Board of Education - Feb 23 2026

001and Dr. Steinberg, we're ready. Good evening. Welcome to the Glen Brook High School District 225 board of education meeting. Um, welcome to we guess students from Civics. Is that full house? We have a good number of students here. By show of hands, how many students are here for civics? Welcome all. Give yourself a round of applause. Now we have a story to There we go. All right. Do we have anything? You have your roll call. All right. Miss Smith. Mr. Downing. Present. Mr. Glowaki. Mrs. Hope here. Miss Mullenbeck. Mr. O'Hara. Mr. Dr. Shine present. Dr. Seinberg here. Four members present. All right. Thank you. Any changes on the agenda? Should we go? There are no changes to the agenda this evening. Entertain a motion to approve the agenda for this evening. I move. Second. All

002in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion carries. All right. I guess next section is superintendent report. Dr. Grall. All right. Well, good evening everyone. Thank you so much for all those who are able to join us. Uh today is really an exciting opportunity um because we're going to hear from two amazing programs that embrace the 4A from start to finish. Um the first will be a overview of our Glen Brook Academy of International Studies program and the second is a review of all of the work that we do to support our students um as they uh transition and and contemplate whether they are going to college or pursuing a career path or the military. So looking forward to those two presentations and uh I hope uh board members that you've brought some questions because I know

003the team is ready to answer them. Uh before we get to that though uh just want to celebrate uh we started this last meeting. Um the progress we've had on our SEAL benchmark and climate survey. So at the last meeting we highlighted that student participation rate our goal is 95% and then teacher and staff participation rate has a 50% rate. You'll notice that Glenrech North has achieved student participation and Glen Brook South is almost there at 93%. Um, from a teacher and staff participation, um, we're doing real well on teacher, both exceeding the 50% goal and we're continuing to work with our staff. Um, the difference here, uh, staff members are non-licensed personnel, uh, who ISBY has identified kind of in a different category. What I think is really important to highlight is this is

004the first year all of our staff members are able to participate in the climate survey. Previously when we used um the University of Chicago's five essential survey, it was very limited in terms of who can participate. And so we're continuing to create awareness on that. But ask any student who has not yet taken it, including some of our friends who might be here tonight perhaps, um to please make sure to take the panorama survey. um that is really essential for the school's report card designations next year. A second great celebration is that um the district was notified last week that we are officially um a 2026 Illinois Green Ribbon School recipient. What that means is after submitting an application and being adjudicated with a wide range of applications across the state, um the Illinois State

005Board of Education as well as the Illinois Green Alliance has identified that our practices committed to reducing environmental impact, improving health and wellness, and um implementing effective environmental and sustainability education are superior. and they want to recognize that and also promote the story so that others can emulate and model. Um really cool area. Sometimes when we hear green ribbon we focus only on uh environmentally conscious and and kind of green initiatives but this particular award recognizes the importance of promoting health across the organization. So, some of the efforts that were identified include the implementation of the Glen Brook School Health Center, which will include the recent uh expansion at Glen Brook North next year. Um the launching of what we affectionately call the battery project uh over at Glen Brook North and South and also

006strong student participation in initiatives through their classes and clubs and and uh other initiatives. So, very grateful for the recognition. It'll be formally announced by Isby in May of this year and we'll let the board members and community know when they can tune in to a virtual celebration. Our final topic today, I'll transition over to Dr. John's who will give a little bit of an update regarding our policy manual refresh. Thank you, Dr. Grall. We continue to march on with our um policy modernization project that we're very proud of. Uh since the last time I reported to the board, we've now completed sections six and seven. Uh we've sent them both off to the IASB representatives to do their final touches before they bring them back to us to be reviewed. Uh under chapter 6,

007there's 52 policies. We adopted 24 from press. We retained 14 sunset 12 which had redundant uh wording uh that were in the adopted or retained policies. We have two that we're going to hold for a while and take another look at. We had similar numbers in chapter 7 where there's 45 policies, 28 adopted for press, 17 that we retained uh with some amendments for both of those. Our next meeting with our work working group is chapter is on Wednesday with chapter 5. That chapter is heavy on uh HR. And so we've had we saved it for last so we could have more time going through it very closely because we know there's a lot of implications with with our collective bargaining agreement where we cannot and certainly don't want to change a policy that would

008some sort in some way implicate our collective bargaining agreements. When all that is done we'll have our next editing meeting with the IASB on March 12th from 4 to 7. And that's an open meeting uh so people can attend. You're welcome if you'd like to come. And that concludes the superintendent's report. Board reports. This is board reports. I read here somebody went to the Glenn Brook foundation meeting. Yeah. Dr. Johns and I attended the foundation meeting. It was a great opportunity for us to continue planning for two events. The first event is the annual night of Glen Brook Theater. uh that takes place um kind of in alignment with Cinderella on the Saturday night performance. Uh more information should be coming forth um in the next probably two weeks. Um as a reminder to board

009members, if you haven't filled out the RSVP in Parent Square, please do so so we can make sure that um we can all come together and and have a nice time out. Um the second event that they are continuing to work on is uh being called Glen Brook Fest. This is that music concert we talked about that we hope to have in September of 2026. Um there have been a considerable amount of um interested musicians uh from our alumni as well as current students and donors to support the activity. So um once we get closer to identifying a venue, which will likely be at a local forest preserve, um we'll share that information out. Um, but the committee has been doing a great job coming together, sharing ideas, and I think as they've always mentioned,

010if other individuals would like to get involved in the foundation, they would welcome participation. So, feel free to reach out to Dr. Johnson or myself. Thank you. Board members, anything to report? Yeah. Um, I had the pleasure of of attending uh the GBS variety show. Um, it was really awesome. I had planned actually to to attend both. Family issue came up for my friends at North. I'm sorry. Uh, I was not able to uh make it to the North show, but it's always an incredible experience. Um, and the large number of participants really highlights for me the kind of an organization we have. We have onstage performers, performers in the pit. We have students helping in the aisle, students doing the text, students building the sets, etc. And it's really a fantastic um opportunity to

011bring the school together around an event. And you can tell by the attendance um where there are families who don't even have students in school, people who've kids have moved on, seniors, they come back, they watch these shows and it's a real testament to the quality and the product in the organization and I really felt felt good um you know with the experience I wasn't wasn't able to go to the GBS show, but I went to the GBN show and I it was the first one that I'd ever gone to and I was blown away. I echo everything that you said just in terms of the number of students participating and the enthusiasm of the audience. There was an alumni dance that was fantastic. It was just it was wonderful and I look forward to

012going again in the future. Great. Thank you. My understanding is we don't have any community visitors going once, twice. All right, next step. Oh, we give time. Now we moving into our consent agenda. So I entertain a motion. There's no changes, right? There have been no changes. All right. So entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda. I approve. I'm sorry. I I move. Second. Mr. Downing. Yes. Mrs. Hope. Yes. Mr. Shine. Yes. Dr. Steinberg. Yes. Motion carries. All right. Our first topic. I gave a little preview earlier as Mr. Breag heads to the podium as well as Miss Debbie Cohen, our instructional supervisor. Um, the Glench Academy of International Studies has a rich legacy in our district. But when we were looking through all the prior board packets, we identified it's been nearly 20

013years since we've provided an overview not only to the board but to the community as a whole regarding the structure of the academy program. And so this year we're going to do just that. Now transition over to Mr. Breag and his team. Absolutely. Well, good evening. It is my pleasure to be up here for less than 60 seconds and hand it over to the people that know a lot and have such passion about the academy. Um, but I wanted to give a little background that last year we embarked upon a journey. We had an opportunity with the retirement of Matt Whipple who was serving as a director of the academy to really take a step back and say where does the academy want to go? And I couldn't be more excited about the staff at

014that time who it took great courage to step back and say, "Yes, it's time. It's time to reflect, evaluate, and think about how we could re-imagine the academy." And in that process, we went and looked at a new leadership model. And through that tonight, you're going to have the opportunity for the first time at a board meeting in my since I've been here, the academy is actually sharing and presenting who they are, what they are, what they're all about, but also hearing about an unbelievable vision that brings forward a real arc of four years for students that take great pride and staff who take great pride in what is known in this district and has been in this district since 1981, the Glen Brookke Academy. And with that, it's you. I'm going to hand it

015over to Debbie Cohen, who's going to speak a lot about the progress that they have made. I'll try not to speak so so much. Um, but I did um thank you so much, Ryan. Thank you everyone uh for having me tonight. It is true that um in my 22 or 23 years in the Glen Brooks, the academy is not presented to my knowledge um at at the board meeting. So, thank you so much and I hope to uh make a good showing. So, um first we'll give an overview of the academy. Um and so for those of you who don't know, we did write this in the board memo, so I will be very very brief. Um but it was founded in 1981 and the Glen Brook Academy um uh has been nationally recognized and

016it's a program that links the teaching and learning of English, social studies, and world language to help provide students with a more global understanding of international issues. Uh each class learns a different world language from a rotation of four um French, German, Spanish, and Mandarin Chinese. And students will loop with their world language teacher for four years. And then they will have a stable pairing of English and social studies teachers at each grade level. Uh I I also serve in the program as the senior English teacher. Um and it it's my favorite part of the day. Um but uh I digress. Uh the curriculum uh for English and social studies departments are complicated and challenging um and they are aimed to broaden students critical thinking capabilities as well as understand the depth and complexities of

017history in the modern day. That's not to say that the world language isn't complex but we already talked about them. Um so um academy combines students from both GBN and GBS um who in eighth grade are selected as candidates and then they uh begin their freshman year and remain in the program through all four years of high school. Um academy students have an intense interdisciplinary first half of their day. They spend every single day block one and two together uh and uh learning a combination of or a swirl of world language, English, social studies and it could be different on any given day depending on how teachers and staff and students want to use their time. Um and so that unique structure uh and the amount of time brings students together to form a really

018unique bond. We like to say that we're a family. As a senior English teacher, when I walk into the room for the first time on the first day of class, I'm the stranger, right? And so that's a really interesting it was a challenge at first but it's a really interesting uh phenomenon. So um in my uh we have three significant changes to talk about tonight. Um essentially we have uh first there's a new role and it happens to be filled by me. Um and there is the new role of the instructional supervisor of the Glen Brook Academy of International Studies. The other part of my title is and advanced academic programs and I hope to be invited back to talk about that piece in a future board meeting. Um but for now uh we'll we'll

