BPS101 Board of Education Special Meeting December 9, 2025: District Goals Update

001We will now stand for the pledge of >> allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> All right. So Katie may be here in a bit. She had a previous commitment. And then um excuse me, Kristen. And then Katie, we don't know if she's going to make it. She's had some unexpected child care concerns she had to take care of. So all right, Holly, do we have anyone wishing to address the board? >> Okay. All right. Our singular item on this one piece of paper, >> one script >> district data presentation. >> Yes. Thank you. >> Start us off. >> Yes. Um, all right. Well, good evening everybody. Thank you

002for being here. Um, so this evening is our followup to the building presentations and as called for in our strategic plan, the district will provide a mid-year update to the board. Um, for tonight, we've provided two different presentations. One will be a focus for the board on our power metrics that the board approved this past summer in July. and then we'll do a secondary presentation that will do a high altitude dive into some of the specific data for you. Um, this is most of the data can be found in the presentation that Brad walked you through with the school report card. Um, a lot of the data we're presenting to you tonight in that second presentation is submitted to the state on an annual basis and that's a part of our district and uh district

003report card buildout. So aside from that, if there are no questions from the board, we'll get started. Okay. >> So, as Tom said, uh we gave the board a lot of data to prepare for this meeting. We're going to talk about the power metrics and then some of the ancillary data, the ancillary data. We're going to do highlights of that. We're not going to walk you through every slide, but if the board has questions on any of the data that we gave you, please feel free to bring that up at any time during the meeting. And then that ancillary data will be both the academic data and then the operational data, which is why we have uh some of our people here to present the data they're responsible for. So let's start with those power

004metrics. Again, the strategic plan, as I've seen this kind of be lived over the past year, is really helpful for focus for the organization, right? we can do a lot of things but we can't do things that we're not focused on. So like the strategic plan gives us that focus. It's really helpful for us uh as a kind of barometer of what we should be doing and what we should put on the back burner. So that has been really helpful. The first power metric that the board has adopted is under priority one enhanced teaching and learning practices and this is based on MAP growth. And I haven't really talked to the board about what that looks like. So I want to just talk a little bit about uh the MAP test itself so you know

005what our teachers and students are experiencing. So MAP is a computer adaptive test and students take this three times during the course of the year. So they take a fall administration right when they come back from break a winter administration and then a spring administration. We fit in but there's a lot of state testing in the spring so we fit that in as well. So the students take that computer adaptive tests. So they're relatively short, so about 40-ish questions. And what the computer tries to do is it tries to get to 50%. So if a student gets a question right, it will give them a little bit harder question to try and get them to see if they get that wrong. If a student gets another question, the second question right, it goes for a

006harder question. So, um, they try and stay, Matt tries to stay within like the grade band of what's reasonable for say a third grader to know, but sometimes kids are scoring so high, it will go outside of what a typical third grader in the nation would be capable of answering because it always wants the student to get the next question wrong to start to level itself. Once the student goes through the battery of questions to see which they get right, which they get wrong. I know it's I made it kind of seem like the computers are out to get us, right? They're not. They're just trying to to find that that right score. And it is a better way than taking like a 90 question assessment. So, um the computer wants them to get that

007wrong to see where their RIT score is. A RIT score is like a scale score um that they use in order to track progress. how they get to their growth metric is they have about eight and a half million students take that uh the MAP test across the country. So they look at the eight and a half million students that are in a particular grade say third grade. What is their average growth? So what's the 50th percentile for growth for third graders who are starting at a particular point? So this is like in a first for a first grader taking it, their average growth might be because they're growing and developing so rapidly might be like 25 RIT points. Now if you teach middle school and your students are taking the MAP test, the average

008growth might just be like three RIT points. So because of the nature of that test, they are really looking for that growth. So that average growth. So we would love for our kids to outstrip that growth, but we want them to match the average growth for the large population. So what the the goal is is they want the percent of students to meet those growth targets that MAP sets. So if you're a parent in our district and you've gotten a MAP report, it will show you where your student stands, what the national percentile is, and what that projected growth, how much should they be growing during the course of the year. that's the number we want to hit or exceed to get this metric. So, we do this for both math and reading. And you

009can see that um this is a recreation of the the DMG uh metrics that we talked about a lot last year. And you can see kind of those trends of where this is going. So, you can see we don't have growth data yet because we have the fall administration and we gauge growth from fall to spring. So, this shouldn't look any different than what you've seen in the past as a board, but we want to continue to bring this forward and continue to do education around what this actually means. One of the things that will change when we when I come back to you in the spring, the late spring or early summer is that MAP went through a reorming process. So, they every few years they look at their population, their growth, they look

010at all of those students and they reorm the assessment. So they they kind of postponed their last reorming because of COVID and the effects of COVID, but they've gone through the reorming. So these numbers will change because not only do they reorm what growth looks like moving forward, but they'll reorm our scores with those new norms going backwards as well. So this slide will look very different and we'll talk about that in the spring. But they went through their own reorming process and we'll we'll show and highlight that. In some ways it's advantageous for us, in other ways it's not. So it kind of all comes out in the wash and we're after growth anyways. So we're not after proficiency, we're after growth. So that's what that slide looks like in that power metric. And

011we'll continue to talk about this. This is a great overall metric of the health of our academic system. Here is that same slide broken down by um some subpopuls within our school. So if you see it grayed out, the gray is that I have less than 20 students in that particular category and to maintain their confidentiality, I just grade those scores out. Okay, so you can see uh G Marie who works with our data, she put the N sizes so you can see the number of students tested in that area and some of those numbers do get pretty small, so we just gray those out. We don't want people trying to figure out who those kids are. So you can see there is some kind of data to highlight here and Carrie and Cara are

012going to go into this a little bit more. But if you look at the second row there for students with IEPs, you can see in 23 only 49% of them met their growth targets and then we bump up to 64% um in the next two years. That's really significant growth and that to me means we're on the right track with the work that we're doing and we're closing that achievement gap. So you can see that's a really nice same thing if you go second column for map the 47th to the 50th again we're closing that gap. So some real things to celebrate there. Are there other things that we can learn from disagregating this data and we have teams that talk about this all the time. We talk about here at the district level. We

013look for overall trends and where we might need to support more buildings are looking at their own data. Their school leadership teams their blit which are building level intervention teams will look at this data. So there are lots of teams within Betavia that are looking at this disagregated ga data. We wanted you to see it. It's not part of the power metrics but we wanted you to see it and let you know that there are some successes here. We're on the right track but there's also some work to be done. Right? So, we're not seeing the same growth for our Hispanic students in math. So, that is an area, again, one that we would want to take a look at more closely, follow those trends, and it's because math is so languagerich now in its

014teaching, we want to make sure we're scaffolding appropriately for second language learners. Um, so that's just an idea there. Questions about MAP >> on on this? So, some of that end numbers are overlap. So there like might be a student that's in IEP low income and two or more, >> right? >> So you you counting them two or three different ways. >> Yep. >> And the one question >> the board may not have seen Middle Eastern and North African. That's a new federal category of race and ethnicity. So that may not be something that you've seen on these screens before, but that's a new category. So we included it. >> Had a question with that. Uh just I mean we're doing well in math but I guess the reading um you know what's causing the

015gaps in the reading growth. >> This is one of the intense reasons why we've undergone those curriculum reviews that you've heard about at CAC is we want to make sure that curriculum that core curriculum is the strongest most rigorous to get the growth out of the students. We've seen this trend for a couple of years where on MAP we're scoring um better in math than we are in reading. And what we saw with math is that we have a clearly articulated curriculum that now goes from K through 8. So that's our goal is to get to that same level of articulated core curriculum in uh ELA. So the reading instruction in that K through 8. So the the work that we're going to approve hopefully at our next board meeting around the CLA resource is

016a key part of that work of improving those scores in reading. Good question. All right, ACT. This is another one of the board's power metrics. Again, this is relatively new. We switched back to the ACT from well over a decade of the SAT from the College Board, and it's been a little bit of a rocky road for us in terms of that switch back. Um, not that our students can't handle that, but when uh they made that decision, we thought we were taking paper pencil test uh the traditional ACT. They said, "No, you're taking it online." So, our students switched to online in terms of taking their assessment for the state. And now there's some additional changes to ACT. The enhanced ACT is coming out that will be a computer adaptive test as well. When

017an assessment changes that rapidly, it's not great for getting trend data for us. Um, our students can do it. We still have the same goals for our kids. It's just harder to look at trends and make like logical inferences when the assessments change like that. Now, the going from paper pencil to um to an online assessment, if you look at the national data about that, um it kind of comes out in the wash. if you get a big enough sample size, they say it doesn't really matter, but it is a different mode for kids to adjust to a little bit. So, it may have thrown some students off a little bit. Um, we still had fine scores. You can see that Joanne presented this data to you at our last board meeting in her building.

