001all right good evening everybody I'd like to welcome everybody to the regular Board of Education meeting August 17 2023. like to call to order um we'll call the meeting to order at 601 pm um we have one amendment to tonight's agenda we're going to table item number 10.4 the acceptable use policy discussion this will be included as an information item at an upcoming regular board meeting may have a motion to approve the meeting agenda as amended second all in favor aye all right uh we're gonna go into closing closed session we will reconvene to open session approximately 7 PM for the regular meeting beginning with two hearings we will also continue streaming on the DPS 109 YouTube channel at that time may you have a motion to adjourn to closed session I think about the
002reasons too oh shoot sorry sorry um so does that appear is that my reading this year like all this stuff right here okay all right there we go um tonight the board has three closed session topics to discuss litigation when action against affecting or on behalf of the particular body particular public body has been filed and is pending before a quarter administrative tribunal or when the public body finds that an action is probable or imminent in which case the basis for the finding shall be recorded and entered into the minutes of the closed meeting five ilcs 120 2 C 11. the appointment the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employees specific individuals who serve as independent contractors in a park recreational or educational setting or specific volunteers of the public body or
003legal counsel for the public body including hearing testimony on a complaint lodged against an employee a specific individual who serves as an independent contractor in a park recreational or educational setting or a volunteer of the public body or against legal counsel for the public body to determine its validity however meeting to consider an increase in compensation to a specific employee of a public body that is subject to the local government wage increase transparency act may not be closed and shall be subject to the to the local government wage increase transparency act oh sorry shall be open to the public and posted and held in accordance with this act five ilcs 120.2 C1 Collective the third one Collective negotiating matters between the public body and its employees or the representatives or deliberations concerning salary schedules for
004one or the more classes of employees five ilcs 120-2 C2 didn't really have to read that we will come we will uh we will reconvene to open session approximately 7 PM for the regular meeting beginning with two hearings we will also continue streaming on the DPS 109 YouTube channel at that time may I have a motion to adjourn to closed session so moved second roll call please aye sorry Miss Joyce aye Mr quo aye Mr Morrison aye and president Montgomery motion carries all right we are now in closed session I'm sorry oh hey thank you that's right and we are in closed session at 605. um all right so first on agenda here uh uh is the public hearing so public hearing for 2023-2024 Budget purpose of this hearing is to seek public comment on
005the district's 2023-24 budget pursuant to the provisions of the Illinois opens meeting act notice was published in the Deerfield review can also be found in the board packet and posting start time of this hearing is 703 pm we are required to ask for comments three times does anyone wish to comment does anybody wish to comment does anyone wish to comment all right hearing no comments the hearing is now closed at 703 pm all right the next public public hearing is the fund transfer from the educational fund to the operations maintenance fund and that is here so I'm going to read this a little bit long um may have a motion to suspend the regular meeting and convene a public hearing on the inner fund transfer from the educational fund to the operations and maintenance fund
006so moved second all in favor aye all right did we have to do a roll on that that was just a okay voice okay um I now call the public hearing to order let the record reflect that this is a hearing on the inner fund transfer from the educational fund to operations and maintenance fund conducted by the Board of Education of Deerfield School District number 109 pursuant to section 17-2a of the school school code for the record on July 27 2023 the board approved a resolution setting a hearing to discuss an inner fund transfer on the August 17th 2023 at 7 pm at 517 Deerfield Road Deerfield Illinois on August 3rd 2023 notice of tonight's public hearing was published in the Deerfield review notice that this hearing was also posted on the on the district's
007website at this time does the administration have any comments having none at this time do any of the board members have any comments all right hearing none are there any comments from the public I have to ask us three times are there any comments from the public all right are there any more comments and clarifications from the administration under the board all right hearing none may have a motion to adjourn the public hearing on the interfund transfer or the educational fund to the operations and maintenance fund and return back to regular session so moved all in favor aye aye all right we are now back in regular session all right next on the agenda what's good in 109 Eric all right thank you Mr quo first one of the new year we'll make it a
008little Snappy but we are excited to partner again with the DEA and uh tell the great stories that are happening in our schools and there's a lot that's already going on here in the last few weeks of summer so let's take a look here uh we recognized over a hundred students at this board meeting in 22-23 not going to give the exact number I don't want to set a bar that is unachievable but let's aim a little higher this year uh as you can see we had several board members participate in some interactive experiences we'll see what we have up our sleeves this year next month we should start bringing students back into the meeting so looking forward to that our staff is back um a lot of them really don't want close-up pictures of
009them taken so I think this was a good compromise to show you they're there their work and their learning but you know don't don't get the close-ups of me um really good meetings today uh Mr simic we'll talk a little bit more about his role in some of the the PD today this is the staff meeting at Shepherd um staff hard at work across all six buildings in the district we also got a chance to welcome our newest employees here in the last few weeks Mr quo gave a nice opening speech to all of our new employees they filled up this whole room we have a lot of new faces this year uh really eager and already kind of making their impact another cool thing that we got to really showcase is that they sat
010by table and they got to hear from their principals and building leaders and District leaders about their why about the students that have impacted their lives why they do what they do why they care so much about the students of this District so it was a really good way to to kind of kick off that experience that's all of Dr Brett's new teammates at Wilmot getting to know a little bit more about her talk about coming full circle so not only do we have a few dozen new staff members these seven right here all attended DPS 109 at some point we won't reveal exact years or ages but really cool to see them coming full circle and now working here one of them said they may have been disciplined by Dr Philippi at some point
011we won't get into the details of that but all right well we'll get into that later um but really cool to see them coming back and you know they've been there they've been that kid in our middle schools in our elementary schools they can relate so well so it's cool to see them coming full circle and now working for us one really special connection this is Mr Cohn who's working at Caruso on the left you all recognize Stephanie Stringer on the right she was his first grade teacher so talk about making her feel a little old but really great to see him and again showing this connection that you know people had such a special experience here that they want to come back and work here so that's really coming full circle we welcomed our
012new students just this afternoon at South Park you see that first interaction between the kindergartner and the teacher or the early learner and the teacher and you get the mixtures of the kids that are super confident that are like Bye Mom and Dad and the other ones that you have to pry them off the leg a little bit but it runs the Gambit of emotions really cool experience that these kids got to have and that you know a lot of us as parents have gotten to have uh and already posing for pictures and see their name on the wall uh excited to start the first day of school in the middle school it's a different challenge right the challenge of the new Locker we saw some rocking it we saw some struggling and there's always
013that I kind of know you I kind of don't know you as the elementary schools mixed together so interesting to see the the initial interactions happen there but the staffs are both Shepard and carusoe doing a good job they've got a lot of things planned for the incoming sixth graders to make sure that they're comfortable our PTO is already hard at work Kipling PTO was out there today handing out sunglasses making sure people knew everything that was going on at Kipling of course that happens at all six of our buildings communication as much as it's coming out from the district is already coming out from the ptos about many ways to sign up and help and then strong Community Partnerships um I had the pleasure of speaking to Rotary Club over the summer thank you
