good evening I call this meeting of the Township High School District 211 Board of Education to order may I have a roll call please miss Baron here Mr Bradley here miss caval here Mr Tom brosi here Mr McOwen Mr Rosen Blum here Mrs kimowitz here would everyone please rise and join us in the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge Al to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic
for it stands one nation God indivisible with liy and justice for all thank you our next item is the recommended action is that the board enter closed session to discuss one second that the board enter closed session
um to discuss minutes of meetings lawfully closed under the open meetings act and appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employees may I have a motion please so moved second any discussion roll call please miss Baron I Mr Bradley I miss caval I Mr d brosi i Mr Rosen Bloom I Mrs clim quitz okay motion carries we are going to adjourn
to our closed session we have the opportunity of having a reception for our incoming superintendent Dr Judith Campbell and people will be here in the audience with an opportunity to meet our new superintendent thank you good evening the recommended action is that the Board of Education return to open session may I have a motion please moved second any discussion roll call please miss Baron I
Mr Bradley I miss caval hi Mr dumbrowski hi Mr Rosenblum hi Mrs kimowitz I would everyone please stand and join us in the Pledge of Allegiance Al to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for it stands one nation under God IND with liy and justice for all all right thank
you very much before we begin our recognition I'd like to read our mission statement Township High School District 211 serves the needs of our diverse Community by providing relevant and rigorous learning experiences opportunities for involvement and strong support systems that Empower all students to reach their full potential welcome this evening and Dr small thank you I'd like to introduce director of Athletics and activities Eric
wowski who will introduce us to some fine student athletes tonight thank you Board of Education and Dr small thank you for taking some time to honor some very talented aquatic athletes uh this year I believe has been one of the most successful years in the pool in my recent memory um with we we will tonight be honoring 12 different athletes so it was a pretty successful swim season um athletes as your coach introduces you please walk forward receive your award and stand here next to the podium additionally any family members that are here tonight should stand and
be recognized uh when uh initially introduced by your your athletes introduced by your coach assisting with the awards presentation tonight is fed High School principal Mark Langer and shamberg high school principal Brian Harland all right so we'll get started Andrew kol has been a wellness teacher at F High School since 2010 where he also currently serves as the wellness department chair Andrew has been the girl swimming and Diving coach at f for the last 15 years two of his teams have been sectional Champs and three teams have finished in the top
10 at the ihsa state championship [Applause] Andrew thank you very much for having me it's nice to see you all again um at this time I'd like to welcome some wonderful people at this time with Erica Myers Nora noall Anna Hinshaw Sophia penev cat GAO and mahika tuluk please
come [Applause] up thank you to the Board of Education District 211 administrators the F athletic department and Mr Langer it is a pleasure to be here again to recognize these wonderful athletes tonight we're here to recognize some of their accomplishments and the exception of young people and for their actions at the state meet before we do that I would like the parents friends and family of these phenomenal student
athletes to quickly stand [Applause] up your dedication energy and efforts have helped make all of this possible and I'm so grateful to your support not only to the kids but also to the program you've raised some exceptional young people and none of us would be here tonight without each of you so thank you very much this year after an exceptional season that included an undefeated dual me um season in the MSL the conference Championship a second place finish at sectionals and numerous new pool and
varsity records we sent eight individual qualifiers to the state meet these young women along with a supremely talented shamberg team managed to compete against some of the very best this country has to offer and came home with some Hardware Illinois is considered the fourth fastest state in the country she is unable to be with us at this time but we'd like to recognize Ellie patla for her sixth place finish in the 200 freestyle as well as our school record and the 500 freestyle in her eighth place finish also School
record for and her ihsa honorable mention all state this year in diving mahika Tulu took seventh place in her first trip to the state meet receiving ihsa honorable mention all state our 200 freestyle relay team of Ellie patla Sophia penchev Anna Hinshaw and Cat Geo took 11th place for an ihsa honorable mention all state award nor noall took sixth place in the 100 breaststroke receiving ihsa honorable mention all state and set a School
record as well our 400 freestyle team of Ellie patla Sophia penev Anna Hinshaw and Erica Myers took 15th Place receiving ihsa honorable mention all state overall the team finished in 10th place for back-to-back top 10 finishes and this is the actual fourth time that we have broken into that tier since the program's Inception in 1978 many of these young athletes are also up for consideration for Nisa allaman status and they will anxiously await those results in this June my
staff and I are enormously proud of these young people the legacy of these upper classmen like Erica and what they have left atrimed we look forward to their continued Adventures over the next two years for underclassman and we could not be more proud of them ladies and gentlemen you're friended All State Award winners for swimming and Diving this year [Music] all right now
the equatic athletes from shamberg high school Tim o' gradian is is in his ninth year of teaching math at shamberg high school Tim has been coaching swimming for 18 years in both boys and girls swimming and recently I know at least in shamberg he's added water polo to his to his resume there uh and he has been at shamberg high school for nine years Tim [Applause]
thank you board members Dr small Dr Campbell and other Administration I have the honor of presenting to you five of our outstanding swimmers from the shamberg Saxon swim and dive team although these five's individual accomplishments are truly impressive what they have done for our program over at shamberg is equally as impressive there are great representations of shamber and District 2 11 by being great leaders who care about the success of all their teammates hard workers in the
pool and in the classroom and exemplary community members the swimmers are as follows uh nah Gwyn with our parents Ivory and chis Veronica mishow ski with her parents Ana and Robert Diana Biv with her parents ehor and
Sana Annabelle bannet with her parents Andrea and jolz and Suzanna Kris Niki with her parents agneska and [Applause] Robert collectively these five girls combined for 18th Place at the state meet our 400 free relay of Suzanna Diana Annabelle and Nina took 13th Place at
the state meet broke our school record and achieved a time that gives them the chance to be allamerican they were also sectional Champions our 200 free relay of Suzanna Diana Annabelle and Veronica took 14th Place medal at the state meet they were conference and sectional Champions broke our school record and achieved a time that will qualify these ladies as all-americans uh which in turn will actually make Annabelle uh a two-time All-American and then specifically individually
we have Suzanna Kris Niki who will be swimming from Theo next year uh took 12th Place at the state meet uh in the 53 she was conference and sectional champion in the event broke our school record took down the pool record at our sectional meet and broke the school record and our own pool record and is also an All-American in the event she also took six place in the 100 free and was sectional and Conference champion of the event broke our school and pool records in those
events and is also an All-American event as well this makes zja a five-time All-American congratulations to these five [Applause] girls right well thank you to our our amazing athletes um it takes a lot of time it takes a lot of energy and thank you for your dedication to your sport
and to your peers and all the support that I'm sure that you provide to them your whole teammates and thank you to the parents thank you for all you do to support not just your child but all of our students that are participating in the different sports it takes it takes a lot it's uh early mornings late evenings um the travel time but thank you for for being there and for supporting that's that's extremely important at this time we're going to take a couple of photos we'll have the kids the young ladies
come up here uh you'll be welcome to come up on this side of the board and take some pictures also and then we'll proceed with our board meeting so let's have our first group up for pictures the next item on our agenda is public comments and just a few notes in regards to that the board welcomes you and is pleased to listen to your comments this evening it's important that you know this is a public board meeting and not a dialogue so the board members will not
be responding to your comments are answering the questions at this time as a reminder the board meeting is being taped and live streamed we ask that you value the procedures and decorum of our meeting and be respectful of those at the podium so they may be heard when I call your name please come forward to the podium and state your name for the record though not required you may state if you are a resident of the district please limit your comments to five minutes you will receive a notification when you have one minute remaining any
individuals unused time or place in the order may not be deferred to another individual if you wish a response from the superintendent please leave your name and phone number with Mr tener our our first speaker is uh well our Margaret and Anthony slavich and followed by U Shireen pton will be next hi sorry Anthony
lost his voice so he is sitting this one out my name is Margaret Slavic and I am a resident of the district um I'm here with some concerns regarding the safety of the children at shamberg high school we recently came into a situation with our child where she had downloaded social media apps onto her well not downloaded she accessed social media through her school issued iPad um we don't allow social media in our home for various
reasons and while on there she was able to connect with individuals that she does not know some of whom are adults and we are now involved with the detective at shamberg high school who's been really great on Friday January 10th we were um given the opportunity in the time of the principal vice principal the chief technology officer and the technology department chair for meeting um and we were trying to get some information on what sort of Provisions are in place for children with cyber
security issues and so we had asked them um well when we had talked to our daughter she had said that the school Wi-Fi they're not able to do it but that they can access these things on the um guest Wi-Fi which is not password protected and so we had asked what the cyber security program is which they said they're is no program um we had also asked whether or not they would be able
