001um all right [Music] um are we ready yep all right then I'm gonna call the meeting to order today's Tuesday March 14th 7 at 5 P.M pm um okay up first we have public comment and I'm just going to read a quick statement the district 97 Board of Education recognizes that public participation is a vital part of our organization's success during a board business meeting committee members are invited to speak during the designated public comment period on our agenda the board welcomes participation but does not respond during a public comment portion of the agenda those who wish to speak are required to sign in on the public comment sheet prior to the start of the meeting we ask that the following guideline followed in order to allow sufficient time for the board to conduct its
002business one when your name is called by the board president please step up to the podium and state your name for the record two public comments will be limited to three minutes if multiple individuals wish to address the board on the same subject this group is encouraged to appoint a spokesperson please note that the board president reserves the right to shorten the time for each person to address the board during public comment to conserve time to give the maximum number of people an opportunities three all speakers must conduct themselves with respect and stability towards others thank you in advance for your participation and cooperation um so up first we have Greg Rosen hey guys good to see everyone again um so I'm just going to read a prepared statement for for you all on a
003little bit of a different topic than I've done in the past but um the legacy of the Oak Park School District is one built on High level academics two-way communication between the school board superintendent Administration and the community Oak Park was a sought after place to live for parents looking to raise their children many in the community left the city of Chicago due to the constant issues surrounding the CPS and challenges due to classroom sizes as parents we did the math on private school tuition with the taxes in the City compared to the higher home prices and taxes in Oak Park we Justified the move because of the legacy of the Oak Park School District but now we find ourselves at a Crossroads a Crossroads of Legacy versus the reality of today I was informed
00417 teaching positions across d-97 were being eliminated in a Workforce reduction technically it's not being called a Workforce reduction but regardless of the words you choose or how it's technically classified it is just that Workforce reduction already knowing the pulse of teachers and faculty within d-97 is already a hot button and the pending reallocation of some classroom assignments and the move to significantly expand the class sizes I ask is this intent to achieve additional attrition which brings me back to Legacy versus the reality of today I ask all of you would you be willing to come into a classroom and teach 27 kids all requiring different levels of support and be responsible to the state for state requirements on classroom progress as well individual academic and social emotional success for each student who loses in
005this scenario we argue the students the teachers the community and the district what does the potential that count of 27 mean in terms of class size in the state of Illinois five-year average b-97 we're at about 20. CBS is at 22.8 and the state of Illinois is at 20. so way to set the bar what about when compared across the U.S average Elementary classroom size across the U.S totally exact that's Michigan at 25. what are we doing Dr Shaw everything we have heard from you thus far has been through the lens of fostering a culture embracing the uniqueness of children and their individual learning needs and ensuring that teachers and faculty are in lockstep with this vision we need to know that these aren't just talking points that we really do mean this you have
006stated you are looking to modernize A playbook on teaching for teachers to hone in on their soft skills and compassion with awareness and understanding the essentials of building a relationship and trust between students and teachers you understand how curriculum previously taught in the classroom and expectations in years past simply does not translate to today's children we all agree which brings me back to the conversation of Legacy versus the reality today that Legacy of the Oak Park School District was built by your predecessors the new reality is that our classroom size on average has the potential to be the largest in America it has discussed in previous board meetings where an ongoing battle to retain and develop our top teaching Talent the days of open communication between the board the superintendent and your voting public also
007appears to be a thing of the past can I finish please I just read a statement that we have a time limit because there are other folks who are going to have public comments you're welcome to submit it to the board secretary this is part this is part of the challenge that we face you know I'm just going to cut to my ask right so we're just looking for the human element the soft skills The Compassion awareness the point of view that you guys expect from your teachers it could be reciprocated right we ask that the same things you ask of us you guys provide as well we would like to see focus group Town Halls two-way dialogue and conversation your obligations to being an interactive part of the community does not stop upon being
008elected guys be available communicate engage and talk with us not at not at us I mean at the end of the day we are Oak Park and we're better than this thank you thank you thank you um hello everyone as you know I'm Hannah Boudreau Oak Park Teachers Association co-president and Gwendolyn Brook social worker so I'm speaking tonight I'm just going to read a statement as well kind of a long day I'm speaking tonight to urge everyone here to please reconsider Mr Lawrence Callaway's request for an unpaid leave Mr Callaway has the very unique and exciting opportunity to go on tour with globally recognized blue singer and Grammy Award nominee Joanna Connor and the record group you may or may not know that Mr Callaway is a profoundly talented bass player who has performed all
009over the world as well as at some of our very own favorites like Fitzgerald and friendly tail he's also been a resident performer at Chicago Kingston mines for years perhaps some of you have even seen him Mr Callaway recently requested an unpaid leave from April 4th through May 7th I've included the letter from his recording label for your review and sadly he was told he would have to resign losing Mr Callaway would be a tremendous loss to our school Community he consistently goes above and beyond to serve our students and staff and is an integral member of our Brooks family furthermore as we seek as a district and a community to have a more diverse staff losing a young talented black man should not be the message we are sending we should be excited for
010him and supportive of this incredible opportunity that he's been afforded not forcing him to quit a job he loves thank you for your time and I'm hopefully you'll consider this unpaid League request as always if you'd like to speak further I'm always happy thank you thank you um up next we have Tanya hey hey everybody hi it's all set up because they don't have paperwork let's see um okay um I don't have such a written formal statement but um I am thrilled to be taken this opportunity to formally introduce myself to you all I've been in Oak Parker for 17 years I have a daughter at Longfellow Elementary I'm a leader in the community although maybe maybe we haven't met um I'm the founder of tedx or Park women it goes by tedx or park
011now and I'm also the founder of parents against child sex abuse that goes by by paxa and also the kids do movement what brings me all brings me to you all here today is that about a month ago my fifth grader brought some news to me at home that there was an lgbtq Club being rolled out at Longfellow I have to say to you all as parents I was really surprised that this had been brought to me through my child and that she had seen it on a whiteboard and every child has a different reaction to topics like this mine has her own reasons um that I will for protecting my child's perspective and the reasons why I had come to me with this update and as a parent who believes and strong communication within
012the parent Community I was really surprised to hear it from her first and not through other Communications like there is about Aaron's law like there is about Candor health and some sexual health education that comes to us I was really surprised that such a sensitive topic was being rolled out in such a way so I took to a platform that a lot of parents use communicate unnecessarily you know bad energy or any um you know opinion that would be uh polarizing obviously I chose this community for all the very reasons most of us are here today I feel silly saying this to you all but um from a very harmless post using the Facebook Longfellow fifth grade page kind of just using um the platform to communicate to parents about the fact that this had
013been rolled out and that this hasn't been communicated to a parent to our proper channels what that resulted in was getting trolled by a Long Fellow dad taking my post my very benign post and posting it to Old Park dads with a following of 2 000 people calling me a homophobe so as you can imagine being a community of Oak Park being the leader that I am and having a very untrue statement being posted about you without any further inquiry or wanting to understand the reasoning why maybe that was put out there um with a huge alarm to me um this kind of behavior that's toxic in our town is it happened to a lot of people through other forums in town with personal attacks without real good understanding so I welcomed DMS from parents
014following that post and I got some really good dialogue going with parents who maybe um didn't use their voices for the very reason some people don't like to put the acronym lgbtq because people jump to conclusions about what that entails oh my God that was it um my ask of you all and um Dr Shaw knows we've also communicated with the principal is that we have still very unclear answers about how this club came about it how it rolls up to Bisbee everything that we've explored does not show any clear policy about from isbe or from the ACLU that impacts Elementary School level so our overarching ask is for further insight and information about why and how the schedule our elementary school kids um we support LGBT but lgbtq but I believe that there are
015some sensitive topics around that whole umbrella that needs to be further explored and open to the parent Community for more discussion um since it does lead a lot of kids who are not in that category um you know that clear very confused or stressed about what this all means for Elementary's age kids and I think it's a very fair request and it doesn't make me homophobe so thank you so much for your time thank you and those three minutes go fast all right sorry we have one more uh public comment sadika Ryan hi nervous [Laughter] if you got this one all right should I just start yeah okay hello my name is felika Ryan I'm the school social Market Whittier as well as a parent of two Irving students at Urban I'm advocating on behalf
016of the culture and climate coaches who are recently informed that their positions will be eliminated eliminating their positions would negatively impact the social emotional well-being of many many d97 staff and students in numerous ways briefly the culture and claywood cultures have greatly enhanced d-97's multicure existence of support for behaviors which we all call mtsfb it's a complex system of varying degrees that support students behavioral social and emotional needs so they are able to learn in the classroom the culture and climate coaches support mtssb with the implementation of evident-based curriculums and practices in all classrooms as well as the implementation of evidence-based interventions for students with more intensive behavioral and social emotional needs and small groups or an individual basis the culture and climate coaches insurance is done in a systematic bare manner with Fidelity the
017role supporting mtsfb is vital especially now when students are exhibiting more extreme and frequent behaviors associated with the difficulty to covid-19 pandemic has caught in addition to the immense responsibility of supporting d-97's mtssb process the culture and climate coaches provide d-97 students staff and families in the following way they provide training and consultation regarding restorative practices classroom management strategies social emotional learning techniques and trauma-informed care they support d-97 partnership with DePaul University which links the United Center students and families for housing medical insurance various therapies and other essential supportive resources they support the coordinators services for the LGBT lgbtq plus students which supports c97's initiative of inclusion they support Second Step in learning for justice curriculum as well as other lessons on anti-racism and much much much much much more in conclusion please reconsider the
018decision to eliminate the culture and climate coach positions they will directly support every school Improvement plan school and to increase student sense of belonging and engagement as well as d97's larger vision of creating a positive learning environment for all students as Equitable inclusive and focused on the whole child thank you thank you thank you okay thanks everyone for the public comments um next to Special Report on the bike walk safety presentation yep so we'll invite up um Genie King as well as we have guests here uh Sylvia ashweri and Doug Chen is here so come on yeah what do you want okay you're going up front we've got the next slide oh thank you thank you okay hi everyone I am one of the co-chairs of bike walk Park and I'm here with Doug Chen
019so my name is Douglas Chan I am a former Irving parent I live around the corner of urban School my daughter went to Julian I served on the PTO while she was at Julian during the pandemic and now she's a sophomore at the high school as an aside if I could be so bold I don't follow what happens in d-97 too much but to hear that they're going to eliminate the climate culture College climate culture positions a little more distressing so please listen to the woman who's saying positions um and I also a d97 parent I have two boys at Whittier so um just a little outline of what we like to talk about today we are going over our relatively new school safety report which we developed last year um and so I would
020like to just introduce bike walk really quickly go over that report um just in terms of its General methodology and what it can offer the district and parents who would like to look at it and then I'll hand it over to Doug and Doug will briefly touch on the process for change as it stands right now and making changes to the road in relation to schools he'll go over the toolkit of strategies that we've identified that might be useful in problem areas around schools and throughout the village in general actually um and then he will talk about our asks and what we can offer in relation to this information um so we are a non-profit organization um devoted to improving safety conditions for all Road users in Oak Park and our mission is to advocate
021for a safe space for everyone on the roads and we do that through kind of policy General policy Focus work and also supporting specific asks for changes in infrastructure and uh funding with us there have been the origins of this report almost every year really disturbing crashes happening around the schools often at the beginning of the year we were kind of Lucky this year that nothing really like rose that level but I think that was probably mostly luck sadly um and so in general um the common response and the response of the district is often to just put more crossing guards at intersections which is we love our crossing guards and it can definitely help but it doesn't fix the underlying safety issues that are causing some of the discussion and some of these problems
022to begin with um so we did this report to try and understand the hot spots that are there and identify opportunities for improvements so this is available on our website it uses crash data from 2018 to 2021 uh available freely from the village and it is 100 a volunteer effort um so you know we did the best we could with the data we had but we feel pretty pretty strong in it um and also it's based a lot on parent observations which we think really strengthens it as a as a resource we studied quarter mile catchments around HD 97 school and um we looked at both overall crashes which you see in the column in the middle and then also just ones that only invite involve pedestrians and cyclists so that's a smaller group of
023uh crashes on the right side and you see the schools in descending order in terms of the number of crashes in the list above so you can see the middle schools are definitely the highest and then it goes down from there I think the most important takeaway from this data is that what you don't see so this is only data that's crash reported to the Village so if you have a near miss or get freaked out because someone drove too close to you and it's not reported to the Village those type of incidents which a lot of people see daily are not reflected in this data so I think it's safe to say that these numbers are actually higher but we simply can't access the data if it doesn't exist right I think people estimate
024that up to a third of near crashes or actual crashes are not reported people just drive away or you know they just don't call the police they don't report it um so I'm going to go quickly through these maps and it's not really I know they're hard to see um but the point that we want to make is that in general you know they are related that kind of the seriousness of the situation and the number of crashes is related to the level of Road usage around the principle so it's no surprise that the middle schools are the most dangerous right because we see here Julian which is you know just behind us um is founded by these heavy arteries almost on all sides um but I think in nearly every school I would also
025see things that surprised me um let me think I think like in the case of uh if I go on the Brooks I was really surprised that Randolph had as many crashes as it does it really it Rivals Washington um also Lombard Lombard is this skinny little streak with no room for anyone and can be pretty dangerous um and then going down from there by um again you can see Lake in Ridgeland kind of dominate Whittier I'm very familiar with um I mean this map really gives me direct insight into the problems that are happening that I experience just north of school on Thomas so um these data snap snapshots become a lot more meaningful when parents have lived experience and can match that against what they see um Lincoln Fillmore is extremely active there's
026a lot of problems there then going down two long follow s Irving which despite being so close to the highway um came in pretty low on the list and then man and so even for these schools where you don't see as many crashes there's definitely still room for improvement and so with each school we came up with like a short list of recommendations for things that we thought could be improved in specific locations those little data snap snapshots are available in a report I will let the board know that you should be expecting something from Irving School in the near future um a parent was hit after school in January I believe while crossing Ridgeland I don't know if she was sent to the hospital it was fairly serious and that has caused the Irving
027PTO to again reassemble and say hey let's look again at the traffic situation around Irving and I say again because one of the dots at Irving is actually my spouse who when my daughter was in fifth grade got run down by a car in the morning to drop off sent to the hospital with a serious concussion and so some of the improvements that we're going to talk about were implemented at Irving not because parents recognize the problem they were implemented because somebody got hit and the last thing we want is to make changes as the result of somebody getting hit we want to be a little proactive and make some of these changes so what bike walk would like to do is basically we can recommend safety improvements for every school as a starting point
