Il Community Consolidated School District 15 Board of Education - Regular Meeting

We'll call the meeting to order. May I have a roll call, please? Aer here. He'll be right back. [laughter] It is here. We saw her. Taylor here. Shupai here. Khan here. Bagman here. Hunt here.

All right. All right. The mission statement of district 15. By leveraging strengths and providing highquality support, we will honor our diverse learners in reaching their full potential. All right, welcome everybody. I'm excited for our meeting tonight. Um, I imagine there are many people listening that are interested in the update on our superintendent search. Uh, we will be giving a thorough update with our friends from BWP shortly, so I won't spend the time doing that now. Um we also in tonight's [clears throat] meeting will cover a couple of um challenges that the district has been experiencing uh at the county and federal government levels. Um and so just for those that are watching um if that so moves you to reach out to your local uh and federal representatives, we would greatly appreciate that support. So more to come on that front. All right, let's dig in. Pledge of Allegiance. Graham Sambborn. Good evening, PR. President Ader, members of the board of education, and superintendent Dr. Hines. I am Angela Gyos. I am the principal of Graham Samborn. I'm very excited to be here tonight. With me, I have one of our assistant principles, Lauren Halprin. And we also have Kirsten Datcher, our comprehensive music teacher who has worked at Samborn for 31 years. Here tonight, we have members of our ukulele ensemble. These students meet weekly during their lunchtime. They are truly dedicated to learning and

performing and we are proud to have them here this evening. The students will lead us in the pledge of alle allegiance and then they will perform our school song for you. Okay.

Please stand for the pledge of allegiance. I aliance 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. We are the tigers. [music] Hear us roar with our stripes and our pride. We here [music] we belong to the group. Aiming high [music] success. That's what we [singing] do. We're the fierce and strong. [music] Together [singing] we can't go wrong. Be here. Be you. Aiming [music] high, reaching for the sky. Tigers must fly. [music] We walk the halls with our heads up high. [music] Our dreams and goals reaching for the sky. The year, the year [music and singing] to the tea, aiming high and chasing our dreams. We're the [music and singing] tigers and together [music and singing] we can't go wrong. Be here you belong. High [music and singing] reaching for the sky. [music] [applause] Thank you guys. Thanks for having us. We are so proud of them.

Great job. Thank you so much. Thank you. And they get a little [laughter] you High five. So when you're doing your homework, reading, writing, just for fun. High five from me to you.

Thanks for coming tonight. Weren't your legs freezing walking outside? [laughter] No. I I figured out that came from Mrs. We're thankful to Mrs. Take a photo. [laughter]

So cute. Awesome. I was just going to say I love school pride award right there. All right. Thank you, GMS. Thank you. [applause] All right. Next up, we have student recognition, Ashlin from TJ. the first time. [laughter]

You can say [laughter] I feel like I should have brought a ukulele. [laughter] I'm really sorry. Nothing would make me happier if you would brought a ukulele. So reverse

good evening president uh Dr. Hines and distinguished board members. Uh we are honored to present to you Ashlin Hayes a sixth grade student at Thomas Jefferson Middle School who is the January recipient of the Above and Beyond Student Recognition Award. Uh Ashlin exemplifies leadership, kindness, and an unwavering commitment to the Thomas Jefferson School community. Ashlin's teachers describe her as a burst of sunshine that when she walks in the room, her smile and attitude are contagious to all. Her attention to detail and academic prowess are only surpassed by her kind heart and her willingness to help a friend. Not only is she great in the classroom, but wait, there's more. [laughter] She is very involved in our school community. To name a few things that you're involved in, Ashlin ASL Club, the spelling be, the musical, TJTV, uh key member of our principal advisory council, as well as one of our student ambassadors that helps and welcomes new students to feel comfortable in our community. Ashlin, you typify what it means to be a Thomas Jefferson Jaguar. We are beyond proud to be with you here tonight recognizing you in that fashion. Congratulations.

[applause] [applause] That was great.

All right. And then for parents and other family members, you can also come up and take a picture. Keep smiling. So she's like mom and sister. They always Yeah. Strong family resemblance. Mhm. Yeah. I was going to say Wonderful.

All right. Thank you. Wonderful job. All right, up next we are sticking with our North Hoffman crew staff recognition from Whitley.

Do you want to come around? There you go. Hello. Good evening, President Ader, Superintendent Hines, members of the board of education and community. My name is Mindy McGuffin. I'm the assistant superintendent for student and related services. And I'm joined this evening by Karen Jones, director of health services, and Miss Teresa Drogo, principal at Frank C. Whitley School. This evening, it is my honor to introduce registered nurse Donna Campbell from Frank C. Whitley Elementary School. Nurse Campbell was nominated for the above and beyond recognition for her exceptional clinical judgment, swift response to emergencies, and an unwavering commitment to student health and safety. Nurse Campbell has served as a school nurse in district 15 since 2008 and consistently exemplifies the highest standards of school nursing. She is known for her calm and attentive presence, thorough assessments, and deep dedication to the well-being of students and staff at Whitley. Just last month, nurse Campbell recognized that a student was not feeling well and immediately conducted a comprehensive health assessment. She obtained vital signs and noted concerning symptoms. Recognizing the seriousness of the situation, she promptly activated emergency medical services by calling 911. Upon arrival, EMS personnel recorded the student's heart rate, which prompted the student to be transported to St. Alexius Medical Center and later transferred to a higher level of care, where the student was diagnosed with a serious condition requiring medication and a surgical procedure. The students parents have expressed deep gratitude to nurse Campbell, sharing that had their child not attended school that day, the

condition may not have been identified in time. They shared [clears throat] nurse Donna saved the day. Beyond this incident, nurse Campbell consistently responds quickly and effectively to medical emergencies, including having provided immediate care during a seizure event until EMS had arrived. In addition to her daily responsibilities, she serves as a district CPR instructor, helping train staff in emergency preparedness. Miss Campbell's vigilance, professionalism, compassion, and commitment to student health reflect the very best of District 15. Please join us in congratulating Donna Campbell for going above and beyond in her service to our students and community.

[applause]

our other nurses are here as well and um our entire health services staff and I want to thank the board for working [laughter]

Thank you [applause] so much. [laughter] All right, we will now open our meeting for public comment. Public comment is governed by board policy 2 and 230. Please remember this is not a dialogue between you and the board. If you have a specific issue that requires a response, Superintendent Hines or a design will follow up with you as needed. Please state your name and identify any group that you represent. Please limit your remarks to no more than 3 minutes. If someone has previously articulated something with which you agree, please state that you agree rather than reiterating the [clears throat] entire comment. We encourage you to avoid comments specific to any person, student, or staff member respecting the right to privacy. This is not the forum to comment on personnel issues. Finally, the board expects and appreciates mutual respect, civility, and orderly conduct throughout the meeting.

Do we have any green? I don't think we have any green sheets. All right. No public comment. No. Okay, that's first. All right. Um, now moving into the public hearing for e-learning. Uh, may I have a motion to convene the public hearing? I move a public hearing to consider and discuss the e-learning proposal. Second. All in favor? I

I motion carries. Hello, President uh Ader, uh Superintendent Dr. Hines, and our esteemed members of the board of education here in District 15. Um I'm here tonight just to briefly go over a few things. We are resubmitting our e-learning plan uh to the state board of education. Uh the state requires every 3 years if you are interested in having the option to hold an e-learning day that you submit a formalized plan. We did that back in now 2023 which feels like a while ago. Um and we did that because we wanted to have in uh the work that we were doing with moving 15 forward, we knew that we needed that elongated summer to get all of the construction done. And so that school year leading up to it, we didn't want to have to extend in case there was any emergency days. Um, and then for that year, which was only last year, when we went into June, we did not want to have additional days in case there were snow days or what have you, that would extend us even further into the summer. So, um, now we've hit our three-year mark. And so we are resubmitting to the state of uh the state to be approved to hold e-learning days. Now uh just so you are all aware uh Dr. Hines sent communication back in November that our hope is that we could go back to especially on days that maybe are like this morning but the whole time um [laughter] had some e-learning flavor right there. It was a snow day time. Um, we wanted to have snow days back on the table as something that we can utilize. Um, we don't have to make an e-learning day every time we need to close for an emergency. However, having an e-learning

option is really nice to have in our pockets. Number one, we know that when um Dr. kinds has retired and is somewhere warm and sunny in the winter and we have to make those calls about if there's a potential snow day. Uh we don't know what the new superintendent will want to have as options. Um and additionally it just gives flexibility, right? It doesn't mean you have to use them, but they are always then available. So on a yearly basis, we always review that plan. It's posted on the district website. We have protocols in place where kids bring home their uh computers and our teachers do a wonderful job creating an uninterrupted learning day uh when it's an eay, but as we all know that's very difficult also for families and for kids and for teachers. Um so, you know, it's nice to have the balance and flexibility. So, I'm here tonight just honestly to to get approval hopefully and then we will submit that plan again to the board of education and then that would take us to 2029 which feels very far away.

Okay. So, we'll submit it to the regional office of ed for approval to have it on file. Yes. Okay. All right. Thank you, doctor. All right. Do we have any I will not read this paragraph if we don't have any pink papers. Do we have any pink papers for public comment about the e-learning plan? Okay. [snorts] All right. Uh may we have a motion to adjourn the public hearing and reconvene in open session, please? I I move to adjourn the public hearing and reconvene in open session. Second. All right. All in favor? I I motion carries. Okay. Superintendent report.

Wonderful. Before I dive into my report, we do have a brief recap video that we're going to show you, a brief [clears throat] look back at some of the fun we had in 2025. Uh you are usually the first to see something, but the group that got to see this before you was my parents' partners group um just the other day. But just enjoy a quick look back at the beginning first half of our year. [music] [music] Heat. Heat. [music] [music] [music]

[music] Heat up here. [music]

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Heat up [music] here. [music] [music] Heat [music] up [music] [music] here. [music] Heat. Heat. [music]

[music]

