001thank you good evening call this meeting to order at 7 24 pm we apologize for our delay thank you all for your patience and engagement this evening here and next we'll move on to our land acknowledgement we take time to acknowledge the land we meet on is the traditional homelands of the council of three fires the potawatomi the ojibwe and the ottawa this land also served as an important meeting place for the miami ho chunk the menominee anoka sac fox peoria arapahoe cheyenne and other tribal nations this land has long been a center for indigenous people to gather trade and maintain kinship ties located at the intersection of several great waterways the region has become the site of travel and prosperity we acknowledge evanston and john evans are tied to the massacre of the arapaho
002and cheyenne for railroad railroads and westward expansion upon which john evans developed his wealth and founded evanston this land was violently taken under settler colonialism through genocide and open warfare and the region that is now illinois and chicagoland is still home to thousands of native people who are actively struggling for sovereignty self-determination and justice the genocidal acts of settler colonialism extended to peoples of african africa and their enslaved descendants despite illinois eventually prohibiting slavery was an accepted practice before and after statehood the vestiges of slavery remain present throughout the united states and directly affect the descendants of enslaved peoples descendants who helped define the african diaspora rich and heterogeneous communities descended from african peoples the genocidal patterns of violence against peoples of africa african descent and indigenous people who have been or have been replicated
003to exclude and harm people from many intersecting marginalized identities religious minoritized disabled and lgbtq identified peoples black and indigenous people of color and people of color writ large in the united states these patterns of violence demonstrate that the pursuit to end state-sanctioned violence against black and indigenous people of color is a daily struggle for liberation from continued social political and economic anti-black racism and oppression today we acknowledge that we are living breathing loving grieving laughing and sharing space on unseated territory may we learn to honor the historical and contemporary presence and power of the people and their belief that we must be caretakers of the lands and waters for the livelihood of future generations the land that surround us surrounds us is part of who we are it reflects our histories it is within district
00465's responsibility as an academic institution to disseminate knowledge about black and indigenous peoples and marginalized people's writ large consistent with our commitment to equity we will work towards sharing truth and promoting healing for the sake of all of our children our families it is important to understand the long-standing history that has brought us to reside on the land and to seek to understand our place within that history land acknowledgments do not exist in the past tense or only in a historical context colonialism is a current and ongoing process and we need to understand our present participation we encourage everyone consuming this message to continue expanding their knowledge and reduce their harm through awareness of local mutual aid models for survival and engagement with online and local resources such as the chicago american indian community collaborative
005and the shore front legacy center i move that the board of education approved the meeting agenda as presented second yes so next we'll move on to our district updates good evening everyone good evening board and community can't believe it's january 31st we are wrapping up the first month of the of and this was nothing short of um a lot of action on all of us in in our district i want to thank our students and our teachers again for their commitment to uh you know to be resilient and fight through the situations regarding covet while continuing to stay engaged in the teaching and also engaging in the learning with support of our families and parents at home i would also like to say we are launching we have a lot on our plate over the
006next few months and i just want to remind everyone how important it is that we stay in tune with the action that's coming because it'll go by fast but it's heavy we've had some successful student assignment planning community members we've had now six of them to be exact one with staff and the other five with the community got some amazing feedback regarding that we've launched i will be launching our black lives matter week curriculum as a it's a it's a a hallmark of our community and we've just launched that so please stay tuned we sent out information last week regarding the changes potentially and also just information that's important for our families to be able to engage with their children at home and also i would be remiss if i didn't mention our culver mitigation
007efforts while not perfect have and in my honest opinion and from what we're seeing what our support in our schools have been really successful overall if you had to you know rate a success rate i want to thank our building leaders they've taken on roles that when they're working on weekends saturdays and sundays calling families for contact tracing that's a lot to ask of them and to commit to our families for being involved and being very cooperative when contact tracing and some of the qrc placement is not it's not desirable but our families have been really supportive and we thank you for that and also the custodian and maintenance team i'm getting more communication than i've seen in a long time with uh the cleanliness of buildings we're improving we got a lot more work
008to do so don't think i'm saying we're there yet but uh that's been going really well for us and um mr bronson we want to thank you for your efforts to uh to work to improve that uh there's still work to do sir but we're working on it i'm thanking that team but again what's really important is that every once they pay attention and stay connected the student assignment planning is still happening that's it's hot and heavy uh it's intense and i thank sarita smith for leading that with the support of dr greene and her team and other members the master facility planning is taking off we're presenting next month uh on the 14th that is going to be a barn burner i've been looking at the presentation and the data and it is overwhelming
009so if for those of my data people when you get this report just get you you know just be prepared to spend a lot of time it's it's so interesting that's all i can say um and then we have the big one the strategic planning which is taking place and uh it's been very uh interesting again with the data that we're being able to collect the involvement and all three of those that all the three of those entities are very connected but we want to be sure that you know that there's student assignment planning massive facility and strategic planning yes we're taking it all on um and we know that we this is enough work for the next five or seven years so i wanted to just continue to remind everyone so thank you for
