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

By leveraging strengths and providing highquality support, we will honor our diverse learners in reaching their full potential. All right, welcome everyone to the final board of education meeting of the school year. Um, and happy last week of school. Uh, this was truly a uh transformational year for district 15 as we implemented moving 15 forward. These changes from new school boundaries, full day kindergarten, our middle school model, and our strengthened facilities set the foundation for an even stronger future for our students. I know that some families and staff have likely experienced some bumps along the way as we moved into implementation this year. Um, and so just please know that we appreciate your grace and understanding while we navigated those. And a huge thank you to the leadership and countless hours of Dr. Hines and our staff for making this um a successful school year. You showed up for our students um every single day and we are beyond thank you so or thankful. Um so on behalf of the board of education certainly wish everyone a great uh summer and we look forward to returning next school year. All right so we will move to pledge of allegiance Lake Louise. [Music] I love this song.

Good evening, President Ader, distinguished board members, Dr. Hines, and our outstanding District 15 community. My name is Jen Reman and I like to bring fun. So here we are with our bucket bands. I am the proud principal of Lake Louise and with me tonight I also have my assistant Andy Oran and Lauren Green. Before we begin tonight, we would like to thank the board for their dedicated service through your partnership with the district and moving D15 forward. You brought about meaningful improvements in our learning community to ensure meaningful improvements and making the best possible income for students and staff. So, we would ask that you please accept this small token of appreciation from Lake Louise for your service. Thank you. When you usually say life is better at the lake. Oh, we'll get there. Yeah. Yeah, that's I was told to go fast, but sorry. Thank you. It is my honor to introduce the Lake Louise Bucket Band. This is a cherished program founded by former music teacher Lorie Scarpelli many years ago and continues to thrive with our excellent comprehensive music teacher Brittany Marquez. This year, our talented group of fourth graders met weekly, developing their processive Oh, that's a hard word for me, apparently. Percussive talents and preparing for upcoming performances. Under Mrs. Marquez's leadership, these young musicians chose to focus entirely on the music of Imagine Dragons this year, giving an energetic spin to their performances. Beyond the music, Mrs. Marquez uses this group to provide a

valuable introduction to the band program offered to fifth grade students. Through their participation, students consistently demonstrate dedication, collaboration, and creativity, greatly enriching their overall learning experience. The bucket band consistently showcases the unique talents of our students, and we are incredibly proud of their achievements because life is better at the lake. We now ask you to stand for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Please continue standing for the national anthem. Oh, heat, heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.

[Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Applause] Miss Superintendent for 11 years and never once have we met. Am I right? Never once have we had a group home. Oh, amazing. Congratulations. Oh, if you know what that is. All right. This is a high five highlighter. So, as you head into fifth grade, you'll be able to take copious notes. All right. Thank you so much. Have a great summer. Way to go. Way to go. That's quick. [Music] And then parents, you're welcome. If you want to step up and take a photo as well, please do. Come on down.

[Music] All right, everyone get a few shots. All right, thanks for coming. Okay, ready? Go ahead. [Music] I fear it's going to be all downhill from here. That what a way to start. That was very exciting. All right. I know the the board meeting portion is not going to be as fun. Um, all right. From RSP. All right. So, up next we have our Special Olympic Summer Games, track and field and soccer athletes and coaches. Amazing. Hi Good evening, board president Ader, Superintendent Hines. Uh my name is Larry Sasso. I was here a few months ago uh when we recognized some of our special Olympians who did snowshoeing. And today we have uh a group of students that have they were involved in two different activities. We had track and field and we had soccer skills. And I'm

going to turn it over to coach Jeff who's going to introduce um some of the players who played in both activities. Um and before I forget, next week some of our kiddos are going to state to compete at ISU. I'm going to name off some of our student athletes over here. They were awesome to work with. So much fun. Um, we'll just get it started. We have James Lavine. He did track and field and soccer skills and he was able to win gold medal in both events. So, nice job. Our next athlete that did soccer skills was Suhab Alam. He's kind of dancing around out there. So, we'll get around. Uh, our next athlete is George Durr. Come on over, George. Awesome job, George. Okay. Okay. Uh, our next athlete is Adith Linga. He did track and field as well uh and soccer skills. Adith, come on up, bud. Congrats. Our next athlete is Gavin Black. He did both track and field and soccer skills as well. Let's give it up for Gavin. Oh, and he was also a medalist in uh track

and field. Uh we also have Garrick Nolan. He did track and field and soccer skills. Come on up, Gary. Uh, and last but not least from soccer skills, Dayton Brown. Awesome job, Dayton at the soccer skills was a lot of people were commenting on how awesome she did of congratulating all the other athletes, encouraging them. So, let's give uh Dayton another round of applause for that. Uh those are all the soccer skills students that are here and I'm going to ask Coach Velisa to come on up and finish off our athletes that are present with us. Okay. All right. Thanks, Coach Chef. Okay. So, uh yeah, like Coach Jeff said, a lot of these athletes did both sports, which was really awesome. Um, but the two athletes that were track and field only, um, were Cameron, Simeon, Cam, and Cam also was a silver medal winner at the regional event. And then also we had Maggie Weaver. Maggie is going to get through. and Maggie Weaver will be representing us at the state competition. Um, and she was a gold and silver medalist at the regional. Congratulations to everyone. That's wonderful news. Congratulations. [Music] And families again, please feel free to come up and take photos.

[Music] All right, come on. Look this way. Say blue J. for you. Congratulations all my athletes. So talented. Congratulations. Let me get a different one. This is You're welcome. [Music] teamwork. Oh, I lost a greater one now. You're very welcome. Good job. Congratulations. Okay. [Music] I know you're interested in it. All right.

All right. All right. Middle school. It's amazing. I know. All right. Up next, we have another student recognition for our middle school statebound students. Where are they? There. What's going on? All right. Okay. Good evening, Dr. Hines, President Adder, uh, members of the board, and of course, all of our wonderful District 15 community members who are here tonight. My name is Julie Crawford and I'm an instructional coordinate co coordinator in the department of teaching, learning, and assessment. And I'm pleased to be here tonight to recognize students and coaches from our spring 2025 track and field season who competed at the state series for IIESA for middle schools. All five of our middle schools competed in the class 4A division of sectionals on Saturday, May 17th. We had 195 student athletes representing district 15 at our sectional meet. And that's just so you know out of about um just over 400 uh members of our track and field teams across our middle school. So really a wonderful representation for district 15. Of those

students who competed at sectionals, 10 individuals qualified in 14 different events to compete at the state meet. And additionally, we had four of our relay teams qualify to compete at state. As these meets literally last a full day on a Saturday, our coaches and supervisors deserve a special thanks for making sure our athletes were prepped on time and ready to compete in all of their events. from Carl Samberg. Our IESA coach was Coach Bulo from Plum Grove, Coach Smith, Thomas Jefferson, Coach Mcte, Coach Zodto from Winston Campus, and Coach Clark from Walter Sunling. They dedicated their Saturday along with a supervisor from each of those schools to accompany our students and help them to succeed at sectionals. So, big thank you for our coaches. Before we recognize individual student accomplishments, I'd like to extend our gratitude to District 15, our board of education, for their continued to support our ISA participation for track and field and cross country each year. And to the best fans, our families, many of whom are here tonight, for their continued support and encouragement throughout our season. Thank you, families. Kids, clap for your families. There you go. Okay. On Q. Um, so on Friday and Saturday, May 23rd and 24th, yes, we let them out of school for the day to compete. Um, our students traveled to Bloomington, Illinois to compete. Oh, Peoria, sorry, Peoria. I get that confused. Um, to compete in the class 4A division of the state meet. Class 4A is composed of all of the largest schools in the state of Illinois and a highly

competitive class division that we have to compete in because we're also big schools. So, it's really really fun for our kids and just a whole another level of competition for them. Um, we'd like to honor any of our students who placed in the top 10 in their events. A number of these athletes also had PRs or personal records, which is a really, really great accomplishment at the state meet. So, I'm going to ask you to step forward when I call your name so we can make sure you're recognized. Um, so first of all, uh, we have Travis G from Winston Campus. Travis took fourth place in the men's seventh grade 400 meter and he had a PR of 56.51 seconds. Great job, Travis. For you track noviceses, that's once around the large track. Um, Alio P from PG, step forward, please, Alio. So Amelia competed in two different uh competitions and he placed in both of those. Uh Amelia took fifth place in the men's 7th grade 800 meter run with a PR time of 2 minutes 14 seconds. He also placed fourth in the men's 7th grade 1600 meter think of a mile pr with a time of 4 minutes 59 seconds. Great job, Amelio. Keenan W from Winston campus. So Kenan took 10th place in the men's seventh grade long jump. He jumped 4.97 m for his accomplishment. Congratulations, Kanan.

Okay, I'm going to jump a little bit here. We had two of our um four relay teams that went to state place in our state meet. Uh first of all, our 4x200 meter men's 7th grade relay team from Winston campus had a PR. They took eighth place and their team members were Kenan W. Isaac B, Blake S. and Travis G. Those of you who are here, step forward. Not all of them are here. There you go. We got a couple of them. Uh they had a time of 1 minute 45.38 seconds. So great job and as I said a PR for that team. Next we had our 4x400 meter team from Winston campus. Also PR at state with an eighth place finish in the seventh grade relay. And those members were Josh Q, Matthew C. Travis G, and Isaac B. St. Step forward if you're here boys. Their PR time was 4 minutes 2.5 seconds. All right. And we are jumping. Um Addie M from PG is not here, but we'd like to acknowledge that Addie also ran two races and placed in both. She took second place in the women's 7th grade 800 meter run with a PR time of 2.22.97. She took third place in the women's 7th00 16 7th grade 1600 meter race and she had a 1600 time PR of 5 minutes 20.2 seconds. So a awesome job. Um Christian M from WRS who's not with us tonight but we'd like to honor him. He actually took place in two different races as well. He was our sprinter. Um, Christian from WRS took third place in

the men's 8ighth grade 100 meter run with a time of 11.454 seconds. And he took third place in the men's eighth grade 200 meter run with a PR time of 27.47 seconds. 23.47 seconds. Mr. Sodto is helping me with my reading. I read it wrong. Sorry. Nice job, Christian. Okay. And finally, we have Kendall, who's here from PG. Kendall H. So, Kendall took sixth place in our women's eighth grade shot put with a PR distance of 9.49 m throw. So, excellent job, Kendall. Way to go. We are so proud of all of you and we celebrate your amazing accomplishments. We can't wait to see what the future holds for all of these determined and dedicated student athletes. Thank you so much for honoring them today. Parents, you're welcome for photo ops. after comment if it's okay just because Rob is here if we can just skip to um I thought he was coming virtual so we didn't have a virtual so right so if we oh yeah if we skip to Rob's presentation this one those of you going off to high school and seventh graders. I'm glad there's a bunch of you so we'll have a strong team next year. Thanks so much. Thank you. Congratulations.

All right. So, we will um now Yeah, we'll now open the meeting for public comment. Public comment is governed by board policy 22 230. Please remember this is not a dialogue between you and the board. If you have a specific issue that requires a response, Superintendent Hines or a designate will follow up with you as needed. Please state your name and identify any group that you represent. Please limit your remarks to no more than 3 minutes. If someone has previously articulated something with which you agree, please state that you agree rather than reiterating the entire comment. We encourage you to avoid comments specific to any person, student, or staff member representing the right to or 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. Up first, we have Randy. Is it Spies or Bless? It's It's spelled Spies, but it's pronounced SPE. SPES. Okay. Randy SPE. Thank you. Yes, you do. Yes. And then just make sure that the little green light is on on the microphone. Can you hear me? Can you hear me now? No. Try pushing. You got good. It was great. But now it's on. Hello. Okay. Should I sit? Yeah, please do. Make yourself comfortable. You can hear me? Okay. Yeah, we can. Okay. Um, so, so I'm here, um, out of a concern of the impact of screen time and technology on our, uh, children. By the way, my name is Randy Spees and, um, I I have a child in Hunting Ridge Elementary School.

uh and what what I've read um and and I've seen I have older children as well is that methods of teaching using technology laptops uh web- based uh simulation they yield less positive results and and I'm I'm citing uh quotes if you if you if you I believe you you might have information on this um most important skills in our children do include clude critical I've heard this earlier today too as well but critical thinking we we how do you teach this to your children critical thinking problem solving collaboration creativity and digital literacy um we we've all educated ourselves in some regards um we know technology changes we've all learned technology um but critical thinking problem solving collaboration creativity um not so easy to to learn. Um the studies um do find that incorporating technology in the classroom has not really shown improvements. I I would challenge the other side of that is where's the technology showing improvements to critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, creativity. I mean we even see that apps that are specifically designed for creativity are are not yielding the results. they're go they're actually um uh counterproductive. Uh research does suggest that simply removing devices in a classroom can improve the quality of a teacher by one standard deviation. And I'm not saying to take screens out of the classrooms entirely, but as a as a board, I'm asking you to consider policies and guidelines to help uh instruct our our schools to to use technology responsibly.

Um other things I I don't need to quote all these things. Uh but screen time, I've mentioned this, it does compromise creativity. uh print is very powerful. Uh retention uh for from students uh that write and that they can read from real paper have have a much better a significantly a greater comprehension. Um and a and a better deep understanding of of what the material is. Uh handwriting aids in memory and deep learning which I I just mentioned. Um the effects of screen time even with homework are distracting um not not necessarily um they have uh delirious effects or um sedentary effects. Experiential learning is is definitely promotes problem skill and problem uh and creativity and um there are are people out there today um you know that that are are still talking. I mean, we could start getting into uh cell phones, but that's that's not why I'm here today. It's just simply screen time, uh the use of the Chromebooks and and the the screens and the technology we use in our our classroom specifically for uh kindergarten through sixth grade. In in my case, my concern is my child. And of course, I'd like to see uh all children taken care of as well, but that's my immediate concern and that's my presentation today. Thank you so much. All right, up next, uh, Randall Lawrence. And you're welcome to sit, too. Okay.

Hi. Yes. Uh, also Randall, but you go by Randy or so. Um, hi. Um, my name is Randall Lawrence. I am the father of three children, uh, two of whom attend Hunting Ridge currently, uh, with the youngest set to join them as a kindergartener this fall. Um, my wife Katie is on the board of the Hunting Ridge PTA. Uh, she has also been in charge of the Hunting Ridge yearbook and the book fair for the last two years. Uh, so needless to say, we care deeply about the school, its students, and the community. Um, I attended last month's meeting in support of Caitlyn Finn, who also talked about the excessive use of screen time in the schools. But, uh, this time I wanted to come and use my own voice as well. Uh, we live in an increasingly digital world, and that fact is not lost on me. But these tools are exactly that, tools, and tools when used properly can yield tremendous benefits, but when used incorrectly can yield likewise harm. Um Randy also just mentioned some of the the harms that excessive screen time can cause. There's a long list of negative consequences. Uh obesity, sleep problems, stunted fine motor skills, impaired social and emotional development, uh shortened attention spans. Yeah, Randy also mentioned that handwritten work engages different mechanisms in the brain leading to uh better information retention than work done on a computer. Um that said, technology obviously can be a force for good. There are benefits to these things. Um digital literacy, typing skills, online safety, uh learning how to code. These are all positive things. And this to me is where the problem lies. Uh to my knowledge, the the students, at least in my yeah, my students have never received a lesson on how to type. They've never received a lesson on how to code. uh what they do

is sit for multiple hours a day in class on Chromebooks as these screens and apps increasingly replace teachers as the mechanism for routine content delivery. Um it's as if the the use of these tools has been specifically designed to maximize the negative consequences and minimize the positive ones. Um, I often ask my daughter what her favorite part of school is, and the most common answer I get is when I get to play games on my Chromebook during free time. Uh, that is unless it's a day that happens to be music day where both of my kids tell me they often watch movies. So, uh, I likewise don't think that technology needs to be banished. Uh, we can use Chromebooks and other screens, other technology productively. We can keep them in the classroom, keep them in the library, bring them out for periodic uh dedicated lesson plans, teach my kids how to type, teach them how to code. That would be great. Uh but what we shouldn't be doing is replacing the core elements of teaching and routing every mechanism of the classroom through a Chromebook, through these technologies. So, uh, screens in my eyes should be the rare exception and not the rule. Um, I know you have a lot of planning to do this summer for next year. So, I I beg you to please consider using some of that to reconsider the guidelines on how these technologies are used in the classroom. Um, I think that it would be very easy for us to flip this dynamic and replace what we are now getting, which is all of the negatives with none of the positives, and instead receive many many more of the positives with much less of the negative. So, thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Up next is Luis Gutierrez.