018Um, but our kids did uh well on that assessment. Um, one of the other things that's kind of been a battle within the state is like what is the college readiness benchmark for that data? So ACT for for ages and ages did their own research and had their own numbers and then when our state brought that on for juniors, they set their own numbers and no one knew like why they set them that way. And with the the reformulation of the state accountability system, they set new benchmarks which are much more in align with ACT. So, I believe the state's headed in the right direction in terms of us getting a benchmark where we want to get all of our kids over that benchmark. You can again see that broken down u by the ACT

019math and the ACT ELA college readiness score. Um except those subops that we are too small. >> When you say college readiness, so that means if they they should be able to go and do passing work as a freshman. >> Yes. So in their freshman year, they have a 75% chance of getting a C or better in their college level freshman work. So it's a predictive score. So when they set that benchmark, they're saying out of all the students, we looked at all their grades, they have a 75% chance, which is a pretty good chance of getting a C or better in that college level math class or that college level English probably 100 class. >> Brad, can you go back to the previous slide? >> Yeah. So just clarifying so the what you have

020historical data 2025 that's just from the >> the past >> spring exam. >> So these were the current seniors. >> Yeah. We're waiting for the next round. Okay. >> One of the the harder things about measuring growth with high school students is you're not measuring the same kids, right? So that's our current seniors in that 2025 data. You were not going to see another score from them. You're going to see the current junior score. So it really you have to look at it as a system score. Is there variance in the student population in Betavia? Yes, there is. Right. Every year there's different kids taking the assessments. They have different skills, different assets, different deficits. But it's kind of a weird high school trend. So, what we'll probably have to do in the spring is

021look at our ACT results for this current junior class and then adjust those annual targets to look at growth for the system of ACT takers within the district. Right? Because you can see we've already eclipsed our our predicted measures moving out. That's not a great goal is to go backwards. So, we'll readjust those moving forward. All right, I'm really bad on the clicker tonight. So, the last the second priority is fostering inclusion and belonging. And this is really a facilitator uh power metric. So, we know that students will do their best academic work when they are engaged and they feel like they belong at school. So, we think this is a really great one for us to take a look at. You heard all the building presentations and all the work that they're doing in

022order to facilitate a general sense of of well-being and belonging within the district. They're doing the specific work uh of this. So we take a look at this on the macro level as well. So you can see our spring data last year 70%. We'll look at this again in the spring. So this should look pretty good. And again, it's growing about one or two percent uh each year is the target for that sense of belonging. Slightly lower at the 6 through 12 levels, but they're getting some good data and some good results as well. Uh next board meeting, so I know we've had a number of board meetings this month, but on December 16th, you're going to hear from two of my colleagues. So you're going to hear from Katherine Murray, and you're going to

023hear from Natalie Osel. They're going to tell you a little bit more about inclusion and belonging and how that fits into the bigger picture of SEAL. So if you have questions about panorama, if you have questions about like what does this really tell us, why do we focus on this, those are like key people that you'll get at the next meeting that know, you know, far more than I do about this and are really really deep into the work. So I appreciate their expertise. We look at this again disagregated. with our teams looking at that information in order to kind of figure that out. I probably should have blocked out the the end sizes below 20 on that one as well. And then Tonyy's going to talk a little bit about operational excellence. the last

024comment. >> So obviously one of the key priorities of the board is um operational excellence in that resource stewardship. So being accountable to the taxpayer and making sure that we are funneling our resources, particularly our money into efforts that support student learning and also improve that student learning in terms of the yield that we're investing in. And this can be a challenging metric because there's so many things, so many different facets uh that go into operations. And we're going to hear more about that tonight from our directors and department leaders and get a bit of a flavor for it. But this particular metric uses the state board of education's financial profile score to look at how the school district's finances support or have the ability to support directing that money into the right areas. And

025as we say, especially lately, we can do anything that we want. We just can't do everything. this indicator, this metric gives us an idea of whether or not we're financially prepared to make certain investments. So, what goes into that metric? Um, there are a number of different parameters. Um, one being the revenue ratio to fund balance. And so, looking at how much cash the district has in its fund balances, looking also at the amount of days that the district has cash on hand. So if if revenue just disappeared one day and it was gone, how many days could we operate the school district with the cash balances that we have on hand? It looks at of course the difference between our revenues and our expenditures. Are we taking more money in than we're spending in

026a given year? And it also looks at uh debt both short-term and long-term in terms of what is allowed, how much was the maximum amount of debt the school district can take on and what that ratio is. And when you factor all those components together, we get the score on a 4.0 just like as if it were a grade point average. And here we've seen we've enjoyed for the last several years a 4.0 average, which looks great. And we anticipate for the foreseeable future that that number will be relatively high. I so I've shared when we adopted the budget, I do not expect that number to be an exact 4.0 in future years, especially as we invest in warm safe drive. We're spending down our fund balances. we're going to have less days cash on

027hand. That number is going to come down, but I do expect it to be above that three and a half uh 3.5 number. But I will point out that if we go back in time about 10 years, just a little bit less than 10 years to a little bit more, maybe maybe 9 years to to 15 years, the district was on the review and the early warning list. So, this isn't something to be taken for granted. Um this takes some hard work to make sure that our finances are in the right spot that we can carry forward and we've enjoy and as I said we've enjoyed high marks in recent years and our goal is to keep ourselves there while investing in all the right things so that we can improve as Brad mentioned earlier

028our scores for ELA that's going to require significant investment making sure that our students have the support that they they need but also things like transportation getting kids to school on time is obviously important. We'll talk about some of those metrics in a little bit. Or even food service, whether we're delivering meals of of quality and of and of of value, nutritional value and of and of of interest and those sorts of things. And so we'll we'll talk a little bit more about that in a little bit. And that's it, I think, for the power metrics. >> So Tony, could you just go through if we were to fall to a 3.52 financial review, what does that mean? we would still be in recognition status. So, that's the highest category that the state board of

029education issues, meaning that we're in good shape financially. >> Um, but if you fall below that 3.5, then you would go into what's called a review status, which is we're keeping an eye on you. You're you're you're doing okay, but you know, it can go in either direction. And then one level below that is early warning. And then the last level below that is financial review. >> Okay. >> Um where you and it's potential for if your if your finances are terrible and they are for for several years, there's a possibility where the state board of education can actually take over the school board and control the school district if need be. >> So the reality is your annual targets are your bottom guard rail >> in this particular case. Our goal here is to

030maintain what they call recognition status. >> Right. Okay. >> Yes. And as I said, 4.0 looks and sounds great, but with some of the things that we have planned, it's not in the cards for us to keep that 4.0, nor should it be. We don't want to collect money for the sake of having a 4.0 score. That's not prudent. Um, but we have been making things. We're setting things up to invest in warm, safe, dry so that we can take care of our schools the way they ought to be. >> All right. Thank you. >> All right. So, if there's no other questions or discussion about the power metrics, we'll transition into the secondary uh presentation for today. What's up? >> Sounds good to me. >> Okay, >> good. >> Awesome. Thanks, Carrie. >> Hi.

