001no okay it is now 7 o' 7 7 p.m and I am reconvening to open session and calling to order the regular Board of Education meeting for Indian Prairie School District 204 on Monday March 10th 2025 Genie will you please call the Miss Jane here Mr Rising here Mr kis here miss Donahue here miss Deming present miss fck here miss G we have a quorum Miss fck will you lead us in the pledge Al to of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with li and justice for we have one board our next uh board meeting will be held on Monday March 24th we have one board salute tonight miss ding District 204 students excel in the elementary robotics tournament the board salutes District
002204 Elementary School students and staff who recently participated in the robotics tournament this past weekend we also salute Direct dor of innovation and instructional leadership Brian Giovani for serving as tournament organizer congratulations to all the winners of the school excellence awards judge Awards and the match results we extend our congratulations to all participating robotics teams and express our gratitude to the Indian Prairie Educational Foundation for their support of the district's robotics program let's have a round of applause for this okay next up we have our student representative report by Emily shield from wanzi Valley High [Applause] School hello everyone it's a pleasure to be here again my name is Emily shield and I'm here today to to represent wanzi Valley High School as a warrior I'm proud to report that our wanzi community continues to
003thrive and provide many outstanding experiences to our students we have a few giant successes with clubs and activities BPA has qualified and is sending 62 students onto Nationals this is more than any other school in the area our model un took top honors at their mu competition with over 60 students taking home delegation recognitions wanzi Valley chess while we went into the state tournament with the number one seed we were unpleasantly surprised with the loss to Walter pton prep which landed Us in fifth place overall the top finisher in the DVC out of 119 points a spread of 2.5 points separated the top five schools we're proud of our team Scholastic bull is showing some strong results this season this past Saturday they won the 41st annual Illinois Masonic tournament with that League they are
004the class 3A state champions overall activities and clubs this year had over 1,00 involved in our 60 60 activities in clubs in terms of Athletics wanzi Valley winter Athletics completed another successful season postseason accomplishments included four DV Conference champions two ihsa Regional championships one ihsa sectional championship and an ihsa super sectional Championship girls bowling completed the season on a high note by repeating as Dage Valley Conference champions girls gymnastics also completed the season on top as D Page Valley Conference champions their first Conference Championship since 2012 our boys and girls basketball programs completed their season with an unbelievable 62 and5 combined record the boys basketball team completed their season with the 31 and3 record record and were repeat DBC Conference champions the Warriors hosted the ihsa regional Regional and won their second straight Regional in
005a row by beating Nia Valley 70 to 52 girls basketball completed their second success completed their successful season with a 31-2 record and also won their second straight DVC Conference Championship in addition the girls won the ihsa regional sectional and super sectional for the second year straight the spring season has officially begun and we have seen just under 700 athletes registered and trying out the sports that we offer this week boys and girls water pole will begin competition in the pool we look forward to watching all of our spring athletes Shine Go Warriors moving on to academics in early February the counseling department hosted the high school and Beyond this was an evening event with many sessions to choose from in regard to Opportunities throughout high school and planning for postsecondary Education and Training AP
006testing registration recently closed this year we will have 1,234 students taking 237 exams this is an increase from last year of over 100 students and over 300 exams that's all for the wanzi valley board report thank you and as always go Warriors thank you next up is our school Spotlight and it's still middle school today we'll have a presentation from Kimmer Cornish Patty bran Ryan sherson and Lily Kaylor good evening and first of all thank you to Dr tally and the board of education for providing this wonderful privilege to all of us to Spotlight some of the great things that are going on at still Middle School I'm Kim Cornish and I'm here today with my amazing assistant principles Patty bran and Ryan sherson and our eighth grade student Lily Kaylor who is also a
007member of our principal advisory team we would like to take this opportunity to Spotlight some of the things that we do it still to support our core values of spirit community and excellence and still we think it's very important to create a collaborative and supportive environment for our students staff and Community opportunities for students and staff to demonstrate our Three core values include our student of Distinction nominations our spirit assemblies and student and staff positive referrals which recognize students and staff who go above and beyond the expectations and exemplify our core values we are very proud of all the opportunities that we have at still middle school for our students to have a voice in all of the things that we do to improve each and every year one way we do do this is
008by having a principal's advisory leadership team that has broken up into into two subcommittees which meet multiple times each school year one is our student Equity subcommittee that's the one that I lead that meets to provide student input and collaboration in celebrating and supporting all students at still I would say our biggest highlight this year is wean an amazing Multicultural night that was we hosted in January it's our second annual and it went really well our second committee is actually our student School Improvement subcommittee where we work with our students to kind of learn about the school Improvement planning process as well as the goals that we have set aside for still we've been looking at long-term goals and we work with the students to actually make sure that they have input in what we
009do every single day at still and I'm very proud to be able to announce that we have Lily Kaylor here who has been a part of our student School Improvement planning committee for the past three years so she's been kind of stuck with me working on this so she's going to talk a little bit about what we have accomplished so far hi so I like Mr Shan said I've been a part of the Sip committee for three years and when I was in sixth grade we made a presentation to present to the staff members about what we think that they are doing great on and what we think that they can improve on and then this year we made a presentation to present to the students of still about the five essential survey which we
010just took a couple weeks ago and we rewrote some of the sip goals so that they could understand them and try to work to meet them so we presented to the students that they would have a better understanding of the five essential survey and right here we have a picture of last year's um last year's uh result last year's results and this is a direct slide from what we presented to the students and so we have a very strong category in involved families and then the other four effective leaders collaborative teachers ambitious instruction and supportive environments are all in the strong category which is great we hope to improve upon them this year to see still be even better thank you Lily uh the final thing that we would like to highlight is we really
