Board of Education - Dec 08 2025

001And Miss Mullen Beck, we're ready. Good evening everyone and welcome to this meeting of the board of education of Glenberrook High School District 225. Uh Miss Smith, could we have the role please? Mr. Downing present. Mr. Glowaki present. Mrs. Hope here. Miss Mullenbeck here. Mr. O'Hara here. Mr. Shine. Dr. Steinberg. Five members present. Thank you, Miss Smith. Uh, next item on our agenda is approval of the agenda. Uh, sorry, Dr. Grall, have there been any changes to the agenda as it was circulated? There was just one change, not to the agenda, but to one of our attachments, the course guide. We actually added uh an updated table of contents just to make items a little more easier to find. So that has been uploaded not only in diligent for the board site but also on

002all of our district websites. Wonderful. Um Mr. Downing, would you like to move to approve the agenda? I defer to Mr. Glowak. So moved. I second. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion carries. Thank you. Uh that brings us now to our superintendent report. Take it away, Dr. Grall. All right. Good evening, everyone. Thank you so much for coming to join those who are present here and those who are joining us online. Uh today I just have two items I wanted to focus on. The first is really an initiative of our communications department and board members. You have this in front of you this evening. Um, one of the areas that we're continuing to uh work through um enhancing our outreach on are the different social media platforms and our profiles that so many members

003of our community, our parents and students and many of our alumni throughout the nation um actually follow. And so just kind of walking you through this, the front page speaks about how many different followers we have or likes we have on different respective areas. But beyond just passive association, we're really trying to dig into engagement. How many individuals not only scroll past what we might have post, but click into it or comment on it or otherwise interact on that. So, I'm really appreciative that we have some longitudinal data here. We're going to start kind of compiling this on a year-by-year basis, but to get us started, we have dating back to July 2025. And you'll see where that trend line is. When you see trends change, one of the natural questions you might be wondering

004in is what what do people get excited about? And um the communications team has given you some of your three top hits here. Um not surprisingly, people get really excited when we talk about kids, when we celebrate what's going on, when we recognize them at board meetings, we recognize them in their own elements or at different contests. And so you'll see a lot of interactions there. One of the other things I wanted to highlight is the different audience that we ultimately are reaching when we use different services. When we use Instagram, we're often times accessing more of our students. When we're using Facebook, more of our parents, but when we're on LinkedIn, we're connecting with a lot of our staff, individuals in the profession. They're monitoring all sorts of different um school websites and things

005of that nature. And so you'll see some different posts um come to the forefront. So with data ultimately we hope to inform our practices and further support um really the promotion of our students and our staff and our community success across the four A's. So this is a resource that we'll be sharing with our communications committee when we gather together. Um but we'll be compiling it monthly and uh we'll make sure to provide it to the full board and our community as we work through it. A quick question. Absolutely, sir. Do you guys track or is it down here? Maybe I didn't see it. How many people are forwarding or besides just liking it, are they reposting it or forwarding it? So, that's a great question. I know we utilize an analytics platform called Hootsweet

006that tracks us on a few ways. Miss Smith or Mrs. Alenas, you have any I am we I'm sure that we could track the shares piece of it. We just didn't do it in this report. Yeah, it'd be cool to see how many people repost. Sure. Track shares and repost. All right. Any other thoughts on the analytics report? You have them later. We'd be greatful to hear them. Uh second topic I just wanted to talk about uh actually comes back to board members and engaging with the community. Um, in front of all the members this evening, I have just a brief memo um that outlines all of the different groups that individuals had reached out to uh Miss Mullenbeck or myself about your interest in engaging. Um, a few real important highlights. We started having

007this conversation back in October in an effort to make sure that some of our board members um who might not always be um in the schools uh each week because your kids have graduated, but provide those opportunities to be connected to what's going on in the school buildings. Um and to do so leveraging some of our existing organizations or our structures that exist now. And so we identified all of the different parent organizations and we identified a a few that we would start with um and established board liaison with those organizations. Those included the GBN and GBS parents association, the GBN and GBS uh booster clubs and the Glenber Foundation which is districtwide and also our bilingual parent advisory committee. So, you'll see if your name um was submitted that I've added you here. If

008you don't see your name, just let me know after the meeting. I'm more than happy to add you uh to the list. And based on this, starting at the end of the week, we'll start sending out Google calendar invites so you have those meetings on your calendar. in addition to support you um and just to have an individual to make a connection between yourself as a board member as well as the organization leadership one of the members of the cabinet which could include myself Dr. John's um Dr. Cummings Mr. breed tag Miss Smith um and others will connect with you and attend the meetings um so that again if anything comes up or we can make those connections it kind of makes a little smooth experience and the other thing I've done is after the

009meetings what our what our real hope is is that we can bring back what we hear in those meetings so it can be shared around the board table and sometimes it helps just to have a little outline for what it is that we might be listening for. So, I put that in there. Um, celebrations or highlights, topics of interest or the themes in the discussion, uh, questions or feedback shared by parents, and then follow-up items. Um, the only other thing I would just offer for board members as you're you're starting to get into um, attending some of these meetings, just remember that these are established organizations that create their agendas, have objectives, and things of that nature. We're not going um to them with the intent of being put on the agenda as our own

010agenda item, if you will. It's really to provide us an opportunity to listen, to have conversations, to reflect. Certainly, you might be asked questions and always remember if you you get asked questions in the capacity as a board member, it's important that we only speak for ourselves and not the board as a whole. But I'm really hoping that we can get a good pulse, bring it back, and maybe that shapes future board presentations, uh, discussions that we need to address and making sure that we're having that holistic understanding of what our parents needs are right here at the table. So, I've talked a whole lot. I've given a memo, but I really wanted to open it up and see if anyone had any questions, anything we can support as we kind of kick off this

011effort this January. All right, seeing no, that concludes my report, but there's some more reports coming. Did you want me to talk about Well, we're going to move on to board reports, and Mr. Downing has a report from Athletic boosters. There we go. That kind of was part and parcel what you're talking about. Sure. So, uh, yeah, um, you know, following that kind of, uh, getting involved with the community, I was able to attend the, uh, booster club, the Libert North Booster Club meeting a week ago, Monday, with Dr. Gavell. Um, very welcoming group, very uh, they were very excited to see us and talk to us. I don't how many times board members have gone there, but I I highly encourage going to these kind of things because it was they were very active,

012very engaged. They even had Chipotle. Mhm. which was fantastic. Um, and uh, you know, we outlined the 10-year uh, facilities plan, which they were super engaged with. Um, very excited. Gave us some really valuable feedback, lots of great questions. We got some volunteers out of it, too. So, I mean, um, if you're concerned about going, don't be, cuz everyone I've been to so far, they've been so welcoming, and I've gotten some great feedback and really made me think about things differently, as well as um, you know, kind of um, establish some new new good relationships with people that are volunteering their time, too. Thank you, Mr. Downing. Um, and then we also had a report from the policy committee that just met and I'd be happy to do that unless Mr. O'Hare would like to

013take a crack at it. Sure. No, we're we're redoing our policies. We're in the meat of the matter now that we did uh half of six and part of seven. Six is uh instruction and seven is students. six seven. Yep. Um fully fully exciting meeting to talk about uh how we're doing our instructions, how we're handling our students. Um you know, some of the stuff we haven't touched in 20 25 years. Some of these policies are are old. Um and it's good to to get get back at them and start uh updating them, making them modern. Excellent. And we want to thank Mr. Downing for attending as a general board member to our policy committee meeting. Um, we will be having another meeting sometime in January. We will publicize that. And then in January, was

014it 28th? We'll be meeting again with the ISBY representatives from press to go over this new trench. So, make sure you put that on your calendar. Oh, they are so much fun. Really, really I suggest they are a lot of All right. Um, so does anyone have any other board reports? That's cookies. These are cookies. And they're cookies. That's right. And tarts. Today we had tarts. The tarts were outstanding. Uh moving on then to item five on our agenda, which is recognition of community visitors. Uh we do have a community visitor tonight. Um for our public comment period. So I will begin by just saying that this is an up to 30 minute period for public participation. Each individual may speak to the board for up to two minutes. We ask but do not require

015that each speaker state their name, address, and relationship to the district to facilitate follow-up if needed. All speakers are expected to conduct themselves with respect and civility toward others. Please remember that this is a business meeting of the board. All comments should be addressed to the board and should concern board business. The board receives public comments as a source of information and considers them in making decisions and in the establishment of policies. It is our practice to take no action on any items nor to discuss any items. members of the public have raised until the board has had time to gather information and then objectively discuss available options. However, during the meeting, the board at its discretion may choose to address an issue or correct any misinformation raised during public comment. While the board does

016not control the topics brought to its attention or the substance of the public comment, speakers are reminded that their comments are not automatically protected by any immunity or other legal protection. And tonight we have with us James W. Thank you very much 1827 Sunnyside Circle, North Brook, Illinois. First of all, I would like to say I must I must say uh I'd like to appreciate your willingness to come to the booster club meeting. The booster club actually has various policy changes and they actually do not permit all of its members to attend their meetings anymore. But that's not why I came up here. This year at at district 225 has seen an interesting coincidence where a very popular internet meme has paradoxically shared what used to be the name of the lunch block at Glenberg

017North which also was the most coveted free period among many students at Glenburg North at the time. I am sharing this as an example because one of the things that was a very significant part of my student career, well student career while at Glenber North was the fact that while students often created the social structure that determined our social status and whether or not we fit in, there was a major disconnect between what the students what my fellow students told me I needed to do to fit in and the students who coached me as an autistic kid who didn't always know how to fit in and what my fellow teachers were telling me was important on how to fit in. I personally think that in a world where so many children and so many students

018are complaining they do not fit in and are going to ask and are asking for help from their teachers and instructors just as we have now understood that there are internet memes and are now utilizing them in various comments. I personally encourage everyone who is affiliated with any schools to look around, pay attention to those student structures students are creating because at the end of the day, it was what the students determined I needed to fit in that ultimately made more of a difference and what the teachers told me who were not always aware of what I needed to gain full social acceptance while a student at Glenchrook North. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your comments. The next item on our agenda is the consent agenda. And Dr. Grall, have there been

019any changes to the consent agenda since it was circulated? There have been no changes. In that case, could I please have a motion regarding the consent agenda? So moved. I second. Mr. Downing. Yes. Mr. Gaki. Yes. Yes. Mrs. Hope, yes. Mr. O'Hara, yes. Dr. Steinberg, yes. Miss Mullenbeck, yes. Six members voting yes. Thank you. The next item on our agenda is the public hearing on our tax levy for 2025, which we had on the previous at the previous meeting, we had some discussion of. And I believe Miss Tarver, you have your Oh, I I'm sorry. I have my script. That'll make it easy. Um, let's start with the the hearing. At this time, I'm opening the hearing on the proposed tax levy for 2025. An estimated tax levy was made available to the community at

020the November 10th, 2025 meeting. Information about the levy was also published in the Gleniew announcements and Northbrook Star on Thursday, November 27th, 2025. Additionally, information regarding the school district's fund balance was made available on the school district's website through the 2025 fiscal year annual financial report and the 2026 fiscal year budget. Are there any questions or comments for members of the board? In that case, I will entertain a motion to close the public hearing on the proposed levy. So moved. I second. Don't we have to leave space for people to say something public hearing? Yes. I'm sorry, Miss Mullen. There is a line that's missing. Uh before we vote on the motion, if we could open up for any members of the community who would like to make a comment. Okay. Uh before we vote

021on the motion, are there any members of the community who would like to speak or address the board regarding the levy? Okay. In that case, now I will entertain a motion to close the public hearing on the proposed levy. So moved. I second. Miss Smith. Mr. Kaki? Yes. Mrs. Hope? Yes. Mr. O'Hara? Yes. Dr. Steinberg? Yes. Mr. Downing? Yes. Miss Mullenbeck? Yes. Six members voting yes. With a vote of six to zero, I declare the hearing on the proposed levy for 2025 closed. As a reminder, we will need to take a roll call vote for each of the three resolutions. At this time, I will entertain a motion to approve the resolution to levy 2025 taxes. I'll move second. I'm second. Miss I heard two I heard two seconds. I just Sure. Beth. Okay. Mrs.

