0018 and I'm reconvening to open session and calling to order the regular board of education meeting for Indian Prairie School District 204 on Monday, September 22nd, 2025. Michelle, will you please call the role? >> Miss Donahghue >> here. >> Mr. Rising >> here. >> Mr. Kurubis >> here. >> Miss Fosdic >> here. >> Miss Deming, >> present. >> And Miss Gint, >> we have a quorum. Mr. Rising, will you lead us in the pledge? I pledge algiance 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. >> The next regular board meeting will be held on Monday, October 6th. We have one board salute today, Miss Deming. District 204 students named National Merit Semi-finalist. The National Merit
002Scholarship Corporation announced that 53 District 204 students have been identified as semi finalists in the 71st annual National Merit Scholarship Program. Tea Valley had 17 students, Niqua Valley had 26, and Wanzi Valley had 10 students identified as semi- finalists. These academically talented high school seniors have an opportunity to continue in the competition for more than 6,930 national merit scholarships worth more than $26 million that will be offered next spring. Merit scholars are selected based on their skills, accomplishments, and potential for for success in rigorous college studies. Congratulations to the District 204 semi-finalist and good luck as the scholarship competition moves forward. >> Let's give a a round of applause for this great accomplishment. Okay, next we have a student representative report by Kylie Tran from NUA Valley. Hi Kylie. Good evening. My name is Kylie
003Tran and I'm honored to serve as student representative for Nqua Valley this school year. To kick off the new year, the new school year strong, our student council and JKB student leaders helped welcome new students by leading them on a scavenger hunt around Nikico Valley with prizes and games along the way. This opportunity gave new students a way to connect with new peers and gain familiarity with the building from a student's perspective. Our freshman orientation was also a success. The freshman had the opportunity opportunity to walk their schedule and meet their senior adviserss who will be showing them the Wildcat way. Having more than 70 student clubs and activities, we also held our annual Frostfest that gave students, freshmen, and their families a chance to explore opportunities for involvement and engage with our current student
004leaders. Parents had the opportunity to experience their students schedule at curriculum night earlier this month. The best people to ask for help on where to go are the students themselves. So, our student council helped point parents in the right direction that night. The Wildcat Assembly for freshmen was also held earlier this month to reiterate the importance of self- advocacy involvement and engagement at our school. Fall sports are in full spring with student athletes occupied with practice meets and games with our DVC coming up. The annual improv show was another success by our theater to pro program with MMA Mia to look forward to in the spring. Organized by our senior student council class, senior sunrise was also a success with great weather and happy seniors. This past week, we brought NA to Nashville. We started
005off the week with NASOs and Dance organized by our dance team and orchested this past week. It was a night of fun competition, team camaraderie, and lots and lots of cheering. There was even a sponsor dance intermission. We ended the week off with an annual fall pep rally featuring performances from our marching wildcats dance team, cheer, and orchestas. The stands were packed at last Friday's football game. And even though our team didn't end up winning, we won in school spirit. To end the week of festivities, we had Meet Me in Nashville themed homecoming dance, which featured a live band to welcome students at the entrance. Finally, the fall is an especially busy time of year for our stu our seniors figuring out what they want to pursue after high school. The guidance counselors have been
006working hard to alleviate stress, offering access sessions before school for navigating school links, which is a necessary tool for the application process and accessing college visit sessions which are being held at NUA through October. For parents, the guidance counselors have hosted a college application informational session and tomorrow will be financial aid night. Finally, in the coming weeks, our school will be administering the PSAT NMSQ and offering flex blocks for students not taking the standardized test to get access to extra support from teachers or have an opportunity to make up any missing work they have. On the week of October 27th, Nico will be hosting career week. This week is dedicated for students to explore options they have for after high school and engage in meaningful conversations with professionals ranging from the healthcare to the trades.
007It's still early in the school year, but we look forward to a great year to come. Thank you and I hope you have a great rest of your evening. Go Wildcats. >> Thank you. [Applause] Okay, next on the agenda is a bittersweet um task here, but we have a recognition and proclamation by Miss Fostic. I would like to invite I would like to invite Saba Jane to come join me at the podium, please. while I read this. All right. Indian Prairie School District 204 proclamation. Whereas Sepnane was elected to her first term on the Indian Prairie District School District 204 Board of Education in April and was reelected in April 2025. She has served in leadership roles as secretary and vice president of the Indian Prairie School Board School District 204 Board of Education and
008has worked to strengthen public education and cultivate community partnerships focusing on student mental health, academic excellence and the successful outcomes of the district's 2024 bond referendum. And whereas Miss Jane is the principal lecturer in communication and media studies and faculty director of the center for the advancement of faculty excellence at North Central College. And whereas Miss Jane is a second generation Indian-American devoted wife and mother of two teenage sons holding a jurist doctor from Depal University and a master of science in communication from Illinois State University. And whereas Miss Jane contributes culturally through the arts, teaching Indian dance at the Neighborville Park District and serving as founder and artistic director of a nonprofit dance troop. And whereas Miss Jane has clearly expressed her guiding philosophy from the African proverb, it takes a village to raise
009a child. And she has dedicated herself to building a strong and thriving future for our village so that all residents may flourish. Now therefore, be it proclaimed that the Indian Prairie School District 204 Board of Education, Administration, and community honor Sapna Jane for her outstanding service. We thank her for her willingness to actively participate as an elected official and volunteer leader, which she has been of great value to all stakeholders in the district. We wish her all the best as she transitions from the board of education to her new role on the Neapville City Council, caring for the legacy of caring and commitment she has shown our school district. [Applause] SNA, I'd like to say a few words before you say something. So, over the past five years, we've been very fortunate to work with
010you through election campaigns and while serving on our board, we've faced challenges and difficult decisions. and you've always been very thoughtful and focused on the well-being of the students and two the 204 community. With your active involvement, we've overcome obstacles and created impressive successes. We've shown how seven people with very different opinions, experiences, and ideas can effectively work together. Thank you for all of your contributions and for being an impactful member of our board. We will miss you, but know you will continue to improve our community as a member of the Neapville City Council. We wish you the very best. >> Thank you. I actually wrote my words down because I knew I wouldn't get through this if I didn't. Um, thank you guys. That I I'm just going to stick to what I wrote
011down. Um, thank you Dr. Tally, my fellow board members, staff, teachers, students, parents, all community members. Um, serving District 204 over the past four and a half years has truly been one of the greatest honors of my life and some of the most meaningful work I have ever been a part of. It's really truly hard to believe what we've all accomplished together. I still remember my first meeting After taking the oath, we had to make decisions about bringing students back um full-time during COVID and protocols were changing by the day. And you know, it it just almost feels like yesterday we were on the stage in Matia High School trying to make these decisions. And since then, we've navigated school boundaries, strategic planning, facility assessments, a referendum, and now our superintendent search. It's kind of
012breathtaking what we've been able to do together for four and a half years. And through it all, one thing has been reaffirmed for me more than anything, and that's the importance of public education and the people who make it happen at every level, including this board. Even when we came to the table with different viewpoints, I always felt we were united in the same goal and that was what would best serve our students. And when that was the focus and it always t is it is really incredible to see what we can do and what can be accomplished. I've had some extraordinary leadership examples in the last four and a half years. I often ask myself what would Dr. Tally do because he's he's set the bar for me in so many ways in terms
013of what extraordinary leadership looks like. Um, I often will ask myself, what would Lori do? Um, just incredible leadership that I've had the privilege of seeing up close along with my dear board members. Um, we joke sometimes and we say, "I love you guys to each other because sometimes we really feel that way." And, um, I learned that that's not common in a lot of boards. Um, but I truly do love these guys. My contributions feel so small in compared to what I've received over the past four and a half years. I'm just deeply deeply grateful to have served alongside you. Such dedicated and effective governing body. Thank you just for letting me be a part of it. District 204 will always hold a special place in my heart. It's the reason my husband and
014I chose to move here. It remains the best decision we've made. I look forward to all that lies ahead for this district and will continue cheering 204 on as a parent, as a community member, and now as a city council member. You better believe 204 is represented up there. Um, thank you guys so much. I will miss you. Get a picture. Get a picture. >> Oh, we got to do a picture. C the next people. myself. Okay, I next need a motion to approve the suspension and waiver of policy 2 col 70s provision related to publication of the current board vacancy and acceptance of résumés for the current board vacancy. I'll make a motion that the board of education approve the suspension and waiver of policy 2.70 provisions relating to publication of the current board
015vacancy and acceptance of resumes for the current board vacancy as presented. >> Second >> I'd like to say something then I'll ask for discussion. The board has 60 days to fill Miss Jane's vacancy. Typically, the opening would be posted for applications, interviews held, and a candidate selected. Last time we had an opening, we had over 30 applicants. One of the board's most important responsibilities is selecting and hiring the superintendent. We are currently in the midst of this process with key actions needed by the board in the weeks ahead. Our timeline continues to be to have a new superintendent selected and contracted in December. Additionally, in preparation for upcoming negotiations, we have just started to discuss union contract terms. After careful evaluation and given the immediiacy of these critical tasks, I'm asking the board to wave
016our typical process for filling a vacated board seat. This will allow us to consider the appointment of an experienced former board member, Natasha Grover, to fill the vacancy. Is there any other discussion? Okay, Michelle, will you please take the role? >> Mr. Rising? >> Yes. >> Mr. Kurubis? >> Yes. >> Miss Deming? >> I. >> Miss Donahghue. >> I. >> Miss Fostic? >> Yes. >> The motion passes. Next, I need a motion to appoint Natasha Grover to fill the current board vacancy effective immediately until the next regular election in April 2027. >> Make a motion. Oh, go ahead. >> Go ahead. >> You have it. Go ahead. Um, I request that we uh that the board appoint Natasha Grover to fill the vacancy uh until the board election next board election April 2027 as presented.