014Dr Philippi for bringing me along for that uh We've also continued to look for new ways to help serve our staff so thanks to Mrs Trudeau and some of the other Librarians here on our staff the Deerfield Public Library will be actually be coming to Caruso tomorrow to be an easy way for our staff to sign up for Deerfield Public Library cards so anything we can do to bring the community and our schools together make it easy for people spread our message get out there and tell the Rotary Club about all the cool things we're doing a lot of these people haven't had Elementary age kids in a minute you know so it's really nice to bring them the stories of what we're doing in our schools speaking of that there's a lot of things
015here on the screen another way we're going out to the community is for the second year now we'll be going to the Deerfield farmers market Saturday August 26th we'll be out there between 7 30 and noon we'll have giveaways for those who stop buying a new thing that's kind of cool we're working on a scavenger hunt with the farmers market so of course we're the educational Wing there right we're going to have kids do a little bit of homework and get a little bit of a prize at the end of it so if you're listening or watching whenever you are come on out and join us on the 26th I'll be there Mr simic will be there some of the board members will be there and uh it'll be a great day let's look at
016what's good in 109. all right all right thanks Eric all right so next on the agenda superintendent report Eric I think you're driving go ahead okay so the superintendent's report will be relatively brief tonight because so much of what I would be talking about uh will be at a later presentation around the Strategic plan and I'll comment on that in a minute or two so as Eric mentioned I was in all six buildings today and that was largely to set a tone for the for the district that was really really impressed and continuously impressed by the engagement of the staff the willingness of the staff the degree to which we have now really is significant and distributed leadership on moving towards the mission in the vision a great deal of credit goes to uh everybody
017all the administrators and staff involved in really latching on to the the mission and the vision this is it truly an organization at this point we can say with a straight face that people know what the mission and the vision are they know what the core values are they believe in them because of the collaborative process that we created and there's a collective effort to drive towards greater engagement for towards the values of social emotional well-being being the foundation for future academic success so uh my my message was really largely to try to put wind in everybody's sails and say thank you for what you're doing and you're in public education for a good reason should be proud to be there I shared a note from somebody that I know that received a message from
018a student saying you made all the difference for me and here's why and here's how and what was interesting is the person that received the note could not remember the student's name and he wrote a very very compelling message to her they're honoring the district was honoring people who had for students graduating students honoring people who had had an incredible impact on their life and she was his person is Valedictorian and I said look I wouldn't be able to do the things that I'm able to do today if it weren't for you and it was very specific about that and the point is is you just never know which kid you're going to reach and which of the kids in your charge you're going to have the greatest impact on she was very fortunate that
019she received that note and that was she had just retired she wasn't able to go to the Celebration because she was in the middle of chemotherapy treatment but his letter to her was the greatest imaginable gift at the end of a career is like this just demonstrates why I did everything that I did so she's a very engaging person and that's that that was the message to the staff in a nutshell so we've got a lot of ongoing professional development you'll hear about that in a few minutes I'd like to say thank you to Dr Arnold and also Ms Ford for spearheading the work and for making sure that it is a United teaching and learning message it's not a separated message between the two who have somewhat discrete responsibilities and but making sure that
020this is a very much a united front and a lot a lot of credit a lot of professional development going on there so we've also conducted a Communications test everybody should have gotten anybody has a kid in school um and and in my case it's kind of me calling me sometimes because I get them too uh so making sure that our email our texts are in our Robo calls are going to the right folks so I think you got those so check uh any update on information necessary please do that we've got uh the buildings are ready to go and I mentioned at our last meeting how important it was the foresight of Dr Philippi and Tim Ryan in their team uh really devoted and really thoughtful about what can we do to be proactive
021to make sure that we have air conditioning that our facilities are in a place where they're ready for kids to walk in and we're we're in really good shape and it was a short summer this year they're only eight weeks that they had to get everything done so staff recognize that and really appreciative and so we we are off to a really good start there Master facility facility planning we'll have a very important meeting in this room on August 29th it'll be a committee of the whole it means the entire board and a number of Administrators will be here we'll be reviewing the administration's recommendation on the master facility planning process and Rosie and Mitch and Kelly you were involved in that and this is the culmination of nearly a Year's worth of work from
022a lot of folks and so what we'll be looking for from that meeting will be a direction on a strategy to pursue from the board that will then begin to execute against over the over the coming years and that concludes the superintendent's report and again uh reprise slightly so that the the borage job is a set to strategic direction for the organization what is the mission why are we here the vision where are we going the values who what are we about and then key performance indicators how are we going to measure our success the administration's job is then to write a strategic plan to get us there and then uh to report back on a regular basis for board oversight we'll have that tonight I I can say I think uh Joanna John Danielle
023Eric I just can't imagine how we could be in a better place I'm really proud of the work we've done and really feel like we have a very focused and energized Team all directed at realizing where the board has pointed us to go so really thrilled with that and you'll hear more about the granular detail of that in a little bit thank you all right is there any questions for Mike all right Community participation relative matters in the meeting agenda the first period of community participation is for the items related to tonight's agenda and second period of community community participation near the end of the meeting is open for all matters if you wish to comment please fill out a community community participation form located in the podium and hand it to Rebecca Rudd we
024will call you up one at a time to the podium to speak please limit the length of all comments to no more than two minutes is there any Community participation seeing none moving on to informational items Freedom of Information X John yeah there's one in your packet we received a request from NBC Universal they were doing a story um us and just about everybody else received the same foia request all right any questions all right fleet vehicle purchase yeah we have a request of the board to purchase two new vehicles this year as background we operate for vehicles to serve the operational needs of the district that includes our team working and and doing various repairs around the district but it also includes work during the winter months to plow so we're requesting the purchase
025of two vehicles this year one is an F-250 that would be used for maintenance and for snow plowing in the winter and then the other is a Transit van that's used for maintenance purposes a prior board had approved purchase of the transit van but we have not been able to get one because the chip shortage so we've been patiently waiting you see the order that we were able to process for the truck in your packet we are anxiously awaiting uh them to take our order for a van and there was some questions from the board about whether or not we could purchase an electric vehicle we are interested in purchasing an electric Transit van if it's available so we would bring that forward for Action in a future month as well that requires some infrastructure