011think that having all that student voice and having so many of our different subcommitte as well as our families be a part of things that still has helped to um give us our exemplary Illinois summative designation this year which puts still in the overall performance um the top 10% of the schools in the state of Illinois as well as earlier this year we had to complete all of our documentation for our redesignation for our Illinois Horizon schools to watch and we were told that we have been re redesignated we don't have all that final paperwork work yet but we had so many of the students on our different committee present to these groups as well as parents so those are some of the amazing things that have been going on at still this year and
012um we just wanted to highlight some of them and we thank you so very much for allowing us to come in today thank you so much it's uh it's always like thrilling to hear from the schools and on the excitement that's going on and I love the committee that you have with the students providing their voice and um important issues in your school so congratulations Lily for being on that for 3 years so thank you so much for sharing thank you thanks you my go okay tonight um we have no public comment um we had no one sign up so we're going to move right on to the consent agenda and superintendent report we will start with the superintendent report Dr T thank you Miss Don Who members of the Board of Education Indian Prairie
013Community there's still time for you to get tickets for the ipf breakfast that will be held on Tuesday March 18th from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 am. at White Eagle Golf course we are excited about the opportunity to inform our community about the wonderful things that ipf does for our school system we will have students performing at the event as well you can find more information on the ipf website you have until midnight tomorrow to buy your tickets on Saturday our third annual mental health Symposium was held at Matia we had more than 600 people attend the event with more than 120 students participating I am thankful to for the collaboration with naville 203 weaton warville District 200 East Aurora West Aurora and Osgo districts their engagement in the Symposium helped us to spread the Great
014information and opportunity to the larger community I want to thank all who helped to create this year's program to include Miss Don forkner Miss Lisa Barry miss Karen Miller Miss Jeanie dinina Miss Janine Lang miss Emily buer and Mr K nyin the month of March is women's History Month this is an opportunity to celebrate the accomplishments of women in helping to shape our country and the world additionally March is developmental disabilities Awareness Month signed into law by President Reagan in 1987 this month brings awareness about the daily obstacles those with disabilities face and achieving full inclusion this month also celebrates the accomplishments of those who are differently abled have made in our lives schools in their own ways have been celebrating both these events I remind parents to complete the five essential surveys schools need
01520% of their parents to complete the survey in order for the schools to receive survey results results are used by schools as part of the school improvement process right now I applaud White Eagle Graham and we heard earlier still middle school for having more than 20% of its parents completing the survey I'm going to give you exact numbers right now White Eagle has 41% um Graham has 34% and still middle school has 31% that was as of uh last week so those that probably have gone up and I applaud those schools for making that happen parents you have until March 28th to finish the surveys and finally before I return the meeting back to miss Donahue I would like the board to approve the appointment of Mr Patrick Raleigh as the new principal of Gregory
016Middle School effective July 1 2025 Mr Raleigh will be replacing Miss Leslie Mitchell who will become the new principal of Hill Middle School July 1st Mr Raleigh currently serves as an assistant principal at great before he joined us last year he was director of Educational Services grades 6 through 12 for 5 years at celin school district 302 he was also principal of Kalin mcdo Elementary School for five years Mr Raley has a passion for creating positive working and learning environments and wants to ensure all students know that they can depend upon him to create a welcoming environment Miss Don who I will now turn the meeting back to you all right I need a motion to approve Patrick rally as the principal at Gregory middle school as presented I move at the Board of Education
017approve Patrick Riley as principal of Gregory middle school as presented is there any disc oh is there a second second okay any discussion Genie will you please call the RO Miss fik yes Mr Rising yes Mr kis yes Miss Deming I miss Donahue yes Miss Jane yes is he here motion passes as um we always like come up and uh introduce who you have with you [Applause] and thank you very the but yeah I'm still new there you go play that card as long as I can um thank you so much I'm I'm beyond excited uh for the opportunity to continue to lead Aton Gregory I am here with uh some family and some very very supportive friends uh my wife Jennifer is here with our three girls um Ashlin Harper and Sydney um so
018they are doing a wonderful job on their best behavior back there and some some really really supportive friends that came out because they know how much this means to me so thank you very much I I'm really looking forward to the years to come thank you so much [Applause] congratulations now I need a motion for approval of the consent agenda items e through n I'll make a motion that board of education approve consent agenda items e through n as presented I second is there any discussion okay Genie will you please call the rooll Mr Rising yes Miss Jane yes Miss fik yes Mr kis yes Miss Deming I and Miss danu yes the motion passes next we move to our action items I need a motion and second to approve the memorandum of understanding between
019the Indian Prairie educa Education Association and the Indian Prairie School District Board of Education as presented make a motion that the Board of Education approve the memorandum of understanding between the Indian Prairie Education Association and the Indian Prairie School District Board of Education as presented I second any discussion do you want to say a few words about what this is we can make Mr hman say a few words he's here it was interesting he asked me this morning do I need to be at the meeting and I like well you can just be waiting in the background so Mr hman you want to come forward it's it is all about our conferences that we have and parent teacher conferences so you can explain that yeah it's nice to tell people what we're voting on so
020the first part of this the first uh action item that you have in front of you is the memorandum of understanding and what that is is in the contract we have delineated when it is that we have parent teacher conferences based on feedback that we received um from families also from teachers probably even from some members of the board um there was um a want be able to explore a different time to have parentage your conferences so we have done that um this is following the same type of arrangement that we have for the 2526 school year you also did a memorandum of understanding at that time in agreement with the with the association for that and this is uh very similar to it it has one notable exception which is that instead of just
021looking at the month of October for the fall conferences we're also including the first week to November and that has to do with when it is that we have a major election and it just simply allows us to have a little bit more flexibility for families and for staff and made some common sense to put it in that in that in that realm so this part is just simply to approve the fact that we can change the conferences then the next part you'll be asked to approve the school calendar based on those changes okay so stay up there for that not a problem okay so um I um Genie I need a roll a call Mr Rising yes Miss Jane yes Miss Dan yes Miss Deming I Mr kis yes and Miss fic yes the
