2 Regular Board Meeting 10-20-2025

001All right, we will get started. Good evening to all of you. >> The October 2020. >> Our board of education meeting will now come to order. >> Mrs. Mo, roll call, please. >> Miss Becker, >> here. >> Miss Liddal >> here. >> Mr. Estes >> here. >> Dr. Martelli >> here. >> Mrs. Hill >> here. >> Mr. Lobach >> here. >> Dr. Bruno >> here. Thank you very much. Mr. Lobach, would you please lead the board in the pledge of allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> All right. So, up first, a set of celebrations and recognitions. And this genuinely is very special because if you've noticed the board

002table has gotten a little bit longer and we have some new members. Dr. McHugh, please. Feel like I need the Madonna headset since I'm going to be walking and talking. Student board members, will you come on up? So, while our three new student board members come up, for those of you in the audience watching at home, we have three student board members each year. And tonight, we install this year's student board. So, we have Khloe King, Joseph Malay, and Sophia Ligman tonight. And just like our regular board of education members, they're going to take the oath right now. So, I'll start you off. You're going to read it in unison. We'll applaud and you will be official student board members. Okay. Are we ready? >> Do you all have your scripts? Ready? I My job

003is to make sure he promise to respect all students. I understand Please give a round of applause for our new student board member. And as our new student board members uh take their seat officially. Do we have any family of our new board members in the audience? If you are there, hands up. Yeah, we got a couple there. Yeah. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for supporting your child, allowing them to spend their evenings with us. Uh we'll try not to make them too long. Uh but it means a great deal uh that young people in our school district are willing to step up uh and put this time in and provide this service to us. So, thank all of you. And uh to our three new members, if anybody has anything they'd like to

004say, you're certainly welcome to say anything you would like. Um I'm going to probably constantly give you the opportunity. Uh it's probably too early, though. Probably don't have anything. I don't know. I'm looking at you, Joseph. Looks like you want to say something. >> This should have been on the application process. Just please understand that. But Dr. Bruno will call on you at random and put you on the spot to speak. So, always have something in your back pocket and I'd like to thank the board for this opportunity or something to that effect that you could just walk away. >> There you go. There you go. But thanks a lot uh family. Thank you all for that also. All right. We're going to uh begin with a a brief public hearing on the need to

005transfer uh funds that are related uh to the budget. And it is now 6:35 p.m. and the public hearing on the transfer of funds will now come to order. The fiscal 26 budget includes amounts to be transferred within funds to account for construction projects completed during the summer of 2025 along with funds that will be used to fund the full day kindergarten project. The total budgeted amount for these two areas totals $5,760,000. The expenditures for these for those projects must be recorded in the operations and maintenance and capital projects fund. During the planning for these projects, financial resources were identified to be transferred from the education fund to the operations and maintenance fund. Are you following along out there? Okay. And then to the capital projects fund. This is something we really do have to

006do. Uh this resolution permits the tra the treasurer to transfer the funds that are part of the fiscal 26 budget. Members of the public who wish to address the board should complete the signin sheet and indicate they wish to comment for the public hearing on just this topic. Mrs. Mo will call your name when it is your turn to speak. Speakers are asked to maintain respectful decor and limit comments to three minutes or less. Mrs. Moch, is there anyone who would like to make public comment on this amended budget? No. Okay, there you go. Well, with that, it is now 9:37 p.m. >> 6:36. Oh, I I had it really like out there, didn't I? >> It's gotten late all of a sudden. Um, may I have a motion to close the public hearing on

007the transfer of funds? >> Motion. >> I need a second. >> Second. >> Any discussion? >> All right. All in favor say I. >> I. All right. The hearing is now closed. See how easy that was? Okay, now we get into our uh presentations and the first presentation up is on the levy and Dr. McHugh, please. >> So, I'm going to turn this over to Mr. Eric Deorter, our assistant superintendent for finance, facilities, and operations. All right, we're trying some new technology, or at least I am. Oh, look at that. It's like magic. Um, so this is something we do every year uh as part of the levy process. So, last year we didn't do it because I thought the board had heard it enough and I heard from the public that they love it.

008So, we're going to do it again tonight. I'm not sure anybody really loves the levy, but I digress. Um, so tonight, just to kind of show you the timeline on where we're at, um, we're going to do what I call the levy 101. We're just going to talk about the process, what involves um asking the board to approve a levy each year. So up on the screen now is just a timeline. So tonight is the levy 101 process or kind of conversation and then in November we'll bring a tentative or preliminary levy to the board for the review. We'll ask you to place it on display for the public and then in December we'll come back and ask for action on that levy. So now we're going to go kind of through what is required

009as part of adopting a levy in a school district. So the board must estimate the levy at least 20 days before the adoption. So that's what we'll bring you in November as an estimate or preliminary levy for your review. Um they must adopt and file the levy before the last Tuesday in December. Um all of this is governed by the county of DuPage and the Illinois school code. So these are all rules that all school districts must follow. Um, the last thing is a truth and taxation hearing. So, one of the things that the school code calls for is if you ask for a levy extension that's greater than 5% of what you asked for the previous year, you have to do a hearing for your public to provide comments and feedback on that request.

010Um, at District 41, regardless of what we ask is an increase, we always do a truth and taxation hearing. It's just a good opportunity to hear from your community. Um, normally we don't need to do it because we're under 5%, but the law does say is if you were to exceed 5% in your ask, you have to do so. So, now we're going to get into kind of how the levy calculation and payment works. So, each year the potential for your increase is controlled by a law. It's the property tax extension limitation law. Um, so the way it works is basically you look at your previous year. So for the 2025 levy, we're going to look at last year's levy. We're going to increase it by CPI, the consumer price index. We know what that

011was. That's 2.9%. So that number is published in January of 2025 based on 2024's activity. And then that's the increment that we add to the levy from last year. Um that's the first bullet on the screen. The second bullet is in addition to the CPI increment you need you get to ask for as an increase to your levy you also get to ask for taxes related to new property that was built within the district during the year. So new construction happens it's not part of last year's taxing extension. So there's a provision in school code that allows you to ask for taxes for that new property. Importantly we don't know what that's going to be for 2025 when we bring the levy to you in November. So we have to estimate that. Um, we'll talk

012more about that in a minute. Um, and then payments of the leppy happen following the adoption at the end of December. So, as you all know as homeowners, when you get your tax bill in June and then September, you pay your tax bill and then the school district is paid shortly thereafter. That's kind of how we receive our payments. Here's where I wrote just a little bit about that the law that I mentioned earlier. So the property tax extension limitation act pel is really what governs how you can ask for an increase from year to year. This came in about 1987 and it was really in response to a lack of control for school districts that existed at that point. Uh school district was able to go out and ask for a large increase and

013there was no law governing it. So PEL was passed to to change that. So now school districts are limited to 5% or the CPI for that year as your increment. For instance, in that last screen I showed you, the C CPI is 2.9%. That's the biggest instrument in increment this district can ask for or any district in Illinois can ask for plus the value of new property. Again, this is an important thing to keep in mind. Even if the district were to ask for more than that, so let's say we file an extension, then it's a 10% increase, which sometimes you'll do because you don't know what your new property growth is and you have to estimate that. the county clerk when they go and look at our levy filing, they'll say, "Well, you guys

014asked for too much under PTEL, you can only get a smaller amount." They automatically reduce our levy to that amount. So, that's an important thing to stress. Um, regardless of what a school district asks for, the law is going to govern what we get. So, you can ask for more than you're entitled to and the levy the clerk, the DuPage County Clerk will automatically lower that. Um, timing considerations. This is just kind of a a slide I like to highlight because it connects to how our collectively bargain agreements with our teachers and support staff work. Um the 2025 levy that will be adopted here in December will fund the 202627 school year because of the timing of those tax receipts. So like I mentioned earlier, the first receipt will happen in June the 26. The

015rest of it will come in September 26. So those are the dollars that we collect to fund the next school year. So 202526. Um, the second bullet just kind of talks about a term we use often. It's called early taxes. So, as I mentioned, sometimes those taxes come in in May and June. And I should say they always come in in May and June because it's very reliable in DuPage County. So, we call those early taxes because they come before the start of our fiscal year, which starts July 1st. We talked about this a little bit earlier, but I always like to have this slide. So the district levy if the diff district were to levy more than pel so again what that law states as the maximum increase from year to year the county

016clerk will automatically um lower our levy to the amount that's permitted. Um importantly if we were to levy under that there's no option to ever go back and find the amount that we didn't ask for. So, for instance, if we decided to do a flat levy this year or a smaller levy and then next year we come back and say, "Well, we really needed those dollars." The opportunity to levy for those dollars is gone. You only get one chance. Um, >> that's forever. Yeah. So, um, that's where it really comes. That's why it's important to really know what you're doing when you're estimating new property growth. So, like I said earlier, we we don't know. Just had a meeting with the, uh, Milton Township assessor last week and he doesn't know yet. So there's no

017way for me to know exactly what our new property growth is. So what we do is we look at our historical average and kind of try and gauge where we were each year the last 5 to 10 years and we put an estimate that we hope is larger than what we will realize. Again knowing that the clerk will lower our levy to the maximum amount permissible. Abatement versus underlevy. I just wanted to put a slide up here to talk about that. Abatement is a very specific term for the clerk. um when you abate dollars basically and it's the second statement up there which is also number one. That's nice. I just noticed that. Um like number one. >> Yeah, I really like number one. So number one, the first number one, the underlev is what

018I was talking about a minute ago. If we ask for less than the maximum, you're choosing to underlevy. So you know you're asking for less than a max and then every year moving forward you would not have that capacity to tax. Abatement is different. Abatement is where let's say you levy the maximum but you know you might not need to collect all those dollars. So most commonly abatements apply to debt service. So District 41 passed a referendum in 2017 so we have a debt service payment each year. So what an abatement would look like is we could maximize the levy, ask for the max levy and then choose to make an abatement and basically tell the clerk even though we've asked for the max, we don't need the max. We're going to abate a portion

019of our tax extension. meaning don't send us the amount that we would need for our bond payment because we have dollars to cover that. So, it's important to differentiate and and kind of understand the two different terms. When you abate dollars, you do not lower your maximum amount in the succeeding year. So, you preserve that tax capacity moving forward even though you can make a choice to not collect all those dollars. Does that make sense? That was it. So, that was Levy 101. It's very exciting. Any questions? Well, the demand was to bring it back. Yeah. But it's obviously very important. It's some uh straightforward information. You do a good job kind of breaking it down, but this is the the basic architecture of what the board will be doing and it will in fact

020set the the capacity of the district to have the revenues it needs to deliver the education that it promises in the next year. So, any questions or thoughts? Ted, >> not a real question, but one thing that that always comes to mind for me is how how there's such a lag in terms of where we're setting the bar, right? It's set the bar at the the consumer price index. So, it's last year's consumer price index. Here we are in this year. We're going to collect the money for next year and it's for the school year after that. So if the CPI is going up and down a lot there's a lot of catching sometimes there's catching up and you know it's just a really it makes your job harder right in terms of of budgeting

021and things >> timing is very confusing you know so the 2024 levy or the 2024 CPI >> is released in January of 2025 we don't do anything with it until we bring the levy in November and December of 2025 right >> and the 2024 CPI information funds the 26 27 school year. So it is kind of a >> a unique school funding thing. Yeah. >> Yep. Okay, >> Eric, thank you very much. >> You're welcome. >> All right. Our second presentation is around our strategic plan and our priority goal to uh Dr. McHugh. >> Yeah. And I think I'm looking at Dr. David Bruno in the back. Are we going to do the SIPS first before the metrics report? So, you're you're still up, you Dr. Webster and our building administrative team. >> There we

022go. >> Okay, >> sir. >> Okay, so to lead this off, each year we do school improvement plans. They are developed by each building. I believe that Dr. Bruno is going to talk about that, but I would like to talk about the next slide. Could you advance me there, please? We have four goals on our strategic plan. All of these school improvement plans will be looking to move metrics in those four goal areas and Dr. Bruno, Dr. Webster, and the team are going to share a little bit about that. >> Yeah. So, before we get into it, um, thanks for having us here tonight. Uh, a little bit of the development of our school improvement plans just so that you have a little bit of background on how we came to those plans. Uh, tonight

023you're going to hear from all of our buildings from the kindergarten center all the way up to Hadley. Uh, they're building specific. So, our school improvement goals that you're going to hear about are building specific that have been built by the administrators and the teachers. Uh, they're consistent. One of the things that we want to do is have consistency from all of our buildings. So, you'll see three different goals. Do they look different at the buildings? Yes, because the data is different. Um, but they're going to talk about that tonight. Um, they're all embedded in datadriven measures. So, you might hear about AR, NWA, MAP, um, you're going to HumanX, 5e, all the different metrics that we use throughout the year. uh we pull it back to here. They're smart goalbased. So if you're familiar

024with that process, they do have the components of a smart goal-based goal. And I think the exciting thing is is they're developed by the building leadership team. So these weren't built in isolation. The conversation started last summer with Dr. McHugh, Dr. Webster, myself, and the building administrators. And we kind of just did an overview of what how did your year end? What are you looking at ahead? And then from there, we got more information from the state on our data. and then they went back to their building leadership teams over the last two months and have had ongoing discussions about what do we want to work on uh this year and what are we looking to achieve. So I'm excited to start with kindergarten with Sarah and then we're just going to go through the

025elementary buildings and then finish with Hadley and then there'll be questions at the end. Sound good? So I'm going to turn it over to Sarah. I'm gonna slide over here. >> Hi. Okay. Um, I'm Sarah Rodriguez, principal of the kindergarten center. Um, we're brand new, so we're starting with a fresh start. And every year, because it's a kindergarten center with our youngest learners coming, we're going to start with new data. Um, so we as a team decided, you know, when we're looking at our SIP plan, we needed to think about our purpose. And our purpose there at the center is to help our young learners um grow from preschool age kids to students that are prepared for first grade. So, we know they're going to come to us with a wide range of experiences and

