001Welcome to the Lake Worth School District 60 Board of Education meeting. I would like this meeting to be called at 7:03 p.m. Lauren could you call the roll? All members of the board. >> Here. >> Ann Hill. >> Here. >> Lauren Hursh. >> Here. >> Andrew Carlson. >> Here. >> Richard Driver. >> Here. >> Tim Panek. >> Here. >> All right. Can everybody please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance? Since I have a microphone, I just can state the vision, mission, and motto. Our mission is to ensure academic achievement and personal growth for all students through innovative and engaging educational opportunities. Our vision is an inclusive community of motivated learners who are inspired to change the world through exploration and collaboration. And our motto is excellence in education, enthusiasm for life, every student, every day.
002And now we welcome comments from our staff, parents, or constituents for public comment. We'll have time at the end when you guys won't be here, I'm sure. All right. So now I'd love to welcome Lisa to give our Educator of the Year awards. All right, thank you. First of all, thank you for to everyone for being here tonight. We have a lot of recognitions. We're super proud of everyone that we're going to be talking about tonight. And we're going to begin with our nominees and actual winner of Educator of the Year. So a little background. In Lake County, um we as the school districts in Lake County are able to nominate educators in different categories um to be evaluated by a committee of educators across the county. And this year we nominated three individuals and
003we'll talk about each of them, but the one we're going to begin with actually Nick didn't win for his category but won for all the categories. So, would I Would you mind coming up Nick Sullivan? Nick can come up for a moment just to tell us a little bit about what Nick does at LBES and um we have some special guests here to talk about So, Nick is one of our paraprofessionals at LBES. He assists with all things and one of the things that is most amazing about Nick for us is when you ask him to do something or you need to give him a last minute change, he says, "Thank you so much for the opportunity." and reminds me that he's the lucky one that gets to work with the kids. Kids words, not
004mine. I'm just repeating them. Um he helps students with their social emotional needs, social interactions, academic goals, and really helps them access the general education environment and he is an amazing gift to us all. And Nick So, um as although I could continue to talk and share all the wonderful things about Nick, I think one of the best things for you to hear would be a parent perspective on why he is so amazing and totally worthy of this recognition. So, this is over. Please come on up. Hi everyone. I'm Shannon Overholt. I am Peter Overholt's mom. And Peter has been working or Nick has been working with Peter since he was 3 years old, so for the past 3 years. They've really gotten to know each other well. So, I had the honor of being
005able to write a letter um to Overholt about Nick um um when he was nominated and so I will read it for you now. In a world that can sometimes feel heavy with suffering and uncertainty, there are people who quietly bring light into the lives of others simply by showing up every day. When I think about that kind of light, I'm reminded of a quote from Mr. Rogers, "Look for the helpers." I see one of those helpers in Nick. I see it in the way Peter lights up around him. Every day Nick shows up for him and the difference it makes is impossible to miss. I see Peter flourish when he works with Nick. Even on days when he wants to push back, when he gives Nick a hard time, when he makes the work
006feel difficult, Nick somehow inspires him to persevere. Nick pushes him to do his best while balancing that encouragement, kindness, and understanding, helping him grow without ever making him feel less than capable. But one moment visit really stands out in my mind. After Peter had back surgery and he was still fragile and tired, Nick came to the house. Seeing someone from school lifted his spirits, but seeing Nick took me to something more. The moment he realized Nick was there, his whole energy shifted. It was as if joy rushed back into him. The bond Nick shares with Peter gave him happiness and strength at a time when he needed it most. What makes Nick's impact so powerful is that he truly sees Peter for who he is. Nick looks beyond limitations and recognizes what Peter is capable
007of becoming. There's a saying that the greatest gift is not showing one's riches, but helping someone discover their own riches within themselves. That is what Nick is doing for Peter. Nick pushes him to try, to stretch, and to grow, but always with warmth and patience. Because of that balance, Peter feels safe with Nick. He trusts Nick and Nick embraces him not just in a role of responsibility, but in genuine friendship. Nick's relationship has a depth that goes far beyond what anyone could expect. It has a rich dimension that makes Nick even more effective in helping Peter thrive. Children often don't care how much you know until they know how much you care, and Peter knows Nick cares. Because of that, he's doing more than anyone ever expected, honestly more than many people thought possible. Even
008the doctors once told us he would never talk, let alone stand in front of a class making them sing a joyful song while eating a pizza in front of an entire room full of children in the audience. Yet, here he is. That confidence didn't come from nowhere. When Peter's with Nick, the obstacles that once felt overwhelming become manageable. Nick stands beside Peter, not just as support, but as a steadfast advocate and friend. Nick gives him the courage to try more, to attempt things he might otherwise avoid. There are moments like music class or art when Nick dances with Peter or encourages him to draw, paint, and adapt movements so he can participate alongside everyone else. Those moments might seem small to someone on the outside, but they are transformative. Because of Nick, Peter feels like
009what he truly is. Sorry, because of Nick, Peter feels like what he truly is, a classmate, a participant, a valued part of the group. And Peter's classmates feel it, too. They are excited to hear him sing. They are glad he is there. Through Nick's example, he ensures that Peter's strengths are visible and celebrated. Nick abolishes the the quiet fears that many parents carry, the fear that their child might be overlooked or excluded. Instead, Nick creates an environment where Peter belongs. Nick also understands something deeply important. Sometimes a child needs space for their emotions to catch up with the pace of the day. Nick gives Peter that space. That patience allows him to rejoin the moment with dignity and confidence. Um The Harvard Center on the Developing Child says that the single greatest predictor of resilience
010in children facing adversity is a stable, supportive relationship with a caring adult. That relationship helps children face challenges with strength and hope. And Peter, Nick is that person. Nick embodies the idea that it takes a village. And in our village, Nick is making an extraordinary difference, not just in Peter's learning, but in the key ways he's grown. For all of this and for the countless quiet moments that may go unnoticed by others, but mean the world to us, thank you, Nick, for your kindness, patience, and belief in Peter. Um there are gifts that will stay with him his whole life. >> We're so proud of Nick and Peter. And across the county, I've heard a lot of people um they've reached out to me to say how incredible it is that uh a para professional
011won the Educator of the Year award. And it is no doubt um because of your contributions to children's lives. So, thank you, Nick, for everything you do. We have two very special people to recognize. And the first is Jamie Glover. I'd like to invite Mrs. Beta to come up and talk a little bit more about why Jamie was nominated in the Classroom Educator category. >> Hi, everybody. Thanks for being here. If any of you have met Jamie, there probably isn't a lot more that needs to be said about why she was nominated for Educator of the Year. Jamie works with students kindergarten through fifth grade at OVES, and she does it with joy and an energized spirit every single day. She also doesn't flinch when asked to quickly fill in for a kindergarten teacher who's
012running late, or to come and hold the door if we need it. Um, I'm not going to read um the entire parent letter for the nomination, but I do think parent words are powerful um because their child's voice can come out as well. So, a couple of paragraphs from the letter of nomination um that a parent wrote. "What I find most inspiring about my children's art class is that Jamie integrates meaningful themes into lessons, encouraging students to engage with culture, history, and social issues through art. My kinder kindergartner came home from school one day raving about his favorite artists, and we look forward to visiting the Art Institute of Chicago to see these masterpieces up close. Jamie has an incredible ability to encourage students to explore their creativity and express themselves with confidence. She fosters
013an inclusive and supportive environment where every student feels valued and motivated to be their best. We are so lucky to have an educator in our community who embodies the spirit of excellence in education. Jamie's passion for teaching and genuine care for students make her an outstanding candidate for this recognition." I completely support all of these words and see it each and every day. One moment I would like to highlight is with our fifth grade legacy project and the mosaics that the Alliance for Excellence funds. It allows each fifth grade class to travel to the Chicago Mosaic School where they create their own tile. The only school in the country that offers this kind of experience. We put that mosaic out for display as part of our of our fifth grade concert and fifth grade art
014show, and Jamie moved over to me this year in the courtyard of our Fox Den and said, "I just It never gets old to see them run up and find their tile and point to it and show a parent with pride what they've created." So, Genie, I want to thank you for creating all of these special moments throughout each and every day. We are so lucky to have you. >> All right, and we have one final Educator of the Year to recognize. A couple of years ago, our district was talking about how we were going to be able to handle the increased need for support administratively in the area of safety and security. We have a lot of parents here, we have a lot of kids here. This is a priority for us. One of
015the most important things we do is keep kids safe. At that time though, we didn't feel like we really were able to afford to have our own director of safety and security. So, we were able to collaborate with Libertyville District 70 and hire Austin Johnson, our director of safety and security. And this year, both districts nominated him in the category of Administrator of the Year. Come on up. I will also read all of the letters of support. Number one, because I think Austin would be annoyed if I did that. Um but, we had so much to say. There were pages and pages between both districts. Um it's it's This is a newer position, and to build it in two districts at once um with consistency and clarity and the confidence he's brought to our educators,
016our teachers, um in the in in our ability to make sure that everyone um feels safe cannot be over communicated. He's implemented a safety week. He's been instrumental in providing facility upgrades. We have all electronic door locks now. Communication has become more streamlined. Our parents are more aware of what we do. He started a parent committee in both districts. But not only here, he's also taking a leadership role in the county, um, helping districts across Lake County to make sure that we're prepared in the event of the thing that we don't want to have happen ever. So, with all that, um, we are just so, um, honored and so grateful for the work you do here and in Libertyville, and we thank you for your help and support. Awesome. We have two, uh, another two
017very special recognitions. This time of year, we want to honor the teachers who have given years of their career, uh, to working in District 65. And tonight, we're going to be honoring two retirees, Kim Novak and April Thomas. So, I'm going to invite Carrie to come up first to read a resolution, uh, award resolution for our retirees, and then our principals will say a little bit more about each of them. >> Thanks. Resolution honoring the service of Kimberly Novak for 22 years, April Thomas for 31 years. Whereas, Kimberly and April, after serving numerous years in Lake Bluff School District, have decided to retire. And whereas, it is the desire of this Board of Education, on behalf of its members, its faculty, and the community to extend its sincere appreciation for their loyalty to this school
018district. And whereas, they have dedicated themselves to the leadership of Lake Bluff School District 65, demonstrating sound judgment and caring compassion for each of their peers and students. And whereas, during their many years of service, they have demonstrated their willingness to cooperate with fellow administrators, teachers, and staff, and to assist the many students who have come to the district and departed during their tenure in Lake Bluff. Therefore, be it hereby resolved by the Board of Education District 65 Lake Bluff, that there be extended to Kimberly Novak and April Thomas as appreciation for their contribution to the school district, and as well as its earnest desire that they may have many years of contention retirement. Dated this 19th day of May, 2026 at Lake Bluff, Lake County, Illinois. All right. Novak, I would love you to
019join me. Give Kim a round of applause. 22 years. Today, we celebrate an extraordinary educator whose impact reaches far beyond the classroom. Kim, you've been a tireless advocate for your students, seeing their potential, standing up for their needs, and ensuring they always feel supported and valued. Your work in special education has changed lives. Because of you, so many students have found confidence, opportunity, and a path forward. Not only that, you are a wealth of knowledge and a valuable resource for all. So, when we're calling across the hall for a quick question, many of you in the office, coming in early, staying after school, we are going to miss you. But, we are comforted by the fact that you'll be able to spend so much time with your family, exploring adventures. We hope a couple of
020Disney adventures are in your future. We are deeply grateful for everything you've given to our school and our community. Congratulations on retirement. April, could you please come down? Ready? April Talbott has given 31 years of service to the Lake Bluff School Community, and this was her second career. I say that not to embarrass her, but to highlight the dedication and commitment that April has given to the Lake Bluff Middle School over the years. Not only is she a Lake Bluff community member, she and her late husband, Scott, also raised their two children here, Emily and Brooks, also Lake Bluff Middle School graduates. April is deserving of her upcoming retirement and will soon have the opportunity to enjoy more time with her amazing children and grandchildren. On a personal note, this is my 18th year as
021principal, and I don't know this job without April. April's ability to anticipate what needs to be done and also remind me of what I need to do will I will always be grateful for. April's institutional knowledge cannot be replaced. Some examples that you might hear on any given day in the front office include, "April, can you tell me where to find dot dot dot?" You name it, she knows. "April, do you remember the name of dot dot dot?" Yes, she does. "April, what time did students arrive and why were they late?" She could provide me that info before I finish asking. "April, how How do I need to order for Bagel Fridays?" Okay, I should know how many to order, but she still answers the question. I mean, thank you, April. And don't even get
022me started on copy machines. April and I have been through a lot of copy machines together. Of course, we have shared more than copy machine frustrations. If you include my years of teaching here at Lake Bluff Middle School, I've known April for over 25 years. I remember the day we met. I was a nervous ball of energy waiting in the old middle school office to be interviewed by Kathy O'Hara and the rest of the interview committee. Kathy likes to tell people she hired I like to think that was done with April's seal of approval. Thanks for that, by the way. Uh April is part of the fabric of Lake Bluff Middle School. She cares deeply about the students, the staff, and the families we serve. She's hosted countless wedding showers, baby showers, holiday parties, and
023heck, she's even hosting her own retirement party after the last day of school. To be fair, uh Emily and Brooks are hosting at her house. Uh April, we have a lot to celebrate over the years. Weddings, the arrival of babies, grandbabies, a successful start and finish to 31 school years. And of course, more than a few birthdays. If you're wondering, all those balloons packed in my office on April 15th find their way to April's front lawn on the 19th. We celebrated together at the times we prayed together. Uh we've also had a lot of laughs together. 31 years in the middle school setting will bring on some very funny moments. Too many to count. April, thank you for giving so much of yourself to this place, the people who work here, the students who attend
024and have graduated from Lake Bluff Middle School, as well as their families. We will miss you. I will miss you. Thank you. >> And I forgot to hand you your certificate, so I will come and do that in a moment. But now we have the rail celebration, which is becoming a wonderful tradition here. I'm going to invite Mrs. Tommy Aaron to please come up and help me celebrate >> All right. Hello everyone. It's so exciting to be back here today. And um I am thrilled to celebrate an extraordinary season of achievement, growth, and excellence um from our current Science Olympiad team. And um The first thing I want to do is give a heartfelt thank you to all people behind our success. Uh we couldn't achieve anything without our community, our coaches, our families, uh
025administrators, supporters who believed in our students every step of the way. So, I want to give first a very um emphatic thank you to all of our parents who have coached an event, who have helped coach an event, who have donated materials for students to use during the event. If you could just stand if you're here so that everyone can please stand. Secondly, I would like to thank the Alliance Foundation who helps support our program this year, which was invaluable. I of course want to thank Mr. Blackman and Mr. Jacksy who have helped continuously throughout the year and again are invaluable to the success of the program. And I want to thank the district. I want to thank Dr. Leali. I want to thank Mr. Khan. I want to thank everyone for the entire community
026for supporting this program because it is not an inexpensive program and we have gotten a lot of love and as a result we've been able to do amazing things. In fact, this was our second year at state ever. Um and because we won first in state last year, we were actually promoted to the highest competition level of comp competing in the middle school level, which was a little different The students actually this year had to compete against national competitors. The state of Illinois actually boasts some of the best Science Olympiad programs in the country, not just the state. And so many of the schools that we competed with have won nationals multiple times. But our heart, determination, and teamwork mattered most. And our students proved that not after a decade of competing at this level,
027not after 5 years of competing at this level, but in 1 year they could place in the top five in the state of Illinois. They actually everything the students schools that we competed with the top five because they are enormously talented programs. And I think it just really shows how amazingly incredible these kids are. And so I would like to introduce first off the children so they can tell you from their voices what this program is and what it means to them. And I would like to start with Sophia Vinas. >> Today I'll be talking about regionals. Winning third place at regionals at the Science Olympiad regional tournament was an incredible moment for our team. We placed 17 of the 23 events and the JV team also placed seventh overall. But this victory was not
028just about medals or trophies. It was about the hard work, teamwork, and persistence that got us here. Behind this victory is months of studying, building, practicing, and learning from our mistakes. Science Olympiad has taught me that hard work is what pays off in the end. Science Olympiad teaches us that success comes from dedication and teamwork and in the end all of our hard work paid off. Thank you. Next, I would like to introduce Maya Valente, who will be talking about our accomplishments at the state tournament. >> regionals and the top invitationals, we weren't sure what to expect at state. Then the long-awaited news arrived. Instead of competing in division A, we'd been promoted to the very competitive division of double A. This was a big achievement because it meant that our hardwork paid off, and
029we were now among the most competitive schools not only in the region, but in the country. However, just just because it was going to be tough, that didn't mean that we were going to slack off. We put in as much effort as we had put in before, if not more, and in the award ceremony, everything paid off. We won multiple amazing medals, as you can see here, and not only that, we actually won fourth place overall. This was a big achievement, and it really showed how much our team had learned and how much we had accomplished. I now like to introduce Claire Dotson, who will be talking about preparation. >> Now, first to start off, I would just like to say that we won the 2026 Team Spirit Award. And we didn't just do this
030once, we did it twice. Each time at state. And I would also like to apologize in advance if my medals make too much noise when I'm talking. Anyway, for the past eight months, Science Olympiad has been a big part of all of our lives. On school, weekends, and even on holidays, we were preparing for competitions and improving our events. There were a lot of long practices and late nights, but no matter how busy things got, everybody keeps showing up and putting in the work. All of that dedication paid off when we earned fourth place in the entire state of Illinois. And and I personally won fourth in Hovercraft and second rate to do it. A shout out to Kayden England back there who is my awesome partner in all competitions accomplishments for myself and Kayden.
