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

leveraging strengths and providing highquality support, we will honor our diverse learners in reaching their full potential. All right. Um so, of course, the big news of this evening um was Dr. Hines's recent announcement that she will be retiring at the end of this school year. Um, of course that was very bittersweet news for us to have and um, we're very excited for this next chapter for her, but of course um, sad to lose her leadership in district 15 after the school year. So, we will spend a lot more time celebrating Dr. Hines in the coming months and certainly as we get closer to the end of the school year. Um, but for now, the important work of the board helping to find our next superintendent is beginning. So, um, this is probably the most consequential decision that a board of education is elected to do. Of course, hiring the superintendent and the the CEO of, if you will, of our school district is a really important responsibility that we all take very seriously. Um, so, a couple of updates on that front. Um, as you all saw, hopefully by this point, we did release a community survey. That survey is to help um us identify what is the leadership profile that we should have in our next superintendent. And so that community input is really important. Um and so we hope you will take just five minutes to complete that survey if you haven't already. Um last I heard we have over a thousand responses. And so really grateful um for those that have already taken the time to do that. If you have not um you should have a uh message in parent square. Um, another easy way to find it, if you go to our website, ccsd15.net, there is literally a popup window that pops up right when you go to the homepage that will allow you to click and access that survey. Um, so please, please, please take a few minutes to do that. Um, the other piece of the work that we have gotten started on is we put

out uh requests for proposals for uh search firms to help the board and guide the board in the search process. Um, so proposals were due today. um we will do the work of vetting and selecting a firm next week. And so once that firm is on board, they will also help organize um the other next steps which will include focus groups and other ways that um community members, staff, folks can engage in the process to help inform the board and um give your input on who our [clears throat] next leader should be. All right. Okay. So with that um we will do the pledge of allegiance. Sunlay.

Yep. Come on down.

Right here. It's like the clown car. [laughter] You said it.

I did. And I'm the leader. [laughter] President Ader, uh, Superintendent Hines, members of the board, and those in attendance tonight. My name is Jason Deetsz, and I am the proud principal of Sunling Middle School. And it is my honor tonight to showcase our Sunling Paladin Advisory Committee, PAC, for you this evening. Uh the paladin advisory committee comprises of uh diverse students from each of our grade levels. Uh the purpose of the advisory committee is to provide the administrative team with studentled feedback regarding the culture and climate of our school. Topics include but are not limited to, as we've [clears throat] seen in many, many meetings, social dynamics, discipline and rules, student and teacher relationships, and grade level concerns. Recent topics include cell phone policies, our stu new student information system, and during the day and afterchool opportunities to name just a few. The paladin advisory committee should reflect the student uh school student population at large. Students are selected for their ability to communicate and reflect rather than specific academic, behavioral or participation standards. Teams and individual teachers can recommend students at any time throughout the year. Students who are recommended will be interviewed by our team and parents will be notified if the student agrees to participate. The pallet and advisory committee will meet once per month with selected staff that includes administration. So I brought with me today uh Mrs. Grabowski, Mr. Mrs. Reer and myself along with our school uh leadership team of our school counselor, Mrs. ASF, who could not be here tonight, our instructional coach, Mrs. Lane, who is here tonight, and our school librarian, Mrs. Loquist. It's an amazing, amazing team.

The members of our team are happy to be here tonight to represent our school, shine a spotlight on this amazing student-led school group, and recite the pledge of allegiance for you at the board meeting tonight. Thank you. Would you please stand for the pledge of allegiance behind you guys right here? Ready? I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

I had the pleasure of meeting with this group today during their lunch hour and um conversation was very lively. I appreciate their willingness to share all our thoughts and in such an articulate way. A little something to say thank you for the extra work you do to make Sunling so special. All right, Mr. Tates. I have one. You do. [laughter] [snorts] If you don't have one, you need to get one. All right. Um, we're going to smile for a couple pictures. So, if we can squeeze it a little, maybe make two rows. Come over.

All right. And then moms and dads can come up too and get a little closer and get a good shot. So, this behind you is called Deon repeated that you see all over Instagram. We want the D15 behind all these wonderful smart. All right, this is Lane. Maybe this. All right, then. Now, parents and family, if you want to come up and grab photos, you're welcome to. Don't be shy. That's right. Look at the camera. Okay. So cute. All right. Thank you.

[applause] All right. Next up, we have our student recognition

Yeah. Let's look at just

[applause]

It's a good-looking group, isn't it? It sure is. [laughter]

Hi, good evening. Um, President Ader, Dr. Hines, Board of Education, all of our community members, and our very proud family and friends who are with us tonight, either here or online. Um, my name is Julie Crawford. I have the pleasure of supporting all of our inter mural capstone events for our fifth graders each year. We have three of those capstone events. And we recently conducted on October 20th our district 15 fifth grade mile. All of our inter mural team uh members practice in the fall with our amazing coaches, many of whom are standing behind the kids tonight. Um and this year on our course, we even set it up and challenge them a bit more by using the hill that's on the course. We have not done that to the fifth graders before, so it was a little bit more challenging for them and they all rose to the occasion. Um, we'd like to extend our gratitude to all of the elementary coaches, one at each building for our training and coordination and they helped to run the meet while also coaching. We had numerous supervisors supporting our coaches and our runners, helping to manage all of our fans and making sure the parents could get in the right place and get the best photo ops possible. Of course, um for our family and friends, they were amazing at this meet. They were cheering our runners. They were loud and very, very proud. Um we have a really strong setup crew. Scott Strick from our maintenance um department. Uh David So, David Soil, one of our coaches, and coach um Joe Algram helped to set up that course. They were the ones, they were the culprits of making them go up that hill. So, um you can thank them. And we'd also just like to extend a thank you to um our wonderful partnership that we have with uh Rolling Meadows Park District. Um we conduct this race at Sock Park in

Rolling Meadows and they've just been a great partner having us come to that same site uh year after year. It's a really lovely event and we're just really grateful for their support. I'd like to say congratulations to our, listen to this, 324 participants who ran the mile this year, fifth graders. Um, they just put in Yeah, give that a round of applause. Um, congratulations to them on their effort, their teamwork, and so much sportsmanship, which is really the cornerstone of cross country. Uh today we've invited our first place runners in each of our divisions. Uh schools are divided into their divisions based on their fifth grade enrollment. So we have three divisions and those those are based on the size of the fifth grade enrollment not necessarily the size of the school. Okay. Um so our green division can my green division winners step forward and I'll I'll talk a little bit about you. So uh we have the green division is composed of Hunting Ridge, Lincoln, Frank Frankie Whitley and Paddock schools. Those four schools make up the green division. Uh for our girls first place winner, we have Anna from Rolling or from Rolling Matters from Hunting Ridge and coached by David Soil. And Anna ran her mile in 7 minutes 20 seconds. Great job Anya. UH, Hunting Ridge has a corner on the market of the green division. In the boys race, our first place winner coached by Coach Soil was Nolan C from Hunting Ridge and he had a time of 6 minutes 14 seconds. CONGRATULATIONS. Thank you. Okay, our yellow division. I have our yellow division winners step

up. Our yellow division was Jane Adams, Marian Jordan, Willow Ben, Sanborn, and Virginia Lake. Those were those schools. Uh, our first place girls winner was Harper G from Marian Jordan, coached by Coach Duffy. Harper had a time of 6 minutes 46 seconds.

[applause] Uh, a special note here, Harper was the fastest girl in the entire meet. So, CONGRATULATIONS.

UM, in our boys race for our yellow division, we had Eric M from Willow Ben, coached by Coach Rusk, and Eric had a time of 6 minutes 46 seconds. Congratulations, Eric. Okay, our blue division winners. Step forward, you guys. Come on, be proud. All right, our blue division was Winston Lake Louise, Pleasant Hill, Kimell Hill, and Central Road. Our girls first place finisher was Satie S. from Pleasant Hill with a time of 7 minutes 9 seconds. COACHED BY COACH SMART. AND AGAIN, Coach Smart coached our boys first place winner and that was Henry CA because there was another Henry C. So, we've got to distinguish here um from Pleasant Hill and Henry had a time of 6 minutes se Henry was our fastest boy runner in the entire meet. CONGRATULATIONS

[applause] I asked them in the hallway if I was going to see them next year and I got nods for most of them. We hope that we see them next year in our middle school cross country in the fall. Congratulations to all of you and thank you to your coaches and all of the folks over here who have supported the kids throughout the season. Thanks families. Thank you. [applause]

Okay, hold tight. Uh, Mrs. Anderson is going to take a picture and then we'll invite any family members or principles that want to take a picture to come on up. Okay, get your certificates up. Perfect. you know, like he looks different. Yes. Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah. Highlighters and we hope you do try out for cross country. Thank you for your service.

All right. Thank you. Thank you. One more round of applause. All right, congratulations. All right, next up we have staff recognition.

Do you have the middle school? Oh, middle school separate. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Okay. Yes. No. I love it. [laughter] I see why we couldn't do that all at once. Yeah, there's a lot. [laughter] You probably have too many. Holy moly.

That's amazing. There we go. Okay. All right. We're not done with cross country. Um, we are here tonight to honor our ESA state qualifiers for cross country for middle school. The IESA uh series is made up of two meets, a sectional and then if you qualify, you get to go to state. These are all of our students after running in sectionals who did qualify for state that we'd like to honor today. First of all, we'd like to thank the ISA coaches, Coach Belo, Paddle Smith, Sodto, and Gabrielle. These coaches supported our athletes at sectionals, which were on Friday nights and Saturdays during the day. And then they traveled to Bloomington, Illinois to go to state, ensuring that all of our students were very prepared to succeed. So, thank you to our coaches. Each sectional team is made up of 10 girls and 10 boys and then seven of those uh run at the meet at sectionals. You can either qualify as an individual based on your time or as a team. This year we competed in two different classes in sectionals. We had some of our schools Thomas Jefferson and Carl Samberg who were in class 3A and then class 4A which is the largest schools in the state of Illinois were Winston Plum Grove and Walter Suddenly and they competed in class 4A in the sectionals.

Again we qualified kids both individually and one of our teams. So, five of our athletes qualified individually and then we had our Winston boys team qualify as a team. So, I'm going to give you a little bit more about each one of them just to give you a picture of what the state meet looks like. Each race is just one single race. Class 4A boys, all of them go off at the same time. It is a two-mile race and there are over 220 kids in each one of these races at state. So that's what these guys were competing against. About 220 kids all at the start line. Go run two miles, see where you end up. So pretty impressive. Um our class 3A boys individual qualifier. Could you step forward Andre? Thank you from Carl Samberg. Andre placed 16th at his sectionals in class 3A. He placed 150th in state and he had a PR, a personal record time at state of a time of 12 minutes 29 seconds. That's for 2 miles. 12. Great job. Um, class 4A, we qualified two individual boys. Our first from Walter Sandlane was Charles C. [applause] Charles placed fourth at sectionals in class 4A and 56 at state. He had a PR at state, a time of 11 minutes 34 seconds for 2 miles. [applause] and Amelio P from Plum Grove. [applause]

Amelio was our first place sectional winner in the class 4A boys. He placed fourth at state with a time of 10 minutes 54 seconds. Wow. Sub6 minute miles, guys. Yeah. Impressive. Great job, Emilio. Was the time wrong? I'm sorry. Was the time wrong? The time was definitely not wrong. Okay. No, he said it was wrong. Oh, he said it was wrong. Felt like it was wrong. OH, I wanted to make sure we got it right. I got it right. It was fast. That's for sure.

Way to slice it.

Um, for our class 4A girls individuals, we qualified two students. One from Plum Grove, Addie M. Add M Addy. [applause] Addie took 12th place in her sectional and 24th place at state with a time of 12 minutes 13 seconds. Congratulations, ADDIE. And from Walter Sun, Samantha C. Sammy. Sammy took second place at sectionals and 14th place at state with a PR time of 12 minutes 7 seconds. Great job, SAMMY. OKAY, now this is the group. Our boys team from Winston took first place at sectionals at their 4A sectional meet. WOO.