031Well, good evening everyone. Thank you for um this opportunity to share the work of our special education department. My name is Carrie Rue and I have had the privilege of being the director here in Betavia and special ed for the past 12 years. And tonight, Kira Chase is joining us and she's been the assistant director part of this intricral work for the past two years. So, I'm took a little different direction on what I wanted to present tonight and tell a little bit more about the story because we're extremely proud of the data that Brad highlighted and the growth that we've been able to maintain over the last three years in particular. But I think what we wanted to highlight today is the heavy lift and the collaborative work and the structures that we put

032in place um that our staff have done to show um what it takes to get the movement and the numbers for our students there. So I'm going to tell a little story about where we began. So I think where we started is at the heart of our work is a shared belief that every child is a general education student first. Special education provides the supplemental individualized support some students need to access their learning to reach their highest potential. Over the past several years, our department's story has been one of intentional evolution, moving from state compliance to more forms of collaboration and from isolated student programs to integrated classroom practices. We once existed as a separate department and our services have continued to shift by embedding interventions that students need within the context of their classroom

033for their daily learning. This work reflects our commitment to ensuring that all students are supported, seen, and successful within their general education environment to their greatest potential possible. Our collaborative structures are not new, but they've deepened over time. At the elementary level, our special education teachers have partnered with instructional coaches, reading specialists, and classroom teachers to align their direct intervention supports within the classroom instruction. Together, they've studied curriculum, identified the learning barriers for students, and planned how to intervene, pushing into that structure so students can belong in their classroom rather than the traditional pullout model to maximize the power that their classroom teacher can provide for their instruction. In reading, our teachers have refined diagnostic practices and learned from one another's expertise to target the root causes of our students skill gaps and not just

034treat them as symptoms. In math, our special education teams have learned the curriculum, identified instructional strategies that are powerful interventions and programming, and sat alongside our instructional coaches. At the secondary level, we've really focused on our general education and special education teachers working to co-partner um and strengthen their co-partnerships, expanding beyond that content expertise to shared ownership of every learner that enters the classroom. What we have found is that when teachers plan and instruct side by side, everyone taking ownership of their learning, students then experience the rigor and support. And that's when we see the growth happening. These collaborative structures and plans did not happen overnight. They're a result of years of intentional work of everyone sitting down, looking at data, talking about our professional learning, being open to reflection, and being willing to blur

035the lines between departments and classrooms of students so that our students experience a very unified tiered level of support. The same collaborative spirit has guided our district's response to significant disproportionality. When we received that state citation of overidentification of black students with learning disabilities, we did not go at it as a compliance task to ISBY. Instead, we sat down. We formed teams of administrators, teachers, BEA members, all came together to analyze data, examine our district practices, and ask ourselves some pretty difficult questions about access, equity, and opportunity for all of our students. As we began that work many years ago, we discovered that our black student population was experiencing lower academic growth, higher discipline rates, greater levels of chronic absenteeism, and noticeable differences in our social emotional screening scores. As we dug deeper and our

036our um analysis expanded, we did see similar trends among our Hispanic students, our English learners, and our students from low-income backgrounds. Through this process, one finding became undeniable that what we have found is that a student sense of belongingness is measurable and it's actionable and it's directly connected to their academic successes. We discovered that our students showing the least amount of growth were those missing the most instructional time, whether they were absent, whether they were being disciplined, or whether they were put in more restrictive placements. And what we now know is that if students don't feel connected to our staff or to each other, they disengage from their learning. And that's where the learning gaps begin to appear. That learning and understanding that our staff have taken on has reshaped our district priorities. What began

037as a special education citation has now become a district-wide commitment to learning and belonging, reflected both in our strategic plan, priority one and priority two. This work now drives how we build relationships with students, with each other, how we look to make sure we're designing appropriate interventions, and how we're looking at measuring student success. Our related service providers, our social workers, psychologists, speech and language pathologists have also embraced the shift and are constantly seen asking themselves and each other, what does a student need? How do we adjust our approach to strengthen our connection and make sure our students have appropriate access? So tonight, as we took a look at our outcome data, the growth in our map, you'll see reduction in discipline referrals and decreases in the chronic absenteeism. I hope you see that they're

038more than numbers. You see the evidence of a district that's taken on a major problem and we've gone through some cultural shifts in how we operate across buildings, across B roles, and ultimately across the school district. I'm very proud to share the story of a department of a staff in a district that's moved from looking at special education as compliance and really have refined it to structures of collaboration focusing on intervention and prevention and from isolation to pro to programming and progress. this is only beginning and that we're here and we're continued with this work until that we look that every learner has the same outcome in Betavia and that each student says that they feel like they belong, that they're capable, they're seen and their academic growth is reflective of those feelings as well.

039So, thank you >> K. You want to walk them through the first three slides that you >> Oh, Holly, I should have told you which one to go. >> You haven't clicked. >> It's me. I'm in power. Holly, sorry. Oh, no. phone. So this is our significant disproportionality. So what we have found through our state citation with our black students is that our black student population is identified for having a specific learning disability that's at a greater rate than our average Bavia peers. And when that happens to a degree over a course of three years, ISBY gives you a state report and says you need to do a deep dive data analysis and see why that happens. So what we have found is that um when we pulled that data through the analysis is that

040these students are having more um time outside of the classroom for a number of variables. So those variables as we mentioned were um attendance um discipline and um some exclusionary practices. So that sense of belonging metric that we are we're teeing up big for Natalie and Katherine next week is going to talk about how all of those um instructional shifts and cultural shifts have started to make a difference that we're seeing a decrease in our discipline so that our um classroom teachers are feeling more equipped, our students are coming and they're understanding how to engage as learners in Betavia and that we're seeing that um both of these are increasing the potential that they're in the classroom to get that instruction. instruction. So, what initially started as um why are they um being qualified for

041special education? Why are they not growing? What we found is that we had to dig really deep and say, well, we have to get them in the building and maintain them in the classroom in order for them to access their instruction. So, we that's what we've really discovered was kind of our root cause analysis from ISBY. The other piece that we wanted to celebrate is that through this work over the last few years, we've really done a push as as part of that action plan is um increasing attendance. Holly and Katherine Murray have done a great job with campaigning and building that awareness with our families. Um we're really working on how to make that feeling of belongingness in the classroom. And that you'll see that from the left to the right is um historic

042perspective of that we're seeing growth that our kids are coming to school um more and more every year and that we're finally finding those ways to bring students to um the classroom in order to get the instruction that they need to learn and grow. >> Well, I just have a question. Um, >> so I think it was last year during plaque, >> if I get this wrong, I apologize, but SIG dispro, >> y >> um, there's an update where it says that black males and BPS have a four chance four times chance of being labeled with a disability, emotional or behavioral. This is a system problem. So they we're re-examining our systems. The hypothesis is maximizing core instruction for black males. Does that correlate to this? >> Yes. So that's the that citation is what

043we talked about at the beginning that we are on that state list for overidentification, but it's for specific learning disability. Um, and so what they're saying is that it's if you are a black student coming to Betavia, you're probably four times more likely to be um found to have a learning disability than the average Betavia student. And when you have that pattern of identification over a certain amount of time, it says all well intention. Everybody is there to try and help, but we're really saying um it's the wrong type of help for students that we shouldn't have that many more students labeled as a disability in Betavia than um the average district in the state. >> And I just have a question. Um >> does the SEAL curriculum that we have is that correlated to

044with belonging? Um I am not going to do justice like you'll hear next week from Natalie and Katherine, but what they are um going to explain to you is how all of the action steps, not just a resource, but how we engage with students, um how we engage with each other, how we're teaching students to engage with each other, it's all a metric that um is measured through that concept of a sense of belongingness. So, it's not it's not as um it's not as traditional as there's a reading uh there's a reading curriculum and then you teach reading. It's much more um what's the word choice? >> Thank you. >> Yeah, there's a lot of pieces >> a lot of pieces and factors in each one of them. And then when you you look at

045each one of them, what we have found is that the more that we can increase that sense of belongingness on that metric is that there's a direct correlation that students academic growth happens. So it's like Masaw's hierarchy of needs that you need that basic foundation and then the learning and the magic can grow. So that sense of belongingness is is part of a a resource, a curriculum that they'll be instructing, but it's one piece of the of a more abstract concept. Um, I'll call it that curriculum. Uh, I don't remember. Is it kindergarten through sixth grade? And then I don't remember. Does it go all the way to high school or >> through? Yeah, there's not a high school piece. So, our current model for that instruction piece, that curriculum piece is it's it was