031It took a lot of time, effort, and teamwork, but seeing how well we did in the end made it all worth it. And now I would introduce Sean Crocker who is going to talk about parent inclusion. >> One of my favorite parts of this program was the parent coaches. These parent coaches were members of our community who gave up their own time to come teach us the event from the the materials for 12 23 academically challenging events. Without parent coaches, our team would have been unable to have had the success that we experienced in these past 2 years. Without my coach, Dr. Valente, I would have been completely lost in Anatomy and Physiology this year. His extensive knowledge of the nervous system and the endocrine system propelled me and my partner forward, which allowed us
032to compete at a higher level in both regionals and state tournament. Now I introduce our next speaker, Cole Ego, who will be talking about invitationals and the impact of Science Olympiad. >> Um first I want to thank the school board for hearing us out and giving um giving us time to talk about Science Olympiad. I'm in sixth grade and this is my second year competing for Science Olympiad. This year I was lucky enough to get selected for varsity for Science Olympiad. Science Olympiad gives you a lot of skills for life. Science Olympiad develops skills like critical thinking, resilience, confidence, and it can form lasting friendships. Now, I'd like to talk a little bit about Invitationals are a great way to learn about what a real competition runs like. Invitationals are also a great way to
033improve students' confidence and performance. They can be a useful resource for developing teamwork and friendship skills. This year, we only went to one invitational and still placed fourth in the entire state. Some other top-tier national teams went to as many as four to seven invitational competitions. Imagine what we could accomplish if we only went to a few more. This scenario needs a lot more support. Use Through invitationals, you have the opportunity to make such a difference in students' lives. It's so amazing that this year I was able to compete on varsity. How good we did at state really is an eye-opener to show how much potential that this school has. Um yes, and now I'd like to introduce Nora Glancz who will talk about junior varsity. >> I'm on the JV team, and junior varsity
034is a great opportunity for students because they can participate in Science Olympiad, develop fundamental skills, further their academic knowledge, and develop teamwork while still having time to try other things that interest them. Since junior varsity is less of a commitment than varsity because it is less time-consuming and slightly less competitive. So, it is a great opportunity for students who might not be sure if they want to continue Science Olympiad throughout middle school. >> Uh now I'd like to introduce Maha Kota who will be talking a little bit about varsity. >> Hi. I've been on the varsity team for 3 years now. Varsity is different from junior varsity since the varsity members are expected to work harder and put in more commitment. Varsity is the team who gets to compete in both the regionals and state.
035This year we had 21 members of our Science Olympiad team attend state, 15 of them being from varsity. Together, the JV and varsity teams worked hard to achieve success. Now, let's view the bigger picture. Science Olympiad will continue helping us thrive as we enter high school. We will be able to take part in the Science Olympiad competition for division C. Learning complicated science will help us continue our journey of life as we pursue careers in STEM or science. The next speaker is Lucas Bion, who will give a testimonial. >> This is my third final year at Lake Quinault Middle School. This is also my third and final year in Science Olympiad team. When I first started, I was in a building event called Tower. When we started, we didn't know what to do. We got
036a cheat, and practically glued the wood directly onto the cheat. That didn't work out so well. And the next year, my dad, Mr. Bion, joined and coached uh Tower. Then, we used newer techniques and way less glue, and that worked out a lot. I would now like to introduce our next speaker, Gabriel Tong. >> Science Olympiad means a great deal to me. I've practiced a great deal for it. I've spent a lot of time on it, and I've obsessed over my knowledge of my fields. And that's why Science Olympiad has been truly the greatest thing I've ever done. I'm so glad I chose to do it. My knowledge of anatomy, physiology, epidemiology, and just science overall has grown a lot. And we are And these are just a few of the amazing topics Science Olympiad
037has. One word that perfectly encapsulates Science Olympiad this year is victory, not just because of the amount of medals we earned, but also the fun we did have, the knowledge we've gained, and the friends we've gained along the way. And I'm glad I've done Science Olympiad this year because not doing it last year is my biggest burning regret. Lee Meyer Hello, I'm in seventh grade and this is my second year of Science Olympiad. And to me this has been uh my favorite year. Um I feel our team has done very well and uh I think the best thing about Science Olympiad is the long-term effect it has on the people that participate in it. Um so, before I found out about Science Olympiad, every day I dreaded going to school. And once I did find
038out about Science Olympiad last year and joined it, I looked forward to going to school every single day just for Science Olympiad after school. And I would also like to mention how hard the students and coaches worked to put together this entire like um all these events to get them running and also um now I would like to call call Cole Niego. Hello again. So, I'd like to talk about again the lasting impact that Science Olympiad can have on students. At state, I was lucky enough to get a tour of the University of Illinois entomology facility. I learned about future career choices for my interests. So, all in all, Science Olympiad can help turn kids interests and hobbies into future careers in science. I now like to call up Maya Valente who will who will
039talk about leadership. >> I've been on the varsity team for Science Olympiad for 3 years and this year I was given the extreme honor of being team captain. This role taught me a lot about leadership and not about not a lot about science, but this is a good thing. Science Olympiad is not science, but I'm also very honored to be given this great opportunity. Being the team captain of Science Olympiad really taught me how what it means to step up and be a leader and lead your team to success. However, I wasn't the only one playing a big role in Science Olympiad. Science Olympiad is a team and that's a big part of it. Even in every single individual event, no one does it alone. You always have a partner or two and if you
040can't collaborate, then we definitely wouldn't get as many medals as we can. However, I'm actually going to branch off a little bit here and do something that Mrs. Vollmer does. So, she is here. She's here at 7:00 to see probably till 6:00 at night on a school day just to teach us about science. So, I'd like to now present her with a little thank you gift that a lot of I've heard all parents have contributed. >> Thank you. >> That was not expected. I actually a little and I did not expect that, but I do want to end this by just saying that this is an amazing group of students and families. And this year, eight of our students will be going on to high school. And I just want to say that when we
041first started 3 years ago, we only had 12 kids on the team. And eight of them are right there and over here. And they're amazing, and they've helped be the foundation of this program, and they've helped bring in all these other new, wonderfully amazing children. So, I think this community should be incredibly proud of what you have to offer and what the children that you've raised. And winning those two spirit awards is one of the proudest things that I think I've had happen for me as a coach, because it showed what character our students have. And they did this for an entire day on two separate competitions, from 7:00 in the morning until 6:00 at night, and that's a long time. So, I want to thank you all very much. Thank you for the recognition.
042But right now, if I could just I This is all I'm going to say, but if all the students who've been involved, JV and varsity, if you could just stand up, and we have to This is That was an absolutely amazing you guys did a stayed plus in my books for your presentation. That was amazing. So, that concludes our recognition portion of the meeting. You're all welcome to join us in the meeting room for the rest of our school board meeting. But, if not, there are cupcakes here with your names on it and you have some water. So, please stay and enjoy your amazing awards. Thanks for making Lake Lotta proud. We have one more recognition to give out. one more recognition, >> Happy birthday. >> Before we continue, we do have everybody a 70th
043birthday. We're super But no, happy birthday and everybody in his face. I know. All right, well, we are in open session, so we will just start Maria off the bat with my name is Jennifer and I'm >> Yes. I am pin for you guys. I love it. I feel like I'm going to walk in front of something that I'm not supposed to, but here you go. Actually, you know what? You can tell me to stop. You can do it, right? Um, okay. I just wanted to come and give you guys a little, um, synopsis of what this year was like for PTO. My name is Megan Hadley and for those of you who don't know, I am one of the co-presidents of the PTO for District 65 this year. Um, and it's been a really
044great year. We're wrapping it up and one of the first things I want to thank all the parents and amazing volunteers for making all the fundraising and events and supporting the cafeterias, every little thing. None of it happens without the volunteers. Um, this year we raised over $86,000 for PTO. Uh, that all came from sponsorships, donations, uh, pumpkin dash and pumpkin chase, spring social, and all the little small fundraisers we do throughout the year. Um, I'm really proud of the events that we put on. Uh, we were able to fund a lot of things for staff and students this year. We spent almost $15,000 on field trips and in-school enhance- enhancements for students. Um, that we got to fulfill requests from the LES enrichment team for our field trips, um, for most grades, K to
0455, with, um, Lake Forest Open Lands and we had indoor sports and stuff. I guess some of those were in-school experiences. Some field trips were in-school. Um, we're doing a New Balance Adventures field trip with the fifth graders. Uh, and all the events like Traditions Year and Time Travelers and then, um, other little things like, uh, Real Wisdom and other visitors to the school. So, we're really excited about that. Another $13,000 went to other aspects of the student experience like yard signs and red path shirts and bobcat shirts and redo PTO promotion. We even got to support other things this year at the middle school which is kind of fun. Um and then 14,000 went to staff appreciation events. So conference meals, teacher appreciation week, staff fridge, uh coffee deliveries, birthday lunches, all kinds of
046things we kind of sprinkle in throughout the year to show everybody how much we appreciate them. So thanks everybody for all the things that they do for everybody else all year long. Um oh and the last thing on my list is we spent almost 6,000 dollars on grade level socials for pre-K up to eighth grade. So every class had at least one social that some are still to come but a lot of fun things this year and planning all the fun events we can take advantage of the awesome funds we raised next year as well. So if you guys have any ideas or want to volunteer come to a meeting and send me an email. So Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You're out of the park. So Um I do not have
047anything to add. So we're good. >> Yeah, just one thing. The only thing Jay wants for his birthday is a volunteer for someone to talk to the audience, new board members. Thanks for everything you guys do. >> No, I don't. You got it Jay. You did it Jay. >> Okay. I got to say it same here. We have so many thanks to give. We have you guys. So many multiple times. You're up. >> That's it. That's all I got. Thank you to the PTO. You guys have been amazing. We appreciate all of your support. Um and we're just looking forward to a great end to the year. All I have to say. >> Great. Um moving along then we can get into the sessions and presentations. We have a visitor in Oxford. Nice to see
048you again. >> Good morning. Some of us saw each other way back in the fall when I first came to you, and others of us got to talk when I came to conduct the visit with the CAC folks. So, I'll go off script for just a sec. Superintendent getting to see everything out there, and also hearing the PEF report. You know, just a reminder that the knowledge it takes to make a great district great. It's a lot of fun. So, I missed that part of it, so we will say it's nice to hear all of that. Because I think when you people So, it was nice to hear you. Well, say if we throw in the superintendent in Boca, very happy, long time since we've been here together. And then that's the number of hours
049that are put in to make that whatever it is, that's kudos for how fast that's happening, too. So, it's just amazing. Uh, so, uh, tonight you're going to get a full report presentation. You have an executive summary in your packet. It summarizes even longer report that came the CAC visit. So, I'm going to walk through uh some of the slides that you've actually seen before because it was so long ago to talk about the process, and then I'm going to highlight things that are in the executive summary. Turning questions that I get. Um, so, we want to go and I want to just a reminder of the CAC process because without that understanding, the report might not totally come together. We'll review the visit, highlight recommendations and recommendations, and just talk about next steps because
050I haven't had a chance to meet with Jackie and Lisa a couple times when I worked with the vision group. It's just a lot of fun and that's what we saw in our work. >> Yeah. Just a reminder, you know, after drawing on a model that was developed in the East Coast, CEECA has developed this purpose statement as a group of engaged districts forming its own PLC, so to speak, to share practice and would share practice of in-depth And all those words are actually very important because it is collective and agreed, and that's that's not me coming in putting a cookie cutter process onto it and saying it's going to look like this. It is a group, in this case, uh 25 uh teachers and administrators from across our our other districts in the region
051who are dedicated to helping a child in that visit, um and the focus really is on not just teaching and learning, but everything that makes it possible for it to be successful. So, uh I did train members uh involved to be on the visit team. They were members who were trained the latest year, also. And then, well, from that point until the visit time, the host team identified a focus for the visit team. Um past sometimes it's been a disciplinary-based question. We'll talk about the host's essential question we can ask the staff. So, the visit team's job then help the host district answer that question. One of the things we focus on is don't ask a question you already know the answer to. So, it's not a good use of anybody's time. Have something that's
052harder that got requires a deeper look, um and that's that's what they both did in this case. And then, between the time the essential question is formed and the visit, the host team collects a lot of data, which still exists in a great place that the host team can look at at any time. It's a really cool document. It does include some standardized data, but it includes into of student work, a lot of teacher work, a lot of collaborative work. Documents, meeting minutes, agendas, assignments, assessments, a whole host of things that they collect before the visit itself. And then we conduct the visit and we look at the identified topic uh the A indicators all the evidence we have in the A indicators and then we focus, take 2 days of focusing on the data.