022Hope. Yes. Mr. O'Hara. Yes. Dr. Steinberg. Yes. Mr. Downing. Yes. Mr. Gwaki, yes. Miss Mullenbeck, yes. Six members voting yes. At this time, I will entertain a motion to approve the resolution regarding application of loss and cost factor to 2025 tax levies. I move second. Mr. O'Hara, yes. Dr. Steinberg, yes. Mr. Downing, yes. Mr. Glowaki, yes. Mrs. Hope, yes. Miss Mullenbeck, yes. Six members voting yes. And at this time, I will entertain a motion to approve the resolution to instruct county clerk how to aortion 2025 tax levy extension required. So moved. Second. Dr. Steinberg. Yes. Mr. Downing. Yes. Mr. Glowaki. Yes. Mrs. Hope. Yes. Mr. O'Hara. Yes. Miss Mullenbeck. Yes. Six members voting yes. Thank you. We will now move on to our discussion and action agenda and that will begin with our personalized learning

023plans presentation. This evening we are really excited to talk about a topic that has been in development for several years. We recognize that every student has a pathway, a journey that they're going to participate on throughout their high school experience. And sometimes students journeys, maybe even neighbors, can look the same. And other times they can look very different. We also know that our parents, many of which are Glen Brook alumni themselves, have taken a path and sometimes their own pathway and their life experiences and their passions can help further shape and inform what their students um might be interested in, what what journey they're taking. Um, one thing is is very sure there's a lot of information that's out there. There's a lot of ideas of what path a student should take in terms of

024the courses they select, the career paths or the colleges that they perceive uh and and move forward with and in reality recognizing the impact that each of these decisions make. The district has made a concerted effort over the last few years to make sure that this conversation is at the forefront of our students journey even before they step foot into Glenberg North or Glumbre South and most importantly that as they're contemplating things as they're looking at different course options and recommendations in which pathway to choose that they're doing so not alone as rising freshmen but with their parents and having family conversations. ations and engaging with professionals such as our school counselors and our amazing student services team. This is directly associated with focus area or goal one of the strategic plan where we use

025terms such as each student shall create and find their own dynamic learning pathway and the school should be here to support them. Recognizing that what that pathway and journey might be as you're a rising freshman in December before you even start high school and what that might look like in September, October of their freshman year, things as we know change. And so this evening to lead our presentation, we have Dr. Cummings and she will be joined by two amazing folks who have met with hundreds of students along with their teams over the last few weeks. And that's Dr. Lauren Ali, our assistant principal of student services at Glen Brook North, and Miss Rebecca Holst, our assistant principal of student services at Glen Brook South. First of all, thank you both for being here, and I

026can't wait for you to share your passion and enthusiasm for what our students have started to go through today. and board members. Just as a uh a measure of efficiency, this particular topic will be directly associated with our discussion on the strategic plan uh in just a few moments. That was not a coincidence, pre-planned. Um well, thank you for having us here. We are beyond excited to talk with you about the personalized learning plan. Um, I will give a shameless plug for the Glen Brook insights that dropped today, starring the three of us, um, and R.J. of course, um, where we had an opportunity to talk about the personalized learning plan to our parents, community, anyone who will listen to it and download it, um, and really talk through the the registration process as well.

027So, please on your way home tonight, feel free to, you know, take a listen to that if you need more info than we're sharing tonight. Um, so for me, the reason why I am beyond thrilled that I'm here tonight having this conversation because the fir this is the first time in the Glen Brooks that all of our parents and students are having a common similar experience. And I think that's so valuable and so important and it's such a positive way of proactively bringing parents in to meet with their child and their counselor um and have that opportunity to what R.J. talked about in terms of that dynamic plan. This is not a plan that's written on a piece of paper that we never look at again. That's actually what it used to be. Um, but

028now we're very fortunate to have a platform such as School Links that helps create this plan to keep it dynamic, to make sure that we're constantly reviewing it and that every student's plan is going to look a little bit different. So, I'm going to take you really quick just through our journey of getting here and I'll kind of sum it up real nicely and quickly for you. Last year um during the the entire 24-25 school year, we uh student services and all the counselors came together to backward design the curriculum. Basically, we were saying where do we want kids to be students to be when they leave high school and then how do we work backwards to make sure they're being exposed to all of that. Part of it was the the PACE framework. Um

029and on the slide you can see just the freshman. Um the the PACE framework is an Illinois mandate for us to um it's for post-secary and career exploration and we have been able to detail for each grade level what the focus is for them during that freshman year, sophomore year, junior year and senior year. So based on that PACE framework, the counselors all join different curriculum groups. So we have one for each of the four grade levels and they backward design a curriculum for the students and it is a district-wide curriculum. So all freshmen um have been exposed to that same curriculum. So that is how we started it and then this year is really the first year of the implementation of this curriculum. And for freshmen, one of the first things they do during

030their freshman year is the creation of this personalized learning plan. So, I'm going to jump into the next slide. The first part today, we're going to have a slide on each of the different components of the personalized learning plan and then we'll kind of give a general overview so you kind of understand um what it looks like when the parents come into the building. But the first thing that the the students will do is they will look at several of these different goal areas. And we are asking students, yes, as freshmen, as 14 or 15 year olds to start making decisions about career glo goals and what cluster, knowing again every year this plan is going to be revisited minimally once, but can be revisited at any time. And they're changing their goals as they

031go along. I think one of the most valuable parts of the the PLP which we customized in the Glen Brooks um was actually adding different goals regarding their academics, their hobbies, their interests, activities and athletics so that the counselors started to get a sense of what they wanted to be involved in um and what classes might relate to that. So those conversations have started, students have started to identify their goals. on the next slide. Um, one of the other things that, um, is part of the personalized learning plan is graduation progress and requirements. The screenshot here says they didn't meet graduation requirements because it's a ninth grader. Um, but when Rebecca shows you a slide in a little bit, you're going to see the visual representation of the credits. And it the goal is to

032keep students on track to graduate while meeting all these other goals. It is built into the personalized learning plan. So students know and counselors that they are able to graduate and they've met all the requirements. On the next slide, I'm going to turn it over to Lauren Ali to talk through assessments. Definitely. As part of the general freshman curriculum, our counselors push into our student resource time to be able to provide some lessons and get students started on their personalized learning plan and some exposure to school links. Um there's two particular assessments that our 9th grade students were exposed to and got to engage with. One of them was the finding your path assessment. You kind of see this visual as like rolls through the different questions and help students to think about um where

033they might want to head, career areas they might be interested in, career clusters that they might be thinking about to help to support and navigate some of those post-secary considerations um that they might have as as nth grade students. And the results are incredibly valuable for the counselors as they guide conversations with families. Depending on what a student's post-secary pursuit might be, it's important for some students 9th grade year to be thinking about course that they need to take 10th grade, 11th grade to prepare them for 12th grade courses um for certain uh college and university plans that they might that they might have. Um, similarly, it helps to guide conversations about balance and considerations about how students want to navigate course loads and different levels of courses depending on what they want to do

034after high school. Those are important conversations. So, instead of students looking to their peers um for guidance about what courses they need to be in, they kind of look to some of these assessments, some of those results to help guide what they're thinking about post uh post high school. And then there's a second one about learning styles. Um it's multiple choice questions for students to think about their learning styles, their problem solving, um and just to um engage in like a little bit of metacognition about how they themselves are learners, which might guide the types of courses that they might want to consider when they're choosing their courses, when they're talking with their counselors about their four-year academic plan or their personalized learning plan. Um so these are just some nth grade assessments that students

035will do. Um, I know Laura showed just the one portion of the PACE framework, but as students move through high school, they're going to be exposed to different assessments that we assign them that we review with them. Our sophomores this fall, we're reviewing some as well. Um, so this just a snapshot of what our nth graders have access to um in the school links platform, which is incredibly robust. Um, but you know, as as Laura mentioned, these are um we uh put a personal spin on what we want to do in the Glen Brooks, what we think is really valuable for our students in our in our community. So, just two uh two areas and I'll pass it off to um Rebecca to talk a little bit about the course planner, which I think is

036the uh little bit of like the meat of students picking their courses for for next year. Thank you. So, as you can see, this is what a current freshman would see when they logged in. All the way to the left are in theory the courses in the um student's schedule right now. and then it builds forward automatically the next um course in sequence for that student. So you can see um at the very top the student is in English one ah and then it just fills the next two years automatically. It doesn't mean that that decision is 100% set in stone. That is just kind of the the default and other conversations can happen from there. But it identifies for the family really where they need to spend their time for um choice making. It

037can really target that conversation at home. um if everything's going swimmingly in English one and they're not looking to make a change, they can have a more robust conversation about um what social studies class they're going to offer. So you can see um sophomore year there's no kind of in the middle of there. There's no uh required social studies course sophomore year. So that's why that's blank. And then they can put um their choice in there when they before they meet with their counselor and then have that conversation with their counselor um when they meet. One of the things that um we just also want to we can kind of toggle between these these two slides. This year we had the PLPS in November. So families and their students picked a 20-minut slot. If the

038parents and guardians couldn't come in, they could either zoom in or phone in. Either one um we made happen. We had a tremendous um percentage come into the building which is it's it's really nice for a variety of reasons. It's really nice for that connection from the the counselor, the student and the um parents and guardians to really just have that face-toface in-person conversation. It's really difficult to replicate. Um so students are present. It is typically during their lunch or or SRT or other um free block that they have before school, after school. They were kind of the entire day um in student services in the month of November. And this plan here was where the conversation started. So the counselor is going to say just a general how is it going? You know, how

039are your grades in these classes? What's your balance and load like? How are you getting involved? Do you like any of these classes that you're going to join a club that is in this department? Are you um so loving English, you're going to either join um the Oracle or yearbook? And it it really allows for robust conversations with the family present. And that you can't can't discredit how important that is right there. Um so it allows for that communication. It allows to talk about course recommendations and and how the transition's going. Is it too easy? Is it is it too difficult? Are you using your time wisely? Um then they get into just other graduation requirements. They can fold in that conversation of of careers and what you've learned in these assessments. Um and and