Yep, you can. Can you hear him in the back? We can. No, he's saying no. Can we hear? Yes, that's it. Thank you. You got it. My name is Luis Gutierrez and English is my second language. I have four children currently at Jane Adams in the dual language program. This is my second time speaking to the school board regarding the need for the continuation of a Spanish curriculum post a fifth grade Jane Adams graduation for students that feed into Thomas Jefferson. Earlier today at 6:28 a.m. My wife, myself, and others received this email. I wanted to let you know that I heard back from Dr. Hinds and unfortunately she has shared that the district is not able to make any changes to our programming at TJ and nor is the district able to commit to offering transportation to Plum Grove sooner than potentially 3 weeks into the school year. I am very sorry and please let me know if you would like to meet again to brainstorm additional options outside of the school day. I find this response utterly unacceptable. I think it is a bureaucratic half measure to a problem that is being left unsolved to the detriment of my son and others during the start of their formative years in junior high school. As a district, we need to do better and we can. You heard or you will hear my son ask you in his second language, Spanish, in just a moment to please help him continue his Spanish studies. What you will hear is the culmination of working hard for 6 years at the expense of his English proficiency to be able to stand up in front of a school board and write, read, and speak his request to you in Spanish. This is a testament to the district and its commitment to excellence in learning. But please do not take a step backwards by not letting my son and the Jane Adams students that feed into TJ continue their education. There are solutions. I have presented some in the last board meeting. My

father was a computer science department chair at a university. My mother was a teacher for 20 years. My wife is a teacher. I have friends who are teachers. I have friends who are assistant superintendents. And I have friends that are superintendents in other districts. And I know that this can be fixed if you want it to be fixed. Don't abandon students like my son that learned Spanish for 6 years only to be told that they can't take it up again for another 3 years. half measures are not what our district mission states. I urge the school board to consider the mission statement that was read at the beginning of this meeting. I urge the school board to consider the hard work that students have put in. I urge the school board to consider what these students have sacrificed to get what they are. I urge the school board to consider all those parents that sacrificed some nights when the sp Spanish Spanish lessons were hard. I also urge you to consider and remind you what was promised to parents before the redistricting took place 6 years ago. The promise was made that a continuation of Spanish from 6th to 8th grade which allowed for a path to biteracy proficiency by the end of high school would be provided. Please create a program at TJ or pass a referendum for 7 years that guarantees busing for TJ redistrict transfers that face this dilemma. This problem will continue in the years to come. If ignored, this will not only if ignored, this will not only be the first time that students and their families will be ignored or abandoned if nothing is done. I humbly ask that as a district we continue to maintain the highest levels of commitment for all our students, especially the ones that, as Robert Frost describes, took the road less traveled. Do we as a district want to send the message we left these students behind because their families took a chance on Spanish? I know this is not the case. I know this cannot be the case and I am sure that it will not be the case. Please do the right thing and

create the solution that is in your powers to execute and I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Up next, Sebastian Gutierrez. Hello Jane Adams. A is for much gracias. Much gracias. All right. Um, up next is Taran. Is it Monson? Taran Mson. Mson. Hi there. My name is Taran Mson. I'm a mom of two young girls who are two and four. or four and a half if she'd correct me or anybody else. I grew up in the Hunting Ridge neighborhood and with a great education and childhood memories, I convinced my husband to start our family here almost 5 years ago. While our children are not in school just yet, our oldest will be soon. Which brings me here tonight to express my concerns with the growing use of screens in our elementary schools, especially as early as kindergarten. This does not seem developmentally appropriate, nor is it supported by

research and data. We all know of technology isn't going anywhere. However, our children are extremely adaptable. For many of us, when we were in grade school, our tech classes were going to the computer lab one day a week to learn how to do basic typing or playing games like Where in the World is Carmen San Diego or the Oregon Trail. Yet, as adults, we've easily adapted to navigate smartphones and tablets and smartwatches without any formal early instruction. It really worries me that perhaps we're rushing our youngest students into too much screen time, especially when there's such important learning that happens best through the old-fashioned, messy, hands-on experience we all know and loved. These young ages are meant for developing social skills, learning to share, collaborating on building blocks, and yes, mastering the art of holding a pencil and forming letters on actual paper. These are the moments when tiny brains are making crucial connections through physical interaction, not just staring at a glowing screen. I truly believe we can empower our children for the future without sacrificing the invaluable age appropriate learning that happens away from screens. I'd love to see the board consider setting some clear guidelines or parameters around the use of screens in the classroom, particularly for our youngest kiddos, or at least explore the options for parent to opt for parents to opt out of device use in these early grades and allowing us to partner with you and teachers in making choices that feel best for our children and their unique developmental paths. Thank you for considering these thoughts and for all that you do for our community. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Any other green sheets? Okay. All right. Um, so we are going to skip items 5.1 and 5.2 for a few minutes and skip down to item 6.1. Um, our moving 15 forward and beyond enrollment analysis.

Hi, good evening. Um, glad to be here in person. Um I wanted to start out with um a lot of the districts we work with around you. They ask how did you do what was done in 15 so we can replicate it. And so I wanted to to shout out to your team from Dr. Hines to Diana to Jim Caplanis. Um there was a lot of work behind the scenes with them and our team working through the data. So um they diligently worked. They asked lots of questions trying to understand the data. And so I think we sit here today and you're starting to see the results of that data with um some of the good decision-m that you the board were able to make um because of uh those conversations. So I'll dig in tonight. Um there is so many things that we could talk about with your district. Um things that are changing um for sure with the impacts of our grade configuration change um what we've been doing to buildings with buildings being modified and whatnot. And if we go to our next page, um you all know about RSP Associates. This is for those people to know how do they know what's going on in your district. And so there's a lot of things that we looked at. If we go to the next page, um this will get into really the 100,000 ft perspective. If there's anything you take away tonight, go to this page. Um in this um analysis, we're indicating that there will be a slight increase in your enrollment through 2930. And you'll see that the elementary will have growth and then when we get to the secondary, the middle school, there's um a little bit of decline, but basically a stable enrollment. Um capacity um we showcase that capacity um is related to maximum capacity and target capacity. Again, we could talk a lot about capacity if there's questions. Um it's really how do you have the right space for the students with the programs that are

going to be in each of those buildings. And then the last page or part of this um is getting into some of the things that change, right? We have full day kindergarten grade configuration changes um and just some different things with the strands that impact how we staff each of our buildings. So if we go to our next page, um again just to remind you that everything is tied to geography. And so when you see this page, there's yellow lines that represent the census blocks. There's green lines that are the planning areas. What's important about this is every piece of data that we collect, whether it's from the county, the township, the villages, the cities, it's all tied back to something that we can statistically analyze. That's the point of this map. Next page. This is to tell you that this is statistics. So that voodoo math um really how we tie all that information to understand what that future can be. Um, this was really big for your district because of the different changes and how we were trying to strategically look down to those strands and understand when we say that there's going to be this many students and they need a let's say Spanish um track that we would have the right staffing in those buildings. So, this is how it's all tied to that. Next page. Um, we also want you to understand the model. I won't go over each of these pages, but if you're not a math person, if the the math equation scares you, this should give you some perspective of how it's a social science and how there's different things impacting what we see with enrollment change in any given place of your district. Next page. Um, one of the other things that we really try to look at is um the live bursts. Um, this really sets the tone for what we might see in the future for kindergarteners 5 years later. Now that's offset a little bit because remember we went from half day to full day and so that's kind of changed some things but when we look at this uh information um we look at it from the

county level um we can see live birth has declined and so that has us thinking about what will that mean for our future kindergarten class sizes in future years. Remember I told you we're going to have some slight increases in our elementary enrollment but we have decline of live births. So what does that mean? It means that we're going to have to pick up a greater share of persons that were born 5 years ago that have an address in Cook County, but more specifically within our school district boundary. But it also means that there will be younger age families moving into our community. So that gets into a subdivision life cycle of how um as some of us who are older, our kids have gone through the system, we move to something else, a younger family moves in. Next page. Um here's just to give you that enrollment by grade um so that you can understand how there's es and flows in the number of students by grade. So we're looking at this from uh 1415 through 2425. And again you can see what that means for each grades. Um what I like to look at is in that 23 24 school year um look at that eighth grade class and we have about 1,225 students. When I look at the kindergarten class the next year see it's 1,56. So the eighth grade classes tend to be larger than what we see for incoming kindergarten. If we go to the next page, what in the heck's happening if if we have that type of potential for really decline? Um this page gets into that. It shows the cohort change. So as we move from kindergarten to first, second to third, um we see some dramatic um changes in what those class sizes are. So for instance, we look at this row of 23 24 to 2425. um you see we had um a lot of growth. Um I really don't look at the pre-k tok because we're really um condensed with the number of kids that we serve there. But when I look at the growth of like K to one or from fourth to fifth, those things start to get at

us understanding why we're seeing these es and flows and why the loss of greater classes graduating going to high school um are offset by some of this cohort change. Go to the next page. So Rob, I don't know if this is the slide where you'll talk about how we saw more incoming kindergarteners because of full day and then our pattern of higher levels of in grade growth coming out of part-time K to one held as well. Yeah, let's go back to that um previous slide. So um one of the things that you see here is just in raw numbers. So in this year we had growth um of uh when I look at the kindergarten to first grade um we saw greater growth. So, one of the things that we tried to understand is when we made the changes from kindergarten to first, were we going to get capture more kindergarteners um because of having the full day kindergarten and would that start to impact some of our cohort change that we'd see from K to one, but we're still seeing a increase um a considerably even larger increase than what we've seen in previous years of that K to one. So, that's that's one aspect of what we're looking at that we can see. um there's still a lot of choice of those that aren't in our kindergarten program um but they come into our district um for first grade. The other piece is um we've seen a stabilization of our preschool, right? So when I look at the numbers here um where we have 488 in this current school year and you see in past years um we saw some years where it was 496. So we see some stabilization um in what we're seeing for the number of kids that are served. But I think when you tie it back to what we're able to attract knowing that live burst when we compare that from 5 years ago, we're bringing more kids into the system as both preschoolers and kindergarteners. So that's a testament to the programming that you offer um at that for those early learners. So that's one aspect. I may circle back to some of the other slides um in this condensed report. Next

page. All right. So, this kind of sums up some of the things that you may not have picked up in either what I said or what you saw in those visuals. So, that top chart um the blue bar represents the eighth graders and the candy striped red is the kindergarteners and so you can see the blue is larger than the red. So, how do we make up some of that difference to have a stable or an increasing enrollment? That's the cohort change. The bottom visual is to give you an understanding of by the grade bands of the elementary and middle school, how are we seeing that change over time. So, it's kind of like riding um a surfboard um out in the ocean. As those waves come and go, um we see some differences in our enrollment. That's reflected in what we have to program in the buildings. That impacts what we see for staffing. Um some of the districts we're working with now, um we're concerned about some district some of the buildings having too many students. Um, we think we're pretty good with our buildings when we get down to the buildings because of the hard work that I started out with where we really were trying to understand um some of the the choices of different families and their needs for programs to make sure we have a good balance of students, some flexibility in those buildings. Next page. Um, this visual shows really just that grade configuration change. So, as we went from the prek6 to the prek5, that's the red. So, you see it just shrink. Well, we didn't lose kids. We changed the grade configuration, right? So, look at that top portion of both of the aggregate of those bars and you can see a stabilization, a slight increase um from what we showed the year before. So, again, this just showing that the big change that we made for this school year. Next page. Um again, I like I like maps and so I'd like you to see how there's some changes that are going on in your district. Here, we're looking at K8's um populations and how that's changed from 5 years ago to now. So orange areas there's an increase and green areas there's a decrease. The

darker the green the greater the decrease. The darker the orange the greater the increase. Really the point of this when we're modeling every given planning area changes just because in this particular moment it's increasing may not always increase may see some decreases. So um those are the things that are built into the modeling. We look at this page and go to the next page where it shows the density of students. Um, if you are flipping back and forth and we're up in that northeast quadrant, you're saying, "Hey, we have fewer kids there than what were there 5 years ago. Look at this. Where is the greatest density of kids up in that northeast quadrant?" Right? This probably where I got more gray hair is just trying to figure out, right? How how do we try to to find the right um boundary lines, right, so that we can have the right distribution of students? So remember we were talking about hey do we have a school that just is for um ML students or do we try to make an opportunity for them in different buildings. This became the the challenge here right we wanted to create those opportunities at multiple buildings. Next page would you mind Rob also identifying the other two less heat intense but also spots that we're watching um in the the bottom right corner. Yeah absolutely. So, if you look down um with those red areas um that um are there on the southern part of your district um just over by I think Willow Bend and then just south of Plum Grove, you can see those those concentrations. So, as we see some of those turnovers there, are we going to have um some other challenges in those uh buildings that are served um for those elementary boundaries? So again, this is always changing, but those three nodes and then that other one that's a little bit um darker off on the west side by Palatalian Road. Um again, watching those um areas to do they get darker or are they decreasing? So again, all that back to that modeling piece. Okay, thank

you. You bet. Um as we go to this next page, um really I just wanted you to see some changes that um again with data, the power of data. So the green line which represents our dennial census and the estimates that come out of that. So 2020 became a point where that got significantly modified. What also is not in this now uh number is what I'd be saying is underounted. Um some of our um uh immigrants persons that maybe just didn't get there with the short or long forms um they're not in these counts, right? And so that's been an ongoing challenge um with really how many people are here with some of those things. But what we want you to see with the data is even the census data moving forward, they're showing that there's actually loss of people in this community. So this is a mature community. We're relying on the most part on the existing development for people that had their kids here. Hey, it's time for you to move so other people can move in and then we have kids, right? So some of you, you know who I'm talking to on the board, right? Um when we look at the blue line, we're looking at what's been happening with new um building. And so this has been a a popular conversation with the Bears, right? Like what is that development going to mean, right? So we're always watching that and again the news it just seems like it's one day to the next it changes a little bit, right? But we're tracking that. That they're coming. That's right. Positive thinking, right? Um then there's um the red line represents our enrollment change. You can see it's dramatically changed over the last few years. So I attribute that to some of the things that we're seeing with responding to what the community has asked for, right? So the preschool programming, the full day kindergarten, the grade configuration change, the opportunities that students have with this dual language um pathways that you have in buildings. Um those are attracting families um to your district.

So those are all positive things. We go to the next page. Um this is just to give you a visual of of what could be built, right? So um we have a few things with um we're tracking over the last five years. Faintly you see some dots sprinkled here. This is just giving you a sense that we're we're tracking things. But when we go to the next page, really the importance of all this modeling is we want to understand what's the yielding of students and how does that relate with the development types. And so on this visual we show you two things. Um the orange lines or bars represent the single families um unit production and the green is multifamily. So we're showing this from 1516 to 2425. So if we look here, this is quite amazing. Um I don't see this with all the districts that we're working with here in the vicinity, but if you look at that um back in 1516, um we were averaging about 26 K8 students for every 100 single family units. When we come here to 2425, it's only dropped to 24. Again, with a mature district where we don't have a lot of units coming online, um that's that's pretty pretty remarkable. We look at your multifamily products, you can see that's dropped where it was 21 for every 100 of those units. Um, that's dropped to 18, right? Where we know a lot of those are up in that northeast quadrant, right? So again, that gets into decline of enrollment, but still a really dense area. We go to the next page. Um, this was just to give you a visual of we're we're planning that there's some development opportunities um in uh really two concentrated areas. There's potential for some infill in some other areas, but they're inconsequential as it relates to some of our residential opportunities, at least as where they are with the conversations with the cities. So, you can see um off of Uclid Avenue, you can see that areas where the where the bears are that we've targeted

the yellow. Um that's something that could happen in the next 5 years, but we want to continue to monitor that year to year because when they do decide to pop, um it could go pretty quick, right? So that's that's what this page is. If we go to the next page, all of that on the map is tied to what we know right now on the possibility of units. And so when we look at those potential units um amazingly, there's almost 1,700 units in the areas from that map that are coded in green, yellow, or purple. So again, that could drive um potentially what they have for market rates, number of bedrooms. Um those things are going to drive um what we might see for students. If we go to the next page, um, this just gives you that visual of what we knew at the latest, uh, time of what this Bears development might be. Um, I know some people would be excited. They might be able to see the stadium from their office. I don't know if they're in the room, but that could be pretty exciting. Um, so again, just trying to tie it with real data so you know how it comes back to the model that if these things happen, what do we see for students? Next page gets into our projections. And um here again with the um bar graph um for the enrollment moving forward showing the red is prek6 or prek 5 and then the blue is 68 and you can see our enrollment right now is at about 11,250. We have you growing to almost 11,350 um as we get out to 2930. So um stable to slight increases um that should make us feel comfortable. Um there'll be some challenges in some of the buildings as you will see. Um we knew that with um again just trying to map things out with this um dual track of of students with ML um and such. If we go to the next page um this is the page that has just a crazy amount of information on it. Right? So we've listed off each of the buildings on the left hand side. We have

a target capacity and then a max capacity. So somewhere between the two of those. Um if we're teachers and parents, we want that target capacity. That that's our most ideal. The maximum capacity gives us the opportunity that if the enrollments grow beyond that target capacity, we we can handle up to that particular point. With the way the programming is in there, it gets a little bit tight different in some of those buildings. That's important because as we look at the enrollments, you're going to see some challenges where you see orange shading which represents where we're over those um target or max capacities. And then you can see some areas where we would be under the capacity of the building. That's the in the green. So as we move to the right, we'll show enrollment three ways for you um in this past enrollment. And you can see we have a black outline saying, hey, great configuration change. So when you look at those resides and attends um they're different because we had a different grade configuration we had different programming right but generally speaking uh when I look at these the middle row green font is based on where student resides and the the students that we're serving do they actually reside in that attendance boundary the blue font bottom row represents those that are actually attending that school for the grades being served we look at that top row purple font that's reside attend subset of reside simply stated they reside in that attendance area and they actually attended. This gives us an idea of how some of the programs or sometimes a living condition where the the family may have two addresses but the address that's in the system shows them in a different location but the other address is in that attendance boundary that they're attending. So gets at some of those particular nuances. um as we move forward in our future years um we're showing you the forecast um for reside

and attend and so the buildings where we start to have target capacity issues I don't think we had any um for the elementarymentaries anything that was over the max capacity um but when we look at um at least on this page um we're over that target capacity um we have central road um Whitley Sanborn and I think Hunting Ridge right so it's just saying hey we're We're going to be a little bit tight there. We can still make it happen. Um when we get to Conor's um preschool, that that's kind of again a little bit fickle with capacity of of how we have to utilize things with IEP students and whatnot. So not so concerned that that's underutilized. Can we go back just for a second because we spent a lot of time talking about this. When we set the capacities, um it wasn't that we couldn't fill the buildings to 100%. because all the buildings have room beyond our 85% target. We just wanted to make sure that we weren't overcrowded or underutilized. Remember that was the language that we used as we were working on this plan years back to develop it. That's what we campaigned around. But even if we exceed 85, we still have room in the building. We're in the low 90s. There's room. What it might, you know, cause us to think about is if we have to open, you know, programmatically, right? We moved EL around. We moved some special education classrooms around to balance and try to get as close to that 85% target. So, we're going to watch this, but I don't think even the ones that are 90 are any major issue other than it's just over the 85% target. It's just like having a an enrollment target. It's not a hard cap. It's just what we're striving for. But we will certainly watch as new developments come online. And if you think about Diana and I went to Shamberg a couple different times and spoke to the village of Shamberg when they proposed kind of an astronomical number of units um single family, every kind of house you could imagine, a row home, a