All right. Wonderful. Love it. I always say thank you comms for humoring all my desire for photos and videos. Wonderful video. Great way to spend the first half of the year and we have a lot of fun planned for the second. Uh speaking of which, let me transition now uh to what we've been up to since our last meetings. Um, so coming out of my office, we are looking and analyzing the results of our human resource audit. We have two audits going on, as you may recall, transportation and HR. Dr. Lazor and I will spend a lot of time working through that, prioritizing findings, um, and then putting a map together for the first two, three years of of her work and and certainly beyond when she takes over that department. We're working on ongoing budget projections for 2627 linked to staffing. We're still working on reductions. Um our our goal is to come balance. We're getting close, but it's getting really tight now. It's getting hard to find places to trim and the conversation now is really shifting, you know, staff programs. We have to decide if we're going to go that route. So, we're going to come to the board next month when Diana does her five-year projections. She'll share assumptions and kind of where we are in real time with the budget. And then we'll look for some parameters from the seven of you in terms of do you want us to to really take the other 1.5 1.7 that we're still working to to shave off, you know, all the way down or will you give us another year to try to do that. So just a little a little forecast for you there. Um hang within. She saw many of the pictures um of my time in the schools. That's my favorite part of my days, my weeks. That will continue. Uh principal interviews. We will have two openings when um Bob Harris and Jenny Groch retire from Willow Bend and uh Miriam Jordan. So, we're interviewing. We will have um openings. We had eight internal APS um interested in those positions. So, we had a very long day of interviews uh just a couple days ago. Was it really just two days ago? It's just two days

ago. Feels like a while ago. Um and we're looking at what what everyone calls my chessboard. Uh of where's everybody going to be? What are our com combinations? Sherry's shaking her head. She loves it. Um we're looking Mindy and and Michelle are working on um programs numbers, case loads. Are we going to need to expand programs and services? Uh we're looking also at um our EL numbers and really just it's a it's a it's a very big puzzle. Um so we will make placement decisions hopefully before the February meeting. [cough and clears throat] Um but within the next month I' I'd really like to have um those promotions decided and um then we'll post for assistant principles and spend coordinators. Uh as president Ader alluded to, Diana and I will talk to you about the work that we've been doing ongoing uh with a lot of my superintendent colleagues and a handful of CSBOs relative to the Cook County tax objections um that we have come to this board with information on over unfortunately the last three years. So, we'll give you an update in terms of and hope that you will approve this resolution. Um, and then in terms of Stronger Together grant funding. You probably have read that we've uh we were one of the school districts that um was impacted when some federal funds were were withheld. We were told on um December 16th, which was a Wednesday, that um grant funding was going to stop for a five-year grant called Stronger Together. We were the recipients of $5 million, a million dollars a year for five years uh to help uh provide mental health services in school beyond social work. So outside therapist from the bridge, Omni um we were also providing free after-school child care to all children, you know, in any of those two schools as well as some other supports and services. Um, at one of our schools it was affecting over close to 40 families. One school it was over 70 families and there's some additional tutoring and and then staff implications

there. So, we quickly got on a call with um our attorneys, the um grantees, the ACT now award recipients. They're the grantees. They have the grant dollars on our behalf. They implement the grant. um they're working with the uh attorney general in Maryland to see if we can't get some of those grant funds reinstated because such an abrupt midyear um stoppage of funds was challenging to to say the least on a lot of fronts. So, we think we have um found ways through our partners at uh Boys and Girls Club, through our partners with the POC who are also involved in this grant to keep services going at least through spring break. And we would hope to be able to do that through May, but at the very least giving our families that are relying on that um free and very reliable and convenient after school and before school care to have that coverage until at least spring break. So, I'll continue to update you as we see how um the the litigation is going and just, you know, keep your fingers, your toes crossed that that um those funds are reinstated because we they really do provide valuable additional services for families that need that. And again, these services are available. It's regardless of income level. It's regardless of race. It's regardless of anything other than need. And I think that there's a misnomer there um about that. So we hope to uh have a successful outcome. Um in terms of administrative services, we as you know last year we um launched for the first time and I love you guys aligned reunification system within the district. Carl Samberg, members of the staff, parent community and some students were involved. Um so that was the first time we really worked on full-blown reunification beyond relocation. We have relocation now. This was a a much bigger lift. Now, we'll have five schools that will go through the same protocols with the goal of all 20 of our schools within the next few years knowing exactly what to do in

terms of reunification should we ever need to uh reunify staff and and students, you know, around a very big incident. So, it it's it's a major lift. It's it's unnerving to think about having to potentially do that, but should we ever need to, we want to be prepared. And you can see the five schools in which uh we'll be participating this year. Uh transportation transition meetings are happening as you know. We honored Tom Bramley who is in Scotland right now enjoying retirement.

We had a wonderful he didn't wait to get out of riverboat cruise but two minutes until he after he retired. Um we had a party for him and the next day they were heading to the airport. Uh so we're working on transition meetings with uh Jude who's been overlapping in his work. Jude you know has been with us for many many years but she is now leading the department. that transportation audit will and those findings will certainly help shape, you know, her next few years. And they are looking at things like our routes because I want to remind everybody, Senate Bill 1799 also hit us hard in terms of another hit that we took um with our inability to to continue to use supplemental drivers on a 90-day rotation as we need to to supplement our our in-house transportation. We'll have two rounds of 90 days next year. Those are our calendar days, not school days. So it's going to hit us pretty quickly that we're going to have to get permission from the union instead of just coming to the board which is protected used to be anyways through your collective bargaining agreement and and and through managerial right uh Senate Bill 1799 took that away. So the transportation audit company is looking at our routes to see if we're missing anything to see if they can't find deficiencies that we have not seen that would allow us to need fewer drivers to run our routes. So we'll see. Uh that will be coming we'll high level findings hopefully will be coming to you in March. We're waiting for that report. We kind of keep bugging them like every week. We Sherry or I we alternate each week to see where where the report's coming. Um and the human resource audit uh that I talked about um Sher is diving headlong into and registration planning is underway. It's opening um right around February 10th. So, we're we're making some some tweaks to tighten up our process and um linked to that is also um residency verification. Uh business and operations calendar year uh wrap up is uh taking place and they're getting W2s and 1099s ready to go out by the end of the month. Uh we're rolling out electronic electronic time

sheets now in transportation. As you know, we're we're slowly transitioning from paper to to uh electronic, which is great. And then winter break facility projects um took place. And then as always, uh, deep clean. So when staff return, you know, the building has been deeply cleaned. And there's Tom. Missed its first meeting after I don't know how many how many decades here at the board, but I know he's with us in spirit. All right. The communication department launched the D15 news on our website. Um, hopefully you received your annual review in calendar form. Um, we're I have an ongoing preparation and our first committee meeting coming up soon on our 80th anniversary gala. And you should have received, I know I did and already filled it out by the way, uh, the communication survey. Please take a few minutes to share your insights with the communication team. Uh, ED services finalizing middle school math placements, administering Kogat for gifted program selection consideration. Uh, they are coordinating the administration of the Illinois Youth Survey, and training all certified elementary staff in relationship centered restorative practices. A lot of restorative practice work will take place later this month when we have institute day which everyone is also headlong and involved in. Um skip to multilingual please. Thank you. Um they are involved in preparing for the 2026 access tests. A window will open January 15th and go through March. I know Renee was talking at uh parents as partners and she said they'll assess uh over almost 4,000 students using for assessments that are are quite um challenging. They're planning for kindergarten dual language and information night. There's a flyer there. You can see the four dates that we will have our information sessions um across both Palletine and Rolling Meadows schools. Um all departments are preparing for two days of institute uh middle school and preschool focus coming out of multilingual and they're working on programs and staffing projections for 2627.

That is a picture of uh Rep. Kanty. She came Mayor Beth Kanty House representative Seth from the POC and four of our parent mentors. We had a one a wonderful tour of our parent mentor program at Jane Adams last week. to show off the wonderful work they're doing. Student services is again working, everybody's really working on staffing projections for classrooms, programs, and related services specifically in student services. Institute Day preparation uh in which that department will focus on nurses, special education programs, and related service staff uh members. Budget projections are all happening. We're looking for ways to reduce um and some of our departments are just not going to be able to based on the needs of our students. Um they hosted a vision clinic at four different schools where 42 children received eye exams and glasses uh from the Lions Club and they've raised over $5,000 uh to they raise money at and give us the vouchers so our families can receive glasses that need them. Um and we always appreciate our partners at Palatine Vision for their uh investment in our students and their and their eyesight. Teaching, learning, and assessment is organizing middle school mini conferences, which we're excited to be able to offer for the first time in a very long time, and they're very heavily focused in planning for a thousand people and what they're going to learn about for two days in January. So, everybody is kneedeep in it. It's going to be two great days. Uh, winter benchmarks and data reviews are underway. Uh, we're doing course planning for 2627. our middle schoolers have their elective forms out and they're making those difficult decisions in terms of what electives they'd like to um to consider being able to participate in next year. Uh we'll be be beginning our grades three, four, and five language arts pilot to augment what we're doing or to supplement what we're doing in K2. Now we're going to have something similar in 35. And we continue to work on technology and learning focus group session. They had another meeting

um Wednesday, no last week, Thursday. they all run together uh where our our consultant came and did a second round. We'll have a third third round um with that group and then at some point within uh the spring uh MJ and Emily will come and bring the board an high level overview of what's been happening and and any s suggestions or findings coming out of the work before we launch um a parent university with the same presenter um to help engage our parents around the use of technology. So, we're we're excited um that we just continuing this focus on when is the right time to use technology. And last but not least, uh speaking of technology, we'll hear from um them in just a few minutes, but they're really helping register uh with the registration process for 2627, gathering feedback and modifications, always looking to improve our processes. Um they're also involved in institute day. You'll hear about AI guidance in tonight's presentation. Um they're planning for -ate projects that will take place this summer. You know, they give -ate gives us money to allow allow us to do different things with technology. And as I said, um their next focus group will be in early was uh took place in early January. So as always, everyone is busy here in district 15. Um but just a lot of exciting stuff happening. Uh thanks to the best team in the universe. All right, that's it for me. Any questions? No. Jim, no. I thought you were about to. No. Okay. [laughter] All right.

Thanks, Dr. Hines. All right. Next up, um, we will do the deep dive into our superintendent search process, uh, with our partners from BWP. Yeah. If you could come up here to the microphones, that would be great. Uhhuh. Okay. I think there's be a test on that presentation for you. So, you better have been listening. [laughter] So, as you get settled, just make sure that the green light on your microphones is turned on and then you have a little clicker for the slides if helpful when you go through the leadership profile. Thank you.

We'll give you fresh new copies. Fresh new copies of the profile

for you to keep and write on. Oh, okay. Well, tonight we're going to walk you through the results of our surveying, our one-toone phone interviews with each of you board of each member of the board of education and the day in the district with the community groups, staff, administrators, and so on and so forth. So, uh we have a slide presentation. and we're going to go slide by slide, but please interrupt, ask questions, raise your hand or don't raise your hand. We're very informal on this. So, let's let's look at page two to start with. Here we go. The superintendent leadership profile is based on the data from the interviews, as I just said, the focus groups and the results of our online survey. We had a really nice turnout for that. It serves these purposes. It helps us in the recruitment of candidates and it did marketing and advertising the position. The interview question development and we worked through the interview questions earlier tonight. They came from this exercise and candidate assessment and scoring rubrics. And it also confirms the fit and it helps confirm the fit. It gives you a sense where did all these things that we threw at you earlier tonight, where did they come from? They came from here and it actually came from all of you and people in the audience and people in the community. So, moving along and my colleagues are jumping in and out real quickly. No test after this. So, you can

relax, you can take notes, but no test. The data sources for the focus group from the focus groups included 28 members of the district administration, 16 building administrators, teachers and support staff representatives. There were 40. There were 20 parents that came to open meetings and community partners, especially the BPAC, as I said at the BPAC meeting with Lucilla and we had a really good time with with that.

Great ladies. came very well prepared with notes and all kinds of information. So, it was very interesting. And the one-to-one interviews, as I mentioned, with each of you as board members and we turned out 1,300 respondents to the survey. That's really good. We haven't crossed the thousand mark this year. So, this is the first time. So, very good. We're very pleased. So that gives you a sense that people are giving you data and feedback and that's what we're trying to do is put it into a format that'll help you when you do your interviews. So the first thing we want to look at is how did this stuff all come together. So it represents quantitative and qualitative processes. So the quantitative is the survey numbers and what people say. The qualitative is the interviews, the the meeting with the groups and hearing what people said. A lot of it is based on notetaking and what we think we heard and what we you verified with each other. That's why we had when we were here in the district, we had two people at each site so one could take notes and one could listen and then get together at the end and come to a consensus as to what was truly said. We want to capture everything. Um, synthesis of trends and patterns were used and tallies and frequency distributions helped us rank the things that really meant the most to your constituencies. And then of course we always look for common themes and when we find those you'll see those again time and time again as we go through this leadership profile.

