001I hereby call to order this regular meeting of the Board of Education for Wilmette Public Schools District 39 this Monday April 27th, 2026. Will the clerk please call the roll? Ann Hurd Here. Judy Berlin Uh here. Aaron Stone Here. Kristen de Castro Here. Allison Fassler Here. Amy Paling Here. Kitty Hilton Here. Thank you. I'd now like to welcome Principal Jackie Brennan who is here to introduce a group of Harper students to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Good evening, Board. My name is Jackie Brennan and I am here with some incredible first-grade Harper students. First graders at Harper School get to participate in an extreme weather project which is very timely given this evening. This project is so fun because students do research in library class that they then bring to their writing class
002and they write scripts for their weather forecast. They take those scripts and bring them to technology where they film them in front of a green screen. My first graders are going to share a little bit about their the favorite part of that project and they brought those projects for you to see this evening. Hi, my name is meteorologist Van. My favorite part of the extreme weather report was when we did research in library because my mom was there. >> [laughter] >> Hi, my name is meteorologist Finley Lawler and my favorite part of the extreme weather project was I was with my friends. It was fun learning about rocks and I got to wear my cute sunglasses. >> [laughter] >> Hi, my name is meteorologist Juliet Horton and my favorite part of the extreme weather project
003was filming it and being in front of the green screen. I brought sunglasses and a fan. Hi, my name is meteorologist Robbie. My favorite part of the extreme weather report was being in front of the green screen. Hi, my name is meteorologist Ella and my favorite part of the extreme weather project was being in front of the green screen because it was fun to have props. Hi, my name is meteorologist Wesley Daily and my favorite part of the extreme weather project was filming it and reading the scripts. Hi, my name is meteorologist Ollie and my favorite part of the extreme weather project was filming my part of the script in front of the green screen and writing my part of the script. Hi, my name is meteorologist Chloe. My and my favorite part of the
004extreme weather project was filming in front of the green screen. Please enjoy our extreme weather report videos. one Hi, I'm Chloe R. Hi, I'm Wesley. Hi, I'm Ollie. Hi, I'm Ella K. Thunderstorms are storms that happen >> when cool air and warm air meet. They have thunder and lightning. Did you know that thunderstorms can cause hail to fall and start floods? Be careful, thunderstorms can be dangerous because they can blow down trees and cause tornadoes. Don't worry, you can stay safe from thunderstorms by staying inside and not going in the shower and bathtub. Thank you for listening to our extreme weather report. Back to you, Harper School News. I'm Van. Hi, I'm Robbie. Hi, I'm Julia. Hi, I'm Finley. Droughts are a type of dry weather that last many months. Did you know that California
005has a high risk of drought? Be careful, droughts can be dangerous because they can cause wildfires and they lack of clean water. Don't worry, you can stay safe from droughts by watching weather updates, winter squalls and lots of shrubs. Thank you for listening to our extreme weather reports. Back to you, Harper School News. Now please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Well, thank you guys so much for being here this evening. You are such a talented group of meteorologists. We loved seeing your work and it is especially hard work in Chicagoland, right? Because there's so much wacky weather. So >> [laughter] >> you
006just never know. But thank you very much for being here and I'm going to meet you at this door here. I have a small gift to thank you for your time this evening and your hard work. So I'll see you over there and then you can go meet your parents in the lobby. All right, that was fun. Okay. Um I'll now turn your attention to the artwork behind me. Ramona artists have been hard at work this year in the art studio. The first-grade artwork on display includes landscapes inspired by Vincent van Gogh's beloved painting The Starry Night and collage self-portraits featuring a background representing a favorite place. The second-grade art includes multimedia collages of fish bowls inspired by the work of Henri Matisse and prints of city skylines. The third-grade art showcases painted self-portraits with
007visual details representing identity as well as abstract designs which explore the qualities of real and visual texture. And then the fourth-grade art on display is composed of large-scale self-portraits which evoke line-drawn portraits by Matisse and Pablo Picasso. And radial prints based on the radial symmetry found in intricate rose windows and Islamic mosaic patterns. Pretty impressive, wonderful work. I now seek a motion to approve the minutes of the March 23rd, 2026 Board of Education regular and executive session meetings. I move to approve the minutes of the March 23rd, 2026 Board of Education regular and executive session meetings. May I have a second? Second. The motion has been made and seconded. Board members, are there any comments, errors, or omissions to the minutes? Okay. All those in favor of approving the minutes as submitted, please indicate by