condo, a townhouse, a a yurt. I mean, they were going to put just about everything in that little area. And and we said, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. It's too crowded uh for us." So we are paying attention in those hotspots, getting involved at the village level. Mindy, Renee, all of us are thinking about where we're going to put programs. Sherry with intradistrict transfer when parents want to, you know, go to a school in which they don't reside and they'd like to attend. Um we're we're shrinking the number of categories for interdist transfer. We're trying to do everything we can to keep enrollment um matching that 85% but it is something that we're monitoring annually and it's kind of why we've continued to engage with Rob this year and you're stuck with us forever now Rob because we really need this level of analysis on an annual basis to just make sure we have programs and whatnot in the right places and in and in schools that can uh withstand the growth that's going on around us um and whatnot. So, appreciate that that um it's kind of like a yellow flag, right? Like, hey, we we want to watch just to make sure we provide the right opportunities for students, right? That's that's kind of the way I would look at this. If we go to the next page, um it's the next part of the alphabet of elementary buildings. Um so, again, um we see some different things here that um help us illustrate where we are with um the enrollments. And I think um what I wanted to note is um the gifted program um with paddock. So we asterric those and if you go down to that page where we're saying that it appears to be overutilized but it's due to capacity not reflected in the gifted program classrooms but these students are included in the projections with the additional 190 gifted student capacity. The over capacity challenges from 2526 to 2930 they're resolved. So we don't have a capacity issue. It's really what I want to state. Can you say that one more time

because you know people will pick up on that number and it'll be all over social media for sure. So um so Steuart Paddock Elementary appears to be overutilized due to capacity but it's not reflecting the gifted program classrooms. Um these students are included in the projections with the additional 190 gifted student capacity. the over capacity challenges at paddock are resolved um through 2526 through 2930. So again just again this just shows you the detail that your team is looking at this information um on an annual basis. Um if we go to the next page um this will be the secondary buildings. So again, nothing um is jumping out um with those buildings and and that makes sense, right? We said that the middle school is is stable. And so um as we look at each of these buildings, what what you look at, so let's just kind of go through a few of these things so you understand how to use um this visual. So when I look at uh Carl Sandberg, um right now we're at 466. You can see we're have some growth to 523. So that's that's where we want to um be able to uh to see some of that. we can accommodate that even though it's in that that target capacity um situation. Um we look at um Plum Grove, we've continued to talk about that. You can see it hits some of the orange, but then it goes under. So again, looking at this is um I would look at the attend numbers because that's where we're really trying to to push forward what some of those changes are for those buildings. Um as we get a little bit tighter on who can move around between buildings, um we're going to say look at the reside numbers, right? So that's that's how you look at this until um we get to some of those absolutes. Next page. This my last page I think. Um lots of other information went into this. So really the annual review. Um probably to build on Lor's thing. As long as you don't have me on at midnight. I think that happened one

last time we did. Oh my gosh. Sorry bud. That's I I had to put some eye drops in. Um but uh so annually reviewing this is really important to make sure you have the right stuff for your kids um and for your staff. Um I think that's a really big thing. Um most of the conversations I have with districts are about class sizes and um also having the right spaces in those buildings um for them to feel um valued. Right? So we talk about the social mental well-being of our students but also of our staff. um always monitoring some of these different variables. We've talked about developments um but also with our live bursts um things that are happening changing with some of our product as people are moving in and out um with how that's tied to the programs that you offer. And so again, just to continue to engage um with the community is the last portion of this. So with that, I I push back to you guys if there's questions you guys have. This this, believe it or not, was the abbreviated version. Um, that's what made us here till midnight. It was 100 SL. Oh, it was all on me. That's right. That's right. Blame Blame me. That's all right. I just want to commend the team. You know, you complimented us. I'm going to compliment you right back because this was a giant puzzle and we worked really hard to to target to hit the right capacities to move lines only where we needed to to do a lot of hard work to figure out where we needed to put programs only to construct classrooms and additions, you know, where we needed to. If we could move a line and not need to add space just to save the money, we did that. But, you know, this was years of of work and and that crazy mind-numbing formula page, whatever you did, it really did work because we came in so spot on. It was truly something. So, thank you and congratulations for

being that accurate. It really helped. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Any other questions or thoughts or feedback? No, just very appreciative um for the clear data and to see the impact of the work. So, thank you so much. All right. Thank you. All right. Take care. All right. Go Cubs. Go Royals. Different division. That's good. All right. All right. So, I think now we can go back to item 5.1 for superintendent. if you want to just move through my presentations and then depending on because we've got smartphones, we have the budget. Um, we have priority 1A. So, I'll do my report at the end. We're keeping an eye on that time if you don't mind. Yep. All right. So, let's let's move to um item 6.2. Uh, smartphones. Is it up there or? Yes. Hello. Not yet. Not yet. We're going to we're going to milk her time as much as possible. She still works till the end of June and we're letting her leave under duress on that day, that last day. Well, um, thank you, President Ader, members of the board, and Dr. Hines. Uh, tonight I am presenting to you the smartphones at school committee um, its findings, uh, and our recommendations for the 2526 school year uh, in response to those findings. So I mean at present

there has been a growing concern uh all over the country around uh surrounding uh student smartphones uh and its misuse in school and its impact on learning environments on social developments uh and on student mental health. Um researchers and education educators alike are um observing negative effects like decreased attention spans, increase anxiety uh and challenges in social interactions. And this has led uh many school districts across the country to implement cell phone policies um or outright bans. Um so in district 15 It's looking good. In district 15, as reported to you last fall, uh we began the smartphone at school committee. Um these are 12 district leaders and administrators. They represent a broad band of perspectives including instructional technology, curriculum and instruction, mental health, uh social work, school culture. Um, and we met over the course of the school year to research and unpack the issues uh and policies surrounding uh students and cell phones in school. These committee members put in extra time and effort to understand and discuss the realities uh of smartphones in schools. And I'd like to take this moment to recognize their hard work and their contributions to the committee and to the district. work good. Um well, so tonight I'll bring you these committee findings. I we'll go through them. Um education and professional development needs that we had discovered uh in our uh research and

work and an outline for uh an action plan for the 2526 school year. All right. Reality number one, uh, smartphones in classrooms do cause distractions. That was shocking. I think that was But what was what's interesting is is the distraction is not just getting caught with a smartphone out. Um, this short video succinctly sums up uh for us um which is developed by Edutopia. Edutopia is an initi initiative of the George Lucas Foundation and is the leading online education resource sharing evidence-based learning strategies uh for preK and to 12th grade. So let let's play [Music] in 2017 researchers looked at the effect of cell phone presence on students. Students were asked to complete math problems with their cell phones placed on their desks, stashed in nearby bags or clothing, or left behind in separate rooms. They turned off ringtones, buzzing, pings, the works. In fact, students didn't interact with or hear their phones at all. But it didn't matter. The phone continued to exert a powerful influence, occupying the students mental space even as they ignored it. Students performed worse when the phone was nearby on the desk. And no, it didn't matter if they turned it face down. They didn't fare much better when the phone was hidden in a bag or a pocket. Physical separation from the phone produced the best outcomes. So, what's the new insight here? It looks like the mere presence of our phones might be triggering a neural system called automatic attention. That's a brain system that unconsciously

monitors the environment for signs of critical importance. It screens out irrelevant information but snaps us to attention when someone calls our name. For example, an infant cries or a police siren whales. In other words, our phones with their constant pings and buzzes may be tripping some of our deepest mission critical wiring, creating a persistent sense of urgency even when the phone is completely off or stored away and draining away precious cognitive resources that could be used for tasks like studying. What can be done about all this? The researchers concluded that intuitive fixes like placing the phone face down or turning it off were futile. And that's a direct quote. Actual physical separation from the phone was the only effective solution. That's true when your students are taking tests, of course, but the research says that physical separation is even more crucial when they're initially trying to learn something. So, as you can see, the research indicates that the even the mere presence of a cell phone, I'm sure we've all experienced it ourselves, right? Even if it's silent or if we're not actively using it, can prod can reduce working memory capacity. Uh, and it's pretty critical not just in the end as in terms of the assessment, but in the first learning. Um, so having a smartphone near you in class, even in your pocket, disrupts the educational environment and makes it harder for students to focus. So according to that research, having smart smartphones out of immediate reach dramatically lessens distraction from learning activities. It promotes focus in the classroom and better academic performance. And this also promotes healthier habits around technology use

and fosters a greater detachment from social media for students. I mean we saw this even as Dr. Hines and I visited our middle schools and talked about this whole issue with our sixth, seventh and eighth grade student advisory groups. Um the re this reality held true even for themselves. uh and our discussions were really quite revealing. I mean you can see students recognize the stool nature. They recognized it in themselves how even just having it on them can be distracting. Um and at that same time though they did express this like well I don't know if I want to be away from my phone right um and some of that really was fueled by well what if my mom wants to get a hold of me or you know so some of these things that we are experiencing in life digital life right now are really seeping into their lives as they you know as they are entering into um a school environment. So overall, the students desired consistency across all classrooms and they were feeling like some teachers handled it one way, other teachers handled it another. Um, and they they're really desiring an overall, hey, this is what is expected. This is what I can release my brain from having to think about and actually focus on other things. as well. This past spring, uh, Governor Pritsker proposed and supported legislation to ban student cell phones use in the classrooms during instructional time. Uh, Senate Bill 2427 was passed in April and requires school districts to adopt policies restricting smartphones during class time. Uh, and they gave it by 2627 um, the school

year. Um, so really it comes right down to physical separation from cell phones will set up the best conditions for learning for our students. And this is what the district is committing to. Uh tonight you will hear uh from our first uh our our policy reading um and uh a proposed uh change to policy 7 col 190 uh to support our efforts in uh smartphone free instructional areas in classrooms. So this is the language that you'll see uh in the first reading of policy 71 190. So reality number two, student mental and physical health must be a priority in education. And I think we know that. But as we were studying this in in this cell phone committee, we were really coming through and making salient in our minds this idea that education and our learning environment need to promote um healthier use of technology. Um, you know, smartphone phones that we're seeing are omnipresent parts of our young people's lives, right? Um, often described as their constant companion. Um, they they use it to connect with others. They use it for entertainment. They use it to relax. They use it for background noise. I mean, how many of us remember, you know, studying with the radio on or or or things like that, right? Um and even for mental health support in finding connections uh with practitioners out there or uh even finding connections with friends and peers who help them through rough times, right? Um this common sense media study found that the constant notifications

make it incredibly difficult for youth to disengage from their devices and emphasizing that this is not solely due to a lack of willpower. It's not like they can't, you know, hold themselves from it, but these apps are deliberately designed with features that encourage this prolonged use, this doom scrolling, this all of that, right? Um this other report uh unpacking grind culture in American teens explores the significant pressures and burnout experience um by our young people today, you know, and highlights how factors like family and school and peers and particularly social media contribute to this heightened stress and um and often overwhelming teens who are really still developing their coping mechanisms. And it's starting early. We're seeing parents give kids equip kids with smartphones as young as third grade, right? So it it's it's starting there and it's out there. Um Jonathan Hates's book uh I'm sure many of you have heard of it. Um The Anxious Generation argues that the dramatic decline in youth mental health since 2010 stems primarily from two societal shifts. overp protection from parents, that constant I need to be connected with you all the time. Um, and the widespread adoption of smartphones, right? So these concerns around this pervasive presence of smartphones, uh, youth screen time habits and negative impacts from social media have really fueled the district's continued desire to build healthy technology habit habits in our youth. We want to reinforce in tech in intentional technology integration and learning and develop strong media

literacy skills in our students. They're going to need to know how to how to compete, how to produce, how to actively act participate in a digital world. Um, so here so we're really committed to making sure that this happens in our schools. So, here are some ways uh that we're proposing to uh or that we're committed to uh fostering uh digital well-being and healthy habits in our youths. So, we're devising our welcome week lessons so that it does highlight healthier technology habits and and digital citizenship. Um these topics will then be reviewed and extended throughout um the school year, especially during middle school and their SEAL days. Um we're going to continue to promote student clubs um and uh for social interaction and ensure that students participate in at least one club. Be very intentional about that. At least one club for every student um that reflects their own interest. Uh we are going to dive in and design a poster and PSA campaign um around healthy technology habits throughout our school year and involve our youth in doing that. All of our middle schools have broadcast clubs. So uh charging them with promoting this amongst their peers um through their broadcasting clubs. Um and and as well we're going to be inter integrating additional lessons on sleep, gaming, and social media in our PE health classes. Now, all of this doesn't happen unless we're partnering with parents, right? So, with that, uh starting this fall, we will be hosting community screenings of

the film Like just giving you a preview. It's really good. Um, but it also is very thoughtprovoking even for uh for students and for parents alike. And what we're planning to do is facilitate these discussions at each of our middle schools so that we can be talking about it um as a community. Um we will be uh sending out parent communications that will address uh school expectations about smartphones um and encourage discussions about healthy technology habits at home. Uh and then as well as hosting a series of learn 15 parent workshops throughout the school year around digital well-being, school safety, and adolescent mental health and how we can partner with them and how parents can partner with us. Um we're also looking forward to providing some guest speakers and additional experts to discuss growing up in this digital age and those imp imple implications on mental health and digital well-being. And I think some of that will be really good coaching for us adults as well. Reality number three, technology uh as a tool for learning must be intentional and strategic. And I'm going to keep saying these words all over the place. Intentional and strategic use of technology. Um, you know, technology is increasingly integrated in our daily lives and uh and in our learning experiences. Um, and as we heard tonight, there's a growing parental concern around student screen time. Uh, so what we need to do as educators is to ask ourselves, does the instructional activity need a technology tool to achieve the intended learning outcomes?

And we as educators, I mean, we find value, great value in the strategic and intentional use of technology in the learning process. Um, and it supports the overall development of a diverse uh, you know, band of students and look look into how we could personalize that kind of learning amongst that diverse student population. And but we what we want to do is maintain a large majority large majority of instructional time allotted for the human element of learning. That is why we were in school, right? We want to see the collaboration. We want to see the discussions. We want to see the hands-on activities, the play, and the social interaction because that's how we as humans learn best. Technology will only help us to get there. I mean, and honestly, as a sidebar, um you know, you you're seeing all the AI tools that are coming out, right? And we are continually as an instructional technology team, we're continually reviewing all of those um things that are continuing to find its way into our educational technology learning tools. But we are committed as a district to keep the human in the learning loop and to coach our staff in how to do that. I I mean we're committed to not let AI replace any teachers. It's just not going to happen because we know that's not how we learn best. So research consist consistently highlights the educational benefits of students who are actively producing and creating with technology

right even right down to our kindergarteners. We want to prioritize activities where students actively think, question, and create. This was a learning theme for our staff last year as we were implementing full day kindergarten, as we were moving into middle schools. This had been a learning theme for our staff all year long. How do we have students think, question, and create and respond in their learning? So is moving away from passive consumption of the glowing screens uh and promoting technology use that's strategic and intentional so that we can see active engagement from our students and better retention of content because what they're doing then is creating meaning for themselves. and they may use a technology tool to do it, but we're creating a learning environment that takes advantage of a balanced way of learning. So, technology should not be used for technologies sake, but only really for learning sake. Uh, and that's the coaching we're going to be giving our staff throughout this next school year. So finding the right balance in your classroom. What is it that you intend to have your students learn and how does how can technology help you do that? Help you be productive in that, help you address that in a personal way for each one of your students, right? And we will continue to support staff with instructional technology guidelines to leverage technology use that is purposeful, that is instructive, that is balanced, and supports student

well-being while learning while leading to deeper learning and content and skill practice. We are going to be providing professional development um on frameworks as you see here. uh with the SAMR model developed by Dr. Ruben Poadura, longtime researcher uh in this uh in technology integration and how do we enhance uh how do we go from enhancing technology use for learning uh into transforming technology use for learning. Um and then as well we're going to be using the triple E framework by Liz Cobb um in understanding the uh ways technology can be used to engage a student to ex to enhance the learning and to extend the learning. Um so these are two ways to examine how technology integration is used in a learning activity. Um and this is only going to reinforce using technology only for learning sake uh and not for passive construction consumption. And then lastly uh we will continue to support principles and assistant principles in identifying meaningful use of technology and then coaching their teachers in their practices in the moment. Right? Learning for learning sake. So really at the end of all of this, the district uh 15 smartphones at school committee findings underscore the complex changes and opportunities uh presented by smartphones in schools. Uh by acknowledging these realities, the district aims to create a learning environment that fosters focused academic engagement and deeper learning. uh healthy digital habits in our youth

and equipping our students to be responsible digital citizenships. I mean and in addition to that ongoing staff development will guide the meaningful use of technology to engage and target student learning. Um, we will have a continued focus on intentional and strategic technology practices in district 15 and ensure that students use technology to engage with content, practice critical thinking, and sharpen skills for academic growth. Any questions? I mean that was really quite a tremendous presentation. It's it's a hard topic. It's one where like many there are different views, right? Some people will be thrilled. You've heard a few tonight. Um some people will be very upset. Some people will be a little bit indifferent. That's how the students seem to feel. We know parents and staff will feel. We'll have mixed emotions. But the work of the committee, you started this year. It wasn't easy. You dug in. They did a lot of research, a lot of reading. I think you made these realities made it very clear how you came to this determination and why we're making the recommendation that we are but we know it's going to be tough again it will be it will be received like many things with mixed feelings but what what are your thoughts reactions feedback questions so the the policy regards to cell phones can you go back to it is going to we'll have Abad do it if he could find it he'll he's he's yeah that's fine he's he's he's he's on it like on So, so we're going to start off with the the cell phones either have to be kept Yeah. in their backpacks or in their lockers. So, what is yellow is new language. Yes. And we really wanted to spell it out uh because in some of our um elementary school situations, they don't have