then to catch if a student was having conversations like this or if they were making threats to harm others through means such as a school shooting um we were told that the policy is more so a see something say something where the students are expected to say something should they know that someone is making those kind of threats or engaging in any sort of unsafe activities um I can tell you that as a clinical psychologist I did do Crisis Intervention counseling at Highland Park
High School after the Highland Park shooting and I will tell you that School shooters are known for being um loners they typically don't have a wide social network and the same was true of that shooter and so our concern is not only for her safety but of all the children's safeties and to expect that children would do something I think is not the most logical solution um we had
also asked about the dig the digital citizenship course that freshmen are required to complete and we were told that the website is outdated and that in fact is not something that happens anymore um I had brought up the list of items that were stated as things that would be blocked through the security um none of those actually are blocked all of them were able to be accessed and I know they had suggested potential for them to be using hotspots however
this was done through the school's guest Wi-Fi um and then we had talked to the school about how to remedy this and their response was to put her iPad on level three security so now that they have put it on level three security she is no longer able to use the device for anything other than academics um we were under the impression as parents based on reviewing the information through the district that she would be protected from those things and that it was only to be used for academic purposes however
that was not the case and unfortunately what we are dealing with right now is very scary and what's even worse is that there are worse things that could happen by this lack of safety um I know that shamberg is an e- rate school and so I was under the impression through the children's internet protection act that they would not be able to access things that are obscene child pornography or things harmful to minors and that it would block access by miners
to inappropriate manner matter on the internet however this was not the case which is concerning to me on a legal standing you have one minute remaining um we had asked how they were going to handle this situation they had said they couldn't answer that but we're discussing with the district I did notice that very shortly after they changed their technology website and we had suggested that they let parents know that this is a security issue and that their children may have had access
to these things despite being given the information that they would not so I would hope that you would consider potentially putting in some sort of cyber security system because our child could have had very serious things happen to her and there are still serious risks that are very concerning to us thank you thank you Shireen pton followed by Joyce Slavic good evening my name is Shireen
pton and I'm a homeowner in the district um I am the co-chair along with yasi dogado from shamberg high school of the communities for positive Youth Development Coalition our Coalition is going into its 11th year and last year we won Coalition of the year or Coalition of Excellence um in competition against approximately 700 drug-free Community coalitions Across the Nation one of the reasons why um we were able to receive that award is because our ability to use data local
data in particular to identify what are the substance use uh Trends um contributing factors Etc within our community and I have to say big congratulations and thank you so much to the district because every single high school participates in the Illinois youth survey and while the state of Illinois has seen a decrease in the number of schools that have been administering it's called the iys the iys our schools since the Coalition started in 2014 and advocating through
um relationships within the district for every school to participate your schools have participated 100% over the last four administrations of the Illinois youth survey the data is so valuable um it's been used by multiple organization myself I'm a former employee of the Kenneth Young Center there number of grants that we were able to um acquire to serve the entire District as a result of that data other organizations such as the bridge Youth and Family Services they also use that data and so I
would like to encourage you all going into the administration year of 2026 that it would be great if the board overall supported the administration of the the uh Illinois youth survey in all five schools typically what happens is staff from Kenneth Young Center the bridge Youth and Family Services we have to contact each school and do a a great deal of background work to get that approval but I know for a fact that the data is also beneficial to the school district I myself have done
presentations with Matt hilderbrand to parents around vaping um the Coalition in particular is looking at underage drinking prevention vaping prevention and prescription drug misuse and so I want to thank you all again for the school's participation and I really want a participation and I really want to encourage you all to encourage all five schools to continue to participate it's very very valuable thank you so much thank you Joyce
Slavic followed by sherad Jane hi my name is Joyce Slavic I am a parent in a Community member in the district and I'd like to thank Dr small for her years of service and welcome Dr Campbell to our district um as Donald Trump unleashes a mountain of fear and hate yet again on our communities I want to encourage our district and board to not not obey in advance from Timothy Snider's important work on tyranny lesson one is do not obey in
advance most of the power of authoritarian authoritarianism is given freely in times like these individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want and then offer that without being asked a citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do and get away with we are still a nation of laws with the Constitution that we teach in our student teach our students in our classrooms we must obey the laws but scaring communities and schools in particular with threats of ice raids and attacks on lgbtq plus kids is
clearly counterproductive to a safe and stable learning environment we need to have a clear plan as directed from the isbe guidelines that were just issued Dei is an important part of our district and our strategic plan it does not mean As Trump would have us believe that we settle for less than the best in ourselves in our Administration it means that we choose to be inclusive and broaden our sites and recognize that the best may come from places we might otherwise Overlook mental health concerns continue to be of concern within our community and especially our young people and I think your comments
on the Illinois youth survey because the recent survey results had some very terrifying result uh comments uh the kids are going through some severe bullying and really severe mental health crisis still uh let's continue to support all our students including those students of color immigrants and lgbtq plus students our diverse Community makes us stronger and better all kids matter thank you thank you sherad Jane followed by Lee
Bennett good evening boards uh my name is Shar Jan and I live uh in The District 211 uh Community we live in shamberg my daughter is a high school student she's attending conent High School um the reason I'm here today is to follow up on a conversation that we began uh last year uh I had requested that we teach Indian languages uh in the district 21 schools uh and then since then we have had communication with the state board and I've been communicating with
Dr small um since then uh that communication and the instructions from the state um uh Illinois state board of education has come uh in the August of last year and since then uh I haven't seen any uh material progress on the topic uh and I was wondering if it would be possible to make the progress so we can introduce uh teaching in indic languages uh in the upcoming year uh my daughter is going to be in junior year and I would really like her to attend the next two years uh in the indic
languages I have a copy of this letter that was sent to U me as well as the uh District 211 that I can leave here uh but the uh the district should already have uh the letter letter here as well but I would really appreciate if you can get back to me on uh what the timeline looks like and can we have that uh being being taught in the upcoming year thank you if you can leave your information with Mr tener that then Dr small will respond apprciate all right thank you right Mr
Bennett hello Dr small Mr Schumacher board staff and Community I'm Lee Bennett a district resident in previous comments I've pointed out some disparity between the athletic interests and opportunities of afforded the young men in our high schools tonight I note a way in which our Athletics offerings may not align with the interests of the young
women 5 minutes is more than enough time to deliver my very limited insight into what women want apparently my standup skills are right up there with Jeb Bush please laugh are we providing equal opportunity for the Sexes this is difficult to measure the participation metric the OE designed for inter cleic Sports is not the best way for high schools to measure the opportunities they provide even
after 50 years few institutions meet this Criterion it's more valuable to measure the participation across all extracurricular offerings this ties in directly with the goal of engaging students with their school I did see this embedded in the metrics for the district's student involvement goal so the relevant data is being collected even if it is not being viewed as a me measure of gender equality
does the Doe's emphasis on measuring participation in competitive sports do a good job of serving the interests of our high schoolers our high schools don't have a competitive Sports Department rather we have an athletics department aligned with the goal of keeping our whole population moving let's look at the lifelong activities where more women than men choose to participate Dance Yoga Pilates and figure skating come to mind various
forms of dance receive wrin votes from the girls when they're asked what sports they are interested in these interests are largely ignored because they don't meet the regulatory definition of a competitive sport it seems many females find music more motivating than determining a winner and loser with an athletic program that develops these interest better serve the women of our community the numbers being tracked
do show more boys participating in the narrow domain of competitive sports but is this a problem competitive sports are not the entirety of High School athletics it is primarily girls who choose to participate in cheer Palms color guard and both scored and unscored dance teams if participation in all these activities were included in the numbers High School athletic participation is close to equal for the Sexes if we do seek to keep everyone
moving regardless of sex and if we have fewer girls participating then more support for yoga and additional dance activities may be the solution that young women want thank you thank you all right then that takes us to our presentation which is on the Strategic plan our update on communication okay can we