019talk a little bit tonight about what the IS role uh brings to the academy. Um we've also um we're going to talk a little bit about a formalized vision and a new uh capstone experience for students that as is coming out of that vision. And then finally a brand new student experience which we're calling all academy days and that is freshly minted. So you'll hear about each one of those things. Uh so first um we'll uh talk I'll talk a little bit about myself. Um uh my role is essentially and thank you by the way. I'm enjoying it. It's been an absolute pleasure and honor to serve in the role so far this year. Um and essentially uh we've created a formalized leadership structure to guide the vision uh the direction and a cohesive plan

020for the academy. Um we've also integrated the academy into more deeply um into um the school leadership so that everybody kind of knows what academy is doing. Uh I I have the opportunity to attend is council meetings at both buildings and I'm integrated to all the processes that go on districtwide and um it's provided us with opportunities for professional learning goals for our uh faculty uh collective and um and a smaller scale. So um to speak of one of the innovations uh that we have is actually um a colleague of mine uh Senora Duran who is the academy Spanish instructor um and she's going to come to the podium. We're lucky to have her. She's been a member of the academy faculty since 2223 school year and uh we are so excited to have her

021talent and energy and expertise in our program. So if you wouldn't mind uh welcoming Paula. Thank you, Debbie. Um, and hello, good evening. Uh, my name is Paola Uran, and I am a proud member of the academy faculty. Um, I I want to thank the board for recognizing the academy as a as a as a department and to have the opportunity to have our is because that has made a huge difference in how we plan, how we prepare, and how we think forward. and envision the future of our academy graduates. So this is the this year is the first time that we have dedicated and consistent time to meet and it is incredibly energizing to be able to plan with other 11 passionate teachers and think have time to think together and as as a

022result of this we have been able to develop a collective vision. Debbie is going to talk about our uh portrait of our graduate and that is something that we all work together and it's it's amazing and super exciting to see all the ideas flowing. Um and uh we also were able to uh reflect on what are our collaborating what are our co-eing needs what are what are the opportunities for us to collaborate as because as you uh may know that many times you have three teachers in the room or two teachers in the room. How are we going to work together to make our students experience really enlightening? So we have been able to reflect on what our needs are horizontally. That means like at the grade level, world languages teacher, English teacher and social

023studies. But that is all that has also allowed us to think about how the academy works vertically. How do we align with the social studies uh teachers moving forward? How do the world languages teachers work together? Because we really never teach at the same time. We teach four different cohorts. So how can we work together so that we can build more um collaboration opportunities in all the different for all the different grade levels and we have also been able to design uh plans for curriculum mapping and that is something that I'm looking forward to as we work next year and the years uh beyond because we want the the academy curriculum to be a live entity and that is only possible when we have time to collaborate and to have consistent time every month to

024work together. So, I am really grateful to be part of this program and I'm really grateful to have the the structure that we have right now. You welcome. And Paula is also the proud parent of not one but two academy alum. So, we put that one in the end. So, I'd like to uh take this time now to present to you some of the uh products of the work that we've actually been able to embark on together this year. We are very very very proud of our academy portrait of a graduate. We started working on this in September and we completed it in January. Um it was shocking and uh really inspiring to think about how quickly this actually came together. It speaks to the fact that people on the team were really hungry to

025formalize some things that we knew to be true of ourselves and what we wanted to aspire to for our students. So, you can look at our lovely uh pyramid um and you can see at the top we have the academy graduate up there nice and proud. Um um and we define our academy graduate as a a global citizen. That is really what we are hoping for is that these uh students will go out and make the world a better place. Um and so uh each band going downward actually is a different layer of how we think we're going to help get the students there. Uh and so we start um uh with attributes right at the at the base. So what kinds of personal um personal attributes would we like to help cultivate uh and

026grow in our students? Things like curiosity, resilience, responsibility, empathy, adaptability, and integrity. Um and we move then to okay well what what types of skills can we use to instruct our students? Uh we want to grow their skills as critical thinkers their ability to synthesize which is really key in an interdisciplinary program. It doesn't actually happen spontaneously all the time. So really giving students uh foundational experiences in well how do we see that these things are working together? How can you articulate the connections between the things that we're working to help you to understand? And we uh also uh want them to be problem solvers not just you know in in the short term small scale but hopefully going out into uh the world looking forward as global citizens. How can we address the problems

027that we we face? In order to do that of course we need to be good collaborators and good communicators. And of course we don't want these skills to remain inert. We want kids to take action. we want them to do. Um, and so that was the last uh band that we uh worked together thinking about which was well what do those actions look like, right? We want our students to be civically engaged, serviceminded and leaders in every sense of the word, right? You know, uh leaders in their everyday classrooms, everyday lives, but then of course going out and taking on more and more complex leadership roles as they're as they as they grow older. So each one of these bands uh actually has a different layer and we created a new page for each one

028of them. Um and so obviously they're not I think you have copies of them in front of you members of the board. Um but you can see that what we did is we defined uh each one of the um of the attributes and spent a little bit more time thinking about well what does responsibility actually mean? Um and what does resilience mean to us? How would we like that thing to be defined for our students so that they understand what it is that we're going for, right? What what do those key words actually look uh look like in action? And in order to help students actually put these uh attributes or skills or actions into practice, we created these the the right side of that document are essential questions for students to consider. We do

029uh we're very proud of this document and we're very excited about it as sort of our guiding star in some future uh curricular endeavors and assessment endeavors, but we want students to be aware of what these things are. So we created with really great intention um essential questions for students to think about to use to reflect on their own progress and to uh chart their own growth as they as they progress across the four years of academy. So those are of course uh also known as transfer goals, right? These are the things that we want kids to take with them and use in the world as as we move forward. Um and the thing that is next that we're really excited about is that we are going to use this document uh the portrait of

030a graduate and the and the transfer goal pages um in order to uh generate ideas for a capstone project for students. And so this capstone project, I don't have anything to show you yet because it's something that we just started working on. We're really hoping to get it done by the end of the year because if certain teachers have their way, we're unleashing it freshman year next, but we'll see. Um, but I'm really excited about it because the capstone project is going to have all of these uh things in it. It's going to be action and uh performance and task based and it's going to be front-facing. So, we're going to have seniors who are going to go out into the community, take action in a project that they have uh decided, but we also

031know that we need to work uh backwards down the line. So, we're working on benchmark and formative assessments all the way down into the freshman year experiences. So, they'll have lots and lots of opportunities to practice with the skills and attributes and grow them and develop them with intention and with a sense of purpose leading towards their ability to actually create that capstone. So that's coming. Uh so maybe uh next year we'll have some kids up here telling you about what they did. Um and that would be wonderful. But um there is one last feature that I'd like to share with you. Um and that is uh something else that we decided to do is that you know academy is a beautiful community. As I mentioned before, I walk into my senior class and I'm

032the stranger. It's like a family and I'm the weird aunt who just showed up and no one's met before. Um and I am a weird aunt. Um so we we you know have these powerful bonds right each grade level just spends all this time together but it occurred to us that you know there's even more power in the 120 of us and 12 faculty members and so we started implementing in the fall this idea of uh the all academy days and it was more than an idea it was an action and so um you might hear students right now just calling it peace day but we can't do peace day every year it'll get redundant for those poor freshmen So we're going to rebrand it as the all academy days and there will be a

033different theme every year uh so that students will have the opportunity to experience this this sort of arc and scope. So this fall we decided on the theme of peace uh one of our uh faculty members thought that would be a really great place to start and so we went with it. Um and so in the fall 120 kids and a group of teachers got together and we did uh a series of activities uh asking students to examine their own ideas about peace. What what does that really mean? And we went and we drove towards this understanding that you know peace is actually uh something that is not a lack it's not a lack of conflict or an absence of trouble. It's actually something that we have power and agency to create. Um and so

034once we got to that then we had students examining things like well okay how do I create that right am I a more peaceful person you know we can think about that in terms of coming to terms with ourselves right and our own mental health and our own uh way of being and then we think about the communities to which we belong in a small scale right here's my family here's my class here's that hallway um and then we started rippling it out into these sort of larger and larger uh sort of ecosystems in which all people dwell okay so we came to those bas basic understandings and then we had a Google form and the Google form gave us some feedback um and uh the feedback was very interesting but I'm not going to

035tell you about it. I'm going to have and invite uh one of our junior academy students who's here tonight uh Niko Boas to come up and tell us a little bit about his part in peace day two human rights and peace. Please welcome Nico. Hey, you probably talk. Thank you. Um, so each subsequent peace day is heavily reliant on feedback both from uh from students and from the teachers on how the previous one went. And peace day two, we knew it was going to happen and immediately following peace day one, that's about all we knew. um we were uh it was very flexible, very open uh without a clear framework. So following piece day one, uh we mentioned the Miss Cohen mentioned the feedback form and all of the students filled it out with things

036that they liked about the first one and things that they would like to improve and a group of students uh got together to determine a vision for what they wanted to do at the second peace day. And the students came to this meeting with a lot of strong ideas about uh about what to do both related to the content material of peace and unrelated to it. I remember uh the very first thing that was brought up was that we wanted to have food at the second meeting but um and that was that that's right. Yes, it was that was that was a wish that was fulfilled and I think it was one that um was uh beneficial to us uh in many ways. But uh related to the theme, we decided that we wanted to

037have uh a vision of somebody teaching us something about what we could do and provide some sort of a a clear vision for how to move forward. And what was settled on was uh proposed by one of our seniors, Alisa Khan, who uh taught the entire academy about the uh United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the framework that that provides for creating peace in the world. And we use that as a uh a guide for moving forward uh with the Academy of Peace Program. Um, and I really liked that the students were given the opportunity to give their feedback on it because the academy is a program that prides itself on encouraging its students to become strong uh and intelligent leaders. And this really gave us the the opportunity to do that as

038did the uh the subsequent peace day number three where we planned out exactly what we're going to do uh just with the students with minimal oversight from the teachers which Miss Cohen will talk about in a little bit. The list of demands was very clear. Um, and I think out of 96 uh feedback forms, I think like about 87 of them said, "Can we please have snacks?" And so snacks there were, and that has now become a long-standing two-piece day tradition of potluck. Uh, so we do that. But um it is uh and you can see actually uh that's Alisa right there in between the two screens teaching us all about uh the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and she just came up gave a 15minute keynote to 120 of her peers and and all

