October 7, 2025, Committee of the Whole Meeting

001I now call this committee meeting of the committee of the whole to order at 6 o'clock p.m. Would you please call the role? >> Miss Pearson >> present. >> Miss Chavez >> here. >> Miss McCall >> present. >> Miss Bennett >> here. >> Mr. Carpenter >> here. >> Miss Haley >> here. >> Miss Stanford >> here. With seven present, we have a quorum. >> Thank you. We will now take a moment of silence followed by the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance As we start each meeting, it's important to remember that the mission of Rockford Public Schools is to collaboratively engage all students in an equitable first class education for a changing world. Before we go any further, I would like to welcome and the board would like to welcome everyone to beautiful historic Lincoln

002Middle School. Um, this is our second committee of the whole meeting at a school and we will continue to meet at v various locations through through the school year. I also would like to thank Kim Person and Aaron Hill who work behind the scenes to produce the broadcast. And I would like to welcome Superintendent Student Advisory Council member Gustavo Ramirez from Auburn High School. [Applause] We're now on to the We're now on to the regular portion of the meeting um which is first meeting minutes from September 2nd, 2025. Are there any additions, corrections, or changes to the meeting minutes? If not, the meeting minutes will be accepted as submitted. Thank you. I will now turn the floor over to Dr. Joe Porter and Johnny Thomas of BWP to present of BWP to present the data

003from the leadership profile. >> Thanks. Thanks for having us back. As you know, last week we spent two full days in your community getting to know all of your stakeholders and today we're here to present the leadership profile report. If we can go to the first slide. The superintendent leadership profile in a nutshell is a clear and concise and unique description of just the exact superintendent we're looking for in Rockford. And we go about developing that by talking to board members, stakeholder groups, and having an online survey. We hit it from three different angles. And once we have a leadership profile, we use it throughout the process. That is why this portion of the process is so important. We use the profile to recruit candidates. We use it in our marketing and advertising. We develop

004our interview questions around the leadership profile. And we assess candidates and create scoring rubrics. again using the specific profile we developed just for you. And it's all about the fit. We like telling people that a superintendent could be very successful in one place and maybe not so much in another. And it's not that they don't have the right skills, but it might not have been the right fit. So, if you can go to the next slide, this one is exciting for us to share with you. In our two days with you, we spoke to 34 different focus groups. There were four of us here. We spoke to 34 focus groups in person and another four focus groups virtually. So we had numerous focus groups and we talked to everybody. District administrators, building administrators, your teachers,

005your union representatives, the support staff in both uh district and buildings. We t our favorite meetings were the two we had with your students, your high school students. That was so much fun for us. We spoke to parents and then we had some community meetings where it was either community partners and elected officials. So those two days were all about focus groups and meeting people in person. The second piece of information that we're going to glean from is one-on-one interviews that we had with each of the seven board members. Those same questions we asked in the focus groups, we asked your school board and we gave them an opportunity to wave in individually. And then the final piece was a survey that we made available to anyone who wanted to complete it in your community.

006And 2,779 people responded. people and board members have have asked me to and uh people from the press have asked me what kind of uh turnout did we get? Is this what was expected? And I'd say the turnout for the in-person focus groups was right in line with what we get in other communities, but the survey results far exceeded Whoops. Hello. far exceeded the normal amount that we get. So kudos for the Rockford community uh making their voices heard. That was very solid. And you only need 2% to make it valid and you're way beyond that. So the data we're about to share is um something that we're very confident about. Next slide. So how do we do this data analysis? We came out of here last week, the four of us, with a mound

007of notes. We took notes. We copied down everything that every person said. And now, what do you make of those notes? So, we had to run frequency distributions. We looked at it every which way. We were synthesizing it, looking for patterns and um looking for common threads. And so when that work was done, we're able to present it to you tonight. We're going to present this in three phases. I'm going to go through the results of the focus groups. So just looking at what we learned when we sat down with you. Then Dr. Thomas is going to take you through the results of the survey, not considering the focus groups. What did the survey tell us? Then we'll come back at the end and synthesize those two and show you how the actual profile turned

008out. Here we go. Next slide. So when we synthesized the data, the strengths of your community came out pretty clear. The themes were pretty easy for us to take a look at. It's a very prideful community. pride, community support, community engagement. You are a city that wants to be involved, informed, and that came through as a great strength. You have a dedicated and talented teaching staff. That came through. How nice to see that in the top two. People, this one we loved. People spoke of diversity in your district not as a roadblock, not as something that's challenging, but as a strength. That was very, very powerful message and we heard it. The next two are about your schools themselves. The pathways for future success. People seem to really appreciate the career pathways for your high

009school kids, your business partnerships, your career certifications. Your kids that we spoke to, those high school students really articulated this well and they appreciate it. Also, the variety of your educational programs. Everything from the Rockford Promise to AP classes, the Illinois International Balorate. People pointed out your fine arts, your sports, your extracurriculars. There's something that can be special for every student in this district. Student voice is sought out and they have spirit and leadership. People are proud of your facilities and your technology. And there was a sense we this is awkward to phrase but we just called it Rockford on the rise because there seemed to be a sense that a corner has been turned and the trajectory is pointing up. Is every problem solved? No. But the direct the trajectory is up now. Challenges.

010Next page. Here are the things in the frequency that they were shared in our focus groups that kind of rose to the top. People think the organizational structure and the central office structure should be taken a look at in today's day and age. Does it still meet our needs? Some people thought it was topheavy. Some people thought there wasn't enough support. Just the looking at the structure of the way the district office and the hierarchy is laid out. Communication was huge. I think it came up in every group we spoke to. Communication is not coordinated. It comes out as silos. It's often either communication is lost or it's repetitive. There are still equity and racial disparities that play out in your schools. Um, different people, different groups talked about sometimes they feel like there's two

011Rockfords. Depends on where you live. Student discipline practices. This one was interesting because some people were looking for stricter and back to suspensions and expulsions and other people were feeling like there were racial disparities and that really needs to be looked at. So it was very interesting. It's something to look at but not sure exactly where the consensus is. Student achievement is low. Nobody wants it to stay there. So many people said we need to get the very least to the state average and beyond. People are very troubled by student attendance, the percentage and trying to figure out why that is. And there was a feeling that the graduation rate could be better should be better. Recruitment, retention, and staffing was another topic. Mainly here is positions that go unfilled or areas where there should

012be more staffing and there's not enough staffing. And then the second part portion of that is getting people to be committed to Rockford and stay. Low staff morale right now, uneven parent engagement, which means some parents and some neighborhoods are quite engaged and involved in the schools and others the schools have real trouble getting their parents to come out and be partners with them. A lack of accountability came up um and having low standards. So your community is saying here, we want you to raise the bar and then hold people accountable to it. There's still some inconsistencies in your curriculum. And of all the programs, um, the only one that came out with frequency was special ed. >> So these are what your stakeholders who we spoke to in the small groups identified as your

013greatest challenge. By the way, if you came to one of those groups and you say, "Hey, I don't I shared this, this, and this, and I didn't see it up on that list." I want to remind you, we heard every word that every person shared. We wrote down every word that every person shared. But you could imagine how long this report would be if we listed everything. So that's why we only um are sharing back the ones that rose to the top. That doesn't mean that the other concerns and issues weren't heard. Finally, we asked those groups, well, what are you looking for? What would the perfect match look like? Well, people want somebody communityoriented and invested. And by that they meant visible, approachable, accessess, accessible, and committed to Rockford in the long run. Nobody