have the screens down please
there we go where's the
assist superintendent Kurt tener and director of communications Aaron Holmes are going to present an update on our strategic plan goal dealing with Communications thank you District 21's strategic plan reflects the shared priorities identified by our stakeholders to ensure the continued growth and success of our district goal number 10 emphasizes the importance of clear and timely communication ensuring that all stakeholders receive accurate information through diverse methods
and Languages by fostering strong connections across our community this goal supports a more inclusive and informed environment for everyone involved School communication has evolved significantly since the early days of dialup internet and the need to adapt continues parents and students now expect faster more personalized communication often preferring texts mobile apps and multimedia content over traditional email or print this year our families have requested translations in nearly 40 languages and preferences
for communications vary between digital and printed formats in the past four years our Communications team has embraced new tools and Trends collaborating across departments to create purposeful transparent communication these efforts are Guided by meaningful conversations with parents staff and students ensuring equity and Effectiveness in how we deliver information under this strategic plan we identified specific targets for the 24 25 school year shown here that directly
align with broader strategies addressing the sharing of our stories on a variety of platforms increased engagement across social media platforms and increasing diversity of staff and students in Communications and the incorporation of student voice as we continue to shape ongoing communication strategies much work has been done already in these areas and this year specifically new practices that you will hear about tonight have been implemented to meet the targets that are listed on this slide so create once
use often uh this practice is exactly as it sounds uh we create content once and use it wherever we can this ensures purposeful Outreach uh to as many audience as possible and provides more Equitable access to the information we are sharing our goal is to identify what can be reused and where it will be most effective uh some examples are displayed here as we build out this slide um this first story which was published first in the
Daily Herald and actually written by one of our students which we'll get to later um was then included on the news section of our website which is on the front uh the homepage we also then shared it on our social media channels linking back both to the web story on our homepage and to the Daily Herald uh another example the second one is uh of a story that was actually done with photos and a an extended caption on social media and then reused as you
see here in the continuing education uh guide book that went out in December and uh encompasses a much larger and different audience in addition we regularly reshare news stories in our superintendent's newsletter and highlight key news items on our web sliders which are those boxes you see on the main Pages um for important calls to action for our students or parents we now send regular text reminders as well rather than just email which has delivered many positive
results so we know our external audiences which we Define as community members for example and our internal Partners students staff and also parents get their information from differing sources and we continue to work specifically with our internal audiences to determine where they look and what they want to see so we have three kind of overriding themes here and I'm going to jump
around a bit in some of the strategies um we began a migration to digital um a migration of our printed materials to digital about three years ago identifying items that fit most naturally into that space originally like the curriculum guide which is primarily used by parents students and counselors who are very familiar with navigating the web in many cases publishing digitally allows us to make make changes that may arise and deliver the information quickly to phones and computers we continue to see outstanding metrics in this area including more
than 28,000 views to our newest curriculum guide which was published late last year because of this success we are now transitioning our former parent guides which were printed documents um given to parents uh providing general information on each school we are transitioning them to an online success guide that actually gives the most pertinent information to the families based on the students year in school so it allows us to get a little bit more specific and targeted
um in the area of digital um translations and shift to online we also have the newsletter platform of sore um it's been very significant in our progress initially it was used to update our principal newsletters which had been in print um but it has been expanded to the superintendent newsletter and new this year we are using it to relay important information that formerly would have taken up a very long email to parents or even a series of emails they would have to read um we're using this
to put the information into one spot uh last week for instance we sent a digital newsletter uh working with student services to our parents covering details of ISB mandated testing so all of it was in one spot this delivery allows for immediate translation into more than 100 languages of the information a clickable table of contents which allows parents to jump to where they need to be and a more user friendly approach to the information we also can quickly
track the effectiveness through the analytics uh this one in particular that I just referenced receiv received 23,000 views in three days with people spending an average of 10 minutes reading it which is actually quite good for this kind of thing and the length of that particular newsletter um you'll notice social media audit mention here we worked uh partnered with a company we already use for um our social media work to do an audit of our social media channels at the district level and really were able to get an overview of what is working and what isn't and what can be done
better and that has led to some new ideas we'll see in the future why am I okay um um in the area of translation you'll notice our reference to um graduations uh the translation of speeches on a separate web page actually started a
couple years ago for those graduation ceremonies and is continuing to be finessed to offer more opportunities the analytics there show users logging on locally and also from many countries around the world to follow along in the language that is most convenient to them including in some cases English honestly they just want to follow along uh the AI has been significant allowing us to share the content we uh create I'm sorry allowing us to ensure the content we're creating is translating appropriately so we
talk a lot about translation we want to make sure it's done well and effectively um we've learned some important lessons using that AI translation help this year for instance the word Guardian which we use frequently in salutations on our emails often translates to a word more similar to police in other languages which is not the message we want to convey so we've now switched our salutation to families or other words that work a little bit better AI also allows us to make sure the actual English words
we're using to convey messaging translate cont in the right context across the board so we're able to quickly see what is not going to work in various languages and tweak as we need to The Branding piece that's mentioned is a broad move to make sure every intended audience member receives information in a way that is easy to use and understand and also identifiable as dist 21 content uh our team this year completed a branding guide that helps our Administration be consistent in how we present our
information as part of this we've completed the overhaul I believe of all major District 211 materials to a new modernized look that I believe truly represents our brand and again ensures accessibility to information and more user friendly delivery District 211 has a longtime presence on
social media but we continue to work diligently to make sure we use it in new ways all the time to tell unique stories well then end goal of boosting the engagement because to just push out a message is one thing but what we want is our community engaging with us so you see some examples here of just a few new things that we've tried um the first is a video um that was taken uh by our team during a um big ceremony
for F's flag football girls flag football championship team we were able to turn that around extremely quickly edit it and get it on all of our social channels and it received a lot of attention particularly what you see here is from LinkedIn where we've upped our presence and it does very well with alumni we are see the other one is just a quick snapshot of our Instagram feed um I want to particularly highlight a video we did for principal appreciation we you see they're kind of in the Middle where we played off a popular social media Trend
to tell the story of how our principles always go the extra mile uh the video uh is an excellent example of creative storytelling done well and his to date our I think biggest success in video storytelling received approximately 25,000 views more than 700 likes and more than 100 shares and the shares are what we look for to spread the word about our district this content as noted on the slide has driven follower growth across our channels most notably on LinkedIn where we doubled the number of
followers in a single year so we're pleased with that um and then you'll also see the month-to-month reach um we took the month of October and looked at that 2023 to 2024 because October is just a month with a lot happening with homecomings and other things that are going on so we looked at how we did content in 23 versus 24 and you'll see the reach on social social media across our channels jump from 17,000 to 142 700 so big change um you'll
recall Board of Education that uh you approved uh the purchase of the of a mobile app and we've been working with the students and staff to determine what they'd like front and center in that app and how best to communicate its launch this is an image of a beta version of the app which remains in development with the launch goal of this semester we continue to work with the final site team the sponsor of the app on this design which will have a scrolling series of news stories at the top
and then buttons for the most commonly accessed or searched items below that users will be able to personalize their content based on their school and the events that their students are involved in additionally this app will provide another opportunity for quick messaging during emergency situations so we turn to equities in both storytelling and strategy um so in the issue the area of Storytelling specifically there are so many Amazing Stories here and I think we
we all recognize that um to the extent that last school year we made it into every major Chicago News Outlet sometimes multiple times for stories that we worked on with reporters and that was great but we have identified the need for diligence in seeking out more diverse stories and diverse voices all across the board uh with the knowledge that for instance it's not just the award-winning student or the teacher who received National recognition who should get the get the profile and the attention that is one piece of it but there's a lot