040maybe do some more. You know, it's not every household where the student comes home and says, "This is what I did at school." But this gives the parent insight into what the students actually doing and how they can continue to have those conversations. Um on January 8th, Lauren and I will both present at our respective schools about school links and encourage families to go in, but it's overwhelming, right? They're drinking from a fire hose when it comes to curriculum night. So re circling back to that and really kind of saying this is what it is. go home and play around. Allows for a really kind of level playing field for everybody. Um, it's also a great time to answer questions. Lots of questions about NHS, lots of questions about student travel. Um, lots of questions

041about summer school. How can my student get involved? They're only free on Mondays. That's a really nice just kind of Q&A. I'm really lucky to be able to pop in and out of these meetings and make sure that kind of every every kid is getting a very very similar experience. Um when we have transfers come in, we do the meeting right away. If if um so they don't get missed any transfer throughout their entire um kind of four years that they can transfer into to the Glen Brooks, they have this PLP right away with their families when they come in and pick their courses. Um, in the end when a student graduates, this whole um screen will be full of the classes that they've taken, what they've earned credit in, and then you'll see um

042you can't really see it very well here, but where they have um missing graduation requirements and and where they've met all the graduation requirements. Thank you. Any questions for us? U Mr. Uh just I guess a quick wonderful work in terms of this and having two students go through the process just seeing the change in terms of that. Um how is this coordinated with the college counselors because many times you start having those discussions with them about junior year and there's some surprises parents kind of encounter based on certain schools that the families were looking at and everything like oh well you should have been considering this. So, how does that coordination work with the other counselors? Um, so at Glenber South, and I'm fairly certain it's exactly the same at Glenberrook North. Uh, a

043few kind of two weeks ago, the counselors presented to both sophomores and juniors. And then last week and this week, the college and career counselors are presenting and then they're doing their evening presentation later this week as well. So those um presentations are of a nice kind of dubtail together of you know think about what courses you're about ready to take you're about ready to ask for you're requesting and your postsecary plans whatever those might be. Um it's also really important for us to we talked about this on the podcast that they're putting the requests in right now. Juniors are going to do it in January and then they have this what we call a verification window where they have a couple of days parents can go in they can sit down with their student

044and look in school links and see what they requested and and then request a change at that point. But how are the counselors I guess because the counselors are developing the relationship since freshman year. I guess my question is how are they learning from the college counselors who have the relationship with the universities because pace is the foundation you know what is required for us to communicate but you're learning insights from university X oh they prefer if you've got these clubs and these activities and university C says something else like oh no we prefer a well-rounded student and everything and how do how often do you guys meet I guess and coordinate on that front great question. So the college counselors have been an integral part of creating the pace framework and sitting on all

045four curriculum. So they have the luxury of being able to pop in and out of all of the grade levels because there is post-secary career readiness work that has to be done all four years. Um and we have identified which areas we want the college counselor presenting on versus one of our um school counselors. do know that our school counselors do post-secary planning as well both career college etc. Um and so they meet on a weekly basis with the college counselor getting any kind of updates from colleges and um learning that information from that. Um but they are integral to this process in terms of um going back to the counselors like the the freshman committee is going to go back to the whole group of counselors and train them in essence on the curriculum

046so that it's being implemented um correctly and the college counselors are part of that. Okay. So it's a team effort in you got it. Okay. Absolutely. Thank you. Yep. No further questions. Okay. Mr. Downey I already have this reiterate this is great. Um, now I don't need a long-winded answer. I don't need a I'm sure I know the answer to this, but asking anyway. Uh, you know, kids change their mind every day. I can't tell you how many people I see in the work world who have a degree they don't use at all, right? Uh, what level of discussion is talked about with that anything they say is not set in stone? Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Especially for our ninth graders. um really considering that I think the one of the benefits of doing the PLP

047meetings in November um is time post the conversations with families. So we still have the month of December and really the month of January for families to post meeting go home and consider the conversations that they were having weigh their options and considerations and by the end of January we really do come to the end of the course request season and I think if you know this this board could appreciate we need to balance the students you know pursuits and passions and desire for change with like navigating and managing building a master schedule and getting students the courses that they want and the staffing plan some of the technical pieces that go alongside running a successful a successful school, but having the meetings in November does permit a little bit of time and a little

048bit of wiggle room for students to engage in those conversations. I know we have families that leave and call David Bole over at Glen Brook North and say, "Is this a good idea?" We have counselors. I'm on uh a multitude of email threads about different levels, trajectories, uh different pathways for sort of cohorts of students that we see follow a similar set of plans and are soliciting advice from a college counselor and like weighing how we're advising students across all of across all of the counselors. So, a lot of those conversations, especially for our nth grade families, are happening over the next couple of months. So we do have a little bit of time but we do like the reality is we do enter into a season of time where there are more limited changes

049that are available just given the natural constraints of a schedule and you know um movement in an individual's students schedules in consideration of how we begin the start of the school year and want some you know stasis and steadiness in in classrooms which is also really good for kids. No 100% I agree. I meant like not changing a CL like if you decide and go down this path and come junior year you're not you don't want to be an engineer. That's okay. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of flexibility. Okay. We have students do that all the time. Um students are constantly changing their minds. Their, you know, their their college plans, their career plans are changing. Um and you know, we have the the ability to to shift and to move into different areas. Yeah. I

050just want to let them know that's natural normal. Yep. I think this is a great way. It's a guided way to be able to engage with parents in and around thinking about where they want to go and getting professional feedback. It's fantastic. And I love the fact that, you know, you I can't remember who made the comment that you, you know, kids come home and you say, "How was school today?" Fine. You know, how was pract? Fine. Everything's fine. You know, whatever. You can't It's like trying to move heaven and earth just to get more than that out of them. So, I love the fact that the parents are engaged and we do have an engaged community. They can come in and they can find out stuff about their kid that maybe they didn't even

051know that the kid is good about good at and they can celebrate it and now all of a sudden it's more, you know, a sense of belonging. It's a it's a you're inclused in this organiza and there's so much to do in our district. I love the fact that parents have a way to see it now. And I I I think this is great because I think every kid needs to take what they're good at and find it and and hone it. And this is a another way to do it. It really is nice to see the uh the parents walk through the halls with their child. Some of them a little embarrassed, but most of them really excited. Mr. O'Hara. Yeah. No, thank you guys. Um this is the stuff I love. you know,

052as you're getting the kids, I mean, the whole point is help helping them grow. Um, I guess just so I understand, um, every student, not just the freshman, had the had the PLP meetings in November, right? Or is it is freshman and then next year it'll be freshman and sophomores and then, um, so are you guys going to have a bottleneck in November at some point because there's only so many days and so many lunch periods. True. Uh it's only the freshman that get that the full kind of 20 minute PLP. Um last week both schools met with juniors or I'm sorry with current sophomores to pick their classes. It was a shorter meeting. It was really um more condensed and was only students, not their parents or guardians. So, it was looking at their

053plan and picking classes for next year and in most cases having a little bit of time left over to have that um kind of career and and college conversation. And then in January, the first full week back, both schools will meet with current juniors to do the same conversation. And then the seniors obviously just meet with the correct post. They um they meet with postsecary and then they do have an exit conversation with the counselors. Um, is is there some thought of maybe getting the parents involved at or are the parents allowed to be involved at at sophomore and junior? We um can certainly phone or zoom them in. Okay. Yeah. But but the main emphasis is the the freshman that first one to get them um because kind of getting back to Jack's thing

054as as you go down a road sometimes it gets a weight all its own and it can be hard to suddenly say, "Hey, I don't want to do this anymore." Um, and so it's nice to have other people there who can listen and help help them make changes. Um, and I guess just just so I understand, uh, we keep counselor, student counselor, college counselor, what so what's the difference between a college counselor and a student counselor? Should we have just counselors? And I guess that that might go beyond where we're at. I'll ask Dr. Cummings to come up and take that question. All right. Council, so if you look back at a lot of documentation, they used to be called guidance counselors. Very outdated term. Um believed counselors, you know, had to schedule classes and

055do some kind of clerical work and that was about it. the the concept of a school counselor is so much broader now. Um and really does include that post-secondary planning that is part of a school counselor is how we typically refer to or a generalist counselor is how you would refer to um every student being assigned a counselor. It's a school counselor, generalist. They're going to help them with their academic, social, emotional, post-secary career, you name it. All the different parts of the PACE framework fall under the school counselor role. Our college counselors are added to help with that specialty of really creating the connection. I think as as you said be um regarding connections with colleges and scholarships and opportunities and really kind of honing in. The Glen Brooks are a special place as

056we all know. Um, but we encourage school counselors to go on college campuses to learn about the colleges. So, it's not just our college counselors that are getting that information. We bring in a lot of different colleges. Our school counselors sit in on that to make sure that their knowledge is increasing of those schools. And when our college counselors travel or learn information about the school, that is being shared constantly with the with the school counselors. Um, so many of our families will choose to use their school counselor to help with that post-secary planning, but we are very fortunate we have the resource of a post-secary that really hones in on that and then that's available to all of our families. They typically, depending on the time of year, they work with primarily junior and

057senior students. College counselors will not typically meet with freshman and sophomore students and parents. It's really during that junior year and then the beginning part of senior year. Does that explain? Yeah. Okay. Just don't call them guidance counselors. School counselors is good. Miss Hope. Yeah. I I have a freshman and so I got to go through the PLP process this year and it was incredible. I mean it was so valuable and not only for the parents to hear from the counselor and to be brought into that but for you know the counselors are asking the parents to share about what they're seeing at home to highlight the strengths of their students and to talk about concern. It really was such an incredible opportunity and so well done. So thank you Dr. Steinber. Thank you. I

058like that. I mean this is great. Um I don't know who said this but looking at what kind of courses a student want to take regardless of the subjects in terms of the high school experience what things I feel better. I I find it interesting that for many people high school is depth. how how how much higher I can go in a certain topic but then you have to write an essay and if you didn't take time on reading books in English class or anything else how do you come up on how to write an essay and then you have to talk about your adventures outside of the curriculum but if you only focus on the curriculum you don't have them while you are sitting for four years in a high school and you can

059be doing all these things for free versus taking a class in college to to Jack's point I always say it's I think on average students get two majors in college because at least 50 to 70% change at these ones. What I've been learning this past few years as the of the grad school, you know, the highest percentage of people that go to grad school are career changers. So, not only people change degrees in college, then they go to grad school because they took three years doing what they thought it was the career of their life and they realize it's very frustrating. I don't know if you see it here, but a lot of teachers going to teaching after getting a degree in something else and realizing that actually they prefer to do teaching. So this

