001e e e well thank you everyone for joining us we're now back in Open Session um and it's an exciting night for us here at Glen Brooks let me bring this a little closer thank you everyone uh really appreciate everyone coming out tonight on this cold as we get into the holiday season and everything uh for those that didn't hear the opening comments before Bruce dowy our president is away so I'm presiding over the meeting today uh and it's a very exciting meeting so making sure I got my notes and everything at this point I'd like to move to our uh next agenda item in open meeting which is recognition of Community visitors and this is a very important part of our meeting that we as a board do listen to everyone um we welcome
002comments we use those comments we may not discuss with the individuals at this point any of those comments we'll use those later as the appropriate when appropriate in the agenda uh as such the meeting is conducted to carry out the business of school district the public comment is an inperson only and limited to 30 minutes with 2 minutes per person per our board polic in order to ensure that the board is able to address all matters on the agenda this evening uh the questions about the process may be directed to me and just as a reminder if uh there's no special protections under any law this everything is recorded So do be mindful of that when you're making your comments and um so finally if uh any speaker there wants to come forward please share
003your name and address so we may follow up with you uh as appropriate so I believe we have one and that is Miss Mary wil wilter hello I am Mary Wilshire I am both a faculty member at Glenbrook South in the mathematics department and a uh District resident and I bring this piece of information to the board about the course AP pre-calculus you'll see later today it's in the board minutes that's being asked to be approved but not for next year but for the following year now this is something that we have gone through several steps looking into this course trying to get approved we were willing to run Pilots other things even up to this year it's a brand new course for AP last year the the particular course really addresses a group of
004students who deserve opportunity who are traditionally underrepresented AP the reality is at state schools across the country pre-calculus is a credit course and by taking AP and passing the test which we completely believe we could do our kids could do that but in particular it is aimed at from ap's approach for their their information although it can be shared with others it is aimed at for lack of a better term I'm going to call them regular or College Prep group of kids so not kids in our honors program but that class and is not a pre not work as a prerequisite for something like BC calculus and we worked together we were employed that we to do it we would have to work together the two schools the two departments div division heads Etc have
005all been working together for over a year we were more than ready we met every deadline and we've been told that now or as you can see in the packet it's been says that it's not going to happen next year but it's actually looking to be approved for the following year and I as the board you're the ones this decision was made at a high Administration level and you're the ones who I I plead with you to look into why this would happen there's uh the opportunity for Equity access and opportunity for these kids to have an AP Credit in mathematics is is crucial and it it's really the movement we've been talking about in education is trying to open these doors we're going to be the only school and not just in the normal
006schools we look at we're going to be the only but but this vast it's the fastest growing course by far AP has ever had because it absolutely fits it fits a need it fits it it offers so much and we're not going to be there and there's things that I would ask you to ask about which is are we holding this off for these kids because kids who have tons of opportunity in AP somehow we're worried about conversation or having to explain to parents or anybody possible things that we would make a decision to hold up for again regular students who are in a regular pre-calculus class which would would be able to take it instead they take this because we're worried about kids in a honors pre-calculus class not taking it or taking it
007it's just even if all of that wants to be discussed we were ready everything was in and we Bas been it's been left off the opportunity list and I it's it's frustrating for me I could say it's frustrating for me for the time I put in but it's not about me it's literally about hundreds of children in Glenbrook right now who next year could be earning AP credit the two departments are ready to go everything's in line everything met the deadlines and somehow it's been pushed off for a year and these kids are going to we worry about competitiveness they're going to now applying to all these schools up against other kids who had singular similar courses but they're going to have the AP course and the AP credit and our kids are going to
008have to go sit placement tests and other things that are different at every College they're often very challenging for for poor mathematical reasons and they won't be walking with the credit may I ask you to make your final uh comment please please look into why because this this is a Travy travesty of a decision if we really want to reach these kids who don't have the opportunities thank you for sharing with us Mary so uh I don't see is anyone I don't believe we have any other uh comments so with that I'll move on to our next item which is I think why everyone is here and the very exciting to see everyone here for this but is a leadership update and so this is uh Dr John I believe you would like an opportunity
009to address the board and the community at this time sure thank you Mr glowaki uh vice president glowaki board members colleagues and community members thank you for allowing me a few minutes to share a bit of personal news a few weeks ago I shared with the board that I would like to retire at the from the glenberg high school district 225 on June 30th 2026 it has certainly been a great honor of mine to serve this district and this community but I do believe it is time for me to step aside and allow others to lead this exceptional District I'm excited about the leadership plan that we have designed and I'll will allow you Mr glowaki to share the details of the transition however let me emphasize that the board and administration have thoughtfully considered
010the best way to transfer leadership to the next superintendent and I am very enthusiastic about the future of this District in conclusion I want to thank the board staff parents community members and my district leadership colleagues for the support confidence and encouragement you have shown me in this role simply stated I could have not done this without the people around me you made me a better leader and you made the district a much better place we never lost focus on students putting each of them at the center of our work and I proud of our accomplishments May the future be the best for the district and each of you thank you very much well thank you Dr Johns and uh I have a few comments I prepare had prepared as well too and I want
011to take this opportunity to recognize superintendent John's for all he has given to this district and the community this past past few years have been some of the most challenging times all Educators have faced these are things that I don't think anybody has imagined that they would have actually ever embarked upon in preparing my comments for tonight I learned the difference between thankful and being grateful thankfulness is feeling the feeling that comes when you take an action and you uh someone says thank you for such as things as holding a door or thank you for picking me up at the airport gratitude or being grateful is much deeper more long lasting emotion that comes from reflecting on things you are thankful for being grateful for not fleeting it stays with us as a powerful memory
012so on behalf of the current and past board members our students staff families and Community I am sincerely grateful for superintendent John's and his ears of unwavering commitment to our district and Community yes we thank you for all that you've done for all all of us and continue to do so and we want you to know that your impact on this district will be felt for many years glri High School District 225 is a better place because of your leadership thank you come on so with that I would entertain a motion to uh regarding the retirement have a motion to approve the retirement agreement as discussed in close session second Mr oara yes Miss Seguin yes Mr shine yes Dr Steinberg yes Miss Mullen Beck yes Mr glowaki yes six members voting I so that
013leaves us with a big question who's going to fill those shoes so with so with Dr John's decision to retire and the district's ongoing commitment as leaders in education it was important to the board that we continue pushing forward while maintaining our high standard s and commitment to Excellence we have focused our attention on selecting an outstanding leader and developing a plan to continue our mission while maintaining the positive momentum for our district to that end it gives me great pleasure to announce tonight that Deputy superintendent Dr RJ grel has been named as superintendent designate and will follow Dr John's as the next superintendent for glenberg 225 the board and Community have come to know Dr gelt in his role as our District's Deputy superintendent he's a highly qualified educator who is a proven leader
014having worked with Dr gerell over the past 10 years members of this and previous boards have recognized his strengths and talents while working closely with him on a number of important initiatives we have know him as an educator of outstanding intellect and character with high standards and expectations for himself and those around him RJ is a dedicated to seeing each and every child thrive in the glims as a board we are unanimous in our choice of Dr Grell as the best person to follow Dr John's as our superintendent we look forward to seeing what you accomplish as our leader please join me again in and the entire board in congratulating Dr gell on his appointment at glum 225 is the new superintendent Now quickly while RJ I know has some St comments to share with
015us as well too wanted to do outline a few of the things during this transition because we are in a unique position where we do get to have the best of both for a period as Dr John's noted in his comment he intends to retire in June 30th of 2026 so for the next next 17 months the board will oversee a tightly coordinated transition plan to gradually transfer responsibilities from Dr John's to Dr grel some of the areas of responsibility that will transition to Dr gell immediately include assuming responsibility for district Communications including leadership and support for the new glri Communications committee assume responsibility for the district Personnel in consultation with Dr John's Dr grel will recruit and hire a new director of special education to fill an opening created by Dr Pearson who will
016be retiring this June because Dr gal currently also has multiple roles that he watches these duties will need to be reassigned and managed to make more op our operations continue to run smoothly for our district and so there's no interruption to our children and the kids that uh here so the board has directed Dr grel to create a revised administrative Staffing plan with initial focus on hiring a school business official for the district and finally to prepare for the district's two 2025 glenberg day openings now as part of the transition and to maintain that momentum as I mentioned Dr Johns will continue to serve the district in an administrative capacity until June of 2026 the board has assigned the following responsibilities to Dr John's oversee the special education audit and program evaluation Monitor and update
017the Strategic plan progress working with District teams to ensure alignment with the approved board goals coach and provide professional development to District administrators especially those that are new to the district monitor curriculum projects as various areas of the district curriculum are scheduled for review and update work with administrators and staff to improve the district's proficiency rankings ratings as we will hear later tonight as part of our discussion reported to the Illinois State Board of Education support Dr gell in all areas of the transition to in the role of superintendent and other projects as assigned by the board and Dr gal this is an exciting time for the district we will continue to have the opportunity to benefit from the outstanding leadership of both Dr Johns and Dr gel the board's decision to name Dr Grell
018as superintendent will allow our district to continue to thrive so Dr grel if you'd like to share some comments well good evening everyone um you know before I get to my prepared marks I just want to take an opportunity and thank all of the members of the Board of Education we've already referenced those current as well as some past board members and thank you to everyone who is here tonight um to be part of this this announcement um it truly is humbling to be standing up here not going to lie I'm I'm quite nervous and and I don't normally Shake um but it's an exciting time not only uh for myself as a professional uh but I look forward to continuing the momentum that we've had in this District truly building upon what we refer
019to as that that Legacy of excellence and really looking towards the future and and what is in store for us so with that said Thank you again vice president glowaki and members of the Board of Education I am truly humbled to accept the position of Glenbrook High School District 225 superintendent this role is a tremendous honor and one that I embrace with true enthusiasm and gratitude for the board's confidence in me the district has been an integral part of my life and my career for many years and this opportunity to serve our students staff families and community members fills me with immense purpose tonight I want to express my heartfelt thanks to everyone who has supported me along this journey through moments of both Challenge and most certainly celebration first and foremost my deepest gratitude
020goes to my family my incredible wife Dr Melanie grel and our daughter Giana are here with me this evening Melanie your intelligence compassion and unwavering support have been my Guiding Light and Giana your kindness creativity and curiosity in inspire me each and every day together you are my foundation and my greatest source of strength I also want to take an opportunity and I'm going to turn around here and recognize the many friendships and Partnerships that I've built within this District Community to the teachers support staff retired colleagues former board members who talk longer than I do and so many others many whom are here tonight thank you thank you for being here thank you for being with me through this journey over the last 10 years and thank you for making Glenbrook an amazing place
021your dedication to our students families and this district is truly remarkable it's through our Collective efforts and the genuine relationships that we've built that Glenbrook High School District 225 has become such a special place as we begin this new chapter I look forward to strengthening the connect that we have in forging new ones to build an even brighter future for our students and our families through our shared commitment Glenbrook High School District 225 will continue to thrive as the leading High School District in the state of Illinois honoring our Legacy while driving Innovation for the future as superintendent I understand that trust is the Cornerstone of a successful School District District building and maintaining that trust will guide my daily efforts as I support students staff families and the community while strategies and priorities May
