Glen Ellyn District 41 BOE Meeting 1/25/2021

001hey bob okay good evening the january 25th 2020 board meeting will now come to order mrs milk roll call please mrs buttimer here mr curry mr estes here mr guzman here mr lobock dr bruno here mr lobock will you lead the board in the pledge of allegiance please yes 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 thank you very much before you begin i would like to note it has been determined due to the cove in 19 disaster that an in-person meeting of the board on the above date is not prudent feasible or practical for members of the board and the public or for a board member legal counsel or its superintendent

002to be present at the district central services office board member and staff participation will be conducted electronically the meeting is viewable by the public by live stream through the district's website and just a reminder to all participants please mute your microphones unless you're speaking and we will then start and turn to melissa who will give her superintendent's report all righty thank you i wanted to start off my report with a quick celebration and a congratulations to our assistant superintendent for human resources marcy conlon mercy was awarded this distinguished service award from the illinois association of school personnel administrators or iespa in addition to receiving this award marcy has played a leadership role in planning the is by annual conference for i believe multiple years and so i think marcy um enjoyed this conference with a

003little bit of a sigh of relief maybe somebody else is stepping into that um for an upcoming year but um thank you to marcy for representing district 41 in such a great way and for your service to the organization thank you we won't make you say a few words um unless you want to so on my call i wanted to give some i don't want to say housekeeping updates but share some information from my call today with the dupage county health department um a good portion of our call today was spent discussing the status of vaccines in the county so i want to help people understand how this is working currently and and will likely work moving forward so all allocations of the vaccine come from the state to the local county health department we

004cannot order osco cannot order walgreens cannot order more the allocations are made from the state directly to the dupage county health department and then they make allocation of the doses out as you're aware we started today with the category of 1b so that is where the county is focusing on right now so from that allocation which is approximately 13 000 doses a week the county allocates doses to the providers who can administer the injections currently there are 83 providers in the county but the issue is insufficient doses it's not with an insufficient number of providers there are 270 000 people in 1b in dupage county who need to be vaccinated so clearly it will take some time to get everyone done the dupage county health department anticipates that it will take 12 weeks if the

005dose allocation stays the way it has been um they shared that the weekly number of allocations or doses um varies and some weeks they've received five thousand doses and some weeks they've received upwards of twenty thousand doses but they're averaging about thirteen thousand doses a week so what does that mean for district forty one um across the county the regional office of education is working closely with the county health department and so we have employed a system to organize all districts we are working either as large unit districts or feeder systems to identify partners who can administer the vaccine to date we have three potential partners for our feeder with the glen our feeder districts with the glenbard high school district once we have agreements confirmed we're ready to get started so the internal work

006of that needed to be done so that we can identify our people and categorize them is done and we could be ready to roll literally overnight once our partners are selected and finalized and the doses become available i think it's important to note that even though the dose allocation and just the available doses is slower than everybody would have hoped the county dupage county is leading other counties with having 1.62 percent of the population of the county vaccinated so while it is slow and while it seems very small dupage county has vaccinated more of their total population than other counties other information that we discussed on today's meeting with the county health department really was more time spent talking about this new variant it has been determined to be more contagious they're not saying yet

007that it is more severe or causing more severe symptoms but that is emerging information as they shared with us today um dr chu said that they anticipate by march this new variant will be the dominant form of the virus that's circulating in the community this variant being more complex as they walked us through an understanding of this basically what that means is we can expect because it is more contagious we can expect more cases more cases mean more hospitalizations and more hospitalizations could potentially mean more deaths that is why when you speak to the county about this they are emphasizing that transmission protocols remain extremely important the goal right now is to minimize the replication of the virus while we wait for a significant portion of the community population to be vaccinated so again what

008they continue to emphasize with us is the importance of our transmission protocols and we know that in schools those are happening to a very high degree because we know schools are not um hubs of virus transmission but i think that anybody um internally and if you watch our dashboard you will see that we we do have ongoing positive probables and confirmed cases in our schools also in district 41 i'm happy to report that we began binex now testing on the 18th of this month binax is in addition to our weekly saliva testing and it is being done by appointment um so um again we have a process and and if um somebody is an appropriate candidate for the binex now the building nurses will refer them and give them further information about binax so any

009questions about that please reach out to your building nurse um you know as i said we were allocated 500 doses free to the district and um at the point that our 500 um tests binax tests get close to running out we can discuss um you know what what we plan to do after that um but we we anticipate that the 500 will last us a little while that is really in terms of more of the covid relating related housekeeping matters um pretty much the updates that i have for everybody from today okay so let's give board members a minute just to see if they have some questions on on what you presented um let me go around and call important members ted do you have any questions for dr keskowski no no questions okay thank

010you julie any questions yeah um just out of curiosity dr k do you have any idea how many binax tests by next test we've used so far like two 20 80. um i know um i'm wondering how long you expect it to last kind of right i can i can look that information up i can check what was what our latest update was i know one of the busier days there were 17 binax tests done in one day so let me check last week's totals it's just curiosity it's not i can find it thank you julie that's it thanks bob thank you guillermo questions just a quick question dr k have we seen any improvement on the percentage for this saliva testing um you know nancy what did we do do you remember our numbers

011we we will be updating um the dashboard this week unfortunately i don't have that information yeah i don't have it um at my fingertips guillermo but i can get it before we end this meeting um you know in terms of the number of samples that were processed last week i'm already thinking about this week's testing um so but i can um go in and and pull that information for you okay thanks thank you campbell bruce any questions we've been hovering right around 2000 samples a week that we're processing so no huge variation week to week but i can get you an exact number thank you test dr k i believe that we're at about 40 tests okay how much we spent so far so far on testing year-to-date or do we know yeah um eric

012can you weigh in on our testing bills is again the binacs um bruce those those tests are free the tests were free um but eric can probably give a rough guesstimate of our yeah you know i looked at it all told if we test to the end of the year it'd be about 470 000 so i think at this point we're closer to i want to say right around 150. uh i haven't seen the invoice lately though the first two months are right around 60 to 70ish so yeah that's kind of what we're on pace for thanks thank you thank you thank you eric thank you bruce uh jess questions um yeah i guess i don't think this is one you can probably answer today but it's one i have so just want to get

013it on them on on your mind um with the new variant uh and the fact that it is more contagious i'm wondering if um experts at the county health department or our epidemiologist would consider that certain populations um in our schools might need more frequent testing um if if and and that's you know whether or not we have the capacity to do that right um you know i can't answer that so the lab could definitely accommodate us and we have the supplies to do it so when we review our our weekly reports that come back if we see any trends bubbling up in a specific team of students or grade level or in a particular building we can either make the decision to offer binax or we can do a second day of saliva testing

014if we're able to pull that off it would be on a much smaller scale based on our data so far you know as i said whether we had to do it just for a building a team or a grade level we could need in order to do that we've gotten ahead in terms of sending the envelopes home so um typically families would have at least one tube kind of as a backup that we could implement a second testing if we needed to and um i've noticed that the participation rates are really really good student population about 80 um and that the staff rate has been hovering at about 58 um is there some kind of incentive program we can do for staff to get those rates up right well i think some of the things

015that we need to look at is the number of people who have already been diagnosed because from diagnosis they will not saliva test for 90 days um so that impacts it um you know we can certainly talk you know throw around some ideas about um incentivizing participation i know um we received some feedback both positive and and concerned about um incentivizing it um and possibly sending a message that we were pressuring people to do so but we can talk um to see if there's um something that we can do to to boost staff participation but again we also have to look at the number who are removed from the testing pool for a period of 90 days from their diagnosis and we do have some staff that are doing binax in lieu saliva for now