060this whole thing about it's been we went through all of these but trying to decide what we're going to do when we are nine years old but to later change it three or four times versus getting a well grounded education and and and and focus on the core subjects. It's I think that happens anyways because students that come from the Gran Brooks they go with that with that. I'm going to ask something that I thought Mr. O'Hare was going to beat me to the punch but how this fits for the kids that say I'm not sure I'm going to go to college or I'm not sure I'm interested on going to college. Yeah. I mean I I think they I think they share the experience. um students. We have I would say more of our

061students opt into pursuing a two or fouryear college or university. We have plenty of students who are opting into straight into careers, other types of transitions, community college, armed forces. Um and so I think that in our conversations with students, we want to open the door for them to consider whatever their post-secary pursuits are going to be. Um and lean into what the students and what the families are ultimately interested in. Um because many of our students do opt into college and university, we do naturally tailor presentations and materials so students feel like they have access to that information. Um but we do college career college um planning and career planning. And if you look at some of the assessments that we go through with students, it's very career focused. So we talk a lot

062about different careers students might be interested in going into rising careers that don't require college degrees. um a lot of materials on school links for students to be able to access and consider what they're going to do after high school if they're going to move directly into the workforce. We have subsets of students um for whom college is not the next step um for them academically and we'll move into you know transition programs will move directly into careers as well. So depending on what the students interests are, we have those conversations. And I think one of the benefit of the PLP meetings is we're learning and discovering more about students post-secary plans earlier than we would otherwise. Sometimes those conversations wouldn't have historically come up until junior or maybe even senior year at the beginning

063of the year when all of our counselors are pulling students down to talk about what's happening after high school. And we learned that a student has been engaging in certain academic schedules um that maybe weren't necessary for what they want to do after high school or missed out on certain elective opportunities along the way. They would have better prepared them for what they would actually like to do outside of high school. Um that's not necessarily, you know, a two or four year college university that they might look to their peers as something that they're pursuing that students think they should also pursue. So, I think we have a lot of opportunities, even if it's a smaller cohort of students. And I know at least um through the PACE framework, there's a college focus, but it's

064really post-secary. So, I think you're going to hear that language a lot of what are your post-secary plans? What are you thinking about doing after high school, not where are you going to college? Um because that is not the college can be one step along the way to a career. Some students skip that and they're going right into the career. We are assuming most students are going to all students are going to do something um when they graduate high school. um whether it's you know directly into into the workforce or not. So I think just our semantics and the way that we talk about it is more inclusive language of all students who are considering plans after high school that may or may not include a more traditional route to and through college. Okay, my

065last my last question, I don't know where to place it, especially with this distinction between college readiness counselors coming at the end, but as our district demographics change, there's an element that we I don't think maybe we do and that's part of the question which is not every family can afford certain college experience and we talk about learning experiences, living experience experiences and college affordability is going out of the question for many people these days. So as we go through this fouryear pad I remember as a parent I faced that too late right when we had these meetings in junior year and by this point my kids didn't know where they wanted to go but they had these frameworks that they were looking at where affordability was not part of the question anywhere okay this

066was a given that you know whether I need to go to the best x or I need to go to the school party or nonparty or this and that are we working since we're working with families this gives us an opportunity to get a better understanding and I just want to be clear this you know ideally cur shouldn't be an issue of affordability or nonaffordability but we have to be realistic and we have to generate expectations or at least let families prepare in advance for how to get to experience that the students deserve or they want to get. Absolutely. So financial literacy is part of the pace framework. It was really one of the main um features of that in terms of being able to prepare whether it's career or college whether it's paying for

067the college or trying to live on their own. Um I was laughing because there's this game of life that that we have have students well it used to be a board game or still is a board game. Um but they where they start to understand about even taking out loans in college and what does that look like to have to pay back those loans and you know you have to pay your for electricity and you know really kind of walking through what does it mean to be an an adult and so that is woven into all four four years of the curriculum. Thank you. Very important. Um this is great. Uh, I I can see how this will really facilitate these very helpful conversations and um I think that's terrific. I did have a particular

068question just because I know you you just focused on these freshman meetings. This is our first cohort of students now that's um working with the APA and I'm just wondering how that conversation is playing out. Are we are we we had we've talked about how the APA has um given us a nudge to create a maybe a sort of a middle road curriculum wise that maybe wasn't available in the Glen Brooks before and that this might open up some opportunities for kids to feel like hey you know maybe I don't have to you know take all honors classes I can take you know all accelerated honors classes I could take some of the intermediate honors classes and maybe that gives me a chance to take an election ive or you know how are we seeing

069that play out and maybe it's too early to say if it's only one group but I'm just wondering if are we are these expectations of there are going to be eighth graders who are coming in who are like you know I've never taken honors classes before but I think I can try now here um versus kids who are always like on a break neck pace and think maybe I can take a step back still get the well-rounded you know approach that I want but also have room to do other things are they asking those sorts of questions or are they still kind of thinking the way they've always been thinking about what their potential um tracking might be. So I think in some of the um meetings that I was lucky enough to join those

070conversations are absolutely happening. Are you the counselors are saying you know what's what's the rigor like for like for you? Are you being challenged enough? Um or or maybe we need to level down one. Um and I think in some of the conversations that we've had, we've been very transparent. Why would we wait until next year to make that change? If a if a student needs to be challenged more and we can make that change for next semester, we will absolutely do so. If a student is if a student needs to take a a level down, let's do it right now so that they can continue to grow and then it won't impact the impact on next year will be less because there won't be as many content gaps. Okay. Um, did anyone else have

071any other questions? This was a really helpful conversation. I I'm sorry my eyes aren't great, so I wasn't really able to see the uh the format that well, but I think that um it looked like it would be much more user friendly than just pen and paper. So, yeah, this is definitely um a step um into the to to the future for us. So, thank you so much. Thank you all. And I think uh Dr. Grall um gave us a little uh preview or alluded to the next topic on our agenda, our strategic plan update. All right. Thank you so much for your patience and understanding as we gave a little bit of a preview of one of our most important focus areas, one of our most important goals, uh, which is focus area one,

072which is really all about student empowerment. Before we get into all of the meat and potatoes of the strategic plan, I want to take an opportunity and take a step backwards and think of where we were and where we've come. Arguably back when Dr. John's first joined the district, he presented a need to the board of education which was uh the importance of creating a strategic plan so that we had a roadmap, a pathway that would shape a lot of our actions and decisions moving forward. Unfortunately, there was this small little uh hiatus that we needed to take um in uh in education for a period of time that happened in 2000 which uh delayed the starting of that conversation. Uh I'm sorry, 2020. I'm missing 20 whole years. um the millennial. Um but in

073June 2023, um the board actually started the process of identifying a consultant to help us craft this plan. And part of crafting a plan is listening to a lot of people. And when we say the word people, we often refer to or we intend to refer to to our students, our parents, our community members, our staff members, our alumni, our governmental agency partners, and our business partners, folks all around that contribute to the student experience throughout their high school um their high school time. As we listened to them, we started to draft the framework. And that framework early preview is this document that we greatly uh and proudly hold and share with so many um that has four overarching goals, a variety of strategies, and we'll also talk about some action steps in order to

074accomplish and fulfill those goals. We gathered a lot of feedback through multiple different drafts. In fact, around this board table, there might have been a little bit of word smithing that we needed to navigate through in order to make sure that we were comfortable with what was being uh put together. And um ultimately in August of 2024, the board of education approved the plan. Now, there's a real important part of this journey that we can't understate. I joined the district back in 2015. I know as we were looking around the table, we determined that Mr. Bree tag had the longest amount of experience having a little a little less than double my time here. And in all of our collective time, the district really never had a traditional strategic plan. We had a whole lot

075of goals and initiatives, but not this plan that was going going to in many ways uh dictate that map and and the journey we're about to take. And so throughout um Dr. John's uh year last year, we introduced what a plan is. And when we say introduce, we explained this new concept of getting feedback from a whole lot of stakeholders that led to this map. And now that we gathered that feedback and now that we put it on paper, we need to give um some reference to that and we need to follow it, which was a little different because often times when you meet with folks, sometimes new ideas come up or different ways of looking at things. But again, this plan represented a five-year pathway to have us accomplish our goals. Um, but as

076we were presenting the plan in a variety of different settings, we started with our administrators, we expanded to our teacher leaders, we expanded to our staff, our community members, we gathered a lot of feedback and got some tips such as maybe as you continue to explain it, don't explain it in this way. Maybe tweak this or, you know, some of the language in the plan makes sense to me because I'm a specialist in that area. Um, such as dynamic learning plan. uh but maybe to a parent that's that's a little more confusing. Um as we gathered that feedback, we also got um a few more direct statements and questions. Um so throughout the year, we're we're sharing this, we're talking about the four goals, yet we're still getting follow-up questions such as what is our

077direction as a district? what what are the goals that we have for next year? What are the goals we have for the following year? And ultimately, because many things, as Miss Tarver can articulate, come back to resources that are available, how do we align our resources with the strategic plan and with our initiative? All valid questions. Um and so we we also um kind of started to get some more direct feedback uh which is more of labeling such as when we would talk about the strategic plan there might be feedback such as um the strategic plan is district work that that's not school work that's on the district side or the strategic plan is not the staff's work. The strategic plan is board work. again all natural uh questions that come up because we've been

078in an organization that have not historically had this plan. So taking all of that feedback and then we had this little transition uh that happened um we tried to come up with operationalizing it um and so I kind of talked through those steps. I'll I'll skip forward to what we started doing first. We had been sharing about the strategic plan. We had uh uh in essence a Google doc or a word document, however you want to refer to it, that lists the plan. But it was lacking context. It was sometimes in our different learning modalities and preferences. We need to have infographics. We need to have less words and more visualization about what this actually looks like. And so we did create this document and I actually I purposely refuse to replace my copy, but

079it is falling apart. I even taped it a little bit. Um because we're always opening this and we're writing in it and we're adding post-it notes as different board members might say things uh that we need to address. We add those notes to make sure that we don't forget about those things. Um and we have been sharing this everywhere. So what are some examples? When we get invited to present to the village board of trustees, all of the board of trustees and anyone there gets a copy of the plan. When we go to our parent associations to present, everyone at the parent association gets a copy. We want them to open it. We want them to look at it and really we want them to ask questions. We want them to demonstrate just like our

080kids in our classroom. We want them to show that curiosity and we want to navigate that and we want to hear from them that because it's a living document, maybe there's some clarity we need to address or maybe they have great ideas that that might naturally fall into place and we want to leverage that wisdom for a five-year plan. We didn't just stop with adults. We continue to share with our students. I'll tell you in this in this new role I meet with student journalists a lot on a lot of topics and almost every time I meet with them it's on a topic that directly connects to the strategic plan and so whenever I meet with them they get some bonuses like board policy copies those are always fun uh maybe some printouts of the

081handbook but we also talk about the strategic plan because our students are some of our best advocates they know what's great about the district. Sometimes we just need to give them that structure and kind of get that ingrained not only with our adults but with our kiddos as well. And then certainly as the general public comes in, you know, a lot of folks um don't always realize um when people move into the community, they move into the community many times because of the schools. And when people are making a choice, you know, uh, not to call out towns, but do I move maybe to Wanetka? Do I move to Glen View or Northbrook? We want to make sure that they know why they should move to Glen and Northbrook. And these types of documents that