017>> Second. >> Any discussion? >> All right, Michelle, will you please take the role? >> Miss Demi, >> I. >> Mr. Rising, >> yes. >> Miss Donahghue, >> yes. >> Mr. Kurubus, >> yes. >> And Miss Vasik, >> yes. Thank you, Miss Grover, for agreeing to serve again. Um, I know you said you have a couple words that you'd like to say. Thank you, board president Donna Hugh. I want to begin by thanking the board for appointing me to fill this vacancy. I also want to congratulate Sapna Jane um for a pointment to the city council. I had the privilege of working alongside her with in the school board and I know she will continue to do wonderful things for our community. It is truly an honor to return to the school board. From 2018
018to 2023, I had the privilege of serving with the school board. This experience reminded me as this moment does now that as that at the heart of everything we do is our students. Every decision we make, we must reflect what is best for them. By way of introduction, I am an attorney and a parent and someone deeply interested deeply invested in district 204. My husband and I have three children. Two who graduated from the district in 2018 and 2020 and one who is currently a junior sitting behind me in high school. I am proud that our district has been recognized for its excellence. In 2025, NICH ranked us 10th best school district in Illinois and 29th in the nation. The success is possible because of the dedication of our teachers, administrators, including our superintendent, Dr.
019Tally, and staff who work tirelessly every day to support students in their growth and achievement. I look forward to working with them and with my fellow board members to continue building on the strong foundation and to ensure that we inspire all students to achieve their greatest potential. Finally, I want to acknowledge the current board and how much I value their dedication and commitment to this voluntary voluntary role. And I thank my colleagues for placing their trust in me. Once again, I'm also grateful to my husband Gotham and ch and children Selena, Devon, and Roshny for their unwavering support. Serving our students and community is both a privilege and a responsibility and I am committed to giving my very best to this role. Thank you. [Applause] All right, Miss Grover, you have to come in and
020take the oath of office again. I will say to again, thank you very very much for agreeing to come back to the board. We know your experience and passion will allow you to immediately contribute to the critical activities in front of this board. So, welcome back. >> If you'll repeat after me, please. I >> um Yes, please. I, Natasha Grobert, >> do solemnly swear or affirm >> that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office >> that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office >> of member of the school board of Indian Prairie School District uh 204. the office of member of the school board of Indian Prairie Community Unit School District 204. >> In accordance with the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of the State of Illinois, and the
021laws of the state of Illinois to the best of my ability. >> In accordance with the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of the State of Illinois, and the laws of the state of Illinois to the best of my ability. I further swear that >> I further swear that >> I shall respect taxpayer interest by serving as a faithful protector of the school district assets. >> I shall respect taxpayer interest by serving as a faithful protector of school district assets. >> I shall encourage and respect the free expression of opinion by my fellow board members and others who seek a hearing before the board while respecting the privacy of students and employees. >> I shall encourage and respect the free of opinion by my fellow board members and others who seek a hearing before
022the board while respecting the privacy of students and employees. >> I shall recognize that a board member has no legal authority as an individual and that decisions can be made only by majority vote at a public board meeting. >> I shall recognize that a board member has no legal authority as an individual and that decisions can be made only by majority vote at a public board meeting. I shall abide by majority decisions of the board while retaining the right to seek changes in such decisions through ethical and constructive channels. >> I shall abide by the majority decisions of the board while retaining the right to seek changes in such decisions through ethical and constructive channels. >> As part of the board of education, I shall accept the responsibility for my role in the equitable and
023quality education of every student in the school district. As part of the board of education, I shall accept the responsibility for my role in the equitable and quality education of every student in the school district. I shall foster with the board extensive participation of the community, formulate goals, define outcomes, and set the course for Indian Prairie Community Unit School District 204. I shall foster with the board extensive participation of the community, formulate goals, define outcomes, and set the course for Indian Community Unit School District 204. >> I shall assist in establishing a structure and an environment designed to ensure all students have the opportunity to attain their maximum potential through a sound organizational framework. I shall assist in establishing a structure and an environment designed to ensure all students have the opportunity to attain their
024maximum potential through a sound organizational framework. >> I shall strive to ensure a continuous assessment of student achievement and all conditions affecting the education of our children in compliance with state law. >> I shall strive to ensure a continuous assessment of student achievement and all conditions affecting the education of our children in compliance with state law. I shall serve as education's key advocate on behalf of students in our community schools to advance the vision for Indian Prairie Community Unit School District 204. >> I shall serve as education's key advocate on behalf of students and our community school to advance the vision for Indian Prairie Community Unit School District 204. and I shall strive to work together with the district superintendent to lead the school district toward fulfilling the vision of the the board has created
025fostering excellence for every student in the areas of academic skills, knowledge, citizenship, and personal development. >> I shall strive to work together with the district superintendent to lead the school district towards fulfilling the vision the board has created, fostering excellence for every student in the areas of academic skills, knowledge, citizenship, and personal development. >> Congratulations. [Applause] here. [Applause] >> I think we're going to have >> right up here. >> We we we have something All right, that was the world longest oath. I know it's everyone's favorite. Um, nominations are now in order for the office of vice president. Do I have a nomination for vice president? I will make a motion that the board of education approve Allison Fostic as vice president of the board of education. >> Allison Fosdic is nominated. Are there any
026other nominations for the office of vice president? Hearing no further nominations. The nominations for office of vice president are closed. I need a motion that the board of education vote on the lone candidate to the position of vice president. So moved. >> Yes. >> Okay. Michelle, will you please call the role? >> Mr. Rising. >> Yes. >> Miss Deming. >> Hi. >> Miss Fosdic. >> Yes. >> Miss Donahghue. >> Yes. >> Mr. Kuba. >> Also, yes. >> I apologize. >> Did I add Miss Grover? >> Did you call Miss Grover? and Miss Grover. >> Yes. >> Okay. The the vote is 6 in favor of Miss Allison Fazdik receiving the majority of votes and is elected vice president of the board of education. Congratulations. [Applause] Okay. Nominations are now in order for the office of
027secretary. I need to I don't secretary for the board of education. >> Okay. Katie Gent is nominated. Are there any other nominations for the office of secretary? Hearing no further nominations. The nominations for the office of secretary are closed. I now need a motion that the board of education votes the loan candidate to the position of secretary. >> So moved. >> Okay. Katie Gent being the only candidate nominated for the office of secretary. Um oh I need a second. Did I get a second? >> I'll second if there was a second. >> You did the first second. >> Oh no. >> Oh for the motion. Okay. >> Yes the motion. Yes. Okay we have a second. >> Mr. Kub. We'll get through it. >> Michelle, will you please call the role? >> Mr. Rising. >>
028Yes. >> Mr. Mr. Kurubus, >> yes. >> Miss Grover, >> yes. >> Miss Fostic, >> yes. >> Miss Deming, >> hi. >> And Miss Donahghue, >> I. The vote is 6 in favor of Katie G being receiving the majority of votes. And Katie G is elected secretary of the board of education. I [Applause] >> Okay. Now, I need um an nomination for the appointment of the Illinois Association of School Board Governing Board Representative. >> I'd like to nominate Susan Taylor Deming Deming as the IASB governing board representative. >> Okay, Susan Deming is nominated. Are there any other nominations for the appointment of the Illinois Association of School Board Governing Board of Representatives? Hearing no further nominations. The nominations for the appointment of Illinois Association of School Board Governing Board of Representative is closed. I need
029a motion that the board of education vote the lone candidate to the position of the appointment of Illinois Association of School Board Governing Board Representative. >> So moved. >> Is there a second? >> Second. Susan Deming being the only candidate nominated for the appointment of the Illinois Association of School Board Governing Board of Representatives. I Michelle, will you please call the role? >> Mr. Rising? >> Yes. >> Mr. Kurubus? >> Yes. >> Miss Fostic? >> Yes. >> Miss Deming. You sure do. Thank you. Miss Grover, >> yes. >> Miss Donahghue, >> yes. The vote is 5-0 in favor of Miss Susan Deming. By receiving the majority of votes, Susan Deming is appointed to the Illinois Association of School Board Governing Board of Representative for the Board of Education. [Applause] Okay, we have no public comment
030tonight. So, we will now move to our consent agenda and superintendent report. We will start with the superintendent report. Dr. Tally. >> Thank you very much, Miss Donghue, members of the board of education in Indian Prairie community. Because I had to read the uh oath, I'm not saying too much tonight. I'm very happy to say that referral GPS, our partner in our CARES mental health clinic, was recently awarded by the partnership of connected Illinois the 2025 award for excellence in teleaalth leadership for advancing teleaalth by innovation based upon in part a recommendation that I had written for them. Um it is because of referral GPS we have been been so successful in arranging therapy for our children and families. Our CARES program will start in October and will be at Granger, Longwood, Georgetown, Matia, and
031Nika Valley. Parents can contact the social workers at their schools for a referral for these free therapy sessions. I rem I remind all parents and teachers to consider joining your school's PTA. PTA serve as great partners with schools in creating positive learning opportunities for our children. PTA support your teachers and support our parents. I'm a member of May Watts. I join each year because that is the school um which was in my boundary when I first moved here. Your memberships are very important. So I ask that you join. That's it for me from tonight. Back to you, Miss Donnie. >> Okay. I now need a motion for the approval of consent agenda items D through J. I move that the board approve consent agenda items D through J as presented. >> Second. >> Any discussion?
