001Thank you. Good evening, everyone. Buenas noches. My name is Elizabeth Jimenez, a person of South Berwyn School District 100. Can we please have a motion to adjourn? No, not to adjourn, to reconvene into open session. I'll motion. Second? I'll second. Thank you. Roll call. Iron A, Butler. Butler. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
002Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. And to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Buenas noches, todos. Mi nombre es Elizabeth Jimenez. Soy la presidenta de la mesa directiva del Distrito Escolar 100. Para mi izquierda es la doctora Mary Havis, nuestra superintendent. Buenas noches. Good night, everyone. To my left is Dr. Mary Havis, our superintendent. Do you roll call? Here or present. Jimenez. Here. Steinfeld. Here. W. Gonzalez. Here. Butler. Here. Drenth. Here. Pallas. Here. They need translation. All right, good evening everyone. It's nice to see a crowd out there tonight. And so we are going to kick off our meeting with a school spotlight from Freedom Middle School. So
003we would like to welcome up Principal Enrique Ojeda and Assistant Principal Brian Conant to share the Freedom Spotlight. Good evening everybody. I'm going to start our presentation with some data that we have where we ended off last year, where we kind of focused this year, and then where our reality is now. Then we're going to spend some time celebrating some of our students who show the characteristics of what a graduate of D100 and Freedom look like. So I want to start out with where we ended our year last year, and I want to start there because the end of the year for our Patriots was on a pretty high note. So I want to make sure that we celebrate some of our... accomplishments. So on our the screen you see now that is our data
004for IAR in relation to IAR math as it's been throughout the past couple years. Last year at the end of the year we celebrated a increase in our students who are exceeding in meeting expectations from 11.69 percent up to 13.51 percent. So it is a little bit of a gain that we'd like to see more. We're going to continue our work so we do see more but there's also the win of the students who are not meeting an IAR going from 26 down to 22%. So our students are moving in the direction that we want them to move. And then we saw our reading scores and this is kind of what we actually celebrated and we were very excited to see the growth of our Patriots with our students who are meeting and exceeding an
005IAR for reading going from 16.04 percent all the way up to 35.52 percent so a big huge congratulations to our Patriots and all their hard work and all the hard work of our staff to make sure our students are growing in the direction we want them to. And then just to acknowledge the students, the amount of students who are in the did not meet section, again, dropping from 24% down to 12. So our patrons are doing good things. They're working hard. Our staff is working with them. Yes, sir. Round of applause for them. And then just looking at our students who are at the growth on IAR. Again, we're there. Where we want them to be we want to see more growth. We're seeing the growth in their Achievement levels and we are continuing to
006work with that so that we can continue to see that growth At our end of last year we did take a look at some of our writing data And we started to look a little bit more into that during the summer as our SIP team met and revisited Revisited our school improvement plan, so I'm gonna pass that over to Mr. Koenig So we were happy to see some growth in terms of our focus on writing and how that improved. And so we decided one of our SIPP goals for this year would be to bring a focus on writing to all subject areas. So this year, in all of our subject areas, except for math, teachers have been working on asking students to do more writing in class, figuring out ways to encourage students to do
007writing, to respond to writing. and to chart the amount of words that students can write in each subject area and just creating that volume of writing in those classes. So this is our action plan for the year as far as ELA and again utilizing those writing strategies within all content areas including our exploratories. For math, what we did over the summer as a SIP team, we took a look at our kind of our broad goal, our results goal. Did we want to or need to refine some of those goals? What we did over the summer is we took a look at the subcategories of math and the... different areas that we wanted to focus on per grade level focusing looking at ratios and proportion number systems geometry and then taking a look at how the
008students are progressing in those areas over the school year so that was a little bit of a tweak or change that we had to our SIP plan for math and then that is just kind of our current reality that we are reality rather from the for the start of the school year and then the goals that we began to work on as the school year started So I will say that there was not a direct writing goal within math, but as the year progressed, our students were, we continued to work on student discourse within math. And then because of this, we had them begin to write what they were going to talk about prior to getting to the conversations. So even though that was not a direct goal or a direct action plan for math,
009writing did find its way into math with students writing. beginning to have conversations about their learning and their understanding of math. So another goal that we came up with for this year was to find ways to build connections between our communities, all of our communities and our school. And so a couple of the areas that we want to highlight some growth this year. The connections that we have. between students and teachers. This year we implemented a couple of different new programs or activities that have kind of grown these connections. We've started an FMS Olympics on our late start days, so students are competing throughout the year in a number of activities, and they're building a team culture in their excels as they compete in these Olympics. We have a staff versus students competition at least
010once a month on a Friday. We've already had board games. games and we've done badminton and we'll have volleyball this weekend, this Friday. And so that creates this fun opportunity for students and staff to interact in a way that is different than the classroom space. You know, the block party that we had in the fall was an extension of this idea as our multiple clubs, the new clubs that we had this year, including we have a cosmetics club that our PTSA has helped sponsor and we have a new outdoor club where students and staff are spending time outdoors communing with nature. It's really been fun to see that growth as well. We have also made strong connections with staff to staff. That has come largely through really focused PLCs as teachers have been developing approaches
011to new curriculum. We've seen them connecting with one another, content meetings, and of course data-driven conversations around these new initiatives. But another highlight, another connection that we're really proud of this year is our connections with our families. Joining us are members of our PTSA, which has really just grown and thrived this year. And some of the ways that our PTSA has taken on initiatives and worked with us this year is we've had multiple fundraisers, and the coffers in the PTSA are... are full and they're using that money to help our students. They've run concessions. We hosted conversations with the principals event and we hope to have another one soon where parents and members of the PTSA have given updates and asked us questions. And a really cool thing we did just this month was we
012invited parents to participate in our Valentine's Day, Valentine's Graham annual fundraiser. Parents sent valentines to their students and those students receive those valentines in class and some students even asked if they could send valentines to their parents which was fun and cool to see so we're really excited about continuing to grow the connections that we have with our families. So the last bit of data that I have for you is as the year is progressing, our school improvement team, along with our PLCs and our content area teams, are going through and revisiting our data, looking at what type of growth we are making, what areas that we need more support in, we need to show more attention in. Through our fall, I'm sorry, our winter. winter administration of MAP we we saw some areas that
013we we know that we were acknowledging that we need to show a little bit more love and support to but we also had some areas where we had some celebrations specifically in some of the grade levels that we are hoping to prepare as they are going off into high school so if you look at the map for math for freedom are looking our last administration from fall 24-25 there was Tiny bit of growth again not as much as we're looking for Unfortunately, we did see an increase in our red So are the students who are the number of students who are falling into the low category? Unfortunately went up when we're looking at the growth Unfortunately, that is not again as a school is not where we want it to be I think it's very
014important that as a school we understand and we visit this data because then that is going to help us drive the decision decisions we're making when we're adjusting instruction or providing additional support for our students as we're continuing throughout the rest of the year. Again, when you're looking into, so this is one of the areas that we do want to show some celebration in. This is actually our math map data broken up by grade level. And if you take a look at the last two columns, which are our eighth grade students and the amount of growth that they are making as they are getting ready to go into high school. So if you can see our high average in blue increasing. For math, it went from 36% to our blue and green up to 45%.