010that and school board i appreciate all of all that you're doing regarding communicating student assignment planning expectations uh any other things as we're having our committee meetings i'm excited that we're able to have those committee meetings and go into deeper conversations about you around the unique things that's currently taking place in our district so thank you for that i'm sorry melissa almost all right now let's get to the fun uh january high five tonight we're celebrating two members of our staff selected as award recipients for january as part of our high five celebrating excellence in district 65 recognition program now it's in its fifth year we have received hundreds of nominations and honored over 80 licensed and support staff members for their tremendous work nominations are accepted through the school year from staff and members
011of the d65 community and forms are available on our website at district 65.net slash high five on behalf of our district i would like to thank byline bank for its continued support and sponsorship of the program this evening's recipients will receive 100 gift card and a frame recognition certificate i am now going to turn it over to melissa messenger our director of communications who will help with our recognition this evening melissa take it away thank you dr horton yes this is always a very uplifting part of our meeting um and tonight we're going to recognize mrs elizabeth nelson and mr stan morrow um i think both are here with us tonight yes no um so well first we're gonna recognize uh elizabeth nelson are you here okay um so unfortunately was not able to join
012us tonight but she's a third grade teacher at walker elementary and has served our students and families for seven years she was nominated by a family member annie millman who also could not be here tonight but said miss nelson has gone above and beyond for our two children during the past two years of covid she engages children in such creative unique ways and does so much to create a strong sense of community among the students miss nelson went so far as to bring my children their devices right to our house so they can participate on the day of e-learning in january both of my children have been so fortunate to have her as their third grade teacher so next up we're going to recognize our educational support staff recipients dan morrow are you here so
013he's a special education teaching assistant volleyball coach and basketball coach at bessie rhodes who has supported students in our community for four years he was also nominated by a d65 family member phoebe valdez who shared last fall mr morrow coached girls basketball at bessie rhodes he did an amazing job coaching a team of over 30 girls he pushes them to achieve their goals and is always motivating he is currently coaching the girls basketball team and is not only supportive on the court but he genuinely cares about helping the players with academic engagement as well i am so grateful for all he does for my daughter and the entire team um so thank you both stan and elizabeth um unfortunately they were not able to join us this evening must be preparing for the winter weather
014we're gonna get later this week um but we'll make sure that both of them get their certificates and gift card so thank you if we could give them all still a round of applause please [Applause] we also would like to recognize some our educators tonight our teachers who have received the national board certification i don't think they're in attendance tonight but i would just like to recognize uh we have jessica constiglio jennifer dao brittany noble elise and elise stahl that is quite an accomplishment national board certification is a lot of work is well respected and it's a detriment it shows the value that those educators really have in committing themselves to this work so thank them and congratulations let's give them a hand that's especially exceptional given that two of those were renewals next on
015our agenda is public comments members of the public are welcome and invited to address the board during open public meetings speakers are discouraged from using the public comment period to air specific concerns about staff members being mindful that public comment period is not a suitable forum for fact finding or resolution of disputes rather we encourage members of the public who have concerns about specific district employees to follow the district communication guidelines found in the student handbook please remember to state your name and that you have three minutes to address the board also note that it is not customary for the board to respond to public comments the best way to correspond with members of the board is by emailing school board at district 65.net do we have any public comments we do the first speaker
016to sign up is julie schatz hello my name is julie schatz i'd like to start off by thanking you all for all the updating of policies that you've you've done as we've learned more about covid19 since early 2020 specifically thank you for prioritizing in-person learning during the omicron surge in particular thank you for beginning the test to stay program which can keep healthy exposed students in school i'm thankful for the vaccine clinics that the district held multiple times that so many people benefited from including my own kindergartner and third third grader in the district thank you for decreasing quarantine and isolation times from ten to five days when the cdc and isb guidance changed them now it is time to update another outdated policy currently at district 65 school buildings children and staff are required
017to wear masks while outside during recess also parents and guardians are required to wear masks at arrival and dismissal as we have learned being outside essentially eliminates the risk of potential sars-cov2 transmission the science tells us that the virus particles disperse effectively in outside air deactivated by ultraviolet radiation heat and humidity most experts believe the actual risk of outdoor transmission is likely less than one percent studies have shown that even on days when it's not windy outdoor ventilation is over a hundred times better than inside an office building and over a thousand times better than inside most homes in april of 2021 dr fauci said quote the risk of spreading coven 19 is really very low in the fresh air i think it's pretty common sense now that outdoor risk is really really quite low