014wants somebody who's only here as a stepping stone to something else. They'd like to see a committed long-term educator. Since communication came out as an area of concern, no surprise that a strong communicator, active listener, engages with stakeholders and explains decisions. A champion of equity and inclusion who is willing to address disparities and supports multilingual and marginalized students. A strategic and resultsoriented person sets clear priorities and aligns people to resources. An experienced instructional leader who strengthens teaching and learning. Familiar with school systems of the same size, diversity, and complexity. This was very important to a lot of people. Rockford's different. They told us you have to know Rockford to be able to be successful here. So you have to at the very least come from a similarly large and complex school system. And then finally

015acts with integrity. I don't know why this keeps fading out but um acts with integrity, transparency and ethical decisionmaking. So tuck that away. That's what we learned from the 184 people we spoke to in the focus groups. Dr. Thomas is now going to come up and tell you what we learned with the surveys. You got to kind of hold. So, it's it's pretty amazing that um the the surveys uh really are kind of the voice of the the individuals that we didn't have an opportunity to sit down and have conversations with. But some of the themes were almost identical, which tells us that we were on the right path in terms of collecting data and making sure that we're triangulating that data and getting a good lens on on what we're looking at here in

016terms of what the next leader should look like. So, we had 2,779 respondents to the survey. 2,629 of them were English speakers, 134 were Spanish, 14 Arabic, and two Swahili. So, it it went across a large swath of the the Rockford community. Um, which we were really really happy with. 70% of those 70% of those Rockford residents um were Rockford res 205 residents. 45% were parents, 24 were parents of former students, 33% were employees, 9% students, and 6% were volunteers in the schools. I want to make sure that I emphasize you may have had some some crossover and that some parents also could be employees, they also could be volunteers. So I want to make sure that we um express that part of the survey as well. So in looking at the district strengths um

017the teachers and staff were came out as some of the most frequent um um identifiers as it relates to a strength for the the district. the diversity in population, the community. >> Could we get a different mic? I have signal at the board and in the recording. So, it's something with the speakers. >> So, I'm trying to figure it out, but >> Okay. >> The the the the Can I sing? Is that good? Um the the the community is also the community was also noted as a a strength partner. The number of educational programs or options uh classroom technology came out as a strength and the school and its facilities were also identified as a strength. Can you try maybe just hold on just a second and see if that if he's able to see

018if there's an issue. He said there's an issue with the speaker and not the microphone. >> Testing. Testing. One, two. Testing. Testing. Testing. One, two, two. Testing. Testing. Mic check. Mic check. Mic check. Mic check. Mic check. Mic check. >> Testing. Testing. Mic check. Mic check. Mic check. All right, we're going to keep going. >> So, opportunities for improvement once again was was pretty much aligned with what you heard from some of the qualitative information that we gathered. uh recruitment and retention of quality uh qualified staff. Improving student achievement. Making sure that there's a focus Making sure that there's a focus making sure that there's a focus on meeting the uh increasing diverse needs of the student population. Quality of instruction. So, making sure that we're paying attention to the quality of instruction, maintaining a

019u positive community relationships, making sure that we maintain the making sure that we making sure that we maintain the go. >> I can do that. >> I know you got this. making sure that we maintain positive community relations, maintain the available educational um options and programs uh for the students and then a number of them really want to make sure uh because of the impact on taxes and things of that nature that we are monitoring the financial well-being of the district. So, some of the um uh survey qualities from the bank superintendent. They the survey turned out that we were looking for an individual that is a strong communicator, someone who can build relationships across the entire um community. um a person that um can work with uh people in teams and and manage people

020in teams. Someone who understands um cultural competency and an instructional uh leader. They have history and they understand how to um lead the district instruction. Some of the personal skills that also came came up in the surveys is that they're a person of integrity, that they're comm they have committed to this community, that they're child centered, a problem solver, and that they champion equity, diversity, and inclusion. Um, some of the things that I I I just want to make sure as we kind of get close together, like I mentioned, um, we we we have been really all over and I I was absolutely amazed at the engagement of of the community and how many people want to access and have um input to how to better the schools and better the community. And so, it's

021a real real strong suit and one that I was truly amazed with. Thanks, Chad. So, now comes the drum roll and the big reveal. I can go to my desk. This is the actual leadership profile. Everything we learned from the interviews from the focus groups combined with all of high surveys. If you notice as Dr. Thomas was going through them. There was tremendous resistance that we went to Germany said and what the people said might not have all been in the same order, but they were all there. So, our last job was to send aside those. And this is what we're going to be looking for. Your board's going to be interviewing for. We're going to be assessing candidates around. It's a really impressive, awesome list. And I want to let you know, we don't

022just pull out the same profile everywhere we go. We let you develop. And this one is highly clean. None of the others that I've ever worked on had summer to now. Some tend to show up on every community. Communication usually does. Being visible and accessible usually does. But there's many many that are very unique. Never done. Thank you. So this first one's a mouthful boat. We thought maybe it was too long and complex, but it's just so good. We think it's so desriven. You're looking for an inspirational, community centered and equitydriven instructional theater who can unite a diverse district around shared vision. Yet we sink in so many important. And the next one's simple, more straightforward. Strong communicator who engages stakeholders guaranteeing authenticity concepts we quickly visible and trusted engaging in with neighbors, staff, family.

023This one we heard a lot mostly from your school. and a collaborative census goal connecting unions department schools and community partners around shared goals. In other words, let's think all of our energies in all the same direction. Like the word two words that start next decisive and courageous addressing factory and systematic challenges while owning leaders economy. Joe, can I add that? Yeah. In a lot of the focus groups, the word that was all around makes you pretend to be speech is tough. And I just thought was absolutely amazing. That was a quality person to be on that there cuz they're going to bring that piece together. So I was really really interested to hear that across several groups including the children but the reason that it's all person we changed it to your ages. Maybe

024we should have just left it tough to try that while I turn up the speaker. >> Testing testing one two three. Oh, testing one, two, three. Hello. Nope. Let's rip. >> Testing, testing, testing, testing, testing. >> Strategic and data informed my people structured. He achieved measurable outcomes. People were saying in addition to being tough, we want somebody to get things done. And then we wanted to respect this last one. We heard leadership experience in school systems of similar size, diversity, and complexity as both Rockford and the Rockford public schools. Those are the key points in your profiles. Those didn't come from BWP. They didn't come from your board. They came from the entire Rockford School community. And you should be very, very proud. It's an impressive list and we can't wait to get it out

025there and sharing it with Kelly. If you wouldn't mind, we'd like to wrap up just next step. So, you can get your bearings and then we'll take any questions. Yeah, >> Johnny. >> So, next uh step for us of November 1st supervis November 4th through 11 um we will begin conducting interviews. um using our leadership profile and matching that leadership profile to the candidates that have have uh applied for the position. November 17th, uh um we will begin to uh conduct interview preparation with the uh workshops with the board. Um so we're making sure that um we're aligned in how we're going to go about making this very uh critical decision. Um and we are going to present the candidate slate. It's typically usually between 25 and seven individuals. November 24th through the 25th um

