Board of Education Update: October 6, 2026

The Illinois Association of School Boards (IASB) gave an overview of the firm's process and services for conducting a Superintendent Search. This is the second of five search firms the Board will hear from.

In order to create the ideal Leadership Candidate Profile, IASB will:

Once a profile is created, everything is aligned to that profile -- the questions, how applications are evaluated, how candidates are screened -- are all aligned to what USD is looking for in its next leader. 

Q: What is the difference between a focus group and a question and answer session?

A: The focus groups are in person and at those we are asking what the district does well, what it can do better and what they are looking for in the next leader. The parent, faculty and staff Q & A is a virtual meeting to talk about the search process. This is not to gather feedback.

Q: We have six seats open in the next election. We would like to include the candidates who file in this process. What is your recommendation for how to do that?

A: You could add them to the stakeholder group interview session or have a separate stakeholder group with just those school board candidates having a group interview session with the Superintendent finalists. 

Q: Have you conducted focus groups outside of the school buildings, out in the community?

A: We can go anywhere the people are, often times they are held at schools, but that isn't a requirement.

A representative from Stifel gave an overview of potential funding options for the proposed Career and Technical Education Center at Urbana High School. 

The estimated cost of the CTE project is just over $14 million. The project would be funded with bonds, and the bonds would be paid back over 17-20 years with the district's sales tax revenue. This plan would not result in an increase to property tax bills.

The bond sale timeline takes about 90 days and requires a Resolution of Intent and a public hearing.

Urbana's total K-12 student population as of the 10th day of enrollment (Aug. 28) is 3,821 (4,068 if you include Urbana Early Childhood School).

So far this school year, the District has 58 reported Homeless Students, which is 1.35% of our student population. 

Housing - USD refers to the following shelters/providers:

Current state regulations require modification of the school code for full-day staff development days to count as student attendance days.

Illinois School Code requires schools to have at least 176 days of student attendance, with each day including a minimum of five hours of instructional time. To meet this requirement, regular school days will include additional instructional minutes. These extra minutes will be used to offset the full-day professional development days.

This proposed code change will be brought back to the Board for a vote at the October 27 meeting.

11.2 PRESS Plus 122 The board approved the  new, rewritten, or five-year review board policies that are included in the PRESS Plus, Issue 122 

The Board approved  a 90-day extension of the current agreement between Urbana School District 116 and Promise Health Care