028and there is a standard toolbox that is recognized around the country for improving Walker biker and folks with impairable ability Across the Nation that are recognized that can be implemented the essential process starts with the families and the ptos at individual schools and if an individual School cannot solve the problem for whatever reason they're going to work with your d97 safety team and I know the urban PTO is already starting that process if you agree with things you have a safety team that then says hey this is what we want to do a lot of the projects are going to necessitate involvement with the Village of Oak Park which is a whole other process to run through and a very frustrating one as someone who's gone through that process and if someone needed your board
029your school board PTO says and we can't do this a parent or you know any group of parents can bypass this body and go straight to The Village's Transportation Commission and say Hey I want X to happen on my street or at my school and we see some of that happening on occasion [Music] some basic tools that are often used uh bump outs so here is at Irving School at the south end it's a one-way Street basically this is a kind of pseudo-temporary pseudo-terminate curb bump out to basically create a choke point prior to this you try to get Lanes of two sometimes three cars simultaneously trying to turn left turn right go straight this by choking it down you can only get one card at a time and just kind of simplifies the intersection
030for kids to get across safely raised crosswalks here's an example Lake Street in front of the Lake Street Theater prime example over rice crosswalk daylighting eliminating parking spaces close to pedestrian crosswalks so that is simply easier to see at some of the schools I think at Longfellow they actually Place cones in those spots where you're not supposed to park anyway but prior to them putting cones there parents would pull into those spots to drop their kids off thereby restricting visibility of the kids as they cross the crosswalk so you know it's not just those drivers it's we as parents who engage in these bad behaviors that that put other kids at risk temporary permanent road closures cul-de-sacs at Lincoln at Longfellow there are one-way segments at by Irving what are your Brooks and these can
031be expanded or reduced as need is as as it arises and you know what's nice about a couple of horses you can throw them as a test to see how things respond and if it's a failure you don't necessarily have to go that route thank you ground murals a nice big black lives matter one over by the high school that sort of Street marketing actually causes dryers to slow down because it kind of creates the noise in the street and it causes people to actually pay more attention to where they're driving one of the big ones around town is Bank button removals rather than you having to come to a crosswalk and push the button wait perhaps an entire cycle for the light to change you get away with these so that anytime you come
032to a crosswalk it always turns green for you as a pedestrian and then it turns green for the traffic and this is commonly implemented in Chicago and lots of other cities around the U.S and I have seen I'm sure we've all seen kids come to intersection the light is green but they have the don't walk sign so they don't walk and they hit the button and then they get frustrated because it doesn't turn and they either wait for the whole cycle for the next turn or they just decide to go because they don't want to wait because who wants to wait when the light for the cars are green but this little hand is telling you don't get to go have you spoken with the village about that yes and they've said it's too difficult
033or if it's going to impact the traffic as I eat cars there's surprisingly been a lot of hesitance on the village part to doing that yeah my understanding yeah they were mostly implemented in like the chains so it's actually fairly new um so I think some of that resistance might just be like oh God you know this this is a fancy system to suddenly deactivate but um I think it's becoming more and more of a movement across the country and in some stuff before this is commonly implemented to just change course on these things so um yeah we're gonna while they are in place I've noticed a lot of them don't work correct they don't do yeah they don't ever change as you said and so even that system isn't actually doing independent function and
034during covet pandemic The Village actually disabled all of them to reduce people actually you know touching things um and so they always turn so it's clearly within the technical capacity of the village to do it you know I think as more people say get away with them it'll happen but we'd like to see it happen of course and it is a basically a no expense sort of change that will improve the ability to walk across the street safely uh one specific plan which flight walk of Park will be coming back to the d97 board is the Julian Middle School commuter Improvement plan uh we've already gotten the ptos at Irving Julian Longfellow and Lincoln to sign off and say we support this plan and it is a fairly comprehensive plan focusing on Ridgeland Avenue to
035improve the walking Viking ability of the 70 of kids who don't qualify for busing to Julia and its primary focus is Ridgeland between Roosevelt on the south end and Erie on the North and it also coincidentally touches the commuter routes of three d-97 schools that happen to feed in to Julian and it's got a series of long mid and short-term changes some of these are very low expense or no expense and include things like we've already seen on board we have a copy of the plan linked on the website and a map that makes a little more understanding a little more comprehensible but things like no turnout red signs very simple to do removing the back buttons adding curveball files is a good example of a long-term project what could be done in the near
036term like was done at Urban School so basically we're asking for increased leadership from this board to influence infrastructure improvements around our schools and that's leadership from this board aimed at the village board coming up in this year the village is actually hiring a consultant to review all the school safety plans in conjunction with the village-wide vision zero plan and the idea behind Vision zero is what can we do so that we have zero pedestal people deaths from streets so we asked the district as a whole you know send these opportunities for the public to engage you know out to the ptos out to the respective schools there are opportunities to have Futures bike and walk to school events preferably in the fall when kids are actually inclined to ride their bikes and walk to
037school because the weather is nice and there's you know keeping stuff daily Communications about what does it mean to those things across the street or you know how come my school doesn't have any bike racks or we need more bike racks than accident so there's lots of opportunities for the sport to take a more active role as Blake walk cook Park we all live here in town we want to be a resource for on the ground change we live all across town so we have you know good senses of what's happening around individual schools we want to help analyze these problems and work with you we can get information out to our supporters and other folks in the community and just help spread the petitions and information and provide support organizing public comment for the
038village Transportation Commission this board or even the village board as various projects move forwards and uh so I guess on behalf of Sylvia myself and the rest of the Oak Park bike walk volunteer group thank you very much for your time and happy to take any questions I have two questions um so I used to live over by Longfellow and I'm wondering have you guys thought about adding a turning a light for turning um so I get my bearings but on basically the intersection of Jackson and Ridgeland there is no turn signal so what I noticed is that so so I noticed that a lot of cars trying to make that turn really quickly that's where a lot of things happen I noticed there was no mention of that here or maybe I'm missing it
039but I think that's a huge um thing there is when we don't have those turning lights on busy intersections and also recognizing that not um although I was a parent community in that area like a lot of people are traveling from the city to the suburbs from suburbs to the city so they don't they may not ever realize that there's a school nearby they're just trying to get to where they need to go so that was one thing and then number two I think um I think this has been my word all day as a kind of I'm not accountability in this sense but I think like making sure that our students are understanding I can't tell you how many times I'm driving I'm going the 20 miles per hour and a kid comes out
040nowhere with their headphones on usually it's high schoolers but I'm noticing more now that my son is a middle schooler that I'm like when you're riding your bike take off your headphones yes so I think as we talk about messaging that even if we do all the things kids have to kids and parents have to do their part to talk about what is safe bike riding have it on a helmet not having you know a phone in your hand or having your book bag in your lunch bag in your helmet and your football stuff on a bike so just if there is messaging for the students and parents I think that might be helpful as well it goes right to really just actually excellent suggestions we do point out so there is a week of
041required bike walk education currently in all d97 schools it was required by a new state law in I believe 2019. so technically somewhere in the house or the PE curriculum this exists we actually so I I don't hear about it from my kids um I'm I still I know it's there I don't know what it involves so actually one of our asks is a little bit of maybe more communication about what that is involves at different grade levels and that if parents learn more about it we get a lot of good information about second step in those programs but we also learn what's being taught in relation to that then we can help reinforce to be consistent right so I can just um d97 have a bike trailer that they utilize and they take to
042the schools during different times of the year where they have a program and then partnership also has a program where they take flight trailer and invite all the kids to come for bike safety and then they also do it during gym class okay is it always at a certain time of the year or it is and I can look that up and get back to like when it is because we moved the trailer so that's kind of how I know where it's going okay um picking up on what Sheree said I I how how do we just get people to slow down a little bit and like abide by South Side it's like what are other communities doing and we are just kind of what three square or four square miles and there's you know
043the I mean if you live here you know which that every street is 25 miles an hour or 20 whatever but if you don't that's a slower speed limit than your average neighborhood it just is and so um and then people get frustrated because then they just think everyone drives slow here and then they'll go around right I mean this is and they run stop signs because they feel like they've been slowed down so I'm just curious if you guys have heard of I don't know other communities that are small like ours landlocked like ours I mean dense populations that aren't city right that what they do to kind of I don't know I mean you don't want to be welcome to Oak Park the speed limit is 25 miles an hour right like you
044don't want that kind of sign outside the but I don't I just I think that the all of the things you pointed out are great but there's also kind of a mindset that 25 miles an hour is like really slow it's it's almost like a school speed limit all the time but it's if you hit somebody going 25 you can still kill them uh well and I'm not I mean like I said we always leave 10 minutes around my family tells me we're always leaving too early and get in place but but it's still it's not natural like for most people to say that my driving life all the time is 25 miles an hour and I'm just curious if you've heard of strategies um based on kind of just I don't know like getting
045that information to people that are driving through or I don't know I don't know that is a gigantic cultural shifting sort of endeavor to Embark upon I mean I think about her dad's page and there's all those Chatterbox people just drive like animals now and then I can I mean I work for a local electrician so I drive around town all the time and you know I hunt around in my van going yeah I work for kinetic energy [Music] [Laughter] but yeah I mean people pass me on the street and I was like um but it's a larger cultural question I mean this country is dominated by car culture and Fast and Furious I think to that point it's just we can't change the culture right even if we welcomed everybody and said these are
046our speed limits I think that they're still going to be the person who's rushing who's running late whose get us where they need to go so I think in addition to this I would love to know like what are some things that have worked at other places I see this these things but if there are other ways that because we can we can Advocate and we can go to the Village but ultimately is their decision I think it boils down to really two things it's infrastructure changes I mean there's obviously the cultural change which hopefully will happen but there's the infrastructure side so things like the daylighting pump outs traffic signaling speed cameras signs just say you're going too fast and I think the other side of that that milk park being the type of
047community is that we don't want to do is is enforceable and we tell the police if you see somebody roll the stop sign even if they rolled it really slow I'm Gonna Take It I mean that's the sort of thing that maybe I think that needs to be part of the discussion is enforcement first of all thank you guys for doing this and thank you for I think the recommendations are really thoughtful and I appreciate it and I think everybody in Oak Park can relate to the issues that you're describing even if your partner hasn't been hit by a car we've all had near experiences um I had a couple of questions um one is uh I think that like I get anxious a lot because traffic issues are ubiquitous so far but you think
048about like you guys drew a quarter mile radius around the schools I'm in Irving dad as well you get outside of the quarter mile radius and that's almost where I'm more concerned because kids walk from far away and cars aren't cognizant of the fact that they're near a school and I feel like they feel because it's more isolated they're less accountable in some ways so I'm curious to know first question is whether you notice data differences like is it more common around schools where are we seeing these kinds of incidents everywhere and we're just highlighting schools obviously because there's kids there the second question I have is I think there's a general and you alluded to this already there's General frustration with people for people who have tried to raise local traffic concern issues with
049the village and there seems to be a general my sense from having been engaged in that at times is that there's this perspective that at some point in our history we were like you know Cavalier about putting in cul-de-sacs and things and now we're like this more rational planning body that doesn't do these things and so I'm curious if you guys think that the consultant process and the recommendations like are you hopeful or what's your kind of read on The Village's interest in actually taking these things on in a new way yeah yeah oh it's good news I mean the fact that they're gonna hire it's better than nothing yes for sure because they don't have the staff to address that stuff efficiently and um that's what we hear a lot in relation to our
050requests we just don't have the staff to do all this extra planning related to active Transportation we're too busy dealing with everything else and so I think hopefully they'll they're will be a better process slightly quicker for the for public petitioning so they'll get through the backlog at least um but I hear what you're saying um in general I think that the orientation is it became car culture more car focused certainly as recently as 2014 when they put in all the bed buttons um and I think that changing changing that is going to be a kind of this is a part of it but it's going to be a slow process division zero plan well I think you don't start to do that because it's going to actually direct them to specific places to put
051Investments that will improve safety for everyone it's going to make recommendations start moving new stop signs and a better slower slower in intersections and hopefully a budgeted a phase budgeting I mean it's really comprehensive but they can build that into the capital budget over time so those two things are really hopeful to me um but it doesn't really make a difference in the short run and I didn't I didn't ask because I wanted to sound fatalistic I was just asking genuinely if like and I I'm I know one of you asks was for us to sort of use our voice to help push for this which I would be in favor of us doing it does surprise me that we're hearing from you guys that they're planning to look at the schools in particular and
052that we didn't hear it from them but maybe we did I think we did just I'll address it okay yeah okay all right I'll stop just one quick thing that I thought I was when you guys were showing the radius map for Julian there's definitely like an uptick near Fenwick and so even just looking at some of the private schools in the in the district just to further the reach of folks who are aware of it um focus on d97 because yeah there's a lot of logic and if we improve you know say with the Julian project if we improve the walkability the bikeability safety for just just the kids going to Julian that has ancillary spillover effects for everybody around it and so while we might be focused on d97 you know working together
053okay yeah we're doing this for the kids and parents around in schools but the ancillary benefits go across the entire community including Fenwick without having to specifically say oh we're doing this for us yeah and that definitely goes to your point as well like you know what about the outside of the radius of physicals to be honest it's probably there probably is no difference in terms of if you're at accredited era if you're on an artery or a road with more usage it's going to be worse um so we just you know we just focus on on this group this population but [Music] be response I wanted to thank both of you I know you guys put a lot of time and attention you've been going to the PTO meetings we actually met at an
054event um and I was very intrigued because I had never heard of this group before um because the data was a little older I just wanted to kind of update it a little bit because the district has really taken seriously the amount of accidents that we've had um with the amount of students more walking um so if you look up here our current road closures Longfellow does utilize their cul-de-sac for arrival and dismissal like Doug said though we have put cones and worked with the village to put permanent signage on Jackson so that the cars do not park there um homes in Lincoln both block off they're cul-de-sac so you can't have any incoming traffic one-way segments which we do block off are seven of the Ten school so buy does it on two streets
055Brooke says that I'm Kennelworth Harvey at hatch Harvard at Irving Lincoln and harbor man at Berkshire and Whittier Tyler schools that are on a one-way Street automatically are these five schools listed and then schools that are not able to utilize any closures because of the idot Restriction is Richland because both Julian is located both at Ridgeland and Washington so they do have a bus pull off Lane to help eliminate some of that next slide foreign plan so we have kept in contact anytime that we do have an issue I meet with the village I meet with the police department the transformation committee um everyone to kind of go over what can we do can we look at our Traffic Safety pattern we have added crossing guards as a temporary solution um but this plan is
