DPS 109 Board of Education Regular Meeting: 8/25/22

001okay we're right here welcome everyone uh we'll call the meeting to order at 7 01 pm this is the august 25th 2022 uh regular board of education meeting for deerfield public schools district 109. can i have a motion to approve the meeting's agenda second all in favor aye um okay the maureen wenner is participating by phone and we are missing mr ashman tonight who's home sick the first item on our agenda or the next item on our agenda is what's good in 109 mr stuckling all right uh good evening board administration we are back after taking a month off and we've got a lot of stuff to talk about from the first week and a half of school uh this is what's going 109 for august 2022 this was the back uh blacktop outside of

002south park as parents were trying to take a very nice picture of their children on the first day of school and they were cooperating as you can see i wanted to show a little bit of highlight for people that might [Music] very smart we played that at the uh opening staff uh rally just very cute our class of 2031 still weird to say that but i got to visit with some of our kindergartners and they just come in with all of that that infectious energy and enthusiasm so that is up on our youtube channel if people want to check that out i also need to brag a little bit about what's good in 109 we won a golden achievement award for our define 109 campaign over the summer that is from the national school public

003relations association one of the top honors you can get in the country so our marketing effort that we did as a whole district really paid off in the eyes of my colleagues and i also got a chance to present at the national conference not only about define 109 but the what's good 109 initiative and i've already heard from some of my colleagues that they have approached their superintendents and boards about starting meetings like we do sharing positive things in their district so i think it's a really nice tone setter that hopefully more districts will copy across the country but on to the new year and as you've seen our new tagline is challenge collaborate create so i've restructured how we're going to do this this year and we're really going to hone in on those

004three words as we focus in on what's good in 109 we kind of exemplified all of it with opening day 2022 all six of our schools were able to design and order their own unique staff t-shirts this year so whether it was the principal and a few other people whether it was a group of teachers doing it really a chance for our buildings to show off some personality and to kind of have their own unique mark on the challenge collaborate create note south park exemplified challenge this week in two of their different classes as students were patiently working to achieve a goal here i believe [Music] okay [Applause] just totally made their day that picture on the bottom right from wilmot to a number of our schools we're doing that this week we saw collaborate

005in kipling where we have a lot of successful buddy systems across the district this is fourth graders i believe showing kindergartners how to work their new devices which is intimidating right for a lot of our younger learners so really leaning on the older kids to help show them the ropes we also saw collaborate you're not going to hear the the music quite as well on this this was a different way of mixing things up in ela class for mr romahart you can't hear it very loud here but he played the benny hill theme and had them kind of do this rotation around the room to find a new person to talk to so rather than talk to the same kid rather than work with the same partner kind of this roulette game of meeting somebody

006new while also working on an assignment so a really kind of cool way to collaborate with somebody you'd never met before in create our steam labs are always great places for that and walden our kindergartners got their first visit there got their first chance to get hands on things and make something and really exciting to kind of see the that spark of curiosity uh and imagination come through their eyes that leads us to tonight's featured school caruso middle school i know mr brooke doer is here and if you want to say a few words about the start of the start of the year we've started in a really structured way wanting to make sure our students and i'll talk about this a little later um that we're starting away with expectations for social emotional learning

007across the building and so all the staff has been all in so it's just been really an exciting way to start the year and um i think eric's going to talk a little bit about this photo but we started the day with scavenger hunts so the students could find where they're going and if you know miss woodsack her classroom is filled with amazing things that you have no idea that someone had and i come out of my office and there's a group assembled of costumes and the best part of it but it was they were given a partner and the partner dressed the other partner and all the kids were all in and they were the only kids in the building that day wearing costumes and they were so excited and it really made my

008day which and in sixth grade that's hard to stand out right like you're in a new school surrounded by new kids and you're the one wearing the costume that takes some confidence absolutely and they were all in and there are kids in that group that have never met another student in deerfield before so quickly making friends very cool thank you mr brodeur another challenge the sixth graders face right is that locker that first middle school trying the the lock for the first time and a lot of them nailed it i saw a lot of them in that hallway the first day like what do i do and the teachers were out there reassuring them it's going to be okay but as far as i've heard everybody has made it into the locker and has cleared

009that kind of first hurdle of middle school collaboration we had different grade level meetings we took away mr beaudrier's mic early jump in if you need to um the different grade levels met and talked about expectations and things for the year i know they did that at shepherd as well absolutely and i think for the students the highlight was not learning about policies and procedures but it was learning their grade level cheer and so they will be actually putting it in place in tomorrow's um school-wide pep assembly and so i is my second year here the district i am a seventh grader so the seventh grade crew is my crew and um just look on social media and you'll see that the seventh grade crew we are going to win the pep rally tomorrow it's

010not all about winning mr brodeur go seventh grade also collaboration really seen in connecting with parents and guardians not only was mr brodeur out there with his administrators our pto held a nice picnic out back for especially our sixth graders to kind of get to know each other as they merge from two different schools mr bruder actually just had an event a coffee event with parents that i know we had kind of put on hold uh during the pandemic and stuff so a chance to get them into our buildings and get them more involved and uh excited about the school so our coffee events are monthly and the calendars put out for the entire year are ready to family so people can plan ahead it's really important to me that we invite parents into the

011building um in a structured way and seeing the building with kids in it is a school when they come to open house and it's other parents there it's a weird office building with small and odd furniture but with kids in the building it's a school it's alive it has energy so it's been wonderful we had six parents come in some parents this is their first student in a dps 109 school for other parents they've been here many many for many years and it's a wonderful way for us to bring them together and start to build those strong positive parent relationships and that parent network in the building and that exemplifying create this is the crew of the caruso minute who even though they've only been in school for a minute have already produced their student

012run directed produced first episode basically of their little talk show that they do and you'll see they add their eighth grade sense of humor to everything too season two episode one of caruso minute today we interviewed sixth graders and asked them what they're excited for about the new school year let's get right into the interviews all right so that's elena and sunday your little news team there and sunday who you see on the right i mean just does this all at home like just knocks this stuff out like in a night like definitely as a future in editing and production and all of that stuff and just amazing that like we've only been in school for a week and they've already knocked out a broadcast so creation and action there i want to give some

013special recognition tonight to two special guests who are not from caruso but who really faced the challenge of standing up in front of our entire staff um for our opening day maya and owen and i forget which video is which so let's see though i had sure 1 diabetes and every teacher i've had themselves since that was done the same that's why teachers are so important to us all here in the district because you look at us as students first and not as someone with a disability or other concern so that's owen and now here's maya here she comes keep in mind that we are kids who like to have fun while learning developing relationships with teachers is important especially in middle school with all the drama thank you teachers for all you do i

014know you can be a pain sometimes but we really do appreciate all you do to help us both of them who are with us here tonight spoke in front of the hundreds of staff members and that had to take a lot of courage to do that um so we wanted to say thank you to them because i had to reach out to them during their summer break to get involved and this is how they spent their last few days of summer to write speeches if you guys want to come up we just want to say thank you guys for serving as great models for the rest of our students for having the courage to speak in front of our staff and we just wanted to say thank you so much there you go and we'll

015take a picture with the board in a second uh but any questions that's a look at what's good in 109 so maya and oh and i have a question for you i told you guys this might happen yeah so tell us about uh how what preparing to speak in such a in front of such a big crowd what that was like for you and then how it felt afterwards um it felt really good i have to say yeah were you nervous was it a bit nervous but after i got on stage it just felt really good for what i have done and you didn't i mean you look really very calm and just absolutely put together up there not nervous at all were you a little bit nervous up there or was like no once

016you got going you were fine yeah once i got going i was fine is that right and then afterwards what uh what was what were you thinking afterwards um i was just proud of myself for what i just done hey you were the best part of the meeting let me tell you really where um so for me it was kind of like the first day of school like all i was thinking about was the speech so i was like i wasn't really like dreading it i was like i don't know i was really nervous for it but i did something like that for my confirmation at my church so it was kind of like that so i knew kind of what to expect but i didn't really because i really didn't know where to go

017um but once after i did it i mean i i felt great and i yeah and we'll give maya bonus points a lot of us were there we had some mic issues mr bialk had to jump in and she was like hamming it up to the crowd a little bit there a lot of us adults would get flustered she just was a cool customer so it was really great to see i thought it was really really great that you stopped and made sure to have the teachers each stand up and receive recognition from their colleagues because that's uh next to hearing it from kids hearing it from your colleagues is the best thing that you can have and it was a real celebration of teaching and it was a really good moment it's one that

018i will look back on and say and our staff said that as well uh owen and maya were the best part of opening day and we worked really hard on opening day but you guys stole the show thank you thanks i was lucky enough to be there and you guys did an amazing job it's really hard to get up and speak in front of a gym full of people and you were cool as cucumbers and you did a great job thank you yeah thanks let's go take a picture quick and then we'll send you guys home give it to one of them hey here we go thank you guys we should have okay i think we might need a drum roll for this next item the next item on our agenda is the strategic plan

019overview presentation and i'm really really excited um to uh have danielle arnold and mr simek and mr steckling i'll talk about the strategic plan that we've all been anxiously waiting for so take it away thank you oh got it thank you so while we're waiting i want to make sure and introduce mr lombardo our new kipling principal a big night for mr lombardo tonight at open house and then out of the frying pan into the fire over here so off to a great start at kipling and we are so happy to have you here and everything we hear is that you're off to a terrific start and thanks for joining us for this presentation as well all right i have to say that i can't remember if it was nearly a year ago that we

