Urbana School District 116 Board of Education 05 06 25

001Where's Jennifer? She She walked in. She doesn't need to get her stuff. I'm gonna start. All right. It's past six o'clock, so let's begin this study session of our band school district 116. Uh, roll call, please. Member Stanton. Yes. Member Jones here. Member Hixon here. Member Baxley here. Member Langodorf here. Vice President Exom here. President Palowski here. Uh we have a quorum. Uh there are there's corrections or modifications tonight's agenda. Uh hearing none. There there will be an executive session after the current meeting for the purpose of litigation facing the district personnel and for a student matter. There will be no action taken by the board following the executive session. Is there a motion to approve tonight's agenda? So moved. Second. All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Let's let's go off with start

002off with our accommodations and recognitions first with the uh science Olympia team. So Jeff Uh good evening. I'd like to thank the school board and the school district uh for this opportunity to recognize a pretty special group of Urbana High School students. Um this is the Urbana High School Science Olympiad team. And uh what they've accomplished over the last couple of months is nothing short of amazing considering that this um uh that this uh extracurricular program at Urbana High School hasn't had a long history. It sort of got revived uh just about just about two years ago and this was our third year and uh they took it all the way in the state. Uh so maybe on your way out of here you can see a trophy about this big. Uh actually I'm going

003to take it with me. It's a trophy about this big. Um and they took second in state uh about a month ago and to get there they took second at regionals and um almost won that. Uh but uh uh considering that maybe not many people here have done science olympiad or been to one of these things, uh I thought I'd have a couple of students here describe uh what happens at a science olympiad uh uh full full day on Saturdays. All right. Hi, my name is Natalie Poesque. I've been doing science olympiad since my freshman year and I'm now a junior. Um so at the each competition there's around 20 events and we try to break it up into groups of three or two or three and each student does three or four events. Um

004half of the events are considered test events. So we have there's written tests, there's lab tests. Um and that's kind of what I like to do. Um you're even hybrid. So, we spend most of the year after we're assigned our um events is we study and we work together and develop strategies um because a lot of it it's under time pressure and we just have to um kind of use our time as best as we can and fit everything onto our cheat sheets as we can and yeah and we also have build events which I think Colin will talk about. Yeah. So, [Music] um to Oh, I'm so sorry. In addition to um test events, there's also build events um where you design and construct um devices to complete a certain task um which they

005then measure and then you compete based on some kind of point system. So here um is an example of a build event that we I completed with uh my partner Elliot Anderson. Yeah. Um sorry, do you want to pick it up? And it's um basically it's a vehicle that designed uh to go a specific distance as accurately as possible. Um, but there's also several other there's other also several other uh types of uh build events based like wind power uh where you construct a wind power turbine or um like bungee drop where you uh try to make a bungee drop uh as accurate as possible to a certain point. So there's a many types and also hybrid events where you do a test and a build. Okay. So, um I also did a build event

006and this is um robot tour. My name is JJ Lee. I'm a junior. I did this with Colin. Um and so this robot was designed using like the Lego EV3 platform. And basically, you've got like a like a certain track that um the robot needs to follow as accurately as possible. and it needs to go from like the start to the end. Um, but they don't tell you the track beforehand. So, you need to, you know, program this thing to be able to move without really knowing um, what particular route you're going to have at the end. And it's all like autonomously done. So, there's no like remote control or anything. So, um, you know, on the event day, we basically are given like 10 minutes to program it and then you have to set

007it on the course and see how well it does. Um, so you know, I didn't have much experience with robotics before doing a science Olympiad, but um, we've managed to, you know, usually get first or second um, in these competitions. Um, and yeah, it's been pretty [Music] good. So, uh, hopefully that gives you an idea of what we'd actually do um, in in an Olympiad. And uh prep preparation for all of this really began at the beginning of the school year and uh the Olympiads that we go to mainly uh March and uh April uh state was in April. So, uh, it's many months of preparation that go into this and and, uh, as we get closer to the competition, actually, a lot more preparation gets gets done, uh, at the last minute, uh, uh,

008which is a lot of work. And, uh, so again, we appreciate the chance to come in and, uh, talk to you about our accomplishments. And, um, uh, I uh, purposely didn't introduce myself at the beginning because this is all about them. I didn't do any of this building. Um, my name is Jeff Birdsley. I'm a science teacher at Erbana High School. And my co-ach, uh, my name is Alex Riley. I'm also a science teacher at Urbana High School. Um, and then we can have the other team members introduce themselves really quick. Um, I'm Cecilia Birdsley. I am a junior at Urbana High School and I've been doing this since freshman year. Um, I'm I'm Orona Mitra. Uh, I'm a fresh and this is my first year. I'm Laori Mitra. Um, I'm also a freshman and

009this is also my first year. All right. And thank you so much. Thank you all. We're so proud of you. It's really awesome work. Uh our next uh recognition accommodation is for Habitat. Okay. Did that work? Cool. Oh, yay. Cool. the big sweet. Um, all right. So, I'm Laura Coritz. I am one of the sponsors of Habitat Club. Um, giving Mark Foley a break tonight, even though he also is very integral to what we're doing. Um, thanks for being here and thanks for supporting something that's really deeply meaningful to our students and to our district. Um, the kids are passing out some letters that they wrote about their experiences and also an agenda of what we do on the trips. Um, I promised Lori that we would keep this shorter than usual. Um, so we're

010going to try and and keep it brief. And normally we come up and we uh do a recap of what happens on our Mississippi trips, but I think most of you have seen that presentation before. Uh and while we do think it's really important that we continue to talk about what education can be when we put creativity and our flexibility first, um we just put kind of put the itinerary on that first piece of paper and the kids are going to come up and just describe a little bit briefly about their experiences. Um I did put up here just kind of what we as a club are and what we do if you're not aware. Um, Habitat Club formed at Urbana High School in 2014. Um, we do local builds as well as work in

011uh, Koma County, Mississippi. So, about once a month we build with local habitat. Um, we've got about 50 active students in the club right now. Um, and then we take trips to Mississippi in both November and February. Thank you. Um, and we go to Mississippi because there's a lot of need there. Uh, how do we make it happen? I think it's also important to mention that this is uh something that we want to be an opportunity for any student regardless of their situation. So, students um pay what they can to attend the trip and then everything else is raised through fundraising um grants. We write a lot of grants um and donations. And then if anybody is watching that has a student that they think that would want to join, uh we meet weekly. Kids

012don't have to do anything except to show up at a meeting. Um we meet in Mr. Foley's room and kids can either come before school or after school. We do the same meeting twice um so that more students can be there. Okay. So I think the first student to talk is Lillian. Hi everyone, good evening. I'd like to say thank you for having us here and I think I can speak on behalf of everyone when I say that we're all very excited to share our experiences in the Delta with you all. Um, as Laura mentioned, my name's Lillian Hall or my name is Lillian. My name is Lillian Hall. I'm a senior and I've been fortunate enough to be able to go on three of the trips to the Delta with uh Urbana High School

013with Habitat Reanity. Um, I can I can confidently say that each one of these trips has significantly impacted my life. Um, each in their own way. Uh the first time when I went to the Delta, I was confronted with very a very impoverished and a very impoverished community that in many ways reminded me of my own upbringing and through just even the from the construction work as you can see in some of these photos to uh going and teaching and tutoring the elementary school kids to just interacting with the community. I felt like I very much bonded and formed a connection with the Delta. Uh, and it it's very heartwarming to see how deeply our the work that we do uh volunteer down there uh how it helps empower the people. And personally, the my

014work with Habitat for Humanity has inspired me to pursue my dreams of becoming a lawyer and providing legal services to those who are unable to afford them. And I can't say what my life would have been like had I not joined Habitat, but considering I did, I can say that it has definitely fostered a sense of purpose and a deep feeling of belonging in my life. And thank you for listening. And the next person speaking is going to be Noah. [Applause] All right. Good evening everyone. My name is Noah Hamilton. I am a volunteer here with Habitat for Humanity at Urbana High School. I have been since my junior year and I am a senior now. And really briefly, I just wanted to talk about kind of happiness. So when I first or before I

015joined Habitat for Humanity, um I was kind of trying to find what made me happy the most. And I kind of thought, oh, at first it's materialistic things or maybe it's people. Then when I joined the club and I got down there in Mississippi, which I was fortunate enough to be given the chance, I realized that what really made me happy was giving every part of myself to others. And that's what I did when I was building that home, when I went to the elementary school and when I met this family of mine that I call my habitat family. So, I don't know. I just I'm glad that I got this chance and this experience to find myself and I'm really grateful. Thank you so much. And the next speaker is Natalie. [Applause] Hi, I'm

016back. Um okay this is my slide. Um the biggest thing I saw when I came back was just the ability to see the value in community and teamwork. Um I like the word family because for this week we were spending like every second together. We were going to work at the build site every day together. We were we were cooking and cleaning together. where we were singing together and um and just all these meaningful conversations and just enjoying each other's presence. I think it was just so joyful for all of us. I think our hearts were all so full to see other people who really care about the world and wanting to make an impact. Like I didn't know how to build a house. I didn't know any construction skills whatsoever. But just being willing

017to show up and work was enough. And I think for a lot of people was the same thing. and just the willingness to learn and work together. It was so rewarding to see the house at the end of the week and how much we had done and also all the bonds that were created. Like I got closer with so many um so many of my friends that I was already friends with and then I met so many new amazing people that I wouldn't have ever like talked to if it weren't for the trip. And lastly, I want to say like the role models that you gain from that and just seeing that as an adult like you like sometimes it's hard to like think about a future, but the adults on the trip are really

018good at showing you like what it means to be a good role model. Um, and yeah, that's it. I wanted to Next is Kate. Um, hi everyone. My name is Kate Gres and I'm a junior at Urbana High School who got to go on the Habitat trip in February. Um, this trip helped me understand the importance of community and the value of dedication to something more significant than material things and far more significant than simply myself. While in Mississippi, I was exposed to an area of extreme poverty. Um, largely due to deep roots of racism. Um, the people in the Delta are the most kind-hearted and generous people that you will ever meet, but they carry such a large burden upon their shoulders that it's difficult for most of us to even begin to imagine.

019And alone, I know that I'm not capable of creating a big change in their community. But participating in Habitat has shown me the possibilities for making a positive impact when we join together. Um, and I have carried with me a new sense of selflessness ever since the trip. And now it's easier for me to understand the full extent of sacrifice when I'm working for such a crucial cause. Um, and I'd like to have Jaylen come up. [Applause] Hello, my name is Jaylen Johnson and I just wanted to say thank you for having me out tonight and it's so amazing to speak about this wonderful trip in front of wonderful people. So, um, the main thing the trip taught me, I went on the February 2025 trip was the sense of purpose. And I just wanted

020to say that everyone has a purpose in this world and this trip has really taught me and allowed me to figure out my purpose in life is giving myself back to others. Placing yourself in the needs of others, especially when you're removed from your normal community really shows just how much of an impact a small group of people just we have about like 20 individuals who go on this trip. How much that small group can impact so many communities down in the Delta. And I just wanted to say Habitat for Humanity, especially these trips, change lives. Not Not only for the people who receive the houses, but for the people who volunteer to build those houses. Habitat changed my life, saved me, gave me purpose, and I just want to say thank you for letting

021us speak tonight. Everyone should involve themselves in Habitat. Thank you. Wait. And I would like to invite Beatric to to talk. Hi, my name is Beatatric. I'm a junior and I was able to go on the November trip for Habitats. I'm really glad that I was able to go on the trip because the sense of community that was gained during this trip helped us feel as though we were working towards a common goal and making a difference on a small community's lives and the lives within that community. Even though we were only able to work on a couple of houses, it still felt as though we were making a difference. Next, I'd like to call up [Applause] Kamaya. Hello, I'm Kamaya Britt and I got the opportunity to go on the November and the February

022trip. And uh for me, Habitat is just a complete indescribable feeling until you are involved in a community where everybody's putting their best foot forward to give somebody else a better opportunity and um a chance to build a house and really build a deeper community. Um, for me after leaving the November trip, I just every day I dreamed of going back and I just really, really, really miss the feeling that it gave being involved in something that's bigger than you. And when I got the chance to go again in February trip, I was enloped with unescribable joy to be able to participate into that again. And um, yeah, and for that that's really changed my life. And I'm really really appreciative of what this organization offers to Urbana High School and it gives you a

023place where you can be completely compassionate and uh carry out the acts of selflessness. So thank you so much. And next is Brock. [Applause] Oh, okay. Well, uh, there we go. My bad. Sorry. So, uh, I'm Brock. I'm a junior. I started doing Habitat earlier this year, and I had a very positive experience on a build outside of the Mississippi Delta, and it was like very profound and fulfilling work, and I I really made me want to go back to it. So, I went into my Mississippi experience like expecting like, "Oh, this is going to be great and I'm going to do so much." And then I was completely like blindsided by like the the sort of environment that it creates for you to to build connections with people because it's a a complete reset

024of the normal social environment that you're familiar with. And there's all these like faces and names that you sort of take for granted and then you become so much more like acquainted and familiar with on a way that like it's really hard to to articulate because it's like super very like on an emotional level rather than something that you get in your your routine of like a a normal dayto-day. And I think everyone here would agree that like going to the Delta changed their life. It's a very powerful experience. And I really don't think I'm ever going to forget it. Like it's I didn't spend many days there, but it was like insane. It's going to define the rest of the time up. I'm alive on this planet. Um after me is [Applause] Hazel. Hi.

025Um my name is Hazel. I'm a junior at Urbana. Um, and I learned a lot from traveling to the Mississippi Delta this past February. But I think um, most of all, I learned the significance of the choices we make. I think I used to be somewhat nihilistic and skeptical of the idea that any one of us could actually make an impact. But after spending a whole week living and working in a community of people whose lives had been changed by the work that we were doing, um, I realized that we really can make a positive difference when we put the effort in. Um, and I think additionally living in close quarters with a group of people who many of which were strangers at the beginning of the trip and you don't have your phones, um,

026and it's like Brock said, a complete social reset. Um, it becomes clear that the little choices that we make in our day-to-day interactions, from smiles to conversations to chores, um, have a huge impact on how we build connections and relationships and a more compassionate world overall. Um, so thank you. And after me is Joseph. [Applause] All right, I don't think Joseph can make it, so I'm just going to close this out really quick by saying thank you again. Um, these are our kids. So, I we have a building full of more of them and a district full of more of them. Um, and I just want to say that this like this is just glimpses of what this trip means. please look at the packets and the letters that they wrote and all the things

027that they did um outside of what they just talked about. Um but as an educator, this is a reminder to me of why we're here. Um and it's really the heart of what public education can be. So, as a school board, I just want to say thank you for supporting this and any other type of experience like this experiential education. Um oh, Joseph's here. Come here, Joseph. Joseph's gonna say his thing really quick. Okay, you sit here. Joseph's great. Um, hello board. Um, sorry, I know I'm a little bit late, but um, my name is Joseph Buts. I had the privilege of going on the trip for November this year and November last year. And, um, it's just been an amazing experience for sure. for one of my best, not even one of my best,

028the best experience that's happened to me during my time at Urban High School for sure. Um, I'm very grateful to Mark and Laura for having um us come. Um, it's an amazing amazing opportunity. Can you describe it in words? Um, one particular opportunity that it gave me, uh, my family's from the Delta, my grandparents were from, uh, the Mississippi area on my mom's side. And so being able to reconnect with my family's heritage and just um just connect with that part of me um and seeing people who are going through such struggle that my parent my grandparents know very much well about is um I can't even describe it man it was very inspirational very motivational for me um to make a change not just this community but across the world across the United States

029and yeah like I said I just can't thank Mark and Laura enough for having for letting me have the opportunity and I feel like there's been during my time at Urbana High School. There's nothing a better thing for me to uh do for my community and for myself um than the trip. So, all right. Okay. So, thank you. And yeah, just leaving us with the idea that may like maybe your whole night could be like this like let's do this all the time. It would be great. Okay. Thank you. We'd love that. Thank you. Our last recognition for tonight are our unsung heroes. as we're getting our video ready um and our students um our scholars who are exiting the building. We have adult scholars behind us who have been nominated to be the 2025

030um unsung heroes. This year we had more nominations than we've had the past six years and um it was a really difficult process to be able to to select the group that stands before us. And so first of all, thank you so much for coming. Thank you for bringing families uh family and friends. And this is an opportunity. We don't always get to recognize the good work um that 1100 staff members do. So, please take that in mind that we have,00 staff and that we have um maybe 30 on our unsung hero list, which is a huge accomplishment and you should be really proud. So, uh John, I don't know. Are we still waiting on the video? Are you ready? So, we're going to play the video and then I'll come up and pass out

031awards. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Actually, if you're here, when your picture pops up, you should stand up. Yeah. Connie, stand up. I thought I saw Monica. Yes, Monica's here. Yay. Kobe, I'm sorry I missed you. Don't worry. I'm going to recognize you later. Jackson, you should stand up longer than [Music] that. Heat. Heat. [Music] Yay. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Come on, Sharon. Stand up. [Applause] [Music] Sharon heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Jessica was nominated by three staff members at Thomas [Music] Payne. Congratulations, Jessica. [Music] Hey, Sam. Hey, [Music] Sam. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Applause] [Music] All right, I have to carry this around so

032that the listening people can hear the audio. audience. So, if our unsung heroes could come up here and stand and face Dr. Iver Tatum, we'd like to take a picture for social media purposes. You look great. You have a lot of people here supporting you. So, Kobe was the second one recognized and Kobe's going to be our head custodian at Leo next year. Would you raise your hand because you didn't get to chance to stand up? So, come on up, friends. Oh, ma'am. We might need to squeeze in, do a double row. If we can have the people that are about my height maybe come in the middle a little bit or or Yeah, that's great, too. If you are flexible enough to do what Mr. Espinosa is doing, that would be Yeah. All right.

033Can we come up? Miss White, I am so glad that you are here because I have been All right, Sharon, come on. Billy, come on. All right, can you get it? You guys look great. Some of our faces up here. Thank you. Um, some of our faces up here have been nominated in years past as well. That truly speaks to um, what kind of human you are. So, we're going to have uh, pass out some plaques. Uh, Brandon McFarland is here, our recruitment and retention coordinator. Is he still here? Okay. And then, um, Maryann is also going to help pass out. All right. Gina's absent. Kobe, come on up. Yes, Connie. Congratulations, Kobe. Here's Connie. Monica Jackson. I don't think Debbie Curtis was here. I didn't see her. Let's see. Okay, Bernice is not here.

034JJ is not here. David, congratulations. Oh, sorry, Miss Green. Sharon, Marabo, she's over here. [Laughter] Jessica, I don't think Rachel was here. I didn't see her stand up. Sam Obama, Maggie, Jen Robinson, I didn't see her. Okay. Karen Connor Matt. Tanya. Miss White. Yep. Miss Wilson. Is Miss Wright here? I didn't see her come in. I just wanted to double check. And always at the end with that Y, Billy's retiring at the end of this school year, but that doesn't mean that you still don't get to earn this because I can see that you're still going to come back to help us. So, Mr. Billy Young, [Music] congratulations. Thank you all so much for coming. If you don't want to stay for the whole meeting, this is a great time to exit and go celebrate.

035You're also welcome to stay for our agenda, which will go for a long time. Thank you all. Thank you. Give the room a minute to reset here. Okay. That was fun. So, as our unsung heroes are exiting, just so that the board knows, um, this award is peer nominated. So, their colleagues have nominated them. Um, which makes it more special too. Also, um, while the crowd is exiting, if anybody wishes to make a statement before the board tonight during citizen statements, there are golden rod sheets in the back of the room. If you just fill one out and add it your name to it, hand it to recording secretary Lori Johnson, we can add you to the list of people who wish to address the board this evening. Okay. Doing it early helps. Doing it

036earlier, not the last meeting. Okay. All right. Thank you. Okay. One last call. Does anybody wish to address the board this evening? Lori, any anybody turn to forms? Okay. So, there are no citizen statements this evening. Um, moving on to our student ambassador report. Okay. First of all, I just wanted to made make it aware that it's teacher appreciation week. So, don't forget to show our teachers appreciation for all the hard work that they do um through the school year, but also through the summer to prepare for the new school year. So, I just wanted to say that because our teachers do really do a lot um for our students. Um this Friday, May 9th, um senior class is hosting an out outreach fair um across door one on streets. Um we're going to have

037food trucks, games, uh different clubs and people from the community out. Um, and also DJ Fireproof will be there. Um, if you don't know Fireman Phil, um, he retired now, but he DJs, um, for events, so he will also be there. Um, and it's open to the community, so not only high schoolers, but anybody can come and see what we have to offer. Um, also this Friday right after is Jazz Cafe. Um it's going to be in the high school commons. Um it is free, but there's a suggestion donation um if you're able to. Um there's going to I believe and uh are both playing uh jazz bands there. So it'll be um a really fun night. And then there's a whole lot of other concerts um just in the music department. So May 7th,

038which is this Wednesday, um UHS is orchestra is having their concert from 7:00 to 8:30 in the auditorium. May 12th is the UHS band. Same time, same location. Um May 13th, 7th, and 6th and 7th choirs are having their uh concert in the cafeterium. Uh May 15th is the UHS choir concert from 5:00 to 6:30 in the auditorium. uh sixth and seventh grade band and orchestra are also having their concert the same time or same day but from 7 to 8:30 in the cafeterium. And then May 20th 8th grade band orchestra and choir are having their concert 7 to 8:30 in the cafeterium. So show our music department some support. I'm sure they would love it for their end of the year concerts. Um I know it's going to be a fun time. Next slide.