015So again, our eighth graders moving into the direction that we want them to go into. This is the growth data, again, by grade level for math. And then this is math as we are looking throughout the year, looking at the categories of geometry, algebra and operations, complex numbers, and then probabilities, statistics and probability. Map reading, again, we... We feel it is important to acknowledge where our current reality is. Looking at the difference between administration between fall and winter, the number of red has gone up. The number of our students who are in the blue, it stays about consistent. But again, acknowledging that we do need to show more support. We need to make sure our interventions are sound and consistent so that our students are continuing to show the growth that we want. One thing
016that did stand out to us as we were looking at our... winter administration of MAP was the vocabulary section of MAP and it is great that all of our ELA teachers, our ELA team, as they began to look at this data, they said we are working in writing in ELA, we need to incorporate a vocabulary component because that is where our students need support. So all grade levels began to identify vocabulary they want our students to utilize in their writing. Hopefully that then begins to prepare them for both IAR and then the spring administration of MAP. And then as their overall writing will improve. This is the growth percentile, 50% or higher. That did increase this year in reading from 37 to 44%. So our students are showing growth. We do want them to continue
017to move up. And again, our blue is in our greens to increase. And then another celebration as far as eighth grade goes, we're looking at map reading the number of students who are in our blue and our green going from 34% to 40%. Getting them ready and prepared when they move on to their next stage into high school. And this is growth by grade level. This is our projection to meets or exceeds with IER. Again, something that we want to acknowledge that is a reality of ours. I do want to make a point that when we got this data last year, we began to continue to support our students, provide interventions for our students, and the amount of projection that was for fall, we did double that. So we are going to continue to provide
018that support for our students so that we can see those same data results this year. As that is finished and I'm done with my data presentation, I'd like to revisit the idea of connections. So Mr. Conant talked about connections within our schools and making connections for our students to our schools. I want to celebrate some of the connections that our dual language students have made and some of the connections that our dual language students have made and shown in connection to a portrait of a graduate. So I do want to celebrate the amazing work that the staff is doing at Freedom Middle School in supporting our dual language students. We believe in being intentional and thoughtful in creating an environment where all our students can thrive and our work with dual language students is a
019shining example of that commitment. This year and just as last year, our excels have become home bases for our students. It's a space where they've not only found resources and support but also built meaningful relationships with students and teachers and they have created those connections and began to feel valued. We've been holding weekly meetings with some of our dual language parents, again, building those connections, building those relationships so that their children can reach their fullest potential. I do want to acknowledge the work of some of our... teachers who work with our dual language teachers, I'm sorry students, Ms. Reyes, Ms. DeRocha, they work with them so that they identify other ways that they can make connections to the schools through various clubs, sports teams, and other activities find their place in the freedom community. I
020am incredibly proud to say that all of our dual language students have truly embraced what it means to be a patriot. So I am going to stop talking and we're going to hear from our dual language students. And to end it out, we have a special treat for one of our dual language students and her performance. My name is Jose Osvaldo Orquínez Hernandez. I come from Mexico. Hi, my name is Alan. I'm from Venezuela. I'm in the seventh grade. My name is Valerie Jimenez. I was born here, but I grew up in Mexico and came back five months ago. Hi, my name is Shalini Robles Zamora. I'm from Jalisco, Mexico, and the clubs where I'm at the Freedom School. We have been supporting him, the teacher has been a total support for him too because
021he has given him a lot of confidence here. I also want to thank the teachers because since he started this school for him it was like a boom of opportunities. So he feels that here he is valued, he is appreciated, that his motivations, his efforts are reflected. feels more motivated to do things better. Exploiting my potential and trying to do things right and taking my responsibilities with more importance and trying to focus more on what I do and that every thing I do I do with my heart and everything. I decided to finish when I arrived in the United States because Even though I was in an English school in my country, I didn't know the language here. It was very difficult for me to speak, to ask questions, but when I started working hard
022and practicing at home, I managed to learn more English and I told myself that I have to keep working with all my strength. Speaking of which, that was like a defense for me, because I had to advocate for myself, because I knew that I had done very well in my math class, and I thought that I needed more, and I thought that there was some mistake. with my grades. So I went and I opened my grades and it turned out that I did belong to the advanced mathematics class. And that has also been helping me both with my mathematics and with my English, since I speak more with English and I try to participate as much as I can in English. I feel that empathy helps us to support others so that they can support
023us and know what to do in school, if they are new, how to get used to it. I feel that helping them helps us to be better people. That is very helpful. Can you communicate with people? Well, you can... In a way you can communicate, but sometimes you get discouraged. You say, I can't do it anymore, it doesn't work out, I don't know how to read it. But if you want to and you trust yourself, it's okay. But then, little by little, when the school started and she started to get to know more friends, who were also very much like her, more or less, she adapted very easily. She adapted, she started to help with what she needed, and it was very good for her. She adapted very quickly. I want to be in the
024drawing. I want to be in the drawing. I want to be in the drawing. I want to be in the drawing. I want to be in the drawing. I want to be in the drawing. I want to be in the drawing. I want to be in the drawing. I want to be in the drawing. I want to be in the drawing. I want to be in the drawing. I want to be in the drawing. I want to be in the drawing. I want to be in the drawing. I want to be in the drawing. I want to be in the drawing. I want to be in the drawing. I want to be in the drawing. I want to be in the drawing. I want to be in the drawing. I want to be in the
025drawing. I want to be in the drawing. I want to be in the drawing. I want to be in the drawing. I want to be in the drawing. I want to be in the drawing. I want to be in the drawing. I want to be in the drawing. I feel very proud of him and at the same time I have seen how much he likes to be here. The same as what I did with Nancy. For example, when I arrived, she already knew more English than me and she was the one who helped me with the things that were in English and she didn't understand. And as time went by, I understood more English and spoke a little more fluent. When new students arrived, I also tried to help them and we helped the students
026and so on, so that they could get used to the new area of the school and how things are in school. And I feel that that also helped me to improve my English. I wanted to share something that happened to me. I feel that not only with the new kids that come, the kids that are born here and speak their native language of English, they also feel empathy for the new kids that come. For example, when I trained in the volleyball team, I didn't know anything. I didn't know what to do. I didn't understand what the coach was telling me. I felt that they had empathy for us because many of the children who were born here helped me a lot with what I had to know about volleyball and that. That's why I feel
