001we're live i'm going to go ahead and call to order our meeting it's january 13th of forest park public schools district uh district 91. um can i have a roll call please yep mr lyons here ms valo here mr rummel here let's cross here mr cotton here it's wood here here thank you um number two we're going to have the pledge of allegiance and this is with amaya moreno and carolyn hart of garfield of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you okay number three the reading of the mission vision and equity statements and this is anthony r say archie forest park public school district 91 will be acknowledged by all our safety nursery and diverse learning
002community that established the highest standards for innovation and continued improvements which he excellent global citizen for each children mission statement in partnership with home and community is is to educate each individual child in a safe and nurturing environment we will foster respect and self-worth teach skills to relevant contemporary um life and promote academic and creative expression we will encourage and appreciation of the rich cultural diversity of our community and and still a sense of wonder for the future to enable our students to become lifelong learners and responsible citizens of the world thank you equity statement recognizing that systemic bias has plagued our educational system we commit to nurturing dialogue around all issues of inequality including cultural race faith psychosomic status gender identity sexual orientation and different ability as they pertain to their classroom processes school
003and school district structures and policies and product producers will support actions removing barriers to opportunities that allow children to reach their full potential thank you so much so we had again amaya moore and carolyn hart of garfield anthony arsey of fpms adeline mata of grant white and reading the equity statement elias jenkins of field stevenson thank you very much okay number four consent agenda items um before we make motions to vote is there anything anyone would like taken off it's a little awkward because i have a lot of no nope okay okay since everybody presumably had time to read these um a motion to approve so moved i will make a second motion uh may have a roll call please mr lyon hi ms fellow aye mr rummel aye ms cross aye ms clatton aye
004ms wood aye ms silas hi very good thank you number five correspondents do we have any nope okay you're over there today okay sorry i'm having trouble with this all right number six matters of consideration from the public are you here to make a public comment okay very good so um you can step up to the podium and miss barnes is going to give you a time this is bernstein crowley she's here to speak on a specific student issue anti-bullying policy and code of conduct very good and just a reminder that we cannot say um individual student names okay and your time is a maximum of three minutes okay can you all hear me um a little louder what about no yeah that's great thank you um so last week um my student i got
005a call from the principal saying that my student was basically a victim of cyber bullying and where another student had posted naked pictures of her on social media and circulated around the school that student who did that had only received a three-day school suspension so i am uh petitioning the board for stricter consequences for this student including um expulsion i would also like um for the anti-bullying policy and the code of conduct to be updated to include cyber bullying and posting of naked photos of students and also for there to be formal education to students regarding cyber bullying and posting of blue photos of miners i don't want to cut into your time is there anything else you wanted to say that's the main thing okay all right thank you for addressing the board we
006really appreciate it thank you jeanette did we have any others that came in okay all right number seven superintendents report a recognition yes so we have a several of them i'm going to start off with the hot chocolate with santa so on monday december 20th the district office and one board member went to the schools to provide hot chocolate and candy canes to all our children and staff we traveled with santa claus to the schools he was provided that time for us it truly was an exciting day and one that we hope to continue every year i truly want to thank bonnie doolin zach franciodakis jason stocks nurse nudis ucetta ramos jeanette barnes edward brophy steven johnson pablo dadio and kyra tyler on wednesday december 22nd the mayor hoskins and forest park chamber requested volunteers
007for a toy drive it was the first that benefited proviso area families including forest park students some district office staff and a board member volunteered to wrap gifts to be distributed on thursday december 23rd and so i just want to thank laura dickinson bonnie doolin jeanette barnes nudista ramos and shannon wood on behalf of district 91 national board resource center at illinois state university and the illinois national board for professional teaching standards comprehensive support system we want to congratulate megan bender who has renewed her national board certification so that's pretty exciting to have and our shield testing on tuesday january 4th d-91 held a covet 19 testing for all our students and staff we had 290 participants of which 273 students and 17 staff took advantage of this opportunity a special thank you to edward
008brophy bob ladario nuri zusata ramos joseph amawi stephen johnson darla cass and eric beltran for their support um i know this is not part of that i wrote in the agenda so i apologize i can't seem to get this right okay um i know it's not part of the agenda as a surprise we want to show our board appreciation as january is school board appreciation month i realize that you are all very humble servants to district 91 and may not want this acknowledgement however with the theme this year being rising above i think you would agree that this year during the pandemic everyone has done their part whether it has been coming to core visits volunteering for school events vaccinations or covet testing because um mr rummel and shannon also were part of helping us
009with vaccinations so i want to thank you for all you do and now i'll just go into my superintendent report as always i will use the district priorities starting with learning and achievement so i'm going to start with our iar data and i'll blow this up the first one you will see here is on ella i'll allow you some time to kind of take a look at it um let me scroll down so you can see the years um the new one here is the 2021 the district average is in black oh geez i'm never going to get this right how do i lower this now there you go okay this is sorry i think i'm just going to use the clicker instead of the roll okay so as you will see the state average
010at 2019 we still do not have the 2021 state average i'm going to give you some a time to kind of look at it our black students are in orange our latino students are in gray asian and yellow uh let me scroll a little bit down white and blue and two or more green district average just to give you an idea i'll talk about them in a second as i scroll down this is um what it looks like in percentage for ella meeting and exceeding here you'll see state averages in black district average is that dark force green black is in gray latino is yellow asian blue i believe it's like a light green for uh white and two or more in the kind of the darker blue okay i'm gonna minimize it a bit
011we're now going to look at math good lord again the black line is the state and we do not have the 2021 as of yet our black students are orange latino gray asian yellow blue white green is two or more and a district average i just mentioned was on there as a darker blue i believe it is okay here's what it looks like for math and averages our state average is in black our district average is forest grain i think everyone can see what that looks like students are diverse students students with ieps this basically is saying that we had no students and then for math and i'll move down for our emergent bilingual students normally known as english language learners our state is in black and the district is the green we then will
