001the United States of America stands one nation please high card here Jackson Mason Presa Walker herea public participation written uh there's no public participation but there is written we ask the board accept the written correspondence as presented I had a motion M Walker and Miss Mason roll call please hi Jackson hi hi Walker and no public comment however for old business we ask the board approve the minutes of the regular board meeting of January 27 2025 the close session minutes of December 16 2024 and the facilities committee meeting of January 27th 2025 as presented okay got a motion Miss Walker Mr Jackson call please Walker Mason I Jackson hi Howard hi motion car for the superintendant no old business okay motion is Board of indication approve the accountable as presented no questions I get a
002motion Miss Walker call please Jackson hi Mason hi Walker hi Howard hi and the building for you report in your packet it's information bu no EAS any other old business um no other old business however before we go into close session I would like to move from my oral remarks the school Improvement update for North Lake Middle School if that's okay absolutely so we'd like to thank our team from North Lake Middle School Dr motive welcome te well I want to start off by thank you I know the commitment you guys make the bo will serve our schol community so thank you for G us a few minutes to share the M school and we truly [Laughter] have so let me introduce some of the people presenting today we have his Aron our school counselor
003Sorry Miss Aron is your seventh grade science teacher uh Miss Mulligan is our school's and then um Mr s is our first ass principal she years in our district as an educator all right all right so we're going to do something a little bit different today right I know you guys Heard lots of data over the last our presentation but we're going to make this a little bit more interactive for you guys part of being a student is to be served socially emotionally right and so we've made it coner up in our district to make sure that we educate the whole child right so we're going to need you for the next three or four minutes we're going to get a little bit better right all right we'll turn over to our class so we're
004going to take a little break from our technology and do something more interactive but your we're just going to um count off by fours to so on one two three three four one write it down now I would like you to find the other people with your number so who has the TW so I'm G to give you two activities to do with your circle the first one is how are you showing up today so that's a very broad question so we're going to give you a choices this is the map of emotions so maybe you're showing up your feeling sadness swamp you could be you could answer happiness Hills Anor alley pal Cole you could say bilian River or joyful jungle so I'm going to give you not a lot of time' got four
005or five per group so maybe 20 20 30 seconds per person to talk about that in time are I Wonder for the next activity with your circle so um I guess before we go on the next activity I'm just going to let you know that um our entire district has been training um about circles and doing CES intentionally so um this is it's not a formal Circle what we're doing right now we're doing something a little more informal a teacher could use these maybe if they have a big test to ask their students how let's let's do a circle before the test how's everyone feeling about the test today just to kind of check in so um but the features we do have on this year in physical circles it's really important not to have
006anything in the middle so it feels a little weird but you um but we're getting used to doing it um intentional opening we did that by having a check in just to see what's mood was um we didn't create any Norms today we don't have talking pieces um we did give the opportunity for each person to speak um you you have the option to pass I didn't say that but you do and then um ending with an intentional closing um we won't be doing that today we're just going to do another EX for a time so this one um I'm going to give you just 30 seconds to find a picture on your phone that your and [Applause] Sh so 30 seconds to find it and then only 20 seconds to sh father his last
007stand [Music] here she [Music] thank you so much that our activ oh see I still have to see some of everybody uh for participating with us um in our kind of get to know you um you know enjoyment activity um we wanted to start off after that with just kind of what makes North Lake Middle School special um you know in our district and in the community um so the very first thing that we wanted to highlight is this year um we have had a reading incentive program that our reading specialist has worked with with our students um each advisory has the posters that you see up on the board um and the students get to color in a part of the poster each time they meet their reading goal for that week um and
008they've they've had uh like a Rewards program with pizza and wings afterward uh for advisories who have won uh which has been a really nice way to incentivize reading for us um and then the middle picture is from our book fair we partnered with Anderson's Bookshop uh and had a beautiful book fair uh that overlapped with parent teacher conferences uh every day students walk past the success wall on their way to the cafeteria uh you as you can you may be able to see little pictures of students um up on the walls High Achievers in math and I ready as well as high Achievers in Arc uh their reading steps uh our student council is extremely active at North Lake uh we have programs uh typically about once a month uh things like TGIF thank
009goodness it's Friday students who can get together dances things like that and then the two pictures on the side were the birthday boxes that are student council put together and delivered to a local food pantry um so they were able to um benefit from that um we've had a lot of scholar recognition programs that we have um at North Lake uh the three pictures on the leth hand side are from our map rewards incentives so students who met or achieved their U Mac reading and math goal were able to participate in an ice cream treat an open gym or both uh and then the picture on the right is from uh our student uh scholar who was the runner up in our holiday winter card program uh we also hosted our our yearly spelling be
010this year we are sending our um student Nico alzate on to the regional spelling be in a couple of weeks um so he will compete with all of the Regional Schools um that send students uh we have trimly Awards breakfasts at each of the grade levels so sixth seventh and eighth graders uh something that we started last year uh where we get to get a chance to recognize our Scholars for the wonderful things that they're doing they get a little bit of a special breakfast and we have um certificates that are presented uh to all of the the scholars uh and then uh last but certainly not least um this year uh I we took uh about 12 Scholars to the Proviso Math and Science Academy math competition um among about 10 schools all who
011feed into pmsa North Lake Middle School placed second um so it was very exciting um for our our Scholars um to have that lots of individual Awards as well um but they really came together and did an amazing job so the heart of what North Lake is is our um bu of Roar uh we believe in respect ownership attitude and responsibility and those for tenant Drive every scholar and every person at North Lake M school um every school in order for it to be successful needs a school Improvement plan um this is a beautiful layout that Mrs sson put together that simplifies our entire School Improvement plan with a focus on four ideals uh we have reading goals math goal our green is that goal and then on the right that red is the attendance
012goal IR is our annual um Statewide assessment um over the last three years we've been pretty consistent our hard work has led us to receive a commendable designation so shout out to everyone at North Lake Middle School for achieving commendable in the 20 24 map map is a three time assessment that we take at North Lake Middle School it measures scholar progress both in reading and in math um this year we just wrapped up math testing about two weeks ago Pro can say that 24 additional Scholars are now at grade level or above and that's really really awesome right the goal is to get every scholar there but um it's nice to know that we've moved up 24 digital Scholars so good job again to all of our teachers and you know we've moved away
