District 96 Board of Education Committee of the Whole Meeting 09-01-21

001[Music] all right tonight is wednesday september 1st 2021 this is the committee of the whole meeting for district 96 school board uh kathy can you call the room miss murphy here mr marble here mr varsity president mr mayor here this gun here miss cliver here and mr hunt here performance present okay great uh at this time is there any public comment no there is not all right uh then next are there any uh board member proposed changes to the agenda no wait wrong way let's say ramesh is here he's first i got that right this time okay i knew we all made that comment last time i wanted to make sure we lived up to it yeah but no there's no candidate these first-year facilities okay great uh then we'll move on to committee reports

002the first one is the facilities committee i think we're deferring this to ramesh's report sure simply talk about the progress we have on construction uh over the last month and a half at both central and hollywood so the most challenging project was central we started off with well there's excellent news on that front we have our occupancy on that we passed all the tests that were required the fire marshal's team was trained on the new system today and so was the school district's engineers so we're making really good progress on that one too it's close out now we had to close our documentation uh at this time and as i mentioned last time we have almost 80 thousand dollars coming back to us we did not use most of the allowance money the only allowance

003money that we used was for a failed valve at a hauser which we had talked about uh earlier and that was replaced was a really good move that we did because if that valve had failed had failed during the school year the school would have to be shut down so we replaced that in time and we drew the money from our allowance and we should be getting that significant money as a refund back so that's i'm the and um the contractor for that project was tandem excellent contractor did a very good job very well managed project on top of things at all times so that was the first part moving on to hollywood hollywood the challenge out there was that even though the project was small it had all the trades that would be encompassing

004a much larger project so you had masonry mechanical electrical plumbing at all the trades coming in and right now we face enormous supply chain constraints in the sense that the schedule that was given to us at the beginning of the project in april and may which indicated for example that you had lead times of 12 and 16 weeks for critical items like the rooftop unit it doubled it ended up being 20 24 weeks in fact our rooftop unit is arriving tomorrow morning at 6 a.m it should have been here mid july so the reason for it the contractors the subcontractors actually told us was it's not just one part of the rooftop unit there could be controls that could be missing it would be coming from a different vendor so there's no point putting the

005main unit in if you're not getting the controls if you get the controls then you need to make sure the electrical is coordinated with it so there was a lot of coordination that had to happen so the problem that we face with hollywood has been supply chain related number one and number two is if you recall we talked about the fact that we had an environmental issue out there which we dealt with on an emergency basis and we are looking to close that uh project out right now which was uh to get an epa clearance that and a no further action required letter based on the removal of the pipes that contain the hazardous fluids all that has been disposed off suitably and we hope to get an epa letter within about 60 to 90

006days our environmental consultants on that project right now working on that um we had a makeup schedule discussion with the contractor this morning so the plan is to get a temporary occupancy on the edition by early october so we're looking over the next five weeks we're going to look towards getting a temporary occupancy that does not mean everything is completed but we can occupy the building beneficially uh for example one of the elements is the operable windows that the board requests that we add to the contract because we are in a different pandemic world that's not arriving till mid-november but we can still open the building because we'll have temporary operable windows in place so the parts of it that are going to get finished up soon there are other parts that are going to

007get delayed i want to point out that this weekend we intend to pave the site the project will look a lot more complete once that's done uh once fencing starts up the fencing contractor needs about seven days but the challenge is we're in school yes the school year has begun you can't make noise you can't work you know it's much more difficult so i've asked them to work off hours saturdays that's how we're going to try and make this project happen but we will get there so i would say the next four to five weeks are critical the playground equipment manufacturer was supposed to ship yesterday the equipment he called us up last week to say that there's a minimum three week delay so that's some of the supply chain bottleneck that we've hit but

008there's no guarantee when he's going to ship it but it could be late september but once it arrives it's a two-week install so our plan is to get this building occupied by october and move from there [Music] any questions um well let's see so some of these supply chain delays i think what was it windows no not the windows that we purchased until november and i think you said there were temporary windows are those something that we've purchased or the builder is providing no um so the initial design for the project had windows similar to what you see at ames if you recall we had discussion on this in march and april we said you know why won't we have operable windows so that we can get uh fresh air in so we added that

009as an alternate in our contract when we bid it out and we the board decided to accept the alternate when we awarded the contract to apex when they placed the order for it we were told that the lead time was a minimum six months so now that six months is more like eight months because we got it we placed the order in mid may we supposed to received it by you know a couple of weeks ago and now they're saying it's uh at the earliest delivery on this is like november we only talk about six units the small use but we install temporary units to get so we can occupy the building the shell of the building is complete if you drive by you'll notice the shell is done but the curtain wall will start

010being installed uh next week it'll start to look a lot more complete with the paving done so that's the way so i guess my concern with november time frame and then potentially longer after that if we have a site that's not fully complete if temperatures start to dip tremendously is that going to be an issue or no it will not because as i mentioned the rooftop unit's arriving tomorrow so once that's installed and once the curtain wall is installed we can condition the space so then the space is done be good and the exterior paving is getting done this weekend so there's a sequence obviously in the sense that we need to get the paving done so the landscaper can move in so we're looking at a somewhat an ideal time it's okay it's just

011that we were supposed to finish the entire project last week and now we're looking at a minimum of about 40 to 50 days of time extension the contractors ask for that extension but we're not recommending it yet until we get a full fully satisfied that they can deliver in those 50 days because we don't want to get into an account where we give them another extension but they're claiming that it's beyond their control and the supply chain is all blocked up but we're sympathetic to a certain extent but we knew what we were getting into when we started the project so so if we grant extensions that's something that's going to add to the cost or that's cost neutral it's cross-neutral okay there's no change on any of those costs we've only uh approved one

012change order right now for this contractor so far nothing else is showing up so it was well within what we could expect on a project of this the biggest one of course is going to be the environmental remediation we haven't received those numbers yet because part of the process is that the soils that were removed from site have to be disposed off correct way we will not accept that until we see what's called a waste manifest from the waste site because that shows that was legally disposed and we don't have any exposure it is very important that we get that document without that we will not approve a change order so i haven't seen that yet yeah i guess along the lines with the playground equipment if it's we don't know when it's coming in

013yet is there a date or approximate date where construction for outdoor playgrounds would have to shut down um not really because the equipment can be installed even in pretty with bad weather but the foundations for them the posts have to be drilled in so our plan is that if it arrives by the end of this month or even early october we can move in really quickly to install the posts we can work almost into mid-december you know it's the temperature is viable because the ground does not freeze solid until you know the first or second snowfall so we've got some time okay so remesh i might i might have missed this but those temporary windows um does that mean uh we can still start students can still occupy that space with the temporary windows is

014that correct or did i miss that miss something that is correct that is correct we're going to get temporary occupancy of the multi-purpose room yes so temporary occupancy means student use yes it means beneficial use to the school and i guess one other question i have is and you you probably know this better than i i deal with i have my own supply chain issues in my day job um and we've seen things say we say like august and then we're looking at october and then october comes we're looking at possibly another month i mean how serious is this supply chain i mean are we going to be is it going to be are we going to see the playground equipment when we're supposed to when they say they are or is it going to

015be put is there a high likelihood that this will continue to be pushed out um the statement that we received from the vendor was there's a minimum of three weeks delay so he did not commit to a delivery date so you're right it is an open-ended commitment at this time but on the other hand if you remember last time when we uh when i appeared before the board i mentioned there were supply chain issues i said the rooftop unit was a problem i mentioned that well it's here so some of the contractors have pushed and managed to get the product in so if we are positive and optimistic we should be able to get the playground equipment on site by the end of this month but you never know they could be there were other

016items that were looking like big delays like curtain wall they're here it's here we got the measurements done in fact last week the initial frame is already up and we're going to be installing next week it was looking at a september 15th installation we're doing it in the first week of september so it's a bit of a give and take and some of them we're losing others but by the next month you get you get pulled back on other elements so i would say overall we'll get there it's just that i can't give you a firm date though [Music] but it's a lot of construction as you can see i mean the project is coming is coming along and the fact that we've held the costs i think is a huge uh task to be

017able to do that with delays that's correct to push those that the contractors accepting those costs is just part of who's doing business is a big deal correct and there's done the vendors have come back and asked us for additional money they could easily have said that you know when i bid this job in april it was x and now i'm paying 1.5 x or they could have walked away i mean you can have that problem so far we've not run into any of those problems typically they're smaller contracts so they likely uh to hold it to be fine if you're on a larger project it could have been a challenge steel was one the disaster this year if you recall in may and june prices were doubling and tripling it stabilized now so anything

