Register three hundred board of education. We would like to thank you for being in attendance both virtually and in person for tonight's board meeting. At this time, we would like to reconvene the meeting of the community unit school district three hundred board of education for Tuesday, 08/26/2025. Man as secretary, please take the role. Burkitt? Present. Tarantino? Present. Lamarca? Present. Linmark? Present. McKendy? Present. Nelia? Present. Satwick? Present. Seven board members present. Thank you. Please rise for the pledge of allegiance. Moving on to item three, approval of the agenda. There are no changes to the agenda.
Can I, is there a motion to approve the agenda? So moved. Is there a second? May I know secretary, please call the roll. Guillermo. Aye. McKinde. Aye. Malia. Aye. Aye. Zettler. Aye. Burkett. Aye. Lamarca. Aye. Linmark. Aye. Motion passes seven zero. Doctor. Smith. Members of the Board of Education, community members, staff, and students, we would like to acknowledge the passing of a District three hundred student. District three hundred would like to honor Degan Kirschke, a sophomore at Hampshire High School who passed away Saturday, August 16.
Degan will forever be missed at District three hundred. And at District three hundred, we would like to offer our deepest condolences to his family and friends in Hampshire High School, school community. At this time, I respectfully ask all in attendance to observe a moment of silence in honor of Deagan. Thank you. For tonight's student recognition, I'd like to welcome mister Adrian Harris, director of student learning and development, to the podium. He will introduce the superintendent student advisory council. This is a super proud moment in district three hundred,
including my superintendency as we launch, this council for this school year. And we're happy to share with you who all our wonderful students are that'll be helping us out this year. So good after or sorry. Good evening, doctor Smith. Good evening, DeSredder School Board. So here's how we're gonna do this, students. I'm gonna call you up by school. I need you to come, stand. That way everybody that's in attendance and wants to take a picture can, and then we're gonna wrap around, and we're gonna shake all of our board members' hands. Alright? Alright. So for starters, we're gonna start off with and I I don't know if I need any background.
I think we've build them up enough at before before now, and so now I'm just excited to be able to introduce them. So first off, from Dundee Crown High School, we've got Sasha Bozovic, and I'm gonna keep calling your name. We've got Yasmin Evans, and come on up as I'm calling you. Yasmin Evans. We've got McKenna Fernstrom. We've got Fatima Lazcano. We've got Kaylee Lewis, Riley Morehouse, and we have Emma Stoltz. So come, stand so people could take photos. Get a moment in the spotlight. Smile. Smile.
Parents, you can come forward if you want to to take photos. Alright. Now we're gonna turn around, and we're gonna start with miss Zeller. I'm gonna shake every hand all the way down the days. Alright. Next up, we have our our Hampshire High School, students. We've got Timalade Ayola, Riddhumbati, Hudson Coupland, Percy Jamie, Titi Rufe, Aditi Seni, and Jayla Watkins. And we're gonna come out. We're gonna take a picture. And Frank pointed out, we're gonna applause for him, this time around, and we'll get you on the back end of the crown. Let's give him a big round of
applause. Alright. Now we're gonna wrap around. I'm gonna start in the beginning and shake hands. Hands. And last but not least, we'll end with our Jacobs High School students. For starters, we've got Bree Abel. We've got Drake Flores, Soam Cholera, Danvi Patel, Rylan Sainsbury, Madeline Truong, and Belle Willard. Alright, Bree. Oh, couple more photos. Alright. Wrap around. And last but not least, I do wanna announce one more group. There's a whole bunch of adults behind the scenes that will be helping to execute the, this group this year, and so I do wanna announce those people.
And as we give them a round of applause, we can actually make up for miss and Donnie Crown, in the very beginning. So we've got Eva Gutierrez that'll be helping out. We've got the good man Casey Dafaw in the background who'll be helping out. We've got Kelly Manoffee who will be helping out. We've got Allison Kaminski who will also be helping. And last but not least, we've got Data Joe Urban. And all of these people will be helping to execute our FSAT. So And I look forward to bringing you updates over the course of the year. Thank you. Our group is already off to their first projects and looking forward to,
working at each of the individual schools, then working here together and presenting to the board, before the end of the semester. So we're really looking forward to the work that's ahead of us. Awesome. Thank you to the team that has really spearheaded supporting me with this, as they have done a lot of work for us to get to this day. So thank you. This is exciting, guys. Superintendent Smith has been working hard to make to make this reality, and it's great to see all of you guys here and enthusiastic. And we're looking forward to, all of your input and all the work you're gonna do and how you're gonna help us make decisions and things like that.
