001ready uhhuh okay time to get started I'd like to call the Open Session board meeting to order can I have a motion so moved any discussion M Bradford Mr shider here Mr Reynolds here Mr wetel here Mr clevinger and Mr Dion Hi 5 I Z2 absent thank you like to ask everyone to join me in the pledge pledge aliance to the flag of the United States of America to the stands one nation God indivisible withy and justice for all do we have a recommendation for tonight's agenda yes we do I recommend the board approve tonight's feary 22 I have a motion so moved discussion all in favor signify by saying I I I oppose same sign motion's carried I think at this at this time in the meeting we'll move on to our training with
002the Illinois State Board of Education U going to provide us our training for the evening yes I am good evening everyone my name is Nicholas eckle um I am the supervisor for school district Improvement at the Illinois State Board of Education um I am out of the Chicago office um but I do spend a lot of time in the Springfield office as well um a lot of times people sit down for a training they're like all right who's the person standing in front of us what do they know about this who are they so little background on me I've been in education for 23 years um I've spent the past four working for is before that um I was a school principal for 12 years School administrator for 12 years um my very first administrative
003job I was hired as the dean of students but then they changed the job title to include the dean of students assistant principal athletic director and facilities manager all in one I was like that's fabulous and it was a very tiny one school one building District um we had about 300 kids um but you know I remember standing on the roof in a shirt and tie going yeah a hole in the roof someone fix that for me please all right thank you um so I've done that um I have taught first grade I have taught fifth grade I've coached wrestling at the high school level um I have taught Ed Finance at the University of Illinois Springfield uh at The Graduate level as well um my absolute favorite job ever I was the kinderg I
004was the principal of a kindergarten building so I had the all of the district's kindergarteners in one spot all 500 of them it's a lot of little people running around but it is also the job where I felt like a rock star every day of the week because I just walked out the hall theyd be like yeah what's up yes the greatest ever and then I went to a middle school and it was not quite the same feeling um all that to say though that in 2018 when designations first happened um in the state I was a principal in Zion Illinois and I received my letter stating that we were a targeted School a what a targeted School we fell into the targeted designation so I have done this work from both sides of the
005table as a principal going through the work and now I was a coordinator beforehand that worked with schools um deor was actually one of my first districts that I worked with uh back in 2021 uh when I started with the agency um I've also done it from the side of the table that you're sitting on now I was a board member um myself in my children's District in Wisconsin um they have similar programming so we were going through the same stuff there so I've sat on all sides of the table for this now um and so today um what we want to be able to do with this module with this training is to give you an understanding that continuous School Improvement is not about changing what the kids do continuous School Improvement is not
006about changing what the kids do it is about changing what the adults do and that's every adult from those that are working on our playgrounds and in our cafet criterias to working in our classrooms to working in our offices and our Administration it's changing what adults do changing adult practices to improve student outcomes that is what school enement is the other part of this is to help you as board members understand the role that you play in not only monitoring but also supporting the work of school Improvement because this is what I can tell you the principles in your buildings Dr Gray because I know he works directly with all of this with the coordinator that's working with toada right now there is a lot that goes into this work and there is a lot
007that these principles and these staffs are doing every day my job is to help you understand your role in monitoring the work but also supporting the work that they're doing but to start I want to know who I'm talking to tonight so if you could tell me how many years you've been on the board what is the thing that you enjoy most about being on the school board and I've gotten some great answers some crazy answers as I've done this over time now um but then when you hear School Improvement what does that mean to you so we'll start over here um hi I'm wetzell I've been on the board now for two years well two years coming up in April in May um I enjoy most about being on the board um just try
008to move this District forward um being a servant to the people in this community and then also getting to meet a lot of people that I wouldn't normally get to meet and hopefully building something to move us all forward uh and when I hear School Improvement um a whole host of things comes to mind everything from academics to you know the buildings themselves so I'm definitely interested in seeing exactly what this is because we get this report and uh the Deep dive I think will be very good absolutely thanks thank you and Mark Reynolds I've been on the board two years same as will um I love coming to these board meetings I can't really tell you why I don't know if I'm crazy my my friends told me I was crazy but internally I
009I feel like I'm in a position to try and improve situation uh I was one of those type of people that would complain oh our kids are doing terrible and and I I I finally got to the point where I said well put up or shut up so I became a board member and I've enjoyed working with these people I've enjoyed working with the administration I think we've got a great a great team here and uh you know I'm looking I'm looking forward to us making improvements and changes and stuff and Improvement to me is you know having a third grader reading a grade level you know having our kids all reading at grade level doing math at grade level and uh I know it's not easy I I know we got a big big
010task ahead of us but I'm enjoying the challenge excellent I'm Al shider I've been on almost four years and um the word School Improvement itself is pretty much why I got involved in school work to see whatever could be done recognizing you're like you're saying not going to be able to do everything but do whatever you can and I enjoy hearing the positive things from our schools that come out they come every every meeting we get from a different school it's always that's probably most you know and I know we're not hearing the whole story but we're hearing some really good things that you know you know a lot of times Community doesn't know about so it's nice to hear those things yeah absolutely a oh okay big audience Jason Dion um been on the
011board Bo now for about four years and I'm getting over something that's taking my voice so we're we're doing pretty good right now um and uh kind of I guess what I enjoy most about being on the board is seeing and building the opportunities that we have for our students not only for those that are high achieving but for those that that aren't meeting the standards uh looking for ways to improve that which that's why we're here right um and then also those that um you know Finding finding opportunities that can meet additional needs in our district put it that way right um and then yeah School Improvement for me is um you know decreasing that gap between the high Achievers and those that aren't meeting a standard let's let's what is it Rising tide
012I I can't remember what I said But Rising tide you know lifts All Ships right so let's let's do that you know um let's not leave people behind just because you know it's easy to do because it's wrong absolutely I'm Bill clevinger I've been on the board two and a half years I've served six six about six months in an unexpired term prior to um joining will and Mark uh on the board uh for their their two-year term so about two and a half years um I was kind of one of those folks who I've watched I had four boys grad uate from MacArthur High School age 45 to age 30 so we were involved a long time in the decare public school system and uh retired and saw this as an opportunity to give
013back to the community and and a challenge to help um sort of in in any way I I possibly could offer in the administrative area and saw the deficits of our young children and hopefully will make a difference in um our our scores from our third grade marker to our ninth grade marker to how do we change that Dynamic and look forward to continue to be part of that with the team of board members we have and how how we move that Paradigm for the whole District forward thank you okay so the next question question always becomes why are Boards of Education being trained okay in the Essa plan for the state and ESS legislation um board members of districts with schools that do not exit status so that means board members of districts with
014intensive schools in them um we'll complete training provided by the Illinois Association of school boards it's iasb and then the Illinois State Board of Education that's me um on effectively supporting School Improvement efforts so what this equates to is there's three modules that boards uh with intensive schools are going through there's 17 districts in the state with intensive schools right now okay the first one um is the board self- evaluation that I would say 95 plus percent of our boards in the state go through every year or every other year anyway with iasb so that's step one step two is understanding School Improvement that's with I isbe um and then the third module that you'll schedule for later will be with iasb and it'll be on understanding data um because when we start talking about
015school Improvement and we start talking about data there's a lot of it in districts and it's a lot of making sense of it and then putting it into practice so that'll be that next one is everybody okay if I kind of just walk around a little bit I tend to roam as I present um so understanding your designations there are currently five designations in the state of Illinois okay the uh topic uh designation is the exemplary designation that makes up schools that score in the top 10% of the state okay the next designation is commendable commendable runs between the sixth percentile and the 89th percentile in the state it's a very large spam um that is being looked at right now and how we could do that differently but that's what the current span is
016right now for commendable schools targeted schools a targeted school is one that falls into the commendable range so falls into that six through the 89th percentile but one or more of their student groups so that could be our El population our Hispanic Latino population black African-American lowincome two or more races uh former e all of those are subgroups any of those student student groups that fall into the bottom 5% then that School receives a targeted designation okay and I'll talk about targeted comprehensive and intensive and then kind of what that starts when they get that designation so that's what targeted is they would fall into commendable but one or more of their student groups falls into the bottom 5 per. comprehensive school is one that their all student score falls into the bottom 5% in
017the state so that's our lowest performing schools in the state intensive schools intensive schools are schools that on report card 2018 or report card 2019 were designated as comprehensive and then again on report card 23 and report card 24 were designated as comprehensive again so they were comprehensive before they remain comprehensive that designation then becomes intensive and so then we do things a little bit differently for intensive schools as far as support from the state board goes how many of you have looked at decator Public Schools um report card online most of you okay on that site um you can pull up any one of the schools on that site and it'll give you the historical designations for that school all the way back to 2018 so you'll be able to see in 2018 2019
018202 22 2023 and 2024 what their designations were I skipped 21 and 22 or 20 and 21 because we didn't give new designations those years because of Co so we said we're g to take a step back we're not gonna put anybody in designation based on Co years to that end intensive support and Improvement so schools that are designated as intensive their official designation is is I intensive support and Improvement their intensive designated schools so this is what we provide from the state we provide the title one part a section 103 School Improvement Grant funds these are funds that are designated specifically for schools in intensive comprehensive and targeted status we provide a different level of funding based on your designation with our targeted schools re receiving the least amount and our intensive schools receiving
019the most amount of funds okay These funds are for four years okay the first year of which is the planning year that's the year that we say okay listen we're going to take all of your data we're going to take a needs assess we're going to take all these things we're going to sit down and we're going to look at what are your priorities what are some of the underlying causes the root causes of what's taking place how do we address them how do we make our plan and then we develop a school Improvement plan the next three years implementation year 1 two and three are the years in which schools take all of the work that they did in their planning year and the plan that they created the school Improvement plan that they
020created and they put it into action all right and we're going to talk about what that action looks like and how that goes over the course of multiple years but the funding is there for four years they get the most amount of money in implementation year one and then we kind of pull back we give them a little less in Year Two and A Little Less in year three the reason that we do that is because we want schools and districts to decide yes this is working for us now how as a district how as a school are we going to fund this long term we call it the sustainability plan okay if something's working what's the sustainability plan to keep it going inside of the school and district there is a more rigorous needs
021assessment that takes place American Institute for research is the contractor that received the contract to provide the uh needs assessment and more rigorous needs Assessments in the state of Illinois for this more rigorous needs assessment they come out to the buildings they do observations over the course of two days inside of buildings they observe classrooms inside of the building um using a a a survey thing that they uh survey tool that they have called class they utilize that there is a survey that goes out to all staff in the building that the staff is invited to answer we don't make it a requirement but we invite everybody to please provide your feedback we give them the opportunity to have input into what's going on inside of the building there is a focus group that takes
022place with staff inside of the building um and if you have a middle school or a high school there is a student focus group as well because they bring a very unique perspective to that table as well as to what is going on or what is not happening inside of the school and there's also a principal interview that takes place as well that principal interview takes anywhere between 45 minutes and an hour and a half to complete okay and you'll get an opportunity to see kind of what some of those pieces look like from that report as we make our way through a root cause analysis is completed um it's determining this is what we're seeing inside of the building why are we seeing that inside of the building not just yeah that's the problem
