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

I will be brief and just want to express my gratitude on behalf of the board of education to all of our staff. Um there's been a lot of celebrations of teacher appreciation week and um you know this being our last board meeting before the school year comes to a close. Just want to take a moment to say thank you for the hours, the heart, the wisdom, um the talents that you've provided to this district over the school year. We're so grateful. So thank you so much. Uh we also had the opportunity to celebrate our retirees right before uh the board meeting this evening and so want to give a special shout out to them and their how many years? 1,00 1,193 years of service.

1,193 years of combined service to District 15, which is just incredible. So we're so grateful um for their leadership as well. All right, pledge of allegiance, Willow Bend. The the respectables.

They're not scaring me. Can you make a second?

We're going to got to make sure that first one's straight first. President Ader, Dr. Hines, the rest of the board of education. Thank you for having Willow Bend here. I'm Mr. Harris. I'm the principal at Willowbend. I'm here with Miss Pente and Mrs. Mcfalls and our respectables. They are chosen three times a year for their leadership and for always following our three Bs, which is be respectful, be responsible, and be safe. They get to catch other students being good and help out with any leadership duties um and things around the school that they that is needed. We are very proud of them. Miss Penti will alian to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God indivisible and justice for all. Nicely done.

Wells and respectables, I have a special gift for you because it's a wonderful job you already with the 3D. It's a very special highlighter. You're very welcome. And thank you. Thank you. That you can use when you're learning and you're taking notes. Thank you. You're very welcome. I just used mine today. Thank you. Who thinks Mr. Parish?

How about all of them? We don't want that one. That's a high five. Thank you. We're going to smile for this family. Squeeze in. Squeeze in. Squeeze in. Any parents see the picture? Quick. There they go. Keep holding those smiles.

Okay. Smiling. Fishy. Thank you. There's a few more.

Okay. And Mr. Harrison is going to be his Mr. Harris's last word. One of our retirees.

Thank you very much. All right, up next we have our student recognition. Yep. Yep. They're coming. Good evening, Dr. Hines, President Ader, and members of the board. My name is Jessica Busy, and I'm a teacher in the ABLE program at Conor's Learning Academy. I'm proud to be here tonight to recognize one of our students, Ameliano Cortez, who was honored with the Infinitech Award, recognizing students who have demonstrated outstanding achievement through the use of assistive technology.

Ameliano's journey is one of resilience and perseverance. In recent years, he transitioned from being cited to being blind. This change initially brought significant frustration and barriers to his learning. However, through his own determination and the power of acceptance, connection, and assist of technology, Ameliano has blossomed. Today, Ameliano is a social butterfly, and a leader in our school. He uses a wide variety of technology to succeed and learn, including a white cane, a brailer, a talking calculator, a pen friend, and a voice output device where he has recorded his own voice. Beyond his academic success, Ameliano is a student who exudes pure unadulterated joy. He brings happiness to everyone he meets. We are so incredibly proud of Ameliano and cannot wait to see him continue to grow and learn. Congratulations, Nano.

Hello, I'm Carrie Griffin. I'm an assistant technology facilitator here in the district and my specialty is academic access and which is how I got to know Jimmy here, our other Infinite Tech student award winner. I met him in 2018, eight years ago when he was in kindergarten is how long he's had his tech. Um, over the years he's gone from a specialty writing app on an iPad to a variety of tools on an iPad and a Chromebook. uh independently being able to decipher now what tools on what device he will use for the task at hand. Um he's so independent that if anything goes ary, he doesn't go to his parents, he doesn't go to his teachers, he independently emails me, "Miss Griffin, what's up with this?" Uh if he needs to, he takes a picture and sends a picture with it as well so I can help him out. Uh a lot of the tools he uses actually have been adopted by the school district to be universally available to all the students. And since he has used them for so long, he helps his students, his classmates whenever they have questions, he helps them out with it. Um, he's so uh bought into the power of at that he actually has stepped out of class to meet with me to learn the communication systems of the AIM students so that he can be a better communication partner with them. Um, so to quote uh one of his teachers here who nominated from the award, Jimmy is the future is bright for Jimmy Lee Bean. He is unstoppable.

The last time was here. I think he was running for president because I still have that button hanging in my office. President still president. I have a gift for you. There you go. And is still hanging in my office. And congratulations, Jimmy. Wonderful. Thanks for coming out everybody.

All right, families, you're welcome to come up. Wait, stay. Families need pictures. one and then we'll No, no, you guys can stay. Jimmy's ready to hit the road. Yeah, go ahead. Stay. Get your picture. Stop dragging him back and forth.

I love it. Okay. Ready for cheeseburger.

Okay. Thank you.

A congratulations. All right. Now on to staff recognition. A month.

She wants to stay.

Thank you. All right. Good evening, President Nater, members of the board of education, and superintendent Dr. Hines. I am Amay Gibson, the proud chief communications officer of district 15, and I am pleased to present this month's above and beyond staff recognition to a group of District 15 staff members who extraordinary efforts brought to life one of the most meaningful and impactful events in our district's history. So last month, District 15 hosted its 80th anniversary gala in support of the Fed15 initiative, which focuses on addressing food insecurity among our students. The event brought together staff, families, community partners, and supporters for an evening centered on purpose, connection, and impact. Its success was evident not only in the strong attendance and community engagement, but in the meaningful funds raised to directly support students beyond the school day. While the event itself was a success, it was truly the people behind the work who made it possible. What began as a shared vision quickly grew into something far greater than a small team could execute alone. In response, staff across our district's teaching, learning, and assessment and communications department stepped forward, volunteering their time, energy, and talents to ensure the event reached its full potential. I would like to recognize the following individuals for their leadership, commitment, and contributions. Miss Emily Anderson, assistant director of communications and digital media. Dr. Emily McFaten, assistant superintendent of teaching, learning, and assessment. Dr. Shane Burkemeer, director of teaching, learning, and assessment. Mrs. Tiffany Costa, director of teaching, learning, and assessment. This group, along with many others across the teaching, learning, and assessment department, including Mrs. Megan Price, assistant director of TLA, Mrs. Britney Henry, ESC instructional coordinator, and Miss Kristen Orlando, assistant director of TLA, all played a critical role in the planning, preparation, and execution of the gala. From coordinating logistics

and designing the event experience to creating promotional materials, producing video content, and transforming the event space, their work extended well beyond their traditional roles and responsibilities. Many contribut contributed long hours outside of the workday and some even gave gave personal resources to ensure the event reflected the pride, care, and excellence that defined district 15. I would also be remiss not to recognize Mrs. Sydney Manola, president of the Northwest Suburban Council, PTA, PTO, and a dedicated district 15 parent and community member. While not a district employee, Sydney's leadership, passion, and commitment to this cause were instrumental in making the event possible. Her partnership and advocacy reflect the very best of our community and a shared responsibility we hold in supporting our students. So, please join us in recognizing and thanking them for their exceptional contributions to District 15 and the students we serve. How many of you had husbands serve as our mascots? Okay. So, they're not here, but they're the unsung heroes of the gala.

Uhhuh.

Thank you very much, ladies. Thank you so much.

And then on that topic, soon as I get back to my post, I will play a quick recap video of the the gala. So, please hold Perfect. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat up here.

Thank you again. All right. Awesome. Congratulations team. That was an amazing event.

All right. Uh we will now open our meeting for public comment. Public comment is governed by board policy 2230. 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 designate 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 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. All right, Lee Bennett. Hello, Superintendent Hines, President Nater, board, staff, and community. I'm Lee Bennett, an official for this week's District 15 volleyball tournament. Congratulations to both Plum Groves on 1's teams on winning yet another district tournament. In response to Plum Grove having four teams, District Sports added the option for a third team at Winston campus. The 67 B team

B team added was very meh. Worse yet, creating another team at Winston seemed to make other team their other teams less competitive. Winston's two, sixth, seventh boys basketball teams seem to have too few players to be competitive. Creating a third team should only be done if there are too many participants for two teams. Based on historical IHSA rules, this would be 40 for soccer or 30 players for basketball and volleyball. When there is a third team at our second and perhaps third largest middle school, how should it be populated? Following IIESA protocol, the first team should be the school's best players, which are predominantly eighth graders. The second team would be the next best players who are not eighth graders. ISA calls these seventh and eighth grade teams and allows sixth graders to play on them. My recommendation for a third team is to include the next play next best players regardless of grade. The system used this year did not allow any eighth graders to play on the third team. With age comes greater size and uncoachable advantage in all three team sports. This size would help Winston's second tier team compete against the first tier seventh grade graded teams. This year's system favored sixth grader participation over the marginal eighth grader. I think this is particularly unfair for the girls. Boys interest in sports is already declining by the middle school years. Girls interest peaks in the eighth grade. Neither marginal participant is bound

for a pro sports career. The sixth grader has two more years to make the team. The eighth grader is unlikely to make the high school team without or even with it or even with middle school experience. So making the school team is a once in a-lifetime opportunity for an eighth grader. It is a greater risk of burnout for the sixth grader. Please adjust the middle school sports program for more balanced competition and greater equity between friend and palletinebound students. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Bennett. And Lee, would you mind sending me that just so I have your stats? Thanks.

All right. Up next, we have Caitlyn Rich, Liam Seamus, Kiara Finn, aka the Fins. I want to sit. You could sit at You guys want to sit down? There's four chairs and five of you. Maybe someone could share.

I'll think Kaitlin's going to quickly. We were trying to get the audio video working for this and I think it wasn't able to. But um she's going to quickly pull something up. Um but to introduce ourselves, uh Caitlin, Rich, Sheamus, often gets called Seamus, but that's okay. Liam, Kira, and then we have um we have Colin is our oldest. He is at a farm track meet right now. So we have three kids in the district and one graduate um of the district. Um do you want to kick us off?

Yep. So um I'm Caitlyn Finn. I am a speech language pathologist. I am the Illinois state lead for the distraction-free schools policy project as well as a mom of four kids. And um here again to ask you to please take the time and consider all the research that I've shared with you regarding how screen time is used with our kids in our school district. Um, am I able to play a I just wanted to play a video clip from a former teacher turned neuroscientist, Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath, uh, his testimony at the Senate a couple months back. I have it pulled up. I don't know if I can plug into something or

typically not we would give we would have you send the clip to the board or to me and I can share it with the board. We don't usually have people add tech at the meeting. I don't know the capability there. Yeah. Can we just pull it up on It's just a YouTube video. I mean, sure. Go back there.

Yeah. Yeah, she's pulling it up. Um we'll we'll flip the order here. Um so uh you'll hear um Dr. Horvath talk through some of the uh research related to um challenges with edtech and some of the findings that have been coming out. Um but what one of the things that I wanted to also cover on as part of that is um we started these conversations a couple of years ago and uh with within the district and we heard a lot of you know interest in having the discussions but also a desire to assess and measure and come up with what is the appropriate approach. I think unfortunately we still haven't really seen any meaningful change in that space and I understand that this is a large change. This is this is not something that should be taken lightly. So, one of the things that we did want to share here and hopefully some of you are aware of it is there is a lot of action going on. There are steps. There are people that we can follow here. Um the LA public school district recently made huge changes and very definitive things to move away from screens and be much more thoughtful and measured in their usage. McFerson Kansas has made a decision to not send devices home at all anymore. Uh Oak Park closer to home has made changes so that devices are no longer allowed at lunch, at recess, before school, after school. They are only to be used when a when a teacher says take your device out. And then in Gailsburg, Illinois, devices also no longer go um go home with students. These are changes that were made most importantly very quickly. Some

of them were made in the last couple of months and they will take they will take effect in in the fall. Some of them were made in the middle of the year. These are things that we need to act and act swiftly on. We should follow the example that these districts have have laid in front of us. They decided that they couldn't continue to assess and m and take more time from our kids in these experiences and they're making changes now. I implore the district and we will hear why very quickly from Dr. Horvath to to act on this and not further wait sorry to to act on this now. Do we have We're good.

Name is uh Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath. I'm a former teacher turned cognitive neuroscientist who focuses on human learning. Um and I do not receive funding nor have I ever from big tech. Um so a sad fact our generation has to face this. Our kids are less cognitively capable than we were at their age. Um since we've been standardizing and measuring cognitive development since the late 1800s. Every generation has outperformed their parents and that's exactly what we want. We want sharper kids. And the reason for this largely has been school. Each generation spends more time in school. We use school to develop our cognition. Congratulations. You see your correlation. Until Gen Z. Gen Z is the first generation in modern history to underperform us on basically every cognitive measure we have from basic attention to memory to literacy to numeracy to executive functioning to even general IQ even though they go to more school than we did. So why? What happened? What happened around 2010 that decoupled schooling from cognitive development? It can't be schools. Schools basically look the same. It can't be biology. This hasn't enough of time to change. The answer appears to be the tools we are using within schools to drive that learning. across 80 countries. As Gene was just saying, if you look at the data, once countries adopt digital technology widely in schools, performance goes down significantly to the point where kids who use computers about 5 hours per day in school for learning purposes will score over 2/3 of a standard deviation less than kids who rarely or never touch tech at school. And that's across 80 countries. Bring it home to the US. Let's go to the US. We have our NA. That's our big data. Take any state. Here's here's a fun experiment you can try. Take any state NAPE data, compare that to when that state adopted one:1 technology widely and watch what happens. The NAPE data will plateau and then start to drop. Now, as Jean said, of course, this is all correlative. What we really want is causitive. To get

causation, what you need is academic research and you need mechanisms, explanations for why we're seeing what we're seeing. Luckily, we have academic research stretching back to 1962 that shows the exact same story for 60 years. When tech enters education, learning goes down. In fact, one of the biggest um ed psychologists right now, Dylan William out of the UK, recently said, "Edte is a revolution that's been coming for 60 years, and we're going to have to wait another 60 cuz it ain't doing anything." Now, that's research, but now we need mechanisms. Luckily, over the last about two decades, we've been doing a lot of work in what we call the science of learning. How do human beings learn? And we now have the clear understanding of why tech does not work for learning. And it is all biological. It's not that the tech isn't being used well enough. We haven't been trained enough. We need better programs. We have evolved biologically to learn from other human beings, not from screens. And screens circumvent that process.

