Urbana School District 116 Board of Education 06 02 26

001Uh, good evening everyone. But before we get started, I would like to recognize the passing of uh, Urbana City Council member Shandra Bishop who service this community was incredible and greatly appreciated. She really exemplified exactly what it meant uh to be a citizen servant. So, um to honor her, I'd like to have a moment of silence, please. >> All right. Thank you. Um like to call to order this uh business, sorry, the study session school district 116. A roll call, please. >> Member Cheryl, member Hixon, >> here. Member Maribou >> here. >> Member Jones >> here. >> Member Langdenorf here. Vice President Baxley >> here. >> President Bowski >> here. We have a quorum. >> Um are there any additions, corrections, or modifications to tonight's agenda? No. Uh now it's time for citizen statements. If

002anybody here present wishes to make a formal statement before the board, uh please fill out a gold sheet located in the back of the room and hand it to recording secretary Lori Johnson. Have we received any? Okay. Go out. Calling once, calling twice. Moving on, uh there is a call for an executive session after uh tonight's meeting for the purpose of uh negotiations uh with the teachers union uh to talk about that amongst ourselves. There will be no action taken by the board after our executive session. Uh the chair would then entertain a motion to approve tonight's agenda as published. >> So moved. >> Second. >> Moved in a second. All in favor say I. >> I. Opposed. uh board of course. Does any board member wish to make a report this evening? Go ahead,

003Sherry. >> If it's Tuesday, I have a report. Um I just wanted to convey that the past two weeks have been busy with many celebrations, graduations, and promotions. And what a wonderful high school graduation ceremony and adult education ceremony and promotions at the middle school and all the elementary schools for the fifth graders who are now going to go to the sixth grade center. I was able to attend many of them and only missed two of them due to the scheduling issues. Each celebration was different. At the high school, I was impressed by the poise, enthusiasm of the graduates who were celebrating an important milestone. At at adult ed, it was evident that the graduates put in hard work that was needed to achieve their goals. The middle school graduates were ready to take on

004a new chapter, leaving their elementary school experiences behind. Yankee Ridge celebrated in three languages and the students sang a me a meaningful song. Leo students recognized their two retiring teachers who dedicated many years to the school and the students spoke beautifully about their teachers and at Dr. Williams the teachers took the opportunity to acknowledge each student and highlight the progress that each student made in year this year in reading, math, citizenship or in other ways. The principles had heartfelt wishes for their graduates and spoke sincerely to them with words of encouragement and advice, wishing them all well as they encounter new challenges in a new environment. Congratulations to all these students and to the families and teachers who made it all possible. So with that, I want to add my opinion of something else. Tonight

005I assume we will hear hear data about students and schools progress this year. And even though the data is important, I continually, and I will do it again tonight, remind myself of the bigger picture. It is not only the test data on a particular date that is important, but is also the journey that these students took to get to this point to graduate or to go on to the next level or challenge. And yes, I support the new measures and the new curriculum that has been implemented to help dad improve. Reading is important, but not every student chooses the same path, has the same strengths, or develops certain skills as their peers at the same time. Test data should not be the only measurement used to determine the successes of our students, teachers, or programs.

006>> Anyone else have a board report this evening? Go ahead, Jennifer. >> Um, John, did you get the picture? I sent John a picture to put up on the screen. Um, I spoke at the board meeting about the last time about the sign indicating what what is now the sixth grade center is sitting on the WY campus. Uh, Mr. Ashman said that he is in contact with some sign makers and is waiting on direction to see what should be on the sign. I would like to see the original sign that was on the WY building stating the school's name, the date it opened, and the board members who voted for it. Tonight, I want to show how the district honored the memory of Hayes School when they renamed it for King School. This was something

007the renaming was something that the community supported, but there were some who were a little nostalgic about losing the name of their school. Later, when the original building was finally torn down, and it needed to be, the school incorporated the Haye School name into a bench that sits in front of King Elementary. I always appreciated this for people who are interested in history or for the family members whose grandparents went to Hay School. And so, I guess some sort of permanent marker that indicated the history of the property and the school. I know other people don't seem all that interested in it, but I would like to see this on the grounds of WY. And I wasn't gonna talk about this. Um, >> can I throw in one thing? Uh, I think the plaque you

008mentioned is in the display case with all the other WY memorabilia. I'm not sure what Ry's working on, but the plaque with the dates is in the sixth grade center now. >> Yes, I know. And it that's great. And I'm so glad that the administration, the uh principal there decided to do that. But I think that depends on the principal. And as we get down the road in history, um you know, that could change. Oh, we really need that case for a display area. We really need it for something else. So, I'd like like this at King. I mean, this is a long time that um since we named Hay School King School. So, I'd kind of like to see that as as a more permanent um it's just me. So, um anyway, >> add

009something. >> Pardon me. >> So, the display case wasn't just at the request of the principal. It was it came out of the work from the committee as a suggestion and recommendation. And so, district administration Randy and John were the ones who gathered all the items. And >> so I I don't see those things moving at any time soon depending on the principal but because it was the wish of the committee that those would be stored there. So I just wanted to add that in. >> And if there are any people who have additional memory memorabilia, we've been working with some of the sixth grade students and would be happy to incorporate that as well. >> Okay. Yeah. Um, and I wasn't going to I had decided not to mention this, but since um, Sherry

010brought it up, I agree. I think that our school district does many, many great things for students, but I think that our test scores are important. And um last week we talked about the NAPE scores and um it was said uh the NAPE scores were in uh our NAPE scores were in the New York Times article about how um scores nationwide have been going down. But they uh compared our score to other scores in the state and we were the lowest. And at the board meeting it was said that the cut offs for this test are particularly high that uh proficiency level used by NAPE is higher than what we would consider grade level proficiency. This might be pertinent if the article had referenced the actual scores, but it didn't. They merely compared how districts

011in Illinois did. We did less well than similar schools in our area. We did less well than all schools in the state. We are at the bottom compared to all state schools. All schools took the same test with the same high proficiency levels. We don't know what the proficiency levels of the schools are. We just know that ours are lower than everyone else's. So that comment was not relevant really to the material presented was also said that we don't get to choose the students who take the tests or the school or the grade level. True of all schools and students who took those tests was also said that this is just one day in one class and doesn't really reflect how well Urbana is doing. This is also true of all the schools and I

012would not have named the schools and took and students who took the test in Urbana that to me that wasn't fair. It was also said that we all know that students today come with a lot of problems and that those problems affect life and learning at school. This is also true of the other schools in the NAPE study. Are our students lives more affected by stress than all other schools in Illinois to the extent that they can't learn as well as students in other similar districts? I have a friend who used to live in Paris, Illinois. She's a retired Orurbana teacher and the Paris, Illinois schools, I guess, have not been doing very well on their standardized tests. and the residents, including the board members and administration there, have been unhappy with the district's performance.

013Their response was to identify four school districts who are doing better than they are, form a committee to visit those schools and find out what those schools may be doing to help their students achieve better and see if there were things that they could incorporate into the Paris school curriculum or how they do things. So I just to me this is something that I think we have to look into our hearts and souls and say do we have to do something similar do and I'm glad that we have are working on our curriculum and all that and making progress is great but just saying well this wasn't really indicative of where we are it is indicative of where we are. So that's all. >> All right. All right. Thank you. Anyone else? Uh going forward,

014I'd like though I'd like to remind board members to keep their remarks limited to three minutes like we were do for citizens for both of you guys. Just try to keep it down under three minutes. We have a long agenda tonight. Uh moving on, our first study topic is a district strategic planning update. >> Okay. So, while John's pulling that up, we are going to play musical chairs tonight. And we have several uh district strategic plan facilitators who um are going to give our end of the year uh progress made on our key performance indicators for 2526, year one of our five-year plan. Um we were here earlier and presented our initial key performance indicators. Um and look forward to sharing progress. We did present the same information to our strategic steering committee on May

0157th. Um the board is getting new data that the steering committee folks did not get because at the time of that meeting we were still in the middle of our map testing. So we weren't able to give um final numbers. So we are excited to be able to share those this evening um with the board. I do want to thank Paul and Sherry and Jennifer who have um actively participated throughout the year in um many of our strategic planning sessions either at program council um our Thursday night meetings at the middle school or joining um different small groups uh in our work through the steering committee sessions. So, thank you. It's really important to have board members in those spaces um to help hold us accountable to the work. So, I will start us off

016with the first couple of slides. John, I think you're g you can put the clicker over there. I'm just going to do the first couple. We know the fast facts um of our data and who we are and um who our schools are and what we u make up and our for our district makeup. So, we can skip this one and we can head right into we know our mission um to create a supportive community to equip and nurture all learners to achieve success. Throughout the presentations um tonight and um in our next session we have have our secondary folks come. A couple of our buildings took the task of taking our new mission and doing some mission work at their buildings this year. So we'll probably be hearing about that a little bit um

017between tonight and next week. And we know our four areas. So we can go to the next slide. So um this is the area in which we'll present the goal areas as we have been student growth first um staff development and retention family and community as agency and district systems and operations will close us out. Um, as I mentioned when you saw the it is a long uh slide deck, but what we're asking our facilitators to do is focus on the new information, the end of the year information. So you can go to the next the other direction, John. Um, the white slides that were in your uh power deck, your slide deck are are the um initial key performance indicators. the shaded slides or if you have color copy that'll show up here. The

018orange slide is the update. So, we're going to have our facilitators really focus on um not spend as much time talking about the strategic actions and the action steps. We did that when we came um the first time to present because we do has as Paul mentioned, we do have several other um school improvement updates this evening. So we do just want to give the highlights and um make sure that we share just the end of the year data from those orange slides. So we will start with student growth and achievement. So Christina Ko Luwendowski is going to kick us off. Good evening everyone. I'm Christina Kale Lewendowski. Hopefully I can be heard okay um out there. Uh, John, are you gonna control it or >> All right. All right. So, like Dr. Ivy Tatum

019stated, we're going to review the orange slides because those are all the updates. And so, I am in the curriculum department and I share this goal with Jessica Bradford. Um, she is here in spirit. Um, and so I just wanted to um, let y'all know we're a team. And so we had four goals and we're going to update you on those four goals. And so the first one is in relation to our I data, Illinois assessment readiness. And so we have the projection at the top. This is what we hope to reach when we get our scores this summer. uh we always get them in preliminary scores and then you guys know in October you get the official scores for to the public and so we are um if you look at the all students

02027% of all of our students will be proficient in um ELA and then we have the priority groups black students 14.2% Hispanic students 19.9 students with IEPs 9.4 4 and English learners 16.4. So again that is what we are projecting by looking at the data. Um and just a reminder to everyone is that this is the first year we'll receive results with the new performance scales. So that's very important to note. So this is um we'll have our second data point pretty much. And so one of the ways we track this uh track our progress is by using NWA map and what that does it provides us a projection of how we may perform on IR and there's been a lot of studies and there's a strong correlation um and so if we take a

021look at the evidence data used for reading students performing at 41% and above all 47% um so that This is according to our MAP data. Um, this is what this is how our students performed. Our black students at 36%, Hispanic students 36%, students with IEPs 19%, English learners 27%. And using that data, I projects that this is how we'll perform on I on sorry, NWA projects this is how we'll perform on IR. All students will be at 20.5%, black students at 10%, Hispanic at 11.1, students with IEPs 4%, English learners at 5.4%. And so you might be asking yourself, how close are those projections? They are really close. Um maybe five to 10% off for maybe a grade level, but it's pretty close when the real results come in. Um so then we go to

022the next slide, the next orange slide and that will be how will we do in math and so we're projecting we had projected all students would be at 21.3% when we get our final results and um I won't read the rest you can just read how our priority groups will perform. Let's get to the evidence here at the bottom. The data showed that all math 41%. Black students were at 28%, Hispanic 34%, students with IEPs 14%, and EL students 33%. And what will we be how will we be performing? The projections say all students will be at 12.6%. Again, this is for math. Black students 2.6, Hispanic 7.9 students with IEP 6.9 and ELELLL 6.3%. Okay. And we'll go to the next one, the next results orange slide. And so we also have goals for

023our black students. And this is the uh this is in the area of reading. And so the results show that when we look at the median percentile, our third graders performed at the 22nd, sixth graders at the 25th, and our ninth graders at the 38th percentile. And then we'll go to the last one, which will be math. For our black students, the results show third grade at the 20th percentile, sixth grade at the 15th, and ninth graders at the 26th percentile. And those are the academic goals. And I'm going to pass this on to the next. Oh, I forgot I have one more slide. Sorry about that. Um this one more slide is really a slide to just um summarize everything. And so the problem is summarized there. We know we have to fix the

024achievement gap between our students. Um so we have our goal there and we just went over our goals and strategies are listed there. uh we want to use a multiaceted approach such as really looking at our tier one looking at how we're uh using MTSS uh multi-tered students of support because what we know is that students are on a continuum there's I look at it like a diamond and students are can be knowledgeable in this area need support in this area and so on and so um and this includes students who need enrichment also it's not students who um may not be strong in a certain area. All our students need to achieve high and show high growth. And I'm done. Thank you very much. Go to the next one. Culture and climate. All right.

025Good afternoon and thank you for having me. Chassity Beckas. I'm the director of equity and school improvement. Um, and so I was overseeing the culture and climate goals this year. I think uh, member Hixon popped into some of my sessions this year. And so I'm just sharing out how we kind of ended the year. So one of our big goals was to um, implement interventions for our students who were experiencing behavioral challenges. And so we wanted to decrease our referrals for black students and students with IEPs. And so Beth Lad will come up here. We had um a very similar goal because as you all know we were cited by ISBY for our disproportionality for our black students. And then also um new this year was for our students with IEPs. And so um in

026Pan Panorama instant referrals. So these are just referrals. This is not um this is not like out of school suspensions. That was like a different um a different presentation we showed with secondary and they'll share some of that data in two weeks as well. But we were able to decrease um our incident referrals for our black students by 1.3% and for our students with IEPs by 7.2% and I believe that Beth has an update on that number as well closing out the year. Then we had our second goal in culture and climate um really focused around sense of belonging. And so we know that students who have a stronger sense of belonging um and feel positive about coming to school or being in their educational spaces um they are less likely to have behavioral needs

027and or the adults in the space are able to um dress them address them appropriately. So um we increased by 15% our belonging for our staff and then for our students we increased by 2%. And this was all about our systems that we have in place. So our multi- multi-tered systems of support for our students. We wanted to ensure that not only are we using the system, but we're using the system effectively where our tier um our services at the tier three level that we have plans in place for our students. And that is um that can be found in our platform called Panorama. And this helps too with teachers who are progress monitoring. It helps with us thinking about what supports we may need, but also as students transition from one building to the

028next. And so at the end of this year, the total number of students who received or have completed tier three behavior support plans um was was 43% of students needing that tier three. So in our panorama platform, it will um kind of code students as critical. 43% of the students needing or identified as critical in behavior had an intervention plan. And then when we looked for sorry for last year for this year the increase was 49% of students needing that plan had the intervention plan. So we did grow we have more work to do in that area. Um and then we also noticed that we had an increase of plans which is may seem like a negative but really a positive with our staff members really following the MTSS pro process and ensuring that our

029students are getting some sort of support and identifying them as well for needing that support. So some of our celebrations um we have a stronger MTSS like responsiveness from our staff our buildings. We have improved documentation to help kind of carry on and support our students. Uh we have increased system and identification awareness. And so you'll see this in some of people's school improvement plan too. We kind of talk about what are our decision rules. How many um referrals will it take for a su student to get like recommended? Um some of our reflections were our 2026 data was below our KPI, right? And so we had conversations on our group about how do we really um monitor what's important on both our student outcomes but also adult practices or PD that will help support

030this as well. Um identify students increase which I mentioned um is actually in my opinion something that is beneficial because we're identifying students and supporting them along the way. Um, of course, overall we want to have tier one systems, resources, and processes that decrease that student identification. Um, and then we still have students who remain unsupported. So, thinking about our MTSS system, if there are, let's just say, 30 kids over a school year who may need um those services, are we able to provide services for 30 children? Right? And so we have to look at our services where can we go back and put more into our tier one potentially our tier two and who services that so that we have a smaller number ideally below 10% who are within our tier um tier three

031services. Sorry, this is just the um data showing how many plans we had, how many were up to date, and how many were on track. Any questions for me? Good evening. Beth Lad, executive director of student services for Urbana and we are going to take a look at our data um from the lens of student services and uh students who um receive IEP or special education services in our district. And so as you can see by looking at um our uh fall to spring data, we did not meet our desired outcome of students um increasing the number of students who met um or exceeded their projective projected math growth targets. Um we spent a great deal of time um within all of our groups talking about two different um needs within this area. um making

032sure that we have truly specialized instruction or really researchbased um curriculum and strategies that we're using with our students. And so that is a goal for us moving forward. And also being able to measure our data throughout the year and not just relying on our map three times a year. And so um our next um action item is to really articulate our progress monitoring expectations. So we uh did take this extremely seriously in terms of our data and making sure that we're um moving in the right direction with our strategies. We felt um we did a lot of work um this year as a department with our special education staff on um instructional strategies and look forward to some adoption of really high quality um materials that will support our specialized instruction. And then um

033Chassity mentioned um really working to decrease our amount of exclusionary practices or suspension days for our students um across the board. Um specifically our black and brown students and our students with IEPs. Um we were on track to meet this goal. Um and um our data was showing that we were going to meet this goal and um and then we did not when we looked at the end of year data. And so um we did uh a lot of work um across our buildings across um our administrative teams on aligning our decision- making um and um really utilizing each other as we're making decisions about students that that potentially need to be excluded for a day or two. Um and um as Dr. Dr. Ivory Tatum and I have spoken about the work that came

034out of our groups um this year. We really um want to um do a lot more work in making sure our staff are trauma informed and um really leaning into what that means from an educational standpoint in my classroom and how do I deal with what I'm seeing, also maintain my learning environment and have um the supports necessary to support our students. Again, we were on track to meet this goal. um and um just didn't get there. But um did a lot of hard work um across all of our buildings for this one. Two areas that came out of um many of the discussions we've had as a strategic group for student services is making sure that we have strong supports in place in terms of what it means from a general education teacher standpoint