022motion passes now I need a motion in a second to approve the 2026 2027 school calendar as presented I move that the board approve the 2026 2027 school calendar as presented board policy 6 uh 20 school calendar in day I second any discussion I think it would be helpful to just say a few so for this one um what happens is that the board of uh the administration along with the association meet we end up developing two calendars a calendar option A and a calendar option b both of those two options are done collaboratively and we then provide them to the board of education for feedback um at that same time we also then presented the option A and option b to the um Indian Prairie parent Council group and they provided us feedback as
023well based on that feedback there was a change in option A and option b that was developed and I worked with the association to ensure that that was they were in agreement with that and then we did ask staff members to take a survey that looked at option A and option b and provide us feedback on that as well option b was the overwhelming choice at 65% um and what that essentially does is that is the option that does take one of the parent teacher conference dates and and puts it on a Monday night so that way the following Tuesday during the election students will have off and we will also have a sip day on that day so students will end up not being in school on Monday and Tuesday but it to us
024made sense not to have them come for Monday and then have the Tuesday off and and doing that way so it again um avoids the awkward middle of the day middle of the week day off um that that was the essentially the only differences between the two options initially the two options did have a difference in one of the options finishing after Memorial Day weekend um but only for one student day of attendance and I IPC told us that that was silly and so they asked us to make that change and so we did and that is the calendar option that you have before you for approval okay any other discussion okay jeie can you please call a roll Miss Deming hi Miss Jane yes Miss danu yes Mr rise yes Miss fck yes Mr
025kis yes the motion passes thank you I know it was a lot of work yeah thank we'll now have a presentation from Dr Christina cpio Sally Osborne and Lindsay schm KT someone must have told you we like props we have all kinds ofs yeah ready good evening Board of Education members Dr tally and the District 204 Community tonight's student services update is aligned with board policy 6120 regarding the education of students with disabilities and the Strategic plan Priority One focus on student development uh this evening I'm joined by Sally asborn principal of prairie children preschool and Lindsay shim ktz one of our assisted technology Specialists the rest of our team and and the rest of the team this Isen Karen Bosa assistant technology specialist Kristen zuda assisted technology specialist oops the purpose of tonight's presentation
026is to update the board and community on the supports available to our students with diverse needs it's also to report on the progress made by students using some of the targeted alternative curricular and Technology based resources finally we will outline future goals and next steps as far as our fast facts our December child count which is always a year behind is that we have 3,17 special education students in our preschool program we have 724 students our steps program for young adults has 104 young adults our out of District students uh number about 100 40 students and we have one student in residential placement um our uh disabilities our largest disability categories are autism specific learning disability and speech speech and Social Work remain as the services with the highest ass access and our district percentage
027is at 11% the state is at 16% and the national Norm is at 15% our largest demographic groups are students that are white Asian Hispanic and African-American and this year we were able to resolve all disputes with parents in partnership with them and did not have to access the due process hearing process the targeted supports available to our students include our board certified behavior analyst Consultants of which we have eight full-time staff they are both a programmatic support in our self-contained classrooms as well as support on a referral basis we also have targeted alternative curricular supports in the areas of ela math and seal for students who either cannot access the general education curriculum or need some extra support we have supports for their needs WRA services are those provided by a licensed clinical social
028worker who partners with parents to provide continuative care between home and school by using the same strategies language and systems the students benefit from a universal approach to their learning and any needed supports for their behavior our bsas Behavior Support assistance support the bcbas in providing behavioral support in the classroom on days in which the bcba is out of the building the BSA is there for classroom support our CNAs certified nursing assistant also have been a wonderful source of classroom support for those students who need a higher level of attention in the skills related to daily living this support is typically reserved for our students who are more medically challenged we also have assisted technology which Lindsay will outline later in this presentation you can see from our enrollment changes that we are making slow
029but steady growth it should be noted that District 204 is a destination District due to the inclusive nature of our education that is provided and many parents tell us that they have moved here for the inclusive and robust nature of the special education services by race and ethnicity you can see that our Asian and Hispanic populations remain relatively stable but there are some fluctuating numbers in our white and African-American populations by disability category you can see that our number of students on the autism spectrum continues to increase our second largest disability category specific learning disability has remained relatively stable I will now turn it over to Sally to for an update on our preschool population well thank you for the opportunity to let me speak about preschool to you um I thought it would be
030best to start out with some numbers um because we've grown over the years we have 27 classrooms at three sites here at sh line we have 19 classrooms at Graham Elementary School we have six classrooms um and at Georgetown Elementary School we have two classrooms so we've really grown um as Dr sepio said we have uh 724 students enrolled as of December 20th 2024 um and then just a breakdown of students that are in our classrooms we have 266 students who attend who pay their parents pay tuition um as a community student we have 266 students who attend um because they are student who have an in who have an individual education plan then we have 131 students who attend through our grant program um I went and pulled some updated numbers just to let
031you know because we're always growing and and as of 22825 we were up to 745 students enrolled at the preschool so we grow about 16 to 18 uh students a month also want to point out that we have quite a large population of students whose primary language is not English um 57% of our student population is uh English as a second uh language um and we have over 45 languages spoken at the preschool I did take a um last glance with my e teachers and we were up to 58 actual languages and some of our common languages are Arabic garati Hindi Mandarin Russian Spanish Tamil Telo Urdu and USC so we've really increased in terms of uh the number of students uh and families who are attending um I always like to highlight staff at
032the preschool because we're quite large and I I really don't think the rest of the districts uh knows how large we are we have 66 certified staff so teachers speech language therapists social workers school psychologist nurse um we have 65 classified staff which are our teacher assistants and our secretarial staff and then we have nine non-b bargaining staff for our OTS and our pts um I also like to point out for our teachers um which is different than the rest of the district our teachers are duly certified or sometimes duly certified with another endorsement in that they are able to teach general education special education and then English is a second language so just want to shout out to staff because I couldn't do that without you uh just wanted to share some fun facts