039Oh, and then um most recent student leader meeting um Mr. Guzman and I uh talked and there have been changes made um to classes. So, they were able to offer classes um that were talked about at the last meeting. Um so, they have been worked out. Um, if your students are saying otherwise, please contact me so we can work that out because as of right now, they have um made changes to work those in for those students. Thank you. Thank you. You guys always do such a fantastic job. It's now time for board reports. Anybody wish to give a board report this evening? I guess I want to give one. I want to offer a special thank you to ST Lai for serving here these past two years. You provided a voice for people who

040don't feel they have power to be here. You ask great questions and you put in a ton of time and effort especially considering everything that's going on in your personal life. Um so just want to thank you for being here. Um Tori, it's hard for me to really u emphasize how much your wit, your wisdom, and your work ethic are going to be missed in this board. I'm especially going to miss somebody calling me out when I need to be called out. Um you can still do that by the way, even though you're not on the board. Yeah. Um so I just want to thank you both for your service here. Yep. Thank you. Um some other another like real topic that we need to discuss is we did not get an application for uh

041subdist. So we need to discuss how to proceed on that. Um, as a board, I I would like to hear your opinions, but I would recommend opening up for another three weeks. We have 45 days to fill the seat before the regional office just pick somebody for us. 45 days from what day? Today. From today. I do have something to say. Go ahead. Um, and this is just on a personal note. I um I sended the email to you because I'm not socially going to stop crying myself today, but um I want to read it. It's okay for you guys? Of course. Um I just want to thank you and thank um all the administration staff. Uh this has been a really great opportunity for me to grow personally and professionally. I feel like when

042I came here I have no idea what was about it. Uh the expectations were very high and I was feeling very intimidating and I think all of you really helped me to understand um the process and also it helps me to see both sides as a parent and as a school board. I know the job you guys do is amazing. It's a lot more that people really sees. All those emails that we receive, all those questions in the community is really threatening to be outside and people just come to you and say, "Hi, I have a question for you." Like I don't know if I can respond. I don't know. Um I didn't imagine that was that intense. So the fact that you guys are keep doing it. Wow. Um you have my admiration. I

043also want to thanks my husband that he is in the public because without his support by taking care of our two little ones I couldn't do what I do outside and um I'm really thankful for that and for my in-laws as well. I finally want to apologize to those who felt that I did not represent them or fight for their interest. I recognize that I could have been more involved and that uh some of my bots did not meet their needs. And I know I have a long way to go in this learning journey. And I think that this is the best version of myself. But I know because of this opportunity, I I have learned more how to protect, how to fight, and how to um express my voice for and use my voice

044for the ones who cannot. Um I'm really thankful that now we have subtitles in Spanish and the YouTube channel. So thank you for that. It's a little the win that I have for this. So, I just want to say thank you to everybody. Yeah. Can I say Sid Lai, you should not feel at all like you did not serve your constituents and you have been a very proud parent here. I think that is when I look at you and hear your questions, I hear them from a parent perspective and we need that. We need board members who are parents who are in schools and know what the day-to-day life is like in schools and you did that very very well. So you represent all of our parents in in way beyond what you probably even

045know. So I wanted to say thank you. So don't you at all feel like you didn't don't apologize because you have done a fantastic job. Yes. Well, okay. Back in December, the date was December 4th, 2018. I had watched the schoolboard meeting on TV from home and I was impressed by someone who spoke so eloquently and honestly about the needs of students and I think possibly it was a conversation about SRO in the schools. That woman was Tori and as predicted, her leadership has made quite a difference for our students in our schools. She knows the student schools in our community well and has been a great resource for the board. I will miss her ability to understand the issues that the board is facing as well as her ability to communicate with the board,

046administration, teachers, students, and families. Good luck to you with your next projects and please answer your messages because I'm want to check in with you from time to time still. Um, and then sit loudly, I know you will continue to pursue many of your personal goals and professional goals, and I hope that you continue to reach every goal that you set for yourself. Thank you for your honesty and for speaking up to express the changes that you wanted to see in our community. Um, I also want to thank Paul for leading the board this past year again to address some very difficult challenges that we have had and knowing that is going to get worse and making decisions for the school district while facing the unknown regarding what is going to occur at the federal

047level is very stressful. I hope your knowledge about school policies and experience will serve us well during these difficult times. and it is to our benefit if you would agree to continue to lead us as president of the board for another year. So, um, do I still have some time? Yeah, I mean, I I think we're kind of ignoring it tonight. It's all right. Okay. I just want to say I had another opportunity to visit a program at Yankee Ridge and it was their STEM program. What was so wonderful, not as well, it was so organized and it's so well attended and the parents were involved, but to see the University of Illinois become involved too. There were so many students and student clubs that came to lead and they brought the materials and the

048activity and they interacted and it was such a hands-on wonderful experience and it's hard to believe that that community has only been there here for a year and I looking forward to next year and all the other wonderful things that they will continue to do and of course the board wants to appreciate all our teachers who come every day and face the challenges and do the best that they can and we know that every day is challenging but hopefully every day is satisfactory. as well for them. There is a summer reading program at the library and um it's from May 12th to August 31st and learn more about the program by going to the library and checking out the books. If a child reads 600 minutes um then they are able to get a free

049book and children can select two books this summer. And you can't stress more I can't stress more that summer isn't a time to take off of reading to take time off of reading. It's crucial to read every day or to be read to every day so that children maintain their skills during the summer. It's very important. So, please utilize all the services that the that the library affords to families during the summer. Thank you. Any other court reports? Of course, I'm going to say something. I purposely I purposely didn't write anything. Um, I didn't want to be super long- winded. Uh, I'll say I feel like this has been like the longest six years of my life. Not all of it's been um bad. Um, I feel like we really accomplished a lot in the

050last six years. There were so many things thrown at us. um you know, I started off um on the other side of this table at that table and those were not good times and came onto the board and and I just feel like we it it's been a journey. Let's let's just say that it's been a journey. Um but we've accomplished a lot and um I've really enjoyed the people and the relationships that were built. I feel like the board is so diverse now and there's so many um voices that are heard and spoken and represented in our community and I hope that that continues. I hope that people continue to talk about what's important to them and push forward for good things in our district. Um, thank you to everyone from our student ambassadors

051to our board members to admin. John, I'm gonna email you today because I need something. I'll still be around. Um, but I I feel like my time here has been well spent, but it is time to do other things. And so, thank you. Thank you, Tori. So, I want to thank Tori personally, too. we've been parents in the district together and in this doing this at the same time too is has um been a joy for me. Um you guys don't know this but this woman does so many other things outside of her board work and her regular life and job and being a mom and being a family member to her large loving family. But she's in involved in so many organizations and the amount of time that you've given to the board and

052she continues. Her daughter's been out of school now three years. My daughter's about and she's still showing up in our schools for all kinds of things. And that is just a testament to your commitment to making sure that our schools continue to be wonderful places. And I know you'll continue to do that even from afar. I'll continue to do that. We're excited. and and thanks to my mom and my uh daughter for for coming and they've always been very supportive and have um lent me to the board for lots of hours. So, thanks for that. So, I guess is it I guess it's time to time to reorganize the board. I guess Gloria you want to have tokens for you guys. Our appreciation Yeah, all your stuff. Yes. So, on behalf of the board of

053education, district administration, and all parents and students, we want to thank you for your service. So, I don't know. Can we pull the There's We get They get to keep their name tag, but Okay. Oh, she's already given them their plaques. Okay. The boxes. Okay. Okay. It's It's not out. So, there's a nice plaque in there to thank you for your service. And of course, flowers. Can you hold both? Okay. And then we'll take a picture. Come up. Follow. Okay. Tori for you. Thank you, silly. Yes, we will be seeing her as a parent for years and years because she's got little ones. And same thing for Tori that I know. Thank you both so much. Yes, we appreciate you. Okay. So, uh, now the board is doing its reorganization, which it does, I guess,

054every other year after an election. So, it's kind of a weird process, but, um, the first thing we need to do is basically nominate and select a president and secretary. that's going to perform its uh duties just for the reorganization. So I guess we accepted nomination from the floor for president prom and secretary prom just for the reorganization part of our meeting. Nam uh Jennifer nominated me and and Sherry to be uh president prom secretary prom. Is there a second for the motion? Second. And does anybody else wish to make a nom other nomination? Uh then all in favor of the nomination on the floor say I. I. Any opposed? Okay. So, um so Lindsay, come on up. Do we have the oath handy? Oh, here. Thank you. All three. Yep. So, Lola. Yeah. So

055Lola and and Jennifer both when you since you were elected you have to be sworn back in. Sworn back in. Okay. So just uh so yeah I mean Lindsay you can you can go back over there if you wish next to Jennifer and then we can teach you how to use these mics which is which is actually a trick. Okay. Right. So, so I guess say your name. Do solemnly swear. I I Lindsay Maru do that I will I Okay. that I will faithfully discharge the duties that I will faith faithfully discharge the duties of the office of member of the board of education of the office of member of board of education of Urbana School District 116 of Urbana School District 116 in accordance with the Constitution of the United States in accordance with

056the Constitution of the United States the Constitution of the State of Illinois the Constitution of the State of Illinois and the laws of the state of Illinois to the best of my ability. to the best of my ability. I further swear that I further swear that I shall respect taxpayer interests. I shall respect taxpayer interests by serving as a faithful protector by serving as a faithful protector of the school district's assets of the school district's assets. I shall encourage and respect and shall encourage and respect the free expression of opinion the free expression of opinion by my fellow board members by my fellow board members and others who seek a hearing before the board and and others who seek a hearing before the board while respecting the privacy of students and employees. while respecting the

057privacy of students and employees. I shall recognize that a board member I shall recognize that a board member has no legal authority as an individual has no legal authority as an individual and that decisions could be made only by a majority vote at a public board meeting and decisions can be made by only majority vote and a public board meeting. I shall abide by majority decisions of the board. I shall abide by majority decisions of the board while retaining the right to seek changes while retaining the right to seek changes in such decisions through ethical and constructive channels. in such decisions through ethical and constructive channels. As part of the board of education, as part of the board of education, I shall accept the responsibility for my role I shall accept the responsibility of my

058role in the equitable and quality education of every student in the school district. In the quality equitable and quality education of every student in the school district, I shall foster with the board. I shall foster with the board extensive participation of the community, extensive participation of the community, formulate goals, formulate goals, define outcomes, define outcomes, and set the course for Urbana School District number 116. and set the course for Bana School District 116. I shall assist in establishing a structure I shall assist in establishing a structure and an environment designed. in an environment designed to ensure all students to ensure all students have the opportunity to attain have the opportunity to attain their maximum potential through a sound organizational framework their maximum potential through a sound organizational framework I shall strive to ensure I shall

059strive to ensure a continuous assessment of student achievement a continuous assessment of student achievement and all conditions affecting the education of our children and all the conditions affecting the education of our children. In compliance with state law in compliance with state law, I shall serve as education's key advocate. I shall serve as education ski advocate on behalf of students on behalf of students and our community school in our community schools or schools to advance the vision for Urbana School District number 116 to to advance the vision of Urbana School District number 116. I shall strive to work together I shall strive to work together with the district superintendent with the district superintendent to lead the school district to lead the school district toward fulfilling the vision the board has created toward fulfilling the vision the

060board has created fostering excellence for every student in the areas of academic skills in the areas of academic skills knowledge citizen knowledge citizenship ship and personal development. Knowledge, citizenship and personal development. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I'm gonna go. Okay. Okay. So, now that we have a new board, uh we need a new roll call uh by the secretary prom. [Music] Member Jones here. Member Hixon here. Member Baxley here. Member Amaribu here. Member Langodorf here and president member present pro member Palowski here. Um so now we have the uh election of permanent officers to to serve one year. Um is there I guess nomination for the floor for president of the board. Nominate member Palowski. I accept the nomination. Is anybody else wish to make a nomination for president? Okay. So, I guess uh

061we we vote. All in favor say I. I. I. Any opposed? Okay. Uh now we will entertain uh nominations for vice president of the board. I um nominate member Baxley. Do you accept? I accept. Does anybody wish to make a nomination? No, I was going to second it. Can I second? All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Thank you, Ben. Uh, now we entertain a motion. Sorry, nominations for secretary. I nominate Sher Langdenorf. Does anybody else wish to make a nomination? All in favor say I. I. Any Thank you, Sherry. Now, uh, we also need to, uh, take a nomination for an officer as secretary prom. is somebody who would serve as secretary in the event that Sherry's not able to make a meeting. Um I nominate member Jones. Sign your name. I accept.

062Thank you. Awesome. Um anybody else wish to make a nomination? All in favor say I. I. All right. Thank you. We have officers. Oh, I missed it. Well, it's a term of of four years for everybody at this point because we're not in a This is copied from last year when we were Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, it's it's a Yeah, the new seats are all for Yeah. Um, yes, it's been. Okay. All right. So it's been recommended by our parliamentarian that uh we have a official motion to um nominate myself as president, Ben as vice president, Sherry as secretary, and Lola as secretary prom u officially and then we could all vote after that point. Does anybody wish to make a motion to that effect? I move to uh accept the slate of officers.

063All right. Is there a second for that motion? Second. Okay. All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Okay. So, I think we've done it correctly and officially now. Um uh our next step is selection of the board uh recording secretary. Uh that's traditionally been done by by Lori and who's done a fantastic job for us in that regard. So, I would personally nominate her for that role. Do you second? All right. This has been moved and seconded. All in favor say I. I any opposed? And then uh our last step is establish regular you know meeting time uh dates time and place. We traditionally met the first and third uh Tuesdays of the month except we're conflicting with uh events on the school calendar like spring break etc. And um we've been meeting here

064and at six o'clock would pretty successfully I think over the past few years. Um if Right. Yeah, we we'll vote on the actual full schedule uh sometime later this month or early June. But um I just want to take I guess it's an informal pollable if they feel that this place and time works still still work well for them. Okay. So I guess do we actually need to make to move that? No. Okay. This will show up as an official agenda item u in June. Okay. Uh I guess moving on. We do have one action item this evening and that's an administrative personnel item uh for the assistant principal at MLK school, Tanya Turner. Yes, Miss Turner. Do you mind coming up to the table as I introduce you? Yeah. Thanks for being here this

065evening. And we had a little bit longer um awards beforehand, so thanks for being patient with us with the little ones. Mrs. Tanya Turner brings 20 years of experience in education as the incoming assistant principal at King School. Tanya began her journey at Parkland College before earning her bachelor's degree in early childhood education from Illinois State University. Her career in special education started at Lello grade school where she worked with students in grades K8. While teaching at Lello, she earned her master's degree in special education and her endorsement in administration from Illinois or Eastern Illinois University. After eight years in the classroom, Tanya transitioned into administration and served as the principal of LLO grade school for six years. Mrs. Turner then returned um to Rand or served not returned, sorry. Mrs. Turner then served at

066Randol Township High School before assuming responsibility as the director of special education and services for the past five years. Mrs. Turner is passionate about advocating for equal opportunities for all students and families, promoting a diverse, inclusive community and fostering stronger family and community involvement. Away from school, she enjoys spending time with her husband and their two children. She also loves working out, traveling, and attending sporting and music events. Mrs. Turner is enthusiastic about the opportunity to work with the district. While Tanya is excited for the challenges ahead, we are thrilled to welcome Mrs. Turner and Mrs. Wong to Urbana and to lead King specifically pending formal board approval. Thank you for the introduction. Is there a motion from the floor to accept the personnel item? So moved. Second. Any comments or questions? Roll call, please.

067Member Hixon. Yes. Member Baxley. Yes. Member Amarbu. Yes. Member Langdorf and President Palowski. Yeah. Yes. And President Palowski. Yes. Oh, I missed somebody. Member Jones. Yes. Okay. Motion passes. Congratulations. Welcome to your new role. Yes. If you you don't have to say anything, but if you want to say anything, you can click the button to green on your little microphone. Oh, there you go. I just want to say thank you. Just being here within the first hour of this meeting is a prime example of why I want to be a part of this district. The energy and the excitement that I just saw with the presentations, that is what I I want to bring and see. So, I'm very thankful to uh be a part of the district and a part of uh Dr. King

068Elementary. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Uh we do have a uh three administrative reports this evening. Uh first one is um our adoption report, Miss Webster. Good evening everyone. I am excited to share a quick seal update. My colleagues in the back told me to make this quick, so I am going to comply with that request. But it is truly my honor. It has been a two-year process to select a new social emotional learning program for our school district for kindergarten through 12th grade. So I'm going to start with a very brief overview of social emotional learning of where we started to get us where we are now. So social emotional learning is just the process of I always just summarize it of being a good human of teaching people human interaction skills, kindness, relationship

069skills, decision making and being self-aware. So it's not social emotional learning is not just for children, it's also for adults to help us interact positively with each other. In 2009, our school district purchased the first social emotional learning committee for elementary, which was Second Step. It was purchased for all elementary school teachers. In 2020, as a response to the pandemic and all of the needs that our children, staff, families, etc. had we established a social emotional learning committee to ensure that everyone was engaged in social emotional learning at that time in their hybrid classrooms and to also ensure that everyone was getting the skills and strategies that they needed to cope during that time. We adopted principles in every building to ensure social emotional learning was taking place. We made we established our first meeting

070on July 22nd, 2020. So we started in the summer and have gone strong all the way up to the present day. Staff members in Urbana early childhood all the way through Urbana High School received a job description and were asked to join the social emotional learning committee. It has continued to be a stipen position that staff members have been able to apply for and to receive a stipen. This committee created our district's social emotional learning vision, mission, and belief statement in 2021 and 2022. Our social emotional learning vision statement is all students early childhood through adult education will utilize social emotional and academic skills in order to become resourceful and resilient lifelong learners. And our mission statement is we provide a nurturing, safe and inclusive learning environment in which we cultivate resourceful, resilient citizens by

071teaching social, emotional and academic skills. And then we have three belief statements that just summarize our vision and mission. A brief overview. I've talked about our SEAL committee. We also started the social emotional learning spotlight which is a newsletter that goes out monthly to all of our staff that gives them strategies to support their adult social emotional needs as well as strategies they can use in the classroom and motivational music and tips just to highlight their days and their month. The social emotional learning committee also created the SEO playbook which is a book of strategies to provide staff members with resources and information about how to embed social emotional learning into their classrooms on a daily basis. The first international social emotional learning day was on March 27th 2020. Our SEAL committee decided in 2023

072to make it a week because we wanted to make sure that we celebrated the power of social emotional learning in Urbana School District. So we have done that for a social emotional learning week celebrations since 2023 and we will continue and 2023 also we started the process of looking for a new social emotional learning curriculum for our district early childhood through high school. We wanted to have one program because up until that point we had second step at the elementary level. Positive action and different pieces of things at the middle school level and the high school was doing a variety of things that you know were developmentally appropriate. But we wanted to ensure that we had language skills and strategies that were consistent early childhood through high school. So in 2023 we started looking for

073programs. We did some research. I talked to some people in Bloomington, Decatur, and around who have adopted programs. We looked on Castle, the collaborative academic social emotional learning site for a list of programs that would fit our district's need. The SEAL committee members, we sent it out to everyone district-wide, families, staff, etc. to ask them to join our curriculum committee. It was a volunteer basis. There were no stipens involved, but we had several people who did volunteer. They volunteered through Google form. Family liaison reached out to families. Staff members reached out to families. One of our parents put it in the parent advisory Facebook group because we wanted to make sure that we had an inclusive group to help us select a program that was reflective and supportive of our entire committee. So, as a

074response to that, we received responses from 29 staff members, four family members, and one community member. The committee agreed to meet five times virtually on Thursdays from 4:00 to 5:00. And the committee members discussed the value of social emotional learning, curriculum needs in Urbana, what we thought was important for Urbana to have imperative components of social emotional learnings. And then we also created in the committee a needs assessment that we sent to staff and families because we didn't want to just make that decision on our own. We wanted everyone to tell us what do you want the program to look like? What works best for our students, our staff, and our families? Because again, social emotional learning is not just for children. We as we went through the pro as we went through the program,

075we looked at programs. We were looking for programs in Spanish and French and of course English. Unfortunately, we were unable to locate any programs in French. We did look high and low, but there were none that were available. So, we did eliminate any programs that were not in Spanish. So, then we focused on Spanish and English because again, we wanted to be as reflective of our population as humanly possible. After we eliminated those, we invited companies. We got down to five companies that we did invite to come to our meetings. They were all virtual to talk to us about their program, the scope and sequence. And each company that we were considering gave the teachers a free pilot license that they were able to try it out in their classroom to get a feel for

076it. That also helped us eliminate another program because the Spanish was not authentically translated. So that took that program out. And then we ended up with three programs to choose from. Seven Mindsets, Inner Explorer, and Second Step. This school year, we asked staff members to volunteer to pilot all three of those programs in their classrooms. Again, we wanted people to have an opportunity to engage in the text with their students. We didn't want to just buy a program that we thought worked. We wanted something that fit our students and our teachers knew worked well for our students. We had 124 staff members who signed up to pilot. 53 for seven mindsets, 40 for inner explorer, and 35 for Second Step. If you are a mathematician, you know those numbers do not add up. Some staff

