001Okay, here we go. I'd like to call the open work session board of education meeting to order. Can I have a second? >> Second. >> Any discussion? >> Miss Bradford, you call the role. >> Mrs. Tyus, >> here. >> Mr. Mr. Wetszel >> here, >> Mr. Cleger >> here, >> Dr. Laorenson >> here, >> Mr. Reynolds >> here, >> and Mr. Hail >> here. >> Six eyes, zero nay, one absent. >> Do we have recommendation for tonight's agenda? >> Yes, we do. I recommend the board approve tonight's October 16th, 2025 special open work session board meeting agenda as presented. >> Have a motion. So move. >> Second. All in favor signify by saying I I. >> Those opposed. >> You know what? I just passed over the pledge. So, let's just take a step backward.
002>> You always do that. >> I'm trying to move along here. >> I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, Dr. Clark. >> Okay, we've had a motion and a second. >> All those in favor signify by saying I. >> I. >> Those opposed. >> Motion's carried. Okay, we'll now move on to public participation. We do. Okay. Board of Education would like to note the following. During public participation, identify oneself and be brief. Comment should be limited to three minutes. Any public comments submitted to the board secretary will be included in the record. Please note that during any board of education meeting and public participation, board members do not respond
003andor comment to public comments. All comments are referred to administration. Furthermore, the board refrains from referring to specific students or staff members by name and requests that public commenters refrain from doing so as well. The request that you omit names is to make is made to protect you from allegations of liel or slander or from violations of the Illinois School Student Records Act. It is not intended to shield an employee from criticism. Miss Bradford, do we have anyone wishing to address the board this evening? >> Yes, Brett Robertson. Good evening, superintendent, board members. Uh, I wasn't planning to come tonight. Uh, I've got another meeting I need to to go to, but I realized that it's now been I looked it up. Two years and four months. two years and four months since the announcement
004about this closure of Dennis School. And I it's hard to believe it's two years and four months. And what really made me feel like I had to come tonight was a comment I saw today from one of the board members, Mr. Wetzel, who said that you guys had not even discussed Dennis School, which I find very difficult to believe, but maybe it's true. But in any case, you haven't made any decision about dentist school or if you have, you haven't communicated it. And I just want to remind you guys how important this is to the community. I mean, we have the future of school children of families, uh the the future of the neighborhood, the future of the West End is all hanging in the balance of this decision. So I think we deserve um
005more priority and more transparency about what is going on with uh the future of Dennis School. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> That's it. >> That's all. >> Okay. The board appreciates all all public comments. Uh is there anyone else in the audience that would like to make any public comments tonight? Okay, seeing none, uh we'll move on and we'll move on to board discussion and priorities. I think this was um our intent here was to provide an opportunity for each board member to articulate some of our priorities and just have a open frank discussion of kind of where we are and where each board member is and reach maybe a little bit of consensus. but to have an opportunity outside of our normal board meetings uh to have some dialogue about what each board
006member's priorities might be and what those might look like going forward. So, I I think we just kind of start around and let everybody have an opportunity. Will, would you like to add anything or part of this conversation with Dr. Clark? >> Um, I just appreciate everybody doing this. Uh I've been asking for a study session for two years now and to have this unstructured time so we can actually have real conversation and have the community see us having conversation I think will be very beneficial. So please share and I also ask you to please listen and make sure that uh what your fellow board members are saying that uh you hear and you understand. >> Okay, very good. Well, let's just start. Kevin, would you like to kick us off and we'll just move
007around the table? >> I recognize him, I think, is coming in right being present. >> Absolutely. >> Can you state your name, please? >> My name is Devon Joiner. >> Thank you indeed. >> It's good to meet you, too. >> Okay, back to Kevin. Uh, I have kind of a lengthy list. Uh, none of these things are based in order of importance. I think they're all important and I wanted to bring them to you today in good faith. Uh my first uh thing I'd like to talk about is next time we're together I'd like to make an official motion to have put on the agenda and at our very next meeting a formal vote taken to uh combine all high school spring sports. Um Mr. Reynolds and I talked about this earlier and I would
008like a vote taken to guarantee that every taxpayer high school student has a chance to participate in a sport and in spring sports that is on shaky ground. Um uh we do it already in middle school baseball and we do it already in girls soccer. It would be my hope that we could guarantee Eisenhower and MacArthur an opportunity to always have a chance to play sports. I would also like to see a new formal board approved and dist district detailed plan to make a renewed commitment to labor and trades and manufacturing. Our district gradually is allowing trades to grow and I must commend them for that. But I would like to see a program enlarged and connect connected to H Heartland Academy in Richland and it be created in the likeness of our wonderful college
009prep program and our wonderful a program that has engaged students through FFA and agricultural jobs education. Our district must not dance around our manufacturing industries but challenge them to invest in us and make sure that we understand the importance of trades and labor. Last night, um, Ms. Laorenzan and Miss Tyus and I attended a meeting where we heard a woman talk about her making $45 an hour in trades plus time and a half. And I think uh, our kids' cell phones would go down if we made sure that we were making that commitment to them. I would also like to see a formalized plan by the superintendent approved by us to sit down and at with our bargaining units generate a formal plan for Dennis school, the one I attended and graduated from. I personally
010would like to see it return to a K through6 building and return the modulars to their original owners and save this district thousands upon thousands of dollars. I believe if we decouple the junior high students and allow them to go to the front of the line as I would want to go to any school either neighborhood or magnet it would give those parents a detailed plan and I think we can move slowly but I think we need to move to help these parents have clear understanding of what's going on. It is my hope that one day our district hopefully soon will institute a detailed formal retention plan that is a system of fairness for all grades to make our high school diplomas more relevant. I would like to see the administrators, teachers, and TAs devise
011a system that tests, evaluates, and creates bench benchmarks for DPS-61 students to meet and reach the grade level they have earned merit for. My example comes from the state of Mississippi which has gained traction from raising test scores because of the intense focus they have put on K through threemmies in reading and literacy and the fact they test to gain advancement has helped improve fourth grade reading scores. It also ensures we all have skin in the game. Our valuable parents and guardians will understand they must read to their students. our churches and houses of worship will hopefully engage in reading in their Sunday school classes and the district leadership can have a singular focus in becoming the best reading district in the state. I would also like to see either through us or through some
012outside body evaluate the Kyle building's professional structure because we're going to have to find cost cutting measures and we might need to start there. I'm all for roadmap 2030 getting kickarted again. I believe there are wonderful ideas being rolled out and generated by that body, but I have concerns about the messages parents have informed me about about the fears they have about the removal of magnet schools. I don't really I haven't seen road map 30 maps official plan, so I don't even know if that's real, but I would like to make sure we give clarity and explanation and transparency as we go. I would have to be sold on bu building usages, buing expenditures, savings, staff inclusion, and how we're going to use everything. If we're going to remove those magnet schools, there is a
013reason parents and students line up to get into those schools. I would hope we would fight to keep them. I also heard some rumors from some parents and I also believe this is not true that we do not do anything either through roadmap 30 or any district plan to decouple our ESL programs or any part of our ESL operations. I will protest with my vote anything that does that. I believe strongly that a contig contiguous and connected ESL body is the only way for it to function and work best for our non-English-speaking students and families. As for the hiring of a new superintendent, I believe, as I put in my email asked for by the district, I believe our calendar is a little too aggressive. And I believe adding a couple months to that calendar
014will allow the pool of applicants to expand and we're hurt nothing and only aid us in finding the best candidate. Our new superintendent is out there and we must use with fidelity every bit of our time, community surveys, community form information and our resources to find the best talent to lead us forward. I would also, this is a small one, Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, I would like to see an immediate removal of the school board service in the schedule B committee. As a matter of fact, Mr. President, the contract says nothing specifically about board involvement. In fact, Ms. Laorenson and I faithfully attended the first meeting and found out we have no vote on that committee. Instead, I would like to see an informal resolution that a vote be taken for our part participation
015be in re-engaging with our community and city officials in forming a committee where we would sit down with the city council, the city school board members, the park district, and any other entities that want to be on that committee. I think that committee could prove valuable for all of us. I believe two board members, I believe Miss Lorenson and I, if we're removed from those committees, would be happy to serve in that capacity. I believe that if we connect and communicate, we can all work together to not only build a better city, but hopefully help our children grow and learn that we can all work together. As a sidebar, madame superintendent, I would like to see one of our student school board members be allowed to serve on that, if we vote on it, serve
016on that board to learn about public leadership and service. And lastly, I would like to see the board district try in every way possible to place a professionally trained teacher in every single classroom. They've done a marvelous job of researching the international teachers and getting them here to help us in that fight. We must use our financial resources to never again students into auditoriums have our talented grade school teachers who sacrifice and are stretched almost beyond their means from absent teachers to take other students in their classrooms. The weight of those expenditures are palpable. The only way to defeat it and the best way to defeat it and I see a new contract on the horizon is to provide a salary scale rewarding the present teachers that have stayed and remain loyal to our district
017and make DPS more attractive to qualified teachers in the area. And that means to draw them from Springfield, Bloomington, Champagne and everybody else that is taking our teachers. So by forming up a brand new contract on the horizon that is based on sound principles that gives us fiscal responsibility but also rewards our teachers is something I think is very important. Those are my comments. Thank you. Mark Kevin has has covered a lot of the issues that I had especially the sports. Um, I'm not in disagreement. Well, I I like the schedule we have for trying to find our superintendent. I um I have a lot of people asking me how we're going to use our buildings. And so as a as a priority, you know, making decisions about French Academy and and Dennis Lab enterprise
018school I I think is a very important topic that we need to to address. I am concerned about uh our finances. I am concerned about going forward being we kind of got u spoiled by uh monies coming from the government during co and so that time is over and I'm I'm I'm just hopeful that uh we we will adjust conservatively in our spending and and take a take a good hard look at at uh everything in our in our budget that we have control over. And I know we have some some big uh union contracts coming up in the next year. Um, and I'm I'm I'm all for u making sure that our we are more than more than competitive in teacher salaries because I believe they're the lifeblood of of our success in trying
019to raise scores. Um, as I mentioned at our last meeting, I'm I'm quite concerned about um the cultural challenges that we have in teaching our teaching our children. I don't have an answer for it other than as I told you, I believe in prayer very strongly. But besides that, I I don't have an answer for how to address it. And and Dr. Clark has told me of of things that we're doing to to meet with parents, meet with teachers. Uh there is communication going on that I find very very helpful. Um but I am very sensitive to the idea of finding ways in which we can touch touch our kids in a way that want makes them want to come to school to enjoy school. And that's it for me. Good morning. >> Good afternoon.
