001So happy. I just knew that would make you laugh. Yes. Oh, yeah. You're going to want to work on that with an essay or something. like read this question. Whatever. Andy's really excited about it. I haven't really had any since we talked a couple days until my chicken just tried out yesterday. She made it officially posted. Yeah. So, it finally was posted today. You know, I can take it. 30 seconds. Yeah. Very sick. We need to have some music going on. Yeah, we do. We should have music. Little waiting room music. Good. Yeah. Next time. Next time we're gonna have music. All right. I call to order the committee of the whole meeting of the board of education, school district number 40 at 6 pm on Monday, April 14th, 2025 at the Mulling Education Center.
002Uh, roll call, please. Arrey Adamson, here. Chet Smith here. Ramona Dixon here. Jason Frell here. Lindseay Hines. Andrew Wer here. Aaron Waldron Smith here. Abigail Greenley here. Akil Kumar. All right. Uh, approval of any board member board of education member participating remotely. Recommend a motion that the board of education approve Aaron Waldron Smith to request uh to p participate remotely during Monday, April 14th, 2025 2025 board of education meeting. So second. All in favor? I any opposed. All right. Motion carries. Right. Approval of the minutes. Uh can I have a motion uh for the approval of minutes of the committee of the whole of March 10th, 2025? So second. All in favor? I I Any oppos? All right. Public comment and participation. All right. Student spotlight, Bsentennial Elementary. Just wheel it around. Okay. Careful. Well,
003first of all, I want to thank you for allowing us to share some of our wonderful things that are happening at Bsentennial. Um, I guess we should introduce ourselves, right? Um, I'm Tammy Ruth and I'm the instructional coach at Bsentennial. And I'm Megan Rasovich. I'm fourth grade at Bsentennial, obviously. And Christine Watts. I also teach fourth grade. uh Jamie, library media specialist at Bsentennial and also at Roosevelt and Woodard this year. As you can see, we're going to be talking about cultivating a love for reading at bsentennial. And just like all schools in Molen, in Illinois, across the nation, um we're working on improving our reading scores. We analyze data. We look at maps scores, state assessments, classroom scores, all the things. And we use that information obviously to help us develop our school improvement
004plan. But as we're also developing that school improvement plan and thinking about uh our reading plans and goals, um one of the things that we want to do is really focus on not just preparing students or instructing our students to be proficient on state tests, but we really want our students to be excited about and love reading. Um, we want students to have been that we have to ask to put down a book because we have something else that we need to do at that time. We want uh students that come back from the library with a Mrs. Fetty Ward excited because they've she's helped them uh find a book that they have been looking for um in order to learn things about things they're interested in or maybe they've connected with a beloved character
005that now they have another book in that series. And we want our kids to come back excited and see those things. We also want our kids that go to the book fair and bypass table of trinkets because they're really excited about all the books that are there for them to look at. Um How do we make this happen? Well, I'll say it's very intentional. We are very intentional in what we do at Bsentennial. Um, one of the things is a teacher collaboration. Um, teachers work together to determine student need. Looking at all of those things, um, as far as scores are concerned, how the student scores look, um, we then look at our curriculum and put together materials, um, that are interesting to our students. Um we f we look at our curriculum and identify
006gaps. Obviously no curriculum is perfect for every student. And so we look at that curriculum and determine within the curriculum what are things that the kids are going to be interested in. And maybe there's some things within the curriculum that we're like our kids aren't going to be engaged with that. So we look for other ways to engage them whether that's through locating um different texts, different picture books, different readalouds, different things on um online, different resources that will get them excited. Um ex for example um couple years ago we piloted one of our foundational skills you phonics and we realized that we needed some hands-on materials for our kindergarten and first grade students. So, we did a donor's choose so that we could get magnetic letters, um, whiteboards, markers, things that they would be
007engaged with as opposed to just learning the sounds and letter names by looking at slides or looking at, um, letters and so they could manipulate those and practice those skills. Um, we also had uh applied for only public schools grant so that we could only public schools foundation grant so that we could get decodable text for our kids. um for our beginning you readers to utilize in order to put those skills in phonics into practice and actually text that they can and want to read. Um working with with struggling readers as I do on a regular basis um many times those kids don't see themselves as readers. It's hard. They um struggle with that whole reading piece and so they tend to shut down. These books have really been a gamecher for them because they're
008able to apply the knowledge into text and they're excited because now they see themselves as readers. Um we realize that some of those kids also we just like in sports or anything else we do in order to get better we need to practice and so we want them reading those those texts over and over again with support hopefully at home or from others. And we realize that doesn't always happen. So, we worked together as a staff to find some volunteers that would come in and read with our younger students. Um, and those kids now see themselves as readers. They're excited to like we would get out books and be like, I'm going to get to the reading part. You know, they could tell me letters, sounds, all of that. But when it came to the
009text, they often had a hard time putting it together and they would struggle with that and be discouraged. Well, now they can't wait. Are we going to get a new book today? And we they get those books and they have people then in the building that we have intentionally placed there for them to read those books too. So they walk away and they read those books to other to other people besides just the teachers. And um we've even had kids who now um you know beg their parents, can you listen to me read? Because they see themselves as readers. Um I had one little guy the other day came in. Um, I have a group of first graders and they used to, like I said, come in and there were behaviors, there were other things.
010Now they come in with their their bag of books and they the first thing they want to do is start reading those books while they're waiting for us to get the that lesson going. And one of the little guys kept telling me how he's been reading this to his counselor, his post counselor. And I could not quite figure out what he was trying to tell me. He said, "I told my YMCA counselor who goes to the after school program that I can read now and he listens to me read every day." and he was just so excited about it and sees himself as a reader and that's that's a big thing. So again, those are intentional things where we put people in these kids' lives that they can read too. Um uh what am I
011going oh the other thing that we have we do um is we try to tailor that instruction through units of study where I was talking about looking at the curriculum. Obviously we look at the standards. What is the um the unit of study? What does the student data look like? and we tailor then we take that we build our own units around that by adding those extra things um the supplemental text things that will be more engaging. Um we really do look at the student need um and we do a lot of flex grouping. these two ladies will talk a little bit more about that where we look at the data and um group our students based on student need where so that we're making sure that we're hitting all of our students needs and
012we also do it on an individual basis. So we do it at the grade level, we do that into smaller groups and we also do it for individual students. Um, some examples, we've had a third grade heroes unit, and we were able to pull in some heroes that that weren't necessarily in the curriculum, but were heroes that that those kids might inter might um interact with or be more engaged in. Um, we've done things on exploring diversity, and we did character development and events, and that's one of the things that we did, and we pulled in, we were able to find some outside text that really just went together, and the kids really hit um, really, I think, kind of embraced that. They were um all had to do a lot with New Orleans and
013Hurricane Katrina and they were just really kind of involved with that. Um we use lots of um websites uh common resources. We've kind of embraced the reading strategies 2.0 book which I think everybody in our building uses. So we're teaching reading strategies very similar on a continuum across all grade levels. Um, again, we're trying to engage our students. We're trying to tailor that so that our kids want to read and love to read. And, um, it's very intentional in the way that we do that. Um, I'm going to turn it over to our fourth grade teachers because they're going to get a little bit more in depth into how that looks at a grade level. Sorry. Oh, it wasn't working and then it was. Now I got it. Here we go. Okay. Hi. Um, I'm
014going to talk about what it looks like for the flex grouping in my classroom. So, I have those struggling readers that sometimes struggle with just how to decode words um or our bubble students as we like to call them. So, our big thing is how do we engage and build confidence in those struggling readers. I'm fortunate to be able to flex group with Mrs. Reassovich, but um the guru of reading over here, Mrs. Ruthie, is the one who knows all the things. You can go to her for any text that you need. You can go to her and say, "Okay, I'm struggling with what to do. How do I get this standard and engage my students?" and that's something that she's so good at. Um, the beginning of the year, I looked at my students
015and I said, "Got a lot of students that are struggling with decoding. How do I help them?" So, we took rewards, which is typically a tier 2 intervention, and we used it as a tier one intervention in my classroom. And those students are working on how to decode and use multi-elabic words, be able to understand what they mean by learning the prefixes and the suffixes and the affixes, and then finally taking that and utilizing that with academic vocabulary. Saw great success with that. Um, out of the 15 students that we pulled with that, 13 out of the 15 made great growth on NWBA, especially my ML students, they made 30 and 31 points, my two kids on in the vocab stream. So, I was very, very excited about that. Just proves how important word study
016is for our students. Um, we used common lit. I have this unit of study on adaptations and I was like, how are we going to find information and text that's important to them? Well, we looked on common lit and when Mrs. Ruthie was doing a coaching cycle with me. We found this text on carnivorous plants and our kids were like, "What are you talking about? What? These plants eat bugs?" I mean, it was the coolest thing to watch them. They had so many questions. There were engaging um great questions on the side, ways for them to annotate the text. And we modeled that for them. And we modeled again and again, and we showed them what that should look like. So that way then when they had to answer questions, they could go back and
017utilize that text the way they needed to. Um, if there's one thing you know about me, I love to act. I love to put on a play. And so one of the things that we like to do um is Mrs. Rasvage and I take our inquiry projects that are in the My View curriculum to a new level. Um, our last unit was on fiction and so we learned about the differences between drama and pros and poetry and then we took some silly fairy tales and we acted them out and we not only acted them out with within our classes to other classes at bsentennial but then we did it for our parents and that was so exciting for us to see some of our students that struggling to to decode were able to read these