027that not only we, the ones who are new, help the other children who are new too. One thing that happens to me when I familiarize myself with people who speak only English is that we are talking to each other like that and I try to... I try to speak English and then I feel proud. The children who are born here and their native language is English, they also feel what it is to be new and try to help us too. Well, Valery when he arrived, the truth is that I saw her with a lot of fear. I saw her scared because she didn't know how to speak English, she didn't have her friends, her mother. But as time has passed, she is a girl like a lioness. I see her with a lot of confidence
028in everything she does. And she inspires, I mean... A round of applause for our dual students who have shown what does it mean to be a portion of a graduate from BSD 100. So if we can have another round of applause for them. Ms. Reyes, if I can invite you up. Ms. Reyes. We do have certificates for our students who are here in a little metal form, so I'm just going to call them up one by one. Okay, so we're going to start out with your Lenny. So then you. Se pueden parar a tomar las fotografias. Nubia Zamora, a small plug, Nubia will be in the BSD 100 musical, obviously. Valerie Jimenez, Johan Ballesteros, Osvaldo Hernandez, Alan Serrano, and then Dana Flores. Thank you, just another round of applause for these patriots. Thank you guys
029so much. Antes de que se vayan, me gustaría decir un comentario para los estudiantes. Before you guys leave, can I have a moment? I'll take pictures and then I'll say something. Do you want comments or not? Should I come after that? Should I come after that? Okay. Se pueden sentar, por favor. Tenemos algunos padres que quieren decir algún comentario. Gracias. Can we turn on the microphone? Thank you. Oh, I was pushing it the whole time. Good evening, everyone. On behalf of the Freedom PTSA, I want to take a moment to express our sincere gratitude to our incredible principal, Mr. Ojeda, and vice principal, Mr. Conant. Your leadership, dedication, and unwavering commitment to our students, staff, and families do not go unnoticed. You set the tone for a positive and supportive learning environment, and it is
030clear that your passion for education and student success is at the forefront. the heart of everything you do. From the big decisions to the small everyday moments, your leadership makes a difference in the lives of so many. We truly appreciate your hard work, your guidance, and the countless hours you dedicate to making the school a place where students thrive. Thank you for all that you do. We are lucky to have you. Thank you. Do any of the board members have any questions for Mr. Ojeda? I do, actually. Yeah. No, I wanted to... Yeah, I just wanted to ask you mentioned that there's been a big growth in the PTSA What are like what are the numbers looking like and what what is kind of what do you attribute to that growth? Can you please go
031to the microphone? Thank you Last year, our active PTSA members that held a position, I think Tina was one, right? This year, we have four parents who hold board positions within the PTSA, and then we have parents who are supporting and, again, helping with fundraisers. So numbers, I don't have exact numbers. I would say more than doubled. Okay, great. For the time I've been at Freedom, I have not had an active board. that is so involved every single day. So very, very proud to say that. I have a question as well. They're doing big things. I hope, thank you to the PTSA for being here, and I hope that you all help to bring in more families and get them more involved in the school. We know that involvement is so impactful to the school
032environment and to the students. So thank you for that work. We appreciate that. It was. Mr. O'Haid, I have one other question. And it is great to see such involvement from the parents. I wanted to hear if you could just describe a little bit more about the writing program that you've implemented at school. Like, what does it look like? Well, you said that, like, you're doing it in ELA. There's more writing initiatives there. And then it kind of, like, got into math. Like, what does that look like at the school level? No, I mean like how are, I guess my question stems from like, you know, obviously you're probably going to try to see how it might change over the course of the year. I think about things like science, like opportunities to write in
033science, or is it just in ELA and math? So they're writing in all content areas, including exploratory. So science and social studies, they're focusing primarily on academic vocabulary. So as they're writing and talking about context, context, not context, sorry, content. They're utilizing the academic vocabulary to infer or here is the evidence so that they're using that more as they're writing throughout all the units. And they're tracking how often and how they're correctly utilizing that vocabulary. In our exploratory classes, we began with just numbers, meaning like we are asking everyone to write at least for 10 minutes or we want at least 50 words. That has began to transition because they feel like they're hitting that. Everyone is writing at whatever the expectation was. Now they are working with actually with Leah, who is one of
034the directors, to develop a rubric on how do they assess the quality of writing that's coming out of exploratories. And Amplify and ELA, it's primarily the writing from Amplify. And then for math, they're focusing on student discourse, so they're using a strategy called Decide and Defend. And what they would do is they would decide on what their answer is themselves and then talk about it with their peers. What we're having them do now is we're having them write that down. So they're writing it and then they're talking to their peers about it. I guess I think about what it means for the elementary levels that are kind of filtering up into Freedom Middle School. if we're looking at this sort of issue, right? Like, is there maybe like a leveled version of what you're doing
035that could be happening at the lower grades, right? So that when they're coming up and through, that could be something that helps with those margins. I also wondered about how much of the numbers you have are affected by, you know, just this dual language thing we have going on, right? Like the English language skills themselves, right? So it's hard to sort of assess, right? Does that make sense? I don't know. I saw a lot of head nodding here. Is there more there? I think it would definitely be great to make that connection. As we continue to grow with Amplify, now that everyone is kind of having it, starting those conversations. Thank you for that. At those parent meetings that we're having, dual language parent, I've had a lot of fun. Thank you. I just want
036to thank you for the presentation. It was amazing. I also want to, I'm appreciative that you recognize that there's room for growth, but the goals that you have set up, hopefully it will put our students on the right track. So I want to thank you for that. When will, what is the IAR schedule? March 11th. March, okay, during the week, okay. So thank you for everything. So I'm going to say something in Spanish to the students now. So I just told the kids how I'm proud of them I am. And for them not to, one of them mentioned in the video that sometimes they don't want to continue going on because of whatever issues that are going on with them. And I just reminded, I just told them that I was one of them. I
037came to the United States when I was 10 years old without knowing any English, since I've had no English. So I know that it's possible. I just wanted them to continue working together and supporting each other and the parents to continue supporting them, supporting them and supporting them because I know they are doing great and they will continue doing great. So thank you. Thank you for the teachers. They are working with them. Thank you. Thank you so much and congratulations to our students and our families and our staff who are all here tonight. That is going to be a tough act to follow in our next couple of presentations, but we're going to do our best. I agree. Yes, if you can take some pictures in the hall, if there's anything, you're welcome to do
