congratulations [Applause] thank you foreign I just wanted to thank Mr Caldera for the opportunity he gave me whether it was the IB program or introducing me to the questbridge scholarship um I also want to thank my family and everyone who supported me along the way and for the people that are not here um special thanks to Ms O'Neill and Miss Hernandez in the College and Career Center without them I don't think this would have been possible just absolutely outstanding congratulations congratulations I there's no words mom to stay as a mom how proud I I see the excitement in your eyes and I just want to say you know what this recognition is not only for him but for mom and family because it takes a lot of support for an individual to be able to achieve this and you just put us on the map again and so I'm so grateful that um you'll be attending the College of your choice full ride I can't wait I can't wait to see what happens good luck [Music] congratulations Elias and that's such a great scholarship I am so proud of you as a board member I'm happy to be a board member sitting here today knowing that our student from Azusa Unified School District has received this fantastic scholarship and I want to thank your teacher Mr Bob Collier also who are leading the way and this is we have great staff we have great students and this is an example of what's going on today thank you everyone we're now moving to item 6.4 all right good evening uh board president Beau Board of Education cabinet and attendees I'm just so excited to be here tonight because we have an Azusa first so I'd like to introduce uh first Lisa Aguilera our American Sign Language teacher here at Azusa High School come up and join me before we present our special guest she's going to present to you one of our extraordinary Azusa High School students um I was lucky enough to um land in Azusa and then have this opportunity to help navigate the Seal of by Literacy for American Sign Language and so today Lisa Aguilera gets to present to one of her students the first seal of bi literacy in American Sign Language like if you work before we call her up so for everyone as I know that we have deaf students in and we have deaf so um forgive me if my communication is um first of all I'd like to say that Ariana is the first student to receive the school she worked very tough um we have to remember that she started in my class as a freshman she spent the first semester in person second semester she did it online her second year of being in uh the third year so she learned this language third language so this is true all of us that if we challenge our students and expect by results from them we can back um Ariana three weeks four get spent one year not in my class with so with safe Practice coming started before school during lunch time and when she was able to ask very now I know um after she finished her interview admitted and when the interviewer asked me I knew um they wanted to know how long had been a student and if she had some basic knowledge language and I don't know I started out with cheers it was state so again lots of another thing foreign ified School District uh certificate of recognition is proudly presented to Ariana Hernandez Enriquez for earning the state seal of by literacy in American Sign Language dated for today and signed by our superintendent and our board president and we just want to say I mean once again congratulations this is awesome you earned this um and we're just so so grateful for uh just thinking this incredible achievement and thank you for being a first uh here within our district [Applause] just one more thing to um to talk about um Ariana [Music] for the State of California only one thousand people have taken this test he's one of the ones hats so less than a thousand that's one of them thank you [Music] the dedication that um you have demonstrated Atiana is to show that when you want something really bad enough you're going to do whatever it takes to get it so that just that's one of the characteristics right you were there in the morning you were there in the afternoon during lunch you wanted this so bad got it and we can't feel nothing but being proud of you and especially putting us on the map again for being the first student here in our district to earn that deal so whenever you're down just remember you accomplish something not anybody in this district has done so congratulations Ariana I want to congratulate you also I think it's really great and so that means you speak three languages right so you're bilingual and that's going to make you a lot of money so hopefully I see you standing by the president because you know there's always someone there doing sign languages hopefully it's going to be someone from Azusa High School so we'll say I know her congratulations me I'm proud of you [Music] I echo my colleague sentiments and and maybe we could not just the president but maybe even the Super Bowl oh yeah congratulations to all of our athletes scholar athletes Scholars language Learners um as we wind down the end of the 2023 school year there's so much to celebrate so many next Generation so many firsts um for your family and for our district and so we are just so very proud of each and every one of you are we ready to move to item 7.1 um Now we move to public comment on agenda or non-agenda items um hope are there any blue cards in in the room I'm seeing no one in person Mr Sanchez is there anyone uh on Zoom for public comment there are no hands raised thank you moving to item 8.1 board member Rodriguez Pena good evening everyone I just want to announce that I did go to the end of the year Hospitality luncheon it was really nice the food was delicious they had Raffles games and I want to thank the hospitality committee every year they put this end of the year uh luncheon on and it's was really great bye people and also on the AMA the the Azusa management association end of the year celebration it was great to spend time with administrators away from the working environment and I loved how they had that preview questions they're really they were really interesting but I did win a Starbucks card I came in late but I still won so thank you uh Amy and have a great summer Mr Greer I have no comments this evening bye mija we will continue with item 9.1 comments by student board members superintendent and cabinet Miss Ortega thank you Dr bo uh Mr Sanchez do we happen to have uh either Carolina Dominguez or Natalie De La Cruz online neither has joined the zoom I'm sorry one more time neither has joined okay thank you um wanted to uh get into the chorus uh congratulations to the sports teams and to the students uh tonight that were being recognized um once again just a testament to um everything that the staff uh invests into our students uh and it's not just the teachers uh it's teachers of course in the classroom it's classified staff uh supporting uh the students and administrators and just extremely proud of our of our students and recognitions tonight um also want to say that um we are now at the final stretches of a school reorganization phase two um I want to again just show a lot of gratitude to the staff that has put in a lot of time to prepare us for the opening next year uh when we will be a reorganized District um so many moving parts and I just want to be thankful uh to to put us in a situation um to be able to move in this direction uh with as little hiccups as possible and so just want to say thank you uh for that and then uh for uh for those of us that are able to disconnect uh this summer I hope everyone has a a good uh summer break uh this summer thank you I too would like to congratulate all of our uh students that were recognized this evening on all they've accomplished um and also highlight um our summer programming that we have going on in the district um we have our CL Summer Bridge which is a professional learning opportunity for our teachers but also benefit to the students as well um they will be um having a gallery walk highlighting the work that they did the last two weeks this Friday at Valleydale school we are also hosting summer programming for our elementary students our middle school students and high school students across the district as well as our gate students and our think together program is running concurrently as well we have just over 500 students participating in these programs this I've been leaving I want to um use my time to um thank Brian Allen and his team Robert zamore Anthony Macias we have a lot going on right now as superintendo Ortega just alluded to um we have the move going on we're almost 95 done with moving all of our large items um from our campuses like for example Gladstone to Azusa and all of our um schools that will be closing this year um we also embarked on the deep cleaning where we're cleaning all of our campuses from top to bottom so we're excited about what that's going to look like as well as our playground installation and I just want to use opportunity to also thank more education for approving all of this work and entrusting us to get this done and then lastly I would like to thank the city of Azusa as we have been informed that they are ready to start the path of travel or the sidewalk or crosswalk for the past or travel so I just want to thank them for their efforts and their collaboration and good evening as well I want to report that the human resources department has been busy filling our uh openings in the certificated and classified ranks um there as Miss LaTasha was just pointing out there's been a lot uh we've been um I'm doing as a district and the HR offices making sure that we have our key um Personnel in the areas where we need to be um the beginning of the school year and I also want to just take this opportunity to thank the board for their work and also wish everyone a happy summer break thank you so much moving to item 10.1 approval of the consent agenda is there a motion motion to approve second moved and seconded any discussion seeing none will call for the vote and the motion passes 4-0 moving to item 12.1 presentation of 2023 California school dashboard local indicators Ms Garcia Medina good evening president Dr Beau board members cabinet and I am very pleased to be here this evening to share with you our California dashboard local indicators for 2023.
Android 2021 and it's continued to today [Music] so what she started [Applause] thank you so much so at this time we will take a brief recess feel free to grab a teacher if you see them take some pictures foreign thank you [Applause] we would like to present a mini library at tamale school there will be many benefits like easy access control we will also help encourage students to read more books students can find books they like and share with their friends reading is healthier for the human brain than playing on screens as some students in the school like to be on their phone we attend to plant flowers on the top of the library which will beautify the school it may inspire people to guard this can be eco-friendly because people can donate books instead of throwing them away this will be reusing and helping the biosity technical difficulties okay okay hello hello so this will all be built for from us um we are going to gather supplies uh and build this by hand just ask oh my God it I'm sorry um okay so we're gonna have a bracelet sand fundraiser for uh for our um for the build for the building project of our mini Library courtesy of um [Applause] thank you for your time [Applause] for the board members this will be on our agenda later this evening to accept but we just wanted to thank the girls thanks again so much good evening everyone we had a great committee meeting several weeks ago we had several presentations I'd like to speak about tonight first one was from our new director of ESL and World Language instructor changes have occurred in New Jersey completely um the current recommended terminology describe students that speak English as a second language or a multilingual Learners and another change that's coming up is multilingual Learners districts will Anatomy to start identifying them at the Pre-K level which is a little bit comfortable uh so uh the doe prescribes different models of instruction that can be used for districts that serve multilingual Learners and those models range in everything from English as a second language to sheltered instruction programs to bilingual programs and to dual language programs and the code basically prescribes that if the district has more than 20 students who speak one particular language we need to establish a bilingual programming from those in particular Dr Heisman did a wonderful job of explaining what we currently offer to support multilingual Learners through ESL Services shelter instruction to give the board some perspective that number is currently at about 500 students and there have been a number of programs that have been designed to support those students and in the upcoming years we'll be moving to offer not only ESL and psyop programming at the theater six level but a quote by Lincoln program at that level and seventh and eighth grade ESL and Scion and high school level ESL sign up trained teachers as well as a bilingual math program she also spoke about some scholarships that are available to staff members who are pursuing certification in ESL or bilingual certificate as you may know these are staff members that are very much in demand and can be very difficult to locate so the district has put together a great plan to develop the talents of our own staff members and develop them Dr Heisman also spoke about some wonderful achievements that are from our students we had a number of students who entered into the Spanish Honor Society and the French office society and 35 students who are in concealed by letters itself we have a wonderful population of multilingual Learners here in Bound Brook our programming is getting better every day to support those students and they are achieving in ways that we can really be proud of as a district moving forward Dr Heisman and the team will assess how these adjustments are working and we'll also be pursuing the question of whether or not a dual language program would be appropriate for our school districts our second presentation was from a wonderful high school student Anthony Chavez who spoke about the idea of creating a newspaper Club at the high school he had a really thorough and well-developed presentation for us about the merits of that program how it might be published in multiple languages it really allows students to develop their their writing skills and create such community at the high school the board is excited about that idea and the committee was certainly in support of us we had two wonderful presentations that I think left all of us who attended excited about the work that's going that's fantastic thank you Mr Johnson any questions okay governance had a very short meeting this month some of the items actually we will be covering tonight one of which as I think everybody received from their email will be completing that Freedom's evaluation via a special meeting next week I believe it's on the 27th so I just want to make sure everybody got that news and is able to attend that I anticipate that it'll be a short meeting it's not going to be it's really just one executive session so it should not be very long but that is next Tuesday week from tonight um the only other thing that really we needed to discuss briefly about we had talked last month about the use of buildings policy and that being updated Ms javorsky is near completion at this point may even be completed he said you'd have it ready for us but just know that our policy is being updated that it's uh better knowing it's going to better protect us from an insurance standpoint it does have nuclear elements to raise funds from if we rent out the buildings to outside agencies so we should have a presentation or you know small snippet on that next month and that's really all we do we discussed for governance very efficient and good questions as possible um buddy we um we went through open positions and transfers that we'll see on this agenda transfers existing staff to new or other positions they don't need it enrollment has is complete well there was an increase of Staff who advice originally negotiations great thanks very much any questions on your resources okay Mr Zucker operations operations is always but include so first of all I've got operations come into it today keep working for giving us some really good news first station business we talked about was uh transferring and money into Reserve accounts from [Applause] the 25 million reserved and 2 million into convenience explained to the committee that many economists are participating recession discuss about the other thing um that I'm excited to talk about is that I've heard this in the past one I wanted to thank again it was divorcing the new administrative team talking about the grant applications so uh and he recommends that we can considerate a resolution to apply for research thousand dollars finally we talked about fixed assets results see if it was one and then last year this was Overlook resulting in the spot of recommendations Mr Morrison can you just go a little bit into not to the devil just explain a little bit just discuss this into the committee yes there is a auditing requirement it's called gasbee34 and it came about years ago as the accounting profession is always changing in the modeling and this Consolidated the different funds into one government-wide financial statement and for the first time required school districts to record a depreciation charge oh and last year the district had not performed this function and as Mrs us had suffered an audit recommendation so on the agenda tonight is a proposal for a fixed asset firm to come in and um a praise all of the district assets over two thousand dollars and greater by putting those barcode sticker on and then it will automatically calculate depreciation that will submit to the auditor and that should take care of that requirement appreciate that uh we also talked about a food service I was surprised that the committee was a little surprised that only um the committee recommended the resolution and talk about this now Mr Mercy outline the RFP in the services provided provide what food service management companies do I know this is a tremendous undertaking and uh all right I think there's been both of my children [Music] um we also have to take a look at all the construction and the town there was a little uh retainable I was kind of shocked to see it but uh in the back yeah and we had also talked about the committee discussed um looking at the committee that had assessed with a discussion on performance of architectural services so that one project we start talking about architectural services options a change in architecture Professional Services to allow additional time [Music] children and yes other than that the operations community and Minnesota is a very thorough time thank you Mr Selco any questions I think the only thing that I would point out is in our operations committee invading in some of the United States there are a significant number of weapons that get discussed in committee and are on our community tonight so just pointing out that the transfers are under uh the adjustment to a new architecture so just recognize that those were outings [Music] on operations okay um and we took a look at the breadth of the athletic programs within the district um the programs coming into the middle school and we also took a look at the head counts for each one of those programs um we discussed a little bit about clubs and how the the clubs within the district are getting started uh and you didn't have a discussion over the stipending fund to give into clubs and are looking at different options to maybe get Clips started uh earlier than the three-year limit that we're at right now so we're going to be coming back to that revisiting that and seeing is there any other options around I think at this point because this committee is kind of a startup starting a brand new looking at Athletics and gloves we want to really get a first look at the overall enrollment where we have growth where we have clubs that use more growth um that was great any questions all right and last but not least I want to go to sue for the source Academy of Educational Services Commission it was a long meeting it was this is every other month and last month was the reorganization meeting and what they did during that meeting was there was election of the four directors um the executive committee and their all students elections in New Jersey school boards Association and then they had the meeting dates Etc that they also had a lot with um just identifying you know the bank and who uh the holds which cafeteria Student Activities petty cash Etc um okay they also did just a location of programs just a lot with job descriptions because you know versus their work and they're getting new stats there was a lot of that the regular meeting started with the superintendent's report and they started the year with 97 students end of the year with 140 students they have 75 students who either graduate and moved or went on to a higher level of care and one of their goals next year is to really look at the students with the higher level care and how they could meet their needs they have an esy program also that takes places in the summer their graduation was today at 10 o'clock in the morning the biggest change with ESC was uh Transportation where they had just um offer Transportation they also facilitate and administrate the uh the transportation they are eliminating the busing program the public and non-public busing program um they're just looking at the sale of buses and equipment that's something that I know that we've also looked into um here's another very good reason was the lack of drivers where you know there's been a lack of substitute successful electric drivers all across the state so that was a duration um they are going to continue with the administration of roots so you know the districts and have those said that it's not placed on the um any you know Administration in the secretaries Etc um they will be keeping one person uh excuse me 324 passenger buses for ESC and the superintendent highly recommended the mechanics and the remaining bus drivers said they're excellent but because of you know they have eliminated the program those people have therefore they don't have jobs now and actually that was an hour and a half wrapped up in a few minutes very nicely done yes any questions or comments any other questions or comments in general awesome great job everyone at this point we'll move on to uh agenda item 5.1 which is open to the public for agenda items for anybody interested in making a comment please write your name address uh and public participation is limited to three to five minutes of duration and no participant makes people once on the same topic until all others who wish to speak on that topic don't everybody is this open to the public open to public agenda I am seeing none thank you thank you all right at this point we'll move on to item number 6.1 approval of the minutes from 5 15.