026exposure to school. Um, so our goal is to meet them where they are and support them in literacy and math and with their social skills. We love the screener we did at the beginning of the year and we talked about using that. Um, we will continue to utilize it and our classroom data as we triangulate and look to help students with interventions and for support. But to measure progress this year in our SIP plan, we decided to align with elementary buildings and use map growth um for our primary metric. So we will be monitoring both literacy and math from fall to spring um and look for that balanced focus. And we know then we're comparing apples to apples too. We can look at MAP in the fall and look for growth on the same assessment

027in the spring. What we did do is take the kindergarten data from the last three years and we looked at the district kindergarten growth and students who met their growth goals in both math and literacy um on the map. So between 2022 and 2025 and 50 to 55% of D41 kindergarten students met their growth goals in math on MAP. Um so we wanted to raise that this year and raise that to 58%. We want to see 58% of our kids, we don't know how that's going to look. They're all together in one building, reach their own personal growth goals. And we dug a little deeper and looked at that first set of MAP scores. And we realized 6% of our kids fell below the 30th percentile. And we have these students being um receiving targeted

028interventions by either ESL teachers or interventionists right now. Um, meanwhile, 26% of our kids scored above the 90th percentile on that math map test. So, um, we want to not only commit ourselves to challenging, um, our students and closing the gap, but challenging those high achieving students. And we're going to do that through our differentiated instruction classroom teachers. We'll do the bulk of that learning during their center times. And we're happy that after we move through some targeted interventions, we're going to monitor that data and refer back to MAP and then intervene where we can um provide enrichment enrichment for our kids in math as well. Um and with literacy, we have the same similar focus across the district. We looked at the data and between 59 and 72% of kids over the last three

029years met their personal growth goal in reading. Um, interestingly enough, that number had declined over the past three years. So, the last year was 59%. So, this year we set our target at 65% um of kids we want to meet their personal growth goal. Looking deeper into our our current data, 8% of our kids fell below the 30th and 20% were at the 90th percentile or above based on MAP. So, our approach from for reading will mirror that of math. Um, and I think that we're being very cautious using map and we always look at our classroom data for everything we do, talk to teachers, and we're really focusing on just looking at our whole student and where they are to support them. But our goal is to help everyone grow in both of those

030subject areas. Um, looking at our social emotional goal being a new building and having all of our families coming together from across the district, we thought that looking at family engagement through the school perceptions survey would be crucial. Um, one of our priorities is that we want all of our families to feel informed and included and connected to the kindergarten center. So to establish some baseline data because we came in fresh without any, we um emulated the five essentials or the school perceptions survey and gathered data with the same questions that are on the survey we'll see in the spring. And that allowed us to gather data on both our communication and our family engagement. So currently as we stand, we're really proud of our data that 90% of families agreed they received timely and

031transparent communication from the kindergarten center, whether that be from um myself or the teachers. Um and 93% agreed that kindergarten center provides opportunities for parent involvement. So using this data, our goal is just to sustain that. Um, we want our communication to stay strong throughout the school year and continue to expand how we are engaging our families um across Glenn Ellen and the other um towns. And um we'll just keep growing and define um what the kindergarten center has to offer and keep reaching out to parents. And we're really proud as a staff this year and what we've already accomplished as a new building. Um the kids are thriving and everyone's excited to come every day and we're very excited that our parents are feeling involved and well communicated with. >> Thank you very much.

032Sarah >> got a question. Sarah, >> we were going to wait till the end. Did you want Did you want >> Yeah, why don't we wait until the end so that we can have everybody go through? But if you want to jot your question down, we will take questions at the end. >> All right. Okay. So for this school year, we recognize that it's going to take some collective ownership in order >> do our larger viewing audience introduce you. >> Absolutely. I'm Britney Smith. I am the principal at Lincoln Elementary. >> Hey, I'm Brian Shrimp, the assistant principal. >> All right. Um, our first goal that we're going to discuss is our academic goal and we are looking at using NWA and focusing on the area of math. So, our collective ownership of math growth

033will be the key to reaching our goal for the 2526 school year. In previous years, our academic focus has been literacy, and Lincoln has seen positive growth due to collaboration, consistency, individualized support, and follow-through. This year, our schoolwide priority is math, reflecting our commitment to strong outcomes for every student. We will achieve this by using data to guide decisions, prioritizing tiered supports, implementing upward and downward differentiation, and maintaining strong communication with families. We are dedicated to making intentional moves that drive student learning forward in the 2526 school year. >> All right. For our social emotional goals, um, one of them is in regards to student belonging. So Lincoln's focus this year on smallroup instruction is designed to strengthen both academic outcomes and social emotional well-being. One key action step to ensure a supportive environment is

034to intentionally build relationships and provide individualized support through small group and one-on-one settings as much as possible. We will continue to highlight and expand the support systems available to students, including access to staff beyond the classroom teacher, differentiated instruction and instructional methods, as well as opportunities for both both additional help and enrichment and multiple avenues for connection and growth beyond the classroom. In addition, we will continue to sustain and celebrate a positive school culture by recognizing students. Our incredible Lincoln staff already do this and demonstrate this through selecting students for our schoolwide WOW awards and personal communication with students and parents via handwritten notes, phone calls, and emails. This is done by all staff, not just classroom teachers, so that students and parents can continue to know that they are seen and supported by all

035Lincoln staff. And then our third goal is focused on the area of communications. So when we were looking through our data, we are focusing on the communication that we have with our families at Lincoln. So Lincoln's communication goal for the school year is to ensure consistent and transpar transparent communication with families. This is achieved through multiple avenues, weekly updates, informal notes, gradebook updates, and formal letters um to keep all parents informed. We recognize that parent perception of communication is critical to student success and their engagement. Improving transparency and consistency builds trust, strengthens partnerships, and empowers families to support learning at home. Clear, timely grade reporting enforces accountability, and keeps parents up to date on students progress. Staff communication includes both academic and social emotional updates whenever possible, supporting the whole child. Collaboration and follow-through from

036all of our staff are essential to achieving our target this year. >> Well, thank you both. >> Thank you very much. >> David, who's next? >> Oh, Jeff is next. >> Hi, I'm Jeff Burke or principal at Ben Franklin. >> Jamie Westgard, assistant principal. So I feel like the the the proudest parts we are of our goal are the action steps but I won't go into them too deeply. Um but more importantly we feel we have the right people at the table. Um thinking about our academic there's three areas that we feel really strong about that can support our growth and really enhance it. The first one is really focusing on our continued growth with small groupoup instruction. We used to call small group instruction the backbone of of instruction in D41 and I'm glad

037to see that really coming back. So there's a growth on that. We have strong coaches in my building. the right people at the table and the the amount of coaching cycles has increased and people participating in them. And then we've been really broadening our expanse with using different preassessments than we have in the past. Really embracing FastBridge and some of those benchmark materials that we've been able to do, further enhancing our tier 2 and tier three invent interventions which really talk about students that that are struggling and determining what kind of support they need. Uh most importantly though, having the right people at the table. We have enhanced discussions every week. week. We have tier 2 and tier three meetings with our teams, grade level teams. We have um administrative team, tier 2 and tier

038three meetings in our building. Jamie and I meet with our student support team and our coaches to talk about um not only academic but also our tier three students for behavioral and social emotional needs. So, like I said, going back to what our goal is up there, just having the right people, but also knowing that we're collecting the right information and then making really good choices with what to do with it. So, we feel strongly about our growth goals. >> Yeah. Yeah. And so our second uh social emotional goal is going to focus on belonging uh similar to uh our other schools. So we looked at the five essentials survey um and kind of compared where we are at in the spring of this year um and where we want to go for that. Um

039I think the belonging goal is really cool because the five essentials we can tap into teachers um parents but also students and we get some some beta uh some data back from our students. Um, and so we really want to take a look at that data on what our students have said. Um, and use that to drive conversations with our fourth and fifth grade, but really with the whole school. Um, do some learning for our students on what these questions mean on the five essentials, but really then help us build out how can we make this this Ben Franklin school belonging for everyone. How can we build that culture? How how can we build that collaboration and invite students into the picture? So, I think it's pretty exciting for me and for the whole staff

040to to kind of see um and build out those action steps as we move forward. >> I thought you getting back up, Jeff. Thank you. >> Hi, I'm Christine Arens, principal at Churchill >> and Tim Shermack, the assistant principal. >> I'd like to start off by celebrating Churchill School met its goals. the BLT and administration set last year. Thank you to our staff and students for your diligent work and dedication. This year, BLT has adjusted our goals. However, we are still focused on growth. We are focusing on the high achievement, high growth quadrant on MAP and having as many students as possible, demonstrating high growth, high achievement. While it's wonderful and an achievement to meet a growth target on MAP, we would like to see students exceed their growth targets. For example, if I met

041my growth target from fall to winter, I'm staying within the same percentile. If I perform at the 57th percentile in fall and I meet my growth target in winter, I'm still at the 57th percentile. Shifting to focusing on exceeding growth targets is why we built off of last year's goals. The way we accomplish this is through our MTSS and focusing on smallroup instruction by working with our coaches and AEC teachers to ensure all students, regardless of where they are performing, are receiving tailored instruction. We recently met with all grade levels and coaches to assign student intervention blocks that will best meet their needs. All students can learn at high levels when provided with differentiated instruction and supports. So the other end is our social emotional goal. Uh and although we met our goal of having

04280% of our students believing all peers are treat are treated with respect, we want to keep working on this goal to improve that even more and ensure that all of our students feel respected by their peers. We will measure our progress by this by looking at the five essentials data. And just like academic goals, we need to teach the expected behaviors of what it means to be respectful to all students and then retach those in small groups or individually when students do not meet those expectations. We have tiered MTSS for social and emotional education just as we do for the academics as well. Churchill will continue to implement and integrate PBIS, which is our positive behavior supports, and address any concerns along the way by conducting restorative conversations and/or tasks uh the students might be

043experiencing with the conflict. Through our school improvement plan goals, we are educating the whole child by developing intellect and fostering responsibility and citizenship while building those positive and collaborative relationships. Thank you. Thank you. >> Good evening. I'm Scott Klespitz, principal at Forest Glenn. >> I'm Sarah Tatel, assistant principal at Forest Glenn. >> So, our first school improvement goal ties directly to goal one in the district strategic plan. foster growth focused academic excellence. For the past four years, the Forest Glenn BL building leadership team has used the percentage of students meeting or exceeding their fall to spring map growth targets in reading and math as a key measure of academic progress. We feel both the areas are equally important and we annually review this data both schoolwide and grade level by grade level to monitor our

044cohort trends. Over that time, our buildingwide results have typically ranged between 50 and 60% uh of students hitting that target in both subjects. Last year, we actually exceeded that target in both areas, achieving 64% in reading and 63% in math. Those are the highest results that we've had in recent years. While we're very pleased with that growth, uh we didn't know if it was an anomaly based upon our past data. And so, we considered keeping the goal at the 60% mark uh again this year. After conversations with the leadership team, however, we did choose to uh increase those goals back to that 64% in reading and 63% in math to see how we do again this year. So, >> just like every other school, each spring, our fourth and fifth graders participate in that five

045essentials survey. In 2025, our five essentials data showed growth in the supportive environment category, increasing to 56%. This progress reflects our continued efforts to build positive relationships, and ensure students feel safe, supported, and connected. This year, our focus is on strengthening relationships, promoting and recognizing positive behavior, and ensuring every student feels valued. Staff are engaging in collaborative conversations to brainstorm new ways to engage, connect, and invest in the whole child, helping every student feel seen and supported. >> And our third and final goal ties directly to goal two, nurturing a culture of belonging. Uh I'm very proud of the work our staff has done with the Humanex survey. Uh for the past four years we've had 100% staff participation um which gives us a true reflection of every voice in our building which I feel

046is very important. Uh our goal in this area focuses on staff recognition and belonging specifically improving our score on the human survey statement. I've received positive recognition in the past 10 days. This has consistently been our lowest performing metric which is actually a 3.72 out of five. So it's not that low, but it's our lowest of of the scores. Uh and one that we're uh looking at exploring meaningful ways to to strengthen it. So during our institute day this past Friday, uh we revisited this goal with staff and emphasized uh that recognition shouldn't just come from administrators. It's about a building culture, building a culture where everyone plays a part in recognizing and celebrating one another's efforts each day. Thank you. >> Thank you both. Hi there. Good evening. My name is Steve Dively, the

047principal of Headley Junior High. I want to thank the board for giving me an opportunity to present to you Hadley, uh, Hadley's goals for the year. So, uh, Hadley Junior High has used a cycle, what we call a cycle of inquiry for the past five years as a base of our school improvement plan. We've tackled a variety of instructional topics such as modeling, questioning, student engagement. Our current goal is about relevance and why students personally connect or why they personally don't connect their learning to their everyday life. And we're on year two of that. In addition, we have several other goals. We'll focus on specific learning targets and our school culture as well. The Hadley team is going to come up and uh will talk us through those three goals. Thank you very much. Good

048evening. I'm Gia Conungle and I am the um Hadley BLT co-chair. Um, over the last couple of years, our BLT team noticed a trend in the five essential survey results that 24% of Hadley students reported that what they are learning in class did not connect to their daily lives. Recognizing this as an important issue, we set out to make learning more meaningful and relevant for our students. Our solution focused on increasing student engagement by designing lesson launches that connected each unit of study to realworld experiences and application. By making Hadley daily lessons more relevant through the uses of engaging hooks and real world launches, we believe students will become more focused, motivated, and connected to their learning. Our goal is that by June of 2026, Hadley students will report a stronger connection between classroom learning

049and real life experiences. We will measure this growth using the five essentials aiming to increase positive responses on the prompt often connects learning to life outside of the classroom from 76% to 80% making a 4% increase. Our academic goal directly aligns with the district strategic plan goal number one that ensures all student achieve excellence and are prepared to thrive in a global society. By making instruction more relevant and engaging using hooks and real life launches, we are supporting the district's vision of providing high quality inclusive learning experience that meets the diverse needs of all of our students. Right. Hello. Good evening. I'm Bob Gazetti. I'm one of the assistant principles. You know, our second academic goal, this particular goal, it was actually developed with an interest on social equity because we wanted to really focus