032>> Okay. Michelle, will you please call the role? >> Miss Foszic? >> Yes. >> Mr. Rising? >> Yes. >> Miss Deming? >> Hi. >> Mr. Kurubus, >> yes. >> Miss Donahghue, >> yes. >> And Miss Grover. >> The motion passes. Um, now we need an approval of the memorandum of understanding between the Illinois Education Association, local education association and school district. Sorry. uh make a motion that the board of education approve the memorandum of understanding between IEA local education association and the Indian Prairie School District Board of Education as presented. >> Second. >> Any discussion? Michelle, will you please call the role? >> Mr. Rising? >> Yes. >> Mr. Kurubis? >> Yes. >> Miss Fazic? >> Yes. >> Miss Grover? >> Yes. >> Miss Donahghue? >> Yes. and Miss Demi. >> I the motion passes.
033We will now have a presentation by Dr. Trudy Ransen regarding the Indian Prairie Education Foundation update. Good evening. I only do this twice a year. Eventually, I'll figure out the mic system. Um, thank you so much for having me here uh for my uh semianual report to the board. It's always great to come in and be able to tell you about all the wonderful things we've been doing at IPF and um uh I'd like to thank the board for its continued partnership with IPF. It is our pleasure to serve the students of and staff of Indian Prairie and it makes it so much easier to have great partners uh like you folks. Um I would before I get started I would like to just say thank you to Miss Jean for her service over these
034last uh several years. She has been a wonderful partner and supporter of IPF and I really appreciate it and welcome back Miss Grover. We are so delighted to have you again. So, um, tonight, uh, I would like to point out that, um, we have at IPF been around for a long time. Um, we are 37 years strong in this partnership with IPSD and we are proud to support um, this wonderful school district. We have provided more than 5.7 million dollars in funding towards district 204 programming and support um since we were founded in 1988. And although we've been around for a long time, the district has changed quite a bit since the 80s. Um our mission remains constant. We are here um to enrich education and support our students. And that is at the forefront
035of everything that we do at the foundation. Tonight, I'd like to talk about uh what the foundation has been doing since I last saw all of you in February. Um what is happening right now as we start a new school year and then I'd like to conclude with events to watch for coming in the future. be one of the first things I'd like to do is give credit um with to our um fantastic IPF board of directors. Um this is not an endeavor that can happen uh just with one or two people and I have right now 16 lovely people who are supporting. There are some familiar faces up there including Dr. Tally and Miss Gent. Um, and we are, um, currently looking for a few NEO board members. So, I'm just going to put
036that out there in public. Uh, we have a few openings. Um, and I'd like to welcome our two newest um, board members, Rana Gam, who was just um, brought on board in September, and uh, Bonnie Zerkis, who came in in May. Uh both of these women are fantastic members of our community and we're delighted to have them. As part of our um policy of fiscal transparency at the foundation, I'm here to give you the financial report for the end of uh fiscal year 25. Um here I have our seven-year income trend. And you can see that although like so many nonprofits, we did take a dip during COVID um it was a tough time for everyone that we are uh trending back uh towards what I am hoping will be the new normal. Um here
037at the in the 2425 school year uh where we exceeded our goal of hitting $400,000 for the year. So that was fantastic. the more money we raise, the more money we can push right back into our programs and the more uh students and teachers we can support. So where does that money come from and where does it go? Um our revenue by category as you can see in 2024 25 uh came uh the majority of it from grants and fundraising. Um, grants are always kind of a bit of a cross your fingers and hope, right? Because they're not always available, but we try to apply for as many as possible to support our programs. Fundraising, the fundraising category would include things like team IPF and our annual inspire breakfast. Um, these two things together are
038our largest uh revenue source. Um uh as for funding by category, you can see that once again our at risk funding um to support lowincome and homeless students in our district and their essential needs is once again our largest and um fastest growing category. Uh which speaks I think to some of the big needs here in our district. Followed by money that we just give directly back to schools. Uh to be fair, most of that money is earned by team IPF. And so those are fantastic runners from every school who um help us raise money and then half of the money they raise goes right back to their individual schools. Um we do have around 6,000 lowincome and homeless students in that as at risk category that are being supported. Um and that includes our
039programs such as kid essentials and afterchool programming. Um and uh you'll see that we also have a a nice chunk there for student health and wellness which includes uh our support of the mental health symposium and also our uh bianial heart screenings. This is our end of the year fiscical year 25 giving report and I just wanted to break that down so folks could kind of see really on a case by case where this money is going. Um we gave last year directly back to the district 288,000 plus and uh that is broken down for you here. Um as you can see uh the largest uh categories for funding were our rise after school programs that was funded entirely by a grant from the Illinois State Board of Education and thank you to Dr. Tara
040Bell for uh collaborating with me on that grant. And um right behind it was uh Young Hearts for Life cardiac screening program. Uh this last year uh we screened over 5,000 students in high school 100% free. It cost those kids nothing. And we hope to be doing that again in the 2026 27 school year. Here in the new school year, we are uh promoting quite a few um hang on, I'll back up just here and give a shout out to this lovely all girl robotics team who were the winners of our middle school robotics uh tournament last year. Way to go. Um before I get into the programs and enrichment uh services that we will be uh supporting this year, these are the largest ones that we will be supporting. Once again, we will be
041the title sponsor of the mental health and wellness symposium. Um as well as robotics clubs for elementary, middle school, and high school. and the Kid Essentials program, which does help our low-income and homeless students uh meet their essential needs, including things like school supplies and um hygiene, food, groceries, snacks at school, anything that they need. Uh even if it's w a winter coat, pair of boots, uh we are there to meet those needs as much as possible. And then of course back to our fine arts roots, we will be sponsoring the annual fine arts festival. Um and uh as well as the winter holiday concerts at the three high schools and um the meet the artist program at Wanse Valley um and other places where we might be able to get in some guest artists.