you did it [Applause] foreign [Music] so much [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] this is [Music] [Applause] yesterday thank you [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] [Applause] but I retired in January and I'm so glad that Mr Russo has asked me to speak tonight about this amazing class I got here they weren't even born and they have really left their Mark here and I want to talk to you about it but first to all the parents and grandparents in the room to friends and relatives to Mr Russo Mr savior Miss love Mrs Quigley our Board of Education members our president with Dolly Jones our Vice President Joe melanchowitz Kirk Becker David D Ambrosia Sarah McDevitt Juliana Reed Ted by Talley Kristen Wilson and Sean Walton thank you for your work your hard work as board members to our minator Thomas Michael to our council members John Shirley is in the room to our PTO president's Tanya and Amanda Eldridge uh uh Frank deloria uh to the class of 68 Deborah spring spearing read to Justin condolucci who was going to get an award tonight uh to our invited seniors that will be graduating tomorrow night that are getting Awards of teacher staff retired teachers are here and of course most importantly the class of 2023.
so still um still leaving us with about 11 11 million dollars in fund balance in Medicaid and then Community Education we always share the Enterprises this has been a very positive circumstance for both Community yet as well as nutrition services where they continue to thrive and improve since the pandemic has waned and the same thing with nutrition services and sr3 we're sharing this information sr3 represents the large portion of federal one-time dollars that will be that is required to be totally spent by September of 2024. and this set aside of 3.75 million dollars right now we are anticipating will go towards offsetting the cost of the K-12 math adoption that's expected to start soon for the 2024 school year along with being able to fund intercessions for both fall and spring break and giving us one last opportunity to pay for summer school next summer so we expect that all that money will be definitely expended by September 30th 24.
that is obscured slightly by what are called on behalf payments for TRS and so actually when you're looking at um we scroll up just a tad Holly at State sources you'll see that the state of Illinois is going to contribute something on the order of 30.7 maybe 31 million dollars to this to our finances this year and that's a little bit of a misnomer because the on behalf payments that the board that the state of Illinois contributes for our teachers salaries for their pensions is estimated to be 22 million dollars so there's really only about nine million dollars of actual contributions of cash that's actually coming into the district's coffers and then being used to spend directly on programs there's also when you look at support services that are excuse me payments to other governmental units you'll see 23.8 million that's the the 22 million the other half of that 22 million is in that number so there's only about um 1.8 million dollars in payments to other governments so some of this stuff we try to represent what the bottom line number is but sometimes we have to uh make some adjustments so that all the numbers foot between all the reports that we submit and it can be confusing for folks what we want you to take away from that document is is the vast majority of our expenses comes and are paid for with local property taxes local property taxes are very expensive and they fund the vast majority of what we do in our schools and it isn't the case elsewhere but it is certainly the case here and the the and the citizens of Batavia do make a real and genuine sacrifice when they when they send in their property tax bills for the students of Batavia let me say it's not that way everywhere do you mean the state of Illinois is different than other states or well certainly the state of Illinois is different than other states because as a matter of fact Illinois at toward the bottom of what it contributes as a state toward education although we spend more than the vast majority of other states what comes from the state coffers is a relatively little and across the state how um education is funded varies by the local school district and primarily by the ZIP code those that can afford to pay for it do and those that can't have to rely almost entirely on the state's revenues which is limited so um we're very fortunate to have what we do have but it makes it is very much a challenge to make all the ends meet at the end of the day and meet all students so if you go to the next page Holly you give a summary of the the funds you know these are six funds here are what we call the operating funds and these the funds that we or transactions out of day to day and month to month the other funds which are capital projects and our debt service funds those are funds that don't see transactions generally in a given month they're you know a couple times a year to pay for either big projects or long-term debt um but the good news here is that we expect the totality of all these funds together to have a surplus that Surplus is uh 2.9 Million and we're going to spend a little bit more in those not non-operating funds and that brings our overall Surplus between all funds together at 2.7 million dollars give a little bit of a breakdown on the subsequent pages of where that money is coming from will keep going until we get to the pie chart and this gives you a breakdown of where money comes from so that giant blue wedge that's 68 percent is local property taxes and then those State on behalf payments are are almost 17 percent but if you excluded that 17 obviously it changes these proportions dramatically and so 80 plus percent of all of our revenues if you exclude those on behalf payments come from local taxpayers a very little amount of money from the feds now money from the feds if you scroll down just a tad there please Holly you'll see that Federal money is declining over the prior year and that's because we're spending the Esser funds or the pandemic emerging emergency relief funds and those those revenue streams are are dwindling and going away and all that money will be spent in totality in fiscal 24 and it will be gone by the week by the time we get to fiscal 25.
that was also with health health services that needed to be completely revamped because there was a lot of old language in there in addition to that change we had the wrong name of the medical form it was it's actually called Med a not school medical medication form doesn't seem like that big of a deal until you're a parent looking for it and then you're like but that's not what it's called so we just made sure that that was all the same thing so that is on the bottom of page 20. okay um the next one in the student address section we did make sure that we added that it said board policy 7160 and we did remove the language that says students may carry a small bag or purse as long as it does not disrupt the learning environment or post a safety threats uh purses and small bags may be able to fit into an 8 by 12 by five box there was a lot of discussion amongst the team and we decided that there's a lot of kids that are already carrying bags in our inuitive bags especially with the amount of students that we have in hallways and passing periods being only four minutes and being able to get from one side of the building to the other that it was necessary for them to be able to carry what they need the next section was on page 36 back in January there was a change of classroom being removed from transcripts and student recognition was being changed instead of going from uh laude to summa laude now we are going with the top five 10 and 15 percent to be recognized at the end of the school year and then we did have to update quite a few things to align with our current curriculum guide so that's starting on page 38 going all the way through page 40.
I have to learn from my mistakes if I can take the test again I may do better and I'm not talking about a multiple choice test where you could memorize the questions and the answers but the kind of Assessments that we're giving where kids have to demonstrate their skills where they have to show us what they know and show us what they're able to do so surely if a student wants to continue their learning why would we want to stop them and specifically this policy supports folks who may not learn as quickly as others who might need more than one chance to demonstrate that they know something or who maybe just take longer to get it so the Equitable grading policies focus on what does the student know and what are they able to do it doesn't look at sort of external factors like the timing and you know if they didn't bring a pencil or something like that to class this is a timeline that explains a little bit of the work we've been doing so the grading for Equity committee began meeting back in December and from December to February we were researching this text and there are also other resources that we consulted that are included in the references at the end from February to April we had weekly meetings where we were working on the development of the policy looking at the types of practices that we would like to include or that are suggested to be included and making sure that it needs sense in may we presented to the staff and put out a Google form for them to give us their input um once we got their questions and suggestions we did respond to those I believe Sue shared that out with the staff recently and then Here We Are Tonight June 2023 hoping to present to the school committee for your approval if this is approved and we move forward we will be looking at A Five-Year Plan of implementation which will be matched with a five-year professional development plan where we would take time to work with the staff and make sure that they're able to incorporate these practices into their classrooms that we can support them in any training that they may need or asking and supporting any questions that they might have um moving into the summer we have posted for a teacher implementation focus group who will meet over the summer to look at the practices and make some recommendations on how we should Implement them more practical since the teachers are the in the classroom professionals when we're with them in the summer that's when we'll be able for them to give us real guidelines on what makes sense for implementation that we may not have thought of since we're not in their shoes and then over the course of the 2324 school year up through the 27-28 school year we will be continuing with this PD and monitoring the efficacy collecting data and making tweaks as needed so I'm going to ask Ryan to come up and Ryan is going to go over the Equitable grading practices with you and um hello everyone so as we introduce these grading practices just to comment that these aren't in any particular order but again these are our research-based practices that ensure Equitable grading for students we can go for the first so one of the first is the elimination of the zero to one hundred point scale the traditional 100 year old uh zero to 100 point scale is is skewed toward failure most of the points that a student is able to earn you know zero through 59 are failing grades so what this would do is make a minimum failing grader of of 50 such that a student yes they can still fail but a failure is not such that it would put the student in a position where they could not Escape that failure and move into passing um another would be the elimination of zeros zeros will no longer be recorded in the grade book for missing or incomplete work they will no longer be given for cheating plagiarism rather the student will be required to redo the work again if giving a student a zero this doesn't give the student an opportunity to or the teacher to understand what that student knows it is only when the student does the work that we can make a measure of whether or not that student understands the standards and whether or not they're they're making progress in those standards so essential to this as well is alignment to standards and or specific competencies assignments and assessments must be aligned to standards and competencies to be entered into the Gradebook excuse me so for example a assignment that for maybe turning a syllabus in with a signature is not a learning assignment and is not a part of the state of the the course standards that would be an example of a compliance-based practice that we must move away from so students receiving credit for merely complying is something that we're trying to move away from new learning replaces old learning if a student retakes an assessment the new grade they receive is the grade that is entered into the grade book if someone gets their driver's license and they fail the test the first time they don't not get their driver's license or excuse me they take the road test when they pass the test they get the license new learning replaces old learning students can make up work so students can make up late or missing work so development of a district flow chart of a timeline for the late or missing work will be developed and shared as part of this new policy so it's clear as to what the timeline is for students to be able to complete their assignments points are not deducted for late submissions only demonstration or performance in relation to the standard or the competency is grading is the student where they need to be in their learning of the standards points are no longer deducted for late submissions of assignments credit the credit is no longer a part of the student's grade extension activities that engage students in deeper learning are there for the purposes of feedback and acceleration only we're trying to measure if the student is meeting the standard rubrics and criteria for Success these will be required as part of assessment so it's clear what the students are be grading against and what the student needs to do to meet the standard so doctors Stefano is going to come back and talk a little bit more about perspectiveness in the real world thank you so I know a lot of the concern that people have Arisen is about what about the real world what about when the kids get to college or what about when they're in the workforce how is this going to have prepared them so to speak to that a little bit um myself as a parent of currently two college students I think the times from when we were in college are quite different I know my children come home with their syllabus they have suggested due dates and the professor then expects them to sort of monitor their own time meet the expected due dates or at least have things you know by the end of the semester when my children have reached out for extensions has never been an issue um k295 reference your experience Kate Burnham works as a professor in the evening at Framingham State and she teaches Masters level classes and her syllabus allows for flexibility in due dates um that really is more of the trend in college education these days in fact one of the articles that we included in your packet for research is from Harvard School of Education where they are talking about rethinking grading and the woman who wrote the article her child is actually a student at Melrose High School which is one of the schools that is participating in the pilot program with the state this year so it's a very interesting read I would encourage you to read it if you have time because it looks at this from many different perspectives from the educator perspective from the parent perspective there's also information from some of the administrative and teaching staff that are working at those schools that are part of the pilot specifically there's Melrose High School and Riviera High School are mentioned in this article so let's talk about the real world we all have jobs we all have things that we do in the real world and I think most of us would agree that um it's okay to make mistakes at work because everybody makes mistakes but you have to have an opportunity to correct them so if our students are learning and they make mistakes and the solution is well you got a 30 because you made too many mistakes is that what's important or is it more important for the student to actually learn all of those things that we wanted them to learn does it matter on what timeline a child learns or does it matter if it takes them more than one chance to master something or is it more important that they Master it and are able to learn it so this policy this philosophy of grading really focuses on um again measuring so that the grade reflects what students know and are able to do it's not do they complete their homework do they you know raise their hand in class those things are important but they don't tell us ultimately what a student knows and is able to do when we compare it to the standards that the state issues or the competencies that the state issues for its cvte curriculum and as Educators that's our job to make sure that the students are meeting the standard and to support them in any way that they can and allowing students more time to learn if needed allowing students multiple opportunities to demonstrate their learning if needed those are important pieces of being successful right if if we teach you that when you make mistakes that's bad and you get a bad grade that takes away from the learning that can come from mistakes because kids become a free to make mistakes because that will damage their grade and there's a lot to focus on learning rather than the author refers to point collecting where kids do things to earn points but ultimately they don't know why they're doing them or what the real meaning behind them is because they're trying to get those points because they know that they need them so when we talk about the real world I just took a quote from the book and I'd like you to listen to it because I think it really applies to many of our students at greater Lawrence Tech and creating systems such as this were based on finding ways to support traditionally marginalized students students who may have had prior bad experiences with school students who come from families who might have had negative experiences with school and it makes it a more welcoming and supportive way for them to learn so when we talk about the real world let's recognize that when we assert that the real world is something outside the students comprehension a world they can't even imagine we risk delegitimizing and dismissing their experiences their world of social pressures caregiver child Dynamics media influences physiological changes is quite real to them for those students who witness or experience violence psychological trauma substance abuse poverty and home instability their lives can't be any more real ironically when we suggest that the that only the world outside of school is real we devalue the realness of school in our own work here considering that most of us have spent at least 16 of the most formative and consequential years of our lives at school and that we as Educators devote our professional lives to the world of schools it seems strange to dismiss the entire institution and experience there as not being real and authentic moving forward we have been