We can continue with the meeting. But I would Yeah, please share the rest of the video with us and we will share with the full board so that everyone has access. But that's part of board policy. Yeah, I understand. Yeah. I think we would have just entered separate points to get get the time, but that's okay. That's okay. That's fine. Yeah, I appreciate it. That's fine. Um, we will we'll wrap up. Um, can we So, the point being is the way that technology is used currently. It is not effective. It is not safe and it is not legal. And we are asking you to please research and make changes in how it's used for our children.

Um, we'll finish up by you finish talking. Yeah.

Um, we thought it would be important to bring the people that live this every day to come share with us. We've asked our kids, "What is the thing that you most dislike about a Chromebook?" And they're going to give you your their answers. Okay. Yeah. I don't like Chromebooks because I feel like it takes away time that I could be spending with my friends like on the bus, during class, in the common areas of school. Uh, I don't like Chromebooks because I feel that they are a big dist distraction in school and they waste a lot of time. They an actual fact is they have wasted 375 minutes a week at school.

I feel sad when my friends see something scary on their Thank you so much. Thank you for your time. Yes. Thank you for coming out. Thank you.

Okay. Okay. Any additional green sheets in the audience? In the audience. Okay. All right. We were moving on to superintendence report because we have so many special guests in the audience largely my the front row. If you if you're okay, I would love to move to um the w presentation. Okay. Or can we Okay, that's what I was going to say.

I was going to make eye contact with the mod. Um before we do that, uh we do have an awardwinning uh superintendent in our presence. Uh and we have a special guest, um Dr. Don Angelas. Now I know why you're here. I thought his wife works at Kimell Hill and I thought, is Shelley being recognized today? And I'm not seeing her face. Oh god, I need a nap.

To my friend Lori and to the board of education, thank you for just allowing me a couple of minutes. Uh I am a proud parent uh and resident in district 15. Uh all of my kids are products of district 15. My wife is an educator in the district, as is my daughter. So, uh, we stayed local and love the district. And, um, I'm here tonight in a different capacity. I serve as the North Cook Regional President of the Illinois Association of School Administrators, IASA, and our region has 46 superintendent and members representing all of the districts and special education cooperatives in the North Cook area. Our group meets monthly throughout the year to learn from and with one another, exchange ideas, and to collaborate. A superintendent of distinction is selected by their peers in each of the 21 different IASA regions across the state based on leadership, communication, professionalism, and community involvement. Each year, a process of nomination and voting is facilitated to choose one of our members for this honor. I believe you know who it is now. The surprise is out.

Surprise. Lori was nominated by her peers for her dynamic stewardship throughout her career. She is highly regarded and respected by her peers as an active collaborator and willing mentor. Lori is always willing to support her colleagues in educational improvements across the state. We just had a celebration uh in honor of her recognition of her retirement. And the words that we use to describe her are courageous, passionate, student centered, and fun. Mhm. And maybe Italian. I think you said I did say Italian. Yeah, I translated it to passionate. Sometimes gets misinterpreted. That works.

Um we are proud to name Dr. Lori Hines as the superintendent of distinction for the North Cook region of IASA and congratulate her on this welldeserved honor. Thank you. Thank you. All right, let me get We even cleaned it up cuz all my fingerprints were all over. Okay, you're in the picture with me.

Thank you. Oh, sure. Yes, me. Thank you so much. Thanks for sticking around. You got it. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah. Come get it after

Steve. She's always telling everybody center on mode. Congratulations, Dr. It's very exciting. Welld deserved and just especially impressive given that it is an award that's given by your peers. Yes,deed who all understand the complexity of this job and recognized you in this way. Congratulations. Thank you so much.

Okay. Now, now I see you Oman. Now we can continue. Uh, so we will move. Let me see which we are. 53. Yep. Yep. 5.3. HLS update. Okay. Health, life, safety. Come on down. We'll follow 5.3. Jim and Diana, the whole crew. Okay. Last one there gets the kid chair. So, just FYI. It's been a while since this crew's been before the board. Like pre-referendum. It's

It's like a little PTSD into if I'm being honest. Oh goodness.

Yes, indeed.

I may or may not have tattoos. All right. Okay. Well, these guys are doing most of the talking, but Okay. So, all right. So, we're going to give um we're going to have introductions, but I'll first just summarize that this is an update presentation on the five-year facility plan. Um what are we updating? The five-year silicon the capital funding plan. and we're going to present to you a discussion on the amendments to the 10-year health life safety plan that or survey that was submitted in the late fall or like November December. Um we're now uh wishing to discuss with you uh amendments for Virginia Lake and Frank Cley HVAC. But since it's been a while since we've been together, I'm going to have everybody introduce themselves and we'll start with Chris

Chris Killinger and with Archon Associates. Uh, we're working on Frank C. Whitley right now. D15. Dad. Yes. Juice, director of facilities, district 15. Matt B, mechanical engineer with W Architects and Engineers. We're working on Virginia Lake. Mike Iicorn, Bold Architects.

Okay. All right. So, if we go to the next slide, unless I have to do it, if I could add. All right. So, uh, Jim had Mr. Kaplanis here has worked extensively. Well, we've worked together and collaborated with um Wald and and um Archon on updating the 5-year facility plan. Now, there's more than five years shown up there. Um just uh give you a a little overview of it, and then Jim can more dive into it a little bit more. Again, last summer, you'll see we did 11.6 million of improvements throughout the district. Um and a lot of HVAC, I mean, a lot of asphalt uh flooring were the big big items. and some um upgrades at the HVAC. This summer we are looking at 9.8 million of improvements and um that is uh including the big one is 3 million in HVAC at Winston campus. But we also have some additional pavement that um ask you to approve tonight. We went out to for three more little projects and um you'll see all the categories there. We're going to have another busy summer next summer. What we're here to uh dive a little more deeper in is you'll see $23.5 million on the line of the HVAC. Unfortunately, there has been a lot of price escalation and that is the two projects that we're going to talk about tonight. Virginia Lake and Frank C. Whitley. Uh then going out further in 28. Um these are you know what we hope to get. It just just depends on funding that we're going to talk more about. 19 million in um 28 and 16 million in 29. Really focusing as we've said in previous meetings that the HVAC systems in the district.

So and then we've tacked on in in 30 um a a flat 29 it's not really flat. There are um several that is a a a total of additional HVAC projects. Um and then so I'm going to turn it over to Jim to go into a little bit more um about the details here.

So from uh the last meeting I know you you probably saw some similar types of uh sheets that you guys had some questions on. So, since then, we've put a lot of work into uh updating and making sure that uh what's in front of you here is is accurate, especially for the jobs and where we think that they fall in the priority. I think it's important to look at this and and go back uh to when we first started. When we first started all this back in 2020, uh the original uh budget was 186 million and the original moving 15 forward was south of a um $100 million 93 if I go off of memory 98 doesn't matter. But what matters is that by the time we finished that process, the overall budget for the additions and renovations had moved up to 121 million and I think it finalized at 125 million, but our 186 million never changed. So you're looking at um the 186 million original budget and off of that um obviously if it went we had price escalations going on postco of about 20% inflation that on 200 million that's 40 million that's approximately what ended up having to get pushed out. So, I don't know if it was we we reiterated last November. We also reiterated a year ago that we were funded through looking at this sheet summer of 27 is uh funded through the 26 million in bonds that we just sold. But the $40 million worth of work back uh four or five years ago that got pushed out, a lot of those HVAC, you see that showing up in 28, the summer 28, summer 29, summer 30, as well as um everything that you see listed up there, flooring roofs. Uh there's additional

roofs that'll be added um as they become identified. But it's important to know that back then and even now that currently the summer of 28, summer 29 is not funded. You see that in 2030 there will be some health life safety funding available that will be spoke to. It was spoke to last meeting by Liz. It'll be spoke to more as we move forward. But for this uh for you guys to to see where we're at is understand that as we talk about things tonight, we're trying to figure out how we're funding these projects and for the summer 28, summer 29, and that these are all this particular uh list of projects is fairly current. I say fairly current because we have moving targets on inflation. Again, right now as we speak, everything's supply and demand. HVAC and electrical continue to continue to go up. Uh I will say we do have some good news from looking at this form and from when we started. Uh where we are self-managing we're saving maybe 30% over uh uh the marketplace and where we've been self-performing we're 60 70%. So some of our line items we're doing extraordinarily well which is going to help us in this overall process. For example, we're 95% done with uh flooring in the common areas, um lights and ceilings for gyms, cafes, MPRs, libraries, hallways, STEM, steam, art, music. At the end of this summer, we'll be about 99% done with those common areas with flooring, lighting, and ceiling. We also self-perform ceiling and lighting. And what was an original budget 5 years ago of a million half dollars for ceiling and lighting that might have covered 2/3 of our hallways. We have all of this

done for less than a million dollars in actual um buying of products as well as labor. So now we're seeing the savings for example on the lighting right now. The payback is already hitting on the lights that we did 2 years ago. So there are things that we did and and did well over the last few years. Doesn't mean that we don't have pressures. And that's why we're here n a to explain the validity of what's in in here on the 5-year um plan as well as then as um different ways we're going to fund it. And we'll talk about that on uh following videos or slides.

Okay. All right. So, any questions on the five-year facility on facility plan right now? We'll we'll tie into it as we continue. I'm just talking about the HVAC stuff. Just so everybody's clear that the large numbers for um working on the HVAC is that that's includes all the schools are having H work HVAC work done or is it mostly certain schools or what's a better way to explain that large amount of money? So, we're going to get into that um on the two projects. Can we do those two and then it'll make a lot of sense and I'll circle back on all the other ones. Okay?

Cuz they're all going to have similar stories. These just happen to be two very big projects and very high need projects that um have been identified quite a while ago. It was on the the last survey as well. So, um these are high pri these two particular projects are high priority, but there's the way we're going to fund it. that we're going to go into that in detail and then you'll see some of the things that we're trying to solve and then we'll use that and I'll list out some of the other HVAC projects that we know that are going to um land within the next 3 to 5 years. Some of those can be pushed out if necessary. It really comes down to do we, you know, we fight as hard as we can to stay on task on target right now so that we're not kicking too many cans down the road.

Okay. Okay. Next slide. Okay. So, you've seen this funding uh or this model before. Um so, we went over the and we also went over this all last night. We had the finance committee last night and Liz um couldn't be here tonight, but she was here last night and uh Lori Hines will in the superintendent report, we give some highlights. The 26 million bond sale went very well last week.

Came a little bit under budget. You know, we'll we'll get to that. Um, so what I want to highlight on this is obviously the colors for one. Um, and point out that we had a little bit of a we colored a little too much last time. That 9.8 million that we're going to do this summer is coming out of the 14 million that we sold a year ago. So the 26 million we uh just sold is really future projects. Okay. High highlighted in green. Um, and those are outside of the the health life safety, I believe. When Jim comes back, um, in the yellow, those are HVAC projects, I believe. Right. Those agree to, um, yep, the numbers on the previous page. Um and so we're again we'll get more into why we're hoping that by submitting the amendments that we'll discuss we're looking to isbeby to approve those or most of it and hoping that um they'll qualify and that we can then um issue two tranches of $20 million of health life safety um bonds. over the next um two years. One would be um next uh winterish and um the following and then the following winter. Um but we're going to dive more into why we're not sure yet because we we have to submit these amendments which the the architects will talk about. But anyway, here we're showing that um in the pink again is the 29 million on the top of future HVAC. We're not sure how to fund that. It all depends on what

what will get approved. Could be yellow uh might be part green. So the the uh so in order to balance this all out, we've put them in pink because you'll see the top grouping is 251 million. The lower group is 251 million. Um, I don't think I need to say anything more about that. You go ahead.