[applause]

AND THEY'VE took up 11th place as a team at state. [applause] I'm just going to go through each of them and if you could step forward when I say your name so we can identify you. Okay. So Josh Q. HI. [laughter] Seventh place at sectionals, 20 20th at state, a peer time at state of 11 minutes 17 seconds. Great job, JOSH Matthew J. Uh, 11th place at sectionals, 81st place at state, a PR time of 11 minutes 45 seconds. Mario R. HEY, MARIO. 23rd place at sectionals, 95th at state with a PR time at state of 11 minutes 50 seconds. Great job, MARIO. Victor P.

24th place at sectionals right behind Mario. They were helping each other out. I think a 167th at state and a time of 12 minutes 22 seconds at state. Am I on? Amen. Amen. F [laughter] 26 at sectionals, 138th at state, PR time at state of 12 minutes 11 seconds. Great job. AMEN. Thomas C. 53rd place at sectionals, 170th at state with a PR time of 1229. Nicholas P, are you there?

Yeah. Hi, Nick. All right. He was a sectional alternate but got put onto the team at state. They can do that. That's what an alternate does. He took 150 first at state with a time of 12 minutes 14 seconds. Nice job. And then we also had alternates of Matthew C. Step forward Tommy L and Owen. Colin ran at sectionals and he took 70th in sectionals. So congratulations. So a huge thank you to our families for your ongoing encouragement, the transportation, all the meals and water and everything else that you bring along along with all of your school spirit throughout our whole season. Together, we get to celebrate the hard work, teamwork, and perseverance across all of our teams and our schools, and in particular, these amazing athletes who made it to state and had so much success. CONGRATULATIONS. You guys get to stand there AND DO PHOTO OPS. We're going to get this picture. And yes, you get to come up for photo ops in a second. Congrats, Karen. High five for you.

All right. Thank you. And then there's been a request that should

Okay. Anyone that's campus administrators closer closer in five, four, three, two, and one. And how about a silly photo? [laughter] A thank you so much. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you so much. All right. Congratulations. All right. Now we have Now we have staff recognition. The room looks a little different now. It sure does. [laughter] It sure does. Okay,

Gorman, you look so happy. [laughter] And if you know Gorman, he's like, "Why is this happening?" I know. We're really pushing him out of his comfort zone. Uh, good evening, President Ader, members of the board of education, and Dr. Hines. Uh tonight we have the distinct pleasure of recognizing staff members who truly embody the spirit of going above and beyond in their service to district 15. Uh first we are incredibly proud to celebrate the visionary leadership, technical brilliance, and deep commitment of Gorman Christian, our director of information systems. Um, Gorman took on the herculean task of leading our district through the full transition and implementation of our new student information system. Through months of 60 to 70hour work weeks, his ingenuity laid a stronger foundation for our data infrastructure uh data architecture and efficiently developing and integrating critical systems like our analytics and insights data warehouse. uh Parent Square and our many many curriculum resources. Even working through illness over uh an August weekend, Gorman's dedication to the greater good ensures that our teaching and learning thrive every single day. Uh this extraordinary effort was a was a team success. So, we also wanted to shine a light on the incredible hard work of his dedicated information systems team as well as other uh technology department members involved. Uh these are the two that were able to attend tonight. But we would like to recognize Andrew Sinef who's our senior student information systems specialist. Body Bonnie Mackern um our application specialist, Lucy Gaza, our

programmer, Vanessa Caro, our executive assistant in the technology department, Beth Richtor, our information technology coordinator, and Julie Pal, our director of instructional technology. Um so Gorman guided our team through uh extensive training and development sprints uh ensuring support for every user in every process because everything attaches to the student information system from registration to report cards um to reports to the state. Uh time and again, Gorman and his team have worked tirelessly even when ill or on personal time off to keep our CIS operations running efficiently and effectively and to continue its growth uh in the development of as it serves our district. So to Gorman and the entire information systems team, thank you. uh your boundless efforts behind the scenes allow the rest of us to aim high and achieve higher and we are so incredibly lucky to have you as part of our district. So please join me in a round of applause for uh these valued and exceptional D15 staff members. [applause] [applause] Okay, picture time. Scooch on over in front of that screen. Mhm. You can't escape it. So, just

absolutely should get a highlight. Embrace it. I can probably make that happen. [laughter]

Or I think you need a highlighter. [laughter] Thank you [laughter] very much for ALL YOUR HARD WORK. 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, staff member, 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, we have one green sheet. Lauren You can come right. Yep. Right over.

And then just make sure the little green light is on your mic.

All right. Can you hear me? [laughter] All right. Um, good evening. Uh, my name is Lauren Dudall and I'm a parent of a student at Sanborn Elementary. Um, first I just want to express a heartfelt thank you for all that you do for our kids and also for giving me the floor to speak tonight. Um, I'm here to follow up on the email that I sent the board and Dr. Hines on Monday following um, the ice raid that happened on my street um, less than one block from Sanborn. Um, I received the email today from Sanborn and I felt like it came a little too late. It seems like a missed opportunity to be proactive rather than reactive. I understand that the police um didn't perceive this incident as a direct threat given how close it was to the school. Um but given how close it was to the school and affecting the broader community, it would have been helpful for district 15 staff and Sanborn to be notified while it was happening. Unfortunately, this incident has had a real emotional and social impact on our kids and our community. Not just because it happened in our neighborhood near our school, but also because ICE has been visible in our neighborhood, in our street, in our community for months. What happened on Monday is no longer an if. It's a when will it happen next. Videos are circulating, students are talking about it. There's a real sense of fear and confusion. We need to ensure that everyone feels safe, and that teachers and staff are prepared to answer questions and provide reassurance. Given the obvious lack of training these federal aids have, Unfortunately, sometimes these situations can escalate. It's important for the school and the district to be aware when this kind of activity is occurring so they can make informed decisions, whether that means a soft lockdown, bringing kids inside, or just simply alerting families. I understand these are unpredictable and unprecedented times. Again, um but clear and timely communication is critical.

I'm asking the district to consider creating a clear communication and safety protocol for when federal activity occurs near our schools. One that includes timely notification to principles, staff, and families. This would help everyone feel informed, prepared, and protected the next time something like this happens. I understand we can't control what happens at the federal level, but locally, we have the power to bring people together and to respond with transparency, compassion, and care. Let's make sure that every child, every family, and every staff member in this community feels safe, supported, and seen. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Okay. Any other green sheets? [clears throat] Okay.

So, we have a bunch of people here tonight. So, if we can move my my presentation till towards the end to just get sure everybody started. And we have a big TLA team. We have the Sikage team. We have the W team. So,

sounds good. All right. So, we will move to 5.1. Our teaching, learning and assessment team. You all right? Where are you? How are you doing?

Hello. Um, it's good to see all of you. I'm Emily McFaten. Um I am the assistant superintendent in the in the department of teaching learning and assessment and I am here tonight uh with Miss Tiff Costa director in the department and the newly minted Dr. Burke Meyer, another director in the department. And I would be remiss if we did not point out uh the TLA department who is all here. Um and as you saw behind the post,

yes. Uh this [laughter] is a surely a team effort. Okay. Uh, President Ader, Superintendent Hines, and uh, the District 15 Board of Education. We are thrilled to be here tonight uh, to talk to you about a couple of things. The first being the data and updates on how our district is doing academically and a little bit about what we've been doing to get where we are and where we are headed. Thanks. Okay. Uh we have been following uh the past few years. The big three uh the big three focus around our three key initiatives which is high having high expectations uh setting ambitious goals making sure that our classrooms are supportive and holding all students to a high level of rigor. Alignment having clearly defined standards goals. uh making sure that we are all headed in the same direction and being data informed using the data and information that we have uh to identify what's working for us and what we need to shift and how we can make sure kids are moving in the direction that we'd like to see. This slide I showed to you back in August. This is our end of the 2425 school year. This is looking at our early literacy and early math scores as well as our MAP test. So you see all K8 represented here. That first graph is looking at our uh K1 scores for early literacy. Uh that second batch of three is our spring reading for the MAP test. So grades 2 through 8. Then you go to

our spring early math skills test and finally our spring map math test. And all you need to see is that we are trending upward. That right there sets the tone for everything. So while we brought you that information at the end of the summer, we have more wonderful information for tonight. I'm going to talk to you a little bit about uh the two state assessments, the information that came out. The first is the Illinois Assessment of Readiness, I AR. It's changed acronyms at least 10 times in the past 15 years. Uh but that is our 3rd through 8th grade reading and math assessment uh that the state of Illinois gives in the spring every year. And we'll also talk about the Illinois Science Assessment ISA which the state has only fifth and eighth graders take. One of the things is similar to our conversation about MAP a few months ago. This is the year for reorming. So all of the state of Illinois tests have reormed. And the reason for their reorming is twofold. Last time we talked about how in a postcoavid world uh they reormed to see what is what are students doing, what is trends and trajectories look like for kids in their learning in a postcoid world. Um that is one reason that the state changed. The other is that the science test was graded differently than the math and reading test. And what came out wonky about that, there's no other way to say it, is that our science scores were incredibly high and our reading scores were lower than that. And reading assesses both fiction and non-fiction. And so if we are assessing kids, you would think that

their reading scores would be probably higher than even their science, which is a more technical reading uh skill that they would need. So the state saw this and they decided to recalibrate. The other piece of this is of the states Illinois has the most rigorous aggressive test in the union to which they had kids who were not showing up as proficient on these tests that were showing up as proficient and more than proficient on the SAT and ACT. And so because the tests were so unreliable in the data, they decided to recalibrate all of it uh to help address that. So there's two areas that we talk about with this testing. The first is that achievement side, the proficiency, and that is do you know it? The other piece is growth, which is talking about if I score I'm just making a number up. If I scored a 15 on the test, the next year I am judged against other kids of my age and grade who scored a 15 on the previous year's test. And how did we do the following year? Did I grow more than kids who started at the same place or less than kids who started at the same place? And so those are two different metrics that we see uh that come from the state. So, a little bit about what's changing for the state tests. What's changing is the benchmarks for proficiency. They've re-calibrated them. So, science, math, and uh reading all correspond to one another. They use the same metrics now uh when you're talking about them. They also unified the performance levels. We used to have five. We're down to four. There were three that were non-proficient and two proficient. Now, we're just at a nice two and two. you're

either proficient or you're not proficient. But what didn't change are the tests. The tests are still rigorous. Um the learning standards that are on them have not changed. This these tests really hold our students to a very high standard. Um and so those are elements that the state has not wavered from or changed. When you look at the proficiency levels online, this is what they look like. Now, I just wanted you to be able to have a visual, but essentially the greens are the proficient colors and you'll see that orangey yellow is the not proficient. So, when you look at the state, here's what happened with the recalibration science scores. This is state averages. Last year, the average science proficiency was at 53%. This year, with the recalibration, it's gone down to 45%. for reading or ELA. Last year the state's proficiency was at 41% and now it's up to 53. Math the state has been at a 28% proficiency and they are up to 38. But all of this while of course we want our state's numbers to be higher. All of this though at least starts painting a more logical picture. Our reading scores are higher than our science scores. That makes more sense. So this is a little bit of that reccalibration and now we're going to talk about how district 15 did. What you see in front of you is the district. The farthest left hand side again the yellow is not proficient and the green is proficient. You will see for English language arts that overall for our district 55% of our students are considered proficient and 45 are not. What is wonderful to see is that if you look and just even notice

the colors, the longer you are here in district 15, the more proficient you become. This is huge. And so you will continue to see these kinds of trends as we look at more specifics, but we are headed in the right direction. It wants it's skipping over it. There it is. Okay. For math, we did not forget about math. Tiff would be incredibly upset. Um, for math, you can see, and we're going to talk about it in a minute. Uh, you can see that our proficiency uh is we have 43% of our students being proficient in math. And you can see there's a wider variability by grade level. There's a few things we've already started doing to address this. Number one is we came to you at the end of spring with a whole new math scope and sequence course alignment to the high school and curricular resources for our math courses at the middle school level. We feel that this is going to help tremendously. um our students have those foundational skills that they need because one of the things we were realizing is kids were missing some they had some holes in what we thought they needed to have in their math and we have been adjusting that and again Tiff is going to talk to that um in just a few minutes but we see what's happening here and we've already started making adjustments even before this data came out and we anticipate that the data will continue to move in in a great direction science science, we are pretty even across the board. It's almost a 50/50 split. Um, and what is interesting about science is that we are finding that our eighth graders are starting to outperform our