013from the notion that reading is taught by ELA teachers everyone is a teacher of reading whether you're health teacher science teacher PE teacher social studies teacher or specialist teacher everyone has taken on the task of teaching our Scholars to read our Ela goal uh it's been a districtwide goal for the last couple years now but it was to get um 47% of our Scholars at the professor reading level I just want to say the tremendous gains we've made from October 1st October 1st we had approximately 15% of our Scholars on target for reading level uh right before winter break uh we measured our Scholars are at 29% and then um last Thursday when we took our last assessment or measure of our data we had 39% of our Scholars for now on target for their
014reading level so tremendous job to all our teachers for working hard the first five months of school and I think um the way we're headed we will certainly get to that 47% so again shout out to all of our teachers who partake in Reading for our Scholars um so how are we getting there how are we getting to those uh increase achievement and growth levels you know we have made it a mission um Mrs zimman you challenged three years three years ago with this uh implementational Arc program Scholars need to build their stamina we went from being able to read from seven minutes a day to reading 30 minutes a day and at our school every scholar reads at least 30 minutes a day at school combined with 30 minutes at home and so we
015have made a tremendous push to um make sure reading is at the priority of both our school and then our parents at it um the other strategy that helped us get to where we want to get to uh is making sure that we meet the needs of our students through small group conferencing and from October through February we've been right around at 90% so essentially 90% of our Scholars meet with a teacher in ela to have some kind of onetoone conferencing or small go coun within a 14 day cycle so shout out that has probably been one of our biggest celebrations is getting kids in small groups and giving them that individualized instruction that they okay you should just use sorry it's okay so as Dr mod mentioned according to our I scores we received
016a commendable designation and moving forward in order to sustain this designation this year are mle building wide our hope is that 70% of all of our Scholars will meet or exceed their target growth on their spring math math test and as of a last minute calculation as of today there are 58 % of our North life Scholars who have already met or exceeded their annual Target growth on math test so we still have room to go but we also still have some time until that third um spring benchmark test we've been focused on two specific math uh strategies in order to help sustain this growth the first to being that all students access my path for a minimum of 50 minutes per week and are passing their individual lessons with a 70% or higher um
017accuracy rate so last week when we looked at the data on the 20th 93% of our building accessed and used I already personalized instruction and of those 93% 55% of our building um met were exceeded the 50 minute goal so we're making progress but we still have some room to grow to ensure that our entire building is hitting that 50 minutes or higher usage our second strategy for math this year has been small group instruction occurring on a daily basis early on in the year this was a this was a difficult push so through some ongoing conversations and dialogue we made a building decision that all math classes would start start each block with their 15 minutes small group time so I can confidently say that as of last week and continuing today every single
018math classroom starts their math block with 15 minutes of small group across the building um now I would um it's my pleasure to present about some of our goals but first I have another question for you when you think about our Scholars and more the soft skills the things that they're going to need to be able to do to be successful in the future um when they when they apply for their first jobs or when they working with someone that they disagree with um a lot of you may have children are very close to children have nieces nephews so what are some things that you hope they will learn to be able to do you can speak up you don't even have to raise your hand negotiate NE conflict M good communicators be good communicators
019yes listen listen yes be able to agree to disagree fabulous problem soling SKS recognizing errors Le these are wonderful answers and all of these are social emotional learning it's the process that um we are all of us are developing the skills that we need for life and so um we focus we kind of um are able to distill that down to four different areas so self-management you know being able to keep yourself most of the time as Mr Jackson said very well um emotions regulation growth mindset that self-confidence and social awareness of being able to agree to disagree so um those are some of the competencies that we are hoping to develop in our students our Scholars and then also we know it will happen best when they're in an environment where they have a
020sense of belonging and strong teacher student relationships so we also realize that our Scholars are learning this not just in the classroom but they're learning it at home they're learning it schoolwide by the way they're treating it in school so um this is kind of how we're approaching our social emotional learning um in each of those three areas so um and the classrooms that's a chance for them to have a nurturing connection to school um there's two advisory teachers per classroom it's kind of like their home base and we do have time for explicit social emot emotional learning um three times a week so we use the Second Step curriculum um we use social Institute to help them with media and what to you know knowing what's a good post what's not a good post
021to put out on their social media and then on Friday we have more more tailored lessons that um my wonderful partner social worker Mr Pap and I are able to um push out to the teachers to work on our our um most specific goal which is emotions regulations this year um the circles when I saw you doing the circles earlier today um I saw that you know how your faces lit up and how you were curious and you learned about each other and when we learn each other's stories and we're able to share like that we learn that we're really we really have a lot in common and we learned that there's not there's not so many things that should be dividing us so um The Advisory classrooms also use circles um schoolwide some of
022the things that we do um Alyssa's Mission and Panorama surveys both take kind of take the temperature of our students um Alyssa's mission is actually a way to screen for signs of suicide and it's sad to say but we we have seen children in our country have signs of suicide younger and younger so we would if we could we would even do it to fifth grade but I'll talk to Dr M um but um the Panorama survey actually gathers data as some questions like how well are you able to calm down are you upset how how often are you able to refocus on a task so the Panorama data is amazing for also giving us their temperature um social emotional as well as how they feel they belong in school um we also use a
023system um of self-referrals and teacher referrals for FAL support if a scholar is just really feeling agitated that day and wants to talk to the social worker other counselor um we've had 1003 of those this year and um Mr Pap and I just try to make time and our schedule to see those kiddos um sometimes the scholars will even this shows you how how well they're connecting they will ask the teacher to write the referral for them so come the teacher will write um you know someone so my class asked to speak to you today um they didn't want to say much more and um we we are happy to do it um we have student ambassadors that work really hard to create a welcoming welcoming environment when there's a new student there's two student
024ambassadors that will meet them in the morning um walk them through the school um talk them through their schedule make sure that they sit together at lunch at least on that first day and the student ambassadors also are present at openhouse parent teacher conferences just just pretend you don't know your way around the school they really want to show you they're very they're very enthusiastic um and then lastly thanks to um Dr mic also we've been kind of reworking our discipline policies um by um many of us have attended Ali hearn's amazing trainings and started to learn to use effective language and restorative practices so this is this ties into seal because instead of just um having the conversations about well you broke a rule it's more bringing them up to the value you know