018else all right thanks for watching thanks joel all right uh the next uh committee up is the policy committee okay um and let me know perhaps what the best way to approach them all should be but obviously the most recent press issue 107 that came out in june um you know we're presenting it for the the first read and mark and i had an opportunity to meet um prior to this meeting to review this issue and included in the agenda are the updates um that are pertinent to our district's policy manual so i don't know if we go through them one by one or we just do them in grouping in terms of you know they're they're separated by those uh that have some updates and then those that um are up for just the

019five year review there is a new one to our district to discuss and then just in going through policy we also came across an existing policy that didn't have to do with press that we might want to consider updating at this time i think in the past we haven't really gone through each one we kind of like if there's some if there's some that you think are pretty important to stress then i would highlight those yeah um and then anybody who had questions on any of the other ones that's kind of is that how we've been doing that [Music] i don't think there'd be much discussion on the others yeah the first grouping those that required the updates the first reading um you know and reviewing them on the boards behalf they all looked you

020know appropriate we would recommend that we should adopt the only one um it appears that it was originally and i'm not sure if they discovered why it had not been adopted but policy 6145 from migrant students which originally came out i believe in october of 2016 and is not one that this district adopted at the time um in you know in reviewing it i don't know if anybody has any questions or thoughts you know i see no reason why we would not um perhaps adopt it with the current as it's as it stands now with the updates yeah i actually just saw d95 adopted it august 12 d208 the high school just adopted it at their august 10th meeting but d102 lagrange had adopted it back in 2016 in december when it came out so

021yeah i don't remember hearing about this one then yeah i don't know if we that's interesting and we couldn't find in our minutes a reason why we may or may not have adopted that i think it's considered optional but stephanie i think you presented it well and help you know it's helpful to also hear the work that other districts are doing with this policy so thank you i don't remember it being mentioned even so this is good that we're only looking at it yeah i don't know if there's any you know well so for the circumstance what whether what necessarily or what is considered a migrant are they these kids who are experiencing homelessness or these are i think it's that's right i know we have a separate policy on the book for you know

022students but this falls within like a defined federal like migrant program so i think parents perhaps who who are here as migrant workers and have their children along with them would be considered you know migrant children necessarily anything to do with legal status or no not not like undocumented or legal permanent resident or you know anything like that it's not it doesn't have to do with like citizenship or residency um it just has to do with being part of this program so it is a little bit more niche but you know you never know and it's very stressful and perspective you know why wouldn't we provide this thing if a student did meet the definition of a migrant student through this program yeah yeah especially engaging their parents and guardians that's the normal yeah it's

023a very straightforward policy and we should probably have it if that situation arises so right i don't know if through a first read anybody had any other thoughts or questions i'm assuming then it would just make its way in the next at the regular business meeting too yes it looked like a lot of them had to do with either um is it i'm going to pronounce it wrong sopba i don't know is there like a way to say it that's i'm looking at david because i feel like he would know that just went into effect so it looks like a lot of the policies have just are updated for that and then um like it doesn't seem like there's a lot of major legislation that happened where the policies are affected it's like uh sopa

024i was going to say stop us i know i always say i was like i'll just sell it and then the other one was um the employment yeah some legislation about legislation that changed with conviction records yeah employment decisions yes so it poses no obligations on employers illinois employers including school districts yeah so i i think those are all very straightforward and not really in need of a lot of conversation personally but important but martha do we receive title one funds we do so we have to adopt this migrant policy according to the footnote mandatory yeah we have you know the state quarterback falls under title one and then um el services too so right um you know one thought in terms of ways to think more about implementation that our el teachers might be

025the ones that would identify a student and then provide those additional supports as well any other thoughts or questions on those that call under requiring updates yeah i mean and some of the changes i thought made sense and aligned like the one including words importing you know gender being added just based on the diversity equity and inclusion work and feedback that's been received so yep there was nothing i thought that was a concern that seemed pretty straightforward and or yes things that we just have to adopt but also make sense to do so yeah absolutely similarly and probably even less um unless it was the um those that required but just the general five-year review so it also just looked very straightforward there was no significant pieces or anything that i identified or in my

026conversations with martha that we saw just the standard ones i guess that need the five year review well i did have one question and there's one colon 20 which talks about intergovernmental agreements do we need to update i assume we need to update that for any of our agreements with the villages etc because this only mentions the landscape yeah it's because it's good it says it covers joint programs and intergovernmental agreements with units of local government and other school districts so [Music] is or is there a way to have a reference in here to ongoing agreements rather than listing them to make it more evergreen yes exactly i like that term yeah either expand it or take out specific references or figure out the evergreen roughness and then to continue this 130 the school district

027philosophy i assume we're going to update that for our latest five-year plan it includes our mission statement for instance yeah i did have that question i couldn't remember that i actually i conveniently our mission statement is right he's right here yeah so yeah thank you for noticing that too thank you kathy will make note of that i remember looking at that and then well conveniently linda i have the printed version which the next discussion that you guys are leading includes our mission statement right [Music] you've earned your first noun later oh no what if i had a cup of cookies oh i didn't realize cereal in your hands all right the 130 to joel points out this is is this this is not a press issue policy this looks like it's just something specific it's

028just our stuff so we just basically copy and paste our views right just put the text differently that would be my assumption it is press policy because that's violent yeah but you okay right we've got something to take a cut and paste our news see this five-year review isn't perfect okay yeah that's you know good that i got the pastor anything else under the 185 year review the people eyes are touching i did not see any others um the only other one just again and having these conversations with martha and just taking a closer look at policies even if they weren't part of this press update we came across um called c2150 about committees which is interesting because it's actually kind of contrary to what we just said about making things evergreen so the current

029policy as it stands to 150 lists the standing board committees but only identifies education finance and policy and so i guess if we revise it we would want to include the new um standing board communities of personnel and facilities that have been created so this one might necessitate the listing out and then the description so with the revised policy the education finance policy would stay the same the description of them stayed the same and then it's the addition of personnel with the description as well as facilities well facility committee is mentioned here are you wanting to those are added oh so that's the other one i just want to make sure that that's that's the aspect i want to make sure that's right the firmware just says three revised ones yeah the two additional ones

030yeah i'm trying to think of personalities and behavior intervention is there let's see that stands under superintendent yeah exactly exactly actually and as i thought about this one too we talked about this and joel your thoughts yeah so we have facilities committee which is the facilities chair meeting with the full board which is what tonight is right we also have a facilities advisory committee which is kind of almost i think of it also the subcommittee of the facilities committee just gives us a little more flexibility that's right not subject to open meetings not that you know secret things are happening there you know i mean it's just been a different like especially when we were in the midst of our long-range planning there was a lot we were inviting the principals and we're having a

031lot of planning meetings yeah it was much more collaborative with the administration and the staff and asking to get back to kind of a normal level of facility projects it becomes yeah like the rest of the committees where you're still meeting and checking you know regularly so to me it feels the same it just had a lot more work but my question really do you want to add facility advisory committee under superintendent committee are we comfortable just adding facilities under board committees and then i'm knowing that i have a facilities advisory committee that may operate from time to time depending on that i feel that comes into and out of existence as needed it's probably better not listed here martha i think you're yeah yeah and some kind of flexibility statement committee that will add

032and retract the same way now right the evergreen portion of this is the very bottom line which says that nothing in this policy limits the authority to designate or does it to create and use so you can use committees for your share was mentioning we haven't depend on preparedness would be no more than two board members [Music] just because of open meetings active requirements related to all of that um and then also there's some committees where there may not this even be a board member and those are i don't know if you'd call those superintendent committees but like as we talk about our strategic plan action teams you're going to hear more about that tonight there are some other board members they want to be part of others i think just listing out the ones

033that report out at board meetings are completely appropriate and over the next two years as we kind of come to uh even fuel facilities it might even make sense for a two years facility and finance be one thing you know because if you read the finance description it's talking about you know the promotions of the property yeah right i mean i'm not saying we should do this now i'm saying if we get to that point and we feel like that's you know we could do that and then we'll get updated again go ahead dude i would i would linda i think that's something we might want to consider as well i think that's that's a good idea so we could at least consider that i think about that going forward like possibly a couple years