012move down to math for emergent bilinguals state is in black district is in forest green all right so as we look at the iar data it is evident that our scores are not good i want us to understand that 2021 data is not going to look good for any district we did not have all our students come to take the test it was less than 60 percent 60 percent of our students we had families they were dealing with child care issues or concerns about the pandemic we also do not have a state average to compare 2021. however i don't want to spend too much time with the 2021 data and rather we should focus on the data of 2019 and earlier before the pandemic as you saw our black and latino students are way below
013the 50th percentile it is very concerning i also know that d 91 has never looked at data in this way and began to analyze our subgroups our diverse learners emerging bilinguals are in single digits it seems that other districts are able to show growth but we have not paid attention to seeing what is occurring and how our students are experiencing school i also am aware that the test score is not the end all and is important to see the whole child we are looking at data very differently here and also have put into place our moves within school annual improvement plans in our every single one of our schools as well as the instructional core visits and we'll be moving further with data meetings and and professional learning on data to address these gaps as
014supported by the instructional leadership ensemble in each building once our leaders understand and are informed by data as instructional leaders they will be able to cultivate collective efficacy within their school buildings so teachers receive guidance professional learning and deep conversations about purposeful moves for individual students and grade levels also i'll be working with christina davis-salazar superintendent of west chicago d-33 who is on the assessment committee for the illinois state board of education they are evaluating design frequency and information on the illinois state assessment which will most likely be changing in a couple of years including having a spanish version of the assessment i want to make sure i am part of these discussions as we move d-91 to improving our scores in all subgroups i have also been speaking to state superintendent carmen ayela i
015will pause for any questions who has questions this is a little awkward for me to but thank you no question dr alvarez um can you say a little bit more about the collaboration that you're hoping to have with west chicago so um superintendent um salazar actually is already part of that committee yeah and because i'm i'm part of ayalas which is the illinois association of latino superintendents nationwide they were looking for support to understand what's happening in the state of illinois sure and so i reached out to superintendent david salazar to find out a little bit more and she had said liz you're more than welcome to help and work with this committee um which then prompted me to talk a little bit further with our state superintendent so that i have more information of
016what is needed and how we could then start supporting our teachers to get what our students need yeah um i don't think it's an understatement to say that we really haven't looked at our data as a district like this um since i began my tenure on the board so that's at least six six years so um you know the numbers don't look good and i'm sure you know parents are concerned and frustrated disappointed i don't i don't want to put words in people's mouths or assign feelings um i know as a black person with a child in our district seeing um particularly black and latino scores be um not just so low but also such a precipitous decline is really um more than concerning so the good thing is that it's all out there and
017you can't fix what you don't know um and so it doesn't serve anybody well to not really look at this take it in understand how to move forward and i think also help families understand our role in this and so that's what we're going to continue to do that's the point of our strategic plan it's the point of school improvement plans it's all of these things that we're working really hard to show that we believe our students are capable of much more they are they deserve more so that's what we're planning on providing them with and i totally understand if they are frustrated and concerned me to have every right to be sure i agree i i mean i am i'm part of that like i want this to be better so we'll get there
018moving on to mid-year's strategic plan just to give you a little bit of update there are only a few slides that have updated on there the first one is on our five essentials the five essentials is something that is used in every school's report card including our in the whole district report card that survey is out just so you know so um what you are about to see is this was based on feedback that was received either from the board from cac from anyone that provided so these are the extra slides now the five essentials opened two days ago just so you know on tuesday january 11 2022 and it closes on friday march 11 we are working with the cac to provide us with further information and i'll be getting an input from students
019and teachers to compile an ad to this presentation um and so you will see here from each of the schools we don't get any input for student rate lower than fourth grade so it's understandable why we wouldn't in garfield and betsy well you would see the zero percent but the teacher rate you could see here where we are our lowest coming from our middle school teachers and our highest coming from garfield and then for a parent rate you you will see here our lowest coming from grant white and our highest coming from betsy ross lowest is middle school right it's middle i'm sorry oh middle yeah yeah lowest is middle school i apologize our forest park middle school yes and so we are really wanting input from our families from our teachers and our students
020here particularly in our forest park middle school to get 100 percent because it allows us to see where they're feeling and what we need to fix so that survey is out we want to make sure that our principals are sending it out to make sure our teachers see this survey and our parents see the survey as well we'll give opportunity during the day for our students to fill it out um to make sure that that occurs um yes i'm sorry how long does this survey take to complete i would say it's a total of maybe 15 minutes okay um so that's the uh five e's i've also added the um the d91 core values that was something that was mentioned during our our second retreat that where is it here it is brought it in
021um that is going to be added to the slides reminding ourselves our where our foundation is physically responsible planning and just updated this slide with our three priorities to say 2026 and updating the last one to talk about our championing of the of the work really on our momentum of development developing these deadlines such as the school improvement plans to address the gaps and provide feedback and so um i want to remind everyone that principals will be presenting in february their school annual improvement plans as a group to show how they are collaborating providing coherence for the work and together reaching the 2026 goals that we have set forth we're really excited to have the principals um come in and present in february yeah i'm really looking forward to it so if you're comfortable and
022you want to support your principal in person there's lots of space sanitizer masking here otherwise um of course we'll be streaming it so and then um the board will be voting on the strategic plan in may i think is what we decided so all right thank you sure so moving on to technology safety i have shared a form with the board in your packet regarding technology safety i did receive one question from a board member that was answered and shared with the entire board if you have any questions regarding this because of confidentiality please feel free to reach out to zach frangidakis or myself thank you moving on to principal evaluations i have started conducting principal evaluations that started in december last month i have completed three out of the six i'm saying six because
023this also includes our director of student services i will also be providing evaluations for district office personnel such as our assistant superintendent of finance and operations director of innovative instruction family community engagement manager network coordinator and superintendent executive secretary giving a total of 11 valuations that will be completed by march 1st our principals will also be conducting evaluations for staff or have been um particularly those that are non-tenured staff staff that are in need of evaluations such as aides and secretaries and regarding our aids and secretaries they are working right now to develop a rubric because that has not been done in the past as a matter of fact miss hopper has provided a folder so that the conversations can start happening soon and then conducting completing these will be part of the principal evaluations
