Urbana School District 116 Board of Education 08 22 23

001hi everybody it's 6 30. uh before we can begin tonight um I'd like to have a moment of science a silence for uh Erica yuskali who's a dedicated administrator here in the district who we lost suddenly and unexpectedly um so please let's take a moment to honor her and thank you very much um local please there we go remember hasanaka here member langendorf here member um Jones here member Baxley here members Statin not here um vice president axon here here president polowski here are there any additions Corrections or modifications to tonight's agenda uh hearing none uh the chair would entertain a motion to approve tonight's agenda a second second all in favor say aye aye aye any opposed motion passes there will be no call to go into an executive session tonight it is now

002time for citizen statements if anybody would like to make a statement before the board there's a set of golden Rush sheets in the back of the room please fill one out hand it to a recording secretary Laurie Johnson and we will add you to the list first upt is uh rakaya Perkins Williams okay thank you all right good evening to all the board members um uh the students who are here representing um and District Executive Administrative team my name is rakiah Perkins Williams and I am a former Wiley parent and of two students members of the former Wiley strong group current ums and UHS parent and I've also served as one of the co-chairs for the recent facilities committee tonight you will hear the final recommendation of that committee that that committee will bring forth

003but I am not here to speak about that in this present moment right now I want to discuss my thoughts on this entire process first I'd like to say that I have learned by working very closely with Dr Ivory Tatum that I do not now or ever have any aspirations to the superintendency um Dr Ivory Tatum is a very smart woman who has to make a multitude of tough choices every day some choices leave to praise and others to criticism her Executive Administrative team Katie Roland John Goose Mary Kim Norton specifically are all working very hard often in multiple positions that are outside of their actual formal roles and responsibilities I've come to respect the tensions that they deal with on a day-to-day basis that are inherent in their roles I also know I got

004to know board president Paul paloski a little bit better so please take this critique as critical feedback versus criticism this committee was not as I repeatedly said before about asbestos it was not even about in my opinion Wiley this committee was about having a tough conversation and moving that tough conversation into a form that was wholly inappropriate the conversations we should have been having in February were conversations about District finances how to repair Community Trust and using and I felt like this committee used community members to do the heavy lifting that the board and administrative team should have done my co-chair and I we are not District employees we're community members we're not feasibility Specialists we do not have special technical knowledge we're moms who sacrifice a great deal along with a lot of the

005other community members to have this conversation that should have been had very openly and very transparently with the members of this community as you'll find out on my um in our report the conversation that we had allowed us to discover a great deal about the inner workings of this district and those things were not necessarily shocking but they should have been shared publicly at the time in place that the initial conversation happened I hope that moving forward when we have to have tough conversations the board and the administrative team will have the courage to have the very specific conversations that need to be had and not try to use a different process to avoid having those conversations thank you very much for your comments and for your service next up is Jennifer Hickson [Music] hello

006the board will be presented tonight with another big idea there have been so many lately Big Ideas that seemingly come out of nowhere that will magically solve all our problems about some new issue and must be considered on a very tight timeline that is being set by outside forces not us you will hear from the report from the district facilities committee made up mostly of District employees and a great number of them administrators many never having taught in any classroom lots of secondary staff you will not have a lot of time to think about this I am here to ask you to please ask the following questions while you are considering the move that the administrative Administration is putting before you I am hoping that you will ask the questions because as a citizen I

007am allowed to ask a question but I am not entitled to an answer in real time there have been no open meetings that allow discussion between the general public the administration and the board so number one will this move address needs in terms of academic achievement for all students if yes then how if no then why are we doing it two will this move address District needs in terms of social emotional learning for all students if yes then how number three is this move based on Research if yes what research please make that research available to the community I have looked for research in this area and I couldn't find any to support a Sixth Grade Center number four should the district be making a move based on a hunch if we can't find research

008should we try to visit a Sixth Grade Center and talk to teachers and staff before we spend the extra money to remodel a school for one number five have We examined the Dual language and District Equity audits to see if this move will address broadly the concerns and suggestions that were presented to us as a former staff member and former parent and an interested Community member I am very concerned about the lack of academic achievement that is happening in all of our schools all our decisions now must be based on raising academic achievement for all students and improving the social emotional learning environment for all students and we should be making decisions with Clear Eyes Open Hearts and rational heads not haste or hunch or even dreams some members of the K-5 subgroup of the

009facilities committee have brought together some relevant numbers for everyone to consider about class size academic achievement and other issues in the Urbana schools but they were told that there was not enough time in tonight's meeting to present them I got a copy I have made copies of their background report for the board some highlights from their report are one many districts that tried sixth grade centers in Illinois have already closed them two losing an elementary building will increase class size for all and elementary schools as you read the numbers presented in the report please remember that we do have research that supports the following things one smaller class size improves academic achievement two fewer transitions support academic achievement and social emotional welfare three better academic achievement supports fewer behavioral problems I think that the presentation

010slides that illustrate the report that I'm going to give Lori are on the district website somewhere in connection with this meeting I was told that it is in an external I copied this down it is in an external Link in the appendix under Community prepared now it was prepared by people on the committee but it was it's labeled Community prepared I couldn't find it so if people in the community want to see it um and you can't you're almost 77 like I am and you couldn't find it you could call Lori at the district office and maybe she could help you and I'm going to give these to Lori and ask her to give them to the board and this is the report thank you very much next up is Peggy Patton if anybody else

011likes to address the board please fill out a golden Rush sheet in the back of the room and hand it to Lori Johnson good evening um my name is Peggy Patton I'm a resident of Urbana I understand the board's going to receive the final report from the Wiley facilities committee later this evening and my comments are as a member of that committee first off let me see I appreciated the structure the process and Leadership of the Wiley facilities committee the charge for the committee was an ambitious one a wide net was cast in forming the committee which had over 60 members at least initially representing community members parents teachers and administrators from various district schools while the perspective of the many parents and community members and indeed that was the Hat I was wearing as

012a community member those perspectives of the parents and community members enriched the discussions about future programming options for Wiley School I found the input of the teachers administrators and support staff in our schools to be especially beneficial their daily experience as Professionals in the district helped me understand the impact that various options for one of our elementary schools would have in our district they had expertise and scope of vision in my view were essential to a fully informed recommendation to the board of education and I hope the committee's final report excuse me informs the path forward for Wiley School I'd also like to comment on the Freedom of Information Act foia requests related to the formation of the Wiley facilities committee these are spelled out on the board of education's business meeting agendas going back

013to at least May 16th I am a firm believer in the rights of individuals to request access to public records and I acknowledge the real benefit that we the public can derive from information access through foia when I learn about foia requests either as a member of a public body or as a citizen Desiring information about our public bodies I try to measure the cost of the foil request against the value of information received in the case of foia requests sorry in the case of foia requests of our school district I always ask myself two questions does the information received through this foia request justify the hundreds sometimes thousands of dollars in time spent by District administrative staff and District legal counsel I also ask myself would I prefer that our District staff devote the

014hours responding to this foia request instead of using their time on any of the numerous other pressing issues in the district I have long advocated for publicizing the costs involved in responding to foia requests so that we the public can effectively weigh those competing interests were the time and Financial Resources expended in responding to the foia requests related to the formations of Wiley facility committee the best use of taxpayer dollars I didn't think so thank you to the board of education for your service to schools and I good luck on your decision tonight hi my name is Julie Duvall I am a parent of um multiple students here in Irvine I am also I was asked to be at the I don't remember the meeting but Paul had asked when we had this committee started

015that he wanted people that were again that would be upfront be honest and rip Urbana apart the next day Dr Ivory Tatum called me and asked if I would be the sped rep at this on the facilities meeting um I I'm not prepared to give you my official report this evening um but I did want to just bring some light as you guys are looking at this report to keep some things in mind this was a really difficult process I was actually rather excited to be on this um and uh to to be a part of this team and it very quickly became a scary experience well I too agree with foia one of the decisions that were made were that staff emails could be disclosed my personal email was Elite and every email that

016staff members got I I received two I kind of took it as a form of harassment bullying um at this point nobody trusts anybody Dr J made a decision that she whoever made the decision and and she should have made it more open and talked about but nobody's here's hands are clean and and it's there's a lot of he said she said in this fight in this fight um these are students lives and and the district did a really good job trying to get the the other the Wiley teachers and placed in students placed in other buildings I just wanted to bring to your attention that I agree more time should have been considered I also think that the Board needs to support its students whatever in board fighting and this is difficult schools are

017tough we talk about this meet the information that was given in these meetings Nobody Knows the Dynamics of Urbana better than Urbana so when you're talking about what happened in Chicago or what happened in Harrisburg Illinois that's not Urbana you all were voted by citizens in our town to represent us and while that other information is correct we're broken we're not working at least people in our district were trying to make a difference and maybe these mistakes were made but they also tried to get everybody together and to have a conversation but then other people made that dirty in a scary process um again I won't give you my whole opinion until the next time um but there was information that was this was a very tainted information you would look in the elementary K-5

018there are two reports I as a sped rep purposely stayed in the group that I was in but I looked at every group every chart I would go home the next day and look at all the information the final report there are two for the elementary school that is because as a group one was made and then a couple of people did not agree with that group decision so they took the information that was made as a group and then tweaked it and given gave their opinion I'm all about everyone having their opinion and I can only speak about the sped information but the sped information provided on the second report was not accurate information and we tried to address that there were multiples of us I only spoke about sped but other people in

019other areas tried to give their opinion about to address this information I'm not exactly sure why we're all supposed to get together and have a committee and all come up to every group was able to unify a decision except Elementary and why two people outside of the group together like this was for them to complain that that Dr Ivory Tatum did this and made this mess they're over there making it dirty inside it as well and so I just wanted to be fair and say that everybody's voices were heard I had to pull the Ada card in a in a subcommittee for people to hear what I had to say um I I think there's a lack of our community um we are we have split our community over this and I don't know how

020you're ever going to get a committee again Paul it was atrocious admins I I'm just a parent and a Community member and the stuff that it was bully so again I will give me give you my official report I just think that this was a process that we did the best that we could in light of what we had and no one isn't as more of a expert on Urbana but Urbana so as you're looking at the data remember all the things that you've heard and said or heard people say and put that towards your people we're all individuals we make Urbana not Chicago neither of their towns and other states us thank you thank you so much Julie next up is uh sorry Mike Anderson hello president s and if necessary renovations decision was

021to continue the pandemic trying to make any reactionary decisions obviously from other public comments this past spring we could get that staff to offset the budget deficence going to support the planning process to be rushed Mr sorry you guys hear me okay was it forced um as a professional facility manager manager I brought up several serious concerns with the rush renovation timeline that was brought up this spring there are still significant delays on building materials last I heard HVAC components Roofing insulation windows and doors all have very long lead times how was the district going to order HVAC equipment that needs to be size of the building and as load when the final building size and its use has not been finalized what is the plan if there are delays material or labor was a

022plan to roll the dice and hope that Wiley wouldn't have been closed for two years I'm still waiting to hear about the reimagine Wiley committee that was presented to us in February and how that became the special facilities planning committee after the vote to close Wiley happened also what happened the plan that was presented on February 7th for the administration to work with the Wiley community and building leaders to intentionally find creative ways to keep the wildly families connected during these participatement project last night at the last I asked these two questions I was told that the board does not answer questions during the meeting I waited several hours until the end of that meeting and I still never got any answers these are all questions that I've asked before the public is still waiting

023for those answers here are some new questions that I hope I really hope the board will ask the admin and hold them accountable to their answers during the February 15th meeting between Wiley parents and Dr every Tatum we brought up very serious concerns about having crossing guards at Florida and file a road if our students are going to have to walk to and from Thomas Payne Elementary Dr Avery Tatum stated we would have crossing guards at Florida and Philo as of today there are still no crossing guards that follow in Florida I counted 17 students that crossed there the other day when I talked to the district about on Friday I did not get a response until Monday after five that they are hoping to have somebody fill in their temporary until they can get

024the position filled but they are having a hard time finding applicants my question to the board is do you find it acceptable to have just leave the 17 students on their own to cross that busy intersection or should the district do better if I were in charge I would pull someone from support staff admin or even myself someone off their normal duties to make sure that every child could safely cross those intersections that weren't a crossing guard or should we just wait for an accident an investigation to then see who should be held accountable for anything there are several things I think this board should be aware about about the different District facility committee that was charged to review the comprehensive needs of all USD buildings and programs for transparency I will say I was

025a group leader in the 6A group we started talking about all the known issues in the current middle school and other school districts are set up IE K8 k6 with a seven eight okay four with a five six and a separate seven eight we started talking about researching what is shown to be the best practice and how the best data results across many metrics such as test scores discipline referrals truancy graduation rates teacher retention and what is needed most by sped students and those with IEPs but due to the lack of time the group voted in the first meeting to only focus on researching the pros and cons of making wildly a Sixth Grade Center I want to make it clear that the 6-8 subgroup only researched and then presented the Sixth Grade Center due

026to Center option due to lack of time it did not research all possible options that may benefit the Middle School so there aren't there is no data that shows the Sixth Grade Center is the best option for our students just that is a possible option personally I feel that overloading the elementary schools in the hopes that it solves some of the issues Middle School is a risk we shouldn't take without more research and the recommendation of a professional consulting firm I think we should be taking this opportunity to make educated evidence-based long-term district-wide plans to address as many issues as we can thank you for your time thank you Mr Anderson Janelle Elliott hi my name is Janelle Elliott I haven't been an Urbana resident since 2007 and have five kids ranging from two years

027old to seventh grade so we have a lot of time left here in the district our elementary school right now is Yankee rich I also happen to have been a co-chair on the most recent facilities committee which turns out to be one of the most challenging roles I've had it might have rivaled raising six kids this summer um on the committee we were asked to examine and determine what the greatest need in our district is that can be met with the use of the building of Wiley and a potential 20 million dollar Bond later tonight we'll share with you what the committee found to be the greatest need but for anyone who had asked me the question in a more General sense what do you think the greatest need is my answer would be rebuilding

028Trust I've learned a lot in this process more than I probably wanted to about leadership in people in the Urbana District again just very challenging committee to lead I had the privilege of meeting so many leaders in our district I spent meetings with a superintendent team many who have never had personal conversations with lots of hours on the phone with Paul as he guided me through the process as I've never even been on a committee met new school board members at the committee talked to teachers from every school talk to many administrators and parents as well I have been really encouraged by all the people who care so deeply about Urbana students and schools we you guys being some of the main ones have so many people who give so much of their time and