018evansen is one of the most highly vaccinated places in the country according to data released on january 27th 95.9 of residents five and older have received at least one dose of the vaccine and 85.6 are fully vaccinated so the risk of outdoor transmission during recess at evanson schools is minuscule the evanston department of health and public human services sorry the department of health and human services does not recommend math scoring outside nor does the illinois state board of education the illinois department of public health nor the cdc we should not be making stricter rules than what these public health entities have been recommending for months at the nearby public school district where i work masks have been optional outside for the entire school year with great success knowing outside time can be mask-free has been
019appreciated by many young and old including staff members like me who help out with lunch and recess supervision it's a joy to see the children smiling and laughing they can forget about masks while they play freely communicate more easily with each other get a break from the from their their ears holding up those masks all day parents who don't feel comfortable with their children taking mass off outside have their children continue to wear them it's no big deal everyone wins and contact racers have never asked about who is with whom on the playground because of the aforementioned little risk of outdoor transmission it just doesn't matter getting 25 minutes to breathe the fresh air outside to see each other's smiles and laughs and to communicate more effectively are all normal things that could be easily
020and safely given to the children of district 65. the district 65 outdoor masking policy which impacts every single child in the district remains outdated and unscientific i'm afraid that decisions about our children's well-being are being made based not on scientific reasoning but to appease adult anxieties and fears with the plummeting coveted case numbers in particular in our community including only two positive cases reported at my children's school last week now would be the perfect time to make a risk a small risk-free step toward normal thank you so much for considering next we have nina tetrowicz let's see hello board my name is nina todorovic and i'm a mother of three here in the community i have a fourth grader and second grader at washington and i have a two-year-old who's starting preschool first i want
021to thank you all so much for your continued service with the d65 community my kids are so happy to be back in person this year we are also very pleased with how organized the remote learning situation was when we came down with covid after the break the qrc was seamless and it provided well-needed structure during our quarantine on the contrary i recently read through our school newsletter and i was disheartened when i read that our school will continue to enforce masking except at lunch i feel that the most up-to-date information coming out around masking demonstrates that we are doing more harm than good to require it at school i understand that you have to abide by the state's mandate for indoor masking however i believe our district still has the ability to allow kids a
022well-needed and well-deserved mask break at outdoor recess pe during drop off and pick up masking is not recommended by the cdc in outdoor settings per the cdc website in general people do not need to wear masks when outdoors i know that the argument would be that kids may not be able to social distance in these activities however outdoors per the cdc is the safest place to be without a mask and the benefit of taking these mask breaks far outweighs the minimal risks i say minimal because one our community has an exceedingly high vaccination rate both in children and adults and two kids are at the lowest risk of contracting serious illness from covet even without vaccination after two years of strict masking measures the time is now to give our children the benefit of a
023more relaxed mitigation measures here is my question to the school board what do you think is normal for our children is it normal to have their faces covered six plus hours a day every day at school is it normal to only know their teachers and peers by their eyes and not their full facial expression is it normal not to have any physical human contact and always be fearful of coming closer than a yardstick to a classmate we have to agree on what we want normal to be right now the normal that our children experience on a daily basis is stoked in fear and creates isolation anxiety physical and behavioral issues that are getting worse the longer we subject them to it we cannot believe that we are for are forcing them what that what we
024are forcing them to do isn't having a long-term psychological impact at this point anyone in our community who wants to be vaccinated has had the choice to do so including boosters evanston can be proud to have one of the highest vaccination rates in the country both adults and children teachers and staff are safer than ever omicron while more contagious is also known to be milder so universal harsher mitigation measures just don't make sense at this point i understand that many families in our community are strongly in favor of masking if they feel better having their child wear a mask for whatever reason then they should be allowed to do so however for those of us who are ready to move on the right policy decision at this point is to make masking outdoors at school
025optional i want my children to breathe better speak better see other children's faces laugh play and not feel the constant anxiety that comes from making sure their mask is on all the time thank you so much for your time thank you all right and i wanted to make sure that i made a couple of board comments and my colleagues may have some as well um like to say gang hi fat choy happy year of the tiger to everyone who is celebrating lunar new year including my family and i also want to note that tomorrow marks the beginning of black history month so a best wishes for a happy and prosperous year of the tiger and black history month like the water tiger in 2022 may we be strong may we be brave and may we
026be just and i'll add a quote from dr martin luther king since we also celebrated mlk day this month the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice do we have any additional comments from the board thank you thank you and so we'll move on to item seven on our agenda okay i move that the board of education accept the recommendations outlined in the attached group motion and approve the personnel appointments leaves and separations resolution to authorize notice of remedy of licensed employee resolution for the dismissal of an educational support staff december 2021 board of education and committee meeting minutes amended policy 6135 uh on accelerated learning destruction of november 202 2019 closed session meeting minutes and recordings november 2021 list of bills october 2021 treasures treasurer's report and budget amendment
