Um and in some cases, in rare cases, Oakdale again, um any questions about Cal before I move over to AFC? Yeah, there's there's there's the question mark again. Absolutely. Um well, and I found it. What I was looking for, I found on our presentation. Um the on-site counselor support team, if I recall what we were talking about, um at at both of the other secondary schools was the combination of academic counselor, wellness counselor, social worker, and I I know what the Ecoin connections is. I asked last year, um, do you have enough of those supports? Because it seems to me that the students who've just described and looked at are the ones that really need um focused intervention from that support team. Where are we? Um, we are very fortunate with our funding that a lot of you know in terms of um to hire as much support as possible.
So we have opportunities for students to pick two of four, three of five, whatever that case may be. Um so something that speaks to them, aligns best with their interests, their values. Um they have that selection process. Um that's in addition to kind of our standard procedure of always giving students uh an opportunity to opt out of something if it's not um you know not appropriate for them or something that their family does not want. Um, and I think that's just in general a critical component of any adoption in 2025 is that we're working really hard to make sure that we have good information to provide to our families and our community um so that we can honor parental choice and allow them to make those decisions about what they want um for their child. The last piece is are the choice materials. Again, I call those behind the wall.
Um and um and to make sure that we reach out and collaborate with those staff members when we work with fa families. Um I I love how Miss Nash talked about how we're opening those doors for building relationships and partnerships to get as much support as we can because that is within our control. Thank you. Oh, Miss Pastor, um, Member Lopez, uh, triggered a a question, um, which is one of the reasons why I love having all these board members up here with the different mindsets and different ways of thinking. Um, training for our teachers because a lot of our IEP students are in our general education classes. um what is the training looking like going forward so that all teachers know how to handle this the various situations because I know that there could be a situation happening in one grade level in a classroom and the admin is there but then there's another situation happening because you know it does kind of happen sometimes at the same time and we can't clone everybody.
Uh, planning board can be very technical, very detailed. Uh, you've talked a little bit about some of your experiences. What do you hope to bring to the Ashlin Planning Board? Um, I won't say if you're going to be elected because you I expect you both to be sitting in the planning board as of next week, but um actually Scott, why don't you start? What what do you hope to bring to the planning board with your experience? Sure. So, I kind of look at it in two different ways. Um, one, a strong logistical background, right? So, working in manufacturing, working with large corporations and large operations, you need a lot of attention to detail. You need to make sure you're following through with everything. a lot of planning, a lot of dates that you have to hit to have things ready to go um for the market.
Um, just to give a a quick a quick outline in terms of science alone, we have 33 students taking chemistry, uh, AP test, 25 taking bio, uh, over 50 students taking the AP environmental science test, and about 25 students are taking physics. Uh, so it's pretty impressive. Uh, that's just that's just science. Um, end of year benchmarking, the window is now open for our K to5 students who've taken their end of year I Ready testing. um as well as our our our final amplify work in terms of seeing the progress students have made in the area of dibbles for literacy uh to make sure that we're obviously have the ability now to take a look at that data over the summer to see how we did and and as the as our principles know I'm always looking at that growth data right we talk about have our students made that year's worth of growth and that I allows us to measure that across K to8 uh educator ev valuation is coming to a a a screeching halt here as summit of evaluations are being shared in on Friday.
Um and so we have spent a lot of time in my office making sure that we've got our systems up and ready to go as we start to now engage in that process um to get these jobs posted and also to get them set up in our system so that they can receive applicants. Um we have done again this year an early hiring initiative. Um what that means is we have sent teams of um administrators and teachers out to college fairs in key areas that we have had some really really good hires in the past. Um and they go armed with a basically an early hire offer. So there's a QR code that links to some documents to get people in and early interviewed. Um so far I'm excited to report that we have um pulled in 14 new teachers for the high school already.
