Board Meeting 6-15-2020

001Seriously. Off. I guess we get our own brand topic. (muffled speaking) Okay. I think we're all here. Okay, immediately following the Closed Session, the Board of Education will reconvene into Open Section. An action will be taken. Is there a motion to move into Open Session? Oh, sorry, we've all done that. Call to order at 7:08. Can I have a roll call please? Ms. Meyer. Aye. Mr. Perlman. Aye. Mr. Struck. Here. Ms. Byck. Here. Mr. Fishbain. Here. Ms. Garlovsky. Here. Ms. Shapira. Here. The next agenda item is a public hearing concerning the intent of the Board of Education of the district to sell, not to exceed $51 million on general obligation alternate revenue bonds for the purpose of altering, repairing, and flipping school buildings and facilities and improving school sites in accordance with the provisions of

002the bond issued Notification Act, the public hearing may be adjourned to another date without further notice by a motion of the board fixing the time, place and date of the reconvening hearing. Is there a motion to adjourn the public hearing until the Board of Education meeting on July 13th, 2020 at 7:00 p.m. to the administration building? A moved. Not. Is there a second? Second. A roll call please? Mr. Perlman. Aye. Mr. Struck. Aye. Ms. Byck. Aye. Mr. Fishbain. Aye, thank you. Ms. Garlovsky. Aye. Ms. Meyer. Aye. Ms. Shapira. Yes, please. The motion carries. Now we will call to order, the roll call of our regular Board of Education meeting at 7:10 p.m., a roll call please. Mr. Struck. Here. Ms. Byck. Here. Mr. Fishbain. Here. Ms. Garlovsky. Here. Ms. Meyer. Here. Mr. Perlman. Here. Ms.

003Shapira. Here. Is there a motion to approve the agenda? So moved. Is there a second? Second. A roll call please. Ms. Byck. Aye. Mr. Fishbain. Aye. Ms. Garlovsky Aye. Ms. Meyer. Aye. Mr. Perlman. Aye. Mr. Struck. Aye. Ms. Shapira. Yes, please. The motion carries. Okay, we are moving on to reports. Okay, first report is the president's report from, I will start it out with a huge tremendous thank you to both of our teams at both schools that's both DHS and HPHS. Yay! Kudos (claps hands) to all of you. The virtual graduations were amazing. I didn't think we could tap those until I was able to attend diploma days at both schools. It was incredible. And what was more amazing was how many parents said very quietly, although they probably don't want their children to know

004that they kind of enjoyed it more, 'cause many of them did than the traditional graduation. And it was really great to see the luxury of having the diploma presentations the way we did was that you could have more people there seeing decorated cars. It was really, really just a beautiful thing on both ends of town. I wanted to take a moment to thank the Highland Park Team, Debby Finn, Lisa Frederick, Alyssa Margaret. I'm gonna mess up her name, Margarets. Lisa Mitran, Wendy Prado, Kelly Schaefer, and Matt Wallace. Then at DHS, Kathy Anderson, Lilly Brant, Joe Taylor, Marlana Fury, George Grubb, Bill Knesley, Bettie Liberles, Joe Taylor. Oh, I said that already, and Brian Verisario. As well as what I thought was a great like addition to it was our Highland Park and police, and Deerfield

005police officers, as well as our SROs, the maintenance staff. And then to be able to just watch our students have that last final goodbye with their homeroom teacher, their counselor. And it was really great to even see so many coaches there really wanting to have the last moment with our students. So truly to all of you out there that worked tirelessly are grateful from the bottom of all of our hearts. I think I can speak for all of us that that was really a shining moment and, as I've said before, turning lemons into lemonade, it really was. And thank you to the board members who have attended. We still have three more days of Highland Park diploma presentations for anyone who wants to join in the fun. Our Return to School committee, we posted our

006Return to School committee in between the website and emails from people who just sent direct emails. We had almost 80 people ask to be on our Return to School committee, which was just a great thing for our community to really wanna get involved in it. We have looked into, Ken and I looked through all the applicants and we got that done. And it seems like, Ken Fishbain is going to be this committee just so you all know. And I think a really important part to this is we need to trust the committee that they are doing probably our most difficult work we have going this summer, and doing it to serve a whole committee. The point of this committee is to really give recommendations to us on how to return to school. Another important thing

007with that, which I thought was a great little kudo was one of the applicants was a recent DHS grad who is studying public policy in education. So, we are excited to have someone who is right in the middle of not only studying it, but has just recently graduated one of our high schools so kinda has that voice, which I think is an important voice. I know we have policy coming up and if policy 2-1:50 passes, I will be happy to name later on our community members and things like that. And who will be on that committee? Just another FYI with that, we have DEA reps, both of our principals have chosen teachers to be on that committee. So, we are all fantastic with that. Moving on. Summer school, huge success on summer school. It's been

008really fun to having, I'm not allowed to say, okay. It's really great to be able to talk to the teachers when we were at the diploma ceremonies to hear about all the different classes that were being offered. Really, kudos to our teachers and our admin team that threw out some interesting topics for students that normally we don't offer. So, Rich Grady is teaching American Military History. Joe Bokulo is teaching writing for TV and film. Then Jason Neuberger is doing sports management. And then we actually had to open up two sections 'cause we had so much interest in the art of business being taught by David Burke. Thank you to Matt Wallace, Joe Taylor, and our teachers who were able to make this happen for all of our students, what a great just enrichment for them.

009It keeps them busy. It gives structure. And for a lot of our kids, it's opening it up another group of students at the other school, that they now know that they have similar interest in. And that just to me it was like another added bonus to it to be able to see that both schools are in these classes that, like I said, the kids would not be normally having the ability to take. So that is that. So thank you to all of you. I think that is all I have on my report for the day and I will turn it over to Bruce at this point, unless anyone has anything, any questions or comments. Great, then I'm gonna turn it over to Bruce and thank you all once again. Thank you very much Ms. Shapira.

010So, I also wanna say thank you to the schools, the virtual graduation diploma presentation... When you're on this side of the school, you know how much work that actually was to put that on. And I know that both schools put in a tremendous amount of work, both for the virtual graduation diploma presentation. And so, I really appreciate all that. And so thank you Jodi for acknowledging that, we really appreciate it. Summer school as well is another one that, while we were doing everything else, trying to have summer school in 2020 to be something that would engage students and teachers stepped up, Joe Jailer, Matt Wallace stepped up big and we really, really appreciate them. So, I just wanted to add my thanks to that as well. Although we do look forward to having our graduation

011back in rudenia and all being together, and having things being normal, the idea that everyone stepped up to try to make this as good as we can make it given the circumstances. We really, really appreciate it. Bruce, can I interrupt you for one minute? I said, Joe Taylor's name twice and forgot Ken Williams names. So pardon me, I just wanna make sure Ken gets recognized as well. Joe got it twice, I forgot Ken. So thank you, Ken. Hey, so, thank you. Yeah. Ramina whoever's would you show the FOI requests log showing the four years that we have responded to the last board meeting? Display those please. Thank you. Yep, so that is the, all that we responded to since last board meeting it was, 5/28 is when we received this full release. And that's all

012I have for my report, thank you. Jodi, you're muted. Thanks, Mike. We're moving on to our remote learning 2.0 plan update. One thing I just wanna ask of all of us and I am a huge offender of it. I'd like us to let Dr. Lach get through this whole presentation and ask our questions later. 'Cause I know what happens is we tend to ask a question or at least I do, that's answered somewhere later, so let's wait until the end and then, let's dive in at the end of it. If you all wouldn't mind, thank you. Hey. Hi everyone, thanks there. Hey, is there, we didn't really coordinate how we're gonna show this. Can I project from my screen? Yeah. Does that make it easier for you, Ron? That would make it much easier. Go

013ahead and do that. Give me one second to give. Yep, go- I made a few tweaks on it. Yep. Go ahead and share. I was gonna, all right. Hold a minute and I'll get ready there. Did that work, you still see it there? Yep, you're good. Yep. All right, thanks all. So, I'm already starting off on the wrong foot. I thought we're gonna do these in a little different order, so I'll do a bit of an adjustment to some of the slides and the flow there. What I wanna do here is bring you all up to date on the remote learning plan. We talked about it last time. I've had a few conversations with some of you off and on and continue to talk to lots of teachers and staff members and colleagues in other

014districts in places as well. To do this we're gonna, we're actually gonna take a step backwards and sort of look at the whole reopening process. 'Cause I think it'll give you some context for how it's gonna to go. And really, what I wanna do here is begin a public conversation, not only just with the, between the district administration and the board members, but also with parents and community members who I'm sure are listening in. So we can start to think about the educational experiences in the fall, focusing on the kids. I wanna talk a bit about the context and the constraints on which, how we're gonna make decisions. We're gonna propose a timeline for some of those decisions, but we're also gonna ask everybody listening for some help, and some information and sort of tee

015up some of the, the real sort of big questions that we still have about how this work goes. We've made a bunch of progress on our Remote Learning Plan 2, I'll conclude and give you all an update on that. Let me be clear though. We're not, I'm happy to talk to anyone offline about temperature checks, face masks, PPE, hand-washing, is it six feet? Is it eight feet? All those kinds of things, but that's not gonna be the focus for this conversation right here. That will come, there is an inordinate amount of medical advice to process and to operationalize, but we're not ready to do that now, okay? So, here's just sort of a summary of what we're gonna get. There's a bunch of rules from the governor, from the state, from the Department of Public

016Health that will govern our work, to various degrees we need to follow them as mandates or as recommendations, though, all of those rules are evolving. We're working on a bunch of different models for opening schools. None of them are final. We have to do a lot of stakeholder engagement to get them right. That means listening. Some of those are gonna involve remote learning. Some won't. Our aim right now is to have a reopening schools recommendation to the board in mid-July. So that's a month or so from now. And there's many lessons we've learned about remote learning in the spring, and we've incorporated them into our plan, but that work is continuing. So, let me go into detail on all this stuff. So mostly starting school. So, this is a screenshot from the Governor's Restore Illinois

017plan. And this has been, this is backed up with executive orders around how people and organizations in the state are expected to work. We're currently in phase three, there seems to be a, some likelihood that we will move to phase four this summer. And maybe that's as soon as the end of the month, there's been news reports saying that's coming soon. But as far as I know, there's been no final decisions about that. Let me just highlight a couple aspects of these plans here. In phase three, gathering size is limited to 10 people or fewer, and face coverings and social distancing are the norm. 10 people is considerably less than the smallest classroom, than a typical classroom at either of our schools. In phase four, there's a lot more flexibility about space, gatherings of 50

018people or fewer are allowed. Lots of other things are opening, but it does say face coverings and social distancing are the norm. I wanna just sorta tee on that end there. There has been some discussion that that and might actually be an or, and the implications for our work are actually quite profound. Opening, we have plenty of, most of our classes are under 50 people. So that would be good news for reopening. And if we could open, have gatherings of less than 50 people with face coverings, that implies some semblance of a return to normality. However, doing face coverings and social distancing with a mandated six feet between people as much as possible makes running typical classes really challenging. So, this is part of the uncertainty we're working with, but this is sort of governing

019our work. We're waiting on ISBE and Illinois Department of Public Health Guidance about reopening schools. We are told that that is coming the third week of June. We haven't seen it yet. This is a real high level picture of how we're sort of thinking of those options. Let me talk about phase five first, 'cause that's the easiest. Phase five only occurs when there is a vaccine or herd immunity. Nobody expects that to happen this fall, that I've talked to. That, we hope comes soon, but it doesn't seem like that is likely for this fall. Instead, this fall seems to be some combination between phase three and phase four, with roughly sort of three categories of opening. On the left there is a remote opening and this would be pretty similar to spring 2020, but using

020our new updated Remote Learning Plan. A hybrid model means most instruction would be delivered remotely, but maybe we can do some sort of physical in-person learning. Maybe that's extra curriculars get phased in. Maybe that means in-person services for some students. We could block off weeks for certain groups of kids or various ways. So there's a whole bunch of hybrid models that are possible there. And then there's sort of a in-person with an asterisk, and this sort of assumes that we're in phase 4, and we can have 50 people or under in a gathering. We have to use PPE extensively, but we do not have social distancing rules. So, our classroom walls can remain. Sure, we have to do something special for band and choir probably, the cafeteria would have to be treated differently. We'll have

021to think of some new rules for unscheduled classes so that there's the appropriate kind of supervision. It won't be easy, but it feels like that in person with an asterisk can at least resemble what's happening before the pandemic. So again, there's four options. One of them, sadly, we'll take it off the table, 'cause we don't think that that's very likely. So trying to figure out between the phase three and phase four options that are in front of us. Now, making this decision is going to involve a whole bunch of trade offs. Like the first is, until there's a vaccine, schools are not gonna be able to guarantee the health and safety of students and staff. It's just not going to be possible. This virus will spread and, if we open, we increase the risk of

022somebody getting sick. We also have to remember that the risk of infection and the impact of COVID-19 is not the same for everyone. There are some members of our community that will be hurt more by this than others. And so in our process of decision making, we're gonna have to be real careful we're making decisions for the right reasons. This is gonna involve some discussion of our values and our moral beliefs, as well as what the medical data says, and what educationally makes the most sense. In those middle options, the hybrid options. It's almost certain that we're gonna have to change student's schedules to do that. Some kids coming in, some kids coming out, and that will impact our delivery of curriculum. One of the things that we'll need to decide together is the degree

023to which we want to do that. We won't be able to cover as much content, but maybe we'll be able to have some in-person activities to focus on, certain groups of kids or set up the social connectivity, and all those things. That's gonna be a key point. Also, we know that regardless of whatever we do, families and teachers are gonna vote with their feet, and make their own decisions. Some families will say, we're ready. We don't worry about the risk, We want our son or daughter in school right now. Some teachers are chomping on the bit to get back and wanna do that. There are others who have preexisting conditions or have worries, and won't wanna come to school. Right now, I don't have any real sense about the degree to which people wanna come

024to school. We've seen a lot of emails come through. I don't know yet how representative that is. I'm very aware that, sadly, some of the more marginalized members of our community may not feel comfortable expressing their ideas. So we're gonna have to be real thoughtful about how that goes. My point here is there's a lot of trade offs that we're gonna have to wrestle with together, over the next month or so. And a lot of the underlying data here is gonna keep changing. If we get more data about how the virus is transmitted, that may help us move things ahead. So, one of the, after thinking about that, like a key takeaway for all of us is how important we do a lot of listening, and do a lot of sharing with our community. I

025think that's all of our jobs. That's the job of teachers. That's the job of administrators. That's the job of board members. That's the job of community members. We're gonna have to come together and think through these issues in a structured way. It's exciting that Ms. Shapira announced that there's a Return to School committee that's starting, and Mr. Fishbain will be driving that, we're anxious to get involved there. I hope a big piece of that work involves lots and lots of listening and providing the opportunities to get at least the 80 parents you signed up, but even more people to weigh in. We're gonna have to keep working with administrators and staff through the summer. We'll have to keep collecting research and best practices from other institutions and other places. I think some focus groups or

026listening sessions, it's kind of hard to think about how to do that on Zoom. It's gonna be real important. We have to make sure everybody gets heard and we'll have to do some surveys at some point, it feels to me a bit premature to survey people to see if you are ready to send your child to school because I, it just feels the information is changing so quickly, but we're gonna have to do that at some point, so, I think a lot of work for all of us coming up is this stakeholder engagement. So we're really listening to what people have to say. Here's our real high level timeline for how we're thinking about this. It's exciting that the Return to School committee will launch soon. We think we've got some ISBE guidance coming soon,

027and we're gonna keep working on what those various opening models look like. We envisioned that in July, there's this, we keep having these Return to School committee meetings and maybe taskforce and subcommittees working on that to figure out a bunch of these details. Again, more listening. We're hoping right now at the mid-July board meeting, we can bring, the Return to School committee can bring a recommendation on the opening plan to the board for approval, and we'll have a final Remote Learning Plan 2 then. And then, in early August department chairs and the 10 month administrators return and students come back on the 17th. I think, freshmen come a little bit earlier and there's probably a few details around that. Again, this is how we're, this is our target right now, but we also know that

028the information is changing pretty rapidly, so, we may have to adjust things as that goes. Let me pause there before I dig into the Remote Learning Plan things and just see if there's questions or pushback or comments from anyone right now. I think one of the important things that you said was, we received many emails, but as you said, that doesn't actually mean that's what our community, it's just a select few people who've chosen to. And I really liked the fact, and one of the think you say is that that listening and sharing is the most important part of this entire plan, and listening and sharing to all voices. Because there are many voices in this community, and sometimes we react to those who are the loudest, and that doesn't necessarily reflect the views of

029the community. So I thank you for putting that out there and literally putting it out there as openly as possible. And honestly as possible. So, mine's not a question and I agree listening. I think we need to do a lot of listening, but even as you were going through the options and the fact that as you said, some people, people will be voting with their feet. One of the things I'm hoping, and I know that I don't even know if there are other board members on the committee or what the committee is going to look at, but as people are thinking through options, I guess I'm hoping that one of the things we will see is what are we going to do, if we for example, open school, but there's a percentage of people who

030are really not comfortable with that, and how are we handling that or vice versa. So again, just to make it even more complicated as you go through, but I think, thank you for that, I thought it, you unfortunately raised a lot of the questions we have, (giggles) so it's not going to be easy, and appreciate all the work that's going into thinking about it. Thank you. I guess my sense is that if we have 50% attendance for staff and students in the fall, that means one set of contingencies. If we have 95% attendance, it's very different. And right now I have no idea where it is gonna be between that. And none of our neighboring districts seem to either. There does seem to be a small and loud contingent that says, oh, we wanna open

031schools no matter what, we need to do that. But it's also clear that that's not representative. I sure hope we can open schools, but I also like the board needs to know, we all need to know, like we open schools, someone's gonna get sick. Right. That is a risk we're gonna have to take. And that's a pretty monumental decision to make. And as you just said, and someone's not gonna show up and what do we do for them? So, yeah. Yeah. That's the thing. So, I think it bears mentioning that, yeah, we've gotten a bunch of emails. Most of the emails that I've seen that came to us as the board, it looked like they were, all, and in fact, one of the emails specifically said, "I was told to email you." I think that