027and the december 2021 contracts for 25 and above yes i move that the board of education ratified the contract with the evanson custodial maintenance association as presented yes hernandez yes yes yes i move that the board of education approved the 2022 summer student learning proposal presented second did anyone have any questions this was presented at our curriculum and policy committee and was in the packet for review did anybody have any additional comments or questions we can uh call the vote yes this is the approval of the school calendar for 2022 2023 2023 24. i moved that the board of education improved the school calendar for school year 2022 2023 and school year 2023 2024 as presented second and i know we had some questions about this item um i wanted to give us the opportunity
028to share those with the public yeah notably there's a break in the fall a full week at the week of the holiday break there so that's a big change um let me pull up my question i think there is a question about the way uh winter break falls it falls yep so and we we experienced this this year where the the winter recess jetted up right right against i think it was christmas eve so there was my question was looking at the the proposed calendar we have we would have school on december 23rd which is a friday christmas eve is saturday the 24th if we were to shift a week earlier then we'd have the same issue on the back end where new year's day january 1st is a sunday then we return to school
029i was my question is uh was any thought by the committee given to adding a day to the end of the school year to the end of the school year and giving a day to families on the 23rd so that people that are traveling or whatnot can do so the day before the holiday so we don't have i imagine i imagine a lot of people or do we have information this year about people getting out of dodge because that's when traveling can happen so they can be out for the holiday and is it worth just having a day off to plan for that knowing that this is something that happens every seven years yeah this um we didn't that part didn't come up but i know it was really important for the board to force
030to have alignment with 202 so that's what really drove that that that date for us to get out so they're in school on the 23rd yeah they are yep yep that's the one that's really the main reason we did it um but also say this what was really well you're not you didn't ask that part but i'll just say was i think what really helped us to uh keep to keep mitigations a little bit under control when we return from january is that we have that weak gap from new year's and that was really helpful for us regarding you know getting tested and things like that absolutely the memo also references um it's the second bullet of the first series of bullets in lieu of the october half day we will now look to host
031a full a full day school improvement day october 12th and october 4th respectively when i look at the calendar is it that october 12th is on 22 23 and the other one's the following year oh yes okay yeah yeah okay great so that's that's user error on my part um my last question that i'm done with calendar questions is about the logistics of talking to stakeholders about the group when we talk about the calendar committee i understand that all of our bargaining units have people on the committee do we have buildings represented as well or just bargaining staff bargaining units we don't have all of our buildings represented but we do have between our bargaining units the school administrators on the committee and the parents on the committee we do have a good cross representation
032of elementary middle magnet schools across the district but there are not 18 representatives from each building got it thank you sure and i think the only other question i had which i think has been answered but it might be helpful to illuminate for the public that in the 23 24 school year rosh hashanah falls on a weekend and the way that it is observed does not require a day off so you might see not having a day off for rosh hashanah in 23 24 but that is not because there's any change in terms of our observance of holidays it's just on a friday isn't impacted by school correct so just making sure that's clarified for anyone else who sees it and might be concerned this is green yeah and so i wanted to just highlight
033again that um sorry my touch screen is having some issues but again that um veterans day will be in attendance day and in in alignment with the state statute we will be sharing information about veterans day on that instructional day yes yes there are stacey gave some data to us that's pretty um you know when you think about teaching and learning it how many four day weeks we have within the cycle so we wanted to really try to do our best to alleviate as many as have less of those as we possibly can which allowed us to uh really look at that thanksgiving week and give that time together so families can do the traveling and you know have our educators be able to you know just check out right before thanksgiving so yeah yeah
034no thanksgiving fall break um also just to add to that too is that same week november 8th is election day and in 2022 that is a state holiday for all employees and require school to be closed so that's on november 8th which is on tuesday veterans day falls on friday so again that would be a very challenging week with with both of those days as well so um just a reminder for our community november 8th it will be a non-attendance day there is not a general election in 2023 so we will not have an election day on the calendar in 2023 but you may see it again in 2024. thank you are there any discrepancies from 202 in here that weren't able to be worked out i mean our half days on wednesdays are not
035in alignment with them no we've actually had a lot of coordination with the high school on our calendar this year we had a representative on our calendar committee and we spent time just reviewing the calendars together i would say discrepancies are as they are in a typical school year so eths is starting earlier than we do which has been their historical practice for the past few years our professional learning dates are not aligned as you just referenced and also they are observing veterans day so that is the only holiday where we're not aligned but in terms of the jewish holy days winter break spring recess um we're pretty much aligned throughout the rest of the school year and our contract does not allow us to start before august 20th so starting earlier is not an
036option for consideration correct yeah that would have to be bargained with the district educators council thank you thank you um i think that we are set to call the vote for the item yes okay so the next item on our agenda is the early childhood report and we have a presentation from sharon's break spread sprouts can you hear me through my mask it's good all right uh good evening everybody i'm really happy i'm dr sharon sprague for anybody who doesn't know me i'm the director of early childhood programs for the district and i run jeh early childhood center okay i'm happy to be here to update the board and the community on jeh's progress towards achieving the goals of our strategic plan um sorry i got to click in two directions here we are in
