Urbana School District 116 Board of Education 11 04 25

001All right, it's six o'clock. So, let's begin this study session of Urbana School District 116. Uh, roll call, please. >> Member Cheryl >> here. >> Member Hixon >> here. >> Member Maribou >> here. >> Member Jones. Member Langodorf here. Vice President Baxley >> here. >> President Palowski >> here. Uh we have a quorum. Uh are there any additions, corrections, or modifications to tonight's agenda? >> No, there are not. And it's now time for citizen statements. If anybody here present wishes to make a statement before the board, please fill out a golden rod sheet in the back of the room and hand it to our recording secretary Lori Johnson. We do have one that's turned in already and that's from Sharon Rose Anderson. Good evening. Uh my name is Sharon Anderson and uh [clears throat] I'm

002a member of the NAACP education committee and I've been very moved by you know all the concern of the board and everything people are doing uh to uh support the students in every way they can. And uh so uh when this uh report card came out uh you know uh at Dr. uh President Williams uh Junior Elementary School. It has had the intensive uh summitative designations for two years. And I was so moved by Michael Turner who has just graduated from Urbana School. You know how concerned he is with helping students who are struggling. And uh our uh Dr. Su Dr. Barbara SuMason who is uh the head of our education committee at the NAACP. she was u superintendent of a Chicago uh public school and she said uh up there at that time they

003for like this intensive designation she had um there was a pilot program there were uh three days a week Tuesday Wednesday Thursday evenings after school uh kids who were really struggling uh would be given extra uh uh support and uh and she said it was effective. You know, if it didn't work uh if I should say more was needed beyond that after school then in the summer they continued. That's of course very labor intensive and uh but she said it was effective and uh it would be so special. I know in many different uh levels uh the kids and the teachers at um Dr. Preston Williams Jr. school are are really having challenges. But it would be so wonderful if we could have some kind of intervention to support these students. Uh like I say,

004I was so moved by Michael Turner when he went uh to a classroom. A child was under the desk just crying because he could not deal with the challenges of the education that was facing him. But he really helped his student and uh turned it around. So uh as we consider this uh report card I hope we can consider how to turn around uh some of the things is uh some uh areas have moved up you know and that's very encouraging. So any anyway I just wanted to say that and thank you. >> Thank you. Uh does anybody else wish to make a statement before the board this evening? Uh hearing none. Um uh there is no call for an executive session after tonight's meeting. So the chair were to entertain motion to [clears throat]

005approve tonight's agenda as published. >> So moved. >> Second. >> Moved and seconded. Any further questions, comments? All in favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? We have an agenda. Uh there are no accommodations or recognitions this evening. Uh so now it's time for our student ambassador report. Not again not tonight. Um, okay. We just had one last week. Uh, it's now time for board reports. Does anybody wish to give a board report this evening? Okay, let's move straight on to our administrative reports. First up is our student services program update. Good evening. Um, I'm Beth Lad. I'm the executive director of student services for Urbana. And with me tonight, I have >> I'm Jacqueline Douglas. I'm the special ed administrator. >> And we are missing a few of our team members that I

006want to acknowledge. Maria Elvier is uh the assistant director and she takes classes on Tuesday evening. So, she's not with us. And I also wanted to just explicitly acknowledge um two people that are instrumental to the work we do. Uh Kate Cloyd and Sharon Johnson are our administrative assistants and um without them we could not do half of what we do and um they don't get a lot of acknowledgement. So tonight we wanted to acknowledge them. We want to thank you for making time for us this evening. It is um extremely um valuable to me to be a part of an administration and a team that values special education the way that Urbana does and prioritizes and um highlights us in a lot of the things that happen in the district. So, I just want

007to thank Dr. Ivory Tatum and you all for um really prioritizing um this group of students and families. I think you're gonna do that because it's not actually on. So, we are going to review some things we've talked about in the last few years and we're going to talk about some new things. Um, but this is our agenda for this evening and um we look forward to sharing the information and answering any questions you have. staffing, retention and recruitment of our staff and um we um have made some great strides over the last year. And um you will see on the first slide our numbers for this year. We um are 14% unfilled for our teachers. And I want to kind of highlight the fact that um a lot of the positions that we currently

008have open are filled by amazing substitutes that um the HR department and uh building administrators recruit for us and find and support in numerous ways um because we know that's not the same as having a certified teacher. Um, and many of the positions that we currently have open in the special ed teaching um, department are our self-contained or more highly uh, structured um, programs. And so, um, I want to highlight that that, um, if there's anyone out there that is thinking about wanting to or is curious about whether that position would be appropriate for them or someone they know that, um, we definitely have opportunities here in Urbana if that's something you're interested in. Our staff has uh administrative team has made great strides in filling our teaching assistant positions and um we have um

009very few openings for that right now and um that's really great to see because they really do a lot of work um with our students um specifically. We have seen a a loss of a couple psychologist positions and um that is not unique to Urbana. That is something that the whole state is feeling right now. We are feeling it from the number of um staff at our universities that can um uh teach and uh support uh students who want to go into school psychology. It's um impacted us in terms of um people wanting to stay in this community, people wanting to stay in public education. There are a lot of contracting agencies and a lot of different ways in which uh psychologists are u moving about their field. Um but we have done something unique

010here in Urbana in the last uh few months. Um we have created some positions called educational diagnosticians and we have hired two very highly qualified um staff. um one internally and one from another uh district who are supporting uh the evaluation role that our school psychologists serve who are supporting observations and um behavior planning for students and being real problem solvers with teams and um so much so that in my conversations with district uh directors around this area um it's something other places are exploring. ing doing as well. It is a position that you would see in much larger districts um and um was just something we thought we needed to explore here. We um did not anticipate actually finding two highly qualified people, but we have and we're very excited about um how this

011is working out. Our social work positions are filled in all of our buildings. Um if you look at this, it does show that we have one district level position and that position really supported um students and families who are in our alternative programs. We are still looking for that uh position to be filled um and anticipate we'll be able to find a candidate um within the next year. Um but I want to be really clear that all of our building social work positions are in place and so all of our students are receiving their services. our um occupational therapy certified occupational therapy assistant positions and our physical therapy position are filled and that team is really top-notch and works closely together. Um and uh we just have highly qualified, highly skilled people in those positions,

012many who have been with the district year upon year upon year and um one new person who is a veteran and is really um a positive addition to the team. and we are um missing a few speech language pathologists right now. The good news is we are able to contract for those positions. So we have um highly qualified uh SLPs serving students. We are just continuing to look to be able to um hire people um internally for that and not have to contract. These are the last two years of data um just for your reference so you can see how we compare to previous years. Um we also um this last summer added an additional position um that has not been filled but we are hoping to fill um a special education coordinator position. So,

013um not a direct teacher and not an administrative position, but as we made changes over the last uh couple of years where we reduced our assistant principal from Urbana Early Childhood and added um more staff within our special ed department, we really felt like we needed an in between position to help in a couple of different ways. to help support our buildings who have larger uh populations of students who receive um special services and to support early childhood as they have gone down from an administrator. So, we're looking to fill that. It was not an addition of an FTE. It was a reallocation of um some positions that um we did no not le need any longer um and felt that was a good use of that and still looking to hire somebody for that

014position. So last year we took an intentional walk with members of our special education staff to strengthen our understanding of what um student behavior is. So during this time we had a professional development which was led by a formal special education teacher as well as a BCBA. She held both titles. So the goal of the training and the series was to develop a shared language consistency across all classrooms and build a collective capacity to support students um through intentional behavior practices. Um together we explored what is behavior and as we took that exploration we understood that behavior is something that is observed and measured. um and most importantly that behavior is a form of communication. Our educators reflected on the fact that behavior is not random but rather serves a purpose for our students. We

015then focused on the importance of objective observations, avoiding assumptions and concentrating on what we see and hear. Our staff was reintroduced and some introduced to data collection measures such as frequency counts, duration recordings and ABC data. So anticedants behaviors and then those consequences. Using this data, our teams were able to strengthen their ability um to guide interventions and provide different progress monitoring tools to make sure that we were making intentional changes to support increased positive behavior. Next, we took a deeper dive into looking specifically at functional behavior analysis and looking at the interventions in which we provide to support those changes in behaviors. And if we weren't quite sure on what we needed to do and what next steps were, we had those conversations built um in a collective format um to make sure that

016we could make set adjustments and use each other as expertise and bouncing ideas off of everyone. Finally, we did some diving into task analysis. So breaking down some complex things into smaller steps so that our students were able to achieve those things. So for some students it could be something as simple as um maybe zipping up our coat. Um so what does that look like? How can we break that step into smaller steps to make sure that they can achieve those goals? Our ongoing goal continues to be to equip every education educator to respond with intention, empathy, and skill, ensuring that every student receives the consistent compassionate support um from everyone that interacts with them on a daily basis. Another thing that um we did as a district um is adopt new curriculum. Um so

017one of the things during the professional development um time is allowed our special educators to sit in those spaces when um everyone was learning about the new curriculum specifically CKLA um MClass Dibbles and going back to progress monitoring with um as web plus to make sure the um things that we were teaching are were showing growth towards the students goals and if not figuring out what we could do to support how we were going to allow the students to continue to grow um in whatever their goal may be. So intentionally tracking to figure out if there was growth being shown. We also um did ongoing administrative PD and continue to do that this year. Um providing targeted training to support building administrators on various components of 504s or even IEPs and different aspects of those

018so that we are having meaningful conversations during IEP meetings and knowing um what the role is of an LEA. Um, another area that we continue to emphasize um with all of our special educators is the open gym time. This time allows for individuals from multiple buildings to come together to collaborate, problem solve, as well as share best practices so that we continue to identify what is working for our students and what areas or opportunities for growth there may be and how we can reach those goals. >> We've spent a lot of time over the last few years talking about discipline for students. um with disabilities and um given the fact that um the last two previous um presentations have included suspension data, we went ahead and included that again. We continue to work with our

019administrators and our um building level teams on um best practice for um approaching behavior for students. Like uh Jackie said, um our numbers this year um are very similar to what they were last year. um we have fewer number of incidents. However, this year we do have an increase in the number of days of suspension overall. And I would just like to highlight um that that really um includes um about three or four pretty significant incidents that have happened um at the secondary level at the start of this year. Um and if you exclude those um uh two or three or four incidents, our numbers would be um almost identical to last year. and last year was an improvement over the year before. So, we see um the work we're doing as making a difference.