022evolve my commitment to fostering each and every one of your trust and I my focus on collaboration will remain constant as I bring my remarks to a close I want to again Express how honored and excited I am to serve as your next superintendent I'm profoundly grateful to the board of education for their trust and confidence to everyone who has supported me along this journey I am committed to helping our district grow and Thrive providing a high school experience for all students that values Excellence across the Four A's which include academics Athletics activities and the Arts thank you for this incredible opportunity I'm excited about all we will achieve together in support of our students thank you again and thank you so I I guess we have one piece of business to official business to
023make this that wonderful speech uh commemorated and everything I'll entertain a motion a motion to approve the superintendent contract has discussed in closed session second mam secretary Miss Seguin yes Mr shine yes Dr Steinberg yes Miss Mullen Beck yes Mr O'Hara yes Mr glowaki yes six members voting yes well congratulations so with that we will take a 10 minute 15 minute break for reception till about 8 o'clock and then we will uh come back to board and superintendent reports so break please e e e no Di and Melanie I think are good for right now um just Mr glowaki so you're aware we do have a a variety of our instructional supervisors in um available to us for upcoming agenda items okay so we'll try to keep things moving so they're not up all night
024uh with this and everything so so moving on to item number six board and superintendent reports Dr jnes all right thank you very much I have a couple things I want to share and then we'll turn it over to the schools I believe we begin with gbn tonight um but I will um start off with a couple things first of all I want to let the board know I've talked about it a little bit in the past the Cook County paid time off ordinance we've been working with uh our commissioner Scott Britain to get an amendment to exempt schools and park districts from this ordinance unfortunately the am Amendment uh did not make it out of committee last week as you'll recall um this amendment would have changed the ordinance so the schools and districts
025uh park districts would have been held to the state law but not the more stringent County rule uh we did our best uh there was a lot a huge effort of superintendents throughout the areas and other school business officials um and certainly this um ordinance poses some serious operational challenges for us uh certainly at least in the six digit uh in terms of costs that we can anticipate incurring there is still an option for home r m municipalities such as Glen View and Northbrook to consider a local exemption from this ordinance in doing so um we would ask the municipalities to revert to the state law uh which again does not include school districts and park districts we're already in conversations uh amongst all the school district officials and the park district officials and we'll
026start working with our Villages right away to see if uh they're amendable to this change uh the next thing I want to talk about is uh you should have been here yesterday the glenbrooks well this weekend the Glen Brooks were hopping uh I came last night for the Glen Brook Symphony Orchestra uh it was yesterday afternoon held at GBS it was the most incredible Orchestra performance I've seen in a 35y year career mostly in high schools uh each time I attend one of their conference their performances I walk away thinking I've seen the finest that I'd ever seen only to be proven wrong the next concert uh the skill and musicality of our students were on fine display as our students played some of the most incredibly difficult works with both finesse and Artistry I
027drove home so grateful for the hard work and dedication of our students um the parent organization had an event as well and it was very vibrant very supportive of these programs um and if youve if you're a music parent uh it's tough to be a parent supporting a musician through the highs and lows in the countless hours of hearing the same note played wrong over and over again so I want to give a shout out to parents because they put in a lot of sacrifice as well uh and we do have tremendous um performers I also want to make special recognition of the three directors last night Aaron Kaplan Rachel Atlas and Brian Boron who really LED our students to Mastery of pieces that are largely left to orchestras of college is and Beyond I
028am grateful for the community that we continue to support the Arts in such a way it was a staggeringly good concert so as I walking into the concert and walking out I was reminded of my old high school days as a high school debater was able to stick my nose up against the glass and watched the the tournament our speech and debate tournament that was taking place uh we had the 49th annual glenbrooks speech and debate tournament over the weekend this is the biggest speech and debate tournament hosted by High School in the country this year we hosted about 240 schools and approximately 2,350 people from 31 States in three countries uh we had one from Taiwan and two from China uh this is Mike greenstein's 26 glenbrooks as a student or a coach and
029terites 23rd glenbrooks as a debate coach it takes a lot out of you and I ran small tournaments this is exhausting there were here late into last night and we are so fortunate to have uh both resilient but durable coaches who make sure that our program is always the best one of the things about the glenbrooks is we pride ourselves in running both a competitive tournament but also want to make sure we have the best Hospitality as a great National as a great service to our national Community also it's a fundraiser for our programs um but it is a huge undertaking Mike Anda do great work and it was so fun listen in the kids did you break did she break who's going to the out rounds these are all coded language that we have
030in speech and debate it was a real thrill for me to hear it again finally I want to talk about Vision 2030 that was uh indicated and shared at the uh triple I conference that we went to at the end of last week and over the weekend Vision 2030 was um initiative taken on by the Illinois Association of school administrators which is the superintendent group but it's supported by all the management groups they were all in attendance as we went through this process both Dr grll and I were part of 2030 of the vision 2030 process and we're very proud of it it has some some big goals the first is future Focus Education that includes future-driven skills enhancing students safety attracting and retaining high quality diverse Educators promoting curriculum instructional flexibility to meet the
031unique needs of local communities and also has goals of shared accountability and predictable funding these are important for the state and will certainly benefit our district uh Dr gal and I will be bringing back um more language on this and more of an update in the near future but the materials are now available at the website that you can kind of see on this particular slide but down the road we're looking for an endorsement by this board of these goals to show our state legislators that this is what's important in the state of Illinois if you look back at Vision 2020 the the real big initiative that came out of vision 2020 from 10 years ago which is evidence-based funding which really moved our state from one of the worst funded worst state support of
032public education to one of the best and has made enormous impact across this state and and I always believe that a high tide raises All Ships and it has helped us as well so more to come on Vision 2020 sorry Vision 2030 but it's certainly something I think think uh our state can be proud of and I'm glad I was involved in it with that I will turn it over to our principles we'll begin tonight with gbn hey thank you um so we wanted to kick off a couple things uh from Glenbrook North we've been having a fun fall um I can't believe that it is nearly Thanksgiving um in this first year of being at gbn um and everything has been really wonderful and every staff and student and parent have been wonderful to
033work with so um the first thing we wanted to highlight was our sir shred Nutcracker which is now officially on display uh you may have been following along gbn was one of the selected schools to decorate a nutcracker that is now on display at the Donald E Stevenson Center in Rosemont and it will soon be moved to its home with our client the Allstate Arena students worked collaboratively to design a nutcracker that captured the essence of the events at the All State and the end product of Sir shred turned out wonderfully the client at all State shared his feedback with our teacher leap block I am stoked by it in my opinion it is hands down the coolest and most representative of the location uh we also wanted to highlight a class project from our
034CTE program that was highlighted on patch recently um it was for Stephanie basford's fashion design studio class um Stephanie bassford has traditionally worked with our Glenbrook North preschool on this particular Monster Hand sewing project but she has two fashion design studio classes this fall and so she was looking to find another class to work with so for this project um some students from Willowbrook who are in kindergarten worked with their teacher to come up with what their ideal monster would look like and then they shared their ideas with the fashion class and the high school students got to work in their Studio to create a customized stuffed creature for each student and Stephanie bord says since my first year teaching the fashion classes at gbn I've been working on this project and I've had such
035a wonderful time I'm always excited about projects where my students do something for others so that was a neat uh Community activity for our act or for athletics um we sent our five swimmers to State uh Sienna Wilson Anna Rod rudametkin Abigail Kim Alicia maschi swam in five different events during the weekend and did a great job with their um with their competitive events there were entries in the 100 freestyle 100 backstroke 100 butterfly and two relay teams for the 200 free and 400 free relays we wanted to say congratulations to coach Jared Shader and the entire team on their season we also celebrated s h fall Signing Day on November 13th and wanted to say congrats to Alexis Meers ree anetsberger Annie filbin and Sam crra P who signed their letters of intent surrounded
036by family friends coaches and staff our Athletics winter season is in full swing and of note the boys varsity basketball Thanksgiving tournament is currently in progress at gbn right now um and lastly from Athletics congratulations to our former gbn baseball coach Dom Savino who was recently notified that he will be inducted into the Illinois High School baseball coaches association Hall of Fame this January uh we also wanted to share just a little bit about operation snowball which had 85 students and 16 staff um have another successful operation snowball retreat at Camp Edwards in East Troy um our snowball staff directors of Kirby Triple Bill Edison and Darren Sullivan safely made the snowy trk on last Thursday during the day along with the team directors Lyla Gallison kayin Kelson Alexi P petrius Tessa walstrom and Lindy
037Winkler later in the evening they greeted the rest of the students and student leaders and student participants as well as the staff members who served as the group leaders throughout the weekend students listened to guest speakers participated in team building activities and engaged in personal reflection that yielded P positive personal growth for all in attendance they returned home on Saturday and ended their experience with a brief presentation for families and I wanted to highlight our speech team who had success at a recent District 211 tournament I always perk up a little bit when I see that we are doing very well against my former uh school friend so I will say this uh they they did a great job our JB novice team took top honors in five events with another six events earning between
038second and third place and our varsity team te members took first in two events with another five events earning third through six places so our building coaches Sarah iler Carrie gson and Amy Teo have been doing great work with our students and I also wanted to say thank you to our Korean parents Association who recently uh sponsored their and provided a generous and delicious lunch for our staff in November it's a highly anticipated lunch and is a wonderful way for staff to experience homemade Korean food and for all of our staff to meet our dedicated families who serve on our Korean par parents Association we are very thankful and I wanted to just let you know if you're looking for upcoming events please mark your calendars for student written and directed one acts on December
0395th our orchus dance show and a whole Hurricane Relief fundraising effort in support of North Carolina's Owen High School will begin on December 7th with a fundraiser from Sunset Foods as well as a magic show featuring David gitner on December 14th so tickets are all on sale at cure.com thank you Miss Hughes over at GBS in academics uh we GBS just wrapped up its apprenda testing and orientation days for our incoming latinx eth graders along with those with Spanish language background beyond the classroom students from AA springman field and maple all attended um during these days the students are given an overview of the Spanish for Heritage Learners program which leads to advanced placement Spanish language and literature during their junior or senior year uh while they come in to take a test to assist
040them with placement they also get the opportunity to meet our wonderful world language teachers uh and learn about the AP programs um as well as key administrators to provide a warm welcome to Glenbrook South they students learn about opportunities at GBS are four core Titan values and they have lunch with current senior peer group leaders and Junior leaders in the Spanish Heritage language program apprenda placement and orientation activities have been taking place for over 25 years and it's another way in which we reach out to welcome our incoming students to the GBS Community also in World languages um I need to give a shout out to our Spanish teacher Jorge Zamora he presented at the National American Council on the teaching of foreign language conference um he was teaching other Educators about how AI integration
041can be used for language instruction we're incred incredibly proud of Jorge being a leader in World language education uh and how he gives back to the profession overall and finally again in World languages uh last week students is from the Glenbrook Academy of international studies presented insights from their four-year study of the German language and culture in discover Deutschland this event was an opportunity for eighth grade students considering the academy program to hear firsthand about the students experiences abroad I'd like to give a special thanks and shout out to GBS German teacher Lori how for her vision and commitment to the German program at Glenbrook South tomorrow is also uh our Thanksgiving tea at GBS this is one of our most favorite days of the year it's where our students in family consumer science Fine