082helps individuals who are counseling folks as they dynamic or or create their dynamic residential plan, that pathway over to Glen View and Northbrook. And so this document, one publication, we're trying to get out there everywhere in addition to our website and other materials. But then let's keep it going. We heard a lot of feedback and we heard that there wasn't as much excitement about the strategic plan. So on the first day, we brought everyone together by everyone, all of our teachers, all of our school counselors and college counselors, all of our instructional assistants, our clerical staff, our specialist staff, our administrators, everyone came together and we tried to demonstrate the excitement that this plan provides. And we answered some of those questions we heard. What is our plan? You don't have to guess what it

083is. It's right here. It's already written. Now, we do prioritize some things in each year to make sure that we're making adequate progress throughout. So, for example, this year we did focus on addressing chronic student absenteeism because when it comes to focus goal or or or um strategy onee, we need to make sure all students have what they need to be successful. And some of our students who are struggling getting to school, they need some special assistance. And so we need to support them in that. That's all in the plan. And it also d also directly gets to a need that we have, which is making sure all students are here and available for learning. So we got this plan out there. We've brought excitement to it as much as we can. And yes, it's

084how we talk about it that actually drives the excitement. Believe it or not, not many people are very excited about reading a whole lot of bullet points on a page. But when we connect it to our own kids, when we connect it to kids such as sorry, rising sophomores as they're going through their process, now it makes sense. And slowly but surely, we start even getting mentioned on social media in a positive way, which is very exciting. What else have we done? I mentioned we started a um a new strategic plan website. I want to call out Mandy, I apologize, but strategic plan is really focused on both of our school pages and it says learn more. We'll go ahead and skip past that next. A great photo. I'm sorry. Just to be to be

085clear, I flipped a coin on whether or not I was going to show GVN or GBS and GBN won on that one. Congratulations. So in in what else have we done? Um in every action or every topic that's presented to the board of education, I used some screenshots here. You're seeing the strategic plan mentioned. So when Dr. Cummings and Dr. Ali and Ms. holes presented on the PLP, you saw that it's connected to focus area one and three and the specific strategies. But let's keep on going. When you actually look at the agenda, we don't we don't bury the strategic plan. It is right there below the agenda item. Now, this is also technically a necessity in order to automatically build our dynamic dashboard, which will be shown in a moment. Um, but it's it's

086out there because we want any community member that may have something exciting to look at about the district or might have an area for growth, we want them to know what our direction is and it's right there for us. This again is something that didn't just happen overnight because in order to align all of our different presentations, every one of the folks around the table as well as their teams that are behind the scenes or th their teams who are supporting them at the podium, they have to understand a strategic plan and we built a system to build that awareness. Then we created another part of our website which is this dynamic dashboard. But I want to emphasize a big thing here. And you all know I do love me some systems. So many school

087districts end up buying another system to monitor their strategic plan progress. And I would like to suggest that many of them look like spreadsheets. They just maybe have some bells and whistles. When you click on one of our items and dig into it. Oh, I'm going come back a minute. When you click on one of our items to dig into, and we'll actually live show this in a moment, you go directly to our board of education site, you see the the actual goal, you see the strategy, you see the board meetings associated with it, you see writeups on progress, and right there you have the whole chronological order of things that we've presented to the board. And when you click on one of those items, not only can you see the multi-page, this is where

088I can be a little long-winded, right? The very long memos that support the topic, but you may not realize this. You can also click and see the video of the board meeting where it was discussed so that you can hear the whole conversation that we had at the board table all through that dashboard. and we'll show you what that looks like with an example in a moment. So, we've we've created our site. We've brought enthusiasm and awareness to our our plan as much as we can. We continue to do that. And then also this year, I mentioned that we need to to kind of uh funnel the work that we're doing. Um we established five initiatives. I mentioned chronic absenteeism was one of them. We also are working uh to clarify our special education supports

089and strengthen those programs. We've done a lot of work on communication. Just tonight, we had a new report that we're working to further inform our our work. You've heard a lot of discussion from Mr. Breag and Dr. Kim and Dr. Vasalopoulos on our late arrivals and how we're using that time to create curriculum maps and to provide professional learning opportunities for our staff. And then you'll learn a little more about this in the coming uh future, but we are really working to make sure that our students, maybe not those students that require specialized instruction through an IEP, but all of our students in providing them multiple levels of support based on what they need. One example of this kind of tying it back to uh chronic absenteeism, you heard Dr. George's present when we looked

090at the school report card presentation the concept in second semester where we're going to implement open campus SRT for students who have a high level of absenteeism but we can incentivize them perhaps to show up as opposed to take days off but give them freedom in exchange for showing up for their classes as we keep on moving forward. It's not just about the focus areas, right? Student empowerment we'll dig a lot into today. It also comes back to these core values. And I want to remind the board that this is the first time the district has established districtwide core values, not values that are specific to north or south or off-campus or transition, but these are our fundamental beliefs. Which means all of our actions, all of our resource allocation, all of our decisions should

091tie back and at the front of that is excellence in learning. Learning might be different for students based on their dynamic plan, but learning is our focus. That is our primary reason that we're all here. And as we expand on how do we support students who are learning, we make sure that they have that sense of belonging. They make sure that they know that we're here to support them. And as we continue going all the way through, it comes down to well-being. Making sure that students at the end of the day have all of their basic needs met, that they are safe, that they are secure, and that they have what they need in order to be ready for learning. Everything keeps coming back here. And while we've talked so much about alignment to the

092focus areas, know that this is at the foundation of everything we're doing and checks us on making sure are we student centered? Are we responding to just a a certain segment of of society that might be having an opinion on something? How does it all connect back? And then one more important thing that we've been doing on a strategic plan. I can't emphasize this enough. The strategic plan is great when you have a lot of words on paper. You need a lot of board memos, board presentations, but it takes a different turn when you start connecting all of that work to the celebration of our staff and our students. And this year we have intentionally been finding opportunities to recognize our staff and our students for the excellence that they bring across the 4A that

093are really tied to our tagline which is recognizing that all of this didn't happen overnight. All of this didn't start with the strategic plan. So much of this started from this legacy of excellence. all of the great work that our staff have done for decades that our students have created a culture with of decades that continues forward. But we're not just stopping. We're challenging ourselves each and every day to incrementally improve to innovate what our practices are. Mr. O'Hara asked a really uh great question at the beginning uh or in the middle of our presentation. You said help me understand guidance counselor, school counselor, co how does this all work? The question is really coming up now because things have changed in 20 or 30 years when these roles might have been more clearly distinguished

094when a counselor might have been more of a clerical role as opposed to really the guide on this journey for our students in whatever path they choose to take. But as these things change, we need to make sure we're putting them out there for everyone to see. And we need to make sure we're celebrating those successes and also identifying things that we're working on to continue going to the next level. And so you're seeing a whole lot of work there. And hopefully one day I'll get even more likes here. Although Mr. Glowaki said he's my first download for this episode, so I'm already up to one for this one. Let's keep on go. Oh, I'm going to get some forwards next, too. Mr. Downy's going to post me now. So, let's kind of get into

095what tonight's all about. A strategic plan too often becomes a document that gets put into literature holders on a wall or it's a great coffee table artifact. We have tried to do everything we can to get away from that concept and to force it to be a living document. But when we say it's a living document, it's not just about having the staples come out and needing to tape it together because we open it so much. It's also about digging into it and identifying what's work and where there's some areas for growth. And so from when we first published this, which was in June, to today, I can tell you we've gotten a lot of feedback. People are feeling the excitement. They're opening it. They're reading it, and they're saying, "Hey, I just need some

096clarity understanding. Okay, we got a goal, but it's a focus area. No, we got some strategies. No, it's an outcome." And then like, where does the work come into play? So tonight we're going to show how we take the not static plan but the living document and we're going to make some incremental changes to it. I'm going to introduce those terms right now. What are some overarching things? We have four goals, four big things that drive our work in the district. We called them focus areas. Now, we're going to call them goals just to make it easy and to be in alignment with a lot of strategic plans. When you have a goal to accomplish it, you need to have a variety of strategies. So, every goal has strategies. All right. So, we have some

097strategies. So, let's just kind of work through this just as a a sample example and go to my focus area. One, student empowerment. Strategy 1A is each student will develop a dynamic plan to navigate their experience in the district. Students will engage with these plans throughout high school in partnership with school counselors and parents and guardians. Right? We've talked about this plans that are dynamic that are built not standalone but with staff who are guiding them and their families. Performance indicators is a really important thing. Is that goal? Is that strategy going to be accomplished in year one, in year two? When's it going to be done? And what is being accomplished mean? Are 100% of students going to have accomplished that within a certain time? 50% of students, 25, what what's what's the number?

098We don't have currently in our plan performance indicators, but that's what we've started to build out for the plan. And then once you identify the target that you're you're going towards, now there's a whole lot of activities that go into it. So for example, strategy is build the dynamic learning plan. In order to build the plan, we decided an indicator was by January, we want 100% of our eligible students to have completed that plan. And those eligible students are uh our current freshman class who actually attend classes at Glenbrook as opposed to maybe receiving their services in another district. The activities to make that happen. We needed to communicate with parents to let them know we're hosting these in-person meetings. We needed to provide mechanisms for them to attend in person, attend on the phone,

099attend on Zoom. We had to train our staff to know exactly what these meetings were going to be. We need to build all that all those structures. Those are all the activities that go underneath. And so from this big goal to individual strategies, there's a whole bunch more work that's happening. And that's what we're going to talk about today. So I've talked a lot about the strategic plan dashboard. We're going to pull it up in just a moment. Our goal tonight is to focus on goal one, student empowerment. The reason why we're only focusing on one goal right now is we need the board's feedback. Some of you might have that feedback tonight. Other of you might want to follow up later on, but we want to hear is what we are building here, does

100it make sense? Are there things that are missing? Are there things that are confusing? We need the raw feedback. There's everything is is eligible to be shared. And then our plan is during the second semester to build this out for all of the other three goals and then to keep this going for um multiple times a year presentations. Now, I want to say one other thing about our long-term at least administrative goal here. We have reviewed so many districts and how they present their strategic plan and I can't emphasize how much districts end up making 4hour long presentations with many PowerPoint slides trying to show everything in it and relive it. Our goal in this has been trying to live the strategic plan board meeting by board meeting, activity by activity. And while it is

101important to do those dashboard reviews, where are the big efforts that we have to make progress? If the first time you're hearing about progress is when we do our once a semester review to the board, we are not living the plan. And so our goal is not to do one of those grandiose presentations where we're just digging into everything because we want to be doing this every meeting. and we're really trying to incrementally add things uh to the agenda to make sure it's not too too long. I apologize today will be a little longer. Um but just know that that's kind of what our our goal is as as we're getting through here. And so with that said, I am very fortunate to transition here. You don't take you can sit from your chairs if

102you'd like. Um we have Ryan and Laura who are going to own uh goal one here. Um, however, someone's going to need to kind of navigate through. So, Christina, if you do me one favor, just jump to the next slide and click on the link just so we have it open and then I will defer to Lara and Ryan. And I apologize if I said stuff that you might have planned to cover. I apologize. It's perfect. Good. I'm just hoping I can match your enthusiasm. No doubt. You have the enthusiasm, Laura. I know you do. Well, I have the enthusiasm about a personalized learning plan. For 15 years, I have been in this district with 12 of my years at Glen Brook South. And this is what I have wanted. I have wanted for us

103to intentionally come together as a district and create a similar experience. We haven't had that in 15 years. So, even before then, right? And so that we were so intentional about creating our curriculum, coming together, and making sure parents, it didn't matter what school you went to, parents had an opportunity to be involved in that planning. So that enthusiasm I have, I'm hoping I'm going to have the exact same for this. Um, I do believe this has been a significant step for our district to move in this direction. Um, I'll also kind of throw out there counselors at South and North never came together. They didn't really know each other. And so the thought that we could bring them in a room together and that they can create the curriculum for students together is mind-blowing.