032there was something put out on social media, maybe in one of the private groups, and most of the emails were only for one high school. So, which obviously it's one of the, one of the groups just saying, hey, let's voice our opinions and there's nothing wrong with that whatsoever. But I think that, well, first of all, I think it is important to say that many of the emails voiced opinions for not opening school. Some of them said, "Let's do what's safe." Some of them said, "Open school." Some of them said, "Don't open school." I mean, there was a wide range of opinions. I think what, and this, again, I'm only one board member of what my thoughts would be, what that I think we can, we can't over-communicate right now. And as opposed to, and

033I know, Bruce, that you were individually responding to each one of these emails and basically saying, whatever, like, well, we're gonna do what's safe. And obviously as we're all discussing now is that nothing is, we don't know anything yet. And so I think maybe, one thing as we're all, as you guys are working through this, and as you're, I think even if the communication is we don't know, but what this is what we're working on, the more you can reiterate that, in the channels that the community is communicating in the channels where the community gets their information, the better off all of us are gonna be, and the better informed, and the more smooth this is gonna go. 'Cause I think one thing that we've learned is that, there's a lot of communication that goes

034on and then when we're not responding, that's when restlessness maybe (giggles) can occur. So, everybody doesn't unfortunately come in, call into the board meetings. There may be a whole huge universe of individuals whose kids are coming into the high school for the first time that don't even know to subscribe to the district 113 emails. And that's gonna take a while for them to jump on to that, so. Where is everybody communicating, for better, for worse, a lot of it's on social media, that's where they're getting their news, their information. So if there's a way for you guys to work on a plan, with their communications department, I know we're just expanding our budget for communications and, got all kinds of tools and software, like let's communicate, let's communicate a lot, communicate often. So that people,

035even again, even if just to say, we don't know, but here's what we do know, but we don't know this yet, so that it prevents the festering. I'll just jump in now. You covered it perfectly, and later on in the meeting, we've already, we've got a plan. (giggles) We have an idea on a community, a robust communication tool. And we'll talk about that when the committee, when we get to the committee part, but that's, you had it covered. So, Mike, I'm gonna pose sort of a two part question here that probably are, it may not be things you can answer now, so I'm not necessarily expecting an answer, but something for you and the committee to think about. The first is, if you're coming to the board or planning to come to the board in

036mid-July with a recommendation on return to school, how much room will there be at that point in time approximately a month before the start of school, assuming we're planning on starting school at normal time. How much room where that would be to make changes if either the board says, gosh, what about this? What about that? And so on, or if things change as more is learned about COVID in the state issues, more proclamations and so on. And then the second part of the question is, how much room will there be to, or will there be a plan in place to change back in a sense to remote learning, if upon the return to school, we see an unfortunate result, and I'm not gonna speak to specifics here, but I think we can all imagine the

037unfortunate possibilities and it justifiably moves the community mindset to a different place back to where they were in March, where we all were in March, where we were saying, shouldn't we be closing now, should we be closing this very instant, as we all were getting frightened very quickly. And I think if that fright reoccurs, for any reason, we need to be prepared to move back to a different position on the scale of possibilities that you showed, and so I guess I'm asking, will there be planning for that kind of movement as well? Those are great questions. Let me be as candid as I can. There's probably not enough time to figure this out properly. When we were thinking about it, like, I get that people want a decision. It also feels, it feels really premature

038to give a decision now, particularly when IDPH hasn't given their guidance out. I know there are some nearby school districts that have started to do that. I'm not sure that's working so well for them, but we did wanna give people a timeline. That said, like the information is changing every day. Like, we had to make a bunch of changes to this, that I'll talk about it a little bit because of a bill in the legislature we learned about on last Thursday night, so, things are changing pretty rapidly there. I think, what I would encourage, and this is in no means to, we need to uphold the Open Meeting Act and all the rules that go along with that. But my hope is that, in this committee structure and that by working with you all, with

039Bruce and or individually, we can keep you as board members, appraised of what we know, what we don't know, what we're thinking as this comes about. I'm sure things are gonna have to change in August. I'm sure things are gonna change in September once school has started anyhow. So, we're gonna do our best to be as clear and level headed and upfront about how this happens, but, this is a fairly dynamic time so, I want people to be aware that as the information changes, we'll do that. So that's sorta to your first point. To your second point, I think that's part of the reality. Like, there could be another outbreak. There could be another lockdown. I heard yesterday that Euston is thinking about going back on lockdown, Illinois seems to be doing pretty well, but,

040we also, there's some data that says the virus spreads more during colder weather. So again, we'll have to plan for those kind of contingencies if and when they happen. So, yeah, I just also wanna say I'm one, when I say about the communication, like I'm not, and I'm actually trying to make less work for you. (giggles) So that is as opposed to responding to 15 or 20 individual emails. If you're aware that there's a lot of activity going on on a social media site, you know what I'm saying? Like, so, over communicating to kind of killing more birds with one stone, and addressing people all at once. 'Cause if I agree with you, the information is changing all the time. And if you instead are trying to answer individual emails, you're never gonna be able

041(giggles) to do that. I mean, that- I wasn't on any of those emails and I'm really grateful for that. (laughs) Well. As you should be. No, I mean in normal times, and under normal circumstances pre-COVID. Yeah, I mean, we pride ourselves on good communication and Superintendent tries to respond to all those emails like it's nearly impossible. So, but there's a way to still communicate effectively I think, to address and respond. If somebody puts something out on social media and says, hey, email the school board about blah, blah, blah. And now you get bombarded with emails. I mean, I don't know. I mean, the Superintendent or you or whomever could sit down and respond to 80,000 emails all day that just says, thank you for responding, but we don't know yet. And that's gonna take you

042all day, and take you away from your work. Or, you could realize, hey, the community is trying to talk to us. They want to express the, they've got opinions about opening school, or not opening school. Well, maybe, here's a way we can communicate in a different way. I'm just saying, it just seems like there's no way to possibly over-communicate right now. And, I think if, I'm not telling anybody not to respond to an email, of course not. But there isn't, (Jodi giggles) there seems to be that there's should be more- Lizzie? One of the things that we're putting on with this committee is gonna be on our website, we're gonna have literally like a, I don't know if it's called a drop down or whatever, that there's going to be a space there that's going

043to give updates from the committee as well as people within the community able to ask their questions or that kind of thing. So that's going more to the committee on the Return to School committee, as opposed to as you said, bogging down the emails for them having to respond to as, so that they can get to the work of actually getting our Return to School plan done, our Return to School 2.0 learning plan done. So, there's gonna be an actual portal place for people to be doing those. So hopefully it won't be as much through the email. So Lizzie, yeah, this is Ken, so, yeah, I had a pre-meeting before the meeting and it was the day that all those emails came in. I walked in and said, "We will exhaust our resources "if we

044have to do what you described, "we'll just exhaust our resources doing that." So I asked Karen to come up with an idea and she's come up with this really excellent, robust communication tool. That will be the portal, the repository for the return to school questions, answers, updates, ideas, yeah, I don't know that much more about it, but I heard about it today. And she's got a plan because you're right. We would just be exhausted by doing that. And at the same time, we've gotta over communicate. We wanna hear from people, as Mike said, we wanna keep listening. And at same time we wanna keep pushing information as fast as we can, 'cause it's gonna change pretty quickly. And I'll shut up now. (laughs) Yeah, I mean, I understand, I'll just sort of, like get... Michael,

045thanks for this. This is a really helpful document as we move, I hate paraphrasing a former Secretary of Defense from unknown unknowns to now we're moving into known unknowns. And maybe in a couple of months, we'll actually know what we know. That this is a it's, we can never communicate enough that this is an incredibly complicated difficult process. One that, and you touched on it that really, we have to take into account as well, are the district's core principles. And it's not, it's so important I think in our considerations to communicate to people and to, make it clear that one of those considerations really is equity in all of this process. If we're forced to do a hybrid opening, there are some students within our 113 faculty that desperately need to be in the building.

046I mean, there are the special needs kids who there's no way that remote learning can work for them, that they need that physical contact. That there are other, even like potentially 9th, incoming 9th graders who are just, it's going to be so jarring and, such a bizarre and strange foreign experience to them, if they don't have some connection with their building as they move into a new school. For kids who don't have the same access to technology who have, who face language challenges, that they need that contact. That so much of what we're doing is trying to carry out our responsibilities to engage all students, that there are very difficult choices to make in this process. And I think that's, from my perspective, it's important that we start communicating that right away and keep on

047communicating now, that this is such a fluid and moving process. So, I think this presentation is a good start to that. That's all. I just wanna jump in quickly. A couple of points I think just are so important. One, Mike Perlman always who said, we need to have avenues and ways for information to come in from the community. I mean, it's really clear that the community cares about this, they wanna share what they think, and what their thoughts are, and what their concerns are, all that. And so we've gotta have a way to bring that in, but to Lizzie's point, she's absolutely right. The information also has to be going out to the community. So, there has to be this flow, information in and information out as we're working through this over the next few

048weeks. So people feel like they're getting the information and a lot of it will be what we don't know yet but, nonetheless, I think that, there's been a lot of uncertainty all through this and we've been working through that. The other thing that I did want to mention though, and make sure it's not lost is that when Mike Lach was pointing out the, and when we're in phase four, we want to be in school to the extent that we can be, and keep students and staff safe. We absolutely want to do that. And just like what the IHSA Return to Play, to the we moved as aggressively, and quickly on that as we could, because we want to take advantage of whatever opportunities, the opening we've been given by the state IHSA whomever, to take.

049So we really want to, we're not, it is way too early to make a decision about remote learning. So even though we're talking about that, we know we have to plan for it because I think we all think at some point, we're gonna be using it next year, but just to make really clear that to whatever extent we can be in school and do so safely for students and staff, that is absolutely what we want to do. All right, so with that and with, knowing that there'll be more questions and more listening as we get ready for a pretty crazy month. Let me dig in a little bit more here. So, let me give you an update on our Remote Learning Plan 2. I thought this was kind of telling, I don't know if you

050saw this in the Wall Street Journal, but it doesn't seem like much of this remote learning worked around the country. Problems pilled up quickly, I find it hectic and stressful. I think we did a decent job here in district 113, but it was far from perfect. And there's lots that we can learn going forward. We certainly did this better than a lot of our less fortunate neighbor districts did, because of the resources and talent that we have here. So, thinking about how this fits in. Again, the Remote Learning Plan, it's relevant to, it's not relevant to all these options. It's really about this remote option, and maybe some pieces of a hybrid option. If we are able to be in person with an asterisk, let's hopefully, the bulk of our instruction will be delivered in

051ways that at least resemble, the ways things would have been a year ago. So again, this is not a plan for everything. This is a plan for delivering instruction predominantly over the internet. So, we have goals for our remote learning, that we've evolved a little bit. It's about saving health of our kids, replicate as much as possible, the high level of delivery that happens in in-person instruction, maintain these connections as possible, and then communicate rapidly, clearly, and directly with everyone. I think we've particularly talked about that last one, but again it's really about getting that instructional piece right. So, a bunch of lessons learned from the spring and we continue to try to learn what's going on. Some of these came from teachers, some of these came from students. Some of these came from talking

052to you. Some of them came from talking to community members. Some came from looking what neighbors have done or other places around the country are doing. So let me sort of highlight them like, so, a big sense that synchronous learning is valuable and important. Not everybody likes it, but a lot of people liked it and there's clear value and importance to doing it. A reminder that structures and routines matter for students. There's trouble with engagement all around the country. That Wall Street Journal article makes that clear. We can't quite tell yet how engagement connects to expectations and accountability. Our sense is that there probably is a pretty direct connection there, but having making sure that the accountability is in place for students and teachers too, of course, and administrators, but making sure that's in sync

053is probably key. We also know that, I think this is to Mr. Perlman's point earlier that we can come up with a great plan, but that plan is gonna change. It's kinda like, the worst investment you can buy is a car because it loses 1/4 of it's value, as soon as you drive it off the lot, Like we're gonna have to plan to make those kinds of changes. And that means collecting data. And that means being able to have some nimbleness to what we're doing. We learned this spring, how important the communications were. In particular, the challenges that many students had to sort of figure out how to navigate different classes, and how challenging it was for some parents to access their student's records and information. That's a big deal. And we also know that

054the equity related gaps that are pretty severe in district 113, and that we talked about together in February, the pandemic, the protests about the murder of George Floyd, like, these are gonna exacerbate those gaps and increase the need for mental health services and supports. We know that some students have been struggling more than others, and we're gonna feel that impact next year, regardless of if we're in-person, in-person with an asterisk, remote, or hybrid or any sort of combination there. We're gonna need to figure out how we respond to that 'cause those gaps are getting bigger. So, some of these pieces have come into focus. We've done a lot of work on Schoology, and so we'll have much more consistent Schoology usage district-wide, it's gonna be the primary platform for all teachers. And we've had a

055bunch of work to sort of figure out how to do, make sure dates on assignments are put in place there. How to make sure that the pages work on mobile devices and we'll work on all that kind of work. We've found that there's a lot of parents who don't have Schoology access. So we're working on some processes to make sure parents know how to see that information. We're gonna make more synchronous learning activities happen. Right now we've set the, the floor to be at least once a week, per course, but we've provided a bunch more tools and supports to help teachers think about new synchronous models. Grading is gonna return to the pre-pandemic processes. As you may remember the do no harm provisions that the governor and the state board promulgated, made a lot of

056sense at the time, but it also, there was students who felt that, well, if the grade isn't gonna go down, they don't wanna engage and do the work, so. That won't be the case. We also know that the way we took attendance probably resulted in more false positives than we should, so, we have in the works, there's a few technical issues we're trying to figure out, ways to be a little bit more rigorous about attendance tracking. The weekly schedule will mirror in-person instruction. So it'll look like white and blue days or cycle days. This is what I referred to just recently. So, SB 1567 apparently is on the governor's desk having just gone through the House and the Senate. And it allows the state board to let school districts have no more than five Remote

057Learning Planning Days, so, if you remember the spring on the non holiday Mondays, teachers did office hours of professional development or lessons. We won't be able to do that in that same way, moving forward in the fall it appears. Again, that bill has not been signed yet, as far as I know, and I have not unpacked the statutory language. So there's some pieces there. We're also, and this sort of goes to this communication push. We wanna figure out a way to get really quick sort of pulse surveys, of parents, of students, of faculty every week, maybe every couple of weeks so we can just sort of see how it's going and deal with those sorts of things. There's still a whole bunch of stuff we're working on that we haven't quite figured out. I talked

058to a few of you about how important this transition to 9th grade is gonna be. So, figuring out how to welcome students and build community will be really key. We've talked about the student, the Schoology stuff, those things. We wanna have some tools for parents and students, akin to how we've provided tools for our teachers around those sorts of pieces. We also need to make sure that, while, we wanna return to regular grading procedures. We wanna make sure that everybody is respectful and aware of all the pandemic related challenges. In my mind, I'm not convinced it's good practice to ever say, fine, your assignment it gets 10% docked off it for every day it's late. That probably doesn't make a lot of sense if there's a pandemic, and there's lots of challenges going on. So

059we need to figure out the right way to ensure that there still is accountability. Kids are not allowed to slough off, but there's the flexibility for all the family emergencies, is provided. All that work is happening. On the right column is stuff that needs to start as soon as we get done with this meeting essentially. There's new ESB guidance coming. We have a whole bunch of health, safety protocols. What happens if a student refuses to wear a mask, what do we do then? We'll work with the DEA to come to some agreement on working conditions as we've done before. There's a lot of work around activities and co-curricular pieces. And then, sort of beyond just the remote piece, but something that's real important to us is to figure out how to address these equity issues.

060And our plan is to bring some ideas around that to the reopening school committee, as soon as we can. So, that's what I've told you about. We're gonna start schools based on the rules that we get from the governor, from the State Board of Ed, and the Department of Public Health, those roles, the rules are changing. We've got some models for opening schools. And we'll have to do a lot of listening to get them right. Some of those will involve remote learning, but some won't. We're hoping to have a recommendation to the board in mid-July. That's a pretty fast month. So, we'll see how that goes. We're taking everything that we've learned this spring, and we'll keep incorporating it in to our Remote Learning Plan and that work continues even though it may be the

061case if we're in-person with an asterisk that, much of this gets put on the shelf in case the nation has a relapse, and we have to go back into lockdown. That's the end of this section, so let me stop and take some questions or comments. I've got a few comments and questions. First of all, thank you. As everyone has said, and as you have said, this is not easy, there are just so many unknowns and everything changes day-by-day, so, I certainly appreciate how difficult it is for the administrators and teachers to plan for what what's going to be in two months. Just a few comments and questions. One, I guess I'm curious, like what went on during the Remote Learning Planning days and how that, like, were you working on this plan during those days,

062were you guys working on how to deliver remote learning in a more effective way? So, I'm curious to hear about that. Also, I do echo Dan's remarks about the need to look at equity issues and issues for students with special needs, and every, we wanna make sure we're doing everything in a way that benefits, it doesn't hurt those students. but I also wanna make sure that we are doing the best that we can for all our students as well. And so, I do find that having a floor of one synchronous session a week might be too low. Maybe there's other ways to kind of raise that floor. It doesn't only have to be a Zoom session, but I feel strongly, and I've shared this with you in the past that our students need structure. And

063I just think that they need to have some kind of connection every day with others. If they're gonna be at home, that social piece is so important for their social, emotional health. How can we make sure that they have some kind of connection to other students and to teachers every day? I'm not saying every class every day, but something every day. And I'm, when it comes, when the plan comes to us in July, I'm going to be real curious to see what a typical day will look like for our students. I think there are a lot of students and parents out there who, that would ease some anxiety if we had an idea of what a typical day might look like. And then finally, you mentioned in the first half of the presentation that we

064cannot guarantee the safety of students and staff, and I'm curious if the district would have liability, if someone were to get sick, do we think that the state might provide any immunity for the school districts? Is this something that's come up in any discussions or not? I know I haven't talked about it with anyone yet. Thank you much. Let me see if I can respond to a few of those and then tee it up to others. So, the next presentation I'm gonna do is about the nine days at the end of the school year, and what we accomplished then. So I think that'll address your question about the Remote Learning Planning days. If it doesn't, we can deal with that. I heard you on the equity issues and the best for all of our students.