026the board would conduct its first round of interviews. November 3rd, I mean December 3rd and 4th, uh the board would work to conduct its second round interviews, um dinner interview and all those other things are are optional and it's it's up to the board to decide how they want to to do that that second round. And then December 16th, uh the board would uh hopefully give you makes that final decision and finalize any discussion with contract issues with the identified end. the board of the next steps uh for us in the subject. >> Thanks. And the only other thing that's not on here is a decision that you need to decide later on. doesn't need to be made tonight, but somewhere in that December 3rd and 4th when you're down to two finalists. Some board

027would like to bring in some stakeholders, selected volunteers that could maybe do a couple of interviews with finalists, share some written input. They're not decision makers. They would just be there to share, submit the input to you, and you can take it from there. that decision doesn't need to be made for a while and you need time to have a good discussion. >> So that's that's it for us. It's your turn for questions and comments or anything you like to be here. somebody question. >> Um, so when you get down to your your your final candidates, >> um, maybe I watch too much news, but there's a story in the news right now. Father Superintendent right now. Um, >> he will be US citizens. >> We promise. >> No, but how how do you vet

028your candidates credentials and qualities? >> Great question. We uh we've always vetted our candidates well, but in the last five years, maybe 88 years, because of the rise of social media and so many things on the internet, we have to do a much deeper dive because the last thing we want to do is bring you a candidate, have you guys do your own Google search, and then you tell us something that we didn't download. So we in addition to reference checks, all the usual, we do our own Google doc. So can we take it one step further? We have a professional in the field that we've given people to and they've been doing the deepest dive I've ever seen. We've been using it out for several years. So when when we come on the 17th

029with the five or the seven candidates, they will already totally bet to the different >> and then and of course just to make sure that um we're we're applying for our engine. Now, does that is that the same for like verifying their credentials? >> So, you're if you're talking about their transcripts and making sure that they have a doctorate, which was a part of that story. I I know the other part of that story was that it was false. He did have a doctorate and they reported it out wrong. Um so we do get transcripts um for those individuals along with their license numbers and things of that nature to make sure that they are valid >> and we'll be giving you all the documents that we have on the candidates. So another set sets

030of eyes on it as well. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Miss Bennett and you can please use your microphone even though we can't hear it. It is being picked up on the recording. So, if we can just keep using it like we like it works, please. >> Okay. Uh, perfect. Uh, just uh one air. Well, first of all, uh, thank you very much for all of your hard work. I received just feedback from a few different individuals last week that um, attended groups and people were very impressed like how professional the process was, like how um, how good like conversation was. And so I just one really appreciate all of your hard work and everything that >> you put into to doing that. Yes. Um people were very impressed with like your level

031of professionalism. So we appreciate that. Second um on the uh this slide in particular uh round one interviews we did some discussions after the last time you came. So those will be December 3rd and 4th and then we can get this to you in an email too. And then round two would be December 10th and 11th. So the um 3rd and 4th is first round. So the >> Yes. Perfect. >> Somebody shoots me an email corrected on our schedule >> for sure. And then um lastly then if um if if we as a board decide to do that like last uh say last two uh candidates and kind of have a smaller subset of people do um that process. Would there be enough time after the December 10th and 11th to be able to do

032before the 16th meeting? >> Absolutely. >> Okay. Um and then last question >> that would be just one night. >> Okay. somebody from my firm would come out and um facilitate it so that it everything runs smoothly and that we could then get the uh written feed batch. >> Okay. And then can you uh last thing about that can you explain the process because something that was important to all of us in this process was ensuring confidentiality for individuals when they applied. So making sure that um their names are not released until it is appropriate for to do so. So, can you explain just kind of the confidentiality that would go into that process? >> Sure. We um we have been you guys have been great. The confidentiality has been perfect so far. When we

033come back and give you the six names, you will be the only ones who know that. When it gets to be the final two, we and we're going to be bringing in some other people. We're usually very honest with the candidates and we tell them that by at this point, you know, we'll still try to keep confidentiality, but there's a chance when you bring in more people that it's harder to do. So, we usually tell them better tell your board that this could happen. As far as the people, let's say we asked three teachers, three parents, three community members, you know, somebody from each and they formed a group. Whoever that group was, we would have them sign confidentiality agreements before they were allowed to take part in the conversation. So, we do our very

034best to for the candidates maintaining that um confidentiality to the very end. Great. Thank you. And my last final question, I promise. Are you able at this time to share out the number of candidates who have applied like in most recent time >> 31? >> I think 3132 we have right now, which is was our goal and we still have till November 1st. So I wouldn't be surprised if we push close or over 40. And remember, it's quality, not quantity. But you'd rather have numbers than not numbers. So, we're okay with where we're at. >> Thank you, >> Miss Pearson. >> Thank you. Did we specifically focus on the state of Illinois or did we search outside? >> National. >> We have candidates from all over the place. >> Thank you, >> Miss Chavez. What

035is the the quality of candidates looking like so far? >> I'd rather not speculate. We haven't had a chance to even interview anybody yet. >> Okay. >> But I here's what I will tell you. Um we have a good number of sitting superintendent with experience. We have some deputies assistants and deputy superintendent from big big school systems that feel looks like they're ready to go. And um so it's we have males and females. We have every racial and ethnic uh group that we can tell at this point covered. So it looks to be very diverse. >> Thank you. Oh, Miss Haley, >> I just wanted to since you like feedback, I just wanted to comment. I did attend one of the um community listen sessions and I sat in the back um and the facilitator

036that was there was very engaging and although there were just a few people there, they were able to draw, you know, draw information out. They didn't just ask the question and leave it there. they actually rephrased it and drew um more information out that was initially not given. So, I appreciate that fact that um they did their due diligence with the you know the small group that was there. >> I I I I appreciate you uh saying that. There there was one community member that I spent several hours with even after it was time for me to leave and that person wanted to make sure that I communicated that we not forget uh the west side of Rockford. >> All right. Thank you. Um again, thank you very much for all your work and all

037the time you spent here last week and in the surveys. I also want to take a minute to thank the uh Rockford public school communications staff and Laura from for all their efforts in getting the word out on the community listening sessions and um and in the community survey. Um it really helped especially getting that strong response from the community survey. I also want to thank I know um IT department also helped with the uh the virtual sessions if not other sessions. So, I want to thank them for that, too. And of course, thank you to all who participated in the survey and the listening sessions. I I think you can see that it really um gives us a great um step to look for what we're looking for for our next superintendent. >> I

038had one final request. Now that we've officially presented this um and it totally up to a school board, we can't make a decision like this. But we would love it if you would post a report right on your website for all to see because candidates are watching your meetings. Candidates are checking out your website and they've been asking me if they could have the leadership profile. I said I can't until I share with the board. So, if you would, you've got a nice spot on your website dedicated to the search. If you could put it right there, um, it would help us, too. >> Yes, certainly. We will do that. >> Okay, great. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you guys. By the way, Rockford was a wonderfully welcoming community. We felt so at