104So, um, to to summarize before we we get to the the first goal to talk about, um, as R.J. mentioned um these board memos that we've been pro um sharing with you whether it's been the course planner, school links, um the PLP tonight, um it they're not standalone topics. Very intentional on why we're here. Um and really making this document come to life. I too carry mine everywhere I go. Mine looks like a disaster. Um but I'm not willing to get a new one yet either. So I just keep making my comments all over it. Um, so to support it, we're going to go through the dashboard, which really is our one-stop shop for looking at progress. Um, so if you are on our first goal, I'm going to walk you through this. Couple things

105I'm going to mention before we actually dive into some of it. You are going to notice on here what looks like typos, and you're going to say, "Wow, who typed that?" It is not. They're not typos. Um but diligent um is working. Oh, were they corrected? No, there are still some. Um the one um it was spelling some inappropriate words up there for a minute. But um Diligent is on it. They understand the problem. They are working to fix it. So if you could ignore kind of some of the typos and more the content that you're seeing, that would be fabulous. Um, so as you can see here, you'll see the description of 1A where it says outcomes, those are actually that wording is going to be changed. Those are actually the performance indicators, not

106the outcomes. So when you look at the first um outcome by December of 2025, 100% of freshman students will have a PLP. And we set these goals to be very ambitious, right? I want every student to be able to have a personalized learning plan. When I look at our data, and our data primarily comes from school links, we're currently at 95% of freshmen that have one. It's amazing. Um, the reason we're not at 100 and might never get to 100 kind of goes back to what R.J. was talking about in terms of it's individualized. So for some students who might not be attending school in the Glen Brooks or are attending school in the Glen Brooks, this might not be the appropriate path for them to be creating their personalized learning plan. That doesn't mean

107we're not focused on transition planning. Um but it's just done differently than this, but we have created our goals to be quite ambitious. Um and we look forward to to working through that. If you scroll down a little, thank you Christina. You can see our activities. So last year how I had described in the 24-25 year was really where all the work was done. Um this is year one of implementation and it only needs to be a three-year goal because next year we're going to take all the feedback that we learned from this year and we're going to refine it and we'll continue to refine it but it will be part of our fabric part of who we are as the Glen Brooks and carrying forward. So we don't need to extend this beyond the

108next year. So, if you scroll down to the bottom, you're able to now see based on 1A any board meeting that we've had that had a topic that related to this goal. So, Christina, if you wouldn't mind clicking on not tonight's because it might not be updated yet, but maybe January 13th, school links implementation. So, here is where um just up a little. I'm so sorry. Right there. Perfect. Um, is where R.J. was talking about the split screen in the video for you to be able to to watch that video. If you scroll down on the right hand side, you're going to see the goal update. And there you're going to be able to real quickly see where we're at with our progress. The 80% for strategy um 1A is because there are other things

109for us still to work on. We're not completely done with that. We've made incredible progress, but when you go back in and you look at some of our other um strategies within there, we still have work to do. And so that is why we're not yet at 100% on that one. But the real nice part is everything's focused on 1A. And so you're able to go right to that memo and be able to um look at that memo, watch the video, and see the progress on the right hand side. All right, I'm going to move on to 1B. Thank you. Look at you. You're already there. Um, so this goal as well, um, revolves around, um, our curriculum that we've been working on with the counselors for our sophomore students and is really centered around

110goals, um, career goals. So, as you will see, by December of 2025, 100% of our sophomore students will have identified a career goal. Um, School Links doesn't create that goal. It's really the platform and the tool that's allowing us, the data that and the reporting features that we have in school links makes it really easy to identify how many of our students have completed different tasks. And so as you can see um very close to to completing that goal but we still have more activities there. Um and when we look at like 1A or 1B it's not just a student support right there's many different parts of it. So there are some activities that you know teaching and learning is involved and there's activities where we're actually you know working together um with our counterparts

111to to work through. So I am going to turn it over to Mr. Briag to talk us through 1 C and 1 D. And I want to add one one real quick comment. I mentioned briefly that some of our strategies require multiple years. Other strategies as Dr. Cummings mentioned strategy 1A might be done in the first three years. a good strategic plan, you're not going to get to 100% of every goal, uh, forgive me, of every strategy until at best the end of your plan. And really, a strategic plan, because it's a living document, will likely continue to evolve. So even when in theory, the plan comes to an end and you're starting to build a new plan, there's still work that's being done. The other comment I wanted to say is the natural question

112might come up. Okay, so you've built these dynamic learning plans. Kind of using that as our our general example. And yes, you've accomplished it for this year's student. What's the plan for next year? Are you not doing it anymore or what have you? Once we've actually fully implemented something, we assume that it is continuing because it is woven into whether it's the school counseling curriculum or woven into our registration and planning process. It's there and we're continuing to build upon it. There's likely incremental changes that are happening, but it's there. So, um it does seem like we will get to our first 100% sooner than later on on Dr. Cummings, uh most exciting strategy. But with that said, Mr. Bree has some equally exciting strategies. I want to have that like light, that glowing light

113that says ditto that points at the other house for the holiday lights. What he just said. Um, so he he took my wonderful 1C Thunder. So, I'm just going to build on that and say um when you look at 1C, what gets really exciting here is as Dr. Gerville mentioned I I've been here a little over 20 years and um during that time I've seen this three strategic plans. This is the first one where the early ones were were so conceptual. They were beautiful in the in their their words, but in their ability for people to grab and take ownership of and find a a part of themselves in it that was was a little bit more difficult. Um, for instance, our last strategic plan way back when used we were going to have meaningful

114learning and you were to make sense of that. One of the things in there was social emotional learning. We didn't have a lot of performance indicators. So, it became difficult for us to wrestle with what does that mean? How does student services and student supports and teaching and learning where do we find that ownership? When you look at 1 C, that's what I'm so very proud of is that there's tremendous opportunities for us to go after this idea of developing job readiness and social emotional skills. And you can see through the performance indicators, we have a lot of different areas tying in from our student services department to our PE and health having a direct targeted indicator about how we embed ruler, which you've heard about a few times, into the health curriculum and beyond.

115How do all of our curriculum maps by 2028, so the five-year portion, have social emotional learning standards and skills embedded into the curriculum. So, as Dr. Grall mentioned, this is really a five-year goal. That's not to say the 20 to say the 20% is low. That's right where we need to be when we're at this point of a five-year plan for bringing this to life. The other thing I really want to note that's important, a lot of times you will see percentages, but at other times you'll see indicators such as the first one that talks about percentiles. Percentiles. Percentiles are another really important piece when it comes to something like measuring belonging. We want to be able to compare ourselves nationally and locally. So the percentile gives us an ambitious but achievable goal. So while

116we know we want all of our students to feel a sense of belonging, we are targeting being in the 95th percentile which statistically says we are excelling. We are achieving at at an exemplary level. So it also is to reach that 95th percentile requires strategic systematic changes. It cannot be random. That is, if you take nothing away from 1C, that is at the heart and soul of this strategic plan and it's what most excites me is that we really have to have targeted strategic actions if we're going to achieve these performance indicators. With that, I turn to our lowest completed right now, which is 10%. But it's e equally exciting because what we are really talking about is this is one of those descriptions that talk about staff. So a lot of times we're talking

117students, but one of the things we know is we need to build in the support systems for our staff to bring these ideas to life. So in this area you see a number of things that we've targeted. We we talked earlier about honors and accelerated honors. How is that coming to fruition? We know that's in the first year. We know that we've added late arrival times. That's in its first year. So, a lot of these systems are in their infancy. They're also what is important to all of us and that's what you'll see deep inside the activities. We know our first year of professional learning communities should never look the same in five years or we're not listening well enough and we're not growing them well enough. So, we're in the early phases of this,

118but people can see the clear targets that our staff 100% will have participated in professional learning communities at the end of this year and have developed targeted goals in curriculum mapping and high yield practices. That's an ambitious target. That's something we haven't taken on as a whole district. Here, it's outlined specifically what we're doing and then what that builds to next. So really excited about how these are unfolding again to put the idea that we all have a way to contribute to this strategic plan in a very targeted way that we know about as opposed to again at the time it made a lot of sense big broad words and themes but now we're getting very targeted. So with that we will wrap up with one E. So one of the ones one of the

119ones on one E that I would love to draw some attention to is a goal that I've also had for 15 years. um and that is that all of our freshman and seniors will have complied with their immunizations and physicals and we would not need to exclude any students as you know based on a previous presentation board memo articulating onee. Um we excluded zero students this year which is like phenomenal. I really don't know of another high school that has excluded zero students. So, I just have to do it. A huge shout out to our nurs's office and our health center on that one. Um, but yet another example, you'll see overall progress on this one is at 30%. Um, one one is a challenging one. Um, because it is so broad. Um, and really

120when you get down to everyone needing what they need, um, it really does encompass quite a bit. And so there is a lot of work still left to do on that goal. And I would add two pieces. I think with one E. Dr. Dr. Grall had some said something really important early on. I want to uh bounce back to that and that is the idea that it's easy to be distracted by what is emerging and when it comes to this goal that would be at the forefront because our hearts are big. We want to achieve everything. This allows us to stay focused and targeted over the next five years and measure the progress. And I think you can see some really important pieces in here from the health center to our multilingual students to our

121implementation of accelerated placement act. That seems like we talked about that so long ago, but we're in year one. These are massive initiatives that are addressing the individual needs of students. This keeps us honest over the next five years of where to target our work. and having it laid out in this format, people start to say, "Oh, well, we we've only achieved 25% of accelerated honors." Well, next or the accelerated placement act, next year it's 50%. Then we're at 75. Oh, we still have work there. We're not done. And and sometimes in in a highly ambitious organization, it's easy to shift right before we're through um defining the depths of what we're working on. The other piece I want to note with that one by August 28th, the this is started out as a state