We do have two intervention specialists as well in addition to two of our wellness counselors and two counselors that are assigned academically, but they do a lot of supports um in addition to our our targeted case managers and school psychologists. We have a ton of support and we are still um struggle daily to meet the needs of these students. Um, so I mean if you look in AR's documentation in terms of counseling and visitation, you're going to see that just about every student on the campus is connected to one if not two of our support providers in addition to target case managers and everybody else. Um, so I don't think we we could ever have enough, but we do our best to, you know, fill the offices that we do have and provide every opportunity for more and more supports. Again, back to student input.
Um those are ones that have restricted access. So, for example, if we said we wanted to read, I'll give you one of my um favorites, sarcasm intended, from high school, Great Gatsby. I was not a fan of Gatsby. Sorry, English teachers. Um like if we were going to teach The Great Gatsby as a novel, that is something that we would have to go through a process for. So, we would review that novel first to make sure that it's appropriate for the grade level, it meets all of the standards, it has literary value, and then that would come to you as a board to approve before we would include it as part of the adoption. Um, so those novel components are not included um with the exception of there is a list of novels that are kind of some of the classics that are available digitally.
So, how are we training our teachers and are we making sure that our teachers are understanding all of our best practices? Great question. Um, and something I'm looking forward to when returning teachers come back on contract, but before student starts, we have some plans um for some consultants to come in and work in a couple of those areas. one in particular with preschool through second grade um uh because that age group is a little different and then another for our upper elementary and our secondary students that focuses on understanding um I call it behavior 101 uh some of the why behind um what some of the behaviors that we see and then some uh strategies on how to deescalate situations with all types of students. So, we have some great plans in place for right when teachers return. If I could just piggyback on that question and and I apologize if you've already answered it.
And then the flip side is a business mind. Um I'm coming in here as a business owner. I really have the point of view of a small business owner. How can we how can Ashlin be better for business is kind of one thing that's kind of always on my mind. Um and then also and so maybe two and a half things also uh housing, right? So, you know, as somebody who's been in real estate, as somebody who does property management, you know, my my thoughts are always on how can our community have more housing, like how can we be affordable housing for people? And I'm really I love Ashland. To me, moving into Ashland was probably one of the best things my family's done. And if we can have that for more opportunities for more people in our neighboring communities or want to get into our community, I think that makes us better.
Formatives will go out in in June, but our summit of evaluations are for any teacher that is on a two-year the second year of their two-year self-directed plan, as well as all of our nonprofessional status teachers who are on a one-year plan. They will receive their overall rating on Friday. In terms of professional learning, we have our final full professional final early release professional development day on Friday. So, any parents out there who are listening, remember it's an early release Friday for PD. Um some of the highlights that are going to be happening. Uh Jenna spoke about the restorative circles work that's going to be being led by our guidance team at Mendes along with uh Miss Alman. Um they're going to do be doing some curriculum mapping work at the high school as well as the middle school especially as we prepare for some of these new coursework that's happening.
Most of our buildings, many, many of our buildings are now fully staffed. Now, we're going to continue to get some resignations and retirements, but right now we're in real good shape um at least with our momentum on those. So, we've been very happy with that. Um one of the things that we loaded in this year that has um had us really looking at all of our marketing is a product called Interview Stream. And Interview Stream interfaces directly with our frontline Apple track. Um, so the thing that we use to do our hiring and it allows our candidates not only to do a short written sample, but also to respond with brief videos to questions that we've teed up so that our administrators, our teachers, people in hiring panels can now view a whole range of videos from candidates as a screening tool. It also allows us to do some marketing.
When I was on campus last year, we were talking with students um and their descriptions of how important that um support team had been to them in order to bring well their life together as well as their academics as well as how to survive the world. I mean the some of your kids, our kids, um are are in places that are very difficult for them and they recognize it and that was one of the things they were telling us if you I think yeah you were there. Um again are the students engaged in picking up the supports from those teams? Yes. The reason I started with Cal and AFC is to kind of paint the clearest picture possible and how long it does take a student who has been basically told they have to come to another program through the various interventions and processes like SARB and um expulsion and just pure credit recovery.