033so if you haven't been at the preschool all the classrooms at the preschool are an animal mascot so originally all the animal mascots were supposed to be animals on the Prairie except we grew so fast that we had to add additional animals and so for example we have rooster and that was never on the Prairie right um interestingly we do have a lot of students come back sometimes I've had high schoolers come back in the summer and they remember the mascot name and they often remember where the classroom is located as well so it's really nice um the other thing another fun fact about the preschools that if you've been here you've seen the playgrounds outside so we have six playgrounds at the preschool they were all developed and to focus on specific motor skills
034um and we're super excited because this summer we're getting new playgrounds so thank you for that um and then at the main campus again you might have seen this we have a striped bicycle track in the back where students ride tricycles and this is really nice because a lot of our kids come to us and have not had any experience um riding a bike or riding a trike and so we really have a very robust kind of like motor curriculum for our kiddos um instructionally I just wanted to talk a little bit about we have seven units of study based in the Illinois Early Learning and Development standards um we rotate through them every other year the nice thing about having those standards in our curriculum with those standards they're nicely aligned right with the
035kindergarten standard so the outcomes that we're looking at are similar to outcomes when kids start kindergarten we also use the seal curriculum of second second steps which is a little bit of a change for us this I think is our second or third year using it um the nice thing again about this is that we're directly aligned with what the rest of the district is using so it's a nice transition again for kiddos and then uh finally we are an i mtss pilot school so we're working towards um high quality tier one instruction for all students uh tier one two tier two targeted small group instruction and then tier three individualized intensive support and just lastly and I know that I got a board salute for we got a board salute for this early early
036in the year but every every three years we're monitored um through the Illinois State Board of Ed because we receive funding through the preschool for all grants um and so the monitoring is a 3-week process which is very intense they're looking at our administrative processes as well as our classroom environment we were just visited November 2024 and I'm happy to report that we received the gold circle of quality um based on our monitoring results so this is the highest quality level preschool can receive so the gold Circle really means excellence in teaching and learning family and Community engagement leadership and management and qualifications in continuing education so that is what I have for you okay I'll turn over to Lindsay okay and our team here Kristen hi um so um our assistant technology department um
037does many things so I'm going to do the introduction part first you you met all of us we also have a third team member um we are um three and a half I like to say I'm am halftime um we have two full-time at Specialists and then um who is not here today um is our technician who is full-time um and um our technician um is a um a 12month employee um and she does our ordering the budgeting repair and then management of our devices and we need her she is out on leave right now and we feel every moment she is gone um so she is just as valuable um as as those of us um sitting here um and so with all of us right we do some um important jobs we support
038all of our students prek to um through transition um and that includes our students that are out of District um we also um support their at needs um and consult with their teams um and then we collaborate with a lot of people um and that includes um home teams so families the students themselves um Vision itinerants right it because it and at go hand inand but are not synonymous believe it or not um those requests don't always go to the right place um and we also work with adaptive PE um so we are always trying to see how we can make um the school environment accessible for all students and there's lots of ways um that we can help so that access to environment we manage online resources um we do a lot of trainings
039um we have online trainings that are live we have self-paced trainings we do trainings in kick up for staff we do things in Embrace we're we're all over the place um because we're we're really um motivated to help all of our students achieve okay um I just thought I would make sure that we reference idea um because we come out of idea and so if I was reading what assist of technology is defined um as via idea it is any item piece of equipment or product system whether acquired commercially off-the-shelf modified or customized that is used to increase maintain or improve functional capabilities of a person with a disability so it is extremely broad as you can see by um some of the examples we brought today um this is just a little smidge of
040what assist of Technology can cover in fact in our district there are a lot of things that we provide for students that are assist of technology that don't come from our department um so we usually consider assist of technology in a range from low te to high-tech so we brought some examples of some of those things today um low Tech can be something as simple as a slant board to help with someone with writing it can be as simple as a pencil grip sorry friend um it can be paper based picture and visual supports so one of the examples we have here is a communication uh book um for students who have challenges using their speech for communication another example of that we have right up here in front these are actually they're called um
041core vocabulary boards and they are if you see on those lovely playgrounds downstairs at the preschool um they are posted zip tied they're hang they're hanging on pretty well um through the winter they are zip tied to the fences so that our students have access to words and communication throughout their day even on the playground um and so that is a low te version of of that um this board here as well um and then we move into of the center there those are midtech things those are things that are usually battery operated um and a few examples we have here this is also for someone who would have challenges using their speech um their single message or a few messages recorded on device with um someone's voice they're called a Big Mac and a
042step by step so you want to this one is programmed I forget what it's programmed for this one is counting so in a sequence so if someone's working on Counting they can press that button and it would that would how be how they participate in a counting activity um we have oh it's go it's go so someone might use that in PE to stop and go might be something for um turning pages of a book or directing an action if something was recorded for go um we also brought some adaptive scissors for our students who have challenges F motor challenges um allowing them to maybe cut pap paper um and we also have the switch here it's called a proximity switch so for some of our students who can't use pressure to depress a switch
043all you have to do is get really close to it some of our students use their heads some of them use their hands but they don't have to actually press um use pressure for this particular switch so it's kind of unique but paper would go in in there and um an adult or a peer could hold a piece of paper in there and um the student could turn it on using the switch um let me see what else I have um another thing that we have in our department that we would consider midte would be this item here this is called a pouring cup um it is used uh in many many different ways we have lists of ways that you could use it however um a lot of people like to use it for
044cooking activities or science in terms of measuring it does pour so we turn it on with the switch and it turns and it poures um did you break it oh you try cutting that a lot of those do have Velcro so we can wash them if we put yeah I hear the scissors going yeah you have oh yeah it's pretty neat huh so our student would turn on the the scissors and and someone else would help guide the paper so those are things that we have adapted um and then we move into some of our high-tech things which are all the way to the right um we have a few of those we'll get into these a little bit more in a few slides but these um are communication devices on it um so we