016so those are a number you know those are numbers that would factor into it as well thank you thank you jess uh and jason uh questions for dr keskowski again melissa just one question you noted some categorization for our staff when vaccination begins can you just elaborate on how that categorization is is developed are there more high priority members of school personnel who would be first in line right um bob i apologize some of the sound of the cut out but i think what you're asking me is um do we have a are we organized in terms of prioritizing staff for vaccine is that okay so the answer to that is yes um you know across the county we have prioritized um starting with people who have higher highest risk of transmission um you know

017so those staff members who work directly with students um within that six feet bubble um and and then have you know kind of that's the top of the priority list um until we work our way down and make it through everybody and the very last people on the list are administrations so um you know and then as we are notified that our partners are going to be allocated a certain number of doses that will be shared evenly across the feeder districts that feed into glenbard and so you know when we get probably a week in advance notification that here's your number of allocations we can go into the spreadsheet and email the people going down the list um the link that they will need in order to go get um their immunization that'll be the

018part of it that we control and we still emphasize to people get on any list anywhere and so if you have an opportunity sooner than um what comes up in dupage by all means take it and just let us know so we can remove you from the list okay thank you melissa all right guillermo i think i can answer your questions now um so our total for last week of saliva tests um was 1731. samples were processed last week that was fast thanks thank you all right let's uh turn to the board and see if there are any board reports i i'll just call on board members to see if they've got uh reports to give julie any board report from you yes i've had to find a mute button um i attended the churchill

019pta meeting on january 12th um and mrs salman the uh principal was there she said the remote sections there are getting big this is the first pta meeting of the year um and they are looking for volunteers so if you are a churchill parent um and would like to contribute they could always use your help um they talked about the new sora is that how we say it um system the library online library thing that they're doing they were in the process of teaching the kids how that all works and they're very excited about it um there's audiobooks and ebooks in partnership with the glen ellen public library and the kids can apparently borrow two at a time so that's awesome i know it's now kind of hard to get books at school um they

020had is it too late for this what's the date today they have a cook's night out on january 28th i had to check the date i'm at 200 you can order between four and nine and another one coming up on the 10th um at perrone's um and that's all for churchill and i have one other thing um we submit or we sent that letter about um to the governor and to our uh state legislators um about funding and i also sent it to a few other districts i sent it to d93 who co-signed our iasb resolution and he thanked us and said he would take it to his board i have not heard back yet um d200 said the same thing and someone from d200 over in wheaton followed up with me to say what

021are your sources where'd you get this information i'm writing a letter too what can you tell me so i passed on some information to her and their board president said hey i have a weekly zoom meeting with six other big districts in the area would you mind if i if i gave it to them too i was like absolutely not yes please sounds amazing um so that seemed like a really positive sign if they wanted to pass it on hopefully they were going to do it too um and that's all i have on that front so i haven't heard yes or no whether anybody has done it but um at least sweet and sound is sort of promising and i hope that some of the people they talk to will take up the cause too

022that's why i have to think wonderful julie yeah well that's how these good things get started right someone like you initiates it and picks up gather some steam thank you very good all right ted uh any reports yes yes um i attended the ben franklin pta meeting let's see on the 12th so i was tuesday of last week um just want to say uh how how impressed i am with uh pta's efforts to keep um forging right ahead with providing um uh hobby night and and book fairs and high interest day all that stuff um virtually trying and they're they're they're coming up with all kinds of creative ideas um the main thing i want to highlight from the report is the yearbook committee is requesting photos um and so it's see gebenfranklin.yearbook gmail.com but

023it's attached to my board report which is attached to the meeting so if parents have photos of their kids being virtually in school or doing activities or whatever if they could contribute that'd be great um and then real quickly i want to just give a shout out for the hadley virtual concerts had a chance to watch that over the holidays um it's right there on the front page of the uh um uh hadley junior high uh website um i found it really enjoyable so thumbs up for the uh i'm a big fan of hadley band uh any bagpipes in the band ted no okay all right thank you thank you bruce any board reports uh no not right now thank you jason uh board reports please yep i attended the s-pac meeting on it was

024january 14th um one of this got one of those questions that we had um at the meeting was that there's a much higher incidence of medical needs among children with disabilities and s back would like to raise awareness around the needs of those children with medical needs as it relates to participation as a lava testing and it's encouraging people to to participate in this live testing and and turn in their test their screening packages okay thank you jason just one quick report from me i attended last friday the lend had a very special meeting which where they invited all of the dupage elected leaders gave them an opportunity to just speak for a few minutes and give their initial impressions of the upcoming sessions in springfield it was a very well attended meeting jessica also

025attended as did dr kaskowski and just to kind of boil it all down to a couple of education pieces they noted that there was a very large omnibus education bill that had been submitted and is still kind of it'll work its way through the general assembly there were some questions raised about whether the evidence-based funding formula might get adjusted there's certainly talk about whether that can be funded at all this year also increased expectations for additional federal aid sometime in the in the spring given the change of administrations in washington uh also briefly noted the importance of some changes to early childhood learning assessments and just noted that the full session will begin and it seemed a little bit uncertain but perhaps february 8th or 9th and there were over 300 bills that were submitted

026in the lame duck session so they'll have a lot on their plates okay yeah jess um i have board reports oh i skipped right past you that's i'm sorry please go ahead no i have i have three um so d41 kids has a valentine's box fundraiser that they're um promoting and so uh if you haven't heard about that yet go check it out on probably on facebook is where you can find information about that and ptas are sending out information but there's um a child's box and an adult's box and the children's boxes are fifty dollars and the adult box um i believe is a hundred dollars and um the items come from local businesses and uh for the most part are not discounted to ensure that um the local businesses are are benefiting from

027the fundraiser as well as the d41 kids foundation um want to celebrate the fact that as i mentioned before we received a twenty thousand dollar do grant from dupage foundation um and so far we've had helped about a dozen families um with rental assistance so that they don't have to worry about um not having a place to stay and that their students can be ready to learn we're also exploring some literacy programs for birth to five the glenbard parent series um had a railroad safety program last week and that video is still available on the glenbard perry series website and it was really really informative and worth watching so i encourage folks to do that this week uh on wednesday at 7 pm um dr john duffy will be talking about anxiety and i've heard

028excellent reviews of his um his talk so encourage people to do that and then um everyone should go to this but i want to special uh point out this date that's coming up especially for the board members hopefully all of you can make it dr tyrone howard is going to be speaking on thursday february 25th at 7 pm and the title of that is uplifting all children to cultivate critical wellness race and culture matter i think uh given all of our conversations around equity that this is a um this is an excellent one for the board to attend um and he he also wrote this book um why why race and culture matter in schools that's backwards and um i've finished it and i highlighted things for you so if anybody wants to borrow my

029copy you can um also restoring the soul of education this is available for anyone and then striving for equity will be available at the end of this week for anybody that wants to and i i highlighted everything for you guys so definitely check those out um speaking of diversity and equity and inclusion i want to celebrate the fact that the glenn ellen library and don bc has have put together just an amazing program tackling diversity equity and inclusion as a village of glen ellen and so district administrators met at a uh had a meeting a couple weeks ago and then board members had another meeting um a couple weeks ago to talk about what diversity and equity and inclusion mean and then just this past saturday um there were uh sessions where two two different