018lines without line you know without a script in front of them and they felt confident and that's what we want. Um, we take some book, we've got book clubs, both of us that do book clubs. We've got some great texts like because of when Dixie and just having that discussion is so important to get your students engaged in reading. And I just really can't say enough about the team and what we do here at Bsentennial because I just really feel that sometimes I will not be happy with how Mrs. Ruthie pushes me, but she pushes me very hard and she knows it's all for the kids. And I am so I'm so grateful to her and Megan because of the fact that now I feel like I'm a better reading teacher as a result. So
019I'll pay you back off. Same right. Ditto. Mrs. Smithy um is definitely uh the one to push behind all of this. So it's been really nice to have that support. But so I I take the the higher kids. I take the kids that are at level or above level. And uh during that time I figured out and I you know early on that they can have a conversation about text. it was the written piece that was the part that needed the pushing. So, in order to get that written piece um to pull it out of them, you know, obviously there's a lot of practice involved, but then uh I use a lot of do questioning that stands for depth of depth of knowledge questioning. That's what this wheel is here. I tried to find one
020that you could maybe read some of the words, but it's basically just levels of questioning. And so what I would plan for my groups um I go back to this wheel and constantly try to get myself in that DK3 level um which is a little bit so it's you know just starts out from the basic uh recalling um at DK level and then the DK4 is actually putting it into um something that they create right so that's what um in my book clubs that they do so they'll interview some teachers or they'll create some sort of they pretend they were basketball coaches and created a team based off of the character traits and things like that. So I try to really dig into the DK levels. Um so the other thing that I've really been
021focusing on this year uh is the figurative language which builds into that writing and vocabulary. So we've been doing a lot with phonics piece and then constantly they will get so tired of me by Friday because they know they have to write at least a paragraph every single week that's in a response. So they're like do we have to write another paragraph again? Yes, you do. Remember how do we start out topic statement? All those things. So, um the the responses have been a lot stronger. I think that they have become more confident with that, too. Um but then the last the most important thing is really finding the engaging text and so to get the higher level text and text that they're interested in. That's what Mrs. Ruthie had helped me with. Um that
022supports our curriculum. We love the My View curriculum. The there's a lot of great text in there, but then it's fun to get picture books and extra text that get them really excited about the topic. um to then still practice our standards and to practice the skills that we're working on. Um and then the last thing is Socratic seminars have been something that I have just implemented um recently and that's when the kids take off and I always joke with them that I get to sit back and eat bon bonss while they are doing the work. So there's a discussion leader and they pose the questions and then they respond to each other and I'm writing notes the whole time making a poster of what they're saying and it's always really cool at the end
023to see like look at this discussion you had. Look at all of these great thoughts that you had. So, um, just giving them that ownership to really take their their understanding and their thinking to the next level. So, it's been fun to try this out, but uh, still learning as we go. All thanks to Mrs. Ruthie and her push for reading. It is an incredible team of video. I would say great teachers who care deeply about our students. All right. Um, so last year was my first year as a library media specialist. I taught fifth grade of bicesentennial for a long time and also first and third before that. And as we wrapped up last year, Mrs. Watts approached me about how could we sort of leverage the library maker space materials to connect more
024with the curriculum that the teachers were teaching in the classroom. Um so the one that we focused on in the fall um was the I guess it's your first quarter first quarter unit. I have to think back now back to the fall on um physics and forces and transfer of energy and things like that. So we thought oh well this is obviously a time to do a Rub Goldberg machine. Um but Dr. Furong had also asked me to do an author visit too. So I tried to figure out a way to do all of this at once and Erin Waldron Smith who's joining us remotely was the one who told me about Lita Palooa which I went to that summer and got to meet lots of really cool authors including a local author who wrote
025a book about Rub Goldberg. Local as in Illinois. So close close enough close enough we didn't have to uh fly around or anything like that. So um what we did in the library was we read the Rub Goldberg book. Um and then the students used that and a lot of really great YouTube videos and all of the great stuff that we have in the library. We had ka planks. Um I bought some ping pong balls at the Dollar Tree. Um they were building ramps out of the ka planks and using them as dominoes. And then from there we started adding in things like marble runs and solo cups and strings and pulleys and all sorts of simple machines to really get their chain reaction machines or Rub Goldberg machines off the ground to try to
026reinforce what these guys are doing in mystery science. As a classroom teacher for 12 years, I know even though we love the science, we love doing it. It can be really really hard to shoehorn it in around everything else that we have to do and all the other important work that these guys are doing in their classroom. So I was more than happy to take that on in the library and we also did it with um fifth grade this year. These are fifth graders in these photos um because they hadn't had it last year. And I don't that the one in the lower right is a video. I don't know if there's a way to get that to play. There's no sound, but they're all going at the end when they're done and make it
027all the way around. But they they that was as far as they've gotten in a while. Um so for the author visit uh we had Sarah Arensson who wrote a book called Just Like Rub Goldberg. She um read the book to every group of students. We had three different students come for an assembly. Um she held a book signing um for all the students and um they got to hear her read it out loud and uh make a human Rub Goldberg machine in the gym. So the key for me with the library maker space is to not just like get through the book and then start playing with stuff is to make the books part of the excitement too. the book has to have a real connection to what we're doing in the maker space
028and what we're learning in class. So, um getting a chance to do this with Mrs. Watts and and the fourth graders has helped me kind of look forward to more ways to do this. Um I want to say thank you to the board and our administrators in our union for um hiring another person to teach sections of library which is going to enable all of us to have more um CMP time at all of our buildings to hopefully do more of this type of collaboration. We did meet during the summer to get this done. It was very eventful. Um, but I'm glad that you did it. Um, so moving forward with this idea, um, I decided, you know, um, in my time as grade level chair a few years ago, I worked with Dr. Pribble
029and some other teachers on the grade level resumes and I'm like, hey, I can look up what everyone's doing in science for fourth quarter and I still have a login for mystery science. So, I just went through everyone's science curriculum and came up with some things that we could do in the library that tied in with each grade levels um science curriculum for fourth quarter. So, kindergarteners are doing weather. Um, first grade is doing space. Second grade is doing like uh erosion and the movement of rivers and things like that. Um, you see third grade is doing like a physics unit that is a lot about bridge physics. So, they're making a lot of cava plank bridges and we're learning about all different um cool people that I know nothing about that are involved in
030building the Brooklyn Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge. Um fourth grade, um we're doing electronics. We're sort of carrying that over from third quarter. So, we're learning about Jerry Lawson who pioneered cartridges and video gaming. Um and William Kumwabbe who brought um light to Malawi and electricity with um if you've ever heard the boy who harnessed the wind, it was there was a Netflix special about it too. Um, and then fifth grade is doing the water cycle, which I know as a fifth grade teacher for six years, fourth grade, uh, or fourth quarter and fifth grade is absolutely maniacal. You have biz. There's all sorts of special events. You've just finished AR testing. You have map testing coming up. So, I'm like, I'm we're going to do a water cycle project in fifth grade. Um,
031but those are fourth graders there working on snap circuits, which is just a hands-on way to figure out how electronic circuits work. We have makey makys and squishy circuits and other things for them to do. They're also learning about really cool people who have changed the world by tinkering with electronics. So hope to do more of this um with bsentennial teachers in the future and get with more grade levels to do more things in library that connect back with what our teachers are doing in the classrooms. So you can see we have lots of things happening during the school day within the walls of our building. Um we also Mrs. Azovich approached us uh a couple of last year years ago. It would have been. Yeah. Um with a new thing that takes us outside
032of the school day that also Yes. So we have um a lot of STEM. We have a lot of clubs at Bsentennial. We're really lucky. Um mainly because of this one here that does a lot of them. Also have one there. Um but they're usually STEM focused. And so I kind of popped down in Mrs. Ruthy's room and I was like, we're not teaching these kids to love to read. How do we do this? And so then I don't know quite how it came to be. But there was became the run and read club where I like to run myself and I thought well and we've got this fun run coming up maybe we can have the kids run a little bit give them a snack and then just do some reading. And really it
033just became as simple as that. And so you know I proposed the idea and then we're like well let's just see. Let's see what happens. Roped Mrs. Ruthie along and of course she was more than happy. Um so you can see our goals really were pretty simple. We just wanted to spread that enjoyment of kids just reading. A lot of times after school, I know it gets busy at home. They're tired at bedtime. It's hard to do that extra 15, 20 minutes that we recommend of reading. So, if you go on to the next slide. So, then I started kind of diving in and I was like, "Wow, there's a lot of research that actually backs this up that makes it sound much fancier, too." Um, and so, you know, a lot of the kids
034that join our clubs don't always have any other um clubs that they're doing or or wreck leagues or teams that they have. So they really get excited about this. In fact, I've got a couple this right now. We just started up our and she is so she is telling me she's been practicing at home and she is not one that gets a lot of support in that way. And so it's just been awesome of how excited she is every single week. And you know, you can see that the research is there and that there's a lot of great things with getting them out even for 15 20 minutes in the sunshine running, you know, pumping each other up. I always say I'm a little biased, but running is the best sport because even at cross
035country meets, track meets, everybody's cheering for everybody. So, um it's a really positive experience. Um and then we just stretch a little bit. We get some exercise and then we move inside. They have the choice to read their own book for our older readers who have their own chapter books. And then, um we take turns reading a little picture book out loud. So, there's our schedule. And down on the bottom left is Mrs. Ruthie there running. So, she is doing the laps running. Um we've also had some great other staff support. They usually pop out the door and they'll cheer them on as they're passing by. We're just running around the building is all that we're doing. Um it was inspired by girls on the run, but this is for boys and girls, so we