045use an iPad to put um words on here for students who have challenges using their speech um so some of the things we have on there this one here has a black guard on there for some of our students who have challenges with fine motor um and we have a couple different versions one of you has a bilingual version that has Spanish and English one of you has a high contrast version that has black for some of our students who um have Vision challenges um so we'll talk a little bit more and maybe play with those in just a few minutes we do have some students who use eye gaze technology that's at some of our highest I would say some of our highest Tech items that we have out there um for students who
046have challenges using their hands um and aren't able to touch items um they use their eyes to control things okay the next one okay you want sit here yeah sure okay so Kristen talked about this a little bit but part of um what we do um because it is mandated by idea is that we provide training um it's mandated in the IEP and it's part of just what we have to do so we train School staff um and we train families but when we talk about families we're talking about um you know Grandma and the babysitter we can train the daycare providers or if students have um like a private therapist we can also invite them so um we're really proud that this year we have worked really hard to expand our training opportunities and
047we have um use infinitech which is a uh Coalition of special education um professionals um and we have used their platform to be able to provide on demand trainings for parents so they can do them on their own time um previously and we still do provide live virtual training so we have a training schedule um we train on some systems like twice a month even um other systems maybe once a month it just depends on the need um but this ability with infinitech allows parents to train on their own time which has been you know really huge um we train on everything from AAC through um like read and write which is our Universal Design for Learning um we have some of those things offered in kick up as um self-pace as well for our
048staff so um we do tons and tons of training and then this is where some of the fun gets going um we do 3D printing and toy adapting when we're talking about 3D printing we can buy something like this from a company called communicate at for $185 we can 3D print this for 66 so um that's one of the things that we print um they're on a lot of your um iPads there and it allows students to be able to get their fingers or guide their fingers into places in the iPad so that they don't slide sometimes you'll see kids touch an iPad and they slide and so that kind of prevents that um one of the other things that we can do are um oh we can 3D print switches there's a switch up
049there somewhere with a heart on it I think um those switches we can 3D print them for a do7 but they cost $75 from ablet yeah it's kind of crazy um there's a toy up there it's a sloth toy um it costs about $35 from Amazon or if your kid is done playing with it you can pull it out of their toy box and it cost you nothing which is I think how we got that one um and then the cord to adapt it is 89 cents so if we pick things up from garage sales or donation we can switch a Dap something for 89 or we can pay enabling devices $110 for it um we did 3D print some wands for modeling communication devices yep um we different sizes um for different needs um
050we can use those on a communication device to highlight a particular cell um whether that is a high-tech device or one of those low Tech communication flip books those flip books are nice um our devices can't leave the country um for obvious reasons and so we have students who need to take their words with them so we can provide them a low Tech version of their words take with them um I always say you know the water table and the pool are great places to communicate terrible places to have an iPad so that's another option um for when our students are doing things like that we also if you can see I don't know if you can see it we are able to print teeny tiny little mini versions of our iPads and our switches
051that we hung on a Christmas tree we thre printed them um and they are D size so um we can put them in uh centers like play centers imaginary play centers with the Barbie dos or the D toys to just have some representation of all of our students so that's pretty cool um this is one of the toys we switch adapted he was purchased he was purchased from Walgreens a couple days after Christmas for 75% off so he was about $4 and I switch adapted him I think just this morning um and so it's yeah go ahead and push it isn't he cute we find that um a lot of switch adapted toys are hard to find that are respectful of age um a lot of the toys we find are going to be little
052toys like Fisher Price and there it's a sloth or it's you know a babyish toy but we have students you know in high school and at steps who still require um to be able to access things you know for entertainment or for cause and effect learning and so this is a nice way for us to be able to do that very cost- effectively I think I adapted him in about five or 10 minutes this morning with um you know some wire snippers and a seam ripper and a needle and thread so um those are some of the things that we're able to do and it's pretty cool we also have a bubble machine this bubble machine you can press it if you want he's going to make some bubbles that bubble machine if we were
053to purchase it um would probably be probably between like $65 and $70 I'm guessing we got that bubble machine at Five Below so for $5 or below and 89 to switch adapt it with the court okay and lastly we'll move into um a newer initiative in our department um within the past two years we have moved to a tiered system for our communication supports for our students that need it we did start initially in the preschool um with um our students there and we've since moved it districtwide this year um but what we found is that with the limited number of people that we had in our department we were doing a lot of managing of equipment and we really wanted to get equipment in students hands faster especially those students that needed it who
054were struggling to communicate with their speech um so we use this approach for kind of three main reasons for time so that staff is spending less time away from students in meetings um and also our time so we can be focusing instead on just getting technology out we can focus on the training piece and making sure everybody knows how to use it the implementation we also um chose one system so it's a bit more proficient so that people get good at using one system um and we just want to get uh research shows that using a communication system um that you have in front of you um should should be done uh quickly um and that we shouldn't delay getting that in students hands because we know if students can't communicate can be very frustrating
055um and so what we have in front of you is um three devices I believe uh similar to this um we have these again all over our district but when we go high-tech you have those communication devices in front of you want um and so you can do things like um we gonna show so you could do things like CLE it out um we can customize them for students so like for instance we could say you could um what your name is so if you go on the my button on the U close to the Top Line do you see someone familiar in there Dr tally on the my button uh there oh we got to turn it up so we customized that one with um Dr Tally's name and his picture um but we