Parents, thank you. We all know we're all parents too. We all know that a lot of this can't happen without your support for your students and for the school district. We appreciate that. It's just it's it's gonna be a lot of fun, so we're looking forward to it. So, again, congratulations everybody. And also, Crown, a lot of the applause that we gave just now were for you guys. Okay. Okay. Anybody else? Just wanna say, you guys, you got a future. You've got everything in your hands right now, so make good use of it. Okay? It's your time. Thank you. Thank you. We don't wanna keep you. So if you all wanna follow,
mister Harry's out, if you work if you work for me, please take your seat to the front. Try to sneak out, Roberto. For tonight's staff recognition, we will celebrate Financial Awareness Day. On August 14, District three hundred celebrated National Financial Awareness Day, which provided an opportunity to recognize our business office staff. The dedication and expertise exhibited by these staff members helps keep our financial operations running efficiently and transparently, ensuring the success of our students and the district as a whole. Please join me in thanking our business office team members for their outstanding contributions to
District three hundred. Thank you, and welcome also to doctor Frank Williams. Before I kick it back over, I do just wanna make a correction. During my, recognition of Deegan, I misspoke as sophomore and should have said senior. And so we look forward to honoring him, later this school year as we go into all those senior activities. Okay. Thank you for making that correction. Just real quick. I'm really happy you're here. Really happy you're here. And, you gave us, you know, you gave us a lot of information about the budget and stuff like that, and it was done in such a way that, was very understandable,
which is sometimes difficult to do and stuff. So we are your team has been around for a while, and they're great people. I'm sure you've already realized that. But we're looking forward to you guys working as, you know, together as strongly as the team worked together before. So thank you, Frank. Good to go. Okay. There is there is nobody here for public participation, so we will move on to, doctor Smith's superintendent's report. Miss Beth Goudy, if you could join me at the podium for an update about Summer Read three hundred and who our winners are. Right? Yeah.
Okay. Alright. Good after or good evening, doctor Smith, members of the board, and community members. My name is Beth Goudy and I serve as the Director of Literacy Pre K-eight. I'm thrilled to have the opportunity tonight to provide you with an update on READ, Summer Read three hundred. This is my first time using this thing. Okay. In its second year, Summer Read three hundred provided all District three hundred students from preschool through twelfth grade with the opportunity to participate in summer reading program that encourages students to become lifelong readers. We partnered with all eight local public library districts that serve District three hundred students,
Algonquin Area, Barrington area, Cary, Gail Borden, Fox River Grove Memorial, Fox River Valley, Ella Johnson Memorial, and Huntley Area Libraries. Student interested in summer reading could register with one or more of the library programs while also enrolling in Summer Read three hundred. Those who successfully completed their library summer reading requirements received both a certificate and a t shirt provided by the District three hundred Foundation. In total, nine zero eight District three hundred students completed Summer Read three hundred program requirements. So tonight,
we're happy to announce the schools from each level with the highest participation. The elementary school winner is Eastview Elementary School. Our middle school winner is Algonquin Middle School. And our high school winner is Jacobs High School. These schools will receive a banner to recognize this achievement and will provide photographs of the students from the winning schools and an update to the board and an upcoming update to the board. I'd like to thank our local library districts for their ongoing support with this program, as well as District three hundred Foundation for their support and participation. In addition, I'd like to thank our families for encouraging your children to participate.
This is a great opportunity for our students to be involved in school and community while celebrating reading and enhancing their literacy skills. We look forward to offering summer Read three hundred next year. What questions might I answer? Alright. Thank you. 900 over 900 kids. That's great. 900. Yep. That's great. Thank you very much. Thank you, Beth. Now we will have mister Anthony McGinn, chief communications chief of communications, give us our back to school highlights. Hopefully, you've seen a lot of those on our social media page. It was an exciting kickoff to the school year.
Good evening good evening, Board of Education and doctor Smith. On Tuesday, August 12, District three hundred hosted a successful first day of school to kick off the 2526 academic year. On the first day, we proudly welcomed back 20,793 students, sixteen eighty one teachers, and three sixty four paraprofessionals, each of whom play an instrumental role in shaping our wonderful D300 community. Hosting a successful start to the school year is a result of months of preparation, planning, and teamwork, all led by Doctor.
Smith. And that preparation made possible an opening day where we had eight forty eight bus routes safely transporting students to and from school. We had 44,755 meals that were served during the first week across all of our buildings. And as you'll see later in tonight's presentation, our team worked on a total of 24 major summer construction projects, ensuring that our facilities were ready to meet the needs of our students and our staff. Tonight, I'll provide a brief glimpse into these summer items that set the stage for a successful new year before highlighting the excitement and energy of those first few days of
school. We'll conclude the update with a short video to reflect the pride that we all share in beginning another school year together in District three hundred. As we prepared for the first day, one of our key strategies was to ensure strong communications with our families. We recognized how important it is for parents to have timely and reliable information to start the new school year. This summer marked the second year that District eight hundred coordinated a comprehensive back to school messaging campaign. By sharing dates of these messages in advance, in May 2025, families knew exactly when to expect important updates, helping them feel informed and prepared for the new school year In total,
we delivered four primary summer messages along with a welcome back message from Doctor. Smith and these communications provided families with clear, timely updates and helped set a positive tone for the new school year. We've observed current encouraging trends since launching this campaign. In the years before this effort, attendance rate for the first nine days of the school year were at 9192% respectively Since launching this campaign, those numbers have increased to 96 over the past two years While many factors contribute to attendance, this improvement aligns with the timing of our communication campaign suggesting a positive impact
Our summer messaging focused on two main priorities. First, Doctor. Smith's anchors amplifying student voice and leadership, enhancing professional learning communities, and strengthening partnerships. And also Doctor. Smith's commitment to safety highlighted through introductions and reinforcements of enhanced safety protocols from the I Love You Guys Foundation. As this update will indicate, both priorities were evident throughout the first days of school. In alignment with Doctor. Smith's anchors, our summer work amplified student voice and leadership strengthening partnerships. A significant milestone in this effort to amplify student voice was the formal launch of
Doctor. Smith's student Superintendent Student Advisory Council, who the board members had an opportunity to meet earlier this evening, and this council unites student leaders from each of our high schools, providing them with a platform to share perspectives and address important issues with their schools and with the broader community. We look forward to seeing how this remarkable group will use their voices collectively in the future. An example of strengthening partnerships was District three hundred's participation in Project Backpack. At this event, more than 300 of our students receive free backpacks, school supplies, and additional community resources at Elgin Community College.