more so just some examples from kind of an equity Focus lens and storytelling and Beyond um we recently began a news series with our student journalists to tell the story of people in the schools that you may not know so much about um there might not as front not as much front and center it was delightful to see the students immediately identify people that they wanted to profile and talk about who are not the people that we all know and it um will diversify who we're talking about and I think also
actually give a lot of information to parents about folks in our school doing a lot of great work um separately we're increasingly putting content typically contained in a PDF format or another kind of locked file format onto a Texton web page meaning we're taking extracting the text and putting just that on a page that allows for greater translation ability of even more of our our website content because when it's only text you can translate in a PDF it does not work um additionally we are ensuring videos are
housed on YouTube that we do even if they're already shared on social media which supports closed captioning in multiple languages and we also create transcripts of some of our biggest videos that are extended to the biggest audiences including Dr Small's superintendent newsletter video uh as we look toward the redesign of our website uh this coming year we've also been very cognizant of accessibility options that are now available within web platforms that far outperform what we currently have there are options for instance for ensuring
better captioning of photos for those with vision impairments and easier scanning um like automatic scanning on the web platform for accessibility issues we may not previously have noticed or even considered um beyond that I meet regularly is defined in the Strategic plan with our director director of equity um inclusion this has been vital in our promotion of special months and celebrating holidays
and how we communicate that information so this is the one I'm most excited about uh we launched the Press Corp last year and have grown it significantly with three times the number of applicants this year this core is aimed at giving student journalists in District 211 an opportunity to work with us to more broadly tell the stories of our school students and staff this year we have about 20 members and we had to obviously we could not take them all but from across our
schools we use schooly and zoom which you can see some examples um of to work with our students in the Press Corp to explore story ideas that are bigger and reach beyond their school and then edit the content they provide us before sending it out to news outlets including the Daily Herald where the students get their own by lines we've expanded um the core to include a um students who are interested in things other than writing so for instance we have a uh one
who's interested in graphic design and they are now working on a project for us and some who are interested in podcasting which we are also working on um in February we will meet with a small group of core members to discuss a 211 journalism day which they brought to me as an idea they wanted to pursue which is fun um so on this slide you'll see as I mentioned the screen grabs of some of the work we're doing with the students um the other piece up there is something fun where they suggested music for a
um playlist during finals to decompress and help them study so that was put up on social media with their feedback and then the student you see here is uh Grace she's from Palatine and she is in her second year with the core um a go-getter like all of them I think on the Press core and her experience she was able to interview um DR Sanders when he was at Palatine High School which she really loved she uh interviewed miss hmel
this summer and thought it was an outstanding opportunity to reach Beyond uh her school work and she talked with us last year and said she'd like to apply to medil school of Journalism which is one of the best at Northwestern considered one of the best and she didn't know if she could make it she didn't know and she kept working with us and um just recently she emailed me and said I wanted to be one of the first to know I got into a medil and and we couldn't have done it without press cor so it gives me just great joy and Mr de George who's sitting back there running the live stream works with me to do the
Press cor so um just wanted to end with that positive story I'm in I'm incredibly proud of the work of our Communications team and what they've done as well as the collaboration across departments and with various colleagues to advance how we share information and tell the story of our district together we've made great strides in communicating more openly and cohesively while implementing tools that allow us to deliver messages efficiently and in ways that reach all of our audiences the team's
creativity energy and enthusiasm have been inspiring and I'm confident that we'll continue to build on this progress moving forward we are now ready to entertain your questions thank you thank you thank you for the presentation I'll start with Miss Baron um thank you so much for the presentation tonight um Miss Holmes I'm just in awe of everything yeah of everything that you have accomplished in um you know I have
worked with you with you know a little bit with um the subcommittee and again it's just I'm just blown away with everything that you all have presented on today um I'd love to hear and congratulations to the student who got into that program um that is amazing and again that I think is thanks to you and your U mentorships so thank you so much for everything that you have done I'm you know really excited for the app and I know that a lot of our parents are really excited for the app and again we live in that
like app era and it's going to be really easy for um parents to access information you know everything that you all have done with social media is amazing growing our followers I personally um you know check up on our social medias and that's how I'm kind of in and known of what's happening in the schools and again just in awe of everything that our students have done and our teachers um and I'm able to see those highlights you know through our social media channels you touched on the question um but one of my questions was
going to be on the translations um just because I know that we can't always rely on you know the translations being spot-on so I'm glad that you all have faced that challenge and are you know making it better to make sure that we are translating our materials in the proper way especially now in you know the era that we live in so um the palentine high school student uh paper is when I researched 21 when I want to like find information that's like
the first one that pops up so i' love to hear from our students and I love to see the the love and the growth from them as well so overall I'm just in awe of everything that you have accomplished so thank you so much thank you thank you Mr Bradley uh thank you both for a wonderful informative presentation uh I do have one question in regards to the app uh with the app and we had a gentleman here earlier today wanting to know if we're going to have Indie as a language is
it possible that this app would be able to be translated in multiple languages because it is an app yes yes it's um it plays It's the final site is the provider as Mr toner mentioned and it that's the same provider as our web host right now so I think it's 130 give or take language is so you can actually set the language that you want it to be and then my understanding is it remains in that language every time you log into it so you don't have to
keep resetting perfect thank you thank you Mr Rosenblum I agree with Miss Baron regarding all the wonderful things that you've done since you started with the district um coming from I believe 214 and I don't remember sorry I don't remember okay and and all the things that you've accomplished along the way um you know we talk about career and college readiness and Miss Napier did a presentation earlier to our one of our board meetings and you
know we always look with when it comes to College and Career Readiness about utilizing external businesses and external sources to help our students learn right and some of the special the especially the career programs that we offer partnering with external organizations businesses to help our students and this is a great example of where we could use
external resources and opportunities but we're using internal opportunities for our students within our district within our schools for them to not only learn and better themselves and maybe get in a great College um and and pursue a wonderful career because of their experiences but it's in turn benefiting our elves our district our students our staff our community and I think this is a wonderful example of being able to
do that through the various things be it the Press Corp or the the working on the app or whatever the students are able to do with regards to communication and those who are interested in doing it and so I applaud you with giving them that educational and instructional opportunity um to be able to do that um I also follow us on social media and I encourage anybody who's watching anybody who's here to sign up for pushes uh
from the district um I've always been a fan of of getting pushed out information opposed to saying oh look on our website go on our website right um I'd rather it get pushed out so that people can get those RSS feeds or whatever they are to to get that information um I know when I log into social media oftentimes we're right there front and center and it's good to to see what's going on and stay educated in that as well so um I also appreciate the translation uh especially with graduations I remember when we started
that and it's good to see that people are taking full advantage of that um to to be able to see their students and their family members um with that particular time in their lives uh which is the Pinnacle of their education in 211 so thank you for everything that you do and thank you for the presentation tonight thank you Miss kavl ditto so there's that um I do have two technical questions if you don't have the answer for me tonight that's perfectly fine I would
hope for an answer at a later time um you know I so I've got a couple questions regarding like privacy um so the first one is walk me through whatever permission structure if one exists about how we know it's okay to include pictures of our students on the materials that we post publicly anywhere our website our social media channels Etc um sure so we have when uh parents register there's the question of if they
are okay with a publicity with their students um being uh their image being used I I forget the exact wording but their image or an interview with their student their student voice that kind of thing um and we are able to quickly check through Infinite Campus um if it's yes or no the vast majority are yes but for many reasons it's no sometimes it's accidental NOS which I've heard from many parents that they just happen to check it we run um the no photo
list for every school including Higgins and north um every year so that we have that so when Mr de George for instance goes out and does photography he can look at the list or we have very easy ways now thanks to our uh tech department to quick look up a class for instance if we're in a class and we know what you know what time period is what school what teacher we're able to look up and it tells us right away yes or no so we're able to waver we call it just wavering the students usually before especially in a media an actual outside