065And we've talked about synchronous learning. I hear ya, I haven't quite figured that out yet. it's not a perspective that I, that there's consensus around as far as I can tell, but we're working there. One of the challenges is unlike at a elementary school, for most of our students, their relationship with our schools, maybe through a counselor, but then it's through their classroom teachers. So there isn't really a gatekeeper to make sure that everything is unified across courses and departments. Which we're trying to figure out some solutions on that one, but I hear ya. And the typical day stuff. Yes, I think that would be the sort of thing that would go in this parent expectations document. Just sort of say, here's what it looks like, a day in the life, a week in the

066life sort of thing hasn't been written yet, but it's, the note has been taken. On the safety issue, I've actually had a bunch of national conversations around this issue. It seems that, generally, nobody knows. Also the sense that I've heard from talking to a few attorneys is because we know so little about how the virus is spread and how a infect, where an infected person captured it, absent a massive contact tracing system, which we won't have. It would be very difficult for someone to prove that they got sick because of something the schools did. Unless the school was being negligent or didn't do what we said we're supposed to do. To me, that sounds like a recipe for a whole bunch of litigation and big lawyers fees, but we're still trying to figure it out.

067Hey, I have a few Thank you. I have a couple of questions and first of all, I wanna say, I'm impressed that you answered all of Gayle's questions. 'Cause I didn't see you write anything down. And I was thinking, how are you ever gonna know what she said, but, I think- I'm writing them down. Oh, you did? Oh, I didn't see, it's all right. (laughs) So, and I had kinda sent this question in in advance, and now it's primed with something else, so, Gayle did touch on this, but there's one of the things I think we pride ourselves on is how much every student is connected to somebody at the school, hopefully more than one person, but that connection is really important. And it's part of what I know makes our staff happy as well.

068So, assuming the floor of one synchronous learning per week, or hopefully more than that, are there other ways, or are we trying to build in other minimal touch points for students and staff with each other that might not be synchronous learning? But again, one of the things I think we heard is people saying even, just to check in, so whether it be a guidance counselor checking in with a student, or a staff member checking into the student, but, something that might ensure a certain number of touch points, one-on-one touch points throughout a quarter or semester. And then, my only other question is about, I would prefer more than one synchronous learning (giggles) per week, but I was kind of confused because you had that as the floor. And then the next statement, I think that

069was new was saying that you're hoping the structure would be similar to a regular school day, so, I know you're still thinking through this, but at this point, are you thinking that if there wasn't synchronous learning, in theory, I, as a student, still am supposed to be working on math every day, every Tuesday from 2:00 to 3:00, even if it's asynchronously, like is that, what you were thinking when you said that? I wasn't quite sure, 'cause those things didn't seem to go together to me. Yeah, I think... Yeah, so, I would say a couple pieces, a couple of pieces there, this is not quite as coherent around as I'd like it to be. What we did in the spring was we basically said during the allotted time for the classes, and we used a variant

070of the typical schedules. That's when kids are supposed to be working on whatever that class is. And if teachers wanna do synchronous stuff then, that's when they should do it. We didn't want one teacher just deciding, I'm gonna do a Zoom call at two o'clock when they might have another class, then we had to, have the appropriate safeguards in around there. The idea in the spring, again, I think we're still trying to figure it out is we need to figure out what the right schedule is. Whether that uses the combination of these sort of blocked schedules, the white and blue days or the cycle days at Highland Park and Deerfield, respectively. Or if we try to do every class on a single day, like a 100 day. Because we won't be, it doesn't appear that

071we'll be able to do the Mondays to focus on professional learning and lesson planning. We've got, we have to sort of revisit sort of what those schedules are. I suspect that, we still would say the rule that says, if you're scheduled for third, if you're teaching third period, and third period is from this time to that time, that's the time when you can do the synchronous stuff with kids, because otherwise it'll interfere with other pieces. So, I think that's the reason it appears a little bit as a disconnect on those slides. 'Cause we're still trying to sort of work those two pieces out. Let me just sort of highlight that this to get sort of at the higher level, like, we did spend a lot of time trying to think about how to build community,

072and in the next session, I think we can talk a little bit about some of those examples, and you're gonna get a big document that lists a bunch of those in your inbox real soon. But, yeah, building community has been a priority for our teachers and course teams and departments and figuring out how to do that remotely. Did I get all yours? I tried to write them down too. (laughs) Yes, thank you. Okay, Mike, I think you can slop onto the next. Awesome. Does that mean I can like go to the next agenda item? 'Cause I think I keep going. I think you are the next agenda item. The only thing, let me interrupt all of you for a moment just to say, no discussion needed. I have a concussion. So if you see me

073all pulling away from this, watching the screens for a while is really not good for me. So I just want people to know that it's not that I'm not listening, but at times I need to turn away from the screens. So, okay, Mike, I gave you a time to take a drink of water too. That worked out well for us. (laughs) Oh, yikes. All right, so, okay. Hello again. (giggles) So, now what I wanna do and, Tiffany, Debby, Kathy are gonna help me out here, give you an overview of the nine days. We called this launching school year 2020-21. Tell you a little bit about what happened, what we got done and what the next steps seem to be. And we'll sort of tell you sort of how when we reflect on it, what comes

074from that, and what it looks like. So, it's funny like, I always think that the way you can tell if something's real is when there is a product, a document, a website, a handout, a piece that sort of shows what it is. Whole bunch of people made this pretty elaborate website that has all this kind of information. It's just internal. That's plenty of works on it, but we put it, we developed a ton of information to sort of organize and drive this work over this time. So I'm gonna spend a little bit of time talking about it and raising some ideas around there. One of our goals was to resolve incomplete grades, Kathy, any chance I can get you to tell us like when kids get an incomplete and what that means, and if you're

075not on and don't want to, I can, I can do that. Sure, so for incompletes, students who were failing at the third quarter, received an incomplete, and they had between the third quarter and through remote learning to hopefully improve that grade. At the end of what we consider the school year for the students on May 22nd, we had teachers identify who those students were, who still had an incomplete. And over those nine days, we spent that time trying to provide individual support to those students for completing the assignment, showing mastery on specific skills. And at the end of that period of time, so on June 5th, we had teachers again identify who was still receiving an incomplete and from there, that's when our counselors and teachers work to determine for minimally our freshmen through our

076juniors, how would they would be making up that class? So, students actually had the option of how they were going to improve that. So, for some students that meant that they could continue doing remote learning through summer school and have an individualized mentor. Or they could take the class completely over again, and they can do that also during summer school. Some students knowing that maybe they had a lot going on in the summer, or that remote learning in it's current form was not something that they could manage at this time, depending upon their scenario, could also elect to take the class later. So that was our freshmen through our juniors. And then for seniors, because of the change of ISBE guidance, they did not necessarily even have to make up the class. So, our number

077one goals for our seniors was that we wanted them to have a passing grade on their transcript, but, when the case was that they were not able to get a passing grade, that actually became a waived grade on their transcript because of ISBE and the new guidelines. So here's the numbers. Debby, you wanna talk through this one quickly? Kathy sorta highlighted some of the bullets already, I think. Yeah, she did. So, yeah, no problem. I would sort of like Kathy said, there was a, it's a real collaborative effort I would say to get to this data, our counselors, our deans, our psychologists, our social workers, case managers, teachers, department chairs, all came together to support kids and kinda make that plan that Kathy described. What would it take to have to move out of an

078incomplete. Staff members held study sessions and worked collaboratively with parents and guardians to help students to resolve these. In both Deerfield and Highland Park, we did see a reduction in incompletes by June 5th. You can see that in the table. If you look, let's say specifically at Highland Park, we had 72 juniors with incompletes on 5/22. And by June 5th, that was reduced nearly in half. Counselors, again, Kathy mentioned that counselors were tasked with communication, teachers as well as but, to counselors specifically with communicating with parents and guardians both after May 22nd and June 5th, to kinda work with the student and the family to create a plan, what would need to be done in order to resolve that incomplete, and to earn a grade. I just wanna piggyback off of what Debby and Kathy

079both said. I mean, some of these kids who are still have that incomplete there, some of those students have IEPs, really complicated situations. These are, some of the kids that, the whole team has been wrapping around to try to figure out how we can best support the kids. So, it wasn't, it's not all for naught, like everybody's been working on this. Any sense of how different the numbers are from this year versus, I assume there are incompletes at the end of every school year that need to be resolved. Is this number significantly higher this year, or is it not altogether different? Wouldn't be incompletes, they'd be failures probably. And so similar kind of conversations about how do we address a failure. It's not unlikely to have an incomplete but not nearly as prevalent this year,

080and I would say to you, at least from our perspective, the numbers are very similar. So, the other thing we wanted to do during this time was to get our courses and curriculum ready for the fall. And so we came up with a process, really driven by the departments where the departments would pick a few courses and allocate them to their teams. And then they figure, these teams would like figure out an adjustment lens that was the language we used to apply to that course, maybe one, maybe more than one, and then do the work to make those kinds of changes take place in their courses and curriculum. So we tried to get people to put their energy on the courses that had lots of kids and that were graduation requirements or where there was

081a lot of kids struggling. And the adjustments sorta ranged the gamut, like so in some departments, for instance, like mathematics and world language, if there's a lot of kids who were not engaged in spring 2020, these are real sequential kinds of courses. And so figuring out what they're gonna be ready for in the subsequent courses is gonna be a challenge. So that's, focusing on this content skill streamlining, making sure you can cover everything there, or recovering the content skills if you have to do that. Many of the, one of the things we realized was that given the variance of remote learning, that probably means, we should expect even more variance within our classrooms in the fall. So the differentiation lens was really about how do you help kids who are better at this, and not

082as good as at that when that's in your classroom, how do you worry about those sorts of things? If you were worried about engagement, the authentic work and student interest lens was the sort of thing that would go with this. If you're in a course team and the teachers are doing things differently, that's gonna be a problem when people end up being absent so, if consistency is a problem, there was a lens set up to focus on that. And each of these lenses had documents, ideas, goals and people to help course teams with them all around there. But it's very localized, teacher centric process to do that. So, Kathy, you wanna tilt, like just talk about a few of these examples? There's probably too many on this page here, but a few of them that

083were kind of interesting that you wanna talk about that, or some of the cool work that happened at Deerfield? Sure, so I think it's telling, looking at the first course that was listed here. This is quite honestly across the board, SEL building community, this came up in our earlier conversation, is the number one concern of our teachers. They know that from day one, it's gonna look very different if we're gonna go remote learning. Because when we did remote learning before during fourth quarter, we knew our students, our teachers who knew their students in the classroom. So when you're coming into the school where, when you don't necessarily know all your students, it's gonna look very different if we're doing it remotely, hybrid, or even if we are in-person, because we've gone through this traumatic experience.

084So knowing that it's really important that we focus there. So our theater courses, for example, they wanted to emphasize community building at the beginning of the year. So they redid their first units to do some different community building activities. I linked a project that they had identified as a part of that first unit. Then going into some of the other courses like U.S. History, Algebra I, biology, it was looking at specific skills, objectives, and standards that we wanted to make sure that we emphasize at the beginning of the year. Most of our classes spiral their instruction, meaning that, they know that there might be some loss of skill or knowledge over the summertime, or even over the course of a school year. So you want to continuously bring up those skills and those objectives while

085you're teaching your curriculum. So we feel as though that that's already been built-in, but we want to do that more often and making sure that we identify those essential skills, those essential target areas for students to be hitting, because oftentimes we might hear about, well, we can't fit in all of the curriculum. Well, we're making sure that we have those essential skills and targets for our students to be able to progress, so that they can master those necessary skills. Algebra is a really interesting one, especially at Deerfield, and that's because we were already dealing with a new curriculum because district 109 had a different math sequence. So our teachers had actually already been very closely working with our math teachers at the 8th grade level for those students coming in prior to COVID-19. So, because

086of the pandemic, our math teachers found it even more important to reach back out to those 8th grade math teachers, to see where our students were at from Algebra, for Geometry, just to make sure that our teachers could design their first units with that feedback. You'll see for biology and English as well, again, looking at those essential skills and targets and going back to again, building curriculum extremely important, Spanish 4 was doing the same thing. And for all of our teams, we are preparing for every scenario, we are preparing for complete remote learning. We're preparing for a hybrid scenario, and we're preparing for an in-person situation. It's really challenging to wrap your head around those kinda three possibilities, but we're trying to do so in the planning that we did over those nine days. And

087I would say that the majority of our teachers and staff are working over the summer as well in their course teams to continue that work and knowing it's not just the first unit, it's every unit after that, that they have to start thinking ahead for. So, here's some Highland Park examples. Debby, you wanna real quickly now, just go through a few of these? They're getting the flavor here. Yeah, I like following Kathy because she does such a good job. I can just add a little fluff. The only other thing I might add to that, that she said, and I got a number of examples here and much of what she said is similar. But a couple of things I think that were really evident. One, the importance of course teamwork. And so I will thank

088you personally for the time that you've given us to do that. Though, the alignment of curriculum, within course teams takes time. And I think that there's been tremendous growth as a result of our circumstances in that collaboration amongst course teams. For example, the math department pulled together. They felt like their starting point, their jumping off point was really to redefine and look at the curriculum so that every teacher at any course team knew what curriculum was covered and what was not, so as they readdress curriculum in the fall, everyone was on the same page. In addition, special ed will use that timeline to know more about their students. We also found a lot of teams talking about SEL equity and in particular much like Kathy said, how do we work with kids we don't know?

089And how do we work and engage freshmen who have never been in our school before, let alone, we don't know them? That theme kept coming up over and over and over again. So a lot of our work was about that. I can stop there Micheal, so if you want since Kathy said a lot about similar stuff. Yeah, that's good. what I will say is, I couldn't figure out how to get it in board docs. I sent it to Ramina who will put it there, but, each of the principles sort of compile the full list of what every department and course team did. So you can get a sense for how it goes. There's 10 pages of central aiding reading from Deerfield and 27, just page turning reading from Highland Park, (Debby laughs) please dig into

090this. They did a ton of work, and come back with questions or comments. There is a little bit of educational jargon in some of those, we tried to parse some of that out, but come back with questions if you have it. So, the third thing we tried to do during launching school year 2020-21 those nine days was set some goals for the year. If you remember in the spring for the first time in a long time, you all had the wisdom to come up with some district goals that makes a ton of sense. It's on us to actually figure out a plan to reach those. And so we started, we started that work amid all of the craziness to have each department build out some goals that aligned to the district goals. So we can

091start to do that work of improvement regardless of what the pandemic state looks like. So, each team made three goals, the goal is to be done in a year. They have to be doable with the modest resources that were in the budget discussion we had last month and had some quality criteria. We just got the first draft of these done, it involved a lot of negotiating and back and forth as you all know from your meetings, but we got the first draft of those done. And we'll spend time with principal teams in June maybe a little bit in July, figuring those out and really nailing them down. And then coming up with plans to go with them. At some point soon, I'm not exactly sure when amid the pandemic, but we'll share these with you

092all once they get final. But here's a little bit of a taste for sort of what people think about they wanna do for next year. This is academic related goals at Deerfield, real quickly, Kathy. All right, you'll see that a theme from the examples that I have here were languages, math and science. Some of it has to do with standards. You'll see that World Languages is looking at their American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages to make sure that the standards that they're using and their curriculum are consistent from freshmen level to senior level, and across all of the level of courses that are available. So, that's for world languages. For science, they're looking at the NGSS Science and Engineering standards. They're in their third year of reviewing those, but it's to make sure

093that those standards are driving their curriculum. For math, we have a pretty exciting year coming up. So a lot of what math is doing is actually some action research. And that kinda goes along with what science is doing as well. So for math, we are actually eliminating Algebra I Survey. We're combining both Algebra I Survey and Algebra to be taught together. It will be taught as a co-teaching model. And we also have some intervention periods to support students. We felt like this was good timing because our Algebra size of our classes are much lower now because of a district 109 changing their math curriculum. So we wanted to make sure that we could provide an inclusive environment for our students as they go into Algebra. And we're hoping that reviewing the co-teaching model and intervention

094periods will help us to get some good data on what math looks like. Science is doing something that's very similar in the regard of looking at co-teaching. And this is really an attempt to provide an inclusive environment, to have our teachers working together, to support our students, to make sure that ultimately, that they're all growing. That they all have about the same amount of growth each year. Your growth should not be dictated by the level of course that you're in. So, that's my shortened version of our goals at DHS. So, there's a district goal about academics. There's also a district goal about SEL and equity. Debby, you wanna talk a little bit about SEL and equity and how those are emerging in some of the goals that the individual departments are setting? Absolutely, and if

095you look through some of those documents, you'll see a lot of this. SEL and equity we would say go hand in hand in many regards. And so some of the examples we pulled, I would say are connected to both. For example, our deans have an understanding that the current practice for assigning detentions really does not deter from an authorized absences. And so, their goal is to train attendance, coordinators and restorative practices to alter some of the traditional methods we've used. And so, they're looking to dive deeper into why these numbers will truly reach here, and don't change in our practices and what we can do to be more positive, making more positive difference in student's attendance. The math department is also looking at things where they call a racial equity lens. There's a hyperlink in

096here that takes you to some research they were doing. And following along with regard to that, but that if they assess, if they look for different ways to engage students that providing them the resources they need and the correct environment to support them emotionally, then maybe they will have greater success in the math classroom. We have to make a math classroom more inviting for all of our students, so they can feel successful and safe in that space. Social Studies teacher are looking to gather information and then do a deep dive into best SEL practices based on the actual needs of their students. So, I would say that both in this case, a lot of our SEL work, and our equity work are really hand-in-hand. Thank you. So again, like, we drafted those, we have drafts

097for every department. We still gotta work on them. So, they're not in the documents that apparently a little internet fairy just put into board docs for you all. But some point later this summer or the fall, we would love to show you where we're going, again, we wanna be able to show that the district is getting a little bit better each year, or maybe a lot better. And these are all the steps that individual departments are doing that along the direction you said. Just a few other things going on over these past nine days, we built a Schoology on Schoology course about how to use Schoology, including some of the advanced features, 88% of the people took this, this is 88% of all staff, so, the vast majority of except a few of our super

098genius Schoology users took it. We did a bunch of SEL work that was aligned to castle those things. We also had some of the Compass Health Center people come provide supports virtually to departments to work on mental health of students as well. Again, knowing that it's part of it. One of the things we also did is, we really tried to tap into the knowledge and expertise in the district. So, we created this, sort of consultancy model and teachers who had something to share hung basically a virtual shingle up on our website to let other course teams and departments tap into their expertise around the district. So, we had this pretty cool way where any teacher or team who had something to contribute to another one could provide that and help on it. And that was