053Data in this case includes all of that evidence that was presented but also interviews, individual interviews. I got to interview some of the board members. Girls, I don't know if you miss each other. I apologize. Uh we haven't done one of these but we try. Uh we do focus groups with students, focus groups with staff members, focus groups with parents and guardians. We go with Lisa or Jackie or both depending on the situation. Uh and then a lot of classroom visits. And thank you to the principals or assistant principals for making the visits possible cuz I'm sure you didn't have anything else to do but have 25 people going through your buildings. We will talk a little bit and so And then after all of that both the visit team debriefs and everything and comes
054up with these commendations and recommendations to give a picture to the host district of where they think the host district is in the journey towards the answering of this question and a host of other indicators. Uh and we finish with a fishbowl at the end where six or seven of us from the visit team meet with six or seven people from the host and engage in something like a Socratic dialogue. We ask a series of questions and then we build on them. It goes on for like 20 or 30 minutes and a lot of those questions help kind of flesh out the final picture for me who's writing the report. And we get back, we finish, and we have a nice lunch and talk all about it. And a lot of people from the host
055team then go home and sleep very heavily. And I get to go home and write So, these are the indicators that we use that organize a lot of the visit team has from the evidence that's collected. It helps them shape their conversation and get very specific feedback, which you'll see some of them here, in addition to feedback being an essential question. At the end of this slide, you can see a descriptor of each of these indicators. That helps you understand what they are, but there's much more to it than that. But it's a little bit too much depth to be useful for this. And then for each of these indicators, we ask a question about the approach, the implementation, and the results. And these are important because in a school district, which is a really
056complex organization, different things can be happening And so, approach is basically, what is the district's intention about something? You know, what are they planning or they taking or undertaking? What have they communicated about it? What have they set the table for, maybe with professional learning? Okay? And then implementation is what's actually occurring in the classroom, on the ground. And those don't always match up, right? So, uh sometimes the district can be ahead of where the classroom teachers are, because it hasn't gotten implemented yet. Other times, the classroom teachers haven't waited for permission from the district office. They have a great idea and they're running with it. And sometimes that In that case, implementation's actually ahead of approach. And we see that happen especially in innovation, because teachers will grab the ball and run with it.
057District office is like, "Oh, that's really cool. We should We should support that. How do we do that?" So, sometimes those don't always match up, and that's a judgment. It's just something we want to describe for the district so they can figure out what do they want to do next. And then results is any change in performance as a result of the other two. So, we do focus on this, too, because a lot of people, especially in education over the last 25 years, really been focused on a kind of deficit model, like you're missing this, you're short of this, you need to get to this place. You don't have that. You can see this is not that model. What we ask is what is your current work work, and what do you want your next
058level of work to be? We don't say what's missing. Uh you can spend all day talking about this what's missing, and it won't get you very far. So, we focus differently. It's not an audit of any kind. We have qualifications in the audit. Uh It's not a checklist. We don't template it. Anybody who's done it, and some people in here who have done a visit understand even though there's a framework, it really is not a checklist because uh the evidence is different every time, and the people conducting the visit are different every time, so the conversations that emerge are different every time. Uh It's meant to be holistic in nature. It's and ultimately the inquiry is driven by the host district. We don't come in and tell you what your host what your question should
059be. We come in and you you tell me what what question you want me to help you answer. So, I did do the one-day trainings in the fall, and then I collaborated with the host district. And you know, one thing they kind of missed on this presentation is the generation of the question. I'll put it in there. I did work to facilitate with the vision guidance team to help generate that question, and then they took it to scale. So, ultimately, it wasn't even us just sitting in a room. The staff had feedback which question to fall on, you know, to land on, which is a great way to do it cuz they're much more invested in whatever the answer is. So, kudos to the addition to doing that. And this is the question that emerged.
060Facilitation, we started with the strategic plan, vision, the mission, the four dreams. We had a lot of conversation about those things, and one of the things that came up was this idea of responsibility, which is in your value statements for your students. And so, it wasn't so simple as are students responsible or not. That wasn't It didn't fit that way. But we did want to probe it into this question as it emerged ultimately. How does the learning here develop students' idea of ownership over their own learning? Because ultimately, self-directed learners is one of the major goals we all want for our kids. So, we're going to stop there. So, before we go over the highlights, I'm kind of skipping ahead. You know, after the report was done, after the visit, the vision and guidance team
061collaborated looking at this executive summary. They reviewed it. And then we drafted from I'd say drafted priority areas. Is that a fairly good way to put it? And again, it was a fantastic conversation. I thought it was. I mean, you know, the the conversation about It was just getting done, I would say. And it was also between 12:30 and 3:30 on a Wednesday afternoon, so I give a lot of credit to nobody behind that at all. And what we did is we really looked at all these combinations and all these recommendations and tried to understand how could we put them together in a way to get the most impact and steps we would to next. So, instead of creating just a list that we would go through, how can we organize them so that what
062others decided gets the most impact? I put things together that belong together. So, let's talk about some of the commendations and recommendations. These are just select ones that ultimately became the priority ones that our group made their team come away with. Now, you'll see in your executive summary, there are many more and in the ultimate report, there are even more. And again, you'll see it in the report as it's not that the most districts should go into, "Okay, we have our list. Now, let's go and do it." You already have You already have the direction you're going in. Which of these pieces of feedback can you use to maximize where you're going and get the most out of it? And so, this is what the team focused on. I'm not going to read all of
063these to you, but I'll try to work with you and talk about the ones that I thought really stood out. R is if it was a recommendation and C is if it's a commendation. Okay. So, the framework one, I'm trying to think of what is the one I really want to go through. So, I will highlight actually this one. It's a commendation, which means you're doing it, but when we come back from our school visits, we ask the visit teams, like, "What's your just general impression?" This is actually what we started talking about right away. The schools were very calm. The visits felt like, I don't know how to say it in words, but the students felt mature and you know, they were comfortable with people coming into the room and even interacting and then
064in the focus groups, and that just permeated the visit for the for the visit team members and that did influence and kind of informed the other evidence we had already seen. And then the other pieces of the visit. So, that was something that really stood out. You'll You'll see it in the report in the second. Uh couple of other things. so we heard a lot about collaboration practices that a lot of teachers have alluded to, but we understood they couldn't take place in the same way or in the same way. We know it's not exactly easy to do that, but that's why we say consider is the way to do it because the staff who was taking part in those collaborative data analysis practices were very powerful. They felt very good about them. It's a
065new way of thinking. So, you know, that was a consideration that we think was worth looking into. Uh and then this one, uh having done CHAMPS myself, having done PBIS myself, it can be a mixed bag sometimes. You never know. Across the board, evidence pointed to that these things are contributing to that sense of autonomy, that sense of expectation that's shared among the students in the city. And sometimes we think, "Oh, you know, the love for parents in this, but they actually do make a difference when they all work together and having shared expectations and uh interactions." So, that's the Uh you know, this thing comes up every time I'll just say in the sense of when a new idea that's related to something in uh district values or a mission comes up that people
066want to emphasize is start to figure out how can you communicate that explicitly. It's there in your values. It came out of a conversation with staff. We hear it even from parents. And so, going forward, what can be done to explicitly communicate that? Um and then the other thing I'll say that really stood out a lot was as people made visits into the schools, the visual communication of what's important was clear and present all the time. Sometimes we take it for granted, but students could refer to it and did refer to and teachers could and did refer to it. And so, if you don't have those, it's pretty hard to make communication. So, that was something that stood out. It has not stood out on every visit, but it has. And then finally, this one
067again is a really good one to hear because this is a superintendent I always hoped and prayed for this. You know, without being cookie cutter, that was not the response we got, but that there was consistency of lessons. Now, is it perfect all the time? No, we're educators. We understand how that works. As educators going through that, it was recognized and really having only been in the school for one afternoon and one school this one morning, it's pretty amazing that this came up as a piece of feedback. So, those are select ones that we highlighted because those ended up being the ones the vision guidance team kind of drew down from all the ones available to now focus on for going forward and then so forward. We did that on May 13th. Then the administration's
068going to continue to determine how to collaborate with staff. We, that's not my job, but I'm happy to always facilitate. I love coming here and visiting. I don't know how the team feels about me showing up to the mistake, but they tolerated me last time, so I'm always happy to help because there's a lot of great work to be done and a lot of lot of great foundations to build. And then we want to thank but I don't know if we really missed her or particularly because Jackie is now been in every actual visit there is. So, we got four, so she's been on three and most of one. Okay. She It should be a medal I should get. So, she could probably use her cell, but it made a big difference in how this
069communication is all thing. And then Dr. Leali has here actually showing the day to support them. So, uh She's been a big champion for CNIC and always comes questions about what we do to do. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions. >> And the only other really thing to highlight too is that we were able to be on the visit in Lake Forest also. It's got like 67 and 65 visits, like sister visits this year. We were able to see each other's schools and districts and uh there was some great learning I think on both sides. >> And we did have some We had two District 115 staff members on this visit and we had four District 115 staff members on their visit from both Any questions? You've been through a lot tonight, so
070Really thank you for hosting me and I look forward to welcoming you soon. Have a great night. >> I have a comment. Keep it up. Let's go. No, no, now I don't need to Hold on, it's Do you need that? Presenting and close captioning. Use my moment. Okay, there we go. So, I'm really lucky tonight because I get to present on three things that I'm really passionate about: paraprofessionals, summer scholars, and then maybe later on. Um but, I truly love to see summer scholars and that's truly one thing that I truly love. Um right now, we are registered at just about 60,000 participants, so we are right on track for what we usually um We will be hosting summer scholars at just about elementary school from June 27th to July 2nd. Uh it's the same
0718:15 to noon. Um we have our jumpstart to kindergarten program that runs. We have our preschool program and then our academic courses for grades 1 through 8. Um and our students with extended school year needs are also implemented within this classroom. We're excited that this year we are again offering art and wellness to our students throughout the day. Um and we will continue to have hands-on fun as we continue to foster learning growth together. And then, just have a lot of fun. As far as staffing, we are looking at having eight classroom teachers, eight paraprofessionals including Mr. Russ, and we also have four learning behavior specialists that will be helping to meet the needs of those students with IEPs. Uh we have art and wellness teachers that will be joining us. Our occupational therapist and
072art therapist will be one day each week. And then, our speech pathologist, I'm very excited to announce when you got the staffing report, it was blank, but just this afternoon, we were able to confirm it with an agency that we have that will be meeting the needs of those students. So, three days a week, um we'll be working with the agency to meet the needs of our students that have speech goals. And then, our social worker has also agreed to work um about 7 hours a week to meet the needs of those students. Previously, she wasn't able to, but has rearranged her schedule again for 7 hours a week and to meet the needs of those students. So, I'm very excited um and we will be able to meet all the needs of our students.
