Well, I I appreciate the commitment to the goal and I appreciate the numerous times that I've pushed back on things and folks are still willing to meet the the requests. So, I appreciate it and we're continuing to learn. We also have a book study that the coaches are doing and the cohort's doing about specifically how to um it's it's called like how to teach our black students, right? Teaching black students, the dream keepers. Yes. Um I saw that on the list. Yeah. And then this uh slide is is the same as before except for the the data is different. It has our um our black students their growth for um the numbers that showed growth that maintain and also that lost ground for both eth and fifth grade. And that con that's that's what we have for our our goal two. Any other questions? Sorry, one just popped into my head.
So, yes, as a district, we're moving the needle, but there are students who are not moving the needle at all. And it's that those groups should be digging into the data at really specific like subgroup as as detailed as they can get to really set the direction of how do we move the needle for each and every student um and not just for all students as a whole, right? Um so that work like of breaking that data down digging into it and setting direction based on it is the work of subcommittees but as a board you won't just again just be seeing like bottom line how is MAP going but how does this break down by our different groups and what has our committees identified as the most important things for us to focus on based on the data are seeing here. So, is that like if we're trying to meet that, you know, overall foster inclusion and belonging and subcommittees dcc Tom's able to and they're able to bring to the board, hey, like we're we're going upwards, but we need to allocate more resources for for this specific group or we need to do, you know, what we're realizing is actually not based on one metric, but if we look overall, there's a couple of groups, one or one or two groups that we're not seeing progress on teaching and learning.
So right here looking at the uh those that showed growth, maintained and lost ground. Is this based on these same students where they were last year or from the benchmark prior? These are this is actually pre-est to post- test data. So 20 81% of our eighth graders grew from the pre-EST to the post- test, which is really exciting because that's 25 students that grew. And when we presented the exact same data to you back in January, only 15 of them had grown. Um, and likewise with fifth grade. In January, only eight of them, eight of our students grew from August to December and now 23 of them. So, we're excited to see them really picking up speed. I think that segus into something, Dr. Deepen, if you don't mind going to the third slide one more time. Um, tell me when I get there. It's the one with the goals and the annual target and the current measures al together.
we're not seeing progress on inclusion. We need to think differently about how we support that group. And you as a board should be saying, how can we allocate resources, set the conditions, and communicate effectively so that the district understands why we're focusing on one group of students rather than, you know, every group of students. And yes, it's a really good question. I'm glad glad you asked it. Um so jumping to fostering inclusion and belonging. So we know panorama is new this year and we know that in the first year of implementation there's a lot of challenges with like it's the first time students are seeing these questions it's the first time staff are seeing these questions you know um so we took a baseline this year um and on the spring data which you'll see more in June um 70% of elementary students reported a sense of belonging um in their schools and 66% of secondary students reported a sense of belonging ing.
That one. Um so I just want to kind of to reiterate both for this and the last one we looked at. Um these are progress monitoring reports where we're looking at those current measures. What we're looking forward to in August with our fingers crossed are the annual targets, right? And so we haven't gotten to those yet. And so I just want to make that clear for anyone watching or anyone in the room tonight that, you know, we've done our best with these current measures to pick assessments that we already use to try to see if those can be markers for us moving forward. And hopefully when we get our annual target, we'll know if these assessments that we use are good indicators of how students will do on the annual for the annual target. But we don't actually know quite quite all the way yet.
Now, Panorama puts out a lot of research. Um, they because they work with so many school districts, they collect data from so many school districts, they put out research on both why is sense of belonging really important. So, y'all can look at that and see what, you know, why is this metric an important one to look at, but also what is an aggressive yet achievable annual target for movement. And what they say is for a district of your size, one percentage point a year is an aggressive yet achievable target. that yes, you might have a year where you grow three percentage points and then the next year you grow one percentage point or no percentage points, but that based on what they see working with districts and the research they've conducted for a district of your size and a student like a population of your size, one percentage point a year is what they consider uh an appropriate target for um growth.
And so we'll find out in August once we have been able to get all the um assessment data back for this school year. Yeah. And I um just wanted to point out too that um it's a combination of knowing how aligned the test data is to be correlated. But it's also there's a going to be a need for us to fine-tune based on what we learn because you know we did our best to try to figure out like well what would a result that would indicate the result we're seeking be but we're very early in in doing that right so and we really haven't done that um probably for I don't know I don't know if it was done at sometime maybe a dozen or more years ago but at least in the time I've been here. This is the first time we've been doing that.
