DeKalb CUSD 428 Board Meeting 6/3/2025

001And we will recall to an open session. Jackie roll call please. Here Steve here. Christopher Boyce here. Mark Shvad here. Nancy Bayham here. Maria Bell Rodriguez. All right. Now for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge algiance 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, we'll now move into public comment. We've got only one speaker, correct, Jackie? All right, Jenna Zimmerman. Hi. Um, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone I've worked with being student past student board member and I just wanted to give a formal thank you to everyone. It gave me an awesome like experience and I was able to learn so much about not only how our school works but

002just how like life works in general and I've also been able to interact with so many amazing um staff members as well as fellow students. So, I just want to say a thank you to Dr. Garcia Sanchez as well as Ari who's not here, but um I wish Maria some luck for the future, but thank you everyone who has helped me. Thank you. All right, moving on to board correspondents. Does anyone have any correspondents for the board? Yes, Mark. Um few little quick points. I promise I won't take up as much time as last week. Um, I would like to have a public conversation on how the district handles the Freedom of Information Act request. One of the items on the agenda is the Foye Compliance Tracker that's published on the agenda. And I was

003just looking through the items. I'm very much a advocate of transparency and following FOYA to the letter of the law. couple items caught my interest and as far as how we handle the Freedom of Information Act requests from the public. Item 60, uh, a individual, a citizen requested the contract uh, basically the contract uh, goals that were approved by this board back in September. And he said there was no discussion on the item and basically this contract was supposed to be attached to the agenda. And this individual asked that the performance and improvement goals approved at the meeting of September 3rd for the uh superintendent. Now the foyer was requested on April 21st of this year. The 428 FOYA officer was given an extension to the 28th of April and then the foyer was finally

004delivered to the requester on the 5th of May. Now, why it took so long to get a single page document to a member of the public that was supposed to be published on the agenda for the public to see that it took two and a half weeks to get to him when it should have been made public already. This was a one-page document. So, at some point in time, I would like this board to perhaps address this issue uh and have maybe have a subject discussion on FOYA. Why it would take six hours to deliver a one-page document that was supposed to be public. It's I've done FOYAS many times in the past and is very frustrating when you don't give people information. This I'd like to have a full conversation with this. Maybe I

005could meet with our foyer officer. Maybe the board could have a discussion on this. This the public has the right to see this information and taking and it showed six hours of staff time for a single page document. Now the document eventually made it to the agenda packet two weeks after the foyer request. And keep in mind this was approved back in September. So it was populated two weeks after the FOYA. So, I want to bring up an item that uh I think is quite interesting that our nearby district in Sycamore does. They have an item on their agenda every week called agenda building. They refer to it as future agenda items where board members can discuss for future discussion things they like to bring forth to the board because I would kind of like

006board correspondence to be, you know, where we talk about things that we do, things we've observed in the district rather than policy. So they refer to it as subject area future agenda items. Now I'm not sure if that would require some sort of policy change on the part of the board, but they put it near the end of the agenda so board members can suggest items to be brought about. Um and that's it for them. Thank you. Well, I don't think since the last board meeting Yeah. Now, graduation occurred and I'm sure especially with some of our new board members that got to be a part of that. I hope that you guys got to feel how truly powerful and pivotal of a day that really is, especially with this was our largest graduating class

007in history. So, I guess just first kudos to our administrative team and all of our teachers and staff at the high school who just put all that together. So just truly just phenomenal and I am just really inspired by all of our students and the success that we're starting to have. So that's just kind of my quick comment. Thank you. I went to graduation and I went to Huntley's eighth grade uh recognition and both were awesome. So great to see the kids being proud of their work and glad we get to go. All right. And any other board correspondents? Hearing none, we'll move on to student board correspondents. Maria did not give me anything. You know, it's summer. I'm just going to let them have fun and enjoy their summer. That is a-ok. Okay. So,

008moving on to item D. Just want to give a quick shout out to our mirror in the business department. For another year, we have been awarded the certificate of excellence in financial reporting. So, truly did a great job. And then to the amazing consent agenda. So it is recommended the board of education approve the consent agenda items 5B through 5E which is B approval of board minutes. C approval of personal action items, D approval of purchase order requisitions and E, employment contract for the assistant principal Founders Elementary. Do I have a motion? So moved. Second. Can we uh remove any items? Um, so I guess the first thing that I'll throw out instead of removing items for separate votes unless you're planning to vote no. Um, yeah, just have discussion on it instead of removing

009it. So is there something are you planning to vote no on a specific item or you I want to have a separate discussion on Yeah. So then we can just open that up for discussion on that specific thing. We don't have to remove it from the consent agenda to discuss it. So Okay. What would you like? I would like to remove the employment contract for the assistant principal. All right. So E will become its own item. Besides that, did you have any discussion or questions on A through D? I think in the um the approval of the meeting minutes, I could have sworn unless it was corrected, one of the votes, try to find it here, voted indicate that uh several members were missing in a vote. I don't know if that was correct. 7A

010in old business. 7A old business. Yeah, the the renovations. It just says not present at vote instead of yes. So, it's just a type, right? Just need to correct that. All right. So, do we have a motion to approve items 5A through 5D with the amendment to 5B? Well, I also want to comment on the other item, so I don't have the time to. Yeah. Um, we are approving um we're approving the assistant principal position. And I'm just curious, maybe we can have a discussion on this in the future. Why does district 428 grade schools in general have assistant principles when many other districts, for example, Sycamore for their grade schools that they don't have assistant principles? they we're going to be looking at probably budget issues going forward here. And I'm I'm concerned I'm

011not voting no on anything here, but I would like maybe going forward maybe looking at the need for assistant principles at the grade school level. I believe the salary for this position is 88,000 and I'm not sure how much it's going to be with salary and benefits. Um I would imagine it's probably over $100,000. Community members, taxpayers always tell me that the resources of our employees should be in the classroom as opposed to being in the front office. And this is just my take on things, what I hear from the community. Why do we have so many assistant principles? Sycamore manages to get by without them. So that's just my take. I'm going to vote in favor of it for now, but maybe look at this going forward. So I guess I'll just quickly jump

012in to kind of give more of an explanation. So, I know Sycamore is right down the road, but to compare us to Sycamore is truly to compare apples and oranges. Sycamore is one, compared to us, a much higher income school district. And two, as far as demographics go, they're a very homogeneous school district. So the behavior problems that present in our elementary schools versus their elementary schools are just very different things where one of the things that we found that has brought down and correct me if I'm wrong anyone in the room but we've been able to bring down a lot of our behavior suspension and expulsion data within the elementary schools by implementing these assistant principles and restorative deans at that level. And what we've really found is if we nip it in the

013butt early, it doesn't become a problem when they get to middle school and high school where those actions start to become not just, oh, I slapped someone wrong. Now we're dealing with a kid got hospitalized because they have the power and the ability to absolutely put a whooping. So, we've just found it's been more effective to find those targeted buildings within the school district where we know we have higher prop populations of lowincome students where we have data that shows, hey, there needs to be more assistance and resources there. And we found that these administrators have helped to curb a lot of those issues. So, that's just at least the why on why we've been doing that with some of these larger schools. If I may also add to that, um, school leaders are imperative

014for the growth of this district specifically because they are part of the support um, of the teachers in the classroom, whether it's for evaluation purposes, providing uh, coaching and mentoring, uh, providing any other restorative practices within the classroom um, that supports the teacher in in within all of the work that they have to do. remembering that outside of the classroom we have obviously um social workers, psychologists that are um that support children directly and are bombarded with the kind of work that they do. having two individuals outside of that realm being able to support individual teachers, teachers at a grade level, uh, you know, a school as a whole, aside from then supporting families as they're calling and needing, uh, one person will never be able to do that kind of work or you're just

015going to have them doing that all day. two people already in a school that's a little smaller maybe like a Lincoln or you know little smaller schools where they only have two u sections that's very different but with a founders with such a large school I mean I would even consider having even a third person there for them based on the number of students that they have so um I us taking away administration doesn't keep us from from uh taking money away from students. We're always going to put money closest to the students. Having that staff person at the end of the day helps everyone at that building, not just the teachers, not just students, not just the other administrator, but the family as a whole and the community. How much is duplicative of the

016assistant principal and the principles in Cal Schools? So, actually, we have two principles in the room right now and others that have been principles as myself. Usually, I don't know if either one of you want to jump in, but I'll start off by saying most part is that I'm going to say based on over at Courtland, right? We have uh Miss Hillard and Miss uh Frankle who take one group section and then the other group of section. So, sometimes they divide things whether it's an evaluation or coaching working with teachers. I know that, you know, Miss Hillyard handles a lot of the teacher feedback on the PQS, whereas Miss uh Franco might be doing the e uh the pair of professionals. So, there isn't work that they're both working on together, unless it's professional development,

017staff development that they need to do, the budget, school improvement, planning. Um let's see, we can keep going. I don't know if you want to add together on many things. However, oh, come on up. Not with the public. Thank you. I was totally planning on this. That's awesome. Thanks, guys. I mean, she's going to be here all night telling you everything that she does, but give them the highlights, please. Yeah. Well, um, Courtland, like Founders, we have over 500 students, 24 classrooms, um, three and Founders, I think, has five um, sole classrooms. And with that comes over a 100 staff members, all of whom need evaluation, coaching, mentoring. For one person to do all that, it's just we're not duplicative. We're we're each working on so many different ones. We're um I think I evaluate