039of her teachers. Um and she did an outstanding job. And so after PC2 uh we asked uh students what part of that we did a lot of like small group work moving around and we asked students what they were most excited about and uh it turned out that they were very excited to take action. Uh they wanted to do something. They're like all right that's enough talking. Let's let's do let's do um and so the action projects were um uh based off of experiences that student had uh during peace day 2 and uh we uh gave students before peace day 3 the choice of what project they would like to land in and to help craft and create. And so we have now students out in the world um thinking about uh what kind of

040art installation they might like to create coming soon to school buildings near you. Um, and so we have an art installation group. We have a group that's doing a letterw writing advocacy campaign for uh human rights um and uh known cases of abuses across the world. We have uh students who are creating podcasts in order to sort of spread that sort of more interpersonal peaceful message. And then we have a group of students who is looking to uh find ways of taking direct action volunteer action specifically around needs of hunger. UDHR article number 25. Um and um and I think they're also uh looking to work with um sick students in Ronald McDonald House. So we're very very excited about what the future holds. spring uh April 30th we'll complete those days of action and

041then um we will actually uh probably gather for a fifth peace day because one of the things that Nico mentioned is that these kids like to have a voice and their voices matter and are often wiser than the adults in the room. So we're going to ask the freshman, sophomores, and juniors what they would like to focus on for the next year. And so we're hoping that this peace day or all academy day um becomes an iterative process that we repeat and it will also I think be a really nice way of uh giving students uh some experience that might be useful for their future capstone projects. So we are so excited about what the future holds and I'm so grateful for the time to have shared just a little bit with you. I tried

042to be concise. Yes, this is me at concise. Um and so uh thank you very much and are there any questions? Thank you. Thank you for your presentation. Thank you also for bringing a teacher and a student. Makes the presentation way more enlightening and entertaining. Mr. Downey Marcel, I think that was a comment about me. I know. Yeah, Brian, thank you so much. I think maybe a a question and a comment. First comment is uh I love it when the students come up and talk. I'm blown away by their ability to get up and and speak in front of a strangers and groups and um that's been a hallmark of little Glammer South and certainly can academy was shining bright tonight so that was nice to see. Um nice job Nico. Can I have some

043food? Uh it I guess I I don't even know if you can answer this question so if you can't don't worry about it. Uh is there any you we're talking about success and uh is there any and this been around since 1981. Is there any par do we have a com compare and contrast how these pe the academy people do in college or their chosen endeavor versus the regular unwashed matches like myself you know we don't track comparatively right we we look at our cohort model it's a really unique model so I think it would be really difficult to compare because the experiences are so different right we have four years all together uh looping with it. It's just not it's just not comparable. But one thing that I think it'd be really interesting and

044I think it's a great idea and we've been talking a lot about it is to do a better job of reaching out to our alums and to keep track of, you know, where they are and where they've been. I have a lot of information anecdotally from social media and other things, but that is on the docket. We're super excited to to reconnect with some of our graduates and see how they're doing. But formal tracking and comparisons, no, we we don't. It' be interesting to see if they just how if they still have very close friends from that four year. It just be it's just information. It' be interesting. I I that's a great idea and we're going to do it. No, it's just not yet. He's hope you're I didn't have a question. I just

045wanted to thank you and this was really interesting. But what you just said also made me think about looking at the the benchmark scores of these students just in terms of the things we look at like belonging and community and support people because I would imagine that in a program like this we would only see those types of scores go up. So I'd be curious. Well, I do take a peek at Panorama from time to time just to make sure. Um, but it seems as if, again, I haven't done any sort of systemic analysis, but you know, we we do keep tabs on our kids. It's easy to keep tabs on our kids because we see them every day for a really long time. So, that that does help. is all that you've just shared,

046how much of this is shared with eighth grade students and parents so they really understand whether or not either the children the students themselves or the parents might want to encourage their students to get involved. So, we do have um a fall uh night where we invite uh community members from across all of our center schools to come and hear about the program. I usually have a a swarm of student volunteers, seniors who want to come and talk um about it, but I'll give give also an an overview. Um in addition, what we also do is we send teams of teachers and students directly to the middle schools. Um and uh you know that we set that up with the eighth grade teachers, but um those are the two things that are our current practice.

047So I'm I'm looking to do more, but um not quite sure yet. Thank you, Mr. Shine. Hi. Um, I have a a few questions. Um, some of them are kind of nuts and bolts question. Um, how are students selected? There's an application process. Um, would you like to know about it? A little more. And then so it's it's 30 per year roughly. How many apply? Um, the numbers vary from year to year. We sometimes have over a hundred applicants and then fewer. Um but uh we do have 30 students uh who are uh in our incoming class. And uh the application process is pretty robust. Uh students have to fill out an application that includes a personal statement, a list of their activities uh that they're currently engaged in and whether or not they intend

048on, you know, continuing those into into their high school years. uh they get teacher recommendations. We look at um also the courses that they were wrecked for coming into um excuse me uh into schools uh north or south. We also ask them to come in for a testing and interview day. So at that time we will ask for two writing samples. One is based in English language arts, the other is based in social studies. And then they do a personal interview. Once we have all of that data, um we uh take a look at the complete picture of the student in terms of uh looking at balance across certain de uh certain things, demographics, uh you know, what would their cinder school be? Uh what um what high school would they be going to? Um

049and then also just who they are as people because we want to create that cohort where people have a diversity of interests and experiences. So then are the courses like honors level and up? I mean is that basically that this so this is they're eh level. Okay. So this is a group that is more academically they're at a higher level. Yes. Right. Yes. They're all they they're all usually they all are. Eh yeah. At least in at least in the language arts areas. Mhm. Mhm. Um and then how do you address um uh AP then for the se junior senior? Excuse me. Um so we have we are not an AP program. Uh we do not have um affiliation with AP but our students do traditionally sit for uh AP classes uh AP tests. I'm

050sorry. They don't have AP courses. Our students can take whatever class uh uh test that they'd like. So, um, out of the English, they can take either or both of them. Um, by the time they get to me, oftentimes what happens is that they know what college they're going to, and the colleges don't tend to want or need that second English AP, but they could sit for the if they wanted to. And traditionally, they do very well. They'll maybe sometime they'll take AP US history, they'll take a world language AP, sometimes they'll come out with the seal of biiteracy. Um, so they they do quite well. Um, and then of course they also have math and science course work that is not part of the academy that allows them to take APs. So are they

051are the are the the number who I guess it' be scoring fours and fives, right? Normally that'd be a college credit worthy score, right? Are they performing similarly to students who are taking the AP courses? And and does it does it is it consequential? Does it matter? You know, parents are looking at those thinking, "Oh, great. I'd love my kid to come in here with a semester or a semester plus off the books and off the payroll, so to speak." Are do we have that data that you've got, you know, 50 kids in one group, 50 at another taking the test, your 50 versus the versus the general population 50. Are they succeeding at roughly the same? Because we don't know that. We should find out, I think. Yeah, I think we we can look

052at that data because obviously the the classes aren't designed for the AP test. Understood. Which is which but it's a valuable point to bring up. We can look at the data. One of the things we're looking at because we don't have AP designated courses in the academy. What are other paths or approaches we can take outside of the AP? such as one thing that the program is really interested in is called an Illinois Global Scholar, which would be a pathway endorsement that they could start to look at that is more aligned with the program, which again is not necessarily going to give them early college credit, but is a recognition on their transcript that carries that kind of weight that's really important to this. But I think we can follow up with the data um

053knowing full well that the obviously the curriculum is not designed directly to teach for the You can't you can't have everything. Correct. Correct. Right. I mean, you may want everything and have some things and people make a choice to be in the program and as long as they understand what what it is they're they're they're receiving and I would assume they do um for for all the the information being provided, you know, that's that to me that makes sense. I'm just curious. Yeah, absolutely. Especially after we we we releveled all the courses, you know, in the entire universe of of Glen Brook courses. Now we've got this, you know, this is kind of standing over here a little bit. And so Okay. Absolutely. Um just a couple of more. So we talked about how they're

054selected. Um talked about the AP. Just give me one minute, please. D. Um, can you speak briefly to the the staffing in the FTE in the program versus anything else in the in the district and if if if if you can't do that now, you someone can just follow up. You know, that's kind of a numbers kind of a of a thing. And I'm just curious um you know, because we just said there's 12 people, right? Right. 11 plus. a new I'm part of the team. We'll provide you that. But you're you're you're the plus one, right? 11 plus one. Yeah. So that that's the staffing for 120 students for three courses. And how then how does that compare with Yep. the general like everything else we do? We can provide you that breakdown. Thank

055you. Um, thank you for your answers. I'm I'm going to go to a different side of this and I do would like down the road to see some followup because I I think we're doing something different which is coming from a different country. Most countries high school is a cohort based systems. You start high school with 29 different unknown people and you go through up and down all the way to the end and and it's common. So but here we don't do it that way and it has its pros and it cons but we have within school a different model even if it's limited we have a different way of teaching not necessarily what happens inside of the classroom from the teacher point of view but what happens inside of the classroom in terms of

056you start with 29 different people on your freshman year and although you share other classes with other people you know that for four years you're going to have two periods of classes with the same group and you're growing together you're going to experiences together to hopefully enhance friendships that way. And it would be interesting to compare on how these people do when they graduate from here, right? Not just necessarily from the academic point of view. I think in general most of our students do very well academically anyways. And you have a good you you have a selection criteria at least on the humanities that would enable them to do well. that what extra they go out with once they go to college after being part of a first an internal cohort of 29 other peers

057and another 90 or so that they were going through as they were moving with the other groups of the academy. I don't know if you have any anecdotal evidence to share or or data that we are collecting. So I'll I'll let Debbie speak if she has any of that data right now. I think part of what we have found in the program review over the last call it 12 months is that that data was not necessarily tracked or maintained and that's consistent with some of our other work. We have as all of you know we've brought forward school links which should make this process significantly easier for us to track where they're at beyond that first year in college which is which is our primary uh metric at this point. But to your point, um,

058what we've talked about is what's really important is not only how they're doing academically, but how are they using the pieces. Now, what you heard tonight, the the the staff has put together. This is the first year of them building that. Next year will be the first year of them bringing it forward to all students to have. So we actually have the measurement instrument now to bring that forward to students and say how are you using that as you as you leave us year after year. But also the real important thing that I heard the in the pride of the faculty was the cohort model and what kind of relationships persist year after year. We don't know those answers at this point. Anecdotally, I know Debbie and team has shared, but we we are extremely