lockers, right? Um so, we're saying backpacks and away and out of the instructional classroom. When you say silence, it would be uh turn off the vibrate mode also because I think that might be a little bit ambiguous. Um it's funny because kids don't know don't really know how to turn off their phones. So in some sense it is going to have to be kind of a lesson a welcome week lesson on how to do that and even how to how to put it on vibe. So yeah. Well, I'm just saying as far as the policy goes. Yeah. Because there's turning off the ringer and then there's turning off the ringer and the vibration. Yeah. I think one of the things about Yeah. having it by taking it sitting in a locker is like you're hearing it, you know? Yeah. I think it has to be referenced that the vibrzing in the backpack. I think people will hear it. So I think generally speaking in high school the kids have to turn off the vibrate mode also. Oh, do they? Yeah. I know. because I've tried getting a hold of my kids uh after school and they're like I forgot to turn it back on. I go I go even turned off the vibrate. He's like, "Yeah, you know, we got to turn off the vibrate." So, we had one student said his dad texts him all day long. It wasn't you cuz your kids don't go here any longer, but a couple of the kids said that the dads do text all day. Funny funny little memes and things. I don't text all day. It was just after school and I was like, I need to know where you are because I'm trying to pick you up and I can't find you. I I I agree with Frank. I think it has to be called out so it's very clear. Yeah. You know, no ringers, no vibrate, no nothing because it's the uh the same level some of angst when people are like it's vibrating, it's buzzing, you know, we need to shut that off too. Yeah. So, duly noted um because that's that's kind

of what the principles are going to, you know, relay to staff and help staff to remind them on how to teach their the kids how to even silence the phone. So, and then yeah, you went into a bunch of other stuff here which I think it's going to take a little time to fully absorb, but um with regards to using AI, I I assume that's going to probably be the next thing where you actually have to come up with a policy on that. We did it right away when you said it's in the first it is in the first reading for one of those. Yeah. She did her hand this year at the beginning of the year and now you have an AI policy edition. Okay. For the for our policy like the board policy. I I guess I was probably referring to something a little deeper like how do how do teachers utilize it when they're teaching in classrooms like Yeah. So when AI first came out, we did already develop our AI guidelines and have uh provided staff development to our teachers along those guidelines. Um we are continuing to massage those guidelines uh and respond to the growing you know environment out there. uh and this is definitely one of them that we're not taking the human out of the learning loop like um so some of it is the professional development around how to use the AI tool as an educator as a you know to help you be productive because there is value in that um but really pinpointing ways of how not to use it uh as well as protecting our students. Um, so right now in the district, are we uh we're not using any of the of the specific AI tools that you subscribe to or anything like that? So I mean it would strictly be what's out there for free on the internet like a chat GPT or whatever Gemini or well um students under 13 uh are not allowed to be using uh AI tools. So we have not

adopted any AI tools for our students that are separate and outside of tools that we have already adopted uh as educa you know educational tools. Um so within like some of our graphics uh creator creation tools um like Canva and things like that they have integrated um AI in a small way uh but that's within the tool not necessarily a separate tool. Okay. So so you're saying there's there's there's tools that we have within our classrooms that then uh go out and utilize portions. No, they're they're contained within the tool itself. They have their own AI engine in the tool, right? So, but it's not AI in terms of like a generative a generative learning tool that is culling the internet all the time for information and being trained along that. It's not that kind of tool. It's just AI generative AI components within but it's contained within the app itself. So it's different from chat GBT or any or you know cloud or claude or any of the other ones that are out there that are constantly combing the internet for information. Uh it's more like uh embedded yes it embedded AI tools that use their their own database of information that is contained within the tool. It's not informed by outside or shared outside. It's mostly Canva with graphics. It's like pulling in like that piece bits and pieces that are part of the program. Sounds like a Google. We're not a high school district. So I was going to say that seems to be our kids aren't Can I ask about this considering full board AI? No. Yeah. So, are we in in insinuating here that during passing periods, it's okay for

students to pull phones out and utilize them in the halls for the four minutes of keep them in. Um, you know, our principles and assistant principles are tasked with kind of the details of of the policy. Um really if if you can get to your locker and then get to class on time and be able to check your cell phone as they in three minutes. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's quite a feat. But right, but if they don't have a locker and it's in their backpack, then it's a potential time that that's your students but my students never used their lockers. But that's in the elementary schools. Yeah. Like so the backpack itself is really just contained for the elementary schools that don't have cubbies are on their books depending on the what school, right? Some have cubbies, some just have books. Okay. In reality, there's probably not enough time. Okay. I'm just picturing the chaos, right? People get in the hallway and then there's there's not enough time to hardly even get where they're supposed to get. You got a traffic jam of people falling each over over each other because they're looking at phones. And that that's why this is a very taught behavior, you know, taught expectation, taught behavior and and we were seeing that in our students like please teach me, right? And uh please make it consistent across the whole school so I'm not having to rethink this all the time. Right. Yeah. Some teachers are real clear about the expectations, don't allow it at all. others don't really take a stance and they said the kids all consistently said it's very hard when it's when it's not consistently administered. So, this will help with that. Yeah, I know some of the learning that you talked about in the that would be integrated into like PE classes. What grade does that start in? Is that just for middle schools or will we be Well, we're going to be concentrating a good

bit at middle schools cuz what we were um hearing is that that need that ended up being a natural um progression for parents to start to give their uh provide a smartphone for their students because they're growing in their independence. Um, so we are concentrating uh on middle school, but I know our committee had also also started to look at fifth grade as starting to prep students. That's what I was going to be going into middle school. That transition would be helpful. Okay. So, yeah, we heard a lot from our six from our sixth graders about, yeah, I finally got a cell phone. And then there were some that were like, "My parents don't want me to get addicted, so I'm not going to get one until 8th grade or freshman year." Yeah. Or freshman year. So, it was a wide variety. I know something that's um come up in the past has been like cases of emergency. I think that was mentioned at maybe a a past board meeting um and how students get a hold of their family. Can you just speak to that? Yeah. Uh that's actually going to be one of the topics of our learn 15 parent workshop um to help parents understand what safety looks like in a school and the means by which they can contact their students or um or what happens during a crisis moment, right? to um it's interesting because the even even hearing from some of our community group members like our police and things like they're like no keep the cell phones away because we don't want any misinformation to be getting out there when we're trying to control the situation right we want kids focused on the teachers or their directives not calling their parents who will likely uh escalate the situation we jokingly said to all that my middle school student advisories what's that thing hanging on the wall over there, right? Or on your teacher's desk, and

every classroom has a phone. Every classroom has a 911 button, every classroom has an intercom to the office. Many classrooms have walkie-talkies. So, there are many means um in which, you know, teachers and and students can communicate. I told them, you know, back in the day when I was little, if my mom was something was going to change about my school departure, uh my mom would call the office and then they would run a note. I said, "So, we have ways of getting information, you know, to and from the office and and to you." So, and then to your point, all of our first responders said, "No, it's we need one person or a couple people calling 911. We'd rather it be the adults if they're able, which you know, we have lockdown procedures, god forbid, if we ever needed to. There's protocols and then that just trips a different type of a response. So, you know, we feel as though we we have it covered. We just need to educate the parents and the kids to really understand that we do have multiple layers of plans and ways in which we can communicate in an emergency or even a non-emergency. And one of the kids said, "I like it when I'm taking a test and I'm nervous and my mom just says, "Good luck." Sends me like a good luck. So that's, you know, that's sweet and cute and that there you go. Or, you know, my mom go to school, right? You they pin pin the note to you. dating myself, but that was, you know, pin him a good luck note, send him with a good luck posty. Well, that's part of, wasn't that one of the two things that the gentleman who wrote the book was saying that that's another reason for the anxiety? Yeah. Just the constant hovering. Constant. Not that I'm against good notes, but come on. Right. I mean, I'm just It's too much all over everybody. Exactly. Exactly. All right. All right. Thank you, MJ, and the whole crew. Thank you. Some that are in this room, some that are at home, hopefully listening. I appreciate it. Thanks. And then I think we'll just plan to periodically update the board as we move

through next year as to how it's going. Yep. All right. Diana and Anthony, you are up next. FY26 tenative budget. Okay. Good evening, President Ader and members of the board of education and uh superintendent Dr. Hines. I'm Diana McCcluskey, the chief school business official, and this is Anthony Foda, my director of finance. And we're going to present the FY26, our next fiscal year tenative budget. So I just give you a brief background for people who are not familiar with how school district budgets work here at work in the uh in the state of Illinois. So we present a tenative budget tonight and then in September we present the final budget. Yes. After the school year starts. The budget is our roadmap to meet the financial goals of the district and the board. It's a tenative outline or a plan. uh in August we'll publish a notice in the newspaper. There still is a newspaper stating that the tenative budget is on display 30 for 30 days prior to the September board meeting. And it also will give details of a budget hearing and we'll have the budget hearing at the September meeting where uh members of the community could uh make comments about the budget and then the uh we will ask the board to adopt the budget at that September meeting and budgets uh have to be uh um uh voted on by the end of the by the end of September for school districts fund accounting. uh we we divide it into two two main types of funds. operating funds which

support the day-to-day operations those are made up of our education fund operations maintenance you know buildings facilities maintenance uh transportation fund IMRF social security working cash and tort those are all the operating funds we will everything we present today will kind of be separated between operating and then the other funds which are debt service where we pay all of our outstanding bond payments capital projects which is where we put all of our capital projects expenses and then health and life safety Uh for the fiscal year 26 budget analysis um the finance team every year we follow the same process. We met with all the department heads. We reviewed the three years of historical information and then kind of projected out for fiscal year 26. uh what the budgets need. Uh we try to keep zerobased budgeting approach which was used for the large expenditures such as curriculum, technology and software licenses and any expenditures that were necessary to be added to the to the budget needed to be justified. Um all the departments did a great job with their presentations this year. We're happy to say that the budget the department budgets remained essentially flat from prior year fiscal year 25 to 26. um great accomplishment for all the departments. Usually we see some sort of up uptick in the expenditures due to inflation or other additional requests that are needing to be made, but for this year they did great job working their budgets and keeping everything relatively flat. Okay. So, we're going to give you re uh assumptions, revenue and expenditure assumptions or like highlights. We're just going to touch on the big on the big ticket items is what I call them. So revenue is divided into three buckets. We've got local, state, and federal. And local is the biggest because that's our property tax revenue. Um and our

property tax revenue makes up about 80% I believe it is of our um budget. Um a little highlight. So for instance, my forecast now I don't have the I don't have the um the confirmation of my of the final levy yet. So based on what I uh anti I forecasted anticipate we're going to get based on the CPI and my assumption of new property um I will have the final levy amounts I should have them by the September meeting you never know in Cook County but we should have them um so I'm it seems as if or from our analysis we will have about $9.5 million increase in property tax revenue again the CPI from back in 23 was 5%, the CPI in 24 was 3.4. It's it's kind of a delayed um uh implementation or re the uh the the the levy is kind of the actual property taxes you receive is kind of uh two years out. So, for instance, this spring of 25, we got the um the uh it it was the levy from 23 and the 23 levy was 3.4%. So, you know, and then in the fall, it shores it up 100%. But, um even though we had five like two years ago, we're still feeling the effects effects the positive effects of the 5%. Overall, our operating funds revenue is going to go up, we think, to about 162 million from 153 last year. So, all that increase in property tax revenue really hits the operating funds. Um, again, in the f in um December when we present the se the levy, it'll have a 2.9 uh CPI from last December. On a positive note, our downtown tiff

here in Palatine, again, we had a an agreement with the village of Palatine that extended that TIFF for another 10 years, but they only needed the increment for a few years. So, in FY26, we're going to get the entire increment. So, that is about an additional $2 million in revenue. The entire amount of revenue we received from the downtown tiff is about 2.7 million. the Illinois personal property replacement tax. We spoke about this in last fall. Um we were we had a windfall throughout uh COVID and after it u we were receiving 5 million five a.5 million dollars in this in this flowth through tax from the corporate um from corporations and industry. Well, unfortunately, the state miscalculated and they over um they over um dispersed this two uh school districts and so now they're going to pull it back from our current aotments. So, we are down decreasing our budget to about 2 million for 26. We'll get a statement from the state in August that they they're going to give us their approximation of what we they think we're going to get. So again, that's another change between now and the final budget. Um, and then you want to talk about interest? Sure. Interest income, um, it's all based on the interest rates that we're receiving from our local banks. Um, rates are still staying relatively flat. We we anticipated some sort of decrease in fisc in calendar year 24 or 25. We haven't seen that. It's all based on the federal federal rates that are coming through. We haven't seen many decreases come through. We only saw one within the last 6 months. Our financial analysts, our bond, our banks, our financial adviserss, they're all expecting maybe

two in the ne in the fiscal year 26. Maybe, you know, we they all thought there was going to be four in this fiscal year. So, it's really a guessing game. We kept it relatively flat. It it is a big portion of our local revenues, 3.87 million for fiscal year 26. And then for the operating transfers, these are just transfers between the operating funds that are for necessary needs. Um we are transferring 180,000 from our ED fund to our debt service fund for copier leases that and for the principal and interest payments for the new copier leases that we entered into in this fiscal year. $5 million from operation is maintenance to the ED to the ED fund. We did that in fiscal year 25. We will continue that in fiscal year 26. and then $3 million from operation and maintenance to the debt service fund. That is for the principal and interest on the fiscal year 24 debt certificates that were issued for the capital project uh moving 15 forward capital projects. Okay. So the next bucket is state revenues and u the highlight of the state revenues is really EBF uh evidence-based funding. We budget at about 18,250,000 an increase of about 150,000. Again, the state keeps uh keeps up with their word and they uh have been increasing the EBF regularly. Um so statewide they they added another 307 million for all of the EBF. So we get 150,000 out of that. And transportation reimbursement has been trending around four and a half million. So we're still hopefully hopefully going to get that four and a half million. We're still waiting for all of it to come this year. Right. Yeah. Okay. And then federal federal revenues, those are all based on federal grants that we receive um through various different sources. Um again, the trend is with this budget, they are relatively flat. Um with the ongoing um concerns that we see in the media

regarding federal funding, with grants being with what's going to happen with grants, we're we're being conservative with keeping them flat. We're not trying to eliminate anything. and we're hoping that all the grants are funded. Uh the major ones that we get are the title grants. Um small little increase there for for title in the fiscal year 26. The idea grant uh there is about a half a million dollars more in this fiscal year. The national school launch and breakfast programs remain flat. That's for the funding for the free and reduced program through the federal program. One significant decrease that we are seeing um is our Medicare reimbursement decreasing from about a million dollars from fiscal year 25 to 26. We we are experiencing it. We haven't received many payments in this fiscal year. We're hoping that we start to receive more in the upcoming next in this fiscal year 26. Again, it's nothing that we can really control. It's based on the federal funding those grant programs, the Medicare programs. So, okay. So, then here's our summary of the comparison of FY25's budget to um FY26 budget. Again, the fall we'll compare it to actuals for this fiscal year. Uh so again, we separated between the operating funds and then the rest of the funds at the bottom. So, we're pred predicting at this point in time that our revenues in the operating funds should go up about $5.5 million. and the capital projects. Just make a note the reason that's decreasing. So that's that's bond sale driven. So we're not we don't have any bond sales anticipated for FY26. And then the simple pie chart showing you our property tax revenues at about 80%. And then the you can see how much most districts are heavily dependent on property taxes in Illinois and the small

slices of federal and state which we need and we depend on. Okay. So we're going to move on to expenditures. Um some of the a few of the assumptions here. Um I want to emphasize that uh the cabinet and and other members of the district leadership team we've met for several months and tried to identify ways that we could trim this budget. Um, we did present a deficit for FYI25 and it was about 12 to$13 million. So, we knew that we had to take action on that this year and the team did. Um, so we did we do believe we identified about $6 million in savings. So, you'll see uh when we get to the u summary of expenditures um what I'm talking about. So, you want to talk about this? Sure. All the salaries, majority of the salaries that are we budget for are all based on contractual increases per union agreements. Um for the CTC, we are budgeting about 82 million for fiscal year 26, which is about a $3 million increase from prior year. This mainly it's it's a combination of um FTEEs and 26 additional retirements that we're going to experience over the in the next fiscal year. Um, that's the next line. Teacher retirements. Fiscal year 25. We had about 30 FTEEs. They were on a REIT program of of about 4.3 million. This year 26, there's 25 for about 3.75. Obviously, when those when someone does retire on the higher end salary, it's replaced with a lower salary. So, we do experience some significant savings in that area. And then all the rest of the unions are all all just based on the contractual increases. Thai, ESPA, SEIU, and then the DTU. Uh they're all again um per per the per the union agreements. Keep going. Yep. Going along with the insurance uh with

the expenditures, the the benefits that we do provide for all the employees. Health insurance premiums as we brought a few months ago is a 10% increase in the premiums. Dental is a 5% premium increase. And vision is no change. property and liability insurance. It's only going up 1%. We did receive some favorable favorable rates in fiscal year 25 for our premiums. So, the budgettobudget increase or the the actual increase um it's it's a small increase of about 1.8 million total budget. Curriculum purchase, the only new curriculum purchases in literacy for about $530,000. Technology, they're continuing with all their advancements and purchases. Some of the high high items to note are instructional text STEM materials, library resource centers, new line flat panels, and third and sixth grade Chromebooks. They have a five-year plan that they are sticking to. Um they're very they're they're very they're on top of their budgets, the technology. They're making sure that every all the students are being provided for and all the schools are being kept on on level with their technology. And then in the operation maintenance fund again the largest expense is the $3 million transfer for the debt service to fund the principal and interest. Okay. Um I'm going to mention here it's always a great time to mention some of the capital projects we're doing still in the district. These again these come uh below the line. These expenditures are coming out of fund 60. They're not out of our operating funds uh revenues and expenses. We're still uh spending down some of the bond money that we sold for all the all the $120 million of construction. So, we do have time limits when we need to spend that money down. So, we did need to spend about $11 million this summer. So, we have some, you know, and all of these were in the five-year facil master facility plan. So,

and we've mentioned these uh when we I think presented a couple months ago, but I'll just go through them briefly again. We have a lot the number one uh projects this summer are asphalt and concrete. You know, a little bit overdue. This particular parking lot here in Sunling at North Side, this this area and the the Circle Drive, that's all going to be replaced. That's our largest project. Whitley is getting the entire parking area also replaced. CLA, many of these other ones are some concrete work, some sidewalks. Um, willow bend is I believe it's concrete uh set uh sorry uh asphalt. Um and um uh you can see like how many schools is that it's over 10 10 school 12 schools are getting getting touched. ESC is getting a what they call a grinding down and an overlay. Our our admin uh parking lot is in pretty bad shape too. So we're hitting a lot of a lot of good good concrete and asphalt work. those bids came in very attractive. So, we were able to take on additional projects um as we saw the bids coming in uh under budget and sometimes like 50 half 50% under the budget that we had anticipated. We've got a couple roofs um going up, partial roofs at Virginia Lake, Will Ben, uh HVAC, we're starting with some replacement at CLA and some repairs at DJ. um playgrounds. We're still doing partial playgrounds um at at at the schools listed here and the SIP here program here will get a few pieces of like exercise type equipment in the back and then a lot of flooring and walk-off carpeting. Um and we're just again trying to to bring all the schools up to baseline. uh we we we've had to um kind of dole this out and break it up into pieces because it's it's a lot of work and it's been a a lot of uh you know a

significant part of our budgets over the years. So um that's happening. And then on the next slide, we're also doing some ceiling and lighting at those five schools there, mostly in the gyms. Main offices, we have been working to not only did we remember we did all the libraries and we we we uh modernized all our libraries. Well, the offices the main offices really needed needed some love too after all that. And so we're doing um four main offices. It's really just the front counter. Um it's not like a complete um renovation of them, but uh many of the offices had like makeshift counters made of like file cabinets and maybe just a slab of some type of material on top of them. So yeah, they they really needed they really needed some looking. We need to look at those. A few locker partals at GMS and Jane Adams. And then for the tech department, I'll throw in a little plug here. are putting in some new line interactive panels, a lot of them, 135 throughout the district. So, we're working in cooperation with our custodians and our maintenance team to get those installed. And lastly on this topic is our um up just the updated five-year facility plan. Again, this gets updated quite regularly, but again, for summer 2025, we're doing about 11.5 million, which is a lot for only like a ninew week summer. We're jumping right in on um actually Friday at the ESC parking lot. On Monday, you'll see a lot of activity and a lot of schools, right? Starting on Monday. Okay. So, get getting close to the end here. You want to take this slide? Sure. These are the budget expenditures fiscal year 25 versus 26. It's budget-to-budget comparison. Um again, we summarize it by operating funds. It does show a decrease of about 470,000, but that is because we are not doing a transfer um from transportation to the ED fund. That was