The day also featured a community resource fair and a family activity fair. We're deeply grateful to Elgin Community College for hosting and to our district staff who volunteer their time to support our families. During the first week of the school year, Doctor. Smith and her administrative team visited 27 schools over three days. These visits continued to strengthen partnerships with students, staff, and families. Each morning began outside near the front entrance of the school where Doctor. Smith and her team greeted students and families as they arrived. Once inside the building, the team assisted with helping students find their classrooms,
open lockers, and set a positive tone for the day. Once the school day was underway, Doctor. Smith and her team visited classrooms where we had opportunities to interact with students and observe them hard at work on their classwork. Other highlights included connecting the staff to show appreciation and support, being joined by Board Member Leslie LaMarca to reinforce the Board's commitment to students and staff, and watching students on updated playgrounds play at Dundee Highlands and Meadowdale. We also had a chance to interact with preschool students at Tlacy and in some cases help them put on their shoes when they fell off.
And my personal favorite, providing support during kindergarten lunch, where we have the opportunity to help students open milk cartons, bags of fruit snacks, and Capri Sun juice pouches. These activities help strengthen relationships and students and families and staff ensuring a smooth start across all of our schools. As Doctor. Smith has emphasized to her staff, students, the community, safety is her number one priority. We made sure that this commitment was reflected in our back to school efforts and throughout the opening days of school. This summer, District three hundred formally introduced new safety protocols from the I Love You Guys Foundation
to prepare community for changes. We took several steps. First, we shared information about the safety protocols in our back to school communications. We hosted a safety meeting led by our Director of Safety with local police officers and first responders ensuring alignment across all stakeholder groups, and we conducted district wide staff training so every team member was informed and prepared on the protocols. These efforts were clearly visible as we visited schools. We saw updated safety binders in every classroom, We saw signage posted prominently throughout school buildings, and most impressively,
we observed our teachers doing an amazing job teaching our students about these new protocols. To conclude tonight's presentation, I'd like to return to Doctor. Smith's welcome back message to our community. In her message, she wrote, In District three hundred, we believe every child possesses a unique genius, something remarkable within them that is waiting to be discovered and nurtured. One of my greatest joys is watching our schools help children realize their potential and share it with the world. After visiting every school alongside Doctor. Smith, I can confidently say that this vision is alive and well in our classrooms,
in our hallways, and in the joyful faces of our students. The work that we have done to prepare for the school year through partnerships, through student voice and through a deep commitment to safety has set a strong foundation for the school year. I'd like to leave you tonight with a brief video that runs under three minutes and thirty seconds. The video captures the energy of the students during the first few days of school, and it's a powerful reminder that the students are what makes District three hundred truly great. Thank you. Anthony, I have a quick question. Who took the photographs? Primarily shot by Kiese Dafoe.
We also had assistance from an intern, Andrew Burkey, who is the son of Doctor. Nikki Burkey, and Kathy Balgazar in our communications department. Awesome. Great job. Yep. Really great job. Thanks. I just wanted to say, it was great looking back at that because so many days have gone by since then. And, what is the favorite part of school visits for me other than being immersed in the kids is you get reconnected back to how hard our staff is really working to make it go day to day. Right? And in the beginning of the year,
you get that moment to just see them kicking it all off and how the energy was amazing. And so, I visit schools, for sure, monthly. A couple times a month if I can make it work. And, I'm just always super amazed at how great our staff is with making sure our kids have everything that they need. So thanks for letting us butt in and be in the way, to get some photos and have our cups fulled or a cup filled for a couple days. I wanna give a shout out to, Tom McGinn's group. Because I remember when I became a board member,
the infographics was something that we weren't making use of, and I it was, like, a big thing for me. I remember sitting in a room and talking to, Anthony about it, about us making, use of more infographics in our communication and whatnot. And I just wanna thank you so much for doing that, and now we're seeing the the the outcome of, doing stuff like that. Thank you so much. Okay. Summer capital projects overview. More great photos. So and, update from doctor Frank Williams and mister John Mickle. There he is. John, you're not in the back. I'm used to finding you over there in the back.
