June 3, 2026

Machine-generated transcript — may contain errors.

. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, good evening everyone.

Adequate notice has been given. Please stand for the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, can I get a motion to approve the agenda?

I move to approve the agenda as posted. Second. All those in favor? Aye.

Any opposed? All right. Public comment. Do we have any public comments this evening?

None. Okay. We'll keep it going. All right.

We will then go to our first presentation for the budgeted option. John. And John, while you're getting yourself ready, I'm going to say very nice things about you now. For those in the room or at home that don't know, this is John's last official meeting as CFO for the district.

And John, I think just on behalf of the board that we have just enjoyed working with you immensely over the past four years. You have been a tremendous advisor and good steward of the district's funds. We know it is not goodbye, but we look forward to continuing to see what happens next with you and staying in touch. But again, just really want to say thank you on behalf of the board and everyone.

Thank you for your kind words. As I've told others, this was kind of an unexpected adventure in my career, and it's been a highlight of my career. So I've thoroughly enjoyed the experience and working with the boards here. I really applaud the work you do because you lead well.

And with that, I'll be happy to talk about the budget. We're on pins and needles. So we made, at the last meeting in mid-May, we presented a preliminary budget, and tonight we're turning that into a proposed budget for next year. There were some minor changes made to the budget, not material too much in nature, but basically corrections that either we missed at the time for the preliminary budget or came up.

So we made some minor corrections that amount to about $63,000 of changes, increased spending in Fund 1 and about $197,000 of decreased spending in Fund 4, which was a duplicate entry. And we also added a number of increased or improved labels on the capital improvement projects and we consolidated the technology improvement plan at into one grouping and added some more descriptors to that as well So I not going to spend a lot of time going back through what we went through the last time We'll see if we can't advance this. I think it jumped more than one. Slow response.

So the budget has been prepared properly as it's required by statute and policy and it's ready for board adoption. It is different than prior years primarily because of the Prop O spending that we're introducing as well as some increased capital spending that's budget funded for a variety of projects. We have shifted revenue from Fund 1 to Fund 4 to accommodate that increased Kaplan project funding out of Fund 4, and you'll see the fund balance decline. It still remains in a very strong position for the end of, when we get to June of 27.

These are those changes that I mentioned just momentarily ago. The budget is balanced. Everything else in this page you've seen before. We have reasonably estimated our revenues.

I think we've done well projecting our expenditures. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. It's more apt to go down than to go up. When it comes to supplies and services, those are well programmed as well and mostly repetitive, and we pretty well know what they're going to be.

So we're pretty good at balancing out funds one and two. Fund three is totally predictable, very scheduled type of expenses. And fund four, with our capital projects, we're making reasonable estimates with them. Some things that can affect that is timing, you know, whether things happen sooner or later than we anticipate may shift costs from this year to the following year or even bring them forward a year.

But I think we've done a good job programming these particular projects. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. People feel safe in our area, in our schools. Strategic plan two, how we help them grow as learners.

Some of our investments that are making that happen. And goal three, how we support the well-being of our learners in head and heart. Revenue snapshot, overall revenue inflows are 130.2 million. Again, the big piece there that's unusual is the sale of bonds.

Voters authorized $135 million in April. We anticipate selling about $45 million of PAR bonds and expect a receipt or proceeds from that with premium of closer to $47 million. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Fund balances will end up the year with slight decline overall but mostly in Fund 1 Operating fund balances also show that decline As you can see we been as a percentage of spending we been in the mid We going to push down into the mid We have policy that says we'll stay above 25%, and as a matter of recommendation, I would try to stay above 35%, but we're in safe territory here with this change.

This is about the GO debt that we expect to issue. We have new existing debt that's paying down and will be paid off in two and a half years. And then we have the new debt that we expect to issue in about two or three tranches, with the first one being in the neighborhood of $45 million. Mr.

Nord may make other decisions from that, but I'll let him make those decisions and discuss them with you. The Prop O, as you know, is $135 million authorization, and that's what the voters have allowed us to issue. We cannot issue more than that in par bonds. We can realize more than that in proceeds if they sell at a premium, and that is likely to happen just the way the market is right now.

First tranche of 45 million is probably going to happen this fall. Here are the proper cost estimates as we understand them today. These have not changed since they were first developed in February. We are in the design development phase right now and by August we will have revised numbers.