042We're working on that so stay tuned. But these are the largest programs that we will be funding this year for student enrichment. Teacher and staff support continues to be strong with the foundation. We are right in the middle of teacher innovation grant season. Uh this fall that portal is open until October the 20th. We have a budget of $10,000 to give out to uh to teachers and staff who apply. Um and we hope to spread that around a little bit. So, uh, get your grant applications in, all of you folks out there who are listening. We supported some pretty amazing grants last year. So, I'm looking forward to seeing what our new ideas are. U, once again, we are sponsoring we are sponsoring the A+ awards, which kick off this week. Not giving anything away,
043but stay tuned on social media. You will see them. Uh, I always refer to it as the best day of the month because everybody's happy to see us when we show up with checks and balloons and the whole nine yards. So stay tuned for that. Thank you again um to Western Governor's University for sponsoring that award this year. And then finally, spring grants made a comeback this last year and it was uh met with a lot of approval. Spring grants are um some very quick I look I think of them as quick grants, right? The application process is simpler and it is a flat $500. We gave out six of them in the spring and it's kind of nice to fill in those end of the year gaps for teachers because they might not know
044in September what they need in April. So we want to make sure that we are are funding some of those endofthe-ear programs as well. teamf is in full swing right now. Um so if you see all of those um appeals on all of your local networks to help out our team members, please uh help. Uh I'd like to thank the 235 team members who will be running us with us this year. This does once again make us the largest charity team that runs with the Endeavor Health Neighborville Half Marathon 10K 5K. Um we're just going to keep wearing those yellow shirts and floating the streets of Neapville. And you can see by the breakdown that we do have a pretty uh desperate group of uh staff, students, parents, community members, alumni, including several of the
045people who are sitting up here this evening. Thank you very much for your support. I think it really does show what we can do when we work together as an entire community and what kind of support uh we are getting from our community because they believe that uh these programs that we are funding are very beneficial to our students and their quality education. I would like to give a thank you a very special thank you to our two 12-year runners. These folks have run all 12 years with team IPF. That would be Mr. Jason Stip, the principal at Wanty Valley and Mrs. Christine Black uh a teacher right downstairs in the prairie preschool. And the fact that we have support all the way from preschool to high school uh with the staff should show uh
046what a fantastic uh event this is. It's a great example of the synergy and collaborative partnership um between the foundation and the district. So, thank you very much to all of those runners. We're looking for the community to keep supporting team IPF while we are working on it. Uh, thank you to the Matia Valley cross country team who is once again managing an aid station at the race. Um, spirit squads, we have signups right now for spirit squads. We have four, I think, and I have space for three more. So, if your school is feeling the spirit and they want to jump on in and and cheer on their uh school's team, we've got a space for you on the raceourse. And I'm sure there's some mascots who'd like to, you know, slip slip out
047of the the the office and and get outside for a little while. Um that's always a lot of fun for the runners to see, and it really does kind of lift our spirits as we run or in my case walk. Um, and then, uh, please donate. Uh, all of our charity runners must reach their 204 minimum by October the 1st in order to be a charity runner. It's only a $25 minimum for students. So, if you'd like to support a student, hop on there and support a student, that would be great, too. 50% of all money raised by our runners goes directly back to the school of their choice. And over the last 11 years, we have raised $1.3 million with team IPF. It is our largest fundraiser of the year and does go a
048long way in supporting the programs that we do here. Um, finally coming up, uh, and and I know it's going to be here before we know it. Um, mark your calendar for March the 26. It feels weird to talk about 2026, but it it's right there. um from 7:00 to 9:00 a.m. at White Eagle Golf Club. As all of you here know, we changed our gayla to a breakfast and it was very wellreceived this last year. And um Miss Fosdic, thank you for being a good sport um and having your picture uh included in this slideshow. But with that contagious smile, how could we not? Um so uh please do plan on attending. Uh tickets and tables will go on sale uh sometime around mid November and um our theme this year is imagine with
049IPF. So we're going to have a lot of fun with that. Finally, how uh folks out in the community can make a difference with the foundation and its programs. Obviously we covered donate to an IPF member. Um I'm walking myself for my eighth year this year. So, um, I'm putting my money where my mouth is and my feet. Um, nominate a teacher or a staff for the A+ award. I can't tell you how grateful the teachers are to see those nominations. Even if they are not an award winner, they do get a copy of their nomination. And that kind of recognition, the idea that they have made an a difference in somebody's life, a student, um a family, it it goes a really long way uh to to boosting morale in our schools. And also,
050I think it's really important to say thank you for all of the hard work that our staff is doing here in District 204. And then um buy an early bird ticket or a whole table to inspire. That would be fantastic. And if you'd like to learn any uh more about what we do at the foundation, um please uh go to our website at ipf204.org. All right. Does anybody have any questions? Oh, shout out to my Welch White Tiger um uh group here for giving me this fantastic picture of their kindness squad. So, I'll open it up to anyone have any comments or questions for Trudy. >> I just want to speak to uh the foundation because it's near and dear to my heart. Um and it's interesting when you sit um in one place for
051a long time, you can see kind of the the tree grow and things happen. Um, I recall when I was on the foundation, uh, the at risk portion started out at $250. Um, and when I left the foundation, it grew to $10,000 and you could see, I think, how it has expanded since then. Um, and I'm sure a lot of its grants. Um, but I, um, I'm thankful that that part of the tree and area has grown. I think that is very impactful. Um so thanks for that. And then the the run again I recall when the run was just starting in the city and uh we had to decide as the foundation whether we wanted to participate at all. Um and then we had to make a decision whether it wanted to be 12
052seats, you know, 12 runners, 24 runners. Um and then we we risked it by having an unlimited number of runners. Uh and so to see that this has grown to that large of a number over time um says kind of that that bet paid off and our community really supports that. So that uh I love what you've done with it. I love how the foundation has been able to grow that as well. So thank you. >> Thank you. >> You have something? >> Just I I just want to make comments too. First of all, um very excited that we are almost back to prepandemic giving, which is that's huge um because that is not happening in other places. So, I think that's a kudos to you um and your staff and your team and I
053know all the hard work that you do uh to involve our schools and our PTAs and all the other groups that help IP IPF as well. Um, and just it's just so encouraging because of kind of what to M Mr. Krubis said, the the impact that all those programs have to enrich our students and the impact it has on our students and staff. So, I just wanted to make that comment. And um as far as the runners go, um I mean I'd love to see more parents and community alumni and students, but um kudos to the staff for always showing up. The staff just shows up year after year after year, and it's just it's wonderful to see that. So thanks for all your work. >> Thank you. >> I'll just echo thanks for everything
054that you do as uh leading the efforts in the district. The IPF has been a very impactful organization helping many programs that you outlined that are critical to our um success. And um I also would encourage parents to consider donating. It's a impactful group and um important to some very innovative ideas and thoughts our teachers have too. Um also you mentioned that you are looking for board members. So for community members that are looking for a way to be involved, I would highly encourage you to consider applying to be a director on the IPF board. So thank you for everything that you do, Trudy. >> Thank you. Yes, we do have three empty seats right now. So um we'd love to hear from our community. And I just wanted to say that the that IPF
055touches every place um so many different places and every family has an opportunity to be impacted. What we do with the Young Hearts for Life, every single student, every single family has an opportunity um to to have that um medical opportunity that uh at no cost. So when we look at uh everything that we do, every family has an opportunity to be impacted. So thank you to um the public for their support, but uh thank you so much for the initiatives that allow us to touch every single family in the district. >> Thank you, Miss Deming. Yes, we do um we do say from prek prek to graduation, right? somewhere along the line, um, IPF has touched the education of that student in some way, whether it's fine arts, heart screenings, um, a helping hand
056if you need it, we are there. We we're quietly supporting everybody because we want to see all of our students succeed. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Now, we will have a presentation from Dr. Nater Nar, Dr. Michael Purcell and Dr. Carlos as Skoa regarding the annual equity board presentation. [Music] Uh, good evening board. Dr. Tally. I'm honored to share the space today, uh, with Dr. Mike Purcell and Principal Carlos Essetia. And so, um, thank you for giving us time to be up here. And we'll I'll try not to take too long because we can speak on each one of these slides for a long time, but we'll try to give us a highlight tonight. Uh we'll look at how the equity plan, which was designed as the throughine of our strategic
057plan and how it comes to life. We'll start with curriculum and instruction, move to systems and structures, and we'll highlight access and supports that ensure every student's needs are met, and touch on operations like food service that are just and essential. Finally, we'll close with a school highlight from Kalashawa to see how this work shows up at the building level. Our strategic plan mentions equity 27 times. To make those commitments real, we created the equity plan. It operationalizes equity and serves as a throughine across every strategic plan measure. This is also grounded in board policy, which guarantees equal opportunities for all students. Tonight, we'll show how the plan comes to life. We'll highlight examples, not everything, to illustrate how equity is embedded in the daily work of the district. There will be a focus on
058tier one. Tier one is the experience that every student has first before any other supports. And just as last and just as last year we heard from Matia High School. Tonight we'll close with a highlight from Kaleshawa Elementary. We'll look at how equity weaves through teaching and learning systems and structures and operations. And this shows that equity isn't a separate initiative but it's embedded in all we do. And this presentation is really a labor of love um in collaboration with the directors, the assistant superintendent, and many other folks in the district to really show how equity is not a separate initiative in our district, but woven through everything. We'll start with elementary curriculum and highlight the last year's ELA adoption of uh the new curriculum and how uh that curriculum that we chose intentionally centers
059equity and belonging. Students see themselves and others in the diverse content and instruction fosters voice, choice and dialogue. SEAL is built in aligned with castle which is the collaborative for academic, social and emotional learning and creating classrooms where every students feel safe, respected and connected. Our K5 STEM work with SAM Labs ensures that every elementary student has hands-on STEM learning. students and building collaboration. Students are building collaboration and problem solving skills from the start. This initiative reflects our commitment to equitable access and connects directly to the portrait of a graduate competencies competencies we all want students to develop at the middle school level. The new common lit curriculum amplifies diverse voices and builds consistent expectations while allowing teacher flexibility. The continued enhancement of achieve time at the middle school strengthens SEAL and belonging and grade
