D65 Finance Committee/ Working Board Meeting - February 8, 2021

001some thank you adila so we're going to call this finance committee meeting to order at 6 53 pm i apologize for our late start in compliance with the governor's executive order suspending certain open meetings act requirements in order to comply with the state of emergency orders tonight's finance committee meeting will be held virtually so we will call the role yes um kim here hell pen here right before we jump in i'm just gonna move uh that we amend our agenda to just swap the order for uh the first two discussion items the financial projections and the thought exchange review so that the thought exchange review can go first you know a second for that second right thank you kim yes okay kartha yes hilpern yes that's great um so we have three action items tonight

002uh the first one is the finance committee recommends that the meeting uh the minutes of the december 9th 2020 special finance committee meeting be approved as presented second great chem yes cartha yes philperin yes uh the second is regarding student fees the finance committee recommends that student fees for fiscal year 22 be approved and presented to the full board for approval is there any discussion here raphael about the fees seem pretty straightforward no we we we're open to us answering questions you get anybody have any questions about the fees look like uh just keeping it flat yes yeah i think just to clarify that fees aren't changing given they're not changing right okay thank you want me to reread it the finance committee recommends that the student fees for fiscal year 22 be approved and

003presented to the full board for approval second [Music] kartha yes kim yes hill prime yes and the third action item uh transportation fees for fiscal year 22. [Music] raphael anything there that uh needs elaboration outside the memo no it's pretty standard same thing we keeping the fees the same for next year so everyone should know that the fees student fees and the transportation fees are staying the same as they were this past year anybody else on the board have any questions about the transportation fees okay so the finance committee recommends that the transportation fees for fiscal year 22 be approved and presented to the full board for approval second camp yes help yes all right so for our first discussion item tonight uh we have susan and jim here from thought exchange uh thank you

004both for being here and for helping us collect the voice of our community through thought exchange um and they're going to share a review of the thought exchange and some of the analytics and kind of information that we can glean from from the data thanks joey uh jim and susan uh if you want to take it away just to introduce jim and susan too so they're from the center for effective school operations or cso um and as joey mentioned we really wanted to have an independent partner to support us through this process so um i know it's a packed agenda for tonight so without further ado uh jim and susan if you want to get started yes thank you so much uh you can all hear me and see the presentation hopefully okay so my

005name is susan bratt i am with cso communications along with my colleague jim cummings um we'll do a brief kind of uh intro of what who ciso is here in just a minute and um but just for the purposes of personal sharing i have been with cecil communications since april so not quite a year um but prior to that i had served over 20 years as a communications director in four different school districts up here in the twin cities in minneapolis-st paul area and minnesota and jim do you want to just do a brief intro of yourself sure my name is jim cummings and i joined cso in july so i'm a little bit behind susan on that one but prior to that i had served over 32 years in three school districts in arizona

006as a communications director so we come to you with the uh understanding of what it's like to work through a lot of this communications issues that go on in school districts so we'll start here um see if i can here we go so tonight what we're going to do is we'll briefly kind of give you some background on cso communications and then also a little bit on thought exchange and how it works we'll talk about some of the themes and how they were gathered and collected we'll talk give you some findings some of our conclusions and considerations and we'll have some time for questions and any final thoughts that might come up so we'll keep going through that the first is some background on cecil communications and thought exchange so one of the things that

007we like to talk about as cso communications we are a company that is actually communications is actually a division one of five divisions of cso um cso is a firm based in minneapolis they we specialize in offering services assistance and support to schools school districts and educational organizations so our whole focus is on uh school districts and schools the other divisions that that the company has are around the issues of facilities finance technology and transportation company actually started over 20 years ago focused on trans transportation and different services and consulting that they would do around school district transportation about six years ago they started the division of communications it really took off about a year ago with the addition of some of us and kind of spreading beyond just minnesota to include a number of

008different states i think we're up to eight or nine different states that we're working on working with different districts or educational associations um our one of the things that i wanted to just kind of highlight is that we we are about rethinking possible is our tagline and so we we enjoy getting into things where there might be a challenge or a problem and figuring out different ways of doing it we know that schools have been operating the same way for 40 50 years and we know that not everyone is being served equitably so we are very interested in changing that dynamic so just a little bit about it one of our our deeply held values is around diversity equity inclusion and i know that that's something that's very important to d65 and so we commit

009to that and improving student outcomes as a result and then we want to our biggest thing is that we want to help schools make real and impactful change we see ourselves as partners in that so that's just a little bit about us getting onto thought exchange it's a crowdsourcing platform to gather stakeholder insights so uh it's really about making that taking that virtual environment that we've all been thrust into over the last year and how how can people engage with one another around a specific prompt question so the biggest thing that i like to stress here is that thought exchange is not a survey it's different in that how we analyze the data it's different in how you participate so when when you do a survey and it and it's another tool so we don't

010say that it's better or worse then um it is just another tool that can be used to engage your stakeholders and as when you work with a survey it's one way you know you provide your information and then somebody gets it here you're providing a thought you're providing an idea and other people in your community are responding to it so it allows for a little bit more of that crowdsourcing kind of idea and the ability for them for all participants to rate the ideas of other people allow for not just more engagement but a little bit more prioritization so that it's not just always the loud voices that you're hearing um you know every every community has allowed voices but are they a vocal minority or that do they represent others in the community and

011that's knowing that a big part of uh your organization is to reach out and elevate the voices of traditionally underrepresented um populations we want to make sure that we can do that and thought exchange might be a way to just sort of take us a little bit in that direction it doesn't solve it but it helps us get there a little bit in terms of how the process works it's a three-phased process in the span of a condensed period so first of all you would get on you would identify what language you want to participate in you'd answer some survey questions and demographic questions as as the board has identified we'll go through some of those but after you do that then you share your thought there's a prompt question and you share your ideas

012about what how you might respond to that then you would go in and then you get to star and rate the ideas of other thoughts that have been shared and then at any time you can go and click the discover button and which allows you to see what are the top thoughts there what are the hot topics you know what are the things that people are really seem to be engaging with so you get and then you also have a chart of your activities so if you saw that you gave something five stars and you want to go in and change that back to three stars you're able to do that through my activity so it is a unique way of being able to see all those results kind of in real time and finally

013i just want to remind people that there is the live report of the exchange that i believe melissa will be sharing with the community and that live report allows you to you know go in look at the top thoughts allows you to uh click on different themes that have been developed and say what were the thoughts that actually got put in that category and then the other thing to remember is that we have two different ways that we analyze the data we analyze it based on frequency which is this little thought bottle bubble with the number sign in it and then it's also about star in terms of how you start them what sort of importance you placed on them so you can see the difference between those this is just a static graphic i

014can't actually click on it but if you click the live report here you can go in and do that i think next i'm going to turn it over to jim for theming thanks um whenever you get whenever we do a thought exchange we like to we read through each and every thought that is that is shared with us and when we do that what we find is that there are trends that emerge they bubble up um from from the thoughts that are that are shared with us and so in this exchange though there were several instances where there were just a high number of shared thoughts and they were met also with a high level of engagement among the participants and that really stood out and specifically those thoughts came in the administrative spending area

015covid curriculum and learning and district spending but as we noted that there are two different ways to look at this you can look at frequency uh but you could also look at engagement and in four other areas equity diversity to recruitment and retaining a staff school board and special education there were not as many thoughts shared certainly as in the other areas but the the rate of engagement the amount of engagement in those areas was significantly high and we should note that this exchange had an extremely high level of participation and so it's which probably comes as absolutely no surprise to any of you so in terms of the report findings um we're just going to go through some of the i know that um talking with dr horton and melissa that there's a an

016interest in kind of diving a little bit deeper into the survey and demographic questions that we did so when we look at just in general look at some some demographic information that we've gathered and i've kind of pulled up some ones based on conversations that we've had with the board share as well about what sorts of things are important given your other efforts that you're working on okay not sure what happened there let's stop sharing try to share again okay it just booted me out so let me just try again here there we go are we back we are okay all right thank you okay that was weird um so anyway the participant language most people poke it in english which is probably not a surprise about two percent of your respondents did so in

017spanish because as i mentioned before thought exchange has the ability to the participant gets to choose the language that they want to participate in they get to see all the other thoughts in their home language and participate that way which is a nice way to make sure that we're ensuring everyone has some access we did have a small number of respondents participate in korean french and chinese so those were the languages that were identified as part of the exchange let's look at race ethnicity so um when we look at that we see that uh from what i understand in your community this is a fairly representative sample of of your overall demographics in your community so you see that there's about 57 percent who who identify as whites 10 identify as black seven percent identifying

018as latinx and then and four percent identifying is multi-ethnic or racial and then you can see the other ones is there as well i think one of the key things to note is that you had 14 and a half percent of the participants choosing not to answer that question so you know take all that into consideration as well as the multi-ethnic racial which we know that as a growing category for people to be able to respond to when we look at where people are living in the community um first you can sort of see here all the different wards that you have um i understand ward six is a very active community so it's not surprising that you see a larger percentage of activity there however i think it's important to note that you had

019almost 16 people saying that they didn't know even though we included the link to find out what word you lived in people didn't go there and so they just said they don't i don't know what word i live in so that is a a little bit of a skewing of the results when you look at that and um i know that based on race and ethnicity and ward i believe board chair had asked for the the crosstabs of that i'm still working on getting the crosstabs cleaned up from that so i will be sure to send that to you so that you can see how representative that is we also asked about what's your relationship so that could be whether you're uh obviously we have about 71 percent of the people participating identified as their

020their primary role as being a parent in the district or a guardian um you have about 22 percent saying that they were a staff member primarily you have six percent saying community member and then you had just a just a handful of students who also participated and students include both d65 as well as the etha i'm not sure what i can't recall what the et stands for but that's your high school district where i know your students funnel into so there was one participant from that district as well uh we also asked whether you were had a program affiliation with any of the following programs and so we looked at early childhood elementary most of your most of them are coming from elementary we did parse out magnet school from that and middle school as

021well so you can see the difference um and again you also have nearly eight percent saying that they have affiliation with more than one meaning they have children in more than one school probably so um see staff role we there was a desire to know about for those people who are identifying as staff what is their role in the district you can see not surprisingly that the majority is are licensed educators which usually falls true for for districts but then you have a you know 13 and a half percent saying that their support staff 12 percent are related service providers and 9 are identifying as administration and that could be school based or district level administration then we asked a few other questions the district wanted to to learn a little bit more about how

022how representative this just how represented the population is so we asked do you currently receive any special education services 20 said that they did um emerging bilingual services about six percent said that they did and then we also asked about gender identity and um they were asked if they their child or a child in their care identifies as lgbtqia plus and there we saw eight percent saying that they didn't so that kind of gets you through the the demographic parts of it then when as jim had mentioned we had a very strong engagement of those who participated um granted when you only have when you have 1300 total 1 376 total participants um certainly that doesn't mean your whole community because your community is much larger than that but keeping in mind that you had

023of that group you had 43 shared thoughts now that is a in our experience to have nearly half of the people actually sharing a thought and not just sort of going in and rating other people's without sharing a thought that's very that's in the high category in total you had 1400 thoughts shared 58 of the participants explored the thoughts and 72 percent rated ideas shared that is extremely high and in all um when you look at all the ratings 50 57 584 ratings were accumulated so people put in a number a very strong number of participation of ratings a strong participation and and the ratings that indicate an extremely high level of engagement um of those who participated another way to look at it is with this this kind of diagram that we pull out

024and what you can see looks like a mess but um the little people icons are the participants and then the little thought bubbles are the thoughts that they shared and so you can see how concentrated in the middle of that are people in terms of rating and sharing thoughts and so it's a very strong engagement level and if i could i can tell you that usually when we put these when these maps put together it's actually put together in thought exchange it usually takes maybe in typical exchange maybe 10-15 minutes to run this one because of the width and breadth of the participation and the engagement took over an hour to go so um some other findings that we did in our analysis we looked at differences and agreements and what that means is that

025when we look for differences there would be group a would would rate a number of ideas really highly group b would rate those same ideas low and then vice versa group b would have some ideas that they would rate highly in group a would have said yeah not so much so whenever when i looked through all of those kinds of where those divisions sort of popped up the interesting thing that came out is that where the common ground is and that's what we try to look for is our words are common ground that we can message where is there common ground that we can target um some communications to and bring people together and the common ground was the same for all of those divisions and it really focused on making sure that the district

026is putting resources and programs and services that are closest to the students and then reducing administrative costs to include paying for outside consultants so there is that kind of the second one is i would say a pretty common theme jim and i have been in school districts for years gone through budget adjustments for years and i have never been through an experience where cut administrative spending has not been the top thing that's come out for people and we'll talk a little bit about that but the again focusing on on focusing your resources to those that are closest to the students we also looked at some heat maps that we like to do and they kind of help us understand where people are at in terms of their intensity for and where they're placing importance we

027looked at these and you can see if we just look at their where their identified role you can see that employees really really put heart strong emphasis on administrative spending and recruiting and retaining staff probably not a big surprise those general community members talk about talk very strongly about administrative spending for parents there wasn't quite the intensity of those but they did again focus on administrative spending so there are some opportunities in our in our recommendations there for how to look at that we did additional analysis i didn't put them in here but they're in the report for if we look at the different demographic questions that we asked whether it was race tenure um i'm blanking now on the other ones that we did but uh you know just looking at the different things

028and we did sort of we did put in some information about what was what was most frequent and and what was most important and you can see that and we'll try to do some i i spoke earlier to some of you about how we can try to dig a little bit deeper into that data the key thing the tough thing here is that everything is anonymous so i can't i can't attach a thought to an individual but i can look by group so i'm going to try to dig a little bit deeper based on some requests from some of the board members okay so after a season does a deep dive into that data we we take a good look at it and then we come up with some conclusions and some considerations for you

029so let's take a look at the conclusions first um and so we're just you can see those both points themselves but the but one of the things that we found is that d65 should really conduct a study of its administrative spending in an effort to find efficiencies and to share the results of that study with its staff and community my understanding that that is something that's already begun within the district so you're kind of ahead of the game in that way now this isn't however to suggest that the current spending isn't properly targeted and needed you know we know from being in school districts for over 20 and 30 years that again the administrative spending is kind of low-hanging fruit um it's it's the easiest thing to get at because it's allegedly the furthest thing

030from the classroom even though we know better now um what it does suggest however is a lack of understanding for the need for of for the administrative expense and it also suggests the need for stronger communication in regard to the scope and responsibilities of these roles and why spending in the area is some is so necessary the the intensity of the respondents to the thoughts in this area also strongly suggests not examining administrative spending would be detrimental to morale and transparency of the prior the prioritization process that you're all going through right now and should cuts be required we should also note that concerns around administrative spending are not in common as we said in school districts and are often the highest rated and strongest intensity areas and targeted for reduction but it's also important

031to demonstrate that the need for administrative positions and what impact they have on student outcomes one of the other things we found is to examine spending on consultants and curriculum this is probably the two other things that bubbled up the most many respondents believe that d65 staff is absolutely capable of developing highly engaging and effective curriculum as well as professional development to implement it we continue with our conclusions um equity and diversity is extremely important not just us as an organization but clearly it is to your district um we uh the data suggests that that d65 take more action on its commitment to equity and anti-racism by demonstrating more support to minority and underrepresented groups training for staff and residents and equal access to technology and this is important that includes broadband and while you're

032doing all this you also need to continue to work on closing the achievement gap finally reserve review the perceived represent over representation of black and brown students in both special education and behavioral programs that that was made very clear more conclusions under curriculum and learning the participants ask that you review the program and review your curriculum spending using as up-to-date data as you have in order to determine both efficiency and effectiveness in regards to facilities and infrastructure there are numerous thoughts shared about d65 buildings and what you should consider among them the modernization of them particularly in the technology area and not just bringing any new technology but making sure that it is equitable across the district there are several thoughts shared um that you should consider renting out your facilities when they're not in

033use to bring in some revenue um and even some suggestions that as long as you're going as long as school is online that you look for a way to rent out facilities for other uses and there are also a significant number of requests for a school in ward 5. under financial management several respondents were really concerned and questioned the need for budget reductions given the recently passed referendum so i think that that becomes really a communication issue how that referendum ties in to what you're doing right now i think is going to be very important to to clarify uh among your community you know throughout your community and you know in it again you know the the district should examine its communications about how the referendum dollars are being used and then draw those connections

034to the current financial challenges in the district under representation um again participation in this exchange was extraordinarily healthy um the vast majority of the folks who participated identified themselves obviously as families with the second highest level being staff that's not uncommon but minimal participation of respondents in other languages other than english doesn't align with your demographics and so you may want to consider additional targeted communications and engagement with those underrepresented populations in addition to that more than half of the respondents identified themselves as white while the second highest group identified is black we suggest that it's probably to your benefit to reach out to the traditionally underrepresented voices in the district in particular non-white families to assure that all of your voices are heard all of their voices are heard rather and factored in to

035the district's decision making within subgroups when we looked at various subgroups which thoughts rated important are very important we did see a whole lot of difference when we looked at the frequency of thoughts but when the ratings of thoughts are taken into account and that utilizes the weighted approach that susan explained earlier we found much greater variability variability so we encourage the district and its leaders to review these analysis to help develop targeted messages that are going to address the concerns of specific audiences so we leave it to you for to uh that's kind of our findings and reports um obviously you have the full report in front of you and and the link to the live report but we just wanted to kind of go over some of that talk a little bit about

036how we got there what questions do you have for us thank you any uh any board members with questions about the report i have a question um it's susan and jim right correct um i just the last comment you made i think you said that there was some consistency in the thoughts that were shared among marginalized populations but not consistency in the ratings and for that reason we need to do some more targeted outreach am i understanding that correctly or no yes you that's correct okay thank you done okay sorry i'm on a headset so i hope that you all can hear me okay um when we were talking about thank you uh when we were talking about the the employees who answered the survey was there an opportunity for the different stakeholders like custodians

037um our health clerks our secretaries was there the opportunity for them to fill that out because i didn't see them represented on the graph and i wonder if they answered in a different category or if they didn't answer at all just i want to make sure that like all our stakeholders were involved in that process i don't think the question broke down staff by by unit i think it just asked if you were a staff member so they so no we didn't no we did break it down by unit yeah and they could identify um the categories that were sent to me from the district is what we put in there they could put in they were either a licensed edges educator a paraprofessional an administrator a member of the support staff or excuse me