034yeah i think we should monitor monster these two years and then see you know when you see your next board you can decide i know school district philosophy thank you oh you've gotten us thinking about this one i actually think those bullet points come off of old either boilerplate press or our whole vision and value so i like to suggest that we edit really all of it yeah not just our new mission statement but as you know we also made new identification i mean basically everything everything is here it was the mission statement that caught my eye but the others i wasn't quite sure where their original origin was but is it more fully revised but i think i think those bullet points yeah those are pretty old i think yeah that's what i'm saying

035i think like this whole front page needs to be right yeah and then all of yeah deleted all of this [Music] and then just to clarify the policy one colon 20 about the igas do you want to list all of them or do you want to leave them all off which i think you said would be even removing lazy maybe they could just say where they're found i guess it doesn't serve any purpose or is there anything you know special about listing the agreements there somewhere you should have a document though that lets people know where what the iges are so they're not just this might be a good place yeah it would be hurt and then i'm sure there can be a you know these things may be modified by the board from time

036to time i mean all intergovernmental agreements come to the board for if they were to be discontinued modified changed or a new one were to come about yeah i mean if you go back to that support governance based on policy so yeah you know i mean this is all digital rights like could we just put a link to wherever that live document is housed and looking at kathy because they don't like yeah i'm just thinking the constant movement it gets updated all the time right still make it evergreen but and i was saying the same thing for the communities too if you just had a list of committee titles or headers or whatever you have two parts in there it says include but not limited to and then on the bottom joel's point of you

037know this doesn't do you want to list them all yeah but we just had like since of digital can you have a link i wonder if that master document i know we live in a very technological age but i wonder if there's something about making sure everything's listed in case somebody like like somebody prints it out i mean like joel prince things yeah i would just have a chat with somebody i would choose to say like is that a share of mine somebody wanted a lot of paper there yeah they could go down to the district office and get a printed copy i mean i think those other means are still there no i i agree i just think we should probably check the press to make sure that's like what they're doing that they're

038okay with it but that's like um common practice well i i assume these are all being reviewed by by shelly am i right no they're not they're so press has the service we pay for with the press actually provides a legal review in a more global way and then every now and then we've looked at policies that'll say we recommend that you would um well i guess at this point since we're talking about making changes is that then does that make it worthwhile of a call to the board attorney if you'd like me that we could do that i think like for the school district philosophy i don't think that merits a call to the lawyer i think that's something that's normal and i would just say because we don't link in our current press

039packet or our board policy but let's just make sure that that's consistent you know like i'm all for doing that i just want to make sure because as the policies the work packets i word policy packets i look through i don't it doesn't seem like a common thing i don't know well it seems like an easy call to check in with them and say is this acceptable practice you know i mean honestly or not has to do with how often we change or enter into that's where i was going to go and i think it wouldn't be that hard for us to update this policy every time we have a new iga we have them what once a year i mean because there's so many villages well i but that goes to the point of

040so we've got somebody's got to remember too most of those live until they are discontinued exactly yeah so i think it seems appropriate the board is comfortable to put them into the policy i think what you're saying is it keeps the board as a board may transition and change over time that's fine do we still have that agreement yeah those are the ones that i know we just reviewed at our last stop yeah that was just a matter of listing them out even the one that had the amendment because of cobra on the riverside one that allowed for like the remote it was still all within the same interval right full agreement right so even that would have necessitated a change yeah that's fine i think just getting with data yep i agree thank you

041all right thanks stephanie okay then next is the education committee and we will just be passing that over yeah you know there's a document it's basically updated strategic plan with more details um kind of talking about the little nitty-gritty parts of strategic plan that weren't talked about before so i don't know i thought we'd invite angela and pam to maybe have a seat with us and um we're gonna talk just about and so for us the sort of the big piece of implementation was our institute they roll out of strategic plan and then just work that we're already engaging him here as we start the year so i thought what i would do is just do a quick kind of overview and feel free to ask questions along the way and i know several of

042you were add-ins to today and heard some of this firsthand but we uh we want to share the role out and talk to you about where we've actually assigned people into goals and strategy areas and then thinking about timelines and and just again feedback from the board overall so interestingly we just talked about johnny in advance so we just redid our mission and motto as you all know and then our values so you all have in front of you it's now called placemat i guess so we know that we want to make the strategic plan as visible as possible for everybody who has a part in implementing it and bringing it to life and that's everybody in our district so so this is what's up this is what everyone received and institute along with a

043pack of now and layers as you all have downloaders um as a reminder that there's work that we need to do now and there's work that we need to do later because i can tell you uh pam angela and jim and don all sitting in this room we are all sort of eagerly wanting to jump in and get going right away and also needing to remind ourselves that this is a five-year plan and we can do everything you know right away so um but in terms of some important process steps to date we did identify our goal champions and now wesley and i met just the other day and he suggested perhaps we create a document then that has the gold champions outlined so using the same document that you have in front of you

044we will go ahead and do that and of course the first world champion for student achievement is angela the one under learning environment the gold champion that is pam shaw high quality workforce is don dufano and then family community partnerships i'll be the gold champion for that and jim fitton for stewardship of resources and again we had introduced that big idea to all of you prior to this meeting but we've also had a chance to kind of dig in more and identify our action team leaders our next step around that will be to look at actually action team members so we put up really kind of all called all staff and ask them to share with us if they're interested in being on any of these action teams and we've gotten good feedback from staff

045we're continuing to remind and we may go twist some arms as well but our next step will be to start to put those committees together and then think about for the purpose and the charges to those specific committees the frequency in which they'll meet and really the work that they're going to dig into and get done so as you also know um just last meeting you all approved the ongoing contract for living the plan with the consortium for educational change as well um and they were great coming in and helping us this summer thinking about how we roll out this plan and make this plan come alive for our staff and i think that was really great advice for our team as we headed into institute day and they'll be kind of uh keeping us

046on track so we just this week had a two-hour meeting with cec where they met with our gold champions and it was really a check-in you know what what are you doing so far what do you need help with where are we headed so i'm excited about that too in terms of the just to give you an overview of what we did in the 50 day i touched on this is that our big goal is that everyone would be familiar with the plan um and have an opportunity to dig in we know that strategic plans that live on the shelf aren't really plans and they don't really become what bring improvements to the district so that was our big idea we were careful too we think we we're careful not to overwhelm our staff we

047kind of say you know this is uh these are big ideas these big ideas all really emerge through a committee really important for many workers you all know 36 people on zoomed together last fall not last fall last winter spring dan and wesley were part of that i know they don't forget that um so you know our goal is to really think about timing and investigation and the action work that would come also reminding everybody that this work really all interrelates so you'll see there's a series of arrows that go around on that back side or front side depending on how you look at your placement but the goal is the strategy side to make sure people know that this work is also all very interconnected and that's one of our challenges is to make

048sure that we're balancing many different committees many different leaders with our overall capacity of the district so our our institute day i know wesley was there and i think some of you that were there for the intro in the morning saw a little bit of it but we we did sort of exactly what we did with the board a couple weeks ago we had a gold champions introduce the big goalie area along with the people that have been identified as action team leaders to give kind of an overview of sort of why those goals are there and why they're important um and then we did a quiz game and um actually todd giermann and kashmir gorman two of our principals um did a great online kahoot those are probably your children probably played sometimes kind

049of learning games and activities and it was really great there's a ton of energy in the room and teachers really got kind of excited and they had to dig through the plan and can you identify our mission and our vision and what are some values and what are not some of our values and what are some of the goals and so it was fun but it was also you could tell people were really studying the plan and thinking about it and then we did you know a little more serious work and ask people important reflection questions you know what felt most urgent in the plan what are pieces of the plan that they feel they're already doing or already doing but needing to improve on and then that really took us till lunch time at

050institute day and then in the afternoon building teams went back to their buildings with their principals they did some similar work you know identifying kind of work already in progress work that they need to learn more about more needs to be done so it was um i think a really good day we got great feedback from our staff about the day overall i wasn't going to ask you like have you received feedback about the plan in general now that every now that has been rolled out um people not there yeah i mean yes we got feedback about institute day which is so much about the plan and about goals um and angela and sort of maybe that's your perfect segue to goldwan and just kind of a brief update on the work that's already happening

051under goal area one but angela's also kicked off a professional learning planning team which is a new committee specifically to look at pd which falls under our personnel goal but as we said they're all interrelated because the plp team is carefully planning to work around student learning so with that angela why don't you okay um so we did get feedback from the staff on institute day focused on that day of learning about the strategic plan and the work that nate eckland had done as well we haven't sent anything out about the strategic plan specifically but what we've heard is that people are receptive to it positive about it i think excited about it but like i said we don't have that fully it hasn't been stated to us as such when looking at goal one