060level teams use plan time for both interventions and community building. And now Dr. Mike Purcell will highlight some of the work with the high school curriculum. >> Thank you Dr. Nar. Thank you Dr. Nar. Um I really appreciate the opportunity to share some of the work um that that's happening in our high schools. Um just like what's happening with the elementary and the middle schools just uh dig into one example uh of where this work is happening. Um really want to walk through tonight more process. I think when we come to the board, we kind of end up with product because you get to see the end of of all the work. And what we want to highlight uh tonight is a little bit of what happens before it comes to that board presentation typically
061in the spring. Uh what you've seen over the last few years are some of these courses that are described up there. Senior inquiry, history of growth through media, dual credit English, all new courses that the board supported. We're so grateful. Um, and we really uh love these courses because really we look at senior inquiry is just a a prime example of student voice and student choice and really digging into a passion area. Dual credit English has provided meaningful college credit for hundreds of Indian prairie students over the last couple years. um the um in our in past board presentations, we've come talked about biology and French and and you may recall that in those presentations we talked about how our culturally responsive instruction guidance really drove some instructional activities and even resource selections. Uh I
062mentioned in biology really the teachers love that at the beginning of each unit that there was a scientist that represented all of our kids, right? that was at the front of that and really kind of framed that unit in French that that they loved this the the resource that they selected because it highlighted French cultures that weren't just France. It talked about Haiti and other areas. Right? So, uh really this uh this framework and this process um is is the foundation of of what we're going to talk about with that. Um the um we're we're going to be coming back this year with several more classes. One of them will be English nine, another be US history, another's geometry, big classes, big graduation requirements, classes that all kids take. So, I wanted to spend some
063time uh talking through what that process looks like. And while it may make uh it's super intuitive where you can see where that might fall into an English class or your history class, uh we went the other direction and wanted to show you how that might fit into even something like geometry, right? Which doesn't doesn't seem to always kind of say, oh, that's that's an equity class, right? So, uh, really kind of show you the process and how how that really does matter, right? So, we really I like I like visual aid. So, we really start with a few things on the table. We have our state standards for learning. I can read all these for you in geometry, but I'm going to let you kind of peruse those in your own time if you'd
064like. Um, we start with for math there's the math practice standards. This is the portion for graduate for mathematics. It's all the affective mathematical things that we want students to be able to do. K12, right? So, it's a continuum of things that are maybe not about uh solving for X, right? Or or finding the area, but really about mathematical thinking. We start with our portion of graduate. We do it on card stock so they can take it back and put it on their wall. Um, and we start with our culture responsive instruction guidance that that came from Dr. Njar and the leadership teams that put this together. And we literally have these on the table. It'll be in a in a folder like this that each teacher will get as we get started. This is
065what we start with. That's our grounding documents. And and when we start there, it be these these things become the center of all of our work and we always come back to those. It's always at the center of what we're talking about. The next slide. So I wanted to highlight an activity that really kind of brings this to life. Um and we can give you some insight into the process. Again, you see the product at the end, but we started with geometry and we started uh with this last spring and and really laid two things on the table. One was these mathematical practice standards, which you see highlighted in the gray box. There's a lot more reading. Those are those are the bullet points. There's a lot more if you want to kind of dig
066in uh the descriptions on those. And then the culture responsive instruction guide. um the those same bullet points and the same bullet points that are on that what we would find on the table and and just sat with the geometry teachers that are on that curriculum team and said, "Hey, just read through both of these and and what do you see and where are these where are some connections you can make between these two documents and where what are some questions that you might have where you say maybe these don't really line up for us?" And and it was it was really insightful because the first thing one of the teachers said, "A veteran teachers been doing this a long time uh and and someone I really respect says that's that's funny because when when
067they first rolled these out at our school and I'm glad they did and we have a lot of conversations about them ironically with our our math teachers didn't feel very included in these culturally responsive instruction things." And I said, "Well, perfect. Well, let's talk about that, right? Where does that kind of fit?" And this activity really laid out a couple things. If you look up on the on the screen there, what you would see is uh some things where they really do connect, right? You look at mathematical modeling. That's the fourth one on there. Ask students to understand what a real life scenario is and use mathematic education to represent that scenario. That's authenticity, right? That's really looking at can we can we take things that are in real life and then use education to
068model that, right? Um constructing vital arguments. Number three, require students to engage in critical thinking. It's empowering, right? It's also part of portrait for graduate, right? Those are big skills that we want kids to be making. Those are things that are happening in in all of our classes. Uh I think this geometry uh curriculum work that you'll see a lot more detail about come spring. Uh we're really excited about um just really there's a place for this in everything that we do. Will we hit every one of those bullet points on the right side of the screen every day in every class? No. Uh what we want to do is to make sure we're mindful of those and and there's some places where it's about the the culture of the classroom. Sometimes it's about the
069instruction that we're doing and sometimes it's about how do we structure it and what are the resources that we select. And we just wanted to dig into one one of very very many case studies across preK um and and beyond um that that gave an example of what this work was. So, we're really excited about what's happening in geometry and was happy to be able to share that story with you. >> Thank you, Dr. Purcell. Allows us to pull the curtain back a little bit and see really how the equity lens plays a role everything in our district. I would like to highlight our CTE programs and how they create real pathways for future success. how courses uh use authentic team-based challenges and students earn endorsements and certificates for work and experience for internships. This
070expands access for all students including special populations and ensures career readiness. Highlight the wonderful work being done by the grading steering committee and its vision to align grading with our portrait of our graduate work. um measuring learning through a lens of equity, growth, and achievement in SEAL, not just compliance or points. Their work emphasizes mastery and consistency. Some pilots are underway that you've heard of, but the focus is the broader vision and how it supports fairness and clarity for students across our system. our work around our integrated multi-tered systems and supports really centering on tier one recently and instruction that supports every student. The focus is on making sure that core experiences are strong, consistent, and equitable across the district while still being responsive to individual student needs. This work directly connects to our portrait
071of a graduate learning framework and brings together academics, behavior, seal and equity under the same umbrella. Equity is part of the onboarding from day one in 204. Induction week for new educators in introduces district values. New educators complete equity sessions and mentoring includes both building mentors and virtual coaches. New educator connections groups help help staff build belonging across the district. Our ambassador roles, equity, innovation, extend our equity plan into the schools. Teacher leaders bridge district vision and daily practice, supporting colleagues and embedding equity, innovation, and into the tier one instruction. This makes the throughine concrete. Our multilingual learners team leads with an assetbased approach, seeing language and culture as strengths. They ensure rigorous instruction for newcomers and host events like the financial literacy and resource fair to connect families with services and supports. That's equity
072in action. Of course, our celebrated mental health symposium which convenes families, staff, and partners to learn together and reduce stigma. This work highlights how SEAL and mental health are embedded into our equity plan, ensuring wellness is a part of every student's educational experience. Our AI work is guided by the district's AI belief statement and the portrait of a graduate. Staff training tackles bias in AI. Students engage in ethics discussion. And our partnership with Digital Promise helps us advance equitable access to technology and innovation. We ensure all digital resources are accessible through trans translations, adaptive tools and universal design. This is about removing barriers so every student can access learning equitably whether through curriculum, technology or our communication with families. And finally, food service I thought was uh exciting. This is this slide excited me the
073most. Our food service team makes equity practical and daily. They gather student feedback to shape menus, always provide varied options, meatless, vegetarian, meat. They keep meals affordable. They monitor sales to be sure students get the meals they want and engage in legislative networks to ensure school food policies remain equitable and supportive. Were your school lunches like that? No. Mine mine weren't. I do remember we didn't even have cheese pizza. I had to uh I would get the pizza and I would scrape off the cheese and the sausage because I don't eat sausage and I was just eating the bread. So, I didn't used to eat sausage, but I know exactly what it tastes like because I realize the bread, you just can't remove that flavor. So, it just it just goes I mean because typically
074we we like to compare to our own experiences. But, I mean, when you see some of the photos up there, which are all real photos of the food service that we have within our schools, it's really exciting. And now um the part that we've all been waiting for our school highlights uh with uh Carlos Essetia and he'll talk about the work that they do in Kalishawa Elementary School. >> All right. It's my pleasure to uh join you this evening and to talk about the exciting work that's happening in our district and uh at Kalisha Elementary School. I'm serving in sixth year as the principal there. Um any uh commitment to equity starts with leadership and we're so proud to be part of a district that has put equity front and center with a profound equity
075statement giving direction and priority to uh school to educators and to school administrators. So to inspire all students to achieve their greatest potential, we must lead and engage in a collective commitment to equity. It's a it's a non-negotiable. It's something we must do. We owe it to our school community. At Kalisaw, our mission statement does have equity added to it uh front and center. Our mission is to provide a safe and positive and equitable learning environment in order to prepare all students to be lifelong learners. And practically that comes out in a co commitments that we make to our community which is to foster educational equity for all students by actively identifying and removing barriers. Creating a culture where all feel safe, welcomed, and respected, ensuring that all policies, practices, and procedures support every student
076and build a community where families are valued as partners. That is all central to our equity mission. really big on strategic alignment. And so we want to align all the work that we do um to our strategic plan as a district, focusing on our priorities for student development, investing uh in our staff to implement equitable equitable practices and then engaging with our community through authentic partnerships that really bring all stakeholders together. uh this image and some of my slides have a few images in there that are intended to pop the heartbeat of our school. This comes from a a children's book titled All Are Welcome Here. We start every school year with a readaloud. This is the first book we've repeated. Uh we read it three years ago um and read it again this year.