037year three of our strategic plan created in fall winter of 2019 and adopted and introduced on april 22nd 2019. the plan was put fully into action in school during school year 20 and full completion of the goals will be assessed next fall based on the boi or beginning of the year math assessment performance of this year's graduating class of school year 2022 tonight i will share with you updates on the six goals of the strategic plan and how we have fared towards achieving those goals over the past 2.5 years while navigating a global pandemic as we get started i just wanted to remind every one of the unique demographics of our early childhood center all students at jeh must demonstrate risk factors for future academic success in one or more criteria in order to be
038selected for admission to our grant funded or special education programs as we are the only school in the district serving this age group we have a larger than typical distribution of students receiving special education services the percentage of students in our school with ieps is as follows in school year 2019 we were 24 of the population receiving special education services school year 2019 1920 33 school year 2021 34 and school year 2022 our current year we are at 33 and climbing additionally this year about two-thirds of our students are eligible for free and or reduced lunch and all head start students meet through free and reduced lunch requirements and to remind you these are the six overarching goals of our strategic plan ensure jeh center is well organized for continuous improvement create a culture in
039which teaching and learning is driven by diversity equity and inclusion create a climate in which students social emotional developmental needs are addressed and supported ensure that all children are individually prepared for kindergarten strengthen family and community partnerships to support learning opportunities and finally align resources with goals to ensure student success this is what we've been able to do to support strategic plan goal one we have built and maintained strong and effective leadership systems we restructured the administrative team two years ago to better support instructional leadership prior to that the structure had been designed to support grant compliance issues we have worked to develop develop a school-wide understanding of the importance of collaborative practice and school improvement we have done this through the examination of research and the regular thorough examination i'm sorry collection of data
040followed by review and analysis of these data to inform instruction we have also implemented and maintained common planning time for our teacher cohorts to regularly meet engage in professional learning communities work on mtss problem solving planning for instruction and progress monitoring additionally we have worked to increase family involvement which i will go over when we get to goal 5. this chart is a little hard to read this chart shows our school's performance on the five essentials survey over time the five essential survey is used to rate how well a school is organized to support continuous improvement to remind everyone in early childhood we are only able to collect data on three out of the five essentials because our students are too young to participate in the survey and two of the essentials require student input
041the areas we are able to get feedback on our effective leaders collaborative teachers and involved families in all three areas we have shown growth over the past two years though one can see a clear implementation dip in the first year of implementation but we are we're happy to see a study group study growth in year two and we are hoping for more improvement this year in the three areas of the five e's we are able to measure we are now performing about on average with the rest of the district so the gray bands represent district 65 performance on the five e's and the blue bands represent this jeh performance we are most proud of the progress we are making in the area of collaborative teaching this graph also compares the outcomes our outcomes to the
042rest of the district these data include responses from our teachers and all of our teaching assistants and paraprofessionals in the category of collaborative practices we grew 84 percentage points last year during remote learning we still have a lot of work to do in the area of teacher to teacher trust and collective responsibility but we have made great strides in collaborative practices and quality professional development these are the things we've been able to do to support goal 2. as of last year about 25 of our staff had completed seed training but our leadership teams agreed that this was not sufficient so last year in school year 21 we brought a five-part racial equity professional learning series to the school to provide the training we contracted with corey wallace who has led much of the seed training
043for the district all teachers also complete a unit study at the beginning of each unit examining core standards and analyzing using a culturally responsive teaching protocol based on the work of gloria lads and billings which asks them to plan for implementation of the unit with an eye towards cultural responsiveness academic achievement and rigor as well as socio-political consciousness we have been conscious to always disaggregate our data to watch for any signs of a developing achievement gap so this graph again a little hard to read but shows uh is broken out among racial ethnic groups of asian black african american from left to right latinx and white in in the area of social emotional development shown here our students were demonstrating no significant discrepancies across racial ethnic groups by the end of school year 21. in
044the area of literacy again our students were demonstrating no significant discrepancies by the end of school year 21 and i'd like to also point out how many students are in the exceeding expectations range which is up in the blue this is a big improvement from previous years in the air in the area of mathematics again there were no significant discrepancies noted by the end of school year 21. there is only slight variation which we did examine to discern root causes and put and adjust our teaching plans for this year for goal three this is what we've been able to do did i change this i did not change we have provided trauma-informed classrooms for the implementation of research-based programs such as conscious discipline and second step discipline strategies are used in the classroom for identity
045identity and community building as well as conflict resolution second step curriculum is used for the instruction of social emotional content concepts we've also been able to increase targeted mtss support by our panda care team our social workers and psychologists this is how our students were faring in the area of social emotional development at the end of last year in the objective and this shows only the objectives we were able to measure during remote hybrid learning overall students were meeting or exceeding widely held expectations with small percentages less than 12 percent in every objective falling in the below expectations range this is how our current students performed at the end of our fall checkpoint period so this is just uh beginning of the year fall data after over the course of the first few months there