$4 million in fiscal year 25. So, if you put that $4 million back in, it is about a 2.5% increase of operating funds um expenditures from fiscal year 25 to 26. And then total all funds again the capital projects is being uh the moving 15 forward main initiative projects are being finished in fiscal year 25 and like Diana mentioned we're only doing about 11 million in fiscal year 26. So that's what's skewing that large decrease at the bottom. But overall expenditures rose only two about 2 and a half% and going looking back at the revenues they were about 2.1%. So, we're we're pretty flat for budget um year-over-year. And when you have those contractual raises, you know, they they run around 4%, sometimes a little higher, you know, that that that takes up a lot of the increase in revenue. And then a quick little pie chart, selling benefits, again, 84% of our budget. All right. So, two more slides. Um we have here the tenative budget. So, the tenative budget in the operating funds, we do have a we are looking right now at this time uh about a $7.2 million deficit. Um that is something that uh we we do believe in the as a finance people that this has to be really we have to like minimize any more deficits going forward. like the the the next slide will show you where we might end up might end up in our fund balance. We've been we've been um able to maintain around a 35% fund balance for several years now. But it is um so the as you can see the ED fund is running a the main main deficit there. You know, even with the transfers to the ED fund um

that's where we're seeing expenditures or exceeding revenues. Um and really the other ones are very small. They all kind of zero each other out. Operation maintenance might have a little surplus, but transportation we might go negative. These are all tenative. You know, again, the final budgets in the fall, but um we do plan on buying some bus. Do you want to speak to the bus purchases a little bit? Correct. Uh we will be we will be buying some buses uh right after July. We will be um I believe Tom the director of transportation brought buses at the last but uh board meeting for purchase and then he is um pursuing some another purchase for additional buses. Also you have the electric buses that will be coming on. Um we're hoping we get them in January January. Um that's you know that keeps getting pushed back slowly a little bit as time goes on um just based off of um manu uh manufacturing production uh time but um there is there is there is a replacement cycle for buses that we do have factored into this um transportation budget. We replace some in fiscal year 25. We're replacing some in fiscal year 26. That's one of Tom's um initiatives is to get back on that bus replacement schedule. Right. Again, I had underleveied an IMRF. I I've I fully levied in IMRF this year. So, we have we we do intend that we have used up some of the fund balance there and still using up some of it a little bit as you can see here maybe at $400,000. Um, so trying to equal even that out too, like what fund balance is sitting in these funds that you can't really get at the money. You can't transfer out of 50. You can't transfer out of uh fund 30, which is debt service. That's why you're going to approve later tonight a transfer of interest income from debt service to ED fund. It's one little way that we can we can use up a little bit

of that cushion that's sitting in debt service. Um, transportation. We we do intend to do a $4 million transfer from transportation this year to the ED fund as was in the budget. Um, but we have really drawn down the fund balance in transportation, too. So, do you want to speak to the last slide? Sure. This last slide shows the unodudited projected fund balances that we project out for fiscal year 25 ending June 30th. And then moving over those tenative deficits that we were seeing. Um it shows a ending fund balance for fiscal year 26 projected at about a 25% of expenditures. Like Diana mentioned we typically look for the past few years we've been around 33 to 35% but because we've had a deficit in 25 and a projected deficit or budgeted deficit for 26 we are going down to 25%. Um so yeah, we we're projecting out this year's um again what we think the fund balances will be. We think that we may end up with a $10 million deficit this year, which took a lot of hard work to bring it down from a $13 million deficit. So what are your questions? You know I think we Yeah. Go ahead. So the the deficit for 20 f fiscal year 26 the tenative budget was that 7.2 but you also but you also 7.2 is is anticipated right now for the tenative budget. Right now we think there could be a $7.2 million deficit next year. Okay. So then

when you say 10 10 million for this year. Oh for this year. Got it. What would you say was the main driving force? I mean I know you're talking about seven seven million in the in the educational fund. Um, and you may have already gone through this, but it's the big money that we're no longer getting. It's CPPRT. It's the delayed um property tax revenue. What are the other things that we've pinpointed because expenditures are around 2%. We're not expending a lot more. So, what are some of the shortfalls in terms of revenue that we didn't get? We have added teachers. We added 50 teachers with moving 15 forward. We doubled the need of kindergart amount of kindergarten teachers we needed. Um we added more teachers for middle school because we were doing a teaming structure. So some of it is staff related. CPPRT couple million dollars. ESSER dollars the money that we are contributing to our portion of moving 15 forward. Um what were some of the other big Wells is the big one. ESR and the CPPRT. I mean, between those two, it's like $30 million. Yeah. You know, we had like $25 million from Esser and then um we've been losing uh CPPRT money at like $4 million. Um the two the two years of 5% CPIs. I I keep saying that those were bonus years. Okay. The CPI had been trending two or lower for 10 years at least. And then COVID came and um we prices went up and and we had

two years of inflation at CPI that fed the the you know the federal sewer price index it was over 5%. You know but the PEL limits us to 5%. One year was six and a half right in the December the December CPI. So, we got some bonuses there with that that said that that also helped this growth in the district, but now the CPI is trending down. We're at 3.4, we're at 2.9, and uh I think it's trending around 2.5 now. Can't remember. And I think the other big thing that we talked about was when we looked at our contract expend revenues or expenditures for related service staff, special education, those hard to fill positions, that budget line item was running us about a half a million dollars and then it is ballooned to 5 million. So it's over five. So, it's about a $5 million gap there because it's harder to find EL teachers, special education teachers. So, we're having to go to contract service agencies for teaching staff and related service staff that are required based on IP needs and they're, you know, raking us over the, you know, over a barrel with cost. So, that's a that's grown over time, but it's it's a $5 million impact to the budget. I mean is it would it be correct to say that most of these uh for for the projected 20 fiscal year 26 you were saying that everything's the projections are mainly flat in terms of revenues and and expenditures. So these are just basically vestages of this year that are just continuing on because this year is just flat. So it's not adding any new deficit. It's just carrying on the deficits from from LA from this monies that we're not receiving that we have been in the past. I mean, and then the the Esser funds, those were predicted to leave to to not

be with us forever anyway. So, they're gone. And what we've done with some of the positions over the years when we got the money, the thing that the the asset they wanted us to talk about was the sustain. How do you sustain it? We used those dollars and we hired people. We bought cleaning supplies. We bought laptops. We did all kinds of things um with them during COVID, but we added, if you recall, interventionists, we added student supports, clinicians, and we haven't really been able to peel those back because sure, there's suddenly not just a lack of need. You'll hear that shortly and our last presentation of the night coming up next. Um so that's, you know, part of the balancing act. We did shave about 50 positions, right, in anticipation of Esser. Yeah. Leaving us. But then we doubled our kindergarten workforce. We added more teachers for middle schools. So that's kind of been a wash in terms of we are up FTE. We've come to this board every year in February wanting more staff to support the needs of our students. And they're not getting any less. They're getting more. We're not shrinking in special letter EL. Our numbers are growing. So that's that's part of this deficit. Can I ask a question about property tax? You mentioned the delayed collections on property tax. Is it delayed and we will eventually collect those those monies or delayed not coming in ever? No. So we understand um from PMA, our investment advisors and that Cook County may um delay the bills and they're normally due I believe August 1st here in Cook County. So that so we don't know how long they're they the the delay might be and that makes us nervous because then we have to really watch our cash flow which we do. We watch our cash flow so we get the same we'll get the revenue it's just there the county is going to

benefit from that interest income than we will by putting it in our coffers. So, um, you know, a couple years ago, three years ago or something like that, we had to take out some warrants, some short-term borrowing cuz that money didn't come in until December. Okay. We're not hearing anything that severe. We're not really hearing anything right at all. But we're being warned that the bills, you know, and here we are in June. They need to come out pretty soon for an August 1 due date. Um, so that's happening. The other thing that's happening that we're really watching carefully and we've talked to uh our attorneys at forensic who watch our PTAB is there's been an increase in residential um uh assessment appeals and they the uh they won some they won their refunds and we have been we have found that there's been a lot of Cook County payments back to uh property owners residential property owners of refunds Now, we get that money back because the state passed some law a couple years ago where when I get the levy, the final levy, it tells me how much in refund and on top of the levy on top. It has nothing to do with the levy. It just says here's how much your refunds are going to be. So, we've got what 1.7 I think it was when I got the levy edit report, not the final levy. Got the levy edit report like last month. It's at 1.7 million. So, those are refunds like last year. But right now, we're seeing an increase of about $4 million compared to where we were last year on refunds. That's also hurting our revenue stream. Okay. It will we'll get, I believe, most of that money back, but it's going to be in the future. So, while we just said this year's deficit could well, we budgeted like 13 million. We've done well. You know,

people watch their their spending, but our cash flow is a little low because we usually again that a that spring property tax influx of money. Um, and it we I think believe it was at the 5%, but it it's coming under where we were at last year at this time. So, we still have a few weeks left to go in June. Um, but that's also affecting our our pro this year's results. So, you know, that's not not bringing you a real positive on that one either. Yeah. So, we're kind of we're experiencing I think a short term like property refunds, CPPRT, uh, Medicaid, we have to get through these times. ES funds going away. um CPI coming down a little bit. So, it's a readjustment for the district. I can't say it stronger than that. We really have to pay attention because we can't really go much below 25%. I don't think the state will come in right away, but we'll have on our budget report, we we have to file all these, you know, reports to the state and they'll say, you know, what is your budget deficit reduction plan? what is your deficit reduction plan? So, I don't know yet in the fall when we have to submit our final budget if we'll have to fill out that part. We'll we'll we'll let you know September with the finance committee and let them know, but that is part of every year the formal budget. It's in the packet the the forms that you have to submit to the state. It has a section that calls it a deficit reduction plan. We haven't had to do that, but that may be coming.

Yeah, I appreciate all of the work that goes into making the presentation and making a very complicated large budget very simple. So, thank you both for doing that. Um, and certainly know that addressing the deficit is a top priority for the board as well as Dr. Hines and obviously our finance team. So, um, I'd be curious, Lori, if you could just speak to, you know, how the how we'll be approaching this work into FY26. I mean, the team has already done it to the tune of $6 million. We really looked at where our expenditures were going. We looked at staffing levels. We looked at retirement. We looked at attrition, resignation, termination, right? So, uh, open positions. We've looked at enrollment against registration. And we're really just staffing as we need to. we're really adhering closely to board targets. So, we had we had gotten some away from that in in some schools and in some uh programs and we're just paying a lot, you know, better attention to where we are with our enrollment numbers. That's something Lisa's monitoring um very closely. We've had a number of um departments looking at Renee, she cut about 18 different positions. We're using our grant money differently. There have been unfilled positions that we haven't hired for. A lot of the departments, you know, raise your hand. Mindy, Lisa's given up somebody. Renee, you know, Lorie, the departments have gotten smaller. Diana has a part-time like one, you know, full-time was was you know, so someone's missing and in a lot of the departments and then we have other through retirements and um whatnot. We have a a multi-year plan and then we just have we have to do it all over again. Unfortunately, it was awful since, you know, finding out in September. We've been hard at work and we'll just continue doing that and do what we did the first time. We try to

trim away from schools as much as we can. Um, but the biggest expenditure in any district is its personnel, their salary, and benefits. So, you know, we're we're going to have to get pretty lean. And that's that's the next round of the deficit work. All right. Thank you both. Next up, strategic priority 1A. It's okay. All right. Next up, um item 6.4, for strategic plan update priority 1A KPI review with Dr. Edgar and friends and friends. I just want to get up and stretch your hand lot of presentations. Yes. Are you warning us? No. I I know I was going to make that joke. Laura, you are in charge. Your left elbow. I' I've actually I've actually scripted this out to try and make it as streamlined as as possible. So, so, uh, President Ader, Board of Education, Dr. Hines, thank you for, uh, this evening. Tonight, we're going to provide an update on strategic plan priority 1A, which is the belonging section of the success and belonging component, our largest component of the strategic plan. The work that we're going to present tonight is a central piece of the educational services mission, which is ensuring every student feels seen, supported, and connected at school. Tonight, we'll highlight how we're building systems that respond to student challenges and also proactively create environments where belonging is supported. Go to the next one here. Here we go. So, our department's work is very broad. It

spans from supporting student discipline decisions to supporting mental health gifted and acceleration programming, supporting attendance and crisis response among other things. While I've had the privilege of leading this work, its impact really comes from the expertise and dedication of our team. Uh joining me tonight are two of those leaders. One is Robin. Just kidding. We had to be here before, but anyway, uh Dr. Laura Swanland, who you've you've met before. She's one of our directors who leads our district's mental health and wellness strategies and initiatives. And Dr. Pam Radford, who's new to the district, who oversees our intensive behavioral supports and works closely with schools to support students with complex needs. So this is more of our team uh that works to supports the schools. So we have Dr. Megan Meyer and she is our trauma-informed coordinator. So she does a lot of work on um trauma-informed interventions and practices and prevention work. We have Christine Kajawa. She's our behavior coach. So she supports a lot of the uh cases as well as Megan on in terms of um significant behavioral social emotional needs as well as Kelly Sworzik. She's a social work coordinator and supports with um with those pieces. And then Carrie Failen, which is our um occupational therapys physical therapist coordinator. She supported our team a lot on sensory strategies. So a lot of behavioral needs come from sensory needs as well. So she was really in influential in helping with thinking about those strategies. Um this whole team offers a lot of supports to the schools whether it's individual cases or groups of kids or prevention work. And then also this work is supported by our executive assistant Eileen New who uh really supports our team a lot and helps us with a lot of logistics around this work. So this year's timeline uh this reflects a coordinated system level approach we took in the summer. We launched a new onboarding plan for training student services staff. We built a more

structured and supportive attendance support model, streamlined restraint and timeout procedures and secured major grant funding. One of the things that uh we're very successful with and Dr. Laura Swolland here has taken a real lead in is is we won $1.6 $6 million in competitive grant funding uh which we're yeah which we're which we're using with great effect already. Uh by the fall we began training cohorts in restorative practices. Uh a number of schools that had agreed to join in. We sent them to various trainings. We rolled out a district-wide attendance campaign. If you are a parent in the district, you've received a number of our communications, I'm sure. and we really work to enhance our trauma response coordination so that we are prepared to support schools when bad things happen and they need help. In the winter, we expanded what we uh started by uh beginning with monthly suspension review meetings at our larger leadership team meetings to really focus not only on equity but also consistent practices. Uh we expanded our community partner delivered services providing broader uh mental health support to our schools and we began focusing on broad professional learning on behavior support strategies with our larger staff. Moving into the spring, we focused on alignment and coordinate our efforts. Uh we finished our coordination of our title one summer program and coordinated it with a new program uh our full service community schools offering a free to the parent uh full summer support program at both Lincoln School and Lake Louise. We also redesigned our behavior coaching model and refined how students are matched to enrichmentbased supports. When we looked at this as a team, we really realized how much work has really gone on over the course of the year. So building strong systems is crucial to fostering student belonging uh because it creates a a responsive and supportive

environment. Tom highlighted a lot of the work that we've been doing. So some of our systems and structures that we have really put in place is the using our data to really guide decision- making and providing support to students um in behavioral patterns. the design the redesigning of the coaching pattern uh behavioral referral has also allowed for us to provide timely support to engage students co-leading school improvement process to ensure that we're focusing on social emotional support as a part of our school's planning the growing of our restorative practices to focus on positive school climate refining functional behavioral assessment and behavior intervention procedures to better align supports. So these are just some of the system practices that we really are intentionally lined to promote. Um belonging is a foundation of academic and social emotional growth. All right. Next we'll take a closer look at some of the actions in detail, but we'll also highlight how we're monitoring our progress uh with our key performance indicators related to student belonging. So to effect to effectively monitor our strategic plan and assess student engagement, we utilize a scorecard comprising of the seven key performance indicators. So we're looking at attendance, office discipline referrals, suspensions, MTSS implementation and intervention impact. Our strategic goal um areas are presented on the left with a the majority of them decreasing in in the measures of what we are expecting except for two intervention impact areas. one targeted growth progress on behavioral goals and one on the use of restorative practices. The 2023 column is where we started or our baseline data and the subsequent columns 24 and 25 provide an update of the progress towards our 2028 goals. So if we take a look at that we are on