038that as we continue on with our meeting. Who was the one who sang at the end? Was it you? Thank you again and congratulations. All right, we are going to move on to our next presentation, which we kind of got a little bit of a taste of some of the discussion about the Freedom School improvement. But as you know, we have a new literacy curriculum this year. And so we are going to do an update. Ms. Beatrice Maldonado and Teresa Adelphia come up and share about what's been happening in literacy in District 100. All right, I know the family's left, but Beatriz Maldonado, yo vengo de Mexico. Beatriz Maldonado, I am from Mexico. Okay. So everything we do in District 100 here is related to our vision. We are here to inspire a passion for
039learning in every child. We do this by creating the inclusive environments where our students take ownership of their academic and personal growth, embrace diversity, strive to be positive influencers of our changing world. And over the last five years, we have been on a quest. to rethink the way that we approach instruction, specifically with different pedagogical approaches. For example, in the area of literacy, we moved from a balanced literacy approach towards a structured literacy approach, and that includes more explicit and systematic instruction. Our beliefs set us on a path towards ensuring that we provide rigorous and personalized learning opportunities, innovative instructional practices, and that our classrooms remain student-centered. These classrooms are supported by the District 100 staff who is committed to ensuring student success, regardless of where the students start their journey. So last year, Utilizing
040evidence-based reading instruction, including the Illinois Literacy Plan, Scarborough's Rope from Research and Literacy, and the Biliteracy Tapestry, our extraordinary teachers, our coaches, researched and selected by an overwhelming margin of 90% to adopt the CKLA and Caminos and ELA curriculum from Amplify. They also adopted the Teaching Strategies Creative Curriculum in kindergarten and Galeria in middle school dual language. As a Board of Education, you followed along as I presented monthly those updates on how the progress was coming along in our Curriculum Selection Committee and you supported our teachers with that implementation. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Fieri states, word is not the privilege of some few persons, but the right of everyone. This year I could not be prouder of the work that our teachers, our coaches, our principals, and our district leaders, including our literacy
041coordinator, including Teresa Adelfia, our assistant director of curriculum, for the task that they have undertaken. They have worked to unpack lessons. to internalize lessons, to engage in lesson delivery, to engage in data analysis, and our staff is going to ensure that our students are successful. So today we wanted to give you a glimpse. We get to do this often because we're on site at the buildings. We wanted to give you a glimpse of the experience of our students. So as Teresa takes you through each grade, I want you to notice the complex topics that she's talking about as students are building background. They're engaged in higher order thinking. They're engaged in experiential learning and analysis. You will also notice that we have added data from last month's presentation, the data dashboard that you have in
042your board packet, by grade level so that you could see what each grade level is doing and kind of where that grade level is at. We don't expect to see significant changes in year one. We're six months in, all right? However, especially in those standardized assessments. We are noticing significant changes in student learnings with the classroom-based assessments that are in progress currently. Good evening, everyone. I'm so excited to take you on a little journey through our different grade levels and to show off what our students have been up to this year so far. So in kindergarten, we have creative curriculum, which serves as a knowledge-building portion of the kindergarten day. So far, students have explored the world around them through topics such as grocery store, percussion, and architecture. Each unit follows a structured approach with
043investigations that deepen understanding, daily questions that spark curiosity, and celebrations that bring learning to life, all while building oracy and expanding vocabulary through discussions and interactive experiences. In the architecture unit, students explored buildings around them by touring their classrooms and schools, analyzing pictures, engaging in read-alouds, and discussing shapes and materials. They then moved from observing and sketching structures to hands-on building with blocks and recycled materials, bringing their ideas to life. Amplify skills and lectoescritura serve as the word recognition portion of their day. Students develop their English and Spanish literacy skills through explicit and systematic instruction. They practice and apply phonics skills by reading decodable text and engaging in interactive activities like stomp and spell. They bring all of their learning together by keeping writing journals where they reflect on and write about the topics they
044learn through the creative curriculum. Here's some data. First grade. Through Amplify's Knowledge Strand, our first grade learners have explored the fundamental parts and functions of the five body systems, studied well-known fables, and stories from different parts of the world. They also investigated ancient civilizations such as Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Mayas, Aztecs, and Incas. They continued developing their phonics skills through explicit and interactive instruction. Amplify Skills and Lecto de Escritura give students the opportunity to apply what they learn by answering text with evidence and by writing informational text to demonstrate their understanding of these topics. This is first grade. In second grade, they have explored fairy tales and tall tales, studied early Asian civilizations, investigated ancient Greek and Greek myths, examined cycles in nature, and learned about westward expansion and the Civil War through engaging read-alouds, discussions,
045and activities. In second grade, students refine their phonics skills and dive deeper into grammar through skills and lecto-scritura instruction. They apply their learning by writing longer texts like these persuasive letters to an authentic audience, using their phonics and grammar skills to craft clear and convincing arguments. In third grade, Amplify integrates the language comprehension strand and the word recognition strand, as students become skilled readers. Third graders have explored classic tales, classified animals, examined human body systems and senses, studied the ancient Roman civilization, investigated light and sound, and analyzed character development and motivations through myths from the Viking Age. Fourth graders have read and written personal narratives, explored empires of the Middle Ages, analyzed and written poetry, and studied the world around us through geology. In the Eureka Inventor Unit, students dove into complex texts about inventors
046and inventions and became inventors themselves. They engaged in close reading, problem solving, and collaborative activities while practicing research, writing, and communication skills through the lens of a fun, reality TV-inspired competition. And one of our teachers made a short video I'll show now. After Thomas Edison's explosion last week, we had to convince him that his lightbulb invention was the greatest invention of all time. We researched and used evidence in our letters to convince him. Then, he told us to research our own invention, and the microscope group took home the lightbulb of glory for their collaboration. Next, we filmed pitches to convince Thomas Edison to put our invention on the back of his greatest inventions of all time book cover. so that we could prove to him that our inventions are just as important as the light
047bulb. Until next time on Eureka! Student Inventor. You can see this unit really brought the fun and creativity from both the students and the teachers. Okay, so fifth grade, they've crafted personal narratives, interpreted poetry, researched the Renaissance by writing biographies, and are currently investigating Native American cultures. During the ancient American civilization unit, students compared attributes from the Mayan, Aztec, and Inca civilizations. In the Don Quixote novel study, students explored character development by analyzing Don Quixote's actions and motivations. Then they wrote a persuasive essay arguing whether Don Quixote's good intentions justify his disastrous actions, supporting their claims with reasons using evidence from the text. In the middle school, both Amplify ELA and Galería for SLA continue the integration of skills like building vocabulary and comprehension strategies to support literacy and biliteracy growth with middle school students.