056intended to include policies procedures and recommendations for improving their safety Village Transportation Network for all users reducing accidents involving high severity incidence injuries or accidents involving bicycles and pedestrians they're going to be developing this plan with the transportation committee with public input like groups like bike walk to discuss concerns identified in their report and other groups to provide input and help shape this study during commissioning meetings and other engagement opportunities the school district is going to be involved in this version as stakeholder group to also provide input and help shape this study study since 10 of our schools are located in four and a half square miles their timeline this is to start beginning this in June 2023 and it's going to last about one year they currently have an idat Grant which is great
057they'll help impact that timeline slightly which that will affect a lot of the things that we've talked about about Julian all right I'll speed it up or they can't speed it up no um so they have been very engaged in helping us try to figure out what we can do to safely walk the schools one point I wanted to mention that you brought up Doug is we have installed at least six new bike racks at Julian alone any school that hasn't asked for that because they have a large population they could reach out to us um principals can reach out to us parents can reach out to us and do let's talk so we can listen to some of the concerns or if we see anything that's going on please just reach out to us
058instead of waiting for things to occur if you see anything that's going on just send us a message and let us know so we can begin to address it so I want to thank uh also Sylvia I know we've met before um and nice to meet you Doug I think that it's also important that we're talking about this work in the context of safety um and also that the board has expressed an interest in sustainability and I know those are intersecting um when we talk about this work so we had recently had a visit to the D200 with um Gavin and Nancy to the sustainability Club I just want to name that other possibilities and Innovations can also be possible in this space for example walking school buses so how might we actually create a
059sense of community and Innovative thinking and sustainability and safety when we have kind of routes of people planned to pick up kids along their way um so that we don't I might not feel comfortable sending my you know my second grader to walk alone at school but if there is actually a walking school bus that's planned by the community so different things that we can think of it as innovative ways to to get it both safety and sustainability and so we're excited about this kind of partnership and the excite you know in the commitment in the community to think differently and to advocate for uh you know for the kinds of things we need to do so thank you for your partnership a good one thank you thank you very much okay um up next
060we have the priority update I've gotten a couple messages saying that we need to be a little louder for the folks in the back so um if folks can try to project so everyone can hear it I guess that's mostly for you yes we will use our teacher voices um so if we can um invite next up we have the um be a learning designer group so Dr Lofton is coming up and we've got other visitors here to join us as well yes so this um this area of work falls under um one of the three priorities that we had identified for this school year um first was be curious and building some uh clear agreements and Tools around our communication and our culture the second was be safe and healthy it's related to some
061of the work that we just heard about uh also around um kovitz school safety psychological safety and then the third area is be a learning designer and so this is some of the work that Dr Lofton and the team have been leading in that area so you have other folks coming up soon yes I do okay um and so thank you in advance to the parents who are here to the teachers who are here and to our principals who will be joining us in just a moment um so I just wanted to kind of tee up the work that we've been doing on the team so in terms of the district priorities that Dr Shad just outlined we are the be a learning designer team more affectionately known as team joy and love and so
062we have folks who are bringing the continue to support the joy of teaching and the love of learning so we have a wide group of students I'm sorry school and District leaders alongside our teacher Mentor that make up the team so just want to give a quick shout out to those amazing folks in the work that they've done around expanding family Partnerships particularly as it relates to family teacher conferences um so the work or a portion of the work that we've been doing is around really strengthening the family school partnership because we believe that we have a common experience um as families and teachers in that finally teacher conference space and so we want to make sure that we're using that workspace to continue to strengthen our connection I mean this work is also connected
063to our superintendent's charge of getting parents and teachers to speak the same family-friendly language about performance and how to support students who drive their own learning and there's clear Equity policy alignment in terms of families being essential partners and also making sure that we're families and students are feeling welcome and understand what's available to them and how to access information as well as being P Partners in engagement so we actually connect conducted a survey and had our families respond we had almost 500 responses around what are the big ideas and things that we need to really think about as we continue to improve our practice and the work of family teacher conferences and the majority of the feedback was overwhelmingly positive but there were some themes as the team analyzed and looked at the qualitative
064data and these themes are kind of outlined here so more time with their teachers um really understanding what they can do at home to support their students having flexible scheduling options making sure that we maintain virtual access a deeper understanding of Standards Child Care came up as an issue especially for families who may have multiple children having conferences at the same time or during the same time period to continue to focus on social emotional support and be like having information in advance and really wants to make sure that as we're thinking about support it's for the whole child we also sent a survey to our teachers and again had some big themes emerge around the conference structure so really a focus on student-led dialogue which is awesome which is really kind of where we're trying
065to go it's about a time of being designed Insurance virtual access um and then again um the theme of having more scheduling options and providing information in advance and for middle schools in particular I'm limiting the amount of off-team interactions that happen during the family teacher conference space can you say what that means so they all have um like they might have a team of six one and there could be a student that's going off team for a particular reason um so they want to limit um the amount of opt-team interactions to make sure that that teaming structure so those teachers in that team are the ones that are really having that informed conversation um are you going to explain that I'm going there okay so um what we've looked at then is looking at
066kind of what our teachers have told us what our families have told us what are those things that actually came up as a common um thing that we could actually kind of start thinking and designing around at least at the beginning so having information Advanced and these are actual quotes from those surveys um and then virtual access is either through Zoom or Google meets so for those families which we may not have the time to during the contract yes come in person um they want to make sure that they do have an actual access Avenue to still participate in the conference virtually um yeah if that's and so we want to make sure that we've thought about that and maintain that as a in a potential option and then um the other thing that came
067up um in terms of a Common Thread was having more scheduling options um so those are the kind of three things that we started to design around and so our goals for this year we're to gather stakeholder feedback and Analysis teams which we did um to begin to provide assessment information and to build assessment of literacy in advance of those conferences to support a virtual option for increased access to participation and to start to build consensus among school teams to make sure that we have a similar experience across schools so well if you can just yeah so we actually developed uh and thanks to our Communications team a website I landed quote plays for folks to really start to get ready for those family teacher conferences so if we go down the page a little
068bit um you'll see that we had a family University earlier in the year so folks can access what those assessments that we give so Math Master connect what they all mean and how they could be used to further understand how students are doing and if you go down a bit further for every grade both in English and Spanish we have What's called the big three so if we can actually hit um The Big Three yep K2 and it goes all the way to eighth grade and so these are the three big things that we want children to know and be able to do by the end of each grade level for families that so it's easy accessible they know what we're focused on and then if you hit one of the links for that resources
069for families to guide student learning if families can go a big deeper a bit deeper in terms of the standards and at the front understanding of how those home supports connect um thanks well and go back what's this provided to I know you had the parent University and it's up on the website but either through the principles or directly to families yeah we're going to talk about it just okay for sure um so I will are the Brooks teachers here who'd like to come on up um so we're just going to do a little interview Style you guys can have a seat cheers [Music] so first of all thank you guys for coming thank you so if you wouldn't mind just quickly um for our board just sharing who you are and you're a Content
070area discipline and then um the quick question I have for you today is just telling us about your approach to family teacher conferences this year um how you design for them and how you experience them thank you it is so I'll because I'll start off I'm I'm Pam Gaffney and we are team six three uh it's Brooks middle school and on my left I had Melissa Baroni who is the math teacher on our team and I have Georgia saganos who is the ins teacher on our team Rachel younberg is the learning specialist and my co-teacher for co-teachers together for language and literature and missing is Mr Tom rising and he is our science teacher on our team so we are excited to be here and talk about conferences and how family conferences went this year
071and I think the biggest thing is that we were very excited that conferences were in person this year we were very excited to see our families and our students face to face when that time came along rather than over Zoom I know it does benefit some people but we definitely think that in person definitely builds that camaraderie between all of us as we meet all of our parents moving forward in the previous a couple of conference times we only really got to see those students during our at Brooks we call it our store time and it was a smaller group of individuals really rather than extending that to the many students that we have and in the time frame which I know Melissa will talk about we even feel that we could have met more
072parents and perhaps even dug a little bit deeper but we were happy that we had the time that we did with the parents of the this particular point in time so as far as preparation we really strive to make connections between the school teachers and our families we sincerely we sincerely want to partner with our parents we find the social and emotional well-being of our students our top priority because without that we know that academics really doesn't come easily to students without that social emotional component and feeling really good about where they're at and who they're with and the relationships that they're building so with all that also comes our relationships with our families and we really want them to know how their student is doing social emotionally academically they can see but we go
073over that as well and just really let them know and give them some strategies and things that they can do within their homes that will also help benefit their students we think that's important we definitely think it's just it's a partnership it's not just the teachers and then they go home and everything is done it's just a continuation of learning and growing and really feeling good about where they are and who they are as a student as a person so we try to make it that parents you know know what we're seeing from their student and that they have a plan when they leave from family conferences and that they can have to contact with their student at home and carry on that dialogue with themselves their student and then with us throughout the entire
074here let's move on anything um and then prior to the meetings as a team you know we prepare for conferences both formally and informally um meeting through like team and super team meetings where we receive the necessary materials and information that's needed for these parent-teacher conferences um info really we continually prep and prepare through entertained communication and often during our lunch time I mean due to our schedules we tend to dine together quite a bit and so that's another opportunity for us to just casually talk about you know our concerns our student needs and discuss anything we have with respect to those needs and then we're fortunate enough that as a team we are that we work as a really nice cohesive unit we support each other and each of us bring insight and experience
075that enables us to learn from each other and value different perspectives which is vital to our team and our team building prior to conferences we ensure that power school is updated and not only with t with our students scores but without also our teacher comments so that we don't have to waste time doing that during the meetings so that parents have that information ahead of time so that we can actually start really focus on the opportunity to zero in and discuss vital student needs strengths areas of growth as a team during the meeting and not just reiterate page and comments our takeaway from these meetings often relate directly to how we can continue to best support our students in the classroom and then ultimately our goal is to always present a united front as one
076whole unit so that parents and students feel that they can reach out to us any one of us actually at any time and feel confident that their questions and concerns will be addressed in ultimately resolved in it with a positive outcome just to kind of echo what my colleagues said I think our goal going into conferences is that we know parents can check PowerSchool and canvas anytime but we want parents to walk away feeling like we care about their child beyond the academic portion that we're invested in who they are as a whole person so we hope they walk away knowing like how they perform in our classroom how they participate what their executive functioning skills are like and what we see in front of us on a day-to-day basis what their social peer relationships
077are like in our classroom so that they also know we're thinking about them just beyond the learning that they're doing but who they are all together as a whole person so that's also one of our goals in that four minute little flap that they have with us that we're really conveying all of those things when they walk away and I just wanted to emphasize again how much our team and all of my colleagues here are committed and value the time to discuss student strengths as well as areas of growth and we're all committed to developing a culture that has an expectation that we're going to be in collaboration with parents to ensure that every child feels supported in the district it's because of these values that we'd like to discuss appropriate structures to ensure a
078better experience for families and teachers through conferences I know you'll hear in a moment that some families had a positive experience but the current structure is not sustainable to meet that goal so we want to meet the high expectation that all families leave conferences feeling their child is known I have heard strengths about their child and provided the direction on how to best support their child but the current model is difficult so for example I'm not sure the board is aware but in terms of the Middle School level we had five families come in for a 20 minute block so that's four minutes with each family within that time we're trying to introduce ourselves um get an introduction know what their child's name is process that information and provide specific detailed information for that family
079specific to that child's needs so we're making sure that we do that in four minutes and then after that you kind of switch gears really quickly because you have another family that's coming so to improve these structures we're really requesting that parent and teacher feedback is highly considered when making any sort of decisions in Partnership we'd also like to be informed in a timely manner if there's any changes that are going to be made because as you heard the level of collaboration and preparation that we put into it really requires quite some time so I would really we we would really be hopeful that you'll be intentional ensuring that all stakeholders are heard and that all efforts are made to be genuinely collaborative in the decision-making process moving forward absolutely thank you thank you so
080much um I just first of all want to thank you for ladies these are all my son's teachers I'm like this is familiar um I just want to thank them because I did get that like we've had some struggles but I did get that care um it's around just love love you because she really was just like I signed up the math acceleration program and she's like I really like he was like I'm not doing that again I didn't make it and she really pushed him we missed the deadline so he want me to do it again but hopefully he sucks in but she gave him that confidence when I do it again and so when I saw her I was like can I hug you because like I just felt that but I will
081say for me this was a lot different um that what I was used to because first of all we went to the fourth floor so that's how I got there and then like you're trying to look on your phone like what room is it in again that was confusing so by the time I got up there the Wi-Fi was not non-existent and so I was like what room is it in um there were people downstairs but unfortunately I don't feel like it was very helpful because they were like there was no like this is your student this is where you should go it was like figure it out so we got upstairs I'm out of breath and we go into the room there wasn't a lot of like signage like six three here or a
082through whatever however you want to organize it but then once you get there like you said this is the first time I'm ever seeing these people so I'm like hi like we're trying to introduce but then you don't have that space and as a new Middle School mom there's just so much you're like I have all the questions all the things because we're not used to this system whereas right before that I was at hatch and I'm in the space that my daughters are in we've had meetings here before I get to see where they sit so when they tell me the story is about I couldn't see the Border this person was hitting me I can imagine all that here you were just like it was like speed dating basically um you sit down
