vice President Bautista before you begin today's meeting I would like to read a few announcements good morning welcome to the April 9th 2025 agenda review committee meeting before we start the meeting I would like to share a few safety points and next meeting announcements please note that the
primary exit and entrance to the boardroom is the door which you use to enter this a this morning if you are leaving the room please use this door the restrooms are outside the boardrooms to your left and during the meeting we ask that you keep all aisles and ex exits clear if you need any assistance
during the meeting please wave the attention of one of our security officers please mark your calendars for the upcoming meeting the next board meeting is scheduled for Thursday April 24th 2025 at 3:00 p.m and will be held at 42 West Madison Street Garden level
boardroom for details on how to register to speak or observe at the meeting and to learn about the speaker lottery process please visit the Chicago Board of Education website cpsb.org if you have any questions about registration or public participation
please contact contact the board office for assistance thank you for joining us today vice President Bautista we are now ready for you to begin the meeting good morning everyone welcome to the Chicago Board of Education Agenda Review Committee meeting today is April
9 2025 i'm Vice President Olga Baltista president Harden is at a conference and I'll be chairing today's meeting on behalf of uh my fellow board members thank you for joining us today we are holding today's agenda review committee meeting in the boardroom at the CPS Loop
office 42 West Madison Street Garden Level i would like to note that the board members and senior leadership are physically present in the board registered speakers may join us in person or virtually if they opted to do so and registered observers are joining us in
person the agenda review committee meeting of Wednesday April 9 2025 is hereby called to order board Secretary please call the role thank you member Smith present member Thomas present member Bole
present member Wallace present member Pope here member Rosenfeld present member Rivas present member Ria Sierra present member Bannon present
member Biggs present member Blae present member Zachor present vice President Bautista present okay i want to remind everyone that the board is looking for a student
leader to serve in the role of honorary student board member for 2025 2026 school year i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm going to uh interrupt for another second i just wanted to also recognize that we have 13 board members present we do have a quorum i'd also like to recognize
Roocci Verma general counsel thank you no problem so I want to remind everyone that the board is looking for our next student leader to serve in the role of honorary student board member for 2025 2026 school year the selected student
will represent CPS student body by attending our monthly board meetings serve as an appointed member on the district level student committee and receive a $1,000 scholarship toward their education at a two or four-year college or university to be eligible for
this opportunity you must be a rising junior or senior current 10th and 11th graders uh hold a 3.0 GPA or higher and demonstrate proven leadership experience the the application period is now open until Friday April 25th 2025 at 5:00 PM
please visit cpsbboe.org to access access the application good luck to you all the order of the meeting will be as follows public participation discussion of agenda review committee meeting items
one through nine a recess reconvene from recess presentations office of Student Protections and Title 9 update office of Inspector General update a close session reconvene from close session and then
adjourn let's now proceed with today's public participation session thank you for joining to share your comments with the board in compliance with the Illinois Open Meetings Act public particip participation sometimes referred to as public comment is the
portion of the board meeting or hearing that grants district stakeholders the opportunity to address the board with their concerns and comments note that the public participation is a time for the board and CPS senior leadership to listen and hear from you rather than a
time for dialogue with board members during or after your remarks uh while we can't discuss personal personnel matters public participation is a key component of transparent governance and it pro that and it provides us as board members
as well as senior leadership an opportunity to listen to everyone who has signed to speak this board takes equity of voice seriously while we may not address your comments directly during public participation CPS leadership is always
present at our meetings and are able to address concerns as follow-ups after the meeting as a district and as a board we also have many other spaces for authentic dialogue for example each and every one of our board members hosts board office hours so that we can have a
conversation please use our website cpsbat.org if you want to meet with the board member during office hours we encourage you to take advantage of the opportunity to meet with the board members outside of a board meeting thank you for your attention and
consideration as a reminder union representatives will be allotted 5 minutes to speak before public participation and any elected officials will be allotted five minutes to speak after the conclusion of public participation board Secretary please share the rules
of public participation thank you Vice President Bautista i do want to note for the record that member Lopez and member Gutierrez both joined the meeting at 10:38 10:38 a.m members of the public who registered
to speak were given the option to attend in person or via an electronic format for those who prefer to attend via an electronic format they were given information to access this meeting by dialing a number and using their phone we did this so that speakers with limited or no access to the internet or
who may have weak internet connection could still participate using their phones also members of the public may submit written comments for board of education meetings via the written comments form on the board's website at cpsboe.org or mailed to 1 north
Dearbornne sweet950 written comments received between the day the public agenda was posted through 5:00 pm the day after the board of education meeting will be submitted to the board and published within five business days on our website at cpsb.org speakers please listen while I
provide directions for public participation i will call your name and number when it is your turn to speak for speakers joining us virtually as a reminder to unmute please enter star six once you hear your name please state your name for the record i will then
start the two-minut timer when there are 30 seconds remaining I will inform you so that you can proceed to conclude your remarks to allow for the next speaker to begin for anyone standing with the speaker please stand along the glass partitions to keep the aisles clear thank you and Vice President Batista
before we begin calling speakers from the speakers list we do have union reps who would like to address the board we'll begin with Jackson Potter CTU vice president who was here in person good morning uh as these marathon
negotiations are hopefully drawing to a close I did get some of my first gray hairs in my beard uh catching up to some of you how were we able to accomplish this transformational agreement that has on is on the cusp of a a vote this week
without a strike vote or a strike for the first time in 13 years uh it wasn't because of some cosmic bargaining process or skillful negotiator but a series of critical shifts in conditions that govern collective bargaining and
while good these outcomes won't be enough to address the myriad of crises or challenges coming our way uh some of the things that made it possible to settle this historic agreement is restoring bargaining rights for
educators for the first time since 94 this allowed discussions around class size and staffing and privatization that made substantive improvements uh elect a school board this process that you all are part of uh made a big difference in
terms of bringing the public voice and oversight into the process a mayor educator you know for the first time someone who really understood what it takes to lead a classroom in a middle school something I will never fully understand or I certainly appreciate the
moratorium on school closings and while those things have helped build and rebuild advocacy and agency of educators teachers really only have a shot to influence you all and board policy and rules once every four years uh whereas
you get to do it every day so in terms of librarians yes this is important we are doubling the number of librarians by the year 2028 and that will not reach half the schools by 2028 you have no restriction on solving that gap between
now and then of the 200 to 500 plus that would get to equity and give every child access um you don't need a CBA to read reach that goal you can do that independently building back what's been destroyed in this era of divestment and
educational apartheid is is not a one day or a one contract effort it represents a deposit but it's not paid in full uh the CEO walked in every day before this settlement was on the table
with the ability to lower class sizes it was only the contract that's making that a reality uh in your CEO search you also have the ability to improve the district moving away from accountants and bankers
and thinking about educators who can build and grow coalitions invest in our classrooms and pedagogically sound practices that will be essential not running the district as a business but as a caring thoughtful district that cares about our diverse school
communities um thank you for your public support for those of you who have committed to preserve the district's equity-based staffing model and protect the classroom from any future cuts as I was on a webinar last night with our members about a hundred of them
we were discussing the bilingual uh improvements in this tentative agreement and I got a little emotional and and I want to just share that before I close this contract expands dual language and world language programs for the first
time in the district in the last few years for black and brown children it provides an African language option for the first time and I contrast that with Trump making English only an edict at the highest levels of government trying
to crush diversity our students identities and make sure that they can't learn about themselves in their classrooms conversely we have memorialized academic freedom in this agreement and the legal protections of our students regardless of what happens
at the federal or state level uh that is a testament to our collective accomplishment we're also making translation equipment and bilingual culturally relevant literature available to all schools and all students in contrast to the anti-Dei threats that
you received in the executive order last week we protect and defend our undocumented children in this agreement and our teachers that are on visas while MAGA abducts them sends them to maximum
security prisons and for expressing opinions he doesn't like so we collectively are welcoming diversity and backgrounds and different opinions and the meeting of the minds i want to thank you and your team for recognizing those things and also acknowledging we have a
ways to go thank you thank you for your comments before we move on to the next union rep I do want to uh state for the record that President Harden has joined the meeting at 10:40 a.m via uh Zoom and
Member Loausano has joined the meeting at 10:42 a.m via Zoom the next union rep is Caroline Rutherford CTU Charter Division Vice Chair who is here in person good morning members of the board my name is Caroline Rutherford and I am
the vice chair of CTu's charter division a teacher at Aero Marquez and the chair of our council of Aero Teachers on behalf of the staff and parents of the Asero community we would like to thank you for forcing Asero to reach an agreement that keeps five of our schools open the advoc advocacy of this board
made that possible we are grateful that five schools are staying open but let's be clear this outcome was not charity it was a result of organizing and pressure from educators parents and some members of the board doing the right thing i have read the memorandum of
understanding negotiated between CPS and Asero and I think we probably agree there are some things in that agreement that we do not believe Aero deserves such as the board agrees that it will allocate additional funding for operation sufficient to cover the charter school's actual operational
deficit while we at the schools are grateful this board is providing the resources necessary to support the continued operation of our schools shouldn't some of that responsibility to support our students be on the charter operator the
current contracts between CPS and the charter operators do not provide any financial responsibility for the operator when they decide to close schools that needs to change and these contracts are drafted so the operators can walk away whenever they want and leave CPS students staff and families
without a school to call home that needs to change operators can close schools without accountability they can leave communities in the dust and they face no consequences for walking away that needs to change this board along with our members and the parents at our schools
have together been fighting for stability for our families and students and we must continue to fight for that stability by preventing any other charter operator from doing what Aero has done in the future why isn't INCS the Illinois chart network of charter
schools doing the same inc says operators need flexibility we say families need stability inc says it's just business we say our kids are not a business we hope to hear from them today fighting for the protections of students
staff and workers at these schools and not defending the right for cho charter operators to walk away with a bag of CPS money as a reward for abandoning students charter companies that have solid plans and are accountable for how they serve students should want the same thing
too we need to protect the rights of workers at charter schools as well i have worked with many charter school educators who desire to have decision-making voice at the table and the right to organize a union charter operators must be neutral about unionization efforts and not engage in
fear tactics that threaten the livelihood of workers at the taxpayer expense when they want when the school staff wants to organize back in 2012 my co-workers and I at UNO were scared we were told CEO Juan Ranhell would fire us just for saying the word union that's
not democracy it's intimidation he was indicted for fraud and we finally got a neutrality agreement for the first time and we could breathe we could speak freely we built a union and every educator deserves the same freedom without fear all educators and staff deserve to have their voices heard in
the workplace and they deserve the space to decide if they want to unionize without fear of retaliation we want to thank you for your support for our charter educators parents and students as charter schools are public schools and funded with public tax dollars those public dollars
should not be used to pay attorneys thousands of dollars to run anti-UN campaigns but should be put directly into the classrooms for the students they serve charter operators should not be allowed to misuse these public funds and then walk away from students and staff when their schools are no longer
profitable as Aero said they should be held accountable to a transition plan with CPS to keep our school communities whole this year has taught us a lot about the loopholes in the system that make it easier for operators to harm students and staff we need to improve
that system for the future so that charter operators cannot put their bottom dollar above students families and staff this board has the power to fix the system to rewrite the rules to say no more loopholes no more runaway contracts no more gambling over our
students futures charter operators must be accountable to the communities they serve not their bottom line we thank you very much thank you for your comments before the next union rep um comes up to speak I do want to remind
everyone standing with the speaker to please stand along the glass partitions and not in the aisles to keep the aisles clear thank you our next union rep is Kia Banks CPAA Chief of Staff who is
here in person good morning i'd like to start today by extending a heartfelt congratulations to our brothers and sisters at CTU for uh coming together with management on a successful tenative agreement on their collective bargaining
uh agreement as well as our uh brothers and sisters at SEIU who have also negotiated a su successful collective bargaining agreement and in that line of successful bargaining and bargaining in good faith we are looking forward to
continuing our work with uh CPS management around um successfully negotiating the uh first collective bargaining agreement in history for Chicago public schools principles and assistant principles so um I wanted to
start today by as I always say we're here in partnership um today I want to speak about the partnership of our assistant principles um partnership for principles is critical to making sure that we bring systems people all the
right people in the room into the table to make good decisions um you at CPAA we represent not only principles but assistant principles for the Chicago public schools and it is very important that we never lose sight of how
essential partnerships are inside of our schools assistant principles are not assistants in the traditional sense of the word they are leaders in their own right they are our thought partners thoughtful collaborators trusted collaborators and the ones who help
carry the weight of school leadership every day this is why our president Troy Laavier has fought so hard to ensure that we have not only more stable AP positions in our schools but that they also have the pay that truly refle reflects the depth and the importance of
their work this is why we're working tirelessly to craft a collective bargaining agreement that protects and elevates the roles of our assistant principles every principal already knows how essential the assistant principal is but we have to
make sure that our district our community our parents and our students know this too we want to make sure that we are protecting the role and respecting the work of our assistant principles so today as we reach the midpoint of the National Assistant
Principal Appreciation Week we want to pause and say thank you we want to thank every assistant principal for their leadership their expertise the vital role that they play we do this work because we believe in
the power of partnership and we uh chose to do this work because we believe in doing what's best for children there's no better way to show appreciation for the hard work our assistant principles do is to ensure that they are respected
and protected in their work so today I ask this board our CPS leadership and all those around us to share a moment and say thank you to every assistant principal you know for the work that they do thank you
thank you for your comments i do want to uh announce for the record that member DB Barry has joined the meeting at 10:52 a.m thank you we will now start with speakers from the
speakers list and we will begin with Lucy Salgado speaker number one um Peter Collins speaker number 15 Steve McName speaker number 17 Molina Pereira speaker 25 and Angelica Huarez speaker 27 all
from Aero thank you please stand along the glass partitions to keep the aisles clear thank you yes thank you thank you good morning my name is Lucy i made proud to my mom born and raised in Chicago i'm here to tell you the truth
right now charter uppers are lining up asking the school board to renew their contracts and say they care about kids about families but let's be real they don't they care about profit about bond deals about squeezing every dollar out of our community and walking away when
it's no longer worth it to them what's messed up is they ask parents to come here and advocate to renew like today but um then close our schools tomorrow that's what Asetto did when Asetto tried to close our schools with no warning it
wasn't because of enrollment or about academics it was about money they didn't even have the DCC to tell parents first that's how little they think of us these folks run schools like businesses but our kids are not products our families aren't markets and our communities are
not disposable that's why we need real protection we need this board to draw the line and say "If you want a charter renewal then you better show up for families you better be transparent you better commit to staying open and serving our kids and not bailing on families a second your bottom line dips
and if you don't there needs to be assurance and accountability charter operators have to do charter operators have too much freedom to do whatever they want for too long if CPS is serious about protecting families like mine then hold these
operators accountable don't renew contracts for charter operators without measures that protect our students families and workers we want stability we want honesty we want schools that are about students not investors we need a system that protects our kids not one
that lets operators gamble with the future i'm asking you don't give out 10-year contracts nobody could tell the future what's going to happen what happens if the economy goes down and they want to close our schools and what's going to happen to those children and families i'm asking you to please
put something in writing for the future of the children for the all the kids that are just coming in we can't let this happen to our families anymore what we went through the set of parents went through no family should go through this so I'm asking you don't give out 10ear contrast because nobody could tell the
future what's going to happen thank you thank you for your comments and next speaker is Peter Collins speaker number 15 good morning i'm Peter Collins a high school teacher at Victoria Sto High School in Aero School over the last several weeks this board has grappled with questions of funding and trying to
give our students the best education possible however while you all were fighting for the students of our city Aero Charter Network is closing schools while maintaining an investment portfolio worth tens of millions of dollars why were they able to do this because the prior board of education gave them a three-year contract renewal
when they were clearly not transparent about the resources about having the resources to deliver to make matters worse that border that board also gave them the ability to close the doors on students and dump the cost on to taxpayers under the current system a charter operator can buy downtown office
space pay for too many chief officers and have tens of millions in reserves while they close schools at only locations they rent keeping the properties they borrowed money to purchase is that anyone good is that anyone's good idea fiduciary stewardship or a prudent use of CPS's resources asa
was one of the one of CPS's most established charter partners operating 15 schools for over two decades if they can't be trusted to honor the terms of their charter on a mere three-year renewal the system is fundamentally broken and this will happen again as long as charters are allowed to close schools with no notice and no
ramifications students and families will suffer when Aero made the decision in October to close seven schools in 6 months some on this board pointed out that they had the right to do that today I ask this board to act quickly to take that power away the board must make changes to the charter contracts themselves to prevent another as from
happening again to do anything else invites uncertainty and fear in our charter school communities will they be the next to close this board should say in a clear and resounding voice that charter operators will not be able to unilaterally close schools in Chicago this board should include in their contracts the requirements that the charter operators not the city and
taxpayers cover the cost of closures change the Carter change the charter contract CPS offers so they cannot mismanage their finances and then come to you for a bailout not only does it damage our students it damages our finances as well as this board has pointed out money is a real issue we
cannot afford to give charters a blank check to operate with absolutely no guarantee that they honor the terms of their agreement and that means keeping schools open we can't change the past so let's act today to protect the future we can't change the financial damage done by Aero but we can ensure the public
dollars don't be spent or spent more prudently in the future we can ensure that no other charter charter operators can cause this level of emotional distress in our school communities thank you thank you for your comments our next speaker is Steve McName speaker number 17
thank you for pronouncing my name right i'm Steve Mcnammy i'm a special education teacher at PA Elementary the Asetto network railroaded the city this year they're closing two schools and they're keeping another five open with the Asetto banner flying over them for another year but they're not paying for
that theou says the board will allocate additional funding for operation of those schools what a deal if I ran some other charter school in the city I'd look at that and think can I get that deal and I could why not the policy is the same so it's time for new policy it's time for policy with language that
says charter operators fulfill their charter agreements in full or they give the money back dollars that come from Chicago's education budget should be considered sacred but instead current policy sends the message to chart charter operators that not only are there few strings attached the city will
give you more of these dollars if you mess up and run out that's a message that deprioritizes accountability and it's a message that attracts bad actors enact policy that will attract responsible players to the charter program it's time for policy that ensures that anti-organizing practices
will not be tolerated at Chicago charter schools the organized resistance against Asetto's reckless cruelty has been a case study in how teachers unions do so much more than what folks typically associate with labor unions when this all happened CTU was the only entity on
the institutional level with the power to keep these communities from getting steamrolled by a private company if we're going to entrust our kids' well-being to a business we need an institution inside the building to check their power and a teachers union is that institution finally you're allowing my
school to be shut down you're probably going to let that happen again to somebody else and there's nothing you can do to fully offset the damage inflicted upon students and families when a school closes so it's time for policy that ensures that Chicago does everything it can to mitigate that damage that means an abundance of
warning when a school closes that means specialized care for every affected family and assurance that the individual needs of each kid will be met at their new school it means priority and enrollment processes at schools of their choice transportation to those schools it means you give those kids more
because in the end you'll still be running a deficit because of what you've taken from them please conclude your remarks a snappy recap recalibrate the charter balance of power write some policy make them pay when they mess up ensure zero tolerance for anti-UN practices and when a school closes give
the world to those kids because you can never undo the damage you're doing to them thank you thank you thank you for your comments our next two speakers from Mero are joining us virtually molina Pereira speaker number 25 please enter
star six to unmute pedro Martinez for Education forch parents for Education for forest we'll have a Spanish translator translate the statement
dps board CEO Pedro Martinez my name is Merina Pereira and today I come before you as a member of the organization Parents for Education i had the opportunity to speak with one of your members who asked a very important question what comes next
and that's the same question we all ask ourselves we are sincerely grateful for the passage of the resolution of last February 27th aero via a brief statement disclosed that on March 21st this year a
transition agreement was signed with CPS since then neither Aero nor CPS have provided more information or communicated again with the affected schools hence we once again ask what comes
next upon requesting it Parents for Education obtained access to the signed agreement between ASETO and CPS after reviewing it we believe the agreement still does not offer clear guarantees that the five schools will remain open
additionally it does not broach the topic of consequences for AEO for harm caused it also does not prioritize assist assisting students from pass and cruise to be able to transfer to other schools as
promised and so what comes next must be a firm resolution that ensures that something like this does not happen again we respectfully call on the members of this board to seriously consider this situation and work together to create
modify and pass laws to that prevent this type of action in the future and establish clear responsibilities for charter networks like Aero what comes next is change if we work together that
change will be possible thank you thank you our next speaker from uh the Asero Group is Angelica Huarez speaker number 27 who's joining us virtually please enter star six to unmute
yes good morning my name is Angelica Huarees i'm a parent at Carlos Wentes Aero School last fall October 9 to be precise Aetto tried to shut down our school and six others all in Latino neighborhoods with no input from parents
educators or students it was a decision made behind closed doors and overnight thousands of families were told they were going to lose their schools their stability and their community but we organized families and educators fought back together and because of that fight
Bardos Fuentes will remain open and will become part of CPS i'm proud of what family staff and this board have accomplished but that is not enough what happened to us should never happen again to any family anywhere in Chicago we
need real protections in place to make sure no charter operator can walk away from our schools just because it's no longer profitable to them our children's are not experiments our communities are not disposable we need a plan that ensures families input is taken into
account and notified in advance that schools aren't closed suddenly and that students and staff have the right to stay together and transition into CPS schools with full support our education system is under attack across the country trump and his allies are trying
to dismantle public education defunding schools pushing privatiz privatization and putting profit over people that's the same agenda that let us settle to turn its back on our kids 30 seconds remaining we can't let that happen here
we must protect our schools our students and our communities from the greed of charter operators and their billionaire donors we say yes to fully funded public schools yes to stability for students and families and yes to the power of parents educators and community standing
together thank you thank you for your comments our next group of speakers are from the prospective charter schools terry Jones speaker number eight tabitha Barry speaker number nine amina Ho speaker
number 10 deandre Lightoot speaker number 13 joanne Hill speaker number 18 clarence Bole speaker number 19 and Danisha Green speaker number 26 hello members of the board my name is
Amina Ojo i'm I'm honored to speak to you today as a disciplined life mentor at Perspectives Charter School and a parent of a former graduate i'm here to advocate for our 7 to 10 year charter renewal because I've
seen firsthand what this school means to our students families and community perspectives is not just a place where students come to learn it's a place where they learn who they are we teach academic skills yes but more importantly we teach character empathy and
resilience our students leave us not just with diplomas but with tools to navigate the world with courage and confidence i've seen students walk through our doors carrying the weight of so many challenges and I've seen them rise they rise because they know we
believe in them because we teach them to believe in themselves perspectives has created a space where every student matters and where no one slips through the cracks i am proud to be part of this mission i am proud of the progress we've
made and I know the best is yet to come a long-term renewal will allow us to keep building keep growing and keep changing lives thank you for your time and for considering the powerful investment in our future thank you thank