020And um I thought about um the fact that we have the sixth grade center and the seventh eighth grade and um sharing that information out distinctly, but given that over the past few years we've included um it just as secondary, that's the way it is on here. But we are taking a look at that um data internally. We um made some big changes um over the last year at our elementary um level in terms of service delivery. And I want to just share a little bit of um background as to um uh why this came about and how this came about. We um know that we are in the midst of making those changes and some people um are feeling really great about it and seeing some great um impact to students and some people

021are still struggling with some of the changes and um and we've still got work to do ahead of us. Um, but I want to remind us all what special education is because I think that can get lost in some of our conversations and I do this with my own staff um on a regular basis that special education is specially designed instruction and all of our uh special education staff should be remembering that what they do on a day-to-day basis with their students is specially designed instruction and it's based on uh characteristics of that student's disability and the needs that that presents in the school environment. So, I just want to remind us of that because I think that's critical to what we do um in our work. And so, one of our legal obligations as

022a school district is to provide a continuum of services. And so that means that we need to provide services for students who have minimal needs and minimal uh service minutes and for students who require fairly significant needs either um in a residential or a homebound placement and lots of levels of service in between that. And when um Jackie and Maria and I spent some time um really looking at and thinking about and I probably spoke about this a little bit last year some changes we'd already made um on a small level that um there were some groups of students that probably weren't receiving or had the opportunity for a continuum of services in their home school. And um so students who either um could uh be successful and receive support and services in the general

023education classroom maybe were being pulled into special ed environments too much. and students who had fairly significant needs but could be successful in their home school were either not receiving that level of service necessary to be successful or were having to move to a district program in um another elementary school. And so we really took a look at um how could we better serve students in their home school um and building this continuum across all of our spaces. And I think um I want to be really clear and I say this every time I talk about this that we are not saying that um we are providing service only in our home schools and that we are only doing certain level of service. We understand that there are specialized programs that need to be in

024place and that students may not be able to be served in their home school. But we did feel in looking at what was going on in our district that more students could be served in their home school. Not only um because that is important for them to be a part of that home community and um for their uh uh relationships with their community, their neighbors, their siblings, that sort of thing. but also because of the unfair um need that that places on a building that maybe um is housing all of those specialized programs. When you're looking at a school um and I'm just going to give really easy numbers because that's how I roll when I give examples. When you're looking at a school that is 300 students and they have four or five or

025six special education classrooms, that is a pretty significant number of that student population. And um along with that comes many things. It comes increased needs. It comes increased staff to evaluate. It comes with increased meetings to be held. And um it it comes with lots of things. And so um there was a certain time where that model probably made sense because of um lots of factors. But as the students needs have increased, as staffing has become more difficult, as um we redistrict and looked at prioritizing students being in their um uh attendance boundary school, we felt that there was a great number of students that could be uh returned um to moving and staying in their home school. We were very thoughtful about this and we took a look at each individual student. We took

026a look at students who were in a district program and um not at their home school and whether they needed to continue there um until they moved on to sixth grade or whether it made sense based on their needs and their factors to return to their home school. there were a small number of students that returned um to their home school and Jackie and Maria really did the the work in communicating with families, setting up team meetings, um having conversations and getting um homeschools prepared for those students um to be a part of their community again. And there were students that stayed in their placements. A great deal of conversation happened to early childhood with students as they transition from preK tok. The prek tok transition is a tricky transition in every district with every

027staff with every student at every moment. And um some people feel um like it goes really well for them and some people really struggle with that transition. Um, but we had a lot of conversations about which of our students could go to their home school, their attendance to boundary school, and which needed to go to a program. Um, and it was a lot of work and we've seen a lot of good things and we've seen some things that we need to work on. Um, as we are continuing to provide professional development for our general education teachers, for our general education staff, for our administrators, and our special ed team, we do still have specialized programs. Our specialized programs are geared towards students with um characteristics of autism that require pretty significant level of structured programming.

028We do have a classroom and a program for students with life skills, pretty significant functional life skills needs. And um we do um recognize that at times we may need a program for students with more significant emotional and behavioral needs and those programs continue to exist. Um, see previous comment about trying to recruit teachers for those programs right there. Oh, it's me. >> Oh, I get to talk about the strategic plan. I was hoping maybe Jackie would. So many of you participated in um our uh efforts to um rebuild and revitalize the strategic plan for this district. Special education and um students who have special needs and 504 plans was a huge part of that conversation. And so um just want to highlight here our goal um in a surprise to none of us is

029to increase our achievement for our students. And um we know that you'll be spending a great deal of time talking about that with Dr. Ivory Tatum in terms of our school report card and um all of our um data later. But um we have a our own um key performance indicator here. And um two of the ways in which we are really working on that this year recognizing that this is a multi-year plan is we will be spending a great deal of time with our elementary team um working um very specifically around the instructional strategies that our general education um curriculum and instruction team has adopted for us to really um move our students forward. not just um utilizing our um really strong curriculum, but infusing that with um very high lever strategies um uh

030instructional strategies that can be implemented within that curriculum or outside of that curriculum. And so um this year we'll be working on the strategy of um utilizing similarities and differences. And I have a threehour um plan for that Friday morning if anybody wants to join us and really dig deep into that. But um I think this is a really great way for our special education staff to remember our goal of specialized instruction and taking these strategies and looking at it through the lens of disabilities and disability characteristics will be um a great experience for us this year on our staff development days. And then I also want to highlight another intentional action step that we are taking is implementing that target consistent agenda for our weekly collaboration times between our general education teachers as well

031as our special education teachers. This is something that has already been implemented at some of our buildings and has shown success um because we're actually looking deeply at our IEPs and seeing what's happening when students are in the general education classroom space as well as in the special education space and how we can intertwine and um make sure we're meeting those goals in both spaces. um what Dr. Ivory Tatum and I spoke about tonight uh we did not speak about this slide and then I left and I said oh my goodness what were we thinking we cannot um leave this space without addressing the changes that are happening um federally and locally in terms of education special education the department of education and so um reminding everybody it's election day it's a very exciting day

032in some states um but um we recognize um that there are lots of changes happening and lots of rhetoric going on right now that is causing extreme anxiety um for many of us and specifically for our families who have students with disabilities for a variety of reasons. Concerns about whether their rights are still going to exist, concerns about whether funding is still going to be available. And I just want to remind all of us that we live in Illinois that IDA is um implemented. It remains in place. It will remain in place. um and that Illinois will continue to follow um our school code which has enshrined IDA. The funding is there and um we will continue to fully implement it and fully um follow um what needs to be done for our students. Um

033I also want to just remind us that this is not the first time that um these conversations have happened at the federal level. um as administrations change and as um uh ideologies and things swing back and forth um many of us have lived through the conversation around trying to uh change and return these um uh responsibilities to the state and I think um I understand that the rhetoric and the wording and what's happening now is extremely different from in the past but again we live in a state where we will continue to do what's what's right and um do it because it is um a part of our school code and our our legal responsibility. And as we close, we definitely want to make sure we say thank you and celebrate all those things that

034are going well and moving in the right direction. Um, as we talked about earlier in our presentation, our improved staffing, um, our professional development opportunities that have led to increased knowledge and continued growth with our educators, um, our educational diagnosticians who are two strong strong team members that have been added this year. um our high school staffing um who is working collaboratively and have allowed um students to be um met where they're at and specifically design instruction has increased um some of our high school students growth in different programming. um our long-term subs who have stepped in um day in and day out and continue to provide that specifically designed instruction um and are very passionate about the students they are working with and advocating for the students and what's best for them. Also, um

035our new building administrators who have background in special education, which has been um amazing to work with them and collaborate and make sure that we are um continuing to grow not only our special educators but our general educ educators as we um work towards students um goals. um our engagement in the strategic plan um with not only our special educators but the community members as a whole which has been amazing. And last but not least um you guys as a board of education allowing us to continue to come and speak before you about what is happening with the students who receive specialized services and making it of grave importance. So we want to thank you guys for that. >> Thank you. Um board members um any questions or comments? >> Go ahead. >> For the

036professional development um the behavior for the teachers and the pair of professionals is that all of the teachers or is this only special education teachers? So the the um professional development Jackie spoke about last year was for um special education staff on the staff development days and it was primarily focused on the elementary teams. Um but that doesn't mean that we aren't engaging our general education teachers um during um staff meetings during um voluntary uh professional development times. One of the big conversations we've had um as we've um been engaging in the strategic plan is how do we um better um support um our staff outside of the special ed department in understanding students with disabilities, understanding um dealing with and um supporting behavioral needs. and um finding the time and the space for that

037is still something that we're prioritizing and engaging in conversation around. Our administrators do an amazing job in their staff meetings of prioritizing and talking about that. It's not as detailed and as in-depth as what we talked about doing with our elementary staff last year. >> Anyone else? Go ahead, Jennifer. I apologize. >> Yeah. >> Um >> Beth, you made the comment at the beginning when you were talking about staff that um uh you had we had great subs in those positions. Um even though >> it's even though they're not certified. Does that mean they're not certified at all? They just have bachelor's degrees or do you mean they're not certified in special? that they are cert a certified teacher but not special ed. >> So it could be both. We could have some of our

038not could have I know exactly what our substitutes have but some of our substitutes have just the substitute license. >> Okay. >> Some of them um could be serving as um a substitute and have a teaching license. People do that for a variety of reasons. um in some spaces at some times actually currently we have retired teachers >> who are serving as a sub. So um it's it's a variety of all of those. >> Okay. And could you tell me what the difference is between the um psychologists educational background and the educational >> diagnosticians? >> I mean what are their certification? >> Yeah. So a school psychologist goes through an extremely rigorous and I if any of them are watching an extremely rigorous program um they would want me to highlight that in terms of

039assessment and understanding um assessment and learning and developmental um levels of of children um and I could name a ton of other things. an educational diagnostician um as we have hired um one is a special education teacher and one is actually has a background as a general education teacher. However, they brought very different skill sets to the table and so we are using them in different ways. And so our general education teacher had um a lot of experience and knowledge around general assessment and so is doing um uh academic achievement assessment with kids, progress monitoring, behavioral observations, um collaboration and problem solving with the team. They're not doing all the same things that a school psychologist would do. So, they're not working in isolation from each other. They're actually working in tandem with each other.