fifth graders and that has not historically been the case in the district. Um, but we believe that now that we've had a curriculum, we've gotten more of a curriculum handle for science, um, especially at the middle school level and we're working on assessments, we're already starting to see shifts and we're having conversations, um, because especially at the elementary school, um, we're looking at minute allocation, what are we doing for science, but we know that as that ELA and the reading scores get better, the science is going to come along with it. we have to get those foundational reading and that'll bring the science along. So when you look at the year by year again for ELA and math there's a reorming that happened but you can see we started in the 30th percentile 32.1 and 36.2 back in 2021. We have continued to grow and even with this re-calibration you can see we are now at 55.1% of our students for ELA. This is regardless of the reorming we have continued to grow every single year in our reading scores and our math scores. you'll see a little bit of the reccalibration for science, but even when looking at the um looking at the current scores, um Kristen Orlando, our science guru, when she relooked at all of our scores, trying to norm them similarly, we still grew. So, it's hard to tell in a reorming year how we did compared P to previous years, but even doing that study, we are continuing to grow. Thank you. the growth percentile for uh I AR did not change. So that is the where you

start the peers where you start in your grade and how you grow compared to them. Back in 2022, an average score here in the district was that 46% of students were scoring um were meeting whatever their target was last year or going above. We are now at almost 53%. So again, that means that kids are not only making their growth, they're making and then some. And that's the huge piece because that's where closing gaps comes into place. We can't just meet our yearly targets. We need to go above and beyond our yearly targets. And in math, we started at 44.6 in uh 2022 and we are at over 51%. So again, we are continuing to close gaps, not just maintain our practice. So, with that, uh, we're going to talk a little bit about how we got where we are and where we're headed. I'm going to turn it to T. All right. Um, we are incredibly proud of our teachers and our buildings and the growth that we're seeing. And that really all starts with our school improvement teams. So, our structure for our school improvement teams really has main remained consistent the past couple years. Uh but just talking through a little bit about what that looks like. In the summer, our teams uh our school improvement teams get together and they take a look at the goals of the strategic plan. They take a look at the district set goals and they are able to look at their own data and set building goals. Those building goals are then carried forward in the fall and grade levels and content areas then set goals aligned to their building goals. So we really have that vertical alignment of the goals throughout every stakeholder in the district all leading back up to

those district goals which has been a fantastic process and it really involves that continuous improvement cycle and we uh we're looking forward to looking at our data throughout this year and then at the end of the year we always take a look uh see how we're doing and again thinking about that continuous improvement cycle um how can we continue to improve So a couple of the things that our teaching learning and assessment team have done to support this growth is always it goes back to our road maps. So our road maps are our guiding documents. They giggle because I love a good road map. [laughter] Um so we have set forth um really a clear picture of what we should be teaching and approximately when for our teachers. We really want that clear, consistent curriculum and that similar experience for our students and their education. And we also have those detailed curriculum inventories so teachers know what resources they have as far as core resources as well as supplementals to support their student needs. Those road maps then tie into our work with progress reports. So, because we are teaching the same thing at approximately the same time, we're able to look and assess the same things and really give parents a more detailed look at exactly what is being taught during this the trimesters or quarters based on um elementary or middle school. And we have these clearly defined topics as well as descriptors done by incredible teams of teachers. So, there's consistency across the buildings towards those descriptors. part of that work because we're aligned, we're able to have common assessments where teachers can look and take tests at approximately the same time and be able to see where they're falling in relation to their building and to the district. So, these are new at middle

school for this year um and growing at elementary as well um as we've refined our curriculums and our pacing for that. Um and really then we can look not just at those standardized test results that you saw earlier but also at how our students are doing with the core curriculums um and their performance there's yeah perfect um so one of the tools that we use to do this for certain assessments ments. We have a tool that we use called Parasess. Um while this [clears throat] is not for every assessment, this is selected assessments. What it does, it's an online tool that houses our um assessments and it provides an automatic grading and an item analysis for our teachers. So they have instant feedback to see how their students are performing on tests, how long they're taking, um how they're performing on key standards. it'll do a full standards alignment um immediately what concepts need to be rettaught and they have all that information and can have those collective conversations to support the learning the very next day. Uh it also does uh alignment over time so we can see how our curriculums are working and how all of our different targets are either hitting or need to be adjusted. Um I think it's the next one. Sorry, there it is. Thank you. [laughter] Uh so uh just a little example of that in mathematics specifically. Um we've made significant progress in our road maps and our alignment uh on those assessments and to support the quality instruction. And one of the things we

know is our curriculum and our core really emphasizes the inquiry and the conceptual understanding, but we also recognize the importance of the fluency and the foundational skills. So to strengthen that balance, we've been able to add some supplementary materials including our fact fluency program that our coaches um helped us [clears throat] create at second and third grade as well as um additional fact or fluency practice at fourth and fifth grade and tools like in grades two on up to help support that individual skill reinforcement as well as um aligned skill to the core. So, we're we really take great care in making sure our students are well prepared for the district beyond and their high school careers as well. Um, one of the things we do uh in math specifically is we partner with our math chairs at our three feeding high schools. Um, and we make sure as as we're going through things like a curriculum change that they're aware as well. And we want to make sure that our students are the most successful they can be beyond. So, we're looking forward to um we strengthen those partnerships um getting our teachers in to talk about that vertical alignment beyond just um their eighth grade year.

For example, just because it's timely, we have some of our teachers from our eighth grade geometry

geometry going to the high schools to see what things look like in the high schools so that they can better ensure that they're preparing kids for the next step. So even as as much as going physically to watch teaching happen at the high schools so that we can make sure that we're completely aligned. Yep. Um we're also going to get to see high school algebra 2 when we're [laughter] there so that we can see also what our students are expected to go into and then um have a dialogue with the teachers that are supporting our students in their next steps. So, so we're gonna go back just one

green lights on. We're going to go back one quick slide. Um, responsive practices and assessment. So, this really uh pulled apart the diagnostic data that came alive from our science ISA. So, here you can see the colorcoded green, blue, and that um that reddish color there that dives into the different aspects of the ISA. One particular area to highlight is the green. So, life sciences the adjustments that were made um in that like the work that Kristen Orlando's been doing with the science team digging need to say this is what the um ISA has assessed this is what we're gathering from it how does that carry back to our practices in the classroom how are we readjusting some of those components and you can see the positive impact that's already having so we can see that our science scores um in that reorming had adjusted but when we're drilling down deeper into it what is it really telling us you can see the positive growth that's happening there. Um, some continued things that the team is working on um is improving those hands-on activities within the science classrooms, building up those that access to that as well as then um connecting with writing. So, how are we responding in those science classes in, you know, connecting that ELA world to it, which is an additional piece that's added into the curriculum. So, that's the work coming ahead going forward um as we continue to use the assessment to drive what's happening and what are we doing moving forward. So great things are on the horizon this year. We are um embedding um and focusing on an ELA curriculum K5 comprehensive review. This particular information we're really honing in on what are the grade levels that we're focusing on and what's that timeline looking like. So this fall we've had a team of teachers that have come together to uh work alongside with the the reading league to support what does it look like from an ELA perspective? what are those additional pieces that need to be in place as we're looking at various resources that we're looking to adopt and move forward with. Uh so this year

the fall 25 we've done that we've engaged in that learning process. The hope is this spring and winter that we will engage in a pilot. Um and then the hope is to bring forward some material that we'd like to um have your approval approval on to move forward for adoption in August of 26. Um and then that uh K one two and three the following year we'll do the learning and really bringing that committee together what are what's the information that we need to learn and then do a um pilot in the spring of 27 with August 27 that implementation the key factor here is that it's been a collective partnership TLA alongside multilingual department to dig in um as we're going through this process what's that comprehensive lens that we want to focus Skip ahead.

You want to look forward? I want to go back one. No, that's back. Back one. Back.

So, here's the why. Um, within that, so a comprehensive ELA review is going to hit all of those key components of ELA instruction. So, it's foundational skills, it's writing, it's vocabulary, it's grammar, it's reading comprehension, it's all of those pieces to put forward in that ELA review. Um, why 35? We have a solid uh core programming K2 right now. So, we want to continue to build on that foundational skills. 35 is lacking that area. So, we want we want to continue to enhance and build that support. This is an opportunity to also when we look at a comprehensive lens build in the um content uh science and social studies. Many times in this comprehensive review you'll find various different um concepts that are attached to that that are covering science and social studies. So this is a way to have that interdisciplinary um components embedded and then it also staggers the upfront cost. So to be fiscally responsible um and and be cognizant of that there's that slow roll out process. So, one of the things is that, you know, I keep thinking about uh I think it was last month or a couple of months ago, Wenda had asked about what have we done, what have we done in the past few years to make this kind of change. And I have to tell you, it's incredibly hard to try and capture it. Um but when trying to when trying to um look at those things in kind of the ways that we've been organized around high expectations alignment and data informed all of the things we're talking about are just pieces of a much larger puzzle of work that's been happening for the past handful of years in district 15. We have been working diligently on getting a

guaranteed viable curriculum. That did not exist when Dr. Hines stepped into this uh into this district. We did not have it. Teachers were doing different things. Teachers had older curriculum. Teachers weren't necessarily standards aligned. You know, all of that were standards aligned. We can give you a scope and sequence of when we're hitting learning targets and when we're hitting certain sta uh standards. We can show you how at every grade level we're spiraling those topics so that we are ensuring that students get a full range of experiences every single grade level they experience. Here in district 15 we do champs. We want to make sure our expectations about learning, about behavior, about um the ways we show up in our building. We want to make sure that that is set and clear. And we want families to be able to follow along with the work that's happening. Which is why this year um 35 has updated report cards that go along with those scopes and sequences between full day kindergarten um middle school. We have completely shifted as a district from from even when I started here the year before Dr. Hines. It is a completely different experience here in district 15. and to say um this is no small feat. This is absolutely due to the work that you as the board of ed have done in setting those high expectations and standards of us as a district. It has to do with Dr. Hines having the vision and leadership to be able to say here is what we need to do. It has to do with every single department that works in district 15, whether it's technology giving us data, whether it's multilingual, ensuring that the kids that are um coming in with a wide variety of linguistic backgrounds are able to not only show up and learn, but they're able to excel. And that is

happening across the board every day here in the district. And um these are just some of the pieces. It's hard to encapsulate the totality of everything that has changed. Um I know from the lens of TLA between Tiff, Shane, Kristen, Megan Price, Julie who is up here, um you know, celebrating all of our athletes and Britt Henry. We are trying to give an experience here in district 15 where kids leave here and go to high school and can do whatever they want. they can go down whatever path interests them. And this this is the totality of the work. Since 2023, that's only 2 years ago, we have made 19% of growth in proficiency for our primary readers. 19 districts dream dream getting to a double digit is absolutely the ultimate goal. The fact that we have doubled that is absolutely I I don't think anybody could EXPECT THAT [applause] and that is absolutely 100% due to the teachers that show up to work here every single day and the clinicians and the building administrators the people who come and work with our kids daily. We have made with early math 11% of growth in two years with map math and reading. While those numbers without the reorm 4 and nine are still awesome, the fact is we are outperforming other districts in this country and in this state. And when you look at the growth targets, we are making almost 7% of growth between three years

three years of postcoavid on the highest most rigorous test in the country and we are not maintaining we are growing and that is just such kudos to everybody involved and I every time we talk about this people just nod and go oh that's great this is huge the exhaustion that everybody feels this is what happens when you when you do this kind of work we are making tremendous mendous growth in this district and the fact is it's not going to stop. We are going to keep this momentum going. There's still tons more work to do but we have set a foundation where all of our goals we get to regal come up with new goals now because we are already meeting our 2028 goals. We've met them in 2025. Who does that? We get to set new goals because we're there and we're ready for it. And so, um, you know, before I say anything about questions, I just want to say thank you. This work is absolutely absolutely vital. And you, all of you here, everybody in this room, everybody in this district are making a monumental difference for the 12,000 kids that show up here every day. And so, um, with that, I want to say thank you. And, um, any questions? you know, it's an oldfashioned Wordle. Uh, thanks to Brit. Uh, [laughter] we these are we we put I believe they will correct me if I'm wrong. We put a bunch of the the actual documentation that we use on a daily basis and like schools plan from and use and we threw it in to see what words came up more often. And when you look, it's systems and learning and communication and instruction and framework and feedback. I mean, these are it's it's not tests, it's not scores, it's all of the pieces that make

learning happen. So, and you made this happen. We talked about it on Monday. You know, you set the gauntlet down for TLA. We will achieve. [laughter] [laughter] Uh, with that, any questions though? No. Yes. No. Thank you. Incredible work. What said it's good to see some movement. It's really nice and it feels really good and I hope the teachers feel it cuz it's hard to see it especially after co Yeah. get this kind of traction.