073Edith Barrientos will be our school secretary to help with all the administrative activities. Um although it says one school nurse up there, really it is this position is being split between four nurses. Barb Fox, Abby Sullivan, and Jennifer Getford, um and then Emily Lane are all working to ensure that our public school again so that our students are covered and their needs are being met. Um I'm really excited again for a great summer. Our teachers that are returning are super excited. They love it. If you have a passion for summer school, which our teachers do, it is it is so much fun. And I invite you to come and check it out because they have a plan and I'm really excited. If you have any questions, I'm here to answer them. Um I used Gemini
074created and I took a little tweaking, but it came out really nice. I thought it'd be better than a slideshow, wouldn't it? I love my little video. Thank you. Any questions? Thank you so much and thank you It's a fiber optic system. Okay, and then you have your proactive behavior support system with Um So, over the past two months, um we've held two committee meetings. One that has a very long title, our student behavior policy parent advisory committee, um has met twice. Uh the purpose of that committee is to review our policies around student behavior, student misbehavior, um behavior of students with disabilities, as well as our suspension and expulsion Um And a part of this committee is to bring administrators, teachers, parents together in order to really have three outcomes. First is to review
075and understand the policies together with the collective group. The second is to understand how we as a district and each of our school buildings implement each of those policies. And then the third outcome is to get feedback from parents, families, and teachers. Now, we all know here there's not a lot of leeway in terms of changing actual policy, but there is opportunity for us to receive feedback from implementation of those policies we're doing each and every day with students. So, Joe and Kathleen are going to review through the information that was given at the healthy committee meeting to share the work. >> Very good. Here we go. So, we're going to start off a little bit broad and then get into the weeds a little bit. So, we're going to start off with what do
076we know about the behavior? We're specifically leaning to school-based behavior, but behavior in general is communication. Everything we do or don't do is a behavior. Behavior is something we learn. Behavior can be changed and punishment or consequences doesn't teach the appropriate behavior. It might have some deterrents and it might be appropriate, but it doesn't teach that replacement behavior. So, how do we do that? How do we have proactive solutions to behaviors that arise in the school setting? >> One thing we've been working on for the past 10 plus years is we've been working with the Foundations program for the state in the school. This is really a evidence-based framework that provides teachers and administrators with information and tools to implement universal structures and procedures so that all students can be successful within the school building.
077>> We just finished the three-year cohort with our colleagues in Deerfield, and so we've been participating several times a year with the elementary schools in Deerfield, middle schools in Deerfield. It just wrapped up this last month with visits to the different buildings. Our middle school team visited the Deerfield middle schools, the elementary school team visited and we both hosted as well from our colleagues to learn how this PBIS implementation structure is working. From all of the the feedback we have, it's a very effective framework to begin our our implementation. So, what does this look like practically? In classroom, it's being able to set clear expectations and and rules, developing the routines in the classroom, the structure, incentive systems, and the ratio of positive to corrective interactions. Every time we have an interaction with the student
078as as a teacher, I want to have a ratio where I'm telling the student more positive things than just corrective things. And so, training and learning about that. What else is school-wide expectations? >> You may know that at elementary school, we have our PAWS expectations. PAWS stands for Practice safety, Welcome challenges, and Show respect. And at middle school, they have their lumber trades. Really, we work to teach common area expectations for the washroom, the hallways, the playground, bathrooms, all the wonderful places. We'll discuss later. We don't obviously expect them to teach the children the expectations. We teach the expectations and the posters are great reminders. Both schools had some really great highlights for the past few years, especially this year. For elementary, I would really love to highlight our especially our second year of implementing
079it. We had moved away from individually recognizing students that were earning recognition for their PAWS behaviors to moving towards the feed the box where they were getting PAWS tickets and then feeding the box when they reached the goal of reading the books, they earned a school wide reward. Right now they are actually working for popsicles, which is impressive to me because the other option on the table was tying the principals in the face. And they won a popsicle, so hey, that's a lucky break for me, but I'm excited that they are excited to work for it. The other big one is just really our arrival and dismissal routine. Um, I know it's late, but I do want to share that we were having some issues on the bus and through some data analysis and observations
080and actually calling our foundations cohort leader and talking through it, we were realizing that the problem on the bus were not because of something happening on the bus. It was actually the way the students were getting to the bus. They were leaving the building and running to get on the bus and it was really getting them all excited and a little bit wound up. So, we changed the policy the policy the procedures in the building to say teachers were to walk their students outside of the double doors and ensure that their students were walking to the bus. And when they did that, our bus referrals from the bus drivers went down, individual student bus referrals went down, and overall good behavior and students feeling safe on the bus increased. >> At the middle school we
081really had two large initiatives in this arena. Our lunch and recess procedures, we spent a lot of time reviewing ahead of this year. For those of you that are parents of middle schoolers, you will know that I'm pretty sure there's two lunch halves now. There's a group of students that eats first and then has recess, and then they flip flop. Having those two halves allows more students access to the lunch room and the space outside and a little bit more elbow room in the lunch room and that's drastically cut down on some of the challenges that we've had. And then also the implementation of our behavior playbook, designed to be a football coach will hold a playbook on the sideline with what their game plan may be. What are What is that for our faculty?
082So, we'll talk more about that in the slides ahead. >> Here are some of the examples of cycles. Again, they're reminders about what the behaviors are that we've already talked >> And here's the middle school, my my personal all-time favorite is the one on the left. Go flush and wash leave. Just a good rule of life. And one of the other parts of it is those got, you know, placed in the bathrooms at the beginning of the year and today they're all still hanging in the bathrooms. And so, it just shows that with concerted effort we get results and we keep working to improve. So, this is the example of the LBMS behavior playbook. This is the student and family version. There's also an internal version that we use for teachers. It just goes into
083a little bit more detail. This gets on one page instead of flipping back and forth. But imagine if you're a coach that's holding that play card on the sideline, it goes from left to right. What are the things that we are doing in the classroom, in our common areas? Most of them are go flush and wash leave. And then what happens as there are different behaviors that emerge. And we really spent time, and both buildings have done this, identifying what types of behaviors fall into these levels and then what responses should be implemented at each of these levels. We'll talk more through that in the slides ahead, but in the simplest way of looking at level one behaviors, things that are corrected by the teacher uh just fluidly throughout the day. Level two behaviors are
084ones that require more follow-up from home. And then level three behaviors are behaviors that a student would be referred for an administrator to provide support. >> I'll also just quickly share LBMS did this this year. They really put all of those on the one page for easy for teachers and parents. Um LBES took the lead for their lead and we followed. So, next year we'll be sharing a very similar document with you. It's already been shared with you since then. So, behaviors. When this behavior occurs, because the reality is we're in schools with children and they're going to make mistakes. And the opportunity there for us is for us to help them learn from their mistakes so that we can decrease the chances of that behavior happening. So, we want to teach what happens when
085inappropriate behavior occurs, how are we going to fix it? Um so, they learn from their mistakes, they learn from their missteps. We want to support students in because one mistake should not dictate the the tenure for those students. >> So, breaking these behaviors apart a little bit, uh level one behaviors are minor misbehaviors that are handled by the classroom teacher or supervisor. These are things that as parents and uh those of you that have been around little kids, this is the stuff that people do all the time and you probably do it a thousand times a day and can't even remember all of them. It's like, "Yep, let's take a seat. Need you to stop talking. Let's please, you know, walk down the hall." Like, all of those little reminders, maybe the the teacher uses
086their expertise and goes and stands right next to the the desk of the student that needs to quiet down or so that they can focus a little bit more. These are handled by the classroom teacher or supervisor and can happen once or twice or all the time. Uh the teacher addresses the behavior. We can track these behaviors as they become problematic or occur a lot over time, but they're things that just uh happen frequently and we address them. Examples uh are all listed. I'm not going to read through all of them, but you know, the the responses is what I want to emphasize here. The nonverbal uh correction, you know, the gesture, you know, please be quiet or a verbal reminder, positive behavior praising. Thank you so much for listening because we can go on
087and on with this presentation. Or frequency management, moving over the frequency count, the teacher actually tallying how many times something happens and so forth. Um as a note here for this, sometimes there's uh questions about recess in the elementary level. Students are uh in in terms of that active time. Uh at middle school, that's an opportunity where we can leverage a little bit more reteaching. >> So, level two behaviors are behaviors that are a little bit more disruptive and more impactful to the instructional classroom environment. Some of the level one level one behaviors that they are repetitive enough, they can escalate to a level two. At LBMS, the teacher would complete a level two form to indicate what has happened and what is their response. In most level two behavior situations, the teacher responds to
088address the behavior within the classroom and see if the student is working with the teacher and they'll communicate with them. I think in some instances, they may ask for an administrator to follow up. Again, this is not a very large behavior, but it's more disruptive than a level one behavior and it does need to be addressed in some way. It may be concerning to see under any circumstances. >> At LBMS, we we created electronic communication form to help provide this our communication to families. What happens is it's a quick and I'll show you an example Google form that a teacher can fill out and once submitted, we have record of of that instance, but also it automatically sends a message to the student, their parents, their advisory teacher. If there's a student that works with
089one of our specialists, a case manager, they receive a message, too. So, that way that information can be can be shared out. Um often times it's an update of what's happened and also the the resolution to that. Private discussion, plan for the next class period or so forth, but it automates that and also gives us record of of what that looks like. Here's an example. Here on the left side of the screen is real simple form. It's pre-populated, that way people aren't having to be chasing down emails for everybody. Uh it's a little bit of coding fun in the summer for me. And then in on the right is an example one that I actually sent home to a family that involved some uh you know, hallway misbehavior during an extracurricular. Not something that I
090needed to call home, not something that was super significant, but then more of that follow-up with the family. Here's some examples of level two behaviors and then responses. The idea is the response would be a little bit more, you know, a little bit bigger of a response. It might be, for example, you know, the parent playing discussion with the student. Let's talk about your behavior when this wasn't taking place. So, it's a little less, you know, in the moment. Could be a behavior contract. This is what we're going to do in class and this is what we're not going to do in class. We want you fully engaged in learning. We might be setting goals with students. We might have some lunch time consequences. We might have some, you know, temporary removal from class. They
091have a check-in with a social worker or check-in with an administrator. All of these could be responses for level two behaviors. >> Level three, these are the the bigger behaviors, the ones that are really escalated to the top, which require a teacher to fill out a level four but the student may be removed from the classroom immediately and sent to the office. Um, or if the situation warrants, the student may if elementary school, stay within the classroom and an administrator escorts the student to a safe place. There There is always communication with families with a level three first, um, and it's usually the administrator One thing I'd like to like jump in here on is for the responses to the behavior because again, it's more extreme. So, at the elementary level, if a student isn't
092completing their homework or they're talking back, or maybe they have sworn by an incident, we cannot take away any lunch or recess recess time. However, if a student is having a very escalated level three behavior at recess where it's unsafe, we at that point can have them spend some recess time with us to do reteaching. It would then be up to Mrs. Bane and myself to help make sure that the child did get some physical activity during the day, maybe going to the block to talk and teach about what the are and how we're going to fix the behavior. But that would be a situation where we could legally use the lunch recess system to help address the behavior. But again, it's not something that's punitive for something non-related to recess. We would really only
093utilize that if it's for behavior occurring during recess on the playground. Um but really we're focusing on re-teaching, problem-solving with our problem-solving team. I took the family green the family together for a meeting with the teachers and the students to talk about what's happening and the behavior plan. You'll see the bottom ones is on more extreme situations we have in-school suspension, out-of-school suspension, expulsion, and finally criminal charges. I have not personally gotten into the expulsion or criminal charges because I don't think you have either and we would like to keep it that way, but it is something on the table. >> Well, the long and the short of it is these are pretty serious behaviors and they they require a serious problem-solving approach with it. We want every student to be in the classroom engaged
094in learning to the greatest extent possible. But when when difficult things happen it requires a really thoughtful response. One of the things that I'm really proud of is when we get to a situation like this, especially when we're looking at a pretty significant consequence, the the administrative team works together to problem-solve and and figure out what that consequence is. At the middle school level, Nate Wagner and I are constantly in communication. What do you think about this? What would be the best way to address this? We often will call Tracy, we'll call Dr. Leary to talk through different ideas together. Just to make sure that our reasoning is appropriate and and measured in in those situations. We want to provide the best possible response with the lightest possible touch to help the student to learn
095from their mistake and and move forward in life. So, it's not all about consequences. We do focus on building positive relationships as well. I talked a little bit about the feeding the facts at the elementary school. We also have class parties in our classrooms, so the classrooms will work towards a common goal together and they have their own celebrations. We also have PAWS postcards where students can recognize students that have done something above and beyond and they get a postcard written that they've sent down to the office and Kelly and I get to read positive phone calls home, which is the best the best experience in the world and I love it. And last week we actually had 25 in one day and it was awesome. We also have PAWS assemblies and we get to