035to have a student with special needs in my classroom as well as making sure we're inclusive our students who receive 504 services. And so while that was not reflective um in our previous goals and and in our targeted um activities for this next year, it is convers they are conversations we keep having and know that that is a huge impact to meeting um our goal categories. >> Thank you. >> Quick quick question. I'm sorry put you on the spot. No, you're fine. >> And I and I should have probably uh mentioned this when I first saw your goal when you first presented it, but >> if there's like a big change, say in either the student population >> or like the number of students on IEPs, if you're measuring absolute numbers of uh >> we're

036measuring percentages. Yeah, we are. And and it I just am giving you the absolute numbers. That That's cool. >> Yep. Our goal is an overall decrease by percentage. >> Gotcha. All right. Thank you. >> Yep. Great question. Thanks, Paul. >> Good evening. I'm Lupe Racone. I'm the director of multilingual programs. Um my partner in this work, Dr. Wemald, unfortunately could not be here tonight. Um but he asked me to share this information for both of us. Um so what we did for tonight was we were able to update the data that you had received um from May 7th or from the May meeting um to show the growth that was made for our multilingual learners. So this data is looking at any student in the district that is identified as a multilingual learner at any

037of our um kindergarten through 12 buildings. Um so as you can see for our goal, our goal overall is that by 2030 we are showing 20% growth overall. Um from fall to to spring this year, you can see that we've actually already met that. [laughter] Um so as a baseline, we're hoping that um we will continue to meet our annual growth of 4% for all of these areas as well. So for um our multilingual learners in math you can see that they had 30% of the students had met their growth. Um for uh math in English 48 approximately 48% of the students had met in growth uh had met their growth goal as well. Um for the Spanish reading this um MAP is only administered at Yankee Ridge and for students within the dual language

038program um at the sixth through 8th grade level. the map in Spanish is not offered at the high school level. So, this measure is just students in the dual language program um kindergarten through 8th grade. Um you can see that that was 21% growth which did um still meet our overall growth goal. That is an area that we want to see um increase even more in the future. um doing this through ongoing professional development work with our building principles, our CITs um and our tier one and tier three interventionists to really kind of help this move along. That's the only new information that I have for multilingual. Is there any questions for me? Good evening everybody. Jesse Guzman, principal at Urbana High School. And so my goal is our graduation rate and where we are

039landing with that. And the three areas that we worked on this year are more of our long-term goals, uh, highly focused on our freshman group. And so our progress was centered around AVID, uh, 9th grade teameing and our college and career pathways. Um, with that, we either achieved these action steps or came pretty close to it. Um, with AVID, we um, completed our site team goals. Um for our students in Aban 9 and 10, we have 97% enrolled in rigorous courses or the most rigorous courses available. The two students that are not are from the first year of implementation. And so we're really working with that first year's group that will be juniors next year to make sure that they are finding success in their own unique way. Um with that after our doing our

040sit our AVID evaluation for this year we did come out as certified. So, we did achieve that action step. Um, for ninth grade teaming, we are on track for doing it at the complete grade level for next year, having three teams. Um, really focusing in on doing solid tier one, really looking to identify our kids who need tier 2 or tier three services with that. We have the framework in place. And looking at our early data, as we just finished last week, and we still have some students finishing finals. Um, at the freshman level, we are anticipating about 85% on track for graduation according to the state's criteria for that freshman year. And then, uh, we are looking at 55% of students on team being in attendance for 90% or more of the school year.

041And all year, our students on team have tracked better than our students who were not in a team this year. And so, next year, all our students will be on a team. um evidence uh for our college and career pathways. Um we were going to do um our students in Zello doing career cluster and the match fit survey. Our goal was to get 100%. We got 93% of them to do that in our academy 9 advisory period. And then our pace framework has been updated. It is much more rigorous. you heard our presentation I think the last time when I was here the last time we met um our CT programming and how that's expanding even down to sixth grade through 12th grade. So that is really um becoming more solid and proud of the

042work that we're doing not only at the high school but at a district level. And so now where are we actually landing when we are looking at for this year increasing it by 1% overall. As I said at the graduation ceremony, we have the largest class graduating in five plus years. And so the average graduating class is about 235 to 240. This year it was 268. This was not a bubble group. This was not a group that was a larger enrollment. And so we are excited to see we are certainly anticipating more than the 1% we were going for um for that. And by the end of the summer, we actually anticipate three or four more students completing summer school. And so our actual graduation rate will hopefully be a little bit higher once uh

043summer school finishes. So we're looking at about 271 when that's all said and done. But again, the final number won't come out till early in the fall once the state determines our actual cohort for our students who actually started with us um as freshmen and to see everybody who's accounted for, to see students we actually lost, where they went to. And so we'll have a final number probably in late August um for that once we release that. But at this point um based off of that initial number, we're looking at exceeding that. And so with that, I will be here again next week um or the next time we meet. So, fortunately or unfortunately, however you want to look at it, um we'll go into more details about our what we're doing in the building

044overall as a whole to help push and um to that next level and make sure our students are getting across that pathway even if when they're not freshman, our sophomore, juniors, and seniors. >> Question, uh does your graduation number include the uh students who graduate from Tiger Academy who completed? >> Yes. >> Okay. And what about adult education? >> Same as Yes. >> because they were participate in your graduation. >> Yes. >> Okay. And ready? >> Yes. If they are registered in Urbana, they do uh graduate with an Urbana diploma. >> Thank you. >> Yep. And next we're going to make a change. Instead of um going to the recruitment and retention section because Angie and um her counterpart have a full HR recruitment and retention report um to share later. So we're going to

045give them a little more time and there is some duplication um in those slides. So, we're gonna uh go past the uh strand two and go right to strand three. So, I'm going to invite Dr. Nance and Mrs. Webster for our family and community as agency area. We're saving time where we can. >> All right. Good evening. All right. So, um Okay. All right. So, um so we're going to talk a little bit about um supporting family engagement and um as Dr. Ivy Tatum stated, we're going to kind of skip through to um the update portion um of our goals. So, our goal 3A um was attendance data and district required family engagement events for this year. um compared to last school year. Um we did help hold a family um neighborhood night on April

04622nd, 2026 out at the Sunny Crest parking lot. Um it was very well attended with over a hundred people including families and community members. Um we also um are looking at a sample attendance monitoring form for school attendance review teams to complete for chronically absent students which will be finalized next school year 2026 2027. Um, so we also are um participating in the Every Student Every Day campaign with the Champagne County Community Coalition to raise awareness and address student absenteeism in Champagne and Urbana schools. Um, so just to add a little bit um of information, I know the last time that I was here um with you all, I shared and actually it was you um that asked the question and I shared that it would be kind of like a academic block party and

047that's exactly what it was. It was a lot of fun. We got a lot of positive feedback um from community members and our youth that came out. Um we had live music, popcorn. I mean, it just was a great time and we had a lot of different academic stations uh set up to engage families in their own spaces where they were comfortable. Um so it was a great event and we're hoping to continue. We will um have some more scheduled neighborhood nights next year. Um, and then also to speak to the Every Student Everyday campaign, one of the things that I was excited to share the last time, um, was that I would be remaking the song that was the AI version of Every Student Every Day. And I got a chance to do just

048that. So, um, our song is complete. Um, I do have a version of the song, um, where, uh, there are two verses and then, um, I'm also joined by some children, some young friends, um, who have also completed a video and a song with me. Um, so I'm excited to at some point share that with you all. >> Good evening. I'm Dion Webster, director of family engagement and student supports. And the video that Dr. Nance just mentioned will be debuted in the fall. It's going to be our kickoff to get everybody excited about coming back to school with students in it and an upbeat version. I'm going to share an overview of our data. One of our other goals was for schools to consistently track their required family engagement events and we did just that.

049Each school was asked to keep attendance. So we were able to compare last school year with this school years of the attendance at each of the events. We saw lots of highs and lows and and growth in the number because the problem that we had in 2425 is that all schools were not tracking their data the same. Some schools were counting a family as one. Other people were counting each member of the family. So we made sure that this year to make sure that the data was comparable across the board that everybody counted each member of the family because that gives you an idea of how many people were there. So all the schools had the same signin sheet. They submitted them to me. They calculated them. I would put them in a spreadsheet each

050month, share it with them and show them their growth from last year to this year. And all schools were asked to have their events in the same month again so we can make it comparable. And we really try to schedule our events in months around events. So we us we cut off family engagement events in March because baseball, softball, all kinds of activities start in April and we don't want to compete with those activities that are important part of our children's experiences as well. So our first event was curriculum night. The date is on the screen for that. Our second required family engagement event that all schools need to hold was family reading night. We saw great gains at King, at Leo, at Thomas Payne. Yankee Ridge was about the same. Um, early childhood had

051a slight dip and then the sixth grade center. This was their very first year. So, next year we will have some comparative data for the sixth grade center because they are brand new. Math and science night was our next night. Yankee Ridge had a huge increase of 271. Urbana Early Childhood did an amazing job of increasing their numbers by 118. and some of the other schools had highs and lows and in discussing them with them is you just can't predict when people are going to come. They send things home in backpacks. They put stickers on children. They put it in class dojo in parent square. And we just really try to work with the parents to find times that meet everyone's schedules. SEAL night was our other event. We had a great turnout again at

052early childhood. They also pair that with their kindergarten prom. So that is the one that I can definitely tell you exactly why it was so high. They pair it with their kindergarten prom every year and then they tie it with social emotional learning standards. A very cute event and they have a great turnout every year. Our attendance data, we started out extremely strong. Our attendance goal was to lower our chronic absenteeism rate from 39% to 34%. Unfortunately, we were not successful, but we will continue to have a growth mindset and say we are just not successful yet. So, in August, we had a wonderful chronic absenteeism rate of 19 September 26 and then it started to creep back up and when children we had lots of illnesses this year and we it it just it

053is what it is is that we cannot control illnesses and we do tell people if you have a fever or vomiting or things that can be contagious, please stay home and take care of yourself. So, we did see a rise in our chronic absenteeism rate around November and December. And then when we moved up to January, February was a really cold month of 39%. And then we ended at 39%. We could not get lower than that. The schools did everything they could. They had incentives. They had breakfastes. They talked to families. SEAAS, which are student engagement, attendance advocates, did home visits. We had videos. And we will continue to work on it because some things are beyond our control. But our main thing was to focus on the importance of school every student every day

054mattering and even making sure that we check on them even if they're sick. We just want to make sure we know where they are. We had those conversations with parents of we just want to make sure that your children are safe and if there's anything that we can do for them to ensure that they get to school every day. So we've done lots of different incentives and our plan is to continue to increase those over next school year. That's all we have. Any questions for us? >> Is there is there anything else that the district can provide for those parents who are having difficulty with their getting their students to school? >> The only thing that we work with the families on is transportation. And we do offer bus tokens because we get donations from

055a wide variety of of philanthropists in the community. So bus tokens are one thing that we give and sometimes the families are close enough but that transportation honestly is the number one concern that we hear especially when it starts to get cold. So sometimes the bus tokens don't work if families have younger children that they don't want to bundle up and take out but transportation is one of the main um reasons that we receive for absentees >> because most children who live less than a mile and a half they have to walk to school. >> Correct. So if it's bad weather, it's difficult to get there. >> Correct. So, I think you guys have already heard from us multiple times throughout the year, so we're not going to rehash, but just a reminder, uh, over

056the course of this past year, we've implemented Parent Square, a new, uh, parent communication system. Uh we've implemented a new uh doc accessibility system which I think is uh on the website as of this morning >> the new website so no one will see it yet >> and then we've purchased and started migrating a new website uh and Katherine's going to talk a little bit about our numbers and then we have some exciting showand tell after that. So, we started Parents Square with a pilot with a few pilot schools and um launched it districtwide in January. So, since January and these numbers are from early May, um we had 13% of our families that were using the app, which is low, but we had 0% of our families using an app before. So, we see

057that as growth. um 1,700 of our families have logged into the Parent Square platform and have selected how they want to receive the information from us, which um if they have a choice, we feel like they're going to read it because they're getting it how they want to get it where whether that's through the app or through a text message or through an email. Um no matter what, our families are still getting the information from us and our bounceback rate has is almost zero. Um, and the amount of people who have opted out, we have 17 right now, um, 17 families who have opted out. That's down significantly from our previous platform. So, we still see that as growth. And as we head into the fall, we'll contact them and see, you know, why they

058opted out or if there's anything that we can do so that they can get the information they need from us. A lot of times they don't even know that they did that. They hit a button that says unsubscribe when they're scrolling through and they don't mean to. Um, so we have the opportunity to recoup those families. Um, 2,600 of our families, um, or of our guardians from Skyward have registered their account. And so we'll continue into the fall kind of finding out the best way to communicate with our families and how to get them to engage with the app. um because once they're in it, they're the the way they're receiving the information um and learning about what's going on in our schools um has increased. It's just getting them meeting them where they're at.

059And so we'll be at back to school events and we'll be um setting up tables at different schools as the year starts. So, as we were just talking about parent square there, uh I did not get logged in as you, but this is my parent square and you can see the posts uh a lot more uh featurerich uh easy to read, engaging uh and then parents will get those via the web if they want through the app or like sent through uh other notifications. Did you want to touch on anything else in the post? Sorry, I didn't get logged in. >> One area of growth that that I am working on with our um parent square like customer service reps is how to um help with communication fatigue. That is something that we've heard a

060little bit about since we've launched Parent Square only because I think we've gone from we have five or six platforms where information is coming and now everything's coming through one platform and that's very um noticeable. And so working with principles, working with schools um to kind of make sure we're sending information um more on a schedule and not um overwhelming our families with the information we're sending. There's a fine line, right? They between giving them the information they need and want and also giving them too much information. So I think that's kind of what we're working on um as we head into the fall. So, we have one more exciting thing to show you which I will hopefully get pulled up here. Uh, so, and I want to give Katherine a lot of credit uh,

061as we're looking at this. Uh, we started the web migration process two months ago, three months ago, and Katherine has been putting in a herculean amount of effort to get they migrated all of our content, but it kind of just dropped it there. And so, Katherine's been like really working uh, diligently and making it look uh, really nice and featurerich. And so, I'll scroll if you want to. So the new website is under the same company as parents square. It's smart sites and so everything integrates and feeds into it. Um they talk to each other really well and um it's mobile friendly and most of our families are using their cell phones to look at our website and our current site was not mobile friendly. So this is part of that communicating with their families

062giving them the information they need where they need it. Um, and so this our goal is to launch the websites and the school sites in July. Um, and so that they're they're ready for when our families come back. >> So, and this isn't live yet. That's why there's no URL at the top. It's a secret. [snorts] Do you guys have any questions? Looks great. mine's going to be really short because I did forget about this. Sorry. Um, we have or I have met with uh uh a lot of the um principles or uh assistant principles and also some key members of the uh um staff from the building to discuss uh um safety, building needs, um energy management, anything like that. Um the things we were really focused on was to uh figured out a

063timeline to um uh to do everything. So we focused on stuff that was um going to be one to two to three years out uh 3 to five and then five to 10. Um uh see this one. No. Um that's not me. Um, so, uh, we're looking into a lot of, uh, programming needs, operational needs, um, and just stuff that needed, uh, um, what's that? Yeah. Uh, improvements and, uh, immediate attention, uh, as well as a long term. So, um I've got all that information um gathered up and starting to put it into uh um uh priorities for everybody. And then I'll share that back out with the groups that I met with and uh um we'll discuss it hopefully one more time. Um and then I'll present it to you guys again. See what

064we have. Any questions? This was kind of done in in in collaboration with the consultants we hired, right, to to to survey the high school and to kind of figure out what the what the building needs are and that kind of stuff. >> We that's a separate separate process. Yeah. BLDD will come next week with their presentation. So what Randy shared here is the work he's done to engage all the different >> Yeah. That wasn't with BLDD. >> Yeah. So BLDD will be coming back next week. >> Okay. two weeks. So, unfortunately, you guys get to hear from me twice tonight. So, I'm sorry that you don't get to put them together like Angie's. But so um so our goals were to um implement a priority based resource allocation process to acknowledge the different priority

065groups because we had the low income. And so then we were having conversations in our strategic plan group of like what are other priority groups that we need to focus on? And so that was something that we worked through the winter was establish a finance committee that's also going to be looking eventually it'll kind of morph into having other conversations within the finance committee. But this was an opportunity to kind of meet together look at um evidence-based funding documents and establish those criteria and priority groups. And so um the team focused on ELLL special ed and homeless. And so this summer we were able to put in an ELLL indicator as well for our um budgets for our buildings. And so those were some things that we were able to kind of implement. And our

066priorities and our goals look a little bit different, but it was a really good opportunity to kind of look at that process and see how we can make it more equitable for for all students. Any questions on that one? Okay, thank you. >> Thank you. >> Okay, that is all we have for you in regard to the strategic plan update. Are there any other overarching questions that anybody have that they didn't get to answer during that priority priority area? Otherwise, I think we'll move on. Thank you. Thank you to all of our facilitators. And I should have when I thanked the board earlier, I also should have thanked the large number of teachers and support staff and parents um and community folks who also engaged through this process with us this year. We um our

067program council meetings were really rich discussions with our teacher leaders um and we had some very committed parents um who came to every single session that we had at the middle school. And so, um, next year we're going to look at our, um, the way we delivered that information. I know the attendance at those Thursday meetings weren't weren't as well, um, high as we wanted them to be. So, we're going to kind of look at the structure of how we're sharing that information and, um, being transparent about our goals and progress throughout the year um, for next year. So, there might be a little bit of a change, but I did want to thank everyone who was really committed to the process this year. So, thank you all and Yeah, that too are end of

068year school improvement updates. >> Okay. Uh, which school is up first? >> Well, on the agenda is Dr. Williams, >> but I'm just here to brag on everybody just quickly because not too often do um we get to sit here and brag on our buildings, our principles, our school improvement teams. And so I wanted to take the time today. We have all of our elementary schools and we also have Gerber here today. Um, and just overseeing school improvement um, last year and kind of starting a new structure and changing lots of things and adding spreadsheets and Canva um, presentations that everybody really loves. I just appreciate all of you for all your hard work. Um just looking in the audience today too and seeing how many SIP members are here with their building leaders too

069just really encourages me and makes me feel very appreciative for all of the work you know all the emails I send you and the things that I make you do. I appreciate you all for your hard work. We have school improvement uh planning days this Thursday and Friday that we are excited about. 100% of our schools shared their drafts on time. had really strong goals. Last year was the implementation of smart and smarty goals. And so, um, there was some, you know, increasing expectations and a lot of like back and forth with feedback. And this year too, they continue to work hard and create those smart and smarty goals so that we're capturing all of our students and our students who need that additional support as well. And what adult practices and um support for