040Um, taking on different aspects of the evaluation process or the role of of what we expect them to do. Does that make sense? >> So, but they don't really have any educational background. Well, they're they're both educ they both have a they both have >> they they both have they are certified teachers. >> Okay. Yes. >> But they don't have I I just remember counting on Bob Cook when he was our school psychologist and he could really explain those tests and what they really really really meant. and our school psychologists are still doing that and our educational diagnosticians are um learning more about that and have great background in lots of different areas. >> Okay. So, I guess my question is are they doing a lot of what the school psychologists did was they did

041the testing, >> they did some testing >> and and then they met with teachers and stuff like that. So, are the um diagnosticians um doing the testing and then the psychologists doing the explaining? >> It depends on the situation. It depends on what what evaluation components we're doing. It depends on what we're looking for in that situation and it depends on which uh psychologist or which educational diagnostician we're looking at. We spent a great deal of time this summer putting together um a lot of a lot of charts around who can do what um what is legally allowed, what is an area of expertise for these people and where does it make sense for who to to serve in what role. And um we have met several times this fall and um have recalibrated and

042um made some adjustments. Um but every building still has access to some version of a school psychologist. Um, but I can't say that a school psychologist only does this and an educational diagnostician only does this because it depends on which of the people we're talking about and what the students evaluation components are. >> Okay. So, if a parent >> says, I want to talk to a school psychologist, there is a portion of a school psychologist assigned to every building. >> There would be somebody they could talk to who's a school psychologist. Okay. Um, and uh the the special ed coordinator that was hired, you said it's a new position. >> It's posted. >> Oh, it's posted. >> Oh, I'm sorry. I misunderstood. Um, >> and you said that this was a reallocation because we didn't

043we decided not to fill. So every every year we look at numbers in buildings for special education um and we look at the needs across that building >> and um what FTE or full-time equivalent of staff each building needs. So every year we take a look at that and make moves and um so we had several positions that had not been not several it really equated to to two. >> Nope. That's misinformation. It really equated to one position. I don't know why I said that. I apologize. [laughter] >> It equated to one position that hadn't been filled for a while that we had been meeting the needs of the students in different ways and we decided to stop trying to hire for that position and to um reallocate it to um the coordinator position. >>

044Okay. And was that a teacher position? >> Yes. >> Okay. And you said that this coordinator is neither a teacher nor an administrator. >> Yeah. They're not uh necessarily working daytoday with students and they're also it's not a requirement for us that they have that administrative. >> They don't have a type 75. Okay. >> They could. >> Uhhuh. Right. >> If anybody's out there >> in the union, >> um I would have to look at the posting. >> Okay. Okay. And I had some other questions, but they're back on another page. Um, >> while you're looking for that, I know that Todd Taylor, our previous um, assistant superintendent, is watching and I know that he loved the fact that you mentioned Bob Cook. >> He worked with Bob. >> He was wonderful. >> I know.

045>> And Todd is back working for us as a school psychologist because I we forgot to mention that we do have uh, two school retired school psychologists working for us. Todd being one of them. So he uh I asked him a question today and he said um that is an assistant superintendent answer, not a school psychologist answer, so he might charge us a little bit more for that. Okay. [laughter] Okay. Um uh I was wondering how many students now are in our our sped classes. Is it different for the autism classes, the EBD classes, and the life skills classes? How how in those classes about >> they are running from 5 to nine. >> Five to nine. >> So because you were saying that 300 students in a school and if you had six classes

046of five students that would be a lot for that would be 30 students. Mhm. But when you think about the fact that that 300 students would have 30 in the specialized program along with 30 to 50 who are um outside of that program, >> you're then looking at >> Sure. That makes sense. Yeah. >> Thanks for um where are the specialized programs? There are what buildings? >> There are specialized programs would be housed at King DPW >> and Thomas >> Payne. >> Okay. and um a a while ago and I don't know when how many years ago but the the board did vote when um renovating Thomas Payne to put some extra ser not services extra amenities >> in at Thomas Payne. So, were those helpful or not helpful? And are we thinking of then

047putting those amenities, if they're helpful, into the schools that are now serving >> these populations? >> I can um answer that question. I'll defer to Dr. Ivy Tatum if she wants to add anything as well. Um, anytime we're renovating, we're looking to make our buildings more or as accessible as possible. And so, um, that's what we did at at at Thomas Payne. The accessibility features that were put in there will be extremely helpful to students who receive special education services as well as other students um, and staff. And um I think uh we as we just did the sixth grade center um one of the additions we did there that I think we think about in terms of special education. But when I was a principal I can't tell you how much it benefited every

048student was a washer and dryer. And um we think about that in terms of lots of different needs related to special ed. But the majority of the time I was principled in an elementary building, I was using that washer and dryer for the just the student population in general. So accessibility equipment in terms of um doorways and um uh restrooms and playground equipment certainly benefits our students who receive services, but also can benefit students who don't. And I think we're always thinking about that when we're doing our renovations. Mhm. >> But they weren't so helpful that we're going to look, okay, King now has or um you said DPW was the other one now has these classrooms. We're not going to try and >> they've had those classrooms for for a while. King has had

049it for a few years. Um Dr. for Preston Williams. I think um accessibility features are um endless and um >> uh you know, we can continue to have conversations about what makes sense in those spaces. Um I'm not saying we're not having them, but um the kinds that were put in at Thomas Payne were were pretty significant to a to a remodel. >> Yeah. Back in the day when it was Hayes School, they used to have a washer and dryer though over there. >> That's just one example, but Yeah. Yeah. Um, so when the kids, you said you were changing how kids receive services. So kids who were in a self-contained program and now you're deciding, oh, I think you could go back to your home school. Then what services or support are those students

050and teachers receiving in the home school? >> The students are receiving the same services that were on their IEP if that's what they need. more services or less services depending on what the IEP team needs. A service isn't defined by its location. And so, um, >> I Yes, I'm sorry. >> No, no, that's okay. >> I misspoke. >> No, no, no, you didn't. Because this has been something that has come up, >> um, when we talked about a several of these individual students returning. So um and and I'll just think of a couple that that returned um from Thomas Payne and DPW to LE. I believe um that when those students started, we did not need to make any changes to their services. The services they were receiving at the uh non-home school are the

051same services that we recommended for them to receive at their home school. It does take conversations and thinking and planning and collaborating with the special ed team and the special ed staff to think about it differently. >> It's really easy to say this student needs almost a full day of service, so they need to go into a program. And what we're saying is you can receive a full day of service and not go to a specialized program. That can happen um any place. Mhm. I guess what I'm I should have said is what support then >> is available to that student and to the teachers in order to make sure that the student receives those services. >> That's what I was really asking. >> Yeah, >> I was going to say I believe that links

052to a lot of the professional development that we're doing um ongoing. I know specifically like Maria, Beth and I, we will go into um different buildings, collaborate with staff during that collaboration time, which we're talking about that intentional collaboration time with the general education teacher as well as special education teacher. We also find ourselves being the models and supporting um the staff when they're looking at a student's educational service and placement page and thinking differently on how we can support them in their homeschool. other things um also are just making sure um we are answering um questions and providing um PD even if it's beyond us that they believe that they need um so that we can service the students um with whatever is written in their IEP. It definitely is a mindset shift um

053and making sure that we are meeting students where they're at in their home school. But I would like to say that individuals that have made that shift are coming in with open minds and flexible and asking lots of questions um wanting to reach out and um see other programs and services and how their colleagues are doing it on a day-to-day basis and we've allowed that opportunity as well. >> There has been a lot of crossobservation >> and you think in general it's going well. I think there are lots of spaces where people feel really good and there are some spaces where people are still building their capacity. >> Okay. >> I have to be honest about that. Right. >> That's all. >> Go ahead, Lindsay. >> Okay. So, um, as a parent of a child

054that has a disability who is in general education, I do get a lot of teachers that, um, come to me and ask me, hey, what is something we can do, um, for these types of situations? And to me, that also comes with the professional development >> where I think that they all should have some sort of mandatory training for the disabilities of all types. Um that way it it will help not only the parent help the child but it will help the child in that situation so the teacher knows what to do rather than like immediate phone calls or the child is >> falling on the floor or the the the the communication from the behavior starts. So to me, I think it's really important to have the mandatory professional development, not just for special

055education, because all disabilities are not just in special education, they're in the general population. >> Absolutely. >> Thank you. Anyone else? >> A quick question. Um based on the fact that we did redistrict and a lot of students had to change schools within the last couple years, what how were the families were they receptive to going to different schools or did they want to remain in the schools that their child had already had some success or relationships? >> First, I'll throw out a number just so you understand the number we were talking about and it was less than >> it was less than 10. Okay. want to say, >> yeah, it was about eight families that we that we looked at um and talked to moving back to their home school, which isn't to say

056that that isn't very impactful for those eight families, but I I realized I hadn't given a number. So, you could think I'm talking about 50 kids, right? And and we're talking about eight families. It was more than that. Some families moved naturally um and so it ended up not being a conversation. Um, some families were um ready to move back to their home school and and were fine with it and didn't even blink an eye. Some families we met with once, twice, three times. Um, and then there were a couple families um that um petitioned, I think, to stay. So, um, but overall, um, like I I think I mentioned, I had Jackie and Maria make the calls because they're fabulous people and knew the families and the kids. And, um, I think we were

057all prepared to have difficult conversations and yet it went much better than we were expecting. And I would say overall um when we met with the families, they were really appreciative of taking the time to not only have their new team of individuals present, but also their previous team present and talking through, you know, strengths, opportunities for growth, what the programming would look like to support their students needs at their home school. But a majority of the families are really excited to um have their student be able to be with their siblings and the community in which they are surrounded by when they're outside playing or walk out, you know, in their backyard and see their next door neighbors. So those were the conversations that we had and they're going they're going really well right

058now. Really pleased. I think the more difficult conversations and the more difficult spaces are our kids coming out of early childhood who have been receiving services and and have needs and and um continuing to build the capacity of more staff to be able to meet those needs. >> You kind of spoke to this with answering with one of Jennifer's questions, but you know, each of these plans are individualized, right? IEPs. >> So, you know, what processes as an administrator do you have in place when looking at all of the entire district or even like a building level? So, looking inside of a building to find, you know, gaps in terms of either staffing or in terms of PD to identify commonly unmet needs in different places. >> I got to be able to answer that

059question, don't I? Because that's my job. Um I think there there are many many ways in which we we look at things. So first you you look at numbers and you look at um you you analyze IEP data in terms of amount of service that are on IEPs and you recognize that amount of service does not equate to need or effort. It's just a number. Then um you take a look at um at what kind of capacity the staff have in those buildings. Um and and you we're getting feedback on a regular basis in terms of what we need to do for professional development. It may not be that people are explicitly saying I need professional development and behavior but we see that in terms of um discipline referrals amount of services across a specific

060disability. If I'm noticing that um most of our students with um a specific disability are receiving this level of service and it's higher than what what you would think based on, you know, um a lot of digging deep into what is happening across this the the country nationally in terms of how people are receiving service. Um which is something that we take a look at. um then I know that we need to do a professional development in a certain way. We um each have buildings that we're assigned to and we meet with our administrators on a weekly or uh every other week basis and that gives us a lot of information in terms of what we need either in terms of staff or um or professional development. Um, one of the things, um, that, um,

061I think our staff would say we need to do a better job of is understanding the complexities of the schedule. Because when you're looking at an elementary schedule versus a middle school schedule versus a high school schedule, you are looking at different ways in which you need to staff to make that happen because of how the schedule plays out. And um I think um our elementary people, we need to better support that that creation of schedules to better be able to have more effective and efficient staffing. >> Okay. when you were talking about the uh service hours or ser amount of service. >> Okay. Now, it's been a long time since I've done an IEP. >> So, but um we used to look at that as teachers and then parents would look at that and

062we would say, you know, is that student receiving enough services? And we kind of equated that with services from a trained specialed person. And so in answering Paul's question, were you saying that we that those services um don't necessarily equate to time that that time shouldn't be equated to time with a special ed teacher. It could be equ I guess I didn't know what you were saying there about services and time and are do are we saying we're giving too much services? >> I mean we ask ourselves that question sometimes. I I think um we oftentimes put something on an IEP and forget that the goal is to in some instances work our way out of needing to provide that service. Sure. >> And um and for some kids, they're going to need service and