008saying yay. Yay. Motion carries. This is now an opportunity for the public to address the Board on any topic. Are there any audience members that would like to speak this time? Um Great. And before you begin to address the Board, I must remind guests to state your name, your community of residence, and by Board directive you are allowed 3 minutes to address the Board. And there is a time later in our agenda where you may have an additional minute as well. And I will just remind everyone as members of our community, you are among fellow community members and friends. As such, respectful and civil discourse is expected. Please note the Board uses this time to listen to questions and concerns, but will not respond immediately to individual requests and cannot take formal action on non-agenda
009items. Please include any specific request for action or response and appropriate information or follow up if applicable. And as a reminder, criticism of specific individuals is out of order and violates board policy 2.230. All right, please proceed. Hello, my name is Valerie Gabuzzi. I actually live in District 39. And I'm an employee of the Cook County School District 39 also. I would like to make the statement before this board to clarify any purported misunderstanding. I am presently off of work by my doctor's orders for a work injury that occurred at Wilmette Junior High on May 27th, 2025. I'm awaiting approval for the surgery on my back from worker's compensation. Regardless, I can't take the pain anymore and I have tentatively scheduled through my own insurance surgery on June 9th. It could possibly be sooner depending
010on the doctor's schedule. I filed a workman's compensation case immediately after the injury and my attorney, who I've had since May 27th, 2025, has provided all records including the off-work slip. I have also notified my supervisor of my work injury and provided the current off-work or doctor's orders relating to this work injury since May 28th of 2025. Everything has been sent in. Um I want to make my position clear tonight to the board cuz it's been brought to my attention about job abandonment. I have not abandoned my job. I never resigned my position and I have no intention of quitting. Thank you for allowing me to appear before the board to state my position. Again, Valerie Gabuzzi. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Cindy Like and I am the office clerk at Wilmette Junior
011High School. Tonight, I'd like to bring your attention to the topic of compensation and as it relates to the positions of support staff across District 39. The D39 Board of Education is entering into contract negotiations with our union. I respectfully request that you consider that some positions in D39 receive bonuses that are higher than some of our support staff's annual salaries. I have worked at Wilmette Junior High for 9 years. My annual income is under $32,000 and I am not alone. These numbers can be difficult to reconcile and can leave staff feeling undervalued. We simply must be better compensated. As you know, the cost of everyday essentials like groceries, utilities, and health-related items continue to rise. We need our wages to increase to more than anyone bonus given. It's not a question of what does
012this position do, how many hours do they work, or how vital they are to the school. It's a question of respect, of basic living expenses, a recognition that we play an important role and that we matter. I know that there are challenges in creating our budget and I ask that this will be the year where the board can recognize the value of our workers and prioritize bringing our wages up to par. Thank you. Hi, good evening. My name is Elizabeth Candido. I am finishing my fourth year here in the district. I am a kindergarten paraprofessional at McKenzie Elementary. It is truly a job I love. It means the world to me. I'm also a resident of Wilmette, a 16-year resident here in Wilmette. So, I'm well aware of how much each tax dollar goes back
013to District 39. Those are taxes that I'm proud to pay because this district has given me and my children so much. With that, our support staff were invited this year by administration during a professional development day to sit down to collaborate, something I know that we all appreciated. They asked us for feedback, questions, concerns, how we could all work together. During this professional development day, we were told that the support staff is the foundation of the work that is done in District 39. And I wholeheartedly agree with that. We are the foundation that works here in District 39. And as we know, without a good foundation, things fall apart, things break. Last year in my role, I made $29,000 in a role where I spend the most amount of time of any staff member with
014the children. The only time that they are away from me is during the one 30-minute unpaid lunch I get every day. That is the only time I'm not with the children. There's a crack in the foundation. During these negotiations, I ask administration to reinvest, to put more money back into their foundation. It is necessary. I ask the administration to reinvest in their support staff, their foundation. It's time for District 39 administrators to fix the crack and to pay their support staff a livable wage. Thank you. Is there anyone else who would like to speak this evening? Okay. Then we are going to move on to board reports starting with committee reports. Uh it appears facility development, no updates this evening. This is DeCastro, right? All right. Then we will move to school finance, Mrs. Bailey.