048Sixth graders have developed narrative writing skills through the exploration of Roald Dahl's memoir, Boy, investigated mysteries and suspense through The Secret of the Yellow Death, and researched the history of chocolate across cultures. They've analyzed sources for reliability, constructed evidence-based arguments, debated topics like whether chocolate should be included in schools, and synthesized their learning into a culminating research project. Students in the dual language program read complex texts highlighting the cultures and history of the Caribbean, Mexico, and Northern Central America. They strengthened their Spanish oracy and vocabulary while deepening their understanding of the focus genres, wrapping up the units with writing essays, comparing poetries, and autobiographies. Seventh graders have explored a variety of topics including narrative writing, character development, conflict, and brain science. In the brain science unit, they investigated the intricate workings of the brain. Students
049apply this knowledge to reflect on their own brain developments and how daily experiences impact them. Students wrote argument-based, text-dependent responses throughout the units, using evidence from readings to support their claims. They analyzed the text to construct well-supported answers that showcased their understanding of their learning. In Spanish language arts, our students read about the United States, Northern South America, and Spain while analyzing and writing memoirs and chapters of novels. Eighth graders have explored a variety of complex themes throughout their units, including character development, perspective, and the impact of author's craft. They've analyzed themes like liberty and equality and the motivations of characters. In their most recent unit, students explained Frankenstein's character motivation by using text evidence and analysis. They analyzed the characters' actions and thoughts using evidence from the text to support their arguments. In Spanish
050language arts, our students studied the culture and literature from South America, Central America, and the Caribbean. They compared poetry and even wrote their own sonnets and relatos costumbristas, stories that depict the everyday life in a specific culture. We're so proud of all of the work of the students in District 100 and all of the teachers who are supporting this. So it's amazing, amazing what our students are accomplishing. We could not be prouder. And our staff continues ensuring their success by monitoring student work, by monitoring classroom data, engaging in classroom visits and walkthroughs. These are what we are doing as we're continuing on in our implementation. And they're collaborating with an extraordinary team of coaches that is lifting everybody up, that is here to support everyone across all grade levels. So our eighth graders recently read
051excerpts from the narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave. In the late 1800s, as a slave, he knew the importance of literacy. These words ring true today. Literacy was a new and special revelation, explaining dark and mysterious things. That's what he thought, right? Once you learn to read, you are forever free. That's what we're doing in district 100. Thank you any questions any questions Like what is your feedback from teachers and stuff? I mean it seems so tight right it seems a lot tighter and a lot more like it's getting accomplished in these structured structures that is brought with the curricula. You've given good feedback, I would think, from folks. It's not easy. Year one is hard. Year one is tough. It's tough on everybody. On teachers, they're doing a lot of
052reading. On coaches, they're learning in elementary sixth grade levels and middle school three. The district coaches, eight grade levels and so forth. It's hard. This is hard work. general feedback, right? More specific, some areas, I don't know if there's any areas that they're thinking about or that they're working on. Yeah, I think... the pacing and just the fast pace of it is always something that is going to be difficult year one. And so we just remind them, you know, we know it's year one, but we're also taking all of that feedback into consideration. We do have feedback forms for all grade levels to fill out, and then we'll take a look at those as we start planning for next year. And then little things like, you know, maybe the formative assessment, they might have chosen
053a different one, things like that. So, yeah, we're keeping all of those things in consideration and making sure that they feel. heard and supported throughout all of this. I appreciate the year one piece of course I just I feel like I'm like eager to see what next year you know will look like too just like based on this it looks so promising right? It's good. Thank you. I agree. My question would be, so you mentioned the pacing. And I know, socially, the first year is socially difficult with the pacing. And I'm understanding that it has all the literacy components, which is the phonics, the vocabulary, all of them. So how many lessons per or are they by mini lessons per day? So it's one lesson a day for our K-5 in Amplify, and those are
054either 60 minutes or 120 minutes or 90 minutes, and it's all integrated with reading, writing, speaking, and listening and all of that stuff. So we're really working with our teachers to focus on those priority objectives so that they get a glimpse of what are the main things we're really focusing on this day and try to make sure that that's being implemented. So the components of literacy are in that one lesson? Mm-hmm. Thank you. And how many minutes, you said? So in K-2, we have 60 minutes of knowledge and 60 minutes of phonics. And then 3rd grade is 120 minutes of everything combined. 4th and 5th grade is 90 minutes each. And then our middle schools have full 50 minutes, and we've paced that out so it's more than one lesson per day so that they
055have a little bit more of that flexibility. Remind me, did we implement all the grades, Amplify, the same year? Yes, everybody started this. I just didn't remember that. Thank you. Oh, I'd just like to make an observation as a parent. The rigorousness of this curriculum is very apparent. When my son, who's here, was writing an essay in Spanish about the Civil War, and I said, oh, the Civil War, I know a lot about the Civil War. And he said, no, the Arabic Civil War from 1200. And I was like, I've never heard of that before, but okay. So they're learning about things that I obviously have never even heard of. So it's intense. Our teachers are enjoying it. Our students are enjoying it. We're enjoying watching it. I have a question. I've been out of
056the game for a while. So I know in the previous model there was a lot of teacher-led groups, you know, leveled groups and things like that that would allow for a lot of differentiation. Is that built into Amplify or is everybody just learning that same lesson or are they having the individual? instruction at their level? It varies. Some lessons are more geared towards that whole class with short opportunities or like 20 minute blocks for differentiation. It's not the same in every lesson and every grade level. So there's pockets of that built in. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Before we jump into our next presentation, I just want to reiterate the comments made by both Bea and Teresa regarding how amazing our staff has been in this first year of implementation. Just attending meetings and
057hearing the discussions that are happening, they're just so deep and really about student learning. And they're working through some hard things. And we're really proud of... all of our staff in this first year of implementation. It really has been quite impressive to see. And the excitement, even though the work is really hard, I've heard so many times teachers say, our kids are writing so much, right? They're sharing, they're learning new information. And so... It's hard, but there's a lot of reward and and we're seeing that coming through in our first year So kudos to our staff and and everyone supporting this it's it's been it's been really wonderful in our just for our district So yes All right. So we are, well, I'm going to invite Scott Hadallah and Beatrice back up again. You didn't
058get to sit for very long. Sorry. And we are going to. do a quick presentation here on one of our very important board goals. So the board had kind of requested an update regarding our recruiting, our support, and our retaining of our staff. So board goal two talks about, you know, how we're attracting, recruiting, and hiring highly qualified personnel. motivating and retaining high-performing employees and providing high quality PD training coaching that supports effective leaders and teachers this is a very important goal to us and we wanted to spend some time tonight kind of going through each of these areas to provide an update on where we are so I'm first going to turn it over to Scott Good evening, board. Thank you. As Dr. Havis stated, I'll be talking about the hiring protocols in HR
059and also some areas of growth that we can lean into. But as Dr. Havis stated, it starts with the goals. It starts with, you know. hiring the best qualified individual, retaining that individual, allowing that individual to grow professionally. And also one of the goals of the district is to hire individuals that reflect the student body, right? The reason for that is we know, research shows, that if you have a student of color and you have a diverse workforce, and a teacher is teaching that student of color and that teacher may also be of color, we know that math scores improve. We know that reading scores improve. We know that graduation rates improve. We know that students are more... Thinking about college more so there is a definite benefit to our students to have a diverse