029energy to our students in our schools um thank you for doing that um but I've also been simultaneously been discouraged by the lack of trust found between many of these same groups of people a lot has happened over the years most I don't know about and some have said that we perhaps haven't recovered trust back from years ago um I can only speak to what I've kind of watched from a distance this past year and it seems to be a further deterioration of trust being on the committee gave me a front row seat to the Deep needs of our students it's hard now and I'm sure you already knew this information knowing the Deep needs of our students while also knowing that we can't realistically address all of them right now even if we were

030operating at full strength but I would argue that we are not operating at even close to full strength right now operating at maximum capacity has to start with healthy leaders who have healthy relationships relationships where conflict is common but adjust quickly and openly I can't pretend to know how we got here and I know that I don't understand the half of how difficult your jobs are I have grown in respect for the volunteer hours that the board puts in and for the superintendent team and how much work they put in and I could never do it writing one report was was more than I could really do um so it's a rare person who can and is willing to do your jobs but as the leaders I also look to you to take the lead

031on rebuilding Trust intention versus impact is a phrase that's been helpful for me as I examine areas of my life from my perspective looking at what happened in both the DL committee process and then the Wily process I don't believe that the intention was for staff or families to feel unvalued ignored or misled but from what I gathered from many that seems to be the impact on some of them the process that you chose in both situations while different LED to some broken trust I've heard some explanations of why decisions were made but is also usually met with reality that it didn't actually work out to the outcome you hoped for in the end I asked some of you to speak to what you can prior to the committee starting because I feared it would

032interfere with the work we were asked to do and unfortunately I think it did many teachers did not want to be a part of the committee from elementary and some parents declined and I think it was because they didn't trust that people wanted to hear what they had to say some of them had felt firsthand and some had watched second hand as decisions were made that impacted them without sufficient time or warning or conversations I believe in order to best serve our students that we as a community admin board staff families and community members must trust each other we will continue to get in our own way if we attempt to carry on without addressing how we got here so I ask you board and admin to start with your relationship with each other and

033then I think relationship with Elementary staff we have so much work to do and we have so many great students and then they will need all of us to get it done thank you thank you Nathan Turner oh sorry Nathan Tanner pardon me I need my glasses on my handwriting is not great so um good evening I don't have any sort of prepared statement or anything um but I did have I just had two things that I wanted to share that have been on my mind and then with conversations with other people that I thought I would share you know on on their behalf one of which was related to the closing of Wiley and that just had to do with some of the teachers and staff feeling like they were expedited out of the

034building extremely quickly and parents who devoted tens of hours in the last two weeks of school um to help teachers move their belongings out of the classrooms and to ensure that the building could be closed up on the last day and I know that the building is just sat all summer which I know was expected but also I think that made a lot of people feel upset I'd say because they felt like they were being disrespected in terms of I think it made it made it a a difficult situation even harder for a lot of people just in terms of feeling like they were being pushed out as opposed to being helped out um but the other thing that I was going to add was I know Dr Ivory Tatum has seen the the lines

035of cars that uh at Thomas Payne because she's been graciously you know helping out with the um the pickup and drop off and and things like that but I speaking with some other parents in our immediate neighborhood that it's pretty close within walking distance of Wiley um I and I know that Mike already spoke about crossing guards which you know has been has been a concern and that's one reason why I think a lot of people recently have not been letting their kids walk to school but um I think there's wonderings about a potential bus um and maybe an added bus route maybe at or near Wiley where people could feel comfortable walking their kids to in the morning which would help out a lot with both drop off and pick up times for parents

036who have busy schedules and maybe also alleviate some of the the traffic needs you know before and after school again I don't know what the possibilities are but I just thought I would throw that out there as something that we've been talking about and I don't know what the district's resources or budget could accommodate but I think that there would be people who would be interested in a potential bus if that was an option and then that's all I've got for tonight but I just wanted to share those things thank you so much thank you Mr Tanner uh the last uh request I have tonight is from Rob Dennett if anybody else would like to make a statement before the board their golden Rush sheets over in their Corner please fill one out and hand

037it to Lori Johnson hi everybody uh I do not have any prepared remarks either this evening um but I did just on my way passing by I wanted to make a quick comment about uh foia request My Name by the way is Rob Bennett I am an Urbana parent I'm formerly a Wily parent um there was a comment made a little bit ago about foia requests and how those things were perceived to be unduly burdening the administration um I have not personally filed any foia requests I did requests to join the facilities committee and by the way I want to thank everyone here and not here who was involved in that committee that was an unbelievable undertaking thank you for serving your community in that regard I was one of a number of wily parents

038that applied to be on that committee and was for whatever reason not approved to be part of that process and I did attend a few meetings as I could this summer but of course without much of a voice in that process um kind of didn't make a lot of sense to continue attending but I am aware despite not having filed any foia requests myself of a number of wily parents Urbana parents community members at large and even Pacs who have filed foia requests with the administration and I just want to say that while those requests may require work on the part of the administration I think one recurring theme that we've heard at least since last fall if not earlier but certainly since the closure of Wiley in as it began in February is transparency

039and if you would like to reduce the number of foia requests that are coming to your door from concerned citizens who are not receiving information through your processes through your board meetings through your Publications and through your Communications with the community at large one way to reduce that burden is to simply be more transparent as an Administration with the community you are serving I know that a lot of those Fourier requests probably stemmed from that perception that information was not being made clear to the public in regards to the Wiley closure in regards to the Dual language events that occurred last fall in in regards to the facilities committee right A lot of these foia requests stem from a perception that information is not being made available in an honest efficient appropriately clear manner to

040the community so that's all I wanted to say I believe those Fourier requests will continue as long as the administration and indeed the board's handling of issues and Communications with the public continues to be kind of close to the chest thank you that's all I had to say thank you one last call anybody else like to make a statement before the board tonight all right thank you we'll move on our first action item tonight is appointment of our student ambassadors a little bit about and of course I got out of the document sorry and now I'm not on the Wi-Fi anymore do you know why we're getting kicked off the Wi-Fi zone yeah I can't pull up the policy because I'm not on the Wi-Fi anymore okay well I was going to review our oh

041looks like it's pulling me back up now give you just a little background about um our student ambassador program and there we go I got it finally thank you um so tonight we're going to swear in our two new student ambassadors Dominica and Paulina just to give the public a little bit of information about the student ambassador program um both of our students tonight went through a pretty strenuous I'd say application process this spring we had a large selection committee mostly comprising of staff from UHS teachers administrators counselors um a couple I think District administrators also participated who worked with the high school but primarily High School folks there was a screening process there was an application process um there we narrowed down the applicants to about five students who were interviewed we had board

042members who participated in the interview process with the superintendent and one of our former student ambassadors also participated in the interview process and Dominica and Paulina were selected they will attend regular meetings I will meet with them pretty regularly to review board meetings they will have an agenda item on the board agenda where they can share happenings from UHS they can share they're both involved in several student groups so they can also bring student interests student groups forward to the board Just for information purposes we also ask that they share student viewpoints when there are issues happening at the high school that we may not be aware of and again they are here to represent all of our students specifically our students at UHS they are here to serve as a resource to the board

043so we encourage board members if there are things that we're discussing where you would appreciate a student perspective that's another reason why they're here to really answer questions and to be that student voice perspective for board members who just want to know from a kid right or from a young person we'll review the packet with them so they are aware prior to meetings what we're discussing and they are non-voting members so as we've discussed they are not granted voting privileges but they do attend meetings and they can comment on individual topics on specific situations that we discuss as a board but they are not allowed to vote on those they won't participate in closed session meetings and they'll only be here for our open meetings so in the event a student is unable to attend

044we had an alternate we don't have an alternate this time we're going to do our best to make sure that at least one of them are here like I said they're both very involved in lots of activities and on teams and clubs so I know their schedules are going to get really busy once school is up and going so we'll try to make sure that we coordinate so at least if one is at a band concert or the other one has a game or something that we can kind of make sure that at least one of them is able to attend at all times so I think that's it questions I know we have some new board members who were not here when we started the student ambassador program hopefully that answers most requests if

045not okay if not the chair would entertain a motion to appoint Dominica Turner Winston and Paulina and Grave to be our student ambassadors for Google is there a second second all in favor say aye any post all right thank you we'll move on to the oath of office [Applause] so yeah I can put my click this near your mouth yeah so there's a little green button on here you tap tap it once it turned there you go and just kind of hold it near your mouth so share it so I say your name aye Dominica Turner Winston I Paulina and Grave do solemnly swear or affirm do some we swear or firm you guys could say it in tandem too if you want that I will Faithfully discharge the duties of student ambassador that I

046would basically discharge the duties of student ambassador to the board of education of Urbana School District 116. to the board of education of Urbana School District 116. in accordance with the policies of the Board of Education in accordance to the policies of the Board of Education I further swear or affirm I further swear or affirm that I shall acknowledge and respect that I shall encourage encourage respect the free expression the free expression expression of opinion by myself and board members the free expression of opinion by myself and board members and others who seek a hearing before the board and others who seek a hearing before the board welcome thank you so much for your service [Applause] there is no call for an executive session after tonight's meeting is there a student ambassador report tonight no

047okay we'll get you next time our first administrative report tonight is on our Equity action plan Dr Kathy who's that all right good evening tonight I along with the members of the district Equity leadership team will share with you our Equity action plan for the 20 2023-2024 academic school year as many of you are aware this summer we receive the final Equity audit from Dr dubiel and systemic equity upon receiving that final report the district Equity leadership team began meeting this summer to draft our Equity action plan just to review and give those in attendance and those watching just a little bit of our historical efforts in regards to equity Urbana school district has a long history in terms of trying to achieve equity in the school district if we examining our historical records we

048have evidence dating back to 1994 that the district developed a comprehensive District plan for at-risk students four years later in 1998 the district conducted its first educational Equity audit between 1998 and 2016 there's been various initiatives various workshops professional development that's been conducted by the school district in order to achieve equity most of those efforts however without were without any kind of sustainable action plan which leads us to 2021 when the board saw fit to establish the equity task force out of that task force one of the recommendations to the board was that we needed to conduct a more recent Equity audit so now that the audit has was approved and has been completed we are moving forward with what we have developed into an equity action plan the equity action plan is intended to

049be an accountability framework to identify measure and sustain actions to advance equity and USD 116. it is a collaborative process developed with District stakeholders and relies on systemic commitment to breast serve all students the district Equity leadership team has not only District administrators but teachers and parents as well on our team here and probably in front of you you can see a list of the individuals that have served on the delt and these individuals will also be introduced later as each strand leader comes up to present for your benefit right now you need to know that our Equity action plan is broken down into five components which we refer to as strands I actually Equity action plan examines our systems our teaching and learning student voice climate and culture professional learning and last but not

050least family and Community agency at this time we will receive the Strand leader for our systems Dr weimel foreign good evening so I am the Strand leader for the system strand as you can see and the systems is one of um the five strands of systemic Equity as as being presented this evening and really the way in which we talk about the system strand is it's the accountability arm or the accountability strand to ensure that our Equity action plan is completed and implemented with Fidelity and so I'm leading that charge with that group but the definition as defined by the equity audit framework is the systemic and continuous development toward advancing Equity so thinking about policies broader processes and procedures as well as the decision-making systems and the ultimately the fiscal responsibilities and how we

051pay for the implementation and Improvement of systemic equity oops I hit the wrong button sorry still wrong button I'd hit this don't I there we go so members in this specific uh strand are Dr Franklin and Mr gutsmer Dr RV Tatum Beth Ladd Shauna Shear Nate wall and myself and so you can see our roles there we're all different staff members at different levels at different positions throughout the district and so our first objective we have some smaller objectives within each strand as you'll see as you've already seen and you'll receive in the presentation this evening one of the big ones is the developing strategies to recruit and retain specialized staff and continue efforts to diversify staff and so I'm not going to read every word but as you can see every objective within each

052strand will have a measure and an alignment piece and so the measure in particular is retaining 80 percent or higher of our current specialized and diverse staff members and specialized meaning all the different types of roles and positions hard to fill so on and so forth that we have as well as the diversity of Staff members across the different aspects of diversity and equity and so so the alignment piece is looking and utilizing our talented systems increasing the retention percentage of our diverse members and increasing percentage of affinity group affinity group participation which was started last year under Dr Kathy's leadership and we're wanting to grow that and improve that as we move forward of course there'll be time for questions so I'm just going to go through each slide and at the end we

053can discuss further objective 1.2 is tackling adopting re-inventing the district Equity board policy and so we'll be working with the Board of Education to officially adopt the policy that was from December 2020 by December 2023 excuse me so an updated policy as it relates to equity work in our district and the alignment piece will be informing a new mission statement as part of the strategic planning that is forthcoming a new board policy related to this particular strand and our Equity action plan as well as new policy procedures for reporting incidents incidences of bias across all stakeholders across the community within our district and outside of our district objective 1.3 really hits the systems piece evaluating and updating policies data collection systems communication instructional practices for barriers to access and full engagement so this came out

054both in the program evaluation of our dual language program as well as our Equity audit that we need to have stronger and better systems for analyzing utilizing data and using that data to inform instruction to inform improvements in our district on a more holistic scale and more transparent scale and so looking at that piece our district leadership teams will be meeting quarterly to review district-wide data the processes and procedures and progress towards student achievement meeting our goals as well as this consistent tool for data collection analysis and planning so really trying to strengthen the data piece as it relates to student Improvement student learning lastly the alignment piece we do have our monthly superintendent cabinet meetings we will be reviewing the work of each Strand and the broader Equity action plan a monitoring tool for

055accountability as I mentioned our strand this first strand is about the accountability arm so making sure that all the remaining strands that you hear from tonight are doing their work and being held accountable to that work as well as providing time and space and other meetings with every stakeholder on in leadership roles principals assistant principals Etc to be working towards our goals working towards our Equity action plan and updating the plan as we move forward the last part of my section of our strand is 1.4 the financial backing so we also view our role as when the other strands need finances or resources to accomplish their goals where the group that will be reviewing those proposals reviewing the work and then working with Katie and the the district business office to implement or the funding

056piece that's needed for each goal and objective and so we'll be aligning our District budget including stipends as necessary for any member that's working outside their contractual time as well as a broader systemic Google Google form where strand leaders can request those resources and financial support and use that as a way to hold each other accountable to implementing so that was our last objective of our strand the next strand is teaching and learning and of course I can come back up for questions about strand one at the end next okay good evening everyone I have the pleasure of um sharing the second strand teaching and learning and this work is really encouraging because as Dr weimel even said there is a check and balance among all of the strands as we are meeting often and