So, when you you see the 26 million dub that those uh funds, they have a timeline to them, but they have a lot less rules. So, we've been using that money to get things done that we know life safety would not uh qualify for like paving projects you'd never get under life safety because you got to be done with everything in the building first type of thing. So, there's a lot of rules to any of these funding sources. Uh for for the DUB, we got the three-year window that you see up there to spend the money. That's a little bit sub 26 million um 4 million, but trust me um in the slide before uh you saw that we had moved stuff out to 2031. Now some flooring, some other things that can be moved back in as we get really good at what we do and how we fund it. Reason this is important is that in 2024 uh life safety rules changed. It changed on approval process. that also changed on um you know a lot of things changed but the bottom line is it also they got they're scrutinizing things a little bit more uh closely. So we want to do these two amendments to find out of the $23.5 million uh budget for these two projects. Let's say 20 million gets approved on life safety. Well, in order to do it properly, you've got to come up with the 3.5 million difference, right? Well, you can use the DUB to cover that difference, but now you're 20 million to the good on the life safety work. That'll allow us to use DUB funding on some of the other things that have been high priority that got kicked out like the C the laminated cabinets and the laminated doors and some of the things that we talked about at the initial um offering 5 years ago that got moved out. And it would be great if we could finish what we started. And so part of that is by doing this uh easier uh big project HVAC and roofs on life safety that'll free up DUP funding in order for us to

get back on task on some of these things and prioritize. And of course we'll bring that priority list in front of you guys. You can choose what's important to the community. I think we have a pretty good handle on what's important, but um we definitely want to try to get as much of the of the original uh ask done and this is a way to get to it. Plus, it takes pressure off. You see the 22 million that's in pink that is um basically to be determined. It could be life safety, it could be dub, but you do have a a certain level of dub that you will be available. There's timelines of that and Liz went over some of that last time. I won't get into the details of it, but um whatever we can do to shrink that takes pressure off the district as we work through those four years of of what I'll call leaner money. And then there'll be u other uh bonds rolling off in 2035 where we'll be able to aggressively go after stuff. That's why we got playgrounds completely done. That's why we're going to be completely done with blacktop within 2 years. So these are things that can last 10 years until the next money rolls around and we're able to fund it without having to uh go, you know, things that roll off without having to increase taxes or do anything like that. So that is the um reason this is so important is to get this uh um these high high value targets on HVAC done so that we can use this money to finish off some of the things we started. So that's why we're really here to show you guys what what this all about.

Okay. All right. Next slide, please. Okay. So, I'm going to turn it over now to Bold. um and they can go into more detail about uh Virginia Lake and also to kind of explain to t to tie together why in in uh November I think it was we presented they presented $32 million of health life safety and why now it's uh going to be a little bit north of that and I'll turn it over to Mike.

Right. Thanks Diana. So, the part of the 5-year plan is to address these HVAC projects. Uh, they've been prioritized as as um Jim mentioned. Um, you'll remember back in November, we presented the 10-year life safety survey which was submitted to the state that was for 32 million. that was a items across all the buildings address specific things pieces of equipment doors walls and um that was approved by the state. Now as we look at buildings comprehensively where we're looking at a complete building, a complete project where you're replacing all of the systems, all of the um making sure that the conduit is correct, making sure the ceilings are are done. That's what we're presenting tonight. these two buildings, Virginia Lake and Frank C. Whitley, and we have the budgets for those. And as Jim mentioned, we'll be submitting these to the state as an amendment, which amends the previous survey and allows you to put that dollar amount in to do a comprehensive project, and we want to get that approved so we can pay for it. And that's what um has been presented in the previous slide there, the $20 million, and we'll be doing that um this year. Right. So, the first project uh Virginia Lake um has a comprehensive look at the building and um Matt Burden, our mechanical engineer, will go into the detail of that.

Good evening everyone. Um just to reiterate what Mike had pointed out with the uh the health life safety survey that was approved by you back in November. Um the dollars that were allocated to that were based on a one for one replacement of equipment. So if you had a heat pump or a unit ventilator in a classroom, those are based on a one for one replacement. The reason why the the budget has gone up and why the the scope has increased is because we're looking now at the building as a more holistic system. Um how do we improve the systems, not just an individual piece of equipment. So we're looking to uh improve not only the energy efficiency of the equipment that's going in and the system that's going in, but also the indoor air quality as well. Uh kind of addressing it as a as a bigger, broader scoped project. And that's what the amendment that uh is before you tonight is to reflect is that increased scope as a as a larger project as well as the budget that goes with it and making sure that that's approved by the state. Um as far as what the scope of the project is right now, that building is an entirely electric uh heated and cooled building. Uh it has a mixture of heat pumps, unit ventilators, uh some boilers with some hot water heat, some air handlers, and some rooftop units. It's kind of a hodgepodge of a lot of different equipment. And as Jim has pointed out, um it's been problematic over the years. A lot of the equipment that's in there uh uses R22 refrigerant which is now not just one but two types of refrigerant removed from what the industry standard is. So it's uh it is at a premium to repair that. Um it is it is like finding gold basically. That stuff is is really hard to find in the market and it's very expensive. Um so we want to address that to bring a little bit more uh homogeneous approach to what the systems are in the building to make it easier for maintenance. Like I said it'll improve energy efficiency and indoor air quality as well. Um, it'll also, I think, allow a little bit better temperature control and control of the systems based on what the space is and what the time of day is as well. So, it's really taking that, like I said, that bigger picture approach of how to address that. And then obviously all of the ancillary stuff that goes with it as we take down ceilings to get to duct work and piping and things that are concealed above the ceiling. There'll be

improvements to the ceiling so that the old stuff comes out and you're you're paying pennies on the dollar cuz you already got the labor to take it down. Why put the old stuff back up? Let's put up new. Same with the lighting fixtures as well. So, it's kind of trying to take like again that bigger that bigger approach. Okay.

Yeah, I can talk to Frank C. Whitley. Okay.

Um, so Madam Mike did a great job of explaining, you know, the scope of the projects and Frank Cley is is pretty similar to Virginia Lake in that regard. Um, you know, we're not replacing one for one pieces of equipment that are 36 years old, uh, that you're hard to find refrigerant for and and replacement parts. Um, we're looking at replacing the heart and lungs of Whitley, uh, from a mechanical perspective. Not the 2024 edition, but the original building, which is 85 90% of the building. Um, so it's it's a large project. Uh there's a cooling tower there that we're going to take out. I know there's uh maintenance concerns with cooling towers. So, the district is getting rid of those uh on every project that we touch. Uh there's air handling units there that were installed, like I said, 36 years ago. Those were installed when ventilation requirements were less strict, less demanding than they are now. Um, so that when we talk about looking at replacing building systems holistically, it's, you know, it's not just replace the same size air handling unit with the same size air handling unit. It's those units tend to get larger with more ventilation requirements and also how are we going to do that and what makes sense from a maintenance perspective, too. So, uh, we're going to be adding instead of having air handling units and heat pumps, we're going to have new rooftop units that have, uh, direct cooling on them and also our gas fired uh, like Virginia Lake right now. That's an all electric building. So, another thing to keep in mind with the concerns with energy and electrical grid with data centers coming online. I'm sure you've heard that you know it providing uh gas service to that building also mitigates risk to relying 100% on electricity during the winter. Um so and like Matt mentioned there's a lot of ancillary things that go along with that. When we are replacing all the mechanical systems a lot of time we have

to take down the entire ceilings to get to all the duct work and re redo that. So there's all that cost for the ceilings coming down and replacing them with new. when you're touching them, it makes sense to just replace with new. New light fixtures that have been installed, we're going to remove and salvage uh and reinstall, but there's still cost associated with that, but we're not throwing away brand new equipment either. Um, so uh there is some casework replacement. Uh there there's uh original casework in those original rooms. Uh my kids actually go to Whitley uh and they have told me, you know, there's drawers that you have to be very careful with. there and some doors that you'd be very careful with if you're getting something out. So, that's part of this work, too. So, I know that's not HVAC, but there's sinks associated with that, too. So, um we have those costs plugged in there, too. So, that's why this project now is at 12.5 million.

All right. So can you explain like my is is that I think that you had said earlier when when we were planning what we were going to speak that when you do it usually the survey is more like one for one like for like correct could you explain that just just so every other project HVAC project I believe that is in the survey is more

it's a one for one so you will have one rooftop unit you'll have a certain amount of um linear feet of pipes. And when that's submitted, it's very specific. It's very um allowing the district some flexibility on when they want to replace the rooftop unit. Over 5 years, you have to do it. Where the approach here is let's capture those pieces of equipment and make it a comprehensive project, submit this project to the state. Um because it's not just the units themselves, it's all the associated parts to it. um which make up the the full um budget.

Yeah. A specific example to that, you know, for Whitley, there's an air handler that serves the air to all the classrooms that was designed in 1989. It was installed in 1990. Like I said before, ventilation requirements are different now. Uh we can't just fit that ventilation requirement in the same footprint that is now. So what we're doing, we're installing vertical classroom unit ventilators in every classroom. You have dedicated outdoor air to the each classroom individually. So if we learned anything during COVID, we learned that ventilation was very important. Being able to isolate and control uh different areas uh was very important. So that's part of that whole discussion with the scope of these projects as well.

In both projects, they doubled down on that, triple down actually. Um heat pumps work from the hallway into the classroom and the system is really never proper for our this far north as far as climate goes. But the unit vents work in the opposite direction. So you're talking about switching the the ducting. The ducting is going one direction. Wasn't big enough anyway. Now it's going to be coming from the uh outside wall. Each room will act independently of each other and then the ducting comes the other direction. So once you open up the can, the can is a lot. And so that's you. If we're switching out a piece of equipment, like Matt was saying, then you're switching out a5 or $10,000 piece of equipment that soon will be obsolete because it's working on the wrong uh refrigerant. Um, this is completely reversing things in order to meet Ashray standards of fresh air as far as all the things that they just talked about. So, it's it's quite an enormous project. So the next step is that these two projects um will be submitted to um

we're asking you to approve it.

Yeah, we're tonight we're asking you approve us to proceed with submitting it to Isby. Um they will review it. It's a review time um at the very best one month up to up to three or four months. It really depends on you know you get in a queue, right? Um they're very specific. Um you're asking for them to approve this in order for you to use firerevention funds. Once they approve you to utilize the firerevention funds, then that allows you to issue life safety bonds to that amount. We'll submit the dollar amount. They may not approve the whole package. They may only approve part of it. So they're very specific, very uh scrutinous. We do do this with other districts. Um Matt and I and Chris will work closely as they come back with comments um in the effort to get the whole project approved and or majority of it um in order for you to use those life safety bonds.

Anything you want to add to that, Chris, or anything?

I mean, most of not I shouldn't say most, all these items, you know, these are typical items that are submitted for life safety bonds. Uh so it's not like we're asking something strange here. Um these are typical items and like Jim mentioned the rules change. They do judge things strictly and you know we're going to answer questions that they may have when we submit and um we'll go ahead we'll have that discussion and back and forth with them. We'll see what we get approved. So, we're asking for approval to submit these two amendments tonight for Virginia Lake and Frank C. Whitley. Um, it will be our, you know, a re revelation of what they will approve especi with these new rules in 2024. So, we're now under that those new know those new guidelines or whatever. So, we want to see we So, the point of tonight is uh the little bit of an urgency. We want to get these submitted because if they uh do approve the funds, um we would need to go out to bid in October.

Yeah. This fall. Yep. Right. So, um and it could be So, the next step you want to talk about what is the next step? Well, yeah. And the reason why we need to go out in the fall is a lot of these HVAC equipment, electrical equipment, they have long lead items. They are long lead items. And so we need the bids, we need to secure contracts so contractors can order that equipment and have it on time for next summer. Y

and then circle back and answer your question, Frank. the um if these two get approved and what percent and how all that works. That lays the groundwork for us on these other projects. Hunting Ridge, um Maron Jordan, uh Pleasant Hill, Winston campus. These are pretty good size projects down the road that we would want to have the same tactic to in order to uh a make it a little bit simpler, but b make sure we're taking care of the most important between uh roofs and uh HVAC. These are the highest important life cycle items that you want to take care of in a district and then the rest of it we kind of make work. So, this this will lay down the groundwork of how we can uh fund the next 3 or 4 years and what that looks like. If we if we succeed, then we get to start rolling back in some of the things that got pushed out. If we don't, then we're pushing a whole bunch of stuff out to 2030 and um and then it'll all have to rest on what DEB funding is available and it won't cover everything. So, now you're going to have a a handful of cans that are going to be kicked down the road at that point. So that's why we're asking and we're hoping that we see a good return on that so that the options there you you guys still will be the ones approving it. It's this is just getting the ball rolling. Once we get to that point then uh we'll tighten this up and you'll have a little bit better idea of the priority lists that are out there. But for sure these two projects for HVAC are extremely important.

Okay. So just to I guess summarize why the you know the life safety went from the 32 million right originally it went up to like was it 80 or something like that. Yeah. So that's because the the HVAC systems were priced out as individual components, right? Whereas now you're looking at taking them and replacing them as a system where you're using more efficient energy means where some stuff was electric, you're switching it over to gas. Yeah. Therefore, you need gas lines all to be run. You're going to have also new control systems that didn't even exist before, right? That's part of it. So, you can even out the heating and cooling of the building so you're not having like hot areas and cold areas in the building. Yeah.

That's part of it, too. Getting the better control systems.