looking at implementation so these are some additional learning opportunities and supports that would be available for staff beginning next year and through the 27-28 school year obviously much of our professional development time would be devoted to this we'll be having a school-wide training on how any effects this might have on the grading software itself next to our Aspen we have posted and hired um grading for Equity teacher implementation group that will work with us over the summer on really fleshing out the nuts and bolts as to how this would be implemented we're going to do an open book study for anyone who isn't interested in being part of the committee but wants to take part in a read and discuss of the book um there will be excerpts from grading for Equity utilized during the new teacher orientation we could also assist staff with uh using our individual instructional coaches to support them and whether it's redesigning assessments or helping them to figure out ways to measure what students know and are able to do and then we will have again through the instructional coaches some mini PD sessions offered over the course of the year next year to help support folks in working these practices into their regular practice oh there's some references uh in case you're interested between besides Mr Feldman's book we also looked at works by Thomas gusky Robert Marzano Doug Reeves and Rick warmelli they're all well-known researchers in the field of standards-based grading and standards-based education which is what a lot of this mirrors but specifically I just want you to know that as a committee as a team we have worked really hard since December we've been very thoughtful about what we wanted to put forward to the staff and to you tonight and we truly do believe based on research and evidence-based practices that this policy in these practices represent what is best for students and what is best for um supporting them through their learning and we would not be here putting this forward to you if we didn't believe in it and if we didn't feel that we had done the our due diligence before bringing it to you and are you going to go to this note so in the slideshow there was a link to the a draft of what the policy would look like you should have that in your packets as well as it would be in the slideshow that's a two-sided document one side shows the language of the draft policy and the other side shows you a plan for year one implementation we didn't plan out the years after that because a lot of that planning will depend on how it goes and the kind of feedback and data that we collect from the implementation thank you for listening to us tonight I appreciate you for giving us your time thank you if you could we might have a question or two Frank did you have a question um thank you and so I'm looking at the four the four or five schools that you have here taking off the top of my head another one compared to our community and the population we serve I'm sorry sir I can't hear you I can't hear you either testing that's better thank you I'm looking at the two four five schools there you have here listed yep um and I'm off the top of my head I can't see how any of these matched our current population um how long has this been implemented in these schools what has been the data that has come out from these schools um and that's part one I'll let you answer that one okay so in terms of the demographics I can tell you Revere High School is a very diverse Urban High School the charter school in Springfield is also a very diverse School South Shore Tech I don't believe is as diverse but it is a vocational technical school so we thought that was exciting that they were part of the pilot program Melrose is a more middle class less diverse Community um but I the whole um purpose of this rethinking grading through Jesse and the grading for Equity is to really try to focus on um students who have been traditionally marginalized or underrepresented so really um our demographic is the demographic that they were thinking about when doing this research yeah I'm aware I've been sitting in those destinations for or longer than I care um and I'm aware that where we we have to go through a change but the other thing is when any change in their curriculum it takes two to four or sometimes six years to see any results what kind of changes does this bringing to our curriculum um because once again but I'm looking at I'm not seeing any results from the communities that would research unless I'm going to have to go out there and look so this is the first year of the pilot program so I would assume that there will be data coming out as the school year comes to a close from the Department of Education with those five communities South Shore Tech has an extensive website that you can look at where they chronicled their work this year and developing and they're going to be implementing next year so there may not be that data available just yet but it was a three-year grant program that those schools are involved in and this was just year one so we might not have that hard data just yet um okay and some of the things you have here I'm in total agreement with um because we have to give provide those opportunities yeah but some things I don't agree with is um in in a lot of colleges are moving towards a different format but deadlines definitely have to be kept in place I mean do we not do we fault them because they couldn't make the grade or the deadline um I don't think so but right these are things that we have to really look at that's a lot of the discussion um the only other thing I wish just would have been present to us in September that way we could really dig into our a couple of months before the last meeting that way we could really look at it dissect it because we have to make a choice of where we're going to use this or not and based on what I got today and and probably the only member here that has sat through most of these things and I know what's going on um but I still have some concerns when it comes to to this stuff especially when it comes to piloting a program that we don't have any measurements towards um because now we're gonna we're asking our staff to start taking on this responsibility and our students and then we have parents that are not gonna understand the process and we members on this committee are going to have get calls and questions on so forth on all the regulations and we're starting to digest the pack the policy um so although I agree with some a lot of the stuff here there's still some concerns I have I have listened to staff more importantly I'm looking at the communities that we that we have here and from my knowledge just because it works good in Springfield doesn't mean it's going to work good here so we have to I wish I had this in January we didn't have it I said I wish I'm not full to you I know that a lot of hard work and everything went into this because this is um this is good stuff this is a step in the right direction because at the end of the day although we're pilingated now are we getting mandated to do it later well that's as you can see with Jesse working on this our anticipation would be that this is something that they will be bringing forward across the state if there's usually you know that's how they operate they start with a a pilot program that's Grant funded and then they do tend to um run with it from there so this may be something that will be coming down the pike to us from Desi this will give us a chance to get ahead of that and to form a policy and practices the way we want them to be formed um not necessarily how Desi is mandating things so it will give us some time to maybe get ahead of it before it does become a mandate from the state so correct um Neil so my my other thing is is our curriculum changing yeah so this does not affect curriculum it would affect assessment and assessment practices teachers would still be teaching the same content teaching the same way the same lessons the same Hands-On instruction this would be more about how they're assessing if the kids got it or not okay um so the other thing is how much so this is going to be starting in September so if you take a look on the back side of that draft so you have the draft here on the back side of it there is a implementation plan for year one so this that one that has the actual policy on it right so there's a policy here for implementation for year one um what we have thought about is not taking all of those practices that we shared with you tonight and on the first day of school saying we're running with all of these we realize this is something that will take time that staff students parents families will need time to understand that you as a committee will need time to as you said digest and process so we will look strategically at the practices and choose practices that make sense to go together to start and so we will probably start off the year implementing some but not all because we do need to give as you said people need time and support and training so with the implementation group and the grading for Equity team here we would make some proposals as to which practices we think we should start with and then which ones would take a little more time to bring on board a final question have we take taken a survey of because I don't see any data here of the staff and the students I'm requesting how this is going to we did not survey as we didn't want to get ahead of it before it came to you so it was shared with the staff we shared a Google form with the staff where they had an opportunity to submit any of their questions concerns comments you know what didn't we think of and then we responded to those sort of in an FAQ document so that we could get back to the staff with um answers we also met with a group of Staff they wanted to come and talk with us so we had a meeting with them to hear their input and you know that's really going to continue in the summer with that implementation teacher group what about the parents so after we have a policy that is approved and we're ready then we would absolutely meet with students and share it out with parents and caregivers and I would assume that there would be some kind of nights at the beginning of the school year where we may be part of our back to school night is where we talk about the new grading policy The Freshman day when they come in you know we would talk to them about that too so that it would be clear up front one final sorry one final question um so as we rolling this out in the staff are starting to learn this we're not going to hold them accountable or penalize them for a failure to understand this that would be pretty hypocritical wouldn't it after all this just questions could be raised I mean yeah so I want to make sure that we're not going to hold anybody accountable because they're starting to learn a new procedure like I said it takes time to learn anything new um it takes time for anybody to start really implementing and taking things into account especially when we are talking about a pilot program and we don't really have any successful data out there from any other communities thank you thank you okay uh I've got a correct a procedure problem because I should have got a motion in a second before we discussed anything it was my fault Frank can I get a motion to discuss this please so move second any discussion on that all those in favor Jen uh you answered my first question the rollout for Mr savoir um slowly I am asking uh patience with the faculty I am one of the ones who were beating up Mr Lavoy about the grading policy last year and this year we do need updates we need I don't want to use the word change people are afraid of change we need to update our grading policy that being said I am one of the vocational Learners on Ryan's schedule for 100 years and as a vocational person I know that the superintendent has been watching our bath there is no coordinator for the vocational end here can I ask Miss Lindsay to come up and sure and so you know Mr hit him Lauren Jones was on the committee with us the whole time she just happened I'm not blaming anybody how much just a vocational learner Joe all right well that's Lindsay's my question my question to a vocational person if I'm working on a seat belt if I'm teaching seat belt safety to a 12th grader and I've done it all year and the best I can give them is a 40.
and that could be you know broken apart in many ways too okay but I don't know how others feel they feel that's of importance again this these are not necessarily goals as I talked about these are just areas to review attention concerns of the board that we will pass on to the superintendent when he comes on and he can approach these as he has time because he will be working this is where we would put policy to because and the policy meetings we were talking about a lot of policy work needs to still be done too I think that would be part of the general goals okay because uh to rework the policies that would that where we need where we think we need policy work I think that'll come out in our September uh board Workshop about setting goals on policy curriculum even more on the financial side of things with what we can expect so I think that's a good point though any other questions okay I I also mentioned to everybody that we the goal of this board has to be more driven towards um the subcommittee work the committee work of curriculum policy Finance CIP and then the negotiation teams and it has to be equitably uh spread out so that the workload is being shouldered by equal amount of members on the board so what I've done is I've re-jiggered this a little bit uh on on committee assignments the chairs all stayed the same but we've we've evened out the uh the committee assignments pass those out so what you see is in adman policy Joe scheiler will stay will remain as chair Peggy Cindy and Ryan uh will be on the policy committee on the curriculum committee Erica remains his chair and Kim Felicia and Peggy are going to go to curriculum and finance Russell remains a chair and Kim Ryan and Joe are on finance CIP will stay Russell is chair because of the financial impact and Erica Cindy and Felicia will move to uh CIP CIP meets infrequently um I thought Felicia could remain as our Communications and publicity liaison she'll be working with Kira and John and making sure that our Communications get out I know we have three contracts is there all four contracts coming up for negotiations you know I believe three three the three you have listened right so teachers Paras and custodians are going to go into negotiation uh in 20 uh this fall so on the teachers I think I've talked to Ryan and Felicia and Cindy about leading on uh teachers on Paris it would be Joe Russell and Kim and uh custodians will be Peggy Erica and Russell all right because of Finance being in in these meetings um won't be at hopefully they won't be as uh time consuming but what I am going to do is I I'm going to take the superintendent out of um those those negotiations he will consult but he won't be lead uh because I wanna I wanna keep the superintendent out of is managing and I don't want him also in in the trenches trying to negotiate where he's upsetting you know his board members we might upset people on what we have to do representing the town but I don't want the superintendent to to feel that Flack so uh especially when we get to teachers we'll be working with board attorney but Ryan Felicia and Cindy Perez again Joe Russell and Kim custodians Eric and Russell and of course I serve as uh by uh by Charter I serve as ex-officio on all those subcommittees and I try to make as many as I can and I'll be at the um I'll be at the negotiation meetings too so I'll lend as a fourth so I'll be the fourth wheel on most of this any questions on assignments I I asked earlier if there was anything specifically that you wanted or didn't want nobody really responded to the uh to the assignment so uh I feel that if if you have a question or an issue you can you can certainly approach me on it and we can see what we can do and and again I know that um policy and finance are going to meet before board meeting so that can make it convenient for folks curriculum is the only one that will be meeting um primarily during the day because teachers are involved sometimes students are involved so that that's why curriculum um I I hope that works for Kim Felicia and Peggy um I thought maybe day meetings are a little bit more flexible for you guys if if we um I know we're allowed to bounce around to otherwise oh of course tending like like say there's a policy meeting and I'm not on policy and there's members who aren't going to attend um for whatever reasons it's almost helpful to know so that we could bump in to support because we really need a certain number to attend not that I want to add myself or somebody else in but if you understand what I'm saying like the work needs to be done so so I like I really care about policy and I'm not on it but if someone's not going they're not going to attend and we know that then maybe we could adjust so sure to bump in as that extra support I mean typically we try to post an agenda for these meetings and I think the um the respectful thing to do is if you can't make it and sometimes you can't make it you just have to report to the chair to the appropriate chair or or that chair can also let folks know that we're a short one for policy or we're short going for that's an excellent point Kim but if we are down one uh and like I said I'll try to be that that fourth wheel or that that felon for most of these meetings any questions so that's that's uh my report that's it for time so now I get to go back to John and uh John a couple things for us yeah absolutely um I'd be happy to be able to give you a little bit of an update on the um the space work that we're doing with fire architecture they are currently in the process of um connecting with the state looking to be able to determine um the possibilities of the um uh the reimbursement that the state would provide for US based on the types of possible projects that we may have in place for us so they're trying to be able to bring forward a good Financial picture for us to help us in making our determinations they're also uh I've asked them to be able to work out a reverse timeline of what things might need to look like for us depending on the um types of of build or or whatever project we might look to be able to go into with that so it would give us a better perspective on what we need to be able to do and set our level of urgency to go forward um I expect to be able to have some conversations with them in our board and Leadership likely in the month of July to be able to start moving lower that word forward and then the other update is we continue to move forward with the Cherry Brook Primary School uh principal search uh Russell thank you for being on board to be able to support that we continue to do well as a working group to move that work forward and excited to be able to see that um bring yourself to a completion at some point so John just to back up on the space sure um there is some Financial uh requirement if if we're looking at Cherry Brook for Portables and that's why we're going to go to town leadership which is for Selectmen and the um and the board of Finance chair uh and we've