018I completed 30 teacher evaluations last year and Melissa did almost 30. Um we have a lot of new staff that requires more evaluations plus we don't want it to be and that's more than one evaluation though. I mean it's it's three evaluations over the course of the year. Two or three? Two. Two. Um and with that we also don't want it to just be the formal evaluation process. We want to be going into classrooms observing the dayto-day and giving feedback and making those improvements and carrying over our school improvement goals um all the time. So that's that's why we need two people. And then if the teacher if the principal has to step out either for a meeting that left the building unattended to previously when we did have a shared assistant principal across two

019buildings. If uh we needed to make sure that if the principal was out, then we didn't have anybody taking care of the building and we had to find somebody else to cover the classroom, a different a different um leader from across the district. There's a lot of reasons that we added to make sure that each one of our schools had two school leaders to really balance out the leader uh the the leadership obviously in the building, but education, the support and the resources that are given to each and everyone. Could we be better? Obviously, everything we can do better. If we can become more efficient, we're also going to be doing that. But to take away something that has really built um um a momentum in support, I think uh would probably put us take

020us backwards instead of forward. Thank you, John. Thanks. If I could throw something in, um two things. one, when I was working with the as a school resource officer, having access to an administrator, no matter when I walked into the building was always a plus. And when I first started the leadership meeting that happened here at the district every Wednesday starting at 2:00, all administrators were here. So, if I had to go to a building and talk to administrator, there wasn't one available. So, having the extra one um definitely helps. On a personal note, I still remember the great Roberto Jess who was my assistant principal in elementary school and the reason why I was not in her office as a discip disciplinary problem no matter what people think. Um I remember because the principal

021had administrative stuff to do and she was available to walk around and interact with the kids, go into the to classrooms and see what the kids were doing with the teachers. And that was I mean 40 years ago. And if 40 years ago we had assistant principles, I think it would be definitely going backwards if we got rid of them. Um I do have a comment on something else. So I don't if anybody else has something on the assistant principal thing. Okay. Um on the uh consent agenda, everything looks great. I would just Amir um Manurva if you couldn't help please have these guys do better the the people putting together financial estimates better estimates um because it seemed Can we clarify that for you? I so there are different times where I mentioned it

022last week and I got I got an acceptable or last meeting got an acceptable answer about why the estimate was so far off of the actual cost. It happened again. We're talking about minuscule dollars here, but still, if you're going to put in an estimate that something's going to cost $600 and it ends up costing a district $1,800, is that money really significant? Probably not. But the fact that we're off by a factor of three is. So just looking to see that, you know, the people who are putting together these financial estimates of what it's going to cost the district to do something are actually doing their due diligence to do it properly so that we're not being surprised. And it doesn't look like they're asking forgiveness instead of permission because that's the way it

023kind of looks to me. It's like, hey, we got permission to do this and if we're overcost, oh, we already spent the money, so they're going to be okay with it and we'll just beg for forgiveness. And that's not really the way we want to run things. Okay. I I can appreciate that. I think that with uh the differentials committee, we need to make sure that we're more careful about how and what those differentials look like. So, uh Dietra, I think that's your committee, correct? So, we'll make sure that we uh take a closer look at that. Thank you. And Chris, one other quick comment, just general comment for the purchase order listing. I noticed we just list the fiscal year for the purchase order 2425. Is there any way f in the future we

024can get specific dates these things occurred on? Uh it is very general. So I don't know if these are from last fall, April or May. It would be helpful to see that on here. If it's coded in here somewhere and I'm not seeing it, let me know. Um I can see for some of the conferences that we've reimbured people for, but for example for there's more massages on the lineup again this time around. So when did that occur? It' be helpful just to have the date on there as well. It's kind of like a receipt, you know. So yeah, this uh document is straight from our financial software. So uh it is already pre I guess pre uh parameters are the same um that come directly from there. When we come to the board, uh

025these are expenses. These are purchase orders. These are requests. These are not being paid yet. uh the actual payment comes on the second board meeting. So these are as they come in uh as these requests come in from our teachers uh from our administrators from our buildings they uh they are presented to the board uh this is their first kind of view of it and in the second board meeting you actually uh approve the invoices or the payments of it. Okay. Thank you. Is there a way that we can get a record a a view of the purchase order and when it was assigned because that would probably answer the question. Yeah. So, it would be within this time period between the last board meeting and this board meeting. So, it's it's not that um

026you're getting this from like January. This would be between these past two weeks. Okay. So, generally speaking, just so that we're clear, is that it's the way the business gets done in the way the system is set up. The business gets done. Correct. Correct. Correct. So, it's not something that we're doing or we're keeping from it doing. It's just the way that it gets entered and then gets processed through the system. Does the system have the option to put in a date where it was submitted like it was submitted into the system on May the 3 or um and another thing there is also there's a lot of layers of approvers right so once the the principal approves it then it comes to the grant manager or the TNL manager and then the business office

027so there there might be a few days uh of approval that that goes through sorting So I don't this is the best uh I think this is the best let's give them a for instance right so for instance if somebody wants to purchase a a printer in order for a printer to be purchased they has to be approved pri pre preapproved then the purchase request request is made right the purchase order is given then the director of technology should be approving that then once the director of technology approves it then it gets approved by your office to be able to actually fund. Correct. Yes. Okay. So that because it it goes in different cues depending on the timing of it. That's why it it gets to that point. Correct. Correct. But again, these are very

028these are about two week uh when we uh uh when we bring this forward as they are coming in uh for approval. And just a helpful notification at the bottom. I had to kind of Google all the status codes from these like AW and O and all that. I didn't see a glossery. I don't know if we can maybe include that at the end or at the beginning of the document in the future. Yeah. Yeah. These are just financial is how the financial software provides it but we can look for another U report but I think this is the one that we've been sharing just in the future. Thank you. Sure. Sure. Thank you. All right. Move to accept. All right, we have a motion. Do I have a second? Second by Kristen. Jackie, roll

029call, please. Atwood, yes. Steve Buyers, yes. Jose Jquz, yes. Christopher Boyce, yes. Mark Sherbot, yes. Bino, yes. Kristen Bailey, yes. And now for item E, employment contract assistant principal for Founders Elementary. It is recommended that the board of education approve the attached employment contract for the 2526 school year. Do I have a motion? So move. Second, Jackie. Roll call. Christopher Boyce, yes. Arvat, abstain. Vanteum, yes. Kristen Bailey, yes. Nick Atwood, yes. Steve Buyers, yes. Jose, yes. All right, moving into presentations. First presentation is the class size advisory task force. Brought to us by Dana, president of DCTA. You got to play and group. He's got a How about that? And you play. Okay. Can you see that? I got a whole team back there. We are a team. Okay. Uh, good evening. I'm Dina. Uh,

030I am an eighth grade language arts teacher at Clinton Rosette and now currently co-president of DCTA. Um, we have a great team behind us for our class size task force. um Jane Luis, um Maurice McDavid, sorry, Jen Hillyard, uh Miss Parker, obviously, and there's several more that uh couldn't be with us tonight, but um our purpose basically uh this task force was formed uh back in 2019 with our first um DCTA negotiation uh then and then um re uh negotiated in 2023. Um we uh previously shared a presentation and we'll go over some of that um what we shared last time. Um but the biggest piece of um what came out of our committee um then led into the adoption and our building of Mitchell Elementary. Um so um based on our mou which is

031attached uh several teachers are awarded grants or stipens um who exceed um the class size and those are listed below. Um the stipen was increased from $250 to $300 with the 2023 contract. So you can see how much we've paid out um so far. Um before I get into anything, I just want to um reiterate that um research consistently shows that smaller class sizes generally lead to better student outcomes particularly in early grades and for low-risk populations which is what we have. Uh it improves their academics, enhanced learning for all, increased engagement and reduces the achievement gap. It also improves student teacher relationships. Um so the recommendations that we have, we're going to continue to work um as a committee um what four times a year, three times a year. Three times a year. Three

032times a year. Um um but we encourage all uh board members to come into our buildings, see where we're at, observe in our buildings for a day. Um you get a real sense of how crowded we are truly. Um so our goals for the 23 24 year um our recommendations were again to open up the new um school elementary school um and because of that we had to maintain our current thresholds. So at K5 we're generally at 28 students um and for grades 6 through 12 we're at 35. Now, we've added FTEEs like social workers and things like that to help with improvement and uh assistance pair of professionals, but really our goal was to get those class sizes down. Um, some considerations to think about is our two-way dual language program, our special education

033programs, our bilingual classes, and then the size space at Malta. Those classrooms are vastly smaller than any of the other buildings. Um, additional items to think about are mobiles being used at five of our buildings back then. Um, and then phases of the different facilities for the next several years. And all of this also comes through FFC as well. So, we talk about this in that committee as well. Any questions so far? Okay. Yes. Yes, sir. Just so I understand what you're saying that the the stipen that you were that were given out over the last year were based on classrooms that had more than 28 K 28 students K5 and 35 students 6 through 12. Correct. But the the what you show show in the presentation is over the lifetime of the contract since

