CCSD21 Board Of Education Meeting - February 20, 2025

001e e e a regular board meeting uh Jessica will you please take attendance of our student Representatives Santi voice Carla AJ Okay thank you and welcome would everyone please rise and join me in the pledge FL United States stand indice okay thank you all for joining us this evening as I look out our elected officials I see our wonderful friend Sher Clump from the park district is here welcome thank you for coming um anybody that is physically present at the meeting that wishes to address the board please complete a comment card and provide it to miss Del Ral on my left here anyone that is virtually attending the meeting wishing to address the board must complete the public comment form listed on the agenda prior to starting the public comment section of the meeting and

002written public comments may be WR uh submitted via email we're starting off our meeting this month with some awards and recognitions starting with the 2024 Donna Ray steckling Memorial Educators Grant Dr Connelly good evening and thanks everybody for joining us tonight um so um we are very fortunate to have the support of um just a a a true member of the district 21 family um the steckling family to uh support our new uh or newer Educators as they come into the district um with uh grant opportunities and so I'm going to turn it over to Cass young who will um take the presentation from here thank you um we are here today to recognize the steckling family like um Dr Conley said and I'd like the steings to stand up if they might I see

003some of them in the on this side over here thank you for coming I just wanted to give a brief uh description of the grant it's a 25 well Donna Ray steckling is their mother and grandmother um she had a 25-year career here at district 21 she was a library assistant at London and a secretary at the curriculum Department in the ad Center and she passed away in 2020 and the family wanted to establish this um Grant to Foster learning to honor her it's given to teachers in their first three years and um requests are up to $1,000 a year and the total amount awarded is 3,000 per year and we have some of the grantees here so if they can stand um magdala is she here today you want to stand thank you um

004uh Lupita Hernandez Rachel schles Lauren Reynolds I know Hannah did not make it today is she here no um Delaney libbit Madison could not make it uh Julia Latista and Natalia from po um and you can see there which school they're from how much money they were granted and some of the reasons that that the money is supporting their um classrooms and there's some pictures here so Rachel do you want to come up and read your comment [Laughter] yeah come here this is your quote and some of your pictures yes so um I wrote that this grant has allowed me to provide my students with a lot of sensory academic and functional tools um that have allowed them to best access the school environment this has included cause and effect toys cooking supplies fidgets and

005various other items but most notably I was able to purchase a variety of fillers for our classroom sensory table such as beads water toys and gems this has been vital to my students success it gives them a highly engaging in novel sensory Outlet to access during break times increasing their overall regulation it also allows for um exposure to different textures smells visual input and sounds and it promotes social interaction and teamwork authentically which is really invaluable to the students in the education and life skills program I'm really grateful for all that this grant has allowed me to do for my students so here's a few more pictures from Rachel's class and um this is from magdala magdala class and her quote was to increase cultural items in the classroom uh here's some more pictures from

006magdala class at Hawthorne you can see um some of the cultural items that the children are playing with another picture uh this is from Delaney is she here do you want to come up and read yours um well thank you so much Sten family um so my students were able uh to uh receive some indoor recess activities games and toys for my classroom and they are so excited to create design and play um and I was also able to get some math games to help support student learning so thank you Julia do you want to come up Julia good evening everyone and thank you so much steling family um I appreciate a lot this is a gift I think it's a great achievement for Russian bigon program we received Uh Russian books and um uh

007we definitely will support our students um and help them achieve their goals thank you very much and Natalia hi everyone I want to say thank you very much for stacking family uh we work with Julia together um we both have Russian bilingual classes and we're very thankful and grateful for the opportunity to get Russian books for us we are short on them and our kids enjoy reading them we share the books between our two classes and um we are very very seriously from all both our hearts we're than thankful that we got this opportunity to buy these books thank you Lauren Reynolds um thank you so much to the steckling family this has actually been my third year that they've provided my students with something so over the past few years I've gotten over $

008thousand dollar from them which has really just enhanced my students musicality and um it's incredible what putting it instrument that into some kids hands that would never have had the opportunity or the motive what that brings out and even some of our shiest students so um it's been really great to be able to give them that gift that they're able to bring home and enjoy for the rest of their lives so I'd like to invite the steckling family up here if they want to say a few words and then we'll take a picture out by the step and repeat of all the teachers the grantees and the gr tours hi again last year we didn't speak because we were caught off guard but this year we're ready so I'd like to thank the school board

009for putting us on the agenda to recognize the donor steckling Memorial Educators Grant and the impact that it's had on the students in district 21 I also would like to thank Cass and her team first of all back in 2021 the team helped us established the Grant and now has been the conduit to communicate the grant the application process and also to disperse the funds to the grant recipients from my family and on behalf of my family I'm speaking here we have a heartfelt thank you to the Educators for everything that they do every day with their students who Inspire them and um I can't look at my sister because for some reason she's crying but anyway it's a happy day the um what you guys do in your classroom every day to inspire these

010students will affect them now how many people remember who their teacher was in elementary and Junior High I mean you guys are famous right so um keep doing what you're doing we fully support you and please a a hand for the students the the thank you I'll meet you out there in 5 10 minutes we've got a little bit more of a presentation ation to give um so the next award is for isbe awards of excellence and um this is a state of Illinois um organization that recognizes outstanding Educators administrators and staff for their dedication Innovation and impact in Illinois schools and we have several people who have um earned this award and I'm just going to read their names if you want to stand up the award of special recognition to Amy McCall she

011is a London classroom teacher if you'd like to stand Amy Award of Award of meritorious service for CCS assistive technology in augmentative and alternative communication amandaa and Anthony me I'm not sure if they're here um Award of Excellence Emily bochnik I know she couldn't make it she's got um three young kids she couldn't make it Award of special recognition Lucy Donan director of special education Award of special recognition for mallerie Rossy she is a Riley physical therapist and award of special recognition to Taylor Park she is Twain resource teacher and I'd be happy to take your picture out there as well thank you and congratulations to everybody so the uh just a few more words on the those who Excel award program so this is as Cass noted this is a a series of awards

012that are uh off you know Statewide uh that come through the Illinois State Board of Education and um the press release announcing the winners literally just came out on Tuesday um so for those of you that it wasn't planned for you know we didn't know who uh was going to be recognized until the press release came out so I really appreciate you changing your plans um on a Thursday night 48 hours after the announcement came out and and joining us uh and they are invited uh to a banquet um that will be taking place down in Bloomington normal um later in the spring um yeah is it April March something oh it's May okay um but a very nice banquet um that has all of the those who Excel a ward when from across the

013state so there's several hundred people down there uh occasionally the governor shows up so hopefully he's able to make it to to your banquet um and it's just a really nice event so um very proud of all of our those who Excel Award winners and again to the steckling family thank you so much um for uh this Memorial uh scholarship program um and just the uh influence that that you are allowing our new staff to to make with your support is just uh extremely extremely um we're just very grateful and I just want to note that Andy who is one of your own is not here otherwise he'd be taking the pictures tonight so you know give him some some Guff about that oh it's his birthday today I work had my birthday I mean

014you know but anyway um so but thank you very much everybody for coming tonight thank [Applause] you okay we have now reached the board communication section of the agenda the first item is the nsso update um the nsso meeting was originally planned for the first week of the month and then we had the potential of an ice storm so it was delayed a week it was delayed to the week to the day of the snowstorm yeah it would it made driving that fun home um so we had a very abbreviated meeting the mo the Bigg we had no students come we actually only had two people in our audience and that that audience is normally pretty full um so the main thing that we talked about was the how we're going on the Strategic plan

015it's still moving along and hopefully we'll have a a bigger update next month because I know that we've got several meetings planned coming up um so next I will go into edred Bill thank you Debbie there we go thank you Debbie um Edward's legislative dinner was held late last month it was very well done the speaker Noel ellerson ing of the American Association of school administrators gave it a very informative and very fast-paced presentation as to what to expect out of DC going forward um for those of you who weren't able to attend or if you'd like to review it given the fast pace uh Mike made a point of send us a copy of the of the slides um Ed R's next member meeting will be held here on Friday March 7th there will

016be an option to attend virtually if needed and state representative Fred creso will be giving a legislative update finally edre will be having advocacy days in Springfield on April 8th and 9th watch your email for registration if interested and that's it for edre Jessica do you have any updates for edre okay thank you you and we'll continue with Bill on iasb okay this is even shorter um proposals for presentation at the uh 2025 joint annual conference are due uh Actually March 1st so if we're interested we need to move on that um and then the north cook spring division dinner will be held on Tuesday March 4th the speaker will be Eric Santos who will be discussing AI in schools um I believe most of us have already registered if you haven't and you're interested

017as always contact lcia and that's it awesome thank you uh next is North KC AR uh we have nothing new for you nice and quick uh do we have anything for the Wheeling Township 708 board we have nothing new on wheeling Township okay thank you do we uh for our government agencies we'll start again with Bill do you have any additional updates uh nothing important other than I think uh about five of us attended the Wheeling Chamber of Commerce legislative breakfast this week it's always great to have the opportunity to uh meet with our legislators and show off this lovely building thank you AR did you I would just add the Ed read dinner was real meaningful an excellent outing and then the chamber uh breakfast was well done well done I appreciate the opportunity

018to be there nothing new uh on the municipality side okay thank you Stacy um well I got to come early and be the greeter for the Chamber of Commerce as and I are associate directors on the board so that was lovely um lots of comments about people who had not been in our building before obviously a huge thank you to all the legislators that joined us um we were at a chamber of commerce right before event right before we came here Cass and I um and the back to school 5K that is now the route has now been approved by the park district that does it happened yesterday so they were able to announce so it's a 5K um back to school um with in with district 21 the Chamber of Commerce the Wheeling Park

019district and the Police Unity Foundation um on August the 9th with more details to come awesome thank you sounds like fun okay Phil do you have any updates yeah I attended one of the uh virtual seminar webinars that IB did did not believe it was one of the finest I'm not going indicate anything further I just didn't think it was uh up to the uh the level of what we what they've done in the past um sorry I missed the Ed rad meeting uh darn having to work and having my own board of directors to report to I had to miss that but hopefully the the next event I'll be able to attend that's it thank you Jessica um just real quick I attended um London's Culture Night a couple weeks ago um I know

020some of the other middle schools do an international Culture Night this was just an incredible evening um they had a a troop of dancers from Ukraine that did just I mean just a really really incredible dance um principal netel led us in the Greek celebration dance that I swear to God if you were at any Jewish celebration you would call it the horor um but you know it was it was sort of that moment where you realize you know cultures have so much more in common than and huge shout out to organic Life For Preparing Foods uh tast wasting portions from around the world uh we ate very well that night excuse me and then last night um I attended the uh strategic plan parent Zoom uh with several of our other parents in the