target this year to meeting our goals. The far right column denotes the change from our where baseline of 2023 to where we are this year based on the our data. We also have uh provided this in a more I guess transparent and digestible way graphically. So this is the same data as the key performance indicators just presented as graphs. Each graph highlights the 2023 level. The yellow line is a target trajectory to 2028. So you can see what the minimum amount of progress needed to reach the goal is. And then of course you have the bars that represent annual performance on each of those. One thing you'll note, I'll see if I can use my little laser part here, is this graph, the second one from the right in the top row seems a bit odd. The um the target line is is flat as you can see and our graphs are already on that. So in the beginning 2023 there was an estimate. This is a office discipline proportionality. We're looking to see are we essentially uh are students of different uh student groups receiving office discipline referrals in a way that's proportionate to their representation in the larger student body. Uh our goal is to have no greater uh disparity than 4%. Uh as we began with the initial 2023 baseline it was estimated to be suppressed. that is low for that year. So we set a goal right at where it would be. So 4% uh it increased the year before and then it's come down to 4%. As we've looked at this more carefully, we realize two things. One, there has been some progress. But two, the goal as it's defined in the way we measure it is probably off in which this is just not a very precisely appropriately measured goal. We're going to change this not in level, but instead we're going to focus on groups that we are most interested in and have the

largest disparities and look at reducing those. So, so this just reflects the average disparity among our groups. We're going to change that to just focus on the groups that have the most disparity and track reductions in disparity among those groups. Does that make sense? Okay. Okay. Exactly. Exactly. Uh, one thing just so you know, as you'll receive in the fall, uh, additional updates with our achievement portion, then you'll talk about, you know, staff engagement and retention and whatnot. As those come to bear for you guys, we will add similar graphs to a presentation on our website where the community come and can come and look and see what our progress is and it's updated every year as these things progress. So, this kind of matches what we talked about last year, right? Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay, good. All right. And here we go. Okay. So, now a little bit more on some of those strategies that um we're working on. So, this slide is really about community partnerships. Like we kind of mentioned, we've had a large focus on expanding our partnerships with the community. The first two things at the top represent those grants that we just mentioned that we received. So, ACT Now, they are the recipient of the federal full service community school grant and we were a subreient, one of the two suburban subreients um to get that. And that is where we're doing a lot of work around this pillars and full service community. But the whole idea is that it's almost like a 247 uh wraparound support for the community, meaning after school programming, wellness, health, um parent partnerships and all those things. So we're still building a lot of it. We've started with Boys and Girls Club and after school program. We work really closely with the partners of our community through that as well. Uh but the possibilities are really exciting for what we're able to build here. Um with this grant, we also got the ISB stronger connections grant which is focused on wellness and mental health. Through that is how we're able to do a lot of our restorative practices work, a lot of the deescalation. That's

been a very large focus for us this year on training staff on how to work with kids when they get upset or how to prevent it. Um those kind of skills that we're finding are really needed given all the mental health needs that you know have been talked about. Um so and this is in addition to the 21st century uh grant that we've had in place uh for our buildings. One of them is ending this year and then the other the other one is continuing um has another year to it. So the main partners are the bridge, the POC and the Boys and Girls Club, but that's not our only partners. We're continuing to expand. So there's just a lot of exciting things we're able to do with this grant work. And you know, we're always in communication with our partners on what we can do. They're more than happy to help. and together we can do more, right? Like there's so much we can do as schools and and and leveraging the strengths of the partners in our community has is proving to be really beneficial not only in terms of direct services for kids but also support for fairness or preparing parents wellness fair that's been a huge success with the past couple years. This group team has been huge in that and working with our partners just getting the word out in the community on what we need and we've been telling them kindergarten first grade big need um in terms of just the supports and they're hearing us and really helping think of what can we do to help with school readiness to help with social and emotional skills in addition to all the needs of our other grades and you know of the middle school students and everything else. So um we're we're thinking of a lot of things we can do within the school but also in the community as well. So, uh, strong family engagement is is key to fostering student belonging because it directly contributes to students feeling connected and supported in their school community. This year, there are two, uh, gifted seminars as examples of how we engage with families. The topics chosen by families uh, focus on perfectionism, motivation, and support

strategies. So by blending expertise of a national expert in addition with our own district 15 staff, we have partnered with families in supporting gifted learners. For each seminar, we had over 100 um attendees and really engaging family efforts. All right. So attendance is one of the clearest and most complex indicators of student belonging. We know families are always doing their best and many absences are just truthfully unavoidable. We also heard from parents about the positive impact of our messaging. Uh one thing that we always did when we uh messaged with parents is we included a link where parents could provide us with feedback about the message, what they wish to receive, what changes they'd like to see and whatnot. So we made some revisions. First, we updated our messaging to have an equal focus on unexcused absences so that we were not just giving parents information about where their students stood relative to the average for their grade and how many absences they've had, but it broke it down to really focus on unexcused absences, which of course are those that are more likely to be under the family's control. Uh, the other things we did is we after we revised this, we moved from an email only approach to a textbased approach. We know that many families are much more likely to review something on their text, their phone, their watch versus their email. It's just a much more active part of our lives, which warden talked about, you know, the the ups and downs of that. Uh, so we we moved to that. We also launched a district-wide awareness campaign where we had monthly newsletter updates that we gave to the schools to provide and we also included that in our district family newsletter as well. And then finally, we built a tiered attendance intervention approach where we updated our larger MTSS behavioral interventions to have a attendance focus. It went all the way from mentoring to wraparound services to

parent contact and whatnot to make sure that parents had support for areas like for this area, especially when they felt they couldn't do it on their own. Uh the biggest shift, you know, of course, is a is a big mindset where we're trying to move away from just marking a student absent to really always asking why, making sure we connect with the parent, and making sure that we offer help when needed. All right, looking ahead, that's still me. Uh as we look to the 25 26 year, our focus on deepening our systems and priorities include scaling up our restorative practices initiative. We're bringing in a uh esteemed national presenter to work with our administrators and we've secured a day to provide training to our schools. Uh we're looking at strengthening and expanding our community partnerships not only through the full services model, but just through the larger stronger connections we work as a focus on mental health. We're launching an updated uh FBA BIP training, which is specialized assessment and uh intervention planning to better support our clinicians who work with uh students that have the most intensive behavioral needs. And we're facilitating cross- departmental leadership in MTSS to improve our alignment, consistency, and service delivery across all of our schools. Our our goal, of course, is to provide targeted support on time and to the right students. And we're really proud of the systems that we've built. we see that um it's been something that we have pride in, but we're most appreciative for the staff in our schools who actually make this work impact students. And with that, we're wondering if you have questions. Well, first, um just a huge congratulations on the results. It's just really impressive to see that not only have we made progress to our goals,

but some of the 2028 goals we've already hit, which is just a huge testament to the investments that we've made as a district, but obviously the work that you all have been doing um with students and families. It's just really, really impressive. Um, one question that I had on the grants. Um, I was just curious if these are multi-year grants and what is our predicted like sustainability of are we going to be able to sustain the grant-f funed initiatives longer term? We can speak to two parts. So the full services community schools grant is a million dollars for five years. So a million dollars each year for five years, right? Yeah. Mhm. And the stronger connections grant is $667,000 for a year for you think three years. The next three years of the others being one of the main reasons that we partnered with the Boys and Girls Club is that they have very expansive systems and even revenue um development systems that they have a Palatine board for example that hosted a big evening where they raised you know six figures in one night etc. they are uh really looking to have a foothold and a a footprint in the Palatine area where we have for example one of our uh middle schools Winston Campus Middle School is actually going off of a three-year grant right 21st century grant 21st century grant a grant that we haven't mentioned and the the Boys and Girls Club is looking for providing the services through their own system without that grant funding so they have you know are working with us around how do we supplement that or how can they do it without a district contribution or a very minor contribution. So the Boys and Girls Club is one of the key partners not only in providing highquality services now but in providing sustainable services. Yeah. So, one thing that they do, for example, is they can provide afterare at a very um

uh underwritten cost. And uh the the most they would charge a family if if they were to come at all would be $25 a week, which is significantly less than our other providers can uh can do. And what they do is they actually use that revenue not as a generation for themselves, but to then transfer to something like a Winston campus initiative where we don't have revenue sources to support it. so they can use those to continue on things like that. So they they've been very generous with us and as we've really deepened our uh relationship with them and as we move forward into thinking about sustainability, they've really started to expand our thinking about how they become a partner with us in the long term. And they're not the only ones doing this. Um the bridge is also doing something similar. What we're finding is a number of the grants we're getting is um typically like things partners get. So, and we're using this data to have partners start to uh look for grants and use the need. So, we were partnering on um a digital literacy grant that no longer the funding is coming. Also, some of the funding right now is unpredictable. Um but like things like that where we're starting to really help show the need that then is catapulting partners and together we're we're doing this. Does that make sense? So that's similar Boys and Girls Club. Other other partners are also looking at like, oh, here's the data that shows the need and we're showing a model that's effective to be able to continue to help support it. So the partners are starting to see how they can like their roles in it as we're continuing to expand on this work. And Sam, it's a good question though because just like the ESRE funds, like we put them to very good use. We know there were districts giving money back and we're like what we'll use every penny. Um the same is true with this. At some point if we don't get if we don't reup um you know our grants the stronger together and whatnot if the money is not there competitive grants always have a shelf life. Yeah. Finding other partners is is critical or else we have to have the hard conversations about when the

money runs out what do we do and we have to stop delivering these supports if the budget our own budget can't bear it. So, it is something we always have to have our eyes on anytime you have, you know, any grant funding coming in. Yep. Yeah. But we have a little amazing grant writer in in the room. So, her name is Dr. Laura Swallman. So, she's always on the lookout. The the real expansive piece of of, you know, Dr. Swallen's work is that not only has, you know, it produced these grants, but it's also produced the information that others can use to pursue grants that would have been a lot more work and a lot more difficult to to approach. Um, you know, we I just talked to someone today, as a matter of fact, who is talking about using some of this information to look at a new grant opportunity. So, her work is more than just what it's already accomplished, but it's helping others reach out to things that we probably would have viewed as out of reach in years past. Thank you, Lauren. needed. Other questions. Just thank you. You guys are quietly You guys are quietly working your tails off right behind the scenes. So, it's very much appreciated. I had one more um on the attendance piece. So, I saw that we were making progress on the decrease of um chronic absenteeism. I was curious if we had data around how our overall attendance has been impacted since we've launched the text and email campaign. Like the the average daily attendance or something like that. We do. I don't have it here. That's fine. You know, yeah. The the thing that's also really interesting is we set a 1 and a half% decline each year in chronic absenteeism. And chronic absenteeism is where someone has missed 20 or more school days a month essentially um in in the year. And even though those increments seem really small, a 1 and

a.5% change can move us from being in the top 40% of of schools with this issue to down below the the 50th or middle percentile. So these little incremental changes actually really shift us in how we compare with larger elementary districts that have the same kind of makeup and and and concerns around student attendance. But I can supply even later tonight I'll go back there. We have a uh new system called unified insights which has been a a data warehouse and visualization system led by the technology department that's allowed us much easier access to this information. So I'll just copy a graph and send it to you know and then you you had the information right there. Thank you. I was just curious. No, it's a good question. All right. All right. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Oh, and thanks to Ahmad. We kind of used his presentation because it was so good with you in March. So, thank you for letting us mimic that structure. Yeah, it's worked out well. All right. Um, do we want to go to 65? Okay. All right. 65. Resource recommendation for K to 5 health. Feel like you guys want may do a couple jumping jacks. Are you good? Are you get the wiggles wiggles out? Good evening, President Ader and members of the board of education and Dr. Hines. I'm um here tonight with Kristen Orlando who is an assistant director in the teaching, learning and assessment department. And um Kristen works a lot with science and with health. And this year she actually um collaborated with a small group of teachers to do a pilot for a new K5 health resource. And we're going to share a recommendation about that tonight.

So um as you know uh in district 15 and we've talked about this at the board table before um curriculum adoption is actually just one small part of our curriculum review process. So curriculum review is actually an ongoing process and it happens every year. So we're always looking at the impact that our curricular resources have on student learning. Um when we see gaps, we make adjustments either by supplementing resources or by doing professional development with teachers. Um but curriculum adoption actually happens every 5 to seven years. Um, and that's when we look more closely at the resources that we're using and and make a decision. Do we want to continue with this resource? Um, or is there a new resource out there that we think would better meet our needs? All right. So, as we reviewed and selected health curriculum resources, we ensured full alignment to the Illinois state health standards and mandates. So on the screen you'll see the three main goals which goal 22 focuses on understanding the principles of health promotion and the prevention and treatment of illness and injury. Goal 23 emphasizes understanding the human body systems and the role in growth and development. And goal 24 addresses promoting health and well-being through effective communication and decisionmaking. Um, in addition to meeting these goals, our curriculum um, health review team sought a program that was interactive and student centered, balanced between inquiry and direct instruction, and supported students to apply their learning in making healthy choices. We also wanted a resource that

was available in both Spanish and English um, to promote the accessibility for all of our learners. All right. Hang on. It It really went crazy. Okay, there we go. Okay. Um, after thorough research and pilot feedback, our recommendation is to use Quaver Ed health curriculum for grades kindergarten through 5th. The pilot team really like the engaging digital resources that offer interactive visuals um and studentfriendly lessons. Something that's different about Quaver is that they began as a music curriculum company. So, there's music and movement infused throughout all of the lessons. They even have a choreography guide in case anyone is a dancer. Um, and in having gone and observed our students participating in the pilot, even our fifth graders, who I have a fifth grader at home, he says things are cringy. Um the fifth graders that I observed really loved the music aspect of it and were like singing along with some of the songs. So I appreciated that. Um we do feel like this resource provides age appropriate coverage across several essential health domains and that's what you'll see on um the screen in front of you. as well as it really allows our students to get that hands-on like application piece and practicing those healthy habits. Our team came together and we made some recommendations that we would continue to monitor the district policies, the state standards and mandates as well as any instructional needs of our staff and students. And we'll continue to support

those instructional practices through vetted professional development, especially next school year when we would like this new resource to roll out. The shift would be to you utilize quavered health units. And then we would need to do some enhancing especially with there's some environmental health mandates that we can address during science. So those will be supplemented there as well as some summer curriculum writing to develop a scope and sequence. And then we need to do some reviewing on the current fifth grade human growth and development unit. So as Christian shared uh our our next steps will be uh looking at professional development this fall. Um we'll form our summer um writing committees to review the scope and sequence. Um, obviously we'll continue to support our teachers next year as they're implementing as part of the monitoring process of of curriculum review. Um, and then as always we continue to uh review what ISBY offers us in terms of mandates for instruction. So, um, we're happy to answer any questions that the board has. I was just wondering and you mentioned that one of the things that the committee liked was the digital component and we've had a lot of discussion tonight about the opposite. Um is that more do you know is it kind of like whole class digital kind of whiteboard displays and individual this what devices digital components or how does that work? Yes, it's designed more for whole class engagement um through an instructional model where there's a lot of opportunities for movement and like time away from the screen too. So, I would say it's more balanced. Okay. Thank you.

All right. Thank you so much and thank you to the committee and all of the work that went into making the decision and also just appreciated the chart that showed like what's staying the same, what's being adjusted. That was very easy to understand. So, thank you. Thank you. And I think it I'm going to move to item 6.6, resource recommendation for middle school algebra. Fantastic. Well, I'm um joined now by Tiffany Costa, who is a director in teaching, learning, and assessment. And similar to Kristen, she does many different things, but her her primary focus is math. And so, at our last board meeting, we actually recommended um Carnegie Middle School Math Solutions for our 6th through 8th grade math program, but we said at the time that our algebra subcommittee wanted to continue their work. Um and so tonight we're here to recommend a program called Edge Gems Math um to support our students who take algebra in middle school. And one of the reasons why we selected Edge Gems is because of how closely aligned it is to um the high school algebra scope and sequence. Um, we know that when students take algebra in middle school, it be it sort of puts them on the runway for for high school math. And so we want them to have that solid foundation that that most closely mirrors what their future experience would be. Um, obviously the curriculum is aligned to the Illinois learning standards and the mathematical practices. Um, and then in addition, it has the added benefit of having both um, English and Spanish resources. Um, another key feature that it has is a family component with a home connection as well as some videos that parents can help support their students or watch um

to learn what their students are doing. Uh and we also uh the team really gave great feedback that it had explicit skills practice. So students could really have an understanding of the different algebra practices as well as um every lesson has an explore where it gives some realworld inquiry and they have what they call teacher gems where they get different instructional practices to collaborate um and work together in some different instructional groupings on their work. Um there are clear models within every um lesson has a slideshow that goes with it to really introduce the different topics. And uh we do a lot of work on looking at the pacing of a program to make sure we can really get through uh the curriculum so that students aren't um don't have any gaps in their instruction. Uh so we like to create what we say is a realistic pacing guide. Uh and we lay it next to the year at a glance. And this has a really good opportunity for some teacher discretion, a little bit of flexibility um for those things that happen uh during the school year that you need time for. Uh but we can still get through the full curriculum. And finally, um there's practice opportunities at varying levels. So Edge Gems has what they called their proficient level as well as tiered, which breaks it down a little bit more for students who need it, as well as a challenge level for those students who need um that ex uh extension. So, here's just a little preview of those family guidance I've mentioned before with some QR codes and some ways that families can discuss algebra at home and find it in their daily lives. Uh, there is a digital platform for teachers, but the majority of this program is really a student consumable based. Uh, feedback from the committee was they really liked how much workspace was in the workbooks for the students so that they could really work out those problems. Uh and uh you can see our total for the annual subscription is right at 38.

