So, uh belongingness in Betavia is a culmination of both skills, social emotional learning skills and our environmental conditions uh learning conditions. So, our skills are anchored in some of the terms that you've heard already from our building. So, it's that BPS portrait of a graduate, our Illinois State Board of Education social emotional standards, and the castle uh social emotional competencies. and our conditions are anchored in those predictable classroom environments. Um, you've heard champs throughout uh the day-to-day, student agency and voice, identity affirmation, psychological safety, and responsive discipline practices. So, that's how we define those two skills and conditions in the district. So, our student voice um belonging data for grades three has demonstrated a 1% increase from spring of 25 to spring of 26. Um we're noticing differences in positive ratings of experiences of belonging abund uh amongst our demographic groups. So we're definitely celebrating the growth of some demographic groups.
Um notably you just heard about um our black students um exceeding some growth measures in academics. We're also seeing um higher rates of improvement for ratings of positive ratings of sense of belonging as well as our Asian um student demographic group and students in grades three through five who um are two or more races. And we're being presented with some opportunities to continue our work cultivating the skills and experiences of skill of students who identify uh with demographic groups uh who students who are multilingual or Hispanic our areas at 35 that we're seeing continued room for improvement um and growth rates that are discrepant from uh our our district population. In 612, our belongingness data has demonstrated positive ratings um of increase from six of six percent from the spring of 25 to the spring of 26. Um that is tremendously significant and should be celebrated.
Our demographic data is also showing strong uh growth for students who are free lunch eligible black and Hispanic. And you heard the very targeted work that our high school and middle school have done um to connect with demographic groups. Uh we do continue to see opportunities at the 612 level as well to cultivate skills and conditions for those students who are multilingual as well as our students who are IEP eligible in grades 6 through 12. So there's much to celebrate and we do have some targeted work to do. So on the horizon within the district for our work within priority 2, we're continuing to focus on um our social emotional learning curriculum work and really we'll be working on uh resource exploration that aligns with the ISBE social emotional learning standards which will be released um in final form in September of 26. Um that work is in collaboration with CAC and we're working on uh classroom engagement walkthroughs that braid both those learning conditions uh so those champs that you've been hearing about as well as instructional engagement which you've been hearing um from our buildings as well.
And we are also going to be working on social emotional learning, professional development um that uh plaque has prioritized as a district professional learning topic for next year. So we're really excited about that. Our administrative team are going to be working um within their professional learning focus this summer on restorative practices for school culture. And the focus of that is really to proactively build relationships um foster psychological safety, support accountability and repair and strengthen inclusive environments for both students and staff as a way to start responding to that staff belongingness data and the staff well-being data we saw as well. >> I'm gonna Tony, do you want to talk about that again? Everyone loved that part. >> Everybody did. They loved it so much they want to hear it all again. >> [laughter] >> Um, I'm Carrie Ru. I'm the director of special education. And in December, I had the privilege of sharing with you the journey our district had undertaken related to our state citation um for many years for significant disproportionality of overidentification of black students for specific learning disabilities.
and we really highlighted and outlined the shifts we've taken as a system to improve student outcomes. What we've learned over the last few years is that students demonstrating the least amount of growth is what we've seen in our historic data were often the same students missing the most instructional time through absences um restrictive discipline, missing core instruction or um not thriving in some of the classroom structures and routines that we had. What we have done on this journey is we came to understand is that if students do not feel connected to their classroom, the adults, peers included in instruction, um they're not finding themselves showing their capabilities within our school community and disengagement becomes um a an issue long before achievement gaps appear in our academic data. So this understanding of the journey that we were on as a district shifted our work amongst all of our committees, our school improvement plans, our conversations, and our PLC's.
And as you have seen tonight, our district efforts, our staff, our teams um have never been about reducing identification numbers for simply meeting compliance. We really have shifted um our practices and our beliefs as educators. We're focusing on understanding and addressing the root causes behind student outcomes by strengthening their engagement, inclusive practices, and meaningful connections for all of our students. So, today, for the first time, I'm proud to stand here and celebrate not only are we below the risk ratio for ISBY, but we have officially received notification that we are finally off the significant disproportionality citation list. Um so this is a huge um celebration for our entire district tonight because after many years of collaboration, conversations, reflection, and intentional planning by our staff and our administrators across the district, this data has become possible for our students. So this accomplishment reflects the entire dedication of a district of individuals who believe that every student deserves to feel connected, supported, successful, and every staff member is working to ensure that this happens.
