PRESENT

Mike Brey, Alton CUSD #11

Vice-Chair Nancy Bradley, Bethalto CUSD #8

Bruce Dye, Collinsville CUSD # 10, arriving at 12:10 p.m.

Secretary Amy Jones, East Alton-Wood River CHSD #14

Todd Hayes, Edwardsville CUSD #7

Chair Cindy Gagich, Granite City CUSD #9

Larry Jones, Highland CUSD #5

Katre White, Madison CUSD #12

Marsha Ribes, Roxana CUSD #1 (sitting in for Steve Oertle)

Andy Brendel, Triad CUSD #2

ABSENT

Tim Reed, Southwestern CUSD #9

Chair Cindy Gagich called the meeting to order at 12:00 p.m.

Alex Gromada, Coordinator, and Kenny Roche, Employment Counselor and Lead Instructor, from the Southern Illinois Carpenters’ Joint Apprenticeship Program attended the meeting to do a presentation to the board. The gentlemen provided handouts and copies of the PowerPoint presentation, which lasted approximately 30 minutes. They invited students and teachers to their training facility and offered to do presentations at our schools if anyone is interested in that. They are tossing around the idea of a counselor program, perhaps a two-day event, that would show school counselors how the math the students learn in high school is applied in the carpentry program. Chair Gagich suggested that math teachers also be invited to the workshop. Chair Gagich thanked the men for their very informative presentation.

Highland made a motion to approve the minutes of the last meeting held on August 27, 2009, seconded by Triad. All Aye; motion carried.

The financial reports for August and September were presented. They are correct as written.

There is a handout of the bills to be paid for October. Highland made a motion to approve the bills, seconded by Triad. A roll call vote was taken. All Aye; motion carried.

Director’s Report:

You were given a copy of the technical assistance visit report that we had last spring. We are in compliance with all areas.
Please share with your school superintendents that, on the teacher service record, code 112 should be used for web design teachers. We no longer receive copies of those reports in our office. Please check the accuracy of those reports with your district office. Teachers may have up to 7 codes each on this report. It is important that our teachers are coded correctly. If their classes are not listed on this report, we are not able to fund them or their professional development activities with grant funds.
Janet put an Excel spreadsheet together for you that shows the old program names and the new CIP 2000 program names, and which schools are approved for each of those programs. When we get our regional data file back from ISBE, the new codes will be used. You also have a handout of all the state cip codes and which career cluster they fall under.
Cyndie attended a Dual Credit Summit recently. There were several heated discussions at this workshop. The one big thing they stressed is that these are college courses being taken by high school teachers and not vice versa. These courses must be taught by a community college instructor. If your high school teacher is teaching these courses, they must fill out an application and be classified as a community college instructor for the time they are teaching the dual credit class. The community college instructors may teach the class, but do not have to be properly certified according to ISBE guidelines for secondary teachers (academics and CTE classes). Cyndie stated that this means that the community college teacher may not be properly certified and would not qualify as “highly qualified” under the NCLB requirements. Cyndie said that there were representatives from LCCC and SWIC present at this meeting. Chair Gagich stated that this is how SLU handles dual credit courses. There was board discussion. Chair Gagich asked if we needed to make any changes in our schools unless the community college comes to us with these issues. Cyndie said that different colleges are handling this differently; however these new requirements are now law. Another requirement is that only juniors and seniors may earn dual credit. This will be a concern with freshman/sophomores that take keyboarding classes. Collinsville stated that the requirement used to state “16 years of age” and no grade requirement. Cyndie also said that the law references “mixed classes” are not acceptable, which means only students receiving dual credit may be in that class. This would be a problem for a lot of our schools. Alton stated that LCCC came to their high school principal requesting a signature on a dual credit agreement document that was just a couple of pages long. However, when they went to Cyndie for a signature, that document turned into several pages. Cyndie said that she spoke with Rob Kerr from ICCB about this and made him aware that we were not included in this agreement from the onset and were only asked for a signature. Cyndie also stated that another of the requirements of the law is that the dual credit course must be a part of an AAS program. The question was asked “what about certification programs?” and we were told that the courses must meet the AAS requirement. It was also discussed that each community college sets the Compass test requirements. Why is this not consistent across the state? Cyndie said that this was a very heated meeting. Chair Gagich asked if Cyndie would get the board members a copy of the law.
Cyndie was asked by a group of system directors and others, as the legislative consultant of ICTA, to share some information with them regarding CTE and how we can improve our standing with legislators. Cyndie spoke with Pam Weber, our lobbyist, and you have listed here some of the things she suggests we can do, since we are in a crisis situation. Cyndie did meet with Senator Demuzio in Carlinville last week and the meeting lasted about an hour. Senator Demuzio knew very little about CTE. She told her about our PLTW programs in our schools and informed her about our DECO health occupations grant that we are working on in some of our schools. She kept asking why her schools do not have these programs. Cyndie said that she wanted to talk to the Senator because Southwestern is a school in our district; however, most of our schools are in Madison County. The Senator asked which system directors are in her schools. It was a good meeting.