050on our student subgroups. So, with our building leadership team, we analyzed all of our subgroups and we found that the largest concentration of students were actually evidenced in our free and reduced lunch population. Um when we actually did a deeper dive into our subgroups, that particular subgroup, we noticed that they all had not all but many had crossover into other subgroups such as our students with IEPs and then also our English learners. So our notion was that if we could move and improve our students at free and reduced lunch, so too almost by default, we would be moving our students who have IEPs and also our English learners. So when we analyzed our MAP scores um from the fall of 2025, we saw that 65% of the students who are free and reduced um they

051scored within the range of slightly below average which would be the 41st percentile all the way up to high average which is above the 80th percentile. So it's a big spread but um is a by comparison our whole school was at 82%. So when we compare the 82% of our whole school to the 65% of free and reduced, we see the 17 point discrepancy. So it's that area that we want to improve. So our goal then was to improve the percent of students um in the free and reduced subgroup um from 65% to 69%. When we take the spring map reading assessment. Um and our our goal then would align with the strategic plan to lessen the achievement gap between student subgroups. Hello, I'm Angelica Love. I'm the other assistant principal at Hadley. Um, our

052third goal for social emotional is tied directly to the district's goal number two to nurture a culture of belonging. Uh, specifically, the strategic plan for the district aims um to look at the five essential survey um to have students score at or above the 70th percentile in the supportive environment category. Um, at Hadley, we're currently in the 50 uh we're 52% in supportive environment. The supportive environment is made up of four subcategories. Safety, academic personalism, student teacher trust, and peer support for academic work. Uh, when we dove deep into those four categories, we noticed that um at Hadley, our academic personalization category was at a 43%. So, our goal is to increase the academic personalization category from 43% to 46%. Um the academic personalization category is comprised of um a couple specific questions. Um but

053some of those questions are students report that their teachers notice that they have trouble learning. Students report their teachers are willing to provide extra help. Students report that their teachers help them get caught up. Students report that their teachers give specific suggestions on how to improve. And students report that their teachers explain things in a different way if they don't understand. Um, so as a BLT, we are working on action steps to address this goal. But the first step we're going to take is a student focus group to be able to get a better understanding of why students answer the questions the way that they did. So hopefully we can meet our goal of increasing um in the area of academic personalism from 43 to 46. Thank you. >> Okay, so that is all the

054buildings. Now, I know there's a bunch of different questions. >> Well, there's at least one >> at least one from the kindergarten center. So, Sarah can come up. >> Yeah, please. >> It's gonna be you. >> I guess because I listen to all of them. I guess I could ask to Sarah and Jeff because both of you mentioned screening. Um, so if you could just discuss a little bit about the screening process you discussed. I know you discussed something that kindergarten center Jeff me specific type of screening at at Ben Franklin. Kind of discuss what >> what we did. >> Yeah, >> sure. So, we brought in all of the incoming full day kindergarteners to the kindergarten center um in the couple of days before school started and they sat with a staff member for

055about 20 minutes and went over some early readiness um screening in literacy math um and we used different um assessments that we used during the school year. where we used parts of ISIL, we used parts of our early literacy screening district created um small assessments and then that gave us some baseline data on all of our students coming to us that we could look at um and continue to look at while we have MAP data that we can use now in classroom assessments. So, it's just a good baseline data um as we have our kindergarters coming to us for the first time. >> Thank you, Sarah. >> Sarah, can I ask a followup? >> Stay there, Sarah. Do you think some of that information might find its way into the school improvement plan at some

056point? >> Yes, I think that we might be changing. We This is the first time we did it, so we wanted to be a little more consistent. And one reason why we we questioned whether we should use some of the early literacy screener parts of our screening. Um the stakes get higher as the year goes along. So students who met their goal at the beginning of the year, um the assessment changes throughout the year. So, we'd be comparing different assessments essentially when we looked at kids who were meeting or not meeting in the spring. And we kind of wanted to keep it consistent so that we knew um if you met in the fall, you might be one away, one letter away in the spring and not meet, but you're still grown a lot. So,

057it's just not as easy to compare growth using some of those components this year. But, we're going to continue to look and see what the best measures are for our kids and using all of them throughout the year for our daily work, >> for sure. >> Great. Do you want Amy? >> Sarah, stay up here. You're very popular. >> Uh, I was wondering with the pre kindergarten interviews, how many of the families or a percentage of the families were able to participate? Did you get close to 100%. >> Yes, we did. >> Okay. >> And um I don't know the exact number. It was very close. It was a very busy two days. It was wonderful. Um just a side note, it was amazing to have the kids in the building before the school year

058started and parents. I thought it was a lovely opportunity for everyone. Um, and anyone who wasn't able to be screened for whatever reason, we pulled those students um, in those first couple of days over a period of time. And now that we have new students coming to us too every now and again, we're also doing the screener so we can have the same data on everyone. >> Thanks. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Other >> answer question. >> Jeff was going to answer >> about the screener. >> Yeah. Um, really quick, Amy, we had 38 out of 40 of our students that are kindergarten at Franklin were able to get pre-screened as well. So, we were close, too. >> Was it Fastrack or something? >> Yeah. So, we have FastBridge. So, FastBridge is similar to the MAP

059testing. Some school districts near us don't use NWA. They'll use FastBridge. And so, in the past, last year when we did our tier 2 progress monitoring, those are the interventions delivered by the classroom teacher. We used FastBridge for progress monitoring. So this year when we were looking at with our teachers and our BLT at students that were below the 30th percentile in MAP, some of them were outliers. So we said, well, we don't want to kind of make a decision based on one piece of information that might be an outlier, high or low. So we decided that we would start using some of the assessments that were available to us through FastBridge. And there was one that was connected to fluency and accuracy, which you know can clock words per minute. But more importantly, there

060was two that were connected to one to retelling and one to comprehension. And those are really big drivers for us to decide if there's a student that was kind of borderline whether or not they needed that in addition to more more intense tier three reading program support. >> Okay. Yeah. Anyone else for Jeff or anybody else? >> Yeah. No, >> I just had a quick question. >> Yeah, please. Amy, >> um, you Jeff mentioned moving to smaller group instruction. What what is how big is a small group and is that in the classroom? Is it out of the classroom? How does that work? >> It's part of our literacy block. That part of it actually could be part of our intervention block as well for tier 2. But there's great strength in doing small group

061instruction because you can differentiate the lesson per group. That way instead of trying to fill like eight buckets at the same time, you could kind of fill one bucket for four kids at a time. I've always found that when we talk about small groupoup instruction, it's usually no more than three or four, sometimes five if it's a little bit higher performing, but we usually look to keep it right around three and four. And we did look for our tier 2 or tier three intervention groups who go to one of our interventionists for extra help. And those groups are right around two and three. So they're they're they're really manageable. You're also sometimes fighting students that don't really want to, you know, come for that support. So we um you know we try to make it

062as like a destination for them as possible and those small groups they can really connect with the students a lot more than if they were a little bit larger than that. >> Okay. Thank you >> Jeff. This might well first of all anybody have any other questions? >> I like to use I like having everybody here and seeing everybody pop up and down. >> You would. >> Yeah I'm kind of echoing what Jason's saying. I had sent in a couple of questions ahead of time. Why does Forest Glenn have this metric and why is Church Hill using this number? And it's so nice to have you guys come here and like talk about how it applies to your specific school and I don't know. It's really like been very helpful to understand as opposed to

063just reading the materials ahead of time. So, thank you. >> Yeah. Oh, so stay there. Stay there. And and you don't have to >> want to spread the wealth. >> Do I want to spread the wealth? >> Does anyone else have any other >> Well, you know what? I don't think it is specific to Jeff, but you also somebody else also mentioned I think mentioned small groupoup instruction, wasn't it? >> Who else did? We'll let Jeff sit down and somebody else can answer this. Great. So, some one of the other schools question. >> So, here's my question. >> Remember, it doesn't matter. It doesn't just apply to you. He would just put random people on the spot. Don't feel bad if he does it to you. >> But I I think it's an okay question.

064You tell me. >> Are you talking about Church Hill? Well, I'm going to ask you to uh it's about it's about small group instruction and I was interested in knowing um because you do seem to favor it and seem happy to maybe even to get back to it or doing more of it. But so I have a question. Uh what either suppresses your ability to do it or what enhances it if it's a good thing? And I would think at a district level the board would be well educated to know how do we enhance that opportunity those opportunities. Truly the way we enhance the opportunity to give small group is to deliver it in the classroom with the classroom teacher. Students are most comfortable with their classroom teacher. That's where they're getting their tier one

065instruction. So for tier 2, those students who need a little bit of extra support, they're receiving it in their classroom from their teacher. and it's built into the ELA or math block already. For students who need even more support in tier three, they are going to a specialized interventionist with a pretty scripted researchbased intervention that is timely and progress monitored every week so we have more data points on where exactly we need to fill the gap. Truly small instruction should occur at all levels of learning, but it's just more focused when that we have the data that says this is a skill that this student or group of students needs more practice. >> Okay. Thank you. Not yet. Dave David, I have a second question. >> Sure. I think the one thing to highlight and

066I know Dr. Webster would jump in too is the things that you heard about when we talked about small group and fastbridge and all these different pieces of their school improvement plans. Those are occurring at all of our buildings. It's not just the Ben Franklin specific, but it's all across the district, right, Dr. Webster? >> Yes. >> Good. Okay. Yeah. Good. Very good. So, the question is, all of you um spent a lot of time putting the goals together, right, and working together, and I'm curious, um how confident are you, right, that you've got the right goals, and why? Well, I didn't think it would somebody's gonna run up to that microphone. I'm going to share I'm going to share why I'm confident. >> Okay. Well, there you go. Well, you can step on. >>

067I think it goes back to like the strength in your action steps. And your action steps can be strong if you have the right people there to do it. And I feel like I mentioned like we've had spent a lot of time with our literacy and math coaches who also delivered tier 2 benchmark screening. So, they had onetoone interaction with a lot of our students that might be deemed as struggling. And I feel like just starting with them and that input, but also the PLC's that we get to go to, they meet every day and we go twice a week to math and literacy. Those conversations like when we when we think about our goals, they start shaping those PLC meetings from that input and and we just go from there. >> Thank you, J.

068>> Scott, >> as the senior member of the administrators here, I'm seeing SIP plans over the years being quite lengthy. I was the one who asked Dr. Bruno, Dr. Mchugh last year if we could do something to narrow the scope down. And so looking at our strategic plan in terms of where the metrics are and what it is that we need to be able to help the district all kids achieve for the district, we look at those and take a look. So from an academic standpoint, from a social belonging standpoint, >> um I feel like we do have the right metrics. So >> thank you. >> I'd like I'd like to chime in. I think they covered it. For me, we have a I I hope you were hit over the head with the fact

069that we have a strategic plan. Yeah, >> we have four goals and eight metrics. Every single one of these presentations is directly or indirectly moving those metrics. They have action steps designed for that. And the who was at the table, which was not just the principal and assistant principal, it's the building leadership team, its teachers, its support staff looking at data and identifying what's right to their school. They can't be wrong. I don't know if they're right. They can't be wrong. There's a lot of directions they would have gone, but that's why I have confidence because of the work of this team, what they put in. Um, and I couldn't be prouder. Can we give them a round of applause? >> David, one more question. >> One more question. We're trying. I know you did.

070>> It did sound like a wrap, but I I do want to ask this to the Hadley folks. to the HY folks. Uh I was very much impressed and listened intently around the idea of aligning the learning in the classroom to what you were calling real world launches and and hooks. And so a question that occurred to me was uh you know how did we what causes disalignment? what makes it hard uh to make that learning feel like it's immediate and connected to real world activity and and on the flip side um you know what will enhance that what will make it easier to draw those connections because you've established it as a goal which and you know which means there is some gap to to doing it and so I'm interested in because as

071a district and as a board we would certainly like to support what will help you reach your school goals. >> We try to shrink that down. I think that's a that's an excellent question. But, you know, my my first one is like quite simply because they're 12, >> right? So, like just like when we were 12, >> how much did we connect what we were learning in our middle school or junior high to what's going on, right? So, like just developmentally like that happens. Okay. Secondly is I think another reason like we want to just explicitly maybe that's an area that we we're working on is yeah there's real life connections and there's there's growth that's going to happen but let's how explicit can we make it right and so careers have changed a lot

072uh motivation have changed a lot over the years and so moving our students to a point where they're like they're motivated or and again like or dislike is not the point it's like I'm in a classroom, I'm I'm hearing that that topic, that lesson. I'm like, "Oh yeah, I kind of get that, you know, like like what what's my connection to it?" So, it's really more of to me an emotional kind of a feeling thing. Uh yeah, there's strategies that we can do, we are doing, but it's really like whether it's regardless of the subject area, are the students connecting to the material? And we believe that when when and if they do, that will just motivate, you know, more, right? right? It'll always motivate the the growth. So, I danced around that a little

073bit, but the the big one is is that recognizing the the middle the middle level learner and the brain is like how can we tap into that and just motivate people to to be part of the team. >> I think you responded to it well. Thank you, Steve. I appreciate it. Thank you all. >> All right. Now, Dr. Bruno, I am done with my questions. >> Oh, Chris has a followup. >> So does Julie. Julie, >> thank you. You were given a look, >> I had a comment, a suggestion, and a question. So, first of all, thank you very much. I love the fact that we are becoming data fluent and that we use it regularly and then we're having conversations with building leadership teams and they are understanding what that information is telling us

074so that we can take the proper action steps. So, thank you very much. I think that's wonderful. Um, a suggestion might be any time we can take percentages and turn it into actual numbers of students that we're talking about. I think it's more meaningful for staff. So 4% of low income that happens to be 22% of a thousand students. Let's do that math and figure out we're talking about nine kids. What does that what does that mean for our three grade levels to move nine kids? So I that would be a recommendation anytime we can take the percentages and turn it into actual human beings. I think is useful. And then lastly, I didn't know, do we have a mid-year check on school improvement plans so that we know that these are living breathing documents?

