Board of Education Meeting 03/08/22

001public hearing to order and note for the board in public that this hearing per state regulation is to give an opportunity to the public and board members to present any written or oral testimony and or comments on the subject to modify school code 105 ilcs 5-24-2-3.25 g holidays in that cashmere pulaski and veterans day would be granted as commemorative holiday status to allow student attendance on those dates for the 2022-2023 school year please note that all legal notices were previously properly sent as appropriate for this hearing miss bradford have we received any written comments no we have not do we have anyone signed in wishing to speak on this subject tonight no we do not is there anyone present who did not get signed in but wishes to speak on 105 ilcs 5-24-2-3.25 g holidays

002this evening board members does any one of you have any comments you wish to make this hearing or do you have any written testimony you wish to have included seeing none having given an opportunity for public participation oral and written testimony i declare this public hearing closed okay thank you the board of education has been in closed executive session to discuss the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employees of the public body the purchase or lease of real property for use of the public body and discussion of collective negotiating matters between the board and representatives of its employees no action was taken during closed executive session i would now ask everyone to join me in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and

003to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and for our listening audience because of the covet 19 crisis and the governor's disaster declaration this meeting is not fully open a fully in-person meeting is not practical or prudent because of covet 19. do we have a recommendation for tonight's agenda yes we do i recommend the board approved tonight's march 8 2022 open session board meeting agenda as presented can i have a motion so moved second second any discussion all in favor by saying aye aye those oppose same sign motion carried we will now move on to our district hot district highlights i'd like to call maria robertson director of community engagement to the podium and she's bringing friends good evening president oaks members of the board superintendent dr clark melissa

004and members of our listening audience i am honored to present and introduce all of our special guests here tonight i have three dps highlights this evening our first group of guests here to be recognized are students who won the city of decatur dr martin luther king jr black history month contest in just a few seconds we will congratulate these students who creatively composed impactful poems essays artwork or directed a short film all around the theme of this year's contest celebrating the civil rights movement students were placed in categories by grade levels from young third graders to the senior high school level i want to thank you to or send a thank you to all the principals for encouraging students to submit and i also created a booklet that was in front of you it has

005all the winning student work it was placed in front of your board seat so i hope you enjoy reading and admiring the amazing work of our students beautiful beautiful and some of our artwork is also displayed here in the windows right over here to the left so and now i would like to [Music] introduce all of our student winners but first i do want to read the names of the students that were unable to be here tonight montessori academy for peace third grader lainey steele she wrote an essay i have jacob white a johns hill magnet school 8th grader who won the poem category delaney malone also a john tell eighth grader she did a drawing and then for the high school categories we have eisenhower freshman travis hargis essay winner eisenhower jr aaliyah houston

006she wrote a poem and eisenhower senior karate i'm sorry if i mess up your name karayan phillips he did a drawing so now you guys get to meet the other student winners hi my name is shayla rush and i attend john's hill magnet school as a 7th grader and i won the essay [Applause] hi my name is naila leverson i attend johns hill magnet school i am in 6th grade and i won the poem category i am isabella springer i am also a seventh grader at johnson magnet school and i won the short film [Applause] name is elena edrington i go to johns hill magnet school and i'm in sixth grade and i won the drawing competition i am lydia leonard and i go to montessori academy for peace and i won the drawing [Applause]

007i'm maya laughlin i go to montessori academy for peace i'm in fifth grade and i won the essay contest [Applause] if everyone can please join me in a round of applause to congratulate our student winners parents i'm gonna take a group photo you guys are welcome to join me in doing that little pic real quick you guys want to maybe let them scoot in towards the back real quick and scoot up just a little bit right there perfect all right i'm going to take one real quick one two three sorry there you go that's all right see you guys if you guys want one in you're welcome to go into that's okay [Laughter] all right thank you everyone congratulations [Applause] i know you're wondering how did i put a short film in your booklet but

008there is a qr code just use your smartphone it'll open up the youtube link to that video thank you all right number two so each year there is a battle against the dictionary and schools across the nation host their own spelling bee here in dps school sent their spelling bee winners to the district spelling bee for grades four through six the district b was held january 27th while the winning spellers in grades seven and eight competed january 28th and then from there the top six spellers from the district b moved on to the county bee the macon county spelling bee was held february 15th while i don't have the names of all of our students that competed let's give the dps county spelling bee participants a round of applause please but now i have another

009special guest with me tonight it's an american dreamer stem academy student her name is sophia jordan and ms sophia will you please join me at the podium miss sophia will represent american dreamer and decatur public schools at the regional spelling bee this saturday march 12th [Music] [Applause] [Music] um my name is what is this my name is sophia jordan and i'm in fifth grade and i go to american dream of stem academy and look what i'm going to ask you a question go ahead is there anything else you want to say about your experience competing in the beat do you know where um the next step is after this region will be the national bee wow but there's only one winner of the regional so right so we are going to congratulate you and making

010it to the regional and we also want to wish you very much good luck this saturday so please join me in congratulations [Music] [Applause] i'm gonna take your picture with superintendent dr clark if that's okay all right you just want to fill in right up there you want to take a picture mom [Laughter] little sister [Laughter] no she probably does better than i would do i'm sure thank you good luck [Applause] i totally screwed that up i told sophia that she gets to announce what she was doing on saturday and i just went on to my script so that's my apologies all right our third and final district highlight for this evening i'd like to turn the mic over to assistant superintendent mr jeff dace [Applause] thank you maria good evening decatur board of education

011superintendent clark good evening wipe it for me i gave them to him my pleasure to be i hope i'm not sick after this all right my pleasure to be up here uh give you a little bit of background of the recognition and award i'm about to announce um golden apple foundation believes that strong leaders in schools promote excellence in teaching outstanding principles inspire outstanding teachers and create a positive learning environment essential to the culture of every successful school golden apple foundation recognizes exceptional principles each year with the outstanding principal award also known as the golden apple award of excellence in leadership nominated principles exemplify best practices and leadership abilities according to the following criteria a commitment to positive student achievement and development professional growth and leadership development among teachers a positive learning climate and sense

012of community in his or her school a highly competitive award process resulted in a selection of six pre-k through 12 12 grade school leaders school leader finalists from more than 100 nominations received it is my pleasure to introduce and recognize our very own golden apple principal award also known as the golden apple award of excellence in leadership finalists principal of macarthur high school a true general in practice mr cordell ingram [Applause] congratulations well guys um this is an absolute privilege uh of course people i say people don't have to be nice and when they are nice they don't have to be nice to you um so i definitely take this award or this nomination to the award uh as as a special thing for me i've been at this administration thing for 20 years now

013i'm aging myself but you know each year you just learn how to learn um you know when you think you know uh there's more to learn uh and so generally i've had the experience of of uh principling some of my current students parents but through that entire experience i still think school culture and climate is what sets the tone and so again i am honored by this nomination and the next step is a visitor a group of visitors coming from chicago the later part of this month to interview some of my teachers some of my students some people in central office so i will give you guys a heads up on that and we'll see where it all lands but thank you guys so much for your support i i don't take it lightly that

014i've been given the honor to serve the the students of macarthur high school in the city of decatur uh it's truly a mission for me so i enjoy it thank you [Applause] oh come on man i was just telling look like you're losing weight two management thank you congratulations okay we will now move on to public participation the board of education would like to note the following during public participation identify oneself and be brief any public comments received will be read during this time comment should be limited to three minutes for our listening audience please note that during the board of education meeting and 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

015by 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 libel or slander or from violations of the illinois students school student records act it is not intended to shield an employee from criticism miss bradford do we have anyone wishing to speak to the board this evening or comments to be read yes we do sorry if i mispronounce your name laureen gaddy hello hello i stand here it's my first time here lorraine gaddy hardthorne but how you doing i just got a couple questions um what can i do for my 15 year old to help her when this seems like these issues are happening so she's getting suspended okay thank you she's getting suspended and she's not learning her

016she's not learning in school because she's being suspended like every other week or getting sit home so she's getting behind in her work which she was a straight a b student when she started freshman class freshman school at eisenhower but now her grades every time she picks them up they're going right back down to c's d's and f i just came from a conference for all of her teachers from 4 30 to about 5 50. and when i got here all of them said wonderful things about my daughter when she's like they said when she's in class but when she's out of class it pulls her grades right back down to square one so i asked a certain member since they said you can't say names a higher power is at the school can they

