Reader
Browse passages, annotate evidence, and export with full provenance for citation.
Kieran Pardue. Adan Pacheco. Hardy Patel. Lila Pantuso. Kira Peoples. Theodora Pappas. Ivo Panavic. Owen Park. Jack Perez. Dia Patel. Mahogany Poteat. James Patterson. Noah Pillai. Jackson Pelhank. Anastasia Ponomareva. Ivan Perez. James Potter. Carson Porzina. Nolan Pondman. John Peranunzi. Abigail Quirk. Luke Pollock. Penelope Raja. Flynn Poplawski. Matthew Rahimi. Kylie Proctor. Maya Rana. Jack Quinn. Owen Roush. Celia Rademacher. Alyssa Rawson. Thomas Redzevicius. Norma Reyes Juarez. Fayaz Raihan. Jaslyn Rivas. Melania Retay. Eva Rodriguez. William Roush. Mia Rogers Paxton Roman Jack Ramsey Emily Reyes Jackson Rosenberg Matthew Ristanovic William Recolas Yari Robinson Natalie Rutkowski William Rodriguez Tessa Ryden Imari Romero Mary Salgado Ariana Rosales Raymond Sanchez Abigail Rowe Isabelle Santiago Gwendolyn Russell Caitlin Shui Gwendolyn Russell Samuel Schneider Blake Ryden Owen Scholes Emsley Ryall Alia Seraponas Delilah Sanchez Audrey Shafer Benjamin Sands Colin Scheedy Olivia Sasson Jacob Sherlag Mary Schindler Kira Shoshensky Breanna Scholes Daria Shishkina Mary Seagroves Zeven Simpson Simran Sethi Katarina Sinner William Shay Nathan Slavkin Ashley Sheridan Luke Snider Avery Sherk Kayla Solum David Schuster Haley Speck Basic Zoya Siddiqui Mark Spisak Suchin Sinopon Robert Stephus Nico Skeen Kendall Stevenson Avery Slevin Nabood Sudrania Aiden Selecky Chloe Sullivan Ethan Sparks Nora Sweeney Jacob Spector Oliver Thulin Marissa Spivey Michael Terrado Talulah Sporer Anjali Tiwade Molly Steiner Kai Tolbert Yandel Suarez Trevor Tomlinson Zachary Sue Yandel Torres William Surratt Sean Toth Maya Tetpa O'Rourke Madison Turick Orbit Thirdman Adacina Uka Scarlett Titterington Jonathan Van Plew Molly Tokars Preston Vega.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
I think that one of the key things that has happened recently especially in our districts is we've seen an increase of not just in school but out of school digital use and being a citizen um social media is real. Google is real. Um I yesterday I will not even say what I opened up and and I was scrolling and I said wait a minute did that say Z Summit but it wasn't name it was G Summit. something else, right? And but the access the access to information and the access to each other is so real time that yes, we I believe the middle school had um cell phone bags at one time where students used to you know secure the cell phones. Um I think the high school had something similar. Now there's a statewide initiative around you know implementing implementing like no cell phone schools and environments and we just I sent an email and I'm serious like even if it's not in the school environment when they leave here they still have access to their cell phones.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
Catherine Toledano Vasquez. Yahear Velasquez. Brandon Torres. Aaron Vasselli. Langston Toth. Katerina Vitali. Maxwell Troha. Jared Waden. Kyle Yuler. Nathaniel Wales. William Vala. Daniel Watson. Antonio Vasquez Carillo. Emily Winegust. Jose Villanueva. Grayson Weltler. Mia Villanueva. Forest Whitaker. Callan Villarreal. Miles Wiggins. Brock Wardlow. Kyle Wilson. Drew Wardlow. Anna Woods. Jack Watling. William Woods. Ethan Weiner. Lindsay Wright. William Weiss. Theo Young. Finley Warner. Kieran Zaludek. Riley Whitaker. Luke Williams. Catherine Whitmer. Madison Wolfe. Colton Woodring. Abigail Wiseman. Addison Zeldner. Let's give them one more round of applause. Graduates, if you are able, please stand. At this time, you may move your tassels to the left side of your caps to signify your graduation from high school. At this time, I would like to dismiss the faculty to form the staff receiving line. During the recessional, the combined bands will perform under the direction of senior Tessa Murphy. Tessa's involved in marching band, wind ensemble, band leadership team, jazz ensemble, math team, empowerment club, NHS, and the Illinois Music Honor Society.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
We have to educate our children around being a digital citizen and identifying safe adults who can support them if something goes wrong or they feel uncomfortable or they see something um they feel they feel like Snapchat deletes something in 24 hours. I can put something on there and they can can go away. So there's a lot that we have to catch up to and try to input that within our towards our culture. Thank you. Um hello everyone. Um I have the privilege of leading the division of student academic success. That is our SSO and the lead CIA department. So you love acronyms, don't you? Uh student support uh services. We have our curriculum instruction and assessment. We have a multilingual uh learners. Those three positions. So we are just blessed to have Beth. I'm going through the office. Beth, Marita, Lisa, uh, Nancy, Nora, Maryanne, Joanne, and Sonia in our SSO department.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
Tessa will be attending the University of Illinois and studying statistics and computer science. Graduates, during the recessional, please wait for your section leaders to dismiss you by row to the field house to receive your diplomas. Thank you to all of our guests for joining us today on this beautiful day and for being such a gracious and patient audience. We ask that you please remain in your seats until the conclusion of our recessional. Congratulations, class of 2026. YOU ARE NOW PROUD ALUMNI OF DOWNERS Grove North High School. >> Mhm.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
And congratulations to Joe Anderson, graduating from college. And in I know, right? And in MLE, we have Celia. Celia's uh daughter is graduating from college right now. And congratulations to her. And then you have Lindsay, Jen, my dearest partner Stephanie, and myself. I'm from South Carolina and we have school I'm from a district that has 83 schools. I'm from a very big school district. We have a high school that has 2600 students. That high school is bigger than our entire three districts, but together at that every year we have a state of the district's um summit. It's every year we have this and one of the things that happens at we have before that actual Saturday leading up to a state of the schools. So principles report to their smaller constituent uh groups. One of the things that happened uh when we first started this process maybe about 20 years ago.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