And so of course we want to thank the review committee again um not just the broader uh committee but also this smaller math subcommittee that just um continued to work because they were committed to having um a product that that would support student growth. Um we're proud of both of the um uh programs that we've recommended and we're looking forward to um launching next school year and and we're happy to answer any questions about this as well. I had a question really kind of more for just my own learning. So forgive my ignorance on how curriculums work. But so having two different curriculums is is is there any concern with that? Like I mean do I you know like teaching one thing one way of math and then switching to a curriculum for a different type of math or is it because algebra is later? I don't know enough about curriculum in action to know if that would be a problem at all. It's, you know, one of the things that the committee looked at is how they flow into each other, and they felt really comfortable with it. Um, there there's a little bit more inquiry in the sixth through 8th grade level curriculum. Um, and then the the the algebra just sort of more mirrors what high school math looks like, but they felt like they were similar enough that that it that it could flow. I don't know if you want to comment on that, Tiff, but that was the conversation we had about flowing. Yeah. Definitely don't need to know a lot of detail about it. I was just more curious. And so then this would this really happens at that transition to middle school anyway then. Right. Okay. That definitely makes it even even better. But even if there were a slight change, it wouldn't matter as much. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions? All right. Thank you. I look forward to checking out the parent guides. I feel cliche. I'm already saying, "Oh, they

teach math different now." So, those will be very helpful. So, I appreciate that tears at the kitchen counter, right? Yeah. One can only hope. One can only hope. Thank you. Thank you both. And thanks, Tiff, and everybody for hanging around. All right. Um, Sher had to head home. She has not been feeling well today. So, next up is Press 118. Uh, it says part one. Press 18 is a massive issue. Yeah. And I mean, and what we wanted to do was make sure that anything that needed to be updated for the beginning of the year was approved tonight. So, we typically, as this board knows, we don't do a first and a second in one meeting, but because of we wanted it in place for for school to start in our handbook and whatnot. Um, we're doing an all-in-one. So, any any questions on was submitted? tech very little um large scale changes very minor some some wordings uh for designate a couple footnotes but I didn't find anything too um too significant anybody have any questions or comments no standard yes standard simple updates Okay. All right. Okay. All right. Do we want to go back up to superintendent report? You tell me. I mean, it's late. Um the, you know, just at least celebrate the year in review. Let's do the We can't do that next meeting, right? We're not here. Yeah. Right. All right. So, if we go, we're going to go We're going to do a little bbop. We're going to bop back to the slides, the year in review, and this was put together by the the cabinet. So, uh, and for the sake of time, I'm going to

just move through the slides rather than make everybody who's who's super tired sitting out there come on up. All right. Um, so as as everyone knows, we our strategic plan has four strategic priorities. uh success and belonging, staff engagement and retention, community engagement, family involvement, our facility improvement, and all the things associated with moving 15 forward. And then really to keep track of all of it because it's just four commitment areas, we have these associated themes. um one of which you heard you know about tonight. You've heard about the mental health increased access and some achievement data that links to our strategic dashboard where we uh present out on key performance indicators or KPIs. So we will continue as data comes in. We're getting our our spring assessment, our PAR data, our MAP data, you know, that is just starting to come in. We intend in August to um to razle and dazzle you with how our data is looking. It's really it's really really looking very good. We're super excited. Um so we will do that in August and we wish the data came in at a better interval. It just it doesn't. So our commitment to you was to make sure that we were going to present it as soon as it was available and we'll do we'll do a a big um show and tell in August. Um the next thing has to do with the work uh that we've been focused on with staff development and retention. Um and then we've you've heard a little bit about the plans with the smartphone committee. Um family communication involvement partnership when communications talked about um and gave their their presentation last month. We talked about ways in which we're um trying to engage the community increase two two-way communication. So you've heard a little bit about that progress. And then you know about student transitions. You've heard us talk about master facility construction. Um you heard Rob come tonight to talk about where we are with our enrollment numbers because we're continuing to monitor um enrollment uh

programmatic needs increases against the available space that we have. So those are just our big associated themes that are around our four key priority areas. So success and belonging, it's probably everyone's favorite um because it really gets at the heart of what it is that we do here in our our district. We set high expectations for our students. This was the first year we did rigorous school improvement goal setting and the schools are for the vast majority of our schools have hit their targets for their their school improvement goals and that's been very exciting at the school level uh their teams have been actively engaged and when the data is coming in remember they set a math or a reading an attendance or a behavior goal some of them still monitored all four but we asked them really to do one one academic and one uh behavior or attendance and We're seeing growth. We've launched a 35 literacy review. You'll hear a little bit more about that in subsequent SWI slides and we're going to focus on um the science of reading to continue to do that. K2 we have mag magnetic reading as a supplemental offering um that we are hearing great success when I visit schools the kids the teachers everyone is really excited about the lessons that are available how it engages kids and what we're seeing our kindergarteners really able to do that full day K growth capital letters exclamation mark the kindergarteners are really finally getting what they need to to be successful K kind kid kinders and then really to be ready for first grade. So that core experience, everything we're doing is helping meet the needs of the kids by their classroom teacher during core instruction. And the goal is always then to hope to need have fewer kids that are going to need addition additional support with interventions. Right? In the past, we've had gaps with our core instructional resources. If you recall, our junior high teachers at the time had a 20-year-old resource.

wonder why we weren't closing gaps, you know. So, now we're right resources, right people, professional development, we're monitoring data, and it's all coming together. So, it's it's been really exciting. And then everything the umbrella there is high expectations. We we have to have that belief that all of our kids, you know, regardless if they have an IEP or a 504 or if they speak uh English as their second language, they can learn and they should learn based on all the things we're doing. And we're doing a lot. alignment. So, as you know, and you've heard the last couple meetings, we have new resources in 68 social studies, 68 math, K5 health, and that career education. That's kind of that old added career cruising. What might you want to be when you grow up? That's coming um ahead in uh in the upcoming school year. Everything, as you heard um Mrs. Orlando and Costa say and and Dr. Lopez, things are aligned to grade level standards, right? So, that that's also where it needs to start. And then middle school welcome weeks lessons are being updated. We did hear from our students um when Dr. Lopez and and Mrs. Warden came with me on different um student advisory superintendent visits, they didn't love the welcome lessons. They said they were a little repetitive. So, we're going to work on jazzing them up, making them more engaging. They they kind of said they were babyish. So, we apologize if they're listening, but they'll be better next year. Um and then achievement outcomes. We are certainly monitoring growth as I said in reading and math and um in Rene's department we 321 students exited access. That's fantastic. 9.6 that far exceeds the state uh exit rates and that's for the second or third year in a row right that we're exceeding exit rates. So that's amazing. And that is an Renee says it often. I'll say it again. It's an extraordinarily hard test even for a monolingual English speaker to pass, let alone somebody that's learning English and may or may not have total proficiency in their native language.

Um, and then the middle school uh exits went from 24 to 49. So, they have new resources in in ELD 3 2 and three one two and three. And it is really helping. When I visited Jeff's classroom at Winston, he he couldn't speak enough about how it is really helping. um the kids exit and we had a little dance party celebration because there was half the class was exiting and it was very exciting. More success and belonging uh celebrations, analytics and insights. You've heard us talk about the data warehouse and visual visualization. Tom referenced it today, Dr. Edgar to support our strategic plan and school improvement data monitoring. If we don't have ways in which to access data in real time, if we don't train teachers on how to use it, we're we're collecting data and as the adage goes, we're data rich and information poor. So, we're really trying to become uh more skilled at um utilizing the assessments um and the data that they generate to make decisions on who needs support um you know, who's doing well, who's ready for enrichment. Our math resource uh gives teachers lessons to meet kids at all ends of the learning spectrum. Um, we're developing more MTSS and intervention tracking methods so the schools have ready access to know when it's time for kids to exit or when new kids need to be considered for additional support. So, we're uh we're excited to launch uh Unified Insights, Power School Unified Insights in the fall. Uh, thanks to the tech team, a lot has gone into getting that ready and and everybody else that had a hand in it. Um, middle school STEM, we expanded our offerings including flight and space. kids have been very excited about that um new addition to our STEM offerings and they have designed learning uh lessons through LRC's around uh those those bots and spheres spheros to enhance computer science skills. Our library intervention programs have organized learning activities around media information and

digital literacy which you heard a couple of our families talk about. So, we're working uh in in those avenues to make sure that when those would be all great times to use tech. So, we're building that out and uh we designed inquiry quests for our K5 students within the library. So, it's it's you know inquirydriven time, not just book checkout time. All right. So, that those are just a couple of the things. Moving on uh to additional celebrations um for the year, Special Olympics, and you saw Olympians tonight. That was so exciting. So, we continue to expand that. Mindy has really worked with Dr. Sasso to to try to do more with Special Olympics. We're going to continue to grow that every year. We've actually found a a sponsor and we're going to try to what we need is teachers, staff, coaches to in order to take on more um potential sports. But we're continuing to grow that offering and we're very proud of our athletes. outdoor areas. We've had some specially designed playgrounds and outdoor break areas to support our self-contained programs at Pleasant Hill and at Sunling. Those will be new for next year. We're very excited to to see them. Um so our some of our our students with some some motor needs and they'll be able to get outside and and uh we're really putting grant dollars to work to to make that happen. Um the the notion of high expectations is certainly clear here. 89 of 93 preK measures. Uh when when Renee had her compliance check for her first uh early childhood uh compliance visit for the grant she wrote for her three classrooms, that's kind of insane like the right out of the gate to have that data. So the nice thing is is all of that hard work is helping Mindy and our consultants, Dr. uh McGuffin and our consultants figure out what our plan is going to be. uh bless you as we move into 25 26 and beyond as as we take over

from ECD and and really take the early childhood uh program under our own umbrella. We have a nice road map uh in in the works. Uh Dr. bland. The staff, they've done um listening and visioning visits. A lot of great feedback uh being provided by CLA staff and they're working on um a frequently asked question infographic so people know what's coming in 25 26 26 and 27 and beyond. So, we've got a lot of work to do there, but we're um we're very excited about our our three bilingual classrooms and uh their their success with year one. And then we've implemented full day Spanish bilingual uh preschools at VLLLL and Kibble Hill for the first time this year. So we could go on with six more slides, but we won't because it's 10:15. But a lot has happened with success and belonging. Okay. And we're very so very proud of that work. Um if you go to community engagement and family involvement, if you go poop one more, I think that's it. Yes, family communication. Nope. One more. back. There we go. Uh, we've had multilingual literacy nights. We've expanded those offerings. Hindi, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, Tamil, Telugu, Ukrainian. Um, we've done middle school, Dare to Achieve, a very well- attended college event. And we've had, as you heard Tom say, gifted and talented seminars. So, we're really um looking for different ways to engage our families um and and meet their varying needs. And that's just a small smattering. We've done a lot of lot more learn 15s, but those are some very new ones. Um, support targeted donations uh for district families. We we really are trying to make sure that we know what our families need and we're looking for grant dollars or community partners. Um, I shared with the board when one of our nurses was looking for hygiene products for her her group. I shared with you if any of you wanted to make a donation or worked in a company that would want to

donate because we're just constantly looking for ways to to give our families uh more of what they need. Classroom book donations for our ladies of faith for able mile and sip classrooms has been underway. And whose mom is it that's helping with those books? Is it Britney Henry's? I think it's Amber. Amber Daniel check. So even one of our, you know, our administrator's moms is is is getting in the swing of of helping support us. And then registration nights continue to happen because we want to make sure that all of our multilingual families know how to register and get registered early so we have accurate numbers and we can staff appropriately. Uh community partners and involvement. You heard um Tom, Laura, and Pam talk about this, but we're doing more NSSO parent nights. We've done more than 20 multilingual um uh we have more than 20 multilingual parent mentors that have put in over 5,000 hours working in our classrooms. That's been fantastic. When I visited the classrooms, they're very they're right there on the floor with the kids. So, that's been a wonderful way to get uh folks into our classrooms and help with our kids. We enrolled 15 multilingual teachers in the NL uh U reading specialist cohort. And I believe they graduated um they've graduated over the last couple years, right? And another cohort will graduate next year. And another cohort will graduate next year. I think I sent that picture and put that info in one of my recent board memos when they were graduating. and our our grow your own MAT cohort with North Park uh just graduated 20 brand new teachers. So that's really we're we're putting our people through the paces so they become educators in our district. So it's it's very exciting to see. Uh family communication continues uh transitioning as you know to parents square because Amad and Jen talked about that at our last meeting. Uh we have that new website. We've standardized the newsletter process for staff and families. We're really focused on increasing our social media presence and branding how we look on social media as well as um working on crisis communication planning um because you

know sadly we there are things that happen that we need to communicate on pretty quickly. So a lot lot is happening with ways in which we communicate um involvement read it dream it we that's a little book clubs that we do we'll have a summer virtual book clubs they were launched last year very successful will continue this year we have parents as partner parent mentors these literacy nights we have our multi-arent advisory our bilingual parent advisory and spark for our parents of students with IEPs but really just looking for ways to connect and get um all groups of parents involved and informed and invested invested in um their child's education, community partners and involvement. My catch up with Hines has really increased, you know, two-way communication. Just the goal really is to just get out in the community to hear what they're um hear what they're thinking, hear um just feedback on different things that we're focused on. Um our partners for our community, that's our beloved POC, Rolling Meadows, the human family service group, uh is modeling their work in Meadows off of what the POC is doing here in Palatine. and Renee and I have a pretty steady presence in both of those groups. Uh our district advisory committee uh met again, gave a nice update and really engaged them about the work that they're doing out in the community. Where does our work connect? And then as Laura Swallen said, how can we um join forces because we really are all kind of focused on on this the same mission of trying to make sure our students and families have what they need. And then lastly, just the ongoing work with the village of Arlington Heights relative to Chicago Bears, just that that partnership and working with legislators around different Senate bills and things that are going to potentially have a negative impact on our district. So, we're we're out and about opportunities and mental health. You heard a lot of this just a little while ago, but we continue to do have screening systems that we're um enhancing so we know which students need enrichment, whether it's at the K1

level, whether it's out of level math or gifted assessment processes that are centered around holistic data and uh school-based decision-m in terms of who needs those supports continues to happen. We want to make sure that we're capturing the right kids and meeting their needs. uh training that we have around mental health, new crisis management system, MTSS updates. You've heard about academics, attendance, and behavior. Those are three big areas of focus, restorative practices. We've put a couple schools through and we now have an accelerated plan to get the rest of the district kind of up and running with a more restorative mindset and piggybacking that with our our work with CHAMPS. And then lastly, seven factors review systems uh for student for student referral. And then uh we're tracking student representations as as uh Tom said with uh relative to discipline to check for disproportionality. And then our equity um data is included as part of our school improvement process. So everybody has the same um template in which they're using for school improvement. Relative to moving 15 forward in our master facility planning, we've addressed repairs, all the upgrades, site improvement. you know, that happened as part of moving 15 forward. We're continuing, as Diana said, to address critical life safety needs, improve energy efficiency, and enhance accessibility. Um that master facility plan, the 5 to10 health life safety is just going to continue to roll. Um we're continuing to work on updating flooring in lighting in uh common spaces. We have $1 million worth of construction going on this summer. and theou we've paired it with repair and restore facilities because if when they come and if kids are generated based on how they divide up that that um parcel you know we want to be ready with any potential facility um expansions that we might need. Um as you know our libraries have been

updated. Uh we are looking for um looks like a typo. We've created spaces for full day kindergarten. We've established we've established uh dynamic middle school spaces. Now, one of the things we're doing with some of our spaces is we're looking to see um what monies we can make available to update some of our furniture. The sixth graders are begging for desks that look like middle school desks. They really don't like their sixth grade desks that came over with them. So, we'll see, right? No promises, but we're going to try. And then we did align the feeder pattern backwards from the high school boundaries providing neighborhood or near neighborhood schools and access. in a few minutes if if we will I'm going to kind of just piggyback in. I've communicated with the board about all the ways in which we've tried to address dual language and that impact that you've heard now at the last couple meetings. We have worked a lot with parents via email on the phone inerson meetings. Rene if you want to come up Sherry did go but I can I can fill in because we understand that boundary lines have changed. We've given a lot of suggestions in terms of how we can address this this issue. Unfortunately, in some cases, you know, what we're recommending is not what they're looking is not what they're hoping to hear, but it hasn't fallen on on deaf ears. So, Renee, you you you take a lot of calls and emails from folks. So, can you just talk a little bit? And I know that I did communicate with the board. I put it in two memos just in case you missed it once, I put it in again. I sometimes do that in case you missed it. Um, so you have a sense of all that's happened, but do you have that doc up? Are you would you mind just updating because this really directly links to this n this neighborhood thing and this this the promise that was made and how that shifted since we went to middle schools. So good evening President Ader and Dr. Hines and members of the board of education. Um I'd like to share just some additional context and history about our dual language program. And to start, I just want to emphasize how much we appreciate deeply

our dual language families who commit to this journey and invest so much of their time and heart in ensuring that their students become bilingual, biliterate, and bicultural. So, if we go back to the beginning of moving 15 forward, uh, in 2023 or prior to 2023, all of our families signed a commitment or an agreement to our dual language program to stay with the program through sixth grade, right? And that was because at that time, sixth grade was part of our elementary school experience. With moving 15 forward, obviously sixth grade moved to the middle school. So this while it created uh or it was had many advantages for so many of our families, it also created uh a situation for some of our families who live outside of the Winston campus attendance boundaries um where they may experience one year less of the dual language program than the others. Um, just to be clear though, every single one of our dual language families, regardless of where they live, have the option to stay at Winston campus and continue their dual language journey through 8th grade. But families who understandably elect to remove their children from the program and go back to their neighborhood schools um would in some cases be eligible to take the Spanish for native speakers class that we offer at our middle schools where we have 20 students who qualify for English language services and also speak Spanish and that is Illinois school code. So we offer that programming for any language. Um you know so we have Ukrainian programming, Russian programming, Spanish programming and that program exists at every middle school with the

exception of Thomas Jefferson. So at TJ u many of the families who are newly assigned and were previously assigned to either Plum Grove or to Walter Sunling had assumed that that course would be available there as well. it is not available there because we do not have the number of students that would require us to implement a Spanish for native speakers course. Um at most we have five students uh that could qualify for that particular course. So we are far from the number that would be required by the state. In addition to that, we took some time. We looked at all of the home language surveys that families filled out in kindergarten. We have potential 17 more students at the building who self-reported uh Spanish as a home language, but that does not mean that those students would be appropriately placed in a Spanish for native speakers class, nor does it mean they would sign up for it if we offered it. It would certainly be an elective for them. And then we have an additional five students that we project would go to Thomas Jefferson for an assured total of potentially 10 students. Um and having eliminated our French program at TJ this year for numbers in our classes that were higher than that um it could pose a challenge for us to implement another class that is small in size. And one of the reasons for that is because our allocation for staffing does not change when we have a smaller class. So what happens is if we have a 1 to 28 ratio allocated for our electives classes and one class has 10 that means several other classes will bear larger numbers in order to um meet the the uh the criteria that we have in place for

that. So if one class has 10 that means another class might have 35 right um because the staffing allocation does not increase as a result. So some of the solutions that we've explored uh to help families because we do want to remain committed to helping them carry out that journey that they signed up for um back when their students entered kindergarten. Uh we looked at offering um a Spanish dual language club that is specifically designed for these families after school. Uh we did carry that out this year. The beginning of the year we sent a survey out to the families um that were impacted. There were very few um but they decided that 2 days a week would be appropriate for them and they've had a great time uh this year. Uh we offered to do that again next year and plan to send out a survey as well. uh to in ask them how many days we're we're willing to go up to five days a week um and certainly provide a fun experience for after school for students. Uh other solutions that we explored that were not um successful for us were um asking to see or checking to see if perhaps the students could participate in a virtual class uh with other students at a different school. uh that does pose some potential contract issues for us with our teachers. Um and so we did not explore that any further. Um another opportunity that we explored was can these students take Spanish too two years in a row when they're in seventh and eighth grade. And while that certainly is an option for them, it may not be the most appropriate option because our Spanish classes are designed for foundational learning. So those students are learning houses, you know, what what's part of your house, how do you say hello, things like that. Um, and these kids learn that in kindergarten.