075They're not something that we complete. We have conversations with our staff about come May, let's hope we got to those goals because we we do have midyear assessment points. So, do we have a midyear checkup on how are we progressing towards the goals that we set in August and September with our staffs? >> Yeah, I think it's a two. >> Is that a part of that pro? Do we have a process for that? >> Yes. And >> yes, we do. >> Yes. So, BLTs meet monthly, two hours a month, right? Minimum. And uh the conversation is ongoing. That's the building leadership team. So, they are constantly talking about their data every month. Uh from a board level, I'll let Dr. McHugh work with the board on how he wants it to look. But from a

076building level, every month they're talking about data. They're looking, they're reviewing. When they hit those different uh assessment calendars, when the assessment windows happen, right after that, we're having data conversations at the grade levels, at the building levels, they come back to our ad council with Dr. Webster, myself, and the rest of the cabinet team, and we have those discussions as well. So, it's ongoing at the board table. I think I'm going to look to Dr. McHugh to answer that. >> Yeah. And I think it depends on the metrics. uh when I do one-on- ones with the principles and talk to the assistant principles, we do talk about their progress toward their on that level. I think this year we're building what these conversations are and as we're monitoring the metrics. Um for example, we're

077going to take the five essentials in the spring, right? >> So, and won't have that >> and even the AR we won't have that data until the summer on some of those pieces. We are talking as we build toward those. But I think as we are this year exploring what do our metrics updates look like I do anticipate we'll be back to the board talking about metrics whether it's strategic or the school improvement plan specifics or the broader metrics we'll have to see how that works but yes internally we do talk about the strate uh the school improvement plans >> well speaking of metrics >> we're moving on >> move on thank you thank you all >> yeah thanks all this is great they're going to listen to my presentation Yeah. Could we have the

078principles and assistant principles hang out for this part? They were an instrumental part of this and then we can get you home so you can prepare for tomorrow. >> Yeah. So from some people like to talk about you know data in the classroom. Uh I like to talk about culture data. So this second part is going to be on culture. Uh nurture culture belonging. Dr. McHugh is going to kick us off here and then about this and then I'll go from there. >> So goal two has three metrics. You can see them right here. one metric for staff, one for parents, one for students. The 2324 baseline, you can you can see that there. The 2425 was last year's data and 2027 is by the end of not this school year, but the following school

079year. So, you can see those metrics there. This is also on the website. Uh so, Dr. Bruno, when you're talking, you're going to be talking about how we're moving from that 2425 data to the 27 and what we're doing to get there. Yes. So, um, as you all know, we have two different metrics that we use when we look at culture. Uh, we have the HumanX side, which is staff. Uh, we've been using that for well over 10 years. Uh, we also have the the 5e. And if you remember last year when we talked about this, 5e was something that in our district wasn't really talked about. And so, this la starting last year into this year, we started putting more emphasis on it because of the importance of it. Um and so I think

080you saw from the school improvement plans that uh it was it was embedded in their uh their DNA and their fabrics there. Uh 5e also is community. So it's parents, teachers and students. So we get a lot of rich data from these two. We're when we do this presentation we're going to break these down separately and walk through them a little bit. So when we look at the human X, right? So administered districtwide to all of our employees. This is every single one of our employees. Uh all staff is invited to participate. they can choose not to participate. Uh this year we're excited. 91% participated. The reason for that is the people behind me, the principles, the assistant principles, the cabinet level team. We all made a a conscious effort to meet with our staffs

081and encourage them to participate. Why? We just want to hear their feedback. Before this, we only had about probably our highest was in 2022 was 80%. But we heard from the board that says we want to see as many people participate in this. And so we came out this year and made a conscious effort if it was sitting with a custodian that speaks Albanian. We had an Albanian interpreter. Not because we wanted to say, "Hey, look, we got 100%." We wanted to hear their voice. We're excited to see 91% there. Highest ever. Humanex, just so you know, measures engagement and satisfaction with our employees. In this, there's questions on I I questions like, "How do I fit in this organization? How do I feel about this organization? And then there's we questions. How do we

082feel about our organization? And what is the organization doing uh from big pictures when we look at that and I wanted just to show the data here. If you're familiar, our goal is always to be in the L or in the red circle, the dream box of Human X. You've heard Brad Black and others come and talk to us about it from HumanX. That's our goal. The numbers in there, the big ones are this current year. The small rectangle ones are last year 80%. 81%. In the upper right hand corner, which means our staff is highly engaged and highly satisfied. Let that sink in. 81%. I couldn't be more proud. I told Jeff when we saw this, we were so excited. And we're going to talk a little bit about why today we focused on

083three things this year. Very simple. We focus on relationships. You've heard Dr. McHugh, you've heard everybody in our cabinet talk about relationships. We know relationships drives our organization and the healthier and stronger relationships we have is a reflection into here. We also know communication. One of the things that we've worked on over the last year is stronger communication with our staff. Making sure they're aware of what's going on, making sure they're participating in things that are going on, and also just having ongoing conversations about what we're doing in this district to be better. We've talked about greatness and want to be the greatest district in the nation. This is a reflection and this is why we're moving the way we are. Our last one is quality. Very simple. A collective commitment to have quality. You

084heard these school improvement plans this year. Very different than last year. The documents weren't different, but it's how we attacked it and how we addressed it. And so these three things that we're doing with our staff on an ongoing basis is why we're seeing the results we have. We're super happy and super thankful for this. Um, but the work's not done. We also know the big question now is how do we scale and continue on this path? Some people might be happy with 81%. Some people might say that's good. Can you do better? That's what we're asking ourselves. How else can we do it? When you look at the outside L, you're looking at 2% of the people that took the survey plus another 9%. That didn't take the survey. How do we address this

0852% here to move them more highly satisfied and highly engaged? And how do we get that other 9% to participate? I'm not going to pay them to participate, but I'm going to strongly encourage them. And hopefully because they have pride for the organization and a desire to, we see that next year when we sit here, higher than 91%. That's the goal. More than 91% next year to come back. And then additionally in the upper right hand corner, seeing those numbers grow as well. But I think the biggest takeaway from this slide that we can all look at and when we talk to our building principles, our building assistant principles, and our cabinet is it's working. It's that simple, right? We've talked about being great. We've talked about communicating. We've talked about building relationships. And we've

086talked about a collective commitment over quality. It's working. Is it perfect? No. But we know the steps that we're taking and the things that we're doing for our staff is working and we're proud of that and we're going to share it and we're going to continue to share it. But we're also going to continue to listen, learn, and build on it because we have we still have growth and room to grow. There we go. Five essentials. Took about four clicks, but we got there. Five essentials. All right. So, student participation grades four through eight. We know that. We know the community participation is when we ask the parents to do this and then we also have staff participation. So if you know anything about the five essentials um there's a variety of questions they ask

087the students the parents the staff they're very different. What then they do is they go into different categories of it. And so from there we're going to break that down and we're going to explain this a little bit. So right now when you look at all the questions that are taken from our staff, students and our parents, district 41 as a whole comes in moderately organized. When you look at a school report card or when you look at the relationship to what the 5e and how it breaks down into the five areas, it's neutral. Okay, neutral equals moderately organized is how they they come out with their their data point. We're not happy with that, but we know we have areas when we looked at this data, we have areas to grow. This is new

088to us and this is something that we are specifically and being intentional about. The nice thing is is from our from our buildings, they're talking about 5e at their buildings. This is something that hasn't happened on a regular basis. So, we're being more intentional not just to move the data point up and get into the green area because we know when you look at ambitious instruction or supportive environment, effective leaders, collaborative teachers or involve families, we know those five areas are critical to success for our students and for success of our organization. That's easy to understand, right? Like we all know that it's how do we get there? with the 5e in each one of those categories. It gives us answers and responses from all three of our major stakeholders involved and then we can

089address it and it looks different in every building and that's okay. What we learned from this is we need more participation. That is the one thing and this is not like oh we're going to shy away from the data. We know and there's a slide in two more uh two more slides I'll show you the participation. Our participation is low. Sometimes people ask like what does the trend data show and all that. We don't have trend data because we didn't have enough participation in 22 23 24 not because we chose not to. We didn't do anything with it and that's just the truth. But that's something that we started last year and said we're going to address it here. Kind of when you talk about you know Dr. Martelli the the checkpoints. We won't know

090our results of this school year until the summer when it comes in. So when we come, we're always kind of a year behind when we come to this presentation, but we will share that data with it when it comes in, but we won't administer this until the winter. So we're kind of like hoping and doing the right things based on the survey. We just don't have a data point to give you to you right now. But the conversations and what's going on in the 5e are ongoing. From the beginning of the school year, our our principal started having conversations at their building about areas that could be improved, about having open and honest conversations with the staff about what else can we be doing? Do we have teacher-to-teer trust? Do we have parent trust? How

091are we communicating with parents? Right? You heard a lot of information come about communication from our 5e data. The discussion has to continue on. If we don't talk about it and we let it become stale, guess what happens? Nothing changes. So, if we can continue to keep this at the forefront and keep talking about it and encouraging our parents to participate and our staff to participate, we will hopefully see a very well-rounded representation of district 41, which then will show into here focus on specific specific areas. I talked a little bit about this. Every building's different. Every building's different when you drill down into these questions and where they're at in their journey. We have two buildings right now that have new principles. Their 5e might look different because they didn't have the same administrator

092when this test this uh this survey was given. That makes it look differently. We have different administrators asking different questions and that's okay because if they're targeting and doing the right things in their building, the results will come. But it comes with discussion and the active uh conversation. Thank you. There we go. Okay. So, when we circle back to the measurements and the goals here and where are we at on our journey, the exciting thing is for Human X, we're we're we're ahead of 2027. We're super excited about that. But here's the thing is we want to maintain or grow with our Human X data. We're not just going to say, well, we're at 27, you know, in 27 we're supposed to get 70%. Let's just slow this down. No, no. We want to like

093blow it out of the water, right? because we know the value of culture and what it does for a staff and how it moves a staff is critical to the success of our students. So, we are going to continue to move forward and then in 27 when we do a review of our complete strategic plan, we'll see where we're at and what we do with those data points. When we look at our parents and our culture and our climate, we're making growth right for a one specific question is what we targeted because when we looked at this data, this voice invalued at the school was an area that we needed to address. this voice is valued at the school is such a critical point for a parent so that they're heard and seen for their

094student. One of the things that we always say for our parents who are here is they're the biggest advocates. They're the biggest cheerleaders for their students. We need to make sure that we're hearing that and that number should be higher because we should be partners in our our students uh education with our kids, with our parents, with our families. We're walking handinand high days and low days. Um so we will continue to grow and and target that. I will show our data here in the next slide on this one. Our students our most important piece, right? Our important piece of this uh education or the school district supportive environment. Are our kids being supportive? We've talked about mental health. We've talked about access to things. Are we supporting them in any way possible that they

095need support to be successful and a contributing member to this society so that when they leave us and go to Glumbard West or wherever school they go to, they leave us as a whole child well-rounded and ready to tackle whatever it is. That's our job. We we can be doing better within the supportive environment. I told you I'd share two data points here. These are critical, right? When we talk about participation because some people say, well, that's an easy way to just say it. you know, participation, we get more. It's a truth. We're not going to shy away from how we are as a building, our students, our teachers, and our parents. You can see from those percentages that they can be better. And I'll sit here and tell you in a year from now,

096they will be better. Not because I'm going to say, "Hey, Hadley, do better." It's because we want people to take the survey. They want to share their feedback with us. That's how we get better. Not by telling people, "You have to do it." We want you to do it because we want them to know when you give us feedback, we respond to it. We hear you, we see you, and then we make responses. Some people agree with, some stuff they don't agree with. And that's okay. But that's how like the cycle works. If we're not having conversations about these things, and people don't feel that their voice is being heard, what are the first thing they do? They stop giving the feedback. So, we're going to continue to ask our teachers to do this more

097and our parents to do it more because it's important to us. The 5e is important to us just like human X is important to us. Switch over to the right side of the screen. Voices value at the school. This was the one thing if you go back right here when we talk about the parents, right? 6878. We're right on track here. Here's the cool thing. We do have a little bit of data in 24 that we were able to find. We are making growth in this. When you look at people from somewhat to two uh somewhat or also to a great extent, the growth is happening. not at all or a little is shrinking. That's exciting for us to see because we targeted in the strategic plan with that goal you just saw. We want

098to continue to see that grow and go all the way through this cycle within our strategic plan. But then we also want to see what else is out there. The 5e has so many different areas that we can be targeting and we want to make sure that we're targeting the right ones for success of our students, staff, and also that our parents feel that the education they're getting here in Glenn Island 41 is the one that they want. One more time. I think the battery is low. All right, next steps. So, one of the cool things is is that we have never taken all the culture data and put it into a strategic uh a strategic plan subcommittee. I used to always come up here and just pres present on Humanex and it was one

099of those ones that we just talked about and we moved on. um because of the nurture a culture belonging we are going to embed the 5e and the humanex into the subcommittee. So when we meet next Monday Molly myself and and Dr. from McHugh when we meet next Monday. We're going to talk about all this data with this subcommittee. We're going to get their feedback and their opinions on how do we connect with our families to get the participation. What are they seeing in the buildings? How can we be doing better for our customers, which are our parents and our students? We're going to continue to engage with our students, staff, and community. You know, this starts from the top with Dr. McHugh. He has a community and also a student advisory committees. Some of

100our buildings are starting to do that with students and asking questions have any lunch bunches and talking about critical topics that are going on their building. This is critical staff. We continuously talk to our staff about things. One of the things Jeff and I do is we go to the exec council with our uh both of our associations now and we sit with them and say, "How is it going? What do you want to share?" These are all things that drive the culture and these are all things that will support in making our culture better. building level conversations. You heard it a lot last night from all of our building leaders. They are having these ongoing conversations. The SIP plans don't just all of a sudden become a uh a document on the shelf collecting

101dust. We're living it every single day and all and in the work we do with our students and we continuously talk about it and that's the only way it will make us a better organization. Districtwide conversations on culture. There's been times where people aren't happy with what we've made decisions on. We all know that. But that's okay because we continue to have district-wide conversations on what we're doing here. We continue to be transparent and open the dialogue so that we can have conversations because at the end of the day, I don't think there's someone in this room, parents, staff, or whoever that's saying, "No, we don't agree on it. We all want the best for our kids. We are all here to make Glenn Allen 41 a better school district and the best school district