024any questions so is it fair to say that everybody in the district for the most part will be receiving evaluations yes i think the only one we didn't put in there is our lunch staff okay maintenance also gets um and our maintenance okay yep okay got it thank you thank you mid-year instructional core visits our mid-year instructional core visits are around the corner so if any of you want to join we start the first week of february 2022 we are using richard elmore's model where he poses seven principles for improvement of student learning for those of you who don't know dr elmore he was a professor at harvard and passed away just last year and he talks about seven principles the first being defining the instructional core and within the instruction record there are three
025ways to improve student learning and the first one is raise the level of content that students are taught the second is increase the teachers skill and knowledge that they bring to teaching of that content and the third is increase the level of students active learning the engagement of that content so there are three ways to improve that he speaks of the second principle says change one part of that core so you either change the content of the students you either change the uh skill of the teachers and knowledge or you change the level of students active learning and engagement and if um if not you change all three and so the third principle is if you can't see it then it's not there that's simple as that the fourth take a test predicts the performance
026so the tasks that we give our students this task that our teachers are preparing will predict what our children should be able to perform the fifth principle is real accountability is in the task accountability accountability that our teachers are expecting for themselves as they're trying to reach certain goals and accountability for our students as they are reaching their own personal goals and then these six principles learn by doing the work actually just sitting there and talking and discussing about what is happening in our classrooms the seventh principle is a description before analysis analysis before prediction and prediction before evaluation so before you start evaluating anything you need to describe what's occurring so albert states that we learn to do the work by doing the work not by making more policies about the work not by
027spending money on the next new idea about the work not by asking people to do what they do not know how to do and pretending that they do and not by claiming that things are getting better when one part of the distribution is improving while other parts are staying the same or getting worse as you saw from our data he finds that the work lies in the face-to-face interactions among people our teachers and our people are responsible for student learning around the world in the presence of that work any questions regarding our core visits just just a comment um i was privileged enough to do some of the core visits that we did earlier this year and to those of those on the board who are unable to do that for whatever reason especially those
028who don't have an educational background i highly recommend you do it if you at all can i learn more in that week than i have learned in many years coming to these meetings and i had a chance to see exactly how dr alvarez and her team and all the teachers in the district do their do their work and it is it has made me a lot better at sitting and sitting behind this table so if you can do it do it and thank you for the opportunity to let us do that thank you for joining us i i did want to mention too keep in mind that every principal or team there or ensemble there um came up with a practice of promise from the beginning of the year and it is time in the
029middle of the year that they're going to discuss what that practice of promise is it could be they're just discussing how it is improved how they have tweaked it or perhaps maybe they need to change it and so that practice of promise is what they are going to be sharing with us for middle of the year and then we go into the classroom to see is it occurring got it dr alvarez yes do you have dates or could you send those out for those that have to plan ahead of time because i would definitely like to go to at least one absolutely i now that uh we mentioned it i'm looking right at mr adler if he could just kind of put our members on there and who could join thank you moving on to
030our second um priority family and community engagement starting off with our website update which is exciting the district is in the process of transitioning and consolidating our website websites i should say this process will take about three months to complete and it started in mid december 2021 our target launch is the end of the school year for our new website and mobile app when this happens there will not be major interruption to our site this will be an almost seamless transition we will keep our domain of fpsd91.org as work continues to be done behind the scenes the main page will be updated with dates announcements and covet information all other information may be outdated on the current site but we'll all be up to date on the new site any questions thank you [Laughter] this
031is unbelievably exciting moving on to hot chocolate with superintendent on monday december 20th 2021 i held a virtual meeting with parents to discuss covet 19 i also asked for parent input on what we can do better how they see any changes based on the pandemic and are decreasing enrollment at this time parents shared concerns about curriculum and i i really thank them for bringing that up one of the topics that was mentioned is that they felt students were being taught skills and standards that they already knew and it was because teachers are trying they were thinking that there was teachers trying to catch up with time lost from the last year and their concern was to please teach children what they don't know and that was one topic that came up from the hot chocolate
032with superintendent any questions for that okay i do want to say that they were um very thankful for all the teachers and saying like they could understand like why they would want to go back because of lost time all right our last priority is talent recruitment and development so we have yes do you want to do covet vaccination status oh of course i do so sorry that's okay covet vaccination status on thursday december 23rd we held another vaccination site at grant white uh this is the one that we had support from two of our board members so thank you very much we had 206 parts participants get vaccinations and boosters and there are 279 students fully vaccinated at district 91. we will be holding two more vaccination events at grant white one on monday january
03317th which is dr martin luther king jr day i want to stress that that day it should not be looked upon as a day off more as a day of service and um that'll be next week on monday and one on saturday february 12th so we could also honor abraham lincoln's birthday and uh both events are from 8 00 a.m to 7 p.m for any of our parents who want to get their children vaccinated or get boosters for themselves is uh the clinic on a saturday which is a big deal but on the the 12th is that also at grant white yes okay both at grant white so hope to see you there yeah can i just say a couple things sure so it's a community event so people uh you do not it's not
034just for um families in our district it's for anyone um there is a a pre-registration available if you don't do it you can still walk in so we really cannot stress how much we really want people in our community surroundings community um to consider vaccination um and or get boostered so um uh dr alvarez of the 270 students who've received a full 279 271 thank you nine nine two seven nine okay yeah um of those students how what's our denominator like how many are eligible because if we subtract the preschool you mean yeah so how many i would have to get those numbers unless someone in the back can give it to me now yep he's getting it now okay thank you they're in the back row okay so 279 out of 594. okay 594.