So students could potentially become bored or frustrated um during those in that type of a circumstance. Uh, another potential uh, solution that we explored was approving an intradist transfer for students to Plum Grove where we do offer Spanish for native speakers and where those students would still be with other students that they will go on to high school with. Um, we did agree to uh approve an intradist transfer for those families. However, we could not commit to providing transportation uh in exchange or in return. Some of our families offered to pay for transportation um which we agreed to look at. Um but with the challenge in bus drivers and routes um that are quite full. uh we are not unfortunately able to commit to providing paid transportation for those families until those routes are firmly established which is typically 3 weeks into the school year. And I just want to make everybody aware that intradistrict transfer is the mechanism that we said we would use if there were any programmatic losses or changes or shifts as a result of moving 15 forward. Regardless of moving 15 forward, intradistrict transfer, you do not transport, right? That is part of what you sign off on when you accept an intradist transfer unless it's for an IEP, which is a legally required uh supports. Um we we don't transport. That's just part and we've consistently adhereed to that for decades. I mean 20 or more years. paid transportation, if you recall, we've usually always been able to offer paid transportation. It's gotten harder with the shortage and and routes are looked at one at a

for each person that's requesting it. We're looking physically at the routes and how many kids are on that bus and is there a seat and if so, we approve it. So, there's always a delay. the things you're describing are 100% accurate, but they're not just because of this dual language. It's always been the protocol, and there's a reason that it's been a protocol. If any of these buses heading to Plum Grove look light, it's our biggest school. It's their most buses. You know, we will certainly approve paid transportation, but we we do have to see there's a two-week route freeze at the beginning of every school year. Again, when we were flush with drivers or when we've had a shortage, there's always a 2 week freeze. We let the drivers get their routes down. We see who's coming and not getting on the bus and then we the transportation goes one by one application to bus roster and we like to approve. We're happy to approve it. I've given you stats multiple times a year on how many requests versus how many we've been able to approve. It's a pretty high percentage. So, I just wanted to expand a little bit on that so you understand that we're not trying to throw up roadblocks, no pun intended, with paid transportation. It's just our process. Okay, back to you Renee. And so that is a general summary of you know some of the things that we've tried. We remain committed to exploring other solutions. If parents have creative um ideas they want to bring forward. We've investigated everything. um you know and we're happy to help and and do what we can to continue that journey for our students and and Renee has spent hours and hours and hours and hours I and I really want you to know responding to every email, every phone call, meetings, Sher has gotten involved in some

instances because she's really helping to oversee transportation with Claire and Tom Bramley. So, um, I a quick email was sent because Renee was, you know, traveling today, but it didn't provide a a context and we've talked about talked about it so many times. I just wanted to make sure that you were aware of it and that it was just kind of out in the general public that we we've really tried to tackle this and uh we're just this is what we're up against right now. So, so you understand. All right. And then lastly, thank you, Renee. Sure. Um, we've had increased access to programs and services. We've alleviated overcrowding as you heard RSP talk about. And we've expanded offerings in special education and bilingual. Um, you know, across the district that equitable access. Um, so we've really uh worked on that and we've been very focused on student transitions. Some of the challenges we're working on student achievement are our dashboard goals. We're making progress, but it they're multi-year goals for a reason. So, we're going to continue to work and be, you know, very, very focused on student achievement. We're going to balance the balance of uh budget reduction versus our improvement work, finding the balance between how do you shave the b the deficit while still providing high quality supports and services for students. Um, so we're looking at the district's fiscal portion of moving 15 forward as an as a as an impact. The increasing staffing needs to support our students that need extra support. We're reducing the reliances we talked about on contract agencies, our rising insurance costs, um, and then the reduction in CPPRT and other revenue streams as part of, you know, the the the general causes of the deficit. We're seeing the, as you heard moments ago, increase in student mental health needs. That's we we came to the board the February before COVID before everything shut down. We said we have a rise in need and that hasn't gotten smaller. That trajectory has grown. So, that's something we continue to work on. Um, student absenteeism and the impact on

our ability to close achievement gaps when kids aren't in school. We can't teach them if they're not here. So, we're really very focused on getting them here. And then transportation, the driver shortage does persist. So, that's kind of a year in review highlights and some of the things that we're focused on. We're got a little very short video and then I'm going to tee up um what we're going to be focused on for the next year and then I'm going to let everybody go home. All right. Oops. The best part of this year was coming to a new school, collaborating with new students, and communicating with new teachers. [Music] Seems like forever ago. My favorite thing about this year is writing sentences. [Music] My favorite thing about this school year is how teachers are so nice and kind. [Music] Anywhere I need you. [Music] Um, my favorite thing about this year is getting to spend time with my teacher, Miss Forley. My favorite thing this year is playing capture the flag with everybody in the school outside. My favorite thing about this year was

Mr. Tomo's magic. [Music] My favorite thing about Willow is all of the classrooms. Oops. [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] My favorite thing about this year is meeting all the new staff members and students due to moving 15 forward and having the opportunity to work with a brand new staff. [Music] Hey, Miss Schmidt's class. What was your favorite thing about this school year? Mr. P. [Music] My favorite thing about this year was I I get to make new friends.

[Music] My favorite part of the squirrel was meal worms because uh if you get a meal worm and if it turns into a pupa, you can keep it, but you only can keep it to takes too much and it dies. [Music] [Applause] the great atmosphere this school has because whenever I come in this school I always feel so positive and the attitude is great. [Music] [Applause] [Music] I love kindergarten because I love playtime and there's good toys. [Applause] [Music] foreign. My ur [Music] [Music]

All right. So, thank you for another great year. Really, as you said in your opening remarks, really a transformative year. So, yay. And it's almost over. June 13th is almost here. It's been a it's been a long uh last couple weeks, but exciting stuff happened this year. uh quickly quickly best practices in reading instruction. We're going to focus on explicit reading instruction. The essentials in phonics, phmic awareness, fluency, and vocabulary instruction. And then we're going to work on comprehension at the intermediate level. The common assessment culture is going to continue in that work. Uh we're launching as MJ said today, smartphone school initiative and the instructional technology guidance that you'll hear about in August. We are going to put some structures and time recommendations around the use of technology in our classrooms. That's a work in progress. Sam, I know you and I you're going to meet with MJ Lori and I I think Thursday and we'll keep that train rolling. The expansion of restorative practices, launching that CIS uh for power school. Um I'm looking at my screen. Uh year two building based school improvement planning will continue and our teams are going to meet. Is it tomorrow? Monday. Monday. Oh, when school's out. Sure. Year 2 attendance initiative will continue. Year three champs where we're going to focus on professional learning with the increase of instructional strategies that encourage students to respond and beyond passive learning. We're going to integrate restorative practices within Champs. Uh department learning and business continuity um practices and plans are going to be underway. We're visioning and preparing for early childhood launch in 2627. Uh, we're going to work on balancing the budget and student need, district-wide reunification work, and continuing our master facility work. There's the chart that Diana showed you. And just a sneak peek, so Sam, get ready. Our data nerd. Um, the kindergarten performance on decodable words is exceptional. Full day kindergarten is setting our students up for success in reading. So,

we're very excited and proud of our our kindergarteners. Uh we are there are increases in percentages of students achieving proficiency in reading and math as much as 8% at some grades. That's a massive massive number. Um chronic absenteeism has decreased by 2% but we're going to we're going to continue to work on that next year. Restorative practices were implemented at a greater rate than last year and we've seen a significant decrease in intense behavior. Although on certain days that seems hard to believe, but it is true and in aggregate. And then lastly, just graduation is tomorrow. Thank goodness it's going to be sunny. We have a good plan in place for Winston campus with uh Sunling graduating first and we've got an hour and a half in between ceremonies and then Winston campus is graduating uh second. So board all knows their assignments for tomorrow. It's it's a great day. If you have Eric, you're going to love it. It's really it's really fun. Uh first day of school for all students, that's preKK is August 20th. Winter break is December 22nd to January 2nd. Spring break is the 23rd to the 27th. The last day of school next year is June 2nd. So we're getting kind of right back in the swing. And then boom, that's it for now. Uh we could go on and on, but the t time is short. So that's it. We've been busy. We have a lot we're going to focus on next year. Um it's been a wonderful year, but we're very much looking forward to summer. All right. All right. Congrats on a great year, everybody. All right. Um item 7.1, acceptance of the minutes. May I have a motion, please? I move to approve the minutes from the May 12th, 2025 regular board meeting uh board of education and close session meeting minutes as attached. Second. Second. Uh discussion. All right. And this is when I can do all in favor, right, for acceptance of

minutes. I think there's no money in. That's right. Okay. Um, all in favor? I I All right. Motion carries. Uh, item 8.1. Okay. So, we're moving into board committee reports. Ed Red, Frank. Sure. All right. So, they close the uh legislative session for the year. They'll come back again in the fall for a veto session. So, the wrap up was uh things that did not pass uh both houses was actually the classroom uh cell phone ban. They uh did not pass that in the House, even though it did pass in the Senate. So, they're probably going to work on that over the summer and then deal with it in the fall, the veto session. They also uh will probably get back to the AI FOYA uh requests, deal with that in the veto session. That also is true for the PE waiver elimination. So, I don't know that's still out there. That's one of those things that could be an issue. Um, and then they also put a pause on the uh initiative from uh the state board of education that puts limits on the use of uh suspensions and expulsions for students in grades K through two. So, those are all things they'll probably work on later. things that did pass uh of note would be uh obviously the budget which pretty much uh remained flat. It's a quick summary. So, thanks Frank covered the highlights. It's just flat. All right. And then uh the uh the bills that also passed of note. Um let's see. We some good ones here. Let's see. Uh well, the three-point seat belt thing for buses that passed. That's uh not going to be active though until July 1st, 2031. So we have to worry about that right now. Um also the the one thing that was a bit of a um we'll have to see how this plays out is that the Senate Bill 1799 uh which restricts the use of uh

emergency third party contracts to two 90-day periods with subsequent renewals requiring the local union's approval. So this impacts us with regards to bus drivers. Um also it altered the definition of emergency situation to only include sudden and unforeseen event or change in circumstances that would result in the near-term interruption of non-instructional services that call for immediate action. So I don't know how that's going to uh actually play out. Uh that it means we're going to have late kids. Yeah. I mean after 180 days of school. Yeah. I'm actually wondering if they're actually going to even question whether or not we can even call it in an emergency is my my point. So, we'll see what happens. Um, regardless, the the worst the the best case, you only have two two times you can invoke uh the 90day 180 calendar days, right? So, 180 total. It's going to be around the winter heading into spring. So, we'll we'll see how that plays out. Um, and the last thing they actually they they crammed it into a shell bill was uh House Bill 22. They ripped out everything from the bill and stuck in a impact fees for new school buildings, which allows uh the developers uh donations and impact fees to include amounts to pay for the costs of constructing a new school building. So that kind of does come in play for us with regards to if we could get money from um the Bears depending on how they how they develop the whole what is it 300 and some acres 326. Yeah. So it's a lot of lot of lot of land to build on. So depending on how they build it out that may come into play with for us going forward. So that's it. All right. Uh5 Foundation, Eric. Yeah,

this is my my first my first board report. Um I've been playing phone tag and email tag with uh Adriana, but Jim connected the two of us. So, we're we're going to get together for coffee next week and talk about stuff. I was unable to make the one meeting that they had at the end of May. Uh but she said the only update she has is that the5 annual meeting is scheduled for August 14th at 5:00 p.m. which I do have on my calendar. So I'll plan on being there for that. Uh during the annual meeting 15 board will work on the upcoming school year events and timeline for the events such as teacher mini grants 50/50 raffle and etc. But I'm looking forward to getting started with that process. Great. Awesome. Finance Committee. Lisa, I don't have anything because the uh finance team presented their uh tentative budget and did a great job of it. All right. Uh equity committee Zubar or Jim? Well, we didn't meet um uh this month, but um we're going to meet to kind of see how what what things we're going to continue as what the comm equity committee was doing before and what you know kind of new new ideas, new new ways we want to go with it. I did attend a IASB um seminar uh webinar uh advanced it was called advancing equity the equity journey continuum. It kind of related more to how different equity committees or different school districts are using the information in the in the Illinois report cards to put into their strategic plans and things like that. A lot of the stuff that we have done, but there are there are some interesting ideas of uh how we could um implement some of the information that's already out there that's put together by the state and uh help us with our performance indicators. We looked to our plan and had components of our our plan in with the state's bed

directors uh today. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. All right. What do our new committee looking forward to it? Awesome. Okay. Um item 9.1, approval of administrative, non-union, and non-administrative salary increases. May I have a motion, please? I move to approve the administrative non-union and and non-administrative salary increases as presented. Second. Second. Uh discussion. All right. Roll call. Aer. Uh yes. I almost said here. It's too late. Yes. Is still here. Yes. I'm I'm here. Honorino. Hi. Taylor. Hi. Shupai. I Khan I Bergman I All right. Item 9.2 personnel report. I move to approve the personnel report recommendations for administration certified and non-certified staff members as presented. Second discussion. Roll call. Taylor I. Shupai I. Khan I. Bagman I. Aer I. Anino. Hi. All right. Item 9.3. I move to award a one-year contract for fresh bakery products to Alpha Baking Company Incorporated, Chicago, Illinois for a total bid award of $45,534.50 as presented. Second. Second. Discussion. Roll call. Shupai. I. Khan. I. Bachmann. Hi. Aer. I. Honorino. I. Taylor. I. All right. 9.4. I move to award one-year contract for the 202526 school year for the

cafeteria packaging to durable packaging Wheeling Illinois for $94,12425 for category 1 Gordon Food Service Wyoming. Oh, skip one. Did I miss one? All right, let me do it. 9.4. Sorry about that. It's large. Large order. All right, 9.4 is what you what you wanted, right? Okay. Yes, please. I move to award a one-year contract for fresh produce to Tesa Produce Chicago, Illinois for a total bid award of $246,388.25 as presented. Second discussion. Roll call. K. I. Batman. I. Aer. I. Honorino. I. Taylor. Hi. Shai. I. Item 9.5. I move to award one-year contracts for the 2025 2026 school year for the cafeteria packaging to durable packaging Wheeling Illinois for $94,12425 for category 1. Gordon Food Service Wyoming Michigan for $78,875 for category 2. Plastic Connections Santa Fe Springs, California for $16,68.25 25 for category 3, Gordon Food Service, Wyoming, Michigan for $20,433 for category 4 for a total bid award of $29,50050 as presented. Second. Discussion. Roll call. Bagman. Hi. Aer. I. Anino. I. Taylor. I. Shouai. I. Khan. I item 9.6. I move to approve the resol resolution authorizing an interfund transfer as

presented. Second. Discussion. Roll call. Ader. I. Anerino. I. Taylor. I. Shupai. I. Khan. I. Bikeman. I. Item 9.7. I move to approve the resolution authorizing another interfund transfer as presented. This one 9.7. [Applause] Second. Second. Uh discussion. Roll call. Ader. I. Anerino. I. Taylor. I. Shupai. I. Khan. I. Bagman. I. Item 9.8. I move to approve the revised calendar for the 2025 2026 school year as presented. Second discussion. All right. All in favor? I. Uh motion carries. All right. Um consent calendar. Would anyone like to remove anything from the consent calendar? Nope. Okay. Motion. I remove Frank. And I move to approve the consent calendar items as presented. Second discussion. Uh roll call. Taylor I Shupai I Khan I Bagman I hater I Anerino I [Music] correspondents as always we have a bunch of foyas. Any questions? What was No, we're really open that AI legislation passes after veto session. All right. Uh motion to adjurnn. I move to adjourn. Second. Second. All in favor? I. All right. Thanks everybody.

All right. It was a late one. It was late. Sorry. But remember, I did tell you in May this was going to be That was a big one. May was short. That was a big one. [Applause] Oh, my phone number is 317 403.