026in terms of charging yet we would add a charging station it's not not much for our team to handle presuming that this happens then what would be the oldest vehicle of the four we have one more generally speaking we keep our trucks for about 10 years there's a one that's approaching 14 years that's actually broken down in the parking lot right now perfect I saw it out there and I said Tim I think they understand you need a new truck you didn't need to put it on display but we have one more we have one more 2014 F-250 that we would seek to replace next year and then it would probably be about another seven or eight years before we would replace the vehicle unless we wanted to take a gas vehicle and replace it
027with an electric if that was something the board was interested in and this is called for in our the fy24 budget so snow plowing uh it's a partnership between some of our lots are done by the park district through the IGA and then two of our maintenance staffers come in early on the snow days and they plow to all the people who are plowing the plow with this truck or our there's a Park District have their own the park district has their own Vehicles it would only be 109 staffers using our trucks so one question I forgot to ask sorry um a previous board said yes to the van was that in a previous budget or is that going to be when we then this was uh fiscal year 21 I believe um so long
028long since forgotten and uh new request and both the purchase for both vehicles is uh included in our operating budget for the year thanks all right any more questions is that going to come to the next meeting is that right uh we would definitely have the F250 for approval at the next meeting if we receive uh the uh purchase order for the van we would put it in for Action we would not bring It Forward for a separate information item unless you wish us to could we explore getting a quote on the electric ban option instead of just placing the PO for it what does that look like yeah we we could definitely do that um I don't know if it's going to be available so there there are kind of two questions there one
029is is it available Ford does make a an electric Transit van um the availability of some of the electric vehicles has been difficult but we could certainly offer out the price of both and communicate that to the board and if the price wasn't substantially different I think we would recommend that the board pursue the electric option what would it logistically look like if they came back to you and said here are the electric and non-electric but you'd have to wait two years to get the electric can we float two years on the current I I would if it was they they won't tell us it's two years from now it'll be you know this is what's available to order now um and so if if there were both available we would likely recommend you purchase
030the electric vehicle if there was only a gas option we would recommend that you purchase the gas option it's always an opportunity in the future that we can resell these vehicles and and go to an electric um yeah I mean electric vehicles right now are kind of at an all-time high so totally understand like I know if you talked about the truck you're probably talking about a thirty thousand dollar difference at least based off of the type but I mean we'll we'll look at it if it's reasonable we'd recommend the electric if it's it's very costly but either way we'll communicate what we hear okay all right anything else all right policy first reading 2.80 to I'm sorry two colon 80 2 colon 170 four colon 100 four colon 150 five colon 230 6 colon
031ten six colon 240 7 colon 305 8 colon 25 and 8 colon 95. Mike so the policy committee has met and any the chair uh yeah well the policy committee Matt um there's a number of policies that we just go through a regular refresh review after a certain amount of time we also have policies that have minor changes based on the Press recommendations and those um have been presented here to the board for review today I don't think I'm supposed to read it but these are our recommended changes to the policies any questions on the policies Randy all right hearing that moving on to acceptable acceptable use policy AUP discussion and that would be RJ sorry that's the one we scrapped sorry I apologize skip um all right strategic Plan update so this will be
032Dr Arnold will be uh bringing us through the a lot of updates it will probably be something of a drink by fire hose here because there's a lot to report yeah that's that is exactly what I was going to say I think words used in Mike's opening were united front professional development and I'm going to try to provide you with a lot of information quickly because there has been a lot of great work happening in the district throughout the summer one of the things that I consistently share is that often people think that schools rest during the summer and in fact what you're going to see in the presentation tonight is that so many of our staff have been hard at work and it's all directly related to our Mission Vision Values and the work
033of the Strategic plan so we'll go quickly I just wanted to show for reference the mission and vision again the next slide is actually the core values everyone in this room is very familiar but I always like to bring that back at the beginning of a presentation whether it's sitting here at the board table or when working with our staff so this is ever present our work and the topic of this evening is more related to the Strategic plan and so these four goals in our strategic plan are probably more commonly thought of in our schools as instructional leadership goal one goal two is sel goal three is known as inclusive practices and Gulf War is more related to climate and culture and that is the work that is happening and has been happening intensely
034over the last few weeks in particular so one of the key updates to share this evening is that new this year in 2324 we have what we call strategic plan leaders these are teacher leaders in all of our buildings we have six of them in each of our schools so a total of 36 teacher leaders I'm just going to point out right now that you're going to see numbers Bolden in red because I'm going to highlight something at the end about the number of people you're seeing involved at this point we came together with our strategic plan leaders for the first time as a district on August 2nd and 3rd two full days I heard one of them say in front of her school team today that she could not imagine how we were going
035to fill the two days of work and then she was surprised about how they filled it and how excited they were about what they were presenting to their colleagues today the real purpose of that is illustrated by that picture in the top right corner there which is a shared leadership image like I'm getting the picture that this is not about one of us sitting at this table leading the work it's not about our principals and our assistant principles leading the work it's really about the United effort of every single person connected with our district showing leadership around the work so that's what we did that day as well as the teams went away and wrote their school Improvement plans which are directly related to the work of the Strategic plan I bring this image or
036quote up which we've shared a number of times just to again point out the word doers because Mike has constantly referenced that where the planners are different than the doers the plan doesn't get accomplished and so this entire presentation about who is doing this is just a picture of some of the professional learning that occurred in District 109 in the month of August so today was our first official start of school where a staff returned to our buildings there were 13 Monday through Fridays prior to this day in the month of August and 11 of them were filled with professional development where we had staff in our schools so this is just an image of a few of those and one of the things that we've really been talking about is that you can't speak
037to one of the Strategic plan goals without referencing another there is interconnection between all of them for example like if I'm talking about Workshop structure I have to talk about the fact that Workshop structure often involves children working in small groups which creates collaborative and collegial classrooms also when they're interacting with each other they're gaining social emotional skills we also ask them in a workshop structure to demonstrate Independence and that in enhances their SEL as well because we're trying to grow kids who are persistent and have grits and can demonstrate Independence away from an adult and all of those structures really are to personalize the learning for kids which creates Equitable outcomes in our classroom so one of the things we've just been talking about immensely is that you cannot isolate them everything is related
038so that is why when I talk about some of the work specific to goals and objectives within the Strategic plan like the first thing I'm going to talk about is cooperative and experiential learning and the development of staff I can't talk about one without overlapping with another so goal one yeah goal one here is some of the things that happened in last year that are continuing this year so we introduced Kagan Cooperative learning structures to our staff last October you see there that we had 22 teacher leaders and 17 administrators just in the initial vetting of that experience since then we've trained all of our staff in day one structures which is 265 teachers in February and 19 administrators we just onboarded another 34 new teachers for day one training on August 10th and then