099a pretty neat way to start some sharing, both across departments, but also across the highway. And those things seem to be pretty fun as those went about it. We did take some data, the raw data for all this as also up in board docs as an Excel sheet. So you can dig into the comments if you want to. It seems again, looking at the pieces on the left, like, a really pretty high numbers of teachers felt that we made pretty good progress on adjusting courses and making plans for next year. Again, high numbers also, but maybe not quite as high around Schoology and other technology usage. And we still have some issues around equity and around special education that we are aspiring to get better at. And you could see that in this data too

100coming up there. So, that's launching school year 2020-21. That's what we done on the nine days. You've got a bunch of documents in board docs to dig into, and we're happy to answer any questions you have. That was nine days well news, Mike. The presentation is fantastic, it answers a whole lot of questions. And I think it addressed a lot of our concerns. I know we all had a lot of question marks and doubts about whether we should have approved those nine days, but, I think that for me, this presentation just removes those concerns. I would absolutely echo that, you got a lot of meat and potatoes done in those nine days. That's fantastic. Even more than what we were thinking of just eLearning that you were able to sit there and really tie it

101back into our district goals and things like that and revise those per-frames. It was just, wow. That was a lot and really time well spent. And thank you for that. It sounds to me if, I had the sense that a lot of what was discussed in the nine days will be of use and value, and is a great starting point for this district and for the teams at both schools, not just for next fall, but well beyond that. It excites me as representative of a really important found. As part of the constant reflection and recreation that is so important for a successful school district. That there's a lot of that contents here that will bear fruit in years well beyond next fall. So, that's great. Well, it also sounds like, based on all the feedback

102that came in that you, everybody really listened and that you worked collaboratively with your entire staff to really work together and come up with a plan that you all have input in and that everybody, everybody is excited about and sounds, actually kind of groundbreaking in a time when nobody has a roadmap and nobody has a blueprint and you guys sound like you're creating one, so, great job and thank you. Thank you for all of your hard work. Just wanna say thank you to all of you as well, again, I know that wasn't an easy decision. I think it was really while use time. People are sick of me saying this, but I feel like there were, there are a lot of silver linings that have come out as a result of really this pandemic. And

103I'm gonna just say this pandemic with a lot of really sad things going on in our world, including systemic racism that all of our kids and much of our faculty are dealing with as well, constantly and they're facing fears and concerns about that, so, even with all that in that nine days, there was such a commitment, there were so many good things and the collaboration amongst staff members I found to just be remarkable. So I thank you all very much for putting your faith in us and allowing us that time, 'cause I really think it was well spent. So thank you, I know that wasn't easy. I'm gonna throw this over. I thank you guys tremendously, truly. And I think you heard from each and every one of us, how grateful we are of all

104the amazing work you did on this, I don't think we could have dreamed it to be, as you said, Debby, the lemonade, when you guys turn lemons to lemonade and this one which was just another, I said about graduation. I said about the diploma ceremony. I say it again about today, so thank you guys all. I am going to pass this over to Ken for a moment. So he can kind of piggyback on this in relation to our Return to School committee and how they will be going with this. Okay, now you can hear me. Hi, everybody. Well, as Mike Perlman pointed out, our committee will meet and then our first meeting will be the report of what, may be with the report of what the plan is. So I thought I'd just make a

105couple comments maybe on a committee report before the committee, and then turn it back over to Bruce or Jodi. So, as a committee, we're humbled. I mean, this is humbled by the importance and complexity of this assignment. Dan, you quoted the Secretary of Defense. I was trying to think of a clever management operations quote. And then your Zoom background inspired me for a movie quote from "Jaws," which is we need a bigger boat. (participant laughs) So, this ain't gonna be easy. There is no playbook to go by. We can't go to the cabinet and say, hey, let's look at last year's Return to School committee notebook. And as Mike Lach pointed out, we need to listen. We'll research, we'll learn, we'll assess, we'll push out communications. We'll listen again and recommend action. And we had

106to do all this in 60 days. So, it's a swift turnaround. This Return to School plan won't be perfect. There's gonna be steps we didn't think of. And there's gonna be steps that we thought of, but we didn't have the time or the resource to actually implement. And it's more likely of course, that we will have a COVID transmission, then not likely. I met with the administration last week, and got to see a preview Mike Lach's plan, which is thoughtful, it's excellent. It's great start. So as you can expect, this committee is gonna cover topics like classroom size and temperature checks and masks and cleaning procedures and buses. And as Mike Lach pointed out, as you also would expect, we'll talk about how to address return to school for our less advantaged students, our medically

107at risk population students and staff. Our students and staff who are at risk from the effects of COVID emotionally or economically or medically. It's gotta stay top of mind. And it is. Our 10th, I was thinking our 10th and 11th and 12th graders are, they're gonna be thinking about what their classrooms are gonna look like. And our 9th graders don't even know where their classrooms are. So it's a, there's a lot going on. The students and staff will be our true north as it is for everything we do. So, as you saw in Mike's presentation, there's a lot of work that has already started. Next step will be Karen, as we talked about, she'll get some communications out. Again, she'll be able when you see it, it's this robust communication tool that's interactive. And we're

108just gonna take off and just do our best. So I'll turn it back to Jodi or Bruce. Actually can I- I have a really quick question. Has the Return to School committee already met? Pardon me? You guys been meeting? No, I just talked to Mike. I just like, as I would have done, I talked to Mike and saw a preview of his presentation. Oh, okay, 'cause then you would- No, no, no. Jodi said earlier that you guys were reviewing all the applications for the community members. I'm just confused because- No, there's not been a meeting. It's just, I wanted to kinda talk about what my thoughts were because we're not gonna be able to meet again before we-- I think it's right, 'cause it's board committee, right? Right. So you guys are subject to the

109Open Meetings Act. So if the two of you are meeting that's... Nope, nope, it was just- Okay. Just my homework and then Jodi did her homework. Yeah, 'cause I mean, the rest of the board is really in the dark about this. Right, so. So. We all are, it's just, and you can say that-- No, I mean about the committee, that's what I mean. Jodi has the committee assignment. She's gonna assign the committee. No, I'm not concerned with who's, I'm just saying in general, if the committee is meeting, No, actually that's it, can we segue, I have a question which would be, I don't know if there'll be any other board members besides Ken on the committee, but the question is, given that you're going to make a recommendation back to the board, do you want

110board members to send questions to either Jodi or Ken, so that the board, that the committee will make sure they're thinking of certain things so that when you come to us, most of the questions already been asked? I'm open to whichever way works for everybody. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I think this should be that. I think that's exactly, as I said at the beginning committee work is committee work, but I would love to have another board member on the committee. I am not going to be sitting on the committee. Ken is gonna be chairing the committee. So I think it's really important that we keep those lines of communication going. And they'd be fluid lines of communication going, because as you said, if we're making recommendations, that means that our questions need to be answered and

111all the ideas, if I think about the idea, the concept that there is no bad idea until we research it and go through it and see, and there is no way that any six, eight, 10 people could know well all of our different groups and then all of our different needs within our community. And the only way we know that is by listening and talking to each other. So, yeah, so I initially went through all the applications and we did all that, but there has been no meetings or anything like that happening. And I think that they are gonna have, this committee is gonna have to work quickly and they're gonna have to work open mindedly, and they're gonna have to be working fluidly, as I'm sitting here, and I see just another COVID update

112from the governor come up on my thing, my emails as we're sitting here talking right now. And so I think that's the really integral part of it. And as Lizzie had said, and I think we can't underestimate, we can't devalue it. We can't value it, I'm sorry, enough, that we have to be communicating constantly about this. It has gotta be, I don't wanna say almost overkill, but yeah, almost overkill because the more we communicate out, we all know what happened with a neighboring district this last week, when people rely on hearsay and this, that, and the other, and don't actually read what the district puts out. And so the more we put out, the more people are informed. And it's not a question of, well, I think this and you think that, no, it's out

113there. Right, but this is also it's all that stuff is also really important, Jodi, but it's a board committee. So, we also have to be really mindful of the open meetings there. Absolutely. We have to be really mindful about that. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Any other questions and comments for Mike, for anyone who presented, or for Ken with the committee or myself? Yeah, actually. Bruce? Could I have one other, can I just add one- Sure. Of the opening school, and I think Mr. Perlman you asked this question a little bit and I did write it down, and I don't think I answered you, but I hinted at it. And I think I wanna be clear. I think the reopening school committee should consider the calendar, but right now, we can't tell any evidence that would tell

114us we should start school earlier or start school later, right now. There's just not enough to know there. So, we're operating as if we're starting school on the same dates that have always been in the fall. We don't know what the configuration of that is. I know there are other districts that are pushing that up a few weeks or back a few weeks or changing these sorts of things. We know we do have to address the Remote Learning Planning days and the calendar. And that's a conversation with board members for sure. But I wanna to make sure that particularly for parents and community members listening, they know that we're currently operating as if we're gonna start school at the same date that has been in the calendar. Bruce, do you wanna chime in on that

115one? No, except to say, I'm glad you mentioned that because, although I think it's been, it's something that's been on people's minds and until something comes to us that lets us know we should change that date, we're staying with it the day we have. But as Mike Lach said, we just don't know exactly what that start will look like yet. Okay, so we, is there any more questions or any more discussion on this? Okay, so we're gonna be moving on to our discussion items, and the first one is the Consolidated district Plan. Our administration has requested that this item be taken up at our next board meeting and that at this board meeting. So, then we will be moving on to our Athletic Apparel Bid. So, you're just- All right. I'm sorry. Yeah. Sorry, let

116me know when can- It's okay. Listen- I can leave, just- Before we move on, do we need to amend the agenda? Towards that- Yeah, that's what I was just about to say. I don't think you can just leave. We've already approved the agenda. So, we- Lizzie taught me well. Thank you. (Lizzie laughs) Thank you, Mike. Thank you, Lizzie. Okay, so then does someone want to, I need a motion to adjourn to amend the agenda. So moved. Is there a second? Second. Okay, and then we would have a roll call. Well, so the motion would be to move the Consolidated District Plan to our next meeting, is that correct? You can just move it to remove it from the agenda. And the you can- Okay, so we've- Put it back on when you do the agenda

117for the next meeting. So Mike, is that your motion to remove it from the agenda? That was exactly my motion. (laughs) okay. Stacey, you seconded that, correct? Yes. So, then we have a roll call vote, please. Is this a roll call or is it just a- Voice call. All those in favor? No, it needs to be roll call. I think we need to-- (cross talking) I thought it needed to be roll call, that's why I called it. It should be under the new Public Act. That's what I thought. The vote has to be an Open Session, has to be a roll call vote. That's what I thought. Okay, All right, Mr. Fishbain. Aye. Ms. Garlovsky. Aye. Ms. Meyer. Aye. Mr. Perlman. Aye. Mr. Struck. Aye. Ms. Byck. Aye. Ms. Shapira. Yes, please. Motion has passed.

118We will remove that from our agenda. Now, Ali, I'm sorry. You are now up on our Athletic Apparel Bid. Right, good evening. (coughs) Excuse me. This is for the Athletic Apparel and Spirit Wear Bid. This was one of the findings from our internal audit report that we should be bidding out for this type of purchases and work with the athletic directors. We all came up with the specs, by the way, this has been the, this is probably the most complicated bid I've ever done. So, how did this work? The structure of the bid was, the apparel prices which is really the MSRP is the same with any vendor, whether BSN and EastBay, first of all, four vendors responded, but only two were qualified based on the responses. It's really the discount where it's off each

119item. That's where it matters, who provides the biggest discount. And then the second component of the bid was, the rebate structure. The challenge with the rebate structure is, I mean, it's a good thing. if there's a minimum spending thresholds in the rebate structure, obviously if the district doesn't meet those, then the rebates are not given, but not knowing how the next couple or three years are gonna be. We don't know if we're gonna meet those minimum thresholds, but, we had to include it just in case we pass those thresholds. How the standing of these items work is just not the district purchases. It's also the team websites such as student purchasing directly from these vendors as well. So anyway, based on all that, we got responses, four vendors. Two didn't qualify, and in the end

120BSN, EastBay, currently, as of right now, we have a contract with EastBay for five years. That will be ending in about two years from now. BSN is the vendor of Highland Park, so, by looking at the document BSN clearly stood out ahead, as far as providing the highest level of discounts, also they offered a $32,000 total rebate without a threshold to each school about 16,000 pre school. Ali, can you scroll down so we can see that? I apologize. No, that's okay. EastBay did provide more rebates, but it had funding thresholds of $150,000 for each school. And like I said, that we can base our lowest responsible bid looking at the rebate. We have to look at the discounts, and the rebates are a supplement. So based on all that information and asking a lot of

121clarifying questions from both vendors, we are recommending that the district go in a contract with BSN. I have our athletic directors with us right now. I mean, they did a tremendous amount of work in validating the bid documents with me. So, I'd be happy to answer if there are any questions. Did I hear you correctly that we still have two more years on our EastBay contract? Correct, so, the recommended-- and are we gonna be able to reach that 150,000 minimum spend? Well, the 150 minimum thousand spend is not a obligation to spend, that is only if, that only applies if for the rebates. So, it's not like we're obligating to spend that $150,000 with the current vendor, but yes, we will be recommending canceling the contract with EastBay. It's not in compliance as part of

122the findings with internal auditors. So we will be sending a cancellation notice to EastBay. Ali, is this contract with BSN then does mean that the athletic department at each school would be essentially obligated to purchase all equipment, apparel of any, all through BSN and not be able to use any other non, any other vendor that is not, that wasn't, it didn't go through this process or is there some sort of threshold where they can like, if they wanted to purchase a small amount, let's say of t-shirts or something for a special event, they could go through a different purchaser? That's an excellent question. In fact, we discussed the same exact question last week. No, so BSN is willing to provide flexibility in the areas, I mean, they obviously wanna win an opportunity to win the

123business wherever possible, but they're flexible if we do go to other sources to purchase for let's say special events, and all that, there's no- But what is the district's, I guess, what is the district's policy about that? I mean, what is, what are, going forward, I mean, let's assume that the EastBay contract that, that whole thing is sort of behind us, what is going to be the, or is there some sort of process in place to streamline all of this, or will athletic directors and coaches be able to use individual vendors as they see fit? No, so see, this is where it gets, we gotta make sure that we follow the Illinois Purchasing Law, right? So we cannot exceed our purchases over $25,000. So, there can always be a minimum spend if they wanna go

124to different vendors, but in totality every year, if you do spend over 25K with a vendor, and if they haven't bid this out, then we're out of compliance. So, we just need to- Right. I understand. I guess I'm trying to... What is the guidance that's given to the athletic directors, is it, use BSN, but if you wanna use other vendors, just make sure it doesn't go up to 20, over $25,000? Right, so the guide- Or is it use BSN? The guidance is use BSN and if they wanna do use, if they wanna use other sources. So that check with me and I will make sure, we will make sure in the business office side before we approve any purchases we're in compliance otherwise, this really bid, entire bid is really for the award of vendor,

125that because we will be exceeding 25 grand so we're in compliance, but if they're in certain times, they wanna go to different websites. It's not students going directly, that's completely different. It's really district purchasing the apparel. So when that comes, we will, I've talked with athletic directors and we will have a conversation before we move forward with any other vendor. Okay, I'm not saying one way is right or wrong, I'm just curious if there is a way or if there is guidance being provided, I'm just curious what it is. That's all. Right. And then my other question was, whether it's, and this would apply to sports equipment in general, but obviously apparel and uniforms and whatnot, fall under this category. What happens to, how is this gonna work with the upcoming sports seasons, if the

126sports don't run or, how is that ordering and purchasing gonna work? What's the guidance being provided there? Sure, so I had a conversation with athletic directors on there and they're actually online right now, so, Nate and John, do you wanna chime in? To let the board know how that's gonna work and when are you planning on ordering? You're on mute, John. Yeah, hi, good evening, thanks for having us. Thanks again, for all of your support of our athletic programs at both Deerfield and Highland Park and our coaches particularly this spring. I just wanted to throw that out there. So, in terms of ordering for the fall, we typically do that now, where we order footballs, tennis balls, volleyballs, the things for our fall sports. So, we're certainly gonna try to do that. I mean, I

127think if we don't have fall sports, we at least have those things in stock for the next year. In terms of uniforms for the fall, we don't have a ton of teams that are needing uniforms in our fall season, but we do have a team or two in the winter and then two teams in the spring that need uniforms. So, we usually lean on our, I do, our BSN rep to see what kind of inventory Nike has and if they're able to, they usually give us a lead time of six to eight weeks to turn uniforms around. So, we have to be mindful of that timing, but we certainly won't order anything without using some precaution in terms of where we're at with athletics, so, I hope that helps answer some of the questions that

128you have. I think so. I don't know if any other board members had similar questions. It just sort of, as we're going through budgeting and, the budget process right now, it just was something that came to mind just at the same time. No, I think it was a great question 'cause particularly in the thought of when we're talking about return to school stuff, the possibility that we may not be having some of these fall sports, wanting to make sure that we're not over purchasing and that's gonna sit in the closet for year. And I would just add in with any of the equipment that we purchased or even uniforms, those would obviously be rolled over then into the next year. So if we didn't use them this fall, we can certainly use them next fall.