057reviewing the data aligned to the goals that you will see that's outlined among each one of these strands so teaching and learning is to intentionally embed Equity driven pedagogy throughout curriculum instruction assessment and ensuring that academic programming is advancing equity among all students so on this on the teaching and learning strands we were comprised of Administrators myself Adriana Ochoa Elizabeth Smith Andre instructional coach at the high school Erica U Scali and SEMA Thurman who's new on board as principal of Inky Ridge I don't care two more okay so looking at the first goal teaching and learning contains a few objectives but they Encompass a lot and they occur over a long period of time so even there's just a few goals when you're looking at aligning curriculum instruction assessment that curriculum cycle to go through

058all content areas is actually typically when you look at research it's typically around a seven year cycle particularly this first objective curriculum mapping to align standard scope and sequence across all content areas work has been initiated through standards reference learning the recent math adoption and determining priority standards across all content areas the English language art language arts and Spanish language arts committees were initiated and the spring and will continue throughout the school year with the goal to have a common and scope and sequence for English language arts and Spanish language arts recommended by the end of this year examples of alignment are priority standards curriculum map and board policy again it's important to note that this Cycle takes multiple years as evidence from the work of the Dual language committee and findings of the Center

059for Applied Linguistics audit collaboration is needed among dual language monolingual and special education teachers as resources are determined and aligned across grade levels and even in the work of our committees whether it's been the math committee or English language arts or Spanish language arts we have multiple representations from all those individuals on those committees and this year with grade level leaders working to have multilingual leaders to provide and put in this work intentional professional development for working with multilingual students and Scaffolding strategies will also be provided for all teachers and time will be allocated through grade level meetings or Department time multiple evidence of progress will be analyzed to provide intervention support and understanding of the whole child through the goal of examining root causes of lower performance of African-American and Latino or ell students

060in addition mtss multi-tiered system of support protocols will be further aligned and developed with individual problem solving that is universal across the district so when we look at alignment we look at many different measures such as the Illinois assessment of Readiness map PSAT s-a-t Panorama and we're referring to those surveys that we do three times a year for teachers staff and families and then also the Student Success piece that holds all of our data as we look at the whole child to make decisions that are best for all of our students and then next will be student voice culture and climate thank you I have the pleasure of serving as the Strand leader for strand three student voice climate and culture and simply put our goal is to consistently seek students feedback and experiences on

061organizational culture and climate I think what was very evident from the equity audit is that our students feel very disconnected from most of the schools that they attend and so we need to address that in a major way on this Strand and I'm actually asked my strand members just please stand if they're in attendance we have Mr Derek Cooper who was the principal of our band of Middle School Jesse Guzman principal of Urbana High School Brandon McFarland our Recruitment and Retention coordinator Trista Kasem our school psychologist dinardo Williams student engagement advisor and Darian Sanchez who's a student interventionist at ums based on the recommendation from the audit it is clear that we need to establish a student Equity advisory committee so that is objective 3.1 for our strand and some of the measures and indicators

062that we will be looking at is how students respond to our pair Panorama surveys we're looking to expand our Affinity groups within our high school and establish new ones at the middle school to make sure that our students feel connected we are looking to rehire the minority enrichment program coordinator or affinity group coordinators at the middle school which we currently do not have as well as identify Equity advisory committee student structure and identify group members so we are looking to try to engage as many students who can give us real feedback in terms of what culture and climate feels like in Urbana School District and last but not least we want to make sure that we create and develop a comprehensive resource list so if our students do not feel connected to individuals inside of

063a school they have a dedicated resource that they can use that they can achieve those resources that they need to utilize out in our community our second objective is to develop positive connections targeted specifically at black and African-American students and or students who qualify for free or reduced lunch again if we look at the data from the equity audit it is clear that we are failing black children in our school district and we need to make some very intentional efforts to raise the academic achievement for our students and make sure that they feel connected to Urbana School District one of the things we're going to be looking at in terms of a measure indicator is our discipline Improvement plan for those of you who were in tenants at opening day I spoke to the fact

064that Urbana is currently in the top 20 percent district-wide or Statewide in terms of our exclusionary practices suspensions and expulsions we have to reduce those numbers we have to effectively reduce our Dropout rates we are losing far too many students one is too many but our numbers are absurd and we need to increase our attendance rates so our strand will be systemically looking at how we can improve the things that I just spoke to and making sure that our students feel heard and connected strand Forest professional learning good evening my name is yavonda Smith and I am the director of professional development and I have the pleasure of leading strand for professional learning our goal is to provide a Continuum of professional learning and growth opportunities for all of our staff in pursuit of educational

065equity my team members consist of Jeanette Delgado who is a dual language teacher we have also Danielle Jackson who is a principal we have Guadalupe riccone who is here tonight the director of multilingual programs and in myself serving as the chair so we have one goal that we created two parts for so the main goal was to provide professional learning opportunities for all of our staff all means all and so the measures and indicators are provided for you also with the alignment on the slides but what I want to draw your attention to is what is our plan education is one of the few opportunities that we have as far as a continuous Improvement of our teachers our Educators our teaching assistants and everyone else that makes up the body of Urbana School District as

066we support our students in providing professional learning opportunities for all staff we divided it up in the following on all staff development days we would have at least one professional development activity to include providing a sense of belonging for our students and staff all of our new hires all of them will receive a foundational Equity professional development overview also a portion each month at our building meetings will include professional development and on also providing a sense of belonging for our students and our staff and then also we will continue efforts to make sure we are enlisted experts and Consultants to provide professional development guidance and support as needed on issues of equity and also related paradigms as you know we have been busy in the month of August we are very busy with the PD

067Department so I want to just give you a picture of what we have done and what we will continue to do in order to strive for professional development for all of our educators we held our administrator Institute on July 31st and August 1st we provided our administrators with not only topics in special education how they could lead the charge of being an Lea in their buildings but also we had a session on leading with equity we were also given the opportunity to engage further to to understand what lgbtqia what does that mean as an administrator how are we going to support not only our students but also our staff and new teacher orientation we did something very unique this year and so we want to provide all of our new hires with the opportunity to

068get an equity overview so what we did on Monday August the 7th we provided an opportunity for them to have an equity overview of all the professional development our staff went through last year they also were assigned two additional trainings in our Vector training model module it includes the following diversity Equity inclusion staff to staff and diversity Equity inclusion staff to students now you may be wondering how do we get this done and how are we working on it well we provided the time and the space for them to come they were paid but we provided the time and space for them to come and to complete these trainings and also ask us further questions if they had any as they dive into what is Urbana Better Together and then on our opening day some

069of you probably seen it on Facebook and all those snapshots of welcoming all of our staff back to our district we were LED with the charge by Dr Jennifer Ivory Tatum and Dr Brandon Kathy as they shared the findings of our Equity audit and yes it was shared with our entire District we continued on that day to provide two other additional trainings it was a multilingual overview and also the lgbtqia overview we also held in all district Pre-K 12 including Gerber and our teaching assistants because this is the first time that we've invited all of our staff to sit in these spaces to join the Special Education meeting led by Beth Ladd Maria elvir and also Katie Madigan we will continue to be intentional about our spaces and our timing to make sure that professional

070development opportunities are awarded to all of our staff members remember professional learning is a collaborative and intentional effort that we all are striving for I now present the next strand strand five good evening everyone I'm Dion Webster director of family engagement and student support sister and leader of strand five but this is definitely my partner in crime Eric hey let me do it come on um I'm Erica Cooper Payton I'm a teacher at Dr Williams and I'm really just here as Dion's hype girl Eric and I spent a lot of time together this summer working on the committee and discussing ways to increase family engagement as the district as Erica as a classroom teacher and me at the district level and former teacher so we had a lot of great conversations on ways to enhance

071it and we're looking forward to Growing our group so that we have a few more voices at the table so so the executive summary definitely showed that this is an area of weakness not that we're not trying but that we're just not connecting in quite the way that works for all families and community so for me family and Community as agency is to partner with families and the community for authentic and that was a big one authentic opportunities to serve the students the school and the district we're having technical difficulties so our group members are Imani car assistant principal at Urbana Middle School Torrey Exum board member Erica Cooper Payton my co-partner Juanita Rogers also a parent and myself director of family engagement and student support we have one huge objective as an engaging is

072established an engaging community space our main focus of this is to create a space where families feel welcome and their voices feel heard we've had a variety of family engagement events over my last five to six years in this role and we're still trying to increase enrollment because it starts out strong and we have a lot of parents come and then it kind of dies out and there are a variety of reasons of why we don't have attendance of families have multiple things to do there are lots of things going on pulling people in different directions so we really want to create an engaging space where people feel like they have a voice something that they want to come back to that they're heard and we definitely want to rebuild trust and establish a Community

073Partnership with not only our families but community members that pour into our students um so just really amplifying those voices too so we do have groups of families who come and we want them to continue to come we just want to bring more people to the table and we want to make sure that they feel their voices are heard that they're validated and that they're valued in whatever way we can provide for that so our measures and indicators for this um and this engaging community space we're doing through a World Cafe model which is essentially bringing people in having them do an initial session focusing on one one area or one objective and then delving into some strong questions that could be open-ended or smaller so we're really focusing on feeling included and feeling accepted

074within our school district so asking questions how when you were a child did you feel included or accepted how did you not how does our school district meet you feel included and accepted how do we not and then we're moving on from there so we're facilitating conversations and multiple spaces with families and community members who may or may not ever talk to each other and then we're taking that information and we're programming it further on so we have I think a total of four World cafes that we are having throughout the school year and each one after the first one will be based on what our families are telling us we want we want to lead this we want to know more about this we feel like we need more transparency here we're trying to

075react in programs specifically based on their needs so our measures for those are majority of participants will provide feedback and input the focus there being not just one person talking and 10 people listening but the majority of people really having input and engagement active authentic engagement and then maintain maintaining and increasing debt attendance as she said sometimes we start strong sometimes we don't I've seen I've seen her program with you know 50 people presenting and three families come so doing the work but making sure that we're reaching more people we're keeping them and we're growing it absolutely and we definitely want to get input so we've we have four dates set and we set those dates working around concerts banned things board meetings everything in the district that we worked around so we had to

076set four dates but we definitely want to give families input on where we meet the first Cafe will be at Dr Williams the next thing we'll talk about the first time will be 5 30 to 7 30 with light Refreshments but we definitely want to give families input does this time work for you does this location work for you we also have to think about space but we want to give families voice because that's one thing that we heard back from the equity Auditors that families and Community Partners wanted input on our decision making processes so we're keeping it Loose we didn't have a choice but to set the dates because they just filled up too fast in the district but we want to make sure that two increase attendance two increased participation that people

077have a voice in what is it that you want from us how can we best serve you and how can we create this space if it's just a cafe model of families rotating to different spaces getting to know different people and having authentic conversations that they generate then we'll do that but like like Erica said we're going to let them dictate the topic so we will start the first one of just Community establishing Community talking about trust School experiences but the next one we want to just talk to them and we've done surveys before in the past sometimes I get great feedback and that's when the past I've used for the family forms as the topic but this time we just want people to talk to us and to create that space so we've given

078out flyers at Champaign Urbana day Jetty Rose day new teacher orientation it was in the Family Focus but we definitely want to have Community Partners come as well so we're trying to publicize it as much as possible to make sure that everyone feels welcome and included in their voices heard we are also working on inviting as many interpreters as possible to be at the tables because we want to make sure there's not a language barrier because sometimes families will come and then they don't feel comfortable because they can't understand or they can't communicate so that's something that we have reached out to we're going to provide child care and again like we said light refreshments our alignment or just by the board policies the mission of Urbana and Danielson domain four which is the evaluation

079system we use communicating with families um just that we're being really intentional with how we're we're making this happen um and at the end of each meeting there's really an intention to give time and space to families and community members to collaborate like just to hang out exchange information if you want to so that we have that we have that commitment to them that you're part of us but we want you to be partners together as well so giving them the ability we we saw a lot of people saying especially during coveted families weren't interacting anymore play dates aren't happening you know you don't feel that connection so we're trying to build that stronger as well any questions for us yeah you never have to come back come back were there any questions for any

080strand leaders board members or student ambassadors any any questions for our strand leaders um seeing that I would just like to reiterate that this plan is just for the 2023-24 academic school year we will develop a three to five year plan at the conclusion of this school year in conjunction with our strategic plan thank you very much thank you our next administrative report is from the Champaign-Urbana Public Health subcontract agreement um Katie to further the farm to school programs throughout the district we um last year Sola gratia Farm applied for a USDA Farm to school Grant and this year Champaign-Urbana Public Health District applied for one and their board is asking that we have a mou basically for those payments so they actually got two grants they got a USDA Grant and then they got

081a youth services Grant from the city of Urbana so there's two separate agreements within that within the packet tonight these are still draft agreements I sent them to our attorney to review and the Champaign Urbana Public Health District's actually going to see those agreements and and approve them first and then after they've been approved on their end we'll bring them to our board for counter approval but I wanted to get them in front of you in case you had any questions but basically they are the granting they're the grand grantee that's in receipt of these grants and we're a sub-grantee and they'd like an agreement in place in order to pass those funds to us so the USDA grant that they're receiving is paying for three three-quarters time Farm to school coordinator position in Urbana

082School District that's a staff person at the district and then the youth services Grant is going to be able to fund 10 Garden coordinators stipends which is one of each building and um and then also for potentially three intern comes this spring if they if they want to use the funding for that but that's what the agreement and the initial Grant approval is for and those would all be USD employees uh board members just came along with our packets over the weekend if you've had an opportunity to look at them if you have any questions uh for for Katie I guess you could ask them now because I haven't played Sherry um specifically they didn't mention the locations of the gardens um is that going to be in the document or no there's one at

083every school so every school has one a garden and a garden coordinator so including Gerber um and so there's one at the high school one at the middle school I don't know the student ambassadors have ever visited the school garden there and so they've worked really hard over the last several years to build those Gardens and most of that's been volunteer work and just last year was the first time that we added stipends to those Garden coordinators who were really doing the work all along to facilitate those Gardens including you know leveraging volunteer days to come and weed them and plant them and then knew last year they got some grant funding as well to build some curriculum kits and they're working on getting those curriculum kits out in front of teachers so they could