059interested and with our tool like schoolings, we think we can build that stronger network to really understand the impact from those factors. I think we live in a I'm sorry, I don't know if you want to say something, but Oh, I was just going to say and I think one of the really exciting things about all academy days is to expand the power of the cohort beyond the 30, right, to the 120. Um and so that we can keep uh ties between sorry that's what they call themselves um really really strong and so yes anecdotally I could tell you that you know from social media and other places I I see my kids you know together out in the world um but not necessarily in groups of 30 but you know friendships that have persisted

060over time just like anyone else I think that you know goes to high school and makes really great bonds and relationships. So, it's certainly something that we're interested in. I like that you're mentioning schooling. So, I think that'll be a really effective tool. That's great. Um, my last question, it has to do with things that we learn because of the academy as a as a school that we can transfer to the other and a half or 97 and a half population of the school because of the experiences, because of anything that happens in the classroom. Are we analyzing that and saying, "Hey, this this works better this way." Whatever it is, can can we benefit? Can everybody else benefit from a learning process? I think that's an very exciting question and we're looking to think

061really intentionally and explicitly about what's working in our model and then look to leverage those opportunities in other places. Um, expand our programming, uh, whatever you like us to use that learning for. And and I would just add one of the things that in in my time here, I can't speak to since 1981, the academy has been this beautiful piece that's been um in its own orbit, so to speak. So the question you asked of us, I would love to be able to pull on uh four decades of what we've learned, but it has been it's it's been not a school within a school, which is what the current team is building. It's been a school uh on its own, so to speak, and we haven't integrated it thoughtfully and meaningfully where uh what Debbie's

062doing as being part of the leadership team. She's understanding what's happening in the other departments. She's able to contribute from the lens of the academy. So, it's becoming part of our cycle, but in all fairness and honesty, it hasn't been an integrated piece where we can make those natural connections. I'm really excited about where that could go. Even in how their team took ownership of the curriculum mapping process, having a portrait, working backwards from there, there are so many things we can learn from each other. And that's just one example of what I think other disciplines can pull from. That's great. I don't want to sound like my mother that complains about everything, but it's such a shame that we have 40 years of data, but we don't have 40 years of data. So I

063know you know Ryan you like to collect data about everything being more intentional. Well thank you. Yeah. I just wanted to add just one followup. Um, first of all, Senora Duran, Nico, Debbie, Ryan, amazing. Um, time taking an opportunity to catch us all up on where the academy has been, where Academy is at today, and even a bit of a vision for what the future is. Um, I have a variety of follow-ups here that we will make sure to follow up with the board. I did want to clarify one thing and this is the challenge of sometimes talking about FTE versus people. Um the academy has 12 dedicated educators supporting it. However, from an FTE standpoint, that's actually only 5.4. Um the academy is based on a co-eing model. Um, so you do see a

064higher level of FTE as opposed to if every teacher was there was just English as opposed to English connecting to social studies and so on and so forth. So you do see FT increase there. But from a staffing perspective, if you teach in the academy, you have point4 teaching assignment in the academy. Um, so I just wanted to clarify it's it's not 11 or 12 FTE from uh a full load. uh and that is incorporating uh uh Debbie fully. Um but for the other items, we'll follow up. I think there's some really fascinating questions. We're having a lot more dialogue as to we have programs in place. Um we know our students are graduating and they're going off to great things, but how are they doing actually after they begin that next pathway, whatever that

065pathway might be? Um, and so that is something that I just want to acknowledge is an area for growth for our district to track on that. Um, it is perfect to transition to our next uh topic. But before I do that, can we just give our team who's been here just a round of applause for just taking the time to be here. And with that, let's go ahead and invite uh Dr. Cummings and her team up give a little preview here. Goal one of the strategic plan is all about recognizing that the path for one student may not be the same path for another student. And that could be two students in the same family. It could be um students with generations apart. We know that some of our students are transitioning and moving forward

066academically to a two-year college, sometimes a four-year college. We also have students that are transitioning to a wide range of careers. Um, students who might transition to a career with on the job training that then also incorporate other institutions of higher education and learning. And we also are seeing um some of our students from our community transition into the armed services and different military branches whether that incorporate at the beginning um a collegiate uh embedded pathway or whether that follows them. And so not knowing where every student is going to go the moment they walk in through the doors of Glen Brook North or South, it's important to have wraparound supports available not only to them but also their families. We are truly blessed to have an amazing team that's joining us today and I

067just want to call them out and thank them for being here for a moment. Then I'm going to stop talking. Uh Dr. Bole over at Glen Brook North and Mr. Classen and Ms. Heaton at Glenberrook South. This is a team of individuals who don't work alone, but work with plenty of our school counselors to make sure that we are listening to students, supporting them and their families, and helping them determine what their pathway is. And with that, I'm going to stop talking. And Dr. Cummings, it's all you. What' you say? Thank you. Um, good evening. Thank you for allowing us this opportunity to share with you ensuring postsecary success for all students. In my 15 years here, kind of a theme from the previous one, it's the first time college counseling has come to the

068board as a presentation to share what it is they do. Um, and be prepared to be um, wowed in terms of all the services and supports they provide our families. Before we begin though, um I do want to acknowledge a question that has surfaced from many people over the last several years and it was it's about whether or not we believe we have enough college counselors um in the role to help support all of our students and our families. You may have read in the memo that back in 2018209 Glen Brook South did increase their college counseling by one staff member. So a total of two. Um and that at that time was really due to limited availability for our families and our students to be able to meet with the college counselor if they

069chose to. At that time, the same need was not there for Glumbrechrook North, but that is something that we are continuing to monitor as an ongoing basis to determine whether or not those services are warranted. Um, do know that when we compare to our local high schools, um, very similar staffing in terms of Main Township and Vernon Hills and Libertyville, um, all have one college counselor. You have schools like Stephvenson and Deerfield and Highland Park. They have two college counselors. And the one that we really can't compare to is Nutrier. Um Nutri has a completely different model where they do not have any school counselors, but they have eight college counselors. So that is not a model that we can compare to. But as you can see, we are really right in line with all

070of our other schools. And I think you'll hear tonight a little bit um about how much our actual school counselors participate in this process. It's not just the college counselors. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to David and Kaen and John to walk you through some of it. I also want to give a quick shout out to Dr. Lauren Ali and Miss Rebecca Holst, their supervisors who are here supporting them tonight. Are they technical questions next? All right. So, hello all. Thank you again for having us. Um, I am Kaen. I am one of the college counselors over at Glen Brook South. I'm a newer face. This is only my third year uh within the district. So, I'm very excited to be here and to get to share a little bit about

071what we do. So, I'm going to kick us off by giving you guys the overview of our post-secary programming between the schools. So this is really kind of like the district eye lens of what we're offering holistically between both schools. Keep in mind there are slight variations in like the modality and kind of how these services are delivered between the buildings, but overarchingly this is the core of what we're doing between the buildings. So the first thing that I want to draw your attention to when you are looking at our list of programming is the scaffolding. So you'll see if you're looking at freshman year looks a little sparse. we just have the personalized learning plan within freshman year, but then by the time you get to senior year, it is incredibly robust in that

072we have multiple supports um and offerings that are very very detail oriented. The reason behind the scaffolding is very intentional. So when students are coming in with the freshmen, these personalized learning plans are the goal. We often find in our arena that students and parents are very eager and very excited when talking about post-secary options and they tend to come to high school wanting to hit out of the gate with like okay tell me more about the specific post-secary options and how to apply and what's the test score that I need and you know the levels of selectivity of these various options that they might be considering. But that's really putting the cart before the horse. The goal with having PLPS be the focus in freshman year is that the student is working with their

073counselor to cocreate their plan for how they are going to maximize and most intentionally use their time while they are with us here at high school. We have found that students being able to maximize their time in high school is what is going to set them up for the most post-secary success by providing them with the most options. So they are working with the case load counselors for that part. They are developing these post-secondary plans where they're pushing academic rigor and within reason thinking about how to challenge themselves with the courses they're taking. They're also considering interests and their passions and um thinking through what they want to explore further. And then the nice thing is these PLPS are revisited with their counselors as they're growing and going through this kind of post-secondary planning journey.

074So the goal of having freshmen come in and work on those PLPS and that being the sole focus is very intentional with our post-secary programming. Then by the time you get to sophomore year, we start integrating the more intentional post-secary supports. So the big one that we have is the post-secary planning night. That is a night for sophomore students and their parents to be introduced to the world in the full menu of post-secary options. So this is where we're talking through there are four-year schools, two-year schools, military options, gap years, trade technical schools. This is where we're kind of laying out the different places that they can go for life after high school. And then again, the other emphasis in this is making sure that they are still very intentional and very much thinking about

075maximizing their time while they're with us. So the focus and the importance of understanding what a transcript is, why it's going to be important, why it's going to give them, you know, the the um more engaged they are in high school, how that's going to open doors for the future. So that's really the goal of our sophomore post-secary program and that is geared towards students and their parents in an evening event. Then we get to junior year and junior year gets a lot more robust. This coincides developmentally with where the students are at. So this is really when like the relevance piece starts to come to the forefront. Usually it's about the time in junior year when students are starting uh they get that realization that high school is finite and that they are going

076to need to come up with a plan because high school is going to end and graduation is just a year away. So this is a really good time to be hitting them with supports when they're very ready to receive it just because of the the relevance of what's coming. It also aligns with big post-secary milestones. This is when we have state standardized testing. So, they're going to be taking the ACT. So, it's really important that they understand the relevance and the significance of that specific test before they have to go into that process of taking it. Um, so in junior year, we have that finding the fit program. That is the big post-secary program for juniors. Again, we emphasize the different post-secary options. And at this point, we start to really hone in on the

077specifics of the college applications, the different components and what's involved with that. But then we have supplemental programming that we offer. We have an essay writing workshop focused on the specifics of the personal statement, the college fair, and the college colloquium. These are very large events designed for students to get that better understanding of the different post-secary options that are out there and the specific like niche areas of interest within the world of admissions. So think you know like auditions based majors and portfolio-based majors. These give some exposure to that for students um along with the choices fair that's a disability fair um for colleges. So students with disabilities that are pursuing college as an option. These are schools that have robust supports for that. This is also where in junior year we begin introducing

078the individualized um appointments that we have. These are offered to students to make these individual appointments. Parents are encouraged and welcome to come but not required. During these meetings, this is where we can really get into the specifics of what that student wants to pursue and we can talk through their unique situation, circumstances, ambitions. This is where we can really tailor our guidance to their specific situation. It's also a very nice time in junior year to get parents on the same page. Um to kind of open that dialogue between student and parent is wonderful um when parents or guardians are able to attend. Then you get to senior year. This is really the programming that we have within here. Very nitty-gritty, logistic, detailoriented um programming because this coincides with the kind of post-secary application timeline.

