001now 7 p.m and I am calling to order the regular Board of Education meeting for Indian Prairie School District 204 on Monday January 23rd 2023. Michelle will you please call the roll miss fostick here Mr carubis here Miss Jane here Mr Rising here miss Donahue here miss Deming present and Miss Grover Miss Jane will you lead us in the pledge our next regular board meeting will be held on Monday February 6th we have several board salutes today um Mr krubus foreign District 204 students achieve rank of Eagle Scout the board salutes neuqua Valley Freshman Patrick Knowlton and Matia Valley Junior David Palm for achieving the rank of Eagle Scout the highest advancement ranking in scouting Patrick's Eagle Scout service project involved creating the lake Crone reading Sanctuary at Crone Middle School the sanctuary has a
002lending library inspirational rock garden with a path in potted flowers any mulched open areas overlooking Lake Crone and around the school David constructed a raised planting bed for the Naperville Park District the purpose of the raised planting bed is to enable elderly or handicapped individuals to Garden as raised beds are extremely helpful for people with limited Mobility congratulations Patrick and David on achieving the prestigious rank of Eagle Scouts thank you Miss Grover Technology Center of DuPage students of the month the board salutes neuqua Valley Senior Brenna Palmer and waubonsie Valley Senior Cameron merchando for being named the January student of the month in their respective programs from the Technology Center of DuPage Brenna is enrolled in the nursing assistant training program and Cameron is registered in the welding technology program congratulations to Brenna and Cameron
003with stemming District 204 student advances to piano competition National Finals the board salutes Gregory Middle School's 6th grader Jeremy Liu who won the Illinois state junior piano competition Jeremy will compete in mid-January as a division finalist in the mtna East Central Division Junior piano good luck Jeremy District 204 educator earns national board certification the board salutes calasha Elementary interventionist Daniel cover Danielle Culberson on being one of the 336 teachers to recertify as a national board certified teacher the national board certification is a treat achieved through a rigorous performance-based assessment of a teacher's pedagogical skills and content knowledge the certification process generally takes one to three years to complete congratulations Danielle on this Stellar achievement Mr Rising Illinois music Education Association Allstate festival and music education conference the board salutes 57 District 204 high school student
004musicians who were selected by the Illinois music Education Association to perform at this weekend's All-State music festival in Peoria Indian Prairie annually places at the top of school districts Statewide with a number of student musicians selected for this conference this year District 204 has students participating in the All-State choir orchestra band jazz band and composition track additionally one District 204 student has been named as a selectee for the ilmea future music educators seminar which is coordinated and taught by District 204 music educators Lori and Jonathan Loff congratulations to all involved Miss Fosdick District 204 students excel in the high school and middle school robotics tournament the board salutes District 204 middle and high school students and staff who participated in the robotics tournament at neuqua Valley High School Burkett freshman center this past weekend congratulations
005to the Middle School tournament champions which in the afternoon session where the Granger 82580c and Hill 98029f and Crone 37475a and Fisher 209f were the evening Champions the high school tournament champions were neuqua 2360v and Matia 8995b neuqua 2360n and neuqua 2360v runner-up were awarded the skills champions congratulations to all the robotics teams and thank you to the Indian Prairie Educational Foundation for supporting this robotics tournament experience we look forward to the Middle School tournament on Saturday February 11th Jane District 204 students win at Chicagoland Google educator group Film Festival the board salutes the numerous District 204 students who recently won awards at the Chicagoland Google educator group Film Festival the annual Film Festival provides an opportunity for K-12 students to become empowered and flex their creative muscles students were challenged to create a film
006under two minutes that responds to this year's theme my world congratulations to vashisht chilakala third grader at Owen Elementary who is awarded for his film vasi's creative world Julian zopp seventh grader from Hill Middle School for his film boyana wire yuvan singara Kasi Jack Lehmann and Sean sawiki 8th graders from Hill Middle School who won for their films eyes on the Storm Xander corellis eighth grader from Hill Middle School who received the award for his film my world of sounds seventh grader Nolan McLean won the award for his film a different prospective another award went to the filmmaking team of Christopher Christopher Devore and Yusuf abutalib and Connor Curry ninth graders from neuqua Valley High School for their film my Globe my world there were several there were also several honorable mentions for students in
007elementary middle and high school congratulations to all these students on this wonderful accomplishment did you say the first one was third grade yes well from Owen um Elementary I'm impressive Barry well thank you to all of those [Applause] next up is our student representative report from kushivasha Noob from neuqua Valley High School hello and good evening my name is kushive and it is my pleasure to represent Nico here tonight as we kick off the second semester the student council is preparing for Mr nvhs a beauty pageant where seniors both guys and girls can show off their talents and fashion sense we can't wait to see our newest Mr nvhs crowned at 7 pm on March 1st for the next couple of weeks 8th graders freshmen sophomore and juniors will choose their courses for the next
008school year this past week neuqua hosted an elective fair to show our Rising sophomores Juniors and seniors their option for the next school year to help our Rising freshmen neuqua hosted an 8th grade open house where parents and students alike can get acclimated to the building before the next school year with so many courses and paths to success I'm sure every Wildcat has a great school year ahead for seniors important dates coming up such as prom and graduation have been scheduled additionally tickets for senior spectacular held on April 22nd are now on sale we hope to see all our seniors there as we approach February the toilet you drive is beginning to kick into gear beginning on January 24th tomorrow we will be collecting new and full-size personal items such as toothpaste laundry detergent baby
009wipes and even more it's so great to see Wildcats getting involved in their community recently 30 neuqua musicians were chosen by the Illinois music educators Association to participate in the imea All-State conference congratulations to you Wildcats and I can't wait to see how it goes in other news this past week was Nico's re-initiation of access our student support service on Wednesday mornings I'm sure all our Wildcats are excited for a new way to get some extra help it's been a busy few weeks for Neco Athletics while a winter sports are running out their Seasons many teams are competing in their state congratulations to neuqua dance and neuqua Special Olympics for getting to State good luck to you all with winter sports wrapping up many spring sports are heading into their selection process in February let's