042Arts and horiculture classes demonstrate their skills in a tea to thank their teachers this is true performance-based learning where they share their Creations music and displays that they have mastered thus far this semester with the staff over in the Arts we just had the joy last week of improvaganza if you've not been able to see this I strongly recommend it's a unique performance that has essentially two teams of performers comp against each other to improvise and they earn points based on the audience Applause and interactions these students are truly hilarious and incredibly quick thinkers I don't know how to do how they do it um but Kudos on a great night of laughs and great entertainment we're so proud of them over in athletics our girl swim team closed out the end of our fall
043season with an impressive fifth place for Lila Sue and freshman Alexis so took 11th Place in diving at the ihsa state tournament freshman I sa freshman um we now begin the winter sports season with a variety of Thanksgiving tournaments and practices are ramping up for other teams it's looking like it's going to shape up to be a great winter season and then finally over in activities we are finishing the Titan can food drive otherwise known as Clash of Cans um last week was the student and faculty basketball game to raise money for the fundraiser it was stiff competition um but by the end of the night the students won this year um all around it's such a fun and exciting evening that not only earned money and collected canned goods for our community but was
044also a great time for teachers and staff to interact in a very different way and then finally I I have to take a moment to thank the Glenbrook South buildings and grounds crew for jumping into action and keep campus cleared and safe during our first unexpectedly heavy snowfall um all year long we're incredibly grateful for all the things they do to keep our facility some of the best around um but this was uh very unexpected and they jumped into action and got our campus clear and safe for our kids to get to and from school and we look forward to everything they're going to do for us in the next coming months we're incredibly grateful for them thank you anything further Dr Johns no I just want to Echo uh Dr George's comment we are
045so fortunate and they're not surprised to be ready for a day like we had so thank you for saying that that's it thank you H board members if you have anything to share I just want to be mindful of that we will have a separate agenda item for some of those attended the triple I conference later so we can talk about that later and everything but if anybody has other comments besides that okay so moving on then to item number seven if I believe or eight I'm sorry going through here but the uh the consent agenda is there anything on consent that needs to be considered differently pulled off a consent nope nothing has changed we're ready to go so I'll entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda so moved second Madame secretary Miss
046mollenbeck yes Mr O'Hara yes Miss siguan yes Mr shine yes Dr seberg yes Mr glowaki yes six members voting yes wonderful all right so the next few items uh that are on our agenda are discussion items uh the first one is 9.1 dashboard report with Illinois regarding the Illinois school report uh and that is uh Mr breek and Dr idrizi if you may good evening next we're going to hear is our dashboard report which we have heard annually do um Mr brech doing and it achieves the compliance with the release of the Illinois school report card as it is required but it also highlights the ACT action we have taken based on the data over the past year and it also highlights action we are going to take based on the newest data we have
047received what is new this year is that in item in the section three we have tited to strategic plan looking forward going into the future what action we are taking please know that this is report for informational purposes only and no action needs to be taken tonight well good evening I know this is this is my favorite presentation of the Year to all of you where I get to share all the da the data with you um but in in the spirit of keeping it tight and concise I'm going to share uh two highlights for all of you and then two areas that we're going to put some energy and focus into so first and foremost I'm really proud to identify the progress re we've made in student enrollment in advanced courses so the last
048four years it's been a focal point especially dual credit courses how do we increase uh student access student enrollment and it's a pleasure to show you from 2021 until now we've gone from 230 students districtwide enrolled in a dual credit course to almost a thousand so that is tremendous progress it's due in part to uh significant efforts in the academic departments talking through through what courses could qualify for dual credit and really putting the professional development forward at the same time um advanced placement enrollment has remained stable that's an important piece because sometimes we start to find students will leave an advanced placement course to take a dual credit so we've been striking a nice balance there so we plan to continue expanding our dual credit programs and to look at our advanced placement courses
049um in the front and of our years with our students right now you can see our senior year is really topheavy in that data um but it gets less and less as you go towards the freshman year also exciting our sense of well-being data it has trended up since we started where it's now at 69% that is 99th percentile nationally that means we're doing really really really well in that area now it makes you wonder if only 69% of students are feeling a complete sense of well-being and that's in the 99th percentile so for us we know we still have work to do we want to continue to see that number go up and each year we're surprised we we hit and we go where's 99th percentile can we really go up more and we
050just slowly keep climbing that ladder important to note sense of belonging is not we don't ask the students do you have a sense of belonging there there are nine different ways we ask that same question to come up with the calibration from trusted adults relationships uh sense of community to really get at this idea of well-being and sense of belonging so again we're going to continue to focus here this is remains an important goal both identified in the Strategic initiatives and strategic plan but also just as something we really have found to be critical for our students now what does that mean for areas of improvement this is one that over the last two years I've said we're monitoring which is growth mindset we have traditionally been in the 30th percentile by far if you
051look at all the social emotional skills measured growth mindset has been the lowest for us this year we saw a significant decrease a statistically significant drop that has put us in the 10th percentile for students identifying do I have the skills of growth mindset again we don't ask them do you have growth mindset we ask them a number of questions there are actually seven that unpack the idea of growth mindset definition wise really simple a person believes they have the potential to get better that's what growth mindset is I can get better through work and persistence I can get better so one thing to note Panorama our survey instrument was adjusted it was recalibrated so we want to track to see did that cause the dip but regardless we've seen this trend that it's been
05230th percentile or lower so we feel it's time to really put some targeted targeted efforts there last but not least this is our climate survey participation rate if we went back to 2021 we were always in the around the 80th 80% of our students were participating that was a really healthy number what we have found as as the years have gone by that has trended downward last year we were 27% below the state average the impact on that being just above 50% was a significant challenge to our report card designation so in the memo I noted that both schools were noted as commendable and they were just a a couple points two to three points away from exemplary when we look at our participation rate that impacted both schools over four points so if we
053had remained consistent with our 2021 number we would both be I would argue exemplary if our if my math is accurate so all other metrics went up but our participation rate went down so this is actually not a problem that will take a lot of effort it just takes time so we are going to move to the five back to the five Essentials that launches usually at the end of January we do not have the official dates right now from the state once we have that we will go back to what we used um in 2021 and before to really have targeted communication to our students a process that's articulated well in advance to families of the importance of this and when we're going to actually administer this case in point our seal survey it
054was at 90% participation rate in September so we know how to communicate this we know how to put this forward and we're going to implement that and we should see that number go up so those are the two points of excitement and two points that were really targeting lot of data was shared with you so I will pause there uh thank you I was gonna say I'll go around on the board I'll start with Miss squin if you have any questions for the team just a question on the last slide is that the climate survey participation right if you can remind me is does that include um staff as as well as uh families so for this this graph here is representing student participation rate so which is what is used on the school report
055card okay so it's only that is only students corre but we from a continuous Improvement challenge using the data we want our staff participation rate high as well these are important measurements that we need okay thank you y Dr seberg yeah just a few questions um looking back to your first slide on Dual credit versus AP and I'm not going to question the numbers I'm just want to know from both sides what are the financials for this in terms of cost for when comparing one to the other right you were talking about normally you see you get more dual credit and less as dual credit grows is this because there's a financial Financial impact on the students because they may have to paym do we have agreement with the Community College districts where they do
056dual credit but they don't pay for the credit yeah we're primarily tied to Oakton and I think the the increase here is more communication to families about the benefits of dual credit that it's a it is cheaper than advanced placement but really what it's about is the the opportunity to gain credit through dual credit is almost guaranteed compared to AP which is you could take the course and then take the test hit a three maybe even a four and not at the credit where in partnership with Oakton you complete the course successfully you have credit and as a followup how the how these two compute on your GPA on the four four and a half five so you have this wonderful packet in front of you and one of the pieces that we were able
057to really work through is if there's a dual credit or advanced placement that qual ifies as advanced academic courses that qualifies as a 5.0 GPA we have created consistency in that arena in all of our classes with those designations previously that had not been the case it could range from a four or a five um advanced placement were always receiving the five but there was not consistency in dual credit based upon that and and the work we're moving forward we're now consistent that's great follow question to that one so the Dual credit that's going forward that there'll be a f anybody in the Dual credit programs currently may or may not still correct want to make sure that was clarified yes thank you for that clarification this I don't expect the answer for this one
058so it's question just for you to both of you to think of but when looking at grow mindset I agree with you maybe the change on the way we're assessing it may have changed that scale but I wonder the way our schools are on on a competitive District on a district where every strives for excellent if this may have an impact on the grow mindset because I'm either a AP student or I'm either a g student and we always get parents coming here com bringing their issues about placement at the Freshman level and if there's something structural there that doesn't have to do with our students per se but as as our students as a group where if I start at certain point I don't feel so that I have the possibilities because I will
059never get to even though I should I would never get to AP courses because I started in G level or I started in different level so I know we have different ways of assessing this but if that's the case it may not be that students don't have the growth mindset but they they walk into a system that doesn't even allows them to think about growth mindset because they have a ceiling structure seing in post I don't know if it's tight to our structure based if you could explain the questions are you asked for the growth mindset no I'm saying my understanding of the question and what they use on this are do I feel I can learn can I take the initiative to go do something so it doesn't really tie oh there are tons
060of St that says if you are ped with different people normally you tend to grow but if you are shown that hey you hanging with these people in the classroom versus the other people that in the other classroom that has an impact on your thinking that I can grow because if I can grow as long as I fit within this classroom I would never be able to move to the next one that's what yeah I was going to say Brian if you wouldn't mind just answer and what the question questions are there actually being asked too it's it's a multifaceted question in order for us to address this there are a lot of districts wrestling with this this is part of why we are partnering with the center for academic and social emotional learning to
061have them assist us with this this is a key skill we know that we know when you really look at the multifaceted problem you have a system that needs to be looked at you have years of mindset development that is occurred beforehand and then you have uh family social dynamics so for us it's really about understanding what is in our control locus of control and how we can work through that there are perceptions that need to be talked through accelerated placement Act is one of those as we move forward with this this is another reason why we're really targeting we are starting to open access we want students to have faith and trust that they can do this and we're building the support system to help them get there thank you and just to clarify
062I'm not questioning the questions what I'm saying is that we may doing a big effort but there may be things that we are not paying attention to that may slow down our effort that are out of the individual part of it I think you wrot the question I'm not questioning the system thank you I'm going Mr sh um so we were this weekend at the triple ey conference and I went to a session that was spoke to dual credit and it was led by the superintendent of 214 and a couple of his staff but one thing I took away which I found interesting and I wonder if then we're looking at this is they're partnered with multiple oakin so they have they work with Harper work with Triton um uh Eastern Illinois University so they
063had a bunch of of Partners and and I asked about that and he said well certain schools are good at certain things and have certain offerings he said but it just it was sort of like H it's just so hard to to engage and get them you know along this path everybody's kind of holding their Turf and so I'm curious are we looking it or or does oakden offer all everything we need so our philosophy is we start with Oak it's local these are challenging relationships that have to be developed so to as the superintendent was talking multiple districts make that even more challenging so we start with Oakton sometimes o Oakton doesn't have that offering then we will start to expand out from there one of the things that we have found though is