070our adults we need in order to meet their outcomes. And so this year we're really leaning into that more in our school improvement days and our PD planning. And so I'm just proud of you all. I just wanted to say that in front of everybody before our first school comes up and DPW. Good evening. We are here proud to represent Dr. Williams Elementary School. We are grateful to our staff and our school improvement leadership team as well as all of our staff in the school who are the really are the ones on the ground uh level making sure that this work is happening. They're working with the students daily. And so while we're here representing the school, we want to make sure to acknowledge all of their efforts because they are really the ones making

071sure that these things are happening on a daily basis. This is just an overview. Um, it's a mind map and so it gives you all of the priority goals that we focus on this year through the district's implementation of CHAMPS or the stoic framework, the implementation of seven mindsets as our new curriculum and our continued implementation of PBIS which aligns with our culture and climate goal as well as our attendance goal. And then we were able to bring in AVID, which we were very excited about this school year with fifth grade and one of our fourth grade classrooms. And we paired that with our Urbana School District 116 instructional framework to support both our literacy and math goals. in order to provide an update. We are happy to come and share a winter update with

072you as a part of being a designated school through Illinois Empower. So, our update is really coming more from winter to spring because we were able to provide that update um earlier I believe in February. One of the major um key takeaways that we've considered as we think about what is improving outcomes for literacy at our school and within our district overall is the implementation of core knowledge language arts or CKLA. um having the opportunity to utilize the CKLA coach Becca Pate throughout this year not only for professional development after school but as well as through PLC coaching modeling observing and giving staff feedback has been critical to the implementation happening with Fidelity as well as ensuring that staff understood the process of implementing the curriculum. You can read a curriculum guide, but really understanding

073what is needed, how to bring in those additional engagement strategies, going beyond the text was something, as Becca calls it, adding your sparkle um was very helpful for us to do because it did take us just going beyond the text and thinking about what we were going to do. As I mentioned on the previous slide, we were able to implement AVID um and fifth grade as well as one of our fourth grade classrooms. If we think about AVID and you say, well, what is that? It is literally best practice for teaching and learning happening in your classroom. So, while we were really focused on instructional strategies, these teams were looking at making sure that they were adding in multiple engagement strategies, callbacks, really taking the learning into a focus of collaboration while incorporating wicker, which

074is writing, inquiry, collaboration, organization, as well as reading. Um, our fifth grade teams did an amazing job of really helping our students become organized. We were excited at the number of students who applied to continue with AVID at the sixth grade center, really having that strong foundation. So, as our goal is not only to prepare the students for the next level, it's really to get them prepared for colleges and careers. And we are overjoyed at the number of our students who were able to apply for that program and continue that work. One of the shifts that we really focused on this year was because our co-teers are not able to co-e in third, fourth, and fifth grade. We wanted to target intervention. So with a strong core curriculum, we then have to think about how

075can we support tier 2. Um, and our focus with that was at our intermediate levels of third, fourth, and fifth grade. So, our co-teers and curriculum implementation teacher were able to pull students for intervention that were in the yellow or average band or the orange or low average performance bands in order to provide targeted intervention. We implemented a strategy called races for us to continue to work on developing students writing skills because one of the major shifts within IR was there has always been an extended response but now it's worth 50% of their score and so we wanted to prepare those students as much as possible to be able to have success on the assessment. When we looked at the students that we were working with and implementing it, we saw a huge amount of

076growth in not only what they were able to respond whenever they were doing their extended response, but the quality of those responses. So, not just more words in the text box, but actually really comparing and contrasting the text, which is always one of the things that students are asked to do. Um while looking at our actual academic data, we were not able to meet our goal of 60% of our students meeting their growth projection. Our growth median was at the 52nd percentile as a school, which was a 10% increase from the winter. And we had 53% of our students who met their projected growth in literacy, which was a 10% increase from the winter. And in the winter, we had had an increase from the fall. So, we're continuing to make growth. Unfortunately, we were

077not able to hit the target that we were focused on. We are planning to continue to utilize high lever teaching strategies um in our classrooms to ensure that not only are students experiencing uh quality curriculum, but we are engaging them in a meaningful way because that is the next shift, right? We've had this curriculum for two years. Um, but we also have to think about how do we make this meaningful and important to our students so that they can have texttoelf connections and really dive deeper into their ability to talk about a text, analyze a text, go back and use two column notes in order to annotate the text and find text evidence within their work. Additionally, we focus in math on the same goal of 60% of our students meeting their projected growth. Some

078of the things that we were able to do was to continue to implement illustrative math, which is our approved curriculum. We had an opportunity as a school to ut utilize our Illinois empower funds to have an illustrative math coach which was our first opportunity since we've had the curriculum to have a coach from illustrative math come into the school. That process started with walkthroughs and targeted feedback and followed by immediate professional development based on those walkthroughs. The staff in third, fourth, and fifth grade were then able to go through and adjust pacing, utilize checkpoints, and small group center-based instruction in order to close some of the skill gaps that they were seeing. So, not only were we collecting those daily exit tickets and using that to inform how we would adjust our instruction, but within

079each unit, there's a checkpoint where you can pause your instruction and really differentiate the instruction you're providing to the students overall. and having that process to work through that with her was extremely successful. Um, every time she came, the staff were grateful and appreciative and they wanted to know if she could continue to come back. The state did allow some additional funding and overages and we were actually able to invite her back in the spring for two more sessions with each grade level. um they were able to determine non-negotiables, really set up the plan and path of success to ensure that our implementation of the curriculum is aligned with the work that they've done this year. And they were able to record that so that if there's turnover, we can go in with that plan

080of moving with success with the adult practices in order to ensure that our students are getting the most out of the curriculum. To be very fair and transparent, we do see gaps within the curriculum. So we also need to think about how can we supplement opportunities for students to continue to increase those skills when we are doing differentiated instruction. Um and then additionally our instructional strategy for math was focused on non-llinguistic representation and we continue to implement AVID both at fourth and excuse me fifth grade making sure to create opportunities. One of the biggest takeaways that we had within that professional development was our students at the intermediate level thrived offc center work and we have to continue to ensure they have those opportunities to create non-llinguistic representations to build and construct and make meaning

081of what they're being asked to do and not only be asked to do it on pencil and paper. So that was a major success and shift from the work that we did throughout the year. As we look at our map growth, um, our overall growth median was at the 43rd percentile, much lower than what we had hoped it would be, which was a 7% increase from the winter. And 45% of our students met their projected growth, which was an 8% increase from the winter. this was not as high, which is why I was very transparent on the previous slide saying we do recognize that we need to continue to supplement our curriculum because we need to find where those gaps are and continue to differentiate the instruction in order to increase the skills for our

082students. Making sure that they have regular fluency practice is going to be a critical component as well as using those checkpoints to provide that targeted instruction and smallroup learning opportunities for our students. I'd already covered the non-negotiables. Sometimes I top the head. So, I think I've covered everything on this. Um, one of the biggest things that we really focused on also was making sure that as you collect the daily exit tickets or cool downs that we use that to inform how we can retach the next day before we continue to move on. Whether that's through a mini lesson with a larger group of students or some targeted small group instruction which is like traditional model within four or five students at a small table. I'm going to turn it over to Mr. High Tower. >>

083All right. Good evening. Uh I'm just going to talk a little bit a little bit about our culture and climate goal uh which was to uh decrease the number of physical the number of referrals for physical contact. uh overall 15%. Um and then additionally with our uh African-American and black males uh by 20%. Um we came in uh I don't remember but in the winter and it was January um and kind of talked about and we're already kind of hitting close to that number um and what we wanted to get to uh and we didn't hit the number that we wanted. We had an increase um instead of decreasing the number of referrals uh for physical contact. And so things that we're already starting to think about for next year is how do we take

084a deeper dive in looking at those students who may have th those situations happen um and how can we get ahead of it. And so uh we have already talked about um conflict resolution uh something we need to work on with students uh understanding when students need to be put into a so uh student academic uh instructional group SIG group uh but then also looking at our supervision and intentional planning. um taking a look at our lunch schedules and how can we open that up to provide more supervision uh without having back-to-back lunch uh periods as well too. Um continue with PBIS implementation and seven mindsets uh and CHAMPS as well. Uh we did a real good job implementing CHAMPS uh within our classrooms but now how can we take that a little further and

085ensuring that students know the expectations and what's required of them in each space that they uh travel through throughout the day. Um and then also increasing uh how we host our community meetings by grade levels uh and having focused LCL targets uh and goals for each grade level. So really bringing the data to students to say hey here's what's happening in our school. How can we uh continue to improve on the things that we're seeing and what are some tools that we need to provide for you to you um as educators uh to help increase um or decrease the number of physical contacts um that we're seeing in our building. Um if you go on to the next slide there, it just kind of shows you um the number of incidents in the fall as

086well as the spring um that is on there and then overall uh for the school year. And so instead of reaching the 205, it actually went up to about 304 and then for uh black males 104 actually went to 203. So like I said was an increase in both those numbers. Uh and so but our plan is really to to take a deeper dive in one in the why, but then also that intentional teaching and planning like we we have to um work better. So students are using their words to solve conflict and not trying to push or shove or hit um when we have problems arise. >> All right, my turn. Hi everybody. My name is Chad Muscleman. I'm one of the assistant principles at Dr. Williams and I'm here to talk to you

087about um our attendance goal. By the end of the 2025 2026 academic year, our school will reduce chronic absenteeism rate by 14% from 123 to I'm sorry to 77 students. Additionally, DPW will reduce the chronic absenteeism rate for black males by 22% from 50 to 39. Um we have a marvelous um SEAA at Dr. Williams Elementary School. um Miss Melissa Watson and she's extremely um creative and makes sure that attendance not not only is on the forefront of all of our students and all of our famil family's um you know minds, but just to continually day by day in our school to continue to reinforce the importance of attendance at school. And if you think about it, if we can't get them in the door, we don't really have much math or literacy to worry

088about if we can't get them in the door. So it is important. She does all kinds of creative things. One thing that all students uh who are kind of on our on our watch list for attendance, they do enter into SIG groups uh with Miss Watson who meet at lunch or other times during the day if we can if we can find gaps in their schedules. Um and those students talking to Mrs. Watson, they they talk about priorities of attendance, priorities of school, priorities of of what we do when we're at school. And the students also have a have the ability to graduate out of the SIG groups um as well if they show improvements in their uh in their attendance etc. But they also know that if they slip up again with their attendance,

089Miss Watson's going to come knocking on their door looking for them. Uh we do other other things we do is Miss Watson's very good at communicating. She likes to send out newsletters to both uh families and teachers on what our what our tren attendance trends are. um what sort of priorities we have coming up and what sort of activities we have coming up to to help with our attendance. Um something simple that she kind of implemented for teachers especially um you know for us communication's very very important. If teachers are outreaching to families that's a that's a double win. It's a positive communication from teachers to families to build a relationship, but also it's it's a double win because we're focusing on the importance of attendance and getting to school and how much we want

090our students at school. Um, she also had this game called attendance. And what she did is she made a competition between all of the different classes in our school. And she made a huge attendance board, looked like a monopoly board. And every week we'd have a different winner. Well, maybe not a different winner. We have repeat winners that attendance. So, it did make a competition between all of the students in classes in the school. And and that's something that the kids really really have fun with and we really try to promote within the school. Um just just another layer of what we're trying to do to get kids in the building. Um out of the blue celebration. That's exactly what it sounds like, out of the blue. Just off the top of her head. If

091Miss Watson saw that there might be a class down the hall in fourth grade that has 100% attendance for this day, we're gonna have an out of the blue um celebration right there. We're going to stop everything that we're doing. We're celebrating and we are making sure that these students know the importance of what they just accomplished. Um and it's it's a catching thing. We did have a lot of a lot of classrooms that did have 100% attendance and really were trying to get an out-of-lue celebration for Miss Watson. Um, we got VIP lunch tables. We set up lunch tables with with fancy um tablecloths and everything across the middle of our multi-purpose room during lunch. We have all kinds of snacks and drinks at those tables and kids that have been showing increase in

092attendance. We we have a big what's the what's the word I'm looking for? One of those big wheels with crank on it. They just randomly choose names out of there and those are the names of the students that get to every class period get to come up and and sit at the VIP table and they are and they love it. I mean, if you get an extra bag of Fritos or something and a drink at lunch, you're like a celebrity around our school. Um, grade level attendance competitions. We've got some old trophies that we just put different labels on and we we go across um each grade level. Let's say for example, second grade. for all of our different classes of second grade. We calculate which one had the best attendance for that week. And

093they get a big old recycled trophy that they get to put in their room and they think it's the greatest thing on earth to get their picture taken with Miss Watson and get to hoop and holler over their trophy that they get to keep for the week. Um, and they really get and that's another another fierce competition within our school. Um, and then check and connect. Check and connect's very simple. Check and connect is kind of Miss Watson's first um, line of defense. let's say she makes a connection and a relationship with a kid immediately that that appears to have some attendance that we need to start uh paying attention to. So it gets a trusted adult in front of our students. All right. So our goal um we did fall short a little bit.

094Boy, in the fall, I'll tell you what, we were really cooking. we were really cooking and our attendance was really cooking as well and we're sitting there stirring our attendance pot thinking we got this all figured out and then um unfortunately we didn't we didn't rebound once we came back from Christmas break etc and you know there's a lot of different I'm not making excuses but there's a lot of different factors that come into that we're a neighborhood school um and the number one mode of transportation for our students is the bicycles that they keep in my office or their feet uh so whenever we do have precipitate ation falling or precipitation on the ground. It it makes a big difference in our attendance and and that's one thing we are trying to battle and

095it's it's also one thing where it gives us another another point of attack for attendance. So we if we get more students that are growing on our watch list, that's just Miss Watson and I meet weekly and that might be a person that they're they're going to find our shoes on their front doorstep because the next the next step to us is not only checking and connect but check and connect with families because that's how we're really going to make a big difference in attendance. Um a lot of a lot of our students being elementary school aren't necessarily in control of their attendance at times. Um, and we need to influence families so they know the extreme importance of their kids being in school. Nothing nothing we we can't do anything positive for our students

096if we can't get them in the front doors. Thank you. As we look at the funding allocations that we utilize, we had updated you um earlier in the semester about how we utilized our Illinois Empower funds were that were just under $85,000. We also utilized building funds um to ensure that we had access to the things that we needed for our PBIS, positive behavioral intervention and support incentives as well as our attendance incentives. As Mr. Muscleman said, hot chips, Takis, hot bunions go a long way. So, making sure we had money to support celebrating those students when they did reach their goals or were able to sit at the VIP table was very important. So, we spent just under $90,000 really trying to help move the work forward through the illustrative math coaching, um, instructional

097materials, ensuring that we were able to send staff to AVID training during summer institute, as well as, like I said, building funds for PBIS and attendance incentives. We have been very fortunate um, and might I say blessed to continuously have the support of Stone Creek Church. um they have truly taken on the role of trying to serve as our um PTA. We do not have current families who are serving on our PTA. And so, not only have they helped support sponsoring our back to school night and providing inflatables, food, as well as Kona Ice to our families, they really updated our lounge. I think I shared this when we came before that has made such a difference on the amount of staff who are even willing to go and sit in the lounge and eat

098their lunch together, which also has a positive impact on our school climate for staff. And so having an inviting and welcoming space to go in and sit at dinner tables as opposed to old tables that have just been moved around the building and are needing to go on the recycle list um was very critical. and they painted one of the walls and even that just felt like such a lift. We recognize that our buildings are continuously getting updated, but some of those small minor changes have really had a positive impact on our staff. They also made sure to help support with teacher appreciation week and we have continued to partner with the park district um throughout this year. Our afterchool program was centered around steam, science, technology, engineering, art, and math. And one of the

099things that we recognize is another factor in us not necessarily reaching the goals is we really need most of that time focused on academics. So that's one of the things we're going to talk about. We want to continue the partnership with the park district, but we really need to prioritize the academic focused time and not have the majority of that time focused on um hands-on opportunities. is we really need to close the gaps and increase knowledge and close those skill gaps rather than being able to do experiments and art projects. Those are important and they are critical, but we also need to make sure that our students can read and perform um math with efficiency and fluency. So some of our next steps are continue with the implementation of CKLA utilizing our high lever instructional

100practices incorporating wicker at all the grade levels while AVID will be focused on 35. We want to make sure that all teachers are utilizing high leverage instructional practices engaging strategies within their classroom utilizing races from the beginning of the year. We started implementing that around the second semester. So, making sure that our students know how to respond to a text with a thorough and detailed essay response. And as we look at how does that work for primary, making sure that students can respond orally in a similar way, we will continue continue to utilize monthly data meetings as our PLC's talk about how can they adjust the interventions that they're providing within the grade levels and really make sure that our tier 2 continues to increase in utilizing research-based interventions. As we have continued to figure

101out what interventions are working and our students are responding to, we have been piece milling that together. So, we've been excited that our co-teers have put together an intervention menu that is targeted for K2 and one for 35 so that staff are only utilizing researchbased things and not having to go out and try to determine what could work for their groups of students. Uh similarly with math cubes is a strategy just like races. So you can explain your thinking and how you solved the math problem. So we will be implementing that and continuing to focus on using those centers in order to build targeted skills for students for our culture and climate. We've really talked about one of the things that we noticed, I know you heard us say there was an increase in physical

102contact. It's the same students having physical contacts with other students who've had physical contact. So, we really want to make sure that as we are um supporting students and giving them tier 2 and tier three supports that if a student is suspended for physical contact, they automatically get put into a social academic instructional group so that they can start finding other ways to handle conflict um as well as looking to implement a peace process. And one of the gaps that we also noticed with um seven mindsets is that we can need to continue to implement zones of regulation so students know how to communicate how they're feeling and have strategies to co-regulate or self-regulate whenever they are frustrated. Additionally, with attendance, we will continue to have proactive implementation of SIG groups, celebrate our students, celebrate