056can customize those systems try it again so we can hear it oh yeah so um we customized that one um but these systems at their full level have four to 5,000 words in them so um they they're very robust and um teach our kids last of febrary I don't know why it's being so Qui oh that's okay that's okay um and so we can customize those with different voices different pictures what students really like um right and we're able to customize the pronunciations um and we're also able to change um the pictures that individually meet student needs um so what's really nice about these is that we really my name is Dr tally there you are okay so we thought we'd have a little bit of uh fun just a few minutes of fun and
057see if you can find something that explains the weather today what did you think about the weather today anything out there that you could communicate about what you thought about the weather today anything you find love o loved the weather that was great I agree I agree good good don't like it it was good yeah I would agree it was absolutely almost perfect makes you happy it was beautiful today wasn't it play like to play I definitely took a walk outside today um so it was a good day to be outside and walk okay well do you have any questions for our department we're very we were very excited and proud to be able to share what we do um because sometimes we feel like we're we're small and we're in office and we like
058we're glad we were able to um explain to you what we do I think well um we're going to wait till the end to um have questions so yeah okay now for some of our student achievement data uh you can see that similar to our Learners without IEPs the achievement of our students with disabilities has remained consistent we continue to look at resources that will result in making more growth in order to close the achievement Gap our SAT scores are similarly consistent but again we're always looking to additional resources that that can result in increased growth and our future goals are to continue to monitor our enrollment uh that continues to grow uh with a focus on how to best serve our students with complex learning and behavioral needs we also want to continue to
059add supportive tools and resources for our diverse Learners so they can maximize inclusive opportunities such as the things that are before you uh this evening and continue to practice the Fidelity of our research BAS curricular resources and now I will open it up to any questions okay thank you we'll start with Miss Jane thank you and thank you for bringing all these um these nice uh technology pieces for us to try I think it gives us a better appreciation of uh how you're working with the student so thank you for that uh a couple of questions I have here um when you mentioned out of District students in uh slide four C could you explain um who what who makes up that that group and what they're doing yeah so these are all students uh
060that have IEPs uh so they have an identified disability and um despite our best efforts in the district um we cannot offer offer them enough support they need have an intensive level of need and support uh that we cannot sustain here in the district and so we find a um typically a private uh and often therapeutic Day School environment uh that is able to make meet the students needs um and uh we fund that tuition and and fund that transportation and uh monitor that situation very closely and uh every year we have students that come back to the district uh and we celebrate that because that's wonderful and uh and they come back and uh we I can't remember one case in which we've had to say no this didn't work out and send them
061back so they once they come back they are back in District 204 so we monitor that very closely okay great that's that was exactly my next my followup so thank you the other uh phrase that you used like in slide nine and earlier is specific learning disability if you could just explain that a little bit more specific learning disability would include um uh challenges such as dyslexia uh disg graphia disc calcula uh things that either affect the student's ability to in the areas of written expression in the areas of math or the areas of reading and so we take each of those so specific learning disability covers all of those areas and so we um we specify that individual need in the IEP and then we have goals and objectives that address those targeted areas
062and then we have those curricular resources that give the students additional support thank you so much for that um uh Miss Osborne I had the privilege of meeting with you a few years ago and hearing hearing the robust robust program that we have for our our our early age students which you reviewed today and is extraordinary at that time I don't believe we had a class classes in Graham in Georgetown was that is that recent we've had the classrooms at Graham probably for five years at least okay and then um our classrooms at Georgetown used to be at gambert they just move to another building in the district okay great and how um uh how does it work in terms of like because I I know when you're under one building you can function differently
063and then you have classrooms in two other buildings are you able to bring staff together at certain points or do you travel and meet with staff in those two buildings to ensure uh I I do do some traveling but I also rely on the staff that are at the elementary schools in terms of the principal and the student service coordinator at Graham as well as the principal and student service coordinator at Georgetown but in terms of the staff um they are we bring them all together at least once a month so we're all kind of under the same roof doing some individual uh professional development as well as just um having collaborative discussions about instruction and um processes and procedures at the preschool excellent I I always pleased to hear that we being recognized for
064the outstanding work that you you guys are all doing and um at many of the state and national conferences that we get to attend uh early Early Education is so emphasized and um many of our peer districts don't have a program like we do and so I just feel like we're leaders in many way in this area and all due to you and your staff and what you're doing there so um thank you for that and sorry just a few more questions um regarding the technology uh so once you identify that a student might benefit from certain technology then that stays in the classroom or are we rotating this throughout the district how how do you manage the logistics of that it is based on student need so it is um the all the equipment
065that we have is specific for a student um and we keep a database it stays with that student because very likely it then becomes part of their programming and their IEP um and once it's becomes part of their IEP they need to have access to that unless the team decides um through a review of data that the student no longer needs it so it does follow them a big piece of what we do in our technician also that's not here today is that recordkeeping piece yeah I would imagine that's a lot to keep track of yeah so um that was just something I was interested in knowing more about and I guess to slide number 25 um to bullet point number two continuing to add supportive tools and resources what's on the wish list uh
066if you were if you were to have a tool that you think would really benefit these students what what would that be and if and I I apologize for not sending this question earlier but it just came to mind in terms of like are there new tools for all three of for all three areas if I so there is a tool called a glow Forge um similar to a um 3D printer um 3D printer prints from filament so it um prints from the ground up a glow Forge is a laser cutter um and it will allow us to cut like seethrough plexiglass key guards um all sorts of like um blocks and and stuff like that that's on our kind of on our wish list but um we could always do with more iPads every
067day more iPads all of the assistant of Technology um the training and the conferences that the Specialists go to and as well as the equipment um is paid for out of the idea Grant uh so we set aside a certain amount of money every year and uh try to stay within and it's hard to predict because you have a lot of movein students again the destination District uh component of moving into the district um and uh and then some of the devices are you know the things that we make are sometimes pennies uh very under a dollar but some of the devices in that are well over well several thousand dollars that we're putting just for one student a lot of the things we did not bring today right because they're in student hands and