038related to a service provider a social worker psychologist something like that or that they were not an employee yeah so and when we had it there as a support staff we put for example and then we had so for each of those we kind of it said for example and the different employee groups that would be included in that they would probably have labeled as support staff then at that point correct okay thank you yep maintenance i think was included in there there was um jim and susan there was a lot of the report that i felt for lack of a better word was expected or anticipated in terms of the findings like you said uh administrative costs isn't a surprise to to come up um is there is there any reason to to believe

039that that you also said it was a healthy exchange so uh how do you reconcile the well i not that i didn't learn anything new but i didn't learn anything new from the data because it's because i've heard it from community members and other forums from other people so well i think number one you should have expected these answers um there if there's any genuine surprise to you in here then um that would be a surprise to us the the meat of this report though even though you know we've talked about administrative spending i think that the real meat in this is under the district spending category uh the district spending team because that's where a number of ideas are shared with suggestions and for how you go about determining budget priorities whether that would

040be you know finding efficiencies in transportation looking at a way to improve your facilities or you know simply just you know spending less on curriculum by doing it in house that's that's where the real meat of this is and if you go in there and examine those answers it's a real launching point i think for your discussions even even more so than the the administrative spending although again we certainly recommend you take a look at that and examine that for efficiencies but in the end the real meat in this is under the cr is under the the district spending and frankly also the curriculum um theme as well and i think the other thing to your point um just is that uh it's kind of what we what we do when we do engagements in

041general in that what is the purpose of the engagement and the purpose of the engagement and you being from everything that we've learned about the district you're a very active and engaged board and you're and you're making concerted efforts to get out into the community and and hear from your constituents so the fact that the results don't really surprise you is actually a good thing it shows that you are out there but the point that i think is important is that it's about it's about offering your stakeholders an opportunity to have a voice so rather than just you saying yeah i know what you i know what you think um you know because we're out in the community this actually gives them that real feeling of engagement and finding out what's finding out what's most

042important to to your community and um and then whenever it is that you do make decisions you're able to point to to a piece of data to say this is what we heard was really important and so therefore you're kind of getting some buy-in on on those decisions so i hope you know i think it's really important that that it not be confused with well that was kind of just a waste of time because now you have 1300 plus people in your community who are like oh you know what they asked me about that i remember when they asked about that and you can see the results of it and when i've when i've when i was in a district using this tool um it was very helpful to be able to point back to

043say this is what the community said was important and this is why this is one reason why we're doing that so you know you you have to consider multiple things you have the financial details you have uh you know other aspects of the districts and other other things that are weighing on the budget but at least you can say that you went out and made a concerted effort to hear from your community and and that's that's and if i could just kind of tell into that that's not just important that you'd be able to say that to your constituents to your community um it's also important that they realize that they had a chance to participate in that and and participating or not participating was really their choice and frankly not participating as a choice

044all by itself and in some ways it shows you one of a couple of things one maybe that they didn't quite understand what was going on or they didn't feel qualified on it but on the other hand it also shows an amount of trust in the district because you people you you folks are the professionals you're the folks who run the district there's confidence in you that you're going to do the right thing yeah i just want to i just want to comment on that and i really again appreciate the work and your help in getting us engaged you know getting our community engaged i mean i really i am a full-on uh community engagement advocate and making sure that we get the voices of folks uh at the table in particular most marginalized rights

045i'd love to see some of the weighted uh you know uh responses right and how they differ for sure and and also just really you know we also went ahead and had our own board cafes uh where we've sat with folks and we were asked these very questions right and they they aligned with what we were what we see what we're seeing here in the report you know you know how can we have someone let's try administrative costs right um and um the way i responded is uh you know i you know i i see us in regards to the administrative costs i really see trying to find a way you know we hired a new superintendent a superintendent of color and right now i and given now that we have covert right we we

046really need whatever help we can get at the very top as well as for at all levels uh it's like all hands on deck to make sure that we get through this uh and really push forward our our uh our focus on equity and making sure that we embed equity across the system right so that takes an investment because there's been this investment and particularly in our in our communities of color uh in in their aptitude to do things and in the way we're perceived uh so you know there there is this need right to so for folks out there who are asking people why why why are those administrative costs high right i think it's you know we are really trying to invest in and ensure that equity is embedded in what we do

047and that's going to take you know what time and effort from all all folks across the system in order to really transform the system into a system that's equitable and normalizes success for students right and again we're also planning to make sure that we have we address structural deficit but we're going to do audits across the system to make sure that we're working as efficiently as possible so we may need this investment at the front at the front end right now but again we will continually audit that's our job uh to be you know you know uh fiscal agents to the community and making sure that we're doing this so i think we are again in doing this engagement i you know again we are i'm committed to doing this over and over again every

048time we do a budget because i think whatever way we can communicate with communities and hear from them and particularly most uh you know our communities that we don't usually hear from i think again that's very clear on this report so we we need to work with our face department uh to really kind of dig into this and really make sure that we're getting out there and digging in and getting the folks the folks who getting the voice folks who haven't been part of the conversation to be part of this conversation and really also educating well how does the budget impact my kids outcome what does that mean to to my kid because we have these high level around budgets and deficits and all that but what does that mean for my kid right and

049so then really uh and our communities get and really kind of getting beginning starting from that point and when we think about moving ahead with what the report suggests in regards to you know helping people understand why we're making these investments yes i'm wondering you identified that there's some of the gaps um in in the thought exchange might be related to communications um i was wondering if you had any strategies you've seen utilized for when the thought exchange emerge has something emerged that's just not factually based right like so clearly there's confusion over the referendum dollars and how they're supposed to be used and when they're supposed to run out and kind of all that so then if something emerges that it is then perceived as a mismanagement issue when it's not when it's based

050on not having an understanding of how those dollars were supposed to operate in the first place like what strategies have you seen districts used to combat when the priorities that get emerged are not necessarily consistent with all the facts that exist in a district i think that uh yeah that's a good question i think that um it's not unusual for those sorts of commit those sorts of questions to come up and i think you know in no way is this saying that your communications aren't good because in every district we have to explain explain again and then tell them that we explained it to them about especially about how budgets work because they're just complicated things and you got all these state requirements and you know all these other things that come into play federal

051requirements and so um yeah i think the strategies that work are just keep plugging keep telling them and so if this comes out and it shows that by you know when we look at this is that um you know melissa and her team might want to look at some additional community internal communications particularly but um communications externally with parents as well about just you know how how is the budget i know that you've already got a lot of that out there you just need to keep going and it's one of those things where it's like i wish there was like a certain strategy that you could get at and i think the certain strategy is that you just need to keep telling them and you know the rules rule of seven is that people need

052to hear it seven times before they actually you know register it and we'll do some sort of action with it well you know most people aren't thinking about the school budget all the time they're working about okay my kids aren't doing distance learning and i've gotta get food on the table and i've got my work over here and so i think that um you just gotta keep at it and like i said and you gotta do it in different ways so you know you might say it one way in the board presentation you might find a way to work it into a internal to into a e-newsletter and then in a more um uh applicable kind of an applied learning sort of way and saying like here's an administrator who's doing something unique and this

053is part of the you know so i think because most of the time they just don't understand what it is that is happening over there at the big scary district office great and one of the one of the big things is is that when like i say i the the administrative cost is always low hanging fruit because it's just easy because again you know not everyone understands what's going on but what people do understand is the level of service that their school receives and that their child receives and that's all a result of administrative spending if you if you want to cut administrative spending i had a friend of mine in a neighboring school district years ago uh go through something similar to what you folks are going through right now and so he would

054go out and he would ask people what do you want to cut who don't you want to take the bus who do you not want to feed who which schools do you not want to get new library books or new technology um it's it's if you approach it really from a service level it's a lot more understandable for people for for people who generally don't have to deal with a district budget john do you just want to confirm though that administrative costs were not analyzed though in this report correct no no no we you know we don't have your budget we just analyzed what what came in to us at the beginning of the thought exchange we did link to your website where you have all that budget information so if people went there and

055took advantage of the fact that there was a lot of information already out there about it um but we know that not everybody does that some people are just going to look at the question and answer and say their piece so but yeah we didn't get into no we just kind of lumped it under this is what was considered administrative spending as opposed to something that's much more school based or something student based thank you uh susan and jim uh are there any other board member questions for susan and jim while they're here okay and thank you melissa for helping uh coordinate this effort so thought exchange was a deliberate effort to put a community engagement effort out there asking about what people's priorities are and thoughts are related to the school budget and where

056we should prioritize our spending uh our next discussion item is about financial projection and that comes to one of the the themes that came up that biz just asked about um which is why are we in this predicament at all why do we have to focus on this conversation um and so here's another chance for us to tell that story um and to update the board on the financial status of the district and raphael i think and kathy with that question in mind feel free to to go back in time and reiterate the things that we've heard many times before the promises of the referendum what it was meant to do what it wasn't meant to do and i'll pass it on to you thank you joey i'm just going to start out by saying

057that uh to go back to what the referendum was meant to do it was meant to provide us an opportunity to the district an opportunity to come up with uh fundamental uh of the the district finance so it was supposed to give us the uh the brilliant room if you will to be able to make the changes required to a referendum was designed to do so i'm going to transition by saying that uh what we're providing to the board today is a yearly thing that we do we go back uh at this time every year we look at the the finances we look at the projected revenue we look at the expenditure and using the latest information available to us economic data cpi uh what the uh with the economic picture will look like and

058then we come up with uh with a projection of five year projection into the future if you will to see where the district will stand now i want to caution everyone by saying the projections are nice but there are so many things that impact on that as i mentioned earlier there's the economy and there are certain two we know that but the longer that you go on and so the farther you are from what you know the more difficult it is to to predict the future so we do the best we can based on the information that we are from the data that we have available to us and then which is the reason why we refine it every year so what we're getting ready to uh to provide you is a five-year projection i'm

059going to have kathy to start that thank you raphael um as rafael mentioned we do present financial projections to the district twice a year february and in september uh these projections because of the most recent cpi uh that was released for 2020 has much more accurate information for revenue to be received in um 2023 uh let me say that last february no one anticipated uh once in the lifetime pandemic that that pandemic would engulf our country our community and will close our schools for all almost um a year um it pandemic covet 19 pandemic had tremendous uh put tremendous pressure on our financial situation we lost over 3.4 million dollars mainly local revenues investment income also some property taxes most of this revenue uh we will not be able to recover we also incurred uh

060additional and unplanned uh 3 million to that's to date three million in uh covet 19 related uh expenditures uh overall we are planning that we will spend approximately 4.6 uh million in uh uh um covet related uh remote learning expenses so if you add those two together that's eight million dollar swing that's something that we did not anticipate uh last february even when we updated financial projections um this september it did not look that bleak um but we know what happened so all of this is being incorporated into financial projections that's what forced us to revise um our estimate and that's what actually is speeding up discussion um about eliminating the structural deficit because that's something that we will be talking to you um again today um but i also uh want to highlight some

061positive uh information uh despite the pandemic the district was able to adapt a balanced budget for the current year we kept its our promise to the community about building up referendum reserves uh as of as of june 30th of uh last year we have approximately 30 million um in our reserves and as a result uh our isb financial rating and moody's bond rating have improved that resulted in some savings uh for taxpayers over 2 million was saved by refinancing long-term debt so let's let's move to the assumptions uh and before we we can talk about individual assumption let me uh you've seen this pie chart before it's a picture of our operating revenue revenues uh you can see that we um the district heavily relies heavily on property taxes almost 80 percent comes from local

062sources and unfortunately it's one of the reasons why we we still talking about structural deficit uh that revenue category is under uh tax caps we the growth in property taxes is limited to five percent or the cpi uh whichever is less and cpi has been uh under two percent um for a while uh also the state funding is very limited district receives only about 10 of its funding from the state which is which is very low and nearly not sufficient to cover our needs the cpi factor which determines how much we get in additional property taxes um the two most recent cpi factors that we are using they are included in these financial projections is the cpi from uh that cpi 2.3 will determine the growth next year it's really interesting but with us with

063with local governments with school districts we feel the effect of a cpi three years later um so just next next year we will be feeling the effect from that cpi the cpa that was just released for 2020 uh 1.4 and interestingly enough actually that's actually very lucky for the district very close what we had in our projections so the adjustment is very small because we had one and a half percent that um that amount that growth will be felt in fy 23 so we have a little bit of time to prepare for that cpi um also um another change we were taking our assumptions for other local revenues much much lower so that two percent that we were making on our investments um a year ago that is there is gone right now we are

064um we are earning except for the long-term investments that we made pre-pandemic but the interest rates are very very low um also another thing that we are restoring but not to the full level are some of our other local revenue such as lunch sales or child care fees we don't know how many students will return and will participate in our services this chart represents um the history of cpi consumer price index again this is not a new chart and uh the average cpi is uh 1.76 so again this is that growth is not nearly uh sufficient to offset the needs that we have in the district um another change the state is struggling and in even pre-pandemic uh it was struggling uh quite a bit um the kovic 19 pandemic has exacerbated those uh those

065crisis so we are we are taking uh state revenues down by 15 percent um we we work with our peers that's something that is that everybody is putting in their um in their budgets uh just to be cautious uh because our enrollment is um uh has flattened uh we are keeping our state categorical funding flat as well um we do have a little increase in our federal uh age and we have included uh federal uh um federal um combat 19 um aid in in our projections but only the one that we know about um we have been getting questions like is the 3.1 estimate included in our projections and the quick answer is no uh first of all because that revenue is not yet approved it will be restricted and even if approved it will

066be just enough and actually not enough to cover our covet 19 uh needs um so it will be restricted it will not be anything what the district received in 2008 it will not be used to pay salaries only covet 19 mitigation expenditures moving to expenditures um another familiar chart and um take away from this chart is to show you that 80 of our expenditures is spent on staff uh increases in salaries for fy 22 to fy24 is known for the members of a teachers union and teacher assistant union um salaries for fy 25 and 26 are estimated we just recently received some good news about our health insurance uh premiums for health insurance are increasing less what we had in our projections we had five percent they are increasing approximately um three and a half

067percent so um we we should realize some savings uh but we are keeping uh five percent in the subsequent years and um we still including pension cost uh shift in our projections it's a placeholder um it's not included in the current budget and if that legislation does not pass it will be taken out but we strongly believe that it's better to have a placeholder in our budget um versus at that expenditure um in the last moment uh um at the end i mean we can always take it out it's about 350 000 in fy 22 which is next fiscal year um so we do we just feel we have to have that in our projections purchase services there's an increase and not because our costs are increasing but because there were several items our workers

068compensation insurance our contract with aramark for our buildings and grounds director services these costs were prepaid with that fy 20 surplus budget surplus two years ago um so all these costs are being put back on the books um supplies are projected to decrease um by 14 uh there were a lot of one-time uh expenditures in the current budget uh they're you know going away we for example um the new um finance and hr software um that is in the current budget again it's a one-time uh expenditure we will be paying a maintenance fee but much more lower uh that at the original cost uh also what's being added to the budget is the capital outlay that's a referendum designated cost to be included in the operating funds that cost was taken out um in the

069current budget because of covet 19 and because of various additional expenditures and loss of revenues um our buildings need um attention um we have a lot of old buildings uh we need to start adding that cost back to our budget other objects and tuition that represents the net cost of park school and special education tuition that cost is increasing by 9 and then finally termination benefits which represent the cost of sick and vacation days paid for retired employees there are a lot of uncertainty about pandemic and economic fallout uh also um regarding uh cpi factors for uh uh tax receipts in fy 24 and beyond as well as future labor contracts um so this is this so this table um represents financial uh projections um on the high level um and uh a quick takeaway

070from this um especially if you compare those projections to september projections is that next year is no longer a balanced um a budget uh we are projecting um and this is subject to change of course but we are projecting a deficit um around two million dollars and then subsequent larger deficits however um these projections also represent um operations of the this of the district on autopilot means expenditures as they are right now uh we we we without um um changes without um curbing any of the expenses without any of the uh um tools that we that we put in um and um and these expanded and these deficits will be growing kathy if i can just clarify so to clarify what kathy so i'm just trying to be blunt about it the projection that should

071just show is an estimated if there were no reduction or efficiency no reimagining of what the district is going to look like we keep spending at the same pace and we know we're not going to do that so that's what that shows we know change has been proposed we will have those big deficits but we know we're going we're working on making reduction and also reimagine how we operate the district i think that is very important to point out thank you so this is the same information just as a picture you can see these deficits growing again [Applause] we won't let that happen obviously because by law we have to have a balanced budget and we don't want our referendum reserves be eaten by these deficits but that's how it's looking right now so when

072you compare these uh projections with september projections which did have a balanced budget um what has changed right um we are often being asked about reconciliation with previous projections so mainly the the changes in revenues uh when the school closed obviously we did not anticipate that our schools will be closed for almost uh uh uh ten months uh and as a result we we we lost a lot of these um um revenues and at the same time uh some of the fixed costs the majority of the fixed cost continued um so additional 2.4 revenues um has been um removed uh from our projections uh we had some savings with uh with expenditures so that's that's a plus savings from insurance we also we are estimating um more uh uh certified um retirements uh which will

073uh save money for the district especially in the long run um so as a result uh um the uh next year looks a little bit more bleak um projected referendum reserves when the referendum was passed uh um administration was charged by the board to keep track of referendum reserves and even though uh the district has was able to accumulate over 30 million uh in referendum um reserves and this is this column thirty million one hundred thousand um if we ever pass an unbalanced budget of course that amount will um will get smaller and i know people ask us all the time why do we need to make budget reduction if we have the reserves but good business practice tells us that there's so many unpredictable issues that happen with finance the economy the pandemic that

074we're dealing with and other things that may come up that we don't know about so it's always good practice to put a certain money away for a rainy day and which for individual use you'll be like a savings so i i just wanted to say that it's not good practice to eat into reserve we want to we want to uh put it in there before something happens that we didn't anticipate so we can continue to operate without having to resort to exit borrowing when we paying a usually interest rate one of the positives of the referendum was the fact that the district was able to restore its fund balance uh pre-referendum our fund balance was only about uh 19 which was way below what bond rating uh um agencies are recommending and and as a

075result uh our bond rating was actually uh reduced twice uh simply because of the of the size of our fund balance uh currently our fund balance is at healthy uh 40 but if we um pass an unbalanced budget in the future of course of course we will eat into our reserves and uh according to these projections we will be below the 25 uh which is this yellow line in fy 25 one of the issues and again this is not only a problem of district 65 but many school districts in illinois is a structural deficit and as i mentioned before uh the true culprit is is the funding in illinois uh very small single digit funding from our state and our major revenue category kept at a cpi so if you stack that against our expenditures

