001[Music] here Spurlock is absent more here Connie here him your meeting calls to order at 7 09 pm um up first we have the public hearing and the fund balance transfer if someone could be the motion anytime I moved at the board of education of Oak Park Elementary School District 97 moves into oh yeah never in mind what else the fun balance transfer yes uh I moved at the board of education of Oak Park Elementary School District 97 moves oh my goodness um to close to close open session with a public hearing on the 2223 torque fund to operations and maintenance fund balance transfer resolution yes Kurt Johnson yes Ken Hall yes for a lock is accent okay yes or yes yes motion to open the hearing is passed were there any public comments for
002I don't think I see any public comments for the fun transfer so then I think we need an emotion to oh I moved at the board of education of Oak Park Elementary School District 97 closed the public hearing on the 2022-2023 tour fund operations and maintenance fund balance transfer resolution thank you more yes attorney yes yes or Johnson yes Ross Jordan yes motion to close okay then we have a number of folks for public comment so up first we have uh Judy guyato Grace did you read the thing oh I'm sorry um I'm sorry um sorry I have a statement to read before the public comments public participation is a vital part of our school system success d-97 Board of Education provides time for input from community and visitors at its meeting starting September 13
0032022 d97 will resume holding board meetings in person on the resume pre-pandemic public comment procedures uh that's not it is that it yeah oh um if you wish to address the board of person during a meeting please follow the following procedure sign in on the public comment sheet before the start of the meeting the call to the table please state your name and please finish your comments within the three-minute time limit visitors will be accommodated according to the boardroom capacity should the need for additional seating arise 297 will provide space for her overflow visitors u97 does not discriminate on the basis of disabilities in admission or access to the programs or activities including board meetings reinvite individuals requiring reasonable accommodation to contact the Ada coordinator at least 48 hours before the scheduled meeting time um
004sorry so up first then we have tunicaiah to Grace [Music] my kids went to school here my husband worked for district 97. and I'm here to speak to the issue of safe gun storage I feel that as a such a large presence in the community that the Board needs to develop the policy regarding safe gun storage a plan and communicate that to the parents the vast majority of children continue on homicide deaths are unintentional shooting deaths and injuries and they occur in the home more than 80 percent of child suicides involve a gun that belongs to a family member 4.6 million children live in homes with at least one gun that is loaded and unsecured over the last 10 decades the firearm suicide rate among children and team and teams has increased by 60 percent
005storing guns unloaded locked and separate from the ammunition can help decrease these alarming numbers I urge you just to consider this and to develop a plan thank you thank you up next we have Alex Allison lipsman hi good evening thank you I'm Allison mixman I have two children at Lincoln School I'm here as a member of Commerce demand action and I am also asking that the board consider implementing a communication plan to go to all families and all staff every year that asks them to know about the importance of secure firearm storage and I just want to underscore that 4.6 million children live in a home with at least one unlocked and loaded firearm um and we know that there are firearms in Oak Park and I hope that you will do what you can
006to pass the communications plan so all families can get that information about the importance of secure Firearms to learn every year thank you thank you uh aplexia Lewis is in love I raised my children in Oak Park and have the Blessed opportunity that my grandchildren are attending District 97 12. and they are at Irving School and recently my granddaughter said something to me about shootings at schools and she says but we don't have mean people in our Park and the kids are worried and we are wary as well grandson of course the kids hang out at our house in the summer my grandson wanted to go play at the neighbors for the very first time in my life I asked the parent um you know do you have a gun in your house when what
007happens to it and um I was nervous it was hard it's not easy to do and we really do want to support that the school maximized ways to make it easy for us to talk with parents and have parents talk with one another about how to keep their children safe how to ask questions how to know how to store guns and so these policies if you could have a policy and ways to require parents to get acquainted with it or that to acknowledge that just to increase it as a way all of us will be feeling safer and my granddaughter will hopefully be true there's no more here up next we have Hannah Boudreau hi friends so as the Oak Park Teachers Association co-president I wanted to speak to you too regarding your decision for
008Gina Harris's unpaid leave of absence as you probably already know Miss Harris she's a culture and climate coach for four of our feeder schools that go to Brooks she recently ran and was elected to the iea Illinois Education Association as the state secretary treasurer so this work would be mostly down in Springfield as I'm sure you're aware um it's an incredible opportunity it's an unprecedented opportunity not only is Gina Harris a product an exemplary product of our wonderful Oak Park schools so we're her children and eventually her grandchildren so this is a direct line down to pritzker in Springfield with one of our very own Oak Park residents and one of our d-97 staff members she's also a 4200 member so clearly dedicated to Oak Park in our schools and our communities this advocacy that
009she would be putting forth for us down in Springfield would be an incredible missed opportunity if we don't Grant her this leave and I know it's a long three-year leave contractually I know you're not obligated but I think you should you should really think this decision hard over is this is again such a huge opportunity not only for her but our entire community please consider branching this three-year leave of absence so Gina can go down to Springfield and advocate for strong Public Schools thank you next we have Stacy Belmont foreign my name is Stacy Velma and I am the mother of four children in school district 97. I'd like to address both statements made by a school board member at the last four meeting as well as in public comment by another parent in the
010community regarding the establishment of an lgbtqia Club at Longfellow and the request by parents to be notified in advance for clubs that they feel may be controversial to assert that advanced notice an extracurricular Club should be provided is a dangerous road to go down this club is intended to support queer students and their allies and to be a safe space for discussions around gender and sexuality that we very obviously need judging by the response to its establishment by some members of this community I would like everyone to reflect on the times that we are living in and all of the socio-political contexts that surrounds us when we have a reaction towards an lgbtqia Club in Florida teachers cannot say the word gay or discuss anything related to the queer community in their classes in Tennessee
011we're seeing the foundations of marriage rights being eroded by recent laws that were passed there all around the country trans and gender queer individuals are being targeted and many would like to see their existence erased at the same time we're coming out of a pandemic and suicide rates among adolescents are through the roof according to recent studies as many as 50 of lgbtqia teens aged 13 to 17 seriously considered suicide in 2022. we're also seeing suiciding younger children in shocking numbers and by the time a queer identified kid enters adolescence they've already likely had several years of feeling alienated and that's been exacerbated by the news all around them of movements to strip them of their rights and protections for some of our youth they cannot get support around sexuality and gender at home for
012fear potential emotional or physical abuse Oak Park is not immune to violence towards children prior notification of a club in the service of reducing some community members discomfort puts youth potentially at risk because the next step after notification is requiring parental permission what harm does it do to you and your children if a club is established without your prior knowledge to support this vulnerable population on the flip side what harm does it do to queer youth if they cannot find the support they need as they work through their identities it might seem alarmist to assume that this would be a logical Next Step but if the past six years of politics have taught us anything it's that dangerous policies are not adopted overnight we make one policy that doesn't seem too bad to most people
013that we continue to make more and more policies until eventually we find ourselves in a pretty scary place we strip rights one by one that is how it has been done throughout history and it's just as damaging on a small scale like a school district as it is on a large scale because we're talking about individual lives our children are autonomous humans too and they have rights to safety and Community it's not only dangerous to assert that schools should notify parents of the establishment of a club intended to support queer students it is also offensive the argument is that this information is sensitive however the only reason some parents consider it to be so is because of stigma and homophobia in our community as well as Society at large it assumes that there is something
014inappropriate or controversial about an lgbtqia club which connotes that there is something inappropriate or controversial about the queer community and the Very idea that the conversations around that conversations around the existence of a gay club were the topics discussed they're in are hard conversations in and of itself is a microaggressive statement we talk about Impact versus a lot in this community and that should be extended to our treatment of the lgbtqia community as well thank you we have Kelly block Kelly Thelma sorry I'm struggling here my name is Kelly Belmont I am a teacher in d97 and the wife of Stacy Belmar I will be continuing where she lives [Laughter] put yourselves in the shoes of a queer fifth grader in this Village excited about this club coming together and then hearing backlash against it
015imagine how that affects that kid and their own sense of self and identity how that contributes to their internalized homophobia regardless of whether they might have support at home Our concern is for that student the queer or questioning student who likely came to that club looking for support or to be an ally to their friend we shouldn't prioritize the personal comfort of adults over the emotional well-being of our children because they think this information is a hard topic furthermore it is our job as members of a progressive Community to address the stigma around lgbtqia people not to further it and to make sure that our policies are in line with our stated values as a school district and Village moving forward I would like our community to think about these things before they put their
016voice to their reactions please recognize that we are discussing a vulnerable population that needs these supports the conversation we should be having is how to better support our queer students during these times not should we warn parents about a support group school is about more than academics is about social relationships a sense of belonging and finding one's identity as well our policies should consider all of these things I'd also encourage board members to seriously consider the ways in which they discuss the queer community and how they might be engaging in microaggressions regardless of their intent words like tolerant are particularly triggering when talking about a marginalized group of people please consider your words they do in fact have the power to harm and please thoroughly think through any policies you might wish to consider that
017are related to individuals identities and to our community please think through your requests from the school district and try to place children's physical and emotional well-being over your own personal comfort if the idea of lgbtq visibility in our schools makes you uncomfortable then it might not be the district's responsibility to make changes but your own thank you uh lesser good evening board members my name is Anna lesser I'm a parent of two one of whom is currently enrolled at d97's pre-k program at Whittier I am here tonight to speak to you in public publicly submit my request which I previously submitted to this board via email the request is for a comprehensive actionable and widely publicized plan to proactively reduce the threat of gun violence in our schools the lives of our children and School
018Employees depend on it I am aware of the current safety trainings in fact my three-year-old who attends Whittier came home a few weeks ago and told me quote I learned today that when I grow up I can play with guns but since I'm a kid you never want to be hurt so I need to check if the gun is locked first until a grown-up this is in quotes because I was so shocked I wrote it down immediately I have two comments on this specifically we very obviously have wonderful teachers in d97 for a child to retain and share almost Verbatim what is being taught the second thought is that we are teaching kids to just survive guns it's no longer an if but a win there is a gun I am a member of mom