064when you bring an idea to Oakton they have a tendency to go hey I think we can do that let's work through that together that's the beauty of that partnership so you you mentioned um I think it was 900 something students a thousand give or take correct roughly how many course course offerings um does that Encompass yeah I'd have to go back and and look at our number I believe after this weekend we'll be in the 20s yeah how many AP or not after this weekend I'm sorry after uh if you approve these uh tonight will be in the 20s and how many APS do we offer oh gosh I should know that off the top of my I do not all that changes now too yeah I'll have to look at that and give
065you an idea an exact number someone could look it up on the report card yeah you're right right yeah right right I might have it on page three comment I really like how clear this is you know what's given at which school I mean the the level of consistency I mean I can't imagine what it what it took to to to get to to get to this point because there are wonderful people on others others have tried and failed yes well we won't steal all the Thunder and everything we're GNA get to this one next and uh miss mullenbach two I guess a a comment and a question did you have any I'm sorry okay sorry about that um first on the growth mindset piece I'm glad you mentioned this is my comment the APA
066because as you were discussing that I was thinking to myself well I wonder if we can really leverage what's happening with the APA to try to get kids to see that this is a real opportunity for them um and I hope that as that's rolled out and presented um to students and families for them to do their planning for their um time at the Glen Brooks um that they're seeing that this isn't this is going to give a cohort that perhaps before didn't really have a place to stretch to now they really will um and so that opens up this Avenue that I hope encourages and empowers um those students in particular to feel like um you know they can do something different and and bigger than what they were doing before um the second
067question the second thing I had to ask about was actually a question and now I seem to have lost it hang on just a second I'm sorry this was in under um section three of the um memo you circulated data of note and I I saw that we we see in the Glen Brooks that there is a greater performance Gap or higher than the state average um for our low low income and non-low income um students um and it's not enormous but it's significant and I guess my question is um I believe that this has been um an issue for some time are we making progress in closing that Gap and what are we going to be doing to address that yeah so there's there's a few things associated with that some of that data
068is based upon the N the N number so that range we have to take and look at the trend data the other aspects associated with that we do believe our work for Accelerated placement and the curriculum work that we've been talking through those are targeted efforts at that there's a lot of work still to be done what we spend a lot of time doing is looking at and you have this in your data the Scatter Plots which really tell us are we seeing a point in time data or are we seeing a trend and we've remained consistently high in um if not the top in both schools when looking at comparables that being said we have work to do there there's no question and I think access is a big one not everything on accelerated
069placement act but I do think that starts opening doors and we have curriculum work to look at to see what how do we understand what our students are doing from point A to point B to point C the shift from sat to act is going to put us in a little bit of a position where our data is going to be off because we're moving to a new system however that is why we went with the pre act8 now we have fall eighth grade data spring freshman data and we can start to really track those Trends so any additional questions I'm sorry make sure to ask M Mr O'Hare uh yeah real quick um I think that that growth number is is concerning obviously the 10% and I you know um especially for your kids
070you don't want them to be limited when they're 14 years old and sudden they're like they feel there's they can't grow that's kind of an upsetting a very upsetting statistic there and I guess something Marcelo said made a lot of sense um do you know and you might not know off the top of your head but the the movement in the tracks that we have how often do kids actually change tracks yeah I I think what we find is it isn't as frequent as we we would seem to believe and a lot of that has to do with um we have systemically looked at differentiation by our quote unquote sequences and our structures not in terms of the diagonal movement some departments have really built this curriculum alignment where it allows for what we call
071um horizontal and vertical movement which leads to just add the diagonal movement um but that is tied to the curriculum mapping work that we've been talking about in order to make those jumps you have to really understand your full sequence sequences and what skill Continuum would allow students to jump across okay so that that could be something we could do to improve it because I think makes a great Point like if you don't see anybody moving correct even if it is allowed to move you never see it you know or I I also I wonder um how do we compare do do other high achieving high schools because we're a high achieving High School have a similar issue in their percentages in their that growth percentage number does that make sense correct so we are
072unable to say give us the identical comparatives what we do have is um our population size our free and reduced lunch population get you pretty CL and it gives us a pretty good and that is what's placing Us in this 10 to 20th percentile so so if you so like someone like Stevenson or nutrier might have the same issue could could be and so part of it could be like you're talk about you're coming up in the system you say what we can focus on is if you've been I I play Ice Hockey if I get out on the ice H to play Ice Hockey and there's a bunch of Pros out there I feel really bad about myself so if you go into our class and sudden you're there with these kids who are
073National Merit and you're not you could feel that too so correct and part of our work because obviously privacy of data with oural Benchmark we're not allowed to say this school or that school but with our partnership with castle and is that this is one of our areas of focus with with them what schools have faced this and what have they done that have similar backgrounds to our two schools and that's the work they're able to bring forward to us and say here are schools that have wrestled with this and have seen a s significant success ratio okay thank you I'm glad you guys are concerned about it as well yeah um and I guess the Dual AP um your numbers so like 2700 students or 2700 classes do you know the percent of the
074students who did this because it isn't half our students who are in both AP and dual like my daughter took a lot of AP classes and my son took shall we say less um and and so it seems like some of those would be the same kids right correct correct the data the way they break that down on that that particular link a student that took an AP class counts as one a student that same student would count as one for a dual credit so so one of the students could be five absolutely could be one student because they took five okay corre okay that makes sense um no and uh the climate survey rate um can we just sit them down and make him do it like like it seems like those are the
075ones that we're you know have control of more so shall we say I think we have a a um a model in place with oural Benchmark that has received all pretty much over 80% every time we've done it uh that we will be putting in place to make sure that happens thank you okay that's it can go ahead Dr seberg to add to to Matt's point which is a great idea think about that is there any way that we can get that kind of report but by students instead of by courses if I understood correctly maybe I misunderstood but when it says I didn't uh Dr Steinberg maybe thinking about a metric that says the number of student that took one or more AP or dual credit classes just down there yeah if there is
076a pattern there that we see yes um no thank you everyone so I just had I guess a follow-up question on the growth mindset and this is why I was interested in what the questions were that are used for the growth mindset because our district is also is watching one child go off to school didn't not realizing just how well prepared he was for school and everything till he got into a different dimension so a lot of our kids don't think they have to grow they think they've they're doing well so we've got a lot of Honor kids and as one of them as an example to use um but think they've achieved it all oh you can't teach me another thing we've all had teenagers and so that's what I'm curious about do you
077tell them what questions they do use for the growth mindset sure there's a there's two types there's academic and social emotional which includes behavior and both of those groups ask questions around the idea of if you have a setback can you get better from that how do you manage when you're looking at a long-term project um what if you do poorly on an exam is that a reflection on you or and so that's the breakdown of the academics so it's looking very much less on the paths and everything but looking at kind of your resilience y exactly so what we call academic tenacity is is kind of the broader construct there but it is really trying to look at how do they manage setbacks and then there are a couple direct questions can you get
078better have you reached your Peak uh academically um that is the number where you start going to your point where you're like uh if if you're a sophomore feeling you've reached your Peak academically and that's where it's for some institutions I've seen some of the schools you were asking about they're introducing other kind of outside seminars and things where children are starting to and we did a little bit of this where we do a joint program with Oakton oh let's get the stem kids over there and they start seeing what you do with these careers and they realize hold on there is more there is I'm now we're promoting their Natural Curiosity their initiative to take go to the library and read up on something that has not been assigned to them uh and everything
079so if the group can I guess come back and whatever initiatives we've got going on that I think that may help uh Elevate these scores as well too yeah I do think to your point one of the areas that has real potential is our work with Career postsecondary Success College and Career Readiness the work-based learning so internships um seeing what's out there working with mentors that is an area that is untapped right now in my opinion and and I think districtwide you can see it in our strategic work that we are going to put some focus on over the next four years which I think really could open the door to this so that'd be interesting to see how those charts and the other question yes if I cannot do your point what I I
080was reading an article the other day growth is associated with academic performance but we have four A's and we we being in general Society not the Glen Brooks we tend to only associate mind growth set and everything else on how do I do in my test or how much Advanced courses I can take while we offer three other set of services that can also tap into the idea of growth you know mind of growing and and growing mindset so maybe that's something to think about it as well your point is really good but they are spending time in school doing other things that they may they are not associating that this is part of their growth be it a sport being an art being an activi so I don't know if these are reflected on
081the questions but something that we may be able to look into it thank you and the other one uh looking at the stats on if you could advance to I guess you reference the lowincome where took a dip there in comparison and everything to our peers and everything as our colleague mentioned and everything I recall a few years back we did have some some more details about I think some unique character istics and correlations to that uh where we have a much more transient uh community that some of those linked into it as well too where they were here for a year and then we have another group by time we start working with these students and everything that changes and impacts what other correlations do you have with this data at this point or
082what can you pull up yeah I think it's a it's a real challenge what you're bringing forward was the end number um often times what's tested we might be looking at someone that's been here for two months but broader than that is we always look at what is happening across their four-year spectrum of of their academic work and when we have that ability to say here they are as a junior what have we controlled from essentially their transition to us forward we see pretty significant growth we need to monitor that more we need to put more energy into that especially for students that might um traditionally haven't qualified for acceleration or honors to ensure that their growth is where it needs to be that's that's the direct Target at this point okay because I know
083the other other C you know is also English as a second language is that creating it some barriers to this as well too not necessarily okay not necessarily okay thank you um well if you have any additional questions for the team please feel free to for them to Dr John's and he'll get them to them so moving on then to the next item uh which I guess is um Mr bag and Dr Andrey curricular change proposals and this lovely lovely course guide yay so it's kind of get to his head guys you can't applaud before he's introduced it and walked you through it that's we're gonna have to make him work for that Applause now okay and he has worked and he has wor we're very proud of this and it is an accomplishment that
084I think someone has said it's been tried for many many years and it hasn't been successful in the past and we are very proud of this effort and and grateful Ryan for your leadership to bring this fru to fruition um and I'm sure Ryan will Echo this point there's a lot of work that went went through to make this happen and it wasn't easy uh Ryan uh calculates that well over 200 hours of meetings went into the creation of this document this this isn't 200 Workforce hours this is 200 hours of meetings where there would be maybe a dozen or more people working on this and that doesn't count the Ryan gets caught everywhere he goes someone grabs them for some insight or something like that this doesn't count the little sidebar conversations or they
085associate principles or is's having to get together to work on something those were the the more formal meetings and it hasn't been easy uh we have great pride and we've had great pride in this district with uh each school being proud of their programs their classes their approach and coming together for an agreement was not easy there had to be some sacrifice there had to be collaboration there had to be a little give and take and Ryan and the other leaders in this process helped coach people and support them through that analysis and those changes so I want to thank everyone the the ises that were involved in the leadership the associate principles who are here today as well um Ryan even the ed services department that supported Ryan through this process there's a lot