At that time, I would hope to see some of the contingency numbers resolve, either move into cost of construction or eliminate themselves in some way. We also have the budget-funded projects, the CHF Performing Arts improvements, which are mostly noise and HVAC-related, the ADSEC field improvements to complete that project, and the WMS field. Again, these are total costs. Not all of them are facilitated within this budget, but span into the following year as well.

In our capital purchases, these are the projects that exceed half a million dollars. In Glen Ridge, we've got 28 million programs there, 8 million into the CHSCT wing, 9 million for Gayfield, Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. And with that, it's ready for board approval. I'd be happy to answer any questions.

The financial position of the district remains strong, and again, I'm pleased to tell you those messages. We're not in a crisis mode at all. We're in a strong mode, and I hope that continues. I'd be happy to take any questions or comments.

Any questions? Could we get a motion first to bring to the floor? I move to approve the budget for the 2026 to 2027 fiscal year, including expenditures sourced from federal programs as presented. Okay.

Any questions for John? I'll just say in case anyone's watching this and curious, we had a conversation about this budget two weeks ago. I don't have any more questions. I asked mine then.

I did have some questions by email, and I think I answered them, but I'd be happy to discuss them further as well. So I was questioned via email. Most of my questions, again, were answered two weeks ago in the preliminary budget session. I just asked for a little bit of follow-up on what those additional items were.

So thank you for explaining the additions to the summer camps and the student services that were not in there before. So good to have clarity there. Yeah, I don't think I have any further questions either. Okay, any other questions for John?

All right, then we'll take a vote. So all those in favor of approving the budget for the 26 fiscal year including the expenditure sorts from federal programs as presented say aye Aye Any opposed All right, thank you, John, and your team. The budget is approved. It absolutely is a team effort, you know.

We've got a great team in the business office, and all the building and program department leaders do a great job managing their budgets and making their requests and doing them in a prudent way. So absolutely, we agree. All right, well, John, I guess stick around. So we'll now move to the modular school facility at Fontbonne.

As you know, we've been working on a project to establish a modular school facility on Fontbonne campus. That's been our preference due to its location in relationship to Glen Ridge attendance area. We've been having success with Wash U developing an agreement. We're not quite there yet.

In the short term, we are working on an access agreement, and we've got the – it's been – they developed it. We redlined it. Now they redlined that. So we've got another version back that is being reviewed.

I think we're very close to having that signed, hopefully in the next few days. Then we'll be working towards a lease agreement, which I would expect to be presented to you in August. That lease agreement then will cover all the terms and conditions of our occupancy at that location. We've been working with Mobile Modular, who is out of Chicago, although I think they may be headquartered in California, but the regional office is in Chicago, and had numerous conversations over time.

We started the conversations with them because they were recommended to us by our consultants, Perkins and Will, who had seen their work on various projects. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. So as we have tried to develop this, we have not reached a final conclusion on some of the costs. I think we know the cost of the structures themselves.

There's a price when they deliver it, which is on my memo there of $1.3 million. There's monthly rent, and then there's a charge upon return when they disband the site. Those costs are fairly figured out. The costs that are not fully figured out are the site prep costs and some other amenities that we may add to the project.

Now that we're working with the potential of demolishing buildings on site, that will probably be done through the permitting and the project documents will probably be developed by Paragon. The Board of Education will be responsible for some of the utilities and grading, but that is still to be determined. So we do have estimated costs for mobile modular for some of those services, but again, the exact scope of work will be determined on the final plans when they're drawn up. Ultimately, we have worked through this and decided that it fit under our policies using cooperative purchasing and have worked through a cooperative purchasing agency known as SourceWell.

We're located out of Minnesota, and in that process, we actually were able to draw these rents down by about $114,000 through that process. So we caught ourselves at a meeting now in June and not another meeting until August, and a need to get this project advanced in the meantime. So we're proposing to you that you authorize us to work with Mobile Modular to negotiate and finalize and execute an agreement pending resolution of the various outstanding scope of work items and review appropriate reviews by legal counsel. Allow us to make this move forward.

I think our goal is to get the lease done by August, demolition done this fall, and this project begin coming on site in like January and be fully complete and set up by middle of May. So that when teachers are exiting for next summer, they'll be able to see the facility and start moving in and understand how it all operates, not have to wait until summer break is over before they see the facility. So that's the plan. Mobile modular understands that timeline, and they don't have an issue with meeting it.