019submit action you have and a parent who has lost a child due to an unknown cause which is the official cause of death on her death certificate I am living the nightmare that people reference and I can attest that it feels impossible most days I also know that if she had died of something preventable my anger would be even greater I do not want any more parents to experience this never-ending pain and am enraged that there is not an active and Public School Safety plan that includes educating gun owners from d97 if there is one I can tell you as parents we don't know about it it may be likely buried at the bottom of an email of links sent out once or twice a year we know that we have guns in our community
020we know that school shootings are happening we know that you as a board have a norm of no surprises I expect you do not want to be surprised when there is an active shooter at one of your campuses so specifically the request is to put out guidance in education to all parents of d97 about the importance of locking up their guns we know that 75 to 80 percent of School shooters get their guns from their homes by sharing this information you can take an active role in protecting our children actions like this usually result in no results no shootings and no gun violence if we do have a shooting and you have not taken action I wonder how much regret you will carry with much respect for your responsibility that you're carrying I close my
021comments yeah our final public comment is John 11 Jacobson foreign good evening hi um I know I've interrupted many of you um more than others around uh this effort for the district to share information about your firearm storage with the families of g97 um and the importance of secure our firearm storage to prevent gun violence but for the record my name is Jenna 11 Jacobson I'm a hatch parent I'm a volunteer in the local lead with the Oak Park Austin area Command action group as you know our group has been asking for over a year and a half for you all to take this what we see as an essential action um I understand you are working toward potentially engaging in some kinds of awareness efforts I wanted to remind you of the critical importance
022and encourage greater urgency in these efforts we've shared with you statistical evidence to try and convey the crisis of gun violence in the hopes that you will do all that you can in Your Capacity as a school board attendant to prevent gun violence in our community I'm not going to repeat all of the data points and evidence but what does weren't repeated repeating is that the most effective action we can all take as adults to prevent these tragedies is to securely store all guns in our homes and vehicles meaning that they are locked unloaded with ammunition locked separately and we can encourage other adults to do the same we've presented these alarming Statistics over and over surely you've also seen the many high-profile school shootings covered by national media if not the local day-to-day gun
023violence that plagues our neighboring communities I presume you've also noticed increasing incidents at nearby schools in Evanston in Chicago in Berwyn and Elmhurst who had incidents in our high school recently at Julian which happened to have just been a BB gun but it should not take an incident of firearms on one of our school campuses to take the Swift action necessary to protect our kids and teachers despite repeatedly claiming that the health and safety of the United seven students is of your highest priorities you have not taken this very simple but effective way of preventing kids from accessing guns which would be to educate adults in our school Community about secure firearm storage beyond the data I will tell you that parents in this community are scared and anxious they're telling me that their children
024are scared and anxious teachers are scared and anxious they're asking me what they can do to keep their students safe at school obviously no single law or policy public education campaign is going to be enough to eradicate all gun violence we have to do everything we can to confront this crisis from every angle do everything we can to protect our children and our Educators they deserve to feel safe at school their teachers deserve to feel safe at school they deserve to be safe at school I do appreciate the sole progress better than none um and that the Educators in our district teachers and staff do so much to contribute to our kids well-being we love our schools I'm a happy satisfied parent but you haven't yet done enough and I hope that this is the
025reminder you need to prioritize the actions that you can take as leaders in our community to develop a culture of secure gun storage here in Oak Park thanks thank you that's the end to our public comments thank you everyone for coming and sharing that brings us to d97 Joy and culture celebration yes great um well one of the things that we're thinking about uh in d97 is this idea of a portrait of a graduate um and asking ourselves what is that Vision we have for a student that graduates from our school district last night we had our Coral Festival I hope and envisioned that one of the things we hope for our students is that all students have access to the Arts as part of their lives I think another thing that we want to
026make sure and we want to think about is something that we're happy to celebrate tonight which is um the access to all of our that all of our students have to design and to science technology engineering mathematics robotics those forward-thinking careers and so it's our pleasure um to invite a group of our staff members as well as students up and before I invite them you know I want to remind the board that at our March board meeting we shared that our robotics teams at Brooks and Julian both competed at the Battle of the Bots Chicago land robotics leave Championship back on February 25th this year all three tournament champions came from Julian this was the first time that the sixth grade Julian team has been crowned champion and Brooks also brought home some Hardware with
027uh tournament as tournament finalists robotic skills contest winners and League champions so we got like a serious District of Champions here and so today we have some representatives from each of our teams I'm going to invite them up and ask them a few questions so if I could invite up from our Brooks team Gabriel Lynch sixth grade student Randy Hill of Franny Hill seventh grade Ryan Campbell eighth grade come on up here yep um Andrew Burrell eighth grade and our coach Brian shiners from Julian if you'd like to invite up Lily driven sixth grade Zach driven sixth grade uh Anderson langfeld eighth grade Nate Kane 8th grade annalize dusterberg our high school mentor and our coach Tim Walsh so come on up [Applause] so Mr um Mr uh um Mr shiners and uh I'm sorry
028Sinners excuse me Mr Shooters and that's why you weren't sure which one are you following so you almost came up as an eighth grader um can you tell us a little bit about this club this work this activity what what exactly is it all about well each year we compete in a league that we actually created ourselves comprising uh 32 teams from the western suburbs here from the five six different middle schools and we compete in the next game Vex game has announced every April around this time named Tomatoes kind of leaked a little announcement and then they'll do official announcement at their World Tournament so we take that that game we buy the elements for that and then we all compete in that against ourselves and then all the schools in the league did
029you say that you created that we created the league we were part of the original Vex organization and then we kind of splintered off because we had so many teams that Dex was starting to change their uh their Rule and not allow all the teams to compete so Tim and I got together Tim you know brainstormed and we all got all the local area schools together to come up with a league in former League uh thereby all the teams could compete and all the kids could go to each of the competitions amazing Tim anything to add in terms of your experience as a coach a high point or something you want everyone to know about this work I I just I mean I've been doing this since 2006 the the club started a parent came
030to me I was a science teacher parent came to me and said hey can you do you want to do a robotics club and I was like no no okay I'll do all the work you just sit there okay you know so then I started but I saw these kids build a robot for the first time they built this tiny little robot and that was a long time ago and it's it's never been the same you know so we've gone we've gone we build robots every year but man this particular group both both schools I can tell you hands down they like listen to our our school we are not very good hosts we took every single trophy we didn't leave anything for anybody else we took every single trophy was to be earned we
031took them off so I mean I think it was it was definitely it was a highlight right there so that's amazing um you didn't take them you earned no we took it I picked them up we earned them in the court yeah so you know um students I I guess and I welcome any of you that would like to respond and if multiple students want to respond that's fine too um tell us a little bit about why you joined uh you know why you joined this group what were you what were you thinking and oh you know you know what's the reason yeah go ahead sure um I joined robotics because I did a summer camp at Brooks and Mr shinners hosted it and I enjoyed it so much I've enjoyed house league and from
032there she was invited me to join competitive okay so you got started with the summer program and then your interests grew from there great anyone else have a different place way that you came in yes so uh when I went to Mann school we had a Destination Imagination which sadly is not there anymore because the teacher had run it retired um and that's kind of like similar to Vex but like not necessarily robot focused um so it's like the same problem solving skills and so me and my friend we heard about Vex and we were just like you know what that seems like the same thing as di since we read the dreaded we're like might as well enjoy that and then it spinch it off with like all this and it was a lot
033of fun yeah so similar it wasn't summer but it was something that happened outside of school that kind of got you interested and then you looked for those opportunities so that's important you were going to share something so I just in fifth grade we did this thing called Mindstorms and so it was essentially the same thing as robots just with Legos but it was really fun and so when I got to sixth grade I was like oh cool robotics so I just decided to join with my friends and so we made it to competitive league and we ended up winning the whole tournament that's amazing that is amazing um anyone else have a story to share about you why otherwise I can ask you another question I mean in my case I just had a
034lot of time on my hands I've always been like really kind of fun of building things it's kind of reluctant at the start but it was a really fun way to spend some time uh really like Richard brand a lot I actually ended up doing it the second year in eighth grade this season um yeah one of my favorite things actually turned out to be one of the best things I've ever been a part of a lot of fun yeah well thanks and you said something really important you said that you were kind of reluctant at first so I wonder like what what advice and this is again to any of you um what advice would you give to students that maybe they haven't thought about robotics before what do you want them to think
035about or how might you try to encourage them to try it out yeah um so I think so much advice my like not giving up on what you're doing because you find terribly many many flaws and what you like your designs you built but it teaches you how to um find better ones and really just like continue trying yeah well I really appreciate that so beyond it's the actual robotics but you're saying you learn a lot of skills around kind of social emotional skills like how to be resilient and keep working at it so it's not only robotics thank you for that appreciate appreciate that and anyone else how would you sell this to somebody who's like robotics me no way any any thoughts on that yeah well for me at first I didn't really
036think of it you know when I first got into the school in seventh grade because of covet my first thought wasn't oh hey I should go enjoy this but um one of my friends actually he was like oh hey are you going to go to this after school you know it's a robotics informational meeting I'm like sure why not it sounds kind of interesting and so I went and um I thought hey that sounds really cool and so I went to the tryouts and I got a team and you know as I said you had to be resilient and it was it was difficult at first because I had no idea what I was doing but um and that it turns out you know to be a really fun thing and a thing that I
037mean I I feel like it will help me throughout my whole rest of my life I'm no grateful I did it it's great to hear um can you give us an idea of um did you want to share something oh I was going to kind of add on to the same thing but I'm a senior in high school this year and I started back in sixth grade um and was on the team all three years at Julian and then once I left d97 I went to oprf where I have been on the robotics team over there for all four years as well um it's kind of been my lead way into getting into college I wrote my college essay on it and it's kind of really helped me with like help I've worked with everyone
038here because uh dude I was the head wrap then this season and last season um so I got to work with everyone and it really helped me like kind of you know be willing to stand up and I hate public speaking here you are great well appreciate all that too like the leadership skills and to help to make your pathway how about um if we haven't heard from you I've loved it like give us an example of what's something you've built um can you kind of describe something you created share any of that with us anyone uh yes so my team we kind of took all the components they needed in for the game and we decided to just do all of them so our robot ended up being uh over engineered uh mess that