083and you have that conversation so I agree I agree with all that because like as soon as we start to get into it you felt like boom there's that pressure for the next person and then I think also just like the after like we no one does business cards anymore but sometimes it just is overwhelming and I have multiple kids so like the Twins were like I'm hungry let's go so having a space or we talk about different families if you have younger kids like that's not a conducive space to have and my kids are not like running around but they're still like what what are we doing um so I think I support like all the things that they're saying because I was there and I was just like I like this but it's
084a little chaotic um and they did the best that they could and they did an amazing job but I do see that there needs to be more thoughtfulness and um people with multiple kids I can't imagine if I was without my husband that day like having assistance um if I was a parent with a special needs child if I was differently abled and had to get to the fourth floor because there was there was even a signage like here's the elevator so those are just a couple of things um uh we you know we talk about equity and equality being um different and I wonder if we should offer different amounts of time for per student based on their needs a little bit because I'm hearing what you're saying and I have one child who
085would need a 20-minute conference and one that needs a 10 minute do you know what I mean and so I wonder if we you know is that does that make you guys feel like you're not able to still make the connection though because you're cutting your time short maybe with some of your students that have less challenges yeah but I'm just curious what you would think about I don't know staggering the time and asking parents to come and sign up for a different amount of time we actually I mean to to your point address um we actually did have a specific student that we we did book more time for because we knew that that was what was needed right so we had that amount of FL we had that level of flexibility built in
086um and and really we take it on a student I mean we see who signs up you know and there's certain there's certain parents that we reach out to that like look we really need to talk to you or you know we haven't been able to connect yet please come to this meeting so that we can have that conversation with you um and so we we tend to kind of look to see like where where that was and so for for that particular for that specific reason we were able to do that you know for our first specific student um and to your point you know I I have 16 year old triplets I don't go to their parent-teacher conferences because I can't talk to 21 teachers I just can't um so I Rely you
087know I Rely you know from a personal experience I rely on I'll email us you know a teacher and so that was one of the things our takeaways too that please don't wait until parent-teacher conferences or family teacher conferences speak to us reach out to us anytime so that we can address those issues before we even get to the conferences because some issues can't wait so we we kind of look at that too so that parent-teacher conferences shouldn't be the first time that we're meeting a parent to talk about an issue you know the students who are doing well you know those parents that's great they want to come in we shake hands we talk to them your kid's awesome let's see what we can do to continue that you know to continue that um
088but the students who have you know concerted needs we definitely want to hear from those parents and we reach out to those parents well before family conferences and I had a question actually I'm sorry if I follow on the and that was my next question was with the spectrum of needs on the kids that don't necessarily count parents aren't necessarily walking away with things to work on sure um is there and and I know we're talking about our gifted program all the time and this is not necessarily they don't need gifted services but is there an opportunity to provide kind of enrichment also then for those families so as opposed to I mean shaking hands and saying you did great was fine but so they have something also as a takeaway because I do think
089some parents even if your kid's doing really well you kind of walk out of the conference and would still like to have something maybe to work on WE leaned in on the website that you all made which I thought was really an excellent way to kind of portray information and so we made like little QR codes that every family could lead with that linked them right to that which included extension activities exactly so I thought that was a really good way for the district to support us in providing that extra level of support what families to lead with something thank you it was kind of related to what this is from Nancy but she was saying that Julian parents um whose kids were getting a B plus or higher were actually discouraged from scheduling conferences
090so the issue around like the equity of who has access um and kind of connected to that even like when I was signing up this was more of an issue in elementary school because it was like such a scramble like did you check email in time yeah the Middle School wasn't as bad but like I have a flexible schedule sure and my husband I mean we're both working from home but and so like I tried to be cognizant of people who don't have that and trying to pick more daytime but like there's no instructions that like there are some people who really need like I'm wondering about like one access of conferences for everyone regardless of whether you have a good kid or not um but two also like how do we and this maybe
091goes back to the fight culture thing too like as a community talk about the culture of like being aware of different students and families needs and how can we can kind of help support each other even in terms of whether it's longer or shorter amounts of time or like being aware of like not scheduling the evening hours if you could take daytime hours of just so this is probably probably a phase process so um we also have a collective learning agreement with that with our partners that and we'll be kind of talking about I'm assuming some of these things but we also have our principles here some principals here if you're coming up to talk about it as well as our our family so um I think we can probably also I also just really
092thank you ebony sure thank you to each of you for what you've shared here today I think um the other thing I just want to name and I know that you I'm guessing you will agree with this is that this idea that students that are academically doing well don't need that same level of attention it's really a problem it's a problematic assumption that oftentimes there are students that are socially emotionally struggling the most do they have anxious they're anxious and so we really need to figure out how to like make a commitment to a universal access for every child um because we're all uh working right and so we want to model that with ourselves and we want to make sure our messages are consistent so appreciate the kind of dialogue that's happened here because
093we get to design this together you know and um and thank you for your partnership and the the depth of practice and I I'm also like ebony looking forward to what we can design together so thank you [Music] and thank you uh for coming up and I know you guys talked today and all that and uh I think there's a genuine interest in collaboratively figuring this out so I appreciate you guys fighting that I'm Julian parent I didn't see julian61 here but they've been doing great with my son [Laughter] and I'm a my son's had a variety of challenges I'm a parent who has been and regular communication with the team the team has been great in communicating back with us and just kind of we keep each other abreast of things and so I
094think when we got to the conferences even though they're really short it worked okay because we kind of knew what was going on coming in and you guys touched on this already it both makes me think one as we think about conference redesign it's a broader thing than just like the touch points but I'm also curious from your perspectives like how often do parents engage with you in that way and is that something that we should really be thinking about more is how do we get parents not to come in four months or three months into the school year to talk to you for the first time if there's something going on I I don't I mean in terms of parent engagement that's really in a family by Family basis and I think that would
095be really hard to quantify especially in the time that we have right now um you know I I you know as a team like we reach out to parents um you know I'm the ins teacher for for our team and so every trimester I email all of my parents and I tell them what we're doing and I say this is what these are what the expectations are and this is what's going on um I you know we weekly we we look at our students who look at what they're doing we look to see if there's you know like where are the where are the dips that we need to address but also to to your point Dr Shaw you know the parents that do come in that are doing you know the B plus and
096above um like okay you're doing really well how are you feeling about it you know and that's my biggest question to our students especially the ones that you know they want that 10 out of 10 or they want that eight IB or they want that 100 what are you doing to maintain that what are you doing what is it costing you yeah to have that and to maintain that because we know how hard that is so we don't we don't dismiss that um and we hope I mean if parents email us then we we clearly engage with them as often as necessary um but you know and there are you know let's be honest there's some parents that don't come to the table you know whether their work precludes it or they don't have the
097time or the ability to do so we do everything we can to to extend that Outreach to them as often as possible and to that point too about like how can we collaborate on more effective ways to get families communicating with us before that time I think that especially like to your point about 6 I think that there has to be an intentional effort of supporting those families and getting them into the school and doing that contractually where teachers are compensated which outside of our hours and things of that nature but I do think that there needs to be a commitment to helping with that person and that transition into sixth grade so that families come in knowing that they're now part of this community because something we talk about too all the time is
098that students we want students to feel the same Pride that they did for their elementary schools in the middle school and I think if we start building that in the sixth grade level and ensuring that families feel like they're a part of it their students will follow as well I also think in the redesign it might be like a great idea to like treat the Middle School differently because it is in my conference with 115 students as opposed to I know elementary teachers see their classroom so that is different it needs to feel different and right now it's the same disgusting so I think that that's something we could consider as well I think I'm sorry that is I was like for a long time I was like maybe it's just me but then I
099was able to talk to Jung and Nancy who are also newer although you have one already in middle school but I remember like the first day I was like I'm so lost like the middle school or the elementary school teachers that my students have had will tell you the first as soon as we get that Facebook post that says this is who your teacher is I'm emailing him hi I'm blah blast Mom I would love to have a meeting with you we meet within the first month I get to know them but with the middle school it is so confusing it's like and I got an email from one person but I was like who which teacher is this and what is i i s and then you ask your student change next year so
100no yeah renaming it so yeah [Music] um the schedule is so different too so you're like so you saw this teacher today so I feel like it's just not like I would have liked a directory with like some pictures like this a little bit about you it just felt very interesting open house we do have an open house that yeah that we do that we encourage parents to commit and especially like Melissa brings up we all do that bridge it's really important not that other grades don't have you know families coming in to meet but I think you know sixth grade is definitely heavy with people coming in and wanting like you said to know you know who's my teacher where are they at what does their schedule look like Etc and I do think
101it does take that extra time from us and Melissa said like compensation wise for us to do that and to build those things and to bring parents in and to Foster that Community as they you know move through their school years just let parents know they are valued we want to partner with you um I mean it's huge to show that we're all interconnected with each other we want the success of you know our students I thought the open so I've had two children matriculating even more Julian and I thought the open house helped to alleviate a lot of that anxiety um so the with the first kid but by the second kid you're like I got this some more guests yes I was just watching the time yeah thank you so much okay thank
102you you're not Gavin okay there's like people who aren't thinking I'm Dr Curtis and then um thank you again would you say um [Laughter] shots fired thank you all for coming by it's a bit of the same drill just a quick um intro in your role for the school and what your students are enrolled and then the question is um for principals how you are prepared for to prepare for family teacher conferences and how that actually lived on your building and then for our parents what was your experience with family teacher conferences this year all right um here are my handy notes everybody um so my name is Ryan Gordon I am the principal at Lincoln Elementary School um so two things go Link in um we're fun over at Lincoln all right so uh
103two things that I think were important to kind of mention uh along the way that um we did specifically at Lincoln um we tried to create a student agency and student voice as part of that process so in our intermediate grade specifically around fifth grade there were uh student conferences and portfolios so that was kind of new to us and things that we're kind of working again to do to really involve students as part of the process um the other thing that I wanted to know um I know that everybody at this point either loves or hates Zoom right we kind of have that love-hate relationship with it but I think that it was very important that we still continue to provide access to folks who needed different um access points we get a lot
104lot of families that we might not otherwise get in person uh through zoom and so um while you know we love that we're in person and her very loud and clear that that was something that was important to us we still wanted to make sure that we had um you know eliminated barriers for those that wouldn't otherwise access those conferences uh two other things that I kind of uh wrote down um that just kind of came to mind and something that I always share with teachers um is that or put in newsletters and communicate in in all forms is that if a student is not meeting the expectation a parent should not come to a conference and experience that for the first time or learn of that for the first time so I'm always thinking
105about like communicating ahead of time so that you don't run into those time constraints because that will definitely change the conversation right um so number one you shouldn't learn that when you walk into a conference you should be communicating about those things you know as we're going the other thing that I wanted to mention is that you know our teachers are very committed to ensuring that families have access uh to conferences and so uh my staff meets all through the week they um meet very late in the day and oftentimes just noting that conferences do run past that time just so that they can make sure that families are heard and that it is a two-way dialogue and not just them coming to the table to tell about what their kids are doing it is
106a more collaborative process so those are some things that I just wanted to share about Lincoln and um you know we'll kind of pass it on over hi my name is Bianca Severino and I have two students at Brooks my daughter is lucky and fortunate enough to have that team as her amazing educators of going into conferences the uh the big three were really helpful just knowing and overall uh what to expect and the expectations for my own student I'm not gonna lie my spouse and I do troll canvas and PowerSchool to keep tabs on our kiddos but I almost feel like we don't need to because the teacher communication has been so fantastic this school year um they're almost beating us to it and so when we show up to these conferences I do
107agree it with speed dating um and I could tell there was a tremendous amount of prep that happened but with each conversation with each of the faculty I actually thought they were co-parenting it was incredible how much they knew about my daughter her needs and it went beyond the academics especially as a student with special needs they were talking about social emotional they were diving into things that we should be aware of if we weren't and even shared some things that we could be doing at home if we hadn't already been so it was just an amazing opportunity to connect with them and it's unfortunate we don't get to see them more often but I do understand that I would rather have them spend more time with my child than with me I already went
108through sixth grade so but it was it was a fantastic experience and in mine may be unique because they are I only know this fabulous team but from what you said it sounds like they're all doing the same work thank you so much so good evening my name is Patrick Robinson and I am the principal over at Whittier [Laughter] um I also feel like I'm getting tested because Dr Curtis is sitting right next to me so um if I'm not telling the truth she will make sure that um everyone knows that um so in addition to some of the things that principal Gordon said at Whittier we really want to make sure that this opportunity that parents actually have with students that they're walking out of that conference feeling like this teacher really knows my
109child not only the academics but social emotional needs and all of those things so we really want to make sure that when we're looking at that short amount of time that um parents actually have with teachers that we're taking some of the barriers and some of the things away so some of the things we did everybody here and across the district we wanted to make sure that um all parents have access to all of the Benchmark data um data reports and so as families you have the opportunity to take a look at map scores Mastery connect scores all of those fun academic testing scores and really kind of develop questions or anything that you might have prior to the conference instead of just seeing that information first thing um at the conference you're able to
110kind of lick that information and really digest it a little bit so when you come in some of that time you have with um the families the teachers are able to kind of go quickly go over that data if there are any questions or anything like that that you have teachers can address that question and then the remainder of that time can really be spent really just kind of digging into how is my child doing social emotionally are they enjoying school you know tell me some really good things about my child as a parent I know in parent-teacher conference that's one of the first things I wanted to know like do you like my children uh and so that's one of the things that the staff and Whittier we really truly care about out is
111making sure you as a parent understand we really love our children and we want to make sure that when you walk out of there you understand how your child is doing um any concerns that you have those concerns are addressed and if they're not finding additional time outside of that time to meet with families because it is a very short amount of time prior to that we also wanted to make sure that in our parent Communications we sent the link to the website so parents are able to see the big three and kind of understand what are those expectations that my child need to master or be close to mastering by the end of that grade level and I think that really helps with communicating some of that common language between the school and home