103their successes, as well as offer in incentives to students who have increased their regular attendance. I know that was a lot. Do you have any questions for us? when you uh speak on the physical contact part of it are is this like um pushing shoving or it's from as simple as pushing and shoving to at the elementary level a fight is not what I call a fight. I a fight at the elementary level is I hit you, you hit me back, I hit you, you hit me back. A fight is multiple hits back and forth. So what we consider a fight is usually a lower level but it is physical contact. So we consider fighting with injury, fighting without injury or physical aggression toward a student which would be something as minor as pushing. So

104it is something that's simple. Um, and unfortunately right now that's some of the things that we're seeing is that rather than being able to talk through what's frustrating or why I'm triggered and you've gotten on my nerves or you're annoying me, instead of using their words, students are choosing to put their hands on one another. So, those are some of the skills we're trying to increase and make sure that we're talking to students about other strategies. We've utilized stopwalk talk for years. Um, but I think we need to go deeper into other ways to have conflict resolution, which Mr. High Tower had highlighted as well. We need to empower students to have strategies to use in order to solve minor peer conflict. And one of those major things is getting an adult support before you

105react and retaliate towards someone. >> Yes, ma'am. between 2425 and 2526. Was there consistency in uh recording of events? I always wonder if if if that had any effect on your numbers at all. >> So, one of the major changes is we have begun putting our minors into Skyward and so that was a shift. So, um in the 2425 school year, we were entering minors, which is what like an assigned detention. If I just hit Mr. High Tower right now, that would have been a minor. But if I punched him multiple times, that would have been a major. So this year minors and majors were also entered and so you're correct we saw a major increase in not only our overall number of referrals but also the amount of physical contact because previously we were

106disagregating the minors and we were not putting them in Skyward. So that's a great clarifying question. So we did see an increase um because before we were considering those low-level classroom managed consequences and not counting them in with our majors. Thank you. Thank you. As we shift to King, I think is next. John, I I just want to remind our other teams and administrators, Dr. Williams has a a little more of an intensive um presentation due to the fact that they are required to have a uh present to the board a couple times a year due to their designation. So our other schools um while they shared so much information with us, it was wonderful. Um our other principles and other teams um do not feel that you have to give that deep of a

107dive into your information. So um that is kind of a requirement for Dr. Williams and they did a great job, but the rest of the presentations will go a little bit quicker. On to King. Hello, good evening. Uh my name is Lydia Wong, the principal of King, and this is our end of the year school improvement plan update. Um I do have uh my three other team members here supporting us today and representing King. They're just being shy in front of the microphone. Okay. Thank you, Mr. turn. >> Um so just I will be brief. Um we had four goals on our SIP um plan this school year. The attendance, literacy, math and culture and climate. Um the literacy literacy and math goals were around um uh the uh measured by uh MAP assessment and

108were focused on the growth projections of students who would meet or exceed um their projected goals and we focused on a cohort of student of our second to fifth grade students. Uh both goals were uh that our 55% of those mentioned students will meet or exceed their growth projection goals. The attendance goal was focused on decreasing the chronic abstentism from 28 to 20% and the culture and climate goal was focused on reducing the school suspension numbers. Um the the main achievement that we are very proud of is our literacy goal. So um it was a 20 the goal that we set would be representing 23% point increase from the previous year and we actually had a 26% increase. So from 32% in the fall to 58% growth in the spring. Um so that means that

109we're closing some of our achievement gap in literacy for uh for our second through fifth grade students. We did that by uh implement implementing CKLA with fidelity uh for our skills and knowledge blocks uh by providing a targeted small group interventions during intervention blocks. We actually had a very indepth day-to-days. Um during the winter and spring and after the winter ones, we have uh reshifted how we doing our supports for interventions for students uh with specific grade levels or specific teachers even and sometimes we grouped those um those groups as well like in the fourth grade to provide the most intervention that we could with the resources that we had. We also had fabulous team of tier one co-teers. Um the co-eing um I think we poured all of our ducks in literacy and we

110have seen that pay off by our results. Um the intervention for math was more computer-based and uh we'll see that we made some growth but not as much in as in literacy. Um I do want to add about literacy that we we did do classroom walkthroughs. Uh we have added specific things um to our goal uh mid year and we focused on scaffolding and engagement and did the walkthroughs and gave walkthrough specific feedback to our teachers about those specific strategies. And to finish the literacy goal, we also achieved our smarty literacy goal which focused on the growth of African-American students for the same cohort of uh grades uh second through 5th. And uh they had an increase that group had increase of 33% in the fall to 55% in the spring which was 25% increase

111with the goal of 40%. Oh no. Um the next slide will show you the data uh the map data that we had and um um just kind of support of uh that growth that we saw in literacy. Well, not yet guys. >> Okay. Am I clicking or are you clicking John? Okay. Okay. So, um the the math goal um we did not meet unfortunately and we also focused on the cohort on of second through fifth grade students. Um [clears throat] although we have not had um as strong of the growth and we did not meet our goal we still saw the increase um in math for uh if we look from the previous year. So um we have had we maintain the same growth for for our math from fall to spring. Uh but if

112we look at the slide that shows overall growth and not just second through fifth grade. Yeah, this slide we can see that uh 43% of our students met or exceeded their uh growth goal which was a huge increase from 29% uh from the previous school year from the spring of 2025. So we are making strides uh through illustrative math. We also had the coaching with Janet Moore. We had targeted math intervention and our grade level planning and data analysis contributed to that growth. Um the next goal was culture and climate. We have not met that goal. Um we have had um more out of school suspensions that we had set a goal to do. We had 71. The goal was 50. The goal was 23 from 55. We do contribute that to a more proper

113um documentation um and uh documenting every single thing. So on um although we have put all of um things in place such as PBIS expectations, seven mindsets, uh we started implementing CHAMPS, we had restorative conversation, we increased family engagement, we did uh really great work in MTSS and supports that we had for students with the um revisiting with families who were very engaged in the process every six to eight weeks of the plans that we did put in place. And we saw uh great results with some students who have graduated out of those tier 2, tier three supports and have reduced uh the amount of suspensions or completely stopped the amount of uh referrals um after those interventions have been successful. Um and I must say that uh most of the amounts of these suspensions

114were focused on very small amount of students. So if we looked at panorama data um and the columns of the behavior, we did have over 80% of our students have being in green which means that they had less than one to 2% of incidents in their whole school year. uh which means that our basic tier one instruction for behavior is working. We just need to tighten up our tier 2, tier three supports. Um and the last thing is our attendance. Um as a districtwide, we've already covered extensively the today that um just like the districtwide our attendance was uh failed short uh with the chronic absenteeism. Although we have done um all of the interventions, uh we have done the our sea done the family outreach, we did the incentive programs, we did the celebrations,

115uh the bulletin board recognitions, the classroom attendance competitions where classroom competed for a trophy. Uh we collaborate with the family liaison and social work services. We increased the communication with families regarding the attendance expectations and we did the SIG group uh specifically for attendance group that was were conducted by our SEAA. Um we also created attendance plans and panorama for chronically absent students. Despite all of those efforts, we still fell short in attendance. Um the Illinois empower money we have spent on literacy intervention support and instructional materials. We have purchased uh quite a few things for our stars program for our uh students with autism who have special needs. We also had professional development from third parties for our CKLA champs and multi- uh language learners. um that also included engagement strategies for all the

116students not for just for those um um groups that I have mentioned. Uh we've spent some money on student incentive and PBIS celebrations and family engagement activities and attendance support. Uh we also uh spent portion of our money to provide uh Arabic classes and instructional coaching as well. Um partnership. The partnerships we were very proud of this year and invested a lot of um output uh and staff effort into it. We have developed a PTA this school year and that is another thing that was a collective effort from the staff and the families but now it is functioning. Um while it was not properly functioning we had a lot of community members who stepped up. uh Urbana Rotary Club adopted us and provided uh like Valentine's card for our staff and dinners for our teachers

117for parent teacher conferences and volunteered in our classrooms and provided classroom supplies. We've continued the partnership with um with the local church uh with uh Champagne Orbana School Foundation. the U of I student organizations came and donated backpacks and football players were there to um encourage the kids in the beginning of the school year. We also had a lot of family volunteers and due to our PTA efforts uh we had seen some of those family incre engagement numbers increase that Miss Dion has uh covered. Uh we also had um um we also had all of these uh partnerships support our um SEAL attendance and student wellness efforts. Um so as next step we will continue strengthening our tier one instruction and intervention. We're really excited. Our numbers specifically for kindergarten and first grade were amazing.

118So we are seeing that CKLA working and um the growth for first grade was over 60 um 68% I think in the in CQLA. So, we're we're just very excited to see when the cohort moves along like how much more found what those foundational skills they can achieve once they get to those I uh testing and what we can really showcase uh what our students can do in Urbana. Um so, we are um we're we are going to shoot for the growth target of 60% plus. We're gonna expand our restorative practices and we're looking to get a third-party uh training for specifically for restorative practices to help our staff to conduct proper uh debriefing after infraction for our students and have proactive approaches to conflict management. Um to help students develop those conflict management skills

119because just like DPW, we see the same the same kind of struggles at King. We also want to improve our school climate survey results for our students and staff. Uh we want to keep on strengthening our attendance system for the targeted grade levels and maintain the focus on our equitable outcomes for our African-American students. Any questions? >> No, no questions. Just want to say that getting those growth figures over 50% is awesome. It's how we close the gap. So really, really, really good work. >> Thank you. >> Leo's next. >> Good evening, everyone. How are you doing? They gave me three minutes back there, so we'll see how we can go. Uh, Mr. Riley couldn't be here today. She's got three three students under uh five. I can't imagine that. I have a 20 and

12024 year old, so that's difficult to imagine. Uh just thank you for the opportunity to present our Leo SIP plan. Uh on behalf of our SIP team, just a thank you to Mrs. Riley, like I said before, Katie Platner, our CIT teacher, Ellen Archer Puffer, one of our co-teers, Kristen Dodie, a first grade teacher, Max Smith, a third grade teacher, Leanne Sanford, a fifth grade teacher, Hannah Kissinger, fourth grade teacher, and Matt Terski, our SEAA. Um, as you can Oh, it's me. I'm just looking at you. I'm gonna go faster. Uh, those are our goals last year. Um, but we're going to go over them in a second. So, this is the overview of all of our goals. Um, taking a look at our literacy goal. We wanted 55% of our students to meet or

121exceed their uh, MAP growth in CKLA in ELA. Um, nice thing is we had a good 62% result. So we had 62% of our students meeting that growth target um is because of our consistent CQLA implementation, our co-eing of CQLA, which I think was a genius idea. Um and our amplify MC class. So we're assessing and progress monitoring all of our students on their reading. Um another highlight there is that we have 70% of our first and second graders at or above grade level now. So that's a really huge celebration from the beginning of the year from fall to here. Um, and so our professional learning communities and really our teachers are doing all this work in groups. They're really talking about where students are, how they know where they're going, and how we're going

122to get there. So, good good for all of our teams going forward. Uh, the next slide really talks about this is basically our growth report. Basically, where you're supposed to be in every grade level is the projected growth from the fall is the diamond. And so the the blue rectangle, for lack of a better word, the blue rectangle is the actual real growth. So we expect the growth to here of the whole school um the whole grade level and then the blue growths out of it. So really pretty good in reading. We're above if not pretty high in that area. And as I said before, 62%. The next section kind of brings up the point for a few people like we like growth, right? But we also need achievement. We're very happy. We celebrate growth,

123but really gets me excited is our achievement. Right? Our students uh at and above grade level. And so I'm happy to report our fall scores for all of our students were kind of on this side of the 50th percentile. And on the spring uh the right side of the 50th percentile, so at an above grade level. So we're really excited about that. And our school uh did so as well. So we're 53% uh at or above grade level um based on the assumptions of our I projections. So that's great. Prior to goal for math 60% we will meet exceed projects in first or fifth grade. Good good result. Again we met that goal with 60% of our students doing that. We had consistent implementation of illustrative math curriculum and we're very excited about some other

124programs that we've used 99 math and extra math as well and our PLC's are really focusing on doing above and beyond and doing interventions for math next year. We had the same uh same growth here like the time is where we should be for uh fourth grade is a little bit lower but everyone else definitely made in a did a really good job. Um the same thing like this is from the fall. We're on the 50% line to the left. Uh now we're just not on the 50% line to the right. And so we have several of those students and then actually all of our students and then our entire school is at the 47 percentile at or above grade level based on II projections. So we're very excited about that one. We're a little

125We're a little less excited about this goal. We did we had 4.8 referrals last year and 5.3 referrals. I think you have asked some really good questions about this already. We didn't we didn't have minors in the system. We didn't know what teachers were trained. We actually had some teachers that weren't able to get into it um especially at recess and a variety of other things in our fine arts department. So now everyone's trained. So that's why we see the differences. But I will celebrate this one part is that 83% of our students had one or fewer discipline referrals and 87% of our students had two or fewer discipline referrals. So what we're doing is that tier one curriculum for CHAMPS and for our SEAL program. It really is working right. Our classroom management plans

126are working. Um we just have a few friends that need some extra help and we've gone through that process and so we really are documenting to help students behavior is not just hey we have to help your discipline. Why don't we call home and ask them to to interrove it. We really want to know what the student's telling us and we want to help that student make better choices in the future. Um, our MTSS system is really strong as well in our school. We have uh Mrs. Riley's a huge part of that and we have check-in checkout and seig groups with both our social workers, our social work intern and also our sea as well. The next one is our goal or what we were before is we we're about we're going to improve our

127attendance by 20%. Um we were 25% chronically absent last year. We're 18% chronically absent this year. Um so that's a huge celebration for us. It's a it's a lot of little things that we do. Our SEAA is awesome. Our social worker is great. Uh we don't have weekly meetings. We kind of have daily meetings and kind of twice daily meetings and we're like who's going to go get some of those kids today? But I will to your point earlier about transportation. We kind of did a little study in our own school is that from students that are from 08 to 1.4 miles away, those are the ones that we're having difficulty with, especially during the winter months. I mean, just it's but we have pretty pretty good and reliable data that has been a constant

128issue going forward. Um, budget allocations and power and well, the state of Illinois gave us lots of money, so we're we're very happy about that. summer writing and planning for ELA. We have read 180. That's an exciting curriculum our middle school's using. We're going to use that for an intervention and train our third through fifth grade teachers next week. Um, we've had a lot of UFly materials as well. So, we have lots of different things that have been really successful in our school and we'll continue to do that. I think I'm over my three minutes. Our partnerships are wonderful at Leo. In fact, we have to talk to the parking department often because they say we're taking too many spaces around the area. Um so uh I count I reads is in every getting under

129first grade classroom. We have 250 plus mentors, tutors and volunteers. Our afterchool program, this one I think is really uh we'll give uh Tara Hawkins a huge round of applause for this. We have over 100 student students in that program. We have tutors coming in every day after school doing academic tasks. Um not every day but most days um as well. And our C1 mentors uh it's done a really good job. Our LE Leo PTA is strong um and active parts of our community and then all the rest of the things that we do including American Reads which has been done well as well and we have a relationship with feeding our starving kids um where we give food for our students for the weekends. Next steps we're going to continue the same things. We're

130not going to do new programs, right? I've I've been I don't have many years left but the years I do have left, we're going to do the same things. We're going to do them well. We're not going to do new things and just hope they they work or don't work, but we have lots of good things that are working. We have lots of good things in our school district are working and across all the buildings in our schools. So, um the more we do that and work on the things that work hard to make sure that we all have excellent teachers that are retained and stay in our schools, the better. Um and also our students give them the supports they need to move forward and be successful. So, thank you very much. Questions? >>

131How many minutes? >> Eight. Still [clears throat] a great report. Thank you so much, >> Thomas Payne. No, >> I got um three shots today at the dentist, so they don't know they're speaking tonight. Um Megan Kirby, principal, first year. Oh, can someone be a clicker? Um well, I'll let them introduce themselves. I think they're on the next slide here. Yeah, Miss L couldn't be here tonight. My assistant principal. Oh, do I pass this? >> Amanda Rutled. I'm a tier one teacher. >> Chris Davis, a third grade teacher. >> Mary Carrie Sarat is another tier one teacher who couldn't be here. And Mr. Williams, our SCAA advocate, couldn't be here. And Miss Griffin, our CIT. Jessa Johnson, tier one. Christina Sloan. Uh I teach kindergarten and then I'm also the tier one PBIS. So I

132first want to thank um my salt team because obviously it takes a great leadership team in order to run a building and follow through with your SIP school improvement plan, your PD plan. So these are like the thinking partners. I'm always going to twice a week. Um and then of course our teachers who are doing all the work day in and day out. Um so it truly takes a team. Okay. So, here are our overall goals from our SIP plan last school year. Um, and then here are our smarty goals that we'll go through. So, I won't I won't restate. A lot of the the schools have already stated things that we're doing. Um, but from last year to this year, the goal was that 50% of our students would meet um grades one through

133five or exceed the projected growth goal on MAP for ELA. and we did um reach that and exceeded it. Um this data I pulled like midappril so with makeups and whatnot there is a slight change. We're actually at 61.4% growth. So we saw great um great success there. um through our our SIP goals and through our PDS and monthly meetings, our Monday meetings, we really targeted looking at the data and then focusing on our high yield instructional strategies, which is um summarizing and note-taking and cooperative learning. And then when we pulled our fall map data, we were targeted um vocabulary through all lesson planning because that's what our data was saying that we need to focus on. And so that was really intentional planning through PD PLC's um through the school year. Um and then

134data days in the fall, we meet in the fall and winter with this team and all my four tier one teachers in CIT. And that's where we're very intentional of placing students in groups. And so part of the success I think this year is we flex kids. So when we're doing whole group and they're doing co-eing, um all my tier one teachers are pulling small groups based on skills um from every different class and then even our gened teachers are flexing kids between their three classes. So it really makes I think we probably see about eight small groups through that block at a time which is amazing because we can do enrichment blocks and then obviously meeting the needs of our students who um are falling below that 40th percentile. Um and then same thing

135well for our smarty goal um our target was our black students. So our our goal was to for the the students who are 40th percentile below um 20 of our black students grades two through five would meet that and we did meet that. Um we had 24 of our black students grades second through fifth um meet their meet or exceed their growth goal um who fell below the 40th percent. Um here is where Thomas Payne the median growth goal was last year or growth was they're at 48 my eyes are bad 48th percentile last year and then the median growth from um fall to spring this year was 59th percentile. Um math we same percent 50% of our students in grades one through five will meet or exceed. Um in winter we were at 55.2