034we've implemented theou from 2019. So that's that's from 2019 until now. Those payouts. Yes. Okay. So we didn't have six classrooms last year over 35. Correct. Correct. Yes. Thank you. Great question. I have another question. Sure. Is I'm just clarification. Is it like $250 for the academic year? That's the full segment. So actually um what happens is we do it twice a year. Uh once in October and once in March. Okay. So a particular person a teacher may get it twice in a year. Okay. That particular statement. Okay. So and what's the max like overage that you would allow? Not not money. I'm not talking about the money. I'm talking about she's talking about the actual students like I've taught before. That's does not seem worth it to me. That's curious. She can give you

035real numbers. Yeah. So theou is a good place to start to really understand this. Um there's actually a chart in there and in the chart it shows um the thresholds. So through this through the academic year that just ended anyone that exceeded 28 students in their classroom or if they were a bilingual class 25 students. Anyone that exceeded that by whatever number of students get get a one-time stipen. Um the measuring periods are October and March. Starting next year, those class size uh thresholds are reduced to 25 for elementary. For elementary, thank you. And then 21 for bilingual and then it's um it remains the same for secondary uh classrooms. Is that students to teachers? So when you have the supported classrooms of two two certified PEL teachers that they could have 38 in it

036and they're not violating because that's only 19 per teacher. So it's for core classes only. So this is not for all classes in the district. It's core classes and PE. So in those classes if the um the number of students exceed the threshold then those teachers are paid per teacher. And the middle school level is a little bit different with averages. So if there's a generally a co-teer in there, it would be the average of all of theirs. So it's a little different. Thank you. And that stipen was $250. It recently increased to 300. And like Dena clarified, that is over the life of thisou. Um the total is the $6,500. to get to the root of what I think Kristen's question was. I think she was saying what's like the ceiling where it's like

037what I think what she means though is like is there a absolutely we will not let a teacher have 35 kids. Yes. The attempt is not to exceed the threshold limit at all. But um the interesting part about this are the measurement dates are based on a particular date an October October 1st date and a no and a March 1st date. So on those particular days if that class roster exceeds the threshold number then that p then that teachers paid the stipen. So the the plan is not to um exceed the threshold, but with students coming and going on those measurement dates. Sometimes it does happen. When it has happened, it's been two students at the most that have been over the threshold. So not a significant number, but nevertheless definitely impacting um the number

038of students in that class. So we want to we want to stay at the threshold and the principles and the office professional do a really good job of monitoring that. So, as students move in, they really look at what the the numbers are and they look at where the best place is to place that student. If it does cause uh um uh class size overload, they will talk to the teacher and say, "Hey, I really need the student to move into your classroom for these very specific reasons." Um they will talk about the stipen at that point if necessary. um if it's still that number on the measurement dates, but if they have to increase that class size, they have a conversation with them. Um and the teacher um and the administrator work together to

039determine whether that's the right move or not. One one question, and this might be slightly outside the scope, but with these classes that are, you know, above the the threshold, is there a metric in place where we're guaranteeing that these classrooms have like an additional parah at all times? because I know we've not had a full roster of Paris. So, is there a priority for it if we know this teacher is going to have more than 28 K5? Are we ensuring that there's extra hands for those occasions? So, that is not something that was taken in consideration or written into theou um but it varies by every class because there could be um x number of assistants in that classroom or a a co-taught classroom. It's all by happen stance depending on the students IEPs,

040504s, and other special needs that students may have. But specifically based on student enrollment, there is not a provision that addresses adding um additional hands or assistance based on on enrollment. Okay. Thank you. If that's something you like to talk about though, we could absolutely talk about it. uh but is it is not currently something built into that in my I would think also that the the administrators in the building would notice that and see if you know the teacher would go to the administrator and say hey really I need extra hands I need you know especially when you're talking those lower levels kindergartens first grades where you really need more hands on anyways uh I would hope that then the administrator would come to the district office and request right and my my concern

041is you I'm sure the desire for the teachers is there. I just want to make sure there is a construct for them to have a right to such things. I agree. Absolutely. But keeping in mind that it's based on a single measurement date. So October 1st and March 1st. So the days around that like it it could be the day where moveins were happening, moveins or move outs were happening. And I'm not taking away from the fact that teachers have a significant number of students in their class, but the measurement date is based on two exclusive dates. Okay. So then uh recommendations for moving forward obviously um Leroy Mitchell will open up in August. So that will reduce elementary class sizes to 25. Um, we're going to maintain our thresholds at the middle school uh

042at 35 right now be because we just don't have anywhere to put them. Um, and continue to approve FTEES as needed and award the stipens as needed. Again, two-way dual language considerations, special education, bilingual, and multa. Um, one thing I do want to bring up really important though to maybe just put a little bug in your ear for um, moving forward um, is ELDC and their space right now being at Huntley Middle School. Um, that takes up twofold. One, they don't have their own space that is purely for their their developmental needs. And then two, we're taking up probably 6 to 10 classrooms from Huntley that could be utilized to reduce uh class sizes at the middle school level. Um so just a thought about our recommendations moving forward are going to continue to push

043for ELC to have their own space, their own building. Um so just some things to be thinking about. Um facilities though mobiles uh will still be used at three of the buildings versus five which is great and again we'll continue to work with the facilities department and FFC moving forward. Anything else? the use of or the removal of the of the mobiles from the two buildings is that bringing the most of them were either music rooms or or media centers, right? Libraries. Um, yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I think except for link except for Lincoln would stay. Yes. But I mean that is that bringing those those elements back into the building? So, so having those mobiles allows us to have music out in the mobile. If we got rid of mobiles, we'd have like um

044traveling music, I guess, is But we're getting rid of two. So, of the two we're getting rid of, is that bringing those elements back in? Yes. Yep. Sorry. So, would we have smaller classrooms if we left kept the mobiles out there? even smaller than 25. So it wouldn't change anything. Jen, no. Okay. No, the class sizes are just being reduced purely due to the mic if you don't mind. Oh, the class sizes are just being reduced purely by Mitchell opening. What that does is it just frees up a space like from a room that was maybe used for DC or Soul that might be moving to Mitchell. That then frees up a room for music to come back in the building. Thank you. Not at Courtland, but Just saying. Just saying. Are there any questions?

045Ju just to be clear to reiterate what I heard Dina saying is that the 10 classrooms that we currently utilize at the Huntley campus could uh instead of it being used for the ELDC, they can be rebuilt back into a Huntley Middle School uh classroom for students. Correct. if he could then build something out separate for ELDC that's more appropriate for their learning environment for the it people. That's what I heard say. Yes. Thank you. Yes. And other than that, we're we're kind of at a loss as to how to move, you know, our three through or uh five six through whatever, you know, 612, our middle grades, our secondary, how to move them along with class sizes to reduce those. And that's why I'd like to reiterate what Dina said as well. you stand

046up for the sorry and that's why I would like to reiterate what Dina said as well inviting board members to please come visit school facilities so that you can see how they're utilized whether they're designed built appropriate for students um and and so when there are proposals or requests you understand why those things might be happening. Thank you. So this committee will continue to meet because it is part ofou. It's contractual language. So we will continue to meet and we will be back before you next year as well. That's it. Thank you. Thank you. All right. And now for presentation B, end of year strategic plan update and department updates. Strap in guys. So we we are going to start with our end of the year data um for those uh new schoolboard members. This

047is uh something that we do three times a year. We will come before you again in the m beginning of the year and then in the middle of the year which is right around January and then we'll again be in front of you at the end of the year. Um this is uh because we want to share with you uh and very importantly our families that we serve our community. Um and we are engaging um in what is being uh coined um 360 accountability meaning that people are not just accountable that um work for us you know at the district office or work for um the school board but everyone is accountable and we are accountable to everyone. More importantly, we are accountable to the uh 6,7 and almost uh 90 kids um that we

048service that we service. So the last day of the school year, that was our number. That's how many souls we are required um to and obligated to and honestly I'd like to say have the honor and privilege to serve. So um we recognize that as we share this data with you, we have a a lot a long way to go. It's not pretty in some areas and we know that we have to put some things in place to not just be pretty but to do right by our students. So Dr. Donald, thank you um for that introduction and uh Mr. Boyas for yours as well. That's exciting. We have a lot of data and a lot of slides. I'm going to try to go through it um at an appropriate pace, but I am happy

049to present in a conversational style. So at any point if you have questions, please stop me. Most of the data comes from our MAP benchmark, which we talked about at the last meeting. That's our benchmark assessment that we give three times a year to determine whether our students are where we want them to be or whether we've got some work to do and make decisions about what interventions are appropriate for which students. So, the first that uh set of data we're going to talk about is related to our interdisciplinary units um that are being implemented. Our fourth grade students, the class of 2033, have had our interdisciplinary units for two years now. they're being written and kind of rolling up with that group of kids. So, this is their reading data um from first when

050they had our older style curriculum and then last year starting in the spring of 24, the first year of implementation with our interdicciplinary units when they were in third grade and now they've had the first year of implementation for interdisciplinary units as fourth graders as well. So, you can see um these charts look very much like a lot of the ones that will be presented. Sorry for the explanation for those of you that are not new to the board, but in case you are, we tend to present our data in these quartiles. So obviously um the red cortile is the 1st through 25th percentile. So that's students that are in the bottom quartile when compared to their peers nationwide. The blue is the top quartile of students nationwide. Green and yellow, I'm going to assume