So coming off this citation is not an end point for our district, but rather a continued responsibility to sustain our progress and continuously improve our practices in support of all of our students. As we've talked about before, there's um opportunities that are ahead of us that I'm confident that we'll be able to maintain and sustain this growth. So while we are all here proud of how far we've come, we want to celebrate our successes. We also need to stay vigilant and remain committed to ensuring that every student feels connected, supported, and successful within our schools. So, thank you to Betavia for all the hard work and effort because it should be very, very much celebrated tonight. So, thank you. [applause] >> Um, just to kind of give the board, you're going to get copies of all of this so you can look through it. Uh Carrie talked a little bit about reducing um exclusionary discipline for students.
So we have some slides on that. This is a big one. Again, if kids aren't there, we can't teach them. So reducing chronic absenteeism is something that our building and our district has worked on doing. You heard about Joann's efforts and all the elementary schools and middle school have worked on this as well. But to me, this was some pretty outstanding data. If you look around the the this disagregation here in every single demographic group, we saw a reduction in chronic absenteeism. That means we had our kids more. They were more engaged in learning. And I think that's a huge testament um to our district and our teachers making that welcoming environment where kids do want to come to school and they do want to participate in that. So, a lot of work has gone into reducing that chronic absenteeism. Are there some differences between different demographic groups?
Absolutely. And we'll continue to work on those so that we have equity across our system. Um we've talked a little bit about bullying and how that really puts um that feeling of belonging on the back burner when a kid is feeling bullied or harassed. So we do uh we have a process that the state defines for us and that we've been trained on to investigate bullying incidents that that arise. So and then we have a different data classifications that we give to the state of Illinois about those different incidents. So we determine if that was part of a protected class. Was someone being targeted because they're part of protected class? We had five incidents of that this year. Was that another reason that they were being targeted? Eight incidents. So, a total of 13 founded bullying claims. 12 uh incidents after the investigation were not found to be bullying.
One of the things that's really hard for us to convey is that while something may not fall into the state definition of bullying, mean and hurtful things happen to our kids and we will address those. It may not fall into this data categorization, but like all of those behaviors are not acceptable within our schools. So, we want to make sure that um sometimes we launch into these and parents feel very kind of betrayed by the process because they think it's bullying. We have been trained to go through that process. It doesn't mean the kid didn't experience something. Um that's really the the whole purpose of a bullying investigation is let's get at the heart of what's really going on in these relationships with students. So um we have 2,612 total discipline incidents this whole school year representing about 811 students. That's a very small amount of our overall percentage of students are involved in any kind of discipline incidents whether it's trudency or whatnot.
So uh this is just something to highlight because we've been talking a lot about belonging and this type of behavior kind of goes in the face of that. Joanne talked a little bit about activity participation and then um I just want to spend a moment on EL exit rates. Our target is to exit students in the fourth and fifth grade. That's our like that's the sweet spot of the access test. So this is measured through access and we've received preliminary data and you can see those blue lines for our current year jumped up in fourth and fifth grade and that's due to the dedication of not only our general education teachers and our e specialists but all people involved in really motivating kids and getting them to engage in that access test. Uh because once that kind of window of fourth and fifth grade passes, it's much harder to pass with a 4.8 8 composite which is what they need to exit uh e services and again when students exit in fourth and fifth grade we do monitor them and support them for an additional two years to make sure they're not falling behind there but again it's a celebration fourth and fifth grade but we have work to do with others a lot of this information comes from the Illinois school report card which will not be updated until um October so you've seen this data before and then we'll go into some of our operational pieces which I believe.
Hey Brad, real quick back on the bullying data. So the the we understand the classifications >> but do is there any way to report metrics on resolution or outcomes of those incidents or do we do that? >> Give me a little bit more like what would you be looking for? >> So you said um I don't know protected classified incidents. Can we somehow report that those were mutually um resolved with agreement by parties or some kind of where there was resolution to the incident? >> I don't Yeah, I we can talk about that and see what we can do to kind of close that loop because it's sometimes it's hard, right? Some kids want to mend fences and go through some restorative practices. Other kids are like, I just don't want to see that kid ever again. Um, so I can >> How does it like an incident get closed out?
>> Yeah, we finish the investigation. We issue consequences and supportive services, but we can give you more details on what that might look like >> for these students >> because I think that may be a missing piece. Yeah. >> Here you've identified them and even the 2,612. >> Yeah. It's how do we convey to our stakeholders that progress was made, you know? >> Yeah, I think there that is would be something to help kind of tell a better story about school discipline. Most people are not super happy that they're involved in that that whole process, but we can talk about like the types of interventions, the types of supportive services that we're able to offer to help kind of heal some of those wounds. Sorry. >> Do you keep track of the type of incident? You know, for the ones that don't that aren't bullying but are discipline instance, do you keep track of how many of a certain type?