039tomorrow we're kicking off another training around Cooperative learning structures where we'll have numbers similar to that day one training so all of this is implemented in our classrooms workshop model is another big key component of goal one and high quality instructional practices and there's a lot of alignment of curriculum and curriculum and instruction language in goal one so we'll move to this piece where I bring up the work of our teams around curriculum reviews so I came before the Board of Education with staff in both April and May to present curricular reviews for both social studies and PE Health what I wanted to share this evening is that just because they present their curriculum and we move forward with it doesn't mean that the work stops so I wanted to illustrate what they've done since
040then they and you see there like sixth grade social studies has met twice to continue preparing for implementation this year same with 7th and 8th grade our full social studies team was just together on Tuesday again to prepare for implementation with a couple of the new instructional tools that we'll be using and the same thing applies for PE our PE staff at the middle school was all in house Tuesday as well for PE professional development in our elementary teachers are getting some training around the loo which is really excited and exciting and now installed in all four of them our element country schools on Monday we have also engaged or started to engage our staff in one of the most critical curriculum reviews that we'll do and one of the most intensive processes in terms
041of a curriculum review Jason Jesuit director of learning is kind of facilitating this particular review with our staff but this slide shows how many people are deeply involved in this process so it started also back in last October where we sent some staff to Teachers College in New York to attend a rebalancing balanced literacy Institute then we started training all of our K-5 Educators general education and special education in small group instruction and they also participated in learning Labs with Chicago literacy group but then the committee work actually started in January of 2023 and you can see that this is going to be the largest committee we've had yet we had 30 K2 teachers on the committee we had 16 3-5 committee members and we are getting ready to add 24 6 through 8 teachers
042to the English language arts committee so this is this is a a vast amount of our staff that will be involved in the presentation that we bring to the Board of Education in the spring of the upcoming year one of the things I have to share with you tonight and I'll pass around is the work we have also done in updating and creating an instructional handbook we've engaged a lot of our staff in helping us write this you're going to see the language of the Strategic plan in it and the practices associated with the Strategic plan you're also going to see assessment and Grading practices in their multi-tiered systems of support and advanced learning protocols that we've systematized around the district as well so this is this is sort of a comprehensive handbook that we're
043ready to share this evening with all of you and we're also posting it to our website to share with the entire community goal two this SEL goal about proactive and positive behavior management and SEL instruction again has layered a lot of professional development go ahead so what happened last year is we formed six SEL teams one in each of our schools as you know we also began administering an SEL survey to all students in grades K through rate previously it had been only to students in grades three through eight but we developed one in-house so that we could get feedback from our youngest Learners we also began meeting with our mtss our multi-tiered system of support teams just to make sure we had good processes in place and all of our schools and um we
044attended and partnered with True North to get some early intervention PD that was also something that we could offer across all six schools in the district this year our focus and one of the big PDS that we've had happen is that we had 43 teachers and 18 administrators come together last August or last week August 9th and 10th and they began receiving training in safe and civil schools foundations again this is in partnership with true north and we also were joined by Lake Bluff school district and this training the really great thing about this is again it's the SEL teams that are our teachers they received those two two days of training they're getting five additional days of training throughout the year and the trainer will be doing site visits at all of our schools
045to help with the implementation and roll out of this work which then leads me to goal three which is the inclusive practices and much of what I'm going to talk about in the next three slides is a direct result of the findings of the equity audit that was done in the spring of 2022 and so there's been a ton of professional development happening and progress being made in goal three so the first thing is Universal Design for Learning Universal Design for Learning is really just good planning planning for the ends in your classroom just as we we see happen in business and maintenance and structures and so forth it's looking at our child who needs the most stretch and maybe the most most support and making sure that if we plan for them that we're
046actually doing a benefit to all of the students that fall in between our principals and APS participated in a four-part learning Series in the spring and then just yesterday we had our first cohort of teachers and administrators participate in that professional learning series there were 32 teachers here and four administrators and I had Middle School staff walk up to me at the end of this and say you've got to get another cohort started this is great like this is really really good we can take some of the learning from this day and apply it tomorrow in our classrooms and we're so excited so I'm waiting but I'm I'm guessing I'll get it approached about another cohort soon the other thing that we have done is we started exploring last year a partnership with the Maryland
047Coalition for inclusive education and True North Joanna and I actually went and visited the Cecil County Schools who are also Exemplar schools schools that they've been in Partnership to see what services that they had to offer and the progress those schools had made that team then came and visited our schools and we finally decided yes we'll pursue this this is exactly what we need to ensure that we're supporting all students in all classrooms that everyone sees all kids as their kids and so just Monday and Tuesday of this week doesn't it feel like feels to me like weeks ago but Monday and Tuesday of this week we had 42 teachers so inclusive practices teams again from all six schools 42 teachers 18 administrators participate in a two-day kickoff of professional learning with them Maryland Coalition
048for inclusive Ed and True North will be supporting all six of our schools and US this year as we continue this learning but they're going to be working most intensely with our two middle schools they'll be supported at an even higher level as we begin this work and then finally um probably as I have shared previously we do have the diversity Equity inclusion committee last year we started partnering a little bit with Dr Sean Joseph and Dr Constance Evelyn from hya Associates just to refresh reboot refocus our work they helped us look at things a little bit differently we sent out an application to the community to invite new membership to the Dei work and next week we are kicking off new Dei inclusion advisories you see the five there school culture curriculum and instruction
049Workforce diversity community relations and policy and many of us sitting at this table as an elt elt will be leading or facilitating one of those committees relative to our work each of those have approximately eight or nine people on them and they include both staff as you can see there but also a number of community members that applied to continue you to be a part of that work or newly join the work and last but not least is goal four so I said this can be referred to as Communications or culture and climate and I wanted to just share with the board tonight a couple of things that have happened that are pretty impactful do you want to say anything yeah sure so as we've not kept a secret obviously we just completed a Communications
050audit from the national school public relations Association uh organization Decades of experience in school Communications we had just shy of 600 surveys 10 focus groups this was both internal and external groups we made sure to isolate people in specific roles within the district so we could really hear you know what do building level people feel about certain Avenues of communication what do District level people feel so summary and takeaways and action steps will be shared at the next Boe meeting just got the report back and eager to share with all of you there we go one of the things that we also started doing in the spring of last year is we had a number of our K-5 staff come to us and say we want to improve this report card we're hearing from our