051you can figure out. So as you can see, we had 50% of our students two springs ago in this group of kids that were in the bottom quartile nationally. and that number has been reduced to 44. We're moving the right direction. One reason that we would like to also track the class of 2034 is that we know anytime you've got the first year of implementation, there will be hiccups. So, it'll be interesting to see what happens with those students that are fourth graders next year that have had the second year of implementation, so the second time a teacher's gone through things. So, we we're encouraged by this data and hope to see further growth in the future. Um, I have ACT data for you from our high school. This is the first year that Illinois

052has switched back to using the ACT as the benchmark assessment rather than the SAT. We're not entirely certain what that will mean for benchmarking. Illinois has not released what they would consider the the benchmark for students to have to hit to be considered proficient in Illinois. So, the benchmark you see on these next slides is the national benchmark of what ACT says um allows a student to be prepared. Um this is our ACT composite score distribution. The black line on each of these graphs is what ACT itself considers to be proficient. So this is our ACT math score and our ACT composite score um distribution by race and this is overall distribution for math. So the higher the bar, the more students scored 13 for example or 25. And the lower the the shaded area

053gets, the fewer students scored that. And again, I'm just going to encourage you to ask questions as you have them. These are um the graphs that are a bit more familiar. These are the national composite percentile groups. As a reminder, the ACT is taken by our junior students. So, as you can see, we've got um the opportunity gap presenting itself as well in ACT as we've seen in our MAP data throughout the years. What is the y-axis again? Sorry. What is the y- axis? Um for I'm sorry, for which side? for the composite score here. The Yes, got it. Um, this is the score the composite score on ACT. So, the max is uh I'm sorry, the Yaxis 40. The Y-axis is the number of students that have scored. So, you've got all the number

054of students. Yes. So, over here, this goes up to 35 with our our high composite score for this junior class was 35. Um, perfect would be 36. Um, and so this is up here. You've got I'm going to guess that's 23 and a half or 20 23 24. So of students who scored 13. Yeah. Thanks. Yep. Um, in this So this is this color would be students of um, Hispanic Latino background. This is basically the same way to look at that information but a different way to look at the same information. So divided by race or ethnicity uh math score distribution and college readiness math benchmark grand total and then divided by race or ethnicity. And this is the average math score and benchmark. And then we've got the same charts but for English. Um

055certainly these are also in your slide deck that you would have received that that are publicly available. So if you have questions after today as well, happy to answer those. Freshman on track is our next chunk of data. Um just a reminder that we look at freshman on track as a metric in part because we know it is incredibly predictive of a student's likelihood to graduate from high school. Um it is more predictive than their race, socioeconomic status, or their prior achievement. In fact, it's more likely than all of those things combined. It is also important to us because it is tracked by the state of Illinois and it factors into our summitive designation for the high school. It is 8.33% of our summitive designation. Another way of thinking about that is that we could

056get 8.33 points toward our score from having a high nth grade on track score. Um the high school tracks this carefully and they have a lot of time and energy devoted to um getting this our number of students who are on track to be as high as possible. This is our longitudinal data for this measure. So as you can see back in the spring of um our freshman on track percentile was our percentage was 63. It is 77 currently. We expect that this will go up a little bit with our extended school year opportunities um that students do have to go back and complete um summitives and assessments and and extend their learning in the hopes of raising their grades if they scored at least a 55%. Yeah. This is our suspension data which we

057always report with the same information. Um, yes. One quick question about the freshman on track is Yes. Does it mean like literally what the words are? It sure does. Yeah. At the end of the year they they have the credits that would be required if they continue at that pace to graduate. Yes. Okay. Very good intuition. Um, essentially it is how many of your core classes have you failed. The reason that's a little tricky is because as a freshman, art is not a core class. But if you're a senior who's credit deficient, you better pass art, right? So, it's a little tricky for that reason. Um, which is why we make sure that we look at it as carefully as we can and try to really look at who are those 23% of students that

058we need to have extremely serious conversations with and try to provide every opportunity to get them back where they need to be because we want them all graduating on time. All right, suspension data. So, this is the number of suspensions and the percentages of students who have been suspended, which is mildly confusing. So, um, on the left you'll see this year's numbers and on the right the same period last year. So, we had almost the same number of students suspended overall, but there were more suspensions this year, which means um higher rate of recidivism, right? So, you've got more students getting the students have more suspensions per student, but not necessarily a big jump in the number of students who receive any suspension. This is divided by gradeband, elementary, middle, and high school. This is

059our student suspension data that is disagregated by demographics. Um, and a number that we watch very closely because while we would prefer none of our students are ever suspended, certainly we would like our students to be suspended at the same rate across all race and ethnicity groups and that is not what we have. We have disproportionate um data in which our African-American students continue to be suspended more than students in other groups. Although we have seen growth in this area over the past several years, we're down about 10 points of disproportionality overall, which is again progress. Um, this is our attendance data. Overall, districtwide, we're averaging 92% uh, which is better than we had seen immediately after COVID. And this is the breakdown by grade and by school building. This is our assessment data for

060the end of the year, starting with map growth. This is a familiar chart which I included only because um board members who are have a bit more seniority will be familiar with it. This was confusing to everyone all the time. So at the suggestion of the strategic plan committee which Dr. Bailey I understand you'll be joining us on which is great. Um we have split those two. So these are the percentages of students who met their growth goal. One of the very nice things about our benchmark assessment is that it tells us approximately how many points each student should be growing based on how that student has done previously. So they don't expect all kids are going to grow the same amount. So based on what MAP expects of them given their glut of data

061nationwide. Um these are the number of students that met the growth benchmark. This one is very much like a light switch. They either crossed the line or they didn't. Which is why I prefer this one. So this is all of the growth total total up for all of our kids compared to how much all of them in total were expected to grow. So, if you got real close to that line, but didn't quite cross it, you still count as toward the success of your grade level. And if you went way past the line and grew tremendously more than you were expected to, you count for all of the extra growth you did as well. Um, so you can see we've got some really bright spots. The middle school math in particular, we seem to see

062students just growing a ton, which is fantastic. And our third grade had a a lot of growth this year as well. This is the same metrics but for ELA. So for our MAP reading test again, this is the confusing one. Um, and this is the one that is the light switch on or off. So any place you've got more than 50%, we can feel pretty good about that. More than 50% of our students are meeting that benchmark of growth expected for them. And this is the um percentile of growth for that grade level compared to the rest of the country, what you would expect. So we know this is helping us identify the areas where we can applaud the efforts um that are being made and the accomplishments and also where we might want to

063devote more attention to looking at the curriculum and how it's being delivered. Here are elementary literacy assessments. MAP reading English. These are our reading percentile groups K5 districtwide. So all of our elementary students. These are the percentile groups over the last six testing periods. So the last two school years, this is by grade. I think one of the best uses for MAP is this kind of um curricular assessment where we're looking gradewide to say, okay, where do we need to be paying more attention? This really helps with that rather than just individual students. And these are our reading percentile groups by race and ethnicity. Again, something that we want to make sure we're focusing on is how are we serving all of our students. And this is reading percentile groups K5 by lowincome status. These

064are the elementary literacy assessments for MAP reading in Spanish. Um, this is the districtwide. So, students that are in our two and one-way dual language programs take MAP reading both in English and in Spanish. Um, in fifth grade this year, our students who took this test uh come from a Spanish speaking background, but in grades K through four, the students may speak only English at home. In fact, about half of them do. So, this is how they've done over the last six testing periods. What I find interesting, well, I guess I'll keep it to myself. It's already 754. Um, this is the by grade and then by low-inccome status. It is the most equitable data every single time we do this presentation. Students who qualify for free lunch and those who do not do about

065the same. This is the same. This is map math for K5 percentile groups for everybody. This is over the last six testing periods. So progress is being made incrementally and this is by grade and by race and ethnicity. Again, please feel free to stop me. And this is by low income status. Now, we've got the same data for our middle school students. Map reading percentile groups for everyone in middle school over the last six testing periods. Um, this is by grade. So, eighth grade one, and this is by race or ethnicity, by low income status, so you're more than twice as likely to be in the red if you qualify for free and reduced lunch. And then our literacy assessments for MAP reading Spanish. Our one-way dual one-way program is in the middle schools, not

066two-way yet. So, this would only be students that have Spanish um in their background. They speak Spanish at home or come from a Spanish- speaking background. However, keep in mind once students reach a threshold that their English proficiency is high enough that they are no longer taking the access test, they may no longer be in programming, in which case they're not taking the Spanish test anymore. So, it's a little bit of a self- selecting group, if that makes sense. If it doesn't, stop me. Um, this is our Spanish reading percentile groups over the last six testing periods. It's kind of spiky. This is a much smaller group of students because it's one way, not two-way. So we don't have um we don't necessarily have simultaneous bilingual. So a a small number of students can really

067change the percentiles significantly. And this is by grade and by low-inccome status. Here we have our math assessments 68 districtwide over the last six testing periods. by grade. I find these really interesting. I want to pause and talk about them for a second. We have a number of seventh grade students who are taking algebra, which is traditionally a freshman in high school course, as seventh grade students. And we have far more students that are in eighth grade that are taking algebra. So, this is how they're doing on the algebra test. It is not the same math test that our other students are taking. So, you can see our seventh grade students are absolutely doing a fantastic job. and the eighth grade students are doing very very well. But what this actually says to us as