Larry Jones said that McCarter came to speak with Highland’s Ag students. He did a very good job.

Cyndie said that she will be meeting with Haine and Beiser in a couple of weeks. She plans to keep CTE in the limelight and meet with various legislators every other month or so. If any of you have connections or an opportunity to speak in behalf of CTE, that would be great. Many legislators have made the comment that they have been in the schools many times but have never been in a CTE classroom.
Cyndie emailed you about the Literacy Suite for 7-12 materials. We purchased this last year and were able to duplicate them for all our schools. She thinks they are about $249. She heard from Roxana and one other school saying that they are interested in these materials. Is anyone else interested in them? The board asked Cyndie to investigate whether or not she can duplicate these materials for all schools with one purchase price and what the cost of the materials is. Chair Gagich stated that she emphasizes to her CTE teachers that reading and math are stressed on the PSAE test and CTE must be able to validate their programs (since they are elective courses and always the first to be eliminated in the schools) to keep them.
None of our schools are meeting the non-traditional core indicators. ICSPS distributed a handout at the last system directors’ meeting (you have a copy), offering to come to do a free workshop for your school to help you identify problem areas and increase enrollment/retention to meet this indicator.
You have a couple of PLTW handouts. One shows all the programs in the state. The other is for high school and middle school state data. They are looking for schools to do a bio-medical program, possibly in schools that already have an established PLTW program. Alton said they once considered it but have backed down on it. Cyndie said that they might want to take another look at it, since they are a DCEO grant participant. Cyndie asked if Bethalto was still considering the PLTW program. Nancy said that they have a new drafting teacher this year, but perhaps in the future they would.
You have a handout that shows all our schools and the usage of Career Cruising in each school. Please look this over and if your middle/high school is not using the program, perhaps you could investigate why. We pay for this for all our middle and high schools. We recently held a workshop and discovered that the program has a lot of great new features. Each school is entitled to a free webinar this year.
We had another great year with the 8^th grade Construction Expo. We do have a problem with schools showing up late to the Expo. This runs the whole program way behind. Schools are to arrive 15 minutes before their session time, so that when the session begins each booth will have 10 minutes with the kids for conversation and hands-on activities. We had some schools arrive 20-30 minutes late, which cut the time in each booth for all kids down to 5 minutes and that just is not enough time for the event to be successful. We had one school that did not arrive at all. Chair Gagich asked that the regional office contact that school’s board member so that there could be some conversation with that middle school about this issue.
There is going to be a Midwest Technology Conference in St. Charles, MO. You have the website there to review the sessions. It looks like a great conference. Cyndie is registering the health occupations teachers participating in the DCEO grant for the pre-conference day. Cyndie recently went up to Wheeling High School, a DCEO grant pilot site. They are a year ahead of us in the grant. They are using moodle.org with this program. It is a great site where teachers can upload curriculum and students access the site. It is paperless. The site even does the grading. The students in the program were very excited because of the technology. Wheeling is a high school district and all schools in the district can access the site and use the same curriculum. Cyndie is going to investigate the possibility of networking our DCEO health occupations project schools so that they can all access the same site for curriculum with this project. Moodle is an international program and it is free of charge. The conference in St. Charles has some great sessions on Moodle and on Smart board technologies. You may want to look at the sessions and consider sending some of your teachers to this conference. It is not considered out-of-state because it is within a 50 mile radius of the Illinois border.