020were talking about entering into the mission and vision and strategic planning process and i might have been one of the most skeptical about engaging in that process because i've been a part of them throughout my career in many occasions and i've watched them happen get started come off with a bang and then suddenly kind of simmer over time and so i was joking the other day that as soon as i was the skeptic mike put me in charge so here i am i i really am not so much in charge as i've been a facilitator of a ton of conversations everyone in this room around the table has been a part of this conversation but even more importantly than any of us the guys the people standing behind me have been leading this conversation in

021their buildings since the spring and into the opening of the school year so i now am at the point where i'm no longer skeptical i'm almost giddy about the fact that we keep saying challenge collaborate create and using exemplars of that in everything we do in district 109 i think we have good momentum so as i shared in the board packet i gave you the a draft of the action plan that has been underway since we started gathering in the spring and collecting input tonight i'm going to go quickly through an overview and kind of turn it over to our principals who are going to share with you a little bit about what that's looking like on the ground floor where it matters in our schools so just a brief like overview and this was

022shared when when eric was standing up here about define 109 we asked all of the stakeholders in our community in the engagement process what they wanted to see in our students and this was a word document that shared some of the answers that were most prevalent in their responses and we had a ton of stakeholder feedback and then we asked them how that might look and this was the word cloud that came as a result of that this is something we're very familiar with in our district at this point and that generated the mission and vision that the board approved in the spring so challenge collaborate and create we've heard a lot tonight but one of the things that was really important to our staff and was started in the spring is that we worked

023with them to really clearly define what we meant when we said emotionally resilient socially skilled and academically prepared and so each of we did a little bit of a leadership opportunity together at um at the district level all of our administrative teams but then our administrators turnkeyed this activity in their buildings before the departure at the end of the 21-22 school year with all of their school staff they presented it back to us and that is what has generated these very specific definitions so when we talk about emotionally resilient socially skilled and academically prepared i think it's really important for us to know what we mean what is our end goal for kids when they graduate and leave deerfield 109 this is something we've been talking about as a district a ton i don't know

024if anyone in here has seen this previously but actually this has been around since 1987 we just found it is called the leading and managing complex change matrix but we've been referencing it a lot when talking about the strategic plan and the process we're undergoing with our school teams because this has been resonant with many of us so the top line is what um lipit and i can't even read right now because i'm blind noster in this model put together said are the things that need to be in place for true change to happen in an organization there has to be trust there has to be a vision people have to feel that they're equipped with the skills and resources they have to understand what the payoff is and there has to be a strategic

025action plan tonight we're sharing with you the strategic action plan but we're really talking with all of our school staff about those other other variables that are equally important in terms of creating true organizational change if you go down the columns you'll see that the blacked out item like if trust is not part of the process you probably have someone in your organization that may be a saboteur the next line if you don't have a strong vision people often feel confused if they don't feel like they have the skill skills to do the job you're asking they're going to feel anxious and i don't need to go through all of them but you get the point right so the important part for us is that we're all talking with all of our staff across the

026district about ensuring that not just one thing is in place that we're not just presenting an action plan but it's actually something that is meaningful for our staff and that they feel supported in that process of doing it we're looking to have all of those six things across the top to make sure that this stays in place and isn't short-lived as my fear was a year ago so throughout this process and talking with people and looking at all of the feedback from the number of stakeholders we've come down to four very important goals which are outlined in that action plan the strategic plan that was provided to you the first one is dynamic and responsive instructional practices the second is positive culture and personal development the third is about equitable outcomes and the four is

027clear and respectful communication the really cool thing for us when we came back to this as a leadership team and started working with our staff is that many of these were the same priorities that we identified a year ago when we were opening school in the midst of that of some of the pandemic timing we talked about what is important to us and when we came back to this and looked at the feedback that we had received from all of our stakeholders we understood that what was important to us is also important to everyone we serve in the community of deerfield and so these four items have risen to the top and that's what we're going to share a little bit about tonight one of the quotes that mike often shares with us is this

028one that says show me an organization where the planners are different than the doers and i'll show you an organization where what gets planned is different than what gets done and the reason i share that and we repeat that over and over is because this is a work in progress it will evolve over time it's already been under so many iterations already and it will continue to take new shape as we see what our staff needs but they are a part of this process with us i'm showing you six pictures from opening day one from each of our buildings where these where our school leaders are working with their staff or their staff is from standing in front of their colleagues actually leading some strategic planning work that was a big focus on both day

029one and day two as we returned to school in august 2022 and for that reason i think it's most important probably as we look at each of the goals tonight that we see the objectives but that you actually hear from each of them like how this is being applied in their buildings and so i'm going to turn over goal 1 to matthew right no to chris sorry chris is going to take this one do i click this too all right so um we are thank you for having us tonight but we are boiling two very energized days with our staff of professional development to kick off the year down to like a minute each year and i get the exciting one of objective one here which is to increase student engagement in our k-8 classrooms

030through cooperative and experiential learning structures that provide authentic real world and hands-on experiences that invite all students to explore their passions and motivate them to learn and as we met and really all together came collectively behind the strategic plan we kept coming back to the struggles that we've had over these last two and a half or three years we have had to ask a extremely talented group of teachers to pull back and shut down and teach in a way that that is foreign to them and to use a sports analogy we've been focused for two and a half years on the x's and o's and the x's and o's on the board are very important but the real learning happens out on the field when you have to adapt you have to create and you

031have to pivot to find success and that's what we're asking our teachers to get back to as we get into experian experiential or what we're calling sticky learning take five seconds and think about the learning the most memorable learning that you had as students and you're probably not coming up with visions of sitting in a desk six feet apart from your peers you're probably not thinking of a lecture that your teacher did for you in in your classroom you're thinking about those hands-on real world experiences that got you up and doing things not talking about bridges but building bridges and figuring out how that works talking about photosynthesis and then creating a garden together and that's what we are passionate about empowering our teachers and providing them the support and the resources they need to

032re-energize and get our learning back to what we believe we are as a school as schools and as a district and we're excited about that sticky learning here we've got a couple of pieces in terms of our action steps over the course of our strategic plan that cooperative learning structure and project-based learning as i just kind of modeled there and talked about we have been talking about getting back to a focus on our workshop model and making sure that we're meeting the needs of all students inside of our classrooms a very collaborative model which we've had to pull back from over the last two and a half years and this sticky learning these these models are going to be in everything we do and so as we look at our curriculum review cycles we're going

033to be picking curriculums that encourage our students to learn beyond just the four walls of our of our classrooms and i think back to a student early pandemic his name was zach and he was an eighth grader at the time and you know left our building in the weirdest of ways something we could have never imagined and his time in the building we had a project that he did called the change the world project and he wrote a great paper about how he could change the world but then when given the opportunity he as soon as the pandemic hit went around town and was gathering as many masks as he could to provide them for the medical workers at the time and when given that opportunity to change the world beyond our four walls he

034did that and and that's what we want to encourage our students to do inside the classroom moving forward and we'll do that with our as we look at our facilities master plan and then also uh continuing to grow in our innovative technology in the classroom one thing we're really excited about this year at the middle schools is our esports clubs that are coming on and and that's something that's gonna i think excite a lot of students so sticky learning thank you number two all right thank you everybody mr brodeur and i are going to be talking about goal 2 which is our social emotional learning goal uh it's a big passion of both tim and i so we jumped on the chance to be able to help and present this for this topic you can

035see there's four objectives for positive culture and personal development for goal two but just remember that this goal is all about social emotional learning for our kids and our students you can see the words that are in bold there proactive positive behavior management systems evidence-based sel instruction talented and diverse staff cultures of collegiality so these are going to be our focus for this goal over the next several years but i think the most important takeaway is really thinking about how our social emotional learning for our kids needs to be that parallel track along with their academic learning and you know i'll even go so far as to say is like before they can even get on that parallel track we have to make sure that they're in a place to um you know that their

036social emotional needs are met that they're feeling safe and confident and that they're in a place to then learn academically push and challenge themselves and really motivate themselves to get to that next level so it's on us to teach them these social emotional skills all six of our buildings are doing building wide common language social emotional systems that we are working on as a whole staff and bringing those to the table at the very beginning of the school year at kipling we had an all school assembly for the very first day and we talked about what it's going to look like in our building and we talked about expectations and not expectations like these are the rules of the classroom expectations like what do we expect from each other and how are we going to

037be expected to interact in this place together because when we're at this building we're a family and so these are the things that we talk about at kipling we're talking about being mindful safe and respectful and then i know a lot of us are also using a champ system and so that way the kids are hearing over and over again not just from one teacher not just from one wing of the building but as a family in our schools they're going to be hearing the same common language and we're really going to be supporting those sel needs right in unison with the academic ones so it's a big ass to even look at all four of these objectives and as a principal team we've been lucky enough to dive all in on really objectives one