017what can i do to help um besides what i already i'm doing at home to help my daughter and it seems like me and her not getting along on the same page so i asked another since i can't say name another person there and another person and another person and then i went to the building to talk to the to the man mr am i allowed to say mr tremble i want to talk to mr trump probably over 10 times in the last three months and nothing's still resolved she's still getting suspended she's still getting kicked out she pulls her grades back up it still be the issue yes sometimes she's late and she do stuff but not all the time i'm gonna speak on one incident so i get a call from miss brooks

018ms brooks said your daughter called a teacher a b word she suspended from tuesday to friday i get there to pick my daughter up they said she was the wrong student my daughter is crying and very upset and i didn't see nothing i've had the principal the officer maybe five or six people we had a little talking i said you don't have to apologize to me i have a 15 year old that you need to apologize to that was just one incident i could name three or four but like i said i don't want to actually name teachers and situations when i don't supposed to she's 15 she was a straight a b student when she started she was working at wendy's i called today and canceled no more she can't work there she has

019a permit it's too much going on honey went to mr trimble so many times i didn't talk to the the lady there she's still harassing and doing stunning my daughter's name like to be worse it wasn't even her they didn't even investigate you called me and told me she was already suspended i get there you have the wrong kid she's only 15. it's stressing us even my 77 year old mom we're stressed we're tired of well i this yes ma'am ms gaddy superintendent clark will make contact with you and we can't get this resolved for you yes sir priscilla palmer please thank you excuse me we don't invite old veterans back all right you better watch it oh it just gives me great pleasure to come before the board and report about how the wonderful

020visit to johns hill magnus school was a couple of weeks ago where i had the opportunity it was like a what do you call a step back to the past to my old days as principal of john adams elementary school with john adams and then was montessori well anyway uh changing school names but mr prangie the principal graciously welcomed me on that day and allowed me to go through the building and visit classrooms and of course being a former first and second grade teacher once upon a time in this district you know i just i was just immensely overjoyed to be in those classrooms to watch those children learn and to sit down with the children and actually listen to them read and and one class they were talking about the 60s you know well

021let's look it up i said why don't you ask me [Laughter] i was in high school at that time so um i wanted to let you know that there was just there's just some excellent things going on in schools there was a lot of learning going on there were some great things that i saw when i visited that school we talked about taking pictures and i was telling the group the other day the only pictures i really took were the bulletin boards in the hallway because i said look at that bulletin board that is really nice and so again the teacher in me always comes out i just want to let you know that um you know how much i appreciate what's going on so many times you know our school gets our school district

022gets a bad rap and i'll just tell you i work out at richland community college and you know people talk about things you're people in the community but if they would only get out into our schools and really see what's going on there's a lot of good learning uh very innovative i saw some innovative you know kids were getting ready to put videos together it's like woo that's really neat but i just enjoyed it in discussion with some of my sorority sisters i'm a member of delta sigma theta sorority incorporated we talked about they visited some of the classrooms as well and did some reading and some other things and we agreed that you know we want to be out in the schools more we want to be there volunteering and i know because of

023covet we can't we haven't been able to get out to into the schools but that's one of the things that we really would like to do because that's one of our five-point uh program threats is education and that's very important for our students and so i ended my day in the cafeteria everybody knows how the dreaded cafeteria is for principals but i a little girl girl ran up to me and i guess i was in her classroom but she ran up to me and hugged me and it's like whoa what joy so i just wanted to let you know that it was a good day i enjoyed my day and i'm looking forward to i've already told mr prangie that i will be coming to johns hill and doing some volunteer work so thank you

024thank you nice to see you again i'm sorry missy von hawkins good evening i'm actually here for two people so i'll do my three minutes and then dr sherrod has a letter for her event as well my name is professor yvonne hawkins i'm a member of the springfield decatur area alumni chapter of delta sigma theta sorority incorporated thank you to dps 61 board and superintendent for approving the principle for a day event held during black history month an opportunity to allow local members of the divine nine fraternities and sororities into our school district this was an opportunity for us to see a snapshot of what a principal actually does on a daily basis i visited william harris learning academy most of you know if not all it is a school for students who have social

025emotional behavior problems but walking into that school i have to say and i've been there before as part of empowering girls there but it was like a different environment this time principal morrison welcomed me in i brought treats for them so of course they're going to let me in so i had treats for all the students and all of the staff in our delta red and black colors one thing that really impressed me was the fact that they were all working on black history projects and as principal for a day when miss morrison was asked to participate and eventually quickly ran out the door and said she's the principal so i actually participated with students who were talking about the cydia movement and ms carver had them actually reenacting the event so they had half

026the class where protesters the other half were mobsters and afterward is what really impressed me because she actually had the students to answer one simple question how did that make you feel and to hear those students talk about the fear they felt how they were scared how they're intimidated and the one question that really had an impact was well why couldn't they just get along why did the color of their skin make a difference so it showed that the kids were really learning really engaged they were preparing for a school presentation so that was a good experience i also saw that the teacher shortage is real on the day that i was there there was a teacher absence there was no substitute and so i found out that as principal not only do you take

027care of the daily needs of the staff and the students but if you're needed you're in the classroom and so that was important to see um that as principal is not just sitting behind the desk every day doing paperwork she was actually out walking the halls the entire time she was in and out of classrooms she was addressing issues i actually had one issue and you know she told me how they handle issues of not accusing the students of anything but sitting down and talking to them about the incident and reflecting upon how they can correct the air instead of telling them how to correct the error so i thought that was very important i hope that dps allows divine knight to come back into the schools again students were asking me you know how

028did you get your numbers how did you get your letters how do you become a sorority so it was a big event for them and then on the second part i'm going to read what dr shiraj has said dps school board i want to thank you for allowing students to be empowered during black history month and greek week i received an invitation from assistant superintendent jeff days and immediately my friends professor hawkins and dr palmer and i rushed to support what we felt was a great idea there's no greater joy than when students see representation in their classes especially during black history month as the only african-american full-time professor in my division at richland and one of four in the college i enjoy hearing students say that they appreciate seeing someone that looks like them

029in the classroom my hope is that you will afford this opportunity again for leaders to be creative and bring their own spin to principle of the day and here's why when asked my only thought was how can i spoil the students and staff for the day not knowing the impact would be phenomenal i just wanted to bring smiles to their faces so i went above and beyond and the outcomes were smiles and laughter throughout the building on that day staff were welcomed with empowering messages in their mailbox with the sweet pink and green cupcake that you have to as well because i am a member of alpha kappa alpha sorority incorporated we had a self-care table where students read positive messages and could take one of the 108 items for free we toured the building

030to appreciate a library full of black history artifacts poster boards that celebrate black leaders in hallways and great music as students walk to class they enjoyed decatur city councilman mr cooper and i facilitating black history trivia and greek knowledge contests during class visits singing happy birthday and reading the two students in the special education program and starting a soul train line for students and teachers one of my favorite memories were the uno competitions the cupid shuffle and the music in the lunchroom with my invited guest terence tat taylor and giving out sweet treats allowing me to come in and be creative meant that i was also able to appreciate staff during their lunch time and really experience what it takes to run a school with an awesome principal like dr zong i thank you for

031the opportunity and would like to share the same sentiments with these pink and green treats that professor hawkins or dr palmer will pass out with a very special message for you i look forward to seeing this event next year with hundreds of community leaders that will grace the halls of your school showing african-american pride sincerely dr james schinrad president and ceo of step incorporated thank you thank you thank you okay lira evans to all concerned i forwarded a facebook post that was posted by an employee of the district it is in my opinion very inappropriate for any educator to share on a platform it is offensive to me as a person of color an educator parent and as a community member that we have someone teaching our children that will post such an offensive degrading

032and derogatory message while everyone have the right to their opinion teachers are being paid to work with whatever students that are placed in their classroom i personally know the struggle but always recognized and accepted the challenges that came with the job i feel all teachers should do the same no matter how difficult that is currently we have a difficult population of students that live very different lives and culturally background cultural background and experiences than the teachers that are trying to educate them also different than the administrators and board members that are leading the district this is the struggle that is causing the toxicity and division in the district this is why anyone that tries to address the issues will get opposition because the majority of staff will disagree with what needs to be done to

033help minority students the very things that mr days miss morgan harris miss goalie and others that may not speak out no need know need to happen and have tried to implement has met opposition that you call causing division as i have stated before until you identify the real root of the problem and own the problems that will never be solved they will never be solved if you don't address it instead of blaming others you will continue to fail in the meantime our children are losing the antidote is doing what is right by all not who or what is like it starts at the top and that will be all president board of education thanks everyone for their public comments we will move on to student ambassadors report are there any reports this evening i see