096do our PAWS assemblies, which is where the whole school are we rangers and comes into groups so they get to do learning activities together and build relationships cross grade levels and with different adults in the building. >> Similar to our communication forms, we also also have electronic buffer cards, which are quick ways for teachers to recognize and staff members to recognize students and staff members. We have an internal process for that as well. Uh really exemplifying our buffer traits. So, it's just another Google form. It gets populated, it gets sent out to the student, their parents, their advisor, their teacher, their case manager, specialists if they work with with those folks. And it's a really positive affirmation. I've had several parents that tell me they'll they'll print every one they get and hang them up
097in their kitchen. Um and they all have my picture that comes in the email, which is a little bit awkward, but just cuz I wrote the script for it. So, and we also have assemblies, we have drawings. We're going to get work to enhance those even more next year as part of this this parent communication. Here's a couple examples of the email buffer cards. You know, this is a recognition Um that was Tommy in sixth grade recognizing a student for displaying one of our buffer traits for being cooperative, kind, persistent, respectful. Thank you for being a leader in your book club and in general with the poster project. Quick affirmation and and response. Uh this one was from Mrs. Huddleston recognizing a student for their work in one of their Socratic seminars and in their
098their writing classes. So, uh sent uh and for those of you that were in the beginning committee, individual emails have gone out based on the block of cards. We're approaching 5,000 emails that have gone out, which is about 1,700 or 1,800 block of cards. And so, a lot of positivity going out. In comparison, our communication forms are about 107 under 107 altogether versus about 1,700 1,800 block of cards. So, that's the that's the comparison. A lot of positive stuff going out. >> How expectations affect how we communicate with parents. I'd say there's a parent student signs of registration. We have that at school night. Parent information night. Parent teacher conferences are a great time to communicate. Principal's weekly updates are another way that we communicate. And then just a sudden communication calling parents when something
099happens and letting them know so that we can continue to work in partnership. We wanted to share a bit about who what this looks like in terms of a continuum of support. And so, as we think about creating the behavioral levels, the signage, and teaching those rules and expectations, that's really at tier one classes and procedures. Every student learns these pieces of the expectations throughout the school. But what happens when a student needs more? So, we are regularly getting level forms about a student. Then a student might be referred to problem solving team by a teacher or a team of teachers who then get together to meet and problem solve and create behavior plans, different interventions in order to teach new skills maybe in a small group or in an individualized way. And we monitor
100that data to see if those level forms decreasing over time and student behaviors and school wide behaviors are improving. If we do don't see improvement, then the next step would be a referral for a special education evaluation or a special school for evaluation determine if the underlying reason for behavior not changing might be a suspected disability, and we would go through that process and potentially create a behavior intervention plan through a functional behavior analysis. In addition to that, if students really are struggling with those positive behaviors within the classroom and they do receive special education services, our new support classroom really is designed in order to support those students. So, if you recall two meetings ago, I think, when I presented about the new learning behavior specialist position, in creation of behavior and regulation support
101space, that addition was created because we saw that there was a gap in services at the elementary school level. Something we could do in order to look at what kind of services we're providing before having to look outside of our own districts in terms of like a therapeutic setting for students. So, that's really what our continuum looks like within our district for services for students who are learning positive behaviors and what happens when it's in meeting those expectations. Any questions for us? >> I Thank you for presenting on this. It's very clear and comprehensive and easy for some someone not in education to be able to understand. Um and the playbook seems like a great resource. I know a lot of that information is probably in the handbook, but having it on one page for
102students and parents to have the same material that teachers have, I think, is great. So, thank you for putting all this together. >> Of course, it's been really helpful. Some of our teachers will even just post the handbook or post the playbook in their classroom for reference in their in their clarity with students, too. And so, that's really been helpful and I'm I'm happy that we've been able to get that up and going. >> All yourself. >> Yeah. >> Have you considered putting a playbook um on our website? >> If it's not, I I love it to be. We shared it with our parents at our fifth to sixth grade parent night a couple of weeks ago. I know we communicated it with our families at the start of the year uh in our welcome
103to school information this past year. But uh I I would welcome it to be just up there and available for families. That's a good idea. Thank you. >> I think it's great that you included parents in this because I think a lot of times the parents in the community don't know what what what we can do and what we can't do. And so, I think clearly explaining to them is very helpful. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> So, um Um thank you for your presentation and now we're moving into our next curriculum update, which is STEAM. Okay. This I just want to close into the curriculum just hurts. >> Yeah. >> I have things and stuff. I think I'm So, in February Tracy and I talked briefly about um you know, programming and so who
104knows how visibly we'll talk about these things. So, this is an update from the information. Um so, again, we're providing an update in February to kind of clarify the building approach to social emotional learning with Facebook and the family approach. So, when we spoke um a little bit about how RULER wasn't quite meeting the needs of the district, we wanted to share what of the things in terms of standards that we want to meet when working with students. And so the Castle standards or Castle framework really comprehensively lay out what students need to know in terms of skills. And so they really break it down in between self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making skills. Now, Ruler did hit on a couple of these areas, but not all of the areas that we
105want to make sure that students build their skills pre-K through grade eight. So in looking at it, we want them to build more social-emotional skills, more decision-making. We want to add in some executive functioning skills as well because we know that's an area of need that can really tie into social-emotional learning and that behavioral self-regulation and student independence. So if we have a plan, I think that's something that's going to be all three. So the programming using Ruler is really a lot of gaps there. Okay. And that works in practice by teaching. So we're not going to have a lot of gaps in the district that you were just hearing about in the presentation given by Wendy Greasy. It's really that proactive teaching of really explicit skills and having kids really understand like how do
106you respond in certain situations that we thought like this was the same. So again, just wanting more proactive supports for students instead of their reactive supports, more practical strategies that students can implement, and also wanting to consider more leadership opportunities because I have a leadership museum program that I went to like a few months ago that is totally amazing. There were a lot of really good takeaways and the biggest one that we have is that we really need that program. But that providing more leadership opportunities for students within our district is something that really can enhance their social-emotional So in terms of our long-term planning, there are pieces that we want to keep in our So, um while we say that RULER's not meeting all of the needs that we have, that doesn't mean that
107RULER is going away. There are some really important pieces to RULER we would like to continue on in terms of um students being able to identify emotions, learn self-regulation and management strategies of emotions. Um and then we want to continue on with what Lena and Joe would I just presented in terms of that foundations work. Um in terms of school-wide expectations and teaching positive and proactive behaviors um to students as well. Some of the pieces we want to target in implementing um some additional pieces, again, would be those executive functioning skills. Those are really important skills for all students to be able to learn and develop over the over the years in the middle school. Um additional problem-solving skills, being able to break down and look at a problem and be able to work through
108a problem with a peer, with a teacher, with a parent. Um individual goal-setting around their own goals for social emotional learning and their own self-management and self-regulation. >> And again, I think it's important to notice that the pieces that are happening are really creating a comfort for your costs that the districts that it's just kind of a trickle down through the SEL model that is what they feel guaranteed throughout their experiences. So, this top recommendation for elementary school, we really want to strengthen that tier one support with that more explicit proactive instruction the social emotional learning and also the executive functioning components. So, the lack of alignment with the school-wide development which can be was in our presentation for and our recommendation is that the more explicit instruction, so we want to continue with RULER,
109specifically the individual emotional learning and regulation and then my bigger emotional challenges. So, there's stuff and practices that we think are really effective and really being built to build a social emotional and kind of well-rounded child. And then we also want to supplement and re-establish the program that we've used historically. We want to dig into what that program what the components that we feel are missing from RULER that we can leverage including things like mindset, local goal setting for students, that problem solving, what do you do when you see a student behave on the playground situations. Again, that goes to say kind of destruction and how you're going to help your child or how you're going to respond to others in a setting rather than just being emotional about it. Um and then self-management. These
110are again resources that we feel staff is pretty familiar with and we do have resources that we hope will be able to support kind of the curriculum and then um supporting teachers in getting their hands on these resources and really identifying the lessons that we think will be applicable to our grade level and students. And then for the middle school, similarly, we want to kind of continue to build on those skills, but really start to equip students with more of that independence, that self-management, those decision-making skills needed for middle school and beyond. So, on the left-hand side, again, kind of um discussing some of the components that Joe was presenting on before, the RULER report cards, more explicit teaching of classroom expectations, community expectations, the behavior playbook, really also looking for increased student leadership opportunities
111at the middle school level. Um and then more explicit instruction around social and executive functioning. So, we are discussing with staff how we can enhance what the advisory looks like now that we're schedule under our belt. Identifying more opportunities within our advisory schedule where we can drive that more explicit teaching of social emotional learning happening. And also making sure that we're continuing to infuse it within our health class. And say once a trimester if students are interested. Um and then that program or that um instruction will be a little more homegrown. We feel like we'll be able to better meet the needs of students and just be able to be a little bit more receptive to the students that we have in the building. We're really happy with the side of the castle standards. Leaning
112really heavily on the traits and virtues of traits and how we can enhance those within our students. Helping students understand organization and planning attributes is something that we've been working on lately. Just really making sure that our students are feeling like they have the skills. The self-regulation and both of them can affect the decision making. So, as we said, our overall goals for students is they are learning to manage their emotions effectively. They're building their own independence and strengthening relationships, improving their solving problem-solving, and that they're better prepared for their learning. We know when students and adults are able to regulate themselves, they're more available for instruction and for learning. If you're not regulated and you're not able to manage all of the things that are happening throughout your day, you're not going to be
113open and prepared for learning. So, in terms of next steps, we're going to finalize our resources, make sure that we have provided all the resources that we need to teachers at each grade level, and finalize those structures and and have that timing in place for teachers. Provide any staff training. As Jackie stated, we do have a staff member, our student support specialist, who's able to provide some coaching to teachers so that they know and understand which lessons they're implementing and if if there's not a resource available for an identified need, that person's able to kind of look and see what what we can provide in order to support students and teachers. And then lastly, we always want to gather feedback and make adjustments. And so, if there are you know, we get through the year
114and we find out there's still an area of need that we haven't hit, then we can pull and add resources. It's really important. Thank you. Giving us an update. And to the open MS schedule update and new So, I wanted to share the results of the survey that we conducted. Staff, students, and parents as we have been implementing some adjustments in the in the master schedule with the middle school. I wanted to just by reviewing a few of those things and I Uh, one of the things that was done from last year to this year was to unlock math and Uh, in doing that, we added an additional course within the academic day at each grade level. So, it's a reminder that was communications in sixth grade, MPA at communications in seventh grade, and then
115seventh grade course in addition to ELA in eighth grade. In addition to that, we added two flex blocks into the schedule. Those occur on Tuesdays and Wednesdays between 7th and 8th period. Um it's an opportunity for teachers to call in students and provide tier two support. Um also an opportunity for students who are not needed specifically by a teacher to gather eventually called a catch-all group where Mr. Jackson and I have an opportunity to meet with kids who haven't pulled. But also, students have an opportunity um to do a drop-in. Sign up and go see a teacher who's available during that time. If they know, I'd like to see this teacher for personal additional support. So, it can be student initiated, it can be teacher initiated as well. So, that's the high-level change and I'm
116just going to acknowledge change is always difficult. And I have yet to meet a middle school administrator who says, "You know, perfect middle school administrators can handle change." He thinks so, there's my final answer. She thinks so, there's my final answer. We want to at least review with you some of the findings that we've got here. We have some great positive feedback and also some things to consider as we move forward. Um first of all, participation rate among students and teachers, we had 30 respondents. Parents, we had 35. So, let's keep that in mind as we go through these numbers. A relatively small percentage of parents were able to respond. And we had 105 students. I'll also apologize in advance. I want to be authentic to the survey, and so these graphs, the majority of
117them were pulled directly from the survey. So, not super flashy, but um you had an opportunity to go through them, but I wanted to make sure that I did. So, on the parent feedback, question benefits from the flex block time for additional help and extended learning. Um you can see the vast majority of parents who stated responded favorably there, strongly agree or agree. Uh when it comes to parents regarding signing up for the new courses, all of them either had perspective from one of the additional courses or perhaps two or three if they have kids in multiple grade levels. Again, fairly favorable responses to each of those. A lot of parents indicating strongly agree or or agree. This one I'm going to show a different graph to you in just a second, but I wanted
118to show you the raw data. That big chunk of the pie there, that 53.3% is the did not like me because I I don't I don't know. I had a question about the separate ELA Wait. So, if I remove that chunk, it looks a little more like this. And you can see, once again, a large percentage of parents are falling into the agree or disagree. So, we had a strong agreement Uh just a couple of the prevailing themes when we talked about or asked parents to provide with some strengths that they saw. Many felt that the additional courses were advantageous. Uh there was some positive feedback from the big and it's a real world application. Some uh comments on the financial components that have been recently food cards, interest rates, even then some activities where