So we're going to take turns. I don't know if one of my colleagues wants to go highlight the district strengths. This is from again the one to one the day in the district all of those things. It's not a result of the survey. We will you address the survey results separately. Sure. Um I'm having to do the strings. Um easy bar, right? [laughter] Um so we u we asked in the focus groups we ask every focus group all the participants the same questions including the board. So um if if you sat in on on more than one the questions that we asked were the same as the uh the phone interviews that we had. Um and the strengths um were there's definitely um some common themes with the strengths. Um, one is, um, the whole moving 15 forward, um, initiative, passing the referendum, um, updating the facilities, bringing in full day kindergarten, uh, moving to a middle school model. Like those again, in in order to make this list, they've had to be represented in multiple um, settings. Um, that was a big strength and we know how difficult that is to do. So, congratulations. Um, it's a lot of hard work. um diversity as an asset. I would say every group that we sat with talked about diversity um and celebrated diversity and more than celebrated honored it. Um so that was a huge strength. Um the staff um again this is not just you know it wasn't just staff members saying you know my colleagues are great right this is all of these focus groups 1300 people

um that had said you know really commented on how strong your staff is um and I live somewhat local and so I hear it too um so um the talent dedicated staff um the engaged and supportive parents and community um I had the uh privilege of meeting with the parents as partners group. Um, another wonderful group. Um, the amounts of support that um, parents bring um, into the district. Um, as well as how the district um, supports the community, the community supports the district um, were very common themes. Um, your dual language and um, ELELLL programs. Um, they're very highly regarded.

Um, there's a lot of pride in those programs. Um, and just, you know, looking at Dr. Hines's report too where, you know, um, there's a lot of great things going within those programs and that is recognized. um recent curriculum improvements. Um that's awesome to see. Sometimes ends up on the other side, [laughter] you know, on the um opportunities. Um so that's really nice to see on the strength. So congratulations to the community and to the board and Dr. Hines for that. Um the overall positive culture and sense of pride. I mean, we we saw with this the students presenting today, there's a ton of pride in district 15. Um and that is something that um I mean that is felt and um appreciated um in many aspects of the district if not all aspects that was mentioned in all of our groups. Um and that is something that a positive culture and a sense of pride like that is um that you know I I I say that that is your only ceiling right that is the only ceiling that that that you'll have is if you have that positive culture and you have a strong sense of pride what you can achieve as a district which you are um is be beyond what we know right now. So congratulations for that and the strong board administration um that does not always come up.

Boards don't always make the good list. [laughter] No. Um, and and feel good about and if they don't make the good list, they they never really make the bad list cuz nobody really comes out and kind of says that. Um, bad list or the the the strengths, I should say. Thank you. Um, but when they make a list like this, um, that people are recognizing the work that you're doing. So, thank you. Yeah. It's very uncommon when we look at the strengths list versus the challenges that we see the board anywhere.

Yeah. Um, but this was clearly mentioned in the frequency got it on the list of the top eight or seven or eight or so. So, I think you you need to feel really good and you know, I know there are three board members have been on for quite a while and you know, you're carrying the torch. It's excellent. This is what candidates want to see this. This is what people want to go to, not run away from or retire from. All right.

So I have the challenges. So some of the focus groups that we worked with, thank you Mark. Um was around and this is in order of frequency of course. So current financial and budget challenges. There was a lot of communication around the budget and the deficits of the budget and so forth and concerns. So, um, how do we continue growing and doing all of the wonderful work that you're doing, but yet then addressing the the budget challenges and and shortfalls? The next one is equity and diversity challenges. Um, there was um a group that was very vocal about the equity and diversity and wanting to to have more diversity across the schools um with programming, curriculum um activities um and things like that. The other um bullet point is schools and departments can be in silos. They're saying that um some of the focus groups said that the district is so big that sometimes you know that they're working in silos and the communication is is um at times fractured or there's gaps in the communication because of the silos that the departments and and the schools are working in. But those are all for me easy fixes, you know, that can can be rectified, right? the special education program. There was [laughter] a lot of talk about special education department programs and so forth um from the minutes of services to what the programs look like um expenditures of the programs. So many different factors within special ed. But there was also, you know, on another side of that, the positive side is that there was a lot of pride around what you're doing with your special ed programs and your students and how you're servicing them. So for me, it's both, you know, here and there, right? So, um, again, you know, there's a lot of complexities that we know that come with special ed communication. um communication. Um there was um some focus groups that felt that communication in some areas were um lacking that it that they were the last

ones to maybe hear the information and at times they should be the first ones to hear it especially the groups around administration and leadership and so forth that they're hearing things with the grape vine versus the proper channels um you know chain of command and so forth. So again internal and external but again those are easy fixes as well as you know large complex district as I mentioned hard to manage. Um some individuals felt that because of the size of the district there was not um there was not a lot of cohesiveness from one school to another or from central office into the schools when it came to um the size of the district and programming or initiatives or activities or um resources. And some schools felt that they had more resources more resource more resources than other schools. Student behavior um they feel that there is an a rise on student behavior and not sure if it has to do with you know the components of mental health or um not being consistent with the disciplinary um components that you have in place um from some groups. But again you know those are things uh that are easy fix as well. And the last bullet point is staff shortages and turnover. So a lot of turnover that's happening. And you know when you bring in new staff, you have to start kind of all over again with that new staff to get them, you know, up to par with other staff and moving in the right direction. So you know what's what's precipitating that staff turnover?

And and to be, you know, really clear, it's that this isn't this is good stuff, that's bad stuff. that this is these are challenges. Every district probably has some of these on their list no matter where they are. That's just the nature of our profession today. And you always got to work harder. You always got new challenges. And anybody coming in would want to know what are some of the surface challenges, the so-called lowhanging fruit. That's a term now everybody uses on everything, but the lowhanging fruit as opposed to, you know, what are the things that are going to take a long time to address and there are ongoing approaches to dealing with some of these things right now within your own guidelines. So these are these are things that just good information for board for uh new candidates and prepare them when they meet with you and talk with you as to how they're going to have some ideas to address them. And the next section is just and I'm not going to read every single thing but these are some of the qualities that came out of all those conversations and interviews. visible, approachable, accessible, committed to D to CCSD15. Well, I would hope so. If you hire a new superintendent, I hope they're committed.

Yeah. You know, we we don't want somebody with one foot in the door went out. So, that's kind of common sense, but you got to say it. And not everybody is visible and approachable. This is a big district. You cannot to be successful hide in a closet in your office. You need to be out. People need to see you and and know who you are and know who the superintendent is and get those nice little uh highlighters whenever a big event. They're the best

comes out. Yes. [clears throat] uh champion for exc for equity and inclusivity and someone who's willing to address disparities and who also supports multilingual and marginalized students and families. [clears throat] Yes, this is a diverse district. This is a district that has to be sensitive to those things. A superintendent coming in who isn't won't be successful.

So, that's a real key piece. A collaborative decision maker, somebody's who empathetic and an active listener. You've got to be a good listener. A person who displays honesty and integrity, a trust builder, someone who has finance and budget skills. That's kind of an automatic for superintendent today. Mhm.

And a lot we see a lot of superintendents getting their CSBO certification, their school business official certifications, a couple of courses on top of their current uh certification. We see people going after that. I think you have several candidates that have done gotten that already. and someone who is a visionary. We like this because from our perspective, we think every district should be looking for a visionary, but it's amazing how it doesn't pop up on these lists. So, it's great to see the visionary piece show up on your list of quality, skills, and experiences that you're looking for in a next superintendent. You've got to be energetic. I know there's a model of energy that you already have. You don't have to replicate that model, but you want someone who's out and about and who is energetic and someone who could deal with the problems that the district's facing. You know, the big one coming with the football stadium. You know, those kinds of things. You need somebody who's out there um you know, decisive and courageous. somebody has to be able to make decisions. You do not want to take and have a board meeting every week because the superintendent can't decide on what to do. So, um that's really key and someone who makes who holds people accountable makes the decisions but can make the difficult decisions and do it in the context of the role of a superintendent. So, those are the qualities that came out of that piece. Now, we're going to talk a little bit about the survey. Any questions about the first part that we just highlighted. It's pretty self-explanatory, but you'll see how all this ties [clears throat] in when you go through all the other material we gave you earlier tonight. So, uh survey

demographics, Brian, you want to highlight that?

Sure. So, um total respondents, as we said before, is about 1,317. Um we we realize how big the district is. Um but um the reality is is um any survey that that that we give out or anybody gives out um this is a significant enough like amount. I mean we'd always we'd like to see more but um it was enough for us to be able to kind of you know analyze look at trends as well. So um and out of those um 1300 um 71% are residents of district 15. um 61% um are parents of students, uh 11% um are parents of former students, and 38% are employees. And you may wonder why that's way over 100%. Um and that is because there are some people that um are representative of more than one group.

Yeah. So you had a lot of teacher response and employee response to the survey. Yeah. 30% is good. Yeah. Lucilla is going to talk about the strengths from the survey. From the survey. Remember, it's forced choice answers. So, people were asked to choose from a list teacher. Oh, yeah. Sorry.

Teachers um and staff were highlighted as very high um quality staff and um and teachers in your district. The diversity that your district represents as well is a really strong suit that came came out in the survey. Wonderful and great facilities as well. um keeping up with the construction and the remodeling, capital improvements and so forth. So, people were very happy with all the capital improvements um the amount of available resources and I know that there was one group too within the surveys that you know um talked about all of the different um resources that you have for literacy and math and and even for professional development um available um the reputation of the district very positive strong reputation. And lastly, the support of parents and guardians. You have a very active parent and um supportive group and that showed in the the survey as well.

Um so earlier I had mentioned when we when we're going over our focus groups, I mentioned you know the 1300 people. Um the reason I did that is that you're you'll see that the survey remember 1,7 people they're their strengths themes are very much aligned to the focus groups. Yeah. um which is a which is really what you want to see. Exactly.

Um so for opportunities um student academic achievement um and I know that um you guys have been doing a lot of work with that. We've talked about some well one of the strengths with some of the curriculum changes um personnel and shortages curriculum updates. um you can't always do it all right, you know, and so um but um but there's certainly a group of people in nutrition that feel like um and now we don't know if this means we need to do more or if it's saying the opposite of what the strengths were, right? We don't we don't dig that much into it, but that did come up. Um yes, exactly. The key an opportunity

um staff engagement. So um there's opportunity for more staff engagement. Um again financial shortfalls in and budgeting um community relations. So an opportunity to grow there and um inclusive programming and the next is leadership skills and qualities as outlined on the survey. A lot of similarities to what we got from our individual and day in the district communications. So the first highlighted area is leadership skills. So under leadership skills we have communication again interpersonal skills. Someone with strong interpersonal skills. A good manager you have to manage people. You have to manage finances. A lot of things to manage. Someone with a background and understanding of finance. You don't have to be a genius and have all the answers with black and white numbers. But you have to understand and be able to give direction. Organizational leadership. Someone who you did it tonight on that u overview. Talked about how things are being organized by groups by [clears throat] departments and all that. That's part of the good leadership skills that you want to see in a new can in a candidate.