039worked out pretty well um and it was just very big and could do everything um turns out we didn't need to be able to do everything but we set the high very high goals because we wanted to it was fun to have fun and kind of show off a little bit and build everything uh it required a lot of like as I think she said uh re like building something rebuilding it and then building it and uh building and keep working on and expanding our ideas like first tournament we did terrible because we had gone for everything and it was kind of like everything was really bad but by the end but by the last tournament everything was pretty decent so we had an overall well-rounded robot sounds like so it's like everything Bagels like
040a everything robot like yeah that was that was my my teacher yeah that's your team tell me like what how about um can you give an example of like what can this robot do that you thought was pretty cool that you you were able to make it do anyone so we worked on something it was kind of like we found a way to make a robot drive in any direction in like in any scenario but it was it took a super long time it was super difficult you saw one problem another problem comes up and the robot ended up being somewhere around 35 to 40 pounds with every everything we put on it so it took a lot of time a lot of frustration but it wasn't designed at the end so that's definitely good
041so yeah yeah you solved one problem and another one creates created and you just keep working through it till it until you get there um well I uh we all want our pre you know thank you and and celebrate you for your accomplishment I think also uh your coaches um uh Mr shinners and Mr Walsh uh you said something like I want us to also hear there wasn't this and then they created it so the only reason we're here is because we also have staff members and teachers who create new opportunities for students and so I want to acknowledge and thank you for your leadership thank you students we got a lot of things we're hoping uh you were going to be help us to figure out to solve so thank you for your leadership
042and for being here tonight so thank you everyone [Applause] you couldn't do without your support you're an LPF is also our partners so we couldn't do it up a lot of people making this happen so thank you again thank you [Applause] um as a robotics parent I've had the pleasure of watching this whole season unfold and the teamwork and the I'm going to pull in a quote for Venus from when the basketball team was here because Robotics are and programming are integrated into everything we do these days if you can't order a book from anywhere without it going through a warehouse that has a robotics delivery we're exploring other planets we're doing concerts and moving scenery on so one of the pieces that Venus pointed out with the athletes are your student leaders as well
043as athletes so I just want to congratulate all of you for being student leaders as well in this field and again one more shout out to the coaches who did a bad news lab and the high school students who came in to support our students because it was really truly wonderful to behold all season thank you [Applause] thank you thank you um up next then we have the district priority update yes oh no do we have more yes we actually have another team so I am it's a pleasure to welcome up uh Donna Middleton our senior director of special education as well as Susan Mira principal at Irving we also have members of our community here um prisia Collins a parent or did I pronounce it incorrectly okay uh Jadis Stewart is going to be
044Representatives Jade is here uh our fourth grade student Mary Kelly our general education teacher and Mary special education teacher I need to do my pronunciations before the board meeting um so come on up and I'm going to hand it off to Donna Middleton because we're very excited to to share this celebration with the board absolutely so tonight we want to highlight one of our students Jadis and James's story focuses on the center of our work in the student services department and the vision of our district which is inclusion and research shows that students do better both socially and academically when they have access to general education and interaction with typical peers the law in which we're governed by and special education as idea and idea also establishes that students should be educated in the least
045restrictive environment to the um you know most extent possible and um Beyond though the research and the law I would just like to say that our district in our community it values and honors the worth of all members and so I am proud to have you meet Jadis I'm proud to have you meet his wonderful mother and the fabulous team at Julie at Irving that makes sure that Judas uh is successful so full disclosure I've told Jadis while the adults talk he can be on his phone it is 7 45 at night and this is it so all parents know what we need to do we need to do at a 7 45 meeting he doesn't know when it's his turn to talk we'll talk about so thank you for having us here Jadis is
046one example of all the hard work that collaboration and inclusion happens in our district and especially at Irving Irving is a unique school we are the um school that for elementary students that are in multi-needs those are students with severe profound disabilities Irving is the only school that has those students so we welcome kids from all eight elementary schools once you're at Irving you are an Irving Eagle for life so let's say Early Childhood team will send you to awesome kindergarten even if Jadis or a student like James might be ready to go to gen Ed you can stay at Irving the whole time because we've started there and wanted to stay there let me tell you a little bit about Jada's story and the reason we have James and his mom here is Teachers
047is to put some of these numbers and philosophy and ideas you hear into a real example Jadis came to Irving in kindergarten he first was in early childhood kindergarten Whittier Whittier he was yeah and then he came over to Irving um I have to shout out Dr Lofton was doing some observations and saw the high reading skills that Jay's had him right away and worked with our team of how to move from multimedes to General Ed fully included so we got a TA in place started working we had a great first grade teacher Miss Sakamoto that said just come my way and join in and now we're at fourth grade where I have his team here miss Sacramento did you have the second order Miss Zions right yeah and now with the fourth grade teachers
048here here to talk about how it's going so I'm just gonna ask them some questions and Mom some questions to bring this story to life for you guys so I'd like to start with Miss Yoshis who is our special education teacher and someone I learned a lot from every day when talking about special ed and philosophy so Mary can you share a little bit with us your philosophy about special education your history and special education sure um you know what it starts actually before I was born um I just want to um I was born to a mother who was blind she lost her sight um about a year before I was born so I always say my sisters and I we lived inclusion I I think it's in me um I my mother did
049what other mothers did but a little differently so um when I you know kind of went down the path of special education I started in business and I have four children my oldest son has a learning disability and you know all those life experiences just kind of you know bringing down all these these paths that you go on but anyway um I was very intrigued with you know I knew my son was bright and had difficulty reading so um I myself seeked out a second career and I've been in special education this could be my 20th year so um I worked in um Berwin I worked in LaGrange and my children went to school in the western suburbs so the districts I came from I kind of honed my skills one of the districts was
050pretty much full inclusion all the students were just included in the classrooms and you know that was just the way it was I felt very comfortable with that and made some friends there and a very good friend of mine her name is Regina mccaskill became the assistant I think special education director she brought me over here and I really had had a wonderful experience here um yeah I think I've worked at about four schools and I have had so much support I am kind of passionate about inclusion and I've had administrators IBM teachers I've had Parents most of all these students it it just it takes you know a lot of collaboration a lot of time but it's it's really I think Donna you know you kind of spelled out um you know all of
051the statistics about it children do better when they are learning with their peers and they're exposed to the same curriculum I'm like everyone else so I didn't want to go on anymore how old is that philosophy that we hear and everyone agrees to in District 97 how does it look in the real world though when YouTube collaborate and have a student with jadis's profile sure um it's kind of funny to talk about something that I just do every day but um you know it starts out um with collaborating I mean just building a relationship with the teacher that you're going to work with and getting to know the student and it takes time it's not going to happen well it's different for every student but it doesn't just happen right away um really getting to
052know them knowing the curriculum and then accommodating modifying um the student pretty much that's their home if you ask Jayden you know he knows his teacher is Mrs Kelly he's not a guest in that classroom he belongs in that classroom yeah and uh yeah yeah and um you know um if you look at his schedule I mean it's there are times where he's in the Gen in class but there is time in the resource room where he's working he always works with other children he's never alone that he is working on building skills at his level but when he I mean we don't know I mean I I feel learning for Jadis I feel learning for any child is Limitless like we don't want to put limits on it and if we do that I
053feel inclusion is the structure to do that so yeah Mary Kelly as the Gen ed teacher who doesn't have 20 years special education experience and has a Janus join your classroom what are some pieces that have made the successful for you so number one it's um as a Janet teacher being open to this and not just open as a person it's opening up my entire classroom and my teachings my my lesson plans are open they're shared every day with Mary and um how are we going to what is our day going to look like today and it's if we are early birds so we're there well before the children get there and um hash out every every morning together about it it's also um saying I need help this isn't working this I need help
054with and it's open communication with everybody who is involved and that is including Mom Mom and Dad and reaching out to them as much as as anyone else because who knows them best and um also Jadis goes to cards after school and we have reached out to them and it is collaboration beyond the walls of our classrooms and that is definitely key um and on another note that I don't think is talked about enough is that being a Jenna teacher I also have 17 other students that I'm responsible for and it's also sometimes stepping back and being like Davis has a team of five I need to be I need to focus on my 17 and let his team of five take over and take the lead in something um and that's okay because that
055is that is a that is an inclusive teacher I'm making sure everybody is getting my um my my instruction help and attention um it but also I think which is vital is the classmates with jadas it has been um an equal learning experience for them and it wasn't easy at the beginning they didn't understand what not all of them understood what jadis's needs were and it took their parents sending in books to help with that they read to their children about children with autism it took classroom meetings every day and and the number one word is empathy and um stepping into that other person's shoes and and realizing that oh I I think I see I think how I can help I think how I can help with the whole classroom and community and that
056traveled not only just in our morning Circle and into every um uh subject of school but most importantly out in the playground and they it has been night and day with them and and they love Jadis they love datas and they treat him just like they treat every other student and help when they need when he needs help and hang out with him and do just every day fourth grade things so these two teachers are amazing that I had a list of personal questions to make sure they set all those points and they are the setup uh they put on everything important so I want to give Mom a chance to share a parent perspective and so I want to hear from you how has your experience been at Irving having Jayden's move from a
057self-contained classroom to fully included agenda I actually like that he's in Jeannette simply because for one the special education classroom wasn't the best fit for him and I like that when it wasn't the best food for him they came to let me know like you know we think Jace can do Jeanette and I'm like you think so and they like don't wanna have a snack at home you're going to have food at home eating on dinner so and you know what let's do it and I'm happy that I could easily talk to any one of them at any time I can send an email it really helps and it helps for Jaden yeah because it helps for James saying the other things I should say because if he's just in a separate class social distance