020So coming into the process fresh, you know, I want to make sure that I'm present and a part of moving forward in a progressive uh manner. I think what I'm looking forward to bringing to the table is and challenging the rest of our board members on listening to the grassroots side of the community, figuring out their challenges versus assuming what's happening in our community that has put us in these positions. I uh I want to form a collaboration with the community to hear from them and try to get them to be more involved in the accountability side of what's happening in our schools. I think uh we need to figure out a way to meet everyone where they are at, hear them on what they feel is going on in the district and try to
021accommodate both sides. Um, as an elected official, I think that's our job to work for the individuals that put us in these positions. And we can't do that effectively and transparently unless we allow them in. I think we uh no longer can assume what the community needs without bringing them to the table, which means sometimes we have to get out there and lead them in that direction, how to get to that table. Um, so that's my mission. I am uh in agreement with the board as a whole to try to do whatever we need to in uh the economic status uh in the the brick and mortar status, but it has to benefit the kids. I think we need to be more uh privy to listening to what the kids need. So, we need to
022as uh Mr. Hail said in involve them a lot more in these processes. I think we will get more transparency from what's going on in the schools if we pay attention to the children we're supposed to be working for. Um as I move forward I will become more um understanding and uh educated on the other processes. I won't have a problem doing that. Uh I'll learn as I move in that direction. But my thought process right now is to bring innovation. We have to understand that the uh traditional way of learning is not working out well. Uh and it's not just based on behavior. You know, it's based on a lot of challenges that our our children face nowadays. You know, we have children that um they suffer based on anxiety. You know, they have
023the ability to learn, but the environment might not be catering to their own personal needs. We need to be ready to evolve in that process to make sure everybody's getting the opportunity. Um so moving forward, my job is to connect the grassroots side of it. Um I hope I have support. Uh we have to pay attention to the most minor detail and just not assume that um our way is the highway. It's going to be rough sometimes. But um what do we have to lose? So with that being said, that's all I have today. >> Um I think the first part I think where we all need to start is to recognize that we make generational decisions on this board. that what we decide to do and how we decide to do it and as
024it is passed down through administration uh through our building principles and to our teachers and our uh pair professionals and our staff is that the decisions that we have to make can cannot continue to be knee-jerk and emotional reactions. We have seen that over the past 30 years. We have seen um one of the statistics that uh I grew up hearing was that since 1970 we've closed 22 school buildings in this town because we don't need them. We need to come to the reality that things are not going to be like what Decar used to be and we have have to understand that the path that we are heading is not sustainable. We're looking at a $5 million hole. Uh we cannot get enough teachers. Um, we have students that are failing and who are
025being robbed of their future by a number of uh different things, but we have the opportunity to do the best job possible for all of these children sitting on this board. And every decision that we have to make moving forward has to be about how well our students will succeed. And a lot of that starts with us. You know, for a very long time, this body has been incredibly dysfunctional. And this is the first time that I have seen uh that a board is really starting to gel to have deep conversations and to understand that special interest does not rule the day. As we come together and as we start to chart a course that will that will affect again will be affect generations. We have to make sure that we are making data data
026driven fact-based choices. If we do not do that and we cave to the loudest voices, we will set up our children once again for failure. We will do things like build another school across uh across the street from an EPA brown zone. we will close all the schools in the inner city uh causing a busing crisis that forces us to spend millions upon millions to transport kids all over to every edge of this district. And the solution comes with first understanding what our role as a uh as a board is which I think we're doing very well in this past six months. Secondly, to not panic but to work under the understandings of what our deficits are and to find solutions uh solutions to change those deficits to ensure that we are desoing that we
027are working with the community that we are working with our partners more deeply like the city and we already do a good job of that but to expand that but to really understand that we have to have a plan. We have to be able to communicate openly and honestly with this community who has been hurt time and time and time again. And we need to make sure that when we go to make a decision or make a vote or throughout the uh and that could be for roadmap 2030, it could be for curriculum, it could be simply approving our consent uh consent items. We all have to ask ourselves does this benefit student learning? And if the answer is no, then we need to get out of that business. And lastly, um I I I
028would like stability. I would like for this board to be stable and to select a superintendent that will help us be stable. I would like the drama I I I would like the drama to be outside of these walls, outside of uh away from this table in the community and to know that when you come in here and when we work together and when our students come into our buildings that they are safe, that they will be able to learn and then they will be able to succeed. And whatever we need to do to make that happen, I'll be happy to do. But again, it has to be fact-based, not emotionally driven, and it has to be all dedicated to what uh to student learning. Thanks, >> um I also have a pretty long list.
029Um but I think it's a lot of it's because I've talked with a lot of teachers in our community. I've spoken with um a lot of parents um and a lot of community members as well. Um, I think we have a lot going for us here in Decar. Um, I'm pretty new to this community, so I feel like I come to this community with kind of some fresh eyes. Okay. Um, I've seen, you know, I'm the place places where I've lived, I've lived in um places that we spend the absolute least in education. So, here we're actually pretty fortunate with what we have to to work with. Um, I know that we want our kids in trades. We want our kids to go to university. We want our kids to be successful in jobs. Um,
030but when they graduate, they have to have the skills that they need. That is, as a teacher, that's my biggest worry. Um, working in higher education right now, our graduates simply are not prepared. That's something that worries me every single day. Um although our graduation rates are up, their skills are far far down. Um so the thing that I'm concerned about the most is is how do we help these kids get the best education that they can get because I know we can do it. We have fabulous teachers. Um you know and and the thing is, you know, kind of like you talked about kids have hard hard lives sometimes, you know, right? But they're with us six hours a day. And in those six hours a day, five days a week, magic can happen.
031So, how do we get there? Um, and one of the things that I think we can do better is to have that sense of connection and help those kids feel like school is a place for them. Okay? Because I constantly see kids saying that that's not true. We saw that yesterday when um we were at the um resolution on race. Um, I think we can do a lot better at that by really focusing in our schools on dedicated social emotional learning all the way from preK to 12th grade. doing something um where we give our teachers lots and lots of support and we're doing it with fidelity because kids need to be able to um manage their emotions and get along together. Um so we're not having kids that are expelled in, you know, once
032they get to high school. I think we can do a way better job with that. Um, also with that, um, we're really fortunate in Illinois to have culturally responsive teaching and leading standards. That's something I'm passionate about. I want to make sure that here in in in Decar, all of our um principles, all of our administrators, all of our teachers are not only aware of those, but they're living them every single day with our kids so that our kids feel safe and happy at school because we are helping them be their authentic selves and we're respecting them. Um, another thing is I've heard from tons and tons of teachers that we need to fix professional development for our teachers. They are not happy with the half days. Um, and we need to find a better
033way. We need to think outside the box maybe with like late start Mondays or something. Um, to find a way to deliver professional development to our teachers that meets their needs and asking them what their needs are when it comes to professional development so that we can better deliver it for the science of reading. um better math instruction. So, we really get to the core of what we need to do. Um that again, I think another thing that we can do is um something that um kind of surprises me um that I've never seen before is that our district spends more money on support services than we do on education. To me, that's staggering. Um, I would like to really take a look at that and see what we can do to um find ways
034that we can maybe flip those numbers around because to me, we should be spending more money on education than than support services for our kids. Um, I think that one of the ways to really drive um our kids to achieve and to really help boost those reading and math scores um is to really improve our collection and analysis of schoolwide data. Um I've talked with lots of teachers and they say it's just not happening in their buildings the way that it should be doing. Um, for example, like, you know, I feel like we should already have had benchmark data talked about right now. I mean, you know, in every district I've ever been at, it's we have it in the end of September and we figure out what to do with it then, you know?