068educators is we need to get more kids in these classes. While this looks great, we want to have the seventh graders that can score in the yellow and green have the opportunity to be exposed to this curriculum as well. One of the great things about the shift in this middle school schedule for next year is that more students will have the opportunity to be in those classes because this sure looks like there are students out there that are ready for this curriculum and so we're going to find them. I I guess my only question with that is is are we I guess not flipping the causation and correlation kind of with that. These students aren't doing that well on the math test because they're in the algebra course. They're in the algebra course because they're

069already so proficient in math that they're there that early. Yes and no. If they're in the algebra course, they're exposed to the curriculum that's allowing them to take the algebra map test. So this is again it's a completely different test and I agree with you that we do not want to give algebra to every seventh grade student. They're not all ready for it developmentally. They're not all ready for it um in terms of the you know their schoolwork. That's true. It's a this is um fairly staggering graph. We we don't want to have for example 25 25. That would make no sense. But there are certainly students that scored in the blue and maybe even the green on the regular seventh grade test who could have been pushed um and then who knows what you

070know. So it it's really um my favorite analogy maybe of all time is thinking about the course that you're placed in like a pair of shoes. You don't want them to be too small because then they'll be pinching your toes. But if they're your shoes are too big, you may also get blisters. Um which I should have mentioned before I had been standing up here for 15 minutes. Just makes me want to take my own shoes off. But I do think that making sure we're getting all of our kids in the most appropriate class for them is something we have to continue to look at because this is great, but it also tells us there's other people out there, right? Yeah. I don't know. Does that make a little bit some sense, Chris? But you

071you're correct. We I think it is the correlation that we want to consider. Um, and this says to me that we haven't found every kid for whom, whether it is they're doing well because they're in that class or they're in that class because they're doing well, it doesn't really matter. Let's give them the curriculum. Let's see what they can do. Let's let's provide them with that challenge. Going back to our last sure presentation, aren't the the algebra class, especially in the seventh grade, aren't they a smaller group of students taking those classes? Those class sizes are way different than the class sizes of gened. So, our seventh grade students, well, this year I believe will be the first year that we may have some sections. So the fall of 25, we may have some sections

072where there are seventh grade students only in an algebra class, but historically whether you were in sixth grade, seventh grade, or eighth grade taking algebra, you were all in the same room. So um yes and no. There there may be anytime we're talking about adding additional um levels. One of the problems is that your denominator is so much smaller that you shifting between two sections of something and three, you may have a a widely different number of kids in that classroom, right? because you may be talking about 100 kids. In that case, I hope you're talking about four or five sections. Can I? Yeah, go ahead. And the goal has been to get as many students into um having access to that higher level of education. And we we try not to gatekeep, but honestly

073in because of the scheduling in middle school before, you know, I know from middle school scheduling, um we would max out at 35 and that there may have been some students that could have got in there, but because we didn't have the space, they ended up going to the other class. And we know that for their career, for their educational career, for that trajectory, if you expose it to them at seventh grade, it can make a huge difference for the rest of their lives. Did that answer your question? Yes. Okay. Um, this is our seventh grade advanced students. So, they did take the six plus math map test like everyone else. This is not a different test, but again, um, this is better, Chris. This is more what we'd want to see where it's, you

074know, 2177 and then two. But we'd like to see a little bit, even a little more variety, a little more color would be great. So, but it's exciting. That's good stuff. um ma math percentile groups by race or ethnicity and by low income status. This is across all of middle school. And that's it. What questions do you have? Yeah, Dr. Bailey. So, I'm trying to decide when to ask these. One of the questions I have is, do you look at data? And I don't know that you can. And I also am very aware that these tend to follow a similar trajectory. But do we look at the data for things like race and lowincome status overlaid with one another? Sure. Yes. Um one of the things that uh we need to work on as a

075community is that we have a lot of um overlap in those groups. So we tend to see um some of our racial and ethnic groups have much higher levels of qualifying for free lunch. And that is something that we need to work on together. So we do look at sort of what is that intersection? What's the of of those things? Um in fact a board member several boards ago said I'm not sure why we have to look at both. Can we just look at low-inccome really? We want to make yeah we want to make sure we're looking at both right and disagregating as fully as possible. Yes. Um we used to present that data separate. I think there was maybe one time that we presented that data separately. So for our students who happen to

076be Asian here and qualify for free lunch or don't here's and it's so many slides that we've um reduced it to. Yeah. I was wondering if you did that though if it's if it exists or if it's something you've kind of we have moved away from it because of um in order for data to be actionable. We we want people to have the appetite to talk through it and come up with solutions. But as a member of the strategic plan committee, among the things you'll be tasked with is with this figuring out what is the best format to present our benchmarking data to the board and general public. So I welcome all conversations about that. I know that these can be um not mind-numbing, but maybe eye-ming because there's so many colors that look very

077it's a lot. And so we want to make sure we are highlighting our areas of concern as well as our things that we're proud of and um coming up with a good way to do that. I look forward to having those conversations. I'm excited for that. Okay. And then another question I had in regard to how things are presented. Um I don't know if it would be beneficial, but I'm wondering about the numbers of students represented by each graph alongside the percentiles so we can see like where they might be more significant. We also did that. That's also something we did in the past. Happy to add it again. Um, so this is probably further in the weeds than we care to get to, but in order to add the number in a parenthesis next

078to each of those percentiles. You have to go in and manually click it and type it, which were created, correct? Um, and anytime you're typing something in by hand, you significantly increase the risk of getting it wrong. And we want to make sure that we're being completely that we're presenting all the information as accurately as possible and not being disingenuous in any way. Yes. However, we can go back to adding a I don't know what the appetite would be for this. We can go back to adding a table that lists what number of students that is, but then it asks the audience to sort of do that crosswalk between table and graph and that we found to not lead to productive conversations either, but open to exploring technology. Well, right. Yeah, it's uh we're certainly

079open to exploring any and all options. Okay. I think also in in in the strategic planning committee um we do have much deeper discussions about data. Again, it's it's in an actual board uh administrative committee. Um p the public is welcome to come and be parts of that. It's a I'm sorry, it's a district administrative committee. Um and so people um we do have a app a parent on there and other people are welcome to come in and have those conversations, but for purposes like this, we would be here to midnight. So yeah. Thanks. Are there any other questions? I think you guys are great. Thank you, ladies. Thank you. And now for all of our department heads to give us their strategic end of year update. I will go first. Um so uh we

080started off the year uh in the improvement and innovation department and our focus was uh based on um some a lot of things that came out of what was named another department. But our main two focuses were to increase and elevate student voice as well as to identify in each of the school buildings gaps that existed and how and to have a plan in place of how we were going to address those gaps. So um this year each school did identify and implement how they're going to integrate student voice and myself and several other directors um did things like meet with principles. We went in and we observed principles during different interactions like staff meetings and some professional development that they provided to their staff. We also uh in the department um we knew that

081comprehensive guidance documents did not exist and what that is is uh in HR world they call it standard operating procedures. So if one person was doing the job for let's say 25 years and then they won the lottery, the person who came behind them often times didn't have anything documented, something written down and say this is how you do this job well. And so that was also a a goal of ours. And um also for u myself personally as a director was to enhance data lit my own data literacy because I wanted to understand that that orange and black slide that Jessica always presents. I said when I get to the point that I can explain that slide, I know that I have um done a little a little bit better. So, I've worked um

082specifically with Dr. Nol um sometimes oneonone and then I've also um I'm outside I'm doing some outside research as well and so I've also worked with people from niu really to just become more data literate educator. And then our culture coach in the INI department did complete an Illinois State Board of Education facilitator fellowship which was a 9-month process and I was pretty much like taking uh two college level courses and she did that so that she can better serve and um partner with our teachers for priority one student achievement using facilities. it can be a little more challenging to connect that from a student achievement level for our department. The main thing that we focused on this year is the Mitchell Elementary building. By uh getting that building up and running on time, it

083does create more space for our staff and students and that was the primary focus for our goal this year. And we are on time and and under budget. We're speaking for budgets. Um business office had major tasks this year. Uh we negotiated three union agreements. We provided considerations for their work with fiscal responsibility. Uh we also had Mitchell Elementary School open up or at least uh be completed with construction with scheduled payments and being paid out of state funds uh with no co uh cost overrun uh and on-time payments. We also closed transition center. It opened in January 25 and is running its programs. Uh we also worked for uh TIF 4. Uh we proposed an agreement signed by all nine taxing bodies and the city uh giving their approval for our proposal and the

084shared benefit the IGA was providing. So we uh were able to sh allow revenue generated by this Tiff 4 to be distributed to all taxing bodies in similar formula to our current TIF 3. This allowed us to maintain some funds for the district that would have otherwise be diverted. Uh we are collaborating with academic departments and school administration to work more efficient and effective resource coordination of sources of funds including grants, budgets, and other streams of funds. We piloted a program with ISBY called resource allocation review. Uh and we're already on the way implementing their framework. uh our ongoing projects are to share our financial goals with community either through the FFC uh group and website and other uh means. Thank you. I apologize. I only hit on priority one, so I'm going to jump

085back on my other three priority levels just real quick. The priority two, our focus has been on community engagement and with the marketing priority is to increase our community use. Our department manages the facility use of our buildings for outside groups and when our buildings move between uh buildings to use spaces such as if Lincoln comes to the Huntley Middle School to use. We are implementing a new software system to make it more efficient and more userfriendly and u to also provide us a better tracking mechanism for our facility use throughout the district and that will be implemented and rolled out in August when we return to school. So, with pushing for more community involvement and usage of our facilities, I guess we can roll out a brand spanking new nice software, are we still