010all hope for good weather for all the sports heading outside it's also a busy month for neuqua's competitive clubs as they are heading into their final leg of their season Our Youth and government team is in full preparation for their spring field trip in March while the chess team model un and speech teams all head into their final few weeks we can't wait to see what you all accomplish it's been a pleasure speaking with you all tonight thank you for listening and as always go Wildcats [Applause] it's now time for public comment and 60 Minutes is allowed each person is limited for three minutes when addressing the board we ask that you respect the confidentiality and the safety of our students and School District personnel we also ask that those addressing the board be cognizant
011that this is an open meeting and is available to all age groups and as such ask that you consider who the audience members are this evening and keep comments age appropriate public comment represents the voice and opinion of the speaker there will be no feedback from the board members during the meeting but follow-up will be provided by an administrator as appropriate although this is not required it is helpful for the board to know whether the comments and concerns we hear are being raised by residents so we ask that you state if you live in the district and if you currently have children in our schools and tonight we have two speakers the first is Alicia Smith hello my name is Alicia Smith I am an alumni of the district a former teacher and a resident
012of the district my schools are Georgetown gomberg Kendall Gregory and labonzi Valley I currently teach in 203. 204 states that they have a commitment to equity and educational Excellence yet not all schools are included in this commitment four 204 Schools fall below the state average and State Testing Fisher Georgetown Longwood and McCarty the teachers students and families are striving for educational Excellence but the administration and School Board are not committed to equity for those schools when the district designed the boundaries of Gambar Longwood and McCarty it gave them a low income free and reduced lunch population that is more than doubled the district average of 18 percent georgetown's low-income free and reduced lunch population is more than tripled the district average of 18 percent then the district create even more inequity by having three of
013those schools feed into Fisher Middle School a student attending either Georgetown or McCarty from kindergarten through fifth grade and then attending Fisher will have attended a school for nine years that has not met the state average in testing school districts do not have to create inequitable schools that cannot meet the State Testing averages Naperville 203 has a similar low-income free and reduced lunch population to 204. Naperville 203's low income free and reduced launch average is 15 percent unlike 204 Naperville 203 does not have a single school with the low-income adult free and reduced lunch average that is more than double the district average as a result every single School in Naperville 203 is well above the state average in State Testing to a force commitment to equity and educational Excellence should be for all of
014its schools the administration School Board should not be designing schools with inequitable obstacles for teachers students and families to overcome we deserve to be included in the district's educational Excellence we want Equitable schools for Fisher Georgetown gumbert Longwood and McCarty thank you thank you the next speaker is Kevin Olay hello my name is Kevin owl I'm a resident in District 204 and a parent of two District 204 graduates my comments tonight are General in nature and my motivation to comment comes as a result of a 13-year teaching career at a Big Ten University coupled with a number of recent events including the termination of a New York University Professor who was terminated after 25 percent of his students in his class authored a petition complaining that the course was too difficult as a disclaimer I
015want to note that my four upcoming comments here are not intended to be an indictment of the universe of students as there are many students who appreciate the challenges that courses present and attack their academics with Vigor a good example is some of the students who got recognized earlier tonight however there's a number of trends that I've seen at the college level that are of concern to me some of these include number one diminishing personal accountability where students fail to own their success and look for excuses for why they missed a deadline or didn't do well on a given given assignment this includes students who feel they should be rewarded for simply showing up or trying as opposed to the results which are sometimes very far off the mark I also see a trend of
016limited proactivity where students fail to plan properly and when they miss important deadlines including forgetting to show up for an exam they expect others to accommodate them also the issue of lower resiliency where students are not able to handle routine adversity or Channel challenges including getting the right answer the first time and also an issue of of Integrity the number of academic Integrity cases that we deal with on an ongoing basis is startling this could be students doing joint work when it's supposed to be individual paying others to do work for them or forging documentation like medical excuses to get out of work worse yet many of the students continue in spite of undeniable evidence to deny that they were guilty of the violation and we haven't even seen the the surface scratched here when
017we hear about this chat GPT AI engine these are not any isolated incidents they appear to grow every year to wrap up my comments I want to say that I was most struck by one of the TV commentators in the aftermath of the NY University professors termination where the commentator asked when did we move away from being a culture of rigor I would ask that the Board of Education and the district not fall prey to what I'm seeing as a general Trend among some academic institutions of lowering the bar or lowering expectations of students let's rekindle a culture of rigor and let's do what we need to do to challenge students as well as help them Miss Donahue the speaker's time has ended be successful in those challenges however Harvard might be thank you foreign
018agenda and superintendent report we will start with the superintendent report Dr Talley thank you Miss Donahue members of the Board of Education and Indian Prairie Community I'll start my comments unfortunately with sad news one of our students Miss Alana Guerrero a second graduate Bill to passed away on January 4th a student in our Homebound Program we want her family to know we send them our condolences alas that may take a moment of silence now in honor of Amani thank you starting this week and over the next several months our high schools through the funding provided by Indian Prairie Education Foundation we'll have the Young Hearts For Life cardiac screening these screenings which will be offered to all students at the high schools screened for heart issues since ipef started the program in 2009 approximately 380