015Yes. Uh D39 and Wixy just finished a 3-year contract for our audit services with Baker Tilly. The board at our committee of the whole was presented with a 1-year renewal for audit services for by Baker Tilly. The D39 renewal came in at 8.85% for the fiscal year 2026 audit and it was recommended to proceed with the 1-year contract with Baker Tilly. If renewed for this uh upcoming audit, it would be Baker Tilly's seventh year in a row providing audit services to D39 and Wixy. All right, that's it. Thank you very much and we'll move to strategy committee, Ms. Stone. Yes, the strategy committee met on April 13th as part of the committee of the whole. At that time, Dr. Krumm and Skolnick provided a brief update regarding the district's new strategic planning efforts. All focus
016groups have been conducted with the information gathered having been analyzed and coalesced into major themes to help the district identify future opportunities and needs and will become the primary drivers of the new 5-year strategic plan. To further refine the district's understanding of these themes and opportunities, the district has recently released a short survey to staff, families, and community members. The results of the survey will help the strategic planning teams to further refine what was shared during the extensive focus group period, begin to prioritize opportunities and goals, and gather any additional perspectives and feedback that stakeholders may want to share. The district remains on track to present the final strategic plan for approval by the board at the June board meeting. The board discussed the survey and encouraged everyone to complete it in the next 10
017days and that was at the time of the committee of the whole. That's it. Thank you, Ray. Thank you. Um all right, we are now moving on to liaison reports starting with community review committee, Mrs. Berlin. I attended the CRC meeting on Tuesday, April 14th. On behalf of the board, I thank them for all of the hard work that they do and have done for decades in terms of doing research for uh necessary uh or valuable insight into make it decision-making in the district. They plan to present their report for this year's study before the end of the school year and they are currently looking for um we're looking at topics for next year and in fact, at the meeting, they suggested that if anyone uh has a topic of interest, they would be they
018would want to hear it. So, we can I'm just sharing that with you. Great. Thank you very much. Look forward to hearing their report. I think we looked tonight and they'll be at the um May um board meeting, so look forward to that. And I attended the D39 Educational Foundation meeting on April 13th and the meeting took place just a couple of days after another successful trivia night, so it was very um fun to hear the recap and the success of that evening. I'm not sure if anyone has had the opportunity to see some of the pictures, but they were um pretty impressive. A lot of effort and creativity, and a very successful event. Um, so many of their events have been the bingo night, the paddle night, I think they did a pickle night,
019and of course trivia, and it's um been so meaningful in terms of the money raised for the grants, but also just a great way to build on community connections. So, such important work that they continue to do. Um, they also talked about the proposed slate for next year. That was discussed and is well underway. And then their next meeting, the timing will be 6:00 p.m. instead of 7:00 p.m. on May 11th, um to accommodate a choral concert. At this time, we do not have a board member signed up, so if anyone can make that, please just let me know. And we will now move to Intergovernmental Cooperation Working Group, um Ms. Stone. Yes, there um was originally supposed to be a meeting on April 9th. However, that got rescheduled for May 20th, which is the
020same night as the Reflections celebration in District 39, so Dr. Krumm Skolly and I will be at that instead of the Intergovernmental Cooperation Working Group meeting that night. Okay. And Illinois Association of School Boards, Ms. Berlin. Yeah, um IASB is calling for resolutions to be presented to the annual delegate assembly. Successful resolutions become the position statements for ISBE, and IAS IASB and guide the association's advocacy efforts. And although I haven't heard of any resolutions that D39 would want to put forward, I'm just sharing that the deadline to submit the resolution for consideration is June 24th. [clears throat] So, if you had one, June 24th. Thank you. All right, that's it for our liaison reports. We will move on to our legislative update, also Ms. Berlin. Thank you. So, tonight I have two bills to report
021on. The first one is just informational, Senate Bill 3669, which deals with multi-tiered systems of support, MTSS. Um, this bill passed out of committee and is expected to be voted on during this legislative session. Um, Dr. Krumm Skolly can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm quite sure that we already use an MTSS approach in D34. Um, we will of course want to review the final language to make sure we're in compliance. The second bill I want to highlight is Senate Bill 2915 regarding notices to remedy. School boards issue a notice to remedy to address serious employee misconduct, and this bill, if passed, would shift the decision to issue a notice of remedy away from locally elected school board members and to an outside arbitrator. IASB has identified several concerns and is asking that members