076particularly staffing expenditures it is very uh hard to to match those uh expenditures and that's what represented in this in this graph um the green line on the top represents our expenditures the red line represents a revenues uh pre-pandemic that's where our revenues pre-pandemic where of course now they're being revised and some of the revenues especially um a lot of the local revenues such as investment incomes that's gone uh they're never coming back so they are represented by the the blue line so we have this gap which is the difference in the rate of growth um so if we zoom in and if we just look at the revenue growth and expenditure growth that's how structural deficit occurs and um the growth in in expenditures has been pretty consistent for our district it has been

077about uh four percent uh revenues um except for these swings uh up and downs in the beginning is has been about one and a half percent um so that's that's our task um our task is to flatten uh the curve of expenditures and make sure that these two lines uh get close to each other uh so we don't have a structural deficit um coveted pandemic obviously put um the structural deficit has been a problem before but covet 19 brought the discussion um that issue um even sooner we we have to deal with it right now and in order to address structural deficit the district will engage in a series of audits and reviews to redesign its educational model so we have a instructional model that that meets everyone's needs but it's also affordable and um

078this is what was designed and i believe our board share this plan with our community already it's designed in three phases uh phase one which will be taking place um this year and will be implemented next year uh basically um the goal of that phase is to balance the budget but also make sure that some of the micro shifts are already taking place and we also will be mapping out tasks for phase two phase two will take place in fy 22 and will be implemented in fy 22 and 23 and will be a series of reviews and audits curriculum audit for example as well as um we will be designing uh master plans student assignment master plan facility master plan we will also engage in demographic study um we will be implementing our new finance

079in hr software which should result in several efficiencies uh and then finally um phase three will be the phase when these recommendations um are implemented and the main goal is not only to reduce our budget but do something very different that was done in the past is to reduce its footprint so to speak and redesign how certain services are delivered because obviously every time we do a regular expenditure trimming or regular budget reduction all of this is coming back because it is impossible to predict what's going to happen in the future with economy with the cpi um obviously we we nobody has a crystal ball nobody is going to know when the next recession is going to hit us so this time the district is committed to do something a little bit different make sure

080that we change our operations and reduce our operations so we don't have to engage in the budget cutting every three or four years um so so that is the plan in the meantime we will um continue to use zero budget methodology we will seek efficiencies um we've been these are the things that we are doing on daily basis i mean contracts are being negotiated staffing cost is being reviewed every possibility is attrition possibilities are explored we've been doing incent retirement incentives so all of this will take place while we work on these three phases of the budget reshaping process and these are next steps we talked about thought exchange review we will be doing a community service um at the next meeting the administration will propose will present a list of fy 22 budget reductions

081um this list as you saw in the prior slides will be probably around 2 million worth of 2 million dollars and the list will be approved and the work will start on um phase one and two and three uh uh subsequently and that's what we had that's all we had for tonight thank you thank you raphael uh that was a lot to digest and uh certainly the shifts that are in there are um significant and it uh it makes even more need for us to uh review the thought exchange information and as a board we have to we have to discuss a number of things as it relates to uh a the timeline those phases um and how we're going to kind of write the financial shift and i think uh kathy i'll just push

082back on one thing you said you mentioned that there would be significant change in year three and phase three or year three of that plan um it's hard for me to see how there isn't bigger changes before that too and i think as it relates to some of our discussion tonight some of it is a continuation of our last meeting which is expectation setting making sure that we're all on the same page on what we want to do what we need to do and make sure that the administration is prepared with recommendations to come to the board in due time um so we do have an agenda i don't wanna i don't wanna bypass that um are there any specific questions about the financial projections um that we saw today or the presentation from any

083board members for for kathy and raphael i see your hand john i'm just waiting to see if any board members have any questions my wait time is exceptional all right john thank you um looking at the i know that we had the improved ratings uh that we said like for moody's for example and that that decreased our long-term debt uh we're saving two million there do we know what the annual savings would be from that so what the savings is actually is a one-time savings that we that we got and we use the proceed of that if you remember to do some of the capital projects that was done this past summer of 2020. you provide in addition to the uh to the million 25 000 that was promised to its capital expenditure from the

084referendum the proceed from the savings was then used to do some additional roofing work at uh washington roofing work was done at king art and some missionary work was done at nichols and i know that we and again i know all those were were sorely needed i know that we needed those things with the lower interest rates for investments and the decrease in state revenue do we know how much that's costing us so estimated uh we anticipate that for this fiscal year we will get as close to the the expected revenue from the state now we have some long term as kathy mentioned there's some long-term investment that were locked in right and those who those who are based on what the interest rate were before this current reduction in the federal fund rate so

085we wouldn't be impacted by those long-term investments but as those as they knew as the old investment mature and we have to invest them out of our reserves i mean the going rate now if you look at it it's about if you if you're lucky you get six basis point interest rate is just so low because the federal fund rate is so low that there's a significant loss of revenue from those investments so that'll be a cost that we'll feel moving forward is what i'm hearing you say yes it's more yeah for the yeah for the us investments mature and we have to reinvest those investments we have to reinvest them at a lower rate than the ones that we are replacing and my last question and i really appreciate everyone's time so i love

086the uh the wisdom of having a placeholder for potential pension costs cost shifts to the district from away from the state as that moves forward do you adjust because i saw like every year you add a half percentage point do you adjust that as you go so for 2022 it's 0.5 you have projected if that doesn't happen then in 2023 do you reduce it from 1 to 0.5 no so yeah thank you thank you thank you john so without any further questions um our next steps this evening are again i'll keep repeating because i want to be deliberate about this we reviewed the thought exchange data which was an explicit opportunity for all members of community to participate in giving us the board some input on decisions that will be forthcoming we did have two

087rounds of board cafes um over the past month um madame president and i got to host one of them and sergio and rebecca hosted another so i want to take a moment to review kind of how the board cafes work it's a different forum it's a different way for people to engage anya and i had i think we had about 30 people in attendance at ours we went through some slides and then had an opportunity to answer some questions but um definitely wanted everyone on the board to get a sense for what those board cafes were like i need to want to share a little bit about about our cafe sure um we shared some similar information to what was shared today about the structural deficit and its origins um the the referendum commitments and

088how we have fulfilled those commitments and how that brings us to the planned circumstances that we are in now that we are working to resolve um and i think we had about six questions that we went through and they were not terribly unfamiliar or unexpected similar to some of the inquiries that we and priorities that were shared with the thought exchange we had the opportunity to talk about our commitment to keeping um reductions as far away from the classroom and the experience of children and families as possible i think we had some questions about fine arts and orchestra and bands specifically [Music] and there were questions about administrative uh the the size of our administrative costs um [Music] and also about cares uh dollars that had come to the district um joey did did i

089miss anything no i think you you hit the nail on the head and for those looking for the details and some of the cares money and where it's been spent you can look at the information part of our packet uh tonight where some of it's been outlined in a memo um sergio rebecca how was your cafe um i think overall it went pretty well we didn't have quite as many people as you did maybe like five or six people from the community um it probably was an interesting experience for anybody who was english speaking and had to listen to the presentation all in spanish but um there were several english speaking participants and i did you know just out of you know there are some similar questions to what were asked during your session um

090one thing that i do want to know is that on page 16 there was um just a a reference to a position that was that could be cut which was a librarian position and just want to make um make clear that if you go back and reference those slides that was just an example we haven't you know we haven't voted on anything so just want to reiterate that to the community it was uh it was placed there just as as a sample [Music] other than that i think um just based on the conversation that we're having um it's it's more of a statement just to reiterate um how how many more times we have to repeat this probably another four times for the community really to to understand it and i want to thank the

091community members who did who have been part of this very important conversation and just want to encourage our residents both who have students in the district and who don't because this impacts our whole community at large and i think some of the things that were covered are a little bit complex you don't really start paying attention to some of these details until you have a child in in the district but they're really important conversations and just you know the uh one of the pieces that was shared earlier um tonight is in having to repeat things seven times for things to stick and i you know justification that's going to be required from us and also creativity and innovation and how we share this um some of the you know the information that's shared is pretty

092um you know pretty intricate and if you you know if you don't if you haven't been part of these conversations before there's gonna be some you know simplifying uh that we will need to do for the community and then just again uh thank you for repeating the issues with the referendum i think there's some misunderstandings you know people who join the conversation later um regarding what we've done with referendum funds it not being extra money that we had to um to do additional things with so thank you for that thank you rebecca anything to add sergio no i don't think i covered it and again again we heard very similar questions you know that align with some of the thought exchange ideas and thoughts that bubbled up along with what you and anya shared right

093so again you know i i look forward to having more board cafes for other activities i think again anything we can do to continue to reach out to the community to provide clarity uh and particularly for the two of those families who again may need a little bit more of walking through in regards to understanding that how the budget impacts their child's education as well as their outcomes i think is something that is worthy of doing as the thought exchange has shown right and really trying to make sure that we utilize our face the family community engagement department to ensure that we're getting out there and and putting uh you know some of this information out there and making it accessible as possible i appreciate you know kathy and rafael and the work they've done

094with the budget and the budget at a glance document i think that's a good place to start uh and you know to really look at kind of just understanding how the budget kind of works so you know i think that's it's a great document to make sure that we get in the hands of folks as we start these conversations even prior right a couple of months you know i think we're doing trying to do a good job in our due diligence as folks to really try to reach out the community and listen and as they we as we weigh how we move forward with the budget and finances for this district thank you sergio so as we look to what comes next next on our agenda is a discussion item for more community outreach and

095at our last finance meeting one of the things we talked about at this point in the process would be a placeholder for two parts of community outreach one would be another community survey of some kind and another one being in good partnership with our with our staff who are inherently impacted by budget conversations either as as employees or as people who have to bear the the heavy lift of um changes in um staffing and programs and materials and and whatnot um staff forums and discussing what that's going to look like so i definitely would like to open it up uh to dr horton and your team if you have ideas for what those two things um are going to look like as kind of a timeline for those and specifically to make sure that we

096are getting information from these forums in advance of being asked to make decisions as a board so that we can can take information from these forums into the decision making process yes so uh with as far as the forms as far as the survey the goal is to release the survey either by wednesday of this week or as early as tomorrow everything is finalized and ready to go we wanted to have this conversation in this presentation today first before we release it the other thing with the with the staff forms we have a targeted for uh in about two weeks we're going to be meeting with deck exec tomorrow and we'll talk more about this i mean this week we'll be meeting with them to talk about that actual uh what's a better timeline to

097do it uh and we'll have a couple of them uh you know which we're fresh off i know our staff is kind of worn out we just had about four uh staff forums over just last week uh it was pretty heavy and we're trying to give them a little a little window between so we want to do it before the eighth of march but you know uh give them some time to just kind of get ready for their return uh for students to class so that that's the timeline regarding our communication and participation with staff and also the community server that will be going out can we get a preview as to what's going to be asked on that survey sure we can raphael can you would you like it sent or you want to

098just add some of the questions now john um i just had a question related to the survey of um is there any kind of like myths and facts section before people take the survey or or some kind of kind of level setting we can do so that you know i don't want to keep surveying people and then if they have inaccuracies in their understanding then then we're not getting back useful feedback is there a way for us to to provide some facts to start and then ask questions about those facts rather than leave it flexible enough that if people have misconceptions then those misconceptions just keep getting perpetuated i haven't i haven't seen it so i don't know what the setup is but that's a big concern for me is i don't want to keep

099asking people for their feedback when they're not starting from the same premise right and then and i think that task is a daunting task to just to try to educate um you know whole community and everyone around what that what's the true uh challenges we have but we can provide uh some of the information that we disclose tonight um in our presentation and i think that will probably give us um and i don't know maybe i can work with melissa and we can potentially do a conversation with the superintendent and put a release of video shortly to have that information available before we release the survey those are i think our best two options to potentially do that and joey i was asking also for you all we have we have questions now we can

100share with tamara would you like to have that shared at a later date um i'd like to open it up to my board colleagues because i think it's important for the survey to give us information that will be fruitful so i think everyone should weigh in where appropriate i agree that i have concerns about making sure that we have the accurate information i was actually going to suggest a video um i think that our board cafe was i think maybe both of them were recorded um and so portions of the board cafe clips from that could be taken as uh you know board members sharing this content with the community um and we already have those recordings uh i think or a conversation with um superintendent something that would allow for that accurate information to

101be included and maybe um i know we have a website or web page with this information i'm wondering if we do want to make a myth and fax sheet that would be a an image that you know that wouldn't require necessarily watching the video but that would be a quick snapshot of the common misconceptions that we hear and what the correct and more accurate understanding would be um i think that's fair you know one to make sure that we're getting useful having a useful dialogue with our community with with these um tools but also to ease some of the unnecessary anxiety that folks may be experiencing this is certainly a challenging and anxiety written conversation talking about um changing how resources are distributed and allocated that's going to you know we're in in the midst

102of a lot of change in our world right now and and it's a lot um and so having that standard anxiety about change and having you know unnecessary um misunderstandings layered on top of that that maybe folks are intentionally propagating we need to i think do our part to try to dismantle um some of that experience so i would agree about maybe adding a video clip or and a myth and facts sheet if we can do that and i think um i agree i think a strong educational effort needs to happen before we survey anybody um so that people understand the pieces and you know i think part of that can be you know why now right why like why are you doing this in a pandemic why are you why are you bringing up

103redistricting why like how are these things all related so that people can understand why they are all part of the financial conversation and why we you know why our timeline was escalated because of the pandemic just really giving i think some kind of bullet facts to start with and i love the idea of some video clips to ask people to watch you know to encourage them to watch before filling out the survey would be smart we'll get we'll get to work on it um yeah i just i just want to add i know that the video is great um maybe an infographic to go before you actually take the survey so you know what you're reviewing um we've done some work um with the city of evanston around just getting information to people who uh

104you know different literacy levels um you know just taken information in a different way i know that literacy works um has worked with several uh nonprofit organizations to ensure that the information they're providing is um you know synthesized in a way that you know takes into account different you know different uh learning learning types and maybe like language access so um if we do that i think that would be really a good idea to put up front um before this survey and i think too just you know being mindful of um you know while we did get a really uh you know a decent um response rate we're still missing a lot of people right so um you know things that can easily get lost into email um that we you know that we might

105not get the best return on on the survey i think i just do be mindful people are pretty tired of filling out surveys and then not really knowing what's going to happen with it um so just wanted to add that that's a really fair concern rebecca and i think back to the team from thought exchange exchange's point is we're diversifying the outreach so that we make sure that we as a board have done our due diligence to give people an opportunity to engage and we obviously can't force people to and some people are going to engage in all the forums uh responsibly and some are are going to bring what whatever their facts are or myths are to to that engagement and we have to expect that as well um and that's just going to

106be a part of the process but i think it's our responsibility to try to put as many opportunities out there as possible um going forward anything else about the the community survey i will just assume that we're going to use the the normal channels of outreach to try to blast this to everybody within d65 as possible to to offer it through school newsletters as well as the different older older persons and the city yeah so i could share just very briefly what we did for the thought exchange so we created a communications toolkit in both english and spanish that had some sample messages that we used um i directly reached out to our parent group so abc bpac as well as opal and trying to reach some people that may have not otherwise participated in

107addition we did partner with the city of evanston on the thought exchange to put something in their newsletter that went out in english and spanish to all residents in the city of evanston um and also did a couple text messages as well so i think that we're trying to be really mindful of reaching people in non-traditional ways um so not just relying on people to visit our website or to open an email because we know how inundated people are with the start of school right now and a lot of new information i do think we definitely have to be very creative and we can also add to that list we've been meeting has some really like great meetings with our with the faith-based community uh and work to get that information to them as well

108so they can share great i i think all of that is um wonderful i also think that people are moved to engage with these types of um opportunities through relationships and so as much as we can you know encourage individuals to leverage their relationships with other people to [Music] put this priority in the context of what is um culturally relevant influential meaningful within the actual relationships at hand um is going to be really key and i think specifically what i heard from the thought exchange feedback was that we have our marginalized populations um participated but the some of the the data was not as specific as might be useful in us applying the racial equity impact assessment tool lends to that data and so i think um [Music] for this particular survey so that it

109doesn't feel like surveying just to survey we need to apply some strategy to it um to lift up and access those voices and perspectives that we didn't get enough specific information from with the thought thought exchange okay one other uh stakeholder engagement opportunity is with our our faculty our staff members um it's uh it's just a good partnership role but it's also something that contractually uh we need to do before we are asked to make a decision and so i think one of my questions for my board colleagues is um is about who who hosts that is that something that dr horton and his team host or is that something that we want um a board member to to host or for it to be a joint venture dr horton's got an opinion on it

110yes i think we should host that uh joey in all honesty administration since we are making a recommendation and we have those relationships that are very that we have to work with them every day right and it's um important that we can have these uh really engaging in uh authentic conversations so this is my my opinion i i accept that anybody else have a thought i agree i think you joey and dr horton would be your best again you're a finance chair so you you have some incredible questions and you have some great insight so you and dr warren would make a great team to host that all right so we'll we'll figure out what that's going to be in the timeline but i think it's it goes without saying to the cabinet um but

111also to all all the teachers uh john in your in your bargaining unit and all the others that we're not asking people to come to a fun meeting we're asking the people to come and get serious and get engaged and to share their ideas and insights because we want to hear um and that that is the goal is to for us to be listening partners so that we can hear prior to being asked to to make decisions um john so i think to sometimes when i see some of the survey data and obviously i mean i feel my bargaining unit is important but there are other equally important bargaining units that i feel sometimes um that that aren't represented as much in those discussions and i would just ask that we try to find a

112way to include as many of the different groups as possible in that conversation and i know you all are very good with that i i just want to make sure that we're putting forth the same effort to reach out to the different groups as we do to reach out to some of our different communities absolutely i had a couple of thoughts um one i feel like um i guess a slight departure from joey and studio your your thoughts i feel like dr horton and his team should host those conversations and um bring that information to the board um and it should inform um both the proposal that is brought to us but also be brought to us in a way that helps to us to inform how we um process that proposal um i feel

113like that's the best way for us to manage our purview and be respectful of administration's purview um [Music] so yeah that that's one thought and the other thought that i had is um given the important what we talked about the necessity of hearing um information seven times before internalizing it there were a couple of things that i just wanted to take the opportunity for us to clarify at the board level about our structural deficit um since this is our opportunity one opportunity that we have to provide that kind of clarity and information for our community um in the slides that we just saw one of the things that i think kathy tackled is that um but i wanted to dig into a little bit more is that the structural deficit has existed for decades but