Chair Gagich stated that we have schools participating in a pilot algebra project and this pilot uses Moodle.
We have talked a lot about the core standards. Some of the system directors looked into that website and found out that the implementation of CTE is not as great as we were lead to believe. For this reason, we are not touting this as much anymore. We have bombarded them with comments. Our ISBE division is very upset. This is being written by college professors for secondary education. We are working on this.
Our program approval process will be done online, hopefully by next year. There will be a basic structure for the various program areas. If your school wants something different, then another process will have to be done.
You have a colored chart handout. We need you look this over and complete the report and get it back to the regional office by November 18. Cyndie reviewed the data with the board members and explained that if your school does not meet in any subgroup category, you must write a strategy for how you will strive to improve those scores (even if your school met overall in that category.) If there is a blank data area, this means that there were less than ten students measured and it will not be evaluated. You will want to read the attached memo which explains that some of the information may be used by proxy. Please get these completed reports to the regional office no later than November 18. We must compile them and submit a regional report to ISBE within 45 days.
We submitted the first quarterly Perkins expenditure report to ISBE.
Cyndie said that the entire state is having major issues with state funds. We have had four payments vouchered to us by the state comptroller’s office, but no state funds have been release to our office at all this fiscal year. We have received three Perkins payments, however (federal funds.) The Comptroller’s office seems to be picking and choosing who they pay. There are many system directors in the state that have not received a paycheck since June. Regional offices are closing. Our slush fund has been keeping our office going so far. However, of the $54,000 we had in the fund, we have now spent $49,000. We will put that money back once the state funds are received, but we do not currently have enough to pay salaries for our office for another month. We have received $118,000 in Perkins funds and will be forced to use that money for state bills until state funds are received. Then the money will be put back into the Perkins account. This is probably an audit issue; however, we have no choice. We were fortunate to have that slush fund to keep the office going this long. There was board discussion. Cyndie stated that the state is about 105 working days behind in state payments. The board agreed that they do not want the regional office to go without salary. The board wishes to keep the regional office open. The advice from the board is to keep $50,000 in the bank account at all times. Do not make Perkins payments to schools if the account will go below $50,000. Cyndie stated that St. Clair county has told Cheryl Hood that their schools will absorb the cost of running her office if the state funds do not come through. There was more board discussion. It was agreed that this board does not have the authority to make those decisions for their individual schools. If it gets to that point, we will have to discuss a plan of action. Cyndie advised the schools to plan on a 20% cut in CTEI grant funds this year. There has been rumor that we may not receive our last two CTEI payments. Please submit all your bills for items that have been ordered to the regional office ASAP. This will allow us to show obligated expenses, and justify our request for additional funds upfront on the payment schedule. We cannot obligate anticipated salary, however. Some schools stated that their districts have advised them that they may not order anything unless there is money available for reimbursement. Chair Gagich stated that these grants are always supposed to be supplemental and not used to run our CTE programs.
Bruce Dye said that Collinsville is having many struggles with the WIN program and asked if any of the other schools are having problems. Cyndie asked the board members to go back to their schools and talk to the teachers who are using WIN. Ask them to have all the students log on at the same time and try to do the placement tests and see if there are problems. Please report back to Cyndie very soon, so we can determine if this is an individual district problem or a problem with our URL site.
Dave Stoecklin from the WIB responded to Cyndie that they cannot fund the Work Keys testing this year. Cyndie asked if our schools are interested in giving the test and if she should try other avenues for funding. There was board discussion and it was decided that this is not Cyndie’s responsibility. If an individual school wishes to give the test and the certificate, then the schools should work on funding individually.
Cyndie just wanted the board to be aware that she is giving a presentation on Work Keys to an adult education group next week. It is a SIU adult education conference in O’Fallon, IL.

The board was asked to review the “Things to Do” items listed in the board packet. Chair Gagich stated that the Region’s auditor has requested that the regional office keeps a copy of member school audits since they receive funds from the Madison County CTE System. This may be an electronic copy of the audit and does not necessarily have to be a paper copy.

Under new business, Chair Gagich expressed that Highland and Granite City have students that sit on the ISBE student advisory council. They are focusing on high school drop outs. There are a number of businesses working with them. State Farm is one of those companies working with the student advisory council. Recently, the students help run a summit for high school students on Columbus Day. At the end of the summit, a student stood up and said that he planned to drop out of school but after attending that conference he has decided not to drop out. There are high school students doing a presentation at an adult conference in Bloomington as well. Chair Gagich distributed a handout entitled “5 Promises.” She stated that it is great that we have Madison county students on this panel.

Edwardsville is looking for a business teacher. One of their business teachers is out sick right now and plans to retire at the end of this school year. If anyone has a student teacher that did not get a job or if you know of anyone looking for a business teaching position, please contact Todd Hayes. Cyndie was asked to send an email message to the board members so that they can forward it to their business teachers.

With no further business to come before the board, Collinsville made a motion to adjourn the meeting at 1:52 p.m., seconded by Triad. All Aye; motion carried.