been keeping them right along but there may be a um a dollar amount that has not been I don't believe it was budgeted right um any no not not not for this at this point so we may have an unbudgeted expense it may come out of CIP it'll be up to where Finance wants to I'll go with this but we we've been meeting with Finance right along explaining to them where this is going and they've been very supportive but uh in order for us to move forward with anything we're going to have to test Wells and and septic and other things and there'll be a little bit of expense to that and and I want to thank uh Tom Richardson and Donna misskowski for their partnership and making sure that things are lined up to be able to make sure that we can continue to do the work are being taken care of so far for some of our fields at Cherry Brook having the opportunity to be able to do the septic uh the septic review um and uh beginning some some connections to see about the the next steps of work that we'll need to go on there but another another step will be coming forward with the RFP process of them moving on there hey John are you aware of the uh the Cherry Brook Dust Bowl situate you know where that stands for Donna perchance I know that the I think that um actually I'd rather not say if I don't have the correct answer for interesting yeah so we've we've gotten some we've got numerous uh over time parents asking about Cherry Brook School by the um playscape Joe you know that dust bowl that is just stripped down it's hard pan so um a parent today met with the first selectman who was very upset about uh that particular area however and he wrote me a note too and I responded that Donna does have a plan for that we're not sure yet if it's going to be um if it's going to be hydroseeded or it's going to be topsoil and seeded we're not sure yet but we are going to fix Cherry Brook Field and the point of getting that field to the left is you're going through the driveway and it's kind of roped off now because we're not allowing cars to park that will become the Playfield because the field that we're going to fix is gonna have to be roped off and children can't play on that probably all fall won't be open until the spring I hope the children will have that field to the left to be able to utilize and of course we've lost the front field because pfas and we will do the parking on that side so whether that gets a little bit torn up it's going to be torn up anyway it's going to have to be replanted so the Overflow parking will go where the snow fence is you know over in that area on either side by the way so just in case you're you're cornered by someone in the public that said um I'm not happy with cherry book we aren't either uh with that particular piece of property but we're going to fix it to that I do understand that there's going to be work that's going to be happening either end of uh July or early August and that's where we were trying to plan the septic um exploration prior to that I'm just not sure where they're what they're choosing to do just yet right any questions for John [Music] then uh tonight uh we have uh posted the Pitbull and Dr Kidwell here to go over to neosh report and also the uh their continuous Improvement plan and I'd just like to add an echo what a great job you did on graduation and the building will break and the fact that the rain held off from everybody looked and sounded excellent so thank you good job thank you okay good evening everyone thanks for taking some time tonight to have this come forward we're very excited to be here so we're understanding that this is the fourth ish report that that from the schools that you will be hearing so we're going to try to keep it brief please know that we could talk frankly for hours about how excited we are about how our year went uh we've had great successes we continue to have some challenges we won't talk for hours we're going to try to keep it brief um for you but please know I'm going to kind of speed right through but knowing uh that if you need something that will happen to answer any questions at the end in general I think we've had a great year um I feel like um a lot of things came together through the course of the year a lot of challenges were met um you know can you mentioned a little bit about um you know social emotional um awareness and and kind of teacher morale and and there's an arc to the to the school year without a doubt I think we finished something real high and sometimes you have to get to the end to kind of look backward to see the growth and I think in the last two months of the school year um with a lot of positivity around student growth around some of the opportunities that students have during the school year left us feeling um like it was fulfilling school year and and that made us feel great but the numbers um you know don't always bear that out I think in this case we sort of see both we see some really positive numbers and we see uh kind of a feeling of positivity um and some Focus points for next year as well um so I want to thank everyone for their support and um I do believe some of some of the decisions that were made early last year during last budget season really really helped this year run well and I feel like some of the the budget um decisions that were made and supported throughout this year's process will your benefits next year based on this year's model so there's a lot of um kind of a nice cycle of utilizing thinking and implementing that we've been doing and I do want to mention as they jump in that anything that has happened here positively is really based on the teachers hard work they continue to be committed they continue to be dedicated they continue to kind of work through a shift you know with our students and making Necessary modifications especially flexibility I want to use that word with staff at the high school there's a tremendous amount of flexibility that has to take place to kind of meet the needs of students because they sort of come out um them with different um social emotional needs different motivational kind of contacts and then clearly what was always sort of uh struggled a little bit with or you know it's always a challenge is to kind of close gaps so those three sort of moving Parts have afforded um teachers to think differently a little bit and I think as a result um they've shown just a ton of flexibility to get students to to their next year whatever that might look like every year um as we know you know we have academic and school climate goals I want to speak just briefly about that the academic growth that we saw this year at the high school unlike the middle um and CIS Cherry Brook you know we don't have the layers of measures incremental measures that they might have we have a more generalized measure around sat um that is summative in nature and therefore maybe not as effective in seeing things like at a pinpoint but it does give us a global understanding of process and progress in in how it's going so as we talked about in November we say that you know we want to see an achievement it will advance as measured by this PSAT sat work there's tons of mini layers in that meaning we have 8th graders ninth graders 10th graders 11th graders all on sort of an arc of taking a particular test we do some things in between the tests um in each subject area to afford students opportunities to develop skills and then you know the next October we'll take another test um and so what we said as a goal this year where we had several mini goals but for tonight's purposes um I just want to highlight two pieces because I just feel like you get really in the weeks right and we have next October November if if we want to talk more about it so one thing I do want to talk about is that first Red Bullet the aggregate score from 2022 PSAT 11 to 2023 sat will increase by 20 points and then the second one eight percent of students the fourth floor down uh will individually improve during this Administration that we took um last March okay so it's pretty recent so we could jump to the next slide a lot of numbers here but I just want to give you the good news um is it okay if I just going a little bit sure absolutely please do so um to make clear to clarify the blue numbers across are how many students take the test the first number here average total score is is the cumulative number so what we see in this First Column is eighth grade this is our sitting these numbers represent people who will be seniors next year so they finish their junior year so we have five iterations of tests that they've taken you can see that when they took in eighth grade this was their score when they took an evolving test this was their score in March this is as a school The Hope was that we grow from the from the October sitting to the March sitting by 20 points if you grew by uh about 50 points okay that's our that's the biggest jump we've seen in several years okay you know I could almost end the presentation now okay um so that's great to see I also want to highlight down here that this growth in math of 30 points the last six months of the school year is market right a lot of hard work is paying off you can see some some years of struggle around here not a lot of growth not a lot of growth and this was really our our struggling years you know you can see two full years of students you know kind of the norm back these are these are numbers that we had kind of pre-covered so I do feel like when we're talking about like where are we I do feel like we have sort of re-grounded ourselves in our Norm here at Canton of what we'd expect from students so this is really good news for reset we're way above State we're way above benchmarks in the state this was The Benchmark for the tasks we can see that we're you know about 80 points above and there's always a confusing question about the math benchmark versus the The erw Benchmark this is reading and writing and this is math The Benchmark is lower therefore you know we're more successful it seems but at the end of the day you can see that the scores themselves are very close these red yellow and green numbers indicate students achieving this benchmark since achieving its benchmark you can see that 10 more students see The Benchmark in five five months okay that usually doesn't happen that's just just a big jump for students so these are all really good news like we as a you know generally speaking our students did better as a school and we can see that number um we'll know against how we did against you know other schools in durg in October but these you know this is a report for today so that first bulleted item that I said you know we wanted students get 20 you know as as a school to improve by 20 points we did that and then some I'll talk about this a little bit more when I get to the successes right but you know we always have concerns that students still have map Benchmark these students are still in our school we still you know I think what I want to say right now you know exactly who these kids are and that's the key when you're going through all of this is keeping an eye in affording students more opportunities or our sales more opportunities based on this information which again I know we want to celebrate but to go for us isn't so much this score but to know who these kids are this is really in my mind why we do this we try to figure out who these kids are that we can you know [Music] um help support um you know throughout so if you're just about to the next slide that the second goal there's a lot of words in have you just sort of state but we had talked a little bit about was we wanted we want all kids we want all kids to improve so that was the global score 1104 but what we want is individually we want kids to be better from one iteration to the next iteration to the next iteration to the next iteration and an average High Mark for us is 80 that's a good goal eighty percent of students would improve so in this case I just want to say that while 80 we want 80 of the kids to improve but we also have to keep in mind is we want every kid to approve so some kids might get a really really high score but to see a really really high score on the SAT is 13.50 so that could forget 1340 on the next is still a tremendous score but they didn't improve so they fall off our statistic so even this is a little bit you know just another way to use data but I think so that's why I like to speak in sort of like broad rushes this is exciting 86 of students improve again pre-cover we get to these years where we don't see this was our hardest year we don't see a great amount of improvement a better year in a solid year this was in erw all right this in math 76 of our students you know improved so this is what I mean by that is they they took the test here and then they took it here this is how many kids improved they took it they took this number I put it here and then they took it again this time somebody assume it's improved cook this number put it here this is how many students approved and we only counted that if they took both tests so this is pretty good we wanted 80 we came up just short but but that's a high number for us and where we've evolved to is we want to know the students who continue to struggle a little bit so there's some good news here of the students that were not were not like um of the students increasing several students were below the benchmark but 25 percent of the students below the Benchmark here ended up above the Benchmark and still we say well how come not 80 well 25 is a pretty good number because the benchmarks continue to increase so students did better and they continue to do better on both sides and my last I guess point of data on this is this 25 percent actually only represents 13 students totally like you know only like of the 13 students that increased um to get to a benchmark all of them actually improved in the test and of the 22 students here 20 improved on the past so I guess what I'm trying to say here there's a lot of numbers there but what we end up with is saying is that we want kids to do better you want to say you know how has Ruth's gotten better from freshman year to senior year and all the numbers sort of bear out if you just followed her and plotted her we'd see in our uh you know a trajectory so those were two goals that I just wanted to pull out in that bury you in every number because I could do that for every class you know you do it for ninth graders the 10th graders another favorite companies but this was the Arc of students from beginning to end so if I if I could just Advance one more so we have a lot of successes I would say and I just sort of divide this into almost thirds the first three bullets is really about process and how I think we a real I think success for our school this year was some changes in our process to understand students better we did two things that we've never done before one is that we we started to use as a pilot star data you've heard more about star data than High School teachers to a degree because you're hearing about it in Cherry Brook and CIS and in the middle school this was the first year we implemented the three tiers of of the STAR testing fall spring and winter fall winter and spring so teach us for the first time start to understand they have content and they have these Star skills and how they start to marry so this is going to be I think a more powerful opportunity for us to ask our students better which is the goal of all of this because we had this formative assessments our student intervention team had more information to talk about kids to help kids in our literacy coach which again you supported last year was a tremendous asset in taking this information and getting it down to brass tacks with students this is what's happening let me work with a student in this way and you know the number of students that she assisted is must have done about 40.
yeah I think so the general discussion and that's a great question we have been increasing the number of students support class over the last let's call it four years started about four years ago our average students were class of 17.9 now we're 18. the issue that's particular to Highland is although we're seeing a long report across we've seen it the most and you know that there's a lot of housing that's coming online it's brand new Fallout Edition so that's the concern we will continue to do everything we can to use the space that we have at home and then I think Doolittle is this will be the second problem it's not a problem when I say that we're using the space that we have behind it you know this summer we are converting that Library I quote the resource room right that's getting converted which is two spaces but it'll be more conducive to the classroom so maybe when you walk in the front of our high on school right there yeah yeah yeah so that's getting converted over this summer we almost did it last year but we managed to kept on right here um we do have a couple of support spaces already in the hallway Island if you go down if you walk straight in the front door and then straight down where it opens up and you have the door to access to adopt two spaces there around Rich are we doing anything else we're adding some uh four more spaces uh the north swing on the North corridor let's bring up spaces and then we're converting a couple storage closets into Office Space very smart office spaces so I mean the only thing I want to add is like the last two two three years that's what we've been doing just jogging around special leads to make more room for classroom so you know the Fallout is that they're getting bumped around right you know around the facility as well and trying to make room for it you know the general population so that's that's a challenge Scott Jeffrey and maybe and I'm not an educator is there any program within Highland School that can be out of the building like meetings I know we have some great spaces on Route 10 that could be leased is there any program there that could be moved out the issue with doing that is that what do you do for administrative oversight teachers so even if you say okay we can move these two classes let's say things are really desperate and we have spaced some somewhere even close by tonight within walking distance what do you do though to provide the teachers and the support that you need and the supervision that's the difficulty now one of the things that we are working on to the summer beyond what rich is saying that we're making some amendments to the space it's a little bit more potentially one of part of the special ed um students to the work you know because right now Highland serves as a district school for autism as an example so if we have a second and third classroom what you don't currently have and that's what we're planning on doing that'll free up some space at home so the point is that we're doing everything that we can within you know highly building right and I do a little explain that I should two years ago we convert to computer labs into two you know spaces for we're going to do all of that first the class size is already starting to grow do we have some more capacity we do you know this year at Island we'll see some classes of 21 and 22 in the upper grades so we could push that up a little bit higher I think that's the likely for the 23-24 school year so I think we're good for 23 24.