114it was mitigated by the sale of bonds and state contributions and state contributions have declined over time and we also ran out of debt service and so that has exacerbated the the financial state of the the district and we ran out of debt service back in 2016. um so that's right prior to um [Music] the the referendum and prior to the operational referendum in there was an uh a capital referendum in 2012 and in that capital referendum was the proposition to build a fifth ward school as well as make investments in middle school renovations um and previous iterations of the district 65 school board made the choice that once that referendum wasn't passed to not build a fifth ward school but still to move forward with the renovations of middle schools and the way that

115the renovations of middle schools was um paid for was i believe with the sale of bonds which is what led to the debt service running out um rafael please correct me if i'm not capturing any of that accurately but i believe that that's the historical nature of the financial state so in 2017 we had a referendum operational referendum that operational referendum was meant to sustain operations along with some particular proposed investments which were safe and secure entries in buildings that had not yet received them [Music] as well as reading interventions and a commitment to capacity building for our equity work um and then we also had agreed that we would put money back into our um our what is the fund i'm losing the name financial reserves financial reserves but it has a particular name

116reserve um sun that's fun balance that's what i was thinking of yes so and that we would put money into our financial reserves or our fund balance in order to prepare prepare for the eventuality which we have come to where our expenditures would exceed our revenues [Music] so the referendum did what we promised it would do and we've we've had a resolution in 2017 that we have adhered to to use the referendum dollars as were promised and planned for and it is our current responsibility as this iteration of the board to resolve the structural deficit so that we can remain fiscally solvent and if we did not then we would not be adhering to our legal responsibility to have a balanced budget but also our moral obligation to our community to steward our dollars in

117a way that is responsible so i just wanted to restate that information i guess directly from the board to our community in this setting as one of the seven times that we need to get accurate information out there so that we can um hold on to that as we move forward in this conversation thank you madam president i think it also is one of the reasons why our entire board comes to finance committee meetings um it is just that important and we're all we're all on the on the team um so our next uh discussion item is about expectations for the march finance meeting and we can blend that with the discussion for expectations for the march board of education meeting um so the march finance meeting is on march 8th the board of education

118meeting is on march 22 and so that's that's four weeks and then six weeks away from now and the idea here is that the community forum will take place and the staff engagement opportunity will take place prior to march 8th and those those phases those three phases that were presented on that one slide that the administration is going to bring a recommendation for us to consider and learn about at the finance meeting not vote on but to discuss ask questions about and get acquainted with that is the and then the march 22nd board of education meeting would be when we uh take action on that on those financial decisions um let me ask the the basic question am i on this is that is that the expectations that all my poor colleagues and administrative colleagues

119have so we're we're okay we're okay with that timeline and with that's that's the end goal um i think there's a couple other things that that we as a board have to do to help tighten the belts um as it relates to the march finance meeting i'll consider this homework for us as a as a board but we have regularly on our finance agendas we have bill lists we have we have p-card receipts we have purchasing information there's a lot of information that we get as board members it's publicly accessible and available for those that can't sleep at night you're welcome to to click on the attachments in the information section of the board agenda but i think we all need to team up and make sure that we're all looking at that so we

120can ask more questions um i i for one would like to discuss at the march finance meeting um potentially some policy changes related to finance we have in our in our board policy and dr horton this is this is for you because it absolutely directly impacts your team we have in our board policy that contracts over or purchases over 25 000 are brought to the board for a vote um i would like for us to discuss and consider lowering that number uh specifically so that purchases cannot be done without board approval at a lower threshold that that's an idea that i have that specifically will slow down the rate at which purchases can be made by staff within the district it will require a little bit more thought and due diligence and cross-checking because it

121will have to be brought to to the board for a vote and it will allow us as board members to see more purchases in more detail prior to being made but i think i think we need to bring some ideas like that from a governing perspective to the table so that we can help the organization tighten the belt and i think we need to be prepared to have some of those conversations at the march meeting you know there are we we've talked about uh how do we lessen the bandwidth um that's used by some of our operations um you know i i see in our build list uh raphael your your team your department um has to write a lot of reimbursement checks to people who go and buy things and then turn in reimbursement

122checks and i understand that's a that's a ritual that happens in schools because people buy things for kids and programs um and i think i think there might be a way for us to procedurally change the way some of that happens too that lessens the bandwidth streamline some of the spending um and and does a couple of things all at the same time but i'd like my board colleagues to to think about some things that you see when you look at those those bill lists and the uh those other documents with a different perspective and bring some questions and ideas that we can from a governing perspective uh look at from board policy um and again if you if you have an idea um when i was looking at the bill list and thinking about

123the procurement cards i went and looked in in our board policy which is online and you type in procurement card and you can read our board policy anybody can do that and you can see exactly what our policy is when you look at our our contracts you can look and see that our board policy 4.60 says anything over 25 thousand dollars has to be brought before the board and we want to make sure that we can we can specify that so that it's actually only certain contracts of 25 000 there's certain contracts of that amount that don't need to be brought before the board but we can change our policy as the board to say anything over five thousand dollars of any kind at one time has to be brought before the board for for

124discussion or or up or down vote um and i think for me that's just one way that we can slow the rate of spending and bring a little bit more oversight to the financial interests of the district long term and that's just the that's just the expenditure side we then have to also tend to some other aspects that we as a board have to deal with whether it's in negotiating and and big contracts and things like that but i think that would be a conversation to have at the march finance meeting um that we all need time to prepare for any questions about that and no questions for me but one of the things i think of right off the bat is making sure again that we even though it's a small part of our

125revenue right getting getting uh money from the state and federal government in regards to some of the services we offer are we are we maximizing right are we making sure that we're utilizing um and maximizing the the money that we are getting from uh in our state and federal government run title around early childhood block grant i mean for me those are you can have you know working on that side uh again one of the things that we see is that again at times we we don't really maximize school districts in general don't really maximize uh the utilization of state and federal funding right so what can we do to make sure that that's happening right and i know we have you know consultants at the at the state level who come and do you

126know it'll do auditory once in a while but you know just making sure that again our bilingual funds for instance uh for bilingual programs our early childhood block grant title grants are being utilized the best possible way thank you sergio anybody else have a thought or idea or question about the finance meeting for march specifically asking board members right now but dr horton i know some of those ideas probably throw a wrench in the administrative ring and again specifically describing it as trying to slow down some of the spending there's a lot of things where it's not about what people are buying but if we if we make a better plan for it we might be able to sometimes it's about a better price sometimes it's about you know making sure that we just have

127the right approvals in place and procedures and um and in some cases realizing that oh my gosh we're buying something and we have it over there so let's not buy it right now these aren't big dollar savings but it's it's something from a governing perspective we can we can certainly help do um to add a little bit of oversight from from our purview yeah i would say there's a lot of big things happening right um team and joey um you know we're opening up schools next week right so that's a it's going to take a lot of time and a lot of effort from our team to be available and make sure that those things happen i'm definitely a fan of um tighten up the belt i think that's that helps us uh in the

128long run uh but i think there are some other things around systems that i would like to discuss that would help to give to give to give me and my team an opportunity to share some of the things that we're doing and decisions that we're making with the board in a more structured manner um and so i that what you mentioned enjoy around um reducing the the 25 000 to lower amount yeah i think that's that's that helps but there are other pieces that'll still need to be addressed that i think would they could easily um still create some some inefficiency problems for us but um i definitely understand i don't know of march with this big reduction piece coming up i don't know march is the best month maybe it's april right i don't

129know but definitely before the new school year so we can plan to have the new structure ready to go yeah well i want to give the board a chance to have the conversation whether it's implemented right away or implemented you know starting in the summer can certainly be a point of conversation but i want to make sure that we're pairing the decision making around what the financial trajectory and decision making pathway will be with also um you know there's only there's limited behaviors of uh of confidence that we can give the community that we're doing um our oversight uh properly and want to make sure that we we're doing that in sync with some of the decisions we're being made to ask john you're muted john thank you i been on zoom for a year

130and i still do that um piggybacking what dr horton was saying you know i'm wondering if we're reaching out to our building admin as well about ways to streamline processes about ways that we might be able to effectively reduce budget because i know that you know they're an important stakeholder too and i know you know when we talk about this you know a lot of times i think i for me personally i think about the people that are my colleagues and we might miss that middle level so i just think that's an important voice that we might want to reach out to too probably are like there's probably things going on that i don't know about but just throwing that out there thank you john point while taking anybody any board colleagues uh have any

131questions or concerns about the the finance meeting or the financial expectations part of the board meeting in march awesome well like i said there's a lot of uh wonderful reading for those who can't sleep in the fyis now seriously if you want to know about the the cares act funding that we've received and how some of it's been spent there's a memo in the fyi of the agenda for that um and uh list of bills fee collection cpi update transportation update and the revenue expenditure update from december 2020 are all listed there and i will adjourn this meeting at 8 51. all right well we have our working board meeting to jump right into um adila do we need to do roll call again um for open session yes let's start um monday february 8th

1322021 this is the working board meeting um lindsay ryan here mendoza here carter here hilpern here kim here hernandez ear tanya foodie thank you adela uh so yeah apologies for um [Music] running behind we are significantly behind on the timeline that we had anticipated for our meetings this evening but thank you for everyone who is staying engaged with these important conversations um due to the governor's executive order suspending certain open meetings act requirements in order to comply with the state of emergency the district 65 board of education will be conducting virtual board and committee meetings um is rebecca yeah you're saying yep uh i move that the board of education approved tonight's meeting agenda as presented second lindsay ryan yes mendoza yes hilpern yes kim yes hernandez yes tanya buddy um yes right motion passes

1337-0 so next on our agenda this evening is public comments and [Music] we have uh any member of the public wishing to submit a comment to be read at the february 8th 2021 board meeting was asked to email their comment to board secretary qureshi a district 65.net by 5 30 this evening please note that it is not customary for the board to respond to public comments at the board meeting the best way to correspond with members of the board is by emailing school board at district 65 dot net great i'll begin with the first public comment we have several for tonight the first comment is from abdul shakur he says i was walking by my fourth grade daughter's class last week and heard them talking about being unapologetically black it was black lives matter week

134in district 65 and feeling curious so asked her about it you said something about being unapologetically black i said what exactly does that mean to you without hesitation she answered it means not having to apologize for being who you really are hmm i said but what if people don't really understand who you are i don't have to apologize she said not even a little bit no i offer that moment to speak to how much i appreciate my children's teachers our schools and this district as they navigate this pandemic while trying to keep the well-being of black children at the center of the academic conversation we're doing so much better than we were even just a few years ago now more than ever i feel like the district leadership is more closely aligned to our family's

135affirmative vision of black light and possibility none of this is perfect and looks different in every classroom and every home but i value what they are working so hard to do this work isn't complete but make no mistake that it's being done thoughtfully and with care so thanks abdul shakur parent of a fourth grade for and first grader at oakland elementary's bcc program the next comment we have is from tom stanton reading the article in winston now about district 65 wanting to draw school boundaries sparked me to reach out the idea for one more major issue to be added to an already chaotic scenario is troubling a pandemic has kept our schools closed for nearly a year we have a new superintendent working to get his footing social justice has abruptly replaced math and science

136as the figured curriculum budget is sunk just a few years after an expensive referendum was pitched to the community as the fiscal solution for years to come enrollment is dropping as families transfer out mid crisis is not the time to reamp the school boundaries i appreciate the value and the progressive agenda this is evanston but the direction and timing of our school district appears tone deaf to the current level of social anxiety plenty of people want to be a part of the conversation constructive solutions but allowing an echo chamber in the district is the opposite of progressive i want our leadership to succeed but please address the significant issues at hand and focus on restoring stability and earning trust tom stanton of evanston the next comment we have is from stephanie kimmel is a resident

137of district 65 and lives in the village of skokie in the walker shoot attendance area she says i read the memo regarding student assignment with interest and i'm glad to see this issue is being discussed i also noted the references to the population of evanston with no reference to skokie also the memo included reference awards specific town hall meetings please remember that we skokie residents do not live in awards and please don't forget voice of the families who live in skokie one solution would could which could help with building a new school is closing road school which is approximately two blocks from walker school and is one of the smaller enrollment schools another option is to consider closing orrington which is an old and outdated building but both of these properties are likely highly marketable

138for redevelopment with the housing market so strong right now let's also at the same time reconsider dropping the magnet concept the word magnet implies better to many families since our neighboring districts use this same term for selective enrollment the idea of a laboratory which launched as martin luther king jr laboratory school seems to have outlived its usefulness for district 65. thank you stephanie kimmel the next comment is from mary bowman she says i was disappointed to read about the decision for district 65 to suspend instrumental music due to the return to on-site learning and the implementation of the hybrid model in a year when our children have already given up so much it was disheartening that the district did not have did not have a plan that included this program continuing with months to prepare

139and plan for reopening did the school administration not realize until recently that class sizes would be smaller and the district would need more adult supervision in each building why not recruit and fill these additional roles over the past few months prior to actually returning to school rather than sacrifice the arts program for our children some might say that orchestra is just an extracurricular activity but there is plenty of research to show that music and the arts are so much more that students who participate in music programs show improved memory and score higher on testing beyond academic performance learning a plane instrument has been proven to be a healthy way to relieve stress anxiety and keep depression at bay a growing concern many parents have for their children after this challenging year with the pandemic virtual

140lessons have been helpful over the past year but even those end in the current district 65 plan sure some families can afford to pay for additional private lessons for their child but many cannot let's let's take this opportunity to create equity within our schools and invest in well-rounded student programs that continue that continue will make our community culture great thank you mary bowman the next comment is from bridget wilde dear district 65 community i submitted a letter for the record back in december sharing my fears as a front-line pediatric provider witnessing the fallout for our for children experiencing profound isolation amid a range raging and unprecedented pandemic and calling us all to action to bring the best signs and people together to safely bring kids back to in-person learning today i'm writing from a place

141of deep gratitude and respect for every d65 administrator teacher facility staff and support services as i have had the privilege to spend countless hours bearing witness to their efforts to make this first step back into our buildings with care thank you doctors horton green calgary d christofaro and beardsley terence little melissa messenger bernice judd raphael obafemi and your entire teams for your unwavering leadership and vision thank you for fostering a spirit of collaboration from the beginning and for graciously welcoming so many perspectives my own included even inviting careful critique in opening multiple channels of information sharing to promote accountability and shared success of the hybrid start implementation thank you natalie copper don jackson med crewley dennis molly and omar white for your compassion persistence and ownership of how these plans impact your colleagues and our

142students thank you to every person on the medical advisory committee who bravely lent us their fears and perspective and thank you to my medical colleagues for selflessly answering this rare call increasing medicine and pediatric advocacy into our public school system the vigor the vigor and intensity of this interprofessional effort makes me proud to be a member of this community finally the biggest thank you to our educators and school staff for all of the ways you have been and will continue to meet students needs every day you are nurturing and shaping all of our tomorrows we have the benefit of knowing our plan incorporates the most important elements for safety there is ample peer-reviewed perspective data about how effective mitigation measures like masking hand washing and physical distancing are to prevent spread of coveton schools our

143facilities are ready with optimized ventilation our cleaning plans are beyond thorough and our health protocols are fully aligned with public health guidelines the verdict of these plans is not yet written our collective safety and success rests with each of us to buy in and protect ourselves and each other in and out of school but we cannot do this and the time is right but oh sorry but we can do this and the time is right we are implementing our first iteration of in-person learning since last march at a time our local positivity rates are extremely low with space to learn the best ways to enforce the key measures and safely scale up in the coming months as most schools across the country return to models of in-person learning we will only have more granularity about

144what can be done safely this pandemic has taught us all to expect the unexpected individually we may be tired broken struggling but together we are better wiser and we'll get through this there are sure to be new twists and changes ahead and i have confidence and gratitude that our district will be adept at staying two steps ahead sincerely grateful bridget weil md pediatric hospitalist d65 medical advisory member and mother of three the next comment we have is from lee clifford says i read with great surprise a recent local article stating that the district is considering hiring more consultants to study redrawing school orders our children have not entered a d65 school building in a year by your own admission nearly 11 months into this pandemic you have as of yet been unable to figure out

145how to accommodate evanston's children's for a regular school day or a regular school week middle school parents are despondent as you have offered no timetable for many to return to classrooms at all what communication or transparency has there been with the community about this massive new undertaking perhaps if you have taken more time to communicate in an open forum with the community you might have a better sense of what parents want right now they need you to get our school kids back in school full-time five days a week they need you to show it can be done safely they need you to advocate for vaccines for teachers and at risk families then they need you to address the learning loss that has occurred during the year when schools were closed frankly spending money we don't

146have on more consultants to assess borders and projected attendance in coming years is particularly nonsensical this year as many working families i know are waiting to see what plans you're putting in place for fall 2021 what are the plans will our kids be in school all day will you find extra space to accommodate all who want to come back will there be school on mondays these are the questions you and the board need to be spending your time on it is a recipe for failure when organizations and leaders spread themselves then trying to take on multiple and disparate projects please refocus your efforts on our children and start the long process of rebuilding trust with the community signed lee clifford [Music] um and the next comment we have is from dr sharon robinson dear district

14765 board members i hope that this letter finds you well i am an evanston resident pediatrician and more importantly a d65 parent i was asked by dr horton to join the medical advisory board to help advise the district on the safety of their reopening plans and i very willingly agreed to do so i am painfully aware of the negative rhetoric directed toward dr horton and the school board that has surfaced over the past 10 months parties on both sides of the in-person learning debate have allowed their fears anxiety and anger to overcome them resulting in a disheartening array of negativity name-calling and threats i have lived in evanston oak for over 20 years and i have never witnessed such appalling behavior in our town i thought we were better than this and i found myself

148deeply saddened and disheartened a sentiment i am sure i share with many of you it was therefore important to me that i expressed my deep gratitude to dr horton the d65 administrative team and the school board for your thoughtful and comprehensive reopening plan when i joined the advisory board i will admit that i completely underestimated your team to my pleasant surprise what was presented to us was one of the most robust plans that i have come across in my research it is clear that countless hours have been dedicated to ensuring that our staff and students have a safe space to return to in-person learning this pandemic has been traumatizing for all of us various ways as a pediatrician i have worked tirelessly to help distraught families navigate these uncharted waters with no comfort all the

149while trying to maintain my own safety and sanity dr horton and his team have done the same enduring baseless attacks and misplaced anger despite the adversity because of our oath to advocate for our patients and students we have persevered i like so i like so many other parents i'm grateful for dr horton's bravery leadership and unyielding support for the entire district 65 family it is my sincere hope that evanston residents will learn from this experience that compassion empathy and resilience are the tools we need to move forward it is time to heal forgive and restore our faith in one another thank you dr horton and team for leading the way sincerely sharon robinson md proud district 65 parent our next comment is from shelly murphy [Music] hello school board members my question pertains to the

