Urbana School District 116 Board of Education 02 03 26

001Um, wanted to praise Lucia Maldonado. I listened to her at for at the League of Women Voters forum. She was on a panel about immigration issues and she did a great job for Urbana. It's awesome. Thanks for that. Um, go ahead go ahead. Well, um, we've opened up the direct reports for one more day for the evaluation of the superintendent. If they are due tomorrow morning, definitely at 8:00 in the morning and then they will definitely be closed. I think we'll probably take tomorrow to make sure we have them all together and we understand all the questions and answers so we can send them on to you and then you'll have, I believe, up until the 12th in order to review them and to evaluate. I'll make your evaluation as well to fill up your

002So, that's where we are stand right now. Thank you very much for doing that work. It's a lot going on behind the scenes to make sure our superintendent evaluation is done on time. So, so thank you all. And and thank you for all the direct reports for filling out um the data you give us is is really valuable for our evaluation of the superintendent. Um, it's one more board report is I want to thank Quest for bringing in uh all these healthy snacks for for everybody in here in attendance this evening. Um, so so thank you thank you guys for that. Uh, anyone else? Okay. Moving [snorts] on, we have a uh a study topic uh this evening of the DPW school improvement presentation uh Principal Jackson. >> [snorts] >> Good evening. We are excited

003for the opportunity to come before you to give an update on our school improvement plan. We do this because we are a designated school and so we not only present our plan coming into the school year, but we also give an update on what our progress is and status is thus far. This should look very familiar. So this is connected to our strategic plan and portrait of a graduate with our values and our district mission. One of the things that we are doing this year is utilizing an instructional framework to really center and root the work that we're doing in our classrooms. And one of our strategies is a non-linguistic representation. So this is what you see in front of you is a non-linguistic representation of our school improvement plan through the example of a

004mind map. And so it goes over both our instructional goals and our culture and climate goals. So we're utilizing the instructional framework with a focus on identifying similarities and differences through literacy and using non-linguistic representations in math as a focus area. Overall, our goal is essentially the same for both literacy and math and that we would like to see 60% of our students for literacy in first through fifth grade meet their English language arts growth projection as seen on MAP. And then because we do administer MAP to kindergarten students beginning in the winter, we would like to include them for our math goal and see 60% of our kindergarten through fifth grade students meet their growth projection on MAP as well. On the left side, you will see that we will be implementing and utilizing

005CHAMPS or the Stoic framework, our new SEL curriculum of seven mindsets, and our universal system of PBIS to allow us to focus on our culture and climate goals, which includes both um, decreasing the amount of incidents of physical aggression in our school as well as increased attendance. We know that both of those things are really centered and rooted in the relationships that we have established with our students. When we look at our map data, um, here is a representation just to give you an update on where we are. Um, you can see at the very top is overall our school profile and then the second bar is the growth that we can see. So, our growth median was at 30 the 36th percentile as a school and we had about 30 we had 37% of

006our students who actually met their growth projection. While this does not get us to our goal, we are over halfway to there and we have been looked at what instructional shifts can we make so that by the spring we can see ourselves reaching that 60%. Um, our adjustments that we have made is that we have time built into our day for math to be differentiated so we have not only our instructional block, but then we're able to meet with small instructional groups each day targeting any skill deficits. We are also utilizing, um, our exit tickets or cool downs to drive the instruction of how we are meeting the needs of our students in those small groups so when we collect that data, we are then able to go through and adjust our instruction and target

007those, um, areas that we see in daily practice to where we have gaps. Um, using additionally our checkpoints, which is kind of like a mid unit assessment, to really allow us to see, um, any deficiency areas or areas of strength so that when we are doing that targeted instruction, we're really focusing on the areas of need. And then we're using those cool downs, we meet in PLCs weekly, and each month we divide our PLC topics up and so we talk about um math at least once to twice a month to see how our students are performing, but that data is being collected every week for us to focus on um in those team conversations. With literacy, our growth median was at 42, the 42nd percentile as a school, and we had 43% of our students

008who were able to meet their growth projection, so we did have more positive outcomes in literacy. Um as we continue to think about what were some of our needs, and we'll talk about how we've adjusted our professional development plan, you will see in the future slides that we've really targeted professional development around math and how can we support um meeting the needs of our students through supplementing um areas of instruction within our curriculum. Within literacy, um we do have a dedicated literacy block, but we also have intervention time that's taking place every day for students. Um in kindergarten through second grade, the co-teaching model has been implemented, and so we have co-taught skills for K2 daily. For third, fourth, and fifth grade, in first quarter, we were really focusing on meeting the needs of our

009well below students through um our co-teachers and CIT, but for the third quarter, what we're really focusing on is pulling our yellow and orange students. So, what we've considered in the past is those bubble students, so that they are meeting with our co-teachers and our curriculum implementation teachers or CITs for them to get the targeted instruction as we're preparing for IAR, so we can increase the skills in those groups. So, they were being seen previously by classroom teachers, but we really wanted to focus that time with the um highly skilled professionals who are able to pull them out and do that targeted intervention with them. And they're utilizing um the High 5 strategies in those instructional groups of activating prior knowledge, summarizing, questioning, visualizing, monitoring, and clarifying. The way in which we've utilized the $84,646

010that has been allocated has really been on instruction. So, we were able to bring in an Illustrative Math coach who provided professional development for our third, fourth, and fifth grade teachers, which has happened twice already this year, and we're excited that the state was able to allocate us additional funding, and we've already contacted them to be able to come in again before the end of the school year. With that, the coach came in and did walk-throughs in our classrooms to see what practices were being implemented and what professional development needed to be targeted. And that focus really centered around um making sure that teachers were equipped to utilize centers. In the intermediate levels, they are required and naturally integrated in the K-2 math curriculum, and they're suggested in intermediate. But, what we found is really

011ensuring that we were doing those small group instructional days was going to be critical to be able to meet the needs of our students. We also have just under $5,000 um allocated for instructional materials. Um those are things like um we utilize UFLI in our small group literacy interventions, which is a phonics-based system that allows us to teach phonics to some of our intermediate students who may not have already mastered those skills. So, we're utilizing that program. And then we've been very excited to incorporate AVID, which is Advancement Via Individual Determination. We do have that at our sixth grade center, middle school, and high school. And this program allows us to really target those research-based high-quality instructional strategies as well. So, this year we've been able to implement that at fifth grade and then one

012fourth grade classroom with the plan of being able to move forward with that training happening for our fourth grade team for next year, but then also being able to incorporate that K5. So, really when we think about WICOR, which is writing, inquiry, collaboration, organization, and reading, and making sure that we're incorporating as many of those strategies into all of our content areas so that we can produce students who can be able to explain their thinking, have opportunities to collaborate, focus on being organized, but also being able to explain their thinking. And then we've also utilized um funds for data-driven analysis. So, our school improvement team, we meet twice a month. I also meet um once a month with our ISBE representative, and then I meet in a cohort for the second time of the month.

013Really looking at how are we targeting um our goals? Specifically, chronic absenteeism is always one that in our cohort we're talking about how can we continue to increase um consistent attendance at school, which we will talk more about a little later. So, what does this look like? Instructional strategies, we are again focused on the Marzano's high-yield strategies of non-linguistic representation um through modeling and the lesson alignment, identifying similarities and differences. What we've been doing is modeling this in our professional development and asking teachers to go through and align it within their curriculum and find ways to ensure they're utilizing these strategies in daily practices. We were really excited when we asked teachers to sit down and do this during planning time because a curriculum incorporates a lot of these strategies naturally within it, but it

014helped to be able to see we're not asking them to do anything different. We're just asking them to be intentional and make sure that their lessons include these on a daily basis. We also had an opportunity to send staff to the AVID Summer Institute in Chicago where our AVID site team was really able to roll out a plan of what would AVID look like at Dr. Williams as we opened it up in fifth and fourth grade. We had a AVID 101 kickoff so that all of our staff could become more familiar with what AVID is. And then we were have we had an opportunity to bring in um our AVID coach who was also able to come in and do walk-throughs at our school and provide specific feedback to our teachers on our implementation of

015AVID thus far. And we also they meet monthly as a site team which Mr. Musselman will talk about a little later, but they've also been able to model these high-yield instructional strategies for our staff so that we can make sure that while AVID is focused at fifth grade, we are continuing to bring it the information forward and increase the knowledge of all staff as we continue to build our capacity with implementing these strategies. A lot of our professional development focus has been on math because we've seen a higher rate of growth in literacy than what we are seeing with our math data. And I do believe as you've looked at district data that is on trend. Um so we were really excited to be able to bring in the Illustrative and I'm saying I am.