077And this is I I would like to say the heartbeat and a mantra uh for our school and that is we're part of a community. Our strength is in our diversity. We're a shelter from adversity and all are welcome here. So, some strategies in action as it relates to our focus on student development. Uh, the first one I'll speak to briefly is culturally responsive teaching practices. So, we seek to have an environment that affirms uh multiculturalism and various identities in literature through our classroom libraries and our LMC. We have schoolwide readaloud and experiential learning focused on monthly themes. This month we are focused on Hispanic heritage. Every month we rotate different um uh cultures that and identities we want to include that are representative of our community. And as Dr. PCEL already spoke to, the
078culturally responsive instructional framework helps us to identify how we make learning experiences authentic, inclusive, and empowering. We recognize having such a diverse school, many newcomers, students are learning English, students on all ranges of abilities, it's critically important to deliver an equitable education, that we have a vision for differentiated learning support. Not all students learn the same. Not all students are learning at the same level, but all students deserve an opportunity to be successful. And so, as educators, it is our mission to ensure student success through differentiation. So we have a robust datainformed MTSS program that focuses on goal setting and instructional priorities. Today we met with our fourth grade teachers and we be began to set priorities for students who need additional supports. Small group instruction based on students individual needs and a strategic and
079coordinated wind block is what helps us ensure that every student is receiving what they need for their next growth and progression in their learning. In addition to that, we have a high investment in social emotional learning. So, we have daily morning meetings in all of our classrooms. We use uh classroom circles as a restorative practice to build community. We've trained our staff on traumainformed practices. And in addition, the programs that we're implementing on a consistent basis to advance social emotional learning would be our PBIS program, implementing CHAMP schoolwide, the second step curriculum, and our quality traits of the month celebrations. We can only go as far as we can with our students as as we lead our staff to. And so our staff are uh excellent uh phenomenal uh extremely committed to equity, extremely committed
080to the college community and uh and so we owe it to them to provide them the best training possible. And so we've established and organized our school around professional learning communities. So we have weekly grade level team meetings that are focused on equitable practices and curriculum alignment. We have established school improvement committees where every licensed staff member is giving is contributing to the work of a committee that is setting agendas for professional learning in order to move the school forward. And we've started to implement more innovative job embedded professional learning opportunities such as instructional rounds, demonstration classrooms, things that will really bring theory to life and help teachers to implement new practices. Uh we we focus on growing our staff in a variety of ways. Um we have mentorship programs that we partner with the
081district uh for our new educators. We have leadership development pathways uh for our staff as well as job embedded professional learning opportunities that will build equitable practice that I'm happy to speak to if anybody wants to know more. Uh in addition to that, we want to focus in on implicit bias training for all staff, restorative practices in training and implementation as well as traumainformed care. This helps us to focus internally on how we perceive the world. This helps us to learn from best practices and maybe a different or a new way of doing things where things haven't worked as well for all students. um as well as helping teachers understand how trauma impacts learning and the daily experience and how can we accommodate learning environments in order to meet the needs of all of our
082students. This adorable koala that you see in the corner is our uh newly adopted community agreements. This is intended to be um a a code of values and ethics that as a staff we embody and that we unite around. And the values center on compassion, transparency, unity, and open-mindedness and joy. These are the things that we want to characterize the culture and climate of our school. And so we embody that in our community agreements. And we went through a whole year process in developing this, which was phenomenal. And we're in our first year of implementation. But we can't have an equitable school environment without strong engagement with the community. And so authentic family partnerships is also a focus that we have at Kalishaw Elementary School. So we have a culture affirming school. We celebrate our
083multicultural community. Um one of the one of the highlights every year is our culture night that is organized by our PTA. It brings um in excess of 500 or so community members in and we celebrate a lot of the various cultures and backgrounds of our families and of our children and it's coming up in November. If anybody would like to attend the Kashaw culture night, it's a phenomenal partnership we have with the PTA. Uh we do have staff who speak multiple languages, myself included. It's very comforting for some families who are new to our country who are seeking support from the school system. They're here because they want what's best for their kids. And when we're able to communicate with them and um and understand their culture, it's very comforting for them. And so we
084have lots of staff who can help support for family conferences. Um and we also get support from our multilingual department uh to really help bridge any communication gaps. We've taken an intentional focus on positive communication home as well because we recognize that many times, not always, but often when we're reaching out to the home, it's to discuss uh a challenge or a problem and that can uh grow weary. I mean, many of us um are parents as well and uh and we know how hard of a job that is. And so we want to really have an intentional focus on building those positive communication channels um and communicational capital that we need when we do have to talk about some of the challenges. Um we have lots of opportunities for parents to be engaged in
085the school. So school events um culture night being an example of one we have many of those. Um, and we have open door policies for us to be able to have parent partnerships. They know that they can reach out to myself, they can reach out to my staff um, should they need any support or need any help or have any concern that they'd like us to be aware of and problem solve with them. Lastly, uh, we have uh, leveraging are the assets within our community. So, family skills and expertise are integrated into classroom learning. We do this through classroom parties. Um these pictures here uh show our watchdog program which was relaunched last year. It's a phenomenal program. Every Wednesday we have three watchd dogss that we've recruited to come volunteer time at school. They
086help us be an extra set of eyes, an extra set of hands, and these are caregivers of of students in our community. It is amazing to see uh the insight that um the the volunteers receive when they see what the operations go because they spend the whole day with us. It's also amazing to see how their kids' faces light up when they see their caregivers in the school and not only them but then all of the children um really tremendously benefit from the watchdogs program. We just had our watchdogs party last week and we had over a hundred participants including the caregivers as well as the students and this Wednesday will be our first watchdog Wednesday. So wish us luck that it will go well. So at um you know we've had our commitment steady
087and strong uh to on our equity journey and we see that academic growth is is happening. Achievement gaps are narrowing. Uh we have high expectations for all and students are rising to the occasion. If you look at culture and climate data on college elementary school you'll you'll see there's uh an improved schoolwide culture and climate. Um, teacher satisfaction scores are on the rise and family engagement is uh busting at the seams with the highest participation rate in years. We have a new board, new PTA board uh that just started this year and we've they've already hit the ground running and they're truly integrated as part of our community and all of our staff uh support our board. So, our promise is to continue to be a model for equity and action, ensuring that every student,
088regardless of background, has the opportunity to achieve their greatest potential. And I thank you for letting me present and for supporting the equity work in our district. >> Okay. So, we'll go through and see if um people have comments or questions. We'll start with Mr. Rising. Okay. Uh, slide eight, please. Um, first of all, Dr. Purcell, thanks for that wonderful explanation of the way we look at um, curriculum at the high school level and and frankly at the elementary and middle school level too. But I I thought this was great because and really it shows more detail on the next slide, but really first and foremost, we're looking to meet those state and national standards obviously, right? And we we understand that we have high expectations in our district and that goes without saying. Um
089but I what I really liked about this is what was it was an and and not an or. Right? So, we're looking for the best curriculum to meet state and national standards. And we're also looking at how that aligns with the portrait of the graduate and all the other culturally responsive instructional things that we're looking for. What's the best fit for us? Um, so I really appreciate you going through that because again, yes, it is academics first obviously, but it's all these other things. It can be all those other things as well. Um it doesn't have to be an or. It can be an and. Um and then I just wanted to give uh kudos to to Carlos um and his koala his Kashawa building. Um slide 24 uh you know and and and again
090kind of a theme here with priority one again academics first but we're foolish if we think that every kid is coming in the building with the same mindset and and where they just came from from home or what they're experiencing and and I won't call out a cert kid. I'll call out myself. No one could have known when I was in elementary school that I was the kid whose parent was on public assistance, who meals were, you know, scarce and whose parents were going through a divorce. Like, I was bringing that trauma that I had into the building. And what I love about this, especially with the social emotional piece, is that our staff and we're helping our staff, you know, try to meet the kids where there are they are and understanding, you know,