035So, I really want to focus on not only teachers working with that data, but students working with our own data, right? So, they they know what they need to improve on because then they can take ownership of that as well. Um that's a way to get student buy in and motivation because uh Mr. Hail is right is that we have to have some sort of benchmarks. These kids have to know that they do or do not have the skills that are, you know, qualifying them to get forward because right now we're graduating a lot of high schoolers who do not have the skills that they should have by the end of high school. That's something that I'm really concerned about. Um, we do have to fix the dentist situation. I'm not a building person. I'm
036going to be the first person to tell you that. Um, I think everybody on this board has their skill set and I think that that is a fantastic thing. I think that all of us can really work together to um give input and decide on um on what we need to do. Um, but I think that also if we do decide to keep the magnets, we need to make sure that the other schools also have equity and that every kid in our district has an amazing school to go to. That's something that I'm really passionate about. And I think that's all for me. >> You're up. >> Okay. My list is not that long. Um, I feel like road mapap 2030 could kind of cover a lot of things once we get back to planning
037with that. Um, I just want to make sure when we start uh planning for 2030 that our top priorities aren't just buildings. Um, I do agree that we have to do something with Dennis, but I feel like Dennis would have been covered in 2030 with the proper planning, but once we put a hold on that, that's what's been the extended time until we uh bring it back. But I definitely want to make decisions with buildings, but I want them to be based off of education and our students learning should be at our top priority. Um, our teachers um the training for our teachers um one of the things they were talking about at the meeting um last night is that there is no training for TA. TAs don't have to come to training and the
038subs aren't paid to go to training. We have a lot of subs. So if they're not getting training like so all of those people need training. Um so that will be like the top priority is trying to get training for our teachers uh TAS and sub. Um the budget is very scary to me. Um there was a lot of red and I heard them say in the next three years we need to do something about that. It's going to have to be way before three years that we start making um changes. Um, I agree with the support service being way bigger than education. Something we need to definitely look into that. Um, the alt ed program is a big deal to me. Um, what we're doing with our kids going into alt ed, it's not
039really like a structured, it's like a babysitting. So, that one definitely need to be and that could be part of 2030 is dealing with the all ed situation. Um, Kevin brought up a good point at our meeting last night. They talked about the inner uh governmental group committee that they used to have. I don't know if I can ask questions, but what happened to that? were where um the board and um city council committee members I mean um they all got together. >> I don't know anything about Oh, go ahead. >> I can share a little bit on that because I was on it. >> Okay. Well, >> a long time ago, past life. Um the um we had we had some meetings. Some of those meetings uh can be productive sometimes. I think a
040better understanding of what everybody's role is is important because uh for example the city has statutory responsibilities that that they have to fulfill. The park district has statutory responsibilities and the school board has statutory responsibilities. I think clarity of what those responsibilities are uh was a real key to understanding and then how are we going to how are we going to work together? What was that going to look like? Um and I think it for lack of a better term it just kind of faded away. Um I I think probably there were some special interests kind of involved at the time. there was a specific issue that maybe came up that people wanted to get together and talk about. Um I know we had special meetings with the city at one point in time for
041the development of Lakeshore Landing. uh but the joint meetings as long as everybody comes with an open mind and understands that there are specific lanes and I hate to use the word lanes because everybody moves in and out of lanes but the the issue is everybody has statutory responsibilities and for those uh sometimes uh your positions might not all be the same and they might not coalign uh as you move forward with those. So anyway, that it just kind of faded away. >> Yes, >> I I think it would be important to bring it back because I don't know when what roads are going to be closed and it might be nice if uh Miss Lorenzo and I could come back and tell the superintendent that bus routes might need to be adjusted for certain
042reasons or things are being done to certain areas like you said that responsibilities might overlap, they might not overlap, but we can communicate with each other. I guess I would take a little different position on that, Kevin, in that uh Dr. Clark, Dr. Curry, the the whole team when they meet with the city manager, those are working discussions where uh Martin Luther King may be closed on a certain day and your bus schedule is going to have to be adjusted to make to make that work. uh when we talk about the the nitty-gritty of how we can philosophically decide what might or might not be important for our staff to work on. But when it op when it comes to operationalizing, that's when the staffs get together and whether it's the city manager, whether it's
043the park district director, they get together and operationalize what we as a collective body, uh, give them some marching orders to do. Does that help? >> It does. I just think it'd be important to have a body that sits down and has open dialogue. I just think it's more ears and more eyes on various problems in the city and I think that can help make us better and them better. That that would be my only contention. Fair enough. >> Okay, that was one of my questions. Uh I do have another question. I don't know if this appropriate but I mean not appropriate. I was saying do the schools have computer labs that the kids go? And I'm going to ask that it's really onetoone technology. They don't have to do labs anymore. >> Yeah, you
044can evening board. It's working. Um just to be quick on that. Um we are onetoone school district. So there's no need for the traditional lab that uh you would consider where students go to a lab because they don't have access to technology uh in a regular classroom. So every student has an iPad um in every school in our district. So we don't have a traditional lab. >> Okay. So that was my reason for me asking is how do they get those typing skills? >> Typing skills. So, so, >> um, reason why I asked that with coming from working at Richland, the kids come and they're so far behind of not knowing how to type, um, not knowing how to sign their name for our contracts. Um, they have to start with so many remedial classes
045before they can even get into regular classes. So, that's why I was wondering about the typing. They have no typing skills at all. So, we're trying to get them to do stuff and they're literally like >> that's because they have iPads, not >> they have iPads. So, that's the reason why I asked is because they have not like they used to have MacBooks, >> right? >> Computers, laptops. Now, they just have iPads. So, they're losing them the typing skills, >> right? So, so we'reware aware of that. they have pecking skills or because they >> well >> I understand I understand that they they need those skills but we we have evolved to a certain extent and in many ways that is something we we know we need to usher back into our schools because you're
046seeing that problem arise. So, uh, we'll make a point to our schools to see if that's something they can address, uh, pretty, uh, easily with, uh, providing, uh, students the opportunity to use, uh, technology that will require them to type as opposed to pick. >> Okay. So, those are just some of my concerns. So, that that's all I have. >> Okay. Last but not least, hopefully, um, I'm gonna probably follow up here. Many of the items that you're going to hear from me, you've probably already heard from six other people. So, we'll kind of try to make it as brief as we can I and in no particular order. Um I think our superintendent search when you uh begin to look at an organization and the going forward success of an organization rests with the
047selection of a an individual who will lead us over hopefully the next um decade. Um that may be a wishful thinking on my part but I would hope that we could uh move forward and have somebody join our organization that would lead us well into the future. Um, I move on to academic achievement and outcomes. Uh, certainly not my wheelhouse, but a concern the our reading and math levels. Um, our scores, how a third grade reading gate. I get back to the Mississippi project and how that worked and how that might be implemented indicator or looked at. um constantly look at career technical education, CTE, and how that how that looks in our district. And uh the one thing we have to remember is when we talk about we throw career training and education out,
048you know, we still have to be able to read well and do math well to pass the aptitude tests to go into the trades. So we I think we should always be mindful of that reading achievement and that math achievement because I know that for example the um IBEDW you have to be able to do algebra >> to basically pass the aptitude tests to become an apprentice. So as we keep that in mind as we move forward with our academic achievement. Um, also what's AI going to look like in assisting our classroom, our classroom teachers? How can that be used as we move down the road? Um, is there a way? Don't know. Um, teacher recruitment and the training experience. Uh I think as we as we move forward, we constantly have to look at
049uh our training and our our retention is going to be critical, but recruitment uh and how we what kinds of training we offer our staff and is it meeting our needs as we move into the future. It constantly changes. Um, as we as we look at roadmap 2030, I look at that as repositioning an organization and we're really with without a strategic plan. Uh, I think Will, you made the point, we're going to flounder and I think that we have we've looked at items and we take items one by one as they come up. And somebody asked me on on the very probably first week that I joined the board three and a half years ago now said how how do you do things? I said I think Dr. Clark walks in her office every
050day and drinks out of a fire hose. uh because we she it just goes from one issue to another issue to another issue and until we as a board come together on a strategic plan um our staff will continue to address one issue at a time and an organization a functional organization can't function like that long term as we move into the future. Uh, you know, there's going to come a point in time when this community and it's not going to be very popular. We're going to have to look at one high school. Our numbers continue to decline. Um, our population declines, our enrollment declines. Um, I was glad to see our staff uh recommend our demographic study and the update of our demographic study so that we'll have some realistic looks at what those
051numbers look like uh as we move into the future. Do we look at I think the demographer at the last the last time around said we were the most convoluted district that he had ever seen in all the years he worked um in the area of demographics. Uh we have K8 buildings, we have K6 buildings, we have magnet schools, we have a whole cadre of different offerings. And I think we're going to have to step back as we move our way through roadmap and have serious conversations about what does that look like going into the future. And I I think I heard every one of us say we have to think about kids first. What does that look like for kids? Sometimes I think we delve more into the adult side of the equation rather
052than the kids side of the equation. And I'd like to for us to keep in mind the kids side of the equation first and foremost and what's going to be more beneficial. Um probably last but not least and Dr. Curry will will probably won't be any surprise to Dr. Curry when I start down my fiscal responsibility list. Um I think the our input dollars we're at about $19,000 per student right now to educate a student in Decator Illinois. Um, I think we're going to have to be diligent in our review of budgets, work with our um, CFO and our superintendent and look to the future because the numbers this year were real. The numbers are going going to continue to look this just as just as an FYI for you in in my work career
053as a public servant here, I saw $200 million drops in EAV. Those are real dollars, y'all. They're real dollars. So, will that happen again? We don't know whether they'll happen or not. I think we we have to rely on our staff to give us good projections and and then act on those projections. Uh but we we are in an environment too where if we see continue to see a declining population, we're 50% of the local tax bill. We're taxing the same people, just taxing at higher levels than we have been over the years. We're not we're not adding tremendous amounts of EAV growth to that tax. So, I think we're going to have to be diligent as we look at the future and look at people's tax bills and how we impact those tax bills.
054And frankly, you look at it as what result are we getting? If we if we were in a private sector business, we'd be looking at outcomes and what those outcomes are and what's the success of our outcomes. Um, as we as we look at whether we're successful or not successful. Um, I I know right now we have a we have a pretty high debt load and I think we need to look at that debt load and and how we're going to react to that debt load uh moving down the road as well. Um, I think we are one of the more highly indebted school districts in the in the state at this point in time. Probably not right at the top, but we're up there close. Um, and that's a result of decisions that boards
055have made over time, and we're going to be asked to make those same decisions um, as we we move through the upcoming months and years. Um, I too would like to see us review our administrative structure and what that looks like and what our costs are. And what would be interesting to me is when we had 15,000 students, our administrator to to student ratio, what might that be? How many do we have now versus how many we had 20 years ago? Um, you know, it it would be do be some interesting material for us to take a look at as a board. And I I think you're going to hear me talk about bringing in some kind of a a reputable outside consultant to look at that. Um who maybe uh can give us uh
056a real detailed review of where we might be now and what that's going to look like going down the road. Um I'm concerned about or would like to see us have a 5 to 10 year our strategic plan. I just can't tell you all how important I think that is to an organization. Those who fail to plan, plan to fail. And that's an age-old adage that it it can't be repeated enough. We have to pay attention to that and we have to look to the future. And I'd like to see us have a 5 to 10year capital plan so that we have a rolling document that rolls our equipment. It rolls our buildings. It rolls everything from athletic fields to trucks to everything we do has some kind of a life cycle attached to it.