019students have been referred for additional testing with their personal care physicians we are thankful to ipf for this funding it provides for this program please contact your child's high school for screening information you may find information on the ipf website and we know that screenings will actually begin this week it is a great program and we're glad that we are have it for our our high school students they get two screenings within their four-year academic time in Indian Prairie I'm happy to say that the district was informed recently that we will receive an additional 250 000 to support mental health clinics more information will be shared at the board of ed meeting but I can say now this additional funding will support our current goal of expanding mental health support to our students and their
020families we currently are seeing more than 70 percent of our referrals for the clinics we currently have in place schedule a time with the therapist this means we will have received more than 1.3 million dollars in the last year to support mental health in our district and I'm very pleased about that I'm starting here I'll now turn the media back to you to our consent agenda items I need a motion for the approval of consent agenda items D through l I move that the Board of Education approved consent agenda items D through K to the exclusion of L is there a second second any discussion Michelle what you call it raw foreign yes Mr Rising yes Miss fostick yes Miss Deming aye Miss Grover Miss Donahue aye and Miss Jane yes the motion passes now
021I need a motion for the approval of a consent agenda item l I'll make a motion for the approval of consent agenda item L as presented I'll second any discussion I am going to be abstaining from a vote on this item as I have although not against law or any of our policies I have a personal relationship with uh somebody on the report standing for the same reason will you please call overall Mr Rising yes Miss Deming aye Miss Grover Miss Donahue yes and Miss Jane yes motion passes next we will have a discussion presentation from Miss Tara Fowler and Mr Mike Purcell regarding course revision proposal thank you hello good evening thank you for allowing us some time in the agenda this evening to come and talk to you we're very excited to talk
022to you about a curriculum project that spent a long time in the making so we are here to talk about our Spanish one class the [Music] um as we uh this is a revised course obviously not a new class to us but a revision of the work that we've been doing we'll talk a little bit more about what that revision was and some of the motivating factors this aligns with border policy 640. um this this course is one of the very few that we teach at both the middle school and the high school level so uh so Tara and I uh very excited they get to work together on this project which we don't do very often so uh in concert with our world Department uh World Language Department chairs and and a representative of
023teachers from uh the from the middle schools and the high schools to to come together to do this work and really what we're here to do is to share with you the work that those folks have really done the most of uh in general it's just a reminder new course proposals or revisions come through our uh the academic departments and and uh and certainly in concert with with the uh with the cni Department um we really look at the following things what's the Merit of the work uh the number of students impacted student achievement goals and Alignment to Board of Education goals which we'll talk about a little bit more like student achievement and equity and student engagement certainly big parts of the Strategic plan um uh as I mentioned this is at 10 different
024schools which is a rare thing for us we had all seven of our middle schools and the three large high schools many of you were here uh over the past five years when I've come to the board to talk about uh Spanish 2 and before that space three and before that on our Spanish four um and then actually right before I started was uh we did AP Spanish so this is the the end of the sequence of of courses uh and and one of the things that Tara will talk about is how these all link together um so as Mr Purcell mentioned this is the last in the progression of course reviews and updates for Spanish um so we're just simply looking to renew the alignment of the curriculum outcome so that all of the
025courses Spanish one through four have a logical progression um also looking at our current curriculum through the lens of student achievement equity and student engagement which is a regular practice for us and is aligned with the Strategic plan and then we definitely had a need for an updated resource I'm not sure Mike if you know how old the resources that we currently use it's pretty old we'll just go with that so this gives us an opportunity to look at both physical and digital resources to support our Spanish one instructions in terms of the course and the curriculum work that we've done the curriculum team has been working for quite some time now we've developed six units not necessarily in the order that they're listed on the slide the units and outcomes are similar to what
026we've had previously in Spanish one with some changes in that we made sure that our work was really focused on that alignment in constant continuity with the other Spanish courses which I mentioned as well as we wanted to make sure that we had some engaging instructional practices and that there were some updates in that area we also gave priority to making sure that the course is aligned with the national standards or the actual standards and we also looked a lot through the lens of how is Spanish one and the subsequent courses aligned with in preparing students for those AP Spanish courses should they choose to go down that pathway so in terms of detail and timeline this could go down as the the longest curriculum project in the history of the Indian Prairie School District
027because we began the work pre-pandemic in the fall of 2019 we had to pause for a few years and then we resumed that work again this past summer we have Representatives on the team from all of the middle schools and high schools including the three World Language Department chairs if approved the well at the next board meeting the team does plan to meet several times this spring and in the summer to prepare for a rollout of the new curriculum and proposed resource in August of well this August August 2023 we are in that year so in terms of next steps we are here tonight to request board approval of the revised curriculum for the Spanish one course at the next board meeting on February 6. I certainly want to take some time tonight to answer
028any questions you might have about that um we would give certainly give you some time to to think that through and then bring that back as an agenda item at our next regular scheduled meeting so this would be a time we're going to continue on in a moment and talk about resources but really wanted to make sure if your questions about the course itself or the process we would answer those before we start talking about how we're going to support the teachers and students okay I'm gonna open it up for questions but first um we're going to ask our student Representatives we have been striving to have more student voice in our board discussions and board decisions so um I would like to know if you have any questions from the student perspective or comments
029plan that Victoria yeah hi my name is Victoria vassel good evening I just want to say I am enrolled for AP Spanish next year and so I think it'll be interesting as I've been involved in the Spanish program since seventh grade and I've been committed to it I feel like I would like to if it's possible for me to like give some comment next year as like I'll be able to also see the new curriculum roll out I think that would be really great and thank you we love that and certainly we we do hear the the voices especially those students that come to the end of the program and it's as you know like a smaller group every year right because our students have so many choices that that we do get to hear