046developed here in Bavia. So, the student services committee and Natalie will talk a little bit probably more about this in the future. We're looking maybe to make some shifts with that, right? We have a great base of that. We're teaching kids great skills that contribute to their social emotional health, but we're that's always going to keep evolving. So, we might come back to you at some point with a different curriculum for our um K through eight students. >> It's also aligned to the state's realignment of their own standards. So, they've been doing some work revamping that over the last two years. um they were supposed to do a final draft of some other touch-ups this year. Um but for us to what Brad's talking about, what we've developed in house is also on a foundation

047of the castle framework. And so as we look at tier one approaches across the district that gives our our teams, our staff, our administrators the ability to then reach to tier two and tier three to differentiate the needs for more specific cases with different students. Hopefully I summed that up correctly. Otherwise Natalie can correct everything I just said. >> I just had a more question for probably my own understanding is when we identify a student or an what is the role or what collaboration happens with the family in in coming to that >> table. So um part of our obligation through the law is that families have to have meaningful participation from the start to finish of that process. So, um, our goal is ultimately if there's ever a point of concern, that first point

048of contact should be from their classroom teacher and that building that relationship of rapport of identifying here are some things that I'm seeing um that we might need to focus a little more intensely this school year. Then there's something called a MTSS process where if that teacher is identifying that child may need resources outside the scope of what the general education classroom can provide, we bring in a team of teachers. They might be called an interventionist or a reading specialist or another gen ed teacher to provide that intervention. All along through that process before they get to the point of a a special education referral, parents should be engaged either through um emails, through letters, or phone calls. At the point of an eligibility meeting, we have had conversations with the family to identify the

049areas that were suspecting a disability. They have to provide informed consent before we would do any evaluation. And then at the point of ele at at the point the evaluation is completed, there's another meeting where we sit down and explain the results and propose a plan if the child qualifies. And then we need parental consent before we can move forward with that eligibility for special education services. So there's informed consent along the way and then we need formal consent from the parents for special education identification. >> So going through so if initial identification as you go through that process can it be then determined that they don't actually need >> that? Okay. Part of our um professional learning is really to look at those inclusionary and exclusionary criteria is what um the the law tells

050us that we need to look at. We need to be very careful that we're looking at those um as part of our evaluation system to why we would say that the child has a disability. What we know is there are children that have a variety of learning needs. Some need high ability acceleration. And there are some students that are always going to live in that low average range. That is um not a disability, but you know that 16th to 30th percentile is considered low average. That doesn't mean that a child may be innately disabled. And so what we're really trying to differentiate is what might be an atrisisk learner, who might need some supplemental instruction, but then who should be reserved to be the qualification of IDA special education eligibility. And we've really built some

051robust systems because I think what we see happen in education in general is people are helpers. They they want to see kids succeed. They want to see kids help. And so those referrals are coming in with very good intention. This child may need more than what I'm able to provide. But what we need to direct teams in is that there's a a variety of channels of help that can be done. We can have help through interventions. We can have help through social work. you can have help through other um tiered services. Help doesn't have to come by labeling a child with a disability. And I think that's where we've evolved in the last few years and we've really been I um much more preventative focus of that we can early intervene without saying a child

052has a disability to stay true to that um that law. So that 30% does that mean they confirmed IEP like they have they now have a confirmed IE plan IEP plan or is it the initial identification >> like right now if you look at this um the state of Illinois is averaging 16% I believe it is of um students in Illinois that have special education identification. We have um we are down to 13%. So 13% of our population in Betavia has what we would say is IDEIDA eligible. They have a specific plan attached to them that staff need to intervene. Um the significant disproportionality is there's an over representation of black students being called specific learning disability. So, while we're below the state average for identification, we're just um we have a pattern of of

053identifying a specific population of students at a higher rate than what probability would tell us we should be doing. >> We just want to make sure because labeling a kid with a disability is a big deal. Like, we should treat that with a lot of seriousness. >> We want to make sure we're not labeling a difference as a disability, right? So, kids can have differences, but we they're not all disabilities, right? So, we want to make sure We're going through a really robust process. The teams are we're not seeing language differences as disabilities. That's an example of that type of work, right? >> Kids can speak all sorts of different languages. It doesn't mean they have a disability, but in a monolingual English culture within Betavia, it might be seen as such. So, we want

054to make sure we're kind of weeding those things out before taking the big step of labeling a child with a disability. Uh first of all I want to say thank you for the presentation and the story and Mr. Arlando just anecdotally. So I have a child that has received some of these services and gone through this process and uh I can tell you it's been very collaborative. So um it's kind of a living thing where we're giving feedback to the school. The school's giving feedback. Um there's regular check-ins. What I like about it is especially when you get to the middle school or high school level where you don't have like a room teacher as a point of contact, it's really reassuring to have one or two people that are like your point person >>

055that are watching your kid and are, you know, um really paying attention so they can talk to them on a more deeper level maybe than just a classroom teacher could. So, what I really like about what we're doing here is we're using data and then we're identifying areas for improvement. We're using the data to help us change our processes so we can get better outcomes. And it sounds like we're changing, you know, our mindset because what you're describing is like an alchemy of a lot of factors like you said. >> And a lot of it's a mindset thing, I think, and how we're viewing these kids. And so, while um you know, as we'll probably say throughout the night, I think obviously we have a lot of work as someone who's been going through this

056for our family, it has been a good process. And it does also for me what's been good about is uh so I have one child that's like a super high achiever academically and then I have another that's a high achiever but in a different way and sort of when you're measuring that progress it helps you sort of calibrate what growth should look like and healthy growth. Um, so you're measuring it. For me, it's been helpful to see like what progress should look like and and um uh because you know if we're used to a kid that's getting 99 on everything and then you have another child that's not, it can get disheartening, but then you're saying, well, they are making progress and then the experts are saying this, you know, they're going to be able

057to succeed. >> We're just giving them some extra support so they can do that. So, um, >> expectation is all students should be growing. They might start at different starting points, but what we're seeing is now that we're we're seeing the growth in a in a population of students that maybe we didn't see this level of growth in years past. So, that's what we're very excited about. We're starting to see it all come together. >> Um question on the um the discipline slide. >> What is considered a discipline incident? Is that strictly referrals or is that just >> it's anything? It's anything that we call it an ODR, an office discipline referral. So, it's anything that goes into our system. So, teachers typically handle like general level discipline within their classroom. That's not the type

058of stuff. So, kids not sitting in their seats, leaving the room, those types of things. Teachers handle that. That's not what but if anything rises to the level of an office discipline referral and each level has kind of a matrix for teachers a decision guide for what goes beyond the classroom. These are the things that they're putting into our computer system that are beyond the classroom. These are the office discipline referrals. So it could be like you skip third block to you were in a fight to um you missed a detention so you're getting another consequence. So it's a variety. >> What is five lab? Is that just a system? >> It's just like a data warehouse that if we try and identify where we're getting this data, one, it helps us to remember where

059we got it. And two, um, if you looked in like some different systems like the state system versus our system, those numbers would be slightly different because they count things in different ways. >> So the like the top right, that's five lab just because we don't have Illinois report card. >> Correct. This this whole slide is out of five which is our database that we keep. >> Um has has there been like implic implicit bias training for staff that are making decisions about IEP and you know discipline and suspension. Um for people to learn about the biases they bring to those decisions. That's part of the work too that you'll hear next week about how we're approaching that that mindset shift of um it's kind of going that multiaceted of we've really worked hard of

060putting in some instructional strategies and interventions and then we've moved to um predictable classroom environments where students have um they don't have to anticipate what they're supposed to do that it's very explicit in teaching them. And then we've moved to um more of that sense of belongingness and then how do you encourage those relationships and how do you connect with students? Um what you're going to see is the use of some of that data and getting student voice and how they're telling us what it is that they need so that we can learn as adults how do I interact or um exchange differently in my classroom so that students are feeling like their needs are being met. So you'll see that that kind of story how that evolved next week. Do you want to talk