102in the nation." That's fact. We say that to everybody now. And I think we all have that drive. So, we continue that conversation because the more we do that, the flywheel, it just gets going and it's just it's only going to get better from here. Five essentials, we have to stress this a lot because we are using this as a data point. We have to get the increase in our parent participation. Our buildings know that. They've heard it. They've seen the data. They want it more because if they have more data from their parents and their students, it just drives our school improvement plans. It drives us when we make decisions. When Dr. Martelli says, "How many kids is that?" Right. It's the same thing with this. How many parents is that? When we look

103at those percentages, what does that mean to us from a building or a district level stance on those questions? Humanex, we need to create the right conditions. If anything's taught us with Humanex, as we've grown into it and we've understanding it, creating the right conditions are critical. Those right conditions look different from acknowledging student or staff within 10 days to having them involved in decision-m to seeing what the organization is doing with financials. All those questions are asked there. And so if we are creating these conditions where they feel supported, respected and that their voice is heard, it just continues to grow. And that is the goal to update. Any questions? >> Can you remind me, David, um, does one of those get mailed home to parents to take or is it all electronic? >>

104So good question. School perceptions was mailed home, right Erica? >> Yeah. School per mail mailed home. 5e is sent with an email because it's a link. So it comes out December January and it's kind of open for about a month. So that's a mail home. Uh humanex to our staff is sent as a link. >> Okay. Because that 25 I mean I'm a parent and I'm like embarrassed. I'm like I know we have opinions so we need to take it. I just couldn't remember. >> It's one of those ones that we have those discussions of how do we present it? Do we do it in digest? Do we do it our own? Is it coming from the building levels on a separate email? It's a lot of those things too is and then just mentioning

105it and mentioning it and really encouraging them because if they hear us talking about it, ears perk up and say we I should probably do this. >> Yeah, totally. Thank you. >> Be lovely to see it. Honestly, it'd be lovely to see it line with parent teacher conferences. You show up, there's, you know, laptops at the schools. All the parents are shows for parent teacher conferences. The ability, hey, while you're here, boom, just while you're waiting to see your teacher, you can take this this survey. Everybody's there and everybody's got downtime while they're waiting for their conferences. I wish in November they're not ready yet. It's a timing issue, but I think you you bring in a good idea of is there ways that if we have parents in the building, is there ways that

106we can be proactive in just those small settings, even if we get five or six more people, it's a win. So, it's good feedback. Amy, >> I had a question on the belonging numbers. It was 57%. Yeah. And my question then, am I interpreting it right that that then means that roughly four and 10 kids don't feel like they belong? supportive environments do they so is it then that roughly one or four and >> I would be careful with that like yes no like right I don't want to because it's not per head the way the 5e is done is with the algorithm when it all goes into it there is a list of 20ome questions from students and then supportive environment also pulls in some teacher responses and also pulls in some parents so

107then it goes into an algorithm it washes it and then it kicks it out so to say this is just from students. It's a student heavy section, but there are other questions that come in from those two other groups that create that percentage. >> Okay. >> Any more? >> Good question. >> Anything else, Amy? >> Uh, no. I'm good. Thanks. >> Let me see. Anybody else? Yeah. >> For Dr. McHugh, question. >> Oh, you have a question. Yes. >> Yeah. >> Dr. McHugh, a question. >> Yeah. Well, so I'm really um I I think very highly of the five essentials. I'm glad that there's this increased focused on it. I think it's an incredible um very robust, insightful set of questions and insight. So there's a lot here really to dig into and feel good

108about other things to maybe ask questions about. And I was interested, Jeff, as you looked at it, you know, what from your vantage point, as you look at it, were you most encouraged about? And then on the flip side, where did you see some areas, what popped out as an area of growth potential for you? >> I think when you look at I'm I'm thinking in particular um parents, students, and staff when they're talking about their experience was overall positive. When we look at some of our top performers, staff feels like I'm I'm happy where I work. Parents are feeling like I like where I can send my child to school and students for the most part are like, yeah, I like being at school. So, I think some of those general questions were some

109of our highest ones. I think my my eye goes to but what can we do? What can we improve upon? And I think they were different at the all the different buildings. They were different. uh overall is participation. >> We haven't shown the spotlight. I haven't shown the spotlight on 5e to drive those up yet. >> Um but we are now. There's a great big spotlight on it and we're going to go and we need teachers. We need students and we need parents. 12% of parents that that doesn't tell us enough. We need that feedback good, bad or otherwise because I believe Dr. Bruno participation goes into >> you. We can't get the highest when we have low participation. We can't even get reports I believe if unless we hit certain participation guidelines. >> Yeah.

110Yes. And I think to follow up off of Dr. McHugh is one thing that we had conversations with every single building. There's a question on students. Am I challenged at school? >> Yeah. >> That's asked at every building and I don't I couldn't quote what our data was, but I know in every single building it wasn't where we wanted it. So what is that doing? Our students are telling us they want to be challenged. They want different things, right? What does that look like at the buildings? I think that's the question that we are all unpacking, but it was one of the conversations that we had over the summer when we started looking at is that one's glaring, right? That one's also something when you share it with staff, they take they they take that

111personal because that's their their craft, their artwork, right? And so they are working towards that so that when students say, I am challenged here at Hadley or I am challenged at the elementary schools, we want them to be challenged and successful. >> Did some Nope. Yes. >> Anyone else? >> Well, I Yes. In fact, we've talked a lot about students in this survey. Do you recall taking the five essentials? Yes. And you're now seeing results, right? I'm if you want to talk right here. >> Do you have do you do you have any thoughts about the questions that were asked? How you commented? How you feel your colleagues, you know, the student body is responding? Any >> I don't know. You're on the spot, but it's >> me. Yeah. Well, please take take the mic.

112Yeah. Uh, I feel like I haven't really noticed the results, but now that I like see them laid out, it like I'm starting to like think through and I feel like maybe I have, but I just haven't like really been like registering it. >> Well, thank you. Anyone else, Joseph or Sophia? >> Pass the mic. >> There you go. Keep it going. There you go. >> Yeah. Um, I thought it was a great set of questions for me and my or my peers and I. It wasn't really a discussion between us. It wasn't it was just a quick survey, but yeah, I thought it was a great set of questions and I wouldn't add or take it away or anything. And I think that the data from that would show great like effective results. >>

113Well, first of all, thank you for taking the survey. The rates of participation were very high uh for students. So, it's means a lot to have you put your voice into those questions. Thank you, David. Anything else? >> That's all I have for tonight. >> Put any other questions or comments on on both of these? Well, you've done good work. >> The only other comment I'd like to make, four of the five domains went up from last year to this year. >> So, yes, sir. >> I know we're in neutral and we'd like to be higher, but four of those five domains went up went up and one stayed the same. So, it's not as though it went down. >> Yeah. >> This is all this is all good. the the the trajectory is the

114right is going in the right direction. >> Yeah, I love that you brought that up because we almost put that picture uh on that one slide like the plus one the plus six we are making growth right in the two areas that we made growth our our leadership and our ambitious instruction which are critical for our students. So thank you for highlighting that. >> All right so with that we could maybe take a minute and let our building leadership >> and thank you all for coming you all the meeting tonight and get to see >> means a lot to have you here in the works. So, we'll let you we'll let you take a minute to leave and then we'll move on. Thank you very much, folks. >> And while they're leaving, can I just

115pump the district special education review that's in that's going on right now in that we have six upcoming listening sessions, I believe. Um, and you can just find them at the district's website, D41 Special Education Review. Please, um, everyone out there that's listening, um, that has an interest, thought, um, comment, concern regarding special education program in the district, please make your voice heard at one of these six upcoming sessions. >> You could have done that during a board report, but >> Well, no, we got people are walking out. >> Got that public service announcement in. Okay. Well, good. >> All right, then we will move forward here to our public participation. Thank you. >> Members of the public who wish to address the board, excuse me, should complete a form and submit it to Mrs.

116Moch. We ask that speakers respect that we are obligated to adhere to YouTube community guidelines and are asked to maintain respectful decorum and limit comments to three minutes or less with about 30 seconds to go. Uh in your comments, I will politely interrupt and remind you of the time you have remaining. Mrs. smoke, please. Anyone willing to make public comment? >> Annabelle Johnson. >> Annabelle. Oh, young lady right here. >> I was wondering. >> Oh, I want I thought it was a prop special effect. Well done. Okay. Yes, please. >> Yeah. Make sure Make sure the button's on. >> The button should be green. >> Annabelle, >> thank you. >> Hello. My name is Annabelle Johnson. I'm in third grade at Abraham Lincoln and I have dyslexia. I had to take time after school and

117over my summer break to go to dyslexia therapy in order to learn in a different way, which meant I wasn't able to do as many activities as my friends. It's estimated that one in five people have dyslexia symptoms. Dyslexia is not a disability. It's just a different way of thinking. I think that at the beginning of kindergarten, all students should be tested to see if they have dyslexia. Learning cursive and word coding helps people with dyslexia. And if it was taught in school, it would be helpful for everyone. Since so many kids have dyslexia, I think you should have one or two teachers who are trained in dyslexia. Thank you for listening. I hope you take this into consideration so other kids can have an easier time than I did. >> Thank you, Annabelle. >>

118Adeline Johnson. >> Hi, I'm Meline Johnson and my daughter and um she wrote that completely on her own. So >> very impressive. >> Want to put that out there that those are her thoughts. Um my thoughts um again Maline Johnson and I'm Annabelle's mom. Um she goes to Lincoln Elementary. Um and you know we moved into the district about 13 years ago. Um partly for Glenn Ellen as a town in itself. Um we loved it here as well as you know um the reputation and excellence um that was found in the education system. And I I knew that my children I felt like would be in really good hands. Um, and with the high taxes we paid to live here, I really thought that there would be plenty of educational support. Um, but when Annabelle

119was struggling to read in kindergarten, um, my confidence really began to shake with that. Um, because everyone thought she was doing okay and that she would just catch up. But her dad and I knew better. We knew how smart she was and that it just wasn't going. She was struggling. She would cry when she tried to read. she would cry when she tried to learn. So, um, right before first grade, we had her evaluated and it she did show to be dyslexic. Um, and it was also confirmed that she was twice exceptional or 2e, which is uh being highly intelligent, yet wrestling with some type of learning disability. Um, so the frustration I felt when I was told that the school would not offer any more help um until she had fallen significantly behind was

120very disheartening. Um, we knew it would take time for her with her intelligence and the amount of vocabulary that she had already developed to drop below that qualifying line. And in the meantime, I just had to continue to watch her self-esteem plummet. I watched her cry every day as I tried and often failed to teach her phonics at home. Um, and her speaking ability was beyond her years, as you can tell. And yet, she couldn't unlock the simple code of reading. So, my frustration compounded when I learned that many other parents in the district have been forced to sue the district, resulting in the district paying for their children to attend separate specialized schools for dyslexia. I also learned that two other schools in district 41 have dedicated Wilson trained specialists on staff, but Lincoln

121did not have this option for us, nor was I made aware that this was even happening anywhere in the district. Um, so I what I had initially experienced with our system, I didn't really have much experience and I didn't fight back and I just accepted >> seconds. >> I'm sorry. Oh, thank you. Um, I just accepted the medical diagnosis even though I couldn't go towards our insurance with this. Um, so we sent Annabelle to um a take-flight dyslexia therapy three times a week, often pulling her from her precious recess lunch hour or countless hours of driving after school. Um, Lincoln prides itself on being a spot for everyone, but Annabelle and I knew that that wasn't the case and she had mentioned this from time one. Um anyway, I didn't get every through everything, but

122I have the dis if you guys could look at the dyslexia guide documentation that the state produced in 2023. Um it it was very helpful and I think it's very helpful for two e students and um yeah, thank you for my time. >> Thank you, >> Don Rice. >> I need the readers. Have you ever gone to the grocery store and forgotten what you were there to buy? Maybe you meant to grab cereal but got distracted by the bananas or worse, forgot why you were there at all. That's what reading can feel like for someone who is dyslexic. You start by you start reading, but your brain loses track. You might miss words that are right in front of you, struggle to sound out familiar names or skip words without realizing it. My son, a

123second grader at Ben Franklin, is dyslexic just like me. And a few weeks ago, he bolted from school. I had just dropped him off when he ran out the doors down the street. It was terrifying. He's a bright, happy kid, a class leader, and a rule follower. But that day, he was overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by anxiety of not being able to read. Imagine trying for years with tutors, with endless hours of practice, even delaying kindergarten by a year and still struggling to read a level one book. Eventually, frustration turns into shame. It can wreck a child's self-esteem. Many people think dyslexia is just reversing B's and D's. It is not. It's about decoding words, comprehension, phmic awareness, the ability to turn lines and squiggles into sounds that have meaning. Dyslexia affects one in five people. About

12420% of the population. Yet 35% of dyslexic students drop out of high school. And up to 85% of youth in juvenile detention have dyslexia. But when supported, dyslexics thrive. They make up 35% of entrepreneurs and 40% of self-made millionaires. So why in a district where 20% of children are likely to have dyslexia do we only have two level one Wilson certified teachers? One's at Ben Franklin and the other is at Forest Glenn. Why aren't we expanding evidence-based programs like Take Flight, a two-year curriculum developed by Scottishright Hospital in Texas, which has helped so many dyslexic students succeed, is meant to integrate into the school day, usually taught in 45minute blocks before school starts, four to five days a week. The owner of Written Word is in Wheaten training educators. School districts like Lake Bluff, Planefield

125are using Take Flight. Over the past seven years, our district spent taxpayer dollars to send five fully funded students to Hide Park Day School in Lamont. The tuition this year is 56,000. Every student typically stays two years. That's more than a half million dollars in tuition alone, not including transportation and summer school. Therapeutic schools do incredible work. They are the right option for some students, but we can and should do more to help our students thrive within our district with more options. We can have a level one certified Wilson instructor at every school in the district, including Hadley. Build the K1 early reading intervention program. Continue Wilson instruction beyond the halfway mark, not at level six, goes through level 12. Add take flight or similar programs to students for students who need different approaches. continue