030sessions one in the morning where the taxing bodies which are the glen ellen library the village park district district 89 87 41 and cod came together and each did a 10-minute presentation about what they have done in terms of equity initiatives and so um those videos are available on the library website um it's it's easier if you go the easiest if you go to the calendar and then find the event and that the videos are there um but really good discussion about what those texting bodies are doing um and then there was an afternoon session with area organizations that included the glenbard early childhood collaborative the glen ellen children's resource center glen ellen youth and families counseling services one community dupage united glenn ellen allies for racial justice and the br riel ymca and that

031is just the beginning this week starting tomorrow at 10 a.m and another session at 7 p.m there are listening sessions and that is the opportunity for the community to listen uh to kind of a state of um diversity equity inclusion in our village as well as to contribute and give your feedback as well so it's it's us the first session where anyone can participate um and there are three for you to go to two tomorrow one at ten and one and seven and then one this saturday um and there are also different affinity groups if you go to the website and figure out if you're part of an affinity group you can register for those also that's it thank you sorry that was long oh thank you jess sorry for skipping over you glad we

032got you in there guillermo thank you bob um i don't have any updates but i wasn't able to attend the pta console meeting last tuesday so my apologies to the console for missing the meeting thank you guillermo all right thank you board for your service and your work all right let's move on to public participation members of the public who wish to address the board were instructed to email the board before 5 pm at this time we have received two emails any emails received after 5 pm will be forwarded to the board after the meeting and posted with the official minutes once approved at this time i will read the two comments that we've received the first is from whitney warner what is the plan for school next year i realize much can change coveted

033wise between now and then but would love to hear that you are discussing it now and have a plan for what you will do and what we can expect expect for each phase and similarly what to expect if we are in tier 3 2 mitigation etc now that we are getting surveillance testing into place can we look to returning to full days for the following year surveillance testing and then she asked the question where is the money coming from to pay for that and finally is this sustainable for the district to do next year if we are still in what i believe is phase four and then finally when will binex now testing begin thank you whitney and that my next question was answered uh here in the meeting in melissa's update and then the

034second and last one comes from doreen corrigan a few questions for the remainder of this school year and for 21 22 what if anything is currently being done to prioritize teachers getting the vaccine are we aware about teachers who do not wish to take the vaccine and are concerned about in-person learning and can we accommodate those requests now to make necessary changes for the fall given our current cdc guidelines and district 41's classroom sizes what is being done for the fall should this still have an issue are we starting to consider off-site locations portables etc that would allow for students to attend full day in person learning wheaton district 200 hasn't had such a substantial issue with staffing and classroom sizes as they've omitted specials this has allowed them to have a longer school day

035nine to one pm special staff team members for spanish art gym have helped as subs while also providing classroom space have we explored this option for this fall for the fall especially for our elementary students who need to be in school longer have we explored the option of extending our current in-person learning schedule teachers obviously have more time given the current schedule two hour break in teaching to allow for ample time for cleaning what if we started a day or sooner 7 45 for example and go to 11 30 and then clean from 11 30 to 12 30 uh and hire more cleaning staff uh and then go from 12 45 to 3 30 p.m in the afternoon uh thank you doreen corrigan thanks to doreen and whitney for communicating with the board this evening

036all right melissa your turn again and you have a presentation and you will introduce our two administrators who will be doing the presentation all righty um i'm hoping everybody can remember back to last year when um teresa and katie presented and talked a great deal about the pathway to the bi-literacy seal and just where we anticipated our kids would be as our wave of students are now leaving us who have had um spanish since first grade so i am gonna turn it over to katie and teresa to share some really amazing exciting data um about um what is happening and and how we are sending our our students off to glenbard west thanks dr k we are definitely really excited um to share this information with everyone and um i'm gonna start by just giving

037you a little bit of history on the program and how it was developed um we recognized that actually none of our current board members were on the board at the time so we thought it would be nice to talk a little bit about how the program was developed and then teresa is going to go ahead and share the data for where we're at today and what that means for our students as they enter glenbard west as freshmen um go ahead to the next slide please mike so in 2011 um we organized a foreign language committee um that consisted of the assistant superintendents of both district 41 and 87. um at the time many of you may remember i was the administrator for both district 41 and 87 for the language program so i served in

038that capacity for both districts we had the assistant principal of glenbard west we had some board members we had our foreign language teachers in district 41 and 87 we also had district 41 gen ed teachers and bilingual teachers and also esl teachers and then we also had parents um within the community committee mike if you can go to the next one um as a district we did visit um other surrounding districts that were offering plus programs um at the time we had two board members that did join us on those visits we visited oak parks uh spanish program arlington heights chinese program and kids killed years spanish program as well one thing to recognize about all of the programs as we interviewed these districts is that they really had a strong focus on exposure to

039language and culture and really hadn't begun addressing what that would mean for students when they entered high school and what that course would work would look like they were doing it more as an enrichment um just for students to gain exposure of another language go ahead and go to the next site please mike um through the committee we did create a vision for the foreign language program which was for the program for the students within the program to develop proficient communicative competence in the target language through integrated thematic units and students would embrace the diverse cultural perspectives next slide please we also created goals for our foreign language program at the elementary school and that was for our students to really be immersed in a foreign language during the optimal years of acquisition for them

040to develop positive attitudes about language and cultures other than their own to increase cognitive skills and academic abilities that would transfer to overall higher achievement and probably the most important and that differentiated us from other programs was we really wanted our students to be entering the middle school above the beginning levels in spanish and at the time spanish did not begin at hadley until the seventh grade and our students spent seventh and at eighth grade in spanish one and then were prepared for spanish two when they entered glenbard west next slide please mike um many people have asked you know what what made us choose spanish as the language um and we really did research nationally and locally to determine which language was going to um that most of our students would want to take

041and from a national perspective it was found that by 2023 um spanish would be the majority minority language um and that by 2050 it had the potential to be the majority when we then dug in and again this was back in 2011 and it it is consistent still today um our largest our students chose spanish over most other languages as they entered glenbard and you can see those numbers there and so ultimately spanish was chosen as the language if you can move to the next slide please mike and then we had to determine the allocation for language how much time would students spend in the language and so as a committee we determined 30 minutes a day um based on the research um that we had found that it was important to have consistent minutes

042across the week 30 minutes a day was where you would find the most benefits and that it was determined we would start at first grade since we had a half day kindergarten program and then we based on research determined that it would be most beneficial to roll the program up each year so we started at first grade and then every year you know developed the program from there next slide please to talk a little bit about our journey in developing the foreign language program the program was then approved by the board of education in beginning in february of 2013 the flesh teachers and i began developing and designing the first grade curriculum we based that off of the hadley expectations um the glenbard language proficiency expectations and also the grade level themes and content that

043students would be immersed in in their general classes we wanted to make sure that we were kind of piggybacking on that um in spanish we then launched the program in august of 2013 with our first group of first graders um and we did that in collaboration with hadley and the glenbard foreign language department next slide please mike 2013 through 2017 we continued to develop curriculum each year um and one thing i'd like to recognize our teachers for is that each year they developed this curriculum by hand we did not utilize a program or a resource we really developed this based on what we knew about language what we knew about our students needs and then also on language proficiency and what those expectations were at every grade level during that time we also determined that