And of course instructional leadership. Even though you're a superintendent, you're trained in finance or you're trained in second language delivery, whatever it is, you have to take on the role as the chief instructional leader. That's what people look to you for. So that's one piece, the leadership skills piece. Then the personal skills are similar to what we also just said a few minutes earlier. Someone with integrity, someone who makes a commitment to the district 15 communities. There it is again. That's popped up, I don't know, three times already. Someone who's a collaborator, a definitely clear decision maker. There is that again.

An active listener that pops up again. And someone who's an advocate. It doesn't say advocate for what, but you have to be sometimes the cheerleader. You need to be the one that's out there. That's the role of superintendent. And the the most important experiences that were listed in your background in the background of a candidate are building principle. That was number one. candidates. Uh people told us the people answered the survey, they ranked this as a number one requirement. And there's, if you think about it, there's a lot of similarities between being a building principal

and being a superintendent at a smaller scale and the importance that people placed on it. Ranked number one. Second was working with diverse populations. Very important. It came that stream ran through the whole night. Everything we did talked about that there is also great emphasis on being an elementary teacher. And when they say elementary teacher, we're assuming K8 because elementary could be, you know, some in some people's eyes K6, but middle school is an elementary level. Uh experience with curriculum and instruction. You don't have to have had the role of curriculum director or cni teaching and learning um assistant super or anything like that but you have to have uh curricul curriculum and instruction background. They also ranked district level administrative leadership is critical having the opportunity to be there. It's a very tough jump for someone to make. It's impossible from the classroom,

but it's very tough to make it from principal to superintendent. You don't generally see that too often. Sometimes you may see it in a small one school district where there's an internal promotion, but that's it. And superintendent experience also made the list. The problem with that is, you know, the number of superintendents who are out there that are up for and willing to make a move is not a large group. As we talked about earlier tonight, the leadership profile is repeated again. You can see it. We're not going to review each one. Highly visible, inspirational, visionary. I love seeing visionary pop up everywhere. That's critical for all of you. It's really important for members of the board of education to have that in the superintendent who can see the light at the end of the tunnel, too. Decisive and courageous in leadership experience in school systems. Size doesn't really matter because as you look at, you know, candidates, they have varying experiences. Some have moved around from large to small to large. It's important that they understand the size of the district. I think that's the real critical piece and the next steps in the process. We made one change in the date. February Oh, we got the February 9th up there. Oh, great.

Oh, you I did that this afternoon. [laughter] Okay. So, so the if if you look, this is going to move quickly, folks. Uh, today, January 14th, the Saturday the 17th, in a place that no one's supposed to know about in a in a hidden place, [laughter] the interviews will be conducted. So, if anybody is curious, don't hide out. Yeah. And on the 27th, the second round of interviews in the selection process and then the February 9th board meeting will be the approval.

Just little asterric that this is the timeline if assuming everything goes to plan. Yeah. If we do not have our person that timeline will change.

We we always say there's a lot of f flexibility built in. We don't control like this morning when we all got up and found a blizzard. We don't control things sometimes that happen on dates that are scheduled way in advance. So hopefully we can meet that timeline. If not, you have plenty of time before July 1st. We said that early way back when we interviewed for this position. There's no rush. We're we're in good shape and we have good people and they're committed. We ask everybody, are you committed to this process? And they all are. There's a lot of excitement about this job. It's a really good job. Yep. Yep.

Good place to be. Yeah. Absolutely. Questions? Anything? You've been you've been through twice. Twice. Twice. So, the two expert the three experts can can help, but the fact of the matter is we're around. We will not go far. We'll be available for anything that's necessary and we're in contact with Dr. Hines also. Any questions? So excited to find our unicorn. [laughter] Look for a unicorn. We will. [laughter]

Yeah. Do we have to add another line to that? Okay. [laughter] Thank you so much. This has been great. This has been great. Again, we'll be in touch and everything's all set. All right. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. Great. Thank you. That's not a souvenir. No. Wait, do we get a Do we get a highlighter? They want the highlighter. Highlighter. All the [laughter] other visitors got highlighters. Save them for the children. For you. We were jealous. I do all we all have to take. Thank you all.

Thank you. Thank you. Good night. Good luck. Take care. Thank you. You want to come on now?

Okay. Okay, good evening. Okay, um Diana and I are going to keep this one kind of quick because we did write a memo that we've um submitted to the board, but we just wanted to really make sure that all of you uh had an opportunity to hear from us again what we've been working on relative to the property tax um bill struggles that we've been experiencing um with Cook County, you know, from us. We wanted to do it in open session. so staff in the community are aware and uh just make ourselves available in case you had any questions. So you as we shared in the memo, this has really been going on really for the past two or three years where we've experienced delays in terms of Cook County paying us the property taxes that we are entitled to as a district and other taxing bodies are entitled to. Um we receive roughly $17 million. We we need approximately $17 million each month in order to pay pay make payroll and to our vendor what we call vendor obligations. So when there's a delay, you know, that's a large sum of money not to to have coming in in terms of our property taxes. We get twice a year, right? And we have had to get very creative over the last three years to to make sure that we can pay all of our obligations. You know, this board has issued tax objection warrants um more than once. That takes time. That pulls Diana and Anthony away from their regular job. Um it costs us money in terms of the issuances as well as loss in um interest earnings and that moves the needle in terms of our budget in the wrong direction. So, it causes us a great deal of of concern and it it should cause this board and the community that pays taxes uh a lot of concern. So, some of the facts that are within this memo is that um most

recently we borrowed $25 million, right? Um through February of 2026 uh to pay debt services and general obligation bonds. Uh the cost to the district on that 25 million was $451,000. The loss of interest revenue on that fall collection is approximately $1 million. So these are real numbers. Um in addition, another 715,000 in interest income will be lost due to the early redemption of investments. So add those three numbers together and we are over $2 million shy of where we should be. And when you listen to and you've read the articles in the Herald, Anna was quoted in the trip. Um she and I are going to go down and and and speak to Cook County tomorrow. Um, I I don't know if we'll all get to present, but we're going to be there in force because they need to understand that the issues that they're dealing with in terms of their software with Tyler Technology and their ability to pay the money that they have sitting in their bank accounts to the people they owe those dollars to. They have to figure that out. They needed to figure it out faster than they did. Thankfully, we've received, and Diana's going to give fresh numbers. She and I spoke earlier today. We've received several installments. I don't know that we're fully whole relative to the property tax monies that are owed to us. Diana will tell you that in a minute. But what we also need to be made whole for is this loss in revenue in other ways. interest earnings, the money that we spent to issue um you know to to actually borrow funds and we we want to be made whole and I think every other district you know around does but obviously our our top priority is is is this district is district 15. So Diana put together some highle numbers here for you and then you can tell us what we've got in where we're short and then um when you spoke

to the the Cook County group what you said and let's open it up for questions. Okay, turn it over to Diana. Okay. Um you want me to go over the SL just the slides? I think most uh bullet points are mostly what Lori said. Again, this is um an issue that's been going on and it's the same issue. They keep saying they're converting to a new software and for three years

and how and then they retract and then they try it again and so it's Tyler Technologies. They are pointing a finger at Tyler, but we know that it's got to be a combination of all the Cook County agencies, the assessor, the treasurer, and the um clerk's office and then Tyler too. Um and this isn't the first time we've issued TAWs like three years ago. Again, we mentioned 25 million we borrowed and that even has to we couldn't even make our debt service payments that that's unconscionable and so loss of the you know 2 million. Um, so in December I, you know, I'll I'll pro I think partly the Tribune finally caught on and I'm I'm hoping that that's partly put the pressure on, you know, that's what our journalists are hopefully, you know, that's the why we have great journalism in this country. So we got a sizable two sizable distributions between Christmas and New Year's, you know, off the radar 20 and exactly the same amount about 24.5 million in two days.

So they figured out a workaround in a three. It's a workound. It was a workaround. And that's what I was like, they got to do a workound. Well, they did a workound.

Yeah. So, we're still due some about 33 million based on what I believe the fall the half of the um uh levy from back from 2024. So, that was 2024's levy in the fall. Now, 2025 is in the spring here. Um, now out of the blue today, this afternoon, I got an email from Maria Papis' office in Cook County and they said that um well, they're they say they're going to distribute the rest of the money that is owned owed to the uh districts and municipalities over the next two weeks. So they had they say probably they don't say this is 100% certain but uh they're going to they're going to do the best they can and they apparently they're using their new it's with Tyler so they're using the new distribution their their new software.

Um so let's see the first distribution date is January 20th and they're going through and it's every day Saturdays all the way through February 7th. They don't tell us the amounts. Um, but they say that we're going to be made whole between now and then, most likely, but not for sure. Um, and they had in their coffers a grand total of almost $ 8.5 billion. Okay. So, if we go to the next slide. So, again, this negatively impacts every school district. I'm sure ours, of course. uh our reserves and reduces our available resources this fiscal year that we depend on for educating our students. Um Cook County has earned interest on 8 billion and they should they should reimburse that. So some of these are the bullet points in the resolution that we're asking you to uh support tonight and they should reimburse the school districts for these unnecessary expenditures.

Yeah. And interest on our money that they're earning.

Yeah. We we demand that the Cook County work with Tyler Technologies. that that demand was in this resolution written by Aris Dalianos. Um uh that they resolved these systemic issues permanently. We should not have to go through this ever again. why they didn't keep a s that you know like when you convert you usually keep this the old software going until you test the new right and then we urge Cook County to seek recompense from Tyler Technologies and reimburse D15 for loss revenue expenses incurred due to these failures that again is in the resolution here so somebody needs to be if you ask me bluntness cough up some money because we didn't budget we don't we don't we really We're being punished by absorbing this $2 million and it could be more. And my other just concern is when we go to the meeting tomorrow is they have extended the due date of these spring collections to April 1st. It's normally March 1st. So now they've already taken that preemptive move. It's going to be April 1. And I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it is April 1. We don't want to have to go out and borrow again. Um, we're going to look now that they've made this statement today that they're going to hopefully uh pay, you know, distribute all the money in the next two weeks, then maybe we, yes, we could go ahead and repay our $25 million TAWWs. But unless we get this money, we can't. We don't have the extra cash to pay it off early, and we don't want to have to go out again. We talked with Liz and there could be a possibility if the money isn't all fully paid that we would have to incur more cost to issue tax objection warrants yet again

again because $17 million a month is a minimum cost to run it in terms of salary and vendor obligations. So we need reassurance also that they're going to send out the next property expert because it does take time too. So it's it's a you've got to find lenders. You've got to find who has the best rate. Like that whole process takes takes time. So wing of prayer. Do we have faith that they're going to come in with words like probably and hopefully and maybe not really. So but we're we're going to see like Diana said within the next few weeks what happens? But we may we may at the February 9th meeting, you know, be singing a different song and we may have to have another authorization from you all to go out again.

We hope not. And I I would say um Yeah. So, [clears throat] it's about 33 million and we did get 850,000 today. So, all of a sudden, you know, we get money. Well, they got a ledger and a pen right in here. [laughter] Going old school figuring out how to somehow they're [clears throat] printing checks. So, um let's hope it just keeps going and we could, you know, get this. And just to be clear, based on the email today, when they say make us whole, they are not talking about any additional revenue to make up for the losses that we have had to incur. Okay? And they have not indicated so far any ability to do. Okay? And that's why so many districts are doing resolutions, talking about it,

reaching out to reporters, talking about it in open session because the the heat needs to be turned on. Yeah. That's a failure. Million failure is not, you know, this didn't just cost us a a couple hundred,000. Even that would be too much. But 2 million, come on. And just to uh clarify for the public, so they know how late it was. Mhm. It was 4 and a half months late. So the bills were supposed to go out at the end of June. They didn't go out until November 15th. So, the four and a half months, I mean, they're they're basically coming up on when they're supposed to be sending out the bills for the next uh property tax, yeah, payment that needed to go out.