077members piloted two programs because they really wanted to make sure they had the best fit for their staff. So throughout the year, we had optional monthly check-ins. Everyone that was piloting the program, we had a meeting with the pilot, with the company's representative, any teacher who wanted to come. was not required, but anyone that wanted to come to talk about the program, to ask questions, to get input, to get tips on how to use the program better, and to share honest feedback of things that weren't working for our students. That's what we did during that time. During those monthly check-ins, we use some of that those notes, some of the feedback from surveys to eliminate the program Inner Explorer. Inner Explorer did not have enough information for our students. And I think I have that

078here. Here we go. and some of the things that teachers said that it didn't have enough discussion and not enough activities. It was mainly mindfulness-based, but it didn't teach the skills and strategies that our students needed. And all of these responses are from teachers who did pilot them in their classroom. So, we tried to make sure that we got as much feedback as possible. And also to ensure before we made a final decision on April 7th, we invited our final two companies, Seven Mindsets and Second Step to come to Urbana in person and present about their programs. We invited everyone, community members, families, students, staff to come because we wanted people to have an opportunity to hear it from the representatives, to have time to ask questions and to see the program. They're all all

079of the programs we're looking at are digital. So they showed us examples digitally of the programs. In attendance we had seven staff members, three parents and two parents who are also staff members. After that meeting we had a we had a teacher who came who was in the office who was in the audience who wants to remain nameless but she was very helpful and helping us make the final decision. Second step did not have Spanish all the way through high school completely translated. We did not want to select a program that was not completely translated and ready to go in Spanish. So that was the determining factor because it was 50/50 from the surveys, the feedback and input between the two. But the determining factor was that we didn't have Spanish available yet at the

080high school level. It was K through 12. It was in the process, but again, we don't want to purchase something that is not completely fit for our children. So Seven Mindsets will be our program for the 2025 2026 school year. We will have professional development opportunities this summer for staff members to learn more about the platform, to learn about the seven mindsets, and to prepare for the upcoming school year. The seven mindsets are everything is possible, passion first, we are connected, 100% accountable, attitude of gratitude, live to give, and the time is now. If you want resources, additional resources about the programs, they are linked in the presentation that you can go to the seven mindsets website. The seven mindsets brochure and booklet have been linked here just to give you a brief overview of

081what we will be working on next year with our students. And seven mindsets will be used kindergarten through 12th grade. We initially did want a program that was early childhood through 12th grade. However, it just was not developmentally appropriate for our early childhood students because seven mindsets is digitally based. There's not enough time in their day and their minutes that they can have electronic devices. It didn't work for them. And we did have them pilot a pro uh program. The seven mindsets where reps were in the area indicator. They came they did a lesson at early childhood in a teacher's classroom. Um so it was a very good experience for the reps and for the teacher to see that it just was not going to be the fit. So we are will continue to use

082second step for early childhood because it is still a box curriculum and is what they need at that grade level. The district character traits coming up for social emotional learning. We will discontinue the district character traits. They were part of our 2011 strategic plan and they will be replaced with portrait of a graduate indicators which will be discussed later this evening. The social emotional learning competency of the month that we focused on for the last several years will be replaced with a mindset of the month from seven mindsets and zones of regulation will no longer be required to teach self-management and self-awareness skills. It will be optional, but we will teach those skills and strategies in seven mindsets. If people still want to use the zones of regulations, they are welcome to, but we are

083not going to make it a requirement with the new program coming in and other other um opportunities coming up. I know that was quick, but I want to be respectful of everyone's time. Does anyone have any questions? I have questions. Go ahead. Um, I know you had the breakdown of how many people had done the pilot of each different program. Um, when you had the first three, do you have the breakdown of like elementary, uhs, like was it distributed evenly so that because I know like I just want to make sure that it's like going to be important for high schoolers because I feel like social emotional learning is really important and something that a lot of high schoolers need. Um, so I just wanted to know if you had the breakdown of that. Oh,

084I do. I can't rattle it off for you, but I have it. Okay. But we it was again it was voluntary, but I do have it. We had quite a few. it was more special ed and um specialists at the high school level because there was there's not time embedded in the schedule but we did have quite a few people that did it but I do have that information that I could share with the entire board is broken down by school teacher etc. You're welcome. Any other questions to piggyback off of that? How is it delivered in the high school to the high school students and during what classroom or Well, the teachers that did the pilot, they made time within their current curriculum time, but next year they're going to have some scheduling. I

085believe it's going to be starting with freshman and sophomores, academy 9 and 10. So they're working on developing a schedule, but this year that was part of the problem is that elementary has a 30 minute set time for ele middle school has the time for the advisory, but the high school schedule because the curriculum is so rigorous, they have to find time to fit it into the schedule with academics. So they're working on it and academy 10 is what when is that class or uh it's a support for freshman and sophomores. So, Academy 9 is for freshmen. Academy 10 will be for the current students who are in the academy and uh moving up to sophomore level. So, is that a full period that they have or a I is the other side of lunch?

086Yes. So, we're doing the AB lunch. We're going back to the AB lunch time at the high school for the 10th graders. I know it's for the ninth graders. Thank you. Yes. Moving up to 10th graders. Yes. Yep. Do we have a plan for juniors and seniors then? Because so um Mr. Guzman is not here because I would much rather he speak to the plan for juniors and seniors. Um I our thought was um because we're going to have the portrait and the portrait does include a couple of the social seal competencies um and they're going to be learning these competencies from kindergarten through 10th grade. Um, we felt like as a junior and senior, hopefully by the time you're a junior, you have learned what it means to be um the you've learned your

087seven mindsets and what it means to be self-aware and um manage your SEAL needs. Um, but if not, there will also be other supports at the high school to kind of work with the students who have not learned those social skills by the time they're a junior. Yep. Um, anyone else? I do have I one question with regards to the financial obligation to the district. Is there? Yes. Yes. There it is costly. I will be perfectly honest. I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but we could share it with you and it's an annual cost. So, we did work on um eliminating any extra bells and whistles, but we're focusing on the the basics that we need to get started. But there is a cost and it'll be an annual cost because

088it's digital and covered through title one grant funds. Okay. Well, that helps. Well, thank you. Next report is for the equity action plan report. You're doing one and two. All right. Good evening. I'm Chassity Becklas, director of equity and school improvement, and I will be going over our equity auction action plan update today. And I also brought some students with me who I will let introduce themselves. Hello, I'm Noah Hamilton. I'm a senior at UHS. Hello, I'm Jaylen Johnson. I'm also a senior at UHS. I'm Hillilary Allen and I am the teacher sponsor of the student equity committee. Thank you. Pass clicker J. Okay, so one of the things um that rolling into this new position, we had an equity audit a few years ago. Um, and you all will kind of see how we're

089weaving this into strategic planning later, but we just wanted to give an update since we've been doing work throughout the year. I've sent newsletters as well throughout the year, so you've kind of seen some updates there as well. And some of you are part of our district equity leadership team. And so you've come to some meetings with us throughout this year. Um, one thing I want to note on this, when I think about equity in my position specifically connected to school improvement, I think about educational equity. So, are students um feeling like they're in inclusive environments, getting provided resources, are we eliminating barriers for our students, and are we differentiating instruction? And so, to the left, if you see, there are five strands um that we've talked about through the year, so I won't spend

090too much time on it, but they are here to support the student voice strand along with me. And so, I'm going to give them the opportunity to answer some questions. They're a little nervous, but we prepped outside and they're going to be great. I've gotten the opportunity to work with them well this year. This is the um UHS again sponsored by Miss Hillary Allen who's amazing works with the students and we've brought them to a few of our student voice meetings with my group and they've really shared and then I come to their meetings and their meetings that they have with administration at the high school as well. Okay. So on the slide you can kind of read through what were some of our goals in student voice this year but really providing spaces for

091student voices to be heard in order to create more positive culture and climate that celebrates and empowers students. So this was like multiaceted because it was primarily focused at the secondary level. So we looked at what was going on in UHS. Um, a lot of our time this year was spent with creating some mentoring pieces for manifest and deity at so sixth and seventh grade um, students and those students were like targeted based off of data and teachers recommended them well just needed more SEAL explicit instruction and being um, being empowered to feel authentically themselves. So we would have lunch with those students weekly. Then we started a twice a week after school program with those students as well. So this is the uhs arm with thems equity group and they started when Miss Allen

092what do you know when this year you all kind of started around January. Okay. So around January. So since then lots of work. Um but part of it was really making sure that we hear student voice and as you can tell we have some of our seniors. We do have sophomores and juniors who are part of the group too who couldn't be here, but we're working on them passing a torch. Um, we'll be at the outreach thing on Friday with a table as well. And so they have some recruitment things coming up next week to get more students involved that I'm sure they're happy to talk about, right, Noah? You saw his smile. So I am going to give it over to them. And the first question, I gave the students three kind of talking

093points. And so the first question, however they feel they want to answer it, do you feel like your voice influences decision at your school? Why or why not? I'll go ahead and answer this question. So I strongly believe that my voice does influence decisions and I think it's because of the interconnectedness with the groups and the committees at UHS. So today we have our president from student council along with our president from student senate, Miss Johnson. And I think uh also on the board uh we have a lot of representatives from a a diversity of groups like African-American club or different sports. Um you name it, basically anything's there. All of it kind of floods and circles back to that table and we get to talk about what issues need to be addressed and what

094we're passionate about that we want to see some change at UHS. So it's interconnectedness. Um yeah that's it. Okay. Thank you Noah. The next one. What changes would you make um for the learning environment to make it more equitable and inclusive for everyone? Um, I will go ahead and answer this. I think my main thing, um, looking at Urbana as a whole is I would try to make it more equitable and inclusive for more people who look like me and other of my peers and the student equity committee on the basis of giving them the resources and opportunities to allow them to be in more challenging classes. Like when I look around most of my AP classes, I don't see a lot of people of color. as well as incorporating more teachers and mentors who

095look like me as well. And I think that if more students of color are receiving the proper guidance and support to be able to receive more opportunities, it would gravely benefit them in terms of knowledge, scholarships, or even just putting them or guiding them in the direction to take more challenging classes that will allow them to reach their goals in life or follow their path that they want to do career-wise because a lot of these AP classes really set you up for greatness. And I want more people like me and Noah to take a chance and really try because they're not that hard guys. You can do it. You can do it. Okay, the last question and everybody's going to chime in, including Miss Allen. Can you share an example of a time you felt

096seen, heard, or supported or a time when you didn't? I will actually start with this one. Um, as being the president of my senior class, me and Sit Lai, we have had numerous meetings with our principal, Mr. Jesse Guzman, and we have brought up numerous issues, including the sanitation of the bathrooms, the quality, the doors don't work all the time. But since like August through now May, there have been significant improvement. And I really think that our administration is really putting in the effort this year to help and work with the student body and our voices to really make change heard. So that's really felt me felt I mean feel seen in the high school is our collaboration with Mr. Guzman. I will just add um as the sponsor of this student equity group that

097it's been an amazing experience to see these students learn leadership skills. We recently drafted emails um to administration together and just learning um different skills with that. Um we have been working on more equitable treatment between um athletes and non-athletes and in that process we have had our voice heard and also had our voice not heard. Um but again it's a good learning experience for them and we will continue to do that work and it isn't easy but we do feel heard and we are learning a lot. I'd like to add one last thing. So there was an example um with between the administration and our committee where we I guess we're just trying to you know understand each other more because groups come into disagreements but I believe that our committee and oh bless

098you our committee and the administration we're both realizing that not to be mad at each other but to be kind of focused on fixing a problem. And I think that the communication that the administration and our committee are involved in are really helping us when it comes to resolving these issues. Okay. Does anybody have any questions for our students up here before I dismiss them? Board members, any questions? I always come prepared with my questions. Um, so obviously there's only a small group of you here to represent, but what was like the plan to include Latino and Asian voices? All right, I can go ahead and answer that question. So we are working uh making efforts uh for next year to include a variety of voices. Um, like I said earlier, the interconnectedness, just the

099fact that information flows through people, that's helping right now with the issues that we're having this semester, but next semester, we are definitely hoping to get just more diversity on our committee. Uh, and we kind of already have a little bit of it. We have some Hispanic uh, representation, also some Asian representation from JJ. We do. Yeah. Yeah, we do. Um, but yeah, I would say yes. So our group is small, but I think we target a lot of the ethnicities and the voice within our school. While we are small, we do have a bunch of people who come from a bunch of different backgrounds. And we are planning ways right now to incorporate and pass the torch on and try to incorporate a lot of more people sooner, like freshman and sophomores, so they

100can really help grow their voice within their class and build it up to when they're seniors to see that change. cuz us starting as seniors, it's kind of like, wow, we have this problem. Let's work on it. But we can't really see it be implemented for the next year. So, yeah. Thank you. Any other questions? All right. Thank you to our students for coming today. Once they get up and dismiss, I'll continue about the equity action plan. [Applause] All right. And so this was just my strand leader um reflection from the winter. We just really wanted to put more emphasis on our manifest and deity program and expanding that through um afterchool programming which we did and we're excited about seeing how that is um cultivated and nurtured for next year as well and reaching

101more students. Dr. We melt was in charge of the system strand and two main goals of that system strand this year was really to create effective classroom and building wide systems to increase safety and positive culture and climate. Um I presented to the board a few months ago about our um action plan for ISBY around our disproportionality. And so part of how we connected those dots is really making sure that the systems groups was also focused on decreasing the disproportionality. The second piece is communicating um this equity action plan to all stakeholders. And so ensuring that you all know what our goals are, what's the progress of our goals um and what are things that we're looking forward to as well. The next one was Miss Jessica Bradford. She's back there. Um she's over teaching

102and learning. And so two big objectives this year, which you all know with the adoption of a new ELA program. We wanted to make sure that we were um implementing that program for reading and then the math program that we adopted a couple of years ago for that tier one instruction. So making sure that all of our students had access to that grade level um rigorous curriculum was important and we wanted to ensure consistent reliable and concise data sharing um to identify students who need that additional targeted support. So using um in MC class to talk about okay these students still need to work on their letters and sounds and how do we make sure that we uh increase like intervention time or that the teacher maybe reviews this information for all students if it's

103a large population of students in a classroom who are still behind. So really thinking about not just that tier one but students who are struggling to access that tier one, what can we do to support them? Um and then her reflection was really just about continuing that tier one for me reading and math and strengthening that and making sure that we still had consistent coaching at both levels um from our curriculum supports and then thinking about how we can identify and really work in PLC coaching for math and for middle school. Miss Yavanda Smith was over professional learning and her objective was providing professional learning opportunities for all staff that support district equity and curriculum initiatives. I don't know why that went there. Okay, thank you. Um, so we had a district level walkth through

104tool that we used to um go around classrooms. We also hopefully it goes to we also provided um teachers and principles sorry principles with an kind of equity bias PD um slides and just culturally responsive teaching that they can use on their PD structure for like every second Monday of the month. And Yavanda's reflection was they met their goal um but they want to continue to work on really building professional development for the entire staff. So, we don't want people opting out of really important professional opportunities. And so, how do we make sure that we capture all staff when they're there and really work on those important opportunities for growth for us as a district or within the school? Miss Webster was over family and community as agency and um her objective was foster welcoming

105and inclusive environments across the district. And this was winter, so her task progress was about 75%. And this was really about uh making sure that when we do have things at our school buildings and so I know Sher you brought up like STEM night, do families and the community partners who came, do they feel welcome? Do they feel like they're included? Um how are families leaving? How much participation do we get? And so those are big things that Miss Webster really worked on of like setting a structure for people to think about and consider and having surveys around that families could complete as well to know how well we did, excuse me, for providing that inclusive and welcoming environment. Okay. Okay. Okay. That is the end the conclusion of this. Um next we'll kind of

106talk about a strategic plan and how some of these are being encompassed within our strategic plan. So we'll try to connect the dots as well and some work that we still need to do to do that. Any questions about the equity audit? The last newsletter will come out the end the last week of May. Board members, any questions? I guess one quick one. Where do you think we're like struggling the most in and is there anything like we as a board can do to kind help support you in in rectifying that? Wow, Paul, that was a loaded question. I was supposed to come prepare for that. Um I do think one thing I continu continuously think about um is how are our children are we hearing their voices right I think that we are very

107knowledgeable and you know lots of us come from different experiences and have different degrees in particular areas but how often do we take the time to listen to the students and their experiences because they're the ones in our buildings every day and so for me I'm working to ensure that that stays alive in our strategic planning of student voices and that the students up here have um that they're passing a torch. So, we'll have it at the outreach table. We want to have more freshman's um in particular a part of the uhs uh equity group. Um we're kind of revamping another role to the it was at the high school was called the minority enrichment coordinator if you all remember that. We're making that more secondary aligned, so six through 12. And my goal is

108that person really supports having more students in AP classes, making sure that they're meeting with their counselors, and also looking at um student voice across the board, 6th through 12, not just at the high school. And how can we form those committees sooner? So, in sixth grade and seventh grade, I was a part of that committee. So, I know what it feels like and I know what it's like to be a part of something and have a voice so that by the time I get to high school, I'm prepared and ready, right? It's really about building the capacity of our students. So, I don't know if it's like you can be helpful there, but I think that um elevating our student voices is really important. Agreed. And then thank you for bringing students tonight. It's

109great to hear from from you guys. Thank you. They were hot back there. They're like, "Is it our turn? We need a snack." So, I got that. Thank you. Okay. Yeah, great job. Uh, our last report tonight is our strategic planning report. Um, well, no, not till your your chance to time come up. So, we have directors here that we'll I'll invite them up when we get to that section of the John the Clicker. There's a lot of slides and I don't want to have to tell you to advance every single one of them. So, it'd be great to be able to click as I go. Awesome. Thank you. Okay, so let's get started. So, um as you know, um board members know this, so hopefully our community as well knows this. and when we

110do our board retreats with our um ISB person um he always reminds us that the board of educ education goals um are should be the forefront which is why I've been including them on our um our agendas for the last year. Um I brought them up here as well for a reason. And I know our public has seen them a lot, but I wanted to also highlight the bold print is um kind of highlighting how um not even intentionally, but the board goals um are represented I feel in a lot of the strategic planning conversations that we had. So um the work of student achievement um the dual language uh specific uh board goal uh was was um intertwined in our um professional development and um conversations about recruitment and retention. The board's goal of

111course for uh culture, climate and community. Uh we have uh areas of the strategic plan that focus on belonging and stakeholder relationships. uh redistricting. Uh the board had a very specific goal about engaging our community around uh future enrollment planning um but to also um make sure we're cultivating diverse and equitable schools. And lastly, um involving the community in a uh long-term facilities plan that will of course continue to provide a safe and inviting learning environment um is encompassing our next plan and um fiscal responsibility and heighten heightening the lens of transparency and equity. So, I purposefully um wanted to share these aloud because I do feel the work that um we entered into with our large committee really did bring out some of our board of education goals as well. Um these goals were

112also part of the binder that our participants um in strategic planning received and um so it was good for them to also see how board of education goals also reflect in what we're going to be talking about. So, fast facts. So, Katherine and I have been working on this um for a while. And I should say, too, um Katherine is going to be out for a few weeks, but she is on a leave. Um so, if the board, this is a great time for me to just say if the board members have communication things, if you could send them to John and I in Katherine's absence, um she'll be back about the second week of June. Um so, John and I will be taking the mantle as much as we can in the next few

113weeks. So, Katherine and I have been working on this uh document for a while. Um there are oftentimes where I'm asked to go present for different groups or for different organizations and um I've wanted to pull together some really important facts about our community. Um, one reason that, uh, we put some of the, um, specific indicators here that are on here is, um, it's important, I think, for us to celebrate the things in our district that are going well as part of our, um, information that we share. Um, but I think one of the key indicators here that I wanted to point out, um, for the room of about 60 some odd people working on the strategic planning, it was really eyeopening. Um, and I don't know that we talk about this enough. Clearly, we

114don't talk about it enough publicly because most of the people in the room were not aware that we are currently sitting at about 74.8% um, low income in our district. The community folks in the room were kind of shocked by that when our facilitator shared that um, that fact and um, people were very much like when did that happen? And um our community has changed over time and I think it's important that we keep that fact out in the forefront as we talk about um how diverse our community is and how um the work that we're doing is um impacting all different student groups. Um but that our our largest group that we are serving right now is a really large group of lowincome students. So um not that that is good, bad or in

115between. It's just an important fact that I have found in the last few weeks as we've been talking to community folks um not a lot of people realized that um that was our current demographic. Um our graduation rate, we're going to talk about that goal later. And um this slide is very much focused on high school. So I I get that. But again, every student in our district starts with us um either as a prek student or at kindergarten. We even have some students who start with us in the birth to three program, but they all end up at Urbana High School. So, I think our goal is to make our high school programming and our um that that um pathway from um early childhood elementary to uh high school the best that it can

116be. Yeah. When you say that 174 students enrolled in college after graduation, what was the number of graduates for that particular year? I mean, what percentage of Oh, I college. Yeah, I was going to say the US it's usually around 260 70 student graduates. Yeah. Yep. But I think the other thing to note is we also have a lot of students who are entering the workforce which is why that statistic is there as well which um was very much a part of the conversations that we had about the um portrait of a graduate and how um how different the world is for our graduates today than they were even a few years when my students graduated from Reban High School. Um at the bottom I want to kind of highlight our amazing teachers that Lai