057And if we can roll that into a 5 to 10year plan, every board member is going to know what that looks like and what those projected expenses might be. And I think then that makes Dr. Curry's life a little bit easier as we move along as well. Now, there's a lot of unknowns there with our with our revenue streams that flow every year, but at least you have a document to work with uh as you move forward. And finally, and I'll cut my remark short at that point in time, I'm a real firm believer in safe schools. Uh, I think our I think our young people when they go to school in the morning have every right to expect us as adults to provide them a safe environment to learn in and thrive in as
058they begin to prepare for the next phases in life. And I I also as part of that think that for example when a young person we have to set the example and that's professionalism whether it's administrators whether it's teachers whether it's board members um I think we have to set that example uh for our young people and day in day out they're going to be more successful. I think when you set expectations, many times our kids most of the time are going to live up to those expectations. So rather than excuses, let's make let's set expectation. And that's about all I have. That was probably more than you wanted to hear this evening. Okay, let's just kind of throw the throw the floor open here now for some conversation about what everybody heard and then
059we can u let Dr. Marino jump up here and start his presentation. >> Dr. Clark, do you have anything to add? >> No. Okay. >> Just just listening to >> Well, I was going to add add something to what you just said about safe schools. Um, another thing that I think that we could do a little bit better is some more comprehensive training for our security staff. Um, I noticed there's a lot of teachers at buildings who have said that their their staff is not as prepared as they would like them to be um in when it comes to working with kids. Put it that way. Um, so maybe some like conflict resolution, CPI training, things like that. Um, if they're not already getting that or maybe they need a little bit more. Um, the
060only other thing I forgot to say was, um, that we need to, um, continually look at the international teacher program, um, and work on improving that for next year. Um, hopefully our teachers will retain them. Hopefully we'll get more. Hopefully the the you know federal government won't sty me the the visas um of international teachers because I think that it's going to be a benefit to our district overall um over time. Um but I think that there are ways that we could improve that. I think that um we should probably have one dedicated person on staff here in the Kyle building that that is their job is you know is making sure that that program is running smoothly and those teachers have what they need. And I don't think that that is something that we
061should worry about that that's equity. I mean, to me it is because these people have challenges that other teachers don't have. And to me, we need to do our best for them. And right now, I'm not sure that we are. I think we're trying to do our best. Um, but I think that it's not anything that one person I that anybody can do while doing their job right now. I think that it maybe needs to be one person's dedicated job. Just something to think about. >> I just want to piggy back off of what Karen said based on what you spoke on safe schools. Again, bringing the kids in this conversation. They know the methodology. They know the warning signs, the red flags, they know the chatter, they know everything that's happening on the ground
062level. You have to have that conversation with them to hear what's going on and what what would make them feel safe. We really have to bring these kids to this conversation. >> We heard that last night at our meeting as well. Yeah. >> Is that the things that the kids say happened at school, the adults in the building don't know about, right? >> Um but a lot of the mentors and things like that hear that. So maybe if we had more mentors in the schools or more, you know, more counselors and things like that, we might be able to keep our buildings even more safe because kids would feel like they could confide in them >> and they have to be, you know, have to build a rapport. >> Sure. Yeah. >> You know, the
063the the schools can't be treated like a prison. And I'm not saying that's what's happening, but perspective is everything. And when we create this us against them environment, we're going to get the result. I think that's where that social emotional learning comes in. >> Yeah, >> we need to start that early and really continue it but with fidelity. Everybody has to be on the same page. We talked a little bit about copying some well-known successful programs like Mississippi. I'm not a teacher, but I have heard people talk about having schools that are K through six and not mixing in junior high with them. I'm just unsure how valid that is, but um if there was some some kind of studies that says that's how your schools should be staffed, I think it's something we should
064look at. I am a fan of magnet schools. I feel very comfortable with that. I I think it's a it's a it's a way to get parents excited about, you know, having a special school. Okay. And I I don't know if that's all politically correct or not, but I know from my experience with Monasuri, the parents over there feel really proud of the school. And I think that it's something that probably we should look at encouraging or even expanding. I'm not an educator, okay? But I but I have this feeling from people that have talked to me that this K through six might might be something that we ought to be looking at. I I think one of my concerns with how we currently do things around magnet schools Mark is in that lottery process
065that that lottery should not determine the success of a student. And one of the things is, you know, we hear every day that how terrible Decator public schools are. And then if people do want to cheerlead for us, a lot of times they'll tell us, well, if you're going to send your kids to DPS, you've got to give them to the magnet schools because they won't get educated other places. And if we and if we allow that and we say that we are only going to give the best to 21% of our students and we and the other 79% be damned, I I I don't think that that's that's a great place to be. Now, I know that there's there's no way that this community will let us get rid of magnet schools. Um, I
066think that that is a emotional trigger, but we have to look at to say if you are a child in our schools, you should have opportunity. There should not be the place where you walk into a school and they have big beautiful uh big beautiful spaces and auditoriums and different and all of these programming pieces and then you go to a neighborhood school and there's black mold in the ceiling. Stuff hasn't been updated since the early 90s. The carpet's coming up. You know, we we have wholly said as a district and our place has been our place has been and I firmly believe this that there are people who as long as your parent shows up to do something, you are the have and if you don't have a reliable parent or you have a
067parent that misses deadlines, then you are the have not. And I have seen marketked marketked differences in between with a with my daughters, you know, my daughter's in Ksix schools because that's what I believe in personally. and we decided not to do the lottery because I could not on a moral basis say that this is what I want to sit there and hope to do. You know, it caused a big argument uh big argument in my household. But if we can find a way and plot a course where we can have both successful K6 schools, successful what we call neighborhood schools even though they're not, and successful magnet schools, and let's uh let's chart that path. But to say that a certain demographic gets special treatment and everybody else has to wait because when you
068look at it, traditionally the top two quentiles of income have made decisions on the school board for 30 years and the people that we serve are in the bottom two quentiles. Okay? So we have a huge disconnect between the people who serve on this board and the people that we serve and a lot and for a very long time no one has taken the time to acknowledge that and we have been so torn up by special interest that we are finally to the end of the line. We literally cannot afford to go forward in the way that we're going. I'm I'm all in agreement with you there, Will, as far as let's accept the challenge of raising the other schools to to make them as attractive as we have for magnet schools. Not not that
069I want to look at the the negative side of magnet schools. I want to look at the what what positives we can bring to the inner city schools or the schools where the demographics are your twothirds >> and we and we do something that builds up I don't know school spirit pride you know which are challenges that we have with all of our kids >> and and we don't have inner city schools here >> we we have two schools that we would consider to be in their urban core, which are Hope and Johns Hill. Every other school is within a mile of the city boundary. We were very strategic starting in the 1960s and 70s in this district. Instead of taking people who lived in the periphery and busting them into the inner city, we
070decided to close down those schools. And those are the decisions that we're living with. And that's part of the that that's part of where we've ended up. And I hear you, Mark. I absolutely agree. Every child who walks in here should have the best opportunity that they can be to be successful. But we need to we need to have that conversation with ourselves of what does equity look like? What uh what benefits do our children have? And really how we're going to pay for that? Because at the end of the day with how much debt we have, how much more can this community afford? How much more borrowing room do we have? And you know, we're carrying a huge huge amount of debt at the moment. And we have made decisions and we have made
071decisions that have not been beneficial to everyone and we have to stop doing that. >> Taking off on the the uh magnet school concept, I have I have a question and Dr. Marino, I think you're going to have to help me here a little bit or Dr. Clark, one of the two. as as I look at the test scores and I'm certainly not an expert in that area but as I look at our testing our magnet schools are not performing significantly above the rest of our say at the elementary school level when the testing comes back and we talk about being data driven uh fact-based uh let's have a datadriven fact-based conversation about the performance of the schools and I know that's not a a real popular conversation to have, but sometimes you have to
072have some conversations that uh sometimes good decisions come out of a little uncomfort or discomfort, so to speak. So, Dr. Marino, >> I got this. >> You got this one. Okay. >> Yes. Thank you. Uh first of all, I want to be clear. The same curriculum is being taught in all schools. Let's just be clear. The Magnus schools have themes just like our other schools have themes. We just received some of our data um that we will be discussing with the board here lately. Right now we have preliminary data and we have schools that are not magnets that are performing well and we have some magnets that have gone down. So it's it really is about trying to reach students where they are and take them to the next level. And it should not matter
073if I'm in uh John's Hill or um South Shores because the teachers are the one teaching the children the same information. Um TNl, if you want to pop up, where is Mary? >> No, come if you want to add to that. Go ahead. >> Oh, I was going to say wasn't one of our highest scores was Muffley. And I believe that's a neighborhood school, wasn't it? I mean, they're performing above and and beyond. Absolutely. I mean, we need to look to to I think I said it at that meeting when they when we were doing the data, we need to check out what they're doing. Absolutely. And car and carry and like Will said, data driven carried over to every school, not just, you know, neighborhood or magnet. I don't I I don't like the
074designation of the separation either, Dr. Clark. I I I kind of bristle at it. I I agree. We need to lift all the boats together. Neighborhood schools need not have mold in their in their ceilings. Um, and I would imagine our maintenance staff would fight and come forward and tell us if children were believing uh breathing mold in there. >> I think uh we have outstanding students everywhere. The problem is getting teachers in front of them and trained teachers that are getting quality training from PDI um and not just catching looking at certain items but looking at it holistically like when I was a social studies teacher uh for example um I was asked to help break down the math data that's fine but after you do that five times I'm wondering are we ever
075going to talk about social studies and reading and incorporating it in my class. We've got to do a better job of not only getting the mold out of the ceilings, but making sure we invest more in the classroom and the teacher and getting them trained in a position like Dr. Clark said to make sure they are with fidelity teaching the curriculum the way it was designed to be teached. And I think if we do that, you're going to see a lot of boats rise. But I also agree with you too and I'm I think roadmap 2030 is like uh my colleague Miss Tyus said um hopefully is not just talking about the number of students in a classroom and is talking about curricular things which I think are really important because I think we dig
076a really wide ditch one inch deep when we um need to be focusing on two fundamentals and doing them better than anybody. Working hard to find people to come in from all around the country to come train our staff to understand those issues. I mean, I don't want to bring up past history, but I think uh there are some people in this room remember we were flown to Brockton, Massachusetts uh to sit down with Susan Patwitz, who's on 60 Minutes. We were ordered to come back and bring a reading curriculum to this district where they were in Massachusetts and Boston in a gangridden uh razor wire. We walked in there, didn't hear a sound because the curriculum was being followed and all they were doing was reading. We walked around every classroom and saw that.