Yeah. Alright. Well, good evening, and, that's a tough act to follow. Those kids are super cute. Oh, just wait till John did. John and I are not super cute, so we'll do our best. Okay. Well, here it is, our summer capital, projects overview. So good evening, board members, doctor Smith, fellow administrators, and community members. Tonight, we'll be covering the success of our summer capital maintenance projects. Thanks to our partners, Alara, Duberry, Leggett, and LAMP, and a huge, huge thank you to our d 300 staff members whose time and efforts helped to
complete all of these projects. For the summer, we had a total of 53 workdays. That's it. 53 workdays. So the end of the 2024 the 2425 school year to the start of the 2526 school year to complete 24 projects with an original budget of 28,400,000.0. We're still working on finalizing that. As you can imagine, we still have some invoices that are still to come in as we wrap up those particular projects. Here, you see a picture of the new floor in that s walkway at Hampshire Hampshire
Elementary. Apologize. Hampshire Elementary. This new floor brightens the area and will save our staff time as it is much easier to clean and maintain. It's just like how much brighter that space looks already. Here's a complete list of the projects that were undertaken. As you will see, these efforts span our entire 118 square mile district and impact every school, directly benefiting both students and staff. So kudos to the board for its continued commitment to improving our educational facilities. Many of these projects have been funded through our cash reserves strategically built over the
years. The district is financially committed to supporting all school buildings across the district, ensuring equitable access to safe, secure, and modern learning environments. While many districts are scaling back on capital expenditures, our board has chosen to prioritize and invest in ensuring that students and staff learn and work in modern, well maintained facilities. But I do think it is important to recognize that reserves are also finite. And the funds available today will not always be sufficient to support the larger scale projects that we continue to talk about in our Master Facility Plans as we face
those towards the future. As we continue advancing our master facility plan, our goal remains clear, provide every student every student with a safe, supportive, and future ready learning environment. That's the goal of our master facility plan. This picture here you see is Dundee Middle School's cafe where the ceiling and lighting were improved to provide a brighter and safe environment. With that, I will now pass it over to John to discuss the projects in more depth and share some outstanding outcomes. Good evening, board, doctor Smith, community members,
and staff. I just wanna thank you for, having the opportunity to show you some of the projects we did this summer. I brought notes this time because last year I got so excited, which I am this year too, but I got kinda got a little off track, kept on going. I thought doctor Smith was gonna throw me out the side door after about twenty minutes. So, and first, I wanna take a moment and John, she wouldn't do that because she knows this is one of our favorite cousins in the area. I know she wouldn't. I know she wouldn't. I know. I think it was, mister Herb was gonna do that, so, last year he was he wanted to go. So, anyway, I'm just kidding. I just wanna take a a moment to thank my incredible team. Our facility manager,
Rick Weger, our grounds manager, Paul Wilhoft, and the heart and soul of our department makes everything go when we're out and about is, Billy Dean, our department assistant. And I also wanna recognize our building managers at the high schools, Dan Dole out at Hampshire, Steve Budnick at Jacobs, and Chris Wittlib at, Dundee Crown. And with with all that leadership, we still can't get it all done by ourselves, right? We have an amazing, exceptional facilities staff of men and women that through communication and hard work we're able to get these projects done along with our partners,
in our fifty three day window span that we had. So I also want to thank our partners through, Alara with Bob St. Mary, our Mechanical and Engineer, Designers, and then also Brian from Leggett, from, sorry, Dewberry, and then Jay and Robin and Kelsey from Leggett, and then we couldn't do any of this. They help us plan everything and then put it all on paper, and then Chad Alexander, Jay Schack, and his team from LAMP helped make it happen, especially with our larger projects. They really do a great job working with all the vendors and,
so we'll, like, we'll get started. I guess I'm running this thing this year, that's scary. Going back to my team, kinda started out on May 23, last day of school at about ten minutes after school was out. We relocated supplies and furniture for 50 classrooms, 30 support rooms and storage rooms, three media centers, two gyms, and one main office in one evening. We had that all ready to go for our contractors to get that done. And then at the end we had it all back, as as our buildings were turned back over to us. I'm gonna talk about some of these or some of our projects with our team.
We'll talk about that as we go through pictures. And then our projects with our partners, here you see the Westfield choir flooring in our band wing. We did all new flooring with antimicrobial carpet, to help with that, kind of the same stuff we put in our preschool classrooms. So, let's get started on the pictures. So Hampshire Elementary, I'll get to my notes here, 1962 is the original, how old this building is, and six years ago we remodeled the original wing, the straight hallway that goes right down, their new flooring, lights, other upgrades. For the 1975 and '95 edition we did that this year,
12 classrooms along with the media center. You can see the old media center. Principal Nolan and her team, when they showed me the sample that they wanted to go with in the carpet, I wasn't thrilled with it, but they did an amazing job. When you see the large picture of that put in there, it is amazing. And as doctor Williams touched on, the notorious serpentine hallway really got a face lift going from carpet and dingy to the new VC tile and night nice and fresh. I keep on forgetting I gotta do this. Neubert. Neubert got a complete major face lift. Original part of the building was 1964,
we ended up doing 21 classrooms, eight support spaces, media center, main office, hallway, stairwells, a kitchen refresh, and we decided to throw a new roof on the building too since we were there. So all new flooring went in there. As you see on the bottom left, the media center got carpet along with our, main office, new stairwell, treads, and risers there. The hallway, if you had been in there, was showing some serious, just fall starting to show the cracks and and the the wear and tear. So we got an all new floor hallway. Our kitchen was complete original from 1962. So they got a complete facelift,
new resin flooring, new equipment, new steam table, new oven, we switched all from gas to electric. So that was, and that's, two of our guys there, we did the kitchen remodel, in house on that one. Westfield, three years Westfield we've been working on. 2324, we did all the classrooms, switched from carpet, and then in all our classrooms district wide a standard that has made a huge difference in our summer cleaning is switching from carpet or anything to LVT, which is called luxury vinyl tile. You do not have to wax this product. You don't have to, you know, scrub it down,
take the wax off, and put new fresh wax on. This is you go in, you move everything, clean it, disinfect it, sanitize it, and put everything back. It has made a huge impact on enabling us to get classrooms turned back over to teaching staff and the buildings earlier every year, which has been huge and it also enables our staff to do more things like paint areas and do other projects in the building. So Westfield, this year, we attacked the hallways. The 30 year old carpet in the hallways is now gone. We actually discovered, too, some, a bunch of clean outs that were just covered by carpet with the original construction.