036just do third and fifth graders. And um yeah, it's been really great. And then we're excited, too, because this time we're going to have a goal for fun run and to see I'm like you guys are going to be the ones nobody's stopping this group. Everybody's going to be running the whole time. So it's been exciting. So yeah, it's a way to kind of spread the love of reading after school, too. And give some of those kids something else to look forward to. They're excited. I mean, it's fun to see these kids who I wasn't quite sure they were going to get it. We had quite I don't even know the numbers now, but there's a lot of kids that come and run with us and then some of them bring their book and some
037of them just like to sit and listen to a nice readaloud. So, it's been nice. It has been. And then, so it kind of stretches out. So, we're also really kind of unique in Co Valley that we've got our own nice little library right next door. And so, our our love for reading, we're trying to pull in our community support, too. And man, do we have it. So, we've got uh Robert R. Jones Library next door and they we give them a call and they make it happen, it seems. And so, just really briefly, we've done we celebrate Read Across America. All right. So, I I've kind of said from the start, the reading is my jam. And so, this is now my way of we want to celebrate that ReadAcross America week. And so,
038I just emailed the ladies next door and then they came up with this beautiful flyer, sent it home with families, posted it online. And so then there these were after school events that co that went along with our theme day that then was a STEM activity or some sort of reading activity next door at the library. So kids got to then go over there and do a registered event like libraries do that was specific for our school for our Dr. Seuss week. Um they've come for PTA events. I'm on PTA as well and they are always they bring a table, they bring activities, they do everything. And then I know that our teachers have um asked them for resources. They check out books, STEM materials. They have so many STEM materials that they offer and
039let us and loan us out. So here are some students there in one of those Dr. Seuss week um after school activities. So they they really are so supportive and we really are so lucky to have them right next door. And then I believe fifth grade too they do a field trip right that um we have I think they'll set up a field trip at a moment's notice. So yeah and so and then they get library but I mean they're al they'll pull resources for us and things like that. They paid for the district's Pebble Go subscription, right? And then they just gifted the library some robots just in honor of National School Librarians Day just out of the blue last week. So that's what's Yeah. So a huge shout out to Robert R. Jones
040Library because they are phenomenal. And then we told them about this and they were willing to come and do all the thing. We're like, "No, no, no, you don't. Just let you know we're going to be talking about you." So they were they were really appreciative of that, too. So that wraps it up. We just really are trying to cultivate a love of reading and we're just excited to share with you. I think we're doing some cool things and there's probably a lot more we could do. But if you've got any questions, please let us know. Come visit us sometime. Yes. Read with our kids. They would love to read with you. All right. Next up is Molly High School uh student spotlight uh CTE student advisory presentation. Dr. Deain. Yeah. Hi everyone. Um really
041looking forward to this. Um I can honestly say working with this group of students is one of the greatest highlights of of my career. Um I think we're trying to figure out how long ago this was. Best we can figure out. It was about a year and a half ago. An email to me, Dr. Savage or I spark for Dr. Savage to and uh Brian as well um about we have an ISAC student representative for the region at Mullen High School and for those of you we'll talk a little bit about it but the it's the Illinois student assistance mission um so for the last year and a half we've looked on how we can increase um communication uh come up with new thoughts for recommendations for moving forward and we've now created a cycle
042and a way of being able to look for constant improvements. Um, so this is some of our committee members. Um, I do have to say, and I think this is the coolest thing ever, they decided to dress for the job they want, which is so appropriate for talking about career education. So, I'm going to let them happen. I should give a disclaimer that I don't know how to dress like an accountant, so I dress professionally. I guess brought a calculator, but I felt that'd be kind of weird. So, uh, I am here today to talk to you about career and technical education. But I guess it's not just me because I have our amazing team here. We are a group of, let's see, I got to count. It's like eight of us. Eight of us
043total. We're not all here, but um, eight students who came together to increase and bring awareness to career and technical education pathways in our school district. So, before they get into it, I'm going to explain how we got here and how I play a role in this. So I am part of the Illinois student advisory council for uh career and education success network that partners with ed system and uh ISAC for the state. I am our black region pathways which represents us UT Rock Island and Colona. Um and I have been doing this for about a year and a half now. I have been on there since my junior year and I have been working on this project for about a year and a half both with Isac for the state and our district individually
044which has led me to be a formal presenter at their annual success conference uh that I was in February and I had my own session along with my counterpart in Aurora. Um so I am now officially specialized in CTE and workbased learning. So what is CTE for some of you who do not know and it's one thing I learned coming into education advocacy is y'all love your acronyms. So um CTE stands for a career in technical education which is any class a student might take to discover a career path in our school district whether that is um accounting or business or engineering or CNC and trades and that is anything to tell them that they do want to do this in the future or that they don't. So without further ado because I have given
045this presentation about six or seven times in the past uh year and a half. It is my greatest honor to tell you I am not going to be the one talking at you the whole time. So they are going to tell you what we have been working on for the last four months here in our school district. So without further ado, I'm going to pass it off to Andrew. So for our processes, um we first started off analyzing data that we've gotten from Rowan's previous surveys. We'll talk about that a little later. Um we we took that data from that what we got and conducted a middle school focus group to really get in to see what the issues were for our middle school students. Um, obviously we created solutions. I mean, we're trying we're
046presenting to you guys right here and right now to try and get this through to you guys and help you guys help I guess I'm trying to say is help you guys help the other students, the younger generation. So, for our first high school survey, everyone ran that before the group had even been meeting. Um, we we got responses from that. We didn't really like the percentage that we got. So, we decided, let's start off with the middle school, simple it down, get them the answers that we want, and we took those middle school because we had gotten them. We got the middle school responses before we went into the focus group. So, we took those those questions and we really found what we wanted to ask them and get and get the the precise
047answers that we wanted to find for our solutions. And obviously we took that into the high school one to tell them exactly what CTE was because personally for me I didn't really know the full range like of everything CTE included in. And obviously with us uh slimming it down and making it easier for them to answer. We've gotten over double the answers from our first survey. And now I'd like to welcome Simon up to the podium to talk about our data. So awesome. Uh my name is Simon Zimmerman. I'm a senior um and I have taken four years of the engineering program over at Mullen High School and dabbled on a couple other CTE programs and I'm here to talk to you about some of what we found with some of our data. Now, I'm
048going to break down this graph to you because it just looks like a bunch of colors and numbers, but here's what we found. We found three big challenges that we as a district can help control. First is age and grade level. Um actually Rowan has a great qualitative analysis of this. She wanted to join an engineering class this year, but because she's a senior, they didn't let her join the introductory class simply because of her grade level. Now, this crosses off a career for her because she's not able to dip her toes into the water. Remember that for CTE courses, not finding out what you want to do with the rest of her life is actually a success. I'm not going in engineering. I'm going to become a pilot. I'm going to study aviation at
049Southern Illinois. That's a win for CTE. These are people and classes that we want to unlock pathways for students. Next is scheduling. This comes sort of at a lack of resources in a way that for instance um Andrew and I have an AP physics course that's second hour only offered second hour. And there's other courses that I wanted to take that fell into that time slot. So just because we don't have all the resources we need, we can't offer classes at different time for flexibility and scheduling for students. And the last one is going to be lack of information. I'll talk about that in just a second, but I want to cover the other 33% of the data. For one, grades and academic challenges. This is a little bit outside of our scope as a
050CTE group because while we would love to help improve the grades of all the students, some of these classes are hard by design. You want a physicist to know their math to the rigorous multiple decimal places out rather than just having a general class. So grades and academic challenges are part of CTE and transportation both which fall a little bit outside of the scope of we as advisory board. So if you can hit the next slide. So let's address the lack of information. We oh thank you. We wanted to talk a little bit more to the high school students about well how can we then get this information to you? And the biggest correlation between both high school and middle school data that we found is kids want to talk to people in their careers.
051They want to talk to people who speak their language. I wouldn't have known that I wanted to be a pilot without going and talking to pilots. Similarly, Lily didn't know that she wanted to be a teacher until she talked to teachers. And I'm sure it's the same with you and you guys in your careers. It takes some one-on-one conversations and some real talking to people that know what they're talking about and have walked this path before to know what your future may hold. And so providing these kids with resources is one of the biggest ways we can do that. Giving those one-on-one conversations. And you can see that through both counselors and teachers. They want to be able to find ways to have these conversations. Then we also saw issues with the course catalog. I'll
052let Lily talk about that in just a second to see how we can alter that to make it a little bit more easier for students to access. And finally, our announcements and peer review. Um, I think Rowan can also speak to um, how announcements aren't always effective in the classrooms. Um, no one really listens to them a lot of times. We have a lot of classrooms. I'm sorry. We're bad students. We're bad. And finally is peer review. Um, I I can speak for a lot of classes, which is I I took the class and I say, "Hey, younger students, this is a great class. Go take it. It's a good opportunity." So, this last slide is going to be talking to the middle school students. And this is where we found some of that correlation.