077We got shut down. Okay. Um and like you said, Mr. Wetzel, brilliantly, we keep leading the troops to the front of the wall. And then we keep we'll do something else next year. And like and like you said, a five to 10 plan. We're going we're going to dig in five years. We're going to do this better than anybody. And we're going to have a detailed plan that takes in account every building, every building, and make it the best it can be. And and like I said about Muffley, congratulations to them. When we were looking at the data with you, Dr. Clark, they they blew it out of the water. Well, there's something we, like you said, data driven. We need to be data driven and look at the data and use it in ways
078that's going to make every teacher better. But that comes with hiring a re a contract that is that we can afford by making cuts and riskly governing uh helping our taxpayers out and finding a way to make sure there's a teacher in every classroom because I think that's a big problem, too. You look at the underst staffed buildings, you're going to see lower test scores. >> Yes. >> Because I'm wondering what's going on in there. Okay. That that's that's my fear. I'm sorry. >> And the data does show some of that. And I hate to put you on the spot, but >> I didn't mean I didn't mean to preach. I'm sorry. >> It's fine if you just want to touch on a basis on a few things. I know we don't have all of
079our data yet, but go ahead. >> So, so um we know right now that we have three schools that are commendable. All right. Two of those schools are magnet schools and that's MAP and John's Hill. And our third commendable school is MacArthur High School and Mley has shown quite a bit of growth. Uh also Dansby is very very close to becoming commendable. We've refined our instructional practices. Um the professional learning um has been targeted big time in this district uh particularly over the last two years and that's where we're seeing the growth. um in many cases like like a hope academy they haven't had the staff in place right and that's where we need to add water so that that school can be more buoyant or be more like in terms of their outcomes like
080the schools that are performing well. So, we've targeted that. We know it's an issue and u we're moving in the right direction. That's why you're seeing schools grow. But that's our current state. We have those three commendable schools and uh and a number of schools that have moved from uh intensive to targeted and now intensive to comprehensive and then uh from comprehensive to targeted. And the fourth level is commendable. We don't have any ex any exemplary schools yet, but we have a few that on the cusp of reaching that level. So, that's where we are. that's our state >> and a lot of this and I have to to give the kudos to um TNL and student services and it is because we are putting these bodies in the classrooms in the buildings to work
081with the um administrators to work with the teachers to work with those students that are needing that additional help but I I I just have to say none of this is going to change in a year >> and everybody knows that it takes three to five years to see progress What this team has done in this short period of time is nothing but amazing, right? The teachers, the TAs, everybody coming together to try to meet kids where they are and take them to the next level. We need some improvements, absolutely. Can we do a little bit more? Do we need fidelity? Absolutely. But I don't want to not look at the progress that's being made too and give them a high five because it takes a lot to go from two designations over. And you
082may even see a school, like I said, I don't have the final. You may see a school that is still in intensive, but in those two areas, they still grew. >> Right. Now, yes, we have work to do, but what you want to see is an upward swing. And that's what we're trying to continue in terms of the academic piece. So when it comes to equity, that's what they're doing. What do you need? Where can I help you grow? >> And it's just not about the students. It's about the teacher and it's also about the building principles. >> So, so we are seeing quite a bit of growth. Um, a lot of that at the elementary schools. Um, but our high schools should be commended. Um we we've seen an 11 um percentage point increase
083the last couple of years in graduation rates. That's absolutely unheard of. Uh we have a more robust career and technical education program. We've added a few programs to ensure that we broaden the curriculum offerings for students. And you will see that these trends where we're seeing greater student outcomes, it will continue for all schools because we're standardizing practices in every classroom. And those best practices will lead to even greater uh positive outcomes for our kids. So that's where we are >> and the writing needs to get better because everybody is just the quick text that you can that's all they know. But we are also seeing a a change in that now that we have the no cell phone that I mean of course we still have to tell them to put it away but
084at least they're having to actually write things out now. You know where it was oh uh okay or just the letter you for you or you know we were seeing that because seen that in college papers. >> Yeah. Yeah. Because they're transferring everything that they do here >> to here, you know. So, still work to be done. >> Thank you. >> I do Dr. Robinson, before you go back too for you and Dr. Clark. Um, I I'd like to have at least an understanding of the way the state is changing the I'd just like to have us not tonight but at some future meeting explain to us how the state is adjusting um their I guess analysis or the way the way they >> uh look at the test scores and just explain to us
085in length aymon's terms, how that works, what does it look like, because I I think the the common response you get from the person on the street is, well, they're just going to lower the bar so the numbers look better. So, I think it would be good if we have a good thorough discussion of that and so that people understand what's happening, how it's happening, when it's going to happen. uh so that they can apply that to or put it in their knowledge base rather than if you read it on Facebook, you know, it's got to be true. >> You can actually explain that when you do the designation report. >> Okay. >> We can actually also give them like handouts, too. >> Yes, ma'am. So, um there's a conference that is um being conducted
086by Isby on November 6th where they're outlining the performance level changes that are being made. So once we have that information in hand, we can bring that back to you all and you'll be able to understand how the summitive designations uh play out for our schools. So we'll share that with you guys. >> Okay. Anybody else have anything else? I would have to tell you this is the best discussion that I think we've that I've been a part of in the three and a half years I've been on this board that people had an opportunity to talk and react and react in in positive positive ways to conversations that many times are difficult. So >> with you sure can >> we had said something um before about having a community u event for the international
087teachers. Is that still happening? >> It is. So we were Do you want to speak? Okay. I was getting ready to speak for you until I remembered you were over there. >> Okay. Okay. Go. Come on. Go ahead. >> Yes. We absolutely are still having um a welcome event. It's actually going to be for all of our new educators. Um, and right now tenatively it's planned for um, November 12th on the half day because we want all of our staff to be able to attend. >> Okay. >> Thanks, Monica. >> Okay. Then let's move on now to another topic of the evening and that's road mapap 2030. And Dr. Clark, do you want to introduce that or do we want to just bring Dr. Marino up and >> Well, we want you to tell us
088what you're looking for. We're prepared on a lot of things. So, what tell us what you want? >> Well, I can tell you the conversation that um I I think we may all be on the same page, but everybody feel free to just jump in. And I think the conversation evolves around what was accomplished, where we left off, and what would staff see as next steps going forward. >> Got it. Okay. So, I'm >> Is that a fair assessment? >> And I'd also uh like my fellow board members after the presentation to think about what their hard nos are, what they absolutely won't vote for, because this doesn't have to be 70. It doesn't have it could be 43 but it but if we start in a place where we have a conversation about these
089are the boundaries that we'll be able to comfortably work in I think that we will find a uh find compromise enough that we can truly put together a plan that works not only for our uh the children in our district but our community our staff and this board. >> Okay. So what I'm going to have um Ashley and Jay to do is to come up. Remember this is this is not final. What was happening is that um prior to this being paused as they were having uh meetings they will bring things to the board to explain where they were. Everything is online. Every single picture, every single note, every conversation is online. And so at the time you guys paused it, they were showing you some scenarios that have been discussed. So, I'm going to
090have Ashley and Jay come up and just talk about where you were uh during that time frame, like what had all been discussed. Um, knowing since this discussion took place last, there is new data that's going to be shared and we're going to have to revisit some of these things because we have new data that's coming. Does that make sense to everybody? So, um, if you want to just talk about Ashley, what I'll have you to do is talk about how the format started. Um, because we have new board members that were not here when you guys started talking about the format. >> Sure. Good evening, board. Um so when we launched uh roadmap 2030 last summer um there was lots of discussion over the spring and summer um formalizing committees um trying to get
091different um stakeholder groups in to make sure we were maximizing um best we could a good representation of our community partners as well as internal and external stakeholders. Um and so from there um we invited several of um stakeholders. We formed our committee. We had our first meeting. Um we built roadmap 2030 and I think Dr. Marino would agree off of transparency. So everything um drives back to the uh roadmap 2030 link on the website. We had two board um representatives with us during this journey. um all materials associated with the process can still be found um on roadmap 2030's link. Um and so I think Dr. Marino was going to take us through a few things um and kind of link it all together. >> So we're we're jumping back here in time to
092uh March 18th board meeting. So this current board um four of you were not here at the time. So, this is basically we're we're playing historian for a moment. >> I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I don't I'm sorry. Can you kind of like go back and show them where all of this is? >> Yes. >> So, uh if you go this is on uh the main page of our district website and you'll see one of the banners will flash up here that talks about um roadmap 2030. The easiest way to go is if you go to district down to roadmap 2030. Um this is the complete archive of everything related to roadmap 2030. Every piece of data, every sticky note, um all feedback just as Dr. Clark mentioned um has been archived here uh as we
093prepare to unpause whenever that is. We we've got this whole basis of information that our our stakeholder committee contributed to. So you can go into any meeting, any session. You can see every presentation, um, every piece of feedback collected. You can also see meeting evaluations. What did participants say about the actual meeting that was facilitated? So there's just all kinds of information that that's here for the board. If you've not taken some time to do kind of a deep dive, this is the place where I would suggest that you start um in order to kind of bring yourself up to speed. Dr. Clark, anything else you're thinking of that? >> No, I just wanted to make sure they knew where to go. >> Yep. Uh, so you can see that um we, you know, we
094did we did pause this um with the intent of we're going to hold everything in place. Nothing's been edited, changed, removed, added, subtracted. Everything was asis, as it was when we paused this process um back in March. So, what I wanted to do was was go to the uh March 18th board meeting because we had officially paused this on March 20. So, what I wanted to do was just simply show you two resources. One is the presentation that was made to the board if you wanted to just click through. The other is probably more informative and it's an hour and five minutes. We took the entire board meeting. We edited it down to the roadmap presentation and the conversation from the board that was seated at the time around their reaction to um the progress
095that was made to date. Um it's an interesting watch. I hadn't watched it in a while. This afternoon I took some time and went back um just to refresh myself with what the board conversation was. Um and Mr. Wetzel said something I think that's critical for this process. We have to know what the absolute can't support, won't support, because we can't have a committee grinding away, moving something forward that in the end really isn't going to have four board members behind in supporting it. So, your conversation is um equally as important as to um what your direction is. So, it's been very valuable for us to uh be able to listen in on what that conversation is. So, um, I would encourage you go and watch the video because you'll get a real good sense
