001I'm calling to order the tax levy hearing for Diamond Lake School District 76. Roll call, please. Ms. Bayless, here. Here. Ms. Holland, here. Ms. Sullivan, here. Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. We now open the floor for public comments on the tax levy this evening. Do we have any public comments? Okay, I'm pretty sure you're all here for the exciting show and presentation that will be happening in just a couple of minutes. Okay, then we will turn it over to Mr. Rogers for a brief comment about the tax levy presentation. Thank you all yeah, just a brief comment that basically we have not
002seen any updated EAV numbers That's the equalized assessed value or any new assumptions about new property So we're still maintaining the same assumption levels we had in November sometimes we will get an updated sheet from the county But we just haven't seen that since the November merit meeting so all things being equal we're still gonna maintain the same funding level request and If approved tonight, I'll be filing it first thing tomorrow morning Great, thank you. Thank you. Does anyone have any questions? Then we will move on to public comments on petitions on non-agenda items. Do we have any public comments? Okay. And then can I get a motion to adjourn the tax levy hearing? Yes. Okay, that meeting is adjourned. And let me know when you're ready to call. Okay, so calling to order the
003combined meeting for diamond lake school district 76 roll call please Here Thank you Now we open the floor for public comments on agenda items only for our combined meeting. Do we have any public comments this evening? Okay Then we will move on to what you've all been waiting for which are recognitions Good evening. This evening we have two awards that we are going to be giving before we have our band and choir concert. Tonight the District 76 Board of Education, the first award is for the Above and Beyond. We would like to recognize and honor the Dahl family with the Above and Beyond Award for December for the extraordinary generosity and service to District 76 community. During a time when many of our families were facing significant food shortages, Due to the lapse in SNAP
004benefits, the Dahl family stepped forward in truly a remarkable way. They located a source for over 1,000 pounds of chicken and personally rented a truck to pick it up, transport it, and unload all 1,000 pounds. Your back was sore, Mr. Dahl, that's for sure. And then they stayed and he supported, Mr. Dahl supported the distribution to all of the families that came through. It was one hour of consistent flow of cars through the parking lot in need of food, and that was a significant source of protein for those families in that time of significant need. It was no small act of kindness. It was truly a powerful example of compassion in action. The willingness to give the time, energy, and resources ensured that families in our community had access to food when it was needed
005most. The Dahl family action reflect the very best of our community and reminds us of the impact of care, generosity, and commitment that can be had in the lives of others. So on behalf of the entire District 76 Board of Education and our community, we thank you for truly going above and beyond. Your kindness made a meaningful difference and we are truly grateful. Thank you very much. We were surpassing out one chicken at a time. He did all 1,000 pounds. We were really impressed. Our second recognition this evening is for the Diamond Award. And this month's Diamond Award nomination came for the very first time from a former District 76 student. So I'm going to invite Paula Medina to come on up to the podium and share her story and why she recognized this District
00676 staff member. Hi, my name is Paul Medina and I graduated from West Stoke in 2024. My eighth grade year was one of the hardest in my life and I learned really fast that I couldn't get through it alone. I remember Mr. Carr reaching out to me by email just to see how he could support me. At first I was really cautious and I never really opened up to anyone before, but over time he became someone I could go to for help or just to calm down for a few minutes. I heard people talk negatively about school social workers and sometimes I joked along, but Mr. Carr changed that for me. He showed me that the right person in that role can make an incredible difference in someone's life. After eighth grade, my best friend,
007El Kim, tragically passed away. It was a shock and I remember Mr. Carr checking in several times to see how I was doing. Later that year, I faced one of the darkest periods of my life. I reached out to him, I was scared and I was struggling, and he did exactly what was needed. He went beyond just doing his job and he made sure I had real support and helped me calm down by talking about our shared interests, especially music. He saved my life. Today, I've successfully completed several mental health treatments and I look forward to helping others in my future. It's not about what I went through, but about the person who helped me through it. Mr. Carr reminded me that one person's kindness can truly change everything and I hope that more people
008realize the power they have just by listening and being kind. Just want to say thank you to Paula. I know she was giving me a lot of praise, but Paula is one of the strongest person people that I know going through that tragedy the other year. She's just the strongest person I know. So I'm really proud of you, Paula. Mr. Peterson, would you grab the, let them know we're ready for them? Go ahead and ask them which one's going first. I think, I think Ban's going first. Next up, which I know lots of you are here for, we have our band and choir performance. They have been, as you heard while you were walking in, giving us a little preview of what we're about to embark on. So they're going to come in, set up