046are two major areas of main areas of concern we are focusing on here objective 2d making friends these are the two areas that have the bigger pink bars and 3b solving social problems both of these objectives were unmeasurable last year when so many of our students were still in remote learning throughout the year and both objectives they're both objectives that are negatively impacted by coveted health safety mitigation protocols that keep our students apart from one another this is what we've been able to do to support strategic plan goal 4. we have provided ongoing professional development to increase fidelity and practices of data collection and data analysis driving a culture of data-informed instruction we have provided ongoing professional learning and planning activities that have increased staff understanding of the teaching strategies gold objectives and the illinois
047early learning and developmental standards we have provided supplemental curricula as needed to improve student outcomes through the use of programs such as the hagerty phonemic awareness curriculum improved resources support supporting the implementation of mtss strategies for example the use of the branching minds platform the development of an mtss intervention menu and the hiring of our academic skills tutors here is the beginning our here we see the map beginning of the year kindergarten literacy data for the past two years that the map assessment has been administered the blue bars represent our class of school year 20 so these were kindergarten students in fall of school year 21 and the green bar represents our school our class of school year 21 kindergarten students in fall of 22. despite the fact that there was a off between our
048alums of class of 20 to our alums of class of 21. what oh i didn't show so thank you wait a minute i'm here yeah i oh i'm sorry sorry guys two clickers problem um all right so i'll just say again the green bars represent the students who were the green bars our current student or our most recent graduate school year class of 21 who start who were in kindergarten beginning of 22 and the blue bars represent the previous year's class okay you can see here that there is a slight drop off this year in some cases more than slight but even these drop off give us hope because the reduced numbers show strong improvement from the years prior to the enactment of this retreat strategic plan where 30 37 an average of 37 percent
049of our students were meeting literacy targets we also noted that the data represented in green represents a school year during which two-thirds of our students were taught remotely all year and engagement issues were an ongoing struggle the print concept area does remain a mystery to us that's the center the the lower area it remains a mystery to us uh one we have not been able to get clear a clear answer on we have questions because it has been consistently low for the past two years with no definition of what is being measured this domain is not present in the comparative graph i will show next and there is no information about this section on the map fluency tech report it definitely does not correlate to the teaching strategies gold that's the assessment we use in
050pre-k concept to print objective where our students consistently score well by the end of the school year with over 80 percent meeting widely held expectations um this so this graph here [Music] the blue bars represent jh students non-jh students i'm sorry the blue bars represent non-jeh students with pre-k experience and the green bars represent our jeh alums these data are heartening as we are performing very closely with other students in the district most of whom do not represent the risk factors that our students do so for strategic plan goal five these are the things we've been able to continue despite limitations presented by the pandemic i won't pretend that covet health safety protocols have not significantly hampered our abilities to have families involved in a day-to-day school life now that we are back in person
051the ability to increase opportunities for family volunteerism has been a challenge due to covid19 but we were creative last year and many parents helped with the preparation of supply kits which were distributed four times over the course of the year but even more volunteered in the classrooms every day when they logged their children in for remote learning and sat alongside them as they learned this graph the following graphs are from the five essentials parent survey and here you can see the difficulty we face in parent volunteerism last year with 29 percent of our families indicating that they volunteered occasionally and 50 percent answering that they volunteered never or rarely none of them gave themselves credit for the daily volunteerism that they participated in by getting their students logged in and supporting their participation in school
052each day um slightly more encouraging than volunteerism was the number of families who indicated that they occasionally to always attended school events with 77 of our families answering affirmatively eighty-eight percent of the our families who completed the five ace a five years survey answered affirmatively that they always attend parent teacher conference a very important touch point for families and teachers okay and strategic plan goals six oops what did i do listed here are the things that we have done and still are in the act of doing to align resources in order to best support student growth and successful outcomes i want to also speak here to some of the challenges we have faced in this area what has been hard to manage over the past almost two years has been the significant amount of administrative
053time that has gone into ensuring basic systems and operations are functioning on a day-to-day basis first we were reinventing what early childhood education looked like in the virtual world now we are back in person most of the time there are still rolling classroom closures for quarantine and due to higher than typical staff absenteeism and a substitute shortage an incredible amount of administrative and support staff capacity has gone into ensuring that classrooms were covered and staffed according to legal early childhood ratios due to the pandemic related stress a very large amount of human resources have gone into helping keep everyone connected emotionally supported and cohesive as a group as a team kovid has done everything in its power to keep us isolated and it has taken a very concerted effort to keep us connected and whole