061about identification and fun and the PD that you guys have done? >> Yeah. A couple of um professional learnings that we've done over the course of the last few years has been um bringing in um uh Fong is a speech and language pathologist who is a multil- language learner um out of Texas and she came up and spoke to our um child find teams or the teams that are doing the evaluations to really help us identify what's a difference versus a disorder or a disability. And part of that is really taking into account a student's background knowledge and the culture of their family. So what is it that they bring into the building that might need not be something that I'm used to as part of my culture expertise of someone growing up in the

062Midwest and how do I weed through what should be an expectation of what I think a student should come into the classroom. But I need to account for what is that rich cultural and experience that they have experienced that is different from mine and how do I start to think about that as a strength and an asset that that student's bringing in and making that something that's pretty amazing um story that I can learn from versus thinking about it as maybe a negative that these are the things in a Midwest town that they don't come with these assets. we're we're flipping that knowledge and that shift of thinking about it as student-based assets of what they're bringing into us instead of looking at it as a deficit. And some of those trainings that we've done

063with our teams have been pretty powerful of how do we just approach and think differently when we see that our student population in the last 10 years has shifted when we look at we have a higher number of low um low-inccome our Kenny Vento has increased um our newcomer population has increased we're seeing expansion of language and so how do we equip our staff to be um able to engage each one of those learners on a very individual level so that they feel welcome and included in the classroom instruction. So, that's that's one of the ways that we've approached that that strategy to make sure that each student feels like they can come in and see value of them as a learner and that they're proud to share what their experiences are so that they

064can engage in those conversations with their teachers and their students in the classroom. >> Are there ever barriers if you're at a point where you have to reach out to parents to discuss something? if there's a language barrier or >> um even access availability, you know, if they're working or just unable to travel or Yeah, we've tried to combat that a couple of different ways. Um we have a translation system that we use in the district. So, there is a number that we call and there's hundreds of languages that are available immediately. So if I have to call a family, I go in the system and I look at what language I may need to communicate with them with and that I can get a translator on on on speed dial. Um what we have

065done is we've tried to move most of our meetings, parent meetings in person. That's kind of our default model, but what we've recognized is that that's a luxury for some and not all can do that. So, we've set up um and done training on how to have appropriate and confidential conversations through a Google Meet or a phone call. Um sometimes you'll be on a call with a translator on a Google Meet to allow that accessibility for that parent. But that's part that's law for us. We have to make sure um ISBY has changed a lot of their um legal requirements of reporting interpreter services use um making sure that the paperwork is sent home in the parents native language. we have to have documentation and we get audited on each one of those factors. So

066that is something that ISB has built in as part of their um compliance and indicator checks that um have been very helpful um in our work of trying to make everything accessible to our families because they're a key partner. We can't have meetings and decisions without them at the table. So we have to do our best to try and um make them feel comfortable in a very uncomfortable situation when you're talking about a child with a group of individuals. Um but those are some of the strategies that we've tried to work through some of those barriers that come up with um just accessibility of people being available during the school day. >> Thanks. >> Yeah. Thank you guys. >> Thank you. >> That's going to be the extent of the academic data that we're going

067to kind of highlight for you. you guys have a lot more slides that you probably we talked about them with the school report card or they're not updated or um because we don't have the full year's worth of data yet. So that's all we were going to highlight. Is there anything academically that the board wants to talk about? And if not, we'll move on to operations. Have to click a few hundred slides. Here we go. We'll get there. All right. So, we're moving from strategic priority one and two to three. Um, in the business office, we're really focused in this year on three goals. Um, one is how we're collecting funds uh in the district and moving to a more cashless system. And then keeping our partners, Organic Life, accountable for what's going on in

068the lunchroom and providing good quality meals for students. And then lastly, looking at enrollment and residency and keeping an eye on how we're meeting the needs of all the individuals that come into our doors. So when we look at um money collection through my school box, this is actually what you guys approved a year ago. A year ago in December, you guys gave me the green light to move on with this process. And it took a huge lift, not only from the business office, but from everyone in the schools to communications to technology to make this happen. And we went live in August with registration fees and lunch balances in that system. And it went really, really well. And now we're moving to that go live portion in the school store and field trips and

069ticketing and making sure that we're meeting the needs of all of our educators as they're providing services but not wasting their time frankly handling cash. So um this is our trend data right now on this and we were doing really well. we were moving the needle down and then November hit and we took in more cash than we did last year. And you know what? We didn't anticipate that we do sell well with um uh libraries and their uh book fairs which are not part of the system. But hey, that's okay. Um we're still trending downward. And what we do is we always end each month and we look at it as a team and we say okay where were opportunities that we could have collected money through the system and then we build it

070for the next year. And I think what's important is that from the high school onto the elementary school, we've got individuals that are now taking less time worrying about collecting money, knowing who paid for something, and they're able to meet the needs of kids. So, I threw in a couple quotes here so you could see just how this is working. Um, I love seeing the kids engaged with uh authors and it's great to see that they can buy the book and it's all seamless and there's nothing worse than kids having cash and handing it to the teacher. We don't have to worry about that anymore. So, it is progressing very well. Any questions on my school bucks and collecting funds? All right, with none there, let's move on to food service. And this is our

071second year with organic life. And just at a base level, if kids are buying meals, they like the food. And from 24 to 25 to now 26, we've seen a great increase in meal counts. We're up 17% year-over-year at this time. Um, which is great. But, you know, I think it's really important our teachers do more with the kids than just 8 to three, right? Same thing with our food service. I want our food service provider to do more for our system than just lunch and breakfast, right? So, they've been working to support our kids in different ways. So, they helped Dominic and his crew. Um, they provided the meals for Tech Week. And not only did Dominic collect the funds in my school books, gold star for Dominic, um, and used Organic Life, but

072I think what was really important is this allowed kids to access meals for this that might not have before because Organic Life was able to meet their dietary needs. So, it was great to see that. Um, and then they were part of the crew that welcomed sixth graders to RMS. you know, not only organic life, but Illinois Central was a part of that day to make sure that that experience was positive for the kids. Any questions on organic life? >> Again, I'll share something anecdotally. So, I've been a school board member for almost 5 years. The only topics that my kids or their friends have ever asked about, one, if it snows, is Mr. Kim gonna call school off? Probably not. Probably not. You'd be very popular if you did that. Um, but the second

073thing is the food and they are all saying that the food has improved, right? >> So, that's great to hear. >> Kind of sad my kids missed it. So, >> sorry. >> Yeah. >> All right. And then the last thing that we're monitoring in the business office is um enrollment residency, but this year we're really taking a look not at our new students, but our students that are coming to us year-over-year. So, every year families have to reregister. You've got to go into power school and you got to say, "Yes, this is my address. Yes, this is my phone number." And this is very important because when we're in local parents of a student and if there's something wrong, we need to be able to get hold of that parent, right? And there's nothing worse

074than trying to dial a number when a kid's sick in the nurse's office and it's a, you know, this number is disconnected or whatnot. So, this is why this is so important. Um, and you can kind of see our trend on this. We did better this year. Um, we went from a 95% rate to a 96, but I want to get that to at least the 99. I really want to say 100, but I know that's not probably possible. Um, and what's really interesting here is if you look at how it's trended as we're doing things with Holly in the buildings to send out messages to families and we're calling families and we're getting them to do this task. Uh we've kind of flatlined now at about 100 is is kind of where we're at.