030a lot of their voice certainly we'll make sure that that yours is one that that uh since we've had a chance to talk for a chance to kind of circle back on that we'd love that thank you thank you so much thank you all right I'm going to just open this up to everyone um if they have comments or questions number one I'm glad we aligned it to what you what we did previously with the other Spanish curriculum it's incredibly important this will be on display at the district office if people want to review this curriculum just like we do with all our curriculum correct correct yes sir okay thanks any other comments or questions just wondered I know the resources primarily where we're seeing any idea are just a brief example of what students
031can expect as this as we consider this curriculum the course and resource change but why do why do you feel it's enhancing and why yeah why is it good question so uh one of the big things that with all of these curriculum projects and and while we look at these and and try to get them on a cycle you know we talk about typically the kind of best practices it's somewhere around six to eight years is is uh what just generally happens over time is that sometimes it's easy to sort of drift apart in terms of the things that we end up doing on a day-to-day basis right especially in a course like this where we're teaching in 10 different schools and you know and especially in the middle schools there's not plcs of teams
032of teachers doing this it's it's one teacher at a time and they're all doing exactly the right thing for the kids that are in front of them but uh what happens over time is exactly the right thing for these kids exactly what I think for those kids and we start to drift a little bit and and and then kids from all these different schools come in and take Spanish too and they're just a little bit differently prepared right so really the the goal of our curriculum work was to really work on that uh coherence and Alignment so that was really one of the big rest analysis for this work I think one one of the things you'll see that'll come out of it that are also really great is is looking at how do we
033really put kids at the center of the work right so I think as you see the theme is it really it's about my life and my friends and you know my experiences and my travel and things like that so one of the things particularly for a beginner is to connect to their background knowledge about life right and then try to help them attach some of this world language to that right and then we can build upon that and become more fluent and things that maybe you know less about thank you I think it's just beneficial for students and parents to understand why the why we're looking at making you know a little pivot and that's it's extremely helpful to have that information so thank you thank you okay I think there's no other comments right
034now perfect we're going to Pivot right into our uh second uh presentation here we really want to support this with resources as well and and and as we've talked about before sometimes those resource conversations come weeks or months later because of the way this works uh we we've been doing this project long enough we're here to talk about all of it tonight so uh so we we did get a chance to say hey We've Come Together on what these units should look like and and brought some resources to help our teachers to really frame up with that what that was and so we both of those trains came into this station at the same time so we wanted to share both of those with you we're really excited to do so too uh the the
035process of this is we brought in uh nearly a dozen different vendors and and their products both physical and digital and sometimes both uh and had our teachers really weigh in on those I had a second round we brought some vendors in to really walk us through what those what our favorite ones of those were uh and and took some feedback from the team and and we really look at those in three areas one are what are the instructional benefits of this one of the things what our our core belief is that nothing's going to help our kids to achieve the the outcomes and the that we talked about in the course a moment ago more than our teachers that that's where the learning happens we want to do is to put great resources into
036our teachers hands to help them to do that even better right so uh what are the instructional benefits to do that and when we talk about instructional benefits what we mean is how does it help kids achieve does it help us provide Equitable outcomes and is it engaging to students uh the second piece we talk about is the digital integration right some of these products are digital we so we actually our processes not only the vendors come in and talk with our teachers that they that we scoot them around the hall and take them to another conference room and they have to talk to our Tech Team uh because they it does it uh does it roster automatically does the our kids get it is the uptime we we do a kind of background checks
037on them and talk to other people that have used them does the digital part work is it effective all those kinds of things those things that truth be told Tara and I don't understand very well so we have to have them talk to people that are smarter than us to give us some feedback on that part right and then the fiscal responsibility of it so we have them come in and and give us bids and we make sure that we're coming in at the most fiscally responsible way that we can um and the one that really rolled up in in terms of all three of those areas is a title called Andre culturus um it's by wayside publishing uh one of the things that we're excited about that this was not uh the criteria to
038make that decision but it happens to be the same vendor that our Spanish three uh Team chose three or four years ago um and uh and we like a lot of the things that are part of this product um the things that teachers in their comments and and the feedback they gave us they liked that it tied to the actual standards that's the national standards for foreign language uh that it would help students with future study including for advanced placement uh including for uh potentially for the Seal of my literacy all nice things but really for the just the Spanish one aspect of this because because not all of our kids are going on to advanced placement and those kinds of things they really like that there's authentic videos in there we get to watch
039some of them it's even some of them it's so authentic it's like somebody out talking on a beach and there's people walking by and you kind of feel like you're there so there were some pieces that just were really just kind of felt like you were talking to someone who's living that in that world right um they like the digital supports and and they do like in this resource that there are readers which are very small books right at a Spanish one level um the kids can dig in and read a story right which is uh which is a challenging thing to find at a a level that is engaging enough to to bring to to a 13 to 15 year old but also remedial enough that they can do it at a very basic
040Spanish level right so they like that piece of it these these resources will will certainly be on display here in the district office for anyone who wants to come and take a look at them uh and and we will be coming back on February 6th with a request to you to approve this Resource as well at this time if you have any questions about the resource or follow questions about the course we'd be happy to address those okay I'm gonna follow the same process because I detect there's not a ton of questions about this um so does anyone have any comments or questions about the resource for Spanish I only have one quick question it's just not mentioned here and I'm assuming it's part of it but I thought I should ask um since teachers