you for your comments and I do ask that for the group I um when you come up to speak it's in the order that I call so the next speaker should be Terry Jones speaker number eight thank you good morning board my name is Terry
Jones i'm a staff member here at Perspective Charter School the staff um student recruitment manager of the network also a proud parent not currently of a student that currently go to Perspectives now but also students of the past um it's my pleasure to um
understand the the purpose in which we are here and the purpose is to understand that we value our students to a high standard we pour into our student from social and emotional learning um pillars of what we do at perspective charter school to what we call a discipline life a discipline life is
just not a way to get through the um your day through school but also the way to get through life um through these pillars we we focus on a healthy self perception of theirel so they can build their confidence in which their self to love their self before anyone else that
can love them at all at all also we focus on a positive relationship u we build these relationship not only with um staff member but with our students and we invest in them daily to build those relationships um as we go through
the day also we also focus on the tools that get the job done productivity so it's self-perception relationship positive relationships and productivity allow us not only as staff members that's standing here before you um to
build our resume and our career but we set as prospective charter school at not only build years of endurance throughout this um school but we also the community i'm just proud to understand that before I was a staff member at perspective you have 30 seconds remaining i actually was
a parent and being that it encouraged me to even further my career in education to also encourage other students to come back we also a pillar of their community we are a student um based school that focus on our student and then we also engage with our parents to educate them
as well thank you for this opportunity thank you i'm sorry thank you for your comments uh before we ne move to the next speaker from the group I do want to announce for the record that board member Brown has joined the meeting at 11:12 a.m thank
you our next speaker is Tabitha Barry speaker number nine hello board members my name is Tabitha Barry and I teach science at Perspectives Charter School Rodney D joselyn campus thank you for the opportunity to speak with you tonight at
Perspectives our students are at the center of everything we do our commitment to the whole child is unmatched we focus not just on academic excellence but on character development emotional well-being and strong relationships it's this balance that
creates an environment where students can feel safe feel loved feel respected and thrive i've taught in other schools before and what stands out to me at perspectives is how intentional we are about making sure that not one student
falls behind uh falls through the cracks we know the students by name we know their families and we know their dreams we do everything in our power to help them reach those dreams this is a school that matters it matters not only to the community to the families and to the
future of our city it matters so much to me that my niece will be attending perspectives in um of this uh this upcoming school year um a long-term charter renewal means we can continue to grow our impact and continue doing what
we do best developing our young people who are ready to lead and serve please renew our charter for 7 to 10 years our students and their futures depend on it thank you thank you for your comments the next speaker is DeAndre Lightoot
speaker number 13 good afternoon board members my name is DeAndre Lightoot and my journey with Perspective Charter School began when I enrolled as a seventh grader um Perspective didn't just give me an education it gave me a second home i went on to graduate and attend Berea
College in Kentucky um something that would have felt out of reach without the support structure and belief that perspective instilled in me after college I returned back to the community that gave me so much i started as a teacher then became a athletics administrative assistant and now I
proudly serve as a paraprofessional i played basketball throughout high school and college so I was honored to be able to coach the team I once played for perspective has always believed in developing the whole child academically socially emotionally and physically i've
experienced firsthand how our model uplifts students especially those who may not find that support elsewhere as we go through this charter renewal I want to express that a 7 to 10 year charter renewal would mean more than stability to the kids it would mean long-term planning stronger
relationships and the ability to grow programs that change lives just like mine i'm living proof of the lasting impact perspective has with your support we can continue to transform students into leaders scholars and community change makers thank you
thank you for your comments the next speaker is Joanne Hill speaker number 18 good sorry about that good morning board member board of members thank you so much for this opportunity to speak with you all today my name is Joanne Hill i am a staff member at Perspective Charter
School where I work with the facil facilities team i also have many family members who attended perspective Rodney D jlyn campus over the years and I can confidently say that um Perspective is a school that does more than just educate
these students they create a caring community where everyone is welcome this is uh this is due through the 26 uh principles of discipline life i have had six family members attend perspective um charter school and also
graduated and doing well perspective teachers teaches students to do both educate and life lessons i have seen students families come come into our school unsure of the self and leave with confidence purpose and a vision for
their future what makes perspective unique is not just our comm community curriculum it's our culture all through the discipline life our students learn to to leave with intergally reflect on their choices and growth into their
fullest potential thank you so much thank you for your comments our next speaker is Clarence Boils speaker number 19 hello everyone my name is Clarence Boys i am an alum of perspective leadership campus class of 2010 i have my bachelor
degree at Lane College i am here to give my support today because perspective has been my testimony if I didn't learn to demonstrate perseverance I would have failed with the odds stacked against me i didn't fail because respective teachers and staff was relentless and
going the extra mile pushed me out of my boundaries respective offered opportunities for me to study paleontology and spent two weeks in North Dakota the youngest of my six perspective the youngest of my six siblings to to attend
perspectives was shot during co perspective gave her the opportunity to go to Africa seeing a different side of the real she's now a graduate from the University of New Orleans i am now a proud staff member at perspective MSAIT for the fifth
year turning my job into a true passion and mission my success come from perspective preparing me to become intellectually reflective being reliable and communicating effectively so that um in communicating effectively so that I can engage in a
more meaningful life i see how vital the Bronzeville campus is to our community and proudly remember the times when Arburn Gresham campus where I attended school going above and beyond for me and my extended family through donations like winter necessities and school supplies they offer mentorships
athletics and field studies you have 30 seconds remaining for that I am grateful and for these reasons I am here to ask the board and the district to support my school's charter renewal so that perspective can continue to make a difference in lives just like mine thank you for having me thank you for your
comments and the last speaker from this uh perspectives charter school group is Danisha Green speaker 26 good morning how's everyone doing today my name is Danisha Green i am a proud member at Perspective Charter
School as a Chicago parent I want the best for my child and every child of the city of Chicago our children deserve the best challenges inspire them equipment that will help them through their school years and beyond i have seen firsthand
what incredible impact this school has not just of my own but the other students that attend the school i have a eighth grader and a senior that attends Perspective Charter School perspective is preparing my eighth grade daughter to reach her highest potential going into
high school she's learning to learn different different curriculum and it's very hard for her but she have learned and pushed through the curriculum now that she sits on the National Junior Honor Society she's holding that role with doing other other great things in the school my son is now a senior in
school he is now going over to Knox College without prospective hair to help him through the challenges there he would not been able to face going off to school or thinking about going off to school i thank the staff members that have been there to help him throughout his school year and with renewing our
school contract we will be greatly happy that you guys renew for a longer charter renewal thank you thank you for your comments our next speaker is Laura Bucky speaker number 22 i'm sorry Laura Bucky speaker number
22 is joining us virtually please enter star six to unmute laura Bucky good morning board members my name is Laura Bucky and I'm here today to speak on behalf of North Londale College Prep as an educator who believes deeply
in the power of schools to change lives I want to talk about NLCP's impact in our community i am currently a Spanish instructor and also serve as a firstear mentor coach at NLCP when I moved to Chicago 5 years ago I interviewed with several schools but from the moment I
started learning about what this school stood for I knew this was the place for me nlcp stood out immediately because of programs like the Phoenix Pact which eliminates financial barriers to college for our students and the peace warriors who train their fellow students to lead in conflict resolution and community
healing these were not just nice to haves they were a powerful reflection of the school's deep commitment to the whole child i also want to speak briefly about how NLCP supports its educators from the start I have felt seen trusted and encouraged to grow as a leader by my
second year I was asked to apply for a grade level lead position nlcp is a place that doesn't just wait to recognize talent it actively encourages our growth every Friday we participate in professional development that is thoughtful and directly relevant to our work but what truly sets NLC NLCP apart
is the sense of community from the moment you walk through the doors you can just feel the overwhelming support and belief in one another we are more than just a staff and more than just a student body we are family it is those personal connections between staff and students that power our success and that
success is real we serve a student population that is often underestimated by the world but not by us our students graduate they go to college they lead peace initiatives they succeed and we walk with them every step of the way so I ask you today please renew our charter
i am a proud to be a part of NLCP and I hope we'll have the opportunity to continue our work for many many more years to come thank you for your time thank you for your comments our next speaker is Nasha Barlo speaker number four who is joining us virtually please
enter star six to unmute good morning my name is Nikesa Barlo and I'm a proud Simeon graduate a CPS parent and an advocate for our students and families my connection to CPS runs deep my parents were CPS students and now I'm raising two black boys in the district
attending Ariel Community Academy my husband also serves as a speaker at a CPS high school our family roots in CPS stands generation and I carry that legacy with great responsibility for the past nine years I have worked as an organizer supporting CPS schools
connecting family to crucial services like social emotional learning trauma prevention and wraparound supports i now proudly serve as a senior organizer with Educators for Excellent working alongside nearly 8,000 CPS educators to ensure that teacher voices are heard in
decision-making spaces at the last board meeting teachers like Dr winnie Shaina Welch and others gave public testimony demanding the establishment of the Black Student Achievement Committee since then teachers across CPS have been meeting at their schools building momentum and
organizing around this demand recently I attended the black student success plan roundt where it was observably clear there is no overlap between the plan and the committee that is a glaring gap and we need urgency we need action to establish the black student achievement committee now especially in the national
climate where out of state threats and executive orders are attacking DEI work and threatening federal funding it is even more critical that CPS double down on protecting black student success we heard elected board members of excitement thank you and a commitment to
add the BSAC resolution to the agenda he said he wanted to be part of the committee but here we are today and is not and it is still not added we are holding you to that promise Mr brown and you are not alone other board members stand with you our teachers demand it
our families demand it and most importantly our black students deserve it we call on the board to stop delaying file the resolution immediately and add it to today's agenda thank you thank you for your comments our next two speakers are from Catalyst Schools daryl
Meek speaker number five and Claybornne Wade speaker number 20 good morning my name is Daryl Meek dean of students at Catalyst Circle Rock i have some handouts for the boards and I would like to share two copies per board member our alderman alderman talero like would like to be here but
has not been able to due to a city council meeting each year teach for America Teach for America organization presents three awards to honor distinguished alumni who have shaped equity and education and strengthened the community at the classroom school and systems level this year Teach former
America Greater Chicago Northwest Indiana is recognizing Principal Jameson Dunn of Catalyst Circle Rock in her tenure leading Cat Circle Rock and 18 at the school Principal Jameson Dunn has received numerous accolades including the 2012 Teach for America Chicago
Alumni Distinguished Teacher Award being a finalist for the 2019 Illinois Network for Charter Schools Charter Excellence Award for Principal of the Year a member for the 2024 Surge Fellowship Cohort and the 2024 CPS Game Changer Award for for
Charter Leaders she holds two master's degrees from Dominican University and is currently pursuing a doctorate in educational leadership she will be honored at the Teach for America's Gala on May 1st this type of highc caliber leader CPS has in one of its schools on
the west side of Chicago that has consistently experienced disinvestment over the last several decades over the last seven months I have had the privilege of serving catalyst being under the leadership of Principal Jun has been lifechanging her
integrity innovation and inspiration is changing for all teachers parents and students for generations to come i invite you members of board of Chicago and board members to celebrate this leader of yours and make your own long-term investment in her Catalyst
Circle Rock the Austin neighborhood and a renewed 7 to 10 years so that we can soon together witness equity and education as reality and not just a plan thank you for your comments the next speaker is Claybornne Wade speaker
number 20 thank you very much finally a podium that's fit for my height good morning board members my name is Claybornne Wade and my wife and I are proud parents of four Chicago public school scholars i serve on the
Kids First Chicago parent advisory board and I'm the sustainable community schools parent coordinator at Family Focus Londale where my primary responsibility is to encourage parent involvement at the Priest Elementary
School and across the city of Chicago i'm also a proud board member at Catalyst Circle Rock and Catalyst Maria Charter Schools in recent months Catalyst has had the privilege of
welcoming 11 CPS board members to our campuses regardless of difference of opinions on charter schools we sincerely appreciate your engagement and visits and we welcome you back and invite all
other members during these visits I shared my experience with the hope of demonstrating the potential for partnership between CPS charter schools and CPS traditional schools catalyst and
four neighboring CPS schools demonstrate the partnership through their shared student worldclass orchestra sponsored by Ravenia you have 30 seconds remaining my work with CPS and my role as a board
member at Catalyst illustrate that is productive pos that a productive partnership is indeed possible keeping our kids our number one priority should
surpass the politics it is in that spirit that I ask to ask you to grant Catalyst a five to sevenyear renewal of its charter if not the fully 10-year permitted by law
please confir their perspective is superior their impact in the neighborhoods is significant and the neighborhood children deserve CPS longterm investment and commitment to their schools thank you very much thank
you for your comments our next speaker is Natasha Dunn speaker number seven who is joining us virtually please enter star six to unmute every year we stand by as images of Chicago's youth flood downtown fill the
media some of these images show young people engaged in acts of destruction fighting and acting out but before we cast blame and make sweeping generalizations about why these youth display the actions they do what forces are shaping their behavior and what
circumstances have led to this moment the truth is many of these youth come from neighborhoods where peace is a luxury few can afford every day they walk past open drug dealers users abandoned properties and blighted business districts there are a few safe
spaces to gather play or simply be a teenager they live in communities deeply impacted by disinvestment violence and lack of resources barriers that are more than just physical these conditions create an environment that nurtures trauma and hardship not opportunity and
hope the reality is clear our city leaders have failed black youth and while the challenges are complex there is a critical step that must be taken now the Chicago Board of Education is mandated by state law to establish a
Black Student Achievement Committee this will be my last time coming down here asking nicely this law passed in 2024 and exists as a tool to address some of the most glaring issues that plague our city's youth particularly
those who live in black neighborhoods it's time for the board to act swiftly the urgency cannot be overstated thank you a letter has been sent to each of you each board member regarding this matter it is of high importance that you
address this issue we have multiple organizations representing 20 districts from across the city of Chicago who are all in support of establishing this Black Student Achievement Committee as soon as possible thank you
thank you for your comments our next speaker is Andrew Broy speaker number 12 good morning CEO Harden President Harden CO Martinez members of the board i'm Andrew Br i'm the head of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools my organization
represents 124 charter campuses in Chicago that collectively educate 56,000 CPS students i've worked on renewal in this city under four different mal administrations eight different
CEOs and dozens of CPS board members and one thing has become clear during that work is that charter renewal should be based on student impact academic growth and performance not on politics not on
rhetoric but on the facts of student achievement unfortunately the process followed this year did not meet that bar we've had issues with timeliness responsiveness transparency and a focus on student
impact now you've heard for the past several months from hundreds of charter parents and students and teachers and they've all carried a single message the charter renewal should be transparent and fair so I'm here to underscore those
comments over the past several months and ask this board to grant seven to 10 year renewal terms for high performing charter schools five to six years for schools that meet academic performance and three to four years for schools that
need improvement doing otherwise is contrary to what's best for students the one thing I can't seem to understand is the previous board implemented a five-year cap on charter
school renewal terms that cap is illegal the state statute contemplates a 10-year renewal term we're asking the board to come forward with a framework to allow charter schools to earn not be given but earn a 10-year renewal term that's
putting students first that's putting communities first i'll close with this idea please conclude your remarks why is it that when district- managed schools struggle the framework seems to be how can we support those schools and push in
resources yet when charter schools in the same neighborhoods serving the same students struggle the rhetoric seems to be how can we hold these schools accountable please conclude your remarks that hypocrisy is transparent change the framework focus on all students and
let's make sure that no charter school next this month receives a term fewer than three years thank you for your comments our next two speakers are from Urban Prep Alexandra Moore speaker number 23
and Desmond Berdell speaker number 28 good morning my name is Alexandra Moore and I have the privilege of serving as the manager of student information and academic support at Urban Prep Academy in Bronzeville it is a true honor to stand before you today and share my
reflections on the impact Urban Prep has had not only on the lives of our students but on my own journey as an ed educator and advocate as well i began my path with urban prep at the downtown campus in 2021 shortly after graduating from Clark Atlanta University where our
motto is find a way or make one that phrase has been a guiding principle in my life and when I joined Urban Prep I immediately felt a deep connection with our own motto we believe it wasn't just words it is a mission that aligned with
everything I stand for perseverance purpose and possibility at Urban Prep I've witnessed firsthand the transformational power of belief i've seen young black and brown boys walk through our doors unsure of their potential and leave with the confidence
and clarity to pursue their dreams even during the difficult closure of the downtown campus in 2023 our students remained resilient and our mission never waved what makes Urban Prep truly special is our commitment to providing more than just academic instruction we
offer our students opportunities that open their eyes to what's possible college exploration trips internships leadership development and real world exposure that plants the seeds of ambition early on these are not just experiences you have 30 seconds
remaining they are turning points in our students lives our work is deeply rooted in creating a sense of identity belonging and leadership for young men who are too often overlooked and underestimated at Urban Prep we are equipping them with the tools to challenge stereotypes to write their own
narratives and to become the change makers our communities so deeply need renewing Urban Prep's charter for another 5 years is more than just a procedural decision it's a powerful statement of belief belief in our families belief in our students belief in the work we do every day it's an
investment in the future of young men who against the odds continue to rise and redefine what success looks like i stand here today because I believe in them and the mission and in the extraordinary future we are building together thank you for your time and for your thoughtful consideration for urban preps charter renewal thank you for your
comments our next speaker is Desmond Berdell speaker 28 greetings my name is Desmond Berdell class of 2016 proud of selflessness urban Prep was a transformational experience for me even though I extended I attended for one year unlike other CPS
schools Urban Prep was Urban Prep urban Prep offered opportunities beyond education the school attended the school was committed not only to teach lessons but out inside the classroom but outside the classroom
equipping us with skills life lessons and opportunities that we took on outside of um the school their hol their hope their holistic approach ensured that we weren't just learning facts but
gaining wisdom and mindsets to navigate life just life challenges one of the most one of the most valuable aspects of my time at Urban Prep was the unwavering support and guidance I
received moreover Urban Prep was a deep and committed community that I Urban Prep was deeply committed to ensure every student graduated so the that they had a I'm nervous i'm nervous i'm nervous
it's my first time doing this i'm sorry moreover moreover Urban Prep was a deep committed community you have 30 seconds remaining urban Prep set goals that was um for
100% and they achieved it they made sure that I was focused on my education finances and that I had the encouragement that I was able to get to college the impact that I had on urban prep the impact that urban prep had on me was immense outside and inside the
school based on my experiences from my urban prep brothers and before me and after me both urban prep campuses should be at least five years ch at least a fiveyear committed renewal charter i am strong I mean I am
a strong advocate for urban prep academy i am an active worker and I am trying to ensure that the school stays open for future students beyond just the ability of the community but the students as a whole it's a urban prep is a lifestyle
please conclude your remarks urban urban prep is a lifestyle and not just a community we help everybody not just the ones in our students and not just our students thank you thank you for your comments our next speaker is Michael Brunson
speaker 29 get myself together start that clock yet how y'all doing today uh there's only so much I can say in two minutes so um my request and my reasoning was sent to each and every one of you board
members in an email on Monday uh March 31st so okay uh Chicago happens to be the site of one of the greatest experiments in grassroots participatory democracy in the history of the United States the local school
council i call it a movement because in fact it came from a people's move many people are not familiar with that history i'll provide proof and a few details of that history in the email that I'm sending each one of you later on today as for now I'm requesting your
assistance and support to awaken a sleeping giant the local school council advisory LSCAB the LSCAB was established in 1995 30 years ago to represent the members of
the LSC's in their respective geographic areas and advise you the members of this board with the local the CPS website states the role of the local school council advisory board LSCAB is to
advise the board on issues related to school council elections operations powers and duties and school improvement ment plans i cannot recall any board member past or present in the past 15 years that I have been monitoring that board
and I even sat on that board for you have 30 seconds remain that ever came to one of the the meetings of that board either in person or remotely so I'm appealing directly to each of you to actually connect with an institution
that was created to advi advise and assist you in each and every one of the local school council members that's the local school council advisory board uh it meets month monthly every third Monday and the next month meeting takes
place on Monday April 21st at 6 pm and I'm here to personally invite each and every one of you to attend that meeting either in person or remotely thank you very much for your time thank you for
your comments and our last speaker is L sarama speaker number 30 who is joining us virtually please enter star six to unmute is report marine Leadership Academy High
school investig manipul carlos Gracias we'll have the statement translated by our translator good morning board members my name is Loose Sarama i have sent you a report of an investigation into Network
14 Chief Laara Lemon so that you can have an idea of the dishonest way she performs her duties miss Lemon has been reported many times but because she is protected by Bogdana she has been granted the power to run Network 14 the way she has thus far allowing
administrators particularly at schools serving the Latino community to endanger the physical and mental well-being of students and allow funds to be misspent without concern for the academic need for them as happened in Marine Leadership Academy and Steinmets High
School where its principal Miss Vilches is taking part in many illegal processes both with the proposed budget and the parents council which leads me to call for an investigation into the parent council department especially into Kashasha Ford who has taken part in
harassment lies and manipulation of council members in order to aid principles in the misuse of funds i give you my contact information so that I may send you all the evidence and shed light on what has been happening so that you may help students interamerican
school is struggling under the mismanagement of Juan Carlos SAS and as always the one protected is a principal and not the school population thank you thank you Vice President Bautista this concludes public participation
and thank you uh board members are there any questions or comments related to public participation yes i have um board member Ryfest yes so uh last week I was able to visit
two very excellent schools and I was happy to hear comments from uh people that come from both of those schools uh Miss Barlo called in from Simeon and I just wanted to say there's some great
things happening at Simeon from their carpentry program to their culinary and catering program uh the way Simeon has just turned itself into the opportunity of excellence i wanted to publicly just
commend Simeon but right down the block from Simeon it's very uh apppropo that we had perspectives here today because I was also able to visit not only Miss Ellis who is the principal of Simeon but
Mr pal who's the principal of Perspectives High School of Technology in Chadam and I saw the same kind of excellence at Simeon at Perspectives High School of Technology so to see the
students the administrators come and just represent the excellence that's in our communities and in our schools whether they're district schools or charter schools really highlights the equity that all of our children deserve
and I want to thank everybody especially the young man from uh Urban Prep uh I was able to visit Urban Prep Bronzeville which had a similar kind of excellence so as we look at uh the things that you are concerned about whether it's uh
renewals whether it's the equity that our children uh receive and we again encourage you all children from all schools whether district schools or charter schools apply to be an honorary school board member come up here and
help us design policy if you want to see equity come be a part of the system you want to see happen so thank you all for coming sharing your views we are visiting the schools and we're seeing exactly what you're saying you love the
most about your school thank you so much Vice President thank you i have board member Lopez thank you Vice President um just mentioning with some of the items that were brought before us but I don't don't know if anyone from CPS leadership will
be able to provide an update to the public on the transition for the acetto pass and cruise and the student i've been in conversations with different parents hearing some questions some of the struggles that they're going through uh just wondering if there's anyone from CPS leadership that could provide that
update no they are not here today thank you um something that I will follow up with uh the other part is as it was brought up by some of the comments many of our students and communities you know they're fighting through different things happening um in particular and
for me in Gage Park we had a student from Solorio High School who passed away due to gun violence and it's unfortunate that this is often the reality for many of our students it was a junior who was an athletic and we lost him too soon and now you know we're working with the
family i want to thank the district for quickly being able to provide support to the school to the family and also to the school counselors who have been you know dealing with the situation that happened right before uh spring break so thank you i see no further
comments this concludes the public participation my apologies a board member Barry de Barry i just want to commend the young people who um show nerve and confidence in a situation where they're passionate thank