150topic of middle school math and the proposed new approach my daughter is in fourth grade in the district over the past year i have had a lot of opportunities to observe her school since it has been online one thing i have noticed is the extremely wide range of student math competency my daughter's current teacher addresses this range for the most part by dividing the children into different breakout rooms on the zoom platform this is possible because there are usually three to four adults for a class of only about 10 students i was wondering how the proposed new middle middle school approach will address the breadth of student needs in mathematics if the idea is in it is in class differentiation how will this be achieved in an efficient manner so that it does not require

151several teachers per classroom how will the proposed new math approach work at the transition to high school will allow for a district supported pathway for students to enter high school at different levels [Music] one more one final thought on the subject of the proposed changes to middle school math i understand that the busing costs for geometry are part of the justification for the proposed changes i wonder if given the district's enhanced abilities to use remote platforms there's a way to expand rather than contract access to geometry in the 8th grade by offering a single district-wide remote learning 8th grade geometry course thanks shelly murphy the next question is from todd murphy i would like to ask the following question of the board what is the specific anticipated pathway to multivariate calculus by the end of

152high school for students interested in stem once they attend college if this will involve extracurricular activities like summer school how will the district support underserved populations participating best todd murphy our next uh comment just a moment is from susan phillips susan phillips writes as a black woman whose aptitude for math enabled me to be the first student in my public high school's 100 year history to go to harvard i urge you in the strongest possible terms not to terminate the district 65 math acceleration program i know firsthand how achievement in mathematics can allow girls black and latinx students and students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds to gain admission to universities programs and fields in which they have traditionally been woefully underrepresented but i also know firsthand how a school district's limited curricular offerings can disadvantage its

153students mostly particularly it's already disadvantaged students because my underfunded huge public high school offered a limited math curriculum equivalent to the already accelerated curriculum to which the district now proposes to reduce its offerings i arrived at harvard a year behind my peers in the stem fields and i'm more than a year behind in mathematics my chosen major a year behind as a black girl in the sciences not because of my own aptitude or the dedication of my amazing teachers but because my school district did not offer the courses i needed to compete with my white privileged peers across the country while i understand why my underfunded school in florida which at the time at that time was ranked 48th among the 50 states in public education was in this predicament i urge d65 not to

154follow the same diminished path given our resources and our commitment we can and must do better i recognize that equity equity issues that you all are trying to address here are collective disappointment that this program has only modestly increased the number of black and brown students taking ap courses and the sense that the achievement gap is starkly represented in the disparity between the number of black brown students and students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds participating in the program compared to their white and wealthier peers a stark reminder of how wide the achievement gap is from the moment students enter school in kindergarten but the proposal does not make clear beyond its aspirational rhetoric how terminating this program will not erase these albeit modest gains further reducing the number of black and brown students in ap classes

155nor does it address the detrimental effect effect that terminating the program will have on black and brown students who would have been part of the program whose opportunities to achieve in mathematics and to compete with their wealthier white peers outside evanston will have been considerably diminished but simply i am deeply concerned that terminating this program will widen the achievement gap for our students i recognize that there are multiple ways pathways to reach multi-variable calculus by senior year the level of math expected for stem programs at public and private universities alike but none of those options include achieving this pathway through regular coursework in school indeed they require summer school courses external and internal exams external programs and other avenues that require the ability and the time to navigate the system and it's options while i

156can help my son navigate these pathways i know that my own parents would not have been able to help me i recognize that math acceleration program does not help the majority of black and latinx students and that so much more has to be done in preschool and in k-2 to ensure that that all arts that all of our students are able to reach common core standards and expectations we can and must do better black however given the invaluable opportunity this program provides for exceptionally talented black and brown students i urge you in strongest possible terms not to terminate i feel certain there are ways to provide transportation funding so that it would become a budget neutral item i know there are committed parents in our district who would help make that a possibility for all

157students in the program regardless of their household income and most importantly we need to ensure that we are living up to our ideal every child every day whatever it takes you're sincerely susan phillips our comments can continue with a comment from elizabeth crouch dear dr horton on d65 board i'm writing this evening with a request for transparency into community feedback collected from the recent thought exchange in participating in this forum it seemed that the vast majority indicated financial prudence and safe return to school as the top priorities i am subsequently left confused by the new priority of redrawing school borders at present time mitigating the declining enrollment seems vital to the district's financial outlook and i do not believe that redistricting at the current time will help this cause furthermore i that a robust and

158safe return to school plan for all students should be the focus and utmost priority while i the district for the hybrid return to school model there is significantly more work to be done to ensure a 20 21 22 school year that allows all children who wish to attend school to enter our buildings and for our students and teachers to engage in full days and full weeks of instruction any and all new priorities will inevitably detract from this necessary work that the community has deemed vitally important in an effort to foster greater transparency please release the feedback and priority rankings as well as the methodology from the recent thought exchange so that we can be assured that the community feedback is seen and a lie and aligns with current action being taken by the district thank

159you elizabeth crouch and um the next comment is from deepmar baum dear dr horton and members of the school board looking at the top rated thought exchange suggestions several topics seem to emerge cut down on consultants and administrators don't cut down on teachers and a little bit not much further down the list keep math acceleration nevertheless this week's board memos propose to get rid of math acceleration and to hire consultants to guide the process for redrawing attendance area boundaries the board memo regarding math acceleration states that this year's student scores using decimals barely went up this is being sold as an argument for desmos and the discontinuance of the math acceleration program because the performance was at least equally bad among all demographic groups also telling the performance of the group that might be most

160impacted by the change the 10 or so highest performers that would have been in previous years in the accelerated math program is not split out or mentioned at all it does not seem to me that anybody suggests that the current set up in the elementary schools helps to decrease the achievement gap getting rid of math acceleration is very similar to continuing what has been done in k5 so it is unclear why this should even stand chance of reducing the achievement gap going forward in the spring math math test for fifth grade 210 points corresponds to the 25th percentile of all students 242 points to the 90th percentile and 259 points to the 99th percentile 10 points are said to be equivalent about one year of instruction this means that the difference between a student in

161the 25th percentile and the 99th percentile is around five years of instruction differences of that side within one classroom will be very common without an accelerated math class nevertheless the administration seems to imply that it is beneficial for all students to be in the same classroom and that is possible for teachers to teach across such a wide range of levels in reality the high performing students will continue being partly bored and partly given exercises outside the curriculum in our experience this has included doing the same challenge mountains on st for several years in a row being asked to do some next great some next great work on khan academy in our local elementary school orrington around 10 of students in my son's grade have at least once scored in the 99th percentile in one of

162the math map tests why are there more students that are at the high performing at orington compared to some of the other elementary schools because of the proximity to northwestern and orrington's english as a foreign language learners program a lot of warrington parents are professors at northwestern university or are foreigners like myself who have a higher degree in mathematics science or engineering indeed a lot of the parents who will be most upset about the discontinuance of the math acceleration program will be foreigners from germany israel russia morocco and china and many more countries all subsumed under the predictable but for them potentially meaningless demographic categories the website that argues for the establishment of a fifth ward stem school makes the point that it is necessary to close the u.s achievement gap versus other developed nations

163in math and science it is ironic that at the same time the district administration wants to terminate the math acceleration program the only winners of getting rid of the math acceleration program will be the peers at new trier and for-profit programs like northwestern's gifted program and the center of talent development with kind regards dr dietmar baum we have one last comment um [Music] dear district 65 board of education dex supports the middle school math recommendations in tonight's board memo we value the collaborative process and detailed work involving our talented middle school math educators the important conversations centered on acceleration enrichment curriculum and instruction and how to deepen mathematics learning for all students these conversations between the middle school math educators and the district leadership that are centered on acceleration equity enrichment curriculum and instruction and

164how to deepen mathematics learning for all students are critical to partnering in the best way to meet the needs of our students meg cruelly district 65 educated council president and that concludes the public comments for tonight [Music] thank you adela um the next item on our agenda is um uh our discussion item student assignment planning um however before we dig into that uh sarita i would like to read a word comment that i have prepared um it's somewhat related to our discussion item but um also a general statement as well um [Music] thank you from the article the hidden victims of gaslighting by ria waltonhome of the bbc it says gaslighting is defined as manipulating someone into thinking they're wrong even when they're right a form of emotional abuse it can be used to make

165the victim question their own mental well-being paige sweet an assistant professor of sociology at the university of michigan studies domestic abuse and believes guest lighting is deeply rooted in societal structure and social environments and or social inequalities women are more likely to experience gas lighting both in the professional environment and in their personal lives due to these inequalities she says in early january we as a board made our community aware of threats and a hate crime that had been directed towards members of our board and administration since we have seen a number of efforts to undermine our credibility and now to ask us to prove that we've experienced these threats and harms as if taking the time and vulnerability to name them write about them speak about them is not proof enough as reported at

166our last convening as a board 25 of the 24 foia requests were for proof of these threats i want to name the impact of the inclination to demand that victims and the marginalized not only be brave enough to name and disclose the abuse that we are subjected to but also repeatedly discuss it in detail not for the sake of repair of harm but to prove harm occurred that impact the impact of that is gaslighting is our energy as a community better used repeatedly dissecting the harm that has been done or correcting it that's a rhetorical question but to answer it i believe our time and energy as a community are better served by being accountable to harm and committed to collective repair i hope we could make those shifts and invite everyone to lean into

167that accountability can be uncomfortable and healing and repair unfamiliar but for the sake of district 65 children and families we must being repeatedly gaslit is exhausting and time-consuming we are committed to stewarding our district through the challenges ahead we want our bandwidth and focus on both the short-term and long-term priorities of a safe reopening of schools responsible financial management and decision-making as we address our structural deficit addressing the gap and opportunity to achieve and working towards program alignment and equitable student assignment in our schools with these critical and challenging conversations that we are embarking on we continue on a path of brave and bold leadership to steward institutional shifts and repair of historical and disproportionate systemic harms to vulnerable communities of district 65. tonight we will discuss the framework for beginning conversations about redistricting to

168alleviate the burden of busing on our most marginalized students and families and consider how to provide a fifth ward school that was taken away and denied again by a subset of our community only eight years ago we will discuss how we approach rectifying what has been perceived as an intransigent problem of resolving a structural deficit that in part is sustained by an adequate state funding of schools and has been exacerba exacerbated by the fiscal decisions of boards pass and the long-term institutional practice of not investing in marginalized communities and we we will do this with transparency inclusivity accountability repair and community care at the fore though it may be challenging we will not shy away from the work of stakeholder engagement and transparency on the front of on the front end of critical conversations we

169will continue to move ahead with our community values to be our best and highest selves for each other our children our and ourselves at the center thank you and dr horton did you have some comments that you wanted to make before we dive into discussion as well yes i do yeah memories of our lives of our works and our deeds will continue in others rosa parks as part of my comments this evening i would like to publicly acknowledge the consumer harassment directed at board vice president biz lindsey ryan in a wake of homophobic hate crime targeting her in january because of miss lindsay ryan's commitment to challenging inequities and her vocal advocacy and action to prioritize the needs of historically marginalized communities she continues to be subject to hateful social media posts challenging not her

170work but her integrity i'm not i am here to stand beside mrs lindsey ryan all members of the school board administration staff and parents are putting themselves on the line to do the necessary and difficult work in writing decades of wrong we can't say we're about equity here in district 65 we must be about it it's more than just condemning acts of violence and hate we must put our words into action in the form of dismantling policies and practices that have further modulized those most in need of our support we are committed to this work as evidenced in the discussion topics before us tonight while the night may be long it is important that we converse that we have this discussion i am grateful for the strong leadership of the school board and the commitment

171to enact meaningful change for black and brown children and families in this community thank you for making it possible for us to do this work serena thank you i'm going to share my strength screen thank you for that intro um i am dr horton um so my name is sarita smith i am here um to present the launching of our new um student assignment plan um so what what is student assignments um so currently we as a school district assign our families based on where they live so we have all these markers and and maps based on your address you get assigned to a school um and this leaves families with uh limited school options or and limited school choice um the only other options to go to a different school other than the one

172that you are assigned to is through our lottery process for both magnet schools and magnet programs um so we are hoping um to shift what student assignments means uh through a pretty long-term project so student assignments to us moving forward really means to build a system that aligns with our values and our community and brings equitable lens and for an opportunity for all the students in district 65. so this year or actually 2020 um i was hired to to lead this work um and i put in its totality because it isn't just about um a fifth ward school it isn't just about redoing lines we are truly looking at all the processes all the procedures and um what this could look like in a modernized structure um and way and and definitely um fixing and

173addressing historical inequities that continue to impact um our students of color and our most marginalized families so what is the vision of this like what is the end goal so our end goal is really to create a comprehensive student assignment plan which will include but isn't it is not limited to new school boundaries and in essence decreasing transportation costs an equitable selection process for magnet schools and programs and a school for fifth ward families so i think it's really really important to understand where we came from in order to determine where we are going so a little bit of a history lesson uh we should all know that you know 1954 was an important year with brown versus board of education outlawing segregation of public education facilities for black students um and then obviously right

174after that civil rights act which has suspended all of our state and local laws requiring segregation um and so what was happening in evanston during during this time in the 63 district district 65 created a voluntary transfer policy implemented to relieve overcrowding at both foster and dewey school and this is where our infamous busing begins uh in 64 once the civil rights act passed uh the board put the desegregation as a policy and that is when a lot of our shifts in our schools and our borderlines started so in 66 and 67 school year one of those efforts was foster school becoming a laboratory school and this school was actually fully integrated an important note here is that we actually bust white and asian students to the fifth ward um simultaneously while black students were

175being bussed out um so very interesting dynamic going on there in 66 67 and then we also opened kingsley school again for overcrowding reasons so we were able to find some pretty cool maps if my screen will work for me um on what our district looked like pre-segregation and then post so this map shows schools that some of you may not be familiar with we have some schools in here that were closed throughout our history miller and central college hill timber ridge used to be a local area school and noise so these are some schools we'll kind of talk about over the course of this presentation post-segregation we all know that foster school ended up closing and they were um the the community was shifted into like six or seven different schools um and i

176think an important note here is um as we continue to think about and talk about the fifth ward and schools uh that even though there were schools that were pretty close to proximity to the fifth board a lot of these students were kind of driven and bussed um to schools way far south way far east and west of their home area so then in the 70s um due to desegregation efforts our enrollment dropped significantly in district 65. at some point we had like 10 000 students and it dropped by a couple thousand um over the course of a pretty short amount of time so obviously the district looked at boundary lines and decided that we needed to close some schools so college hill miller and noyes ended up closing um king lab and styles which

177was another middle school ended up combining and by 79 ended up moving to the current location where king arts is and the decision to close foster school was made in 1979 as well during that time they also decided to close three other schools they were looking at timber ridge central and kingsley timbridge ended up closing as a local area school and turned into a magnet central closed and kingsley was one that the board had some pretty deep discussion um on when they were looking at that because the communities around there including fifth war families were arguing that then there is really no school even within proximity of their neighborhood so there was a lot of questioning about that a lot of debate kingsley ended up surviving and foster school as we noted uh did close

178in the 80s there was just a lot of push and transparency from our board about creating this uh established 60 guidelines which is that no defined racial group should exceed 60 of a school population and again a lot of busing and a lot of movement of fifth ward families and black and brown communities to make that actuality so uh in the 70s the early 70s this is kind of what the map looked i looked like um uh you know timber ridge again ended up closing and becoming a magnet school so walker consumed that space in that area of evanston central ended up closing so oakton and washington uh consumed a lot of that space so you'll see over time as the maps shift that each every time a school closes obviously another school kind of

179takes up that space and those families in the 90s it was and get back to the drawing board again for the district um and a lot of everything after the 70s was really about overcrowding and racial balance you'll kind of see that um as a pattern um in a lot of these maps and so there was a lot of um small shifts to to balance schools and um and balanced race in schools and in the 2000s we really shifted to a program mindset to diversify schools so obviously in 2001 uh the district opened tweet our 2a immersion program at two schools and since uh then we've actually extended expanded that to five and then in 2006 and seven we offered um african center curriculum also known as acc um at oakton so the board in

180the 90s were um i mean pretty literal about their drawings we found some pretty um interesting drawings where they're literally scratching things out like hey if we shift this line this way what it will look like so that was revision 1 and 94.95 we ended up getting something closer to revision 2 in 94.95 for which is actually pretty close to the current boundary lines that we have today this map is specifically speaking towards the middle school population i think it's worthy to note that even though through much of the 60s and 70s we were shifting boundary lines for our k-5 population the middle school map didn't shift that much so again talking about overcrowding and and making sure that our our schools were racially balanced uh a lot of that same consideration really didn't happen

181at the middle school level and i hear a lot in the community and and from our principals you know about like how many kids are coming and how you know how what's the true uh capacity of their schools and it's just worthy to know that you know some of that is uh ramifications of us not really giving the same attention to middle school uh lines as much as we did elementary so here we are today current maps again not very drastically different from that mid-90s map you saw which also wasn't drastically different from the 70s map outside of some schools closing um and we have the infamous willard island which will address in another map so here we are um a lot of talk about the fifth ward a lot of talk about you know

182foster school closing and i just wanted to take a minute um to for you guys to visualize um kind of where we are so i'd also like to mention that there was a correction made in the board pre-read regarding wards and school inequities there was a map uh used that had an error on it um and in that map we stated that all the districts had a school except the fifth ward which is is not accurate so uh all of our schools have a all of our excuse me wars have a school besides first and fifth so first ward is here there's no actual physical school building in first um or they're or obviously in fifth um and so as you can see the colors are the um schools and who they serve so in

183your first war many of those families and students attend dewey a small portion of them attend orrington then you have your fifth ward where families are technically assigned to five different schools the um challenging part for the fifth war famines is that they actually attend every school in our district so we have fifth work families going all the way to oakton and dawes up to willard into walker and skokie i mean they they're literally accounted at every single school in our district and some of that uh is due to you know our special education services you know being only at limited schools some is due to placement of programs like twee and acc um and and some frankly are due to families who just have felt so much adversity in some of the schools that

184they are assigned to that they uh bluntly just refuse to attend um and then we've had to make considerations for for them to feel safe and and um wanted in our district um so again still currently shoot our middle schools um again hasn't shifted that much so why now why are we doing this now so obviously uh one one reason is our policy we are actually supposed to look at these lines uh annually um and make recommend recommendations to the board um you know every year so i am a very policy driven person so it was one of the first things i looked at um uh when i got into this role now the inequities um are jarring they are not new a lot of this information people know already um and to dr horton's