051parents and families that it doesn't speak to them about how their child is making progress in school and so again like let's form another committee and get to work and so we had 18 elementary teachers and two curriculum Specialists work with our department to do exactly that to revise the K-5 report card and this is what we're you're going to begin seeing on our report card this year instead all of our teachers will be rolling this out and sharing this with families at open house and back to school nights as well so the reporting around academic subjects is now not going to be a number system that doesn't really make sense to people it's going to be Mastery of the standard progressing towards Mastery of the standard or not yet working at the grade level
052standard and you see the descriptors there the same thing is going to happen with habits of success which are more of that executive functioning or social emotional learning piece they're meeting age appropriate they're progressing towards age-appropriate or they're needing Improvement in some of those particular areas so same initials but here's the big change so last year if you were had a third grader in our system this is what you would have seen as the third grade math descriptors which are essentially the domains in the Illinois state standards for mathematics operations and algebraic thinking numbers and operations base 10 and fractions measurement and data and geometry our parents said that that didn't really tell them too much right they couldn't really glean too much information from seeing a 4321 in those areas this is what they'll
053see for third grade math on the report card this year so it's going to say use this place value to add fluently within 1000 or calculates and solves problems involving area classifies 2D shapes like the actual work that's happening within those domains and standards which I think most people can read and definitely understand where their kid is excelling where they're making grade level progress or needing some additional work and then finally finally the connecting with families as everyone knows we've added a layer of parent-teacher conferences of course for this school year so we've already set our open house dates principals are communicating each of those we have the fall parent teacher conferences coming up at the end of October you can see there that the first semester still ends in that January timeline which the
054first report card is communicated then when you go into semester two we'll have parent-teacher conferences again in March and then a report card at the end of the year and June but we're really really ahead of schedule and you can see we've even already set the candy Roundup dates for next year and the graduation dates as well so that we have all of those dates on calendars for families to begin planning so this is what I wanted to illustrate like I that doers quote at the beginning this summer instead of I mean everybody enjoyed some time off maybe in some relaxation and downtime but we had a 198 of our certified staff in our schools or in this room learning and doing work around the Strategic plan and when I say 198 I'm not talking
055duplicates we had people that came to multiple professional developments I'm saying 198 unique participants and that equates to about 70 percent of our certified staff were with us at some point during the summer and then as as today kicked off it's no longer a 78 percent now you can see that the Strategic plan work was happening in all six of our buildings as we initiated the first day of school in 2023 and now we're all in any questions it's good work I have a few questions and comments first of all it's thrilling to see what started off as a theoretical Vision plan idea wouldn't school be cool if it were more like this and to see that kind of coming into practice is really exciting I think you you and the team here are really
056at the Forefront of some of these more Innovative whole child practices so that's I'm really I'd love to you know I I want to stay in my Lane but I sure in a theoretic way would sure love to be like I'll fly on the wall um I really also love that chart where you showed how connected each of the goals are it's really hard to capture that and it's hard to talk about it and I thought that was really one of the better presentations of that concept that I've seen so I really like that um I really also want to recommend the team on the report card kind of more granular more practical is there a scenario now that people parents might be like oh yeah I know what that is and that they see
057that their kid maybe is you know maybe could use a little more practice there is it possible to sort of have recommended resources that are linked to each of those so a parent could actually do something with that report card information right other than be you know like you know I you I mean you know the whole series uh I have to remember to call my kids teacher and then it's gonna make an appointment you know maybe there's a place where you're like hey here's a bunch of stuff for each of those and you know make it you probably save yourself a lot of conversations yeah just a rhetorical question you don't have to actually answer that but you actually have something though that's a work a working in a work in progress is that
058they're actually the next step for our curriculum specialist with members of that committee is they're working on a document internally like what are the assessments we're using to measure each of those to determine whether they're at Mastery progressing or not yet there and then also a corresponding document that defines that in more simple terms for families as well so not a resource document but to give another layer of added detail to give families well that's awesome but you know for anyone especially around here who sees their kid didn't get an M they're like what can I do and so here's you know you just you can anticipate that question um one of the things I remember low report cards have kind of gone like this and um I noticed that for some of those it
059was like Mastery to The Standard progressing to The Standard I was always confused like what is it why would you expect to see a Mastery of the standard when you're halfway through this school year right and like so I've always been confused by that concept you know yeah which is one of the points of messaging that we're going to work on because there are some skills that by January we will have expected students to master there are other skills that will have been introduced in the early months but they won't have mastered them until the end of the year so that's one of the pieces of creating this accompanying document because it's okay to still be progressing towards a grade level standard when you're still sitting in the grade by the end of the year
060because we're reporting on grade level standards you would hope to see in most cases Meats across the board but a p is okay XP is okay because sometimes we've not taught that to full capacity just speaking as a parent I have no particular ex I mean I but for as a parent I my question wasn't did my kid master this yet or not my question was is my kid where you expected my kid to be at this point in time and that so I think the Mastery concept creates um confusion maybe around what so some of the skills and standards too will only show up on trimester one report card and some won't even show up until the second trimester or the sorry I keep saying semester trimester is old brain uh semester report card
061so first semester there will be some standards most of them that are reported in first semester will be the ones that we expect to have mastered by the end of first semester there will be other ones that show up second semester that weren't there in addition and that will be one differentiator um I'm not suggesting I know what you should do I I'll defer that and that's kind of a different Lane I just wanted to raise my you know that observation and you'll do with it what new things appropriate um I am curious also with first of all amazing level of participation engagement and getting people who you know who own the work to help craft the work I think there's great I'm curious how do people like is it a hey I'm interested in
062this they volunteer for what like how did people come to be on these different work streams yeah so our um our strategic plan leaders actually applied for those positions they had a high level of interest in leading the work within their buildings so they actually applied all staff members in all six of our schools will be serving during the school year and on some committee that meets during early release usually once or twice a month so at the end of last year they were pulled like what is the What is the topic of most interest where do you see yourself serving and that's how they were placed on specific committees and then of course when we engage in work over the summer months if they are going to serve on that committee during the school
063year we invite them to attend the days that are related to that that we're offering in professional development and they can decline to come in the summer month or they can join us and I would say our participation rate was incredibly high they they chose to be a part of something they're passionate about so I think they joined us at the table because of that um awesome presentation thank you so much I'm super excited to hear about some of the K-5 report card adjustments I love that it was teacher-led that they came and said this is the feedback we're getting we want to do something about it so I applaud that you with the third grade math standards an example or is third grade the only grade that's going to see that change that's just