039ease here and everybody was so willing to help. So, thanks to you guys as well. >> Thank you very much. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Bye. Can we just make sure the dates are corrected on this before it's officially on the website? >> Good idea. >> Okay. >> I did send that email, Dr. Porto. >> Oh, thank you. >> We'll do that. >> All right, we're moving on to the um next part number four, preview of consent items for governance committee. Are there any questions regarding the governance consent items? Seeing none, we'll move on to the stakeholders committee. Um, and I believe Miss Miss Stanford will lead the stakeholders committee. It went off again. testing. >> Yeah. Spin that one around. Thank you guys. Thank you. Okay, it's time for the stakeholders committee portion of

040the meeting tonight. Let's start by showing our 12-month calendar. clicker. Okay, our 12 month our 12-month agenda. Our feature presentation will be from Jason Pope this evening, executive director of talent. We want to remind board members of the opportunities available to interact with our students, families, and community each month. Please make sure you check the board calendar on rps205.com on a regular basis for the most up-to-date information. Now, let's take a look at the good things happening in our district. Shout out to Auburn's plus program team for earning the team of excellence award at Carpenters Place Celebrate Success event. For two years, Miss Willilifford and Miss Fish's classes have volunteered weekly at Carpenters's Corners, gaining work skills and giving back to the community. RPS 205 was well represented at Rockford's Labor Day parade. Board member

041Nicole Bennett walked with bus drivers and nutrition services. The REA, our cheer teams, and high school bands showed their spirit. Shout out to parade marshall and bus union president Kina Bennett Hicks. Blue and white night at Whitehead Elementary was full of fun and community spirit last month. Families from Whitehead and Flynn Middle School enjoyed food trucks, games, touch a truck experiences, a dunk tank, and more while connecting with local vendors and services. Guilford High School student athlete leadership team led sports camps at Westview Elementary. Students showing strong behavior attendance in grades joined in basketball, football, soccer, and cheerleading topped off with ice cream to celebrate their hard work. Maria Monasuri at Marsh students celebrated the International Day of Peace with music, art, and a living peace sign. Activities included a schoolwide singalong, sidewalk chalk, peace

042art, and a giant peace symbol formed by students and staff. This year's theme was act now for a peaceful world. Next up is items of note with our community partners. Rockford University students came to Flynn Middle School as part of its Jane Adams Day of Service. faculty, staff, and students volunteered their time painting a mural, drawing with chalk, and breaking the ice with the middle schoolers. Help us celebrate our teachers with a Golden Apple Award nomination. Go to golden appleofrock.com and tell them which 6th through 12th grade teachers deserve this special recognition. The deadline to submit is October 16th. The Rockford Promise Scholarship application is open now through February 5th at 5:00 PM. High school students can apply for the chance to attend college tuition free. Don't miss this lifechanging opportunity. Apply today at rockfordpromise.org.

043Napleton Subaru Rockford partnered with Adopt a Classroom and Guilford High School during Subaru Loves Learning Month. Teachers Ruth O'Donnell, Nathan Kershman, Michelle Tucker, Aaron Craig, Ryan Callahan, and Megan Joy each received kits and $500 for classroom supplies. And on our 2055 vibe, we've officially launched our search for our next superintendent. The board is partnering with BWP and Associates, a national search firm, to lead an open, transparent process. Read more on the 205 Vibe. And now it's time for legislative news. US Senator Tammy Duckworth was at Jefferson High School on September 6th for a Rockford town hall. This was an opportunity for invited constituents to connect with the senator with moderator Steve State Representative Dave Vela to learn more about her efforts at the federal level and connect with lo local community resources. It's now time

044for our feature presentation. Please welcome RPS 205's executive director of talent, Jason Pope, who will provide us an update on recruitment efforts. Mr. Pope, the floor is yours. They fooled me. All right, I don't have to use my teacher voice. Good. I haven't dusted that off in a while. I can't see the screen, though, so I'm going to do my best. I'll pop out quite a bit because I don't necessarily remember every slide. >> This isn't That's not my presentation. There we go. >> Jason, you can use my iPad. >> Okay, cool. It'll follow along. >> Well, you can just Yeah, you can just click it and slide it as you need to. >> Cool. All right, so before I get into my presentation, uh I just want to say a few things. I have

045what is probably the best job in all of RPS 205. I absolutely love the work that I do. I get to work with our students, our staff, university students across the region to try to bring teachers to RPS 205. Uh my team has been recognized multiple times by our board, by our district, by uh members across our state for the work that we do. And I say that to say this, there is many people across the district that help in this work. And I think they need to be recognized, too. So, as my team's been fortunate to be recognized for some of this work, we have a lot of people in our district that participate in this work. It's important work, and I'd like to see them be recognized, too. So, I'm just going to

046say a few names, and as you see them out in our buildings, please tell them thank you. Tell them how much we appreciate the support they give the recruitment team and bringing teachers into RPS 205. So, uh, our entire board and cabinet for the unwavering support for the work that we do. Our curriculum team with Elvina Ivy, Josh Rupon, Acasia Ford, Annie Piper, and Heidi Deman. They continuously help us build out these pathways and support our student teachers. Our schools team led by Morgan with Blake, Andrea, Heather, and Sarah continuously work with our student teachers and our employees on their pathways into the classroom. our finance team who continuously finds ways to fund these initiatives that we do across our district to support teachers into the district. Uh and then an amazing amount of principles

047and teachers across our district that support our student teachers and all the candidates I try to bring in their schools. Jake Ser, the principal here at Lincoln, continuously is one of those people that will go out of his way to help future educators feel welcomed in RPS 205. So, as you see them across the district, please give them a thank you. So, tonight I'm going to kind of we do a lot of things in recruitment, but tonight I'm really going to focus around what I call three big tenets. And this is around what we'd call our teacher pathways. And for the audience, I apologize. I know that screen keeps going in and out. I promise there's some really cool stuff on these slides. If everybody want to shifts down and go to that side, I

048won't be upset. So, that's my teacher advice. Go that way. Uh but anyways, so we do some really big things, but tonight I want to focus around three specific pathways. The first one being our studenttoteer focus. So helping RPS students get into the classroom as certified teachers. The second is staff to teachers. So finding those future educators across our district that are in those important support roles, working with our kids, helping them earn their teaching license and get into the classroom as a teacher. And then finally, the work that we do around student teaching, which I call the lowhanging fruit. That is where I think we can have one of the biggest impacts, is building a very robust and rewarding student teaching experience. So our first pathway, the RPS students to RPS teachers. On the

049screen, you'll see Antonio Ramirez. Antonio is a teacher here at Lincoln. He is a graduate of our Rockford University education pathway student. I've had the privilege to be in Antonio's classroom many times. He is an outstanding educator and a true inspiration of what our RPS students can be as future educators across the district. Uh he's a teacher here at Lincoln. He's about to finish his master's degree in urban education. He's expressed interest in earning additional endorsements in ESL education and eventually wants to become a principal and school leader as well. So, just an example of what our pathway really can mean for our students and ultimately our district as we move forward. >> Yeah, his dad's here. Proud dad right there. Tony, raise your hand. Yeah. >> I did not know that was your son.