023why are we seeing that we'll talk about the root cause analysis a little bit they develop a new school Improvement plan based on the root cause analysis so all of these schools that are in intensive status when they fell into intensive Stat or when they became intensive they already had school Improvement plans in place from when they were comprehensive status we take those out because we need to start from scratch we need to start from square one so that's what we do we have an on demand learning series that is available to not only schools that are in designation but schools across the state we have a school Improvement website that lists all of the resources the materials and everything that we have um the folder that I gave you today contains a lot of
024those materials a lot of those resources and we'll talk about them as we go on there's a little icon on each slide for a corresponding document um and we'll talk about those technical assistance from the school Improvement helpline um so that school Improvement helpline is available 247 they can call and leave a message call and speak with our my assistant or they can send an email to the helpline as well and then there's an assigned School Improvement coordinator for every District that has a comprehensive or intensive school um in decator I believe currently it is Trevor Chapman um so he is the coordinator that is uh working with Decor right now um he's technically our lead our project lead for the Department um but he said hey let me keep deater so we said okay
025you can keep decater um so um the great thing about Trevor Trevor is a uh is the former principal at um unit District 5 high school um so he is a wealth of experience and background so what schools indicator fall into the Intensive status um these are all schools that were on report card 23 so that's the report card that came out last October October of 2023 so these were all 2018 original comprehensive schools so we have Steven deer Middle School Franklin Grove Elementary which I know um in 2122 was the merger of two schools um into Franklin Grove um American dreamer Stem muffley Elementary and Hope Academy so those are the five schools indicator that are currently in intensive status so where did it come from like I said they were on report card
02623 or 2018 they were Des at as comprehensive now you heard me say before that this is four years planning year and three implementation years but if you look up there you're like Nick I count five years that's because of Co we gave an extra year of funding and an extra year of support to schools during Co um to still do the work that they were doing so on report card 23 they were again designated as comprehensive so they became intensive schools this is their uh report card 23 so the 2324 school year was their planning year so this year 2425 is implementation year one for them right so they have this year and then the next two years the goal is to get them to targeted commendable or exemplary by report card 27 so
027that would be October of 2027 okay now you're like Nick we want them at commendable or exemplary yes we do want them at commendable or exemplary absolutely but but targeted is still an improvement okay and targeted gives them four more years of support as well they're out of that com that comprehensive or that intensive designation status but targeted gives them four more years of support to help ensure that the systems that they've built the systems they put into place continue and are continuing to do the good that they want them to do inside of that school I want all of my schools commendable and exemplary okay but we got to take steps to get there sometimes okay so the continuous School Improvement model that's my little icon that tells us um that there's a corresponding
028document it's this document right here all right um originally when we created this this document was literally just this blown up to be a full-size piece but in our conversations with principles and District administrators assistant super tend directors superintendant it was said that hey if you've got this and you've got all these resources that are linked if you just linked them right at the bottom and the principal pulled up one page then they could just click out to all these different documents all these different resources so that's what we did okay our department we're school and District Improvement we're all about continuous Improvement we do the same thing for ourselves okay but we do it through the lens of the people that are doing the work inside of the schools and districts so as you
029can see here in the continuous School Improvement it is a circle it only has one beginning and that's identify local needs that's where we start with all of our schools identify local needs is the first component there are five components identify local needs plan for school Improvement select relevant evidence-based practices and interventions Implement and monitor and examine reflect and adjust course we're going to talk about all five of these components tonight okay we're going to go through what the schools go through what work they do but we're also going to go through how do you as a board engage in the conversation and engage in what's taking place the other document all of the documents that are in here are directly related to schools and what they do except for two there's two they're called
030monthly topics and tasks one says planning year one says implementation years these are Board of Education documents for Boards of Education they are designed to help boards engage in the process engage in the work that's taking place right it gives you topics and tasks things that as a board During certain parts of the year you're going to have to do certain things for schools that are intensive three times a year schools that are intensive need to present to the board on the work that they're doing and the progress that they're making as a state we have not said exactly what that has to look like we haven't given them a template and say present this to your board we've said that's up to the district and the board on how they want that presented to
031them and then there's essential questions to help you engage in the conversation with Administration okay and we'll touch on these at the end of each one of these components what some of these questions are and how you can engage with uh your Administration so let's dive in the first one is identify local needs each comp this component is made up of four elements identify a school leadership team build a stakehold Advisory Group conduct a school level needs assessment and conduct a root cause analysis so my first question to you is what's the difference between a school leadership team and a stakehold Advisory Group uh School leadership team would be our Administration while a Stak holder advisor group would be a collection of people between probably teachers students community members yes on the second one almost
032on the first one okay so the school leadership team is a group of school level staff whose focus is to develop Implement uh Monitor and evaluate the school Improvement plan so it's not just the school administrators that are inside of a building okay but it's other members of the school staff that help in this process that are key members they're the ones that then after that school leadership team does all this work creates that school Improvement plan they're the ones that take it back out to the rest of the staff and say Hey listen this is what we're doing this was all of our voices included in this in creating this here's how we're going to do it so here are some of the people that should be on this okay we say a size
033of four to eight members is recommended my very first teaching job I was a first grade teacher I was one of 16 first grade teachers in one half of the building there were 16 first grade teachers in the other half of the building as well so when our team sat down with all 16 of us guess how much we got accomplished not a lot too many cooks in the kitchen too many opposing viewpoints right so four to eight members all right now this is going to vary from building to building I have one District in um the southern part of the state just outside St Louis um where they building their junior high middle school or their their middle school and high school is the same set of teachers there's 50 kids and four teachers
034that's it so their entire staff is part of the school leadership team meeting right but if I go to some place like Auburn High School over in Rockford that has 150 staff members and several thousand students get guess what you're not going to get 150 staff members so we say eight maybe nine staff members so here should be included grade or grade bands okay you say grade bands maybe you've got a K1 rep a two three rep a four five a six rep right depending on the grade depending on the structure of the school middle schools and high schools Department chairs right your Ela your math your science your social studies all of those people are great to have at the table specials areas teachers art music PE stem Woods Metals all of those somebody
035from that group needs to be represented special education teachers this a group of teachers that work with our neediest kids in the building they bring a different perspective they need to be at the table this next one um teacher Union represent represent representative okay I don't know what the union relationship is indicator that's not the point the point is is that when you start talking about changing things inside of a building changing the things inside of a building that adults do the unions are very interested in that because you're you're changing practices for adults right and they just want to make sure that the teachers and staff inside of those buildings are protected and taken care of absolutely 110% I was a union rep myself when I was a teacher I get it have them
036at the table so that when people come to them and say hey they're asking us to do this they can be like yeah yeah it's totally okay it's totally what we need to be doing for our kids have them at the table and the one that is probably overlooked more than anything else is the PA professionals so PA professionals teachers assistants whichever terminology is used they are important they have a very unique perspective nine times out of tens those pair professionals and teacher uh assistants they're parents in the district that are there so they bring a parent perspective they work with kids small group one-on-one a lot of time they are an important perspective to bring to the table your school leadership team meetings your school leadership teams should be meeting at minimum minimum on
037a monthly basis okay that monthly basis should be the time where they've got data in front of them to say hey this is what we've implemented this month as far as our action plan how are we doing on it well here's what the data says so this should be on a minimum a monthly basis I know in some districts I have some schools that they meet on a weekly basis some meet every other week some meet once a month it's up to the district it's up to the schools but at minimum it should be once a month so how do we help schools guide that work right how do we help them guide that conversation and keep that conversation focused fused on school Improvement okay we offer other resources because here's what I can tell
038you all my years as an administrator the number of times I sat in my car before I walked into the office at 7 o'clock in the morning had my phone I was going through all this is my schedule for the day I got to make this call I got to go do this observation this evaluation meeting I got to go do this this and this I was like all right my day is set and then I stepped out of the car and the superintendent called me and three teachers called me and I hadn't even gotten in the building yet and then I got the building and my secretary was like hey Nick you've got four people outside your office waiting for you already I'm like 7:01 what time did they get here right and my
039whole day was gone and by the end of the day I got to the end of the day I'm like man I'm exhausted it's been a long day I don't want to sit down and have this leadership team meeting I don't want to sit down and go through this but I have to I need to go through this for my kids so what do we provide in your packet you're going to be like Nick we got two of the exact same things nope one says planning year one says implementation year okay because the planning year conversations look different than the implementation years these documents none of them are written in stone we didn't carve these on tablets anywhere okay they're guides they're resources to help principles and teams stay on task the year in the
040Life document that's in there it's the long one that goes this way this has if you look across the top it has the different players at the table we've got school Improvement coordinators ISB Board of Education District staff intensive School principal School leadership team and the school level needs assessment vendor underneath all of those for each month is who's responsible for what should be taking place inside of that month okay again it's a guide to help keep going forward too many times when I've worked with schools I said hey do you have a school Improvement plan yeah yeah let me get the binder off binder off my desk and they're like okay here it is and I'm like wow I also just showed how old I was saying taking binder off the shelf um because
041everything's electronic now but but I'm like wow we we we've got to we've got to redo this right like we've got to think about this again we do this because we don't want it to be a case of we've done it we printed it off we put it on the Shelf we'll check it at the end of the year no we want this to be something that is at the Forefront of all of your school leadership team conversations now we also know School leadership teams they help with the day-to-day function of the school as well right they're talking about man we're having some issues with arrival we're having some issues with dismissal oh there's an assembly coming up those are still important conversations of running a building that the leadership team can be involved in
042but we want the main focus to be school Improvement of that conversation now you'll see where it says intensive schools at the top of of these documents as well we have these documents for intensive schools comprehensive schools targeted schools and then we have documents for all schools in the state okay the state superintendent Tony Sanders his vision is school Improvement for all regardless of designation okay where it's not a you have to do but here's a good practice you should have regardless of the designations inside of your school I can tell you right now as a principal of a district that in a school where they were an exemplary school they were National blue award uh national uh Blue Ribbon Award winners twice they didn't have a school Improvement plan they never looked at data
043they never did any of this stuff the students that came to them came from very affluent families doctors lawyers business owners they could have done next to nothing and those kids would have been fine and done things but that's not 90% of the schools in the state of Illinois it's not what happens right our students need a lot from us so these are guides to help keep everyone on track at all times all right um also one of the documents for school leadership team again this is just a guide but it's a resource that's in there to help principles um know who should be on their leadership team what they should be talking about and how often they should be doing it I can tell you right now that when I went through my master's
044program to get my license be an administrator a couple dozen years ago um we didn't have a class on school Improvement there was no course on school Improvement I don't think in any of my classes we ever talked about school Improvement once it was a lot of learn on the job trial by fire kinds of things right so a lot of principles coming into this they don't know how to do this and that's okay that's what my people are here for is to help them understand that so we give them this as a resource to help build those School Improvement teams School leaders teams okay next sorry my eyes itching me you were 100% right on stakehold Advisory Group stakehold Advisory Group is a group of stakeholders that are all impacted by the success of