079So when students are pursuing post-secary options um specifically college admissions, students are knocking down our doors by the time we get back because college applications typically open August 1st. So all of the programming that we have in senior year is much more geared towards the actual completion of those activities. The other so that was kind of like the scaffold lens of our offerings. But another way that I really like to think about our supports is through a multi-tered um system of supports lens. So if you're thinking through that like MTSS pyramid with the bottom being like the kind of global supports that are for all students, those are going to be our big group presentations. So that's that sophomore post-secondary planning night, that's the finding the fit with juniors, that's the college application night. Um

080that is going to be that programming that is geared towards explaining those core important pieces of the post-secary admissions process um and just the post-secary options, but then we have the tier 2 supports. So within here, this is things like our first generation group and the um presentation that we do for the BPAC group as well as the Korean parent association. These are geared towards targeting specific populations that may need additional supports in navigating their post-secary plans. So we're looking at underserved student populations or populations that have higher need of support. So first generation students historically underrepresented in college admissions. So this is geared towards providing them with additional supports. Same with the um BPAC and the Korean parent association that is geared towards making sure that the information is accessible to families in their

081native language because the US higher education system is complicated. That is why we have jobs. Um and it's especially complicated if you are not navigating it in your native language. So those supports are geared towards really targeting um specific populations that need additional supports. And then last but not least, that top of the pyramid, those uh tier three supports would be those individual appointments. That is really where we can walk with students through what is going to be their specific pathway. And that is where we can really consider all of the nuances of their particular journey and really kind of tailor, okay, this is a game plan given your specific situation. Um I have one slide and I think I know why because I go on for quite some time. So, I'm gonna hand it

082off um to John to go into the data. I'll save some time with it with with the da with the data here. Um so, as we look at post-secondary uh options, I'm going to talk a little bit about our statistics and uh some of our most recent statistics and as we look kind of in a historical context um some of our statistics over the past five years. Um so, at Glen Brook South, as you can see from the graph, you know, majority of our students do choose uh the four-year or two-year path. that's where a majority of our students um are are um kind of congregating. But we also see many of our students look at things like trade schools, uh apprenticeships, workforce, and then and then and then gap years uh as well as

083the military. And if we look at uh Glen Brook South statistics, um oops, sorry, uh sorry, Glenrook North statistics again, you'll see a similar pattern as we look at those four-year and two-year uh trends. Uh and then once again uh the trade school technical programs, apprenticeships, uh workforce and then and then gap year not quite as many uh military in this in this most recent class. As we look at percentage of of uh graduates attending college again four and two-year uh we see a you know a similar graph uh historically for both Glen Brook South and Glen Brook North uh again trending in that 93 to 95 uh% range. But if we zoom in a little bit closer and look at where our graduates are going, uh we see many of our graduates looking at

084uh public institutions primarily in the Midwest, uh although we are starting to see our students gravitate a little bit more towards some of our southern partners. Uh my guess is after this winter, we'll see even more of that flow. Uh this was a pretty hard winter and we tend to see uh that happen. Uh and then we have um you know uh private school uh representation as well somewhere in that uh low 30 to mid30% range where our students looking at those uh private universities. Um oftent times for us you know at Glen Brook South and Glen Brook North those are typically uh those schools that tend to be pretty generous uh generous with merit aid. uh schools like Lyola and Marquette tend to be our some of our bigger feeders uh as we start

085to look at some of those schools uh in the private sector. So, I'm gonna turn it over to David who's going to talk a little bit about uh instate and out of state institutions. Yeah. So, um you might have read in the media from time to time uh the term out there they've coined as Illinois flight uh that a lot of students uh are leaving the state of Illinois to seek post-secary um opportunities. and the Glen Brooks um are are definitely um a part of that. Um what I I love this slide because there's so much data up there and I I'm a data guy. Um so let me just kind of break it down for you. What we have are are two years um starting from 21 and then 22 and then we have

086Glen Brook South, Glen Brook North and and you can see uh the bottom bar, the blue and the green are students that are leaving the state. So back in 21 uh we have 54% of South grads that left the state uh to go to school and uh 66% uh Glen Brook North students. I look back um because this we we do a five-year pattern every year in both North and South. We keep a five-year um history of this. So 20 was left off because that was I mean that was five more than five years ago but that was CO. So I wanted to go back and see if COVID had any impact on our students staying in state or or le um stay leaving going out of state staying in state and really the numbers

087were basically the same too. Uh so that really didn't have a a big impact on our students saying well we're going to stay closer to home which I think we might speculate or assume that that would happen. Um, another interesting year to look at is the 2024 year uh where you have a slight um decline in in south as well as north not as much with north but that is the year if you're all in our world of college and financial aid that is the year that the FAFSA had major problems. usually the FAFSA, which is the form the families have to fill out to receive any type of financial assistance from the federal government, state as well as the the institution. Uh that's typically filled out in October of the senior year. Uh that

088information gets processed over while the students are applying and then come January, February, March, our students are receiving those financial aid packages uh as we speak. I was just talking to one student today about her financial aid package, breaking it down. They're receiving that information in order to make a decision by May 1. Well, back in because of the delay and and the inaccuracies of the formula, students weren't receiving that information until April, May, even end of May, beginning of June. and decisions were just all up in the air because of that because they weren't really um learning how much it was going to cost. So, um so again, just kind of wanted to give you a little bit of perspective that when you read articles, when you hear about Illinois flight, um our students

089are seeking opportunities outside of the the state. Um, and I think it really comes by because a lot of our large public institutions, as you saw, our students are heavily geared towards large public institutions, they're they're awarding scholarships to our students to make it very comparable as if they stay in state. So, here they have the opportunity to leave state and for a good number of them, it might be for just as costly staying in state or maybe even cheaper uh in some cases. So, those are kind of the statistics we just kind of wanted to throw at you real quick just to kind of give you a flavor for what our students are doing once they once they leave the Glen Brooks. Um, what I wanted to do is just kind of now give

090you a little bit of a an idea of what our top schools are. Um, one of the things that we are proud of in our programs and in our philosophy that Caen was talking about finding the fit. Um, our philosophy is we want students to not not necessarily go after uh what we sometimes call that bumper sticker uh school or that branded school, the more um ranked school, but to find that school that fits that fits their interest, that fits their um personality, that fits the program they're looking for. We both use a fun model called the five Ps uh to help them uh do that. And so what we've listed here is just kind of our top 10 11 schools that our t our students tend to to navigate. One statistic we didn't put

091up there. Um both schools our students will have a tendency to to apply uh to over 400 425 different schools which tells us they are willing to go out and to apply to a variety of schools. And I know at at North our students tend to choose about 135 to 145 different schools. And here at South Ken and I were looking at these numbers this morning, here at South that's usually around 145 and 155. So even though a lot of times we do say we're Big 10 bound and we do have conversations quite a bit big 10 Big 10 when it's all said and done our students do spread their wings and go out and forge their own story and their own path which is which is fun to see. Um, conversely, going from our

092popular schools where we tend to see students going to, um, consistently every year, um, this is a slide that put together just to kind of also show some of the the ones out there, the the the unique schools where students are going in and in and choosing to go most often by themselves, forging ahead, not attending the U of I with the 78 other North students, but going out and maybe hitting up um Calpali or Eard College. We have two um H.B.CU campuses up there, Hampton University and Howard University. So again, it's wonderful to see our students uh taking on uh a lot of individuality in this process and then wanting to go out and continue that next step uh in their academics. And then lastly, um not only is our responsibility, not only do

093we get to work with the students and the staff, uh and the families, the parents, uh to help them guide them, uh to where they want to go after the halls, uh but part of our responsibilities and one of the things that we get to do, uh we fall, we throw it under professional development, but it's also building relationships. It's building connections with our collegiate friends, with the admission reps. Um, but all three of us are very active in our state association, the Illinois Association for College Admissions Counseling. Uh, it has a national uh level that we're also very involved in. And then we're also involved in the college board. Uh we attend conferences. In fact, we have a state conference coming up uh in April. Uh we've been speakers at these conferences. In fact,

094John is speaking at the IAC conference uh coming up here in April uh which will have approximately 7 to 800 uh attendees from the state of Illinois. It's uh high school college counselors and school counselors and college reps come together and we kind of hang out for two two and a half days uh network, get to know one another and just talk about trends and and um topics in our profession. Um, we're also invited on college trips. Uh, I know John just got back from Rollins College. Um, I am heading to the University of Tennessee in April. Um, Kaen went to Providence College. And a lot of times these colleges invite us and they pay for our um for our participation in our attendance, which is always nice. So, we get to go meet with

095faculty, meet with students, take tours of the campus. Sometimes if there's an alum on that campus, they'll uh have us meet with a a GBN or a GBS for John and Kaen alum during a lunchon. Um so again, we have that opportunity to go out and not only learn about their institutions, but we also feel that our responsibility is also to educate them about the Glen Brooks, about what type of programs we have, about the academy, which uh Debbie so eloquently spoke about. Um and again in the future really talking um about our transition. Um it's going to be a lot of fun telling them about a transition about the curricular change, the leveling change and where that's going to go down in the future. So again, a lot of different uh fun opportunities we

096get to do. Then obviously we host somewhere 175 to 200 of them in the fall for our students. Uh they leave class to come down and talk with uh talk with the college reps and then as Kaen mentioned we have our college fair coming up in April. Uh which for us is just a culmination of all our families coming together, all our college rep friends coming together and it's just it's a blast for two two and a half hours. Uh so um so yeah, at that point I'll turn it over to Dr. Cummings and um we'll go with questions from there. Great. Thank you all of you. Um so just to to wrap up before we get to any questions, um outlining for you what our next steps are. Um the first one kind of

097goes along with what um Ryan and Debbie were also talking about with the academy is really trying to use some of that data on how our graduates are doing after they leave us. So there is national clearing house data and that talks about persistence rate meaning after they go to college from their freshman year to their sophomore year do they stay um it doesn't have to be the same university but do they stay in an institution for their sophomore year and our rates have um historically been about 95%. So looking at that data a little closer and trying to find out, you know, what about the 5% that didn't um persist and and how we could change some of our programming to support that. But I also think we have an excellent opportunity with school