050Awesome. Um, so for those that aren't familiar with our Rockford University education pathway, it is a threec course sequence that we've built at our high schools that allows our students that have expressed an interest in education to become more immersed in a career in education. So throughout their sophomore and junior se junior and senior year, they take a threec course sequence. They get opportunities to go back into elementary schools, work with kids again. They get to see teaching from the teacher side of the table. Uh, and we really try to engage them and and interest them in careers and education. From there, they can attend Rockford University at a significantly reduced tuition rate. It's about an 80% tuition reduction. Throughout their four years in college, the district in Rockford University provides a lot of wraparound

051supports to them to help them across the finish line. and then if they come back and teach in Rockford public schools, they can take access of our urban education master's degree and get their education paid for by the district. So, it's one way that we want to get our students into our classrooms. We know as as we fight against this national teacher shortage, the best way to make great teachers for Rockford Public Schools is to help our kids become those teachers. Those are the ones that are going to have the biggest impact on our classrooms down the road. So, as we look at some of the success the education pathway, currently this school year, we have 35 graduates of that program as certified teachers in classrooms across the district. Man, so 35 graduates of the

052program in schools across the district. The next number is something I'm really excited about. Of those 35 graduates, a third of them are in hard to fill teaching positions. special education, bilingual education, math, and science. So, not only are our students filling our teaching vacancies, they're filling the teaching vacancies that we need the most. They're filling those hard to fill classrooms. If we project out specifically around that bilingual teaching piece and we look at these 86 students that are on track to student teach over the next 3 to four years, almost a third of those students are earning bilingual and ESL endorsements as well. So, we are going to start to make some real gains on our bilingual teaching vacancies over the next several years from our own students. And then that last number on

053the bottom, uh, last year, it's actually been about, it's almost two years ago now, I think. Uh, we just got the money this last year, but we secured a $300,000 grant from Senator Duckworth to enhance our education pathway. Currently, through that grant, we've been able to provide an additional $50,000 in tuition reduction for those students that are in the pathway. and we've been able to provide housing for 15 pathway students over the last year and a half. Over the life of that grant, we are going to be able to offer $150,000 in tuition reduction for those students and uh housing for up to 25 students while they're enrolled in college. So, really thankful for the grant we were able to get from Senator Duckworth's office. All right, let's transition into staff pathways. So, on this

054screen you'll see Joseph Wagner and Kiki Perez. They are both man. What is going on? >> All right, I'll try to Okay, so Joseph Wagner and Kiki Perez, uh, they are both part of our second LEAP cohort. They are currently working as building support professionals at Kennedy Middle School. They will both be student teaching uh this spring and then moving into full-time or um sorry, they're student teaching right now and they will both be transitioning to full-time special education teaching positions starting in January as part of the second LEAP cohort. So, our LEAP cohort is a pathway for our staff members and we have a couple different ones. The LEAP cohort is specifically designed to create more special education teachers. We take staff that are in support roles like pair of professionals that have at

055least an associates degree and in partnership with niu. They work full-time in their support role during the day supporting kids. They take courses in an accelerated cohort format through niu to earn to finish their bachelor's degree, earn their teaching license and their LBS1, their special education teaching endorsement. We provide a lot of additional wraparound support for them while they're in that program. They're providing services to kiddos. They're finishing school and then they come back and teach in our district for at least three years in a special education teaching position. Our first cohort graduated in 2023 and we currently this school year have 18 special education teachers that were graduates of that program. White slide. Um our second cohort which is currently student teaching right now and will be graduating December. We'll have 18 of those

056pe 18 of those I I call them kiddos, but they're not. Most of them are adults my age or older. Uh but they'll be transitioning into full-time special education teaching positions starting in January in the schools that they're currently serving in. The LEAP program um originated out of Rockford in 2022. We were one of the original founders that created that program in partnership with U46. Uh and I have to say this program has just not only shown great results for us but is reverberating across the state. So uh other districts have reached out to us and niu and asked how do we build something similar and Senator Durban actually just gave niu a fairly large grant to create a regional leap cohort for ru r r r r r r r r r r r

057r r r r r r r r rural school districts. So things that are starting in RPS are reverberating across the state around teacher recruitment. So, our RISE program similar to our LEAP program uh built in the same facet. We take student support uh we take uh employees and student support roles that have an associates degree and they do a two-year track to complete their degree, but this one is with an emphasis on elementary education. So, we currently have 20 staff that are in that program that will be student teaching this spring and then moving into certified teaching roles in the fall. One of the great things about the RISE program is when we developed it, we worked with a lot of our community partners, our parents, and our students. And niu actually took feedback

058from all three of those groups and designed four electives that are built around the Rockford community. And only students in the RISE program receive those courses. They're taught by Rockford community leaders. And the idea is to make those teachers better teachers in Rockford, to really know about the historical context of Rockford, the educational context, and really to have a better connection with our students and our families so they can be effective educators in all Rockford public schools. Uh, this next slide just kind of shows how these programs are impacting our schools. So, we talk a lot about these teacher pathways, but I also think it's good to see where are these students ending up, what schools are being impacted by our education pathway, our LEAP program, and our rides program. And what this slide really

059emphasizes is all our schools across the district are seeing an ROI. We're seeing these these employees and these students metriculate back into all of our schools. I broke them into three tiers. So that first tier is schools that have at least five staff or more in certified teaching roles through these programs. Uh tier two is schools that have three to four staff and tier one is schools that have at least one to two. So you can see across the district all of our schools are being impacted by these programs. But I really want to call out Auburn High School. Auburn High School is leading the charge. They have the largest number by a wide margin with 12 staff or students that are in teaching roles through these pathway programs. And it speaks to the work

060that former principal Jenny Keffer and current principal Ryan Knockriner have done to build a culture around developing and cultivating young talent, getting them into their building to work with kids and then finding pathways for them to get into the classroom and supporting them at the building level. So the work being done to kind of really grow their own students and staff into teachers I think definitely deserves to be recognized. So then the one of the last things our last big tenant is student teaching and I'm going to give a little historical context on this to talk about where we were and where we are now. So when we look at student teaching, if we go back about four years, u I would classify our student teaching program as hope and pray. Let's hope that universities

061send us students and let's pray they stay in Rockford. And about four years ago, we decided to completely tear that down and start over. We really wanted to get aggressive with universities and really get them sending more kids to Rockford. And then when they're here in Rockford, we want to do all the things to get them to want to stay. I always like to tell universities, when we get kids here, we want them to do three things. Fall in love with our kids, fall in love with our buildings, fall in love with our city. If we can do those three things, we can keep them longterm in the classroom. So that has really been our focus. growing our university partnerships, getting more student teachers here when they're here, giving them a really great experience, giving

062them a lot of professional development, mentorship, and really helping guide them through that process and then getting them into the classroom. So, this slide kind of illustrates the life cycle of a student teacher. Uh, that first column, uh, really looking at a student who's in their freshman through junior year. So, one thing I think we do really well compared to any other school district in the state is we start working with student teachers their freshman year in college. We don't wait till they're placed in our district for clinical hours or student teaching. We spend a lot of time on campus in classrooms working with future educators and talking to them about not only the field and the career, but everything that Rockford has to offer. We want to get them excited so when it's time

063for them to do their clinical and method hours, come in and do observations, they're requesting Rockford Public Schools. Whether they're an RPS grad or they're from another area completely, we want them to really think about us. And then once they're here doing those observation hours, we want to make that experience so good that they only want a student teach here. And then when they student teach here, again, we want to make that experience so great that Rockford is the only place they want to teach. So starting that freshman through junior year, you can see we do a lot of different things to engage them and get them excited about Rockford. When it's time for them to student teach, we put a lot into them. All of our student teachers start out every semester with a