045the school Community okay the story I always tell with stakehold Advisory Group um is when I was a principal in Zion I could walk outside at the end of every day and I watched my kids walk down the road I I literally stand on the corner and I'd watch them walked down the road three blocks library was on one side of the road and the store was on the other side of the road guess where my kids went every day store into the store so I got to the point I'm like oh hope my kids are being good inside the store right like I hope hope they're being good so I walked down there and I talked to the store owner and I said hey are you know the principal up here my kids behaving
046when they come in at the end of the day he's like yeah he say they're great they come in they hang out I put out snacks and drinks for him or whatever it's great and I said you're okay with it he goes I'd rather have him in here than not there causing trouble we getting into something I said appreciate it how can I help he said how can I help you I said well know how you could help you got space for a bookcase in here he's like yeah I got a space right there like great I said I'll get you some books and a bookcase he goes I'll get the bookcase you get the books it's okay I got him like 40 50 books right every age level from kindergarten through sixth grade which
047is what I had in my building at the time I went down there a month later he had like 150 books on that bookshelf so where are the other books come from he goes oh I bought some I got some donated from people that came in and saw it but that's how how you make the connections in the neighborhood or make the connections in the community that's the purpose of a stakehold Advisory Group is to be part of that so who's on your stakehold Advisory Group who should be included teachers and School staff okay this one's easy for an administrator because you can just say hey who on my school leadership team also wants to be on my stakeholder Advisory Group right because they know the work that's G on they can speak to it
048directly because they've been doing it parents and Guardians important to have on there if you've got kids that are old enough have your middle have your middle school high school kids have a student rep or two on there as well right maybe it's a student council president ambassadors whichever you have available in your schools have students on there as well community members community members are so important I know this to be a fact the number of times I heard as an administrator well you know I went to the school 20 years ago and you guys are still doing the same thing we did 20 years ago I'm not doing the same things I did five years ago inside of my school let alone 20 I'm not doing the same things I did two years ago
049inside of my school I've changed it because I needed to for my kids but we've got to get the community members in there to hear that and see that to be part of the conversation local businesses you know you got that store that's two blocks down get your business owner in there as well School leaders important your administrators they better be at that table they better better be there and the other one that's not up there but I always recommend is your Civic leaders okay Alderman mayor board members okay these are the people that are in front of constituents on a regular basis and when those constituents start complaining about oh over at deor Public Schools oh over at American dreamer stem that person's able to say hold on wait a minute you know what's
050going on inside of that building you know what they're doing or you don't let me tell you purpose of your stakehold advisor group engage the community to build an understanding about the needs and the processes that are taking place inside of the school it's an opportunity to get varied perspectives and concerns that are impacting the school and community at the same table and they act in an advisory capacity okay they bring different perspectives they bring different ideas to the table it is then up to that school leadership team on what to do with that advice frequency can vary on how often you should have your stakehold advisory group meeting we recommend two to three times a year these are the three times a year that I recommend to everybody the first time is when you've
051got that school Improvement plan ready to go you've create you've done all the work you've done the needs assessment root cause analysis you've developed goals goals Key activities your progress monitoring you developed all of it bring that stakehold Advisory Group together explain to them Hey listen this is the process we went through we did this we did this we did this here's the priorities that we identified for our school and what we're going to address and here's how we're going to do it this is what we're going to do to address these concerns and these priorities inside of our school second time when winter Benchmark time you completed winter Benchmark it's an opportunity to bring everybody in and say Hey listen here's our fall data and here's our winter data look at the progress that
052we've made here's the growth that we've seen take place and then the third time is at the end of the year after that spring Benchmark is done and after you've had that opportunity to examine reflect and adjust course you've tweaked your school Improvement plan for the following school year Roll It Out roll it out to the community and say hey this is what we're doing so board members how do you engage in this conversation well I think a fair question for you to ask is okay you've done this work what's the data that you're looking at that you have found valuable in assessing the school strengths because every school even our schools in the bottom 5% of the state there are strengths that are taking place inside of those buildings there are things that are
053going well inside of those buildings and there's areas for opportunities and then you can ask the question what priorities were identified during the needs assessment and root cause analysis those are questions that you can ask of your leadership engage in the conversation so that you understand the work and also so that you understand when that school Improvement plan comes across your desk every year because it has to come across your desk every year for compreh for targeted comprehensive and intensive schools you know what you're looking at you know how they got there you know why they got there and why they wrote what what they wrote All right I'm going take a minute here and stop any thoughts or questions on the first part of what I've talked about is there a a phone number
054on this technical assistance from school there is it's at the end of the presentation okay I've got the email address the phone number and I've got my business card on there as well okay for you to access would you go back over the statutory requirements for these various trainings for the benefit of people who are watching or for the minute so they'll know why we're training now and when we're going to train again and all that kind of absolutely absolutely so the statutory requirements for school for districts that have schools in intensive status okay is three trainings okay the first one is the board self-evaluation that's something that like I said 95% of our boards in the state do on a yearly or every other year basis okay that's something that takes place regularly we've
055just added it to this because it's an opportunity for you to reset and say okay we've got intensive schools how as a board do we operate and function as a board we're going to do a board self- evaluation the second one is understanding School Improvement that's the one we're doing today and then the third one is um understanding data monitoring School monitoring data Okay the reason that we're doing this training now is because there are there are expectations for schools to come to boards and say three times a year and say hey here's our plan here's the work that we've done and here's the progress that we're making okay now the five schools for Decor were identified last year okay we didn't have these modules created at that time okay we created them the end
056of last year over the summer so we're rolling them out to you guys now all right we're doing it now because your schools are in the midst of this process right now okay it's an ongoing process for them so we want you to have this information now I know that elections take place in April board members are seated usually end of April Start of May okay for new board members part of their training going forward for all board members across the state is going to be understanding School Improvement and monitoring data those are going to be two components that are added into the four hours worth of training that every new board member has to go through okay those are getting added in I'm working on creating the video for the um understanding School Improvement
057one um so that that'll be available to any of the groups that go out and do the board trainings but we wanted this in-person opportunity now for boards who have schools that are going through this currently right so it's an opportunity for you to engage them now and say hey we just learned about this tell us the process tell where you tell us where you guys are at right now okay your schools that are comprehensive and intensive meet with my coordinator on a monthly basis your intensive schools meet with my coordinator twice a month okay it's an opportunity for you to engage and say hey tell us how those uh those sessions are going how are those meetings taking place like how's that how's that rolling okay so we do that now so that you
058have that opportunity and then any new board member that comes on is going to have access to an on demand version of this training when they come on and I've also said to every superintendent if any of those board members want an in-person conversation or an inperson training with me I'll come down and do it as well I have no problem doing that okay thanks yeah absolutely Jason did you have something you said you wanted all of your schools and exemplary or commendable status right is there enough room there because we're talking percentiles we are talking percentiles we absolutely are um the honest answer to that question is at the Exemplar level not no cuz it's the top 10% in the state um but what I want to see is I want to see the
059steps towards that level right like I I want them making progress towards that commendable or exemplary level makes sense okay um you know I I put it in perspective of of a student right if I have a student who comes in and they're scoring at the third percentile when they come into my school I don't expect them to be at the 90th or the 95th percental by the end of the year but I would love to see them at the 20th percentile by the end of the year and then I'd love to see them at the 35th percentile the next year and the 50th percentile the next year same with schools I want to see them move up every year I want to see them taking those steps towards that ultimate goal of they're no
060longer in status and that they have the systems inside of their school that regardless of what administrator is sitting there or what teacher is sitting there those systems stay that work continues moving forward regardless of who sitting in any seat inside of that school so we are in the process of writing a five-year strategic plan is there's best practices to integrate this into that so you will see later on we'll talk about the difference between a district strategic plan and a school Improvement plan okay okay and how the school Improvement plan supports the district strategic plan okay and then secondly uh there's been discussion about started discussion about shuffling buildings around and possibly closing some so how does that affect so um what happens is that um take Franklin Grove for example okay because it
061was Franklin and Oak Grove Oak Oak grve before that um because I'd worked with both schools and then I worked with them when they combined what happens is whichever rcds code okay so the district has an rcdt code that code identifies decada public school this is your rcdt code and then underneath of that each school has an rcds code and that tells you that this is this school if the rcds code stays the same designation status stays with it okay which if you're making those shifts and you're making a lot of changes around it doesn't hurt to have that support there for that school and that administrator to help them through the process as well okay because I know for me when Franklin and Oak Grove were combining together a lot of my conversations didn't
062always Focus around the school Improvement plan and that process but how was that that merging process going on right and I became kind of another voice another person to listen to and help rainstorm for them it's the same thing my coordinators do the same thing um closing schools um I know I had another District that closed down one school and reopened it as um a school that was um all English language Learners inside of that school well the rcds code changed for that so their status changed when that happened does it answer your question yes it does okay any other thoughts or questions okay next up what is a school level needs assessment so a school level needs assessment is conducted during the planning year okay it ensures that the initial School Improvement plan that
063is created um is based on high quality data the best data that we can put forward for that so the American Institute for resch search um they conduct the school level needs assessment on designated intensive and comprehensive schools and like I had said that consists of Staff surveys focus groups uh principal interview and then observations inside of the school okay um one of the pieces that I will say that is nice about having an outside group that comes in and does it is that they don't have a horse in the race okay there's no bias for them okay they're also beyond the school level needs assessment they're not allowed to provide any other services for those schools okay so it's not setting them up to do any other work inside of the school okay they're
064just going to give you the data as it is okay they're going to put it out there and just say this is what it is all too often I had a school that I worked with that the principal that started the school year did um the Illinois quality framework supporting rubric which is the the Illinois needs assessment that schools do by themselves um did that and marked everything as exemplary or accomplished you're in the bottom 5% you're going to tell me everything is working exactly as it should or above what it should two months later the principal was replaced a new principal came in looked at it and said yeah this isn't right I said okay let's redo this okay with a with America with air coming in and doing that there's no bias right
065and to that principal's credit to that first principal's credit she wanted the best for her school right and she saw that her teachers were working hard I would never say that they're not working hard but are they doing the right things for the kids that are in front of them maybe not so we need to readjust so what does this look like for air they look at four areas leadership and vision curriculum instruction and assessment culture and climate and targeted instruction and support those are the four areas that they look at that's that's what the focus groups the the surveys the interviews and the observations all focus on those four areas under each of those areas there's different elements so if you look under leadership and vision it's got Focus shared vision and goals distributed
066leadership and sustainability culture of continuous Improvement and line consistent professional devel okay that's all the stuff that they collect add- on and it's a lot Dr Gray these reports were what 40 50 60 pages long I mean they're extensive reports okay that put in direct quotes of what people say into there okay no identifying information is provided but if somebody says hey this isn't working it's in there it says it on this initial report this is the initial page on that report it designates each of those elements as initial emerging established or robust okay for all of our schools that are in status we see them all over the place there are things that are established and robust and that's great because like I said before there are things that work inside of these schools