075Kind of stuck. So we're going to try again once the holidays are over. But um we utilize the messenger system which sends messages out in uh native language. So that's great. They're not just getting some random email that that isn't in their home language. So that's been very helpful. And our goal for next year is to improve this, but also to start earlier. Right now, we wait till August 1st to say, "Hey, tell us what your phone number is. Tell us what your address is." Well, we can do that sooner. So, I'm going be working with the technology department and with the communications department to get that out there sooner and get that information quicker so that we can be more responsive to families that have difficulty finishing this task. Any questions? >> Does this

076include families that are moving within the district? >> Yes. Every family needs to say, "Yes, this is um my new address or my current address." If the family flags that their address has changed, then that notifies our office to get residency information. And a lot of times at the high school level, it's a one high school system, right? So families are like, "Oh, I don't have to reregister even though I moved." Yes, you do. We need to know where you live. So, um, that's a piece of it. >> Yes. Just anecdotally, I know someone that exactly that their child was in middle school now and so they just didn't even realize that >> even though they'd moved locations that they needed to. >> Yeah. >> Exactly. And and again, this really goes back to that

077safety piece. like we want to be able to know that we're emailing things home or calling or sending letters home to the correct information. >> All right, with that I'll turn it over to Dave. >> All right, welcome everybody. Uh so I'm Dave Thurby. I'm going to talk about where the tech department's uh operating at this point uh in the year. Uh this is kind of a big time for us to kind of gather all our stats. So we've been meeting a lot with my team to kind of discuss the year as a whole and kind of see where we're at. So I'm going to share a lot of our goals, what we've accomplished for the year and then the statistics behind all that and kind of how we did it. So um for those

078of you that don't know, this is our department hierarchy. I just wanted to share that because some of you may not know kind of how my department's laid out. Uh essentially it's three tiers of that uh that have specific tasks. So the information services team handles all your building level stuff. The network operations team handles all the server and windows type things for the staff as long as well as the internet and Wi-Fi all that kind of stuff. And our MIS team handles all the data like power school and other types of things uh that are part of that. And I have Dana also that is my coordinator that helps us keep us all organized. So um all right. So quick stats. I wanted to share this just to specifically show you this sheer scope

079of what this district does on the daily. Um, so right now in the general household, you probably got 30 maybe 50 devices if you're crazy with internet of things devices in your home. We have 14,000 devices every day connect to our internet every day. Um, so if you do our rough math with 5,100 kids, you've got close to three devices per person in this district on average. If you add staff, that kind of balances a little differently. But, um, security events that we have every day, 3.4 billion per day that we're getting filtered through and preventing and trying to do actions upon things. And then our peak for the year uh, was 7.8 gigabits per second. So, that is literally on average seven times more than what you'd have at your home internet speed. So,

080very big uh, for the year. Um, this is all of our goals. Um, so obviously, uh, high quality service is one of the things we strive for. Uh, I'm going to talk about our goal and what we actually did with that 95% on time resolution this year. Um, reoccurring issues is a big thing for us. We're always trying to prevent that ticket uh from even hitting the system. So, we've done a few things to work on preventing those. Um, obviously security and privacy compliance is huge for us. We do a lot of audits and security reviews and best practice alignments every year. Um, and it's becoming more of a thing every year. And then obviously our mission critical stuff, 99.9, we call it 49s in the tech world. Uh, so I'll talk about that as

081well. Um, so the first one, this is our ticket stats for the year. The little red dotted line is last year. Um, as a whole, we had close to a thousand less than last year. Uh so on our average this year it's 676 tickets roughly per month. Um that's great compared to where we were pushing a little over 700 on average last year. Um that's a very good improvement. My goal was to drop this a little more but between Tik Tok challenges and a few other Chromebook issues we've had this year that went up a little. Um now on top of all this seeing that ticket load on average the whole year I think we had 80 85 8600 tickets for the year out of those tickets by up my on-time close rates our goal

082was 95. We blew that out of the water for the whole year. I I'm very impressed with the way the team knocked this out. Uh we did quite a few changes. We did some little automations and things here and there. We did add some specific things for Chromebooks like protective cases around the touchcreens like you guys have. It's working. So, some of these little things that we've thrown in has really helped us keep these on time rates down. We're also like the load of the tickets were down close to the thousand. That has helped because we're now able to kick this up another level. So, this is proving like the students not waiting for a device. The staff are working. and they're able to do their jobs in the classrooms and we're able to respond

083to them very quickly to make sure they're not out any time. Oh, and on time for the whole year, 98%. So, we really did great. Uh, this is let me I'm going to kind of explain the differences here. So, when you see requests versus incidents, request is generally something someone needs us to do like I'm hired. I need a laptop. An init an incident is more like I broke something, I need to fix it. Generally, our Chromebook breakage is the big spike on incidents. Right now, you can see last year we were in the 52 53%. We're at 48 and a half as of yesterday or as of this morning. So, that's actually made a very good shift in some of the tweaks we're doing is helping. Um, again, these cases, I think, have been

084the biggest thing. Our screen breakage is probably the top Chromebook issue. Um, it it's helping. Um this is kind of how we break things down based on our tickets that come in. So obviously talking Chromebooks that falls under device and hardware primarily. Um apps and software and some of these other categories. Um they've had they have gone down a little bit as far as the request counts and whatnot but um the devices are still our top for the year. So request for changes this is more of your I'll call it the higher level stuff that the team handles. So, these are like major projects and larger system changes that we have to make like applying an update for something or swapping hardware. Um, what I did here is tried to share like what we had

085last year compared to this year. Um, and I don't know if you can notice the shift here, but our pending's a little bit higher than what we had last year. And you can see the major changes are quite a bit lower. We have a little backlog happening right now. We had some major changes. You guys approved Juniper replacement switches for the year. that's taken some time for the team to get rolled out. Uh it's a very major process to get everything going. Um so that's kind of delayed a few things along with some other projects um that you know have added a little bit of that backlog. So we're plowing through it. It's just taking a little longer time to get there. Uh a lot of challenges for us. Obviously everyone knows tech costs are

086not shrinking. It's growing constantly. A lot of complexity with all the AI stuff that's coming. We've had a lot of increase in kind of governance and compliance stuff that we have to follow be it cyber insurance or other types of sharing agreements that we have. Um and honestly the daily support volume has escalated quite a bit uh in the past year and like I said the long-term stuff is delaying a little bit as we're trying to get through it. Um some successes. Here's a pick of the team. Great team. We did knock out the 49s again this year. I'm very proud of that. Um, our uptime honestly that's what makes us all reliable as a district and I think that's great for us. Um, our infrastructure is honestly one of the big assets that we

087have as a team. We can really lean on that and it handles very well. We put a lot of effort and time into that and it shows. Um, my MIS team has spent a lot of time building and automating a lot of things. We're checking data, making sure it's accurate, trying to automate more and more to avoid the human errors. It's it's helping. Um and honestly with the AI coming that's also a part of that where you need accurate data to do anything with it. We're focused on that highly. Um obviously the skills of the team is great. They're doing so much stuff and we're expanding you know all of the knowledge every day. We're finding something new and then again our strategic alignment that's one of our main focuses and improving all of our

088collaboration and cross department stuff. So any questions? All right. >> Thank you. >> Hi everyone. I'm Dominic uh from the BAC and um maybe some other areas you might learn about that you didn't know I did around here. So our our goals which align with the strategic plan of the district can be broken down into four sections. our artistic and uh technical excellence, the facility stewardship, community engagement, and the operational success that will continue to propel us to be one of the greatest things in the region for uh arts and education. So, let's start with our artistic and technical excellence. One thing that you may not know about is our arts in education program. our arts and ed program uh is really starting to take off and this is a timeline for you to really

089see how it's a 12 month process in terms of identifying and curating appropriate options that could be good for different grade levels. collaborating with different schools and grade levels and then implementing those over time to then actually put them on and get people to come sit down and see those. So everything that is happening this year was really an 18-month ago start pro uh process. So, I've already started working on 14 different options for next school year that our different school leaders will be getting and they will be able to pick through which one aligns the best perhaps with their grade levels or their priorities at that time. One of the greatest things with our uh arts and education program is it also allows families to come to events later on in the evening. So

090we're con connecting the the learning in the arts and what the family can experience together as a unit. So we we are fantastic at, if I may say so myself, at at putting students and the arts together, training them, giving them opportunities. The biggest the biggest goal that we have for identifying the future growth for us is launching better data. with that. We are all We're great at just throwing kids into positions, teaching them, moving them on to paid positions, but how many how many of our events have student workers at them? I don't have that data. So, we're going to get that data this year so that we can continue to grow that over time. Uh the other thing that we are going to work on is we're going to do a fullscale audit

091of every buildings digital media microphone systems all of these different systems which we you'll see in a little bit work a lot with that we have no necessarily information on what's what's a good system, what's a bad system, who put this thing in that we don't know about. There's a TV hanging on a wall here. We're going to get a good audit of that so that we know what we can expect and how to unify the district. Uh facility stewardship. This is this is a fun slide for you. So the top two pictures there. Um you know, you may say, "Hey, you're so young. You're 15 years old, BAC." Well, did you know when we were built the elevator was not where the people could get to it? It was hidden backstage. Well, it is

092no longer hidden backstage. There's uh there were a set of doors in that top right picture that have been removed. And then that wall in the bottom left picture over there is now a secure wall to backstage. That's right. An audience member could have walked right in the front door and straight backstage and then onto the stage. Now we can close and lock those doors. So that little bit there made us ADA accessible for patrons to be able to come in, find the elevator, and then B, it creates a secure wall to the backstage area over there. Uh, I know it seems like why wasn't that there? Uh, the bottom right, this is how we're utilizing our space that was here in different ways. That is our new podcast studio, which is my old office.

