Across the Board in D303

Recommendations during Committee meetings go to the full Board for consideration, with final approval taken during future Regular or Special School Board meetings. This issue of Across the Board provides summaries from the following meetings:

• December 16, 2024 - Combined Meeting of the Learning & Teaching and Business Services Committees

Meeting memos, presentations and other documents in BoardDocs

Agenda items for Board discussion. There is no action taken at this time.

This summary combines both agenda items for the Mid Valley financial and District 303 financial agenda items.

Administration continually monitors the actual revenues and expenditures for Mid Valley and District 303 throughout the fiscal year and reports them to the Board on a monthly basis. There are no areas of immediate concern within the revenue and expenditure budgets. The reports presented to the Board are available at the below links.

Administration recommends that the Board accepts the Mid Valley and CUSD 303 Financial Reports as presented.

Community Unit School District 303 entered into a lease agreement with Wasco Girls Fastpitch Softball League in 2014 for the property located at 41 W.755 Silver Glen, commonly known as “Verhaeghe Fields.” This 11.5-acre property is owned by CUSD 303 but maintained and operated by Wasco Fastpitch, per the current lease agreement. The Board entered into a short-term extension (through December 31, 2024) with Wasco Fastpitch as the organizations negotiated a new multiyear agreement.

The proposed lease agreement has a four-year term, from Jan. 1, 2025, to December 31, 2028. The language in the agreement remains largely unchanged from the previous agreement, with only a few updates.

Administration recommends approval of the lease agreement between District 303 and Wasco Girls Fastpitch Softball League, as presented.

District 303 solicited a proposal from Microsoft to maintain software services for the District.

The Microsoft Select Agreement is based on the total number of full-time staff in the school district and includes the following software services: Windows operating system, Office Professional Plus, Desktop Campus Core Client Access License (CAL), Windows Server CAL, System Center Configuration Manager CML, and System Center Endpoint Protection. The total cost of renewal for the above services is $92,138.30.

Administration recommends that the Board approves the renewal with Microsoft at a total cost of $92,138.30.

The State School Code allows school districts to use “e-learning days” in lieu of "emergency days" when there is severe weather or another type of emergency. The number of e-learning days may not exceed the minimum number of proposed emergency days for an approved school calendar. The District’s e-learning program must be verified by the regional office of education for the school district prior to implementation.

The e-learning plan needs to be renewed every three years. The e-learning plan being discussed does not make any substantive changes to the current plan.

District leadership and the School Board discussed the importance of maximizing learning time and using e-learning days when severe weather closes schools. There was also a discussion about using e-learning days to ensure that the school year doesn't need to be extended to meet the required number of instructional days if there are several "emergency days" of severe weather that close schools. This school year's calendar runs later into May than is typical. The final day of classes (May 29) is after Memorial Day. The school year would need to be extended if "emergency days" are used instead of switching to an "e-learning day."

The District recommends that the School Board approve the three-year (2024-2027) e-learning plan.

Leadership provided an update on the evaluating of the D303 Multilingual Program.

Chief Academic Officer Dr. Christine Igoe and Chief Financial Officer Justin Attaway presented an overview of of the evaluation that will take place. The presentation contains two main parts:

• Explain how the Academic Return on Investment process supports informed decision making about programs and initiatives.
• Describe how we will use the Academic ROI process to evaluate multilingual services for our students whose home language is Spanish to ultimately make a recommendation to the Board.

Leadership expects to make a comprehensive Multilingual Program recommendation at the Feb. 18 meeting of the Learning and Teaching Committee. If approved, the new program would be implemented for the 2025-26 school year.