016I apologize. We always use all these um acronyms and shortcuts, but Illustrative Math um and really having that person come in and help focus us on at intermediate, our older kids, they need to work with hands-on tactile manipulatives just as much as our element primary age students. Um and so that was really helpful, but then she was was to come back in December and see how are we implementing the strategies that were developed in November as a focus and then take it to the next step. So, we're overjoyed that the um state was able to get extra money to give to us so that we could bring them back because our staff were really excited. Another part that came into this is really looking at our pacing and are we on track with where our

017scope and sequences and then if there were any adjustments that needed to be made, how can we naturally look at the units of study and blend lessons that already pair well together so that we can cover all of the units by the end of the school year. And that this is a little um focus area. I think we're always also trying to increase the student fluency and she was able to share with us some fluency resources that are digitized, which are interesting to students. Um but we all know, I'm a previous fourth grade teacher. If you don't know your fact fluency, it's really going to be challenging to be able to do fourth and fifth grade math if you don't know your multiplication facts. Just like at primary grades, if you don't know addition and

018subtraction facts, it becomes more and more challenging. If every time you're trying to solve a problem, you're trying to figure out those basic um those basic numbers. At this time, I'm going to turn over to Mr. Mosman who's going to talk more about AVID and attendance. Hi everybody. You know, this is a lot for me to work at one time. Okay. >> [laughter] >> All right, the first thing I'm going to talk about AVID just a little bit and I'd like to give credit to our AVID site team. Uh fifth grade teachers, Adrienne Kerner, Tierra Atkins, and Alejandra Nasser and fourth grade teacher Julia Rush. You can see how we've naturally built the site team to include fourth and fifth grade as we'd really like for this to expand uh with our trainings, getting more

019teachers trained and hopefully there's just a natural trickle down effect through our school to implement AVID um school wide at Dr. Williams. Um we do focus on the implementation of WICOR strategies. WICOR strategy again, Ms. Jackson said, stands for um writing, inquiry, um co- cooperation, uh organization, and reading. And we we grade all our interventions and our strategies by those standards. So, you can say that in a day or week if you've included all of those if you've incorporated all of those into a class time or a or a week of class, that's a really good um bit of information, really good work that students have done. Um month We do meet once a month. We meet on the second uh Wednesday of every month, and we we discuss what our strategy or our focuses

020are going to be for that month. We like to come in and we like to implement these strategies, and we like to even explain the strategies to the other teachers um at faculty meetings. That way we can spread the wealth, and we can model for teachers to show again that this isn't something new that they're being asked to do. These are These are amazing strategies that we can easily integrate into our curriculums to enhance what our students are doing. Um so, implementation of AVID, kind of how it's worked, is fifth grade specifically has um taken on the organizational tool aspect of AVID and student agendas. So, they're really working on keeping themselves organized, keeping their school work organized, and being able to use these organizational tools as um educational resources for them. Um we've also

021focused on focus note-taking at the fifth and fourth grade levels as well. And we hope to implement this fully into fifth and fourth grade by next year, and again um start implementing down to third grade as well, and have a natural trickle down effect. So, kind of our PD planning for everyone as member members of the DP DPW site team have attended summer institute in Chicago last summer. The summer institute is coming again for next summer in Kansas City and we do plan on taking as many teachers as possible to that to uh help to fully implement avid into our building. Um we will really focus on getting fourth and third grade to those uh to those trainings this year so we can really pick up the pace. And that's going to help us that

022trickle down effect will help make this a school wide event for Dr. Williams. Another thing I'd like to talk to you about is our attendance and I want to give just as I gave credit to our avid site team, I'd like to give credit to our SEAA Melissa Watson who is extremely creative and really works very hard to work on what we call more consistent attendance with our with our students. We don't like to focus on the negatives and say oh you can't you know, you're you're not here 90% of the time or 100% of the time or anything like that. We want to focus on just growth and we want to focus on consistency. And that's what Ms. Watson does daily. She is extremely creative and extremely energetic. Um this is just a list

023of some things that she works on um that we do at Dr. Williams Elementary School. She works on attendance videos where it's kind of like a newscast where she actually has students be the news reporters um and reports what's going on in attendance or what's just going on at Dr. Williams Elementary School for this week. Uh she makes monthly newsletters for staffs and for staff and families. Um and she also encourages staff to make five five positive phone calls. It's not you know, a phone call can be a minute and 30 seconds long. But that minute and 30 seconds is very very important to families to hear something positive that their students have done at school. Um some incentives that she has put into place attendancopoly. It's always hard for me to pronounce that but

024she has a she has a large Monopoly board that she has made up on the wall and she keeps track of students attendance based on Monopoly. So, if you are And and let me tell you, this has produced so many classrooms that have actually gotten 100% attendance through the months of November and December because the teachers and the kids are just competitive and they want to they want to win the Monopoly game for attendance. Um she also has if you can come in through uh our lunch periods, she'll set up VIP tables in the middle of our um multi-purpose room and she will have students come up who have been rec who are being recognized for increased consistent attendance, for their growth in attendance, or just by having consistent attendance already. So, they get to

025sit at a VIP table up in front of everybody. They get chips and drinks and stuff with there to enhance their lunches and they just think it's the greatest thing. And these are ways that we can I mean, we can recognize any and all students in this manner and that's her intentions is as many students as possible get that positive reinforcement and that positive um you know, recognition for what they're doing. Um out of the blue celebrations and that's just what it sounds like, out of the blue. If we have something to celebrate, we're going to send out She sends out an out of the blue video. And she'll send that via email. There may be a third grade class whose attendance maybe hasn't been up to par, but now today they have 90 some

026percent attendance, we are celebrating that immediately, out of the blue. That's just what it means. Um Our interventions for attendance, we have grade level attendance competitions. So, if you are a member of a second grade class, let's say we have uh four sections of second grade, the the class that has the most consistent attendance among the second grade will get a trophy for the week and they you kind of we kind of say you get bragging rights for the week. You get to adorn the in your classroom for the week. Um and the kids and we take pictures of the kids and put them on our front display board as they come into the as you come into the school, you can see our display board. We just really try to hype them up. Any

027little again, any little thing that we can do to recognize our students, we try to do. Um we also have attendance SAIG groups. So, Miss Watson works with students who maybe just need a little extra boost or a little extra backup with attendance. Um she does work with them and and talks with them, has social groups on the importance of attendance and the importance of improving your attendance and just anything to promote all the good that we do at the school. She promotes. Um and then check and connects. Miss Watson, the first thing she does when she gets to when school starts is she's got these little pads of paper with um you know, the carbon copies. And what she does is she she's got a target uh list of students that she monitors, let's

028say. That she monitors based on their attendance and she goes and checks and connects with them and just checks with them on how they're doing for the day. Just another another way to build a relationship with students. Uh how are you doing for the day? Tell me what zone you're in. Talk to me about how you got to school today. Tell me something great that happened at school yesterday. Things like this. Just to again, another person to build a relationship with students and help help them understand that they're important and being at school is extremely important to us. Um so, our chronic absenteeism rate uh is 32% and that is actually a decrease from 35% last year. Um at the same time, our goal is to be under 30% and we were we were really

029hitting that goal. And unfortunately, the cold snap got us. We're a neighborhood school and you know, a lot of our kids are hoofing it to school or riding our bikes. And unfortunately, cold snaps really when when the weather goes south, our attendance goes south as well. Um so, we are increasing the weather's evening out. So, we've got a lot more kids that are at school this week and we are promoting them and and building them up for being at school. I think that's all for me. Thank you. All right, you got it. Um I'm just going to talk a little bit about our initiative with CHAMPS this year. I know it's been district-wide. Um and so, just to give an idea of what CHAMPS is um is is how we manage our classrooms. Um and

030so, part of the things that you'll see in all classrooms is they'll CHAMPS out their lessons. And so, I just included that here for you. Uh we're talking about conversation, uh help, activity, movement, participation, and then what happens when we complete all that and how we're successful. Um and so, just to kind of think about what that means to students is answering that question, how should students talk or throughout the school, uh and what our voice level should be. Um and if we're asking about help, uh how can students get help when they need it? Um so, you know, sometimes it's okay to just get up and go find a teacher. Sometimes, I need to raise my hand. Sometimes, I could just get help from the the people that's around me, the students that I'm

031working with. Um so, are we telling students that in advance? Um also activity, um what students should be doing. We could be working in partners. We could be completing a math assignment. Um but are we ensuring that students know what the activity is uh that they're working on. Movement, how am I moving around the classroom? Are we stationary? Participation, uh how do I participate in this? Um am I raising my hand to participate? Am I talking just out loud? Uh but just make sure again the students are aware. And then success is how do we know we completed the activity? How do we know that what we are are trying to work for has been accomplished. Um and so, you'll see that in classrooms. You'll see it posted. Some teachers will write it. Some teachers

032have clip charts down. Uh but that'll be in all of our classrooms there. Um With CHAMPS along with that, too, school-wide things we've been focusing on, um it's just we're using attention signal. So, our attention signals, we say William William's Wildcats, sorry. Uh students will do a W, and then the expectation is that they're voice level zero, and we're waiting for the next directions to be given. Um things that we've been working on with teachers, and it's also ties in with what we've been doing with PD, um is our CHAMPS expectations for classroom activities and transitions, sorry. And then how are we correcting uh students? So, are we correcting uh fluently uh to monitor misbehaviors in the early stages versus as a reaction, right? Are we monitoring or are we addressing it uh with students?

033So, those are things we've been focusing on as a school, or things we want to improve. Um Again, with CHAMPS, uh something that we have there is that all teachers did a classroom management plan, um where they spelled out just in more depth on what their classroom how their classroom functions. Um and then we also provided professional development around Stoic, uh which is uh CHAMPS that we use for students, and Stoic is what they say they use for the adults. And so, we're talking about the structure of our classroom, how we're teaching it, and how we are observing it, um how are we interacting positively, and how we are correcting fluently as well. Um and so, uh we offer professional development with that throughout the school year. Uh one thing we did in particular where

034we gave Excuse me, we gave students uh surveys to ask them, "How well do you know our class your classroom expectations?" And teachers were shocked based on the information they got back. Some teachers some students say, "We know exactly what to do." And some classes students says, "We have no idea." Um and so, we took that back, and then we addressed our classroom management plans, um and then kind of talked with that as a staff, too, on what that says about us as teachers and as a staff, and how can we correct it so students are uh receiving them education they deserve. Um and then that's also saying that they just revised their classroom management plans based on their feedback there. Along with CHAMPS 2 is is our PBIS. Um and so with PBIS, one

035thing that we do every month is we have a certain criteria for our celebrations and our students can have no more than one detention or no office referrals and they'll participate in an incentive. Uh so you can see on the side there, uh it's just various ones. We just completed January um and they got to decorate West Creek Retreats uh during their time um that the teacher set up for them. But you can see there, each month we kind of tracked the percentage of students and so we're happy to see that it increased uh from first semester for January. But of course we'd like to see higher. Uh I think around 95% would be great. 100% would be awesome. Uh but we're still working towards that. Um so that's what we're doing there as well.