053Now, teachers, counselors, and parents or guardians made up nearly 75% of all data. This is the exact same thing we saw in the high schools. They want to talk to people that can have conversations with them about what their pathways look like, not just a two-minute session with a counselor. They want to have a long form conversation saying, "This is what your pathway looks like for the future." and then zero and announcements both do a similar job that to a more general role but to talk about some of the solutions that we came up with I'm going to pass it over to Lily Hoy Hi everybody my name is Lily Hoy and my CT pathway has been with the grow your own teacher program so influencing future teachers to come back and teach in our
054district and be influences to those students and so some of the discoveries we have found is that we already have a strong foundation within our CT pathways but now it's just finding the best way to execute them and make it to the best ability for each of our students to grow within that. We also saw that there was a big big disconnect for our eighth grade students going into nth grade and them transitioning into high school and feeling that com the being comfortable within a new building and their future future scheduling that they will have being in a bigger building. Our middle school students will definitely benefit from more CTE information because talking to them within our small groups, they didn't know what CTE was. they didn't know what opportunities were available for them at
055the high school. So being able to incorporate that into their days will help them figure out what's best for them earlier. And there are also many options and opportunities to help students at Molen that we already have in place but not many students know about. So to talk about for the eighth grade to 9th grade transition, one thing that we can do is to influence our link crew differently. And for those of you that don't know, Link Crew is an organization that we have at the high school to help the incoming freshmen and new students into the building feel more comfortable and get to know the school better. And so Link Crew is set up right now to focus on just okay, here's the gym, here's the bathroom, here's stuff that everybody knows where it's
056at. But instead, we can make it here's where our D-wing is. Nobody, not a lot of people know what D-wing is. doing is engineering and CNC and everything like that that's going to help the students figure out what career path is best for them. Along with that, incorporating link into our eighth grade orientations and our course catalog nights, being able to break down what's the course catalog, talking about the information in it and then getting to go with students from the high school to see here's exactly where you can take that class and what will happen there. Along with that, empowering our counselors to spend more time with the students. Talking to our eighth graders, we found out that they only spent approximately three to four minutes with their counselor to set up their freshman
057schedule. So that means they felt uncertain and worried about what their freshman year was going to look like. And finally, students want to hear from other students. They get tired of listening to their teachers. As much as I don't want to say it, they do. They like to hear from other students. They like to see what students do. So creating a peer mentor program where underassmen can go talk to upperassmen about classes and seeing presentations and videos from what those students are doing in those classes. So seeing what Andrew is doing in his class or what they're doing in engineering or different classes that we have at the high school. And then also marketing our MHS CTE courses at the high school. Not everybody knows what a CTE class is. So they take a study
058hall their freshman and sophomore year and then they're farther behind other students like Simon who took engineering all four years. So one thing that we can do is simplifying the course catalog. The course catalog is super long and often confusing to find what you're looking for in there. So making it more accessible and easier to find stuff um by breaking it down into different categories will majorly help those students. also incorporating a career counselor back into Mullen High School. Students, like we said, want to talk to other people in that field. So, a career counselor can help you get set up with interviews or talking with other people within that field of whatever you're interested in and finding what what path you want to go down sooner to get you off on the right step.
059And like Simon said, more students want to hear from announcements. So, allowing for teachers to talk about it in class because people can't hear it in class. Yeah. Yeah, nobody listens to the announcements, unfortunately. And so allowing for teachers to have time to post stuff in the Google classroom and make announcements and share about what is available to the students will help them grow more. And finally, creating an MHS chatbot for either the Mullen Cole Valley District website or onto our course catalog. A lot of students are afraid of face to face interaction. A lot of students get too scared to talk to their teachers or counselors. So allowing for them to type in questions into something or typing in keywords to help them find what they're looking for will help them still reach the
060goals that they have for themselves without having to have that immediate face to face interaction to find that. So now I'm going to pass it on to Paige. Hello, my name is Paige Jackson. I'm a part of the music program at Molen High School and next year I will be taking over Rowan's position as the CTE student leader and I have just recently been accepted into ISAC as well. Um, what would I like to see over the next few years in the CTE program is continuing student input, hearing and running surveys for students to hear if what we're trying to implement and what we're trying to fix is having a positive or a negative effect and what we can do to make it have a positive effect towards the students. I would like the CTE
061program to start investing in CCTE, which is college and career pathway endorsements, which could help um students in CTE programs get job get into jobs easier. And I would also like to see CTSO um organization implemented as well, which is outside of school. It's like a club for specific things like FFA, HOSA, just to name a couple. And it's outside of school for students who want to be in those things, but due to like scheduling or other conflicts, they can't. And so they could have that other um opportunities like outside of school. And we would like to continue hearing students voice getting students opinions and voices to administration because in my personal experience I know that administration loves hearing from the students about students instead of just like observing and being like I think this
062would work but hearing from students is like as a student I think this is what we could do to fix this. And finally, we would like to increase forms of communication with our students. One good option would be like social media. A lot of students have social media so we can get information out there to them easier via a social media platform and it can be a quick and reliable way to get fast, easy information. And now I'm going to pass it back to Brooklyn. So we have spent the last several minutes explaining to you what we've been doing either in the last year or in the last four months coming up with these ideas. But I think the most important thing to note is that while we are here informing you, action is already
063being taken. Um we have already been working with Dr. Deain, our middle school principles, and Mr. Moore at the high school to get these solutions up and running off the ground. We had a meeting about in early April to talk about how we can get those easy lowhanging solutions up instantly. Those student presentations can be done through the CTE group. We can get those social media platforms up and running through a student who will run it for a department. We can honestly get that chatbot going. We live in a world of AI. Like it's it's not complicated to get that up and going if we have the right team to do it. So I think it's important to note that while I'm here telling you what we need is support. If we already have people
064up and going, then we need the rest of the district and our administrators to be here and be like, "Yes, I see the work that is being done. Let's keep it going. Let's light a fire under this project and help our students continue to have career opportunities in our school district." As well as making it a point this should become a district goal. We should be able to keep up with the trends not only in our district, our area, and our state, but nationally. We are doing really well as a district already in CTE. We offer more things than Rocky does, but we also send students to C to UT for ACC because we don't have those programs. So, making sure that we are keeping up with our local competitors is a good thing. It
065also allows us to light the path for other districts. I am very, very proud to say that this data is being used in a St. Louis school district right now to relight their CTE pathway program after my presentation. And I've been communicating with one of their directors down there on how we are using our project now to keep theirs going. So we can our data has an impact and it is proven that if we can do it, so can other people around the state. So it's very important to make sure that we are keeping up and leading the way. And finally, the biggest goal of this is to improve student choice. Like Paige said, like we've all said, students want to have a voice. We are the voice. So, we are trying to tell you
066that we have great pathways right now. We are doing great, but there is always more that we can be doing and we want to see more, especially as you look at those middle schoolers that are coming up. Engineering is really big and it's one of our most popular programs right now. But in four years, what if we want more in education? What if we want more in healthcare sciences, but we don't have it to accommodate for them? So, we really want to make sure that we are continuing to listen back to our students and doing what they want and striving to help what we can do to help them. And that is all we have. Any questions? I just want to say thank you guys for doing what you're doing. It's a very important thing.
067Um something that we've needed to get back into for years and years and I know that the administration is listening to you and I know that if you ever need anything from me, I'll be happy to talk to people and and help provide a voice in the campus. Thank you guys. Thank you. Wow, Matt, I see why that's one of your proudest projects. That was great. Gosh, for just a quick second on on on these students. We have Simon and Rowan who are riving that nothing's ever going to stop them. Andrew, if you get a chance to end up talking with him, he's our one of our apprentice for CNC manufacturing at Aronic. Um, I would tell you what he's possibly going to make, but just know this, he's going to be fine. Lily is
068a Golden Apple Scholar and Paige is going to be another a second in a row Isac representative. And the thing is is that when it came up and it's supposed to rotate, she saw the power in it and took it and ran with it. And moving forward, we're already starting to have transition meetings. Uh and that's uh why Mr. Beam is here, too. Impressive. All right. Mulling High School History Club. Abigail, you uh introduce her tonight. Yes. Picking up the swag. Hi, my name is Abby Greenley. I'm a junior at Molen High School. We have a presentation tonight about our history club. This is one of the biggest and most involved organizations at the high school. They have so many cool projects that I hear about all the time. And so, we have a representative
069from history club here tonight. He's a great leader in our school district. And so, without further ado, I will let him introduce himself. Hi, thank you, Abby. So, I am Andrew Grow and I am the president of the history club and I work alongside Akquila. He's the vice president and we love Moly High School. We do a ton of stuff in Mullen High School. Um, maybe Simon over at NHS is jealous, but we are just a little bit bigger. Just a little bit bigger. Um, so we have a lot of student involvement. I do believe we are the largest club at the school. Um, and with that comes a lot of weight and a lot of opportunity to work on projects. And what I really want to talk to you tonight is what we've been
070working on for really a couple years. Uh it started with Jetin when um the year previously we started renovating the outdoor um well it was just a patio but now it's outdoor classroom so we uh kind of turned that patio which it was a senior patio and not a lot of people used it right so um it was being misused it was kind of falling into disrepair the pond Mr. Lamp is very happy with the pond right now. Um, but the pond wasn't doing so hot and so we came in and we really redid a lot of it. Uh, we tore down a big wooden structure. Um, we are handling the landscape right now. We resurfaced the entire patio and we got um, Heritage to come in and put us a little seating area there