So that our that made our plumber very happy because now he can if if there's any issues, he's got that taken care of. The PDC is on the left that got a whole new facelift with the carpet and then the really, the top notch part I thought was the library. We did, with working with our purchasing department, they got all new furniture, bookcases, everything, new carpeting, our district painters spent a ton of time there making sure everything was perfect, and then our staff also updated to LED lighting. Also the stairwells, we did, LED upgrades in the gyms, the cafeteria, and then all the exterior lighting.
It was our last school that has LED, that was not LED lighting for the outside, so. Westfield is looking pretty good these days, a big change. Dundee Middle School, another three year project, and we actually called our construction manager, said, Hey, you ready for phase four? And he has not returned my call since. So, I think he's good to go. This is our geothermal system that we put in. This is a building, was built in 1978. It was an all electric building, if you're familiar with those from the 70s because electric was cheap then, not so cheap now. So, we our equipment was 47 years old,
HVAC equipment. It was not supported by the manufacturer anymore so it was failing, falling apart. So we dug 96 wells about 500 feet deep to the north of the building. Can't see them anymore, they're all underneath the surface. That brings in 50 degree, 54 degree cool water that helps cool the building in the summer. We have a DOAS unit which is our fresh air intake and also high efficiency boilers that heats that water in the winter to be able to turn over to heat. This is one of our only buildings where we can switch back now from heat and cooling instead of,
you know, having a certain date you have to do it, we can switch over on the dime. So that's, that's a plus there. You can see in the middle, that's the cafeteria on the top, when we gutted it all, and then the bottom the nice new ceiling grid, ceiling tile, and LED lighting. On the right you can see the ductwork getting ready and going up there, on the top picture and then the finished product on the bottom right there. Dunny Crown Teacher Lounge, this space was not really efficiently used or set up right for a staff lounge. It had kinda like the group bathrooms and it was very just very dark.
There was no natural light in. So we were able to, one, on the far right, you can see we were able to create some wellness rooms areas. Those were kinda spread around the building in closet spaces that we could find, so this is great all located in one location. Individualized lockers there in that middle hallway area, and then, the the main area with the food, it has a duplicate kitchen setup that, you know, on the side where we're taking the picture from. And then the best part I think we added there was some natural light through the, through the hallway. Every time I've been in there since then, staff seem to be very happy with it.
And then individual bathrooms as well. So if you have any questions you can stop me at any time. District concrete replacement, if this is an annual process where we go through look for failing concrete throughout the district, this year there was some, the top left there that is Eastview Elementary, the main entrance, the bottom left is AMS, bottom right is Dundee Crown main entrance, and then the top right is Westfield near the PDC and then the teacher's entrance Door 4. We did 8,000 square feet of concrete this year. To give you equivalent, that's a four foot wide sidewalk about five football fields long,
so that's how much we were able to replace this summer. Jacobs High School and Dunnew Middle School new tracks. The original, the last overlay or the last track at, Dundee Middle School was 02/2002. It was showing some wear and tear along the tree line and on the north side. So we did a complete overlay there and changed some things with the, shop put area making that more suitable for the students. At Jacobs, in 2011, two track, two lanes were added on the outside and then it was resurfaced again in 2018. We were showing some major wear there. That was a complete gut redo.