So, the heat pump that you're that we replace uses an older refrigerant, two generations old, that might be what, $5, $10,000, whatever it is. you replace that and you're back in business for a little bit of time. When you go and you touch and you say, "No, we're going to come up to today's code because you're approved at the time that you you built this school." So, you're on the codes of 40 years ago or whenever it was built. When we now go into it, you got to bring it up to today's codes, fresh air, current refrigerants that meet environmentals, and then everything else. That's a complete redo. And so then you go from a break fix component that might take um you know a million dollars to $10 million. Um we didn't drastically change as much in um paddock was the last one we did 3 years ago. It went from an original estimate of 2.3 million that already had univvents inducting in the correct order in some cases to 5.5 million. I'm going off of memory. And so it might have been a little bit, don't quote me exactly on the on the numbers, but it's an example of that doubled in size. The thing is that the funding was already in place and that was prior to the 2024 rules. So with the funding in place that that just was like, okay, here we go. It it hit our it hit our new budget. We got approval. We got it done, but we didn't have to go ask for funding. We're in a different situation right now. We're we're looking at the fact that we don't have funding in place. How do we fund these projects? And this is the strategy that we're presenting. But to answer your question, it's once you open up that, you're not using anything that's there anymore. It's all done.

And and we use anything that we can, some certain conduit and electric that's in the right place. But otherwise, you got to right size the wire. You got to right size everything else. It changes everything. And that's what goes from 2 million to 10 million. Mhm. All right. Thanks. Kind of a difference between a repair and a replacement. Yeah. As opposed to just replacing a a certain specific section, whereas you're doing the whole system. And some of the systems, as they said, are, you know, from the 1990s. So, they're well beyond their useful life. And they're we're piece mailing them together, fixing them. They're down more than they're up. Kind kind of like a car. You can keep repairing a car, but eventually you get to that point where

financially it's not making sense anymore. I'm putting so much money into this. Yeah, good analogy. All right. Okay. So, um that is our presentation. Any other I hope we made ourselves cleared up our questions in previous meetings. I know. I hope we I hope we answer them. If not, please or shoot us an email in Jim. Um, any other questions though?

Okay. So, you will be there is a approval of the action item for the two uh amendments and and we'll we want to wait and see. Again, we think that'll take through the summer. Okay. Like the next step is you're going to Yeah. So we'll after the um tonight if it is approved then tomorrow we'll submit it um the application get get signed and start the application process um over the next two to three months there'll be a kind of a back and forth uh once that's approved then um you can right I got it last night um so yeah you're going to and then the um this is tonight board of so then you're going to submit it to the North Cook ISC

yeah first it goes to Um Dr. Hine signs it and then it goes to the local ROE. Um he signs off on it. And they usually do it right away. He Yeah, she Okay. They um and that should be done in a couple weeks. Yeah, that takes about a week and then it goes to goes to ISBY and then we think it'll take maybe three months. They'll go back and forth with Isby. Um, and so maybe by um September uh uh we we'll we'll know what we're hopefully that they're willing to approve. That's what we're waiting to see. That's the next wait and see.

So you saw the yellow the 20 million. If if we do have that favorable of a response from them, then we will be coming back with Liz to discuss uh issuing health life safety bonds. Thank you so much for the thorough information. We appreciate it.

35A. Okay. Um All right. Wait. 35. You mean 35 language artists adoption? We're back to five. Sorry. The 35 adoption 515. What are you talking about? All right. Um, we've got our uh curriculum team aka party throwers by night, right? Yeah. Yes.

Yeah. There you go. All right. Good evening, uh, President Ader, members of the board, and, uh, Superintendent Hines. I'm Shane Burke Meyer. I am one of the directors of TLA, and I'm here with Angelica Briffani, one of the directors of multilingual programs. So we are here this evening to talk to you um and present our grades three through five ELA curriculum review and material uh recommendation. Next slide please.

Oh thank you. All right so this is really our guidepost. The big three drives every decision that we are making. We're we're circling back to that constantly to ensure that we have strong alignment. We have our core curriculum. our standards are there, our performance targets, what are we assessing, how are we identifying that, that drives really what we do. Um, again, that leads into those high expectations. So, everything that we're doing, everything that we're bringing forward to you, everything that we're seeing in our classrooms, our partnership between our two departments really drives on that high alignment and high expectations, which leads to also that data informed decision-m. Where do we see our gaps? How are we supporting that? and how are we ensuring that we have that strong curriculum and solid alignment to move forward. So here is we started our curriculum review process and this really began over a year ago. Uh teams get together and it really drives uh learning. So as we're bringing things forward we really want to ensure that we have capacity built for everyone and that really began with a partnership with uh the reading league. we were able to bring in uh that company to support building up capacity of our our teachers so that as we're evaluating various tools we can ensure again that we have strong alignment high expectations and data informed decision-m uh we were able to offer several different um resources and learning opportunities this year not only for our pilot team but also all of our K5 teachers in the fall were able to experience some professional development on the principles of a science of reading.

Okay. And so as we began this journey, we knew it was essential to seek out a comprehensive program. And those defining elements of a comprehensive curriculum include opportunities for foundational skills, language and vocabulary, reading comprehension of both lit literacy and umformational texts along with speaking and listening and word writing. A comprehensive approach provides promotion of literacy development by literacy trajectories and deep text comprehension. In addition, it also provides opportunity to align content with reading and writing instruction. Our curriculum review and alignment process was guided by several key components that were informed by the Illinois comprehensive literacy plan which adopted was adopted by the state in 2024. Using this as a guide, we were seeking high quality evidence-based instruction and coherence while ensuring equity and access for all learners. Alongside usability and implementation for our teachers. In addition to those is the inclusion and co of coherent assessment and instructional alignment while offering differentiation and targeted support. So as we began our pilot, we used the key components from the Illinois comprehensive literacy plan as an anchor to ground us in our curriculum review. We were able to pilot two curriculum assess uh two curriculums during this pilot phase. After each curriculum was piloted, we surveyed our teachers on each of those curriculums. The survey focused on elements that were inspired by the key components of the Illinois comprehensive literacy plan. Those focuses included direct instruction with modeled support, strategies adapted for multilingual learners, strategies adopted for special education needs, flexible small grouping and individual instruction, diverse authentic texts, writing instruction and assessment informing differentiation opportunities.

So a lot to encompass but this graph is representative of the present u the percentage of teachers indicating yes to these elements being pres present in the curriculum in every category magnetic literacy and mosaura exceeded as the curriculum with a higher percentage of evidence being present and effective. An important objective going into the literacy pilot was being able to select one comprehensive ELA tool, a curriculum robust enough to support all of our 35 classrooms, including our monolingual, ESL blended, bilingual, and dual language classrooms. We have prioritized these perspectives through crossep departmental team collaboration in lock and stop from the start. And I think we pride ourselves a lot on having had that journey together. Shane will now share more on why magnetic literacy and mosco electro meets the needs of our focus. So why magnetic literacy and mosao? It's about alignment. Number one, you saw that our at our big three that has been our driving factor from from the very beginning. It's aligned uh strongly aligned to our Illinois standards as well as that literacy plan that Angelica was able to express. In addition to that, as we dig into the curriculum, it's a thinking curriculum. It's not about students just being delivered content, but they're active participants in the entire process. They're building knowledge, they're building skills, and they're actively engaging it and participating in it from the very beginning. You see, you've got um we gave some examples to you. If you open up those examples, you'll see right away text is throughout the entire content. It is not just delivered by a technology component, but you have it right here in

front of you. There is um text right from the very beginning. Students are writing daily writing in this in this material. They are annotating text. They are digging into it. There's interactive components. They are not a sit and get. There is active engagement throughout the entire process and you also can tear it out and it can be sent home as as teachers find that um that access to be able to partnership at home. So it is truly an interactive component. They are a part of the process. There is additional explicit instruction on foundational skills. That's that why behind that set that's the the very beginning of how students are going to function. And then it also has interactive literacy components attached to it. So not only they learning phonics and decoding, but they're applying that knowledge. They're interactive with it. They're writing daily. That's a part of this this um instructional component. Differentiation support is provided for staff and students daily in their instruction. And then there are assessment components. Those are digital pieces that are added in, but it's not the driver. It provides the avenue for teachers to know what to do and when to do it to support that instruction. So, a little bit more about the material. It's a streamlined structure. So, there are six units and again that goes for the Spanish as well as the English version. There are six units of instruction, four modules within that and then there's a range of five to seven sessions. Those are the daily workloads that occur for students just based on the text complexity and what the skill is that they're learning on that particular unit. It's practical pacing. It's a 60inute core lesson, but you have built-in differentiation. So, there's 30 minutes every single day day that is designated for teachers to respond. Where are the gaps? How do we

support those gaps? What are those differentiated components or how do I scaffold learning throughout that that um ELA block? And it's integrated instruction. Yes, you have foundational skills, but you also have that making meaning component, the syntax of learning, the writing components, the extension activities that's built into that daily instruction. So, we are recommending this product magnetic and mosaic. We are recommending a three-year um uh recommendation for this particular component. Whoops, I forgot to click. uh that will be paid for at a yearly basis for three years. It is comprehensible um components that are again that student workbook. Teachers will have a print student or I'm sorry a teacher edition that couples this and you see both of the products. You have the magnetic as well as the mosaico. Those are sister products. So the structure that's built within magnetic is exactly the same structure that's built for mosaico. We have a partnership and that's really it's about what's right for all of all students. This product provided that opportunity for us. Okay. So, looking ahead and moving forward, there are several key implementation steps that we would um include in part of our process. We plan to offer optional summer trainings to have teachers who are interested that would like to gain an overview prior to the fall to participate in those optional summer sessions. Also in August for institute day we will offer options for tiered trainings and then alongside with this um providing ongoing touch points through initial implementation to make sure and ensure that we have success. We also would like to take time to thank all of those teachers that were a part of this pilot. We acknowledge um all of the participation, time, dedication, and

just ongoing continuous dialogue with them as they piloted all of these different curriculums. The committee was representative for from teachers from 11 different elementary schools and we had representation for 36 total teachers which included a wide variety of monolingual, ESL blended, bilingual, dual language and we even had reading specialists and coaches participate in this process. We could not have done this without their readiness and eagerness to learn alongside us with this um and this process. So, thank you to all of you out there who are listening that participated. And we just like to thank you for your time and if there's any questions, we are here.

So, how many uh classrooms were these uh piloted in? 36. We had roughly 35. Okay. Yeah. I wasn't sure if the 36 teachers were just 36 teachers or is it individually 36 classrooms? It's about 33 cuz when we had the exact specialists and coaches, they didn't have necessarily participating classrooms. However, they took the materials and used them as if they would foresee how they could implement that in the future with students who may serve in that capacity or if they were coaching other teachers. So each each one of the elementary schools you had like one classroom in third, fourth and fifth

multiple in some like one building we just had one third grade uh teacher one particular building but then others we had three, four and five. There were some buildings as well that took it upon to have their entire team pilot and so that grade level might be representative in in that pilot. Now how many different uh curriculums were you guys investigating? We did. We piloted two, but last year the team brought forward several different things embedded through the process and landed with two that we would pilot. They found this one to be significantly better than the other one or significantly better. Yeah. Go back to that graph.

I think the other thing, if I may, that's nice with this is it aligns to um what we're using in K2. A number of years ago, we brought forth the K2 magnetic reading. kids are really enjoying it and the data that we're getting back is significant in terms of our reading achievement and and the the success that it's having within our classroom. So I I think it'll be a nice continuation K5. Then the other thing that I think is really even more amazing and about it is the fact that it's written in English and Spanish. So if you think about a million years ago when you guys were writing the curriculum to a line to an old resource, you wrote it yourselves.

So and yeah, Clary, you were in the department at that time. This it's like done for us and there's significant alignment across K5 and then as well as our our the five categories of multilingual and then you know gen G gened. I think it's just going to be wonderful.

It's structured exactly the same. So what they see as you look at the the various resources, what they see from the English is also what they're seeing structurally from the Spanish version. So they're able to weave those components in. It's not trying to learn something completely different. This is truly our staff's data. This is not something that we have created. We pulled it. We asked our our um pilot teachers at the very end of the pilot to complete the exact same survey. that survey qu or those survey questions were built off of what they were looking for. So high impact assessments informing instruction differentiated differentiated opportunities servicing all students th those were key components that they were looking for. So we created these questions in the survey based off what they were looking for. They completed this survey and then we just look at it pulled it and then and ran it um into look at a nice little graph here. Uh but you really can see there's there's a significant difference in the first pilot uh to where they landed with mo um magnetic literacy and mosaical.

And to add to that, the it was it's really well done in the sense that when we're at third grade bilingual or even dual language, it's a 50/50% language allocation. And so it really is determined by how the multilingual department will pursue how much of Spanish literacy, how much of English literacy. This program allows the teachers to be able to, as Shane explained earlier, even flow back and forth. Like there are times where they gave us a sample unit and the teachers were in English for three days and then the second day the two next two days would be in Spanish. But this program is so intentional that whatever skill that they were introduced in one language, it's a practice review skill in the second language so that we're lifting language on top of not having to relearn the skill, but utilizing language to access the skill. And so um in that respect it's also intentionally well done. Some of the comments from our teachers even in dual language programming have been that the students feel that they're able to shine and be if I'm an English native profile student or Spanish native profile student more often than not. So that's been positive too.