063specialized supports for the entirety of their educational career, but for many of our kids, they may not. Um, and so, um, I think we forget to have conversations around what was the intent of that service and has that been met or um, do we need to increase the service because we've been providing it and nothing has changed. Um, and and here's a here's a perfect example of it that doesn't equate for most students, but when we place our students in outside placements, either um a a special education day school or an alternative school, we are typically placing them there for pretty significant reasons. And as somebody who has spent, you know, 20 years in meetings where we're talking about kids who have been in those programs for a long time, and if I'm sitting in

064an IEP where we're talking about they're not turning in their work or they're not attending regularly or um you know, they are up and out of their seat a lot. It's time for us to be talking about that student going back to their home school because that isn't a reason to be in a special ed environment for a full day. Those are behaviors and and things that could be addressed in a less restrictive placement. That can happen with reading support. Um that can happen with speech language support. And and I think sometimes we forget to talk about is it time to add more because we aren't making growth or is it time to add less because we've made the growth and we don't need this anymore. >> Thank you. Any anyone else? Thank you for

065doing this essential work for the district and thank you for this great presentation. >> Thank you. We appreciate all of you. >> Our study topic for this evening is the 2024 2025 Illinois school report card. Okay, John is going to drive from over there because he and I are going to tag team this a little bit. We're very excited that we are have two or three less slides than we had last year. [laughter] So, yay. Um, but again, this is really, really important information and we don't want to make light of it, but we do know and recognize that it is a long presentation. So, um, we'll go through the slides. We probably won't talk ex extensively. We tried to make them easy bullets um easy graphs and tables. So they don't require uh a

066PhD to be able to to analyze the data. But stop us as we go and um it'll be easier I think to talk about some of the data as we go through each slide instead of kind of holding all the questions to the end if that's okay. All right. So we're going to jump right in. As you know, the school report card was released last um Thursday and um there was a lovely comparison in the news gazette that looked at all of our regional um data and the designations and um basically the whole county. So, um I know a lot of folks are talking about this and it is really important information. So, we shared a press release. I know it was long, but um I firmly believe that it's important for us to be

067transparent and talk about the areas on the port report card that we're doing well. Um but also talk about the areas that we know we still have work to do. And we have a little bit of both this year, which is nice. Um as you know, the uh accountability bands um really they look at everything from a elementary middle school. We talk about the world in terms of secondary being grades 6 through 12, but on the report card when they talk about accountability, they really do break things into K8 or 18 and um high school is kind of its own category um for accountability. So what is new in the report card this year? So last year there were a lot of new um areas and new data. This year the only real new metric

068that um they uh included for the first time ever is a high school growth calculation. So that is a um first time uh data point for the state. Our 2025 students will be the our first cohort. So they will be the first growth calculation data that we have available to us um in the report card. Um and so that will be our baseline for assessing future high school growth measures um as they develop over time. Um historically the state has focused more so on graduation rate as being a way to identify whether a school was making progress or if they were exemplary or commendable. um and you know of course chronic absenteeism and some of those other things are in there but um like ELA proficiency and math proficiency and some of those things were

069not part of the accountability for high schools. So moving forward um there this new metric will give us the opportunity to look at some growth over time. Um we have our own high school benchmarks as you know we give the map at the high school level in grades 9 through 11. So we have measures in district that we use to look at growth um for our high school students but this will be the first time that the state will also be looking at that beyond just the number of students that are graduating. There is a lot of time if you um have looked into or you know I know IB does some um hopefully they're doing some schoolboard presentations around this. I know Dr. Sanders, the state superintendent. This is his slide. I did not

070create this. Um, but he's shared a lot of information through press releases and through his superintendent um, state superintendent updates around the Illinois rightsiz performance levels. Um, you've heard me, you've probably heard Sanders, you've heard us say for several years that the proficiency rates in Illinois were the highest basically in the country. and that has um really impacted our our students level of college and career readiness as it relates to um the state performance levels. So one of the things that the state did this year is um this slide is a great example of you know we had our IR which is the state um standardized test the SAT which was the high school test and then ISA was our uh science assessment. If you look at that top misaligned um those bars, you're they

071are all over the place. We've got five um five performance levels versus four. What does meet and what's what's exemplary? The lang even the language isn't the same. Um so now we've moved to a more unified performance level. So we are going to use the same language. Um below proficient will mean the same thing for IR, ACT, ISA. above proficient will mean the same thing. So it'll be much more um comparing apples to apples when we talk about the vocabulary and we're able to compare growth over time. So um we included a uh in the press release for families and whoever else read it the media but mostly for our families we thought it was important for them to know a little bit more about what these rightsize performance levels mean. So um I included

072a PDF there for fam like what does this mean for families and so there was a lot more information in that document but the highlights were um the last two years the state uh since Tony Sand Sanders became the superintendent u one of his major goals was to rightsize our performance levels and really to um h make our students you know their their real achievement um relevant and you know there's some great examples that he gives about how students that um they on our tests are showing up as um below proficient or below expectations but they are taking AP classes or they're um getting a number of dual credit classes and they go on to college and be um and and are very successful. There's so many of those stories that um the proficiency rates

073really were uh so high that it really was showing that our students were underperforming in some areas when they were being very successful and on track for college and careers. So in 2025, after two years of going around the state talking about this, looking at new benchmarks, um looking at um our proficiency rates, they basically um rewrite sized, that's that's the word the state's using, the performance levels um to give different names, different scoring thresholds to put us more in alignment with the national standards um for other state assessments and post high school student success measures. Keep going. Um, that doesn't mean Oh, you can go back, John. Sorry. That doesn't mean I've had people ask, well, does that mean that you and we'll talk more about can we compare them or can't we? But,

074um, does that mean that the expectations or the standards for Illinois students have changed? No, it doesn't. We're still the expectations are the same. The standards still remain rigorous and unchanged. Um, basically what this did was just recalibrate our 2025 proficiency rates and establish new more accurate baseline for documenting progress. Um, due to the right sizing um of the current proficiency rates um you he is strongly encouraging I know we're going to talk about it this year but not in years after this but not to compare um comparing proficiency in the same way that we have in the past. So in a lot of the data that uh in his media call and in the information that they shared with the media um while the definition of proficient has changed um that change did not

075affect students raw skill scores or the calculation of students growth percentile. So we could still see their raw data scores um but they are uh very much saying um they don't want us comparing performance year after year with proficiency after this year. Um thankfully we'll still have student growth where we can um have some longitudinal data. So and then John is going to we're just going to kind of tag team back and forth. So >> So this slide here shows uh as we talked about they call at the state level right sizing the proficiency. I call it reorming. Uh which is something that we do periodically for a lot of tests. uh map is coming up on a reorming for uh new post pandemic also this uh right around now. Uh but here you can

076see uh highlighted this is for the state this is their previous year score versus their how that compares to this year's score for ELA and for math. Uh and then science actually reormed a little bit down. uh most of what we focus on on these presentations are uh English and math but uh the science was actually a little bit higher than it compared to nationally. So uh while Dr. Sanders did say that he didn't want districts comparing proficiency anymore, uh I couldn't help but just get one last check just to kind of see our longitudinal data. Uh other districts have done this as well. This is uh from a CPS Chicago public schools presentation where they uh checked the proficiency at the old norms for their district and they were up about 6 of a

077percent on proficiency yeartoyear. This will compare to this next slide where here you can see the three uh data points. This is our 2024 uh performance with the old norms. Our 2025 performance with the old norms. And then this is the same 2025 performance with the new norms. Same thing for ELA. So these two are comparable on the left and the one on the right is the new norm. So as you can see there's some good news here. We increased uh more than a percent in our proficiency in English and almost half a percent on our proficiency in math using the old norms. Uh getting this data is incredibly laborious. You have to download all the thousands of scores for all the kids for both years and kind of manually find their proficiencies uh versus

078the state just kind of giving that to you. So we will not be doing this for future years. Uh but this is some good news on our proficiency data year on year. Moving forward here, you can see the previous three years with our old proficiency data. And then now you can see on the new data broken out by race. We still have a lot of the same uh disparities between some of our racial groups within the district. uh but the scores overall are higher for that 2025 year. Uh we wanted to show you this compared to the previous scores just to show you that overall well uh the scores have gone up with the new norms. The uh changes are very similar to what they were. Uh and actually some good news here also for

079uh right here you can see some uh large improvement uh for this group here which is our uh multi-racial students. So uh in the future all of the data that's kind of grayed out to the left that is the data with the old norms. So we will not be seeing that anymore. So I'd like to just take a moment of silence while we mourn the loss of all of our old longitudinal data. >> Uh but moving on, this is for ELA. Uh similarly for our math proficiency, you'll see some of the same uh things there. So um again, this is a uh state board of education slide. So this was one of the slides that I've seen in multiple discussions about the report card leading up to the release last week. Um is uh we've

080talked about this with you before prof the difference between proficiency and growth. Um so uh it does hasn't changed even though we have rights sized. So what students know versus how they've grown. So proficiency is what measures what our students know and they're able to do. That hasn't changed. Um and proficiency equals achievement. So that's where we look at our gain, the gains our students are making in their achievement levels. Growth, however, measures progress over time when compared to similar students. So that is um a measure that we look at um growth equals progress. So moving forward, we will have um some great growth data to be able to look at um with the student growth percentiles um over over many years of time. Um so we have cohort growth which shows who's growing faster

081now. Um and we look at our cohorts um in different ways. Uh one of the cohorts that we like to look at because our mobility rate in our district is so high is students who start with us in kindergarten and then stay with us through all through high school. Um you'd be surprised how many students go back and forth between Urbana Champagne Randol back to Urbana. Um and all of that impacts their growth. they're getting different curriculum, they're getting, you know, different instruction. Um, we also look at baseline growth, which shows how rates of learning change over time. Um, so basically the same math just different comparison points. Um, the importance of growth is growth shows where the gains are really happening. Achievement is important, but um growth really is showing us that progress over

082time. So why proficiency and growth are needed? Again, we get a complete picture with both um and growth tells us how far our students have come and how quickly they're moving forward. So, we uh definitely need both measures as we plan and guide school improvement moving forward. So, this next graph uh shows our ELA growth over the past four years. And just as a reminder, the growth is consistent between the norms because that uh is based just on the improvement of the raw scores. So, as you can see, uh we did have a substantial increase in ELA student growth this year uh from last year. Uh just as a reminder, the student growth percentile uh 50% means you're kind of gaining on the state average and below 50% means you're kind of falling further behind

083on the state average. So 43% still uh putting us falling further behind on the state average, but the rate of change in which we're uh moving, we're moving in the right direction. And that'll be highlighted a little bit more clearly on these next two slides. So this is uh you may recognize this slide. I'm sure you all remember it from last year. We presented this slide. This was uh our growth uh for 2024 from 2023. And I just wanted to show you this slide just because on the right side where you look at the uh kind of bars of how the change in growth from 2023 the slide from this year uh we've had a kind of lot bigger change in growth. The change of growth again if you remember from last year the growth