054through it all in summary two and a half years after initial implementation of a three-year strategic plan both preschool ts gold data and the kindergarten map literacy data indicate that we are providing significantly significantly improved outcomes for our jeh alums the five essentials data is showing that we are moving towards being organized for continuous improvement and despite operational and system setbacks brought on by a global pandemic we are moving in the right direction and need to maintain focus to continue this growth i want to thank the entire jeh community for all of their hard work and support in implementing the strategic plan we have made great progress despite challenges of historical proportions and i am extremely proud of the team we have built and the progress our students have made through it all thank you
055thank you i think we may have a couple of questions of course um one i as well as some folks who are here tonight were a part of the initial early childhood task force that helped to lead to this lovely strategic plan and it is encouraging to see that gap closing between um our je8 alum and folks who are attending private preschools throughout our community um i these disaggregated data wasn't in the memo um and so i appreciate you including the racially disaggregated data here um one of the outcomes last year that we were hoping to see movement in were our outcomes for our latinx young people and from what you shared today there are indicators that there are not measurable gaps between how our latinx students are performing in ts gold versus their peers
056and i was just wondering if you could speak to us a little bit more about the investments that you all made into helping to bring parity in in those outcomes okay i'm really happy to brag on my bilingual teaching team they had to stare at some pretty um disconcerting data last year this time and it was a real call to action and they answered the call they came together they worked collaboratively as a team they really looked at the data and analyzed where the students were falling behind particularly in mathematics areas of quantifying they developed a plan they worked together and they really targeted their instruction around these areas and they saw the outcomes they engaged in progress monitoring supported one another observed one another the plc process was really operating strongly and we saw
057the outcomes right so it was really an incredible example of how data informed instruction can improve outcomes for students so i'm very proud of that team again this year we're seeing some discrepancies in the fall data and they are ready to go to work they've already started thank you that's really um exciting and encouraging and much gratitude to that team and so please share that we are proud and appreciative of them and the investment that they've made and i hope that that work can also be a model for how we continue to tackle any discrepancies that show up thank you um the other wondering i have is about data and i'm not sure that you're going to be able to answer that um but for the kindergarten outcomes it's not disaggregated by race and so
058one of our i think deepest hopes with the early childhood task force was that we really disrupt gaps and opportunity to achieve by investing in early early childhood opportunities for vulnerable populations and so you know this kindergarten readiness question is really critical specifically for our vulnerable communities and i know given that jh primarily serves vulnerable communities in some ways we can presume that these are all growth metrics for folks from vulnerable backgrounds but it would be helpful to see it how alumni are doing by race and ethnicity is that something that's possible for us to get is that something that you can promise or not i imagine i could certainly ask them ask rad to disaggregate that way for us um in map it's not something that has been offered up to me that i've
059shared with you what what has been shared with me but we could definitely ask for that i agree with you it would be of interest to see and we do know that our population is approximately you know very slightly year to year but 75 to 80 percent students of color so you can sort of extrapolate a little bit when comparing it to the rest of the district but um i think it's a great idea i'll ask for it thank you i did i just wanted to get a comment and then a question um but again i just want to thank you for all the work incredible work that you're doing doing the jh and all the team uh again those are our littles uh from our most marginalized communities i think you know a lot
060of the equity work really sits uh or the foundation is set here at jh right and i think uh you're setting up as president right for the rest of the district uh in regards to and then again i was part of that group the early childhood task force and just uh i just seeing this data and despite the pandemic um seeing the progress is just absolutely phenomenal i mean it's incredible um so so kudos and you know share this with the you know share this video with with your staff i mean i think that they're doing an exceptional job they've seen and i would love to see you know again the example that you gave here in regards to you know presenting not just academic and cognitive development but also literacy and then parent involvement
061and parent engagement you give us this comprehensive report and picture of how school districts when all puzzle pieces are working together can really move the needle and on equity so so again to me i'd love to see this type of reporting of what like what you did today across the the our whole system all the way up to eighth grade and um so now seeing that and then taking it so my question is um you know i was thinking about the kids assessment the kindergarten individual development survey so you know as we think about comparing apples to apples and really taking this comprehensive look at how children develop you know that for me uh you know kids is kind of this this natural continuation of how early childhood should be which i think continues on
062until second third grade uh so you know for you for me kids kind of it continues what teaching strategy goes treaty strategy goals does and really takes that comprehensive look at child development from a cognitive social emotional uh perspective so you know my hope is that i know you know jh has done collaborations and has done work with our kindergarten teachers i know you have you've had your meetings annually i don't know if it happened because of covert last year but again um hoping that can continue to happen in regards to because i think that's also part of the pieces is making sure that we have these transitions from from our early childhood system or early childhood program here to our our k-8 uh schools uh as smooth as possible where everybody's understanding where kids