036And then along with PBIS, um we just kind of have our intervention plans. Currently right now, we've got about 186 students who are on our intervention plan and that could be for uh SEL behaviors or attendance. Um and so that's what we're seeing there. And pretty much an intervention plan is a plan we're just going to write for that student uh just to support them. It could be check-in, check-out where they're just matched with an adult. They're checking in, they have the points that they earn uh and the adult is encouraging them throughout their day. It could be a social and emotional academic group uh where we kind of take a deeper dive um to focus on what um skills that we need to help improve. Um it also could be our social workers and

037then also working to create some PE groups for students who might need more uh just around that physical part of their day to get up and move more is what we're working towards. Um those things have helped to decrease our suspensions uh first semester from the 24-25 school year to 36 and then 25-26 have been about 27. And so we're happy to see that decrease and want to continue to see it decrease um because we all know students should be in school. Um and then also there just to kind of track our goal for our physical contact. Uh right now we had about 194 incidents, which is less than our goal of 205. Um but we're still working to it to improve that there. Um to just make sure that students are speaking um and

038we're handling conflict with our words, right? Uh we don't want to go and have to be physical. When I say physical, those are ranges from I'm upset, I might push someone or um I'm upset and I may get angry um and and and hit someone there. So, those are the things we talk about physical contact. We're working to decrease that um as well to this school year. Okay. I'm like, I've been doing really good. Now it's my turn to win quick. And then of course we would like to acknowledge the partnerships that we have. Stone Creek has just been a phenomenal support to our building um for our students, but especially for our staff. So, Stone Creek Church has um helped sponsor our back to school night last year and this school year. And that

039included them providing us with bounce houses. Um Pastor Ricky came out and grilled um hot dogs for us for students to be able to enjoy. Um then they were also able to go and get a Kona Ice. We always include a resource fair within our back to school night. And so, as they go through the stations of going to visit their classroom, going to the resource fair, they have like a passport. And then the end result was of course if you go through those stations, you get to get a free Kona Ice, which they thoroughly enjoyed. And then throughout the school year they have come, they provided um Now I can't think of the name of the uh burger place, but uh Smith Burger. Like, how could I forget that? Um Smith Burger food truck

040uh they provided for our staff as a pick me up. They often bring in bagels and juice and coffee in the mornings for us. Um we did lose a staff member early in the school year and they have just continued to wrap around us and bring in pick me ups just as they kind of ebb and flow and kind of think about morale, they will just pop in and say they do out of the blue for us. And they come in and they bring treats. Um recently they brought in just beverages, so teas and um soda um and different beverages for people to enjoy, lemonade in the lounge. And those little things are very small, but they really have a huge impact and it also lets our teachers know that they're seen and appreciated. And

041so we are just very grateful to Stone Creek Church. Again, they also remodeled our lounge. I did put a couple of pictures on there. They remodeled our lounge last year, gave us some updates. So you see like kitchen tables and chairs in there as opposed to the old furniture that just got discarded from classrooms and any hodgepodge of furniture. So it really has brightened up the space. Um and they even painted the wall and even that made the um nature of the feel of the room feel really different and homey. Um so we're just very grateful to Stone Creek Church. And of course we're excited to continue to partner with Urbana Park District. We do have our Splash program which is happening through our um Stronger Together Connections grant, I believe is what it's called.

042Dr. Bateman is nodding, so um but that Stronger Connections grant has given us an opportunity to have steam enrichment activities for our students. We do recognize that we're continuing to think about ways that we can continue to increase our growth and proficiency at the school, but that also comes through enrichment activities that a lot of our students are not always having an opportunity to participate in. So having that partnership with the park district and then them coming in to provide homework help and really hands-on learning opportunities has been amazing for us. So at this time um we're going to look to you to see what questions you might have for us. The board members, any questions? Uh, going [clears throat] back to the discipline staff that you presented earlier, um, with regards to just being

043a little bit under your goal for physical contact, is is that the goal that you present here for 205? Is that what your goal is for the whole year? Okay, so you're close to where you go. Okay. Yeah, we were at 242 at the end of last year for incidents of physical contact, and we wanted to see a decrease in that by 15% and go down to 205. So, we're not far from it. Um, but we're also hoping that, as we've even seen as we've come back from January, it just feels different. We have students who have previously been agitated and swung at someone who are now seeking help because we are seeing the benefits of our social academic instructional groups and really helping them be able to express themselves before they respond in that

044way. So, we are, um, close, but the percentage of our referrals is a little less. So, last year about 40 over 45% of our referrals were physical contact and that's down to about 40%. So, it's interesting, depending on how you quantify it is what's the percentage of the referrals, but we were specifically targeting incidents of physical contact because that was up at a higher rate and specifically targeting our black males and decreasing the numbers of physical contact with black male students. So, yes, unfortunately, that is the end number, but I'm not trying to nitpick. It it it it it certainly seems like across several metrics, things are definitely improving. So, it's it's it's really heartening to see all of that. Yeah. Okay. Good sharing. I know as a designated school, um, there are certain [clears

045throat] things that you have to to do in order to to show that you are working towards the goal that you want to. What's next? What's the next thing that they're you're required to do or you want to do for the school? So, we um will come back, of course, in the spring and update you on where we landed with our school improvement plan, but really what we want to do is to continue to implement AVID school-wide. Um I am very excited that both of my counterparts have worked in AVID schools, and we really feel like that is what's going to support our students with the instructional um strategies that they need that we can see the increase in our academic outcomes. Right now, we're doing we're on a slow and steady um increased um

046growth and slowly increasing proficiency, but we really feel like that implementing AVID school-wide will allow us to make significant growth in a much faster rate. So, while we're doing um that slow roll implementation at fifth and fourth grade, um really being able to incorporate those WICOR strategies K-5 is going to help us, I think, get a quicker return. And as I've talked to both of them, as they've worked at AVID schools, they've seen that data turn around. So, that's really where we're looking to go as we continue to also increase consistent attendance. Those proficiency and chronic absenteeism rate are two of the um highest qualifiers to get you those points that you need in order to come out of our designation. And because we really look at this data and um through meeting with Christina

047Kelly, who's our ISBE coach um and site person, when we looked at our targeted areas, it was proficiency really that was causing us to be in that automatic designation. So, that's our focus for this year as we want to get at least 10% of our students at proficiency in math, literacy, and science. Um last school year, when we looked at that data, we were at 13% proficiency in science, just under 8% in literacy, and around 6% in math. And so, if we could get all of those at least 10% we could come out of the automatic designation. So that's really what's causing us to be automatically designated. Our growth was over 50% which was very significant. So when you look at how they calculate it, we're making the growth that we need and we're increasing

048attendance and we also have the culture and climate survey that's giving us the points that we need to not be designated but that low proficiency rate is really what's targeting us and then as we look more specifically we really want to focus that on our black students because we do see a disparity in proficiency rate for our black students compared to our multi-racial and white students. Thank you. Anyone else? All right. Thank you all. This was a really really good report. Congratulations on on the the strong results we're seeing here. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful evening. Our administrative report this evening is our transportation overview. It's going to be led by Mary Ann Schlosser. Good evening. I'm going to have Do you guys mind coming up to the table in case there's any

049questions? Jay, do you mind coming up too? So tonight we have Jay Rank with MTD. We have Chris Coyle and Shawnee Langley from First Student. So I'll give them a I'm going to do most of the presentation and then if you have any questions I'll have them respond. Thank you, John. Okay, so for our contracts we do this like every year just to kind of give you a heads up of where we're at where we are with our contracts. We're finishing up our second year with First Student contract and we'll be going out to rebid in February of 2027. Um that's just part of our contractual agreement with First Student. And with MTD, we have an annual contract, and these are the costs of both contracts for each. We're going to kind of start with

050MTD a little bit first. Um, with our data this year, it most of the incidents were for UMS in years prior, but then now we have our 6th Grade Center. And with the graph that we had, it was including 6th Grade Center and UMS. And so I kind of pulled out the data for 6th Grade Center, cuz I had a feeling that might be a question of what do incidents look like for 6th Grade Center? So, um, the 6th grade would start, if you look at the graph, starting August of 2025. So, as you can see, the um, incidents have decreased quite a bit from school year 24 to school year 25. And then for our incident process with MTD, we kind of started this, I think, last year. Um, and we've continued on, and

051I think it's been a pretty good process for MTD. Um, school administrators reach out to MTD if there's any incident that they need to request video for. And then the school administrator handles the discipline, adhering to the district's um, behavior response continuum. And I have to say that Jay and I, we communicate, but it's not as frequent. It's usually through the school administrators, I think. And then Dr. Avery Tatum, I think it's brought in for anything that might be more noteworthy. Um, the MTD supervisors, they make sure that the buses are there on time, and then they help assist the operators and release buses for dismissal. For fall of 2026, there we started a learn-to-ride program for the incoming 6th graders last year that kind of went over the expectations for sixth grade orientation. The