044when students came in new to the district we were not going to create a separate program but rather we were going to immerse students in the spanish language at the grade level that they were entering in and we were going to differentiate for their needs so if a student entered the program at third grade we differentiated for their proficiency level and they attended the program with their third grade peers um in 2018 was the first year that our fifth graders took the apple assessment and then from that data theresa and the team began to develop the curriculum for the middle school in 2018 and 19 we had a really great collaboration with hadley and the glenbard foreign language departments where they came to visit our flesh classrooms and they were able to be engaged in

045the learning that our students were participating in and also got a first-hand look at how awesome they were doing in the target language being immersed in spanish in november of um our students so just this past november our eighth graders took the apple assessment and this was for the projection of where they would place at glenbard west and it was important to do that in november instead of at the end of the year because glenbard needed that information for class placements for next year in december just this past month we continued to analyze the data we looked at course placements and we also created course recommendations um these occurred with um teresa and myself as well as steve dively the department chair over at hadley and our spanish foreign language teachers where we all came

046together and had discussions about the expectations at glenbard and what that meant for our students and where our students would place within the the trajectory at glambard from there our students received their course recommendations from hadley on what courses they would take at glenbard relative to spanish something that we're really proud of is the collaboration that has occurred between everyone between our elementary teachers our middle school teachers and then the strong collaboration that we've had with glenbard to really make an articulated program in districts that are not unit districts um you know that that strong collaboration has really made a difference for our students so i'm going to turn it over to teresa who is going to talk a little bit about the apple test and then the data for our students and what that

047means for class placement at west thank you katie thank you for giving all that background really great information i want to continue building your background knowledge to help you make some sense of some different levels that we're going to be looking at as katie mentioned we look at proficiency levels based on the american council of teaching of foreign languages or we call that actful and we use their standardized language proficiency assessment and the abbreviation for that is apple so when we talk about apple scores we're referring to those proficiency levels associated with the actual levels and in particular we're focused on the novice intermediate and advanced and mike if you could change it to the next slide it's just a close-up of what those descriptions are generally for that novice intermediate and advanced level and

048then might go ahead and go to the next one i wanted to point out that i have a red box here around a series of scores and you'll notice on the left hand side is the general descriptor ranging from novice high at the bottom moving up to advanced loo and for ease of labeling actual has named each of those word descriptors with letters and numbers such as n4 going up to a so i just wanted you to have that background of how all of that's correlating the significance of the red box is showing that we get information about the scores ranging from n4 novice high all the way up to the advanced low or advanced level with that form b there are two different forms form a is more appropriate for the younger students our

049hadley 8th graders took the form b assessment and that is the same form that is used by glenbard west so those scores will directly align with what glenbard west is using mike you can go to the next screen thanks um also for context i want to look at that same table at those very top two ratings the i5 and the a and these areas are significant because students who reach that i5 and above level for any of the domains in the language are reaching levels that are considered achievable for a seal of by literacy that would go toward the foreign language part of the seal now our students took assessments in all four language domains reading writing speaking and listening and to earn the foreign language part of the seal students would have to earn

050an i-5 or an intermediate high or higher or comparable level on the apple test in each of those four domains mike if you could go to the next slide so some targets that we're going to look at uh as a reminder at the end of fifth grade the this group of students took the apple test and we wanted them to score an n4 or higher and we had many students reaching that level and higher but as you can see as i mentioned earlier if you look across the lines those students took the form a we had students who scored very high but the level that the form a goes up to is limited so we may have students who were scoring higher than we realized but we weren't able to capture that data just because

051the form a only goes up to a certain point at the end of eighth grade we're expecting students to achieve a level i to or higher but i do want to make it clear even though that is a goal and expectation for the end of the year a couple things to consider expressive language speaking and writing are typically considered higher and um students who are learning a language as a second language usually will score lower in those areas and that's not something that's unique to district 41. internationally that's true second language learners and you'll notice that the receptive domains reading and listening will tend to be higher something else that we want to keep in mind as katie already mentioned that score of i2 and above is the score we want students to achieve or

052we expect them to achieve by the end of the school year but we could not wait to get that score until the end of the year because we needed to get the scores to help us determine placements for glenbard west so the scores that you're going to be looking at the actual performance are early in the year in november and we're expecting our students are going to continue to grow and um acquire even higher scores than what we'll be looking at and just to reiterate our students took the form b test and we did that specifically to make sure that it aligned to glenbard because at glenbard they also take the form b test so we wanted it to be the same test that students would be taking at glenbard thank you katie for re-emphasizing

053that i might go ahead and go to the next slide so this is a transition slide i just want to be clear the previous slides were just giving you background about what are the proficiency levels that we're looking at how do we measure those how do we name those what do we use those for so those are giving us our guides of where we want to head the slides that are going to follow are the actual scores of our 8th grade hadley spanish students on the apple assessment that was taken this past november mike if you can continue one other thing before we take a look at the scores as katie mentioned no matter when a student arrived they were enrolled in the flesh program and that's true all the way up into hadley so

054we had students who were coming new in third grade fifth grade sixth grade and and later but they were folded in with the rest of the group who had been participating in flesh since first grade so just for your background knowledge 58 of our current eighth grade students who are enrolled in spanish courses have been receiving flesh instruction since first grade 42 percent of those students arrived sometime after first grade mike if you could go on to the next slide thank you so a couple of things that i want to point out on this slide and then you'll notice the same pattern in the following slides we're going to look at what is essentially the speaking domain this says interpersonal listening and speaking and basically that means students participated in conversation style and they were

055given prompts as though they were participating in a conversation which is the listening part and then they had to respond appropriately in the speaking part so as a reminder this is including all students no matter if they arrived and started with us in first grade or afterwards and looking at a domain that is typically harder for students learning a second language our end of the year target which is in red here we still had 36 percent of all those eighth graders taking spanish meet that expected goal still at the beginning of the school year we haven't even finished the school year yet even more interesting and i'm really excited look at that blue line that's a reminder of what the cutoff was for reaching seal of by literacy performance level already six percent of the

056students have speaking capability that would qualify for the sela by literacy for the lang foreign language part of the seal mark mike if you could go to the next slide uh writing is one of the other expressive domains and again we do expect to see lower levels achieving but even so looking at our red line target taken from the beginning of the year including all students no matter when they came 49 percent of our students met that target or exceeded it and look at the top 13 percent are already qualifying for the seal of by literacy in writing again these are the harder domains that we're looking at it's very exciting to see how well they're doing i'm looking forward to showing you the next slide if mike would move on and now we're going

057to look at the listening look at our target the red percent of all students no matter when they arrived met that target already still at the beginning of the school year 39 are already qualifying for a level for the seal of illiteracy for their listening skills and then mike if you could go to the next slide the reading red line again 73 of our students met or exceeded the target again we're at the beginning of the school year we expect those scores to be higher by the end of the school year 43 already meeting levels that are acceptable in reading to obtain the seal of illiteracy so that was really really exciting for us to see our students are doing very well this is an excellent reflection of our teachers um both at les elementary

058and spanish hadley so let's take a look at how we use these stores scores to um look at or determine placements for glenbard west as katie said we've been in collaboration with glenbard west we've had meetings we've had our teachers with work with their teachers um you may be familiar with what is considered the traditional track for their spanish courses starting with spanish one and as katie mentioned typically our students would take what would be the equivalent of a spanish one spread over two years in seventh and eighth grade and they would be fully prepared to enter into spanish two they still continue this same track at glenbard west the traditional track starting for spanish one for students who are new to spanish as freshmen and it continues up to spanish four and after four