119students were challenged with cooking their future warm meals and budget. Students ran out of money some of them quickly and had ways to earn more, got themselves a job and earned some mad cash and it was it was a pretty rewarding activity. Uh the flex side of the lot of comments about the benefits of flex time really a lot of students and parents alike, teachers as well, but that was the kind of thing they were really happy with on the flex side. Uh as far as how that time is being used, I think that kind of dictates uh how positively a parent or student viewed the flex side. It was still a little bit strong because they only get homework maybe once a school day and come home with minimal work as possible. And for
120some students, the flex time is a life hack. However, that makes it a little more challenging when a teacher really does need to see them for some re-teaching or some extension because a student who really feels strongly about getting homework done may then be a little bit resistant to not doing Um Anyway, I won't read every bullet point cuz you may have had the opportunity to see it, but I just wanted to highlight a few of the top things. Um from the parent perspective, there's also opportunities for improvement. Maybe this is where I want to really acknowledge that on the one hand, providing rigor can also be somewhat frustrating to some. And you think that we've stepped up the rigor, and I will tell you primarily uh preliminarily, uh just from looking at some of
121our math reports, uh from the most recent uh math assessment that was done, it's very strong numbers, especially in math, especially in the seventh grade with what we're doing with some of the eighth grade courses. And so, I wanted to definitely highlight that for you, but also not We've added an academic class to our student schedule, and for some, uh they run into Well, there's uh the we're seeing we're seeing some of the stuff in the data that I think is really great. I do like that someone like that put in a new program, so I appreciated that. Um allows students to pick three people that they want to have at lunch. This is not necessarily tied to the adjustment in the schedule. I want to be clear about that. We did divide lunch periods
122in half. It's accomplished a lot. It's It would be supervision. Helps students get through the lunch line. It's just not hard. That's just the way they're going to run it. Kids look at it and sometimes do. Um Then just some conversations about the length of instructional time. Uh you know, we had that We had lost instructional time. As a reminder, of course, for three years, there was really minimal instructional time lost, but it is indicated that three years was >> I'll just interject here that I did ask this student and he's not back here to express his opinion. He said sometimes he has math three times a day, which could be hard because they'll have the two math classes and then the flex block that is math. But I would agree with you that sports
123pretty strong. We're seeing it. >> Um And just some some feedback about the transition to to middle school particularly the amount of work that this committee had suggestion about possibly doing communications and Um shifting gears now, we want to talk about staff feedback on the transition to the new new schedule from the staff perspective. You can see, you know, a a large chunk of staff indicated neutral agree or strongly agree. Um flex block effectively supports student learning. There we'll get into a little bit about one of the next feelings of that in just a few minutes. New courses again in the communications and PAA and creative writing. The majority of staff responded favorably to that or neutrally to that. Um should should be able to write staff. Um strengths and uh students responded kind of
124feeling good about it. The end of this seems nice and neat. There was some good feedback about the consistency of the schedule and students could pass all the feedback. Minimizing some of the disruptions of the day. There was some commentary here about the new courses specifically and being able to relax and things other schools can implement like trials, TED Talks, separate reading and writing focus groups, financial literacy. These are all things that the always hope that they can build in but don't necessarily have the time for so that was something I wanted to highlight. Well, and then of course a number of teachers have indicated wishing and having more academic classes, wanting to get more class time. Uh And there are also those who have always told me that hey, the the the period of
125time that we have the kids in the classes is just right. It allows for students to stay on task and minimize this and some of that teasing that can happen in the longer class time. When you look at opportunities for improvement, feedback about the 5-minute advisory at the end of the day, and I'll come back to that as we look at recommendations coming in. Uh but uh Monday, Wednesday, and Friday we have 5-minute advisory at the end of the day on the days when we have our flex block week. So, that was a comment made about that. Uh where some of the ongoing frustration and I'll tell you over the course of the year I think this improved. Uh but often competing interests for kids who are needing additional tier two support. And if you're
126a teacher who's requesting a student, chances are good that they may also be several others requesting that student for additional support as well. And so, it can be a little challenging to try and prioritize who's going to go where and who takes priority on any given day. One of the things that has sort of been happening in some of our team meetings or some earlier meetings in the week where the team gets together and actually talks about who they would like to bring in for the flex time. A little bit more of a strategic approach to prioritizing those flex slots and which kids are getting pulled to. Uh but that's still an ongoing process and something that we have really wanted to continue to work through. Uh Oh, starting flex right away. We rolled out
127the schedule and of course you need to get to know your students in order to have a little better idea of who is ready for tier two support or who is in need of that. Uh we want to know have happen a little earlier in the year than it took place a little later than we originally wanted it to. And so, that's some of the feedback that was provided by the staff as well. Um student feedback, here we go. Um Very positive. They understand it. It was all of them. Read it and strongly agree. Um some of the eighth grade students, the transition to the new schedule has been smooth for me. Um again, very positive there. The majority of them are indicating strongly agree. Um and then you got a chunk of kids that
128doesn't apply to you because they're a sixth grader. So, if you remove those sixth graders, this is a graph that looks Um brain smart slot to get help or extend my learning. Once again, kids really enjoyed flex block and responded very positively to The comments spoke to that as well. They wanted more Um the new courses, communications and PA and the new class. Kind of a completely even distributed area as far as their feelings about that. As I said, adding new adding more perceived course work and it is less even in person, depending on who you're asking. Um eighth grade students having separate feelings on that. Again, a lot of a lot of them didn't apply to it. So, when I remove those that are in the sixth and seventh grade, you get a graph
129that looks something like this. Strengths from the student perspective. Uh good time and more good time and more time to learn new things and get my homework done. Flex block is really nice. The PA being added has taught me more real life things that I can actually I can actually apply to real life situations and all the other classes apply. For sixth grade, communications is good for helping me to presented from the my class. We did just kind of generally as a feedback which I appreciate them giving it gotten world of skills something new is fun. Um strengths. Uh And I love the time the first period if let's do start the day off smoother without the rush. Oh I did that helping back with that. Experiences and feelings about uh NCA and just being
130a kind of a a challenge in course. Uh And students talked about the advisory companies. Thank you. Lunch time lunch time and dinner. Uh I like to join lunch groups way bigger than the simple one. Understood why they make sure they're included here. Um you know really a lot of it was more flex time. opportunity to go to school day that was a big part of the student being. So overall means block block was well received by students staff and parents. Uh many students have expressed a desire for more flex time. The mixed feelings about these classes both from the student and parent perspective some feel the classes are too long and others appreciate the fact that the skills learned by them and in those classes. Some have received an email refining the block block
131scheduling process. Um and there's some mixed feelings about the length of classes. The majority indicated that they were just right. Uh whilst indicated that they were too short. Uh Now for next year we're not considering wholesale changes to the schedule but there are some adjustments that uh can be made. One including the SEL advisory programming into the school day which we're working to identify specifically where that place might be. Um also reallocating those 5-minute advisories from the end of the day and adding one of those 5 minutes to the first period in part because we wanted to build in a little bit of time for the announcements, attendance that needs to be taken during that time, the pledge. I will say that we have had a considerable improvement in on-time arrivals so the result is
132first period is starting at the beginning of the day. We have a lot more struggling to get here on time when they knew that there was a period of time that was advisory versus even and odd days and some of our time is great. Um And so um those are kind of the big things that are being worked through right now. Where does the day end? What's advisory? Advisory, SEL program is going to go and really helping students to distinguish between what flex block is and what that advisory and SEL is like versus Do you have any questions for him? >> This is great feedback and input and and we're um we'll be a good source for a discussion and ideas that you can generate but I wanted to focus on one of I mean
133homework seems to be mentioned a lot of times and kids wanting to get it done at school and everything but on the same hand on the other hand we get feedback from the high school that students say you know, I wasn't prepared well enough to handle the added workload when I get to high school. I mean the high school didn't read the memo to cut back on the on the homework. Um so and also they listen to the CIC report about you know, students taking charge, being responsible for their education. Um you know, I think homework's going to be there and I think it's I think it's an issue of trying to communicate really well with parents that we're trying to develop in new kids the ability for executive functioning, for time management, for being
134able to come home and be effective and not just be looking at the TV or something. And and let them know why and keep part of why kids have homework is to prepare for the high school. But also, I mean, the parents have a big role to play in And you know, it's not the school that can say, you know, to the student, "Well, you're not doing a good job at home. You know, you need to do this, do that." I mean, but somehow if we could if we could communicate with the parents and let them know exactly the you know, what kind of the situation with the school work and what they're going to be looking at later on. And right and telling them, "Here's Here's what we see as best practices for um
135you know, creating a space at home for your students to do the work, creating a fixed time." All of these things. >> And and yeah, I really appreciate you saying that. That's certainly a conversations that we have with students. And when we ask them, we do we do we do we have kind of conversations about being able to do it Um and and we have some very honest kids. And they talk about the space and the place and the way in which they do homework and how they could be way more effective if they didn't have the the phone buzzing in their pocket or right here on the table or up in the room with the Xbox or the Xbox. And there's there's there's a difference between having a lot of homework and having a
136student who spends a lot of time on it. And certainly there are some kids that spend an inordinate amount of time. And we're speaking of students, by the way. Um the conversations that we have with kids often focuses on the environment and how much time they spend off task and distracted and that's the result that they're spending a lot of And that's something we thought a lot about it. >> Time management is just swamping >> Also, our kids are going to be involved in activities. And we're trying to balance that. You need to be able to do the homework and do the class and managing the time and also having the time to do the things that we know are valuable. I appreciate you saying that. >> Well, can I just throw out you know,
137the idea of um um putting out to the parents you know, just here's our recommendations. >> The other thing I would mention about homework is there's the end of homework that's assigned classwork that is for some students not getting completed in the time that they're being provided. So, it becomes homework. Um for example, a student that might spend a long time in the bathroom, that can miss instruction. You know, or go to the nurse's office or or just zone out and not stay as a student. So, the student that wasn't paying attention in class will then >> And and with I mean, with the shorter math classes, it's almost it's almost guaranteed there's going to be more math homework. Cuz because the teacher doesn't they don't have as much time in the class to do
138what they're going to do and build in the skills that they need. And just parents should know that that's you know, they're going to be coming home with you know, with math homework. And for every one they do, yeah, I I would be careful not to say that there's more math homework as a result of the change in the math curriculum. I I I would be sitting here and telling you that I would be sitting here and telling you that today. Um but again, the point about them and our being able to make the point on what should be made. Yeah. And then one more thing. It's not easy. It's very difficult. Hey boys. Yes. It's about eating your face. >> It's good to get your mouth out. I appreciate it. >> No, thanks. >>
139good. It surprised me cuz it sealed the building, so. It's like your home. >> You don't see that often. >> All right, I'm trying to go through these very quickly. The first item is the German >> It's a new fancy golf cart. >> The LVMH turf winning bid award. So, uh we put out a bid for turf winning commission of the turf for the middle school facade for next year. We got really good results. We did We got eight bidders and they were pretty wide range of bids. Um the low bidder actually was low enough that the architects was a little nervous about them and so we did a lot of reference checks and everything and they came back really highly rated. The conclusion is so um the recommendation is to go with the low
140bidder and to do all of the work at once. I was planning on spreading out the work in two different years, but just really it doesn't make sense to to do that. So, at $102,000 they are Tech Group is the low bidder and that's who we're recommending to Questions? >> What point is will be like involved during construction? >> That's part of the services of Turf Winning still. They serve as like construction managers to manage the the work and review the review it when they're done and make sure it's up to specs and all that stuff. We need >> Any other questions? Thank you. Time to take a look. New >> I think you needed more in the numbers presentation. I think blueprints are going to be next. This is This is the town of
141budget that we're approving now in May. And this will go on display on our website and be available for public viewing. It needs to be done for a minimum 30 days. We'll have plenty of time. The final budget will be posted this summer. And so, the town of budget is a balanced operating budget for next year. The small operating surplus actually will be transferred to the debt service fund to pay for um some of our leases. So, we have budget $29 Uh this year's budget really focuses on student growth and support and keeping up with the C. So, in curriculum and coaching, we're introducing a new daily curriculum in two grade levels, 2 through 5. Math two instructional coaches to enhance and support in teachers' instructional practices. We're focusing on providing more student support with
142a additional regulation room. Sports sound to support students and reduce classroom disruptions. We still using true north for continuing operations. We are focusing on math by delivering more math support. Some of the staff we already have, so we've got some teachers who don't have a full schedule and are teaching some of their special classes that we're going to be shifting to provide math support. And then we're mixing our capabilities internally to provide some of the services that we used to outsource to true north. Student services including speech pathology, adaptive PE. These services. We're working with other districts to share staff. Um As you know, um this is the graphic you've been seeing. Most of our property Most of our revenue is provided by local sources. We're heavily reliant on property taxes, which are about 90%