So, uh, as you see here, we've, uh, gone based off of, we've set targets based on what research tells us is an appropriate target each year. So, that's one percentage point getting us to, you know, I would say generally about 75% threequarters of students at the elementary level and 70% of students at the secondary level. And if we norm that nationally, you know, based on Panorama's data, that's in like 70 75% is in like the 90th percentile nationally and 70% for high schools is in like the 80 90th percentile nationally. So if we're norming this to like, you know, is 70% aggressive yet achievable because that might feel like, hey, that's only 4% higher than where we are now. That's still being at almost the 90th percentile nationally. in terms of student sense of belonging um score. So wanted to share that as well. Does this one have a guardrail like the other one?
So, um, so we will get better at that over time, too. And so, there'll be sort of like a fine-tuning refinement of those numbers as well. And in some places, the team has already talked about changing out the tools that are used to measure because we may have access to some better tools for next year. And that's just a really long way to get to. Um, a bunch of us sat in a room last year and tried to figure this out, right? Um, and as people who've worked with me a long time know, I'm fond of saying that none of us is as smart as all of us. So, I always feel like the more people in the room, uh, the better the, you know, decision-m that we make and the ideas we come up with. So the first week of June this year, we will be engaging not only with our executive team, our principles and our assistant principles, but thank you to our coaches who are going to be joining us, our coordinators who are going to be joining us.
No, it does not. Is there a reason? Um mostly because this is really normed. The reason that for the guardrail in the map one is because the guardrail is actually what map norms as kind of what is appropriate growth uh appropriate growth targets. So 50% um but you all are outperforming map. Um this one is based off of what Panorama put out. So we didn't need to set a guard rail that was saying we don't want to drop below any percentile because this is what's normed based on what they shared. I think the other aspect is there's a lot more historical data and results with map in the district. Yeah. We don't have any here. Yeah. The panorama's new. This is the first were using it. And to Danielle's point earlier, we ch the panorama group changed some of the vocabulary and structure from the fall test assessment uh fall survey assessment to the spring one because of understanding of language and vocabulary and concepts.
So, we're going to put all the people who like are living this from day to day in the room and try to come up for ne with with recommendations uh for the board for an even stronger set of interim measures for next year. And you'll see some changes, you know, in some of these areas. Um, and you'll see us targeting some things that the board has brought up this year in the guard rails. Like one thing that comes to mind is the chronic absenteeism. You'll probably see some reflection of that. So, so um what we will be bringing back to the board will be the work of a much larger group all of whom have now been deeply engaged in this work. So, as we continue, I know I know um President Curio makes fun of me because I like to say the goal is to be vertically articulated from the board all the way to the students understanding what we're doing with student outcomes focused governance work.
So the spring one what we even understand Brad correct me if I'm incorrect on this but the spring one spring survey we believe gave students maybe a truer understanding of what the questions we're trying to ask and to get that's why they re yeah we switched some of the categories that were really focused on and then there's all sorts of research around the more times you're exposed to questions you think deeper about them you understand the vocabulary around them So you'll start to see some shifts just based on the test itself and then students understanding. Um the last one there is a guardrail for and that's the financial profile score. So uh incredibly right now Bavia has a perfect score a 4.0. So, if we think about the trend line, we're hoping it's a nice flat line across the top. Knocked it down this year.
And it's kind of like a pyramid. As we as that articulation gets deeper, there's more people involved in it. And the more people that are involved in it, the broader our knowledge base and the better we can do bringing forward recommendations um as we intend to do this summer. Totally. Well, thank you all for all your hard work again. Um and I'll go ahead and move to approve uh progress monitoring to report for uh goal to report four. Second. All in favor? I. All right. Thank you so much. You um we'll go ahead and move on to public comments. Item 5A. I appreciate you um sitting through. We've decided to change our agenda so that we prioritize our student outcomes focused governance um and hopefully get folks who are coming to speak to at least hear about that before they get up here. So, I appreciate your patience.
So, fired up for this one. Um, we'll talk more about it later. Tony fought this pretty hard. Now, we said that we understand um or like when we talked as a DCC, we were like, well, maybe more resources as a result of all of the other work happening on the strategic plan, we have to shift resources and allocate more resources towards uh you know, it could be towards facilities within operational excellence. It could be towards, you know, efforts to increase belonging or to increase, you know, student participation in activities or it could be efforts to improve college and career readiness. And if we have to allocate more resources, we don't want to be dinging ourselves on another goal at the expense of allocating resources towards something that we believe is really important. And so we said, yeah, in an ideal world, we're staying at financial recognition 4.0.