034a shaking head no we will move on to more discussion is there anything the board wants to discuss at this time i just had a couple questions i don't know if there's anyone here who can answer this but it's been brought to my attention that the there's a compressor down at john's hill plus there are about five leaks in the roof at johns hill is there anyone here who can follow up anyone else seeing none we will move on to reports from administration i'd like to call zach shield executive director of the dps foundation to the podium to present an andreas ag academy report very good thank you um really appreciate the invitation tonight i know most of you pretty well kevin we have not spent time together and alana i look forward to spending

035some time when you have an opportunity went out to lunch with jason today so i was very appreciative of that um and many of you uh i've worked with in the past uh i want to tell you i am going to time it all right you said i could have ten minutes i'm gonna do seven and a half time you all right okay i'll set the timer very good well it's my great privilege to be the director of the school's foundation it's um an incredible job to get to do every day because of the people i get to work with um who are the kids and the teachers and i want to just share a little bit about the foundation in general for those who might be less familiar but then move into a focus

036on the ag academy which has got some big news that we just announced a few weeks ago but if i can direct you to the slides this is the first time i've ever walked in and said man i should have brought my glasses so i don't know what that says but uh no here's you're good i'll go um so the mission of the decatur public schools foundation is to acquire resources to enhance uh and enrich the learning environment in the district um we actually are made up of a private uh we're a private 501c3 we've got our own foundation trustees yvonne hawkins who just departed is actually our foundation board chair and so she is my boss so um you can direct any complaints to her if you don't enjoy the presentation i guess although

037dan's there too so uh could i have the next slide please so we're established in 1997 um again as an independent non-profit we are completely self-supported my salary operations all the grant making comes from private donors so what the district does in exchange is provide the office and tech support for us um this is a little bit of an unusual structure most school districts employ your director and pay the expenses for the foundation but we don't do that here so we're more of a true foundation over the time since we were founded we've raised about 15 million to put into the schools in addition to the large project that we're actually going to talk about here in a minute and our trustees found activities from single small classroom initiatives all the way through the broader

038multiple school um projects that uh that we'll talk about like the andrus academy so and you have in front of you the reports of donors i think bobby may have shared that with you earlier in the year if she did please take that one and put it on the waiting table at your doctor's office so i think push out the positive propaganda so next slide please so this kid actually has no business being in this slideshow i just like to include him because he makes me laugh every time i see him he's not in the ag academy but to me that is what the foundation is about is that smile on that kid's face this was a taekwondo program that we established a few years ago at stephen decatur and you know he was so

039outgoing and so forward and so friendly with the people he was such a great ambassador for the schools and for the foundation so i like to put him in every slideshow so so and i'm right here green one all right there we go all right so what i'd really like to talk about and focus on tonight is the duane oh andreas ag academy so this was created uh with an initial it's about a 1.7 million dollar investment uh from the howard g buffett foundation who's been a longtime supporter of our programming in the public schools um here we go anything there we go uh so the academy a lot of people say well how's it where does it happen you know what takes place there we actually have students from both eisenhower macarthur high school

040involved um it's modeled on what's called the ffa three circles model ffa was at one point um the future farmers of america uh the last 20 years or so it's been called the national ffa organization so it's more about leadership business development soft skills going out and doing career development events really develops the whole student in a way that may or may not ever have to do with agriculture there are three circles that are involved one is the academic coursework we've got teachers that that teach different agricultural curriculum in the classroom then we have supervised ag experiences so saes that might be going out and working at adm and an internship or working out at our science farm and then career development events so you know parliamentary procedure public speaking debate things of that nature

041and the objective overall is to just introduce students who are non-traditional to agriculture careers um you know worldwide only two percent of the jobs in agriculture are on farms everything else is commodities and you know real estate even as as you're getting into banking and agricultural sector engineering welding and so our branding for it is welding to wall street it starts with ag so a lot of you have the swag t-shirt still running around that i see walking billboards so uh we got off to a really great start the first year in the fall of 2018. um the young woman in the pictures is brie holbert she was the first african-american female president of the national ffa organization brie came here and spent two full days with our students at each high school met each

042of the 200 kids personally who were involved in that first year and i think it was really great because she was very personal with our kids she talked about her story she grew up in l.a nowhere near a farm didn't have any idea you know what ffa was she said i couldn't order a sandwich when i was a freshman in high school and just had so much trouble interacting and by the time she met our kids i think she was on her 30th state going around to visit students but very very impressive young woman and we stay in touch she's been really encouraging of our activities going forward so living science farm one of the important tenets that we've operated on is that the students drive the program and very early on we didn't intend

043to do as much uh as we have and if you look here you'll probably recognize these are the grounds at enterprise former enterprise now american dreamers stem academy if you look closer miss bradford you will see isaiah bradford's artistic photo of the sheep right there in the middle very talented young man who you know um and i didn't put that in there just for you it was for him uh so american dreamer has been great they've got about 12 acres there we can tell our kids do their plots they do sweet corn they do all different manner of things to sell at their farm markets and as you see we have family days here this is a saturday we've got the kids and the goats there and up on the upper right hand corner that

044is the amishman who was perched on top of the barn building it in three days it was impressive so and there's an aerial shot you can actually see there um to the left of the picture uh some of the plots from the first year shows you a little bit of how extensive the the plantings have been so and and part of the ffa model part of our academy precepts are going out and getting involved at the farm it wasn't zoned for the small livestock project so you see in the upper left-hand corner our kids actually drafted rezoning language and presented it to city council and they approved it so that our kids can do their projects there so and you can see they have a pretty elaborate plan going forward for that enterprise property that's

045their plan down to the left so we got off to a fast start we had 202 students in the first year and that was our capacity with two teachers we jumped up to 361 students in year two had great support from our administrators and our counselors who really stepped in al i know you asked a lot of questions about it at the outset and we tried to answer them uh but was really great about helping with the recruitment effort for that swag campaign um third year you see that's our covered year we had a dip down to 234 students um simply because we didn't have the recruitment time we typically do this year we jumped up we're at 435 students we've had to double our teachers we've got gone from two to four teachers so

046we're very grateful for the support the school board's provided in supporting those teachers we get to the end of our four-year pilot period here in june and at that time our kids have actually amassed enough resources that they can go forward and self-sustain in addition to having adm contribute to support our idea or ffa activities um which we do a lot of travel i do a lot of career development events and it's pricey and being involved just in the organization has some expenses but it's been very important to us that it be student driven and that we not cause the district any taxpayer expense so just at the bottom i had a couple notes it was a priority for us to go out and really engage students who might not typically be thought of as

047candidates for the academy we were 63 minority the first year with enrollment and that just happened to be a mirror of the district minority rate that year uh and then we were 44 female that year and those are the two demographics that everybody who is skeptical said you'll never get you know you'll never get minority engagement and you will never get women who want to be involved and actually we're a little higher now with female enrollment and our leadership teams are primarily made up of women so i'm very proud of that our young women have been very empowered to take on uh roles at the front so and our first four-year cohort actually graduates here in may so that'll be our first four-year cycle we've had a few students that started early and have moved

048down already but this will be the freshman going out so have a lot of success a lot of local and regional awards that our kids have won at these development events alumni president from macarthur high school marie schaefer is actually at the university of illinois college of aces now she's studying plant biotechnology and she's been very upfront about saying i would not have gone into agriculture i do not have this program never even realized that it existed but she's a great example of you know kids that come from the district and are open-minded and explore new things so uh just a couple those are some kids on the rider from eisenhower high school at one of our banquets that they helped host our legacy learning banquets on the left this is from a service trip

049kids took to north carolina in january they ran the tech for a large um conference there and people couldn't believe that they were in high school and these are professionals from all over the country um and that's the national ffa ceo uh who they're with there in that picture so part of the um the thing that we're really proud of this year our students from macarthur actually applied and were selected as a top 10 chapter in the country uh of 8817 chapters and so for their third year of activities that was really incredible and there are a couple things that contributed to it one is they do a lot of service oriented projects the other is the living science farm where they work very closely with our students from eisenhower mr mcmillan is our teacher

050at eisenhower really leads the greenhouse effort and really has put a lot of work in at the farm so but very very proud of these kids and they stood on the stage in front of you know 50 000 students and attendees and accepted their award and i think you've met a few of them i think they came and spoke a month or so back so so um with this growth and success it's great but it also can strain the boundaries of what we've got available here in the district and you've just got a few activities there that you can see the greenhouse there at eisenhower we built that um two years ago uh and you can see the kids do a lot of their entrepreneurial work out of it um however we didn't have one