064an example so we changed the descriptors in all K5 and both math and English language arts amazing thank you what is still the transition time frame from going from the m and n and p language to letter grades still they'll still have the standards base to report card K through five and then move to the letter grades in grades six through eight so all six through eight is there's none of this transitions into the middle school no great and then last question for any children that may be working well ahead of grade level standards for whatever reason and whatever subject is there any way for teachers to somehow give a report on that so that also came up in in our discussions and that's what they said they would that would generally be included in
065the commentary right in the in the comments that come from the teacher to the parent as part of the report card okay um and then one last question aside from the report report cards totally for me the last question I promise um can you just speak really quickly I know you would brought up in the I believe the equity and udl section we're moving to the cope or we already have moved to the co-plan co-serve co-learn model do we still have any co-teaching existing in our district to your knowledge yes we do we definitely do have a presence at the middle school a majority of our Ela and math sections are fully co-taught um and we also have a few sections at elementary but we really tried to look at elementary especially at some more
066natural proportions across the grade level but our case managers were very lucky that for the most part again those exceptions are able to focus on one grade level some of them have two a couple times more than that but then so instead of like a full third grade co-taught they might be focusing on third grade embedded in the planning and the professional development but working with two or three third grade teachers okay so is are we still in flux with that or are you guys have we landed on a Model that's working for now it's kind of dependent upon the student needs right so if if there's an appropriate grouping of students to run more of a trueco section we will absolutely do that but we don't want to be in a position where we
067feel like we have to put five six seven kids in one section because we have the ability now to staff that differently in Middle School that'll be something that MCI is going to partner with us that was my question and so mciu will continue to kind of Drive about you know what is the best way to approach scheduling and and sections moving forward awesome thank you guys so much yeah I just have one second um I see that the report card um talks a lot about academic skills and stuff like that is there a place for teachers to be commenting on social emotional skills of kids I'm forgetting what's on the report card yeah so I'm glad you actually asked that question we'll still have the habits of success section will you flip back though
068to the third grade right there so one of the things if you see that first box there exhibits effort commitment and perseverance that used to be under just the habits of success which are more of the executive functioning or social skills demonstrated by the child what came from the committee was that they actually wanted to put exhibits effort commitment and perseverance under each core content area and not just under habits of success and the reason for that is they said they often see a student who might exhibit effort commitment and perseverance and math but struggle or not show the same level of effort in ela or something else and they wanted to make sure that they were reporting that separately for each skill but yes we we are but that's one thing I meant to
069point out that came from that came from the team I just want to reiterate what Andy said I completely agreed with the Mastery progressing needs Improvement just knowing where my kid is supposed to be is super helpful because I think progressing and needs Improvement are kind of this I mean the I get I read it's a more prompting necessary but I mean I would assume progressing also needs Improvement to get to Mastery so they kind of feel similar to get I'm guessing the end result we want is Mastery in most cases yeah by the end of grade level you would want to see Mastery and and we I think they landed on the words Mastery progressing and not yet um and and I go one more back around the academic and I really love that
070because we do like Mastery of grade level standard is where we will want children to be by the end of the grade that they're in progressing is going to happen throughout the course of the year not yet working at grade level standard we are we are providing scaffolding for students who may not be working on skills at third grade maybe they're still developing skills and Mastery at second grade standards doesn't mean that they still might not meet Mastery of grade level standard by the end of third grade but it's fair to say that they're not yet there not yet and it's amazing how much conversation we had around language relative to that I think that's super helpful because I think parents seeing a p need to know that that's okay yes and that is that
071is the path to get where we want them to be by the end of the year the goal is Mastery of all standards so the commentary I think would be super helpful in this thank you great job just have one question and one I want to it's amazing to see that I know initially when I came on board just meeting just building principles hearing all of this to see it at the numbers you reported just now it's really you know it is you can and I can even see it within my own child right just knowing how it's really trickling down um so I want to comment and recommend you guys on on that um the one question I had and I think it kind of touches on what Kelly and Joanna was talking about
072last on the mcie you mentioned kind of going back a little further the focus on the middle school and I think you just sort of answered or some of that what talk a little bit more about why the focus sure so um when we visited Maryland and started talking to mcae they recommend you start with one kind of school um we are further along than many of the districts that begin a partnership with them in that the majority of our students spend the majority of their day in general education already we really want to make sure it's the quality of you know the inclusion that they're receiving so Danielle and I tried to push for all six of our schools getting the Intensive level of support that was a polite no and I understand the
073reasons why um so we we pushed and we said two and then in talking to all of our principals they were all interested so that made it really hard and we kind of landed on a compromise because again our district is uniquely positioned to partner with them and figured our middle schools particularly for the reasons we just talked about the scheduling is more complex um and that'll be really helpful to kind of to get that insight and overview but we do have teams meeting at every building Elementary's included the big difference too is the middle schools will have more intensive support directly from MCA and True North at the table at their meetings versus Elementary will be led by their committee support by Danielle and I Kristen and Jason our directors in our departments one
074of the things about Middle School too from an instructional standpoint that we've talked a lot about is that the as the content becomes more complex and specific it becomes more difficult to think for teachers to figure out the stretch right like how to continually extend it or support it at a standard below so that's one of the pieces of Middle School really getting the first layer of support So how do you take an algebra one class which feels like very specific content and still make it accessible to Learners above and below that capacity and that's one of the the neat things that they'll be working with us on Sarah do you have any questions no just excellent presentation it's so exciting to see everyone so involved and invested and enthusiastic about the work so thank
075you for all you've done to facilitate that and take the privilege since I have the gavel to take the last questions here so I have a few um I'm pretty sure it should be um so first for Joanna um so case managers what's the thought process behind grade level case managers versus cohort you know what I'm talking about like yeah yeah so we really we heard that and a lot of the feedback from our staff and the equity audit we have to make sure all of our Educators general education teachers special teachers are embedded in that professional development in co-planning and it's really hard as a special education teacher just like General to be expected to learn a new grade level every year so that's a priority okay and then from a report report card
076standpoint Middle School I really love the new breakdown I mean that's second Andy's point about resources for you know I think we we were working on that in terms of where the math pathway was at one point right and then linking that to resources and I know the curriculum has that we chose has resources right so um I I second that I think that would be phenomenal for parents especially that they want to be involved and that's I think our goal to get the entire Community involved right not just the teachers and students but the parents right um but for Middle School in terms of the the report cards I you know I know we went to letter grades but and I know we still have a mix right of letter grades and standard-based Grading