Um, again, we have the ability to to control access to those, but we do have some of them digitally. Again, most of your classic literature pieces um are what's contained in there. Um and then some of those those long read pieces are available in there as well. So, if we got to that point where we decided we wanted a particular novel, um we would bring that through the process and then bring that to you for approval. Um honestly, in in 2025, we don't do a lot of that anymore. Um we don't teach as much novel based as we might have 10-15 years ago. It's more skills-based. Um but if we saw that that would come through you all.
Um, so there was a a slide that listed the increase and decrease in some schools for out of school suspension. uh for those schools that had increases, are we seeing a trend in a particular um behavior type or action that would result in us maybe looking at our processes or the way that we um are working with students prior to getting to that point? In short, are we seeing this one particular action or behavior that is driving that increase? And is there anything that we can do proactively to help curb some of that or give attention to? I think uh we need to continue to focus on looking at students because one thing I may not have um spoke about was those numbers do include um the same student that may have multiple incidents. And so, um, another data piece that was interesting to look at is the number of students that have are approaching or have more than 10 days of OSS.
Um, so those are really kind of the the thought process of how I think I can contribute to the planning, both logistical piece and then um, you know, through that business mindset. Okay, Camilo, same question for you. What what can you bring to the planning board to help with with the issues that that they're going to be looking at? Sure. I'll first mention why I'm running to the board and and and and um that'll bring me to the the qualifications and what I can bring to the table. I think the first reason is as being uh the excitement of being part of the team that shapes uh the character of the town that shapes um and improves the quality of life of uh the people in Ashland. I see it as an opportunity just as Scott mentioned before as an opportunity to serve uh the community and do my my public service for a community that I love.
Um and then at Mendes I mean I'm sorry at Warren they're going to be doing some grade level team work on on curriculum mapping as well. And uh Pete's going to be looking at the S3 work and the data team meetings work that they've done to make sure we're looking at the whole child uh and improving upon those practices. And Sarah is going to be doing some team building activities at Pitway. Um other quick things, it was alluded to that our Alice training has gone really well this year. Um and it it it concluded with each student in our district taking a field trip, a walking field trip to the appropriate rally points in case of an emergency situation where we actually had to fully evacuate the building and go to a safe space. So worked really closely with John Murray who's done just such a fantastic job as the co-chair in the safety committee.
So it allows us to link to videos to the newmies. It allows us to link to letters from Rogers Park about what their school is about. So, we've really tried to embed similar marketing in these tools that we've been folding into our hiring process. So, so far so good. We're going to do actually a quick 15minute training. Cara, if you want to log on tomorrow, um just to make sure that everybody knows how to get in and start using the system. Um it was very inexpensive. It's a great leverage tool for us. So, we're excited about using that. Um we also you're going to see later on tonight's agenda we have um for your consideration the new agreement with our PAR educators. That's a key component in our really pushing through more rigorous and successful hiring of candidates for our many PAR educator programs. Um as we've talked about in the past with you all that affects morale that affects um ability to serve our kids.
Um, so with the junior high students, the goal is to get back to a comprehensive site at the next semester if possible and get to that next grade level and high school on time to get all the wonderful opportunities over there and if necessary come back to us as the safety net. Um, the calendar students again through the various processes that they go through are the ones that struggle to really make that connection right away. It does take more than a semester in most cases for them to really trust us and understand what we're about. But when you see it, it's why we do what we do and despite the heartache that comes with everything. So, um, those students for the most part struggle to really connect because they've had those opportunities to connect at other sites and they did have connections and now here they are with us.
So um so based on all of that information uh the recommendation from the committee is approval of perfection learnings um AP coursework and HMH's into literature and I will open it for any questions. Mr. speech. Um, I would just jump on that bandwag the ongoing developmental that training, professional development being part of the curriculum. Just know most teachers are going to initially just do what they have time for and they're just going to struggle through getting through and it might take a year or two, but if we can have people that are leading the way from the district to say, "Here are some precious nuggets that not only save you time, help you be more effective." If you can get excited about the curriculum and show those ins and outs, the teachers are going to have a better chance of being able to get excited about it, too.