038and two to start the school year um we were able to this summer attend the safe and civil schools conference and after day two i think i found joanna and i said i'm drowning i'm drinking out of a water hose right now there's so much information coming at me and this is completely overwhelming in day five i was mentally and physically exhausted from the work that we were doing and then lucky enough all my colleagues were as well so we came back and then we spent our summers planning together how are we gonna take what we learned in five days and the plethora of resources that we got and put them in action to make immediate impacts in each one of our school buildings it would be an impossible task to do alone and so

039we're lucky enough that we have colleagues across the district in each of our buildings that want to do this work teachers certified staff members custodians tas each one of our buildings has a sel team that team is going to be meeting throughout this coming year and for years to come and we're taking on the work together as a principal leadership team we took what we learned over five days we boiled it down to a one day training for our staff we then spent the next day in our buildings working together to really craft what does our sel programming and training look like in our buildings the amazing part of the work is that it looks different in all of our buildings than it should each one of our buildings is a separate community with separate

040needs but all of our students deserve the best and we're working together and collaboratively to provide that we are starting in an amazing place though because we're not starting at nothing each one of our schools has strengths and you talk think about and talk about sel programming so we're able to borrow from each other share with each other and collaborate it's been really amazing to see the buy-in from each one of our staffs the staff is so excited for the work that we're doing um it's contagious our kids are seeing it specifically at crusoe starting the year in a much more structured way really sharing what the crucial way means how do we act care and give for and to each other has been really i think a wonderful way to establish what our expectations

041are for every member of our school community and that's what's amazing about the social emotional learning work that we're doing it's not just for students it's not just for our staff it's for our entire community and so we're able to come together and do this work and it's ongoing and it's not done it's one of some of the work that will never get done we're really pulling from the castle sel standards of self-awareness self-management responsible decision-making emotional skills and social awareness those are things as adults we know that we need to be successful we have to empower our students to gain those skills as well the graphic on the right is really kind of looking at that safe and solo schools model we're focused right now as a as a school system on those processes

042how are we functioning as a team how are we making sure that the work that we're doing is the right work that's that improvement cycle and how are we making data-driven decisions we're also at the same time working with our teachers that have positive classroom management and that looks a little bit different every building and that's great because that means our staffs are biden bought in and then finally we're really making sure that the interventions that we're offering both social emotionally and academically because they go in hand are really supporting the work that we're doing in our classrooms all right so big surprise that i get the equitable outcomes um goal i had done some work along with danielle for our diversity equity and inclusion committee so i i'm definitely passionate about this area but

043what we're finding in through the information that we collected through that audit is that this is everybody's work this is not just a committee's work and i think that our staff really feels that um and we're hungry for a time where we can come together to plan for these equitable outcomes so i want to kind of talk you through these objectives and then what it's looking like in in our buildings right now and the first objective is where we're starting and that's collaborative pathways to co-serve all of our students and so we're using a framework to co-plan to co-serve to co-learn and it seems like such a simple idea why haven't we been doing it all along but the truth of the matter is the school day is a busy day and bringing all parties

044together is challenging what we're doing now is we're really rethinking our wednesday early release so if you've been around a while i think we're in about our eighth year and i think it's really the first time that we're taking a look at that schedule and really prioritizing the time between our teaching teams and our student services really coming together taking that time to co-plan for our students so that we can really think about each of them as individuals we're obviously going to need professional development that's going to be internal and external sometimes on the ground sometimes bringing some outside resources and experts in we're looking at creating culturally responsive classrooms really starting with auditing all of our materials making sure that our students see themselves in the texts and the materials in the literature and

045everything but also exposing them and broadening their horizons and then finally we have to continue to look at that data over and over again it's certainly not something that we're ever going to be finished doing but something we definitely plan to do so where are we beginning i think it's actually starting next wednesday we're going to begin with a universal design for learning and what that looks like it's a udl framework that begins with the strengths of our students so as opposed to them coming to the planning to the table our teachers our teams you know what is it that students cannot do it's what can our students do what strengths and skills do they bring and then we'll look at the progressions what skills should they have known coming before and what comes next

046and then the next thing we have to do is we have to look at how we're differentiating for all the various learners in our spaces and we know that there is you know so many differences that students bring bring to the classroom into their learning environment and then how can they showcase their learning right because i'm sure all of you sitting around the table know that you showcase your learning in very different ways some like to do more paper pencil tests some like to get up and speak and perform and so we'll be looking for those opportunities but finally that fifth step is going to be why does it matter why is it interesting going back to that sticky learning so it really provide that equitable experience for all we have to rethink how we're

047planning for that type of instruction and so we'll be following all those action steps and then just kind of going back to the beginning and kind of cycling through over and over again so exciting and i think i would say i've never seen the staff more excited about what we're going to do together on our wednesdays than what we're about to embark on together next week all right so communication is something that i personally am very passionate about and i'm happy to speak about goal 4 which is clear and respectful oh sorry that's okay communication um goal objective one focuses on our internal communication the importance of how we're communicating within our schools and within our district this is what's going to take our strategic plan and make it something that lives and breathes and

048doesn't just sit on a piece of paper and we are very committed to that as an administration and as a school district we think about some of the things that we're going to launch we're going to be looking at bringing back our district-wide events and celebrations so our staff have an opportunity to come together and to learn together it was so really wonderful at our opening day to see everybody for the first time in i guess two and a half years together we had a chance to hang out and relax and lunch together and then we came together for some really wonderful presentations including the two students who you saw earlier today also thinking about our building leaders how we're communicating and making sure we're sharing consistent messages the principals talk weekly about both our

049external internal communication for consistency and all of us do some type of weekly or daily communication to our staff some of it's just the minutia of the day and other is about things like our strategic plan and our social emotional learning and the different aspects of our strategic plan we also are seeking new ways uh thought exchange being one of them or surveys to solicit feedback from our staff because we need to know how are we doing with the goals that we've set for ourselves and to hold ourselves accountable and then looking um out of the horizon we're very excited as building leaders that the elt is committed to spending time in our buildings so they'll get to know us and our students and really see how we are implementing the goals of our strategic

050plan and our school improvement plans and then we look at our external communication this is so critical because it's not just about inside the four walls of the school it's about our entire uh community our parents and beyond our parents so we look at how our schools and our district are communicating externally again our building leaders the principals we send a weekly communication we're very consistent in things that we need to be consistent about and then we add things in that are specific or unique to our individual school settings one area that we're really continuing to focus our time and commitment to is how are parents able to get a glimpse of the classroom uh without necessarily being always in the classroom and we're really finding ways to enhance our use of seesaw in google

051classroom because parents can look on those tools they can see student work videos that students have made if a student is home they can still access the um what's going to happen that day and work at home on the different things if they happen to be out of school and that's an area of growth for us and we need to continue to focus some attention on and then this is the most exciting one for me is that we're returning to more of our school events with our parents present it's been so hard to have parents out of school when we had some of our parents just handing out school supplies of kindergarteners and first graders and even second years they were like i've never been in the building they've never been past the front foyer

052um and so we're excited to also incorporate what we learned during the pandemic that we have other ways to share what we're doing so continuing the use of live streaming and videos which we implemented last year for concerts and assemblies allows us to bring people who don't live in the area grandparents parents maybe who are working in can't attend to be a part of the events in our school so we're very excited to focus on those aspects of our internal and our external communication i didn't forward any slides i just communicated and she communicated everything on this slide no um just to kind of wrap up one of the things that was mentioned about how they're spending wednesdays was opportunities for a staff to co-plan and co-serve and in in an effort for co-learning the

053other way our staff is spending some of their wednesdays is in what we call building based where they're getting some bite-sized pd but you heard mentioned an sel leadership team i think all of our buildings have multiple leadership teams action teams in place now instructional leadership teams sometimes equity leadership teams sel leadership teams and they're spending some of those wednesdays meeting as well because again they're part of this process with us they're the ones that are going to help us make productive change throughout the district and their impact on each other and their colleagues are what really ultimately will create change for the outcomes of our students so that is the other piece of dedicated time that's happening on wednesdays and most of them are working towards specific goals that are outlined in the strategic

054plan as all of our buildings will be developing school improvement plans that align with the strategic plan and that work is already underway so i feel like we are all moving in a synchronous direction as a result of this work and it is i think it is exciting i think people feel that they have an opportunity to really make some change and be a part of the change process in our district i made a comment i had a comment that was shared with me i was not present to hear the comment it was shared with me by a staff member that a colleague had said that they had been in the district for a very for quite some time and this was the first time that they really felt like we were going to make

055something happen and so that statement has resonated with me and i think all of us are committing committing to making sure it does so i'll we'll take any questions of course there was i have i have a team of them thank you all right um first i want to congratulate mike and your whole team and the staff and everyone who's worked so hard to do this i i was reading it and i just you know i was very involved when it was still like in its kind of dna conception it wasn't really like a thing yet and i just love where you all took it and i love the thoughtfulness of it um and i think it's very exciting and i think it's really when i first came on the board i thought you know

056this district has so many opportunities and advantages and is in a position to harness people and resources and ideas and the kids are tremendous and the families are engaged like we really could and should be at the forefront of american education the model that other districts want to come visit and i feel like this sets us kind of in that like i can feel it coming i just think it's wonderful now having said that of course there's a couple things i want to ask about okay but i don't want to oh not i don't want to overshadow that that was a big exclamation point it was really great um so one i remember and they're the characteristics and ones emotionally resilient i remember where that came from the word cloud and it was really the