098links. Um if you may recall from a previous presentation up here, school links when they get their accounts, they keep them for life. So it's not like Navian where they lost their account once they left the district. They keep that account for life. And so we have an opportunity here to be able to reach out to our lum to get information. We're currently using part of school links um for ambassadors. So students who have gone to those schools to help other students that are at South and North who have interest in going to that school. But I think it's a wonderful opportunity for us to um start looking at some additional data. Our next step is to look at um broadening our nonol pathways. And so looking at what does that look like for the

099Glen Brooks and and what do we need to help support um different careers and trades and really um making those different pathways available for our students. And then I think as we always do, we're going to continually look at our programming. Um I'll speak for the three of them. They typically send out surveys after every event, the college colloquium, any of our parent programming. and the programming has evolved over the years based on the feedback that we receive. So, thank you all for a wonderful presentation and Lauren and Rebecca for being here to support and we'll open it up for any questions that you may have. Thank you. We start Miss Hope. Could you put back up the slide that you went over, Miss Heaton? Yes. I just I had some questions because I think

100when you talked about cart before the horse and totally agree and I think we all know that a lot of students and families are thinking about their post-secary options for their student even like in eighth grade when they're picking their classes with their students whether that's appropriate. Um and it creates a lot of stress and I think it's overwhelming especially for families who are going through this for the first time. And so a lot of the things on there sound amazing and it feels like they're large group or onetime things. How are like the individualized, you know, by the student or by the family like those questions or guidance addressed? like are are we meeting those needs even if we feel like maybe it's premature for them a little bit because it I mean I

101think the pressure that a lot of these kids feel to figure out what they're going to do afterwards even if they're picking their classes and those kinds of things. How do we support that? Great question Beth. Um so I'll add and then of course Kaine if she has anything to add to that. Um, I think it's important to know that this slide really represented what our college counselors do, not in addition to what our school counselors are doing. So, there is a 4-year curriculum. Happy to come back at another meeting and and share that with you. This is our first year of implementing that. And it's a very thorough 4-year curriculum to help get at some of these things. So, that's just the first even though it says, you know, just personalized learning plan for

102freshman year, there's many other components involved in that. I do think as we created this curriculum, we both schools work together to really identify what are the continuum of services that we could offer. What can we send home in an email or a newsletter versus large group, small group, individual, etc. And really identify key points in the four years of when we should provide um more individualbased counseling versus small group or large group. But at the end of the day, the the your students school counselor is their point of contact um for everything um primarily mostly everything. Um but they are ones who can help direct any individual questions, any programming, follow-up questions, things like that for the student or for the family. But if you have anything to add. Yeah. And you mentioned that

103after these events you send out surveys and gather feedback about the events themselves. Do we have any feedback from parents and families about adequacy is the wrong word but if the amount of meetings supports guidance specific to postsecary planning over the course of the years feels like if if they are happy with that or if they would have liked more or they didn't know where to find it those kinds of things I can no we don't um well I can speak to just are the QR codes that we have in our surveys. Generally, they are overwhelmingly like they've been very positive. We'll have additional notes. Usually, the biggest additional notes is just um the like expand on other, you know, post-secary options outside of just the college piece. The nice thing though, we ask about

104I mean they're pretty straightforward questions, but like was the length of timing appropriate? Was the relevance appropriate? We survey students and um parents for like the the evening events. Parents generally want more. Students always say like relevance is great and like the timing was great could be shorter. Um overwhelmingly though I would say um the uh the content though like the relevance and the content that's covered it's been overwhelmingly positive in what we've I mean just in in the past three years that I've been here. Um but yes, it's the two um our you know plans for the future. It's the additional post-secondary options that we'll sometimes see like we would like more robust explanation in that realm and snaps. And I can give you just one quick example. You might remember this example back

105at South um junior parent night. Finding the fit was a very different structure than what it is now and based solely on the feedback that we got back. It used to be an opportunity where they went to private rooms and then they came into big and they really just wanted to hear John talk and so the parents were like cut that beginning part. um and we did and so I do think we utilize that feedback. We have changed um the structure of many of our different counseling events based on that feedback. It's just one example. Just one more question because I wasn't on the board when we added the second position at South. So I'm curious what led us to make that decision and as we think ahead, it was on the last slide about

106whether we want to continue growing the staffing in the program. what would make us do even more of that and and what would it allow us to do that we're not currently doing? I happened to be at South when we added that college counselor. Um so there there was the need based on limited availability of the college counselor. So we were hearing from numerous families that could not get an appointment with John. And so, you know, we even started talking about overtime and appointments on the weekend and evenings. Do you remember that? I do. Um, I wasn't happy about that, but I do. I was like, they need more of you. Um, and and again, it's not to say, you know, so popular. Yes. Um, you know, it's really about evaluating the needs of of

107the parents at that time and the students. and there was enough concerns with availability that we felt it very important to to add that on. We haven't seen that at North yet. Um I don't want to speak for you, but um David does such an amazing job there at his as programming and stuff and we just haven't seen um families that can't get an appointment at this time. But it's something certainly we're going to continue to look at. I think as we start to look at non-ol pathways and careers um that might open the door for adding of different positions FTE when I'll come back. So yeah this shine hi uh thanks for the information. I'm actually uh surprised that in all these years we have not had this presentation. Honestly it's it's it's hard

108to believe given the importance to families. So thank you. Um I have two questions. Um the first is um how how has how is AI impacting your jobs if it is and then how if if if how is it in any way affecting the students applications and and the steps and the processes they have to go through? And I have one other question unrelated. Um yeah absolutely. I mean, we could probably talk a whole another board meeting on that because that is absolutely um part of the conversation right now. Uh what is an appropriate use of AI within the application process and what is not an appropriate use. Um as well as the colleges, we are hearing colleges now using AI to do some pre-screening of of applications of essay. They're doing the same thing

109employers are doing ba basically. Yeah. which um we're I mean obviously for all of us it's so new. We're just trying to still kind of figure figure that out and what that means not only from the admission side as our students are very aware and very conscientious about that college application process and putting it all together and then all of a sudden what is that AI doing um to to the application to to to get it uh to go forward. I think when we talk about AI in the application process, obviously we go right to the essay and we talk about at least I know I do and I'm sure they do in their building. We talk about your essay is your opportunity uh to share your personal story. It's your opportunity to say what

110your pathway is, what your interests are. And quite simply, why would you want a computer to to write that story for you? Um, so we hope that they use it for research. I was using it today uh with a student who is looking I I was talking to a sophomore student who's looking for summer research opportunities in neuroscience. And so we went to chat GBT, we went to Perplexity, and quite honestly, we found some great programs at uh Ohio State and the University of Iowa. Um, so it's great for research opportunities, but then when it comes to putting together their story and the application, that's where we're hoping they'll put it aside um and then just go with their nar their own narrative. Well, and I was going to say too, Skip, I think in

111terms of the matching process, you know, when we meet with students individually, it's an opportunity to really connect and get to know those students and then think about, you know, appropriate college or universities that might be a good fit for that student. And I don't think AI can do that. you know, I think AI can can can give data and match students based on, you know, maybe a particular major, but I think that there's other pieces. Um, and certainly I think those individual appointments allow us to make those connections with students and families and learn about them, their personalities, their learning styles, and then help match them up. So, I think that um, you know, AI still is uh, not not able to do that. And to add to that, I think there's a reason

112that we all have counseling degrees and that we're licensed counselors because it gets so social emotional. And I think when students are using like AI for the matching process, sure you can put, you know, a list of attributes you might be looking for into chat GBT and get generated a list of schools. The difference though is definitely that personal element and just the layering of the um specific circumstances that the student's going through because a lot of times you can have students that are dealing with financial hurdles or they're dealing with maybe um family barriers or not being on the same page. So, I think that there's a lot of additional pieces that um in terms of the matching process, like having that counseling degree specifically becomes incredibly valuable when you're meeting with students because

113this is not just like a logistical straightforward logical choice. It's like buying a house. It's emotional. Yeah. It's a huge investment and it's emotional. And so, I think that like the counseling degree really comes to play a lot more than I think students initially or you might initially consider when you're thinking about like, well, why don't you know we all just hire private college consultants? they're missing that counseling component and I think that is a very critical element because it is an emotional process for student and parent. It seems to me that AI potentially could could sort of you could get into a thing where somebody who's like really clever could kind of game the system because if you could figure out what they were looking for, then you could create a mask that you

114know kind of was was targeted, although it may not be you and that's not good. And it seems that to fight that, schools may then start to fall back on more on standardized tests and grades and uh class rankings there. It's a lot harder to gain that part of the system and that would be in my opinion is is would be unfortunate because you lose a lot of the person with just using those numbers. And I I don't know what the answer is there, but it is I'm glad I didn't have to deal with that system. You know, I guess I guess I'd say that my my thank you for your comment. My other question has to do with the non-ol pathways and again it leads a little bit to the AI thing, but technical

115trade hands-on kinds of jobs pay today a fortune. They're very difficult to disintermediate with a technology like AI, like when you need the plumber, you need the plumber kind of thing. But in today's world, like say those unions and technical schools, they're happy to have the student go to junior college also. So, it's not it's not an eitheror. And are we bringing in to these college nights some of these non-traditional, you know, offerings? is, you know, is the pipe fitters union there and the, you know, the electrical a and all of this so they are on an even footing and parents can actually hear because if you want your your child going to a university, you're probably not thinking of this other pathway that they could have a very successful future, but somebody has to

116tell, you know, has to communicate and and bring your awareness up. So when I see these numbers, I think we are we have more work to do. Yeah. No, definitely agree. We have more work to do. Um I would say at this point um we haven't traditionally had um them represented at the college fair. Uh, one of the reasons for that is that our college fair is lined up with our Illinois Association for College Admissions Counseling, uh, that runs probably 40, 50 different fairs, uh, throughout um, the spring. And that calendar is associated with that. and and there are certain criteria uh that go along with that uh in terms of we do receive a significant um financial support uh to to help feed the the college reps uh and to help with any other

117expenditures we have. So for trade schools, vocational programs, skill-based certification programs to be a part of that, they would have to pay the registration fee that the association uh requires. So I know it's a little bit probably complicated that to get into tonight and we can talk um at some other point to explain that process. Are the military services representative um represent the themies uh tend to to be there? Again, the college fair is open to anybody who is willing to uh to be a part of that that college fair uh program. Uh that week we share with Bington, we share at district 14 uh 214. So the military does go come and visit the school. Oh yeah, they do presentations but they're not at the college. I think skip the other thing too that