086of people that deserve our gratitude for for getting us to this point and we know that the teachers have worked hard and will continue to work hard to make all this come to fruition but I think what this represents for our families is Clarity in our academic program that we've longed for for for many years and it also enables us to launch forward on other work down the road so now Ryan I think you can come to the podium and and earn our gratitude and Applause all right um I would love to take credit but in the spirit of growth mindset um you have a tremendous amount of folks on Zo right now who quite honestly um made this an amazing two years of work yes it was challenging yes it was hard but the
087thoughtfulness that came from our is's and their teams made this actually it revitalized my belief in curriculum and instruction to see that kind of work and dedication so a big thank you the Applause should go to all those folks sitting on the call right now who really put in the work with them across Willow Road and with their team so thank you to all the is's and the aps for their work um yeah there you go actually uh Bob peeper was here and he was in the back reading one of these and he asked if he could take one so I said I would buy him one and give him because he's like that was a year of my life so um with that what you do have in front of you is our course
088guide so I think Dr John said it all um but there's a lot of really exciting pieces in here I will tell you it is still in draft mode once we add the new courses we'll we'll clean up some of the the locations of things but we are really excited there's there's a few things I I want to point out number one was every course but 13 were touched I'm gonna say that again 100 plus pages every course was touched to some degree but 13 now blessed were those 13 that went through a a recent new course proposal process so if you're wondering which 13 Ryan um there's your answer um so uh through the work of Dr solise and Mr Mir uh we were ahead of that game to make sure didn't have to
089go back to those courses uh the other thing about this is you'll notice at the start of every Department there's a consistent statement about what they believe it is this idea of an ambitious Target what they believe where they want to go um that was one of the most enjoyable experiences where we took I'm blessed to have been in this district for almost 20 years we took all the resources we had in every department and we did full scan hands of all their historical pieces and provided them a summary for them to work through and really digest so just tremendous work from a variety of sources so what that does yield is a change in how we propose courses so there's an excitement here that we have a new application for curricular change process that
090is going to have Road bumps that you're going to see when new courses come through because there is a deeper richer process to ensure that alignment stays in place that we're asking questions um both at a department building and District level so that as courses get approved they're really understood about the value for the gaps that may may exist how we're moving forward with larger initiatives and ensuring that there's equity an alignment across both buildings so that will come with a change for our folks who are experiencing that kind of process for the first time this year but as they go through what we did we changed this process of how they propose they also have to include a syllabus a common syllabus and a curriculum map that shows what they're actually moving forward towards
091if they have honors they include honors expectations so Department building and District leadership team we're reviewing all of that before it gets to you last but not least um we move this timeline up so that there's a better sequence you know uh typically in September is when we will be doing our curriculum improvement process which will then lead directly to new courses which will lead directly to new textbooks new materials so you'll see a process go right through that so this year there was a truncated timeline which did yield some pauses on some courses some other things that we needed to do to ensure that we we met the right direction of all this two years worth of work with that um this year we have five new courses and three honors designations so important
092to point out the first two on that list are dual credit courses you have English composition 101 um a number of you have asked me about that is that a freshman course that is a freshman in college course so it does look different than our typical titles and that's because we adopt the title from Oakton number two introduction to education a wonderful opportunity for our students that might have an interest in becoming an educator that they can begin that process also we have three other courses you heard about one early on AP prekel and then we have three honors designations coming forward this is a change in our protocols that we wanted to be more transparent when a course changed its honors designation um so that you were aware most important to that is the
093CTE course this was a course that has never had honors it's a what you may recall incubator or you may have heard about business incubator we did a regional analysis anytime we have a concern about a course or we have uh disagreements we begin a a local to Regional analysis of what others are doing we found that we are the only District that we could really find that offers a robust incubator program that doesn't offer honors credit we are rectifying that wrong for the start of the 2526 that's those are the types of things you will see brought forward in the future so with that all of these is's are available for questions as our our APS um so we'll turn it over before I turn over to the board members there was a question
094that came during our open uh public comments and everything so I figured since we all probably will ask it in some version or another I'll get it out there uh it was regarding the AP Calculus uh pre-calculus class and the reasoning behind the 2627 adoption and the College Board review view process sure which I understand that is a extensive process as well too if you could go into that a little bit sure so the AP pral was proposed by both buildings uh the buildings reviewed it and had a number of concerns that they felt needed to be addressed they brought those concerns to our district level team which is which consists of uh directors and your building APS they shared those concerns wanted to make sure we understood those and offered any guidance we understood
095their concerns um agreed with their concerns and also gave suggestions on what to do for next steps those next steps were shared with the I instructional supervisors about how we could move forward with that as they reviewed those changes U they made the determination that it was best that we hold for another year to work through those as I noted when we do find that there's some disagreements about a proposed course A lot of times we do a review of other schools that may be a little bit ahead of us so some of those schools we looked at this course was being proposed at the senior only level and in only one sequence we asked about why only that sequence was there other opportunities to expand access outside of the senior year only um because
096as we reviewed other schools um there's access level at the 10th 11th and 12th grade and there are two different types of AP pre-cal often across different tracks or sequences so for us we rais those questions we also had concerns raised from our student services teams about how to articulate that an AP course was lower than an enriched honors course and how would that be perceived by families that's not the sole reason for any uh we can work through a number of factors but in compilation of all of those there were enough concerns laid out the is has understood those and felt it best to hold for another year we did put forward that if they felt there was enough time we could look at a 25 26 or a 2627 adoption it was determined
097that 2627 was the better Direction and that why you see it the way it is can you elaborate on the College Board review process how long does that take and when must that be initiated so the College Board has to have the the the syllabi reviewed and structured by the middle of January that's the date that they've laid out for us in order to have it ready for approval now you can expand that there's always excep January for next fall correct were to if we were to go forward it's part of this is that view could yield some because you would propose our our syllabi our Curriculum maps that could tell us it's approved or it's not and there's a feeling that there just wouldn't be enough time if it was denied that they could
098look at expanding access we considered a pilot um in the spirit of alignment and Equity of access to Pilot at one school and not the other pose potential concerns especially in the the spirit of all the work that was done here as something as positive as an AP pre-cal to only offer that at one building um seemed a potential misstep during this time okay I appreciate that yes uh Miss Mullen Beck I've caught glimpses of this work on various calls that we've been on over overtime little sneak peeks and U I'm I it it's really a fan fantastic work product so I um I applaud everyone who put in all those hours of work plus 200 hours of meetings which counts as at least you know a thousand hours of work um because meetings are
099harder than just working um I do think um that it's so easy to read um it's just flipping through it you know um I do think that as you work on um completing it or or you know finalizing it having all the flowcharts in one place as opposed to scattered throughout might be just a helpful um for for students and parents as they're going through it um I know that just looking at the Timeline that you have that we're in phase two right now is that right we just wrapped up phase two pH two and I see that we have very very shortly in December phase three yes so what exactly is that going to entail um that's different than having this sure so phase one was this essentially making sure full course guide alignment
100phase two was before we took any other steps that could perhaps be a a false step we did a curriculum inventory or curriculum audit where we asked each is to list out their courses share do you have a syllabus do you have a curriculum map what we found is almost every class has a syllabus however they vary uh in terms of what what's inside those so phase three will bring forward a common syllabi that people can use as a template it will look at curriculum mapping so what you may hear is uh backwards design curriculum map ubd it's all the same language which basically says start with the end in mind and work backwards so starting in December we will begin that work with um Mr MC or Dr mctigue Who will work us through
101a process of making sure all of our instructional leaders understand that curriculum mapping process and then they will begin their work with their uh teams their curricular teams we as part of the APA thought it best instead of stopping all of our good work and saying p it over here let's embed curriculum map syllabus work and APA into a phased in approach so throughout this winter spring and into the summer we will be doing curriculum mapping work as part of APA implementation with our ninth grade teams and then expanding that year after year and do you anticipate that that work will will push changes through this and how is that going to be yeah I don't I don't think so so I think it truly is now it's let's get in depth with that let's
102start looking at how we can have the impacts the things we talked about in our dashboard tonight what's happening in our ninth grade English one CCR versus our English one accelerated honors what would it mean for a student to move if by the time they're a junior could they make that leap how do we get them there those are very rich conversations but it starts with really knowing what exact ly are the expectations in each of these courses and what's the skills Continuum available to us any other additional questions Mr oare uh yeah so uh this document um it's going to be on the website at some point um and searchable maybe so you'll actually searchable it will be there'll be this there'll be a print PDF and then in School links the course guide
103is embedded in there so everything you see in here is duplicated and replicated directly in the school links so families have multiple points of Entry all of the visuals that you have align with how students select courses nice so the language that fames if you work better off paper open it up and work there if you'd rather be digital it's there complete consistency our system of truth will forever be working through this School link system and then pushing that information into our other facets okay so yeah I was going to ask about schoolinks I love that you guys are linking that um and then this this will then be kind of a living document or is it going to be like how often are we going to update it is it once a year and
104you have a date where you're thinking about it you once a year so it'll be part of this annual process that we will go through so as soon as we're done with this this was a a unique process time yes getting it y I hope there got good plot development in here I'm reading it tonight and I don't to fall asleep section one it's riveting as you as you do work through it you'll find that in the summer we we'll end the year and start the year with the is's okay so that they'll have more time to Tinker with this um but each year at this time we'll have a new version ready to go and it will move to a 2627 it's beautiful my friend it's beautiful thank you Miss sequin um this may
105be some of a a technical question but I know as part of the like changes and designations of the um uh that you know know they're coming into play um are the are the names and the numbers of the courses changing so because I hear you know my kids talk all about you know this 363 and this and this and you know all the jargon and everything else that they use right are those things going to change cuz I'm just saying that that's something that's familiar to the students and the family so are they are they going to be kind of relearning those so if you would turn to page three okay you will find for the first time we are publishing our course numbers so that you can actually understand what are bottom of
106page three you will see yes you will see actually why we call certain things w o why we call things so to your direct question we are changing all the course codes so it and here is why it's a it's a question that's really important for us to understand North and South have had different numbers so we've had double the course codes we no longer have that North and South have the same course code that's your Georgia that is not that is not a painful look that is a look of Happiness yes well this is my practical side of me like but this is what families and students talk about all the time so there will be a change and there will be change management as part of that so we are trying deeply our
107inside of school links inside of our documents this is a area that we know is a significant change they know oh I'm in English 263 yeah well you might have been in English 263g studies all these different words that are now standardized under one course code one name okay um so it is a change the time was right there's probably never a good time to change course codes but in the adoption of this and the adoption of School links we didn't want to have the same course title and say North has this code off-campus has this code South has this code yeah so and as you can imagine it was a lot easier to step back and create our own versus say North you get this one South you get that one um and just