052official date is still yet to be determined, but we're looking for April of 2026. And that's a good opportunity for MTD cuz it's a new process for our students going to the sixth grade center. So, they get to learn about not riding a yellow school bus versus riding the city bus. Um last year we um implemented adding a green bus to kind of help lower the numbers of the current routes number of students on the current routes routes and we split the orange and gold and we've seen looking at our data too for instance some a pretty good data. So, we're going to continue with that. And there are um we still have the routes and neighborhood maps available on their website if you wanted to know which route your student should be driving or

053riding. And that is our most of our MTD information. So, if you have any questions we can take a pause and allow you some time to ask questions of Jay. I have a question. Oh, sorry. Uh regarding the um splitting of the orange and the gold and you So, you are decreasing it due to the behavior concerns on that on that route. Uh we split it last year um because of capacity issues really uh in in pre-COVID we had that them split up into two buses, but we had a driver shortage and a vehicle shortage. Uh so, uh we combined them for several years, but then it it was it was problematic and uh and there were some students that were on the bus for a long time. So, last year yeah, we split them

054back up um and and that's that's been helpful. Yeah, cuz I'm familiar with that um with that route and for a long, long time. So, yeah, I haven't heard anything about it lately. So. >> Okay, great. Knock on wood, right? >> [laughter] >> Thank you. Anyone else? I think member Hickson. Um, yeah, could you what is an incident? It's different from a fight, I take it. Uh, it's it it could be approaching a fight if it's horseplay or or something like that where it's, you know, something's going on, it's not not right, but uh, not quite, you know, a physical altercation. Uh, it could be, you know, somebody spilling water, spraying water all over the place, or tearing something up, you know, um. So, yeah, it's it's kind of a catch-all for, you know, something

055that needs attention, but yeah, not quite like a a violent fight, okay. Anyone else? I think we Yeah, I think we can continue. Okay, thanks. So, for First Student, um, the last couple of years we've given you what the um, writing the routes were that we had for each bus and each school. So, we continued with that, especially since we added in the 6th Grade Center. You can see that we've stayed pretty consistent with our routes. Um, each one just added one more um, from last year. I'll give you a second. I know there's a lot of data on there. And you can also notice that it's like the circle Gerber Pavilion, those were increased. For First Student, um, we you'll see for school year '24, we had about 1,500 eligible riders. That increased for

056school year '25. And it went back down a little bit just due to enrollment for this school year. Uh, but we're staying pretty consistent with our routes and then the number of drivers kind of fluctuates depending on just where we're at and how lucky we are. For student behavior for, um, First Student, we got some data back. We've In my department, with me being my first year last year, um, coming in, we were working really hard for me to get a better understanding of what's happening in the buses and how to help support the schools. And we realized that our data is not very consistent from year to year. Uh, because we have been really encouraging the drivers to use referrals as a communication tool to let us know if there's anything that's happening on

057the bus. And so, my department does feel more knowledgeable about what's happening, but it we saw a spike and it was like, "This isn't accurate." And Shawnee and I, we talk almost at least weekly, I would say. We talk pretty frequently about different behaviors and making sure that administrators are responding to some of these behaviors on the buses. And we didn't have good enough data prior to be able to disaggregate to see year over year. So, those are some things that we're going to be working on for next year to really talk to the drivers about the severity and the variation of, you know, what's an incident versus a fight versus like eating on the bus. We're getting a lot of referrals for littles eating on the bus. And I had one that was like,

058I think the entire bus kind of got a referral because the kid brought a snack and shared it with all their friends. And so, which is very important for us to know that that's happening so we can tell the principals to address it to make sure it doesn't escalate into bigger situations. But you know, training for my staff and for First Student of what does this look like and calling them something else and saying, you know, maybe this is a written warning versus an actual referral. So, those are some things and we are going to be we've talked about this for a couple years and I think it's time that we implement Halo behavior. It's a communication app between the drivers and the schools. So then it's more communicative and not just hey, this is

059a referral. It's the principals know what's happening and they can address behaviors. And it doesn't give it the negative connotation of it being a referral. And the process is very similar to what we used last year, but I think that it's happening a little bit faster for my staff and for First Student. The bus driver will write a referral and give it to the First Student manager which is either Shawnee or Dawn. Whoever can send it. It's usually Shawnee who sends us the referrals. And then the First Student manager is emailing it to the school administrator and make sure that the business office knows as well. And then the school administrator is handling discipline adhering to the district's student behavior response continuum. And then we have been working really hard having our administrators respond back

060of what kind of consequence that took place, you know, whether it was just a conference with the student or if the student was going to be suspended off the bus. And again, we've been doing this just to make sure that our drivers are feeling supported and that the administrators know that behaviors that happen on the bus a lot of times come into the buildings as well. And that is all that we have for for student. What kind of questions do we have for them? If anyone has any questions for any of our presenters, go ahead. Remember Hickson. I was wondering, I looked and last year it seemed like there were more at a couple of schools it there were regular buses, but then this year there's a regular bus and a special bus. What's the

061difference between a regular bus and a special bus and why do we have them? The special buses are for special needs children. Oh, okay. And then the regular ed buses regular ed. Okay, so like at >> have to keep them separated. >> I'm trying to remember. I think it was um I can't Okay, maybe it was uh the middle school had five regular buses and ones in coming to school, four regular buses leaving school, one special bus. Now it has three two three two. Yes. Or is that because some of the kids are at on the bus for the sixth grade center? Um maybe a few The middle school would have gone up probably to high school would be my guess. I could but we only used to have one special needs bus for the

062uh middle school and now we have two because you don't want a student on the bus for more than an hour. And so we have gotten more special needs children. Oh, okay. Okay. >> [clears throat] >> And That's IEP driven as well. So we basically look at capacity either from time or or load capacity and based off of that we adjust. So. Okay. And we had gotten a letter about um people uh, students that at Yankee Ridge having to wait a long time for the bus because the bus was late and I got the im- the impression from the letter that it had happened more than once and you were very responsive in saying that communication would be put out Yeah. better, but I was wondering why the wait? Why the wait? I had a

063driver no call no show and I was not we were not aware of it and Don and I myself were out driving. So, we [snorts] tried to get a bus there as soon as we could. And the other problem was um, our high school driver was supposed to go pick up and she was like getting there cuz due to having problems with her route. So, so generally the students having to wait, that's a problem that won't No, it and normally does not happen. Okay. >> Um, normally, you know, we have a regular day and students don't wait, but when they do have to wait, I do put out outreaches on our FirstView app. And if the parents don't have the FirstView app, I don't have a way to get in contact with them to let

064them know that the bus is running late. So, that's something we communicate out pretty frequently is that, you know, if you have a student that's riding a bus, download the FirstView app. It's the best way to get information in a timely manner. Is that Is that it? Yeah, I did have a question about um, also communication. [clears throat] Cuz with the Parent Square and so we could have one tool, but if you ride the bus and you still I have two different communication tools, is there any way that that could be incorporated in Parent Square and the information can come out through that Parent Square app instead? Can I make a comment about that? I kind of like having the FirstView app because you can actually track the bus. So, you can see the direction

065that the bus is going. You know when it's coming. It tells you like when the bus is in a certain amount of distance of your home so that you can have your child be ready that when they show up. So, I I I appreciate the FirstView app rather than having it on ParentSquare where the notifications might be helpful, but I think they do a pretty good job through the app itself if you have that. Mhm. And there I think things that happen in the community that our administrators who um post things on ParentSquare at 5:00 and 6:00 in the morning are not going to be aware of a water main break or a detour, you know, where construction is happening and they have to reroute buses around. That's happened to us a couple times. >>

066Mhm. And so, it's nice for them to be able to get in there and put a message in at 7:00 in the morning and tell the families that our administrators wouldn't even have that information at that time. So, And that's like when the 26 was late that day, I had put a message out on FirstView at 1:30. And I had called the school and let them know that the bus was going to be late. So, they could put something on ParentSquare. Yeah, I guess that's what you guys are saying. >> the example they did that that day. Yes. And then Dawn went as soon as she got back in, she went in and put in another uh thing in the FirstView, another message. I know that um you don't have this information now, but I'm

067always curious to know what percentage of students are taking the bus at each school. And maybe that can be included in future reports. >> Okay. I think so. Yeah. Anyone else? You have I have more of a uh comment. Um I just want to say thanks to the the buses and everybody that drove in this really horrible weather that got our kids to school safely. They did a really great job and I'm proud of them. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. I will definitely let my staff know. Anyone else? Go ahead, Lou. I I just I don't know. Lou, go ahead. The question I have is do you have the adequate amount of monitors on the bus or you have a a monitor shortage? Is all buses equipped with a monitor? Um all the buses are

068equipped with a monitor that is required to have them. And those are IEP driven requirements. So, that's one of the things that we we off we actually have quarterly con meetings with district administration. So, those are topics that we we talk through and and if there's something that's needed beyond just normal communication, it's a great opportunity to discuss uh and and get through those issues. Do you [clears throat] guys what what is the retention rate for drivers? Do you do you have many drivers change throughout the school year? Would you if you could just throw an estimate out of 50 drive I don't know how many drivers you have, 20 or Historically here we haven't had a a large turnover. You're probably looking at about mid mid-teens just as a percentage. Um that fluctuates obviously

069if it was for whatever they they decide to leave or something some incident happen. I think if you're not going to see in the 25% range, I would say mid mid 20% and that's that's not atypical for a school bus the industry because our drivers are part-time. And there are opportunities that are out there that they they can get on full-time, get benefits. That's obviously an opportunity for them. Unfortunately, we lose to to mass transit vice versa. I mean that and other school districts. So it it's >> [clears throat] >> even before COVID, there was a nationwide shortage of CDL drivers. And we're required to our drivers are required to have CDLs as well as a school bus permit and um not everybody necessarily wants to go through that that training and and certification. Yeah.