117already said it well. This is teacher appreciation week and our teachers are a um phenomenal dedicated group of people. Um and we wanted to highlight not just how many staff members we are but have but also how many of them are dedicated to their continuing education. So the fact that almost half of our teachers have master's degrees or higher um is a great statistic to share with our community. And again, we are in the we are right next door to um a wonderful uh junior college with Parkland College as well as a tier one land grant university. And so the fact that our teachers are taking advantage of um master's degrees, PhDs, you know, we have teachers that have masters plus 60, we have teachers that have double masters. Um and the fact that they're

118taking advantage of the opportunities available to them um in the backyard of um University of Illinois is something that we should be celebrating. So uh strategic planning process overview. So this is a photo of we took this right after lunch there. There were a couple people who had run out and didn't get to make it in the photo. Um, I think our Mary Lect didn't make it into the picture and a couple other folks, but this is most of the group. Um, and I thought it was important to have a photo so people could see the um, diversity of the people that were part of this um, planning and um, just the racial diversity, the community diversity, the roles that people played. Um while everyone came um at the strategic plan from their lens as

119a group, we really did uh talk about what was best for the needs of the entire district. So phase one was preliminary analysis. So I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about a lot of the data slides that you're going to see because some of the board members have seen that. I just want to highlight the things that you haven't seen. So um through a partnership um including staff, students, families, board members, community members um this plan in the last several months reflects our collective work to guide our district in a new strategic plan for 25 20 for the years of 2025 to 2030. Um preliminary allow analysis phase allowed the district to hear from various stakeholders through discussions about root causes. Um I think Chassity talking about um some of the

120uh activities that she's done with her students. Um we have been talking about strategic planning in a lot of our administrative spaces for the whole year. Um we have had our program council meetings focused on district data um this year with a very intentional plan of incorporating the conversations that we've had with our teachers um into this process as well. So um we were able to identify common priorities, positive strengths and opportunities for growth. The goal uh was to create a focused, detailed and actionable plan that aligns work across the district. The planning facilitators and members of the district leadership team um looked at data throughout the year um related to supporting outcomes for student, staff, families, the community, and of course lastly, district operations. So what were our goals? Um the the folks kind

121of planning this from behind the scenes, which is mostly our district administrators, um our leadership team and um our building administrators who were um part of some of the planning processes at our just the conversations. So starting with the data, we wanted to make sure that we grounded our work um in objective fact-based data. Uh you'll see in the slides uh basically every single slide that you had in your packet was shared with our community. Um which was hard to share. Um some of the data that our our uh some of our parents and community folks saw I think shocked them a little bit. Um but it was important for them to have a true picture of our true story of where we are as a district. Um engaging stakeholders for meaningful impact. So stakeholder

122impa input was um important in this process from start to finish and very meaningful to the conversations that we had um in in the two days that we were together but also all the days leading up to that. The goal was to create a new mission statement, a new motto and new values. Identify the focus priority areas that will help align our efforts across the district and then to create smarty goals. And um if the board or those listening aren't um familiar with smarty goals, they have kind of taken over um in this more equitable environment from smart goals which have been around for a long time. So a smarty goal um is strategic or andor specific. People kind of use those S's interchangeably. Measurable um ambitious yet achievable, realistic, time bound, inclusive, and equitable.

123Our goal was to create not just goals for the next five years, but to also um create an indicator for next year, which we call um a key performance indicator goal, um a KPI. You'll hear us use that acronym a lot over the next year. Um and so, uh the team created a um five-year goal and a um one-year goal, and there was a lot of conversations around action steps. um and strategies. Uh we didn't include those in the presentation because the groups that met in and kind of did that brainstorming during those two days were smaller groups. Um and we want to have more voice in that process. And so I'll talk about that later in the presentation. We'll be opening up um strategic planning strands for anyone in the community to join. And

124um that is where we'll kind of fine-tune those strategies and action steps a little further with more voices. So phase two was community engagement. So um the community engagement phase allowed the district to hear from just a variety of people um and including talking about that root cause that I brought up earlier. um collecting feedback for the strategic plan was a collective effort that um really valued the input of all of our stakeholders um and the inclusive approach that we want to take moving forward. So here are just some examples of the engagements. Um we had a survey. The goal was to have another survey. We just ran out of time. So we really wanted to have one and then offer um another one, but we just didn't have enough time to make that happen.

125So we did um have 300 almost 300 responses from the first engagement. There were a lot of little small group meetings um where uh we included um you know different uh different groups. So, um I just participated in lots of spaces where um we just had a lot of variety of people there whether it was through portrait of a graduate or through going to an advisory committee meeting or um just having um informal conversations with like Chassity talked about a lot of the committees that are happening throughout the district um getting people's input in those ways. Um, I also uh attended a French bilingual parent advisory committee meeting, a Spanish bilingual parent advisory um meeting. I was unable to reschedule the special education advisory meeting. we had to cancel because of uh snowstorm night and

126then we didn't get it rescheduled. But I I'm still planning to go and meet with those folks after the board approves this. So I can go and talk with them um before school is out or soon about um how the plan reflects the goals for our student services students. Um and then of course the program council group. There were community listening sessions um set up around our elementary schools. Most of the people presenting uh participating in those were parents. Um we did have a few staff members at one or two of them and a couple community people. Um but most of the folks who came out to those listening se um sessions identified as parents on their signin sheets and then our uh parent portrait of graduate design team which included a wide variety of

127uh different stakeholders and then of course the strategic planning design team as well. So um that link there I don't know if the board looked at that but it is a live link so others can click on it. It is actually the presentation that I shared when I went to every listening session um that had the engagement results survey data. Um I'm going to just go through very quickly um for the board because the board had not seen that presentation yet. Um so the these slides represent a few highlights. Um and these slides are also what was shared with the strategic planning team. So they also had that information. So um the um 299 folks who uh completed the survey were mostly parents and staff members. Um one of the air some of the areas

128that staff um really indicated were needed in our schools moving forward were reading interventionists at the K3 level, more social workers, and more math teachers. Um, some of the additional support groups, student groups that were mentioned, um, that needed priority were our ELLL students, our English language learners, our students with special needs, our advanced learners, and our, um, students that are experiencing homelessness. Um, out of the this group of folks, mostly parents and staff members who completed the survey, safety was an area of concern. That was pretty much any open-ended question where people could uh talk about what their concerns were or opportunities of growth for the district. Safety was one of the things that was mentioned. um curriculum improvements were often suggested um specifically science uh curriculum for social studies and science at the

129middle school and um that the district needed more curriculum for students with different learning styles. Um, as you know, we've adopted an English language arts, Spanish language arts, math, and now SEAL curriculum. And people noted, it's great that we have new curriculum for literacy and math, but we can't forget about science and social studies. Communication was a recurring theme. Um, and you'll see later, we have a communication goal because of that. Um, our parents who participated uh really called for a unified and consistent system for communicating with their teachers. um better access to curriculum information for parents. And that universal communication theme um really was something that um was carried through through several different conversations and in different spaces and just to give you an example. So I'm going to go back to that. So,

130at um at one of the very early sessions, we had a uh family, and I won't say what school they were from, but they had a second grader who um had been in the district since she was three as an early childhood student. And there was a mom and dad who were there together. And they talked about this at length and they basically said every year that their daughter had been in our schools, they've had to download a different app or learn a different app. And um the the dad was just so so it was actually kind of funny. He said, "We'll do whatever you want us to do. Just just please tell us we just want to do one thing. We don't want to learn remind Seessaw class dojo." Um and so uh that

131theme at the very from the very first listening session meeting kind of carried on throughout some strengths. Uh we've talked about this at the board level. Diversity is um cited as a strong strength for our district. Communication was generally positive, but um there's some areas of communication that we will talk about later. Dedicated and caring teachers are appreciated. Extracurricular activities are valued. The dual language program was seen as a strength. Um a welcoming and inclusive environment was often mentioned and the new ELA curriculum was seen as strong. There were a lot of comments um from parents around the um the fact that they were glad to see a new ELASSLA curriculum challenges and concerns. Uh literacy continues to be a concern, but um some people very specifically um talked about middle school literacy. Um there

132continues to be an achievement gap um between our students of color and their white and Asian peers. So um later on when we talk about priority groups um you'll see that a lot of the conversations that happen during strategic planning really focused on our priority groups that are not excelling or that are not um growing at the rate um that their white and Asian peers are. So when we talk about students of color, I know our Asian students are often are our students of color, but when we talk about it in this way, we're specifically talking about our black and Latino students. Um the focus on academics sometimes overshadows students other needs. So there were comments about mental health as well. Um inconsistent instruction and lack of support for teachers were noted. Um the inconsistent

133instruction comment was and we heard these in person too. Um, for some parents, um, they noted that it depends on, um, who your teacher is year-toear on whether or not your student is is making great gains or growing. Um, and that could be for lots of reasons, right? It did that didn't come out in the survey as much, but it did come out in person. you know, if I'm a um first year teacher and I'm learning and I need a lot of support, you know, uh it may not have been a really productive year for that particular student, but if the next year I might be with a veteran teacher who has been teaching for a long time and you can see the difference and um I think some of this was also related to

134student behavior and how um some teachers are just master behavior managers and some are not. Um the o overuse of technology is mentioned um in the survey. I we relied a lot on Chromebook use when we came back from the pandemic and um there were comments in the survey around maybe we're relying a little bit too much on Chromebooks sometimes. um staffing issues including ter uh shortages and turnover continue to be something that were noted but we are really feeling like we're coming out of that at least right now in our I'm looking at Angie but in our current hiring season we we're filling way more positions this time of the year than we have in the past um discipline and behavior were mentioned as significant challenges in lots of spaces and when I say

135spaces I mean in person as well as in this survey Okay, so these are the results from the survey. Um, challenges, mental health needs are increasing, class sizes are seen as too large. Although, um, we do have a couple classes at elementary where that's the case, but on the for the majority, for the most part, redistricting really did help that. Um, a lack of trust exists between the community and the district. And that comment in the survey was, you know, people uh talked about the WY way, the way WY was communicated. They talked about um the sixth grade center and the facilities committee and how that happened. Um and there is still some concern from some um regarding the sixth grade center. Is it going to be as much of a benefit as um we

136hope it will be and um people expressed that in their uh survey comments. Um some people were, you know, like okay, it's done. the sixth grade center is happening no matter what, but hopefully um we can still uh get positive outcomes from it. So, I think some people have um moved on and have um are looking forward to the future and then there are some who are still expressing um concerns about it. And then there were people in the survey who talked about our the property taxes which I don't completely have control over. So, there we go. common themes from the small groups and our focused um kind of engagement groups. So this is um information that came out from more so the listening sessions. So that first uh those first themes I shared were

137from the survey and now we're moving into those in-person conversations that we had with people um mostly parents but a few staff members who came um communication between school and families um was a significant theme and you can see that again this is talking about apps um email flyers um Katherine was a part of the strategic planning she led a group about communication and she did a very thorough thorough deep dive into our analytics. And so it was really interesting to see how many parents have blocked us, don't get our emails, how many people parents don't get our phone calls, and then how many families we have that don't have an email on file at all. And so that was that was great information for the group talking about that strand to have. Um, another

138theme, family engagement and involvement. um discussions around how can we increase parent participation in not just school events but also um learning and making sure our parents are understanding what is happening in classrooms um and that relationship between staff morale and um family engagement. So, it's it's hard when you're a teacher and you plan a great event or the school plans this fantastic event and only a handful of people come and so that can feel a little um defeating especially when it when we feel like we've communicated in all these different ways and then I know we had a district event last year um I'm looking at Miss Webster uh that was a district-wide um we we we informed everyone, we sent emails and social media and I think we had what, five people come.

139Um, and that is really hard when you put forth that much work and you have all these people there to engage with families and then we have five people come. So, we needed to think of a better way to engage our folks. Um, which is why we have a goal about that. student behavior, safety, and well-being. Um, under that culture and climate um um recurring theme um included things like bullying and explosive emo explosive um emotions and behaviors. several parents who came in person talked about bullying um and talked about the need for the district to create a safe and supportive environment for all students um you know whether that is our accelerated students or whether it's our students who are in some of our um neediest programs who need it more support um we

140need to be thinking about all um levels of our students who are being impacted by student behavior culture and instruct culture Um sorry, curriculum and instruction was a frequent topic. Um and I kind of mentioned that earlier that people have noted that we have new curriculum but please let's not forget about the other things that are important. Um teacher support and staff climate culture were identified as crucial for the success of the school. Um and a lot of this was parents really talking about supporting our teachers. Um do our teachers have enough training? Do our teachers um do they need more professional development or how to deescalate um behaviors in the classroom? Are we providing them with all the tools that they need to be successful teachers in the classroom when when climate and culture

141issues are um coming up? I think a lot of the parents who came really wanted to make speak up for our staff members and say, is the district doing what we need to do to empower them with all the tools that they need to be the best that they can be in their classrooms? Um, diversity and inclusion were themes that emerged of course um in our diverse uh population. that is was expected. But a lot of the um conversations really did uh uh um talk about things like um cultural misunderstandings and are we making all families feel welcome and represented when we still are struggling with getting um you know certain groups of our our uh students and their families out to events. Um the dual language program was mentioned in several spaces as a

142positive. I know Sherry already noted it's not even been a full year yet and we've we're already seeing a lot of positive implications um just from that program being uh together in one space. transitions between schools. Um people, this is again, you know, people wondering if that extra transition at sixth grade is going to really pay off in the end um for us. And we are really um really excited about all the things we're planning for the sixth grade center. So, um I know that'll, you know, people want to the the uh proof is in the pudding and so hopefully everything that we're going to be doing soon is going to reflect that. um but really talking about the transition from kind early childhood to kindergarten and um were also areas that were uh discussed

143the need for consistent systems and processes. So um we have a group right now the district um parent teacher advisory committee that Chasse and I lead where we have parents and um staff members. We have teachers there and parents there. And one of the things that we're working on is a consistent communication document about PBIS. Um, and I know that wasn't reflected in um, their voices were not reflected in this bullet, but I'm bringing it up because all the people in our committee have said the district needs a consistent positive behavior and intervention support handbook. like you know right now what happens at for PBIS in one building may not be the same in the other building. Um so we don't have a unified approach. Um and parents and staff have noted that is something

144that we need. So we're working on having a document by the end of the year um with input from that committee. Um the importance of seeking feedback and input from u parents and staff um was definitely something that was discussed. Um, and often we have found that surveys are not the best tool for us to be able to do that. But unfortunately surveys are not going away. So we need a way as a district to make our surveys more impactful where we can get information we need. Um, but we also don't want to over survey people. So there there were a lot of conversations about that. Um and then resources and funding um ex implicitly discussed in the context of staffing needs um the availability of programs and the desire to use school money effectively.

145And so I know Maryanne's going to talk about some of the conversations that we've been having um this year um as with the uh state board of education because we have a um in intense designated school again that uh we had to go through a resource allocation process um with the state and talk about how we are identifying funds for all of our schools that are designated. Um how are we doing that through an equitable lens? And so that's work that we've been doing this year as well and Maryann's going to talk about that with her strand. Um some positive things, I've already kind of talked about all of these. CKLA, dedicated effective teachers, dual language, um supporting students with varying needs. Um we've made a lot of progress with our um at the high

146school with some of our life skills programming and some of the other things people have noted that we've been putting in place. Um and there is recognition of the importance of applied learning and activities that hit things beyond academics. So people ask why aren't we going on field trips as much as we used to and those are things that um we have been talking about. I think coming out of COVID people are now just getting back to the point where they are starting to go back and do all of those things that we did prior to 2020. Um addressing inconsistencies and improving our systems. The development of a portrait of a graduate was listed as as mentioned as something positive. Um enhancing communication with families and then showing a willingness to be involved and support

147the schools in various ways. Areas of growth. I've already kind of talked about family engagement, enhancing communication, addressing student behavior, um strengthening the community, more consistent feedback, improving staff morale. Um and that was really related to um mo mostly culture and climate and making sure that our uh staff members have adequate support to um grow as professionals um ensuring consistency in our systems um the transition and strategically planning for resources and funding. So, um, we had a couple sessions where we had some, um, Latino participants come and here were some of the, um, some of their, uh, feedback, whether it was at a listening session or in the small group. Um, understanding and supporting their children with homework, um, particularly in math due to the language barriers and different teaching methods was something that parents

148brought up. Um, there's a clear lack of, uh, consistent communication from school and teachers. And I think this is also a translation thing. I think there are things that are sent home that aren't translated sometimes or um there's a reliance on using apps and so they specifically mentioned the WhatsApp um in relation to that and sometimes when parents teachers are sending notes home um the parents aren't able to read the notes that are coming home um in in regard to communication about their students because it it's not in Spanish. um challenges in ensuring their children receive adequate support in their learning um particularly in reading and math and navigating the school system. So that this was they feel that it is a challenge but they um are also there saying they want to be kind

149of part of the process. I was supposed to go out to Ivanho and do one of these engagements, but um the weather we had to cancel that. And so we're going to go at the end of the year for the end of the year picnic and share um their strategic plan now that it's completed, but then talk about um how our Latino families can engage in the process um next year. And here were some of the um comments that were shared as areas of growth specifically um for our black students. So, um there were comments about how can we more impactfully engage our black community and our um black families to um be really more involved um in the school environment because right now there is this perception um that there's a negative impact on

150our black students because maybe we don't have as much um parent involvement from home. Um concerns about potential racial bias. um the the ease in which our young African-American students are being labeled. So, if you were to look at our special education data in relation to um black boys or black students in general, it they our black students are overly labeled for um supports um through an IEP and um challenges related to student behavior and discipline um that are possibly influenced by factors outside of school um in our community and the need for consistent and supportive um support from school staff. when those things are happening in the community, how can we better support um our black students at school, when those things happen outside of school and our students with disabilities um was also

151there was uh some very specific uh growth areas for us as a district. Lack of adequate staffing and resources to meet diverse needs. I think one of the uh populations that has been hit the hardest the last couple years with um long-term subs and vacancies unfortunately has been the special education um department. You know, at the at Thomas Payne, we've had multiple long-term subs in that program. Um this year we had a couple buildings who were still hiring for um special education teachers even when school started. And so that is an area I think that we I think we're moving in a good direction, but it has impacted our ability to meet needs when we don't have trained special educa special educators uh working with those students. Um, and then addressing the full spectrum of

152needs for students with disabilities, including both those that need extra support and of course those that are on the other need that on the other end of the spectrum who are accelerated um and might have a 504 plan because they um have acceleration needs that need to be addressed. And these couple slides I'm gonna I just included them because um we have had a lot of conversations with our program council um staff. So people that attend program council and we meet four times a year are our folks who are in some kind of teacher leader role. Um so it would be department chairs um our grade level leaders our um team facilitators anyone who is in a stipen role where they're providing leadership. So, um, these were meant as areas that those folks indicated our

153strengths for the district, and you probably read those, so I'm not going to kind of read all the bullets. Um, but we wanted to make sure that their voices were also heard because they were part of a lot of the conversations that we had to inform our work that we had in um, April with our groups. So, here were some of the areas of growth um, that those folks shared. and we've talked about uh discipline and um we've talked about the academic performance gaps. Um so that none of this should be new information for the board hopefully. Jennifer, yeah, could I ask did the um different colors mean anything? So the different colors were more specifically for strategic planning um where we uh kind of highlighted areas in different colors where we'd already talked about

154it and where we didn't the day that we presented these slides. So, no, they didn't really mean anything for the presentation that we're doing right now. Yes. And oh, some of the threats. So, a SWAT is S Swo T. Um S is strengths, W is weaknesses, O is opportunities for growth, and T are um the threats. So, the things that Whoops, I'm going the long wrong way. Sorry, with the clicker. So the these are potential things that could be barriers. And so I know there's been lots of conversations about cell phones and um I already talked a little bit about um family and community engagement, community violence, language barriers. So those are also things that our teachers talked about. And then the themes are pretty much um the emerging themes were themes we've already talked

155about too is our racial disproportionality and discipline, student achievement concerns, um social emotional learning and school climate. So our our teacher leaders were basically saying the same things that we heard from our community folks and our parents who attended a lot of the sessions. um talent development and staff support um family and community engagement systems and infrastructure. All right. So phase three was basically now developing the plan. So we had a lot of um information that people gave us and now it was time to kind of sit through sit down and talk about those things. Um, and so what we gave our um, strategic planning team was you've seen the fall 2024 um, data and then we gave them kind of an update on where we were in the winter when our students went back

156and took their um, map testing and their um, compared to last year's IR and where we were um, for the fall versus winter. So, I'm not going to really go into those, but um you want me to just keep going or you want to come up and do So, we also shared uh the district um plan for discipline that we had to submit to the state and um so, Chassity did a great job of kind of highlighting that for the community folks and parents who attended strategic planning. the board members have seen this, but All right. So, I'm back and this is I don't know where the clicker went. Oh, I got it. You want to go back? Yes, please. Just to kind of outline our disproportional or how we got here. So, USD is