041seem to be happy with what what is offered here I'm assuming it includes some writing component too thank you Victoria do you have any questions so you use a different resource for our Spanish too so um so it's very normal to have different ones so we would certainly bring we brought all of these and and we make these independently there's some advantages to having it kind of hearing the same voice but uh but there's some disadvantages true tooth beats old if you're kind of hearing things the same way so um this one we do we don't have for Spanish 2 uh if you if you recall likely you don't because it's there's a lot of these courses right Spanish 2 chose to use more open-ed resources and do things that were more self-created and what
042we brought was that they one of the things we incorporated in the Spanish 2 was instead of a workbook fee for that class we were doing the first round of our national test so it previously was the Apple test and now we're doing the stamp test gives kids an early look at uh where they are in terms of sealed by literacy gives some actionable feedback for kids uh based on National standards on where they are so that was kind of where we put our uh our money towards that rather than towards a primary resource and was that was the team's decision that that came to that and they've been really satisfied with that since we've done it right I think that's it thank you very much and the resources will be on display and people
043can look and comment on that if they have any items and submit them to the administration and look forward to the discussion at the next board meeting all right thank you for your time we now have our presentation from Mr Doug at carius regarding the curriculum approval process foreign good evening again Dr Taylor I'm Board of Education thank you for allowing me to come before you this evening I really wanted to talk about board policy 6210 which is at about um instructional materials is the key part of this focus and wanted to just have clarification around this as it's been kind of a topic about what does the board approve and not approve and so just wanted to talk about that process so our current uh the bottom part of this policy is really what
044we're specifically referring to in in the current policy states um that the superintendent shall recommend to the board for consideration adoption all textbooks and instructional materials and shall include that following information um that word all is the one where I'm really wanted to have a conversation about does this match our practice um and I'm here to say it it doesn't match our practice um any kind of um uh document or um you know can be considered instructional material if you're bringing it into the classroom uh to get a point across or to do instruction with it and so if every instructional material came to the board we'd probably get stagnant in the process of trying to prove everything and that's why I'm going to break down for you a little bit about primary resources or
045primary instructional materials versus supplemental instructional materials and part of that is what we would make as a suggested change to the policy and that would be the addition of uh one word in there which is the adoption of all textbooks and uh primary instructional materials so I wanted to go through and and break that down for you what the difference is just in real terms and it wouldn't be all inclusive but just a general idea so when we look at primary resources or primary instructional materials that's all of our textbooks whether it's hard copy or digital we bring those to the board required novels and by what we mean with required novels is is the novels that we would expect all students uh to be doing their learning from in class we have certain novels
046um that will go along as a whole class to be focused on some part of the curriculum sometimes we have Choice novels and I'll talk about that in the supplemental materials and then student workbooks these items currently go through and have been going through the board approval process which means that just as you just saw with Spanish one that we present about any changes to the curriculum and who's involved in that process we talk about that curation process whether that's how many different resources we brought in for staff to look at whether it was a piloting planning or those thing and then we do a final approval to the board on that that's been the practice and I do strongly believe that that should be the practice moving forward supplemental resources this is where it
047gets there's a lot of other stuff that's going on um that we use to support instruction in the classroom we have many digital products like IXL DreamBox Lexia some that are also not digital like Pioneer Valley during when we were during the pandemic we did have a digital version of Pioneer Valley as well we have Pioneer Valley though the hard copies in all our buildings right now Newsela which is a lot with current events sound trap National Geographic Quaver Music we have intervention support so we have some supports that we have in place for when we're looking at a multi-tiered system of supports we have our tier one which is our our um you know the instruction or or resources that we use all students then we might have tier two interventions where you might
048see something like re-naturally or Bridges math that means that our tier one curriculum or instruction is not um being as fully effective for those students and so we might need something else this is usually a smaller percent of students where we need some different level of intervention um in our library books oftentimes library books are brought into the classroom to read to the class or for students to read or for Choice those can all be considered instructional materials the classroom libraries some of those we help support and purchase for teachers some of them they bring into the classroom themselves but classroom libraries are also ones where we haven't brought those to the board in the past Choice novels so oftentimes teachers might say okay these seven books or these seven novels you can choose from
049because that'll help us um you know um a lot of times they're looking for students to have a better opportunity for interest with a book but they'll help them meet those standards along the way we would consider those Choice novels we bring manipulatives into the classroom we have a lot of consumable supplies um that we go through each year some of those are with course fees and yes the board might approve the course fees we bring speakers in the classroom and sometimes there's handouts with the speakers those would be considered instructional materials it's also donated resources and then open education which is more free things you might find a video there's newspapers all those get brought into the classroom as supplemental materials so we wanted to make sure that there was some clarity on all
050those things many of any of these things that cost the board might be approving through a bill list but that does not mean in any way that it identifies to the board exactly what that is there might be books for the LMC in there for our libraries but that doesn't mean that the board's getting every the list of every book that's going into those libraries same you might see something that's related to like cengage on the bill list and that might be for Big Ideas Math but you're seeing what that bill is for cengage so they do get board approval but they're not specifically on what that is on many of those Bill list items and many of these are digital resources we also at the same time look for all of the directors do