009for a few minutes, so make yourselves comfortable. And I think you might even want to warm up your voice, because I think they're going to invite us in to sing along with them as well. Mr. Carr, get some pictures with me. Oh yeah, I'm too short, you can't believe it. I'm a pop star. Students are coming out next. Here we go. Thank you for having the band program. We have a multitude of students here representing all levels, 5th through 8th grade. And we've compiled a list of some fun carols to kind of serenade you with. So I'll put it this way without lyrics. So we're going to start off with Jolly Good St. Nicholas. to our superintendent and administrative report. We understand that you were all likely here for what we just saw, which was
010fantastic. It will not hurt our feelings if you would like to go home and be with your families for the rest of the evening. We do love a captive audience. If you would like to stay, we would be thrilled to have you. But thank you very much. Happy holidays. It was fantastic. It's so nice to get to see that. No, no, no. But it's a mix. Yes, it is. It is. It was nice. Intermediate band. We are looking forward this evening to giving the board an update on high reliable school implementation. And I'm gonna turn it over to Dr. Cunningham who has the. Thank you very much, Dr. Null. So I'm really excited tonight to talk a little bit about some of the work we've been doing with the Marzano Resources Group and what we'll
011continue to do. And really the purpose is to. update the board on our work related to how we're approving instruction and assessment and how we're utilizing our staff professional development to those ends. It's really to explain also more importantly, what is standards based reporting and the way that we're approaching it and how we're going to be approaching it and where this aligns to our PD and then really. begin to paint the picture of what we're gonna be putting out to families, which should be providing greater and greater clarity as we move forward. So we've got our three P's that we've been focusing on this year, PLCs, PBIS, and presence. Particularly this one will focus on the P of PLCs, and we'll get into some of those questions of PLCs in a moment. But just to
012take a step back for a moment of what High Reliability Schools is, really it's a framework. to help improve schools and districts to improve. And really this came about, it was actually a conversation with the superintendent in an area district in North Shore 112, as we were talking about some ways that really work for smaller districts, not just a large scale district, but a smaller one as well to identify areas for improvement where we can have surveys, metrics, but also the resources to continue to advance our instruction. So we've walked through the different levels. safe supportive collaborative culture was the first one that was a much easier metric to clear with some of our just our past metrics Then we moved into effective teaching every class from which started to really move us down the
013road of making sure we have a clear model of instruction where we know what we're going to train our staff and what our coaches are going to train our staff in. And the reality is we come back to these all the time as we work on that. Next was guaranteed and viable, which is making sure we have clear unit plans, clear scope and sequence across the curriculum. And what we're moving into with the Marzano group is levels four and five to really support that work. And so we didn't, you are able to earn designations. It's a pretty rigorous process. and you constantly go back to that. So we did get to level three as a district, which we're proud of. Level four and five is really what we're, because of our partnership with the grant,
014the FSCS grant, they were able to work with us to secure working with really the people that wrote, when we say who wrote the book on standards-based grading, they This group wrote the book on it. So it's nice that we have three associates. We have Dr. Mike Rule who wrote this book, Humanized Education here. And he has two associates with him, Dr. Whitney Owens and Crystal Green-Berazuel. Great associates we have working with the principals in our building. So really levels four and five are what they're supporting us with, which is making sure we have... proficiency scales that are aligned to our standards and that we help our students goal set and progress monitor and families also understand where that is. That's really a fancy way of kind of saying competency based education. So to show
015how this fits into our framework of embrace and power Excel. They use this idea of growth strength and mastery which really fits into what we're doing and where we're being coached is really in the excel side Which is the academic portion really is what we're looking at here, which is we're going to kind of show to the board tonight, so With that being said another visual just to understand the connection of what we're doing for plc question one We really take our standards that we have for off of all of our subject areas We really aggregate them into a proficiency scale where we'll put multiple into a scale and there's some examples in your folder site We'll take a look at and then from that you can develop your unit plans and really all this
016asks the question What we want students to know and be able to do and be much clearer about it and then PLC question two are the CFA stands for common formative assessment. So it's the major measures, teachers are always assessing, but it's the clear things we're able to communicate to students and families where students are in their progress. And then whatever those may be, those standards from the scale, those end up on the report card and that's what ultimately gets reported out as progress on a scale of one to four in our district. So really we do this because we believe that by knowing what we're aiming for, We know where the target is and if we've hit it so that's really the idea that we're getting to more and more that our staff or