070So that's [clears throat] kind of what I was thinking. It's a It's a niche job, right? It's a unique position. So just a couple follow-up questions if to improve the retention or the recruitment of drivers or if you just ask drivers what their wish list, what would a driver say? Do you Do you ever get any survey data from what they might be find competitive or appealing about the job or something that might make it easier for them? Yeah, I I That's a great question and I could have a thousand answers for you. And I think just from being part-time that stability of having the benefits is is one of the key factors. We as a company though, we actually do provide employee surveys every two months and and ask those probing questions and in

071fact we've got one coming out tomorrow. So we're really looking to engage with employees to to get what's on their mind, what's what we're doing well, what we we need to improve. [clears throat] And so um well-timed question maybe we can share that in the future once we get the results and and share it. And because we we really want to be a an employer that people want to come to. Just like with MTD, I mean that's that's what it's about. A happy happy employee means that I don't have to go out and recruit and train and spend all this money that and it's a lot easier to retain somebody that's gone through that process and and train. So. Nice story is working out there. Yes. >> You're right. >> Uh in fact that was

072one of the things that I was over there how we can improve the break break room. Yeah. And so we're we're going through that with um I don't want to steal my thunder of what she's going to be doing with the employees, but we're we're looking at repainting, we're looking at adding, changing out tables and chairs. So it's in truly engaging let them kind of decide what their outcome's going to be and and make it more inviting. And that's that's we're a little limited on space and and challenges there. Um but I think with cooperation and we really work well with with administration to to see what we can do, but um I you hit it out of the park, Lindsey. Uh Those days where it's 0° -20, it takes a lot for somebody to

073come in from their cozy little bed come in and pick those students up because minute they open that door, all that heat escapes. So yeah, I I think that it's it's great great that you've asked that question and we're always looking to how we can improve that retention and and employee satisfaction. Jay, I don't know. Did you want to add anything or not? Uh no. Uh Yeah, I mean it that's been a challenge as well over the last you know, 6-7 years. Um it's it's gotten better. We've seen better applicants recently. So, it it's we we feel better about the general workforce. Um Uh our our our turnover isn't as high. Like in the first year, it's it's it's fairly high. Um maybe uh you know, 60-70% of retention. But if you make it through

074the first year, you're likely to stay a long time. We've got a driver uh that that we're been here for 40 years. Uh so uh yeah, the the ultimately the turnover is not is not that high. Um But yeah, we we benefit from having other services well. So, it's not just part-time work where a lot of our school trips are actually done uh for extra overtime uh on top of uh their their normal work. So, uh we don't have uh too many people that work just the AM and PM gaps. Uh the school trips. Uh so, uh the nice nice part for us is we we can fill in the gap for them and make it more uh appealing to to to get out of your bed uh and let uh especially on like old

075days. So, uh yeah, that's uh and and over the years we've done tons of things to try to uh you know, improve uh the culture, improve the pay, improve the benefits, improve everything to to try to get people to stay cuz yeah, uh during the you know, pandemic, it was really hard. Uh and we lost a lot of people. Um But and and it was difficult to hire. I'm sure you guys remember. Uh but it it seems like that's uh that's past us now. And one more. Do you Is Do you know if there are many drivers that also work with the district like during the day? So, they drive in afternoon, drive in the morning. Can they be lunch monitors or have some other kind of position in the district or do they have

076a job in between? Some of them have the pre-K, their early learning. Um but I only have so many early learning routes. Um but yeah. But I think your question is whether there's kind of dual employment. Yeah, to to kind of expand their the appeal. >> Do you have anybody here? I don't have anybody with me. >> have done it in the past. I mean there've been times, not I would say not recently, but there have been times where someone does a morning route and afternoon route and they come and do lunchroom supervision or something for us. Um and that has been particularly drivers that are also parents. Um because we have quite a few of your drivers who are actually parents in the district. And so um that has been something that it has

077appealed to those folks. It's not been a lot of people, but um they get to be a lunchroom supervisor at their kids' school, which is kind of cool. Um and so it is something we've done in the past. So it is an option if people wanted to do that and were looking for more hours. And we're always looking for lunchroom supervisors, so. Okay. It's an idea. Well, I I just looked up and there is a bus driver, school bus driver appreciation day on 4th Tuesday in April. So maybe we should put that on our calendar and make sure that we convey that on April 28th to our our bus drivers. So Thank you. Appreciate it. I was just going to say too, I know Mary Ann already mentioned this and they did too that we

078meet with them frequently, but they are just MTD and first student are just such great partners. I don't know that people realize. Um and I'm glad Luke asked and Lola asked some really significant questions about the life of a bus driver and a monitor. It isn't an easy job. Um but they are here and they show up and they care about our kids and um it it is I appreciate the partnership and we appreciate the relationship and it's all about relationships with schools and both of um both of you have all of you have are just great to work with and so we appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you. I want to say I appreciate Urbana because this is my first management position so with the company but I've worked my way up from a

079driver. So. And you still drive? And I still drive. Yes, I do. Which is not what we want so. No. Yeah, I answer the phones. I I do the computer some of the computer work. Um you speaking of the cold weather and everything I know Dana, my dispatcher, she had put out an alert on First View too. If parents had the First View app then I mean cuz it goes right on your phone. Everybody has a cell phone anymore these days. Um but it goes right on your phone. You see that bus coming. You don't have to wait outside so long when it's so cold. You know and plus we put out messages due to the weather conditions. You know, the roads were snowy. The side roads are still some snowy. So. And if I

080may that that is one very good point. We were actually talking to a driver before we came over there. One of the concerns that she had communicated with the parents is the snow being so close to the the curb there's not a lot of area for the students to kind of queue up and so there's concerns of them potentially falling in the in the the uh the path of the bus. So those are some things that as we kind of move forward we'll we'll put some reminders out because it's obviously safety first uh for for both companies and making sure that we communicate that because you don't necessarily think about that >> Yep. but uh yeah, it's a concern. >> I know we talked about this for some of the rural routes like when you

081guys um see areas in the township or the rural routes where they haven't been plowed and I know Randy and Mary Ann has shared the contact information. Like those are things that you can call and say hey, it is it is very dangerous that you guys have not gotten out here and plowed these areas yet cuz we're taking kids out here. But I think what you just said Chris, I not thought about if there areas that aren't being plowed very well where you have bus stops. I I bet our city works folks would appreciate knowing that and I mean not as a complaint but say hey, we pick up a large group of students right here and you plowed a big huge amount of snow there. Um and just let them know that and I

082think you know, we can work with them Randy's team to make sure like if there areas that parents let you know cuz we would not know that. Um I I bet our city works folks would help work with us um to put that snow pile maybe on the other end of the street or something, you know, so. Well, I also thought about the the the the ice and one of my fears is watching my son go to the bus and then the like driveway part is icy and he'll slide under. So I kept thinking like get the ice up, get the ice up. But that's one thing too is thinking like the kids could potentially go under the bus as well. Yeah, but they slip and fall, they can. Yeah, the shoveling sidewalks too is

083it's not the city's responsibility. I mean it's everybody's so I mean I I would encourage anybody that's a homeowner and anybody that's, you know, got it shoveled even if you're renting like look out for your neighborhood, you know. Anyone else ambassadors? All right, let that go ahead. Like I rode the bus in like elementary school and it was like a great experience and then same with my brother. He's in elementary school and he like loves his bus driver and she's so kind and like so I think like the people that you guys are getting for like staff like buses, like are really great people. So, thank you for employing people that are like looking out for the students as well. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. A lot of times when the drivers and

084the monitors are on those buses, they think of those children as their own. And that's true. That's great. Thanks. Anyone else? All right. Thank you all for coming tonight and presenting us this this really really great report. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Um our our last topic this evening is a policy review for press plus uh 120. Okay. You should have the packet. I'm not going to try to navigate the um clicker because I'm going to kind of not read through them policy by policy. So, I'm going to kind of just go through the packet, if that's okay. Um so, hopefully you will you noticed that I organized this one a little differently by topic areas. So, I hope it was um a little bit easier for you to read. Normally, I just kind of

085go through them by number. Um but this time I thought it because there were a lot, this was a pretty um pretty involved uh press packet. So, I took them and organized them by um operations and safety, personnel, curriculum, um student behavior, mental health and attendance, student records, and then lastly um immigration law enforcement. So, hopefully that helped a little bit in in terms of um just kind of uh keeping the subject areas together. Um so, I'm just going to highlight a few. If you um have a particular one that you'd like me to highlight that I maybe don't stop and talk about, please feel free to um let me know while I'm in that section and we can discuss the ones that are meaningful to you. But there are a few that I I