Um, what do we have the timer on, Hilda? Three minutes. Three minutes. You'll have three minutes to speak. And again, um, board members can't respond to things that are not on the agenda and we'll go from there. So, uh, I have Rebecca Jean, come on up. Hello, my name is Rebecca Jean. Thank you for the opportunity to speak here tonight in front of you. I want to start by saying I'm a teacher of 12 years and I love my profession. I'm here to briefly explain my recent experience in the Kraton district and close with one request from the school board. In January, I underwent an emergency appendecttomy. Soon after, I made the heartbreaking decision to resign from my third grade teaching position at Larry C. Kennedy Elementary. But I wasn't treated like someone who resigned due to my illness. Instead, I was treated like I had been fired by my principal, Miss Helena Lebron.
We don't want to drop into what's called financial review. There's no like recourse for dropping into financial review from the state, but that's dropping below a 3.53, but we might need to drop from a 3 4.0 to a 3.8 because we had to allocate more resources and dip into our fund balance and had less cash on hand. So, by doing that, that means that for this year, we dropped to a 3.8. That doesn't mean we're not financially healthy, but that does mean that we want to make sure we're, you know, staying above that 3.53. So, I can offer a great example to this. Brad is the source of this conversation for me. So, Brad, let me give you credit. And if I mess it up, I'm sorry. You correct me. But the Fox Valley Career Center this year is experiencing the most student requests I believe they have ever had.
Despite still being employed, my classroom keys in hand, my classroom was packed up without my consent or my knowledge. I had to involve HR to retrieve personal items that were wrongly claimed belonged to the school. It felt less like support and a very difficult and vulnerable time and more like punishment. As my kids walked away a final time, the principal told me with a grin on her face to quote, "Take your last looks." Sadly, this was part of a larger pattern. Throughout my time at LCK, I had I and many other staff members faced bullying and poor communication from admin. Despite all of this, one of the best parts of my year was founding the school's first cheer team. We raised over $400, primarily through cheer parent donations for bows and palms for the girls to have as keepsakes for their season. I later found out from a colleague that only the bows were given out to the girls.
They received amongst the districts that belong to the Fox Valley Career Center over 700 student requests for their programs. It's the most they've ever had. The result of that is they cannot financially afford to take every single kid from all the districts and they have to deny. So, Betavia us, we have students who get denied going into like the nursing program or the auto mechanics program. And you know, for us that kind of stinks, right? because those are pathways some of our kids really are going to jump into immediately. Uh one of our graduating seniors was just recognized by the Tri City uh exchange club because he's uh he just passed his actually he we just learned he passed his MC uh mechanics uh level one license test. He'll be walking graduation after having gone through tons of setbacks in his life and is going to be walking that stage going to Aonzi because he wants to study business and then open his own uh mechanic shop, auto shop doesn't happen like without that experience though and getting that certification through our programming partner at Fox Valley Career Center.
The principal decided to withhold the pom poms for possible future use. Those were not district- funded items. The palms came primarily from monetary donations made by cheer parents in the LCK community at large. The Cheer Girls deserve to have these special keepsakes as a way to remember their time and cheer and a token of all of their hard work. This was not a decision made by someone who values putting kids or their hard-earned accomplishments first. This was a selfish decision. There are still many LCK parents and cheerleaders upset with the decision as well. So, I respectfully request the following from the board. Before the school year is over, please consider returning these pom poms to the girls as a symbol of their hard work and their accomplishments. Thank you. Thank you so much for your comments. Thank you. Go ahead and move on to uh the approval of consent agenda.
Brad and I have talked like how do we find facilities or resources that we can when they get denied there we have a backup option and to Simone's point that will possibly I'm sorry Tony I don't know if we've talked to you about this but we may have to look more into like well it's going to cost us money it's resources but it's directly going to what the kids need and want their voice is the ones that are telling us this they sign up for Actually, I have modeled the preliminary budget, which we're going to talk about next. Best case scenario, it's likely that we'll be a 3.9 next year because we won't have as much cash on hand after we've spent down our fund balance. Worst case scenario, 355 because our fund balance threshold could fall lower than we wanted to, but it's a budget.