So we'd be happy to answer any questions. Yeah, thank you for that overview. Can I get a motion to bring this to the floor? I move to authorize the superintendent and CFO to negotiate, finalize, and execute an agreement with Mobile Modular pending resolution of outstanding scope of work items and reviews by legal counsel.

Okay. Any questions for John? Just because this is a, it's not a real robust market as we've talked about, could you just explain a couple of the extra steps you took to ensure yourself that this was, you know, the right people to work with? I know you did some checking around.

Just state a little of that. Well, the first thing we did is went searching for another turnkey operation, and there's plenty of people that will sell us buildings and bring them to site, but actually assemble them the way we need them and fully prepare the site and connect them, that's unusual. So this company has a national presence. They do this nationwide and we then went searching for references.

We've had conversations with, I think, three different school districts, one in Illinois, one in Ohio, one in Florida, about their experiences. Spervantage, the one in Florida in particular, we had a Zoom meeting that lasted for quite a while from a massive district down there that has used these folks for years and puts up campuses and takes them down and moves them around and it's quite amazing what they do. The other districts are much smaller scale and have only used them once or twice for building projects very similar to what we're doing. All of them had very satisfactory outcomes with mobile modular.

The one in Florida in particular, it's unbelievable how big that operation is and how often they move these around and rehab them. But they gave us all good advice and satisfactory marks from them. And then we also began looking through ways to control our costs, and that's when we ended up on the cooperative side of things, talking through costs with SourceWell. And all of that has led to today.

Erin? Thank you for doing that due diligence. And I think just one clarification, when you refer to turnkey here, you're talking about the site prep, those things that you just mentioned, the connections, not necessarily like a homeowner who's like a turnkey vacation home and it's all fully furnished, right? So can you talk a little bit about like the furnishing situation?

So the plan will be to furnish these with furniture out of Glenridge. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. We'll put new furniture in that building. And ultimately, then the modular campus will be disbanded and any of our assets will be disposed of at that time.

Thanks. Just a phrasing thing. Yeah, I think, you know, when we're going to have new buildings, we need to have new furniture. And I don't think we'd want anything less.

The only thing I say is I just really appreciate the thoughtfulness around the timeline and getting this done by the spring so that Glenridge the Glenridge community can really have some familiarity with it before heading into the summer and all that And I think that will help their transition a little bit, too. So I just wanted to make that comment. Anyone else? Oh, sorry.

Go ahead, Chris. Along those lines, because you said that. Yeah, thank you again for all you're doing around this. This is an exciting thing that we have found a company that's able to do such a great, like, fast but also just really efficient work in terms of turnkey.

But I'm excited about the timeline, too, because it allows the parents, by then, you know, they'll actually be able to see the physical space. Even if they can't go in inside, I'm sure you guys will think about, like, getting them, how quick you can get them in there. But it's great that it'll be there in that summer. You know, they'll be able to see that it's there.

And then online, I'm sure by then, we'll have a bunch of great info about what it is, and you'll have all this information. So I just appreciate the fact that you're thinking about May in terms of, you know, so that all of that beginning thoughts and comfort level can start happening. So thank you for doing that. I should mention that one of the scope of work items we're still trying to determine is covered walkways between the facility and over to Dunham.

That's not in these numbers yet. But we're exploring that with them and how to make that happen. Because kids and staff will be going between buildings every day. Yeah, exactly.

So, yeah, with ICE, you know, yeah, that's something that, yeah, that makes perfect sense. So, great. Yeah, Meade, go ahead. Thank you, John, and thank you, like Aaron said, for all the due diligence.

And I imagine, yeah, this is a small market of companies that do this sort of work. So sort of similar to what Chris was saying, and I had some questions, and I thought you answered them really well, but I think for maybe this purpose, it's good in case there are people listening at home to know kind of how you're thinking through. You know, some people might think, oh, these are modular trailers that are, you know, each classroom is going to be in their own trailer, and to go to the bathroom, they've got to go outside. Spervantage, Restrooms, and then there'll be two more classrooms for specials.

And so they can operate within that unit. Currently, that fits our model very well. We're currently three classrooms per grade, so we can put two grades per pod. And we'll have three of these pods, and there'll be a separate pod that will have offices and additional support services within them.

So they'll be structured that way. These are long, modular units. Thank you. And then since, you know, we're all fairly fresh off the storm from last year, could you talk a little bit about sort of what you're thinking about or what the team is thinking about for a storm shelter and, yeah, whether they're going to fly away or not?