084check them out and go outside in their school Gardens and use the kits and the materials that come in the kits to teach kids about Gardens excuse me will the students that's a great question Joe I'm sorry Mike well students at Tiger Academy have the ability to participate in in the gardens either ums or UHS for the public the answer was yes for both buildings and one here on this property as well thanks Paul any other questions you're welcome to reach out to me anytime but we're expecting to bring this back for approval either at the September 6th study session or the September 19th regular meeting whenever public health is finished with approval and any other questions or comments great uh thank you moving on uh to the next report which is a similar agreement

085but with the city of Urbana again Katie sorry same thing so the USDA one is for the farm to school coordinator and then the youth services Grant is through the city of Urbana so I was kind of speaking when I was speaking out of speaking about both so and our attorneys reviewed both of them they don't have any concerns about them they're pretty basic agreements and we have had other agreements with Public Health in the past um so just a sub subgrantee award agreement comments or questions for anyone about the city all right thank you uh our last administrative report tonight is an enrollment report Dr Norton okay so tonight this is a preliminary report typically when I come to the board we do a sixth day enrollment report but we wanted to give you

086kind of a snapshot to where we are right now as I walk you through this presentation you'll see some overall numbers for our schools you'll see it by overall grade level numbers down to specific class sizes you'll also see don't panic when you see and you also have a PDF that was shared with you that that are the class counts on the presentation it looks pretty small but we will also highlight that in some other graphs that will make it a little bit easier to understand as I walk through it so first off as we're looking at the process for six day we start that on the first full day where all students come and that was Friday August 18th because leading up to that we may have freshman only one day or part of

087kindergarten and then the other part of kindergarten so we start our Six Day Count when we have all students on that first day and then we conclude six day enrollment it will be Friday August 25th and then students that have not attended will be withdrawn following the sixth day so as we look at these numbers right now we do not have you know you may have students included in the count that haven't registered yet and haven't attended they're still on our rosters and then Tuesday September 5th The Six Day Report will be shared so I'm going to present this tonight we'll come back and I'll share our enrollment after six day and then in October I'll also do a fall housing report so you can see how those numbers change over time so some proactive

088steps that we have taken at this point typically in per our CDA we do not post classroom adjustment Tas until after the six day enrollment because we want to see what our numbers really look like once our students have been withdrawn if they have not attended or registered but you'll see as we advance on the presentation we've went ahead and posted classroom size adjustment Tas one at Leal for kindergarten and two for Yankee Ridge in second grade and dual language classroom adjustment Tas are in place and we have four this year and that is typical at the start of every school year we will we will put those in place and that's to comply with the with the ISB language that the student teacher ratio and the ESL and home language components of programs serving

089K-12 shall not exceed 90 percent of the average student teacher ratio in general education classes now these numbers on the right what you'll see that is for classroom size adjustment Tas for general education classes that we have not counting for our ESL or dual language so we had seven 2018-19 for 2019-20 0 and 2021 because we were remote uh 2 and 21 22 and one last year and that was Kindergarten at Wiley and then we'll wait and see where our numbers look overall for this year so where are wiley students now so when you look at this chart you'll see um based on each School the number of Wiley students that are now in in each school so you'll see Thomas Payne has the most former Wiley students at 86. Dr Williams at 16. like

090I said Thomas Paine's 86 Leal is four and King is 22. 168 students overall so that is lower than the Wiley enrollment for last year because we may have some students that have moved and are no longer here so overall enrollment if you look at the the circle at the top and again it's really hard to make this comparison because this is preliminary about 21-22 we were at 4103 22 23 4258 and currently at this moment 4408 and these are all based on today so I got this today based on the third day of enrollment and then if you look at the bar graph at the bottom you'll be able to look at each school and see from 2122 and to the next two years how that compares so you'll see um a slight increase

091in Yankee Ridge on a little bit of an increase at the high school and then you'll see Thomas Payne okay this is the enrollment report that will show you overall numbers this is not class sizes so don't panic you'll see overall kindergarten King for example is at 50 and first grades at 48 and so we'll break that down a little bit further but you'll be able to see overall each grade where we're at um on this report and you should have a copy of this too at your tables so now if we look at that further you'll see some Trend data and we will look at each Slide by grade and so we're looking at just Elementary so for kindergarten and if you look at that lightest teal color all the way to the left

092for each school that's this year so you'll be able to compare and see for example the king for kindergarten was actually higher last year or for Leal it was actually higher last year with those class overall that's overall grade can I ask a quick question yes so the numbers for this year are the day three numbers but the numbers for the prior years are they day six numbers they are they're after day six yeah so so some of those numbers might actually have been with the students who were dropped because they didn't either register or show up on them correct yep you're getting all this information early so when I come back to you next time our numbers will be lower and that's why y'all keep saying that over and over so it's a little

093hard to make a comparison Although our principals and secretaries have made a lot of phone calls have really tried to reach out um you know we really want all of our families to feel welcome we don't want to have to turn anyone away for overflow or anything like that and I'll talk about that in a little bit so they've been really intentional with their efforts but we do have students that have not yet registered and are still on our rosters okay so you'll see first grade and I'll just kind of go through these and if you need me to slow down I sure can in second grade and you'll see Yankee Ridge that's where we have the class size adjustment PA so we Yankee ridges is higher for second grade so we're watching that very

094close at this time and then I'll show you the individual numbers for that in just a minute besides just overall grade and third grade in fourth grade and fifth okay now when you're looking at this and again you have a copy of this at your table you're going to see last year so on one of the documents is August September 2021 and again that was after six day enrollment particularly I mentioned that Wiley last year for kindergarten was where we had the classroom size adjustment Tas and so you'll see that we had a classroom at 24 at Wiley last year and and that's the only classroom size adjustment ta that we had so you'll see that and then compared sorry that was 21 and then next is 22. what happened is where Wiley was 21

095this was right after six day and then after a few more weeks of school they they received more kindergarten students last year so that number actually went up a little bit and so then the one that's highlighted that's effective today so you'll look at kindergarten has the classroom size adjustment ta posted at Leal with 24 monolingual kindergarten students and then second grade at Yankee Ridge we have 29 and 30 at this time and then other numbers you can take a look there we don't see any concerns at this point and they're not close to that classroom size adjustment ta at this point if you look at the very bottom cell you'll be able to see School enrollment at this time for example so if you look at Dr Williams we usually like to stay close

096to that 450 although when we look at their class sizes their class sizes are reasonable so we're really monitoring that very closely meeting with Ms Jackson a lot and reviewing these numbers as we're monitoring this okay again these are preliminary findings we'll continue to keep you updated any questions at this time board members ambassadors any questions on the enrollment report go ahead and Sherry yeah I know it is and I know that my question will be as well but is there any room like at Yankee Ridge if you had it to add another second grade classroom excellent question and yes there is okay and how many did you say there and that adults are in that class did you say one teacher and two one at this point but we're we have posted for two

097class size adjustment Tas that then would support those classrooms okay so it's green yeah tap it once and then wait a little bit there you go when the students are no longer able to attend school because they're not on the register are you able to reach out to their families and try to help support them through their situation they might be in that's a very good question and yes so even though they haven't registered secretaries have been calling to to see if they have enrolled anywhere else or if they're planning on attending so good question now we continue to try to reach out and we don't withdraw them at this point we still give them an opportunity to come and if even if it got past the six day or ten day they are still

098more than welcome even if it's past that point I think a quick question anyone else all right thank you doctor thank you oh that completes our administrative reports tonight um I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Anna Seaman with the public television for uh running our cameras tonight our first study topic is the district facilities committee good evening again um I'm rakaya Perkins Williams and I'm Janelle Elliott oh thank you thank you for having us here tonight we're here to present a report of the district facilities committee regarding the use of the Wiley building um we just wanted to put an overview slide to take you through what we'll be talking through tonight we wanted to make sure our report was reflective of not just the findings but the process that the committee went

099through to get to these findings and we believe the Middle School group will go into finer detail about the recommendation but this is a summary of all that was done as we did not give periodic updates to the board we wanted to make sure we gave a comprehensive and as bounce report as possible this report is the result of the work of many members of the Urbana Community smart hard-working dedicated and capable people everyone gave a lot of time and effort in order to participate in this committee and we want to acknowledge and thank all of the committee members so tonight we'll be presenting a truncated version of our report starting with the background in March 2023 the Board of Education charged the District administration with four mean a planning committee to advise the board

100on the future programming for Wiley School the Board of Education specifically requested that the committee be co-chaired and that representatives from Wiley be prioritized for membership on the committee the committee was also designed to include representatives from each Elementary School in Middle School in the Urbana Education Association District administrators and members from the Board of Education so um I know there were a lot of questions around like how the committee was selected um I just want to be clear that some of the stuff you you all already know but for the purposes of like the public being making sure that they know kind of like the things that we learned we want to share it as well um so there was an open call for the volunteers to join and there was a representative group

101of all the stakeholders which included um parents and teachers and community members there was a blind screening process um the elementary school principals were all tapped to join Dr um Jennifer Hines recruit recused herself from being on a committee um and then there are specific District administrators or roles relevant to the process that were also asked to be on the committee and then the superintendent and her executive team and of course I just want to say Lori Johnson it's just the rock star we couldn't have done any of this without her so thank you so much Lori yes we just wanted to read the charge here that we were given as a committee the Urbana School District's Administration is organizing a special facilities planning committee to advise the board of education on the future of

102Wiley school Under board policy to colon 150 a special committee may be created for specific purposes or to investigate special issues a special committee is automatically dissolved after presenting its final report to the board or at the board's discretion to examine the future programming for Wiley School the committee will review the comprehensive needs of all the USD 116 buildings and programs while also considering the financial resources expected to be available to the district as part of the comprehensive examination to best meet the needs of the entire District the committee will consider but not be limited to the following reopening Wiley as a neighborhood Elementary School reopening Wiley is a newly themed Elementary School with a specific Focus reopening Wiley as a second Middle School campus or reopening Wiley as a whole school dual language campus

103the committee will be co-chaired and include representatives from each Elementary School in a Brandon Middle School there have been Education Association District admin and members from the Board of Education there will be an open call for volunteers via survey in the committee's meetings will be publicly noted and held either monthly or bi-weekly beginning in April 2023. the administrator's goal is for the committee to provide its final report to the board in August of 2023. and here's just a list of all the different people who were on the Committees um the people who have Stars by their names either formally withdrew or stop attending meetings and this is just a list of all the meeting dates our initial meetings were scheduled from 6 to 7 30. uh we amended the meetings to meet um for actually

104half an hour so that we can kind of like analyze the data um and so the added dates I think were the July 11th July 25th and then for the final vote because we want to have time for people to review the information that was presented we added a separate date just exclusively for the purposes of voting um as we say the board requested that one of the co-chairs and several more representatives and Wiley be prioritized I was one of the co-chairs from Wiley um asked to be a co-chair and then additions were made sort of the remainder of the committee was like very representative of the district and you can see here the different people in the different roles I also wanted to note that some of the roles were overlapping roles like community

105members were parents and parents were employees and so it wasn't like very much like people had one single role so people had multiple interests and multiple stakes in this process and the next thing that we found that to be really interesting is that Janelle and I went on a fact finding um process I think normally would have happened like weeks prior to the committee being formed so that we can have a complete understanding of the problem that we were being asked to address we spoke to so many people and we um we did it in the compliance with Oma laws so we spoke to The District Administrative team repeatedly right many meetings with them uh we appreciate them like taking the time out to meet with us and answer all of our questions like every

106single one we met with several District principals formally or informally we spoke to the board president a lot um we had a lot of questions and he was very forthcoming with his answers we spoke to teachers we spoke to parents we spoke to concerned community members and then after we gather all of this information we shared that information directly with the committee so the first couple of meetings was literally us reporting back the things that we shared and that took up a great amount of time oh and they're also attached to the um final report in the appendix and then due to the size of the committee because we want to make sure that we were in compliance with Oma laws uh we broke up into smaller groups we could have broken up a lot

107of different ways we thought that because part of the charge was to let you all know what the needs were across the district the most logical way to break up into committees Janelle and I just said we're clear and you know supported by the board members but this was this was a call by us two break up committees into K-5 628 and 9-12 right so um each working group was given a criteria that we came up with in support with the administrative team but we developed we found and developed this criteria and we shared it and we insisted that it will be shared um as the metrics designed by us to reveal what the various data sets were that we would need there was multiple like literally hundreds of thousands of data points that we

108could have used and we needed to narrow it down some kind of way so um we use District data as well as ISB data and school report card data in each of the working groups and the data analysis was as comprehensive as we could do given the time frame that we were given and most of it occurred during subcommittees but some subcommittees were giving homework to do and bring their findings to the following meeting um and this is just a list of the criteria that we asked the subcommittees to use when talking about the needs at their grade cluster which is enrollment data facilities data curriculum and social emotional mental health academic testing and demographics the finance needs the staffing needs and transportation needs if necessary um and then after everyone met and analyzed their

109data over the course of several meetings each subcommittee presented their findings and they made recommendations that we worked to consider as an entire committee and the final voting took place on August 2nd via public Google form so the the as we voted everyone's name showed up uh and it was videotaped so everyone could see in the K5 working group um they came up with four um specific needs that they thought their their group had they were stronger academic outcomes more support for SEL smaller class sizes and equity-based enrollment across all elementary schools um this subgroup then self-selected down to two options reopening Wiley Elementary is a neighborhood Elementary School and reopening Wiley as a second Middle School campus so for the equity-based enrollment they were talking about making the schools equal not based on like

110the Equitable needs of the students but just more equal enrollments in option one reopening Wiley Elementary as a neighborhood Elementary School keeping Wiley as an elementary school uh some positives to that class size with redistricting included class size can be reduced more evenly especially in low achieving schools that will become overcrowded with five elementary schools Equitable enrollment across all elementary buildings with six elementary schools redistricting can eliminate The Chronic overflow problem with only five elementary schools redistricting would not be able to achieve that while maintaining the administrative cap on the buildings academic outcomes smaller class sizes allow more individual attention and social emotional needs smaller class size will increase the teacher's ability to be build meaningful relationships with students which will lead to better social social emotional outcomes um continued impact on the district's needs