067there are things that are going right inside of these schools but then we look at the initial and emerging things and say how can we do better how can we help that that process along okay so looking at this list of data standardized assessments that's I PSAT which will be act um School surveys attendance five Essentials Benchmark behavioral data progress monitoring classroom data anything up there you think that doesn't belong up there no all of those belong up there so when we say that school leadership team is sitting down and looking at data that's what they're looking at okay it's a lot but it's all information that tells us everything that we need to know about what's going inside of the school what would five Essentials be so five Essentials is the um climate survey
068that's done every year so for climate survey um it is is Teachers students and families that answer the five Essentials and that's done on a yearly basis I believe that window is open now um so it's an staff has the opportunity to take it students the older end of our students have the opportunity to take it and then it's open to families as well okay yep all right um District data dive so Benchmark what's is it NWA uh we're using no it's not that no star fast Bridge fast Bridge we also Incorporated star the secondary level okay good um so that Benchmark um that's the one that's done three times a year all right fast bridge is used here uh star at our older end of things is great but there's other ones out there
069there's map is out there I ready is out there fast Bridge there's star 360 there's a lot of different ones um but for you understanding what is the one that is used here in deor public schools and how does that data play into what we do is important for you to know progress monitoring so benchmarking three times a year progress monitoring progress monitoring is done every week every other week every four to six weeks depending on the intervention that's taking place okay when I talk with principles about writing School Improvement plans and their progress monitoring plans I ask them please use your local Benchmark as your data for setting those goals okay don't use I I is a test taken once at the end of the year and you don't get the results until August
070September okay it's not a good thing to write your goals on but if you use your local Benchmark that you're using here in the district you can sit down throughout the course of the year and say are we on the right track to exceed to meeting our expectations meeting our goals okay root cause analysis again it's another resource that we have available to our principles okay I know that when I went through my Masters program we didn't ever talk about a root cross analysis right that wasn't something I did until I started working on on developing School Improvement plans okay again a guide a resource but a root cause analysis it's an approach to problem solving through discussion to dig deeper than the surface symptoms and undercover and uncover the underlying causes okay one of
071the biggest problems people tell me all the time is the problem that we have is low student attendance chronic absenteeism is the problem I said no chronic absenteeism is not the problem chronic absenteeism is the symptom the problem is why are the kids not coming to school the symptom is they're not coming to school the problem is why aren't they coming to school is it a transportation issue is it a family issue I know that when I was um in z I had fifth and sixth grade in the building I had a lot of kids that ended up being absent well come to find out the babysitter was sick couldn't watch the two and three-year-old so the fifth and sixth grader stayed home to watch the kids that's why the kid wasn't there okay I
072understand it but it's there's not a whole lot I can do about that problem but that's the point of a root cause analysis in root cause analysis you're going to come to two things the first one is a problem that you can do something about as a school this is something that we can do about transportation is a issue we've got one bus that shows up late every single day us as a district that's a problem we can solve okay we can deal with that parents don't feel comfortable with their kids crossing this street to get over to the school that's a problem we can solve as a school and as a district okay the other piece you're going to come to a problem that's outside your control so what we do from there is
073we go up to see where it is that we can help solve that problem okay I had sixth graders that were home by themselves in the morning had a hard time getting up Mom couldn't get them up I had one mom who called me she goes I can't get him out of bed said okay you're two blocks away I'll be there in a minute I walked down that street every day knocking on his door come on we're going to school you're walking with me get out of bed you're walk walk to school with me about the second week I didn't have to knock on his door anymore he just came to school cuz he knew I was going to show up and banging on his door right but I couldn't do that for the 600
074kids I had in my building but I could get him up I could get him out of bed so that was a problem I could help solve but I also had an group or an organization that donated clocks to families alarm clocks to families in the community as well because they didn't have any clocks in the building in their houses they all had cell phones but right we'll get there right but donated clocks alarm clocks to families okay there was just another way another help that we could give that wasn't necessarily something I could do inside of the school but I had an organization I could reach out to for assistance so the root cause analysis really digs deeper into the why and it's about asking questions repeatedly until you get to the why okay
075another one that I get all the time is well Nick there are children with disabilities and they have a IEP for a reason so they're never going to meet expectations that one makes me mad okay and it makes me mad for a number of different reasons one because I'm a human being two because I'm an educator but three I'm also the parent of a child with an IEP and another child with a 504 my daughter has a specific learning disability okay the school solution was well we're going to give her an IEP and we're going to pull her out of her Ela class and out of her math class every single day and give her individual instruction just for her I said that's great when is she ever gonna get the on grade level material
076so that she even knows what it looks like so she can get up to grade level standard oh well we don't do that yes you do now okay but so the symptom isn't we have all these kids with IEPs what's the problem how are we providing services to those kids let's dig deeper and maybe we need to look at our programming I'm not saying that about decer I'm just saying in general we need to dig deeper into the why behind some of the issues that we're having so that takes us through the first component of identify local needs identify local needs is a pretty lengthy challenging process okay and it's challenging because you've got Educators some who are like I've been doing it this way for 25 years and it's always worked I understand that
077I respect that I respect that you've got 25 years in the classroom but it's not it's not doing it anymore for our kids we need to look at how to do it differently how to change it up and hey what resources do you have available that you've gathered over 25 years help us out be part of the solution that we're looking at so plan for school Improvement is made up of four elements smart goals Key activities and timelines local assessment for uh academic progress and then monitoring the plan I will tell you if you look at that screen it goes from easiest with smart goals to hardest with monitoring the plan on the other side okay I've seen great plans written and they start off Gang Busters and then they get to October and the
078plan goes to the side and they don't monitor anymore and then they get to the end of the year and they're like oo we should look at some data like ooh you're eight months too late we got to change this up so smart goals again this is another resource that we have that explains what a smart goal is why they're important specific measurable achievable relevant and time bound and it also gives some examples of good smart goals on the back of it to help them start the conver ation so specific measurable achievable and relevant are probably the two biggest ones that I focus on for everybody okay and I say this because if you walk into a school and let's say 9% of our lowincome students are at or above the proficiency mark on our
079local Benchmark is it achievable to say that 89% of our lowincome students are going to be at or above the proficiency Mark at the end of your one as much as I would love for that to be the case it's probably not going to happen and relevant if Ela and math are the two biggest areas that you're suffering in in your building that have low student outcomes please don't write a goal about social studies or science it happens more than you think what did you say the last thing you said um social science and science if El and math are the two biggest areas that you're having the most trouble in don't write a goal about social studies okay focus on Ela and math okay and then once you've had Ela and math up to
080where they're supposed to be I just want to make sure I understood yeah no absolutely all right so this is a little bit of interaction are these good goals or bad goals based on specific measurable achievable relevant and time bound so here's the four goals I can tell you all four of these goals have come off of school Improvement plans that have been submitted to is okay the first one I can tell you that um when the principal wrote this goal 32% of their African-American students were at or above the Prof at or above the 60th percentile so goal one by the spring of 2025 40% 48% of African-American students will score at or above the 60th percentile on the IR reading Benchmark assessment good goal bad goal so they're at 32 now they were
081at 32 at the start of the year yeah yep that's a good goal okay all students will show Improvement in their benchmark assessments bad goal yes well not a very objective not not a not a very good goal like hey great like they're all going to make Improvement great it's a nice dream but let's let's on what by when how much okay 38% of students will increase their RIT scores uh in the NWA map assessment what's uh that is the score on map it's called the RIT score is just it's the title it's the name of the score not obtainable where do we know where they're at now like before that one I think they were at 8% for the start of the year but what they're saying is individual ually it doesn't matter it's
082not the overall average they're looking at individually so if a student at only 10% they need to go up to 4 or you know whatever um you know at least 38% of the students will increase on that particular score not so much the average for the school that doesn't seem too bad I think it's good if it's individual here's what's missing by when you there's no timeline there's no timeline on it by when and you were kind of getting to the point though 38% of students will increase their rid scores okay that could be a kid increasing their RIT score by one right or that could be a kid increasing their RIT score by 25 right how much do we want them to increase their RIT score if this had said by the spring of
0832025 38% of students will show eight or more points points of growth on their RIT score and map specific good goal it's specific it's relevant it's achievable it's great I was just assuming [Laughter] Infinity the the other bad thing about that I think also is that uh you're not really looking at how many decreased yep or how many stayed the same you know so it's kind of ignoring some parts of it too and then by May of 2025 38 students 38% of all third through fifth grade students will score at or above the 60th percenti on Star 360 map math sorry star 360 math benchmark assessment yeah that's a good goal now I think one of the biggest things that people struggle with is this we're saying that only 38% of our third through fifth
084graders are going to be there or 48% of our African-American students are going to be there okay I struggle with that as an education leader because I want 100% of my kids there but I also need to take it step by step by step to get there I want 48% of my students this year I want 59% of my students next year I want 63% of my students the next year right like I want to keep building but I've got to start somewhere and it's not that I'm saying hey the other 52% of my African-American student group doesn't count I'm not saying that at all those other kids we're working with every one of of our kids but we know that realistically in one year this is what we can do with this percentage of
085students next year let's step it up take it another level the year after that take it up another level I think that was one of the big failings that No Child Left Behind they one of the goals was um to reach a 100% graduation rate it's like you know it's like that's not humanly possible um you know so let's be more staggered you know to try to get as high as you can yep and that's and that's one of the things that that the difference between No Child Left Behind and Essa is No Child Left Behind there was a lot of punitive that went along with that there was a lot of shame that went along with that that's not what this is now right under a No Child Left Behind what happened if you
086didn't perform they're like oh we're going to take some of your funding away from you yeah how does that make sense to anybody right right that's like saying to a student with an IEP oh you're not performing well we're going to take all the supports away from you it makes no sense so that's where under Essa and what we have now if you're underperforming here's support and we're going to support you until you no longer are in that underperforming Mark so that was smart goals so like I said that's kind of the easy one right I set the goal that's what I'm that's what we're working towards the next one gets a little harder it's it's how are we going to get there okay what are we going to put into place to get there
087that's where writing the plan comes into place so the question before was District strategic plan versus the school Improvement plan what's the difference again we have another resource available to you okay it talks about that the district strategic plan is a long range plan founded on the vision mission and values of the district okay so it is it is looking at the district as a whole and setting some goals for the district and saying these are our long range goals that we're setting for ourselves a school Improvement plan is created at a school level and it's created to improve student outcomes through the improved leadership systems and processes with inside of a school okay so that's why I said before that a district Strate a school Improvement plan is there to support the district strategic
088plan okay so the district strategic plan ensures consistent implementation of high quality instruction to improve student outcomes the school Improvement plan says that students scoring at in the on or above grade level range of the numbers of operations domain will increase by 10% from the spring of 24 to the spring of 25 is measured by the IR already man math diagnostic assessment so the top one that's the priority that the district set inside of that District Improvement plan the smart goal underneath of it is how that school is supporting that goal that priority so District strategic plans they're usually three to five years School Improvement plan is one year the Strategic plan is focused on the Mission Vision and core values of the district while the school Improvement plan is focused on adult systems and