064full day professional development workshop led by our curriculum team. We do a deep dive in in curriculum instruction, classroom management strategies. The student teachers get to network together and build their own support network with each other so they don't feel like they're on an island as well. throughout their semester of student teaching, we pull them out of the classroom several times and do some continued professional development opportunities around the Danielson framework. Um, and then really make sure they're involved in their school's PLC. Uh, we throughout the year we will pull we will give them tours of different buildings, connect them with principles, and then we bring in community members, too. So, it's not only RPS they're seeing. We want them to get involved in the community and get to know Rockford because we want them

065to stay. Uh you can see then we also offer housing and compensation. So I will say this has been a huge gamecher. This is probably what has moved our numbers greater than anything. And it's not only that we're providing housing and compensation, but it's really the strategy behind it. So when we look at housing, the housing is really an effort to get students who are not necessarily from the Rockford region. So we can pull students from niu that come from a 30 to 40 minute window from Rockford pretty easily. We can pull Rockford University students. That gives us a pretty small pool to work with though if we want to get aggressive with schools like Illinois State, the University of Iowa, uh all of the educator prep programs throughout Wisconsin and then some of these

066mid Midwest schools that have really good programs. We have to provide opportunities to get these kids here and that's what the housing does. It provides opportunities for students who want the chance to teach in a large urban district with a diverse student population the chance to do that. Uh the compensation also allows student teachers to just be student teachers. Like the pay helps attract them, but it also helps them focus on student teaching. We don't want student teachers to have to work a part-time job or have some of those other burdens that may stop them from crossing the finish line. We want to make sure when they get in the classroom, they can get into the classroom as a certified teacher as well. The compensation housing is also working as far as attracting those other

067students. So, I will use the Illinois State University as an example. Uh, traditionally, we will get three to four students a semester from Illinois State. And those are kids that are from Rockford. They're they're going to come, they're going to live at home while they student teach. What we can't get from ISU is all those kids from the suburbs, all those kids from Chicago and the middle of the state. The housing allows us to do that. It's allowing those students that want that opportunity to be here to be here. This semester, five of our six apartments are filled with ISU students. Next semester, all of our apartments except for one are filled with ISU students, and a lot of them are coming in content areas that we need here in the district. The compensation is

068also driving students here. So those students that maybe don't need housing but live 45 minutes to an hour from here without compensation that wouldn't student teach, they're willing to make that commute because of that compensation and then they're getting a better student teaching experience. It's preparing them better for the field. Um and then we we end every semester with a big student teacher celebration where we support them and that's really our big recruitment push. a lot of administrators come in and help and then when they transition into the classroom there's a lot of continued support for them in that first and second year and these are the results. So currently we have about 20 university partners that we work with continually around student teaching and some of our other pathway programs and we host about

069120 student teachers a year. If we look back four years ago during our our hope and pray period we were averaging about 60 maybe 70 student teachers on a good year. So, we have doubled those numbers in just four years. And I will tell you, the more student teachers that we can get in the district equates to more teachers in the classroom the next year. Two slides left. Almost done. So, the next program I want to talk about is a continuation of our student teaching, and that's our aspiring teacher program. And this is our year-long student teaching placement. So, this is really designed to to better prepare educators for their first year in the classroom. Unfortunately, as as much support as we can give those traditional student those traditional student teachers that are in a

070semester long placement, 16 weeks just isn't enough to prepare for your first year in the classroom. If you student teach in the fall, you get the opportunity to build relationships with kids, set some classroom management strategies, build some structure. What you don't get to do is see student and growth achievement. If you student teach in the spring, you are stepping into an established classroom. Every student in that classroom knows you're a student teacher. We see that student teachers that can spend an entire year in a classroom with a really high quality teacher by their side are just better prepared to enter the field and tend to stay in the field longer. We see when teachers leave the field, it's typically in the first three to five years. And the feedback we hear is they just

071didn't feel prepared to be in the classroom on their own. The aspiring teacher program works to alleviate that. Uh through our aspiring teacher program, this current school year, we have 69 graduates of the program that are in classrooms in RPS. This year, we have 21 aspiring teachers in our schools. This year, we rebuilt that program three years ago. Uh it was very decentralized at one point where our aspiring teachers were spread out across the district and what we did was try to find really good cooperating teachers to put them with but they weren't working together. They weren't creating a network of support. They weren't truly supported in the building as a whole. So we condensed the program into just three buildings at the elementary level and really follow a medical residency model where there's an

072aspiring teacher and what we call an MCL at every grade band in that building for those three schools. and it's really providing the support they need. And then if we look of those 69 graduates that are working in the district, 72% of those graduates have either reached tenure or on track to reach tenure. So the program's working. So I will finish with what's next. So what we have coming up on the horizon, the first thing is our Bright program. And I'm I'm really excited about Brightite. So built in kind of the model of leap and rise. This will be another stafftoteer pathway but this is specifically around bilingual education. This will take staff members who are working in those support roles and be able to provide a teaching license in a bilingual endorsement in Spanish,

073Arabic or Swahili. We're looking at it'll be a 25 seat cohort. Right now our numbers are looking like about 15 seats for Spanish, five for Swahili, five for Arabic. That could change. Those numbers could change a little bit based on need over the next year and the candidates we get. But what's extremely exciting about this program as we're with our leap and rise program candidates have to have an associates degree to get into it. What we've done with this program is work with both Rock Valley College and Northern Illinois University and it'll deliver a 4-year degree in three years. So candidates will need no previous college experience. We'll be able to take candidates that have no college coursework, get them into a support role for three years, supporting our kids, help them finish their degree,

074and then they will stay and teach in the district for at least five. I'm really excited about that one. American Board is an alternate lensure pathway I've recently found through the ROE. Um, very high level. This will this could allow us to help a lot of our subs in the district that have bachelor's degrees but don't have a teaching license create a very coste effective and fast way to lure. Uh it's about $2,000 a candidate in 9 months. Uh our biggest roadblock to getting our non-certified staff to certification that have bachelor's degrees is most of the time they have to go through a master's program and that's expensive and a lot of times candidates just can't afford it. This will be very coste effective and very quick to do. I see us being able to

075do cohorts of 10 to 20 staff at a time, provide some wraparound support for them, and really get a lot of our subs into those certified positions where they've kind of been serving for a few years already, but in a higher capacity. Uh the curriculum team and I have built out what I call a math educator task force. Uh so we are working with a lot of our math educators across the district and really it's got three focuses. The funnel which is how do we get more people to want to become math teachers. The pipeline which is once we get them in once we get them through the funnel and into programs how do we get them to want to come to Rockford public schools and teach math. And then the last piece is how

076do we keep the math teachers we have? Uh and that'll be the big piece that we focus on. Uh, and then the last thing, our next big university partner we want to work to build a relationship with is Jackson State. So Jackson State has there's really two reasons we want to target Jackson State. They have a large contingent of students that come from the Midwest, so the Chicagoland area, which those are students that we can draw back to Rockford. They also have a very highly recognized educational program. They produce really good teachers. All right, any questions? [Applause] Miss Haley. >> Um I just have a question. U regarding the um the American Board program. How long did you say that was? >> Great job. >> Thank you. Uh so with the American Board program, it

077advises candidates. So it's self-paced. Uh it advises candidates. It should take 9 months on the fast end uh up to a year. So anywhere between 9 months to a year depending on how quickly the candidate wants to move through it. What we would actually look at doing if we do that though is building out a cohort model where we have a group of employees going through that sequence together and hiring somebody like a retired principal or a retired teacher that could kind of lead them through that coursework and serve as like a completion coach. So we we'd want to really sequence it out for them. So it's not like if if we make it self-paced and we just send 20 people out in ether to do it, two or three are going to complete it.