111it can also improve the academic and social emotional outcome in Middle School by improving the academic social emotional outcome in K-5 students would be better prepared for Middle School which will improve their academic and SC outcome in the Middle School Equity Equity audit identified classroom sizes as a problem in the K-5 buildings and then Wiley as an elementary can move the district beyond the status quo when combined with redistricting and standardizing curriculum and instruction across all schools Ian Wiley is an example of a success it was a failing school comprehensive and targeted that turned itself into a commendable School in 2023 so the K5 group had many vigorous debates and was pretty much the only group that had two recommendations that came out of it the other groups had one recommendation that came out of

112each group so we wanted to make sure that we included not only the points of that that the K-5 members argued for but also the points that they like the pros and the cons that they presented this information is also all of the recordings that you can find that were shared publicly so if you want to go back and listen to them um the counterpoints for uh keeping while he has a sixth Elementary School were that the academic outcomes um some of the assertions were it would be difficult in actually identifying the impact of the academic account outcomes by keeping six elementary schools there was also an assertion that um that the um social emotional needs of students could be met combined with redistricting and it can kind of create more of a balance staff

113of student ratio that um the class sizes made I'm not really sure what this means but um Staffing all classes basically they need more teachers it's kind of like the argument so it's like no matter what we do five schools six schools we need more teachers and then um Equitable enrollment across all buildings combined with redistricting May eliminate The Perennial overflow that you're seeing every single year and then the second um option that was argued was actually an argument for reopening Wiley as a a second Middle School campus and the reason why um the K-5 group thought that this would be a good option is because they felt that um even though it doesn't impact the academic outcomes of the K at the K-5 level they knew that it would help increase Transitions and supporting

114those transition experiences for the fifth graders that um there might be fewer classes um without certified teachers if if we um I'm just going to read what it says this class has without redistricting class has may vary from building as we just saw in Kim Norton's presentation with redistricting building classes could be more Equitable um we may have fewer classes without a certified teacher decrease access to space for K-5 and then um with Equitable enrollment across all elementary buildings without redistricting this option could negatively impact K-5 Equitable enrollment but the big question that they continually ask is that um if we kept widely as an elementary school how could it move the district from the status quo and then there are also some counterpoints to that and those kind of arguments was that um um

115they will have negative impacts K-5 increase in class sizes if we have a sixth grade Center versus addressing the needs at the K-5 level we have negative impacts on social emotional needs increase students and staff ratio the class sizes will also have negative impacts and will increase unevenly and um using Wiley as a sixth grade Center will lead to overcrowding um we some of the members speculated that it will happen at king um and potentially with the overflows then we had the six eight working group and their needs and recommendations um the top they were a bit more cohesive in their desire to identify needs within I think it was the first meeting they talked about options and then voted on one recommendation that they would work towards from that time on and so they

116quickly voted on working towards a Sixth Grade Center the following needs were identified as the top needs stronger academic outcomes more support for social emotional and developmental needs more instructional spaces and facility needs and then behavioral and discipline needs more specifically when they talked about academic supports they would hope for specialized curriculum that a Sixth Grade Center could better tailor its curriculum to specifically meet the needs of sixth grade students transition support moving them from elementary to middle school can be challenging from less freedom to lots of Freedom so that they could provide extra support during this transitional period enhanced teacher collaboration because smaller size of Sixth Grade Center could facilitate stronger teacher collaboration and then team teaching in some sixth grade centers team teaching approaches are employed and that can lead to a more

117comprehensive instruction and support for teachers also and continued more instructional spaces and facility needs was a very big deal so first the ability to have all the best resources to thrive as a student at ums and be better prepared but also to provide relief to the current ums building by removing around 300 students and staff this would allow for the current 7th and 8th grade students and staff to spread out more students will not be as crowded in the hallways and teachers will have their own spaces for their instructional time as well as planning time continued a designated space to better prepare interns it's in the sixth grade students from elementary to middle school for example giving sixth grade students time to adapt to the many changes coming from elementary into middle school and then

118a space to thrive academically as they experience classes that are not too big in hallways that are not too overcrowded um in terms of Behavioral SEL and attendance supports it could allow for unified expectation rules and procedures better safety measures and improved surveillance was talked about quite a bit safer environment away from other influences a stepping stone to confidently transition into the middle school environment as a seventh grader and allowing the sixth grade students to discover who they are in a smaller more defined space and then for the um 9th through 10th grade working group they realized that their needs would not necessarily be met by the Wiley building but the needs that they knew that they had to work on was improving their graduation rates and improving the Dropout rates by decreasing them I'm

119addressing social emotional needs especially those of students of color and our English language Learners or second language Learners making sure that they feel more connected the students themselves to the school um renovating of science labs and the parking situation if you've ever dropped off a child UHS you know that that space needs to be renovated and then construction lab space at Urbana High School so there was no real recommendation for the building but they had plenty of ideas of what they could do with that money and so then um we we after everyone did their presentations there was a final vote of the 53 members of the committee um several seven members formally withdrew um the attendance criteria was 50 of all the meetings and present for the in-person vote um therefore 39 people met

120the attendance criteria six committee members were eligible were not present for the in-person vote therefore only 33 people um voted in the final vote uh as you see of the options we opened Wiley Elementary's as an elementary school we see seven votes no one voted for a newly themed um curriculum at Wiley at the elementary school reopened wildly as a second Middle School campus received 24 votes there was one boat to open what uh reopen while he has a dual language campus one Committee Member abstained and um there were six committee members who were absent but they were eligible to vote and this is just a graphic representation of the votes that we just shared with y'all and so this is a list of every single person who voted and what their vote was um

121broken down in alphabetical order based on the results of the committee vote we bring forward to the Board of Education a recommendation to convert the Wiley school to a Sixth Grade Center some expected outcomes you could hope for if the board were to approve and follow through on the committee's recommendation the following outcomes are anticipated for sixth graders who have the opportunity to attend a self-contained Sixth Grade Center a designated space to better prepare and transition from elementary school to Middle School more time for sixth grade students to discover how to be productive Learners and students students will Thrive academically students will have more time to mature and learn to make age-appropriate decisions incidents resulting in office discipline referrals and behavioral incidents will decrease a Sixth Grade Center will help improve the overall culture and

122climate at both middle school campuses fewer behavioral incidents and positive culture and climate will also allow more time to focus on fostering a safe and nurturing learning environment for our staff and students and the space will allow the whole child to grow and develop some additional benefits creating opportunity for creative and Innovative instruction we can add more learning resources improve student discipline and culture and climate and intentionally improve educational outcomes for the 7th and 8th grade students as well overcrowding issues and concerns will be addressed teachers will have their own instructional spaces and will create safer and learning environments for all future indicators of Student Success would be measured by the following improvements in map data decreases in discipline referrals decreases in the number of sped in 504 referrals due to stress and anxiety improvements

123in attendance and conversely student achievement because students will be in school more and improved educational outcomes for future students as they matriculate into Urbana High School so before we go into um the our Reflections the sixth grade working group has their own presentation they're going to give you after we did not feel it was appropriate for either of us to actually give that presentation because we honestly didn't work very closely with that group so um they can speak for themselves better than we could possibly hope to speak for them so you will be hearing from them in more detail after we're done and so we had a few Reflections based on this process that we wanted to make sure that we share with y'all yes um this committee cannot operate in isolation so the process

124and decisions made in the months prior to the committee members came in with varying positions which is to be expected but the lack of trust between many parties often interfered with and slowed down the work that the committee was asked to do we did our best to lead well with transparency but it was outside of our scope to address issues that happened outside of our committee in the future we believe that those issues should be addressed before moving forward Urbana has many needs district-wide that are beyond the scope of the resources of the Wiley School building and the 20 million dollars of Revenue in the bond and we hope that these needs could be addressed as soon as possible as well as I'm sure you do too so the decision made by the board to

125actner's recommendation will impact the school district for many years to come so it's our view that more time should have been granted for a decision of this magnitude um and we hope that you all take the time that you need to come to a decision and also we just wanted to reiterate that there are many passionate intelligent and caring individuals in our community and in our leadership team um we need each and every one of them to work together to help achieve the greatest needs of our students and we found that in this process that Community voice has to be thoughtfully engaged and critical feedback not seen as detrimental to progress in the district vigorous disagreements will only make this District stronger and as we're able to resolve these the dissenting views and the best

126interest of the children of this District so we have to keep the kids center front and center and no one's expecting everyone to agree but we can't shy away from those really tough conversations that are needed and lastly we just wanted to thank the District administration team who met with us every other week Who provided us John with data constant requests Katie gave us financial information Lori made us sign things didn't let us forget it was handing us data sitting in meetings Dr Ivory Tatum as well people rotated among all the working groups and offered their assistance all the way from data up to helping what's next oh and the snacks and the drinks except one meeting [Music] um yeah thank you all for your help um thank you again board president Paul pawlowski for

127guiding us and giving us so much of your time for everybody on the facilities committee it was your summer yeah you spent it working on serving the students in our district while simultaneously is apparently serving on a whole another committee so yeah hard committee was presenting earlier in equity so thank you so much for giving up your time yeah and to the teachers in various Urbana community members that provided thoughtful and critical feedback every step of this process and we would like to especially thank our families for allowing us to serve the district in this manner and everyone who supported us in this time ultimately I think we both served because our commitment to provide the best education not only for our own children but for all the urban children it was really a high

128priority for us as it is for you all and so we'll entertain any questions that you have that is not specific about the Sixth Grade Center because they're going to present board members ambassadors any comments questions go ahead Rafi so so my question I don't know if you're going to defer to the next group or or answer but I'll throw it out here um one thing that if you look at this kind of as a from a globe like bird's eye kind of global perspective on these three different subcommittee recommendations the thing that strikes me odd is uh me of insight into this that's why I ask is the uh High School group just saying they'd rather renovate the high school and the reason I say that is because like all of these theoretical benefits

129of a Sixth Grade Center are they then lost in seventh and eighth grade because if they are there and that makes 7th and eighth grade that much better and more productive academically and you know socially then you would think the ninth graders would be on the better foot income again and all through High School you'd have a much better Foundation to succeed well in high school during all these you know AP classes and Etc so um so it seems odd that they would just be like it so I can go back and I can definitely answer that question make us a better driveway yeah no no the um the the you guys charged us with identifying the needs and we chose to do it at each grade level there are no sixth grade or middle

130school needs at the grade level Beyond like the needs of the high school was we need to decrease our dropout rate and we need to increase our graduation rate we wanted to make sure that you guys had it for public record for um posterity's sake because we refer back to the previous committee's facilities reports where they identified the needs in various ways so for future committees they'll see that these are some ongoing needs the um in the high school group neither one of us were in there all the time but they definitely made vigorous Arguments for the ways in which a Sixth Grade Center would support and help those things increase at um at the high school level if the kids are coming in better prepared we looked at data across cohorts from like third

131grade through 12th grade we looked at um um the high school yeah the dnf list we noticed that there was a high level retention from ninth grade to 10th grade like the numbers like there was a lot that was um noted discussed and collaborated on that of course we could not include in here but as far as the recommendations we wanted to make sure we specifically outline what it was that the high school needed right now and right now the high school needed to update its facilities it needs to increase academic achievement and you know if if we had a million trillion dollars you know definitely decongest that but it wasn't because they didn't discuss it it wasn't because they didn't know it it wasn't because they weren't concerned about it well and you'll you'll

132see if you look at the votes what they voted for so we made it clear to everybody that your working group was just that it was the group that we've asked you to work to identify the needs of and then we wanted each group to be able to present their needs and then people within each group voted for what they thought would be so we we relieved the high school group of doing that research because we knew there was 25 people in this in the six State group who was doing the research to show the benefits of a Sixth Grade Center and I think that um yes if kids can do better k through eight they will do better at high school but I think also too um and I will like to say Dion

133Webster appointed this out in our very first meeting our our high schoolers are not feeling connected and that's something that needed to be in this report for y'all to know that something I need to work towards because if they're not feeling connected no matter what we do K-8 those benefits will be lost potentially 9 through 12. any other questions or comments all right I just want to personally thank you both I know how much time you and actually for the broader committee you guys gave up hundreds and hundreds of your hours you're in sacrifice time with your families this summer got an incredible amount done really in four months it's it's pretty spectacular what you got done so on behalf of myself and the board I really want to thank you all for your efforts

134and and with that your committee is discharged okay thank you [Applause] so um as Janelle and rakaya I want to personally thank you too I know they were wonderful to work with um they had amazing questions I think they learned so much about our district I also want to thank all the committee members that I still see sitting out there as Paul already said you guys gave up so much of your time this summer so we appreciate you as rakaya and Janelle said um this really isn't a sick so I I don't I didn't want you to think this was like the whole team decided that we were going to present this I think when we saw the final presentation and the fact that these recommendation was a six to eight grade Center there was

135a lot of little nuances as even as Ravi pointed out that that weren't included and I think partly because it's very technical information and rakaya and Janelle didn't really feel like they could speak to FTE and exploratory and the sky and things like that and so instead of asking them to come forward and present information that they really are experts in we asked a couple of the Middle School folks to share the information that rakaya and Janelle did not put in their presentations so if this really isn't like a full six eight you know the full presentation is in the drive so if you would like to see all the K5 presentation the 912 presentation the 6A presentation the full ones you can go to the Google Drive you can listen to the tapes John

136recorded all of them and you can go and watch the full the full slideshow this is really talking about the information that Janelle and rakaya did not talk about so I just wanted to clarify that so the Middle School folks are going to come up if you guys all want to kind of come to the front so I think the areas that they're going to hit are discipline Staffing what what would what would the Staffing at a Sixth Grade Center look like um Katie's going to talk about finances because again that's her area she's the expert and where Cayenne Janelle didn't feel like they can they are the experts in our finance and our budget so Katie's going to talk about that a little bit we have some really self-explanatory maps in there that Randy

137and I can ask questions about if anyone has questions about them and I think I'm going to turn it over to Patrick and Derek who are going to start I think with discipline all right so we're going to jump up a little bit in the presentation this lie here so Derek Cooper I'm the Urbana Middle School principal and I just be adding some context that we think is really important and why we strongly uh why we are strongly in favor of the Sixth Grade Center and I'm Patrick I'm Patrick Russell assistant principal at the middle school and um this first slide we just really have a few slides for you as it relates to discipline a bit of comparative data for you I'm not going to read off all the numbers but I would like