057issue about kids i won't repeat but i remember i know how we got there but when i saw how it got rounded out the stuff under that heading is way is way bigger now than emotional resilience right um and so i just wanted to flag that which resilience is what the people were seeking and it is a really important component of it but i just want to ask are we committed to that being the heading or is it too narrow given the things that wound up being in that bucket so that's you can reflect on that but that's rhetoric kind of rhetorical within the vision the word emotional i think when we were taking this back to our school teams we were asking not only like what is the definition of emotional resilience but how

058do you get how do you get kids there right or even adults like we were we were reflecting ourselves like have we always been emotionally resilient so you see things like like about identifying and regulating their feelings that probably is another castle well it's certainly an important component of being able to be emotionally resilient but it's sort of a thing that exists autonomously from resilience it's right right so i don't we don't have to get too pedagogical i just wanted to flag that and have you reflect on that i don't have absolutely yeah i have a strong opinion about what you should do i just wanted to flag that um the second thing is um there was like that introductory letter like hey here's what we're about to do here's the four goals here's what

059each goal is sort of intended to accomplish when i read it i thought that was really helpful and so when we see that it just says you know like goal one we're here let me just flag to one whichever one comes up so go to positive culture and personal development it would be i think really beneficial to have a sentence after that saying this is what this goal is about and then underneath those go into the sub categories of each goal but like kind of kind of a little bit like what happened in that cover note to kind of anchor people about the bigger picture of what each of these things is about um i i think that's especially true with respect to the equitable outcomes one that's like a third rail thing that people

060there will be folks who react to that without really appreciating what that me it's just it's a triggering thing so like if you had some language that would say something like hey equitable outcomes what this one is it's the concept that the school's goals should apply to all students while the means of these goals will vary as those students themselves vary that's one example when you kind of can move beyond that like flash term and really talk about hey it should apply to everybody like i think we may wind up taking some of that pressure out of the system so something like that totally fair point i've had a lot of conversations about equity and how equity applies to all well a lot of folks bring their own baggage to those two words and you're

061going to wind up spending a lot of time talking people off the ledge right the third comment i would have or maybe a fourth house is with respect to the metrics at the end of each of the goals so i do feel more strongly about that one and i thought you all have done an amazing job getting this like world view this what we could do and how education could be and experiential group project-based learning and like the whole stick i loved it but then when i got to the metrics i was disappointed because they didn't reflect the inspiration of the vision they almost felt like a kind of the same old metrics and i'm not saying we shouldn't have those but i feel like we could have done better right more inspired and so

062to kind of give some color to what i mean um in the goal one about the academics and different approach to learning when you look at the goals that we're going to measure are we is it working it's sort of the same how do they do on the standardized test and how are we doing under reading measures and what about math and i it made me ask questions like is there no other benefit to going to a project-based experiential cooperative experience than simply those same things like isn't there anything else we think we're going to try to get from that for our kids and for our classrooms so that's when i was like i it kind of kind of at the 3 yard line right so that was that one on the second one um

063kind of the more whole child measures there were like seven and most of them four of the seven were like just panorama results and i i think we can maybe be a little more inspired around that in terms of are there measures that we can talk about what's actually happening in the classroom or etcetera i don't want to try to make them up but again i think we could put punch the ball into the end zone on that um the third one which was uh kind of equity inclusion etc again it had to do with like equitable test scores and you know or representative performance and i and i think like maybe the vision is more than that than that and it couldn't it be like well should we start paying attention to how involved

064our kids and different kids with different resources and backgrounds in orchestra band or field trips or what about how often their parents are you know what's the parent representation or are we organizing things you know if we looked at maybe it's like you know what maybe we shouldn't have parent events the same time of evening for el i don't know but again i was something that maybe we could push that harder um and then the communication i loved what you said and we talked about the community and the parents and the staff and what about how we communicate with our kids and what about having our having our kids communicate with kids i mean there's a lot we can do but then we go back to the thing the metrics were all did our parents

065report like it was the same so that i feel like the things that are measured are the things we say are important to us and i just feel like we got so close i really want us to revisit the measurement part i hope you receive what i'm saying in the spirit in which i'm offering it because i think it's great yeah i'll jump right in before you jump in let me try again okay sorry i didn't mean hello hi maureen i can hear you now sorry no problem so hi maureen uh i'm responding to uh some of andy's uh points that uh that he made about the strategic plan so uh i really uh andy you're a discriminating consumer of these things and i really appreciate that i also really appreciate going back to the

066inspiration the feedback that we got from the community and to focus on the metrics i i couldn't agree more that it's a great and difficult challenge and the strategic plan it's easy to look at this and say hey this thing is done it's written you know we three-hole punch it now we're done with it put it on the shelf and away you go and it stays the same but what i have learned over the course of doing this is that the questions you get from the governing body and from your staff and from your parents and kids will help you refine and improve and the metrics in some way are the most challenging part because some of the stuff that we most aspire to is crazy hard to measure how do we measure sticky learning

067right well may we find a way and to your earlier point if you want to be a model for other districts you find ways that are not typical or common and i think that's a wonderful charge for us and as the board considers kpis that's exactly where the governing body should go this is the dashboard through which we will monitor the district going forward and i i see that influencing everything we do so great points it is well and i was reflecting on a meeting that we all just had on tuesday where we were having that exact conversation right like how do we measure some of these things and you you hear of walk-throughs and you hear of rounds where staff do things together we're we don't have a benchmark for any of that yet

068we haven't been doing that so the interesting dynamic as this evolves is that we'll probably be creating the benchmark to then measure it moving forward because it doesn't yet exist in deerfield but let me let me add one thing to that one of the most liberating factors for us as an administration is permission from the board to not reflect only the typical metrics that schools have and i can't overstate how important that is because now it's like okay here we go now we get to try to focus on the stuff that we all find most meaningful and maybe make a mess of it initially but you get better at it and then that's how you become a model speaking as one member of the board and not for the board i feel like if we

069don't address it at the metrics level the plan will wind up being on the shelf i think there's no there's no option but to do that and the metrics for all of us one of the key things there is like you are what you measure right and if we want to stay away from the typical and move towards the inspired we're going to have to find new and different ways of doing that so i i love the points um ask a couple questions this is so macro and so nebular and my questions feel really small but this was a galactic conversation over here um i echo everything andy said i think this is remarkable i love that all the principles came tonight to be a part of it i think it really exemplifies the collaboration

070that you guys are prioritizing so thank you for that just simple questions are hopefully simple for gold two are is leader and me still a part of our district or is that when you reference that some schools are having different sel programs and others leader and me might be one of them or is leader or me separate where does that fit in so currently our k5s still have access and are utilizing some leader in me and some second step seo lessons in our schools for different reasons too right there was that leader in me provides opportunities for student leadership that was more deeply embedded in a couple of our schools than it did in others and second step also a cap castle approved curriculum gets into some of those other five castle um frameworks and

071does some explicit teaching in those areas so i think our staff likes having access to both and they still have access to both actually second step is available k-8 so these are still tools in the toolbox absolutely okay speak to me like a kindergartener what is the difference between co-teaching and co-plan color and co-serve what does that look like in a different like how would i know it's different so some of it you know runs parallel but we've really made a significant effort more recently specifically this school year to have a lot of our special education teachers case managers focusing only at one grade level that might not mean that they're in a full co-taught classroom because it really depends on the needs of the students at that grade it's not always best practice to

072put put them all together right so they might be in two or three different classes at third grade for example but we're still really trying to have our special education teacher focusing specifically on one grade level it's not the case for everyone but for the majority of them middle school i think entirely at grade level this year um and that way it's not just the general education and the special education teacher we need to see everybody involved helping all students so our el teachers our interventionists all of our related service providers coming together and really embedded in that grade level content so everyone is co-serving all students right they're planning together and when you're focused more at one grade level not our related service providers unfortunately but um you know our special education teachers and

073our general education teachers it really gives them that opportunity to dive more into the standards and everything that we're working towards do we still have co-talk classrooms we do have a few classrooms that are considered you know mostly a full co-top model right now but um we really found that when that's appropriate for kids that's the route we go but if not if our special education teacher for example is only at one grade level they're still spending the majority of their day between two usually at most classrooms so it's very similar okay so this is a growth from the co model that you guys are seeing the next like next benchmark of co-teaching okay and really focusing on that co-planning piece being you know essential um awesome for the goal for external communications is there

074going to be a plan to get parents and stakeholders involved in that process of getting feedback like you know you say these are the external communications we're working on are they working for the stakeholder groups does that question make sense i think we've talked about doing something typical like a survey okay getting feedback from our parents and we're exploring different options for that but i haven't even presented an idea that i have to others that are behind me who i would be asking to join me in that effort but i've i've proposed to mike today some parent engagement opportunities that i see okay could offer to bring in anyone from the community where they could experience some of the activities that we've been doing with our staff relative to sticky learning relative to the tiers

075that we address in the multi-tiered systems of support and who they were as learners and how that applies in our system today like we've done some really great activities with our staff and i had the opportunity in opening days to walk in and see various staff members leading these in our buildings and i thought why are we isolating this to our staff like why don't we do that with that's cool in our community too so um they're standing behind me and they might be can i but that's an idea i have to engage our community in that in in the work that's happening in real time so that they understand it that's very very cool i didn't jump on that yeah um the you know and i'm gonna stick my foot over the railing a