017get greater clarity so our students have greater clarity and where we're trying to go So in terms of the revised scales work, this is what we have on our website right now, which is this graphic showing kind of four areas, the four levels of moving forward. And there's a narrative that sits at the top of this. This is what we kind of tell our families what this is for. But really level two is considered foundational skills. So in the past, the way this was taught, it was kind of like you're beginning to understand. And then three is you do understand. And as we've learned over time, and I say we. both our district and really nationally there's some challenges with that because it's what is beginning and what is when you really do get it
018and so the way a better way to approach it is two is foundational skills you need three are the skills that you want and really four is above the grade level and we can see at the state level we're doing something very similar with this and where the state has now gone to four levels they define level one For the purposes of our scales, we typically don't do that because we're thinking foundational and moving on from there. So this is an example of a scale, and you have different scales in your folder if you want to see a different example there, and I'm going to reference those in a moment. But this is what a revised scale is going to look like in our district. So we have at the top the topic and standards.
019In this case, it has an eight at the top. I know I'm speaking to some that are educators in the room. That eight would mean eighth grade. This is actually a writing standard and that's a through e so it combined all of the parts of the standard into one scale So the titles at the top and what will sit on the report card moving forward next year is that's what it's gonna say in the report card It's gonna say Claim evidence reading, constructing claim evidence and reasoning as opposed to what it does now where it lists like the whole skill of who are proficient. Okay, then level four, it very closely aligns to what comes out on the IAR is above proficient, especially for ELA and math, the way we're designing these. And really, this
020is again, the benefit of working with the people that have written the book on standards basis, we're able to get some of the best resources. as to how these are aligned to common core as opposed to us really working on this on our own okay level three again closely aligns to proficient on iar as well And students must meet this criterion all targets. So if you notice there's four targets and this standard So students would have to meet criteria all four to be considered proficient if you don't and all four but your two that's where the 2.5 comes in that you're partially there It's important to note as well for a skill like this Especially for writing a student can be working on this all year The teacher could be addressing different targets all year
021and so the student may not show that they have mastery until all targets are covered or it's revisited multiple times throughout the year and it's important for teachers to be able to communicate if and how that's working which we'll get to kind of at the end of tonight with how we want to think about reporting progress level two the vocabulary and skills very closely aligned approaching really what we've learned in just as the Marzano group came in and really Dr. Knowles, while she came in and began to start looking at things that we were doing, a lot of the skills we wrote and the things we wrote were proficient were really foundational. They weren't at the rigor that we want to push our kids to, if that makes sense. It's not unusual to do, but...
022These are now the foundational skills, the vocabulary you need to know, especially in the middle school level, we call that tier three, which means this word like sight, things like that. Maybe not necessarily what's in the text, but things you have to know to answer the question. At the younger grades, a little bit more content specific, but there are a number of foundational skills that are hiding here. What you're seeing is a teacher version. The teachers work on student-friendly versions of these. And then at the bottom here, excuse me, clicking my computer instead of this. So just to be clear, each foundation will match each target. So the foundation targets link, which is a nice way to see those pieces together. And sometimes teachers will teach certain things in isolation. So. Again, if they've earned
023some but not all, that's where the .5s typically step in. So we hope that this really has been amazing already. Teachers have started to use these, even though we're not really, we're still revising and adopting in all subject areas. This is the work we're doing this year, a lot of it. Teachers have started to put this in front of students, and it's been pretty incredible how quickly teachers can articulate what students need to work on. The reality is these are so good that any parent could actually take one of these and run it. and you could develop through AI, and you could actually develop assessments, vocab, because they're that specific. And the reality is with the current, where we're going with artificial intelligence, it really becomes about competency and what you can show you can
024do. And so... Getting ahead of it with this type of work allows us to know we're measuring what students can actually know and be able to do. And there's lots of different ways we can show that and students know the exact words and you know parents know the exact words they need to know. It becomes a really powerful tool for just student growth communication. Well, let's let's let's keep diving, shall we? So the second piece of this is common assessment. And so it's just really explained plc question 2 which is how we how do we know that they have learned it? If you have good scales, your assessments start to look a lot better, and what we are asking kids to do. So what you've got in your folder, or what you have excuse me