Yeah. And when so many districts right now are really struggling and so to see this kind of growth at a time period where districts really are stagnant in a lot of ways, this is huge. It's huge. I just kept telling you just it's happening. It's happening. It's happening. Just be patient. You know, this doesn't these this type of movement doesn't happen overnight. But it's year over year and and now we're really like my grandmother used to say cooking with gas. We are cooking with gas. We are cooking with gas. So that's it's very exciting to see. Be interested to see what next year looks like. Stay and grow.

We will grow that [laughter] what Tiff showed about that paras. It's crazy. You can really see. so quickly and easily. Who got it? Who didn't? What class? What question threw everybody off? The question analysis is huge for a teacher. We've been talking to about formative assessment and how we need it so desperately for seven years to really help the teachers get targeted with what they're teaching and not spend time teaching things that our kids have already mastered or teaching, you know, teaching it to kids that know it or that those that don't spend more time. and this paras this little slice of p little slice of pear um that that is going to help that's going to be the the really diff the real difference maker

the dayto-day shift teachers can make that's for all the different subjects for ELA math science they have the pair assessment yeah we started with math science at the middle school u math and science are also at the upper elementary we're just starting it this is really the first year of it so we're building it out and like anything online, you got to we write the assessments, we take it from the curriculum, we tweak it. Um, but it's about finding the right questions and making sure they're asked the right way so that kids can demonstrate their work. So, this is new for us. So, the the pair assessment is customizable then to whatever curriculum you have because you do the customization,

right? They're writing the question analysis, right? So, then they So, how often do these assessments are they given to the kids? Is it like weekly go two weeks? No, for the PAR assess our goal um at middle school it's really once a quarter that we're looking at them. They've chosen those common assessments. There's a lot of other assessments. Some teachers do use pair more often, but there's other tools that they have to formatively go along the way. Um so anywhere from three to four is the goal per year. We really want a nice balance of assessments. Um it doesn't have to be all pair. that's not the goal um by there but really some uh some teachers really see the benefits and are using it.

So so the the pair uh software is is mostly for data analytics to provide feedback to the teachers in a quick and easy to digest fashion so they can adjust quickly. Yeah. So we build the questions within the platform and then when the teachers give uh the tests uh much of it depending on the type of question is autoscored and they have it instantly in front of them um as the students are taking the test how how they're doing. Okay. So teaching and learning are the ones that actually put together the test questions so they're the same across the board

with the with the support of teachers. Yes. It's really about those teacher committees um coming together to help. Uh but then we um Kristen and Britz and Megan um our team do a lot of the building as well as myself and Shane. Um we build the [clears throat] questions within the system and tweak from there. Yeah, that's nice. Currently what we're doing also is then working with the administrative team at the building level and their their uh team of teachers and also then once they're done with that. Is it green? Can you hear? It's green.

It's green. It's just not maybe close enough. I will just spill over. [laughter] Um, so then once the assessments are done, we will go inhouse and have a conversation with either individual teachers or teams or their administrative team and talk through what do you notice? What are some ahas? What happened? Is it down? Drill down to the question type. Was it worded differently that that caught all the kids up? And so then we go back and have some other conversations. We were meeting yesterday with an ELA team and um they noticed that well the kids understood the question but they threw in the word not in the question type and so it threw them all off. Well then that's a reteing moment that you go directly back and have that conversation. You can also with this toolkit it get back to teachers and students so that they can redo. So again there's that formative lens that it will capture within the system how the students answered, how they grew, what was the reteing components involved in that. So we see that growth over time. So, it's really an a great tool for growth and to see where how are they performing and what do we need to do differently.

Great. Thanks. Yeah. Congrats. Thank you. Very exciting. Thank you. [applause] I just wish Emily was more enthusiastic. I know. Really? [laughter] The whole team. It's my No, the passion the passion is outstanding. Really love it.

All right. Item 5.2, presentation of our audit results from FY25. Thank you for your patience. Good evening, Board of Ed. I'm Diana McCleskkey. I'm the chief school business official here. I'm here with uh Anthony Fishota, the director of fiscal services. And tonight uh we also have with us Lindseay Fish. She's a principal at Sikitch. They're are independent auditors and they're new this year. And um Lindsay is going to go over the results of the audit.

Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me to your meeting this evening to present to you the results of your audit for the fiscal year ended June 30th, 2025. Um, just a little bit of background about myself and and my firm that I work for. Um, I'm a principal at Sikitch. We are a top 30 national accounting firm. Um, located here in Neapville, headquartered in Neapville, Illinois. I have been with Sikitch for about 15 years. My entire career. I have worked on governments or audits of local governments including school districts. Um, our team works on hundreds of audits of local governments throughout the state of Illinois. That's what we do all year round. Um, so enough about me. Let's talk a little bit about your audit. I've got, you know, 5 to 10 minute presentation for you this evening. Um, my comments will begin surrounding the annual financial report. I believe you have bound copies in front of you. So, I'll try to give you some page numbers as I go throughout. I think there's some, yeah, some numbers up on the screen as well, but kind of small probably. So, I figured we could look at the hard copies we've got in front of us. As

real quick, um, so the big report is the audit that Lindsay will be walking through. Um, the tabs will be in the order. um that Lindsay will be uh discussing all the information. So, she'll name page numbers. Just look to those tabs, match up the page numbers. What you'll be seeing on the screen is also the same pages that you'll be seeing in your book except for the first part, the management discussion, and analysis. That was that's a multi-page report that Lindsay will be touching on a few topics on. So, um just wanted to walk you through.

Yep. So, I'll kind of start from Yeah. start to finish as far as where your tabs are. So the first thing I would like to cover um is just an overview of the audit process. So you're required to have an independent audit annually. Um our audit was performed in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards as well as government auditing standards which establish the framework for your um audit. So we evaluate internal controls, we test transactions, verify balances and ensure compliance with state laws and regulations as well. So the goal of your annual audit is to provide reasonable assurance that the district's financial statements are presented fairly and free of material misstatement. So if you do flip into that annual financial report, your first tab will probably come to the independent auditor's report. I know I kind of have them flipped a little bit. So we'll see which one we we come to first, but audit opinion is page number one on Sikage letterhead. So pleased to report that the district received an unmodified opinion on the financial statements. This could also be referred to as a clean opinion. So this is the type of opinion that you want to receive. Congratulations to the district on the receipt of that unmodified opinion. This means that the financial statements present fairly in all material respects the financial position of the school district in accordance with generally accepted auditing principles. A few additional key points as well. Our audit had no material weaknesses or significant deficiencies in internal control. We don't provide an opinion on internal control, but we do analyze your internal controls to review for any potential material weaknesses, significant deficiencies or deficiencies. We also had no compliance findings noted as a result of the audit as well. So, you know, the district's accounting and recordkeeping just, you know, practices continue reflects uh sound oversight and attention to detail. So from there, after the independent auditor's report, if you flip forward a few pages, you'll come to the management discussion and analysis. So the page numbering is a little off. Hopefully your tabs will help, but it's page number MDNA1.

That's the pink, right? The pink should be your first tab.

So this section as it's titled management discussion analysis, it is prepared by management. Um, and if there's one part of this large audit report that you're going to read, I would say start with a management discussion and analysis. Um, and and why I say that is it gives a little more background behind the why of why these numbers are changing year-over-year. You know, within the audit report yourself, you it's you just see the numbers and the facts and there's not really a story behind the numbers. So, that's where the management discussion analysis comes in. There's a little bit of a story behind it. Again, prepared by management gives you some year-over-year comparison um and explains, you know, key changes throughout the year. From there, I'm going to flip to page number seven and eight. So, this is the beginning of your financial statements. So, page seven is your statement of net position. I always call this, you know, your your 10 or 20,000 foot view of your financial position. Um, and the reason that I say that is because this statement pulls in um a lot of long-term focused items that you only have to compile annually for your audit. you're you're required to put all this together to get that unmodified opinion, but it's not something that you you know generally use in operations day-to-day. So, this includes items like capital assets. It also includes long-term liabilities such as, you know, pension obligations, outstanding debt, and items of that nature. Um, the focus would be on page number eight or your net position. So, total net position at year end was 47.8 million. net position did decrease by about 6.9 million. If you flip the page one page from there, um you'll see the change in net position. The district was also required to implement a new accounting standard this year called Gazsby's statement number 101 on compensated absences. So, this changed how the district is required to account for liabilities for um sick and vacation time that employees have not yet used. So historically you just acrewed for

vacation because that's something that you'd pay out under this new standard. You got to take a look at sick time. While that's not necessarily paid out when an employee leaves, you'd have to estimate how much you think your employees will use. So a new standard there that you're required to implement. You know, no change to our opinion because of that, but you will see that there was a change in accounting principle restatement due to that new accounting standard. Next pages are your governmental funds, balance sheet, and income statement. So these take out those long-term capital assets, take out the long-term debt and has more of that current focus on your financial statements. So I will discuss page 14 and 15. That's your statement of revenues, expenditures, and changes in fund balance. Total revenues for fiscal year 25 were 259.5 million primarily from property taxes of 162.5 million and state and federal funding of 84 million. And then total expenditures were 311.2 million largely for instructional services and support services. The district ended the year with a total fund balance of 91 million which was a decrease of 36.7 million. So of this you know decline of 36.7 million um if you look at the capital projects fund column which is two columns over from the total column um there is a draw down of about 24.8 8 million in total for that fund and primarily just relates to some planned capital spending from previous debt issuances. Also had strong investment income this year as well totaling about 6 million. So that concludes my comments on this report. I just wanted to touch on the ISBY AFR. So, it's the ISV annual financial report and what that is, it's another [clears throat] standard form that every school district is required to fill this in. And it's essentially kind of a regurgitation of all the information that's in your annual financial report, but it's just in a

standard format that gets submitted to ISBY. Um, but within that is a financial profile summary score that ISBY will calculate based upon the information that is entered into that form. Anthony, I don't know if you if you flag those. I did not flag it. It is the large stapled packet. It's about 10 pages in. Um, if you go about 10 pages in, it's page four of the actual AFR. It's also up on the screen. It's probably easier to see than the other slides. You can you can see it. So, those are small numbers.

Just, you know, high level. You don't necessarily have to have it open, but I'll I'll continue to go over this. So, the financial profile summary score pulls in, you know, five key metrics here. So, it looks at um your fund balance to revenue ratio, expenditures to revenue ratio, days cash on hand, short-term borrowing maximum remaining, as well as your long-term debt margin remaining. Um each of those is weighted a little bit differently, and then you get a profile summary score based upon all of those metrics. So, the district's score fell within the financial review category this year. A 3.35 out of a total of four is the highest you can get. Um, so this is one level below the financial recognition category, but it does still represent, you know, stable financial operations with just some areas for monitoring. So last year you're in recognition. This year you did fall down one. So I just wanted to kind of talk about why that happened. So changes from the previous year include a decrease in the rating for expenditures to revenue ratio. So that's the the second one there on the page. And you did have a planned, you know, draw down of fund balance this year. your your budget planned for some spending. So, that's not necessarily a surprise to see that one go down. And then number five, your long-term debt margin remaining. You did issue new debt this year, so that did result in a decline in that rating as well. You're still well within your debt margin, but that's just how they calculate it. So, 3.35, again, stable operations, just areas for monitoring for fund balance ratios. um pretty, you know, kind of a common thing we've seen is a lot of people slipping down potentially on their categories because of the ESRE funding, the the COVID relief funding is pretty much all spent at this point for everyone. So, you know, losing that high source of revenue, just having to take a, you know, a step back and look at your operations and how things are set up with that revenue source no longer there. So, that concludes my presentation. would just like to thank the administration and the business office for their professionalism and

cooperation throughout the audit process. You know, as we mentioned, this was the first year with us working with the district. So, a bit a bit of a, you know, get to know you type year. Um, however, it went extremely well. I was I was giving them my praise. I one of the best first year audits I have truly worked with. So, it was really good first year and look forward to continuing to work with the district and I'd be happy to answer any questions. Kudos to Anthony. Anthony ran the audit. Really? So, thank you for everything you did. It's a tough It's a lot of work. YEAH. [applause] Any questions?