076little bit on this one is that um you know i think there's a lot of this comes down to there's so much technology that we use google classroom seesaw there's email there's all these communications and this has always been kind of one of the things that parents especially when you have multiple kids like get like just bombarded with like and you have no idea where anything is at i'll be honest right and so at some point and i think this might be a technology communications it's like a whole all i guess all you guys it's just how do we get to a point where a parent knows they can go to at least one spot and have like if it's nothing more than feq where do i find this where i find that kind of

077deal that survey really should be questions surrounding that in my opinion it's like i know how my student is doing in school or i know where to find that information of what my student is learning do i know where to find how what they owe in terms of homework or whatever else so i can help them right that's the level of interaction if we make that easier for parents they're going to get more involved to be able to do that stuff the harder we make it the less involved they are and i'll be honest right now it's the beginning of school with the three kids my wife is like and i've been trying to help her it's it's insanity right i mean it's nothing it's it's not all bad it's just it's just a lot

078and then when you have kids across buildings and districts and college and i'll tell you that if you want to talk about perception of parents and how schools are doing and how they're and how their kids are doing in school this is a big part of it yeah right if they don't even know where to go and get that then you start getting these responses from parents of where the less engagement in terms of the surveys that go out and all those other things right see like my i think one of the measure points talk about putting your toe over the balcony here no one of my measure points would be like you know do i know where to go in the district to get this question answered or do i have to go on

079facebook and post it and get an answer from other parents and i do think i think it's i would love to have the percentage way heavier that we know how to access this information in the district and get good answers versus knowing the district can help us and we have to go to other parents so anyways that's it both of us are back in the balcony skywards i mean like i wouldn't say skywar i know you guys struggle with skyward i think skyward from feet and all that other stuff is actually relatively straightforward for parents at least in my opinion right but it's like that it's one place to get all that information it's just like i wish there was something like that where there's a portal for all this other information all right so

080and i know i'm looking at um that kind of feeds into my final question is do we have a plan for the strategic plan to live on the website and do we have a potential goal in place for a dashboard of progress towards goals i think that that is after presenting it this evening our next step and i think eric mike and i are going to work in collaboration potentially with an outside um an external company to think about the branding getting it to be a living document on our website talking about how we can make this more publicly available awesome okay that's on the radar that's great thank you all right all right i got a couple um just kind of and you get hit a lot of them so i can knock those

081off but um i know this is the primarily the the educational and academic aspect and student focus which it should be right but financial strategy like how does that fit in yeah we did not focus on strength the the strategic plan is the academic focus uh separately if we wanted to create some strategic goals around finances that i think that when i've done this in the past the finances uh have not been part of the strategic plan but that obviously is something we want the board to to monitor and measure and the only reason why i asked is that we also serve as a board right the non-parent community right and so and their part of this like if we were to do a score card for instance right would be the financial aspect of

082the financial health what we're doing about taxes what we're going to what we're going to aim for in terms of our reserves right um potentially even the investment strategy right those types of things and like say your kpis you could have you trip maintaining the triple a bond rating that could be a significant one uh what are the reserve balances and so on exactly because there's always that question of oh you know we always talk about we have that target reserve balance that we ought we have and that we you know we plan somewhat conservatively and so it grows and then we spend money and everybody's like oh you're spending all that money as well you know if you go back to the strategy and look at the balance there's a reason and we this

083is a smart investment and we have the money to do it those types of things makes it easier um on the scl side of the house um what i did notice in kind of the the metrics was there was no parent feedback or did i miss that within that so the only like one of the measures that we have thus far is the five essentials survey which is a requirement in the state of illinois but can be replaced with other surveys so we're doing some investigation if there is a better tool that would provide us with more explicit parent feedback that would be relative to sel panorama who we work with actually for our student sel screener actually even has newly created a parent survey to talk about climate and their child's sel so we're

084investigating like might there be a better way because there's like there's the potential there's a disconnect between what the students are providing in terms of feedback in their surveys and what the parents are at least at least either perceiving or evaluating their child as right we know within our district there's an over indexing versus our peer districts related to you know anxiety and certain you know certain things so it's i see that as having again another opportunity for the parents not only to be engaged but to provide another data point that may kind of balance out some skewing that may come from the from the student data there's potential in some of these tools that um actually provide the same questions to parents as they do to children as they do to staff and so

085you have three perspectives around the same content to have that comparative conversation so that's what we're looking towards okay and last question i have is on the equity side of the house i know we just came from or we just saw a couple months ago that data right and so a lot of this is the connection with the high school with the high school so where we land our kids at eighth grade and how they enter in high school hasn't at least per that data in math has significant impact in terms of where they start obviously and where their path is in high school and i think it and if you look at that breakdown and we obviously see some equity issues within that right so um i don't know how i mean i get

086the outcomes and you know i see them there's a lot of data right that'll break it down but i think the overall in my opinion is is that really right where are we and i know it's a lot of the academic outcomes associated with it but it's how are we connecting this with their ultimate i guess no one say ultimate but their high school graduation right and where they land there based off of the equity issues we know how we exit them and and integrate them in high school does that make sense and then oh sorry no just jumping up do we still have a dei committee we do so i actually have had a couple of members reach out to me they partici some of our diversity equity inclusion committee members participated in the

087audit they were part of focus groups i haven't met with them since the audit because we were awaiting the results of the audit we have obviously now just begun sharing all of that with our school teams which we wanted to make sure we did first i'm going to bring them those who are still interested serving bring them back together to take a look at the audit with me probably in the month of september or early october will they be a component of this goal of the equity goal it really resonated with me from elise vertura's comments when she was with us and and then worked with us even beyond presenting the proposal she said if you continue your dei committee they should serve in an advisory capacity okay and not as a strategic action capacity

088like equity is the work of all stakeholders okay and not just this group so that's one of the things i'm going to be talking with them about when they come back together with us this fall thank you sorry ron okay um the last thing is i just want to echo what everybody's been saying this is i think an amazing you know document and and work it is something if anybody's had drinks with me at the triple i i've been screaming about this for six years right it's my like i get on there after you guys know i'll go on forever right so i'm really really when i saw this i was really excited um to hear you guys about it and it's just it's it's an amazing um so thank you if i could uh

089i just want to follow up um ryan brought up some good points on the the finance side of it and mike i agree with you our role as a district is to educate children so we don't need to be talking about the dollars and cents and the debits and the credits in our strategic plan but i will comfortably say um we've built into the dna of this district uh and john probably experienced it once or twice greg experienced a lot when we get the five-year plan and in years four and five it would show deficits it's like it's not acceptable greg i don't want it even on paper we will not accept deficit spending in this district and so it and john's picked up that that torch and he knows that that's what we have

090to run with and so the key and i don't even know how to do it within the context of what we're doing but the board members are going to change people with my history and series history at some point will be gone ryan has picked up the torch quite well you know jumping into the finance committee and we want to make sure that that stays as part of the dna of this district and as we execute successfully i'm going to assume our strategic plan as we start to do things you know that question should always be there after we say is this what's best for the kids because that should always drive our decisions but secondarily we should say does it fit within the financial constraints of this district and and again i i really

091truly don't believe it should be part of this document but we can't let that mindset leave this district um and that's you know my comment on it and this is fantastic by the way this is the best we've ever done so maureen did you have any questions or comments i asked mine already thank you though okay um i just had a few i uh like danielle was a skeptic going into this um whole process starting with the mission vision i absolutely did and i was i'm very excited about the mission and the vision and i was very excited that the administration was taking on the work of the strategic plan as support as opposed to the board because the last two strategic plans that the district has done have been from the board and i

092think that and it wasn't just the board i mean obviously there was input from all stakeholders but i i do believe that what you said is absolutely um accurate and that you know the the people who are planning need to be the people who are implementing and the board obviously is not implementing anything so i think it's much more appropriate that the administration created this plan and because the administration created the plan and not the board i think you can see from the the plan itself that it is much more um uh i don't even know what how to describe it as opposed to the other plans that we did that were you know much more vague and kind of flowery and aspirational but didn't really have you know concrete um you know objectives that

093you could measure and um you know that were inspirational as opposed to aspirational so you know i i appreciate all the hard work that you all put into this and the staffs too not just the people in this room because i think that the end product which really isn't an end product because it's going to be a living breathing document that's going to evolve um is really something that um i think we all should be very proud of and excited for and i'm i'm converted so i'll join you danielle in the conversion club uh a couple comments and um that i have and we kind of talked about this this before um but i i'm very happy to see mr lombardo and mr berger were talking about how scl is the building block for everything

094else that we want to see in our students and i think that that is reflected in the vision in the very deliberate order that we what we want for our children and we want them to be emotionally resilient socially skilled and academically prepared and we've talked about this before but that order was very deliberate and it was based on the feedback that we got through the thought exchange and all the stakeholder input that that is what's most important for our kids um is to to be emotionally and socially resilient and skilled and that will lead and provide a good foundation for the academic part piece of it so i was very i'm very happy to see you know the mission and the vision sort of not sort of but actually integrated in every aspect of