022reach out to their state representative to urge them to vote no. Specifically, they are concerned that a notice to remedy is an early accountability tool that allows districts to address inappropriate conduct promptly. Adding arbitration delays action and creates barriers when safety concerns arise, student safety concerns arise. Early intervention may pre- prevent escalation into more serious misconduct. Local school boards need the ability to act quickly to protect students, and some bad behaviors, such as boundary violations, can be serious warning signs that require immediate correction or monitoring. Um, again, this bill has passed out of the Senate and out of the Senate, and is expected to be voted on this sec- this session, and IASB IASB is asking each of us to contact our state representatives about this bill. All right. Thank you very much. We're now
023moving on to information items, our first of which is written communication, Dr. Krumm Skolly. Thank you. The board, under written communication, has received written communication from Sharon and Joel Greenberg regarding increased car congestion at Ramona, from Susan Stone, uh voicing concerns regarding evaluation, and Elena Resnick, on behalf of a few parents, regarding single subject acceleration. And I can forward with the administrative announcements? Please. Great. All right, very good. Um, tentative last day of school will be June 5th. Based on careful review of the school calendar and emergency days, we are able to establish the final day of school as Friday, June 5th, provided no additional emergency days are used between now and June 5th. Uh, Wilmette Junior High School will host their graduation ceremony this year at New Trier High School on the evening of
024Thursday, June 4th. Um, aligned with the end of the school year, we host our annual Reflections ceremony, and that will be on May 20th at Michigan Shores. This annual tradition honors our district retirees and celebrates our employees who have reached career milestones within the district. This is always such a wonderful event, and we hope that our teachers, staff, and administrators will join us in recognizing their colleagues, along with members of our Board of Education. Um, we also have a special new recognition opportunity coming up for our students. Uh, board mem- members will remember that uh occasionally we invite our students here to be recognized at the board meeting, and our student lists have grown and grown so much so that we thought an event uh specially designed for them might be appropriate. So, this year
025we're trying something new. Before the May board meeting, we will host a special student recognition event, um primarily for our High Crest and Wilmette Junior High School students for their accomplishments in some of our extracurricular activities, including um Latin, Science Olympiad, Athletics, Math Olympiad, Oak Honor Choir, and more. So, the event will be hold held on May 18th, right before the board meeting. Uh, it will begin at 5:30 p.m. I think um I might have heard that our jazz band will be performing as we're entering um the facility, and um invitations will be sent to parents and students in the near future. We're really excited about this opportunity. There's a lot of work going into plan this event, so we hope that um everyone will be able to join us in recognizing not only our
026students, but the sponsors for those many activities that uh earned state level or even higher sometimes recognition. Um, also later on today's agenda, you'll see the Board of Education meeting calendar for the upcoming school year. Um, it has been uh proposed and is recommended for approval within today's consent agenda. The board is maintaining their regular Monday evening schedule with a few meetings adjusted for holidays and for breaks, so note those, but um we're glad to be able to get that schedule established um at this time this year. I'll also share that um our district recently went through a compliance audit, and I've shared the results with the board, but wanted to take a moment to celebrate that with our community as well. District 39 recently participated in what is a triennial audit from the North
027Cook Intermediate Service Center. This audit is a comprehensive review of board policy, as well as all aspects of requirements associated with each department. The audit focuses on legislative requirements, as well as any requirements set forth in school code. Um, there's many people who might not realize that uh we have to go through this audit review with uh some regularity. So, the compliance auditors um also conducted a deep dive into our personnel records maintenance, our student records maintenance, curriculum and instruction records, buildings, grounds, and business processes, and student services as well. They also toured our buildings. I was really proud to show off some of the the spaces and unique features of our buildings to the auditors. Uh, and needless to say, it was an intensive process that included probably about 4 months of preparation of
028documents and evidence leading up to it. We wished we had had even more time, uh but the tool didn't open until uh uh sometime there around. Um, and then once all evidence was submitted within their system, they took days to review that. They came on site for a couple of days to view our in-house documents, and then conducted the facility tours as well, so it's a ton of work for our central office team, and we are always very happy and also proud when it is done. Uh, this year I'm proud to share that we met and exceeded all requirements. After the thorough review, our team uh the team from NCISC found Wilmette District 39 to be in full compliance on all issues, and they also issued um a letter with several commendations to our team.