091and not intruding into their personal lives, but at least understanding if they're having a bad day or if something's bothering them and to back off or or or when to lean in, right? So again, academics first, but understanding where our students are at and the day that they're facing to make sure that they're best aligned for the best learning environment for themselves for that day. Um, same thing with slide 25, you know, invest in staff. Again, academics first, but how can we help our teachers be the best teacher for their students? Um and then slide 26 uh again academics first but you know how can we ensure that our community and especially our students are seen valued and welcomed into that building. So kudos to you to all the thoughtful um proactive ways of you
092making this happen at Kashaw and the results speak for themselves. Right. So, you know, we're seeing higher academics and we're seeing students valued and um you know, it's just it's wonderful to see. So, thank you for all your work you've done. That's all I have. Thanks. >> Fantastic. >> Thank you for your work on this. Uh as as often as I saw equity through this, I saw belonging and community. Um it underscores every part of it. Um, and even down to the Kawasha community agreement, which I noted as being different from some in my experience, which is maybe like what the school values are. You've encompassed the community in that as well. Um, and I think that that must be one of the reasons for this incredible growing community that you have. People feel like
093they belong. Um, so as Mr. Rising said, kudos to you for that. Um, keep up the good work to all of you. Thank you, Mr. Kurubus. >> Um, two, three things I'd like to expand on a little bit, but I love how the presentation took us from a plan, a policy, a statement through administration work through, you know, all the way down to the elementary school. Um, so you sometimes we sit behind this desk and we, you know, make a policy, but to see how it actually plays out in an elementary school, um, is one of the joys of being a board member. Um, so I love that about the presentation. Um, on page on page 24, I'd like you to just talk briefly about the small group instruction uh based on individual needs because
094I think that is an important part part where you're trying to You still got to teach a class, but you also got to teach a student. So, can you speak on that? >> Yeah, absolutely. Um, part of that way that that's met with fidelity is through that third bullet point, the strategic and coordinated implementation of what I need. So, this is a block of time that is scheduled one hour each day. It's a separate hour per grade level. And this is where I have my classroom teachers and my student support teams working coordinated sharing kids. And so it allows for us to provide differentiated targeted interventions and supports on all ends of the spectrum, right? from those who need uh English language support to students with IEPs to students who may be reading and math
095intervention to students who are in project arrow and everyone in between. All right. And so by having this time dedicated, what we're doing is we're securing students access to the core curriculum because as has already been noted from the board, academics is our primary mission. And when we begin to break students apart during core instructional time, we are unable to intervene then our way out of a lack of tier one instruction. And so by having this time secured, we can have we have a team that we deploy at that block of time per grade level that will work with smaller groups of students and we'll be able to provide what they need. Whether that's a research-based intervention, whether that's a small group with their classroom teacher, whether that's going to with Mr. Cook to the
096project arrow class, whether it's going with the multilingual specialist, whether it's going with the special ed teacher, we've got the whole team working serving the students. So that's part and parcel and critical to successful differentiation. Now beyond that during tier one instruction we still have you know students coming to our school who uh maybe are coming from another country right they're coming from the Middle East they're coming from Ukraine they're coming from a Latin American country uh they don't have access uh to to the same opportunities uh can't access curriculum the same way and so in order to do that our teachers need to provide accommodations and modifications for those variances and differences during tier one instruction. So, differentiation really has to be something that's systematically structured so that we can um provide those best
097instructional interventions and track progress and growth at a student's level, but then also has to be embedded into the tier one instructional program in order for students to be able to have access. And there's a variety of ways we can do that. We could differentiate process. We could differentiate product. We use the standards to guide the goals, the big learning goals, but then we can make tweaks and adjustments to accommodate for students needs so that again everybody's feeling part of that learning community. So that that's how we we get at that. >> That's fabulous. That definitely hits home with the point. Thanks. U the other point I'd like to make is um it's something that we talk about a lot is uh student voice. We talked about how many times the uh equity is used
098in the strategic plan. Well, student voice is used four times in this presentation. Um, so I just want to point them out real briefly. Page six, we talk about diverse voices. We talk about, you know, fostering student voices. Um, so I that's and that's self-explanatory, but that's nice to hit that point. On page seven, um, you know, we talk about student voice and making sure that that's part of the curriculum. So, you know, it's not just the top down stuff. We're seeing what, uh, students want. on page even put it in bold this time but part of our labs is trying to foster the students voices. So we're um putting that um you know throughout and then on page 24 amplifying the student voices here. So, I'm highlighting the four times you used it um
099in the presentation. It's something that the board prioritizes. Can you speak on that briefly? >> Yeah. Um Dr. >> Yeah. I uh thank you for noticing. I think that's something that um we embed everywhere. I think it really is, you know, part of it in some sometimes it's places where it's really uh evident and explicit like in the the senior inquiry class we just talked about, right? In other places, it's um giving kids an opportunity just to literally use their voice and and to interact and to find those times instructionally where they're uh where they're talking and and being able to kind of express how they feel about a topic and using instructional strategies like debate, right? Socratic seminars and things like that to to back up and use those things. So, uh and I
100think, you know, it's it's places where maybe you don't even think about, uh student voice being a big piece. I I love that we talked about food service or doing surveys and what do you really want and using the sales data because really that's that's really what they want is what they're buying, right? So, um you know, I think just finding those opportunities big and small to to use uh student voice to make big decisions is is always our best path. >> Yeah. And you know, an integral part of our culturally responsive instructional framework is empowering students and part of that is student voice. And we could probably do a whole presentation on that. But you know, partnering that's a 204 creation, our culturally responsive instructional framework. It wasn't just something we took from a
101book or borrowed from someone. We looked at it. We we came together as a district um multiple stakeholders and really thought of what does culturally responsive instruction look like in our district? uh because our district is our district and we weren't just going to adopt something um generic. And so that empowering piece is huge. How does a student feel empowered within the classroom uh within the school system? Um we didn't want to create experiences where the submittive stu submissive student just listens to the teacher, but how do they feel like they get to take the wheel? >> Yeah, student voice and agency is critical to equity work. Um, that's the way that you inspire students to achieve their greatest potential. Our greatest potential is being a change agent and leaving the world a little bit
102better than we found it. And so the way we do that is by amplifying our students stories, letting them tell their stories and letting them hear stories that resonate with their experience. If we're not intentional in that, then it's not going to happen. And then students are invisible and voiceless. A quick little funny anecdote. Last week we had to cancel soccer for third grade and that's a big controversy in our school because soccer is wildly popular. So I was helping out the lunch and recess staff that day because they were short staffed as sometimes we are. So I was in the lunchroom and I got a call on my cell phone from my recess supervisor and he said, "I don't know what to do but the students are protesting soccer." And he sent me a
103video of a little protest. So I looked at this video and one I was proud of my students for identifying a cause. These were these were third graders for identifying something they were passionate about and letting their voices heard in a peaceful way. Now I was a little bit misguided. I had to explain to them why they weren't playing soccer and it was really a safety issue. But I think it illustrates the point. You know, you give students a voice, you give students a platform, and that opens up dialogue, opens up education, and so voice and agency is critically important to equity work. >> Thank you, >> Miss Grover. Do you have any questions? I know you didn't get to see any of this ahead of time. >> No. Um, I do have one question,
104though. Um, I appreciate um the work you've been doing and how you've shown us how you're using equity and implementing it into the curriculum. I do have a question on the authentic career and technical education. Um, it, you know, it says real world challenges and students earn endorsement certifications. What is, can you expand on that? I'm not familiar. Is that the world of work or is that COOD you're talking about? >> Uh, yes. Yes. And uh so it is uh work that our students may do at uh technical center of DuPage, TCD uh would would fall under there really uh and and you know uh Brian Duvenini and I and others have really worked on taking the course book and being able to map students towards pathways. If you have an interest area, you doing