095the plan because that's obviously we can't achieve the vision if it's not part of the strategic plan as far as measurements andy i very much appreciated your comments you articulated much more effectively than i um could i mean i i looked at the the measurements and they all seemed fine but again you know there's just something intangible about a lot of it and and i couldn't think of other measurements so i didn't necessarily feel so comfortable being [Music] i don't know if critical is the right word but you know um wanting something a little bit a little bit more um but i i i think that you understand that the board has given you kind of permission to experiment and to find try to find those ways to measure intangibles even if we've never done

096it before and other people haven't done it before and hopefully we'll find some things that that work understanding that along the way we may find some things that don't work as well either but you know in the end you know what gets measured gets done so i think we have to we have to um keep working on that um i was curious about the co-serve co-learn model and i i find it very interesting the way that you explained it because i had wondered you know we've sort of been expanding this co-teaching model for the last many years and and i wondered where that was going to go because obviously we can't staff every single classroom as as co-taught classrooms and from a financial perspective if nothing else so i i was interested to hear your

097explanation and i think that it shows a kind of a natural evolution of the kotop model we've learned a lot from doing that and hopefully we can take what we've learned from that and make it work in in a way that's going to benefit even more kids um ideally and then the other piece of the equitable um goal that i wanted just wanted to mention is i'm very glad that you know we are talking about um you know diversity and cultural responsiveness and you know we see these stories all coming from other parts of the country where it is the exact opposite and i'm i'm glad to see that in our district that we are not moving anywhere near that direction in fact going in the opposite direction because i think that's best for all

098of our all of our kids and all of our learners so again really amazing job everybody and thank you so much for all your work so i've got a question as well but before i ask the question a little prologue here first to the board on saying uh thank you for trusting us thank you for trusting us to do good work and bring a product that you and we are proud of to you and also thanks for the inspirational uh but still tangible mission and vision that we have those things matter they really do that people are able to see themselves in that in the organization the community is really important also uh danielle thank you for being a willing accomplice or victim or whatever it was in this to champion the strategic plan i

099i the one overarching thing that i want to reassure the board is we're going to get this thing done we're going to do this stuff and we're going to get better at it as we go right and we're going to learn from each other from you through challenge and inspiration and iterative improvement uh and to our principals who are where the rubber meets the road i cannot begin stephanie stringer would be here by the way she had open house right she is with us in spirit i cannot begin to say how fantastic it is the one thing that you most hope for is that your principles will be instructional leaders and i've seen that desire and you guys put the aspiration into action at the two first days of school with your staff and we

100did it over the course of the summer with the retreat and we've got it we've you got it going and hats off to you marcy i'm gonna put you on the spot okay so uh one of the things that you said in the course of our retreat was that i've been waiting my entire career to do this and there are some parts of you i think that we're really reluctant to speak up but where was that coming from and what's it like now it's my 20th year in district 109 i began my career as a fourth grade teacher and back then there were no rules i don't know if you know that but there weren't and i could do whatever the heck i wanted and i did and then the rules came and i had

101to stop um just as i was moving through my career and exploring different paths of of my journey as an educator and an educational leader and i was in i thought the perfect role to effect change for those of you who are here for that was the director for innovative learning and i'm like jackpot because now i'm going to help this whole organization do what i know is the most exciting type of learning any child can do except that wasn't actually the position where you can affect change um you have to be in a school you have to be in a building you have to be able to walk into classrooms you have to be able to talk to the teachers and the students and you have to not only inspire but empower kind of

102our old tagline but it's true to make that happen and so when we started talking about sticky learning and we started talking about project base and we started talking about engagement what that can be looking like and then we're coming off of the heels of the pandemic and everybody's hungry for that you know i felt like the seas were partying and it was finally our time to do what i think we all know and have felt is best and we're deerfield like if anybody's gonna do this it's deerfield and so yeah i've never been more excited to be an educator than i am this school year so kind of feels like it's all coming together and thank you for speaking up and chris you're one of the champions for sticky learning as well and one

103of the comments from our staff you ever wonder if staff have influence on us one of the one of the stickiest comments from our staff going back to what marcy was saying was a comment i remember when we used to try to make learning memorable and if we all think and chris this is something that that you underline is like what do you most remember from school when you were a kid right what was that what made that sticky it was a connection to a meaning to it to an adult but it was doing something it was creating something presenting something it was active so uh to each of you thank you for all of your work i am so pleased and proud of you and the whole administrative team i think we are in

104a really really great place and can't wait to see what's next where's our certificate thank you all very much have a good night next item on our agenda is the superintendent's report you have to follow that oh man it's gonna be short i can tell you that because we uh we spent a little bit of time talking there all right so i'm supposed to pull mine up right eric here are we west east south i thought you weren't allowed to do this no no i i do a good job when uh when i don't have the clicker right yeah and i figured the clicker out but it's a long story so i won't uh i won't talk about that [Laughter] uh yeah take all kinds of things away from me i won't be able to

105drive soon right so uh well there we go well yeah there we go wrong end of it okay well we had a terrific start we had beautiful weather and here is miss ford walking into shepherd i think you have a kid there too as well and then here at south park it is all hands on deck on the first day of school in deerfield very exciting kids want their pictures taken with their parents out in front and this is out in front of caruso lots and lots of engagement and excitement this is eli one of our kindergartners and i know his mom so it's really very cool there too so we really got started uh our first day of school was terrific also on the second half of the first day of school was the

106opening day staff barbecue so it's un up for a discussion or debate whose idea it was it may have been joanna's it may have been danielle's whose ever idea it was it was a really good one which was food trucks for the staff on day one you know that it's a good idea when the staff stand in line for an hour and still think it's okay uh because they're connecting as as dale pointed out they're connecting with each other and that's what they most want to do on day one so it was a rousing success and really a terrific way to start the school year the opening day staff assembly likewise owen and maya you met them earlier really did a great job setting a tone uh one of the nicest things was maya had

107each of the teachers about whom she was speaking stand up and receive a round of applause and you can see a picture of uh maureen there making herself look absolutely humongous next to mr ashman okay so all went really well one of the reasons that the plan is going to be executed is that a the principles are leading it but b the staff have been very involved and what these are are sort of mental or maps of goals one which is the third from the right two uh goal three goal four and these are the the representations of what this looks like so in the third from the right this is goal one uh it all begins with the vision at the bottom of that graphic you see the vision and then the the the

108latter of the scaffold to the things that flow from that so this iterative work with staff to physically represent it to have them process it and provide feedback as well these are all ways and danielle uh and our principals have done just a really great job of repeatedly coming back and allowing people to process these ideas a lot of facility improvements over the course of the summer as well and we start out here at caruso we have a new band and orchestra room it's in use now the auditorium still well underway but it will be as beautiful as the band and orchestra room by the end of it wilmot got new lights new floors new ceilings really looks very good a number of schools got new gym floors and a lot and also new lights

109for kipling south park likewise we did lights there i believe as well as it is a new floor in walden got the new floor uh replacing the old terrible floor in a new painted ceiling thanks to jeff our our painter it's a very smart move from dr flippy to hire a full-time painter it's astonishing how much better it looks and also one of the things that is not seen here but is very important is dr philippe tim ryan and dan the air conditioning heating cooling guy ordered a bunch of parts took an inventory ordered them well ahead of time so that we didn't have to have any down units if we could avoid it and we started this you remember how hot it was last year and the struggles with the climate control over the

110course of the summer zero issues with climate control and start of the school year zero issues as well so hats off the whole operation hinges on whether the teachers are ready to go and whether they're in a good place and if it's too hot or too cold everything else doesn't matter so really terrific there and off now to dr flippy about our shield process this year yep very quickly um we're very excited that shield is now offering a take-home model this is something that we've long been waiting for idph has continued to recommend that schools offer the shield test to families for those that are interested in it we have about a third of our families that have elected to test so kudos to katie ruko in my office who put in an extreme amount

111of time putting together all of our test kits one month's worth of kits we'll go home with students tomorrow they simply need to bring it in on monday morning they'll toss it in the bin at the front of the school and then passport health will collect collect those samples and process them and we'll report out to families electing to test just like we have in the past our next opportunity to enroll this is for anyone who enrolled by august 11th our next opportunity for families to opt into testing will be towards the end of october and i think that was the point you just made right there and that almost concludes the superintendent's report i'd be remiss if i didn't mention the fact that somehow dale has managed to make sure we are staffed so

112not an insignificant thing right uh unbelievable amount of work over the summer uh finally got omar in place is number two uh but tireless efforts there uh from from uh hr and tech uh is working seamlessly so thank you rj for all of your work uh the wan is underway uh now as well and uh teachers have the tools that they need staff have the tools that they need in their classroom so we are off to a really really terrific start and one of the most important things for a staff is like the stuff from the pandemic is the barriers and all that are gone the carpets are back and there's a palpable sense of relief that and we get to be together so we're off to a great start any questions for mike okay

113the next item on our agenda is community participation relative to matters on the meeting agenda we welcome your comments and questions tonight the first period of community participation is for items related to tonight's agenda and the second period of communication community participation near the end of the meeting is open for all matters if you wish to comment please fill out a community participation form we'll 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 anyone who wishes to participate having no community participation we will move on to our information items 7.1 freedom of information requests i don't believe we have any this month okay um 7.2 core values overview daniel where is this you no yeah i'll i'll