051a great job of trying to negotiate when we know that we need a resource it might have a one-year cost of 23 000 but if we get it for five years we can get it for sixty thousand dollars and so we look at those opportunities too and try to decide is that something that we know we'll be using for that period of time when did we go through the cycle on that how often is you know we have systems to check how often is this utilized by staff and those types of things so a lot of that that's moving along that entire way and those are not things that come specifically to the the board every time you're not approving every speaker that comes into a classroom or um you know somebody pulls a video
052because they want to make a point on something or they bring a newspaper in their classroom because they're talking about something with current events it would be nearly impossible for us to have you approve all of those every time and so just wanted to clarify that for what the policy says versus what's actually happening in practice um so that with that I just wanted um we're also I mean there are some things that we could um put into the consent agenda if you want to do something based on like a cost that we're doing that you know things that are over a certain if you wanted us to do a separate item of what that breaks out we could do that um but um I can't imagine a way that we would be able to
053do every inch all instruction materials as the policy says for the board approval um so with that I'm um would be glad to try to answer any kind of questions that the the board may have we're just having a discussion just having a discussion thank you um I support administration's uh recommendation on changing the policy to add to remove all and put Primary in there I think that's a good temporary fix to better align our policy with uh with our practice and then I believe we should Advocate with the Illinois Association of school boards for a revision to the Press updates because this is a problem that's really systemic throughout Illinois we don't want school boards to be a hindrance to Administration teachers and students in getting instruction done but there is a level of
054responsibility that the Board needs to be aware of with the financial side and what is getting approved um balanced with the practicality of you know even if we approve a book and uh digital material are surrounding the book there might be an update and that might happen instantaneously and we would have to be hovering board to approve stuff throughout the day to get it done practically so that's nearly impossible it's systemic in that the whole school code is out of date it references computer disks which you know but nobody is really responsible for kind of updating the school code so I think um we can do a little targeted pushback whether it is uh uh I think we could start with just an email to them about our concerns about it so I think although
055we try to follow press as much as possible to stay out of trouble and guide us on policy I think this is an area where policy has presses uh a little deficient on the policy and could be used um that can be updated uh so I think the fix now is is important because I don't like being out of line with policy and practice but there's probably a better solution once somebody takes a look at the the whole state of Illinois and it might be a legislative solution there has been some proposals of requiring the publishing of all instructional material on the website so that that can be reviewed by the public and this goes in conjunction with that what kind of burden is that what is included in the instructional material you know do
056we need to cite every website that gets referenced during the day um so I think there's a there needs to be there's transparency there's approval of what is being you know used and there's the financial aspect of it the bottom line is yes the let's change the policy and yes let's advocate for um a systemic change with press tend to be very focused on policy that the rest of us aren't but this is like your key area that you strive and spend a lot of time and attention in and you brought up press so I just for the public I would like ask you to explain what press is so we are members of the Illinois Association of school board which is a governing volunteer volunteer governing body of school boards which nearly all school
057boards are members of and we subscribe to a service through that Association that assists us with putting together our policies so they call it press it's an it's an abbreviation I don't know exactly what it stands for but it instead of hiring an attorney to update us on all the tweaks that the law makes every month or instead of Miss Mrs Jane putting together all that policy changes um we we subscribe to the service so that it keeps us up to date and a lot of our policies follow price there are times where we've deviated there's times where there's options to deviate um the music repertoire is a policy in there that is ours uh uh but there are other districts that don't subscribe to press and completely draft all their own policies and um
058I I believe there's benefits to having press because it keeps us um as most up-to-date as possible sometimes if you do your own policies um then we'd have to have an annual review to say hey did you guys read all the statutes that they passed and let's see if we need to update this that and the other thing so it's nice to get the updates um it's it's much more cost effective than from a attorney time and board time to keep us in compliance but just like anything else sometimes uh it doesn't it doesn't go right so I think this is one area where we can suggest an improvement okay Miss fosdek have any questions or comments um this seems I understand I can seem like a tricky thing but when explained practically I I
059don't know that any of us have the knowledge the experience the training or the time to do this for 27 000 students and all of our teachers and staff so to me this seems like a practical point but I also think it's a vote of confidence in our Administration and our teachers to say that that on the whole we support and stand by most of you know most as much as we possibly can what is used to instruct in the classroom thank you Miss Grover any questions or comments I do I appreciate the clarification so thanks for that it it's what is supplemental resource is going to be tricky because you have some that all the teachers will be using um because as we noticed in our earlier discussion some of those books are old
060some of like the Spanish that's where we're um kind of reviewing that curriculum so maybe all the Spanish teachers use a particular supplemental evidence but then each individual teacher might use their own so it kind of gets tricky how do you incor what is supplemental how do you if we are to approve supplemental resources how do we go about it like you were saying what it you know we can't do a teacher by teacher but at the same time if it's a district-wide supplemental we might want to approve it so it kind of gets iffy yeah we currently don't we're not recommending to approve all supplemental materials we we want really the policy to match the practice um however if the board does you know it would not be too difficult at the where we