136two and then again once we did makeups and a few more testing we did drop a little bit but our growth was still at 60.5%. Um in our proficiency um there's a lot of work like Craig spoke to well actually they're doing great in proficiency but this is where TMAS Paint has a lot of work to do. Um we saw a small improvement there but obviously um the growth is great but we hopefully over the next five years we'll continue to see the proficiency of the trend go up there. Um, our smarty goal was that 30 black students grades one through five who fell below that 40th percentile would meet or exceed and we had 38 students of our one grades one through five meet or exceed. Um, math the median growth was from last

137school year fall spring was 37th percentile and this year we're in the 59th percentile as well from fall to spring. So here you can kind of just see the growth increase from fall to spring last year to where we're at this school year. So growth increase of 17.1% in ELA, proficiency increase um 13% and growth increase in math 20% with a proficiency increase 7%. Um our culture and climate, there's been a lot of work with readjusting systems and structures this this summer and fall. And then also utilizing our new curriculum with CHAMs and seven mindsets. Um and so the goal was to decrease uh major discipline referrals. We spoke they spoke on like minors versus majors. So this was only measuring our majors um by 35%. So in the winter we had a 53% reduction

138which was about 206 fewer referrals. And then from fall to spring or total we had a uh hold on this changed because this was pulled in April and May or middle of May and we had a few more. We were at um we went from 826 major referrals last school year to 455 this school year which is a 44.9 reduction. So um still met our goal there but there's still a lot of work work to be done there as well. And then for our smarty goal, it was targeting our black students to decrease discipline referrals by 25%. Um, and then of the 488, actually I don't think I updated this one, but we do see about a 59.2% reduction. Um, but it's actually a little less than that probably because I didn't update I didn't

139pull the black data from that, but still we met our goal by that. Um and then just like talking about culture and climate um this is just the the staff survey that um they take at the end like then replace of the five essentials through Panorama. So just a celebration to our staff um and our staff leadership here. This is just um I don't know how to explain but just like how it's favored. So 69% of the um staff members feel that the school climate is moving in the right direction. as far as school leadership 79% and then staff leadership 83%. >> So shout out to our administrators for that. people and our school leaders because Yeah. Um and then this is just a snapshot of where again there's a lot of work to do

140with our students because um if you move to the next slide um their celebrations in this with our students but go ahead like what our staff is experiencing um like they're they're feeling the culture and climate is moving the right direction but our students are still feeling like it's not consistent. Um, so we're really gonna target how we can um how we can streamline and communicate with our tier one expectations and common language. So that that's a lot of the work that we're doing this summer with um Champs and seven mindset on just aligning everyone with um similar system, same language, same processes for our tier one um experiences. And then this is just shout out to Miss Sloan and Miss Rutled. They create a lot of our fun um culture and climate like activities

141for our students, staff. Um we try to keep our staff very happy because we're at work so much so it might as well be fun as well as work hard, play hard. So you can see here we've had some fun and field day staffs um staff holidays that was anything but a cup day. Um it was a staff cookout one day and then when they when the students met their um map projection map projection for their or their math growth goal for their class if they hit over 50% they were able to pie um whoever they wanted in the face. So Mr. Davis was pied. Miss Sloan took off that day. No, I'm kidding. [laughter] Um and then attendance. So this is the goal we did not meet. Um obviously there's still a lot of

142work. you asked what we need in order to get students to school. um if someone could if we could rent a little bus or if we could purchase that for participate, I'd be happy to drive the first 30 minutes of every day because like we said, like we Craig and I attended a um conference in Chicago and if we this is on our to-do list this year, but if we plotted all the students who were not making it to school in the winter and how close they were in proximity to our building, I bet you we would see the same data that Craig's seen. our students like the pathways of sidewalks aren't plowed or the safety of students of things happening in the community. Um you know you can't have a kindergarten walking 1.2 miles

143from their house by themselves. So if we could come up and brainstorm some ideas on how to sweep kids after the bell even just to get them in the building, I think we would see an increase in this attendance rate. Um and those aren't not our sidewalks. Our sidewalks are clear. just that's a can say. [laughter] Yeah. Um and then we um so our goal for our smarty goal was that for our black students to um decrease their chronic um from 51 to 40% and we also did not meet this goal. We we're still about 45% of our black students chronic which is 71 of our 157 students. Um we as empower money um my staff they've been able to purchase a lot of supplementary items um to support our three focus target or four

144areas. Um Janet Moore we've spoke on for IM she's been with us um Jessa attended uh numeracy conference in Effingham this year. um slow in attendance. You attended >> practices >> um for kindergarten coming up. We collaborated with um Beth Mirs with my third grade being really intentional about our writing due to IR being 50% of that. So they did a lot of work with Beth this year um who's coming back next year. She did some work with my K2 as well um for one of our PDs. Um there's a handful of us on this team attending the science and reading conference that takes place in somewhere >> somewhere in Wisconsin. Um and then just like flexible seating items from the PBIS door. Um and then we have a lot of summer writing that's happening

145this summer which I'm excited about through um for all areas. We have um teachers doing some scope and sequence work with CLA IM and then also with CHAMs and some planning with our fine arts team. Am I missing anything? Oh, um partnerships. We've did this year we did some work with um UVI athletes. We also had the high school athletes come over. We did um high five Fridays with our police department. That was really awesome. Every Friday in April, the kids the kids loved it. We had like 15 cop cars outside which I alerted our families because I didn't want them at first. I think people were freaking out. But then it became like the culture in April on Fridays. that everyone looked forward to. Our PTA is amazing. Um our carnival is a big

146hit every year. We I think for our um fall conferences, they were able to purchase everyone a dinner for the um burrito king food truck. Was it burrito king or something like that? So just um they're they're very great to our to our staff. They purchase a field trip for every grade level as well. Um what else? Um yeah so next steps just again um I think this work was a lot of um hitting the action items and next year will be a lot more getting in depth with the intentional planning with PLC's looking the data responding to our lessons um and just tightening the schoolwide systems and consistency with language. Um, I I keep telling my staff that we're not trying to do more, but we're just trying to be intentional with the things

147that we're already do doing. So, I'm just we're just trying to make sure not overwhelm our staff, but doing small things very well and not adding more to their plate. Um, because there's a lot on everyone's plate. So, we want to make sure that we're supporting them, but yet providing um the best professional development for them to be successful in their spaces with their kids. Any questions? >> Questions? >> Quite a remarkable turnaround for a year ago. Congratulations to you and your entire staff. >> Thank you. >> Yankee Ridge. Good evening. My name is Patricia Valente and I'm the principal at Yankee Ridge Multilingual. So excited to be here. >> Hi, I'm Elizabeth Smith Andre and I am one of the assistant principles at Yankee Ridge Multilingual. >> And oh, sorry, you gave me a

148job and I already forgot it. Oh, John. John, this is the best part. You can't [laughter] miss it. I can stand up and show you. Oh. Okay, I'm gonna do it. So, if you notice these shirts, we are one pack. Can we get a howl? [laughter] We are Yankee Ridge Multilingual and we are happy to be here and happy to serve the community and so grateful for everyone's support in the community, the teachers, our leadership team. The school would not be where it is today without the support of everyone. It takes a village, right? So this is this this came out as our wolf pack Wednesday and every time on the announcements we celebrate being one pack. The incredible diversity that we have at multi at Yankee Ridge Multilingual has really both challenged us and

149encouraged us to really look at all of our students and all of our families and find creative ways to to connect. And so this was one of our ideas that came out to bring you unity and how do we interact with each other? How do we have conversations with each other? We all have different perspectives. What does that look like? So that has been a really amazing move this year at Yankee Ridge and wanted to share that if we can get the slides going. Are we good, John? And we're not yet. We did also include our wolfpack strong on our slides. I >> know. It was so cute with that. We go over every Wednesday. >> These are not huskys, they're wolves. >> And so what we what we encourage with these Wednesdays is in

150our pack, everyone belongs. We protect. We include. We speak up. We show kindness. No lone wolf at our school. So really unpacking that and teaching that with the students and the teachers. See, isn't that so cute? Yay. Thank you. >> Okay, so thank you to DPW for this little template here um for our SIP goals. So this just includes our SIP goals that we were aiming for this school year. As everyone has a goal on culture and climate and attendance, we have ELA, of course. We also have Spanish language arts growth and French language arts growth that we will be discussing. And then our math growth goal. And so in our English literacy, wow, this has been a really fun year. So we believe we have an 8020 model for our Spanish dual language. And

151then our French dual language is 50/50. So 50% of of the school day is in English, 50 is in French. 80% of the school day in kindergarten is Spanish, 20% is English, and then I should speak in the microphone, but it's hunching. So the 20% of English gradually increases as the students progress in in in in the years. So first grade they get 30% then third grade, second grade 40% more English and then by third through fifth it's 50%. And so this year has been a really amazing goal where we've been really focused on how are we building that English comprehensive foundational skills in our students. And so really we introduced um UFly in K through five. And so students were getting from kindergarten through fifth grade a comprehensive English literacy instruction as well as

152Spanish and French. And so that would this would lead to some of the growth that you've seen in our fall to spring in English. So 43% in fall and then a 50% growth in spring. And so we've just been really thinking about creative ways of how to integrate the English into our science and social studies and then really talking about the standards and how does that look and then also being able to make the metal linguistic connection. So how do we see how does English and Spanish compare? What does that look like? What is it how when I'm saying the sounds in English, how do those sounds reflect in French or in Spanish? And so really getting students to think about crossing over in their brain how do the languages what are the similarity what

153are the differences and so that I believe has been a lot of the help in the growth and we made our goal of 52%. And so this is just kind of the map data goal of of where the the growth numbers fall for the whole school. Okay. And then we have our French literacy goal. So our goal was that um for so what we saw was that during the 24-25 school year 34% of students met their GB+ projected growth goal. The GB+ is the French um like kind of standardized test that we give instead of like MAP you can give in Spanish. We don't have that for French. So that's what the GB+ is. Um and that by May of 2026 50% of students will meet their French GB+ projected growth goal. Um we did

154see that. So by the spring 54% of students met their GB+ growth goal. Um and we attribute that to stronger co-planning across grade levels um to vertically align the French language goals. We also um incorporated more French into French um like texts within classrooms as well as within our library and even kind of around our building as well to um promote all the languages that we see. We also had the French embassy tour um and they were impressed by the dedication of the multilingualism. We had more PD on multilingual strategies and additional co-teer support in kinder through fifth grade French dual language. Um continue and something that we continue to work on is um a uniform system of assessment in addition to the GD plus because it's not a perfect assessment. So working on ways

155to continue to assess our students in French as well. And now if we look at our goals in Spanish, we are 54% in fall and then in spring, this was actually our winter to spring was 46. And then if you look at the next slide, it it is our um fall to spring which was 42%. And so although we did not make the 50% in Spanish, we have made a lot of growth in increasing our foundational skills for a lot of our students in Spanish in three through five. And some of that we found as as we're implementing more of the foundational skills in K through2, we were finding some of the students just we just needed to fill a lot more gaps in the Spanish. And so being more intentional with how three through

156five teachers are teaching foundational skills in small groups or as a whole group to be able to make up some of the missing pieces is really important. Our next step in in in developing the Spanish Spanish literacy goal is to the comprehension piece and the writing and the vocabulary. So increasing the rigor and increasing the the using text to to look through comprehension and understanding it at more intense words in Spanish and vocabulary. That would be that would help us to to continue to move forward in our in our Spanish growth. And the UFly actually helped us as well. So the more we were strategic with the English language development foundational skills, we also could compare and contrast with the Spanish. And so that that the ability for the students to use both of their

157resources has also is also very helpful in in the Spanish growth. And we'll continue to work on bridging and the multi the metal linguistic connections as well. And then this is the map. This is this is from from fall to spring. And so it was a little bit lower if we looked through the whole year of for Spanish Spanish growth. And now if we look at our math, woohoo, we made our goal in math at 51%. Um our goal was 50% of our students would make their growth and 51% had made their growth. And so a lot of this is just the intentionality of pacing and making sure that we are thinking about IM and how it fits into the language component that we need to also teach for our ELLs. So what lessons and

158how do we teach that with with with being able to give opportunities for our eels to practice the language. So we had to be very intentional in the lessons that we were using and how we were using them. Um we also were using I mean the structure having the consistency of IM implemented and the consistent structure of IM has also been very helpful and then collaborating with the teachers in asking the teachers what were the different spaces that you feel like we can support and that we need to grow in and some of that was math fluency and math word story problems. So again, using teaching students how to read and use the language in math is really important. And then the fluency, the automaticity of knowing, adding, and subtracting, dividing quickly. So being able

159to be more focused and intentional in math has helped with the growth and will continue to help with the growth. and then working with U of I a combination of the math department as well as the multilingual department to be able to to look at IM and say how do we how do we present IM when with with ELLL students in mind and and the language support that they would need and then our our assessments and consistently our assessments and daily instruction how are we knowing that the students are learning what what are we using to assess that they're learning what what pieces are really important and then analyzing the data So, I'm excited about our continued growth in that space. And then there's our So, for our culture and climate goal, we really wanted

160to focus this year on our systems and procedures that we have in place. Um, and really focusing on that those are stable, in place, being used consistently. So our goal was that by the spring of 2026 we will strengthen culture and climate through implementation of PBIS systems schoolwide in champs in classrooms. Tier one TFI will be at 80% by spring of 2026 and tier 2 tier three will be based on fall TFI. So the TFI is um it's called the tiered stands for the tiered fidelity inventory and what that is is it's a survey that we would do in our PBIS committee um meetings. Uh it's every like eight weeks or something like that. Um, and we would fill it out together as a team and it asks questions such as like, do you have

161student input in your systems? Do you have family input? Do you have this type of system? And you kind of rank yourself and your goal is to get to that 80% piece. So, in the spring at our most recent survey, we were able to hit that 80% mark. Um, we hit 83%. um meaning that we are consistently implementing PBIS in our building and teachers and staff are following our MTSS processes and procedures. So, we're really excited about that. Um and to have those things really set in place. We have a really fantastic PBS or universal tier one um Kathleen Carter who has really taken charge in this um in this process and she really started the Wolfpack Wednesdays that we have um has um helped with uh sharing out discipline data at faculty meetings. In

162addition, we have done champs walkthroughs throughout the building. We've also done some PBIS um walkthroughs as well. Um, the SIP team has planned more Monday meetings, doing some examples with champs and helping teachers implement them as well as classroom management plans, focusing on seven mindsets and as well as um adding in the zones of regulation and helping teachers do that. Uh, regular data meetings and then check-in checkout and SEIG groups as well. And then our attendance goals. So, our attendance goal, like I feel like many other people, started out really strong in the fall, 18%. Uh, chronic absenteeism was our chronic absenteeism rate. And then in the spring, um, we saw it this that spring data is our ultimately like our year total. So, our year-end rate was the 28% chronic absenteeism. Um, our smarty

163goal was uh focusing on reducing the chronic absenteeism of our Latina students. We our goal was to decrease that by 15%. We did not we did not meet that. We did decrease but we didn't um decrease by 15%. So a lot of people have talked about attendance already. Um we actually are the opposite. We do not have very many walkers. We have a lot of bus riders. We have eight buses. Um, and a lot of a lot of times it is waiting at the bus stop. It's too cold to wait at the bus stop or it's raining or something like that. So, that actually um plays a factor more so than walking to school. But, you know, we have really really awesome um sea family liaison. So we have Papa Floor and then Kenya Oriana

164and they are both really fantastic, incredible. They do a lot of home visits. I agree with the if we could have a bus go and just pick up those kids that you [clears throat] know couldn't wait in the cold. Um that would really be helpful. But um we our seaas really did a lot to try to get students to school and also a lot of working with families to really help them understand the importance of school. Um they saw kind of early in the year just how low our kindergarten attendance was and the real like need to focus on that attendance and talking to families and explaining the difference between early childhood half day and full day kinder and the need to do all that. So, that's something that we're really going to continue doing

165next year as well, starting right off the bat really focusing on kinder. Um, and we saw a few a couple different grade levels have lower attendance where they would do grade level incentives for a month. And, um, there would be a prize at the end. That prize might be them coming to lunch recess and playing games with the kids at recess or a small prize like a sticker or um, pencils or things like that. Um they also did and starting at the very beginning of second semester they did an attendance incentive plan that really had a lot of success. Um they called it be an attendance hero and the hero stood for here in school every day ready to learn on time and it was a six-week lunch group program that they did and students

166got punch cards and they were so excited with the punch cards and if they met their attendance goal for the week at their lunch group they got a punch. Um, and it spelled out heroes. And so they would get a punch for the week and in the lunchroom the kids would be like, "It's it's Tuesday. I'm in first grade. I get to go with Miss Kenya today." Or whatever. They were so excited. And that was a really big um attendance incentive that lasted a long time that students really um responded really well to. Um they've done a lot of other things, phone calls, home visits. They did um at the end very end of the year they did a bunch of positive office referrals with handwritten notes to students who had good attendance or whose

167attendant attendance had appro improved throughout the year and then they got a prize as well and students were so excited to have this like just personalized note to them. Um, so a lot of they got a prize which was also very exciting, maybe more exciting than a note, but um that uh just they're they have just worked really really hard to um help our students be in school and our families understanding the importance of being at school >> and we wouldn't be here if it wasn't for our partners. So we worked really closely with the center of teaching for biiteracy. We created a three-year plan. the teach center of teaching for bi literacy really focused on multilingual language development and the pieces necessary to do that. And so as a leader it was really important

168that we that I continue to grow as well in that space to be able to support the building and the teachers. And so we had a three-year plan with objectives and goals of where we were going. Um our they helped us with creating a mission and vision work and we talked about pedigogy and what kind of what is our building pedigogy? What's our identity? what's the when what direction are we going because when you choose PD and you make decisions you kind of want to have a unified direction. Um we we they helped us with biliteracy unit framework being able to plan and connect to standards and assessments and then we the Illinois resource center is really helpful with multilingual strategies and how to implement that in the classroom. U of I RAC's team is

169helping us with a combination of math and multilingual strategies to be able to to connect with our students in in the language that they need for math. Then I counts I reads our our mentors the University of Illinois groups America reads our feed for star feeding our starving kids and the YRM PTA our PTA has been is is amazing. It's super strong, super passionate, very flexible and easy to work with. Um, it's been they've been super supportive in many many different areas and our families have been receptive and giving us ideas and and and challenging us to be able to come up with new ways to connect with students and with families. So, we've been really everyone has helped to contribute to how Yankee Ridge is become. And so, these were just some of the

170the the other contributors that have have been a part of supporting the different school nights that we had. And so social emotional heritage celebration, the consistent teacher appreciation that is seen in the building so teachers feel appreciated and loved, our welcome back and our end of the year picnics and then having raffles, connecting with the community, a lot of U of U of I different support so our students could see different opportunities for STEM nights that they could be in different careers and have different experiences. So thanks to all of our partners for making Yankee Ridge Multilingual an amazing place to be. And our next steps like many many of the other schools have focusing on tier one deepening our tier two and tier three further developing champs and seven mindsets trauma informed training expanding

171on flexible interventions further training in MClass and Panorama further training on multilingual instruction strategies and pedigogy. So keep doing what we're doing but doing it better and more like more intense. >> Thank you very much. Any questions? Any questions >> for the attendance? Do you think that any of um attendance chronically issues could be from like um ice being in the community as well? >> Yeah. So um yeah. Yes. Um there was definitely a time like in April I think there was a week where we had pretty low attendance especially Monday and Tuesday. Um, and then it was it was definitely our lowest attendance of the school year and that kind of week was tough. >> Yeah. >> I think every time there was a surge and and oh no, ICE might be around it.