That's great. This is an awesome book. Very engaging. The colors. Yeah, the color is it's and it's grade three, so you could understand. And I think you gave me grade five. It's a lot more words and less pictures. But this I I would have loved as a third grader to have this. And you see text right away. You're not going to another book to bring forward, to open up, to get. It's just all intertwined. Like Angelica said, intention, intention, intention. This clearly was put together very well in that regard.

Um, and it's what we were looking for. It's what staff are looking for. It's what we're all looking for. Um, we circle back to that big three. That is our guidepost that's driving us to our decision making and our recommendations going forward. And you see it and the the level of vocabulary in here

and the depth and breadth of it is amazing. I think one of the things also really interesting to see is as you went into classrooms that were piloting in third, fourth and fifth grade, just that spiral and practice and trajectory of what comes next. So our third graders, for example, were working on main idea and key details. And so that was something that they were being introduced with. They had a graphic organizer. Fourth grade, they were working on descriptive language and really leaning into the text to say, what is the author trying to tell us? On top of that, then we went into fifth grade. And then in fifth grade, they're also using main idea key details. Same graphic organizer, so it's not asking the students to have to lift another item and think about something differently. But now they were reading a text that had descriptive language, was written more poetic in poem form, but still having to understand what that text was saying and also lift that skill of main idea and key details. So it was interesting to see how over the grade levels even they would spiral but the level of you know intensity was just a little bit further pushing the students based on practices they had previously been exposed to.

Thank you all so much. It was great and I really appreciate that we do the pilot work. My third grader was in the pilot and she was so excited to be able to participate. So very good. Thank you. True comment from a fifth grader said to the teacher as I was leaving this classroom and said, you know, Miss Rivera, will we be using this next year in middle school? And so she had just mentioned to her, well, no, we're just still going through like the motions of things. And so that was really telling. That's awesome. And it's great that we're incorporating student feedback in that way. So yeah, thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you both and the rest of the team. Thanks very much.

Thank you. Uh, no. Well, they're expensive. We're going to collect them back up. Oh, Eric's going home to play more booksh.

I'm glad I didn't write in it. All right, next up. Oh my gosh. All right, Dr. Edgar. Hello, Swanland. Congratulations. By the way, I haven't seen you since since baby Calvin joined the world. Yes. You know, we missed an opportunity to put a picture of baby Cal in our presentation. A

so good evening, President Ader, members of the board, Dr. Hines, and members of our community. Thank you for uh giving us an opportunity to update you on the educational services department and many of the activities we've been engaging in and some of the impacts we've been having with our students and staff. As you know, this is Dr. Loris Wland. Now, we call her mom. Uh, and I who will be talking about it. You can see uh on the slide there are several members that are not here uh for one reason or another. Dr. Pam Radford, she's our director of intensive intervention. She manages our behavior coaching team and is directly involved with our school psychologists. Dr. Nicole Morose, who's one of our assistant directors, who works on community partnerships, our grants, and restorative practices. And then Dr. Megan Meyer, who is a crafter of all trades, who works on our behavior team and supports a lot of our trauma-informed initiatives. All right. Oops. Wrong way. So, before we begin to really discuss what we do, we want to ground ourselves in our strategic plan. As you guys know, we have four main areas. The two areas that Ed services focuses on is success and belonging and community partnerships. Uh belonging is our main area where we look to help schools move from reactive strategies to using proactive and connected systems of support. Uh we do this through not only providing guidance and training and coaching but also direct involvement with schools through the behavior team that we have established. The other area is family and community partnerships. Uh we have established several mental health related partnerships with outside communities. We do this strategically, not only to increase the breadth of services that families or students can access when school services aren't specialized enough, but also as a larger strategic aim to sustain some of our efforts as we go into a more and more lean era of funding where many mental health

services are are being cut at the federal and state level. This is a general overview of the department. You can see just size-wise where most of our time is spent, right? A large proportion of our time is spent on supporting schools with behavior systems, responding to student crisis, supporting attendance systems, navigating parent concerns, uh student discipline guidance, and supportive behavior coaching for teams and staff. You can see we also coordinate and support larger district efforts around restorative practices, a large initiative that started this year and will expand into next. gifted and accelerated programming at the elementary and middle school levels. Uh community partnerships and school improvement planning. We co-lead that with the department of teaching, learning, and assessment and have found that to be a real boon for our practices moving district guidance into actual living systems that our schools um engage in every year. You saw an earlier presentation by Graham Sandborn where some of the really good work that is being done that represents what's happening in many of our schools is used to support some of the initiatives that we organize uh at the district level. Our main goal is to increase alignment between these areas so that schools experience the supports as a connected system as opposed to a series of separate initiatives. uh we work with our schools to engage in various practices right different trainings different systems but all of them are connected in a way where they support each other and are supposed to feel as an integrated system. We work very hard to try and uh not only place it into that type of context but make our trainee feel so people see the connection between a training in one system and a training in another where they're both really working together to support the same thing versus another thing to do. Right? that is hard in a teacher's already difficult day. The next part we're going to go through

is Dr. Swallins. All

right. So, now we're going to transition into talking about some of our mental health, behavioral, and attendance systems that um we support. So, the first one is around the uh mental health and behavior. So, we have just a list here of some of those initiatives that are um systems throughout the schools and you'll see it with within each of the schools. So these are meant to uh be a range from prevention efforts for all students to how to support students that are escalated with really an appro uh focus on how do we prevent escalation or more significant behaviors. Um as well as building school capacity for this work. Uh so you know we've talked about some of these in the past like our mental health awareness program for example. We've done more work too around um just working with parents and schools and wellness. So we've supported like PTAs and wellness fairs. We we are heavily involved in the Palatine wellness fair that's every year at the Ber Y. So those type of initiatives as well. Um supporting classroom management through things like CHAMPS our crisis responses ranging from you know when department DCFS is involved or suicide risk or threat assessments um and those restraints and times out those kind of more serious situations u and then those community partners for mental health. Um so those are a couple of the partners that provide some of those mental health uh medical kind of therapeutic type of supports for students or families or coordinate with with outside agencies. We have two that are highlighted that are some of the um larger ongoing initiatives as well or multi-tered behavioral interventions and supports though that's where you have your prevention efforts for all students and then you have your interventions that some students just need a little bit more of and then you have your intensive interventions so like tiered and layered supports um which is based on what the students are needing and we have multiple levels within those right so they can range from like quick checks with kids who just could use a little or connection to groups that are um

teaching skills for students like executive function or social skills or aggression or you know friendship skills those kind of things to intensive behavior plans or like wraparound type of supports right so that's something that you'll see across the district and we're always looking at refining and improving um and making it so that it's all one comprehensive system uh where hopefully it's not seen as like all these separate things but one unified place to really have it where students needs needs can be met where they feel like they belong. There's a sense of community and we're supporting all those behavior needs and then the behavior coaching which Tom is about to go into more really what that involves because that is a large part of the work that we do.

So it's it's no secret that across the nation and even in Palatine we see that our families and students are showing increased needs and complexity of those needs as well. Uh several years ago, we started to get called on more frequently by our schools for support to try and help them address some of these complex needs that just fall outside of the typical skill levels of our staff. They're highly skilled, but sometimes these complex needs just simply surpass what their backgrounds or experiences have been. And so as the need increased and as calls increased, we started to build a structured coaching process so that it was organized clearly uh oriented towards supporting teams and sometimes students and was also very easy for schools to access the district so that they had a singular place to go and a singular process to follow. So this document here just happens to outline it. But essentially the way it works is it allows for a behavior coach from the district to go and work with the team to first look at what their existing practices are to see if they can uh assist at the team level to determine whether basic practices have been put in place, whether or not there needs to be some type of consultation, training or guidance on addressing those. And if that is the case and the needs are still occurring, then they get involved with the case and will either uh participate in the uh assessment of of the students needs to develop complex and specialized intervention plans and sometimes in the training of staff and the modeling and supports of those supports in classrooms. Uh so basically it comes to helping identify needs, plan supports, sometimes engage in training and then support staff on an ongoing basis to continue those. Now, this graph uh represents last year's data. We gather data annually. It's it's a bit weird, but hopefully it's fairly intuitive, too. So, this first dot here. Here we go. Right here.

Get you with your the pointer. Excellent. Right. Yeah. You're blind. I'm the blind Laura. Just watch this. Right.

So, so that first dot on the left represents a baseline level for uh the students that we get involved with. Right. So this is average number of crisis response per day that these students are engaged in where someone needs to go to a classroom because they are so dregulated that they need assistance or they can't stay in a classroom because they're too disruptive or it's even dangerous. The second dot is the first month we get involved. So things have escalated and now referral has been made. That's why it has increased, right? That's we're now involved because it's at that level. The goal of the behavior team is to return it to the way it was on the leftmost dots. Right? So you see these next dot data points are across months of involvement with the behavior coaching team. So you can see uh orange is our office discipline referrals. Those are uh forms and documents that teachers uh submit when a student has gauged engaged in some type of behavior that violates our behavior policy that has some volition to it. It's intentional. The blue represents student crisis. That's where it's an actual mental health concern where this is something that really speaks to dysregulation and things that are outside of the students control. We address both obviously and you can see the goal is to reduce those over time and you can see that that is actually what is happening here. We've had a very high success rate. Now at the very end you see that when by month 8 we had a slight uptick and this is b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b basically a small group of students whose needs simply surpassed our behavior team and they needed more specialized support through our student services system. So what we find is that, you know, when we're able to be involved, we're we're pretty effective and and we're able to be involved with a smaller number of students, but by design because we're looking to support those who need the most specialized type of supports that our schools aren't able to provide simply on their own. Now, one

thing that we do is uh we survey our administrators and teachers who have been involved in the behavior coaching process. We piloted the survey last year. So this is somewhat limited data, but you can see the people that were uh that responded were actually very pleased with the support they were given. Most felt that there was a very positive impact with on students with with the data and most felt that it was actually a very supportive process, which is important. You can imagine that there's a lot of tension when you are entering in a classroom where the questions are, are people doing things the right way? Can we help you do them differently and whatnot, you know? So, uh, we're happy to feel see that people felt like this was something that was agreeable and helpful as well as not only being helpful. Uh, an area of focus that we have had for the last couple years has been student attendance. One of the things in national attention has been the chronic absenteeism rate. Chronic absenteeism is when a student for whatever reason, excused or unexcused, has more than 20% of the school year um, which is absent. basically it's missing a month of school. Uh it's it's been a real epidemic or at least described as an epidemic across the nation. The uh in in Illinois about one in four students has a chronic absenteeism level. It's really quite quite large. Uh and so we've engaged in a series of overlapping supports to try and help uh bring this down. As we've heard before many times, we've talked about our automated calls, not automated notifications for parents. uh we were sending those out monthly. We received a lot of feedback on this was too much and it wasn't having the impact on the targeted students that we were hoping for. So we reduced that to quarterly. But we have a series of school uh overlapping communications that we ask our principles to send out in their newsletters, send directly to parents who students have uh attendance concerns and whatnot. We've developed a

series of tiered interventions that the schools can provide to engage in a more supportive stance for people who are having legitimate difficulty uh that is starting to get beyond their control. And we've developed some pretty uh significant partnerships as well with uh our community partners to address the most severe cases. Uh we've moved over the last several years to having eight schools staffed by the regional office of education a lot program alternative learning opportunities program. This program is uh where the regional office provides a district with two advocates that's what the name of the people are called to advocates that are trained to do specialized mentoring and support to students in order to improve their engagement behavior learning and attendance at schools. Uh it's a it's a real windfall. I think Dr. Heines was actually the first one who identified it, but uh it's a real windfall for us. We contribute a relatively small amount to their first year's salary and following that the ROE's grant pays for their salary in its entirety perpetually after that. So, it's been a real uh great return on investment as Mr. Kaplan was talking about, you know, earlier in in his presentation.