So, that's how late they were. And then also, just people understand a little bit, you know, I know you clarified as far as needing 17 million a month to run the district. Um, and what we keep in reserves, just so people know, we keep 25% in reserves. So, that that covers 3 months. So when you're you're four and a half months late on getting money to people, even your reserves, you're that your res you'll blow through your reserves and then you'll literally have zero. So that's why we have to go out and get the loans against the uh anticipated taxes. Thank you. Good Frank. Good for saying that. Frank, do we have any any sort of leverage in collecting the lost interest and all the the other expenses?

Legal desk. I am. Mhm. So, that'll be something we'll we'll see how it goes and then we'll we'll determine if if we're going to get Arisianis uh worked on the resolution that the board will hopefully approve tonight and we we have had conversations uh prior we were having them before we knew anybody else was having them. We were like, well, you know, we we need to get legal involved and this is ridiculous and this is costing taxpayers money and it's hurting the district and um you know, we're prepared to engage you in a conversation about that in February or March. Certainly. Yeah. As we should. Yeah. And just to say, if this was like a private sector problem, you'd be fired. Yeah.

This this would not have gone on longer than two weeks. Yeah. We we said we can't we don't have the liberty of that simple, you know, the luck of looking at a problem for three years and not not addressing it. People need to be losing their positions over this. Y So, um Lori, Diana, if um the community is listening and um and concerned, do you have any um recommendations for them to, you know, um reach out and and who would they ideally um would you point them to so that way we can uh you know, get ahead of this? Yeah,

I would say local legislators at one of our legislative lunches that was um hosted by the regional office of education um about a month ago and I think Frank you and I and Diana were at a lunch in at Ed Red. We've talked to the legislators to raise awareness. Um I think each board that's doing a resolution will probably be having conversations with their their delegation. I I would tell the community it would be their local legislators. Um, and then the the, you know, Papis' office, the the assessor's office, county office, county board. Yeah. The state legislature needs to really pass a bill that makes it mandatory that things like this never happen again. Y and there be consequences.

We can put something on the website with the resolution in terms of where people can, who they can contact, and how. I I'm happy to toss that together and put it up tomorrow. Great. Yep. All right. Any other thoughts or questions?

Thank you, Diana, for all your work and Anthony and Liz, if you're listening. It's been a lot lot of extra work. All right, item 6.3, our technology department. All right. Uh, good evening, President Ader, uh, Superintendent Dr. Hines, esteemed members of the board of education, uh thank you for the opportunity tonight uh for Julie and I to come and uh present to you the 2026 technology update for the district. So tonight I want to take you on a journey. Uh we are going to check out out of our rearview mirror uh at where D15 technology has been uh where we are now uh and how these systems and tools are translating into powerful learning experiences in our classrooms and finally where we are going to head in this rapidly evolving age of artificial intelligence. Uh so let's take a look at uh the D15 technology ecosystem which is a a complex complex interconnected uh system managed by our D15 technology department. Um so to understand our current trajectory uh we have to look at our starting point. Uh so prior to Dr. Hines's tenure in uh district 15. Technology in the

district operated in separate silos. Uh we had our technology services department which mainly handled the infrastructure uh boxes and wires uh as we affectionately call that. Um classroom technology was sprinkled into different departments. Um and then our data systems uh sector um was in a totally separate department. Um so while each area worked very hard uh they weren't working necessarily in concert um together and this was a limiting factor in terms of deployment and e efficacy uh in the integration and operations of technology across the district. So then starting in uh the 22 23 school year uh with Dr. Hines bringing my leadership as chief technology officer into the district. Um and on the cabinet uh we unified these key uh three divisions under one umbrella which is the currently the D15 technology department. Um and this wasn't just an org chart change. uh it it really was a reorganization of our philosophy uh to strategically gain efficiency and effectiveness in technology implementations and deployments. Um this alignment ensures that every dollar that we spend and every hour worked supports the district's strategic improvement plan in a systemized effort. Um by unifying these divisions, we can now coordinate from the cloud to the classroom and support all users and all departments and all levels of the organization for a unified understanding of the system. And so with this new structure, we have spent the last two years refining uh to gain a trim and robust D15 technology ecosystem. So this gives you a little

bit of an overview of all of the systems that we uh well the majority of systems that we maintain. We have a lot of utilities and you didn't want to see a whole list of those but um while we're trying to be very budget conscious so um trying to make things as efficient and effective as possible. Um and so I would like to highlight though three um ecosystem enhancements that we have been developing uh this past year. So first uh we have anchored our systems in a dual hub of power school cy and unified analytics and insights. This hub allows us to move forward in the democrac democratization of data. Um this means that all people uh whether you're a principal, an assistant principal, reading specialists, uh student services, teachers, um staff have access to real time data uh on academics, on attendance, on behavior, on a lot of key levers that we are trying to improve in our schools. um in order to make informed decisions, see our progress all while strictly uh protecting student privacy. So all of that getting coordinated and orchestrated. Um the second enhancement is around digital safety. Uh this year we transitioned our web filtering from GoG Guardian to securely. securely provided us uh with certain filtering tools that we were missing. Um as well as a wider tool set for instruction uh within the securely classroom that teachers will eventually be using to by the end of this year. Uh it's been a transition. Um additionally, uh securely partners with families. Um through the securely home app, uh parents have greater control and insight into their school their child's

school device activity. Um so district 15 is committed uh to digital safety and instruction and have that go hand in hand. The third enhancement is in support. Uh we migrated to a uh a system called incident IQ which will help us manage all of the technology across the district. uh previously tracking assets and inventory and repairs uh were disjointed with our asset management in one system and our ticketing system in another system. Uh and so now with incident IQ, we'll have a support ticket that's tied directly to a specific asset and we can watch that process and monitor that process and make sure that those turnaround times are as efficient as possible. That's something that we're working and and dialing into. Um, so when uh and and then in addition when submitting tickets, users can now be asked for specific information so we can address issues much more efficiently and with the information that we need to get started on it. Um so as incident IQ provides data on support tickets on uh on repairs and things like that, the district 15 technology department is using that data to measure our progress and to um you know reflect on our own performance as we support all users and all all technology and all devices in uh in the district. So now I really do must address a critical component of our infrastructure which is cyber security. Um the global reality is that ransomware remains a dominant threat. Um accounting for 70% of attacks worldwide. Um so these attacks primarily exploit two things. They exploit unpatched software and they exploit compromised user

credentials. [clears throat] So this is an allin effort. It's not just the technology department that can withstand all the attacks. Everybody has to be involved. Um so we regularly engage with our partners at SOFOS and are tracking our progress against recommendations from um the Federal Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency otherwise known as CISA. And so these are the um consultants and partners that we're working with in order to know that we're tracking on the right way in terms of uh defending defending our systems. Um we have been laser focused in hardening our systems and have made some significant stri uh strides as you see here. Uh we by implementing a network detention detection and response system to monitor traffic 247. So if something were to happen, we do get pings uh uh uh for things that we have to start to look out for. um by organizing a disaster recovery and response plan to strive towards learning um learning and business continuity in any kind of scenario. um by expanding multiffactor authentication to our financial system which wasn't on it before and to our student information system as we have migrated um to P school and then enhancing a role-based access control to ensure staff only see the data that they need uh or that pertains to them. So in all transparency we have identified three critical gaps that we are continuing to work closely on. Um one of which is user training. I mean in recent fishing exercises we did see a 20 20% failure that's not going to protect us. So it really is going to be incumbent on every user in our district

to understand how to detect a fishing scheme. Uh how how to not give information, how not to share passwords, etc. So, and and that's that's that's just modern day living for all of us, right? How many of those spam calls have we gotten? How many of those texts that we've gotten and they they they're spoof they're spoofing us every day. So, uh really beefing up our skills in uh being able to recognize that that'll only protect us um down the down the long run. Um another thing that we uh have to really put in more work on is network visibility. We need better control over who is on our network. how do we identify them? Uh, and how do we segment it so that we can contain potential threats if they were to occur? Um, and then as well expanding out our incident response plan. I mean, again, it takes the whole village to protect ourselves from any kind of cyber security attack. But in the in the event of an incident, how do we all respond? And everybody in their own different roles has have to respond in different ways. So, we're that's on our to-do list to help everybody and to make plans for every department so that learning continues and that business continues um even when we don't have the tech just like this morning at GMS. [laughter]

All right. But by unifying our department, we are ensuring that when a teacher reaches for a digital tool that it works, that it's safe, and that it provides insight for student growth. Um, and it so it comes down to our big why. Why are we doing this? And how are we using these technology tools uh to further learning? So, in district 15, technology is no longer an add-on. I mean, as you can see, this is the backbone of everything that we're doing here. um it serves pedagogy and not the other way around and that's the bottom line for us. So because for over a century the architecture of a school system was built on a premise of scarcity. Information was rare. It was hard to access. How many of you had to go to the stacks to go and get information? Um and it you know schooling was largely information that was contained at the library or in your teacher's head, right? Um, consequently, our definition of success back then was simple. We wanted our students to be knowledgeable. Uh, we measured their performance by how many facts, dates, formulas they could store in their heads. But we no longer live in that kind of world of scarcity. We live in a world of overwhelming abundance of information and access to it 24/7. Right? So our our shift has to change. School has to change. Um Dr. Michael Wes, a leading voice in the field of anthropology at Kansas State University, [clears throat] um suggests that continuing to focus solely on making students knowledgeable is preparing them for a world that doesn't exist. when the sum of human knowledge is accessible via a computer or a smartphone. Uh the value of simple retention lessons right so Dr. West argues that

our mission in education now is to produce students who are knowledgeable. And so notice the difference. The to be knowledgeable is not a static state of having information. It's the dynamic ability to be able to handle the information. um a knowledgeable student can navigate the chaotic flood of all this digital information to distinguish a credible source to validate if it is an AI generated thing or not uh to synthesize complex ideas that they're pulling together um from around the globe and to use those ideas to solve problems. Right? That's that's how we that's what we want our students to be able to do. We want them to be knowledge able. Um so in a in the in a unified district effort, district 15 um tech has been strategically focusing on the big three of our strategic plan to improve learning and foster knowledgeable students. We are refining our digital learning environment. Uh we're aligning our library innovation program to the Illinois media information and digital literacy standards. uh and building platforms that support datainformed instruction because eventually what we really want to do is to D in D15 is to have students use technology to think question and create because that's how they're going to have to handle information beyond district 15 right in their lives. Um, we can't teach students to navigate the modern information landscape if we confiscate the map at the classroom door. And we can't teach them to be critical consumers of social media if they only learn from paper textbooks.