051at macarthur and so we've got private donors that contributed money to build one we're working on that this spring and next fall so we'll hopefully have commensurate facilities there but it comes down to instructional space at the end and dan we've had this conversation and reagan for about 10 months now we've said what do we do is there anywhere we can add on to the buildings how expensive is it going to be is that really the right thing to do to ask the district to put taxpayer dollars towards it ultimately um the conversation that we've had with our donor went in a great direction um you know he's aware that we're already at capacity enrollment and a little bit over we've got one teacher at eisenhower teaching in the third grade classroom english classroom upstairs

052or third floor rather and so it's really not ideal at all and if we're going to hit our growth goal which is 500 students we really need to look at other options because there weren't any good ones here and so that conversation is carried forward to the announcement that we made earlier this month this is the development of the ffa agriculture education center this is a nine million dollar commitment from the buffett foundation to the schools foundation to create a center that's specifically focused on ag education will house our educational activities for all of our teachers um we're working chrissy pettit has been so encouraging with the dea to say hey let's be creative eventually about how we do the scheduling do we get block scheduling out there for our older kids so they can

053go out and really engage there it's also going to be a wonderful event facility where we can host people from all around the region there and it really put decatur on the map as far as you know looking into you know how we work with our partnering districts i think that doesn't happen very often but we're in a really good position to make that happen so in closing i stuck this slide in here because i'm sure our adm colleagues are watching this is one of my favorite images of adm sometimes we think about uh you know factories and processing plants is not very romantic but i love that picture and i love the fact that it speaks to the optimism that our kids have when they realize all the careers that you can look into

054all the directions you can go again that's our whole thing is classroom to career what are we getting you to whether it's going to college or starting right away when you walk off that stage so with that said last slide i'm gonna leave you with these are our four instructors in each school we have two at each building delia and seth are at eisenhower and becca merrill and hannah sawyer are at macarthur these are the websites it starts with ag.com is our parent website for for the program and then beneath it you have the kids living science farm facebook page i'd encourage you to visit they advertise their farm sale days any of the special projects they're doing they had a strawberry sale a week or two ago and then each building has its own

055specific facebook page that'll highlight activities that they're doing there so with that i will say are there any questions or did i go over my time limit melissa okay fair enough all right well very good yes i just want to thank you for your minority engagement i think that's very important um this is something that i would have loved to do in high school so i'm very excited about this my only question is um what is it that we can do to better help you reach our goal well i think really the thing is get involved it's not too late you can come out and see what we're doing in fact um going mr moreno out to the farm tomorrow afternoon to see what we're doing he not been out there i know jeff has

056stopped out almost everyone's been out at some point or another but come out and see what we've got and there may be times you know semesters or even full years when we don't have any livestock out there because it has to be student driven and if not they're not out there doing the work then there's no point in us doing it so right now we've got sheep we just had lambs so they're kind of fun to go out and see right now but we also will be doing a lot of summer activities we did a science camp for eighth graders last year and we love volunteers to come out and help with those things um adm sponsored that and we'll have some similar things happening throughout the year so how do you go about getting

057your teachers are they they're so they're our teachers yes they are and it's not and we reimburse again the full cost of employment um throughout the four-year pilot and what the district committed to doing was paying teacher salaries after that point the remainder of the expenses we continue to pick up and the ag center won't cost us a dime as far as upkeep anything like that the teachers themselves are very hard to hire we got very fortunate in hiring three really good ones the last cycle that are all really vested in urban agriculture they know our schools they wanted to be here and that's a very difficult thing to do i had some other people in the industry say how did you hire three people that good in one year i said well it wasn't

058easy we were very selective about who we were working with but you know i'm very proud of them they all have different strengths as well and so i think as we get to the ag center each of the four teachers will be able to teach kids from both high schools so that's kind of a neat growth opportunity for us thank you thank you i'm glad you have a site in mind for the ag education center yeah it's going to go down on 30 acres just south of 51 after you get past the golf course um as the ground opens up a little bit there's an eight acre parcel that's right near the veterans building um that is going in uh and on that eight acre parcel we'll have the building in a giant indoor arena

059so we'll be able to host events in other groups but also have a basketball court soccer field things so that we can actually do events out there as a district and and as i've spoke with the different administrators i can picture eisenhower knights and macarthur knights and let's have the district leadership out and do a cookout that's the sort of space we want it to be very welcoming just like the science farm where we've done hay rides and things like that and i should say too i'd be remiss to uh overlook recognition for our buildings and grounds guys they've been fantastic we built that barn and they saved us forty thousand dollars by doing the ground work for us and laying the concrete and helping us in the in the in the um the union

060guys said you know what we understand why it's important to bring in the amish as outside contractors to do this very quickly and very well so it's great i've never and i've never asked anyone in the district for help or advice that they haven't given so it's just it's really a great privilege to be over the program once a new facility is complete what's your uh participation capacity you know we've always said 500 is the goal the the thing that i learned this morning that scares me to death is that at eisenhower already we have 285 kids registered for this coming fall so that would put us at if we double that 570 if i did the math right um and so you know that would that would we'd be able to accommodate that our

061thought process is that the freshman and entry-level classes still take place in the high school and that the upper level classes are blocked scheduled out at the ag center and if we're creative with it we'll be able to juggle and you can be in that 5-600 range and serve them well but if we're at 500 that means 25 of the kids in our high schools are getting some relationship to agriculture and and it may not be that they go into a job but they learn that um you know when russia invades ukraine ammonia gets more scarce and so nitrogen fertilizer gets a lot more expensive and eventually you see that at the grocery store so just connectivity to the global economy what we're doing there's so much value in ag that people don't realize they

062think so and of the 30 acres how many of them are going to be productive so 22 of them um for sure will be productive and it kind of bends around a lot of them are out of sight behind the woods but the eight acres around it will really be the event space and facilities and we'll probably be able to do some test plots there but there is the opportunity to produce things like sweet corn at a scale that will further support the program so yep thanks that's a good question zach you lost one of your teachers early we did you wanna yeah sorry relate that story i'm laughing because i sat on the ground and rocked back and forth and cried like a baby um but he was andrew klein helped us to establish

063the program at macarthur my boys were in the program just loved them established a really strong rapport with him and his second year andrew came and said zach i want to talk to you about something and i said oh no and he said well i've got an opportunity out here that is really attractive and i think i'd like to go an interview for it and i said that's fine um go ahead and do it i'm gonna tell them your bank robber and uh and i did and they still hired him but it was um the state of illinois with isb he's the lead ag consultant for the state board of ed everybody comes back and he's put in a lot of time to help our kids through that transition with him being ghana he didn't

064have to do that but it speaks to who he is it speaks to who all of our teachers are you know in any of them i think that relationship with the kids is what's most important but he's also a great advocate for us and for our program at the state level so but yeah thankfully we've been able to produce uh replace him with really strong people the other statistic that you gave us when one of the meetings was the rate of growth and i think you compared that to an omaha well i think you did that and actually you misquoted it and i got yelled at about it but it's okay i didn't tell you i don't want to hurt your feelings uh so i think what you meant was when i'll tell you what

065you meant uh which is we went out to omaha to see um uh mr buffett's son howard actually contributed 25 000 to start a program in omaha which very similar demographically although it's a larger hispanic population but very diverse and and howard said i don't think that's that's ever going to work why did you do that and it worked really well and so he said well why don't you go out there and we started talking about this concept and we visited and they had about 30 kids i think that first year so we came back and said oh i think i think we'll do you know maybe something similar 30 kids you know maybe at each building it was 200 the first year and part of it was that swag it starts with ag campaign

066and that was a really pointed effort to say look this isn't just tractors this is all this other stuff that goes with it and you want to be a welder look at this person who's you know a five foot two blonde who works at caterpillar and makes eighty thousand dollars a year because she learned to weld you know and it's those messaging things that i think and again the counselors are great our grown-ups in the district grasped it very quickly grown-ups out in the community were very skeptical so um but you know grown-ups can be difficult sometimes so kids are the best so thank you for that question any other the new facility how many i mean i already know the answer but it bears repeating how many facilities like this are there in the

067united states in an urban district there really isn't one um chicago high school for ag sciences has been very helpful as we designed this and we took kids up and and teachers and guidance counselors in fact dan hainline came from buildings and grounds and he thought it was a complete waste of time on the way up there he thought i'm losing a whole day loved it when we came back he talked the whole way about it and he has been nothing but all in since then but even their facility they're on the south side of chicago they've got about 60 acres um so there's a lot of land but it's not the same sort of facility it's basically a high school this one is going to be very ag focused we'll have a mech tech