061provide the board with some of those digital resources that are supplements that you see listed there like we do get newsella for all middle school students um for them to have access to that um it could be easy for us to list out what are those ones that we send for approval we typically do those renewals around June some of those are for like I said three years some are for two years some one year some five we really try to do that based on whether we can kind of get a financial break on those um and looking if we know that some cost increases are coming and what we can do with that so some of those ones that are maybe um there's still a lot of those and some of them are are
062very some of them might be I I know this is not um a small amount in a regular thing but compared to our budget like there might be something that's eight thousand dollars for us to pay for for each year we have a a long list that we review every we typically start reviewing that around April to June in that area and do our renewals by June so we have everything in place for the following year and so we could especially if if the board wanted on a certain amount that we could list those out what those look like so that they know exactly what those approvals are going for it would be really hard on some of those um intervention ones where we might only have 50 licenses across the entire District because it's
063very specialized for what a student needs are and I don't think that that's what [Music] um they were expecting to happen with the policy there are a lot of things too like I said that are Freer that people bring those resources in because that's going to add to the discussion especially at high school you might bring in a newspaper article to have a discussion about a current event and there's no way that it would no longer be a current event most likely if we went through the approval process and so there would be challenges in situations and you always want to take advantage of learning opportunities when they present themselves and so that happens a lot especially with everything kind of going on in the world and trying to have those discussions and um you
064know I think about the government class and and seeing all the things happening across the world and the the things that are probably brought in as as discussion topics related to that so uh Victoria do you have any questions or comments hi so I do appreciate the district doing their best and um I do agree that I think that at some point I feel like we all kind of almost become supplemental materials because we all kind of bring our opinions and our teachers bring our opinions as well and so I think I just appreciate the district doing their best but I think that yeah in a practical sense it is kind of hard to approve everything that we do but I do also want to mention that I also appreciate the district coming in with
065an open mind when improving different supplemental materials I think actually miss Donahue was with my class last year when we neuqua had a pilot program um um in their honors English 2 class with the Underground Railroad it was a new book that we tried to implement into the curriculum and I think it actually went really well in our last reflection of the study was asking like do we think that this should be implemented into our curriculum and that do we think that the district should approve this book and I think that was really great that they gave us um opportunity as students as an entire class to kind of try and you know think about like the text that we read within our classes so yeah thank you thank you for remembering me as your
066substitute teacher I never cease to be amazed by our students here in in District 204 questions that they did right that would never appear just don't we would never think of um I just have to say I just have a comment uh we each work with uh have adopted different schools in I took a tour last year the first visit that I had to one of my schools and I love that the principal had an opportunity show to share with me some of the intervention tier two resources that were involved in that particular School for students from a map resource Viewpoint not all students needed that that math resource and I don't think that all of our schools I'm not going to mention what level but I don't think all of our schools at that
067level had that resource but uh I and I never I didn't follow up near the end of the school year to find out but throughout the year it seemed to be very beneficial for the students that were able to um have that particular intervention so I don't think it was one that had come across for us to to prove it was a tier two intervention resource and so extremely beneficial for individual schools to make that determination of what's what's going to work for their particular school maybe not necessarily across the board so that was just a reflection that I wanted to share of an experience with one of the schools that that I partner with thank you was it at elementary it was yes it was it might have been the bridges intervention because oftentimes
068a credit to um our teachers who um aggressively are looking to meet every student's needs so a lot of times they are you know searching for what's something out there and there are a lot of free educational tools out there so sometimes you're like for some reason if it's not clicking right now um you know they are looking for something else that might spark better might just connect better for that student because it might be a little engage in a different way you heard earlier in the year someone came up and talked about can they try a different intervention at their school or a different supplemental material that was DreamBox versus IXL or those types of things and we do want to try to support buildings and what they think might work best for those
069students sometimes that's challenging because oftentimes we can only purchase based on how many students are in our school at the elementary level or that so then it does kind kind of sometimes make it challenging for us but when you have those free resources to try and then word does spread at times so it's like hey this is a great intervention and we've struggled to find we have struggled to find like tier two interventions for Math and so it was great that we found one that seemed to have a lot of um they were finding success behind that and so we're like okay we've got to see if we can get this in the hands of other schools across our district who might be seeing similar I think it was actually Bridges math and the principal
070introduced to me my first visit but then um I'm just going to say they they had the principal had one of the teachers that had been involved in helping to make that determination used it quite a bit share with me and it was so wonderful to get that particular update so to see someone who was truly using it foreign I don't think there's anything in today's presentation that I disagree with I think that's it's an important distinction that you're making and what a wonderful observation by um Victoria on how what how are we defining supplemental resources um there I don't think it's uh the Board needs to approve supplemental resources but there is a process internally to approve some of these supplemental resources correct yeah um most of the anything that has a cost we
071have an internal process of approval on that outside of that you're going to have obviously um uh most of the time our our building leaders know what teachers are using in there A lot of times Department chairs might know what teachers are using we get a lot of teachers that ask hey is this something we can get and then we explore it we try to see what it looks like or we see if a building's trying it and they're having success and see if we can give that access to other buildings so um yeah there's um there's not ones that people are trying to hide from anybody else everybody's always looking at if they can find something that works they want to share that and so that's a great part of it but anything that