060workforce I think there's a benefit also when we diversify our workforce our employee groups You know it for those individuals that are already members of our team It helps mitigate the feelings of being siloed. It helps, you know, those feelings of isolation. And also, I think it's important when you have a diverse employment group, you know, it's not about just does the individual fit into the culture of the building. That's important, but it's also does the individual push the culture forward in a positive way. And so that's what we're attempting to do. So then the question is, so those are our goals. So, you know, what is the framework to do that? And, you know, I think of it as the must, the wants, and then you select your candidate. So the must always are,
061do they have the knowledge? Do they have the skills? Do they have the competencies to do the job, right? Like that's your licensure. That's your, you know. background checks, that's your reference checks for an employee. And then you get to the wants. And the wants is we want our employees to reflect the student body of our school. It doesn't stop there, though. We want, you know, candidates that have a growth mindset. We want candidates that believe in teaching the whole child, that believe in restorative practices, in that... that believe in social-emotional learning. So these are important to us. So then you take this framework and you overlay it on the applicant pool, and that's where we get our applicant, our new employee. So how are we doing thus far? How does our current workforce reflect
062our student population? As we talk about, as you know, you know, we are a predominantly Latino Hispanic district as it relates to our student population. We also have a large group of both white and African American students. So then let's talk about our employees. We are trending in the right direction. That doesn't mean that we don't have work to do, but we are trending in the right direction. 2017, 91% of our teachers identified as white. 2025, that has decreased to 76%. And we've also increased from 2017 to 2025 by about 13 percentage points, the amount of Latino teachers or Hispanic teachers that are in our district. And we're also making some minor gains. with African American staff members as well. One caveat to this information, and the caveat is anytime we ask about demographic information,
063anytime we ask about race or ethnicity, that is a voluntary response by our employees. With that said, we do feel as if the vast majority of employees do fill that out and we feel as if this Though it may not be 100%, we do feel that this accurately reflects our current demographic. And that's borne out by our applicant data, right? We have 45% Hispanic. These are the applicants applying for our positions, 34% white, 7% black. So that 45% Hispanic shows us that we are attracting the candidates that would wholly reflect our student population. All of that said, we've talked about the goals. We've talked about the framework. We talked about the need for diversity. But I think it's a good time to talk about the reality of hiring in education right now. There's no secret
064that we currently have a teacher shortage, both in the state of Illinois and nationally. And this is borne out by the 23-24 Educator Shortage Report. I think in short, it's the demand. There is not enough supply to meet the demand. 3% vacancy rate across the state of Illinois, approximately 4,000 teachers, over 1,000 support personnel, so on and so forth. You see it, that there is this, again, the demand and the supply are not matching currently. And as the superintendent says, all districts are in desperate need of ESL, bilingual, special education, math and science at all levels. That bears out here as well. Historically hard to fill positions in this district include special education, related services. Dual language, we're doing good with dual language, but as other districts expand their dual language programs, you get into
065the same situation where the supply and the demand are not meeting one another. And then I also put middle school here. And one of the reasons is that... You know, there's different certifications. There's a K through 9. There's also a 6 through 12. And so with those individuals that have that 6 through 12 endorsement, we're always competing with high schools. And high schools traditionally pay more than elementary schools. So that's just a general hard-to-fill position. And, again, that's borne out in our unfilled position trends. So currently, this year, 10 unfilled positions to special education to social workers. So that's that's your sped that's your related service SLP and then ESLs, you know, you're gonna have your dual language and your middle school interventionists now I want to stress that because there's 10 unfilled positions that
066doesn't mean that there's you know, 10 classrooms that don't have a teacher. That doesn't mean that there's special education students that aren't getting their minutes met. That just means that we have to be creative. For example, at the beginning of the year, we wanted to hire a special education teacher. The applicant wasn't there, so we had to pivot. We had to disperse our resources to ensure that our students are being met. But again, this just shows that the reality is that there is a teacher shortage and it affects every district in the state of Illinois. And frankly, I think that we are doing better than many. So now let's talk about what we are doing. And you'll see several bullet points, job posting, partnerships, student teaching, alternative licensure. The point is there's not one magic
067bullet, silver bullet, that's going to solve this problem. There's not one solution that's going to have a pipeline of teachers coming to the district. So it's a triage approach. It's a little bit of everything. So job postings, this is basic, right? This is where most school districts are going to do what we're doing here, right? It's K-12 Job Spot. It's the ISA job board, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, other job boards for different positions. You know, for example, the IT position, like that went out to the Apple job board. So just creative as to where we're posting our jobs. Partnerships. Current partnerships include Golden Apple. This year we... We had a discussion with Golden Apple. So instead of just general teachers, we wanted them to focus on those hard-to-fill areas. We wanted them to focus on special
068education, dual language, and related services. Dominican University, we have a partnership where they're social workers, they can intern in our districts, and then the other universities we have partnerships with or they're sending us student teachers. Student teaching is another valuable resource for our hiring protocols. Currently, we have seven student teachers in the district. We have requests for nine either student teachers or individuals seeking to observe in the classroom for the next year. Student teaching is essentially a three to four month interview. You know, a first-year teacher, there's always going to be room to grow, but you could see if those fundamentals are there, and it often results in a higher. And they also get to be exposed to the district's culture, which I do think is one of the secret weapons that this district has.
069I do think that when people come here, and this is going to bear out in our retention, they want to stay here. Alternative licensure. So, you know, currently we have two teachers on an alternative licensure and three paraeducators on an alternative licensure. So that's five positions. Doesn't seem like much, but that's five positions that are currently not vacant. So, you know, if an individual wants to enter the profession of education, of teaching, but maybe they didn't go through the traditional teaching program. We're going to work with them. We're going to work with West 40 to see if there's any potential alternative license to get them into the profession of education. Job fairs, standard. We were at the West 40 job fair last weekend. We'll be going to the North Central College of Education. There's a
070virtual job fair coming up. That's just beating the bushes to try to get out there and meet the applicants. I think this is important. Internal hires, 23 to 25. We've had substitute teachers that have five that have gone on to become teachers. And, you know, that makes sense because oftentimes individuals, they go into subbing. Maybe they're waiting on their pal. Maybe they graduated in December and there's not a job available for them. So then they come and they start working in our district. And again, it's it's it's. ostensibly in interviews. So if there is a position that opens up and they are good, then we could grab them up and they could become part of our team. I think it's also important because if we think of the goal of our workforce reflecting our student
071body. You know, oftentimes our paraeducators and our subs are coming from our community, i.e., they are reflecting the student body. So, you know, I do think that this is an area where we can continue to focus on, and it's an important area. So what can we do moving forward? What can we build on? So I think it's a matter of just continuing to do what we do, continue to expand and grow those partnerships, continue to grow our partnership with Golden Apple. And then we talk about those internal promotions, paraeducators to teachers, general educators to special education, dual or related services. Now, importantly... When we talk about those things, you know, those are touching on wages, hours, and working conditions. So that is something that we would have to collaborate and negotiate with our union partners.