So about 10 years in one this big high school they put their numbers up and they were showing oh they're above the state average and all these things. And one person in the audience said, "Hey, could you tell me how are the subgroups doing?" It's a very different story when we start looking at subgroups. But I am blessed right now to be an amormer. >> People talk about equity all the time. Yes, you do. That's what I get to do. I get to present to you all and I think I presented to almost everybody in this room where I get to disagregate the data. So, we're going to be stopped at 10:55 and they're going to they're going to hit the 1052. So, you get >> Oh, what? >> What? >> It's already 1052. >> Okay, everybody go in your folders. Please find this. >> You have a summary from the Oh my good.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
Are you serious? Yes. >> All right. So, everybody find this. Please find this. It's in your folder somewhere. I know I put it in there. So, turn to your partners to table mate. see if you can see it. >> I will. In the end, um, it's in there. So, one of the things that happens is we're taking a look at all three districts. I've presented MCCAST data for you before. Please note that MCCAST is one of the metrics, one of the point in times that we have. And when we brag about being above the state, we are going to also use it for all the other things, too. So, this is where we are taking a look from 2017 to 2025. Um, we've always been above the state. This is Ammeris. Uh, in English, uh, actually, no, no, take a look. 2017, we were below the state, then we jumped up and then in math, the same thing happened above the state.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
I know I'm going to go fast. All the questions. >> Are you sure? >> Yes. >> You know, you have Stephanie and I don't say that. >> Well, Stephanie's gonna go fast. >> Okay. Just the time. >> Thank you. So here we are with our Amoris data. Again, this is just longitudinal because because one of the things we actually need to know when we start looking at subgroups, did this just happen? And you all are here and you've been here for a for a while where you heard the narrative of oh well the demographics of our community has changed. So that's why there is this this you know this uh um this disperate uh type experience for our students. And actually I was looking at it. Well, we've always had this um going on for at least 10 years. Uh when we take a look at Pelum, notice that Pelum has always been above the state average um 2017 2025.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
Notice that even as they are above the state averages, things have changed uh in terms of proficiency and I'm looking at MCAST again meeting are exceeding. And so you take a look here in English and you take a look at math again leading above the state but still there's a trajectory that we have noticed that it's been a downward trajectory but still above the state. When we look at the regional middle school again, trends that we're looking at, we're looking at being above state average, but still there's been this dip and I don't know what was happening in the 2020s, 2021, but something took place and then there was a big dip. Uh, but again, still above the state average and that's where we are. And then we look at the high school again above the state average. I want to note here for our high school MCCAST.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
The way if you look at 2017 2018 and the numbers might seem really high, you're like, "No, wow." Um, there was a different metric for the MCAST uh data back then, but it was in the desi equivalent to beating art seating. So, I still put it on there since that's the way they aligned it. But, it was a very different um numbering metric for uh percent of achievement back then. But notice where we are still uh above the state average in some instances coming up in English and then going down in math. There is not only the experience students have academically in the classroom around a particular test. There's also the experience in terms of student access who's getting to take the courses that we offer. And in terms of our advanced coursework, I want you to notice that we have this 119 students in AP English, AP Global Studies, 74, AP Statistics, AP Biology.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
You see the numbers there and we have community partners that have just shown up for us and Sarah's sitting right in front of me, but we have 14 students that actually attend Amoris College and are taking multivariable calculus. Now, I was a high school math teacher, so I calculus and algebra 2. I'm like, yes, can I get an award? Um, I love it. And then we have five kids doing dual enrollment at GCC and HCC. Uh we have opportunities for our students. We have things that happen. Look at our graduation rate. We have innovative career pathways. We have lots of things happening for our kids. The question that we're going to sit with um today is is that an even experience for all of our students? So if you take a look at the advanced coursework where 61% of our students are in our advanced courses, when we look at our Hispanic students, only 39% of them are actually in those things.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
And if you look at our students with disabilities, it's 25.5% of the students being a part of those courses. We have a rich diverse community. We have multilingual learners. And I want to make sure we're clear, multilingual and Hispanic aren't the same. We have very Thank you, ma'am. Uh we have varying language uh students here and families here in cultures here in Ammeris. And so of our multilingual learners, I want you to notice access is one of our tests that we provide for our multilingual learners. And we have an 89% participation rate. You might say why be excited about participation? Because this means our students have trust us enough to take the test because not every student want to exit our ELLL services. Some of them find community there and some of them want to stay there. But we have nine students and this is our 2025 that have exited this year.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
And then on average it takes about 5.2 years for our students to actually exit out. But one thing that we have to identify and know that being multilingual is a gift. It is a a positive thing not only for our students currently in the Amoris school districts but when they graduate when they continue on in life that is a positive thing. So we have a school committee Sarah that talks about student experience. She wants to know yes I hear you but how do our students experience this? And this is just a typical student in our school system. So, I'm using our full school system. They start out third grade when we start some of our testing and notice the trajectory that happens for them. They're doing okay. They're doing okay. They dip down seven eight, but then it comes back up. By show of hands, how many of you have ever gone to middle school?