Well, you know, I mean, it does seem like we have had some stronger storms in recent years. These will be tied down like so that they just can't blow away. But, you know, they're not going to, if we, if they were to take a direct hit from a tornado, they're going to suffer quite a bit of damage. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried.

Spervantage the project around the Dunham Center which them for a long time and in many places chances are they experienced some weather there as well Yep for sure And yes, to your point, sort of just thinking around, I'm sure that the team is also, like you said, developing sort of safety and security. I don't know if there's going to be a perimeter around the facility. It seems like. Right, we plan to fence the perimeter of the modular school facility and playground areas.

We'll fence that in. There's going to be, we won't be fencing the parking lot area, though. I mean, that's going to be open, but we'll fence the rest of it. Okay, thank you so much.

Anyone else? All right, all those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

All right, it passes. Next up is student ready, success ready student assessment. Can I get a motion on that? Next page.

I move to approve the district's participation in the success ready student assessment pilot. Second. Okay. Hang in there, guys.

It's the last one of the year. All right. Any questions? Any comments?

All right. Then all those in favor of approving the district's participation in the Success Ready Student Assessment Pilot, say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

All right. It passes. Consent agenda. I move to approve consent agenda items 5.2 through 5.10.

I second that. Good, good. All those in favor? Any opposed?

Great. This is excellent. I got it. I got it.

I'm back on board now. All right. Board of Communications, I will start out by saying I should have said this at the beginning, but I do want to recognize that Pam is not here tonight. It is an excused absence.

We're upping our governance game here by noting that. No. No. All right.

CRSWC, Leo or Ben, has there been a CRSWC meeting recently that you'd like to report on? Sure. Oh, okay. We had the first post-election meeting of the CRSWC.

It was not in the normal quarterly sequence, partly to deal with the damage that was done by a storm a few months back. We also had the, you know, election of the officers, and we approved this new scoreboard for swimming touch sensor system for swim meets that was, you know, there was some discussion about that, and it's an item that's primarily used by the school district. The center is a joint school district and city facility, and there have been some discussion about how to think about that, but ultimately we concluded as a group, and I'm glad we did, that, you know, that partnership, which is basically a money-saving partnership, it's a dual-use arrangement, depends on it being fully utilizable by the school district for the school district part of those tasks. So we're spending money on something that the city maybe doesn't need, but ultimately we're getting this dual-use facility that is creating greater value for our community than it would otherwise.

And that was the conclusion, and I'm really glad we got there. Great, and thank you guys for your work on that because that is important. And it's worth noting congratulations to Leo, who is president of the CRSWC now. So, yes.

Moving on. Wellness. Chris and Erin, was there a report on the... No?

No. We reported that. We'll keep it going. Equity?

All right. Yes, we did have our last meeting of the school year on May 20th and reviewed the survey results of the staff survey Spervantage, the goal 1 initiative, and the goal 2 initiative. And then we talked about the way around interest in different types of affinity spaces And then also talked about the plans for professional development in the year to come with how that ties to the Goal 1 initiatives et cetera So I think, and also to SEL as well. So, looking forward to, actually, there'll be a new equity coordinator coming on to join Dr.

Poole in leading the equity committee next year. So, and thank Dr. Daniels for his service. Great.

Mead, the Tech Study Committee. Yes, we missed Ben. Ben was excused but absent. I brought my note, my doctor's note.

I brought it. Yeah. No, it was like the second to last week of school, I think. And, you know, that's, I was very grateful for all the teachers and staff that were there.

I know that, you know, in the middle of May, that's not a, you know, after school, that's a hard time. But they were there doing the work, and they're doing some really cool stuff. So they're split up, as you know, into groups of kind of the model of instruction group and the group that's dealing with AI. The group that's tackling the model of instruction is working on a couple of things, one being kind of parent-facing, so how are we explaining our tech use and what kind of, like, are examples that we can show to parents of the tech use that's happening in the schools to kind of enhance the transparency and communication.

And then something, and there's kind of discussion around how to make that, you know, is that like an infographic with, you know, different text parts and videos perhaps on a website and things like that, which I think is cool. And then there's the teacher-facing kind of component. So some teachers are working on like a playbook of kind of questions to ask themselves around whether or not certain tools or technology is useful or just thinking about what is kind of enhancing the project with technology. So that's neat.