172It it if it did affect families coming >> and I appreciate the community who kind of like we had families and parents kind of text us and rally around like what can we do? How can we help? Is there anything? So, it's it's I think it's really help it's really helped families and helped the teachers and all of us know that there were people around who were supportive and wanted to see our family safe. >> So, that's how we got through some of that >> really wrapped around of like going to bus stops and things like that. So, there there were familiar faces, adult faces there to help. >> And then I mean that those were different conversations we had in the classroom too, right? So, they would come in with the fear and then

173how do you you unpacking that fear? Our teachers did a really nice job of wrapping around students and being able to help understand what's happening. How can we school what what can we do here at school to make you feel safe? How can we talk about it? >> So, yeah, that's good. >> Anyone else? >> Thank you. Y >> and and last but not least, uh Gerber. >> Good evening everyone. So I am going to share some similar themes but because Gerber is our school affiliated with Cunningham Children's Home and we serve uh an all special education population that is extremely mobile. Um, our our wonderful, fabulous school improvement committee really has to every year kind of think about how we can look at our data in a meaningful way because some of the ways

174that our our peers analyze their data just don't match when we have kids that that aren't with us an entire school year. or we know uh you know the majority of our population is going to be in that red zone that that well below average on every measure that we give. Um so you'll kind of see some of those adaptations in how we have addressed our data and I'll talk a little bit more about that as we go through. So this is our beautiful building that we hope you guys all come visit if you haven't already. Um, so just a little bit about our goals up front. Our literacy and math goals are really very similar uh to the ones you've heard about from our elementary friends. Um, we are also looking at MAP data.

175We're also looking at those projected growth scores. Um, but we really have to tighten up our timelines. Um, since a lot of our kids won't be with us for all three benchmark periods, we just looked at whether they made growth across at least two benchmark periods. So, finding two benchmark periods that those young people are with us and looking at were we able to affect some positive changes in them within those two benchmark periods. So for literacy um our goal was 70% and for math our goal was 65%. And we'll just zoom to to those results because I am really really proud of the hard work that our teachers do in literacy and math every year. Um 78% of our kids made their projected growth across two benchmark periods in both literacy and math. Um,

176so we rocked it. Um, we did the hard things. Our kids did the hard things. And so, um, it's just amazing to see and it's amazing to to see kind of the fruits of that when you see kids excited to learn. Um so we we did a lot of data coaching with our reading interventionist um so that we could target specialized instruction based on the data and um we really focused on the Marzano high yield strategy of cooperative learning. We felt like that was a strategy that you don't often see for special ed kids. You don't often teach special ed kids how to work together as a group, especially special ed kids who have social emotional concerns. Um, how to work together as a group and struggle through academic and social emotional problems. And we

177felt like this strategy for us was especially high yield because it hit not only their academic needs. But then we were working on how do you have conversations with your peers appropriately no matter what the topic was. Um and we saw a lot of gains and I think some of our teachers at the beginning were like what is our SIP group thinking choosing that strategy and then as we got going in the school year they were like wow this is really working our kids are having some good conversations or if they're not ready to have it with a peer they're having that cooperative learning conversation with a teacher assistant in class. Um, so I think we saw some really good good things from that. Um, we also like some of our elementary friends had Janet

178Moore come in. Um, if you have never talked to Janet Moore about math, she is amazing. Highly recommend working with her. I am not a math person and I love listening to her talk about math. Um, and she has just done some great work with our special ed teachers in helping them understand what is designed as a regular ed curriculum and implement it in a way that really makes gains for our special ed population. Um, so a lot of kudos to Janet and to our math teachers for the work they've put in with her. Um then talking about uh culture and climate. Um so we did not look at suspensions. We traditionally don't suspend at Gerber because our kids are there because of their behavioral needs. Um but we looked at kind of our system

179of um we have uh a behavior rating system for kids on a daily basis. Um and so we really wanted to make progress. our highest level is gold on a daily basis and we wanted our kids to to make progress and um we wanted to have 80% or more gold days uh for our students every quarter and and we didn't see the gains that we wanted to make in that despite some one-on-one student meetings, um data meetings among staff members and IEP problemolving meetings. Um, one thing that we have recognized this year, um, is that we've always had a very mobile population, but this year more than any, it really increased. Um, I I believe last year when I met with you all, we talked about how Cunningham had opened up a DCFS shelter and

180that shelter um just the the nature of that unit is that kids are there short term. Um, so we've had some kids that have only been at Gerber for two days from that shelter program. Some kids that are in that program for six months before a more permanent placement is found. But there's a different um a different behavioral intensity that we found in that group of young people. Um because there's some hopelessness there, right? They don't know where they're going. and they don't know when they're going. When kids are residentially placed, there's there's more of an understanding that this is going to be my home for a little while. When they're in the shelter, I I could be here a couple days, I could be here weeks, and I don't know, and I don't have

181control over that. Um, and then along with that turnover, if you've ever worked with students with behavioral needs, every time there's a new new peer introduced into the environment, it kind of upsets the apple cart a little bit. So, for our longer term students, having to deal with this heightened turnover in their classrooms um has had some trickle down effect. um that we see in behavior as well. Um so those are two pieces that um our team at the end of the school year was really wrestling with and trying to figure out, okay, now that we've identified these new challenges, how are we going to address them in the coming year? Um the other piece that we've noted that um that also has kind of some similar potential root causes. Uh for us, our kids

182live on campus. Um so attendance is different for us. Their their residential staff make sure they come to school for the most part. Um so when we talk about attendance, we talk about time out of class. Um because they may be in our school building, but they may be walking out of class. they may not be engaging in learning. So, we really wanted to work on increasing um or decreasing the amount of time students spent out of class. Um and and once again, we weren't as successful in that goal as we wanted to be. Um and and we think some of the factors that that I just talked about made a difference. Um when I looked at our data, uh we served a total of 67 students across our school year. We're a very s

183small school. Um only 46 of those 67 students were there for two quarters or more. So that means 21 students that we served were with us for less than a quarter of the school year. A third of our population was with us for less than one quarter. Um, so when I talk about turnover, that's what I'm talking about and and talking about that that uh that intensity that adds to um our population right now. Um, my team also when they really dug into the data, they found that two students accounted for 34% of the total time spent out of class. We had two um very intense young people that needed a lot of support and most of the time could not manage um learning around their peers. Um and so uh if we took those

184kids out of our data, we have a very different data picture. Um so I talked about uh some of the things that we've uh done our collaboration with Janet Moore. We're we're very blessed. We in don't have the the Illinois empower grants, but we have the title one neglected funds. So, uh our time with Janet Moore is paid for through uh the title one neglected. We're also able to supplement with some additional math and literacy curriculum, including a lot of manipulatives for math that Janet has suggested that work really well for um our our learners and also a lot of different sensory items, flexible seating, fidgets, all kinds of strategies to keep kids focused and engaged on the academics. Um, our next steps, like I mentioned, um, we really want to kind of dig deeper

185in how to better support those kids who are transitioning through our program so quickly and how to support them in their transition and how to support the peers that are being impacted by seeing all this coming and going. Um, and we plan to increase uh professional development uh using uh trauma-informed model that Cunningham has has championed. It's called trustbased relational intervention. Um, myself and one of our teachers uh went to a training last summer. Um, but with all the other pieces that we had going on this year with Champs and Seven Mindsets, we kind of let this take a back seat. Um and we started ramping it back in in spring and hope to continue that more. Um and then also uh to to continue the progress that we're seeing uh in our academic areas.

186Um we're going to continue to do our our data meetings after each benchmark. Um we've already got Janet Moore on the books for a few days uh throughout next school year. And um as those of you who are at the retirement celebration saw um our wonderful interventionist Cindy Ditchfield is retiring. Um but we are hoping to continue to partner with her and bring her back in a consultation role um so she can continue to support the other teachers um in in reading strategies to help our neediest kids. Any questions? Any questions? >> Thank you so much. >> I just I just want to give the board just a little more context. So, this was our end of the year presentations. Um, due to the timing of when we ended the school year, school improvement teams

187have not met yet. So, they meet on Thursday and Friday. So the next steps that you saw, I kind of like a preview um without any data associated with it to of of what they might be doing next year, but they are going to have their full groups um for two full days at the middle school on Thursday and Friday. So um they will be coming back in August um to share their more concrete data points and data goals after they've had those two full days to work with their teams. Um I know Dr. Taylor just walked out, but I wanted to give Dr. Taylor a shout out and um Chassity Beckas for um the amount of work that they do uh with our administrators and the meeting time and the work with the school

188improvement teams. Um it's great to see the growth and we know we have some areas that uh our uh teams are still working toward for next year. Um but it's nice to see that some of the curriculum improvements and some of the things we're doing are paying off. So kudos to you guys. Right. Um, moving on to our administrative reports. First up is our human resource recruitment and retention report. Good evening. It's fun to sit here with my friend and um colleague Peter and so uh Maryann's passing out a copy of a of our stay survey. Um we're just giving some highlights. You can take that home board members and look at it. Um but it's an executive summary of something that we're going to talk about a little bit later, but I wanted you

189to at least have that. Um so I know it's been a long evening. Um, but I'm excited, very excited, uh, to share some human resource highlights from this school year. Um, and then I will introduce Peter Fur, our director of human resources. So, um, we make a really good team and complement each other's strengths and maybe areas for growth. And so, um, thanks Peter for being a part of our Urbana team. >> Yeah, I'm really excited to be here and share some amazing highlights from our human resource team. Um our first up, ah there's the team. So all these fine folks you heard from today, our teachers, our leaders, um our administrative um staff and our human resource team support everyone from our teachers to our pair of professionals to our custodial staff um to

190everyone. So, uh, these fine group of people work really hard to make sure that, um, everyone finds success in their job and enjoys doing what they're doing. >> Okay. Um, Tracy Welch is on that first slide. Um, she was able to support our long-term subs this year. And we also have Lonnie Maxi who's a part-time kind of temporary employee that helps um, scan documents from business team and human resources team um, to upload. So, um, not all full-time staff, but just wanted to give you a little bit more context of who's in the picture. >> It's a good-looking crew. >> It's a great group of people. We we frequently say we have the best department. >> Um, as you heard from um many of different uh talks today about our strategic plan, we wanted to

191make sure we highlight um some of the things that our human resource departments really focused on. Um our first priority area is really retaining staff. Um and uh you can see what the our goal is and we've talked a couple times through with our strategic plan group um that will retain 87% of the staff by 2023 or 2030, excuse me, and um increase that at 1% um every year. Our goal for this year was at the end of the year um to be at 83% of all staff and then specifically uh 88% of all licensed teachers. Um so really excited about sharing some of our strategies that we've implemented and where we are today. Um this is a really rigorous goal. There's been a lot of challenges, right? Not only in education but a lot

192of changes in Urbana that are good, right? our our redistricting process, our Yankee Ridge multilingual learners on that school that came online. So, there's a lot of shifts internally that happen and to retain um the amount of teachers that we've done is a lot of hard work through our leadership team and our connections with the staff that we have. The next goal here is about um recruiting, right? And this is another really rigorous goal. uh really making sure that our staff represents our student population. And so our goal by the end of 2026 here is to represent our staff of 31% of uh licensed teachers that are uh not white, right? So our student or our teachers of color, right? And our staff of color um will come and support our students at all of

193our campuses. And so that's our link into our strategic planning goals for the district. And if you've taken a well, not that you would probably look at other school districts often, but to see the percentage of teachers of color in other school districts that are around us, to have such a high percentage of teachers of color to reflect our student body is pretty remarkable and it's something that we're really proud of. So, um, we're going to open up and talk about the teacher vacancy grant. This has been a blessing um that was funded by the state and we are in the third and final year of the grant. It's not going to um continue after this year. Um but we were able to use this money in very strategic ways um to retain staff and

194also to recruit. And so oftentimes we talk about the retention first and then recruitment. And so, um, Aubrey, one of our, uh, HR rock stars, um, is kind of our media specialist. And, um, we were asked to share some slides with it, with, um, Isby, uh, that they were presenting on the teacher vacancy grant and success that different school districts have had. And so, she created a few slides for us to share. So, these are some of you're getting ready to see the three slides. So, for the teacher vacancy grant, um, you know, we wanted to be able to spend money in ways that could retain our staff and then recruit more staff. So, these are a couple highlights. Um, some of the ways that we spend our money is job fairs um, cost a

195lot of money. And previously, um, when I say that they cost a lot of money, they not only do you have to pay, you know, three $300 three to $500 to register to go to the fair, you have to pay travel expenses to get there. Um, you're [clears throat] paying for, um, materials to present, um, you know, different swag to to pass out and so on. So, job fairs are expensive, and the teacher vacancy grant has allowed us to attend more job fairs than we were previously due to money. We've also been able to fund a lot more um kind of advertising presence. Um we have some examples of some billboards. We didn't do billboards this year, but we have done them in the past. It was really fun to be able to feature um

196staff members, different staff members on three different billboards um in kind of a Brady Bunch fashion where they're looking at each other and pointing. It was it was a lot of fun for our staff members to see that around town. Uh we've also used money for our tiger tours. Tiger tours is the uh kind of the brainchild of um of a lot of you know just of our our human resources team talking about how can we get new people to come and see what's so great about Urbana. And so um we were trained to drive the activity bus and take teachers around to um to see the district and to see Urbana students to talk to Urbana teachers during the school day. oftent times when um folks are applying they don't get those experiences. They're

197usually interviewing outside of the school day and so we wanted to provide an authentic experience for them and really to find the place where they felt like it was a great fit. Um we were [clears throat] also able to provide signon bonuses. Peter's going to talk a little bit more about that I think and referral bonuses. And so the referral bonuses and the um hard to fill bonuses um along with retention bonuses was a great way to retain uh highquality staff. So some of our outcomes these [clears throat] are great celebrations. So um after year one of the teacher vacancy grant the the data in the first kind of black square was pulled October 1st. So this would have been October 1st of 2024. So after year one of implementation of the grant on October

1981st we still had 70 positions vacant. After year two on October 1st, this is all through our state reporting through Iowa um we had 49 positions um vacant. We will run that same data poll on October 1st of this year to see after three years of the vacancy grant um where we're at. And so the the number of vacancies dropped 30% after uh year one from the close of year two. So we consider that a huge success. Our teacher retention rate during this time period went up from 85% to 88.2%. Now this was pulled um you know a couple weeks ago. Every day that our data is going to be different every day. Um so we might have a resignation, we might have a new hire. And so when this was pulled, it was pulled

199a couple weeks ago um but that was the data at the time. And so we uh went from um this past year we went from 80 um our goal was 88. So then we had retained 87% of the staff from the year prior. So our goal was to raise 1% annually, which sounds really small, but it's really hard once you get those high of numbers for staff retention. And so we did make our goal in terms of um teacher retention one percentage point. Um we also made our goal in increasing our um teachers of color. Again, something that we're really proud of to be able to go into buildings and for students to see people that look like them. Um whether or not they're Latin, African-American, biracial, Asian. Um we really uh have a teacher

200demographic that represents the students and world we serve. So during this time, we've also seen a percentage um of growth in ELA and in math districtwide. Um when you have strong building leadership, as you've heard tonight, you tend to and for for um building leaders that stick around and they have kind of a following. Those teachers don't leave um because they're committed to their to their school um leadership, their teacher leaders in the building, and then that's when we see the greatest um areas of success. One of the targeted approaches that we use to really recruit and retain um staff is through our tuition assistance. Um this chart just shows over the first or the since 2023 to current um how much we've expended to support our teachers, our non-certified staff and even our long-term

201subs um to help grow them professionally um to earn a PEL or to even advance um in a degree, right? And so you see two different fund sources. Some of that was through the teacher vacancy grant and some of that was from um the human resource district funds. Um and how that works is there's an application process um and people can apply I believe three times a year um so they really get an opportunity as classes come and go. We can't pay for everybody's college tuition um but we can help support um as much as we can. Um I like to say uh that's a huge huge win and we were just talking about this earlier. Um, and when we think about even the amount of long-term subs that we've been able to support and

202recruit, it's about eight people that we've gotten to become from a sublic to appel. Um, and employed or almost employed within our school district, which is a a huge accomplishment for our our teams. >> And something while while you're ch No, you can go ahead while you're changing slides there. Um, to kind of give you an idea because Paul, you would have been the only one on the board at this time. So when I entered in my position seven years ago, our budget for tuition assistance for districtwide was 7,500. We are going to feel it was increased to 15,000 maybe in my second year or third year in the position. We are going to feel the hit of this without the teacher vacancy grant because we've been able to help support so many educators going

203back to school or so many support staff um trying to to get their bachelor's degree to go into education. So, this has been a huge success or a huge um retention piece to be able to say that we've supported so many staff members. Maybe not full funding, but a little bit um is is remarkable too. >> The next targeted approach for retention is with our loyalty bonuses and a hard to fill um bonuses. Um so you can see through 2023 to 2024 um there's a group a joint committee with the UEA and district who kind of come together look at the the data that we have for our open positions and the positions that are most in need or hard to fill and you can kind of see the breakdown uh per year of what

204those positions are and those teachers were awarded um monetary um bonuses for their hardtofill positions. Um we've also with the teacher vacancy grant um had two opportunities within year one and year two to provide loyalty bonuses to really retain um and show appreciation for our staff. Um so we saw in that first year 111 teachers and the criteria was staying 10 or more years uh with Urbana and then in that second year 329 teachers um who are returning, right? And so we tried not to double dip the teachers and so everybody got um some of the retention funds um and that went a long way to just showing that we appreciate you know we can't pay all the the money but we can u be strategic in how we allocate what we get. >> Okay.