052just updating you on some of the things that we've done with goal one the standard space monitoring strategy is going to be led by kim hefner who's principal of hollywood elementary school and katie castle who is a staff member at hauser junior high they are we've talked about how that strategy would work realizing this is a five-year plan and the work is to be done over the course of five years and we don't want to overwhelm everybody by trying to do all strategies at once we're going to actually start slow with the standards-based monitoring strategy and look at this year as a year of research and looking at the research that there was a committee a standards-based reporting committee a few years ago are going to go back to that work and look at the

053work that was done previously we're going to look at what other schools have done their things that have worked well for them pitfalls they've had so that we can try to avoid those and really just spend this time digging into what's out there already with full day kindergarten uh kazmira gorman the principal of life park will leave that with me and we have started to plan how that will work out so we are looking at forming an action team within the next few weeks and beginning to meet as an action team we've talked about the beginning meetings being about discussing our role as an action team we want to make sure everyone on the team understands what we're here for we're an investigative body and what that means and what that would look like we

054talked about the beginning meetings being about looking at our team's purpose and then exploring research on full day kindergarten as well as other kindergarten options so that we're able to see the full picture of what kindergarten can look like and the benefits of all those different types of options that might be out there and then well not a district strategy on your strategic plan i did want to just touch on summer school from this year because that is one of the ways that we work to foster student growth and achievement and usually at this cal meeting i would update you on different summer happenings so i wanted to make sure that we did that but this is related to the strategic plan in terms of student growth we had 99 students participate in our skill

055building program we had 160 students participate in our enrichment program and in keeping in line with our strategic plan thinking you know that one of our strategies for goal one is looking at opportunity and equity gaps and so looking at summer school miss hefner who oversees the summer school program and i looked at the participants of summer school to see are we truly or is the population summer school reflective of our school our district population and it was pretty close we had um 58 of our students that attended summer school were white which is about what we have as a district population which is hispanic population was next and um in attendance at summer school 32 percent of our population summer school were hispanic and 31 is our district average um with our black population

056we had about two percent in attendance and three percent of our district average so close our asian population is less than one percent and our district average is two and a half percent um and then our multiracial percentage of participants in summer school were six and a half percent with uh our district average actually being 2.3 percent so it was nice to see that our summer school program for the most part everybody is getting that full opportunity to be a part of the program we also looked at our free and reduced representation in summer school and that was also pretty much on park our district average with 27 percent being represented in the summer school population 21 being our district average so that was nice data to see as some baseline data as we began

057looking and exploring our opportunity in equity gaps do you have any even questions um going back to the full day kindergarten conversation i know with the standards based reporting you were saying this years of research here uh you know do we feel like we have a timeline are we figuring out a timeline where full-day kindergarten will be you know either researched and recommended or not recommended i'm just trying to absolutely yes so um when we met with arlana from cec he did talk about looking at that macro level of developing a fight like where all the strategies fit in the five-year plan from our point of view right now obviously that could change again it just as time goes on and when we talk about pearl lake kindergarten miss gorman and i have talked about

058we want to start by the end of september beginning of october with our group so that we can do the work between now and the beginning of february end of january so that depending on what comes of that if we decide to move forward before they get the garden as the board if the board decides to move forward full-day kindergarten that we have the time then to look at staffing if needed to address facilities finance all of those pieces with ample time before the end of the year okay so that is a conversation we're hoping to be able to yes this year yeah okay and we're even like wondering just even you know we've been thinking about this and talking about this um you know it might be helpful because this is a community that

059we're going to put on kind of a shorter time frame as angela just described but even monthly bringing to where the committee is at so that you have kind of regular discussion points along the way um i think might be really helpful i think the other piece too that that angela has shared about the full day kindergarten is looking at the research itself but also looking at our own unique student data and really digging into that so those are probably two very specific things that the committee would be doing teachers i have a question about facilities because would the spacing constraints affect all day kindergarten for clovid restrictions or are we not limited in that area yeah because of spacing like are we able to hold the same capacity you know if for some i

060hope to god not but if for some reason i mean do we have a contingency plan i'll just say an interesting observation for me is has been to see our schools and it's great to see them full yeah and um also to see kind of where we might have some smaller group programming in larger spaces because of covid or because the room is available to us and there's some combination of that different at different schools um and i think that's also going to really help us start to visualize where that kindergarten space could come from so you know when we did all this facilities work that one of our goals was to build space you know enough to accommodate full day kindergarten i think i just read in the landmark today that riverside this area

061north riverside is one of the growing communities so um who knows we have to keep looking at our enrollment but you know we really did this ames edition to have that extra room beautiful kindergarten we know that full day kindergarten in hollywood you know because it's a one section school we would have that space we know that life we're kind of talking about starting to already feel maybe a little bit crunched to be a true two-section school what would be needed if districts again if we were to do fully kindergarten districts do have to offer at least half day to families that might still want that and prefer that we would like to do the place that would maintain the happiness so again there's no i remember you know like would there be two different

062avenues do you have do you have a consideration for whether or not there are restrictions yeah we want to we want to take another close look at all of our facilities but we know and jim knows and you know what one things we talked about with the full day kindergarten committee is that their work is going to probably be very focused on the educational aspects research student data and that then again talking about the interrelationship of all these goals finance and facilities would kind of enter in and we would make sure that we had those updates too because we know that the additional cost that it would bring and then just the impact on the facility yeah no i would just i know there's so many pieces i'm sure you i just wanted to make

063sure and i hope to god that is the case but i think it's a great idea to as a board now we know this this conversation will be happening yeah so that when it comes march april and there's a recommendation or not it doesn't feel like right oh my gosh i don't know like i you know like to be um you know filled in along the way if there's articles that are going to hear the board or you know anything so that we all feel along with the you know expertise of the committee sharing information with us so that we know that we're um we just know that that's coming our way no and besides the staffing i mean yeah we we start hiring in january and february for most of our positions and then

064also families need to plan and so they're going to need people to transport or not and it's really important that you know i like that you're ahead of that okay you might recall that this was a board conversation is that there was a conversation at that from the strategic plan team and wesley probably recalled this the best that they didn't even want us to write the strategy as explorer fully kindergarten there was some talk feel of kindergarten no there's more work that if there's some additional investigation educationally finance facilities really all these areas that are you know directly you know impacting directly on the shoulders of the board of education so that's what we want to do is make sure we're providing that regular update regular conversations along the way um but but we are

065as angela said looking for kind of a one-year timeline for you know moving toward a decision from the board because if we're going to implement we'd like to implement sooner in the five-year plan then later the five-year plan and then those other goals that would continue on would be you know again depending on the decision if we don't move forward you know sort of evaluating the impact of that if we do move forward evaluating the impact of that so one other thing within the timeline you have well will there be a point where there's community like we ask for community feedback because i mean it's not helpful to have it before you need it you know i mean like in the process i'm sure there's a point where that's necessary i just want to make

066sure we build that in because i think this is a topic that's very you know it's going to be very our community can be very interested in it and i want to make sure they feel that they have the opportunity to share it when you know share their information when when it's needed absolutely yes so we've talked about with action teams you keep the action teams a little bit smaller 10 to 12 people but you invite guests to different meetings and so there would be a meeting that you know community members would either be invited to or we would figure out how that community and if it's a survey or what that that meaning would be focused on looking at that community feedback right i think from a board perspective i want to know you

067know it's a big decision that we're going to be possibly facing so i want to make sure you know where the pulse of the community is so yeah absolutely great angela could you clarify the perceptual data that's listed in the bottom of the just kind of elaborate on what you guys mean right now well and so on the side you may or may not remember that those are the um those are possible key performance indicators and so they're not set in stone to be the way we measure the three strategies we have but the perceptual data is looking um and that's in term terms of the baseline data we have with five essentials so some type of um satisfaction or um community right so it's a big older survey type thing is what they mean

068by perceptual data yeah that's what i i kind of figured that but i want to make sure it's less of a concrete um you know yes i have five of these but if you have a survey you might get everybody but you might not and so correct okay thank you so i'm i'm wondering no i think i heard that the standards when we're talking about standards-based monitoring and reporting that that's something that's going to be uh collected identified and configured over the next i don't know i guess year or so i wanted could you give us an example of a hypothetical or you know how how different or varied those standards might be in terms of you know are we looking for numerical values or or what what is it we're looking for i guess