071and we've turned it into an outdoor classroom. So, that's kind of a sneak peek, but then I'll get right into the presentation for you guys. So, our kind of three-step plan of implementation, it started first with that Charles Carpenter sculpture and exhibit, just really the whole outdoor classroom. Um, and then we recently got delivered our Charles Carpenter statue. So, if any of you are ever at Mullen High School, please come into the history lab. There's a giant 100 pound bust of Charles Carpenter just sitting at the front of the room and it's really, really cool. And the second part of that is the Carpenter open openhouse and dedication which is happening later this uh school year. I believe May 14th is when it's scheduled for. Um, and it's right on May 14th, 2025, 2:30 to
0724:30. Um, we're going to be passing out flyers to the schools in the administrative building shortly, but if you want to take a picture of that or write a note, we'd love for all of you to be there. It'd be really, really amazing. Uh, we have, I believe, the author of a book who um an author who wrote a book about Charles Carpenter. He's coming there. I believe the daughter of Charles Carpenter is going to be there. So, a bunch of important people. Uh, it's really cool to them. It's really cool to the students in history club, the students in MHS, and really everyone who's kind of involved in the carpenter story, which I'll get into in a little bit. Um, is just really excited about this whole thing. And then our third step plan
073of implementation is kind of departing from that physical aspect of that outdoor classroom is really going into promoting a positive school climate. So that's really our true goal of the project, right? That's our final step. That's kind of the end. That's what we really want to achieve. That's the legacy we want to leave. And it's kind of a gift for students and teachers to enjoy and to kind of bring, you know, tie a bow around everything we've been working on and really uh make it a better school and a better school district. All right. So, educational goals. So, how can we foster a growth mindset in both the history club and in the MHS and in the Mullen Co Valley School District? So, now that ties into our district goal and into a lot of
074our portrait of a graduate and a portrait of an educator, which I've worked with Dr. Savage on in the superintendent advisory council. And really what we want to see is we want to implement those active learning those really those qualities that we're trying to um enforce and really promote with those initiatives. We want to have those be a part of MHS more actively, right? More in our school culture. So I'll go to the next slide here. And so what are some difficulties that maybe just schools are experiencing or maybe what we're experiencing at MHS? So plans are often not personalized. So, say I have a really amazing plan. I have something that I really want to do. It really speaks to me, but Simon or Andrew, they really don't like it, right? It doesn't fit
075with them. And that is also kind of you're seeing a common theme here tonight with the CTE, right? Not everything works for everyone, right? And that's kind of a problem is if we go to a giant school assembly or we have a giant presentation, we're like, "This is the one answer, right? This is what we're going to do. You're going to be just fine. It's going to be awesome." Well, some some students might not feel so hot about that, right? Because it's it needs to be personalized. and if it's not, it can kind of work against or at least not in the favor of that initiative. And then it's hard to create a one-sizefits-all. So, that really ties into that first one. Um, you know, everyone's different, everyone prefers different things. And it's also challenging
076to get students to engage. I know as a leader in clubs, I know Simon's seen it, I know Rowan's seen it, I know Andrew seen it, everyone's seen it. Club members and club um, you know, people who are actually focused on doing things within the club, they fluctuate. They go up and those are really great times and then they come back down. And those are those are kind of bad times and we really want to make sure that school engagement is happening across the entire school of MHS and across the entire school district. So one way that we think would really address this problem is giving students a precedent and a role model that they can really model their life at MHS and in our school district after. So the important of goal setting and
077personal disciplines. It's going to give you life skills and it's going to develop students with more than just academics, right? You want well-rounded students, especially if they're going into college or if they're going into a trade or really anything post-graduation, whatever it be, right? You want someone who's well-developed, who has core values, who is creative, and who is going to be and is going to succeed at whatever they choose to do. And that's really what we're trying to foster at MHS and specifically within the history club. So, giving them someone to look up to, a positive role model with a positive message. And we'll get a little bit more into that positive message in a little bit. And it's an idea, a symbol for our students to model their life after. It's someone to look
078up to. So, enter Major Charles Carpenter. So, you've heard that name multiple times. If you're at MHS and you're in the history club, you've heard it so many times because we've really been bashing that theme in. Okay. So, I'll just read off his accolades and you can look at him, too. So, local Quad Civian, he was brought up in poverty. He's a cancer survivor. He's a former wooling teacher, a scholar, an athlete, a poet, a thinker, a leader, an innovator, and a molder of young men. And he was a World War II hero. So, those are just some things right off the bat. And then there's more um items up there. But he is really a positive person that the Molen Cole Valley School District produced and who that he gave back to. And so
079that's why we chose him as our kind of uh person of the year, you know, the person to kind of lead our projects because we thought that he really um served as something more than just a teacher, right? He really went above and beyond. Um and that's why we wanted to choose him to represent our project. So these are just kind of some fun pictures. So that's him teaching on the left. Then MHS loses three bachelors. So, um I haven't read that whether that means they're going off to war or they got married. I'm assuming they got married, but those are some news clippings. Um and it was made by the Lotype, which um also was another MHS activity. So, kind of cool. And these are just some other ones, just some newspaper clippings highlighting
080his accolades, things that he did in war because, um because um before he went into World War II, he was a teacher, but then he did leave teaching and he went and served in World War II. And that is what um if you're not from Molen, you're probably most familiar with because he did some uh pretty interesting things with putting bazookas on his airplane. He was kind of the first person to do that. And we're gonna watch a video on that. It's only a one minute video, so it should be fine. Uh and we're gonna hopefully you guys can see that the sound the sound doesn't work. That's okay. We can just we can just watch. Okay, I'll talk over just a little bit. We're now standing here in awkward silence. So he joined the
081World War II um battle um over in Europe and he was a recon scout and so what he did was he would go up he would look at the enemy and uh but that was a little boring for Major Charles Carpenter. So what he did is he decided to strap I believe six bazookas on the wings of his airplane. And keep in mind this is a you can see a photo there. This is a recon airplane. Very close-range airplane. Not exactly something that stays up top and just drops them down. Right? So he would actually dive, I believe, between 100 and 300 feet within the ground. You can see him diving there. And then he would launch off the bazookas to get in uh to behind enemy lines and cause some very crippling damage uh
082to the opposing side. So that's uh what he's most known for. And that was just kind of a little video to get you guys familiar with his war accolades. But then we can move on to the wrist. So how did he get there? So when he was at MHS or when he was at high school, he taught at MHS. He decided when he was, I believe, a freshman, as I said before, he came from poverty. He didn't really have that positive role model. He decided to make a carpenter creed. And I'll let you guys read that up there. And he said, "I have resolved to exert all my effort towards being a nobler and stronger fellow, a gentleman, a scholar, a friend, and a real man/person. To the best of my ability, I will ever
083strive to self-control, self-improvement, freedom, wisdom, courage, generosity, truth, and a true nobility before gods and men. I will be better. And he wrote that in 1929. And he wrote that when he was a high school student. Think about, you know, the kind of students that we're trying to generate in today's age, right? And just think about what he was doing when he was just a kid at high school, right? I mean, he sat down and he wrote this. the maturity that it must have taken for him to write that and really want to live by something more than just what was in a textbook, right? He really brought out how he wanted to act, the person he wanted to be, and he put it on paper and he put it in those words. And that
084really is what spoke the most to both me, Akquille, and Mr. Lamp here. We really appreciated what he was trying to do, how he was really being more than a teacher, being more than just a person, being more than a soldier. He was really bringing all of those qualities out and to the forefront of his life. and he really tried to promote a better life for himself and those around him. So, how to make a creed. So, the reason this is up there is because in order to foster kind of the carpenter creed within our history club is we had all of our students in history club write their own creed. And that's kind of getting into what the real meat and potatoes of this presentation is supposed to be is we had them all
085write a creed. And I'll just read to you two of our students creeds up here. I promise to myself I will work harder and harder each day and I will never settle for mediocre. Every action will be done in love and love only. Love for my peers, love for myself, love for this life. I will never take for granted. I promise to be a better person each day. Forward is the only direction. I pledge myself to look at situations with objectivity, empathy, and generosity. to the best of my ability, I will continuously strive to improve myself for the betterment of myself and those around me. So, you saw it with Charles Carpenter and now you're seeing it with MHS students who are I believe both these people were seniors this year, but people from freshman,
086sophomore, junior, senior all wrote these creeds. So, they're doing the exact same thing. The exact same person um that Charles Carpenter was, what he did, he sat down, he wrote it. We're doing the exact same thing in the history club. And that's really what me and Mr. to land here in a we saw that and we were like this is something that we can bring to the greater school and the greater district. So our school culture plan what do we want to see happen and here we tonight we were just informing you guys and yes this is in the very early stages um but this is really what we want to see happen and we think that if it happens it can really generate um a lot of involvement a lot of uh pride and
087a lot of very developed and well-rounded students. So first is to adopt a personal growth creed for students to create freshman year inspired by the story of Charles Carpenter. So whether it's through link crew like was mentioned previously when the freshman are coming in either as eighth graders or in their very early freshman days they can hear the story of Charles Carpenter whether it's on the outdoor classroom or during one of the lessons they can hear that story and then we're going to ask them to write their own creed. So you see freshman orientation or link link crew event excuse me. So that is really a time when they're freshman, right? They still have four years ahead of them. They just got done with middle school. And we're giving them that opportunity to kind of
088take control of their lives. And we're saying, "Here is someone who is in your exact shoes. He did all of this in life, right? A cancer survivor, World War II veteran and hero, and someone who really put forth the values of a teacher and to change his community, right? We want you to model your life after a man like that, after someone who's accomplished so much and has given so much back to his community. He was a freshman when he did it. He was in high school when he did it. And now you're a freshman. And we really would like you to write your own. And the idea with that is that we weave that idea of personal growth or their carpenter creed into the classroom. Really like if I write down that I want