157in the top 20% for state for exclusionary practices. um we have inconsistencies in how we implement behavior um responses and interventions or consequences across our district. So last year the joint student discipline committee met with UEA um and really tried to problem solve what can we do about this and then therefore there was a creation of the student behavior response continuum and discipline matrix. Um and then we spent time this last summer really working with deans, assistant principles, principles, district staff to really um dig into these two pieces and what they mean and how we can apply them. We did some of that over this school year as well. And um I personally meet with secondary uh APS who are over discipline and we look at like top five um discipline outcomes, behaviors, what can

158we do about it? what can we implement? How do we share this data back with staff so that they are informed as well? And what supports do we need to put in place? And this was all kind of culminating into this year, what you'll see when Miss Jackson comes up. We have culture and climate goals in our school improvement plans. So when we say that we are disproportionate by 4 point um four by 4.9, that's our risk ratio value. And so this is just a cheat sheet. The BIR is basically what we would call a office discipline referral. So anything that is above a 3.0 is yikes, right? That means that our specifically black males are at a much higher risk um 4.9 ratio of receiving some type of disciplinary action that leads to exclusionary

159practices which could be in school suspension sorry out of school suspension um or expulsions for our students in particular. Like I said, we we are targeted more for our black males. And this is like over time our disproportionality rate. And so right now, this is last year's data. Well, I'll say that we are higher, the highest we've been since 2018. And so last year, oh yep, sorry. Last year, as I shared, the UEA and a joint discipline discipline committee kind of met because they realized that there were things that needed to um be improved. And so from that, we hope that of course next year, we usually get the data around um October, November that we've dropped. So that's one of that goals that also connects to the equity action plan in the system strand

160where we want to decrease our disproportionality. Um, and I shared this too a couple of months ago. So, I met with um, assistant principles and universal PBIS teams and deans um, and some school improvement team members in February and we all worked really hard to look at our discipline data and come up with a tiered system, a plan in order to first we had to of course submit that to ISBY to say we know that we have this issue. Here's what we're doing about it. And so the way that we kind of um tackled this was to use tiers. And so at tier one, we want to make sure that our universal that PBIS um framework or restorative practices is happening at every um at every building or level. Restorative practices tends to lean more

161into the secondary level. Sometimes PBIS is more used at the elementary level. So that's our tier one support. Tier two, we want to make sure we have students identified who are at risk and then based on those risk, of course, we intervene. What are we explicitly teaching them? So, this will be in great support of seven mindsets because we can use some of those lessons to really target behaviors for classrooms or specific groups of kids. Um, and also just making sure that all students are getting that explicit teaching so we have less students who are identified And then the last tier would be you know the smallest tier um ideally where if there are students who are not um being successful at tier one or tier two then we create some type of intensive individualized

162plan for them based on the supports that they need. This does not mean that they are students who um have an IEP. This might mean that that student just needs something different and the frequency or the amount of time could be four four weeks, six weeks or it could be over a couple of months to really just try to intervene and support that student. Okay, I'm going to go back a couple and this is probably a good time to just inform the board um that as while we have been under this um discipline improvement plan with the state um Miss Lad and I were just informed about three weeks ago that the state has now put us under under a discipline improvement plan for our students with special services as well. So, we've had three

163years of being in the highest um percentage in the state. Um and while that number did go down a little bit um since this is Beth's second year, we did see an improvement last year, but not enough for them to set for us not to be still considered um in the top 20% in the state. um for our students with special needs that are also receiving um office referrals, inschool suspensions, out of school suspensions, expulsions, and just basically exclusionary practices. So, we will be coming back to you later with a plan very similar to the one that Chassity just uh presented around our district data for all. Um now, we will be bringing you back a discipline improvement plan specifically for our students with special needs. Okay. So, um I am not going to go

164through all of these slides because most of them you already saw um when we did our school report card presentation in October. Um but there are a couple new ones. So, this is one of the new slides basically that shows unfortunately that our starting at kindergarten um this isn't our our achievement gap or our um that wideness of closing the gap doesn't start when they're in third grade. It basically starts when our students walk in the door as kindergarteners. Um so, our incoming kindergarten students are 45% lower than the state average for students who are ready for kindergarten. So, John, did you want you look like you were turning your mic on. Okay. All right. Um, so this was a slide that we didn't share with you earlier. Um, so we wanted I wanted to

165highlight this one. And our black and Hispanic students, um, as I mentioned earlier, the the gap between our their white and Asian peers, um, continues to grow as they go through school, but this slide shows that it actually has already started by the time they enter kindergarten. You've seen these slides about our ELA proficiency. So, we're going to talk about that as one of our goals. Um, this is a new slide that you didn't see last time where we basically compared 2019 to 2024. Um, and you could see the um, I uh, English language arts proficiency um, over time by grade. Um so the um in addition to the losses from 2020 and 20 2021 there is a dip in achievement as students transition from middle school and sixth grade. Um and this shows a

166little bit of a rebound in seventh and eighth grade but we are still consistently lower than the state. I clicked it. Is it dying? Okay. Sorry, you've seen this ELA proficiency. Um, you've seen this slide about gains in math. Um, this is a very similar math proficiency cohort data slide compared to um the one that I just showed you about um English language arts. Uh but that you this is new information that you did not have in October that we provided to the strategic planning uh team. We've talked about this showing um where our English language learners and our students with IEPs and um lowincome students fall in comparison to the district for math proficiency growth and don't know is the battery going out maybe ninth graders on track. um you've seen this data. This

167was not new to you. This was new in terms of uh we did not break down the ratio um breakdown for you for 9th graders on track. Um so this is a new slide um in terms of comparing the different groups. Um and Thank you. Okay. I think the battery maybe was going down the charge. It's getting heavy action tonight. Um if you see where the our Asian students are and our white students and the rest of the state who in comparison to our um black, Hispanic, and um our students of two or more races fall there for ninth graders on track. And um I think you saw this slide in October. Um eighth graders passing algebra. You saw previously. I think it's because my computer is Oh, you did plug it in. Can you

168advance for me, John? Chronic absenteeism um was a uh data point that we talked about I think at length at our last meeting um and we'll continue to talk about chronic absenteeism more. You can go to the next one and this was a new slide um where you um we didn't have this information. John, you want to explain this one because this one is one I know John really was proud of. Yep. And we will be Yeah, we'll be digging in a little deeper. uh I think at our next program council on uh chronic absenteeism because it's the most important thing for learning is being there. Uh but here you can see kind of the change month by month. Uh this is the cumulative uh so every month it kind of like builds on the

169all the previous months. Uh but there was a significant kind of a jump in February for most of the schools uh with the cold weather. Whoops. It went did two of them that time when I only wanted it to do one. Okay. SAT scores. Um I know we've moved to ACT, but we wanted you to at least have some historical data about SAT. So that was a new slide that we didn't share with you in the um fall participation in CTE. We've talked about this and um how the number of students participating um in CTA courses is a great celebration for our district advanced coursework. Um so you've seen the numbers of the students um participating but I think we broke it down by race. So this is a new slide that you did not

170see in October um related to you saw the percentages of percentage of students but here you can see um who those students are in terms of race. Um and I think Jaylen said it earlier when she was here. You know she wants to see more students in her classes that look like her and that is what we want as well. And then you can see who scored three or more. I think we shared that with you in the fall. Um, more students graduating. So, we we actually have a graduation rate goal. Um, that is an area we want to significantly improve in the next five years. Post-graduation plans. This was a slide that we didn't show you that was new for the strate just shared with the strategic planning team. So, we wanted to highlight

171it as well. Um you can see the 2022, 2023, 2024 and um some of the increases in area in our students that are attending um that are going into work or um trade school we saw last year was a big increase from previous years. So this was kind of an interesting data fact. We've shown you the designations. Uh we've shared that with our strategic planning group and we shared this with the strategic planning team as well. So this is something the board has looked at pretty extensively, but we wanted our strategic planning group to see that as well. And now on to something exciting that um is coming out of all that data and all those conversations. Um the portrait of a graduate uh conversations that we had with the planning team. Um really talking

172about what skills and competencies are we going to focus on as a district. So I know the board has heard us talk about this. So now you actually finally get to see it. Um over the last several months um there has been a team of people working to uh collaboratively develop um a portrait of a graduate. And what is a portrait of a graduate? Oh, here this is the committee members. I wanted to thank them. It is really hard. Um we had these meetings right after school um at about 4:00 and so um it's hard to get um parents in spaces like this sometimes that early in the day. Um anytime you have a committee where you have teachers that are participating, but you also want to include parents and community members. is tricky because

173we get the most success having a meeting right after school for our teachers, but it's also not as um parentfriendly to have a meeting right after school for parents. So, um we were happy that we had um a few parents who participated in this as well as several teachers. Um we had a couple students. So, thank you to everyone who was part of all of those meetings every other week for several months to do this work. So, what is the portrait of a graduate? So um the portrait is basically a um we had a lot of in-depth conversations looking at our uh state data um talking about workforce readiness um and what are the competencies that our uh students need to develop before graduating. U Mrs. Webster mentioned that we have had previous to this,

174we've had character traits um that came out of our 2011 uh strategic plan that we've utilized to teach things like perseverance and integrity. Um but now as we think about what we really need our students to be prepared for for life um college and career um they need a little bit more in-depth um training and more in-depth conver intentional teaching around those skills so they can um realize their full potent potential as USS graduates. So the six essentials, competencies and skills that we um chose as a group were critical thinking or our critical thinking, communication, adaptability, perseverance, self-management, and social awareness. Um and as skills that we deemed really important to equip our uh equip our students for lifelong success. So this we ended up with six, but we talked about many many more. And

175so there was, you know, conversation, there were surveys, there were rating scales, there were lots of ways that we landed on these six. Um, but these are the six that the group chose. And here is a visual just basically representing um what those six areas are. um what we're going to do moving forward is, you know, it's not just about choosing the six skills, it's also about choosing how we're going to implement that those in all levels. Um so the goal again, just like with our um character traits, is to start teaching the skills in kindergarten and then teaching our students what does it mean to be a critical thinker? What does that look like in first grade versus fifth grade versus 8th grade versus high school? Um, so the committee came up with these

176descriptors of the things that they want us to focus on when we implement this with the students day-to-day in the classrooms. Um, and then we also came up with a definition of what these things mean to us here in Urbana. And we're going to take that information and utilize um all of that to uh pull together a group this summer who is going to um really work on coming up with a K first prek K 1 2 3 what it looks like at every grade level on how we're going to implement it. So, um I'm hoping to get I have a couple volunteers, but I need a lot more folks um to be part of that process to kind of help us um build that road map, so to speak, from kindergarten through 12th grade

177to develop these six skills. So, on to um creating the new components. So, the mission, the values, and the motto. Um, so I partnered with um someone who was a retired superintendent. He was a member of Luda, so I knew him in that realm. Um, he retired in uh 2024, Dr. King Wallace. Um, he joined a student- centered um consulting group that ex uh includes other Luda superintendents who are doing work um throughout the state and beyond um to support LUDA districts. And so, uh, Ken was, uh, great in, um, kind of planning with me. Um, he was one of our thought partners in some of the work and how we were going to what data did we need to share and, um, what information we needed to present to the strategic planning team and

178how we needed to present it. So, um, Ken was a great thought partner for me and I think he did a great job to help facilitate the work during the two days um that we were with the committee. So, um, on April 16th and 17th, um, our goal was to bring a variety of stakeholders together to talk about a new mission, values, and how we were going to accomplish our mission and values. And um as Chassity mentioned really to take the work of the equity action plan, the discipline improvement plan and all the other district data that is in all those other slides and really um come up with some goals um to address our priority areas of need um which I've already just kind of gone through and talked about signific what our present

179state is kind of like a state a current state of the district. So, here were the uh strategic planning team members um that participated. So, on the left we had students uh we had some people there representing UEA. Um we had uh a couple parents um who were just only parents. Um we had a um every school had a parent who uh was invited to attend and who had agreed to attend um but then at the last minute um were were unable to attend. So we didn't have a parent from Thomas Payne and we didn't have a parent from um early childhood but they had been invited and we were um we didn't realize they weren't going to show up and be unable to attend or we would have probably tried to get someone else

180last minute to fill their spots. But the goal was to have a teacher and um a teacher staff member and parent from every building. And we did pretty good to and um in our goal to do that. We also always have parents um who were also staff members. And so, um, I know I list them under faculty and staff, but I would say several of the people who were, uh, there as parents, um, really, I mean, as staff members really did speak out in their parent role as well. It's hard not to wear both hats when you're sitting in a space talking about the future of the district and you are also passionate about the needs of your own kid. And so I think we had we had some parents who did that um and

181um shared their voices in both realms. Um and then we had our two board members uh Jennifer Hixon and Lola Jones who participated and then we had our district administrators um who were part of the process and building administrators. I know um when people often um make negative comments about the number of directors and administrators that we have on district committees. I don't know if you guys know this, but guess who's doing the work? The administrators. So, if we don't have administrators in this space, then a lot of this work doesn't happen before or after. Um, so it is important um to have directors and building administrators in the spaces. Um, it's very important to have our building um our dish our principles, our building principles there, especially um the ones who are represented here.

182They were very intentionally invited. So, Imani Carr is going to be the next leader of the sixth grade center. Mr. Guzman, of course, we have high school, very specific high school needs. Um, and then Melissa Karns is going to be leading um the um middle school. Uh Lydia Wong participated and we were so thankful she was able to come as the incoming principal for King. It was a great way for her to get to know a lot of people and um just to kind of meet um some of her own staff members who were there. So, um so yeah. So, we had some building administrators and district administrators, but I'm also very proud of the fact that we had so many community members, if you look to the right, who um who said, I you

183know, I'm happy to be part of this. And so, a couple of these folks were involved in the portrait of a graduate. So, they wanted to continue the work. Um, it was really important to me that we had representation from not just our faith-based leaders, but we had um, faith-based leaders representing the black community because, as you saw in several of our goals, we need our black community to get behind us and help us move our black students forward. And we can't do it by ourselves. Um, and we know our our black families rely on their faith. So, it was really important um, to have faith-based uh, people in the room. Um CU schools foundation is one of our really um really significant partners. We had people there from um the city of Urbana, Urbana

184Police, the mayor elect. At that time he was a Mary Lect, but now of course he is Mayor Williams. So he was there and he also is a parent. So when he spoke up in a lot of those conversations, he was speaking up more so as a parent and not the mayor. Um, we had a parent um who uh also works for Parkland who was um part of our portrait Virginia who she's just been a wonderful new addition I think to some of our district committee work. Um someone from NAACP, Mrs. McFarland, um we had Stone Creek Church representatives, Urbana Park District, um Rod Wyatt, Dr. Wyatt um is the assistant chancellor for preK12 initiatives. So I meet with him regularly. He meets with all of the um regional superintendent regularly. He's kind of the

185right hand for Chancellor Jones. I'm not quite sure um what his position is going to be moving forward. Um because that was a position that Chancellor Jones created as part of his tenure to stay connected to what's happening in our schools. Um but I'm hoping that Dr. Wyatt continues to be able to work with us. Um we had Matt Kelly there um representing some of the CTE work that we've been doing in the district um to move forward our um trades and our um apprenticeship uh conversation. So this was a really well-rounded group of folks and they were very committed to the process. All right. So the mission statement and this is a picture um that is Ken standing there um our uh facilitator who joined us kind of um doing an activity with the

186group. So um a mission statement what is a mission? So the mission is your overall purpose. It is basically um literally the keystone on everything that we do moving forward. Um, our mission statement that we have right now is is long and includes a lot of information, but our goal um here was to make sure that we had something clear, a concise declaration that when we say it, everyone knows what it means and there's no, you know, there's no gray areas. And so um we came up with lots of iterations of what a uh mission statement would be moving forward for our district. But this is what the group settled on. The mission of Urbana School District 116 is to create a supportive community to equip and nurture all learners to achieve success. So short,

187concise, but very powerful. Um our motto um which is what we stand for and who we are. Um, this was a is something we spent a lot of time talking about because we also not only want our to also always talk about our mission, but we also want to um make sure that when we're uh talking about who we are, we have this as well so that we are stronger together and we're leading for the future um was what the group um came up with. And then the values. So, we decided um in a lot of our pre-work and some of the conversations that I had with Dr. Wallace and some of our um small group work leading up to this that in our previous strategic plan, we had a mission and a vision and

188it was so much information um in that it it did kind of become a little watered down. And so our goal this time was to really focus on our mission, but also make sure that we call out the things that we value as a school community. And so um we had a lot of conversation about what what are the things that we value. Um these are in ABC order, but um pride I'm going to call out first because we talked about um in lots of small groups. We did some voting. We had a lot of, you know, we had our top, I don't remember, six or seven and we whittleled it down to four. Um, but pride was the area that received the most votes every time we voted. So, pride in our school from

189the student perspective, pride as a staff member, pride as a community. It should mean something for people to say they graduated from Urbana High School or they attend Urbana High School or their children go to Urbana School District. And so, or I'm a staff member in Urbana. So we had a lot of conversations about um we need we need to um we need stronger pride and having that be one of our values was a way that we would intentionally do that. Belonging was an area I know we often talk about belonging in terms of student belonging and relationships with students. And I know everybody in here, maybe not board members, but a lot of the people in the room hear me say all the time um one of the quotes from Rita Pearson about um

190that uh kids don't learn from people they don't like. And so we talk a lot about relationships and what it means to feel like you belong, but that we also have a belonging issue. um not just with students but with staff. So we shared data with the com the committee around um how we need to better retain our folks like we we've been getting people and then um this new generation of new teachers if we don't keep them till tenure we have seen that we've been losing them um to and some have just been leaving the whole field of teaching altogether and going in other directions and choosing other careers. So, we need to have a sense of belonging um also for our staff members. But we also talked a lot about belonging as a

191community. Um there were people who called out the fact that there's white flight in our community that um people in our community are choosing to move to places like Monaceel and Muhammad and that is something that we need to address as a district. Um, and there are a lot of reasons why a lot of the data that I just talked to you about is actually um having having a big part in why we're losing some of our white families. But as if we do a better job of valuing belonging and um our community, hopefully in the next five years, we can bring back some of the um some of those folks who have left us. If not um having moved out of the community, they maybe have left us to go to private school. So,

192we're also dealing with that in terms of um bringing back some of those families who might be sitting in private school spaces right now. Um getting them back to uh believing in our district for the future. Uh we talked a lot about building community and of course integrity. So, that was one of our character traits that um we have talked about for years that we kept um because integrity is what you know what what integrity is what happens when nobody's looking, right? is what you do when nobody's looking. But it also means that we need our uh community to uh reestablish some of that trust in terms of you know some of the processes that we've gone through with WY and Genki Ridge and um some of our communication. So we need to build back

193some of that trust and in order to do that we need to be showing integrity. So these were the four values that we came up with and then now to the priority goal areas. So, um, as our directors are going to come up and kind of present these different areas, but as we talked about what our priority areas need to be, the focus was really on we needed goals that support our students, we needed goals that support our staff, and then we need goals that support our family and our community. And of course, our district systems and operations kind of bring it all together. Um and so this was an image that uh we've kind of created to show our stronger together leading for the future but also the different four priority areas. So I

194think our first person oh so here are the four areas um student growth and achievement staff development retention family and community as agency district systems and operations and our first one is student growth and achievement. And so Jesse's gonna Jesse Bradford is going to What's that? Oh, Christina, you both are going to come. Awesome. Jesse and Christina are going to come and talk about the student achievement goal. I do want to say um I know that in a lot of the goals, you're going to hear us talk about priority groups. And um I again I want to kind of echo a couple of the conversations that I had with a couple of parents at the strategic planning is we know that um our students who are accelerated and our students who are above grade level,

195they matter and um they matter just as much as all of our students. And so we have plans for uh helping our uh staff differentiate for those um students and making sure that we're always keeping our students that are accelerated in in our in our planning. However, um when we talk about these goals moving forward, um we really have focused on the priority area groups of our black students, our Hispanic students, our students with IEPs, and English language learners because they are the students who need us the most right now um to get them to a level of basic proficiency so they can move on in college, career, and life. So um so each director is going to come up and present their uh goal area and talk a little bit about the conversations that

196they led at strategic planning. So hey, sorry about that. I'm Christina Kale Luwendowski, director of assessment and accountability. And goal one, all students will grow and excel to reach their full potential, achieving success in college, career, life, and beyond. By the end of 2030 academic school year, at least 30% of students will meet or exceed on the Illinois Assessment for Readiness. That's what we call the AR in English language arts, ELA, Spanish language arts, SLA. Um, so In then we have key performance indicators we call that KPI for 2526 percentage of students meeting or exceeding on the I in ELA for 2526 school year and so currently so how we ended 23 24 in the area of reading um we had achieved 12.5% and so when you look at all students when you see the

19716% you need a point of reference to say Okay, why is it 16%. Because we ended the school year at 12.5%. And so then we looked at every priority group like Dr. Ivy Tatum stated and we looked at how they performed and projected what they would be able to achieve with all of the new strategies and new curriculum implementations that we've done thus far for our black students. 6.8% Hispanic students 12.5% students 7%. And we wanted to make sure too that um we were closing um the achievement gap um amongst our um our like black students, Hispanic students, students with IEPs, and our English learners. So, we made sure that our percentage that we set um closed the gap um amongst our white students and all of our students. And how we looked at that