021district and uh I thanked them in person for their frankness and their Candor in not only the positive things they had to say about the district but the things that they're looking forward to discussing uh as we move forward with the Strategic plan um so once again yay district 21 but we have lots of stuff to work on awesome thank you yeah myself I was at the legislative dinner um I was very happy with the uh chamber event here discovered a new coffee place in town so I'm very happy to shop local um that was quite good and I am looking forward to tomorrow night is having Tarkington is having their bingo night which I always love to go to so I will be there so all you tarington parents I'll see you there um

022so that is it for this uh La last item under board communication is our student Representatives yeah so this month um we asked our student representatives to um have some kind of focus conversations with some of their um peers uh and so uh each uh member had had some um questions that they uh talked with their uh their student PE with and I'm without setting it up any more than that I'm just going to go ahead and turn it over to our our representatives and and just tell us about the questions you asked and then the U um the feedback that you got from from your your I want to keep calling them colleagues but peers student colleagues there we go so who'd like to go first got to do that Santi thanks for volunteering

023you're welcome so the question I ask is is there someone or something in school that helps you be successful or feel happy while learning and some of my peers said that music has been helping them focus in class more and has helped them feel in control of their emotions and now teachers are starting to use more free time while kids are working to let them listen to music another thing is stress toys some students use stress Rel Leaf toys during class when work is overwhelming or like they're sitting in class and they need something to do to pay attention and also the library helps a lot I myself have been to the library sometimes where it's nice and quiet and I get a lot of work done in there and another thing is teachers are

024now more willing to let students come in during lunch to freely work on any school workor and I just want to thank teachers for being understanding flexible and so supportive of their students so my question was can you think of anything that could make learning easier or help students feel more comfortable when they're having a hard time so from The Forum that we got it said that collaboration and working with other partners has helped others because they could communicate with others and get other suggestions so that could help them as well and um classes and activities that help them do best in school are engaging and challenging subjects like math and language arts and interactive and fun learning me methods like games group works and like mystery puzzles and investigations that have to relate with

025doing all like with um the unit or subject they're doing and um exploratories like art cooking and PE are less stressful for them and it gauges more people to talk and also have more fun and also agreeing with Santi um my social science teachers and language arts teachers give us more time to do work during lunch and that's been very helpful and some things that I'm suggesting is that like some people are really like getting behind with their work or they're having like trouble with their grades and maybe there should be like a study Club after school where like some peers who already know about that subject or like skill could help other kids were struggling so that they can improve as well and maybe like sixth graders if they're struggling with their work maybe

026um we could have some eighth graders sign up to help them after school so that they could do well and maybe like they could even earn certificates or maybe like there could be perks like giving them snacks and water to help them Focus throughout the time if um we ever make a study club and I think that will be beneficial a lot if that happens so my first question was what do you think would help students if they have trouble with schoolwork or other problems one of the big things was teacher support with um meaning clear explanations personalized learning approaches and consistent availab availability of trusted adults for support my SEC the second major thing for that was improved organization tools encouragement of using planners or digital tools to help students stay on on top

027of assignments and deadlines my second question was if a student is having a tough time what can teachers classmates or the school do to help them feel better or do better one of them was less pressure reduce the academic and social pressure on students who are struggling allowing them to feel safe and supported in a way that doesn't add to their stress the second thing was encouragement and positive reinforcement offering words of encouragement positive feedback and reassurance can help students feel more confident and motivated right thanks everybody uh any questions from the board not a question but Santi the last time I saw him was at a swim meet I was sitting in the stands with my wife and young man walks in front of me and I was kind of daydreaming because our grandson

028is in that competition and wasn't up yet so I was kind of out of it Mr G how are you you and so we chatted a little bit and I said well that's my grandson let me walk you over to him and my grandson had just lost a race was not in the best spirits but uh but Santi went back to him later and about 20 minutes half hour later I saw the two of them walking with their arms around each other back to the pool for the next Heat so quite a young man between music and swimming and academics uh I'm real proud of what you're doing for our town our community and our school dist district and you certainly present a great image out there at the pool so thank you very much

029for that yeah thank you what uh what event do you swim um I like swimming the 500 which is a long event and then backstroke okay 500 freestyle yeah yeah yeah well yeah probably yeah any other stroke would probably kill you 500 yeah right yeah yeah when I swam in high school we only did a 400 so this is a 500 and he's not in high school yeah it's amazing awesome all right thanks everybody it was a great report this month we really appreciate it and hopefully you don't have too much homework to do tonight but go do it all right thanks everybody now Santi make sure that your parents watch this last very tiny section so they know what a good guy you are if they're not watching it now make sure they rewinded

030okay so the next section on the agenda is the staff communication we have three items first it's a school safety update yes so um as uh Debbie said we've got a number of of Staff reports this evening but we wanted to start off and um welcome our our uh director of school safety uh Danny mik to come up and uh give his uh school safety updat so Danny come on up good evening everyone good evening board thank you for for having me tonight Danny mik director of Safety and Security uh tonight I'll just be providing a brief presentation uh an update on our uh lay of the land for all things Safety and Security here at district 21 um whenever we're talking safety whenever we're talking security our just want to always reinforce our top

031priorities ensuring a safe secure learning environment for everybody our students and staff uh that's not only when we're doing training exercises or drills um that's throughout any operation throughout our school district uh our structured time structure time our top priority is always going to be safety that's something we always want to reinforce to our community uh we've completed several security improvements throughout the district we also have a few that are in progress so basically this presentation will be just an overview of what we've completed so far and then what we have in motion as well first thing we'll start with is our police nox boxes which are have been installed in every building uh on every building uh two per building this was con this was done over the summer of uh 24 so if

032you're not familiar with a oxbox is it's basically a safe secure key storage um typically this is required for code for fire departments basically if something was to happen inside a building it would give them access in that building if they didn't have a key would allow them to go inside and address whatever um issue that is there that is they're dealing with this is not a code however for law enforcement uh but it's equally important for them to have access to the building as well um now all the police departments that serve our district do have fob access so those Patrol officers that Patrol control our our um communities that serve district 21 U if they got a call for service at one of our buildings they would have fob access but however we

033do not just want to rely on those key fobs because um depending on the event uh that system may go down um so we want to ensure that we have a layer of a layer in there for them to have access not only to the exterior of the building but as well U as the interior of the building uh in the event that they had to respond for an incident or some sort of Crisis or emergency um they might not be able to encounter a staff member right away that has uh a key for interior of our building so this would ensure that um there is never a situation where they do not have access uh to any parts of our building additionally if this is after hours and they needed to go in because

034an alarm went off and they need to clear the building because that's proper protocols for law enforcement um they would have the ability to do that as well again this has been installed at every building we have uh two per building and they're indicated with blue reflective tape on the boxes itself which uh separates them from the U fir knock boxes and we collaborated with our police departments to uh let them get the opportunity to pick where those boxes go uh one's sort of in a centralized location and one's in more tactical location for them to approach if they needed that tactical Advantage our standard respon response protocol has been in place it's been in place before I uh started here in this role however we're always looking to continue to improve these protocols um

035over the uh summer 24 our administrative team we did a sort of a refresher training on our SRP however we also had new staff new administrators as well so some of them it was their first time be exposed to the standard response protocol we wanted to make sure everybody had that refresher and that um that new training if they were new we also created a uh SRP training video and basically during that training our staff was advised our admin our building leaders were advised that they need to provide this training video to their staff um so that everybody within the buildings of this district 21 teachers uh staff members are custodians that everybody has this uh standard response protocol training in the event we had to initiate one of our protocols everybody knows their role

036their responsibility um this just ensures consistent understanding of our emergency protocols we don't just want our administrators trained on this again this is for our students this is for our um other staff members throughout the building our support personnel as well as our community members we push out communication to our families as well on what the SRP is and what each each protocol means our emergency flip charts and signage um as you can see in this image here uh we call this our safety center in our classrooms in our Gathering spaces basically it's a dedicated location in each of one of our rooms that have this these in this uh critical information and safety resources um that shouldn't be removed from the wall it's just that's you know we're not we're not covering that up

037with anything else this is just where we can find all of our emergency information uh something on there is our emergency evacuation Maps these Maps indicate your primary and your secondary evacuation routes as well as shelter locations um it also has like the address of the building the room number you're in uh sometimes if somebody had to call 911 they might draw blanks in a time of Crisis they could revert back to this and get that information that a dispatcher is likely going to ask you um another thing is the SRP signage it just reinforces our standard response protocol and some of the procedures and actions that you take if we ever to initiate one of those protocols and a new thing we implemented are these emergency flip charts we call them our grabb and

038go flip charts they are located in every classroom and every Gathering space of every building um every school building in our district basically what this is it reinforces our standard response protocol procedures but also has some additional steps and resources is if our staff need to reference that we call them our grabbing goes because in the event of one of our protocols gets activated that staff member should grab that flip chart and evacuate or shelter with that flip chart so they could reference it it also has red and green cards if we were outside of our buildings they can account or say you know I'm missing somebody or I have everybody it's just a quick easy visual identification all the resources located in one area um this improves reaction time during incidents and it ensures

039that our staff with the training with the proper resources that they are confident and our students are confident in understanding what our standard response protocol is which again is an all- hazards approach to any situation that arises we can initiate one of these protocols and our staff our students will know how to respond another training we did over the summer of 24 with our administrative team and uh members of the cabinet was the IC 100 certification this is a training course um this is something that was you know decades ago was brought on by the fire service this is something that they get trained on law en enforcement is now trained on this and now school districts are required to be trained on IC uh administrators specifically what this allows is for uh collaboration during

040the event of a crisis uh or some sort of mass uh event what's going to typically happen in one of these events um is we need to have a sort of unified front with our uh fire and police and this is the way that they function and incident command just basically assigns roles and responsibilities to everybody um on the incident command team so um it's just a more efficient process of dealing with a crisis and if we're doing a unified sort of front with our police and our fire we want to ensure that we know their procedures and we're sort of speaking the same language in that in that sense um and this aligns with uh response with National Emergency best practices these are these are recommended practices recommended certifications that our district administrators um