089processes with inside of a school does that make sense to everyone kind of what those differences are between District strategic and school Improvement plans okay the school Improvement plan for all schools design as intensive they are required to use the state's template for their school Improvement plan we recommend it and it's optionable optional for comprehensive and targeted schools but for intensive Schools they're required to use our plan template okay so the plan template includes a lot of different things the first thing that's on there for everybody is the continuous School improvement process front and center all the time importance of smart goals a lot of the documents that we talked about today are included in the template okay as you can see on the screen right now this is the plan okay this is one
090page of the plan in here they would write their goal at the top and then the next part this is where I said it gets a little trickier it gets a little harder okay we've written our goal but now how are we going to attain that goal what Key activities are we going to put put into place this could be instructional strategies that we're going to try inside of classrooms professional development that we're going to provide to staff inside of our schools on new curriculum new interventions different uh uh instructional practices or practices that we want them to implement inside of their classrooms okay could be a lot of different things on here we lay out what is the key activity as you can see in there we say focus on adult practices not changing
091what the kids do but changing what the adults inside of that school do we're going to say who's responsible for it and by when they're going to be responsible for it by this is what I say to all my schools please do not write an action plan for a 10mon school year at one go because I can tell you right now when that administrator takes it to their teachers and says hey here's our action plan and the teachers are like okay okay okay because it's got 52 things on it want to know what that teacher's going to do okay I'm going to go back to my classroom and teach my thing and I don't blame them that's a lot to take in at one time I tell all of my schools that I worked with
092when I was the coordinator month by month write your action plan based on one month at a time bite-sized amounts because the other thing I tell them is I want you to do fewer things better then more things halfway okay have two instructional strategies that you're going to try inside of classrooms for the month of October who's going to do it all of the classroom teachers when are they going to do it by by the end of the month then comes the well how are we going to know if they're doing it how are we going to know if it's being successful that's where classroom observations come in okay that's where administrators being out of their offices and in classrooms is going to tell us whether those instructional strategies are having any effect and it
093also lets those teachers know and gives them some sense of calm for the day well I know that when Nick comes in as my building principal he's looking for these two strategies that we've talked about and these two things that we're doing so they know what I'm looking for it's not a pop in and surprise what's he looking for it's he's in here because he's looking to see how these two strategies are going inside of my classroom great okay part of that key activity is we didn't just say hey here's the two strategies you're going to try we said hey we're going to try these two strategies and here's the PD to go along with it okay we're not just going to tell them what to do we're going to give them the support to
094know how to do what we want them to do okay now the big question comes up who's paying for this PD who's paying staff to attend this PD who's paying for the provider that's going to come in and give the PD we give you funds for that that's what the 103 School Improvement funds are for is to help support that work okay what's the professional development I'm sorry professional development okay so you go through and you list out what are the associated expenses with doing these Key activities okay the other piece is we need to look Beyond just the 103 School Improvement funds that go along with it but what are some of the other funds that we might have available is this focus on our e students title three is this focus on our
095children with disabilities Ida funds looking at other funds inside of the district inside of the school to help pay for this okay because then that's also looking at what is our sustainability plan what is our long-term plan for making sure this stays continues the way that we want it to continue also that's on here it says what other resources do we already have to support executing these Key activities there's a lot of resources inside of our schools okay and we may not be utilizing them all effectively so maybe we can sit down relook at what we have and maybe we need some more professional development on what we already have inside of our schools okay and then also what support or information do we need beyond the school whether that's from District leadership that's from
096an approved Learning Partner maybe our local Roe what are some other groups that could come in and help us support this work as well so developing the Key activities was a little harder this next part this is the really hard part it's the monitoring plan okay that monitoring plan should be on a monthly basis so when that school leadership team sits down that month they can say hey this is the data that we have whether it's progress monitoring data directly from the students it's observation data from the classrooms it's attendance data it's behavioral data but it's looking at what are we going to look at on a monthly basis to see if we're making progress nine times out of 10 if a school Improvement plan fails this is where it fails is at the monitoring
097plan because there is so much that goes on inside of our schools everyone is busy those teachers are busy they're working hard with their kids every day that administrator they've had 85 phone calls 364 emails and I'm not even joking about 364 emails because I remember that's what mine looked like when I was a building principal there's a lot going on if plan's gonna fail this is where it's going to fail but that's where the monthly topics and tasks and the year in the life of school Improvement that's where this comes into play these are the tools resources to help administrators and school leadership teams stay focused stay on task and work towards completion again we give you as board members some questions it's fair to ask what support beyond the school leadership team does
098the school need to implement the school Improvement plan okay what other resources do they need what other supports do they need okay I guarantee you if you have a principal standing here and you ask them what do you need beyond your leadership team that principal is going to tell you exactly what they need beond their leadership team because they know ask the question how will the school or District monitor the school Improvement plan okay that's where three times a year SE September January and June these principles have to come to the board and present their information okay now again what that looks like exactly how they present it that's between the board and District leadership on what that looks like selecting relevant evidence-based practices this is my word of caution to everyone on this I
099went into a school not that long ago I sat down with the principal and I said all right tell me about the curriculum that you have inside of the building tell me about your interventions well they told me about their Core Curriculum great it's on point it's research based it's relevant it's evidence-based there's research to back it up that it works for kids great what interventions are you using I started writing I had him stop when he got to number 16 interventions and I said I'm going to stop you I said cuz I got to 16 so you have 14 interventions too many inside of your school okay we can't intervene our way out of low student outcomes we can't we can't just keep putting interventions in place if 80% or more of our students
100are receiving interventions on a daily basis that's a core classroom tier one instructional problem could you explain what you mean in that sense by interventions that absolutely absolutely so core classroom instruction is what that classroom teacher teaches every day right that could be they've got Bridges as the curriculum they've got Reading Street as the curriculum that's the Core Curriculum that that teacher teaches every day on grade level interventions being what an interventionist a PA professional or a teacher might pull a group of anywhere from three to four students to work on their individual specific need based on the Benchmark and the progress monitoring assessment that they have have so those interventions work with small groups of kids sometimes one-on-one with kids on their specific needs but if 80% or more of our kids need that
101level of intervention our core isn't working and we've got to read we got to read address our core instruction and what's taking place on grade level inside of our classrooms okay approved learning Partners so comprehensive and intensive schools have to work with one of the state's approved learning Partners there are 48 options for schools to choose from that are approved learning Partners okay comprehensive intensive schools have to work with a Learning Partner that Learning Partner can be done a lot of different ways you may have two or three different learning partners that come in because they're working on leadership coaching they're working on instructional strategies they're working on culture climate that could be a couple of different groups you have come in that help you with that okay it might be somebody that you have
102come in they come in on a monthly basis they offer instructional coaching services to teachers that Learning Partner it's how you set it up as a school in a district but you do have to choose from one of the learning Partners so is has approved these 48 yes Partners basically Implement Mon and monitor so communicate the school Improvement plan to all stakeholders implement the school Improvement plan monitor implementation and progress towards those smart goals that's where I said if it's going to fail this is where it's going to fail okay the first thing that should happen on teacher Institute days at the beginning of the year is that principal and school leadership team better be standing up in front of them with the school with everybody having a copy that school Improvement plan and going
103through it step by step and it should be telling all staff members all right for this key activity this is who's responsible for that for this key activity this is who's responsible for that those teachers should never go into a year not knowing what their responsibility is when it comes to the school Improvement plan all right it's also that opportunity to bring in that stakehold Advisory Group and say hey here's what we're doing implement the school Improvement plan this takes time right good school Improvement is three to five years for it to be good positive change that stays and then monitor implementation and progress towards the smart goals that's that school leadership team sitting down at minimum on a monthly basis with data in front of them to say hey we're making progress or hey
104we're not making progress and why again board questions what data sources were selected to monitor progress of the implementation and Key activities why was that data chosen who's responsible for collecting that data sorry no that's okay how often are those data sources reviewed okay A lot of times you'll ask the question who's responsible for collecting the data who do you think they're going to say the principal is responsible for collecting that data that's a lot on that plate of that principal that school leadership team can help right they can pull that data just as well we don't gatekeep data everybody needs to have access to the data okay so again these are ways for you to interact and be part of the conversation of what's taking place we don't expect board members to be on
105school leadership teams and in there doing this with their staffs no that's not your role as a board and that's okay but it is the role and responsibility of that staff and that principal okay your role your responsibility comes in as it's kind of accountability it's kind of asking the question what's the work look like what are you doing tell me about your data tell me about why you chose those priorities okay and then how can we help support that what resources do you need what can we provide okay examine reflect and adjust course now examiner reflected just course looks the exact same as planed for school Improvement it's the exact same four elements okay except this examin reflect and adjust course takes place all year okay you may get to November and say hey
106we've done these two instructional strategies for the last two months and we're really not seeing any progress with this why aren't we seeing progress what data is telling us that we're not seeing progress okay how can we change it up what can we do differently so they should be examining reflecting and adjusting course throughout the entire year the only thing on that school Improvement plan that does not change is that smart goal smart goal stays the same but those Key activities they can change all year long because you may get one and you're like this is going to be great and you get two months in and you're like this is horrible it is not working let's do something different okay let's do something different again asking those questions what updates are you making how
107are you adjusting course throughout the course of the Year okay it takes us back to our continuous School Improvement model okay it's continuous it goes round and round we do it year after year high performing schools should be doing this low performing schools should be doing this and everybody in between should be doing this okay this QR code will take you to the school Improvement website on ISB okay all of the resources that I've shared with you today that we've talked about today they're all located on the school Improvement website they're available to anyone regardless of status they are available to anyone this oh sorry is contact information that first on that's up there that's our school Improvement hel line that's the email address and phone number to call for support okay I will tell
108you that if you call the school Improvement heline or you send an email and you are deater public schools they're going to send that it to Trevor and Trevor is going to respond to you okay the next QR code that's up there that's my business card I haven't carried a business card in paper business card in five years so that's my business card also because I don't have pockets to carry that many business cards but that's my business card it's got my email address on it my phone number on it my office address please feel free to reach out right and then down there you see Trevor Chapman he's the school Improvement coordinator that is assigned to Deer public schools this QR code is for me I do ask that everybody please take just a
109couple of minutes there's just a couple of questions on this feedback form um like I said I'm doing this training with 17 districts across the state deada public schools is District Number Four that I'm doing this for okay if there are things that I could do better changes that I could make or other resources that you might find useful please take a couple minutes and and complete this training feedback form for me I do want to say thank you I know that the work of board members is not easy you are all elected volunteers to do this work sometimes it comes with good things sometimes it comes with bad things I understand that from having sat on a board I appreciate the work that you do um I appreciate the support that you offer to