093So that uh that section right there used to uh it's right below our booth so it's a perfect line to the booth so that we can send signal out if we want to do live podcasts at any time or things like that. I was able to vacate my office and move next door because last year we were able to for secure reasons move the box office up towards the front and create a second secure entrance up front. So that that helped us utilize existing space and those are video production students and in fact this week there's been video production students in there every single day recording their uh capstone projects in there. So those are some things we have accomplished towards this goal already. Um and here are here's a few more. Um we've done

094things in HC Storm uh the con all the conference rooms around the districts with the two TVs and the moving cameras, the touchcreens everywhere. All of these cameras, all of those kinds of things are the BAC folks. We leave the building every now and then. Um the middle school library, which is a stunning, stunning space in terms of um well, in terms of what Mark did, of course, but in terms of the ability for us to have multiple displays, a microphone system that now every student, no matter where they are, can be able to hear what is going on. um Bluetooth capabilities, um a touchscreen system which can automatically operate all of the things within the room at a touch so that everyone has the capability to experience a presenter like this and um we

095did a similar thing at the high school as well. But here are I know you have this presentation those are long quotes but those are what some folks are saying about the impact on students with those spaces there. Uh so our goals in this section are are are right here and um yeah next moving on to community engagement. We do a lot of community engagement. We're doing two community engagements this very night. Um, but how do we equitably create this engagement for our students? There are two equitable uh areas that we're really working hard on and we've been working on for the past couple of years. That's our arts and ed series and our pay what you will programs. Within the arts and ed, you've got multiple areas that really make the arts and ed

096a successful thing. And that's the programming. What are the choices being made? What's happening in our world? What's happening in our communities? and what kinds of things do we need to bring to our students and then the public reach of that the numbers that you see there as these are numbers as of November 30th in both years so as of November 30th last year there were 72 arts and ed tickets experience happened as of November 30th we're already at 588 for the current year the same with pay what you will you can see so pay what you will The equity in that program is even in its name. It's not a pay what you can program which insinuates certain things about people. It's a pay what you will program. What you're willing to pay for

097uh coming to this piece of art. The reach on that was 89 tickets in our community before. We're already at 358 tickets as of November 30th. And you can see we hope to get arts and ed up to 1,200 throughout the year. And we anticipate we'll reach 750 this year with our pay what you will tickets. Uh and this is not even we're not even halfway into our season yet. We haven't even this doesn't count December or any of the major initiatives with our history to hiphop or things like that coming up in the spring. >> Can you just explain the pay what you will? So if I Yes. go to an event at the BAC and I want to see Miss Geral's one of her kids is playing and the ticket's $10. I can

098pay more than it. >> That's a great great clarification on that. Pay what you will. Those are for our national tours, for example. Does that make sense? The most of the things for student performances are all free, right? And then there are nominal fees for other student experiences like tonight's Winter Wonderland concert. That is when we bring in an artist from outside of here around the nation or the world. And yes, there are pay what you will tickets. And if you're willing to pay I can only pay $10. I I'm only willing to pay $10 for this. That's what you pay for that ticket. Also though, if you're willing to pay $110 because that's a valuable program that you want to see equitably go on for other people to therefore afford it. You can do

099that too, right? So, it's got that kind of thing. You might think too looking at this, well, what does that do? We are almost three times this year the amount of last year's uh attendance and income in those shows. So more people are coming. It's being supported by the total community and it is it is it's great. So what are our are our our improvements? So we we've we've got partnerships. the two we plan to do, we've already completed that. And then increasing engagement with underserved populations, groups, uh that's never completed. We're it's not something that's ever done. We're always going to be looking for opportunities to do that. Great picture for the Black Student Union that we were able to fund the drumming group that came in earlier in the semester. um and then

100some of those uh improvements to grow those other areas, the operational success and processes. So, we're going to really focus on our operating procedures and uh make sure we're aligning all of those between our different departments and we always every year we review a different system of ours. Um we have reviewed our ticketing system in the past. We have reviewed our um re reservation system in the past and we're we're planning to make some improvements on that as well. So that is mine. What what what did I leave out? What questions? >> What are some highlighted shows we got coming up here? >> Oh, there we go. >> Well, I'm gonna I'm going to tell you what my my favorite one is from history to hiphop, which the entire seventh grade is coming to. um

101and some of the high schoolers as well. It is the history of music from the slave ships all the way up until now and how we identify where music came from as Americans and where music actually came from and why it stemmed out of where it came. They tell a very interesting story in it and it's um it they play this song and you might know it mostly by Elvis Presley, you ain't nothing but a hound dog. And then they go on to tell the story and how it was really just marketed that way and it was really w written by a black woman and that song was kind of stolen and taken a different direction. So, it's really interesting stories on how our music is and and where it came from and the roots

102of why it is. So, that's what I'm really excited about. But, uh, some people might be excited for uh, Eric McCormack from Will and Grace, but So, and then of course all the kids things that get to happen. That's all my stuff. All right. I think last but not least, you're going to hear about facilities and transportation. All right. Thanks. Exciting. The three goals. Um, you've seen these. they're a little bit different. Uh the first one is about response time and resolution time. I'll talk more about that. Um it's basically our work order which is um now mirroring with technology department. So we all have the same throughout the district. So um it's incident IQ and then reducing the deferred maintenance b uh backlog. A lot about warm safe dry right there. And then the

103other one is some indoor air quality initiatives. So the first one this is response time. So currently well this is as the end of November is when I um pulled this. Um you can see this is going in the right direction. This is what we want to see. This is very new um to my department and really what we want is when that ticket gets put in whatever it might be we want them to respond to it. So that way the end user normally a teacher can say okay they've looked at it and then you know our goal for that is one day you can see there um July and August yes people still put work orders in and work tickets in July teachers are gone but they're still in the buildings we get into

104different teams and we're not in a specific building. So we have the custodians and teams. So we're working through right now how to improve that and what to do to make that number go much lower. Uh as you can see November I mean we are almost down to one day right now which is a good sign. And then the resolution. So basically once that ticket is put in when is it actually resolved? When is the work done? Currently we're at five days on average. I want to get that down to three. So that could mean if I'm at Hooverwood and I am a teacher there and I put in a ticket, a work order, it goes to the custodian. Maybe the custodian can do it, maybe this custodian doesn't have the skill set to do

105that work order. Then it gets passed along. Well, that resolution time counts everything for that. And again, that is going in the right direction. Oops. Um, back to that some target areas. I skipped over that. Um really how we're targeting to do this is email in progress as a department. So at this point saying hey you are at you know it's a simple email like hey we're getting there we're down to you know for response time we're down to 1.2 days. Other things is we have monthly meetings showing all of the maintenance people you know where you're at how can you improve on it. And really what I have found and in talking to um Mike and Rob with this is it's very much individual conversations. Some people are at a different level as far

106as just the techn technology they can do. Um high school, it's great. Custodian over there, Elvin has taken an initiative to get Chromebooks for all of his um custodians there. It's 500 square feet or 500,000 square feet, sorry. It's a large building to go back to one um desktop every single time is not using your time efficiently. So that has really improved difference at an elementary school, you know, 50,000 square feet. You don't have that far to go and some people need that desktop and instead of that. So we've been working through that and that's helped that um really the data as well. The other area is something that you're going to hear me talk a little bit more or a lot more um a week from right now when I bring um Louise White's