108C Mak sense yes yeah okay thank you for that and awesome I have really great work on this this is like great thank you any additional questions Dr seberg thank you I'll go back first to what Sandy said earlier this is we clap I don't think we clap enough because you you came here I don't know how many months ago explaining the whole process and you listen to the process I think this is going to take forever and and you need to get the Buy in from everybody and it's not just the is's or the aps that are here but everybody who spend even an hour to try to figure out how to make this works the serves are are congratulations because it's not I don't know I I shouldn't say this because I'm not
109attending every other board meeting from other districts but it's not every day that the district goes in two schools and says we're going to tackle the entire curriculum every single course and and you earn it everybody earned it and the people who are in leadership earned it as well because being a faculty at a different level it's not always easy to get everybody in the same you know team even if you are part of the team so huge congratulations and as everybody says to make it on a way that is understandable that's another you know layer of of of thankfulness from my end just to quick quick comments there could be questions at the same time it you mentioned something when when you were asked about the AP pre calculus and let me think into
110something else for some people's AP is It's The End means right so they see as that course as this is the my credit college credit course or one of my three college credit courses but as as education is becoming more fluent between you know the first level of college and and high schools we see many people who want to take as many AP courses that they can so it maybe I'm reacting to the way you presented it but maybe teachers should be thinking about this AP course is not just for seniors or the last level because maybe you can build a sequence of two AP courses or three AP courses that will save families a lot of money when the children go to college so it as I say it's not a question it's just
111a comment piggy backing on your comment on the flip side and leaving this also is curriculum is such a tricky thing because if you don't get it in time you have to wait an entire year to get it again and sometimes you put the time and you feel what's happening here because now I have to wait until I won't see this going until a year and a half from now or something like that and I'm sure you do this but it will be interesting you may have mentioned this to have fluent processes so if something is not working to be able to address it on time so we don't get frustration from it I as a teacher you are here for X number of years even you're frustrated you'll get to see it next time
112but a parent of a student who's going towards graduation sometimes skipping one window May mean do I get to have this credit or not so I'm it's not a statement on this particular course because I have know nothing about it so I'm not taking any any position I'm saying as you are working so hard on doing this maybe we can build windows so you have people that know this is going to go work or not that could bring back the feedback quickly and say hey if you make few Twitches here and there this may work better so correct just the comment and one more comment and and I'm done with AP credits it's I don't know if you do this study or not but it will be very useful for families when children when our
113students go to college they have to take placement regardless of the courses that they take on AP and for many families in particular first generation families this comes as a big surprise so my my student did this big effort and got 3 AP and whatever and then he took a he or she took a placement and then asking him or her to retake calculus or to retake English 101 or something like that how are we handling this in terms of expectations or are we working with our regular feeders to make sure that this doesn't happen I know it's out of our scope but because we're offering it yeah I I I would think that's a Township question so I would defer to you in terms of the township work in that regards was the question
114when students play at the high school or from the high school to the college level the high school to the college level we do the job the student gets the AP and thinks now I'm moving to wherever I'm going Northwestern and I'm going to go directly into calculus 2 because I took my AP and then I walk into Northwestern I said well hold on you have to take a placement and I'm not asking for us to know about every possible University but at least on the common places where we stand do we have any inkling that this is working that students are not having a problem many of our students receive the credit at the college level and not having those placement classes anymore okay so especially um I can start with Oak for example
115they they removed Alex they have it as one of measuring place and other measuring place is they have completed Algebra 2 at the high school level and they have scored either on the SAT or act a certain level to move right away into college bearing classes many of our col many of our AP and dual credit courses they receive credit at the college level without taking a placement level course to my knowledge but it's something definitely to look deeper into it but I've not heard that they wouldn't be receiving that credit yeah right now for our four-year universities in math it's less than 3% historically do not receive college credit classes when they go in so we find we are so far ahead of the state and the national level on that front our students
116graduate and get into to credit bearing classes of our AP courses um i' have to pull the data but I believe of the 3700 tests uh nearly 3500 receive college credit so R program is robust um and successful they put a lot of work into ensuring that if a student's going to take that course that they're being positioned for success that's that's great thank you yep Mr sh good thank you so I have a couple of questions I guess that's for last maybe not the best um so the first question I had was in terms of the U guide and everything are students allowed if I notice on page 33 for example contemporary literature English for contemporary literature it's offered at GBS English for contemporary social themes is at gbn they're both half semester classes
117and everything so assuming these are two significantly different classes after all the reviews and everything if a student at gbn wanted to participate in the class at GBS what are the means by which they can participate in those classes is there is there a way that they talk to their counselor or anything or is it you've got to wait till next year and we figure out if we're going to add it at the other school I'm going to defer to this one because I think I incorrectly answered this last time good evening um so through the Staffing process our goal between gbn and GBS is to try and make sure that all of our students have opportunities to the diverse cours workk that the District offers however we do have to make sure that we
118uphold the seat limitations that are available in one building or another so I'm going to give a quick example to explain how we would uh provide a traveling course as we call it a very common one is Hebrew housed at GB n um and Hebrew very rarely fills completely at gbn um so at GBS we offer that to our students and at the time of course selection we indicate to them uh that it it doesn't typically run at GBS but they could take it at gbn um and very recently in the past three years we have started to provide a shuttle service between GBS and gbn um to remove any other barriers that had historically been in place of students being unable to self transport um so we work with the schedulers to be able
119to fit it within the master schedule we account for those traveling students in the overall Staffing plan to make sure whichever building is receiving The Travelers um has the seats available for it um however we're not looking to do that broadscale across every courses because we are trying to ensure that students can stay at their home school and that we build programs in each of the buildings um so we typically do this with our specialized program in um for example Spanish Heritage language program that I mentioned earlier this evening that uh GBS hosts or welding at gbn we have a variety of these unique learning opportunities and we're very transparent in that communication of offering students capacity to travel so it doesn't apply to every class is what you're telling me correct yes so it's
120only select classes may I recommend in the guide an asct or something if there is that option for to indicate that that is and then back page or something instructions on how a family could go about asking or what they should ask their counselor absolutely uh because that would this is such a wonderful work that makes it just much more transparent in all your guides that okay wait this is one I can ask about this one is or if it's a rotating class if it's if the other idea that I understand you may have faculty at one school one year and next year maybe well it it depends on development of programming so I can give another example of um for example uh ASL American sign language for years and years our North students traveled
121over to Glenbrook South but then North uh this current Academic Year reached a number of students to be able to justify a complete section of asl1 at gbn without the students needing to travel so we try to be very flexible and adaptive each year always trying to reach the outcome of completing a program or a course at the home school right so we we could indicate it in the course guide but if we see in the process of Staffing that that we meet that minimum threshold that's been set to run a class then we'd rather run it at the home school and not have the students travel okay so again the point is if there is if there is some additional details to note those that'll make it very and the other one uh it
122may be under student services or could be a page at the end is going back to our question earlier about growth mindset and the opportunity to move diagonally or into other areas love the grids uh but I guess reinforce again talking to their counselors about if they have questions about class placements or how do they go to select classes this guide is a wonderful opportunity for them to do that uh looking at I think it's on page 61 the math guide and I know from gbn experience there are a number of freshmen and there were some at South as well too that were actually in AP uh uh BC calculus they're freshman year and vice versa we've had a number of kids go through these programs at different and I know this is a model
123of what is typical so that may be another disclaimer on the charts these are typical but we do have this Matrix approach here where we put students into different classes based on their abilities uh you may have a freshman in sitting in with juniors in a class and it's not necessarily the honors class track because they've mastered the skills but they this was the appropriate level and that's one thing that's always been really remarkable about the glim bricks that we are putting these kids where they're challenged appropriately and sometimes the label and while we're trying to get these charts together we kind of start feeling like we're boxing them in but we're actually much more flexible so I would add maybe this is the recom even it's noted as recommendation track and stuff and then
124same footnote so you're counselor for regarding placement and everything yes I I really like that because that's the intention we find that we get the challenge of something like this is we get mired in the details or the nuances of the glenbrooks and then everything is an exception but I really just like the Simplicity of the language this is a typical pattern or typical path but there are multiple Pathways to the same outcome so really like that language thank and that kind of reinforces What U my colleague was saying about also College placements and everything with what they're doing you a lot of the schools are giving credits for you getting that four or five on your math or your English however they're still requiring you to go still take their calculus one uh because
125it's a right of passage it's the boot camp that you're going through that University so you walk in with 24 credit hours but you're still forced to take certain core classes regardless because we want you to learn our way uh so I know it's a balancing act in terms of what can we do with that and dual credits doesn't even address that too because even with dual credits they will not offer it as well too and go you still have to take my calculus one and that varies unfortunately by the thousands of schools that are out there um so yeah I guess it's that other disclaimer subject to correct again and that's what we have up in the front about dual credit we we try to speak to that so people can have a better
126understanding and how to calibrate that so we can make sure to highlight that even more now wonderful work again and another round of applause if anyone has any additional comments or questions for the team again please feel free to shoot Dr johnes in a note and he'll get it off to them uh moving on then to our next item whoops am I clicking too many things here uh 9.3 acceptance of a donation award for the glenbrooks so this is a very quick one we have uh found ourselves in a very fortunate position in which the school um glum South school booster club has uh committed to donating funds in order for us uh to buy about $141,000 worth of equipment at Glenbrook South Dr gll would you take us through the details certainly um we
127had an opportunity to learn more about Glenbrook North uh booster club's donation last week and uh we gave an early preview that we would have h a separate donation from the Glenbrook South booster club I want to really give credit to um athletic director Mr Tom midus for all of his work not not only identifying that there was a Improvement opportunity that doesn't only benefit Athletics but also physical education courses um but also work with Dr Pac to facilitate a comprehensive bid and evaluation process um if we take a look at table one as identified on page two you'll notice that we received four different uh quotations for similar uh fitness equipment uh we're recommending uh proceeding forward with awarding the bid to direct Fitness Solutions uh for equipment that is uh ultimately branded Dynamic
128Fitness at the cost of $14,597 we provided a variety of illustrations that will give you an understanding of the layout uh and then also what the equipment looks like and for those who um may not recall the exact layout uh this equipment will be going into a secondary weight room uh which is directly to the left of the Fieldhouse it's actually accessible through some garage doors for a lack of better terms um we look forward to replacing our existing equipment that is quite dated and Beyond its useful life and uh just really also want to recognize the work of the glenberg South um boosters um this is an investment that our parents our community and their fundraising efforts has made possible and uh we're very excited for this now we really appreciate the community and
129and the foundation for all their work to do this on behalf of the Glenbrook uh Glenbrook South and everything so it's very exciting we've got you know earlier in our consent after a few discussions had uh our folks up north doing something and now folks south of go Willow have contributed as well too so that's wonderful uh this is for discussion today only it'll come back on consent any questions I'll start over on Miss sequin good thank you Dr well good all right so we'll bring this back on consent thank you all and thank you again to our boosters all right moving on to 9.4 board policies and procedures this is a followup to our previous discussion regarding uh 7.16 personal appearance which then as you may recall then uh led to changes also in