129Okay, and does anyone have any other questions for Ali here? Okay, then we can start getting into our next section, which is a doozy, our board policies first readings. Stacey, do you wanna take the lead of this as- Well. I speak for the chair? I was gonna say, I didn't know how you're gonna do these sections. We talked about it since there's so many things here. The first two sections are basically what we had discussed months ago now, after having press come in and reviewed all of our policies for us, and looked at what we are, we weren't aligned in differences. And then they even spoke to us about things that we had done to ensure that they're reflecting us, so, these policies are, for example, the first one is one that we don't even

130have, but it's a press policy. And we thought it made sense. So basically the first two sections are us coming up to speed with press. There's very little that's different, there are some differences versus where we've been historically, but we're recommending that we move to be aligned with press, unless we had a specific reason why we wouldn't. Dan, do you have anything else to say or add about that? No, that's completely accurate. And these, yeah, the first two are, you'll see, there aren't a lot of changes that have been made. One's entirely new and the other one's simply, and then in a 120, where simply there's some change in language that clarifies that the role of the board to approve inter-governmental aide, inter-governmental agreements and the like. These are pretty routine. I view these policies

131as fairly routine changes. And I actually did just wanna add that many times what you'll see is that our policy was shorter than the press policy. And so again, this is beyond section one, section one and two, that if they had more detail there that we thought made sense, because it would ensure that we knew what the intent was. We just agreed. We decided that we would recommend adding that language. Well, I have a couple of comments on the first one. In the second paragraph where it says the district is governed by the laws for school districts serving a resident population of not fewer than 1,000, and not more than 500,000, I'm guessing that that part was selected because we fit into that category. But there are actually some laws in the school code that

132apply to districts that are more than 500,000. And I would suggest that we possibly put some type of qualifier in our policy that says, the district is governed by laws for school districts serving a resident population, but, something to the effect of governed by the laws, but, something that says we're not limited to all of those laws, because we've actually had situations where we've had community members raise issues with certain policies that, we don't have to comply with because we are under 500,000, but, we may want some flexibility in being able to be a little bit more expansive. So while it's a statement that that is the category we fit into, we may just wanna, we may wanna consider that. So that was my- do we wanna change it to something like governed but not

133limited to? Would that fulfill what you're thinking? I don't know if that will be the wording and we can work on it for the second reading. I just, it was just this for discussion for the purposes of this discussion. I just wanted to raise that. That was one of my. I'm not sure I understand. So I wanna make sure that we- So, sorry guys- As we, There are certain provisions in the school code that are different. I understand that. So, it would be that we're not, we don't have to do those though. 'Cause we do not have- Well, if we wanted to, I'm saying. If we wanted to. It's okay. We don't want it to be totally limiting and I'd have to go back to the, I'm thinking of a certain example in my head

134that I'd wanna sort of go back and apply it too and we can, I can work out with you offline and we can bring it back for the second reading, but it's just an issue I wanted to raise- So again, just to make sure I understand it's, this is what we're governed by, but we could also be governed by other laws that we don't have to be governed by, if you will, because we're not in that size? Yes. Okay. Yes, I'm happy if you have, depending on how are the board members feel about that? If everybody agrees, we can work on language. Yeah, no. 'Cause there are things that we have, we have the option of opting into, it's reasonable to reflect that. So, yeah, I'm happy to think over some language. Okay, and then

135on the second one, so I think you added in this, the district as approved by the board may enter into, I don't know if that language is necessary because it's not that the, as approved by the board may enter, the district is the board for this purposes. And I think that the one that we just read it really lays that out. So it's saying that the district is the board. So the board acts like a corporation representing the district. So then this one's saying the district enters into and participates in joint programs. What this is trying to say is when the district enters into these it means, the district cannot enter into these agreements unless the board, some of the board signed these agreements. I believe that's the intent of this. So, I don't know

136that when you use the word may that that's strong enough. The district is the board. And I know we kinda ran into something a week or so ago, I don't even remember what it was about. Well, what does this, does it, the district mean the board or the administration? The district always means the board and actually this policy, 1-10, the one that we, the first one, the school board constitutes the body corporate that possesses all the usual powers of a corporation for both purposes. And in that name maybe sue and be sued, purchase hold and sell property and real estate enter into such obligations as are authorized by law. So really, and then, it says in a later policy, how the superintendent is really our CEO, and that it functions that way. So it's really,

137we can designate what the superintendent's authority is, but it's really the district that enters into, aka the board enters into these agreements. So I don't think that that, I think that language may dilute the policy a little bit, but I'm not, I am a lawyer, but I'm not the district's lawyer. (laughs) Can we subcontract you out? (laughs) You are a lawyer. (laughs) You're not a superintendent. I meant I'm not the help, the district lawyer, but anyhow, those are my comments on those two. Okay, thank you. Does anyone have any comments on section two? Since this is also first reading? I have a comment on section 2-10. I have a lot of comments on the policies, just FYI, sorry. No need to apologize at all. When Lizzie is done, I've also got something on section two,

138on 2.10 if she doesn't cover the same things. Okay, so for 2-10. This is the one, well, it's talking about, official action by the board may only occur at a duly called and legally conduct a meeting in which a court was physically present. And this is really not the current state of the law right now. I don't know if we need to reflect, something to account for the, the current, the governor's order and maybe just, even just to state on less because this could be something that informs part of our life for a long time. And it could be, I mean, he just signed the Senate Bill 135 or something, 1135 that reiterated this whole, the whole section about quorums and when you have to be physically present and whatnot. So, I don't know. I

139just feel like we should, that that should be in the policy. Yes, when we originally discussed it, it was so long ago that was- I'm sure and I wouldn't be surprised. (cross talking) I wouldn't be surprised. Yes, well. Yeah and they're there. I don't believe there's been a press update yet, but yeah, I mean the current state of the law that's changed since this was reviewed should be reflected. Yeah. One thing the board could do, which we did in March is adopt a temporary rule for Bobby's reflect the current state of the lane, well, conducting board meetings as long as we're under a disaster proclamation. 'Cause that was what the law that the governor signed, so, we could update that a temporary law, the board adopted March 18th to reflect that so that the policy

140would be for normal operating and then the temporary rule would cover the board for the period of time that we were under a disaster declaration. Yeah, I just think it also needs to be prospective. Right. Hopefully Michael, is that your comment too? Did you have something else to comment? So, my primary comment was, yes. The law is not the physically present and, I guess I thought it could be something that follow that physically present saying, except in the case of a, of an emergency order by the state or federal government that provides otherwise. Right, it could be unless otherwise, unless otherwise provided by law, something like that, law or emergency order, which is very different. (giggles) Yeah. Yeah, I think that's fair. So, the other point is a much more minor one and I don't

141really have a strong feeling one way or the other, but in the end of the first paragraph where it says management and governance of the district schools, should that really be of the district and its schools? It feels like there's more to the management and governance than just the schools for the district. We've got more than the schools that we're managing and governing, no? I think as a board, it's just the schools. And I think I understand where you're going to, but I'm not 100% sure when you say, what else do we manage? What are you thinking of outside of managing the district schools? Oh, the fact that we've got an administration and an administrative office, and the fact that we've got programs outside of... Got it, that's what I thought, yeah. And I don't

142know legally where this should lie. So I'm not hard set on one way or the other, but it just got- Right, the district schools and buildings 'cause you're right, we do have buildings that we are absolutely, as you said, we have an admin building, et cetera. But I think our kids that are placed in other facilities, I don't know if that would be included. I don't know if that opens us up. I'm not sure entirely. I'm not sure. Well, right. It relates to if the duties include the authority to adopt, enforce a matter of policies for the management and governance of the district's school, so, I don't know if the policy can relate. I don't think we- Outside. Right, we don't monitor and manage policies at other programs that our students are at. Yeah, I

143mean, this is language that is in the press form and it's, yeah, I think it's open to a reading that, with the adoption and enforcement in monitoring of policies concerning the governance of the schools, that includes administration, that includes, that's all, everything ultimately goes for, there's not a distinction between the district and its schools. They're all part of the one same entity. So I mean it's a fine point. I think it's, I see the rationale of the point, but one of the considerations is to the extent that we're trying to comply with the guidance of, so that it makes the administration of these policies more rational going forward. Do we make all these very fine distinctions? Or do we simply go with what is the press state current form. I'm agnostic about what the correct

144answer is, but that's part of the rationale for simply following the press language. And I think that's partly why we have these first reads to see, however one's feeling about it. And do we want to press sets, do we wanna defer to press, or we wanna personalize them more. I don't think it hurts anything to say that management and governance of the district and its schools or the district including the schools. Or do you have to even say anything like to your point about the other on 1.20, Lizzie, would this still fall under that where it- Right, the district. Governance of the district. Of the district. That may be the easiest way to rationalize that it's just state of the district. Yeah, just take out the word school entirely. Yeah, because I think that's a-

145If that was like before? Is that what's before? that's what Mike's point was, right? I agree, yeah. That is, I think that is what Mike- If you say to the District, then it covers the kids that have a therapeutic day. So, then maybe we just eliminate the word schools and although it's the press thing, we just eliminate it 'cause that would encompass everyone. Anybody else have a thought before we... The only thing I would do is run a change like this by our attorneys of record so that they can tell us if there's a reason that we're not thinking about here, that that could get us into trouble. But I think that's what I was looking for. I just, I'm not a lawyer. So I don't know, if a suit came up and it was

146against a school or the district or some specific element, or if somebody was trying to defend themselves against an action in the administrative office, if that would excuse them, because we don't govern the school, we only govern the schools. That's sort of what I was trying to address, but I think that we have to, we have to get a attorney of record, voice and opinion on that, just to make sure we're in the right place maybe. Because I agree with Dan that as much of this, as we can leave, the way press has it, or that makes the job a lot easier for the future. So that we're not working to committing everything. If you said to defend things because that's how it's written, but, okay. Okay, I know someone said they had a couple

147others on here. We can just go through and see what, just moving down the line if people have any discussion on any of the others here. So I have the same comment on, or a similar comment for policy 2-130, and policy 7-190 AP4. And they both refer to the use of him or her in the first one and the use of harm himself, herself. Right, I have already- In the sentence. Yeah, those are mistakes, no gender references should be in any of the policies. And so we- So, if we can just get those two corrected. Yes, they'll all be changed, yep. And actually that aligns with Supreme Court today, so we're good. Yes, surprisingly. Yes, how nice is that? (laughs) Do you need those numbers again, or you have those noted already? We already do,

148thank you. We already did. All right. Yeah. Anyone else on anything in there too? Yeah, so 2-20. I guess I'm, I went through these and it is not always easy for me to tell if the red line is error. Is an insertion or a deletion? If it's the press link, sometimes I can tell 'cause it'll say, okay, this is press, but sometimes I'm just not sure so I, but anyway, in 2-20, number three, it says, employing a superintendent and other personnel, and then it crossed out, approving personnel hiring and dismissal recommendations. And then there's an insertion that says making employment decisions. I don't know if we want that (giggles) there. I don't know if that's press, I'm really surprised 'cause we don't want that. At least I don't think we want that responsibility that we

149make employment decisions, at all. Yeah. So Dan correct me, that is press. And I think what we make decisions on because, actually even prior to you around the board, we make decisions kind of aligned with the budget. So basically saying like, yes, we want to have an athletic director. That's how we're making employment decisions. Right, no, no. I understand what we're supposed to be doing, but making employment decisions that is, to me, overbroad and sounds like, we decide if this teacher is more quali, teacher A is more qualified than teacher B for the next, the open English teacher position or something like that. I think that, I'm surprised that that's press, to be honest. I will double check, but- I am actually double checking it right now. Right, I thought you were better at that,

150than I was but, right. And I'm scrolling up, sorry. Just queuing up, trying to go through everyone. 2-20, I finally got into it, let's see. The press language is, yeah, no, that is the press language, making employment decisions, dismissing personnel, including determining whether an employee is willfully or negligently failed to report an incidence, et cetera. Yeah, that is the press language. So the things that are crossed out are things that we chose not to, but the things red underlined for Lizzie's question are what press has suggested, correct? All right, the red underline is the press language, what's crossed out is what we had there- Are old, yes. Are old. I would agree with Lizzie that this, I didn't notice that first read through, but this opens the door quite wide. And I would be real

151concerned about, all of our boards, ourselves and future boards, and the room that they think that implies they have to make decisions about every detail of employment for our employees. I mean, it just, that's making employment decisions. That's anything we want to. It seems odd to me. Maybe we could bring this back to the attorney and find out if there's a way to- Again, it's interesting. It's the press language. So I'm just gonna start there- Yeah. And I'll say that we've had the old policy, and to be honest, it hasn't stopped anyone from the board, not necessarily this board, but it hasn't stopped people from trying to literally make personnel decisions, which is why I stated it the way I did, because I literally looked it up nationwide to figure out what it meant the

152board could do. And again, what I just said is what it meant you could do, which is, or in theory should be doing, which is to approved the fact that there is that role not the person in the- Right. Right, but I guess I'm reading it's like, approving personnel hiring to me is more along the lines with what I think we do and should do, but to say, we make employment decisions, I don't know. The including determining whether an employee has willfully or negligently failed to report an instance of suspected child abuse and neglect. That is new and I guess I would, that's what, again, I would be curious what the attorneys say about kind of how that would, how would a board member, does that mean that if this is, if this of that

153an employee is accused of willfully or negligently failing to report that the board is empowered to make a decision, right? Like at a hearing or something, maybe that's what this is all referring to. Lizzie, can you- Making employment decisions too. Tell me what you're seeing, I think I've lost where you're looking at, I'm sorry. I'm still on that same paragraph. Paragraph three. Okay, thank you. Maybe this is referring to kind of when we would have like a board hearing, on a personnel situation like that, or maybe that's making decisions, but I think it would be better to have the language be a little clearer. I think it is. I think that's related to maybe a year or so ago when this, when the laws were changed to kinda clarify the reporting requirements that was added

154as a requirement. If the board is ever making a decision to dismiss an employee for, say, an allegation of corporal punishment, this would be one of the affirmative findings you're required to make. All right, well, maybe we can ask the attorneys how this is actually, this particular part of the powers and duties of school board actually plays out in real life. I'm writing it down as one of the ones that I will bring to that, that we can bring to them. Okay, so do we wanna keep moving on from that one? Yeah, I had, and also in 2-70. When it talked about the resignation, I would also add in, or excuse me, the vacancy in paragraph two resignation. Or I don't know if this should have just applied to a vacancy in general, that it

155says every elective office of a school board member becomes vacant before the term's expiration when any of the following occurs. I think it could be clear, a little more clear, at least with respect to certain of these choices that it becomes effective immediately. I guess we've had situations where there's been a resignation and there've been like a thought that you can resign and then choose your day that, choose the day that the resignation- My concussion- Becomes effective. And I think it should just, if we could clear clarify that, that if you, if there's a resignation, it's effective the day you resign. Isn't the resignation effective once it's been, the effect of this is that the resignation isn't effective until it's actually formally submitted. You would think, yeah. You would think, we can talk about that

156a little bit off, I'm happy to fill you in on the why I'm bringing that up, but it would be a good idea to clarify that. So, I'm sorry, Lizzie, I'm not exactly sure. So you're saying number two? I even think... When any of this can- I mean, I think you can put, becomes vacant immediately when any of the following occurs. Okay. I know some of it seems obvious, but I think it would in certain situations be helpful to have the redundancy. Better to be over obvious than have a BM five. But I mean, if we're in a meeting and somebody gets angry and says, you know what, I quit, I'm sick of this board. That's not a resignation. Dan, are you trying to tell us something? No, it's not. (Jodi laughs) It's not. It's

157not a resignation until it's- No. Formally in writing. Correct, to the written, to the secretary of the board. What Lizzie's just saying is, you can't say I'm resigning a week from Tuesday. I'm resigning, effective next week. Yeah. Right. When you resign, it's effective. Correct. I think that's an important, I do agree that I think that's an important thing in here that needs, because exactly as you guys said, you can't say, I'm resigned two weeks from next Tuesday. If you're resigning, you're resigning on that at that moment. Is that always the case? That you'd have a written resignation? Is that always the case or is there not a situation where somebody says, gosh, my job has changed and I have to move in two months, on this date I will be moving. That's interesting. I'd like

158to serve until I move, and then, my position will be open, which gives the board time to do something about it, but can't you do that? Now that you say that Mike, I know that we have that at 109, that we had someone who exactly that their job changed. And they said, "I will be here until Christmas." And then you also did give the board more time. I think it's actually happened in 112 as well. So that's why I'm curious about it. I feel like we've had that in the last four or five years. Maybe it was a little longer ago than that. Yeah, 'cause we were all thinking of it as being a reactionary resignation, I think is how we, when we started having this discussion, we were thinking it was more of a

159reactionary resignation versus just being a natural course of life. Things change. Yeah. Yeah, maybe then we do stick with it just as it is. I'm not sure. I don't think that, I mean that that's, not what I would... I think you have to also check what the school code says, 'cause I believe with, again, I looked into this and looked at what the school code and what the law actually says, and that's why that's where the policy comes from. So if another school board did this, it doesn't mean that it was- Right, well who knows? Correct. You're right, we were just speaking experientially. Absolutely. Okay, we'll look into that. We'll look into that. Okay. In policy 2-95, now, again, I read this a couple of times and maybe I am crazy, but it says in

160order to avoid the appearance of propriety, wouldn't that mean impropriety? Should that say impropriety? Impropriety. (cross talking) A board member will recuse themselves from discussion or vote pertaining to the individual employee by the district. I think you're right, it's impropriety. Yeah, that's impropriety. That I suspect is probably just a typo. Okay. But good catch. Significant one. (Lizzie laughs) Yeah, oh yeah. One of those. Yes, thank you. All right. 2-105. Why was the first paragraph taken out? That's not press. That's something we added when our board was doing things that some board members didn't like them to do. I think we just added this last year. No, I think it was added a few years ago. No, it says June 17th, 2019. That doesn't mean that's when it was added. That was when it was- No,

161but I specifically remember, I could be wrong, but I do specifically remember talking about this, maybe it was just in the review, but I do specifically remember talking about this paragraph last summer. Right, so is that- (cross talking) I think we did speak about it, but I think it was on the policy before I joined the board. 'Cause I seem to remember knowing about this in advance of joining. I would agree with you. We spoke about it over the summer, but I would agree that it was there before it was, because we had a discussion with it over the summer when we were working with our gov, if I remember correctly, it may have even been in a governance meeting. I can actually tell you for sure. It was added because it was when people

162were running for the board. Lizzie, not when we ran, the board before that, that became a big thing because we had people on the board who were doing things like taking out ads for people or publicly speaking. And that's why, and somebody's name literally said, honorable, board member name. And so this became part of policy that you can't do that. So press probably didn't think about this. So didn't have this in their policy. Okay, but last year we did talk about it and obviously kept it in because we didn't want people endorsing other people in their capacity as a board member. Right? Is that what we discussed last year as well? I don't remember it being endorsed in local people, but I think it was absolutely about, our discussion was about things on social media

163and about other political things and things like that, not endorsing someone as a board member. I think that's what it was. Okay. All right, so, everybody's just... Well, though, so my question is, Lizzie, arre you saying that we should put that back in what is being strucken out right now? Is that what you're saying? Is that what your request is? (cross talking) I would have is, is it policy or do you want it, you could make it a board norm because, one of the issues is even as policy and the recourse is... What do we do? The board president publicly gives a... Right. Does the board president give a slap on the hand? Do we remove them from the board? What is the thing? Policy enforcement- If it doesn't bother anybody, I'm not gonna, we