089to be a better person and I will do this no matter what. Right? Well, when you get into the classroom, if you being a better person means that you don't study for your math test, right? Or you don't study for your English quiz, right? um that you really look at your creed and you're like, well, this is what I promised myself that I was going to be. This is who I want to be and I really want to maintain that. Okay, so really weaving that in, whether it's the teachers enforcing that, right? See, very macro things up on the screen here, but whether it's the teachers enforcing that, whether it's peers, whether it's uh weekly gatherings where people go through um kind of how they're maintaining everything in their creed, but they really interweave that
090with the classroom. And then what we think also will be very um very good at MHS and will be implemented very well is to use that creed for each club to concentrate on certain aspects of what they do within their club. So kind of you know if the lineotype was writing about we strive to um foster creativity and to be good journalism right to foster good journalism. Well then that club would always they would see it whether it's painted up on the wall printed whatever they would see it and they' be like this is what we stand for right it's really giving we have our district mission statements we have a portrait of an educator we have a p portrait of our graduate it's really giving those mission statements to every club to every individual
091within the school all right to really unite that and where we would really like to see it we would really like to see it here is sports sports and sports okay we know that sports is a really big part of our time at MHS we know that a lot of our community members and a a lot of our students are very invested in it and so we would really like to see those creeds um also invested into those sports. So whether it's painted on the side of the locker room or in the dugout, they see it right, you know, like they're mid game, you know, they're having a pep talk and they look over and they see the creed of their team or the carpenter creed or they think back to the personal creed that
092they wrote and they're like, "This is who I want to be. Let's go back out on the field. Let's go back out to the classroom. Let's go home and let's accomplish it." So, and then our fourth part is to use those personal creeds as a way for students to reflect on poor decisions they may make. We all make mistakes. We all do, right? We're all human. And really, like I said, if you know you don't study, if you forget something, if you miss an event, if you're just not feeling up to it, you reflect on that creed and you think, "This isn't who I want to be." Uh, you know, we're kind of taking a step back. Let's start moving forward again. Let's re-evaluate where we are and let's really go back to the mission
093of our creed, of that personal creed that that student wrote. Step five is to post or promote or promote the Carpenter Creed into the sports culture, science, locker rooms, team goals, etc. That's kind of built off of step three as you saw before. Step six is to instill our district message and educational goals for students and community members to visit. So whether it's here, whether it's at like the front entrances of all the elementary, uh, middle and high schools, uh, they're really seeing it, right? Because community members, they don't go to our classrooms, at least not very often. Um, and they don't really see what's happening behind the scenes. So, we really make posts about it with through social media, uh, through the district newsletter, and we really let the community see these are the
094kinds of young people that we are promoting, that we are growing, and we really want you to see it, and we think that they're going to be very beneficial to our community. And our seventh step, and something that we think will really just tie a nice little bow around this whole project for each graduating class, right? Obviously, this will be an ever evolving thing for those running it, but for those students, you enter freshman year, you write your creed, you're really proud with it, you maintain it, you reflect upon it throughout all your years of high school. And then whether it's a lot of people or a couple of people, we would love to have them recite and read their creeds at graduation. kind of go back and like, you know, stand in front of
095the entire graduating class, their friends, their families, and say, "When I was a freshman, me and my peers, we all took the time to write this creed and to become people like this." And I'm sharing that with you today, and I'm happy that I accomplished that. And that will really foster kind of, you know, the educator and the graduate that we want to grow, right? That that is um enum enumerated in our portrait, right? Who we want to promote as MHS. People are going to see that at graduation. People are going to reflect themselves, okay? And they're going to see that, wow, we really did become it and we did it because of the resources at MHS, because of the support that our teachers gave us. And we really want to foster that. And then
096another personal anecdote that I just want to add on to this is that this past weekend I was down at Atlanta for a leadership development institute and we had a packet and we went through it with our um LDI leaders and we were just going through things like what's important to us. What values do we think are important within a leader? And at the very end, they had us write a couple of paragraphs or it could be as ever long as you want. And they had us write a vision statement. And I was writing mine and I was like, "Wow, this sounds exactly like my creed that I wrote when I was at that MHS um history club meeting." So, just think about that, right? It's not just something new that we're pioneering here. It's
097new to our classroom, but this is something that giant corporations are putting a bunch of time, effort, and money behind because it really works, because it's important, and it's really kind of a nationalwide and international thing that you're really empowering students and giving them kind of a life mission and a purpose. And with that, that is the end of our presentation. I'd be happy to answer any questions you guys may have. If you don't have them right now, uh you can all reach out to either Mr. Lamper, myself, or you. So, thank you guys very much. Any questions? I don't have a question, but I just want to say just the the cohesiveness of tonight's of just the the reading and the things that you're doing and what you're doing to promote explorers and connections
098and all of that is what leads to the students we saw for CTE and the history club. And so, it's just lovely to see kind of that progression of knowing that's what creates these student leaders and they're going to go out and make our communities better places. So, so thank you for all of that. It was welcome. All right. Uh, moving on to Student Information Systems Committee. Craig, need to brush up on my popcorn skills here. It's important. Uh, my name is Craig Reed. I'm the technology director. Um, I'm Stephanie Casey. I'm the special coordinator at Hol High School. Uh, Greg Green. I'm one of the assistants analysts for the district. and we're going to talk to you about um our student information system and some possible recommendations. Um so first of all, why why
099we're here announced a long time ago um around 2016 that there's going to be a new version called cumulative. So Greg and I started digging into what this is going to look like and we found out it's basically a rewrite of Skyward as we know it now. We're using SMS today. So we u we were kind of following along following along. There was a low in the action for a while. We didn't even know if it was going to come out actually. And then over the last couple years, Scoward's been reaching out to us saying schools are migrating. It's time it's time to start looking at it. And when we looked at it, we saw it was completely different. So we thought at that point, it's probably best to bring in other competitors just to
100make sure that Skyward Cumulative was the right move going forward. Um so and also it's been a long time since we've been on Skyward, a long time since we've looked at anything else. And so from the tech committee, we formed another committee. It's a two-part process. Um the first committee was just kind of to see where we're at with Skyward from a district perspective. So in this in this first part, we we had a lot of people in this room. We had extended cabinet members, we had administrators, we had teachers, administrative assistants, people from edtech. Um we just uh took a full day and we looked at um all three options, the three options that that we thought would be best. Um, we based this off of who can best do the Illinois state reporting
101because we're such a big district and it's so important that we really need to have a partner that had all the modules we're using but also has those can Illinois state reports because those things are are are pretty crazy as um so we looked at uh cumulative we looked at power school and infinite campus on a single day and from that day really two big decisions came out first um cumulative just wasn't where we thought it would be as far as what it because it integrating with other systems and it's reporting and uh it's not quite what we thought. So um we kind of moved gears towards power school and infinite campus and the committee decided that we wanted to expand and really kind of focus on the teacher part let elementary and secondary teachers
102look at specific parts of the of the uh of the system and then from there make a decision on what our recommendation would be. Um so that was the second part of our committee process was to expand that group. We had a great uh a great group of of uh of teachers that came in and um we had specific demonstrations by all by both Infinite Campus and Power School uh for their their system. This mys uh yeah, we wanted to first see uh because Scar wasn't making us uh change right now. they everything's out there of we're never going to force you, but you can kind of see that they will not on board to our current system. Everything that they're doing is the new system. So eventually it's not going to be worth it
103for them to uh maintain their current system, but they were not forcing us, but we did want to start with uh getting engaged of where are we at and not just make it a technology decision. We want to make sure everybody in the district, everybody has a role in using it. uh what were their thoughts on our current system. So this is a breakdown of the people in that initial survey or initial committee. So uh we leaned heavy on teachers but also brought in people in different roles in the district. Uh and then this was getting their gauge on what is the current system of Skyward as they know it. Uh integrating with different systems specifically Google Classroom because that is big in the district. uh and what was the response? How did it integrate?
104And you can see it was not on the higher end for a lot of it. Uh then, uh been able to view, you know, it was mediocre and at the same point, this is all a lot of our staff know. Uh I've been here 15 years. Skyward is all I know. So, a lot of our teachers that have been here for a while, Skyward is what they know. So, how comfortable are they with it? And you can see they're, you know, they can use it, but it's not top in the charts by any means. So Craig sent out a a survey to them where we collected those results along with few others. Um, but we can see uh the second one. This is one to take a closer look at. And so uh after the
105first demonstration of the results um or the different programs wanted to see okay what do they want to see more of and infinite campus and powers school were very high on it. Um like Craig said it was really kind of surprising. Uh everybody was okay to get away from Skyward even though that's what everybody's comfortable with. It's what they know. It's also what they know. um it doesn't do everything that you know well it'd be great if we could do this. We know the limitations of it. We've used it for a long time. Um we've tried to maximize the best we can but in the end it comes down to this is what we have. Um the demonstrations from Skyward and Infant Campus were very good. Uh you know got good feedback on all of
106it and uh during that that was focused mostly on teachers especially the second one. Uh we had teachers uh giving their feedback on what they saw, what they liked and with those it was close um between you know is 60 to 40% between uh infinite campus and power school. Um so did you happen here? Okay. So I was on the committee with the secondary group, excuse me. Um and this was these were comments. They were asked they asked us afterwards for comments uh through a Google form. The highlighted trends is what teachers kind of felt about power school. It has a nice interface. It's very customizable. You can see user friendly, many options, additional features. Um and then looking at Infinite Campus again the highlighted teacher feedback is that it has good integration with other