059students who follow that track have the option of going to spanish five or taking advance placement courses in spanish for our students they anticipated them being higher having all of those years of daily spanish instruction so they created a special track that they call the honors track and they're naming those courses spanish two honors and spanish 3 honors and one of the things that i want to point out that makes this track different than the traditional track is that students who follow this track will receive honors credit at the spanish two honors and the spanish three levels but also something else you'll notice that the pathway to begin taking advanced placement courses come sooner so even students who might start at a level two honors after two years would have that option to start taking

060the advanced placement course so that's something that's quite a bit different than what is typically available students at the high school normally have to follow a four-year sequence with them or at least three years for our hadley students starting at two before they even have that option for advanced placement like if you could turn to the next slide here is something really really thrilling our hadley teachers made placement recommendations first by collaborating with each other talking about what they knew of each students and their demonstrated abilities and language over time we also looked very closely at the hadley course descriptions and expected proficiency levels at the end of each school year for each course and of course we use those apple scores to give us guidance and that's where no understanding those proficiency levels and

061how they correlate with those apple scores come into play so looking at those three factors teachers made recommendations and mr dively i the hadley teachers the department chair at um glenbard west and the assistant principal there we all met together and one by one we shared our recommendation for placement so in the end we ended up placing 44 or recommending 44 students for spanish 2 remembering that we have students who are enrolling all the time and some as i mentioned haven't even arrived to our district until they've attended middle school here we recommended 52 to be placed in two honors 52 to be placed in spanish 3 and 132 placed in three honors based on those criteria student ability the apple scores and looking at those glenbard west course descriptions so in the end i

062want to thank our um plus teachers for their hard work in developing the curriculum i want to thank our spanish hadley teachers for making that adjustment and learning to have a new type of spanish student starting in sixth grade and learning how to develop appropriate curriculum for them based on their needs but even with all of these new students who arrived later on into our district look how many we are still placing above that spanish two level so those students rose to the occasion so in addition to awesome differentiation instruction those students new to our district were coming into classrooms that had fantastic models for spanish speaking going on that were able to support um mike if you could go to that last slide in the end 84 of our currently enrolled spanish students at

063hadley in eighth grade have been recommended for above the traditional spanish two level at glenbard west and that is all thank you for listening to that we are super excited that our students have achieved the goals that we had only hoped for um that our teachers and our students really rose above and we couldn't be more proud of where they are um and we're excited to see what happens when they go to glenbard hey katie thank you and teresa uh thank you not just for the both of you not just for the presentation but obviously being leaders in helping to promote uh development develop and sustain the foreign language programs that we have at district 41 that's a it's a wonderful journey and you're right and relatively early in your journey these are remarkable achievements

064let me step back take a minute and give board members a chance to thank you mike offer any comments or questions obviously you gave us a lot of information to look at so yeah applause all around let's just go around here bruce would do you have any questions or comments for either dr mccleskey or dr ulrich how many total students are are there so 280 are going into spanish are there other students that are going into other languages like french chinese and starting at level one or what level would they start at there we uh placed for the language piece a total of 425 for excuse me 425 students but that included the students who are going to be taking french and it's going to it includes students um who will be assigned to that

065spanish heritage versus the one of the traditional or honors placement tracks as well we also have to remember that some of that gap from the total number of eighth graders is that we do have a significant number of english learners who may or may not be taking a language at glenbard west west next year depending on how they perform on access testing okay um what what percentage were recommended for spanish one of the kids going to hadley none yeah okay um and uh sorry um do you know what percentage it was last year that were recommended for spanish two uh okay that i think we're two it was automatically uh moved into spanish two but katie do you have anything to add to that no i was going to say in the past bruce our

066students articulated into west at the spanish two level that's what they were prepared for um they didn't go above spanish too okay um and then the apple test do we know those kids not this year but years before how they performed on the apple test yeah um bruce this is the same group of students who took the apple test in fifth grade so the eighth graders i remember the board uh last year asked when dr gordon was was about to leave asked that uh that the kids that were in eighth grade that year that hadn't had um spanish language throughout take take the apple test and then uh as soon as he left and the new board was seated uh and and the old board the reasoning behind that was to get a comparison of

067how the apple scores were currently compared are under you know with kids who had not had um with kids who had not had uh had the the flesh uh curriculum and then compare that to uh kids who who have you know have had flesh since since first grade and this board uh the current board i'm seated with uh even though it was three thousand dollars i remember refused to to approve that to see what the difference was between kids who'd had flesh and kids kids who didn't i was really a proponent of of getting for transparency purposes and data purposes for getting that that information and um right and bruce if you remember the reason but i'd like to you know uh but that was the this board's choice so right and if you remember

068back at that time our students were completing spanish one in seventh grade and the second part of spanish one in eighth grade and so they were naturally their their natural place at glenbard was for them to be in spanish too so there really wasn't a reason to give them a test we would have been testing them just to test them and being that our eighth graders are tested in so many other pieces the iar test the science the test the math test we really didn't want to give them an assessment for no purpose um that would serve them um i remember i remember the reasoning the board resisted it or the sorry administration resisted that test but i think that board thought it was important to uh see how well our flesh had improved uh

069these kids in in their you know from one one class who hadn't had fless to this class and really really see how well we were doing um and and i know as a teacher you know testing can be uh it can be onerous uh a lot of times and get in the way of teaching but uh um i just wanna clear that this board you know opted not to to gather that information and see what return on investment for for this investment which i think we spend about a 900 to a million dollars a year on flesh um would be well and i think what's really great about the data that we're able to present tonight is we were able to show you where we were at and how many students you know we knew

070all of our students were entering at the spanish two level in the past and what that trajectory looked like and this data can now show you based on our students and the years of experience that they've had in spanish how far they've been able to supersede that traditional level that our students were at so while we don't have the apple assessment on previous students we sure do have a comparison of where they were traditionally to where they are now and i think that that is a huge celebration for our students for our staff for our board for our community because this is really what our community wanted they wanted to create an environment where our students could be bilingual and biliterate and i certainly think that our students are on that path bruce did you

071have one final thought before we move on is there enough capacity at west for all those kids to enter um the three honors classes so we've certainly been in collaboration with them like i said all the way back from 2011 and then as we've rolled this program out year after year we've kept them in the loop we've analyzed the data together and they were at the table when these recommendations were made so what glenbard has shared with us is where our students are at is where they're going to make sure that they land um and that's that's what they want to make sure that they that they can do for our students they never hold students back um was something that they continued to say to us over and over they wanted to meet our

072students where they're at okay i just want to add too the whole reason that we are even administering apple is because in that collaboration process we wanted to show at fifth grade where our students were on that trajectory on achieving the seal of biliteracy that pathway so that they would be prepared and they asked us specifically to administer apple at the beginning of eighth grade so that they could make good placement decisions for our students in a timely manner okay thank you thank you lisa thank you thank you katie um ted any questions or comments for dr urich or dr mccloskey uh i don't have any questions i just want to say thank you so much for uh the overview i was familiar with a lot of it but put it all right into place

073from for me um it really is encouraging to see the results of that like that um and i would like to point out that um the discussions that we had with doing the apple testing with the previous eighth graders um was also clear that um we'd be comparing apples and oranges because it'd be two completely different classes it was not the same sort of circumstances and it wasn't going to show anything thank you thank you ted um guillermo any questions please uh first of all thank you for the presentation and uh felicitaciones those are some amazing numbers so i had the questions but i believe that the one with the native spanish you address that question on your last slide so that's really good my other second question someone unrelated uh did the fifth graders