We were also able to add some areas in the, the high jump area as well, kind of like Crown, last year for the students. So, see, playground improvements. So, we have a robust system that involves custodian building custodians, maintenance staff, facility and building administration that that, inspect the playgrounds, check the playgrounds throughout the year. We also annually do a, one all big inspection with a certified playground, safety inspector, and then we also make replacements. We replaced a bunch of, like, the chain climbers,
the clatter bridges, some decking in the playgrounds. But then also we were able to, through a grant this year, we were able to get six shades as you see there. The top right, that's the Lacey and then the bottom left is Liberty. We were able to add four zero ones at other schools that had pre k programs for making it a little cooler for the students and the staff. The bottom right is a picture of Eastview. We also this summer did two refreshes on our mulch. As the mulch gets deeper and deeper, it starts to break down, turns into soil. So we removed a total between Eastview and Westfield,
17 semi loads of of old mulch. We actually did not know I mean, I've been here eight years. I did not know there was a concrete barrier around Eastview. It's kind of like an archeological dig when we found it. Everybody's excited. And I think the kids probably thought the playground grew over the summer because we added about two feet to it that we took off, so we got that going for us. So playground replacement. Moving forward, whenever we replace it, we're looking for a more standardized, safe environment for the students that they can enjoy the same experience at Meadowdale, at Dundee Highlands,
and anywhere else. So the components are the same, they are just different colors, at the two schools. This is Dundee Highlands here. We had a little bit of, ADA, it was higher up on the the hill so we brought it down, centralized location, so, make that a little more accessible and put in a ramp into the playground. At Meadowdale, that's kind of a more, I guess, a drone view, we also had an issue there, old old piece of old pieces of equipment, one of the oldest in the district, also close to Route 25, was kind of like, look at that as a safety issue there. So we were able to move that back against the the baseball field there and,
our surfaces now will also go from mulch to the poured in place rubber. And I I will say this, everybody has a little kit inside of them. If you haven't been out there, go check it out. I it's so cool how, like, how squishy it is. It's kinda it's like I think they're making them extra squishy these days. I don't know. But, Anthony had some great pictures of students playing. Thought that was great. That that made me really happy seeing the the the final product there with the kids on it. Crown's tennis courts, this was not an overlay it was starting to show, sorry, sorry, starting to show some serious cracks and,
just some wear and tear. So complete tear out, new drainage, instead of the poles in the past, and after you, after the project was approved we had that storm that came through that knocked part of our fence down, so it's kind of like, ah, glad we picked the right one there. And, but we also found that those poles were just jammed into the ground with concrete. Here, what we did was we put them inside the concrete barrier so they're in sleeves, a lot stronger. See the logo there in the middle and it was open and ready for the first day of school, so really excited about that. In 2024,
we engaged with one, with our traffic partner to come up with a new pattern as we had a queue that was out onto Route 72 and a safety hazard. We brought multiple options to the Board, you guys chose the one that got rid of the least amount of parking spaces but was also the most conservative financially. I am happy to announce I was there on day one and talking with Principal Labrie, he's like we usually get in everybody in at 09:30 on an average day. Now day one, everybody wanted to take pictures of little Jeremiah and little Amy, you know, where where can we take pictures?
And we were trying to move them through. We got everybody in the school by 09:10, twenty minutes better than their average. So, we're really excited about that. We worked extensively with the, West Dundee Park District oh, the Park Park District, the police, and then also, assistant superintendent Burket Burkey, sorry. And also, Leo, my principal Labrie did a great job with their staff getting them ready for it, and also the community. I guess he made a video driving through, really cool. Classroom safety project, along with the, the top priority for Doctor. Smith and along with our new safety protocols,
we did a consistency project adding, indicators on every classroom door in the district. It's hard to capture this project in pictures because there's so much behind the scenes. It's all electrical and infrastructure. I will say if you happen to go to one of the performances last year at either Jacobs or Crown, you really got to see what our project was going on here this year at Carpentersville Middle School and Jacobs High School. When the show started, the lights came up. New high-tech LED lighting, new sound,
new wireless microphones, new, new video enhancements. It really put the chair on the top of our talented students and staff and their performances and we got a lot of great reviews last year, we're really excited. So, if you're not doing anything on a Wednesday or whenever they do a performance, I'd say go out to Jacobs this year or any of our auditoriums now and as we are consistent across the board for our lighting and and sound. So really excited about that project as well. Our HVAC and electrical projects, this is more in house. On the left side we did, we put two new rooftop units in at Gilberts and Crown.
Also the top, the middle top picture showing some of our guys working on a unit over at Lake In The Hills, replacing some fan motors and coils. For the electrical side we did, Carbonsville Middle School asked us to put in, electric hand dryers for all the bathrooms, so we did that. We worked extensively with the tech department with camera installs and upgrades, and then you see some lighting there, that's the library media center at Westfield and also the gym at Dundee Middle School. One highlight, if you look on that bottom left, I wanted to highlight the conditions of some of our work staff when,
and the dedication on that extended heat wave we had that was brutal. That is a 150 degrees point eight at 10:00 in the morning. So that's the surface of our roofs, and our guys were up there making sure getting you know, we had some failures in the beginning of some of our equipment, some some some breakdowns, and those guys were up there working hard getting those things fixed and and new parts in. So I just wanna show you that. Gulfview Lakewood and Oak Ridge got new intercom clocks, an upgrade for the for the buildings. We worked over spring break this year to get ahead of the game,
because in the past we were rushing the, the training and everything after the institute days, like when everybody's back and need to focus on other things. So running all the home runs and all the all the wires during spring break enabled us to have all these projects done early, and they got staff trained before, institute days. So it was great. We had them all in one classroom over at Oak Ridge, learning about the system and, moving forward on that. So that was that was a huge success with that earlier project. Dundee Crown, we found some, underlying, water damage in the old main gym, which they kind of use as the cafeteria now.
So you can see there along the bleachers, that was on the south side of the of the gym. We had to replace all that wood. And then the nice thing is the final product of sanding the whole thing down and repainting it really brightened it up along with new lights in the gym, LED lights. Other highlights. I got ahead of my notes. Give me a second. I'll get caught back up. We covered all this, alright. Sorry, my hands are dry. Every summer our ground staff refreshes and adds new amazing, designs. If you see in the top right, some of the schools come up with some really cool ones that they get for
sensory and just for kids to, be engaged on the playground. So our staff goes around with work orders and paints them, gets them ready to go for the school year. Within two weeks of school starting this year, bottom left you see that's Newbert Elementary, every flower bed was trimmed, bushes trimmed, edged, and mulch was applied. Our team supported the installation also of the University of Illinois grant that funded the, the new garden, the raised garden, outside of Carpet Little Middle School. They had a lot of fun with that one. This was our second year working with the eighteen thirty three Leadership Academy.