110the administration and the school um and I know it's not easy so if no one sold you today thank you you for what you do as a board member okay any questions or thoughts before I let you get back to your business of so our five schools on this continu improve continuous Improvement plan here those were identified last year yes and so they're in their first year now yes okay and they will continue for the next three years so this year and then two more years they'll stay in status yes okay and you know worst case scenario if they don't come out what happens then that is currently part of the conversation that's going on is if we have schools that were comprehensive comprehensive now they're intensive if they were to stay intensive after the
111end of that four years what comes next that has not been determined yet um but that is in the process of our goal is to have that decided sometime in the next 10 to 12 months decided what that is so who is our key contact person or communication person from your from what you're doing to us who who in our district so heading this up I go directly through superintendent um is who my communications go to um but I know that Dr Gray works very closely with Trevor and the schools on the school Improvement um plans and efforts inside of the schools so Trevor answer your question so there's meetings already scheduled with Trevor that's been happening and so the school our schools go over there playing with him and so Trevor is monitoring and
112giving feedback and um so it's all done via our Zoom meetings right now so we'll go on I think once a month we meet with him get T some schools is twice and they present their information feed so have we received any information since this one year thing has been going on so the information you received was a a presentation done in November by Mary she walked you through all the Subud designations for our schools and we talked about what we were doing in order to help them okay and then following going forward when do we get reports on the progress uh typically we'll probably give another report around one of those um fast grades prob probably in the spring fast Bridge we'll give another report so when you say that you're working with 17
113districts with intensive schools is that it for the state of Illinois so 17 districts have intensive schools in the state of Illinois yes out of 600 out of 621 districts and it ranges anywhere from some districts only have one um to outside CPS we have districts that have up to nine intensive schools so we're middle of the pack okay as the districts are doing their root cause analysis for these schools do you collect that data and then I guess aggregate it and then kind of get a common theme we we don't collect that data as the state um we leave that to the district um because there are things that they find across the district that are common themes across the district from school to school that they're seeing their issues but then there's also
114very spe school specific and Community specific things for individual schools as well okay that's what I'm wondering is if there's just an overall commonality between them that could be addressed at a a higher level right no I understand exactly what okay anything else thank you appreciate it thanks so much we appreciate it absolutely it's my pleasure I think it's a lot to digest and probably gives us all a better understanding of how the process works and maybe how we can do a better job as a board monitoring that that process okay think we're ready to move on then with our if it's okay with you would you like to take like a 10 to 15 minute break and then move on to the continue on or other things on the agenda besides the regular just
115regular agenda now it's fairly concise tonight wait till 6:30 you don't have to start right at 6:30 there was a public notice that went out stating that the training starts at 4:30 I would like a um but we can take if it's okay with president and then we can take 10 to 15 minute break about 15 minute break okay thank you because you at that way absolutely questions new board members come on it's also [Music] Cor e e e thank you okay I think we'll re resume our U regular Open session meeting uh we'll now move on to public participation Board of Education would like to note the following during public participation identify oneself and be brief comments should be limited to 3 minutes any public comments submitted to the board secretary will be included
116in the public record please note that during any Board of Education meeting in public participation board members do not respond and or 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 request that public commenters refrain from doing so as well the request that you omit names is made to protect you from allegations of liable 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 yes sir but before I do that if you don't mind can I take a roll call since we had a board member that entered sure okay thank you uh Mr Dion hi Mr
117cleer here Mr Wetzel hi Mr Reynolds hi Mr shider here and Dr Collins here 6 I Zer nay one absent I will call Abby still to the podium um good evening um my name's Abby steel and I um am here to speak to the board as well as DPS staff as well as DEA as well as the community at large um Mr um Hingle who is just here really kind of gave me a good um entry into what I would like to talk about he talked about the root cause analysis and so when we look at our declining enrollment which was mentioned in the meeting um late last week as well as low test scores and things I feel as though I would be remiss to not State one of the root cause analysis being
118what this school year is consisted of for my own daughter I speak about my own personal experience but I am very well aware that this is the experience among many um families in our district um this year my teacher has had no my daughter has had no teacher um she has had a maximum of two days a week with her former teacher who's retired from last year so very thankful for that but even as a retired teacher with her own health issues that has not been a consistent thing no fault of her own there's been roughly two to three months of the same two subs um that would come in those other three days a week um but more days than not there's been an inconsistent um Road hting door of Subs as well as
11913 days this school year she's been split amongst other teachers in her building um those split days have looked as though little work has been done little work has been assigned um little help has been provided with an example one day she was been in she's a sixth grader in a prek classroom and she told me that she struggled with moving forward in her ISL and she didn't want to ask for help because the teacher had pre kids and she was busy with them I take ownership for the concern um for not bringing it up sooner I've been blissfully ignorant if you want um I've been assuming best intentions that things were going to be taken care of and I've also kind of extended that toxic positivity of I'm sure they're going to figure it
120out which has also been something that's been um amongst our district as a former employee my not speaking up could be costing my daughter's education however I'm not the only one at fault um I once I realized what was really going on more recently um The Buck has been passed from District level administrators who claim that they didn't know anything about it to building administrators who feel as though their hands are tied to Union leadership who wouldn't speak really on the subject with me as a parent um to teachers who let's be honest it's good money and they also feel bad for saying no um I'm imploring you as the board as our Union as our staff for these kids that we come up with a better solution I listen to a significant and saw
121on the screen a significant amount of community um individuals who are working on this bold plan I've you heard the term bold many times but we have to put that same amount of time spent coming up with a bold plan to hire and retain our staff I will come back later to share more that's it that's it thank you uh thank you for those comments we we always appreciate comments from our general public and on what we're doing and not doing so very helpful we'll move on to there's no Junior board comments tonight um move on to board discussion um Dr Curry good evening um I wasn't going to have a PowerPoint for you all but thanks to not having uh close session earlier I was able to whip one up instead of just stand
122up here and talk so uh a few Finance updates from the actual committee meeting there wasn't a lot to add so I'm just going to kind of give you an update of kind of where we're at uh and a comparison of uh last year at this time first and I need to thank Maria and it in the back for getting this uh up for me ready after 4:00 today so the report comparison just real quick if you look at fy2 24 same month January compared to fy2 same month January you'll see first there's a six million $6.5 million difference in the Ed fund but if you look at the two yellow lines that are highlighted we have spent the last this last year trying to bolster those two funds with evidence-based funding so we're still
123positioned in a pretty pretty secure place for now I want to say for now because we don't know what the world's going to look like when all the eser dollars run out but it's coming quickly but 46 million currently in the Ed fund that will really start to taper off here as the as the end of the year uh approaches but right now we're we're positioned pretty well but if you look at om andm it's a million3 better than it was this place last year and transportation is four million better than it was at this time last year and everything I'm hearing coming out of Springfield is if there's going to be cuts to our funding from the state it's going to be based on mcats which are Transportation reimbursements will probably be the first
124thing to be to be cut so we're in a pretty good place if you look down at line 12 for tort you'll notice that it's $2.2 million um less than it was last year just know that over the every three years either line 12 line eight or line nine gets reduced and another one gets bumped up because we try to keep that taxx rate the same among those three or those tax dollars that we asked for the same so this coming year on the tax levy tort has a has a much bigger ask than the other two so and if you look at the very bottom line 16 our overall total of 100 million uh is now 101 million with a with a positive of $734,000 so that's that's just comparing where we are today
125or at the end of January to where we were a year ago at the end of January couple other things that have happened since we last met uh the property tax relief Grant is a grant that districts can apply for I'm not going to read it all to you there's a lot there but in the first sentence they're designed to help reduce the property tax burden on local taxpayers in the second bullet uh relatively School District with relatively High property tax rates can apply in the third bullet uh this money that if you receive it replaces some of the revenue created locally through the taxes to receive the grant you have to meet some qual qualifications but then if you do get it you have to lower your tax rate then the state makes up
126the difference um bad news is there in the second sentence unfortunately your District's adjusted operating tax when divided by the average fell below the rate necessary to qualify but I think it's important for people to know that we tried so um we did the paperwork and we were not selected and we weren't selected because we were 363 in rank order based on uh meeting the criteria only 36 school districts received a portion of the $ 49.8 million that was set aside for property tax relief uh and they averaged about $ 1.5 million each but we did not we did not uh receive it last thing on my list the most recent eav is out um this came out the last Friday and and after a month of sliding downward we have started to pick back
127up we are at 893,00 numbers are not quite ready yet from the county and this number does not include Tiff but it had dropped down to 889 at one point and it's gone back up a little bit this is also without all of the uh any challenges not all the challenges have been taken out just yet but we're sitting in a pretty good spot for the first week of March almost last week of February so that is all I have I can take any questions that you might have okay thank you so much okay thank you Dr Curry next up I think we have Ashley Dr Marino and or is Dr Marino gonna handle this one tonight okay all right uh president Clevenger Dr gray members of the board uh this is the second meeting
128of the month which means we are bringing to you an update on the strategic planning process so um I'm going to give you a little bit more information than we typically have because we are now about three committee meetings away from bringing to you a final recommendation at least how the timeline is holding now and I'll back into that timeline here in just a minute so just some reminders for everybody some of this is repeat but it's important especially for a listening audience um all materials everything associated with this process can be found on our website if you've not gone to the site I would encourage you um go take a look um every piece of evidence documents evaluations comments feedback um it can be found on our website so I can't stress that enough
129so where are we in this process and I'm highlighting in uh the red text where we are at the moment we are in Focus area 4 setting Direction and starting to draft the plan and the key here is how will we get from where we are to where we want to be and I think it's important when we ask the question where are we that we're looking at some data so we spent an entire 4our session going through all of this in a deep dive but I wanted to bring back in front of the board some of the key data points that create for this district and for this committee a sense of urgency so if you look down in that purple section you will see academics where do we score regarding I in reading
130and math how about in sat in reading and Math and how does that compare we're just using a general comparison to the state of Illinois so that the number has some context if you look to the right you'll see some other measures in the green um what does our treny rate look like compared to the state of Illinois um eighth graders passing algebra and so on I won't go through all of those data points uh if you look down to the lower left this has been a topic of conversation with our road map 2030 committee and that is um we've got you can see the percentages of students who actually we took 2019 data and we have a service called Clearing House which registers all postsecondary students as they're in uh some form of postsecondary
131education so this is not 100% accurate but we believe it's pretty close Okay uh we think we are looking at around 18% of our students uh from 2019 fast forward four years how many of them actually picked up a college degree either four-year or twoyear so the reason why I'm showing you that data is that we have to consider in this strategic plan what do things look like moving forward when we have 80% of our kids that aren't choosing necessarily this path so how do we strengthen and provide Pathways for all Learners so we're going to talk about that in just a little bit but I wanted to give you some data and then in yellow of course is our staffing this data is not a surprise to the board uh every month you see
132those HR reports and you understand um this is what our data looks like I had our HR team pull this today um you can see our vacancy rates in certified non-certified and in special education and if you look back at the SWAT analysis that we did with our staff with our community um teacher shortage and vacancy certainly was at the top of one of our weaknesses one of our threats and one of our opportunities moving forward you also heard that in public participation this evening so one of the things that we wanted to do briefly is make sure the board fully understands we gave a bunch of different scenarios at The Forum last week and we asked our stakeholders to weigh in I wanted to show you the current scenario how we are currently structured