058so basically um yeah I think it's best that the kids do see someone different in their classroom simply because you don't know until you're a little closer to it you know you may know oh they're in that different classroom but they can see this person can do some of the same things I can do I can help this person I think it makes the world a little better when you truly know like individuals that think differently and do things differently or with disabilities they are different but they are still my classmate they can still be my friend I can still learn how to work with them and be there for them like you said empathy I really like that because when I go to his classroom like hi Jay this mom Jaden's can read better
059than one kid was like Davis who are we better than me you know so it's just cool that they get a chance to kind of like observe and work with him and it has been really helpful because I remember one day what I emailed Miss Kelly like I had all these feelings because fourth grade is different it's not like second grade and his one-to-one was leaving that was the transition that's very hard for him and I was like oh my God I don't know if this is the right fit and I literally emailed her like one night and she's like if you want to meet tomorrow morning weekend I was thinking dang the next day that early but we met and I kept saying do you think this is a good fit for him and
060she's like yes and that for me I just felt more secure knowing that like you said with all your other students and Jay this is the only one um with autism in that classroom and she said this is a great fit for him we're here for him we're going to work with him I always get emails from missions everyone's always updating me even I get emails I got that picture what is that picture from what did you earn can you tell them what'd you earn them to get that picture this one fast food Friday we've been working at school don't worry and he ran into Mrs Simmons office that's my AP and said can you tell Mom and Dad that I earned fast food Friday and I'm so proud do you want to good job
061do you want to introduce yourself what do you like about Irving School what do you like okay let me take the phone okay okay what do you like about Irving anymore you listen what else do you like about Urban school look up look up because I'd be good yes not all the time um I do want to say it's not always Rosy and wonderful there are times I text Mom during the day we reach out to Carl or call or call but the collaboration effort and everyone saying like Mary and Mary Mary said this is the right placement and is going to work staying at the Forefront is what makes it successful and because it's almost eight o'clock and I know Jaden has to eat I'd like to introduce a video we had our Communications
062Department come over to see Irving in action so Michael and mom hasn't seen this yet I've warned her we interviewed students and James I want you to watch you'll get to see an action um one thing I want to highlight that you're going to see is the class is doing numbers and so you'll see Janice is gonna have cards that so we're really working on udl so he has visual cards of the story to help him access the same book that your child to fourth grade would be doing and so you can that's I just want to give you the background he's doing it with other students in his yeah Susan can you share what udl is yes sir all these terms that we know Universal Design for Learning so breaking down barriers for students
063so they can access the same curriculum and a lot of barriers that we might break down for Jadis I've heard Miss Kelly say that works great for Tommy like what's good for one is good for all and so very excited to show you this video I told Mom Amanda that we might need to get her some of the raw footage because we had to splice what the kids said to little points but the kids were so passionate to share their thoughts on inclusion so I told Mom we might give her the raw glitch yeah um [Music] hmm you're wasted uh so you should definitely include them yes they can do stuff they can do a lot that's just not the way we can we do it different ways and they still do it right in
064Miss Kelly's class do you like write it no I'm reading yeah right I like writing it is Alan help you does your schedule Stars [Music] yeah which one helps you what about friendships Calvin does Jadis have friends in class lots of friends he's a wonderful but he was pregnant oh they're really good and he's also going to make who else do you like to play with Elliot I know what's your friend in Miss Kelly's class like some sometimes he just wants to talk kind happy and cheerful why one word is awesome [Music] do you think you treat Jada the same as you treat other friends if you treat them differently because he is just weird thank you so thank you so much for having us we really wanted to just highlight the powerful work that
065collaboration and conclusion I know a lot of times we come to the board and ask for certain Staffing for special ed and wanted to bring a real life example of what all that works and I'm going to especially thank these two teachers and Mom for coming here because Dr Sean I kind of just told them that this was happening and so thank you guys so much for joining us and Jadis thank you for coming thank you so thank you guys [Applause] you know I'm sad Ness um so for this presentation I'm going to welcome up oh where'd she go Dr ebony Lofton just exited the room oh there she is oh but you scared me for a minute Sarah Dr Lofton uh Dr Lawrence uh principal Robinson we have Ashley uh Cannon here as well
066as Michelle is here as well tomorrow [Music] we have a few of us yes my apologies you sure yeah cheers [Music] [Laughter] thank you so super excited his story but we wanted to also continue to see the anti-racial anti-racism and inclusion um in District 97 and was engaged in and so really excited to provide an update on the work at both the K5 and 16 and so um you'll see here all the wonderful books that we have with us today so Dr Lawrence principal Robinson um Jennifer Logan who's our elementary curriculum specialist the Nevada Shaker our Middle School curriculum specialist Ashley Cannon our individuals and societies department chair at Julian middle school and Keisha Helm Matt Stewart yeah our first grade teacher at bicycle um so we always want to start with um how our
067work actually allows the policy so there are three implementation areas that we believe are most um Salient in the work so obviously providing Equitable access ensuring that our professional development centers um diverse perspectives and also just recognizing and valuing diversity so um AF and H are those implementation areas that we are focused on for this journey so just giving a little bit of background about where we're going and where we've been so in 2121 um we following the the murder of George Floyd after a series of other incidents that had happened involving anti-racist racist practices we wanted to make sure that we continue to highlight and lift up the work that was already going on in a district around anti-racism but also put some formality and urgency around kind of putting pen to paper around
068what our values are and what it is that we're going to do specifically around making sure that we address this um in curriculum practice so I don't know Michael we can show the open the link so um on our district website we obviously have an overview of the work which really links to um if you want to kind of just go down um our policy links as well as the learning for justice standards but really kind of also a visual around what it takes to actually become anti-racist so that's kind of the root of our work if we go back to the presentation um we also understand that some families want to get more granular on what these lessons actually look like so we also held a family University session in 2021 um and you
069don't have to absolutely play it but it gives families entry into what those lessons look like I'm at the KFI level and go back to the presentation um so really excited to provide an update on this work because we've been hard at work since 2021 and I'm excited to turn it over to Dr Woods thank you so the inclusive and anti-racist units that we develop for grades k through eight they're all grounded in the learning for justice social justice anchor standards so this is an overview of those standards the standards are divided into four domain identity diversity Justice and action the identity standards allow students to learn more about who they are as a person the diversity standards give them an Outlook of others and their differences and so that they're able to embrace those
070differences the Justice anchor standards really allows students to learn more about um things that may be unfair or Injustice and so how they would be able to react to that and the action and anchor standards also allow students to be able to act if if there is someone who is being treated unfairly or if there's Injustice um so this really provides a road map for our anti-bias education in grades K through 12 and it really um provides a Continuum of Engagement throughout those grade levels and the anchor standards are age-appropriate and also have those learning outcomes for all students and so there are several topics that are addressed in the learning for justice standards there are actually eight topics race and ethnicity religion ability class immigration gender and sexual identity bullying and bias and rights
071and activism and so we wanted to make sure that students had tests that reflect all of these standards and domains so we purchased several texts for each of our schools these are just a few um that we purchased you'll see stamped is there which was our language and literature unit was centered around and we have several other texts there but we wanted to make sure that students had books that they could read that reflected these standards and now I'm going to just pass it to Patrick sure talk about Grace K5 so as we think about um elementary school buildings one of the things that we really wanted to focus on um this year is really how do we create or continue to create this sense of belonging in our abilities and so that students are
072able to see themselves within the curriculum with within the building and throughout everything that we're doing in the building also how do we create this um Improvement and engagement in our lessons and so one of the things when you've seen these lessons implemented throughout the building you can actually see students being engaged in some really deep authentic conversations at different levels and it's amazing to walk into a kindergarten classroom and see them actually discussing skin color and actually see them or hear them discussing things that they enjoy doing within their skin activities that they enjoy doing within their skin and really kind of it's aligned to that identity um anger standard to fifth grade to having them engage in discussions around um Equity versus equality and those type of things so I actually seeing this
073curriculum live and breathe throughout the building is amazing and it's really amazing to kind of observe these lessons oh this is just a quote from one of the fifth grade teachers at Whittier and was really around just being able to engage in these authentic conversations with students about their lives and how they see themselves and really celebrating and acknowledging the things that makes us different and unique and then also just being able to learn about their students you know it's if it's an opportunity that we create um with it's an opportunity we create throughout the day that we can have these authentic conversations with students and this is just you know an example of a standard online lesson we don't have to play the clip but this is taking place during morning meeting so just
074to kind of give you a vision of how this actually looks inside of the classroom so students are invited to for majority of the elementary schools students are invited to join the carpet during their morning meetings once a week in which the teacher presents the lesson um and students are then able to kind of engage in their lesson in that conversation then we always end the lesson with actually having students putting the learning objective into their own words and this is one of those examples of the lesson equality versus equity and then actually hearing students kind of connect these two terms with things they're actually seen throughout the day in the building and providing those um examples um to the teacher and so as we begin to think about how to make sure that we're
075implementing these lessons with Fidelity throughout the elementary schools we want to make sure that you know teachers are provided with the pace encounter then teachers are actually implementing those lessons throughout um the weeks and then although it says we're um allocating time and morning meetings um this these lessons can actually be implemented throughout the day and some of our third fourth and fifth grade classrooms the teachers are actually doing these lessons during their social studies lessons they're finding other opportunities outside of morning meeting to really align these lessons to some of the um content that's being taught in the classrooms and then making sure that we supplement with additional lessons from the learning from Justice um anchor standards and there was also support that we provide in schools at the district level we started by
076making sure that there was initial and ongoing professional learning around the learning for justice standards so teachers engaged engaged in self-paced lessons and modules through learning for justice we also formed an inclusive and anti-racist committee and that committee consisted of curriculum Specialists culture and climate coaches and teachers across the district they came together to design those units around the identity diversity Justice and action standards we also wanted to make sure that there was space and opportunity for teachers to reflect and gather their feedback and so we did that with a diversity Council and we did that also with teams across the district and throughout the year as they implemented we supported teams of teachers through classroom visits and also shared additional resources to support the work and just to add something on to this um