029They noted special appreciation of how well prepared everyone was for the visit, um and I've provided a copy of that letter to the board for your review. So, just really proud of the work that we're doing here. There's a lot that goes into that, so uh grateful for the team's uh preparation, and and for North Cook coming in to review everything. And we all did re- receive and read that letter, and um so impressed with everything that they took the time to commend um about District 39, and I know it's so much work that went into it, and they um recognized and appreciated that as well, so thank you very much. Um, in uh other news, our insurance cooperative, we have an update from a recent meeting that the insurance cooperative held. District 39 has
030been part of an insurance cooperative since 2017. As a member of this cooperative, we are able to pool employee groups together across six organizations to offer competitive insurance plans to our employees. Like many businesses and organizations, the cooperative is experiencing some pretty significant premium increases for the plan year beginning 91 of 2026. We expect that our PPO plan will realize approximately a 14 and 1/2% increase with moderate changes to the existing plan. The HMO plans will have a 15.8% premium increase in the new plan year. We are continuing to monitor that and work with the cooperative, but those are some pretty significant increases for us to budget and consider. This and those are estimates. Thank you, Dr. Kowalski. Those are estimates at this point. We are monitoring a few changes and adjustments that are occurring,
031but we did want to bring forward that news to the board. District 39, along with the insurance cooperative, continues to explore options to mitigate some of these increases. But those estimates we expect to be in the ballpark of what we'll be experiencing. We certainly want to continue to ensure that all of our employees have access to the health insurance benefits that they have come to enjoy and expect. Under Freedom of Information Act, the district received FOIAs from CT Mills requesting existing names, titles, and work email addresses for employees responsible for overseeing curriculum and instruction, teaching and learning, career and tech ed, and STEM, English language learner, tech and information technology and computer science, library media services, and core academic subjects including ELA, math, science, and social studies. And from Nathan Lou and Susan Sohn requesting
032all records and emails District 39 staff has sent regarding the evaluation process. That concludes my reports to the board. Happy to answer any questions. Any questions, board members? Okay, then we'll move on with the annual business. First, we have our 2026 consolidated district plan, and Kelly Jackson will give a brief overview of this. Thank you. The consolidated district plan or CDP is a streamlined planning tool developed by the Illinois State Board of Education to help school districts manage federal grant applications. The plan serves as the programmatic portion of the grant application process, so we go through this first to ensure the district meets the legal requirements of the Every Student Succeeds Act. And so instead of requiring us to submit separate plans for the title grants and IDEA, the CDP allows us to answer a
033single set of questions to cover multiple funding sources. Our district departments of curriculum and instruction, student services, and along with the business office submit the CDP yearly for approval from the board, and then it goes to the ISBE for approval. Thereby initiating the grant application process for the next fiscal year, which is 2027. Thank you. Any questions on the consolidated district plan? All right, then we will move on to audit services contract renewal. Thank you, and we reviewed this briefly with the board, but Corey Beltmeyer will give a a brief summary of this. All right, so the the board is will take one action item, but there's three separate contracts for the board to renew with them. One is for the District 39 financial statements. Then there's a separate administrative procedures that they do related
034to our salaries that they sign off on and send it to our workers comp pool self. And then the other the other financial statements is our Wilmette Community Special Ed agreement. And the recommendation is to renew that contract with Baker Tilly for 1 year. Thank you, Corey. Any questions, comments? No? All right. Then we will move to first reading of board policy 8:30. Thank you. We are suggesting revisions to this policy, and those suggestions are made through collaboration with our union leadership as well as guidance from the board's attorney. Dr. Kowalski, would you like to give a brief summary of this? I think the element that I would highlight the most is that this is now going to apply to interactions through school communications as well. And so you'll notice there's a change in the