>> Yeah. >> So my question was is what is a discipline incident like like um is a detention a discipline incident? >> Yes. >> So this is everything. So I guess the I don't know what to call it like the the lowest form would be like a lunchroom detention or that and then like obviously the highest one would be an expulsion correct. >> Expulsion would be the top. Yes. >> And then so what is the biggest category that of discipline incidents like what is the most given I guess is what the question would be >> the most given consequence. >> I don't know that but I can get you that information for sure. I mean it I'm sure it might be different from >> it's different levels. Yeah. >> So I mean if I could have it I say for elementary, middle school, and then high school.
>> Great. Yep. No problem. >> Is that something all of us are interested in? Just want to make sure. >> Okay. >> Yeah. It's very easy to break that information down and give you both consequences and then major infractions. just just to help me narrow down on the question that that Raquel was talking about, you know, like there's significant discipline incidences and there's kind of like daytoday like where does it end up? Is it a is it is it a teacher telling a student to settle down and be quiet and be respectful enough times that they write them up or where is it up on that? >> It can be part of that. Some buildings have different processes on how they do that as to what equals an office discipline referral. So, >> so that's where the that's where the line is >> the office discipline.
So, anything that comes to the office is represented in that 2000 num that 2,612 number. >> If a teachers handling that within their classroom, we don't know about it. >> Okay. >> But sometimes there's so many of those incidents that teachers are handling that it would rise to the level of an office discipline referral. >> But that office discipline referral might have like five things behind it. >> Right. Right. Right. >> That they've been struggling. >> Understood. >> Okay. Thank you. And do you keep track of comparison year to year to see if progress has been made? >> Yeah, we do. We do look at that over the years. Um, we had some pretty dark years around 2020, 2021, even into 2022 and we've seen a down tick in a lot of our discipline incidents since then. And I think a lot of that actually has to do sorry Tom with our focus on belonging, right?
So if a kid feels like they belong, if we're teaching them how to do conflict resolution, I think those are all positive things that have helped. Go ahead, Tom. Sorry. >> No, no, no. You gave much better answers. Um, what was I going to say? I was going to share. >> I'll stall for you for a minute. So, one of the things that I'm intrigued about on is the absenteeism because to me, and I'm looking for kind of confirmation from everyone here, or you feel free to tell me I'm overre overreaching a bit. To me that feels a bit foundational, right? Like yes, having them in, you'll get more in year one, but the more they're there over year two, year three is kind of my impression would be that it's a kind of a compounding effect, you know, because you're engaging them. You're teaching them the joy of learning.
They're there to participate. It's kind of like it's a self feeding process, you know. So I'm intrigued about that as it moves forward. >> Did I say >> Thank you for the >> Yeah, you're welcome. >> Appreciate it. Yeah. Um Kristen to also address that question that's a part of also the reason why we also know like if you talk to Carrie and Natalie they'll share with you there are certain areas that we have to keep my eye right now uh of certain groups that we do see some disciplinary um areas kind of rising a little bit and so that's based on that year-to-year study and kind of mindful watching of the data. I just have one quick question. Um was going back to like all the scores and so forth and it's like uh so the EO community it's like a little bit behind on everything.
Um we first give these was it December 2024 these presentations like everybody is that when it was >> uh we've done a presentation midyear presentation December 24 and this past year December 24th >> was that the first one December 2024 >> um and I remember it was I think it was um Ming Jen Hicks did the presentation um and just going about everything and I asked the question of how many Hale endorsements they want and being said 100. We want everyone to get EL endorsed. So, I'm just curious if there has been and I know I have that data now, but if there has been any EL endorsed teachers, um I just like to know since our EL scores, I'm sorry, the English learner scores are kind of a little bit lagging and behind. I was just curious if anyone got approved to do an EL endorsement, but you don't have to give me that data now, but >> seems like he's taking notes.
I am [laughter] I am sorry Raquel I'm taking not you're looking for kind of like has there been progress on that side of things. So there there's uh aside from that though just to reflect on our data one you're right there there are areas that we are intentionally trying to uh support right different student groups I think that's part of the reason why we're also celebrating some of those metrics because we're seeing um even though there might be a little bit lagging to peers when compared to peers um that are not in that same demographic we're seeing the growth trajectory which is as we all know we've talked about each year. That's one of our biggest gains and and excuse me, aspirations because I think um as you're seeing, the more we keep growing, the more the scoreboard kind of takes care of itself, right?