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
Okay, not all of you. Some of you are like, I'm not going to middle school. I'll just pop. But middle school is one of those places that it doesn't matter if you're in Ammerst, South Carolina, Massachusetts or Walong Island, South Carolina. Middle school is hard. It is a hard place to be. Not because of the building, not because of the teachers, because of students themselves and how they're growing and where they are. And sometimes it is even more difficult if you have not had the rich instructional experiences necessary to succeed academically. And most times in middle schools, this is where you find kids who I'm not sure what's happening academically, so I'm going to act out another way or I'm going to find another way to um move myself. You talked about isolating isolating myself from that experience. And so you'll take a look at some of our data and you'll see that middle school's the place where some of our kids most of our kids are having the most struggles in our system.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
So I stand before you as a 56 year old black woman. Guess what happens if you are an SD student, a student with special education needs, a minority student person of color, if you are a student that's from a low income uh place, and if you are ELLL student with actual language needs, you are more likely to experience our system differently. And I want everybody to hear me say that clearly. Ammeris is an excellent place to be. We have an excellent district, but not all of our kids experience it the same way. We're going to look academically at that. So, if you've noticed this dark blue line at the top, all of our students, again, we're looking at MCAST. This is a data point that we have that we're going to use. So, most of our students are doing or all of our students just in terms of the percent of meeting or exceeding are doing exceptionally well.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
We have a couple subgroups. And again, this is not all of our subgroups. This is a couple of our subgroups. Black, African-American, Hispanic, Latino, English L learners, multilingual learners, uh, students with disabilities. They are experiencing this gap. It didn't just happen. Sometimes we use COVID as the well, you know, it was an experience for them long before CO. We have had historically gaps between subgroups in our districts. And so the question is not which curriculum do we use or what thing do we t or they need to do this. It is how as a system do we respond instructionally so that there is coherence and co and consistency that allows them to get their needs met. It is not a teacher problem. It is a system problem. We need to look deeper and we can't choose this. Well, we're going to do this this week.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
Oh, well, I'm gonna let that person do whatever they want, but you know, over here, we don't like it. What we have to do is figure out what does it look like as a system to consistently be meeting the needs of kids so that we can meet them where they are, but ensure that they have access to grade level instruction. Because if I'm a in sixth grade and I'm reading on a third grade level and you only meet me at third grade, I'm always going to be behind. There is not a way there is not an intervention of interventionist that will pull me up. If you only expose me to third grade, you have to get me introduced to grade level instruction. If your goal is to make sure that I get closer here >> or >> you're in sixth grade, I'm at a third grade level and you teach at sixth grade level without scaffolding me up.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
>> That there you go. Absolutely. Because the other thing happens too. Well, I'm only going to teach this is this is the grade level. I'm only going to teach that. There are kids that you can't just choose to leave behind. And luckily we're at a system where teachers are excellent and dedicated and truly care. And it's just as a system we need to ensure that we have consistency that we provide the professional development to learn to scaffold and to do all of those things. But also we can't do it blindly. We have to make sure we have things in place that we can actually monitor progress. We have teachers that do this every day. Be very clear. This is not oh we now have to teach people. It is oh no we just have to make sure that we build in the appropriate measures for people to get there one second.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
So the same thing is happening not only in ELA for grades three and six but in math again gaps the gap is significant there even as people go up and note even as we're improving over the years we are improving over the years the gap still exists. We have to figure it out. And so when you take a look seventh and eighth grade, same type of thing. There are ways, there are times that we have gotten up and have tried to close the gap, but then we still have those same issues across years, across the decades. Same thing for high school, grade 10. And notice that what happens again in high school remember the grading system was different because I want to remind everybody this 94% you might go what happened but the mechanism the way we created change uh for the MCCAST but that's still there and I want you to notice this line here we have this flat line this is meeting and exceeding what it means here is that our ELLL learners for these years none of them that's 0% % met or exceeded.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above