the State of California requires that we present these local indicators to the board of education at the same meeting where our app is being adopted in the fall we will upload these local indicators to the California dashboard and in December at the beginning of December it will be made public to the community with California dashboard is part of our state's accountability system and it allows our district to measure progress on eight State priorities using multiple measures our state has uh next slide please thank you our state has identified eight priorities for educating students uh which we use to develop our district goals you see those eight priority areas indicated here in the pie chart and they also guide our spending uh for our district um these accountability measures they also have accountability measures that measure progress in each of these eight priority areas here you see that we have two types uh that we have two types of indicators we have state indicators and we have local indicators the state indicators pull data directly from the state an example of that would be our s a smarter balanced assessment or S back results and it gives performance levels for our school sites in previous years we had performance levels for our state indicators that were uh displayed by a gate a color gate that was broken up into five levels where red was the lowest indicator and blue was the highest performance indicator these were determined using two years worth of data this was paused as a result of assembly Bill 130 and we switched this year for the California dashboard of 2022 using uh the image at the bottom of the slides that shows the similar to cell phone bars to rate our performance level for the state indicator since we are expected to have results for Smarter Balance assessments this year where we'll be returning to the colored gauges because we'll have two years worth of data or our local indicators they're developed by the district using a self-reflection tools that are provided by the Department of Education and these local indicators don't apply to individual schools but they apply to our district um this data that we see in our local indicators you will also see in our lcap plan um you'll see it in the plan summary as well as in the section for educating uh engaging educational Partners uh our goals and actions and our improved and in serves to improve I'm sorry increased and improved Services section within the lcap um the next slide shows us the state priorities aligned with the state and local indicators you can see them alongside each other there are two areas that overlap that is school climate and course active both of these areas have both state indicators as well as local indicators for example um data that's pulled from the state or School climate includes our suspension rate for the district and local youth proof survey data is a local indicator for school claim okay in the area of course access or College and Career indicator is pulled by the state so we have that state indicator data and we also have what we call access to a broad course of study which is a local indicator this next slide is our dashboard landing page and it shows what um the California dashboard looks like for 2022 um there's three key messages that we want to take away from the dashboard um quality education is not measured or defined by just one metric here you see all both the state and the local indicators and we must seek equity for all our students so you'll be able to see subgroup data with each of these indicators and also the local indicators and state indicators support decision making for our district next I will be sharing with you the process for local indicators um here it's broken up into four steps in the first step we are determining what tools we will be using to gather data on this indicator we're also ensuring that we're including feedback from all educational Partners so making sure that we're involving staff and we're involving the parent voice in this process and then we're looking at the data and analyzing data in step two uh it's how we will use this indicator result so we can identify areas of strength and areas of Need for our district and of course we use those needs and areas of strength to inform our lcat the next step is to report on these local indicators to our school board and also in step four to upload this information publicly on the California dashboard website which happens in December it's important to note that in step two um it's how we're using the data so it's part of our continuous cycle of improvement as we're looking at our lcap and making adjustments for the following year the next slides will show you a specific local indicator results for 2023.
it resulted Board of Education attendant proves the minutes for the following meetings that's regular and executive session from May 15 2023 thank you Miss Lima a second second uh can we do a roll call please Mr Gorski yes sir Mr Bell abstain Mr Dawson yes Miss Casino yes Miss Lima so I did motion but I wasn't here in the meeting so I guess I'm staining from the absolutely yes Mr minhas yes Miss High yes Mr Boomer yes Mr Lucy yes this evening entire traditional order this will be under items three and seven we have a motion motion thank you Mr Central thank you Mr all in favor aye all right thank you thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you very much foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign you're off mute back everyone we are up to agenda item 8.4 will be a result of the developers Board of Education recommendation of the superintendent approves in accordance with the convenience of njsa 18-a 37-5 -15 be the report of elected HIV incidents and investigations here for the period of April 26 2023 through March 15 th Evolution motion thank you Mr Zucker for a second thank you Ms cuisine Mr Dawson yes Miss Casino yes yes it's high yes Mr Romer yes yes thank you item 941 being resolved at the Bound Brook where education about recommendations the superintendent approves in accordance with the positions of njsa 18-a tte they're affordable limited HIV incidents and investigations noted in the agenda for the period April 26 2023 to the May 15th 20 th hour motion motion second thank you Mr Dawson and a second from Miss Lima yes thank you Mr Dawson yes yes Mr zip code yes Miss moosen yes Mrs yes just hi yes Mr Palmer yes yes motion passes resolutions is 10.2 to 10.56 is that Evolution motion thank you Miss muscle the second second let me give it to miss high any questions or discussion I just wanted to say um sorry I just wanted to say that on 10.20 for Smalling Elementary the Girl Scouts I thought that was really a great idea your presentation agreed any other questions or comments all right hearing none can we have a roll call please Mr Dawson yes Miss Casino yes yes yes exclusive yes hi yes Homer I understand for the catch we are up to item 11.1 resolve the development report of Education approves the resolutions as outlined in District education resolutions is 11.2 through 11.8 I have a motion motion thank you Mr Dawson a second second thank you Mr Zucker any discussion hearing none come here roll call please this is awesome yes Casino yes yes [Music] absolutely thank you Mr zip code yes Miss moosen yes Mrs yes it's high yes Mr Boomer yes thank you and 12.1 being resolved at the Board of Education approved uh I'm sorry the Bound Brook Board of Education approves the resolutions is outlined before action resolutions 12.2 .2 out of motion thank you second second thank you Mrs you know any discussion can't wait it's gonna be riveting can we do a roll call please yes sir Mr Dawson yes yes yes with abstentions on 12.18 and 12.19 .
there are very few moments in our life where we can capture the moment and one thing becomes something else and that moment is tonight when these eighth graders walked into their room their eighth graders been here for many of you nine years and when they leave here they're high school students the transformation is amazing because tomorrow they said I'm a freshman they have really done an amazing job all their years here do you know that 45 of the students up here have been enrolled here since kindergarten I would like to recognize the following 8th graders who have achieved gold honor roll every single marking period in all subjects this year I'm going to ask you to stand because that's a great accomplishment Dylan Hubler Logan Cleveland Georgia Marie Gonzalez healing Conrad Johnson Tyson Columbus Nick Kutcher Rhys Manhart Declan North Christmas Day McGowan okay when you're ready Queen of course Ursula Adam projects Michael stanberger and John [Applause] we got this and so you can talk about it with Mrs Lamay and um Mr uh man these 8th graders have worked over a half million equations and expressions from September until now Nick culture this year was selected as the student achiever of the year he was also one of two eighth graders out of all descending districts to be part of the high school marching band this year Lexi dreamt designed the yearbook cover front and back Murray Gonzalez designed the t-shirt that they wore proud of on their class trip our geography big winner was Griffin Tommy but I also want to point out when he was in fifth grade and we competed against the strix as a fifth grader he was the only fifth grader he came in second place only two of Finney and Gilly who's in the room tonight so congratulations Griffin this year's science fair Ms cardamom shared with me was one of the best science fairs we've ever had and every student came with their game and so we did have a first place or second place but she said the projects range from biodegradable sunscreen to renewable energy to earthquake uh proofing homes and everything in between every one of you did an amazing job I'm sorry I missed that there Audrey Lafferty memorized the most pi digits on Pi Day she memorized the first 62 number [Applause] when Kenneth already was only in fifth grade and she was playing basketball for mid-month she took a mid-court shot all night fifth grade okay ready [Applause] Curtis Costello has demonstrated one of the most outstanding greatest growths I've known him since Pre-K and I have to say Curtis you are a special friend to me in our drama club production [Applause] and what was outstanding we had four eighth graders leads on the stage and 10 8th graders working behind the sets both of those jobs are so important what I'd like to recognize our leads Avery catanese Charlotte mamad Mia Bramley and Nick coach 8th graders took first place in a really big competition in Colt's neck at Cedar Drive Middle School academic team you bought first place home and we are very proud of it right now do you realize 22 but I hope this motivates others have summer jobs this summer I've gotten their working pages I'm going to be working this summer for the fourth time in our school we introduce challenge day to our integrators students learn about the importance of being themselves respecting others for who they are they discovered so much about themselves and others while they learned across the lung the class of 2023 wants to thank Miss Dover one of their favorite teachers and Mr Savior for writing a brand so making challenge day in our school possuma and uh I was there I was asked to come back and I have to say we spent a day in the gym learned a lot about one another learned a lot of new things together he'll tell you in our first ever eighth grade versus faculty pickleball tournament first ever Dax Klein and Chris McVay took first place Mr savior Mr Russo and you got the first link congratulations Dex and Chris uh Cecilia Suarez or valedictorian performed with her sister in the golden key music festival in Carnegie Hall for the fifth time [Music] [Applause] many of you know we've had very successful Sports season girls soccer MCL chance the 10-3 record voice soccer American division champs 12-0 boys basketball MCL chance snowball classic Champs with a 19-2 record in wrestling at Belmar cheek Sado was the 2023 Tri-County Champion Monmouth County Champion Monmouth Middlesex County Champion with a 17-0 rep congratulations [Applause] and we're test team League champions the best record we've ever had 10-1 for career day this year John deshelia LED his class in the planet interviewing almost 14 of the speakers that we brought in and welcoming the keynote speakers John you did a great job [Applause] did you know when I'm going to ask you to stand some of you are the audience some of you are up here we have five students graduating eighth grade and they're simply graduating high school so I'll start with Grace bonavita and James bonavita thank you James Avery kakamis and Kelly [Applause] Adam Roberts [Applause] Michael stanberger [Applause] in this class there are 23 graduates who are the oldest siblings okay they're the oldest sibling with younger brothers and sisters along the way but there is one eighth grade and this is so unique his name is Emmett Whiting he's the oldest of six that are all in this school right now and I have to say [Applause] has always shown us and this is when fifth grade he was always responsible for picking them up while all his friends were able to run into the homework he picked them up every single day he is the example of Big Brother [Applause] six books and a total of 185 255 pages congratulations [Applause] We Say Goodbye we're sending them off they're going to be our Messengers in high school they will be attending seven different high schools here so I hope like in oh we always say about Brielle no matter where you go to high school where you go to college your true friends are here and I hope that happens College college or post College to recognize the following parents and you must stand as parents that graduated from real Elementary School and said they believe it's a good idea to stay in this community and they want their son or daughter to go [Music] this is the most ever that we've had in a graduating class of parents who came here so please stand John Australia [Applause] Karen ball stay standing in general Holly your junko Gonzalez president Matthew Schuler Andrew Crowley and Elizabeth Johnson [Applause] they are clean the example and the spirit of Blazer and Beyond uh I would also like to because I don't know if they're here but if there are any grandparents in this room whose child and now grandchildren are graduating would you mind standing because I know we have some grandparents in this room yes this is the show right you have the standard you get in trouble Mrs Jones [Applause] Thank you Grandma and for always being here for supporting our activities tonight we're going to say goodbye to 29 families because they're a baby but their youngest is leaving us 29 families who will never come before you'll come and visit but you're like wow I'm done I've been coming here for so long and I'm never coming back um every year the PTO likes to recognize families who have gone above and beyond and has done so much with PTO Ed Foundation booster club even outside of school boy scouts Board of Ed members like families that have done so much and there's three that have really have been here for more than 15 years and have done everything Mrs Carlson whatever you need I want to support this school I'm committed all volunteer whatever you need and these three families we read I need to recognize tonight the bashalia family and Grandma's Here The Jones Family [Laughter] tonight we are recognizing five of our staff members who are retiring and leaving here Phyllis pinkettman 24 years in education Jen love 24 years in education Mike fercano 24 years of education Lauren McGinnis 16 years Sue Crowder nine years a total of 101 years [Applause] I would like to say thank you to our teachers our coaches our supports and staff secretaries custodians you know it takes a village and it's totally don't work to hear in our community that the village works together so that we produce some of the top students that go on to high school and college and really make our community real very proud at this time it's so important that I phoned to ask you if you are a current teacher a retired teacher a staff member any capacity that you've come here to work with children because when we come here in the morning that's what we've come to do I want you to stand and I want to recognize the great people that work here in our school [Applause] foreign [Applause] Mexicano Dana Stover Sue Martin and Jamie Mentor who have helped to make this evening memorable a special shout out to Michelle Whiting I don't know how she does it I told her there's six kids in this building she you'll see at the end of the program has done the slideshow and the kids got to see it today it is simply simply amazing thank you for your work to Ed Slater of all his technical work you know what would we do the technology that we've seen over the last 15 years you have been instrumental in doing what needed to be done for kids without without ever asking why and so I thank you and also to Trish Brown and Sydney Rosen for their musical input to this program thank you Trish and thank you Sydney special thank you Jorge uh our head custodian all our custodians I see Dwayne in the back all the hours that it takes to get this together The Taste the community but you guys do it without question and you're amazing again to John I want I want to thank you uh um some of you may know this or may not but I've spent uh the last 45 years of my life in education two of them here uh and it's simply a wonderful way to like end my career I said to my husband you know this is the last thing I'm really going to do and then I'll truly be retired and so I have to say to the families here that I work with I feel so fortunate for every child that I've worked with and there's been many thousands in 45 years but my experience here in Brielle with the teachers that we have here the administration the Board of Education uh I I can't thank you enough from the bottom of my heart what it has been what a great ride it's been to me because I've been the lucky one to be able to come to work every day and uh be with you so thank you so much [Applause] today we're going to send 60 Messengers as I said messengers of Hope from Brielle to all the graduates I want you to keep on dreaming keep believing in yourself and work hard every single day you have successfully completed your time you're done you leave here as high school students if I said but here you have made your parents teachers this community is very very proud hold on to your hopes and dreams and thank you for sharing your successes with us the class of 2023 you have major more remember your one outstanding group of leaders you are resilient you understand that by working together that will make a difference please bring that message of Hope and kindness to the world a world that needs that now and we need you to do that as I said I've been honored and blessed to be your principal superintendent for the last 15 years congratulations class I will always remember you good luck and God bless okay [Applause] thank you Mrs Carlson you know there was a lot of information that you unpacked in that speech to honor our students and this community so you always do such a lot and I actually launched your other commencement speeches on YouTube just to get sense and you hit it out of the park as always thank you so much um I will say though if you'll have me back I will come back to play Pickleball next year with that said we're going to fast forward a little bit and talk a little bit about some graduating seniors who are receiving Awards sponsored by our PTO so at this time I'd like to invite our two PTO Representatives up to the podium so we can get this started uh Tanya moskin asking one of our PTL co-presidents and our PTO Secretary of Caitlin Gloria foreign and they they do that to obviously support the school and support our students and this is just one example of what they think so let me talk a little bit about and their Awards the real parent teacher organization invites High School senior senior Elementary School to apply for scholarships funded by the PTO these scholarships have been established to encourage and Foster schooling and continuing education the applicants this year we're all truly exceptional they really were this year's award winners exemplify the highest level of academic performance as well as an impressive resume of work and extracurriculars that demonstrate commitment leadership and service so we are very proud to announce this year's wonders of the real PTO senior scholarships one at a time the academic Excellence scholarship award the recipient of the PTO academic Excellence scholarship award as a student who will be attending the University of Southern California in the world's bachelor's Business program at the Marshall School of Business that by itself is very impressive so I would like to invite up to Podium to receive this award Sophia wall commencement High School [Applause] Sophia graduated from Brielle Elementary in 2019 she attended management High School where she was a member of various clubs and sports teams such as the National Honor Society model um the volleyball team swim and track and field her passion for business also led her to join the Academy of Finance at Madison Square High School where she was fortunate enough to take part in many reward rewarding business related events outside of school Sophia volunteers at St Mark's church and Seeger with the program she founded with her brother when she was in seventh grade called I will achieve in the fall Sophia will be attending the University of Southern California we'll see where she will be a part of the bachelor excuse me the world Bachelors of business part of the Marshall School of Business this unique program will allow Sophia to spend their first year this is going to be really cool wait to hear this first year at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles her second year at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and her third year at the bocconi University in Milan from her last year Sophia will have a choice of attending whichever of the three schools offers the most appropriate classes for her in the area of her specialization the program will earn Sophia three separate Bachelor Science degrees for three universities from around the world congratulations [Applause] next the outstanding achievement scholarship award the recipient of the PTO outstanding achievement scholarship award is a student who will be attending the University of Miami as a foot fellow honors student majoring in engineering this award goes to Jack detlinger [Applause] a little bit about Jack graduated from animal Madison High School and earned honorable status every marketing period since his freshman year he was a member of the National Honor Society and the Academy of Finance through the MHS Key Club he volunteered for many activities and helps at the massacre Recreation and at Brielle Recreation as a special project we live at toys for Todd's local campaign and donated 150 he played varsity football and basketball and was Captain of both teams his basketball team won the New Jersey group two-state championship in 2023 for the first time in Madison High School boys in the fall he will attend the university University of Miami as a foot fellow honors student majoring and Junior congratulations Jack the achievement scholarship award the recipient of the PTO achievement scholarship award is a student who will be attending the Honors College at Rutgers University and majoring in plant science Maxwell Lotus graduating from communication High School Maxwell won't be with us this evening because he's actually attending his own graduation but let me tell you a little bit about Maxwell as I said Maxwell's graduation graduating student Communications High School where you maintain a 4.0 GPA wrote for his school newspaper and hosted a podcast on his school radio it holds a first degree black belt in the United States black cat Tempo karate it was a four-year Varsity member of Madison High School state championship served is especially grateful to his teachers such as Mr Yi Mrs Hyland and Miss cardamom who are important factors in his inspiration to pursue a career in science next year he will attend the Honors College at Rutgers University with a major in plant science after college he hoped to travel the world and do research next the Marvin C Walker scholarship award the recipient of the PTO Margaret C Walker scholarship award students will be attending the Honors College at Clemson University in South Carolina biotech technology high school Matthew [Applause] a little bit about Matthew Matthew's lived in briella's whole life he graduated from free health Elementary and was the salutatorian of the class of 2019.