107apps and current district systems. Um on here there was a lot of talk about language supports and translation its ability to talk to Embrace which really struck my core. Um the Google syncing so a lot of the systems we already have in place right now infinite campus just really works uh really well with that where Skyward maybe doesn't work as well. Overall, what we liked from Infinite Campus, its interface looks similar to Sky Skyward, but it's more modern and more responsive for all types of devices. Again, that integration with multiple systems. Um, the IEP integration for your IEPs, your 504s. Uh, for Skyward, you kind of have to toggle between Skyward and Next Path right now. Um, easier reporting. Skyward's data mining is not at all user friendly. Um they have an optional learning management
108system. It syncs to Google classroom better and it has full integration with Google core services. So um and one thing that we forgot to put on the previous slide is that it does have um complete uh well not complete but quite a few of the languages translated built into the system itself the application itself. Um the other two struggled a little bit with the uh um with the translation part of it, but we were really impressed with Infinite Campus, the way that it would do that within the the application, not have to use a Google Translate or something for that. So, it's a lot of our student demographics. Um upon approval, this is just a very tentative timeline. Um the the big thing here is to keep to keep note of is that it's going
109to take us a full year to implement this thing. So, if we hit the ground running in July with with our with our procurement, we've already kind of budgeted it through the edtech funds. Um, and being able to buy teacher devices through a grant was huge because it allowed us to be able to to budget for this next year. Um, so we're going to definitely have to renew Skyward um and then purchase this. So, it's going to be a very big investment for the first year because Skyward is is costly. Um, and the first year of this or any system is going to be costly. But, we'll be running Skyward all next year while we implement this thing. So that's very important to uh to make sure you understand. Um as well as trying to
110define specific dates that we can train our our specific users, administrative assistants have to be trained. The high school counselors have to be trained on how to do how to do their scheduling as well as the middle school um you know specific uh um teacher groups. Um just the the multiple people that that use this and reporting. Um we're going to have to define all that. So it's really kind of hard to say exactly how everything's going to going to pan out. Um but upon approval, we'll start this school year working with Infinite Campus. They've been amazing to work with um and really identify actual dates, specific times of the year next year that we can get our our teachers together uh for that training for that PD and make sure that come June uh
111June 30th of 2026 for registration u we're going to um be all in on campus um and Skyward will just kind of be there for historical hit. So that's tenative. So we we can sharpen this up once we have those initial meetings and everything's approved uh to move that way. U just a quick cost comparisons budgetary only. There's a lot of modules. Everything's everything's kind of packaged together, layered together. So um Skyward, we have a lot of different modules for food service and special education stuff that I'm not remembering. Um and uh just to kind of match Infinite Campus and Skyward, Infinite Campus was the cheaper option. We didn't make that part of the the rubric really when it came to the committee. We didn't really want to be about cost or we really wanted
112to be about features. But if things got really close, then of course cost is going to be a factor. But it just so so happened that the committee chose um one of the the cheaper options. Um what I liked about Infinite Campus versus the other as far as budgetary goes that Infinite Campus doesn't charge that 3% up charge every single year. Um so it's pretty level funded. Um very rarely do they have an increase. Power School and Skyward both um just just a standard one to 3% every year and you know as we get into the hundreds of thousands to renew something that 3% becomes you know very very costly. So just a quick cost comparison and that's all we have for that. Any questions that we can address? I have a question. Can you
113guys hear me? Um what is your plan to um train students and families who have used Skyward for years? Yeah, we're um we have it's really hard to see. I know, but uh I would say probably towards the end of next school year, just talking with Infinite Campus, we're going to have to think about uh maybe having some uh community nights um community engagement evenings. We're definitely going to have some videos. I I u I envision a website just kind of when we get started and things with July, once we after we get an environment going, I'd like to have some screenshots out there. um just some FAQs, you know, timeline of where we're at, where we need to be. Um so I I think that we can do a lot of that towards the
114end of next school year and be ready for registration. We saw the um and jump in, please. We saw the uh the parent side of things and the demonstration and it was it was a pretty clean interface. I don't you know, it's pretty easy to navigate, but I can actually speak from experience. the district I live in, my students are there. So, I'm just a parent in that. So, I am familiar with the parent portal of it and so I've done their online registration, um all of my students grades, I get the alerts of when my kids checked out, um making the online payment. So, I'm familiar with the parent piece of it. Um the interface, it it is user friendly. It's very similar to Skyward as far as your navigation's on the left. you
115know, go to the area you want, but there is more to it and just having it set up, but the registration um I can speak very in depth about how Molines is. Um I set it up, but I use uh I make it a point each year. I do my kids registration into wit um instead of my life just because I want to see it. I want to compare and it it's very straightforward. It's very simple to use. Um the biggest thing will be getting parents the new login that that will change um getting registered for that and so there will be um some communication that we will have to be pushing out and informing parents but it's really no different than we went online registration with Skyward. That was a big push. A lot
116of times parents at that time weren't familiar with using it. We had to do a big push at that point. Now people are expecting it. It's just given the tools and resources to know how to get logged in. Um, but I also just want to make sure there's a plan for students to be able to use it since that's where they, you know, check their grades and do all of that. Yeah, absolutely. That's going to, you know, we'll have to, we'll have to and Infinite Campus has all three of them really, but Infinite Campus has a really good onboarding plan for districts. Um, so and that's I know that was really really talked about towards once we have the live environment after we have teachers trained so that teachers can provide the most support for
117their their students in the classroom. Um, so yeah, absolutely. We'll have to have to identify exactly what that looks like um as we get implemented. Okay. Thank you. I would say that those were my major wonderings as well. um the parent and the student support because I noticed you guys did a really great job with getting educators on board at all levels, administrators and teachers um and that feedback, but I didn't see any parents up there uh to look at the platform from that perspective and give that feedback. Um and then the other question that I had was the data that you guys provided um on those uh screenshots. Was there a breakdown or an analysis of those responses from secondary because you had like a liker scale? Was there a a breakdown of who
118uh voted that way or who selected those responses from secondary to elementary? because there is a big difference in the student and the teach and the teacher use user um interface versus the elementary and I know even from a parent perspective but also from the educator's perspective about what you're putting in there what you're sharing with your students. So how how did you guys um kind of get get at the heart of the decision making when it pertains to that component of the the system? Yeah, it was it was pretty much just the I mean a lot of it I think was the interface. We didn't break it down to this this number. We didn't break down to um secondary or elementary. It was pretty much just a kind of a group decision. Um but
119we did in the presentations we did break out uh the demonstrations as far as in the morning was just elementary and it was all focused on the elementary and the afternoon was focused just on secondary. So that way it pertain they could tailor just to what each grade level could use. And so in that mix um I mean we could definitely go through the results and figure it out but break it out still. Um in general it did across all levels it was fairly even distributed as far as kind of that 64 I think when we looked at it of who who voted for what. I think it was kind of on the elementary part of it and we were pretty unanimous in wanting in campus. So I think that it was I mean and
120I talked to other people that were secondary that wanted that as well. So, I would say that we were very pleased with what we saw. So, yeah, I get I could still rate that out. Yeah. Any other questions? Thank you. All right. Uh, I have a motion to adjourn the uh committee of the whole. So moved. Second. All in favor? I All right, we'll take uh five minutes. A real five minutes, not any five minutes. It's so hard. take that long is scary but the new version isn't the same and so it's clunky do lots of things Just make sure you get here a little early. I think you just want to make sure we get everybody and put you up on that street wall there. Yes, sir. So, Any other questions for me? Don't
121they go to bed by this time? Oh, no. Each each kid I got later at the 25th I'll just kind of do a quick run thing all the different things that you're going to see. That is too funny. mean that your budget audit capital if you have any questions or think of anything before meeting this is nice big difference from where we were I feel comfort and you guys did a very good job preserving I think we've ever had I understand. All right. Good evening. Thank you. Appreciate it. do it. So you don't have to be we'll have the rest of the meeting to an empty room here. Just just you just that'll be it. Kate Kate's still here and then taking notes. making this All right. I call to the regular meeting of the
122board of education, school district number 40, and immediately following committee of the whole meeting, Monday, April 14th, 2025, the Mulling Education Center. Um, roll call, please. Audrey Adamson here. Chet Smith here. Ramona Dixon here. Jason Frell here. Lindsay Hines. Andrew Wear here. Aaron Waldron Smith here. Abigail Greenley here. Akquilkumar. All right. Uh, approval of any board of board of education member participating remotely. Recommend a motion that the board of education approved Aaron Walden Smith to request participating participate remotely during Monday, April 14th, 2025 board of education meetings. So move. Second. Uh, all in favor? I I I oppose passes. 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. Approval of the minutes. Can
123I have a motion? Approval of the minutes of the regular meeting of the board of education of March 10th, 2025. So moved. Second discussion. All in favor? I approval of the minutes of the close session of the regular meeting board of regular meeting of the board of education of March 10th, 2025. I have a motion. So move. Second. Discussion. All in favor? I I opposed. Yes. Great. Communications, public comment, and participation. Got none. Moving on. Public hearing of the proposed 2024 2025 amended school budgets. We are now going to begin the hearing of the proposed 2024 2025 amended school district budget. Is there anyone who wishes to speak in favor of the proposed 2024 2025 amended school district budget? No. All right. Hearing none. Is there anyone who wishes to speak in opposition to the
124proposed 2024 2025 amended school district budget? All right, seeing none, is there anyone who wishes to speak neither for nor against the proposed 2024 2025 amended school district budget but wishes to offer additional information. None are going to conclude the hearing. Hearing no public comment, we will now close the hearing of the proposed 2024 2025 amended school district budget. Well done. All right. Consent agenda. Uh the recommended motion that the board of education approve the actions contained in consent agenda items A through B and D through MM as presented. Some second. Discussion. Roll call, please. Jason Perrell. Hi. Lindsay Hines. Aaron Waldron Smith. Hi. Audrey Adamson. Hi. Chad Smith. Hi. Ramona Dixon. I abstain. Andrew Wer. I. All right. recommended motion that the board of education approve the actions contained in the consent agenda item