041and other key members of our district should have so we all received this training after we have we got the training we took a a certification test so everybody's been all our administrators have been certified ICS 100 just updating our emergency drill procedures uh sometimes with these uh with drills um just for my experience being an SRO and working with multiple schools um they can be treated as check boxes right this for the school safety drill act we are required as a um School District as a school to you know conduct x amount of drills U we don't want to although we want to make sure we're staying compliant with that we don't want to treat these drills just like check boxes we do these drills for a purpose is to learn where we may

042have gaps to where we may need to improve also what we're doing well so um one of the things we did uh as a team was ensure that we have standardized procedures on how we conduct these drills we want them consistent across the board um specifically for our lockdowns evacuations and our shelter and places um that way when we're going out and observing these drills when our principles are conducting these drills they are conducting them in that standardized fashion and that we are um the part of the training that we provided was what our administrators should look for during these drills and then after the drills conduct a feedback form so then we can go back analyze that information um and here at district 21 we run a safety week in the fall and in

043the spring um basically this kind of like a heightened focus on safety and allows us to ensure that all our buildings conduct the required drills per the school safety drill act so um during that time after the safety week is conducted uh we do a safety week debrief and part of that is analyzing the data from our drills um and just having that consistent way that they're conducted ensures that we're looking at the data in a uniform fashion across our district allows us to address those those potential needs those gaps also what we're doing well um again this is one of those things that's going to strengthen preparedness for real life if we treat it as a checkbox if a real situation was to happen we are likely not going to perform it the way

044that we're supposed to if we if we conduct these drills based on best practices in the event of a real situation where you're going to be better prepared it's going to ensure that our students our staff continue to build their confidence in our safety protocols carehawk system is something that's been implemented uh this is a project taken on by the Information Services team um and um they were I was fortunate enough to be brought in on these conversations when this was being implemented uh this system has heavy sort of a safety features in it so I I was very thankful that I was brought in to collaborate on on that side on that side of things with the carehawk system uh what essentially is um is a integrated safety alert and intercom system it provides

045audio and visual cues so the displays that are located in classrooms um in the hallways in the big spaces like our PRS our um our libraries uh any any space in the in the building they have these displays that primarily function as clocks however if we were to activate one of our protocols uh no matter which one it is it would display it visually uh on the on the display right there and then it would also send out the the message over the PA system which is typical um however we want to ensure that in those spaces where maybe it's loud like a hallway a gymnasium a lunchroom U not everybody might hear the message that's going on the PA or some students because they just hear messages all day they might just disregard it

046however if you see this going off uh we also have students in specialized programs that might not be able to hear a uh a alert go off so having this just gives us that second layer of not only the message going out but a visual cue as well um it also has has a lot of cool features supports multi-building coordination so essentially if we needed to put another one of our buildings in a protocol uh because something's happening outside the building uh we need to put them in a hold we could do that kind of remotely from the district level we can also do that from our crisis Go app which is emergency communication app tool that the district uses um and that also is integrated with this so we've activate one of our protocols

047via crisis go it would activate care hog so just want to thank the information Services team because that they brought me in on this project and it's been a it's been a great and we're looking forward to expanding to the rest of our schools this summer that's the plan so thank you um our SRO program is continuing to improve we have three sro's one is stationed at each Middle School um basically that's where they're assigned that's where their office is that's where they spend majority of their um their day um their week however they're also assigned to the schools that feed into those middle schools so um they have made efforts to increase the walkthroughs the visits at the elementary schools to continue to build relationships with staff members there and students there um and

048just you know address any needs that they may need or just like I said just building those relationships what's cool about that is as these kids progress and get older and move into the middle school you know that's a familiar fa another familiar face another Trust adult uh so we just want to continue to build those relationships they're um out there doing targeted lessons mainly right now on uh Internet safety digital citizenship um as we know this is an increasing issue it's something that I don't see stopping anytime soon right as as um kids get devices and apps and social media at a younger and younger age um we want to make sure that they have the information understand what potential dangers are out there um what they shouldn't be doing online but also what

049they need they need to report if they see so our sro's um have been also working with the information Services team and um Elizabeth Lynch was part of that team who's been really outstanding at at working with the SRO um to get to create these presentations and I was fortunate enough to be brought in on that as well uh to get my aspect on that um and the SRO expertise so they've been out there doing that and it's um after speaking with the SRO um they advised that they've seen a reduction in cyber related incidents so um I think it shows the progress and the uh result of getting out there and doing these lessons so something we're going to continue to exper on we updated uh we improved our London School arrival and dismissal

050plan so unfortunately I'm sure everybody's aware we had an incident at London um where uh there's a a vehicle struck a pedestrian uh thankfully there was nothing no serious injuries however um it we knew that we needed to take some action to mitigate this from potentially happening again um before that incident occurred we were already underway on parking lot assessments uh basically and London was one of the top priorities we knew that we needed to address some issues with it um and then when that incident occurred we decided hey this is pretty urgent we need to take action right away so we came up with a plan that reduce con congestion and improved overall pedestrian safety um and these procedures are now clear for staff and for parents um you can see we have a

051dedicated staff parking area we have an area for our um parking drop off and pickup which basically means you have to park before you drop off and pickup um and then we have a dedicated one lane for a Carline and a dedicated uh bus area as well so it just cleared up some procedures and minimize the speed of of of vehicles going through the parking lot Vehicles not going around one another and they having one area that a pedestrians can cross so mitigating some of the potential risk uh that existed with the parking lot before to go into some uh safety upgrades uh updates that we have planned also things that um are in progress on the operations front uh we are just just numbering in general so as we uh the district uh take

052the operations team is currently underway of kind of upgrading our signage in our rooms you can see them kind of here in this room there's new signage um that has our district logo and the room number as we're going through that we also identified that our the numbering over and this is not unique to this District it's many districts operate like after a number of years the numbering just sort of gets out of whack so um they don't flow in a logical numerical order which is really important especially when we're talking safety um there's a very specific way that a building needs to be numbered so as we're updating these placards um we are also renumbering the buildings so that they make sense in a numerical logical order per best practices and guidelines um it's

053not as simple as it sounds there's a lot of systems that like work off those numbers our fire panels our control systems um so there's a process there so we're we're doing that um but additionally with room numbering uh we are uh once the weather breaks and those those those um buildings that have been renumbered we're also going to be placing window decals with classroom numbers on the exterior uh this is an uh important feature for law enforcement because or even fire department's First Responders if the incident occurs at a school it might be more efficient it might be more um have a tactical Advantage if they approach the the classroom or they might need to get there quicker um it's very challenging to understand where that classroom is just by looking at a blueprint

054or it might we might lose uh precious time that we need the ability to identify a classroom from the exterior for law enforcement is critical it's a recommendation that they made uh district 214 already has already done this a lot of other districts already have this in place so this is one of our initiatives here is to get uh our Windows numbered from the exterior high visibility exterior door numbers is exactly what it says um you can see here in the image uh basically just upgrading our door numbers our exterior door numbers so that um they look nicer and that they are more visible basically uh it's a reflective material it's a more permanent sort of placard not just sort of number that's taped on there um and it's just going to be allow for

055easy identification of doors um whether it's day or night trting classroom numbers um this is really common in universities and colleges you'll walk through a like a I was just at jolia Junior College for a training and I just as I was walking down the hallways I mean I saw it was very clear what room was what and you can see it down the hallway um with especially for you know a law enforcement P perspective when if you're going down the hallway it's nice to kind of see what classroom I'm approaching versus getting right in front of it before I identify that classroom um so that's another one of those tactical advantages but additionally it's it's nice for our students and staff to be able to walk down and quickly identify a classroom or just

056be able to see where I'm going easily navigate around a building reification task force this is uh one of the major sort of projects and initiatives that we are sort of in the planning phase with if you're not familiar with what reunification is it's basically the idea of safely reuniting students um staff with their loved ones after an incident where we need to Evac at the building or where we need to relocate to a safer safer place um the I love you guys Foundation who created the standard response protocol who we utilize also created the standard reunification method and it's a just a ba basically the process of how you reunify students with their families um you can see it in the image here this is a very general overview uh but basically um students

057get transported to the reunification site there's a student assembly area there's a bunch of staff there that have their roles and responsibilities um and they parents then we ident release to them where the site is where they can get their students um and then there's a very specific process on how that how we facilitate the reunification um in order to do this though you can imagine that it'd be very challenging for us to do this alone because if we're impacted it's likely the rest of our buildings are impacted and we might not have the Personnel Resources to do this as efficiently and uh safely as possible many or many communities are now creating these Mutual Aid teams to kind of help facilitate these reunifications now naturally because my position is shared with District 59 uh

058we are creating this reunification task force getting staff members here um who showed interest trained on reunification as well as staff members at District 59 and then in the event where we need to actually conduct a reunification um we can support one another at our joint reunification site this is one of the most important things I think as far as uh safety and ensuring that uh we can identify potential concerning situations or concerning uh subjects so the focus of threat assessments is to uh strengthen early intervention strategies basically it's the idea of understanding concerning behaviors understanding concerning situations um identifying those depending on how you know they can get reported To Us by the community a student a staff member can get information and determine this is something concerning we need to look into it

059further however that comes about and then we go into the inquire phase which basically we gather and gather as much information as we can talk to everybody that's involved in the situation um and then we take all the information and then this team forms which is the called the threat assessment team it's a multi-disciplinary team involves uh School administrators our support person Personnel like our counil our counselors social workers School psychologists our First Responders it's sort of this multi-disciplinary lens that allows us to assess all this information and determine one if there is an actual threat and or and then if there is a threat how we're going to manage that or how we're going to deal with um the situation or subject of concern this is something that's required again through the school safety

060drill act um our staff has been uh trained on this however we are currently evaluating different uh training methods that we can get consistently to our staff and our threat assessment teams we do have threat designated threat assessment teams for the for every building um and I just had the the opportunity to attend a threat assessment campus trainer program where I'm actually certified to um train our staff on threat assessments um so I think it's a good opportunity to get that internal training consistent across our district and just kind of find tune some of our threat assessment procedures uh but yeah again this is one of those uh important things that I think uh really builds the confidence of our staff especially our administrators to um identify issues and and ensure that we're managing them

061appropriately our visitor management kiosk is another project that's currently underway um our visitor management uh if we utilize Raptor it's currently in place uh basically what is currently in place is when a we have a visitor a contractor a parent come to one of our schools they are buzzed into our secure vest and then um they have to provide an identification to our office staff it runs them through a database that ensures they're not some sort of any on any offender database where they're not allowed to be on school campus um so we utilize that right now but we're looking at implementing this kiosk and we're actually going to Pilot um two different kiosk at two different schools to just evaluate how they work before we decide to you know implement districtwide but basically what