That's just not the environment now. Um, and I'm not demeaning textbooks. There's a place for a book. Yes, library is one of the favorite places that I have. Um, and that's one of my favorite places. But to be able to create knowledgeable students, we must immerse them in an environment where that information and content live and have them practicing finding the information, sorting the information, analyzing the information, criticizing and then creating connections so that they can understand themselves and they can understand the world that they live in and will eventually lead in. Right? So practically, oops, I'm backwards. Practically this means moving sto uh students from being passive consumers of content and mimicking it back and spinning it back on a test um to active creators of learning right for themselves where instead of just receiving information they're doing something of their own accord making connections and uh creating something with it because passive learning asks what do you know but active learning asks ask what can you do with what you know? And as students practice that day in and day out, that's what's going to prepare them for what's ahead. Um, and that's the shift from being passive consumers to active creators. So therefore, it it's it's about acknowledging that the tools of inquiry have changed. Uh if we want our students to become expert navigators of the digital landscape, we must put the tools of the modern world in their hands and teach them how to use it with acumen, with skill, and with integrity. And this is what happens when we can coordinate a district 15 technology support and ecosystem because this unifies the vision that we have for our

students. And now we're making our systems help support that in the learning in our classrooms. And so I wanted to take you a little bit on a tour of some of the learning that happens in the classroom. I'm just going to play this for a little bit, but um you're not going to be able to re the the audio sound capture uh was not that great, but I just wanted to kind of have you see some of the movement that occurs um as they're using this particular tool. This particular tool is a readalong, Google readalong. been catching up. Okay. So, what are you doing now?

So, what she's doing is reading a book called Google uh with Google Readalong. And what she's eventually then doing is doing a ven diagram of what she is reading. So the uh exceptional tool of Google readalong is that uh a student is able to read along and when they get to a point where they stumble, Google read along um helps them read it like they uh coaches them and offers them assistance. It clarifies words. And so one of the goals that we do have is to have students uh use more academic vocabulary. And in this sense, this guides a student in being able to do that. And then now that they're able to get some help, instant help they're reading, uh they're able to then do the critical thinking part and start to, you know, create a ven diagram, uh draw some conclusions, etc. Now, what makes this extra efficient is that the teacher doesn't have to be sitting there with each and every one of them. They cover this. And what's extra cool is that the teacher then also has data that the tool is collecting so that she can review each student's progress when she has a moment and then figure out where she can take the student next. Right? So that's how these powerful tools are making learning happen uh in the classroom.

And even sorry just really quickly in addition to each student it does collect like aggregate data. It'll give a teacher like everyone in your class, this would be make a group of these kids with these words and it will like start to kind of help like shift for instruction for the next day. These are some high frequency words that a lot of your kids didn't get. So, it makes some really cool like instructional suggestions for a class. Really great tool, right? Um in this tool uh in a second grade bilingual classroom um there are also sorry next one. Um in this in this uh classroom this is a kindergarten I iPad um with teachers Erica Sloo Sarek and Lauren Espinosa and this is at Virginia Lake. Um they're using iPads in a variety of ways to support student learning and practice. Um students are using uh apps like Seessaw um to support language practice and and to support our magnetic reading curriculum. Um students practice decodable words by reading and recording it uh recording themselves and then listening back and that whole process of uh reading and then listening and then being able to self-reflect on your progress uh and then know exactly in that feedback what kind of uh like how how to learn the word, know the word. Um that's just going to enhance their word fluency, right? Um, and then and then in conjunction with that, they're going to be dragging letters um uh to build their academic vocabulary and spelling those letters out. So all of that uh efficiently done within um the Seesaw app. Um and here uh is an Ozobots. So by uh in sixth grade science and this is in

conjunction with Tracy Ali who's our library information teacher at uh Carl Sandberg um integrating the ozobots into the sixth grade water cycle units. Um we've been transforming a traditionally passive diagramming exercise into a rigorous computational modeling task where students must program the laws of physics. Um and with this intentional use of technology, it's requiring the students to translate these abstract scientific concepts uh such as thermal energy um and gravity into this logical coding and then moving them from mere consumers to digital tool uh uh consumers of the digital tools to creating these simulations and solidifying understanding of these concepts that are really abstract until you really can do something with the information, right? Um now let's take a look at some questioning. Uh here many of our digital resources are offered in multiple languages um and uh different reading level levels like this in uh for Pebble Go in kindergarten. Um this is another learning uh activity done at uh with Erica and Lauren at Virginia Lake. Um they also are having students access Pebble Go to do some research and then they're actually having students um ask questions about the animals, gather that information and then create paper books uh from it. So notwithstanding it's choosing the right tool for the right task, right? And that's what our students have to really start to be able to make natural for them is is knowing where they need to what they need to do, where to get the information, and then be able to express their learning in whatever way they need to express it in. Right. Um, another tool that we have, uh, that's actually just a new tool

that's been introduced by Google this year, um, is Google Vids. Uh, in sixth grade science, uh, Laura Pokerjack, uh, at TJ, um, has students create persuasive videos using Google Bids. Um, and what they have to do with this is communicate connections that they're making with their with their concepts of physics and then practicing their skills of persuasion in promoting safety. So, let me show you what this one. Both skiers have kinetic energy, and when the skier without a helmet runs into the tree, it is the peak force.

The robot with the gear is safe, while the robot without is not.

So again, uh really pulling in information, getting an understanding of it, making a simulation, and then doing something with it. So here is um a seventh grade uh classroom in Sharon Len Lindstöm's flight and science classroom. Uh this activity takes the highly abstract again physics concepts of aerodynamics Newton's law of motion lift drag and thrust and makes them immediately concrete. So the technology here is serving as a bridge. Um they're manipulate They're we're not just asking students to read about uh flight forces. We're requiring them to manipulate those forces in real time. Um this builds the resist resilience and immediate problem solving skills and if their calculations are wrong, the drone doesn't fly correctly. Right? So a instant feedback loop and and knowing and understanding and and and fine-tuning uh the depth of understanding about a particular concept. I'll show you this. Come on. Can you play it? So, in this project lead the way unit, the drones serve as more of the they serve more than just being high-tech toys. I mean, they're s they're really sophisticated laboratory toys. Um, so by integrating the drones into the curriculum, spec specifically in the modules like drones to the rescue, students trans transition from passive consumers of technology to active

engineers. They're designing ways of using this drone and fully understanding these con uh concepts of flight, right? What better way to learn that? So lastly, earlier this fall, uh Emily from McFaten and I launched the technology and learning focus group which composed of volunteer parents, teachers and admin staff and administrators uh and centers on sharing and discussing the intersection of classroom instruction, technology and family life. Um the first meeting was held November 3rd and primarily focused on gathering experiences and viewpoints on the impact of technology on the daily lives of students and families. Uh the second focus group meeting which we had last Thursday um shifted the lens towards the practical application of school technology um to student learning and the long-term preparation of students uh for life beyond district 15. And our third meeting is uh coming up on February 19th. Uh Emily Emily and I do plan on sharing um the focus group findings and district recommendations with the board of education uh in March. Uh learn 15 will also be hosting two workshops this spring. Uh one workshop will have uh uh the researcher Dr. D'vorah heer who's been helping us with our technology focus groups um and share with parents and staff how we can be mentoring kids in a connected world. Uh and then secondly there will be a screening of the film like which explores how social media algorithms and technology affects brains and behaviors especially in our young people. So lots of learning to happen. So again, finally looking ahead, uh we cannot ignore the shifting landscape of artificial

intelligence. So I'm going to hand it over to Julie who will update you on our current approach to AI and education um who is work who's been working alongside um instructional technology coordinator Beth Richtor um and has been spearheading uh the district's learning around AI.

Thanks. Um, okay. So, in education, we really often talk about preparing students for our future. Um, with the advent of generative AI, the future came overnight. Um, in just a few months, we moved from a world where we Googled our answers to where we could generate a solution. Um this represents the most significant shift in how humans have interacted with information since the invention of the internet itself. Um D15 has really been navigating this shift with both innovation and intentional caution. When we look at the data from the World Economic Forum, as shown in this graphic, we aren't just looking at a tech trend. We're looking at a fundamental shift in the labor market. By the time our current eighth graders graduate high school, 86% of the companies they apply to will have been transformed by AI. The future of jobs report indicates that nearly 90% of all future roles will require a baseline of digital and AI competence. This is why our knowledge aable framework is so critical. We aren't just teaching students to use a tool. We're teaching them the literacy required to thrive in 2030 and beyond. For those of you who might use Google Gemini, you might recognize in the bottom right of my graphic, the Google Gemini logo, because this lo graphic I did in fact create with AI. All I did was insert the future of jobs report from the world um economic forum and asked it a couple of questions to draw some conclusions and then I asked for a graphic and then of course I checked my the facts and when I

was I was looking back at the graphic and I noticed that it used the year 2020 in it and I looked and I was like oh no that's wrong and and these are the kind of things we're having our teachers model in the classroom because while a lot of these tools aren't appropriate for the age of many of our students, we want that modeling to be done and shown to our students as we're teaching them, you know, the use of these things and why the human is needed in all of these. And actually, MJ looked at these slides last week and I wish I had kept the original graphic in there so I could show you cuz she's like, "Could you make it more colorful? It's really bland." And I threw it through one more time and it came up with this one which was 100 times better. And that was the improvement in technology in the week of Google Geminis's just picture production in their product. So I mean this right now is the worst AI production we're going to all see in our lifetimes. And it is changing drastically and quickly. Um so we presented the first iteration of our guidelines to the board um here in the fall of 2023. Uh you might remember those you are here that we presented them with titled version 1.0 intentionally uh because we knew they would need to evolve. Um and with the ongoing rapid enhancements in AI, we've continued to reference these guidelines, evaluate them, and we have updated them along the way here and there. Um, we had a we added an entire uh page section with um AI notetaker guidelines when those started to aggressively join virtual meetings and transcribe and summarize. Um, we added guidance for our staff focused on keeping student data

private and secure. Um our most recent work has been on adding guidance where AI exists already in district provided platforms and this is a moving target. Um as technology advances and curriculum packages add pieces in where they can. Uh we have really kept our focus though on our core Google suite. um as AI tools pop up left and right you might have heard in the education market magic school AI school AI and Chat GPT even recently jumped on and tried to offer you know free accounts for all teachers um then sometimes when we hear the word free in education we try to warn teachers that that means you are the your data

is the cost [laughter]

um so we uh really focus on keeping things um you know kind of in-house and and safe and and and secure. So, by keeping our focus on Google products, we can ensure the safety and security of our student data privacy as well as be fiscally responsible with our instructional technology budget. We've done some Google AI training with teacher leaders, coaches, lits, and administrators um and have been rolling out PD here and there um in different buildings. um our AI tool that is currently being explored and evaluated um and with the intention of rolling out um through the middle schools this year um is within our securely platform as you heard earlier which was the platform we already transitioned to um this year. So this is something that we already own in our district. So this is not yet another tool we have to add on. Um and they have a feature in it called securely AI chat. So this is a layer of safety and monitoring overlaid on the Google Gemini AI engine which applies filters sets guard rails to help ensure responsible AI usage. So this chat provides a safe environment where students can learn to interact with generative AI without the privacy and content risk associated with open public forums. It also gives teachers some direct kind of um viewing right into it. Uh, and it has what's called school mode. And so you can see a couple of examples up here where um I asked it in the top one to write me a three paragraph essay and right away it says I can't do that. Um, that sounds like schoolwork. You should go talk to your teacher. Um, and then the second question I try to get 4* 6 and it tries to ask me to rewrite it as a math pro or as a addition problem. And when I say I don't know how to do that, it then tries to prompt and and and help me along with how how I might be able to write an

addition problem. Look, this is how an addition problem looks. Um so it doesn't look like your traditional chat GPT or Google Gemini, you're going to go out to look and and teachers would have full visibility into um chat history and then it exists in the tool that we already have um within our district. But this is how fast this is moving. This was did not exist like literally like three months ago. Yeah. This is how fast things are moving.