Thank you. That was very informative and very clearly laid out. So, really appreciate this being a first presentation with the board as well and uh grateful for that. Yes. Thank you. All right. Yeah. Great. Great. And Anthony, I appreciate these tabs. [laughter] Yeah, we would have never found them otherwise. Was very helpful. [laughter] All right, up next, our 2024 item 5.3. Our 2024 health life safety report with Wald. Yeah.

Okay. Okay. Presentation number two is uh the 10-year healthife safety survey conducted by W Architects that we have here tonight. Um sitting next to me is Jim Kaplanis, our director of facilities. This is Mike Iicorn with Wold and Justin Went with W. So they'll we'll kind of tag team on this, but we can go right into the first slide and I'll turn it over to Mike.

Uh thank you Diana. Um, thank you board for having us here tonight um to present these the summary and findings. Um, we're certainly honored to serve the district and certainly congratulations on the student achievements and I think what we're doing here is really going to create that safe environment uh for for your teaching and learning for your students. Um, the health life safety survey does happen every 10 years. Uh, the last one was completed in uh 2015. So here we are in 2025. Um we conducted the walkthroughs uh in spring and summer of this year. And what that entails is our architects walking through the building looking at components, the architectural components and engineers looking at the systems um electrical, mechanical, plumbing, and we're looking for um deficiencies relative to the health and life safety um requirements of the state. And that includes um uh deficiencies that need corrective action. And so this list are those deficiencies and then the recommended corrective action and and also the cost estimates for each of those items. Um and those items are put into categories A, B, and C. So category A is urgent. Those need to be completed within the first year. Category B need to be completed in the first five years. In category C, as we were walking the buildings, there's other things that we're recommending as improvements. Um, but those are not required. Um, and those uh include um for example um for a might include um electrical uh improvement to exit signs or emergency lighting that needs is need of replacement over the next five years um and over the next year. And then category B, things like doors, uh, deteriorated, um, CA cabinets, things

like that. And then category C are pavement and ADA recommendations. So the total um, in each category, category A is 491,000, category B uh, 27.8 million, category C 4.2 million for a total of 32.5 million. Now the different categories you know we look at the ABC but also as we break it down we have the exterior uh components architectural uh fire protection plumbing mechanical electrical and um mechanical relates to uh replacement of uh RTUs or exhaust fans um things that we know um just a snapshot today we know that those need to be corrected within the next 5 years and in no way is this meant to say that you're buildings are unsafe. It's really to say that over the next 5 years, you should be looking at these and replacing them and making improvements. So, with that, um I should also point out that this is included in your uh master uh capital funding plan as well, which Diana um has presented previously. Okay. Any questions related to that? Otherwise, I think we'll keep moving on.

I have a quick question. And Mike, could you give me an example of what uh when you refer to architectural exterior components, what type of what type of things would fall into that? Jess, yeah, I I think the architectural exterior would be leaks, uh tuck pointing work, uh cracked brick, maybe cracked sidewalks, those types of items. Perfect. Thanks. So, if we can take a minute and I was just 2014. Yeah. When this report was done. Sorry. In 2014 when this report was done, that number was 158 million. Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. So, I when I arrived in 2019, they had they had shaved off 25 million of 158. And then we've gotten after, you know, over $und00 million worth of more than $100 million worth of work. So that number I just kept saying to everybody, I assure you it is going to be a lot less. And with a a district of 20 schools, 1.7 million square feet of property, you know, both of you as experts, Mike and and Justin, you know, how are you how are you feeling about that number? How should the board be feeling about that number? Um,

yeah. Well, certainly you have over the last 10 years, there's been a lot of improvements since um 2019. there's been a big bump right over the from all the work that's been done. Um and certainly the like I said the buildings are not are are not unsafe. They have um needs or again improvements over the next 5 years. It's not untypical for school buildings as we walk through them, you know, kind of with a fine tooth comb. You have architects inspecting things, engineers. Um it's really another set of eyes. It's helping um Diana and Jim as they plan out their work the next five-year plan which is very solid which we'll continue to update. So I you know this is really buildings are in good condition. It's really taking that you know uh sharpening the the pencil even further and making that you know that greater improvement and making sure that you're ahead of the game and not kicking that can um down the road. I think we should emphasize um priority aid

that that that amount of less than a half a million dollars is like nothing compared considering we have 22 20 24 buildings. That's really good. Yeah, that's not right. And and Justin will get into some more details about that. So yeah, if you want to expound on like the A like really what you find out in the A.

Yeah, I mean most of the A's were electrical type items. Um kind of onesie twzies. We've got an emergency light out. We're missing an exit sign somewhere. There should be one. Um maybe there's not a pull station at an exterior door. Um so I mean it was like things that are $2,000 a pop. So that just kind of added up. Uh the other thing we saw was doors. Maybe doors are not operating the way they should. Um so those need to be addressed to make sure people get out of the building safely if something happened. But again, um, a district of this size, walking all the buildings and having that many A's is compares very favorably to other places we've done these surveys.

To add in on on all these categories, A's are small u in nature, but uh important enough to hit the A level. Many of those issues we can take care of ourselves now that they're identified. um and they will be taken care of uh mostly ourselves or within district or you know small projects with outside contractors. The bees u which and we're going to get we have some picture we're going to get into all these categories a little bit more but the bees are you know the dilapidated uh cabinets countertops the ceilings the floors in the classrooms and then additional HVAC and and roof projects that are coming to their end of life. So, those uh are on the 5-year plan, and we'll get a little bit more into that here in a couple slides. And then the C's are uh your ADAs and your your pavement on the outside that doesn't really qualify for uh the AB level. And we'll also talk to that here in a few minutes.

Let's go to the next slide.

So, I was part of the team that did the walkthrough. So, I'm going to walk through some um just kind of examples of things we saw as we're going through. Uh on the screen here is an example of uh exterior pavement that's cracking. Uh so, this happens when the pavement gets old, it settles. Um so, there's a tripping hazard there. Uh this actually goes in as a priority C recommendation. Anything exterior paving related um is qualified as a C. So, this is an example something that is in that C category. And before you move on, this is a great example because I didn't know where they took this picture and when we were prepping, it turns out that this is Mary and Jordan and that is on next year's uh list along with five more schools. Uh many of their uh items that they found last summer have already been taken care of because they are part of uh the 12 projects that you guys saw that were taken down around the district for outside. And the importance of that is it requires DUP funding and not life safety funding because it's a sea level item. So we're taking care of that as our original five-year plan. So a lot of this stuff is just disappearing as fast as they show up. But this will be taken care of next summer. This is an example of priority B. Uh so this is some step cracking uh that we see often times in school buildings where there's masonry. Um this happens when things settle. uh nothing that is alarming but it is a B category something that should be dealt with in the next 5 years.

This would be in the architectural uh category. Uh this is another B example. Um there is quite a few cabinets and counters throughout the district that are delaminating and look like this. Um so I know this is something that Jim will be hitting with his 5 10 year plan. Uh but a couple examples here. Countertop you can say is clearly delaminating in front of the sink there. And then we got a a cabinet door that is um the facings coming off. On this slide the a special note that these are things that from the original plan back when the 186 million was put together had to be moved off. So when you look at a future slide, this is something that we're going to need life safety uh funding in order to uh tackle. And um it but it's exciting because a project like this uh knocks out some of the ADA because if you do uh give us the funding then that sink for example becomes an AD ADA appropriate sink as well as taking care of the safety hazards associated with it. And then the cabinets like we've been doing throughout the district have been switched over to mobile units. So it takes us into the next level where they're gone forever. That area is spruced up with carpet, paint, and everything else. And now you have a flexible room for teachers to move around. So we're really hoping to do that.

Another example of a B category. Uh this is something we find pretty frequently in back of house spaces, custodial rooms, mechanical spaces, um just abandoned pipe penetrations. And so this needs to get grouted or sealed up to maintain that kind of fire seal between the spaces. Um but it is a B category. is something we're looking to recommend getting done with the next 5 years. This is an ADA item. So, this is a priority C. Um I think yeah, so these are classroom door entries that don't have the required clearance at the doors to get in. Um per ADA, if you are on the pole side of the door, you need at least 18 in at the latch to your obstruction or your nearest wall to be able to get that door open. As you can see here, you've got maybe two at one of the pictures and maybe 10 in the other. So, we're falling short of that. Um, this type of correction is pretty involved. It involves moving doors. You're impacting ceilings, floors, whatever's on the inside of the room, whatever's on the outside could be lockers. Um, so it is kind of a messy renovation, but uh, like I said, it's an ADA item falls into the C category. And because it's a C category, then that's also D sub funding versus life safety. So we uh have um 1.1 million in the five-year plan from this from the start from when we brought this forward that this type of work is going to be accomplished. We'll stretch that those dollars as far as we can and get as much done. It's not required work because it's a C category, but it's definitely uh targeted and and has been targeted to be completed in uh summer 27. And then the last example I have for you all is an example of a priority A. Um so here we have multiple locking mechanisms

on a bathroom door. Um in order for us to be compliant, we need to have one fluid motion to get out of a space in the event of an emergency. Um we see this pretty frequently on staff bathrooms. Um, and so something we see often, uh, but is a quick fix. Um, but this is an example of a priority a we found. And, and that is staff bathrooms, not on student bathrooms. So, yeah. And they say use this latch. Why are there Why are there three dead bolts on [laughter] there? Somebody Somebody's really paranoid about somebody walking in on them. [laughter]

So, so they they they in this example, they'll have a shared key on the bottom and then at the latch actually shows vacant or not vacant on top. So, the the bottom one isn't really secure because anyone could walk in. So, once they do the dead bowl, someone knows they're in the bathroom. We're going to have to come up with some solutions on this. But, um it is very common uh and we inherited this. This is a common retrofit we see. Tom, is this the bathroom you use? He'll never talk. [laughter] Don't tell.

Okay. So, so, so those are um pretty much examples of the A's, the B's, and the C's. We're going to move into the facility master plan. Just another just uh Jim's eyes on it. I presented this last month, but is any more questions on the ABS and C's right now? Go ahead.

So, I wasn't I wasn't here last time, but for just a quick highlight, uh summer 25 FY26 that's completed and and done on uh on budget, under budget, actually. Uh summer 26 is falling in line. You'll see one the HVAC line will be put in front of you that was below budget. So, numbers are still trending good for next year and and that's funded. U summer 27 FY28 uh will require and and Diane will talk about that as far as going on for some D sub funding. Next slide. Exc. Next slide. You want

No, that was Dub and these are what we're showing you on the cabinets and whatnot. This category covers a lot of things that um were shifted out, but uh this is where your life safety uh funding will you'll be going for life safety bonds in order to make a lot of this happen in summer 28 or 29 because the next DUP funding isn't available until uh FY31. Okay, next slide. Um yeah, so this is the final slide. Again, this is this is what Jim's referring to. We showed this last month. Again, the green is that at the end of this fiscal year, we anticipate uh selling 26 million of the DAB bonds. That's part of the um the 40 that we had in our in the plan. Um so we sold 14 last year back back in I believe was February of earlier of this year, I mean, of 25. So then we'll sell 26 the end of this year. And then in order to accomplish what Jim was referring to and some of those in the 20 summers of 27 and 28, we will need to sell another 40 million of uh health life safety and Liz Hennessy went into depth about that last month. And then then looking out in U 29, we'll we can come we can sell another 10 million of DEB because some will roll off. So again, that's the capital plan right now and those are the we've kind of gone now more into explanation this evening about the health life safety portion of that. So any other questions?