062a kiosk does is when a visitor comes to our building or a contractor uh they that kiosk will be uh in the vestibule they encounter and they engage with that kiosk um and then they they put their reason in there I'm a visitor I'm a contractor I'm a parent picking up so and so that in they get their they scan their ID that information gets routed to the office staff office staff can then View and ensure that that person is cleared and then address the need that that visitor that contractor whatever that person is there for um this takes a little bit of administrative burden off of our staff and it also ensures that everybody that comes into our building is getting screened you can imagine there's sometimes where I if I'm an office staff

063and I know this parent and I've seen them you know 10 times already I might it might be awkward for me to ask them for their ID and this is just speaking from experience they we're not always asking somebody for ID because we know that parent but we want to ensure we don't know what we don't uh truly know if things have changed with individuals and in order to stay compliant we need to ensure that someone's coming into our building that they're getting screened um so what this does is just takes that sort of that ability away from our secretaries and it puts it in uh the hands of our visitors because now they're going to be they're going to have to engage with that kiosk basically it also provides accountability for all those who

064enter the school so someone like myself who is not assigned to one school you know I can um I'm assigned to all school so I can visit any school um and with the new badges that we're getting I can scan my ID at this kiosk and now I'm accounted for in that building so now if we have to evacuate me as someone who's not permanently assigned to that building I'm accounted for and they know that Hey where's Danny he's he's not here we gotta's he might be inside yeah a quick question I'm a volunteer in a number of different schools and I in addition to providing ID every time they still want me signing in and signing out does this take the place of doing that yes it will yes this will also take take

065away the three sign-in sheets we have one for staff one for parents one for visitor you know so this this will be this will be all that basically so there's no need for pay for stuff um and in the event of an emergency if you sign into a building you I don't I mean I don't I don't trust that somebody would grab that piece of paper and remember that you know you were in there so it' be this just provides that accountability not just for staff for um like I said sta uh visitors contractors anybody we want to ensure we're accountable for everyone that walks into our building like I said we're in the pilot phase we're going to Pilot two different uh kiosk and then we're our hope is to make a decision and

066Implement districtwide for the next school year stop the bleed training is another essential component this is actually requirement uh uh school code that requires us to to have this training and most districts are providing that training um through some you know like an online platform that's better than nothing but to really conduct to really have the stop the bleed training um it's going to be very difficult to do that through like a some sort of online training program uh you can't learn how to put a tourniquet on unless you actually put a tourniquet on like in training so it' just be very challenging to do that just to stay compliant this is another one of the things we don't want to just do to be compliant we want to do with a purpose um so

067having the stop the bleed training is important and having the stop the bleed uh kits in our classrooms as other key areas in our building is going to be important in the event that um there's severe injury and our staff are trained on how to how to prevent or how to uh mitigate any potential further issues until medical personnel arried it also empowers them with life-saving skills very very very a slim chance that they would ever have to utilize these skills in a school setting however um it's more it's more likely that they may have to step in and help somebody outside of school so this just gives our staff that extra set of skills parking lot review and safety assessments as I mentioned uh prior to uh the London incident that occurred these uh

068parking lot review and safety assessments were already underway in the 23 24 school year four parking lots uh were assessed we work with our consultant Kim Le horn they specialize in specifically in school parking lots basically improving the efficiency and safety of parking lots any District you go to I I promise if you ask them if they have issues in their parking lots they're going to tell you yes um it's just when you have a parking lot with a bunch of people showing up at one time you're going to encounter issues um it's never going to be perfect but we're always looking at how we can improve this is one of those things we bring in a consultant who specializes in this they can provide us options and then we can evaluate that and determine

069uh what we need to do so uh we have as I mentioned four parking lots that were completed in the 2324 school year four parking lots currently underway and then we'll finish off uh for the final parking lots reviewed next school year third party school safety assessments this is important I mean I could walk through a building and I can identify a bunch of uh bunch of issues or things that maybe we need to address um or things that we need to look into or things that we're doing well however um having another set of eyes or another other people who also specialize in this and understand school safety and U physical physical building security um is always going to help us out because we might identify things that we didn't think of or things

070that uh maybe are relevant or emerging issues ensures we're complying with best practices they identify areas of continued Improvement and another major part of this is anytime I've applied for several safety uh grants for schools every time I've applied I can't remember one Grant where I didn't apply where they asked to have you completed uh safety a third party safety security assessment and if so what were the recommendations made so we want to continue applying for these grants we want to secure funding to help uh fund some of these safety projects and having these security assessments done is going to uh increase our chances of getting getting those grants funded if as you if throughout the presentation you heard me continue to say we're always continuing to improve that's what safety is all about especially

071school safety we're always looking at ways where we can improve I also encourage our school Community um to have a voice in this too this safety is not just my responsibility as a safety director it's not just the superintendent's responsibility a principal's responsibility everybody plays a role I say that all the time um that includes our staff our families our First Responders um like everybody everybody in our community so please if uh the community members watching those in attendance if do you have concerns or things ideas please present them to the district uh we want to we want to hear from you as well with that I I'll take any questions if there are any so Danny we talked about our SRO and most of us have met our SRO in the buildings I find

072them to be very engaging reaching out to the kids there's been a lot of negativity though in other school districts about SRO can you speak to what our SRO do and what they don't do because I think what they don't do is what people need to understand yeah um so our sro's all have had um the proper training number one uh when you select an SRO you don't just uh put you know any police officer in a school setting it takes a c an officer with a specific set of skills um they also need the proper training so um through nasro who is the gold standard for SRO training um they say somebody needs to be properly selected and carefully trained uh to Be an Effective SRO um so I think that's a main part

073of it the process of when selection happened that was before I started but I think we we got you know the strong sros in our buildings and they're looking at ways to to improve and they really truly do want to help um and they understand the role of an SRO they're not there as an enforcer or somebody to are really um hand down you know citations only or deal with uh you know juvenile delinquency issues that's not the case the main priority of an SRO yes they are there to ensure that the building remains as safe as possible but they're there as a resource too to help support our our students be another trusted adult so I think they just understand the true role of what an SRO is um and not just you know

074sort of a glorified security guard because sometimes that's what it is seen as um and that's not if you're putting in an SRO for the sole purpose of keeping your building safe then you're doing it for the wrong reasons right thank you Danny so you spoke about the rapid response team if there was you know an a unification team where if there was we had to clear out this building and and we needed to reunify or if there was some Mass event in which we had to Pro you know provide a a widespread evacuation is there an opportunity I know weal you talked about District 59 and you know from what I understand you rely on surrounding districts that your people have one job to do you may need more through the Wheeling Police Department

075or some of their organizations is there an opportunity to train and partner with Community organizations to help support with those efforts mundeline uh Vernon Hills they have Community organizations that go through that same reunification training so they're available to help out should that be needed is that something that you would work with our local police departments to see if that was something that was needed it's certainly possible I mean one of the things that we also need to be cognizant of is that when we're reunifying students with parents um that um Community organization that might be lending support um needs to um really understand um the the dynamic understand the trauma um and that you know they're not just you know pointing in a direction to go so so again it's it's one of those

076things where that um that Community organization um there would need to be a wrong um uh training process um a really in-depth relationship that has been built um so that we know um that at a second you know we need to activate that that we know those people are going to be going in there and um doing the work that needs to be done in a way that we know our teachers would be doing um mean like Omni I'm thinking like like places that that we rely on for mental and behavioral health support with and our students yeah and families anyway if we had an event and I'm sorry with the climate out in the world right now it is not unforeseen that at some point in time something CommunityWide may happen I hope not

077but I you know but also as we're talking about this kind of stuff I think we need to be very cognizant of the time in which we are living in yeah and and and so I agree with you and I also what I would say is that there are layers of you know so the what happens after the reunification actually occurs and where you know so it's kind of the the First Responders but then you know when the First Responders are done you know who's in the aftermath of that so I think that there's a lot of different layers of Community Based possib you know support needs um so I think it's all something that kind of just needs to be in the in the planning but that's is a good question I mean it

078wouldn't so somebody that we definitely would partner with is like our region 9 Healthcare C itions they have um they partner with the hospitals that we would potentially be using in these situations um and the Emergency Management agency coounty Emergency Management agency so and they do have trauma informed teams as well um and people that have specialized training so uh definitely those are people that we would partner with um they already understand this type of training reunification they conduct their own exercises actually just went to a meeting today about it and they actually requested that school districts be part of these coalitions because they're typically left out um so this is something that they're making a request and so that that is definitely something that some people that like like Dr Conley said they would

079have to understand what a reification is because many organizations that may support us it's just not what they do but if it's somebody that has a background in it and are willing to actually provide a realistic effort to help then yeah that's something I'm just I I work with a large organization in like County like some of us are trained specifically you know should we have to help out in a situation yeah like a certain team or something like that yeah and our role is very defined out to what it is so thank you very much so Michael I was just going to say Debbie and I attended the reunification workshop at the last conference and I think we both walked away saying wow I mean this is the complexity of this is not something

080either of us had ever thought about and addressing it and coming back with a plan I assume is what you're talking about you have a plan now but a future plan well that and we've been training I mean so we have had in this room and you know the entirety of this of this floor have conducted table uh top exercises with First Responders um you know we actually have um you know the ability to do tabletop training and have on our own we have literal you know like outlines of our buildings um you know and and a and a a you know a reunification layout um that we can you know model all of those things and so our administrative team have gone through those trainings over the past two years and um so tabletop

081training is is really good and it's it's definitely a great first step part of the plan here would be to now do a actual walkthrough exercise at our unification site um so that way we're prepared in the event that we have to go there it's not our first time doing it um it seems pretty simple when you think about it but as some members of the board expressed they attended that uh seminar on it and um you can imagine if you didn't have the proper training it could be pretty chaotic yeah and I will also tell you that I guarantee you that we are light years ahead um in in what other many um school districts might be because you know when when I you know have conversations about well okay I'm just going to

082say you know in at the beginning of the year in the incident that occurred in in Georgia you know their reunification site was their football field yeah no that's not you know um so so there's a learning curve that that I really feel good about the work that the team you know Kim and Michael and and and and Danny have been doing um you know to get us ready for that so if if I could because she's not going to say it on her own even before Danny got here Kim was in the process of building the reunification teams working with the Wheeling police after the homes incident and like Mike said we are light years ahead because of the work that Kim's done on it so 100% Phil Paul yeah Daddy an extremely thorough