096at the time why this was paused and what the conversation was at the time. And it's going to come down to probably the same thing when we unpause and move it forward. What are four board members at least going to support? Because about every item in here could be contentious. you know, magnet schools, no magnet schools, two high schools, one high school, grade reconfigurations, leave it the same. Um, do we integrate prek or do they stay in an attendance center? So, we probed around all these issues through our community forums, through our stakeholders, through our feedback um in order to bring at the time what the most current thinking was. So with that, I'd like to jump in right back into that presentation now that you have some context for where we were at the
097time >> for our listening audience one more time because you said you like shortened this particular board meeting. You did not take anything away from the discussion on road map 2030. >> Yeah, it's all completely archive. >> Thank you. I just wanted to say it one more time for this main audience. So, um, I'm not going to repeat this, uh, presentation in its entirety, but I do want to stop at a few different places so that the whole board at least gets kind of a a quick look of where did we pause this and I think that's what President Clevenger's thought was, can we get everybody at least on the same page with when we paused, where were we, and what was the current thinking. So, um, Ashley talked about the transparency piece. This was
098critical to us. Um we know that in the past u we may have dropped the ball in this area of transparency and we wanted this process regardless of what you thought about what's being recommended or the outcomes. We were hoping that without a doubt everyone say it was transparent. It was out there. Every piece of feedback you can go back through and kind of see the path that was taken in order to get here. So we did have two community forums. You'll see some stats on the next two slides that talk about how many showed up, what was the breakdown, um what did that look like. Um but just a reminder that uh we did go to the community two different times in order to um try to present information and then at the same
099time receive information. And what was interesting at this February 20th forum um with the participants there, we did we did some live real time polling and talk about transparency and a little bit of anxiety who was going to say what as it flashes up on the screen, but uh we move forward with that plan and we could see real time as people were participating on a device um what their current preferences were as we probed around some of these different contentious issues. So um those two forums were were informative to us and and helped the committee. All that feedback was brought back to the committee in order to continue processing. So this was the time frame that we originally laid out um before we started the process. This was presented to the seated board at
100the time. We laid out um the the dates, the times, the topics, the focus areas, what questions we were trying to answer. What you see in gray is what was accomplished. What you see are the last two meetings when we paused. So that gives you kind of a frame of reference as to um what transpired in what time frame did all of that occur. And again, you can go back to the website, click on any one of those meetings. Um even the ones that we did virtual, we did a complete recording unedited. you can go and actually watch the entire Zoom call and the conversation and the data that was shared there as well. So, um, again, back to transparency. Okay, these were the deliverables and I want to I want to put these out
101and and back up to what the intent was. Uh, when we began this process, we had three things that we wanted to deliver on. One was a five-year strategic plan. And when we say that, we're talking about an updated and refreshed vision, mission, values, and goals. We wanted a balanced scorecard. We wanted to answer this question. What does an improving district look like? And how would we keep score to know if we're on the journey of continuous improvement? So, we work through a process in order to align a variety of key performance indicators to the five goals that came out of this plan. And then the third piece which ended up being u quite complicated is while we're looking at all this, if we want to change instructionally what we're doing, if we want to
102incorporate some of these gatekeepers strategies, the Mississippi model, some elements of different things that teaching and learning wanted to do, we would like the opportunity to have available a reconsideration of how we're using our existing facilities. And I made this statement multiple times. This was not a committee to talk about what's the next building we're going to build. That there was uh this was not about adding footprint. We have all that we need. The question was how do we utilize what we have in the most efficient and equitable manner. So these were the deliverables we were intending to set out on on the journey. So then what was expected in this year? Um because of the major changes that would likely occur from some of these transformational recommendations, there would be an entire year by
103which we could do the detailed planning of what would it take to move into attendance centers versus neighborhood schools. What would happen if we actually used true middle schools instead of a K6 or K8 model? All of that would require several community forums, communication strategies. How does this impact me? Um what does this look like? And in the meantime, while the all that was happening, we would begin the detailed preparation of what we called smart goals, action plans, and timelines where every department and school would look to the the new goals of that strategic plan and say how what needs to happen operationally in order to accomplish the kind of uh goals that we were setting out for. So when you look at the strategic plan, it is a plan on a page literally and
104you'll see it here in a minute. That is not the full plan. That is the general direction of where are we going, what are we trying to do, how do we want to go about doing it. Um and and then all of the detailed work would be supplemented in this coming year once that plan was approved by the board. Um, we also are already implementing some immediate improvements and you you've heard a little bit from teaching and learning. You've seen a stronger CTE focus. You've seen some adjustments in uh structured literacy. So, we weren't saying we can't do anything at the moment, but we could get a lot further if we were to implement the full plan. So, don't I don't want you to assume that everyone's sitting on their hands waiting to unpause. there's
105actually improvements that we could delineate for you that we said these are going to happen regardless of what this plan looks like because it's good for kids. And then you get to next school year. Um that the intent was complete complete and full implementation of that plan including all of the detailed sparkles action plans time frames. It would be very clear in this year all of the detail that would go into pulling off um all of the deliverables in the strategic plan and then the execution of that plan. It would obviously require reconfiguration of boundaries. There's a whole lot of impact. So we didn't want to create a plan and then at the start of this school year roll it out without all of the pieces to do it right. So this this gives the
106board thinking at the time as to how we would layer this um in order to uh implement this process. Um we talked at the time about all these moving parts, decision makers, facilitators, content experts, steering committee, feedback and inputs, outputs. So you get a sense of all of these things. Um, in a lot of ways, Ashley and I see ourselves as kind of tech support facilitators, coordinators. We're not the experts in any one of these areas. Our job is to try and stay as neutral as possible and provide opportunities for the feedback, funnel it, and help provide processes by which a committee would look at and say, "Well, it really seems like we're moving toward this." And we would provide opportunities and some tools and processes to start to narrow the focus of that committee.
107So, this is just kind of a a glance big picture on on what we had. Um, I'm going to skip just a couple of things, but I think this is important. We know that we can be better than we are today. And we also know if we continue to do what we've always done, we're probably going to get what we've always got. So, the answer to the question is not do we need to do something different. The answer is what are we going to do? And it's from that process that we started with a data dive. Now this is unchanged data. In other words, I did not update anything. So there are some updates we want to do when we officially unpaused. We will do a complete refresh of all the data. But this is
108what the board and the committee at the time had been looking at. And I'm going to leave this up for just a second because it gives you a really good snapshot in a lot of different areas as well as some comparative data. Not that the state of Illinois is the exemplar that we want to compare ourselves to, but it's an easy data point for us to look at and say, what's the rest of the state doing in these particular areas? So, we started with with a deep data dive with our committee. In fact, we spent an entire session hearing presentations from all of the content experts. We did one from teaching and learning, from human resources, from communication, from technology department, um student services, we all came to the table and said let's put out
109enough information so that this committee understands our current state. Okay. Um, from that we have moved into this is the draft version two of the plan on a page and I don't expect that you'll read it from from your seat at the moment but we wanted to show you that we had a process in place that all as all these meetings were happening we were beginning to form the future. Um, what's the mission? What are we here to do together every day we come to work? Vision is if we do it well over three to five years, what does it look like? Values and commitments are those beliefs that we said have to be incorporated into our organization that we can live by these things. The goals, there are five goal areas. You can see
110those uh student achievement, uh effective learning environments, positive workplace, we're looking at our staff, four is community and family engagement, and five is fiscal stewardship. And you might be looking at the goals saying, "Well, duh. Why wouldn't we focus on those things?" It doesn't tell us much until we get into the smart goals, which are not yet developed because we have not finalized that these are the areas that we want to probe around in. But what you can expect is smart goals tied to each of those five goals, tied to action plans and timelines, tied back to the balance scorecard and the deliverable, measurable data that will track to answer the question, are we making progress? On the right hand side, you'll see the process that went into that. We had a writing team. Um
111Ashley worked closely with um uh core group. I don't even remember who exactly was on it but we had you want to talk just a bit about this process. >> So when we um moved into the futuristic state of the district and putting those actions on the page so that it can be a livable daily document um we asked for volunteers um from within the committee. I believe um board member Wetzel was on the writing team and we went back and forth um based on feedback from the initial um strategic plan workshop when we really broke down with the committee the current mission and vision and a lot of things went into the feedback. It was too many words. There was too much fluff. How do we streamline? What do we mean by those types
112of things? So, um, the writing team and I really focused on gathering that feedback and help allowing it to move us forward into what you see on the left, um, left side of the page. >> So, we did a lot of research on what does the future of education look like three, five, 10 years from now. And you so where you see five articles, we took what we thought were scholarly, academic, and very realistic articles about the future of education and we said, let's not plan in isolation about what we're seeing now. Let's plan to where uh where we're going to be. And so it's through that entire process, multiple revisions. Our entire committee had access to the shared Google Doc. Our writing team had edit access. and we had uh went through a process
113version two to get us to this point. So um let's talk for just a minute and this is teaching and learning but I'll I'll I'll put these up on screen. The question was, well, what's going to look different in the classroom? And this is what we're calling our high lever strategies. And these high lever strategies are designed to be something that would give us uh a lot of synergy toward the goals that we were pursuing. And and I won't read these to you, but I want to highlight just a couple of them. We've talked about professional development that came up in your board discussion. teaching and learning was looking at a different model of how that could look on a regular basis. Um, we're calling it a, you know, a PLC me, uh, PLC process,
114job embedded, meaning at the time we were looking at late starts or early releases once a week for an hour for teachers to have the time to actually work with each other looking at data driving improvements um, at their grade level and among their content area teams. So, so I just wanted to to hit on a lot of the things that you've talked about, you're going to see in our high lever strategies, CTE and pathways, um, uh, STEM, steam, the gatekeeper grades. Mr. Hill, >> just pump the brakes just one minute. You bet. >> I want to go home, too. >> I'm excited. >> Okay. I know you are, and that's great. Um, >> the big problem with PLC's presently >> is we don't have that time. We never did. Yeah. we'd meet maybe once