035title to reflect that, but then also some content as well. I'll add for some time now this policy has has really governed the behavior and communication collaboration that we expect of visitors to our school, whether they're physically visiting our school or collaborating via communication with our staff. And so while we've relied on this policy for those expectations, we hope that these revisions help to make it even more clear what our expectations are and give us the opportunity to ensure that those expectations are adhered to. Thank you, board members. Mrs. Pappas. Um Um this was reviewed by attorney legal and everything. Okay. Um I was wondering in in uh I guess that's section four or you know, it's number four. Um it says violate any Illinois law or town or county ordinance. Um do we ever
036consider a violation of federal law in that as well or not? That would just be one that I might add. We can get clarification on that. Okay. I don't know if that's other other places in the policies or not. Maybe it's only in number four. I don't know. Thank you. And you'll note that number four was actually not revised. So we'll ask the the board's attorney about that clarification. Thanks for that. Yes, please. Um so right above that, no person on school property, that starting with that sentence, so the sentence right before the numbered items. It says or through communications with anyone. Really anyone? But I think that is clarification of with district staff. So we might be able to clarify that further. Thank you. Excellent catch. That was those were the main ones. I'll
037keep looking, but someone else can go. Anyone else? Ms. Stone. Um I had a couple suggestions that I'll get to in a second, but I just want to say that um you know, I get that nobody cares about anything more than they care about their kids. So passions can run high, but I have zero patience and tolerance for people mistreating staff. So I'm glad we're adding some more heft to this policy. Um and a couple suggestions I have to give it even a little more teeth than it currently has that you can maybe run by the attorney or we see what we think. One is on page one of four, which is where we are. I think it's in the sentence right before um the one that Allison was just talking about. So if we're
038the paragraph that begins the school district expects mutual respectability and orderly rewrite there. Um if you go down to the part that's underlined, it says and in communications with staff including by email, telephone, to etc. I wonder if we could change including to including but not limited to. Because right now there's a list of things and I can imagine a couple other ways that someone could be rude to staff that aren't listed there. So that would be one thing to expand that reach. And then the other one is on page three of four. There's the third heading that says procedures to deny future admission to school events. And it says any person who engages in conduct prohibited by this policy, whether through communications or in person, may be removed from school property or denied future
039admission to school property or have restrictions placed on their communications. I'm wondering if we change both of those or to and/or, so we aren't limited to doing just one. We could do both. Or all of it. Okay. That's what I had. Thank you. Any other comments? Questions? Okay. Thank you. Well while it's unfortunate that a policy like this needs revisions, I will say that revisions are needed at this point. Ensuring that our staff is always protected is the priority, so thank you for the work that has gone into this. And again, this is just first reading, so we will see this again. All right, we will move on to public comment. This is another opportunity for the audience to address the board. Are there any audience members that would like to speak at this time?
040Okay, seeing none, we will continue with our agenda. Moving to action items. >> [clears throat] >> Excuse me, the next order of business is the consent agenda. Are there any items that the board would like pulled from this evening's agenda? All right, thank you, Mrs. Pappas. Please proceed with the motions. I move to approve the personnel report dated April 27th, 2026. I move to approve the calendar dates of for the regular meetings of the Board of Education and to set the location of the regular meetings as the McKenzie Education Center 615 Locust Road, Wilmette, Illinois 60091. I move to approve the 2027 consolidated district plan. I move to approve the fiscal year 2026 year-end audit services from the financial auditing firm of Baker Tilly US LLP for the District 39 financial statements, self-school employees loss
041fund report, and the Wilmette Community Special Education Agreement WECSEA in the following amounts: fiscal year 2026 District 39 $50,400, self $840, WECSEA $5,250, total $56,490. I move to approve as first reading of Board of Education Policy 8:30 visitors to and conduct on school property. I move to approve to maintain as confidential the executive session minutes for the following dates: August 11th, 2025, August 25th, 2025, September 8th, 2025, September 15th, 2025, October 20th, 2025, November 10th, 2025, November 17th, 2025, December 8th, 2025, December 15th, 2025, January 12th, 2026, and January 26th, 2026. I move to dispose of executive session audio recordings pursuant to District Policy 2:220 for November 8th, 2021, November 15th, 2021, December 6th, 2021, May 23rd, 2022, October 2nd, 2023, November 6th, 2023, November 13th, 2023, January 22nd, 2024, March 18th, 2024, April 15th,