078If if we can create a cohort of 10 to 20 and we can put that wraparound support around them, we can get 10 or 20 across the finish line. >> Anyone else? Miss McCall. Sorry. >> Thank you. >> Can't see your light. >> I'm sorry. >> Uh, first I just wanted to highlight that Jackson State is an H.B.CU. So, I'm very uh grateful for that collaboration. >> Additionally, I have a question. So for these cohorts, it's at any level of staff or do they have to be pair of professionals or >> So that is a great question. So the way that niu is able to accelerate some of this coursework is by giving them credit for work experience. So to do that they have to be specifically in a role front-facing with kids. So example,

079if you're working at the administration building, if you're a school secretary, unfortunately, your work experience doesn't equate to college credit in that course. So pair professionals, behavior intervention specialists, parent liaison, uh building support specialist, you have to be in a building working with kids on a daily basis. >> And then secondly, um I know you mentioned it, but I needed you to just kind of repeat it. So say I'm a new person coming to the community. I start with the um as a sub or a pair professional. How much time um will I have to have been employed by RPS to take advantage of this uh program? >> So we we want to see a little bit of work experience. So we look at typically about a year as kind of that benchmark. Um, if

080somebody has less than a year, but they have in the time that they've been working with the district, have really good work history with the district, um, have referrals from their administrator and a few teachers in the building and maybe a community referral, I think we would consider them as well too. Uh, especially when we look and I'll have more details coming out about the bright cohort soon, but that one is tenatively planning to launch next fall. Uh so we uh the contracts are working through negotiation right now, but as soon as those are completed, we're going to start recruitment. So I anticipate being able to start recruitment for those programs late this fall. Uh so we're going to have to get creative with some of those candidates. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >>

081Miss Bett, >> could you give a brief update on the pathways and the recruitment efforts for social workers? Yeah. So, our we through the SWAT grant, we started the BW program with the University of Illinois. We currently have three staff members that are working towards completing their BSW, uh, which would then move into, so this coming fall, they'll be doing their internship in what we call a non-certified social worker role, really, um, handling tier one and tier 2 interventions at a building level. And then uh we've recently just had another discussion about expanding that into a master's program for certified social workers. I do have a tenative meeting with Rockford University to build that pathway out. Uh but we are also building that pathway within our high schoolmies. So how the academy would tenatively look

082is similar to our education pathway. Our high school students could go through the social work pathway uh through the Rockford Promise Scholarship, then go to Rockford University to earn their BSW, come back and teach in Rockford public schools, and then through Rockford Public Schools complete an MSW while working as a non-certified social worker to move into a certified social worker role. So, as we continue these conversations with Rockford University and the SWAT team, I will keep you apprised on that. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. I did have um sorry one additional question um so how long will like so we have bright we have leap and we have rise how long will these um programs last right so um will it keep is this something that's going to continue to go to keep getting

083you know like math teachers and this special >> you guys keep giving me money I'll keep building out programs and uh I'll keep trying to get teachers in the district but uh to answer your question seriously um The LEAP program is something that I think tenatively we could do indefinitely because the need for special education teachers is so great. Uh and this is our greatest way to attack that need. Uh the RISE program is something that we could do in cycles because it's focused on elementary education. There's also a large number of elementary education teachers in the pipeline. There's not a large number of special education teachers in the pipeline. I would love to be able to build something out around some of those other hardto-fill areas like math and science. That is extremely more

084difficult because of the way that those degrees are held at the university level. So, elementary education, early childhood, special education, uh bilingual education, those are housed within the college of education. We can work with the college of education to build those pathways out. If somebody wants to be a math teacher, they don't go through the college of education. they go through the college of mathematics and sciences and those college those parts of the university aren't as favorable in building out cohorts like the college of education is. So we have to get a little creative with them. The other component becomes that entry point of an associates degree. Um every so many years we exhaust that pool of candidates internally and we have to build it back up. So we can't realistically do a LEAP program

085every year because we just don't have the candidate pool to support it. So, we need to do one, give a few years to build that pool back up and then do another one. And another thing that I would like to look at in the future is how do we build an associates degree pipeline to then transfer into those other pipelines. >> Okay. And the final thing um so we have this bright where um we're offering um people with no bachelor's degree or no so associates degree and they can come and get through this program. So, have you looked at the leap and the rise to see if there's any adjustments that could be made to allow more participants by again alleviating that associates degree portion and doing that? So, have that been looked at? And

086>> so when we decided to build out the Bright program, this was the first time that we looked at, hey, we need an associates degree pathway. But now that we have, excuse me, now that we have that built out, we could easily work with NIU and RVC to add that associates piece into these other pathways. So once that bright program gets running and we see how that works, we could easily build that into those other programs and that might be a better sustainable pipeline in the future. It is just it's it's obviously doing that. it's more expensive. Uh I will say it's also significantly harder on the candidates. Uh the Bright program is going to be unique because we're asking people to do a four-year degree in three years. They're going to have no breaks

087for three straight years. They're going to be working full-time. They're going to be taking classes in the fall, the winter, the spring, and the summer for three years straight. So, it's going to be intense. So, with that, we have to make sure we get the right candidates into those into those seats that can handle that workload. But then, we also need to support them. And that's going to be a key component between RPS, RVC, and niu. What do those wraparound supports look like to make sure we're getting those students across the finish line? >> Okay. Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Anyone else? >> Yeah. Okay. I have um actually a couple questions. The first one is I know like these are all great uh factors that seem to have succeeded, right, in recruiting um

088you know, student teachers and current teachers uh or new teachers. And um for the bilingual program, are there any other special efforts that you're doing to recruit recruit more bilingual teachers or student teachers? >> So uh I can speak kind of historically of what we've done or kind of what is in the pipeline. So Bright will be one of the big things that we want to do for grow your own uh through the Rockford University education pathway. uh and I can attribute most of this success to Jefferson High School, but uh the candidates coming into the pathway through Jefferson High School, the majority of them are bilingual and are working towards either a bilingual or ESL endorsement. So, as we project out over the next three to four years, I anticipate a large number of

089those candidates coming out of that program with those uh bilingual endorsements in Spanish. Uh we had done a partnership with the Illinois State Board of Education hosting international teachers. Uh we've had I would call minimal success with that program for a variety of reasons. Uh but I think really if we want to really move the needle on bilingual education in our district, we have to focus on homegrown talent. We have to find our students and our community members that want to be teachers in our district and then help them get into the classroom. >> So I'm glad to hear I'm happy to hear about Jefferson High School um or Pacific School is is is leading in that. what else what other support can be given to continue that or or be a stronger pathway? >>