you for getting up here and attempting the thing that's scary we need more of that um I also want to recognize the folks that commented on the Black Student Achievement Committee we hear you we know it's necessary and overdue
and we're we're working very strategically and quickly uh to get it done i was just I attended a meeting last week i was very enthusiastic about how the energy in the room was being conducted and uh we're working on it
thank you so much thank you i have uh board member Brown and then board member Blae just in support of uh what board member Deberry said uh please hold us accountable for the Black Student Success Committee and just know that we
are um moving diligently to make sure that that uh we have our committee up and running we'll be reaching out to people in the community to serve on the committee um come down if you want to come down and and and and request loudly
we're not afraid of the smoke so there's no problem with that but um please know that it is a priority uh there's and and um I'm one of the people that's pushing to make sure that that that it happens so thank you very much and also to uh uh
brother Brunson i think just for us not to lose his comments on local school councils um and the potential uh power uh of of really effective school governance that they bring um and so um
I'm interested uh uh Mr brunson to just being a part of that process so uh thank you very much board member Blae um I just want to cosign what my fellow board members are saying that we are
having regular conversations about bringing that um committee online um and it is very important to us um additionally I just want to give an extra shout out i know someone came and spoke on behalf of principal Jameson
Dunn she is wonderful um the school that she is at Catalyst Circle Rock is a warm and inviting place they have really wonderful partnerships with people um across uh the county quite frankly um
and they're doing great stuff with their kids they have a great arts um music department they also have um a venue attached to their school that is an asset in the community um it's it's it's really exciting stuff going
there and I'm happy to hear that she's um a Teach for America alum we hear so many different things about that program but this is somebody who um was able to use that program in order to come back
and serve the community and so um giant kudos to her i'm I'm happy to have met her and if you all get a chance stop by the school um and they have great snacks if you come for a visit you know they
that's always important so thank you so much and um that's it thank you this concludes public participation thank you everybody board members uh we will now proceed with the potential board reports to be
considered at the April 24 uh 2025 regular meeting after each item is presented board members will have the opportunity to ask their questions and make comments before proceeding to the next item on the agenda
board members we will begin with the following education items numbers 1 through 4 we'll begin with item number one resolution Ray National Board Certified Teachers Recognition National Board Certified Teachers Class of 2024 and
2024 Renewed National Board Certified Teachers Board my name is Lesie Niskarn and I am the senior project manager for CEO initiatives from the chief executive office i am returning to recommend the board accept our annual national board
certified teachers resolution at the board meeting on April 24th you may recall we intended to accept the resolution during the March meeting however when the board time was shifted we realized that not all of our external NBCT partners could attend so we want to
thank you for accommodating the change both board members and the board office fortunately during this pause CTU's nurturing teacher leadership program identified an additional teacher who had renewed their certification early but
was not included on the initial certification list so therefore this resolution recognizes the 36 Chicago public school teachers who have successfully completed the ND NBCT program and the 73 who have maintained
or renewed their five-year certification as of December 2024 our partnership with CTU's nurturing teacher leadership program at the CTU Quest Center relates directly to the CPS board with academic progress at the top
through high quality and rigorous instruction talented and empowered educators are realized through the highest teaching credential National Board Certification this rigorous voluntary multi-year certification process is to attain an
Illinois National Board for Professional Teachers teaching standards endorsement i'm also pleased to announce that on May 1st we will be celebrating our new and renewed NBCTS you'll be receiving further information from the
board office and you will hear more about our NBCTS during CEDO's honoring excellence at the board meeting but for now we respectfully ask that you accept this resolution if there are no questions we hope to see some of you at the celebration
thank you item number two authorize the second renewal with various notfor-profit organizations for community schools initiative sustainable community school services good morning Vice President Batista and
other members of the board my name is Autumn Berg and I'm the acting executive director for the office of sustainable community schools within the office of college and career success the office of sustainable community schools also includes our schools that are implementing the community school
model supported through the 21st century and full service community school grants for a total of 61 schools we are recommending the board to approve the renewal agreements for 17 community- based organizations that are acting as lead partner agencies in our sustainable
community schools nine of these organizations are partnered with our 20 schools and act as a catalyst for helping support the transformation of the schools into sustainable community schools hiring our coordinators leveraging refor resources leading the
needs assessment process while also supporting students and families with engagement activities the renewal would be for May 1 through 2025 through April 30th 2026 um there is an increase to spending
to 11.8 million from 10 point from 10 million based off of the expansion agreement and the new collective bar bargaining agreement sces will be adding an additional 50 schools over the contract period and 75 schools have been
invited to attend and um submit applications for the new um expansion these vendors were selected via the procurement request for qualifications process and we support the equity focus that in promotes
inclusive partnerships wonderful any questions comments board member Lopez and then board member Rivas thank you um can you just remind us for the funding for this programs uh where
does it come from sustainable community schools is um funding that the district identifies to fund sustainable community schools but is it generated from it's local funding thank you yep um appreciate that and I also just want to make comment uh
personally having had the experience of overseeing 21st century uh programming out in the Little Village quite a few years ago and working with local um organizations and also schools i've seen firsthand the impact that these strong partnerships and community have uh not
just for our students also our parents but also our educators um so very happy that we are continuing working in community especially with grassroots organizations thank you Board Member Rivas and then board member Zia Court uh
thank you Vice President um I wanted to say all the things that board member Lopez said which is amazing amazing work that these uh nonprofits get to do in our schools um I I love um the opportunity to collaborate um you know we can't do this work alone we have to be able to work um with and we have so
many great nonprofit organizations uh in our city that are doing amazing work so I'm really uh glad to see them uh work in our schools um and so my question is you know we're adding um is it 50 over the course of this next contract 50 new
schools um how are those schools going to get get chosen uh because obviously that's an amazing program we want and I would want all 50 to be in my district right um so how are we going to choose what schools get to have uh this model implemented there um and then what does
our long term look like in terms of expanding this more right because obviously it's still very limited and we have you know 600 different schools so in partnership with the joint task force and the SCS school selection subcommittee we um are starting with
some um database criteria to invite schools so we invited 245 schools to participate in a kickoff and then we asked them to submit a letter of interest and 75 schools submitted and are now in the process of applying the
school selection um expansion subcommittee will then be reviewing and making decisions based off of um what schools will move forward in this first iteration um and then we'll continue to make um changes and updates over the course of the next three years awesome
and then uh I know that the funding is um different between the two different models so we're expanding then the full community school model which is more more expensive right compared to the 21st century is that what it is we're expanding sustainable community schools
um which has um a higher funding model based off of the um the model that we propose um that is more transformational and has additional pillars and principles that guide our work so uh my question more is about
like if a school let's say has the 21st century which is less funding can they say I actually want to do the the the full sustainable community school model instead yes they um we have schools that have 21st century now and full service community school funding now that have
been invited to apply yes that's it for me thank you board member Zachur and then board member Bole hey hi Adam nice to see you um as you know I'm a huge fan of sustainable community
schools and I'm really thankful that you're here um you know for their expansion and um for funding that expansion when I retired in June it was from a sustainable community school so I'm pretty familiar with um the model
i'm just wondering um exactly what the money is going to pay for because it I I mean I know about the funds that schools get and I know it it doesn't cover even the 20 never mind 37 so what does this money exactly go for
so the 11.8 is that the 11.8 uhhuh sorry got it no no problem um so the 10 it'll the 10 million will continue to fund the 20 schools we added 1.8 8 million to this renewal as a way to jumpstart our
um expansion our first expansion of schools um but once the contract is fully determined then we will look at what's written into the contract for the full allocations for the additional school which may change the allocation here so so basically we're right now
funding what existed already plus a little bit to get started on the next batch yes i should I should add that I'll be back in July as we are also adding 14 additional nonprofits to our board report um and at that point there
may be an additional increase just based off of once we have the contract in place thank you thank you i have um board member Bole and then board member Ryanfest hi um I was looking at that supplemental
memo that you prepared um to talk about like all of the sort of finer details comparing the different models and what each model is going to fund um and I have a lot of questions
that are it's like sort of like granular detail things which I I I'll make an appointment to to speak um to somebody about that but my overall
question is I looked at the U monitoring piece and so I see that there's going to be some sort of it says internal compliance and audit monitoring going on for the both the 21st century and the uh
other sustainable community schools and um I'd like to hear a little bit more about what this looks like and if we can see the monitoring like that has been done i know that the models have been going on for a while right i'm not 100%
sure but I'm going to just guess like let's say 10 years or so maybe seven years for sustainable community schools and since 1998 for the other models okay so if we could if if there's a way we could look at what that monitoring looks like and then the other part is back in
the appendix of of the memo um we talked about research like they're going to start doing some research to see if these schools are impacting our student outcomes because that's really
what we're here to look at um you know on a on a level of how many kids were in you know each program and did it improve attendance did it decrease discipline
um and then did it help because they were there more frequently at school did we see increases in literacy and math scores you know I I just would like to look at that especially since we're expanding it is there a way we
could get that kind of data so the data is not fully available right now for that but we are um we have a sustainable community school evaluation subcommittee and we are going through the procurement process to identify two
partners one will support us with participatory action research that will support our partners and our schools in developing um school-based goals and then we are also opening one to identify an evaluation partner that will hone in
on a student's experience and looking at students that are touched by SCES and different metrics that are um higher for them compared to students that may not be um engaged through SCES so once I have that information I'm
happy to share those um contracts with you thanks thank you i have um board member Ryfest board member Pulp and then board member Brown thank you Vice President uh my uh questions are along the same lines as uh
board member Bole i'm very excited about the uh potential of the expansion of SCES schools i believe it could be uh have a transformative impact on the 91 schools uh that are in the 10th district
uh however I am wondering uh how are community partners chosen what is the process for uh qualifying as a community partner for a SCES school and along the same lines as uh member Bole the impact
of the SCES schools we already have uh I would really like to see more data on the impact that they've had that uh uh leads us to want to expand the program as well as more uh data on the
monitoring and management of the community programs that are uh chosen to partner so partner agencies are selected through the procurement request for qualification process so this is open to
any nonprofit in the city of Chicago to apply um and they submit information um to procurement and then we have a subcommittee that reviews all of the submissions um and they are reviewed and
then consensus is built on the organizations that move forward um to be included in our board report um that is how the the partners are made or decided in regards to adding to our board report does that answer your question
well I guess I'm wondering more uh what is the criteria that they need to meet to be a part of a SCS school good afternoon board members patricia Arnandez um we can share out the specific criteria for that solicitation
i don't know off the top of my head but when we go out to market we list what the evaluation criterias are and I think when we share out the recommendation memos with the with the board members we list that those uh criteria with the weights assigned to the evaluations but
we can get you the specifics to this contract oh um and give you um some specifics of how what the evaluation committee looked at so high level there's inter interrogatory qualifications of the organization
partnership subcontractors sustainability recruitment and retention and alignment those are just some of the highlevel things that we look at but we can get you specifics you're welcome thank you board member Pope
uh good afternoon thank you so much for your presentation sustainable community schools are in my view a wonderful opportunity for schools to develop meaningful partnerships with local community organizations and to turn
schools from a 9 to3 or not 8 to2 or whatever operation into a much broader community-based organization that can provide help and support to parents and families amilies and community members
uh I think this is a fabulous program i'm excited to see it expand i am curious if you have planned out for the additional schools how many will come in the first year second year third year etc of the uh contract agreement thanks
have that is going to be shared with the final contract once it's um ratified um and so we'll know the exact numbers as it's listed in there but it is a phase in correct yes thank you
board member Brown thank you Vice President um and thank you all for your presentation good yeah well good afternoon now at this point um I just wanted to share for the board i think first I'm very excited about the
um expansion of sustainable community schools uh I was blessed to serve as a much younger man i was the resource coordinator at Chicago's first high school that was a community school which was Southshore School of Entrepreneurship um and there's
boatloads of data on the effectiveness of community schools learning policy institute several Stanford University we know that community schools work but the idea around sustainable community schools was that in communities
um that often don't have a say so in regards to what their schools look like how they operate um the idea of deepening what already worked is where sustainable community schools came from and the first you know product of that
thought was Diet High School um state champion Diet High School if I say so myself um so I think uh I'm curious uh the expansion I know in the original vision of sustainable
community schools it was a village format right so you had high school and then theater schools so in the Bronzeville community we had Drake and then the then you know and diet but it was I was going to say for the board
because of the politics of the day the village model could not be implemented right so we were able to get 20 schools and that's what we were able to do um and so now the idea is implement the village models the way that it was
designed to do connect elementary schools to their high schools not only in curriculum but also in local school councils how they work together parent advisory councils community partners to create a cohesive prek
through 12th grade system of education in our neighborhoods um so um that's the soap box now my question is uh so are you all looking at the village model as as you look to expand so the school
selection um subcommittee is still working on um how we will be selecting the schools but that is um still part of the consideration along with um other data sets and um information that'll come in through the applications okay
but I invite the board to look and I can email folks if you need it but look at the study by the learning policy institute which is um some of the top you know education folks in the country uh that really do dove deep on the
community school approach um yeah and and then there's several other studies because I think we need to understand that that is not a program it's a way to look at school this is not like you know a mentorship program
sustainable community schools is looking at schools differently right community wisdom in partnership with academic expertise not community wisdom as an addendum community wisdom as in partnership with academic expertise so I
can definitely email that out to folks and I know there are folks here that know more about that stuff than I do but that's it thank you i have board member Gutierrez then followed by board member Bole and then Blae thank you guys for your presentation really my my uh my
comment is more so what I talk about a lot is storytelling um member Brown gave so eloquently spoke your story right and having that
ability academic school year ends the 30th of June October 1 it'd be great to have a recap report highlighting the lives that have been touched the transformation that's happened within
communities um I I I think um when I've been sitting here the last couple months listening to folks come up and talk about their portfolios right right and I think one of the things that um we're looking at spreadsheets we're looking at different things and it's that
storytelling piece right that's really I I believe going to be much more it's crucial now but it's going to be so much more as we try to figure out what funding looks like over the course of not only this coming fiscal year but those years to
come and I think having that as a tool to be able to articulate to people what we're doing and how this how this um how there's a tapestry of that connectivity of community and academics at a local
level and literally transforming the model um as member Brown has said that one of the things that I would encourage not only you guys to consider but other groups and members who have part uh particular portfolios that you'll come and talk to us about to to really give
that some thought because I think storytelling is so key and crucial thank you thank you for that board member Bole yeah I mean just looking at the numbers um you know I'm glad to see that we we've increased you know the number of
schools that are going to get these programs um when I look when I compare 21st century you know looking at like about $8 million we're able to serve 56 schools it just seems like a great bang
for our buck and there's a lot of similarities um in in terms of what they do i saw some differences but the other model the SCS model it's like 500,000 per school
and we're you know only able to hit 20 i I know I need some more detail on that and another question I had there was something mentioned about curriculum circles
um in the SCS model and that they would be working with educators are are those uh CPS educators that that develop the curriculum yes they are curriculum circles are designed at the school level so in partnership with teachers at the school
um and uh parents and um students work together okay thank you yeah board member Blae and followed by a board member Zach Core hi I'm I'm super excited um from I think
it was maybe 10 years ago when the conversation started um making community making schools community based where there's real opportunity to touch not just the kids but the families and the neighborhoods around so I'm I'm really
excited to see this come together um and be expanded but I I think to everyone's point um I I'm glad that you've got a partner now to do some research and to start collecting data because
um this is a real opportunity you guys are trends setters you are you're in the forefront of of how education could look and let's not forget what happens here is being watched by so many there's so many other school districts and states
and other folks that can really benefit from what we're doing here so I'm glad you've got um a uh data partner if if if we can't if we don't have the numbers it didn't happen unfortunately that's
that's where we're at right now so I'm glad you're I'm glad you're jumping in i'm glad you're welcoming or looking for um a partner to do that research and to do that deep dive and it'll only make us all better so um thank you for all your
hard work i know this isn't easy and I know this is a path that you guys are are blazing so be proud of yourselves we're proud of you and we're looking forward to more great things thank you thank you for that um board member
Zachor um yeah this is kind of in in response to board member Bole um please come and and talk to me any board member about sustainable community schools i come from a sustainable community school i can talk to you about how it's
different from community schools how the model is um fundamentally different um I'm one of the people who pioneered curriculum circles and I can share with you the transformative nature of that process so you know in this very very
important initiative that uh some of us have really you know invested a lot of effort and energy into um you know please come and and get it straight from the horse's mouth because I have that uh six years of experience plus time fighting for it before that
those are all our questions and comments thank you so much item number three authorize a new agreement with Renaissance Learning Inc good afternoon board members my name is Peter Leonard i'm the executive director of student assessment and MTSS
in the Office of Teaching and Learning we're recommending the board to approve a new agreement with Renaissance Learning for Student Assessment Platform services at the April 2025 board meeting these services were originally selected via competitive bidding process
and RFP this contract we're bringing you today is proposed via the single source process after the completion of that previous final renewal agreement this student assessment platform branded as Checkpoint in CPS is the system that
stores administers and reports curriculum embedded assessments the assessments that are tied closest to the daily learning experience of students and this includes the assessment content for Skyline CPS's culturally responsive standards aligned digital and freely
available curriculum the system is also the system used for teachers to enter their scores for REACH performance tasks a required growth component of the REACH teacher evaluation system and then finally it's the system used to administer the CPS
algebra exit exam for both district and charter school students helping to enable students to earn the algebra competency or credential consistent with board policy the contract as you'll see is in the amount not to exceed 3.37 million with Renaissance Learning with the term date
starting June 1st 2025 and ending May 31st 2028 the goals for me are 43 $430,000 or 12.7% you'll notice a significant reduction in contract costs for this three-year agreement as compared to the
previous three years negotiated in partnership with the vendor Renaissance Learning there are connections to the CPS vision here in relation to the student experience the instructional core vision highquality curriculum and meaningful assessments and in relation to equity really prioritized resource
equity and fair policies and systems in this engagement ensuring that all educators have access to standards aligned culturally responsive assessments that are embedded in the curriculum supports high quality curriculum and balance assessment in the CDT helps our teachers with responsive
instruction and most importantly empowers students to own their learning without approval the district will lose access to this assessment system used for curriculum connected assessments reach performance tasks and the algebra exit exam thank you for welcoming me today and I look forward to any
questions or comments the stack is open i see no questions or comments at the moment thank you for your time oh I'm sorry we have one um could you talk about the um this contract includes support for staff for teachers
to if they have problems with the system is that accurate yes so this contract includes all the services related to the platform so the actual building of content into it the user licenses for students and teachers any of the technical support for the district the
customer service support for teachers um if they have any engagement with the system and they need support have you received feedback about that process whether it's been positive or negative from a usage standpoint uh yes so I can
give you some some data on kind of administration that we see so we've seen in this last school previous school year we saw almost 420,000 administrations of different assessments within the system at the at the selection of teachers already this year with a couple months
to go we're over 400,000 as well and on pace to increase so year-over-year our teachers and students have been engaging with the system more um like any system there are um improvement opportunities that we listen to our educators from both as they're able to submit kind of
tickets through our ticketing system as well as when we go on school visits we ask about system performance for this program and any component of the CPS digital learning environment and then we feed those prioritized requests into the custom development process that we work
with the vendor provider to uh implement continuous improvement the system itself to what we hear from educated okay i mean is there a process for just kind of an overall evaluation from the user standpoint of whether this is working
for them i don't have access to a universal responded um tool in terms of that feedback but that is something that we can can take back in terms of the the structures for how we collect feedback on the system all right thank you you're welcome
um my question for you is thank you for the presentation um what is the universe of users utilizing the the system in terms of that curriculum piece so we have more than 400 schools and
Nikki or anyone else can correct more than 400 schools that have adopted Skyline in at least one content area and grade level is more than basically 80% of district managed schools so every educator every teacher needs to use the system for the reach performance task
purpose and entering those scores and then teachers in close to 80% of CPS schools should be you know are in the platform administering the assessments connected to what was taught and then our eighth grade and some seventh grade students that participate in algebra um
are able to take the algebra board member Wallace thank you for your present and I saw that for FY24 it was a little high is there something that I I see the proposed spend doesn't show that it being that high is there something we should be anticipating that would happen
in the future to cause it to get this high again no that was the the payment go forward um for licenses for multiple years we are stable year-over-year as you'll see in there there are some slight increases we really negotiated
hard with the vendor to try to bring our costs down here and so thank you to the team that collaborated um and they got as low as they could get for us you'll notice there's a slight uptick in year three but we do not anticipate any kind of bulk cost that is the those three
years are what we anticipate and we don't anticipate any surprises thank you you're welcome board member Rio Sierra hi thank you for your presentation i'd like uh to piggyback on board member Bannon um's request for feedback i'd
like to see some feedback on the student experience particularly in the early childhood grades in the earlier grades and then um and some teacher feedback as well i'd like to know what this is like implementing and executing and what it's been like so far great that is something
we can take back one thing I will give you um respond to is that we did have heard right for our younger students right engaging with different technology platforms is sometimes a challenge most of our assessments are able to be done both in the system or paper pencil we
have especially prioritized that for our youngest learners because we don't want a platform to get in the way of a student showing us what they know and are and are able to do so we have had that some of that feedback for our youngest learners and have made sure that the mode of administration is is
flexible for those assessments but heard on the desire to have a more structured set of educator feedback yeah I think my my concerns particularly with the with the younger students is I mean studies show that digital learning digitally is
not the best way for them right need to connect the hand brain um and I'm just I'm just wondering why um why we're moving towards such digital learning for the younger grades when like I said studies show that it's not as effective
so our our youngest learners are digital natives we know that for some of our other maybe assessment programs for example most of our students um in kindergarten through second grade use the the I Ready assessment right and so those types of assessments can be
administered on a range of devices they try to have audio components so that if a student is still learning to read that the reading comprehension doesn't get in the way of what they know and are able to do um and for assessments like that there are core assessments that have online components and then there are
often uh more offline assessments that go deeper into particular aspects of a student experience um a lot of the data when we work with a partner around whether they are looking at mode comparability essentially if you were going to move uh an assessment that
previously was paper pencil to digital um as they'll engage in psychometric evaluations that allow to compare the performance of the same assessment in paper pencil versus digital mode comparability so that we're confidence that students are able to demonstrate
what they know in that medium versus another um in curriculum embedded assessments we're talking about here with the pieces in in the Renaissance platform for for Skyline we aren't able to do mode comparability studies but we're able to
do is give flexibility to our educators in the mode of administration so if you are have second graders or first graders who are really comfortable with the system are able to access it and show what they know a teacher has the flexibility to administer that way if