198data, too, is we kind of looked at trends um from AR and what we've seen in the past um and what the state has and and how much these um how much students have grown. And so, um that's kind of where we set our goals. And um we also looked at achievement and so instead of growth because we want our students to be performing at grade level that's really important um that we have students performing meeting or exceeding on a on a instead of looking at growth like growth is great but if they're still reading at a third grade level when they're in sixth grade like it's great that they're making growth but we want all of our students reading at grade level and performing at grade level. So that's in our group. Um Jennifer

199was in our group. Um that's why we chose achievement versus growth because we want all students performing at grade level. So math. Okay. Go ahead and keep reading. Okay. So what was this? Okay. So now we're going to do math. So all students will grow and excel to attain grade level proficiency to reach their full potential achieving success in college, careers, life, and beyond. Um something I didn't say before that I or it's for grades three through eight. U by the end of 2030 academic school year at least 27% of all students will be meeting or exceeding on the IR math. Um so that's going from 9.2% which is um what they performed in 23 24. So we're going from 9.2 to 27% in five years. Key performance indicators percentage of students meeting or exceeding

200on IR. Um so we are going to project we are projecting because we just ended IR that we are going to be at 12.8% for our black students 5.1% Hispanic students 5 all students is 12.8 right that's what I said uh Hispanic students 5.6 students with IEPs 4.4% 4% and our English language learners, they're we're going to project 5%. And we did, like Jesse said, looked at past data starting with 2019 all the way up to 24 and saw the patterns and trends and um this is our best projection. And if you click on like the math baseline data, it'll give you a chart that shows you like um so for the 26 27 school year, this is um at how much they'll grow, where we want them to be meeting and achieving the percentage

201of students. Um so we did that for um each year for the the next five years. So we did that both for both reading and math. questions for Christina or Jesse. Was kind of wondering where why 27% was picked specifically. I mean, just kind of curious like how did you determine that that exact number? So, we looked at where we were currently at right now. So, for math, what we were at 9.5%. 9.2. So, right now with students in grades three through eight, only 9.2% 2% of our students were meeting and exceeding. And so we just looked at um the trend for how much the state was growing. Um and we took that. What else did we do? We did a lot of calculations. So then what we did, we did we went back and

202forth. We documented it too. And so what we did was we said, "Okay, three we we felt that they would grow 3.6% each year. And so that's how we got ultimately the 27%. Yeah, we just looked at how much the state was growing in that area and we wanted to be competitive with the state. Um and so and then we looked at what we have currently been growing too and kind of looked at those two um to set that that percentage and then we multiplied that by five years. That makes sense. Thank you. Yeah. No, good question. That's always hard to determine, right? Yeah. Yeah. We want to make it rigorous um and and get close to where the state is, but when we're we want also want to make it um achievable when we

203were working with Ken, you know, we have to also remember that, you know, with the where we're currently at and um uh we want to make it attainable and realistic too, right? and remember what type of students that we're working with, you know, with our poverty and um not saying that they can't, but make growth, but we want to set growth that's realistic and and achievable. And I think that's good growth to set. Um right now at 9%, in five years, we're going to hopefully be at least, that's why we said at least, uh 27%. So, and can I just add one more thing? I want to just give a shout out to all the teachers. Um because I felt like this year it was a very strong intentional um strategic way that they created

204the testing environment and I just felt like it was this thing going through the district with grades 38 with I felt like they felt that this was serious and that we needed to communicate that to our families and to our and to our students and that we can um achieve and and and improve. So, shout out to all the teachers because it's up to you all to set that environment for testing. Okay, other questions? All right, I'm going to go to the next area of if I can get the clicker to go cultural climate. So, Chassity's gonna she led the culture climate group and they have three goals. Um, I meant to say this at the very beginning. Um, and Paul asking that question reminded me. So, we uh we wanted to be rigorous but

205achievable, but we also wanted these this we know that we this is aspirational, right? like we talked a lot with our um the whole group about the fact that we know where we are um and our data isn't great in some areas but it's where do we aspire to be in five years and that's really where we try to keep our focus on being aspirational and and and where we hope to be so or where we plan to be. So Chassity is going to do the next three that uh focus on culture and climate. All right. So, I want to first give a shout out to my group. I had um Dr. Wyatt, I had a parents, I had a student, another community member from the coalition. Um and we and some staff members and

206I think this cohesive group will ask a lot of great questions. Um, luckily we had data readily and available for them, but I was also able to just tell them things that different groups have worked on with our discipline as well and pull up live data. And so we really dug in and I will say that because culture and climate is huge. That's why we have like kind of like the three pieces or three different goals because with culture and climate we just can't say reduce something without adults doing something too without some type of training and support with some um type of professional development and interventions for students. So our goal is of course um to create that sense of belonging not just for students but also for staff too and we'll see more

207of that later for all students with a focus on positive behaviors to decrease the exclusionary practices. And so this is how we're also making a connection from our discipline improvement plan that goes to the state but also um how we're enacting that in our strategic planning. So by the end of 2030 academic school year, we want to have a 50% reduction in discipline disciplinary disproportionality for students with individualized education plans, IEPs, but also our black students. And so things that we'll be looking at next year, um, one of our key performance indicators is we want to make sure that each school implement interventions for students experiencing behavioral challenges, thereby decreasing discipline referrals for black students and students with IEPs by 15% compared to this year's data that they're going to end um, end with. And

208one way that we're making this come alive, too, is like I said, I meet with administrators. We're working on our school improvement plans and we have our culture and climate data. And so, um, as you'll see when Miss Jackson comes up, going from SMART to Smarty, there are targeted groups in the school improvement plan for our schools as well, especially if they're targeted by uh, ISBY, Illinois State Board. And then we also want to make sure that we are all doing the same type of work and bring in some cohesion to really decrease this data. The second one is by the end of 2030 we want to have a 25% increase in favorable culture and climate perception scores from students and staff. Um I think this year we had 36% of students who um said

209that they felt a sense of belonging. So this is our 6th through 12 12th grade students who are filling out that panorama survey. So we want to increase that by 2030 by 25%. And currently we use the five essentials data and that's what um Isby pulls when they give our like climate survey for how our staff feel in supportive environment. Right now that is weak um but Isby is giving us an alternative to use like Panorama. So we want to design something similar that our students are getting in Panorama but it will be specific for our staff members so we can gather baseline data on what is our staff sense of belonging right now and then of course increase that by 25% by 2030. Um and so those are some KPIs that we'll be working

210on this year too. So in increments we want to increase it by 12% but we also have to get that baseline data this fall once that survey is created because like we said we want our staff to feel like they belong as well as our students. And the last one is we think about our tier three. So those are our students with um the most maybe challenging behaviors. Again it could be over time or within a short amount of time as well. So we want to make sure that we are putting in interventions for those students. So by 2030 we want to have a 20% decrease in tier three behavioral incidents that result in exclusionary practices. So, this might be more of our um like fighting um when we think about a lot of our

211students getting into physical fights, whether it's with either a teacher or a a student, a peer. And so, we want to decrease that by 20% because that is what ultimately gets students expelled or suspended from school. And so one thing we want to do is start um in by June of next year having at least 60% of our students identified as needing tier three supports per panorama through that multi- multi-tered system of supports. So, a school would say, "Okay, we have 20 students who are considered tier three." And that will be triggered by maybe these students had three or more physical fights or we want to get to them before three or more. Actually, maybe they have one or two um and we're saying, "Okay, we know this student um is struggling with putting their

212hands on another student. What are we doing about it? And how are we reteing that? How are we meeting with families or whatever we need?" and that will be a team problem solving this so that we can really actually get to the root of the issue um and stop excluding that student over like those repeated behaviors that we're not able to intervene and retach or put some type of replacement in for our students. So it doesn't say 100% because right now we are not doing this well but this is something that we really want to increase next year to ensure that we have data to support how our students are doing even our students who are really struggling with specific behaviors that could um bring them to exclusionary practices. Okay. And next we have student

213services. Oh questions for chassity. Sorry, this is a record. Okay, thank you. Oh, not yet. I think I I'm not a question exactly, but I really like the idea that you put in there the um the belonging of staff members. I think that's a great addition. Thank you. Say that. The team did great. Yes. So we do have three big goals, but we hope all of the wrapping around will make some impact. Okay. Student services. So Beth Lad has two areas. Good evening. Uh Beth Lad, executive director of student services for Urbana. Um I led the group that was focused on students who receive um special education services or who have IEPs. And I want to make a distinction because sometimes on our um report card, our state report card, they talk about students with

214disabilities and that is inclusive of students with 504s. So in these goals right now, we're speaking just about students who have IEPs, individualized education plans, and are focused um on students eligible for special education services. We had a small but mighty group. We were represented by myself, a building administrator, a teaching assistant who was honored this evening with an unsung hero award, and a parent and community member. And um we had uh I think you're going to hear each one of us report out just really amazing conversation around the needs, the reality, and um our aspirational goals moving forward. And so the ones for um uh my department focus on two different areas. They focus on academic achievement and the exclusionary practices. And um our uh group really felt connected with those two goals in

215the sense that if our students aren't in class um we know they can't make the gains that they need to um especially given the fact that they're already working with the disability that needs to be accommodated and um supported. And so, um, Jesse and Christina focused on our, um, Illinois assessment for readiness, our AR achievement, and, um, for our goal, we, um, talked about how to get to where we want to be for the, um, AR, and we focused on our MAP growth. And so the numbers you see here were really intentional in thinking about how much growth math predicts is possible and reasonable. How much is necessary to close that gap and how much um is um appropriate when all of your systems are functioning in place. You've got all your staff. You've identified

216the right curriculum and knowing that that is still a work in progress for us in some ways. That is where we came up with the numbers that you see here in terms of our um goal for um growth and achievement. And our second goal um really focuses on the suspensions and expulsions. And Dr. Ivory Tatum informed you we have been cited by the state um for three years of um discipline data for our students with IEPs. And um I'm not surprised by that when our overall um district is cited. Um it's just a matter of time before we were um typically you might see that your students with disabilities are more excluded um than other students. There's obviously a significant overlap between our black and brown students, which is why we were cited districtwide and

217our students with IEPs. Um, I was proud and I did point out, even though it's a a minor win, that last year we did um go down in our exclusionary practices overall. Um, until a couple months ago, I was hopeful we would go down this year, but we'll see how the the year ends, but we did want to see a diff a significant decrease in our exclusion um of students through um suspensions and expulsions. And um we're having some really continued difficult conversations with our staff and we recognize that the decision to make the um suspension really is not the point of um focus. But um the way in which we're culturally responsive to our students, the way in which we understand trauma, and the way in which we instruct students is the overall um

218need for that. But um we do have to really be thoughtful when we're making decisions about excluding students for very certain behavior. So that is our um second priority area. Questions? Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Next we have multilingual learners. If I get the slide to move. Okay. Thank you, John. So we've got uh Joe Weimtt and Lupe Racone who led that group. Yes. Good evening. This I am Joe Weimttz uh executive director of secondary multilingual and alternative education and Lupe Riconei, director of multilingual programming for the district. And I'll start with a real quick uh overview of our team. Uh we had Sit Lai was one of our team members as well as two of our family liaison and myself and Lupe and one other person maybe. I can't remember. I think that was

219just us. It was a small group as well. Um, and we wanted to really focus on the growth aspect uh of our student achievement specific to multilingual learners. Um, as a real quick reminder, the term multilingual learners. In the past two to three years, the state of Illinois, Illinois State Board of Education has um kind of reidentified the student group and the name of the student group. Historically, you may have heard English language learner or English learner. Way back in the day, limited English proficient u emergent bilingual. Lots of different terms have been used. Right now in the state of Illinois, it's multilingual learner. So that represents students who are um categorized as students who are learning English as a second language according to English assessments in the school district and across the state. Um

220and so we're talking specifically about those students in this particular um group and this particular goal. So, we're looking at the growth and individual achievement of multilingual learners. Um, and we broke it down also similarly to student services and and Bethlad's group in regards to looking at growth that we want to see for our students over time um by utilizing the MAP assessment um and the growth scores in regards to English literacy, Spanish literacy for students who are in the Spanish English dual language program as well as in math. And I'll let Lupe break that down a little bit further. Yeah. So specifically we were using the map which as you've been discussed is given three times a year really focusing on growth not necessarily achievement in this case. So looking at the students growing

221um by the end of 2030 by 20% in their English literacy and 15% in math. Um so specifically students that are in the dual language program. Our goal is for 2030 that they exceed in both Spanish and English literacy. That not that they exceed, excuse me, that they grow by 20%. For next year, our target really is focused on using the map and focusing on a 4% increase for our MLL students. And um as Dr. Bount mentioned, this is looking at all of our multilingual learner students at all of our buildings, K through 12. Um so students that are still below that 4.8 um score that ISB determines is considered English proficient. Um so in that case we're wanting to for next year focus on that 4% increase um of students that are meeting or

222exceeding their target for yearly for the next 5 years. So that way we can meet that 20% goal by 2030. Um for English Spanish literacy for our students that are in dual language focusing on that 3% increase yearly for the next five years so that way we can reach that 15% overall goal as well. Um, one additional piece of information when we talk about multilingual learners, it's important to talk about u the not just the proficiency level of which students are at based on uh how long they've been either in the country or learning English, but also we oftentimes categorize students by newcomers or recent arrival immigrant youth as well as students who have um potentially been born in in the US and are still acquiring English as a second language. Um and so we

223um have a really have had a stronger focus in the last couple years, especially at the secondary level on supporting our newcomer youth. Um was in a meeting this morning with our middle school and high school team looking at curriculum alignment as it relates to our newcomer sections of English classes at the middle school and high school level and vertically aligning uh what that looks like for students who arrive in middle school versus high school and everything in between. And so when we think about the growth targets, we have to also be intentional at where they start with their English literacy and English fluency. Um, and that's why we're looking at the growth over time, not just proficiency at the end of the like the academic standard. Um, so for us, growth is really important

224as it relates to language development. And similarly at the elementary level, we've um this year really kind of uh established new uh protocols of service to kind of mirror what we've been doing at the secondary level, which allows our students that are on the higher end of the proficiency scale to receive more co-taught services. So that way they are still receiving that rigorous CKLA um curriculum through support in the classroom. In addition, also focusing on the newcomer students, really adopting some additional supplemental tools for our ESL push and pull out teachers so that way they can really make sure that they have materials that are targeted to the specific linguistic needs of the students they're working with. Any questions for us? um this is a or had been a pretty mobile group and so I'm

225wondering are you look are will you be looking at a 4% increase overall including all your brand new kids and kindergarten through or early childhood through however you're doing it. Um or will you be looking at like Johnny made 4% growth from year to year? You know, each student I I just Sure. No, that's a great question and it gets to my comment earlier about the differentiated needs of different students within the multilingual um group. And so this particular goal, as it's written, is for all multilingual learners. So, not broken down by individual student um and those who may come and go, but what we another indicator that we do have is the progress to proficiency scores based off of the WEDA English um uh assessment. And that allows us to break it down individually

226to see also by a percentage of the group of students based on years in the program or years in the country or years in the district in regards to their progress towards that 4.8 score for the access assessment. So this particularly is whole group cohort, not cohort data, but year-to-year data, even if the students may be different, whereas we're able to break it down more individually with the access scores, but not reflected in this particular goal. Any other questions? Okay, thank you. And I am going to I'll be back soon to talk about the seal of literacy. We increased those numbers again and 70% of them are students who have been in dual language programming. So coming soon. Coming soon. All right. Um and I am going to just uh share the college and career

227readiness goals. So, um Jesse Guzman and Shauna Shear led the college and career readiness group and it included um a parent, a teacher from the high school, uh two of our community members, I believe, and I can't remember who else was in their little small group. Um but their goal, if you remember, I shared a data slide with you that we are currently at 83.3% from 2024 of our uh fourth four-year graduation rate. Um and that is where we have uh basically um the highest we've been the last two years prior to um 2020 and 2021 where we kind of graduated everyone and we had those stipulations in um the emergency action uh stipulations in for COVID. Um since then we've only had like a 2.5% increase for multiple years. So we were at 80%

22880.5 80.4 before um and the state has stayed around 87% uh 88%. So um that gives you a little bit of baseline as to uh why they landed where they landed in terms of increasing the students who had graduate in four years um by 2030 to 88.5% for all students um and increasing by 10% for our black Hispanic students with IEPs and English learners group. And so um that is going to be a lofty goal but we wanted it to be um ambitious and um but we also feel that is it is achievable um by looking at the KPI the uh key performance indicator that by the end of this year 20 uh 202526 um we'll increase the graduation rate for all students by 1% but specifically for our students um our black students Hispanic

229students with IEP students with IEPs and our English learner groups by 2% um in the uh yeartoyear to get us to that 10% in um five years we had a college we had a counselor there too I believe so yes when you count these kids um this is a math question um are we counting the kids from um 9th grade to 12th grade. So it's a fouryear graduation rate. Yeah. Right. So the kids who aren't there at 12th grade, are we are we saying okay they didn't if they graduate we still count them the ones who graduate in December. You mean or students who graduate a four-year graduation rate? Yeah. This is our four-year graduation. So um if they started and my brother took longer than four years to graduate. Um, we have a rate.

230Um, it's on our school report. I mean, he did graduate, but he took another year. Yeah. Um, and so we have a fiveyear and a six-year rate that's in the school report card. Okay. So, there is a four-year rate, a five-year rate, and a six-year rate. Our goal is the four-year rate because we want to we want to graduate our students in four years and not have students that are reclassified or repeating any grade levels or um so yes. So, this goal is very specifically to the four-year graduation rate. And so, the kids who just drop out, they are that they're included in our dropout rate, which is a different number on our school report card. So, yes. Yeah. They would not be included in this because they don't graduate if they drop out. Correct.

231They're they're included. Yep. They're included in our dropout rate, which is an area that hopefully by increasing our four-year graduation rate, we will be decreasing our dropout rate. So, yeah, if they transfer to another program, then they're not part of our statistic. Then, if they it only um it depends on the program. If they transfer to adult ed and participate in our high school graduation program, then yes, we are able to include them. But if they transfer to a program like youth build, they have to actually drop out of high school and join that program because it's it's more of a GED program and not they don't get a high school diploma. So, it only would count if they go to a program where they receive an actual high school diploma. Yeah, good question. So,

232we're going to leave the student growth and achievement area and move to staff development and retention. Um, so one thing that we talked about a lot in um afterwards and during is professional development. And so, um, you don't see a very specific goal for professional development here because, um, we've decided based on the conversations we had with our groups, professional development needs to be in every single area. And so, um, I know Mrs. Smith, oh, she's still here. So, Mrs. Smith has a very lofty goal because, um, she will be working with each strand leader to make sure that we are embedding professional development in all of the strands. Um when we develop the action plan with the uh strategic uh priority areas and the action steps, we will make sure each group has a

233goal for professional development. So this area is focused on retention and recruitment. Hi everybody. Um I just wanted to talk a little bit about our committee work. Um we had a great committee that had a lot of ideas. um about retaining staff and it came down to providing the staff um what they need to be successful in the classroom in terms of uh supporting our students. And so in terms of staff retention um and I and I wanted to talk about retention prior to recruitment because I think that the retention of staff is very important um in for student outcomes. It's also uh financially important because every time we have turnover staff, it it just costs the district money in terms of um training the staff and and getting to them to the level that

234we need for our students. So by the end of the 2030 academic year, Urbana School District will retain 87% of staff in all positions by increasing the staff retention rate by 1% annually for the next five years. And so from the 23 24 school year to this school year, so just last year to this school year, we retained 82% of all staff members um in we've retained more teachers um than we have overall staff. But when we have a staff of over,00 and we live in a dis I mean we have students that are very transient that go back and forth. We also do a staff. The university brings folks here um that are here on a temporary basis. We also have a lot of folks that go back from fourth from unit 4 to

235Urbana in terms of of working. We have students that will work for us that have come to the university. They'll stay here for a few years and then they'll relocate back to where they're from. So, um our goal is to up that through our retention efforts. Um, and our goal next year, um, we already had, this was our HR goal is that we would retain 83% of staff. Um, we actually had a loftier goal, but through strategic planning, we thought it was a little bit more realistic to raise it 1% per year. Um, so that we're able to meet that goal. So by the end of 2026, 88% of all licensed teachers would be retained. Um, so again, we retained um 83% of staff um from last year or we want to retain 83% of

236staff from last year to the end. Yeah, from this year to the end of next year. I'm sorry, I'm tired. I think I said all that right. So, if you can go on to the next one. Are you gonna ask a question? Oh, sorry. Just a quick question about the math again. Yes. Uh, do retired teachers teach count differently than say like a teacher leaves the profession or goes down the district? So, okay, it counts either way. Yep. Yeah, that doesn't seem kind of fair almost, right? Well, but we're always going to have retired teachers, right? And so, it it um I mean, we're you know, some for the most part, our retired teachers have um it's a very small percentage like we we don't have a ton every year. So, we have a lot

237of incentives to keep our retired teachers working, too. All right. So, um we also have um one of our goals is to recruit staff, and we want to recruit staff that represents and reflects our student body. Um by the end of the 2030 academic year, we will recruit more teachers of color by increasing the number of teachers of color by 5% over the next five years. And so currently, well at the report card from last school year, um just so you have a little bit of some baseline data, 28% of the staff of the teachers, not the staff, 28% of the teachers in Urbana last school year were teachers of color. And I um wanted to show you kind of some fast facts and I will be very quick because of the the evening, but

238I I am very proud of the work that we continue to do to recruit and retain staff. To give you a little bit of spot checking for school districts in our area. So we have 28% of our teachers are teachers of color in unit 4. 22% and this is all last year's data. 22% of the teachers are teachers of color in rand city schools. 21% of the teachers are teachers of color in Danville. 5% of the teachers are teachers of color in um Carbondale. 8% of the teachers are teachers of color. In the Puria School District, 25% in Bloomington district 80 uh district 87, 13% of the teachers. Um and so in Chicago public schools, that was like the big one, right? um where 55% of their teachers are teachers of color. But in terms

239of us being at 28% um I think that that is something that we should be really proud of that the district uh we have staff of color that specifically want to be in Urbana because of what we stand for. Um and overall we've done a pretty good job of retaining staff, all staff and teachers. And sometimes I think that that's um we forget that because of the very small group of people that are disgruntled and sometimes just kind of miserable and then you hear from the same people and um and sometimes those people just stay and talk about everybody leaving when it's a very small percentage that we're losing every year. So we want to continue to increase the number of staff who reflect represent and reflect our student body. Angie, I had a question.