125C as presented. Second discussion. Roll call. Lindsay Hines. Aaron Waldron Smith. I Audrey Adamson. Hi. Chad Smith. Hi. Ramona Dixon. Hi. Jason Ferrell. Hi. Andrew Wear. Abstain. All right. Resolution to adopt amended uh amended budget for the 2024 2025 fiscal year. Recommended motion is that the board of education approve the resolution authorizing the adoption of the amended budget for the 2024 2025 fiscal year. Discussion roll call please. Aaron Waldron Smith. Hi. Audrey Adamson. Hi. Chet Smith. Hi. Ramona Dixon. Hi. Jason Frell. Hi. Lindsay Hines. Andrew Wear. Hi. Approval of addendum to the employment contract Mulling High School assistant principal for curriculum instruction and assessment. The recommended motion that the board of education approve an addendum to the employment contract for the incoming Mulling High School assistant principal for curriculum instruction and assessment. and Jeffrey Whitaker
126to include the attendance and all costs associated with three days of courageous principles training from June 6, 2025 to June 8, 2025. Second discussion. I was just going to say I think I it's wonderful I think that we've continued to do this as um different leadership has been onboarded to make sure that they all have some of this similar training and they're coming at things from some you know familiar background stuff. So, I think it's it's great that we continue to see this as something that we're focusing on. Anyone else? All right. Roll call, please. Audrey Adamson. Hi. Chad Des Smith. Hi. Ramona Dixon. I abstain. Jason Frell. Hi. Hines. Aaron Waldron Smith. I. Andrew W. I. All right. Approval of addendum to employment contract temporary interim principal at Lincoln Irving Elementary School. The recommended
127motion is that the board of education approve an addendum to the employment contract for incoming temporary interim principal at Lincoln Irving Elementary School. Even uh to include the attendance and all costs associated with three days of courageous principal training from June 6, 2025 to June 8th, 2025. So moved. Second. Discussion over the floor. I agree. All right. Uh, roll call, please. Chad the Smith. Hi. Ramona Dixon. Abstain. Jason Ferrell. Hi. Lindsay Hines. Aaron Waldron Smith. I. Audrey Adamson. Hi. Andrew Wear. Hi. All right. Approval of revised job description for the Bartlett Performing Arts Center manager. recommended motions that the board of education approve the revised job description for part-time Bartlett Performing Arts Center manager to become full-time a full-time position renamed as the workbased learning and events coordinator discussion this is a great move as
128we've seen in our CT presentations all right any more discussion Roll call, please. Ramona Dixon, I. Jason Frell, hi. Lindseay Hines. Aaron Waldron Smith. I. Audrey Adamson. Hi. Chad de Smith. Hi. Andrew Wear. I. Approval of dual credit partnership agreement between Blackhawk College and Mulling School District number 40. Recommend a motion that the board of education approve the dual credit partnership agreement entered into this first day of August 2025 by and between Blackhawk College in Mulling School District number 40 pursuant to the Illinois Dual Credit Quality Act. Second discussion. Roll call, please. Jason Frell, hi. Lindsay Hines. Aaron Waldron Smith. I. Audrey Adamson. Hi. Chetta Smith. Hi. Ramona Dixon. Hi. Andrew Wer. Hi. Approval of impact memorandum of understanding Browning Field concession and bathroom improvements. Recommend a motion that the board of education enter into
129an impact memorandum of understanding with ill construction labor and management council for Browning Field concession and bathroom improvement. So move. Second discussion. Roll call, please. Lindseay Hines. Aaron Waldron Smith. I Audrey Adamson. Hi. Chad D Smith. Hi. Ramona Dixon. I Jason Ferrell. Hi. Andrew Wear. Hi. Approval of agreement between Upper Iowa University and the Mulling Pole Valley School District number 40. The recommended motion is that the board of education approve the school the school district clinical placement agreement between Upper Iowa University and the Mullen Cole Valley School District number 40 for the 2025 2026 school year. Um, second discussion. Roll call, please. Just I'm missing. That's what we're doing now. Yeah. 13. Okay. That was Who did Jason and Audrey? I don't know. And I'll just use this. Okay. All right. So is Jason. Oh,
130your sheet. Yeah, my sheets. My sheets's missing. Check. Okay. So, okay. All right. Um, Walden Smith. Hi, Audrey Adamson. Hi, Chad Desmet. Hi, Ramona Dixon. I Jason Ferrell. Hi. Lindsay Hines. Andrew Wear. I. All right. Reports, requests, and open discussion. Dr. Savage. Okay. Couple of things. First of all, I want to officially welcome everyone to the education center. It's exciting to finally have a home base for our school board meetings. Um, first of all, I want to thank the board of education to validate uh the decisions that you make and pro and providing this uh location for us. I want to thank uh Keith Carstens's and his uh facilities department and Mr. Gallow for um all of the decisions and the hard work going into uh making this place a reality. Um I want to
131congratulate Mr. Dismmet on his reelection and I want to uh welcome Miss Severson and Mr. Manis on the election of their first term to the board of education for the Molino Valley School District. I'd like to thank the other candidates for their willingness to step up and serve our community. That is very much appreciated. I would also like to thank Miss Severson and Mr. Mayus for being proactive and for finding the time to engage with the district and their new schoolboard member orientation in the onboarding process. And we've also been working with them to be sure that they have a copy of their required trainings as well for the Illinois School Board Association. Regarding the reorganization of the board and the seating of the new members of the board of education, currently we expect to
132receive the official election results from the county clerk on the 17th. So, we will be able to conduct the receding of the board meeting um um at our next school board meeting on April 28th. Uh for the meeting on the 28th, we are um going to have photographic arts here beginning at 5:00 pm to take professional head shot for our new school board members and any other board member that would like to have their professional headshot photo retaken. Um uh we would also like to take a new group photo around 5:30 p.m. if at all possible. Um we do not anticipate having instant access to these photos. So, the current group photo on the website will come down on the morning of the 29th. We'll replace it with our logo until the new group photo
133can go back up in its place. Um, we also anticipate having student musicians here to perform on the 28th. We want to celebrate the amazing service of our outgoing members and also celebrate the service of our incoming members. Um, and lastly, on uh the next meeting on April 28th, we will open and close two separate meetings uh that night. The first one will be the regular meeting with the current board. Uh we actually uh timing will be closing out our current strategic pay schools. So it makes sense to do that with this current board of education towards the end of that meeting because President Wayard is one of the two non-returning board members. He will need to uh have nominations for a temporary president. Uh once a temporary president has been named, President Weer will
134then adjourn this current board of education for the last time. Then immediate immediately following the temporary president will open the second meeting. And in that meeting, four things must take place. Seat the two new school board members. Uh administer the oath of office. Um elect officers and set a time and place for regular meetings. And then adjourn. So, just wanted to make sure everybody had those sort of order of business and something to look forward to for uh the next meeting. Lots of things happening. Just a reminder to file your statement of economic interest by May 1 if you have not already done so. Um and this is a busy time. We've seen our amazing students uh doing such wonderful things. Lots of events to see in our district in April and May from concerts
135and plays and sporting events and classroom projects. Um, I know our student board members like to keep us updated. So, so many wonderful things and we're so proud of them. Um, a few other scheduling reminders. Um, we are having our open house here at our new education center uh next Wednesday on April 23rd from 3:30 to 5:30. The district annual retirement reception will be May 7th upstairs at the University Club downtown Molen. Open house from 4:30 to 6:30. And lastly, it's time to get ready for graduation. Please get that on your calendars. Board of Education. Uh we will have a new date, Friday evening, May 23rd, to celebrate the class of 2025. So our new board members will be sworn in and very shortly after be um passing out diplomas. So um and lastly, uh
136one quick little um announcement for the second time in a row. You've heard it here first. Uh we've been uh got another award, another innovative district recognition from model school. So yay. You know, we're just lots of good job. Nice job. He was really getting ready there. Brian will be wearing that as a case for the next No doubt. No doubt. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Dr. Savage, student uh board of education member report. Abby. Yes. So, um, a little update on women in STEM. We've been to four different outreach events with, uh, elementary school students. Since the last time we met, so we've been super busy. We've had a guest speaker, um, come in and talk to us. We had a pharmacy, a pharmacist come in that worked in retail pharmacy and share some
137of her experiences. And then I know most of our clubs, including women in STEM, are now electing new officers for next year's uh, clubs in the coming couple weeks. Um the biggest event that has happened at the high school in the last few weeks has been NHS induction last week. There were about 94 I think 96 um new members inducted juniors and seniors and then uh NHS is now preparing for their campus cleanup on April 22nd. Um they're partnering with history club, green molen interact club. So this will be a very big event where a lot of the student body is involved. And then I'd also like to give a shout out to at NH uh to five students who are recognized at NHS induction for having all straight A's throughout their four years at
138Molen High School. So that is quite a significant achievement. Um and I'd like to recognize them for all of their academic effort. And then I'd also like to give a small shout out to um a new club that started up this year called Threads of Kindness. They are working to provide uh dresses for homecoming sades and prom for students who might not be able to afford to go out and shop at places. Um so they are now uh renting out their prom dresses the last couple weeks for prom, which is May 10th, and they've seen a lot of success. They're very small but very passionate club. So they've done a great job because I know it is very difficult to start up a club and to get members to join. It's been a personal experience.
139It's very difficult to do that. So they have done a really good job of getting that started because there's definitely a need for that in our school. That's all. Thank you. What's the number that threats of kindness? I can give you contact. All right. Board of Education member open discussion. Um I today I did the um kids at kids against hunger uh field trip uh with the Roseville and J uh bsentennial kids and uh as you can see with the the the student speakers up here I I'm always blown away by our students you get I mean they just they knock it out of the park every time and they ran this whole program uh with with some input from uh Mrs. Peterson but they pretty much ran the whole program. So cool to see.
140And I I texted Aaron during it. I'm like, I'm pretty sure Rowan really is the actual principal of High School because she is everywhere doing all these things. So I was really impressed with those kids today. Anybody else? All right. Uh close. We will now close session. Um I have a motion to go into close session to consider the employment and the appointment employment confirmation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employees of the district. Second. Hi. We'll go close session. I just think I just can't. All right. Can I have a motion to return to open session? Moved. Second. All in favor? I. Any opposed? All right. Uh, we motion pass. We are back into open session. All right. We have a motion. The recommended motion is that the board of education approve the appointment
141of Mr. Donald CJ Smith to this position of Logan Elementary principal effective for the 2025 2026 school year. Second. Okay. Uh, discussion. All right. Uh, roll call, please. Chat to Smith. Hi. Ramona Dixon. I abain. Jason Perrell. Hi. Lindsay Hines. Aaron Walden. Smith. I. Audrey Adamson. Hi. Andrew W. I. All right. Uh, can I have a motion to adjurnn? So moved. Second. All right. All in favor? I I both. All right.