084is kind of how fast you're going down the highway. The change in growth is whether you're accelerating or decelerating. So almost all of our uh racial groups uh showed uh increase like a in the growth from last year to this year. So that's a little bit of a positive for us there too. Uh similarly for math is not as big of a jump but we moved up from 41.4% to 44% this year. And then uh just to compare apples and apples, this is last year's slide uh showing on the right side uh most of our groups kind of either at par or in the negative and then this year almost all of our groups uh showing a lot more uh high change in growth moving in the right direction. Once again, >> before you leave,

085John Math, can you go back to the last slide? I just wanted to highlight um you'll be hearing more about the state's numerousy plan. So um when I uh listened to Dr. Sanders talk about state data, the whole state is seeing a um a shift in um ELA. Yes, there's progress being made. You know, we rolled out our science of reading. The statewide plan was around science of reading and a literacy comprehensive literacy plan. And we're seeing that growth, I think, across the whole state. the area that is um not growing as quickly is math. And that is across um multiple districts and and statewide. And so um something that we'll be talking about more in the future is the state's numeracy plan um to help strengthen and support our math practices as a state,

086not just as a district. So, so graduation rate earlier you heard me talk about that has been the accountabil accountability measure most used for our high school students um for years in the school report card and that has not changed. Um as you saw um in our press release and you know as this slide uh shows we did see a um decrease um we were 83% last year and we um dropped for our four-year graduation rate um to 80% um that is not the goal. We have a a strategic planning goal around this to increase the number of students that are graduating um in four years and on time every year um every year to year. Um what I can see go John go to the next one. I can't remember what the Okay, you

087can go back. So um when we looked at the four-year cohort, the five-year cohort, the six-year cohort, and you can go into the school and um score report card and do that. We did not make a fouryear, fiveyear, sixyear cohort graph for you, but I think the most important thing to note is our four-year graduation rate did go down 3%, but if you look at our five-year cohort, it went up 3%. Um remember this 2020 to 2024 25 is our those are our students who were out of high school for a whole year during COVID. Um and um many of them when we returned remotely um in 2122 school year were reclassified. Many ninth graders were ninth graders again and several lots of sophomores were sophomores again. And so um that particular cohort of students

088um really struggled uh remotely for that year and um that it really did impact our fouryear versus our five-year cohort. So, our four-year cohort went down, but our five-year cohort went up because it took several of those freshman and sophomore students an additional year to graduate because of the year that they were at home um and um not in in person for their learning as a high school student. >> Yeah. And the five-year cohort for the GLA graduating class of 2025 won't be included obviously until they graduate this year. Uh I did uh out of curiosity uh Dr. Laura Taylor mentioned that I should go check kind of some of the students who we took on in 2021 just out of curiosity and I did pull that up. I didn't make a slide. I just

089kind of pulled the data during this meeting, but the uh entering class of 21, the class who uh had an entry date uh in 2021, which was that first kind of pandemic year, that was the year we had the most reclassified students almost by double uh for the last uh four years, which kind of rings true. I remember being there passing out Chromebooks and we did it by classes and I had so many students come into the sophomore junior line and their name wasn't on the list and I had to give them the sad news that their Chromebook was one line over uh and that they should probably talk to their counselor at that point. So, uh, still dealing with the effects of 2020 21 school years, but, uh, light on the horizon >> and

090lots of, uh, I think intentionality at the high school. In the press release, I mentioned things like, um, you know, our students that are graduating from Tiger Academy who would not be graduating um, other otherwise. Um, we have three December grads that are graduating from Tiger Academy this semester. So, um, Academy 9, Academy 10. So, there's some really specific coursework. There's some specific, um, intentional, uh, supports being put in place for students to, um, really impact the four-year graduation rate, um, and just have more students graduating, not just graduating, but graduating with a plan for a college or a career as well. So, um, if you look at this slide, um, you can see that we broke it out by race and, um, we saw a decrease in the four-year graduation rates. Most the most

091impacted, uh, group is our black students. >> So, moving on, uh, ninth graders on track. Uh this tracks students having learned at le earned at least uh five fully year course credits and having no more than one F in a core semester course. So you can see a little good news here. Uh actually pretty good news. Uh we are year-over-year up uh over 7% for 9th graders on track. You can look at that top bar is the year-on-year change and the bottom you can see that we've been trending up uh over the course of the last four years a kind of steady increase with some little ups and downs here and there. So, good news for nth graders on track. And then the eighth graders passing algebra 1 uh did have a substantial decrease this

092year. So this is looking at uh eighth graders passing algebra 1. Uh this also as we've been looking at some of these we do have some cohorts of classes that come through. Since this is just looking at individual grade levels instead of the district as a whole, there are some cohorts that come through and do a little bit better and a little bit worse. So, there's a little bit noise more noise in these numbers than some of the district-wide schoolwide numbers. >> And I did want to point on the side, um I people ask about eighth graders passing algebra. Not all of our eighth graders are taking algebra. Um but because algebra is considered advanced for eighth grade, it's not part of the um grade level eighth grade standard to be for an eighth grade

093student. It isn't a um st a math standard to be in algebra. Um so it is considered um advanced. So, but if you're a student that is collegebound and taking STEM classes, um if you want to reach calculus at the high school level, taking algebra um at 8th grade is is really important. >> Chronic absenteeism, some more good news here. Uh we have been really focusing on this as a district. It's been part of a lot of our strategic district improvement plans. It's been kind of a core of all of our communication this past year that students can't learn if they're not in school. And we have over the past two years seen a decrease of 22% in chronic absenteeism. uh which is really a credit to our administrators and uh district and school administrators

094that we've been getting more kids in school uh and more butts and seats. So that's where all the learning happens >> and our teachers too. So I think um we have put a um uh we have our student engagement advocates that that is their job to work on truency and absenteeism, but we've also talked a lot with our teacher leaders and our staff around the fact that we need them to be also part of the solution to chronic absenteeism. Families want to hear from their teachers more than they want to hear from the principal or the superintendent. And so, um, the more our staff are sending those reminders and putting notes in Google Classroom and sending, um, just saying, "Hey, we missed you the last three days. Where have you been?" I think our teachers

095um, intentional focus on this has also helped as well. It's been a team effort to get to to really um, show improvement in this area. >> Yeah. And I think Miss Lundowski talked about a pre previous presentation about leveraging some of our panorama and other tools to work with seas to get individual uh attendance plans for people who are kind of most at risk for not paying at school. This is the same chronic absenteeism. Sorry. >> No, go ahead. No disclaimer. uh broken out by race again. So, uh decreases in pretty much all groups this year. Uh the biggest decreases for uh white uh multi-racial and Hispanic students. So, really leading the way there. >> This was a slide we didn't show you last year, but we pulled this um when I was in one

096of Dr. Sanders's presentations. He shared this data for the state and I said to John, you know, we need to look at it in this way as well. You know, we anticipated that high school would have the highest rates of chronic absenteeism. Um, you know, they they can get they get themselves to school by themselves, right? They can they can do that. A lot of them. Um, but our younger students, I was a little more surprised that our we have some higher rates of absenteeism among our K12. I think kindergarten, yes. because um you know kindergarten is not required and I think you when you've got a 5-year-old and they are sick and they sniffle and um then most parents keep them home. But but I was a little surprised that that number for first

097and second grade um is as high as it is. So I'm glad we really looked at this and um it's going to give us a little more um information to be able to share with our principles around grade level specific um interventions. Uh we've been looking at it more of a elementary and middle and um high school, but we we really are seeing that um if we can do some intentional push pushes um at kindergarten, first and second when our a lot of our families are just starting the school experience and really changing some of those habits before they get older, it will ultimately make a difference to them as middle schoolers and high schoolers. >> Yeah. And I did want to highlight on this slide just uh when you have uh a sample size

098of a couple million students like the state, you can get some really beautiful data just that curve of like attendance across the state highlighting kind of like kindergarteners are maybe out more with sniffles and seniors are more out with senioritis. uh but then our data as I had kind of mentioned earlier uh there's a little bit more noise in the data when you have class sizes of uh 300 so um participation in CTE which is our uh career and technical education pathways. So as you can see um we continue to grow our CTE program at our high school. It is a a focus of mine. It's a focus of Mr. Guzzman's um and you can see the intentionality in the number of participants that are starting to enroll in those classes. So, you know, going

099back to 2022, we had a smaller number of students um concentrating as a I'm like I am here because I am a CTE student and I'm this is the path that I'm on. you know, we have created some intentional career um pathways and college pathways for industrial technology, for our culinary program. Um so, uh you can go onto the school report card and on the the page that talks about the CTE concentrators, you can click in there and see what some of the some of those numbers are. These are just the overall numbers um for our district. And it is nice to see that our the four-year graduation rate for the students that um are focusing on CTE and and career and technical ed, their graduation rate is 92.7%. They they are there, they want

100to be there and they are enjoying the classes that they're taking. And so um we see that is is something that we want to promote and we want to grow more in our district. So advanced coursework. Um the uh as you can see this is an area that we we show you this slide every year and there has been a little change. Um we again one of my goals and one of the goals at the high school is to um increase the number of students that are in our advanced placement classes and honors classes. We've talked about that for many years. But not just increasing the numbers, increasing the students of color, our black students, our um Latino students that are taking those classes. What we have seen though, we focused so much on trying

101to get our our students of color in some of those advanced and honors classes. Now, our dual language classes are uh have kind of uh surpassed um that increase we're seeing this year is our biggest increases with our dual credit students. Um, we have more students taking dual credits um than ever before. We have more students graduating with uh more credits that they can graduate as a senior. And I already have so many credits towards a degree at Parkland or toward a degree somewhere else. Um, so that dual credit increase um more than offsets the decrease in AP participation. I think some of our students have figured out um while AP classes are great um unless you're scoring a five on the AP exam that you're not getting a credit for that. That credit's not

102going with you to the U of I a lot of uh you know land grant colleges and some of the the bigger universities if you don't score five it does it it doesn't count. Um, so I think just our shift in also talking about um careers and um making sure that our students are in pathways that really suit what they want to do for the future. Um we've we are not surprised by this shift in dual credit and it it isn't to be seen as a negative that there are fewer students um doing that AP course work. It's it should be seen as a positive because our students are um more college-minded and more career-minded and those dual credit classes are helping them get there. >> Quick question. >> Yeah. >> So, in that orange

103box there where it says percent change 2023 for AP classes, should that be negative 4.58 instead of positive? I had just noticed that as well, uh, Paul, and I think that might have been, uh, leftover from last year's slide deck, but I can get you the updated numbers for those >> uh, a little bit later. >> Thanks. >> Sherry was going to say something. Oh, okay. >> So, average class sizes over the last three years, uh, once again, uh, we've been kind of pushing average class size down, which is good. uh kind of more space in the classrooms and more direct teacher contact is another way where you can really uh influence uh the educational uh progress for students. This year we're down uh very slightly about 0.15 students per classroom. And so over the