063are at and where we want them to go um so so for me one of those pieces would be having a conversation around the kids assessment and how again some of those domains and maybe we can pick up more domains on that particular assessment or survey which is an observational survey um can really kind of help us continue to connect the dots and create this uh help continue helping us move the needle for our most marginalized students that emerge out of jh so that's the question is can we use can we do can we look at kids kids survey data next year um so i think i think we can't look i mean this the k the challenges we face with kids have to do with the fact that the data comes in so late
064i mean i the district would have to really commit to using the kids survey in full at the kindergarten level in order to make it terribly useful for us because in the way we use it now we only use part of the assessment so we don't get the result because of that we don't get the data back till much later in the year so it's not really usable to the teachers i think that the i mean i don't work with kindergarten but i um i i know that if you collect all of that documentation in order to conduct the kids survey which is very similar to teaching strategies goal assessment as you said that process unto itself is incredibly valuable for an educator so i think it is a great process for the educators to
065go through at the beginning of the year but it is unfortunate that they don't get any meaningful results back until much later um but it you know there there are i know that dr beardsley has been discussing um possibilities of expect with kindergarten educators of expanding the use of kids more fully that would bring into play some questions about how they're going to have enough coverage to actually implement it because it is a large assessment and that one teacher trying to do the whole thing could be challenging but i'll leave that for you to sort out but i i agree it is you know definitely it's there's more correlation in terms of the type of assessment holistic assessment between kids and teaching strategies goal thank you at the risk of being repetitive i think this
066work often is slow and we don't get to always celebrate victories so i'm going to take another moment to acknowledge three things that you identify that i'm particularly excited about that our data is still better than it was before we started all of this during a pandemic is exceptional right i mean we never want to see the numbers go down but they should they should have gone down far more considering what we were struggling with and how many additional layers of challenges this population has at their age and with the pandemic i think the fact that we are closing the gap on other programs i mean this is a huge issue that we were trying to address over the last several years as making sure that our the kids in our programs were going into
067our schools as ready as any other kids in town and the fact that that gap is closing and then i i appreciate on your bringing because i was looking through it and going i remember us talking about trying to understand the disparity for latinx students and the fact that that gap is also closing just all of that really please celebrate with your staff that this is just exceptional work and i hope that we can steal lots of ideas and generalize it across our entire system because we this is this is phenomenal work you all are doing so thank you thank you yeah i just wanted to know on top of that that um one of the other things that came up a lot when we were doing the early childhood task force was how foundational
068jeh is for how vulnerable families get introduced to district 65 and how their expectations get set about how they should be treated how their school should feel for them and for their children and seeing the levels of engagement but also hearing you mention the way that you notice that parents are engaged but maybe haven't given themselves credit for is i think really meaningful in terms of the affirmative and empowered experience that i hope all of our caregivers have in throughout district 65 but it's just a really powerful way to enter into the school system with really high standards regardless of your vulnerabilities and um that's critical because we know our all of our kids first educator is their their caregivers and so those caregivers feeling empowered and connected and valued is critical to the rest
069of the experience with district 65 so thank you all for paying close attention to that and thinking of the affirmative ways to engage with our families um i also wanted to hear a little bit more you mentioned academic skill centers at jh yeah that's like it looks a little different i hope so but i'd like to hear a little bit more about that play-based right we have four well we have four tutor positions but only three three filled right now one in the process of being filled uh that's the fourth in the process of being filled um and we use uh we don't have a center that we pull students out to to go to that our tutors help they work with the teachers they go to regular um mtss cohort meetings so with smaller
070groups of teachers the tutors are checking in regularly to see how the students are doing and they're developing intervention plans together they're helping to execute on these intervention plans they're focusing more on the academic skills and our panda care team which is our psychologists and our social workers are focusing more on any interventions that might be around social emotional learning but they are out they're pushing into classrooms they're working just outside the classrooms they're really doing a lovely job developing relationships with the students and working with the teachers to develop strategies that they can reinforce with the students when they're working with them so it's been a nice addition that's really great to hear and honestly it's we have not been able to i think operate those kind of integrated systems with fidelity often um
071in district 65 and so it's really wonderful to hear how you all are working collaboratively with fidelity to i think how those supplements were imagined and i really want to acknowledge and congratulate the team on being flexible and adaptive [Music] this this pandemic has required us to be all to be flexible too uh points that we probably never imagined that certainly introduce a lot of stress and um it sounds like the team is really taking that on with grace and compassion for children and families and one another and i thank you all for that yeah i think you said it perfectly grace and compassion and dedication it's been they've been amazing really um and it has been challenging as everybody knows for teachers everywhere across the country um but i'm very proud of our team
072i really am thank you we're proud of you all as well i think i think that has exhausted all the questions and comments from the board thank you so much so we had some really informative uh fyi items that we encourage folks to pay attention to and specifically the opening of schools and fall housing data and with that with no further business before the board i adjourn this meeting at 8 34 p.m you