164don't have to spend a lot of time discussing it, I suppose, if it's not bothering anybody else. I certainly agree with the intent of why it was there to begin with, I'm not sure this is the place to have it. Yeah, now, that was the discussion that we had, I think. Was the discussing the press policy was exactly that, is this something that's more appropriate in a board, and our board undertake, our board understanding and undertaking those things. Okay. Rather than have a policy that's built for the, it's such an awful situation when that happens what's in, but it's been a strange district. (giggles) Okay. And then, all right. I noticed in 2-110, this is, yeah, that under officers, this was new or press, I guess, under the board president, it says, serve as, the

165number, it's paragraph 11, serve as or appoint the board's official spokesperson to the media. So, I just didn't know if that's something that the board wanted to, I mean, we've had, we've never had the board president have the authority to just appoint anybody to be a spokesperson to the media. (cross talking) I assume that could mean, not necessarily from the board, but for example, Karen Wagner, your communications person. Well, it just says appoint. So, that means the president could appoint anybody. So I'm not comfortable with that necessarily. I think it's always been the president... So, I'm comfortable with it being in there because I think that in, I think it's gonna be a rare situation where a president wants to give up that role. And if they do, maybe it's because they aren't a good

166speaker to the public. And so they wanna give statements to somebody else to do it. Or there could be reasons that I could see them wanting to do it. I don't imagine this is gonna come up very often as something, somebody would wanna do it. It is a little broad' cause I guess technically you could appoint a friend down the street, but. Right, you could technically appoint your child. So I think there has to go with, and I agree with you that there's a broadness to it, but I- Yeah. I agree with that, that there may be reasons why a board president would say, I don't want to be the official spokesperson. Well, then I mean, I guess I would just say to that, I mean, that's what part of being the board president is,

167is being the- But if there was a conflict or something, if there was a conflict or something where a board president said, I am not, you know, if there was some official situation that they were, I don't know. I don't even know what the situation would be. If there was- Then that would technically if, if the board president- Yeah, but I said wouldn't- They resign as president. Potentially the vice president. All right, Lizzie can I, I suppose there could be a scenario where it's, I don't know, the fire department's there and the media is looking for those spokesperson from, to speak to the media about, I mean, I read it different. I see it just in a interim kind of a spot scenario, but I do see it is one of the few things where

168it got the president actually making an appointment but, I don't know, I see a more of a timing thing. Well, it's interesting. I think Lizzie's point becomes clear here because we're all seeing it as something a little different, and that means that it's not a very clear bullet point, so. Although I guess so it's interesting because when, I don't think I thought about it necessarily in that way, but there for me was almost, I'd say, an implicit trust in the board president that they wouldn't appoint, for example, as Jodi said, her child (giggles) or a random person on the street. So that if there was a situation for which someone appoint, the board president appointed somebody as an official spokesperson, that there was a reason for it in that moment. If people feel really uncomfortable

169about it, obviously, we can change the language, but I just kind of trying to, I don't know, get back to a place where we trust people, so. Yeah, I mean- I'm not- The broadness of it can go both ways that it can be the just, the exigencies of the moment require that somebody speak and the president say, okay, you speak for us. Or it can be the situation in which the gravity of the, gravity of what's going on maybe requires a particular expertise in being a spokesperson, that's a matter of the rest of the board trusting the president to appoint someone who can hand, but some kind of disaster control situation, but that it's necessary to have, it's appropriate to have an outside spokesperson. But yeah, I mean, I would think that, I think that's

170the reason for the broadness of it, because it can, there can be multiple different kinds of situations in which this might make sense. Okay. I don't think we should ever have somebody outside of the board, speaking on behalf of the board or the district. I think, I don't ever see a situation that we would ever do that. I mean, I don't ever see a situation where that would work or that would be a good idea. And I was not at all worried about the neighbor down the street or the child, I guess it's just- I know, We've been doing a lot of, we've been having, we've had a lot of discussion about protocols and chain of command and whatnot. And I think if we're, if we want others in the district and the community to

171be following a certain chain of command, and we are one asking that of them, I think we should also be modeling the same kind of behavior. And they're just our board. That's just always been how it works, is the president speaks for the board, and I agree, implicit trust in the president, I totally agree with that. But the president, if the president can appoint and just, now different people, it's not about not trusting the president to appoint the right person. It's about the people on the other side (giggles), outside of the seven board members, not knowing who's speaking, well, wait, was it the president's, I thought just the president speaks for the board. Oh, well, I was appointed by the president to speak about this. No, I was appointed, I was appointed. I mean, to

172me, that's just... Okay, so I guess- Big ball of confusion. Okay, so what I would, my question is a couple of things on this. One would be, A, let's just take a consensus on this, but two would be, or B, would be do we wanna add something into the vice president that in case a president is not available to be an official spokesperson, i.e hospital, out of town, out of the country so- Vice president, that's already, I mean, the vice president already is- (cross talking) Let's kinda take a consensus on this one 'cause I think we could sit here on this for a while with everyone's interpretation. What is the consensus from most of you there? And I think once again, this just one of those that's just difficult via Skype, do we want to

173scrap this? Do we want to keep this? What is kind of a, person by person what are you all thinking, on a consensus with this? (cross talking) Could also hear from Bruce about it. 'Cause Bruce, when you talk about the spokesperson, all of this is also just, this is really for the media, but I mean, I don't know if he has any thoughts about it. Yeah, I mean, I think that one of the things that when the media come calling or if there's a situation in which the board needs to be heard from, knowing that it's the board president speaking and the board president speaking on behalf of the board, it just, and Lizzie knows this very well. It just makes things go much more smoothly. And there's much, there's a lot of efficiency, the

174chain of command is really clear, and the media know whom to call, and the board knows who is going to be speaking on their behalf so, I think the clarity around that is very important. Hopefully we don't need it very often, if at all. But when we do, having clarity around that, it's very important. Okay, so, I'm gonna go back to that. We've heard from Bruce, we've heard from, is there anyone that we, can we get a consensus on whether we want to, well, this is a first read, correct? I've lost my track of where we're at. Yes. Yeah it's our first reading. First reading. Okay, so we have a second reading coming up on this, I guess I would say to people, kinda think about where you want before we come to our second

175reading on this one. So then we can go from there on this specific one. 'Cause that's, I think that's our best way to kinda move on from this one. Okay. Are there any others that people would like to further discuss in sections one or two, section two, we've already done one. Section two. I have a couple more. I don't know if other people do 'cause I- No, go right ahead. You're on a roll. Okay, committees. No, wait a minute, I'm sorry, I skipped one. 2-140. Yeah. Communications to and from the board. In paragraph two, I just, I don't know if maybe there's a word missing or something. Like, it says, during the board's regular meetings report for the board's consideration, all questions or communications appropriate for Open Sessions submitted through the active electronic link, along

176with the status of the district's response in the board meeting packet. I don't know what that means. It needs a lot of commas, because it reads from the above paragraph and it, boy, does it need some commas to make it clear. I agree, I had to read it two or three times to get it straight, but, I haven't picked up commas through the rest of this. So, I figured we wouldn't go into that. Ensure that the superintendent or designee shall ensure that the home page for the district's website contain an active electronic link to the email addresses for the school board and, during the Board's regular meetings, report for the board's consideration, all questions are communications appropriate for Open Sessions submitted through the active electronic link, along with the status of the district's response in

177the board meeting packet. Actually, even though I did the chair of the past committee, even I had a question on this proofs, and it was, I didn't know, I thought to some extent, this was almost FOYAs, or I didn't know if this was in addition to FOYAs 'cause it's basically Bruce sharing or questions theoretically that are being written to the board. That he's responding to in the meeting, so. I think I understood the intent, but wasn't sure were necessarily doing it then, but right, so. Well, and when you read that, I mean, this is press language, and when you read that, it almost, it reads as though these questions come in, the questions are answered and considered or whatever, and then reported back to the board separately, as opposed to the way we do it

178which is a question is emailed to the board and then a response, I respond to that email, and the board has copied. So the board knows the status of the answer because they're copied on the response. So let me suggest that, Bruce, what you've just said makes so much sense that I feel like I get concerned about you, Bruce, every time a flood of emails starts coming in and I see it, oh my God, this is what Bruce is gonna have to do for the next six hours is respond to each of these individually, and we talked about that once earlier in the meeting. It seems to me that if we start letting people know with an automated response, that their concern will be addressed at the next board meeting. And if they want an

179answer, that's where they get it, that then they can watch the board meetings that if we teach our community that, maybe that will become the norm, and more people become aware of where they can hear answers to these kinds of questions. But that means we've gotta do it. And it allows Bruce, it allows you to respond only once to a large group of concerns that are on the same topic, and probably saves a lot of time and gives you time to think about it. I like that this is in there, and we just need to follow it, but, it does need some commas still. (giggles) But that's a different issue. So Mike, what you are reading this as is essentially a bounce back to board emails that come to the board and to Bruce, that

180would say, your questions will be answered at the next, we've read your things, and your questions will be answered at the next board meeting. If appropriate, I mean, we have to come up with the language, but if appropriate for Open Session, blah, blah, blah. That way, people who are asking a question about their child's IEP or something, aren't getting that bounce back or are getting bounce back that clarifies that you'll get an individual answer, if this is about your student or something like that but, yeah, I think it makes much better use of Bruce's time and much more respective for his time. It also gets the answer to the entire community instead of just to the person who sent the email, so that all the other people were thinking about sending the same email to

181Bruce or to the board, have their answer if they saw it, and we know we've provided answers to it. And I think we will be much more effective in our communication, if we start trying to communicate this stuff to everybody, and we also may draw more people to watching the board meetings so that they are more informed, which might draw far less questions, because I think of all the things that people are sending emails about recently. And I say to myself, Mike Lach's presentations tonight answered- Answered a lot of those All of their questions. But probably none of them tuned in. But the point of this sub point isn't, at least within the context of this particular policy, the point of this sub point isn't about informing, at least this particular sub point, isn't about

182informing the community. It's about making sure that the board is informed of all communications that are going on. That we've deemed that the board packet and the meeting packet includes, the emails that Bruce sends that we're all copied on. That if the board knows about what's being communicated. That's the point of this particular sub point. No, I see that now that it's, (cross talking) Communications to and from the board, not to and from the community. Well, I was thinking it's- That would include emails from the community to the board. Right. But if it's only appearing in our packet and not actually being spoken during the president, I mean, during the superintendent's report, then yes, that's, you're right, Dan, it doesn't address the problem that I'm talking about, so. I think that's a legitimate, that's something

183that's appropriate for us to consider and take very seriously, but it's just, I don't think this sub point deals with them. This is more of the, if one knows it, we all know it point. And Dan, just so you know, each time you raise your right arm above your shoulder, you lose it. It just disappears completely. On everybody else's screen, but yeah. (cross talking) I am good. Okay, Dan, right. Now that I'm reading this again, no wonder I didn't have the question in the meeting, (laughs) when I looked at it right. I totally understand this is responding directly to sharing that we all understand when Bruce or the board gets a question from the community. Yeah. And for what it's worth the press footnotes do say that that paragraph is optional. Although I think we

184actually like it. I mean, I like it. Yeah. And does it say commas are optional? (laughs) Yeah, although I do, the syntax of it can be improved, but I think the point of if one knows, we all know is important. Yeah. I agree. I guess I would ask then, Bruce, your opinion on whether or not maybe we keep this, but add something to it saying that, at your discretion, you could also include some of these things in your president's report, or maybe that doesn't need to be in the policy. Maybe that's just something for you to think about, but whether or not you think that would help, because I, again, I get concerned every time a flood of emails starts coming into the board and you're probably getting some that we aren't getting, so. That's

185true, that's true. And then same topic too. Yeah, and it's too much of your time. Well, you know, what's interesting. To spend your time on, and I'm sure it's not the time you enjoyed the most, so. Well, what's interesting is that I've always thought about this language in terms of the, as Dan said, when one board member gets, all board members get the answer, but, Mike, to your point, and I think Lizzie was making this point earlier. And it's really important, is that when a lot of emails come in around a topic, to address those at a board meeting, I think there is value in that. So maybe there's, I mean, maybe it's apart from this, maybe an email sent to the board, I'll still reply and the community members who sent, the community member

186who sent it will get a response, the board will see the response. But I think coming back to the board meeting and saying, we got between, and since the last board meeting, we've gotten a lot of emails about how the start of school will look, and just to kinda summarize the emails, this and here and here and here, this is where we are in this. I think there's a lot of value in doing that. It's the supporters meeting more than once a month, it's a two week turnaround typically. So I think there's opportunity to be timely as well. So I, Mike, I never really thought about it that way until you described it like that. So, I think that's however this lands, I think that's a really important consideration, as I said, it's the one

187I think Lizzie was making earlier. Yeah. On that same policy, there's a lot of, there is a whole exhibit on guidance for board member communications. Is that staying in the policy or were you just using that for discussion purposes? I honestly don't think it should have been, I don't think that it was supposed to be there. No, I mean, it looks like it can 'cause on the bottom it's got one of those little dated things, so. Right. It looks like it can stay in there. I think it would be a good idea. I mean I would, it was not a bad idea, I guess I'd say. Okay. 2-150 on committees. We had in our, while our current policy states that the superintendent appoints non board members to such committees, and then now that's crossed out.

188So, I'm just curious why, and I guess that should be good. That's like, that's a big diff, that's a big change, and so what is, I guess that's just something everybody should discuss. Or I guess, is that just something that the policy committee, 'cause I was not there when you did this. So, is that just something you guys decided to remove for some specific reason or the recommendation of press? I think it's press, is it not? Recommendation for press right. Right, yeah. The policy committee would not have made that change without a recommendation for, recommendation without the recommendation of press. So again, it shows that our board had done something different than press, which you can obviously do. But so we, our lean toward was always to go back to press unless we had a

189strong reason why we shouldn't and at least bring it forward to the board for discussion. So for like, so for all the board committees, the board president appoints all, would appoint all members? I assume that that doesn't prohibit the president from talking to the superintendent and saying, hey, who do you think's good for this? So. No, of course not. Right. And I don't know what board, at what point chose to defer from press either. I don't know if it was, two years, four year, or six years. but as we've discussed before this, to me, it's just, oh wait, unless we find a reason to defer from press, you know, press is pretty good at this. Yeah, I actually don't have a recollection on this one. So. (Jodi laughs) So, maybe it was in before you

190were there, Stacey. Ken, is it before you? (laughs) No, no, it says right there adapted 3/17, amended 9/2018, so it's pretty new. Okay. Does anyone has any strong feelings about that one way or another? Okay, moving onto our next one. Or moving on farther into this. I'm sorry Lizzie, go ahead. In 2-240, there's a lot of mention of the review cycle and whatnot about policies. And I can see that obviously you're, I'm assuming this is the press language, but yet, it's just sort of funny. I don't really see that it says, it really says anywhere that we're using, which I know we are now using. Now I can't remember what it's called, but like the super press, The service that we subscribe to, to help us like review all the policies. Like the sort of,

191I remember we met with that one guy who came in from press and it's like the, so I don't know if it's worth it to mention that we are using, focusing on, and using the help, the assistance of press, I can't remember what that's called, the press sort of- Yeah, it's like Press Plus, I think, isn't it? Press Plus. Yeah, it's Press Plus. Something that complicated I couldn't remember. I don't know, that just, it just wasn't really mentioned anywhere. Kinda leave some of that optional, but it seems we made an affirmative decision to use that. So I didn't know if that was something we wanted to... I just, I know I personally worry about including any reference to a specific contractual relationship in a policy. It's just something that's... Yeah, the only thing is we

192put it in, then if we stop using it, we just have to make sure we take it out. Yeah, so it's just... All right, well that was my last comment. Sorry, didn't mean to, so we're done with section two. Section five. Chronic infectious disease, first reading. Whoa, we can have a party with this one with COVID. (giggles) (cross talking) Discussion on this. Can I just briefly an update from the policy committee discussion on this one? First of all, we thought the update of this particular policy was timely. Also, it looks like it was last updated in 2010, most of the, or a lot, I guess a lot of the guidance in the policy comes from the Americans with Disabilities Act, which had been significantly updated since we had last updated our policy. So the new

193language tracks press, it tracks the amended ADA. We specifically talk that first sentence of the second paragraph that says, an employee with a communicable or chronic infectious disease is encouraged to inform the superintendent immediately. My guidance from the policy committee was to talk to our attorneys about that, to see if we could make it even stronger, and say something like is directed to the extent allowable by law, to inform the super (clears throat), excuse me to the superintendent. Our attorneys strongly advised against that actually. Yeah, you can't do that. Yeah, the basis was basically that this is a kind of employee notice policy that's meant to inform people of their rights and responsibilities and that to tell all employees, well, first of all, so to require employees to tell us things like this would violate

194the ADA probably, and also to tell them that their obligation is up to the extent allowable by the law we can't really expect them to know that. We can expect for themselves to know that, but not individual employees. Yeah. Yeah, no you can't do that. And I think on the very first paragraph, I think that all, that should cover us for whatever comes out with COVID. Because there could be rules from this Department of Public Health about contact tracing and, which would fall into the procedures. That's still to be determined on what's gonna happen with that. But it just says we need to be consistent with the public health rules, so, we would just implement them consistent with that. So I think we're fine the way it reads. And I think we're safe to assume

195that come COVID, we're absolutely gonna get some guidance on how we have to handle this in the public school system with reporting with case tray, with a tracing and things like that. Definitely, yeah. Any other discussion on this one? Okay, so let's move on to the section seven. Board Education Policies, first reading. These are student behavior, student behavior, administrative procedures, going through hazing activity, expulsion, bus conduct, timeout, suspension, et cetera. Does anyone have anything they'd like to discuss on those? Okay. Last chance, anyone? Okay, so then let's move on to our public comments. Hold on, I have to have my little thing to read, so pardon me a moment while I pull it up. Public Comments. Due to the extraordinary situation presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, as we announced on March 16th, and as part

196of the announcements for this meeting pursuant to the rule of board adopted on March 16th, public comment will be provided by telephone and Zoom. For the next 30 minutes, public comments that have been received will be played in the order of which they were received. Registering who wish to speak live during the public comment period, we'll need to use the Raise Hand function in Zoom to indicate that they would like to speak. I will call in registrants with have activated the Raise Hand Feature in alphabetical order. All minutes will reflect public comments as usual. Are there any publics out there? Any public comments out there, Ron? Not anymore. (laughs) Okay, we lost them. We killed them on our policies. Okay, so now we're going down to our action items. The first thing is the District