126to fund placement like Hide Park Day School when necessary, but focus on creating stronger supports locally. Thank you for your time and for listening to families who just want their children to have the tools to read, learn, and believe in themselves. >> Thank you, Don. >> Thanks, >> Megan. Hes Okay, hold on. Let me give me a breath. Let me take a deep breath. Okay. All right. My name is Megan Hass. I'm concerned that when we go to Hadley that they don't offer the same level of support and that the Wilson program isn't rolled out till level 12. It stops at level six. I'm not sure the reason for that, but cutting off students before they're finished with the full program can't be the best option. It's disheartening to hear how many families that we've

127had to leave D41 completely get the dyslexic help that their children need. I can't imagine the social and emotional damage that could cause a kid that needs to leave to get the help that they need. I don't want that to be our story. It would break my heart and I'm still hopeful that it doesn't have to be. So, my asks tonight are simple. Um, please ensure that children with dyslexia receive the support that they need within the local schools so they don't have to leave the district. I challenge you to look at the holistic approach of a program which may look something like a special dyslexia class at one of the schools or a program that's been mentioned earlier. Two, early dyslexia screenings at the new kindergarten center should be a requirement. Hit it head-on

128early on and you can address it sooner. Maybe save those millions of dollars that they just mentioned. Um, three, we should have Wilson level one certified specialists. Um, I challenge you to look at what the difference is between certified versus a Wilson level one. It's a significant difference. Um, four, and this is kind of specific maybe to Forest Glenn, but evaluate where your spaces are being used for your children to get your special reading help. Mine is in the library in an open library with other help going on with open social media or media classes going on and library checkout. Ask a dyslexic person to focus while that's all going on. So, thank you and we hope we can put our trust in you to evaluate this with the the great evaluation you're doing for

129your your intake. >> Julie McCann, sorry. I'm going to read this so I can try and get through my three minutes. By introduction, my name is Julie McCann. and I have three kids in D41. Fourth grade, fifth grade, sixth grade. We're a parent school is Ben Franklin. Today, I would like to share my experience with having a dyslexic child, my sixth grader, my oldest at D41. I'd like to share my frustration, my gratitude, and my hope for D41 regarding dyslexia. Uh with the special ed review happening right now, I thought this was the perfect time. Uh, dyslexia looks different in everyone, moderate to severe. Many have it, one in five. Actually, it can be recognized as early as age five. Dyslexic kids are so intelligent. They see the big picture. They are hyper aware of

130their surroundings. They mask their struggles with workaround methods. They try so so hard. They see their peers are doing it. They're getting the same information as their peers. They're getting it. Why aren't why aren't we? They internalize. School becomes a little bit miserable. Anxiety builds. And as adults, we know what it feels like to be behind. We hate that feeling. No one likes that feeling. Imagine being a kindergartener and feeling that way. We participated, practiced flashcards daily, started uh tutoring in kindergarten all the way to third grade. I was desperately trying to help my daughter and it felt like just no one was understanding, comprehending, hearing me. I heard phrases at school. No, no, no. She's so smart. It will click. She can read. She's fine. Let's try this. Let's do that for 6 weeks.

131Not until third grade. But progress was just not being made. She was not meeting any of the goals that the school tried to put in place for her. My biggest frustration as a parent, you trust in the district. We moved to this community because of the great school district and I just felt like we were not getting what we needed. Um, this was my experience. Neighbors, community helped figure this out for me. I didn't know what the heck a 504 was. IEP, don't know, have never heard of it. I'm not in education. We don't know what we don't know. And I got nothing from the school. I felt like I was banging and screaming for it. Kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade were somewhat lost in our household. Gratitude. I don't have anything bad

132to say about teachers and staff at Ben Franklin. I loved every single one of them, but what they did was not enough for my daughter. The systems in place currently are not working. A fourth and fifth grade, we were funded by Hide Park Day School uh in Lamont. My daughter asked every day, "Mom, if I just try harder, do I have to go?" Going for two years riding on the bus to and from, she felt different and begged to come home to be closer to her friends. Please, I beg you, start dyslexic training in the kindergarten. Please staff more than two people trained in a program. And if you do any program, it doesn't have to be Wilson, it could be anything, do it in its intent, its entirety. Don't stop halfway through. >> Thank

133you very much. Thank you, >> Sebastian Basaki. I am Sebastian. And even though I haven't been directly tested for d for dyslexia, I still know how hard it is to read and write. Except I only learned because my parents put things into their own hands and hands to pay for me to go to tutoring for those subjects. Even though school should have done that years in advance. My tutor said I came in at a first grade level and I at the time I was in fifth grade. Why did the school not know that already? Do you guys test us? And just because I was lucky that my parents found a tutor that could help, not all parents can. That's why the school should have had should have had a program so that nobody needed to

134pay for a tutor and that they could already get the help they need from the place they'll be using those skills most or at least made it so that the curriculum would help kids that struggled with dyslexia or reading and writing in general. So I believe that the school should make it so that kids in that need that so that any kids that need help get it from a school. Is it in your power to do that? If not, who is in charge to make that happen? Because you haven't changed anything yet and I'm in seventh grade. Parents don't need to pay out of pocket for a private tutor to fix something that the school should have already had handled. Thank you, >> Sebastian. Helen Baki. Sorry, I told myself I wasn't going to cry

135this time, but everyone's stories were um very uh affirming to the experience we've been through. As you guys know, this is Sebastian's second time coming to speak. I don't remember if it was last year or the year before, but that kind of just goes to show you um how many years we've been begging for you guys to do something and you haven't. Um uh obviously I'm going to sound like a broken record here, but part of the problem had to do with the Lucy Caukins units of study program that promoted balance literacy. Behind that label lied a deeply flawed idea that children learn to read simply by being surrounded by books, by guessing at words, and by discovering patterns on their own. It was wrong and it was costly, especially for children with dyslexia. Dyslexia

136advocates even brought up an additional concern that the use of this curriculum mudded muddied the waters on which children were truly dyslexic and which children were struggling purely because they were taught incorrectly. As we were told, if we go to a neuroscientist, which is thousands of dollars out of pocket insurance doesn't cover, and if we did get diagnosed with dyslexia, the school and the district still do not have to offer help. It would be a shot in the dark and a huge financial risk. We chose not to do it. And although we finally the district finally made a much overdue change in the curriculum in the beginning of last school year, this district never acknowledged the harm done or that they would do anything about the older kids who were affected. I had various meetings

137with several of the administration with Dr. Bruno, Dr. K. Some, many actually even went so far as to claim there was never a problem at all. I was even told units of study was considered a rigorous literacy curriculum. Every study says the opposite. Neuroscientists say the opposite. The proof is in the children to show it's the opposite. Reading is not a natural process for everyone. It must be taught deliberately and explicitly. Children, especially those with dyslexia, need systematic instruction and phonics, decoding, and fluency. And our students for about a decade didn't receive that. Those of you new to the district or with younger children probably don't know that that is how long we used a non-science-based reading curriculum. The gap that was created for that segment of kids goes so far so far beyond getting

138in-class help. If for whatever reason a child did not receive a solid foundation in funological and phmic awareness, their fifth, sixth, seventh grade teacher isn't going to be able to fix that. A literacy expert, a concentrated and targeted intervention must take place. An explicit assessment needs to take place. The MAP test does not does not assess for um these foundational literacy skills. It's just a comprehension test. And many, as some said, dyslexics can mask very well and they can pass that test. My son passed with 75 80% MAP scores and first grade level um writing spelling and writing capabilities. Here's an example of the in-class differentiation that you tell us will be the fix. Make a list of the words you can't spell and keep going over them. Keep in mind this was a fourth

139grade or later assessed at a first grade level. And you guys as a district do not allow access to help. I've navigated every possible avenue for someone in our position that doesn't qualify for an IEP and doesn't have a low MAP score. And by your own definitions and the MTSS program, you guys have the power to modify or change or preventing access because you care so much about that MAPAP data. >> You have no method for assessing phonics foundational skills beyond the first grade screener. Helen, I really do want you to be able to complete your thoughts, and I don't want this meeting, particularly after hearing some absolutely profound and moving statements, to devolve uh into something that's quite awkward that requires a recess. Um, can you wrap up, please, in the next 30 seconds?

140>> As I fought this for so many years, you guys have done nothing. You can't even be bothered to reward a policy to help children. You could do that tomorrow, and I find that shameful. I've listened to a lot of the meetings on the data and the improvement plans and never once has this aspect of this policy ever even mentioned being changed and getting kids the help they need when they need it beyond in-classroom differentiation. D41 failed to give struggling readers the tools they needed to unlock the code of language and this failure doesn't fall evenly >> success and people will not hear your words. >> Low-income students are the most affected by this. >> I'd rather not be >> the evidence is overwhelming. When students can't decode, they can't comprehend. And when they can't

141comprehend, every other subject collapses. Their confidence, their future at West and in college collapses. Thank you. >> Thank you, Helen. I appreciate you completing your remarks. Thank you, Mrs. Moch. Anyone else? >> I do have a a second request from Megan Hess. However, she did use her three minutes. >> Okay. Yeah. Okay. the the the note will be included in the minutes that she requested. >> All right. Thank you, Megan. >> Does the board have any questions for us? There was a lot of talk. >> Yes, but as I think folks know, but I don't certainly mind reminding as part of the school code that governs regular business meetings that have certain restrictions to the kinds of give and take that we can do in this setting. We do not ask questions or engage in

142conversations here. There are other avenues and venues uh that we can take to do it. It is not a sign of disinterest. So take do not read any kind of judgment on our part in terms of what we hear. But as part of a regular business meeting, uh it is really not appropriate for us to engage in conversation uh and questions here. Um but thank you Don for asking. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Well then we will then move on to board reports and we will start as we always do with our superintendent report. Dr. McHugh. >> Okay. Thank you. We have five topics tonight as you can see here. Starting with transportation. transportation. Uh I feel like I'm talking about it at every board meeting and um we know that Safeway, we've been monitoring Safeway since

143the beginning of the year and we have high expectations for our bus service. Um they are not there yet. We continue to monitor the services that we're receiving and um basically we are holding them accountable for having better service and um we have been exploring other options in the event that they can't that they can't deliver that. Um however at this time we have no we have no need to take action today but we do continue to monitor the situation. >> Okay. strategic plan subcommittees. We have met with the first three, goals one, three, and four. And as Dr. David Bruto mentioned, we will be meeting with the fourth one next Monday. And during the the board reports, if the board members who sat on those would like to share anything, they're welcome to. But

144these subcommittees are focused on um looking at our metrics and getting feedback from staff and parents on what we can do to improve those metrics. >> Do you want to take some You you invited board members who were on those subcommittees. >> Did you want to add anything about the first one? >> Sure. >> Is now the the time to do that? >> Yeah. Sure. >> So, I was a part of the growth focused academic excellence piece. Um Chris led that beautifully along with uh Dr. McHugh and I thought we had a great conversation. We had about a dozen parents or so there and we talked about how the district has fine-tuned the way in which we're measuring progress in the district and we had a conversation around really emphasizing the how are we doing

145these things how are we going to get to these goals and so uh I think we'll probably see some action steps possibly added and we talked about fine-tuning some of the goals themselves but I thought it was a conversation. So, >> yeah. Thank you. >> Thank you, Chris. Any other board members who may have been on it? >> Are we number one or are we going through >> Are you comfortable with >> We could do either the early learning or community connections. Anything to share? >> Okay, I'll share for community connections. Um, we just kind of went over what communication we thought we were doing well with and what needed to or could be improved. And we wanted to give a shout out to our PTAs which do some wonderful, wonderful work for our district.

146And I also took away one of the things that I think we could do better. One of the members mentioned that at a previous school they had had an app and trying to have everything for students all in one place instead of it getting lost among a zillion emails I think could be really helpful. So I liked that suggestion. >> Yeah. Thanks. And the goal three the early learning facilities now that the kindergarten center is complete. We're looking we're really looking at our preschool programming. Um, Molly Victor led this subcommittee meeting and it was um, I thought just great to hear from both staff and the community about thoughts about preschool programming and where we might go and then whether or not there are changes needed for the facilities. So, this is the beginning of

147the the board had tasked me with figuring out what's our plan for preschool and we're tapping into this subcommittee as the first step in giving us some feedback toward bringing you um some more information as the year goes on. Instructional technology, hopefully you have seen surveys went out to families, staff and students are in the process of taking it. Students grades four through eight. We will bring those results to the November 3rd committee of the whole meeting where we will engage in a robust conversation about technology. So the three student board members are able to make it. We'd love to have you there. active threat training. Um, safety is our number one priority and some of the administrative team met with districts 87 and 89 along with the Glenn Ellen Police Department, fire department, first

148responders um just getting training for active threats. I believe it was one of the first times we've all trained together and it's just one more one more uh step that we're taking to make our schools as safe as they possibly can be. Looking ahead, kindergarten pre-registration, we felt like last year's process captured so many of the students to help us figure out uh the big question we're getting is will there be half day next year? Well, we need parents to tell us what their what their desire is full day versus half day. So, kindergarten pre-registration, I believe, launches in November, same as last year. Um, look for information on that. And um again, the more information we can get in pre-registration, the more informed we can make on our programming for next year. And lastly,

149board, if you recall, in the spring, um Dr. David Bruno and Dr. Chris Webster worked with elementary staff on the schedule. Um what were what would be some opportunities to make our elementary schedule stronger? This year, they'll be doing the same thing with Mr. Dively and his staff on looking at what are the things that the Hadley schedules that that are working and what might be some areas that can be tweaked. So that has started up and we just wanted to give you a heads up. It'll take place over the coming months and I'm sure we will have a team report out to you once um any recommendations are solidified. >> Questions for me? >> Yeah, questions for Dr. McHugh about anything you saw there? Yeah. Yeah, please Katie. Um, Jeeoff, I asked you this

150ahead of time, but one thing that jumped out at me as a new Hadley parent this year is the students having to make a choice between the music track or the exploratory track with STEM and book talk and art. And um, I totally understand it. It's a scheduling limitation based on what's happening right now. But now that the students are here, and Jeff answered this too about the limitations on it. So, I don't know if you want to speak to it first, but I'm curious if kids think about it like I do, I just I felt like they were forced to make a choice. Do I do music or I do other things? And it seemed like such a young age to be having to like say goodbye to music if you tried it in