077this is only not happening within the classroom but we're finding opportunities throughout the building whether it's in Spanish whether it's in PE whether it's in library so it's not only the responsibility of the classroom teacher but it's a shared responsibility throughout the building and that teachers are all taking ownership of this content foreign so in terms of what's going on in the middle schools really exciting time so um we when we started the work wanted to make sure that there was time Department time for the individuals and societies teachers as well as our language and literature teachers to really unpack the standards and really start to embed those in the existing units um so they actually live and breathed and those units that were being taught um we purchased stamped racism anti-racism Anew for all
078students in grade six of the onset but it is now a permanent unit that happens in through a child's Middle School trajectory in year we also um thought that language was really important so when we're talking about race I want to make sure that we really honed in on understanding what those Norms were when we talk about in future race and then at the beginning we also made sure that we were in constant contact and thinking about um how to reflect on what we've learned what we've done and supporting teachers with the implementation of that first payment understand and I'm going to pass it to Mr Cannon to tell us about some more exciting work that Saturday Middle School um [Laughter] last year the eighth grades in both Julian and Brooks uh undertook a curriculum
079transformation and so what that entailed was changing both the process and the product of how instruction is going to be delivered in all 8th grade history classrooms in both schools um we we had settled in on three particular points that we wanted to emphasize we wanted to develop a curriculum where students could be co-designers of their learning experiences we wanted to start bringing we wanted to leverage student voice into the completion of thematic-based units we wanted to get away from teaching history as isolated facts and dates and events but rather as a conceptual thematic study where students voices could be could be left leveraged at different points where they're sort of they're sort of enroute into the high into the highway of learning would be something that could be accomplished because we're looking at ideas
080in American history in a thematic and conceptual way we were able to combine with the national Equity project that helped us with this and then in terms of leveraging and understanding what student voice actually looks like in our classrooms we piloted uh the work with the project for educational research that scales for parts and this consisted of Interest surveys which were about six questions that were administered to students over the course of four times in the year these questions were very very basic in terms of um in this classroom I feel respected um and it would just be a yes or no or another question would be the work that the the work that I'm studying now has meaning to me or can help me later on in life yes or no um this allowed
081teachers to understand in real time that what their experiences of the instruction process was was not necessarily shared by students so for example um I know that when I started this process um in 2020 uh over Zoom I had students that were telling me I like you and I think you're pretty cool but some of this is really boring um and and for me after after doing this for over two decades um I had never been I'd never been spoken to in such a direct way it wasn't rude or anything but it was honest and I had been living in this I've been living in this and what I pitched to the teachers um on the eighth grade side was I've been living in a silo thinking that this really was working and in the
082end it wasn't other teachers were finding that in their experiences as well so to recognize students to recognize where student voice was and then authentically bring it into what the content looks like um transform both process and product these were the three units that we ended up creating over the course of a year so for example our first unit which traditionally focused on industrialization and progressivism we incorporated reconstruction in there as well which is where seventh grade curriculum ends and eighth grade picks up so we decided that reconstruction that unit would be an exit point for our seventh graders and an entry point for our eighth graders and essentially what we ended up doing is when we taught the unit on reconstruction industrialization and progressivism we didn't I we just looked at a statement of
083inquiry other ring takes time and effort to interrupt and so the entire unit reconstruction industrialization progressivism was looked at through the lens of how does other ring get interrupted with time and effort students were introduced to that language at the outset of the unit it was integrated throughout the unit at the end of the unit students had to explain how can you find an example of othering being interrupted with time through time and effort um we changed our assessments we developed common assessments that focused on Common Core and Illinois history standards but also taking the same questions but in different primary source documents so what we ended up doing was eighth grade teachers developed the same questions who is the target audience of this document what are the most important sentences in the document how
084does this document represent the statement of inquiry but they're they're doing these documents on topics as varied as Upton Sinclair's the jungle Ida B Wells lynching our National Crime wdb Du Bois Booker T Washington and then um this year we added an analysis of from a whisper to a rallying Cry by Paulie Duke uh the analysis of Vincent chin and so what we started realizing was students were able to understand historical content through a thematic lens but also bring their own voice into it we saw the same process in our unit on World War one which we then transformed into a unit on the black church The Great Migration and World War One seeing how three separate events can coexist because our statement of inquiry was that people can adapt adopt or resist ideas we
085then took the same principle in the 1920s where we combined Harlem Renaissance and the standard understanding that students out of the 1920s so we're combining Langston Hughes and F Scott Fitzgerald with the idea that Society finds change difficult so you're taking a thematic approach to content where students are able to integrate their voice in the process the takeaways are the results that came out of our work is that for the first time our department developed a grounded mission statement that was committed to statements of inquiry through conceptual units um but also recognize the need to actively claim and actively state that our department believes in an anti-racist and anti-racist philosophy this was a mission statement that was shared with parents at curriculum night this became what all of our department meetings were Guided by this
086became sort of what we do um the other takeaway another takeaway that we got from this was it is important to transform um what students are learning but it is equally if not more important to transform how they are learned so one thing that came out of our work was the need for individualized conferencing with every student when it comes to developing work products this accomplished two things one it was it changed the way adult instruction was created we are now leveraging student voice that idea but what we're really doing is letting students design what their learning looks like to them and our role is collaborative in that so you no longer are really looking at the idea of the sage on a stage lecturing for 77 minutes right because you're not going to be
087able to get much buy-in when you're lecturing for 77 minutes instead what you're doing is using that block time to individually conference with every student to find out where they are um when we talk about the rich tapestry of what student voice looks like it comes out in these settings so when a student for example um I had a colleague at Brooks talk about how they had a student who took the statement of inquiry and just wanted to go with the discussion of what lgbtq rights looks like in the idea of othering takes time and effort to interrupt that only happens because they have an individualized conference setting that allows that to happen but it also happens because you're transforming content to focus on a conceptual understanding as opposed to being locked into time and
088space um and I think it was interesting to see how students were responding to seeing themselves in American history and also seeing themselves in the instructional process we found that stronger students were being developed stronger thinkers were being created stronger writers were being foraged because that individual conferencing time a lot of one-on-one setting to how to become better at school and then finally what we what we established and what we're now living with is that our the roles of our students are becoming ones of active agents um you are we're finding that students are able to participate in their learning experience authentically and in a rich way where every single conference is different because all of them are different um I think one of our one of our teachers uh said it's like I now
089have 112 IEPs right and the reason is is because every single student has something new that they're getting out of the process and every teacher is developing targeted worthwhile appropriate goals that fit for them this is something that we hadn't been doing but something that came away um from transforming the content and something that's that we're still doing now the hope would be that we can that we can move this down to seventh and sixth grade as well so that the idea of that Universal Design the idea of students becoming um active participants and active agents in their learning through a through a conceptual understanding of history as opposed to a traditional notion of history is something that process and product changes and as a result students are able to see what can be as
090opposed to what is okay right okay when I start seeing a third person it's really late um I guess I'm also talking about uh I guess I'm talking about the African-American studies course as well um it is it is interesting not in your head so many people in this space gave birth uh to this course so just just a real brief synopsis of it and then we could talk about where it is now and um how it's being how it's being carried out as just part of what we do as part of what an eighth grade student experiences um I was fortunate enough uh to have the support of so many people in this space I when we went remote in 2020 uh I had I had former students reach out to me in the
091wake of processing Brianna Taylor Ahmad Arbury George Floyd they reached out to me over Google meets and over FaceTime and and they said you know we we learned a lot in your class but we never had a space to really talk about some of these things that are going on and now I just don't know what to say I just know that feel really sad um and that hit me because there was nothing I can do for those children at that time like my time with them is it's done and all I was left with was I let you down and as a as as the adult in the room I probably should have been making more time for those discussions but I just caught up I just got caught up with learning targets and
092exit tickets and just do this and do this and then when when my former students heard police sirens when my former students could not Escape what was on what was on the news when my former students did not know in the middle of the pandemic what to do all they could do was just say to me I wish you would have done something different um I know that so much was going on in 2020 the one thing that was clear to me is I did not want to feel that sensation of guilt again um so I was fortunate uh again so many people in this space um I was I I just started writing a course about what it means to be different in America and how to process that um the African-American studies course
093that I ended up writing uh was supposed to be a two trimester course with the same group of students uh it would focus on African-American history uh from 1965 to the present day use of primary source and secondary source material um it would then also focus on community service projects that were rooted in the empathy interview approach um getting people to tell their stories this was something that uh I piloted over Zoom uh in that in that year when we started off remote I know you popped into my zoom room a couple of times and heard a great discussion about um you know the the abundance mentality and the scarcity mentality that was that was really special I didn't quite know how to deal with affirmative action on that one but we learned um and
094then after that in third trimester when we went hybrid um I started having students that were doing this over zoom and then doing it um in person and my enrollment numbers went up to 40 kids that that third time sure uh it was at that point that we started thinking about maybe this could be something that could be offered um and right now uh it is a course that is open to 8th graders this is it's an elective students are opting to take it um and basically what we do in the course is we take the documentary America to me which is what we tried to do um which is what we tried to do in third trimester unfortunately Zoom did not support America to me in that damn copyright thing um so now what
095we do is we show America to me and we use that documentary as an opportunity to ground what is being taught in the history classes so where do you see an example of othering taking time and effort to interrupt in America where do you see an example of how an idea um has power where do you see somebody resisting an idea of change taking the documentary of America to me for 8th graders um has accomplished two things the first thing is that it allows them uh to contemporize what it is that they're studying in their history classes but it's also used the idea of anti-racism as a way to get ready for high school and that the the difficulties that we have in talking about issues of othering and issues of silencing a voice that