025in our school we value everyone being safe and you were running in the hall what can you do differently what can we do together so it's it's a completely different way of talking it doesn't mean that we're still not addressing what what we saw them doing but it's um it's it's an it's a it's a way to solve with them and to help them understand it's it's our values that's why we want you to not run in the hall for instance um if we look a little wider and we and we recognize that yes our Scholars are learning social emotionally outside and the family in the community um we have a few we have a few different activities and Partnerships um one thing we do is a wild cat wow if we happen to catch
026someone doing something good or um see a scholar do something um that we really are proud of we the teacher will write a wild wow right in that moment and send the scholar down to the office to spin the wheel and get a press so um and actually Dr mod has some wild cat WS for people here tonight we just wanted our school board members to know that they bring a lot of wow to our district and I'm going to ask if one of our board members who received the W cat W could read their V out loud to our audience here miss thank you for all you doing support our scholar staff Berkeley School District 87 Community your service to our schools is a tribute to your curing self assistance you and so typically
027when Scholars recognize by their teacher um they will bring that postcard downstairs to the office they receive a choice prise and then we mail that parent so in the age of Technology when it emails easy that is beautiful to read when you get better yes it is and I can imagine a lot of those are on a parents fridge all over um last last year we sent out 500 by this year we are around 210 for the first half of the school year right and these are not just you know we picked up a pencil the hallway these are true genuine reflections of the good scholar and they're all each handwritten by a staff member I a scholar select it could be you know we showed you that Roar making those Positive Choices so say
028that someone fell down the hallway right he or she picks up all their books and say hey let me help you the class so when a teacher an adult in the building recognizes or sees that Behavior they will give those Scholars that card immediately and they bring that to the office immediately they get to pick one of 20 prizes and then we mail that at home um the other ways we try to keep the line of communication open is from the the Friday Focus that Dr mod um sends out um we I send out a weekly seal Spotlight the last one had six behaviors and teenagers that are often misunderstood so I'm hoping um families are getting as much out of that as I am I live with teenagers too um we also have strengthening
029families and provisor public partnership to amazing organizations that come into our school to provide a service to our families and our scholars in the school strengthening families um provides a class on Tuesday nights where families can learn you know how to have a family meeting how to resolve conflict um how to how to um divy up the chores and get people to follow through with their chores um provides a public partnership provides mental health counseling by licensed therapists for the scholars that do um qualify and need that type of support um our Seal Team we will say a little more about that later but the Seal team also has been making many efforts to communicate with families um when we have a scholar with many absences we've been bringing the family in with the scholar
030and say having the conversation with our Seal Team there with many resourceful people there um teachers um social worker the principal assistant principal um we noticed you've been asking what can we do to better support you um to coming to school is everything okay what do you need um and then we have many more Community engagement events um here we have some of this the ambassadors um giving out schedules at open house and then um providing a tour to a new family and then um this oh okay um this is a picture of um the first time we we do the the sharing circles with advisories we'll do it all together in the gym and so um what I love about this is the black and white photos are from two years ago um the
031same Scholars that you see in the color photos that's that's when they first learned it two years ago at sixth graders and they're eighth graders now all right and then a school wouldn't be a school without our community and so we found multiple ways this year to engage their parents uh in November right before Thanksgiving break we had our fall Fiesta we had about 175 amilies and their children come uh we provide an outstanding dinner for them and then we had entertainment through valet clero it's just a good time for parents to come and N see a presentation right the best way to get to know people is to break bread with someone it's beautiful what we bet once a year and that's probably our biggest turnout of the year so we do that every
032U Thanksgiving for you and then who doesn't want to meet these two lovely people and have ice cream with them you know what I'm saying but um that initially is our uh get to know the um principles we talk about some of the initiatives that we had this year the focus was on attendance and then that 30 minutes of reading at home we do a really good job of reading in school those 30 minutes we want to partner with our parents to know that those 30 minutes are important at home and I just want to commend our Our Food Services Department anytime we have celebrations they're willing to provide what we need so that our Scholars can have a good time you know um if you look at that table on the right there was
033ice cream with about 30 different topics and that's all done through our food and services department so uh I really thank you for all the um support that you give us to make our families enjoy some of the great things happening so I do appreciate it we do appreciate that they do appreciate uh National Junior Honor Society right those are the cream of the crop Scholars who believe in not only academics but then giving back to our community so you see them on some of their outstanding field trips this is where they went to Feed My Starving Children uh they packed all kinds of meals so that not you know anyone goes to fed hungry and so just a part of who we are as a community at North like Dare To Dream um this
034is just an amazing opportunity for young Latinos and their mothers to talk about what happens Beyond High School right and so we went about three Saturdays ago with about 15 Latinos and their moms uh got to meet some outstanding keynote speakers do some breakout activities with the goal of Thinking Beyond High School right middle school high school is just a stop to where they need to get to and then the activity culminating with a mom writing a letter to her daughter and then reading that letter together after six hour um just present it was amazing tears everywhere from every single daughter and every single mother um I want to thank Miss mull Miss Mulligan who uh chapero our Scholars there but it was just a beautiful event um and we hope to continue to do
035that for for years to come we were doing that every year and then the pandemic hit they stopped but then they invit us again this year and so just a beautiful uh beautiful event so there and then after school clubs we have all kinds of after school clubs approximately 15 clubs this year um one of the biggest hits this year uh is at eame Club you know U and so again thank you guys at the district level for providing all the supplies and resources as you can see you know we have to find ways to connect with kids um if they're not in school they're doing other things and we want to make sure that we can give them every opportunity successful so um that is my advantic really come to life and really awesome
036that kids are do all right attendance right you challenged us Dr s three years ago like hey let's go we got to get kids in school and so um we realized that during the pandemic all we would say to kids is stay home stay home stay home a little sniffle stay home stay home stay home and we realize that the pandemic is over and they're staying home right and now it's like let's go let's go let's go and parents are confused and so what happened happened this over the course of the last four years a third of the schools in Illinois had Scholars that missed 18 days a one in Illinois not North Lake not Berkeley in Illinois and we had similar numbers we were right on par with Illinois and percentage of kids that