122initiative and I think what's really nice about our strategic initiative early on we talked about our values and when we look at our values and we have state initiatives that come our way whether it's accelerated placement act or the variety of curriculum initiatives coming our way we can take our values and tie those in and say how do we bring that to life in the best interest of our community and our students as this Cole outlines. And so kind of as we wrap up our portion, um Christina, could you bring us back to the website actually? Perfect. And then all the way up. Oh, little down to that dashboard. A little more. Perfect. All right. Um there's a some areas for growth that we're going to be working through um administratively this semester. Um because

123as you all know we function in a semester basis on our entire calendar. Um there is some redundancy that we've identified within our goals. Um I'll use um Mrs. Smith's area in the area of communications. We have communication sprinkled in through a number of goals and really in part that that came about because there was a lot of feedback we had from different stakeholder groups and so it was kind of added in a variety of places. But when you're really building a strategic plan, we need to make sure that that things are are in clear areas and that we're not just associating the same initiative with all sorts of different strategies when really it's one big one. So we have some we have some area there. We also identified that we're currently having a significant

124discussion about our master facilities plan and the master facility plan work and a tremendous effort of the district to maintain fiscal responsibility that's not really addressed in any of the goals right now. you can in many ways associated with each student will have access to staff resources and support to meet their unique needs, but that's not a traditional um kind of finance and facilities goal. So, we'll likely bring forth a recommendation in the spring that we would add a goal five that would relate to some of those operational needs because to be candid, what has gotten our district to be extremely successful um is is not without mentioning of the operational components and we need to continue to improve on our operations and challenge ourselves to be even better and we need a place to

125have those goals and to track that. So those are some things that'll happen. Um there's also a few areas Mr. Bteag was kind of mentioning them when um we have some uh overlap or or different words that we've used in goals that we can do some cleanup on. So nothing structurally um significant outside of possibly adding a goal five. Um but just some some cleanup language and some consolidation. Um, the other thing I I just wanted to really emphasize, um, and Dr. John's, uh, shepherded us through so much of this, our district with over 78 years in existence has a lot of amazing elements to it. But one area that we absolutely have had room for growth is the development of systems. And Mr. Bree mentioned the infancy of some of our systems. We just

126established a consistent late arrival schedule. So for the first time to many of our parents and students, there's no confusion on when there's a late arrival day or not. It's clear. And for our staff, we've implemented a consistent set of expectations and activities that they are working through each and every week. We've built that system. as we get into years two and three, we're going to be more efficient with that time. That that's just a fact because it will be more natural and now we're having multiple years to plan for what those activities are, not just a few weeks and months. Um, so I just want to really emphasize that early on in the plan, building systems, it may not sound as exciting, but with strong systems, we can really start to accomplish uh things

127that are all measurable that directly relate to the student experience. So to Dr. John's for his work in starting our systems process and building our plan, um, we're we're coming we're doing well and we're going to do some amazing things in the coming years. With that said, that does conclude the administration's presentation, but we are more than happy to click through things, discuss, and we really would like your candid feedback on how we've structured tonight and as we're moving forward. Well, thank you so much. That was very exciting. Uh, Mr. O'Hara, did you want to kick us off? Sure. I don't know if it was very exciting, but it was very informative. It was very informative. I just um but but I I think you're right. It's like the system when you talk about the

128systems and building a system. It's like it's like the road runner. His feet move a lot and then all of a sudden he takes off moving, you know. Um and so as you build these systems, it might not feel like you've done a lot. I know some of it can be measured early on and it's great. Um, however, most of your results come later down the road when you build these systems the right way and you get this institutional memory is what we're trying to build, it feels like. And so, I'm I'm excited to see it. I'm glad we crossed off a couple of your goals from 15 years ago. I'm sure you have a couple other ones. Okay. But, no, thank you. Thank you guys very much. I do like how the presentation I

129do like how we go into into the points. Um, I think it's good to see to keep coming back to these because too many times I've been involved with strategic plans that just it it's a excuse to pay a a consultant some money and to put it to the side afterwards. So, I like the fact we're actually following up with it. We we we dug the hole. We're going to build the house now. And it's great, Miss Hope. Yeah. this dashboard and all the links is so cool to be able to come back to and hoping to bookmark it and keep coming back to it and it's been so helpful on every agenda to have the strategic plan goals that are associated with what we're talking about. Um, I'd love a little more time to

130sift through it in detail before giving specific feedback, but all of the tools are here and this is really well done, Mr. Downing. You know, I echo that really well done. Uh I like the dashboard much better than this spreadsheet. So that's great. Um you know, following through on a strategic plan is probably hardest thing you ever do in business. Really is. I mean, I can't tell you how many strategic plans I've had and how they're piled up and you know, anyway, just I'm not here to confess. Um but so that I I applaud. I truly do. Uh since I here wasn't here for uh the formation of it and I'm really just kind of here seeing it um as you're pursuing through it. There was a comment uh you made um about um staff

131and kind of you know is the board's responsibility for strategic plan. And then Ryan, you made a comment about we're only 10% with staff. Um, which is I've been in my experience been very common that getting staff together and to buy into something even though they may have been a part of it, change management is probably the hardest thing I've ever seen in business period. Um, it sounds like you have people going on board. Uh, was there resistance? Is there any is there still resistance? in an organization with a rich legacy of excellence. That's where I was going. Always connection to our historical path of approach. I truly believe it comes down to one conversation at a time, one initiative at a time, and emphasizing that we don't just celebrate what's new, but we celebrate

132the tremendous work of the folks who have been here for decades. And that includes some of our teachers who have been here through decades as well as decades of being community members or students along with that. And slowly but surely I believe we're making progress. I think that there's a lot I asked a survey. I asked a question to every single staff member in district. There was some incentives completed. Um but I asked this question. What is one thing that we could do um to support them and make this year great? And I got a a a wealth of of ideas. Food is always a good thing uh to make people's day better. um common theme, but you know, sometimes that works around the board table as well, uh with long policy meetings, but the

133the most common thread came down to something like I have confidence and faith that we're turning a page and we're we're going in a direction, but I I want to see it come to fruition, and so let's make it come back to communication. um we do all the work at the board table. Do people know what we're talking about? The answer is we've created a large number of ways to communicate that out, but we're also providing opportunities for ongoing feedback. And so I think over time that'll get better. There's definitely people who are fully supportive of everything and there's other folks who are are still wanting to see what it means for our students. There's listen, there's always resistance. whatever we can do to help because it's, you know, whatever we can do to help

134shepherd this along, please let us know because if it's communication from us or whatever, but as a as an alum, as a community member, as you know, uh, with kids in the school and and graduated, you know, all this is really refreshing. I feel like we're coming back to that sense of belongingness. I feel like we're coming back to the focus on kids, which if you talk to anybody in this that's a staff, faculty, administration, anybody that's been involved in this community, you know, they call it the Glenbergs. It's a special place. It's because of that belongingness and this is centered around that. And I'm happy to evangelize it as any way I can. Perhaps support an accordion wall in this room to have more people be able to come to be recognized because it

135can get a little tight in here. Uh Mr. humor in that. I just want to applaud I mean really this is remarkable what you guys have done when this was initially brought on way back when I think as an initial thought of how to help us focus on all these important areas that we keep getting pulled into and to you know those opportunities that pop up and how do you use the resources effectively and stuff. So to pull together the way you have and to be able to then celebrate the milestones as we achieve them but also course correct using these tools to course correct when we're at a different part and make it part of the dialogue. It is leaking into the parent conversations. They are starting to see this and go oh wait

136we're talking about students how is this and you know I know you're asking for specific feedback on should there be a goal five or not separating that actually is comes back to that as well too. How do we tie that back into the student experience? What does that mean? And I do recall that there were discussions about it even at that time. So, we could probably work through all that and figure out how does that best put the community forward, put the students and community first and put the resources where they're best uh to be utilized. But kudos. I mean, I don't know what else. Just you should be proud. take this moment to celebrate what you've done and how you've made this part of our dialogue on a routine basis. Mr. Glowaki did it.

137Can we all give everyone here a round of applause for all their work? We're just going to keep backing for a moment. Dr. Steinberg. Yeah, I agree. Um, just comment. I got this comment in a different context earlier last week. A lot of people also want to be part of an organization to do their job. And sometimes we mis misjudge their silence as if they are not on board. So sometimes to hear 10% is in favor doesn't mean that it's only 10%. There are a lot of people that otherwise would be kicking and screaming but that they are happy that there are no obstacles for them doing their work and and we need to find ways to capture that as well. I I wouldn't sell short in terms of we always have early adopters but

138I think there are a lot of people especially in communities like ours that and it happens in board meetings and if they don't show up it's not necessarily because they don't care they may be like I'm happy with you say always about these things I'm happy about how things are going so I would say I don't think this has been unnoticed so some people's may be waiting but some people may be like hey they don't need me to do anything I'm happy the way things are. So hopefully we can capture that as well. Two, this is great. I've been around strategic plans and the hardest thing is to assess how it's going. Don't even implementing it or not how it's going. So I'm like looking at all these you talk about system here, system there.

139This is like perfect. I I do have two comments. I was thinking who's the intended audience for this, right? So I started remembering you created a two-page or you or Vicki created a two-pager for the budget where we have a lot of information but there's a you know all right I like to minimize maybe there is there is there is a cliffotes version of this system annual financial report there's a cliff notes version of this system for the people who are who are the people who are not going to be clicking everywhere or or keeping track of everything where this is the fall back if I want to know more it's here but it's something executive summary yeah kind of like hey here's how we going how is this how progress go a two pager

140or something like that the second comment is because I believe we are we are a leading district I if if I will have a wish list on this thing it's it's a lessons learned right so this is what we accomplish and what we have done but what did we learn on the process in particular if you want to prepare ourelves for updating the strategic plan down the road. Some things were I'm sure some things were harder to implement than others. Some things got more buy in, some things got less. We thought about doing it this way. We realized halfway through it that we want to do a different way. That has to be documented somewhat. And I don't know if this needs to be public or not, but I think makes it for a great

141paper down the road as well. But it's it's like this who we are as a district, so we should take the opportunity to document that. Everything is great. Well, I have to say that I mean I I um we're just going to sort of uh follow on comments. This is a tremendous work product. Um and I think everyone is very excited about it. Um I we one of I wish uh Mr. Shiner here because when we talked about the strategic plan always always always he talked about accountability and this is all of this is showing people just what Mr. Bright said, "You can have these very lofty aspirational words, but until you actually get some KPIs against it, how do you know that you've actually accomplished anything?" Or even what do you know that you

142have to do to accomplish something? you know, the work of taking these large goals and breaking them down into um strategies and then KPIs and then progress against those. That is the hard digging in that makes us be able to show our community that we didn't just come up with these like high flutin ideals. we're actually implementing them and we're working against a a plan in a way that is focused and um not getting distracted but learning you know from the process you know adapting as we go along seeing what we may have left out and what we need to include. Um so having it be a living document. Um, I personally love all of the being able to click through because that is just, you know, to be able to to link put it