151fifth grade. >> Oh, no. Don't say goodbye. >> So, I know that and not say goodbye forever. I know you can still like jump in later, but um I don't know. I'm curious if you guys have thoughts on it or if you want to speak to it first. Jeeoff, >> Joseph, please make Yeah, make sure there's on. >> Uh, yeah. So, I I did music and I just like chose music because I did it in fifth grade and I just felt like going with it would be the right choice. So if you So I feel like if students are more interested in like STEM or art then the like I feel like there aren't many students who are actually both interested in music and STEM and art. Well, there are some, but yeah, I I

152feel like there's most students will choose one over the other. Um, I do music and almost daily I hear people say how they wish that they could do exploratories and music because like they're both good programs and that's pretty much all I have to say. >> Thank you. Sophia, is there any >> thing you'd like to express? >> Um, as a person who's played multiple in instruments before, I think it helps you in so many different areas of your life. just like learning something else. So, I think that um you know the fifth grade opportunity of learning that instrument is a great program and I do agree with Chloe that I hear many students say that they wish they could do both. So, >> yeah. >> Thank you. >> Well, there you have it. And

153I think that's the power of having these discussions on scheduling is um getting everybody to the table and talking through every schedule is going to have its limitations no matter what. um but getting all the feedback to see what type of schedule is going to best meet the interests of our students, the whole child. And I think that's the reason we're engaging in this. So, it was a great question. >> Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Board members, any individual board member uh reports? Katie, you're leading us off here. >> Yes, I'll go again. Um one, I have a couple of thank yous. One to Julie. We met for lunch last week. Julie's my board member. We or not board member, board mentor as an experienced board member and being new. So, I

154appreciate her taking the time. Um, and then a big thank you to Eric as well. He um Amy and I kind of had a leg up on the Levy 101 tonight because we had a meeting with him last week in his office to go through all things school finance and he makes it pretty riveting. Like I really learned a lot. >> Wait a minute. Even Dave Dave stopped it. >> I mean, I I left excited about finance. Um, so but thank you for taking the time. We appreciate it. I Amy, I don't know. Did you feel riveted? I was excited. >> I, you know, I wouldn't have thought she used the word riveted, but it was really interesting. >> Maybe it's just me, but I thought it was very interesting. So, thank you. Um, I

155>> Your background is in finance, though. Mine's in engineering. So, if he was going to go on about planning things, that's that's where I'm at. That would be riveting. >> I studied accounting, so maybe that's why I was riveted. Um, I attended the Hadley PTA meeting. I was very excited to sub in for Amy. Um, one thing they talked about the fun run coming up where they're having an obstacle course as well. That's actually in two days. I think it's Wednesday. Um, they talked about dine outs and then one thing that I thought was great, um, Mr. Dively was able to nominate two teachers for the Golden Apple Award and um they get a $25 gift card from the Hadley PTA which I thought was so cool. It was really interesting to learn about. Um

156and then I'm attending the Ben Franklin PTA meeting which is actually tomorrow. But so I'll have another update next month, but I wanted to mention that literary pumpkins starts next week. So whether you have a child in the district or not, it's such a cool thing to go by Ben Franklin and see and get excited about Halloween. And then I also attended the PEP committee meeting, which is a foundation that serves the four Glenbard high schools and the six elementary um feeder districts and largely through scholarships for high school seniors. But one thing they are doing in order to sort of enhance community connections is they're bringing on an independent contractor for 6 months to help with their social media and get some testimonials from students or families that have benefited benefited from um the

157PEP Foundation. So that was very interesting. >> Good. >> Great. Great. Thank you. You've been busy. >> Thank you. >> Great though. >> All right. Anybody else? Amy. >> All right. Um, as Katie mentioned, I also uh attended finance 101 extended. Yes. Which was very riveting, Katie. Um, I talked about the community connections subcommittee already. I also attended the D41 kids meeting. Um they were are in the process of finalizing all their books for the theater and they're already starting to plan next year's play. Um they said there is there will be a slight challenge with our late start. They don't have as much time to prepare for next year, but they're excited and planning to still do theater. And they also got their Illinois tax-free status. Um they're moving into their winter outerwear. So

158this year as they buy that their money will get to go further because they're not paying tax on their mittens and coats and which are outerware. And then I also attended the supplemental pay committee meeting. Um letters have gone out to those who uh are expecting supplemental pay and they've either accepted them or in the process of asking questions and clarifying. Um it was stated that the communication this year between GIA and the district that they felt it greatly improved and was more transparent. So they said that was a real benefit and highlighted that as a good thing. And then uh one of the new clubs this year is at Forest Glenn. It's the student council club and this week they are celebrating kindness week. Very good. Thank you. Busy also. Yes, indeed. Ted, you

159about to turn on the button? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> So, uh, two weeks ago I attended the, uh, Abraham Lincoln PTA meeting. Um, everything's in full swing there. Um, I'd like to thank them again for the opportunity to participate. As we mentioned last time around, it's not something that board members do in all districts, but I like I like, you know, being able to keep uh, you know, get kind of a little bit of a pulse at least of what's going on and and uh and I'm really kind of amazed at the amount of work that gets gets done there. Um, and I don't know whether Chris you wanted to talk about the uh policy meeting or you want me to >> Well, talk about riveting. I mean, policy is where it's at. >> Oh,

160that word. Now look at Oh, Nancy got offended. >> That is not a reflection of your work, Nancy. >> We have yet another meeting coming up next month. >> Next week. Right. >> I just have to look at my calendar. >> Yeah. So um as we've mentioned we're uh in this process of doing the press plus um I don't know initiative whatever you want to call it. Um it's where it it's sort of a document control system um where we can actually track our our our specific pieces of policy that where they differ from the actual press. But it's sort of we're also kind of have this reset where we have to get into the system. So the previous uh meeting that we had, we answered a bunch of questions that you know um were

161specific you know uh on on their you like quite a few policies only apply to let's say an elementary or a high school district. So you answer oh we're elementary and then it gives you this. Well, now we're going through and looking at what it spit out and where does it differ from from ours. There aren't that many places that it differs and we've done we've gone about halfway through. Um but one that I thought was really interesting um pol all of the policy section 9 stuff is unique to us and um my interpretation of that and that's um the technology stuff. My interpretation of that is we were actually kind of ahead of the curve in terms of putting those things into a policy. Um where we were seeing them pop up now in

162the press stuff. Oh, here's our rule. It's 9 whatever, but it's >> the instructional section. >> Yeah, it's in the instructional section or it's in the in the um uh staff section or something like that. Um so some of our discussions have been how are we going to deal with with that because there are some benefits of having the separate um technology section. Um and then another discussion we had was once we're all done and oh and I'd like to thank the cabinet for reviewing all of this stuff because they made our jobs a lot easier. Um they were able to highlight oh here's something that you you guys on the policy committee should look at. Um, but when we're all done, we we we got to figure out how to kind of summarize it

163so that everybody understands uh you know, we didn't just blindly throw this thing in here. So, um, so that's part of our discussion. And, uh, as as you mentioned, we have another one coming up, um, to finish the work. This we I I guess we made it about halfway through, right? >> So, this is a big lift. This is a a big project and a real uh needed one. So thanks to both of you and Nancy and the whole whole cabinet for driving this forward. Thank you. >> Yeah, I think the goal of what we're doing is just to streamline the policies and to make it as concise as possible. So where we've got some things that may be extra that aren't necessary, we're looking to align as much as possible to what press has

164available to us. >> Good. That's what we're doing. Needed timely. Yes. Other Julie, please. Um, I've attended a couple webinars lately. I haven't seen real humans, but they're little, you know, squares on a screen. Um, so it's nice to see you real humans. Um, but I don't know where I found this, but it's called like public funds for public schools is the name of the organization. They partner with Education Law Center, and they put on fantastic webinars. If you guys really want to like nerd out, they are really well done. I have learned so much. I took copious notes and I left the notes on my kitchen counter when I walked out the door. So, I cannot read to you my notes because my brain failed tonight. Um, which explains the password problem I had

165also. So, it's a it's a long um a long train that fell way off the track. Um, so I've done a couple of these and they're excellent. If you guys want information, I can try to forward you a link or something, but um really well done. Really learned a lot. I'm also registered in like I don't know a week or two for one through COSBA which is the conference that Bob and I went to last month. Um and it is called federal vouchers, funding cuts, firings, what you need to know about the impact on public schools. The federal government is doing things fast and furiously. Um so just trying to stay um updated on everything. But yeah, these have been really helpful um and informative. So if any of you >> over here I'm sorry.

166my back to you. I don't know how to do this. >> Um, >> they're great. So, if you're looking to nerd out, too. Let me know and I'll send them along because they've been really well done. >> Just send the link for everybody's awareness and Yeah. And folks could >> for sure. So, I I can't speak to the Cosmo ones because I haven't been to those, >> but I'm signed up for it. So, >> Okay. >> Great. Thank you. Thank you, Julie. >> Jay, anything? >> Just Just one. And I attended the combined um Hadley choir and Glover West choir concert. Um I believe I saw Julie there also. Um I mentioned before one of my favorite my favorite and I will die in this cross. My favorite band concert is the Hot Cross Buns

167band concert and it's because but it is no no it's because it's the concert where kids go from learn from not knowing how to play an instrument to playing an instrument and you just see that growth from nothing to something and I absolutely love that. This is my first time go to this combined concert and just to see that growth and you you knowing some of the kids that were in the the Blumbard West choir and seeing that growth was was really neat to see and I really I really enjoyed this. It was neat seeing my first time going to that concert and it was just something exceptional to see. So I enjoyed that. Um and I'm maybe one of of our student board members talk about what next but cabaret nights Friday. It's always

168fun a fun addition to the Pava program for a few years ago. So I'm excited to that. Well, that's not a bad transition and though it is your first meeting and you would have no reason to have any kind of a board report to give tonight. Is there anything from the student board members perspective on something upcoming that you know that you want to speak to right here? >> Go for it, Joseph. >> Well, I know that I had the preac last Thursday. >> How was it? >> Um, >> riveting. Yeah, >> that's it. >> No, you're having your show. I get it. >> Hardly that. Okay. Thank you, Joseph. Anyone else? Yeah. >> Sophie, look like you were about to grab it. >> Um, I know in previous years and you guys do representatives

169for each grade and I just like to say I'm the seventh grade representative. >> Okay. Yeah. Wonderful. Chloe, >> might as well just say that I'm the sixth grade representative. >> Outstanding. >> I'm the eighth grade representative. >> Wow. >> All right. Well, >> there we go. >> Well, thank you. Thank you all. Okay. Um then we will move into we've got a couple of discussion items and the first one Eric and Dave that look at the five-year capital project plans. >> Okay, >> this is riveting. >> This we went we held it off today. >> Maybe not. >> Good evening for it. Um as part of our ongoing commitment to maintaining safe, functional, and future ready learning environments, the district continues to maintain a five-year CA uh rolling capital improvement plan. This plan is

170reviewed and updated annually to ensure that our projects are sequenced based on the most pressing facility needs and aligned with our long range strategic priorities. Uh the plan includes projects that address identified health life safety deficiencies as well as recommendations from an administration to support long-term operational goals. Um wherever possible, we work to level out capital spending year overyear to promote consistency and predictability in our budgeting. Um that said, project costs may vary each year depending on scope and urgency. Uh tonight's presentation includes a look ahead at the capital projects plan for the summer of 2026. While this report is just for information only, I want to note that the total projected cost for this summer project will be 1,663,874 and will be funded through the district capital um project fund. A formal recommendation for

171the capital projects will be presented later this evening and at that time we'll provide more details on that specific work. >> Thank you David. >> Is this something that Eric is supplementing or is that >> okay? This is the second riveting part. >> Okay. >> No, the only thing I would add is, you know, we do try and keep our spending level. Um, and if you look at the attached fiveyear kind of projection, it does show about a $ 1.5 to$1.6 $6 million capital spend each summer. >> Um, that's slightly lower than we were spending a few years back because we've tackled many of the bigger roofing and mechanical challenges that the district's faced. So, with that, happy to answer any questions. >> Sure. Thank you. Well, please Amy, >> I more have a comment

172and I commented um in my email on the agenda, but the Forest Glenn prek playground has a rolly slide and the rolly slide is the best. So, do not get rid of it because how many of you have not? Now, that's riveting. >> Roly slides are the best. They make noise. They're fun. Don't get rid of that. That is my comment. >> Laying down the law law on that, man. For sure. >> There you go. >> You know, the one other thing I was going to point out, I forgot to mention, is we are just about ready to receive our updated 10-year healthife safety plan >> um that have been completed this summer by our architects. We're just waiting. They're in the report writing state now. So, that will, you know, likely influence the contents

173of this report next year, right? uh because as they identify health life safety items, we do tend to fasttrack those to get those done first. >> Yeah, that was my question. Okay, good. Anyone else? >> Well, thank you. Thank you both. And then the annual Chromebook purchase and Fisel, you're going to make purchasing Chromebooks. >> I'll make this very riveting. >> Got it. Here you go. actually. Uh so we're reviewing our um our life cycle refresh cycle for our Chromebooks. Um currently we have uh kindergarteners that carry the Chromebooks through fourth grade and fifth fifth graders through 8ighth grade. So we want to change that make it first grade through fourth grade and 5 through 8. Make make it a balanced uh refresh cycle and the kindergarteners the devices will stay in kindergarten for four

174years. So that that'll be up every four years. That way we can balance the cycle. uh we were able to go to Dell directly and get a tremendous savings um on the devices. So that's going to enable us to to get extended warranty and allow us to do um um a a damage u accidental damage um no questions asked. Uh one device per year per student. So not encouraging anybody to do anything with their devices, but if it does, it'll be covered by Dell. Um so this is gonna in the long run it's going to save us a lot of money um moving in this direction. >> Okay. Thank you. Uh board members any comments or questions about the no the Chromebook purchases? Yeah. Okay. All right. Well done. Well done. And these of course