025are just 3 examples. These are 3 scales that we're currently in the process of adopting. The first one is an eighth grade ela scan standard called the analyzing claims, evidence, and reasoning. The second one is geographic features, which is a second grade science standard. And the third one is equivalent fractions, which is a fourth grade math standard. With any of these scales teachers will be also working this year and this will be multi-year work That's the reality of it because you really want good assessments that we say common formative That means that teams give them at the same time they meet together discuss it these go home to families Students goal set off of these they're very clear at each level. So let's pick eighth grade ELA with student assessment for that one So if
026I was to pick the eighth grade ELA assessment These are all written to be very Iar friendly, but teachers may develop something like this. I won't. This is the reason why I gave you these just we're not gonna be able to see what's up here. So this would probably be a pretty decent example of a pretest in eighth grade, because the passage is actually pretty simple. It's but the idea is, if you can kind of see what we're looking at, we have level two questions, level three questions, level four. This acts like a very good pre-assessment because students can take this cold. Teachers know where students are. Your interventionists can figure out if students are unable to write because if you get into a section, a lot of what's on the IER test, for example,
027is only half of it is multiple choice. The other half is writing. So you have to be able to write about what you see. So the foundational knowledge exists in section two. You know the vocabulary. You can identify what the claim is. You can identify what the evidence is. But when you get to the section three portion, now you're going to have to begin to decide if that evidence directly supports the claim, if there's enough evidence. And now you're analyzing if the claim is good. In the past, we may have asked students just to summarize the claim or the evidence. That's really not rigorous enough. And this skill builds. This is an eighth grade skill. Claim evidence reasoning. We will now have scales starting in kindergarten with this. And reasoning is first introduced, I believe,
028in fourth grade to give an idea of how this will build up across grade levels. We're so excited about it because it's so clear. what we want students at each grade level to do. So level four, the nice thing is four is defined in every scale. That's really not something we've had before. And so it's the above grade level. In this case is you have to be able to look at the opposing view and argue if you think that the author did a good enough job defending. Again, this passage is very, it would be a more difficult passage, for example, as in Ms. Triplett's eighth grade ELA class today, they're going through 12 angry men. It would probably be a much more in-depth passage about that. But you have to be able to do that
029or compare two arguments. okay if i was to look at the science one which i won't click on we won't have mr hansen do that the science piece will uh will ask voc has a vocabulary bank in it level two it'll ask if it's a liquid or a solid um there might even be a short answer question this allows for teachers to be able to model it i guess we might as well click on it because i'm talking about a hansen so let's let's go ahead and do that so i wasn't sure totally how the pacing worked bring over the second one buddy assessment yep clears mud perfect so And what happens is an EL resource teacher, for example, can say, if I provide visuals of these, I didn't change what's at grade level, but
030we can look at if this is a liquid or solid by showing a visual. Or if students cannot write, where would you most likely find ice outside nature and why? We do want students to write that, because it is considered building toward what's on the Illinois science assessment, and that is rigorous, but if students can give it to us, they can express it with speaking but not writing, this allows for much easier assessments. The reality is this. assessment teachers may decide because it says to create a map they might turn into a project and once they know the foundational skills are there they'll have students create that and label those pieces they may do that but there is that portion for level four where students have to be able to compare contrast different types of
031landforms in nature so that isn't again levels two three and four you students cannot jump two typically to get to a four and really they shouldn't be able to because they can't apply the vocabulary until it's there. The last one, let's click on it too, Hanson, why not? Here we go. So it's fractions. The reality for math is most of the standards in math will get combined where equivalent fractions in this case, this is an assessment designed very much like an IAR test would be where there's different ways you answer every question. and our envision text actually does this if you've seen some of our math work it gives it to you in lots of different ways that's very similar to what's presented uh when when you take it but the reality is more more