083presentation it's quite amazing the breath of activities now that we have to do as a school district and even consider having to do as a school district in order to keep our students and staff State appreciate the efforts thanks sir thank you much Danny for all your hard work thank you very much thank you thank you sir appreciate it okay next is the summer 2025 construction overview yeah so um later this evening U the board has the opportunity to approve our our summer 2025 um uh construction bids um so we thought it would just be a good time for Michael to briefly um just kind of remind the board of of what is planned for this summer um so I'll turn it over to him um within the where we look at tonight approving the

084bids for the summer construction uh there's a pretty detailed list of what we're looking at this summer um and just so that we go through a little bit there's a lot of flooring a lot of new uh bathrooms um teacher Lounge flooring throughout the district uh some boilers finishing up the last of our three playgrounds uh that we are responsible for Long Fellow was owned by the Buffalo Grove Park District so that's still to come um finishing out HVAC work uh we only will have after this year about one or two uh rooftop units left to replace um exciting new developments in tur fields at Twain and Whitman um enhancing the the parking lot safety At Whitman with a new bus turnaround so lots of really good stuff coming student lockers at London and homes

085with Cooper to follow the following year um we are in the last throws of being a repair renovation and um you know really just replacing everything District to becoming a preventative maintenance and special projects District which will take a lot of load off of the construction funds and return dollars as we start to get less federal dollars and and possibly less State dollars depending on what happens with the budget uh give a lot of more money back to the Ed fund that being said we've been able to do this because of surpluses uh and haven't taken anything from the Ed fund or any of the others while doing it uh I have shared a 2627 Outlook uh it's in your executive content it's something we will make public but wanted to the board to see

086first the last two years summer 26 and summer 27 will mostly be completion of flooring throughout buildings completion of bathrooms and then major classroom work uh like our CCC rooms art rooms science rooms and uh next year a major overhaul to London um to cure some of the Oddities of space challenges that are are in that building and create uh some more welcoming environments and places that students need them so take a look at that in your packet um we will make it available to the public after you've had a chance to review but uh really exciting the next two years uh what we have planned thank you okay and then um finally for our reports this evening I'm going to turn it over to um Dr chers Who is going to take us through

087um her team's update which um Lots going on um a lot of good stuff and and so uh going to let them dive in so good evening before I get started I just want to take a moment to recognize some of the members of our team that are here this evening because while I'm the one here at the podium and Dr Shao will be joining me at at one point in the presentation um this is the work of many not just um our admin that are here but as well as right our Specialists our teachers um and a number of other individuals but I do want to recognize um the team that I have the pleasure to lead here in district 21 they are a very awesome team to work with a very hardworking group

088of folks so I want to make sure that they are stand and that they stand and are recognized this evening so Carol and drol our director of math Amy Brer our director of literacy Ana Figaroa our director of language Services Janelle hackit our director of professional and Community Learning there you are see he's he's a tricky one right Chris lapetino our director of student enrichment and supports and then as I mentioned um Dr Shapiro will be joining me shortly uh Dr Rodriguez was not able to join us this evening but um she also is a very important piece of our team so again just wanted to take a moment and uh recognize our team members that are here for efficiency um the slides will be shared with just uh Dr Shapiro and I so I

089will be presenting um on all of the areas other than the ones that um Dr Shapero is going to report on attendance so for our literacy update um even though we have a director of literacy Amy who does a fabulous job she works very closely with um ana figuroa with the language services that whole department um as well as um some initiatives that we've done that Dr Rodriguez has also been supporting this year we've gone through a lot of changes with our literacy over the last couple of years and I know that um it's it's something that has right been challenging for teachers because there have been so many changes but I do want to emphasize that right Illinois um the State Board adopted an Illinois comprehensive literacy plan and we had a certain timeline

090that we had to make sure that all of our practices were in alignment with that as well as the current research and things um that are happening in the field of literacy and so that was something that then had us move faster than we maybe normally would with some of these initiatives um but we really needed to make sure that we were getting an Ali with these pieces uh one of the things right that we've been really focusing on in addition to getting you know our curriculum aligned is um supporting our teachers with their instructional planning as we've made so many changes right in in a fairly quick amount of time here in the last couple years um and then adjusting our scope and sequence accordingly um and using assessment data to plan for instruction

091we've been doing a lot of learning walks and actually um I was just kind of going through some of the the walks that we've done we have been in over uh 200 classrooms probably closer to 300 classrooms this school year um and I will share with you first of all that those are some of the best days right of of my work here in the district getting to go in and see all the great things that our teachers are doing with our students having opportunities to listen to students read um and hear about what they're learning about um it's it's really important I think that we spend the time on on the ground in the classrooms not just so we can see all of the great things that our teachers are doing but also to

092see some of the challenges that they have to face with trying to meet all the various needs of our students and so it's something that um our team has really dedicated a lot of time to and we feel really passionate about the importance that we spend the time in those classrooms um to be able to look at student engagement look at our curriculum implementation and again see all the great things as well as the challenges that our teachers have to deal with on a daily basis um this graph here um at the table here at the bottom kind of just is a very high level overview of some of the updates that have been done um in terms of content and academic vocabulary instruction right K basically K through five um again that is something

093that um Amy Ana and Dr Rodriguez have all been working on together um to implement those pieces of phonics right in K through five um in both English and Spanish so Thea is actually the Spanish version of The Benchmark phonics um that we have adopted K through two you see there that there's some language about oral language development again as a reminder um that 52% of our students in our district are English Learners at some range right some identified range of English learner and oral language development is particularly important for them but it's really important for for all students right but that is a really important piece and that's why it has been something that we really have been emphasizing um additionally in 3rd through 5ifth uh we have made some um instructional pieces around

094close reading um to be able to help students access grade level text um which also includes uh some test taking strategies I think that that's one of the things that is you know really important that we're making sure that all of our students in our district regardless of their programming that they have access to grade level content because that's really how we're going to move students um out of you know some of those intervention pieces into that meeting and exceeding they have to have exposure to grade level content regardless of their instructional programming and then sixth through eighth grade right more integration with uh student engagement strategies uh increased use of non-fiction text explicit grammar instructions that's something that we've been seeing and actually pushing down even um in some of the third through fifth

095grade because there's more need for that um and then again the content and uh academic vocabulary instruction lots of work happening there with lots of people um participating in it and you'll see a little bit later when I share some of the scores that we we definitely are seeing the fruits of our teachers labor um in these efforts uh reading incentive so we had had some buildings in previous years that were kind of doing this just like right individual buildings and then we made the decision because of some of the successes we were seeing that we wanted to do it as a districtwide type of initiative and so um this year already right we have um students have read 22 over almost 22,000 books and almost a million and a half minutes of reading which

096is awesome we we were very pleasantly surprised um how well that initiative caught on and how serious our students have taken it and you know the more students read the way the more that their vocabulary increases and the better readers and comprehension um thinker you know with they they'll be stronger with their comprehension as well any questions about the literacy portion okay math update so we have uh been beginning the review for a new uh K through five math resource um and through the vetting process that uh Carolyn did with a number of teachers and Specialists and other individuals in the district uh it was narrowed down to amplifi Desmos which actually we implemented in our middle schools a couple years ago so this is kind of nice that it's going to be um hopefully

097right after we finish the pilot if it it goes through that it will be um a K8 um resource that we have in place we were very very pleasantly surprised that we had so many teachers express interest in being a part of the pilot so 90 classrooms are participating in the pilot which is phenomenal um so many teachers jumping in and wanting to be a part of the pilot uh which will then uh mean that about uh just under 2,000 of our students will have access to seeing and and working with the pilot so that's already begun um and we had a training and those are some pictures there from the trainings um that again very well attended trainings even we had one offering after school to try and offset the subbing the issues with

098subbing needs I mean that was a full training I think we had about 45ish Caroline yeah teachers that um came in for an evening training and so again um just phenomenal effort and and buy in from our teachers and that really um is extremely exci exciting because if teachers are excited about it that means they'll help us get students excited about it this is just a a slide about some of the highlights with it um and I'm not going to read the slide to you but I think the important pieces you know Dr connley says it often um that right we have had everyday math for 30 years right we've had the same math resource at our elementary level um and so this new resource um is right more up to- dat and has um

099current best practices in the area of math and then has some really nice uh technology integration pieces I will share with you that again we have right Desmos at our middle schools and when Carolyn and I have walked um that in those classrooms and seeing it in action students are very highly engaged with it and it's not technology just for technology sake it's actually right really some really nice interactive pieces for students to be able to use so in terms of next steps right we're going to kind of watch the pilot visit some classrooms um do some work with teachers on uh co-planning and co- teing um gather feedback from the teachers who um have been a part of the pilot conduct some focus groups and then hopefully make a decision for implementation uh by

100the end of March any questions about that the elementary portion just as a question you're going to conduct focus groups have you gotten any feedback yet from the students at all we just started we're about okay thank you absolutely um yes just quick question about the um the math curriculum one thing that I know was very helpful for my children in the elementary age was the conceptual approach to math you know coming from you know my background where it was a lot of rote memorization and that's great and that served a purpose I feel like my children have a better understanding of the concept of integrating numbers together and and why math is a global curriculum and not just the work you do in that course does the new curriculum build on that type of

101of thought process that it's still very conceptual of how numbers work together yeah there's a lot of um real life examples and that's those you can particularly see it um with some of the way that they integrate the technology with some um modules and things like that and so right talking about the speed of a car and how far you can go and how fast you can go measuring um right trying to to create uh different measurements and things like that and how do you how much do you need of this versus that ingredient right to get to a certain thing um so absolutely I think that it's you know real world but then also very tactile right like there's a lot of those pieces um Carolyn has been leading some work um over the

102last couple years around uh what's called building thinking classrooms and it's a lot of right how do we teach children how to collaborate with one another to Sol problems and we've been doing U moving more towards vertical learning so if you go into our classrooms right you'll see some vertical whiteboard spaces um and that has been super neat to see um our kids getting out of their seats huddling around right like so you know anywhere from two to five kids usually two to four kids huddled around a whiteboard and there's whiteboards all over the classrooms this is both at at both the elementary and the Middle School level and they're solving math problems to together um and really thinking right without being like you were mentioning not having just wrote memorization um and the feedback

103from from kids on that they really enjoy that a lot um and you can tell when you go in the classrooms just the energy in the classroom and some of the things that they come up with and how they solve the problems is just truly amazing I think it it not only gives them agency but it makes them enjoy doing math it's not just oh well now is the time where we do math like it makes sense to them why we're teaching them this way and that's it's been a joy to see my children grow in their math skills because of the new ways that we're teaching them to enjoy you know the way math works together and it just so that's I'd like to learn more about the curriculum I'll probably have more questions