138to highlight the fact that and there's a bit of a pattern here that last year during 2022-23 sixth graders that have been in middle school they accounted for 1917 referrals and uh third through fifth grade across the entire District did receive 1149 so that's um well above 50 percent in terms of the referrals that were earned at sixth grade and the referrals that were earned in three through five that was in 22-23 and um this is just a bit of a disclaimer the next two charts are going to look a little bit different because at the middle school level we chose to use two Information Systems as it related to discipline data um because of other bells and whistles that were actually very helpful for our staff as well as it was easier to run

139reports we had the majority of our referrals entered into Behavior flip whereas we just use Skyward for any infractions or referrals that resulted in suspension or expulsion and so um once again sixth grade they had 1964 referrals as well as the 71 that were see that 1964 that's actually it was in Behavior flip and then the 71 referrals that were ended into Skyward so that's a total of 2035 which is again is is well more than 50 percent above what third fourth and fifth grade in the district received combined notes that second chart is in Skyrim was suspensions and expulsions mostly oh yeah I'm sorry I thought I addressed that yeah I was saying that yeah the referrals that were entered into Skyward they were either suspensions or explosions right now um that pattern actually

140was not present you can go ahead uh that was not present in 2019-2020 uh sixth grade they uh had 1199 plus an extra 87 which actually was less than third through fifth grade combined in the district um it was more than fourth and fifth but actually when you combine them all um the Elementary's third grade and up did get more referrals than sixth grade one thing that we would like to note that uh these numbers were severely impacted by covid that was the year that during spring break we ended up shutting the schools down so it's rather skewed but um I do think it does show that um there is a really large amount of need you know as it relates to you know what exactly transition wise and I'm not saying that it's all

141facilities and I don't think Mr Cooper who's about to carry on with that I don't think he's going to say that's everything but it is a fair question about uh transition wise and lot of different ways you know what what is going on with our fifth graders as they come to the Middle School having that sixth grade sixth grade are sixth graders but be able to have them in a smaller space be able to provide more support more resources into them so kind of like those Elementary level supports that they're getting but also teaching them preparing them for what to expect at the at the middle school level that we would expect when they go on a seventh and eighth grade so we do just want to kind of emphasize that looking at like our

142discipline numbers that are really really important to take into consideration like the safety concerns the culture and climate concerns as it relates and how that could be impacted and improved by having that Sixth Grade Center you want to talk a little bit about spacing sure um this is not specifically um excuse me there's not a specific slide that pertains to facilities but uh that was talked about a lot uh during our facilities meetings both at the larger committee meetings as well as our breakout sessions and one thing that I just did want people to know and we've been dealing with it but the middle school has been 100 full for the last five years okay probably a little more about it but I did look back through Master schedules and and what rooms were assigned

143to what and definitely for the last five years uh and that includes offices as well as classrooms of various sizes we have 36 offices at the middle school we have 74 true learning spaces spaces that were designed to be learning spaces anyway and um you know we've as we've added programming and as to a lesser extent we've had more kids you know we've figured out a way to make it work but we are doing a great deal of teachers um pairing up in rooms we even have some cases where there are three different sets of teachers that are teaching out of the same room we have to figure out a way to make it work an example of this would be we have a room off of our library that is usually very integral in

144testing and having the community come and do little small projects or quiet time for kids who just need a little space and that is a classroom now a room that probably a lot of you all are familiar with it's a room 1520 it's our big multi-purpose room it has been a classroom for the last couple years now in fact even our Splash room it's a recreation room and it's been more for again a quiet place like during lunch it has never been a classroom it's a classroom now so um again we are dealing with it and if we have to continue with it we will but we really do have some very serious concerns as it relates to space at Urbana Middle School two of our teachers who are going to talk a little bit

145about um exploratory and on team time hello okay Rusty Clevenger I am a middle school art teacher and this is my third year so prior to that I was Elementary art teacher for 12 years um nine of which was traveling between two buildings Dr Williams and Wiley and then three that were just Dr Williams hi I'm Amy Lawrence I'm a sixth grade special education teacher and team facilitator um I believe this started my 13th and a half year at Urbana Middle School thanks so we work together on the sub subgroup which was specifically for exploratory um and for special services so with that we looked at the schedules for the past six years because 20 20 and 2021 was kind of a schedule that we couldn't really base anything on so that gave us five

146solid and then we compiled that information to come up with what this would look like for exploratory classes so if Wiley were to become a Sixth Grade Center you would have 12 non-team teachers that would allow for a rotating schedule for the sixth graders so if you're familiar with the middle school now there's a sixth grade schedule a seventh grade schedule an eighth grade schedule one would become one sixth grade team one would become the other and the last would be the other of those 12. for for those teachers might travel between both schools five of those teachers might stay at the Sixth Grade Center all day because there's power in getting to know students and being there all day for your students three would share with Elementary or UHS and having 12 19 teachers

147would allow class sizes around 25 so that depends like occasionally in some years we have students who are really in art and then some years really into foreign language so that kind of is where that is around 25. teachers would use the new program spaces in the Sixth Grade Center some would have to share spaces throughout the day so that doesn't mean share spaces at the same time that means it was used by one teacher in the morning and another teacher in the afternoon cost for these 12 have been added to the financial yeah go ahead okay so just a breakdown so you can visualize that uh two p teachers would be their full day two elective teachers would be their full day so elective as of now in this case would be like art

148film Tech foreign language that will be decided then there would be a librarian who would also be in Media Tech so in elementary the librarian rotates every class through the library space so that might be part of it but they also may be teaching exploratory classes connected more to Media and then the three shared teachers with that elementary UHS ums um would be your your band your strings and your choir so in elementary you can join band and four strings in fifth grade middle school is choir strings and bands and then that continues into the high school two shared elective teachers so that means they would be there for a half day so that would generally be four classes um class periods total of eight and then two shared PE teachers which would be a

149total of eight classes um so of course this would have to be figured out once there's an approval did you need anything from Amy for this Services part any questions so we did we did talk about special education services some um we kind of talked about what would possibly happen with some of our programming such things as more of when um students are possibly in a program such as what we call like our life skills or um I don't even know what the technical term is for Miss hollett's classroom but miss hallett's classroom and some of those or our intensive instructional which is our EBD classrooms so those would most likely stay at ums so if you're a sixth grader that needs to have that special programming you would still probably attend the regular or

150regular ums Urbana Middle School because of the needs that you are needed for your special education services the rest of the special education services through sixth grade are all usually provided on team by team teachers which if it became a Sixth Grade Center would be at the Sixth Grade Center and just add to that when Patrick says you know we're running out of space there's been a lot of changes in education based on you know people gaining information specifically on special services or specific programs like dual language so that actually would provide more space for those updates to those services and spaces so I prepared some of these Financial figures that are on this slide and the next slide so I think that I'm supposed to explain them to you so what's displayed in front

151of you is the Staffing of Wiley school just the staff costs that were in place in Wiley so when I rolled these forward into the 2024 budget all of these account numbers where these salaries are placed got zeroed out but we also zeroed out all of the long-term Subs where then these these positions were placed so the next slide I so I think this side the good thing to note is that it's around two million dollars in salaries to staff a two-strand elementary school I think that's a good um takeaway from this slide so if you move to the next slide though if you look on the left hand side oh thanks John yes I'm really tired sorry um on the left side you can see that same two million dollar number at the top

152there on the left or sorry on the right and that was the amount that got zeroed out from the Wiley account numbers but then the next number down was all of the vacancies where we had long-term Subs filled in that those also got zeroed out and then this one point or two million dollars or so number got put back in to all of those vacancies of the teachers where they were placed into the actual account numbers in the actual buildings and schools where they belong so the ultimate savings is around one million dollars for this year only um so if Wiley were to reopen as a two-strand elementary school we would need to re-establish all of that two million dollars of salaries into that building's budget again um or and then potentially fill all of

153these vacancies again so just keep that in mind whatever Choice the board makes there is going to be a financial impact to reopening and some of the committee's work was comparing the financial impact of different types of programs that are offered in that building and and what the impact would be so a two-strand school would be around a million but then the next slide shows some of the work that thanks John that the committee did to estimate what um the Sixth Grade Center Financial impact would be and because all of the core teachers at the sixth grade level would move to that building you wouldn't be hiring all of those positions and so the focus was more on the extracurriculars and not extracurriculars you guys just did a whole process thank you all the electives

154and other special services that would need to be offered as part of that building we typically use a placeholder for a vacancy of around 50 000 but with the new teacher contract I increased that to 60. so as just a basic placeholder I put in we put vacancies around sixty thousand if there was a specialized position we increased it if it was a halftime position it was decreased so um the uh it's approximately six hundred thousand dollars to staff the Sixth Grade Center on top of the current Staffing levels that we have at sixth grade in order to and reopen that building and that's just Staffing costs that's not other building costs but we wanted to be sure that you had an estimate of the size and you can certainly see that compared to a

155two-strand elementary school which we're not really even talking about reopening I mean we were talking about reopening a three-strand potentially with an addition or something like that so then your costs are even more increased beyond that to fill those rooms and those classrooms so um this was just for Big Picture read of the different types of Staffing levels that would be required did I cover it okay yeah why is basically what Katie just basically said is there would be a lot of shared positions so um the way the Middle School works right now they have people assigned at the sixth grade level seventh grade level 8th grade level so their student relations supervisors that work with all three grades there are social workers we have multiple there are other three three so two would stay

156at the seventh and eighth grade campus and one would go with the sixth graders so this this just basically shows how um part of that savings that Katie mentioned is we wouldn't have to hire all new instructional coaches and all new clinical professionals and counselors there's three counselors so two counselors would stay and one counselor would go to sixth grade Mr Cooper would continue to be the principal of sixth seventh and eighth but we also have a sixth grade administrator a seventh grade administrator and an eighth grade administrator so the administrator for sixth grade would then of course move to the Sixth Grade Center and the seventh and eighth grade administrators would stay at the seventh and 8th grade site so this that's basically um how we're not needing to spend two million dollars because

157we would we're going to shift 300 students over so we would shift over the positions and the people that work with those 300 kids basically and then the next ones I think I really I don't need to probably go too much in detail this is um Scott Walker wasn't able to be here today but he was kind of a um a guest of the committee he wasn't formally on the committee from igw but he did attend several of our meetings actually and one of the asks from the six to eight group was to kind of give them an idea of what would what would it what would be in the Sixth Grade Center what would that look like um Mike Anderson who's out there is our facilitator and one of the things that he did

158was took the group to Wiley for a visit so they walked around I know I remember Amy saying well I've never even been to Wiley how big can middle school kids even fit in those classrooms I think everyone had an idea of um you know thinking of an elementary school room can middle is that is it really going to be appropriate for sixth grade centers uh sixth grade students to be in an elementary sized classroom um so in order to really eyeball that um one of our meetings uh part of the meeting we walked everyone around Mr Cooper and Patrick took the six to eight group around the middle school and showed them some of the space issues that Patrick was talking about some of the offices where they're really tiny offices and three people

159are working in there with kids so people got to see that so I think that kind of gave a different perspective as to the space needs and then when the group traveled over to Wiley the Wiley classrooms which I don't think is on in here but is probably in the final in the big report the Wiley classrooms are actually pretty large for Elementary School classrooms they have the largest Elementary rooms per square foot than all the classes then basically all of our Elementary classes in the district um so John can you go back so um yeah so if you go back one more okay so this this in um again I'm not going to read it all this just shows you um that there would be nine the uh 12 team teachers as was on

160one of the other slides um some science labs this just shows you what you get for 20 million dollars basically and the square footage would be very similar to um what we've done at Thomas Payne overall square footage so there's an admin suite and a counseling Suite um and some you know special small group rooms if you go to the next one you would see a lot of the newer things so there'd be a new gymnasium a new kitchen locker rooms PE storage a new stage Library there would be just like we have been the model we've been following at our elementary schools is updating all the Fine Arts spaces with new music art dancing rooms these would be new Fine Arts rooms so there would be new art new art space an orchestra room

161abandoned choir room and so this would be kind of the newer spaces of what we would add so all of the map shows you on the next slide is that the on the next slide yep the clap the existing Wiley is kind of that light gray color um and that is where the on team classes would happen so um there are three teams as Amy said and um as they walk through the building they kind of thought about where those three teams might go so two teams would go on that back um long hallway which is now like the four five hallway and then there would be one team on the uh by the play area bus loading area that would be um currently like where K1 is would be another team all the colored

162spaces would be new so the gym there would be the admin office counseling Suite is purple or lavender on the green would be all the new fine arts classes by adding all of that new construction to the front of Wiley then it would generate Courtyards to keep the natural light coming in there was a lot of discussion about physical play Space um I know one of our parents is here and was on the SEL part of the group and said you know really they don't have recess at the middle school level but they really still need as sixth graders the ability to be active and and play a little and so they asked you know could there be basketball hoops could there be soccer and because there's so much green space in front of lightly

163it allows for that where in some you know we're so landlocked and our footprint is so small that a lot of our elementaries it is unusual to be able to have a footprint this big at a elementary school so there would be a car car loading area but then there'd still be enough space to have some play space that would be used for PE but would also be able to be used on team um for sixth grade and I think that is so the rest of this is just basically the technical stuff from igw showing you um using our Thomas Paine 2023 numbers um and you know what we paid for a 19.5 million dollar expansion at Thomas Paine based on everything that you just saw on those charts I would basically get us with

164geothermal and all those other things a 20 million dollars sixth grade expanded space Randy you want to add anything okay he and I were supposed to tag team and then I did all talking sorry the rest of this is just the links that um the the six to eight grade Group found a lot of active sixth grade National sixth grade sites um as it was already noted earlier there aren't very many sixth grade centers in the state of Illinois it is you know there are a lot in Texas a lot in other Southern areas California um so these are just some active links and then some articles that the SEL group um found that really talk about developmental needs brain development for sixth graders some of the anxiety um and SEL needs that uh um

165sixth graders have being paired with older kids at a sixth seventh eighth grade Center so that's what those articles are for and I know Lindsay you're here do you want to say anything for the SEO booth well you got to come up to the mic so I'm Lindsay Amara boo and I was part of the District facilities committee and I know um earlier somebody had spoke about how the Sixth Grade Center here in Illinois that we did have had closed but they didn't really specify why it closed it closed because um there wasn't enough space and the building was old so it wasn't because the Sixth Grade Center failed it was because it just wasn't able to be maintained and kept that's probably the only thing that I was thinking about and I was like