096same anxiety is being experienced by 8th graders who are getting ready to go off with ice and by allowing them to see that it's not just something intrinsic to one discussion that it takes courage to have a discussion to change anything whether we're talking about race whether we're talking about gender whether we're talking about identity whether we're talking about trauma whether we're talking about anxiety and going to high school the idea of having the courage to have that discussion um is what gave rise to the African-American studies course and it's something that um I'm quite proud of because a I I think that is it is meeting students where they are and helping them to go to where they need to be um but infinitely more important more self than and selfishly um it is
097my down payment on not having done the right thing for over 20 years of students and you know sometimes guilty can be a great motivator um and I and I I do believe that um because my students my former students come back and say this would have been this is what this is what I needed [Laughter] I'll give you a narrative I'll give you that so from the 40th students um we are really excited about the fact that this course has grown to Encompass 202 students who are um have been enrolled or either currently enrolled in the course between Brooks and Julian and we look at the demographics by race so it was important to us that it also mirrors kind of what our district looks like um and it does when we look at
098demographics by Denver we also find the same so really excited about and then um on a national stage because it goes beyond Oak Park um I had the pleasure of joining Mr Cannon and his student and Dr cam was there where they actually kind of showcased nationally on the work that's being done um and we're affirmed um by nap as they were discussing their work um last year I think that was last year and then um just last month I'm Mr Cannon was written up in a top beat for the work on that history black history course black studies course um and just in general the work that he's been doing so it reaches far beyond our district and we're really excited about it being Amplified on these National um we're going for Global and
099I'm gonna hand it over to Dr Lawrence Dr Lofton so that brings us to the teach app um and how we're incorporating that in District 97. um so the teaching Equitable Asian American community history Act um is an Illinois instructional mandate that went into effect this year um for all public schools and the expectation is that there is a unit of study um that talks about the contributions of Asian Americans and its impact on our country and so the unit of study should include three things um the events of Asian American history also the Asian American history in Illinois and the Midwest as well as the contributions of Asian Americans towards advancing civil rights from the 19th century onward so we've done a lot of work in our district to pull this together um in
100terms of what we're doing in k through eight but we kicked this off with district-wide professional learning so we elicited help from the Asian Americans advancing Justice organization they provided district-wide professional learning for every single teacher in our district across all 10 schools um and I have to say they were very impressed with the fact that we provided professional learning for all teachers not just language and literature teachers not just social science teachers but all of our teachers across the district um and so these are just a few quotes from some of our teachers in terms of their experience with the professional learning but everyone thought that the training was thorough and thoughtful um they thought the resources that were shared were incredible and they were very appreciative of how the professional learning was implemented
101so we were excited about that on our Institute day on January 6th so now we're going to talk a little bit about our teach act implementation in grades K five and six eight so I'm going to turn it over to our two curriculum Specialists so first Jim Logan for K5 so when Dr Lawrence and I met in the beginning of the year and really decided how we were going to get this to work in our K-5 schools we saw a natural Avenue with our social science committee as well as well as our inclusive and anti-racist committee so as a team before the January Institute day I met with the social science committee and just introduced the Act and the expectations and we thought we can do better than just one unit of study we saw
102a natural Avenue into our learning for justice steps that were already created and using feedback provided from the teachers across the district we decided that we were going to create lessons that were um based on our different learning for justice standards and we were going to embed them into our current um Decks that we have um so we used the Asian American Education resource table and we took the lessons that were provided there um and we developed lessons for all students in grades K through five um to that would get that learning through the um learning for justice stats and messing up my words here sorry um and so um the committee began by designing these lessons using the again the error table resource and finally then after the completion of those during the April
1034th Institute day all teachers in grade through K-5 were provided an overview of the design lessons and then activities as well as best practices for implementation and then Keisha is a Committee Member going to talk about that experience um so as a team we work together there's a lot of collaboration along um how we were going to create the lessons for teachers we wanted the lessons to be easy for teachers to navigate and we also didn't want to overwhelm teachers as well so each grade level has a total of two lessons each and we work together to design lessons from this incredible air table you should check it out when you get a moment because it's tons of resources on there about Asian American culture which there are things on there that I didn't know
104so this has been like a learning experience for myself as well but we began by choosing topics related to the learning for justice themes and then we narrowed down those topics and chose more topics that were connected to the social science standards as well as the ELA standards so that these lessons could be taught not only during morning meeting but if they want to be taught during like an Ela block or during social studies so this gave teachers the flexibility to where they wanted to teach these lessons but then we narrowed down those topics we started developing the lessons for each of the grade levels and we wanted them to be engaging where students can have Hands-On activities while also participating in some deep discussion as well throughout any part of the school day and
105then lastly we provided that overview for all K-5 teachers at The Institute day that you mentioned that we had last week and now teachers are starting to kind of dive into this work and see what works best in their classroom okay so at the middle school level we started the planning process for the teach active implementation in eighth grade and we started that process last summer in August of 2022 um and we began with just meetings collaboration with the two Department chairs of individuals and societies um one of whom is Mr Cannon sitting right next to me um and so and we began the process really by first looking at a standards audit to make sure that we were covering all the standards in grades six through eight and that that was really what was
106driving our instruction and our planning and then thinking about how are we going to implement units of study um with the three components of the teach act and make it really seamlessly and to what students are learning and especially driven around those inquiry statements that Mr Cannon was mentioning so um and he started to touch upon that because that really seemed like the the door was open for that with unit one and so that's where um with the guidance of the department chairs and our collaboration um the entire eighth grade team worked together in brainstorming what that would look like and thinking about like um you know the lessons and still leaving a little bit of autonomy but having some things that are also common that they're doing and then finalizing that in the scope
107in sequence so that it would be ready to go for this school year um and as it's being implemented we've also reflected a bit but I'm going to turn the mic back over to Mr Cannon who is so eloquent to speak more to just you know the actual lesson planning teaching around it and um from his teacher lens when Vina talks about this idea of what does articulation look like it was great for me to see as a department chair continuing the process of transformation where the the teachers made a conscious decision to not teach um in accordance to the teach act to not make it a standalone one-off and for them to actually say that I mean I knew where I was going to Advocate but to hear teachers say it shouldn't be a
108separate unit like it has to find a home in one of the units that we do um whatever that entry point is that was very encouraging and I think that was a direct reflection of the work that we did last year about what transformation in content looks like so to not make the implementation of the law something that was inorganic a check off like almost on a list of things to do but actually make it germane actually make it relevant um to what teachers are doing so in the first unit that we did um one teacher decided to integrate um the story of Vincent Shin for example as part of their immigration mini lesson um I took it and I took I applied Vincent chin to the same principles of reconstruction so that my students
109could start making the argument that the same idea of fighting for individual rights that idea of othering being interrupted with time and effort you can see that in different struggles throughout American history of which the Asian American Experience is just one part of it um for and and so in in on the eighth grade side we started seeing teachers use that assessment in different in different times within the same unit but finding their own entry into it organically so that students could start seeing that this is a part again of the Thematic experience sixth and seventh grade teachers were using that Asian that uh that resource air table um and I think was unnailed it that that resource airtable was something they enjoy it was an opportunity for many of them I was sitting in
110on a discussion of seven of sixth grade teachers who were saying oh my God this is what we do it's just it's just better like it just looks better let's try this um and so it was nice to see not even 15 minutes after um the instruction that of the in-service to be able to go and figure out ways to organically make those resources come alive for students um on a student level it was powerful to see students um read some of polyu's book and especially or afterward and then talk about how violence against different groups of people in American history is a sad and seamless connection um it was very very powerful for for one student to say it makes sense that this is why we have to do this um and then for
111another student who did identify as Asian to be able to say I get it um and that's why this is so important um so to be able to see those those touch Point moments where student discomfort is complemented with student empowerment became extremely powerful and again I think that's where because of the transformational work that we did last year because that we're reaping the benefits of that we approached the implementation of the teach act not as a one-off but just as part of the muddle that we call American history once again um this is WBZ Chicago um this is Nichelle sticker from Brooks and she was featured for I'm integrating the Asian American history and work into her course this school year so more attention um on the district oh sure yeah she does that
112she's a rope so one of the things that we were really proud of is that we were able when we were giving the platform to really kind of share our journey as a district and this work um Dr Lofton Dr Lawrence and myself we were able to present at the National ascd Conference and really just kind of share the journey that we have been on as the district what started the journey um how we collaborated with teachers with the district with all schools and then where we are currently at and where we are going with this work um we they kind of scheduled us on Sunday one of the last days of the conference at 2 45 so we were just like okay No One's Gonna show up um we're going to present to a
113room of chairs uh but no we have over 75 individuals show up to listen to us um we went well over the tie and no one left um everyone stayed completely engaged and glued into the information we were sharing and at one point we had to end so we ended the presentation and but we stayed behind to just really kind of um talk and really hear stories from other individuals from different districts around um and so we were we all were able to kind of engage in a conversation to really learn about where districts are currently at in this work and to really hear in a conversation I was able to engage in to hear um the young man say this is something that my district has not made a priority this is something that
114my school has not made a priority so to actually hear that this is something that your district is doing and that teachers are actually engaging in these lessons students are having these conversations as early as kindergarten is just somewhere that I would love to be at and I would love to kind of talk to see how we can bring some something like this to our district and that was just one of the stories that I was able to share or engage in yeah just a reminder of where we are contextually right so the one and I had a chance to talk to some folks from Florida and from Oklahoma who are not in Canada and Denver who are not and cannot actually have the same conversation that we're having um and we're made aware of