205So, our next one of our next tasks that we um that came out of strategic planning was the idea of finding out from staff um what what they're thinking and feeling about the school district. And this is um you know, we we do an exit survey, but an exit survey is um it's feedback for the future, but it catches it. It's too late, right? The person's already resigned. They've already left the district. And so what we're more interested in um is the stay survey so that we're able to understand what staff want or what they need um uh to stay in our district so that we don't lose them. We distributed a stay survey that was developed by our strategic planning subgroup to just our licensed staff as a first kind of start. And so

206it was distributed to just over 400 people, 400 teachers. And out of that, we had a 50% rate of people that took the survey, which I think is really good um because the survey was extremely long. So to have that many people uh complete the survey was great. It um it left an opportunity for people to include their name to give very targeted feedback so we could feed uh follow up with them or they could leave or they could be anonymous. And so in this [clears throat] in this uh and this is just three slides from an executive summary which has been given to you. So I encourage you to read it uh because there's a lot of great takeaways and ideas suggestions for improvement. But 75 more than 75% of the folks that took

207the survey have said that their deepest satisfaction from coming to work is seeing student success. Um it's it they aren't saying that they come to work for the money. I think that that that we know that that that's kind of a given um that that folks aren't going into education for that reason and that that is keeping people satisfied in their job. Other things that um the reason why our staff are staying is that they have strong work families um strong team bonds. They really enjoy working with the colleagues they work with. Um and I think that that's what sets us apart. We talk about that in our Tiger tours frequently that um Urbana is different because we're family. Um you're going to have a superintendent that's been in every classroom. She knows your name.

208She knows something about you and you're not going to have that in other um school districts. Uh something else that was really that came out in that survey was trusting trusting teachers. Urbana also prides itself as having a lot of teacher autonomy. um that that sentiment um kind of varied a little bit a few years ago when we adopted curriculum. Um and it was really uh we needed to do something different to produce different results. And with all of our new teachers coming out of school and entering into a job where they have to manage student behavior and um and just all of the needs that our kids come to school with, having a curriculum that's already developed for them was incredibly helpful for our for our teachers that were new to the job. Um

209they also talk about just having that creativeness um and and being able to take risks um in their classroom to supplement the curriculum. In addition, there was a lot of mention about the district's commitment um and values to equity, which I think is really important to note that there are folks that stay in our district because um we have a commitment to serving our most underserved students and um and and people do have I mean they have options. They have options to move to smaller towns um surrounding this area and um and they choose to stay in a district that is um more high poverty than some of the surrounding areas. So, hit it. Am I not hitting it right? >> The battery died. >> While we kind of figure out that >> Okay, >>

210perfect. I was going to say one of the strategies um that the teacher vacancy grant or one of the opportunities the teacher vacancy grant allowed uh Angie and I to have is to collaborate with a variety of different stakeholders and school districts and one of the places that we were able to connect talked about the state survey which then we were able to bring that strategy and kind of make it Urbana right um and we got some great data and great next steps from that. >> Yeah, good. Thanks for including that. Yeah, it's my segue as the >> That was great. So, some suggestions for improvement from the stay survey. So, some of the things that we um that were our takeaways is that teachers are asking for more support with classroom climate and behavior.

211Um that sometimes the dayto-day the day-to-day work is causing fatigue and burnout. Um there also there was some feedback in the survey that there's a perception that district administrators are out of touch with the daily reality of classrooms. And I think in some cases that's true and I think in some cases um our district administrators are very aware of what's going on in the classroom based on how much they're in the school. But it's different with being a visitor in a school or being in a classroom with a teacher. And it it is difficult like our students come to school with a lot of challenges and um and it's our job to meet a student where they are and help them grow. Um something else that that was mentioned is that um teachers don't like

212the walk walkthroughs, classroom walkthroughs. That's a non-negotiable. We want administrators in classroom seeing what's going on, making sure that the curriculum is being implemented. Um, so that's uh we we hear you, but we still got to do that. Um, something else to think about though is rethinking Monday meetings. So there was a talk about kind of the Sunday night anxiety. Um, there are administrators that have that too that are just worrying about, okay, so what's going to happen tomorrow after a weekend and rethinking that maybe instead of a Monday meeting have it a different time um during the week to help with that anxiety. um also talking about staff support and balancing workloads and balancing support staff um support in classrooms. So those were suggestions that we took for improvement. Um and then it doesn't

213like me clicking Peter. Oh, hold on. No, it was it did go there. I just ruined it. All right, I'll start talking while Peter will get he's got the magic touch. There we go. See? All right. So, um kind of the the final takeaways or some of our priorities and with our subgroup and thinking about um our summer professional development with administrators is okay, so what are going to be our priorities for staff retention? So, um I think that something that we could work on is having having teams in school to be able to respond to to classrooms for some behavioral support. um in an elementary building. We've got to have more people that can um be boots on the ground supporting besides a principal and assistant principal. Uh so we need to see what

214we can do to help support our administrators with that. Uh there was also conversation about consistent consequences for phones skipping and classroom disruptions. That's probably more secondary focused. Uh and it's it's sometimes hard, right? We've got several dean of students. We've got several administrators and to to make sure that we're implementing things consistently um can sometimes be challenging because teachers might not know the specific situation that occurred and might just see a consequence. Um also protecting planning time um teachers are really wanting to you I mean they have their plan time their plan time is protected. I think it's more so protecting professional time outside of the school day. thinking about the number of meetings, the the um additional professional development that they're requesting less of that so that they can focus more on um

215their daily tasks. And then um also recognition of veteran staff. Um there was comments uh made about showing the veteran staff that they are appreciated, that they often feel overlooked and um they want to see they want to feel seen and heard. So, those were kind of our priorities. >> All right. One of the highlights um that we kind of alluded to in the beginning here is that when we look at our teachers of color, we're at 32.1% which is above the 31% goal for the year. Um when we look at different districts around or very close around to us, um we're we're above them. So, I looked just a little bit ago and one school district's at 24% while another is at 8% and other is at 22%. Um, so that's a really good

216highlight for um not only recruiting. Um, and we can we can have that as a an important part when we talk about our stu with our student teachers and tiger tours and our job fairs. Um, but it also meets the goal for this year. Um, here's a couple of targeted approaches that we used um with teacher vacancy grant money, but also with our our team. We really looked at who's in our classrooms already from our student teachers, right? Whether they're from ISU or U of I or EIU or, you know, on their own program and how can we get them um really invested in the Urbana School District and um they already have a sneak peek, right? we already they get an opportunity to meet their teachers, their meet their future team. Um so we

217really try to recruit um as many as we can um to stay with the Urbana School District. One of the biggest things as you know a lot of kids like to go back to their home um which is allowed to and live with their parents or whatever. And so we talk about that in the tiger tours too about opportunities that the Urbana community has to house you um how you can um still have a a really outstanding um nonacademic life right even though you just got to were at college here so living off campus. Um another targeted approach that we we've mentioned is our tiger tours and that gives everyone a really good look at what Urbana has to offer. um some of the conversations that we have, not only Angie and I, but other

218directors come and speak with the student teachers. Um it's a really opport amazing opportunity. In fact, one of uh the candidates that we had two Tiger Tour years ago um is now going to be an early childhood teacher, right? And so um she was able to experience Tiger Tours, I think a couple times. um and we met her at a recruitment fair um in over at the university and she's now uh going to be a great first year teacher over at our early childhood school. And then our job fairs uh we got to expand the amount of fairs that we we got to go to and and bring our exposure to a variety of different places. We were able to use some of our um human resource department team members to help us with that.

219Um, so that was a really great opportunity to again further our outreach to make sure we're connecting with various um, universities to bring and find the teachers that are hard to fill, right? And really recruiting our special educations teachers, elementary teachers, dance and drama teachers, um, middle level teachers to really be interested in Urbana and to join our team. Um, so there's a couple of targeted approaches that we took. So, um, if if you are on social media, I would encourage you to follow our human resources Facebook page. And so, we try to highlight staff and highlight openings and just highlight uh, reasons to come work in Urbana, which is not something um, you know, the district web page can necessarily do. And so, uh, just because there's so much information and we don't want

220to, um, you know, kind of overflow or, uh, overcommunicate with our families like Katherine was talking about. So this is a page that we hope that um staff will follow, that we hope community members will follow, that prospective candidates will look at and um and every person on our HR team, as Peter was talking about, plays a very like a specific role in our department and really complement each other well. And so we've had we've been able to grow the capacity of our clerical staff within our team to be able to go to recruitment fairs at Northern or in Indiana or at Western. Um something that Aubre's been able to do um for us is uh been able to really uh improve our social media presence. And so you've got some data points on our

221Facebook page. I encourage you to take a look. We just highlighted um our staff that retired um and that was something new that we did this year. I follow um social media pages for other school districts and kind of you know steal great ideas and I saw um a school district doing that in Bloomington and so we were able to turn that over pretty quickly. And so for those of you went to the retirement dinner and we had that slideshow going that was a new addition this year um that we hadn't done in the past. And so uh we'll continue to do that. We um advertise our upcoming job fair in the summer. We um look for vacant positions. We uh talk about the referral bonuses on our social media page. And we also um

222it's fun to have our like our prize patrol when we surprise staff members um for the staff excellence award. And you'll hear Peter like blow this little horn. It's not as cool as the uh Yankee Ridge wolf packow. not cool, [snorts] >> but it is it's a fun little noise maker. So, in terms of and I'll just briefly highlight this for the tiger tours when we first started this initiative a few years ago. Um we had so many people come flooded from other areas and then we had a couple um of colleges tell the student teachers now you can't take off a day to go on this Tiger Tours thing. And so, um, we had to be creative, um, in in how we recruited, uh, to get people to come and go to the schools,

223but we also were very specific about where we took teachers. We were taking teachers to school to schools that had the highest vacancy rate. So, we we went for our elementary buildings, we went to DPW, we went to King. Um, we'd always hit the middle level. Uh the middle level is one of the hardest um spots to fill. In addition to um DPW, the high school retention rate has really turned around the last few years under um a very competent, stable leadership team uh where we don't have people leaving like we did several years ago, which is fantastic. Another targeted approach that we've taken is with the use of the teacher vacancy grant having um a sign on bonus for new teachers, right? Um and that's been really successful. We've we got like a fake

224check that you can kind of see in some of the Tiger Tour pictures and we bring that to our recruitment fairs and really highlight that we're investing in you, right? And the idea is over the the next three years as you gain tenure um you get this sign on bonus. So, we want you to be a tenure teacher with us. Um, I can't tell you how many different school districts kind of came through our booth and looked at us and were really jealous of that idea, I guess we could say. Um, and I think we're if not the highest for uh teachers for $3,000 bonus in our area. I think I think that's accurate. Um, we also really targeted the positions that we needed the most support in with referral bonuses. So you see a

225$200 $250 for for a teacher. So if you refer a teacher, $500 bonus for um a special education teacher um or a teacher. And then uh recently we upped that to a $500 bonus for sped a DPW sixth grade center where we saw um just a need for our middle level teachers and we wanted to make sure that um if if others know of a teacher and they're interested that they can refer and get that money as well. Um, another highlight for when we were at job fairs is we we read and understood that the the span of the person at the fair is really really quick, right? There's tons of extra people in and out. So, as we were taking resumes, we were scanning them to our uh leaderships um our principles who had

226openings and they were able to that day within that hour connect with that staff member or that candidate and say, "Hey, I heard you were at ISU. Uh we really need you as at at the elementary level and I know Thomas Payne got I guess two or three, I believe, um from just that practice, right? That immediate feedback. Um so, that's one thing that's been really successful for us. All right. Um, in terms of retention, this is going back to our strategic plan goals. So, we met, um, uh, two of our goals and we almost met the third one. So, um, again, I just want to talk about our decrease of vacant positions from 2024 to 2025 that we had that 30% decrease. the the goal that we did not meet was that middle column.

227So our goal was 83%, we fell short at 82.1. And so this is retention of all staff. Um so we also have to consider all staff meaning our lunchroom supervisors, our TAs, our support staff, crossing guards. Um, we we fre we see turnover in those positions every year because people are looking for more full-time hours, year- round work, and that's why we target that job fair in the summer for our support staff positions. And so, we're still going to try to reach to that 83%, but it it is challenging to hit that. Uh, but we did we hit our goal. Um, our goal was the 87% or it was 87% last year. Our goal was to raise it 1%. We're at 88.2. Um, and we're we're going to try to continue to raise it another

228another year. And then finally, I know that we took a long time, but again, we're just really excited to talk about the great things going on our dis going on in the district. And so another initiative that we had this year um in addition to our unsung heroes because our unsung heroes recognize our support staff um that are quietly doing work behind the scenes and maybe don't get recognized as much as other staff members. But our staff excellence awards are peer nominated and um can be any position in the district. And so you're able to see really a great um uh kind of reflection of the district. There were a lot of the school improvement team members that were here tonight. They they're on they're in these pictures. Greg Delgado, uh Christina Sloan is in

229the pictures. Um and you'll see people that you recognize quite a bit um just from being uh being around for a while. I know that they talked about Kathleen Carter. Um you know, the tier one implementation. We actually even have a husband and wife and different pictures um that were that were nominated by their peers. And so people got really emotional. This was where I'd also encourage you to look at the Facebook page when they were surprised and we read what the um nominator said about them and there were there were tears. And so what we'd like to do next year um is to at the beginning of one of the board member or board meetings is to recognize like the three people at a time just very briefly so that we can do it

230more timely rather than in May when things are really busy or June having everybody come together. It makes it a little bit more overwhelming and and we'd like to be able to take their pictures and and um display them um in a prominent place in the district to recognize their um contributions to the school district. And we'll stop there. We could definitely go on. We can tell you that um we may have worn a huge inflatable tiger to job fairs to get people to come and walking around and um it is cutthroat out there when you're recruiting teachers. So, >> any questions for human resources team? >> Thank you very much. This is great news. Yeah. Are you gonna wear the inflatable tiger here? [laughter] >> It's really funny. So on on opening days, >>

231I tell you what, I'll wear it if we sign that contract soon. >> Yes, I know, right? That would be funny. That would be that'd be a good incentive. >> Yeah. On opening days, it's also something really special that we talk about with um potential recruits. We show pictures from opening day. And if you haven't been to the opening day ceremonies, I really encourage you to do that. Um it's so special to bring all staff together in the gym, having the cheerleaders do a cheer, the music department playing, the band welcoming people in. Um in the past four or five years, we've now had dress up days. So like in themes that people are coming in, we've had an inflatable theme. And so you get you get to see some really um we're when staff

232are coming back, we want them to be pumped about the new school year, not sad that summer is ending. So >> I know, right? >> Well, let's Well, let's call for questions. Thanks again. >> Thanks. >> Um our last administrative report of the evening is for the tenative 2627 budget. >> Good evening. I know you're super excited for the tenative budget at this hour. Um, I have to say Dr. Franklin does have a great department, but I I can't let it go without saying that mine might beat hers. So, I have I might have the best. So, uh, tonight I am presenting to you a another very tenative budget for fiscal year 27. And at some point you might question like why am I bringing such a tenative budget? And due to board policy, the

233tenative budget is brought to you every year in June. Um, so we can have a budget in place to operate when our new fiscal year starts July 1. The final budget will be brought to you in September. And so you'll see quite a few changes from then. And this is really just part of board policy and something we do every year to get the fiscal year started. Um, in your packet, you're going to have the following items. you'll see the tenative budget summary, the tenative budget changes for the ED fund and budget assumptions. And I'm going to walk you through some of the highlights tonight. Um, this year is a little different because of our uh ongoing contract negotiations. You're not going to see any increases to the salary or benefits um in your expenditures.

234And this is on top of the regular unknowns that we might typ typically face with the tenative budget. So, we're still receiving information and the final budget numbers will be very different in September once we settle the contract and get more updated and finalized information. You're also going to see some unknowns in revenue. I know I say this every year, but there still some unknowns in revenue. We will see an increase in EBF. They the state did just approve their budget. Um, especially we're hoping to see a bigger change in EBF if we remain tier one. Um but we are anticipating some of the other state funding to either decrease or remain flat for the mandated categoricals which includes things like transportation and special ed. So our levy numbers might have to change towards the

235final budget to kind of cover some of those for the mandated categorical goals. I did do a 1.49 million increase for property tax um and revenue. We overstated the revenue for property taxes last year, but we're still seeing an increase due to the TIFF 4 that expired in December of 2025. Um, so that's kind of comes on and it looks like new property and then it will hit our EAV the following year. So we'll have more definitive numbers for you at the final budget. I want to make sure that you realize though that the property tax revenue is received in portions of two tax levy cycles. we levy and then we get a portion in June and then we get another part in September. So it hits in two fiscal years. Um and our property

236taxes account for approximately 70% of our revenue. So it's very important when we do the balloon levy and things like that that we try to capture all of the possible revenue um to make sure that we can keep our finances stable. I did incre uh include an increase to 600,000 to our state evidence-based funding. Again, we're hoping that we become tier one or stay tier one and we'll see an increase in that revenue. And so that will be adjusted at your final budget meeting. All other mandated categoricals in the state are projected to have a slight increase, but with our transportation cost increasing um and special ed, we're expecting to see a little bit of a slight decrease over expenditures over revenue. Um and that will be reviewed further for your final budget as well.