069just in a hypothetical sense so um the standards-based monitoring and reporting process will be at least a two-year possibly three four-year strategy uh the first year being like i mentioned a lot of research um and then the second year looking at the development of it professional learning for it because we want to make sure all staff members are aware of how it would work out and then also educating communities and families as well so they understand what that would look like so when looking at standards-based monitoring we'd be looking at state standards the common core state standards to show how students are meeting or exceeding or approaching or not yet meeting those standards which is similar to our elementary report card now where we have the one two three four that talks about exceeding meeting

070approaching or not meeting um but instead of the key criteria that's on report cards now with the standard space monitoring system we would be um evaluating where we're at with those specific common core state standards for the different subject areas does that answer the question you're asking me i i guess yeah so it sounds like that there are some similar parallels to what what we see now so i guess just sounds like you're going a little bit more in depth or trying to be more specific about what we're um reporting on the progress of students so we're teaching to the standards when we look at curriculum alignment we look for our curricular resources to align to the standards but then when we report out currently on our report cards we're reporting on just random criteria

071that might fit math science social studies or english language arts um this way it's more focused on your child is learning fact fluency up to 10 and so if that's what we're teaching in class and that's what we're assessing in class we want to let you know if your child is exceeding that standard meeting that standard not yet there or approaching it okay right i guess just depends on how many are you gonna try to accomplish like is it is it you know fractions and then also math fluency in this area and as far as what standards we've been doing yeah i mean it's a question of right now how long are you making another part yeah i think that's the interesting question is how long do you make it and so we don't overwhelm

072the families absolutely useful enough for the teachers because there are districts that have overwhelmed families and families just you stop looking at what's happening because it's just too much on the page so that's some of those pitfalls that we would be talking to other districts about but i got an a in math you know what does that mean um i think is also a good comment because you really don't know what topics they didn't know and that's the kind of thing where you could take the sat i'm thinking about my junior you know it really is important to know oh i didn't know this part of algebra but i knew the geometry and so i think it's interesting who's making them today there's there's feedback yeah there's a lot of people just wondering if you're

073starting a woodworking project [Music] is that you david we're getting feedback is that i don't yeah i know i i i i like i appreciate right here i guess i'm um the whole standard space i'm i see over on the like the the right hand side it says growth and proficiency and reading and math including map and iar i guess i mean i'm not saying we don't teach the standards i'm not saying that at all but i guess i'm just getting i'm just concerned because i know there's so much testing going on and i just don't want to make i want to i'd like sort of a little bit more clarity around what we're looking at and serve in regards to standardized tests because i mean i do think we personally i think we spent

074a lot of time with these standardized tests and i just don't want that to be i'm just concerned that when we put that in our strategic plan and for saying okay we're going to be looking at the these standardized tests that that's going to become our focus i tonight that causes me a little concern i just sort of like like what people's thoughts are i don't think that's necessarily meant to be there for the focus but they're you know the only way to actually like assess some of these goals are to look at all the data that's relevant so that whole side are things that we're going to be looking at to assess if we're meeting our goals yeah so i don't know i would like to reiterate none of this stuff has been right

075[Music] talking about standardized tests and the amount of tasks that we're giving i just i just want to basically make sure that that's not something we're going to be focusing on putting our major focus on i guess is what i'm trying to say i think that's one place that the report could be helpful though because you know those classroom assessments that the teachers give can give the window into things that may or may not be on the standardized test but are still useful to know and so you've covered a lot of areas at once and maybe both but i mean to ignore the standardized test i think is also a mistake i think you have to have some kind of benchmark but i'm not saying you need to do it 10 times a year but

076certainly a useful tool yeah i mean i don't think we're talking about any more or less testing no um you know one of the things you hear about districts that have made perhaps make the transition to standards-based grading it's kind of what you said you're you know a child used to say i got an a and math a child you know with standards-based creating can often say like i'm really good at and then can almost name skills that relate to the standards and or can say we heard the opposite like i got a d in that i don't know why i got to be yeah oh it's because i don't understand and we don't get you know it's not but but anyway that's this whole idea of also making a child sort of conversant with

077what's happening in their own learning well it's or i did all the homework i don't understand why i got this grade on the assessment well then there's a disconnect and so it's a way for the teacher to say you know am i actually teaching in the class but i'm assessing and so i think it's a good conversation for everybody and how how detailed they go that's what they're going to look at so i'll just interject a process step that as wesley said that right hand column those are um what were identified really by cec as key performance indicators because they were likely things that we were already doing so that whole kpi and the targets i think that's a whole another board discussion as we kind of you know sort of dig in i feel

078like this is kind of first layer like hey these are the big goals this is how we're organizing getting the work done around the specific strategies but then i do look forward to more conversation and again not to make you know light of it tonight either i don't want to cut that conversation short it's really valuable but i think we do need to sort of dig in just on that kind of right-hand side of the of the slides and you will be doing that with cec and then bringing it to them yeah and with all of you i mean yeah you know exactly kind of what david's just saying is you know i know there's iar map and those are important tools that the board uses to look at overall student achievement but what else

079is there what more could there be or i don't want more of just test scores you know so i think again that board feedback will be a report part of it too yeah i was just thinking about this last couple days we're doing one two three tonight in this capacity what is it what are where are we at what are we doing and then four or five in i guess october right september october so probably november before we circle or like when we come back to this maybe we focus on like you had a little bit of time two months or whatever think a little bit more about it we could maybe have a little bit of a dialogue how we're thinking about that objective or measure or whatever and then kind of move and

080sort of move through that throughout the year might be a good way to go about it because right now it sort of feels like you don't have a formal goal like we have gold but they're not set yet and we should probably have them before the end of the year or at least before like end of calendar year but probably at least before the end of the school year right and that's what cec has said it takes you a while to figure out your real key performance indicators and it takes the committee's time to be together to sort of identify their purpose their charge their direction and then say a way i know that i'm getting this down or being this goal is we should look more closely at this for that so and then

081over the five years those things might even you know evolve yeah the first time we're like i don't know you know that that didn't paint the full picture whatever i think every year it evolved because this year this team is going to be focused on these three things and so we need measures on those three things but then next year you know after this year you'll probably have ideas of what you want to do next year and then okay this is what angel wants to do next year okay here's what we want to measure with it and yeah so it's it's which will force us as a board to get better at what exactly are we measuring ourselves on well and and the difficult thing is even though standardized test formats have changed the lengths

082have changed depending on what year it was i know you remember until it might be five days it might be three days and so every two years you have a discussion about what does that mean for us and our kids and why are we sitting for six hours a day and what are we doing with that data so i think that's another difficult position that is not always under our control but we have to figure out how much we want to put weight on it so all right i think you're getting a lot of attention yeah i have a feeling you know it's a very important topic i think how you engage with members of the community that the children are not yet under the districts per use so they'll have kindergarteners this topic is

083important to them but they might not know these conversations are going on at the district level or at the ward level uh because they're not already within the district so obviously families that still have children going through or even families with kindergartens behind me but i still as a community i never have an opinion on it so i'm sure you'll still see engagement from those for which they might not have children going through kinder but have an opinion oh that's true for sure and um those who still are in the district and have children but how do you engage with those that are have not been in the district but will have kindergarteners coming up soon so i think it's partly reaching out to the programs the preschool day care programs that are in the

084area around talking with our current families about what programs they've utilized so that we are trying to find where our families are coming from um and then utilizing the communication tools that we have social media the landmark and so forth to put out an alcohol whether it's for a survey or coming as a guest member to come do a focus group or give feedback yeah we did that even with the prior plan it was kind of neat to send out a community feed blast and and you would get people that didn't even have children but had an opinion and so it's you know i think it's a good idea given the number of families who will sign up for full day kindergarten and saint mary's only to transfer into d 96 in first grade i

085mean i i don't know if that's something that they would be that st mary's would welcome having us interact with them but that is that is an audience i guess yeah well until something i think we just said is it's not only the people who it we shouldn't be focusing on simply anyone with an agenda on it but the whole community because well yeah any taxpayer has the right to say what they want to say and we want to make sure we reach them all it does cost money this isn't only the person with the loudest voice and to the point of the committee is it's based on what is good for the students and the district as a whole and not specific groups so i think your focus on the research yeah and what

086what have other people learned already about those it's not a vote is what i'm trying to get at yes right but i think even like you know you mentioned community survey or community outreach community engagement really important but i think you've all presented sort of interesting parts to that you know question is that surveying families with young children yet to enter kindergarten is that surveying the whole community that may have an opinion as a taxpayer you know community member who either did or did not have that opportunity for their own children or don't even have children in the district necessarily so that's something again where i think the committee could have some discussion but also would love more board discussion on that because um to ask the community sort of do you want full day