104last four years we've reduced average classroom size by over 2.2 two students per classroom which is a really uh impressive reduction for student classroom. I would like to highlight also on this next slide uh the reduction we didn't include this last year uh but we had talked a lot about uh the variance in classroom sizes during the redistricting process. So this uh school report card year represents our first year uh post redistricting. So uh following the redistricting there was a very substantial reduction in the variance between those very large class sizes and very small class sizes sometimes in the same hallway of the same building. Uh so that's you can see here almost all of them except kindergarten had a slight increase but everybody else was down very substantially for the variance between large and

105small classes. So on to the um annual summitive designations. So um as you know there are multiple measures of indicators for academic achievement and student success. we've just talked about many of them and so I want the public and our families and um just our stakeholders to remember that um while the designations are given annually from the state um they shouldn't just be um a measure of whether a school is successful or not. We're focusing on lots of other areas um to really highlight student success. to the next one. So, this is um an ISBY screenshot. This is not a slide that I make, but it it's very self-explanatory and very detailed around how and what the criteria um are to be considered um commendable, targeted, and comprehensive. I know um this is something that

106is compared, you know, district to district and um county to county and so um there are a lot of supports that our our schools receive around um the those that are targeted or comprehensive um and you know we do have the one intensive designation. So we'll go ahead to the next slide and talk about those a little bit. So um that first column shows you the 2324 designation and then the dark bolded column there um in the middle shows you the 2425 designation. So just a couple of highlights. Um Urbana Middle School um after a a very uh targeted focus on chronic absenteeism, they um that really did help them um in moving from comprehensive to targeted. You'll also see that their designated subgroups have changed a little bit. So for as many years as

107has been designated, they have been designated for all students, which would be um all all basically all of the uh racial student groups. Um one of the groups that they've been designated for in the past that they were not designated for this year was the Latino students. So that is a group that made um progress at S and um they did not fall in the uh designated subgroup category, but they are going to continue to work this year for the the black students, the children with disabilities and um lowincome student groups. Leo uh was another school that um was targeted the first year they received their targeted designation. and um they actually had the uh Latino student group there and then that dropped off. But um last year they were targeted for black and um

108lowincome and this no black and students with disabilities, I'm sorry, children with disabilities. And now the group that um they were designated for this year to as their u priority area subgroup is uh the black their black students. And then um King, Thomas Payne, and Dr. Williams um their designations didn't change and their dedic designated subgroups did not change. So, they'll continue to work um with the school improvement supports that we receive from the state. Um they come every year and talk about their school improvement plans. So, we're not going to really go into those tonight, but um we will continue to work on the priority area to uh grow um achievement and uh proficiency and growth for all of those students um student groups. And then Yankee Ridge um as you know this is

109they did not have a designation last year and this is their first year um and so based on the data that they have they were able to receive a commendable um designation um for this school year and they're doing a lot of conversations and talking about um what they need to do to make sure they remain commendable for next year. So you had a question. Okay. And John is going to uh show the schoolhouse just one more quick quickly. This is a a great visual that we highlighted last year that we were going to just highlight not so much for the board because we know you guys know, but more so for our our listening audience and parents that might be watching. >> Yep. And so how they come up with the designations. Uh there's

110between well some of them don't have all of them but there's between six and eight uh different groups and each one of those gets a percent. Uh and then you can either depending on your proficiency and growth and uh chronic absenteeism. It's a little different at secondary and elementary. You get so many points for each of those. All of the points are aggregated and then you get your overall index score at the top. Uh, I did want to highlight if you log into Illinois schoolreportcard.com and if anybody here or at home is as excited about data as me, I'm sorry because I don't believe you. Uh, but uh, this has all the data about all the schools in the state and you can just like lose yourself in here for a day or two uh,

111learning about things. If you click on the schools, this will take you to all of our schools. And then if you click into them, uh the first one here will be the designation. Uh and then if you go down there, you can click into each of these and it will give you more information about that. Uh all of almost everything we've been talking about tonight has either been in the academic progress or the student tabs on the side. So this has all the information about the new achievement profiles. If you go back to the district, it will have the secondary and elementary broken out there as well. All of the growth data, all of the student data, uh, including chronic absenteeism, and a lot of other things that we have there. I'm not going to

112go too long into it because you don't want this one-hour presentation to be a 4-hour presentation, but that's all there if anybody wants to look at it further in the future. And then I think Angie was going to do these next couple slides. Alrighty. So, in terms of teacher retention, um we are a little bit below some of our kind of highest competitors in terms of um unit 4 or Danville. Um we're a little bit above teacher retention um rate than Randol. Not that it's, you know, a race, but I am a little bit competitive [music] in in trying to keep our staff here. But I wanted to look a little bit deeper. And so I um on the Illinois report card, I did a five-year trend um back on teacher retention and just looking

113at the numbers in terms of um thinking about um some of the turmoil that the district has had um you know several years ago prior to Dr. driver Tatum um being our leader um in school year 2019 to 20 or 2018 to 2019 and then going into 2020 the retention rate was 78.7% and um and it it takes a lot to move that that needle and so for us to be at the 83.4 four where the on the report card they're rounding up to 84. But for us to to jump those five um percentage points I think is pretty impressive given how many changes we've had in the district in terms of schools um closing reopening as something different. um our dual language program moving to one school where these are these are big changes

114that created you know staff and and families um being at board meetings and that's sometimes where you can lose people and our numbers have continually increased over the years which is something that I think matters and it's hard to think about those things when you have people here that are very angry and upset and if you get emails um and so on but we are trying very hard behind the scenes to have the right leaders in place at buildings to retain quality staff and we're continuing to do that through our strategic plan. So, I wanted to mention that um a little bit. So, um it's not as high as what I want it to be, but I think that given um the other circumstances, it's something it's a celebration. Um something that is was kind

115of important to note um when you think about student achievement and we think about student attendance um something I'm trying to figure out and I'm digger deep I'm digging deeper into is just kind of our attendant teacher attendance and if you notice um our attendance rate this is 40% this in the school year 25 so last school year 40% of our teachers missed 10 days or less. Um, and that is um not great in terms I mean if you think of students um aren't achieving if they aren't at school, students are also not achieving if we don't have great teacher attendance. And so the the schools that um maybe are in more need of of that support are are um schools that that have struggled with student behaviors as well. So and DPW um have

116traditionally struggled with more teacher absenteeism than the other schools, but this year um which is different than past years, and I'm trying to figure out why. This year, in addition to DPW, we've also had more absentes absenteeism at Yankee Ridge, which was um which is also interesting. And so we're again looking at things through um celebrating staff um supporting staff um so that we we have teachers attending work more regularly. >> Is that [clears throat and cough] is that all absences or sick days or >> any absence? Yes. So uh professional day, sick day, personal day if they're not if in our you know Skyward system our data that they that they were absent. And so if you look right next to you know where we're 40% of our teachers um missed less than 10

117days right and so that means that 60% of our teachers miss 10 days like more than 10 days of of work. Now do they get the benefit time through the contract? Absolutely. Um and and so sometimes I see novice teachers, you know, using a lot of days because it's hard when you, you know, student teaching and going to school doesn't necessarily prepare you for a classroom in 2025. Um but we're trying to support our our staff through like employee assistance program um of just making sure that we get people at work. Um we're also working with administrators to address um staff attendance teacher and um non-sert staff regarding patterns of behavior. So right now we have a lot of people not just teachers a lot of staff that are absent on Mondays and Fridays. Um

118that seems to be a trend that's sp like that I've seen every year. Um you know sometimes people might need that for their mental health. Um, however, when we're thinking about student achievement and what our kids need, it's it's really hard when we have those um absent days. We have hired more subs this year than we ever have in the past, and we continue to um hire the subs, but there's no replacement for the licensed teacher who's there every day with the kids. Um, while we have an adult in the room that's qualified that has a bachelor's degree and has a lesson plan, it's not a it's not a replacement. So, that's something that, um, we're going to kind of strategize about. Um we've talked about offering some incentives um for staff that meet that

119goal um through the teacher vacancy grant. Um it it's just that it's hard to plan for knowing what it could be, you know, if it's going to have an impact. How much money is it going to make to make an impact? It's not necessarily sustainable because we can't after this year the vacancy grant funds are gone. Um so it's more of like an internal thing, right? We can't necessarily bribe people to come to work. Um, we want them to come to work because they want to be there. So, we're thinking about ways to make them want to be there, too. So this this slide has our uh classroom teacher ratios uh which is again a little bit uh we've decreased the ratios this year of classroom uh student teachers. So students per elementary teacher were

120down. That kind of correlates to the previous slide where we showed you uh the average classroom sizes. >> So key takeaways um celebrating our chronic absenteeism improvements by 10% in 2024. Um and an additional 11.5% in 2025. That that is huge. Um you know, we can't show progress or achievement if we don't have butts in the seats and our kids aren't there. So um that has been a focus and will continue to be um using the pre2025 norms uh both ELA and math proficiency um improved by 1.1% for ELA and point4% for math compared with the historic norms. And we already had our moment of silence for our longitudina data. So, we won't be doing this this data point moving forward, but um we just thought it was important just to show that this year.

121Um ELA student growth percentiles um showed substantial growth, especially for our black and our multi-racial students. That's our uh two or more racist students. Um we drilled down and looked at who is the largest multi-racial group and it is our uh black and white students, our students that identify as black and white. So, um that is is a great celebration there. Um math student growth overall improved, but especially for our multi-racial and our Asian students. Um we talked about eighth grader, eighth grade students passing algebra. While that percentage uh decreased, the percentage of our ninth grade students on track to graduate on time, um which is really important, increased by 7.2% and ultimately that will impact our future graduation rate. um the number of students taking CTE courses continues to increase um and they we

122we see that in their four-year graduation rate at 92.7%. So what questions do you have for us or comments? >> Board members questions. Go ahead Jennifer >> your mic please. >> Oh they I did it again. Do our students do our students take the nape? >> Our fourth graders do I we don't get that data? Yeah, I don't I don't think so. >> No, we don't we don't take it because I had I had read an article about you know Illinois compared to Virginia and >> we have to be chosen to take it and we haven't I mean we haven't had a group designated a cohort to do it in a while. That's not the one that we're chosen for this current year. >> We might be. Yeah, I think fourth grade maybe, but the

123state tells us we have dedicate we have designated this grade level and they will take the NATE, but we don't take it as like a district. >> Okay. And so so those national aptitude I forget what the the letters form um test that >> national in the data that was included here. This is all last year's data. I I think the one that was one grade level that was chosen was this year. So, >> okay. >> It's not in this data. Yes. >> But the No, I wasn't asking if it was in this data. Um um this article I read just said that districts should compare the cohorts taking the NAPE or you know the Illinois state scores taking the NAPE to see how they >> um how the new designation not designations but how

124the the new >> proficiency levels compare with the NAPE >> because and so I'm hoping that we'll do that because we want to know if our kids are really making good progress in learning. >> The state does that. We've not ever done that. Um I know this uh data point that the state has shared in the past is that when you look at 50 the nape in reference to the 50 states, Illinois was like fourth >> in terms of how strict and how high our proficiency rates were related to the NATE. Okay. Um, and so that is one of the things I think why they rightsize the benchmark because >> seeing Illinois being fourth out of 50 states when you look at Nate data was one of the reasons why um that was a real

125uh goal for our state superintendent. >> Okay. Okay. And another question was um was targeted this year instead of comprehensive. Yes. And those designations come with money per student. And I was wondering, so is that money being divided between and the sixth grade center? >> No. So the money follows the groups, the students. So um we have our own school school improvement funds that we um like Yankee Ridge, they've not had access to school improvement dollars because they've not been designated in the high school. And um so we'll continue to support the sixth grade center and uh their school improvement goals, but the state is pretty specific about um even though the students were part of that data, the S money um for school improvement, that title 0003 grant is very specific to the school.