037missed 18 days of one right so we had to do something about it we started something called that presence wall it isn't perfect attendance because we don't don't want perfect tennis we why to stay home if you're sick right so we acknowledge Scholars who have missed three days or less so doesn't they perfect attendant it says your presence matters and the outer layer is every one of the adults that works here and we want the kids to know that we care you here and so that's about a 14 foot wall uh when you walk in on the Lakewood side so Kudos Sol our teachers for putting that together um so what is the impact on attendant and what have we done to make sure that we can get more scholars in school last year uh
038we were tasked with uh improving our attendance putting something on a school Improvement plan that would lead to changes at North Lake Middle School we want to try something called a Seal Team and the Seal team just focuses on um how we can partner with parents so that we can bring kids to school I'm GNA just self-report Mr height toow I was the principal that sent a nasty letter to your house if you don't come to school I'm calling so and so it didn't work you had us listen to a podcast Dr s you remember that and it was a school in New York that said that they partnered with the DMV and they partnered with DMV to say that if your kids don't come to school they can't get their driver's license do you
039know what happened Miss Mason when they did that you going to tell me I'm GNA tell you I'm GNA tell you Absol absolutely positively nothing no impact so negative communication with parents doesn't work so I told our team at North Lake we are not going to threaten parents by calling the police DCFS you're a bad parent we're going to call West 40 we stopped all those letters and we finally said to them come meet with us what do you need you're not in trouble we start every parent meeting with this line you are not in trouble what do you need so that you can partner with us to come to school every single day we started this Seal Team sometime and late February of last year right let's try it if it fails it fails
040we'll go back to drawing board last year in 20232 24 by February 1st we had 100 kids that missed 14 days or more so we got on it we called the parents we we took no as not acceptable answer I can't mean with the you're going to meet with me your kids education is important to both of us and we're going to meet with you so we meet three times a week with parents from 8:15 to 8:55 we will call parents a week two weeks in advance so what's happening by meeting with the parents and saying you're not in trouble what can you do what can we do to help you right so this year I took the same data one year and 21 days later I'm on February 21st Friday before I went home
041I pulled the data and this year we have 46 kids that have missed 14 Nam supp so we have cut our absences by 50% a little more than 50% there's still a little ways to go we still have three more months that deserves an next SL all right so here's where we were at um in 2021 22 if you just follow the column to the left in the bottom 31.7 so 32% of our Scholars missed 18 days or more in 2021 22 that's right after the pandemic in 2022 23 32% of our Scholars missed 18 days or more last year with only three months of the Seal team we didn't come together till February we cut it down to 25% this year if we don't have any more of these outrageous cold days we could
042be at 15% we could we could we have met with 80 parents so far this year of kids who have missed five days or work so we truly have partnered with our parents to tell them that attendance is important to the success of their children it is truly a work of many people this is not a one person job uh we have teachers on our Seal Team we have social worker a counselor Mr solsman we have teacher assistants who make all the phone calls to set up the parent meetings who take no as never an answer you cannot tell my two assistants that you cannot meet with Dr Mo they will beg you to come parents come right and one of the most important people on this SEAL team is a nurse who tells a
043parent that I'm here every single day so if you need something inhaler medicine whatever you need we'll figure it out but send your kid to school and we have the same Mantra there's only three reasons you miss school if you have a fever over 100 degrees if you're vomiting or diarrhea other than that we can deal with anything and parents sometimes didn't know that we had a nurse every single day and so we've really been able to um curtail some of the attendants and then really you know we share with our parents that 90% of success in life is just showing up if they show up they're going to learn something every single day all right and I want you to meet one of her success stories all right meet Frank Garcia come on Frank
044you can talk you can talk them say what I yeah you want to say what you want to say hello Bor of of Education my name is Frank Steven Garcia Merida I'm in seventh grade I go to nor Lake Middle School as you know um last year I this year I have improved my uh attendant from 19 absences last year to three this year and the reason is thanks to the co team that came to me and my mom to meet up to tell them why it was important for me to not miss school and in education and I have loved the school last year and this year like the clubs the teachers are really nice and that's why I love school and I enjoy it and you know it truly is a partnership because
045mom works in evening shift mom I called Mom a week ago and Mom said hey you know what I work the evening but let me ask my boss if I can take the d thank you Mom off C well thank you Mom we appreciate your support and we know things like that are happening he went from 19 days to three days and he's in two after school clubs and so it's a tribute to our our accelerated math programs awesome and he just one of many success stories and so I truly want to say thank you to of course all of our parents but then our Seal Team who works really hard to make sure that we be partner with parents we no longer have negative communication with parents we don't threaten them we ask them
046what they need all right and then really um we are on a journey together right um we need to be navigated by our school board so that we can navigate our own families and our own children own Scholars so um I have told our staff we have told our staff that nothing worthwhile is easy and if it doesn't challenge you it certainly won't change you and for us to get better we have to be challenged and we have to be willing to change ourselves oops so each one of you are getting a compass than an appreciation and in gratitude for all that you do to guide us it's always thank you for the gift and then lastly I just want to say we just want to say our school wants to say our community want
047to say you give up your time every month you give up your time every day to ensure that we have everything that we need so from the bottom of our heart thank you for your support on our journey to be commendable and I hope we're here one more year from now saying to you we're commendable again and we know with your support and with all the resources that you provide us we can be commen thank you guys for everything you do thank you I want to hear this prank again what can the board do for you and your to make you improve where you what can we do to help you help your other Scholars do what you done well mostly is to try their try your best to get their attention because they might
048not focus the first time but you got to try and try until you get their focusing all right don't give up on that's right don't give up on good job appreciate you very much well we're going to go in close session and I'll like you down good job you can stay up you want or you can dismiss yourself you want thank you guys for attend very put on top of this go first good job thank you guys to close session can I get a motion please Miss Walker and Miss B hi to hi esposa hi Walker hi hi Jackson hi car thank you okay ween reg uh board reports this B report no I have nothing to report okay Miss Walker nothing facilities right right okay thank you Mr President uh director leave of absence