media situation um so if a reporter comes into a room we can say these students can or cannot be featured um and then we also make sure they're waivered after we take photos if we don't do it firsthand secondly I do want to add I think an important as side to that is even if the parent has said yes if the student is going to be featured prominently in some sort of feature especially on the news even if it's a completely positive story we call the parents and let them know and most of the time they're overjoyed and so excited but sometimes they have real
questions about what that means and how it's going to look and we work with the student and with the family I'm so pleased to hear that thank you very much um so then as a follow-up question to that let's say uh a parent has checked the box for yes you know it's totally fine to use the image let's say the student is featured prominently in a sto in a great positive story and they've also said yes the phone call said yes 6 months down the track family circumstances has changed have changed or whatever and they want to revoke
that permission now I'm not talking about like a story that's been perhaps in print in the Daily Herald once something is in print it's in print but you know must we were just talking about our you know migration into all these digital applications so can would we retroactively remove a photo of a student where they retroactively declin to participate yes that's actually great question because we had an example of that that Mr J George handled specifically maybe a year or so ago um that's the only time that we've had it happen that's come through us um so
you're right outside media we don't have that power um but certainly we work with them and in this case I can't remember why um uh it wasn't but that didn't matter they had asked that they be removed um uh and it was a story that we had posted at some point several years before and we were able to remove just that piece just that person's believe name and or image didn't really even change the story and we were able to let them know that was done I really appreciate that I mean with with technology expanding it to be the way
that it is you know generally speaking up until this point it's been a general understanding that even if your picture is posted and it appears on Google image search for example if you don't know that person's name necessarily the internet is not just going to stick those two things together right you know that's not the case anymore you know as as you have large language models kind of all over the world that are just constantly trolling for data and pulling it from anywhere anywhere that's publicly posted that can take a minor for example their face find it in other
places and then attach it to a name so that face and name follows a minor person around potentially forever like then that retroactive I would like my picture removed is really wonderful to hear about I appreciate that in terms of safeguarding our students privacy so thank you really wonderful work that you're doing thank you Mr D yes thank you I appreciate the presentation um my question is more along the lines of our goal for the communication is to
be clear and concise how do we audit let's say information that we post on our website and things like that so that we make sure that it's current because when sometimes we do a search we get you know several years and and sometimes you know the priorities out you're getting something that immediately pops up as 2018 or even like early earlier today we heard about the you know um digital citizenship courses which you know parents are looking for information they're getting information that's not applicable
what do we do as a district to ensure that what we're posting is current so great question on that um our new well she's been about a year now so not so new but um Web Master on our end is very cognizant of this being an issue and we have heard from people within the schools some parents hey I'm searching for this and an old version coming up and what it seems has happened that our kind of our protocol well before I got here um for years has been you're supposed to take the old down and put
the new up and that didn't always happen for whatever reason it didn't happen um so whenever we're made aware of that we immediately find the root of it which sometimes can take I'm astounded sometimes of how hidden the back end on the back end it really is to take it down at this point um we have regular meetings with uh the web masters of the schools they every week now which I love so that's a new thing where we can all talk together and one of the topics has repeatedly been this the importance of when something is
put up that's like an annual thing the old one is taken down and how important that is and how important it is to monitor whenever we're able to or audit what is on the website now and take down old stuff but the reality is um there is a lot of old content up there so we do our best and I've told our Web Master whenever she has an extra minute to try to pick a page or an area and go through and remove the old content um with the uh redesign if you'll call it that or
shift to a new look of our website um that will be part of the work so Mr Nei the um that will be actually a key part of the work is to make sure old content that is not needed and not used um outdated is taken down and other is frankly Rewritten um more concise and consistent across departments and pages um and what you see is hopefully the new current content in a concise format so that is we recognize that as an issue that we will
address and the responsibility for the district pages with the Web Master right yes overall with the assistant I would say of departments who certainly know their areas better than we may specifically know them so they may be able to tell us just so you know this page we just realize it's still there can you please remove it and we do that okay thank you thank you very much truly appreciate it appreciate all the communication and I've been a you know a supporter of having kids involved so I
think this is this is really great and it's it's good to be able to to see this and our our students being engaged and learning life skills that will help them in careers so thank you very much for the presentation [Applause]
that takes us to the consent agenda and we had a board member that was absent so there are going to be two motions for the consent agenda first motion is a recommended action is that the consent agenda with the removal of the minutes of the meeting of December 12th 202 for be approved as presented may I have a motion please so moved second any discussion roll call please miss Baron I Mr
Bradley I miss caval I Mr Dum Broski I Mr Rosenblum I Mrs climit I the motion carries the next recommended action is that the minutes of the meeting of December 12th 2024 be approved as presented may I have a motion please so moved second any discussion roll call please miss Baron I Mr Bradley St Miss caval I Mr dumbrowski I Mr
Rosen Bloom I Mrs clim quitz I the motion carries then that takes us to our special reports and the first is Freedom of Information Act request I don't know if anyone has any questions okay the next item then is the secondary school Cooperative risk management and Workers Compensation Insurance program it's an information item Dr small the secondary school Cooperative risk management program typically
called scrimp is a risk sharing Insurance Pool providing comprehensive insurance coverage at a lower cost than the district can obtain individually this risk sharing Insurance Pool is governed by high school districts 211 main Township District 207 high school district 214 Northfield High School District 225 and lien Township to2 the agenda item that's presented to the board tonight is an annual information piece regarding scrimp does anyone have any questions okay
if not then we move on the next item is the 2024 consumer price index for urban consumers and that's an information item Dr small the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the CPI for urban consumers each January for the prior calendar year the 2024 calendar CPI is 2.9% the board report attached to the agenda provides a 10-year history of the
rates using the 2.9% an updated 5-year forecast will be presented to the board at the February meeting in conjunction with information on the amount of property tax refund Levy that is available the Cook County Treasurer has calculated that the property tax refund Levy for district 21 is $4.2 million this represents the portion of tax refunds that fits the requirement of the law to be considered for this tax refund Levy the this information will be reviewed in detail in February and the board will determine if any action is
needed to accept this Levy that is automatically added to the text Levy Abate all of it or Abate some of it any comments or questions okay that'll take us then to the next item the elementary and secondary school emergency relief fund Esser final report an information item Dr small board has received numerous reports regarding Esser expenditures since the beginning of the covid pandemic this is the final report
as all monies have been expended and reimbursements to the district from the isbe have occurred any questions all right that takes us to our next item and it is in regards to student user fees 2025 2026 student user fees and 2026 summer school fees there's quite a bit of information is there anything that someone would like to have pulled yes can we pull the
instructional um textbook fee okay and we'll vote on that separately is there anything else okay then the recommended action is that for the 2025 2026 school year the driver education behind the wheel fee remain at $400 for the regular school year the student parking user fee remain at $75 per semester the under 1.5 mile transportation fee remain at $250 per
year that the late registration fee for transportation remain at $35 and that the late fee be imposed on registration payments received after July 1 2025 that the 2026 summer school transportation fee be set at $60 per semester the price of a standard School breakfast be set at $2.25 for students and that the reduced price standard School breakfast remain at 30 for students that
lunch prices be set at $3 $3.50 and $3.75 including milk for students and that the reduced price standard school lunch remain at 40 cents including milk for students and that all summer school fees remain unchanged as presented may I have a motion please so moved second okay any discussion I know there was a question about the um um the fee for the uh
the breakfast I don't know if uh Dr small you can kind of talk to that a little bit I'll ask Miss Hummel to explain why our um low rates go up by a quarter this year uh yes our um as a participant in the national school lunch and breakfast program um there are uh requirements on how we price our meals um specifically um for our lunches we are looking at the difference between the reimbursement rate paid for a paid meal and that for
a free meal and that is what the um USDA says is the amount that we should be charging for a school meal uh that amount for this year is $41 uh if you are not meeting that threshold um it's called the paid lunch Equity um provision uh you must increase your rates um by a minimum of 10 cents uh to reach that goal um and we are given the fact
that we are um we have been under the past couple years we are trying to reach that point we will still not be at it with the um meal prices that are set and recommended here um but that is the uh rationale for the recommendation behind the the meal pricing okay thank you any questions I to have a question um in here and it's regarding the 1.5 mile is it possible that we can go