107project that's going to be happening this summer. Um that's one of the improvements. Um a little bit later, actually in 2026, I'll be talking more about um the storm site work and the parking lot improvement. And then early next year, we'll be, excuse me, bringing back the August and Nelson flooring project that I brought last year, but the bids didn't quite meet the budget. So, we looked at that again and hopefully this time they will. So, what we're trying to do is is this backlog of multiple projects that we have to get done and and with warm, safe, dry focus is we're just going to continue to drop that percentage. Now, percentage is not going to completely drop all the time. It's kind of like that, you know, two steps forward, one step back because

108each year there's more projects always being added to that because buildings are getting getting older. And then goal number three is to implement air indoor air quality. You saw this last year. We didn't quite meet that goal where I wanted to. Um we're really focusing on that more this year. Um specifically looking at temperature and air flow in all the buildings. Um here is our progress. Um HC Storm is going to be the pilot school for this and really we picked that one um because Storm got a lot of renovations done and some new equipment in there but they also have some you know older parts of the building too. So we want to make sure that all of that is you know working how it should. Um so we're at a point now I

109would hope that by the beginning of the next calendar year so in January February of 26 that will be up and running. So that dashboard will be running. We'll have on time. We can see exactly what's happening and then the goal is is then to get that rolled out obviously to all the schools. But to have a dashboard for you know staff members to go in and they can click on and see it. >> I have a quick question about this one for the air quality. Are we mandated to do any type of uh air quality checks? >> Uh mandated. No. The part of the mandate mandate that we have to do is specifics like for instance um you have to bring in 10% of outside air. That would be one thing that you have

110to do. Um but we're not we do we do checks and we have but you're not actually mandated to do those. >> So um we don't have to like record air temperatures or humidity or like mold counts or anything like that. Now, our system, what is our system going to record that you want to do? >> Right now, it's looking at temperature and basically air flow, making sure we're bringing in that outside air when we're supposed to, you know, making sure it's 10%. It's meeting that. Um, for instance, during CO, we increase that. Um, so we can just go in the system, I could do it right now. I could say HD storm, I want I want 20%. And I literally just enter 20% in. And that means that it's bringing in 20% of outdoor

111air. So it's mixing 80% and 20%. So that 20% right now it's 10 10% is what you have to do. So that's what we're going to be monitoring making sure that's doing what it says says it's doing there. Actually I was just saw a presentation. Um the technology is there with a AI now that will flag you if your outside damper, air damper or maybe a motor is almost going down. It will create a ticket and get sent automatically to you to go look at that motor or look at whatever it is. So it's out there now. It's very expensive, but it's it's coming. It's coming to the point where it's going to be, you know, monitoring every system that you have. So we're just we're starting at this point right now but we want

112to get that to look at everything but right now we're just looking at you know basically we're focusing on that as you know it's very much tied to you know student success and how they're feeling and you know in the room and a comfortable temperature. Oops. Before I get to transportation, anything else on facilities? Okay, transportation. Again, these goals are very similar in transportation. I think Tony mentioned it. Um, on-time performance is very important. Um, to get that to 99%. Uh, route efficiency is another thing. We you always want to reduce routes. Obviously, it's saving money as well, but you always that you want to be as most efficient as possible. And then, um, obviously, safety is very important. Um, right here is one accident per 100,000 miles. Currently, we are at 98.1%. That's a

113little bit down from last year at this point. Um, there's a couple factors in that that I've identified. Um there's been a lot of leadership changes with Illinois Central at this point. Um basically they have a new manager, they have new safety manager, they're hiring a new assistant manager. So really their entire team has turned over in three months. So really working through that. Um and then the other piece is um you try to tier as many routes as you can for that as well. So I'll just say a reminder of tiering routes. So basically, you don't want a bus just going to the high school and dropping off kids and then another bus, separate bus just going to the middle school and a separate bus going to elementary school. You want that one bus

114to drop kids at the high school, then go pick up rotollo kids, drop them at Rotolo, go pick up elementary kids and drop them at elementary. Now that's not completely possible in Battavia. We have one bridge and it's very difficult to get from Rollo Middle School to Grace McQueen. If any of you have tried it at about 3:00, 3:30, it's it's a little difficult to do in this town. >> I talked a little bit, I know when efficiency here um but we did um go from we have 190 current routes right now um compared to 193. Now, some of that is our population in schools have kind of dipped some. Um, so that I would say I know at least one route that has helped that. Um, but the other two is really by efficiency.

115Um, driver shortage is still an issue. I've talked about that before better than it has been, but um, we are still seeing issues with really recruiting drivers and getting drivers in. And then the other one is the 100,000 miles. You'll see an X here. I don't have the miles to date yet, but what's really good news is we have not had a single accident um to date. So, I would say that is a success considering the leadership change and the turnover there. So, that has been very helpful. >> Questions? I'll just say something kind of unrelated to this, but under your purview is that I appreciate how hard everyone's working. We're off to a snowy, wet winter >> and I'm an early riser and I see those folks out there working, you know, black and

116uh so their efforts are appreciated. Also, their neighbors at our schools, they clear the pathways for our students who are walking and their parents. So, I just want to say thank you to your team because I know that's very hard work. >> Yeah. And the work continues, too. Um Tony and I were just talking about this. Since pretty much since the first two snows, we've had a team coming in between 3 and 4 a.m. every morning to now move the snow piles. So you only put the piles in so many spots, especially at well especially at the high school. Um that lot is very challenging. So we then have to have come in with equipment and get that snow moved so we're ready for the next one. Now, long as this doesn't freeze tonight, the

117rain's actually helping to melt down some of the snow. So, we have places to put the snow that's coming Thursday night and on Saturday again. So, yeah, it's 17 in so far. It's the most since 1978. Just a little fact for everybody. >> Super fun. >> N's corner of trivia. >> Yeah, I think that I'm it. Right. Um, does the board have any overall questions, general thoughts, anything they wanted to discuss before I kind of do a closing statement? >> Just thank you for all the presentations. Really appreciate it. >> Thanks, sir. >> Hey, guys. Thank you. >> Anyone else? All right. Um so I will just say then that wraps up um the second year of our strategic plan midyear summary. Uh just I do want to personally thank all of our leadership teams

118that are here tonight and those who are not who helped uh not only just put this presentation together but what's more important the work behind the presentation right the work that they're reporting about our current progress our outcomes. Um what's it really interesting to me as I was listening to everybody tonight uh about two and a half to three years ago data was almost never being discussed at board meetings and now as an organization we are shifting towards all of our decisions being data driven and I think that's a really remarkable uh compliment to our leaders um to our colleagues both in BEA and BESPA for having embraced this um worked together and um I think we're going to continue to see the progress that we've been sharing tonight. It's a journey. It's not an

119end destination in education. Um there will be a time when all of the leadership in this room will be different faces, different names, different people, but the work will never stop. I mean, it's always going to continue to go, right? And so, the idea is that our legacy is to always build upon the foundation of those before us, keep building towards better, better, better. and in the themes of our wonderful Chicago Bears lately, right? We're trying to become the best, but it's a it's just a pro progress of growth. And that is uh what I want to summarize. Oh, stop. You got Lions. You got Lions and Packers fans in the room. Um but what what I I would just end with is the growth mindset of the organization, our ability to remain disciplined as

120an organization is key to making sure we stay on the path of growth. the more we lose sight of that, the less we're going to be able to accomplish. And so, I'm really just proud of what everyone's been able to do. We're going to keep going. So, looking forward to the end of the year report. Um, we'll have little check-in reports for the board along the way, as you've already heard. Uh, Brad alluded to some stuff coming up at the next meeting next week. So, we have another board meeting in a week from tonight, um, which will send us off into winter break. >> All right. So, thank you board for you. Appreciate it. >> All right. I will entertain a motion to adjurnn. >> So, move. >> Motion by Raquel. Second by >> second

121Aaron. It is now 8:39 and the PM and the meeting is adjourned. Please everyone. Thank you.