It's wonderful news. When do you think that we're I mean like this is looking at the last uh slide it takes you through 2030. Post 2030 is that when we're going to get into our kind of just maintenance level, you know, expenditures. Well, maintenance level expenditures are ongoing and that's part of the HVAC roof projects and whatnot. Are you I guess I I guess what I'm saying is it looks like

so fiscal year 2025 there's a lot of referendum work a lot of you know the capital plan items and then you know the referendum work kind of ends from that point moving forward but then soon thereafter we have the uh you know life safety items that are not covered by the referendum expenditures. they're they're in in essence new particularly these um you know item B's you know where there's a significant amount. So once those things are completed I assume already we've done the referendum stuff we're then done with the life safety what happens after that so I I I think about I'm going off of memory but about 125 million was the referendum work as far as the additions and whatnot. it was $186 million total package. So, we've already started and and many of this those dollars are already maintenance. The 12 paving projects that we did this last summer and and the two uh uh HVAC projects, those are all uh knocking things off of what would show up on uh a life safety plan. So, their numbers are already being reduced. the the plan, the five-year plan is really taking a lot of the things they identified is already on that plan and being worked out. And then some of that uh doesn't show up on their plan because we are our plan's a little more in depth when it comes to HVAC and roofing, but they can write an amendment to add that in. So, all of this here that you're looking at is really maintenance. And so it started and then we're we're doing over the next two summers which is funded with DUB. What will ultimately be the your your guys' decision is the life safety for summer 28, summer 29. Do you want to take and get rid of all that dilaminated cabinets

and countertops and all that other stuff? That's that next step. But that is on the list. The question is when do we get it done? And that comes down to money. And then I think after that 2030 is the interiors of all of our classrooms and there's thousands of classrooms beyond the laminate, you know, the laminate that you're going to get after with the sinks, the cabinetry, the bookshelves, all of that. We have to do floors, we have to do ceilings and classrooms. So, we told the community like when we were building the referendum plan, shopping it around that we'd have a 5-year facility plan, we'd have a 10 year, you roll one year off, you add another year. We're starting to identify what's happening to your question after 2030. It's going to be costing out what it's going to and we have a a general sense of what it's going to cost per classroom

and then we're going to start building that into the post 2030 work. I think the other thing we're going to try to need to get at is what's going to be in the the on&m budget for general maintenance. And I think that was part of your question because I I I guess we've been, you know, so whether it be the DEB bonds, is the intention moving forward to access those bonds, you know, that's our recommendation. Yeah. To to pay things off of

otherwise the work will stop and we're not at a point where the work can stop. There's still work to do. We've done a an unbelievable amount of work. I mean truly in you know five or so years but we we still have another I mean this 10-year plan right we've you've mapped it out well and then we need year 11 your year 12 year 13 and that's what we promised we we we told the community that we were you know no new no the next superintendent and future boards should never find themselves in the position that I did that we did and and this is how we're going to you know live up to our promise we're going to continue to develop these plans to guide the work and then you know how much money you've got to dedicate from the general on and m budget andor other revenue streams. It's another thing we talked about during the campaign.

Yeah. And these health life safety bonds will be another another way in which to keep the work going right. Got a plan. We know where we're going. Yep. So the the biggest ticket item here underneath the uh the B items is the architectural total. So are those uh architectural items all interior? Okay. So those are like the the cracks in the brick and a lot of it is the cabinetry that you saw. Um flooring, ceilings, um dilapidated finishes, those types of things. Okay. Yeah.

With HVAC and roofing. [laughter] HVAC not the HVAC is in a separate category. He's asking about architectural. Is the HVAC under the mechanical? Correct. Yes. Those are big price tags as you can big price tags. So does the architectural also include trying to open up those doorways? Um in the priority C. Oh, those are all in the C. Yes. Okay. All right. Thanks. All right. Wonderful. It's a great appreciate your work and your partnership. We just keep on keep on keeping on with all this this great facility work. Thank you.

Yeah. So, in December there'll be a your your application comes in December and then we'll have to Yeah. You want to mention that? Yeah. So, in uh December at the December board meeting, you'll be asked to uh approve the application for life safety. So, we take this as a package and we submit it to um via the district to Isby. They review and they approve it. Um and then you get the the stamp of approval at which point you um the clock starts ticking again for the 10 years, but you've done everything required um to be in compliance. So, that will be in December. Great. [clears throat] Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's exciting to see.

Thanks for coming. two big pieces of work come to fruition and all the pieces falling together between the academic report and this facilities. Yes, it's huge. Huge. Okay. Uh I think we can tax levy. Yeah. The fun continues for Diana and Anthony. [laughter] She's still smiling. Bye. Thank you. Okay. So, um already introduced ourselves earlier. Wait, who are you?

So, we'll just jump right in again um into the 2025 tax levy because this one is a big one and we have to present it every November and then in December the board uh approves uh what we're suggesting. So uh my present pres our presentation my presentation tonight is very similar to the same format um that I've used in previous presentations. Um so for people who are not familiar with the levy I give a background on how the levy is calculated and there's a timeline and these are all ISBY regulations that we all school districts have to follow. So tonight we present the levy and I'll go into what the levy means. Um it has to be presented 20 days prior to the adoption which is gets adopted adopted hopefully next um in the December 10th board meeting. But tonight we'll ask the board to approve a resolution estimating the aggregate levy for the year 2025 in the action items. And then again next month there won't be a truth and taxation hearing because my recommendation is less than 5%. If you go over 5% you uh you have something called a uh that hearing and then next month we'll have the adoption of the levy and the resolutions and then we have to get it uh to the Cook County clerks by the last Tuesday in December which is December 30th of this year. Next slide. So some notables. Um, you probably have all heard because I've mentioned it before that uh the second installment of the Cook County tax bills were delayed. They normally are due on August 1st. They would have been mailed out end of June. Um so due to some s technology upgrades at uh between the assessor treasurer and

um clerk's office they um they were terribly delayed and recent news is that they will be mailed any day now. So you should be getting them and then the due date is December 15th. So, we're hoping that as soon as they get mailed out that uh mortgage companies will release some of that money because as we presented a couple months ago, we did have to borrow take out some tax anticipation warrants of 25 million in order to to to tide us over. And um we shouldn't have to do that. So, um so that's what's coming. And if you could all pay your tax bills right away, we'd appreciate it. [laughter]

And if the Cook County Treasures Office would please release the money to the school districts, too, because it doesn't come your your your checks don't come right to us. They have to get processed. So, we hope that they also will release the money a ASAP. Mhm. Um with lost interest earnings, right?

I know. And that's my secret. That's what I'm going for. All the interest because the TIF money, as we've talked about earlier, that didn't get released. some of it got released, not all of it. So, there's money that could have been that is sitting on a bank account that could have been ours. So, the and when I go over the history, the the EAV um for so we got the final of a year ago, the levy we presented a year ago. I got those final numbers in like September, I believe it was, which is late. And you'll see the history of the trend. So the EAV decreased for the last levy, but not the current assessment that you got now. That that ballooned, right? That went high. So you'll see what I'm getting. You'll see in the following slides, but the new property came in nice and high, almost 25 million, but you'll also see that that was a high um since uh the last 10 years, except for the year that some tiff rolls off. Tiff tiffs rolled off. Uh, I contacted our friend Reed um with the village and he thinks that some of the properties that rolled came on the rolls which Cook County never can tell you what is in this new property. We think it's the large could be part this is part part of it the large industrial property by St. Michael Cemetery on Elgangquin Road near Harper. The old Weber property on Selstrom Drive has two new industrial buildings and the VW dealership on Rand Road near Lake Cook. So those would be significant additions to our tax roles. The CPI from last December is 2.9 and no tiffs rolling off on this levy next year probably well definitely Rand Road and Kirchaf Al and Rolling Meadows. So the next slide shows the history and this is what I'm kind of talking about

in the yellow is the the trienal assessments. So in 25 everybody in Northern Cook, Northern Cook, your assessment went way up, but in 24, so these are the actuals and you can see every year before the trienal reassessment, the the assessments went down. So, um, but that's history now. You're only looking at your current assessment. Your eyes are popping out because it went so high. Um, but again, the new property that came in on off of the levy of 24 was 24,785. And you'll see that's pretty high if you go across except for in 19 when we had 47 million, but that's when the Dundy Road tiff rolled off. So nice surprise that we have that much new property on our rolls. And um so the other thing uh I'll just you can see here is you can jump down to my proposed cap last year was 156,178. I don't always come this close but um the actual came in at 156 351. Um, so the change the percent change in increase in the actuals was 3.99 which makes sense because the CPI was 3.4. So and so the other half% was the new property.

Okay. Do you want to go over this the terms you want to give us up to that? [clears throat]

So we're just going to go over some of the regular terms that we use. The levy is the amount that we're asking for. That's the amount that we're coming to you today for. um and it will not be the final amount that we get from the from the county. Uh the limiting tax rate is the calculated total allowed tax rate for all the operating funds. Bond and interest tax rate, that's exactly what it sounds like. It's the the tax rate that we get for the bond and interest payments like they were mentioning earlier. The D sub amounts that's factored into that bond interest tax rate. EAD is equalized assessed valuation. That's the equalized market value of your property within district 15. That's think of it as your home's value. Um the extension that is the amount that we are given from the county. So they take our ask they run their calculations with all the EAV the new property uh C CPI then they come out with the extension which we just got a few months ago. Usually it's released in June. We just got the draft in September. Um everything is late as Diana mentioned PEL that is the this Illinois's law property tax extension limitation law aka tax cap is the lesser of the 5% or the CPI which as D mentioned is the 2.9 that we had in December of 2024 which will be used for this year's calculation. truth in taxation. If your levy is increasing by more than 5% or 105% of last year's total you're going to be receiving, you need to do a public hearing and you need a public notification in a local newspaper. As Diana mentioned, we are under 5% so we will not have the public hearing in December. Maximizing the levy is increasing the levy for the unknowns that we don't know. We we're estimating

the EAV and we're est estimating the new property value. Those are amounts that we could try to reach out to Cook County for, but it's hard to get any information from them because it is such a large county and large district in and of itself. The property distribution in district 15, 75% residential, 25% commercial and other property.

Okay. So then how are we going to figure out what to estimate or to ask? You know, what are we going to do for a levy? What are we going to how are we going to figure out that levy? So, we need some variables which I've kind of I've mentioned in that history slide. Um, so the actual what we got for last year's levy 156 million 351. The EAV is 4.3 billion. Okay, again that's less than the previous uh year's levy. We got the 2.9 CPI from last December. I'm going to use 15% as the increase in the EAV and I'm going to use 20 I'm going up to 25% for new construction because we had 25 25 million. I don't know what I 25% I think it said 25 million. So we're going to use 25 million. So the next slide and then I always say it's just a division problem. You got to but we got to calculate the limiting rate. So the numerator is last year's actual which was actual extended taxes 156 million 351 um time increase by 2.9 the CPI so you get 160 million85 and then the denominator is um you take the um current year EAV and then you subtract the new construction. So this is a little wonky because the current year EAV is last year's EAV increased by my 15% which I think plus the new property 25 million but then you take out the 25 but because the new property is taxed at the full rate what we call it. So take that out. So the denominator becomes 5 billion that number there divide them by divide them uh the numerator by the denominator you get a limiting rate of 3.1787. Okay, next. So then we take that and we multiply that times that EAV again. Keep coming back to that EAV, but this time that includes the 25 million new property.

Don't take it out. Add it back in over 5 billion. So we get what will be the estimated 160,887. That's the estimated cap, not including principal and interest. Okay. Then we got to add in that. But we got to know what that bond and interest percent is too. So Anthony told me it's 13.7 million. That's on the dub and and uh any anything else that we have outstanding. Um and that comes to 2712. Do the same type of uh math math problem. Add them together. Our estimated total estimated tax rate is 3.4499. And I'll mention later that now that's lower than the one from the previous year because you have to remember that it's inverted because we're always limited to the PEL the cap. If the EAV goes up, which it will this year because everybody's assessment came in super high, the tax rate has to go be lower because the end result can't be more than 5%. Increase. All right. So on the next slide um that is yeah the that is the next slide but do you want to talk about it?