back and look at that as the mileage point being the drop off or pickup location of the student and not their home because there are instance where their families that live next to one another one has free busing and the other one is paying for busing because they might be 20 30 ft on off that 1.5 mile but it's not the Bus location it's their home there are very specific guidelines on
how to measure the 1.5 mile um marker from the school to qualify for reimbursement um and that is what drives that um the uh amount that we're submitting on our annual claim is specific to the home address and the guidelines and reimbursement are coming from the state correct interesting point Thank you anything else okay if not may I have a roll
call please miss Baron I Mr Bradley I miss caval I Mr dumi I Mr Rosen Blum I Mrs kimowitz I all right that motion carries the next recommended action is that for the 2025 2026 school year the student textbook instructional Supply fee be set at $170 may I have a motion please so moved second okay discussion yeah
I have asked for this specific one to be pulled out um for the reason being is that since Co we waved that fee because of you know the pandemic and then last year we reinstated it as at $75 a lot of board members weren't comfortable you know going from zero to 170 I am still currently not comfortable with going back to 170 I don't
think that things have changed for our neighborhoods um in fact it's progressively potentially even getting worse um and so at this time I do not feel comfortable and also given that we have um raised our Levy I think that our um our community is being taxed at the Le you know taxes and then now you know families are going to have to pay that 170 and I know there are programs
for families that aren't aable to but there's some families that don't meet the threshold of the requirements and are still struggling to even put food on their table so for all of those reasons I am still not comfortable with reinstating the fee at 170 I am comfortable keeping at 75 if any other board members um you know also choose to I am in agreement um especially when I think about the financial projections and the the essentially the total figures that this
fee represents in terms of how much total revenue they are expected to bring in and their role in our financial predictions and which is hovering right around a million dollars um I think it's just just over and to me that margin is thin enough that we can uh wait to see the real deficit in our budget before we actually have um a financial justification to move the fee so I'm in agreement any other
comments Dr small can you tell us what the costs are um of this the instructional fees what is what does that really cost us and if we stay at 170 does that match the costs or are we still wellow uh for the current year um the consumable uh supply cost fee per pupil is about $247 um comp
so we are um that varies obviously year to year when we recalculate but that's what it is for this year okay so the 170 is quite a bit less than what the actual cost is for the consumable materials okay all right Miss uh Baron would you like to make a motion for the $5 amend amend the motion do you want to amend the motion if we can amend it do we have to get consensus for the amendment no we just we need a second
second all right so the amendment is to to amend the motion to reflect $75 for the fees okay we have the textbook instructional Supply textbook in excuse me textbook instructional Supply fees to be set at $75 okay any other discussion on that all right so we're going to vote on m i Madam president I would support no
fee I'm sorry I would support no fee all right right now it's the amendment I understand you want to I'm explaining my position thank you thank you sir all right may I have a motion may I have a roll call please Mr Ros voting on the amendment yeah $75 $75 okay Mr Rosen Bloom yes Miss caval yeah yes yes Mr dski
nay Miss Baron yes Mr Bradley yes Mrs clim ktz I all right the amendment carries so I'm going to read the motion the recommended action the recommended action is that the 2025 2026 school year the student textbook instructional Supply fee be set at $75 may I have a motion please so moved second okay any other discussion okay roll call
please miss Baron I Mr Bradley I miss caval I Mr dumbrowski no Mr Rosen Blum I Mrs climit I the motion carries all right that takes us to the next recommended action and that is that the curriculum committee report and recommendations be approved as presented may I have a motion please so moved second okay any discussion all
right roll call please Mr Tom brosi I Mr Bradley I Mr Rosen Bloom I miss CL I'm Sorry Miss cell I miss Baron I Mrs Clin quitz I the motion carries the next recommended action is that the Board of Education recognize the reorganization of the current assistant principal positions as described above may I have a motion please so moved second uh
we have a winter curriculum committee report we just voted on that yeah okay go sorry okay all right um Dr small at the June 2024 Board of Education meeting the board approved a District to1 Administrative cons compensation and benefit package in an effort to enhance the ability of District 211 to recruit and maintain administrators clarify their current benefits and add additional benefits one of the next steps presented to the board
at that time was to review and then recommend structural changes to assistant principles including the potential of restructuring the 10-month assistant principal position to a 12-month assistant principal position there are currently three levels of assistant principal positions at the school level the board agenda write up details the changes for reorganization of all three current levels of assistant principles including the elev elevation of the buildings and grounds assistant principles to associate principles restructuring all 10-month assistant principles to 12-month assistant principles
and allow the principal to designate one lead interventionist and summer school principal among the 12-month assistant principles the change of the position from 10-mth to 12- month significantly increases the number of applicants that may consider the position from both in District and outer District Personnel for example current teach teachers who may also be involved in extracurriculars and are interested in becoming an administrator typically have to make the move or the consideration into Administration well before
10 years of teaching experience the shift to an assistant principal to a 12-year position with vacation time increases the starting pay of entry-level administrators and allows the range of experienced teachers who would see this as a monetary promotion to almost double the individual positions and their individual salary would be brought forth to the Board of Education annually annually for approval prior to July 1 any questions I just want to mention I
I like the ability to grandfather current 10-month prin assistant principles um in case for whatever reason uh personal or otherwise they're not able to switch to a 10 to a 12-month role so I I do appreciate the opportunity to to to let them decide for themselves if that's something that they're unable or unwilling to do so okay and I I
think this allows a good opportunity for the um assistant principles it allows for learning it allows for some stability and continuity so I I thank you and the administration for looking at this and exploring these options all right so then that will take us to the roll call please miss Baron I Mr dumbrowski I Mr Rosenblum I Mr Bradley I miss Cavell I Mrs clim ktz I the motion carries that takes us to
the next recommended action and that the Board of Education award the replacement of fire alarm and graphic enunciator control panel systems including contingency funds as presented may I have a motion please so moved second okay any discussion I feel like we've been talking about this for a long time already okay Dr small is there anything you wanted to add okay roll call please miss Cal I Mr Rosenblum I miss Baron hi
Mr Bradley I Mr dumbrowski I Mrs clim quitz I the motion carries the next recommended action is that the Board of Education support Illinois Vision 2030 through the resolution as presented and informed the Illinois Association of school boards iasb of the adoption option through the Illinois Vision 2030 website may I have a motion please so moved second all right um we'll start with
Mr Rosen Bloom here thank you um as I mentioned last month at the Joint annual conference held in Chicago in November education leaders from five Statewide organizations introduced The Vision 2030 blueprint for excellence in K through2 public education Vision 2030 was developed through an engagement effort that included inut input for more than a thousand stakeholders including locally elected school board members Statewide
from the southern tip of of uh the state to Northern Illinois and it also reflects input from discussions with local Educators who work tirelessly inside and outside of school buildings to improve outcomes for children from all backgrounds across the state development of the vision 2030 blueprint was led by the Illinois Association of school administrators Illinois Association of school boards Illinois principal Association Illinois Association of school business officials and
Illinois Association of Regional School superintendents Vision 2030 is rooted in a shared belief that students learn best and Educators teach most effectively when they feel safe and connected to one another and to their communities this is the single most important thing we can do to support both academic achievement and individual well-being and it is something that has to be considered in our
instructional approach curriculum student support services and finances so that local districts have the resources needed to ensure that our school buildings are safe Vision 2030 provides a road map to enhance K through2 public education through future focused learning in shared accountability and predictable funding it articulates a shared commitment to putting systems and processes in place that support all
school districts throughout the state in Sharing what works for our kids and our communities and it details plans to advance policy legislative and fiscal Solutions leverage public resources and preserve local flexibility and Leadership so that the important discussions about curriculum and finances are made closest to home school districts across Illinois are being asked to express support for the goals
and priorities of vision 2030 by passing a resolution at a public meeting such as this it is important to note that the ability to demonstrate Statewide support for vision 2020 with more than 90% of Illinois school boards passing a similar resolution was critical to generating legislative support for the passage of the evidencebased funding formula tonight's motion
is to ask this board to approve our acceptance of the resolution as you have been presented in the agenda for this evening's meeting thank you thank you any comments or discussion I was um skeptical about this to be honest and I remain skeptical about certain parts of it but I will say um when
I was I I did I do like uh the statements on the mandates and reforming the Mandate process specifically classifying just you know necessary mandatory mandates and like more discretionary ones to try and get rid of some of these unfunded mandates that we deal we deal with every year because of the way our legislative house works you know they have this flurry of legislation and then rain down on districts all around all of these