143of our funding. The net increase on our property tax will be 1/2%. We had a The CPI was 2.9%. So, that is the the tax increase from existing property. The debt service extension is going down a little bit and then the collection rate is also going to be So, that would have been would have been 3% of the increase in property tax because I'm assuming a 100% collection but that makes it only 1/2%. Last year I assumed 98 and 1/2% because that's what it had been for the good past couple years. And then this year we collected 100% of our taxes. So, I'm not going to go all the way up to 100% in my assumptions, but I'm going to go up to 99%. But still I'm comparing All these numbers are compared versus what
144I'm estimating this year to end up, so property growth will actually be flat versus this year because we have a lot of volatility in property taxes. Um we're expecting inter fund transfers down about 20% and then state funding to go down transportation reimbursements and finally So, we're looking at a very modest uh increase in our new functional budget. We are receiving salaries going up by 6% with the combination of some increase FTE and contractual salaries salary increases from the staff. We're seeing health insurance inflation go up this year. This is a industry-wide thing. Our numbers actually look pretty good. Uh only 7 to 10% many districts are seeing double digits. I double digits and we are investing in the CKLA CKLA curriculum and that is $70,000. Okay. Staffing. We're going up 2 and 1/2 FTE
145in instructional staffing. This is the two instructional coaches and the dedicated special ed person. That's 12 set by our early education and one classroom teacher just to be enrollment. Uh and then we're going we're reducing our instructional technology department and we'll be having two less FTE. So, similar change of 1.6. Um So, human people 34% education non-humans and uh So, salaries and benefits account for over three quarters of our operating budget, almost 80%. Uh and then you can see purchase services, supplies, and capital small portion of the budget. Our salaries and benefits are going up 6 to 7%. 24% for supplies really because it's a little bit of a small number. Changes can have a big percentage increase and that really is reflected on the $70,000 number. Current capital, the big project for next year
146is the generator replacement at elementary school. Actually we're transferring the balance from fund 10 to capital projects to fund that project. I'm supporting this year, so won't come out of operations for next year. And then the $100,000 of park flooring that we just approved. And I'm really trying to pull the access points and concrete work into this fiscal year. We'll do that before June 30th. So that will come out of the capital projects. Um so the net of that is that at the end of next year I'm projecting our operating fund balance to be 43% of our operating expenditures, which is hopefully within the range of board policy range of 30 to 50%, so puts us in a strong financial position at the end of the year. So just as a summary, we have a
147balanced budget. Despite a lot of increases in salaries and health benefits, we we're re-engaging our staff to focus on providing support where we need it and de-emphasizing areas where we don't. And we're we're secure from this position at the end of the year. Strong finances. It's time for the budget. >> Thank you, sir. >> I really like the the format. It's a really nice presentation I think for people to quickly and easily understand where we're headed. In fact, could you go Could you go back to the third page? The the simple thing. I I think this is fantastic cuz it clearly shows how our budget thing is in alignment with our objectives of improving the educational results, improving performance. Um And I mean, just to review I kind of I think summarize what we're doing
148and so for people listening and for for the we've we've created a a team uh now that will be um eight people. And it's with the the four and the and the um in Richmond and um we've got three and we will have three of them teacher supports for ELA, behavior, math. We have kind of a math specialist. >> And we have our reading interventionist, uh reading and math interventionists, too. >> Okay. So, you know, we've got this team and they're supporting focused primarily on the elementary school um but um freeing up the teachers. So, our plan is that the the teachers now in the classroom are going to be able to have the time and the focus you know, to bring these kids and give them the attention, specialized attention they need, those that
149are struggling, you know, to to to bring them along and that's that's you know, that's what all of this is. All of these additions you know, are there for added added support but the frontline teachers you know, giving them the time and the resources to really do their job. >> Ideally, every student. Right? You know, the ones that are struggling then even the ones that are need more we're going to be able to provide them and for the students who are solidly at grade level to be able to provide them with the experiences they need to grow. >> Well, yeah, I mean, my expectations are that you're not going to do all those students all in one year, but if you just >> You know, just >> bring along a few every year, keep them
150at grade level and then bring a few more on, you know, just so we're showing steady growth. >> It's the goal. >> Yeah. So, it's I mean, it's I like to simplify things. >> Yeah. Always very appreciative of Jay. Um He's an active member of the administrative team in terms of understanding exactly what you just said, like the educational outcomes and the give and take of resources uh that needs to happen so that we can be flexible and adaptable. That's the nice part of being in a smaller system is that we can make adjustments from year to year and make changes where we see we need It does take some work to get the budget to uh to fit. So, I'm very appreciative of >> And also the presentation of our guest thing is fantastic
151and it brings um you know, everything is clear as a >> I agree. I'm as good as >> Yes. Very thorough some of >> I still haven't looked into it. So, 4 years later, it'll be a special project. Someday. >> So, I mean, we are required by school code to approve hazard routes using guidelines from the Department of Transportation. And although we don't it doesn't really impact the transportation reimbursement, many districts reimbursements are tied by to the the providing bus transportation to kids who live on a dangerous road. So, that's really the main reason that Uh in the packet is a list of some of the Um the right now we have three hazard routes that are listed in the resolution and then kind of the background and the the approval how they come up
152with some of the resolutions tonight. And so, uh keep in mind when an educated citizen has a resolution, you can feel free to give it to them to speak. I'd see the board to discuss the resolution to re-affirm the existing three hazard routes. And then So, actually the governor made a mistake because we since 2011 for transportation and so forth. So, it's the new Thank you. Two. It's all right. Mr. Uh The next thing I want to ask >> The really big topic is no fault insurance. >> So, the property casualty insurance renewal was actually flat this year, which was good. There was about an 8% increase overall for the cooperative that we use. This is a reminder there's almost 200 school districts that pool their risk together and we fund we self-fund the first
153certain amount of dollars of the claim depending on what the payment is and then they require reinsurance above and beyond that. So, we are extremely well covered. We have almost $40 million in excess liability coverage. It's We've had a pretty good experience. And and that pool we don't even include um our school board legal which I think was we have a 15% surcharge just because we haven't used it recently, but um it it the the insurance market is there's personally improving cyber which was really expensive for a while and then the claims have not materialized or the risks have not and it's great and it's going to come down, but then there's also a lot of convective storms and things that cause the future storm. for a property so and then that we did well
154we did very well our um amounts of coverage and they're going to be mostly listed in the memo. It's really a simple presentation and you can just look at the approval. That's it. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. >> They also must have changed their presentation. It's somewhere in the book. >> And both of them have the illustrations in the in the memo which is briefly the coverage kind of shows you the buckets. >> Interesting. Thank you. Move along to your operating assistant deposit. >> So, board >> 430 requires the board to authorize annually the depositories where we hold our money. They're listed in the memo. They have not changed. We have most of our investments in the Illinois School District Liquid Asset Fund, which is managed by PMA. And then we bank with Lake Forest
155Bank and Trust for everything else. That's the biggest chunk of what we're doing. Most of our investments come from those smaller comes from those six. We do have a loan agreement with Lake Forest Bank and Trust that was also in the memo. We just need the board to approve the resolution as well for fiscal year 2017. >> So, question that. Is this part of our Does this get voted on every year? Um that one. You zoom. >> The agreement you have there I do need to go to the board to approve the automatic renewal. It's the renewal of the depositories. Only we look at the same the next year. So, >> And they've never changed that it is. That's always been that. >> Lake Forest Bank and Trust is our is one trust and it's
156local. And so, it's a it's a financial very strong bank and also it's local so it's this. It's local. >> And then to the study of services contract. >> So, we did We did the year doing We just got done with the first year of our J.B. of our second contract with RGB now. to provide you night custodial services. We're very happy with the services. The supervisor came back and did an amazing job. The workers are great. We would like to In our contract, we have a we have the right to extend it for up to 5 years or 4 additional years. So, for up to a total of 5 years at the rate CP- December CPI not to exceed 3%. So, this So, the contract rate basically renewed at So, last year, which is
157300 And RGB has already signed the contract. >> Any questions for Jay? Two steps. So, Thanks. Thank you, Jay. Um, moving on to our world language update. All right, thank you. Um, so, I'm not going to go through all of the uh historical information. It's in the board packet for anyone who's interested in why we're doing another update. As you remember, the administration provided a recommendation that we would like to sunset the French program due to the declining enrollment. Um, there's some information in there in terms of the pipeline and why we why we came to that conclusion. As you know, in our last meeting when we took the vote, um, the the vote was a tie, and so, the motion failed, and the board asked me to bring some um, solutions or some potential
158ways forward uh for not sunsetting the program. So, as LBMS administration and and I were discussing, we we have to say we know that face-to-face instruction and having that human body in the classroom is the best way to go, but due to the enrollment and knowing that we're going to need to increase based on our numbers of Spanish, we're going to have to increase by some Spanish instructor instructors. Our first priority in staffing this program for the future would be to hire a part-time instructor. Um so we would be looking at finding someone who can teach like a a point five French position so that we can maintain high quality instruction. Um as we've talked about before, if we're going to offer a French program, we want it to be strong enough so that our
159students feel confident going into the high school um with students who have had uh a similar program in District 67. If we cannot find a part-time instructor because obviously this might be a hard-to-fill position, um we would be looking at a virtual school option. The Illinois Virtual School is something that the Lake County Regional Office has taken over in the last few years and is actually a very effective way to offer courses for districts who can't maybe fully staff a program that they want to be able to offer. Um it is credit bearing, they are certified instructors, and I like the idea that it's scalable so that there are some years that we don't have students or we only have literally, you know, one or two students, we we aren't then having a full-time instructor,
160we can just pay for those seats and have the students be able to do it that way. So in terms of the cost, you're paying per seat and then you're also making some decisions about synchronous um and asynchronous instruction, so you could have one to two days of live instruction per week and then you'd be paying for the seats for the students. So it's definitely um more cost-effective than even a part-time teacher and something that we could utilize no matter how many students sign up. So, we know that face-to-face, um, you know, person is better, uh, but obviously then if there are some years where we have, say, don't have students sign up, we would still have that instructor. We would need to reassign them, uh, for those, you know, time periods that they're not
161teaching. With the virtual model, we'd be able to, uh, customize a little bit more and uh and it would be more cost-effective. But, so basically, we would be looking at prioritizing strategies. So, we would start pretty soon. We have 2 years before Mrs. Austin retires, but we would start looking at the best ways to recruit, uh, part-time teachers, uh, French teachers first. And if we get to that point, uh, where we don't have someone, then, uh, we'd be looking at online virtual school as an option. Uh, but either way, I do want to just say that we're always looking at our options. We will, more than likely, if we go in with the trend of enrollment, we will, uh, definitely want to invest more in our Spanish program so that those class sizes aren't as
162big as they are right now. We're up at, you know, 26, 27, uh, which is a lot for just those rooms, you know. It's not It's not that our teachers can't handle it, but the rooms aren't built for 25 to 27 middle schoolers, and so it's getting tight. Uh, so we want to make sure no matter what how this goes, that Spanish remains a priority cuz the majority of our students are choosing that. So, that would be our strategy in this. >> What would the virtual school like to look like for a student here taking it? Would they sit in a classroom? I assume they would still need to be staffed. >> They would be here. Uh, it would look a little bit like we did, um, during COVID. So, if the student we have
163sort of an independent study experience, there would be an opportunity for them to probably talk with the instructor. So, headsets and those kinds of things and yes, we would staff it, supervision um with a paraprofessional probably. Um, and I know that there's a little bit through that virtual school right now there's some reimbursement available. The paraprofessional and supervision that Deborah I don't know if that'll be the case in two years, but yeah, if it's still we would need to provide a space and a supervisor. And there's potential that we could offer in another language if we wanted to go that way. Um Yes, um I'm sorry to interrupt. So, we still have two years in that. So, it would be year three where we would be starting with the new variation. So, students would be
164signing up um, to take French not knowing if they were going to have a French teacher or have it be virtual. Correct. They are. So, we at our incoming sixth grade night we were um pretty honest with the sixth grade, you know, we didn't really go into detail, but just said that that's still an option right now, but we're not sure. I don't know that we could guarantee that that cohort wouldn't get to eighth grade and have to switch from face-to-face to a virtual option. Um So, that is hard. We're not really sure. Was there any feedback? We didn't really address it. It just because we weren't sure how um the board would feel whether this would be a supportive way to go. I don't know that we have really any other options. Um So,
165we would have to communicate that. I'm not sure if I would get how we would communicate it because it's it is tricky because it's 2 years. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of urgency, but obviously this is why we brought it up now because we want to If we're going to have kids sign up, we want to make sure they sign up with confidence that we will be offering it for Um and just knowing that chance we would be going for a part unless Yeah, unless we have a lot more Are there part-time French teachers out there? Um there might be. >> Yes, they actually support them. >> I looked up the numbers earlier today through the Lake Winnipesaukee teachers just out of curiosity. In the past year, there's only been since March 1st
166for middle school French position I'm going to like I mean Lake Winnipesaukee with the benefits package of the staff. Four middle school Spanish teacher in the past 3 months. Our future is in April 1st. 9 math since March 1st, 1 English March 1st, 10 science since January 2020. Two social studies since March 1st. 7 PE since April 27th. >> makes me very for that day. And then that's my side of the trade event, you know. That doesn't ever be another So, yeah, we would have to have another one to kind of you know, one year We would do our best. We would do our best to approve and I just can't in good faith say hiring another full-time French teacher would be safe. Um obviously whenever we can hire a full-time, we have a better