074on the piling on the uh dual language did they go through the same same testing or no so they take a different assessment guillermo and we also are testing them at fifth grade and eighth grade they don't roll up to glenbard until next year yes because we started the dual language program at kindergarten and then the floss program started at first grade so we are super excited to come back again next year and and share the same level of data on our dual language students um that we have on our plus students but they do take a separate assessment um called the stamp assessment um and that's just more fitting for um the program that they're in totally pick great job thank you congratulations thank you camera thank you uh guillermo uh julie any questions

075please yes i do actually i just i i do have one question but i wanted to just make a couple quick comments first um first i'm i'm so um curious and interested in this subject and i actually wrote a lot of research papers in college i just sort of sought this out as a psych major um and i'm so happy that our district has all this for children because i know as you know and you know more than i know um how important it is for language acquisition that it happened early in the youngest ages possible so i am super proud and super happy that our district offers us my own children are in these um programs and if if i hadn't been on mute you would have heard my first grader in the shower

076across the hall singing so it's working it's sticking they enjoy it my fifth grader i don't know spanish it's french for no good reason other than curiosity um but i'm always amazed that my fifth grader can just rattle off off the top of her head and stuff she brings home i'm like i know this is like an essay and you've done it in another language and it's amazing so um i'm so glad that we have this and thank you for offering this and thank you for your presentation i just have a question um out of curiosity when do they um seek out that feel of bioliteracy like what is that kind of any time in high school is that like when does that happen yeah so my understanding is that glenbard west likes to offer

077it consistent consistently so they wait until students are seniors and for the majority of their students now even though they do use apple testing have you have used it in the past they rely more now on the advanced placement test because that's another way to qualify for the seal but there's something that you have to remember qualifying for the seal of biliteracy has two prongs one is the foreign language piece students still have to perform at a meets or exceeds level based on the parameters of their english literacy as well so this gives them time to continue developing in both languages to meet that rigorous criteria okay thanks thank you julie uh jason any questions yeah i have no real questions but i've said it before and i'll say it again you know when we

078have the opportunities to go and visit the schools um one of my favorite things besides maybe ode to joy are hot cross buns i'm sorry um is going to those the dual english rooms at churchill and as as i remember with katie or or teresa disclosed it's not just about the language it's about the respect for different cultures and whatnot and it's just such a fun place to be so it's a shout out to everyone involved in it it's such a great program you jason um katie and uh teresa i do have a question i'm really curious about this based on what i've learned about the power of learning a second language early in life and its relationship to other cognitive development and performance in other academic areas and and i think one of the

079first people to bring this to my attention actually was dr mccluskey in a conversation that i had with her in churchill i i know you didn't come here tonight with this information but um any any sense of how the students who performed above or let's say at spanish 2 and above and certainly for the students at this honors three and four level any sense of how their performance there correlates with what you've seen in terms of their academic growth in other subject matters and i know there's no way that you you have that like in your head but i have to ask you know we've seen a lot of interesting correlations bob i don't have data in front of me to share you know academically like percentage-wise what that looks like um and i'm sure

080teresa has a lot of stories to add to this as well but when you walk into the classrooms and you talk to even gen ed teachers you will hear them tell stories about how kids are making connections you know how they're here hear a word in one language and they can make sense of it in in another language we hear some of our science teachers that will say that kids are making sense out of words because of cognates because of you know words inside a word that they know um in spanish um we've had parents that have contacted us and said you know at times my student my child is using this as a communication tool um when i don't understand what they're saying like one parent had given us an example that i'll never

081forget um that their child had had a hard time saying the difference between shirt and shorts and they would have a conversation and the parent would try to figure it out when their child learned spanish they started saying pantalones cortos for shorts and the parent said to me while i don't speak spanish i understood it enough to know that he was differentiating between the two in a different language for me and we were able to make that make sense of that um we had a family who adopted a dog from mexico and they sent us a letter saying they were able to communicate with the dog with some basic commands in spanish because the kids knew spanish and they were thrilled when the dog had made you know these connections and so i mean those

082are obviously light stories but they've hit home to our families and to our kids and it's really made a difference in their lives so i can't share academically where those connections are i mean we certainly could do a study on it and and try to figure that out but i think it goes deeper than the academics and i think that that's something for us all to remember like these are skills that they will take further than any of us could ever imagine and i think that's what we need to be really really proud of sure i'm just going to add one little thing i know katie's already told so many great things but my favorite stories is uh are when parents tell me that siblings communicate with each other at spanish and parents don't understand

083what they're saying and they just have so much fun talking to each other or you'll have the older sibling helping the younger sibling you know understand concepts and i just love that sense of um brotherly sisterly love that's joining them together through the language or at the sleepovers or the soccer games like somebody gave us an example of you know a student on one of the soccer teams that didn't speak english and all of the glen ellen district 41 students jumped in and started communicating with them because they spoke spanish and so i just think there's a lot of really sweet stories um that like i said far surpassed the academic piece of it right and katie wouldn't you think that over time we can start to watch what um now that we're articulating up

084a group of kids who have had spanish since first grade what their experience is like is glenbard west so does moving so moving through their language path there um what else does this allow them to do so um that's where i think we might see some interesting data over time now that we've actually rolled this first yeah and we've already been in conversations with glenbard about the fact that our students have the potential to exhaust the courses at glenbard and so there's that opportunity of starting a third language or taking some capstone courses which are courses that are more related to career orientation you know and career interests so there's a lot of really unique opportunities for our kids and i think it'll be really fun to watch them jess i think you wanted to

085perhaps affirm the siblings um no you skipped me again oh hi you haven't had a chance to say anything like i'm skipping you all right well actually i did something else but go ahead let me go back to you i'm sorry i am somehow you're disappearing on my screen but go ahead you're up i just i wanted to say how phenomenal this is and how excited i am and and thank you for all this hard work i got a little clumped at the when the score he built it up so much and then there was this massive um like oh moment and i i just am so excited for these students and how we have set them up for success in ways that uh having not gone through this program um they they just wouldn't

086be as confident as i know they will be um in the language and what opportunities that opens up for them so i'm i'm beyond overjoyed and i'm so appreciative and i'm so grateful for what you guys have done so thank you thank you just apologies a second time uh just to wrap up and actually you you set up my comment really well about setting up students for success i you know i have the great pleasure to see the product much later in life of a good elementary a good high school education um being working as a professor in higher education uh and and i can tell you two critical pieces uh that are directly related to the work that you're doing with our elementary students and that is there is a real explosion amongst uh

087uh corporate recruiters uh and large corporations uh to look for bilingual people to employ uh and and it has become a hiring competency right they're looking at the way you might look at other things on a a cv and attached to that is also the ability to culturally uh integrate across different nationalities that it's a a again a very strong employment competency and it's a it's a benefit that i uh have i'm fortunate to see uh the product of what works and it gives me a great sense of what's needed at the elementary and uh levels and middle school levels high school levels and this is certainly uh a powerful lifelong learning tool for our students so thank you both thank you um okay all right uh we are going to move into our unless

088i missed anybody else maybe i skipped jessica twice that at that time you know what bob i would like to make just a wrap-up comment before we move on to the next item sure i think it's important to acknowledge in all of the planning and um you know while there is no model that meets everybody's needs we we know that that's not even a topic to debate um but why it was so important to maintain the programs that are really unique to district 41 such as flesh you know so when when we were planning our model and trying to figure out what what can we do you know meeting all of the requirements of what we had to do with um transmission mitigation but how do we not lose the aspects of of programs that