072And, you know, as you know, we're currently in negotiations with paraeducators, and not to get into the details of the negotiation, but that is part of our conversation. And then, you know... I think another thing that I would like to, I think we should try to do is a partnership with Morton High School, District 201, because our students, they leave us at eighth grade and they generally go to Morton West. And as they're in high school, as most high schoolers do, they start thinking about their future. What do they want to do? Well, if there's individuals that are interested in becoming teachers or want to work in the field of education, how can we get them back into our district? How can we get them to tutor and mentor on a regular basis? And how
073can we get them to think of us when they're done with their teacher preparation program and they say, you know what, I know a place where I can student teach, District 100. So then we ask ourselves. Once we hire, how do we keep them there, keep them in our district? And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Bea, and she will talk about the mentor program. And I will break the controller. I got it. I got it. You do your part. Okay, cool. All right. Thank you. All right. So obviously we know that our teachers are one of our greatest assets, right? So it's very important that they start their year and their journey with us feeling valued, feeling supported, feeling heard. So we invite newly hired teachers to participate in approximately a
074four-day new staff. new staff week. It spans, like I said, it spans over four days. During that time, they really learn who we are as a district. They get a little glimpse of what we believe, and they really start thinking about, you know, that community feel that we have. Sometimes they might be greeted by our lovely mascots that we have. Some of the fun stuff that we've recently restarted that we used to have years ago, and we brought it back because, you know, we just felt that it was so powerful for people to know the community that you work in was our Berwyn bus tour. And so led by our retired teacher, Mona Towner, and our principal, Diana Iacobasi, they take new staff all around Berwyn. They visit all eight schools. and share some of
075the establishments, food establishments, where they can go get lunch or other things, if they want to visit, like libraries and things of that sort. So they do go to those eateries or they visit them. And then we reach out to a ton, a ton of our community members and ask them to donate things for our staff that we raffle off as prizes. So we've had, I mean, you name the business, they've... they've given us things and we raffle it off during that week for staff. Sometimes it's a coupon for a free pizza. Sometimes it's, you know, 10% off here. Sometimes it's, hey, here's, I don't know, free coffee from, you know, one of the local coffee shops. And so our teachers, our new teachers and new staff really appreciate that. We also have a variety
076of presentations during that week that support our staff. For example, we have an Ask Me Anything panel for new administrators led by our current administrators. This year, we had a lot of assistant principals that we hired. So our new, our, you know, former, not former, but our existing assistant principals, you know, sat on a panel and they answered. some questions for them. Maybe things that they wish that they knew that people might be afraid to ask. So they were able to be there and ask and answer some of those questions. So they shared, they mentor, they support each other. After New Staff Weeks, right, mentors and mentees. Mentors and mentees meet on a monthly basis to discuss a variety of topics, address any logistics, right? How do you log in? How do you put in
077for a sick day? Those types of things. They meet with their mentor group at their schools and they talk about those things. They can also meet with them to talk about more tailored things. Okay, I'm having trouble with this student, like managing them, what do I do? And so then that mentor can help them and be supportive in that sense. This year, our assistant principal, Sally Ziegler, she provided mentorship to our new assistant principals because not only do we want to retain our teachers and staff, we also want to retain our administrators to make sure that they are, you know, feeling like, okay, I understand the system. I really get this. And so she's been doing that on a monthly basis. She meets with them and goes over a variety of... Areas that are typical
078for an assistant principal and then on a monthly basis She meets with them one-on-one as well to kind of tailor it a little bit more to what they need And then, you know, on a quarterly basis, we meet with the brand new staff with members of teaching and learning. So teaching and learning will bring them, you know, to a site. That one was at Laverne. And those sessions are facilitated by Director Samantha Schumann and Literacy Coordinator Leo O'Donnell. And what we've done is because all of our staff has really been working on the Saretta Hammond work of culturally responsive teaching in the brain. they've been working on the strategies during those mentor sessions and doing activities with them so that they kind of do a book study, but showing them some of those activities that
079they can do with their students to build community, to build belonging, and so forth. Professional development is also absolutely important, especially if you're a brand new teacher. What we do in District 100 is we embed professional development during the day through our coaching department. It is an absolute treasure. It really is extraordinary because we have an extraordinary team of coaches that provide that support right then and there during the day. Having the plethora of coaches in a district really demonstrates the commitment that we have for staff because it really is telling them that we value their professional growth and development. And then at the end of the first year, actually we're coming up pretty soon, they're going to start sharing that with us, new staff provide feedback to us. We send out a survey, they
080give us feedback in that survey, and we use that survey to continue improving our practices. The results of that survey do point to us having a supportive environment. They feel supported. They feel like they can go to someone for support. They feel like if they call on someone, they can do that. Yesterday, for example, we had Dr. Rachel Mahmoud, 2024 Illinois Teacher of the Year in the district. She facilitated an engaging activity called the World Cafe. One question that was asked during the World Cafe as people were there is, what are your school's strengths when it comes to making people feel they belong? And the group that I was in actually had several new staff members. One of them was an administrator, a couple of teachers. But most of them have taught in other districts
081before or were in other districts. And this is what I heard them say during the discussion. I have never felt more supported in a district. Everyone here is willing to help. And that feedback helps us. But we also pay attention if people aren't feeling it, right? And so what can we do to get better? So we take the good, we take the bad, and then we work on improving. All right. So Bea mentioned a lot of opportunities for feedback. And we try to... get feedback from staff as often as we can. Again, if we're getting strong feedback in an area, we know that's something we need to keep investing in. It's working. It's going well. If we get feedback that we're not being successful in an area. We come together as a team and we
082say, what do we need to do to change this? And so those are some ways, but we also have some more formal ways that we get feedback about how we're doing. So the five essential survey is something that is taken every year. And traditionally for the past, since 2021 to 2024, the absolute highest area. in all of those years was socialization of new teachers and that's teachers responding to that survey so that has continued to be our highest area we'd love to see all of those areas move up as high as socialization of new teachers well that's something we're working on but this is an area that people are feeling like they're supported in our district so that is good news and also as we know we we follow this every year but we are
083consistently seeing growth in our teacher attention trends and we know there is so much value. Bea said it at the beginning, Scott reiterated, our greatest assets are our teachers and we want to keep the amazing teachers that we have in our district. continuing to invest in teachers, letting people know how much we care about professional growth. The activity Bea mentioned yesterday, creating a culture where people feel they belong and their voices are heard and that they're part of what we do as a district is really important to us. And measuring and making sure that we are continuing to have data that shows us that teachers are choosing to stay here is really important. So we're proud of that. that growth over the last several years. And we continue through everyone working together to invest in
084our teachers. The board has been extremely supportive in investing in teachers and creating conditions where teachers want to be here. And so we appreciate that. So that is our update on teacher retention, supports, and recruiting. Any questions for any of us? I hate to be the guy that focuses on the negative here, but when we looked at the five essentials survey, you talked about what people are really happy about. I'm a big believer that we want to create those systems that allow us to keep that. We want to keep that high, right? We want people to feel that they're being brought into the team high. But then what are the areas where... people are saying we need help. So that gives us some goals as to we need to invest some more resources and some
085more time into that. Yeah. And so when that visual on the side, there's a variety of, so some of those are student responses, some of them are teacher responses. But an example is that for many years we noted. a lot of feedback from staff around the inconsistencies of the resources and the curriculum that we provide in the district, right? There was a feeling that there wasn't enough resources, that we weren't providing consistency or rigorous curriculum experiences. And so that data, along with many other things, led to... initiatives in curriculum and how do we address that? I know that in an area that has traditionally rated low is a sense of safety and security. So that is something that we have addressed the past couple of years. We're not where we need to be yet, but
086it is an investment that we're continuing to make and how do we make sure everyone feels safe and secure in our buildings. So those are a couple of examples. I can certainly share more information, but... Any kind of feedback in Five Essentials comes from every single school. And so schools dive into that too to look at, because there could be feedback in one school that looks different than another school. And so it's really coming together as a team and saying, okay, there's some things here that we're not feeling great about. There's not one person that's going to solve that. The goal is then we bring our whole team together and we say, we've got a really low area here. This is concerning for all of us. What are we going to do to work on