105your career interest surveys, those kinds of things, you have you have an area that you're interested in, let us shine a light on the on the course book to say here's some classes you should probably consider taking. And some of those result in uh endorsements that are state kind of uh supported. Uh we have a couple of those that we are doing right now which is uh education and construction. Looking to bring a few more on. They have some real specific characteristics like team based challenges and some and some time with uh internship time things like that. Uh so we're building some more of those out and we had a dozen or more graduates last year that had that uh that certificate actually that went on their diploma. >> Oh well great. Thank you >>
106Miss Dumming. [Music] >> I knew there was a reason that we had Miss Grover Quebec. She just had a qu I hadn't thought of a question that I just I'm going to ask and follow up on. It just made me think of Dr. Dr. Priscell, do we have um since we have part of our students who are in DuPage and and other do are all of our students um that want to do technical things, can they do COD or do we do COOD in Wanzi? I just wasn't sure. >> Great question. So um the uh since we are sitting in DuPage County right now today and the kind of the seat of 204 is in Dwage County, we participate in all DuPage County things for all of our schools. >> Okay. Um otherwise we too
107many meetings, right? >> I just wasn't sure if they would allow they allowed all of our students to Great. >> So now after students graduate, students that live in Will County would be availed through their tax dollars to go do Will County things, right? So that that they wouldn't necessarily metriculate to COD, but if they're doing do uh dual credit things through us, it's all through college. >> Perfect. Thank you. I just hadn't thought of that. Um just a couple of things that I wanted to to share. I love the the the feedback that you um you know you began to touch on the geometry example. I will really look forward as you come back and share with us the curriculum in the spring. Just getting a little bit more on that particular one that
108really caught my eye earlier. I mentioned that um I would really enjoy seeing a little bit more of an explicit example of what that looks like in the classroom. just just for um for my edification and and maybe some others to understand exactly what that looks like. But I'll look forward to that um when you come back in the spring. And then uh I love the fact that we are really looking at a holistic view for our students and the conversation and the inclusion. This is not academic and then we're adding equity. it is the embedding in um the holistic looking at the entire part of what our students need for success um and to feel good about themselves. One of the things that you on slide 25 when you when you shared the um
109Kalashaw you called the Kalashaw um >> the community agreements. >> Yes. and joy is there. >> That's not I mean that's not something that we readily think about. Joy is so important for our students. It's important for them individually, but the classroom and the environment to have that many families come in to participate. That says that they not only do they feel the the academic value, but they want to be there. They want to interact with your with the um with the administration, with your staff there, with the other families. That is so important. And our students, they resonate with that. That really helps them so much enter the classroom ready and want to learn that. So that really struck me because I felt like joy was really so important. Um, slide 17 also just
110kind of stuck with me. I was listening to board member Kurubis and talk about uh every place where students were talked about and uh you talked about it students also on 17 with uh just AI and making sure that our student voice and the inclusion of them as far as that discussion is important. And so AI just because it's such a um at the forefront of so many people and especially from an educational realm making sure that we hear that student voice for them to understand what are their responsibilities but how can they uh see AI used in their growth and probably give uh the uh education side some some ideas on how it can really be brought and used proactively and positively. I thought that was really important. And I think that is and
111then I guess finally the the the last thing that I wanted to say is just um the communication in Kashaw. We've seen how important one of the the lasting things that I will really appreciate. I think so many of us will really appreciate with uh Dr. Thally's tenure has been our ability and the desire to really get out to listen to the community. we saw how important that is with the passing of our referendum. I love that you've taken what we have been so intentional about uh from a macro level and really including that uh at a at a you know micro level within the school and again that just points to what I was mentioning earlier as you've indicated how important that your families feel with inclusion within your school. So thank you. Yeah,
112thank you for that. And uh there is absolute alignment between the board priorities and mine as a educator which makes it easy. And I do serve at the pleasure of the board and our superintendent and Laura Rosen Bloom and Dr. Nar and it's a joy um to serve this community. >> Well, thank you. Lots of really excellent comments. Now, oftentimes people look at equity and think it's a and several of them brought this up an or like I can teach math or I can do equity and it's like no, I I think you did a great job of showing how it's embedded in everything. It is a foundational principle for student success and I really appreciate that. I appreciated the comments about making, you know, the comments about you're a part of a community and
113how making coursework relatable to students, but also looking at individuals exactly what does the student need? Like no one would question if a student had poor vision, getting them glasses so that they can read the board or whatever. And to me, that's what this is all about. It's like finding out what the student needs, whether it's a support system or a different way of approaching a math problem or making the math problem relatable to them like in in their lives because oftentimes people tune stuff out. I'm like, I don't know what that is and I'll never use it or why would I need to know? And it's like that's what came through in your presentation. So, it's like I truly appreciate um the all of the um examples too. Um, I love that koala that
114Miss Deming pointed out. I just truly love that. Um, and I didn't even notice the joy. So, thank you for bringing up that comment because I am a true believer of that. And, you know, Carlos, I was assigned to your school for the previous couple years and I got the opportunity to attend a number of events and I will say that I did experience excitement, joy, and lots of community participation. So really kudos to you and the work that you're doing over there at Kalisha and I miss you and if I was a teacher I'd want to be in your school. So so um so thank you to all of you for the work that you do and it truly is a found foundation of the success of our of our district and so keep
115at it. So thank you. Okay. And now I have any legislative advocacy and board of education updates. >> Do you have anything? >> Um I just wanted to share that I attended the first full lend meeting of the year uh with Dr. Thally and Matt Shipley uh this past Friday and it was in person hosted by District 88. Um and it was really interesting. it was kind of an overview of land and what the committees are working on. And then we also had a breakout opportunity um in a larger group to work with our legislators. So we had Representative Yang Roar and Senator Elman um just to have an open conversation about the things that are on our minds and the things that they're currently working on. Um and I'm sure Mr. rising already knows
116about a bunch of it because some of it was just discussing transportation funding for example and the mandated categoricals and the things I'm still learning about uh as a more of a financial newbie here. But um it was I I felt like it was productive time. It's always nice to be able to uh connect a little bit with our our county people um and see where everyone is. >> And I will kind of dovtail onto that because I think since the last board meeting. I said it on my first um panel review for the evidence-based funding at the state level, that committee that got appointed to with the state board of education. Um the categoricals did come up and the importance of that that districts across the state feel that's extremely important. Um so that
117was raised and I'm getting the notes from that and I'm passing those along to Mr. Shipley um as I kind of move forward for that. the the meetings for those are only once a quarter. Um but a lot of stuff happened and a lot of things were discussed. Uh I also had the group for IASB with ISBY that there's a a handful of board members that um it was the mental health assessment was discussed and I've got some notes from that that I'll share with the board probably by early next week just because I'm leaving for a conference this week. So, I'm going to sure to get the board my notes on that that I took. I did have one more thing I wanted to share that I just remembered as you were saying that
118um Representative Yang did have a request for us which was to bring back to our communities that if students want to see change that oftentimes right now they go straight to representative and that perhaps some of those changes could be made more effectively and more immediately um at a local level whether it's the school board or the city council rather than passing a bill for the entirety of the state. Um, but encouraging our students to act locally first. >> That's good information. And maybe our student advisory board too should hear about that as something maybe they can take up to help advertise, you know, how to act on some of the needs that students see. So, but thank you um all for participating in those. People often don't recognize that besides our regular board meetings,
119there's an lot that goes on behind the scenes and a lot of meetings that we attend or participate in groups to help advocate for our district and our needs. So, thank you both for for the reports tonight. So, with that, I need a motion to adjurnn. >> Motion to adjurnn. Second. >> All in favor? Yep. I