133inator public schools and you can see from that list um how we're structured we've got a variety of different configurations including k6s k8s a 78 Junior High um magnet schools um and two high schools the reason why I'm showing you this current state I want to bring it back to the 10-year uh enrollment Trends and the demographics moving forward and I want to pull out this quote and this is not news to road map 2030 committee um the quote is this is quite frankly one of the most convoluted districts the analysts have have studied all these variations special schools and differential grade distributions dot dot dot if you click on the links above you can see the 10 and some page full report or their onepage exact summary but this is what it shows this
134is what our historical data has looked like uh with a high water mark just in this graph in the late 80s somewhere uh just north of 12,000 and you can see what that looks like what I want to do is show you what the future looks like um and again we're looking at anywhere between a 1.4 and 1.6% decrease year-over-year if you do the math on it it's between 100 and 120 students per year given our current enrollment um what's interesting is if you extrapolate 12 grade levels at K12 you can probably uh generalize about 10 students per grade level per year now it will never work out mathematically that way but it gives you kind of a sense of what we're looking at these are the projections moving forward okay and these projections have
135really held pretty true as we go back and compare um our data with those projections and you can see uh if you project out just a few more years into 26 27 when we will actually fully Implement all of the recommendations from road map 2030 we now fall below projected that likely that 7,000 marks so almost almost less than half of where we were in the late 80s but this is some indication of what we have to plan and prepare for so what I want to share with you in just the next few slides is what are we doing about addressing this and you may ask the question Jay we've heard a lot about scenarios and brick and mortar and what about what's going on inside the classroom and we're going to talk a little
136bit more about that tonight and the reason why um we're bringing it to you as we begin to get closer that runways getting shorter for us before we come to you with a recommendation I want to put some facts and assumptions that our committee has been using as we're doing our work and I won't read each of these to you um but I I want to make basically a statement we've got ample square footage today for all of our needs and if you apply declining enrollment moving forward we probably have more square footage than we need especially year over-year as time goes on what we have is disparity and inequities in that square footage okay and you can take a drive around the district and probably figure out if you start comparing some of our
137newer construction to some of our 100 plus year old schools obviously there's going to be that discrepancy so what we wanted to do is just share we brought this to our community Community for our first form on January 30th and we just had our Communications team thanks to Maria um put put together just a little bit of data um so you can kind of see how many were at the event um at least self-reported in the best of our ability the percentages of which stakeholder group was represented there and I share that with you because what we're seeing in a lot of our feedback is a far greater represent ation from our employees and staff um and maybe that's not a surprise they're closest to this they're the ones we have direct in immediate communication
138Channels with um but nonetheless when you're looking at feedback we also want to be careful that we don't take um the overall feedback that comes out and generalize it as if that's what the community thinks so I want you to know we're paying attention to kind of some of that Breakout so I'm going to come to our next forum here shortly and you saw some video of that when you came in today we wanted for the board um to have kind of a visualization of what transpired Thursday and we'll talk uh about that in just a minute but these are the goals on the configuration side of this equation okay remember we have three deliverables through this process one is Mission Vision Values and goals in a five-year strategic plan number two is a master
139facility plan that's going to come to you with phase one phase two and phase three recommendations why do I break it out that way phase one is going to be immediate in the 26 27 school year phase two is going to happen probably three to five years as enrollment continues to decrease we will not have we will not have need for all of the current square footage that we have so how do we plan now in step one before we get to step two and step three so we're looking at this holistically with about a 15-year view of let's make decisions with the end in mind and then back it up so that we're not redoing this exercise every couple of years um as as the declining enrollment uh may call for so we're really
140trying to be planful but here are the goals we want to adjust space Equalization and adequacy in other words we don't want to have a small small percentage of kids who have the benefit of some of our newer facilities so we're going to be sharing with you some strategies that we're looking at we want to balance that square foot per student you go into some buildings and we are crowded and jammed in you go to others and you've got lots and lots of space so how do we how do we address that how do we improve efficiencies and costs how do we build on the strengths and weaknesses but still address the weaknesses and threats that our community told told us about probably most important are the last two and they're the ones we haven't
141spent a lot of time on but from here forward that's what you're going to be hearing about whatever we do in these configuration adjustments have to support the vision mission values and goals for the next 5 years and that means we're looking at some different configurations exactly what is yet to be determined but we're starting to get a pretty good sense on where we think this is going to focus us the other thing we want to do is align to accommodate High leverage strategies what do we mean by that and I'm going to get to that in a moment we're going to give you one slide that has five or six High leverage strategies that you are going to see in part of the recommendation you're not getting a lot of detail tonight but each
142time we get in front of you we're going to talk more and more about that but let's talk about the differences in these scenarios okay we've got scenarios that we put out to our committee and to the community where we said what do we do with prek do we leave it in a standalone building as it is now or do we integrate it within a primary school so that prek is with kindergarten and first grade so that's one scenario one aspect that we include and ask for feedback we have another one where we said do we keep the current magnet structure or do we modify it or maybe even eliminate it we're asking some tough questions here uh the the next one is do we need Middle School to come back as a true Middle
143School scenario or are we going to absorb middle schools into a into the K8 a 48 scenario where we really don't have middle schools any longer right now we have a 78 Junior High we call it a middle school but it's really a 78 junior high so the question is we're probing around is there a place for us and is it fit into our high leverage strategy when we get to the middle school and then of course one of the most popular items that people want to weigh in on is do we continue with two high schools or are we looking at a one high school scenario and maybe for the time being two campuses until that enrollment gets to the point where we absorb that in truly into one high school so these are
144all of the different aspects that this committee and our community is weighing in on and I said this in the Forum on Thursday if you ask a 100 people how you feel about these you'll get 120 different responses meaning everybody has strong feelings about this and it is not a slam dunk of everyone believes in this or everyone believes in that we've got a lot of split decisions and different viewpoints especially depending on who's showing up in the Forum to provide that input so understand we hear a lot of loud voices but it may not be representative of the entire community so we just have to acknowledge that and deal with that as we move forward so let's fast forward to last week we had our second Community Forum you can see we uh doubled
145our numbers um and you can kind of see that same breakdown that we have and I'm going to call for the video for just a moment so we're going to pull that up on screen no audio but I want to talk about a few things to make sure that it got your attention on what we did during uh this forum because it's important one of the things that we've really tried to do is ensure transparency so in this process um as we were going through it um what we wanted to do was make sure that as people came in they were provided both a digital option to provide feedback and a paper option in fact people came in and said no I'm good on the digital and we said let's give them both so that
146they have that opportunity so through this process you can see individuals out in the audience with their devices they're not tuning out or checking their email they're actually engaged and if you look at the screens here on the main screen is the scenario and to the right was live feedback so what you're seeing is screenshots of how this and watch this develop here on screen as feedback is coming in it's building a wordcloud that's allowing transparency for people to actually see the feedback that's coming in so we asked them around these questions if you look to the left it means I prefer it the further to the right they don't like it so we took those four areas and said what do you think of magnets what do you think of Middle School what do
147you think of prek integrated or standing alone what do you think of two high schools again you can't take this data set and apply it to the general population per se but it gives you a feel of the people who are in that room how did they perceive as we took them through these different exercises so what you are seeing is just kind of a visual of how did we set up this forum to ensure transparency all voices heard it was efficient um people had note cards we took those note cards we sorted them we answered some questions live and probably one of the neatest things that we did was at the end of this we said we will not leave this building until every person had the opportunity to come up and ask a
148personal question a specific question um clarifying questions and have dialogue with us so um what you'll see basically is our team UPF front here um and our ability to make sure that we were the last ones in that room that night to make sure everyone who came with a question had the ability um to to have that answered so um we're going to go ahead and um uh close out the video and if you could put back my presentation please um both tonight's presentation and the video are both now on our road map 2030 website so if the public or anyone else or even board members want to go back and like let me click back through that again um all that is now on roadmap 2030 site um as of about a half hour
149ago Maria got it posted so let's close out with a couple things whatever we do in this reconfiguration we're not rearranging chairs on the deck of the Titanic which we've been accused of we're not putting lipstick on a pig what we are doing is saying we think we can do some things better and it may require us to reconfigure some things do we really want k8s and k6s is that going to deliver what we're after so I'm sharing With You High leverage strategies we could take about 30 minutes per bullet and actually do a deep dive we won't do that tonight but I wanted the board and the community to understand there's all kinds of work coming out of the teaching and learning Department that we are looking at how do we start to identify
150what are those High leverage strategies and how do we start to incorporate them into the plan so you're going to see things like job embedded time for teachers we don't have enough of it we can't expect teachers to run an effective mtss process meet the needs of every learner if we're not looking at how does how do we structure the workday for our staff to be able to come to the table and have those conversations we're looking at a CTE Focus 20% of our kids four years later graduate from a higher ed institution that's great what about the 80% we got to get better at defining those Pathways building on what we already have and making sure that every student understands there's a pathway for them more about that in the future we are looking
151at deploying a real stem steam curriculum 612 and you're going to hear teaching and learning talk about some ways and we're going to do that that we are actually very excited about tonight isn't the time to get into the detail but we're going to ensure that's in place we're looking at gatekeeper grades and strategies what does that mean gatekeeper is this if we want all kids reading at third grade some of you have talked about the studies down south um and how some states said hey we're going to make sure if you don't read by third grade there's a little gate here that you're going to have to work through in order to demonstrate competency we are not suggesting retention as the gate but we are recommending getting kids on the radar early using our
152multi-tier system of support or our RTI system to intervene and directly work with those kids not on target to hit the expected competency at the gate we're looking at how do we use PLC time with teachers maybe we're doing an hour release like we do at the high schools and maybe kids are engaged for an hour a week in detailed instruction based on their needs so how do we use that time what do we do with Summer learning okay it's it's great to have all these activities and enrichment but how can we better use summertime to directly dial in and focus on those kids not meeting that expectation and using it as some leverage in lie of retention or other things where we can start to apply uh more strategies and more frequency in order
153to try and change the trajectory of our test course okay we're looking at alted expansion not elimination expansion okay how do we find alternate learning environments for kids that just aren't cutting it in the gened classroom but it's not a behavior issue they need a different learning style how do we create a more uh robust alted program and we are placehold probably four to five times the seats we have now in anticipation of meeting needs in a personalized learning fashion more on that later um last ly we're going to restructure what we do in the K5 literacy realm and our teaching and learning folks will be back to you at the appropriate time to talk about it so when we talk about configurations that is the tip of the iceberg but we got to get
154to that if we want to really drive home these high leverage strategies so please understand there's a pace and a process for all of this and until we got to a certain point we weren't ready to come out firing in all cylinders about what's going to happen inside the classroom but we are now going to be connecting every scenario recommendation to how it's going to fit in to these high leverage strategies I won't read these to you but I want you to see where we are this year is about products three of them strategic plan vision mission values goals balance scorecard or a data card for the board to hold the district the administration the teachers and this community accountable for results we're going to be digging in and presenting that to you before this
155process is finished we're going to have probably five goals and you're going to see four or five key indicators within each goals so roughly uh 20 different indicators that will serve as the way in which we keep score are we getting better okay and then of course Master facility plan next year planning planning planning to do this right right the last bullet in 2526 talks about implementation of some immediate improvements we can't do all of them but there are some lwh hanging fruit and things that we will do and Implement next year that don't require any facility changes and we can do it in our current state 2627 Is Our Big Year okay after all the planning that goes in next year to to Really dot the eyes cross the te's we're going to be