185point uh we are not just going to talk about an inequities and and how to build an equitable education system we're going to do something about it um so we understand that this is a long-term project um but we really have to get around um and rectify this perception of good and bad schools in the district which we hear in my office a lot um we have to address our fifth ward uh students um and and the fact that they attend every school in the district like what does that say about our priorities and how we prioritize them um and you know our we have the two wards that are the wealthiest in our district and have the most resources have the most schools so there's something that that doesn't sit right about that and

186we we need to address that we are also going to be doing a master facility plan and what better time to talk about school uh location options and and assignments than uh coupled with a master's facility plan which um i'm super excited about especially the fact that they're going to analyze capacity and school utilization uh so we can really determine if we have to shift anything what um how that relates to uh what schools can actually handle and then our population which was brought up earlier we are we are decreasing in size in the district um we we totally understand that this number here is an anomaly because of covet but even our projections as early as 1819 and last year were still showing us on a decline over the next five years we also

187have some census data that um is stating that our population in evanston is decreasing and we'll be looking at the new census data that is coming out um and there's even some national data over the next 30 years that's showing that um the the baby making population is also um not doing that as much anymore so we want to be prepared and again fiscally responsible but how we um navigate this process so over the past few months it's really just been about planning um like how do we do this how do we get a team of people that is going to support this work in our community and so here's all the staff at district 65 that i've probably met with way too much and i've probably bothered way too often um but thanking them

188for their support and helping us visualize this in um a strategic and sensible way um and how how do we do this so student assignment uh phase one is really just it was about reviewing our systems which i've been doing since i got here and our policies and procedures related to student assignment and um any information that's currently out there from the community i've met with several community leaders uh particularly people that have tried this before and the group that got it on the ballot um a few years ago so just trying to understand the landscape obviously we need to establish some deadlines and establish our work our internal working team and then the student advisory assignment advisory committee application is being developed and uh we've created a selection metrics for that so we are

189going to be asking uh for our community members to join us in this this is not just an internal district decision this is not just an internal district process uh we are going to be collecting people in our community to help us understand and realize this so phase two uh we'll be doing some goal setting uh we'll be doing our application our sec selections uh there will be more surveys we know we'll try to convince these for you guys but some community and parent and staff surveys on this because we know opinions will be uh large and vast and we want all that information so we can synthesize it we will be um engaging with our superintendent's youth advisory team because i you know i'm coming from the non-profit world and uh you know youth

190voice and choice is really important um and so often we adult and don't ask the kids what they want so it's really important for us to to get their voices heard we will be doing ward specific town halls because we um believe that we really need the the input of our community uh so based on the survey we may have some questions that we need to go further and deeper about and we will then take those uh questions and bring them to the town hall so we have a very clear understanding um and specificity about what uh you know families need and want in in a school and community space and then uh you know probably way too much data analytics for for me to get into um phase three uh hopefully around the fall

191or or even early um winter the master facilities plan uh will help uh inform our recommendations and get some information from them uh we'll be doing a little bit of a different thing with community feedback form so yes we're doing a survey yes we're doing town halls but we'll have a landing page um on our district website that will um be a place that where you can ask continuous questions and continuously uh converse with us um us being a working team so we don't want it to be a kind of one and done like we ask you your opinion and and we never hear back from you we really want this to be a ongoing process and ongoing communication um and and to be fully transparent about what we can and can't do so some

192phenomenal things may come out of these town halls and surveys and we may come back and say like that sounds amazing we can't do that right now or that sounds amazing here's how here's portions of it that we we're gonna you know continue to work towards uh so again just don't want anything to be a surprise by the time we um present board recommendations um so a little bit about our um our call to action and what we're going to be asking for of our our sac committee so i am going to read this um our call to action is that all students should have the right to a local area school high quality education high quality programs and high quality teachers that are proximate to their homes and neighborhoods we must ensure that all

193families have the opportunity to actively participate in their students education without barriers this should be our commitment to all students in district 65. so if that spoke to you in any kind of way i am pleading and begging and asking you to apply for our committee so the student advisor assignment advisory committee application will be going live soon we are looking for 30 people who are passionate about school equity and believe that all students have a right to equitable and follow a quality education experience so 10 of these people will be district 65 educators and administrators we need 10 representatives from the community um across all genres and areas uh you know community youth youth agencies leaders community institutions all the person uh you know i'd love to have the input of families and or

194or staff from family focus and youth serving agencies religious based organizations our local colleges and university um and i really really appreciate some a few representatives from the citizens for a better evanston who got uh the fifth ward school on the ballot uh last go around and then of course our district 65 parents um again as 10 people so as wide of a school variety as possible so this application we plan for it to go live february 15th i know it's right around the time where schools are opening too so we're throwing a lot at you guys uh we will um hopefully send this out in a vast communication way so anyone who is willing and wanting to get on here applied could do that and we hope to do all of our selections before

195spring break and then our work will begin and i am also asking two board members to be a part of this committee and the staff surveys and community surveys are on the horizon [Music] so i'll end with um this beautiful picture of a sankofa bird which as you can see on the title says go back and get it i think there is a remarkable opportunity for us to ride our wrongs and fix the inequities that we've had around education and student assignments in the district uh before we can then go forward and talk about other parts of this this process um so we are really tr this bird uh is a symbolization from ghana that translates to go back and get it it characterizes the need to reflect on our past in order to build

196a successful future this work is going to be significant it's going to be emotional it's going to be challenging but every parent wants the best for their child and we can no longer prioritize some some parents and some families and some students over others uh as as we really push to build an equitable system um we have to modernize this system there are some really cool examples out there that we've been looking at that i've heard about since starting this work and talking internally that i think would really uh lend to our vision um and we have to fix the inequitable structures that we have put in place particularly for our fifth floor residents so i hope this body of work creates choice for parents and truly truly is reflective of our evanston population and

197i will take your questions now thank you serena the great work i want to say that uh there's been there's been quite a bit of work to get to this point so thank you thank you come on suny i'm gonna say can i go ahead and jump in i know you heard something i am so thank you for that presentation i was so thrilled to read this memo i was so thrilled to see the presentation um i think you know i was on the citizens for a better evanston advocacy committee and that's what drove me to want to be a member of the school board was to finally get to the point where we're sitting here and having this conversation so i am just thrilled um so thank you uh and thank you dr horton

198for for leading this and and uh you know making this a priority i know we have gotten some some questions and i know that there were some commenters earlier who are wondering why are we taking this on now when there's already so much change and so much upheaval um my perspective is this is the exact right time when there has been so much upheaval and we know uh you know kovit has you know it's kind of cliche and i know we've heard it in a number of instances but but it's exposed a lot of the inequities and what's wrong and instead of just going back and becoming complacent with how things were because for some people that's comfortable we should take this as an opportunity to um to shape things up and and to correct

199some wrongs um so i think this i don't think there could be better timing to have you having this conversation um one question that i had well a couple of questions that i had um one is on the you said that there's a trend of declining enrollments which i know we have seen for the past couple of years at least i do wonder the the projections that you showed us is that taking account the dip this year because of covid so i guess what i'm saying is i know that in the past we've had some challenges as a district to have accurate projections and we haven't always been been right and it's caused us some problems um how much is covet impacting the existing projections and is there anything we can do to accurately account

200for the the decline due to the pandemic yeah that's a that's a great question and i mean kylie uh trained me well on how to do our projections and how we do them uh currently and you know our our logic it you know there's obviously error rates right um and you need some some margins of error that's going to happen there um i actually looked at 2018 19 five years projections too to see like how close it was um it's pretty close even with this kind of 300-ish kid variant that we have currently this year because of kobe so even if we added 300 more kids on there not only are we if we don't decline that much will at least be stable for the next five years uh so this is not showing any

201indication of growth and i think um our um the census data that's going to come out this year will be really really critical into saying like so here's what like our projections are and then here's evanston census data and then they'll give us five year and twenty and thirty year projections as well so we're really trying to hold tight until we get that april information because that's really going to uh help us determine if we are like at a stable amount of of kids or if we are truly declining over time so luckily for us timing again like census data is coming out so that'll really help us um i did some national senses kind of digging and again like the baby making population isn't really doing much right now uh they're netflix and and

202that's about it right like they're not having a bunch of babies so uh there's some data around that that that the population really just isn't growing right now um and that you know they're they're focused on career they're not like focused on you know marrying right away like you know they're not like me i you know settle down early they're there they're a little different so uh hopefully with census information that's coming out april we'll have a little more accuracy because i know we pulled some information from evanston public library who pulls it from the census so just waiting to get a little a little better accuracy from them on the numbers okay that sounds great and i i assume too will i mean i have no idea what evanston's census uh i know that

203nationally there are concerns about the upcoming census and how accurate it's going to be so i think you know we have to take that into account as well you're thinking through all of these questions the only other question that i i had immediately because i know we are just at the planning stage and there's you know obviously still this is the first in a long conversation um but one thing that i know was considered at least a few years ago was really shaking up even just you know instead of looking at k5 and middle school to even further um you know look at like k through two centers and three through five and six through eight is that still i mean it's kind of everything still on the table or is it really good let

204me take that sorry yeah okay so so you know what suny yes so that is a little bit ahead of the process but absolutely uh we are open to um all of it you know right and as we think about and we reform the committee and advisory group we'll look at different models and samples and you're absolutely right sony that is something you know as a superintendent what i have to prevent myself from doing is jumping out and saying yeah let's just want to make these changes so we want to use this advisor group the right way uh but i'm sure that those uh scenarios definitely will be on the table uh for us no not trying to get ahead of anything just kind of exciting are we really talking about you know kind of

205looking at it from scratch and it sounds like we are so that's great thank you did i see yeah no i'm sorry i just want to thank you and the team your team for you know getting getting together and and creating you know i i again i i'm such a fan of making sure that we're always looking at the history because this work isn't new right i mean the work towards equity it's it's uh you know in spanish we call la lucha the struggle you know the struggles have been gone for for a while right uh and uh and you know your your example of how you you kind of broke you i love the memo how you broke down the history of it is just incredible uh and really really beneficial because we need

206to know right that that that there is a history to this and there's been attempts uh and and here's the latest attempt and i just really want to acknowledge and and thank you for giving us that historical context so we can so then we have a a clear path right uh to moving forward knowing what we have seen in the past so that i think is phenomenal uh you know one of the things i i think about it was mentioned in one of the comments is you know again we know that across the across the country you know we're seeing declining enrollments right and what the impact of that is so um you know one of the that's one of my concerns i think and what i hear a lot is you know what i'm

207seeing and i'm hearing is you know for instance there's folks who are just not either they're homeschooling or they're for the little ones for instance a pre-k kindergarten they're just keeping their kids home they're not you know they're just gonna wait another year or until the the cover blows over so just really making sure that i think it's and this is an ass for the whole team right to making sure that we keep track of those declining enrollments to make sure and then we and i would imagine most of those are are our most marginalized families our black and brown families who are keeping their kids at home right uh especially with their pre-k and little ones right uh another thing too you know you know given that we are seeing the decline in romans

208it makes me think about the broader context and how things that happen outside of the school walls impact our enrollment so you know we know that evanston is a very expensive community to live in um you know again we have families who again immigrant families who have doubled up um and you know part of what i'm hearing around the decline in enrollments is that is our most marginalized families are either moving away to double up with other family members because they can't afford to live here or um you know or again just barely struggling to hold down to stay in this place i know i'm part of a multi-generational family so we have my mother-in-law who lives with us right so you know that that i think as you take into account and as you

209look at um you know you know have his conversations you know really making sure that somebody from the city of evanston is part of the conversation um you know uh and folks from chamber of commerce and the real estate folks i really love how you really point out how even though there's law you know to desegregate schools for brown versus board and the civil rights act that privileged people and what privileged white folks and some of our privileged other folks vote with their feet and they ask what the good schools are and we know what that means right so you know that they don't want to be with working-class folks or live near us so again diversity is good for some folks but only to a certain extent right um so just being uh you

210know i i i thank you for your honesty uh because i think that's what we're dealing with we're dealing with not only decades but centuries of that right colonial mindset of thinking lesser of us and and of people uh who have been marginalized and colonialized and desecrated so you know i i'm excited for this work to happen uh i would be hard you know i will be i'll volunteer myself to be part of that uh sac community just not to say that you sound like you want to be honest i am freaking it's going to be a fight sergio i think we're going to have to come up with the process to figure out i think a lot of papers yeah yeah yeah i got i got tons of stuff going on so again i

211take this as a tentative because my schedule but yeah it won't be much of a fight but we'll see thank you intimidated by arm wrestling biz but that's cool thank you sergey i appreciate the sentiment so oh yes rebecca uh thank you uh for that very informative and needed uh presentation i'm curious if there's any way that we could just post that part of your of tonight's presentation to our website maybe it doesn't have to be the presentation tonight but i think that um for for many people this might that this might be the first time that they're hearing this right and so i think people who have lived here um for as long as you and i have we know a lot of that history right and we keep on repeating it but there's

212new members to our community um also members you know uh immigrant people from in our community that didn't go through school here right so that don't have exposure to that history and why it's so important so um if there's any way that we can post just that you know that section of your of your presentation i think that that would be really beneficial um just as a as a general history um of of our district i think that there's a great value to that um i do also want to point out that this didn't just get added to our docket this was part of our of our yearly planning so this was presented to us we knew that it was going to be on um on the docket since last spring so for anybody who

213feels like we're just adding this on believe me we are not we are not you know uh we're not trying to torture ourselves with that it's it's a lot of work right so we didn't just say you know let's add this on top of our already um high workload so just you know to let the community know that this has been um part of our work since um since last spring and also invite um not just you know to this uh committee but also it will be um we've been working on the policy uh for this and that's gonna be discussed at april uh 12th policy meeting i believe so i encourage the the community to join us on that we don't have as many policy meetings again because it's been a really busy year

214for our school district but i do want to encourage members of the community to attend that meeting that memo has been out in part of a previous packet and it will be included in in the packet for um for april but just um again i think it's uh it's it's a conversation that's been needing needed to happen in our community for a long time and so for those who might feel impatient that um at the timing just know that it's it's something that has to be that has to be done and so this is this is the time so it's not i didn't really have a question just wanted to say um thank you for the presentation great job and invite uh the community to not only um those who are interested in participating in

215this um in this committee but also to keep um to know that it was already on the docket to discuss so thank you thank you thanks rebecca joey yeah i just wanted to say thank you um we told that story very well and it was i i liked rebecca's idea of cropping it and making it available for other people to listen to it was very engaging it was clear it had visuals i went to timberridge school for kindergarten hallways were still small and narrow but i think in the history that you told you also normalized this uh for us and for the community this is something that has to be done every couple decades um you have to recalibrate around your community around who lives there and who goes to your schools and this is

216something that has happened every couple decades for a long time here in district 65 and we need to do that and it can be tied into it can be tied into our budget process our finance our long-term fiscal health it can be tied into making all of our schools better places we talk about the permissive transfer process all of our schools should be great schools for all of our kids to go to and everyone should be proud to be able to go to any one of them and you shouldn't hear those murmurs in in in buildings or offices anywhere so thank you for setting the stage for the work i guess my only real question is and it may not be able to be answered tonight um is what's the budget for this project because

217this a long-term project like this does take people are going to knock consultants but you know we don't have civil engineers on staff it does take um consulting work to bring people in to assess the value of properties and kind of do the due diligence to to do this long term um and is there a time at which a budget for this will be set for for that time frame that the project will be set yes uh we will be we will be able to do that uh i would say safely as early as next month um well actually it'll probably be in april because we would have to put out a bid for um for the services to do the um facility study and the master planning so um by the time we get

218that we'll know we'll have a better idea of what what it'll cost us to run the demographic studies and all those things so all right i would i would be very much interested in when it goes time to choose partners to work with to help doing the the massive facility studies to having possible suitors come and present their vision for that work to the board in open session so that the community can hear from uh the vendors and we can have a chance to to hear how they would approach this work and try to match the right vendor with the community as well absolutely you can do that biz um i want to echo my gratitude um for the way you cohesively put this together i think that it's really important for our community to

219to see the demonstration of our commitment that this will not happen accidentally this will not happen without intentionality and strategic planning and assessment of all sorts of components um i think there's a tendency sometimes for people to see board work or district work as like these disparate things that are unrelated like oh now we're talking about math and then now we're going to talk about um you know this other thing and that they don't have anything to do with each other whereas with our conversations about finances or conversations about equity or conversations about curriculum these are all interdependent pieces and when we are talking about you know kids having equitable experiences we can't close our eyes to one aspect of what's happening for them we have to be present and engaged and and collectively problem

220solve all of these pieces um and have kind of equity at the center of all of our decision making and i think that you know for folks who aren't you know who's whose job isn't to be in these conversations all the time it can feel random it can feel like but wait um but i want to echo you know suny's perspective of i think we have many people knew lots of things were not working before this pandemic but we have an opportunity that more people are seeing what's not working and i just i i can't imagine us deciding that we should go back to a way that was failing kids when we have an opportunity to reimagine a path forward so i'm really excited because i think this is a critical piece to every kid

221having what they need at a neighborhood school and having program alignment um and us really really repairing a lot of harm that's been done in our in our community so i also don't have any questions right now but i'm very excited um and and grateful for you giving us this framework to work from great thank you and we do we definitely plan to you know update you guys often so i might not come on your screen but there will be board updates as we're going through this work uh pretty often to keep you guys oppressed thank you serena i i would like to say not only thank you but i am so proud of [Music] the insight the the energy the wisdom that is being invested into this and i really appreciate how that showed

222up in the presentation that you made um you know we've we talked a little bit tonight when we were going over the thought exchange this guy this idea of you know are we um talking about equity and anti-racism or are we doing equity and anti-racism and um this moment um reviewing the early childhood report that we reviewed previously these are moments that make my my heart leak um because as a black woman who once feared bringing my children to district um i know the impact of the work that we are doing for for every single child in this district they are going to be a force of nature because of the work that we are doing to allow them an educational experience that is loving and uplifting of everyone's humanity because of the accurate history

223and and curriculum that they're going to have access to um because of the faith and the investment that they are going to receive from us and and one day they will we will come to a board meeting and we will see their faces and we will hear their stories and they will be able to um tell stories that are not rooted in harm but in hope and that that is what i i see in us having this discussion tonight and when i hear folks who are surprised by this discussion i i want to remind our community that we are not as has been alluded to we are not haphazardly throwing things around we are pursuing diligently consistently without being deterred a vision we are pursuing a vision and equity is the umbrella for that vision