114jump in so the next logical step for the board we have the mission in place the vision in place uh there is an interest in appetite in the the board processing and then approving core values and then also kpis as mentioned earlier these are processes and so one of the things that we worked on as an administrative team is to create a draft for the board's consideration uh these have been beaten up and moved around spent a good chunk of time over the course of our uh two-day retreat this summer and what you see before you is uh the the result of the the big draft that was boiled down to a smaller draft which was then rearranged and edited in a number of different ways and it is there for the board's uh consideration

115at this point what do we do with the core values i mean i i with this mission vision and strategic plan i kind of was thinking that was our kind of map of the universe so what how does the core values fit into that uh some of unless you want to make your mission or your vision very very wordy there is an opportunity to have core values as well to say things that you might not have been able to get into either those other documents so critical things that you believe are are very very important and my experience is that uh the core values and we hear this from our staff is like there are staff that are actually very interested in having seeing the board take uh have a position so on uh to

116to use one example what is the board's position on equity equity equitable outcomes for example right there is real interest in that and these things do make a difference in an organization anyone else have any comments or discussion about the core value proposed core values are we to read this and then like next session we talk about it or what what are we trying do you want to accomplish something on this now are we just sharing it if this is i think my read on this meeting is discuss deliberate and then um modify in whatever way or or what have you it's sort of a you can either do it in a meeting like this or a community committee as a whole but yeah this is right serious it's your meeting so it's on for

117information this week or this month and so we should have a discussion about and these are just proposed core values we can tinker with them or change them and whole or in part depending on you know how we feel about them and then i would expect that we would adopt core values in some form at our meeting in september cool well for my two cents i mean i really like them my first glance but i would love to see in that second bullet point some reference to meaningful relationships you know i i think you know the social emotional skills are hugely important and they are a foundational building block to academic or to teaching and learning because those are parts of the building blocks for developing healthy and meaningful relationships so that you can teach

118and learn i kind of feel like that concept would be valuable to add the only question i had was the word affirm for the uh fourth bullet point the affirm and then identities races ethnicities genders et cetera what is your interpretation of the word affirm is it meaty enough for you that's we really went round and round about that verb um because i was i was looking for meaty yeah and we is there a in in your thesaurus do you have a better no i will not sit here and say that i have better i just i guess for me i i didn't know if it felt if your point was this is our announcement to our community to our staff that these are what we strongly value and uphold i just don't know if

119the word is strong enough how do you feel about him embrace i don't know yes sure maybe maybe adding on a firm and a brace or i don't have an answer for you it just when i read it to me i just thought i was going to hit me a little harder like to sari's point there are districts in our nation that are taking steps in the complete opposite direction than what you're saying here and i want to be kind of loud about it yeah embrace or celebrate i'll let andy help you out he seems to be a bit of our word smith yeah and i think for for anybody who's who is listening or who might be watching this later i think it would be helpful just and i'll read it real quickly what

120these are they're in the packet online available if anybody wants to look at them but just for purposes of the discussion if you don't want to go looking for the packet online right now the the proposed core values are one we believe that students construct meaning through authentic experiences imaginative play and intellectual challenge we prioritize social emotional skills as the foundational building block to academic skills we commit to inclusive practices that ensure equitable outcomes across educational environments for all students we affirm people of all identities races ethnicities genders ages religions abilities orientations education levels national origins and any other distinguishing characteristic or trait and we engage all stakeholders in respectful and professional dialogue to make decisions that are best for our students so those that's what's been proposed does anyone and i think you both

121kelly and andy have made some good suggestions for some tweaks anyone else have any nick no no maureen did you have any thoughts you wanted to share no okay um yeah i mean i think that these these definitely expand on the mission and vision in a way that we you know i think the way that you described it was was right on you know there are a lot of these ideas that came up in our discussion of mission and vision and you just can't put it all in to those statements and make them manageable so um you know i think that these are very reflective of our core values and i think that if we can work on maybe a couple of word changes there based on our discussion i think we'll be good to

122go okay well we'll make these tweaks and then and the following meeting uh put those in the packet and there's not it is important to do these but you can keep on tweaking them and approve whenever the board sees fit and then did we want to talk about setting kpis we're going to do that in a different meeting yeah that'd be a separate meeting for us and siri and i will discuss when and how to process the the formulation of the kpis we'll create a draft set again andy appreciate the challenge to to think bigger and more boldly about those and then we'll see where we land as a totally new board member can you explain to me the difference between kpis and the metrics in the strategic plan yeah what what the the intention

123of the kpis what we wanted in the in the strategic plan draft was hey can we have some sort of mile marker how demonstration of how we're going to be successful if we do this are we going to be successful what you want with kpis is a set of six maybe eight measures that your that the board the governing body uses as a dashboard if you will yep so you've got your speedometer odometer gas gauge and so on and so you take the things that are most important to you and you put those up and then you create then something that is that the the govern the governing body repeatedly goes back to those six or eight things so have we maintained a triple a bond rating for finance is an easy one to talk

124about is yes or no but then other ones an academic one for example the most important academic marker of all of them probably is reading at grade level by the end of third grade because if you don't all learning follows that you learn to read then you read and learn from then on and you want 100 of your kids reading at grade level by the end of third grade so you monitor those limited number of things over and over again so where is the so i understand the pathway of the strategic plan you have goals you have things you measure to andy's point you you know the things you measure are the things you do so i see the circle i see the importance when we set kpis we make a mandate xyz this is

125what we expect this is what we're measuring who then takes that torch and runs with the doing i thought that was the whole point of like the planner should not plan if they're not doing i'm just so confused so what for the governing body what you want to do is you want you know we bring a draft and then we process a draft and then the board says yes these are the kpis that we believe will get us to the mission and the vision okay and so those should be the things over and over again it might be 10 years or 15 years out but yeah these small number of indicators are going to lead us to that promised land that you establish in your mission and your vision so they're longer term okay so

126you might be looking at a five times as long a time horizon for example then you will in a strategic plan which might be the one year the three year okay all right i'll put my faith in okay it works all right any other questions okay uh item 7.3 uh e-learning plan daniel yeah i think we just got um information that we needed to renew our e-learning plan with the regional office of education and then with the illinois state board of education through the process we underwent right before we had the school closures in march of 2020 so we're just redo redo to submit so we have to follow certain procedures one of them is presenting it to the board of education as an informational item and then taking action on that we have to

127also have to do some public posting the e-learning plan that we've had in place and posted on our website really has now been become quite efficient over the past couple of years so there's not any significant changes at all to it and this just allows us once we adapt it it allows us to engage in e-learning if there's if we choose to if there's a school closure for weather or any other reason yeah and typically the way we stick with yoga yes yeah the way we're not even going to say the word whether yes e-learning uh the way it's worded really in the case of an emergency and we're able to pre-plan so give people advanced notice that there's potential for a snow day tomorrow please take home your devices prepare for the potential for

128an elearning day great any questions on the e-learning plan now the next item on our agenda is action items uh item 8.1 is our consent agenda which includes 8.1.1 personnel 8.1.1.1 resignations and retirements 8.1.1.2 leave of absence 8.1.1.3 employment of certified staff 8.1.1.4 employment of educational support staff 8.1.1.5 employment of at will staff and 8.1.2 bills for payment i have a motion please second roll call mr beckley aye ms jacomu aye mr quo aye mr morrison aye ms wender maureen can you hear us oh yeah yes thank you and president montgomery aye motion carries uh 8.2 treasures report can i have a motion to approve the treasurer's report second roll call miss jacom you aye mr quo aye mr morrison aye ms winner maureen aye mr begley aye and president montgomery aye motion carries 8.3

129uh can i have a motion to approve the recommendation to approve the security system upgrade don't move second we'll call mr quo all right mr morrison aye ms winter maureen aye mr begley aye ms jacomu i am president montgomery aye motion carries 8.4 approval of closed session minutes from june 16 2022 and um kelly and andy need to abstain and i have a motion please so move second i'll stop it thanks maureen roll call mr morrison abstain ms wender maureen hi mr begley aye ms jacob you abstain mr quo hi and president montgomery hi motion carries thank you 8.5 approval of regular meeting minutes from july 28 2022 and nick and andy will abstain uh can i have a motion please second round are your first this time maureen maureen hi mr begley abstain miss

130jack of you aye mr crow all right mr morrison abstain and president montgomery aye motion carries 8.6 approval of the open session meeting minutes portion from the closed session meeting on august 2nd 2022 and andy um you need to abstain can i have a motion please so move second roll call mr begley aye ms jacomew aye mr kwow aye mr morrison abstain ms winter aye and president montgomery aye motion curies 8.7 approval of closed session meeting minutes from august 2nd 2022 andy abstain again uh can i have a motion please still move second roll call mr begley aye ms jacomu aye mr kwow aye aye mr morrison i'm sane ms wenner hi and president montgomery aye motion carries thank you committee reports true north has their first meeting of the school year next week so