104for you but thank you sure if I could just share on the you know the vertical whiteboard uh part so I had the opportunity to go into one of our Middle School um a couple of our middle school math classrooms um um and the they were you know the productive struggle um you know the the problem solving the figuring out the the kind of charting out I quite frankly as someone who also learned math by rote and you know we had the holy cards um I went to a Catholic school but it was like the timed test you had to go um I still have nightmares about those things um and you know the the things you know the process that the kids were going through I I sat back and and quite frankly I

105I got lost um but they were getting there right and and so I was like well I'm kind of glad that I'm not teaching this right now because I would be probably screwing them up um you know it was it was something to see so I assume based on the time frame you've talked about that you're not going to have any real empirical data on what's happening it's going to be based on your observations and what you're hearing from teachers to make the decision and what you Pro presumably heard from other school districts on how this program has worked yeah it's brand new um it's a brand new program actually so if there are any school districts they're going to be jumping in when we're jumping in again what we do know is the success

106that we've had at the middle school level and that that this is formatted in a very similar manner um and so we are anticipating right that that yeah we're going to we're going to see some some nice results but to your point arand it'll it'll we have already done winter map right and then we won't have spring map until May and this pilot is hitting right in the middle right so in terms of that type of data right y it's not it's not real tight on the book end of it yeah yeah understood thank you okay so I kind of already talked about Middle School um let see we do have a data point here though to um you know in terms of on our midyear Common Assessment right we found that more students um

107answered some of the questions correctly than they did in last um last year for the midyear um assessment so definitely right starting to see students um again Embrace um The Learning with math and I I definitely think there's there's a lot of pieces in play um and you know I can't say it enough that it wouldn't happen without our teachers right without our teachers taking the time digging into the resources talking with each other about what they're doing and what they're having success with um and really sometimes it's scary to let kids be in charge of their own learning right there's there's a piece of trust that has to happen especially when you talk about uh middle schoolers and I have a middle schooler so I I feel like I can say that and and

108um two older children so this is my last middle schooler and yeah that that takes that really takes some um a lot of thinking about how do you organize your classroom so students can stay focused on what they need to stay focused on and our teachers are doing a phenomenal job with doing those pieces I think one of the things also and and Carolyn or be please you know um correct me if I'm wrong but the work that we're also involved with with 214 and 214's you know theater schools um and the math C you know the Cooperative math curriculum work that we're doing you know in viewing some of that work when I you know kind of visited Forest View there is a good connection to the the kind of work that that the

109staff has been doing you know at the 214 you know collaboratives and what the types of of learning will be embedded through Desmos wouldn't you say absolutely yeah and that that was that's a new partnership right that we've been working on uh with the with 214 and the feeder districts but some of this work is work that Carolyn and and her team have been working on you know for longer than just this year right um and again you know teachers really jumping in um to the book studies that we've been doing that are very tightly aligned to the um collaborative um and professional development that we're doing with 214 feeder groups for sure and that is being facilitated by University of Illinois right that's correct yeah really important and good to hear about the collaboration

110with 214 because some of us over the years have felt that that was lacking not from our side necessarily but so that's really great news to hear yeah I I just think it's it's good that we're moving in this direction or looking to move in this direction because it does have nice alignment and I think it will Poise you know put us in a in a good spot um you know as we're matriculating our students over there so absolutely wanted to give a quick um update on uh some expansion of Elementary stem opportunities that we're doing and uh Dr Rodriguez right our director of science and social studies has been working with Chris lapetino um on applying for some grants and so we're really excited that we have gotten actually two waves of monies um

111to start to move this work for forward um so the first wave right was Kilmer Frost and field um that got awarded some monies and then there teachers right we have some teachers that have been trained and then just recently uh po Tarkington and Twain have been awarded a some monies to begin um expanding the project lead the way at the elementary level for next year and so we're really excited about these opportunities for our students to have more stem opportunities um in at the elementary level in addition to um the special periods that they have but just some additional pieces um and Project Lead the Way is the modules and things that are associated with that are phenomenal and I think that it's going to be really great for um our elementary students to

112have that exposure instead of just waiting till Middle School um for a project lead the way so um I wanted to make sure that we um shared that because it's really exciting um direction to be moving in for our ele students any questions about that turn it over to Dr Shapiro for a little bit all right well good evening I'm excited to share some of the updates about our attendance initiative and some of the enhancements we've made since um I last presented in August um we one of the first things we did was establishing attendance code so working really closely with the info Services team to create codes in power school that allows us to to be able to track when students are absent and why they're absent and looking at um codes such as

113illness vacation days um using our health clinic we were able to add a code for that so really being able to disaggregate the data by code um we were able to create attendance toolkits to provide strategies and supports for our staff and our um our princi principles to be able to share messaging with their families and their family newsletters um some letters to send to families some email templates and different tools that our um staff can use regularly um we provided attendance updates throughout the year really just making sure that our um our building administrators have access to the data and um looking at it in different ways as you'll see um in just a second um more updated attendance tonight uh we have been able to automate some of our emails so we every

114Friday our school administ or um our building administrators receive a email of students who have missed 10% or more of the school year to date so they are constantly being uh being in um informed of the students who are chronically absent and so we want to make sure that those students are constantly on our radar that we're able to address those in real time and looking at that information regularly um our really exciting piece is starting in January we hired two attendance liaison and so we have B Donna andrusk and Elsa skansi who have joined our team and been able to support attendance at all of the the tiers um so really working to think about how are we addressing attendance at a schoolwide districtwide level as well as addressing those individual student needs so

115individual schools are able to refer students but then um bodana and Elsa are able to support and and work with the families in the students to make sure that they are coming to school and really dig deeper into the reasons why they may not be coming to school and we're really excited that Odon speaks Russian and Ukrainian um and Elsa is a Spanish speaker so we have our our top languages um represented there um so again we have that referral form that allows us to really address those so we have been digging a lot into some of the research and providing tips they've been um engaging in some observations at the school level looking at the the culture and the climate of the arrival process um and the attendance components and so we're excited to

116continue that work with our school leaders over the next coming months and those attendance Liaisons um that they're a direct result of the district's success in getting our stronger connections Grant um from the state of Illinois so um you know and obviously um beatric and her team um you know worked really hard on on getting that Grant um uh you know application in and it was a competitive Grant process and so um and they gave us $100,000 more than we asked for isn't that right something like that yeah they gave us more than what we asked for which was nice um so it really gave us some some some good options obviously we didn't ask for enough well no we asked for the maximum amount they decided to give us more so yeah so we

117just wanted to provide you a quick update of some of our attendance data from the beginning of the year through uh February 7th um so this is a graph of by grade of attendance by grade level so in the green is th are those students who have attended 95% or more of the school year um to date as of uh February 7th um the yellow is between that 90 and 95% so those are our students who are more on that watch list we want you know a couple days and they could slip one way or the other and so we want to make sure we're catching those um and then those students who are in red are what we are considering in the state of Illinois considers chronically absent students and so those are those

118excused and unexcused reasons and that students are absent and missing more than 10% of the school year you could see that our earliest Learners are the ones that have the highest um absence rates and so that is something we definitely want to take a look at and and make sure we're addressing with our prek our kindergarteners um first graders making sure that those habits become um solidified that we we really work on creating positive habits to come to school every day so that we can see those effects later on these are our prek sites um Tarkington hawthor and Whitman all have prek so that is separated out our our attendance by prek and then our by school this is our K through five attendance schools so again really just working to support the schools that

119need um that are we're working through the tier one piece of what are we doing universally to make sure that that message is loud and clear at all of our schools of the importance of attendance and so really sending that message to everyone as well as working with the um students who are in that chronically absent range and our middle schools and obviously it's been a little bit of a rough winter season um in terms of illness so you know um I think that that uh hopefully as those things cycle through um you know we'll be able to uh uh to you know gain some some ground but it's you know absences have been up because of of um a lot of different things rolling around out there so it's just something to note and

120as we get the breakdowns via code we'll be able to see that better I assume that is the rationale for why we're seeing absences in different places yeah and and again it's we I think one of the things that that Ellis and the team and and and our our building um uh offices have really been working on is to try and and get more information uh as to reasons for because sometimes it's just you know they call in my my students's absent it's not necessarily you know telling us exactly what's going on so you know that's another thing is as they've been cleaning up the attendance codes as we've been working with our attendance secretaries is to really try and make sure that we're getting as much usable data so that we do have a

121good picture like you know but just anecdotally everybody's sick um so you know that has been yes right right any questions about attendance I just had had a quick one obviously AB absenteeism postco is not just something that we're dealing with it's being dealt with on a national level so as we look at times where the world is more unstable or times where we obviously have illnesses and we're looking at our data obviously I'm sure we're looking at surrounding data I know when we had this last little incident you conferred with local but by average and I apologize I'm Los my voice um are we about where similar districts are are on a national level as far as absentismo the same kinds of strategies or are there things that we're doing better frankly actually I

122think right now we're probably trending a little bit better um nationally um than nationally again I there's look better than the national numbers that's why I'm asking right they do yeah um so I think that that that's one of the areas that that you know we're um I think we're seeing some some good results here um and and you know a lot of that again is due to the level of intervention that we're we're you know putting in place so um but you know it's also cyclical so again at these times it's a little bit hard to know exactly there right now the data is pretty noisy right um you've got a lot of external influences um I will also say though that a big piece of this um it'll be interesting to see because

123as the return to office policies begin to start taking root and they are um good b or otherwise um you know that has been some of the you know the impetus I think for for some of the absence right it's kind of like well you know it's okay I can work from home the kids can you know remote learning things of that nature so it'll be interesting to see if that starts to change a little bit as as more and more Industries are requiring people to come back into the office so other questions thank you all right I'm not going to go um as in depth as we normally do for our um data this evening but I did want to share some pieces to highlight um to the board since we um hadn't shared

124our winter map uh data so just um again just a few highlights one thing that we changed this year um with reading was that we added first grade um had first graders taking um map data in or map in in Reading um and that was something that you know we felt was really important to get a handle on how the first graders were performing um in the similar assessment um to be able to follow those students through um so just a couple of things I want to highlight here on these slides so at the top you have um this winter right winter 2024 so the students took it in December and then um last winter um the the U data from those two data points you'll see there um if you look on the left