224and reducing harm and investing in folks who have historically not been invested in or historically have been underestimated is what we are seeking to repair and that is woven through everything that we are doing um and i i i hope that is apparent in the discussion that we had what we were talking about with our structural deficit when we talked about in our finance committee is not terribly different than what we are talking about at our working board meeting because the umbrella is the same the strategy is the same um and this is what our community deserves this is what our children deserve i feel like um you know these are challenges we are confronting challenges that folks have said can't can't be confronted it cannot be done and i think what we see in

225this proposal is the and even in our conversation about the structural deficit we what we see is that in community the impossible can be tackled in community the impossible can be done and when we invest in hopes for our big big dreams for ourselves and our community we can bring the the right minds the right hearts to the table and do incredible things um and you know four years ago when study and i said that we wanted to lead with transparency and inclusivity um i think at the time maybe they'll seem like lofty hopes but this in practice is is what that looks like we're talking about making a big and difficult decision in community with our community and we're talking about dealing with those big feelings on the front end of the decision making

226not surprising folks with a ready-made decision and and folks having grief and confusion and concern about that um this is not being done in the shadows this is being done in the light it's being done in the light and we're proposing that we put it in the light and that we link arms and we bring our best to the table to figure this out on behalf of each other and our collective good our collective children these are our schools are a common good and i feel like this proposal reflects that commitment and um i'm excited and energized by it and i'm i'm proud and appreciative um of of our administration sarita of of our our board as well i'm i'm proud and appreciative of our collective lift and come in and investing in this well

227i thank you guys much gratitude i mean as a i'm like super super humble and honored i grew up in the fifth floor so to even be in this position is like super nostalgic for me um i mean i shipped the system a little bit i went to dewey but i came back and went to haven so uh i i really really uh appreciate you guys for um trusting me with with this work um and i will um do i do my best to to get to that vision and and the mission at hand so thank you all thank you so we look forward to the updates in terms of the the costs and the opportunity to speak with um and hear from some of the the bidders um for investing in this and um

228look forward to the ongoing updates and i encourage our community to check out the application and get involved um the more interdisciplinary team that we have the the better um [Music] thank you so much was there any did anyone have anything else that wanted to contribute to the student assignment discussion before we move on uh i just wanted to add one thing so i know that you said 30 people and given our community i think you might find it challenging to limit it to 30 people and i just thought about um because we are you know i'm sure that you have some sort of rubric in mind to you know how you select and just ensuring that um we have a a good representation of all of our awards and all of our attendance areas

229so i just wanted to add that in um in in making sure that whoever you know you probably will have a challenge cutting it down to 30 people so just wanted to make sure that there is some intentionality behind you know who we have from from how many words and you know making phone calls if we need to um so that you know you know folks who don't answer surveys or emails i just you know think of um making sure that we have the right people on board for that and um just wanted to add that yeah absolutely we um our our consultant firm is actually going to help us do that so we can uh i just know too many people i've been here my whole life fourth generation so i want to be

230uh blind to some of the um identifying markers but the war specifically is going to be one that we see so we can make sure to your point that we have that representation uh but we're going to take all identifying things off so we really are just looking at the members and their answers and based on our rubric and making sure we have that representation for sure sweet i'm assuming we will also have a representative from skokie right because they wouldn't be in that ward classification just to make sure that thank you that's what we have it's like all the words and scoping yeah and will those applications be available in uh spanish as well and yep absolutely all right great thank you so much next on our agenda is our middle school math all

231update thank you anya um and good evening to everybody this evening david wartowski our director of stem is going to bring an update on math acceleration and our work to essentially reimagine math acceleration to briefly provide the background on this update please recall that in the spring of 2020 we suspended a math acceleration process that was in place in district 65. this suspension was a result of the fact that we did not have the test scores that we needed to potentially place students in accelerated courses we also agreed to support and monitor this shift this update is focused on that work before we dig in with david i also want to remind you that this accelerated placement assessment process the well-intentioned and creating potential opportunity for some has been harmful social emotionally and academically and

232this harm has been felt by students who are and are not accelerated additionally the process has perpetuated racial placement patterns within our math classes i applaud the teachers and the stem team who worked incredibly hard and with incredible passion to create a better way to bring accelerated learning and challenge for our students within our classrooms accessible to all students david all right well thank you so much uh stacy and um sarita the presentation of the worker team there's a tough act to follow but i i have to say i've been looking forward to being able to update um the board on on on the work that's been going on for quite some time and to really celebrate a lot of hard-working collaboration that's been going on for for for quite some time um going into

233the results we've seen the impact and talking about the path ahead so you know uh what i'll be talking about here is is like so what's different what what happens a reminder of what's different this year as opposed to prior years and then just sit in there like so how's that gone you know we had certain intentions but what was the impact and what key learning do we think we have from that and then a look at the road ahead uh what what is as we've reflected on the past year what does that mean going forward so pausing to say so what's different um quick background uh just update i think we're aware of this but right back in may so um not quite a year ago we had communicated that we were suspending the

234alternate math placements for this fall and we committed that we'd be monitoring the math learning very closely and we'd be providing recommendations for next steps for math acceleration in the early spring and here we are coming back to that conversation um so what was different this year is that we had placement within the grade that was um one big difference so students went on to the next level students in sixth grade they took math six students in seventh grade took math seven students in eighth grade they took algebra there was one exception to that right so students who were already in alternate placing any seventh graders who had taken uh math six seven last year would take algebra this year right any eighth graders who took algebra last year would take geometry this year that

235was one thing that was different this year the second thing i was doing this year was the curriculum itself so we had a lecture of math being used in all grade levels in two of those grade levels we had desmos being used which was built off of illustrative math we're really excited to have desmos included this year um it will become what we have six through eighth grade but it was only available this year seventh and eighth grade but we um there was fifteen hundred about 1500 districts that applied to use this new core curriculum built off of the highly rated election of math and it turned out that we were one of 40 districts that had at the time been accepted to to use the curriculum uh creating a great partnership with them and

236and and using that core curriculum but the second thing we did it wasn't just that we also um brought in uh tiered tasks an individual choice for our students we had a massive amount of work from teachers past summer uh creating a large library of these tier tasks that were aligned to learning expectations the intention was that it allowed students then to have further challenge even beyond the core curriculum so while there's differentiation within that core curriculum from relationship math there's also the opportunity for individualized choice whether i want to go on to a really really challenging task or perhaps i need to address some unfinished learning or maybe i just want to practice where i'm at so that was a big piece that we put in place this year and then finally also intensified

237professional development we knew that what we were doing requires an investment uh in in in our educators and so we had summer opportunities available and many opportunities throughout the year that were really amped up from before a pause just to sort of remember about the former system so while we had um known that without the as as dr pierson mentioned without the data in place last year uh we ended up halting the alternate placement but um even before the pandemic there were things about the former system that certainly gave us um some pause right and some concern um so one was there was racialized access to rigor and as you can see highlighted in the graph below there were huge differences into who ended up being placed into our alternate classes the mass 67 or

238skipping math 7. rough numbers if you were a white student evanston about 1 in 3 would end up into that space where they ended up taking geometry in eighth grade but the numbers for black students for latinx students depending on the year was closer to something like one in 50. we also had concern about having what turned out to be five years of standards taught in three years of middle school um that is a lot of learning for a three-year period and considering also that we did it in in middle school um it you know turned out that's the only time in the whole k-12 experience that we as an evidence community were having more than a year's worth of standard uh stands at any time and here was five years of standards in just

239three years for those students who were taking job between eighth grade another one was that fifth grade scores were impacting high school trajectory and high school access so by that system we would notice that uh for example um something like 88 percent of students who were who who who scored on these tests in such a way that they were in place in other classes would be end up taking two aps or more in high school or math aps um but that number for students who didn't uh hit that that cut off um that number was closer to zero there were very few students who would end up taking two math aps um who didn't access those classes so you had pretty high stake testing going on um as early as fifth grade um there was

240also costs right there's the financial cost that was around busing the altered class size where in some cases we might have to run a class with seven kids in it um and then the testing procedures themselves all of those had a financial cost it's also a personnel cost well it's difficult to attach uh money to that if we think about all the work that goes into the busing the ultra class size the scheduling the testing procedures it was massive um and if you account all of the the work done to to have conversations at the building level and district level and within classrooms and all of that you know we we figured out that about a quarter of a million dollars just in personnel time was was was at hand um again tough to measure

241but that that's it's it's it was it was a big cost also just a social emotional impact of students and dr beardsley alluded this early and when she kicked off this presentation but we saw those anecdotally and consistently whether or not a student was put was in this alternate placement there was the effects of students who just barely made that cut off and i can tell you stories about tears i saw but i can also tell you about stories of cheers i saw from students who had made the off and they were they had concerns too whether it happened in middle school or in high school where a number of them would would drop off or from that track or they would um they would they would doubt themselves um as being a strong student

242even if they had they were then these were students with the 95th percentile scores who were starting to think whether they really were good at math after all so there was a toll uh to be taken social emotionally on all of our students um as a result of the system that we had on the right as an example by the way of some of the unintended consequences you can think about social emotional impacts um this is a test you know we graded these um centrally and you know we passed this out to something like 1700 students every year and a student simply said i'm dumb i don't know i guess because i don't know so what were we telling the student about her abilities or his abilities as a math student this someone who's likely

243very good at math but this test was telling them huh i don't know um so the pathway that we had this past year um looks like this students in math in sixth grade took math six students seventh grade seven students in eighth grade taking algebra and in that space as i mentioned before there's extension opportunities so the acceleration is happening in a couple of ways so first of all our system our pathway is innately accelerated because there's four years of standards going on in the three years of middle school that we have so that already puts us in a space where we're a year accelerated um beyond the the uh college and career expectations outlined by the common core in addition to that however uh we accelerate the learning not just in that core curriculum

244i mentioned before but also those extension opportunities that i mentioned uh those to your tasks that allow student self-choice um it's a few things are important to to um to note here one is that um the the pathways in high school remain intact so there's no uh it was very important to us that we did not limit or take away the access um to any number of to access to the levels of math in in high school so that remains um and also for students who want to make a decision for for high school pathways they can make that at the end of eighth grade or during the latter end of eighth grade year which is a time when students are more mature and also rather than having a high stakes testing going on to

245determine pathways early on now we've got a richer portfolio of work that can help a student to understand where they should be placed and help those who are coaching and advising the student to have a rich amount of information as to what pathway that they that they can follow um for students who would want to go on to take mb calculus um is as a senior uh they would have to get credit for for geometry and there's a number of ways to do that a couple examples of that would be a summer course in geometry um another example might be doing independent study it's important to the high school that you have the the um the knowledge of geometry but it's not important that that you sit in the class uh this particular class right

246so if the student can demonstrate their learning how however they got it uh that that's sufficient then to be able to move on so those are a couple examples of how that could be done and traditionally just put in context um about uh four percent of students in evanston uh end up taking multi-variable calculus during their high school years um so intentions um let's start with that what did we expect so going into this school year we had a lot of discussions within the department um and they really started with what we value so you can see a number of things that came up there collaboration and student choice and that appropriate challenge self-awareness a whole variety of things and as we as we sat with these things that we collectively value okay well how

247will we see this um and it came down to looking thinking about really three lenses we thought about well we need this active engagement we need to see active engagement uh academic growth and attainment uh what do students know and understand and then thirdly culture mindset um what do students feel um in all the while isolating race one thing we had a lot of conversation about is if we if we no longer have a system that has racial predictability um does we don't want to have a system replicate itself in a new way within the classroom so that was something that we were looking for so in order to look at these lenses we utilized student survey map data we brought in compression planning and and teacher input were all part of part of what

248we leveraged and as we're doing that we were considering are our students feeling challenged um do students have a sense of that they're engaged they have a sense of identity as a mathematician we look to to hear from our teachers what did they think about their experience what was the lived experience of these changes um and and then also high school preparedness um what were we seeing in terms of students throughout all this being prepared for high school um and again reduced racialized outcomes uh something that we saw across many measures um and and then uh we were looking for the equitable practices so impact those were our intentions what did we see um so we collected quite a bit of data and in this presentation i'm highlighting a few uh so you can have

249an an idea of the types of things that that are i think are of note um so starting with challenge a question that we asked is um to ask students to to rate uh on certain um you know their levels of agreeing or disagreeing uh away from strongly disagree up to strongly agree on several statements one of them was i have opportunities in my math class to engage in challenging work well about of our middle school math students said yes that they do they either agreed or strongly agreed with that and we saw about five percent um disagreed with that so this is good news right there's a strong uh you know preponderance i'd say like we see far more students agreeing or just or strongly agreeing with that than disagreeing we also want to

250look at it in different layers so one of them is by quartiles and i think you know what we can see here is a trend that in the second third and fourth quartiles not a lot of difference um so i think a good news there is that you know students in that upper quartile uh are as likely as students in second and third to to agree with that statement um in in this past year uh i think what came up worth noting is the first quartile was the the the least likely to agree with that statement um which i think is just something for us to sit with and and consider um another thing too is so now i'm looking at the right side of the screen um we we'd like that that red sliver

251to be as close to zero as possible we really don't want any students who are feeling that they're not engaged in challenging work um well so we also look within that sliver to say but how many of these students are in fact when they are not feeling challenged are they choosing the challenging tasks when they have that choice um and about a quarter of them were but they went on opportunities is that three quarters of those students are not we're not yet choosing or they were we asked them are you choosing the most challenging tasks and they said no no i'm not so that was a space i think where we could see some hopefully um more media improvement and reducing the that red sliver there yeah there we go oops apologies my computer is

252so then um okay there we go so then the next question we asked was um we wanted to so this is good news in terms of the amount of challenge but one thing we had to sit with is but how does this compare to last year was to say that last year students were they were also feeling super challenged so ideally we would have asked that exact same question a year ago but we didn't we didn't have that historical data so the best we could do is what you see on this slide we had a statement that said i have more opportunities in my math class to engage in challenging work this year than i did last year and so um what we're seeing there is that um again uh showing that you know over

253half so uh i think about 53-ish percent in general we're saying yeah in fact it was 53 in general or agreeing or strongly agree with that whereas the the number of percent of students who disagreed with it was about 15 in general again looking across race this time did we see any variants um perhaps um but with the end sizes we have like i certainly would would not conclude that there is racial predictability here so that's good news that so far as we can tell it seems that race is not necessarily playing a role um in students perception of of challenge at least as compared to last year one thing important to note is that this particular set of data what we did is we looked at those respondents who um felt okay about remote

254learning right so there was another question that said whether do you agree or strongly disagree you know where do you fit on the statement that remote learning has had a negative impact on your math class and so we wanted to isolate away the effects of remote learning itself and about a third of our students said no they disagreed like no remote learning has not had negative impact in my math class so this is the results that we saw there are students feeling uh prepared for high school so that's another question we asked i feel like i'll be prepared for high school and here we're seeing that there's again some some differences across the quartile so i think not so surprisingly we see that from the second third to the fourth quartile the higher the quartile

255the more um that students are in fact feeling that they're prepared for high school but i think also worth noting is what we're seeing in the lowest quartile that um since the students in the first quartile are about as is are perceiving at about the same levels as a third quartile that they are prepared for high school so it's something for us i think to uh to consider and learn more about but i think good news that overall um you know we it's students are generally feeling that in fact yes i'm prepared for high school um so then to look at the preparedness for high school we turned to our map data to see that um what we're finding there and one look we took was at attainment so we asked what percent of students

256are at or above the 50th percentile uh looking at uh we use the winter scores and the story here is that despite a pandemic by and large we're seeing numbers that are pretty much what we've seen in prior years there's a slight drop if you look if you isolate if you look for any differences for prior years it's only within white students that we see a bit of a drop from prior years which could be a cohort effect like we don't know but by and large pretty much the same as as last year we then looked at growth however and i think here's where we have when i talk about celebrating i think this is something really to sit with um to see a slide here where there's really no predictability by race i think

257is just amazing and a huge testament to the work that has happened for quite some time this is not data that i think we're used to seeing i certainly think myself i'm not used to seeing we have you have to see this in our other grade levels and we didn't see it in the past two years in middle school math but we did see it this year so um and meanwhile if you look in in and like compared to prior years um i think we're still staying strong so we've got strong growth and a lack of racial predictability when it comes to growth academic growth we ask students directly about the curriculum so as you're probably saying before there's really two aspects of curriculum that we brought in that were new this year so one

258was desmos in seventh and eighth grade and the other one was these individualized tasks so we asked students what are one or two words that you would use describe desmos and you can see what jumped out when we had that very open-ended question fun good helpful challenging um i think you know they're high school students excuse me they're middle school students so the word boring certainly made the list too but i was really thrilled to see that that that word is smaller on the wordle than fun good and helpful and even lower smaller than challenging because those words were coming up more often when it came to um asking them about the choice tasks which were that opportunity to for student to pursue as much challenge as they would like we were happy to see

259that about 90 about about 93 percent of our students were in fact making those choices that had become a part of our curriculum so only about seven percent were like wait i don't really know what that is um about half of our students end up taking that regular level they're allowed to practice it further but you do have about fourteen percent that are taking on that challenge that super challenge task so we've got about a quarter of our students who say oh wait a minute i got to step back and maybe i need the the the the extra practice is a little more scaffolded or helps with some of my unfinished learning i think in all cases uh able to accelerate for learning for for all of our students um i apologize there we go

260um so they also mentioned you know we want to turn to our teachers and so so what do you what's your perception what do you think of this and we we said that the stem department is ready to propose a system that intends to advance equity and strong math instruction by eliminating math six seven in limiting the system of testing for purpose of alternate math placement and instead focus on providing challenge differentiation and the option for acceleration for all students through a single pathway focusing on acceleration to construction we asked do you support this proposal and what we saw what we found is that the vast majority of our department said yes um about two-thirds just said yes another quarter said yes with some reservations um and then we had some undecided and just a

261little bit of no um so in terms of reservations the themes there were along the lines you see on the bottom of the slide so we'll you know what are the considerations for students who are several grade levels below in math skills or have severe cognitive delays so it was not a concern about a student who should be skipping necessarily but more concern about the acceleration of the some students perhaps like in the first quartile i was mentioning before um we also said well we need to allow for some specific instances for a very small number of students um and then there was also some notions of well but um what supports are we doing for math differentiation k5 like we want the middle school teachers were acknowledging that we need to think about that

262space as well and then um there's also just a worry expressed for some of the students as some of the teachers that said yes with the reservations they said well you know just worry about making a choice during a pandemic so they're sort of sitting with that um from our teacher leaders uh they wrote a statement very close to this um back in the summer and then we revised it more recently so i'm just going to read this and as i read it i want you to picture not my voice but the collective voice of teachers who have been a an integral part of this work i said in the last few years about one in three white students would place into classes that led to eighth grade geometry while the number of black and