112there's a lot of other things that we're doing I was just thinking about the parent University that was around assessment so that people could understand the assessments that were in front of them um even if you you know don't love it's a you're just looking at a piece of paper if you don't understand it right and so to kind of understand or get some familiarity with how we are looking at uh students and in terms of like academic performance on our standardized assessments I think that was a really good step in the right direction too um it also helps uh with acceleration because everybody um is interested in accelerating their kid and making sure that they're having opportunities uh to accelerated learning and so um it can kind of lend itself to uh opening the
113doors for those conversations as well and that's something that we also have to keep improving on as a team and making sure that we're providing those opportunities in order to really kind of help parents understand the assessments how that data is used how teachers are using that data to plan for instruction and I think for us that's a learning opportunity that as a team we're looking to improve and address hi my name is Julio Curtis I have it's one of whom has an IEP and one of whom actually has a single grade level acceleration subject acceleration just to give you perspective and I've got two students at Whittier um my experience with the process overall was very positive I'll start first with the Brooks experience I'm not going to rehash kind of what other people's
114valid points were that I agree with but I do want to make mention that it would be it's um I agree with feeling lost and although for my student that had an IEP that had different classes I actually didn't see the opportunity to actually meet with those teachers that were in the core group so to speak like the 6-1 group and it wasn't until I actually sent an email to my child's case manager I said well can I meet with this teacher this teacher this teacher and this teacher which was still hard to grasp who that was but they said oh yes we've provided a time you've already signed up for a time period with the six one group even though none of your child only has none of those teachers but we've set that
115time aside so I think it'd be nice honestly to preemptively tell parents that have those children with different schedules even the single subject acceleration student that I had that I signed up for a period with that teacher the seventh grade teacher but thankfully she called me and she said we can do a phone call which was more helpful so I think those students that have different schedules and different teachers before or that grid comes out and you have to sign up everywhere it'd be nice to even reach out to those parents because no one knows that that's available so that would be helpful with regards to the Whittier uh the elementary school I actually think it went better I liked how the map scores were sent out earlier that was nice but then I had
116a lot of questions and I didn't know if that would be addressed in the parent-teacher conference and so perhaps even not only sending out the map scores ahead of time but even sending out either asking the parents what do you expect out of parent-teacher conference so that the teacher can address that during the conference or also preemptively saying we're going to talk about this and um we'll tell you you know we can do this but I find sometimes that the Elementary School parent teacher promiser somewhat formulaic even though the math course were sent out ahead of time they just they always just show you the work and yeah that's great but I want to know do you think my child's doing well and if they are doing well what can we do to do more
117that's what my question is that might not be everyone else's question um and with regards to that I want to go back to the Brooks one you know it was great having the opportunity to talk to the 6-1 teacher I don't know what number my child children I don't either you know they're great I know you and I just don't know whether you are um but one thing I noticed is the opportunity to speak to French art um and some other the other ones was it didn't seem to be as valued because I got stuck in the speed dating world and then I missed totally the time with the art teacher and the French teacher and whatnot actually they give another com show another component of our children that is very just as important but
118I don't think I had the opportunity up thankfully they were still hanging out in their room and I was able to run and get them but I think we don't even communicate to the parents how much of an important it is to still meet with them also yeah and so I think if there's some way that we can make some adjustments with that that would be helpful too yeah I think that happens at elementary school too absolutely with the art teacher and you may get yourself right in Spanish you could sign up so they said like if you want to meet with their elective teachers there's some space to sign up but I think as a parent I I can speak for myself I'm interested in math science like reading so I was like you're
119doing okay I think you got like a B in Spanish let's keep it moving so I think it is highlighted so before if you have more than one kid it's a hard thing that was gonna be my next question because my my twins are coming and how will we address that and I know how you're going to have two middle schoolers oh yeah yeah I was back in the building an hour apart but so from my experience one was in sixth grade and one was in eighth grade and they were different schedules your world by them being twins is different and I I can't speak to that but if the kids are in different grades it flows pretty easily and they're on different it's on like an alternate oh yeah right okay so I will
120have three at the middle school yeah shoot myself okay I think the idea though that you're that kind of struck me with what you were saying is maybe it's possible to have a recommended or suggested schedule that maybe the team can collectively go ahead and propose and then in addition to that I think it's very simple to go ahead and have a QR code that allows direct access so if that paper comes home with the student and also gets emailed it's a little bit easier for parents to have multiple ways to do that with option for Zoom or in person and then I mean I I don't know how it works on the back end but as a parent that would be super helpful and then I can make the decision as to am I
121going to email that teacher or am I going to zoom or am I just going to go ahead and and do the the median is similar to what we just did for the second trimester I I had a question on the element with me and the elementary school I also think that one of the things that seems to happen is you look at you're looking in the past right this is the work I think you said you know showing the work in the past and it is a little more difficult to understand okay but does like okay so this one didn't go so well do we really do we need it again like or is this one and done right and versus is this one of the skills that is built upon that you're gonna
122in seventh grade if you didn't get this in fifth grade like bye-bye right so I do think it would be nice to kind of as we start talking even as in elementary school understanding which of those concepts are ones that actually will carry over to Middle School yeah and be and I have a fifth grader so it's more important this year I'm very curious about how prepared my second child will be from middle school but um you know like what I don't I mean I'm not like I just that's a thought that I had and also I think there's a big jump I don't know when you go from like second grade to third grade like every time you're leaving and we only in conference in February so then we don't talk again at the
123end of the year and I my other thought is is there is there anything we should be doing from improving communication with families maybe not a full-blown conference but something that tells families at the end of the year besides just getting that report card all right so I know we met in November or December or October whatever we met and then we met again in February now now my kid has moved to the next grade what did they do what they needed to do on February and end of the year um and I think it's especially in I think it's more in elementary school only because you don't have PowerSchool you don't have campus so you're not you're not actually seeing it but in elementary school you kind of get to the end of your
124life well all right we're gonna go to the next grade and it's gonna be great but you don't wonder I felt like going to elementary school I had more access to the teacher to do check-ins yeah like because you only have generally like one teacher yeah but like if you were at the school for the some of those end of the Year celebrations not like a football conference but you just you have better access to an elementary school teacher than you do to a middle school teacher so but that is a privilege like I I do the same I think I do check-ins yeah they are tired of me but I have the privilege of having a flexible work schedule and being a two-parent home right okay so you're saying for those other parents in
125general I've heard that direct feedback from people like we went from February to the end of the year not hearing anything I'm sorry I was gonna say one thing one thing that I think we do well uh with conferences and and so I have the um lens from being a teacher in another District um and and so I heard you say that we usually are lagging like these things are behind the time actually the way that our our times are designed we're actually in front of uh when things come out so we have our conferences in between uh trimesters before report cards come out so we actually are proactive in that sense and that's one thing that I do love about these conferences we have an opportunity to really start engaging and if there is
126like concern or greater concern um you kind of are a little more heightened and before you get to you know that end uh report card no I agree before the report but the work you're looking at is work that was done in the past yeah and sometimes like if you're looking in February it was done in possibly December like we're on like we're four units at yes so I will say I'm just first of all thank you and thank you for coming out thank you um and so the answer clearly is in the room as we're thinking about redesign so we want to make sure that obviously we're healing hearing from all of our partners and stakeholders to make this a continue to make this a process that works for both families and for our
127teachers and so just some future considerations that we have thought about is really kind of making sure that we're collecting data closer to the source so um having school level data so we took a district level look just to get some themes but we want to continue to dig down and dig deeper around what these experiences are what we need to continue to work on what we need to think about and so just I just pulled a couple of areas that we probably will continue to think about um and and going into next year is kind of thinking about that Family Conference access analysis so is zoom the only way what are our different access Avenues to make sure that we're inviting all of our families in and so that they have a meaningful experience
128with us we do want to contain and think about the types of Assessments that support that Family School partnership so what do families need to know in terms of assessment and what do we need to make sure that folks are understanding around those big three around those standards that they can take from grade to grade I'm also figuring out what that successful bridge is from home support to school Success we've talked a lot about like what can I do at home that came up in the survey itself we've talked about it here but how does that bridge start to blend so that we have that presence of school Success we've talked a lot about the structure so that will probably be something again as we continue conversations we talked about time and how to redesign
129it and think about it differently especially with our Equity lens so that would be something that we'll continue to design and think about and then continue that two-way communication so I think that we've outlined here that's really important that those channels remain open so we want to make sure that we kind of build that into just the way that we do schools so or continue to build it into the way we do school um so I want to thank everyone um thank you for us coming to Brooks team thank you I appreciate all of you in the beginning a thank you note for me and maybe a Starbucks gift card so um thank you all and thank you for your time and attention stressed [Laughter] so um thanks Dr Lofton and everyone I you know
130one of the things we wanted to do is like um also show work that's in progress as opposed to work that's all done and really kind of engage in the you know and the redesign as a team so thanks to the board also for engaging thank you for all of you that shared your practice um do you have that Clicker oh there it is okay good to see it from here okay it's great um actually I actually uh just put some this is the ugliest flight in my deck because I just made it um as we were sitting here today um so I just wanted to name that in this presentation um I will be addressing um the public comments that were made earlier about class sizes as well as culture and climate coaches and
131I also just took some bullets um some of the hopes that were expressed in the last presentation are related to the directions that are being proposed here specifically this idea of a home school Partnerships that support our youth this ask for clarity about what it is we're trying to do is related to competency-based learning this uh focus on not only grades and scores but also portfolios and how do we really think about where our our students are in those learning progressions that's something we hear uh that I heard asking like I want to know where are we get good information on on that Journey this portfolio of experiences Beyond core academics it's not just about those things I want to see the full development of my child I want that to be valued and I
132want that to be invested in uh that's part of where what I'm about to present and this focus on transition supports for those Rising sixth graders how are we being very intentional I know that uh Larry Hannah and I have also talked about this specifically how do we really build those bridges and how do we be especially attentive to uh the experiences of our students with special needs for example as we think about this this is a really shifting even in this conversation who is the audience of um Family conferences it's the family and so then how do we adjust the system to support the needs of the family and that is a a big theme Here is how do we adjust the system based on the needs of the students and the families that
133we're here to serve so this is a presentation on preparing for the portrait of a graduate and I forgot to take the draft for discussion only off it is no longer for discussion I am not presenting it so um this is an important part of the presentation is to name it that what I'm presenting tonight is about preparing our district for the future so there's three big buckets here first of all I want to talk about whose vision and I'm going to address specific components of the sy2324 phase one um aspects of where we're headed and then how to be part of this process so I want to start with this diagram which is not something I made up it's from the Illinois Association of school board School Board governance resource materials what it shows
134is how boards and superintendents are supposed to work together and they put it here because I often get the questions so what's your vision and I it's not my vision it's the vision of the community as represented by the democratically elected Board of Education who hires one person that's me who is held accountable for working with staff to then put together systems plans culture procedures to deliver on that vision this is a very complex idea it shows what the board is responsible for and what the superintendent's help accountable for and underneath it is trust and communication and really well-governed systems leaves a very complex idea and you would only care about this if you live in a democratic country and so I want to name and position the complexity of what we're setting up to
135do so this is also um kind of from the same Source showing that on the right hand side you see who is responsible for those different aspects of alignment so the bottom those big Ideas the board then the board and the superintendent working together on those District goals those superintendent goals then driving the work of the rest of the district that's what I'm held accountable for and that's what I'm proposing here tonight is how are we going to do this together so our why needs to be our students and so one of the things I want to talk about is this idea of a portrait of an Oak Park eighth grade graduate what is that ultimate Vision we have as a community for when our students graduate eighth grade we as a community commit that
136they are able to do these things that they have had these experiences that this is their portrait and how do we actually have to quantitatively and qualitatively monitor and measure what success looks like given that Vision that means that some of the metrics that we have may be useful and that we might need to create new metrics than the ones that we have right now so and I'll give you an example so if we say and we'll talk a little bit about this in a minute um if we see and we know that career awareness from you know starting in elementary school and certainly in middle school it's about to become the law you need to be exposed in thinking about what are the career clusters and what's the journey what sparks my passion we
137need to be starting to think about that in Middle School then you know the iar score is not really going to map to that we might need to create some new metrics so what will what does that mean well maybe we say given that vision of really being by the time you graduate by of eighth grade having a sense of the three top career clusters I'm just making that up that you that every student is aware of then we might say well some of the things we want to make sure then is by the time you get to sixth grade we want to make sure that you're aware of the different career clusters by the time you get to seventh grade we want to make sure that you've had at least two experiences shadowing someone
138in a career that you're interested in things like this and then we can say we expect you know 95 percent of our students or 100 of our students to have this experience these are different metrics that we can create that are aligned to our values so what new mental models what new kinds of ways of thinking might we need to achieve this vision so um I am going to I recognize we are running late I this is a three minute video I'm going to Pat go past it but I will be sharing this deck doing a screencast and sharing this deck with all staff and at that time you I would like to ask you to watch this video to see how another Community has built their portrait of a graduate Outlet there we go
139um so this idea that we come together as a community and design what is it that we value and what's that portrait and I am proposing that we convene a portrait of a graduate design team here at d97 so that we can actually start to implement this by the time we're planning for next summer and we say what are those dimensions of development that matter and how are we designing around them for because this is what matters to us as a community and we need to figure out in that process how do we balance a district-wide portrait with all the uniqueness of each of our school communities and cultures so once we have that portrait of an Oak Park eighth grade graduate then we can start to say well what does core instruction look like
140in our schools how do we build community-based entrepreneurial Partnerships outside of school time and how do we need to have excellent operational systems so that it's not just a temporary thing but we're actually building long-term plans that are going to give to the community even after someone else is the superintendent someone else is the board members we're all moving into different places but we build High Fidelity systems that are respectful and responsible so again here uh you can look at these kind of breakout boxes at another time but we also have to get to that next level of uh foundational operational system so I'm going to click real fast through these uh you can read them when you have the deck but basically what's proposed here is that even in these operational areas we have