049please see the letter as shown under correspondence for this meeting we ask that the board approve the licensed Personnel leave request as presented for Dr Nicole spor and Mr daleway a motion M Jackson M phone call please hi hi Jackson Mason hi Walker hia license Personnel leave of absence please see the letter is shown under correspondence for this meeting we ask that the board approve the licensed Personnel leave request as presented for Chrystal Addison Wendy Lee and Diane kuchi I got a motion Miss Walker and Miss exosa roll call please esposa hi Walker hi hi Jackson Tower motion Carri licensed Personnel resignation we ask that the board accept the resignation of the following personnel Katie head stem teacher at North Lake Middle School effective at the end of the 2024 2025 school year I got
050a motion Miss Walker and Mr Jackson C please Mason hi Howard Jackson hia I Walker I motion Carri educational support staff leave of absence we ask that the board approve the educational support staff leave of absence request as presented for Vincent harelson and Aisha or alot a motion and Miss W call please Walker hia hi Mason hi Jackson hi High to hi motion Carri educational support staff Employments we ask that the board employ the following Personnel pending all employment paperwork Jill P got a motion Miss W call please hi Howard hia hi Jackson Walker hi Mason motion car adopting the 2025 2026 school calendars attached as a copy of the school calend calendar which is presented for adoption we ask that the board adopt the 2025 2026 school calendar as proposed and attached to the
051minutes of this meeting showing the beginning School the ending of school excuse me beginning of school as August 19th the ending of school is May 29th 2026 with 175 days three Institute days and two all day parent teacher conferences and five emergency days for a total of 185 days so if we do not need to use any emergency days next year it will work work out where our last day of school will actually be May 29th next year and we also through communication with lien and with Proviso we have matching winter holiday and matching spring so we're always contining to work on our communication and we try to align best I got a motion Miss Walker and Mr Jackson Mo call please Hi C hi Jackson hi MOA Walker hi vosa hi Mason I motion
052Carri so as a part of our press policy review that the board knows that Miss Espinosa and Miss Walker along with Mrs Travis and Mrs immerman and Miss dasik have been part of that process so uh two things came up in that process one is press policy two 125 E3 a resolution to regulate expense reimbursements and uh we've talked to our attorney about this as well so what I'm going to ask the board is to wave the first reading and go ahead and approve this policy this press policy because it was a change in legislation and needs to be approved so this policy is now presented for the first reading and adoption we ask that the board approve the following policy policy 21 25 E3 resolution to regulate expense reimbursements as presented I got a
053motion Miss Mason and Miss roll call please hi Walker Mas hi Jackson Carri and it's the same for this policy which is policy 480 ap3 operational Services administrative procedures Inventory management for federal and state Awards our policy our current policy was not as comprehensive but because we're in the middle of the school year and we are receiving federal funds the recommendation was to adopt it immediately so we ask that the board approve the following policy for a first reading and adoption policy 480 ap3 in a motion Mr Jackson and Miss Mason roll call please miss Bosa hi Walker hi Mason hi Jackson hi Tower hi and for my oral report I want to mention that I along with Miss doik and Dr maanik have been meeting with the middle school principls and uh we conducted
054a sports interest survey this year and that was part of our Roe compliance visit and we are going to be exploring uh additional sports for our middle schools and so I'll give you an example for middle school students they're interested in Bowl so we're going to see if we can do Bowl they're interested in Cross Country they're interested in SOC there was even interest in slow pitch 16inch co Ed softball so we're going to see what we can do and um when I say see what we can do there's lots of little things we have to look at and what we are learning is I'll just give you an example we have space at MacArthur where we know we can install the goal posts for a soccer field but North Lake we may have some
055issues with the ground where it's not as smooth as it needs to be now we don't own that property that is part of Veterans Park District so we have to work with Community Partners to see if we can get that land a little bit um more smooth to have a competition on but if we can't we're going to look at Grant Park we're going to look at Eisenhower Park we're going to look at West Li new school we're going to see what we can do and I'll keep the board posted but I just wanted you to know that I asked our middle school principals let's look into these things and we've had a couple of meetings so far and Dr maanik and miss dashek and I uh have been working with our attorney and we
056have questions that we need to have I'll give you an example goal posts have to be secured a certain way for soccer to make sure they don't fall over there's things like that we just have to be monitoring at all times because we would be we have to make sure it's safe we also have to look at Transportation because if we do have to let's say for cross country you'd think oh well we can just run here at the stool well we really didn't design it for them so we may have to put the kids on a bus and get take them to Veterans Park District or Eisenhower Park District how do we do that so those are just some things we have to work up but we're excited because as you saw tonight the
057more opportunities we can have for our children the better um also I I had a meeting with a parent who is also a uh staff member and this was ironically it's also about a club but the challenge is this Panic parent has a private organization it's a it's a for-profit club and and I wanted to tell you I met with her discussed with her it's a tawan do club and she was interested in starting that at uh at North Lake Middle School but this would be where it would be a fee based payment the children would have to pay and we have a policy that is doesn't allow that our policy is it needs to be at no cost and the vendor needs to be a non for-profit I told her I would bring it
058to the board but that I explained that is our policy and I ran toy your attorney as well so I just want to mention that and I would just like to ask for the consensus of the board we will continue to look for opportunities for clubs but for a u for-profit organization that we would follow up in this I'd like to consensus we looking for consensus sure thank you one other thing real quick I uh sent out some information and my apologies I don't remember if it was Saturday night or Sunday but I got it Friday and it was the financials for the geothermal project at pace so I've been putting in our weekly memo information about the geothermal so I like to just give a quick summary of that and then ask for the
059consensus of the board so what's happening is PACE Center in Maywood which has a pace Elementary in Pace High School so their hbac is nearing end of life and what they currently have are univent it's a univent system which means every classroom or every space has its own univent unit which provides the air conditioning and provides the heating they're wearing out the cost to replace them is prohibited the cost to maintain them continues to go up because people are moving away from them they have explored and they would the administration of pace is recommending to transition to instead of a traditional HVAC system they would like to transition to a geothermal system and so what that requires is the uh timeline for this would be and if I could back up really quick I had
060to educate myself in geothermal because I didn't know a lot about it so I was able to get over to Irving Middle School on President's Day which was one of those very very cold days president G we were off but it was a really cold day and I did a tour of Irving Middle School with the superintendent it was so warm in there that's a geothermal school and it's just in and I also had a chance to talk with their facilities director I asked him what's good about it what are the challenges and we went through all that and I met with Mr White about that and Miss Dasha so we feel comfortable suppor ing the recommendation of the pace Administration so in terms of the costs it's essentially the same cost and I that's