068lab that's that's very large where we can do welding work in concert with heartland tech to make sure our kids are getting those experiences early um and then we'll have two science labs upstairs we'll have a large instructional classroom of horticulture space in the indoor arena so and then a meeting space also with stage we can do school board meetings out there if you like so nice that sounds like an imitation okay very good i know we're way over time so somebody more interesting is going to come up and talk about something else so me all right i do owe you all right thank you very much everybody thank you [Applause] next report i'd like to call jeff dace assistant superintendent of p12 teaching and learning to the podium to present the next two updates

069lead 180 and starks consulting thanks zach they can't say nothing about me now all right i have these acronyms in my head pprs trying to be proactive so proactive um progress report series for you all you you entrusted us and approved some contracts as far as the partnerships that we have with the district so we have two of the partners coming here today and we plan on having them come for the next board meetings to give you all the progress report as far as the work that they're doing with the district this school year so first up we have lead 180 and we have them here in person so dr scott neal will present the work that they've been doing with us this school year thank you good evening members of the board dr clark

070scott neal founder of lee 180. um i didn't know i was allowed to bring cupcakes next time though mental note but those are just uh some handouts to kind of i'm a visual learner so i like to have the slides right in front of me on paper so you have that as well this is green button all right just a little bit about our team i'm former teacher assistant principal principal district leader and was that a fork on the road in my career where i went to the national level and worked at an organization called new leaders and we developed transformational school principles across the country um and so that relationship with all those principles is what led me to start lead 180 and do this work at a national level danica lewis is our

071chief program officer and is the lead for the project here in decatur amy lubin also works as an implementation coach with danica a lot of training with the teachers i assist danica in the training with the principals and mary wright's booth is the partnership that we have she's a national expert in culturally responsive teaching uh she did a session with the principals and culturally responsive teaching is making sure that teachers when they select materials their instruction is you know reflective of all backgrounds and making sure that it represents all the kids that are present in school so we want to make sure that we have those equitable practices throughout or to all of our teaching and learning uh so this is a really bad road design with a lot of exits but uh it sounded

072like a good idea to kind of show our roadmap so we've had a two-year partnership and so what i'm going to do is just walk you through what was done last year and what we've done this year and then some potential for the future of where we could take the work so doug lamov he wrote a book called teach like a champion and it's a well-respected book in education circles he was interviewed recently because he just came out with teach like a champion 3.0 and he stressed the importance of curriculum and so that's you know that having a rich curriculum that um you know is used utilized by teachers and accurately like aligned across the district is is really important and essential to have uh teaching and learning happen in 21st century um and then

073you know the other thing is like you know what i always want to make sure that we're research based it's uh you know the researcher in me and so uh there was a study done in 2020 uh called the elements by the carnegie foundation and so i want to like you know assure you that this partnership and what you're doing as a school district is research based you know assuring that teachers have um access to high quality instructional materials uh having a partnership with different uh partners that are helping the implementation work in the coaching making sure that you have a scope and sequence pacing guides uh so that you're having uh you know making sure that all the standards are being taught equal across all the schools and building capacity of formal and former

074learners so making sure that you know just this morning i was at the principal's session and it was hands-on training the whole way through you know we set them up for about five ten minutes telling what to do and then it was all interactive scenarios working with different tools that they can work with their teachers tomorrow if they want to and so that type of capacity needs to be built because you can have a beautiful curriculum sitting on a google drive or wherever you put it in the school district but if it's not being implement implemented with fidelity it's useless you know so we want to make sure that's why we don't do like a one and done type of workshop it's an ongoing relationship and coaching model because that's how it really happens and

075as teachers are working and doing the planning that's where they learn about the standards so one of the first things we do is identify priority standards and so um the the school district reached out to cadres the teachers and they worked and again you know mind you this is like in 2020 when the pandemic was at full strength right and so they still worked after school and uh these groups of teachers were great to work with and committed to the work excuse me and so the first thing we do is we have them identify priority standards and these priority standards guide each unit and those units that i'm going to show you here on the scope and sequence so that you know teachers know that those priority students like you'll have other standards that pair

076off of that but the priority standards are going to drive the work in every unit and those ones that are in yellow that we call them sometimes power standards and that has the most important information for a student for the next grade level up connects to other subject areas and provides skills for 21st century world of work and college readiness so we stress those or highlight those because we want to see those more times than not because they connected so many different areas so once those priority standards are identified then teachers went and began to create the scope and sequence and scope and sequence basically maps out the entire year at the standards level i always say it's like a compass it gets you in the direction but doesn't get you to the door right

077so scope and sequence has a purpose at a high level it lets you know that these are the standards we're teaching at the in this quarter this unit and throughout the year and then we get into unit planning and that gives you the step-by-step directions or turn-by-turn directions to let you know how to teach it what the students should be um you know assessed at and so this document like this is the whole year on one page you know at the standards level and so it's a very nice clean document you click on that then you get more information about the standards and the descriptions but like you know personally as a parent i wish my daughter had this at her school the only way i know what standards are being taught is the newsletter

078that comes on monday or our homework that comes you know you know in our bag which is the worst filing system in the world but you know that's how i know okay we're working on fractions this week if i walked into a meet to teacher or open house and said wow you have the whole year mapped out in week one you know what's going on in week 32 this school is a plan you know the school knows what's going on and as the students are working everything is interconnected so what you do in unit two might be something that is at a lower level that you're just learning like um some basic facts but in unit four you need to know those facts to apply it to a project-based learning type of scenario right so

079everything that the kids do they don't have to ask why are we doing this because if they look at the scope and sequence and the teacher shares that with them they know that everything has meaning and has a reason and so learning skills is the next thing that we do and so the teachers created learning skills for all those priority standards and the learning scale basically unpacks a standard and scaffolds it from below basic to basic to proficient and advanced so proficient is basically where we know that kids have mastered the content at the standards level and so um this is really important to give feedback to kids as they're working through a unit and working through a standard because um students now can actually self-reflect and say i know what i need to work

080on a teacher can pull them for a group and that group has meaning because they have evidence now that you know whether it's formative assessments or some other type of feedback they know exactly where they stand against the standard and so this also like some districts take this even further and go with standards-based grading but now you know you're mastering all the different parts of a standard and then unit plans um get created off of once we have the scope as of sequence created sorry and so the unit plans um are you know we have a unit at a glance and the learning targets and so every school in the district has um ela and math are instructional planning toolkits and those toolkits unpack all the standards and have every single learning target and what

081we've also done is identified the depth of knowledge level for every learning target the definite knowledge level explains the different levels of complexity within a standard the standards are very deep um when they you know changed over to the new standards and so it's very important for teachers to teach at that target level so they know that they're hitting every single area of the standard before the end of the year and um and then those depth of knowledge levels also guide the design of the lesson design of the student activity and the materials that teachers are going to be using so we want teachers to think like designers and so if they always are like trying to plan for the next week that's coming up you don't have enough time to design a really deep

082lesson right so we want to front load all that information and have that all done so that in the future they can um you know design really um you know complex project-based learning things like that so going into this school year we um have decided you know we met with the district uh staff and we you know had a couple calls and decided that we um would want to have uh assessments aligned to those units so um danica and amy have been working with uh some of the same teachers that worked on the unit plans and some additional teachers to help uh build assessments for the units and so their building the goal was to build a couple of uh formative assess form assessments and an end-of-unit assessment for every unit that they have created

083and so they're working through that right now with ela and math teachers the goal is to have those all completed by the end of july they have about i think about 40 days left of that work to get done and then we also are working on coaching support with schools like i said before we can introduce all this work but principals and teachers need that support at the school level and the support can be varied by you know each school and so we we tailor make that that support and make a plan with principles to help support and it's had its challenges with covet and staffing issues and there's times we've had to you know reset reset a plan or or you know reschedule a visit and that's okay that's happening at every school across

084the country right now that we work with and we are very flexible and we'll continue to get to work but now things are hopefully turning the corner of it feels like it is and so uh even the principals today we're having it's a great group like nobody like usually when you've got a group of teachers or principals they'll learn in a room and they know nobody's watching they'll like kind of go off not do the activity everybody was engaged 100 in the activity today um and they're like really ready i think for next year and they're talking about you know even the strategic planning for next year already which is a great sign that's what you want to hear in march and april from great leaders that they start thinking about next year already um