035thank you yeah thank you okay and then we also have our coveted dashboard that we uh update like knowledge is power so um but if people have questions they should certainly be in touch with their principal and make their way from there any before we go to the next um item any questions thank you for doing that thank you yeah this is huge all right moving on to talent recruitment and development our last priority our hiring process we have revamped how we do hiring here at district 91. the process is now a two to three round interview process questions are developed by an ensemble that will interview the candidate based on the role description resumes will be reviewed first and then those that make the cut will be put through the first round interviews those
036on the interview panel will then look at their scores based on a rubric tied to questions and scored to see who moves to the second round there will be different people on the interview panel per round to get all perspectives as we bring in quality teachers quality employees to district 91 high quality i should say so this is for all positions correct thank you for coming thank you so teachers instructional assistants yeah we we are working with transportation to get that going yeah as well um and that's in the process right now okay what is the timing in between the rounds i know a lot of jobs are saying people are losing because the process can take three to like three to six months which is ridiculous for someone looking for a job about what
037is that timing we just hired uh mr romero um so if i could give you the timing i want to say it was within a month or so the process okay it takes time to make sure that we have everyone ready to meet review stuff yeah i have a question yes i'm sorry larry go ahead um if i understood this correctly does this mean that you're getting rid of the online survey when they turn in their resume for certified positions or are you still doing that as part of their submitting oh you mean the one that they go out no that they still do that okay correct thanks i apologize i was like what online sir yes they still do that that's how we go and check through what they write um your resume all
038of that is the letter of intent that is all provided where we then start looking through all of them yes okay thank you so it's a database is that what i'm is that what we're talking about yes okay got it so i just had a real quick question when you're going through the screening process particularly with the teachers and looking at you know talking them through how they do what they do is that informed by the the standards that we use for the core visit that we've been using for the core visits is that part of the or is that too granular for the process it probably is too granule for the process but i understand i did speaking with some of my principals um they this is the reason i said two to three
039rounds because they were saying can the third round be that we observe them teaching oh that's exciting that is exciting okay thank you anyone else before we all right okay great thank you oh were you done sorry yeah okay yep apologies thank you and then if you want to call the next one yes see status of district finances okay so i'm going to click on it so that we could all see it so basically this is just a trs teacher's retirement system in illinois i don't want to read it to you but basically it's an optional savings plan that allows trs members um to allocate a portion of their gross pay to a 457b deferred compensation plan that is administered by voya financial basically the purpose of this plan is to supplement existing trs pension
040for members so this this is anything for an expenditure of ours this is just extra money that they're going to be able to put in right [Music] okay and that's the that's the end of my superintendent report okay sounds good um okay let's shift into committee reports um i will start uh mr rebel feel free to chime in so teacher negotiations um we are kicking off with a meeting um on the topic next week and hoping to get something on the calendar sooner rather than later for um to sort of talk about how we want this all to proceed so it's happening we're kicking it off do i miss something uh we have the one meeting i think next friday with the but that's yeah that's it okay thank you all right b board policy
041so we have a bunch of policies we're bringing forward this evening um nothing really significant other than a few slight wording changes that differ from what we're getting from press and those are wording changes based on language we've already talked about uh terminology that that we just don't we don't agree with but nothing substantive for this round we do have a few items that we'll be talking about in february but that's february okay great thank you see finance that's myself and mr lyons we haven't had a meeting we don't have anything to add right okay mr murphy we probably should i would say like february march yep okay great so we'll plan for something february-ish um pending schedules okay d engagement uh miss fallow we have nothing i think it's on um i don't need
042one we have quite a report um last month um monique reported out that we were re-examining the function of the community engagement committee um nudies and i had a fabulous meeting on monday monique was called to an emergency meeting work um so nudist and i went ahead and plotted out what the new structure of the community engagement committee will be very exciting all right um in the past we've had to rely on the committee to kind of go to or it's like to bring the community to us our new purpose is going to be to get the board more in to the community by building a support system for the board based in different groups throughout the community so like who can we rely on as the board to kind of help us with our
043mission not by disclosing things that we talk about obviously but like how are we going to address some of our initiatives and get that support from the community but get it from different parts of it recognizing that the school district doesn't only mean parents and children it means all of forest park so moving forward we are going to get a support system together for board work and that's going to include different groups that we are going to refer to as stakeholders and we're going to hold stakeholder roundtables this is going to include business groups parent groups district employees not necessarily just i mean any district employee uh we're going to look into our senior community we're going to hit our child free population they're still taxpayers they still have a stake in the school board
044still super or school district rather still super important to get them involved uh and then village leadership as well um we have plotted out to meet the first monday of every month at noon at the main office looking through different events that are going on we're gonna send out spreadsheets of here are all the things that are happening in the schools and then if we can because everyone has you know lives and work and business if we can have folks sign up to go to different events and it's not like be a hero and go to every one of them like pick one pick another one you know we'll get people we'll get us out and then we'll also get people in to kind of support our mission in the mission of the district we
045really i don't am i i'm cut yeah right i like that very much um so yeah that's it's going to be more of an informal space to gather some feedback too we just kind of want to get the community kind of more unified as to what the district and the board is doing as opposed to like we are here you are there like we're kind of all in it together because we've all got to make it work so now the function and focus is how are we going to do that and what are the next steps so our february meeting uh first monday noon main office or virtual with the googly meets um we'll do well you know we're we're gonna we've got some good wheels in in motion i was we were super jazzed