032than one standard will end up on this this is really just isolating one for the sake of the board seeing what that looks like In fact, one of our feeder high schools on Stevenson. What they do is they they list the standard for each of them. They just give you perfect. If you answer the questions you're proficient in this case, we're actually giving you the foundational versus proficient for each of them. And then what's beyond proficient, which is in this case real life application for fourth grade. So these are the types of things that we're working on as a staff, and the idea is we really want to We really wanna see pre-assessments happening, but there'll be certain formatives that are gonna go home to families, and that students will have those opportunities to sit
033down and goal set where they are. To give an example of what we saw today, for example, it was on Friday in ELA class, they pre-assessed, it might've actually been claim evidence reasoning for sixth grade. Students had to color in where they were, and it was an advanced class, so a lot of students were very unhappy. They started at ones and twos, but it was a cold read for the first time. but they were able to say, okay, I didn't explain my answer here. That's really what I need to do is be able to explain my reasoning or my thinking, and I have to understand and unlock that. So they set a goal off that pre-assessment that's now a product they immediately have that they can see, this is why I have the score. Parents
034can see that. The teacher has now tracked their progress and has a physical representation of that. So it's, if you can't tell, I'm really excited about it. Let's actually, Hanson, go back over to the presentation. Yeah. And by I, it's the wrong word, we're all excited about it, but I'm the one talking about it. So. We're good, it's working buddy, I appreciate you. So just to give an idea of some of the things we're doing for staff implementation of this work, that we're dedicating significant time and resources is really what we're trying to show here. Two of our staff institute days went to this work, seven of our late starts is going to the development of these scales and then working into assessments. our plc meetings weekly teachers are talking through what do we want
035students to learn because we've made these so specific the conversations are so much richer teachers are debating the vocabulary are they really teaching this word and it's in both languages right english and spanish are we really going how are you using this term we're finding one person this is kind of silly but in kindergarten one's using exclamation point one's using exclamation mark one's saying a different spanish than the other you don't find that out until you start discussing this openly and so we're really excited about those types of meetings and discussions two of our early release days are dedicated to this work uh and the next one potentially we're talking about assessment but we don't want to rush things our marzano coaches that came on site they were actually just on site this week debriefing
036with teachers we they have a scale where teachers are rating themselves on their implementation and a lot of the scale work is how we're using with kids In the classroom, how are you being explicit with what you want kids to know? Do they know what is on this scale and what you expect? And do they know how it's going to be assessed? The Lake County ROE, we've partnered with them. They actually just came into West Oak Intermediate School and presented on how the IAR test works. For example, they did say that 40% of students across the state get zeros in the writing section because they don't answer the question properly. And it's a lot of what we just, actually within that claim evidence reasoning, the exact prompts are almost exactly what match what's on IAR,
037but students typically just start summarizing and it's considered a zero. They don't give you part of it for writing. You get nothing. So it's very they don't have a zero but they give you a zero basically not evaluated So that's been very helpful just to give perspective of the rigor of what we want. Curriculum planning days, our teachers do come out usually at least once a year to meet for a full day to work through things with support from this team. The exemplar scales you've seen, we've been providing those. Again, that's really an advantage of working with those that have gone out nationally and done this work. And then our instructional coaches are leading a lot of that graphic at the beginning of how all these things link. They develop that because they want teachers
038to understand it. They're helping each team work through deciding the standards they're using to work past the development to put it in the classroom. They have an incentive where teachers can earn a PAW badge for those that like token economy, just like we do PBIS, that they can earn that on their door if they're giving those, whatever we can do for recognition for that. And they've been trained in coaching using scales this last spring. We went to a training on that. So really excited for that work. It's really complex work, but our staff is really choosing to level up. We're so proud of them. These are just a couple photos of debriefing with the Marzano group that when they came in last week, that's a teacher filling the scale out. She was not happy I
039took a picture of her like that, but that's her really thinking about her and reflecting on her progress. There's just such great things happening already. Our second grade team, for example, has a pencil for level two and a pencil for level three, and kids are putting in stickers into their pencils when they can do another part of the writing. So one of the coaches just walked in and said, tell me, I see you just earned a badge for having details in your writing. Can you show me? And the student went like, right here, here's my details. They're using the vocab we want them to use. All that matters a lot with how we're doing things. We had a sixth grade math teacher that was... teaching vocabulary explicitly which she thought would distract from the learning