125that the median uh growth is higher this year than it was last year so this year uh the median growth was at 45 whereas last year it was at 40 um and then again right we we always like to look at our students who are approaching meets and exceeds and what is happening with those groups so basically those uh yellow green and uh blue bars um and so comparing this winner to last winter uh we saw an increase of 3% um of students that fell into those uh again approaches meets and exceeds so going from uh 45% of our students falling in those categories last year to 48% this year so definitely seeing right the it trending in the correct uh Direction I wanted to share um some some data as far as grade byg

126grade um and I'm going to go talk more through the summary slide but the important piece that I think that this U particular slide shows us is with the exception of that second grade right we see that red group shrinking um and that's really we we need to see right the students who are um you know really needing that intense intervention we want to see that shrinking um and we absolutely do see that and again that is is um due to efforts of our classroom teachers but as well as our interventionists um that we have in place U focusing on trying to support those students I included 23 uh winter only to so that you have the backup for this slide which I want to spend a little bit more time on which is the

127cohort um data information so right as I already mentioned we have a large El population about 52% of our students are El's and so the cohort information is important regardless but it's particularly important when we have such a large El population because as the students move through our system we would expect right that their achievement continues to improve um and so this again is just a summary report comparing last winter to this winter and that grade level cohorts and how much they increased or held steady and so you see there uh with the reading across all of the grade levels with the exception of um fifth and sixth that held or I'm sorry fifth to six and sixth to 7th that held steud right at those percentiles all of the other cohorts grew right their

128achievement um of those uh students in the meat suceeds and approaching all of them grew um and then on the uh intervention right those tier three kiddos that we have that are in the red all of those numbers have decreased and that's absolutely the trend that we want to see and so um again you know we really appreciate all of the efforts of all the different members and and teachers and Specialists and everybody that works in our system in the efforts to making these things happen because it truly is a systemwide effort to be able to show some of these um some of these uh data points that are really showing that we're moving in the right direction with um with the reading achievement in our in our district any questions about that and then

129um when we talk about right map basically sets reading growth targets for students and so we always looking at what percentage of our students met their target that was right calculated through um through the software um and so definitely again we see an increase over last year where last year we had 45% of our students meet their targets and this year we had 49% of our students meet their targets so again that's you know definitely what we want to see we want to see um that number increasing so similar graphs for math um again if we look at um what the median growth was you see that it went from 56 um the 56 percentile in 2023 to the 63rd percentile um this year and so again right that median is is Shifting um in

130the direction that we want it to to shift in most definitely um and then when we look at the achievement bars there um again we're seeing some pretty nice growth where um when we're looking at our approaches meets and exceeds students we saw an increase of 6% of students falling into one of those three categories moving from from 51% in 2023 to 57% um in 2024 so again those are some pretty pretty nice uh shifts um in terms of the achievement of our students that we're seeing um those bands grow um and definitely in the direction we want them to that doesn't mean that we don't have work to do but it at least means that the efforts that are being put in that we are starting to see um some some good shifts in

131that in the right direction any questions about that okay now when we look at the achievement by grade level right it's it's kind of you you see that it's not as straight and um straight of a trajectory as we see with reading some of that is to be expected just because of the way that we reading instruction builds right year-to-year versus how math instruction right based on the standards and things that are being taught um but I do think that it also is you know in support of that it was time for us to really look at the resource that we have in front of our children as well right that that because we don't have a a standard pattern um it definitely was time to look for something um to see if there was

132something better to meet the needs of our students and support our teachers in addressing those needs and again I have the 23 chart really only for the sake of being able to then have the backup for this summary chart um here right and so we're again seeing um the blue green and yellow bands growing some some grade level cohorts more than others remember that the fourth to fifth these are our kindergarten cohort friends that were part of covid right so our current fourth graders were in kindergarten that year of remote learning um and right not to make an excuse but there probably is something to that um playing a part in that um in that in those pieces of data um and then again but most of the data points are definitely moving in the

133right direction where we're seeing that the students in the tier three red groups shrinking and the students in that meet succeeds and approaching um growing with the exception of that four five in the holding study fifth to six any questions about that okay and then and again when we are looking at the uh how what percentage of students met their uh growth targets um some some really good data there in comparison to last year this year to last year 6% more students met their uh growth targets than um last year so that's good any questions about that data before I move on so we want to talk a little bit about Partnerships I think um Dr connley already kind of LED some of the discussion on the 214 Regional math collaborative right that we're doing

134um with that so I won't um add too much more to that other than you know we do have our teachers participating um as well as our um you know Carolyn and I participate um in that PD that's happening at different points throughout the year uh the the professional learning partnership with the feeder district from six I'm going to talk a little bit more about that because I have a slide specific on that as well as the literacy night so I'm going to skip over those for now um I did want to highlight um that we recently Ana and I recently went to a meeting um on E English learner leadership at 214 which was a fabulous meeting I was really um really happy that they put that together um that the high school district

135put that together for all of the feeder districts to hear about the shifts that they're making with their multilingual Learners um and so that we're aware of what our students are going to be going into the students that are going to remain in our program um and it was very it was very well organized and time well spent um so that was a really great opportunity for Anya and I to go and um collaborate with people from other districts and hear what they're doing um and share some of the great things that we're doing here uh to meet the needs of multilingual Learners um and then tomorrow actually I will be hosting um the other uh teaching and learning assistant superintendents that are part of the feeders uh we rotate um who hosts that and

136tomorrow is my day um so they will all be here with me tomorrow morning so I'm going to circle back to the family literacy nights this um was something right that uh Amy approached uh Indian Trails was it last spring maybe was like last or last spring about looking at doing some more work with the library um and so we have so far had uh three family literacy nights and you can see there from the numbers on the attendance I mean phenomenal attendance from our families at those nights um they have been very beneficial for our families to just get familiar with the library all of the things that are offered at the library um and then of course right we had um some very generous uh donations from the Rotary Club um and then

137also the bank of trust is going to be donating some books as well so that our students could each uh take a book home for the for themselves so that was awesome um and then again you know thanks to our teachers who you know went those evenings as well to lead some story time as one of the activities there was stem activities the choosing the book activities and again just getting familiar with the library and getting students library cards if they didn't have um so we are extremely appreciative of the partnership um with Indian Trails Library and then we also have um more of those events coming up and then um I also just wanted to share as right as we have been trying to increase our collaboration with not only uh 24 but all

138of the feeder districts one of the things that we've done this is our second year right as far as dividing up um teachers that are in the specials areas and each district hosting um one of those groups and this year we hosted our PE teachers um which Chris uh was was the host um there at homes uh and we had 120 PE teachers um from the area join us in a conference style professional development where they could choose from a variety of sessions and you can see some of the pictures there um from that event any questions about that just briefly I had the opportunity to go to the family learn uh literacy night with Tarkington the excitement from the students was just overwhelming and I hope that Amy we have an opportunity to sit

139down and debrief with Indian Trails I know they were very excited um to be able to offer this as to the greatest extent possible because the kids were just unbelievably excited with everything they could drag their parents to from one session to the next to the next and to see their teachers somewhere other than in the classrooms as well so yeah for sure it was truly an outstanding evening yeah the turnout has just been amazing for those so we're definitely planning to continue those that those efforts any other questions or comments great thank you awesome thank you so as you see a lot going on a lot of great stuff um thank you everybody for your presentations this evening um and uh with that that concludes our staff Communications okay and we have now reached

140the public comment section of our meeting the board will allow any individual to share a public comment for up to three minutes such comments should not include the discussion of personnel matters which should be brought directly to the attention of the appropriate School official during public comment the board and administration listen to comments but may not respond to the public I have just been handed one and that is for Ben Coleman Ben I don't think it's on if you just flip the there should be a switch on the top there there you go that's a little better thank you uh can I please have my time back thank you uh good evening my name is Ben kman and I am the current president of the district 21 Education Association we represent the teachers education support

141personnel and custodial maintenance staff here in district 21 we are addressing you today to start a new tradition we have no specific message or goal today except to say that we are grateful that we work in a state that values public education and we are grateful that our board and our superintendent are working to protect students and staff from the uncertainty and change happening elsewhere we hope that regular and open communication with the board will help our district remain strong and uncertain times in that Spirit we would like to thank the board members for meeting with us and answering our questions I want to close by mentioning two people who will be leaving at the end of the school year Janet Jordan is a wonderful person and a dedicated teaching assistant in Holmes Middle School

142who will be retiring this year she has held many people in her time at holes and she will be missed also I want to thank Bob gurnie for his kindness professionalism and his promptness in responding to concerns from the association his new district will benefit greatly from his leadership thank you for the chance to contribute and thank you for the work you all do in support of students and staff here in district 21 we are excited to be a partner in the decision-making process thank you Ben hey uh Mike is there anyone submitted a request online uh yes we actually have one we have a Megan B I'm going to unmute her here okay thank you hi uh good evening um before I begin addressing my concerns I want to First acknowledge and thank the

143equity and learning team F their dedication I'm encouraged by the commitment from some of our Administration to support these invaluable teachers whose work is critical to the success of our students it's heartening to see their contributions being recognized and I hope that momentum continues that being said I still do have significant concerns about where we are headed um I would ask I would like to ask are we truly using the right curriculum for our students is this progress we're seeing enough or should we be pushing further and most importantly is this curriculum tailored to meet the needs of all of our students or were teachers simply handle a program with little input when comparing ourselves to neighboring districts and reflecting on concerns raised by literacy teacher in the last month's public comment I am left

144questioning whether the instructional planning choices that we've made are genuinely the best for our students while we've seen some improvements the data is still shows troubling gaps in literacy and foundational skills progress is being made but it's not enough for some and certainly not at the pace we all need I'm perfect I'm particularly encouraged by the recent changes to the math curriculum which is a step in the right direction but again we must ask is this enough are we in the right path because we can't afford to rest in small ones while larger issues persist we need to ensure the curriculum we using is the best fit for our students and teachers today not just something that looks good on paper I'm deeply concerned by The District's focus on attendance leasons asking businesses on social

145media to incentivize attendance rather than addressing the root causes of the disengagement again we need real solutions and engaging relevant curriculum and Leadership that focuses on sustainable meaningful change speaking of transparency where is the promised email from last month's public comment that was left out in the agenda taxpayers have a right to see and hear all public comments accurately when the board selectively shares or Administration um for that matter what it wants it undermines the trust and silences the very people you are meant to represent it's time for leadership that listens to teachers I have heard otherwise from the previous speaker but those in the front lines to understand the challenges of our students face teachers have raised concerns about outdated curricula and insufficient resources yet rather than receiving the support they need they're met