046and it was a very loud google meet meeting between two brains firing at rapid speed so it was great um and that's where that's where we're going to start we're going to have lots to report all the time thank you can i ask you a question um help me understand the how the i think i get it but i'm not entirely sure that how the function of this is different than like a cac for example oh i'm not actually sure because i just i i would love to sound smart but i can't okay um this is okay um okay and the other thing that we talked about too is that in years past the committee has functioned as a support to a nudist is doing are you trying to phrase it the right way nudist
047is doing her job with community engagement so well that we just are trying to build on that and like work under her okay as opposed to before where we were having to drive the thing okay are you okay i see your eyes okay right like that's right so we were hyping what right so we don't have to we don't have to drive we can passenger all together on the bus got it okay i'm trying no no that's fine no i'm i'm curious if you guys are going to meet once a month and we'll have something from you every month so i'm curious to see how this takes shape oh see thank you thank you and thank you and the rain's on fire we were rolling okay do you have anything else no you good okay
048all right i don't want to move away too quickly thank you okay eu superintendent evaluation ms wood and yeah and mr lyons go ahead okay um so we are going to use the same rubric which i will be emailing to the board members tonight or tomorrow morning and we took um three of dr alvarez's goals that she set out in her leadership plan it was emailed in our newsletter august 6th i can resend that as well if you want to look dr alvarez has some goals in there but some of them are dealing with her relationship with staff and the union and that is really hard for us to assess so dr alvarez that would be something that um we would like um for you to do is come up with like a gold tracker
049so that if you like we don't need a detail of it so one of your goals was um like give feedback after um a visit right and and to meet a little bit this is just an idea we'll still talk about it this is not go home tonight and do it um so that we know that you did it or how you did it it could be a very general update it doesn't have to be very detailed but you laid out so many great goals but we can't assess if you how you've done them or how well you've done them that's all and i so just so you know some of the feedback that i have given to staff i have included anyone who i believe you were part of that one time too um
050or i've included kira or mr rummel and that yes so i will and oh mr lyons was there too trying to remember everyone so is that what you're referring to um yes or and we can talk more in detail but you have other ones like regarding working with hold on i'm going back to the the plan one of your interpersonal goals was to grow with your interactions with each school leader um so if there's just a way that we can know how you're doing that or that you've done it so that we can and these are all really great goals and really important um but we can't just sit and say yes she did it if we don't sure no you know what i mean well i think too we've all done activities with her
051throughout the lab you know since she got here so i think part of what will help you get this together is once you get our feedback and we see the rubric so we can provide you with that because i think that'll be that'll be helpful too sure team effort right what i wanted to do is we did not take all of your goals because it was hard right sure i would like to do that so for next year we want i don't want to leave we don't want to leave off any of your goals right we want to be able to assess them and if that's giving each other feedback about those visits which takes a little off of your plate that could work too we can have conversations about that um let's see we
052talked about that i think that's it um i did talk with miss tyler about the idea of coming up like mr lyons and i talked about we would like to do a whole different rubric um and miss tyler and i talked about that that might be a board as a whole project um so that we can get together to meet and we can all you know get input put our input in not just the committee that we can meet there'll be input and then uh mr lyons and i can get in and fine-tune it right um but to have everybody involved in that because it's such an important thing to do um for us and for dr alvarez so that's not now right that's working no not now in the future yep you know um
053i don't know i'll let you know next month but i will send out the form so that you guys can see um what we'll be doing and then um we're doing ours dr alvarez is going to do hers first right so that will be done for february and then we will plan to get together we will do ours as a board separately then come together to talk about it and march and then share it in april so that's the timing that we're thinking of okay yes we had a lot of moving pieces i know all right were we missing anything no no all right ppc there was not a december meeting our next meeting is uh wednesday very good cac okay so we did not meet last month we'll be meeting wednesday as well but
054i have some notes that were sent to me so uh our two we have turned into two subcommittees in december one focusing on parent handbook and one on asset and need assessment the parent handbook one which i'm part of we are doing our first read-through of what we've had and people i've seen a couple people already put in their notes on what suggestions they have for change i plan on reading it again and putting my notes in this weekend and then the uh asset and needs assessment is in the first step of seven steps uh it's a strategy to produce an assessment of both the district our schools and the community by the end of march early april and this will happen every year and will be will help to inform the strategies used year
055to year for the district and the school improvement plan and then the two bullets that they want to be clear is that is a process used to understand and create a profile of the needs and also what our strengths are without a current or comprehensive assessments we have are less likely to provide offerings or foster partnerships that effectively address risk and promote opportunities for all of our students and family and the purpose of the needs assessment is not a rigorous scientific evaluation um that sorry to impact individual programs or strategies and curricula and whatnot but it is to gather a wide range of information from focus groups and surveys and town hall meetings and put them together for us to work with and change things as we go this is a living document that will
056continue to change as our district changes and help us focus in on our needs to propel our assets that we already have and also to change and alter and improve the needs that we have and that's all i've got i have nothing for now for all of you that are still with us if you haven't noticed already our theme is that if you didn't think that we communicated before we were making up for that a million times um get ready okay um i said all that the mic was off um nine items for discussion um so that's me let's talk about our asset needs assessment so obviously ms cross just talked about that as it relates to the cac and from a board perspective you know it's not often that we get to have a
057real discussion just to have it i mean it's for a purpose right but we don't have to vote on anything right now or there's there's no need to do something like that so what i really wanted to do was pose this question um to the group which is essentially and i don't know where to look so i'm sure look forward um which is essentially as we approach the second anniversary of the pandemic which has changed the educational system in unimaginable and necessary ways it's given us a lot to think about what do we think about the assets that we have as a district and where do we see needs that we would like to provide solutions for so what i'm interested in are things that we're not doing well we want to change things that
058we'd like to do better and you don't have a solution but you're curious about hey i'm thinking about this i want to put it out there assets that we have are we using them well are they suiting our needs can we make changes assets from the perspective two of things that we're doing well how do we further take those forward highlight expand uh make them more user-friendly so this is really just an open discussion and um as long as we within reason have a good conversation going i'm open to just sort of talking about it so um does anybody want to start us off yeah mr rum will go ahead i mean just based on what we heard this evening and especially what we saw in the superintendent's report um and not knowing anything about