086blacking out pretty much the entire period of the year where people would want to rent our facilities, though? Because if we say, "Hey, you can only rent from us when our doors are open." And our students are using the facilities all year, it's pretty useless. And we're not making any money off of it over the summer when all of these travel ball wreck leagues and things are going on that we would get the money from. We can look at other options. It is more challenging in the summer to be able to open our buildings up because that is the time of year that we have the opportunity to clean our buildings from top to bottom and ensure that we have it ready for our students and staff to return in August. It's also a time

087for our construction projects. And if you've ever been in any of our buildings during construction season, they are um they're quite a mess for a while, which also delays our cleaning process. Not to say it can't be revised and reconsidered. We do try to open it whenever possible. Um, the high school is one of our busiest buildings obviously, which makes it even more challenging because it is so frequently used by our own student population, athletes, fine arts, etc. But again, that can be something we can reconsider and see if there are ways to do it. It's just not always the easiest way to go about that and to give up that time to do construction and and cleaning that's necessary, then we may lose out an opportunity to do the construction that's necessary and the

088upgrades we need to throughout the summer. Uh the third priority, financial stability. Uh for that, we have a five-year plan which will be brought to you in the fall. Uh it's a five-year facility plan that we update on a regular basis. Once we get through our summer projects, we'll be updating that information and that'll be presented to the board. Um budget in which I already mentioned is under budget. And then the last thing uh we for human capital and recruitment priority, we are in a transition period with our department. Our day shift custodial supervisor retired last year and we have a new supervisor in place. Our maintenance and ground supervisor is retiring later this year and so we'll be re uh looking to get his replacement in place so that we can train and then

089my retirement is next year. So out of the four supervisors at the department we'll have three new coming in over the next year or two. So that succession plan is underway and we'll be bringing more information forward as we progress through that. Right. Thank you. So HR really does touch all the priorities but we live in priority four human capital um recruitment development and retainment. So we have implemented a number of new systems to streamline our work but also create efficiencies but some of those rollouts have um been more time consuming than we expected. So, we are continuing to improve our onboarding and customer service process um through our onboarding and have a lot of exciting new plans coming for the start of the 2526 school year. I always have to remember what year we're

090in. Um so, we're excited about a new year starting for us and creating more efficiency and getting people excited about joining the D428 family. We are continuing to build partnerships with colleges and universities. We have a strong connection right now with Grand Canyon University um because we have some partnerships where they're helping to uh grow our own our pair professionals into teachers and we're excited about those cohorts. We continue to work with niu um but the the calam is getting out there. So we have more and more colleges and universities reaching out to us for internship opportunities for um clinical hours but also student teaching opportunities. We continue to work towards um the creation and finalization of handbooks. We're doing an unaffiliated staff handbook, also a handbook for our administrators because everybody just needs to

091know what the rules of engagement are. Need to know how to how to follow process and procedure and to accomplish their end goals. We um as our mirror mentioned supported and participated in the negotiation of three contracts. We are getting those implemented for July 1st kickoffs. So, as related to hiring for all of those uh three units as well as just other initiatives associated with each of those contracts. Thanks. Evening. Uh from a technology perspective with strategic priority one, the goal is to continue the success of our one-to-one programming um and finding ways to enhance it, including increasing the uh return on investment. uh also enhancing our cyber security posture. So uh we actually mitigated the increasing costs of our one-toone devices for the 2526 school year by saving the district more than 10% per

092device of the total purchase. Um, we did that by uh working again very strategically with the business department, working with the board and trying to get these things in front of you guys uh usually before the holiday break so that way we can guarantee receiving the devices by July and also we were able to mitigate many of the price fluctuations that occurred post um election. Um and then as well as uh as a Google reference district we have been able to introduce advanced features from AI to our cyber security to the platform which is something they only rolled out to a handful of customers which kind of put us at strategic advantage for a couple things. Uh for strategic priority two was to work collaboratively with the communications director to enhance our outside facing website

093and successfully migrate from our current mass communication system to parent square. Um, and I can honestly say with the addition of the FTE with Kevin Wood kind of uh joining on to the team the website and multimedia specialist position uh we've been able to be very agile in our ability to sort of present uh information to the community as a whole social media Kevin was at our graduation taking pictures. So we had some nice real time event information shared with our families and the community. Strategic priority three from a technology perspective was working collaboratively with the business department the grant manager to appropriately size the technology department budget. So the same as our mirror discussed uh working very closely with the various departments but um especially with the increasing costs that are happening in the

094technology field as well as the cyber security portion of it. We're seeing increasing costs of upwards to 33% on some of these products and platforms. So being able to work, you know, with the business department and quickly streamline when we can purchase something and trying to maximize the ROI or trying to lock in on multi-year agreements in order to drive down costs, especially with the uncertainty of the future, has been able to save the district money. Um, and for strategic priority four was to attract and retain IT professionals and assist the HR department with their frontline migration. Um and again so part of the journey of my department is to make sure that there's continual uh professional development. I can happily say that one of our core members just got a certification last week. Um

095several of our current hourly staff are working on certifications as well. So we like to prepare them as well to be able to either join the team as a full-time FTE down the road or to find a career within uh information technology by the time they leave. So thanks Billy and I will share this one. Um, teaching and learning, student achievement and growth is the heart of the work that we do. And as Dr. Null had shared during the end of the year data presentations, it's very important for us to look at what are the grade level standards, our course placement, our course offerings, the trajectory that our students will need to be successful in what post-secary path that they have. Um, we make sure that we have, as you've seen through past board meetings

096and upcoming future, additional course offerings, new curriculum, different professional development to support all of our classrooms. Um, she'd also reference the two-way dual language rollup. We're really excited about that with the fourth and fifth grade done. Currently working on the sixth grade. A lot of exciting movement there and watching the staff um write that curriculum and prepare for um those students to reach the middle school and then to the high school. Um and also continuing the focus on conversations around data. We've spent a lot of time with our PLC's. We're sending um leaders this summer to Chicago for extensive PLC professional development collaboration with INI student services and building principles to make sure that the important work that is done each time that we have PLC's surrounds the work to support all of our students

097where they're at. And then with community engagement, um the high school has continued their monthly sessions. Our buildings continue um their family engagement nights and they're already getting on the calendar now for next year. The orientation dates and open houses which is exciting to see roll out. Really looking forward to those. and then also um utilizing the communication department to make sure that we're having timely feedback to our families about the different programming and events that we support. So, I'll go ahead and cover three and four, and I'm going to use this because I'm guessing it's up here for a reason, right? Um so, the big one with uh strategic priority number three, our finances. We really look to see how we could maximize our spending with our grant funds prior to using our local

098funds. So, uh, we met earlier with our our mayor this year to talk about our budget for TNL for next school year, and he said, "Why do you need additional funding if you're not using it?" Well, we're It's not that we're not using, it's that we're maximizing our grant spending prior to our local funds. So, the local funds right now are instable because we don't know what's going to happen um after after the presidential election, right? Those are unstable. So, um, we are remaining to keep those, but we're going to use the grants as much as possible. And then the last one was I wouldn't say it was seamless, but the hiring process at Mitchell. Um, we have been fortunate enough to I think there were some doubters that we weren't going to be able

099to to fill Mitchell with uh certified teachers and we have filled all classroom teacher um vacancies or FTE at Mitchell Elementary along with some others as well. Um we still need assistance but I mean that's something that we are struggling across the board and hopefully with the new contract we're able to um rec recruit more. So, that's where we're at as teaching and learning. All right. Good evening. And last but not least, uh, student services. Um, you know, I'm standing up before you talking about a lot of the work that's been done by many of my team members. Um, so I'm really happy to kind of share those highlights, but the work really I'm going to give them the credit for what we've been able to accomplish this year. Um, when it comes to student

100achievement priority one, we really leaned into professional learning communities this year. uh making sure that our related service staff and our special ed teachers have that structure and kind of um support and accountability to be able to move forward in their dialogues around what they do for students centered around data. Um this one was an important one for us because we took a hard look in the mirror from last school year and said, you know, we probably didn't do what we needed to do to set up a good structure. And so we took a huge step for that this year and the feedback we got at the end of the year was that it was beneficial to the staff that engaged with it. Um we'll continue to build on that and as uh Sarah mentioned

101we'll work collaboratively with TNL and INI and all the other uh departments to kind of uh continue our PLC progress. Um in addition to that we've continued our work to build out multi-tered systems of supports um for behavior. So um you know really we're we're kind of entering next year our fourth year of some systematic work that we've been building out and I'm really happy to say that every year we've seen some growth. There's definitely pockets where we need to kind of sh some things up. Um sometimes supports are impacted by staffing or lack thereof. Um so we do know there's always going to be some continuous work there but um really making some great steps in our framework. Um and it's something that I think Dakota has been highlighted across the state in some

102of that work. Um, priority two, community engagement and marketing. And we really focused in on trying to continue to maintain the enga uh community partnerships that we have. Uh, family service agency, safe passage, ramp. Um, there's many more than that that have been existing for a number of years. Um, but we also wanted to look for more opportunities to continue to build upon those to bring in more um, supports for students or families. Um, so, um, one of the things that we really, uh, leaned into this year was, um, collecting some funds that could be used to then utilize agencies or get more things to students. Daybreak Health is a big one. Uh, so we're able to get some, um, a significant number of grant funds. Um, and then in partnership kind of with our