237The district also received revenue in FY27. We're going to be receiving revenue for our energy incentives for and credits for the geothermal project at the sixth grade center. This is a one-time only revenue allocation and that's why it's remaining flat because we've seen revenue from prior years and so there's no increase for revenue on that. As for expenditures, this is a snapshot in a moment of time. Um even though we've worked really hard in negotiations and the budget, we've been working really hard on where our numbers um could be, we cannot predict where we're going to end up. And so this also impacts other employee groups as well when it comes to salaries. That's why we haven't brought to you our clerical staff and administration increases because we need to settle the contract with our

238union. Um, and due to guidance from prior CFO, we are not reflecting any increases to salaries or benefits until we're finished negotiating. There is, you will see, an increase to our food service contract. We're entering our second extension um with an option to extend for two more years. Our contract is written right now that we see it as an increase of CPI, which is 2.7% for FY27. There's also two more years of our contract with the city of Urbana for our SRO's um their school resource officers. They are also in the middle of negotiations. And so I'm putting in a placeholder. Last year it was about $14,000 that we put in for the budget. And so I'm just putting a placeholder that you so you can see that there will be an increase um of

239$20,000 and that will be updated for your final budget as well. Um, and there has been a lot of communication with the park district as always for the district's portion of the indoor aquatic center. Uh, it is currently estimated to be the same as the prior year for FY26. The finalized numbers will be reflected in the final budget. And I just kind of want to hit that we are entering our third year of a three-year agreement with the park district. So, you'll be hearing me talk more about the indoor aquatic center. And then I know that this is again I keep on saying tenative and it'll be more finalized at the final budget, but we will be I'll uh bring this back to you for approval at the June 16th meeting so we can start

240the new fiscal year starting July 1. Do you have any questions? >> Any questions? >> And it's kind of late. Yeah, this is even more tentative than than typical years because we just we we don't have any idea what our expenses are going to be. Um >> so what if we don't stay a tier one? >> Um so the state has it set up to where we remain like they hold us harmless. So we'll see the same increase and even as a tier two we will see some sort of increase in our funding. So I feel pretty confident between our property tax revenue and our EDF that the revenue side is pretty accurate. >> Good question. Anyone else? So yeah, we we'll vote on this next time around. So if you have any any questions

241between now and next week to reach out to Maryanne and her staff and or bring your question in two weeks. >> Thank you. >> Y thanks everybody. Um we do have an a set of action items. um that we will vote on individually. First up is 10.1 is a list of a long list of personal items as typical for the end of the school year. Um >> Sure. >> Were we not going to do adults? >> Oh, you're right. Thank you. Adult Ed. >> I believe typically Shauna just provides you the information and then yes. So with >> mention that it's here >> it is. Yes. So please review that if you again theirs is also even more tentative because of [clears throat] not having any of the numbers for um increase in salaries but

242that will also be approved at the June 16th. Sorry, thank you for that. >> Thanks for that reminder. U again first up is 10.1 our personal items that are published in our agenda. A long list of personal items is typical for the end of the school year. Um, is there a motion for the floor? >> So moved. >> Second. >> Move to second. Any questions, comments, discussion. >> Roll call, please. >> Member Cheryl, >> yes. >> Member Hixon, >> yes. >> Member Maribou? >> Yes. >> Member Jones? >> Yes. >> Member Langorf? Yes. Vice President Baxley? >> Yes. >> President Palowski? >> Uh, yes. 10.2 is a resolution authorizing uh the sale or disposal of property in accordance with state law. Um, this includes this time around a tap and stove, a refrigerator, an audio

243meter, laptops, a variety of audio materials from UBCS, library books from um Thomas Payne, early childhood, uh, DPW and M, uh, King School. Is there a motion for the floor? >> Some moved. >> A second. >> Any further questions, comments, discussion? Roll call, please. >> Member Hixon? >> Yes. >> Member Maribou? >> Yes. >> Member Jones? >> Yes. Member Langondorf. Yes. Vice President Baxley. >> Yes. >> President Palowski, >> yes. >> Member Cheryl, >> yes. >> Uh, next up is our diligent agreement. Uh, this is a annual subscription fee to the tune of $9,500 uh so that we can share documents with the public. Um, do we want to provide context, Lori, or >> questions? >> So, you got Yeah, I sent a nice Lori put together a really nice little update for you guys,

244overview >> um, in response to a couple questions we received. So, >> what one of was said last time when was presented was that Champagne used it and before that I looked at Champagne and I couldn't find it. This time I went and I was able to find all the different documents under the agenda. It was very helpful. >> It's a nice organizational tool. >> Yes. >> Okay. Is there a motion for the floor? >> So move. >> Second. >> Any further questions, comments, or discussion? >> Roll call. >> Member Maribou? >> Yes. >> Member Jones? >> Yes. >> Member Langodorf? Yes. Vice President Baxley? >> Yes. >> President Palowski? >> Yes. >> Member Cheryl? >> Yes. >> Member Hixon? >> Yes. Motion passes. 10.4 is a request for chiller requ. Uh this is uh

245utilization of health life safety funds. Um securing a replacement unit and uh proceed the baiting process. So the request is the project cost not exceed $500,000. >> This isn't that old, is it? Or am I? >> It is. Yeah, it's it's fairly old. >> Okay. Okay. I remember that >> it's our last oldest one in the >> um high school and it's uh one that we had planned on >> uh swapping out in a couple years. >> Oh, so this isn't the one in the kitchen then that we replaced when that was refurbished. >> Okay. >> Um >> I do have more context to this. Yeah. Um the first I want to give a shout out to Angie's crew. They are good. Maryanne's crew is also good. John's technology people are okay. However, the facilities

246department, warehouse, facilities, grounds, and custodians are by far the best. >> I'm teaming facilities. >> Okay. Um, >> sorry. >> And nobody can go after me except Dr. Tatum and change that. >> Um, so the uh high school chiller failed on Friday uh 22nd. Um, following inspection, evaluation, service techs and engineers, we're informed that the existing chiller is no longer repairable and must be replaced. Um what we uh had originally budgeted in or uh I guess tenatively budgeted in our um tenure life safety was um about $335,000 I think um for this chiller. And so I knowing that it would be or figuring it' be more than that um bumped it up to $500,000. Um, and then this in this memo I sent to you guys, I said at this time, um, the exact project

247pricing is still to be finalized. And I got those finalized numbers today. And the actual cost of the chiller is $532,000 with a 10% contingency fund. Um, and a 10% architectural and engineering fees puts us at $638,400. So, um I missed that guesstimate by a little bit. Um so I would like to ask for that much money um to be put towards um the cost of the new Chilla for the high school. What we would also uh um by moving forward this quickly, we would um purchase a uh unit that's already in stock. Um it would be the exact tonnage that we need um and have everything that we will need um for and there are some in stock. And then we would also some of the added cost to this is also moving the

248chiller from out outside the building um to the roof and uh just to make the building conditions a little bit better. Right now there's a um pretty good vibration in the building in that area from this chiller. So it'll take that out of uh the building be a much better uh setup in there. So, I'm asking for uh $638,400 for that. >> All right. So, is there a motion to bid out this project to uh not exceed $638,400? >> Some move. >> Say again. >> Move in a second. Any further questions, comments, or discussion? Again, roll call vote is in order. >> Member Jones, >> yes. >> Member Langodorf, yes. >> Vice President Baxley, >> yes. >> President Palowski, >> yes. >> Member Cheryl, >> yes. >> Member Hixon, >> yes. >> Member Maribou, >>

249yes. >> Uh, last item of our action items is, uh, the young adult house. Provide context for the public. Randy? >> Yep. Uh the district held mandatory bid opening um for the young adult home um on May 20th. No contractors attended the meeting. Uh in an effort to encourage participation and obtain bids for the project, the district um waved the mandatory pre-bid requirement and reopen the opportunity for submissions on the 27th of May. Uh despite these efforts, the district still did not receive any bids or proposals for the project. Uh after discussing the matter with um the district's legal council, Howard Howard Mets, we're advised that the board may still uh proceed through the emergency exceptions process allowed under the district's purchasing and procurement guidelines. Um this process would require approval by three4s majority of

250the board. Um uh the purpose of requesting this exception is to allow the district to move forward with the project timeline and continue uh pursuing qualified contractors or construction partners who may be willing uh and able to meet the district expectations and project requirements of the young adult young adult home. Uh given the lack of bid participation despite multiple attempts by the district uh administration believes this request is necessary to avoid further delays that could impact programming, student services and project cost and scheduling. Uh approval of the emergency exception permit uh would permit the district to uh directly engage with uh interested contractors and negotiate services and explore uh alternative delivery methods while still maintaining transparency and physical responsibility. Um the district would continue to document uh all efforts, outreach efforts, uh contractor communications, estimated

251cost and uh recommendations to the process and provide updates to the board informing uh provide updates to the board as information becomes available. Um we respectfully request the board's consideration for approval of the emergency exception process. So the board or so the district may continue to move forward with this important project. >> Any questions for Andy real quick? >> Yeah, I just have a question. What the um I I think I gleaned some of that what the emergency exception process is, but how would we then determine to get somebody, you know, as soon as we need him? I mean, how does the process go? we would just reach out to um whoever we think can do the house and uh ask them to just do it. Basically, it's just a simple are you able to

252do it? Can you do it in our um within our specs? Can you do it within our timeline? >> And then if they're able to, then we'll start the process. >> And then it's presented to the board and that's when you need the three4s majority. >> Oh, we need three4s today to go forward. >> Today It's it's the emergency authorization takes three quarters. >> Are you are you going to uh go to multiple companies or go to just one that you prefer or >> I've reached out to a couple already and said this might this could possibly be coming. >> Yeah. >> Um to to be ready and >> um everybody that received a bid packet I'm also going to reach back out to um and then >> go from there. >> Yep. >> Thanks.

253>> All right. Um, is Sarah Go ahead. >> Sherry emailed earlier. You want me to respond to your question about the location? >> Yeah. >> Okay. Separate. >> Yes. >> Um, well, is we're still under discussion, right? Okay. >> Um, Sherry wanted to know, I don't know, she had an inquiry from somebody from the high school, I'm assuming, about the location. And um so I reached out to Damian from BLDD and based on our walkth through with them several weeks ago, it's been now um when we walked the site um when we were talking to them about making sure that wherever we put the home, it would not interfere with the other projects that might would be happening there on Iowa Street. So, it was decided at that time um that the northwest corner of

254the site um just south of Washington Street where Race Street runs into the high school campus would be um the the the preferred location. Um and then that with that the entry would likely be from the east. So, from where the parking where new parking lot would be and would be located as part of an extension of the the new parking lots. There would be new parking in the back and there would be parking that would also be part of um this home as well, but from the east. >> So, not from the race, >> not from the race street. Not the entry and not the parking. Is that what that was your understanding to, right, Randy? Okay. >> Okay. Yes. >> It'll be in the closest spot where the we most recently tore down

255a house. >> A few years quite a few years ago >> off of Washington. >> Yep. >> Yes. >> Right next to the apartment complex. >> Yes. Okay. [clears throat] >> All right. So, is there a motion for the floor to authorize an emergency exemption uh since we didn't have any biders on our regular bidding process? >> Some moved. >> Second. Any further questions, comments, or discussion? Again, a roll call vote is in order. >> Member Langorf, yes. Vice President Baxley, >> yes. >> President Palowski, >> yes. >> Member Cheryl, >> yes. >> Member Hixon, >> yes. >> Member Maribou, >> yes. >> Member Jones, >> yes. Motion passes over threequarters. Uh that is it for action items this evening. Uh there is a executive session uh for uh to talk about uh contract negotiations

256after this meeting with no action taken by the board afterwards. Superintendent report. >> Okay. So, I have some exciting news that um we've been hearing a little bit about this, but I didn't want to share anything publicly until we had someone reach out to us and provide more information. So, Maryanne and I received um an email today from the uh Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, DCEO, that we have been awarded $250,000 from the Build Illinois Bond Fund. Um and which is uh one of the um committees and um funds that is managed by the Illinois State Democrats. Um, Senator Farace has been in several spaces um with me, I'd say in the last year and a half where we've been talking about um increasing our uh CTE efforts. Um, we've had discussions about the

257limitations of our space. Um, I was at a Rotary meeting with him and we were talking about um the needs, our capital improvement needs at the high school. So, he is part of this build Illinois bond fund committee. Um, and he nominated us for this grant and we were notified um today that we are officially getting this money um and it is only designated for capital improvements and um based on my conversations with him, he would like us to earmark it toward our future CTE improvements at Urbana High School. So, very excited about that. So, we just received all the documents today and um we have a person that we're going to work with through the state and BLDD will um I have a meeting with them, Randy and I are meeting with them Thursday

258about um the presentation that they're coming back to the board with in a couple weeks and so I'm going to walk through those documents a little bit with them as well. So, very exciting. So, yay. Some seed money to get the project started. I don't know how far $250,000 will go, but we'll see. Yes, every dollar is important. Correct. Yep. Um and then I did want to thank our mayor again. Um as we mentioned this morning, we are keeping our the members of the city council and the mayor's office um in our thoughts and prayers at the loss of um Councilwoman Bishop. So, um, again, I also want to thank the mayor for the donation to Tiger Academy. So, um, this weekend the mayor hosted his second mayoral ball. Um, and Mayor Williams, uh, took

259the initiative and reached out to the district around wanting to do something more for Tiger Academy. um he's been um over and visited and he's aware of some of the projects and programs that we've um implemented in the last couple years. We do not know the amount. So if you look at the check, that's why I included this picture, you can see that it's kind of lying through um so we are not quite sure of the amount yet because they need to uh settle up, you know, all of the costs and um to find out what they have left from the fundraiser. Uh but we are thankful for whatever we are able to get. No, no amount is too big or too small. And so I just want to thank him um on on behalf

260of the district. So Dr. Weount and Domisha Nun and I represented um and accepted the check um on on the board's behalf. And so we want to thank the mayor again um for prioritizing the partnership and and being part of the future of our our band of youth. the retirement celebration. Um I know a couple of you were there so it was it's always a really nice um end of the year celebration and this particular group was uh really near and dear to me. I knew almost I knew all of them very very well and worked with a couple of them for many many years. And so um this was a special group and combined 327 years of service to Urbana School District. That is amazing. Um and so you can see all of their

261names. Tim and Carla, Maggie, Teresa, Meg, Bridget, Cindy, Susan, Don, Beth, and Dan. um just the the countless number of students. We can't even count up in 327 years of service how many students and families they've uh helped to support. But um we're sad to see them go, but very excited for them on the future. And many [clears throat] of them, you see how much they're smiling, but they have great plans for what they're going to do next. So, we're really happy for them as well. >> Are we are we sure that Bridget's not coming back? >> No, we're pretty sure. >> Okay. Because it's been like three years. Yes, she's been saying it for the last three years. You're right. I think it's really done now. Um but yeah, we're really happy for her

262and everyone else. >> Um and then we had a couple end of the year um highlights for athletics. So, as you know, our uh the state track and field and tennis and some other things um some of those state championships actually happen after our seniors graduate and after we end the school year. So, um, this past weekend, Andy Lecowski for Rebana High School earned sixth place in the long jump, um, at IHSA State Track and Field. He's one of seven athletes in Urbana history to meddal top nine in the state. So, congratulations to Andy. That's awesome. This is a great action shot, too, of him >> um, long jumping. So, congratulations. And then um our UHS tennis doubles team um Xander and Theo Neans earned um sectional runners up and they competed at state last

263weekend. So um congratulations to all of those end of the year athletic accomplishments. >> Yeah, go for it. My granddaughter um we were last weekend went to Kentucky, but she's from she's She's going to school in Alabama and she this is her second time going to national. So >> nice. >> She'll be going to Eugene, Oregon. >> Wonderful. We have another um Urban High School grad Tyler Carell is also going to nationals. Went to Yankee Ridge and graduated. He graduated the year of COVID. So unfortunately he didn't get to >> do all the state things. But um in the what's the one where you jump over? >> Cobalt. The coal. >> Yes. for the bars there. >> I think they went to school together. >> They did go to school together. >> He also is

264going to um he also is going to stay too. So >> wonderful. I got to let her know that national NCAA. So, yay. >> Um thank you for sharing that. >> And then our middle school track and field team. Um last week we had some award record uh holding uh state titles there. So, our um 200 meter state champion, Crystal, is in there. She's one of the girls holding the uh the trophy there. She set a new state record as a seventh grader. Um and then our uh 4x100 state team, the uh the uh relay team set a new state record as well. >> And Amia is my niece. >> And Mia is your niece. Yes. Track family there. Um and then we had a uh place a person placed uh Zory placed in shot

265put. Amaya placed in shot put in and discus. >> Uh Jimma placed in long jump and then the 600 uh meter relay team came in third place. So that is a really great group of sixth and seventh graders. Um they are going to be amazing when they get to the high school. So hats off to them and congratulations. Summer meals. Um, this has been being circulated. So, I am hoping this is making it its rounds around the community. Um, and so all those programs, a couple of them start next week at Dr. Williams Orbana Middle School and Urbana High School. Um, that starting next Monday through Thursday will be summer meals. And then uh we have the program um the two weeks at Yankee Ridge and then the high school and Thomas Payne transition program.

266So we'll be offering summer meals throughout the summer at different places. So I know a lot of our families, a lot of our uh administrators talked about transportation tonight. So hopefully families are able to navigate and get to some of these locations. Um since it isn't offered at all of our schools, but just the schools where we have programming. Um but the meals are free. You don't have to register. Anyone under 18 can eat. And um on behalf of our Banana Park District, they've asked us um to share some of their strategic planning information. So they are in in um embarking on their next strategic plan and um they we shared this survey with our uh parents and families before they left and so we'll share it for them one more time. Um there's just

267a really short um few questions. I went in and looked at it is just asking about people's experiences with the parks, the programs, um some of the green spaces, and they're just looking for feedback. So this is one of their early engagement opportunities. So um we'll share this link out again. You guys of course please fill it out. Um so anybody they want information from anyone who is willing and able to take the survey and a document will be placed on our on their website um with the results after July 1st. >> Right. Thank you. Uh there was a set of three foyers that were all processes published in our agenda. At this point uh the chair would entertain a motion after a 5 to 10 minute uh recess to uh enter close session for

268the purpose of discussing uh negotiations with the teachers union. Um and there will be no action taken by the board after the close session. >> So move. >> Second. >> Roll call, please. >> Vice President Baxley. Yes. >> President Palowski. >> Yes. >> Member Cheryl. >> Yes. >> Member Hixon. >> Yes. >> Member Maribou. >> Yes. >> Member Jones. Yes. Member Langorf. Yes. >> Yeah.