040and she realized my students learn it much faster because when they know like i don't want the vocab let's say it was numerator and denominator when they can say that our lowest common denominator when they can do that quickly it's amazing how much more you can get done so it's it's extraordinarily exciting work that teachers have stepped up to do that as we continue this work of what is it we want students to know and be able to do We're completing those revised scales. Teachers are already really using them because they don't get away from what we do and we have online, but those will all be publicly available for our families to access, for our students to access because it's supposed to be visible. So we will update the scales. And then for question
041two, how do we know each student has learned it? It's developing those assessments. And do teachers assess all the time? Yes, but we're talking about ones that you specifically now work with your team on, your students. look at and understand why they are earning what they're earning and it's something you can give to families that's very tangible to understand what the skills are and where they're lacking and what we're doing to help address those specific bullet points that maybe they haven't hit or they've already hit and how we're going to level them to the to the four the last piece is we are very interested in reporting progress there are very amazing fun exciting engaging ways to report student progress and to show that And so we're going to have a task force together to
042talk about what can we do in the future to help students and families see the one, two, three, four progression in each of these skills and standards. And really, it will link to ultimately our portrait of excellence and how we're raising students to embrace power excel. There's a lot of moving pieces with this we're really excited about, but it's work that's needed if we want a report card to actually. jump out and have meaning to us. So a lot of exciting work. Questions or feedback? So when you say the proficiency scales are going to be online, is that like this thing is going to be online? Yeah. I think that is just amazing. I think that from a parent's standpoint, I think this would be incredibly helpful. And hopefully our parents take advantage of that.
043I mean, just kudos to you guys for putting so much thought and work into all of this. I'm really, really excited about it. Good. And so what ideas do you have for, like, the report card? Like, what kind of ideas are you guys thinking of? Because I know it's been kind of challenging. You know, I hate to say until we do, because I hate to give an idea and then we don't use it, especially if you really like it. That it may not, but this is another nice thing about working with the Marzano Resources Group, people have done this in so many ways. I will say chances are it's probably gonna have to represent itself outside of the PowerSchool platform to some degree, just because of the realities and the restrictions there of what it
044does. But also that means you have to have good communication between home and school so that parents, if it's not in that platform to get the update, where does it look, or where does it exist? I don't want to say until we've met as a group, but there are a lot of really exciting ways. Visual is really powerful. I'll say that too. When students can like, here's what we've taught up to this level and the student's gonna shade in how far they are compared to what we've actually taught. And if you're giving assessments at certain markers, not that you're not doing it all the time, but then students and family knows what's coming when it's coming and why that, and you can see the assessment of why they got what they earned as opposed to
045like a report card where you're not sure. Yeah, please. We're going to have students, parents, and staff sit on that report card task force so we can get solicit feedback. I met with the student ambassadors last week and they had very valuable feedback about the report card currently. And sort of bring their voice into it so that what we define as our portrait of excellence, which includes academic achievement grades and probably so much more, is accurate in terms of that, all of those voices of the different stakeholders. There'll be lots of voices so we can have our parents give us feedback too for how they're consuming the report card as well. I was just going to say I love this and I'm equally excited about all of this. So thank you. All the information you
046already have on the website is really, really helpful. What is the anticipated timeline for having everything up there? A lot of grade levels are actually already fairly far along. It will be this summer. It could be earlier. We'll talk about it as a leadership team and keep the board updated when that makes sense. But some of it is thinking about how easy it is to look at it. So right now, if you go there, it's a long drop-down list, and you have to hunt for your standards. So there are better ways to represent that. So we're even thinking about how, if I want to know... I need to know what's in trimester one, what's gonna get assessed in trimester one. I wanna know what's in unit one. So teachers are mapping that right now. We
047didn't present on that tonight, because really nothing's completed with that work. So everything will be, it will go up before the next school year begins. Only because we also don't wanna confuse families if we're not using it yet for the report card that's for this year. that makes sense i love that this is so easy for families to understand and it makes it very very clear to the kids too on what they need to do to achieve the next level so that's fantastic thank you well i will say teachers have made more student-friendly versions in this if that makes sense a lot of them have for the older grades to check mark some kids love just like i checked it off and i know it or they celebrate it sometimes they just do one target