115a month to evaluate the data. So, and a concept that came from your group was weekly PLC's. >> That was the concept that and that may replace or supplement or reduce the half day concept because if teacher >> I'm sorry, at the high school we were they were wanting to replicate um I believe um the high schools dismiss an hour early on Wednesdays. So, they were wanting to see if we could expand that um alignment at the K12 level. >> Would I'm assuming you would allow those PLC's to fluctuate between heavy literacy content between social studies and English teachers and then math and science could focus on math and science, >> right? There there and and the concept was we we want to give more autonomy to the teachers. Okay? We don't want district created
116here's your PLC time and you're going to do this on behalf of the district. It was intended to be more authentic tied back to the date of the school, the school improvement plan, what's important at each grade level and content area that there would be more freedom and opportunity within the workday so that we weren't paying people to go to professional development. We weren't waiting for a half day to have conversations with each other. So there there's there's a lot of detail around that. >> Thank you. >> Today isn't the the place, but those are the kinds of things. >> You can drive your NASCAR now. Thank you. Go ahead. Go ahead, >> Mr. Wetzel. >> Um this is I think the meat that got lost in the building discussion and uh this is this
117is the fundamental stuff that will truly change education in this district. One of the things that really uh kind of excited me is that concept of gatekeeper grades uh which is we have checkpoints and don't know exactly what grades those are but it was talked about what second 6th 8th and 10th or 11th something like that >> it's varied and it's also tied to some grade reconfigurations right which is why you're going to see ultimately and we'll end with that is where we left off with how do we accomplish this and is there a better way to use our structures and facilities to organize that was completely missed and everybody's screaming about that. >> Yeah, >> we saw that too. >> Okay. >> And and not to not to blavorver this because I know uh
118people have places to be, but this is one of the you know, and I'll take full responsibility for this. I'm I I'm the first person that called my fellow board member Jason Dion and said, "Hey, talk to the community. We have completely lo uh left uh we have completely left reality and everyone is caught in their lizard brain and if we do not give it space we will fail because it will come to a knee knee-jerk reaction and these things I think are the most important piece of our strategic plan. Uh, and then just to close out, um, we talked about changing what we're doing, literacy K5. You'll see alt ed, that discussion came up. We wanted to completely revamp, um, our alternative education program, expand it because alt ed shouldn't be a life sentence
119because something went wrong in your general education. We wanted this to be a real alternative education for kids who would thrive in a in a real um uh dynamic alt ed program and that would include a lot of personalized learning. So a lot of your issues we've been talking about planning for looking at research and saying what could we do differently um in order to really move the needle uh according to the balance scorecard and all those measures that we laid out. So these this is just a a reminder the snapshot in time where we left off with these were the strategies that we would like to move forward and then flesh out in detail when we get into the smorkeal action plan piece to say how do we actually implement them. Um I won't
120belabor this. This was the draft of a scorecard. You're seeing way more measures on here that will actually make the cut. But we wanted you to see the discussion among the committee. If you took goal one, student achievement, what kinds of things would we want to pay attention to? If you took goal four, increase family and community engagement, what would we be measuring? And you might look at it and say, well, community involvement, how would we measure that? If we don't have an existing measure, we will need to create one so that we can track this over time. So when you look at this, this is concept and the real work will come in once we've once we've determined the final scorecard and and and seek board approval on that. That's where you're going to
121see in the lower right is an example where we took uh pick a measure and say, okay, what would it look like on a piece of paper? We want to show three years of historic trend because when you look at data, you don't want a snapshot in time. So you'd see three years, then you'd see the current, which would be blank until that data point comes in, but then you'd see projections. And that red, yellow, green stoplight was to give uh any person a quick scan. If you look down the right side of that scorecard, you're looking for green, yellow, and red. And we're hoping over time that you would see a lot of green, meaning we are making progress. Yellow is we're flat or we're up and we're down. It's not a real trend.
122red is we're not moving or we're moving in the wrong direction. So, we wanted to simplify. We wanted real hard data, but we wanted some kind of a visual that that you could look at and say, are we making progress? >> So, question on that. I'm sorry. Yep. >> Uh going back to that, >> and you have to remind me because it's been a while. >> What piece of this was going to be live for community members to see? >> Yep. Um so one of the things that you've heard about is our district our district data warehouse that we've been working on. We have the ability to make available uh what's called a forward-f facing portion of our data warehouse that would actually present real time when data points were available. Um you'd actually see
123that data um appear in real time. Some of these pieces are only updated once a year, sometimes three times a year. Um some of these are are monthly or even sooner but the concept was transparency. What good is it to have a plan and goals but not identify what you are considering success um toward those goals. So that was the concept here is let's get accountability to the district to the community around these five goals and how we're going to measure our progress. And then the stoplight piece is just a a best practice that you'll see in a lot of organizations where real quickly you get a snapshot and and then you can determine what you want to dial in and and look at. >> And also just to note um these measures were not
124um created by just the experts in the content area. We did a gallery walk with our committee. They were did we leave off anything? Is there anything we should add? Um they got to vote on priorities under each of the goals. Um, and then we were going to create um, a focus for each year because we know we can't bite off more than we can chew and we were going to prioritize. But I just wanted to make sure we noted this was committee um, collaborative work um, that and they were able to give us feedback. >> All right. Um, back to the facility piece. Um, we wanted a slide that represented um, the conversation around facilities. So, so this just gives you a kind of a timeline of all of the different touch points that
125this committee um had some opportunity to get information about our facilities, weigh in on uh some of that. And this was trying to build what would lead up to in a few slides here is what would we recommend then if we were had the freedom to reconfigure our district to meet our high lever curriculum and instruction strategies. What would we do if we could? Okay. But I just wanted to put this back up in front of the public and the community and the board. Um all that went into u looking at any piece of these um facility conversations. So, we also wanted wanted our committee and the board to be reminded of the facts and assumptions we're using in doing this. Um, I I won't read them all to you, but I'll hit just a
126couple of them. Um, we've got ample square footage. We're losing student enrollment to the tune of about a percent and a half a year on average. We're going to refresh that data because we think it may be more aggressive than that. Um that's what that's why we've requested the demographic study. But we just wanted some assumptions. The other issue we're struggling with is all of our viable square footage, the surplus is at the secondary level, which causes a real issue with trying to look at your K8 environment, knowing that if you're not building a brick and mortar, but you're using your existing square footage, there's some advantage and reason why we wanted to consider a one high school model because that frees up all kinds of opportunities to reutilize very nice square footage but at
127uh potentially a K8 level. So that so if you're wondering kind of how that how that got in there, these these were the assumptions and facts that we wanted to work within with whatever decisions. This is a scenario that um that gone through several processes. We at one point in time had 20 different scenarios that we were looking at. They got narrowed down. we started eliminating, reducing, um, adjusting, tweaking, going back and forth with with how to do this. This was where when we paused was the scenario we wanted to do what's called proof of concept. We didn't even know if we could pull off that structure, but we knew it aligned really well to a lot of the high lever strategies. So, at the time, I'm just going to give you the thinking that
128we would look at a prek2 attendance center. We were looking at quadrants. It doesn't quite equal out to quadrants, more like three portions of the community, but for practical purposes, call it north, south, east, west, where each quadrant would have a prek2. Each quadrant would have a 35 that it would feed into. Each quadrant would have a 68 actual middle school. And then uh we determined at the time that we would remain with two high schools. Um, we we got enough feedback that the timing probably isn't now, but President Clevenger said it well. At some point in time, our numbers, we won't have an option to migrate to one high school. That will happen. Um, at what point in time do we determine we're going to make that move. That will be up to the
129board. Um, but for the moment, um, we we stepped away from, uh, going to one high school. Um, so let's talk magnet for a minute. What came out of this conversation? Um there was a lot of contentious conversation in the community on our team. Um we know how coveted our magnet schools are. We actually proposed scenarios that did not touch the magnet schools and we were told by our committee do none of these options show a non-magnet option. So we kind of went into this with well we know how important the magnets are and people really don't want to mess with those. We left them off until we got so much feedback to said, "Will you bring us back some options that maybe tinker with the magnet structure? Uh, don't include magnet schools or have
130some different recommendations." So again, this is where we paused. This is not a final recommendation. It was where we paused at the time with our best thinking um and how to how to utilize and leverage those strategies that we would keep Monasuri um in its current state. Um, and there were a couple reasons for that. One was if you look at achievement out of the three magnets, it stands above and beyond typical performance that you would see at the other two magnets. It was a noticeable difference in the data. Um, number two, it's a unique program that uh is pretty special and there was some thought about preserving. We're one of the few K8 monastery programs in the state that operates. You combine that with the results. And the third piece was as our architects
131toured that facility, we did a lot of customization to that building. So much so it works perfectly for a Monasuri. Um the efficiency if you took that building as is and tried to convert it to a a K2, a 35, a 68, we would be at about 40% efficiency because of the structural design that occurred in that building. wonderful for Monasuri. There would have to be a lot of work done to convert it back to something more traditional. So given all of that, we talked about threading the needle a little bit here. Can we keep a magnet, but can we take Danvy and John's Hill and convert them? Keep the name the same. Uh the namesakes are important, the history, all of it. But consider making them middle schools by which you could have every
132single student in the district attend one of our flagship buildings. So you would essentially allow your sixth, seventh, and eighth grade, regardless of the where they live, what their neighborhood, what their zip code is, they would come through one of our flagship middle schools. And that was an option to say, "We're not getting rid of magnet. We're going to add magnet to 100% of the kids, but the magnet experience is in the sixth, seventh, and eighth. So, we tried to again thread a needle here with how do you do all of this? Um, could we have three different magnet schools? They would all have a core, but each would have a different pathway, a fine arts pathway, um, a steam pathway, and then, uh, kind of a CTE, um, CTE focus. But within that we
133would say what if we use that as a magnet where if your pathway was more I need that arts integration piece. You could apply and we would try and load balance to where families could select which of these three directions they may want to try. There'd be a core for each but we have these different options at the middle school level. It accomplished a lot of things in our mind. It kept uh a magnet structure. It provided true middle schools and it retained a piece of the magnet structure at Monasuri in its unique program but then gave a 100% of the families the option to have some choices in our very best newly constructed schools. So this was the thinking at the time that went in prior to the pause. So I just wanted to