197113 Board of Education Resolution. It is recommended that the Board of Education approve the resolution reaffirming our commitment to equity and racial justice as presented. Is there a motion? So move. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, any discussion? Yes. (laughs) I'm not quite sure what, I mean, I'm for that, but was there something specific that somebody put, I actually didn't see. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, we kinda suggest that- Yeah, can I actually, Jodi, since I'm the one who kind of brought this up. Can I say a couple things? Absolutely, So what I did actually, I'm sort of surprised actually, if this is up for action, if it will put a, if what you're about to put up as a for action. I'm a little bit surprised. What I had suggested was that we as

198a district put together some, a resolution or a position statement or something that we can propose that we bring to the delegate assembly that would be voted on at the delegate assembly and the conference in November, through the IESB. And what my thought was, following the George Floyd murder and obviously are for a lot of people in our, even just in our own community, let alone our entire state, in the education world, that could be really benefit from some improvements in various policies and whatnot that could address the systemic racism that obviously these protests really shone a light on. It really wasn't about, I have no problem with a board resolution just for District 113, but it was more to, as a school board, we as elected officials have the ability to really get involved

199in advocacy through these resolutions that, 'cause our, the IESB is a lobbying, they're a lobbying arm to Springfield and so the idea was to really more put something together that was more of a call to action. So, I'm happy to work on something. The resolutions form I know was included in the packet, but there's been a lot of information out there about different things that we can do, like and if you go through the Illinois Association of School Board, that has it's own constitution, I mean, there is literally nothing in there about any of this topic, the belief statements, the position statements, there's literally nothing. And so I think, I wouldn't be surprised, at least I'm hoping that other school districts will also be engaging in these efforts. And hopefully there will be other resolutions

200for the districts to vote on this year. But I thought, especially given all the work that we do and that we've done to establish district goals and a lot of the policies that we have, and the amount of, the efforts that we put towards equity in our own district, I just thought it would be a really, something really important that we could actually do. Something that we could do to try to really make a difference in a lot of people's lives. So, that was what I wanted to discuss with the board, is if they if, and if somebody wanted to help me or, and I would want, I'm not an educator. So, I would want to have help from whoever within the district would be best suited to help with that. There's been community members

201that have said they would love to help out, drafting the right language or whatnot. And so that's what this was about. One quick question. I thought that the document that we saw linked to our agenda was a document that showed the application. Yeah. And that application, I think, is due nine days from today. It is, but- (cross talking) I'm sorry? Yeah, there is a process for turning in late resolutions. So, I looked into that as well. But, yeah, they're due June 24th, but it wouldn't take that long. I mean, to put something together, I mean, for example, we could put forth a potential resolution regarding mandatory compliance with SB-100 as opposed to just, right now there are certain, only recommended compliance with SB-100. There's certain things we could put together that wouldn't be all that

202hard. Even maybe something that's putting forth that all school board members, we all have to go through certain mandatory training. None of us are required to go through any type of equity and diversity training, maybe all school board members. I don't know what it would be, but we could easily, or at a minimum draft a potential beliefs statement. That should be part of the IESB belief statements that I think would, I would hope get as much attention as the arming teachers in schools have the last couple of years. Well, I, Lizzie, I think that's part of what this, that's what this resolution is. It's saying, I mean, this is one step along that way, I mean, let's establish for ourselves what we commit this district to doing in terms of equity and fairness. And then,

203with this resolution in hand very quickly, I mean, my dream would be to go to other districts, to join us in sponsoring a resolution that incorporates these principles that are in this doc, in this proposed resolution to put before the ISB general meeting. But I think it's very important to first commit for ourselves for this district, that we believe that there are very specific kinds of things that we could improve and areas in which we should do better or in which we should pursue in order to further the goals of equity and justice within the district. And we're going to put our foot down that we think this is important, these are the principles that are important, and then we're going to take it seriously and commit to carrying them out. And from that foundation

204going and propose using that as the jumping off point to propose a resolution for the IESB general meeting. I have no problem with us doing at all. I fully support this. I mean, this is something that we were just shown today, but I guess, right, I just wanted to make sure that everybody understood. Right. What I was trying to- Well, yeah, no it's- What I was doing to do, I think that we have a unique opportunity as school board members, to really be advocates and really make a difference and while, and this resolution is great and it reaffirms our commitment within our district. I think that's wonderful. But I think the idea that we do have the ability to potentially take this step and do it like right now. So I actually, I don't know

205how I missed it, but I haven't read this resolution 'cause that wasn't what was in our packet. And I don't even know when we got it today. I'm looking at, so, well, I don't know. I don't think we did get it today. I mean, I was sent a draft because of I was the one wanting to propose it. So of course I would like to look at it first before I agree with all of it. Although I'll be shocked if I didn't, but Lizzie, I agree. And so to me, it doesn't have, it can be, I don't know, a but, and, or whatever, like I don't, they're certainly not mutually exclusive. And I know that's not what you were saying Dan, but I think there's, if we want a parallel path time-wise because, I don't

206know how late you can come up with the resolution. But I- I was, I also checked over the IESB stuff that we can apply for an extension, you can apply to have a late filing. So I think that would be the first thing we'd have to do. But this to me was, it was a first stepping point of who we are and then going from this, whether we work with other districts or we do it on our own to propose something that this is who we are and making a statement who, I don't wanna say who everyone else should be, but to propose something to IESB, that really makes a difference. And to say what Lizzie, to piggyback to something Lizzie said, you'd have to hope that something like this is gonna get us much

207attention as the multiple years of arming our teachers. And isn't this what we wanted to get particularly with what's going on right now? Isn't this the message we wanna be giving out there? I also just wanna piggy back and now, I don't, Lizzie, I don't know who said it but, I think I'm the only one on the board that is, well, maybe Ken did, that has gone through the equity training. And not that it has to be exactly what I attended, although I will tell you it was life changing for me. And it was, I looked at it again today, it was seven years ago. Yes, I was on the first one. Right. With from Dr. Fronel, Dr. Fronel brought it to the district. We were the first ones. That is something we could talk

208about whether or not we, (cross talking) whether we go to something or even ask Mira to take us through some things or whatever, but, I do, I'm certainly in favor of us providing our own district with the resolution and starting there, I'm all, I'm not, I guess, to some extent, could we ask for an extension to file something? And if we decided not to, we don't have to do anything, but it gives us the opportunity to bring something forward because I actually do think it would be nice to bring something forward. And as somebody else said, I wouldn't be surprised if maybe other districts are also doing something at this point in time. Oh, I'm sorry. I think we can file that. And then as you said, if we choose not to, we choose not

209to, I don't think that- What did you find, Jodi, about filing for an extension? There's a form we have to fill out. And I apologize. I was looking at it when I was at (giggles) time graduation in my car. So I don't have it with me, in my- Oh, I didn't see, I didn't see the form for finally filling. There was just a link to, like this is you can apply, you can file for, and I apologize I should have saved it. So I was going through the IESB site to find it that there is something that you can file for. You can appeal for a late entry, et cetera. I don't remember the exact verbiage and I apologize for that. But there is a way that, so then that date nine days from now

210it was not hammered in stone. You know? Yeah, no, I mean their rule. I didn't see a form. I guess I just missed the form. I guess I may have misspoke maybe, it was just a link. Like I said, I don't, I just remember looking through it today and seeing that nine days was not our hammered in stone, you had to have it done in nine days. So I guess the questions, so I guess just in the- But the problem is if you do it late, they're not required to consider it. So it would, I guess I don't, I'm confused 'cause I thought what we were voting on was to go forward with a proposal, to move forward with a resolution, but it looks like what we're voting on is this. I think what we're

211voting on right now is this in the hopes that then this would be what we then use to build our resolution on. Okay, 'cause that's not really what was on the agenda. So I guess I'm just very confused, but. Yeah, I see this as the Spring Board for the resolution for the IESB meeting. But I think there's a value in, as the foundation for that resolution to the IESB meeting, actually committing this district to doing the work in the district. There are actual kids in this district who would benefit from us improving the, working on equity issues here. And you're undertaking to do that. The concrete work, as well as the broader resolution, is I think very important. Before we do this, I still can't even see this and it's not all on my screen.

212So before I would vote on anything, can we get it forwarded to us somehow because I'm not voting for anything that I can't read the whole thing. I understand that- (cross talking) Does it make more sense tonight to just vote, to move forward with pursuing this process, so that because it's, to vote on this without having read it yet and just start reading it right now at 10:25 at night is perhaps asking more than we... So then do you want to amend the motion? Let me see, I'm reading through it. We're saying it was recommended the Board of Education. So as opposed to approve, I'm trying to think of how we can amend it, how we can amend what's on our thing to say, to work towards.. Submitting a resolution like this and I don't

213know if we want to, if there's somebody- Yes, it's recommended that the Board of Education approve the process, the process approve, the writing of a resolution, reaffirming our commitment to education, equity and racial justice, ought to be presented at the IESB conference. Would that work for people? So it was recommended that the Board of Education approves the writing of a resolution, reaffirming our commitment to equity and racial justice to be presented at the ISB conference. I think you have to, you don't just get it presented. You have to present it to the- (cross talking) Committee, so I think it would be that we would submit it, submit material to the resolutions committee for review, by their committee. And to be submitted to the IESB review committee. (cross talking) It's important that we not table this

214before we- I was gonna say- We reconsider it, but we, I don't think we should, we shouldn't table this because I think there's- There's huge meat to this. Significant value. Absolutely. Need for a District 113 resolution. Yes. Yeah. And would take the the motion be both of those or is that really one? We can do two different motions. I mean, anyone can make a motion so we can, any board member can make a motion, so someone can move for this one and then move again for the next one saying that we move forward too. Okay. So that- What have you amended. Yeah, I mean this... This one, I don't think we should. I agree, this is very important. This one wasn't... We could, I don't know. I'll defer to the president. I think what this

215was was this, I think we're thinking it whereas, when Lizzie made the initial request, it was to do something different than what this is stating. This is our district statement. And I think this is where we then could use this as a guidance for our, proposing something to be presented at IESB. What we would do is- Jodi? Yeah, go ahead. No, I was just saying that one of the things you could do is, so there's a motion that speaks to the District 113 commitment to equity and ending racial injustice. And then you could, someone could amend that motion to include to approve that and to, so that way it could be one motion, just an amendment to that motion that would do what Lizzie is talking about, that there would be this resolution presented to

216the IESB based on the District 113 resolution. So I think you could do it in one motion. I guess I'm still concerned about us voting on this resolution, even as just a District 113 resolution, without any of us having actually had a chance to read it. I don't expect to do anything but support it, but it would be unusual for us to not wanna make some edits to something. And if this was really important, then, we all ought to have a chance to look at it, and suggest exactly how it should read, but. Well, and right. And I think it should be given the proper attention to the community and to our staff and to, it's not something that we should just, put in front of us and just vote on it, not withstanding how

217important it is, but there may be other people within the district that may wanna have some input on it. So the question is, can we make a motion or the motion? I don't even know how the motion exactly read. I keep trying to pull it up, but, can we amend it to say that we are going to work on, we're in, we agree. And we can even put a date on it, I guess, to some extent, but to say that we're. I'm looking for the exact, right. There wasn't a motion in here in our packet. It was just the forms, the resolution forms. Yeah, I think- Right, I mean, I don't know what- The action item was that we were agreeing to, we were voting to move forward with preparing something to submit to the

218IESB committee. Right, so could we have a motion that says we're going to go forward with preparing something for the district and then, to use that for the IESB resolution? I mean, we could. I don't think that this is something that's going to be, this is not the right format per se, that you would propose. Yeah. I mean, if you read the various types of resolutions and things that get presented to the committee, this is not the, it's gotta be more directive than this. Yeah, no, I wasn't saying it'd be the same thing, but that it would be almost the foundation, but I understand what you're saying. So we could do the, it could be our district. We vote on this, but what we might propose to the resolutions committee, in an effort to, we

219want to, it's a call to action, right? It's not just, anyway, but again, I haven't even read this whole thing either. So it's hard, Jodi you're on mute. Thank you, Lizzie. I'm sitting here chatting. So, this is my thought process. If we're thinking of two different things here, so let's deal with this statement that's here in front of us at the moment, okay? So I understand fully where people feel that they have not been prepared in order to do this. I understand that and respect that. So what if we changed it to the motion? It is... I'm trying to, I'm sitting here trying to phrase it. It is recommended that the Board of Education. I don't- I'll propose that we, that it doesn't make sense to propose that we act, I'll suggest the meeting right

220now, but we have a special meeting given the importance of these issues and the timing, the need to prepare a resolution that we have a special meeting to consider this resolution. So I'm reading the motion as it is, is at the request of a board member, the board will consider approving a resolution. Why don't we just say, we'll consider drafting and approving a resolution, and we can move forward and- Well, that's where I was- We all know where this is going, but, the next meeting is scheduled for the middle of July. Right, our next meeting is in the middle of July. So the question is, do we wanna wait until then to do this? And then also I'd like to get us on a motion to get something together for the IESB to be presented

221to the IESB, so then the question is, so let's do this one. So the question, I guess Dan's first motion would be to be putting a special meeting together before the July 13th meeting in order to do this. Correct Dan, am I hearing you correctly? Yeah. Okay. So then I think within that, I'll try to think if we can, okay. As a reminder, we would only need four people to attend that and move it forward. Right, let's try to keep it- I know that some people have other, you know, they're- Right. I'm thinking I'm leaving town, right. Okay, and if we can try to limit this special meeting to this particular thing so that we're not committing to an evening of six to seven hours. That would probably be a better way to go. It

222would be recommended that the Board of Education approve a special meeting in order to draft a resolution reaffirming our commitment to equity and racial- You don't need to have a motion to call a meeting. you can call a meeting and- Yeah. I mean the president can call a special meeting anytime you want. You don't have to have a meeting. You don't have to do a meeting. If you want to amend the agenda, remove the motion. Then we can remove the motion and then we can call a special meeting and we can schedule a meeting, and just remove this, okay? Got it, yep. Thank you. Okay, how about this? I move that we amend the agenda to remove this item from the agenda. Is there a second to the motion? Second. Okay, we need to take

223a roll call and all votes now. Can we get a roll call vote? Oh, I don't. Oh, I'm sorry, pardon me? Is there any more discussion? I just wanna weigh in that I'd be happy to attend a special meeting. 'Cause I think this is really important. Thank you. I think we all do. (cross talking) And Jodi if you want to create this as a sort of a sub committee, I wouldn't be happy to take charge of that and work with IESB- Thank you. To figure out how to get a late resolution and whatever. And you can- Thank you. That would be lovely. Whoever wants to do it with me. Probably don't need more than one person or two people, but whatever, more than one person, but we can... Okay, we'll do- Do whatever- Let's vote

224on that- And we will take care of it. I'm happy to help in any way, Lizzie. So, just let me know. Thank you Stacey. And I'd absolutely like to help on drafting it. Great. Thank you, so we have a motion with a second. Can we get a roll call vote, please? Ms. Garlovsky. Aye. Ms. Meyer. Aye. Mr. Perlman. Aye. Mr. Struck. Aye. Ms. Byck. Aye. Mr. Fishbain. Aye. Ms. Shapira. Yes, please. Motion carries, sorry. I didn't mean to mute that on there guys. Okay, moving on. Pardon me. Our School Treasury Bond, it is recommended that the Board of Education approve the School's Treasury Surety Bond extension in the amount of $25 million of coverage per statutory requirements. It is further moved that the Board of Education authorize that all documentation be filed with the appropriate

225parties. Is there a motion? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Any discussion? Seeing no further discussion, can we have a roll call vote, please? Ms. Meyer. Aye. Mr. Perlman. Aye. Mr. Struck. Aye. Ms. Byck. Aye. Mr. Fishbain. Aye. Ms. Garlovsky. Aye. Ms. Shapira. Yes, please. Motion carries. Moving on to the C, the transferring of interest from interest earnings from working cash funds to educational funds. Sorry, all of a sudden a frog in my throat, It is recommended that the Board of Education approve the transferring of interest earning from working cash fund to the educational fund resolution as presented. So moved. Second, is there a second? Second. Is there any discussion? No. Seeing no further discussions, the roll call, please. Mr. Perlman. Aye. Mr. Struck. Aye. Ms. Byck. Aye. Mr. Fishbain. Aye. Ms. Garlovsky. Aye.

226Ms. Meyer. Aye. Ms. Shapira. Yes, please. Motion carries. Next one, transferring interest from our debt service fund, to the operations and maintenance fund. It is recommended that the Board of Education approves the transferring interest from debt service to operations and maintenance funds resolution as presented. Is there a motion? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Any discussion? No. (Stacey giggles) Is there a roll call? Could I have a roll call, sorry. Mr. Struck. Aye. Ms. Byck. Aye. Mr. Fishbain. Aye. Ms. Garlovsky. Aye. Ms. Meyer. Aye. Mr. Perlman. Aye. Ms. Shapira. Yes, please. E, transferring funds from operations and maintenance to capital projects. It is recommended that the Board of Education approve the resolution to transfer funds from operations and maintenance to capital projects as presented. Is there a motion? So move. Second. Thank you, any

227discussion? No, said we do this from referendum. Yep, roll call, please. Ms. Byck. Aye. Mr. Fishbain. Aye. Ms. Garlovsky. Aye. Ms. Meyer. Aye. Mr. Perlman. Aye. Mr. Struck. Sorry, Aye. Ms. Shapira. Yes, please. Thank you guys. Those are all part of regular business that we have to do every year. So now we are moving on to F, our public address system. Highland Park High School Cafeteria. It is recommended that the Board of Education approve the proposal from Maiko Communications to provide the public address system, PA system for the Highland Park High School'S cafeteria as presented. Is there a motion? So move. And a second. Second. Thank you. Any discussion? Seeing none, can we have a roll call vote, please? Mr. Fishermen. Aye. Ms. Garlovsky. Aye. Ms. Meyer. Aye. Mr, Perlman. Aye. Mr. Struck. Aye. Ms.