126>> And so do they still give us the same amount of money even though there are a third fewer students there? Um there I thought it was ahead right we'll have to look at what we are being given for next year but yeah we got very similar they give you a certain amount based on what year you are in your school improvement status right >> so the first year we um got a smaller amount because it was for planning purposes and then our the year after planning I mean it was such a significant amount of money we could barely even spend it all on because they're very specific about what you can and can't use it for as well >> um and So, um, it I don't know what the exact amount is off the

127top of my head, but it is identified by >> it's not a headcount amount. >> It is by enrollment and it is by student groups and it is based on your priority area groups. >> Okay. >> I have a question. >> Yeah. Um going off of the um absenteeism for high school students especially, I know you talked about um making pushes to fix kind of the whole like truency and the chronic absenteeism thing. What kind of pushes are being made to hopefully improve truency and >> abencia and um we have student engagement advocates at all of our schools. So at the high school is Jack's schools, Mr. Jack who um we have a um list of who those students are um and it is you know year to year we might have 150 students on

128that list from the high school. I don't know what the exact number is right now but um they meet individually with parents. We send letters out. Um their home visits that are done. Um lots of individual check-ins with kiddos. Um, I know one of the things that we've talked a lot about with our staff is really noticing. It's hard to do that at the high school level when you've got 120 students, right, a teacher might have, but really trying to notice I have not seen Keandre for three days. I'm going to check in with the counselor, check in with that Keandre's dean to know if we know where Kandre is. And um, and just sending those reminders in Google Classroom. the personal touches um are really important. You know, we have been talking a lot

129about relational capacity and belonging and I think um our students notice when they've been missed. Our parents know appreciate the phone call that yes, I appreciate you've missed my kid at school. Um, so I I think we're doing a lot of uh district-wide things like messaging, videos, um, just trying to put the importance of how much attendance matters in front of our our families, but also doing those uh nuanced little individual conversations and meetings one- on-one or um just those personal touches, too. So, a little bit of all of it. If you've got other if you got ideas, Kandra, I'd love to hear them from a high school students perspective of what you know you might want us to be doing. But [snorts] >> thank you. >> Um the designation at DPW uh does that

130uh the state has requirements and for training again for the board and for the building and etc. that's going to have to be followed. >> I don't know what they are yet. So, um Paul's mentioning last year because we had an intensive designated school for a second year, um the board had to um uh participate in three different modules. Um one about accountability, one about um guidance from the board and what data are we looking at. Maryanne and I had to participate in some um financial um uh what is it? What's the acronym? the resource allocation review. >> Yes, the ROR. Yes. So, looking at to Jennifer's point, the money that we get from the state and the money that we have as a district, how are we allocating that to the buildings that need

131it the most? And when you have a building that is intensive, are we looking at um the number of staff there? Are we looking at things like the class sizes in that building? Are we making sure that we're allocating more money um to this to the a building that would have an intensive designation? I don't know what the requirements will be for next year yet. So, they haven't shared those with us, but I'm sure there will be because now this will be our third year in a row with an intensive designation. So >> just one more thing I guess you know this you speaking to that with regards to trying to come up with differentiated ways of providing supports between our buildings and different designations right you maybe when we're kind of looking at this

132going into a contract here we might try just to think out of the box about that in different ways as well in terms of how we negotiate with the union >> it's a good point and Angie said like theirs and DP PW have are the buildings that have had more long-term subs um in re years past and that continues to be the case this year and I mean it's improving but um it you do see the impact more in those two spaces. So >> I just want to touch on it's a concept something that I'm not shy about conveying how I feel about this. Um, there's a big difference between testing ability and whether or not a student can read. And I don't think we can evaluate a whole school based on one particular score

133on one particular day, but we do have to be concerned that the students are learning how to read, but whether or not it's a testing >> and you mentioned that that there are a lot of students who might not do well um on this test, but they do achieve. They are going on to college. >> Absolutely. Um, and that's one of the reasons why I came into this district because instead of um, working at Parkland and focusing just on GED where there is one test one day and you have to either pass or fail that on a score versus coming into the Deltad program that we provide here in our district where the students study, they learn and they get tested on what they learned. Y >> um, plus they build their skills as well

134as they're as they're doing that. I think that that's something that Urbana has always valued and I'm glad that um I was able to come here to help students and we showed that that we had students who went on and became attorneys. We just had a student who became one of the 40 under 40 and yet [clears throat] might have not done well or not have attended school might have been you know one of those truins but they can really achieve and and I think we have to look at each individual child and not just a school's um rating in order to help our children. >> Absolutely. >> Anyone else any questions or comments? >> Um I agree with Sherry. I think that that is a strength of I mean I had a brother who

135took longer than four years to get out of high school but he got out of high school [laughter] and um you know I always told students I don't believe in second chances. I believe as as many chances [laughter] as you need to learn this. So, and I think that's something that Urbana does and Urbana does well and and that's something that we should pat ourselves on the back about um because I think that's important and not everybody graduates in four years. Um and my other question would be um are we going to talk about the demographics of the school report card at another time? >> Um we typically don't. We usually focus on the designations and the achievement and um proficiency and growth, but I mean you can go in there and look at any

136is there a specific data point that you wanted to look at in the >> Well, um >> Don might still have it up live if we >> um I guess I when I looked at the demographic stuff that was just district stuff, >> district >> um I noticed that there was a h we have a higher student teacher ratio than the state for elementary students and we have a lower administration student rate than the state and our teachers get less pay than teachers across the state and our administrators get more and I don't know that that's working for us. Um, so I do think that it's something that we ought to think about. Anyone else? >> All right. Well, Luke, go ahead. >> So, this you uh have on these figures the state averages or

137state percentages. Does this do you ever look at the data in terms of comparable school sizes or demographics? You know, you don't look at a 1A school football team versus a 8A. >> No, we frequently for a lot of the things and you may have seen like it kind of crept into like a lot of the staff portion, but we'll look at the schools that are kind of demographically in size comparable to us in this area. So we'll frequently kind of look between like Ranul, Decatur, Danville, Champagne, and Urbana. Uh just to see kind of how that is a more like relative comparison than the state average is 90% Chicago. And >> like a lot of the other school districts like in our area are school districts with maybe >> a total of like a

138100 or 600 students. So they kind of have a lot of different things going on than us where uh like looking at those uh >> we do around us. You look at the chronic absenteeism slide 23. That is a data point that I mean we have other data points that we look at that but you can see we compared ourselves to the districts that look more like us that are diverse that have high um high number of students that are low income um that have more black and brown students. And so like when you compare our um this is meaningful to us to be able to show that our chronic absenteeism when we compare ourselves to our peers people that again look like us. We're not comparing ourselves to Muhammad or St. Joe or to

139Lono and Monaceel and places like that. We're comparing ourselves to districts that have more diversity. So when you look at Decar, Randle, City Schools, um Danville, those are often places um when we do things like talk about preparing for negotiations, we'll look at our teacher retention rates compared to the districts that look like us. Um we look at our teacher pay and and our insurance and you know, we just we look at that benefit in a district that is very similar. Um, talking about the number of days a a teacher goes to work in our district in Decar and Rantul and Danville is very different than talking about the number of days a teacher might miss in New Trier or you know some of those multi-million dollar districts up north or even some of our

140districts that are less diverse that are close to us. So um the challenges are just really different um dayto day. So yeah, we do do that, but we we've not gone to that deep of a dive when we pull out that student achievement data. So >> with the um teacher retention data, >> it's I imagine Urbana and Champagne, the population mobility is higher than a town like Grand Tour with the university here. >> Yep. >> Is the I mean is there any way to correlate the number of teachers that are leaving with the flux of population in this town. So our retention rate may be great. It's just the people move in and out of this city a lot. >> Oh yeah. And we collect that d like we know the people who leave us

141they're you know they got a job at you know there we had a email today that one of our folks might potentially be leaving us because her husband is got an opportunity for a job in Arizona. I mean that happens um a lot when in a university town. So, >> we have several teachers on visas that can only teach for three to five years. And so, um, you know, that impacts our data. We have, um, teachers that are married to spouses or significant other at the university and when they finish their program, they're leaving just as as you suggested. Um, in terms of contract negotiations, if we were able to match um, what our neighbor pays over here for their teachers, I mean, our retention rate would would go through the roof. And so I

142want to I mean we all want to be able to offer as much as we can for our teachers. Um but we also have to fairly compensate our administrators. Other I mean because there is a um a huge uh shortage of administrators too. Um if you look at just in in the area of who's looking for a superintendent for next year, we have Champagne, Danville, Decar, I believe Poria, and Springfield. And so people aren't in line for these jobs even though they pay well. They're not there's a lot that comes with it um that may not be worth the money. So we we do want to pay our teachers well. Um but we also need to keep strong administrators to lead them too. So there's a lot that goes into it. We're constantly reviewing um

143ways and trying to follow current trends through research um through human resource societies that that we're a part of um to study what other people are doing. And so in terms of negotiations, thinking about other things that we can offer our staff that might not um always be the money, you know, you think about the working conditions and you think about other benefits um that would be important to staff. So the [clears throat] let me ask another the way you calculate the retention rate is something like this where say you have a 100 teachers last year and this year we have 80 80 so that is a 20% reduction. So that would be an 80% retention rate. Is that the way it's >> our our retention rate from the state and they don't count every

144single teaching position. It's it's by code and some of the data is not correct. So, for example, both on Urbana and Champagne's um report card data, it says in the past six years, we've had two principal turnovers. That's not accurate for either district. And so, um some of I I don't know when they pull some of our data how they come up with their calculations. Um but in in terms of this particular calculation for teacher retention of the teacher groups that they pulled which are not all licensed like certified staff that we divine that we define as teacher in the um collective bargaining unit but if we had 100 teachers last year 83.6 of those teachers would return this year. That's what that data is. >> Okay. And I will say if you do have

145any questions about uh how they come up with any of the numbers on the school report card, uh here's the teacher retention. And if you scroll on up to the tippity top, there's this little learn more arrow. And if you click on that, that uh tells you kind of a little bit more about what it means and how they calculate that. >> Um okay, I'll check that out. I just have one other one other question about it just in case I if if maybe you know this but um is there a simple way to assess at what point the teachers are leaving are the majority of these teachers leaving after one year five years >> if we that's a great question and so we have found through our data that if if we can get