086wanted to to highlight um what we're currently doing, what we plan to do, or you know, if we don't have a plan yet, what are we going to be doing for that. Um so, on the cover page, I did want to highlight the um mental health screenings for students. This is something new. Um there uh is a new um mandate from ISBE that school districts uh will provide um universal mental health screenings for students in grades 3 through 12 beginning with the '27-'28 school year. So, um we have a specific timeline. I actually have added this to our board agenda for March. I'm going to bring a little more information about what this means and how um how we're going to implement it. The nice thing is we don't have to go out and buy

087a screener, and um I'll share that in March, but ISBE is going to provide one. As it says here, um to assist districts with implementation, ISBE is going to provide guidance, resources, um training, um and they actually at the in the last uh session that I was in with uh the state board, they said they're going to be doing that by July. Um it is so much more helpful when we get things in the summer, when we have time to digest them and really actually do some work and um look at the information that they give us. So, um right now, they're on track to give us that information in July. Um we have some decisions around the policies that we'll need to make, so I'll share that with you in March. Um I'm putting

088together a district planning team um to kind of look at the policies, look at the recommendations from the state board, so we can start having that plan in place well before the '27-'28 school year. Want to highlight that one. That is a big one coming. Um so, I'll start with district operations and safety. Um the first one that I wanted to highlight is um policy 360 there. the second one, um where it talks about um notifying law enforcement if there's a threat of gun violence on school grounds. Um if the if the threat is from a student, the building principal must notify the student's parent or guardian as soon as possible, especially if there's a firearm involved. Um having our SROs is um just just really is uh such a meaningful way for us to

089address things like this. I know a lot of our smaller rural districts um maybe don't have the ability they don't have um SROs, so this is something that is um more uh targeted to the districts that don't have SROs, um but thankfully um our SROs address a lot of these um potential threats or perceived threats or um you know, not real threats, but social media things, and they they address those things for us, and they are our liaison with the uh police department, so we rely on them to do that. Um I'm going to skip down to uh field trips, um 6-240 there on the page two, same thing. Um there is new language uh around the uh ability for schools to use activity buses uh for career-related activities. So, this is the um language

090where um at the beginning of the year we were utilizing one of our activity buses to pick up a small group of our students at the middle school, um and the the the um school code and the legislators had not officially signed that bill um it at that time, so um you know, there was a report made to the ROE that we were doing that, and so we rectified that right away. Um but one of the things that um has uh been put in place here is that they have not considered um they have not added in sixth graders to the um full law, which you'll see later on where it talks about activity buses in one of the other ones. Um But, for this particular one, um career-related activities would mean things like career

091fairs. Um if we wanted to take a group of students to a HBCU fair or to I Hotel for something, um it would allow us to be able to use our activity buses to do that. Um we still are not able to the sixth-graders um during the day for curriculum-related things unless it is a career-related activity, um which is outlined in the um school code language. And I brought it with me in case someone wanted to read all five pages of it. It is a lot of words. Um We're going to flip on to page three unless anybody has anything on page two they want to bring up. About field trips. Mhm. >> When you went to that other not in this part that you sent us, but the other long one, Mhm. um it

092said that the school board were supposed to approve field trips that are more than 200 miles away or overnight. Do we do that? I I don't remember doing that. >> think we do because we have activity I mean our our trips they go to Peoria, they go to What would be 200 miles? Is that past Chicago? >> I don't know, but Oh, Habitat is over 200 miles. >> Yeah, that Yeah. And I I think most of our trips go to St. Louis and Chicago. It's probably the furthest that any of our 150. Chicago's probably 150. I don't know how many it is to St. Louis, but But, there was in that long one, I thought, "Well, gee, I find those kind of fascinating to read through." >> That is fascinating. >> And um I thought,

093"Well, I don't remember Here it says um all field trips must have the superintendent or designee's prior prior approval except that field trips beyond a 200-mile radius of the school or extending overnight must have the prior approval of the school board. What what what's the definition of a field trip? I'm not sure that that that a club a club's trip qualify cuz we have other things like the African-American club will will take student on a long trip to HBCUs or whatever. Okay. I'm not sure those qualify as field trips. I would want to know like the legal definition of what a field trip >> Okay, I don't know either. A field trip would be what is something that's happening during the day from 8:00 to 3:00 and we don't have any other than going to

094maybe Peoria or Springfield or Chicago for the day or St. Louis for the day. That might be a field trip. >> for for singing or you know something like that. >> yeah. But in these type of things probably have been going on for many many years and that maybe at one point they were approved and it was just an unwilling you know accepted. >> I don't think we've unless it is something big like you said going to Carnegie Hall or you know taking a group but for a normal everyday field trip it is very rare for our our schools to go beyond Chicago area or St. Louis area or even Indianapolis for that matter. So I think our schools would just like to have field trips period so Yes. Okay, I'm going to move on

095to page three unless there any others. I'm going to hit the safety ones they're kind of all right together. Um, the training around evacuation and law enforcement drills for our subs um, in 4170. That's something we started doing this year. Um, I know John we were being a little proactive not so much because we knew this policy was coming but more so because our substitutes have been asking for it. When we added in the crisis go app, um is this our third year on Crisis Go? Yeah, about Third year, yes. Um we have been utilizing that with administrators and our our school personnel and our subs had not um had the privilege of being added to that, but they really um spoke up and said, you know, if we're going to be subbing in our

096schools and we need to know more about Crisis Go and we need to be part of it. So, John did a training with them, we added them into Crisis Go this year um at the beginning of the school year. So, um more of a request, but we're already kind of meeting that mandate. Um we also have a couple here around um well, this one is around the hazardous substance release procedures. So, that is something that we'll work um we'll work together, facilities will work on that one. Um and then the bottom one around threat assessments uh 4190. Uh to our districts, as you know, um one of the policies from last year was that we will have um threat assessment teams at every school, we'll have a district threat assessment team, and we will um

097have those teams in place by the first day of school and make sure that all of our uh staff know what the threat assessment procedures are. So, we've already been um implementing that. I know this says that guidance will be provided by ISBE, but our uh uh um student services team came up with our threat assessment protocols about 2 years ago. So, we've already been doing that. So, once ISBE does share whatever threat assessment procedures that they would like us to implement, um we will fold those into our current guidance that we already have. Questions on number three? Okay. Let's skip to page four, um which starts off um personnel for us. Um the first one is just an FYI. I believe we've shared this with you and I know we have a couple board

098members who participate on the para um, the para committee. But, um, for student growth, that is something that uh, we were given the option to eliminate for our um, uh, teachers as part of the evaluation plan and through the work with the union um, through our uh, performance evaluation committee um, and their joint uh, review team, they did decide this year to go ahead and eliminate student growth as a significant factor in their um, teacher evaluations. And if our teachers aren't doing student growth, then our principals don't have aren't doing it either cuz they don't have the growth of the teachers to include as part of their evaluations. Uh, the next one is the uh, racism-free schools law. So, this one has um, we've been waiting for the guidance on this for quite a while.

099Um, we received the training program in um, mid-to-late November and um, we have put together a um, training module and um, all of our administrators have recently been trained and we've pushed that module now to our school teams and the principals um, at every building have set dates to go through the racism-free schools um, training requirements and the the um, information that we're required to present. Our facilities department is uh, going to be doing that. Um, anyone who works in the schools will join um, one of the school meetings. And some of the um, some of the information that are that are included are things like um, definitions around microaggressions and um, you know, just uh, just some terminology and um, one of the ways that we're uh, meeting this mandate is we took a

100lot of uh, actual examples and I know if the facilities actually did this on their own they thought of what are some examples that we you know can make this meaningful for our custodians and we did the same thing for our administrators. So we took real life examples and then shared those and had thoughtful conversation around reflecting it was there harm and was this was there some under unbeknownst to the person maybe some hidden racism kind of in there that maybe whoever was involved in that that scenario didn't realize how it would might be perceived to someone else. So that that has been very thoughtful and Chastity Beckles is leading that work for the district as our equity person and we've now passed that on to the schools for them to be able to utilize

101that training as well. Anything else on that was all I was going to highlight on page four unless someone else had something. Okay. Going to move on to page five one additional um personnel item that I wanted to highlight was the one at the very top about the short-term approval credential for teachers. They ISBE has continued to keep that and our legislators keep renewing it every year which is wonderful for us. I know as we mentioned here tonight we are seeing more people our workforce has improved. It isn't as difficult to find and fill positions but you guys see our personnel reports so you know that we still have a large number of long-term subs. Some of them are retirees and so it is we're grateful that ISBE continues to approve the short-term approval credential

102for teachers so we can get people in there very quickly to get their credentials because we do still need long-term subs. I will be grateful for the day when we can go back to just having daily subs and you need a sub you call for a sub but right now we do still have some amazing long-term subs that are filling positions all over the district. So I'm going to switch to curriculum. Accelerated placement this is one we've talked a little bit about just very recently. Jesse Bradford came and talked publicly about our acceleration plan. I was really glad that Jennifer member Hickson brought that up because we had not had a public conversation around our acceleration policies in quite some time. So one of the things that we are incorporating is basically what Oh, that's

103a difficult one where it talks about the end of unit assessments. This one is the one where a student who meets or exceeds is automatically enrolled into most rigorous level of coursework at the high school. So we've been utilizing we've been doing this because it's been something that has been discussed for quite some time. We are not calling it that the acceleration the auto enrollment part is just something we're automatically doing. We're using our map data to look at that. One thing that Jesse shared when she was here to present a couple of meetings ago is we're actually going to start using that map data to have those same conversations with our students at the elementary level. So just a better communication to say to a parent, "Hey, your student's map data is really showing