130the handbooks at the schools and everything it uh was the basis and stuff so uh Dr Johns thank you since we last met uh the gbn and GBS teams completed their review of the recommendations and the questions that the board asked and made both handbook policy revisions accordingly these documents incorporate the feedback from the November 11th We Believe gives the provides a greater Clarity to the readers while addressing areas of growth in tone of structure as discussed by the board uh Dr Grell were there other details that we should make note of no the only other element that I would add at all is um I'm going to read directly from 6.20 School dress code this was an important statement that the board had asked that we summarize um and I believe actually um somebody's
131words are from Dr George's and what she shared with the board um so a School dress code is designed to honor the dignity and ensure the belonging of all of our students allowing students to express their individuality while ensuring that attire does not interfere with the orderly operation of the school or the health safety or education of any student this approach unders scores the district's commitment to fostering an inclusive environment where all students feel valued through the use of explicit language the dress code equips students families and staff with a shared understanding of daily expectations um I wanted to emphasize that because that um represented a significant amount of the feedback in addition to some other changes uh that we're happy to respond to any questions that you might have Mr oare as being a
132member of the anything additional you'd like Dad okay anyone any questions Dr seberg just appreciate the work put on it you already had put a lot of work on it just adding the Tweet so thank you Mr sh anyone else M I just want to say I feel like the revisions um were very responsive to what was brought forward at the last meeting so I was very happy to see that um and I think they're they're um really helpful I I like the positive um statement at the beginning um of the policy um and were I guess that's handbook so not policy sorry it does also though exist in the policy Dr Steinberg recommendation right and that sort of sets the table for this right that you know we're it's not in order to have
133everyone feel included we're doing this not we're restricting you so that you know it just has a completely different it turned it on its head and I think it makes it more effective also um and um setting out what we're trying to accomplish so I appreciate that M sequin anything no I appreciate all the changes yeah I please share my appreciation as well uh to I know actually our president who's away on policy as well too that was involved in the this with Mr oare and the rest of the policy committee uh in making these changes this is a very important piece of the puzzle and the ongoing work that the committee has been doing with updating all of our polic and then integrating them into handbooks procedures and everything else that the uh schools
134do here to make everybody feel like they belong uh without safely so uh this will be coming back on consent at the upcoming meeting so that leaves us now to uh 9.5 the isba uh conference debrief a few of us had the opportunity to attend this past weekend the conference there was a number of and I'll we'll go around around the room to those that attended to share what they've participated in everything I at the high level can at least uh I'll start it off with a couple common things that I observed with the I want to say hundreds of districts that were represented there we are not alone in the issues and everything else that we're facing it seems to be there is a systemic changes in the way education is being uh supported
135and what the issues are that districts are facing and forcing a lot of districts to really go back to the fundamentals remembering exactly why are they here who are they representing why based on what should I be doing to keep this community going keep our kids going keep education going positively constructively and equipping these kids for the future that is yet to be known so that is something that I kind of seen overall I can quickly report I guess on one piece as your as the delegate to the uh conference in terms of the uh some of the legislation that the uh group will be promoting and everything no surprises really other than this was also a change in Dynamic uh everything that came out in the guide in advance that we discussed that was
136on consent was adopted however the process changed all at the last minute uh six out of two out of the six that were on consent were ped from consent last minute for discussion still ended up going through vote and passed eventually but it just showed the change in Dynamic where every piece everyone felt the need to have to have a voice have to be heard and everything it created a lot of frustration among the delegates as well too because what became a could have been a two-hour meeting that was prepared and done by started separating out you had the parliamentarians everyone coming out to try to figure what was going to happen next how do we go about this oh wait this person brought it up now we've open discussion let's go back and forth
137make sure everybody gets their time and everything and that adds to the costs so they're looking one thing I heard from some of the folks afterwards they're going to be looking at how how many of these now do they bring forward and everything and this is just the group that is recommending to our legislators lobbying for what may be changes happening none of the appeals went through either but the again people wanted their chance to be heard one more time uh and it was interesting even on the appeal it's you're appealing to have the discussion the people that came up to to voice that were not appealing that piece they were appealing the actual matter trying to bring that up as part of the discussion which I think added to the frustration as well too
138so it reminds us to use the rules and you know they're there for a reason to keep things efficiently so that was something that I noticed have changed but with that I'm G to start with Mr O'Hare here actually P can I ask you a question on that what were the two that were being um held back four of them were held oh four which which four uh actually uh hold on I have my sheets here I'm curious yes they I mean they were held back for consent uh for discussion and they did pass and they passed by not even yeah not even close it was you know the same as you know 10 votes versus 300 yeah so it wasn't anything drastic but they Ed the the procedures and everything I had my list
139here I apologize I'm sorry if you no no no I was going to report on and then I figured I'd spare you folks is this oh wait here it is sorry it's printed in large writing no wonder I'm not noticing it uh okay the two that made it the so the Illinois state seal Biol literacy was one that was debated uh briefly the resolution to support the evidence-based funding was debated uh the resolution that would support the unified health plan for school districts to participate through the central Management Services was debated an amendment to the existing position statement on Election Day school closures was debated so the only two that went the measure to oh actually no actually that one there's another part of six but uh and also the Tiff a measure that would
140advocate for Tiff process reforms was also debated uh number six which there was a a piece also in some language that they wanted uh stated about why schools can be open to keep it local that was a 7.08 was also discussed so yeah everything that was on consent just pulled okay pretty much so Mr O'Hare um no it it was a good conference I guess for me I went to one of the ones on on funding and I was fascinated by um you don't realize how much RJ in his department does on just keeping everything running on a regular basis um and talk to some other school districts doesn't run quite so well at times so and and the delay in the property taxes was an issue for some schools and for us it was
141concerning but just kind of a blip so thank you RJ and it was it's thank you yes Mr Shan well you heard me mention um one of the seminars I went to which was about um dual credit and it was extremely interesting and of course I was trying to compare what they do to what we do they've been at it quite a bit longer 214 and um there's a lot there that I think we we can learn I think we're looking at them there's no secret there um we have members of our team who were work there and um but they're there few years ahead of us and so their number of offerings is considerably greater as is the the level of adoption so that said to me there's a lot we can do with
142this and the superintendent to his credit really stress the the cost savings to families I mean we really I think we kind of sometimes want to kind of play a you know not really want to say that publicly like why would you do that but the real the reality is a student can easily come out with a year of college credit and at 20 to 100 Grand a pop for a year of college depending what you're doing it is not an insignificant amount but also is a great opportunity for students um and the other thing that was interesting and ours kind of look the same up there was there's really this dichotomy between AP and dual credit they really they were not seeing much of a diminishment in the number of AP uh like student
143courses taken so you like you add up all the kids times the number of courses you know so like I guess it'd be like the number of tests actually and they were kind of constant more more less while the AP number was sort of that's gradually up and so they weren't cannibalizing each other and this in his explanation he felt they really weren't the same students he said there seems in his opinion to be sort of this um Prestige associated with ap that dual credit doesn't really seem to have so for certain families they want the prestige or apparent PR Prestige of of the AP offering and they they viewed that to be of greater value thought that was interesting and my own personal opinion I know if you take the the Dual credit and
144you get the credit you've got the credit I mean no nobody no you know I mean you've got that credit and generally a college is not gonna you know say that's not a college credit so that that was one thing the other thing there was a big emphasis on trust trust as a topic so this was one of the the two big General Sessions and I went to another one um that was more of a workshop and of course I'm sitting here thinking well how would how would this you know apply to us um but it was it was really eye opening um the gentleman who did the presentation was very Dynamic very interesting wrote a book easy to follow um but so much flows from trust and um hard to earn easy to lose
145I think we all understand that and um so if you think sometimes we have challenges one of the during the General Session that the gentleman doing the he says turn to your neighbor and you know he went we did this two or three times and the gentleman sitting next to me was a superintendent from a small District next to East St Louis Illinois and I told him about some El and he said well we have a board member who at the meeting text his wife about um close session things and it's on Facebook literally while we are sitting at the meeting so when things look Bleak they they they can be materially worse and I just felt so bad for this I guy because it's like it's almost I mean we've been through this it's
146very difficult to sanction or discipline a board member and and it's like the guy was like despondent about it and it's understandable so I thought it was a very worthwhile conference not not the best um I thought some of the sessions were kind of like sleepers but um learned some things met some people so that was my experience thank you Dr cyberg yeah thank you and so I went to two sessions I wanted I I have two approaches when I go to conferences one of them is like what you just said look at names and go to some sessions and see what happens and the other I look like going to the gym try to work on my muscle memory so in this time I I hadn't been in this conference for no not going
147literally to the gym but to to the Mind gym I haven't been on the triaa for I think four years so when looking at the sessions I look for sessions that address directly board members what should we do on this or that almost as if I this is my first time walking there so I share with RJ one on decisions decisions which was really good done by I iasb and was throwing cases like left and right and asking people interactiv to say it was who should make the decision it was kind of like a whole thing this is a superintendent decision this is the board decision this is superintendent but board should respect the superintendent they should coales together and the interesting thing was that and you were there RJ was there except for one
148I probably there were like 15 cases except for one really you see anywhere in the room 80% of people coalescing in this should be a decision from like we were all over the place and and the ISB person was challenging everybody why do you think it's this way why do and he would say what's the right answer okay what very refreshing what you know thinking about sometime professional development again just for muscle memory we get used to doing things and then you there has to be some some marker that says what should be and although we have policies and procedures sometimes we forget or we just go with the SP of it so to me it was interesting then I went to superintendent evaluation because we did something that we do and I like and
149I'll add a comment I think Pete made to me later on something else the session was given by a superintendent a board president and a board member all from the same district and they were talking about how the process work together I was moderated by somebody else was very interesting and and later when I I think was earlier not earlier I think pet you were the one mentioning we should be offering sessions as well as the district because we are my thunder where I was going to give you guys an assignment for in a few minutes I'm saying we in terms of the administrators of the district or teachers of the district but I think this is something where I think we do some things that we do very well and and it would be
150nice to communicate with other people on the things that we do very well so it was a dual thing and the last thing is talking about visual memory I was so excited about the talk and buying the book I'm already I think a quarter into it or something I haven't read a physical book in a long time so this is this has been good challenging experience thank you so I'll add so besides the delegation and going to do that I enjoyed the uh General Session and I missed a few sessions because of that uh but I did I have two approaches there sessions I put on my agenda to go and see and then if they don't catch my attention in the first five minutes then I start wandering the hallways and jumping into the
151other ones to see if they're on topic and stuff because you can write a good description it does half the time they're not talking about it but um there was a few on board self- evaluations which I was very interested in it's on our plan to do that in June and everything I got a couple good contexts of sharing their experience of what they found beneficial and what they also found as pitfalls when they went down the self- evaluation process as well too based on who they did one of them had a very interesting suggestion where they bring back their past board members to those self- evaluations as well too they invite them to be part of that that is gets a little dicey in the self the uh closed meetings piece so I've got