146teachers to year five they're more apt to stay with us and so that's when we do a lot of wraparound supports this Thursday we have a new teacher mixer social at the yard. Um I don't I know you guys have rules about who can like be in the space, but um if a few of you want to stop by, meet new staff, say, you know, hey, thanks for being here. I mean, it's just kind of an informal listening session of how can we support you and we try to get them tied in with other people so that they have that community. Um but it's it's it's that young group. Um because it's hard as soon as you start. We have a lot of I mean we've had um you know first year teachers that have

147you know they've paid all this money to go to school and then after they start and it's hard and and they feel like they have to quit and leave the field and some do that right in the beginning of the I mean right few months of school um we had one person that um wanted to do that and we were able to keep her um we we changed schools wanted a fresh start to be able to wrap around a lot of mentor ing support and she stayed. Um, you know, and sometimes we have principles do the same where when they go in it's just it's hard and people are like, I can't [clears throat] do this. I want to I want to do something else. And so that's when we really have to mentor and

148and bring in supports to to let them, you know, to show them that they can do it. >> I think one thing that's impacting Illinois is the tier 2 retirement system as well. um you know when you're a young person and you say you know it is hard and we we do see success once we can get our teachers to 10 year you know get them past that three four five year um mark but the change in the tier 2 um when I can what age I can retire like I'm a tier one because I started 33 years ago but our new group um I think they have to like I can retire when I'm 55 which I'm past that but the new tier They have to work until they're 62. >> No, it's it's

14967, I think. >> 67. Yes. >> And that and if you're a young person. >> Yeah. Like our veterans, they're not going anywhere, right? Our people who are here like me who've been in the district 20, 30 years, they're not leaving the the folks that are being impacted are the and that and our unions. I mean, the the um the uh CFT um the um what is it? Illinois Federation of Teachers, the IEA. I have really been pushing our legislators um to fix that in the retirement system because it's going to continue to be an issue when if I work two or three years and I'm looking ahead thinking, "Oh my gosh, I have to do this till I'm 67 before I can retire." >> Um and how hard it is, you know, for the

150first couple years. Um, so that's why we're doing all the things that we can to um make them want to stay and help them um be successful while they're here because it really is easy to say, you know, I can't do this for, you know, 40 more years. I'm going to go do something else. And so I think until our state really looks at fixing that tier 2 system, we're going to continue to have this be an issue with our newer and younger non-tenure teachers. >> Yeah. I just have one other question. So a lot of the longitudinal data was from 2019 2020 which is a pivotal >> moment right? >> Do does does a lot of this data exist for the five years before that? Oh yeah 2015 to 2020. >> We just don't

151show you 10 years. We we tend to show five years. So, in all the slides, we dropped off 2018 and thought, okay, we could have kept 2018 and kept going, but we tend to kind of um keep it around the five-year, but if you go in and play in the report card, like John said, you can really get lost. There's years and years and years. >> The graphs get really busy when you start getting to like 15, 20 years. >> Yeah. >> Anyone else? If and if there's something you want to see specifically, Luke, for the last 10 years, let us know and we can we can pull that and send it to you. Yeah. >> And if you have ideas about staff retention, by all means, love to hear them. So, I mean, it

152takes all of us to really think about what we can do. So, >> every presentation that I'm in the um when we talk about achievement or progress, everyone is continuing to say post pandemic, we're here, and post pandemic, we've made this much success. And I think we're going to continue that is going to be that marker for many years to come in terms of can we get back to where we were before 2020 and 2019 and and I think that's every district's goal due to how much the pandemic just impacted so many areas. So >> the presentation that I was watching part of it at least it said even before the pandemic they saw that the trends were going down. >> Oh yeah. >> So wasn't just because of the pandemic. >> Yes for sure.

153Speaking of the tier one or tier two retirement, um a friend of mine, uh she said that the teacher absenteeism is because um we don't have in our contract um what we used to have. And I'm wondering if that's because of the tier 2 retirement, but it used to be if you saved up 2 years of sick leave that then they would give you, you know, like I retired after 25 years, but they gave me 27. >> Mhm. >> Because I had two years. >> They still do that. >> We still do that. You don't It doesn't have to be in the contract. And so you think about those tier 2 people and the novice teachers who might leave the field if they have to work until they're 67, they a lot of people aren't

154saving those sick days. Like I've saved them, right? I mean like I I think that our tier one people have saved them because um you know we see light at the end of the tunnel, right? And that's two years earlier of that service credit. >> Um but yeah, we it happens. TRS honors that. We report those days as service credit. So it it doesn't have to be in the contract. Um I don't know with tier 2 like what the rules are in terms of the service credit if the two years still stands. I would think it would, but um that's something I can look into. Usually when TRS when we talk to TRS, they won't talk to us about like an individual staff member. Um that's their business on when they can retire and and

155their service credit. And so we just report the numbers to them. >> That's good discussion. Anyone else? Uh, any other questions or comments? >> All right. All right. Thank you everybody. It's a lot of work to put this together. Really appreciate it. Um, moving on. We have one action item tonight. So, uh, it's 12.1. Uh, we pre-approved uh, these bills and checks uh, back in September 16th. But these are the actual numbers from our September bills. Starting off with our education fund bills for $1.7 million. Uh operation maintenance fund bills uh $466,000. Transportation fund bills uh $231,000. Working cash bonds for $949,000. Uh tort for $64,000. Wow. Uh school occ facility occupancy tax for $30,000. uh life safety levy for about $69,000, payroll and benefits uh for $4.1 million and Urbana adult education for $143,000.

156Is there a motion to approve uh the September bills and checks as read? >> So moved. >> Second. >> Been moved and second. Any questions, comments, or discussion? A roll call vote is in order. Member Hixon, >> yes. >> Member Maribou, >> yes. >> Member Langorf, yes. Vice President Baxley, >> yes. >> President Blowski, >> yes. >> Member Cheryl, >> yes. >> Motion passes. Uh there is a call for a future uh committee meeting on Monday, uh November 10th at 6 p.m. at the building that is currently called the uh Rana 6 Grid Center uh for the naming committee. Um it's not it wasn't in our published uh agenda because it the time wasn't set when it was published. Superintendent report. >> Okay. Um so today our um state superintendent shared some information uh regarding

157um the uh lack of SNAP benefits for some of our our families um due to the shutdown. So we we shared this out. Um you know we are a full community eligible participating district. So our students will continue to get free breakfast um and lunch in our afterchool programs. Um you know we started reading rally and um our other afterchool programs that meet the students get a snack or they just get a snack Maryann snack and dinner at the >> I think it depends on the program. >> Depends on the program. So, we are continuing to offer snack and um dinner depending on what is happening after school. Um and we did share some additional resources um for the community around um food pantries and the um the University of Illinois Extension offers um some

158support as well if you go into their website um for local food pantries. So, there's more discussion about this happening at the state level and um we'll continue to share more as we know more. Um we're really excited that we have a threetime state qualifier in cross country. So, Marley Yao um we've we've celebrated her uh the last two years as well. She's only the second female athlete from Urbana to achieve this and she will race um for state on Saturday. So, we're really proud of Marley. So, congratulations and um we hope she gets there. So, yay gets on that podium. Um the 40 North Ace Awards um have been announced. So, Tamara Gingo, music teacher at UHS orchestra, who also works with our mariachi and does so many other things, um has been awarded

159the 2025 teacher ACE award from 40 North um 88 West. Um, Miss Gingle will be honored at the ACE award celebration on December 2nd. So, congratulations to Tamry Gingold. 40 under 40 was last week and um, one of our social workers at the middle school, Stephanie Menow Smith, um, was recognized and we we love her. She's amazing. She's so child- centered and um, her students enjoy her. She's just a positive person to be around. So, um, we are really excited to be able to honor her and acknowledge the work that she's doing at our Bana Middle School. The UHS career fair was today. Um, in the small gym, we had uh a little over 20 employers. Um, there were some um military uh folks present as well, Parkland, University of Illinois. um some of our

160career and trade um unions were there talking about apprenticeships with students. So they were able to go over during their lunch period um the fourth and fifth hour um six-hour lunches to talk about possible careers after high school. So congratulations to the uh CTE department and our uh counselors for um their work to put together. This was one of the biggest career fairs that I can remember. Um it was very well attended by the students and we appreciate the number of employers who came out to participate. Um intramural basketball games start this Saturday um at the health and wellness center. So this is the boys schedule um for fifth grade. Uh there's six teams. They play at 9, 10, and 11. And the girls, we have three teams. If you go to the next slide,

161John. And the girls um are doing something a little bit different. The girls uh we have three teams. Two of them are combined teams, but the girls skills are very much beginning level. And so um we proposed to the coaches a couple different options. And yesterday the coaches decided that they like the option of really focusing on skills. And um instead of playing um kind of like the boys are doing these full games um they're going to do half games and that way every um every team plays at least twice and instead of them being expected to play for a full game they're going to just work on their skill um for a half game and then they get to play each other because it's just three teams. So they'll they'll get the um experience

162of being in games and um knowing learning the rules and all of that, but really um spending more time focusing on their skills and growing those beginning level basketball skills. Um the Day of the Dead bike ride was a community celebration. Um I know it was organized by our um family liaison, Lucia. Um, I know Kenita did a great job of sharing around information with all of us. Um, and the just the community learned to ride and walk safely and at the same time, um, had their day of the dead celebration. So, it was a fun event as you can see from the pictures and photos. Um, Friday is a staff development day. Um, so elementary families and early childhood families know there's no school Friday. our uh sixth grade um middle school and high

163school students dismiss early and have um professional development in the afternoon at their buildings. Um eighth grade pri choir performance is um November 11th next week at 7. And then the uh fall musical starts um November 21st um and through that weekend before Thanksgiving Yeah, I just got an email that I wanted to share. Um it's regarding Tiger Market. Um I Mr. Guzman said that he's allowing us to go in there um additional days. So we'll be there every Tuesday hopefully this month distributing food um children or students can also go into the pantry with a teacher counselor and get additional foods if they need it. And I read in the paper today that United Way got $20,000 or is giving $20,000 and dividing up between a few entities that they trust and they know

164have the ability to get food to families and we were one of the ones that were selected. So >> I did not see I read in the paper, you know, >> I haven't got an official news, but >> yes, that's great. >> Go ahead. >> Uh this Thursday is uh UHS wind symphony and symphonic. They'll be in the uhs gym. >> Okay. I don't mean to have that on the events and engagement calendar. So, thank you, Lindsay. >> All right. >> Is that it? >> Um, one thing before we go. If you have not seen the board lunchons, I just I meant to mention that. Sorry. Um, Lori sent it out on Friday and I know a couple people have gone in and started signing up. So, if you guys can go in and um

165put your name in some of those lunch times and then we'll advertise once we know where every who's going and where and when. >> Right. [snorts] Um published in our agenda were a list of FOY requests that were completed. At this point in time, the chair would entertain a motion to adjurnn. >> So move. >> Second. >> All in favor say I. >> I. Uh that's it. We'll see you all. I guess our next board meeting is November 18th. >> We have a printed