087kindergarten may not be exactly the question we want to ask or it is right i mean so well yeah with the caveats that we tell them this is what it costs this is what it means for the buildings and you give them enough information that they can at least make it reasonable i think it's a lot more listening yeah so maybe tonight survey could be even like we've done sometimes informational nights i think the information we were looking at hollywood school or something i mean uh inviting community in for in personal focus groups so yeah again this is really helpful feedback i think as we think about process steps with the committee and kind of how we kind of extrapolate from the committee the additional pieces needed so thank you ready for yeah i think

088you can move forward learning environment and culture yeah okay absolutely all right so in looking at goal number two of learning environment and culture there are three goal strategies under that area the first one is social emotional learning integration with core instruction and the action team leaders for that strategy are jeff wydra april may and todd giermann and the second goal strategy is student-centered learning and the action team leaders for that strategy are sarah hickey and kasmir gorman and then the third gold strategy is cultural culturally responsive approach to learning and our action team leaders are duraducci alex scoville lopez and p gats so in looking at these three strategies the action team leaders for the sel strategy and culturally culturally responsive approach to learning they actually met last week on august 26 and those

089two groups came together to do some foundational work of digging into what has been completed so far due to the fact that social emotional learning and culturally responsive instruction or teaching those were the two areas that were outlined by the plpt to be focused for professional development this year so they met and they looked at some of the work that we completed this summer with our lana from cec with the um poster walks that we did looking at each strategy looking at where we want to be at the end what's going on now and what needs to happen in the middle and then they they took the information that we created in our groups from what we call the chapter one the very first things that we would need to look at they looked at

090what was outlined in those posters and then they also looked at the data that on institute day as which is mentioned before the the staff went back to their buildings and was their principles they looked at all the strategies and they went through those strategies and they did a walk where they went through those listed things that they thought they were doing how they are doing those things and so they took the data from the posters at those buildings and they reviewed that information and started to make some foundational understanding of where people were at that were at in the buildings on those areas because the one thing they noted was they would like to really start with that philosophical approach so that it's consistent across the district the one thing we know is there's

091lots of work being done in the areas but it's the consistency piece and the general philosophical understanding so that's where they started um and i have not met yet with the student-centered learning strategy team but plan to do that in the near future all three of these groups have received the information or photos of the poster so they can start to put that data together and organize it as they want from what the different buildings thought and then we've given i've given them the names of the people who were interested in their to be on their action team but we have to work all that out as some people are interested more than one team so we'll need to review that in the future but at least so they know who's interested can ask another

092question about the on the right side the student engagement will the committee be looking at how we measure what kind of measurement tools we're using for engagement or are those are those with that so again those are some of the things right you should adjust it but yeah and they'll and what will be important is that everyone's using the same tool exactly yeah because i was thinking you know our buildings do have different populations subtly and are we going to tailor it to that in general because it changes sometimes every year or is it more of a probably global strategy across the board okay i mean i imagine with like this goal too when we look at um social well you talk about student engagement yeah which is yeah in general i think you just

093have everybody doing the same psychologist too who can even explain how to really look and observe and make sure that the data's right because if it's a classroom teacher i mean that could i could see that being part of professional learning so right if you're doing some observational data you have to make sure that you are identifying exactly what you're looking for when you collect the data so that's something the committee just like the other lists these are the you know we think we're doing this well but we're going to look more right right we're going to have to have some parameters of what we're looking at for observation data i like the approach they're taking that these teams are taking in terms of these are a lot of situations or areas where there's already

094curriculum there things are already being done so it's great to take this inventory of whatever the thing and then kind of going back to the philosophical side of this is what's being done and where do we want you know because otherwise how do you decide how do you decide what to implement or what not to like what to change what not to change without knowing where you're at and a broader picture of right what we feel we need to be doing so i think these are a great foundational system right and is it being done at just one it's one building not doing it or you know it's so it's important i think for the leaders too and i think the good thing is from what we gather from the initial data that everybody's doing

095things and they're all actively doing them but the question is now we need to look at being consistent and really understanding why we're doing these things i mean there is a basic understanding but let's have a general philosophy that we all stand by i just appreciate does not like a jump in and let's try this whole new social emotional learning program without knowing what's already happening everywhere and taking some time to think about what we want you know in the other picture that's the thing too with social emotional learning you know maybe i'll talk to martha or i remember as martha angela the other day too is that even with social emotional learning that's a five-year plan will we be done with that no that's going to be something that we need to continue to

096go on and revisit every year and make sure that we're still having as new staff come in that they understand the foreign curriculum and everything to keep it i know at the planning committee i asked because we all and our children have come through many months and almost more you know year and a half of pandemic that is is this an individual approach to start or is it a global approach to dealing with their basically as you said every child has experienced some degree of trauma in the last year and i like that the district that you mentioned at our meeting is going to be assuming that everyone needs this baseline of care and then we'll dive in deeper as we see and interact with the students so i really liked hearing about that at

097the planning committee and i'm kind of excited that we have this acceptance that we are in this place but we are going to work through where we are and where the students are right so i appreciate consideration for that in the sel approach and then also with um with the culturally responsive approach to learning they looked at the information too even done some research on outside speakers and organizations that we can connect with to really lay out a plan for that too for some work that's previously been done good they got their wheels spinning when we met last week good now i'm excited that's great we can move on to goal three which means we kind of shift personnel committee and we actually shift a few and say this right now angela pam dot jim

098everyone's in this room they have been so busy getting school open and dealing with kids in need and staff who need things changed or different so um and we're still dealing with profit as you know so just a huge thank you to this group to also sort of taking a moment to lift our heads out of the sand and think about the long-range goals too so there's just been a lot happening here in these first it's not even been weeks it's been funny it has no and i know thank you john because you know no there's map testing going on i'm sure dawn's been busy with this yeah yeah it's a slightly busy time well i have uh i am the um a gold champion for goal three high quality staff with goal being to

099recruit develop and retain exceptional personnel for all positions there's two strategies underneath this goal to provide a personalized professional learning environment that includes mentoring coaching and collaboration and the the team leaders of that goal angels have angela's part of that chris harvallis as well as kim hefner and pam referenced the plpt that's really the that is essentially the action team and there's been three meetings this year i'll know that i know that there's been work that had been done leading up to this um i've been able to attend two of those three meetings so it's really been given me an opportunity to start to get to see that the work's been done um angela's also working with i guess you'd say a consultant from west 40 who's helping with developing that plan and um if

100you'd like to elaborate more on some of the work that's been done i can't so we have currently 16 members on the professional learning planning team and it's representation of different roles throughout the district as well as all different grade levels throughout the district from our early learners through eighth grade uh we have as don said we've met three times so far set overarching goals for professional learning in the district pam had referenced that the team decided that based on different data points we looked at a professional learning survey that was given at the end of last year we looked at the modern learner's brightweight survey that was given at the end of last year and then we looked at another data point but i am blanking on that third one right now to determine

101what survey or what professional needs our staff members were saying they had and so from those three data points and then looking at the strategic plan as well we learned that the staff members were really calling for professional learning and social emotional learning culturally responsive practices and student engagement so focusing professional learning for this year the majority of professional learning for this year on culturally responsive practices in social emotional learning knowing that those two will then lead to better student engagement we are working on planning long range but getting up to that speed um just takes some time this is new for our staff it's a mindset shift of having staff members help plan professional learning so there's a lot of conversation that has happened and needs to happen so that we can all feel

102comfortable and fall on the same page as we continue to move forward so um also working on how can we personalize learning so very excited about that i it's one of the it's part of the strategy the first strategy under um goal three and knew it was something we would work towards but again another mindset shift and i'm happy to say that the team is actually pretty much getting there before i thought we would so looking at how can we personalize learning about social emotional learning and culturally responsive practices for ourselves as well as what the district might provide to so a lot of great work that's been done in that area thank you angela and the other strategy the action team leaders involved in that will be brad meyer kim hefner in april may

103and that is really the focus is to really to focus on that recruiting and retaining of staff the team has not met formally yet um i did speak with with kim about that today um but we'll look to get some uh something calendared and bring everyone together the um one of the foundational pieces of that is just the kind of belief that it's important that students see themselves in what they're learning who they're learning from and the people they see around them in school and so we'll look at recruiting and hiring practices look at what opportunities how we can do to expand uh the types of candidates that that we're able to engage in as positions come open and just to expand the you know the diversity of our workforce once when's the last time