you want to be able to administer in the paper pencil format you have the ability to do that as as well for students who may require it in their IEP or for whom you just believe the the students in your class would best be able to demonstrate during that time
uh board member Thomas good afternoon and uh you'll excuse me i left the room earlier um is there data available on what educators feel about uh Skyline in terms of how this platform is working say
there's there's structured feedback on educators feelings about Skyline at large i don't have structured educator feedback and a comprehensive survey for Checkpoint uh what we do have are information about the educator experience from the ticketing process
which has allowed us to prioritize improvements from school visits for understanding the teacher and and student experience uh and from the demonstrated change in usage over over time as we've seen increases year-over-year with the adoption and use
of the system uh but one of the primary takeaways from this engage so far is a desire to look at a more uh comprehensive educator feedback on the system i think that's a Oh board member Pope Leave it on okay I didn't leave it
on I guess uh hi uh thank you for your presentation and uh I uh do have a few questions i know that some concerns that educators had raised were related to the amount of reproduction of materials that
they had to do in their schools and also on the part as a bilingual teacher I'm very concerned of course that uh there'd be equity for our English language learners and a number of the things had not been translated as I understand are
we making progress on improving uh translation and a full inclusion of Spanish-sp speakaking students and what about uh Skyline is it available at all in other languages that our students may be learning in thanks
yep thank you for your questions um I also welcome if um others from the teaching and learning team to to talk through on Skyline i'll start with Skyline overall right we know that there is that we've rolled out in the last couple years AL the authentic Spanish
language arts curriculum so any of our dual language schools or transitional bilingual education programs have access to a Spanish language arts curriculum that was built from the ground up according to the principles of how st students learn in Spanish and not a
translated and adapted version of reading in English to that method we have assessments that match so in all of our Skyline curricula the assessment development has happened in concert with the curriculum development so that the assessments are truly connected to what's been learned and so we do have
assessments of authentic Spanish literacy in the Skyline alle translation and the ability of those to access uh Spanish for other content areas we do have a um an exciting update for schools that we'll be giving them uh next week not
connected to this component but connected to the work with um I Ready we've worked with them over the last couple years encouraging them to develop an authentic Spanish reading adaptive assessment that matches what they have in English and many of our schools have
partnered in piloting that and for this upcoming year they will have that so whereas they had a lower level fixed form assessment previously they'll have access to a truly adaptive authentic Spanish reading assessment built from the ground up it's definitely been a priority for us as we partner with OM
with our our bilingual schools and we're really trying to make all headway we can in authentic native language assessments thank you you're welcome board member Biggs thanks Peter i appreciate your report um
several schools that I visited are talking about shifting away from Star 360 and more and more are looking to use I Ready across the board um I'm wondering how the Department of Assessment is is thinking about supporting that is that a shift we're
thinking about across the district are we really beholden to STAR 360 at this point as a universal assessment thanks for your question board member Biggs um I think I'll be with you guys next month looking at our curriculum associates I already renewal um so the
current model right now and board member Biggs is talking about our screening and benchmark assessments so we try to help all of our schools balanced assessment systems where we start with the most important assessments are those that are connected to your curriculum that's closest to the learning but we know other assessment types can serve
valuable purposes so things like star 360 and I ready we really think of as those universal screeners the beginning of the year where you can get a quick dipstick on where all students are in their learning so you can differentiate instruction provide responsive supports and where needed maybe provide tier two
or tier three academic interventions our per the collective bargaining agreement all of our schools have the ability to create and vote on an assessment plan each spring and schools may choose to use different assessments in that screening and
benchmark for our contracts the district pays for any school that elects to use I Ready in grades K through two because that is what our contract covers and the district pays for any schools that use STAR 360 in grades three through high
school um for this past year about 20% of our elementary schools have chosen to administer the I Ready assessment in 38 and pay for that
themselves um currently we that uh that payment comes out of school's budgets and is not able to to come out of the the the district budget um we are looking at our our options in those spaces of whether we need to continue
with the current model or consider options and we feedback thank you board member bigs any other questions thank you thank you board members
item number four authorize a second final renewal renewal agreement with various vendors for inschool arts education services good afternoon board members my name is Jeffrey Waraxa manager of strategy for the department of arts education in the
office of teaching and learning i'm also joined by my executive director Cesar Toea we are recommending the board authorize a second and final renewal agreements for inschool arts education services with various arts partners at the April board of education meeting
this contract ensures that CPS schools have access to highquality arts education partnerships in music visual art theater and dance including residencies workshops inschool performances and field trips
this only focuses on during school arts services and has no impact on out of schooltime providers or those contracts these vendors were evaluated and selected based on their ability to partner with schools and provide meaningful supplemental student
experiences schools will continue to have the ability to select these vendors that best meet their needs and this pre-qualified pool guarantees quality and accessibility for them the vendors on this contract represent just a small portion of the hundreds of
arts vendor organizations that schools can continue to choose to work with annually this renewal includes an annual not to exceed amount of $1.2 million with a two-year contract term totaling up to $2.4 million beginning May 1st
2025 vendors were selected through a request for qualifications with the majority being notfor-profits and two WBE certified vendors key performance indicators continue to confirm strong vendor performance in this pool including high
ratings in Oracle from over 2,000 school reviews annual letters of recommendation from schools on those partnerships and curriculum samples from these vendors if this renewal is not approved CPS schools would lose the this access to a pre-qualified group of arts partners
limiting their ability to provide comprehensive high-quality arts aligned to individual school needs to ensure equity and community engagement with future solicitations we acknowledge that this initial RFQ process was very extensive for the applicants when it was first launched
and coincided with the difficult timing of the summer of 2020 we look forward to future solicitations that can include more organizations to this pool and to provide applicants with timely outreach and technical assistance to complete the application this renewal directly aligns
with the district's vision for academic excellence and community partnership ensuring that all CPS schools have access to these community arts organizations i will note the discrepancy between historical spend for the last few years and the proposed
higher spend limits for this renewal because the purchase orders for these services are organized and opened by individual schools mostly totaling less than the $35,000 per school spending limit much of this historical spend was not
properly attributed to this contract by the school staff when they opened those those purchase orders we've worked with procurement to analyze both the oncontract and offcontract spend and we determined that schools are actually spending closer to $1.2 million
annually with this group of vendors thank you for your time and consideration and I welcome any questions you have board member Rinfest yes so uh I visited a school elementary
school in my district uh Bret Hart uh and they have an arts teacher but they don't have any instruments and so my question is uh how is the extension of our partners and vendors to
traditionally underserved schools uh going to be more equitable with the extension of uh these funds thank you yeah so these funds are a combination of sometimes schools making decisions from their own budget and spending from there
but we also partner um with one of our close colleagues our our close partners at Ingenuity Incorporated a nonprofit um organization and we do annual granting to schools directly based on what their needs are so in some of those instances a school really needs support maybe they
don't have a dance program or a dance teacher but there is a dance organization they want to bring in and provide an afterchool residency opportunity or or um you know a a club that will be started and funded through that grant um when we're making those
decisions um from the applicants we're taking into account things like the opportunity index we're also taking into account the assets that exist in the school so every year we do an annual analysis of all of those assets um how many teachers do you have what are they
teaching minutes of instruction what courses are being offered etc um called the creative schools certification um and that's also an opportunity for us to look at what are the assets um and resources within a school and when we're doing that annual granting process we are actually granting to those that
don't have robust resources in the arts so we are trying to direct um those supplemental resources granting programs etc to those um also another anecdotal thing when we're working in terms of instrumental um buildouts or or
resources for schools um I just spoke with the Langlang Foundation to get a new piano keyboard um lab into two different CPS schools again based on both the desire of the school but also what other arts arts assets and how can we direct those external funders to
support the schools that need it all right so I just give you a little rhyme like dance rapper sing arts is my thing so I'm hoping that later on we can uh sit down and talk offline about uh so I could get a more clear understanding of
how uh I can take those things that you're telling me now and work best with uh schools in the district to make sure they understand and have access to those grants so uh I I hope that we can just have a conversation later about this so
I can get a better understanding perfect we love you thank you i have board member Rivas followed by board member Rosenfield uh thank you Vice President um so some questions here i was going to mention Ingenuity so I'm glad you mentioned them
uh there seem to be a really great uh advocacy group to ensure we have more arts education in our schools um so I'm someone who every month likes to talk about making sure we keep our dollars local uh and making sure that we're you know revitalizing our own economy here in the city of Chicago by keeping those
dollars in our city and our state um so when we're looking at the MBE and WBE so just from my understanding not for profofits then wouldn't qualify or wouldn't apply for those statuses right is that the case right my understanding is is that they're exempt from that
they're exempt okay hi best friend hi how are you uh you are correct so nonforprofits are exempt from our MWBE um credit if you will because if you think about it they do not have
ownership that we can get certified as a minority or womenowned business they are governed by direct board of directors and that could change right and they have different mix u mix from the community but based on our policy we do not give credits for non forprofits okay
great um so I'm I'm glad to see that we have 36 nonprofits here um which I'm I'm going to assume that means that's 36 local organizations probably all i mean I see the Mexican Art Museum there i see the Puerto Rican Arts Alliance uh beautiful to see them included so then
my question then around um I see that WBE is listed at 40% and I'm trying to just understand what that 40% means is it dollars is it number of programs how is that divided what does that mean it's usually the dollars so whatever the
vendors get paid um our vis our business diversity folks will track the payments to the woman or minority owned certified vendors okay so so that that leads me to my next thing then that we have you know uh these $2.4 million right that's going
to be spent on 40 different vendors of those 40 vendors only two of them are WBEs so two out of the 40 vendors are getting 40% of this $2.4 million not necessarily it's whatever uh as the
team stated whatever the schools spend going forward then if those two vendors get any of the business then whatever they get paid will be credited towards the uh goals and I think historically they've gotten paid that 40% but I can
follow up and get clarification okay so this this this 40% then is the historical right because that because the schools individually get to choose who their partner is correct okay cool uh well that's great because I think my concern here would be that you know you have two for-profit organizations
getting 40% of $2.4 million right and I don't want that i would love to support the small nonprofit organizations that are doing amazing work um in our city okay thanks Board Member Rosenfield followed by board member Bole hi and I also thank
you for being here um two questions well they're kind of go together so you said we could lose access to this pool of vendors i'm curious how many of our schools use this pool of vendors because
you know feeding into my next question that's a big jump from 195 to 1.2 million 195,000 and you said many weren't reporting their use of these vendors so can you tell me more about that how did you find out they weren't and how many are using them and how
could we have such a humongous difference sure so when the RFQ was released in 2020 um it was an opportunity for vendors to put their name in the hats or or raise their hand and say "We are ready to be evaluated based on the quality of
our partnership practices with schools." Um it was not mandated and I think that that's really important there when I we were doing our most recent full school year analysis we had 377 different arts organizations
that worked in CPS schools last year so the 40 in this contract is just a slice of the organizations that are actually working through our annual data collection process i talked about the creative school certification um so that is one aspect of of who is actually here
and present um in this pool versus what is still accessible to CPS schools um the reason we did this RFQ in the first place was to really be able to provide schools with a short list when they come to our department and say who's a really good music vendor we didn't have an
answer to that years ago but now we do we were able to analyze their curriculum samples how they partner with schools and say you know what this short list of of arts partners should be your first place to go when you are shopping in the arts partner marketplace
and what what percent of schools are using this short list we haven't done that analysis of the the specific number of schools utilizing these 40 partners um we do have numbers that and we include charter schools in
our annual arts data collection sure 898 schools basically all of our schools have partnered with at least one registered arts partner organization last school year so there's significant um coverage when it comes to that but we can do some research in terms of this
pool specifically okay thank you board member Bole yeah so basically these are all vetted partners so if a a school says you know I'd like to take my classroom on a field trip to the Beverly Arts Center to see their annual play
then that is that school is spending their own money to do that and they're working with a vendor that's been vetted that's kind of what this is about okay precisely yeah we also encourage when we're doing our annual granting process
that I talked about um through the creative schools fund with Ingenuity um we do encourage schools to look at this short list of highqualified vendors first um because we've been vetting them for their quality practices i don't see any other comments or
question oh um yeah thank you so much for the presentation so I guess um I I need a little clarity so um this money does not actually cover any schools being able to
use art programs is that what you're saying i'm following up on board member Bole's question right in general this is the opportunity for schools to have this level of spending authority should they choose to use it so we see variable number uh amounts of annual spend with
this pool because of that right we're we're offering these vendors up for school's use and if they choose to partner with them over the course of this contract um that then results in varying levels up to this not to exceed
amount okay but so board member Bole said the school would have to pay for that field trip but are you saying no they can schools can get a grant that would pay for whatever a residency or workshop or whatever from this $1.2
million is that what you're saying yeah so in our granting process um we have historically provided um about half a million dollars through our through district funds through our department um we contribute that portion um the last
number of years we also work with Ingenuity to for them to fund raise to basically match a lot of that funding usually exceed that half million dollars and we've also been working with um city hall um in the last number of years too to create a portfolio of about 1.2
million $1.3 million in that annual granting process um so that money is a combination of district funds and um sort of philanthropic funding through the granting uh of the creative schools fund grant this is really just focusing
on sort of the the opportunity for schools to spend if they get that grant or with school funding okay and um I think it would be helpful for us as board members to kind of get that bigger picture you said this was a small part of kind of a much bigger thing and um
yeah so I just think it would provide some clarity if we could see that much bigger thing and then just to board member Rivas's point um it's great to have a list of vetted vendors but um it's also great for communities to be
able to say this is a vendor down the street from us that we can build a long-term relationship so I would just like to see how that plays into it also but thank you so much any other comments questions thank you so
much board members before we proceed to items five and six Brendan Perry director of policy records and ethics will address the board to provide an overview of the policy process good afternoon um my name is Brendan Perry i'm the director of policy records
and ethics and we have two policy items coming to you today but before we get into those I wanted to give you just a higher level overview of how they got to you today um before I begin you should have two different handouts in front of
you one um is a timeline uh for the more visual learners like myself and then the other is more of the um overview itself as a cheat sheet that we'll be going over that I encourage you to uh look through as well uh and I'm happy to
answer any questions on those but to start off you know why do we have a policy review process specifically well that's because every board policy and rule uh shapes how our district operates and therefore in order to make sure that
we keep things current and fair and aligned with all of our district priorities and legal requirements we created over the course of several years what we have now as the this thoughtful review process for anything that's going to come to you for a vote so what what
do we do so this full review will take ordinarily a full six months to get through and that's going to be broken down into about six to seven different parts the first part is the policy and rule identification and early review with
this my team uh we have a list of all of the policies and we will flag any policies and rules that may be due for review board rule 1-2 outlines that all of our policy and board rules need to be
reviewed on a bianual basis starting with the older ones so pre209 to be updated by April 2026 so my team went through and we found and flagged all of the ones that needed to go we look at all of these and ensure
that they are reviewed for legal compliance and alignment with these district priorities and then those after we meet with those policy owners we then send them on to step two which is stakeholder engagement during this step the they gather input from internal and
external stakeholders now those internal stakeholders include the offices of face family and community engagement equity the office of student health and wellness among others and within those meetings with those teams the policy owner gets a really good idea of who
else can be a collaborator and a stakeholder on this policy review process now it is the policy owner's responsibility to ensure that they either meet with those stakeholders or explain why those stakeholders probably aren't the best for this specific policy
but they're always able to speak to that matter when asked the next step is the drafting and the legal review part so here the policy owners work with my office as well as the law department to finalize any of the language and submit any revisions to
my team then we have the internal and board review step which is where the drafts are reviewed by the CEO's office as well as the board office and they are presented to the agenda review committee today what's happening now um for board
member discussion uh and involvement then the board members will vote to authorize that specific item for public comment uh at this month's uh board meeting so later this month when the public comment period
starts my team uh uploads it to our publicly visible website wherein uh people at large can log on look at the current policy look at the revisions uh suggested and offer commentary that is
uh that goes for about 30 days not about it is 30 days it goes for 30 days and um based on the feedback from the public the policy owner can review that and make any changes if necessary we have a public comment summary form wherein they can describe why they did or did not
choose uh to incorporate feedback from those public comments next we and usually the final step here is to bring it back after that 30-day comment window to the board members to vote on whether or not to adopt this final version um if approved then the
policy or board rule is u adopted and we publish that as the standing rule now I do want to flag because it is going to appear before you today sometimes we do have exceptions to this full process due to certain circumstances and those are
these rare exceptions those include non-material amendments to previously approved board rules or policies as well as legally required amendments to previously approved board rules and that is the one that's going to be coming to you today in just a moment now what is
the role of board members what do we ask of you well first of all engagement right you know we want you to ask questions and request clarity to flag any issues at this meeting the gender review meeting because we believe that that is valuable feedback we also uh
want you all to stay informed on the policies as they come through the regular process as well as getting posted um you will be seeing these drafts before you have to vote on them and you do get the opportunity to provide that feedback and then we also
want you to vote confidently right the reason we include you at the midpoint in the process after all of this all of the policy owners have been able to meet with stakeholders is so that you can receive versions that um you can provide
feedback on and vote with understanding where what it has all gone through who has seen this what whose hands have been that uh in that way so finally I just want to go over why the full six-month process and that is so that we can make sure that the policy owner has ample
time to engage with the necessary stakeholders and get their relevant feedback we want to ensure that the policy owner has the opportunity to get an appropriate appropriate legal review we also want to make sure that we maintain transparency with the public
which is why things like the 30-day public comment period are so important um and also just to build trust in the process we don't want anyone to feel like we just rushed through everything we want to ensure that by the time this board policy or board rule that is going to govern this district it has gone
through all the necessary steps and not too hastily so it was a very higher level overview of this process um I understand there will likely be questions and I'm happy to feel some of those unless I killed it that's not so fast um board member
Wallace you did kill it but I do have a couple of uh clarifying questions could you explain who or what is considered a policy owner oh yes great thank you so we went through the all of our policies and owned sort of and assigned a content
expert so it's the individuals who have the subject matter expertise as well as who if there is the question you know what is the policy or is somebody not in compliance with policy who what would be the best team to speak to that so it would be uh it's usually a central
office uh a unit or team that is assigned the owner and I will just flag because I know this is being recorded on the website we do list next to each policy who the subject matter expert is it's on the left hand side underneath contents so you will be able to see who
all of those owners does that answer your question it does thank you thank you thank you very much thank you board members we will continue with the following student protections in Title 9 item number five rescend and adopt final
comprehensive non-discrimination harassment and retaliation policy good afternoon board members my name is Brian Thompson i'm the executive director of student protections in the office of student protections and title 9 and equal opportunity compliance
office uh today we ask the board to amend board report 24-0725-P1 the comprehensive non-discrimination harassment and retaliation policy the policy has been amended to ensure compliance with the official guidance issued by the US
Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights on February 4th uh 2025 on April 19th 2024 the US Department of Education amended the regulations implementing title 9 of the Education Amendments of 1972 with an
effective date of August 1st 2024 this final rule introduced a broader scope of prohibited behavior falling under Title 9 with its expanded definition of sex-based discrimination on February 4th 2025 the
Office for Civil Rights released official guidance to school districts via a dear colleague letter clarifying OCR will be enforcing the 2020 Title 9 regulations including retroactively uh to August 1st 2024 this amendment of the comprehensive
non-discrimination harassment and retaliation policy brings the district policy into compliance with the 2020 Title 9 regulations uh by reverting the definition of sex-based harassment uh to sex harass sexual harassment if this policy is not
approved uh Chicago public schools will not be in compliance with the Title 9 with Title 9 of the Educational Amendments of 1972 and risk uh losing federal funding this amended policy continues to asssure that all Chicago public schools community members are
able to make complaints of discrimination harassment and or retaliation and have them investigated appropriately uh and appropriately addressed this amended policy continues uh to support safe and supportive learning environments uh by ensuring
that all community members are protected from discrimination harassment and retaliation in alignment with local state and federal law because this is a legally uh legally required amendment necessary to ensure compliance with the federal law we are
not we are making changes uh immediately and not proceeding through the full policy revision process i have uh board member Wallace followed by board member Pope sorry question you said you didn't go through the full process could you explain of how far through the process
you went if at all yes uh we re had a review of those policy changes uh which is primarily the definition of sexual harassment uh by both uh the policy department and law thank youmber Pope yes I understand the
necessity of doing this at this point but I just want to comment that this is an extremely unfortunate situation i feel confident that CPS will maintain its protections for all of our students
and I understand that we are legally required to comply with uh federal changes in regulations but I do think this is something that we should all be aware of as an area to follow up on and
to maintain concern about and to make sure that we are putting our full effort into protecting all of our students and making them feel safe in their learning environment thank you if I can respond to that comment I I I
would say uh that our office the protections from our office will not change as as it relates to that policy this is an amendment uh for that specific um that specific language from the federal government thank you very much thank you for your
time board members we will continue with the following marking marketing item number six authorize the commencement of the public comment period for the amendment of the commercial activity policy right good afternoon board members my name is Courtney Hill and I am the
executive director of marketing here at Chicago Public Schools uh today I'm here to talk about our recommendation to authorize for public comment to amend the district's commercial activity policy um so this policy was created back in 2006 um and essentially what it
does is it gives the district the opportunity to partner with outside corporate uh companies to be able to place advertisements on district-owned media or property for the purposes of generating income for the school district um now since the policy
implemented in 2006 uh our research shows that it has not been implemented in any kind of broad way across the district there have been small cases where schools have done small partnerships with uh with companies but not on a large scale um we did an extensive set of reviews analysis of
this to try to figure out if it was something that still has worth and is something that could bring value to the district and today I'm going to walk you through the process of what we did in that review to kind of share some of the findings of what we found um we listed in our presentation in the uh review
audit that we did two examples where other government agencies or school districts have taken similar policies like this and put them into motion to be able to generate interest for their cause um here in Chicago you all uh have a chance to ride our public transportation system with Chicago with
CTA uh CTA essentially uses their assets so their buildings their bus stops their trains as a public advertising network and in 2022 to now they generate about $33 million a year by running that type of system um there have also been implementations of public school
districts that have done uh processes like selling naming rights to sports stadiums um that's happened in Texas and other school play in other school districts but those are just two examples to kind of show you precedent where this has been done in other spaces um so as part of our engagement we met
with a ton of different organizations within the district and then outside of the district so within the district we met with a number of different departments including CEO CEDO FACE procurement communications to all kind of discuss the utility of such implementation um and then we did
external uh communication to meet with a number of different advertising associations as well as local out ofome advertising vendors to do a thorough analysis to see if this is something that could be viable for us to pursue um now the thought with this is if we were to replicate a similar process let's
take what CTA does uh CPS owns about 800 buildings across the city of Chicago so could we take that network and set it up somewhere to CTA to be able to generate income um we did a review of that and I'm going to read back some of the initial findings that we found to let you see what that potential could be um