089are unique to district 41 this one in particular so you know um while that's taken a lot of um shifting and and being responsive and working through things um i think the benefit of of trying to hang on to that um throughout this process and pandemic um speaks volumes and and was really important and for good reason good point good point melissa thank you for making it all right we've got a a few discussion items and the first one that's up is the 2122 school year calendar and melissa you'll facilitate this please yes i can i've got a couple of um a couple of pdfs open here hold on one second um equity progress too many tabs open um all right so for the 20 21 21 22 school year um just a little context

090we do have a calendar committee that meets to discuss calendar we we activated our committee a little bit later than typical um just because we wanted to have a firmer grasp on everything that was going on and projected to happen um but happy to say that we are moving forward a calendar for 2122 that looks very comparable to um years past of what we would consider a typical school year while i can't cement that in right now i feel safe in saying that is the goal that we're working towards is to be able to open fully next school year even if that means we have some mitigation efforts in place that we have to maintain again um everything with the virus has been very um unpredictable and there's still a lot of unknowns but we

091are moving forward a calendar that sets us up to do that um and aligns with um glenbard west um comparably to as we have in years past and the calendar that you see in front of you has um a first full day of student attendance on august 18th and i believe let's see our um last day of student attendance is projected to be may 27th so a very comparable calendar to what um people are used to seeing thank you melissa jess i'm going to call on you first go ahead jess sorry and then i didn't wasn't ready to unmute um my my only comment is i i know i asked a kind of a dumb question about november 2nd and i think my confusion is that the um pictures of the calendars show november 2nd

092as a non-attendance day but it's not listed in the list of dates as a non-attendance day so i think that just the coloring on the calendar is a typo so to speak okay it could be mrs smoke anything um um no no but um jess you are correct that is a shading error our last day of student attendance is may 27th but staff will have their institute day on may 31st right and then the november 7th november 2nd of 21 yeah it's incorrect okay we'll fix that before we approve it at the next meeting thank you was that it jess okay good guillermo no no questions for comments thanks okay thank you again bruce any questions uh no questions thank you uh julie ted just a couple of comments because i participated on the calendar

093committee for the first time um just wanted to let the people know who are tuning in that there's an awful lot of pieces that go into this in terms of state regulations and contract um uh pieces and i i didn't absorb at all because i kind of i got pulled in late but uh i appreciate the amount of effort that goes into pulling this all together and i guess i kind of felt that shirt on my duties because i didn't notice that uh pink colored november 2nd um so because i know we had a discussion about whether uh whether a day like that this year and that it was unique for this last this last election thank you ted jason any calendar related questions um no calendar related questions now thanks okay thank you uh

094i have uh no questions all right i'm uh you uh i think uh or eric uh we'll lead this uh discussion this has to do with the 2021-2022 student fees mr deporter you're up all right yeah this is something we bring to the board each year uh and what it is really is a list of registration fees that we assess students uh for the school year um of note there have been no increases on this report from previous years in fact we've held everything flat and one of the things we did decide to change this year and i i think it was an update to the board report was in speaking with mr dively at happy we decided that the age old practice of buying calculators is no longer necessary because kids have them so

095that's a few we're actually going to take off of registration because they just haven't seen that need as kids come in so we have i think a good number on hand still so we don't need to assess that fee across the board so that's really the one meaningful change from last year to this year and then additionally there's one small increase that the contract we signed for the hadley yearbook cost is just under 16 in previous years that have been right at 15 so we're going to raise that from to 16 so uh one dollar change so thankfully that's the only increase uh on this list um just as an aside i will say you know this is a topic that you know i communicate with my colleagues across dupage and really the collar counties

096and we talk about registration fees frequently um you know no district wants to be an outlier with higher fees and what i can say is glennon 41 actually is towards the bottom edge of the fees that are assessed for registration um and for that reason you know i think they're appropriate where they are and we're certainly not looking to increase them so the plan would be to just present this to the board for discussion tonight and then bring it back for approval uh at the next business meeting at the end of february and then just as everyone may know already that we do not look to collect fees until summer time really july and august so registration starts here in the first quarter of the year towards march april but then we don't collect these

097until later thank you eric happy to answer your questions okay let's see if anybody's got any ted any questions for eric no questions thank you guillermo any questions for eric no no questions thank you julie any questions no thanks jess any questions no thanks for asking or answering my earlier ones thank you bruce any questions um do students on free and reduced lunch get the fees waived yes i do okay that's it thank you jason any questions no questions thank you all right i do not have any questions thank you eric and then the final discussion item uh deals with board policy revisions and this is a first reading and melissa will facilitate this with uh assistance from jessica actually um jess is a a wonderful notetaker and sharer of our policy conversations so my

098facilitation is usually turning it over to just to share the details from policy committee sure um so this will be detailed lights today but um this was from press issue and the main components are student data privacy with some some new policies that came out from press and then um timeout and physical restraint policies there as you may recall we had as a kind of a reaction to some news reporting had um been required to change our policies one way and then there this was a this is a slight uh course correction um revision on on those policies um and also what you're seeing are some administration recommendations that are kind of that are timely at this point so um even though it's a first reading for these next recommendations it's uh it's something that

099the that we we need to prepare for the next year so we'll be voting on it later in the meeting um but regarding um non-public school students um and notice of rights regarding student school records and release of a photograph student directory in yearbook any questions thank you jess um julie any questions for either melissa or jessica i am also on the policy committee so i guess i can jump in and help two if need be but julie go ahead maybe i should quiz you just to prove it no i don't have anything go for it jess will keep score yeah i'll lose okay thank you uh guillermo do you have any questions no thank you ted any questions no questions uh bruce any questions uh just to confirm this all came from press correct

100looks like it did yeah the the ones from the press issue um and then the administration recommendations um i think we were just trying to clarify the wording around the uh release of student directory information so that was not press that was specific to our district and that was just to make sure that we had people know that the if you you can release or not release your information about your student on the yearbook and in the pta yeah et cetera okay yes it really clear it clarifies when you make that choice bruce what did what it actually is okay great glad that got cleared up yeah jason did you have any questions just about just one and i think i think i i understand what i'm saying but in reading the the policy revision

101proposed regarding the use of isolated time outs amounts and restraints it there's nothing regarding about how that policy is implemented is that something that be in an ap or right um so yes jason and something that would definitely come out um through our student services department and through laurel if you remember there was this a big reaction with emergency rules and restrictions that came out and then gradually over time it swung a little bit back in the other direction and i'm i'm not sure that everybody um is really happy with where it landed um but yes the permitted under limited circumstances um that would all be crafted into an ap and clarified but i i i wouldn't be shocked if there's further discussion and future changes to this um i still think there's a lot

102of um conversations still happening ab happening regarding this and and potential for change thank you thank you jason um and thank you jessica and melissa it's great to have you as policy committee and members okay that was the last of our discussion items we'll move on to the consent agenda are there any items board members would like to be removed from the consent agenda to be considered separately hearing none may i have a motion to approve the consent agenda which includes employment recommendations on the personnel report the school district payment order and the foia report of december 29th 2020 through january 19th 2021 the december 2020 financial reports and the open and closed session minutes of december 14 2020 and january 11 2021 as presented motion second thank you uh roll call mr smoke mr