different things that that and we have to stable so if that process could be reformed in the ways in which this document lays out that it's attempting to then that got my vote all right so thank you and I I think there's you know there's strength in numbers and having the different associations being part of this um supporting it um as you said looking at some of the mandates and you know looking at the the welfare and what is
best for our students so I think this this has a lot of potential here we've got a lot of information they're putting a lot of effort into it okay anything else um I I disagree with um some of the funding mechanisms for the countywide uh Capital Tax um additional taxes outside of the ptal and uh just some of the language that um regarding the funding and then as far as setting the standards below um where they're at now in order to more
align with a National Standard I strongly believe that having a higher standard and and reaching that goal uh as an aspirational U point is is more effective uh for goal setting than than lowering that and and um trying to do comparisons to other states I I think growth is more important than where we fall nationally so for those reasons I don't I don't support the vision
presented okay thank you any anything else any other comments or thoughts all right may I have a roll call please Mr Bradley I Mr dumbrowski no Mr Rosenblum hi Miss cavl hi Miss Baron hi Mrs clim Kitz hi the motion carries the next item is President can we just have a quick break oh if there's minutes I'll take a
quick break all right
okay
[Applause] world it's not
cheap myone set the temperature that's
a treat ischar that's a treat it is I first my coffee it's you know that's one of those gifts you would get for yourself but when someone else gives it you appreciate it
all right that takes us to our next item it's a discussion item um the high school credit for m328 Accelerated Algebra 2 and pre-calculus taught in Junior High um it was asked to be brought up this meeting as a discussion so I'm opening it up Dr small uh both districts 15 and 54 have taught this class in their schools in the
past uh they have chosen at different times to come back and switched it back to being taught at the high school depending on their situations within the junior highs uh we certainly uh can have a policy that is presented to the board in February for consideration for junior high credit if this is taught in the junior highs by qualified teachers and following certain standards um I would recommend that if the board decides to go that route that the junior highs have this as an opportunity to teach in the class and have um transcripted high school
credit but it'd be an option for them to take that and choose whether they want to do that in their schools uh have it taught in our schools for high school credit or taught in their junior highs uh just for regular Junior High credit right let's open it up for discussion Mr dumbrowski um thank you that that's kind of uh the direction I was interested in uh but is it specific only to this math course or could this
be a blanket policy that would allow for any course that might make sense um I know this policy would specify for this course at this time and I think that is exactly what we discussed at our last meeting that it' be just for for this I don't believe we discussed anything all we do is put item on wanted the item on the agenda for discussion to develop a policy that would cover this specifically and then to determine if the
board wants a policy on this correct and and my question simply is does it need to be specific or can we have a policy that allows us flexibility if there are um courses that get taught over the summer that might be a bridging course that might make sense to have it um at a at a uh more local facility than maybe a student that has to bus into our
school I if I could I'll go ahead if I could answer that question likely the policy would be a broad policy in reference to being able to earn Credit in that situation from there we would have anou with our beater districts like we do with other districts that would define it as this course to start in this case right for the board policy it would be something broad but for execution it would be specific correct thank you that
is what I was going to touch on I'm not I'm certainly not comfortable with a broad policy that allows um because we have two you know uh we're not trying not to use feeder districts anymore I don't remember the other sender sender districts yes because we have two sender districts of considerable size I would be very very uncomfortable with that sure um but if the specificity so theou uh similar to Theus that we sign with other local Village like our police departments Etc it
would be in a similar format correct it would list this particular course okay um so I I will say generally speaking because Theus that I'm most familiar with are the ones that we have with our Police Department again fantastic service with our Police Department very happy with that I um and I've made this plain before I am unhappy that those don't come up for regular review that that essentially they have kind of a they perpetually roll over without B
board oversight and I've said before that I'm uncomfortable with that and if that provision is in this hypothetical mou I will be just as uncomfortable with that too um I want it before boards for review but that notwithstanding as long as it would be a specific situation in terms of execution then I could be on board okay thank you I like that as well for our foundation schools to allow them I think that was what we were calling them I like that too for for them to
be um have the opportunity right um on a on a on a um one-on-one kind of basis right um I agree that it's it's good to have a broad policy that allows that to occur and then we actually look at when there's a request like this and and maybe we'll find other maybe the community or the parents and the students will find other courses that could benefit from this
type of a relationship with us um to be able to to look at putting other m in place to make that happen the only thing I I worry about is what do we expect from our teachers I know we've got you know over 12,000 students right here and the ones from our U sender schools our foundation schools you know those those kids are going to be coming here but
I'm concerned about opening up maybe a Pandora's box of wanting us to teach I don't know some kind of an advanced science or something else I'm I guess I'm a little concerned in regards to that let's see how how this is working and what kind of memo of understanding that we have um because that's that's where my concern lies as long as for me Madam president as long as the you know if we're assuming we're talking about the difference between it being taught on
our property versus with our teachers versus it being executed in one of our cender districts Pro you know uh most likely with one of their teachers you know those students I'm fine I'm more than happy to give those students credit assuming they fulfill the same requirements that they would be filling and they receive their inst instructor has the same qualifications that we would expect an instructor on our property to have like there has to be parody between those two things but um that was going to be one of my questions but when Dr small WR out
the information that she had here presented that was already covered in the language in which she she described it yeah I'm not worried about giving them credit I'm just worried about um workload well yeah the workload and what else are we going to put on on our teachers when those students are not here yet and and we want those kids we want the kids we want to be able to give them every opportunity but we also have to keep in mind of the students that we currently have that are registered at our high
school so if I'm hearing correctly um we will ask for a policy to be prepared and come back to the board and and again our our role as a board is to be strategic and the administration's role is the execution so I don't want to overstep our role role I think our goal is to open the door that allows for um opportunities for our partnering districts whether they be 15 54 or
some other school district um I I think that's that's all we're doing is we're we're just providing an opportunity even if it was something where all of a sudden the schools that are teaching Mandarin decide to accelerate and and make maybe be more proactive and and take their students a little bit further because they know they'll get language credit when they come to 211 so I I see this as an opportunity okay I agree Madam president I
see it as an opportunity but I also don't think that an opp like an opportunity comes with oversight that is that is the board's role to provide oversight and um those two things go hand inand you can't have one without the other all right thank you um just some questions if we have a policy like this and say you know our feeder or Foundation schools end up teaching this math course is that like an expectation
like moving forward or until we say you know this isn't working out um because I don't want to put us in a position where you know we put get this off the ground and then it's not working and then we don't have the teachers or we can't get the teachers to teach this course course and we're kind of back at the at square one if that makes sense so over time this course has been taught in different ways by different teachers um the key to all of this is that the decision
making occurs in early spring when we're doing all of our tallies and setting our FTE for our teachers so that's when Mr schum marker reaches out to say do you want the course do you want us to run it are you running it and then we have plenty of time to make sure that we have teachers um it becomes very problematic if it happens later than that and traditionally has you have you seen that back and forth of like we're teaching it a couple
years and it goes back and okay we're teaching it in person we're teaching it Zoom it's we're teaching it you're teaching it it just depends on the situation depends on the number of students they have probably depends on the teachers they have available I bet you there's many factors that goes into their decision and we honor that we have honored that decision over time and have conversations started with 15 and 54 as far as their interest level okay and they're open to it as well okay thank you anything else in
regards to that this my mind is just thinking about a a a situation that may be called dual credit where you know it's it's the next step in someone's education right but we're looking at it from from our foundation schools to ours versus ours to a higher education we do work with Harper College for dual credit um Harper College has
ve very similar to what we're talking about our teachers have to be qualified through Harper College to have been able to teach it at the college level before they would allow our teachers to teach it in high school for dual credit same situation we could teach the course ourselves without mating Harper stipulations give the students High School Credit prepare them for their next steps in Harper but they wouldn't have received dual credit it's the same
thing that happens now um if a junior high chooses to teach it without having the qualifications and the stipulations that we have for transcript credit they get Junior High credit they come to high school they take the next level math and they keep moving forward in math in high school any other questions all right and so the direction is clear all right thank you all right that takes us to potential topics