061what I was waiting for which was those financials that's what I sent you on over the weekend so you could see that the financials for a traditional HVAC and for the geothermal would essentially be the same but what the geothermal allows for in pac's case after the seventh year they should begin to experience significant utility cost reductions so electricity and gas because what that system does is the very first thing they will do is they will build a uh a a boring so called a boring field and that goes down below the uh uh frostline and it's filled with pipes and those pipes are filled with with water in glycol or iners and that pre either preheats or preols the water depending on the time of year and that's where your savings come in because
062then when it gets pumped into the system it's either already cooler or already warmer than the outside air and so it reduces the electricity cost um or either to heat it or to cool it so um we are okay with this I just wanted to educate ourselves and then talk mention it to the board so what I'm looking for is consensus of the board uh for an agreement that we would approve the U decision support the decision by Pace to move toward geothermal and then the cost of this is our proportional cost so all the districts of pace have a number of children who attend and then it gets divided by that number through each School District so I'm asking for the consensus of the board to support the decision of pace to move toward
063GE any questions do we know approximately how much that would be for our district yes it's in uh the exact amount is in the email that I sent on Sunday and we also had all of this reviewed by Tammy back with Shmo she's the person we use for our financing um for our project and Miss Walker again if we did the traditional hbag it's essentially the same but the savings comes after the eight years oh and I forgot to mention I don't know what's going to happen with federal and state funding but geothermal currently is eligible for refunds rebates and incentives and how that works is you can apply for that once you are pro your project is uh ready and so I don't know if those incentives will still be available but this project
064will be eligible for that so that could result in additional savings as well and D what are what are your thoughts I think it's the new technology I think that's kind of future eny savings and Irene you looked at the financials and being a member of the executive board and sitting in on all of the presentations uh the other caveat is the units in the classroom frees up a lot of space which gives the uh the Dynamics of the class it changes the Dynamics of the classrooms which is really great for the teacher and the students especially especially this type of students that they are serving it's it's safer and they get to control their temperature in their own space by several degrees not too much but it's enough to make a difference so they
065can control their own any other questions the numbers yes then I think maybe okay another question for consens show consens please got question and unless there are questions that's the end of my report okay good update thank you good evening everybody I I'm going to start with following up on Institute day we had our Institute dat on February 7th um I received some great feedback with regard to the day um several of our and this normally doesn't happen so I received several emails from our staff saying it was the best Institute day that we have ever had um that they were very thankful of the time that we took to plan to have Jimmy Casas join us for um the day that they enjoyed having the soft selected sessions I want to thank Miss esposa
066Miss Walker for joining us that morning you have at your chairs um a signed copy of culture ey so in the front of her they've all been signed by classes for your pleasure reading pleasure um so I don't know Walker have anything they to any words to say regarding their time with us that morning it was awesome was so interactive um you know often times you go hear people speak and you think really take I have somewhere speed or it's just plain War he was very interactive of the games C us play at the beginning was really ni you know very inform he was so Lively you know you get up that morning cold outside here coming I had to but the teachers enjoyed it the breakfast was delicious it was just a really good
067environment and he was very well spoken to hear what he had to say and about how we as parents and teachers and Educators the role that we play in making sure students don't get to point where they don't want to n but we don't get discouraged and no longer I agree with same eni it was wonderful he was wonderful um you know when you say you could read the room I mean everybody in that room just looks happy to be there he was so engaging his his presentation went from engagement to emotional there was a moment of like don't cry don't cry you know you know he was he's in it he and you he radiates it um one of my big thing was instead of ding to do list credit toist that it was
068wonderful I don't regret going I wish we were there a little bit longer actually so thank you for the invite wonderful so join it was really it was really great day I think all of our stff that I think our Administration um enjoyed spending the rest of the day with him he actually stayed a lot longer than even he was contracted to with us an extra hour and so very thankful for the time he gave our our community and our our staff so it was really great made a wonderful team did great Jimmy said to me it's a great feeling in here the by the um just enthusiasm of our staff and the way interactions that were happening came into the gym and everybody walk around so it was really it was really special so
069we had our first um articulation meeting with lighton high schools um so that was really exciting last week I met with all the ccul um um f instruction directors assistant sups came together um the feeder schools in met withth lien high school so that was really exciting we have been wanting to do that we so that was our my first our first time together so that was really exciting we talked about um creating some K12 alignments for instruction looking at courses ensuring that we are preparing students for the high school um and that they want to know what we are doing to make sure that all that that was a really good starting conversation that we had with the high school um this week um on Wednesday we had our first one with periso so
070that's really exciting the math department stting math department so um I'm really hopeful that these are just some beginning conversations to further articulation for all of our students that we have that K to2 lens or K to 12 lens um and making sure that we have smooth transitions for all of our kids so it was really great experience um we talked about some future opportunities um moving forward into next year and some ways that maybe we can collaborate with around professional running um with the high schools as well I wanted to give you some um information on the Dual language um one way or the M program a language program update we are making progress with that roll out we've had our first professional development um from the Illinois Resource Center we have our second
071professional development session planned for March 21st and then we started um hosting our parent informational centers sessions excuse me we started last Thursday we had eight families come to the open house at whiter and we have one tomorrow at 3:30 to 4:30 and Jefferson and then we have um also having those conversations at adult ESL every week and then you have some flyers at your space if you um would like to I think she shared a couple of extra ons with you if you know anybody that you can share those with that would be most appreciated we also G have some more flyers ready for us at um parent conf on March 6 and then at our PM event as well and then as we continue to have open house and kindergarten registration um our
072next Berkeley parent Association for multilingual Learners is going to be March 13th Mrs Malave is going to do another um presentation the honoral presentation of the power of our words and each of our family members will receive a book called um five so the the power of our words and we are excited because we are concluding our access testing we've wrapped that up our students and our teachers have done such a great job so we'll expect those preliminary results are usually result um released to us in early May so any questions questions about R the Dual language programing and along that I also just have at your place um American read company has put together a research breed kind of looking at the results um that they put together we are listed on the third