104we have a document describing our teacher and staff retention and percentages do we i mean i know we talked about that some data points on that um and we'll take a look at that i know that we're not sure what's the illness that reporter well we are sure but we're not sure i mean if it'll be without any iar scores and you know well we'll have ir scores but not till spring or something right i know we we don't have what i would consider a huge turnover rate other than you know someone retires but i think i'm excited at least from when you go to institute and everyone seems so excited so if we can keep that kind of energy for our staff and draw people and i think that's great but that might even

105be you know state like where the committee might want to take a look at that document but then sort of dig in like what what additional because the state puts that together for us based on and it's accurate and but is that the most meaningful data point for us yeah no is there something else for our specific because we're unique small district and wesley you were going to say something well the engagement one of the things that uh martha and i talked about yesterday and the two of us just met about this was uh nate eckland the three of you were there i think the content was very good we also presented it in a way that that kept people's attention too even on only one leg and as a non-educator i feel like i

106took something from it as a non-education yeah yeah like it just it was a it was a it was a great yeah so just to kind of hit on your your excitement piece there and like hearing that you know everybody's already kind of engaged with it it was just a real good institute day and everything and martha mentioned that she's continuing to speak with him on how do we maybe continue that going not be like a one-and-done thing so more to come on that but he's got some ideas or he's got some capabilities of like working with um staff surveys and and like coaching opportunities and things like that that i think would be a really high value um because i think any time we talk about a survey surveys are not easy to write

107they're typical to write to get and interpret the data that you're actually trying to get so having somebody that kind of does this for a living that would be good to truth party as well just because i think you know it's just less vibrant very like yeah well i i love that it was somebody that sometimes you know you do get the research people that write the book and they they're in this doctorate program and that's wonderful but i i think it's so wonderful that he was a classroom teacher for so long but also was on committees and had a diverse experience so i think it was a way for everybody to connect with him that thing he said i i understand you like getting your shoes and i think that's very valuable because it'll

108give him when he does meet with us later i'll peek into oh yeah i was in the musicals and i understand how to pull that group and i was in you know the classroom for english or whatever it was i like that about it so so thanks for that part wesley because at the september 15 meeting i anticipate bringing forward a contract where we could do some ongoing work with with nate eckland and his partner that was there with him his name is todd yeah um doing a school like a school-wide satisfaction survey um so it's really asking teachers and paraprofessionals their thoughts about kind of their own role individually but also their role amongst their peers their role within the organization and we really think that that's valuable data but then as wesley said

109not just doing that survey but then follows working with building leadership teams to say like okay this is what you've learned about your building climate culture you know like how do we want to work together to make improvements here um and then also kind of those checkpoints with the principals who lead those blt so we're looking to get that work structured and again i think we felt that just really positive feedback about having somebody that could kind of align with us and help us keep focused on that area as well i think wesley is absolutely correct about the survey as being difficult though because even those five essentials when you fill those out it's it can be very dry and not meaningful because the questions are so vague um and you're like well i don't

110know is it a four or the five i'll choose this and it was everybody with the reason that we went with that choice and if we could maybe tailor it he could help us with that so i would say you know in the years that i've been here all i've really kind of heard is that nobody really sort of puts a whole lot of weight into five no because it's so take and maybe you take it maybe you don't not a great return rate on those right we're required to do it by the state so it's not optional but having something in addition that's not burdensome and lengthy but also really helps us dig in on some things that we're wanting to better understand and address within the district so benefits with that perceptual data

111that was up there also but also i think we have staff satisfaction schoolwide satisfaction is one of our potential apis here so overall staff satisfaction that's really potentially a way to measure that probably one of the most critical ones well it's really important because imagine if you're it's your kid's teacher do you want them to love where they work yeah of course they're going to be so much better teacher if they're engaged i mean it's just and any one of you guys like do you like where you work of course i'm going to work so much harder so i think it's really important i mean the vision i think of eckland consulting is uh i forget their timeline exactly but it's being part of a network of districts that want to make it a great

112place for teachers to teach yes therefore for children to learn you know so i think that's really um there's really a lot of powerful things in there and and teaching right now is very difficult especially now especially um yeah anything we can do to really figure out what's what's happening and that's important we know the pandemic was you know teaching is challenging and we know that the pandemic made it all the more challenging and here we are we're talking about we're very excited to see kind of school back to in a way that feels normal normal with masks on but we still are in a coping environment and so you know i sort of feel for for everybody in the organization kind of the challenge of kind of doing what starts to feel normal and

113very exciting and there's new challenges that come with that but also knowing that we're we're not really there yet we're not out of the woods yeah i want to get on mentoring and i can yeah so also under goal three high quality staff not a strategy but again something our district does that is about recruiting developing retaining exceptional personnel um before mentoring induction i wanted to talk about just some of our summer professional learning work that we did so um the elementary math team of the math interventionist met and worked on the news a new scope and sequence for math and focus what we have noticed over the years is that some of our grade levels with math and focus teach standards that are above developmentally above where students should be so we have gone

114through and revamped the scope and sequence for all grade levels less changes at the primary grade levels a few more changes at the intermediate levels and so that work was done and shared with the teachers then on the second institute day and we'll continue to revisit that as well as rework our common assessments that we assess students with with math and focus a team of hazard teachers worked on sel related activities that teachers are going to be using during cougar connections which is like our advisory class every student every grade level attends cougar connections at their during their lunch lined up with their lunch period and so now we have these sel activities that teachers will be working on with their students as well and then another group of hauser teachers along with sarah hickey

115our innovative learning specialist worked on um worked on the structure of worked on the structure for our what i need program our win program and when is completed is administered it functions during math and ela so math and ela as you know is a double block of 80 minutes we take 20 minutes of that to focus on what students need individually and so this team of hauser teachers and sarah hickey work to provide a structure for that so that they're either doing practice activities doing work with the teacher directly or doing participating in games that might reinforce what students are working on partner work collaborative work so setting more of a structure so that it's consistent among all the ela classes at a grade level all the math classes at a grade level so we're

116excited about that work as well so those were a few of the summer things that we worked on and then probably one of the most important things with a high quality staff is mentoring induction and retention so we started our mentoring and induction the week before school started with three days of time with our new teachers we welcomed 14 new staff members new certified staff members to our district team we spent three days talking about we learned about the school district we participate in different activities that would help them establish routines and procedures and relationships in a meaningful way so really focusing on not just doing an activity to do an activity and say it's fun but talking about the purpose and point behind that activity um obviously talked about the regular pieces of the

117job like schoology or seesaw the curricular resources and then they were able to spend time with their mentors and their building leaders as well we've also had two long-term subs that joined us and during those three days if they could learn these pieces also there are two long-term subs that started the year off so they came and joined us and then our next steps are just we'll have continued monthly meetings with our new teachers um the teacher and the teacher league for mentoring we will have trimester meetings with our mentors to ensure we're supporting them as they're mentoring the new teachers and then the teacher lead for mentoring will also provide some individual coaching for new staff members as well and so i just wanted to in past times our new teachers would join us

118tonight and they'd stand up and introduce them so instead of them standing up and introducing them i have individual pictures of each and i'll just briefly tell you you can see their faces and i'll tell you who they are can i ask a quick content question related to the math before you go into the teacher list um i know prior we talked about that fifth to sixth transition to carnegie work as being a very difficult one is there any consideration when they were doing the math and focus are they also focusing on that transition to carnegie time we were talking um we did do some conversations between the fifth sarah hickey talked about what we're looking at fifth grade standards and talked with the sixth grade teachers about what are their needs that we need

119to make sure we're preparing students for right so when we worked on the fifth grade scope and sequence we did take that into account and we're going to then evaluate how that may or may not assist first experience right i remember just even the um math assessments are very strange for that age group we just talked about prior years that across the country there's a strange issue that happens from federal sex grade and the way that the test is written even and what content they're being taught so i'm hoping that we continue to look at that and make sure they have a successful transition and i did have one more question about hauser um i i think i remember this currency for my own child but is there still time for them to flip the

120classroom and do some problems so that they have that teacher with them in class to practice so that they're not just like getting instruction and then going home and doing homework exactly so that there is still time that's what i remember but because it's such a benefit to be able to bring your problem to the teacher and say i don't understand what i'm doing and to have like you said the 20 minutes of individual time i think that's where those moments come from and i just was going to check in to see if that's still happening yes okay great thank you sorry absolutely mess up your teacher so our new staff members include carly williamson is the new school psychologist at hauser junior high school claire kopp is our new early learners teacher jen graf