Sure. So as as we mentioned some of the we're plugging in some unknowns the EAV and the new property if we we have to assume a little bit more than what we're expecting because if we if we miss out and we under assume that money's lost forever. we are not able to get that back and it's a compounding effect. If we don't get it now, it's never going to be able to get to be recuperated in the future. So, um we there's always that risk of not capturing the full value of the property taxes if it's underleved. Thus, we're going to increase our expectations a little bit in case, for example, that new property comes in at 35 million instead of 25 million. We're going to increase our ask in just to make sure that we don't miss out on this any future potential earnings through the levy. [snorts]

Yeah. Okay. Next slide. So, you've seen me show this before. Um this is a great little um this is just a snippet of a large spreadsheet and what it does is you we put in all the factors and it the red is when you go into truth and taxation. Well, there's nothing scary about truth and tax taxation. It's just you have to do a couple extra things. But when I look at this and I kind of just consolidated some of these columns. So the far left column going down is the EAV increase and as I said previously I'm thinking 15% and going across the top is how much is the new property. Okay. So if my estimation comes in, we're somewhere around 15% EAV increase and 25% new property, we're looking at we probably get around 161,684 in new in in that would actually be extended, but we want to ask for more because we don't know for sure what it's going to what the new property nor the EAV is going to. So when I look through across here, so I'm going to suggest tonight we levy or ask for 164,079. And if you look at that, we know I know it's not going to be 100 million in new property. And if you go all the way down to 23%, we're still covered. We're still covered. if if if it was 23% EAV increase and 100 million even $102 million a new property. So it's just way out there, you know, it's we know it's not going to fall into those ranges, but I'm comfortable asking for $164 million. Next slide. So again to rec kind of make sense of

all this again the last year we actually got 156,351,000 a maximum this year we could ask for is 160 without going into truth and taxation the 5% 164,168,000 I'm recommending a 4.94% increase of 164079 but I think we're probably going to get around 161 million.6 which is a 3.41 increase and remember the CPI is 2.9 and again at the bottom it says no matter what I ask they're going to still apply the pel they're only they're going to limit it to 5% or less or the 2.9 plus the new property. So then on the next slide, it's just now we have to decide how much we're going to put in each of the funds. And do you want to mention I think we're going to ask for a little less. You want to mention that?

Um following the audit results that we just went over a few minutes ago. The municipal retirement and the social security fund, they combine total. This usually those levies are the same amounts because it's it's, you know, they're pretty 50/50. [laughter] 50/50. Um, social security has a little bit less of a fund balance than municipal retirement because there's more spending out of the social security. Um, we're recommending [snorts] increasing the social security a little bit and decreasing the municipal retirement by an amount of about 700,000 and then increasing the ED fund by that offset 700,000 because we have some fund balance, right? Correct.

We still have some fund balance in those funds that's over 50%. So, we want to again underlevy a little bit and use that up. We're not going to underleve in in 80 in tort anymore. Um, we used some of that up in previous uh levies and um and transportation of 5 million. That's because we get another 4 to 5 million from the state in the trans in the transportation claim because the budget in transportation is between 9 and 10 million. But we don't have to levy all of that. So that would be the ask. We might take a look at that and adjust those numbers between now and next month because this is this is what actually gets the the resolution is next month. So next and then quickly again this is um the impact on a home. I started with 350,000 a couple years ago and I just keep extrapolating on those numbers. So la I presented this last year on 2024 that that 350 had grown to 342,000 by the you know the estimate the market value estimate increases. So let's say again um this year if the market value were to go up 15% that would bring it to 394,000 and this is where when we talk about the EAV this is that equalized assessed value equalized such a fancy word but that's what the state that's what we have to do in Cook County we have to put it in all these factors to equalize it to the rest of the state. So, so then they Cook County, they take 10% of the market value of that. So, that that brings it to 39,000. And then we have the state equalization factor that you multiply to bring it back up to some other, you know, the what they call now this is the equalized assessed value.

And then you take our tax rate and we multiply that times it. And so it could possibly go up by about $96 the just the district's levy on the on that home. All right. So last slide is just so just some food for thought. Um again because of the government shutdown we don't know the October CPI yet. Usually we do by now. Supposedly it's coming out tomorrow though. So September's was three. So, if you look to December, and I'll bet October's is pretty going to be pretty close. And if we don't have a I think usually gas prices, if gas prices kind of stay where they're at, um December might be should be around three also. So, we might have another year of three, which is good when it used to be two and under two for so long. So, you can see how it's trending there. Um, and the last 10-year average because of those two 5% CPIs is 2.7. That's high in the in the in the historical look back of CPIs. So again, as I mentioned earlier, the EAV that the levy we're talking about tonight, if the EAV I is up by 15, the rate though is down by 12. So that that's how it balances out. And uh this year we'll we have the first year of the downtown tiff and uh comp complete um surplus uh get distributed to um the various taxing bodies. So we have in the budget 2.8 million and keep in mind that the the actual extension the actual levy from last year was only 6 million is 6 million increased from the previous year. So that is about the range. 6 to 7

million is our increase in property taxes every year for this huge district. Yeah. I hope I didn't we didn't lose you. Any questions? Just a simple question, Diana. Um just curious because we have a a budget need. Um why why even do the math? Why don't you just ask for 5% every year? You know why? You know, well, we're not going to get it. Correct. We're gonna get the pizza, but we can at least get the um do the ask and not even, you know, it's just a

we can I can if you want me to raise it up to um in the pink [clears throat] in the pink on that slide. If you want to go back to um because if there's no loss of um you know, if we don't get it, we don't get it. But um I I've always been taught to ask for much more than you can ever get. So the question I had 4.94 versus five. Well, it depends on the district. Some districts don't like to go over five.

Um and and some districts like to have the hearing every year, too. So it it is fine if if if if you'd like me to ask into that pink I can. It's no big deal. Um the pink. So you see I have 100. So even the pink though is only like so 100,000 more than what? Not even 100,000 more than what I'm asking. So, um, we can come back next month with, you know, I've cut I've truncated this, but at a 100red million of new property, which I know we're not going to get.

We're not going to get and as you can see, it decreases as you get higher on the EAV percent increase. So, I can I can ask any one of these numbers in pink, I can even go higher. I mean, if you want me to ask 170 million, 180 million. I mean, there's also a public perception though, I think. Pardon me. You got to live within your budget. Yeah, you do.

And and I think that um some the most districts need every every penny of the levy. Some districts don't. Some districts look at their coffers and they look at their fund balances and they say, "We we don't have to maximize the levy." [clears throat] We do. Yeah, we do. We have to maximize the levy.

So, um I can pick a five. So, the 5% I mean if we did want to go if you go to the next slide, right? So you can see the truth in taxation is 1641 168,000. I can go any number above that. Um the the funny thing about the levy is you're just you're you're guessing but you know we're gonna be we're gonna we're I unless there's some miracle [laughter] um that we got you know there's but I'm not aware that there's an explosion of new property in the area when a tiff rolls rolls off that's now next year we have a couple tiffs rolling off that's going to make a difference but for this levy right Now, at this point in time,

I think I think what Dian's trying to say is it's just extra work and you're not going to really need it because you're not going to have over hund00 million worth of new property. So, we're already covered. But if the con if it's just a number, we know we're not going to get anywhere near anything [laughter] because of the 100. Yeah, we're not going to. So I can pick any number. Um I guess maybe the question is how did you come to that number? Um

because I think I think there's some value to have a a rationale behind it otherwise you know just so our asks are consistent with Sure. Again back to this. So, we're probably this. So, right now, because there's no tiff rolling off or anything again, if I ask for 164 million, we're covered. If we go 100 million in new property, which we know we're not going to get and if you go way down the chart to 23%, you see it's it's decreasing once you get Yeah, you're decreasing. So,

so you're just basically using that number to um cover us if you know cover us for a 23% EAB increase in $100,000 of construction or 102 million 100 million

23% we're still covered. I mean I yeah I could show more columns and show you how far that goes out as far as but it just goes infinite. I mean it's there's again when I you just know that you're not going to get more than the CPI 2.9 and then so my yeah the um again let's see on the next slide again that 3.41 41 at the bottom there. I mean, my judgment is we're covered. I'm fine with the 4.94.

Yeah. So am I. I know. We're not voting right now, but good. Yes, I know. Okay. So, yeah. So, tonight, but there's still a resolution tonight. It says it's just it's um what's the technical name of that thing? The estimated to estimated tax levy. Okay. Awesome. Thank you. Okay. You're welcome. Welcome. Great. You're welcome for the next. All right. Back up to superintendent report.

Can we go to slide um 14 15 please? The month of November is National Board Appreciation Day. Uh National Board Appreciation Day is officially November 15th. We're going to honor our wonderful board tonight with a brief video that was made from various people um in the district wanting to express their thank you for your tremendous support of everything we do here in the district. [music] Camp says, "Thank you. school board members for all that you do.

Hello, President Ader, members of the board. We [music] are sending this quick video to say a huge thank you on behalf of Thomas Jefferson Middle [clears throat] School. We especially want to thank you for your support for Thomas Jefferson as well as all of our schools. No school has felt that support more than Thomas Jefferson, especially with our moving 15 forward initiative. With your leadership and partnership, we continue to ascend to new heights. [music] Your dedication does not go unnoticed. Thank you again for everything you do for our students and our community. [music] We are truly grateful for your leadership. Thank you. Good evening everyone. This is Central Road School, home of the world.

In honor of school board members day, we want to thank all of our amazing district 15 school board members for their support and dedication to our amazing school. Central Road is a special place for learning while having fun each day. WE APPRECIATE OUR HARD WORK. Thank you.

HI, D15 board of education. On behalf of all of Mary and Jordan school, we want to thank you for all that you do for the kids in our district each and every day. Thank you so much for providing inclusive opportunities for all of our kids, making sure that all of your decisions are student first. Thank you for making MJ a great place to be. We appreciate you. [screaming] Thank you. [music]

Thank you for Thank you for moving 15 forward. Hi everybody. This is the Lincoln administration team and we just want to say thank you to our amazing school board and all that you do to make our district so great. We are really grateful for all the effort you put in to make full day kindergarten happen. We're very thankful for all the opportunities that our staff and students have here at Lincoln thanks to you. Thank you so much from Lincoln School.

[music] Thank you for making sure we have good teachers. Thank you for letting us do cool clubs, good quality education. Thank you for all the fun field trips. Thank you for organizing school sports. Thank you for all the fun electives. [music] Thank you for keeping us safe at school. Thank you. Thank you for education. [music] Thank you board members. [music] Thank you board members.

Thank you board member. Thank you board members. Thank you board members. Thank you board member. Thank you board members. Thank you [music] board members. Thank you for members. Thank you board members. [music] Thank you for all you do from student services and services. [music]

Thanks to the district 15 board of education for supporting student learning. [music] Thanks board. Thank you, District 15 Board of Education, for all you do to support innovation and technology in our district for students and staff. Thank you, Board of Education. [music] Hello, District 15 school board. We just want to say how much we appreciate you, everything you do for our community, the kids, the families, us, the administration, [music] and our teachers.

Thank you for all you do. Have a great day. Thank you. Thank you to the best board of education in the entire universe from your cabinet. We couldn't be more grateful to have such a supportive board helping us do the work of district 15 for our staff and students. From the bottom of our hearts, we thank you. Thank you, Board of Education. [music] [laughter] Oh, very nice. VERY NICE. [applause] ALL RIGHT, COUPLE MORE. UM, if you'd like to see a little Halloween, I don't know how long this is.

Okay, we can do it. We got a minute. [music] [music]

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

[music] [music]

Nice.