048one foundation if that makes sense they'll change the wording So they'll exist in lots of ways, if that makes sense. But some just give, especially at the high school level, we've seen like they'll just give this. Even though it's not that exciting, it still has power to it. I just have one question related to the assessments. Because the four represents above proficient, will those questions, and I'm kind of curious what Marzano thinks or says if that's come up, are those questions considered optional for students? Like if a student knows that they are not Ready for that if they are part of the process Are you know since that's above proficient and we're really I mean obviously we'd love for everybody to be above proficient But the goal is proficiency. I was just curious if that's
049been discussed or is that sort of an as You know an individual teacher or class. I was just curious what they say about that It's a great question anybody can jump in to add to that it really should be a stretch idea. So sometimes it's not even on the assessment that you're looking at here, or it might be if you want to, I will give you that question, if that makes sense. So it won't even be, because you don't want a kid to feel defeated if they can't do that part, if that makes sense. So any of those, it can be presented in a myriad of different ways. We're excited that it really exists for all of them, because some of our teachers are having a hard time conceptualizing a four to begin with. But
050it is considered a stretch beyond, and you try to represent it in a way of like, do you wanna challenge yourself and go for that? Which ends up being very motivational for students when it's approached that way. So I don't know if anybody has any other thoughts on that, but. it is optional to stretch. A lot of times teachers get insight into how students are even attempting to try to do that. Maybe they didn't get the full accurate response, but just how they're attempting to get at that. To know, okay, they're like nearly there in math. You know, some of those examples in math. They're like nearly there. If I just give them a little bit of support in a small group, they're going to be able to stretch and hit that four where they
051may not have been able to. When you put it online, will you include the work, like the pre-test? Because I feel like as a parent, if I look at this, it's going to be, maybe I can kind of figure it out, but the examples make it so much easier to be able to work with the student and say, oh, let's, you know. ironically it's the same thing like I see an exemplar of what this looks like as I'm trying to develop it yeah I just don't want to put out like the actual assessments and then the kids take them if that makes sense because you or you create what's called parallel assessments which is a good practice to make something similar so it Sometimes what you'll see in a scale is what they'll do on
052the side. They add a column. In fact, our group that we work with right now likes this. They add on the side where it explains an activity representation of what that might look like, or you'll get a question sample of what it might be. Like you'll get a snippet of a little bit of an idea, but not the whole thing. In fact, the state does that with their state assessment. They'll give you a question idea. So we'll have to probably think about that a little bit. It's a great thought and question because it'll be how... what format will we do that? And the reality is we might give it in one, but then we find out a student can access it in a different way. And so if they aren't able to do it in
053the way that we're showing, we may try to find another way for them to show understanding too. That's the nice thing about this once we have a good foundation I don't know It's a fun thing to think about this is fun to think about what would happen if we did that so when we put that out if not else just showing a little bit of possibly, I guess as we develop, we'll have to think about it. Motivation then, right? We're going to learn it one way or another. Some of them, we will have some students that will want a four before they start. I will say that. We'll have that too. We don't necessarily need that from them. But it's really exciting. We're finding as we do this, we have kindergarten classes that are suddenly
054way farther than we thought they were, if that makes sense, because we can define it clearly and then we can jump on. Thank you. That's good because I haven't answered either of your questions our staff so to acknowledge dr. Cunningham's work with staff every single day and our principals being in those PLC meetings very consistently our staff are really rolling up their sleeves and having difficult conversations of what does this really mean to us to be a three what does this really and getting in sync so that it is guaranteed and viable no matter who you have for kindergarten or no matter who you have for first grade that that same expectation is consistent across the board in that grade level. So to give our staff credit and Dr. Cunningham for the initial work. And
055our winter map, our winter star results are showing, I know Dr. Cunningham has some preliminary and there's still some stragglers that are still testing, but we're right there this week. that do look really good. So our teachers doing this is really helping to solidify that students are better able to articulate their understanding. So we can't wait till we have all of the scales done. And Ms. Crutchfield, to your question, some scales are really complex up in the middle school level and some in kindergarten, there's a lot to do. So to give a definitive timeline for when those would be done, we wanna give the teachers still that autonomy too, to be able to do those and do them right rather than do them maybe quick. And then we'll just continue to modify them consistently. But