So when we are guiding our staff on AI to improve efficiency in their jobs using AI, this message is always at our forefront, keeping the human in the loop. While in a matter of seconds, AI agents may generate the information, display trends, or draft communications, the final decision-making authority, the discernment required to interpret a student's progress, to awaken the students potential, or the empathy needed to communicate with a family will always rest with our educators. All this work serves a singular human- centered purpose. We're building this infrastructure to clear the path for what matters most, the relationship between the teacher and the student. Whether through predictive analytics that give insight to a student's journey towards growth and achievement or AIdriven tools that scaffold learning in real time, our goal remains constant. We are leveraging the power of today's technology to ensure that every student in D15 has the support, access, and opportunity to learn, grow, and reach their highest potential during their time in district 15. The human in the loop isn't just about safety. It's about ensuring technology serves the big three to improve learning outcomes. So taking all these technical updates, cyber security measures and AI guidelines into account, let's bring it back to the vision for district 15. So in summary, I will frame it in a thinking exercise that our library in innovation teachers use with students. What if what if every student graduated not just knowing how to use a computer, but knowing how to leverage technology to solve complex realw world problems? What's true? What's true is that every piece of technology, resource, and device is vetted against our big three of our strategic plan to improve

learning. Uh we aren't chasing the latest gadgets. We aren't we are building a secure robust environment where teachers can teach and students can become knowledge able in the best conditions for their learning. They'll know how to use the tools that need that they need. Um so what's next? What's next is an intentional and mindful roll out of new AI tools and a continued commitment to teaching students when to use any kind of technology tool and when to put the technology away. We are developing a set of instructional technology guidelines with a lot of input from a lot of different places um to ensure that as the world changes, district 15 remains ahead of the game uh with intentional and safe innovation, questions really wish you like technology. [laughter]

I mean, who wants to come play with our drones? [laughter] I'll be there tomorrow. So comprehensive. [laughter] Well, we I mean we we just really had to show you like what was happening in the classroom because this is the kind of stuff that our kids are going to learn to to remember, right? I mean, that's how we learn. That's how we as humans learn and that's what we want to bring and make sure happens in all of our classrooms using technology. So, uh, I got some questions for you.

So, with regards to Power School, I know the transition to that was not exactly 100% smooth. I know some some people were not 100% happy with the utility that they lost uh from uh the previous Infinite Campus. Um, I'm wondering what uh what do the employees do if they want to utilize this, you know, large amount of data that is now available to them as far as generating reports? Do you guys have somebody like a um an expert at how to generate reports that are specific to an employes needs to meet the goals? Yeah, I think you met him and he was recognized. Mormon. So, he's he's Yeah. So somebody needs to generate

Yeah. reports, you know, you're using this data because I mean the data by itself is useless unless you can actually create useful reports that the employees can then use to do their jobs. Yeah. So what how do they go about doing that process? Well, I was going to Oh, let let me just say um whenever a district moves student information systems, and I I'm not sure if you were here when they moved from Tyler to open a campus, right? Um that was painful. It's a it's a it's a painful process because Yeah. So, I'm wondering how we're making it less painful and more useful. Yeah. Right.

And and and again like we just started on it. So the goal is to make it as useful as possible wherever possible, right? Um are there ways to build reports? Yes. Are there ways within the within the tool itself that we're learning how to use? Uh yes. Right. Um, so all of these things are built in and our and are are materializing and in in our workflows in our processes, right? Um, we've gone through just about two two terms of report cards. Um, and when you move a student information system, you have to rebuild every pro card. You have to re you have you have to teach how to use the their grade books. You have to do all of that. So yes, we have we have a lot of focus and efforts and energy being put in uh developing and continuing develop and meet the needs of the staff, meet the needs of the students and meet the needs of our parents.

So I mean the the data migration of course was the first step, right? [clears throat] And we're still we're actually still doing it. There's a large amount of historical data that also needs to be moved over.

Um and let's just let me get into a little bit of the details. the historical data that had been gathered even prior to us moving to um P school CIS uh was like also as well the AS400 data that was in Tyler and the data from Infinite Campus which was 5 years worth of data and then now um actually two years worth of uh power school data. So a lot of that is fitting into the architecture that we've designed so that we can have uh much more visibility into it. Uh much more access into it now that we have a structure by which um staff can access the information that they that they need um and that they're authorized to. Right. Um,

so, so I guess I I guess I'm kind of wondering what there's, so you mentioned Gorman being the like the one guy that could just No, he's not he's not [laughter] I was kind of wondering what the process That's what I wanted to clarify. I wanted to clarify that people do this and now how do I do it cuz it's not there anymore,

right? So that's what I wanted to clarify that like so while he makes those reports he makes the ability for people to write make the reports but like different users have access to a lot of different things and then uh we create all sorts of instructions. So we have actually like a whole staff internal document that has a tab for like every type of user. Are you a secretary? Are you a nurse? Are you an admin? Are you a teacher? are you um a related specialist in some way? And then we have this is how you do blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. And we we make I mean Beth and I made five today because somebody said I want to run a report for this. Our our uh Karen who you saw earlier head of nurses was over and said she had a nurse and they wanted to do this and so then we looked how do you do it? We made directions and put it on there. So like that's an ever growing system. As we're learning what people want to do, we're like, "Oh, here's how you do it."

Okay. So there's a there's a process that people very submit what they're looking for and how and then those those requests you guys do the development for that. Basically, I make directions. [laughter] Okay. Well, and so the distinction is here and I just want to point out that as Julie is saying this, she's they're we're able to now with this particular system quickly turn around these directions and enable users to be able to do that. That was not the process. There used to have to be some person who had to make and send something like a

there's so power school is very um uh we can customize all sorts of things and that was not available in infinite campus. So if we now want to set up this page for parents to see, we can [clears throat] go in and customize these things and that was not available in Infinite Campus. So as we're working with different departments and different people and they're like, "Oh, this would work better if it looked like this. This would work better if it could do this." We can long-term plan and develop those things and and continue to evolve the system. And that was never on the road map for Infinite Campus because it came very much like this and that's how you could use it.

Okay. There wasn't a lot of flexibility to it. So there's a lot that's good. There's a lot more uh opportunity for customization. I was just kind of wondering what the process is cuz you know I just got a feeling that maybe people don't realize how to to better, you know, how to get these systems working the way they want them to work. Well, we're hearing from our users. I'm just saying I think some of them might not know. That's what that's what how the process will work to actually get them where they want to go because they're not, you know, experienced in in generating reports and working with power school. So, they're like, I don't even know how I got to get this information out of the system.

Well, if if if you have a person in mind, let them know. Just reach out. Okay. Uh we've been working with various groups, all roles. I mean, we just met with secretaries like a couple days ago and as you can see see like we're hearing from a lot of people about making our registration process improve. So, whatever we can do, we we got a lot of tinkerers [laughter] in our department that are that are big problem solvers. So, great. Okay, good. And then, uh you guys talked about multifactor authentication. Uh I'm just kind of wondering how do you guys do that right now? like is that done with you know typically I think people are familiar with getting the you know the text message with a a code

um what what are we actually doing with that do we have you know hardware for that do we have soft tokens on the computers I'm just kind of wondering how we're doing this uh well most of it is through our Google accounts um and our Google accounts have multifactor through what you're talking about like either getting a text or you get it through uh particular apps um through the various systems. So what's uh so what's being effic

Yeah. What's efficient though is that because we've centered around uh P school analytics and insights and the backbone of all of that is our Google workspace. Um all of that kind of ties in together and uh the multiffactor authentication then happens at the Google account level and then then you're able to access what is hooked up to it. Okay. So when somebody logs in then you're actually going to get something that pops up in another app that somebody has downloaded on their phone or is it on the typically it's on the phone. We do have backup codes if people don't have their phone available or things like that. So there are ways around it. Okay. I mean ways that we can help people not around it.

Yeah. It's a dangerous [laughter] thing to say. You want to say there's ways around it. Um that Yeah. Strike that from the record. Okay. [laughter] And then um you're talking about ransomware being one of the major problems um in the world. Yes.

Yeah. So so how do you guys go about preventing that from happening as far as um let's say backups, right? Incremental backups or air gap backups so that is that what we do right now? What do I guess what do we do to make sure we don't become victims of ransomware besides staying up on you know software patches and fishing? Well, uh, so some of this is in the, and I don't want to misquote the acronym because there's so many acronyms. Um, so again, like we we're saying, one of the things that we do have to work on is network visibility, like who is on our network and tracking users on our network. That's one way. Yeah, that's good. Definitely.

We uh have implemented our network detection and response system. Um, we typically do monitor like security patches that have to be installed and and and the like across any kind of appliance that we have in our district. Um, so there's a lot of work in that. Um, but again like network detection, uh, monitoring, um, and then really coming down to password management. I mean it's really if you read anything of any of the attacks that are happening it's usually through user credentials that were compromised right yes you know people right using password is password passwords giving them away and then having

accounts not being shut down like right temporary employees not having their account shut down is usually or employees who've left right exactly so on boarding offboarding uh in your HR department becomes way important we I don't know when people are leaving and coming and being able to shut down accounts. But as far as data backups go, in case there ever was a compromised, we have the data backed up offsite. We have a system. You never have the situation where it's like, okay, we did get compromised. Now what? Right. That's that's one of our [laughter] disaster recover what I'm saying where like as long as we got things, you know, backed up to a point where nobody could ever corrupt the backup.

Right. Right. and [clears throat] have multiple places of where backups are being held based. Right. Okay. Good. And then uh let's see. You're talking about the uh piloting uh I was wondering if you're going to be piloting that Google uh school chat. Is that piloting it in a classroom? Is it what is the accessibility right now in D15 security? The securely AI chat. Yes.

Uh so right now we've been testing it like we've been having it accessible for um admin and teachers. Okay. to kind of just test against it, see what it looks like, so you get the feel of it. Um, and then through the next um like month and a half, I'll be doing um meetings through all of our um middle schools with middle school teachers because we're just going to um uh use our middle school o u um organizational units for those school uh students, sorry. And uh after we have all the middle school teacher meetings, um then set a timeline for when we'd, you know, maybe in like two and a half months or so, open it up for students at the middle schools.

Okay. So, middle schools will be first and then you'll uh are we going to do like like all the middle schools or we just going to do like one or just like eight? love to do all the middle schools, but I mean as far as like you might want to just make walk before we run and just pilot it on maybe a few eighth grade classrooms before we uh so yeah the the yeah the challenge is um it it it's done by Google organizational unit. So, it's just a challenge, but I will when you say organizational unit, does that mean like all of district 15? No, no, no. How our Google organizational units are broken out is by TJ Middle School. Okay.

In Google. Okay. So, you're saying when you do pilot, it would be like start with one school. Yeah. Yeah. Think about Well, there's a component to this, right? teachers have to plan on what it is that they're going to be using this for. Sure. So, there's a there's some of that. So, it's a measure of like teacher readiness and we can I have to see how the meetings go. All right. No problem. Or how many emails I have tomorrow morning if anyone listens to this. I mean, I've talked to the middle school principles about it, but you know, I I don't want to get too far ahead. I'm just curious like what your thoughts were as to how this would roll out. Yeah. You know. Okay.