263latinx students following this path has been closer to one in 50 depending on the year the districts moved to detract this school year has interrupted our racist practices as a system we support this change and are eager to carry out empowering and equitable practices in our classroom part of this work is that of differentiation while honoring teacher individuality creativity and flexibility we see differentiation as holding racial equity at its core providing an authentic culturally responsive and rigorous environment that is conducive to the success of all learners i think it's really important that the board understands the commitment of our educators this is just showing you in a very mathy way give you a venn diagram here about 80 percent of our department played a role last summer and getting ready for what they knew would

264be just a massive year we had 20 teachers that were in learning workshops around self-direct we're in workshops around self-directed learning it some described it as that college course that it just killed you but you loved it they they learned tons and invested a lot of time and energy into that about 23 were involved in um summer projects across the board a lot of it were were around the building of those tasks that i mentioned uh that created the the tier tasks with student choice and ten teachers did both um so really a massive massive commitment from our department um we also uh we we used the racial equity impact assessment um early in this work and often we came back to it again more recently saying okay and as we sit now in this

265process where are we um and uh we did this with the with the with the math chairs and the proposal received a passing score from that group um it also um i think a a powerful part of using the the racial equity impact assessment is not just whether we get a passing score or not but it also helps on earth be so what now um we didn't get a perfect score so like okay so what would make it better and um some of the implications we we discussed were so you know we think that we recognize there has been student involvement how can we have even more we've had parent involvement how can we have even more and also that we want to keep a really close eye on what happens as we transition to

266brick and mortar versus the experience we've had this year some of that involvement of students and parents looked like this we i mentioned the compression planning we had a student group uh where we had six students involved uh we simply posed a question what do you need to help you learn in math class and it was awesome to listen to them uh they basically described culture responsive pedagogy without ever having opened a book or heard that terminology before but they you know they talked about lively classrooms where students were exchanging ideas i'm just so proud uh that that is in fact you know what we're doing more and more and more of in our classrooms we've worked on that for years and desmos is allowing us to take it to yet another level um along

267with just the massive work of our teachers um and then we also held a um a group of uh 12 adults that were largely made up of parents and we had some admin from eths and a few from district office and we sat with two questions so one is what do we need what do we need in an inclusive rigorous classroom to make sure math acceleration via instruction is successful for all learners um and you know whether they're working above gradebook level at grade level or working towards grade level we also ask how does d65 make it hard for students of color um to do well in middle school math and so from all of this work we ended up having 19 top ideas generated um and that led to identifying 14 definitive actions around

268improvement improving our system um which just helped us i think to continue to build recognizing the work of social justice is isn't a destination it is a process and continuing to grow and build and grow and build some key takeaways as we reflect um on this data that i presented to you as well as some other data that we did through our analysis so start with um just three points of i think just good news um the fact that there is no racial predictability in terms of students making expected gains when we look at middle school math that other metrics as well also show little to no racial predictability so for example student's sense of challenge or their sense of identity as a mathematician and also the students who are feeling have been feeling challenged

269they feel prepared for high school and generally feel that this year is a better experience than last year for math when we isolate for the effects of remote learning some things to just pause i think for us to think about so when students we saw that in the data that when students are aware of what the learning expectations are and where they are in their own learning they also have a strong math identity they're more excited and more proud i think that relationship between those two are are worth noting also that math student math identity and student choice um seem to have a relationship with feeling prepared for high school um so even more reason to think about the the importance of learning expectations and students seeing where they are in their own learning we

270also sat as you mentioned you mentioned before is there a relationship between race and student choice in those level tasks well the answer is potentially we really don't know we would have to do more work to analyze that we did not get a solid answer on that one way or another as we did the analysis just so far um opportunity well a fourth of our students do not have an awareness of where they are in their learning um of what they are learning or where they are in their learning um so the third fourth glass full is that that many people like 75 of them do so that's great but we want to get that as close to 100 percent as possible on knowing the importance of that and the relevance to their building their

271math identity um so um some students feel unchallenged um we talked before there's the sliver's relatively small but it's there and we want to get to get that closer to zero so some in some cases not yet choosing challenging tasks but yet in some cases they are so we got two percent of all students that are not feeling challenged despite choosing those challenging tasks so that's something for us to wrestle with and then finally the perception of having opportunities for challenge decreases among students with a relatively high map scores were relatively low um and we saw more more of it on those low map schools the lowest percentile so that's something for us to dig into more finally next steps um three big ones so i'll start with the first one that is the biggest

272is that we're acceleration of learning so math acceleration is really important for us and that here we are envisioning it and enacting it through curriculum and instruction so what does that mean it means that our next steps are we can use desmos as a core curriculum in all of our grades now it's the as it becomes available in sixth grade in the fall we wish to have desmos as our core curriculum in sixth seventh and eighth grade making it our full middle school math curriculum we also wish to continue development of the learning expectations uh to which we have assessment activities and choice tasks are aligned so that's work that is well underway from last summer as i mentioned but we know we can grow that even more um this means that we would discontinue

273the the the district-wide math placement testing process and instead be using utilizing a formal process of assessment that's in line with the illinois acceleration act which means that math 67 then would not be a necessity instead we would have a robust and already accelerated curriculum for all of our students um also looking ahead um we know we need to continue to monitor we need to as as we grow and build we need to pay a close eye as i said before you know starting with our values and holding those lenses um and and seeing like do our does the impact match our intentions um professional development um [Music] has to grow as well as we as we recognize where we're strong where we need work and making adjustments along the way and finally just staying

274in communication you know we had uh we had two information sessions last year uh we're scheduling another one coming up um soon in march and continue to have engagement with stakeholders especially students and parents as we seek to learn more about what we continue to do better i'm good for questions it's late everyone let's let's come on that's what you really think dr harden [Music] um thank you for this presentation and um as one of the board members who was part of the compression planning i really appreciated that opportunity to be involved in that process and i think there was a lot of consensus about what we're hoping for in a new acceleration model and and that is um equitable um so thank you i think this is um tremendous work um i i thought

275i saw in an earlier um set of uh slides perhaps about the the distinction between depth and speed right of learning um that you know we shouldn't mistake like compressing all of this math the speed at which students are going through the curriculum as you know the kind of deep math education that we want so if you could talk a little bit more about that and what the desmos pilot showed us about depth and speed yeah no i i thank you um sula for for bringing that up i think um oftentimes i think that when we um and this when i say weak this is i think a broad thing that goes way beyond evanston nationally there's a sense like oh i want more challenge and so it's like oh i'll just i do the

276next thing so i'm doing this topic go to the next one yet um you know the the leaders and and mathematics education would argue that the depth is within the grade level standards themselves there's so much richness and um that's that is that is critical in what we're doing is to not just speed along um that is that is not the richest and beauty of mathematics by any stretch there's so much to uncover within every grade and you know desmos um you know you asked about that a way that desmos for example does that is that when a problem is presented students are immediately brought in so what do you what do you think i saw um you know a lesson today where i would watch a video as a student right this the the

277tortoise and the hair and i'm watching the video and i have to describe what's happening but i'm also seeing it on a graph and trying to relate the graph to the picture and my voice matters i heard that mentioned earlier like how are we lifting up um i think any was talking about student voice and how lifting that up and that's a that's a big part of equity work every single student's voice there comes into play and i have to build on other people's voices and so a teacher might say so you know so and so offered this idea if you want to stop and revise your own thinking based on what she shared you stop and do that and you can literally on a screen begin to see students words change and you can

278see maybe what they drew change and so there's an interaction between the students that really empowers them um to make for their own own sense making right this is not about students regurgitating what the teacher has to say it's about them seeing themselves in the work and doing it collectively um and so i think that those are really powerful practices that allow students to come alive in ways um that that that are really enriching and humanizing and challenging academically and it sounds like um it's also less about getting the right answer first right and more about thinking rethinking and revising which is a lot of the ways that we approach language arts right you think you revise reevaluate and reflect but that we haven't really seen in math instruction as much and that we really

279do need in math instruction so um i'll be curious to see the data as we go as we roll it out full um and i hope we see that the this early promising data holds so thank you thank you yeah thank you yes i just wanted to again thank you david and the whole team for for again giving us this presentation and again just um you know what i'm seeing the common thread here is just the work around equity right so so going back to my colleagues were saying how again we've been getting comments like why are you thinking about this no math and then thinking about you know uh student assignments again this is the the common thread here is equity right and what we're seeing here is just this um you know this

280this this movement right it's moving to the needle for communities that have been disinvested in for so long right so and and just to make it clear i i want i would love for my children to have access to multivariate calculus if it's if they're choosing right all of us would want that uh you know a lot of us don't know that that's an option uh so that's one piece right so for the folks who have the privilege of that knowledge and have kept it for themselves for so long uh wow you know this this is eye-opening you know i when i first got i signed up my kids to the district that you know we didn't realize that uh alger was was offered in the middle school right i i often talked to my

281wife about this and you know again when i was growing up again we you we didn't take algebra until you were a freshman in high school so just to kind of just to let you know that it's and this as as history like always going back to history is that again you know you know again children now are learning so much more are expected to learn so much more than they were in the past and i thought i'd seen some studies a couple of years back around what you know concept children are being taught uh and a comparison of what what's being taught nowadays what children have to learn versus what was learned back you know in our times when we were younger and again we're expecting children to learn so much more because we

282realize that they have the capacity to right so and then going back to that comment around you know the depth of it right and and and and also being able to work through a problem and not be in the make not making an eraser who gets it first but really you know how do we facilitate collaboration between children to solve you know math problems or or any type of any piece of the curriculum because at the end of the day right i think the value of education is that you know we we find ways to create curriculum that engages children individually and challenges individually but when they can't do it by themselves guess what we need to work together as a team to solve this problem so you know my hope is that dozens is

283like that and i think from what i'm hearing is that's how it is uh another thing i really want to you know build on too is that you know and this should be across all curriculum is that thinking you know letting children know and how do we get children to be aware right and then parents also to be aware where the children are at academically and what's the task at hand right and how how wonderful right and i just read a study in the paper the other day about the folks doing exercise right and they have folks who um and this is adults and and they had a one group control group that was told you know you could do this and it was positive motivation you're great you're going to do this and there

284was another group that was told uh uh you could do this but this is going to be hard but here's how you got to do it and guess which just because which group got farther is the folks that we're told that this is gold it's going to be hard it's not going to be easy but here's what you can do so again all we're asking here in the equity work is that we want the very same things that our most privileged parents you know want for their kids right we want the challenge we want the curriculum we want access to uh you know high quality challenges for all our children right we want the supports uh and trust us we will get there if we if you give us the resources and supports right and

285i think you know that that that is not not not a bad thing to ask for right uh and it's uh it's it's sad that a lot of folks have kept it to themselves and it's interesting to hear folks now say well you know this is uh you know now we're gonna miss out on on some black children and some latinx children who could take advantage of you know these spirit options where were they before you know and so so you know not now not now now now it's brought up that that we know that we need to do that for them and i just think again i think we can have high high expectations for all children and we can normalize success for all children if we commit ourselves as a community to do

286that i think this is the work that we're doing here so thank you for all the work that you are doing and and your team and this is thank you thank you sergeant yeah sunny hey um i recognize the late hour so i will try to keep this brief but um just a couple of things i wanted to thank you for the presentation and i really wanted to highlight a couple of things one that your statement that you know our existing math pathway for all students is already an accelerated pathway i think that's really important and i don't know that our parents and our community members fully understand that algebra in eighth grade is already an accelerated pathway so we're already giving that to all students so what we're talking about is this kind of

287double accelerated pathway that we have some evidence that it isn't really serving students well as they get to high school and so one of my comments would be if there's any way to get some additional data from the high school about that because i know we've gotten some some data and some anecdotal stories about kids dropping out of um higher math in in high school that have been accelerated in middle school i think that's all important evidence for people to understand like why this kind of double acceleration is not actually serving students well um and i think the other thing that is worth highlighting is again the the incredible educator involvement in this whole process it reminds me of several years ago when we did move to algebra for all and we had a team

288of middle school educators math teachers at a policy committee meeting at 10 p.m you know kind of a meeting like this tonight on the last day of school because they were that committed to this change and i think the educator involvement here and what you've shown us is you know we are a community that we value our teachers and and we want to hear from our teachers and and this is our teachers telling us this is the right thing to do and so for us as a board to ignore that would be irresponsible um so i think that we have to acknowledge and thank our our middle school math teachers in the math department um for for really taking the lead on on this equity initiative and then finally because i feel like i always

289need to bring this up whenever we talk about middle school math acceleration which in my years on the board has been i think every single year um it's great to talk about middle school math but we every time we do this we are really missing out on an opportunity to be talking about earlier math skills and that's really what the issue needs to be we need to and i recognize i want to honor the educators who also um you know made that point that we're missing the boat if all we're focusing on is is middle school map we've got to talk about how we strengthen instruction and i know from the the um report that we got uh on our pre-k programs that there's that we're definitely making some movement in our pre-k programs and

290that's great and i think that i'm hoping now we can take some of the energy and resources that we've been spending on the middle school acceleration piece and put it where it really can make a difference in the pre-k through the 33 space so thank you thank you thank you sorry let me share it soon just one one first of all thank you for highlighting the teachers so much um that's they they are the reason um they're brilliant group um i do want to share one bit of data that i probably shared before so um what we do know from the high school and we can search to get more data i've heard that question i i will do what we can get more data but i'll share this that um of all the students

291that would historically were taking geometry in eighth grade what we found is that only a quarter of them about 25 percent of them would take mv by the end so we do know that 75 percent of the students who had accelerated under our watch ended up not staying on that track historically david i want to apologize because i don't think you're getting the full enthusiasm that we all feel because we're solidly into our six of this meeting um but i i i this is fantastic information um i just wanted to say like as a parent who i have a sixth grader and two fifth graders i don't think i could be more solidly in the transition time of this program and yet unequivocally want to show my support my my sixth grader has felt all

292the opportunity and challenge that she needed and i anticipate that my kids that will be in sixth grade next year will as well i i think we just can't highlight enough that when every child gets a chance to shine and thrive every child wins so um i know we will all have more to say when it's not hour six but i wanted to make sure you knew that this is very exciting stuff this is the work we should be doing and i'm grateful for everybody on your team that's been making this happen thank you i think that for its worth i think that's a lot of excitement you just showed for 11 o'clock at night so i'd like to piggyback off of that i i want to sit with a couple of things um i

293want to sit with the concept that when outcomes are predictable by race that that is essentially evidence of racism and when we see outcomes that are not predictable by race that is evidence of anti-racist impact um and it's not enough for us to simply say that we're not racist we need to be anti-racist in our approach to education and so i um want to honor and celebrate the the fact that the um that graph about making expected gains represented anti-racist uh impact of of curriculum and instruction and um i also want to yeah reiterate again sonny's point that our middle school math program is already advanced and so this idea of being hyper focused on competition and hyper focused on um you know speed and acquisition over depth and and quality is um is is

294problematic in many ways and i think you know if we want to make sure that we are addressing social and emotional needs and addressing care and commitment to the collective that um this proposal really presents us the opportunity to course correct and and still allow folks to be challenged and experience rigor and i and i agree that i would like to see us be able to shift our energy to talking about how we ensure that these gaps in opportunity are closed earlier on and folks educational uh career with us and i look forward to continuing to receive updates on the impact of um this decision algebra for all and hearing about how we are thinking about how to support folks earlier on um i joey i see your hand it's 1106. it's crazy um i

295think one of the thank you david for the presentation um i think one of the nuances of what you presented um is the you mentioned desmos but it's also in the in the investment in the educators as being more versatile and better practitioners that make them more able to take on any uh a much more wide range of student population and still be effective at meeting their needs so i think uh that's exciting because our teachers are awesome they're worth the investment but um i'd rather invest in them than textbooks that still have the same concepts and skills being presented um hey b um i did want to ask um you mentioned the shift from getting rid of the the testing as done to um to uh i had the slide up um using a

296a formal process of assessment in line with public act 100-042 um is is that going to be the mechanism for identifying exceptionalities to the system that's built to meet 95 percent of the population's need that is correct joey so that is the illinois acceleration act and essentially that's a much more limited process that is narrower more narrowly focused on individual evaluations and so we have a defined process that we've been enacting and we'll continue to enact that in the exceptionality space okay and and it's fair to assume that in some cases um meeting the needs of students that meet that exceptionality criteria might still be within uh the continuum that that's being described here and in some cases it might need to be altered based on case-by-case basis that's absolutely correct and so we've got

297you know part of the process is kind of a five-finger test before we hit an excel the assessment portion where we determine essentially kind of their cohort of students of which they're learning with and so we have kind of our own process that's defined and yes we may receive requests that one we do the school-based review and say you know yes we'll move you on to acceleration or no we will not for these reasons and once we get to acceleration there may be students in that assessment that do qualify for something and there will be students that do not and that's been pretty consistent the way we've been enacting the process great thank you and thank you for making tweaks to a system that still provides a continuum at the high school with open-ended opportunities

298thank you joey um so i just wanted to add that i also am so proud of our educators and uh express my gratitude to you all for bringing this thoughtful presentation and [Music] your thoughtful leadership in this curriculum instruction but also to our educators for all the the work that they have put in and the um to express our confidence in them and the impact that they're having um stacy you i i was a little um concerned when you said that uh the excel acceleration would be accessible for folks who inquire it seems like that in itself lends itself to um [Music] inundation and and opportunity hoarding um is there a or is there any thought being put into how to um [Music] resist that that inclination or that that type of engagement so um

299yes anya well also take being honoring the requirements of the state law which has particular requirements about notification and about who can potentially request acceleration the process that we built we engaged with a variety of educators from different disciplines so we also have the state require law requires that in fact there is an intake process that multiple stakeholders can access but then we are then able to review the requests and determine whether we move forward with assessment or not based upon our internal criteria and so the process that has been developed by the team of educators can help us support and weed out requests that are have grounds and requests that don't based on the criteria and so we've got to balance both the requirements the law with a lens of equity and opportunity thank

300you anya i just had a quick comment um not really a question thank you david for the presentation uh one thing that i'm really excited about is what this is going to do for our girls and so we did see those gains um in the the work that we did prior to doing this work and um you know women are sorely underrepresented in our stem fields and i think i'm excited at the thought of knowing that this could potentially impact and interrupt that cycle so just wanted to add that i know that we didn't have data specific to gender but i think that that would be something that would be worthwhile noting with with this work thank you all right well thank you for the robust discussion and content this evening um oh yeah uh

301yeah with no further business before the board i will adjourn this meeting at 11 12. rest well