now in that implementation we found a number of limiting factors that make us a little bit different than what CTA does um the first of those limiting factors is that most of our schools are tucked deep within neighborhoods so think a school is probably only going to be facing in a general standpoint the
houses that surround it we do have some schools that have hightra public facing street frontage that could be ad generating but that limits our inventory so essentially a lot of schools wouldn't even account or wouldn't even be eligible some would um we also looked at
uh community zoning rules so what happens is in every community there's a zoning policy that dictates the uh maximum size that a sign can be on a building and it also dictates the maximum brightness that a digital sign can be so that you don't have like an extra bright sign that's shining into
someone's windows um both of those rules basically limit the size of any ad panels that we could make to a pretty tight standpoint and it makes another set of ad ad panels potentially unviable so they just wouldn't work um we also found that there are some ethical and
legal limitations for some businesses when looking at running advertising so some businesses would basically be legally or ethically bound to not advertise within a certain distance from a school or associate with the school that also limits our inventory um then we also looked at the costs so what
would it actually cost to put a system like this in place um the vendors basically share with us that on average it costs anywhere from 50 to $100,000 to implement a single ad panel in a digital standpoint which is what the preference would be on any type of school so uh
time to build a network of this nature is estimated at somewhere between 5 to 10 years with a potential cost of $60 million so that's a pretty hefty investment right so if we were to ever do something like that we'd have to make sure the return was appropriate um CTA
had a similar problem when they built their network where they didn't have the capital or funds to be able to finance it so what they did is they contracted and did an RFP they bid it to an outside firm the outside firm fronted the capital to be able to build the network
and they did a work back and ownership process so over the years the uh vendor basically made their money back and at the point they made their money back CTA got a higher percentage of the revenue and took ownership over the network so we would likely have to do something similar because that's a pretty hefty
capital expense and against other things we need to do for schools um so the viability of that that we found is that it is possible there is money that we can make there but it's a very long leap so we're talking about really like a five to almost 20-year window before we
could potentially realize anything of substantial return from that so that's just kind of a barebones factual analysis of that particular opportunity um we looked at a couple other opportunities as well so could we replicate what CTA did on our vehicles
and turn district-owned vehicles into public advertising network opportunities the challenge there is that we don't have that big of a fleet so our own delivery fleet is pretty small so we wouldn't be able to generate much there and we don't own our school buses so we use outside vendors for running our
school buses and transportation so any revenue that would be generated from that mechanism would go to the vendors and not from us um we also looked at the opportunity to sell ads in any own district owned media think newsletters blogs things of that nature our metrics
are again a little too light so we don't have a higher enough viewership or click-through rate to make it a viable stance so at the end of the day we found that there is some potential here but it's something that's going to take a lot more deep analysis and a pretty long timeline for us to be able to actually
do something that could generate return so our recommendation is that we made minor uh tweaks to the language to basically open it up bring it into modern times to allow any schools that have smallcale versions of an implementation that such such as this to
continue to practice and to be able to leave us open to be able to evaluate and accept new opportunities as they come up um we also have flexibility in our amendments to be able to continue our feasibility analysis so that we can see if there is anything that we could do with this on a long term that could be
beneficial to the district so um in terms of uh let's see like our uh the impact of non-approval again as I mentioned the biggest thing is that this is a long run right so we're looking at a long lead time to get anything back so the longer we delay if we weren't to
approve this the longer we have to actually be able to start anything um from an equity standpoint any new revenue to the district in our financial standpoint would always be good and we want to make sure that we set that up in a way that's equitable we've amended the uh text of the policy to make sure that
we're planning for that so that any uh income that could come in is going to be distributed in in an equitable manner and that's essentially what our recommendation is so I'll open it up for you all to ask any questions and thank you for your time okay um you have quite a few questions
um board member Ryfest followed by board member Blae thank you for that presentation i've been really interested in the opportunity of uh sponsorships endorsement deals for our schools with products uh I understand
and and thank you for letting me know about the limitations uh legally and ethically uh with kind of advertisements but what about product placements so if uh I just visited a school they have an electricians program I see craftsman
tools you know that they're using why isn't Craftsman sponsoring the school or if uh a school has a studio program and they're using ProTools and Logic why isn't ProTools sponsoring the next
generation of engineers and producers uh have we looked at any opportunities for product placements for what students and schools are already using that we may not be uh uh benefiting from those relationships thank you so great question that was actually one of the
amendments that we made in the language was to be able to open it up for that type of partnership so the specific text that we put in basically opens it to include sponsorship of any type of program or activity or an actual owned asset so if it's tools it's an owned asset and that applies as well so that
was a change that we wanted to be able to open up to be able to create an opportunity to consider that and you don't see any limitations in those types of sponsorship relationships with those companies so I think the way that we've written the policy is to give us a
thorough way to be able to vet each opportunity on an opportunity to opportunity standpoint so for example we may get an opportunity from a company that we may vet and we may be like that doesn't make sense there may be something that doesn't fit our mission doesn't fit our values the company may
want too much in return for what they're getting um we basically set the language to be able to provide a thorough way to make that consideration and then we'd have to consider it on an opportunity to opportunity basis thank you yep no problem i have board excuse me board member Blaze followed by board member
Thomas thank you so much so we're just um uh voting on or we're just discussing right now the policy that allows you to open yourself up o open CPS up for commercial activity correct yeah that's
correct so as Brenda mentioned in the the place that we are in the policy review so our team has done the analysis we've done an audit report that we've shared back now we're opening it up to engagement so engagement with you all to be able to provide feedback what you'll be voting on at the board meeting this
month is to move this to public comment and that's a broader period of public engagement so what it does is takes the modified version of the uh policy that we've updates to we'll make it available for public comment for 30 days any feedback we get from you from the
general public about it we'll make additional amendments and then we'll bring it back I believe in June for final vote for adoption great and then when when you're getting proposals from different companies or organizations about opportunities for partnerships or
sponsorships who on the CPS side is evaluating those andor is there is there anybody who's going out and reaching out for those kind of partnerships for those types of part Yes that's a really good question so the language that's in the policy basically designates it
specifically says a designate of the CEO's office likely that will be my team and marketing as Brendan mentioned and they basically picked the department that has highest level of expertise to be able to manage it um when we met with CTA to evaluate how they do it it's basically a similar standpoint so their
marketing team has um basically a review committee where any outside proposals from advertisers come in through them they're vetted they're screened for text for content mission alignment things of that nature goes through their normal screening process before it gets approved in Greenland so um part of that
would be operational planning so if we did decide to implement this or execute any large scale planning um we'd have to build that kind of process we'd likely have an outside vendor managing this so that's how CTA does it and it would be some kind of interchange between those but officially in the language of the
policy it's the designate of the CEO and that likely would be our team and um I think this is a real opportunity and this is a timely conversation um this board in particular is has
um is is really and myself for sure is really interested in different opportunities to raise revenue um so often we talk about cuts and I I want to talk about different opportunities and you know I go to my daughter's plays in
the band and we're at Lane and uh the the stadium at Lane and there's not a lot of snacks to offer there's um maybe if there were gear for the teams that could be sold i think there are opportunities there's a scoreboard
that's way outdated that maybe if you put something somebody's name on top of it we could even just get better things than we have now amenities than we have now the bathrooms you you know um when
we're looking at $12 billion in infrastructure um improvements if we if we um were to correct all the things in the school buildings um that we wanted to correct maybe there is opportunity for some partnerships so um I'm excited about
this thank you for changing the language i'm hoping for some really dynamic really exciting um opportunities um that you can bring our way um and and and help us raise some money and some energy
i think there's there's so many places that proper marketing um can be beneficial to CPS so Yeah and thank you for that comment you also had a second part to your question about how we would actually go out and generate new opportunities in addition to ones that
come to us yeah um I'll use CTA as the model again because that's our most direct comparison so what they have is basically a contract with an outside advertising agency called Intersection that um manages advertising networks for multiple government agencies in Chicago
they run all the advertising for Divvy um all the bike stands and they do it multiple states so the way the partnership works is the outside agency is tasked with doing that new business development so they're constantly out on the market working with existing customers building new relationships
with new customers and bringing those advertising deals to CTA so likely we would have to build some sort of partnership of that nature to be able to do the organic and then anything net new that came to us we would either vet independently and work with our outside partner to be able to execute manage um
what that does it also opens it up to not just big companies so you mentioned like Craftsman as one opportunity there's also probably a lot of opportunities with small local business so think your neighborhood grocery store or your neighborhood bank there's lots of opportunities in that space that we
could explore as well um but the purpose of the policy is again to set the template and guidelines that give us the ability to legally be able to be able to go out and do this and then we build the operational processes as a layer under that to execute great thank you so much
board member Thomas followed by board member Zachor good afternoon what a exciting uh uh policy discussion and app propo the questions of board member uh Smith and Blaze
um many of the uh advertising uh processes CTA uses is with something mobile and I was just thinking of Clear Channel who looks at uh boulevards
vehicular and pedestrian circulation since schools uh and school property those are things that where things could be affixed it's not going to be mobile but they can tell you what that circulation is going to be on any
thoroughare and I think that would help uh enhance your your client base or the possibility of a client base uh just knowing that the number of vehicles or number of pedestrians in a certain area
uh is going to be so many thousand per day at drive time and and that's uh I mean they clear channel has a an overlay of the entire city uh or boulevards that might be a network for
you too yeah absolutely your client base yeah indeed and so the way that works so the technical term for that type of advertising is called geoargeting and the way that works is let's say we were to take the side of a school and turn that into a public basing built um so
say it's facing a highway great opportunity for that um so not only are you able to generate income from the ad panel itself but you can put a chip in the ad panel that basically ties into a mobile app network and then that way any car that drives by that billboard on the
highway is going to get a ping and if your ad campaign is tied into that then it'll push a mobile ad to them so um Intersection for example runs those types of campaigns for us now we actually employ that with clear channel and intersection in marketing ad buys that we put in motion for ourselves to
promote our programs if we were to build a network we would definitely want to have that kind of type type of technology into it to be able to expand those opportunities i have uh board member uh Lacquor and then board member Rosenfield uh thanks so much it's it's
really interesting to hear this and obviously you've done a lot of work and what you were just talking about kind of addresses I guess a concern I have when you talk about um it's potentially 20 years before we realize any kind of benefit you know 20 years is a long time
and what CPS will look like in 20 years what the city will look like in 20 years is hard to predict but even more technology so yeah I guess I'm just expressing um a concern that we make sure that We're um we're looking ahead to this with uh guard rails around the
potential changes in technology and how that might uh change how we generally consume advertising at all so it sounds like this i'm I'm not very up on this stuff but this chip and it gets you this that and the other might be in that direction but um but that's a now and
what's what's it going to be 20 years from now if it's really going to take us that long to realize a benefit like we don't want to you know design something only to find out it's obsolete by the time we might get that benefit so I'm
just expressing that that concern yeah and it's a great question one of the initial considerations we had when we met with ad vendors to analyze this was analog or digital and the difference between that is to say do we just do a static posted billboard that's just a
flat piece of paper that someone's got to print and replace or do we make it a digital panel and most ad vendors are planning for that type of future by shifting almost everything to digital so even if you're driving around the city you're looking at CTA there's really a big trend where everyone's that owns the
these types of panels are switching them from analog to digital to be able to keep up with those trends in the future and then adding chips and doing mobile sync wherever they can to be able to keep up with the digital advertising trends so a lot of that would actually be taken care of it of for us in
whatever external partner that we identify with um so let's just say hypothetically if it were Intersection since they do the most in the city just as an example um they're constantly reinvesting capital to expand and to modernize that network and that becomes
an investment that they do and they share that relationship with us so I think in the long term however long it would take us to build it out we should be well prepared for any kind of uh technology change new changes in advertising to be be able to make sure we're staying ahead of the curve to
maximize our revenue board member Rosenfield oh and then bar board member Gutierus so very interesting very exciting i appreciate the district thinking outside the box on new revenue sources um does
that also include name changing on a building so wealthy alumni corporation that kind of thing does that include something like that in this um I mean technically it can in the most strict terms of of the deal right so you can
think about that as like a football naming right stadium um I think we would have to set some guidelines to say what we're comfortable with um we have a pretty tight process for actually changing the name of the school so I doubt that we would put that up for sale
um but if it was just like a a sports annex or a periphery building I think that's more appropriate um so I think we just have to figure out what we're comfortable with in terms of the deal and how working like um Akila brought up Lane who that's a park district you know
that Kerrywood Stadium is not CPS it's park district are we going to work with them park district then if in fact we went to like that kind of naming and that kind of Yeah actually that's a really good nuanced uh question so uh that kind of gets to the language of the
text uh we we amended the text specifically to say that it gives us the flexibility to be able to sell on both owned and leased property so that's an expend expanded flexibility that we put in there for exactly that opportunity
right um if it ended up being that type of case it would just we'd have to work out a revenue sharing agreement with um with uh the park district or whoever we were leasing the property from but we did specifically modify the language to accommodate for that and then great and then my last question is so it generates
this income now the specific school doesn't get that money that's not going to their budget correct that's going to Chicago public schools at large or is this something that like LSC's will decide on decide yeah so I think again
the question there is policy versus implementation so again our goal in the policy is to give us the legal right to do this I think on a case-byase basis we'll have to analyze to say is this a deal that works for the school or is this a deal that works for the district
but we did add language in there in the policy to basically dictate what that review process looks like to ensure that we're we're distributing the funds in equitable sample so for example we don't want to say hey there's like 10 schools on the north side that have great
straight frontage and we're just going to give the money to them right like we want to figure out a way to be able to centralize and and distribute the funds equitably to a need that's best and again we don't know what any particular advertising deal or opportunity would be
until it comes up but we specifically changed the language to allow us a very thorough process that ties into our equity index that would allow us to evaluate that and make the best decision for the greater benefit of the whole district great thank you for your thoughtful planning on all of this yeah
no problem this is very very exciting um but a couple cautionary tales is a guy who's done a little bit of trying to get naming rights on things um one especially around the valuation of the assets right i have this great property
for you to advertise right thinking it's going to generate tons of money and you have to have the right partner yep right for that so so keeping that in mind then I think the other question that I have is around guard rail of the types of
advertising that we as a district would want to and would not want to engage and I think I'd like to hear a little bit uh if you have that baked into this policy or is that something that we would uh work on
yeah yeah actually so that's a really good point so I'm going to call out a section so it's section A uh 2B we have eight different clauses for types of content that we offgate would not allow and again going into our
public feedback section is where we want to gather feedback to see if we want to expand upon that um so that's based off of common principles of just us as a school district what will we find acceptable and not acceptable um we were able to get access to CTA's contracts
and to see what they standardize on so what's acceptable or not acceptable and it gives us a baseline to say as a broader city and government agency what type of content will we allow but again that's a great place for you to review this as we're going into this public comment phase and let me know if there
are other things that we want to add to that as exclusions because I think that's super important both for credibility and to make sure that we're doing the right thing by managing any type of situation that we would set up like this thank you i have uh board member pulp
followed by board member Bixs hello thank you very much for such a thorough and reflective uh presentation i don't want to be a Debbie Downer in this situation but I do have some significant concerns uh I was at a
school as a teacher where a pilot program of providing news over the PA system was implemented many years ago and it involved advertising for products and among the products I remember in
particular was uh a certain major soft drink company which at the very same time as that was happening we were removing their soft drinks from the schools because those school because of nutritional issues for example and not
wanting to have our kids drinking a lot of pop in the schools so I do think it's very important for us to maintain a focus on our values as we evaluate these things and of course we're all seeing
the glimmers of dollar signs and the money that could help our students and our classrooms and coming from underresourced schools I certainly share that absolute concern i do appreciate that you said that there was a lens of
equity that would be applied to this because I can certainly see that in more affluent neighborhoods uh ads might be more valuable to uh various companies and I think it's important that we make sure that these ads and the benefit that
we get from them if we actually get there is something that is distributed with the equity equity lens and the opportunity index and things like that that we have really fought to have to improve our schools for all of our
students and that this doesn't go in contradiction to that so I I appreciate that i also just want to say that on a certain level the idea I mean I've watched all of our stadiums get renamed
numerous times in Chicago and stuff on a certain level I'm like oo let's keep education a little pure than this and I do have you know that reaction that I don't want to be buying and selling education in that kind of way and I
don't want the companies that advertise to have an influence whether it's subtle or overt on the kinds of curriculum the way we teach the things we do in our classrooms and in our schools so I just we'll stop right there yeah for sure and
those are all amazing feedback points Um thank you very much for sharing them um I'll address one of your first ones and the way I look at it as kind of the the marketing lead is um there's external to the building and there's internal to the building right so what you're talking
about is advertising internal to the building um that becomes a little sacred in Sacri right i think that's a place that we could very easily make a determination that that's either offlimits or very limited really what we're talking about is external to the
building so where is something set up in a space where it's truly public benefit it's really promoting something more to the public than it is to our kids that's really the spirit of what this u policy is looking to do versus a type of advertising opportunity you talked there but I I totally get why that could be
compromising and of concern um in terms of content values that's something that we speak about very um repeatedly in the policy so we put a lot of strict language in there to kind of make sure that anything that comes through is evaluated in that way and that
additional review process of vetting to determine should we go or not go will always happen as well so we've got multiple layers built in to make sure that we assess thank you so much yeah uh given the very wise concerns and
limitations raised by many of my colleagues and yourself I'm I'm curious do you have sort of a a sense of a range of revenue that we might be looking at each year um should we move forward with this in some way shape or form got it so
um what I'll say is at this time we don't have anything concrete we have baseline comparisons of where else it's been done the next step for us let's say this gets approved we get past public comment we read the policy um we are talking with the exec team about expanding our analysis and that's part
of why we want to get this readopted so we can keep going um things that we've got to do as additional considerations is we've got to actually go in and do a full count to see which schoolings which school buildings make sense and which don't um we also have to do a construction analysis and that's going
to take a little bit of time and possibly a little bit of expense what we've got to find out there are we have really old buildings right so our buildings are sometimes 85 years old um we don't want to go and drill into a wall and install a ad panel and the whole side of the school comes down so
there's some additional analysis we have to do before we can actually come up with the real number but that's essentially the next phase of our process to be able to get into that and figure out what that looks like i have uh board member Doyle followed by board member
Wallace um I figure um my question was really what Ellen asked i was wondering if an individual school agreed to have like the billboard or something would they get the money but you answer
that that wouldn't be the case i was thinking back to like when schools had the cell towers yeah exactly they got the money but yeah and and there are certain instances where that has been the case again I want to continue to to highlight that our policy gives us
permission and then on a case-byase basis it gives us flexibility to make that determination and it may be an advertiser that comes to us and says "Hey we specifically want to do it in this community for this reason for the benefit of this school." Then that makes sense um but we didn't want to be overly
restrictive in the policy to where we kind of cut off our hands before we get started we needed to leave it flexible to say "Yes we're going to stick to our values we want to purposefully support district equitable impact but leave it flexible to analyze each deal as it is
and make a determin case by case basis uh as a as a parent of four children I'm always very um frustrated and concerned by the types of things media is is pushing to them i try to teach them what to look for based on what channel they're watching what radio station they're watching they get different
advertisements i do like the idea of uh board member Rhymefest talking about being able to dip into some of those corporate deep pockets for the the collaborations we're already doing but I also feel like uh board member Pope and we need to be very careful in what we're
doing and what we're saying um I wanted to point out also the way we're we're talking about some of our our schools some of our neighborhood schools that we've been fighting for and almost kind of dismissing them as if they because they wouldn't be uh large revenues but
whatever students are in that school and whatever parents or guardians are at that school are still people that you would be advertising to um I also want to be very careful about the types of advertisements we're doing i don't know once these vendors are chosen if there's
language in there to be able to decide what kind of advertisements we do we all know the thought is that sex sells and I don't want sex selling to my six-year-old uh don't want it to my 17-year-old either but that's just something that's going to happen i want
to make sure that we in in this we're doing this it's it's not racially biased it's not based off of socioeconomic status and that we then try to partner with smaller vendors if necessary in those smaller schools we talk about our
neighborhood organizations that are trying to be in our areas and and support our students our scholars i think it's important that we don't bake into this policy that those students aren't worth the time or effort yeah absolutely and um I'll just state very
plainly like that is not how any network we would build would work or even the processes that would go through in terms of making ad deals to make it happen so we can give an example let's say we partner with Craftsman and Craftsman wanted to go past that say they say well they I want to sponsor tools in every
school that has shop but I also want to run ads to help me sell more Craftsman schools across the city um what they're going to do is basically look at our network and they're going to see our footprint and they're going to make a decision about what customers they want to reach in which areas um the goal is
to centralize and funnel that money into the district so that we can make an equitable decision to say "Hey we just made this money off this campaign but these neighborhood schools in these areas really need the funds the most we can therefore spend them and distribute to them um in that baseline." And that's
how we've created the policy specifically to address that concern and to make sure that no neighborhood is left out of the revenue generating quantities regardless of whether their school makes sense to be an ad panel so um contentwise uh we speak specifically
to that it's literally the first one in the restricted content section uh about nothing sexual uh against uh things that would be harmful from food standpoint things of that nature again please give us all the feedback of what your concerns are as we're going into this
public engagement phase so if we need to add to that list we'll add to that list we want to make sure that this is something that people are comfortable with if we do implement it that can work for every thank you i have board member Bannon followed by board member Lopez
um thanks for the the presentation um I'm looking at the the details here cta collects 33 million in annual advertising income in 2022 is that their gross or their net that's their net okay yeah so the way it
works if if I can take a moment just to describe the dynamic so um Intersection who runs the uh ad network basically sells and generates the total income and they have a profit sharing agreement with CTA so a certain amount of the
profit goes back to CTA so the 33 million is the annual net that came back to them after the gross that came to the vendor um now the way that works in time if you remember when I talked earlier um the vendor paid to build the network so
the earlier parts of that agreement meant that a higher part of the gross was being kept by the vendor and over time CTA ultimately gets a higher percentage of that profit so that's why you have that long lead time right capital recoupment and then over time
you get a lot more money back um um so right now we're just looking at the policy there's no one working right now in CPS actually selling any of this advertising yeah correct yes so yes as we found created in 2006 I think the
idea was there but there were smallcale implementations here and there but never like a massive district-wide let's do something really big so nothing of that nature is I think it's great to have the policy i think it's worth looking into the feasibility that's I mean I I think this is just based on your own report
seems to have very limited I'm sorry to burst anyone's bubble about and think outside the box but seems to have very limited uh potential for as a a significant revenue stream for us but I I I hope I'm wrong yeah exactly and that's why we want to continue the evaluation to
actually get to the real number like what is that real number um the policy keeping it alive gives us the capability to be able to continue that and that's really what we're looking to do thank you Lopez thank you i pretty much similar to what