166but I thought that was important to say because it wasn't because sixth grade centers are not going to be successful just it didn't work because there wasn't the funds to fix it so thank you all right thanks and Mike I know you made a public comment but do you want to add anything okay okay all right I think that was so again the purpose of us doing that was just you know since there were you know 20 plus people who voted for the Sixth Grade Center we thought it might be helpful to give you a little more information um rakaya and Janelle did a great job of showing you all you know all the other things that the K-5 68 and 912 people talked about um but based on questions I've been receiving we really

167thought there might be some specific things people might want to know about you know what a schedule might look like or what a budget how much is this going to cost the district and um so we we thought we'd act just kind of pair that information with what um the co-chairs have already shared to give you kind of a more overall view so all right uh board members ambassadors any questions for the committee I was a little bit late I couldn't ask a question about special ed what would the impact for the students who are receiving special ed services inside their classroom from attending and making another transition they'd have possibly four or five transitions within their school life they started early childhood and Beth left but right yeah she wanted to comment okay go

168ahead go for it Amy so you sorry I want to make sure I'm clear so you were asking if opening a Sixth Grade Center and then transitioning from elementary to sixth grade and then from sixth grade to seventh and eighth grade so the ones that would be transitioning where they would be the students who not in special programming so those are the kids with IEPs or 504s or speech I like I have an IEP just for speech um those students still gets all their services on team through kotot small group pull out classes from their special education teacher that's like on the team the students um then who need the special programming of life like our life skills programming um some of those I and I'm not familiar with all where all the programs are

169in elementary I know Thomas Payne houses several of those some of those special programs we would just automatically go to the middle school just because those programs are already there a lot of those students don't come into the general education classrooms as often so they would still be able to get their services their Urbana Middle that would so those students wouldn't have as many transitions it's the kids on team that would have and I don't think it would affect the many differently than what we're seeing I mean I know it's a brand new transition again from Seventh to 8th grade but I think it would still be about the same as what it is now because seven the way we would probably run a Sixth Grade Center is very similar to what our ums is

170doing like what seventh and eighth grade would continue doing I jumped up here because I have a son who is autistic and he has transitioned many times from different schools he was in early childhood to Yankee Ridge to Thomas Paine now and he did it successfully it was without hesitation there was no big obstacles to come I think it all is also with the staff that you have that is working um I mean as long as the kids feel welcomed and comfortable within their environment and everybody is included and not ex like inclusions I think it works really well so transitioning to me is important as well because of having a son like that but I think if he can do it any of the children can do it successfully it's just about the administration

171that you have and becoming a team and accepting everyone thank you okay so say the Sixth Grade Center is a success they're going to sixth grade with about like what like 200 kids and then they're thrown into high school with like two times that much two times as many as kids as that so how would that affect them in that way because I feel like high school is like from sixth grade to high school I say that's like at least like part of a transition but bigger kids harder classes I would say that is quite much harder than the sixth grade transition and they're going to be used to that like separation and they're not going to be separated as freshmen so how would that work good question so there'll be about 300 sixth graders

172the seventh and 8th graders around we typically have about 300 at each grade so at the seventh and 8th grade site there would be 600 kids so when they leave the Sixth Grade Center Dominica they would go to they'd be together with all the seventh and 8th graders the um the good thing about it is right now when Patrick talks about how crowded it is and how there's no room um there was lots of conversations about the sixth grade sixth seventh and eighth graders and the hallways together and bathrooms together so that would leave the ability to separate the seventh and eighth graders a little bit more and do more things on team and really work on their social emotional needs work on some of those cultural climate behavioral needs right now I know they

173talked about this rakaya said in the ninth nine through 12th grade group I know Mr Guzman is here too about how the ninth graders the last couple years have really been struggling as they transition from the Middle School to the high school and having them having Sixth Grade Center having sixth graders in one building and then seventh and eighth graders in another building really does allow you to work on not only their academic needs I hope they like Thrive right academically but also really work on those social emotional mental health um culture climate behavioral things so then by the time they get to the high school they're in a much better place um to be a high schooler and and kind of leave all those immature kind of Middle School behaviors behind because they've we

174the staff has really had a chance then to focus on those and not just kind of right now I feel like they spend a lot of their time putting out fires and going from one incident to the next incident but they could be more intentional with really wrapping around the kids at each grade level a bit better and also will they be like included in Middle School extracurriculars very good question we didn't even talk about that so kudos to you for bringing that up so yes they would still be an IESA site they would still participate in all the extracurriculars a lot of the sixth grade teams are basically sixth grade teams so they probably would practice at the Sixth Grade Center it gives us another gem which right now is really really hard space

175when we have volleyball when we have multiple things happening trying to schedule practices at the middle school level is really really hard so having another Middle School sized gym for games practices the sixth grade teams would have all their activities and practices at the Sixth Grade Center but like things like cross country right like they would be able to run get meet over at the middle school and be part of the cross-country team or the track and field Group so yeah they would still be part of IESA Sports okay and then one more thing like for example because I know don't they start at like different sometimes the middle school starts at like 8 45 or something like that 8 30. so and then and then what time do the elementary school start they would

176do like same times so I know like when I was in Middle School concert band was a thing in the morning and then it would go into like classes so like you would go to your first class the five minute walk to your first class so with sixth graders be included in that because they don't have vehicles and buses I don't think we'll be on route for that so we talked about that a little bit and we have activity buses now so we'll probably keep concert band as the zero hour so it would be like at eight o'clock and then we'd have someone drive them down to the like they could probably walk but because it's only like two blocks but in the winter time and you know bad weather we have activity buses where

177we could drive them down there now good question yeah [Music] any further comments or questions because I do have one similar logistic question I mean we've invested a lot in Tiger Academy and I mean right now we have the ability to pull out students who are struggling in individual classrooms for specialized instruction over here how would that work with the Sixth Grade Center sorry Joe it's okay the first thing that jumps to my mind would be and we've talked about this briefly in our side our small groups would be we have very few sixth graders that come to Tiger Academy it's mostly seventh and up um but we did last year had one sixth grader out of all the students that we served and so we would have to just get creative on how we

178would do that either through an activity bus process to get them here um or we would have to plan that further than what we've currently thought of thus far but the majority of our students last year were eighth grade and up a couple seventh graders one sixth grader this year we have all high schoolers and two middle schoolers so far so it's not a huge sixth grade need yet Joe why you're sitting with Sherry asked about sped do you want to make a comment about the language I know we have actually okay we've had some internal conversations also about dual language and there's pros and cons with the Sixth Grade Center as it relates to the impact on Dual language programming the pros would be similar to the other Pros or a smaller learning environment

179a better focus on social emotional needs because our dual language Learners have a lot of the same needs as any student when it comes to academics and social emotional the cons for full transparency is concerns about splitting up the program even further and the staff even further and so that's something that we've talked about and having to be really thoughtful that if it does go forward as a sixth grade Center how do we ensure we have a proper and enough staff so that our dual language teachers aren't sight load even more we have a couple staff in the program that work multiple grade levels six seven and eight so we'd have to redesign some things there because it would be they could also travel but it's a they're not always necessarily elective teachers in the

180same type of scheduling it kind of flows throughout the day in a different way but there's pros and cons as it relates and I think what we've talked about a lot as a small team of dual language staff is we see the the pros benefiting the broader Middle School Community as a win and a pro for everyone who's in Middle School including dual language Learners I'm including students with special needs and the the cons would be things that we'd just just have to work through and strengthen on our own internally um thanks um I do have a question for administration um in general so we've had roughly 2 000 elementary students in our school district for the past 12 years has been remarkably flat um we've also for the past about five years had a

181cap on enrollment in particular buildings of 450 so if we go to five elementary schools you can do the math we're gonna end up with something south of uh 2000. so I guess what is this administration's plan with regards to like building caps with we go to five elementary schools well I think well one is we will be talking about redistricting this year so um you know right now everybody is in there five elementary schools so we'll be talking about redistricting the five uh elementaries um and then Kim is already kind of shared the romance currently with the Wiley students redistributed so yeah and we've met with administration at Yankee Ridge and DPW and in particular as we were awaiting results from six day if we went a bit over 450 we again we want

182to welcome our families we didn't want to have to turn anybody away and most importantly we're looking at the class sizes because you know you may be over a little bit but in many cases DPW and Yankee Ridge had some smaller class sizes in our other schools so we're really taking a look at that well and we didn't say this I can't remember if you said this not Kim but I know in a lot of the documents I would encourage you as Janelle and rakaya mentioned to go in and look at all the links in the appendices from some of the community members um some of who we heard from tonight about class sizes those just have not materialized this year I know there was several reports that you know the king classes would all

183have 27 28 students and that hasn't happened we have less kindergartners this year one of the reports talked about we would have what was it 300 additional kindergartners in the next few years we just haven't seen that um those increases now one thing that did come up I think at the Sixth Grade Center is um and with the K5 group as there were a lot of discussions back and forth about future growth so say in five years we have 300 additional or three to five hundred additional elementary students that we don't know what we're going to do with them you know we had a conversation with Scott Walker that if we needed to go back and look at in the future our Middle School enrollment may be decreases but the elementary enrollment is booming we

184could always convert the Sixth Grade Center I know they would hate that but we could change it back to an elementary school if we needed to because all the spaces that we're adding are basically things that we would put in an elementary building anyway Fine Arts a gym a kitchen a library we'd have to go in and put in smaller toilets and smaller sinks but that would probably be it so if we got our if we were a position where we saw a huge huge growth you know in five to ten years um we would have the option to do that and you know return the Sixth Grade Center to an elementary school if if that's what happened as of right now that that one of the reasons why um we asked him to kind

185of share that information just to give more perspective is a lot of the narrative and a lot of the things that you heard in some of those other reports were like that we were going to have these huge class sizes this year adding the Wiley students to the other schools and yes we do have a couple spaces that we have class size adjustment Tas but that is as Kim shared very normal for us to have two or three grades or two or three classes where we have to have a TA um especially at Leo you know because they only have one monolingual and two deals yeah hello the kindergarten was allele yeah so that happens at Leo typically first so we weren't surprised that they they we need a class size adjustment ta there because

186they only have one monolingual kindergarten so when a monolingual student comes they don't have any other spaces to go because the other two kindergarten classes are dual language and that happens it most of the grade levels at Liu I think this year except for two so um so it isn't atypical for us to have two or three class size adjustments uh Tas every year we always have the ones that do a language because of the 90 rule that Kim talked about so that is also very typical um so I just wanted to say that out loud because I think there has been a lot of conversation about moving the Wiley students into the into five elementaries was really going to very much negatively impact class sizes and that may happen I don't have a crystal

187ball and we don't know what will happen in five to ten years but right now we're just not seeing that enrollment growth at elementary okay one last question for me and that is uh what this Administration need from the board with regards to decision making process over the next six weeks or so so we've I've talked to the regional office to Gary Lewis about this I've had conversations with isby and as the board heard this spring about the public hearing process um even though we're not required to do the three public hearings because the requirement is you have the three public hearings if you're closing a school forever and making it something else like central office or you know if we were to sell it and do something else with it but because it would

188continue to be a student attendance Center we technically don't have to do that but we're going to because we want to have more opportunity um for people from the I know tonight we heard mostly from people from the Wiley committee Community but we also want to be able to have space and voice for people from the Middle School level who might want to come and share their opinions so we are going to go ahead with the public hearing process we're ready to post those dates we're going to have the two meetings in September and that first meeting October 3rd those will all be posted as public hearings where people can come and I've notified the Roe and isbe that were doing that and then we're going to notify them hopefully after the board makes a

189final decision at the October 3rd meeting whether we will be moving forward with the Sixth Grade Center or if we will be moving forward with returning widely widely for The public's information the public hearing process was remarkably similar to the public comment process the floor is opened and anybody who wishes to speak we'll have five minutes to to address and express their opinion on the matter go ahead Robbie so I just had two questions I guess that came to mind as Paul was asking his questions and what is uh just kind of a comment or slash recommendation that's a question I guess but uh you know on the one hand you say well all the classrooms don't have 28 students in them as was predicted you know but the other side of it is if

190you have a teacher an individual teacher I used to have 18 but now they have 24. or 15 to 22 that's a big change in their own personal mind so it'd be good by that October 2nd meeting to have some October whatever that day was to have some feedback because uh from the teachers who have these classrooms because they're deciding as individuals on are they looking for other jobs you know for this retention aspect you know if they have 30 students clearly they will feel overwhelmed but you know sometimes for more students might be the the trigger you know their Breaking Point so be good to have teacher feedback I think um and then the uh question is uh what is the stance I guess at this point or the opinion of these folks of

191this u-shaped table um about a single do Language Center so uh you know coming around the new year it was we all would like to have a single do Language Center done in the right way and then now um you know potentially the Sixth Grade Center at this building and this redistricting process is upcoming potentially so you know on the equity action plan slides one of the bullet points had to do with collaboration between monolingual and dual language programs so is that the stance that there should be collaboration between those groups or should we just put them all in their own School foreign question um you know both those decisions need to be made whether or not we have five or six elementaries of whether or not one of them is going to be a

192district-wide Attendance Center for dual language program if if we're going to go in to reduce the redistricting for Elementary attendance boundaries which we desperately desperately need to do so yeah the board's got to make the decision I would have a personally and this is just speaking tonight without you know doing full research but I have a hard time going to four elementaries as neighborhood attendance areas I'd have a hard time I think deciding to do both at once but that's where I'm standing tonight so what's your question that's what it would have to be is for neighborhood schools a dual language school if you're gonna have five elements I'd have a hard time voting for both of them myself but that's just that's me tonight you know it's the you know taking a finger to

193the wind uh I you know that's not after talking to the community that's not after hearing everybody's voice on the matter but you know I had a hard time making that big of a change that quickly across the district yeah so what I'm saying is if a single or a Sixth Grade Center pushes do a single do language school off the table which do you want more I know a follow-up question to that is I came late to the table but has there been any exploration about having the K through second grade dual language classes in one facility and then the third fourth and fifth in another facility so at least the teachers can collaborate and have a curriculum that's appropriate for those age levels in one building I know I was late to the

194table can we discuss that again back we discussed in the past a hard thing to deal with was the siblings so are you asking if we can discuss that tonight I think we could send you something in writing like you know the views of the committee um when we talked about that we could definitely to answer excuse me can you see one one quick thing um I just wanted my recollection from last December January when the board paused the whole dual Language School discussion before the vote was because the board wanted to review facilities redistrict like what you were just saying Paul facilities redistricting maybe one other thing a strategic Plan before doing having the discussion and decision about hold the language school so my understandings were still in that timeline and following that plan