141to make sure we're constantly strengthening our systems so that we're building strong foundations so then preparing for phase one of the portrait of a graduate in this presentation I want to focus on that in school core instruction time and that box says how do we get that right loose and tight between what we do here as a district office and the lived context of schools Dr lofton's presentation and her calling up the different voices is an example of getting close to the nuances that are happening at the school so we got to strike that right balance there's only so much we can do here from district office the real deal lifting needs to happen at the school site and needs to happen in collaboration with building leadership teams we need new tools like logic models
142which we'll talk about we need new ways of measuring competency so that we're focusing on Learners that have voice and choice in their own Journeys so let's talk a little bit about uh the next level of instructional systems development in these two buckets first around uh central office and Middle School roles and then the second around classroom sections you can see some of those bullets um on the side is really aligning toward a smooth student Transitions and competency-based learning and really doubling down on Middle School Student Success and then in the second bucket we'll talk about using enrollment data to figure out how to hold up two values inclusive learning and fiscal responsibility we'll talk about how that process is going to work so this is what our org chart looks like um currently it
143is organized traditionally in vertical columns and um there are you know they're in vertical commas so it's very traditional you can see the school principle spots there in this year 2021-22 there were five different supervisors for the 10 principles so that's um some of the opportunities we have of getting to the next level of instructional systems development is integration of mtssa academic and behavior in our mindsets and our structures currently they reside in two different places on the org chart but in the life of a student they are together who I am behaviorally who I am academically is related to Great instructional design introduction of career awareness integration of IEPs and 504 structures currently they sit in two different places in the org chart and again align supervision of the 10 schools because with that
144comes aligned support so we also want to get ahead of the career learning curve by July 1 2025 all districts that enroll 6 to 12th graders that's us must adopt uh new career exploration kinds of plans so we want to see that coming and this is the Illinois Pace framework so by the end of eighth grade students need to have this set of experiences around career clusters and exploration and career day so we want to do this in an Innovative exciting way not in a compliance way how do we get excited about what our kids what our students are excited about there's also a call out here to financial literacy and the importance of building that competency in early on so we can talk look more at this framework also for guidance so um that
145I showed you our current state this is a view of our future state in terms of central office leadership alignment so I want to point out a couple of things here there are two assistant superintendents one of Elementary and one of middle schools so that creates that aligned kind of support and supervision structure we also have increased experts based in schools so there are directors of Universal Design and you can see in green they are based in schools so that we're building relationships and um and you know having closer proximity to student experience there's also not a separate department for instruction the senior directors of instruction co-report to the assistant superintendents of elementary and middle schools and we need to build new structures so that there's alignment and more seamless transitions as students go from
146elementary to Middle School instructionally there's also nested leadership teacher leadership roles that are focused on targeted support and improved learning conditions so those coordinators of Universal Design you can see there's one director of Universal Design focused on the Brooks feeder and two teacher leaders then that report to them that support the two schools each likewise for the Julian feeder and then at the middle school level a director of Universal Design and two coordinator teacher leaders again attentiveness to the experiences of all students with a focus on students with special needs and as we work to create this these kind of seamless transitions let's be clear it's not a light switch it's going to be a process and so we need to really thoughtfully integrate core instruction mtss structure special education we want to make sure
147that students are moving up and down that triangle based on what they need and also across our system based on what they need and so this is uh the design Challenge and it's not something that a few positions can do it's an Adaptive challenge not a technical one so we're going to have to do this work together and create new ways of working in order to uh to deliver on on the promise to our our community so here's the current state of middle schools our Middle School structure we have um three assistant we have the principal three assistant principles culture and climate coach and instructional coach again in terms of reporting structure there's been different um you know different people that the principals report to that the schools report to and there isn't uh systematic
148administrator support for Arts Athletics clubs or Innovations and we need to think about how this might limit expansion of these programs and access when there's not kind of uh clear who's the point person on these areas so here's the future state of middle schools again consistent support for supervision coaching and support across both middle schools there's a student facing focus on careers counseling and competency though so there are six Student Success coaches those are teacher leader positions these are with a counselor background preferred or a social worker background with uh evidence of um of really doing of practicing in alignment with those counselor standards so we're looking for Student Success coaches that have that background you see operational expertise embedded in the schools we have the manager of communications that will be in the schools
149this is telling the stories of Middle School elevating all the good things that happen and helping to Brand our middle schools in the positive with the Positive stories and the positive things that are happening there every day the manager of safety and restorative response France will be a district-wide position but it will be based in the middle schools again to build those relationships and have that attention to our Middle School context um in terms of the universe director of Universal Design and the coordinators uh that was you saw that in the previous View and then also you can see that the Student Success coaches loop with the students so the Student Success coach that you have as a sixth grader moves with you all the way through the uh to when you graduate and again
150systematic support for uh these different areas there's a 112 month associate principle of teaching learning and the Arts and then um won a 10-month assistant principle of culture climate Athletics and clubs again the point person we have lots of different people lots of different roles doing the work they're the point person to help to organize it uh and and to bring us together around preparing for this portfolio so what happens in the future uh stay here we will be posting this week six Student Success coaches those are teacher leader roles two assistant principals of culture climate and Athletics and clubs and two associate principles of teaching learning and the Arts uh and then also uh three coordinators of Universal Design and one director of Universal Design so those will also be posted and I have
151a call out box there that the job descriptions for these new roles will provide a starting point and we will evolve as we learn and as we go because this is new work and we have a general Compass of where we're headed but the actual work will need to be developed by the people on the ground so I wanted to also tell the story you know this idea of changing and evolving the organization over time as it happens and that's what that's what good organizations do so in 12 in school year 12 13 there were data and instructional technology coaches and that's when we were rolling out the first one-to-one devices the focus was going to be on that instructional technology over time we increased the capacity of the system of course there's always people
152that need more help and so on but we built the capacity of the system and the there was a fine there was a an observation that the individuals were doing more operational things and not getting to those instructional aspects that technology offers to us and so the decision was made in Sy 16 and 17 to move the um data and instructional coach role to redefine it and to really make sure that um uh that the you know the instructional pieces were integrated and that's when then we evolved to the instructional coaches so that journey is one that the district has taken before and so now let's talk about the culture climate work the positive systems and the capacity that's been built by the work of the culture and climate team is essential and this is
153a beginning list of that kind of systems and capacity building that has happened because of this work this team's work and it's important to note that as we go forward what we know is our students are telling us that this now this relationship building and this community building needs to be the responsible of every one of us that faces in our students it it and needs to be a universal expectation and a universal commitment that we make and we know that that complex process happens through really good instructional design and really great uh practice in our classrooms and and wherever we we practice as um as educators so again here I want to just call out that because of the systems we now have the internal capacity to begin to really integrate mtssa and mtssb
154in how we do our work we also are preparing for a holistic approach to Transitions up and down the mtss triangle as well as across Pre-K to K 5th to 6th and 8th to ninth and I want to say this isn't something it doesn't happen because you put it on a PowerPoint slide it's not going to happen immediately we're going to have to build Bridges between our current work and our future work we're going to miss things we're going to be like whoa what happened there we're going to need to go back and figure it out and we're going to do that together so that's that first area um and so now I want to kind of focus on the classroom sections what's important here and I'm going to what's important here is that um
155we're going to look at some projections but I'm going to move real fast to them and you can look at them then later if you would like to when you have the deck um we want to make sure that we are thinking about class sizes that balance two things when our class sizes are so small because of the 70 30 ratio in terms of the students with IEPs and without IEPs it limits our ability to be inclusive and to create integrated and inclusive classrooms so we want to strike that right balance um between having small class sizes having inclusion and having fiscal responsibility so we'll talk about that in a minute so there's um five-year enrollment Trends we have been declining in enrollment and there's a lot of different factors that are part of that
156um and in the in the screencast version of this uh we will kind of take some time on these slides we have some information here about where the students have gone we're going to be leveling off that's what's projected and you can see by school those actuals and uh projections so there is declining enrollment there has been declining enrollment in our district and what we need to do is to look at that data and say how do we maintain our commitment to small class sizes in elementary schools again ensure that inclusive learning opportunities reflected by the 70 30 ratio and demonstrate a fiscal responsibility as stewards of public funds so um what I want to say here is these three big buckets annually we have vacancies that become available due to non-renewal retirements or resignations
157and teachers eligible for transfer um due to a district need will have a position in the coming school year we are not having what's called a riff or reduction in force in the district so any um you know we have the vacancies and then teachers that are eligible to transfer we will find a place for teachers based on their certification so the benefits of doing this way is it stabilizes the system by taking a holistic approach we focus on individual staff licensure as well as District need we adjust readjust staff assignments to respond to that enrollment data we maximize our internal Resources by transferring staff where we have those vacancies and opportunities we limit external hires only if we don't have people already that have that credential that are available and we limit outside contractors
158which is something that we've had to do so there are other considerations in terms of the short-term fiscal impact the staff to vacancy match can sometimes be a consideration and we need to think about the workforce diversity Dimensions when you are working internally with uh the staff that we have so those are that's the other side of the coin that we also need to name so let's talk about this internal transfer process um so this is a slide that shows the total number of sections this year as well as then the total number of projected uh sections that I'm going to ask Anna if you don't mind coming up here because I forgot to call her up here as I jumped in and I'm thinking everybody's going to get sleepy I need to talk fast
159um sessions means classrooms yes classroom sections so let me let you uh these are since I sped over your other side Anna but you can talk about these yeah um on the darker blue are the total number of sections at each school um and then in the likelihood of course are the projected sections um so you might be most interested first on how we came up with a projected section so I'm actually going to skip forward and I'll come back um so the first thing that we looked at to figure out how many sections that we think we need for next year um the first thing we did is we took a look at enrollment um so for two different for grades two through eight we just looked at frames one through seven enrollment at
160each school right that's pretty straightforward for projected first grade enrollment next year we took the average of this year's first second and third grade we didn't look at this year's kindergarten class because historically more students come to the district um between kindergarten and first grade um kindergarten is obviously the hardest to estimate um we uh we work with a um a demographer named Dr casarda um who produces some scenarios for us every so often um he produces a set of three different sets of scenarios um scenarios B are the his estimates based on a number of factors including birth rates housing Trends in Oak Park other factors um scenario B is kind of his best estimate of where we think numbers will be I'm in kindergarten at each School um and then what we do
161is we set classroom sizes um so with a couple exceptions like which I can talk about um so maximum classroom sizes at 20 for preschool 21 at kindergarten and then 22 at grades one through five there are two grade level exceptions except affecting eight classrooms where there is some physical space limitations at a school um and then the third part of part of course um which Dr Shaw talked about before is we also then went through and made sure that we got really granular with our enrollment uh enrollment numbers uh to determine which students had IEPs could we service them and and the and the classrooms at those um at those levels and then maybe start the right special education resources were then available to those students um so let me go back here so
162that's how we came up with those projections um so what you can see is that um and this is also I want to note here this is the number of gen Ed sections cotat sections and then we also added instructional and multi-needs sections so you see um across the district we estimate we would reduce from 226 sections to 212. some schools are remaining steady and some are losing as many as four sections and this doesn't mean that there's not you know sometimes what happens as a cohort of students um moves um sometimes we need to convert a gen Ed section to a code talk section or code talk to gen Ed right um and as if there's a large cohort of students in one grade level we might need to open a grade level section
163at that school close the grade level section from from the from the grade level that they had just exited so it doesn't mean that there's not movement at those schools where there's where there's um a net change of zero but that's what that looks like district-wide so what does this look like in terms of class sizes in elementary um and so this is um this is based on enrollment data as of the end of January um and this is and the projected class size is of course based on our projections um so we asked to make the average class sizes right now it's really average of averages right it's an average of the grade level average within a school um we're at 17 right now on K2 when we go up to 20. you see
164the minimum class sizes that we see across the district some class size is a small as 14. we're gonna be going up to this class sizes as small as 16 and going from Max 21 to Max 24. um and again that's only because of their those two exceptions where there was space limitations at one school um and three five average class size of 19 to 20. with minimums of at 15 going up to 17 and maximums at 24 again because of that one exception at the one school where there's space limitations thank you um and so I want to talk about the timeline um so teachers being transferred to another District 97 school because of the uh the changes and the adjustments that we just walked through on March 17th um by Mark March 17th
165teachers being transferred to another District 97 school will be notified then from March 20th to April 7th uh positions will be posted in front line um and uh this was recruiting and the recruiting and hiring Frontline system and opta internal employees would be invited to that process and first preference would be given to the transfer teachers and the teachers that are impacted by what we just talked about beginning the week of April 17th teachers would be notified of their new position for sy2324 and then of course buy our agreement all teachers would be notified of their official sy2324 assignment by May 30th so that's a overview of that timeline and then again just to summarize here positions can remain the same it could be created they could be eliminated or redefined and all teachers eligible
166for transfer due to a district need will have a position in the district in Sy 2324 and the full organization Staffing and how it all looks will be shared after July 1 2023 because there's a lot a lot of movement and a lot of changes that will be then finalized by that date and so our commitments through this process is to really be guided by the implementation of our Equity policy even though that change is challenging we're you know we're going to do it because the right thing to do to improve the system for all of our students and we want to keep people whole even through these transitions be straightforward with people about what is happening and why are you know we want to make the time to meet and talk when we need