059what the survey is going to look like right because we're just starting the process right i would submit our first priority would need to be the vast disparities that we saw in just student performance i mean there's there's pretty clearly uh there are differences in who is doing well and who is not that i find profoundly disturbing and i think we should at least understand why that's happening and then start to look and say what do we need to do what assets do we need to redeploy to address those great thank you i also want to point out too that um one of the reasons i wanted to have this discussion now is that we're six months in with a new leader and so that obviously brings about a different opportunity we now see how
060she works how she connects with people in our fa and our community you know some of what she's capable of so that's also something to take into consideration how do we feel about our curriculum yeah go ahead um sorry it was bapping me in the head um i think as we look in into how the pandemic has affected traditional classroom learning it's almost time to look at what traditional curriculum means we don't necessarily all need to be in the same place at the same time anymore we know like we know that now um so what is that how does that translate into a more diversified differentiated curriculum is that something that because we see that a non-traditional setting works and ever had to work and and did to a point um clearly there's disparities in
061the test scores and i was going to echo exactly what mr almost said but when we look at curriculum is that something that we need to take more of a deep dive into and say all right well you know if if a was a non-traditional learning environment then b might be a non-traditional yet still standards-based you know effective curriculum because the whole i mean the whole environment has changed everything is different now and it likely won't go back to being i mean i always just say it will never be march 14 of 2020 ever like it will never be march 14th again it will be march 15th so then it becomes our job to kind of say all right how do we then modify and we're small enough to do it which i think is
062the cool thing we're small enough to say how can we kind of flip our approach to delivering instruction and to implementing again like a differentiated more diversified curriculum um we've got great teachers we have amazing teachers uh and we always have um and again we're small enough where we can play with some things which i think gives us a really unique opportunity that a lot of larger districts don't have so i mean i guess that's my that was i i was going to say that we probably should leave this to the cac and invite everyone to just join um and get input from our you know citizen advisory i'm sorry yeah this conversation this conversation yes okay what one other thing just to pay you back you can finish up yeah um what can i
063just i'm sorry i'm done no i'm good i'm good i'm good i'm sorry i didn't no you're good sorry you're good you go so you're okay you one of the things you that you alluded to and i i think it's it's absolutely critical it's not going to be things are very different now i think there's two components to it there's curriculum which we're directly talking about but there's also just the way we behave like classroom behaviors and things like that so there's like two components to this there's what we teach and then there's how we actually put the information across and also what's this what's happening around the students that are either helping them or hindering them from learning and i feel like there's a lot of stuff that dr alvarez has brought in that
064we saw in the core visits where it's like talking about behavior and things like that so i think this is a lot bigger than just curriculum um and i think we should look at all of it yeah i do as well as well i don't want to really cut anybody off if you if anybody wanted to offer something well i'm just so i do agree that we need to have the cac on this but i'm not how sure how we get all of the board in on it at the same time i agree um i don't know well i think that that's part of the hope is that um some of what is discussed can be shared with the cac because to your point there's just one person on there with an alternative we're not
065all on that so um you know i think this is an ongoing conversation but we're also the governing board of the district and they are an advisory committee so um these two bodies can work in tandem to provide creative solutions but if we're not thinking big and we're now in pandemic 1.8 right or whatever i don't know i don't know where we are i have no clue trilogy from hell 4.2 i don't know um and so but if we're not thinking about how we come out of this doing things better smarter more creatively um you know in a way that better impacts our entire enrollment right then we're not doing it right so um i just want us to be a part of that continued solution obviously we don't just want to fund things we
066want to also be a part of the solution it's a whole new world it is a whole new world i see it as an awesome opportunity yeah when we were you know interviewing dr alvarez i was like i want someone who makes big ideas and potentially big mistakes like how do you know otherwise right you don't know so we don't want to play with people and obviously we have a really important role to play but big ideas are how you get to somewhere great i'm looking at you you're good i'm good okay the only thing that i wanted to say is like when we're looking at it like not just curriculum like what are the other stuff the district can do right like earlier randomly i was scrolling through like old facebook videos and i
067see like where i'm posting stuff at other schools that they're doing that i don't see why we don't do it at ford's part like the plays that you used to always go to um their contraband when they combine the schools and do like this huge concert so just those little extra things that brought me into like i had i didn't have a kid in van didn't have a kid in theater didn't have to get a lot of places but because those schools had it i went to it just as a support so looking at not just curriculum is what can make us extra but not even extra at this point because a lot of districts just have this what are we not offering that should be that's not i mean it'll be curriculum but not
068like veering off to where yes all this is important but we also need to look at the whole child right and all a lot of that stuff it pees into it sorry i'm trying to take notes for this all right he was saying like extracurriculars or specials that are more i'm not sure how that works but like it's whether it's a school day or after school like i'm not really sure how we can fit in like theater programs um there are districts that say and everybody in fourth grade chooses an instrument you do it for fourth and fifth and that's their band and then or orchestra or whatever and then it moves forward so i don't want to put words in your mouth but right like something like that where it's i don't know like
069the other day during the school yeah things like that languages that's throughout the whole from preschool on up like things like that those extra where it's something that should be offered in a public school i just don't know where it fits so it's thinking of those things not just when you think of curriculum you're thinking of like math you're thinking of english you're thinking of science because all of that needs to encompass it right all right so i think that's a good a good place to pause for now um thank you for being here i just want to make sure you all know you could get on the cac and give your input i just want to make sure you know that yeah i think we know that but i okay yeah i mean i