0422024, and April 29th, 2024. I move to approve the accounts payable for bills listed between March 24th, 2026 and April 27th, 2026 in the following amounts: educational fund $422,595.74, O&M fund $106,420.28, transportation $219,455.21, capital projects $80,498.00, total all funds $828,969.23. I move to approve the manual checks issued between 20 March 24th, 2026 and April 27th, 2026 in the following amounts: educational fund $1,167,301.03, O&M fund $240,194.35, debt services $950, transportation $135.54, capital project projects $78,396.00, total all funds $1,486,976.92. Thank you. May I have a second? Second. The motion has been moved and seconded. Will the clerk please call the roll? Sorry. Christine Castro? Allison Poulos? >> Yes. Amy Phelan? Yes. Aaron Stone? Yes. Katie Hilton? Yes. >> Judy Berlin? >> Yes. Ann Heart? Yes. The yeas have it. Motion carries. We are now moving on to
043conference items, old business. Is there any old business this evening? New business. Any new business? Okay. Anything for good and welfare? I'll mention two things. Um our students continue to do exceptionally well, and I mentioned that in May we will be honoring some of them. Uh we recently received word um from our band teachers that our Wilmette Junior High Symphonic Band made history at the state contest. On Saturday, April 25th, the Wilmette Junior High Symphonic Band delivered an outstanding performance at the Illinois Grade School Music Association state organizational contest, and for the first time in program history, the ensemble earned perfect scores from all judges, receiving a superior distinction, the highest possible rating. The performance was praised for its musicality, precision, and artistry, reflecting the dedication of the student music musicians and their director. So,
044we want to extend our congratulations to the Symphonic Band on this outstanding and historic achievement. And then also, our math Olympiad students, we are very proud to share the exciting results from our math Olympiad participants this year. Our students did amazingly well. Uh since 1979, the math Olympiads for elementary and middle schools has been providing challenging and thought-provoking mathematical problems designed to strengthen students' mathematical skills. Participation in math Olympiads um are located in all 50 states, three US territories, and in 30 foreign countries. In all this year, we have 4,179 teams and approximately 70,000 participants in this um extra additional challenge opportunity. Students who earned awards rank among the best mathematicians on their grade level. Many students from Highcrest Middle School participated in math Olympiads uh under the supervision and coaching of Laura Prochaska and
045Jess Radcliffe, we're really proud of our students and really grateful for their sponsors. I'll mention um just a few. Uh 39 of the math Olympians uh won awards for excellence for finishing among the top 40% within Division E, which is our fourth through sixth grade. We had one student earn the prestigious Dr. George Lechner Medallion, awarded for achieving a perfect score of 25 out of 25. We had seven students score within the top 2% earning a gold pin. 11 scored within the top 3 to 10% earning a silver pin. Eight students scored within the top 11 to 20% earning the embroidered patch. Four scored within the top 25 earning an embroidered patch, and then nine additional students scored within the top 40% also earning that embroidered patch. Both Highcrest Middle School sixth grade team and
046their fifth grade team were recognized with plaques and are included in the Moebius Honor Roll because both teams scored within the top 10% of all participating schools. Really proud of our students for taking on this extra challenge and grateful for our teachers who helped to support their success as well as the families who supported them as well. So, excellent um results from both of those competitions. Again, above and beyond the regular school day, our students are just doing some exceptional things. We're really proud of them. Thank you for sharing. Very impressive, and I agree, just a very um cool opportunity, a great learning opportunity for these kids to take their skills and present and be challenged at that level. So, very impressed. And if there is no other business this evening, we will adjourn to
047executive session. No? Okay. May I have a motion to adjourn to executive session to discuss specific personnel, specific education, individual student matters, and collective negotiations. I move to adjourn to executive session to discuss specific employees and personnel, individual students in special education, and other students in collective negotiations. Thank you. May I have a second? Second. Motion carries. We are now adjourned to executive session, and the time Oh, all those in favor, um please say yay. Motion carries, and we are now motion having been made and seconded, motion carries. Now, we've all said yay, sorry about that. We are