one question on the the pay for the intercessions in the summer school that's not that's not first student that's targeted targeted students right because there is some charges for summer school this year that's correct intercessions have been by invitation right and summer school is some summer school and summer school yep but some summer school has been paid for okay tuition-based correct okay that's correct okay so again other fun budgets as you know we have over 55 different funds here in in Arizona and all of those are on the budget forms we're just estimating but we don't know what the budget balance carry forward is going to be in each of those funds until the school year is completed and that won't be done until August 28th or something at that point in time you will see the final results of what our beginning balances will be in all the funds once you've approved the annual financial report so so now average teacher salary since Governor juicy proposed the 20 by 2020 we have been adding and um and adding information regarding average teacher salary every year and so to date the average teacher salary of all teachers employed in the budget year which is 2024.
and then in terms of expenses we break things down in terms of functions and objects as we call them and the functions are kind of instruction Support Services those sorts of things instruction is things that go directly into the classroom support services are things that support instruction in the classroom and then payments to other governmental units primarily for tuition especially with with students that have special needs or maybe in vocational programs we have a little sliver in there for contingency and then the other major item is debt services and one more page Holly will break it down by object and objects are what we actually spend it on whereas functions are what it's for what we're receiving in return is what the object is and so salaries and benefits obviously drive a major component of our budget for staff but we also do a lot of purchase Services Batavia is in terms of school districts I don't know of any other school district that outsources as much as Batavia does meaning that our food service our transportation and our custodial services are all outsourced and so we rely on these contractors to provide services for us that help us provide education for our students whereas most school districts they have their own buses and they have their own bus drivers that work for them directly they have their own food service program that have employees that work in the cafeteria we Outsource these things so we have fewer employees per student than most school districts but on the flip side and so accordingly we have less salary and benefits but accordingly we have more in terms of purchase services capital outlay is a pretty large item these days although it hasn't always been the case but in the last budget fiscal 23 and moving forward into fiscal 24 it is a substantial number several million dollars almost six and we'll talk about the status of some of those projects right now and the need of course with the failure of the recent referenda of what we'll need to do to make things work for our students in terms of facilities in the in the coming years that will be a I'm a sure will be a challenge and a priority for the Board of Education a non-capitalized equipment is often something that people wonder about we use what's called a capitalization threshold so a capital item is something that costs more than five thousand dollars it could be a piece of equipment or other asset maybe it's something that's affixed to the building um that we would track it in our um our inventory our asset inventory we have to program and depreciate that item over time and keep it in our finances a non-capitalized equipment is an item of equipment that is more than a supply but less than an asset it's kind of that in between region and so in particular Chromebooks is or computers are items that are non-capitalized equipment there you know there's not quite as much like a like a pickup truck is definitely an asset that we would track on our inventory but something that was in between a supply is something that we'd use and once its uses fulfill itself it would go away non-capitalize it's you know a computer's still good after a year or two or three but it's not quite something that we track on a financial basis they're a dollar threshold for that criteria five thousand dollars so if it's more than five thousand it would become an asset generally and if it's more than if it's less than 250 dollars it's a supply and I'd be those are wonderful questions to ask Rob thank you and now that we have three new board members like these are the kinds of things that are helpful to know and so sometimes you know I'm trying to make sure that we get kind of the basics done but I'm sure you have questions and I can answer those questions now or if you come across something in the future please don't be shy it's important that you you know can see how all the pieces fit together and so happy to answer any questions that you have the one the Debt Service was Zero for 2024.
and then the last big update that we had is that we added an uh an additional appendix and that is our Athletics and activities code of conduct as well so then it's in a One-Stop shop easy to access all of it and then it's um you know you're not having to search through multiple different areas to be able to see that any questions for me thank you all right thank you all right activities director Jessica is here to give us an update uh good evening and I just want to say I think this is uh Mark's one year today so I just want to thank the board uh Dr Stern Dr mongan for the opportunity to serve this District in the capacity of Athletics and activities uh director at the high school it's uh it's been a joy I know it's not always easy not always perfect but uh I've enjoyed getting to learn a lot here form relationships with a lot of the kids I meet a lot of the parents community members and seeing a lot of you out at events uh it really really makes it worthwhile so thanks for your support thanks for the opportunity and uh the last kind of activity athletic update I'm going to bring to you it's in your packet I won't read through it word for word but just want to recognize our bass fishing team and it's inaugural season finishing 28th down at State there's a lot that goes into that sometimes you catch it sometimes you don't but uh yeah they finished 28th and 28th at state in their first season I think they had over 75 teams that end up qualifying to go down there so they made one vote to go down there thank you to the coaches those kids and and our volunteers to donate the bass boats for us to go and uh you know we'll have that conversation about what the new basketball looks like in a little bit in the months to come next thing I want to recognize is our girls track team who made it down to State you can look got all the qualifiers and where they placed one I just want to bring to attention is our senior Paige greenhagel who as you can see placed uh top five in numerous events she is on a scholarship to Liberty next uh next fall as a incoming freshman so she will be missed and then on our boys side we had a number of boys who also qualified for the state finals down at Eastern they went down there had a successful run the one I do want to highlight there's another senior Nolan miles who plays top five and two of the events that he participated in so uh some lots of recognition down there not just those two but for all of our coaches student athletes so thank you for the opportunity for those student athletes to go down there and compete and on that I'll say thank you and I'll uh I think I know the words of the next guy coming up here that I get all the fun stuff he deals with all the dirty business side but we'll get Dan pollen out here so thank you very much I guess he introduced me already I thought I had this taken care of with Mandy that I could go first obviously not but that's fine I can accept my role um so uh update summer is is cranking along um our guys are working hard getting buildings clean getting Furniture taken care of outside crew you know getting weeds taken care of which is an ongoing battle you know fertilizing aerating kind of getting all those things done so our crews are working hard not a lot of projects um going right at this time we're working on some permitting things right now to get the high school edition going um with any luck we'll get some bids out in the next few weeks break ground probably in August um so we've been working with the ROM with the county to get that process roll in and get some Earth moving and get that going to try to get that under roof by winter time so obviously we can have that open for next year um we're finishing up uh the construction of the transportation and maintenance new office building on central campus our barn dominium as we call it um we're waiting on water get Furniture going kind of get those things going out there and hopefully by the end of June we'll be moved in there and that'll be completed some other ongoing building projects not a lot of look few little remodeling things nothing too crazy a lot of painting a lot of upkeep a lot of Maintenance we'll probably be looking at HVAC upgrades and some bigger projects moving forward working with Dana to kind of get those prioritized we'll be replacing a few pieces of HVAC equipment lowly Lakes getting a few pieces the district offices and get a few pieces just updating that equipment and controls and just kind of getting all our systems updated that we can manage them better and then the last kind of update is we had our second steering committee meeting for the new high school today so working through that process kind of getting some designs out there kind of having it's a pretty large group that we've kind of been working with and kind of getting thoughts and ideas bounced around today on on three different options for what that new facility could look like in the future so we're going to keep moving with that process and try to do some site visits in October you know September October look at some other Progressive schools kind of get some of those things outlined to kind of have a plan going so when the referendum does pass in the spring we'll be ready to go any questions are we on target for the high school or did you think we would have started construction we may be slightly behind um but I think based on our kind of weather constraints um and everything I think I think we'll be fine um we break ground in August we'll we'll get things rolling any other questions thank you thank you all right W superintendent on phone support um sorry for the Nia so as you guys are aware of many years ago or several years ago we had Nia that we serviced inside of our district uh that was the hard of hearing program uh due to enrollment we actually had to have them go to another facilities they went with District 300 but part of every odd year that asked that the board votes so part of being part of this Cooperative is that through their articles of agreement for naihip or foreign Illinois Association school board members we vote for a school board member as well as for the sub-region um so a school board members elected as well as a participant in terms of a district administrator they gave us names here for who they would like us to vote for and they're asking that the board reviews this and then excellent point we look forward to say yes we would be willing to have them as elected so you'll see them attached in your board packet it's just something we do every other year in an odd year for Nia okay if you'd like to be a writing you can write yourself in if you're interested in the ground disrupt edu and see it maybe you should put a paragraph of why these people seems weird to vote for something yeah they have bios yeah that's about it there's a bios but it doesn't really good I know that you can do it if you would so desire it's helpful yeah all right thanks for willing to foyers we received our first foil from local Labs you're familiar with this in the name of Vince MC um this is a local Labs we've replied to the foyers asking for more information um double checking to make sure that this person is actually employing the company that's not a phishing attempt and then we never get any response back so um it's just cold right now so we're holding it to see if we can actually find out if they ever respond to that then we can respond to the foil um the second point was from uh lrs Waste Management they were looking for a current waste provider and service information and we were able to comply with the request for the information that we had at hand um next one was from the University of Kentucky and they were looking for certain records related to our students and we were able to comply with that request according to our directory information of what we would be willing to share and only for those families that approved that their information could be shared and the last one was from Hello college and this is a company for profit company that wanted used student information and for marketing and for profit making and that um foil was denied all right oh smart procure I forgot smart procure so we've received numerous foyas and it used to be from Smart Mercury procure just a quarterly foil based on our purchase orders and invoicing but they've expanded what they were looking for and then repeating asking for the same information like just like a quarter apart so um we reached out to them to see if we could find out like you know answer any of their questions or what they're actually looking for uh they have not replied to that request and so therefore we've told the request until we get a response from them do they ever respond when we send the information sometimes well some to the ones for the invoices they'll sometimes say but they've expanded Way Beyond what yeah right I'm just wondering if it's like we're on some list if they just send out I think so it doesn't want to send it back to me you know that's why we've asked for additional information well Open Session you need to motion a second to adjourn closed session seconds thank you yes Nolan yes Pappas yes Effie yes Paul yes Gorman yes thanks again for coming out of it enjoy the remaining goodness
what grade would you have me give them and why you would give them a 50. 40. it he needs to be worked with to make sure he gets the standard to proficiency until he achieves proficiency he needs to be worked with it's not acceptable for a student to not meet proficiency what do you have would you have to sell us on this what is it you want to tell us on the vocational end again everybody is quoted from a book please speak freely so would you would you send that student to work if he couldn't meet Proficiency in seat belt safety um possibly but with the understanding that he is an apprentice right but then hide the fact right that I couldn't get him to pass a seat belt safety course yeah would he be expected at work to continue working on it until he met proficiency yes right and so that's the standard we're trying to do here with our kids right so it's it's better for kids to feel free to make mistakes here knowing that their teachers are going to work with them until they meet proficiency so that when they go to work they feel comfortable going to their employer their boss whoever I don't know how to do this can you help me and work with me until I get it right so creating a safe space here for kids to make mistakes and continue to work until they can meet that proficiency is what we're looking for not just trying to grab it wasn't in the book Thank you please have my vocational colleagues because I am new to the vocational world and one of one of the things that I think is so great about Career Technical education in the shop is that the kids are Hands-On and you're going to keep making them do it until they get it right aren't you you know because if they break something they need to fix it right if they don't know how to do something they need to eventually get that so if I say the test on seat belts is today and if you don't get it Tommy you don't get it that's it books closed on you then you didn't really learn about the seat belts right and that was the goal so I think our vocational Educators our technical educators are actually more aligned with doing this kind of work already because they are there with kids giving constant feedback um telling kids no don't do it this way try it this way and having them um keep trying until they get it right and I think that's a lot of what what this is I think it will resonate with a lot of our vocational Educators actually because I think it aligns more closely with some of them do in their workspaces than some academic teachers thank you thank you Lee Mr Joe yes I might be jumping all over the place here but I have a whole lot of things going on um in my mind and for status I agree with Tom that um some implementation changes however you want to call it our needed in our policy a couple of things the first thing is it would have been helpful I know you didn't have this ahead of time for us to have this um in our history we do not vote on anything on the same time that we receive it or that it's presented it's usually voted upon at the next meeting or after we've had time or a special meeting so that would be Point number one that um I'm not ready to vote on this tonight as it has been presented because I have so many questions I would like to read Mr Joe Feldman's book because I feel that in this presentation we have taken a really big drink of the Kool-Aid that he is there it bothers me that we have a charter school listed that we might be comparing our things to I do not believe in charter schools as such and I certainly don't want us to be in line of comparing it every single student and or parent that applies to go to this school applies with the idea that they have many options but one of the primary options is that we will