073page in Berkeley and it looked at results over time and looking at the students that came into uh the beginning of the implementation that we at Mercy readers and the decrease over the second year and then started at the beginning of the year in emergency and moved out of e as emergency readers so I just wanted to share that with you we'll spend a lot of time on that and that's all that I have to share [Music] with good information thank you you're welcome bu and statement position of Student Activity reports for the period January 31st 2025 for your review annually the funding and contract we opportunities and internet access and land contracts are presented in work Mr the CH the review and the evaluation motion isation of category internet access and man access services
074for year 2025 and 2026 anding attorney [Music] review a motion Mr Jackson and Miss Walker R call please Mr hi Walker hi Mason Jackson hi hi to hi here we're here we also updated our appraisal our Pro company for our insurance and auditing purposes last year we had a full appraisal where they came out they reviewed everything in person this year we seem to be up to date with everything and we're just submitting updates through our fer you within our accounts so the St motion is the Board of Education approve the agreement through 2024 2025 appra inne revie at time motion Miss esposa and Mr Jackson roll call please esposa hi hi hi Jackson hi Walker report late January ABC held a meeting announcing the preliminary health insurance rates so we received our preliminary race
075with your and the calculat for October 2024 so there'll be a final meeting on March 7th with our final rates um basically right now our PP increases 9% HML increases 7.3% and 4.1% 4.1% foral seems be the average in general this the ABC Trend the HML medical are is 7.3 the EVC trend is 7% and the EVC trend for PO is 8% and we're 9% and those will change B year yearend question any questions question M Travis you all right listed on my oral report are vacancies pretty much remain consistent uh from the last few months 16 Certified Six support and um one District wi update on Career Affairs career Affairs for the universities that be done this Saturday Dr Scot and I attended West 40 they have a regional this is their second um
076attendance there is kind of low today I attended noro University attend that very long on Wednesday Dr spur and I will be going to Eastern University SL U they um host it together so this year is at Easter next year it be a few of us soate so we are hoping that we have good attendance but each month I'll update you and then next week I have about three for repair so I'll keep updating you for right now tance is very low at West 40 we may have talked to three or four people and today at NIU which good to be back home that's where I graduated from and at Mercy 87 um so I shared my story and cannabis were really happy but today I talked to about six or seven um students I
077did invite them to come and visit us on spring break some of them were very happy to do so so at least you know I was able to invite them out and follow up with an email and hopefully they can be up on our offer and come out and visit our um facilities I did have the video of and also have pictures so they were very excited to see schools has been renovated and updated2 they were excited about that but overall 500 districts and everybody was very you know disappointed inor we don't know what happened um I was the last person to leave it they did that 12 so everybody was gone but I was the one of the last ones to leave I'm someone show up so it's not well attended today so we
078yes on Wednesday and then about two or three um just wanted to let you know in March beginning of March middle of March it's that time of the year you will receive an email but in your Berkeley School Board member emails the statement of economic interest don't get getting ready to be sent out they will be due May 1 but uh just get ready they'll start in early March I'll remind you um a look out for those and then uh we will again going over Staffing proposals for the upcoming school year so principles will discussing St for the and last but not least thank you for allowing me to attend the is it's conference for HR administrator School administrators so I talk a lot about updates and laws policies teacher retention and the shortage we
079share a lot of strategies and how to build our own for teacher assistant substitute teachers who want to be teachers was a great conference today conference conference just to collaborate with colleagues any questions any questions questions question have the am ofers interest we so invited out to do a presentation there's a company that work with teachers distance for those who are interested in becoming teachers I'm going to say I have received a lot email if they were interested had about people who are interested if we are able to with pram uh it will probably start people to about eight people who are really interested do have some substitutes who are interested they have and they are interested also excited so there is an any questions okay let's start doc you right um so this last
080week I got to do some planning for math Olympia which is our annual event that we lost year in District 87 we heard a little bit about the pmsa one that more like attended but we have our very own with the intermediates at middle too so I met with a team of our teachers and we do some internal planning on that and we're gonna have three events we'll have an individual event for the students which will be a mental maath event a team event which will be a partner Challenge and then there'll be a Jeffrey game that they'll be involved in or a potential for change done a different format but we'll host that at the they have graciously host it in April this year so that then um just last week at the early
081release we were able to partner with Jody Sagal who is um works with us through alysa's Mission and mind wise and as we know Alyssa's mission is we go through for support with our students prevention awareness programming and the s programming that we did at the intermediate and the Middle School level was then provided to all of our support staff and teachers to give them a little bit more depth and insight asynchronous like online course that they were able to do a early release to have more understanding just from that building level lens of Sy these science they can be looking out for and having a depth of understanding around what do we need to know when we're working with mental health and suicide awareness respect with our children in today's world so we were
082grateful for that and it was be grand funded through the opportunity that we had with working with J so our um wed he said intermediate and middle schools were provided that just during this early release and then I was not aware that North white was going gonna go ahead and get us into a circle today but that was an awesome real experience that you have to participate in around this for stort of practices work that you've been doing in the schools and I love that because that is that is at the heart of all of this is and as you can see there's a difference in just coming together and having those moments and and the way that it opens up all of us able to have conversation and engage and even if you don't
083even know the person that you're talking to so that's the stuff that's happening all the time with our adults in the buildings and then our children in the classrooms and that's our proactive work that we've been doing I know last month I mentioned that we were going to be doing um I thinkig our restorative Circle and we did actually have that take place which is our more reactive approach or restorative approach once the harm is already been caused that's a much more intensive approach with the circles and it is very scripted and as you saw like those seven elements that Miss Mulligan shared with us today it is going to go even deeper because now there was in this particular situation both physical and emotional harm to many people who were involved and we brought
084all of those people with pre-conferences work that was done in advance oneon-one and then all of them if they were willing and ready and wanting to be a part of the circle were invited to a space to attend it together I have to say it was one of the most I had no idea that it was going to be I was just an observer to help us evaluate our process to kind of learn from the experience and help us St how we can continue to move forward from a district the whole time I was fighting back tears because I had no idea how much emotion would have been brought to the circle even a year after this incident had been taking place and also how much F had happened but how much healing can also