118I would say is a big challenge is you know finding uh the plumber that wants to take time off you know uh from the job to come here to talk to our students because they're not getting paid where you know so that that that that also becomes a difficult thing to to try to find those uh you know those those speakers to come and talk to our students. Thank you. Before going to Mr. allowing one common thing because I'm going to forget I'm sure we have parents in our community that be more than happy to talk about what they are doing and how they are making a living. they're going to be coming to promote any particular trade, but we have in our community enough parents that either have a college degree but decided to

119go the other way or that didn't need. We have a lot of immigrants here that that came, hey, I'm good at this trade and they're making way more than some of our parents with with university degrees sometimes with PhDs. So, it could bring that up. I'm sorry. I didn't want ahead. Um, how long is the college counseling program programming? Has that been going on for years or just frame it out now and it's been going on for years or so? We've had college counselors in the district. This is some of that freshman sophomore. Oh, this one. Yeah. Um, bits and pieces have been going on for years and then it's just kind of a culmination um over time. Uh, so this isn't something that just came out and said this is all we're going to

120do. We've been doing the finding the fit program for since I've been here in 2017. So, it's just kind of you just you framed it out so us for us, but this has evolved over time. It's definitely has evolved. Absolutely. And just to add to that, um when I had come here and talked about how the school counselors as a freshman, team, sophomore, junior, senior, these lovely friends behind me sat in on specifically the junior and the senior curriculum. And although the schools weren't considerably different in terms of their college counseling program, they really are united now and they've done such a fantastic job working together and offering many of the programming districtwide. So it's not just at South or just at North. There are a lot of programs now like the colloquium that's open

121to all district students just located at South. No, the reason I say is because it it two reasons. one uh you know I'm in my fifth of six years in the last six years is my fifth one to go through the college process in the last six years five of the last six years so yeah so it's uh yeah it's been fun tuition's fun too um uh so the comment was is that a that focusing on freshmen and getting things ready and getting them ready for college is great. I can't Every one of my kids is telling my youngest daughter who's a senior right now, oh, college freshman year is going to be so easy. You're going to be so ready. And every one of them, all four said that. So, that's kudos to everybody

122here, right? Um, and kudos to you guys for, you know, through the the great work you're doing. You know, I can't believe we've never made it. I'm, you know, not even a year in the port. Can't believe this hasn't been a, you know, it's every parent's thought when they walk their kid freshman year into high schools, especially here. They're going to college, right? And where are you going to go? And I know everybody doesn't do that, but still it's their thought. So, I had a couple tactical questions that'll lead into another question. Um, I know there's a difference between school counselors and the college counselors, right? How many school counselors do we have? And how many is that per student? So like if you have I mean do we have is it a per student

123thing or is it a Go ahead. Yes. So currently South has 12 counselors school counselors and North has nine school counselors. Their case load can go up to about 265. They're all right at about 250 students per case load. Right. And they act as kind of an intermediary. And then I'm is my words not so is how I'm seeing it right or I see it in the business world right so they're acting as the counselor to those 200 students and then the college counselors are a shared resource to each one of them that go and help them is that correct correct and what I would say is a resource to the school counselors as well so anytime they go to a college campus or get information that is brought back to share with all of

124the school counselor so they have that same knowledge. Got it. Yep. Um and I heard also that you you visited or you're trying to get, you know, give them over 425 schools. So I'm just p piecing this together and this trickle down effect, right? And it it's uh I know that because I know some of the college counselors and I know they spend days writing um you know college essay recommendation letters. I mean it's just it seems like there's so much work going on here and I applaud the work you're going on. What can we do to help? It sounds like it's almost overwhelming and there's a huge need that every parent wants. Is there some way be it a person or a you know an F ft I want to use the right clo

125whatever FT whatever it is it sounds like you use some help what can we do Dr. Cummings. Um, so very kind. Thank you. Um, just so you know about the letters of recommendation, um, those are written primarily by the school counselor and not I know I'm just saying there's even all that it's like 100% I'm not minimizing at all what they or the school counselors do. Um, and it's very season dependent, very heavy during some seasons than others. Um, so that is what one of our next steps is is to really, you know, jump into it and see what we do need to help support what we're currently doing. We don't want to have to minimize any of the post-secondary planning that we talked about today, but we would like to add um some career

126and non um college pathways to the discussion. And so we will be exploring what other local high schools are doing, what the research out there is, and potentially coming back with what we might need to be successful with that. Yeah, I would think, you know, I know you said you can't compare us to Nutria, nor should we because we're not nutrition and I asked what Stevenson one of the things that I wrote down before you started. What is Stevenson, Libertyville, Vern Hills, what are they doing? Um, just because they have something doesn't mean that that's the way. Mhm. Right. So, if there's other schools outside of there that are around this country where we can implement best practice or we can take it to the next level ourselves, that'd be a wonderful thing. Yep. Agreed.

127Thank you. I was going to say I don't envy your jobs, but just to be I don't envy my job either on the other side at the academic level. These are crazy times. So if you open the news, this is this is the worst job market for college graduates in the last 60 years. 6. So you get a college degree on average, you owe 90k, 100k or more, and your chances of getting a job is really low on the I shouldn't say really low. It's lower than it used to be. No, that's the group with the lowest unemployment overall normally, the college graduate. And now it's the one with the largest unemployment, which is crazy. But in add to that that like my colleague was saying here you have this AI thing that it's kind

128of like everywhere and and I'm glad to hear you are going to conferences with college counselors because I think there's there's a lot of questions on the other way and I don't think we can you or anybody can respond these things now but our responsibility I would like to think that high school will never be replaced as an element of the society. I'm not so sure about the traditional four-year college pathways. So, at some point, we need to be at the forefront of I may lose my job, but luckily I'm old enough that every now. Yeah. You save some money. Yeah. No, I don't want us to go ahead of the time, but I do want us to be conscious back to the comment about non-ol careers, but you also see if you see the

129kids that everybody's exposed to these influencers and all these things that are making money on the side. Yeah. one out of how many make it, but still there's a pool somewhere there. So, so it I'm glad you're talking about, you know, looking at the students individually and and making sure that that it is the right path. I think we're going to have a hard time with the parents. I'm speaking as a former parent of of school kids because I'm not sure what the reaction is going to be if we do a college career day and and we bring two people that actually are advocating for hey I'm doing really well and I didn't go to college but our responsibilities we are students more than anything else and and we are all from different generations so

130so I don't know I have two easy or or this kind of sideways question I have a more deep one the first one is I didn't see any category about international schools and counting about how expensive is to college here and how cheap air is to go to college abroad. Do we have any interest? We have people asking typically three to five students a year at all. Yeah. Okay. Same at North. Okay. We we lump them into the collegegoing um percentage, but maybe we should have broken it out even more. Uh but yeah, we'll have same at North. We'll have about three to five per year. um setting abroad. Yeah. Now the second um so I like you do these things for for first generation multilingual and and different groups. One of the things that

131I noticed when my kids went through through the process is that there's a group of people that learn the basics. what do you need to be to do to be successful at the college application? Make sure you write a good essay blah blah blah blah blah. There's another group of people that for different reason either because they went through the process so the kids are not first generation or because they know more they start talking to the kids about why they didn't do a volunteer experience during the your first summer or why don't you work in a particular place that would benefit. So this extracurriculars that colleges are looking more and more because when you look at the 10,000 students every school gets a similar band with of type of students most of them took

132similar classes most of them have similar GPA most of them have similar interesting majors what makes the difference is not how they write their essay but what it's in there and what is in there is hard to come up when you are a junior or you have to you know you hear these stories of people parents telling oh this summer you have to do a volunteer experience and also you have to teach somewhere where I have to be a peer mentor which is impossible. So I I talk too much. So, I wonder if what you do on on these things if there's any kind of regular counseling or college counseling that talks about how to pay attention to your life experience that's going to be part of your college application or it's just simply following

133the I know for me and I'm I'm assuming it's the same for John and Kaine that when we talk about extracurricular activities um and I know I will we will be addressing it in our our sophomore parent program next next month um it is absolutely about the quality of the experience and not the quantity of the experience. And we really want our students uh to become involved freshman and sophomore, junior year in extracurricular activities uh not not so much for the application process uh but for them to build their story for them to organically become who they'll become once they uh uh graduate from the Glen Brooks and and go on to college. So to us, we do emphasize the entire application. Um I'm sure if you've had students go through the process, you've heard

134the words holistic review. Um all colleges now seem to be using uh the term holistic review and and and they truly are holistic and in going back to a previous comment about um colleges looking for uh particular attributes when they're admitting students. It's what we call institutional priorities. Um, and we even have a guest speaker at our colloquium who flies in from Chapman University to talk a full hour with our families about institutional priorities because if our students believe that they can strategize their extracurricular activities to meet what the colleges are looking for, that could change overnight when the president walks into the vice president's office and say, "Hey, we now need more students with X attributes." So we we definitely espouse our students to and encourage our students to to just be organic in

135their Glen Brook experience and um and that's who they want to be when they when they go to to um apply because if they have to shape who they don't want to be to get into a particular institution, do they really then want to go to that institution? So, um, so yeah, we I I and I believe John and Kaen have the same philosophy kind of try to take a step back from the strategizing of an application to encourage them to just build their story. And just to add on that, I think this is also where the value of those individualized appointments come in because depending on the students postsecary option of interest, that could look wildly different. If this kid's looking at the electrical union, you want related work experience. We want them in

136like some type of part-time job, even if it's at like an Ace Hardware or something that's going to be considered related work experience versus if it's a student that's looking at the University of Iowa that admits on an index, there's not going to be pressure with that which extracurricular, you know, like how are we going to think through that versus if they're, you know, dead set on the highest selectivity institutions? Well, yeah, those are schools that are going to be scrutinizing across top applicants. So, they are going to be in-depthly looking at your extracurriculars, but to Dr. Boil's point, making sure that that's authentic to them and that they're not just trying to shape an application, but they're really kind of assessing that fit and um yeah, that advising I feel like understanding kind of

137where that level is going to be at. It comes from those individual meetings because that's where you get like the specific post-secary option and you understand their circumstances and perhaps the deficits that they're working with or like the the areas to enhance their potential application. um once you know kind of what that desired pathway is for them. Great. Thank you. My last comment maybe a little bit longer but maybe not on my part is I'm going to go back to AI. There are two things that my field of research is AI. So I was doing Gen AI 20 years ago before JPD and everything. There are two things that scared me a lot these days. The first one is that it AI is a trusting environment. So if I go as a student I say