175are items that by the way are very standard items that come before the board on an ongoing basis. And we do get a report from the appropriate cabinet people and staff people that lay out a lot of the details including the cost and quite a and the savings was nice to see. Thank you. All right. Then we will move on to the action items that we have on the agenda. Uh and this is the consent agenda. Are there any items board members would like to see removed from the consent agenda to be considered separately? All right. Hearing none, then may have a motion to approve the consent agenda, which includes the employment recommendations, resignations, and leave request as noted in the personnel report, disposal of surplus property, freedom of information act report, investment schedule, monthly

176revenue expenditure summary report, school district payment order, summary of bills and payroll, and the treasurer's report. And then finally, the regular board meeting minutes of September 22nd, 2025 as presented. >> Motion. >> I need a second. >> Second. >> There we go. Uh, Mrs. Mo, roll call, please. >> Mrs. Lidda, >> yes. >> Mr. Estes, >> yes. >> Dr. Martelli, >> yes. >> Mrs. Hill, >> yes. >> Mr. Lobach, >> yes. >> Miss Becker, >> yes. >> Dr. Bruno, >> yes. Thank you all. Okay, we now have a few recommendations. And the first recommendation that is up is to approve the board member uh expenses. May I have a motion? There we go. To approve reimbursement to Bob Bruno uh and Julie Hill for expenses occurred at the federal advocacy conference in Washington DC from

177September 7th to the 9th through the 9th, 2025 uh in the amount of $213.91 as presented. motion >> second. >> And just as a just a brief reminder and we have the images uh up on uh the screen, the the purpose of going to Washington uh was to advocate uh for public education uh for special education, for title one, for grants uh for full funding. The board is part of a a national organization. Julie referred to it as CASPA and we won't try to >> pull Can you do that uh what that stands for? It's a National Association of School Boards and there was a day of pretty intense uh of training and then next day we were on Capitol Hill and we met uh with as many of our representatives as we could and

178you see images both with six district representative Casten and then we met with Senator Duckworth. We were not able to meet with Senator Durban because we were meeting with Congressman Cass and they were assigned at the same time. But it was also a great opportunity uh to learn uh about AI initiatives um and to look and to consider the way in which changes at the federal level are in fact going to impose themselves uh on states. Uh and then that will likely trickle down uh to school districts. And we wanted to be in a position quite frankly to make a strong case uh for our uh students. And the best way to do that was to be present uh and and and to sit uh with folks, learn and play some demands, which I think

179Julie Hill did exceptionally well. >> Oh, well thanks. I was just going to say we also met with Representative Ramirez. Um >> Ah, that's correct. We did get a picture, I think, but not in the same >> Yes. >> mailing email. So, it's not there, but we did meet with her. >> Um, and I will also say Bob took some really ugly candidates that I said you may not send those. Alan, do not put those anywhere. >> But these these turned out all right. >> And we appreciate the board support uh for uh sending representatives to this conference. This board has been very actively engaged in advocacy around policy. uh because it's very important probably more so than ever that we be present there. So we appreciate uh the support that you showed >> the

180consortium of state school board associations. >> Yeah. Yeah. Thank you Jay. That is it. That is it. Thank you. All right. End of discussion. Good. Yes. And Mrs. Mo roll call. >> Dr. Martelli. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Hill. >> Yes. >> Mr. Lobach. >> Yes. >> Miss Becker. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Leiddo. >> Yes. >> Mr. Resties. >> Yes. >> Dr. Yes. And that motion passes and thank you Paul. Second item is fund transfer. You heard some conversation earlier. May I have a motion to adopt the resolutions transferring funds from the education fund to the operation and maintenance fund in the amount of $5,760,000. And then from the operation and maintenance fund to the capital projects fund in the amount of guess what the amount is close 5,260,000. Uh yes I need a motion. So

181>> second >> heard a second. Any further discussion on this? Uh roll call. Mrs. Moch. >> Mr. Essies. >> Yes. >> Dr. Martelli. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Hill. >> Yes. >> Mr. Lobach. >> Yes. >> Miss Becker. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Leau. >> Yes. >> Dr. Bruno. >> Yes. and the motion uh passes. And then the 2026 summer capital project plan may have a motion to approve the 2026 summer capital plan as outlined in the budget report for a projected amount of $1,6638 $874 to be paid for the 2026 27 capital fund budget. Would that be paid from? Yes. Thank you. >> All right. Motion on that >> motion. >> I need a second. >> Second. >> Any further discussion? Yeah. >> Yeah. I appreciate you getting a jump on these mechanical items or super

182long lead times now, so I think it's smart you get it up up front. >> All right. Roll call. Mrs. Mo. >> Miss Becker. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Liddell. >> Yes. >> Mr. Resty's. >> Yes. >> Dr. Martelli. >> Yes. >> Mrs. Hill. >> Yes. >> Mr. Lobach. >> Yes. >> Dr. Bruno. >> Yes. There was one other item that was listed here uh that had to do with the student transportation services. Dr. McHugh earlier in the meeting explained that there was no longer a need for any item on the agenda in which to act on. So uh we will then move uh to the remaining part of the agenda. >> Other. >> Yes. >> Oh, you want my students know that they Oh, okay. >> Oh, they're going to miss other. Other is the

183best section ever because it's other. >> So this is their their exit point. Okay. I guess we can't let you stay. The rest of it is like I don't know R-rated or something. I don't >> We can't get you a book if you would like. We're just discuss a book story study about what a school should be. So if you're interested in reading the book, we can certainly get you a book and invite you to participate in conversations down the road. >> Assuming you're reading books like real, you know what I I mean, I know >> I'll probably get I know they're reading, >> but are they reading books? >> I'll probably read it via ebook. So, don't let Bob put down. >> Thank you, Nancy. >> All right. Well, as we let them transition

184and again, thanks to the family. Appreciate you spending the night with us. >> Thank you. We'll see all of you >> again soon. >> All right. So, under board governance, there are two items. Uh why don't we do it in the order that we have and we'll start with the advocacy report. Uh you saw uh the look back at the COSPA conference. Uh Julie um what do you have for us this evening? >> Um >> well one thing I forgot to mention earlier I am going to um I'm part of I'm what the leazison for lend of the board. Um and starting I don't know a few days ago I am now the co-chair of the federal um advocacy committee >> of course. >> So they are sort of expanding that. has always been very

185state based or at least as long as I've been around. >> Um, and so we're going to put more of a federal focus on it. And I am um working with a board member from Downer's Grove. So I'm meeting with her this coming weekend. So I don't have any information for you yet, but as we as we build this and move this along, um I will have more to talk about. Um obviously >> I just say I appreciate you taking that on. I didn't know you were taking that on, but when you said it, I just said of course you are because of course you are. >> Thanks. I'm excited to uh have a little bit of a leadership role in that. >> I I was joking with with Julie the other day. We we

186were I was talking outside of this and she said something about, you know, I'm just a stay at home mom. I said, "No, you're not. No, you're not. You're a lot. You're you're you're a strong strong advocate." So, I appreciate that. >> Thanks. Um and then what else do I want to say? I left all my notes at home. I just So Bob reminded me this morning that there is an opportunity to testify to the um Illinois uh general assembly regarding um if I had notes this would go faster. Evidence-based funding. So assuming that it's still available, there's still upcoming dates. I just need to like make sure it's still available. And if they are, um, I am planning to sign up and use my three minutes, um, to my best ability to say what

187we need to say to further advocate for full funding of our schools. Um, because I think we all know, uh, we can use every penny that we can get. >> Yes. >> So, um, so that is my next stop. And just one correction, Julie, I think the hearings are in front of the Illinois State Board of Education to impact their budget request, but that is the right body to be a part of and um and folks who advocate for public schools are really interested in hearing from people like you and board members um to to participate because it helps to kind of shape the way that board is thinking. So that'll be a >> see how not useful. >> You'll find those notes. That's okay. Um >> your kids are probably reading notes at home

188right now. So counter >> so on this subject of of advocacy and and by the way given the very heartfelt comments that were made by members uh of of the public um I think this is particularly pertinent and you may be aware but the the the office of special education programs in Washington that is charged with overseeing the fidelity in which school districts implement the federal law providing a proper and full education for students with disability. That office has been essentially shuttered. The people have been laid off um and it's raised an enormous concern around the country u because we're talking millions of students uh who are impacted by special education uh programs. But there really isn't anybody there in Washington. This happened before the shutdown. Uh and so this strikes. So the district at

189the local level, the board should in fact do everything that it can do uh to make sure we are providing the most comprehensive form of education for students. And we do have the special education audit that is that is ongoing that Jason made made a plug for. But it's also true that without the federal government uh playing its role in terms of oversight, direction uh and of course funding it makes it simply makes it that much harder to provide the services that needed to be uh provided. Uh and so when I I became aware that this was happening, uh I did ask a representative uh from CASPA to provide us Julie and I shared I think I shared this all with the board about this program and how important it is. And I and I

190did so because I think uh I would like to recommend that the board consent to direct Julie, as she's done so beautifully in the past, to put together a letter that would uh address how damaging the shuttering of this uh office is. Uh a letter that we will send uh to all of our uh appropriate elected leaders. I know that Nancy has a long list because we've done this before and we've gotten letters back acknowledging the receipt and there's plenty of information in those links I think where where Julie uh could construct something very effective and then bring it back at the next next meeting. It'd be great if we could send it out tomorrow uh but uh nobody's there to maybe read it. Well, the members of Congress uh representatives will in fact get

191it. Uh, so how does the board feel about Yeah. recommending and consenting to direct Julie to do that? Yeah. Good. Yeah. Okay. Well, good. Well, Julie, it's a good thing you're not just a stay-at-home mom, right? Because you got more to do on behalf of the board. All right. Well, thank you for that. All right. The last item is the board book study, which we're going to try to do something bigger here. And we've asked and the board's agreed to read what school can be. >> And >> no, could be is right. And Nancy, I think, has sent out a request or is going to in terms of u asking board members how uh they'd prefer their reading, whether it's sort of a link to an audio book or whether a hard copy, however, an

192ebook. But we've also asked Erica Kil to put together a plan of engagement with a timeline. So, I'm going to turn it over to Erica to to share that plan. >> Yeah. Well, building on your success from last year's book study with the anxious generation, which I thought was one of your most successful engagements with our community, and it happened very organically because I don't think that was intentionally planned. So, when we went to the PTA council meeting and shared that you were planning on doing another one, uh Bob, you were there, Jeff, the rest of you. Um I just wanted to share that the PTA said that was amazing. you had a number of parents reading that book along with you even though you didn't formally ask them to and they gave us some

193feedback and said why don't you make this more of an engagement opportunity as a book club for the entire district 41 community and so I took that idea and you all have a proposal that um I've shared with all of you and it really starts with building some partnerships around the community with the with the bookstore in downtown Glenn Ellen all of the libraries and the communities that we served. I would reach out to them, ask them to make the book accessible to our to the communities. And um we would follow up with other engagement opportunities. Uh you could bring it up here in in December again at your meeting in January. And then your February committee of the whole meeting could be a book club discussion specifically with with all of you and the

194community as an engagement opportunity. If you decided to move forward with that, um, another thing you could do, uh, within that time in the next few months, I believe you're all going to PTA meetings. And during that PTA meeting, maybe you could ask the president say, "Can we have 10 minutes just to talk about the book? What themes are they noticing? What uh what are they enjoying about the book?" And that would happen before then that committee of the whole meeting. uh finally to to start it off. We kind of are launching it right now in a way, but we would do some communications, get the word out there, promote it, and um that would all lead up to that February committee of the whole. So, that were some of my thoughts, but I'd love

195to hear yours as well. >> Lovely thoughts. Yeah. How do board members feel about the plan timeline? >> Riveting. Finally someone yeah came through with something riv what so just you know in terms of our task um when we come back at our regular board meeting in November during this part of the meeting this would be an opportunity to talk a little bit about what we're gleaming from the book nobody has to have the whole book uh written by then but I would take uh some leadership and and just raising some questions and getting some thought and then that'll kind of feed the conversation for the community and we'll do it again uh in December and then hopefully by January everybody's had a chance to read the book and Dr. McHugh has volunteered uh I

196believe you volunteered uh to uh to facilitate that larger conversation at the committee of the whole meeting. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Any thoughts? Anything good enough? Sound good? I like this plan. I I I didn't realize we we had to like agree to it. I I just figured it was good. >> Yeah, it is good. Yes. I don't know. Yes, it is good. And I'm >> And there's a whole community what schools could be. >> I >> People could in fact join if they wanted to. There's podcasts. There's films that we could bring in if we wanted to, you know, have folks access the concept in a different way. So, there's a variety of things people could do. >> Yeah. I I've had a chance to uh listen to a number of the podcasts. Uh they're

197they're longer form podcasts and the book and the focus and the network takes advantage of all all of the opportunities that can happen uh at a high school level. But I think Chris, as you mentioned at an earlier meeting, the the concepts really do range across the ages. And there are in fact examples of of schools and certain activities that are embedded in elementary schools that show up in the podcast and and in the book. So hopefully people will be inspired to sort of think really creatively about what school could be as we think about the future of District 41. Yeah. All right. Well, Erica, thank you. We're launched. Okay, there you go. Thank you. All right. upcoming meetings. So, Monday the 3rd of November is the committee of the whole meeting and then our

198regular board business meeting is the 17th. Uh, and a reminder the November 17th and Jay, this is you because I know you're going to come here. >> No, no, it's at the kindergarten center. >> Yes. >> And I noticed I noticed we have a new address >> on Bloomingdale Road. >> Okay. >> 881 Bloomingdale Road. >> No, Nancy shaking her head. >> That's what it says. I'm reading it. enter, >> but we haven't addressed that. >> Well, whatever the address is kindergarten. >> Uh, all right. Uh, any any items for uh consideration for future agenda? >> All right, then we are we do not have any reason to go into close session and it is now 910 p.m. I got that one right. May I have a motion to adjourn the October 20, 2025 regular

199board meeting? Motion >> second. >> There we go. All in favor say I. >> I. Meeting adjourned. Thank you very much. >> 909 Bob. 909.