121is our new third grade teacher at blythe park elementary school two seconds of third grade all right that's cool gabby eggberg is our new second grade teacher at ames elementary school um when jen allman became the math interventionist opened up that position so gabby has taken that matt loeb is um our orchestra teacher for fifth grade he is the gentleman that we are partnering with rb um so he teaches orchestra rb as well as orchestra at our four elementary schools mary kate mirna is our part-time early or part-time english language learner teacher servicing students at hollywood elementary school in central elementary school alicia patterson is returning to the district she was actually a previous employee here in riverside 96 she is returning to central as a resource teacher that's interesting katie guerrero joined central as

122well she is our new social worker at central kerry mccabe is joining us at hauser junior high teaching sixth grade english language arts carol swann is teaching a band to our fifth grade students at all elementary schools so she'll be working with matt closely emerson duty is joining us teaching art at ames and blythe park the great thing about emerson is that she was actually um she's student taught here last spring cool yep so she's and she's student time at aims of life what does she expect your dream teacher dreamed she's familiar with our community already and familiar with her two schools and um some of the kids actually remember her too from she was teaching her so it's great jax jack d stefano is our lane our music teacher at flight park and ames

123first year teacher very excited and i've been in some of his classes already and just very energetic heather nessler is teaching eighth grade english language arts at hauser junior high school and peggy collings is teaching second grade at central elementary school and the interesting thing about peggy is she has done a few long-term studying positions in our district so it's great that um like we were able to see who she is it's kind of on the job training on the job interview and uh really impressed with all she had done as a long-term sub and excited to have her join us on full-time staff okay so that's our those are our 14 new segments that's awesome it's nice to get to see their faces and say their name they're not here sarah hickey does it

124again transitioning back and forth from rv to here is it going well um it seems to be going really well so i had said because rb started school already by the time we did new teacher orientation so i figured they probably needed him in the morning even though he's scheduled to be with us he's like no i want to learn what's happening i want to learn about riverside so he was already making the transition even before school started it seemed to have been pretty smooth we haven't started lessons yet so i will be checking in with him once we start the instrumental lessons but he is great energy very excited uh and i just i know it's gonna be okay yeah i know my daughter has him at rv in the afternoon and all still

125has lots of energy so sometimes we go around generally like on par with the number of incoming stuff we bring in every year it is yeah i would say so would you say so you've been here long i think what's always interesting about um new teacher mentoring and induction in the school district riverside size and that's like it's a social worker and it's a psychologist and it's a music teacher and an orchestra you know i mean so it's you know very large school districts might bring in a lot of new primary teachers and instead our mentoring has to be much more sort of customized and individualized because you know like what they have in common is that they're new to district 96 they're new to a teaching role we want them to feel welcome and

126connected there's things about technology and where to find this and where to find that but really their jobs are pretty different and a couple are just from retirees not not a great proportion but a you thank you thank you for that well strategic plan related but not fair responsibility type stuff um yeah so just in addition to so i mean a lot of what we talked about was related to that but um martha and i had some conversation around full day kindergarten and just kind of you know what are some of the costs that are gonna be around that the people that we got like how many teachers would we need to hire and things like that that that we need to be aware of as the angela and her team are going through kind

127of assessing all of what that would look like um i think a couple things i was even thinking about is how might that actually change i think somebody kind of brought how might that actually change our pipeline of students like would that increase people participating in early childhood education because they can now translate into kindergarten which martha kind of told me we can because that's outside of standard district protocol we can actually kind of we can control that a little bit better whereas we can't with kindergarten but if we had more uh if we had full day kindergarten would that bring more people to the district would that have more people in kindergarten like whatever population increase so trying to look at some of that on you know our first grade second grade population and

128if that trickles down does that have an impact and then that impacts teachers and all that other kind of stuff right so just kind of trying to put some of those pieces of the puzzle together which angel will kind of do with with the rest of the team and everything too um we let's see i already kind of mentioned the slotted in the the work with uh it's not doctor right just easter yeah mister eckland uh mr eklund nate eklund um i thought there was some really good stuff there that he could provide it's like kind of bits and pieces that martha could bring us of different costs and things like that like what's a part of that cost would be good things here but it sounded like for nine months of work with coaching

129the survey interpreting the survey working with building leadership teams it's not like there's a lot of stuff there that you're working through it'll bring us that we could talk about next time but it sounded just watching him i'm kind of sold so so he's kind of pretty good the other thing we talked about was kind of working with staff and it was i think maybe we didn't actually have it as a key performance indicator but kind of around that satisfaction overall stat and staff satisfaction is really rather than just sending out surveys and getting numbers and trying to interpret what does that mean like really talking to people about why do you stay here like what do you like not like just kind of getting into some of that um you know i think that

130helps build trust and in just collaboration and relationships and all that kind of stuff and so there's a lot of good value to just you know talking to people and kind of being very intentional about what you're talking about to you so that's something martha's kind of taking away and kind of doing and then we talked about our never are are never started i don't know the right way to stipend conversation we keep talking about evaluating it like what do we want to look at how do we want to say whether this is too much or not enough and all that kind of stuff but i figured we could try to target that for the november meeting where maybe we could really dig in and something for two months and plus the 24 plus months

131we've already been thinking about it but we could have maybe more of a targeted dialogue on that we'll get through the other two goals next month and then at that november one day you can look at that list and put the list together and um i think i don't know if you've already done it we didn't actually talk about super um details on that but like enrollment for the different things like what's the cost per student trying to look at some of that data to say does this feel right and do we want to try to put some parameters around that or give martha some guidance on approving or removing potentially things like that so hopefully we can do that at the november meeting and we talked about a number of other things but a

132lot of that i think we'll just kind of like parse out as we get more into the goals and stuff like that so kind of high level right now just how does this fit in because as martha said with the arrows and everything a lot of what goal one and goal two is fits into goal three but goal three also impacts goal five and even goal four and all that kind of stuff so we just kind of talked about the interrelatedness between that and kind of a big picture of things that at the board table what we really need and then just in general feedback for the different committee works to kind of bring some of the suggestions and recommendations and things back to us yeah i know years ago we had very detailed stipend

133conversations with remembers those so for me personally i think it's it's a balance between yes with the cost per student did the students enjoy it but also what opportunities are we giving staff for those areas to really help them grow in areas of interest plus things that are good for them and then we have a little glitch with pandemic where some of our teachers didn't get to do their clubs just because we weren't allowed to meet you know for some of those things so i think that'll be part of the conversation but yeah i definitely think it's worthwhile checking in but yeah that was interesting awesome yeah i know we definitely they they could use an update but i'm i'm hoping it can be a fun one is there anything you wanted to add to

134that no i think as well so we're just trying to think through the items that are really going to fall under personnel committee and again same with all the board committees they're all very interwoven too but um especially as we look at kind of a strategic plan globally but kind of forecasting what's what's potentially on our future agenda so thank you much for that all right uh yes well thanks to the uh education and personal committees uh so that brings us to finance sure i don't have much tonight but just i i know that this is going to be coming up as we talk about the strategic plan especially like goal number five dealing with uh uh being as good stewards of our resources and so i know a number of these goals are going

135to bubble up into uh sort of finance discussions so mr fidgeon and i are going to be meeting this month to start talking about um this in preparation for the next column of october all right thanks david all right that brings us back around to public comment has there been any public comment there has not all right that brings us then to future meeting dates uh next meeting is september 15th the regular business meeting at 7 pm in the multi-purpose room at ames board will enter into closed session at 6 15 if necessary and return to open session at 7. uh october 6th is committee of the whole 7 pm multi-purpose room at ames did we have a discussion about changing these up or we're not quite there yet we're going to stay in ames

136we're staying from here for now okay we're flexible as long as we noted in our agenda i think we decided that this was working well for us for a period of time that we're still masked and socially distanced okay can you maybe do more of a diamond we could try more with that yeah yeah i could see yeah i i i think i agree that that would make it make sense type things we're just going to try every configuration i will say though i really do appreciate oh yeah this feels so much better it's yes a little less formal a little less or worse seeing eye to eye to the uh people presenting which but not for regular board right correct yeah i think that's appropriate more formal voting and stuff like that yeah all

137right uh so let's see so that is october 6 2021 committee of the whole 7 p.m in the multi-purpose room at ames elementary october 20th it reads the regular business meeting 7 p.m in the multi-purpose room at ames elementary board will enter into closed session at 6 15 if necessary and return to open session at 7. and that brings us to the end if there is nothing else this meeting is adjourned [Music]