138pick the best college for me my grades are my GPA is 4.5 and my grades are this hey I will respond to my prompts right so it won't question my GPA or it won't question if do you like this and I may continue to expand because my college is not coming here so I like sports and I I'm really good at at whatever volleyball and yeah I would take it except like you said earlier you are counselors that you're with them for years so The question is how we how we get that information clear because if it's not happening now you'll face somebody who sits down and says hey ch told me I should be applying to here. So that that's part on one side. The other side that scares me even most is that

139if you do a Google search the first hits unless you if you pay attention you realize that it says sponsor hits. We're not that far from getting to AI to the same point. this this first line of advice, the preferred one, it's really a sponsor line of advice versus line number seven that is the real one that is going to use. So I know it's putting too much into you or into anybody at this point but but it how do you deal with this in terms of of you know and this is true for every counseling level not just college but how do you keep the gravity the center of gravity with you versus you know the center of gravity with that because parents of course they don't listen to what we say as parents

140but at least they should be able to trust you and work with you to to get into where they want to Quite honestly, I find Tik Tok, Reddit, and Instagram being more stressful um with with that information. And I'm on Tik Tok and it stresses me out. I'm like, now ground yourself. You've been doing this longer than Tik Tok's been around. Um, you know, I a dear friend and colleague of ours that's up at Lake Forest, uh, Jerry Sabrinsky, he he does a lot of financial aid work for us in terms of presentations. Uh, John and I have had the pleasure to uh, work with him when we were both in admissions up at Lake Forest. He once said, um, you know, every question, every myth, every scenario can be answered with it depends. And

141I I have that slide in every presentation I give because sometimes that information might be correct whereas other times it may not. And I think that goes back to what uh Kaen was saying um earlier. That's the importance of meeting with us and wanting to connect with us and that counseling emotional part of them coming in. This is what I heard. Is it true? Where did you hear it? Let's break that down. Sometimes it is true. Sometimes it's um just mindboggling to be quite honest. So all right. Well, thank you. You think Thank you. So thank you so much Kaen, David, John, and Lara. I think one of the things that we continue to hear is a desire of the board and our community to make sure that our students have what they need in

142order to be successful. Um and I think so too does data help uh inform those things. So, we have a few follow-ups um that the board has asked for and I'll make sure to gather that, but um there's there's no doubt that the data is very clear. The majority of our students are collegebound and the majority of our students are navigating a difficult world today than they were even 5 years ago and certainly 10 or 15 years ago. Um and we want to make sure that they have everything they need to make the right decision as best as we can. I think the renewed effort again through the strategic plan through goal one of working handinhand with parents from the beginning of freshman year and really at the beginning of 8th grade um is is

143critical into recognizing that students start thinking now. Um and I'm looking forward to sharing uh working with the team to share future updates. Um, but you all for our first presentation did amazing and thank you so much for that and we're going to give you a round of applause just for that. Thank you all. Next, Dr. Romano. We have three items here that we're going to work to be efficient with our time on. The first one, uh, Dr. Romano will just walk the board through the process regarding uh potential release of ESPs. Those are our support staff members as well as tenure and non-tenured and part-time uh licensed staff which are our teachers and related services. Dr. Romano. Um yes. Um so something that we engage in every year is staffing and that is the

144staffing plan uh which is going to be coming to the board in the next month or so. As we plan for the staffing season, something that um an interest that we have is to make sure that we are not overstaffed and sometimes in order to do that we engage in what is called a riff or a reduction in force. Um and also we can engage in non-renewals. These are conversations that the principles are having at the building level with the staff instructional supervisors will be communicating if there is anyone um impacted by it. Um but what you have in front of you is basically the procedures that we would engage in should we be engaging in a reduction in force or non-renewal. You have in front of you the uh different resolutions that we have

145available depending on the reason. For instance, if we have a staff member going from full-time to part-time or if there is a staff member that is going to be honorably um dismissed. Um and so that is what you have in front of you. Um this year we brought both memos that we used to bring to you in the past. one was for licensed staff and the other one was for non-licensed staff. We are trying to do a better job in communicating everything all at once just to make sure that you have all of the information uh to make the decisions that you need to make. And so even though we have different timelines uh that are required by the Illinois school code, we want to bring everything um together to make sure that you have

146everything available um for the moment that we need to make decisions. So that's basically what you have in front of you right now is just the procedures. Um and then for the next meeting um in March at that point should we be recommending a reduction in force you would also see uh additional information uh in regards to names um and more information about uh conversations that are having at the building level questions Mr. Downey maybe not a question but just to reiterate for the newer board members that normally we do this and then when we have a better idea of how the schedule is going to look down the road some people may be invited back or the loads may be increased depending on on how the schedule pans out. Thank you for adding that.

147Yes. Thank you. The next two topics are budget related. Um highlighting that both of these topics were reviewed by the finance committee. Uh very grateful to the finance committee members for sharing feedback. We were able to enhance the elements. Uh the first one is regarding the school operating budget. Uh Miss Tarver, do you just want to explain uh briefly the purpose of the school operating budget and the recommendation of the finance committee? Sure. So the school operating budget um covers operate it covers the expenses of operational needs that are within the control of the buildings. So th these are item everyday items and as well as instructional items that they control um what they spend and how much they spend on it. This year we're asking for a 2% increase for next year's budget. This

148is based on um what the projections are for our revenues and our overall expenses and what we are able to increase their budgets by. Um you know consider taking into consideration cost of living expenses just cost of materials in general. This is part of the overall budget and um is one of our building blocks. The largest building block being the staffing plan that the board will hear about at the next meeting. Um, happy to entertain any questions the board might have. There is no action requested tonight. It would come back at the next meeting. Let's hope Shine Mr. Shine, Mr. Ding. No, you you always seem to do a good job figuring it out, Vicki. So, thank you. I guess we're good. The final topic for um our open portion of the meeting this evening

149is regarding student fees for the 2026 to 27 school year. Again, the finance committee work through this. Um we are very um prideful uh or proud depending on your preferred word um that we charge as few fees as possible. So many districts assess fees with athletic or extracurricular participation and we've tried to condense everything into a single fee. Uh the only uh exception with that is uh breaking apart the Chromebook fee separately and that's really because our students take ownership of the Chromebook uh at the end of the four years as opposed to returning it. Um Miss Tarver, do you just want to highlight the um summary of the recommendations? Sure. So, we're recommending an increase on our registration fee of $20 per student. Um, that just represents the increased cost of instructional materials, um,

150textbooks, um, online materials, etc. Um, they have increased this year more so than we had anticipated. And then with some of the curriculum changes next year, there's going to be even additional textbooks that we're going to be consuming. So, um, we need to increase that. The other uh one of note is the um transportation costs. We are recommending an increase in that. It just over the last 5 years or so. Our revenue increase in transportation fund is not keeping up with the cost of transportation. So we are recommending an increase in the transportation cost to better meet the total expenses of providing that transportation. The other ones are very minimal increases. Happy to answer any questions from the board. So, is that $20 all inclusive of that? I wasn't following you. I'm sorry. The $20

151is um for the registration fee which will cover textbooks cost and other instructional materials. Uh the transportation fee is a separate fee that we are recommending an increase this year just because that the expenses are not I was confused if there it was included in the 20. Sorry. Thank you. Let's hope Mr. Shine no questions. Okay. Uh again no action requested this evening. This would come back at the next uh board meeting. All right. So, possible topics for future meetings. Yes, I want to make sure to talk about this. Um, I'm getting my my notes so I get the dates right. On Tuesday, March 3rd, we will be meeting with the Glen Brook North Booster Club at 6:00 p.m. And on Wednesday, March 11th, we will be meeting with the Glen Brook South Booster Club

152at 7:30 p.m. And our focus will be looking at the football stadium renovation ideas. Um, so this is an opportunity for us to gather additional community feedback. Mrs. Bonner and Dr. attack uh will be leading uh a lot of that conversation along with the architect uh and our construction management firm. Mhm. Tuesday, March 3rd at 6 o'clock, that's GBN and Wednesday, March 11th at 7:30 p.m. and that's GBS. Yes. And I'll send out um calendar invites for any of the board members who would like to attend. As a reminder, um because it's a community event, if a number of board members come, it's important that we maintain uh focus on the activity and not engage in in any uh extensive conversation. Uh but we'd love to see as many folks um who'd like to attend

153be there. Uh there is also one other opportunity I wanted to offer to the board members. We are going to be taking a little bit of a tour next week of some stadiums around the area. If anyone is interested, reach out to me and I can give you the details on that. Jack is raising his hand. We are gonna we're gonna make a note on that. Now, this is a note. It's an all day experience. Whatever it takes. All right. So if anyone else would like to join, let me know. If not, we will bring uh back the highlights based on what the student said next Friday. Make sure Yes. Right. August 6. Yes. Make sure you have snacks. That's a guarantee. Uh a form of a vehicle that looks like that. Yes. I could

154drive a mini bus. All right, friends. With that said, that uh concludes the upcoming meetings uh between now and the next meeting. All right. Go. Yes. When's that? Friday. What? Send out the invites. What? Yeah. Oh, we're leaving at like 7:15 in the morning till 6 o'clock at night. What? We're going to We're going to Sterling. Are we going to visiting? Uh five or six. All right. I guess we're moving into a long day. Moving it. Uh yes. Uh we are ready to move into close session. We have a few topics if the board wants to stick stick around. Yeah. So yeah, of course this this even that I'm waiting for the queue. This evening the board of education will enter into a close session to discuss sensitive matters that allowed under the open meeting

155act. Please note that no action will be taken following the close session this evening. At this time, we will entertain a motion to consider the appointment, employment compensation, discipline, performance or dismissal of specific employees of the public body or legal council for the public body, including hearing testimony on a complaint lodge against an employee of the public body or against legal council for the public body to determine its validity. Collective negotiating matters between the public body and its employees or the representatives or deliberations concerning salary schedules for one or more classes of employees. Litigation when an action against, affecting or on behalf of the particular public body has been filed and is pending before a court of administrative tribunal or when the public body finds that an action is probable or imminent in which case

156the basis for the finding shall be recorded and entered into the minutes of the closed meetings in accordance with sections 2 C 1 2 and 11 of the open meeting act. Who moves for this? So moved. Second. All in favor? I I. Any opposed? Motion carries. Okay. We take five minutes. It's up to the board. Board minutes.