already has been said i believe there's an innovative approach um definitely room for further discussion looking and it also for at least for me it gets the wheels turning what other ways can we look at at it to bring in revenue um also share many of the concerns in
particular of the type of items uh messaging and um and one of them is once let's say we move forward we award that uh partnership uh and the company finds themselves in hot waters for you know whatever the reason that we have the opportunity of opting out from that
contract it will be important I also applaud you know thinking about how do we build that relationship with the business community um how do we continue working with them so they can continue supporting the experts in educ education um the other I had a question about the
consider consideration not just of building the infrastructure but also maintenance and afterwards once 20 years right said is CPS going to be the owners of what it's set up or is it the company that if they decide to walk away they
got to take everything down with them yeah that amazing question so that actually has happened in other markets and we are distinctively making sure that any deal that we go into that's a contract term that it can't for us um so essentially the way it works is let's say we were to kick off an agreement of
this nature we would likely do an RFP um so we do an RFP invite a number of out of home advertising agencies to bid on the contract to come in um part of that would be them putting up the capital to build the network we would put into the terms what we want that progressive
change over time to be so after capital recruitment they make their money back what is our escalating scale of greater net income that we keep for ourselves with the goal that after a certain period of time ownership reverts to us so that's the model that CTA work with
that seems to work best for most of the government agencies in the city and I think really equitably like is what we want to get to anyway like how do we make sure that we own it that we continue to scale our net revenue and that should anything happen a vendor can't just walk away and end up shutting
us out of the whole system well thank you so much cool thank you all for your time board members we will continue with the following nutrition support services item number seven authorize the third renewal agreement with various vendors
for food management services good afternoon board members my name is Jason Moika i am the executive executive director with the office of nutrition support services i'm joined here today with Justine Britain who's our nutrition program manager
nss is requesting the board to authorize the third renewal uh agreement for food management services with Aramark Educational Services and Open Kitchens uh this is uh to provide meals for all of our students under the
National School Breakfast and Lunch Programs i want to point out that this is the third of four one-year renewal options for both food service vendors after this renewal we will have one more
uh renewal option to exercise before we will have to release a request for proposal the implications of this agreement is not approved is that we will not have meals to provide our students i want to point out two things
of equity that uh uh that we um follow in our department the first one is inclusive partnerships we value and embrace the voices of students to determine how we can best provide meals
and services the second point of equity is resource resources so we try to ensure that our schools are appropriately staffed our staff is properly trained and that they have sufficient and working equipment in
all of our schools our vision connection is supports academic progress and operational excellence our strategic plan connection is supporting an equitable learning experience for our
students the key performance indicators are increasing meal participation meal and program compliance and accountability and training the term of this contract would be
commencing July 1 of 2025 and through June 30th of 2026 the proposed spend would be not to exceed $116 million uh I want to point out that the increase
in cost is due to the annual consumer price index uh that is part of this contract that allows each vendor to request up to 6% CPI increase every year uh with the
support of the procurement department they were able to negotiate a lower percentage CPI increase with with both vendors for this current agreement uh to highlight our uh
MWBE so our goals as a department is to have 30% MBE 10% WBE for Aramark their MBE percentage is 47.3% with 12.8%
WBE for Open Kitchens they are 100% WBE company cumulatively we are at 37.3% MBE and 33.3% WBE i want to conclude by saying that
our department is you know fully committed to working with both vendors to increase food quality and variety through a number of different avenues that we are currently uh doing today among those are student tastings
offering limited time offers made to order popups for our students lots of student engagement efforts uh student surveys uh food focus groups and a chef residency program that we also
have so with that uh that is the uh conclusion of my agenda item happy to answer any questions that you may have i have board member Biggs followed by board member Blae yes uh you stated that the consequence
of not supporting this renewal is that we would not have meals to feed to our students are you saying that Aramark is the only vendor that could provide food service for our students so right now we have a contract with Aramark and Open Kitchen so both vendors we procure both
vendors provide the food for our schools right so in this contract we're contracting with these vendors to provide the food to our schools so are these the only vendors that are available to provide meals to our students well no there's lots of other
vendors out there in in the world of K12 s uh food service so I would imagine you know once we go back out to bid we're going to have more companies that are going to want to bid on this contract this current contract when this proposal
went out um we only had three companies that submitted proposals right one was Aramark one was open kitchens and there was a third company that submitted a proposal for only one category of our schools that proposal came in um at
almost $20 million higher right and so at the time with the evaluation committee um that was selected uh you know that that company even though they did well with their presentation it was the cost understood
um I think all of us regularly hear from students across the system um about improvements that they would like to see to their food and so I'd like to understand how the surveys and the tastings are actually impacting the food
that is served in schools sure um so anytime we're doing some sort of student engagement we take it very seriously how we're going to use that their student voice and actually make real changes onto the menu so for the
student tastings for example we're always putting new menu items in front of those students at those tastings and based on the student feedback that's what's determined what goes on the menu next so if we do you know we did three different recipes with blueberries
earlier this year the highest rated recipe that's the one that's going to be on the spring menus um something like from our school survey last year uh which collected a lot of different feedback um we were able to make some
like more broad changes to the menu so we heard broadly that students wanted more cereal options they wanted to see um yogurt more frequently on the menu so those were some um kind of specific ways that we could infuse that student
feedback onto the menu thank you i'd just like to point out to uh to Justine's point about surveys so uh just last year we kind of took over and launched our own internal food survey that was sent out to schools and uh we
received well over 45,000 responses right that was unheard of uh previous to that uh this year we launched a survey again uh which ended recently and we've got uh over 40,000 responses right so
this is great for us and we take all that feedback and we work with both vendors as far as what's going to change or what's going to be different going on to the menu through school i think board member Biggs um accurately
described that we're all hearing complaints or concerns about the food so I would love to um maybe get a report on the feedback that you're getting um maybe it's anecdotal but I'm having a
hard time finding someone who really loves the food i'd also um I I know that some schools have kitchens and some schools have just dropped off food so I don't know if there's if you've got any data on the differences in and
appreciation for the food with those those two different um setups um but I' I'd love some information on that as well um and then if we're thinking about a renewal now and then um we we
have to do a brand new contract in a year or we have one more renewal option after this one we have one more renewal option after this one and then we'll go out back out to bit right and um when you were bidding the contracts was it for the whole CPS or
were people able to piece meal it like maybe a region of schools or or was air chosen like you said there was only three people to give you proposals um was it because the RFP requested someone who's able to cover all the schools as
opposed to maybe smaller portions that smaller companies might have been able to jump into so in this in this current contract um previous to this it used to be for all of it and then in this um this
current contract we kind of broke it up so we did um we broke it up into um three different categories right cooking warming and receiving right uh for this for this next solicitation
uh we added a fourth category right so if if you want to bid on um cooking sites you can bid on those locations right which would be right now it's about 472 locations want a bit on
the warming locations that's about a hundred of those 472 schools have their own kitchens and they make their food yes that is correct okay then we have a hundred that are warming kitchens so they have ovens at those schools but
they receive the food kind of in modular uh form which is still prepared fresh from open kitchens gets delivered the day before and those schools just heat up those then we have about 60 or so locations
that do not have the capacity to cook anything on site and so those meals get delivered to those schools day of how many of those are there about 60 fascinating yeah I'd love more
information um if if we could get it the I'd be very interested in the survey Because again sometimes the only people you hear from are the people who are complaining there might be a bunch of kids who are happy and I'm I just am not hearing from them
so if you Hey so if you can if we could see the that data that would be spectacular yeah we could share the survey data with you and I and just to add to that you know um you know it's sometimes we get emails from principles right or or um studenting voice
committees right uh saying "Hey you know there's something wrong with the food at the school." So when that happens um you know Justine myself somebody from the team will go out to the school we'll do an operational visit
we'll we'll you know look at and see you know is it is our staff doing everything correctly are they on menu um you know what's going on that's leading to this right and sometimes it might be um you know we've got to retrain our staff um
could be equipment that's down and not working properly it could be our biggest uh pain point right now is staffing we're short staff we've got about 382 vacancies right now across the district staff kitchen staff wow 382 vacancies
out of 2500 staff right so where is that posted i think that's good information for we can um I can get you that number but we track that internally but out of 200 employees right now I have 382 vacancies and we always recruitment is
not our problem it's retention right so right now we're in the middle of uh two contract negotiations with our unions um so hopefully through that process we will uh negotiate higher wages for our
lunchroom staff but that's that's the biggest the biggest problems that we have right now is that hire people and then um between 2023 to up to now we've had about 100 employees that have transferred out to other departments
because they Right so that's that's that's our biggest issue right now is retention it's not recruitment it's retention right maybe we need to look at that too which two unions are you negotiating with uh SEIU and Unite Here
okay okay thank you for your time i appreciate it you're welcome okay i have myself um I have um an anecdotal uh complaint the person did not did not want to uh make an official complaint
but in my district um a handful of times there was milk that was distributed and then collected back because it was expired so that happened about five times so far in the school year um by the time they were collecting it back
some of the kids had already drank it um and can you speak to like is that a common complaint that you have are you getting these complaints because it was made to me but um they didn't want to go on record no
and that's fine and it is not a common complaint it does happen so I'll be transparent and say that it does happen and when it does happen uh you know our operations teams goes out to the school and they investigate a lot of times it
it is human error right so when that happens while unfortunate we address the staff we retrain the staff if one or more students got ill because of it we do connect with our um disease prevent
uh prevention folks here internally if we need to report that to the health department which under law with three or more students that report an illness we are required to report that to the health department um once we do that the health department conducts an
investigation on top of our own internal investigation we will send out folks to the school we will check all kind of um sanitation uh handling procedures and we will review all of that right to make sure
that our staff is executing properly thank you i have board member Rivas followed by board member Brown uh thank you vice president um so a few things here uh I am the son of a former CPS lunch lady and uh I can assure you
that those salaries are very hard to live on and so I totally understand why the vacancies are so high um I don't know if it's still the case you know with lunchroom attendance LAS are only paid four hours a day or five depending on um the staffing model at their
particular school um you're only paid for the days that you work right you're not paid over summer things like that um and so my family uh while I was growing up in CPS uh and in college um had to live off of $8,000 a year was the salary
that a lunchroom attendant made um until my mom uh my mom's position was cut by CPS um so uh I totally understand why you have so many vacancies and I hope that we can work with our labor partners to ensure that we have a living wage for
our staff especially our poorest paid staff our mostly uh people of color that are working in our lunchrooms uh supporting and and feeding um our families um so yeah sorry
um and anyways um so I appreciate that um sorry I got sad for a second um so uh one of the things I was uh concerned about I I do appreciate the health insurance my mom received from CPS though i will say that absolutely desperately needed health insurance for
her last part of her life um so when we're thinking about when we're looking at open kitchens versus Aramark I think you touched on this already i was just wondering what the breakdown was but it sounds like Open Kitchen handles the schools that need the food that's uh that's that's warmed up in the ovens correct versus the kitchens yes it's
just over about a 100 locations okay do you know the breakdown of like this 116 million how much would go to open kitchens versus Aramark i can get that for you i don't have that in front of me right now okay appreciate that um and then um I I I saw recently on the news I
did not read up on this i apologize but I saw in the news recently that uh Illinois passed a law requiring kosher and halal uh meals be available in at institutions like schools uh and I'm wondering um what what is that looking like for us in terms of compliance or or
are we compliant already well I'm happy to say that CPS has been in compliance well before it became a law beautiful so we started offering kosher hal meals about four years ago uh so right now we have about about 20 schools doing kosher
um you know years ago uh we we were talking about this i went and visited New York public schools saw their halal program and came back here and said okay we rolled out first we started with um with kosher and then we switched over to
halal so now we have these schools multiple multitude of schools that offer halal meats um on the menu and then uh with the kosher meals uh it's you know if a parent wants that for their child they fill out a form and then we have
these kosher meals that the schools receive and heat up and provide for those particular students that's awesome to hear um and then my last question is just related to obviously like our so many people uh are dependent on uh this food right on on making sure that our
students u are fed and how important that that is uh and then we know that our students are in school for a very long time especially if they're doing their out of school time programming um at the school that I worked at we had a snack program after school i don't know what the cases for all CPS schools so I'm just wondering is there a snack
program is it and and what does that look like for our students and families yeah so um on any you know any given school year we have um a lot well over 400 500 schools that are on an afterchool and or snack
program right so uh we have a lot of schools that have that offer afterchool suppers and or snacks every day throughout the district that's awesome to hear thank you Bo Brown
thank you Madam Vice President um I I want to echo the concerns that I heard from uh board member Biggs and board member Blae uh and and and CPS team that's here can correct me
if I'm wrong um but hasn't there been a lot of problems with Aramart and particularly like around uh the janitorial services with food service so I I can't speak on the janitorial side because that's a separate contract from food services so how manage food
services no I get that but I know that Aramark has been pushed out of other cities like New Jersey Newark New Jersey and places like that and I know that while it's a different service it's the same company i'm saying this to all of
us that you know there were uh rodentinfested schools on the south and west sides uh that were managed by Aramar and so I'm just I'm just concerned with um being careful with my words i'm just
concerned with uh vendors where there's been some struggle and so I I I'm really interested in seeing are there other vendors that we can approach um just a
thought so what I can say is is with any vendor that's doing business with CPS um you got to hold them accountable for what's in the contract right so uh what I can say is on my behalf we have
quarterly business review meetings with both vendors right every quarter and they are presenting all of the contractual KPIs and SLAs's to us and we are discussing them and you know can you
tell us what those acronyms are please yes so KPIs are key performance indicators and SLAs's are service level agreements so in our contract we have KPIs and SLAs's that we hold our vendors accountable to right so we meet every
quarter they are presenting those KPIs to us and seeing where they're at right happy to share those KPI metrics with you guys if you guys like you can see how both of our vendors are performing but both are meeting our contractual
requirements anything outside of that uh I have a monthly meeting with our vendors to discuss um all things outside of the KPIs right operational uh performance whatever you want whatever else we have those
conversations with the vendors right and so when they're not meeting our contractual requirements then there's certain steps that are taken to get them to be into compliance right and I just want to add real quick
for clarification the janitorial entity of is different from the food service arm of air so when we're having issues performance issues with the custodial side of Airark you know it takes us time to go back out to market go through the
evaluation process and contract with a new vendor but to Jason's point if we have any kind of service uh concerns we will address them with the vendor and if we find that or we see that we're not going to um come to agreement or um you
know compliance with the current contracts terms then that's when we kind of take a step back and say okay we need to go back out to market see who else is out there who can deliver deliver the services for this oh thank you i have uh board member Thomas followed by board member Zach
Core thank you um Vice President Um and I I just want to thank all of the board members for these really informative in-depth questions regarding quality um because I've had some
complaints as well from schools that I've visited um but my question comes about cost i know you want to be competitive and when these go out for bid but we are approaching some really
inflationary times suppose the cost of services based on what's in the marketplace becomes really prohibitive from the for the person I mean for the contractor
that's taking the bid and can't comply what's what's the safeguard they say they just can't do it at this price well once we put out the bid right companies are going to bid and they're going to submit their proposals then
their cost proposal Part of that is you know uh the evaluation committee will review those proposals right and then at the end of the day it's going to come down to procurement's going to try and negotiate lower lower uh prices for that and then
ultimately it will come to the board right for approval of these contracts right um and you know at the end of the day we have to provide meals for our students Okay um you know I'd be remiss if I didn't say that once
we do go back out to market uh yeah there's concern that whoever comes to bid on this business um it's going to come in significantly higher than what we're paying now right uh but every year the cost of food goes up um cost of um
you know right now we're getting certain letters from repair vendors about the tariffs so now the cost to repair equipment is going to go up the cost of purchasing new equipment is going to go up now right so there's a lot of unknowns that we don't know just yet
that are coming down the pipeline but at the end of the day when the time comes we all are going to have to agree on on what company is going to provide all the services that we need for our students right at the best price possible yeah
because those are all non-controllables those are not things that you can control in the marketplace absolutely um thanks so much for being here uh I have uh one comment and then um a small question I guess um the comment is just
around um making sure that we're keeping in mind how important food is not just for health and wellness but for academics so I'm guessing that uh many of us here are beginning to struggle to pay attention because we're hungry and
if we were going to go to a lunch that was unappetizing enough that we ate hot chips and drank pop when we came back we would be equally struggling to pay attention and that is in fact the
reality uh certainly in the school that I left a high school where a large percentage of the students was not ever going to eat that food that they found so unappetizing so to my question now um
so we actually this is a student voice thing student voices I believe across the city uh usually put food as a number one issue um and so our student voice committee once did meet with food services and we were told that there was
a such thing as um a seasoning station they might have called it um because one of the things the students uniformly say is the food is too bland and they don't have any options to make it you know taste differently so we were told that
was an option but at the time I left last June so this is three years later we still didn't have one so I'm just wondering how if those things are options already why aren't they options for every single school because it is
the case that across the district not just in certain schools that students don't care for the food yeah so what I'll say is um you know K12 food service is probably one of the most regulated divisions of food service right we have to follow
um you know all the meal pattern requirements all the rules and regulations set forth by the USDA um unfortunately um that means certain salt requirements that cannot be exceeded right and so on and so forth and so
sometimes as much as we try to the food is not always going to taste like you get at home or like you get at at a another retail location right but between our team and our vendors uh both
of our vendors have really great chefs right that are continually working on recipes recipe development how do we incorporate more flavor into the food without adding salt and to your point it's how do we incorporate uh you know
salt-free seasonings herbs lemon things of that nature into the recipes to add that flavor without increasing sodium it is a challenge it is a very big challenge but I I'm proud to say that our team has done a great job doing that
and both vendors uh have done I think a really good job as far as working with manufacturers right on on creating products that are for K12 but are more
uh popular more favorable with students so this is part of those tastings that Justine was talking about is that when the chefs come up with new recipes or manufacturers come up with new products right that meet the K12 requirements we
put those in front of students now if a student tells us we don't like it guess what it doesn't go onto the menu same thing with recipes that the chefs create sometimes these the chefs create a ton of recipes that we'll go and we'll taste and we'll say "Well let's put you know
these 10 in front of the students and they'll go around across schools across the entire district sampling these recipes with students and they'll tell and the students say will tell us we don't like it or we do." We try and set a percentage of favorability before it
gets put onto the menu as far as the flavor stations go I do recall at some point we had some of those in high schools um we do now so we still have those flavor stations in high schools um
almost every school has uh you know can offer uh different types of condiments right so all of those are available as well i have um board member Bannon followed by board member Gouter well thank you for your presentation a
couple questions that I have relative to um Kuska i think um it would be good for everyone to understand kind of the dynamic of the dollars that are coming through so what are current reimbursement rates um and are you able to
um draw down on all the potential offerings that USDA through ISBY has for the for your schools um so I think that would be one good thing to know um also in rising cost time do you allow
your um vendors opportunity to substitute things out um you know as certain costs come out our little you know maybe a menu required X ingredient but that is
cost prohibitive for them to be able to use something else so to answer that question so you know the menus are planned well in advance and Justine and team you know are the ones who review the menus and approve the menus um you know our vendors are the ones who you know menus are costed out they get
reviewed by Justine and team and they get approved um there are times that manufacturer something may happen with a product and and it's not available and it has to be substituted right um sometimes it could be a quality issue it
could be a whole slew of things that could happen with a particular product and so when that happens it does have to be substituted whether it's you know quality issue or or anything right manufacturing issue and so we will sub
it out but it's not without Justine and team approve and how about relative to um the cost structure in terms of your reimbursements so we can get you that information but just so you know there is um you know uh there's a meal rate for breakfast there's a meal rate for
lunch there's a meal rate for after school and so as an example say if the breakfast meal rate was $3 out of that $3 both vendors get a portion of that and then NSS gets a portion of that and I guess that's why I'm asking because I
I I I understand that world relative to that reimbursement rate that I think it would be good for all of us to really understand and then the last thing if you haven't done um as how you engage students and this could be part of the next RFP when the next food show is in
Chicago to ask them to bring students with you as different um manufacturers are trying to bring about to market new types of food because I think that will help inform some of the work that we're
trying to do relative to um in the schools with with with making the uh menu a little bit much more appetizing for our students absolutely uh last but not least I have uh board member Lopez
thank you um very similar again to what has been stated and that I've been hear hearing from students to parents um regarding different complaints from tasting to food being cold um you know more healthy
options um so I shared those uh also wondering once you shared the information about the um different uh I believe it was surveys conducted I'm just curious to know how long was the window open what was the outreach done and also for any future opportunities
let us know how we could be of support of distributing you know whether it's a link how do we engage our own districts so that you can get you know uh if more number of people responding right um a question is with the the contract language uh is there any language
potentially if they're not able to meet their deliverables or the quality that there is you know language where we can end the contract Yeah I'll let Patty speak to that yes um
all our contracts have termination clauses um I don't recall off the top of my head what it is on this specific one for the most part it's 30 days termination notice written with written notice um with some contracts it's a little longer just because it's going to take us longer to offboard and onboard a
different vendor but we do have standard boilerplate language around that for all our contracts thank you and also it's the part where you know if you were not to renew this right that leaves us with less than three months of
going back to the market and to be honest I feel like it's tying our hands it's we only have Sorry go ahead yeah and that and that's why Jason has said originally that if we do not get approval for this renewal we will not be able to serve students right uh and we are going a couple of months the
contract ends in July we haven't had performance issues with the two vendors that's why we're choosing to renew we did take a look um last year about potentially going back out to market but the cost is so high that if we go back out we're going to spend a lot more money than with us renewing with our
current vendors the plan is to renew hopefully the market will kind of stabilize and then eventually we'll have to go back out to market once we're out of all our renewal okay just want to you know and you know pretty much say what was I guess is
pretty clear out loud that even at least as a board member right now I feel like you know in a difficult situation knowing the timeline and that I also don't want to have students without food but knowing that it's a vendor that I've myself have receive a lot of complaints
for yeah and just to share out with you guys a lot of um the renewal options that will come before you are usually within a two to three month window The challenge for us to come before you with a renewal like six to 12 months ahead of time is that we cannot get um fixed
pricing from our vendors 12 months in the future right so if I were to come and let's say um if I would have came back in December to renew airmark or open kitchens might not be able to give me a fixed cost for what their uh deliverables will look like starting
July 1 of 2025 so that's why a lot of the times when we come to you for renewals is within a two to three month window before the start of the next contract thank you for additional information um and the other item also want to second um board member Rivas in particular
about our staff and in the kitchen and they're the ones that often also looking out after our children um hopefully we are able to continue how do we retain them and also maybe add support whether it be certification or help you know expand their skill set thank you thank
you thank you very much i think those are all of our questions and I do have a request from the board uh Secretary um Susan if we could take our recess now
um I would need a Oh two items yeah we have uh we have two more items before we go to recess thank Thank Okay thank you i think we'll uh power through these next two items and then we'll move for our
recess thank you uh board members we will continue with the following procurement item number eight authorize a new agreement with various vendors for custom printing services and I'll do my presentation quickly for members so good afternoon again patricia