152to talk but they're your predecessors that are doing it uh over at rolling 2114 so they've invited them back and everything for it and stuff so just have to figure out how they end up doing it um and I think it may be part of the assessment I don't know if they bring them back for the discussion so they share in what they want because they do then strategically tie their movement for the upcome the board that's in place to that evaluation how are we doing on things and use that as a guiding point so that's one thing I I know we're going to discuss that at the next meeting but uh so was looking at that um the other one there was working collaboratively there that was another one that was very you know
153with the board working collaboratively and everything there was some interesting points you know there's a huge debate over what is the difference between transparency and collaboration and you sometimes there very trans you think you're transparent but it's not the answer I wanted so that well I was being transparent now well it's not you know they raised that as an excuse that it's not being transparent you're not going through the you know we shared everything with the process and St how do you educate the boy and so their advice was sharing actually more about the process and which is not very exciting for most people than when they have an issue and they come to a board wanting to wrestle with it where do I go and like well here's the process you go to the
154committee you discuss it there then it works its way up but that's where you can be mostly heard and everything and that may be some things that we want to look at as we go forward as well too um Carol you went to the fun Foya one and everything there was but I did get a I popped into one on that as well too it came up in a I think they may have done a repeat of it it was interesting to see how they're you know were're required to do more and more in that area and what people have access to so it becomes very another thing for board training I think we'll all have to be mindful of is what is captured what is in writing what is of discoverable now everything as
155well too uh and what is considered work product and while you're collaborating to develop that product and so that we are educated on that so coming out of it the uh Dr John's and RJ both ended up getting texts from me about everybody's gonna get a holiday gift uh Bruce will be excited about this too you'll get the trust Edge which I'm hoping we can discuss at upcoming meeting uh kind of along those lines but during that session and you guys can chime in that we're there but it what was interesting and I've seen the studies in the business world that that does trust some of the other issues we start talking about communication issues and other things usually that is a symptom of something else that you have to go find out what that's
156what is and I'm this is right on at least the first pages are right on target right so I thought it'd be good for us as we're going through this this in the upcoming months and stuff to kind of teing up for self-evaluation and other things to understand also where do are we headed uh as well too in terms of that so uh those are some of my takeaways from it and I'm trying to think of a Dr John's and RJ you guys got a chance to go and Carol got a chance to go into some sessions anything I I went to a couple really good ones but and I particularly like the speaker on trust I thought he was fantastic uh and and I found myself quoting him to cabinet members today at their
157dismay um R.J and I started off thanks Carl um RJ and I started off by attending the isb's accountability and support session um and it was led by members of the Illinois State Board of educations Administration and what they started off with was identifying that we have a problem of practice in Illinois in which uh our cut scores for performance levels are too restrictive to the point students are getting A's and B's uh on Dual credit courses but not passing proficiency on the cut scores and they went on to identify that we had the fourth highest set of performance expectations in the country and they are going to go through a process that that really starts uh this February January or February to re-evaluate our our performance levels uh for all grades and all subjects
158and then put together uh recommend Commendation for a redesign of the accountability measures much of what uh Ryan talked about today this is a massive project it won't be done until probably sometime in 2026 uh where the cut score performance levels will change the standards expectations for every class every level I'm sorry every subject every level will be re-evaluated and and likely change so uh we already know that we have some frustration that we won't see the state's recommended cut scores for prea and act for eight months nine months I think is what we're anticipating uh so the the good side of things is the isbe is recognizing that they as they describe have a problem of practice the downside is that I don't think they really uh were responsive when we said the timing
159of when we get our data is absolutely essential we got our data uh we get our data so late that it's off often very hard for us to make changes in the school year in order to impact the kids whose performance we just measured so um that has been a problem of ours ever since uh No Child Left Behind we're still struggling with but it'll be interesting to see how this process takes place they did com um commit to a process that would use uh lots of our teachers lots of our administrators so we in 225 will look closely for those opportunities so we can participate uh but it was good to know know that I rather know that now than read about it in six months so I thought that was valuable and then
160I went to a couple really a neat tech one about all kinds of tech tools from a colleague of ours not too far from us who really is a leader in um uh tools actually how to help us make our work as administrators and and administrative assistance how to make us more um efficient so Dr gel did you and and Miss Smith I'm sorry oh can I ask one followup question yeah what what do you what do you define as cut scores I don't I'm not so on the assessments at the performance levels that they perform at it what point do you say someone is proficient or so when you say cut score are you saying that that's the that's the score which that below that they're not proficient and above it they are cor
161yeah yeah okay and they still get a good grade on the course anyway that's what you're mentioning yeah so what the ISB has pointed out that we have students who won't score proficient on the state assessments but are getting A's and B's in dual credit courses which are really benchmarked against as by as dictated by the local community college or the college in their particular Network so it's it's a that's not supposed to happen Okay Dr gell right well I certainly did enjoy my time with Dr Steinberg it was interesting the questions for decisions decisions was as Dr Steinberg mentioned they present a scenario and you have to decide whose decision is it superintendent board somewhere in between and it it made me feel a little bit like experiencing a standardized test because they were
162very creatively worded to maybe see if you were going to get the right answer or the wrong answer uh but Dr seinberg and I enjoyed U some nice conversations there um the other thing uh uh I wanted to bring up is I had an opportunity on Thursday last week to attend um one of our management association board meetings and we received a legislative update um it's an important one because it has to do with the different pension system tiers that we have and so there has been a lot of discussion about what we refer to as tier 2 uh for our TRS and imrf um annuitant uh and members and um there's a subst difference in terms of pension benefits um and there's legislation to possibly address that the natural question however um is that
163the state of Illinois recently announced uh or members of the governor's budget office recently announced that the state is projected to have a deficit in the upcoming fiscal year so to make changes to pension programs will likely cost more and so how does that balance in the equation uh but it was it was very good to understand uh what's happening in Springfield and what might happen uh in the next legislative session the final thing I'll share is that one of the things that I know Mrs Hughes and Dr George's promotes um a lot among our staff uh especially in our buildings is the importance of professional growth and development and the joint annual conference or triple I is just that for members of the Board of Education members of cabin things of that nature to
164come together and to refine our um art of actually um governing and I think there was a lot of great conversations uh that were had um I would also uh challenge ourselves I think uh Mr glowaki might have been going down this path um to realize that when we listen to different sessions it's kind of a reminder of some great things that we're doing in our district and perhaps this might be an opportunity for us to come together and maybe even submit a session or two for consideration um because there's a lot of stuff that's happening in the state that we can learn from I think this is also an opportunity for us to share that knowledge and I think the best PD happens when you're giving and taking away from it so little challenge
165for the future that we'll talk about uh in the future and I was going to say I'm so I'm going to challenge this board it's a near future because I think proposals have to start going in by January oh wow and so you know while it's still fresh if you have a topic in mind that you think we can high like shoot me and Bruce and Dr John's and Dr gll an email and we'll see about who may be the appropriate people to pair up because I think it is beneficial I we seeing while we're faced with all the similar challenges that many districts that I mentioned earlier are wrestling with the one thing I see that we do differently is how collaboratively we do actually work the problems and go through our process to
166come to Solutions at the end to address those problems and take them on the one that kept coming up a lot of schools we were discussing was the whole cell phone issue and you know that was one of the pieces of legisl uh one of the recommended legislation pieces and I'm like oh yeah we did it no problem yeah here's how you can do this and they were like wait how did you do that they were concerned about I mean there were but you know they were concerned about with the wh ifs what if this what if that parent brings it up and everything else and um so even something that we take for granted on how we did it someone else can benefit from so uh yeah I'm gonna challenge you guys on that
167one by the next meeting if you guys come come up with a couple topics Miss Smith do you have one to share oh yes I seem to go to um legal sessions um so yes I did go to the Foya and it was it was not only Foya it was om so the open meetings act so I know that all of the board members have taken the El training um that you have to do when you get elected to the board but it it's always a good idea idea to kind of have a refresher on that and um so I I really enjoyed the Foya piece because it was well both pieces were actually done by members of the Attorney General's office so it was people from the pack so if we um give someone
168or either we deny a foa or we don't give them the information that they think that they need then they can go to the pack and so it was really interesting to hear from the people of the pack of how they review those things and how they make their determinations um with the ma they talked about meetings and they talked about Gatherings which I thought was really interesting so here we're at this formal meeting but then there's also Gatherings which we also had while we were at the conference we had lunch together and so board members had to be very careful about the conversations that they have in those Gatherings we talked about our kids we talked about what we were doing for Thanksgiving but um as as board members are in those Gatherings they
169have to be very careful about not conducting business and it's not only those Gatherings but it's also it could be on a zoom call it could be um making sure that we don't reply to all when we if there are um emails from the administration that the that the board is getting because that could be seen as conducting business um I also went to a legal update that was actually by our own Law Firm so um John Fester was there and um and ly heims was there and they talked a lot about um Title 9 about um OCR complaints and about how some changes may be coming um based on what the new Administration is thinking so they talked about immigration they talked about actually the future of isbe a little bit um book Banning
170and censorship and also um also sports teams so that was really interesting it was called um um we can't make this stuff up so they they did have um some really interesting anecdotes about what was about some of the things that like Mr gaki says are happening in other districts where you go that I'm I'm glad that that's not happening in our district so it was very interesting thank you and thank you for uh your com so again challenge by the next meeting topic ideas that we can start working on some quick proposals The Proposal process is not that onerous but it you know come up with a jazzy title and we can work through it from there um so that H kind of concludes the open part of our meeting for this evening we
171do have some matters for Clos session our next board meeting will be December 9th at 7 p.m. right here uh so today just quickly to sum up we approved two agreements the retirement agreement and a new contract uh we heard about the triple I conference we reviewed our Illinois school report card stats and what we can do and where we're focused on improving and enhancing those uh we discussed the curricular proposal and the new curricular guide that we love sold New York Times bestseller list um and then uh we had their second read of our policy 7.16 on the comp uh supplemental handbook policies associated with it so with that I'm now going to uh we do have matters as I mention for a close to consider the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal
172of specific employees of the public body or legal counsel for the public body including hearing testimony on complaint lodged against an employee of the public body or against legal counsel for the public body to determine its validity security procedures and use of personnel and equipment to respond to an actual a threatened or reasonably potential danger to the safety of employees students staff the public the public property and litigation when an action against affecting or on behalf of a particular public body has been filed as pending before a court or administrative tribunal or when the public body finds that an action is probable or inate in which case the basis for the finding shall be recorded and entered into the minutes of the Clos meeting per section 2 c19 and 10 of the open meeting acts
173I'll entertain a motion so moved second all right let's uh all in favor all in I any opposed motion carries let's be back here at quick bio break and get back it should be pretty quick I think so do we have the case that the motion is long e e e and Mr glowaki we are back all right thank you we're back in Open Session uh we have one item coming out possible action regarding early graduation I'll entertain a uh motion to Grant the request to graduate early I move to approve the early graduation as discussed and close session second all right I'll entertain a motion to adjourn so moved second one all those in favor I I all right have a great Thanksgiving everyone thank you happy 10:43 p.m.