087this to improve it together? And maybe that becomes part of the school improvement plan the following year. Or maybe it becomes a goal particularly for that school or grade level. But the data really does drive a lot of the decisions that we make from that. Great question. Any other questions? I have a question particularly on the process of the, you shared all the process of how do we attract and retain teachers. I'm wondering how the process when someone applies. What happens after how many people are in the meeting are the persons they are in the meeting or interview are they trained with? Implicit bias training I had just for the recommend part like like those specifics Yeah, so in our district You know, when I post a position, an open position, our system allows me
088to essentially tag the administrator of the building. So anyone that applies for a fourth grade dual language position at Kamensky, you know, Principal Valdez would get those applications. And then once there's enough of a pool, then she will do the interviews likely with a team, with her assistant principal. And as it relates to your question about implicit bias, I think it is an important area, and I think that's an area that we could grow on as it relates to training. Because I do think it comes back to that, what I said in the presentation, where... It's not necessarily about is this person going to fit in our culture? Because you could think that a group of teachers might be more willing to hire someone that they feel that connection with because they're like them. But
089I think the emphasis is also... It's not about will they just fit like this perfect jigsaw puzzle, but will they move us forward? So, yes, I would say that's an area of growth as it relates to training our staff about implicit bias. But, you know, there is also implicit bias training throughout the district, but I think that is an opportunity for growth for us. Thank you. Oh, yay. All right. The next item is just the 20. 25 2026 calendar so that is on the agenda for approval this evening that was posted in board book and it essentially is very similar to our calendar last year and we do work with the high school to make sure that all of our breaks are similar the high school does start earlier than we do but you know
090we do make sure that the breaks the longer breaks are aligned so this has been was distributed for any kind of feedback to our staff and this is where we are. So this is on the agenda for tonight for approval. The only thing you'll note there is an election day like on a Tuesday. I know those are not the most ideal days to have off but we can't have students in the building during election days. So that is the calendar. Were there any questions on the calendar? Okay. The dashboard, you will note we have some attendance and enrollment numbers. Our enrollment has stayed pretty steady, just slightly under where we were last year. January was a rough month for student illness. Apparently there were flus and lots of things going around. So I don't think
091any of our schools hit 90% attendance for the month of January. So it was definitely low. We're hoping to bounce back up, but our year to date student attendance is still in the low 90s. Obviously, our goal is to keep moving that forward, but we are aware of lots of illness in January. We did have one FOIA, which was simply a data bid asking for the companies who submitted bids for the roof, which are very typical FOIAs that we get following bids. And I will turn it over to Jenny for the financial report. Thanks. Our bank balance as of today is $64.3 million. Our revenue for February to date is $4.6 million. Our cash flow for the month of January, our revenue was $3.7 million. Year to date for $35 million. Our expenses for the
092month of January were $4.5 million. Overall expenses at $38.1 million. You'll note that expenses are dead on but revenue is a little bit short in our percentage 53% normally be at 58 But that's because we're expecting the tax revenue to come in the end of February beginning of March So we'll start seeing that even out. Our next one is the grant snapshot Again the grants are coming in nicely everything is status quo so to say And we have just the tail end of a couple little smaller Cares grants, but then this will be the last year for any of the cares funding on the agenda tonight I'll call your attention to four different agenda items on the consent agenda item G is to approve the first part of the two-part bid for for the Education
093Center item H is for the roof repairs that will be happening at Emerson Elementary this summer I is for the replacement of the doors at Heritage Kamensky Pershing And this is partially funded through the maintenance grant that dr. Havis wrote and J is Approved the five-year extension for our Garbage contract and this is to keep the cost down to keep it where it is And that's the end of my report. All right, and that concludes the superintendent's report Thank You Mary finance It was a relatively light meeting. We're just looking at some possible opportunities with bonds going forward. Thank you. Legislative report? Yes, I would like to highlight that SB1231, Senate bill passed. It actually amends the Children with Disabilities article of the school code. It increases the number of days that a school district
094must initiate a formal hearing to resolve disputes between a parent and a school about special education services. It goes into some detail, but I know a couple of the days, the increase of days are the initial five days gets increased to 14 days and the initial 30 days. I think that the school has, the parent has time to appeal, go through an appeal process or go through a partial due process hearing, goes from 30 days to 60 days. And that's it. Thank you. Correspondence? We had one correspondence. Thank you. Welcome in District Resolution Committee. Do you want to say anything about your meetings? Well, sure. We had a meeting to discuss the welcoming resolution a couple of weeks ago. We were able to kind of get everybody together on the Zoom and take a look
095at what we had and just, you know, cycled through each of the bullets that were there and just decided about how might we... Improve upon the language or you know put in some more strong language we were able to collaborate with the union leadership in for the teachers union the para educators union leadership and the custodial union leadership as well And then we had an outside person who expressed interest who was also present in the meeting I don't know if I'm missing anything, Wendy, but we came up with language and then sent it to the board and you just make sure we had the language vetted through legal and all of that. So all of you have a copy of the recommendations from the lawyer and the final copy. So I guess that's for discussion,
096for us to discuss what do we want to do. Anyone? like point of discussion or agreement or? Discussion about the recommendations. Oh, I mean, I'm a little biased because I worked on it. So I am very comfortable with moving this forward. I feel like... we gave all vested parties an opportunity to provide their input and Well, we started with a very strong resolution it was just some minor tweaks again as member Drenth mentioned just to make it stronger more resolute I Am very comfortable moving this forward anyone else I agree. I just have a question. So this, the one on the back is the finalized that you would like us to adopt? The one that's in board book is the finalized one. Sorry, all the colors and fonts are confusing me. So this is like
097with the edits? I think the color one was meant to show what changes. I see, okay. Got it, thank you. Yes, so I guess I had before we even this to approve it I would want to thank both of you for leading this committee. I know that that's extra I also want to thank the South Berwyn Education Association custodial Association and the professional Association including Adriana Caballero who is present here for being part of this committee Thank you. I really appreciate I Having worked on it for the first time, I know it is time consuming, so I really appreciate it. So thank you. Okay, and any public comments? Public comments, individuals appearing before the board are expected to follow the guideline outlined in the board policy 2-30. Okay. Action items are for the consent agenda.
098Items may be removed from the consent agenda and the request of any one member. Items not removed may be adopted by the general consent without debate. Removed items may be taken up either immediately after the consent agenda or placed later on the agenda at the discretion of the board. Seeing none, then can we have a motion to approve the consent agenda? I'll motion. Second? I'll second. Thank you. Roll call. Aye. Erne. Drenth. Aye. Steinfeld. Aye. Butler. Aye. Jimenez. Aye. Pallas. Aye. W. Gonzalez. Aye. Motion carried. Thank you. So now we have any other public comments appearing before the board are expected to follow the guidelines outlined in the board policy. Seeing none. Any board member comments? You know what? We're at a weird time, and education is really taking a hit. So I just want
099to encourage all of you to, you know, encourage your staff to know that they are doing great work and, you know, to not fall into the traps of becoming what... Some people are saying education is I was an educator. I couldn't make it It's a really hard work. So I appreciate everything that everybody does So, you know, I just encourage all of you who are leadership positions to you know Keep in mind what would staff are having to deal with on a regular basis? externally So I you know, keep keep them keep them happy I echo that in addition to encouraging our students, they also are going through difficult times. So thank you for supporting them. Okay. Seeing no more comments. Sorry. It was really great to see the PTSA here today and supporting the
100middle school. And I know as a parent of Pershing, our PTA is very active as well. So I just want to say. So I just want to say thank you to all the parents that donate their time to making those schools wonderful places. The teachers put in the love and the knowledge and the parents put in more love and more support. And that's what makes the team work. So thank you to them. And hopefully more PTSAs and more PTOs grow as the school years progress. And I actually want to add, thank you for reminding me about freedom. I was watching the pictures and some of the pictures are outside. So I am so grateful that the students are able to enjoy the green space and have area to do different activities. And I'm hoping that
101all the staff is happy that they have a parking lot. So thank you. Can we have a motion to adjourn? I'll motion. I'll second. Roco I or nay Jimenez aye Steinfeld I W Gonzalez aye Butler I dreamt I palace I Motion carried. Okay. Thank you everyone for taking time to be for being here. Have a good night