provide them an education and competencies to go out in the workforce so the word soft skills and work habits to me is offensive that we cannot grade or um put value forget I said the word great put value on work habits and soft skills because when you go out there in the workforce um it's all about work habits and soft skills so that bothers me the word Equitable you know Equitable means equal and where does it flexible is wonderful let's have a flexible grading policy that doesn't bother me at all but to call it Equitable means equal for everybody so how is a 50 equal to a hundred is the 50 the new zero I totally understand I don't think many teachers in this school at least I hope not give zeros um because it's almost impossible to get a zero and then get back up to a passing grade but if 50 is still an f and a hundred is still an a it's an easier way of saying that so I don't have problem with saying you're not giving zeros it's demoralizing but it's also demoralizing I was surprised uh because I asked um the superintendent when I came to get this the other day um that there were no uh faculty 1707 teachers on this and I totally understand it is the administrator's job to come up with new policies and to say this is it with our vote then it's going to happen so I understand that but it almost seems like we're inviting the people that have to implement this in after whether they agree or not it might have been an easier road to go down if we had had input and maybe if something was a hard no from a faculty they could give reason and it could be debated but and maybe that has happened but it didn't seem that way in the presentation okay so um as I said I'm jumping all over I am as you all know old old also comes with having many things flown by you and things have been rolled out here in the school back when my kids were in school I remember a thing called IMS it was going to be the be-all and end-all for all math teaching forevermore and the town of Andover bought into it it set our school system back years but again somebody published a book it wasn't Mr Feldman but somebody published a book that this was the way to go and we jumped on this school has jumped on so all I'm saying I I want to see some changes in our grading policy and some of these are tremendously valid but I feel like we've just sucked in everything and said okay here we go we're gonna have this and it will be the way to go so I'm not opposed to the change I'm not ready to say yes tonight only because we just really got this and got a chance to discuss it and I know it has been Mr Cirillo's Mantra from day one that and miss tisla that um we not we took a policy vote not to vote on things the night they were presented so I just I do have some specific issues most of them having to do with our shop vocational area on at what point do you say this student it will it result in more kids not graduating because they didn't reach that passing skill or grade I I don't have the answer to that but anyway I'm sure I'm going to think of a few more things but right now can I and I probably shouldn't have addressed it all to you that it should be to we haven't heard from our principal yet and um okay can I respond to one sure you said I know you talked about the um work habits and soft skills and we absolutely agree that those should be measured and assessed and shared reported out with students and families but not necessarily included in part of their grade however in the Career technical areas where employability is a standard and there are competencies that go with it those would still be assessed because they are tied to a standard or competency okay can I jump in with one more sure this would have to do more with um like absences so a student that has been absent a great number of times and might end up with a zero for all of the things that happened during that time I understand under this that student would get a chance to make up whatever he had missed but where then does that burden come on the teacher to be one-on-one with that student to take care of all those things so do absences come into our grading policy on here absences were not tied to this policy we have an attendance policy that is separate so it would stay there um so it's still going to be up to the teacher to make sure that that child who for whatever reason not sick but maybe didn't want to get out of bed that day um again we're here I asked John when I gave him this we met briefly when I came to pick this up because I couldn't find it anywhere and I told him philosophically all I wanted to make sure is that we are not watering down who we are we have worked so hard to get here and we are here and we've kept those standards up here and it looks like most of our students have jumped through hoops to do it the right way because of the product and the product is our student that we are sending out into the workforce Ultra College wherever so I don't want us for a second to undermine everything that we have worked so hard for and that's not all tied into things policy so for the faculty or whoever is here tonight I'm not saying that at all I just don't want us to jump on to Mr Feldman's bandwagon because it's the latest great work being published I understand um I'm glad that you brought up because you reminded me of something about not wanting to lower where we've come from um policies and practices like this often increase expectations because the things that oh I just won't do it I'll take a zero no you're not going to just take a zero this is an important thing that you need to learn that's why I teach it that's why it's part of my curriculum so you can't just choose to opt out as a teacher it's my job to have you come back and see me after school come to my win block and say Hey you haven't done this why is it because you don't know how to and you need some more support is it because you're working after school and you didn't get to it but if I just put a zero in that book that deprives me of having that conversation with the student of building that relationship with a student of helping a student we're not going to let them off the hook with a zero like you're actually going to have to do this um the same thing with with um redoing a test if I take a performance assessment or I write an essay and my teacher gives me feedback doesn't it make sense that I then Implement that feedback to make my essay better right because that's the goal is I am a student the teacher gives me feedback on what I need to improve now let me improve it otherwise it's feedback that never gets acted on so that's part of um a lot of schools if you look um or read the book and other things the teachers that are quoted in there talk about how this actually made them step up their game and it made their students step up their game because there was no more of this playing School right well I know if I do these five homework assignments it doesn't matter what I write on them because I'm just going to get a check or a zero because it's complete or it's incomplete and if I look in my grade and I did 10 assignments and I have 10 checks my average is 100 but then maybe I take the test and I get a 50.
well I mean in a variety of levels too she was working directly one-on-one with several students but she was also supporting in assessing for other interventions and she was also working with classroom teachers directly to give them strategies to help support the students in the class so so it was a layered position where again again if you think about it like a you know pie chart you know percentage of her day was directly with students percentages working on assessments and then giving information back to staff she worked directly with staff against Dr kilo mentioned so these two dedicated to the high school excuse me yeah yeah high school high school right um and that was a new position this year you know we hired her this time last year and she came in and they just hit the ground run and then again this is something that we've done in the past week where we go back to all those numbers that I had on the previous slides and every teacher has the names of students and where they land and they kind of look at the skill challenges that students are having so those are successes for us um because again I think our process is better and growing um and then you know these other things are basically you know how we use our time in our day you know so we have a resource center we figure out who's struggling and then we give them some assistance um and then teachers through the professional time look at that look at the students and look at their practice and again try to support students um you know some of the time that we have for professional development this year you know a lot of it was around this data around to the progress and around our curriculum so we put a lot of work into that and then we continued and I think this was a real uptick this year and some people might not have used so much of the success because it was hard work it was a struggle but really getting back to attendance with families with students and expectations um and what we do about that at the high school because attendance is tied to credit that's not that's attendance is very important it's probably the most important thing but in Middle School it doesn't the seat time doesn't account to a credit we need to have some alignment with the amount of absences versus the amount of the affordability of credit so we've had to do some things um in terms of communication some some attendance contracts some opportunities for students to do additional work to gain back seat time and I think we've we've actually come forward on a process that is somewhat effective but that's going to be some good Hard Summer work this year but I would do that as a success as well and then for all the students that you know despite a lot of these interventions work you know I do want to say a success for us is the affordability and allowability for students to come to this room next week the week after July 5th or July 10th um I guess a few weeks away to initiate a four-week summer recovery Credit Opportunity this is the third year we'll be running this our numbers are around 30 issue a little less a little less it's great less is better um um but again it affords students this opportunity to continue their progress of credits um and it'll they'll get you know um kind of pushed back a little bit in terms of courses they still need to take to get to their 25 credits all students take 25 credits to graduate so so this is a success for us that we have the program that we've budgeted for that um some of the grants that we received during the covered years have to support this so we just feel like we have a good process in place and um so I talked about successes actually outcomes an improved process some use of the interventions with the time and then some outcomes that I think are important so that's the academic side I want to turn it over to Dr Kidwell talk a little bit about the climate um so I'm just going to Echo you know what Drew said originally we're just so proud of this school year there's just been a lot of growth and just um I think actually Kim used the word like reinvigorating people and and though we might have a long way to go that is just we've felt that this year in a lot of ways and so there's so many pieces we could talk you know School culture and school climate there's a lot of different directions that you can go on that and some of it very much actually overlaps some of the academic pieces as well that they've just connected as much as we talk about academicals versus culture goals they're just you know Universal with each other um so you know we continue to strive toward the idea that as we work harder to create an inclusive welcoming um environment for students that they're going to engage more in their learning families are going to engage more in their learning it's going to cause academic achievement to increase and it's going to allow students to feel like they are a part of the community and that's what we're always going to keep working towards so we have a couple of pieces and and this was part of our nearest recommendations part of our own self-reflection to create this as a school-wide goal there's some pieces that we look at for Success we do use the Panorama student and family survey data to create these goals and to work toward those we don't have that for this spring quite yet in our hands but we know we've been working with these numbers for the last couple of years we've got and we've had a couple of those members on a few indicators be a little bit lower than we wanted which is really what sparked some of our our work for the last couple of years and that's um you know that's not something to lose heart about but it's just something to say right how can we reinvigorate ourselves and and work towards some of these pieces we're looking at students who are participating in extracurricular activities and different um experiences outside the classroom we're looking at written curriculum as that becomes again an overlap between the academic pieces and part of what is school culture teacher expectation student engagement in the classroom all Linked In Those ways and how teachers are incorporating some of those goals and strategies in their own planning and goal setting for themselves throughout the year so it can flip to the next so some of the places where we've we've really just felt good about what we're doing and it might actually start kind of bottom up just to tag team off of what Drew is talking about you know attendance obviously is inherently connected to academic achievement into students succeeding but it's all about the culture why do we have attendance issues with certain students if they want to come to school we want them to want to come to school we want them to be in a place where they feel like they are accepted they're welcomed even if it's hard some days they want to be there so as we review our academic pieces and and and you know we do use contracts as there's that credit card and they have to get there it's also how can we help you how can we work with families so we've been working on that communication just making those connections to get students back into the building and we have seen improvements we really have this year and some of it has been tough conversations um just having families kind of reorient with the expectations of you know if it's not okay to miss 37 days of school that's a lot that matters and that's not a number that's crazy to even say out loud like those are the numbers for some students that we're dealing with so we've seen um a decline in some of those those High numbers which is a great thing our teachers have been working on their curriculum up a part of a niask initiative but all evolving process and we've specifically been working towards um having teachers embed vision of a graduate attributes which again speaks to some of those culture pieces looking at collaboration how to how do students work with each other looking at those compassionate citizen pieces how are we kind to each other and actually seeing how do we play those out in instruction and assessment in the classroom um something that I've been really excited about this year is just the teacher conversation surrounding grading practices and Grading consistency and as much as that seems like a specifically academical it's so related to the school culture and school climate how our teachers creating expectations in their classroom how does that translate into assessment practices how does that translate that into the grade book and what does that mean for student and teacher morale how do we look at things like participation and effort how do we how do we look at late work policies from absences are they all sort of end up scaffolding into each other so we've had some great conversations among the staff in our professional time throughout the day to really dig in and be reflective about those those practices and to make some changes moving forward kids excited to come to school um is that really what we I mean in terms of what we're telling kids isn't it about setting expectations and having them meet those expectations as opposed to changing our approach to make them want to come to school um you know as they get older they're going to have to go to work and have to do a lot of things they might not want to do they're not going to actually cater to them um then what are we doing to make sure we're going to go too far in the direction of catering to students who maybe just need to get a kick in the ass and come to school so Best of Both Worlds so we want we want school but there are those pieces those contracts for attendance specifically as you're talking about there is that piece of you don't get credit for this class if you're absent this many times you are coming in for the summer to do x amount of hours and units for this class because you couldn't come to school didn't come to school throughout um even looking at discipline and behavior issues with students you know um we've had a lot of great success but we've got some issues we've got some issues of students just being unkind to each other and so some of those we will continue to work restoratively and look at those practices but there's also consequences for those actions so we work sometimes the hardest part is that balance and knowing knowing particular students of what's going to work best so I think it's about I really do I think we're never going to stop wanting kids to be excited about coming to school sure but that doesn't mean that we're not explaining to them that there's hard consequences for some of their choices and that choices matter okay can I how many students are coming to summer school from the high school this year or have to come because they have to um they fell below grade and they need to to make it up in order to get that credit so our number for is is we have students who are eligible we just haven't confirmed their registration so it's about 25 I would say 20 to 25.