146with silence or excuses meanwhile families are paying for private tutors because the basic educational support that should be provided is simply not there our students today are different than many of your grandchildren or children who have long since graduated their needs are different than they were years ago we can no longer rely on outdated systems that no longer meet the chall es of today's classrooms the time for change is now we need leaders who listen to teachers act with urgency and prioritize their students needs above all else to those who continue to focus on personal agendas and photo ops on social media the time for patience has passed it's time to put students first April 1 is approaching and for those that are aware it may come with an opportunity for real change I encourage

147my fellow neighbors and community members to realize the crucial need for leaders who will fight for our kids leaders who will listen act and make sure our students needs always come first not a selfie or a social media post of their lunch date with a local politician our kids deserve better and together we must give them the education and experiences that they all deserve okay thank you uh do we have any written Communications we do not okay thank you um Madame President just for the record I want to note that the um email uh comment that was just referred to is attached to this month's minutes which are in the consent agenda for approval thank you for noting that the next section on the agenda is the consent agenda this month we received three New

148Freedom of Information requests we have conference and travel expenses for the board to approve for the attendance of two board members to the 2024 Jord Andel conference four board members to the edre annual legislative dinner on January 27th and five board members to ib's North Coke division meeting on March 4th for the total amount of $2,229 70 cents uh Phil have you had the opportunity to look at the financials yeah uh in the two runs that I reviewed I think there were maybe three or four questions that I had all of them were responded to favorably didn't have any follow-ups okay thank you than you does anyone need anything pulled from the consent agenda last month's minutes and the closed session minutes of January 16th okay thank you may I please get a motion to

149approve the consent agenda as presented minus items A and B so moved okay Stacy yes Phil I I vote Yes Debbie yes Phil I Arlon I motion carries may I please get a motion to approve items A and B of the consent agenda no move second Phil I I vote Yes Debbie yes Bill hi Arlin I Stacy abstain thank you we have now reached the new business section of the agenda we are going to move a couple of items around um we are moving item f up to the top um um and that is the um approval of an employment agreement for the principal of Booth Tarkington Elementary School Dr Connelly yeah thank you very much um we have a uh uh as the hour is getting late we have an audience that we know

150would like to be able to you know get home and be ready for tomorrow um so um it is uh tomorrow yeah yes absolutely so uh I am very excited to um recommend um Jullian Dorne as the next principal of Tarkington Elementary School uh Julian has been the assistant principal at Tarkington for four years um prior to that she was the assistant to the principal uh at field and has also uh has a long teaching history in the district including at tarington um and so uh you know we had a a a good process uh search process that included external candidates and internal candidates and um in the end um you know uh Jillian distinguished herself as the uh right next leader uh for Tarkington and so uh it is with that um that I

151make that recommendation thank you may I please get a motion to approve the proposed resolution roll call please Debby yes bill I Arlin I Stacy yes bill I I vote no thank you congratulations Mrs Dorne [Applause] so I'm extremely grateful and honored for this opportunity to move forward as the next principal of Tarkington uh the past four years have been extremely valuable and useful I look forward to continuing to build my relationships that I have with the students there the families there um the community and each of you as our stakeholders as well um I'm committed to building and fostering a positive culture welcoming inclusive environment for all students um so that they feel supported and empowered I want I look forward to continuing to cultivate that positive culture um prioritizing the needs of the

152whole student and building those Community relationships um I thank you for your trust and your support in this next chapter thank you thank [Applause] you congratulations okay and the next item on in cons of consideration and approval of a resolution authorizing the acquisition by eminent domain of a plus or minus 5 acre parcel of real property located at 2814 East hence Road in Wheeling so um as the board knows uh we have uh been in in discussions um to acquire this um U piece of property for our proposed Learning Center um and um at this point um we are putting forth the recommendation for this authorization to uh potentially um move forward with an eminent domain proceeding um in so far as uh we have not been uh able to engage uh in the uh

153the kind of of of negotiation um that we uh have feel has been productive um and we do believe that that this is a step that will allow us to hopefully um uh Kickstart um those meaningful negotiations um obviously this is not something that we uh we would we would rather be able to to kind of complete this in a in a you know a standard negotiation where we come to a a Equitable agreement um but we uh do feel that we need to have this authorization to move um forward with an em domain proceeding should those efforts um uh fail uh Andor um continue to be prolonged which is an experience that we've been having thus far so Michael if you needed to add anything to that um no just that obviously we do

154not want to have to use this but at this point in order to move the project along we feel like it's uh the next step to get us to the point that we will acquire all the properties okay board members do have any questions well I questions I don't have any questions I'll just make a statement I I'm going to vote no tonight on this not because it's a bad project not because I don't agree with it not because it's uh something we we can afford but because I I just think the Optics of giving them one final warning and saying either finish negotiating with us or we will take these steps is what I would prefer and so I'll be voting no tonight not because I don't like the project not because I don't

155like the job that the staff has done but because I think there may be a better way uh to telescope our message to them uh and so the community knows that we're open we're being honest with them and we're giving them every opportunity to negotiate a final deal thank you if I may just quickly respond to that this is a warning we are not going to court tomorrow morning this is hopefully an encouragement to reach that Equitable deal it is an encouragement to move forward for both parties to complete this project and to properly incentivize and reward those Property Owners um with any Fortune at all they will come to the table and no legal proceeding will ever begin if we do not at least authorize the possibility now we are simply delaying the project

156until the next time we have this debate and the next time somebody says you know I don't like the Optics nobody here wants to go to eminent domain not for the Optics not for the cost not for any other reason but it is necessary to move the process forward if we are going to complete the project if we're going to do things like remove the modular classrooms that we've promised to remove and to do so in a timely manner so I will be supporting this resolution thank you Phill sure um I'll officially move the motion okay thank you um understanding that for the last couple months we've handled all three Parcels uh in the same manner uh offers went out negotiated two of the three I see no reason why we don't move this forward

157uh at this Point um the third party certainly has every opportunity to respond and continue the negotiations in good faith we hope they do certainly I mean we are all in favor of An Early Childhood Center as I recall from our prior conversations uh and in you know in support of that and in benefit Ben betterment and benefit for the children of the district I say let's make the approval tonight I I I'll I will make a second that I will make a a comment really first which is uh I will also be voting no for for the reason that dmra is not here this evening I would have much preferred to have a full board and a little more of a discussion and that those of us that are voting not really just wanted

158some one additional month to table it in order to have everybody here for a conversation and so I as everybody knows I fully support the project and the Early Childhood Center I do not support eminent domain in almost any form but I I I don't support it in this form but again it has nothing to do with how much I believe in it and I do think that there was a compromise to be had and unfortunately um you know we are where we are but I I think that one way or another hopefully this propels this for what I do believe should be a non-court resolution to to the project in which we come to a fair and Equitable agreement for everybody and I second it second the motion well everyone else has made a

159comment so I might as well too right no I mean I I I am in support of the resolution and I will be voting accordingly I think in in many regards eminent domain gets a a bad W um and I'm a lawyer so I can say stuff like that um you know this this property has been for sale for six years we've been in good faith negotiations on our side for two months now this is simply the appropriate legal remedy for this stage of the negotiation um nothing is being done that's unfair nothing is being done that's in bad faith uh we're not moving forward in any regard that is you know bad Optics which I know we like to throw around that phrase a lot this is simply the appropriately legal remedy for this

160stage of the negotiation okay thank you much okay we've got a motion in a second so may I please get a roll call vote I'll vote Yes Debbie yes bill I Arlin no Stacy no bill R motion carries okay thank you the next item is the approval of publication for a notice of a permanent budget trans so as the board knows we've had a process of making budget transfers uh to support our capital projects um over the past several years and so this is just a you know a continuation of that process um and uh you know posting public notice about the uh uh permanent transfer that we'll be uh making um and so unless there are any questions um there's no specific presentation attached to it I'll make the motion thank you um I'll

161vote Yes Debbie yes bill I Arlon I Stacy bill I motion carries okay next we have the approval of transfer from internal service fund to the education Fund in the amount of 2 Milli 750,000 so separately from the approval of the publication of notice of transfer that you just did that will be a you know this is a different transfer um so again um unless there's any specific questions um there's no specific presentation attached to it this is something that we've been speaking about uh within the finance committee uh we've planned for this type of transfer uh it's within our ability to do we should do it and I'll move the question second Debbie yes bill I Aron hi Stacy Bill hi I vote Yes motion carries thank you and the following item is the

162approval of the 2025 summer construction bids again you know um Michael alluded to the uh to the summer construction um work uh in his report this is just um approving the bids that came in very favorably um I think they came in 2.75 million under uh what was U projected by our our construction managers which is awesome um just uh again Testament to the work that that Nicholas and Associates and and Michael and his team and um you know taking really good um advantage of of a of you know a bid market so um just it allows us to do everything we wanted to do so so moved second bill I Arlon I Stacy bill I I vote Yes Debbie yes motion carries okay and the next item is the approval of the constru construction

163manager fee structure for the 2025 summer construction projects so recognizing the work that Nicholas has done is actually being able to pay them uh for the work that they will be doing this Su the only question I have uh Michael is the 133% or approximately 133% management fee similar to what has been done in the past the charges that they've had in the past years so it's not a 133% fee there's a 4 and a half% fee in toal total for the services then there are fixed costs which are I just want to make sure that everybody doesn't think we're paying 133% the fixed costs are for the salaries of the site superintendent the project manager fixed costs that go along with them obtaining Insurance although they rebate that back to us in our allowance

164because the bond premiums that the contractors uh are supposed to are required to apply come to us then as part of our allowance so it actually this Year's allowance is over a million dollar for the summer construction um and then there are uh fees that are not fixed there are reimbursable cost within uh this number that total 700,000 of which we hardly ever spend even half of that because of the fact that we don't pay that much for trash removal we don't pay that much for some of the signs that come out so while it looks like 133% we've never paid that much and they actually dropped their fee by a full percent this year as did Aron dropped theirs by a half a percent based upon the Loyalty that the districts had to them

165and the number of dollars we've done in work over the last few years so our total costs in on the construction will actually be about a percent and a half less than they would have been last year thank you so Arlin I Stacy B vote Yes Debbie yes bill I okay I made it motion passes okay [Music] and that's it here the next regular meeting of the board of education is scheduled for Thursday March 20th 2025 same place I may please get a motion to adjourn the regular meeting yes Debbie even wait for me Bill hi I vote Yes Stacy aren I Phil R motion carries awesome thank you all for coming