070think our board members are so engaged it can be hard to like get yourself into something else yeah yeah okay all right thank you b mr brophy do you want to talk about the annual audit report [Laughter] don't you i sure do thank you uh just some brief items to note that for our fiscal year 2021 the most important thing that needs to be communicated is that it is an outlier year because we had lower than usual expenditures so if there's one thing that everyone needs to take away from fy2021 it is that it's very unique financially in terms of having the lower expenditures that we did we did not spend as much as we usually did as you can see based on the data that's been shared seven of our nine funds we saw
071our reserves increase and in two of our funds they were reduced i do want to point out in those two funds our operations and maintenance and our tort fund the operations and maintenance both in the tax year of 2020 and in this most recent tax year 2021 which concluded on december 31 of 2021 uh 14 days ago we levied the maximum rate we could uh levy in our operations and maintenance to shore up its reserve level so i just want to make sure that uh that gets communicated and then for our tort fund you see that that was reduced as well by and ninety three thousand dollars the reason is because the expenditures we have in that fund annually are around a hundred and thirty thousand dollars so we don't need to carry a significantly
072large fund balance in that fund we only need to carry about five 500 000 so we are strategically spending that fund balance down in our tort fund so i just want to make sure that the board is aware of that the only other points to mention are because we didn't have students in our schools if you can really think about it we're january of 2022 right now a year ago we still didn't have kids in the schools we didn't have kids in the schools until about the second week of february of 2021 if you can all think about that so as a result of that we didn't incur as much of our extra duty expenditures we didn't have a need for as many substitute teachers we didn't have a lot of the on-site activities that
073we provide students so ultimately our expenditures were significantly lower as we plan for the next fiscal year we want to make sure we position ourselves for the things that we need to do as based on that data that you saw earlier presented by dr alvarez we want to make sure that our students have the resources that they need any questions in regard to our fy2021 annual audit and that's all for that item adam so in january of every fiscal year we present our second fiscal quarter financial report it represents our activity from october november december so in this case october november december of 2021 most important things to point out if you'd like to go to the next page in this fiscal quarter as you can see right here in october for receipts in our
074education fund we captured just over four million dollars that is an outlier rarity it's because the property tax receipts were late we normally capture that revenue in the first fiscal quarter and this year they were late getting out because the assessor was late so we received them in our second at the early part of our second fiscal quarter uh capturing as you can see the 5.4 million dollars in this fiscal quarter just to put that in perspective a year ago in the second fiscal quarter the the revenue we captured was 1.3 million dollars so very indicative of again outlier situation for our revenue going on to the dashboards as you can see this is our expenditures dashboard right where we expect it to be midway through the fiscal year we're still below what we expect
075to be our threshold uh for that and then on the last page the year-over-year fund balance all three fund balances except for our transportation fund were lower this year as of december 31st compared to last year and remember we spent less money last year so we would expect last year's to be higher that's all for our second fiscal quarter report unless there are any questions madam president i just had one question one of the one of the things that we voted on i believe it was last meeting was drawing down our reserves because we're getting more timely payments but it sounds like we got a late payment is that yes precisely so of course the timing the timing happened to be for the the uh seven plus consecutive years that the cook county treasurer managed
076to finally disperse taxes on time this fall they didn't the good news for us is we had uh healthy reserves to support us for the first fiscal quarter until that revenue was received in october we don't anticipate late receipts in the coming fiscal years and as we did reduce the target threshold from 12 months to 10. uh we're uh we will be monitoring that activity is that fair to say say again we still have some room even with just the 10 months that's not that's not putting it okay correct yes sir thank you yes sir any other questions not a question but chipotle's opening soon we we are excited about that we're very excited to welcome a new business into into town very much so thank you madam president yeah of course thank you okay
077number 10 consent agita agenda items uh to discuss in closed session so uh may i have a motion to go into closed session i'll make it i'm sorry hold on one second may i have a motion to go into closed session for the purpose of the employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of employees and student discipline cases i'll make money thank you a second i'll second [Laughter] all in favor okay great let's go into closed session you good okay thank you this is where i keep messing up hold on i'm gonna get this right today oh right um can i sorry one second i have a motion to approve the closed session minutes and we'll make the motion second all in favor okay great number 11 um items okay i'm we're we're gonna work on
078this because it's like not clear for me uh sure i will make the motion second hold on one second let me say it janette i'm sorry items that we discussed in closed session consent agenda items can't i do a motion in a second for those yeah that was the minutes i thought i just did it no i thought i just did it you're saying what was just i'm sorry the personnel items okay i'll have to get um okay so i will make a motion for the personnel items that were approved in closed session may i have a second monique gave a second second i've been doing that incorrectly so i'm gonna i'll work on that something about that isn't clear for me um okay great number eleven items for action let's have a motion to
079discuss considering a recommendation to approve the proposal from camino group or stakeholder engagement data technical analysis and assistance and professional learning for thirty four thousand dollars i will make the motion may i have a second please great discussion mike mike's on there we go i provided this in the board packet but as pre previously shared prior to and shortly after i started and presented at the board meeting in october there is a substantial need to establish an evidence-based culture throughout the district to ensure decision-making that is tied to student learning and achievement as you saw from our iar data and where as we go into fast bridge data there are strong indicators of this need this requires implementing a process of learning from data which promotes assessment literacy among our educators and builds trust by
080making decisions based on evidence and data sources evidence-based culture also requires stopping the habit of reading things into data that are not present and grounding our instructional planning and adjustments that are truly based on our data and that means making sure that our teachers our principals are very comfortable looking at data and being informed by data so that they know how to make the appropriate moves the camino group will assist in developing our evidence-based culture and we'll begin immediately working with our stakeholders particularly the instructional leadership ensembles that we have in each of our schools and also supporting with our school improvement plans and they will support the work on on those together and as of right now the camino group is ready to proceed with us i'm going to go ahead and scroll and