085so that was great to see today um and so that kind of leads into the training support for instructional leaders as well um and that's been you know an ongoing uh process in monthly uh meetings with the principals and we've covered a bunch of different topics i'm going to show you here in just a second so on the assessments basically we create like an assessment blueprint and those different levels of depth of knowledge that i explained to you earlier cannot all be assessed with one type of assessment item you can't just do multiple choice multiple choice will get you to maybe a dok too but for a three or four you need an extended response or some kind of performance task and so the teachers utilize those assessment blueprints and created those before they actually

086went in and like created an item bank and developed assessment some of the assessments they already had and maybe they just had to make some minor changes to them some assessments had to be created from scratch you know so it is a laborious task to create all these assessments and then so this is a highlight of the geometry team they went in and really went in and had deep discussions about how they wanted to assess their students and within each unit and each form of assessment and how they were going to assess and what type of assessment item they were going to use um so like like i said that's a level of detail a lot of districts don't get to a lot of teachers don't get to and so it's really again if you

087go back to the research you're checking all the boxes of what needs to be done so it's really great work and i mean getting kind of back to the assessments the importance of it too is you want to have a line feedback to kids because if you let's just say you gave a multiple choice assessment all the time and you're assessing um at a dok 3 target now that assessment doesn't match the feedback for students and you can get a false positive on a formative assessment thinking oh the kids are rocking it but then they go take a test like park or some other um you know more complex next generation assessment and then the scores are going to go down and it's not about scores it's really about getting ready for the world of

088work in the 21st century it's very complex types of information that kids are going to have to process very quickly and so that's why we want to have those different types of levels of performance tasks in an assessment and then so this is a little highlight of like some of the school support so this is like you know a lot of people um overlook pre-k as far as when it comes to in-depth planning but i have to tell you from my experience with pre-k teachers especially in illinois they get the depth of knowledge levels be like more than anybody it's really and pe teachers too it's like because it's natural right like okay you're like learning how to bounce a ball and now you're going to learn how to do another it just naturally works

089with them and um pre-k is so developmental that they see it right away the only difference is it's not obviously a paper and pencil test it's very observational so but they're able to take um all those skills that kids need to demonstrate and put them into scale so that's some of the work that they did at uh one of the schools it's pretty cool i mean i'm a little bit of a frickin nerd so sorry um and then again like i mentioned before the standards line leadership we've worked on everything from the importance of providing feedback not just just students but to teachers how do you coach a teacher if you see something misaligned what's the problem the right way to do it if you have a different level teacher there's a lot of experience

090how do you differentiate your coaching approach to maybe a first-year teacher and so taking those different approaches and learning how to do and then they actually practice them in simulations with each other and get a lot of practice in doing those things and then we also did a session last month on multi-tier systems of support and how to identify those um we cannot have every student in tier two and tier three you know your tier one core curriculum should be serving nine percent of your students what i mean by that is they should be proficient in that tier and then tier two and tier three are placed kids for kids that are not responding to that core curriculum so if we're not getting those to those levels then we have to take a look at

091what's happening in tier one and making sure we're hitting the right standards the instruction matches the levels of vigor and that we're getting the feedback to kids and that they're responding to that feedback and so that's why it's really important to take a look at um multi-tier the system of supports but start with tier one first we don't want to just be putting identifying kids um when we're not really identifying what maybe the core issue could be in tier one you know and that's not just here that's everywhere that we work i'm kind of put my principal hat on there again sorry um so where we're headed to is um the instructional planning toolkits now are in a platform and um we are talking about a rollout plan because this year was like to get

092another platform out to teachers this year we didn't want to go there and we thought it would be better to maybe roll it out going into the summer and i'm going to be meeting with mr dais to kind of discuss a plan for doing that going into the summer but edgy compass actually takes all the that stuff that we're doing right now in google docs and word documents and excel spreadsheets and puts it into one platform and all that information from the toolkits is all you know embedded in there and teachers will be able to like have all that at their fingertips so you have all that in your packet and and in the board packet if you um you know wanted more information on it but it kind of just takes you through and

093has all these generators and and i and actually keeps count of how many times the teacher uses standards so it reminds them you use the standard three times do you want to use this again or do you want to use a different standard recommends paired standards gives aligned activities things like that so that what we're trying to do is streamline and save time for teachers so it's all right there in one place and then we'll have to go to 16 different places to find align tasks and items to help them you know align with those dok levels so i'll stop there and see if you have any questions okay all right thank you thank you very much [Applause] as y'all can see we've been doing a lot all right uh yeah so that was focusing

094on curriculum development and leadership development which is a good segue into our next um group which is starks consulting and i would leave the names so we have fadia uh i'm getting it right fadia fadia afana and dr angel johnson good job hey you guys um thanks so much for having us um my name is fadia fane hi i'm dr johnson and we are here from starks consulting we are team members on dr stark's team so we'll go ahead and get started here starks consulting is a minority owned business and a woman-owned business enterprise dr starks has extensive experience in turn around schools um has been a a dean a principal out of school ceo and as members of of her team we have also had those positions too um currently starks consulting works in

095school districts in both illinois and california um for example kankakee school district decatur real journey academies in california and epic academy um we are really excited to be here we will move on to our mission and vision we're all very passionate about what we do especially serving in underserved communities it's something that we're all very passionate about our mission is to provide school districts and their school leaders with the tools and strategies needed to support what they need to be effective school leaders we all know that a school with effective school leaders means a a positively running school for our students to help school districts better address ongoing challenges associated with leading schools in socio economically challenged communities while also addressing the whole child and leading with relationships it's something that were is very important

096to us what we bring equitable and effective school strategies we're student focused and focus on student-focused solutions if there is a problem how do we solve that for the best of our students research based everything we do when we work with your assistant principals and deans which are great everything we do with them is research based and we have we're a team with a lot of experience especially in inner city and urban areas what we provide for um decatur public schools we work directly with all of the assistant principals in in your district as well as all of the deans it's kind of two-fold so we do one-on-one monthly coaching sessions with our deans and assistant principals as well as monthly professional development and we'll get to the topics that we've covered with them the

097topics that we will continue to cover with them and then after surveying the deans and assistant principles on topics they'd be interested in next year we also have that on a slide to show you also all right so a few topics that we've covered this has been both even with covid we've done face-to-face as well as virtual professional development with your assistant principals and deans when it is face to face we make sure to have two sessions so that we're not taking all of the assistant principals and deans away from their building at the same time so we do the same things we just break it up into two sessions so that we're not taking away the leadership team from the school so some topics we've covered so far clifton strengths um the importance of

098being an instructional leader versus a manager data informed decisions um the danielson evaluation framework and pre and post observation conversations topics that we will cover still actually tomorrow is our professional development on diversity equity and inclusion and then we finish off with culturally responsive practices so after every professional development we have with your assistant principals and deans we survey them and they're anonymous because we really want to hear how they really feel about the work we're doing with them and as you may know being a school administrator is very hard work so it's very important to us on the starks consulting team that the work that we do with school administrators is actually work that's going to impact them and their work and the work they do with their teachers which in turn affects students

099and student growth so when participants were asked if the session improved their understanding of the topic 98 responded yes i should say that this was after combining all of the survey results so far since august um we've asked the same questions and so we kind of combined that all together in our results here when participants were asked if the pd was relevant to their everyday practice 91 responded yes when participants were asked if the pd was relevant to their professional growth 95 responded yes when participants were asked how they would rate the session on a scale of one of five 98 of the participants was responded with a four or five so that lets us know at least that what we're doing with them um is positively impacting them they don't feel like they're wasting

100their time when we're meeting with them and we really are there for an additional support system so when we surveyed them about what they would be interested in in terms of professional development for next school year these were the results culture and climate progressive discipline understanding and utilizing data curriculum development social justice and equity leadership development and skyward training so all of these were topics that the majority of your current school administrators at the assistant principal on dean level stated that they are very interested in learning more about for next school year um this slide uh is supposed to have a testimonial here um from a school district that's similar to decatur um and this is dr walters um the superintendent at kankakee school district and she'll talk a little bit about starks consulting and

101what starks consulting has done for her school district so far do i play that on here okay um that's okay so um yeah he doesn't have access to it so um we'll go ahead and skip that um but basically it was just um dr walters stating the positive results that they've had so far in all of their kankakee schools because of the support from starks consulting in terms of mentoring their school leaders so that is that's what we have here but if you have any questions we'd love to answer them for you i don't have any questions but i have a comment yeah um it's just exciting to see the numbers because a lot of times we hear teachers say that they don't have there aren't enough hours in the day for something like this