240Sure. I'm really tired. Um um do Hispanic Latino staff or teachers count as white or people of color? People of color? Okay. Yep. Good question. Angie. Yeah. Um you I was wondering if you know what the retention rate of teachers is in other districts. you were at you were saying you I could I could look that up. It would take I wouldn't be able to do that right this second, but I can I can get that information just to kind of see where we are. But to have numbers in the high 80s, high 80 percents, you know, um I think is is pretty is pretty good, especially when I talk about like, you know, people that come here from the University of Illinois and then the teachers leave and we have teachers that go back

241and forth from Champagne and we have um teachers who retire and teachers that we get right out of school and move up. So, okay. And then does that also include long-term subs? No. So the long-term subs are considered in our all staff, but they're not considered in our teacher licensed teacher data. Good question. So here's some very brief I'm just I should have timed myself to make sure. So some of the things that we do because in our committee they didn't they didn't really know like a lot of the things that we do and so this is my opportunity to make the meeting longer and briefly say what we do. Um and so this we've provided staff retention and listening tours. We started that this fall. So we're doing that um outside of contract negotiations

242where we're going and meeting with staff during lunch during the fall semester to hear what's going on in the building um and how HR can support them. Um we also have a stay survey, a retention survey. We have a state interview um scheduled where we meet with people that we have heard that um might be looking elsewhere and we want to meet with them for a stay interview, not an exit interview. Um we re uh award annually hard to fill teacher stipens. Um we have a social media page to highlight staff and what they're doing. Um in the fall we're implementing um various subgroups of staff members of the month and at the end of the school year we're going to have a celebration recognizing their contributions to the district. Um some of the other

243things that we've implemented are our tiger tours where we have made partnerships with various schools. We drive our activity buses around um and show them Urbana and what makes Urbana special. Uh we have referral bonuses. We have a 100% success rate in providing tuition and fee assistance to every staff member who's applied. Um, and we kind of do our things big, our social events big, our job fairs big, and um, try to, you know, just our marketing. I think marketing the brand is important. And that's I'll I'll be quiet now. Okay. I asked Miss Webster to come on up and be ready for supporting family engagement. So she has the next goal. So we had a a great group as well. We had our district family liaison, Dr. Janice Mitchell. We had a family liaison,

244Mr. Jean Florimbo from Yankee Ridge. We had Miss Landa Neely from Urbana Early Childhood. We had a King parent, Miss Cooper. And we also had an Urbana High School staff member, um, Dean, Miss Stacy Luth, in our committee. and a district um a former district parent and a current community member um Miss Deborah McFarland were all part of our group. We had a small but mighty group and we had robust conversations about making sure that our goal was rigorous and our main goal was to make sure that we support and develop families to engage learning for all students. And we wanted to make sure that families were aware of the things that we are doing in the classroom so that they can support those things at home and to get families in for events but

245to make them feel comfortable and welcome in those events. So our um we want to by the end of the 2030 academic year increase overall family engagement and required district activities by 50% measured through annual attendance records. Those required activities are curriculum night, family reading night, math and science night, and social emotional learning night. We want those to be reflective of our focus area. We do know that schools have several other events which we encourage. However, to make sure that we're our data is comparative across all schools. We're going to focus on those four events. So by the end of next year, we want to make sure that 100% of our schools will consistently track attendance at district required family engagement activities and events because right now our data is skewed. We don't have consistent

246data to show the number of people that are there. I do get sometimes some signin sheets from families and schools, but I don't get as many. So that's a goal for us is to get there to make sure that everybody remembers to get signin sheets. People get excited, they get to the events, they come in and we just forget to ask them to sign in. So, we know people are there, but in order to have clean data to really compare where we started, that's where we're going to start is the end of next year. Everybody's going to do it. Short and sweet. Any questions? I'm curious why um you didn't include parent teacher conferences as a as a required event. Well, it is a required event, but in terms of attendance, we are going to

247include it. I'm so glad you brought that up. But that's just not one of those four that I brought up for face events. So, you are absolutely right. That will be one, too. It's well past my bedtime, but um it will be one of those events as well to ask families to come. So, thank you for catching and we do have pretty good data on that. That is one of our strong data points in terms of being able to compare from year to year because we collect that from every building. That's our one consistent. The rest of them we just got to work on. But thanks for bringing that up. No, I'm for it. Anybody else? Okay, thanks. And um Katherine and John led the communicating with families uh group. So I'll let John talk

248about this one. We had a great group as well. Uh we had some very lively discussions. A lot of the feedback that we got through the surveys and the community forums were about the communication and how the communi uh district communicates on every level from the district to the schools to the classrooms to extracurriculars. Uh so our goal was to increase family engagement by improving communication tools and participation. Uh so by the end of the 2030 academic year uh we will have families receiving communication through a single district-wide communication platform uh that will be inclusive of building communication, classroom, extracurricular communication. Uh and then we'll uh have 50% annual improvements of the number of people that we're reaching for each priority group. So just as an example, uh right now uh 6.6% of our free

249reduced families uh we don't have contact information for for email. Uh by year two uh or by year two that would go down to 3.3% a 50% reduction. Uh and then by year three it would go down to 1.6% another 50% reduction. uh so that by year five it would be down to 04% for free reduced families. Uh and by going for each priority group that also gives us an opportunity to uh look for avenues to uh make sure that we're communicating with all of our families equitably. Uh so uh one of the uh key performance indicators is by the end of the 2026 school year. So, by the end of next year, uh we'll have a uh single communication platform adopted and we're hoping we've already been talking to a few different uh platform

250vendors uh and hopefully we'll be able to do some piloting of that uh early this year. Do you guys have any questions about the communication goal? It is exciting. I'm very excited. Yeah. Oh, you were at one of those listening sessions where this came up as a parent. Yes. Okay, I'm going to switch to um district systems and operations which is Don can click for me. There we go. Um so I Ry's daughter uh was in an activity at school and you know family first so he is um at that activity with his family. is probably over by now. So, he could have been back here. So, I'm not I'm just teasing. But I am going to present um his uh work. And John, can you move? It won't go. Improving facilities. So, um as

251you know, when we presented in um February or March, uh we shared with the board that we've completed our um last 10-year health life safety plan. Um we have also uh completed the work for the 2000 I can't remember now 8 master facility plan that the plan to um remodel and renovate all of our elementary schools and bring them all up to a certain standard. So it is time for us to have a new uh master's facility plan. Um we had some great data from the survey. There were two very specific questions um on the survey uh that was um shared and um lots of people gave really good feedback that Randy used with his small group which included um I can't remember Maryanne was part of his group but uh out of I think

252we had Lola was part of his group um to talk about facilities and finance and then we had a parent and administrator and I think someone from the city. So um basically the a lot of the input uh we had two questions on the survey around um what are some areas of growth for our buildings where are some things some things that we're doing well. So they had that baseline data um as some just good indicators of of what people were thinking in terms of our welcoming environment um our buildings um safe functional. So um that really informed um some of the uh goal work that they uh included here. So by the end of 2030, we will strategically enhance all existing facilities to provide an energy efficient which he uh Randy has shared the

253energy efficiency data for our district um equitable, safe, functional and welcoming learning environment for all students, families, and staff based on targets from the master facility plan and the 10-year healthife safety um plan. And again, um, we just finished a cycle of our health life safety plan and we are jumping right into those recommended and, um, prioritized tasks for the next cycle. Um, their key performance indicator is that by the end of the 2526 school year, they will actually have pulled together a team to create that plan. So, we will establish a uh comprehensive prioritized master plan for facilities uh improvements across all schools. But in addition to pulling together the plan and having those meetings to to develop it, they also want to um complete at least one high priority impactful upgrade to each

254school um that would focus on safety, functionality, and energy efficiency um as identified through the district-wide facilities assessment. So um five-year goal is to have that plan and be implementing several areas of it and including health life safety. But the key indicator for next year is just to create the plan and to involve several stakeholders as we have with our last two facilities plans um to be part of that process. Questions? Okay. And then Maryanne is going to talk about aligning our resources equitably with finance. So I I had the opportunity to be in the same group with Randy. We had Matt Bane from the Urbana Police Department, uh Lydia Wong for the new um King principal and member Jones. So we had a lot of conversation that was around some of the facility planning,

255but then also the uh finances. And a lot of our conversation was kind of around not all schools have the same need or the resources available. Um and so kind of creating that holistic picture to um be able to fill in the gaps to address the needs of all students. And so we kind of started out having conversations of making our goal around um the needs of all students and completing a priority based um budget resource allocation to ensure equitable distribution of our finances. And then we started really kind of drilling down of what that looks like. And um each school right now gets a budget based off of their um enrollment population, but then there's a low income or an SCES like multiplier that we add onto it. And then through some of our

256conversations, we kind of talked about that's not the only indicator and a priority group for our um students. So, we had our 2030 goal as having an um having it incrementally um implement a priority based resource allocation to address the priority groups by 25% each year to ensure 100% of schools have resources aligned to their specific needs. And part of that conversation was um doing it 25% each year because of um doing it to do it incrementally and then um that we don't want to like hurt other schools by taking away funds. So kind of um addressing it to where it's a slower process. And then um for our KPI for the 2026 academic year, we want to implement a priority based resource allocation process to acknowledge the um priority groups that are beyond the

257SCES metric and work with administrators to increment incrementally I can't say that word tonight implement the process between 20 FY26 and FY30. Um, and we are kind of having the conversation of what would that look like? And I think during um, the RA process with ISBY, we kind of talked about implementing a finance committee and that would be a great opportunity to have some of these conversations start. That's going to be really hard to implement given like the fact that the salary schedule doesn't isn't linear. There's bumps in places depending on on levels and things, right? That's be kind of hard to kind of shift that in aggregate. Yeah, but this is just for the building budgets. So looking at like the building budget right now, we have an a multiplier based off of just

258the SCES population. So it might be is that a holistic picture of that school's needs. So if there's a higher need of like IEP students, then that could be one of the priority groups that we also focus and implement to give them a percentage an increment more. And so those were the conversations that we were having. I'm sorry. Um, what does SCS mean? Lowinccome. Yeah. Socioeconomic status. Thank you. Yes. We need to add that. We thought we caught all the acronyms. We missed one. Thank you, Sai. Yes. Thank you. Because we went through this to find all of them. So, we missed that one. Questions? So if we were moving money based on um the number of students with IEPs. Okay. So school A has fewer students with IEPs. School B has more students with

259IEPs. So we already put in X amount of dollars based on IEPs at each school, right? I mean because it comes some of it comes federally some of it correct yeah but there right now there's not an indicator for the district that we implement for students with IEPs even though we know that those take higher resources right but what I'm saying is so is there a pot of there's a pot of money as I that kind of is targeted toward all the students with IEPs right no correct so she's is talking about the idea grant the um yes so the funding that we get from the state so there's a pot of money that goes to students with IEPs and right now if student if school A has more students with IEPs and student oh

260school I just said it opposite school B has fewer then school A is already getting more money based on so so that's going to be part of the conversation that we have in the finance committee. Is that a priority group that we want to address with using district funds? Because we know that some of the federal money might not be there as much for the students with IEPs. And so, we're wanting to get more of a holistic picture because right now it's just the federal funds that we allocate towards students with IEPs. there's not really a a set amount to say like these students need a multiplier to help bridge that gap. And so that is going to be the goal of the 2526 and the finance committee to set those indicators and kind of

261discuss those metrics. But we also know too that it's going to be a moving target because the idea grant is different every year. same thing like you know we have title one lowinccome grants as well and students who you get more money based off of your socioeconomic status with that too but then with our district budget allocation process we give another metric of money based off of lowinccome status. So we're just kind of wanting to refocus and look at our allocation process and see if it's as equitable as we want it to be. And one of the reasons to give you a little history around when we started the uh lowincome multiplier, it was when Dr. Williams was at that time Prairie and King had non-existent PTAs. And so if you compare uh buildings that

262have strong PTAs that are supporting their teachers, that are providing professional development, that are providing money for activities and family events. And then you had two schools where they had they didn't have that benefit. And so one way to help equalize and because Maryanne's just talking about district funds, so she's not talking like the ID grant, the idea grant is it it gives us money for how we pay our TAs, like all of our teaching assistants are paid out of that and some of our salaries and some of our um related services personnel. But what Maryanne is trying to do is provide more of a resource allocation process for how we give building money the uh district money from to the buildings. Yeah. It's not for salaries. Yeah. Correct. And it wouldn't be just based

263off of the grants either. It's looking at district allocations because right now we only have been doing that for lowincome um which has benefit benefited in the past a couple schools before we redistricted. Now, we've spread our low-income students around a little bit more. Um, but you know, in our conversations we've been having with the state board, they've also said, "Hey, you have schools that are designated and they're designated for these very specific groups. You should also be allocating funds for your schools that are designated um because of their students with IEP's growth or designated because of your MLL students growth. But but right now we are only doing it um and we've been doing it since I'd say like 20134 for lowincome students. So they were impressed that we were kind of ahead of

264the mark and that we've been doing it for lowinccome but the state said you also need to be thinking about these other groups that you're that are receiving designations be um through the state. So thank you. Yep. Yeah. Um all right. So implementation phase. So I know um I received an email today um from a board member asking about this and I know there was an email sent out around the community about um us not including strategic areas or action steps very specifically and we did that intentionally because as you can hear from the strand leaders, we had 60 people in that room. Each one of them pulled a very small group of people to do the work. And so, um, yes, there were conversations around next steps and action steps and strategic steps, but

265to have a small group of less than 10 people decide the action steps and strategies for the rest of the district for five years was not enough voices. And so each trans leader um has those ideas and suggestions and things that their small groups came up with. But now in moving into next steps, we need more people to be part of this process beyond just the 60 that were in that space. Um so as I mentioned um we are going to embed professional learning across all areas to increase the instructional capacity of our staff. Um and that is something that um Mrs. Smith will work on work on with each strand leader. Um we have a template that we will um have each strategy and action step included and then we will also make sure

266that each strand leader has uh staff development and training as part of that. And then um the strategic planning team who we are so thankful for their participation over those two days. But what came out very loud and clear from a couple of them when we talked about our exclusionary data and and some of the data that was kind of like an aha for them um and one of our folks who's connected to the community coalition he actually said well who is holding you guys accountable like as part of that and he said that they that there needs to be a group beyond just the board who is also looking at that data as part of the community. So, um, having our strategic planning group, um, now shift into a a steering committee who will

267now be part of the group that helps hold us accountable to our work. We wrote the goals, but now the work begins, right? And we need more people to be involved in the work than just those 60 people that were in that room. So for the next five years, we're going to ask our uh that committee to now um meet with us twice a year and we'll present our progress and um have them help hold us accountable to the work moving forward. um in addition to of course presenting it to the board. And then um we will open up the oh yes there's another uh we're going to have a website where we'll put all this information um once Katherine gets back where we throughout the year we will also be able to update progress.

268So, as we have one of those meetings where we update date progress on our goals, um we'll make sure that that information is uh listed on our website. And then um moving forward, so just this Thursday, we have our next portrait um not portrait uh program council meeting. So, our first invitation to other stakeholders will be Thursday. We're going to invite our teachers um to join and be part of a working group and we'll do we'll um have a QR code where we can invite other people whoever would like to join a strand that you're passionate about or that means a lot to you. Um we want to open that up to parents as well. So um we want to encourage people to join a priority group. Um each group will um become a working

269group um and next year they will meet once a month. um and we'll all meet on the same night and kind of have a strategic planning night of uh work um moving forward monthly and um we want more people to be involved in the process. So we appreciate the um staff, parents, students and community members who were involved um but we need more voices to be part of the work moving forward. So we've created the goals and now the work begins to develop those strategies and action steps um for progress monitoring. So, if you're listening out there and you're interested and send me an email and you can be part of one of these working groups moving forward next year, I am going to ask for I know we typically don't do it do a

270one night, but um time is of the essence for us at this point. I want to be able to um take this information to some of our other stakeholders in the community. So, I want to be able to take it to the end of the year picnic. I want to be able to share out this info. So, um, we only have three weeks of school left. So, I am asking that the board, uh, approve the plan tonight. So, then we can begin the work of, um, sharing it out on Thursday at at, um, program council and taking it into other spaces. So, it lives and breathes. Um, and it won't do that if we're not out talking about it and sharing it more with more folks. Do you have a question, Sherry? That's a lot

271of information to absorb in one day when you weren't part of the process. The one thing that that I'm question and I'm concerned about is that the only student achievement goals that you have are for reading and and math. Is that correct? So, one of the one of the things that you did highly um stress upon before and also when the student Jaden or Jaylen Jayen Jaylen was here as far as you'd mentioned it too is about getting more representation in um higher level and AP courses but yet it's not part of any part of the strategic plan. That doesn't mean it won't end up being a strategy or an action step. So, um, and also that'll be part of what I believe they talked about it in college and career as well. Um, in

272Jesse's group more so than they did in um in the uh student achievement group. It was more so part of the college and career group. Okay. As one of their action, one of their strategic priorities. Thank you. Yep. Is this the time where we're supposed to discuss it or do we have to It's an action item later. Is it an action item later? We We can do it now or we can do it later. It's It's perfectly appropriate to ask questions now. Yep. Well, last time I You said we had It's Well, it's fine. Okay. Um Oh, yeah. Go ahead. We have um goals about um math and English language arts. And we want to increase our AP courses, which means we need goals for science. Um, and so, um, I I how do we

273get that into the elementary grades? Um, there's no goal science for science or tech. Yeah. So, before we can set a goal for proficiency, we need some curriculum around science. And I know that is one of the areas that um but if we don't have a goal, we won't get a curriculum. Well, we already have started working on the curriculum. So, this year they've been doing social studies and then next year she's already started working on looking forward to science. So, you don't want to add it. It doesn't mean that they won't add it as a as an action step or a strategy in there, but um we can't do all the things all at once, but that doesn't mean we need curriculum before we can say hold people accountable to um to having a

274goal like that. But Jesse's already looking at curriculum for science. She's already started having those conversations. So, Okay, anyone else? All right, that that that completes our uh administrative reports and we do have one stud topic for the evening, which is the Preston Williams school improvement plan report. Last but not least, so we we kind of wanted to set the tone and really talk about next year before Miss Jackson came up. Um, so you had a lot of that prerequisite conversation. So turn it over to her. You want to switch John? Sorry. Oh, all right. Well, thank you so much. I know it is late, but um we naturally want to um give huge kudos and shout outs to our staff. Mr. Musman and I are here to represent Dr. Williams, but the work that

275we do each day is in collaboration and in support of our staff, including support staff and certified staff. So, here you see a list of we're in an in between stage. So, we're hiring new school improvement team leaders while also having our current school improvement team leaders. So, we wanted to represent all of them on this plan because we're merging between this year and next year. So, you see them there. In the interest of time, and I hope you all are okay with this. I'm going to take the lead on going over the slides so you don't have a lot of going back and forth with us. I promise I'm clicking it. Um, this is doc Dr. Everatum has already spoke um very extensively about the new mission and the development of it along with

276the motto and the values. We wanted to give you an update. And so in the packet that was shared with you, it did say that we are currently in our benchmarking window, but we put a very conscientious effort knowing that we would be presenting to get as many students tested by Friday so that we could have data to share with you because it takes 24 hours to become available. So when I turned this in on Thursday, we did not have that, but we were able to add that data and get it updated for you this evening. So, um, last spring we set a goal of by May of 2025, 44% of first through fifth grade students will meet their English language arts growth projection on NWA MAP as we do not assess kindergarteners for literacy

277on MAP, which is why they are not included. We are excited to report that our end of the year data again still currently in the window. We have a few more students to assess who were for makeups, but we are already at 48% of our first through fifth grade students meeting or exceeding their uh projected growth in literacy. So, we are super excited that we were able to exceed this goal because as we exceed their growth projections and meet them, that is how we start to close that achievement gap. Um, some of the key activities that we utilized was the implementation of core knowledge language arts, affectionately known as CKA. Um, implementing the M-Class assessment screening and progress monitoring, as well as ensuring that our students were actually setting goals and tracking their progress. So,