068we buy them specifically for individual students you know can be $10,000 right um so um those we we buy for individual students okay thank you so much Mr Rising and let's hope the federal government fully funds the idea Grant um as talked to your legislators have them fund that idea Grant because they're not fully funding it um I I don't have any questions I just wanted to thank you Dr CPO for the update on student services Miss Osborne you know my feelings about the preschool absolutely love it proud snail parent um many years ago though and then assist with technology instructional technology amazing um my kids only had ring cards that were PBIS ring cards and that I mean that's the only thing they had back then that's all there was I think um so
069I mean even something like this because both my daughters had IEPs you know and especially with speech I mean this is incredible um and there wasn't to this extent so this is just amazing especially with all the ESL students we have and um you know in the growing number of um students with disabilities and IEPs that we have too so wonderful work just thank you so much I yielded my time miss dumming this these tools resiliency self-confidence and Independence and the ability to communicate there's just nothing more important for student to feel that empowerment in the classroom and that ability that you you're able to provide and this this shows how important these resources are that's why it's so important for you to bring to bring these and demonstrate so that we could even you
070know allow Dr tally to for the public to even hear that because if you're not working with it every day then you don't understand the power of something like this so thank you so much for um for helping demonstrate so that we can understand the the power that this technology provides just a couple of quick questions when students when students enter um we had a number of preschool um Stu are the help me understand are the where we have the 724 preschool those are our preschool students that's not determining how many may need special um Assistance or receive special services so that was 724 enrolled Al together okay and then the breakdown was the number I believe we had 266 students with special needs having an IEP um so that was kind of why I
071did a little bit of of the breakdown of the students who are enrolled and how how do how are we able to make that deter determination because being able to do it so early so that resources can be provided from the very beginning is so critical how does that how does that happen so we have many students coming out of the early intervention system in the state of Illinois and they come to us and we're we're required by law to take a look at the needs that they have and determine whether or not they would be eligible for special Education Services in the public school system at three yes and so then we are actually doing an EV we're doing an evaluation to determine to look at all those developmental areas and to to determine
072if there are any needs based on our evaluation perfect thank you for that lumination because I just wasn't familiar and then um I the number of the qualifications of our teachers h that is wonderful to have that commitment to work with um you know students with various needs I'm so blown away by the qualifications and that professionalism of our students of our um of our staff working with our students so thank you so much for finding the best thank you for the staff for coming and wanting to pour into our students the best um possible and then the professional development the opportunities did I hear correctly that there are opportunities that are provided for personnel that aren't just staff so for caregivers um that is wonderful part of actually IEPs um that we're required to
073write um if parents do require training for for different areas so that is an area of discussion and consideration um that we have at IEP meetings and it's part of idea um the special ed law that's that's great I didn't I didn't know that thank you so much this is um this is wonderful so truly appreciate it Mr kruis three points I want to make slide first the fiscal responsibility aspect of this you know we you're kind of oh excuse [Laughter] me nobody got hurt right the um the fiscal resp responsibility aspect of it you know you were mentioning we could buy this or we can print it ourselves and look at the savings um last meeting we had we're talking about the hundreds of millions of dollars we're spending But ultimately it comes down
074to that individual purchase at the end of the day and what are we doing to to be frugal with it and I know there's a lot of other school districts that would have just bought it and been done with it and so I appreciate trying to stretch the dollar as much as we can to try to you know help our teacher staff and students so that's awesome page eight slide eight this talks about our numbers um these are just like the hard numbers if we were to normalize this for the changes in the student population this would paint a different picture with the the white demographic uh decreasing um with the Asian population increasing ining um this might say a different picture on which demographic is using the program more or less over time so
075I think this is important um but if we were to say is it gr if if one population is using the program more we can't really tell if the um numbers are going across absolutely across the district how are they changing relative um to their changing in the popul overall that's just a comment and then page five is another kind of shout out is this no due process hearing like like wow I mean that's that's pretty good and if we were to break it down into we had this many students who have this many I IEPs and we had this many meetings to determine all of the changes and and kind of walk through the whole process and yet we went through all this did all this work and people were happy overall with it
076and so that's kudos to everybody involved in getting there but that's something that can get lost in the in the shuffle here but no due process hearings that's that's a huge win so thank you for [Laughter] that we need to take the devices away from exactly Miss fastic thank you for for all of this presentation and sharing these with us um I just have a couple small questions the first is we have 30 about 3,100 special education students and there are three and a half of you working on Two and a two and a half to provide assive technology so I should have asked this in advance but what what rough percentage of our students with special education needs require assisted technology to some agree I think I think it would be hard to tell
077because there are things that don't require our level of expertise to um because assistant technology is so broad right for example those pictures picture supports and things like that they don't necessarily need us we do provide uh the system that they use to make picture supports but we wouldn't know that that's something that might be able to be pulled through Embrace but I am not I am honestly am not sure um I think it's much larger than we um even know um we work on a referral system to request our support um similar to our Behavior team so if a team needs our support that's one way that they can get it um but I think there is a box on on the IEP that needs to be checked but it doesn't always need our
078level of expertise to decide that and I think in addition sometimes um I don't know if that always ident like just the number doesn't always identify how much of us there is right because some students need a lot of at support so even if we looked at those numbers it wouldn't necessarily okay explain how much support certain kids and I think it's as good as um you're talking about how great the staff is um we do a lot of coaching in what we do so if we do a really nice job especially with communication and empowering our speech and language Pathologists who are on the ground with those students a lot um more than we can be at 2 and a half um if we can be sure that they do a lot of the