This year we saw 45 team members go through an eight week training on the pillars of leadership. Gotten some great feedback from our guys wanting a second round, they're asking like, Hey, when are you gonna do round two? So we're really excited about that and we're looking forward to getting more people involved in that. We're part of a group called SEM, which is Strategic Energy Management. It's a it's a free group that we signed up for through ComEd and NICOR and they help us with finding rebates, different ways we can save energy, and then they also give us goals. And this year we saved, from our goals,
we saved 720,000 kilowatt hours which is the equivalent of powering 64 homes for one year, 64 average homes. Now along with that and setting our goals, we will be receiving the district a check for a little over $37,000 as a rebate for those savings. So we're really excited about that and it was our, out of the four years, this was our best year as far as, you know, seeing those savings and then also getting money back. Steel coating. We steel coated over 727,000 square feet this summer and striped. And for anybody that likes soccer, I think we have a couple board members that do,
that's the equivalent of 13 FIFA official size soccer fields, so bigger than football fields. So, and I just wanna thank you again for your support. My department is an honor and a privilege to lead this team and work with our partners. We are very proud of all the work we do under the leadership of Doctor. Williams, Mark Wetzel, and Doctor. Smith, our Superintendent, and the continued support from the board of moving our district into the future. So, we're really excited and I just want to thank you. I want to thank you.
I mean, you know that this is my favorite time. I say that every year because it's true. Just the amount of money, just for the people at home especially, for the for the amount of money we save by doing a lot of this with your crew, with your with your people in house is is really good. And, a lot of place a lot of places would have wouldn't have bothered. You know, they wouldn't do that to go out of their way to save money for the district. But you can always tell that they do they enjoy what they do. You know, they always seem to go the extra mile, and we have a really, really good team.
And if you could just tell them from us that we really do appreciate everything they do, you know, every every year and all throughout the year, we'd appreciate that. Like, thank you, John. It's like like I said, it's my favorite my favorite meeting of the year. My pleasure. Thank you. Anybody else? Yeah. I I would add to that and just say, John and team, you know, what you're doing to enhance the learning environments is is is palpable. You know, you you we see some pictures, but those of us that have visited know that we have aging schools and aging
grounds, and you all go out and identify them with our building leaders. And these summer projects take care of so many of those those issues. And to, you know, the settlers point of we're doing a lot of in house. We do a lot of it with our partners. But at the end, what it's doing is creating a better environment for both our students and our staff. When they come in and walk in and see that picture at Neubert in last fall, and I was visiting, I think, with you all about playgrounds, and we saw the weeds and things like that.
There's a difference there. There's a difference for everybody to walk into a building that they feel, proud about. So well done. Thank you. Thank you very much. Just wanna say thank you for everything. I think it's exciting times for the kids coming to school, finding out, like, all the improvements. I'm kind of excited myself just seeing all the cool stuff. I will share, I was sucked into the playground and the new flooring that is there, and it's super bouncy, much better than mulch. Because I remember elementary principal days,
finding the mulch in your shoes, needing to dump your shoes out as the principal at recess. And those new playgrounds and that flooring is amazing. The canopies are amazing. Of course, I've seen all of this up close intimately. And so, the work that the team has done is beautiful. Staff are enjoying, new spaces, things that we've waited years to see improved in our district, which leads me right into continuing, to focus on all of the things that we need to work on at because as Steve mentioned, our buildings are aging.
We are after innovation for our students. We're after, what's next and the best. And so, we have to continue all those things. So I'll jump right into, talking about our master master facility plan community engagement program. As missus Jennifer Volk joins me at the podium, I will, open us up to a little resetting about what's next with our facilities. And, John, thank you again to you and the team. Looking forward to one of those breakfasts again soon to thank them for all the work over the summer. Good evening again.