195I just wanted to add that the reason why I'm asking that question because if we go forward with the Sixth Grade Center then we still have to answer the question and and do something for the Dual language program and I would like to see at that point it explored again to see if it would be viable so I think the Consultants that we would bring in to help us with redistricting I think that would just be one of the charges we would give them is what would it look like if we created a one dual language school plus for for neighborhood schools and I don't know if you remember our mapping when we did all that mapping several of our elementary schools are very close and walkable to one another so um you know I

196think if we had some expert Consultants who could look at that and where students could walk from and move move kids around within neighborhoods um you know like I said Leo basically has two dual language classrooms and one monolingual classroom already is kind of what the way they're structured Dr Williams on the other hand you know has multiple of each which is why they're always so full so they have two monolingual classes and two DL classes and some grade levels there's three DL and two so it is it is a a little different there and that's why their class sizes are always so much not classes their total enrollment is always so much bigger but again Ravi I don't know that tonight the six people here are going to solve that but definitely that would

197be something that our Consultants that we would pay to do that work would look at so thank you that's I think it's certainly worth a question worth considering as we as we approach this question well thanks for bringing that up anybody else have comments or questions um yeah please go ahead with social emotional learning when I was in Middle School a lot of the kids weren't interested in it and would go on their phones or watch movies or skip class and so I was wondering what is a way that we can grab their interest and actually make them interested in improving their behavior and themselves from ums want to tackle that so something we've done new this year is that uh our advisory is scheduled so that every kid has advisory four days a week

198and that's where they're getting that social emotional learning that's where they're connecting with that small group and developing those relationships with students with a small group of students yeah can we enforce the phone cages being used the cell phone box the screen Force those being used I know it's kind of you know up to every instructor and everything to make that that call but yep so what we've done though uh this year is that we're making more consistent you know procedures and processes across the board so that's something that we're emphasizing in like every class every grade level uh and that's and we have buy-in to it from our staff so that's actually looking really good yep yeah um one thing I noticed is that students tend to be more interested when you start talking

199about their interests or things that they're interested in so I was maybe you could do something like a survey and then you could base the lessons off of what the students like and that way they'll be more engaged I like that yeah thank you anybody else all right I think that finishes our study topics tonight thank you everybody for your input thank you thanks everybody productive discussion we have a long list of action items on our consent agenda I'll read them through if anybody wishes to remove something from the consent agenda please speak up after I'm done uh first up are our minutes for the June 20th uh business meeting and then uh the June 21st district facilities committee meeting minutes the July 11th District facilities committing meeting minutes the July 25th district facilities committee

200meeting minutes they met a lot August 2nd District facility is committee many minutes and our August 7th study session we have uh June bills and checks Advanced program at the June 20th meeting and the July bills and checks uh for the advanced approval granted during the July 8th meeting Ed fund bills the tune of 2.7 million dollars o m fund bills for 883 thousand dollars Bond and interest fund for 476 thousand dollars Transportation fund bills for three hundred twelve thousand dollars working cash bonds for 130 000 dollars school facility occupancy tax for 1.6 million dollars tort for uh 660 000 Life Safety Levy for fifty one thousand dollars payroll for eight point uh four million dollars a manual education for 186 thousand dollars um or so another list of personnel items is typical for this

201time of year on our consent agenda enter fund loans imrf fund to working cash for the amount of three hundred thousand dollars uh 12.5 weeks we do have that administrative Personnel item uh being requested um we also have a resolution authorizing and directing the sale or disposal of personal property there's these are library books from Yankee Ridge and math kits uh 12.7 is a new activity account marachi Tigris sorry I don't speak Spanish Mariachi Tigres it's a new activity account for uh Urbana High School we have approval for travel expenses uh for uh Jazz Nolan Adriana Ochoa Wendy fertz Eric osaki and Yamada Smith to attend the teaching for by literacy summer Institute in Chicago in June uh we have the memorandum of agreement um for the CU PhD um for the for the the

202the that's all Clinic that was talked about at our last meeting and that's it for the list of items for our consent agenda does anybody wish to remove anything uh from this consent agenda for motion okay I see so uh this would be a request to approve the consent agenda as amended as described by secretary Johnson is there a motion to that effect so moved so again this is for the entire cassette agenda as verbally amended uh any further commodity discussion roll call please remember Baxley yes member hasanaka yes member Jones yes member langendorf yes vice president Exum yes and president polowski yes for our individual action items uh first up our gifts a long list uh beginning of the year uh Carol lichtensteiger Steiger of Urbana donated a thousand dollars worth of sports equipment

203soccer ball soccer goals basketballs and a basketball hoop to Tiger Academy Jack and Jill of America donated 500 to the CU Early Childhood school uh the following made a purchase made a total of Thirteen thousand seven hundred eighty five dollars on donations to Thomas Payne Elementary PTA to purchase playground equipment for the playground uh the CU autism Network the May family uh Matco fire protection incorporated uh Boren uh Russo Builders uh Kirby and Turner masonry Incorporated uh burginger plasting uh Plastering Incorporated satellite family plumbers and pipe fitters Local 149 Thomas Payne family donations and the Thomas Payne PTA Dick's Sporting Goods corporalis Pennsylvania donated a thousand dollars to Urbana High School Edith Harlow from Loda donated 100 to the ums jazz band and USGS in UHS jazz band uh the following donated a total of

204350 to the Mana High School Band Room expansion uh Jennifer Ivory Tatum and Katie Roland dark containers of Urbana donated a variety of school supplies book bags Kleenex scissors Etc to Thomas Payne Elementary School and lastly St Matthew Lutheran Church of Urbana had a school supply Drive collecting a large variety of school supplies including crayons colored pencils markers pencils erasers glue sticks dry erase markers everything a student would need through Indiana Webster director of family engagement and student support is there a motion to accept the gifts and send out thank yous to the the donors is there a second any for the calendar discussion all in favor say aye any opposed next up is a press plus press plus 111 and press plus 112. this was discussed at our last meeting the the list of

205policy changes that um were brought to us by our subscription to press Plus is there a motion to accept those changes to policy it's been moved to Sarah's second it was second is any further comments or discussion uh roll call please remember Jones yes Amber hassanaka yes member Baxley yes member langendorf yes vice president Exum yes president polowski yes lastly uh 13.3 is a real estate transfer agreement City Urbana this was for the our old facility on North Race Street we have agreed with the city of Urbana to sell it to them for 100 and 13 000 so this is actually a different prop oh am I my real estate transfer agreement am I misspeaking no you're reading off of the agenda correctly but this is an agenda item for a different property the attachments

206for 1811 East Florida Avenue I see so I um since it wasn't on the agenda I would recommend we pull this and postpone it to the next meeting that's fine all right uh so we're done with our action items for this evening there is no call for future special and executive meetings we do have a long list of foias tonight I'll get started on it if anybody else wants to chime in um they're certainly welcome to first up is from Tom Schroeder for any architectural documents or Communications plans drawing cost estimates requirements specifications from the last year related to any considered uses of the welding billing those considered uses may have included but not be limited to the following Sixth Grade Center renovated Elementary School whole school dual language campus central office from Tom Schroeder

207any records submitted to schools of Illinois public Cooperative sipc to gain membership in the organization this should include an approved Integra governmental agreement and likely other documents from Vince Espy total spending on substitute teachers by school for the last five years please provide the expenditure breakdown by year in school number of substitute teacher Days by school for the last five years kindly provide the number of substitute teacher days for each year in school per diem payment schedule for substitute teachers for the last five years please provide the per diem rates or payment schedule used for teachers substitute teachers during each year within the last five years names of all substitute teachers day has worked and total payments made to them for the last five years please provide a list of substitute teachers who have worked

208within the school district for each year within the past five years additionally include the total number of days worked by each substitute teacher and the corresponding total payment made to them from Tom Schroeder any record or Communications that provide Financial estimates projections and or analysis related to these board actions and include estimated projected expenses and sources of revenue or savings more detailed records are preferred from Tom Schroeder the multi-year capital facilities Improvement plan for the district that was developed with input from District 116 staff Board of Education members and the community invitations sent to District 116 staff Board of Education members and the committee to participate in developing a five-year strategic plan for the district and from Tom Schroeder links to the audio recordings of the 7 11 23 meeting of the facilities committee and

209lastly the recordings and draft minutes of the July 25th 2023 meeting since the meeting wasn't video recorded I would appreciate a copy of any visual presentations from the meeting and the list of foyers that were all processed superintendent's report John I'm back as we've heard we started school last week and we are just in our fourth fifth day depending on what grade you're in this is just a few photos of the band was out welcoming back our freshmen on freshman day and some of our elementary students and middle schoolers um and ribbon cuttings so last week I think several board members joined us at the band room expansion and Thomas Paine for our wonderful ribbon cutting events and then we were able to kind of gather and tour and walk around those new spaces so

210very exciting for us to be able to do to kind of unveil two projects all in one night and for board members who haven't had a chance yet to stop by Thomas Paine or the band room I'd encourage you to go especially to Thomas Paine's you can see what 19 million dollars gets you it gives you a lot so go and enjoy that um thank you to Mayor Marlin and the City of Urbana staff for the school supplies they collected and bagged 100 bags filled with supplies that they took around to all the different schools so this is a picture at Early Childhood King at the middle school and Thomas Paine so they kind of took a tour and went around and just just delivered back so thank you to the city of Urbana and

211the mayor for that um caring closets is a new initiative that is being supported through the CU schools Foundation United Way both school districts are being the and unit four and it allows community members to purchase essential school supplies for students so there's a QR code here that you can access there's a website where you can go in and purchase items on behalf of students from both districts so that'll be open through September 30th Mrs Webster talked a lot about the Community Cafe model the World Cafe model that we would be entering into as part of our Equity action plan and the family is Agency Group the First World Cafe is set for Tuesday September 12th and as she mentioned it will be at Dr Williams so we're going to really start promoting that to

212get as many of our families from all grade levels in all buildings to attend there's a new app for our weekly menus so I if the board remembers we did enter into an agreement with a new food service provider Quest and so if these links are live if you want to download the app Katie do you want to say anything about it gotten a lot of feedback about the food being better yes have you guys had any of the new lunch or breakfast items yet not yet huh they're older yeah because you're a junior senior Junior's and seniors so they don't have to go they don't have to eat in the uh in the comments well you should check it out it's free it's free um but yeah no that we've gotten yeah give us

213some feedback and we've gotten some good feedback on the talk to your friends anyway yeah at least let us know um it was a big deal the last couple years so I've been around to a lot of the elementary schools at the breakfasts and the classroom meals have been way better and they are giving a lot more really healthy fresh fruit and vegetable options um so that has been nice to see for our elementary school students I've heard the pizza is better at the high school yes yes yep yes that has been a big yeah go ahead yep so that's the fresh fruit and veggie program you went to King so that was something that King and Dr Williams so no we don't do that anymore but the quest program is really amping up their

214um fresh fruit or veggie options for everybody which is really nice so and lastly upcoming dates Thursday was supposed to be the Dual language family picnic but because it is going to feel like 115 degrees outside on Thursday we have postponed that and I believe it has been rescheduled to the 31st that is just hot off the press as of today yes so it is rescheduled for Thursday the 31st from four to six at Ann bucks Park um right across the street from our current central office ums open house is the 20 also the 24th um but it is inside so uh tomorrow night at 6 30 well Thursday night at 6 30. District parent teacher advisories first meeting is next week and then also next week UHS open house is at six o'clock um

215and there's no school Monday September 4th for Labor Day the superintendent report s anybody have a report go ahead Robbie I've got three things to report uh first off um just as a clarification of the past um you know the business meeting in June with a Consolidated District plan when it was presented I was told that the bpac had reviewed the title III Grant and speaking to the bpac chairs the following week they said their meeting it was canceled the week before so they had that actually reviewed it at that point but uh speaking them to them again today it sounds like they did that last week so it has now actually been reviewed by them unlike what was said before then my second point is I received a very large spreadsheet of from a

216parent uh about school supply costs um and I think she is preparing that and ultimately will present it to District uh leadership but uh if you look at the school supply lists and just compare them uh looking at what they cost on Walmart uh there are some classes if you exclude backpack and headphones at Thomas Payne where they're in the 90 200 range what you have to pay for school supplies some schools are less there are some grades are more like 30 but the average is probably in the 45 to 50 range for school supplies per student and this was all spurred by the fact that most of these require classroom requirements are for a package of four Expo markers and for the cost of four Expo markers you could actually buy three packages of

21760 if you buy them in bulk so the proposal that does parents ultimately going to want to make is and this might be a board policy adjustment to consider is rather than having individuals buy their school supplies have some dollar value they just pay and then buy it in bulk at the school level or the district level I mean there are things like the mayor's office and apparently some church that is donating school supplies but the cost of school supplies are you know equivalent to that of school registration so it looks great and then the third thing I had is uh I was speaking to another constituent of mine uh at age 10 and uh he uh on the first day of school was looking uh there's this alley next to allele that is so

218beat up and shoot on uh you know it is dangerous you know there's just like it's like potholes but it's it's where the kids play soccer during recess and because one of his friends broke his arm on that playground last spring and he was standing there with his most disgusted look on his face saying I can't believe they haven't repaved this yet so I know where that is on the list of priorities but uh there's some definite concern out there amongst the students at Leo about their safety during uh recess time on that playground oh thank you um any other board reports I've got something really quick I mean at our last meeting we had an initial discussion or I guess a second discussion really on setting board goals for the year um what I'd

219like to propose and maybe if you reviewed the meeting Robbie or not we'd um we would love to hear and if you have any additional uh goals you'd like to to bring to the table I'd like to bring kind of like a spreadsheet of of goals and dates along with a list of stuff potential study topics for the year uh come before um the board at our next meeting for about so that we can actually agree these articles the year and we're going to work toward them on kind of on the schedule is that like a plan for everybody all right thank you one last call for corporate Force if we're done uh you mentioned uh thank you to Anna Seaman I slipped it in there as as around the corner all right so this

220is being videoed yeah that's the thing I've been wondering the whole evening yeah yeah you know she's with the new building she's actually kind of off in a closet around the corner I see so it's going through like these things up here yeah but I did I did acknowledge you're kind of as Janelle and rakaya were walking up yeah I remember you saying that but I was like where is she yeah she's we're very very happy you don't see the people's face and and on the interwebs um with with that the chair would entertain a motion to a journey a second all in favor say aye uh thank you everybody we'll see you on September 5th