for future discussion Madam president I have one yep please um I propose that we direct as a board that we direct the superintendent to review the nonregulatory guidance on immigration enforcement actions issued by the Illinois State Board of Education on January 22nd 2025 and return to us with any recommendations for either policy or action
all right um Dr small have you seen that I have okay we do have policies that address it and I would be more than willing to bring forth information on that all right is there a consensus to have that information then for next month yes MH okay there's there appears to be consensus for it thank you all right um I do have u a topic also we had the um the mom of our our
young person at shamberg high school she spoke about cyber security can you provide us with some information next month exactly how we do monitor that and what we are what are we doing in regards to security for our students and the laptops and and things of that nature excuse me is there consensus for that yes it is scheduled to be a presentation next month already in the book oh it is okay then that will
be terrific all right I thank you very much is there anything else then okay all right that will take us to the committee reports and um I have nsseo I'm going to ask if you would open up the presentation I'd like to just take you through that quick nsseo started the Strategic plan they've had a number of meetings they've included our superintendant our business managers
our directors of special ed so this was a summary that was presented to us um at our January 8th meeting that our board the governing board uh ask that we share with all of our member boards so it was made up of a a number number of people the Strategic plan it had the planning session there have been presentations um they've provided updates they've taken a look at
the mission the vision the values and priorities the nsso mission statement is just as you know with any of our regular students it propels students with special needs to be actively engage citizens through Dynamic family school and Community Partnerships their vision statement enhancing students talents and dreams for a promising future they have it listed what their values are uh
being student center being person centered uh engaging students the families Community connecting and collaborating and setting a high standard for our students they developed some priorities looking at the fiscal responsibility continuous improvement process um defining the advisory and the governance structure and the most important also is recruiting and retaining high quality staff that seems to be the hardest thing
right now is having um you know the staff we've been very fortunate and been able to hire they talked about the action plans they're looking to take concrete steps towards achieving those priorities and they have a couple of meetings and I I didn't write down the dates um they've got two meetings for the strategic planning and we've got representation at at both of those meetings one was yesterday that I was in attendance at and another one is
next week okay um they identified priorities and this picture with the group was taken over at Timber Ridge in in the gym uh a wonderful opportunity for people to have input they talked about the instruction and the programming and again the facilities and the financing uh if you recall we talked about the study that they did to take a look at what the fa facility needs
are what needs to be repaired um the life uh of some of those uh equipment whether it's the heating things of that nature taking a look at that and seeing what needs to be done they also talked about the governance and including our superintendent more so in the information sharing between the superintendent from nsseo and all of the member superintendents just to keep those lines of communication open and
again looking at the the quality staff so a lot more will be uh presented at our February board meeting and then those items I'll be able to come back and present to our board so I talked about the next steps um developing the action plans and making certain that they do take a look at them annually uh updating each and um you
know working together as a group because we have eight member districts and there's a number of districts that we feed into so basically again they're looking the focus is on the future instruction and planning governance facility and finance and the high quality sta so those are the things that we're going to be looking at as far as the next steps that are taken to to get there um I don't know Dr small is there anything you'd like to add in regards to being involved in it it's
a good summary there's lots of good work going on there most certainly is um I'm just going to touch on two more things here real quick um the summer school for our students it's going to be decreased this year it usually is 84 hours during the summer it's going to go down to 60 hours and the reason being is the maintenance work that has to be done at a couple of the schools so they're going to be replacing some windows and they're doing some of the heating and the uh ventilation systems um usually
there's as I said usually there's 84 hours during the summer school which is great for the students and for for the parents because you our special needs kids sometimes can be very demanding and finding uh appropriate daycare for those uh Young young people is sometimes difficult so they're going to look at that we discussed it we also talked about watching to make certain that our students don't lose um some of
the abilities that they've gained throughout the year so they need to be monitoring that also um so that's the summer school and um we did have a support staff that spoke at our last meeting she had attended a conference and she was one of the very few attendants who spoke very positively about being a support staff in in a school district or a special
school and uh she felt really good and she shared that with us because it was important for her to let people know that she appreciated uh the administration for their support she appreciated her peers which was very important because they're they're supporting and she loves her job and the students that she supports so it was it was really nice to hear from her and her provide that information so I think I have everything from NSO and
uh if you have any questions all right then we'll move on to uh to edred and Mr Rosen Bloom thank you so um this coming Monday I will be attending Ed R's annual legislative dinner um it's very timely that this year's event is going to feature keynote speaker Noel ellerson um I don't know how you pronounce NG um she's a respected expert
on federal education policy and executive associate executive director of advocacy and governance at aasa the school superintendent Association her keynote will tackle the pressing this is what the announcement says will tackle the pressing concerns raised by the recent election results including the federal landscape priorities of the new Administration potential policies and threats state
level action and more the timely conversation will provide a road map for understanding the evolving education landscape and those of us that are going to be attending myself included we're going to learn how to take a proactive um approach in protecting and enhancing public education in Illinois so I don't think it could be any more timely that that that's what's going to happen on Monday and I look forward to reporting back during our February
meeting the information that's shared during that time okay thank you all right that will take us to our community and Family Services report um we did have a meeting for the month of December so our next meeting um the Palatine the up pal pal time sorry up Coalition um will'll be meeting Wednesday uh January 29th from 11:00 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Palatine Library so if anybody who is interested in
attending um you are more than welcome to join all right thank you um that'll take us to The District 211 Foundation report um the highlight of that I believe is that the scholarships are active and to my understanding we've got 25 scholarships available thus far and possibly you know have a few more all right then that takes us to our upcoming calendar and our next board
meeting is going to be February 20th all right the next recommended action is that the board enter closed session to discuss minutes of meetings lawfully closed under the open meetings act and appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of spefic specific employees may I have a motion please so move second okay any discussion all right roll call please miss Baron no Mr Bradley no Miss Cavell
no Mr dambroski nay Mr Rosen Blum no Mrs clim ktz no the motion fails that takes us to the release of closed session minutes the recommended action is that the Clos session minutes of June 20 2024 July 18th 2024 4 August 15th 2024 August 28th 2024 September 19th 2024 September 25th 2024 September 26th
2024 October 9th 2024 October 10th 2024 October 14th 2024 October 17th 2024 October 24 2024 and November 19th 2024 no longer require confidential treat treatment and are to be approved in place on file may I have a motion please so moved second any discussion roll call please Mr Rosenblum I miss Baron I Mr
Bradley I miss caval I Mr dski I Mrs clim quits hi the motion carries next recommended action is that the Board of Education accepts the retirement request of Katherine Boer effective June 2028 consistent with the master contract of the District 211 United support staff Barbara Kowalski effective May 2025 according to the master contract of the District 211 teachers union and Mark
Thomas effective June 2025 according to the master contract of the District 211 operations maintenance group may I have a motion please so moved second any discussion roll call please Mr Rosen Bloom I miss caval hi Mr dski hi Mr Bradley I miss Baron I Mrs kimowitz I the motion carries next recommended action is that employee Monique IG be suspended for one day without pay further that the board secretary
notifies said employee in writing of this action by the Board of Education may I have a motion please so moved second any discussion roll call please Mr dski I Mr Bradley I Mr Rosenblum I miss bar hi Miss Cavell I Mrs clitz hi the motion carries next recommended action is that the employee Wayne orus be suspended for 3 days without pay that the
Board of Education adopt a resolution authorizing a notice to remedy for Wayne orus and that such notice be provided to the employee by the secretary of the Board of Education may I have a motion please so moved second any discussion roll call please m Baron hi Miss caval I Mr Bradley I Mr Rosenblum I Mr nooski I miss Clint quitz I the motion carries next recommended action is
that effective July 1 2025 Thomas mokan be appointed as principal at Shamburg high school at a gross salary of 195,000 may I have a motion please so moved back okay any discussion roll call please miss Cavell I miss Baron I Mr Rosenblum I Mr Bradley I Mr dumi I Mrs Clint quitz I the motion carries next recommended action is that
effective July 1 2025 Ryan Zack be appointed as director of multilingual programs and community outreach at a gross salary of $157,500 may I have a motion please so moved second any discussion roll call please Mr Bradley I Mr Dum Broski I miss Cavell I Mr Rosenblum I miss Baron I Mrs clim quitz I the motion
carries and with no further business