ROI,

right? Uh we're at all the middle schools. We started with that first. We've moved to three of our most uh needy elementary schools just based upon attendance rates and student body behavior concerns. We're moving to our fourth next year. Uh this complicated icon kind of explains our impact. Now, attendance is a weird thing. Before we talk about this, attendance is a lot like body temperature, right? The average body temperature is 98.6. If you go up one degree to 99.6, six, you typically feel that that's a low-grade fever. It has an impact. If you go up 2°, you probably are staying home that day. 3° you're getting 101. You know, it it becomes concerning, right? So, small changes just like body temperature are actually very significant for attendance, right? So, we we'll talk about that at the end. But the reason I say that is when you see even small percentage changes, when you put it in a larger context, you see that it's actually quite impactful. So overall over the course of our two years we've reduced chronic absenteeism by 4.3%. Okay. So that means for every hundred students that have chronic absenteeism about five four five less have it right. We've reduced several uh in we've moved several people into the more trending you know chronic absentee level which is like the next level down but you know we have a lot of work to still do. If you look at the impact though, you can see across all of the federally identified categories, we've had an impact. There's been a reduction, meaning that it's been global. It's not just been the average. It's actually been uh an impact on all the subgroups that we look at specifically to make sure we're having an equitable impact on them. When you look at uh our progress across the the various grades, we can see that when you average the grades itself, right, and there's different numbers of kids in each grade, that's why they average different. we see that there's a larger impact but the biggest

one has been in our middle school where kids actually have a choice and this is where our ALOP advocates started off. Uh so if you were to uh look at where Palatine started and when we did this, we had about a 21% uh chronic absentee level. And when you compared us to the absentee levels across all elementary districts in the state of Illinois that have more than 5,000 students, we were better, meaning we had a lower uh absenteeism rate than 52%. We're right in the middle. 48% had a uh had a higher rate, 52% had a lower rate. That 4% difference has brought us down to the 41st percentile. Right? So we have surpassed about 12 13% of school districts with this small change. So it's quite meaningful uh and enough for us to keep going with the plans that we have. All right. So these is just this highlight of the trainings that we do internally. So this is where we are supporting our buildings in these specialized trainings in order to again have a kind of consistent system across the district as well as to support our staff in the areas that can be a little bit harder to do or more challenging. So a number of these are for more intensive kind of behaviors and needs. Um for example, our behavior assessment and intervention system, student deescalation and crisis response. And that's both for like a student who's in crisis, but also for supporting community and mental health after a large-scale crisis event might happen. Um, we do quite a bit of support in that area when a when a school might unfortunately have an event that happens that impacts them. We have a lot of focus on kindergarten and first grade because that's where we're finding that there's been a need and what our kind of data is driving. So, we're we're helping think about how can we help our kindergarten teachers and our first

grade teachers and the staff that work with the students. um threat assessment, suicide risk assessment, those type of trainings as well to make sure that we really are responsive and um and supportive in those ways when these events do o occur. Wraparound supports is where you are supporting the student basically 247 working a lot with outside providers or community members or family members and really helping a student not just with school um but usually it's also with the family as a whole. So looking at the family unit and ways to support in those ways. Um and there's two areas that are in bold because these are some of our newer training initiatives that are also impacting a lot of staff that we are really trying to help so that um we can have this foundational training and supporting student behavior training um across really most all of our adults that work with students. Um and that would be our bus driver and program assistants. we're about what we're about to talk about and then later on our what we're doing with the foundational restorative practices training.

I'll go with the bus first. So, uh one of the things that we have always done is recognize the need to provide training and support to our bus personnel, right? Uh a bus typically will carry anywhere between 40 and and 60 students max. And you know, many of the concerns that occur at school also occur on a bus or at least can. And so we have, you know, you can imagine the precarious situation a bus driver can be in when this happens with the number of kids, the environment, and it's simply one person by themselves. And so we have historically uh spent a half day with the bus uh the transportation department doing an initial behavior orientation where we talk about how we can connect bus drivers in the transportation system to our various systems with school. So how a bus referral can work with the school, how the school can reward students, develop plans, etc. and some basic uh things around how drivers can think about supporting students and whatnot. For some of our routes on um where we have more uh behavioral need concentration this year, we've piloted additional training for those bus personnel, both the drivers and aids. Uh we actually partnered with the transportation department. We had a gentleman who's a bus driver who was a retired police officer before. He partnered with our uh team to deliver uh this training for our our bus drivers and aids and it was really impactful to have someone who's actually living it. But the amount of training that police go through to navigate difficulty and tension with with someone is is so high. He really was a shining star in the program. But anyway, we received a lot of strong feedback with that. That's something that we will be expanding into smaller groups all for all drivers and aids next year. Uh we also developed a series of protocols to really have our schools take a close look at a student and are they regulated to the point where it is clearly safe that they board

the bus and take take the bus home. Right? It it's not it's not a goal to get them on the bus and get them home. It's a goal to make sure they're safe and they get safely home. So, we've really worked with our staff to have a clear understanding of how you make that decision and sometimes make the more difficult call that maybe the family needs to assist us and and help with transporting a student or transporting them later on an activity bus at their middle school or something instead of transporting them right away and having it blow up and then it becomes a big incident. Uh next year we've also put a uh a uh information in our registration pleat for parents as well. They'll go into our handbook and whatnot about the need for students to voluntarily get on the bus. Right? Sometimes students might be a bit afraid or they might just not be wanting to go to school and there's a question of do you put the student on the bus using some type of physical forces. Often parents will want to lift them on and you can imagine that's dangerous, right? not only is a child maybe moving around or resisting, but it's also going up these stairs into seats and whatnot. And so, we've really are are being clear like, you know, students need to voluntarily enter. And so, what we'll also be doing is at our schools, we'll be expanding the amount of time that buses can be available for our young students or students with disabilities to go onto the bus, become familiar with it, meet a driver, see that it's actually something that is is not concerning. And if we need to do that more often for particular schools, the transportation department is agreeable to saying yes, we can we can do that during, you know, the interim between our routes. We can have someone there and the child can be brought out. So we're just trying to make sure that some of the areas where we could have had safety concerns are shored up. Uh so there's been a lot of work with the transportation department to add these additional systems into their repertoire and we're hoping to have a continued impact with them next year. but for program assistance.

And so program assistants or like the ESPA staff is another a group that we've really worked with to support behavior. Um this is a pretty large group across the district. And your program assistants could have different roles. Some of them they're they're working with students that can become highly regulated um in a on a frequent basis. Then some of them might not work as much with students who might become disregulated. So we tailor the training to the type of role that they have and the student population that they're working with. So for the program assistants that are with students who may have more intensive needs, we're ensuring that they have the skill set for well hopefully prevent significant behavior or what to do when they start to see something start to escalate, right? And then um but we make sure that all program assistants have the understanding of how to work with students uh these kind of foundational practices. And this is something we're really working on continuing to build. So, we do this for August institute for the program assistants as well as our halfday um institute days when they're when they're here for those half days. But we're also looking at building more ongoing training as well. And our behavior coaching team does support program assistants in their training when they are like for example one-on- ones for students that may have significant behavior needs, right? so that we know that they they feel well-versed in how to implement these plans, how to respond, how to what kind of language to use, and a lot of it is again those proactive kind of strategies. So, we recognize that these are personnel that are incredibly important for our students and uh want to ensure that they're getting the same level of training uh to be able to support uh student wellness um with the youth that they serve. One of our main initiatives this last year has been restoative practices. We really focused on training our teachers to implement what we call foundational community building practices. These are systems that teachers use to begin to

engage students to not only build insight among each uh student with each other for a community building activity, but also for the teacher to have a regular check-in to really learn to understand each of their students at a personal level and just to develop a sense of values and value for each other at the class. Right? This kind of outlines our our general approach. Uh we've been piloting uh over the past couple years restorative practices at schools. We've gone to training all of the elementary schools and all of our administrators in this foundational restorative practices work. We'll be training all the middle schools this upcoming academic year. And we have piloted what are uh called advanced restorative practices training with key administrators. That's something that we'll be expanding. Advanced restorative practices is actually what most people will associate with the term restorative practices. This is where you can have facilitative conversations to repair harm when some type of behavior has either disrupted the community or were trampled upon some type of relationship. This is uh going to be an addition to our conventional discipline process where we're looking to add, you know, this type of of reparative piece to to our traditional process where we're not replacing it, but we're adding something to it to make sure that not only are we holding students accountable, but we're also really looking to to how do we return things to a way where they understand what they did, they understand how to repair that relationship that was a little bit bruised. the teacher or the staff member has an opportunity to engage in that repair as well. So there's just an easier way of bringing that student back into the fold so they feel like they are returned to the community and are acting as a community member within that class. We have uh these are just several pictures of things that you can see.

There's been a variety of ways that our schools have implemented this. It's been implemented in several classrooms. um you earlier uh had a presentation where our CLA therapeutic day program uh has uh presented they've taken this you know beyond beyond belief actually so our main consultant Ally Hearn when she was talking with us and and learned about the things that they were doing actually did a visit to see because it was yeah because it was absolutely um what's the word I'm looking for a vanguard it was something un yeah exceptional it was it was something unheard of to take it the way I know, right? I'm

That's a I know after you get after you get past 55, it hurts you. But anyway, um it was something that was actually pretty it was what a great compliment to say, I really want to come see what you're doing because even with all of my national work, I've never heard of something quite like that, you know. And and she even asked, you know, could we have some testimonials? Is there a way to maybe get some video so she could include that as just part of what you know is possible in schools? They've done uh even parent nights that have been done in circles where there has been surprisingly positive feedback from families like can we have this more? I mean it's it's been wonderful. They do their staff in circles. There's there's a lot of things that have really built a culture of valuing how you engage in community building at both the building student and and parent level. really amazing. These are a couple of testimonials from our staff. Uh we've recognized well over 50 staff for engaging in exceptional restorative practices this spring. Uh it ranges from teachers to administrators to related service staff. Uh a few people have even said they've cried when they've gotten recognized by us. It's just really amazing. Yeah. you know, so uh it's but it's great to hear that we have more than 50 people that our administrators are seen as standing out among their peers and doing something quite exceptional. Uh and really, you know, this is where they are just practicing with these the major roll out is in the fall where they're the expectations for more regular use are are more structured. So it it's really been successful so far. All right. So, we're going to talk a little bit about some of the community partnerships and grants that we've mentioned. Um, and so, a lot of this work has been supported with these competitive grants. Um, there's four in particular, the stronger connections grant. This is an ISBY grant that um is

for wellness and mental health and behavioral initiatives. Um, and then we had the 21st century grants. Those were at two of our schools. So, we had a grant at each school. th these grants are suns setting like so in other words they're ending this year stronger connections is no longer going to be available through the state uh the 21st century you know we're just looking at when um when we'd be able to reapply so like these grants have run a certain number of years and our 21st century ones both of the schools are at their last year this year and then we have the full service community school grant we are a flowth through funding through act now that's a federal grant um highly competitive one and we were one of the suburban districts chosen for two of our schools for that initiative. Um, and so this has been a big support of of the work, but the federal grant and the community schools that is really I mean day by day sometimes we're not sure what's going to happen with that funding,

right?

Uh so the so we're kind of in this in this position of kind of looking at all this, but we planned for this. So, um, we're kind of talking a little bit about how are we going to keep some of this work going knowing that some of the, um, grants and the state of grants right now is really tricky in terms of like we're keeping our eyes on ones that typically come out. They haven't come out yet. It's been a few months, you know, and we're constantly on the look at these, but we've been working a lot internally and with our partners on making sure we continue this work, especially the ones that have to do with the afterchool kind of things, the community based things, the ones that we don't have the internal training for. That's why we kind of highlighted this. A lot of this is internal. We're able to continue it because we built the internal capacity to be able to do this work. And then for the things that we do rely on our partners a lot like the Boys and Girls Club, the partners in our community, the POC, the bridge, and with North Cook and ALOP, we've been working a lot with them to say, how can we keep this work going given this curtain's current state of these grants and and this this funding? Um, and we really are starting to be able to come together with a combination again of our internal with them being able to figure out ways to keep this work going. And I think that what Swiss really is highlighting how we have built these really strong partnerships in Palletine and we have the data about the effectiveness and the impact of this work which is what you need for future funding. Right? So where where sometimes it's it's like the partners now can apply for grants or look at part ways to get funding because we've been doing this work and we have the um the data that that shows the number of students that we've served and the kind of impact that it's having. So we're just kind of highlighting if you're kind of like how are we able to do a lot of this? Well, we are always looking at these out like just ways to do this whether it's our

community partners have um been looking at funding sources and streams and it's something that they were are approached us and would like to partner on or we've literally been with them at the table building this together. And so a number of these um we feel we are going to be able to hopefully continue to at least have aspects of it and we'll continue to look at opportunities and you know just keep an eye on that state of the funding uh for a lot of this kind of student wellness, mental health, after school programming, full service community school which is really an incredible model um that the state in a lot of ways is is behind. It's just again the funding sources for this is is really up in the air in a lot of ways. Um and we are we are continuing to to think about what we can do with this work and how we can build on the things that we've done uh regardless of what kind of happens with these federal with these state and federal grants.

I will say that uh you know just the the funding and security has really brought some of these community partners together. Um you know there's there's been a commitment especially from the Boys and Girls Club. You know, one of the things that that they do is they provide, you know, quality after school care that that's not just supervisory, but has a a varied and fairly intense schedule of instruction, civics things, you know, whatnot. And uh because their system, they underwrite the cost based upon the family's income. So for some families that simply can't afford quality care in a conventional way, the Boys and Girls Club is able to provide that through through their mechanism and they're committed to being here no matter the grant whether the grant remains or not, you know, cuz they feel that's part of their mission and they see the need in our community. It's and it's been really very very encouraging that to hear people come out with that. So um all right so these are oh is this you or is this

so these are the partners which we've mentioned the ones uh there's many partners these four in particular are the the ones that really have done a lot of this work with us and um like we just showed are are staying at the table and committed to ways to help continue to support our students and families especially in that kind of 247 kind of model the afterchool programming the the community based sports helping families get access to supports and services in the community, those type of things. Um where where we can get a lot of impact uh with those services. And

I will say even though I highlighted the Boys and Girls Club, each each of these has committed in their own way, you know, some mechanism that they can be involved with the schools no matter what to further their mission and to impact our students. So even though we have a a broad focus in behavior, mental health, supporting families and whatnot, we also cover other areas gifted in academic acceleration. We have a a small gifted program at Stuart RPACK and we have an expansive accelerated math program across ele all of our elementary schools and middle schools. Uh we engage with TLA. They're really the leads, but we work with them very carefully on school improvement efforts. Uh there's a lot of help that we offer parents trying to navigate our system. uh whether they want to provide feedback or they just feel like they need a little bit of help uh engaging with the school and whatnot. And then we um are the primary person to help schools navigate with the Department of Child and Family Services. And with that, do we have any questions? Everybody looks at Linda.