In 2024, District three hundred engaged in, students, staff, and families and community members in a collaborative process to assess the condition of our district facilities and ensure, that we had a master facility plan that reflected the community's needs. With that, we also want to continue to reflect what we heard about expectations for the future of our district facilities. I thank everyone that participated in all that work in that previous year. What we have today in our master facility plan reflects the time,
insight, and commitment to the future of our schools. Tonight, I'm proud to present a formal charge sheet that align outlines the next phase of our work on the master facility plan. The next phase invites even more community members to join the conversation. The charge sheet before the board tonight enables us to continue strengthening partnerships with our community by empowering them to take the lead in Supporting some, in determining how we should progress next. Specifically, the charge sheet calls for the establishment of a facilitating team that is consisted
of various community members, board members, district staff, and professional advisors. This team would lead the engagement process, creating space for everyone to provide input, share ideas, and shape priorities for the moving plan forward for moving the plan forward. Sorry. Lots of talking tonight. This is a community led effort from beginning to end. And, respectfully, we recommend to the board to approve the charge sheet later in tonight's meeting. At this time, I'll turn it over to missus Jennifer Volk from Discovery Works Collaborative who will continue
this presentation. Good evening. It's good to see all of you again. I'm here tonight to provide an update on where we are with the community engagement program and how we're going to get things rolling here in the next few months. So I know you've seen this map, and we'll come back to this, throughout the process just to provide an update with where we are. So we are still in step one, and the first step is really developing the facilitating team that doctor Smith just mentioned. We're looking for 20 to 25 community members that are really going to help lead the community engagement process. And to help us make sure that we're hearing from all of those diverse voices
that make up your community as a whole to help decide what are the best ways to implement the facility master plan and what type of schools do we expect for our community. This group will help develop the community engagement activities and potentially some workshops and things like that throughout this engagement process. I would like to note that the facilitating team is really in charge of process, as I mentioned. So they're going to be coordinating and facilitating and making sure that everything is open and authentic and that information is understandable and that the community is being heard throughout
this process. The community that is participating, in the workshops and we're going to be doing building tours and things like that, they're actually going to help determine what is in that final report that is presented to you in June. When we think about developing that facilitating team, there's a lot of things that we look at. We want to make sure that we're getting a good mix of community members. We want differing people at the table. We often look at it as almost a microcosm of your community in one group, and so these are just some of the things that we look at to make sure we have a good mix.
As far as building that, there is an application process that will be opening tomorrow provided that you approve the charge this evening, and all of that information will be available on the district website. And we would encourage anybody in the community that would like to be involved to apply. That first meeting will start off in October, and then that recruitment, as I mentioned, will begin following that charge adoption. The other thing that we have seen work well in other communities is nominations. And so that form, on the district website will also accept nominations for the facilitating team if anybody has
ideas of the other community members that might be good for that role. We are getting started on the online survey that we've mentioned a few times, and that will be an opportunity for the community to provide some input on the district, where the facility plan is so far, and other ways that we can gather input and make sure that we're reaching everybody in the community. We look forward to presenting those results to you hopefully by the October. So the next step as far as finishing up step one is that board charge that you have in front of you this evening. This really defines the purpose and the goal of where we're headed over the next
year or so with this community engagement program. Helps guide the work and provides some accountability to that facilitating team as far as what their role is, what that timeline looks like, and what type of feedback you as a board are looking for as you plan for the future of your school facilities. Hey. Any questions on that piece? Thank you. That concludes the superintendent's report. I just wanna step on your toes. I think that's the longest one since we came back. So Yeah. We're rolling. We're back. But it's been good. It's been really good. Item 10, board discussion.
Are there any updates regarding the following board committee's, operations? Yes. Our next meeting is Tuesday, September 9 at 04:30. I encourage people to attend. And if they can't attend, to watch the recording of the meeting as a lot of the things that we vote on in these meetings are discussed at that meeting in more detail. Okay. Superintendent evaluation committee. No updates. Okay. Policy, no updates at this time either. And board member handbook. Nope. Nothing else. I kinda took the summer off. Anybody have anything that they wanna talk about or share?
No? Okay. Alright. So then on to item 11, consent items. Consent items less than 35,000 So moved. So moved. Second. Secretary nano secretary, please take the roll. McKenday? Aye. Fiorentina? Aye. Burkitt? Aye. Linmark? Aye. Zettler. Aye. Mc I'm sorry, Mehlia. Aye. LaMarca. Aye. Motion passes seven zero. Okay. Item 12, consent items over $35,000 Consent items over $35,000 have been previously reviewed and discussed at the board operations committee also. And need no further discussion,
is there a motion to approve the consent items over $35,000 Okay. Okay. Ma'am, secretary, please take the roll. Mackenzie? Aye. Amelia? Aye. Zeller? Aye. Burkett? Aye. Fiorentino? Aye. Barca, aye. Linmark. Aye. Motion passes seven zero. Alright. Thank you. Moving on to item 13, roll call action items. 13.1, is there a motion for the approval of the charge sheet for the MFP community engagement program? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Any discussion? Madam secretary, please take the Oh,
I'm sorry. Oh. I just wanted to say, I appreciate the board supporting us, hopefully, in this next step of the process and really looking forward to getting more community engagement as we are at the last round before we make some final decisions about the future of our schools. Absolutely. We're all about community engagement. So any other discussion? Madam secretary, please move the vote. McKendy? Aye. Amelia? Aye. Lamarca? Aye. Lidmark? Aye. Zeller? Aye. Fiorentina? Aye. Anne Burckett. Aye. Motion passes,
seven-zero. Okay. Item 14. Is there a motion to go into closed session for the purpose of discussing one, the appointment employment compensation, discipline performance, or dismissal of specific employees of the public body, two c one. Number two, litigation, two c 11. Number three, student disciplinary case, two c nine and four, security procedures, school building safety and security, and the use of personnel to respond to an actual or threatened or a reasonably potential danger to the safety of employees, students, staff, the public,
or public property two c eight. Salute. Second. May I have secretary please take the role? LaMarca, aye. McKendy? Aye. Zeller? Aye. Melia? Aye. Burkett? Aye. Tarantino? Aye. Anne Lindmark? Aye. Motion passes seven zero. Okay. We plan on no action to be taken after the closed session.