104that they could be elevated in to the next grade level for math or for language arts. And some parents may not realize that if we don't tell them. So we we recognize that we've been doing that at the second second dairy level but not as much at elementary. So that's something that we're going to work in just our acceleration policy. Even though it isn't a requirement for this particular policy change. Also there is the next one I was just going to mention we um there is some new language around dual language programs and the state right now is encouraging districts who have a large number of ELs like ours to look at a dual language model for programming to expand their existing programs and so the state is going to be providing some additional guidance

105to districts. Who have not yet created dual language programs and encourage them to do so. Fortunately for us we've been ahead of that game for a while and we've had dual language in our district from um I think going on 12 years now. So but this I didn't I thought people might say I wonder what that is for and think that they're asking us to do something different with what we're already doing. So basically this language is for districts who are not currently implementing um effective dual language programs but they have the numbers of students to do so. So the state is going to be encouraging that. But it could mean we find there's more competition for DL certified staff. That could be a problem. Thankfully Champagne already has uh dual language as a very

106robust program over there. Somebody from Rantoul sitting here. Do you guys have dual language? Okay no. So that might be something that Rantoul might look at as when they get that guidance from the state. Just stay away from our staff. I do have a question about the accelerated placement. Yes. So, you said that they go by the MAP testing. Is that the state standards that we have to go by? Well, um we get to choose. So, yes, we can use IAR data. But, remember when um we had that presentation IAR data, we get it so late in the year. Um so, we we get the we got the IAR data the real IAR data. They sent They sent us some data in the summer that was very preliminary. Um but, we received that data in

107October. So, by then, our high school students and our you know, it's it would be great for elementary, but our middle school through 6th through 12th students are already in courses by October. Um so, they we could use IAR data and make some changes if we needed to, but by utilizing MAP, um which is our our benchmark that we give three times a year, we can give the MAP assessment right at the beginning of the school year. Um those first two or three weeks, and then we can move a student pretty quickly. So, um we also That's why we have been choosing to use MAP. The IAR is a good checker. Maybe if we had a student maybe that we missed, and we get their their IAR data, and we say, "Wow, that student really

108they may not have um uh shown that on their MAP data, but MAP is supposed to be a predictor for IAR. So, the two are supposed to kind of work together. So. Well, I know some students don't test well on the MAPs or the IAR. Yes. Um and so, you know, they're sitting in these classes, and they're getting A's, and they're bored, and they're not being challenged. We still take teacher recommendation. So, teacher recommendation is still um So, a teacher can still recommend and say, "Hey, I really um think this student like I had a kid who did not was not a great standards uh you know, standards-based tester. Um but, yeah, so teacher can still see that and say, um, I really like to recommend this student and then Jesse, um, or somebody from

109our team would do the testing for them, so. Or principal could make a recommendation, too. Okay. I'm going to move on to page six. I'm going to highlight those first two at the top. Um, so dual credit, the, um, high school credit for non-district experiences. So, um, this first one there, revising the requirement for agreements between districts and out-of-state uh, post-secondary institutions. There's been a lot of activity in the state, um, and as well as with our, um, community colleges. I know this really talks about out-of-state, but it is all in response to the increase in the number of students taking dual credit classes. So, um, right now we, um, have an agreement with Parkland and I am on, um, the state board has an advisory committee. I'm one of the superintendents on the dual

110credit advisory committee where one of the changes is, we can start, um, with Parkland's, Parkland would have to agree to this, but we can, um, in the next year begin to have our own staff members teach a dual credit class at the high school. There's very specific rules. They have to have a master's degree, they have to have so many, um, credits in that particular area. Um, but we could, in fact, um, you know, have students stay with us for a dual credit class, um, instead of going out to Parkland. Now, they get a great experience out of Parkland, especially for some of the CTE things for our juniors and seniors. Um, so, but again, uh, that that is something that is coming in the future, so you'll hear more about that. Um, and then

111the, uh, requirement for ISBE to post on their website approved externships and internships and volunteer work. So, we already have a really robust we've been working really hard to strengthen our career and technical education pathways. And we have administrative internship program. We have students that are already doing some really great work as interns or graduate with us and go right into internships. So, this is something that the state is going to be doing. I know the state superintendent Tony Sanders has really been talking a lot about improving the career and technical ed options from the state board too. So, this is their way of giving districts more information around how we can help expand our pathways. And then the next one is the acceleration one that I was thinking of earlier. So, this one is

112requires that in order for students to in grade 7 or 8 to receive high school credit for a course they must pass the end of course examination in order to get that credit. So, one thing that we're adding is part of our acceleration plan is we're adding in the end of course examination as one of the required tests that some of our students that are accelerated are going to need to take. One reason is ISBE is also ISBE is recommending that. But, what we've seen is we have students who are very in math for math in particular who are really high level and have very great high skills, but they have these little gaps and little you know, I'm really good at algebra. I'm really good at algebra algebraic thinking, but I'm I'm not as

113great in things like geometry or you know, I have these little holes. And so in order to make sure before we bump a student a full grade or or even two grades that we would make sure that they are taking the end of course examination. So we don't we're not putting a student in a position accelerating them to the next grade where they're going to have I'm a I'm a great mental math person, but I very much struggle with you know, reading word problems or things like that. So that's something that we're adding into our acceleration plan. This policy is talking more so about in in order for seventh and eighth graders to get high school credit, they are going to have to take the end of course examination in order to get that credit.

114So. Any questions about curriculum? Okay, I'm going to move on to student behavior mental health. >> one. Sorry, go ahead Kendra. So the the the acceleration exam after So like if I did take like pre-calc, but I took it um at the AP level. Once it is the end of the semester or the end of the school year, I would take an examination for that or is that Not if you already took it. So if this is for someone who is wanting to be I'm I want to be accelerated into pre-calc. Maybe I'm >> Oh. I I'm not old enough to take that class or I'm not you know, I might be a eighth grader and I'm not at the high school yet. So if they wanted to take the pre-calc class then we would

115give them the end of course examination just to see where their skills were. But if it's a middle schooler who takes that class, so we have some middle schoolers right now who are taking algebra um at the middle school. So, when they finish the algebra class, we're going to give them the end of course examination to make sure that they learned enough um as an eighth grader to be able to give them the credit. True. All right. So, this is only for students who want to bump up to a certain class. Who is it there? All right. Okay. >> Yeah. Good question. Um student behaviors. So, I'm going to jump to the attendance and truancy. Um this again is in response to some of the uh growth in the state around CTE and dual credit.

116Um the state is now going to allow work-based learning experiences to be counted toward the um calc uh the um number of clock hours of school work That's awesome. um required for a student um at the beginning of the school year. So, they're going to give us some guidance around um what what we can calculate, um how much we can give for a work-based learning experience. But, that is great. I mean, we've we've done that on our own. Um our counselors do things like independent study, and they we have found a way to give students some of that credit, but it will be great um for the state to actually recognize that um as work-based learning experiences. Then, it can show up on a student's um transcript that way. Um so, we will be waiting

117for that guidance from ISBE, but that is again um a change in response to a lot of the dual credit and CTE growth across the state. Um I did want to highlight the next one because this is unfortunately part of our world now with social media is um the uh prevention of in response to bullying language is being updated to include um cyber bullying includes unauthorized digital replicas. So, unfortunately, um, one of the young people, one of the things they're doing now is, um, putting, uh, taking a picture or putting somebody else's head on a picture or, um, taking a picture offline and, you know, superimposing a head on a body or whatever that, you know, whatever it might be and posting that, um, as on social media or, um, as a way to bully

118and tease. And so, if that, if we know about that, um, that the language now for this policy is saying that if that happens, that is considered cyber bullying and then we can use our, um, bullying investigation, um, steps to, uh, address that, uh, with families, with the student and, um, through consequences. I'm going to switch to seven. Anybody? Number seven. Lindsey's like, "Oh my gosh, kids do that?" Yes, they do. >> [laughter] >> Oh, because I just did that the other day to my my boss. >> [laughter] >> But I'm sure it was for fun. Yes. Well, unfortunately, sometimes they they are not always in fun when that happens with, um, middle schoolers or high schoolers. Um, the 7190 student behavior language right there at the top, there's three different, um, changes in the

119policy. All of these are to address, um, some of the SRO behavior or some things that are happening in in other districts, uh, around, um, with SROs. So, um, in some of my Luda and superintendent groups for the last year, there's been lots of conversation about SROs, um, ticketing students, giving citations, um, giving fines. That's never been something that has been part of our agreement with our SRO program through the city. Um, but it is something that was happening in a lot of places across the state, surprisingly. Um, so SROs could ticket a student if they, um, were seen doing a certain behavior or they were getting fines and then they'd have to go to the the police department and pay those fines. That's never been, um, a practice of ours, but to stop that

120from happening, they this policy is being, um, put in place so districts cannot do that anymore. Um, also, we, um, cannot use our SROs, um, to, um, make them into like, um, chronic truancy, what's the truancy officers? Um, they're that's not part of our school SRO program, either. We've never done that. Um, we have had our SRO maybe go out, um, and accompany a student engagement advocate or a social worker on a visit, so, um, there's a second person there or if, you know, if there was ever a safety concern, but their one of their primary roles has never been to be truancy officers or anything like that. So, um, unfortunately, there are districts that have been doing that and so this language prevents them from doing that in the future. Um, and then this