I appreciate the um behavioral coaching. I appreciate the um community building. Um I wanted to just uh hone in a little bit about the chronic absentee. Um do you have a target for next year and moving forward for um so that we could see the progress of the the work being done because although 4% is um is a nice number. I like um I'd love to see that number just um get larger and larger

for sure. Uh actually in August when we return from the break where all of our data is, we'll do a comprehensive review of not only chronic attendance but all the other metrics that we use in our strategic plan to update you with our progress across academic, social, emotional, and whatnot. Uh we have a 5-year goal. The the fifth year is meant to be at 12%. And so uh we're well on our way to that target even though it's it's a gradual reduction. Uh, and that again that'll put us well ahead of the vast majority of of districts in the state. Yeah, sure.

I just want to thank you all. I was writing like different words as you were presenting and I just I just appreciate how responsive this team is to the needs of our students and families, how proactive you all are, the resilience of how you've navigated like funding challenges and all of the work. Um, and then I'm I'm also just really excited about the restorative practices work and just the immediate benefits for our school communities, but also the life and human skills that that gives our students. And so that's just another way that we're supporting our students in their growth and development. And so just grateful for our district's leadership in that way. Thank you. Did you write down avang guard? Is that one of those? No.

Where is that? I can see it's I hope that would not be one of the ones. Yeah. And Batman. Yeah, we didn't we didn't cry Batman just now. Okay. You almost escaped it. That's right. Batman. Thank you. And we're so glad you're back, Dr. Small. Thank you. And to the rest of the team, thank you. Thank you. All right. All right. Can we do No, that's the public comment. Yep.

All right. We are going to quickly go back to public comment very briefly um for someone who was not able to make it earlier tonight. Uh Mr. Wall Sure. As long as you have a microphone. Sure. Yeah. Great. Thank you all. Uh I just came from a choir concert at Padok. It was marvelous and I appreciate you accommodating me. I couldn't be here in time. Uh briefly because I know I'm limited here. Thank you Dr. Hines. You've been the super since my kids have been in school here. you've piloted this district marvelously through several tough years. Uh thank you to Dr. Edgar who's still in here. I haven't seen him in person before. Oh, he's out. But uh for his work in the ATG program in case he watches this microphone, which has benefited both of my kids. You know what? I'll sit down.

Um we got it. Oh, sure.

I do this for a living. I'm more comfortable standing up. Um so I'm here to talk about tech in schools. My friends, the Fins were here earlier for public comment. I understand. I'll keep it super short, although if you give me a fourth minute, I will tell you a short and wild story uh about my own kids. My kids have had issues with tech. They're both ATG kids. They have every advantage. My wife and I have done everything we can. The one thing we can't control is the Chromebooks they're issued and the tech use in schools. You guys, I I have a list in my pocket. I'm not going to pull it out due to time constraints, of course, of journal articles, peer-reviewed stuff, uh, showing how detrimental this is. I I doubt that there's been any period in history where there's been such a wealth of data in such a short period of time about how a certain addition to education has affected these kids. It is across the board objectively detrimental to overall education for these kids. You've seen the articles. I've seen them. It's universal. Um, you were talking about ROI minutes ago. One of you was excited to hear about return on investment. The return on investment on the the investment that this district has made into tech has borne out to be negative. So, what I'm going to suggest is that this district, which was a leader 10, 15 years ago in adopting this stuff when everyone thought it was a good idea, now take the lead. It doesn't matter if all of the surrounding districts are still doing it. Doesn't matter if if there's this desire to to appear to be tech forward. Take the lead by admitting that perhaps the the investment in this case was a poor one and take the lead by saying, "Hey, we are actually going to going to lead by stepping backwards here. Traditional methods have proven to be more effective uh and less detrimental to our kids attention spans.

engagement, distraction. I mean, across the board, I've seen this with my own kids. I've talked to every parent I know about it. Uh, that's what I came here to say this evening. Thank you for listening. I appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right. Now, we are going back. Uh, press. Does anyone have questions on press for 54? 5.4 54 first read. I did not. It's a lot of annotation, footnotes. Good. Okay, perfect. Okay, so superintendent report.

Yeah, if you wouldn't mind going to four um 41 just hit some highlights. I say that every time and then I tell you all of it, but um so quickly uh teacher go back one slide if you don't mind. Um, it was staff appreciation week across the country and our PTAs are always wonderful and generous and our administrators as well making the teachers, our wonderful staff feels feel loved and special and valued. We put a couple pictures together. Um, we couldn't do anything that we do in this district without them. So, just extending a sincere and heartfelt thank you for the work that they do every single day with our our children. The job is rewarding, but it's challenging and they show up every day for the kids. So, thank you. Thank you for that. And to our partners at the PTA for, you know, making them feel extra special. It's uh according to Bob Harris, there's there's 12 days to go. Summer is almost here, so hang on. Um on Friday, last Friday, it was uh thank you or appreciate your school communication uh crew. So small but mighty, Ahmad and Emily and Sandy, a big thank you for the impact you make every day and putting out our stories, communicating on behalf of the school district and just making us look, you know, so good both in the district and, you know, outside the district so everyone knows all the wonderful things that are happening in district 15. So a quick thank you there as well. Did that one already. Okay, so transition work continues. Had lunch with Dr. Smith today. He was able to meet Drs. Row and Campbell, our 211 214 superintendent, put him on a bus. We went and visited 20 schools. Really got him up to speed a lot on the 12 schools that were under construction over moving 15 forward. Talked about some future construction projects that were going to participate in. Um he was able to jump in with finance committee last night to kind of start to get up to speed on the budget and health life safety, which we heard a presentation on tonight. So that transition work uh continues. We were also between the last meeting and this

meeting able to get on the call with Sam and Dr. Smith. So, we're just really starting to, you know, communicate and the baton's getting closer and closer to the handoff. Um, we continue to hire leaders as positions are open. A few of them will be in the uh personnel report to um in just a few minutes and then we maybe will have another few in June. Uh continuing to spend time in schools. The equity committee met. Yay us. It was really hard to get a meeting on the books, but we had a great meeting. Um, and you and you all can give an update in a moment. We're doing new principal preparation for um Mr. Wilson and Mrs. Thurber, and we had a DIY meeting. That's our uh district advisory um council for educational excellence. A lot of community members come through. Um and then we're prepping for SEC soon. And then um I was in Springfield for this the superintendent of distinction. It's a 4-hour ride from my house for lunch, but it was really nice. And um we continue to meet with the Springfield team monitoring what's happening with the Chicago Bears as a legislative session uh begins to draw to a close here in just a handful of weeks. Uh the executive assistant to the superintendent interviews Hi Valencia. We're going to approve her in a little bit, but they interviewed and uh that's Dr. Smith's new um new admin that will replace Clara when she uh heads off closer to home. And um I know Mindy will never be the same because she's leaving student services, but um those interviews uh took place. Assistant principal interviews are ongoing. We're almost we have one school left for we're done. I thought we had one left. We're done with reunification drill. Sherry can't stop smiling about that. And registration. Just wanted to give the board an update. As most of you know, uh I think you were all on the board back in 2021. Prior to that, we didn't have a protocol to check residency. you registered when you first got here and a lot for a lot of families that's in kindergarten and you might get all the way through 8th grade and never be asked to prove that you still live in the

district. So, we put a a protocol in place back in 2021 and it's iterated over the last couple years. Um, and and once again, we have just a couple minor changes and I wanted to just make sure that the board was aware of. So, new students and kindergarteners, which we've always done, registered and proved residency, but third, third and sixth grade students will go through the registration process. This is what's new really. Families with leases will provide an updated lease or affidavit, but will not complete the whole process annually. Okay. So, those are two two new two shifts. All right. Next, uh you know, you've heard you've heard about the uh tenative budget a little bit at the finance committee. It'll come in tentative form at the next meeting in June. Uh we don't meet in July. They'll continue to true up that budget in August and then it'll come back to the board in September for approval. So just that's kind of the next three phases of of budget work. Healthife safety we talked about and then this is what Diana alluded to. So a couple of things relative to the 26 million DEB bond sale that's for you to vote on in just a little bit. There's 26 million um limited tax bonds in working cash were authorized in 2023. Hold on one second. Um which were the last issuance related to funding plans for 15 forward. The market was stable um conditions. We had seven biders with four proposals uh at a competitive bond sale May 5th. The winning bidder uh was K at Key Bank resulting in an all-in true interest cost of 3.31% lower than what we expected in April which was you know just a little higher at 3.43. 43. Uh we were able to maintain despite the deficit work that we're doing. Um our AE2 bond rating which was really critical I we believe to the strong support for the purchase of these district bonds. Uh the debt repayment structure includes large principal amounts uh with which were attractive to uh investors and led to a very competitive uh bond sale. So we're happy

about that. And that's your final one right for the 15 forward potentially unless you do the health life safety. All right. Perfect. comm's department uh working with uh WCAG the ADA compliance uh so our website is up to speed but that uh deadline has been pushed so although a lot of the work is done it doesn't have to really uh begin for another year we did a gala debrief that video and we're figuring out next steps in terms of now how do we get that money how does it translate into food for families so we're working on that uh setting up chatbot assistance again for the website and then managing a lot of communication around reunification uh ed services, all departments planning for title one summer school, planning for that ESPA staff behavioral support training you just learned about and as well as the um the personnel training. So Tom's Tom and Laura did a great job presenting uh some of that work just a moment ago. Multilingual is preparing for uh EL and new ELEL newcomer and bilingual summer school, planning language screenings for incoming kindergarteners, new students, hosting a multitude of BPAC um elections, and um organizing delivery of books from Bernie's book bank. The kids have loved getting free books in their hands. The pictures that have been shared, I think I sent them to you. I always sent you guys a lot of pictures. I know I get excited. Um they they have loved it and they've become great partners. and sneak preview. Our access data came through and we are we nailed it. I mean so many more kids have exited. Kids are growing. It's really very exciting. So, yay us and yay all the kids that really worked hard. That is an extraordinarily hard test. That's just a sneak preview. But I did tell Sam today because I couldn't help myself. I was so excited. Uh student services planning for classroom and program moves for the fall. Parents have been communicated with, schools have been communicated with, working on the fiscal year budget. idea grant and then also preparing for ESY summer school which will be here before we know it. Uh human resources monitoring

enrollment and allocations. Uh they went through that work. We're largely fully staff but in case uh anything changes we're monitoring it. Collaborated with CTC regarding the implementation of the professional development learning collaborives uh for the upcoming school year because we are doing away with some of our interventionists. This is a way in which we're going to be able to deliver professional development and support. we don't have enough subs. So, this is also a way to to um offset the need for subs while we still continue to professionally develop teachers. Example 3, four, five, they've got to learn a new resource. They're going to need support in doing so. This is one way to get that support across as well as allow them time to look at data and make a multitude of other decisions. And then they continue to work always. It's it's it's non-stop staffing season down in human resources, teaching, learning, and assessment. The spring assessment cycle is done now. Window closed yet? next week?

No, later this week.

Later this week. So, it's getting close, but we've been in a lot of the buildings as I as I visit the schools and some of the rooms you can't get into because they're testing. So, hang in there, kids. It's almost done. We're planning. We have a big institute coming up on May 21st where school teams will look at their school improvement data to see how the year ended up. Did they meet their goals? And then what they're going to potentially set their goals for in the next year. Uh they're developing plans to launch that learning collaborative professional development model. And then as you heard tonight, the 35 language um arts um adoption. They're they're planning for that launch pending board approval tonight. All right. And last but certainly not least, technology. They're finalizing the instructional technology guidelines and planning professional development. They're supporting the endofear um system management readying for summer projects and and they're uh asset management. They're organizing summer professional learning and then they're doing an ongoing library program curriculum development as they continue to build out um the student experience in library linked to standards and tech. So that is just a little bit of what we've been up to um since our last meeting.

Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, we are now at acceptance of the minutes. May I have a motion, please? I move to approve the minutes from the April 8th, 2026 regular board of education meeting and close session meeting as attached. Second discussion. All in favor? I. Motion carries. Board committee reports. Uh Ed Red Frank.