when we hit September this is what I am you know trying to you know hopefully um wrap our arms around what happens to enrollment this September should be engaged for what's it going to be like the following the performance and a new housing online are we going to stay on Pace to what was projected or if we start to exceed projections that's when I think we're going to run out of classroom space and so I know that's a long-winded and then give me an answer I don't know how to do classrooms we haven't really just yet but I'm hoping come September we could look at where we are with the moment we could have determined how much more capacity will we have even if we increase class size the question about how big is too big you know that's certainly a question that you know not console would have to address since I've been here we've never gotten over 25 students get a class in elementary you know so if you want to stay at 25 barrier that we don't want to go about that then that it's at that point we'll have to calculate what do we need in terms of trailers just to be safe is there contractual restrictions to class sizes for teachers not in that contract you know it's you know for us it's a it's a I guess a comfortable on how much Administration and certain parents so you know what we have in terms of the estimate of the probable cause for events Nazi is I think worst case scenario and if we had to hit the world war at Highland and I was 1.2 million dollars um yeah I just wanted a couple things then you were talking about supervision so what I'm thinking is let's just say it's somebody happens to have a fever you know next door to high levels and whether it's a drama class or music class or something if it was within walking distance you could go over there students theoretically code for the teacher I mean we're talking about supervision is there a requirement on something like having a principle is in a separated building here you know I don't think there's a report it's like a concern it's a yeah that needs to be okay so there could be a situation but you don't really see it right now yeah okay I mean just use your imagination school security yeah even the Portables are they pretty concerned where they're on the same piece of property and detached I was wondering because mostly what went through my mind based on what I had heard you say was like wait are you saying if it's a separate building we need to have a principle for that building okay okay hold on just like that and I have a nurse I just wanted to understand her yeah I I yeah thank you um Rich you had mentioned uh Office Space it could be you know we're kicking them out of their space to try to generate you know more classroom space and we're you know retrofitting a storage closet you know with office partitions repainting it you know trying to try to light it appropriately and that's their new homes in order to make space you know interior building okay so like in elementary school classroom teacher would would he or she get office space no no all right necessarily the counselor yeah yeah okay um reading a math specialist you know oh yeah yeah one-on-one you know that makes sense okay okay even you know deliveries custodial you know Services I'm sure would be necessary sure yeah I'm just you mentioned office space and I'm thinking so I'm a parent and I see my classroom teachers that you know my kids at the classroom wait they have a desk why do we meet in office no no no that's fine I appreciate it and then um do we have uh I I'm guessing that you have some sort of ongoing uh annual indicators for enrollment if it's a conversation with the Realtors or whatever it might be birth certificates I had no idea do you have any indication right now but next year you know where we are headed in terms of like September three months from now you know the I mean the core of of enrollment and enrollment projection spots with births yeah I've suffered five years ago you know if every birth that we have in Cheshire we we have 1.5 students roughly that actually enrolled in kindergarten and the father and six years later that's just a starting point then on top of that they use trending um and then in the graves past kindergarten you know they just use a cohort survival method and then you have the factor of new housing you know that's another way so you we do get the NASDAQ projections from the New England School Development Council we got we have our first run in November and then we got a spring update and the spring update is based on the October 1 actual enrollment that we had in hand so that up the enrollment projection a bit and then right now you know it's too early to gauge what's going to happen in September because parents will be registering children you know through the summer you know as of right now it looks like you know certainly have registration It's On Target you know maybe a little bit ahead of where we would expect to be right now but we have to wait for September yeah no no but the indicators the indicators you see right now are suggesting 15 months from now you know profit Highway yeah that's what I'm worried about okay okay I just wanna that's based on it's based on your current you know in the past month yeah the other strategy that you know that we use in all districts users you know you can put teachers on a cart you know teachers around like if we had them let's say Bush campus a shot I mean we did have to find a space you know we would probably do some specials like music or art in an alternate space and so I think these are all the decisions that will have to be made this is certainly a possibility doing trailers you know money aside I think we would rather be on a trail on the property than be in a space outside the property but money is you know certainly something that that comes I'm just looking at you know we have 550 000 years we're looking at 900 .
our first area is priority one which is uh basic Services uh all of these areas that we assess are using our William settlement reports and we're measuring progress towards meeting 100 in each of these three areas um qualified teachers is the first area we have a hundred percent there textbooks for all students as well providing them access to standards aligned textbooks both at home and at school that's also at 100 and maintaining facilities in good repair and there we're at a 79 percent the next priority area is implementation of state standards and here we're using a self-reflection tool that's using a five-point scale that you'll see on the left hand side um the first the number one represents exploration and research and five represents full and sustainability of the standard um you'll notice that um the on the right hand side it gives you the average of each of the topics within implementation of State Standards um here this is these are average scores so for example um support for teachers and administrators as three sub categories within that section we take the average of the three categories to get that level of progress for that second our next area is parent and family engagement and in here we're using also a self-assessment tool to gauge how we're encouraging parent participation and how we're partnering with our parents in decision making uh we're focusing on the three areas of building relationships between school and families building Partnerships for student outcomes and seeking input for decision making our district has to write narrative that also are publicized in the California dashboard and it summarizes our progress towards these areas and you'll also find these in your report that is the local indicators report for 2023 some highlights for parent engagement include opportunities for parents to participate in programs like project to inspire families in schools pack Plus these opportunities help us build leadership for our parents and also give them input when making decisions our next priority area is school climate and this measures students sense of connectedness and safety this data is taken from our district annual youth group survey and it includes the percent positives for 2022 and 2023 we do see a decline in the percent positive for both of these areas um that for example in the area of school safety the decline could be attributed to the continued impact of the covid-19 pandemic as well as the increased violence that we've seen in our community as a district in response to this specific need we've taken steps to increase safety at our school sites including a campus safety positions at our high schools and shifting at our staffing at our middle schools from noon supervisors to campus security positions installation of perimeter fencing as well as safety cameras to try to see some positive sense of safety perception for our students to support a sense of school connectedness we've partnered with Western Justice on um focusing on restorative practices and peer mediation using Community circles within many of our school sites as well as through the lcap you'll notice that there are actions and services that support Mental Health Services as well as PBIS positive behavior and intervention supports for our full site we've partnered also with California Ed partners for the on track board which has identified Target students and has developed internal goals for these students and then I think later today you have an abort agenda item will you'll see a contract with second call and this is going to provide some push and support for our secondary students so we're hoping that all of these efforts will result result in growth in positive perception for a student connectedness uh priority area number seven is access to a broad course of study um and here we are reporting on progress on the data we're interpreting the data and using this data uh every year we examine Elementary class schedules for all our sites as well as secondary Master schedules to assess the programs that we're offering across the district we in particular look at our English language Learners to make sure that they have access to these courses as well as our special education students and we are at a hundred percent for access to a broad course of are our local indicators includes my presentation but I'd be happy to answer any questions or take any comments that you uh yes I have a question regarding the school climate I know we talked about the pandemic but how how long are we gonna using the pandemic I think and we said the same thing last year and I noticed the numbers have not changed much and that's the same thing with the um sense of connectedness we spoke about that and um I'm just hoping that with with the safety I know you mentioned a lot of things I know we are doing we're trying that these numbers will change but on on the con being connected what are we doing about that or how yeah I'm just very concerned because um I mean even the school safety like you know like what exactly are they not feeling safe uh you know what exactly is who can pinpoint it because I don't feel safe okay I don't feel safe why you know the students the the yard I don't know I just think we need to like pinpoint it um maybe it'll help us fix it you know because we can't fix a problem we don't know nothing about and even feeling connected why are they not feeling connected the numbers are very um didn't change much it's a little tense but why are they not are they teachers not reaching out to them are they not being able to stick to their counselors so they say this climate is very important because that's actually what keeps our students in our school and also myself as a parent if my child was not feeling safer not doing connected I personally would not want my child to attend that District that's my personal point of view yeah and I I think you bring bring up some very valid points um these are definitely areas of need for the district and we're that's why we're highlighting these areas that um are areas of need and that we need to continue to work towards and provide um interventions and supports for our students so they feel first safe and then they feel connected to their school sites so for example through the work with Western Justice if we're focused on um implementing Community circles at all our school sites that will give opportunities for students to actually voice um situations where they may not feel safe um or issues that they're having so then the classroom can have a discussion and try to work towards um making a better environment for students but we have we do have we Western justice has been with us this school year so I'm really I am really surprised that the numbers have not changed much because they have I know they've had Community circles with students I know parents and staff so if they're still feeling the same way yeah and it's a process we do need to give our staff and our and our our school sites time to implement these strategies right and to um really Elevate the good practices and make sure that they're happening across all our classrooms and and campuses so you know the other piece too is the increased violence that we experience in the community that may be affecting um you know some of these um responses that we're getting from students again it's data it's a data point um and it's a data point that's very important then we we understand the importance of continuing to support in these specific areas so that there's not really an easy answer to this but I know we are aware of the need and that we're going to continue to support our school sites both staff and students okay thank you thank you so much Mr Medina thank you moving to item 12.2 this is an action item is there a motion motion to approve ment any discussion being none I'll call for the vote [Music] um and the motion passes 4-0 moving to item 12.3 may have a motion motion to approve second any discussion being nine I'll call for the vote and the motion passes for zero next we have our update on the Surplus property Mr Ortega thank you Dr Beau I just want to uh update the Board of Education that tomorrow uh we'll have our next uh Surplus property committee meeting uh here in the boardroom at 5 PM it is an open meeting uh the bulk of Tomorrow is to uh once again revisit the Board of Education report that will be delivered uh to the Board of Education here in the fall and so the group has committed to provide input and hopefully get to a final uh version of that report tomorrow we will also be um asking the committee if um if everything goes well if our next meeting which is scheduled for July 26th that we vote that that's going to work and that's the medium where we can have the public hearing uh as part of this process we do have to have a public hearing uh if the committee uh agrees and we work it out that way we already have a draft of a mailer that's going to go out to every single resident in the Azusa Unified School District boundary so it's not the city of Azusa per se because you know that we service other parts as well and so we are looking we are looking to mail and advertise this public hearing uh on July 26 so that folks who are not connected to our social media and or do not have students who currently attend a zuzina fight School District uh know that we are holding a public hearing on that particular day Mr Ortega now moving to item 3.2 revised board meeting calendar this is an info action item Mr Ortega uh thank you Dr Beau uh we are bringing uh this item uh forward uh for board uh consideration uh currently on our board meeting calendar we have a study session scheduled for November 28th uh Tuesday November 28th that is the week of the csba conference and uh we have three board members attending that conference and more specifically attending the pre-conference uh this time around it is uh up north and so our three board members will be traveling on the 28th which means that we will not have a quorum uh to hold that meeting um so we are looking to the Board of Education we are recommending that that study session be moved uh to Tuesday December 5th uh but looking for the board uh Direction uh on that particular board meeting thank you Mr Chicken so uh just recap your uh proposal is to reschedule the November 28th study session to Tuesday November 5th so I'm sorry Tuesday December 5th that is correct is there a motion make a motion whoa I'll make a motion um you move it to December 2nd fifth I second that motion is there any discussion just just a quick reminder since it since it's here that I will not be in attendance at this upcoming board meeting um I had indicated that there were a few dates that I was going to miss and so I will miss the next uh looking at this I will miss the next one but I should be good for the remaining uh updates listed when you talk about the next one are you talking about December 5th are you talking about August thank you for for asking for clarification the very next board meeting that we have on August 8th which is the first meeting on this calendar thank you any further discussion okay moved and seconded I'll call for the vote and the motion passes four zero now moving to item 14.1 approval of the 2324 adopted budget may I have a motion make a motion to approve 14.1 any discussion being none I will call for the vote and the motion passes or zero fourteen point two may have a motion question to approve thank you any discussion seeing nine I'll call for the vote the motion passes four zero 14.3 may have a motion make a motion to approve move by board member Rodriguez Pena seconded by board member Greer any discussion being none call for the vote and the motion passes four zero next up item 14.4 may I have a motion make a motion to approve 14.4 second moved and seconded in a discussion seeing none I'll call for the vote motion passes or zero moving to item 15.1 this is an info item Mr runkio the next couple items starting with 15.1 um are the are required by government code 3547 that allows for the public to be one made aware of and speak to the negotiations that will take place between the district and the collective bargaining groups Before You Are The Sunshine proposals from aea to the district and then beginning on 15.3 are the proposals for the sunshine proposal for the district to negotiate with aea does that conclude 15 the presentation for 15.1 yes thank you moving to item 15.2 this is an action item may have a motion to open the public hearing for the aea sunshine proposal for the 2324 fiscal negotiation year make a motion to approve 15.2 moved and seconded is there any discussion uh call for the vote the motion passes 4-0 this now opens our public hearing at 809 PM hope do you have anyone in the boardroom who would just make public comment on this item no one in person and Mr Sanchez anyone online for the public hearing 15.2 we do not have hands raised thank you so much it is now 8 10 I'm calling the public hearing for 15.2 to a close moving to item 15.3 info item Mr rankio similar to 15.1 15.3 is the district's Sunshine proposal to begin the negotiation process with aea for the 23-24 school year and that concludes my presentation thank you so much and now we move to 15.4 public hearing of the Azusa Unified School District sunshine sunshine proposal for the 23-24 fiscal year negotiations may have a motion to open the public hearing motion to open the public hearing thank you moved and seconded any discussion being none I'll call for the vote and the motion passes 4-0 the public hearing is now open at 8 11 pm hope is anyone in the boardroom Mr Sanchez is anyone on Zoom which is to make public comment during the public hearing we do not have any hands raised thank you so much I now call the public hearing to a close at 8 11 pm now moving to 15.5 this is an action item may have a motion motion to approve 15.5 second moved and seconded in any discussion seeing Nano call for the vote and the item passes 4-0 this now brings us to 15.6 consideration and approval of the amended employment contract or the assistant superintendent of Business Services this is an action item and we are required by Edco to read the following the amendment to the assistant superintendent of Business Services contract extends the term of the contract by one year from June 30 2025 to June 30 2026.