056again, just to acknowledge Dr. Cunningham's work. I know Dr. Clipp has also been supporting how do we differentiate for some of our students with an IEP? How does that look? EL students, how do we do it for dual in terms of in English and Spanish? There's a lot of complexities to this. So while you see these examples and they look great, they're doing that for every single standard. Kudos to our staff who have worked really hard this fall under Dr. Cunningham's leadership. Thank you. I just feel like after seeing this, it's been really impressive to kind of see the year-over-year growth. Mr. Rogers, you're up. School maintenance project grant, this is something we apply for every year. It's a 50-50 matching grant. If we spend $1,000, sorry, we spend $100,000, they will cover half of
057that. So we try to identify projects that are going to hit that $100,000 mark. So one project that we've identified as a possibility for the summer would be potentially expanding and renovating our garage outback. So it's really dilapidated, doesn't provide a lot of storage and accessibility for the building. So this would allow us to renovate that and potentially turn it into a market. So it's kind of a multi purpose tool that we can utilize provide additional storage and provide some flexibility for our community relations in the district. So this project we're going to we would plan on doing this in house. We're going to get some budgetary numbers together and really the nice part about this is you can go prefabricated building or we can do something. A little bit above that depending on what
058kind of needs the space is going to have so we are planning about $100,000 for this project which would hit our target perfectly so you're more or less guaranteed for this grant we just have to apply for by the end of February by the end of January. Thank you. There are considered routine and or not controversial and will be approved by one motion. If anyone, board member, staff, administrator, or citizen wishes to have a separate vote on any item or items, that item or items will be pulled from the omnibus vote agenda and voted on separately. Be it resolved that the Diamond Lake 76 Board of Education accepts and approves the omnibus vote agenda items A through D as listed. May I have a motion to approve, please? Mr. Becker? Yes. Ms. Carpenter? Yes. Ms.
059Hale? Yes. Ms. Sullivan? Yes. Okay, that motion is approved. The next item up for action is approving the 2025 tax levy. So I'm going to, there's like six things I have to read, so just so you know. So I'm gonna ask for a motion to approve the adoption of the truth and taxation resolution the 2025 tax levy in the following amounts which the total is sixteen million seven hundred and sixty four thousand four hundred and seventy four dollars The education fund is twelve million eight hundred thousand the O&M fund is one million six hundred thousand the transportation fund is one million fifty thousand the working cash fund is ninety thousand the imrf fund is 180 000 the social security fund is 180 000 the fire prevention and safety fund is fifteen hundred dollars the tort
060immunity fund is sixty thousand dollars the special education fund is eight hundred thousand dollars and the sedol imrf is two thousand nine hundred and seventy four dollars it's very specific um And then also for the resolution for the working cash levy in the amount of $90,000, the resolution for the fire prevention safety levy in the amount of $1,500, the resolution for the special education fund levy in the amount of $800,000, and the resolution for the CDL IMRF fund or levy in the amount of $2,974. So may I please have a motion to approve all of those? Yes. Okay, that motion is approved and then we will just so you know we all need to sign it I believe at the end um The last item up for action is approving the school maintenance project grants
061be it resolved the diamond like 76 Board of Education approves the recommendation to apply for the school maintenance project grant and make available local funds to meet the local match requirement May have a motion to approve please Yes Okay, that motion is also approved that wraps up our business agenda for the evening and we have one foyer request that was fulfilled Notices and communications. We have the seat all information David you went to that meter, right? That's great Oh, no, that's fine if there's anything else you want to add you can do it in January too. Yeah, no problem. Thank you for attending Okay, and then we also have for the D 76 highlights. We have the November diamond edge Then okay moving on to public comments and positions on non agenda items we've heard
062of lost our audience So I do not believe we have any Moving on to others super others one thing to note is that we received notice from our law firm Korea Bo check that they are merging with It's like a tongue twister. Fagan, Friedman, and Fulfrust? Am I saying it right? I lost the three Fs. Fulfrust. So F3 law. KB law is merging with F3 law. Nothing is going to change on our end. We will still have the same attorneys that we're working with, but they have to give us notice, and we have to kind of sign off that we're still good with that. So just so that all of you are aware. do we have anything else no sarah bochek will still be representing us and still be our active attorney along with dorsey
063korea nothing changes does anyone else have any others good evening okay um we do not have executive session this evening so then we will just move to adjourn elizabeth you jumped right on that i'm ready it's a december it is a december meeting yes Awesome. Thanks, everybody. It's just you and I have to send this, the text, now that I read it. Yeah. You can take our papers or you can leave them in. Either way, we'll take them back. It looks like we just need this with your signature. No, because when I read it.