156rolling out the 2627 school year full implementation of all the configuration changes it's going to include boundary changes configurations it's going to be a lot a heavy lift but we won't be in a position to do that in the coming year but if we do our planning correctly next school year we'll be in a place where we can roll out um all of these implementations so that was a lot but we wanted the board to have kind of a comp comprehensive update not just what's happened in the last month but comprehensively where are we where are we heading we have three meetings left with our roadmap committee and we've got decisions that are going to have to be made those decisions are going to come before uh the board and at some point in time
157and the board can talk about what the timing of all that looks like and there may be some discussion around that but the board is going to be the group that will say yes no maybe whatever is going to happen it's got to be driven by the Board of Education all of this is for not if it doesn't change the trajectory of those data points that I showed you in those first couple of slides I think we all agree or not those aren't acceptable we've got a lot of room for improvement on a lot of different fronts we have to do some things differently to get some different results and every decision you make you're going to have about half the people not happy with the decision and unfortunately that's the job we all signed
158up for we're not going to get there making an easy decision and tinkering around the edges that basically keep us in the same state that we've been in for a while with data that none of us are proud of so I just challenge all of us to continue to do the hard work make the best decisions for all kids and these decisions you can probably bet close to half the people will disagree with you on but the time is now the people is us and we are the ones here to make these decisions so thank you to our committee road map 2030 thank you to the team behind me uh that that is every step of the way all in on all of this and we appreciate the support of the board as well and
159this is a messy process um I know know Will and Jason hear it every time I get up reminder this is real messy it's getting real messy right now um but this is part of the process and this is the right work for this team and this board to be having at the moment so I'm going to stop uh turn it back if Jason or will who are on the committee care to share I may have covered most of it but if they'd like to share anything uh they're welcome to do so or any of the board members I do have a quick question so um regarding the timeline of this and I think this is one thing you touched on in recent meeting um we've got we're looking at possible change to the board
160and um hiring a superintendent why now good question Brian Byers asked that twice I've been on the radio on this topic and he says I'm going to ask you the question again Jay the answer is we're always going to be in flux we got Board elections every two years um so to say well we're going to wait for the next board about the time they get in and get seated you're up for your next election you've got a superintendent here now who's going to be retiring in a year so the question is well let's wait for the new superintendent so now we're in the 26 27 school year they probably need a year to get out look around and understand it but then you're back into Border in other words this thing doesn't end or
161stop and it gets real easy to kick the cannon say someone else can do that when it's stable fortunately or unfortunately there is no ST ability in the system that we currently have in place and so someone has to take a stand and say we're not going to let another group of kids go through our system without us at least giving everything we've got to put in our best foot forward into what we think will make an actual difference so Jason good question and here's what I would say to the board and and of course my advice take it or leave it if I'm interviewing for a superintendent I'm not saying come in and tell us what you're going to do for a district I'm going to say part of your homework is review that
162strategic plan and all that went into it and you come in and tell us how you're going to lead that plan that this committee stood behind and drove and I'm going to say the same thing to my board members as that board rotation goes this should outlive all of us if we've done it right okay if we've done the process right it shouldn't matter who's in these seats that that this moves forward and you've got a balanced scorecard to answer the question is it working are we making a difference um you know it uh I've had a lot of really good conversations with community members parents staff since Thursday I put it out on social media uh to everyone reach out and that offer still stands any questions that you might have and one of
163the things that I I have noticed in all these conversations are are are two major points and the first is there's a lot of fear and there's a lot of there's a lot of scared people and so you know I know that not everybody on the board is on this committee uh this committee but I would ask you that you go out and talk to the people around you and you have these conversations and you take these questions in if you don't know the answer reach back out to Dr Marino or anyone that's uh been helping with the Strategic plan piece because you know people have because of and and I don't want to D Drudge drag up the past here but because of the actions of past boards and really acting without Community input
164people have already decided that we made up our mind and this is all going to happen no matter what and I think for the first time um in a long time that we haven't done that and I don't and I think a lot of people don't know what to do with that and so these individual one-on-one conversations and it's going to have to be multiple conversations because one of my good friends we've been friends since College um 20 years now and they told me that if you make any changes I'm pulling my kid and I said man if that's where we're going to start then how do we move anything forward and that is the consistent message that I'm hearing and we have to do our jobs to be out in the community to help
165believe fears and then on the other side and this really goes to in administration and implementation that if we do this then there also has to be the and and I see this but the O openness and transparency that goes along with it and that we need to move in the ways that we say we're going to move and do the things that we say we're going to do and hopefully this process helps us rebuild trust with the community because right now we're at zero so I appreciate the process I appreciate all of the staff members and administrators that have been working on this everybody that's been showing up to these committee these uh large uh Community forums I appreciate everybody on the board who's been asking asking questions and I thank our committee members
166and I I just hope that as we build this process and move it forward that this is this is a point that we can look back in 20 years and said this is when we decided to turn it around uh I was going to talk about this board discussion but since we're on the topic I might as well go ahead now um I attended the second Community input meeting the other night um I'm one thing I was concerned about at that meeting was it seemed to be the focus was on mostly about uh building usage and Facilities but what you just presented about looking at a lot of other factors of what our district needs to deal with I'm glad to see because I think that was one of the biggest weaknesses of the previous
167strategic plan it just mostly focused on the building usage question there's many other factors which I have submitted my nine goals to talk about all those from my point of view but I won't get into that right now the second thing is I am concerned that the data used for enrollment does not match with our student services numbers um the current number is 7777 and and that's not what was shown in the chart I don't disagree that um there's declining enrollment there's declining enrollment Across the Nation unless you live in a booming suburban area in this country enrollments declining if you look at the small schools around us enrollments declining by huge numbers there just aren't as many kids being born um so I think that's something to keep in mind um we act like
168we're doing something horrible and I don't think that's necessarily the case I also know that the two biggest parochial schools in this town also are declining so I was surprised at those numbers um which also then leads to the whole question of um our high schools 7 eight years ago the high schools were renovated by a by decision of people who looked into the three options of whether you'd have one high school or two or something else I forget what the other option was uh the decision way was made to go with two high schools I don't think we're anywhere near talking about merging two schools we still have close to 2,000 students in the two high schools um that doesn't suddenly get us down to 600 in one high school that's many many years
169off if that happens um one person in the community input meeting also said said something about you know if we could improve our academic um progress uh I think that would help turn things around in terms of enrollment but I don't expect enrollment to suddenly increase because of the nature of people not having as many children and like I said I think one thing our School Board needs to look at in the long range is working with not working with but being familiar with what the Economic Development Corporation in this city is working work on um one of the biggest changes you can do in enrollment is bringing in more businesses that bring in more families that bring in more children so I I think that's one of the biggest things as far as um
170trying to hold at enrollment uh we certainly have plenty of building space there's no question about that um so if we actually did increase enrollment that wouldn't be a problem at all the final thing I want to talk about is my dismay at any suggestion of one of the options being withdrawing our magnet schools um Monas in some cities is not that great a success but Mary Anderson developed it over 20 30 years into one of the most successful programs that's recognized many people come from around the nation to see how that program has worked I think statements from people who have had children go there will strongly support that also it's a unique kind of program that has a different style of education but indicator it's working extremely well and to even discuss ending
171that program greatly disappointments disappoints me John's Hill is couple decades of Fine Arts um emphasis and development and also a tremendous ESL program um that is welcoming and being available for any population from any part of the world to come in and be able to add to our um culture and add to our enrollment um so those two I think you know have established themselves as being very successful the third one is the one that's going to get started with the new school um stem has been at two different schools I think I would say that I'm not totally sure whether stem will be a strong magnet school in in the sense of stem it depends on the staff I know the principal she's going to do a wonderful job of trying to get it
172but it's a new process and I would certainly not want to change what the plan was to establish that uh ka8 school for that purpose we build it for that reason we should give it quite a few years to see if it works so those options I'm very disappointed in that does not mean that I also don't recognize that when we have magnet schools that means sometimes the other schools don't get the attention they need and I think that's an extremely important thing that we have to stress um it's very much like if you have neighborhoods in a city that are um very high level cost of housing and others that aren't where do you try to help out the most of the ones that are the lower housing costs um if you want to
173keep improving your city culture and everything so I think we do have to really look at how much Financial Resources we put into the other schools to balance off that disadvantage that the students in the non-magnet schools have just automatically because they don't have that special Focus so I think that's an important part of of adding of keeping the magnet schools but also doing it whatever we can and I don't have any Perfect Solutions but I hope that's what the committee discusses is how that can be addressed um so those are just some things I wanted to share I hope the committee uh keeps those things in mind from at least my point of view thank you thank you Dr Marino other other board comments for the evening okay we'll move on to our consent
174items does anyone have any items on the consent calendar they want pulled okay seeing none Dr Greg uh yes I recommend the Board of Education approve the consent items as presented which includes a minutes open close uh meeting February 11th 2025 B Financial conditions report C treasurer's report D release of February uh checks early do have a motion so moved second second discussion Miss Bradford Mr Reynold hi Dr Collins hi Mr Wetzel hi Mr clevinger hi Mr Dion hi and Mr shider hi 6 i0 n one absent motion carried thank you do we have a recommendation for the Personnel action items yes I recommend the Board of Education approve the Personnel action items listed in the memo from miss Monica wils Director of Human Resources and the human resource department as presented do I have
175a motion so moved second discussion Miss Bradford Mr Clevenger hi Mr Reynolds hi Mr Dion hi Mr shider hi Mr Wetzel I and Dr Collins I 6 I z18 one absent motion carried thank you uh we'll move on to our roll call Action items and I I have a couple of points of information here before we move into the recommendations um the the DPS resolutions the f resolutions are pertaining to dismissals uh for performance for your information interim superintendent gray will bring resolution recommendations to the Board of Education from decar Public School District 61 uh board members do you have any specific questions regarding these recommendations at this point in time Dr Greg do have a recommendation I recommend the Board of Education adopt the one resolution regarding the dismissal of One Professional educator licensed
176uh plal employee Amber Eagan uh as presented do I have motion so moved second discussion M Bradford Mr Wetzel hi Dr Collins hi Mr shider hi Mr clevinger hi Mr Dion hi and Mr Reynolds 6 i0 n one absent motion carried thank you Dr Gray do you have a recommendation yes I recommend the Board of Education adopt the one resolution regarding the dismissal of One Professional educator licensed plel employee Jennifer Vargo as presented do have a motion so moved second discussion Miss Bradford Mr Clevenger hi Mr Dion hi Mr rennels hi Dr Collins hi Mr Wetzel hi and Mr shider hi 6 i0 n one abs motion carried thank you we'll have the following announcements and upcoming dates they'll be listed on the screen uh with February 27th we have our principal for the day
177the community and Business Leaders uh and that'll be from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. at various schools throughout the district uh March 3rd is palaski holiday schools will be in session March 12 a district half day for all students March 14th is the end of the quarter March 21th parent teacher conferences no school for students uh March 24th to 27th is spring break week no school and but district offices are open and the 28th will be the thei holiday will be observed no school district offices are closed uh that ends the public portion of the meeting the the public portion of the next regular board meeting of of the Board of Education will be at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday March 4th at the Kyle administration building uh please note that during spring break week uh the
178March board meeting are the first and third Tuesdays of that month do I have a motion to adjourn so moved second all in favor signify by saying I I I those opposed