Hernandez chief procurement officer i am bringing before you the request to authorize entering into new agreements with 57 vendors for custom print services from a request for qualifications that was issued by my office in late 2023 custom print
services includes everything from um all printing needs for schools and central office departments such as banners signs booklets calendars diplomas pamphlets posters etc yearbooks um my team did extensive outreach out of the 57 vendors
that we are being that we are recommending for award 19 of them are MWBE 10 are WBE and 37 are local vendors the aspirational goals on this contract are 30% MWB and 15% for WBE we are
requesting a not to exceed authority for $30 million for a three-year contract that will begin May 1st of 2025 through April 30th of 2028 the 30 million is an estimate based on current historical spends uh school and schools and
departments will only be able to spend if they have funds allocated in their budgets this is a strategic contract meaning only these vendors will be able to provide these types of services to our different uh internal users all spend for um custom print services will
be tied to this board authority for the next three years the schoolbased spend is approximately 48% um literacy accounts for about 16% and our marketing department accounts for about 13% of the spend there is no guarantee of work for vendors if this
item is not approved schools and departments will not be able to procure custom print services without a separate competitive procurement process and contract creating additional administrative uh support and time to create and facilitate multiple bids for
individual uh business units all the larger printing jobs that exceed our bidding threshold will be required to be uh second like a second tier bidding process with the vendors for the categories that they were awarded and then the work will be awarded to the
vendor that provides the lowest cost and can deliver with the specified time requested by the users um equity focus this is a direct resource equity every school every department has access to the same pre-qualified vendors that have met our requirements and will be able to
spend above the $35,000 uh threshold this falls under the operational excellence of vision connection um that concludes my presentation and I will take any questions if you have any thank you very much thank you or members we will continue with the
following information and technology item number nine nine authorize a new agreement with Sentinel Technologies Inc good afternoon my name is Kyle Austin director of network services for ITS i'm joined with our deputy CIO Ed Wagner
we're asking the board for a new agreement with Signal Technologies for our firewall licensing maintenance and support services this agreement ensures un interrupted uh coverage for the district existing
nextgen firewalls to include uh enterprise cloud-based security services associated licensing these services are critical to maintain the district's cyber security posture and ensure secure access to educational and operational
technology services implications if this agreement is not approved the district would face heightened cyber security risks including increased exposure to cyber security threats the lapse of support and licensing could result in discredited
firewalls performance delayed incidents response and compromised internet access to district effects learn digital learning online assessment and core operational systems this agreement is essential to maintaining resilient and
secure technology environments for all users across the district this re uh equity focus is resource equity to ensure that all schools in in every neighborhood has access to the internet uh vision connection is
financial stability and operational excellence our key performance indicator is service uptime of 99.9% are not to exceed is 3.1 million this agreement will start on May 1st and end
of this year and end April 30th of 2026 the reason for this one-year agreement is because we're going back out to bid for RFP and we wanted more time to work on our RFP any questions none thank you very much yeah oh I'm
sorry there's one there's one question i'm sorry this is really exciting you're going to have to come back for this um just understand the scope is this this is for all CPS every school every network yes okay that's it i'm sorry thank you so much
the following slides list the standard monthly reports and motions that are listed in the agenda review committee meeting agenda and posted online board members this concludes the board reports on public agenda are there any comments or questions on any other
items thank you uh we will now move to a short recess board member Lopez do you have a motion motion M01 i move that the board to take a 30 minute recess is there a second madame President has so moved thank you i'll
proceed with a roll call member Smith i member Lopez i member Thomas hi member Bole i member Wallace i member Pope oh I'm sorry she's
not here member Rosenfeld yes member Rivas yes member Rio Sierra yes member Brown yes member Bannon i member Gutierrez i member Bigs i
member Zachor yes member Deberry i vice President Baltista yes 15 eyes zero nazs this motion is adopted by the board this meeting will go into a 30 minute recess
recess slide thank you that's fine just the meeting of the board of education is reconvened we will now proceed with the business portion of the meeting we are ready for the presentations all right good afternoon once
again uh happy to be back with you all again um again my name is Brian Thompson uh you don't remember from earlier today uh I'm the executive director of student protections at OSP and I am here on behalf of our our chief title N officer
Elizabeth Mela Brown and I'm here to give you a little bit of an overview about our office uh and and dive a little bit into some data today so let's start uh with how it all started in 2018 uh Chicago Public Schools hired an independent monitor
Maggie Hickeyi to review the district's handling of sexual misconduct in schools based on Maggie Hickeyy's report and policy recommendations the Office of Student Protections in Title 9 was established to coordinate the district's response to sexual misconduct and as well as provide our
students with the supports uh they need to begin their healing journey in 2018 and and you'll also hear from the inspector general the office of the inspector general um was also given the sole authority to investigate the adult to student sexual abuse
allegations it's important to note uh that OSP is the first of its kind K through2 title 9 office in the country and providing a comprehensive approach to this work other K- through2 districts across the country uh of similar size or smaller uh
have reached out to us to seek our guidance and and building uh this model uh in other states and cities across uh the country uh next slide please uh this slide depicts how our work is governed title 9 Title Six Title
7 are all federal civil rights laws uh for institutions receiving federal funding like CPS uh failure to comply with these laws uh puts uh that funding at risk most of the work that falls under the scope of OSP and the equal opportunity compliance
office uh with uh most of this work sits within under OSP and the equal opportunity compliance office with one exception uh and that is as I mentioned before the adult student sexual misconduct investigations that are handled by the office of the inspector general next slide please
so while OSP started to provide a comprehensive response just to sexual misconduct uh the needs of the district changed uh so as you see on the slide before you um while OSP started to provide that comprehensive sexual misconduct response in 2019 we signed
the resolution agreement uh with the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights which we're still under today uh to monitor our handling of sexual misconduct in Title N cases at this time the Equal Opportunity Compliance Office uh moved under OSP since Title 9 also applies to the work that they're
doing in 2020 we began to take uh those highlevel staff to students physical abuse verbal abuse and corporal punishment cases and up until that time uh those investigations were uh done by or conducted by the law department investigations unit
in 2021 uh we expanded to take all highlevel civil rights cases which include um which we categorize as bias-based harm such as discrimination based on race color uh sexual orientation in 2022 we expanded to take
all staff student sexual uh staff student misconduct cases including the lower level cases uh up until this time the law investigations unit triaged those cases of physical abuse verbal abuse and corporal punishment and assigned uh those highlevel cases to
OSP following this change uh in 2022 we adopted uh that process and and also made sure to provide those same resources and supports to students uh that mirrored our uh civil rights as well as our Title 9 uh investigations and so these are the
current categories uh categories of uh harm that are reported to our office as you'll see they're uh in a few different buckets one those uh title nine cases uh then that fall under the federal mandate uh then there are those
sexual misconduct cases uh that our office also oversees because just because it doesn't fall under title 9 doesn't mean it it shouldn't be addressed and students appropriately support it in in addition to that those title six uh cases in overarching bias-based harm categories and then what
we uh call general staff misconduct uh which is those which are those physical physical abuse verbal abuse uh corporal punishment failure to report and retaliate retaliation cases that I previously mentioned so on the next slide uh you
will talk just a little bit about how that how those cases get reported and filtered through so we have several reporting mechanisms but typically uh district staff are required to port report any instance of harm uh towards a student whether they witness it have suspicion or knowledge
of an incident uh to OSP via Aspen and the Aspen incident reporting system school administrators fill out an Aspen incident report and select uh one of the required questions uh that will route the report to OSP for review uh
that initially started with uh the first two questions uh as it relates to sexual misconduct when we first opened our doors uh and now it includes all four required questions uh because that is comprehensive of discrimination and uh the physical abuse verbal abuse and
corporal punishment cases as well those reports will be then routed to OSP for review students families and community members can also self-report via our online complaint form uh on our website they can also email us email us directly or visit our office in person
which uh you know we've we've also seen families do all reports are individually reviewed and triaged by our intake team uh depending on the information reported uh the report is either designated as a schoolbased investigation I'm sorry uh if you will go right back to the last
slide um the it will be designated as a school-based investigation an OSP investigation or a referral to the OIG for uh those adult to student sexual misconduct allegations or it may not rise to the
level of OSP involvement cases designated for investigation by the school are assigned a student protection coordinator as you'll see depicted in the slide uh to assist the school to with the investigative process and to coordinate uh support
cases designated uh for OSP investigation are assigned a student protection specialist along with a student protections investigator that student protection specialist uh is in place to help coordinate that response at the school level uh the student protection specialists are working uh more uh in
depth with those schools to make sure that we have the appropriate uh plans for support uh and to address any responses and help to remedy any effects of the harm that might be caused by uh the behavior that was
reported in those oled cases uh we're also assigning a student protection specialist to navigate some of those same concerns to make sure those same supports are in places uh for uh all of our students uh reported incidents that do not rise to the level of OSP involvement
uh for example a student abuse at home uh our team will ensure supports are also coordinated for those impacted students next slide please our goal is to provide a holistic response to harm uh for our students
experience as I discussed our intake and triage team reviews each incident of harm our investigation in team undergo specialized training and ongoing coaching to conduct conduct trauma-informed investigations our coordination team crafts supportive
measures for students impacted by harm our training and prevention team creates student staff and parent training for awareness and prevention of harm and also creates and coordinates prevention program both for staff and for students our data and compliance team
ensures uh the district is meeting the mandates and required and requirements under federal and state laws as well as city ordinance they also respond and investigate reports of sport inequities and lastly our equal opportunity compliance office
investigates staffto staff title nine title six and title 7 complaints uh and studentto staff sexual misconduct uh allegations next slide please so while OSP is responsible for the enforcement of Title 9 and other civil
rights laws we also want to prevent harm from happening in the first place or help students and staff recognize uh harm when it's happening right away an awareness campaign was initiated in the fall of 2018 that impro uh that
producedformational materials such as what you see here uh for schools and handouts uh for students this is continued annually at the start of each year our team also monitors compliance uh of displaying these posters in highly visible
locations uh around each of our schools to ensure that information is is available for our staff and our students now I want to talk a little bit about prevention uh through education as I mentioned our training
and prevention team creates trainings to educate our staff and students on how to recognize and report instances of harm our annual protecting Chicago children's training um is released at the beginning of each school year our team also creates developmentally appropriate
universal student training uh for all students uh in pre get grades prek through 12 uh and in those trainings we help to teach our students how to recognize and report harm uh and also teaches students about boundaries and
consent in order to fulfill our title n obligations each school has a designated student protection school representative or what we call uh our SPSR these staff members receive additional training on how to conduct school-based investigations uh safety plan for
students uh help to organize additional supports and as well as uh send in and submit those uh submit those reports directly to our office and lastly uh during the course of the evol evolution of our work OSP
also created a corrective action training for staff this training is designated to stop problematic behavior exhibited by staff that could lead to a potential policy violation if continued uh OSP conducts individualized corrective action
training uh for staff members referred to the law department referred to uh by the law department or uh the office of the inspector general and on the next slide we'll talk about prevention uh through student engagement our civil rights scholar
program offers high school sophomores juniors and seniors a unique chance to enhance their leadership skills uh foster a sense of community throughout the district and contribute to Chicago public schools proactive approach uh to addressing instances of
bias-based harm scholars engage in sessions focused on skill building and project development and field trips focused on experiential learning these students also designed a project for their schools to build community and
prevent bias based on some projects from our students last year uh included supporting newcomer students and raising awareness to stop bias based bias-based language happening in their schools so uh that's a little bit about
our uh programming and on the next slide uh we'll talk just a little bit about some of our initiatives so with the trends that we saw in school year 24 uh these are the initiatives we committed to at the beginning of this school
year uh while all are equally important there are three uh that I will highlight um that really stand out the first is that we developed a new preK through 12 uh bystandard
intervention curriculum uh a comprehensive curriculum designed to cultivate identity affirming learning environments where students feel confident stepping into themselves and stepping up for one another we've also updated our student training to include title six and
physical abuse and corporal punishment education and then lastly I want to highlight our partnership with the taotherapy provider um for all impacted students in OSP investigated
cases this partnership provides all students in K through 12 immediate connection to ongoing mental health support uh to start them on the road to healing so on our next slide for the beginning of school year 25 we also prepared uh
for the new Title 9 regulations that went into effect on August 1st the new title N regulations expanded the definition from sexual harassment to sex-based discrimination required the opportunity for students and parents to appeal uh supportive
measures for title N cases required support for pregnant and parent and students and mandated staff training uh about sex-based discrimination in preparation OSP updated the non-discrimination policy our procedure manual and updated uh all
of our materials and training uh over the summer last year if you would move forward please you'll also see that as I mentioned previously uh that those regulations were vacated and in February of this
year i'm sorry those regulations were vacated in January uh of 2025 of this year essentially stating that the 2024 regulations uh did not exist in February 2025 uh OCR released official guidance to school districts uh via a dear
colleague letter clarifying OCR will be enforcing the 2020 uh Title 9 regulations including retroactively to August 1st 2024 essentially OCR reverted back to the 2020 regulations this is what prompted our
amended amendment to the comprehensive non-discrimination policy I brought to you this uh earlier this afternoon the other changes made to the policy that was adopted by the board in September uh will not be in effect so now we'll switch gears uh and
present a snapshot of our data uh for uh the first semester of school year 25 uh this will just be a a a short snapshot and we plan to provide a more comprehensive overview uh at the close of the school year
so on the next slide you'll see a comparison between school year 24 and uh school year 25 osp received approximately 5,700 reports uh for the first semester this year which is up from approximately 5200 reports uh from
the first semester of school year 24 reflecting about a 9% increase in reports to our office on slide 15 uh we'll take a look at the cases open following those reports uh now where we see a higher number of reports opened uh for investigation uh
this year and and where it was only a slight increase in those numbers for uh the reports we did see an increase in those numbers of a higher increase in the number of reports that turned into
cases um if the report is a potential violation of district policy we would open an investigation uh for the year uh the year's first semester we approximately opened 2,300 cases for investigation up from approximately 1,600 uh in the previous school year
this marks a 42% increase in the number of cases open our team is is currently working to analyze uh this data determining if uh we can identify the cause of this increase some of the increase correlates uh to the 2024
regulations uh change and the expanded definition of sex-based discrimination which were in effect uh for most of school year uh of the first semester of the school year uh and anecdotally uh districts around the country noticed roughly a 30% increase
in uh cases and next uh on the next slide I'll show you a little bit you'll see a little bit more about the breakdown of uh cases uh this graph shows the breakdown of case uh by case type the cases open for investigation by OSP were due to
alleged violations of Title 9 Title Six the district's non-discrimination policy uh or abuse against students the investigations were either handled by OSP or designated school-based investigations for this
chart typically OSP will handle invest in investigations uh that are severe and complex harm you will see a little over half of our overall cases open for OSP investigation uh were for sexual misconduct i would also like to note
that sexual misconduct cases reflected here are only uh studentto student cases and do not reflect the cases uh of adult to student sexual misconduct referred to the office of the inspector general as they will present uh on their investigative data uh to you
separately now we'll review a few data insights under each case type starting with uh studentto student sexual misconduct on the next slide so in the first semester of school year
25 OSP opened uh just over 1100 1100 student sexual misconduct investigations as you will see the allegations of sexbased harassment uh account for about 45% of our investigations this can range for from sexualized comments to unwanted
advances uh or other sexualized behavior in slide 18 uh we'll move uh just to talk a little bit more about bias-based harm cases bias-based harm occurs when a student reports harassment or discrimination by an adult or student on
the basis of a protected category for the first semester OSP opened 535 investigations uh of allegations of bias-based harm racial related uh harassment or discrimination accounts for about 50% of the
allegations with national origin based discrimination or harassment um is which is a newer category is accounting for 16% this fall uh and then moving to general staff misconduct on the next slide uh general
staff misconduct is a term that encompasses several different types of adult to student harm including corporal punishment physical abuse and verbal abuse we also investigate allegations of failure to report uh if during a review of the incident or during the course of
the investigation it is found that the staff potentially did not report allegations mandated by the reporting of child abuse policy for the first semester OSP opened 490 investigations of general staff misconduct 58% uh of the investigations
involved punishment uh on the next slide we'll talk a little bit about our case finding for our case findings in the interest of time I won't go too much in depth uh here but for the first semester of school year 25 OSP closed uh 184
cases our case findings included closed uh if we were unable to complete an investigation dismissed uh if the case met a reason for dismissal or closure this technically only applies to our Title 9 investigations
substantiated if the incident was more likely than not to have occurred unsubstantiated if we were unable to meet our burden of proof uh or the evidence standard unsubstantiated with findings if the case did not meet uh the evidence standard for the presenting allegations
but a different policy violation was found during the course of the investigation so on the next slide we'll talk a little bit about what are we seeing this year uh cases are trending a little higher uh than last year across all case
types we will do a little bit more of analysis uh and hope to have some answers to help address some concerns through our training and prevention efforts uh in uh coming school years uh but we did resolve more cases in this year's first semester than in
school year 24 uh a 79% increase in cases closed compared to last year uh this provided some resolution for students and and from our offic's lens uh resolution is both via the investigation and uh via the supports
and uh safety planning that we provide uh for our students on the next slide I also want to take a moment to recognize uh that investigations account uh for about 58% uh of cases where OSP provides student specific support and going back to this
is a comprehensive effort uh both investigation and providing the necessary supports for students to be able to fully engage in the educational environment uh it those we it's not just in those cases uh that we're providing supports so it doesn't have to be
support does not have to be coupled with investigation on the next slide uh I gave an overview already uh of the prevention efforts through training we also wanted to share the universal trainings our team created for the district the trainings listed here
um also meet the mandates by federal state or local law and our team has additional trainings available by request uh of schools to further educate students and staff on amends belonging and consent those we call uh those
workshops we call the ABCs of OSP on the next slide uh to further promote student voice our team has also created uh the civil rights scholars advisory council uh which is comprised of members uh from previous years uh of civil rights
scholars and the work they work together to further educate and advocate for students across the district and what better way through to do this than through uh sharing their voice through a podcast uh if you have time I do encourage you
uh to tune in the first episode linked here is on identity lastly uh I'd like to share some highlights of our training and prevention efforts 361 uh schools completed the OSP student
training our team also uh trained three cohorts of informal resolution for school-based investigation now uh informal resolution for uh investigations is available and has been available uh in our Title 9 cases uh we
we know that this restorative approach is supportive and helps our students and we want to also offer them another way uh to resolve uh conflict or harm in school buildings uh through our school-based investigations uh by using informal resolution as well so in the
fall we trained three cohorts of uh schools and we are looking to continue that partnership uh with the office of social emotional learning to uh to train uh more um more schools as we move forward to also be able to offer this
option to this res resolution and lastly I just want to highlight that uh 74 individual corrective action trainings have been also completed in the fall semester uh by our team uh for um to help staff uh
recognize and stop any problematic behavior before it becomes uh a greater um concern for the district and next slide please uh one uh other thing that I'd also like to highlight here is our bystander intervention curriculum which I
previously uh mentioned uh we have uh eight schools that we piloted this new intervention uh bystander intervention curriculum uh this school year uh we hope to roll that out uh more broadly as we move into school year 26 uh as we work to digest and
understand the feedback that we got from uh students impacted uh or involved in that program and staff who helped to facilitate that program uh following training uh but here on the screen you'll also see uh some followup and feedback uh from both staff students and uh parents
alike on the next slide uh I just want to highlight u our partnership again uh with gaggle gaggle is the teleotherapy provider uh that we have been working with to ensure uh students are connected um with the
appropriate level of support and care uh not every student wants to receive uh followup from a school-based clinician uh uh sometimes because harm has happened in school students want to receive uh an independent uh support and so we've been working really hard to
make sure that this remedy was also available um in allegations of harm and on the screen you'll also see uh some feedback uh from a parent that we received this past school year with that uh that is the conclusion
of my presentation here uh and happy to have any questions that you all might have u board member Blae and then followed by board member Wallace thank you Vice President Bautista thank you so much
sorry you caught us after lunch and like we we're a little bit out of gas but um this was super informative and timely and I'm glad you brought this information to us um and also kudos to
you on the bystander curriculum that sounds really exciting and even if it appeared that the number of of sexual assault cases uh um that were brought are higher that for me
um tells me people are comfortable in sharing that information and so that's really important even though the numbers higher than it was last year it still might be um de demonstrative of something positive happening
um so my question is um a couple the is there is there ongoing educational piece with students about um what sexual harm is or sexual abuse
is or um I I know that it happens occasionally in school but I'm just curious as to um what that piece looks like yeah uh specific to uh sexual harm uh the the OSP student training is what we roll out uh for for all schools and
and so we roll that out at the beginning of every year and schools then facilitate that with each and every student uh and so that is you know our primary means of educating students about what their boundaries can be and
should be uh where they can report a harm and really even what steps uh will will follow um a report of harm to OSP this in this year that training uh expanded just from that sexual
misconduct harm to also include title six so that bias based harm as well as physical abuse verbal abuse and corporal punishment uh to be comprehensive of all the work that OSP and does that take place throughout the school year or does that mostly happen in the beginning of the school year yeah when we roll that out that's a great question when we roll
that out we ask uh schools to complete it by uh typically by the close of the first semester okay and is there any conversations to maybe revisit like after the new year or something like that if the cases are up i don't I don't
know the time frame that they're up again they could be up because people are comfortable sharing now um but it might be one of those cases where they start off the year and they're like "Oh I better be careful." And then something happens where it's later in the year and
people are getting a little loose with their hands or Yeah absolutely and we do rely on schools to let us know when uh there are additional concerns but we do uh manage and and try to take a look try take closer looks at the data and see spikes and see if we can help and support in any way uh what what I'll
also add there is that if schools are seeing specific concerns we can go in and we we work to talk with students and or staff uh and in some cases parents about those uh ABCs of OSP so those are some additional trainings or or work
workshops that we offer um to address some of the concerns that might rise throughout the course of the school year yeah it's something you might want to think about just like a later version so that everybody sort of gets a little reminder you know teenagers and young
people you got to tell them everything a thousand times at least my kids anyway um um so when you say adultto student contact you said that it goes to the inspector general is that the CPS inspector
general yes okay so if there's an adult to student contact it doesn't go to the police right away so if there is a harm that is happening in the building uh our all of our CPS schools are following certain protocol and they they have uh protocols for um
for when they should be contacting police uh and and they should be following those in those cases where harm is happening right away this is outside of that process right and then 58% corporal punishment so are teachers or leaders in the schools they're
hitting the kids uh so corporal punishment corporal Yeah yeah corporal punishment could look like a direct physical contact with a student or it could look like making them do something physical in response to their behavior oh okay okay and then um when you said
that there's a new distinction about national origin does that is is can you can you speak on that a little bit yeah so national origin uh was really included in in title six yeah uh and and what we saw in the last school year especially uh following the uh October
7th escalation we saw more um uh instances of national origin and we will make sure to call that out as an allegation with within our office and and address that specifically that's interesting and then Gaggle is an online
therapy app and is it used in the moment or are those students can use that for for a longer amount like get actual the consistent therapy through that yeah they they will get consistent therapy sessions so what happens is uh once we
take uh take that case our student protection specialist works with that student family to understand whether or not they uh they think this would be a good option for them and if they wanted to engage in those services we make that referral directly to Gaggle and uh then they'll be able to receive like short-term services um so typically we