167chance of getting a quality candidate. We have talked about sharing. That's really tricky with schedules, teacher schedules with another district. This is different than I assume the other administrator because the schedules are they're just locked in. So, I don't think that that's going to be an option. With Go ahead. I just want to say >> When however parents decide or students decide what they're going to take, I think like it should be explicit. Like I'm signing up for the French but I understand that it may in 3 years or 2 years, like this might be a virtual >> It could be. It's an option. We would probably emphasize that our primary administrator but um but then there's a possibility. >> Just so people even though I know you tell them but just so people aren't
168surprised. >> Yes. So, I know I've been gone so you guys be patient with me. Um I wonder if we should maybe add this as an agenda item next time around to reopen a vote on this. My initial thought here is that when people were asking to keep the French program, they were asking to keep it in the way that it looks like right now. And maybe this is not the way that keeping the French program as that. Would be just Yes. Um so, maybe I guess that we reopen the vote. Put that down. Yeah, on the agenda. >> I think not for tonight. >> No, no. It'll be a choice. Um So, you're Anne's bringing forward a motion to put it back on the docket at the sunset. Um just to reconsider the to
169reconsider Yeah, just because then we would have our quorum of seven. and I would connect support their consent was I'm open to Please put to that on discussion and Yes, yes. Um remind us in June the interest level from that one's okay. Could you bring that up? And I believe we asked Nate to come in here but I believe we asked any comments No, I think we will have Yeah. No interest from the What did we ask third or fourth? Third or fourth? Yes, sorry. It's late. It's 9:36. All right, thank you. Any other questions about Lisa? I'm sorry you guys. We um I don't really have a Turn North update. Yeah. I don't know. Everything's It's going It's still happening. >> No, it's really good. >> And we have that. We cancelled our May
170governing board meeting. We'll have one in June and reorganize and >> Thank you again. >> Yeah. >> Uh press packet, we have a new press packet of policies. The policy committee was able to meet. Please review. A lot of them are just legal updates and value reviews. There's a couple of questions that do impact the board. Um one, first one really doesn't impact us. We will continue. It's about posting where we post our meetings. We would We would We normally post them here um and then if we post they meet somewhere else, we have to post it there too, we just would continue to do that. Post here and then wherever we Yeah, and then the same goes but that we will have those town community town conversations and so that would be in a
171different location. We will make sure we post it there as well. They are answered and we'll just continue to post it at the district's offices Yeah, and then the second one is actually board meeting procedures. So this one is actually of interest to the board. There's a question about whether the board wants to add a little bit more restrictions on um voting without roll call and in the policy discussion the policy committee we talked about most votes regardless of whether there's a financial component we do a roll call anyway and we thought like it's probably a good idea to just do a roll call for all action items. That way then everyone has their voice heard and and that voice vote just doesn't get confused on what we should be or shouldn't be doing with
172a voice vote. So we're recommending that we use a roll call vote for Question three I'm sorry the the 5.250 is really just a demographic question. We have more than 50 employees so we would be answering 50 or more. It's okay. Um other than that just please review the rest of the policy. You want to go over it? >> Do you? >> Thank you so much. You know, moving on to our action items It's less people in here so I know somebody was really carrying it. All right, so if we could start with our ESY summer school staffing approval May I have a motion to approve the 2026-2027 ESY summer staffing plan as just presented by Kathleen T. So Any discussion? Lauren Please call the Laura Brickson Yes. Dan Hill Yes. Andrew Carlson Carrie Stover
173Hill Yes. Richard Driver Yes. Lauren Hirsch, yes. Tim Penich Yes. Great. The motion has passed. Moving ahead to approval the LBS one position for LBE SBE support We have a motion to approve the LBS one position as presented by Tracy Mark at the April 14th Approved. Second. Any discussion? Lauren Please call the Tim Penich Yes. Lauren Hirsch, yes. Andrew Carlson Dan Hill Yes. Carrie Stover Hill Richard Driver Yes. Yes. Great. The motion has passed. All right. May I have a motion to approve the top winning bid as just presented by Jacob? So moved. Second. Any discussion? First Lauren Hirsch, yes. Richard Driver Yes. Dan Hill Yes. Andrew Carlson Carrie Stover Hill Yes. Tim Penich Yes. Lauren Hirsch Yes. The motion has passed. Um D, our hazardous routes approval I have a motion to approve the
174hazardous routes as just presented by Jacob. So moved. Second. Any discussion? Carrie Stover Hill Yes. Laura Brickson Yes. Tim Penich Yes. Dan Hill Yes. Lauren Hirsch, yes. Andrew Carlson Richard Driver Yes. It's passed. Um property casualty insurance approval May I have a motion to approve the property casualty insurance as just presented by Jacob? So moved. Second. Any discussion? Lauren, please call the Dan Hill Yes. Laura Brickson Yes. Tim Penich Yes. Andrew Carlson Richard Driver Yes. Carrie Stover Hill Lauren Hirsch, yes. The motion >> It's passed. I want to authorize these depositories approval. May I have a motion to approve the authorized depositories as just presented by Jay? >> So moved. >> Second. >> Any discussion? Lauren >> Laura Brickston >> Yes. >> Richard Driver >> Yes. >> Dan Hill >> Yes. >> Andrew Carson >>
175Yes. >> Harris Andel >> Yes. >> Lauren Hersch >> Yes. >> Tim Penich >> Yes. >> It's passed. Moving to D the R J B contract extension approval. May I have a motion to approve the R J B contract extension as just presented by Jay? >> So moved. >> Second. >> Great. Any discussion? Great. Lauren >> Tim Penich >> Yes. >> Laura Brickston >> Yes. >> Dan Hill >> Yes. >> Andrew Carson >> Yes. >> Harris Andel >> Yes. >> Richard Driver >> Yes. >> All right. Bear with me. We have the personnel report plus the uh uh summer school. I'm thinking of words. Uh summer school. Okay. So, here we go. Starting with the personnel report for May 19th, 2026. We have a non-licensed new hire, Christina Donahue. She will be a new secretary
176at LBMS, effective date 8 10 2026, replacing April Thomas at a salary rate of $23 per hour for 196 days. Two resignations, Dale Mitch Mitch a paraprofessional at LBES, uh effective date 6 8 2026. And Laura Perugini, a paraprofessional library assistant at LBES for effective date 6 8 2026. Three new hires. Joseph Heddinger, he will be the new health teacher at LBMS, effective date 8 20 2026, replacing Tara Polumbo at a annual salary rate of $76,329 at the MA10 salary schedule placement. We have Quinn Welder, course instructor, LBMS, effective 8/20/2026, placing Ann Sik Sik Divich. I can do it at 8:00 and you just can't do that. Um annual salary sal- salary rate of $58,500 um salary schedule placement MA1. And Kelly Schmiegel, she is the new PLA Teaching and Learning Specialist. Building will be
177dist- district-wide, effective 8/20/2026, new position, annual salary of $95,036 and the MA plus 15. We have four change of assignments. Andrew Robin is a occupational therapist at LBES, effective 8/24/2026, she'll go from 0.9 to 1.0 at $120.24 per hour. Emmett Planery, social studies teacher at LBMS, effective 8/24/2026, uh replacing Helen Moore, $55,105 at the BA salary schedule placement. Amanda Cannon will be to a math teaching and learning specialist district-wide, effective 8/24/2026 at $90,536 and the MA plus 30. And Todd Battaglia, long-term sub, eighth grade special eighth grade language arts at LBMS, effective 5/18/2026, covering Anna Growth at $284 a day. And two FMLA's, we have Allison Shepherd, a first grade teacher at LBES, effective 9/11/2026 to 11/30/2026, and Anna Growth and eighth grade language arts at LBMS, 5/18/2026 to Anna Chapman. And now, summer school.
178Um the first will be in 68 hours and these will be teachers. Allison Shepherd is a teacher for grades 1 and 2 at $50 an hour. Oh, that's what it is. Okay, sorry. 68 hours at $50 an hour. Here are the teachers on that list. Allison Shepherd, teacher for first and second. Here are the kindergarten teacher for JSK. Christine Souk, teacher Megan Kelly, teacher for third. Erin Maloney, teacher for four and five. Tommy Earons, teacher for six, seven, and eight. Tina Bui, teacher for one and two. Ryan Reagan, a teacher for wellness. Jamie Glover, teacher for art. Anita Swan Munozin, teacher pre-K. Kate Whitehead will also be teacher for LVS1 pre-K. Lynn Laser, a teacher at LVS1 ESY. Ryan Werken, teacher at and L LVS1 ESY. Brett Kramer, teacher at LVS1 ESY. Jamie Gold, teacher
179at LVS1 ESY. The next group will be at regular pay for 64 hours. It includes Nick Schlicting, Schlicting, Schlicting. Eleanor Sims, paraprofessional. Michael Graham, paraprofessional. Macy Classen, paraprofessional. Gretchen Pomeroy, paraprofessional. Heather MacMarrow Cole, paraprofessional. I guess they're all paraprofessionals. Jeff Parent, Jeff Jacobs, Diana Espinoza. Okay, moving into the nurses. Um like Kathleen Setter, before sharing the role. Jennifer Dinner, she will be at regular pay for 28 hours. Emily Lane, $40 an hour for 12 hours. Beth Sullivan, regular pay for 12 hours. Barb Fox, regular pay for eight hours. And then moving into Andrew Robin, is an occupational therapist at $50 an hour for 16 hours, added today a speech and language for $50 an hour for 40 hours. John PT will be doing social work for $50 an hour for 20 hours. Miss Berentos is
180our secretary and our regular secretary we pay for 75 hours. May I have a motion to approve the personnel report and it's only a small supplementary report that has just been presented. >> So moved. >> Any discussion? Here from Brown? >> Yes. Yes. >> Grayson? >> Yes. >> Ford Harris? Yes. >> Yes. >> And Hill? >> Yes. >> Brown? >> Yes. >> The motion's passed. Moving to the consent agenda, which includes the following open session meeting minutes from the April 28th regular board meeting and the May 12th policy committee meeting, the treasurer's report, the info plus report, the bills report, and the May I have a motion to approve the consent agenda for May 19th, 2026 as presented by administration. >> So moved. >> Second. Any discussion on the consent agenda or would you like
181anything pulled out for a separate vote? Hearing nothing, Ms. Lord, please call the vote. Bridget Driver? >> Yes. >> Grayson? Yes. Ford Harris? Yes. Kim Bennett? >> Yes. >> And Hill? >> Yes. >> Laura Grayson? >> Yes. >> Yolanda Brown? Okay. Moving to our Bill 340 requests at our last regular board meeting. This FOIA section of the agenda is simply a report item. We do not require approval, but do you have any questions for administration? Before we move past that point. All right, we have our public comments. Um we're welcoming anybody for public comment. >> Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. You You have to are seriously 17 years Sorry, question. No, no, no, no. She's getting happy. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Mrs. Katie James. I'm a first grade Yes.
182I also have a rising kindergarten We have a third and And I'm speaking tonight with our Northwestern University Town Development's recommendations regarding advanced learning services at the middle school. I remember that report a few years ago. Um But first I want to begin by saying thank you for taking the initiative to review the previous model of the immersion services in our district. When Northwestern delivered its report in 2024, it recommended significant changes to the delivery of services in our district and rather than just ignore that or set it on a shelf, you know, acknowledge it, the board and the administration got to work and made significant changes. So, today our schools reflect reflect the vision that's laid out in the report. We have a core enrichment curriculum for all students. We have an accelerated math
183pathway now in fourth and fifth grade that will align through our middle school. And this year we have tier three level supports provided in fifth grades three through five using a plot model that delivers targeted services in our elementary schools before we had a boundary bubble. That's a systemic change and it deserves recognition. And as parents of two students who are receiving the gifted services, I want to thank you all for making these changes. And I want to assure you that the advanced learning program has been a wonderful success and has added significant value to our children's education. But I'm also here tonight to ask you not to stop halfway. The same North Group that guided our elementary transformation also offered recommendations at the middle school level that have not yet been fully realized. While
184our accelerated math pathways are now well aligned between elementary, middle, and high school, same cannot be said for ELA. For ELA, there's a gap in the delivery of advanced learning services at the middle school level. That is why the report recommended an accelerated course model for ELA. It also made the same recommendations for the science, noting that parents among stakeholders for inclusion of advanced programs in the science subject And finally, the report called for implementation of the tier level services that are currently being provided at the elementary level in the middle school level, as well. And uh despite the recommendations right now, it's my understanding there are no advanced ELA curriculum at the middle school. So, why is this gap in advanced learning programs? Because the data we have in the report showed us that
185cohort achievement at the elementary level was declining over time. A symptom, the reviewers wrote, of undergrowth relative to the adverse projections. If we challenge these students in elementary school, but then return them to a one-size-fits-all environment in the middle school, we risk losing the very growth that we worked so hard to build. So, I respectfully urge this institution and the board to commit to the full implementation of the remaining recommendations at the middle school. Advanced course offerings in ELA, and science, and social studies, along with tier three intensive supports for those students who are outliers working beyond their grade level. Every student deserves to be matched with the right level of challenge at every grade. That need does not pause between 6th and 8th grade. And neither should our commitment to meeting it. I hope
186you know this is worth fighting for. But I really do need these comments because I honestly don't think they're taking me seriously. That program and my kids are suffering. So, I'm sorry. My son is >> Is there a one minute one more minute? >> Dear Lake Bluff District 65 Board of Education, my name is Morgan and I'm at the office and I'm currently a freshman at Lake Bluff High School. Before that, I was a Black Cat at Lake Bluff Middle School and a Fox at Lake Bluff Elementary School. At the District 65 schools, the mission is to ensure academic achievement and personal growth for all students through innovative and engaging educational opportunities. Even though this mission already applies to all students, I can't help but think of the students who especially need these innovative and
187engaging educational opportunities to be consistent and dependable throughout their education. During my experience in the District 65 schools, especially at the middle school, I began to notice that some students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder weren't always receiving the support, understanding, or empathy empathy that they needed from their teachers. As of July 1st, 2024, the Illinois State Board of Education changed the mandatory ADHD training requirement from once every two years to once every five years unless changed by local school districts. ADHD is a tremendously complex condition and scientists are still discovering new information about how its different presentations affect students and which strategies are more effective in supporting them. It is common for students with ADHD to need more resources and guidance to improve both behaviorally and academically. The role educators play in that support process
188is extremely important. Frequent training on ADHD would allow educators to discover more up-to-date innovative strategies for supporting their students more effectively. It would also help teachers' understanding of the disorder, encouraging greater empathy and more effective responses in the classroom. According to Lake Bluff School District 65 policy 5:100, titled Staff Development Program, the ADHD training course is also only required once every 5 years. Since many of the training requirements line up with educators' license renewal, it is significantly more convenient to track and manage the completion of these requirements. But should this practicality outweigh the quality of education for students with ADHD? District 65 Board of Education, I respectfully ask you to establish a district-wide policy that requires staff to review the current best practices regarding identification and treatment of ADHD once every 2 years. Whether it's
189through an organized online course, professional development workshop, or a presentation during a teacher institute day, additional training and updated information are needed to better support students throughout their education. I would be grateful for the opportunity to discuss this issue further or answer any questions. Sincerely, Morgan Pappadakis. >> Thank you, Amy. Are there any more Okay. So, may I have a motion to adjourn and turn the May 19th Board of Education meeting at 9:56 p.m. >> So moved. >> I mean, a motion. >> Thank you. >> Sorry. >> Um all in favor? >> Aye. Any opposed? You better or not. All right, the meeting's adjourned. Thank you, guys, for making it a late night. >> You're not a parent. >> You're a happy parent. That's it. Thank you for spending your night with us. >> I'm
190stranded. I need you to take me home. I would love to. You're not a stranger. kid.