131i'll update you at the next meeting i know we were supposed to have college yeah today but we yeah policy committee was scheduled to meet today but we had some uh intervening uh scheduling conflicts so we will reschedule it at everybody's mutual convenience and we got a finance committee coming up here right and then i know ken's gone so the facility is coming up yeah we've got finance on september 22nd to review the levy and five-year financial projections and then again on the 27th of october for the annual audit and then fdc is meeting very early for summer 2023 work to get ahead of the extremely long lead times on october 6th thank you the next item on our agenda is open community participation we welcome your comments and questions tonight on all matters if

132you wish to comment please fill out the community participation form we will 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 hearing none the next item on the agenda is board superintendent other um just a really quick thing i just want to thank eric specifically for incorporating the challenge create and collaborate in his what's good in 109 i think it's so important and really reflective of the hard work that was put into the mission and vision and everything to have it then be reflected on a monthly basis through the what's good so i thought that was awesome thank you yes uh go ahead andy you were green before i was um two things i

133also wanted to congratulate eric and and i know it's a team tackle but for the award that the district received for the communications work and it is truly authentically good and i love seeing it during the meetings um it's from my perspective been a really positive wonderful energetic meeting and great i feel great momentum so i feel a little reticent about raising this question but it's been on my mind a lot and i'm just curious to hear in the aftermath of the july 4th situation how are our staff and what are we hearing from the kids and you know i i know we're in this microcosm of this evening it felt great but i can't help but wonder if the bigger ecosystem there's still a lot of difficulty and i'm just curious how how are

134how are our people and are there things we could or should be doing to support them this might be a a team tackle um joining if you want to lead yeah i can start mostly from the student perspective um you know we offered support over the summer not only sharing resources in the community but specifically if any individual students or families needed direct support and huge thank you to a number of members of our clinical team especially jen grady who's our psychologist out of early learners met with a number of students she's local she has a ton of experience and she she did wonderful work so i really appreciated her kind of leading that over the summer and our other folks as well of course um and then they were prepared right at the start

135of the school year principals have communicated to families obviously anyone in need of additional counseling support um you know sometimes we start that at school and then hand off if someone needs more support outside of school so you know the feedback as i've been checking with our clinical staff is really the vast majority of our kids i don't want to downplay the experience of those who need additional support so please don't take it that way but the vast majority of our kids crave that start of school year that normalcy those routines so i think they're very appreciative of that but certainly still mindful of those individual students and families who need additional support and that's in place and you have a sense for the staff are they feeling safe anxious sad well i don't want

136to build the list for but you can imagine yes all of the above right i think that's i mean it's it's how people are responding just generally who have who live and support children and families in our community and some were directly impacted and others indirectly impacted and those that even didn't maybe know someone there on that day feel the pain that has resonated throughout our communities so it's hard to dial in but they're they're they certainly are no different than anyone else in our community i think though there is certainly a strong commitment to our staff to serve to continue serving those kids and families at the forefront but we're also encouraging them to take care of themselves there was an event coordinating as part of opening days where they could attend a session

137with ann marie repke which is somebody who's worked with the district previously and deals in trauma and supporting that's a partnership we've had for a year with her that we probably will continue the other thing i'll just add on that is um throughout all he's dr doug bolton has always partnered with us but last year was the first year that he was with us consistently pretty much every wednesday afternoon strategically because of early release he's continuing that work this year so part of it is he's supporting our clinical staff our sel teams but also is going to be available to do some work directly with staff whether it's at staff meetings or the building based time during early release specifically about adult sel as well it's one thing he really prioritizes when he presents like

138the adults we need to take care of the adults so they can take care of the kids yeah i would say that uh the staff in many ways are um not in a different position than uh all of us very frankly and the reality is is that we've all experienced a very significant trauma in the last two and a half years and trauma shows up in different ways for different people and it's a very individual experience and then add to that the collect the other collective trauma which was the fourth of july and these are things that you know whether it whether you look at you know the humans are social beings and not being social had an effect on all of us and i think that we're going to continue to see those effects

139in sometimes obvious but more often very subtle ways a reluctance to engage that social muscle atrophy and so i think that we're going to experience that individually and then we'll experience that collectively for a very long time maybe perhaps for the rest of our lives very frankly we have the advantage as a school system of having the single greatest salve that i can imagine which is children walking into your space and saying the darndest things and doing the darndest things and it's an unbelievably buoying experience to have a connection with kids and so i think there's that but you know there's nerves and there's you know it's not it's not an easy time for educators nationally either and so that's why maya's comment at the beginning of the school year was so incredibly apropos was

140a celebration of why we come to work i'm in the normal course are there opportunities for surveys of the staff how are you doing what's on your mind do you do that from time to time and maybe you'll hear we we do and we looked at a new one today as a matter of fact right that that was one of the things i talked about but one thing i know that's actually happening in practice because some of the principals just share the surveys that they're doing like wednesday they do what they call exits with their staff and some of it's relative to the content of their particular meeting but i have seen on almost all of them that one of the questions is like anything else that's bothering you anything we can do to support

141you know it's this measure of anything and that's almost happening weekly thanks if i can jump into i think dr faust had mentioned we're looking at using thought exchange with our staff too is just another way of surveying how they feel and providing them a different medium for that so my comment um as i we're going through the media i was pondering the the core value and i just want to reiterate something that i've said many times and again those have been on the board with me a long time and the administrators know everything that we start looking at you know historically as a board we've always driven back is is this the best thing for the kids and your bullet points the last one basically drives that and i would argue and some other

142words miss andy seems to be our top wordsmith here tonight um might argue differently but i would say that what's best for the kids should be our top bullet point because everything else are subsets of what's best for the kids and and that has been for my almost 18 years on the board a core driving thing in this district and i'm not saying we always executed perfectly we stumbled a lot and you know we had some false starts and all those things but it was always driven by when we make that is this best for the kids and so i would just argue when we look at our core value statements that that should be the leader because that's what's driven this district for as long as i've been part of it and uh it

143should always drive the district that's all i got i just want to say that the first day of school was almost like a normal first well not almost was the normal first day of school which is like i think a success um across the board so that was fun to go to and and see that it was a massive humanity and you know doing the normal thing on a first day school so that's a really cool thing to see after what we all went through um you know the fact that we're here at this time of night through all this material is actually pretty impressive i'll say that so i'm pretty happy and so that's when i'm gonna shut up and one last thing after nick spoke sorry after nick spoke i note that we

144don't really have a core value bullet explicitly addressing what core values we might have with respect to staff and the role of staff of our educators and i just wonder i wonder if that's something we want to think about how would you say that or did i do am i oh how would i say yeah or they said why do i say that no no no yeah i don't know how to answer well i know that you had you had about ten and then you did was there another one in there that maybe pertained more directly to staff or no i yes there was and uh we'll revisit it and trot it out and see how it works okay anyone else maureen all good thank you i had just a few i won't prolong prolong

145the meeting too long ryan sorry um so many thank yous i mean i think the beginning of the school year from everything that i saw both when i was at the staff kickoff and at the new teacher orientation and you know just everything i'm hearing around town it sounds like everything went off really really well everybody was very happy to be back and really excited for for the new year so and and that enthusiasm comes from the top so thank you to um all of you sitting around this table and all the principles for creating an environment that everybody is really excited to come back to and i especially want to thank mike because you know i think last year you know was kind of well it was unfair to everybody but it was unfair

146for your first full year as a superintendent in our district to have mostly to be dealing with issues related to the pandemic and not really being able to get into the work of leading the district as the district's instructional leader and it's been a joy to see you kind of be able to and i'm sure that you were this way bef in other districts but in our district to see you kind of blossom into the instructional leader that we hired you to be and that we knew that you were because we didn't get a chance to see that as much last year so it's been really exciting to watch and to see you so excited about everything so and i think that that that definitely impacts everyone in the district so thank you for that

147and again danielle and joanna thank you for all of your work with the strategic plan and working together especially on the equity piece to make sure that that is more integrated and hopefully we can make a lot of progress in that in all areas um the opening day for the staff again i was i was a little nervous when i saw the lines at the food two of the three food trucks um but everybody seemed just very happy i didn't hear anybody complaining about the lines or the weight um or the food everybody was just glad to be there and it went off really really well so um thank you for the planning and i think becky you worked on that too so thank you and eric the t-shirts i love the graphics and i

148love the tagline and congratulations on your award and that's all i have thank you if i could just one more comment you know i don't i didn't get to experience the opening day unfortunately my work schedule is a little bit crazy right now but ryan it was nice to hear you not refer to the start of the school year as a new normal because we talked about that when we started the 21 22 years like well we're going to start a new normal and it's going to be okay and it we got through it and we worked it but to actually just be able to use the word normal and know that it means what we did in 1980 and 2018 and 2019 it's just it's it's good to see the real normal not the

149new normal so anyway now i'm really done okay um if there's nothing else i need a motion to [Music] move to closed session to discuss 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 legal 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 or recreational or educational setting or a volunteer of the public body or against legal counsel for the public body to determine its validity however a meeting to consider an increase in compensation to a specific employee of a public body that is subject to the local government wage increased transparency act may

150not be closed and shall be open to the public and posted and held in accordance with this act pursuant to 5 ilcs 120 2c1 the board will reconvene to open session for the sole purpose of adjournment name a motion please second roll call miss jacomu aye mr quo aye mr morrison aye ms munner yes aye mr begley all right and president montgomery aye shane carries at 906. thank you you