077a little we have a mix right only we still report habits of success with the middle school so I mean it's like I love the advantage of what's going on with K-5 related to that I wish we could apply that and I know it's like a little bit of backtracking does that make sense from the decision to move away from that to letter grades to get them used to it but this is so it's so valuable to understand even at the sixth seventh and eighth grade level of they're doing well at these disciplines but these they need help with as a parent right just getting a lot of grade which I still we all know that we're trying to get them used to high school right but it but getting an A and having a
078Mastery are two different things in my opinion all right you can be an n and get an a right you could even be frankly an end sometimes to get a B right or maybe even an a right so I I really do think that if we could when you guys go down that path and work it right that we should try to find a way to take some of what you guys are doing in case of five and and do that I think a lot of the students and the parents will have a lot of benefit from that that's more of a comment I guess than a question um and then uh parent collaboration which goes to any earlier Point um I know I've been I've had some discussions with RJ related to this right
079outside of just the resources associated with it um figuring out how to use the tools or provide parents a way to understand the status of where their their children are in terms of homework assignments what's due what's not due right when major events are coming up whether that be projects being due or or tests I know a lot of students within our district have the executive functioning skills to be able to do that independently and that's where we want all of our children to get to but the reality is is that I would say the vast majority of our students are not there right and parents are trying their best to keep their students on task right and help the district related to that not having a platform that is universally or uniformly used or
080a way for parents to easily access that information without having to peel it out of their kids or email their teachers or in some cases case managers it becomes is a very frustrating thing right for as a parent and so if there was anything that we could do from a technology sample which I understand applies then to teachers and professional development and usage right which is a very difficult thing um anything we can do in that in that regard I think would have immense benefit right to to student outcomes um not let alone social emotional well-being not just for the students but for parents as well right so um but like Brian on that isn't there between like giving the kids we trust our Educators We Trust our staff yeah they give our children information
081is there a fine line between the helicopter parent of like but I need to know what's happening in the school and I need to remind my kid like if we're missing grit is our primary characteristic is what you propose giving that to them or is it just I think I think I agree with you right there is a there is a there is a bridge too far right that comes along with that I would just say that we're not even close to that bridge right and that accountability for our children in terms of holding them accountable for you were assigned something you should be doing it right and oh by the way I can see it so it's not just the teacher holding the mechanical it's their parents holding them accountable when they choose to
082be that involved I I I don't see how we get away from that nor is it something that we don't want to happen right um I yeah I I get your point there is a fine balance associated with the whole thing right but that visibility is it's happening today meaning that parents are getting involved and I think it's creating a lot of churn and work for teachers right in terms of parents emailing and going like what's due what's due today right and then there's a lot I know my son for instance used to use them as an example right struggles with executive functioning and we had to put in an entirely new process in place that his teachers then had to abide by in order to to keep him on task when this is something
083that I think it already exists for instance in Google Classroom that that capability may already exist we're just not uniformly using it in such a way where and parents won't have access to it where they can actually execute that so yeah I'm struggling with it a little bit right because I agree with you that helicopter parent and getting two in the Weeds on it may go counter to the grit and the accountability and independent working and we want them to do but I would say that there are there's a population of students that need that additional level of support at home right to hold them accountable for those things and even if it's just prompting I can't even prompt if I don't know right well I think what goes above that is just that entire
084layer of executive functioning and I'm imagining in your bucket of scl is is conversations happening around executive functioning specific to the Middle School or is that for the next strategic plan all grades actually so one of the things that came up in the professional development Monday and Tuesday that was held this week and I heard a staff member stand in front of her school team today and say one of the things we learned at PD earlier this week is that the portion of the brain that guides executive functioning isn't fully developed until you're 25 to 30 years old and then she looked at everybody and said so I don't have a fully developed executive functioning brain but that was the conversation that they were having like how do we help students navigate and develop those
085skills knowing that the expectation is that they're not fully there that they can't manage all of those things independently right and so I think when you go into the nuances of apps and how apps are using those are like tentacles off the conversation but I think the bigger conversation is the vision and the goal of K through a with developmentally in terms of executive functioning so that when we launch them into ninth grade we have as much Assurance as possible that they can handle studying for a test or completing a project and I can speak from experience that that's we're not there yet right in terms of seeing our high schoolers especially with the pandemic have this robust you know executive functioning capacity so I'm I know it wasn't necessarily specifically talked about but I'm
086assuming it's somehow enveloped in that scl bucket okay cool yeah I think um we certainly want our kids to have grit but then you also have the you don't also want a helicopter I think though one of the things going back to what Ryan's saying is it could also be viewed as a conversational tool with your child as well right not necessarily you know you don't have like you're you know four assignments outstanding but you know if we're able to see it from a different from perspective that is just very easily accessible I think is what you're pointing out to I mean I could point out to my own two children I'm presuming my second will probably require more you know or do I let him just you know take ownership of that I would
087also look at my older child and say I know he's doing it I'd like to have that conversation with him to just further what he's doing you know to have that conversation at home knowing that he is retaining this information and what what he's retaining in school and how do you then you know build on that in real life scenarios to further enhance his SEL skills so I think I see the point like the you know balancing out the two you could use it to your advantage and you can also certainly use it to the point where you're like well let them learn let them gain the grit but I think there's a balance there I think I look at not to kick a too much of a dead horse on this but this has
088been a bit I've brought this up multiple times right um I just I believe I strongly believe that the if you are able to give that visibility to the parents right there's there's some planning that comes along with it with extracurriculars there's a lot of discussion about there's too much homework there's too much things too many things being given to the kids but the thing is the reality is is that most parents actually don't have the visibility to really know a lot of it is feedback and stress that they're seeing in their children if that makes sense right they're assuming that there's too much going on because they're getting that reaction from their children rather than being able to actually see I'm not saying that it's debunking that right but having that visibility would give
089them context in which why their child is maybe behaving a certain way or struggling with in a certain way it also would then potentially influence you know what extracurriculars and when you schedule certain things what you do as a family because you know you have a test coming up or those types of things it's just it's that little additional piece of information as a parent that would help us then manage our children's social emotional well-being that much easier right um that we're just lacking a little bit right now um and it's I'm not saying it's an easy thing to solve right it's just like saying hey we need to improve executive functioning on all our children it's not an easy thing to do but I don't we're making all these inroads and strategies associated with