103DAP County Mental Health Board and our other uh, mental health agencies, we were able to supplement what they do by providing free access to mental health services to all. Sorry, this is going to be a shameless plug plug. All students in our district um as well as families. Um so it is something that we can uh provide that is unique. All right. Uh strategic priority three. Um this kind of leans into more of that financial stability. So again, we really looked at grants and where we could bring in some more funds. We're able to sub obtain a mini grant through IAAS, which is Illinois um um kind of alliance of administrators of special education. And that allowed us to build a greenhouse at the Beyond One Barbar Transition Center, which allowed them to start doing

104some life skills earlier in the winter, and now they're transitioning out in the uh warmer weather into the ground. So, um, and I already mentioned Daybreak Health. That was a a huge um huge thing for us. We're really proud of that one. And then last but not least, I'm going to uh speak to a thumbs down that I gave us. Um, and the thumbs down was probably a reflection of where I was in the moment that I had to say, "Okay, where are we at with this one?" But um it really comes down to working with human resources, which that part has been fine. Um but to fill our hard to fill positions, the ones that have been chronically hard to fill for not only Decal, but for many districts like ours across the state

105and across the country. Um this is going to continue to be a challenge for us. I read a report earlier today that talked about um within the state of Illinois, how many districts are struggling to fill special education or related service staff positions or even administrators. Um, we know the universities are struggling a little bit to kind of produce the staff that we know that not only our district, but every other district is looking for. It's very competitive. Um, I'm not our mayor, but supply and demand comes to mind. There's just not as many people out there, and the supply is really high. So, we're going to have to continue to really roll up our sleeves and look at any opportunity we can to get creative with how we bring in and retain employees. Um,

106I will end with this. At this point heading into summer last year, um we were short 12 special education teachers. So early June to August, we were able to staff those. We did it creatively. Um we brought out some retired special ed teachers back. We're able to still hire some. Um where we stand today is around eight. So we still have some work to do. Um but again, rolling up our sleeves, we showed last year we were able to kind of do what we needed to by August and we'll do it again. So on the for both the HR and for Kyle um I guess teaching and learning also I was listening to um Mike Row and he was talking about to get people into the trades. We don't start in high school, we should

107start in middle school. Same question to the three of you with the four of you. Are we looking to start in middle school to try to I mean we have administrators, teachers, um assistants that all came through our system. Where do we start recruiting and try to keep them here? So that's a good question. Where do we start? um you know CTE, career technical education has become much more real in our schools where we are starting to have those conversations earlier with students and they're thinking about what do I want to do when I grow up. Some of us are still trying to figure that out. So to expect our students to know that have a hard fast answer um it's kind of unfair but absolutely it is something that we need to do. There

108are um organizations such as help me out um the teach uh students I'm sorry golden apple no not golden apple but students that uh desire to become a teacher future educator thank you thank you future educators so we've had conversations with the high school about uh future educators of America but that might be something we need to have more broad at the across the uh secondary level including middle school as well so that is absolutely one strategy that we can address um with some more um vigor and excitement. But that is one place to start. Right now things are a little up in the air because of some of the funding that's going on with programs as related to our partnership with niu and our psychologists, but even um Golden Apple and other uh funded

109programs through the state and federally, where are those funds going to come from? So, I um I anticipate things might get a little more hairier for us, but they are still conversations that we need to have. Thank you. To add on to that, you're absolutely right, JJ. It doesn't start at high school. Exposure starts early in talking about careers. I know the elementarymentaries. I know the middle schools because I've seen it. The exposure through different careers coming into the schools, parent engagement nights, and then also we have recently implemented school links which is a career college planning platform that both middle schools have also been using this year that will continue to expand um into next year with making sure that students are using that. that it has a variety of lessons, um different career

110exposures and um course planning software as well that will help the students understand that. And as far as the career tech education and some of the pipelines with that, we've also worked with middle school high school to build out the PACE framework um per Isby and have our first um CNA pipeline for that trajectory and then we're looking on looking at several others for the future that will soon be built out. Just to be clear, I was I was using the CT part as an example lead the way. Sorry. How we're getting teachers is where I was kind of going with. Oh, sorry. Well, that would that would lend itself to obviously Dieter got the memo on that question. So, thank you for my TED talk on those other topics. [Music] I question about that

111too. I don't know what kinds of of leeway we have, but in terms of like way other pathways into teaching for people like myself, I'm not like saying that but like people who have been in classrooms and who do have education and training or things like that that that could qualify like I don't know what kinds of loopholes there are with the laws, but like making that stuff accessible to people who maybe have the expertise. How do we help them get into this field? Well, I'm excited to say that when people do come to us, we do work with them. So whether it's us helping them determine uh their level of qualification or referring them back to the regional office in the regional office, working with them and doing transcripts, transcript reviews or um determining

112college credits that they've had or work experience that can count towards certification. So that is part of the CTE world. We have had individuals that um have been professionals whether auto mechanics um working in the textile industry, working as as a chef or in restaurants and they have enough college credits coupled with their work experience to qualify them to be an educator. I wonder how how well known is that that people can come to you because I'm I'm wondering like that would seem to be a really helpful way of recruiting is just to help people and you know it's it's a little bit of an art and a science because we can't do it for every well we we can't make it work for everyone but for those that we can we absolutely capitalize on

113that but when folks come to us and express that interest we absolutely do what we can here and or refer them out or if they start at the regional office then they get referred to the districts that are looking to fill those positions. Um, we could talk about that as a cabinet and as a HR team on how we can identify those folks that may be looking for a career change and uh determine their level of uh credentials to be able to do so. Well, I think that was a great presentation from all of our departments. I do have a Yeah, a quick follow quick follow-up question. How many vacancies do we have going into the 25 26th year? And how does this compare to where we were this time last year? I can give

114you those numbers, but it's going to take just an approximate I do not remember. I don't want to misquote. I mean, are we experiencing more vacancy this year than we did last year at this time? Actually, it is less. I can't tell you uh uh how much less, but it's less. We've had less turnover this year. Um, however, I will caution you that it's still a little early to speak on that. There are individuals that may be seeking opportunities in other districts that are waiting on board approval, waiting to determine if they're going to continue in the field of education. So, we we we get resignations on an ongoing basis. I would love to be incorrect about that and come back to you and be like, "Mark, you did it. We didn't get any more

115resignations." Um, but it is an ongoing process that tends to happen throughout the summer. Uh, I'm going to try to find this as quickly as possible. I just want to find out if we were up or down compared to last year at this time. What what the trend was. I think you could send us an email. I'd be happy to do so. I can do that. All right. Or if you want to put in the weekly update, that would be good, too. Okay. Great. And these are our buildings that um sit uh school improvement plans. You can peruse them at your leisure. If you have any questions, let us know. All right, moving into old business. Item A, 2025 2026 sub rates and annually employed substitutes pay and benefit. It is recommended the board of

116education approve the 2526 sub rates and increase in pay and sick time benefits for annually employed subs. Do I have a motion? So move. All right, Jackie. The roll call, please. Steve Buyers, yes. Jose, yes. Christopher Boy, yes. Mark Shva, yes. Vince Bham, yes. Kristen Bailey, yes. Nick Atwood, yes. Item B, press 118 release first reading. Do we feel that we as a board need a second reading? Not hearing that we need a second reading, I will entertain a motion to approve the changes from press plus. So move second. Jackie, the roll call, please. Jose DZ, yes. Christopher Boy, yes. Mark Shvat, yes. Dante Bino, yes. Kristen Bailey, yes. Nick Atwood, yes. C Buyers, yes. Moving into new business, item A, Kagan Summer Academy Conference, which will be presented by Billy Wermo from teaching and

117learning. And Emmy, will you be presenting with him or Yep. So, yep. All all three of them are coming up here. Oh, okay. Team effort, team request. Um, so we're coming forward tonight to ask for um permission for approval. there's to come back for approval for the Kagan summer academy conference. It will be funded through teacher vacancy grant. I am going to pass it off to my colleagues here and they're going to explain what it is um why they need to go and how that's going to come back and benefit us as a district and you can see the costs there. Um so we would really appreciate going to this conference. The Kagan Cooperative Learning Conference is going to give us a lot of ideas and background knowledge and more of that collaborative learning strategies

118and tools for our classrooms. Um, our third grade curriculum team has been working really, really hard the past few years um to make our MDUs and now we're transferring them to the IDUS. And we want our lessons and everything to be extremely collaborative because we want to cultivate that positive classroom environment as well. Um and so we think that going to this conference is going to really give us a lot of strategies and tools to better include that in our IDU units as well. Yes, we have no idea what IDU and so MDU is multi-disiplinary disciplinary units. So the data that um Dr. was sharing was all of our map data and how um they were focusing on fourth grade and last year third grade started doing all of that. So it's including like social

119studies, science, reading um all of that into one in your writing. Um and so we're watching that progression and we just it's just a it's like a it's like a lesson plan on steroids. Yes, that's a great way to say that. Um just easier to say that. Yes. Um let's see. So, the goal is to figure out all these different strategies and include them into our lesson plans. Um, and one of the things that I saw and read up on a couple different ways is how they group their students um based on their literacy levels and they have um like turn-in talks, but using that to kind of foster that collaborative team. Um, and in our lessons, we use um something called team tasks where students are working with their groups, but then we are