115that by what we were doing but also a reminder to us around what activism might look like for other parts of our country and what this work actually entails in the courage that it takes in some other school districts or peer districts to really kind of dig into this work and to the point where books were removed from classrooms and those things that folks are living at right now are really real and it just made us I think for me grateful that we're able to really kind of have this conversation and do this work and I'm really proud of the work that we have done um as a district in this work it was it was a proud moment yes can you tell me what ascd means it's the association of supervision uh curriculum level
116yeah development thank you that's it thank you um so as we're ending we wanted to think about kind of our next edges of our leadership um so we talked about kind of the structures that we've all set up we have pacing guides we have standards we have structures we have all of those things but what's the thing that we need to think about next or what are those things that we need to think about next in terms of deepening our practice and we want to make sure that um there's a consistent Synergy between central office and our school level team so we want to make sure that that collaboration lives and breathes so as we're thinking about this work together what does site level invitation implementation continue to look like we also value obviously um
117the races of our teachers and teacher teams so what does it mean to be in constant conversation and getting feedback um and iterating on and designing around and improving on this work we're also concerned about the local histories um there are many Rich histories just in Oak Park um so we want to make sure that all of those lived experiences are present as we think about our work and moving forward into thinking about those continuing cycles of redesign in our units and then intersectionality because we know that we have to bring our whole selves to the table um so what does it mean to continue to privilege intersectionality as we think about multiple perspectives on this work and then we always want to think about how we're communicating this to our families how it's resonating
118with our students our community members so we're always thinking about better ways to make sure that we're talking about living and breathing this work in public I think that's it thank you any questions [Laughter] um thanks so much uh this is something that's important to me uh I'm actually presenting the aera the research conference on Thursday about kind of the tea check as part of a panel on some of the different Asian American history initiatives around the country um so it's kind of interesting to hear what Oak Park's doing and uh I teach teachers mostly in the western suburbs and Southwestern suburbs and I had a student I swear I talked about the teach actor in class and one of during one of her presentations she's like did you know there's this teacher my District's
119doing nothing and of course not um so I appreciate that we're doing this work and I'm actually friends with Paula U so I'll share kind of what the what some of the comments were shortly like that um one of the things I I discovered when I was looking at the T check stuff is how many other um unfunded under-resourced mandates there are so kind of to your point about intersectionality I was wondering um what you've done around like the disability history mandate or the lgbtq history mandate which actually connects to the public comments from earlier as well um and and one of the reasons I was so surprised at that is I have students who will not teach Tango makes three which is a picture book about penguins uh because it's got two same-sex Penguins
120raising a baby penguin um because it's gay and there's and and it just blows my mind right um and and then so when I saw this mandate saying we have lgbtq history and then they're in these public school districts I'm like oh he's not working um so I'm just kind of curious what work like I said I wasn't familiar with these mandates before I looked at the two check stuff um what work either we've done in the district or even if you're moving towards that like I said with the bullet point around intersectionality um because even at like my mind was going as we're you know we were talking about like when we talk about links and Hues we don't talk about him also being a queer man or like uh in uh the March
121Trilogy the graphic novels like um he doesn't really jungle this does a really good job talking about the Civil Rights activists that were really put behind the scenes because they were queer and like getting thinking about like who gets foregrounded and what that means and you know there's been writing about the black women that were part of civil rights that were also pushed to the background because they're like it's time for black rights not for women's rights and and so I'm just wondering like how all of that also takes the I know that's like a really I just asked you like 50 questions but it just you know my my brain was going as you guys were talking so I can't say that we were just engaged actually in an audit um the mandated unit
122so Dr Lawrence does an amazing job of taking up keeping track um of all of the the items and the things that we're supposed to make sure that we um cover and I feel like we passed with flying color we did um so and we're always keeping our our finger on the pulsive kind of what um the Mandate units of study are but also is Mr Cannon was saying going Beyond um just what the state tells us to do and trying to figure out where are those places of intersectionality where can we start kind of making sure that this work lives and breathes not just for the mandates because we want to make sure that we impart something important to students and they tell us something important too um so I I and just to
123add to that I think the fact that we've adopted the learning for justice standards k through eight and it provides each and for those domains identity diversity Justice and action we're able to embed all of that work from lgbtq plus to Asian American history all of that within those units that we've already designed so that just gives us a way of being able to do that across all grade levels across the district I don't know if anything else would like to add I mean the text that you referenced we have a lesson on that in our learning for justice standards in K2 so we do have a lesson directly related to that and I think you were speaking also yeah I mean I I all of the examples of intersectionality you brought up um Langston
124Hughes and being both um a black man but also being a man that had to live in the closet so to speak like once you introduce students um to the broad base of where the historical content fits in with that theme the individual conferencing approach starts getting students to start pulling that out on their own um and that is where I mean I have students that are right now um focusing on women who are left behind the Civil Rights Movement right so like you know we focus on Dr King but we don't focus on parity Ohio that game Dr King the inspiration for I have a dream so I have a student who is doing her end of the year project on literally the women who are left behind so it's an opportunity where once
125you introduce um sort of the lay of the land and allow them to see the conceptual history going in they then take that concept and start applying it um in terms of where they see it applicable um and I think that's where again you you you're almost creating like a gallery walk so to speak where they're teaching one another right so so if if you're doing a project on Langston Hughes and what it was like to be at the Forefront of the Harlem Renaissance would be in the closet on everything else and I'm doing a project on the women who are left behind in the Civil Rights Movement um when I start teaching you my topic and you start teaching me your topic that only happened because our individual conferencing allowed us to go into
126those very directions so you're right there's so many on I mean there's so many discarded mandates it's no longer a to B but how many multiplicity of points are in between I think as he did this audit too we found um a lot of evidence like in many places where we are addressing the mandates and it's cross-curricular so and we also saw opportunities for growth but like and it was really eye-opening and like a proud moment and a moment like where can we keep growing in providing those cross-curricular opportunities you don't have to answer them tonight um but first of all thank you for this um and I want to thank you I know you say you felt guilt but as a d97 alumna and a parent of three um children in this District like
127I am so excited and I can see like the passion when you speak about it so I understand why they keep giving you the life this is totally but um like as an alumni like I definitely did not see myself in this I remember going to my Dean and saying like these are the schools I want to apply to he was like what about you about and I was like no I want to go to HBCU um and so I would love to see like where hbcus fit into this and the like impact that they've had on black not just Black Culture but American culture um because we know that a ton of like doctors and and lawyers and all types of teachers I just read an article about the teacher how hbcus are saving
128the teacher shortage um and how hbcus um they teach differently um it's more of the social emotional um so I would love to see like something on hbcus also historically black um fraternities and sororities um I saw some of that in the middle schools during black history month and I was like I wish it was more than the paraphernalia because it is a whole lot more than that yes at least it sure is I see you afternoon and then uh like we have a broad Latino Community um and I remember like having friends who said Oh Park is very black and white there's nothing for in between so I'm glad that um the Asian Community is being represented here but I also love to see like the Latino community and then finally um I would
129love to do like a shared language because I think it's really important when we talk about these things that we have share a common language across the district and so as a researcher professionally at HR all the many hats that I wear um we do like asset Framing and then we have like um certain terminology that we use across our lab and all of our Publications and so like I noticed at some at some spaces you guys use African-American some use black some use it Latino some of you Hispanic um so like I think like as students are learning um like having that shared knowledge like and I know it it will change like my mom's like I'm an African-American I'm like I'm black I know my grandma was color colored um so these things
130will change but I think like the more we yeah probably negro um but the more that we talk about these things um and the more that we use that shared language people become more comfortable because I feel like we're always like African-American is a black is a Latino is it latinx um so if we can't yeah so so many different things that uh aapi like we're just it's yeah I know that's so just um I think the more that we have like that shared language of vocabulary it gets like okay this is black or whatever the whatever you agree upon you can also talk about the history of it yeah you can talk about the history of it I was just gonna say um and forgive me if I've missed this information but I think
131similar to how we receive follow-up and ways to support um the Second Step curriculum it could be helpful as parents to get here's the here's the book we read in class and why we read it because we would we would go get it from the library and then talk about it together also knowing she's had that experience already so um that just a helpful homeschool connection and so I just first I wanted to commend the three of you for getting 75 people on the last day of conference because typically when I've been to a conference on the last day and the last hours it's been me chatting with the panel so nicely done um also just thank you for being here to all of you this has been really interesting to listen to and just
132heartwarming in many ways to just see what's going on in this District So to that end um I would this may be again a future question that's not applicable for tonight I would love to see kind of what the internal evaluation is for this program but also encourage to look outward for Grants this just screams longitudinal study on this because what you were talking about Mr King um where this impacts beyond what you're doing is important what you were talking about Dr Lofton with other districts sometimes not even being able to discuss this having this record of what you're doing I think is important so I would encourage you to see it at that level and look around to see what grants might be available to actually do even more than just what evaluation we
133would be doing for ourselves see what we might be able to do broader based on that I want to deliver everybody's points but job well done and thank you the thing that I have always was asking Educators to be was nimble and I see that flexibility in what you guys are doing and how you're teaching students but letting the students teach you so that you can teach them better so I'm gonna stop talking thank you thank you so much for doing this I think it's um it's interesting I was doing respected some research with Asian American teachers several years ago and one of them was talking about how she had uh like a latent racialization awareness in her 20s and um and she was really frustrated as an Asian-American teacher she didn't get any of