134clarify this was not a final recommendation but it was how do we take this feedback and bring something that provides the greatest equity um possible for all learners. So that's a lot that's hopefully brings you up to speed on where things were paused. Oh, I was just going to say um when this scenario came up is when um a lot of miscommunication went out because people thought this was it and it was just simply a scenario. >> Um and discussions would have come back to say maybe it's another scenario that you want to look at, but we never got that far into the game. Um, the other piece that occurred is that everyone started focusing on on buildings and as you said earlier, you have to get the academic piece down first and then your
135buildings will support the academics. Yeah, I went to a lot of meetings and that academic side that I was talking to you about, I would have as a as a teacher at the time, I really would have enjoyed seeing that and I would have had more buy in, but all I kept hearing about was what buildings people wanted open and closed. Just a quick question and then I'll end. This is teacher trivia. Okay. The recent data shows preK through three and 456 attendance centers are better socially for children. Why preK2? Why35? Why? >> Sure. So when you start looking at these scenarios, you have to put pen to paper. take the number of students, total square footage, existing facilities, >> and some of the ideals that we wanted, we couldn't hit with the current facilities
136without requiring >> a fairly substantial addition remodel. So >> again, we're we're backing into how do we get the best with what we got in order to meet that. So there were a few things. Ideally, if we had 10 to 15 million, we may have tweaked this, but we set out with we got an existing footprint, we have facilities, how do we use them? So, that that's that kind of led us here. >> Thank you for your time. >> And that's why all new data information is needed, too. >> Okay, other questions. >> I have one about the committee. How was the committee made? Like, who decided who was going to be on the committee? I can tell you that it is administrative driven and so we kind of like got together and said who
137are all all of the key players that are out here. We wanted to make sure that our business was representative our teachers were represented uh represented TAS uh parents um am I missing anybody? Um union yes >> leadership is your membership right here. >> This is a question for the three of you. How hard is it? Let's say we vote on starting it tomorrow. How hard is it going to be to kickstart it with all those? >> Yeah, it's it's going to be hard because we do need to go back and revisit all of the people that were there and we need to ask them, hey, are you willing to come back and work with us? And if not, then we're going to have to go back to um our list and invite more people
138to the table again. >> And are we willing to add people? >> That's my thing. it will be >> I think we should have more families and more teachers. I think the ratio doesn't have to be the same. I think that not all stakeholders when it comes to schools are created equal. That's my opinion because I think that there's people who spend their entire lives in these buildings and there's people who send their kids to these buildings and I think that they should be heard from a little bit more as well. We did u make sure we had teachers and TAs um and secretaries that had school I'm sorry kids in our schools. We were very careful of making sure that was selected and I hear what you were saying but we also wanted to
139hear from everyone because what we're hearing from our business partners as well is we are not preparing them to come to them to work as well. And so we were trying to make sure we did have a balance. Um but the people that are showing up if you look at the uh data going through the slides you will see a great deal of teachers were showing up to those forums more so than the parents and that's something that we do have to work on because we do need to hear from them and we also had students that u we brought to the table as well. Go ahead. And I think um some of this we leaned in on our um building principles for a recommendation. This was a commitment over a over many months and
140even those that were initially listed here. Um we seen attendance vary. It goes up and down. It's seasonal, right? In December, we're on a virtual Zoom. Um people are traveling and so we wanted it to be representative. Um, and we wanted to make sure our the people that did commit were in it to see the process all the way through. A part of strategic pan planning as well, once you get into the action plans and different things like that, there's opportunity for subcommittees. And so, we didn't get to that point where um, if we're looking at data and community engagement and things like that, how can we also engage those families um, without it being a sixth or seventh monthlong process? What was the number of people we reached out to? Do you remember? In
141the beginning, we reached out to quite a bit. >> Close to close to hundred, I think. >> And you ended up with what? >> I think we ended up with a solid 40, but the like I said, the attendance varied. Um >> there were 57 identified and committed to that process and and again as the process moved through we we saw you know decreased participation which was interesting to us as facilitators. We evaluated every session for the people who were there and we asked basic questions. In fact we could probably randomly go in and pick one. They were the same questions throughout each session so we could say are we hitting the mark? are people responding and saying this was an effective use of our time. We had an ample opportunity to provide input. Um
142so not to now to be frank our evaluations of each session were really very very positive but why we saw a decreasing attendance and participation we didn't know how to fix that because all of the feedback from the committee was well organized structured good use of our time. we were seeing very high remarks from the people who were actually in those sessions. So, you know, that that's kind of baffles us too. Same thing with community forums. Half of the people in those forums were our teachers, not the community members or parents or taxpayers or others that that you know we we were hoping uh to to hear their voices, too. So, uh it's a little bit of a conundrum. How do we get more people to turn out and show up and and stay engaged
143and participate in that process? >> That was the the whole and that's what I was going so and you guys would know that but I'm watching um from the couch because I was on FMLA, right? And so I'm looking at the feedback. I'm looking I'm following online so I can stay a breast of everything and I'm seeing participation dwindle. So by the time they got to this point, >> they were already at about 25% of what they started with. And so you have to kind of get people re-engaged again because everything that has been done so far, some of those things can change because you have to bring these people to the table. Is this still what we want now that you have this new information, right? But we want to get going, of course,
144but we still got to make sure we're bringing people to the table. I would like to bring just the conversation back full circle. Um, in these scenarios, what we don't want to do is go down a road that at least four board members aren't going to support. So, we're real interested in your board discussion. If we hear do not touch the magnets, we got to pull that off because we don't want to put people through the paces and recommend something that at the end we can't get over the goal line. So, this is where the board feedback is really important to us. Um, and so we're we're listening intently uh to determine what are the absolutely can't happen in this plan or can't be recommended because you won't support it. What are the things you're
145open to and could be convinced given the right data? What are the things that you absolutely have to see? And >> let me jump in for just a minute. >> I don't think we can take a vote before the planning process is completed. I think the the impression would be that you're asking us to sit here and take a vote um and have straw polls about what or might what might or might not. I learned to count a long time ago. >> With with a sevenperson board, you got to have four votes. We all know that. >> So, but the issue is m moving forward, I think you got to let the planning process play a little bit further before you make a recommendation to us to vote on. >> I think that's what he
146was saying. And I think we just kind of jumped ahead because like I said, this was a scenario and we still have to go back with new data. What you know, Ashley and Jay is saying is as we start bringing things back to you again, you have to let us know how you feel about what we're bringing to you. >> And really, uh, Mr. Clevenger. The reason I said that, if you go watch the video from March 18th and hear the board discussion, there were board members no longer seated who said, "I absolutely won't support any plan that touches a magnet school doing anything different." Which is part of the reason why it got paused was I'm not sure we were going to have four votes to push it over the finish line. So, it's
147just the reality of what we all need to be aware of is we'd like to continue the planning, continue moving forward. Any item of this plan that you look at, you will have people lining up at public participation saying don't touch my school or don't do that or we don't like that. and and you're going to have to work through that with people who disagree with the what's even being discussed and determine if you're ready, willing, and able to make those decisions, even knowing you're going to have a contingency that isn't going to like it. And if you watch the video, you you'll hear me press on that just a little bit. Hopefully, not too hard. But the reality is the you are not in easy seats to make these decisions because about any decision
148you make about half the people are going to have some issue with it. There is no magic bullet. There is no perfect plan. That's the reality of of what we have and and part of this is timing and and I'm hoping Mr. Clevener there's some conversation about when is the proper time to unpause and do the work. You have a superintendent search. you have lots of other items on your plate. Um, what I what I have said publicly and I've said it privately, what you don't want is to unpause now while you're trying to attract candidates for your superintendent position and all they see are people up here screaming at you during public participation from now until your superintendent search is complete. Okay, I'm not saying that to be uh uh evasive or or hide
149something, but at the same time, you got a lot of candidates watching you, watching your board, saying, "Is this a place that I think I could be successful superintendent, you don't want to jeopardize that process." We're not saying prolong it indefinitely. And Dr. Clark can weigh in on this if she cares to, but my recommendation is get as far in this superintendent process to the point where you've got candidates you're interviewing and then consider an unpause of this process where you haven't jeopardized probably your most important task and that is to secure your superintendent. So, um, what I handed out earlier and thanks to, uh, Secretary Bradford, um, it is a draft calendar and it does two things. The first is this is this is draft. This is working. We set our calendar here on
150the board, right? That's what that's one of the things we do. And what this shows is what our current timelines are for our superintendent search. It shows information about legal services. It shows all of the things that we are legally required to do like pass a budget, uh ensure that we do a superintendent evaluation and this is the first time that I have seen this and I think it will be a tool that all of us will be able to use. Uh and part of this conversation was a question to Dr. Marino and Miss Granid about >> what they thought would be what they thought would be possible uh or would make sense from a term of uh restarting the process. Now this is not set on uh set in stone. We own this process.
151At the end of the day the seven of us are the people who will determine when this starts, when this stops. Okay? And so I would encourage you to look at this. No decision has to be made tonight, but we need to make a decision at some point. But please look at this and please come prepared to discuss this at our next board meeting during board discussion. >> Thank you. Appreciate the time. >> Yeah. Thanks. >> Thank you. >> And I just want to clarify something. Uh asking hard nose is not asking a vote. It's about putting parameters on and to understand where we are because you know there are things that um there's some sticking points I have that I want to have conversations about about how we present data. You know I won't
152support anything that doesn't say the reason that we're shuffling these buildings around or uh add up to these high lever strategies and then that equals why we're doing this. And there's some structural pieces there but we're not going to presuppose. We're not going to sit here and uh decide in a close session what that committee should should and should not say. But at the end of the day, if we ask 57 or 100 or however many people are in this committee to come in uh come in and give us what they believe at the bottom of their hearts is the best job that they can do. And we come in and we say, you know what, I don't want that and I had not said that and I had not put that parameter out there
153to work in. And then all of a sudden we take these 57 people for the first time in a long time in an open and transparent process and say, "You know what? We don't care about what you uh what you thought because we gave you the false pretenses of we would accept we would accept the work that you turned in even though it doesn't match our rubric." >> That means some boundaries. I think you're right. >> Any other comments? Okay, I think that will draw this meeting to a conclusion. Uh, the next regularly scheduled meeting will be 6:30 October 28th uh at the Kyle Administration building. Do I have a motion to adjurnn? So move. >> Second. >> All in favor signify by saying I. I. >> Those opposed. We are adjourned.