079trainings that we have offered and we really coach them up then they can do a lot of the things that we can do with implementation so we work a lot in that way in that coaching capacity it's a super super collaboration Happening Here for our students congratulations on that and thank you for doing that for our students um it's amazing that we have so many different things here also the level of creativity just blows my mind I I think that's really cool this is the smallest of examples that we could bring I mean we could have brought I think we have over 3,000 pieces of equipment in our inventory oh go well thank you for having that for our students and providing them with that responsibly like Mr Kupa said um and then I think
080I had one other question students how do your very youngest students use these kinds of things because right there's the word there also and then there's a picture so are your very youngest students sisar able to pick it up pretty quickly we work closely together with Lindsay at the preschool okay um and we have many students that are using that kind of high-tech device yeah and many of our students are picking up very quickly um I'm so impressed sometimes when I go in the classroom and the kids are going through the different levels and answering questions okay um yeah it's pretty am see and then my last question is you said about 50 57% of the preschool kids are English language Learners um is again a question that would have been helpful ahead of time
081but is the goal to keep them consistently learning just on an upward trajectory to kindergarten because I imagine there's not enough time to graduate them out of the program depending on their typically they typically do not graduate preschool because they are assessed right when they also transition to kindergarten okay um we're just really looking at building those basic foundational uh skills for them and trying to make sure that their family at home is using their home language okay um and so we've been really working hard on that and as our population has grown we've understood better what we're supposed to be doing so I think we've been doing a very good job with it thank you very much well thank you it was a very interesting presentation and um I think if as you heard
082from everyone we appreciate seeing all those devices I don't know in my mind I had this picture of where you guys are working looks like Santa's Workshop like with all little tinker and make some really cool things yeah maybe it was that snowman that got me on that um but I I agree that like creativity is like amazing and uh on top of that cost reduction it's like wow I can't ask for anything more than that I I would say too um ipf has uh grants that are super easy to fill out and I was on the grant committee for several years and I would encourage you if you have some nugget of something like put one in I mean it's only a couple of paragraphs you have to write and they love uh awarding
083those to really creative ideas so um I would encourage that um I also Al I had a question about you said um the preschool had grown to 745 like after the charts were made or whatever and that you regularly are having you know a significant you know a chunk of students come in that are new um is there a limit like or a wait list or like um for our tuition students we only accept tuition students up until December so our tuition students are usually pretty stable what we're looking at is those students transitioning out of Early Intervention when when they turn three years old so um we are typically getting those kids uh up and all year long and so we're increasing our class sizes uh until the end of the year then we
084transition for the next year so there's no limit um there is in terms of class sizes yeah so uh in terms of the number of students who are in a blended classroom is said it always has to be a certain ratio for the state a number of the students who are in our and when I say Blended classroom I mean a general education classroom with students receiving special Education Services in that setting um so there's a a number for that as well there's a number for students who are in more of our smaller self-contained settings so there are limits we are not quite at that limit yet but we're growing okay but to your question as to whether there can be a weight list for students with disabilities there cannot canot so we can't say
085well we're we're full um if it's a student with a disability they they have the right to come in okay yeah interesting I've been on the board a long time but I learn stuff every time it's like um I also was going to say I um sub you know sometimes in the schools and I'm often I sign up to be a TA and help um students that have special needs and I was absolutely astounded with the little girl I was working with she I think she was in kindergarten I and she had one of these devices and it was amazing I she was nonverbal but what how she could use that thing and all those different cells I mean it was extremely impressive and the other thing I thought was super cool was the scissors
086because I was also working with kids um that had trouble dexterity with cutting and and so they had created some scissors that kind of like they didn't have to squeeze them or what or they could squeeze them a different way and it was like obvious how important and thrilled they were when they got to cut that paper and so I can imagine what that um device would do for these students that are in those integrated in those classrooms and see everyone else whipping through and cutting out the little you know forums and stuff and being able to have something that helps them it really touched me so thank you for all of your thoughtfulness creativity and cost savings for our district so really um an honor to hear all about what was going on so
087thank you you're welcome I'll just say one I I just want to say one thing or maybe two um the I did get to see the Santa's Workshop a couple of times a couple of times um but what the assisted technology it gives students the opportunity to be engaged fully um with their with their peers and that's what we want um just recently we had our spelling be competition and we had a non-verbal student who used his device and he came in fourth and it you didn't know that you didn't know that did you know that it was tremendous what SCH may I ask what school I can't remember I'm sorry I I just can't remember what oh wait wait I can tell you scullin okay um and so it was a wonderful U process
088uh that he was able to compete and the device allowed him to be part of the process so well done thank you so much thank you no can't make me everyone wants their toys [Music] you thank you all right our last item is legislative advocacy and Board of Education update does anyone have any items we had we attended L received oh yes our division meeting was uh this past week and um we were honored to receive a governance award for um the work that we do do to make sure that we're performing and executing the role as board members in uh a proper and efficient and um standard way and we can apply for it every other year and Miss fck um took the lead of um uh putting in our application this time and
089we are thrilled that we got selected again and um we awarded this plaque which we'll take our picture right after the meeting um but um thank you for everyone because that that was something that all of us had to work together to accomplish and thank you to miss fic for capturing all of that information it's not a simple application I was say that's not just to fill out your application there are metrics that you have to meet to receive that governance award I didn't bring the statistic about how many had received it this year but it was maybe I think there maybe eight yeah I was going to say seven or eight one one of eight in D page D page yeah yeah all right we were the only we were the only there's no
090there was no District that was close to us in proximity that received it either I will say that's right and we have we've had a record of uh having it for many years so it's like it's uh certainly an honor to to be recognized for that so all right any other items no with that I need a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn all in favor second in favor I any oppose no okay all right let's get a picture real quick before people start moving around