Yeah. It really is going to depend on teacher readiness. teacher readiness and the logistics of the Google OU like a combination of both of like how I could make it work smaller cuz yes I would love to go do it with three schools but it's just turning it on for or three buildings or three classrooms right take it slow [laughter] I mean if we're not there yet that's fine I I was just curious if you had a plan yet you know so that's it it is a plan in progress yes

all right well that's it for now Can I ask um uh you know I think all of us who are in the workforce um we deal with some degree of AI integration um uh and I'll be I'm sure all of us have uh peers that are are really begrudging towards um all this integration and um and in tech. Um, so just out of curiosity because you did um showcase some classrooms that were um were uh had tech integration um within their curriculum like what percentage of that of our classrooms actually are doing that? Is it just a small portion right now or um where like where do we stand? And this is in piggy back to your um statement about teacher readiness. Where's our professional development? where like you know where do we stand?

Well, come to our mini conference next week and um more and more ideas will will happen. Um I think to some measure every classroom is using uh tech is integrating technology to to varying degrees right um and again it's always as as it is appropriate with technology you saw some instance here um but there are lots of other incidences that we just didn't bring forward because we only have a few you know certain amount number of time um a specific percentage can't really say um because we do know it's being used to some degree in every classroom.

So in various times, various, you know, um Dr. Hines walks around all the time. I walk around, you know, we see it happening in and out throughout the days, uh in in all the classrooms. So, but I think one of the things we're working on that Emily touched on during her presentation and um MJ and Julie alluded to is we're working on

scopes and sequences and within the pacing guides and whatnot putting, you know, places in which it would make sense like when would technology be the just right tool, right? And then what are some of these resources that you can link to try to get a better handle on when we're using it and then making sure that there's professional development to support the use of right in age appropriate ways across content areas across different grade levels. So I think that that's a work in progress. That's something we started talking about last year. We're really focused on this year. it'll be part of the work of this committee and and then the um institute days and then we'll we'll learn from having D'vorah you know heer here and you know I think over the next couple years your question will be it'll it'll come into greater focus and there'll be greater clarity around it because that's the work right now.

Yeah. In addition to kind of all the other things

and and for and building in opportunities for staff to have professional learning um within their days and to share with each other. uh a lot of these grade level teams do share a lot of these really great uh uh integration moments and tools and being able to like work with students in that sort of way. Um one of the big things about this district is um I think the teachers have a really great understanding of um how to get data, how to use data, and how to how to how in instruction needs to shift on that. Um and in some sense it it it ends up being more of a scheduling thing. It's trying to have have people have those critical conversations, right? So um sort of a different approach to uh trying to enhance learning in the classroom. It's more about getting people together and talking about it um and sharing ideas and uh talking about students and moving them forward and sharing their own observations and insights and tips and things that they've experienced. There's a lot uh there is a lot going on, put it that way. So to get a specific percentage, I don't know if I could actually do that, but I know it's happening. And then the transition of course to where our middle school goes to high school. Um is there [clears throat] the um collaboration with the um the you know resulting high schools?

Yeah, there's artic articulations all the time. I think I was just hearing uh Tamara and Charlie like uh say that they've got their scheduled with 211. So yeah. Yep. Nicely done. Thank you both. A lot of work. Thank you. excited about how proactive we're being on this front. It's a lot of change. Stay ahead of the game. Yeah. Okay. All right. Uh press item 6.4.

I just before our front scooty Sherry comes up. Does anyone have any questions for 120 first read? No. It was a big one. There were a lot of footnotes and minor edits, but if she doesn't have to roll her way up here, I would like to allow her to do that. [laughter] But but of course, if you you know, you do, I'll she'll she'll roll on over. Okay. Yeah. Um I had no questions. Uh, I did just want to name that I did ask a question via email just in case others I mean I doubt people are reading the very dense uh press but just in case

um that I did notice in one of the policies that it said that we were removing voting as a citizenship value as something that was taught but Dr. Hines clarified that it is not that we are not teaching that it is being taught within civics's education for grades six seven and eight. So just I was concerned like are we not teaching kids how to vote? We should absolutely be doing that and Dr. Hines clarified. So thank you. All right. All right. Uh okay. Item 7.1 acceptance of minutes. May I have a motion, please?

I move to approve the minutes from the December 10th, 2025 regular and close session meeting as attached. Second. All right. All in favor? I I motion carries. All right. Board committee reports. Ed Red Frank.

Okay. So, the Illinois State Legislature, they're going to uh they just started their 2026 session. Uh the Senate started on the 13th and the House will be there on the 20th. Um, as we've talked before, hopefully the state legislature will uh be discussing how ways to prevent uh future failures in the Cook County property tax system, which is, you know, caused all these delays and cost basically wasted taxpayer money. I mean, it's the money's gone. The money went to, you know, lending institutions and there's lost opportunity there for, you know, uh, [snorts] investment returns. Um, with regards to the Bears, I'm sure everybody heard about uh them now talking about Indiana,

which is just a leverage play in my opinion. Um, but I'm sure that'll be coming up this legislative session. Uh, they're probably going to, you know, push again to get uh some sort of mega project deal which will help fund uh infrastructure development and uh and and you know, give them some sort of property tax guarantees. So, you know, we'll see what happens, but I I can guarantee they're lobbying for it. I don't know if it'll come up. It seemed it got shelved last time around, but uh maybe this time they'll get something because they are starting to run out of time, I would say.

And just so this board remembers like we are we're not anti- mega pilot. We just want that that that tax component piece, right, which is what we went through a board of review and board of appeal for, right? We have theou that protects our interests, right? which is to be made whole in terms of any student generation and the per pupil expenditure that goes along with that as well as any capital infrastructure dollars should kids come and we would need to build an addition or school. So like our piece of it is yeah we're in support of pilot and yep we've got thisou so then we are hopefully going to kind of fade to black a little bit and let

yeah I mean I think we're we're all in support of them building in uh Arlington Heights. It's just that we want to seat at the table when it comes time for deciding that we're going to be uh funding the the children that they may be bringing to the area when they develop that 325 acres cuz that's a lot of land. It's not just the stadium. The stadium actually takes up a small fraction of that land. So, I mean, what gets put on the rest of it?

Could be lots of new additions to our student body. So, we need to actually make sure we have a voice at the table when that does occur so we can say, "Hey, don't forget we need to pay for our kids to have an education." Um, and then, uh, Ed Reddd is having a legislative dinner on January 26th. So, I'll be there. I think Wendy's is going to be there. And uh I don't know, Lori, if you're going to be there, but we'll be uh we'll be hearing from uh certain individuals with regards to uh potential education legislation and uh regarding policies and funding. So, we'll see how that goes. So, our local reps will be there, and I think we're going to have uh Brad Schneider, the congressman, will be there, too. So, he'll be able to give some insight into what things are brewing at the federal level. Um that is about it for now. So, we'll see how things develop over this uh next session here.

All right, thanks Frank Foundation. Eric, uh yeah, just to recap, we had a great time passing out um all the mini grants um back in December and uh we just got this from uh Adriana, the mini grants, uh the projects are being bought right now for all the teachers. So, hopefully we'll have projects starting to show up around the schools, which is very exciting. Uh we have our meeting next uh Thursday on the 19th. So, uh, the only other information at this point is that the 50/50 raffle tickets will start selling on the for on Valentine's Day on February 14th. And, um, so more information after after our [clears throat] meeting and probably at the February 9th board meeting.

Awesome. Thank you. Uh, finance committee, Wenda and Lisa.

Um, really no uh, updates from the finance committee. We just wanted to remind everyone we are going to talk about the um we're going to have an action item for the U property tax delay resolution. Um and uh thank you Diana for just um giving us a little bit of a summary regarding the property tax delays. um you know, as a community, um please consider um for those of you listening, um out in the world, they're uh reaching out to your local legislation so that way we can um really address this and not keep um kicking this down the road and having a problem for um our next um budget, you know. So, just an just an ask for the community.

Yep. Agreed. All right. Equity Committee, JAM, and Zubar. Uh, yeah, we have not met yet. The universe was not aligned with all three of our schedules. Like probably three or four attempts to meet just did not happen in one or [laughter] lots of schedules, lots of commitments, and then not. Yeah, we basically created a revised agenda for the for the year, but we just haven't sat and met with Lori, and that was we had a plan to schedule for next week. Yeah. connected. Double fingers crossed. The universe is in our favor this time that we can actually all get together and make something happen.

Awesome. All right. Uh, moving on to action items. Item 9.1 for the personnel report. May I have a motion, please? Move to approve the personnel report recommendations for administration certified and non-certified staff members as presented. Second. All right. Roll call or sorry, discussion. Roll call. Shupide. I. K. I. Badman. I. Hunt. I. Aer. I. Honorino. I. Taylor. I. Motion carries. Item 9.2. May I have a motion, please?

I move to approve the resolution to establish a fiscal year and prepare a budget as presented. Second. All right. Discussion. Roll call. Khan I Bagman I Hunt I Ader I Herino I Taylor I Shai I All right motion carries item 9.3 may I have a motion please? I move to approve the e-learning plan as presented. Second. Discussion. Roll call. Budman. I. Hunt. I. Aer. I. Herino. Hi. Taylor. I. Shupai. I. Khan. I.

All right. Motion carries. Item 9.4. I move to approve the revised board of education meeting schedule as presented. Second. All right. Discussion. All right. Um, roll call. Uh, this can be all in favor actually. Candy, what are we? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Um, can we All in favor? I I All right. Motion carries. Item 9.5. May I have a motion, please? I move to approve the resolution on issuance of property tax bills as presented. Second. Second. Discussion. Roll call. Ader. I. Honorino. I. Taylor. I Shupai I Khan I Bachmann

I Hunt I. All right, motion carries. Item 9.6. May I have a motion, please? I move to award the bid to Omega3 LLC for a total bid award of 132,900 as presented. Second. Second. All right. Discussion. All right. Roll call. Honorino. I. Taylor. I. Shupai. I. Kund I Bagman I Hunt I hater I motion carries item 9.7 may I have a motion please I move to approve the superintendent retirement contract as presented discussion

are you sure Lori [laughter] this is your last chance no that's you want a real answer [laughter] what can we say no now and then like delay All right. Um, roll call. Taylor, I. Shupai, I. Khan, I. Bagman. I. Hunt. Hi. Her I. Honorino. I. All right. Motion carries. Would anyone like to remove anything from the consent calendar? No. All right. May I have a motion, please? I move to approve the consent calendar items as presented. Second. Discussion. Roll call. Shupai.

I. Khan. I. Bachmann. I. Hunt. Hi. Ader. I. Honorino. Hi. Taylor. I. All right. Motion carries. Uh, correspondence. Dr. Hines. A lot of foyas. Once again, um, don't know if you have any questions about what was submitted, but um, it they really are just out of control. I did see our first uh request for a real live person confirmation. Oh, that's new legislation right there. Yeah, I just saw the very first one where it's like, are you a real person? Person with foyer. Did did they turn out to be a real person?

Well, nobody [laughter] [laughter] find out, but it's still better. Probably not. So, right. All right. Uh motion to adjurnn. I move to adjourn. Second. All in favor? I. All right. Motion carries. Meeting adjourned. All right. Look at my binder. [snorts]