278they did that after fall, prior to our winter benchmark, as well as after winter, preparing for our spring benchmark. These are going to parallel with math. So, I'm not going to read every single key activity because they're similar. Um, but I did want to give you an update with our math progress as well. Our expected outcome was that 46% of our first through fifth grade students would meet their mathematics growth projection as seen on our MAP assessment. And as of today, 42% of our first through fifth grade students met or exceeded their growth projection. We do still have a few students that we're testing, so we're not sure if we'll get to 46%, but we are um excited that we were very close to meeting that goal. And you'll see as we move forward, we

279actually set a more rigorous goal for next year. We are continuing to implement illustrative math. Um we established some schoolwide testing conditions, which Mrs. Kale Luwendowski mentioned earlier related to IR, but we wanted to utilize our testing conditions for both MAP and I administration. Um and again setting those goals with the students after those benchmark periods. We were um really excited and hopeful to make a huge impact on our chronic absenteeism rate as it's a major indicator in us being designated as an intensive school. So our goal was by the spring of 25 we would decrease the number of chronically absent students by 14% moving us from 34% to 20% of students who are chronically absent which is the threshold the state likes to see us at. They want to see us at 20% or

280below honestly. Unfortunately as of April 29th when we pulled the data our chronically absent rate was at 33%. So we only saw a decrease of 1% um but felt really good about some of our key activities. I did want to go ahead and include the chronically absent rate because we're figuring that based off of each student and that's a percentage of students who have missed more than 10% of their enrolled school days this year. So that's accounting for a student who may have come later in the school year. Does that make sense? Okay. So 10% of the days that they've been at our school, how much have they been there? Um some key activities that we have utilized. Huge shout out to our student engagement attendance advocate um who was able to compile this data

281regularly in collaboration with Mr. Muscleman and our parent liaison um who were very critical in our monthly attendance meetings. We had grade level attendance rates that were shared and utilized as a schoolwide competition. We had an attendance spirit week in the fall encouraging daily attendance as well as making sure that we were sharing our chronic absenteeism rates with our staff and families via a monthly newsletter while also not only sharing the data but focusing on the and emphasizing the importance of being at school daily and knowing the impacts of that such as the impact on literacy and math skills. Um throughout program council we had an opportunity to do a root cause analysis and we were able to bring that work into this presentation um and we also move forward with some reflections. So some

282of the causes of um our lack of growth is obviously going to be contributed to absenteeism. The more we have students at school for the entire school day, the more likely we are able to ensure that they are engaged in the rigorous curriculum that we have developed and adopted so that we can increase their learning outcomes. Um, also we have to be realistic and talk about where we are in education in 2025. And we know since that we've returned from the pandemic, school's different. So we wanted to be honest and be thoughtful of the impact of disruptions in our learning. So class disruptions, students being removed from class due to behavior and being mindful of resource allocation. So we wanted to mention limited resources to respond to student needs both behavioral and academic. So for

283example, we are a designated school. We are intensive. So we have funds issued to us through the Illinois Empower process to help us try to close our achievement gap. So we've brought in retired teachers who come in and work with students in small groups in math for example because we don't have anyone who supports math at a tier 2 right now. So trying to really work with some of those students in a targeted way and we also have and I know many of you know Dr. Gillespie Washington she still comes in and works with our students a couple of times a week at the primary level working on those literacy skills. So making sure that we do recapture some of our experts in the field so that they can come back so they can make

284an impact. I don't know how she keeps the energy level that she does, but she is amazing and we're grateful that she continues to work with us. Um I will talk a little bit more about what those resources um could connect to as we think about our achievement, but I want to align that to our math and literacy data. Um so I'll talk about that a little more in the future. Some reflections that we had is we really want to make sure that we're incorporating math centers and giving students opportunities to utilize hands-on manipulatives and show their learning in more than just paper pencil building, constructing and um doing their math in more than one way. not just paper or pencil but um models whether that is through physical representation drawing pictures all those things

285that'll come up a little later as well. We also really started going back to progress monitoring um through the implementation of MClass. So we want to make sure that we are responding to that data with an intentional adjustment in instruction. This year the goal was to ensure we were utilizing progress monitoring. But what we want to see that shift to is when we get that data, how does it inform our instruction to make database decisions to change how we are moving our students through the curriculum and adjusting our intervention time when we're working with students. And then all curriculums have um great positives, but they also have areas where we need to think about what can we do to meet the needs. CQLA has writing embedded within it and it often comes for a short

286period of time within the units of study. So we want to increase the daily writing opportunities that our students experience so they can practice those conventions all throughout their units of study. Increasing their exposure confidence and overall writing skills. The grammar is very strong. So we want to make sure that it's a buildup when they get to that um end of the unit writing project. This is an overview. I have to be very honest. Naturally, this is Miss Becklas's template. So, she was able to make sure that you all have an overview of what school improvement is for. Um, what we look at, and then we're going to move into our smarty goals, um, which has already been alluded to and explained very well tonight. Looking at our attendance goal, um we are still aiming

287for and focusing on getting our attendance chronic absenteeism rate down to 20%. So by the end of the 2526 academic school year, we will reduce our chronic absenteeism rate by 14%. Right now we're at 33%, we buffered up a little bit just in case we go back to 34% by the end of the year. If we stay at 33%, we'd actually be at 19% next year, which would be under that threshold, which is obviously a goal that we would have. Um, we then wanted to look more specifically at a targeted group and we noticed that there were some discrepancies with the chronic absenteeism rate for our black males. So, we would like to reduce the chronic absenteeism rate for black males by 22% or 50 students down to 24 because we saw an over representation

288of 42% of our black males being chronically absent while making up only 31% of our student population. Since this is a significant dis disproportionate over representation, we would like this to be a critical area of focus for our school. Some key strategies that we've implemented this year and will continue to move forward with are the monthly review of our chronic treny or chronic absenteeism data utilizing our tier 2 attendance data interventions such as SIG groups which are social academic instructional groups that are focused on attendance as well as setting attendance incentives and doing lunch bunch groups really leaning into that belongingness and making sure that students feel a part of the school community. These are interventions that we already have in place, but we know continuing their implementation is going to increase our impact. Additionally,

289we want to make sure that we're working with our families and having positive one-to-one conversations with them, not just about why your student isn't at school, but what's what can we do to support your family with getting them to school regularly. When we look at our culture and climate goal, um this is an area of focus for us. Although it wasn't part of our school improvement plan for this year, it was something that we have been monitoring and continuing to be responsive to. So by the end of the 2526 academic school year, our school reduced the total number of incidents of physical contact by 15%. We currently have 242 incidences of physical contact and physical aggression and we would like to see that go down to 205 or below. Additionally, there is again a discrepancy

290with that being an over representation for our black males. So, we would like to reduce these incidents for our black males by 20% going down from 130 incidences to 104 or less through enhancing student teacher relationships, increasing student engagement, and fostering stronger school family partnerships. Um, I know that this is a district initiative, so we wanted to make sure to include this as one of our key activity and that we will be adopting CHAMPS, which is a classroom management tool that helps teachers create clear expectations for student behavior and engagement throughout the school day. And the acronym stands for um conversation, help, activity, movement, and participation. So through implementing this in all spaces um both classroom and non-classroom spaces, it will allow us to really start moving forward on making sure our Sorry, somebody connected

291to the audio. I didn't know if I needed to do anything. Okay. Um um I apologize. So with implementing that we can set clear expectations for our students in all the ways in which they engage in the classroom will will help which will help us minimize the number of disruptions and distractions. Again we will continue to utilize social academic instructional groups for our students who are at that tier 2 level needing additional support for behavioral needs and we have been implementing them all throughout the year. We have a significant number of students who are participating in those groups and we know that they are beneficial because we want to make sure that when we think about impact on culture and climate, we want to remember that we're building student skill. Behavior is a form of

292communication and our students are letting us know that they have a need that is not being met. So while we are not only trying to respond to the behavioral issue, we want to build their social skills so that they can manage themselves in a different way and go back and apply that in a social situation in the future, which looks like roleplaying scenarios. So we do that with our students as well. And we are a PBIS district, so we will continue to implement our positive behavioral interventions and supports, but we want to now target it to our black males. So not only having our building level system but go beyond that and go to that next level of targeted groups so we can ensure that the incentives that we are setting are exciting and motivating

293to our students so that they can stop and think before they go slap somebody because they said something that they didn't like but they remember that we're working on a goal and we're trying to decrease that. So making sure that they can get some onus and ownership in that as well. I can click it. Thank you. Um, with relation to literacy, um, we really because we meet with the state, I meet with the state twice a month, um, got some feedback that while we were looking to increase to about 44 and 48% for this year. um they really encouraged us to go further because in order to close our achievement gap, we cannot continue to set like a growth proficiency goal of under 50%. So we really wanted to strive for a far more rigorous

294goal so that we could begin to close that achievement gap. So our goal is to ensure that 60% of our first through fifth grade students will meet their English language art growth proficiency growth projection I'm sorry projection not proficiency because then we're going to come over and look at their proficiency level. So to move that to a smarty goal um currently we have our first through fifth grade um grade levels performing in our low achievement low growth quadrant and that's about 240 students who are performing below the 40th percentile. So we want to shift that to our first through fifth grade students actually getting to even if it's high growth we have to get to high growth before we can get to high proficiency. So we really want to shift and move into those high

295growth quadrants while decreasing the number of students who are under the 40th percentile of achievement because that is where we are at that basic level of proficiency. So we want to reg reduce that excuse me by 10% or 40 24 students. How will we do this? The district is implementing um an instructional framework that we will utilize and one of the top high yield strategies through Marzano is identifying similarities and differences and making sure that we are using this across all spaces and all settings within the school. So naturally this aligns with literacy. But the more opportunities we can have students compare artwork, compare music, compare games, when they're practicing that skill across all of those modes, we will see that naturally come back and impact their literacy in a positive way. So I gave

296some examples of what that looks like. And then we are excited to be implementing AVID. Sorry, I need to move this. Well, actually I have it on the slide so I can pull it out. um which is the advancement via individual determination. And this will allow us to establish a culture of rigorous, relevant, differentiated opportunities for all students in an environment that promotes college and career readiness, which aligns with our district goal and strategic plan as well. AVID we have seen at our middle school and high school level. And we are excited to bring this on board with fifth grade next year so that we can make sure that we're aligning those high yield strategies with high engagement strategies for our students. Thank you. I don't know why I get in trouble. Okay. Um with

297relation to math by this is a similar goal. Um actually everything is the same except our numbers and the smarty goal. We want to shift that again that goal to 60% and math is given to our kindergarten students in the winter and spring. So we want to include them in our data set. So we want to make sure that we capture where they are performing because honestly they are performing at our highest level right now with relation to growth in achievement in math. So, we want to not only bring that into our goal, but to be able to continue to include them and track them as they're moving up because we know that that will have a positive outcome over their six-year career with us. So, we want to see them meet 60% of the

298students meet their growth projection while again seeing kindergarten through fifth grade students who are performing in that low growth low um achievement quadrant moving into the high growth quadrants. and then seeing that number decrease from 265 students by 10% down to 27 students being at that basic level of proficiency at the 40th percentile. That is not growth. We're really looking at getting that to proficiency, I'm sorry, achievement. And how are we going to do that? We are going to use non-llinguistic representations which is another high yield strategy through our instructional framework and implement AVID which will continue to not only focus on fifth grade but we'll be incorporating some AVID strategies throughout the entire building. So as we continue to roll it down each year after. So the next year will be fifth grade, the

299year after will be fifth and fourth and it will go down after that. What will our professional development look like next year? Naturally, we're going to need to incorporate [Music] um professional development around CHAMPS, which is going to be newly implemented across the district. um to ensure those consistent expectations for classroom behavior. We will do some very targeted um instruction and professional development around our instructional strategy of identifying similarities and differences for all staff and that will happen all throughout the year. But we are charged with what is first quarter going to look like um as well as ensuring we have professional development for non-llinguistic representation and we'll be bringing in the AVID professional development as well. What questions do you have? Board members questions. Who's leading the SE the um social academic instructional groups?

300Our social workers, our parent liaison, our student engagement advocates. We actually also had um a social worker who came in and volunteered and did some of our social academic instructional groups as well as an intern who volunteered some time and came in and did that as well. So, we're grateful that every year we have a social work intern who helps, but mostly they align with our students individual education plans. So, we were grateful to have some people come in and volunteer their time to see some of our students who we didn't have to have in an SIG group, but we really wanted them to be in a group. Um, after your conversations with parents regarding uh truency, were there specific things um besides illness of course? um that were preventing kids from coming to school.

301Sometimes um it can be things such as um there wasn't someone right awake on time to get the kids up into school and certain families feel like once it's 9:00, oh, it's okay. They don't have to come. So, a lot of what we're doing is reme messaging that it's okay to be tardy. We want them at school. Um and so I've had a student tell me, well, if we oversleep, then mom tells us we don't have to go. I said, "But it's important for you to be here." So, you can come at 11:00. We still want you to come into school. So, I think it is um educating our families that we would rather them be tardy than miss the entire school day. But I do think sometimes once you break that routine, it's like,

302"Oh, it's okay. We'll just, you know, call it a day even though we really want them to be in the school." So, making sure they know it's not too late to come in. I don't know if you have anything. And what time does school start? 8:15. Another another thing strangely is weather. Um now that we are most of ours we we have one bus that comes now. So that's the transportation that a lot of our kids have to school our bikes or their two feet. So a lot of times when we have when we do have weather, we see a tremendous drop in our attendance for that day, week, however however long of a span we have of terrible weather. It's a hard problem. Any other questions? All right. All right. Thank you. This is

303an action item later on in our agenda, right? No, no, no. Sorry. They just have to present. Okay. My apologies. Thank you. We're all getting We're all getting tired. Um, speaking of action items, we do have three of them this evening. The first is approval for the strategic plan that was presented earlier this evening. Um, is there a motion for the floor? So moved. It's been moved. Is there a second? Second. Seconded. Now it'll be time for for discussion on uh the vote for approving the strategic plan. I'm actually going to vote for the plan, but I have to say, well, I have one question before I say the the the very first part of the plan, the team who not number two and number three, but I can't remember what you called it, but

304um who who was on that team? Uh there there were no names um with it. There were and there were I was wondering was that all staff members? Probably teachers. It's from So we've been talking about this all year through some data point or another either through program council or um through our district leadership meetings or our meetings with um cabinet meetings. So you mean the group who decided what the priorities were? Yes. to look at the very first part well the very first part of the plan I can't remember what yeah that was the group um and um yeah phase one yep preliminary and so that was all staff members probably all staff members in some form or fashion teachers and and and central office I and administrators and administrators building administrators building okay

305from the board and also from the board goals so We we started with the board goals, which is kind of what I started our presentation off tonight. Everything's derived from that meeting we had with with with Perry, right? Yes. Um I guess I just want to say I would like to see more parents and community members involved. So every listening session I went to parents were invited and I think uh 47 43 whatever I was going to say that they were all invited so much work so much work in people come and I went to two of them and um I was shocked to see how few I think there were only four of us at the Thomas Payne one. Yeah. Um, and everywhere that I went, I had the QR code and invited parents.

306I think I had one parent from Thomas Payne who signed up and then unfortunately she wasn't able to come um to be part of the plan. And we had a parent from early childhood uh who also signed up from the one of the listening sessions, but other than that, I mean, I put the QR code out there multiple times and and said anybody who wants to participate is welcome to participate. And so I um after we didn't have a representative from each school, then I went to building administrators and said, "Hey, do you have a parent who might be interested in representing your building?" um the strategic plan. So then they went around and talked to PTA people or people like that to get a representative to represent their building. Yes. I would like I

307said when I saw how few parents you actually were able to speak to and that was a lot of work. It was a lot of work. Well, and I also want to say in a lot of those spaces, we have staff members who are also parents. And I mean, they work for us, but they also when they contribute to conversations, they also do it through a parent lens. So, um, I think that's important to recognize, too, that you can be a staff member, but also still have very strong opinions as a parent. So, but I would like to see us figure out a way to I would too. So, I'm hoping when we open up the district working groups that we have lots of people who maybe it was overwhelming to be part of all

308of it, but now moving forward, you can say, "Hey, I just want to work on increasing the number of AP kids of color we have or I just want to work on um having recruitment and ret, you know, retaining and recruiting more staff." So, hopefully now that we have the working groups established, people can say, I just want to work on that. can I just be involved in just that goal? And maybe that'll lend itself to more people wanting to be involved because it is overwhelming to think I've got to do all of it. Um but if if I'm really just interested in um college and career or I'm really just interested in my multilingual learners and helping to grow, then you can now say I just want to work with that group only. So

309hopefully that'll help get more people involved. I'm hoping. But Y yeah, this vote really isn't the end of the be of the strategic planning process. It's the beginning of it. Yeah, that's very much just the beginning. All right. Does anyone else wish to comment on the motion on the floor? Okay. If not, then a roll call vote would be in order. Um member Baxley. Yes. Member Langodorf, yes. President Palowski, yes. Member Amaribu, yes. Um, member Jones, yes. Member Hixon, yes. Motion passes. Um, uh, action item 14.2 is the consolidated plan and grant updates. So, this is uh we're requesting approval for the consolidated district plan to be submitted by the Illinois State Board of Education. Some provide a little more context for the public. So, this was the um plan that all the directors, many

310of whom were here tonight, um came and presented at our last April meeting. Three weeks ago. Yeah, three weeks ago now. And um it it was the um this is also one of those things we have to do for the state. So, we have to present the information, talk about the grants, talk about what the grants pay for, and then we have to submit that we had it board approved. Um, so it's the one with a very little print. Yes. Where they go through all the mind you reading it. Exactly. Yes. Very little print. I move that we approve the consolidated district plan so it can be submitted to the Illinois State Board of Education. Thank you, Sher. Is there a second? Second. Moved and seconded. Any further comments, questions, discussion? Another roll call vote

311is in order. Member Langondorf. Yes. President Vowski. Yes. Member Maribou. Yes. Um, member Jones, yes. Member Hixon, yes. Member Baxley, yes. A motion passes. Our last action item for the evening is appointment of our school treasurer. We're requesting approval for Elizabeth Walden who as our district's school treasures. This is basically making sure all the checks get signed and and uh basically doing a sanity check on our on our accounts. Um, is there a motion for the floor? So move. Is there a second? Second. Moved and seconded. Any questions, comments, concerns? Roll call, please. President Palowski, yes. Member Maru, yes. Member Jones, yes. Member Hixon, yes. Member Baxley, yes. Member Langorf, yes. A motion passes. Um there are no listed uh call for future special executive meetings on our agenda, but I believe that we have

312to schedule them. Sorry, for the uh the training for the intensive school, right? June 4th. It's June 5th. Okay. Okay. So that's after it's after our next meeting. Okay. superintendent report. Uh thank you. Um uh one more I guess piece of business before we we we close for the evening is we do have to make a decision with regards to the open seat in the subd district 6. Um I would propose that we reopen the application process to be closed the Friday before our next meeting so that if we somebody does apply we could have it in the agenda. Is that the Friday before the next meeting? How do people feel about that? Open it for another I guess that's just a week and a half. Yeah, it's not very long. Not very long. Um,

313you want to keep it for the June meeting? Maybe we could open it till the Friday before the June meeting. June 3rd is our next meeting. Maybe Friday the 30th. So, Friday, May reopen it until Friday, May 30th. It doesn't hurt anything. Yeah. Yeah, scramble. Okay, people okay with that? Had the opportunity to talk to a teacher and if you have other people that you know kind of just talk to them and see if they can recommend somebody and again we can talk one-on-one with them. Have either a phone conversation or a face-toface conversation and see if we can answer questions regarding serving on the board. So I hope we will at least try to find several contacts. We still ask Tori to come back. Okay. All right. I think I think we have a

314decision then. Okay. So So thanks everybody. Um there are a list of foyers in our agenda that were completed. Um so the chair would now entertain a motion to enter close session. And give me a while. to read these long legalized uh exemptions uh for for closed um for three purposes. First is the appointment, employment, compensation, discipline, performance or dismissal of specific employees, specific individuals who serve as independent contractors or specific volunteers of the district or legal counsel for the district, including hearing testimony on a complaint lodged against an employee, a specific individual who serves as an independent contractor or a volunteer of the district or legal or against legal counsel for the district who determines validity. However, a meeting to consider an increase in compensation to a specific employee of a public body that

315is subject to the local government wage increase transparency act may not be closed and shall be open to the public and posted and held in accordance with this act. Uh the the second reason is the placement of individual students in special education programs and other matters relation to individual students. And the third is litigation. When an action against, affecting or on behalf of a particular district has been filed and is pending before a court or administrative tribunal or when the district finds that an action is probable or imminent, in which case the basis for the finding shall be recorded and entered into the closed meeting minutes. Is there a motion to have a 10-minute recess to the room followed by a close session for those three purposes? With no action. With no action following uh

316the close session. Thank you. I move to go into recess. Well, to do it to 10-minute recess followed by a close session. 10-minute recess followed by a close session for the red purposes. Yes. Amendment second. A roll call, please. Okay. Member Marabu. Yes. Um, member Jones. Yes. Member Hixon. Yes. Member Baxley? Yes. Member Langorf? Yes. President Powski. Yes. 10 minutes recess to clear the room and then um keep your mics folks because we're going to be talking to