How everybody survived another problem. Wanted to thank um our instructed in the community for um their service. It's it's on for their service. Um I was able to visit Sunling. They had a wonderful assembly for their veterans um that were either on staff or parents of children. It was very moving. They did a lovely breakfast. Um the students wrote very touching letters to our veterans. Um so it was just a beautiful event and there were events like that across the entire district. So, um [clears throat] it's always a great day and we really make a point to to honor our veterans. Let's uh thank Tom for his service uh and both Tom for THEIR SERVICE. RIGHT. RIGHT. And and I don't know if anyone else in the audience or Mr. Smart, I did thank him personally for his service and anybody on staff that um is a veteran. We appreciate you. Okay. What's next? All right. I will go fast. I promise. Two-way communication. Lots and lots of it been happening since our last meeting. You can see many different committees, hangout times with kids at schools, middle school student advisory, the reading event that I sent you pictures of at the Palentine Library, TLA came out and and really outdid themselves dressed like dinosaurs. Um, we've, as Sam said tonight or Mrs. Ader said tonight, uh, if you go to the next slide, the superintendent search timeline launch, I'm, you know, helping construct all of that. We're continuing to do budget analysis and have reduction meetings. We meet as a team. We're meeting individually. Um and we're knocking that number down. Um we're probably probably cut around three three or so million already. So we're we're about halfway to where we need to be. So we're just going to continue to do that work um over the next couple months. Um we're concluding the SEIU negotiations. We hope to bring that to the board in December. Really wanted it in November, but I'm trying to

be patient. Um Frank and I went to Edrad. We had a nice legislative lunch. Wenda, Eric, and Frank were with uh we were together at the North Cook ISB meeting in 214 and um a bunch of the superintendents have gotten together and we've been meeting with local legislators regarding the Cook County property tax delay and really just kind of pounding them so they understand what this means to the district's tax objection warrant, the cost, the loss of interest, the the fees to do this work and just the extra, you know, level of frustration. So, we we've met with Mayor Beth Kanty, you know, Senator Walker, you you name it, we're we're reaching out and we're we're trying to clue them into why this is such a big deal to us. And as Diana said, hopefully those property tax bills are going to be released. You know, we're in we're in mode right now with some of the attorneys to see if there's anything we can do to recoup some of the costs that that we've lost because it's just truly unacceptable for three years in a row to be told that it's a a technology issue. We'll fix the issue, right? I mean, I don't know. We don't look at problems for three years. [clears throat] We we figure out how to fix them. So, that's our request if if you're listening, you know, Cook County. Um anyhow, transportation audit is underway. Um, we've signed on with auditors. That's in your agenda to approve tonight. Um, and really what they're going to help us look at, they're going to look at our tears. They're going to look at our with a a fine tooth comb. They're going to go through and look for efficiencies or inefficiencies with our routing. That's the first priority. Um, this largely is in preparation for next year when Senate Bill 1799 goes into effect and we have two 90-day rotations and we're still short drivers. Our supplemental drivers, we are short right now. the ones that you approve for this 90-day round. We haven't gotten all of them. So, we are

really short and it's not even really snowy with the exception of the other day. So, we hope that they help us figure out if there's anything more that we can do or anything that we can do differently to help us with the dis the distribution of drivers that we have across the tiers. um supporting the human resource audit is done and we just are going to go through the findings and then start to figure out what shifts if any we're going to make for next year um in the human resource department. Uh we've had some parent meetings. We've had some just there's been an uptick in in calls and and needs for um the support of Tom, Sherry, whomever is able to take point on those calls. A lot of it is a lot of that has happened within the last month and uh we're working to do um an endofear insurance review um with with CTC who who guides us um and partners with us on insurance as a self-funded organization. You know what Diana has been up to. You heard all about it tonight. The levy and um construction to begin on the charging stations for those for those electric buses that we we signed up for quite some time ago. Tom, thumbs up.

It's already started, so that's great news. Uh, communication. We're working on the annual report calendar. It's gonna be exciting. Um, it has Big Batman and Little Batman, also known as Ahmad and a local preschooler [laughter] at the library. That's such a great picture. Um, so the calendar is coming out. We'd like to have that out in December for January. So, it's it's looking it's coming together. Uh comms was involved in a lot of Halloween's veterans day coverage at the schools as you saw with the video. Um attended the parent square community connection uh with other parents square districts in Illinois and then as you can see they were with me at the catch up with Hines in the community at the library. uh ed services collaborated with TLA to plan for that in-person high school algebra 2 course that you heard uh the team talk about and then partnered with boys and girls clubs to offer free student soccer skills clinics at our community school sites human resources working on the audit a lot of staff interviews reviewing documents that end of the year insurance review u human resources as part of and pursuing uh new higher education partnerships um so we're excited about that auditing e data for ISBY uh is is multilingual work preparing training for it's already hard to believe access is is upon us almost again it feels like we just finished it hosting BPAC workshops there's one coming up at Willow Bend at the theme is the superpowers of self-esteem um our schools have been heavily uh advertising that so I hope we have a nice turnout and then implementing an afterchool writing program at our middle schools uh student services preschool consultations have been um visiting screenings and meetings with staff. We're working with our consultants, so that's been going well. Uh you'll hear a big preschool update at next month's meeting. We're excited to share what's been going on there. And then supporting the increased needs of Mckin Vento students. So we have more

students um that are homeless and no funds being given to us to support those growing numbers and needs. Uh teaching, learning, and assessment. The department is beginning meetings with the content teams at each middle school. MTSS academic intervention meetings are happening to make sure that kids that need extra help are getting it. Uh the completion of fall inter uh scholastic sports, you saw many of our athletes honored tonight. There is a 35 ELA curriculum committee uh finishing its final learning session before piloting. And then we had our first kickoff of the technology and learning focus group uh with D'vorah, our consultant. Was it last week? Two last week. one or two weeks ago and um both Emily and MJ it's all a blur. Both Emily and and MJ have been you know instrumental in in making that happen. We are really robust conversation and once that committee finishes um we'll bring a report to the board so you can learn about what we talked about and then any findings or shifts that we're going to make. Technology again as I said was involved in that same kickoff continue to work on developing power school cysts and providing training their troubleshooting. It was a massive thing to get off the ground. You heard, you know, MJ say, you know, Gorman took a lead, but it was there was a lot of uh team support behind that. You know, it's been tough on on on many, but we're working through the kinks and and we're get each each week gets a little better. And then they're planning network infrastructure upgrades and maintenance for -ate programming and those dollars that are associated with. So, that's a little bit of what we've been up to since we were last here. Okay.

Thank you. All right. Item we're going back down to 6.1. Acceptance of the minutes. I move to I move to approve the minutes from the October 8th, 2025 regular board of education meeting and close session meeting as attached. Second. Right. All in favor? I. All right. Motion carries. Board committee reports. Uh, Ed, Red, Frank.

Okay, so the state legislature, they met for a veto session that concluded October 30th. Um, the big uh win for us was the uh Senate Bill 243, which creates a 5-day human verification window for uh suspected AI generated FOYO requests. So, this will help cut down on all the foyer work for stuff that's generated by AI. So, hopefully that'll make our that'll make Jamie very happy.

Jamie Yeah. happy. So, we got that going for us. Now, tax bills bills as we discussed are are going out uh allegedly November 15th and uh so that's good thing, but uh we want to make sure this doesn't happen again. And as uh Dr. Hines mentioned they're allegedly going to work on some legislation to make sure this doesn't happen for the fifth year uh where they decide to wait four and a half months.

Um there was no development, no movement in the mega projects build for uh the Bears stadium and developing that area. So the Bears were I guess threatening to move to Indiana now. But uh I don't think that's going to happen. and I think they're just a little peeved that they didn't get more money or any money. Um, let's see what else we got here. Okay, so we did have our Ed Rad kickoff lunchon that was held on the 20th and the ED red initiatives for this year. There's three. One is a world language graduation requirement which doesn't affect us too much. uh but the purpose of that is for uh adjusting uh the amount of education in world language for graduation from high school which they're trying to reduce for kids that are actually um going into um I guess you call the trades uh to make sure that things are adjusted for for kids uh plans moving forward as opposed to just having a blanket oneizefits-all requirement. Uh then there's the MCAT funding which is mandated categoricals which uh are underfunded right now. Um the percentages have fallen uh compared to the funding last year and some of these items include transportation, special education, truency prevention and bilingual education. So having the uh general assembly allocate appropriate funds for MCAT is essential and Edrad will advocate for important for the importance and the need for MCAT funding. Um we're actually going to be filling out a survey on transportation expenses and uh and other funding to we can uh so that we can input that back to the state legis state reps and let them know exactly where we're having problems. Um and then lastly would be uh school procedures for working with law enforcement off campus. So the schools have procedures to follow

when law enforcement is present on school grounds. However, the school code is unclear on protocols when students partake in school activities off campus such as field trips and park district facilities. Uh for this reason, Edrad will be working in collaboration with Forensic on language that extends applicable procedures on school grounds to school activities and protects staff from liability. And that wraps that up. All right, thank you. All right, Eric, for the 15 Foundation.

Yeah. Uh, not as much information as Frank provided, but very exciting stuff because the deadline for the mini grants ended last week on November 7th and Adriana told me that we have 60 mini grants that were applied for 6 that were applied for. So 15 is currently in the process of analyzing and uh the grants will be selected and uh awarded and recipients will be notified in December. And I'm excited because I get to go along and uh I requested I get to hold the big check if if there's a big check involved. But yeah, [laughter] whatever it is. Yeah. So I'm excited to go along and be a part of the celebration. Maybe I can carry the balloons. Sure.

That would be good. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. So yeah, that's really coming along and we have our next meeting next week. Awesome. Thanks, Eric. Uh finance committee Wend and Lisa. Um if I ask that um last Monday we talked about turn your mic on

that um Diana already touched about especially um thoroughly the levy um we also talked um in addition to that about school fees. So um some of the things that uh we'll vote on at um at the end um next month for the for the lobby. But that's it. All right. Equity committee Zubir. Um we we haven't met uh this since the last meeting. Um I do think that with the conference coming up, there's a lot of equity uh programming

that um I'll have to talk to Jim about which ones to cover so we can kind of come to the to the committee meetings with some more perhaps some some more uh p different perspectives as we move forward. Great. All right, moving on to action items. Um, item 8.1. May I have a motion, please?

Report recommendations for administration certified and non-certified staff members as presented. Second discussion. All right, roll call. Adah Iino I. Shupai I Khan I Bman I Hunt I All right motion carries item 8.2 Two, approval of the semiannual review of close session minutes. I move to approve the semiannual review of closed session meeting minutes from March 12th, 2025 through August 13, 2025 as required by the open meetings act as presented. Second discussion.

Uh Jim and I met um and none of the med uh minutes that we reviewed were able to be released because they just still need to remain uh confidential. We have citations to go into closed and and um we want to release when we can, but none of none of them were able to be released at this time. Okay. All right. Uh all in favor? I I

I All right. Motion carries. Item 8.3. I move to award a three-month contract for emergency transportation services for unassigned school bus routes to first student Northbrook, Illinois for up to 20 drivers at $442 per day per driver effective November 20th, 2025. Second discussion. Roll call. Beckman I. K. I. Shupai I Hunt I ader I Hanerino I

All right motion carries item 8.4 Four. I move to award the mechanical replacements project to C Acetelli Heating and Piping Contractors Inc. of Villa Park, Illinois for Winston campus for $2,880,000. Second second. Uh discussion. Uh quick question. I did notice that two of the companies were disqualified because it says they did not meet bid specifications. Um, I was just curious what what did they misunderstand? Oh, wait. Jim's not here, is he? [clears throat] Not the bus one.

No, the mechanical. Oh, you know what? I was looking at the bus one. Sorry. Yeah, actually, I did mean the bus one. Oops. I guess I missed that. So, you went back. You went you went fast past the discussion part, I guess. Sorry. [laughter] I just noticed that. I was looking at the bus uh prices. Why were the buses other uh quotes disqualified?

We asked them to prove that they've been in business and have been in very good standing for four plus years and two of them could not do that. Okay. Thanks. Or or did not supply it. Yeah. I was just kind of wondering on that for clarity for anybody else who was reading it why they were disqualified. Didn't really say All right. Thanks. All right. So then back to item 8.4. I think we can do a roll call now. Khan I. Bachmann I. Hunt I. Ader. I. Hanerino. I. Shupai. I. Motion carries. Item 8.5.

I move to approve the resolution estimating the aggregate levy for the tax year 2025 as presented. Second discussion. Roll call. This is for clarity. This is the 4 um right? This the 4.94. Yeah. Yeah.

This is just Okay. Okay. Roll call. Batman. I. Hunt. I. Ader I. Honorino I. Shupai I. Gun I. Motion carries. Would anyone like to remove anything from the consent calendar? 8.6. Sam Oh, I'm sorry. 8.6. Sorry, I skipped one. Uh, item 8.6, approval of the acceptance of the audit. I move to approve the audited financial statements for the fiscal year 2025 as recommended. Second. Discussion. All right. Roll call. Hunt. I.

Aer. I. Honerino. I. Shupai. I. Khan. I. Bagman. I. All right. Motion carries. Now. Would anyone like to remove anything from the consent calendar? Nope. No. Okay. Uh, may I have a motion, please? I move to approve the consent calendar items as presented. Second. Second. All right. Discussion. Roll call. Ader. I. Honorino. I. Shupai. I. Khan. I. Bachmann. I. Hunt. I. All right. Motion carries. Correspondence.

As usual, we received a volume of any questions on what we Any questions on what uh was submitted? No. No. All right. All right. May I have a motion to adjurnn? I move to adjurnn. Second. All right. All in favor? I I All right.