143all together and and and say just just like Dr. Cummings said that these are all of these presentations that we have on they aren't one-offs. It's it all fits together. You know, you're you're coming to us and showing us these pieces and then you're helping us understand how they fit into this larger framework um that we're marching through. Um, and we're quantifying progress because people love to see those the, you know, percentages, percentiles, whatever. You know, I don't know that everyone expects us to be at 100% right away, but they want to see forward movement. And the way that you can do that is, you know, have these these documents be updated consistently. So, and I I I must say, I mean, truly, this must have been just a tremendous amount of work to put

144together. Um, and it's really user friendly. I think I I love though the idea of having some sort of executive summary because not everyone's going to have the appetite for clicking through every strategy under every goal. Um but they will nonetheless want to know what's going on. And um I I'm I'm looking forward to spending some time digging into it so I can give some um you know focused feedback on it. But one thing that I thought might be a a good idea is, you know, we had so many people involved in the process of creating strategic plan. All of the committees and people from all over, you know, parents and families and students and staff and I just want to make sure that those people know that that their work is being like look

145at this. look at what's come from that that you know they worked hard and this is not a strategic plan that just got thrown into you know someone's file and that disappeared you know all that heavy lifting that they did were we're doing something with it and I bet that if if you know maybe maybe there are parents that don't have kids in the district anymore or maybe there are students who've graduated so they don't really think about the work that they did on it but I bet they'd love to hear where we are two years down the road and how far we've come and what we're planning to I would be thrilled personally if I were part of that one of those committees to be able to click through this and and look at

146these sorts of documents. So, but all in all, kudos all around and um I am very excited to really dig into it. So, we will definitely get you feedback and I I agree that um we all expect that there will be changes and um you know, we'll assist you in figuring out what would be useful as far as those changes go. But really, Yum's work. Thank you so much. Thank you to everyone for your feedback. Okay, speaking of Yemen's work, that brings us to Dr. John's with his update on the policy manual. Uh thank you, Miss Mullen. Uh I've been trying I've been sitting here thinking how I can generate the enthusiasm uh that has been present this evening and I don't have 15 years of policy rewrites needed. I have 20. So, my enthusiasm's

147growing inside of me. Uh, tonight you're feeling it, right? Okay. Um, can I get preach? Thank you. Um, the last I'm here to give a quick update on where we're at with our policy modernization project. The last time I spoke with you on this uh topic uh was the October 27th board meeting where we shared the five chapters or sections of policy that we are bringing forward uh to our formal meeting with the IASB to start to gen generate it as our future policy manual. And we've done that. We had that meeting on November 13th. They were very impressed with the work that we had done. we were very organized in how we sh transmitted our thoughts and and perspectives on the policies that help things proceed very well. Uh one of the some of

148the feedback we received though uh and this really ties into focus area three when we talk about simplifying information being transparent focusing on clarity the feedback was is the document that we had before was an awful lot to read. So what you have in front of you is is we took that feedback and we created this document trying to to make it as simple as possible to go through and see what policies are retained, which policies are sunset and and what we're doing as our next steps whether or not we are uh adopting with an amendment or just straight up adopting. So that's what the current version looks like. Uh I also want to report uh extend on what was said earlier about our meeting uh this afternoon. Uh I think some real great credit

149needs to go to the policy committee. This is I hate to say it but it is tedious work and tonight we went through the first half of chapter six. Uh we reviewed 29 policies under chapter 6 and we did uh 8 to 10 policies under chapter 7. Uh so that leaves us with 48 to go uh in a date to be determined in January before we meet with the IASB representative on January 28th. So we have a lot of work to do, but the committee has done tremendous work so far. On a side note, and and I think this is something we need to to reconcile with, there is some urgency. The press update came out two weeks ago and indicated there's 119 policies that are going to have to be revised in some format

150due to new legislation, maybe some case law, new regs that have come out from the state. So, we want to get kind of ahead of the curve to to the best that we can. Fortunately, the ISB is going to work with us to help integrate some of these new policies or these revisions into the work that we have ahead in our next two meetings with the IASB. So, we're we're working as fast as we can because it's it's almost a sysophian task that there's more coming all the time, but the committee's done great work. Uh I hope you'll find this table to be uh more clear, more simple, more transparent as we continue this process. Any questions or feedback? I just want to say thank you to my colleagues that are putting all this work.

151Thank you to you as well, but the rest of you are all volunteers like us. So, thank you for putting the time and doing this. I just we do it for the food. Okay. I'm thanking you as well. I just want to highlight. But um one thing just to to um point out to the full board, you know, we're we're what the system that we've adopted for this is a little bit different than what IB's sort of, you know, wish list would be would be that the full board be involved. And we knew that wasn't going to happen. But this document hopefully will give you an opportunity to at a high level look at what's h what we're doing. And we're, you know, we're doing this incrementally so that at the end of the year,

152the end of the academic year, I should say, um, when we've completed the entire manual, um, that you've been able to kind of follow along and it's not an enormous task to go through the the entire binder and try to work through all the changes. Um, you know, this will kind of help you, you know, follow along with us a little bit so that when we get to the point where we ask the full board to look at the the the new manual and vote on it that um you'll be in a position to do that, you know, sooner rather than later because as Dr. John's points out, you know, the new policies just keep coming. So, we we we would really love to be in a position to have this this um in place

153so that for the new academic year, we're ready to roll as we get new updates, you know, coming from each legislative session. All right. Um unless anyone has any other burning comments about policy, we will move to the next item on the agenda which is love the chart. Recision of intent to withdraw from True North Education Cooperative 804. Dr. Grall, speaking of charts, hopefully everyone loves this chart as well. In the memo, uh we made a revision uh following last uh meeting to add table one which clarifies the um kind of comparison of circumstances for remaining a member uh of True North or withdrawing from True North. As a reminder to the board of education, the administration is recommending recommending that we remain a member of uh True North 804. Um that is primarily predicated

154on the reality that the organization recently revised and approved its articles of agreement which remove any financial uh consequences of remaining a member. The only expenses the district will incur are those expenses from services that we choose to utilize whether that's a tuitionbased program or a contracted service. Um, as we move forward from a programmatic perspective, um, it's important to always remember that remaining a member provides the district with an option and that option might be an essential option for a student who needs it. um and True North um uh plan to reinvision a therapeutic day school providing services um all the way from uh early childhood education or ECE through transition services is essential for those uh for many of our our students who might need it. Um, and we do have um several

155students that are receiving uh their educational services in external placements um from Glen because that's the appropriate least restrictive environment for them. Um, finally, it's just always important to recognize that as a non-unit district, meaning we have five elementary feeder districts and the high school district where everyone feeds into, um, there are students who start a program at True North and will remain in those programs by remaining a member um, should it be deemed appropriate by a student's um, multi-disiplinary committee or their IEP team um, that that is the appropriate setting for them. by remaining a member they will remain eligible to stay at True North. Whereas if we left um there would not necessarily be that guaranteed access uh to services. So um given all those changes and the followup that uh we had

156since last meeting, we recommend proceeding and I'm happy to answer any questions the board might have. I appreciate the chart first of all. Thank you for including that. Uh, only question I had. Are the articles of agreement available for review? Yes, they have been um Did I miss them? I'm sorry if I missed them. I'm pretty sure they were in a bullet points for the board. Um, they're also um available through True North, but I can certainly provide them to the board right now. I apologize if I missed them. Did anyone else have any questions? We discussed this quite a bit at the last meeting. I'm sorry I wasn't there but time. But just want to add two things. Um for those I know a few of us had gone there before. It's like night

157and day in terms of of of how the board and administration work right now. Yes. It's like and due to many things. Okay. But one thing that I do want to recognize is that we were on our way out and we had a process to be on our way out and and no arguments about it. But as a district, credit to R.J. probably credit to both of you, not just RJ, Dr. Jones and R.J. What I heard when I went the first time was that we had issues with the way things were being done and that was what pushed us out. So when there was an opening of changing the ways the way the way were going, we didn't shy away from it and RJ took a leadership role on that and it was recognized

158for it. So it we may not see it here but it my first meeting there we were kind of like the black sheep or maybe black sheep number two and we went from there to a people waiting for RJ to make a presentation and and even though you know we things have changed totally I think we are a leader leader district in the area so it's a good opportunity for us especially it doesn't cost anything but to continue being a leader district of the area. So, whatever we vote, we shouldn't discount that part on on it's not just simply at this point, it's definitely not dollars and cents. It's more about how we come up as as part of a larger community. At least that those are my two cents. Okay. Did you want to

159have a vote tonight or bring it on consent or uh we do need a vote tonight based on True Norse's um procedures. Okay. Okay. So we have a recommendation from the administration to resend our intent to withdraw from True North Education Cooperative 804. We have a motion. So moved. I second. Miss Smith. Mr. Down. Mr. Downing. Yes. Mr. Glacki. Yes. Mrs. Hope. Yes. Mr. O'Hara. Yes. Dr. Steinberg. Yes. Miss Mullenbeck. Yes. Six members voting yes. All right. Well, that takes us then to our possible topics for future meetings. All right. In response to feedback from the board, we have a few very important committee meetings coming up. On January 12th, there will be a joint finance and facilities committee uh meeting. This will be to again have another discussion on the master facilities plan. Um,

160so for anyone who might be interested, we will do that at likely 5:00, kind of starting earlier again for that purpose. Um, but that will be on the 12th. On the 26th, we will have our first uh, forgive me, our second communications committee meeting. And there are two really important topics there. Many board members might also be interested. Uh, we have a fall communication survey. Early spoiler alert, the feedback is great. So, Carol will have her enthusiasm ready on that topic and charts hopefully. Oh, many charts, many charts, many doc. It's going to be great. And then we will also begin the conversation about student representatives uh to the board table early preview. Um we will start focusing on the importance of establishing and maintaining principal advisory committees at uh both Glenre North and Glenber

161South which will also feed representatives into a superintendence advisory committee that will then create a structure and a pathway that's in line with what we've learned from the conference um and kind of creating this this mechanism to get there. So early preview for everyone who's here that just heard. Uh, so all are welcome. Remember, you don't have to be on a committee to come. There are cookies. Did anyone have any additional potential topics for future meetings that they'd like to raise this time? Uh, that's okay. If if something comes to mind later, you can always shoot R.J. or me an email or call or carrier pigeon, however you want to get it to us. All right. And I do think we will have close session tonight. Yes, there will be no action coming out of

162closed session. Um, so we will come to a close on our broadcast and I would ask the board if we could go directly into closed. I believe this will be brief and that will allow us to keep going. Okay. Um, so I'll need a motion to go into closed. So moved. Well, don't we have to read the Oh, I have to read my script. I forgot about my script. Okay. This evening, the board of education will enter into a close session to discuss sensitive matters as allowed under the Illinois Open Meetings Act. Please note that no action will be taken following the close session this evening. At this time, I will entertain a motion to consider litigation when an action against, affecting, or on behalf of the particular public body has been filed and is

163pending before a court or administrative tribunal, or when the public body finds that an action is probable or imminent, in which case the basis for the finding shall be recorded and entered into the minutes of the closed meeting in accordance with sections, I'm sorry, section 2C11 of the Open Meeting Act. So moved. I second. All in favor? Any opposed? Motion carries directly into close.