167to and be invested in the long-term development of people and even if roles are eliminated within our district we want to really support people and stay committed to them in in the long term and so that's uh those are commitments we're putting up because of their values um so there's a we talked about this is like the phase one of our process there's a whole bunch of things that have come up in discussions with so many uh of many of you in the room as well um that were that are not going to be part of phase one um so I'm naming them here as questions and considerations that have been and will need to be considered as we go forward um we I would say in terms of next steps watch for opportunities to
168be involved in the vision uh process for our Oak Park portrait of an eighth eighth grade graduate and um I also will be um making a screencast of this um where we don't zip through the slides and for folks that want to uh take some time and see the other aspects and then um there's always let's talk if you have uh feedback or suggestions ideas um for some of the bigger ideas that have been floated here um and then also these are existing places where I'll be going as I want to hear and connect with what has been proposed here um you can see those places and I'll be working with the principals to have a voluntary staff meeting at every school as well as meeting with student groups and then if you have other
169suggestions if there are other places where people are coming together that would be helpful to to talk and here I would really look forward to that as well um and then um that's how you use let's talk and then we can pause here for any questions in this question before so I have a question um and it's easier for me to ask it in a scenario so I'm a third grade teacher at hatch and because of the enrollment shifts my that section is going to be eliminated so I find that out on March 17th right so then the like the portal will open up about the open positions and then I apply right or express my interest in okay and then what's the rest of the process for that yeah so um Dr Schmidt would
170you like to come up and show that process yes so the rest of the process will be um once the applicants yeah once the applicants have completed the online application for the online information then they're receiving principles will look at the applicants of the internal transfers and then they will on a collective decision will be made for the best transfers at which time then the receiving applicant receiving principles of the two will be matched or have a welcoming tour and that confirmation will be given to the teachers of their new assignment ahead of all the other regular assignment notifications which which we've already had due to thank you will there be profits for 10-year teachers um so this process you why don't I let you answer the will there be preference for tenured teachers so
171according to the opta contract they it specifically States um seniority will be a consideration and transfers so seniority whether it be Contender ship throughout the district it would be it has been a factor in the recommendations that have been coming improve the transformation but so the language is so it doesn't the language is around a careful consideration for uh seniority which then tracks to tenure uh by definition but there is also you know um other dimensions that um come into play and that are considered like for example um you know Team Dynamics or what whether um you know credentials and backgrounds of the teachers and you know the different dynamics that are considered to build a healthy school environment but it is clear that uh careful consideration is given to seniority in that process um
172on the classroom size those are all numbers that comply with the contract but I know the focus was on Elementary we have similar um kind of that kind of information for middle school yet so Anna you want to address that yeah um we can get you I think class size it's a little trick here at the middle school sorry section numbers in the middle school are really like there's you know three um but the actual experienced class size is a little trickier to figure out at middle school because right those yeah the team they're not you know there's different schedules among students so it's a little bit triggered to calculate um who can work on it and people think of something to you but will overall if there's movement in the elementary schools will there
173be movement in the middle schools or is that happening later like this is so this is phase one right so is it happening in a happening in a later phase or because there's going to be a trickle-down effect if we have lower enrollment in Middle School in elementary schools eventually we have lower enrollment in elementary our enrollments down people across the whole District right but it it it it'll keep going matriculates I guess it waves yeah goes like yeah um yes it might right we're gonna have to watch the numbers closely um we did take a look at um numbers obviously for next year that's what's on here of the year after that it still doesn't look like what's happening is tripling up to the middle schools yet um but yes you're right eventually the
174okay the cohorts of students um would get smaller the question I think is really like does it take three whole cohorts of students to drop the numbers in middle school right or is it is it is it what's Happening Here happening across five cohorts of students for example and maybe that wouldn't triple up to Middle School this way I guess but didn't the buy School data say that the middle schools there's that one with the stripes yeah Julian and Brooks are groups especially is already kind of going down like on its way right yeah the next chart with the blue and purple lines for yeah for right now this way yeah other way I'm going the other way yeah so so there's a there's a couple here yeah so a couple things so the projections
175that um this one okay I'll stop here what was the question about this that one I really don't remember that um the sections didn't change for right there's yeah there's no change of numbers except in the issue with Julian's instructional right okay so there is no changes for next year right yeah that's right right based on enrollment therefore no change based on section uh thank you for this this is uh very different than this is good this is good I like it um I was trying to change my words carefully um my only other question is um I know that there are various ways for people to get feedback and then you'll be communicating after July 1st um I noted that it's going to be a screencast and the weekly wrap up does that only
176go to d97 parents um Amanda you want to you want to take that question sure it goes to all district 97 staff who goes to all district 97 families and it also goes to a group of like kind of Legacy subscribers from the way that our old newsletter was managed so previously you could sign up I think if that's actually still on the website so community members that may have also signed up um may also be receiving I asked because I can see this someone who may not be a parent but is a Community member and already like they're going to be Whispers and gossip about oh they're firing all the teachers so a way that if someone is not a parent that they can still have this an opportunity to either ask questions give
177feedback or receive accurate information um so I just wanted to know like how this will be disseminated to the the General Public thought to that can anyone submit a let's talk a Community member since the middle of this talk it doesn't have to be it's on our website um it's right at the top the little um it's like a dialogue button so yeah that's open to anyone and uh we added a button uh this week for Sy at 2324 planning so it's best if people click that icon that way it'll get funneled into red channels my my question might get ahead of us I guess um so this is sections in classrooms so that's teachers and students what about those um interventionalists and the support folks because of this shift what does that mean for
178them um so there are several positions that are kind of out not non-classroom full-time teaching roles there isn't a change in Phase One to those um roles okay and what we did do and I I will say you know at um with um teachers having that conversation kind of thinking about what's the instructional core and we want to spend some time understanding um what are the roles and how do we position them so that they are kind of as we go forward aligned to the portrait of a graduate and to what we're trying to do but that's going to be a collaborative process that we've kind of started that process and that conversation with um Ed Council this last time and it was non-partis phase one it's not part of phase one uh to make
179changes to any of those positions okay Hub with regards to the specific role you've outlined the the fact that we now have better systems um we've evolved and so now there's a there's a new need right for for people that support our students they were technology and now we moved to culture and climate there's the assistant principles principle of culture and climate that's one of them and then the success coaches um do those are those two roles the ones that are kind of picking up some of the work that the culture and climate coaches currently do and so we that's I think one of the things we need to think about we we need to maximize the potential we have in the system we also have uh national board teachers that we as a district
180haven't provided an opportunity for national board teachers who receive the annual stipend to actually contribute back we have PBIS teams that are stipended how are we investing in that you know those teams to be owning this work and so really kind of making sure that that um work of proximity and relationships becomes everyone's work and that we use the systems and the Investments that we already have and this is to just create more alignment and get things flowing it you know in uh in a great direction for our kids so I would say that um it's not about it's not about um taking you know that uh and moving it to someone else we've got to figure out given the capacity given the goals of culture climate relationships and systems around um you know tiered
181behavior and tiered academics how do we make sure now that we use the capacity that's in the system and the Investments that we are already making in the system to get that to happen again that needs to be a conversation and a collaborative process but there are lots of opportunities we actually have every single thing we need to do amazing amazing things it's a matter of coming together to figure out how we're going to be gonna do thank you so so we have the success coaches and we have the coordinator for Universal Design right and some of that climate and cultural work would have to be picked up by that yes because I I hear what you're saying and I agree and I like it but practically speaking and I don't know who makes up
182the PBIS group so I'm I'm gonna speak to what I do know many of our nationally board certified teachers are in classrooms and so while we do want them to have teacher leader roles they don't have the same flexibility of movement and flow throughout the building that the climate cultures climate and culture coaches previously had those success coaches and the coordinators for Universal Design have more of that and so that's why I said yeah what I said before yeah and so I think that figuring out how do we move how do we like make sure that like we move that focus and that capacity somewhere it needs to exist we do have and like while I said there's no changes like uh no further elimination of like all the other roles I think we counted
183how many of those um non-classroom roles do we have in various by school yeah two to three at least yeah so we have two to three personal a known classroom right yeah so mtss Las these different roles uh language arts Specialists um you know interventionists and so on so one of the things is uh what are those positions currently doing and given our new vision and our our future Direction how might those existing roles be shifted to take on and to you know be more strategic with how we're organized so even though those roles are continuing there is an opportunity to think about how can we be more strategic with um some of these things that are currently sitting in the four culture and climate roles that are no longer existing but there are many
184other positions that are still existing whose work and these expertise still touches those areas we also know that like eventually really good behavior systems are owned by the people who live in the school every day and it's um if we think about the Danielson framework for teaching really supporting each other to say what does really strong culture and climate domain to look like in every classroom and and making sure that that um support of each other reside in the school following up on Venus's question with those Student Success coaches if they are classroom teachers would they be given release time for those duties these are full-time the Student Success coaches are full-time team release teachers so they will just like teaching they won't have a teaching logo yes they will not these are full-time teaching
185load full-time out of classroom release so um just like the culture and climate coaches they do not have classroom responsibilities and would they have to reapply for that role every year no we would um we were posting them now and then we were looking to recruit again people that have a counseling background or social workers that demonstrate a portfolio of doing and meeting those counseling standards because that's how they work with students they would be hired into those positions and we would want to invest in and retain them and certainly we want them to be there for the whole three years um that they're they're with their with their students as they loot with them so we'd be looking for stability in those roles but in some ways the biggest difference is that they're living
186in Middle Schools specifically that's right and we still have um many full-time release roles that can continue to reside in elementary schools and that gets to Venus's question how are we thinking about that there are currently two culture and climate coaches supporting the eight schools and we can provide that information to the board there are several other positions that are outside of not right regular classroom teacher positions that are still residing in the elementary schools that continues and there are opportunities there to think about how do we create more alignment thank you I think I just want to say thanks for the presentation um having students who have worked in districts that have risks I appreciate kind of our District's ability to look forward and trying to waylay that thinking about where we can still
187be fiscally responsible without cutting teachers because there's also the impending teacher shortage right um and then even just in terms of the Student Success coaches I think the day that Dr Shaw told me about it I like literally left a university Mission a meeting where they were all they're also creating Student Success coaches for our student for undergrads to work on student retention and this is kind of this whole notion of like a wrap around services to help kids or not kids but young people um be successful in school both academically but also social emotionally so it's kind of interesting that we're kind of in lockstep at some of these things um and that ultimately they'll be more connected with students um for a grade level because I know that was one of your concerns
188Venus in terms of parents having a connection with who who's at the grade level um I know like change is always a big thing um but I I feel like the ability to look ahead and do these in phases um I think it's exciting because I think you know we've had conversations about wanting to make big changes in d97 like our you know academic disparities have continued for the last several years despite our discussions about equity and so without making changes we're not going to see results um so I you know I I hope that we're able to keep doing this kind of work and and seeing the impact yeah I also just want a name that there's some changes that really underscore school-based supports but it's Anchored In what will be the portrait of
189an Oak Park graduate which is district-wide and so I think that connection feels really important to build and maintain any other questions I'm sure we'll get more as things rolling thank you um that brings us to destroy District 97 joy and culture celebration or are we moving that to next oh no we're doing yep um Amanda's coming up we're just got a quick uh you know it's a little Joy commercial s oh no it's just Amanda the questions look why don't we hold that yeah we'll hold that okay Amanda we Amanda we we did keep you late it's okay let's just bring your baby next time we'll bring a picture of Emma um I'm really happy to be back uh wish I was at home with baby but happy to be here celebrating with some
190of our students this is your second choice right um well well no just kidding let's just put it um so to today we're going to focus on a couple of celebrations out of our middle schools uh first of all we want to give a shout out to our district 97 middle school speech and drama team they placed first at the West 40s speech and drama Festival last month [Music] thank you I believe some of our I think some of these coaches we have been here tonight so um yeah yeah so shout out to them uh great job uh we uh this group had students from both Julian and Brooks [Applause] did wonderful yeah I think you were so proud of them they did such a great job yeah and uh so we're told that prior
191to the pandemic our district earned a first place trophy for 10 consecutive years so we're really excited that that we should continue now that they are resuming uh the competition uh additionally uh they they let us know that the district has the most first place wins and individual events uh sorry so the district that has the most first place wins and individual events they're the ones who win the trophy so that's sort of how that came to be with our district um so we're really proud of them and I believe some information went out in our newsletter so hopefully everyone saw that and then we also want to shout out our awesome robotics team so a little bit of a spoiler alert for our April board meeting um we are going to have students and
192coaches from Julian Ann Brooks join us and robots um I heard a rumor that the robots may have been disassembled but maybe robot Parts yeah here's some of our kiddos from uh the competition I believe this was also late last month um of the 32 teams in the robotics League that they participate in all three tournament champ Champions came from Julian so uh great job to those kids uh Brooks here Brooks also had some tournament champions and finalists so we're really proud of how all of them uh performed they are I I don't know if anyone followed along but on our YouTube channel we actually have um a stream of the competition so that's up there and we're looking forward to them telling us more about that next month and then also wanted to shout
193out for our staff celebrations [Applause] uh so last week was National School social worker week so again in our newsletter too uh we just want to take the time to recognize our amazing social workers for the important work that they're doing to support our students in all 10 of our buildings so thank you uh Hannah and to the other social workers that were attendance tonight and then everyone here that's a good group um so that's it so next month yeah we are really excited to have the kids join us and I believe we're also working on having um a recognition for Autism Awareness Month so that's coming in April yay kids now we're going to be students speed move all right so up next we have the consent agenda someone can read the motion I
194moved to the 497 the Board of Education the district district 97 approve the consent agenda as a percent second boss driven is absence yes yes yes or yes yes okay then up for discussions is the Food Services agreement particular motion I'm sorry did I miss another motion it says discuss mandate oh we did discuss it last time as well Park Elementary Schools Kim more yeah yeah yes or Johnson yes um up next is the Food Service Board of Education of Park Elementary School District 97 approves the 2324 Food Service registration fees as presented second Frost driven this afternoon yes yes Ken yes more yes yes District calendar yep so you have a memo um that's available Dr Starks is coming up she was helpful in helping us to make some adjustments we realized there were