Okay. So, as mentioned, the legislature is scheduled to end on May 31st. uh constitutionally after that date, many bills will require a 3-fifths vote to pass. So that's if they actually extend things. Um Senate Bill uh 3776, which allows Illinois to opt into the federal scholarship tax credit program, which gives donors a federal tax credit up to $1,700, has not advanced out of committee. Regardless, the number of states that have opted into the program is now up to 30, and this includes recently New York. So, the program starts in January 1st, 2027. Uh, but Illinois would need to opt into the program. Uh, so we'll see how that proceeds with uh Pritsker because I do believe he'd be the guy to make that decision since they haven't pushed this bill through. Um, Senate Bill 2914. Uh, this is the notice to remedy passed out of the uh House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee with a vote of 7 to2. This bill includes binding arbitration to the notice to remedy process in Senate amendment one. So this creates a significant problem for school districts because uh student safety concerns were highlighted noting that there are no accommodations for students in the arbitration process and that students can be subpoenaed to testify. shifting the locally elected school board's ability to notify employees of behavioral expectations to an outside arbitrator with no opportunity to appeal critically impacts how school boards can address teacher misconduct. This moves local control from the elected school board to one arbitrator. Despite opposition to this bill, uh it's could be called to vote in the House. Um, there's still, I think, questions about whether or not they actually will call it for a vote because so many people are opposed to it, but

we'll see what happens. Uh, House Bill 4416, which uh was unemployment for ESPs, that legislation has been sent back to committee. So, I don't at this point I don't think that's going to be going anywhere. Um, and this bill would have uh imparted a bunch of extra additional costs on districts since it would uh be having uh unemployment benefits paid to ESPs over the summer. Uh the uh House Bill 2789, which is the uh Illinois mega projects bill, that one is still uh in committee. They pushed it to the rules committee and they're trying to I think work out details within the Senate and with probably the Bears. Um, which we'll see what happens. I mean, they're running out, like I said, they're running out of time. End of the month is uh is pretty much where things would stop until a veto session, but I pretty much would think that the Bears would make a decision this summer whether they're going to Hammond, Indiana. So I, you know, can't predict the future, but something's going to happen. It should happen by the end of May. Um, that is, uh, the highlights.

Awesome. Thank you. 15, Eric.

Uh, yeah, we uh just celebrated uh as we heard before, staff appreciation week and uh the 15 foundation. We uh our final tally. We had 574 tributes for staff appreciation week across all the schools uh and we worked together with Mors chocolates uh to provide the medallions that you all received. We had a couple extra. So they get they were uh we we taped them to a certificate that was distributed out to each school. Um and that was that was really really u uh really powerful. I I I remember getting those as a teacher and that that just that just means a lot. Just a little note like that really means a lot. So, uh, we also had two anonymous donors. Um, one for Blessings in a Backpack for $5,000. Uh, as well as another donation, um, uh, Adriana did not tell me the amount, but it was a donation for VEX Robotics for the next 5 years. Um, and then we have our final meeting of the year next week. So, uh, very very positive year this year.

Thank you. All right. Finance Committee, Wenda, Lisa, we met yesterday. Um and uh thank you so much uh Diana and um Jim for giving us a comprehensive presentation on health life safety um particularly Virginia Lake and Frankie Whitley. Um and then of course the review of the capital um funding but nothing new to um add to um what was already presented. So thank you very much Diana. All right equity committee J.

Um yeah well like Dr. hindsight, we finally got very complicated schedules together and we're able to to meet um and yeah, we had a really great meeting. We had kind of updates and um talked about uh even kind of more plans for the future. I don't know if you wanted to add specifics, but we tal um go ahead microphone into your mic. evaluate the various models your microphone.

Sorry about that. Okay. Yeah. So, we looked at some of the assessment tools that we have and um how they help us uh look at the the equity uh gaps in the in the school particularly the impact of uh poverty. We also looked at the current um process right now. I think we had a detailed conversation about um the language in particular about how we uh making sure that the the language scores are the ones that improve so it helps them in uh all the other uh categories uh because language being so essential to doing doing better on on all those subjects who kind of understood that a little bit more. Um we've talked a little bit about curriculum review um which is all things that we had talked about in terms of what our our goals were would be for this week. I think what we have planned because we want to see a little bit of kind of in person see some of these programs at work. We are going to attend one of the BPAC meetings which uh uh we're cheerleaded quite a bit at the at our at our meeting. So we're going to try to do that uh tomorrow. And then I know there's a a tour uh scheduled I believe for May 19th.

Yeah. For I believe.

Yeah. And I I just wanted to add to that I think what what was really um not surprising but I wanted to point out I think to everyone is that we we covered so much in that meeting and it but it it it's all already happening which is a kind of really great thing right you know it's not like it's not like we had to talk about what we need to do you know and there it's already happening and there's plans to continue and do more so it's like it's just these really great things that are happening across the district um wonderful things that are kind of going on and then Zubar and I are going have it, like you said, to have that chance to kind of kind of go some go see some things that are in action that we we hear about regularly. But, uh, it' be nice to kind of see them firsthand. So, we're excited about that.

I think the other thing, if I may just add one other thing, Jubar, that you were interested in learning more about is how mandates find their way into the curriculum. Yeah. And then Emily was able to kind of pull up the deck that or the the document that's used where we track it and then we we make sure that it's placed appropriately whether it you know whatever what grade level it needs to be in or Yeah. Yeah. That's Yeah. I I I should have mentioned that because that was pretty impressive because I thought it would just be like um the amount of detail that are in those Excel worksheets or whatever to show that you know cuz a lot of times you see these mandates and you just wonder well is that just somebody at the end of the school year just throwing a lesson together sometimes from the state we make it better.

Yeah. So you meet the mandate. That's what I was hoping not to see but no it was a lot of a lot of thought a lot of detailed um uh tracking of it. That's good. Mhm. Yeah. So, nice job, Taylor. Yep. All right. Awesome. Uh item 8.1 for personnel report. May I have a motion, please? I move to approve the personnel report recommendations for administrative, certified, and non-certified staff members as presented. Second. Second discussion. Roll call. Ader. Marino. I. Ter. Shupai. I Conn Hunt I.

All right, motion carries. Congratulations. We look forward to working with you. Valencia will be joining us at the June meeting so she can learn from Claraara. It'll be her first practice and and Claraara's last. Um, we're usually done a little earlier than this, but not much. Just to, you know, to be real. Sometime later, think about 9 9:30 and and and you know, to Valencia's husband and the kids at home, um, watches for TV. Yeah. You're have a plan. Second Wednesday of the month. There we go.

All right. Congratulations. Uh, item 8.2. May I have a motion, please? I move to approve the destruction of the specific closed session meeting audio recordings from January 17, 2024 through October 24, 2024 in compliance with 5 ILCS120/2.06. Second. All right. Discussion. All in favor? I. All right. Motion carries. Item 8.3. I move to approve the revised 20. I move to approve the revised 2026 2027 board of education meeting schedule as presented. Second

discussion. Uh just noting that this meeting is August 5th for anyone that's listening with instead of 12th instead of the 12th. It's the Wednesday before. Uh get ready Valencia. Second meeting Wednesday meeting. Oh my goodness. All right. All in favor? I I All right. Motion carries. Item 8.4. I move to approve the health life safety amendment for Virginia Lake and Frankie Whitley HVAC as presented. Second discussion. Roll call. Gun. I. Badman. Hi. Hunt. I. Aer. I. Honorino. I. Taylor. I.

Shupai. I. All right. Item 8.5. I move to approve the two 2026 to 2027 administrators increases as presented. Second discussion. Roll call. Bachman I. Hunt I. Aer I. Herino I. Taylor I. Shupai. I. K. I. All right. Motion carries. 8.6. I move to award the 2026 parking lot improvements project to Chicago Land Paving Contractors Inc. for the base bid and added additive alternate one willow bend for a total of 339,000 as presented. Second discussion. Roll call.

Hunt. I know. Hi. Taylor. I. Shupai. Hi. Con. I. Badman. I. All right. Item 8.7. I move to award a one-year contract for milk to Bob's Dairy, Franklin Park, Illinois, in the amount of $392,883 as presented. Second. Discussion. Roll call. Adah. I. I. Taylor. Hi. Shai. Hi. Gun. I. Bagman. I. Hunt. I. All right. Motion carries. Item 8.8.

I move to award the purchase of seven buses to Midwest Transit Equipment, Kinki, Illinois for the following. two 2027 71 passenger buses for $35,94 and five used 24 passenger buses for $448,295 for a total estimated amount of $754,199. Second discussion. I was I was wondering I saw the bid it was like for uh five buses for 71 passenger uh buses. Um, why' we end up buying two as opposed to five?

We I think I just texted Sherry. It's so funny. I I think we're just trying to do a combination of new versus used. Correct, Diana? I talked to Jude. So, because we have a five electric So, we got um So, we've got the two wheel. So, that's seven for next year. What we're really focusing on now are those smaller buses. Okay. let those go for a little bit. Well, also just, you know, uh remember in co we didn't buy any buses, right? Yeah. So, now we're trying to catch up and I'm going to put in a plug that I got went through 135 buses like last week and only two vehicles needed every year. Good. All right. Nice. We got that going.

So, even though the fleet's aging, it's well cared for. Yeah. We don't we uh take care of our bus and we typically don't buy new buses. We typically buy used. And I know that's what you were I was going to say. Yeah. The next question was why are we buying the new buses as opposed to the used buses? Why don't you buy the new buses? I forgot what you told me about that. Okay. Yeah. I just said why new buses to share? Yeah, we'll find out because we usually buy the used ones. We do usually buy gently used. It's a just like a car. It's a better investment, but Usually they're about 3 years old or something like that.

Yep.

I'm with you. Has that been on the whole time? Oh, there you go. So, we're okay. I think I said everything. I think I said everything I know at this point. Okay. Because it is a I mean, just say you It's a significant amount of money difference, right? In the use. Scott, any comments? You can get three three more buses for It was pretty,000 more,000 more. And we got a guy right there. He's a bus guy.

Yeah, I talked to her for a little bit about it, but um I remember her saying that the cost difference between the new and the old was was that big and she really wanted to update the fleet. Um, we have a lot a lot of older buses out there and um, yeah, that's just and the the small buses, they're really in disarray. That's why we went after the small buses for sure. They're they're really old. So, yeah, I can get back to you if you'd like. Yeah, the small ones are the small ones are the used ones. Yeah. Yeah. Let's see the

But if we just looked at our whole fleet and only two weren't I mean it can't be that bad. Yeah. The used buses were about 100 grand and the new buses Yeah. They're 90. Yeah. And then Yeah. The new ones were like 153,000. So they're about 50 over Yeah. Over 50% more. Yeah. So it was a pretty decent delta. Yeah. Do we want to get more information? So, especially if the use were available. Yeah. I'd like to find out until June 8th to get a answer.

So, we abstain. We're going to hold until the June meeting. Yeah. I'll just postpone that vote. Okay. Do we have to do anything to close the motion on this? May maybe I call everybody and and you say no. You gota just deny it for now. You're Yeah, you say no and then it's roll call. Okay. Her no. No. Taylor. No. Shai. Wait. If we say no, do we have to go to bed again? I would. Yeah. The motion doesn't carry and then we might have to go. We're going to bring more. Then why then why don't we just postpone the vote? That's I don't think we should vote because if we say no, don't we have to bid again?

I I think somebody makes a motion to move it to the agenda for the next meeting. So, we'll move it to the agenda for the next meeting then. Yeah. I don't think we should vote cuz it might just kill the bid. Yeah. I make a motion that we move item 8.9. Um, no, item 8.8 school buses to the uh to the June agenda. Second. Okay. Discussion. All in favor? I I. All right. Motion carries. Thank you, Lisa. That should work. Item 8.9.

I move to award a 9-day contract for emergency transportation services for unassigned school bus routes to first student North Brook, Illinois for up to 10 drivers at $442 per day per driver effective May 20th, 2026 as presented. Second discussion. Roll call. Taylor. I. Shupai. I. Khan. I. Bachmann. I. Hunt. I. Ader. I. Honorino. I.

Motion carries. Item 8.10. I move to approve a three-year contract with curriculum associates for the grades 3 to five language arts curriculum for1,2442,43.90 as presented. Second. All right. Discussion. I just had a question on how we budget for this. Is it this is included in our budgeting forecast? Okay. I just wanted to double check that it wasn't times why we do a multi-year. It's less expensive than the outlay is not one. Okay, perfect. Thank you. All right, roll call. Oh, go ahead. All right. Roll call.

Chupai. I K. I Batman. Hi. Hunt. Hi. Aer. I. Herino. Hi. Taylor. I. All right. Motion carries.

Before we go to consent, I want to do a shout out to our new director of early childhood. Um, Melissa Pava. Is that correct? Hi. She's sitting next to me. I was wondering we're very excited. Last year we um we were hoping to find a director and we really didn't find one that was going to meet our needs. So, we went back out and and we found you also a district 15 uh parent. So, we're very excited. She comes to us from a with a wealth of experience in early childhood special ed. So, no one's happier than Mindy other than me that this that we found you. So, welcome. Thank you. Congratulations. Welcome.

Okay. Sorry about that. No, no worries. All right. Uh 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. Uh discussion. Roll call. K. I Bagman. Hi, Hunt. Hi, Her. Hi, Hannonino. Hi, Taylor. Hi, Shupai. I Okay, Foy. As always, we've received a multitude of Freedom of Information Act requests. Any questions in terms of those that I've submitted for your review? No.

Nope. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. We have a motion to adjurnn. I move to adjurnn. Second. All in favor? I I motion or meeting adjourned. Motion adjourned too, but meeting adjourned. It's all adjourned. It's all ajourned. Yes, ma'am.