see students receiving between six and eight sessions uh to help uh address some of the behaviors or the concerns they may have uh seen and this is for title six stuff or they can they can access gecko for for any sort of like mental health assistance it would be for
anything referred to our office i see okay okay thank you so much i'm still learning i appreciate you oh my pleasure i have um board member Willis thank you i'm really excited about a lot of these things um I'm actually really excited about this bystander
intervention and I'm I'd be really excited to see the curriculum to know how you got past the bystander effect uh the bystander effect tends to be a thing where the more people that are involved and around witnessing something the less likely people feel they need to intervene and so if you found a way to
be able to get people past that I would love to hear that because it's something I work in my my volunteer world um I'm also curious for instances of abuse at home i know you said that wasn't an OSP incident but when you refer these to I I assume you refer these to outside
agencies is there uh collaboration with these agencies to give the students wraparound services or or is it once you refer it you guys are taken out of the loop yeah um so I I'll address your first question around uh uh bystander this bystander effect i I think what
we've done and what we're working towards is making sure that we are educating students on what they can do uh so that when something arises they don't have to pause they don't you know they don't get stuck in that space of there's nothing for me to do i don't know how to move forward i don't know how to get support uh but providing them
with the direct information on what they can do who they can tell uh what support is available to them uh and you know as as I as I mentioned before this is this has been a uh something that we've piloted this year but we do hope that that will undercut some of the uh the
concerns we see with that you know the bystander effect uh and your your second question uh was more related to um I'm sorry if you repeat your second question sure uh so I know that uh abuse at home isn't something that you can handle but once
you refer it to these outside agencies are you working in tandem with these agencies to give the student wraparound service or are you taken out of the loop right uh so typically those are referrals if there if it's homebased abuse those are referrals uh to DCFS which the school would have already made
uh prior to uh reporting to our office uh what we what we're doing there's there's not as much collaboration with those agencies but we are working with the schools to make sure uh we provide as much support as we possibly can while they're in our school buildings wonderful and one more question um have there been any discussions around what
we plan to do if um someone challenges CPS because we take on a more broad definition uh that is no longer codified in federal law yeah I uh would um the we've been in communication and and working with uh
the law department i also know that there is a uh a a group of individuals within the district that is working on what that response would be thank you i have a board member Smith followed by board member Pope
yes so I'm looking at um how sexbased discrimination uh was added to sexual misconduct am I correct in saying that and so when we look at uh
SY24 versus SY25 the number of incidents went up is that because sex uh uh that was added i I think in part we we think that it might have been to the expand because of
the expanded definition uh but we want to dive deeper as we close the school year to understand you know what actual allegations were reported to us and what they look like and if it was if it could be attributed to this change in definition or if it could be attributed to something else and when I'm looking
that general staff misconduct and uh biasbased harm went down is that because of preventative efforts do you think why do you think those went down i I would hope uh that those would be because we have included uh more
information about biaspace harm as well as uh the prohibitions as it relates to uh corporal punishment physical abuse and verbal abuse into our uh our training efforts as well as you know very uh in normalizing those things with with our schools have do have we seen
any data about the preventative measures bringing down those numbers and any data about uh the sexual misconduct going up because I guess I'm looking and saying man if we could get those other numbers down you know do we have any tactics to
get the sexual misconduct number down as well yeah um I I think for those other two categories yeah we we did so see those those small decreases our hope is through additional prevention efforts through additional awareness uh I think what we uh what we understand about
boundaries and and and healthy relationships between students is that you know we those things are taught over time and so as we reinforce our curriculum as we reinforce our training uh we hope to see uh you know more other things normalized in the building and those numbers come down yeah to to quote
to quote the prophet James Bowwin it takes a long time to learn a little bit thank you absolutely yeah hi thank you so much for your report my questions I have two actually one is do you coordinate at all with the
sex education folks and what's included in their curriculum that would have applicability to student understanding and maybe student assertiveness on issues that are troubling with them because we have an excellent sex education curriculum and I would think
that there might be a a beneficial relationship there and my second question is I've worked in the past with groups like healing willing to action that are uh you know involved in supporting particularly young women but other students as well and I'm wondering
if you or anyone from your department has done any work educationally or you know jointly with any of our community partners who have this focus yes absolutely uh great questions we uh
and so both questions around collaboration i will say yes we have collaborated a lot uh with office of student health and wellness uh and and one highlighting some of the pieces uh that uh also show up in the sexual health education curriculum u as well as
making sure to you know combine some other efforts uh one uh one such effort is really highlighting what uh we we've rolled out a resource more recently uh that highlights what we see in each of those levels as well as what shows up in the OSP curriculum so folks know where to go and grab additional
information um to your second question around uh connecting with outside organizations uh actually you know a number of our initiatives have been in collaboration with not just departments in uh the district but also with other organizations uh one such example is the
bystander intervention curriculum thanks my pleasure thank you very much Dr thompson i think those are all our comments thank you so much for your time questions good afternoon members of the board my name is Phil Wagen i am the inspector
general and I'm going to be presenting on our work of our sexual allegations so first like OSP did before me I just wanted to give a little bit of background about our unit or about the formation of the sexual allegations unit
within the Office of Inspector General the office has been around for about 30 years however until 2018 uh sexual misconduct investigations were not a core part of the work of the office uh we worked those cases on occasion but
we did not have a unit devoted to it uh for for most of that period before 2018 those cases were primarily investigated by the CPS law department however in 2018 uh that changed and we formed uh what we call our sexual allegations unit
which is our unit that's devoted to uh adult on student sexual misconduct investigations uh which Brian discussed a little bit before me uh that that's that's the layer that our office investigates the student on student cases we don't
investigate the adult on student we do by adult on student uh what what we mean by that is uh students that are CPS students or including students at CPS charter schools and adults that we often
refer to as CPS affiliated adults which primarily means CPS staff CPS volunteers uh and and many uh employees of CPS vendors who are frequently uh working
directly with children uh so in 2018 uh if you're unfamiliar uh the Chicago Tribune had a series of news stories that that they called the betrayed series that highlighted some concerns with sexual abuse cases involving CPS
and so in the aftermath of that uh news story series our office uh agreed to take on this work and create a unit that was devoted to it and and obviously that needed to be a heavily resourced unit and and CPS uh you know provided
significant resources to our office uh to add staff to have a unit devoted uh to that work uh I wanted to highlight sort of three of the hallmarks of inspector general work generally uh for offices of inspector general you know across the
country and also specifically with our office uh because these are three uh sort of key tenants of our office that we wanted to make sure that we were bringing to this work uh of the work of investigating sexual misconduct of
uh by adults on students and one of those is independence and impartiality uh the office of inspector general you know pursuant to state statute is independent from the operations of the board our investigations are all conducted independently from CPS and uh
and I think it's very important that in these cases uh you have that level of independence in these investigations to en ensure for example uh that they are uh investigated free from conflict which was one of the issues that came up in the betrayed
series also transparency uh and by that I mean transparency to the public uh is part of our work where we report publicly on all of our substantiated investigations and uh in addition to
these board meetings that are public like the one I'm speaking at right now where we where we provide general information about about the sexual allegations unit and updates on our data in addition to that we release uh you know we we publish on our website public
reports with additional information uh most notably our annual report which is usually released uh around January 1st uh that details all the substantiated cases from the previous fiscal year so for example this past January we issued
our most recent annual report and it included discussions of all all of our cases from the 2324 school year uh so uh there's significantly more information in that report about our sexual allegations work as well as the other
work of the office if you want to read more about it uh so in addition to uh you know a commitment to transparency with the public in these cases in our public reporting uh we we also have a comm a commitment to coordination with law enforcement and child protection
agencies uh in in these cases that's typically uh the Chicago Police Department the Cook County State's Attorney's Office uh DCFS and the Chicago Children's Advocacy Center um moving on to the next slide uh some
key roles of our office uh include what we sometimes call filling a gap in the system uh and and this also sort of speaks a little bit to I think a question that board member Blae had uh with the previous presentation uh asking
if these cases are referred to the police for example or DCFS and law enforcement so yes of course they are uh as uh as as Mr thompson said in his presentation uh OSP as well as my office tries to
make sure that in all these cases of uh sexual misconduct that DCFS is notified and that's documented in CPS's incident reporting system uh and DCFS will review those cases and they will uh also loop in the Chicago Police Department and so
that's sort of the natural progression for those cases and then simultaneously our office is investigating but uh you know you should know that DCFS does not actually investigate all those cases just because we call DCFS and report it to them and
try to ensure that as mandated reporters they're being notified it doesn't mean that it it results in a DCFS investigation it also doesn't mean that it results in a police department investigation uh they have they have jurisdictional issues they have uh
limited resources they have uh in the case of the police department in the Cook County State's Attorney's Office they have a higher burden of proof and so uh there's a significant layer of cases that frankly if our office wasn't investigating them no other
investigative body would be uh and and through doing this work since 2018 there's been many cases where we've substantiated these cases uh and uh those were cases that that DCFS and the police department didn't investigate for one reason or another
uh uh that said uh also in response to board member Blaise's comment earlier we try to make sure that we do make sure that we are communicating with DCFS that we're communicating with the police department and and making sure they're
aware of these cases in addition to the uh initial reports that were made to DCFS by the mandated reporter that in the vast majority of cases was not actually our office it was the person you know at the school that that that first witnessed the abuse and raised
concern about it you know they're the they're the mandated reporter that needs to communicate it to DCFS but then as we are investigating these cases naturally it's often the case that additional facts are uncovered and there's reason to follow up with DCFS and make sure they're aware of those additional facts
if they already have a case it might be helpful for them to know those that additional information if they don't have a case it might be helpful for them to know that additional information because maybe now they they do need to open a case based on the additional information
provided uh you know and as part of our coordination with law enforcement you know we try to assist them where we can uh we also try not to uh we try to avoid disrupting their investigations which is something that can happen uh obviously if you have more than one investigative
body working in the same space as is often the case in these investigations uh preventative efforts uh our office is primarily situated uh in a space where we're responding to uh
concerning allegations after they've occurred we are you know first and foremost an investigative outfit conducting investigative work rather than uh trainings for example uh but we certainly realize the importance of
prevention efforts uh and and try to contribute to that where we can uh- which which among other things includes sharing information with OSP uh about alleg allegations early in the case so that they can make decisions about
whether or not staff members for example should be removed from schools while an investigation is pending due to due to safety concerns uh so that you know it would in doing removing those staff members would potentially prevent future
harms while the investigation is pending uh title nine developments uh this was also came up in the previous presentation i don't want to spend too much time on it uh but we're we're we're also the OIG is
also uh uh responding to the changes in federal law and that that basically impacts how we investigate a a subset of cases that have been uh uh designated as title n cases under the law and we have
to address those cases in a certain uh we have to make sure that we're following the correct procedures in those cases it does not impact the actual cases we open or the or the findings we make in cases the outcomes in the cases substantively it has very
little impact on our work uh Title N was not the impetus for us forming this unit as I said at the outset of this presentation and so changes in the law whether whether it was the changes to the regs in 2020 or 2024 or now uh the
judge in January striking down the most recent changes it it doesn't have a very big impact on the substantive work of our office our mission continues which is uh which is child protection from sexual abuse and uh and as well as protecting
student uh adults uh from sexual abuse which is also largely guided by uh the state criminal code as well as CPS policy uh separately from title 9 our our office has over time tried to narrow the
scope of the cases we're investigating and that's because when we began this work in 2018 we started with an overly broad scope uh it's always been called the sexual allegations unit but the reality was in the early years that unit was investigating a significant number
of cases that actually did not have any allegations of a sexual nature and we started with that overly broad scope uh really out of an abundance of caution as we started uh investigating this area for the first time with a focus on it we
really wanted to make sure that uh we were learning as much as possible about not only cases where they were directly bringing up sexual allegations but also cases where uh there were there were violations of policy that that could
sort of implicate the uh uh that could have sexual misconduct implications uh so this year we uh we we've actually significantly reduced our case load because we tried to remove a layer of
those cases that that simply weren't where the allegations were not articulating uh misconduct of a sexual nature and so this next slide provides a chart of our uh case load over the last three years and the the lower line the
dark blue line is the current school year i just want to highlight that uh our this is an accurate presentation of our case load based on numbers month by month and it's lower for the reason I just gave i don't want to give the false impression that this uh could suggest
that reporting is down i don't think that's necessarily true in the presentation before me uh Mr thompson uh stated that they're seeing that reporting is actually up uh we also track allegations by uh by by job category at CPS
uh as shown in in my next slide uh we generally track this information uh and we and we track it over time so so this chart shows that for example uh this year teachers comprised 30 36% of
our cases as opposed to 43% of our cases uh a couple years ago uh so that number has has gone down somewhat uh security guard cases have gone down somewhat uh however co cases where al where there
have been sexual allegations against coaches have gone up uh cases with allegations against SECA or other uh classroom aids has also gone up uh as a this data
it I wanted to sort of highlight that these positions it's no surprise that these are people that are in classrooms that are interacting they're in schools they're interacting with students and so it's sort of natural that this the employees that are interacting with the
students the most are more likely uh to uh result in uh investigations based on their contact with students uh you know for example the the the teacher number uh while it's 36% of our cases uh it's
actually uh you know as compared to the overall percentage of teachers in the district it's actually a lower number uh uh on the other hand I you know security guard cases usually over our since 2018
since we've been tracking this uh we've usually had a disproportionately high number of security guard cases cases involving allegations against security guards uh we also track complaints that we get based on uh whether they're
involving elementary school students or high school students uh based on uh the sheer numbers it they over the years it's been pretty balanced between uh the number of allegations we're getting at elementary schools versus high schools but on a per student
basis it's more than twice as many cases involving high school students uh the next slide shows the types of allegations we investigate we have our own definitions for categories of cases
based on the allegation when they come in and uh they run across a wide spectrum of severity of misconduct uh and on one end uh we have cases that that we label
concerning for a variety of reasons uh but where where there might be boundary crossing and and behavior that is uh that that is uh could be violating CPS policy and could and and could result in
substantiated cases but is not necessarily uh does not necessarily mean that a sexual abuse or a or a sexual assault has taken place however we also have cases of course where there a student is
alleged that a sexual assault has taken place or uh or otherwise sexual abuse uh the next slide shows in this current school year uh the number of the different categories of cases in which
we've issued substantiated reports uh so this school year we've issued I believe 52 substantiated reports that have come out of the sexual allegations unit and uh in in three of those cases our primary finding was that uh sexual act
had occurred that uh for our purposes sexual act means penetration uh we had an additional three cases where we concluded that uh sexual abuse had occurred an additional three cases where we uh determined that uh there had been
grooming uh and then in several more instances of misconduct we also uh issued 21 reports this year that were not substantiated that that explained why uh based on the evidence we could not substantiate the
allegations of uh of sexual misconduct uh and we also issued other reports uh what we call informational reports uh with respect to personnel actions we try to track uh cases that that that we have
that involve staff members that have been removed from the classroom while our case is pending uh that have been reinstated to the classroom and uh employees that have been fired or resigned or retired uh as of March 21st
of this year related to our cases there were 38 staff members that had been removed from the classroom uh uh 19 had been reinstated uh during the course of the year and 23 had been uh fired
resigned or retired the next slide uh highlights teachers removed from the classroom in particular because uh this has always been a priority for us given the critical importance of teachers uh ensuring that the that the education
of students is not disrupted uh it can put a significant strain on schools when teachers are removed from the classroom for extended periods of time so we try to prioritize those cases and make determinations as quickly as possible uh
when when teachers should be reinstated uh or otherwise conclude those cases as quickly as possible so uh CPS can make decisions about disciplinary outcomes so currently there are 13
teachers that are removed from the classroom uh pending our investigations uh and that number has gone 13 while you know it would be great for that to even be fewer that is over time that has been a good number for us uh pre in previous
years that number has been significantly higher so that's a result of concentrated efforts on our part uh our case inventory and uh an overall uh overview of our case inventory is that we have 198 active investigations
at the moment in our sexual allegations unit and we have 129 cases where uh additional cases where the fact gathering is is essentially concluded but those cases are still being reviewed
and the uh we're making determinations on those cases and writing reports uh the next slide provides uh the numbers on the cases that we have substantiated since 2018 all of our
substantiated reports by by category of the primary findings we made at the time we issued those reports so since 2018 the sexual allegations unit has issued 452 substantiated reports as you can see
on this uh chart uh the the top category is is the is the largest one and comprises about half of those reports and that's in this concerning category that's where you know we made the primary finding in those cases was something less than sexual misconduct uh
but as you can see if you you know scroll farther down this chart uh many of these categories include sexual misconduct including you know 27 cases where we found that there was a sexual act 23 cases where we found sexual abuse
and 16 additional cases where we found grooming uh the last two slides in my presentation uh are are are more reference material for you because it provides the definition of our various
allegations and how we track them uh and that is the end of my presentation are there any questions okay um I have uh board member Rivas followed by board member Smith
uh thank you uh Vice President uh so I just want to uh re reiterate some of the questions that I asked during our 5x5 when you first presented this information uh which I appreciate um and I just want to uh coming from someone who works at an investigative agency how many investigators are in the sexual
allegations unit uh what's the number of cases on their case load um are we working them uh too hard based on the you know the the delicateness you know at COPA those are some of our most serious and difficult cases things related to to sexual allegations and so
I'm just wondering where are we at in terms of you know start to end how long does it take a case to go through um I just want to make sure that we're providing our students and families uh justice I if that's what they need uh or just a resolution when something comes
up yes of Of course thanks for the question so the sexual allegation unit has about 30 positions uh those positions are are are divided up among investigators uh attorneys and
uh other support staff including people that manage intake and are you know work within the flow of the investigative uh work uh their their case load has come
dramatically down i mean I there were times where investigators some of them may have had you know 30 40 cases uh and we've and over time we hired more staff to try to
address some of those needs uh and as I mentioned earlier in the presentation we've tried to reduce our case load where we can and try to make sure that we're prioritizing the most serious cases you know as as you rightfully rightfully are concerned about uh you
know when you have too many uh as I said early on we were we were we wanted to learn as much as possible so we took this very broad approach uh which was illuminating and helpful but uh the more of those cases that you work that are beyond sexual allegations the more
you're burdening investigators and and you're making it more difficult to give the needed attention to the serious cases so I think we have made great strides in that area case loads have been coming down this year with you know as the there the line chart in the
presentation showed that our case numbers are are down and that means that investigator case loads are down and I and investigators I think now have approximately 10 cases uh uh which I think right now I think we think we're
in in a manageable place uh but you don't have um start to end I You don't track it yeah but do you have like a start to end you know if I submit a complaint today should I expect a resolution in 6 months a year 18 months
how quickly can a case go through yeah i apologize i forgot about the second part of your question uh there unfortunately there's no uh definitive timeline every case is different uh and some cases are more
complicated than others uh it's not our uh it's not like we have a 60-day investigation policy and that if you make a complaint with our office we guarantee that we'll be finished in 60 days uh the reality is that our investigations generally take much
longer than that uh and and frequently take more than a year uh we're certainly doing everything we can to reduce those timelines as much as possible and it goes without saying that if an investigator has 40 cases cases are all
going to take longer than if they have 10 cases so our hope is that those timelines will be reduced there's also the aspect of the case you know our investigators don't they they do the fact gathering but they they don't make
the ultimate conclusions at the end of the case and they don't write the invest they don't write our our final reports so we have this additional layer uh that that's like our attorney review we we we have we have attorneys in our office that are reviewing the evidence after
the fact and are and are preparing those reports and so uh that model where you have attorney review it it extends the timeline because attorneys are reviewing it but
in in I to me it's clear in cases of this serious nature with these stakes and you know sometimes they're criminal cases they're often you know an employees uh you know employment is on the line uh you have you have agreved
students we really want to make sure that we're as thorough as possible and that we're making the correct call and so we we think it's important that we have a lot of layers of or sufficient layers of of review for quality control
uh so that's there there are variety of reasons why our cases take so long but uh we we uh the attorney review is one aspect of it thank you nothing for me appreciate it i have uh board members Smith and then uh
followed by board member Wallace yes thank you uh you have some great data there's a lot of data here uh one of the things I don't see that I wonder about is in many time many times impoverished
Latino and black boys can be the most vulnerable population especially when it comes to being abused and sexually abused people don't talk about sexual abuse with boys and in fact there's a
lot of tropes that boys want that uh do we have any data gender data in terms of the amounts of sexual misconduct uh established against boys that's a great question uh that
obviously wasn't included in my presentation i think we could probably we have that data uh and and and we could compile that and and provide that in the future but uh I
I I don't have that at my fingertips so I can't tell you what that data is thank you i I think that data should always be included so that there's no misrepresentation about the abuse and sexual abuse boys undergo in our schools
and in our systems thank you member Wallace uh in your report for your substantiated cases you mentioned that there were uh about 13 cases where there was a failure to report and I was wondering if that was a failure to report on the student
or if an another adult had witnessed something and hadn't reported could you explain that yes of course uh that's not not a failure to report by the student so and and and let me just make clear these reports are not making findings against students they're they're they're
uh uh they're focused on on uh misconduct by adults uh so the failure to report cases either mean that we have concluded that uh a CPS affiliated adult
has uh violated their mandated reporter requirements to report this to DCFS or it could mean that they have uh violated their duties under CPS policy uh because CPS has an additional layer of policy
for reporting to CPS it's not you know for example you you can't uh you can't if you're a CPS teacher for example you can't simply call DCFS and then not report it to the school district the school district based on CPS policy
requires that staff members uh report it to the school district so it could be So some of those cases involve findings that they failed to report it under CPS policy i also want to add I'm happy you brought up failure to report because in that chart uh there was one that I think
let me let me flip to it to make sure so on slide 10 for example uh these are cases that we issued this current school year there's only two failure to report cases listed there but uh this is listing cases by primary
finding so that doesn't mean that those are the only cases where we made conclusions about failures to report it's often the case that we might have a case where uh for example in one of these the top line item here is is three reports issued for uh findings of a
sexual act we could also make findings in that case that someone failed to report or or in the grooming cases or the sexual comments electronic messages cases uh this isn't breaking out the data by all findings in all cases it's a
total of 52 reports listed uh characterized by their primary finding so uh I'm only highlighting that because this could appear like it's a relatively low number for failure to report like only two cases but uh we would have
issued more finding we would have made more findings on failure to report they just would have been included in those other cases that makes sense okay Inspector uh Waganak thank you very much for your time i think those are all our questions and comments thank you
all right um we will now move to executive session board member Bole do you have motion MO2 i move for the passage of motion number 2550409 MO2 and the commencement of a closed session to consider matters
permitted under section 2C of the open meetings act subsections 1 and 11 as specified in the motion is there a second i second the motion thank you i'll proceed with a roll call member Smith
i member Lopez i member Thomas i member Bole i member Wallace i member Pope yes member Rosenfel yes member Rivas yes
member Rio Sierra i member Brown member Bannon hi member Gutierrez i member Bigs yes member Blae member Blae say yes
member Zachor yes member Deberry yes vice President Bautista yes 17 I zero nays this motion is adopted by the board this meeting will now go into close session okay we're ready the agenda review
committee of the board of education is reconvened board secretary please proceed vice President Bautista I would like to note for the record that there are no items to vote on from executive session thank you is there a motion to adjurnn
so moved seconded is there a second second all in favor i I We are journ thanks everyone