195some inconsistencies there outlined here on this side um those have been adjusted and um the revised calendar is accurate so if you have any questions for myself or for Dr Starks we're happy to answer those otherwise we can get that approved and posted it says action 411 do you want action today are you asking for production next time yep yeah any questions well you just got some steps in yeah um up next then we have standing board reports fact Fork CCE or claim and then we're reworking CC Again Clay okay back and forth um intergovernmental liaison reports anything so keep it moves all right then that brings us to board remarks sure yeah I want to get in front of that train all right I was gonna talk really really fast so I had the
196pleasure of attending the black and Oak Park um event with Venus uh earlier sometime this month um at Julianne and I think this is I could be something that the whole District does it was done so well um so Jeremy um Jeremy Christian lit he had two Math teachers there one was for students who needed like additional support and one was for students who were excelling and advanced I guess you could say um so they talked about like the differences and things that parents can do was very well attended there was food I wanted to say their child that was child hair because it was a lot of kids there I think it was for both I think it was for families yeah so um he also has the vice principal of oprf there to
197talk about like principal principles sorry responsible yes um to talk about uh the things that uh we should expect or a parent should expect but also she was talking to the students which I thought was pretty awesome and then Venus and I were there to talk about just being a parent oh and the young lady from girls on the rise um and then Venus and I were there just to talk about our experiences like parents we did not answer any questions on behalf of the board but people did have like some little questions um the things that stood out to me the most were number one how many like I love the way that Jeremy met parrots where they are um one thing that stood out to me was that I feel like almost none
198of the students or none of the families knew about girls and Iraq um he talked about things that they were doing he talked about the assessments why they were important he talked about uh with a different Black History Month he talked about like the importance some of the initiatives that they were doing it's really like the format that it was a safe space for people to ask questions regardless of their educational background um there there isn't always that Comfort level when we're in culturally diverse groups um so I really appreciate that opportunity for black parents to be authentic or ask questions and say I don't know um which oftentimes we don't have that opportunity and a non-judgmental space um but I was just really impressed with the the whole program like most people say I
199can't go because I gotta feed my kids or I don't have child care I students be there and they talk about him like some of these students I was like you are clearly a parent I know it was a student and so you have students who are eighth graders who were just like the way they love or him was just so like inspiring to me and I I was like I thank you so much because there hasn't been a space like that at Oak Park where people can I mean I think there have been little spaces here and there but something organized by the principal um and it's something I was kind of envious of like this this doesn't happen at Brooks and so I think like having an opportunity to kind of just talk
200playing and not be you know so academic all the time um with parents and help them to understand what's going on um the fact that he was like meeting with nine students every day to go over their grades um to me and he does Saturdays oh and started school um so there was just a lot of things and I was just like what are how can we support not only him but how can we make this something that happens in other spaces um so that people have that opportunity because that's how you get parents engaged that's how you get people to care that's how you get people to say oh there is a space d97 does care about me um so that was my report Venus he wanted to um I wouldn't add much at
201all you hit everything on the head what I would say is there is a culture of Excellence through mentoring um at Julian that you could visibly see in this event the two teachers who were Math teachers that spoke were black women and so they are mentoring these other young students boys and girls to excel in the stem area where we are highly underrepresented um and so it was great to see that it was also great to see how part of their culture is meeting students where they are but helping them to be the best that they can be and the entire event absolutely felt like a safe space but not a manufactured safe space it felt like that was just the culture of the school carried into this event in the evening so that's all
202I do were there a lot of parents there yeah quite a few that was one of the best uh parent-intended events that they had and they were they were engaging they were asking questions it was really wonderful and that's a lot of questions um so I had a couple comments the first comment I had was about something we learned about during public comment um I want to commend Longfellow for starting their lgbtq support in elementary school I think that's great I think our students need support younger and you know because it affects their lives when it affects their lives and if they're in elementary school and uh the concern you know the students that are impacted are it are not just lgbtq students but those would be my focus um Beyond making sure that they
203feel supported through the process um and then I just had another comment I think we're talking about the IGA so I'm not going to be at the April 11th meeting I was telling Venus what my husband doesn't like musicals I asked to go to the lattice corset visible I said don't buy tickets for the 11th and he heard buy tickets for the 11th so I'm not missing Milan but anyway um so I think we're talking about that I know the jacket Little Bill anyway um so I I so I don't I know we're gonna I'll send some feedback with the IGA specifically but we've heard recently just some comments that have come to us about kind of a more of a police presence at school and what the IGA means kind of generally with that
204and I know that um the SRO conversation was back in 2020 in the middle of covet in order to make this comment I like typed an SRO in my email and you know there's memos and we did a lot of research we had a we had a really structured conversation and I think that we definitely um we specifically said we read out loud from a memo that um in this consideration um of terminating the agreement we're making a systemic decision it's not a reflection on individual officers or relationships they've cultivated with our students and staff and just because we terminate the agreement it doesn't mean we're cutting ties with the police department um we know the police departments everywhere are re-examining their practices and committing to improving relationships with the residents they serve especially residents
205of color we can certainly remain open to collaborate with them as they initiate programs and policies to build trust with the community even if we're not going to have armed officers in our buildings uh but at the same time the emphasis on the discussion about why we're not going to have sros was about more than just kind of sros but just kind of the impact of um armed officers and the buildings and police making uh police being with our students and kind of the impact it has we drew from a bunch of research we drew from research from the U.S Department of Education we drew from uh to various studies that have kind of studied the impact and I think that as we proceed with the IGA I think it's important just to kind of
206be reminded of some of the concerns we have so that we proceed intentionally and support this relationship that um that we're building and you know and make sure that we're doing what we kind of committed to the community we had hundreds of public comments at the time so I think that some of the things um the positive relationships are important but our students are k through eight um and those positive relationships seem you know starting with children they seem to there's a tendency to believe that you're talking to a trusted adult and yet there could be situations that come out and a policeman is doing their job and so I think we have to be careful with that um they say generally at least in in buildings some things we talked about is an increase
207in criminalizing of behavior that is really kind of adolescent or School disciplined um they talk about um you know building relationships with police officers if we're going to work on building relationships counselors social workers other adults with specialized training and an obligation for confidentiality is really important to consider so I think I shared some of the materials that we have from the time with oshma um like we had some Google docs and stuff um so that just as you're having those conversations um we also all just heard about kind of the limited time we have for all the curriculum goals we have so um well I appreciate that we are working collaboratively with our other Municipal bodies I'd like to just keep in mind um that we came to this decision uh just a couple
208years ago and we weren't even in schools right so this happened when we were on a total remote system and now we're back and it um and I think we should just be reminded that we kind of decided as a community if we want to revisit it we definitely should but at that time between Community comment and our vote on the sros we did kind of say that we wanted to you know the armed officers in our schools was not something we viewed as as a positive or alive [Laughter] um one thing I do want to comment on that is and this is just as much to as a follow-up as a mental follow-up for me but Gavin you had shared something in an email about like any police officer any schools considered an SRO
209no I was saying the opposite I was saying that in some of the public comment that we've received that it was suggested that an officer coming to the building was a violation of our decision and not have sros and just clear clarifying not that probably anybody needed it but that eliminating sros did not Envision that there would never be police officers I think that's how I suggested and as the upcoming discussion suggests it's a question of when and how and with what understanding and is that something that would potentially fall under the policy committee or is that something that's more District level because of the IGA I think it's a question to my mind the first discussion would be one of the things we talked about around the IGA was that there are a number
210of like a lot of the IGA maps on to the law right and this is what the law says but that within it there are a lot of areas for discretion about how we understand and implement the lot it's not prescriptive in every situation this is how School Personnel would handle this or this is how you know and so to my mind um I don't think it's a policy discussion because I think it's a more nuanced thing but I think what I'm hoping for in terms of the next discussion and folks I think probably have additional ideas too it just is to have a discussion around how we make sure that we're while we're following the law we're also conscious that as we as a district use our discretion we're doing it in a way
211that's responsive to some of the concerns how they just addressed and also that there's um consistency in that it's not left to every individual to figure out in what could be a very stressful or unfamiliar situation like how should I exercise as my expression but really like more guidance you know when and how we and your parents are present for certain things or when or how we ensure that people know when to you know when it's appropriate to call please or you know those kinds and for non-safety related I think that I I don't think we've ever after we've removed the sros we didn't really talk about expectations about whether or when or if he would have armed or uniformed officers or are brand new in our school for non-safety related for other issues right
212yeah well and they're just I mean there's there's a concern that like any you know single police officer walk through the school if you're not the kid that they're walking over to see then that creates anxiety right like that's an anxiety it could be an anxiety created situation even if we're getting more anxiety for the kids well well no I'll tell you if they're going to see them for a let's talk about literacy and like if for a non right we're gonna have the police officer come and tell you about a career path to police officer being a police officer there's kids that 20 kids somewhere that know that that's happening and the other kids just to eat officers walking into school um you know there's there's a lot of research on like I said
213you have officers who build friendships all of a sudden they're buddies with a kid named Joe you hear Joe's friend Frank did something like Joe what'd Frank do to get in trouble but all of a sudden we're criminalizing and trusting a police officer to with information because they're a kid this is someone that they're supposed to talk to and there's lots of resources to us that doesn't go so well for Frank or for Joe I think just a common theme is uh also what we heard about Longfellow wow I can I can definitely value groups I think that we have to respect every family's um buildings all certain things and so I do think that having that communication in life we're starting this we're doing this my girls came home and they were like um
214can you give this permission slip I'm like most permission slips have been like electronic where you guys going now what do I gotta pay for she's like oh we're going to see a show I was like what kind of show she says a drag queen show and I was like okay but I feel like we are you know our family is is not tolerant our family is welcome and we we teach our kids love everybody but if another parent another family doesn't or if another family is like anti-police and we know people in this community they're like abolish the police I think just having that information like the police are going to be in with officer Howie if you don't want your kid to participate um please let us know because I did see some
215of the students there I know um have some challenges so I was a little disappointed to see those students and um just understand like if they understand like the full concept of like what was going on what was happening did their parents know um for people to have the opportunity because some parents are teaching our kids like something totally different than I am and although I don't I don't agree with them or I don't understand it I have to respect that that's their child and um I just think the end of the day like parents should be able to make that decision if they want their child to be in a space with the officer if they want their child in a space where they're talking about lgbtq or race or any of those things
216I think that setting up the club that wasn't forcing yeah yeah so now to say like like this is happening so that that parent can have that conversation like we had to have that conversation our kids a long time ago I could imagine someone from what I've heard and this is I'm not on a dance group and my husband is he was like it was a it was a big it was a big like thing or whatever and so I think that was the lgbtq club yeah um so I just think because parents didn't know or because they they felt so some parents some of the parents were feeling like they didn't know that they're blindsided they're having inappropriate conversations and I feel like if there were a email to say this is happening to
217like give the facts that could have it could have but it's a club that you voluntarily go to it's not it was a part of the curriculum I also think like our core values and instruction we'll talk about things like race and identity I don't think it's a district you would let people opt out of like I don't want my kid to go to any class where you're going to talk about race or or gay people yeah in all fairness opting out is different than informing though can I can I just say what I feel like we're starting to have a big discussion I will say there was a situation a couple years ago on my campus where I forget why but there was an ice officer that came to speak to someone like it
218was like an invited presentation or something and there was an outcry particularly from some of our undocumented students because they came in like an identifiable band and they kind of freaked out and felt like the campus was not safe they didn't understand why this officer was there and so there was discussion about like when someone like that is invited to a campus whether they should be in plain clothes or an unmarked car or like being you know like not sending students into a panic that like someone's coming to get you so there might be larger discussions about like if we are going to have offices in the building for whatever maybe it's you know a parental release for families who are uncomfortable with that um or it's about asking them not to harm you know
219whatever it might be so this is what we're talking about on May 11th right yeah so I think that's just like the clarification I know people are wanting to leave but we actually still have one more thing to talk about um I know we do well I just want to so I've had conversations with a bunch of you about communication stuff and so I wanted kind of just board like uh affirmation around like trying to have sometimes set aside to work out like board Communications with ushma amongst ourselves um Gavin's thrown out this idea of also the board retreat so maybe collapsing those things too those things together I know it's already like mid late March and so um while urgency is great I don't really know if it makes sense to try to do
220this before our one new board member is suited I don't like it seems like it would make more sense to get um especially because then our schedules are very complicated to get maybe a date in May or June because I think um Holly and I have talked about like kind of to be covered we probably need an iasb rep even though I know it wasn't the best experience last time just to kind of cover our butts and so to also coordinate that level of scheduling if we just had one topic like communication I feel like ISB rep might not let us just have a conversation and I think it should also be like what's that can you say what you mean by cover I don't know you have to you can't have a self-evaluation where
221you meet in closed session without an ISP rep see I was trying to shove it under like superintendent evaluation but Holly didn't think that was right either I feel like that's considered self-evaluation I was figuring out yeah that's itself to prevent like a living violence so I feel like we should we should have a discussion about or we can figure out another way to do it but what are the highest value things for us to talk about and then if it requires that we have an iasb person here and we just say listen like we're going to run this and please you know I don't know I don't have any problem saying that I don't think the last person we had here was like he just kind of you know because we're talking about stuff
222that they don't they're not well and if we have a question and we want there but we can say well what yeah I don't have I don't think we need to adjust the agenda so that we can get a nice view route here I think we just talk about what we think is the most important things to talk about and then we if we have to invite somebody we do it and then we just explain to them how we're planning to run the meeting I can't imagine we're going to get somebody who's like no okay so then I can maybe you and I then you've offered to help um record it replying I'm suggesting like in May I probably just do like a schedule and Pull and see one who can pull it off yeah
223okay all right but I just wanted to confirm with everyone that we're cutting towards that because I know there's lots of service yourselves thanks for covering my butt all right um uh all in favor of adjourning the meeting at uh thank you [Music] to talk about