072costs we do have an approval process that goes along with that many of those come through are directors because when we're meeting to look even at our renewals and stuff we're getting together with most of the people that you saw up here earlier and we talk about what those things look like and what can we do and do how long are we gonna you know when are we reviewing that because we also don't wanna even though we could maybe get a great deal on something we wouldn't want to renew something in a contract that goes longer than if we're going to be looking at that curriculum in two years we don't want to renew something for four years because we might decide to make a change through our curriculum committees on something so um but
073all of them do go through an approval process the rising yeah Dr Peter could go to slide four um this is what the board is approving so textbooks hard copy all the digitals required novels student workbooks um it's kind of good that we had our workshop at five o'clock today that that talked about our curriculum review process and then you know we just had a presentation um on Spanish that talked about the the rigorous um curriculum review process that staff and Department chairs go through to to make sure we're putting the correct resources in place with these primary resources that our teachers are using are also also aligning to the standards for our students to learn effectively and and do well on their tests or you know their SATs or whatever you want to talk
074about um is it safe to say well above 90 percent of what teachers are doing is with the primary resources in the classroom because to me the supplemental a lot of times is to reinforce something that's in the in the primary resources the supplemental is for practicing maybe for for math um you know or for social studies on questions and and you know but supplemental material is to the pure definition of supplemental material is to enhance the primary curriculum I would say that that depends some of our curricular areas don't have a major primary resource that we've purchased to go along with it so you could find an Ela about like with guided reading and doing those types of things where it might not all be driven by a primary resource however then you have
075other ones that it would be the majority of it and you're right A lot of these supplemental things could be to support students for a personalization focus on it that's what you see with a lot of those either like Alexia or DreamBox where then they can continue on and practice that skill set that was already taught in a different way but it does an individual personalization of it um you know so those are the things that you get from a lot of the supplemental resources it'd be um you know like our Middle School social studies we don't have like this driving we use a lot with like [Music] um um you know Newsela might provide us with the current events or guiding things that way it is something that we continue to look at um
076uh but we do have a curriculum expectations that are consistent across those schools and then what do we do to meet those and we do try to be consistent with that whether it's using this or using that um and we give the guidance on that but um it'd be hard for me to gauge about the 90 percent they I think in general that guides their instruction and what their planning looks like they might bring in something else to support or to help get a certain um uh you know curriculum strand to make a point for the students or to help enforce it reinforce it I would say that's what a lot of the supplemental materials do hope I answered your question but it typically guides the work that they're doing and then they just need
077to bring in other resources to to enhance and support um and then just find out one final comment uh Victoria you blew me away with your question uh you know because I I think back to our our whole role as a district um is to educate all of our kids the best way possible and we have a portrait of The Graduate that talks about communication and creativity and Innovation and critical thinking and problem solving um there are supplemental conversations that go on in every classroom and that is the goal of education is to expand people's thought process on a subject um and so that I thought Victoria's question was spot was and comment was spot on so thank you I agree uh you know students we um so often understand the importance of collaboration and
078student voice in the classroom and I'm sure oftentimes they're learning uh things from each other in there or any type of Socratic sentimentars those are all instructional methods and practices that probably go along um you know with the instructional materials foreign so I do think it was very helpful to have our earlier Workshop about curriculum and uh the fact that now we have laid out all of our curriculum and when it has been re-looked at or renewed um and a plan going forward for the next five years of which curriculum subjects will be looking at again of course there's always State mandates or federal mandates that might throw that up in the air but it's good to have that in place I um I agree with the next moves to um well we'll vote on
079the change at the next meeting but I think if it passes then I do agree that we need to press iasb um because I I think the wording here is very um too inclusive of everything and also the school code updates we need to express our disclosure at how out of date that is and really ask someone to step up to to pursuing getting this updated so I think that that's an important I think that there is an absolute overwhelming amount of supplemental material I think this like was shared teachers every single day are looking for other ways to try and help their students and they might bring in a different book or a different resource to try and see if that helps the student there is over all policy around supplemental or any materials
080we use in our classroom also as you shared there is um oversight with you know any purchases that go on to make sure that people aren't buying things that are out of line with what our District's Direction and focus is so I think that there is um you know things that are looked at to make sure that you know inappropriate materials are not being purchased but I also think it's important for people to know that the school board doesn't approve every single item yeah and we would put everything to a stop if we tried to do that I think it's important too like we're doing the same thing there's different supports we might need for our English as a second language Learners and in special education at times you know they have Team meetings about
081the IEPs and might find so those are always happening on a regular basis I do think it's in to ensure just from this presentation that people understand it's not a change in practice um it's just the language doesn't match our practice and we don't want to add to any confusion so I think it's important for people to remember that that's it then thank you a legislative advocacy or Board of Education updates from anyone there is a lend meeting on Friday I believe and also a large unit district meeting so there'll be a couple of things that are coming up so I did email the board about something I was bringing up to iasb I'll probably have an update for the board at the next meeting yeah all right then I need a motion to adjourn
082motion to adjourn there's second all in favor any opposed nope nope we are adjourned