134this right and so this notion that like your head down and you work hard and you just ignore all the racism around you and so I think there's a lot of folks um like it excites me that our kids are going to have a language and understanding and having you know like I know we're not supposed to text during the board game but one of my friends was texting me saying that you know she teaches American studies at UIC and she's like I'm gonna I have three out of 30 kids that know who've been since right and so this idea that there's like a whole District of kids who are going to be familiar with that name is pretty heartwarming um so I I really appreciate all the work you guys do so thank you
135thank you all right okay so that brings us to the active items but before we vote on the action items we do have an amendment um so we're at the consent agenda uh I need someone oh yes oh I'm sorry I'm jumping around um oh sorry so we have a senior leader appointment so if someone could read the motion for that piece yeah the motion is simulator I move that the Board of Education of Oak Park Elementary School District 97 moves to approve the following senior leader appointments commencing on or before July 1st 2023. that one okay chief legal and Equity Equity officer Luis a Rodriguez assistant superintendent of elementary schools Patrick C Robinson and assistant superintendent of middle schools Dr Luis F de Leoni second Kim yes attorney yes more yes Spurlock is absent
136somebody will suck it all right I moved out to Florida education at Oak Park Elementary School District 97 moves to approve the agenda as presented I would like to make the request to immediately consent agenda we have received an updated Personnel report which changes the existing consent agenda item 7.2.3 personnel and therefore changes items 7.3.1 termination of non-certified sort of vacated employee 7.3.3 resolution authorizing dismissal of full-time teacher and last year probationary service 7.3.5 resolution authorizing non-employment of non-tenured administrator as a result of the amended Personnel report a request that we remove items 7.3.1 7.3.3 and 7.3.5 from action no further discussion is needed based on approval of the amended Personnel report under consent agenda thank you second yes her Johnson yes yes yes Spurlock is African yes more yes yes the revised set agendas
137okay so sorry about hearing me off um now we are at you're supposed to say can I have a motion see I was confused because I how many times are we gonna vote on this can I have a motion for the amended consent agenda [Laughter] bye John's at the Board of Education School District 97 proves that midday consent agenda as from seven point seven whatever yeah 7.3.1 7.3.3 7.3.5 of the Personnel action second raw stripping yes Kurt Johnson yes yes yes currently yes more yes for life is absent robust consent agenda is okay so now we are at administrative items personality oh God okay so that's now I don't even know what chances are so did you say oh so we have the we have to make emotions right yeah okay so we're at the
138remaining personal items so if someone could read the motion for 7.3.2 and move that the Board of Education of Oak Park Elementary School District 97 approved the resolution authorizing non-reemployment of non-tenured employees second austrating yes Carter Johnson yes yes Spurlock is absent kid yes more more yeah I'm sorry yes okay now we're going to read the motion for 7.3.4 I move that the Board of Education of Oak Park Elementary School District 97 approved the resolution authorizing non-reemployment to full-time non-hindered teacher teachers not in last year of probationary service thank you yes okay that brings us to administrative items up first is funds transfer it's coming up if you have any questions okay good evening so we have four separate fund balance transfers that were all part of our fiscal 23 budget [Music] um various state
139law is irregulations audit an accounting regulation just requires separate board resolutions to pass these as well um until they're here for a discussion tonight and then to be voted on at the next meeting I'll just touch on each one briefly on the first one we opened the meeting with the public hearing state law requires a public hearing for that particular transfer from the tour immunity to the operation maintenance fund so the first three transfers are all really to fund the capital projects and it's just moving from one bucket to another um so the first one was moving it from the toward immunity fund operation and maintenance the second one um it's moving 1.5 million from the working cash fund operation maintenance and the third one is moving those funds that we moved into operation and
140maintenance to our capital projects fund so it's essentially when the first two transfers plus the 2.7 Surplus we budgeted to fund the capital projects and the fourth one is when we do annually as well it's kind of a more of an accounting exercise our technology leases were required for the audit um and Izzy regulations to record those expenditures in The Debt Service fund um the actual revenues that come in come in from education levies or you know transfer making a transfer to match the revenue to the expenditures that's a that's when we do annual mean really for the audit um but that is my summary of the four thumb balance transfers any questions for Patrick it's like a noun okay thank you Patrick thank you thanks Patrick um okay that brings us to board assignments
141uh of course we have standing board committees at Fork CCE and claim but speaking of which um well I'll do that during board marks never mind so standing board committee reports thank you nothing uh how about in our governmental liaison reports the tri board on Equity policy and self-evaluation did not meet again as it hasn't for my first four years in the board [Laughter] I'm always on our agenda but I did want to just note from a policy committee perspective that um Sean and I have been talking about and have given Dr Shawn Jones a heads up that um we do want to bring a Secure Storage policy to the table for discussion we're in the process of pulling together some of the kind of rationale behind it and some of the research and some
142of the um numbers just in terms of the degree to which school board school districts Across the Nation and actually recently the entire State of California have decided to adopt policies or laws to that effect so uh next step is to kind of pull that all together and have a conversation with Dr Shaw and others in the administration and then we'll bring it share with you all and and bring it to the board for a discussion so maybe not before you leave us so maybe it'll be your legacy um okay okay updates I feel like what spring break everything um kind of connected to that I guess moving into concluding our board remarks uh so at the next board meeting we'll have our new we'll have that Changing of the Guard um and along with
143that absolutely Flex that a little bit I reached out to our incoming elected member yeah and it seems that the library is holding their election on the same night and because they're they're seating they're seating oh yes sorry they're seating on the same night so she can't participate as an active board member on two boards at the same time so we have to allow her to uh finish off her process with the library on the team yeah she does come at nine o'clock it would be like when Phil Collins did Live Aid in New York and in London yeah you're dating yourself um okay so what is does that mean we would Shaw's not took it around for her so the next the plan is to do it as a person but unless I can
144work with her on the timing I did not ask for another it is technically doesn't it this term ends at 12. she will turn to a pumpkin I think it happens when the next person oh so you're with us you better talk to Colleen I will be out of town for the next one just as an FYI [Music] so the policy reads a minimum of 21 days which allows the certification of the election results and then you have a maximum I believe of 28 to 30 days after the 21 or total total for the person to be if we're counting business days okay the language doesn't state that all days are in the calendar account so I'm counting business days the first meeting and they will keep us certified all right so yeah maybe Colleen
145can run over here after her meeting when she's like by Library um yeah so I guess we'll see kind of in conjunction with that so um a couple things one um is usually I think when we Shuffle the Committees so I need to go back and look at our spreadsheet and see what folks want to do um I think some of us are on companies that don't ever meet uh and so kind of revisiting like workload and whatnot and then obviously also seeing what Colleen would be interested in doing um so I'll send out that soon so just everyone can see um and then I've solicited leadership stuff a couple people are interested in a couple of things I'm trying to talk to folks and nail down who's interested in what for sure and then
146hopefully by the weekend after I've had conversations I'll send stuff out and I guess we'll have side conversations it's always awkward because you can't really have open discussions but um yeah so can I just say something on committees really quickly um one of the things that we might want to do when we have our retreat with Colleen is just think about the Committees we have and whether they're the right committees like the board committees themselves you mean yeah and whether we might repurpose them or just if there's one that's just not doesn't make sense but there's something we don't have that might make sense I think I don't think we need to be locked into these just because they've been on the agenda all the time but maybe it's worth a discussion about how to
147like maximize the value of the community we've had some conversations around playing uh because it's been kind of a not fully functioning Committee in some ways um and a couple other ones uh I know I think Holly talked about like whatever we want our communication yeah it was like a Communications committee and I know we had talked about like ambassadors so that the retreat would be a good time and I need to send out dates again or or we need to work out some weekdays I think at least between the two of us to so we couldn't get a weekend that worked for Holly for pretty much either April or May so we need to send out more dates for weekdays but yeah but that's a job and he has to actually go to during
148work hours which is very confusing yeah um so look for that uh other board remarks yeah I just want to make a comment based on one of the public comments today um during the last four meeting I believe it was um we were having a discussion about clubs and groups and I said something um didn't fully think out my words and didn't speak as eloquently as I would have liked so I just wanted to accept an apology to anyone that I may have offended um and that is not that is I have my character and anyone who knows me knows that I am a huge supporter and Ally of the lgbtq community uh but I think like sometimes you know these things are nuances and so we we uh try to like say the right
149thing at the right time and so I just wanted to apologize to any Community member parent or student who I may have offended um and if anyone wants to talk more about it I'm happy to do that as well thanks and someone related to that because there were discussions online on this um and I was not here for the last meeting I did want to say I read through policy again okay the first day I started on the board two three years ago whenever it was um and just to be very clear our policy is very supportive of our LG lgbtq clubs and our students in general uh so I would like to make sure that everyone feels welcome and welcome to have spaces to meet and that's generally supported in our policy as it
150stands how do I have one more thing um so I know that's it so this is not really a d97 thing but I think it does kind of relate so there's been a lot of talk about what's going on at high school and I just hope that we as a community can be like more thoughtful about the way we talk about our students and so not just the students who um experience that trauma and that trauma is very real but also those students who need support that were involved in these incidents and so some of the comments that I've been seeing on Facebook just like remember that we're talking about students young students and if I think back to all the crazy things that I did as a student um you know and just being
151misguided and not really knowing how to deal with my emotions I think I'm so happy that our students have that like my kids they're like you know what are you feeling and I'm like what do you mean um and so I think that now these students are gaining the tools but they're still kids and so I just want us all to be very mindful of the words that we're using when we're talking about our students because they're they're growing and they're learning and just like I've made a mistake and I misspoke um people make mistakes and I just hope that we would give them Grace and so you know some of that the undertones of some of those the language that's being used on social media it's just not what I feel like our community
152is about so that's it thanks any other parting comments um [Music] I would like to say congratulations to those of you who ran it was such a hard collection but you persevered and you won I would like to I'm sure I'll get a chance to do it but I can say it twice thanks Tyler for stepping up to the place when we made the call and we've enjoyed it on the board we've missed you um but I know this is a really tough position to be in with small children and A busy life and um we appreciate your sacrifice thank you into that next meeting and you have to bring cookies those are the others because you have the blood buttons you have to also Feed Us yes um Okay then if there's no other
153uh comments then I will take a Voice vote to adjourn all in favor say aye [Music] um thank you Nancy