228Byck. Aye. Ms. Shapira. Yes, please. Motion carries. G, approval of the second amendment to the employment contracts for Bruce Law, Superintendent. It is recommended that the Board of Education- Jodi, did you miss, you missed the new work. What did I miss? Oh, thank you. Yeah, a rag cafeteria. Another one under rak. Okay, hold on a second. F, thank you. Thank you very much. Wait I have, didn't I just do F? There's two. I do not have the second one on my, thank you, I apologize. I do not have that. So hold on, let me. I do not have that verbiage on mine. Yeah, approving those two together as- (cross talking) It's one vote for the two of them. They're not two separate votes. They were under one. Okay. Yeah. Okay. 'Cause they're both under the

229same F. So, moving on to G. Okay. It is recommended that the Board of Education approve the second amendment to the employment contract for Bruce Law, the Superintendent as presented. Is there a motion? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Any discussion? Seeing no further discussion, roll call, please. Ms. Garlovsky. Aye. Ms. Meyers. Aye. Mr. Perlman. Aye. Mr. Struck. Aye. Ms. Byck. Aye. Mr. Fishbain. Aye. Ms. Shapira. Yes, please. Motion carries. Moving to H, the accept tentative budget set hearing authorized expenditures there under. It is recommended that the Board of Education accept the tentative budget set at a public hearing there on for August 24th, 2020, with posted notice and authorized the expenditures and purchases during the fiscal quarter in accordance with a tentative budget until the final budget is adopted. Is there a motion?

230Moved. Second. Thank you. Any discussion? I had a lot of questions following the budget or the initial presentation from last month, and I am not gonna be voting yes today. So I've just feel like I wanna, and but I just I wanna say why, I know that there's a lot of work that goes in to the budgeting and it takes a really long time, but I'm just not feeling, we went through a really, a long process and expensive process of the internal controls audit. I'm not sure where we are as far as what we learned from there and how we've applied some of the recommendations, a few things here and there but, what we've implemented since then, and I know that there's been obviously a huge, a huge focus just on the, remote learning plans

231and the pandemic issues. And so, but before I'm gonna be able to vote positively on the budget, I'm hoping that maybe we can get some recommendations from either the finance committee or when we were all on the finance committee, or maybe the finance committee is gonna have to meet or something to go through some of these things because, as Bruce has pointed out to us, there's been a lot of, there's been some information that we have now that was not available to us just through reporting and whatnot over the last couple of years. And there just seems to be a lot of, just a lot. I just have like a lot of questions, and again, they're overriding it related to the pandemic kind of how we're addressing and how the district is, how the administration

232is addressing the idea of, how the expenses and the budget and whatnot are, is changing pre-pandemic, mid-pandemic, post-dynamic and going forward. And those are the types of questions that I just don't feel like I have good answers for, in order to vote in favor of the budget, so, I just wanted to... Got it. Okay. I apologize. I don't know. Did we get a motion seconded on this? Yeah, that's why we were in the discussion. I just wanted to make sure we got that afterwards. All of a sudden I lost my place. That's what I was saying. Okay, thank you, Lizzie for yours. Is there anyone who has any further discussion on this? Okay, then roll call, please. Ms. Meyer, Aye. Mr. Perlman. Aye. Mr. Struck. Aye. Ms. Byck. Aye. Mr. Fishbain. Aye. Ms. Garlovsky. Nay.

233Ms. Shapira. Aye. Motion carries. Moving on to I, our IHSA Stage one, return to play. It is recommended that the Board of Education authorize student athletes summer strength and conditioning session to be held in accordance with the IHSA Stage one Return to Play guidance beginning June 16th, 2020. Is there a motion? So moved. Is there a second? Second. And just so you all know there were two attachments for each school. Is there any discussion with that? Yeah, I just had a question, which was, it says that this is about training but I couldn't find anywhere if this involves any equipment or if it's just people's bodies doing their things. 'Cause if it involves equipment, I'd wanna know what we're doing in terms of sanitation and keeping everything clean, et cetera. I also did not see

234anything about equipment, but I would not be the person to be able to answer that question. Nate, or I'm sorry, either our athletic trainer or I'm sorry, directors of athletics on here or EDS. I don't think they're on here any longer. My gut would say does not involve equipment, but I do not know that for a fact, so, Kathy do you know? I do know, sorry. I appear to be very dark here. So yes, we are not using really any equipment other than cones. This is specific to training that cannot be sport specific. So, any cones that we're using are only going to be held by the coaches, and they will be cleaned with wipes on a daily basis. Great, thank you. Any other discussion? Okay, seeing that there's no more discussion, can we take

235a roll call vote, please? Mr. Perlman. Aye. Mr. Struck. Aye. Ms. Byck. Aye. Mr. Fishbain. Aye. Ms. Garlovsky, Aye. Ms. Meyer. Aye. Ms. Shapira. Yes, please. Motion carries. J, right there, yes. J, it is recommended that the Board of Education approve the settlement agreement for student 2020-06 as presented. Is there a motion? So moved. Second. Thank you. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, can I get a roll call vote, please. Mr. Struck. Aye. Ms. Byck. Aye. Mr. Fishbain. Aye. Ms. Garlovsky. Aye. Ms. Meyer. Aye. Mr. Perlman. Aye. Ms. Shapira. Yes, please. Motion carries. We'll get onto to 13, our consent agenda item. I'd like to have something removed from the consent agenda before you make that motion. I'd like to have the PCards. That actually was the April. The April PCard moved. I guess you

236could probably just take some both of them for discussion from the agenda, from the consent agenda to be or separately. Got it, okay. So we are removing from this consent agenda items, G six and seven are PCard statements, you'd like those removed Lizzie, is that what I'm hearing correctly? Yeah, I'm sorry. I've got Board docs open, so I'm not looking at the same letter Okay, that's fine. But we're taking PCard statements for March and April, so we'll remove both of those from our consent agenda. Mm-hmm. Got it. Okay, so it is recommended that the consent agenda be listed, be approved as listed with the last two ones removed from it. Okay. Is there a motion? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Okay, Stacey, will you provide a report on the bills? Yes, so I

237pulled a number of different bills that Ali reviewed with me prior to tonight's meeting, including legal bills as well as our construction and everything was in order. Okay, thank you, Stacey. Any other discussion on any of these and then we'll make our motion for our last two. I just didn't see in the calendar the board meeting calendar, did the list of who does the bills next? I think it was in our last one. If I recall, Ramina, are you on here? No, I'll create it after this is approved. Right, okay. Thank you. Okay. So, there is, there's motion, a second. Any other discussion on this? Okay, then can we have a roll call, please? Ms. Byck. Aye. Mr. Fishbain. Aye. Ms. Garlovsky. Aye. Ms. Meyer. Aye. Mr. Perlman. Aye. Mr. Struck. Aye. Ms. Shapira. Yes,

238please. Okay, so now we will be moving on to the two that were pulled out of there. In one second, suddenly everything disappeared from my screen. It is recommended that the board approve the agenda items. I'm not sure how I should phrase this, so pardon me one second. Why is this not coming up? Is there a motion to approve the PCard statements for March 2020 and PCard statements for April 2020? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Okay, discussion? This is what Lizzie wants. Yeah, so, the reason I pulled these, I mean, first of all, there was one, and this is, I believe in the April one, there was a, you could tell obviously in March and April, there was a lot of credits, obviously, for things that got canceled and things, but there were

239like, one, and again, I'm just curious. There was like a ton of airplane there, airlines, look like maybe for the baseball team, the Highland Park that baseball trip, that spring baseball trip that never went. And it was quite a lot. And so I guess I'm just curious with that. I mean, sort of what happens there, 'cause obviously the distributor sort of didn't get all their money back and it goes on the, it just went back, went back on the individual's card who monitors, like, usually with airlines, you only get a certain amount of time to reuse the flight credit, I mean, what happens there? Do they give school districts breaks for that? 'Cause, I mean, it was kind of a big amount. That was one issue. And then there was also a refund that may

240have been incorrectly booked as a, which should have been a credit. And it was from $909.79. It said Hyatt Hotels DECA state reimbursement. I thought that maybe that was a cancellation, but maybe it wasn't, but I don't know. 'Cause everything else that said reimbursement was in the negative. But this one was in the positive. So, it just kinda caught me off guard, but. Was the DECA one in April or March? Well, I think it's in April, but it's in April, but the problem is is you can't, it's really hard that there's no individual dates on these transactions. There's just like transaction numbers. You can tell at the top of the sheet, so the DECA one was in April, but there's no page numbers on these and there's no dates. And I think, the PCard reporting

241has been a little bit, has been different in recent months or maybe within this past year. There's been an improvement in how they've been reporting PCards to us. But again, as I sort of mentioned earlier kind of in line with some of my comments earlier, it's really hard, as you realize it, when you were month to month maybe reviewing, we're trying to review these statements, but then when you're kinda looking at it, then you go and look at the individual budgets. It really is hard. I think at least as board members, at least for this board member to kind of understand when you just sort of see this whole list of all the PCard transactions, I just don't know if maybe it would be, there was a better format. So you could at least, it

242could be coded into what, and maybe it is coded. And I just don't know the codes into what budget, if this is coming out of, (cross talking) Lizzie? I think one of the things you just said that I think could probably be an easy solution is we need them dated. I mean, I think, that's- Yeah, I mean- I would agree with you. So, I mean, 'cause they're just, it's really hard to, it's just really hard to keep track of all this. I mean maybe this is something, again, as every month we get down and it's late, we get down to the, this part of the meeting and it's in the consent agenda. I mean, I don't know if maybe it makes sense for, again, the finance committee chair or maybe this should be part of

243the finance committee. In general, we should be looking at this stuff a little more closely. I don't know if 'cause, again, and if you look what we just approved in the consent agenda, we have a new policy. I was updated our policy board FET about the prioritization of government expenditures. I mean, we really gotta be paying attention to this and Bruce is supposed to, is recommending, that we approve this and maybe we need a little bit more of explanation from him, I don't know, but it's just seems like, as we're now getting different kinds of reporting and we've just been through this whole internal controls audit, I'm just feeling like we just maybe need a little bit, again, and I know there's a lot of priorities right now. I know that, and I know we

244never seem to really get through everything, but this is important work that we do as well. And it's hard for us, I think for me to determine, well, how can I just go ahead and vote on this budget. And if I don't really understand, if I don't really feel comfortable that where all these numbers are coming from and there was the idea that numbers are carried over historically from this year to this year, this year to this year. But at some point you gotta take a look at, well, does these numbers make sense to keep carrying forward? And I don't really know how to do that with the way that we're perceiving the information. I can talk about the PCards, Lizzie, appreciate your comments. First of all, yeah. I mean, it should, we can definitely

245add the date as far as the source of funds. If you see the account number, which obviously doesn't mean a lot to you guys, we can always, 'cause PCard transactions could either hit the district's budget or it's either certain activity funds or convenience accounts. So, the account number that starts with 96 to sell certain activities, and 10 to 90 is district funds. So we can certainly put it a description there. As far as looking at each individual transactions. I mean, the board has an opportunity as part of the bill review process, which doesn't happen to any other school district is, they can select random bills and, I think we've talked about this before. I mean, when I get a list of bills from one board member, whatever their turn is, they can certainly select these

246PCard transactions. So we could review the backup together. Now as far as looking at a backup for every transaction, I mean, we can also talk about that. I mean, there are thousands of transactions if the board wants to look at- No, I'm not suggesting that the transactions aren't legitimate, like the receipt isn't there. That's really not where I'm going with this. It's more of... Okay. It's not really that. I believe that whoever made the transaction made the transaction and can support that it was made, I'm not suggesting that. So, if I can just break it apart. So yeah, the PCard could definitely have improvement, and I kinda break it into two separate things. It's really the internal audit recommendations and the budget. And if you, and if I stay as, I mean, I'm happy to

247stay as finance chair, I'm also happy, I know we're gonna redo some committee assignments, but as long as I am finance chair, I'm happy to do that work right now to, two things, remember when we had the internal audit? I did recommend that that becomes, that triggers a work product that you address those internal audit recommendations. And so those should be done, and that should be ongoing work throughout the year. And then the budget, there were other schedules that Ali provided us that showed us some good details of things that were, I think they were over 25,000. So in addition to the PCard, you're also gonna wanna be interested as a board of those items that are done through regular purchase orders, through regular contract accounts, in addition to the PCard, and find out where

248those go, and looking at the budget. So I see it as two different things. I'm happy to go back and do some of that work with Ali if you guys like, during the next weeks. So, Ali did give, did provide a bunch of really great information. I appreciate it. It's about how the budget process works and the historic spend, and all that's great. I guess what I'm having trouble with is just again, like, at what point do you take a look at, a couple of years ago, I'll bring up a different example. A couple of years ago, we were sitting at one of our inner governmental meetings in Deerfield with, and one of the, and actually it was the mayor of Deerfield. She said, to all us, just talking about upcoming year and whatnot, and

249she made a, just made a comment about, everybody should tighten their belt. And I just remember thinking, well, I don't know, I know what that means, but I don't, I'm just wondering sort of why she said that and sort of what, what is prompting her to say that? And it was just, whatever was affecting the village was prompting her, say to the school districts, everybody should be tightening their belts. Like at what point do we just, when I look at these, but I get it. If we say all budget, the budget is balanced. I understand all of that, but it's like, okay, well, if we have this giant fund balance rate and we've talked about this, this has come up before, and we talk about how to pay for construction or project. I mean, we're

250in this just completely unprecedented time we've never been in before. And we have, I don't know. Again, I don't know the answer to this question, but at what point do you look at the budget that you've always done? I mean, a lot of the budgeting that we have this year shows increases in the various budget categories. And I understand that the budget that we have from the taxes and our revenue that's coming in can sustain those budgets. But at what point do you say, does anyone say, like, do we take a look and go, well, do we need to be allocating this much to each budget item? It's not, I wasn't confused about the process. I wasn't confused about the timeline and, I'm actually saying, isn't this just like everybody isn't, is it an opportunity?

251A point where you look at different categories and say, is this the time to just take a look at it again? I just don't know. And it's, we don't run the district, but we are the ones who approve all of these things. And where is the money being spent? Are we spending it differently? We have a pot of money, as we all know, and should we be spending it differently? I don't know, but I just think it's important to look at it. And I don't know that we're spending really any time talking about that. I agree with what you're saying completely, Lizzie. I think that it's well past time for the board to get together. And I think this is probably more appropriate for a finance committee meeting when, which we're all members of, where

252we really start talking about what we'd like to see the district do with its budget and how we are gonna manage that and tighten it and find ways to have a truly balanced budget, because we don't really have a balanced budget. We call it that, but there's one category and it just happens to be a pet peeve of the mind because I'm involved in that committee, but there's one category we can't even begin to keep up with. And at some point we need to find a way to devote more money to it, or our buildings are gonna crumble. But tonight we've gotta get through this stuff. Can we make this a priority to have this come up at a finance committee meeting, and really address it at length, so that we can talk about giving

253direction to the administration on- Yes, thank you, Mike. That's where I was gonna go with let's vote on this. And I think that's a good idea that we, our finance committee kind of goes over this. We are all members of the finance committee, and I think that that's the place for this discussion to be going and really deeper and really seeing where we wanna go with it. Yeah, I just have to throw in one more comment. Just a reminder that the budget is a, it's a requirement. It's a point in time and it's a plan, the financial management, any direction from the board to reduce our spending or increase our spending can happen to run out the, that happens. That can happen at anytime. That's not a once, that's not a one point deal. You

254can manage that finances throughout the year. We shouldn't be doing that. So let's have a discussion about this, in great depth at a finance committee meeting. Yeah, Mike, and then the long-term financial plan, that would happen in the fall because you're starting to set what your levy is gonna, what you're gonna levy you for the next year, and what your budget is. So that's where the conversation should be. I get that. Just some thoughts. Thank you. Okay. So the motion that we have on the table right now is to approve the PCard statements for both March and April of 2020. (cross talking) Ali, did you have any comments, though, about those like airplane tickets and then entry- Oh, sorry. About the refund? Lizzie, I don't, I can't tell you from the top of my head,

255there are a lot of transactions. If it's okay with you, I'm gonna take a note of those transactions, and get back to the board with an answer if that's acceptable. Sure. Okay, thank you, Ali. Can we get, we have a board member just so we know when going into vote, Gayle Byck has left the meeting at this point. So we have a roll call vote. Mr. Fishbain. Aye. Ms. Garlovsky. Nay. Ms. Meyer. Aye. Mr. Perlman. Aye. Mr. Struck. Aye. Ms. Byck. Ms. Shapira. Yes, please. Motion carries. Okay, where are we at, here? Pardon me. It is recommended, I'm confused on what I have here. Ramina, pardon me? We did our consent agenda. Mine is now saying that we are going back into Closed Session without having the other votes. So hold on one second, there

256we... Pardon me, I'm just trying to read through this. It is recommended that the board move into a Closed Session, into a Closed Session to consider the information at 11:07 with the appointment employment compensation discipline performance, or dismissal of specific employees, individuals who serve as independent contractors in a park recreational or educational setting, or specific volunteers of the public body or legal counsel for the public body. Including the hearing testimony or complaint lodged against an employee, a specific individual who serves as an independent contractor in a park recreational or educational setting, or volunteer for the public body or against the legal counsel for the public body to determine its validity. However, a meeting to consider an increase in compensation to a specific employee of a public body that is subject to the local government wage,

257Increase Transparency Act may not be closed and shall be open to the public as posted and held in accordance with this Act. Collective bargain, collective negotiation matters between the public body and its employees or their representatives, or deliberations concerning salary schedules for one or more classes of employees. Is there a motion? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Hold on a sec. I think we have to include something from earlier in our Closed Session. Let me just go back a moment. We have to include, one more thing and I apologize if I see my agenda correctly. The placement of individual students in a special education program. I'm sorry about this, and all of the matters relating to individual students. Now, can I have a motion. Is there a motion? So moved. Thank you, second? Second.

258Thank you, a roll call, please. Ms. Garlovsky. Aye. Ms. Meyer. Aye. Mr. Perlman. Aye. Mr, Struck. Aye. Mr. Fishbain. Aye. Ms. Shapira. Yes, please. We'll be going into Closed Session, but the only reason I'm coming into Open Session will only be closing our meeting. Immediately following the Closed Session, the Board of Education will reconvene an Open Session and no action will be taken. Okay, so. Do we go in the other Google chat? Do we have to, that's my question, Ram, are we going back to the other Google chat? Yeah, you can go to the other one. Thank you. Okay, let's take five. It's 11:09. Let's get back there at 11:15. We'll see you all there, thank you. Thank you. Thanks.