And then the AI group is working on kind of a decision tree about AI and so when to use AI. And I think, and I can talk more, Luke can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the decision tree could be, is for teachers initially to think about kind of how to help coach their students about AI use. But also, kids are going to have to kind of go through a decision tree as well about whether or not to use AI. And then kind of categorizing assignments or tasks into three categories like red, yellow, green.

Red being obviously like we expect no AI use on this thing. Yellow being we might have this project be assisted by some AI. And green being maybe a little bit, I don't want to use like a lot of words. Spervantage, And I'm excited to see where it goes.

Thank you. Chris, SSD Governance Council. Yes, Monday was our final meeting for SSD Governing Council. It was a tough one.

Lots of people in attendance trying to – there are lots of passionate people around what's going on with SSD. And we did pass the fiscal year 27 budget. And, you know, that's a positive thing. You know, it's not easy to have to make the cuts that, you know, SST has to make for anyone.

So, you know, it's a heavy heart that, you know, you have to make cuts that are going to affect people's, you know, take home pay, and that's really rough. So one thing that came out of that meeting is that we know that SSD is going to be making some asks for some help. They just don't have a choice. Otherwise, they won't be able to continue to serve the needs of students.

That's where they're at. And yeah, the other things they discussed were the CSIP, the three goals of the CSIP, and that was great. We also tried very hard to elect another Board of Education, a special district Board of Education member that didn't happen again. It did not.

So what's great about this is there's this process with the governing council. So we elect their Board of Education members, and there's a process, you know, a set of rules around the way that happens. And on my four years on the Governing Council, it's happened twice now where we've had to take votes in multiple different meetings. This is the first time where it's now going to a third meeting.

So we, luckily, the president of the Governing Council suggested there is going to be a subcommittee created to go over their rules around electing people. Maybe he's making some new bylaws, et cetera. Is that because you need 50% plus one and they can't get there? Yeah, yeah.

Does someone get eliminated like off the bottom No No It very interesting And again it worth looking at because we come to this so many times Because what happens is you go around the table. There's a role call. Good. Yeah.

Come with me. Be my, like, attendant at the subcommittee meetings because it's fascinating. What's that? Oh, okay.

No, yeah, let's chat. No, it's, you go around a roll call and, you know, there's 22 partner districts sitting at that table, right? And we, you know, there's been, you know, you have stuff, you know, pre, before the meeting, you read about the candidates, et cetera. At the meeting, there's predetermined questions that they answer.

We can't sort of, I think in most of them you can't even ask anything off the cuff. It has to be predetermined. Anyway, you go around the table, if everyone votes a certain way, you just vote again. Everyone votes the same way again, you just vote again.

Yeah, three times in a row, everyone, nobody changed their vote. Well, guess what? We didn't get to ask them any more questions. Anyway it a problematic system and I happy to be a part of making sure that we get this done in a way Because guess what The Board of Election of the Special District is really critical more than ever So yeah I going to put some time in to helping them make sure we make a streamlined election process That's awesome.

Thank you for that. Thank you for your work on that, Chris. It really is important. And then, Ben, Parks and Rec.

Parks and Rec. Yeah, it was kind of a couple of interesting things. So first of all, the tennis center lighting is going to be replaced in the next couple of weeks, or at least in phases. I don't know, for those of both the school, the district and community that use the tennis, which is, you know, it's very used facility, the lighting is like, you know, not the best.

So it's going to be great. The other thing is that the Hanley House, as most of you may know, is one of our great historic treasures in Clayton. It is being reopened, kind of not full-fledged. It had a lot of challenges with the building but they been able to fund certain kind of critical ones and looking to do more in the future But one of the things that was mentioned is there used to be a school district Hanley House kind of connection I think there was some involvement Superroportionate Proposition O levy agenda motion carried Agenda.

They have partially funded. It's been, it's passed city council. So the project is green lighted. However, there's still some budget or fundraising to be done.

I was not aware. I was always under the impression that the city had the budget to do the whole project. Apparently not, but so be it. So may take a little while for that timeline to actually be realized.

Thank you. Great. I think that's it. So on behalf of the board, I hope everyone has an excellent summer.

Oh, you have one more. Yeah, well, I just make a comment. Sure, go for it. I was just going to say happy summer, and something I did just want to throw in there is happy Pride Month.

Happy Pride Month. Yeah, yeah. Thank you for saying that. You're welcome.

So happy Pride Month.