103estes yes mrs hill yes mr curry yes mr rollback yes mr guzman yes mrs buttimer yes dr bruno yes thank you we also have a few superintendent recommendations and the first one is the new registrar for district obligations may have a motion to approve the board of education of school district 41 to approve the board of education of school district 41 to approve the resolution appointing a new registrar and paying agent for certain outstanding obligations of the district as presented motion second any discussion very good hearing none roll call mr smoke mr curry yes mr lobock yes mr guzman yes is this hill yeah mr estes yes mrs butter yes dr bruno yes the second recommendation uh board policy revisions which would be the second reading and adoption these are the policy revisions that jessica

104mentioned just a little while ago may have a motion to approve the board policy revisions as presented motion second any discussion roll call mr smoke mr lobock yes mr guzman yes mr rusty's yes mr curry yes mrs hill yeah this is buttimer yes dr bruno yes and finally categorization of non-bargaining unit positions may have a motion to approve the resolution regarding categories of positions of non-bargaining unit educational support personnel employees as presented motion second any discussion roll call mr smoke mr guzman yes this is hill yes this is buttimer yes mr lobock yes mr curry mr estes yes dr bruno yes thank you board next up is the other or board governance learning together does anyone have well i guess i could ask you first melissa if you had anything and then if the board

105has any items to present in this section i think we learned a little bit about vaccination and doses probably more than you wanted to know all right anyone else go ahead bruce go ahead i think you spoke up first is is there school tomorrow are we planning on having school or not call we send out a communication to our parents that will look at it at 4 45 so a communication would go out no later than 5. um i know that districts around us have already called it but i also believe that the forecast is changing a little bit so if there's a way to safely sneak in an an in-person day tomorrow um we just want to monitor it a little bit long it just felt a little bit early to call it right

106now sounds prudent thank you thank you uh jesse i saw your hand please yeah i'd like to suggest that the board read a book that furthers our understanding of diversity equity and inclusion as it relates to our role as board members um i i've read several books if somebody wants to kind of collaborate on um what what book to recommend that we we do as a board if we're open to that i can make a suggestion and take some take suggestions as part of the input well jess you showed three books earlier in your dei report and obviously the board has made a commitment in a number of different ways to diversity and equity and inclusion the books sound very interesting our other board members this is the place on this agenda for doing this

107we had talked about this in which we might take pieces of of a reading uh either directed by the superintendent or perhaps in this case by a board member uh are there are there any objections uh from board members to perhaps finding a book around equity that would support the board's commitment we don't have one yet but jay i guess some uh and not to sound contrarian because obviously it's something that i support in the thought process um i just don't know if abortion is a place for a book club and i don't mean that rudely um but that being said i mean having you know recommended um books that various board members recommend say hey i think this is good books to read on this topic i recommend board members read these you know

108and and having a library or a book exchange for for board members to share is a good idea i think some of those books that you recommended tonight about would be great read um so i said i agree with you to extend yeah i would say as the taxing bodies were um sharing you know some of their and and the nonprofit organizations sharing what they have done as diversity is and equity inclusion they've many of them had said they've they've done a group read and that really helped them kind of come to some same level of understanding so i think there's um benefit to kind of through through the value of peer pressure to have us all read the same one text i'm all for the value of peer pressure all for that let me

109get it's a good conversation let me get some more input from people uh guillermo uh what are your thoughts uh that's a good question um i always always open to um learning something new or that really a good book that will bring some new ideas and some collaboration within the team so i'll be up for that uh i'd love to see your highlights and just go through that hopefully you didn't highlight the whole book so i don't have to read the whole thing but i'd love to see some of the key points that you highlighted and uh on some of those books thank you thank you guillermo julie what what are your thoughts i'm okay with that um i was just sort of thinking along guillermo's lineup can i read the highlights as a lazy

110activist can we like do an article or a couple articles instead of like a 300 page textbook like i i am interested and i'm all in on learning things um okay we're here it has to do something something is good yeah for sure starting to sound like my students at the university of illinois they're into reading but they'd rather the articles be short on the chapter short but that's fine bruce any thoughts here um no i think i'd rather use board time in in in different ways okay very good ted how about you i have no objections and i think i've read one of those books already ah you're ready you're ready leaped ahead um well look i i think this is why we have this actually one of the reasons why we have this

111on the agenda and of course it's not to turn the meeting itself into a book club but to allow people to do some study and then to bring what they've learned together and to share that as a team of eight so i certainly would be in favor uh of asking we can't of course require it but we can ask board members to do some reading and then look for an opportunity because we're certainly going to be talking much more about diversity and we can use this uh this part of the meeting when appropriate and there may be other things that will need to be done but then we can actually talk a bit about the pieces that we've pulled out of the out of the book and we can keep the conversation brief but but

112insightful if that would be appropriate is that a line close enough just to what you're interested in absolutely and i'll i'll check with our um uh facilitator with the dei project and dawn to see if if they recommend something different than what i've already done because i i would i i'm not sure i've i've read one that's been like well that was gripping you know so um perhaps perhaps i can get a better recommendation dogs got a little noise i think i can get him out of the house if you give me a second give him food they're plowing the streets that gets them all excited all right live live television here all right uh let's move on then upcoming meetings uh our next february eighth meeting is a regular board workshop meeting and then

113back on february 22nd for regular board meeting are there any items board members wish to suggest for a future meeting let me just put up your hand and i'll jess your hand is up um yes i one of the things that i know is coming is the academic assessment data and i am excited for that because i think um parents are concerned about you know what are do we have a gap what are they how do we address them um but i'm also hearing concerns about you know the impact of this pandemic and all that has brought on mental health of our students and so i'm wondering if there's a way in around that time before or after um to do a review of our mental health and trauma services and and if it's an

114opportunity for us to stop and evaluate and take stock you know are do we have the resources aligned for you to do what we need to do um and have have we provided that to you know i is there a way to assess the gap in that capacity i know so i'll just stop talking jess i think we have um some really good data um you know we can in terms of mental health and sel that we can talk about inherent in our model with putting our eyes on kids five days a week um but also walk people through again our crisis alerts that we monitor actively um literally seven days a week almost 24 hours a day so while we can't talk about specific responses to situations um we can talk through all of

115those alerts trends that we saw what some typical responses were whether it was home visit by the principal and social worker whether it was dispatching the police for a well child visit um you know and then also how it connects with our threat assessment team because um almost exclusively all of our threat assessment team meetings have focused on supporting mental health and walking through um what buildings have been dealing with how they responded and just sharing those things um and getting feedback from our consultant nancy czar so yes we can certainly do an update on that well obviously the district is certainly willing to do that and can do that so i would assume all board members um never assume bob or you're okay you'll never assume i i was worried but never assume all

116right let's then move on to a closed session the board has a need to adjourn the closed session and may take action following the session may have a motion to adjourn to a closed session to confidentially discuss two two one the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employees including hearing testimony on a complaint lodged against an employee to determine its validity excuse me dr bruno yes ma'am there's no action planned after closed session that was my error in the script so i just wanted to make sure the board was aware of that so we will not be okay so there's no action item we may not we are not going to be taking any action okay thanks for the clarification nance did we get a motion a revised motion yes okay all

117right any discussion then we'll call mrs mrs buttomer yes mr curry lobock yes mr guzman yes mrs hill yeah mr estes yes dr bruno yes thank you very much we will now close the open this open session and board members you'll need