102so it's really good to hear the positive feedback so i don't know what you guys are doing but keep it up thank thanks thanks so much when you're talking about the um the different aspects that the teachers would like to see in the next school year is that in order of priority so i'm so just to clarify to you all um those aren't teacher results those are results from all of your administrators and deans the people you surveyed is that but is it an order of their priorities yep okay any other questions thank you so much for having us thank you thank you thank you ladies thank you all um next board meeting we plan on having first class educators which is doing our equity training and then eos and we'll make sure we communicate

103that okay thank you that ends our report for our administration all right we will now move on to our consent items does anyone want any item pulled from the consent items to discuss and or vote on separately hearing none do we have a recommendation for the consent items yes i recommend the board approve the consent items as presented which includes a minutes open closed session meetings february 22nd 2022 b freedom of information report c bills d job description assistant superintendent update okay i have a motion second second any discussion roll call vote please mr schneider aye mr oaks aye dr collins brown aye mr taylor all right miss banks and mrs lewis 6i zero nade one absent motion carried for the record roll call item a possible discipline or dismissal of a custodial employee excuse

104me was pulled from the march 8 open session board meeting agenda so do we have a recommendation for the personnel action items yes i recommend the board approve the personnel actions items listed in the memo from jason hood director of human resources as presented can i have a motion please so moved second second any discussion roll call vote mr taylor dr collins brown aye mrs lewis aye mr scheider aye ms banks aye and mr oaks hi 6i zero nay one absent motion carried do we have a recommendation for the employment contract for assistant superintendent dr jay marino yes i recommend the board approved employment contract for assistant superintendent dr jay marino as presented do i have a motion please come up second second any discussion roll call vote miss banks mr scheider aye mr oaks

105aye dr collins brown aye mr taylor aye and mrs lewis aye six i zero nade one absent motion carried jrd leave yeah he's right there he's back there we welcomed you last time but welcome again glad to have you do we have a recommendation for the decatur public school district 61 2022 2023 school calendar yes i recommend the board approve the decatur public school district 61 2022 2023 school calendar as presented i have a motion i moved no second second any discussion roll call vote mr oakes aye dr collins brown aye mr scheider aye mrs lewis aye mr taylor all right and miss banks 6i zero nay one absence motion carried do we have a recommendation for the roofing contract for macarthur high school yes i recommend the board approve the roofing contract for macarthur

106high school as presented you have a motion second second any discussion roll call vote dr collins brown aye ms banks aye mr oakes aye mrs lewis aye mr scheider and mr taylor all right six i zero made one absent motion carrie do we have a recommendation for the roofing contract for pershing early learning center yes i recommend the board approve the roofing contract for pershing early learning center as presented i have a motion so moved second second any discussion roll call vote mrs lewis mr schneider aye ms banks aye dr collins brown aye mr taylor aye and mr oaks 6i zero nay one absent motion carried do we have a recommendation for the roofing contract for south shores elementary school yes i recommend the board approve the roofing contract for south shores elementary school as

107presented we have a motion moved second second any discussion roll call vote miss banks mrs lewis dr collins brown aye mr scheider aye mr taylor aye and mr oakes aye 6i zero nay one absent ocean carry do we have a recommendation for the bid award for ip intercom speaker yes i recommend the board approve and award the bid for the ip intercom speaker as presented today i have a motion second second any discussion roll call vote dr collins brown aye mrs lewis aye mr taylor aye mr shiiter aye ms banks aye and mr oaks aye 6i zero nay one absent motion carried for your information superintendent clark will bring resolution recommendations regarding reduction in force to the board of education from decatur public school district 61. board members do you have any questions regarding this

108process at this time yes i'm i'm not sure what's going on really in past discussions i thought we were talking about that there was not a need for reduction in force with our tremendous teacher and teacher assistant shortage um so that why would we need to have reduction in forced positions when these people could easily be transferred into another position i think it's the whole concept of reduction in force is dehumanizing when a district is fully funded i mean fully staffed like in the 1980s and enrollment was going down of course you had to have reduction in forced positions every year we are in a huge educational crisis where we are desperate for people in every building and to even consider the idea of saying to a person you don't have a job until we

109find a new one for you is just contrary to what we want to do to retain staff in this district i'm just horrified by the idea of continuing to use this concept when we don't need to we need as many staff as we can get we need to encourage all of our staff to stay and not do anything anything to discourage them i am very very disheartened by this even being discussed i think we need to look at when we say a position isn't needed anymore that's fine but talk about what positions a person could go to in place because there are a lot of positions open all you have to do is go to any school in this district any day and you know there are a lot of positions open so i'm very

110concerned about this nature of discussion of reduction in force um so i have then that will explain that process and answer some of your questions for you so we're not roofing any teachers um we are riffing some teaching assistants because they were hired specifically for class size for this year only they will have callback rights and we do expect to put all of those back into a situ or a position that is they're similarly suited for so the riff is for hours for liaisons and i did give a an explanation of each one of them the liaisons are ours the a couple of the schedule b ones are there's a sub and there's a teaching assistant who was an athletic director so the people that will have the callback rights as outlined are in number

111one number two and in number seven so one thing to keep in mind is that you cannot conduct a rif if there are positions for which the person is qualified meaning the recall rights would allow that person back into a position for which he's qualified essentially immediately yeah so i mean these are functionally necessary um rips because of the structure of what we're doing and if you if you look at the documents themselves which are contained in your packet you'll see pretty clearly why each one of those needs to needs to be the way it is i'm not sure where you're talking about documents to refer to because i looked through the packet i couldn't find anything in regards to these specific things they're in the open session packet they're they're i looked through the

112entire packet i couldn't find anything regarding this i so i don't know i had to ask but i assume they're there could you give me a page number later on not right now don't worry about now just later on so we can refer to this well can we maybe table this then because i wasn't really clear on this there's a time limit on doing these things um the time limit is 30 days before the end of the school year you could theoretically i suppose i don't know when the school year ends but yeah so you know 30 days you could theoretically table it i suppose i moved i moved to table this until the next board meeting it's the and i'm just asking the question to be clear is it because we you don't see

113what you're looking for or is it more clarification that you need any more clarification when you talk about teaching assistants not having the positions i think we also need to talk about apparently i was informed a couple weeks a few weeks ago that previous boards limited how many teaching assistants could be hired i think and i think as they said they used to be a teaching assistant at least for every kindergarten classroom and first grade classroom i think our board needs to discuss a change in that going back to having that because it was reduced to one teaching assistant for every two classrooms and i think our board needs to discuss that and if we decided to go back to that previous policy then certainly we would have a position open for every teaching assistant

114in this district there would be no question about that so i think that needs to be done simultaneously with this discussion in the production enforce sorry in this packet deanne points out to me that there are two dismissals for cause involving teachers who don't have appropriate licensure to teach well i understand that these are things we discussed in closed session so one i'm told is licensure and one is performance and that's what i'm trying to get some clarification on so this is information that was presented or given in writing for review in the weekly update thank you and so what i'm trying to kind of gauge here um president folks is where we're moving in terms of this information because it's not new information and this and are there penalties i you know i'm assuming

115there are penalties associated with this which is why the time frame is so important and why this was brought to us ahead of time and our district can i mean brian you can explain this but you know to the extent that we want to make a procedural change i don't mind you know we can have that conversation i'm not saying that you're incorrect you know but what i'm saying is this specific these reductions in force that we have before us are we have to accomplish these and then if we need to make i understand um by april first usually a standard school district so no no not said april 1st before that's 30 days for educational support employees 45 days for licensed employees and the 45 days so i didn't look at this in advance

116because i didn't know there was going to be an issue the 45 days you're against your right against the wall on by the time you adopt the resolution get it delivered because it's the delivery date it's not the adoption date so that postponing the next board meeting i don't even know if you'd make the 45 day deadline and if you don't make the deadline what happens then is the employee is automatically re-hired so i am recommending that we move forward so are any of these individuals contesting the riff as deft ever well they don't i mean i mean it doesn't really play into it but it's just so the process my question is which weekly update was this sent in because i don't have anything after february 28th and my weekly update for february 28

117doesn't have this in there i don't have anything for march but of course my macbook is still not working but that's beside the point and i my macbook wasn't working so i didn't have access to the weekly update until 5 30 tonight so i i did not have a chance to read it so just for general understanding exactly in the amount of times that i've represented this district or had the privilege of representing this district we have always done rips every single time the first board meeting i i'm just saying the first board board meeting in march um and as a general this is for future reference because you'll be on the board next year the same thing will happen [Music] the hr department prepares these makes the list solicits information from principals solicit solicits