121language also, uh, requires districts that have school officer, school resource officer programs to have a memorandum of understanding with that agency. We have that already. We have an, um, an a agreement with the city, a, um, intergovernmental agreement around our SRO program and we update it every 3 years. So, uh, this doesn't apply to us because we already do it, but there are a lot of districts where, um, they have not had agreements and MOUs around their programs, but they will have to do that moving forward. And then, um, I was going to highlight the suicide and depression, um, language here. This is also something that we've been doing. I think we started 2 years ago, John. Um, inserting the information for suicide prevention resources on our student IDs. So, we've been doing it for

122our students, um, but we haven't, um, added it to the employee ID cards. And so, that that is an additional piece of the language. So, a couple years ago we started putting that in Um, we have a little sticker that we put on the back of the IDs, and then we incorporated it onto the student IDs, um, but now we'll have to, uh, add that in, um, for employees who work with our students in grades 6 through 12. So, they also have suicide prevention information if they're concerned about one of their students or just for themselves. And then lastly, I was going to highlight a couple of the immigration, the, um, there are only two in this packet, um, but they both are in um, response to, uh, just I think our governor, our state

123legislators want to make sure that districts know, um, that they should not be prohibiting any services to our students um, based on their citizenship or immigration status. So, I know, um, of course that isn't something that we do here in our district, um, but I think it is a, um, it's important to our, um, members of Congress and our, uh, our governor that that language was spelled out very clearly. Um, and, um, the counseling services that we, uh, require schools to provide, um, and address the needs of all of our students regardless of their citizenship status. That's just memorializing what we already do, but putting it into policy for districts to have to follow. So, those were the ones that I wanted to highlight. Um if anybody had another one that they want to discuss?

124Okay. I just want to express my appreciation for for putting all this together and making a a quick summary for us, but uh reminder to the board members, the the full changes are available to us via email. Uh this will be coming up for a vote in 2 weeks. >> Yes. So, uh please take the time to look over that, and if you have any questions, please present those to administration before the meeting and so that so they can be prepared to answer them, and we can be prepared to vote. Thank you. One of the ones that stuck out to me uh was in the um was called uh grading and promotion. Oh, mhm. And um basically says a student shall not be promoted based upon age or any other social reasons not related to

125academic performance. So, I wonder how this >> new language. That's been in that policy for Oh, it's been in that policy for a long time. Okay. >> not new. Okay. The change in that policy was around um if during COVID, there were a lot of stipulations around you couldn't um keep someone's diploma, you couldn't not give them their report card um for, you know, um for if they were a remote learning student or something like that. So, that is addressing that change, but yeah, we have not done social promotion. This that's been part of that policy for a long time. Okay. And do we not do we base all of our promotion and graduation requirements? It says system and shall determine when promotion and graduation requirements are met. Yes. >> And so, um to promote

126a student to the next grade level shall be based on successful completion of the curriculum, attendance, and performance on the standardized test required by ISBE and or other assessments. Oh, and or. So, we don't promote students based on their standardized test. We promote them based on their grades, based on the standards based uh the standards that are addressed on their report card. And for high school students, they are promoted based on their the number of courses and credits that they take, correct? >> number of credits. >> Right. Yes. >> [clears throat] >> Anyone else? Again, yeah, please be ready for in 2 weeks to to uh cast your vote on these uh policy changes. Um there are no action items this evening, um and there's no call for future special or executive meetings. So, um

127it's our time for a superintendent's report. All right. So, oh. I've been sharing out a little updates that it is Black History Month, and so, um we're looking forward to many of the activities um that our schools will be um entering into and sharing and just um all the work that our teachers are going to be doing to uh put off some great Black History moments um for the rest of the month. Yesterday, though, not yesterday, Sunday, um we did have the uh Black History Month kickoff at Dr. Williams School in honor of um Janice Mitchell and um her many achievements as um a parent, as a staff member, as a district parent liaison. And so, you here are a a pictures of some of the performances. I know Keondre was there and played with

128the jazz band and that was nice. Um, a nice addition to the program this year. Um, so it was a great way to kind of kick off the event. Lots of performances by young people, so. Um, NAPPED is next Monday. And so, NAPPED is our um, it is it's coined National African American School Involvement Day. Um, parent involvement day. However, um, any and all parents are welcome and invited to participate. So, I say that every year because I get that question every year. Um, but it is for all of our families. Um, and the idea is that we really want to promote um, family engagement and involvement in student learning um, both at school and at home. So, this is a um, little graphic that shows a lot of the activities that are planned. If

129we had the times, we put the times on there. Um, so if you're looking for your child's school, for the public um, who might be watching, we'll put this in the board update that goes out tomorrow. So, you can plan if you want to come have breakfast or visit the classroom. Um, so there is a wide variety of events happening but um, from just stop in and and visit on your own to um, more formal assemblies and things that are happening at night as well. So, I think we'll have a very full day of events for um, NAPPED next Monday. And uh, winter guard. So, we want to give a shout out to the winter guard who after their performance this weekend qualified um, for the state finals in Springfield on February 14th. So, our

130winter guard and our flag um, lyrical flag folks, they just every year we're just so proud of them. They do they just do such a great job and they always um, have a showing at the end of the year for state. So we wish them the best. They have another weekend performance this weekend, but then we'll be sending them our best on February 14th when they compete for state. And our ambassadors already shared a little bit about ILMEA and this just kind of highlights the names of some of the students who the picture of some of our high schoolers who participated but just our middle schoolers who qualified for orchestra Abraham Cody, Penelope Dunn, Clara Nardi. So congratulations to them and then our high schoolers Cecilia Beardsley, Alex Friedel, Giselle Juarez, Isaac Bedonie, Junior Nono,

131Eliana Lee and Finley Curtis. They all either in chorus or orchestra. And then we actually had a future music educator seminar for Finley. So congratulations to all of our middle school high schoolers who take part in ILMEA is a really big deal and so we always like to celebrate their accomplishments when they get to do that. CTE spotlight. So we'll we'll be having some more CTE conversations here later in May. I think we're going to have our middle school second and the sixth grade center folks come and talk about some of the CTE classes that we're adding to the to help expand our CTE framework down to sixth grade. But here are two of our students who just earned their ServeSafe Manager certificates. So if you know some of our culinary students they take the

132Um, get the What's the lower level where they just get their suit sanitation license? That's part of the class. Well, these guys went to the next level and didn't just get the san- um, safe sanitation. They actually now have the safe manager sanitation certificate. So, they can now actually take this uh, credential and be a manager at a restaurant. So, it's really exciting that they they can do that as a level three culinary arts uh, culinary student at our high school. Um, this is the first year that Miss um, Cheyenne Wormer Neal has offered the ServeSafe Manager Certificate and we already have suit two students who have um, who have met that criteria. So, congratulations. Three of them. Nope, three level three, but we only have two pictures. Yes. And then kindergar- kindergarten registration, we're

133going to be putting this out as much as we can between now and April 8th. Um, so if you live in Urbana, you have a student turning five on or before September 1st, please, please, please come to Lincoln Square to register them on Wednesday, April 8th from 10:00 to 5:00. If you have questions, um, that email goes directly to our um, kindergarten coordinator and she will address your questions and um, get back to you as soon as she can. That is the last. Oh, nope. Dual language. So, um, this is the time of year where um, we have families um, that also might be looking at kindergarten, want to explore dual language. And so, we're going to be doing some dual language tours before kindergarten registration, March 25th and March 31st. Um, so if you're

134interested in um, applying for the dual language program at Yankee Ridge, um, feel free to just show up on those two dates. Um, there will be an informational meeting as well. Um, March 31st and March 24th um, for Spanish and French respectively. And um, then that way as soon as we have registration on April 8th, we can make a determination and let people know um, right away if they've been accepted into the program. But we we know it's important to come and see it. And um, so this is a way for uh, families that might be interested to tour and then of course join the parent meeting. So we'll be sharing those out as well. That's it. Thank you. Um, there were a series series of photos that were completed that were published in our

135agenda. At this point um, well firstly a a reminder to the board members to might not block out a little more time next week uh, or next meeting for our meeting because we're going to have a long executive session afterwards to go over uh, negotiations and uh, do our superintendent evaluation. >> Yes, and the business meeting will be short. We have no presentations and we'll just be approving bills and checks and normal business items so we can focus on the exact portion of the meeting. Um, at this point then the chair would entertain a motion to adjourn for the evening. Can I just say one more thing? I'm sorry. I forgot before. Um, um, we got these t-shirts that um, we're happy to to receive to encourage um, our families to know how much um,

136it how important it is that the children come to school every single day. And there was a really nice picture of the um, Champaign school board just holding their their shirts in front of them so I thought maybe Lori could take our picture afterwards. >> Absolutely. That's the plan. >> Okay. And also the other thing I forgot to re- mention was Read Across America is on Saturday um, March 7th at Lincoln Square from 10:00 to 1:00. And um, we're looking for more celebrity greeters. We have almost We should have about 40 booths there for children to participate in hands-on literacy activities and every child who comes will receive a free book and a tote bag and there'll be storytellers throughout the mall and some fun things to do. So, I hope you'll put that on

137your your schedule as well. There's also a jazz festival at EIU. The 7th. On what day? Uh Saturday the 7th. Saturday the 7th. Okay. Yeah, I think that's it. The chair would entertain a motion to adjourn. Thank you. Is there a second? I second. All in favor say aye. Aye. All right. We'll see everybody in 2 weeks. Oh yeah, so if you guys want to just bring your t-shirts up here real quick.