090this I think that in terms of the parent interaction with their child associated with this I think is something that I would suggest that we bring into the conversation and start discussing yeah I think uh that we're gonna need some time uh administratively to form what we believe is the appropriate perspective on how much and what window we believe is appropriate the level of communication and Reporting relative to student work and progress is I think there is a balancing act when we when we see all the data that we get from our kids is that um hey I I've got a boatload of support and the other the other end of that is I am just not gritty at all and the degree to that I don't want to say it's a fine line because
091I think that's probably overstating it but I think there is a way that we can actually work at Cross purposes to the stuff that we most desire for our kids by not striking the appropriate balance there just also an observation I don't envy the position you all are in because these are very difficult times but first of all kids all over the country are struggling with motivation engagement executive function organizing planning Court like everybody two-thirds of the adults are too by the way but it's everywhere that's one one sort of comment the second thing is that you know not only is that challenging part of the stuff is engaging the kids getting the kind of authentic kind of internally driven interest motivation engagement and you're working on changing some of our approach to kids that
092might actually be a non you don't have to build a scaffold to force Behavior you might induce Behavior organically right and then this other thing that's sort of hard is at the same time with all this we're also moving towards a more of a student driven small group autonomous project-based learning which actually requires even more of the things everyone's struggling with so there's a lot of moving pieces and like I said I'll be very eager to see how you and your team decide to square that Circle because there's a lot a lot going on all right well thank you guys for that that was that was a great presentation um all right moving on to action items consent agenda all right so uh 11.1.1 approval of meeting minutes from July 27 23 policy 2 colon
093due 220. 11.1.2 Personnel 11.1.2.1 resignations retirements policy 5 colon 210 11.1.2.2 leave of absence policy 5 colon 11.1.2.3 employment is certified staff policy 5 colon 200 11.1.2.4 component of educational support staff policy 5 colon 280 11.1.2.5 employment employment of at-will staff policy 5 colon 270 11.1.3 bills for payment policy 4 colon 11.1.4 destruction of closed session audio may I have a motion to approve the consent agenda roll call please Ms jakamu aye Ms Joyce aye Mr quo aye Mr Morrison aye Ms Bonner aye Dr dornfeld aye and president Montgomery all right Treasures next on the agenda 11.2 Treasures report may have a motion to approve the treasures report so moved second roll call please miss Joyce aye Mr quo aye Mr Morrison aye Ms bonder aye Dr dornfeld aye Ms jackamus aye and president Montgomery
094aye motion carries all right 11.3 Open Session minutes portion from the closed session meeting on July 13 is 2023 Andy you were weren't there so abstain please may I have a motion to approve the minutes so moved second uh roll call please Mr quo aye Mr Morrison who's staying Miss Bonner aye Dr dornfeld aye Ms jakamu aye Ms Joyce hi I'm president Montgomery aye motion carries all right 11.4 at 2023 to 2024 budget they have a motion to approve the 2324 budget so moved second real call please Morrison aye Ms Bonner aye Dr dornfeld aye Ms jacamir aye Ms Joyce aye Mr quo aye and president Montgomery aye motion carries one more year down you got money all right 11.5 contract for shared director of school and School Safety and Security that's DPS 109 North
095Shore School District 112 Bannockburn School District 106. um may I have a motion to approve the contract so moved second roll call please miss Banner aye Dr dornfelter aye Ms Jackson aye Ms Joyce aye Mr quote aye Mr Morrison hi and president Montgomery hi motion carries all right 11.6 resolution authorizing commencement of social media litigation I have a motion to approve the resolution authorizing commencement of social media litigation so moved second roll call please Dr dornfeld aye Mr jackhammiu abstain Ms Joyce aye Mr quo aye Mr Morrison aye Ms bonder aye and president Montgomery aye motion carries all right 11.7 resolution authorizing the inner fund transfer of the educational fund and to the operations and maintenance fund may have a motion to prove the resolution of authorizing the internet fund transfer from the educational funded
096operations maintenance Fund in the amount of 4.5 million dollars I went too fast so moved second yeah do it a little differently all right roll call please miss Jack Muse aye Ms Joyce aye Mr quo aye Mr Morrison aye Ms Banner aye Dr dornfeld I am president Montgomery aye motion carries all right second part of that resolution authorized and transfer from the operations and maintenance fund to the capital projects fund may I have a motion to approve the resolution authorizing transfer from the operations and maintenance fund to the capital projects Fund in the amount of 4.5 million dollars so I moved second roll call please miss Joyce aye Mr quo aye Mr Morrison aye Ms Bonner aye Dr dornfeld aye Ms jackamus aye and president Montgomery aye motion carries all right I'm 12 committee reports
097any committee reports talk policy earlier right we have an EDC meeting scheduled for next month I believe all right anything else all right 13 open Community participation this period of community participation is open for all matters if you wish to comment please fill out a community participation participation form located on the podium and hand it to Rebecca Rudd we will call you up one at a time to the podium speak please limit the length of all comments to no more than two minutes are there any comments seeing none board superintendent another I've got two one of the things that we learned over the course the not just the pandemic but also leading up to the pandemic is all things lead uh to and through technology and it's absolutely staggering like what we want to do
098as a school district that agree to which everything whether it's student scheduling or grading or communication or board meetings it just the list just seems to grow all the time and for us just this year several examples new radios the vercata project that's ongoing the lose that we heard that are now installed that take a ton of fiddling and adjusting and all those other things and those are just projects in addition to keeping the lights on making sure everybody's computer works properly and have access and all the other stuff so RJ you make it all look like it's just not that difficult and we know that it is and so uh there's probably no other area that is quite as stressful for us as all the things relative to Tech you'd probably have competition from
099buildings and grounds on that one but you're you're right in there with the most stressful area there's no question about it so well done Mr semic if I could just quickly add to that in addition to the WAN network which I still don't understand at all but supposedly according to people that understand it's saving our district a lot of money so thank you for that I forgot about that one yeah that's a big one right just a real quick update on that I just got noticed today that they finished testing on it and officially turned it over to us so we're getting the paperwork done and we should be implementing it hopefully within the next few weeks so awesome and so RJ again thank you and second like to say thank you to everyone on
100the administrative team and especially to Kate who is not surprisingly turned out to be not only passionate but smart and really hard working as well so we've completed the initial round of drink by fire hose successfully and show every evidence of being ready for more so thank you for that do you have anything you know I always have something I know that's why not even covet can stop me from making a last comment I just want to comment you know I have been over at the district a number of times over the summer for various meetings and there's always a full uh contingent of training going on in the room that you're sitting in right now um it seems it seems like it's 24 7. I'm sure it's not but it sure seems that way
101because not always a lot of people there undergoing training and everybody seems happy to be there so that's um that's great and it's a testament to all the work that um you are doing with your teams particularly Danielle and Joanna um and uh and everyone so thank you for getting everything ready to go for the school year and for all the work that you've done that went into the Strategic plan and is going into the Strategic plan and um just thank you all for for all your work and and Kate thank you for taking this on and and really tackling the um the onboarding with um enthusiasm and curiosity and um we couldn't ask for anything more so thanks for that and to all the administrators who have now done the new board member orientation
102twice in the last few months so um you should have it memorized by now anyway thank you all right well Sarah you feel better and you can see her commitment by even joining us I'd be in bed right now I'll be honest with you all right I need a motion to adjourn all in favor aye all right I'm getting adjourned at 8 23 pm thank you