081wait if there's any questions well dr alvarez is scrolling are there questions about this item uh not about the camino group specifically because we it was in the packet how many how many of these different consultancies i assume did we talk to before we pick them there were two overall okay um are there other questions and dr alvarez just um so i'm clear this is from now until end of may correct okay and can you just pull out so there what the i mean i read it but just to put a fine point on it maybe for the community what the deliverables will be um so i'm looking for a hub where we could keep all of our data and stored so it's not erased and we could go back year after year as well
082as making sure that the professional learning that needs to be done and and teaching about this hub to us to our principals to our teachers particular our instructional ensembles that are helping with the school improvement plans get trained i don't like the word train but get the learning needed and so that eventually they become independent with it and be able to pull out on their own as they work with data as well as for me to provide that during newsletters to say here are some questions you should be considering as you're looking at this data i also want to be able to get graphs the graphs that you have seen those have been developed by myself and mr adler using excel that normally that's not how it works normally you have a data strategist as
083does that that does that for us and so hopefully the hub will have some graphs that are already there for us to just pool okay great okay so i have one question sure yeah can you speak to some of the highlights of the two proposals what was the differentiation factor that made you go with this versus the other proposal that you had out there sure the other one basically said that they could go ahead and create it for us but not necessarily be teaching it to us so as i understand it they're going to do the research that's in the deliverables piece of it gather all the data and everything and they're also going to be developing and providing this hub for us is that something they're building or they have it and they're going
084to be putting our information they're going to be utilizing what we have right now um and taking that information to make sure that we get informed of what we have and i think i recall i shared with you that we have already some type of system and that's part of it but we don't have a data strategist i do want to reiterate that this is only just to help us in the future i i'm going to say we will be needing one okay all right um let's get ready to vote may have a roll call please mr lyons hi ms fellow aye mr romwell aye ms carl aye ms wood hi hi i'm excited about this i am too all right so we're going to be working with the camino group welcome okay number two
085consider recommendation to adopt board of education policies for second reading and adoption i will make the motion may i have a second please all second discussion okay uh the policy committee has met and all adoptions and revisions were discussed and now just up for adoption all right there's a lot in there so yeah i mean if i click on it there's just a lot in there i don't know that people are ready for that yeah it was a long meeting yeah does anyone have questions though about any okay did you want it for what it's worth we basically took all of the press recommendations the only exceptions and i noted this before are were areas where they're using terminology that we do not use in this district so in each so the only changes we
086really made were to say we're going to substitute the words that they use for the ones that we use in order to be consistent with our own policies as well as changing uh my name in there or updating yeah there's a lot of administrative updates okay okay a roll call please mr lyon hi othello aye mr rummel number 12 additional matters for consideration from the board um i don't know if everyone gets them i get emails occasionally from iasb and they um are doing an equity diversity and inclusion webinar series there's five in the series first one was last night [Music] it was about being intentional about the language you use and why you know there's certain things that are not appropriate to say anymore because of the meaning behind them like master bedroom um
087peanut gallery um some other ones um also talked about put um person first so instead of a transgender child a child is transgender um instead of an epileptic child it is a child with epilepsy um [Music] and then they also talked about how because it was school board members um it's often brought up about you know taxpayers right and not everybody um owns property in our districts but there are different kinds of taxes you know there's property taxes there's income tax there's sales tax so everyone contributes and is just as important whether or not they own or rent and that was one of the other ones was other things is apartment tends to lend itself people think low income um so instead of saying apartment saying multifamily units so just being thoughtful on how some
088words you know if you urban right is used can be used in a way that is negatively seen or rural right so just being conscious of what those things mean um and i would encourage you all they are all they are free they are all about an hour um um their webinars uh if you didn't get the email i can always forward it to you um you can register yourself i really um i really enjoyed it and uh i hope that you guys join us so sure please sure okay thank you for that yeah it's primary bedroom right that makes good sense to me i'm not i need the etymology at peanut galleries anybody else have anything i would only like to add with the vaccination clinics that we're doing i am so glad it's
089from eight to seven because a lot of times it's like in the middle of the day and people can't get away and this allows i mean some people still may not be able to go depending on what their schedule is but it allows a huge opportunity having one during the week having one on the weekend and still having those hours really allows more families just with kids or not people to come in because it has a greater thing instead of doing like an eight to twelve or twelve like midday one when some people just can't simply get away whether they're working from home or doing whatever i just appreciate having those additional hours to allow more people to try to clear up their availability yeah great i had the pleasure of answering the phone at
090the one for a little while in december and people were so excited to talk to somebody i guess they didn't think anybody was gonna pick up but like you know i don't know it was nice to be able to give people information to help them make an informed decision like help them get what they wanted well very gratifying all right um anybody else i look up just a few things so you know as i was sort of joking you know we are in pandemic 4.8 i don't know i don't know where we are to be frank um and you know if you're a parent if you're a teacher you're a teacher who's also a parent you're a board member who is like it's a nightmare things are very challenging out there and i think what
091i just want to say is to our community thank you for trusting that we are trying our absolute hardest to do what we believe is the right thing with the information that we have in the moment um it's a real game of whack-a-mole um and i know that there are a lot of people who are really happy who are unhappy who are confused who are frustrated all of it is valid um i think what we're committed to and not i think i know what we're committed to is just continuing to serve our community in prioritizing our children and our staff um so that in a really uncertain hard time and it's january and it's cold and gray and you know that that our kids can show up to school um every day and know that
092there are people here that are excited to see them and teach them and help them grow and so thank you for sending your kids thank you to our teachers for showing up continuing to work through with us thank you to our administrators thank you to our nurse who i met yesterday because i took a pcr and she was lovely um and our administration and our maintenance crew and our i mean transportation there's just no way that we could be in school doing what we want to be doing with our students without great support so thank you for sticking with us okay um 13 adjournment um i will make a merchant a motion to adjourn we have a second second happy early birthday um all in favor very good uh what time is it hold on
093please 8 19 meeting is adjourned thank you