120able to pull like one kid from every group back to our table and have a very differentiated um literacy group that kind of goes with that social studies or science standard. Um so with the lower level learners or readers, we're able to give them a lot more background knowledge and kind of um give that enrichment to the students that are higher literacy learners. Um so it creates a lot of natural differentiation within those plans too. Um so that's why we would like to go and in going then our team would be able to come back during institute day and share our knowledge with the rest of our staff. Um, and hopefully they would be able to really easily implement those things in their own classrooms, fostering more collaboriveness amongst our whole D428. Do you have

121any other questions? I have a question. I'm just wondering, uh, that's a great opportunity sometimes for us to videotape ourselves and show showcasing some of the strategies. Would that be something that could happen upon your return? Then then that could be a a lesson for other teachers to be able to take a look at. Yeah, I we redo that stuff all the time. Yeah. So, now just to add something um a little bit more because I'm at Brooks right now. I already talked to like a reading specialist at our school and they kind of want to already try to implement these strategies, but we've been watching videos. Obviously, we haven't gone to a conference yet. So the idea is if I'm able to go, that's something that I could potentially pilot, record, and then present

122at our school as well to see how the data will fluctuate because it's supposed to make it more like student centered versus like me talking to the kids the whole time. Then the kids can like learn from each other. Good point. Thank you. So necessarily I'm sorry. Go ahead. Is there a repository for things like that for teachers to access? We do have one like an internet or something where teachers can view these videos of these techniques. I I think it's something Oh, go ahead. Why don't you do it? So, our instructional coach team has been talking about building something. We've done that in some um buildings, specifically at Brooks last year. The instructional coach created a bank um that we're calling more like podcasts because we know our younger teachers, that's exactly how they're

123learning. Um we also have um trainings where we have these video um videos of these like short strategies that you can see um as we're writing our interdisciplinary units. So I'm kind of spearheading that with my bilingual partner Sonia Enriquez. And anytime that we have something video that seems like it takes way too long to type out the directions for a teacher, we've been linking a teacher video within the lesson plans so teacher people can see that in action. And then it's kind of that quick ongoing learning that I didn't have to sit down for an hour um and go through this training or this session, but I see directly what is written into my plan in action through that. I think the benefit to that is that teachers get to see others like them

124from the same school, same district. It's not oh that happens somewhere else. No, it's happening right here. Then they can go to individuals that know them. So it's definitely a much better u more innovative way of bringing back something. So it's a you know more innovative using technology. So that kind of answers my question. But so we don't need to know what the plan is but there already is a plan in place on how three teachers going to this conference are going to distribute this information to the hundreds of teachers we have. And also whenever we go anywhere our principles always make us do it at staff meetings. So there's also that in place. Okay, thank you. The the funding source for this is the teacher vacancy grant and you you may not be able

125to answer this, but maybe staff can. Um it's regarding travel with the teacher vacancy grant. It supports professional development, but it's supposed to address the teacher shortage, the teacher vacancy grant. How does this address vac? We were just talking about vacancies just now. How does this help us with that situation? Oh, I have it, but I would love to go for it. So, I didn't mention that my secondary role is um I am the assistant or I mean the co-vice president of DCTA um and have been for 17 years um either as president or vice president and so something that and my role as an instructional coach which I feel like is an direct extension from the teaching and learning department. So I get to see things intersect in different ways um that other people

126don't have the advantage of doing. Okay. Is that better? Um so one thing I'll say is that before we had our interdisciplinary units, we had what we called these templates of instruction. Um they were not as developed. We saw weaknesses with what we had. Um, and as an instructional coach working with new teachers, it made it really, really hard, um, and very complicated and very cumbersome, like hours and hours and hours of planning to try to develop these lessons. And we thought, if we know what works, um, for students, then why aren't we doing a better job supporting our newer teachers with the strategies that we have? that led us to these IDUs that we're um creating. And with those embedded PD, right, with those embedded um instructional strategies, it's much easier for a new

127teacher to pick up what we're giving them now and be able to follow a lesson and integrate some of those hands-on learning practices for kids and the collaboration that we know that students need in today's learning. So, I do think it directly impacts especially our new teachers and um keeping our new teachers here in our district. That's what I was going to say. The other part is not just about obtaining you but also retaining the ones we have. Yeah. Yeah. I've had I've had several new teachers who have said we couldn't have done this without you. You know, working alongside an instructional coach with the um better developed units for our teachers in their hands. Just quick, you estimated high on all these things. Okay. All right. Do we have consensus to bring this back?

128Yes. Yes. Item D, Kisswalki College Early College Program, MOU. And this is presented by director of teaching and learning, Sarah Montgomery. that would be name. I'm really excited to bring this back every year. Thisou will be renewed with Kishwwaukee College and it is for our juniors and seniors that would like to apply and be um accepted into this early college program. This allows students to earn their associates degree and high school diploma at the same time. This is specifically a two-year track for these students. Just for background information, they do have a one-year track. So, if a student wants to just do it their junior year or just do it their senior year, they can do that. But that is outside thisou. And then we have, I would say, a plethora of other dual credit

129classes that our students can take under the high school's roof. So, we are continuously growing that. You heard earlier this year presentations. We have a couple other cooking in the oven right now that you will hear once the school year starts, which I'm really excited for. It is definitely a benefit for our students to have the exposure to this advanced curriculum. Similar the timing is perfect to Dr. Null and our presentation on our end of the year data making sure that all of our students needs are being met. This is one of the ways that we can make sure that we're supporting our students and giving them a leg up while they're with us. That was a really high view. Do you have any questions? Is this a new program? Is this something we've done

130in the past? Yes, this is something that we did in the past. We will renew this every year. Gotcha. Any other questions? No. Hey, you not any questions? Do we have consensus to bring this back? Thank you. Moving on to the superintendent report. Dr. Garcia. Yeah. Yes. I got confused there. All right. All right. So, you know, that means that we're at the end. So, we're going to go through this, but we have a lot of celebrating to do. So as uh our president has as uh boys had mentioned this is our largest graduating class that we just had. We had 54 graduates this year. This past Saturday, two Saturdays ago and uh that is uh last year we had 427. So it's an 18% growth. We're very happy and pleased about that. Sarah who

131Jennings is our assistant principal at the high school. So she's here representing. I don't think I have high school folks around as well. Um, but I wanted to make sure that you we talk about how wonderful that is. And I keep saying this, I get that you get all of the credit for graduating the kids, but it takes us all the way back to ELDC through elementary and middle school to get them through there. So, it's everybody's win and that just speaks to how well we've been doing the work that we've been doing that we can continue to graduate more and more. So exciting about that. Uh we just came back from our end of the year uh leadership conference. A number of individuals here were at that conference. I'm going to say that first

132and foremost I feel that this um conference really allowed us to be number one very vulnerable, very transparent, and uh also be able to learn some things that um we thought we knew but we didn't. One of those big pieces I'm going to give shout out to uh Mr. Matt McIntyre who has our emergency operations plan up and running but did some tabletop exercises with us that really had us all bubbling up with some excitement and some wondering around if we're doing the right things. So Matt and the SRO's will continue to that do that work with us uh as we go through the year ensuring that with the crisis with our team, right? So that's Tammy, Ben, Matt, Shauna, and Arir to ensure that we know what we need to do. God forbid if

133anything ever really happens, but we will be prepared. Uh so I'm really excited about that work that we've done. Uh we brought in more work around the series of belonging and culture and climate and uh especially with this year being the a lot of movement, a lot of transitioning for not just our regular transitions from fifth to sixth grade and then from 8th grade to high school, but then of course of the movement of where people live and what schools they're going to be attending and with Mitchell being added on. So excited about all of that work. I want to do some shout outs for our student athletes. The boys tennis team made it to the fourth round of the championship. So, yoohoo. Wow. Exciting for the boys tennis team. Thank you so much. The

134girls softball team won the regional championship game and advanced to sectionals game is tomorrow in Bington starting at 4:30. The middle school track team, Huntley students, uh, seventh grade boys, Henderson, uh, plays fifth grade in the hydrump. Eighth grade boys, Darius R. fourth in discus. Seventh grade girls, Divine M in the sixth in shot and discus. Seventh grade girls uh four um four time 100. Thank you. Relay. Thank you. Uh in fourth place as well as the seventh grade boys in second place. So that's great. We have uh academics and we have athletes. And then I want to give uh Miss Rita Elliot a big huge shout out because we just found out that our uh we were selected our annual report was selected as the publication and dig digital media excellence award from the

135National School Public Relations Association. So that's a big deal. It's a national it's a national award. Everybody has something to do with it, but Rita's the one that made it all happen and made it look the way that it does. So, if you haven't taken a look at it yet, please, you know, it's on our website, so you can download it for take a look at it there. We have hard copies, so please take a look there. Um, way to go, Rita. Then, um, I just also wanted to, I'd be remissed if I didn't say that our very own police chief bird received the highest honor that can be bestowed on a police officer, the Medal of Honor. So, congratulations, Chief. Very proud of you. And thank you to you and to your squad for

136what you do for us each and every day. Thank you so much. Stay safe out there. And that's it for me. I'm going to turn it back over to our president so he can wrap it up. All right. Do we have any final comments from the board before we adjourn? All right. Do I have a motion to adjurnn? So move second. All those in favor say I.