085still happen among adults and in organization when something has taken place like that so I'm actually going to read to you some of the emotions that were shared so as um Miss Mullan kind of opened today with like your question we open the circle of a question and it was what emotions are I bring to the space right now and some of the emotions that people shared when we first got there was nervous curious anticipation empathy and hope by the time we had closed out the circle she stopped and again asked what are you bringing or what are you walking away from the Circ with and people said excited thankful ligher positive hopeful and optimistic and just to see that change of emotion through this process thinking again there's an emotional and physical harm that
086took place and now we've gone from that space to that opposite space within that time was truly incredible and then I'm going to share just a couple of quotes from participants in the circle around how they felt the circle left them feeling so one person said that I believe that there was Final enclosure it was clear that this was something that needed to happen and we lasty imp on those that were involved it felt good and it felt healing and walking away from the circle I felt very grateful relieved and AED by all the participants just even seeing students parents administrators teachers everyone come together leave all of that behind and say like as humans we want to show up how do we how do we grow to be better together um it's something I
087wish I could have video I could have bottled up I could have captured and let everyone be done but it definitely makes me proud of the work that we're doing here and if we could all just continue this work even Beyond this like as a society I just wonder where we could be and this is how we chose to show up um but for sure it it just makes me just so excited to see the trajectory of me on as a district to have chosen to move in this way that we're starting with these proactive approaches of of building this relation relationships work like we did today getting to know each other and seeing each other first but then when we've done the harm how do we restore it and how do we heal so
088it was definitely it was an incredible thing to be a part of and I'm excited to see very good observation very good speak I totally agree with you any questions no let's start Mr White you Mr White uh February 7th when the conference was going on we completed the waterproof injection process at North l Middle School so they thrw a holes in the wall they threw Holes in the Floor they inject an expanding poly type of substance in there that expands the build and C SE so first week is uh letting it cure letting it expand waiting it to harden second week we're waiting to see if we had any leaks so far to this day we have not had anything so it looks like it work um our next steps are to continue we'll
089paint the wall Passat the holes we'll level out the floor we'll clean the room we'll get the room ready for use so that'll be ready for use soon the second stage is when they drill holes through the wall around there's an incoming water feed through that wall and lot of water just poured out of the hole they drilled into the wall That's leading them to believe that there's a leak in that main outside of the building so that's our next step is to investigate why that's leaking originally we thought we were going to have to dig it up but W our architectural firm is working with thean who installed it and they think there's another way that they can test that by putting pressure in it see if it leaks out there's another way to
090test it without digging it all up so that process is going on behind the scenes right now um when I get an update forward that to you guys but right now it looks good looks like we will be able to reuse the so any questions about the North Lake Bas any questions the only thing I have is for the summer project on installing fire po stations both is gathering the prices for that they have to get prices from Simplex who does the programming on those devices and then I'm hoping by next Bo meeting in March we'll have updated price for for that project that's all good thank you for the follow appreciate you um well a couple things first for our nurses we still have a vacancy for the flo position that we're working on
091with this Travis oning and um there is a new guidance on What's called the cardiac AR plan that's supposed to be included into your with emergency operation plans so working with nurs um and Facilities we are installing more aeds on the second floor of our vs um and then we will follow up with um enhancing our C plan with on that um Mr White is passing around these are called stock with Le kits um at our last board meeting I showed you the L bags that we have for emergency kits these are the Stop Lead KS that will be um coming this week for our teachers following up with that we will be training our teachers it'll be um kind of a simultaneous like online course and hands on which is the way we did
092our training for an shooter event they did some things online and then we will do some things handson um because otherwise these kids wouldn't matter if they weren't trained in how to use them so that'll be some of our upcoming trainings um with our staff and some emergency prepared that um for also some things for our school safety is we did have um our state assessment uh done for the preschool forall program and then we also had our site assessments security and safety assessments done as well and at the next board meeting um Mr W will summarize um State assessment from preschool program and then the security assessments for the preschool program and give you a summary of those finds and for special education we still have vacancies for few teachers as Miss Travis referred
093to at our social workers and um we did have our state visit for the preschool for program and the results were very promising this was the first visit that we had from the state we had our special education inclusion Blended program really up and running and state coming in to do that visit so we're very proud that with that program in place now to have the results that we had and we'll be sharing a summary of those results to had to gave us our first um results and some feedback and then they'll give us kind of a summary littleit um we also have um our CLP evaluation which is the evaluation of our programming here in District 87 but the whole review also of the pace programming for all special education um they've completed all
094of their observations on site assessments they're working now on Financial um kind of audits looking at those pieces and we expect to have a full summary um by the end of spring probably be said like April or May at latest um so have a report on kind of that full picture of their research on our special education and we uh started our lps1 so that's a special education endorsement program starting in February we have um 10 lovely staff members such as Dr Mis in the program uh so we're excited that we have 10 staff members um that are working towards getting their special education any questions thank you m SP thank you few things for getting the 2025 26 registration process um up and running so that will open next month so all of our
095current students could reenroll for next year will be with us and then all of our new students will have that opportunity working with our insurance company to continue to do some safety some Online safety training for our staff we put together small opportunity for our staff that they can participate in making them aware of fishing attempts that you probably see in your personal email or professional it's a risk for personal organizations build awareness with that as well as our infrastructure security also working with s with the technology team to build this capacity to manage all our virtual servers that allow us to do technical things that we do school district7 as Irene said we just move forward with our e rate for this school year so that's to allow us to have the internet capabilities
096that we have throughout the district so we purchase move for with the vendor that provides the best service as well as is financially responsible we are as said we're finishing up access testing but we're starting I testing we have to ensure all the technology is ready for successful testing continued season and that's stand report report last all any question okay any other no so then rather than adjourn the meeting what we'll do is go back into a second closed session and then we'll adjourn from there and we won't be coming back into Open Session we're going to get a motion to adj please and Miss Walker and Miss B call please High to hi Jackson Mas Walker okay we going to close second so you guys have a nice evening