118information from other kyle employees and it's a monumental task to prepare this stuff i mean that cv is working on this stuff 24 7. uh and and others in hr so i have a motion on i have a motion on the floor to table and i would appreciate if the motion would be addressed is there a second second okay call the roll well we can still discuss but the um tell them when it was in there the information was in weekly update on february 25th each resolution is outlined and in red it tells specifically why so two weeks ago and it was discussed in closed session i don't believe it was i don't remember any such discussion and we're not supposed to discuss that kind of thing in close-ups it's an employment personnel not individual

119employment well how else we're not giving individual names here names are on the forums will be ready it was not discussed in closed session not saying it was but in the weekly update i did put in bright highlight if there were any board questions regarding the process and or recommended resolutions for the march 8th board meeting please i'm sorry i didn't have access my whole macbook froze up and i didn't realize what the problem was until 5 30 tonight that's my fault i understand um but it's your recommendation at this point that we move forward with this because there are issues if we don't move forward with it sometimes sensitive issues yes and so it's your recommendation as the superintendent that we move forward with this tonight that is correct and then we can address

120this the overarching issue that mr schneider's brought up subsequently but we have to address this because this this is the reality that we have right now that is correct and this happens every year you have i think i understand it happens every year i think things are changing in the world and we need to address that because the teachers that were listed in here were graded as not re-employable the teaching assistants were being ripped because of specific time and job and they will have an opportunity to come back in the fall but even with i don't understand that because even with it for until i'm sorry al i do go ahead go ahead you said we have 30 days to make these decisions can't we table it he said 45 for the uh so we

121can't even wait two weeks until the next meeting and discuss this it'll be it's going to be real i mean 45 days from is april 1st to may 15th is 45 days and that's how i usually have heard from all those school districts april 1st is the standard time do you have to get it by yeah i know so i'm told i've forgotten i did prepare the resolutions but i've forgotten the particulars and i wasn't prepared for this at all because i had no idea this normally is just a routine process so what i'm told now is two of them are hours reductions meaning they're maintaining their jobs but the number of hours they work are being reduced for one reason or another one of them one of them is an extra duty schedule b

122person who's losing their extra duty but they maintain their teaching assistant position okay then four of them are subs who are doing schedule b jobs and that's bargaining unit work educator the last one's a parent educator i apologize for not looking at this weekly update ahead of time because i couldn't get to it and that's partly my fault i mean it's understandable but i'm just concerned about the whole concept and and that's why i moved to table it so can we just um address the concept at another time in the meeting and some two on twos i would like to take a vote on the table and then we'll discuss the concept in future motion made in second i need to know what the motion and second was because i was busy looking forward no

123who motioned and who i did was this items one through seven um all right ryan can we just simply say letter i or do we need to go through each one through seven just say letter i or should we go through each no you can just say what so there's a motion and a second on the floor to table letter i until the march 22nd board meeting everybody understand what the table is okay mrs lewis no mr oaks no miss banks no mr schneider aye dr collins brown aye mr taylor no i have two eye for fournette and one absent motion fails we have the original motion in second to approve the riffs can we go through that again i'm sorry i don't think we got that far i don't yeah okay yeah so we

124need to have this is questions so we've already had discussion so go ahead and do your resolution too yep i recommend the board adopt the two resolutions okay resolution one all right i'm sorry okay please note the below dps resolutions one through seven are pertaining to the reduction in force regarding honorable dismissals honorable reductions restructuring and hours dismissals and discontinuation of certain extra duty stipends and duties i recommend that the board adopt the two resolutions regarding the honorable dismissal of six certain educational support personnel employees nicole kerry tandia smith brandi o'connor gabriel calhoun sherry goodwin and macy mori as presented may i have a motion it was second second any discussion the discussion i would like to ask for is that um for the next board meeting we have on the agenda the um number

125of teaching assistants that the board has a policy of approving per classroom can you repeat that i'd like to have on the asking for information i'd like to put on make sure that on the next agenda the open agenda we have a discussion of the number of teaching assistants for the policy of number of teaching assistants we have in this district by classrooms i would think we could put that as a bullet item under that discussion well i've asked for things to be on open agenda before and it's been just ignored and i'd like to have it on the open agenda i'm asking for it now because it relates to this vote so you don't have to say anything around i'm just asking for it it's not a vote i'm just asking for that to

126be done my point is this is information that we could have sent to you no i'm not asking for information i know what the information currently is i want a discussion of the current policy being changed do you want to know how what are this i'm not asking no i know what the district policy is i want a discussion of changing it and we can't do that in closed session so i want it to be discussed in open session i'm just asking for it to be put on you can reject me if you want i'm just asking for it there does thing else needs to be said you want to add an agenda item under what or discussion just board discussion well why does it have to be doors why we have agenda items all

127the time on the list why can't it be one of the board on generalization when it comes under you on this underboard discussion i want it to be an agenda item put it under board discussion please for the next meeting just to clarify mr scheider when you put agenda items i think you're talking under consent and roll calls those are voted on items and you can always put items under board discussion just to have a discussion okay is what you're saying so i just wanted to make sure you understood the difference thank you melissa for doing that some people don't seem to want to explain things to some of us board members thanks please send an email to melissa specifically telling her what to have ready for the board well i've been told i'm doing

128a board discussion so i'll just bring it up in board discussion don't you want any information as to how many teaching assistants there are i already know the policy i asked that at a previous meeting a private meeting i know that i know the policy i'm wanting to discuss a change in the policy i have it okay i've got it i have it okay okay there's a motion in a second on the floor for resolution number one are we ready for the roll call yes mr taylor dr collins brown abstain mr schneider no miss banks mr oates and mrs lewis i have four eye one no one absent one abstain motion carried resolution number two i recommend that the board adopt the two resolutions regarding the honorable dismissal of four certain educational support personnel employees

129allie hamill kelly marlow jessica herbert and j don bryant as presented may i have a motion have a second second any discussion roll call vote mr taylor mrs lewis aye mr oakes aye dr collins brown abstain miss banks aye and mr scheider no i have four eye one nay one absent one abstain motion carried resolution number three i recommend that the board adopt the two resolutions regarding the honorable reduction of two certain educational support personnel employees courtney trager and megan myrick as presented can i have a motion second second any discussion roll call vote mr oaks aye ms banks hi mr scheider no mrs lewis mr taylor and dr collins brown abstain i have four eye 1a one absent one abstain motion carried resolution number four i recommend that the board adopt the two resolutions

130regarding the dismissal of two professional educator licensed employees craig flowers and j.c cecil as presented i have a motion moved second second any discussion roll call vote mr scheider no mr oakes aye mr taylor aye mrs lewis aye dr collins brown abstain and miss banks hi i have four eye 1a one absent one abstain motion carried resolution number five i recommend that the board adopt the one resolution regarding the decision to discontinue certain extra duty stipends and duties of one educational support staff employee bryce lynn as presented can i have a motion so moved second second any discussion roll call vote miss banks hi mrs lewis dr collins brown abstain mr oaks aye mr scheider no and mr taylor i have four i one 1a 1 absent one abstain motion carried resolution number six i

131recommend that the board adopt the two resolutions regarding the decision to discontinue certain extra duty stipends and duties of two employees of the district robin payne and brandon abbott as presented may i have a motion second second any discussion roll call vote dr collins brown abstain mrs lewis mr taylor mr scheider no miss banks and mr oaks 4i 1a one absent one abstain motion carried resolution number seven i recommend that the board adopt the one resolution regarding the honorable dismissal of one certain educational support personnel employee morgan ringo as presented may i have a motion have a second any discussion roll call vote mr oaks aye ms banks aye mr scheider no mrs lewis aye mr taylor and dr collins brown abstain four eye one nay one absent one abstain motion carried we will now

132move to announcements the board of education sends condolences to the family of robert bobby lee ingram jr who passed away thursday february 17 mr ingram was the father of cordell ingram principal of macarthur high school we also offer congratulations to superintendent clark on the birth of first grandson [Applause] yeah okay we will now move on to important dates march 9th summer school registration closes there is an update i'm sorry um the deadline has been extended to march 23rd thank you uh from march 11th parent teacher conferences and did that come out the extended deadline i have it right here i have a graphic of it right here yeah robocall went out earlier this week yesterday thank you so march 23rd is summer school registration closes right okay march 11th parent parent-teacher conferences no school for

133students march 14-18 spring break week no school for students district offices are open the public portion of the next regular meeting of the board of education will be at 6 30 pm tuesday march 22nd 2022 first floor board room of the kyle administration building do we have a motion to adjourn the moot you have a second second all in favor say aye aye those opposed same sign motion carried we are now adjourned