090Yeah, so I would say probably the two biggest things from a support lens is um when we get ready to start recruiting for Brightite, I need connection with candidates that are interested in our community and getting them into the district in those support roles so we can get them into those pathways. And then from the school lens, uh, when we work with our pathway students, it's identifying those students that maybe haven't picked education as their career, but getting them kind of into that idea, too. So, there's a lot of students that don't know what they want to do after high school. Let's start talking to them about education as well and getting them into some classrooms to see what teaching is all about. >> And I'm hoping with the special as well as bilingual that

091they will have the resources that they would need then. I I'm sorry. Can you repeat that? >> That with the bilingual with the bilingual B special that they will have the resources that they need to be successful then >> I I guess I don't understand the question >> like they would be successful in their classroom they will have the resources that they need. >> So as uh are you talking about when they step into the classroom as a certified teacher? >> Yes. >> So they would go through their traditional bachelor's degree program uh go through every I guess I'm not understanding the question. >> Let me rethink it and rephrase it in my head and I'll get back to you. >> No problem. And the second thing is is it too soon to say like

092like have like a a a lens or view bird eye view of like what the retention has been with these programs with um >> did he say that already? >> Yeah, like what has been the retention so far? We're they're staying beyond their contracted time or is it too soon to see? >> So right now it's too soon to see. The first LEAP cohort is go will be going into year three next year and they're on a three-year agreement. Um the second LEAP cohort will be three years starting next year. Like we'll be entering year one next year. Uh the rise cohort will be entering year one next year. So um I anticipate high retention because they've all almost all of our leap and rise candidates are Rockford natives have grown up in the district,

093attended the district, have worked in the district. Like this is home to them. And we know that's why the grow your own initiatives really is the best way to get the best teachers here in Rockford and keep them here. Welcome. >> Anyone else? >> All right, I'm gonna run away before there's any more questions. >> I was gonna ask one quick question. Maybe maybe two. Um, you mentioned the RPS onampus presence. What colleges is that or do you have a presence at? >> And uh, so the biggest ones would obviously be Rockford University and NIU. Spend a lot of time at both those schools. Uh I spend some time down at ISU Central State University. Um Iowa, the University of Iowa is one we've recently really been trying to grow partnership with. The University of

094Iowa when we went there last year and spent some time with their college of education. They have 600 kids in their college of education. Last year was the first year that they had more students from Illinois than Iowa. 51% of their kids from the COE come from Illinois. A lot of those are Chicago area and those are kids that we can draw back. So, as we work with universities, we're always trying to get on campuses and we can, but the big ones would be NIU, Rockford University, ISU, National Lewis a little bit. They're more of an online school, Iowa, and then Central State. >> Thank you. Um, and you know, I I don't know if it goes without saying, but obviously recruiting teachers who were RPS students um is a great way to, you know,

095make sure that we're getting teachers who represent the diversity of RPS students. And so I appreciate all your work in doing that. >> Thank you. >> Sorry, I have one final thing. >> Shoot. >> It just got triggered. So blame Paul. But can do you have a plan as far as once these students um complete their program and they get, you know, get their uh bachelor's degree or whatever. I know that the lensure test is something that's very very um difficult for students to pass especially the math portion. Is there something that's ingrained into these programs to help assist with the that particular section of uh the lens exam to try to be able to help increase the students in their their graduations. I know from central states there were um a lot of students

096that that come in they cannot get past the um the Illinois state state of Illinois licenses program and I don't want that to be another barrier for like Jackson State you know coming from Mississippi you know is there something that can be ingrained in there to help assist these participants in actually obtaining their licenses when they're done student teaching and everything to be successful teachers in our district. So the universities traditionally will have that built into their program, but as we're seeing sometimes that's not enough support. Um what we are starting to see is universities pivot away from allowing people to student teach without passing their content exam. So historically, universities have allowed people to student teach without passing their content exam. And then they have so much time either before graduation or even after

097graduation to pass their exam and get licensed. uh because more and more students are struggling with passing the content exams, universities are now starting to require them to pass those content exams before they student teach. Not every university is has fully transitioned to that, but a lot have. Um what that means is student teaching numbers might go down in the intermediate but in the long run I think that we'll see the universities will then provide better supports to them to make sure more of their students are getting into student teaching ultimately graduating getting into the classroom which means the student teachers that will be coming in will be ready to get in the classroom as soon as they graduate. We try to provide some support with them too. Um, it's I'll be honest with you,

098it's tough because a lot of that stuff is governed by the university. So, we will try to support them to the best of our ability, but really that is a university factor to be able to help them cross that finish line and graduate. >> Thank you. >> I have a quick question. >> Um, have we checked into possibilities of pre-esting prior to that fall on the university as well? So I guess when you say pre-esting, uh, can you give me an example? >> The student teachers that we have that that's, you know, that's in the program, is there any way, um, or do you know of any resources that offer um or is there any way that they can take a pre-EST for their license? >> Yep. >> Um, >> so there is an organization

099that most the universities utilize and we've utilized it for some stuff too. It's called 240 Tutoring. So 240 tutoring will actually give the students some tutoring support and then they provide sample tests for them that match with the state content exams. Uh and typically students that can pass those pre-EST tend to do well on the state exams too. Uh some universities do a really good job of utilizing 240 tutoring, some do not. Some students really utilize it, some do not. We also know some people unfortunately just are not good test takers. Uh so really need to work with the schools to figure out how to get those individuals across the line too. >> Thank you. >> Welcome. >> Anyone else? >> Thank you, Mr. Pope. >> All right. Thank you. >> Appreciate it. [Applause] We

100have just a few more slides to get through on our deck and then we'll move on. Thank you. Okay. Uh for some internal external news. Earlier this month, a few of our schoolboard members had the opportunity to attend the Consortium of State School Board Association Legislative Advocacy Conference held in Washington DC from September 7th through the 9th. The purpose of the conference is to develop ongoing relationships with members of Congress and their staff for the purpose of influencing policy. members were able to engage with Illinois federal legislators, Senators Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durban, and House Representatives Darren Lehood and Eric Sorenson to advocate on the behalf of the students and staff of RPS 205 and to share perspectives on important issues. Top federally funded legislative priorities discussed with legislators included requests for full funding of

101the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, funding for mental health supports, title one and title 2A a teacher and principal recruiting. Schoolboard members were also given the opportunity to share the positive impacts of programs created and funded by Congress for schools, students, families, and educators. Congratulations to the Greater Rockford Chamber of Commerce's 40 under 40 honore Nicole Bennett. All the honores all the honores were recognized at their reception on September 16th. Board member Tiana McCall and myself joined other local elected officials for Rockford area Habitat for Humanities legislative build day. We constructed walls with the help of volunteers. The homes that are being built are located in the Emerson Estate subdivision behind Auburn High School. And it was really hot that day. Do any board members have anything to share regard regarding any events you've attended

102or any interactions you've had in the community? Miss McCall, >> I just want to say that um thank you to all the contractors and everybody who put up these houses and stuff because it took me well over 15 minutes to get one screw in. Oh, well, not even a screw. See, it was a nail to hammer a nail in. It was just I will happily pay you guys. >> Way harder than it looks. Um secondly, I just like to um again just recognize our our student athletes. Um over the weekend, I've attended several flag football, junior football, all kinds of football things and and um the students are are really really excited, you know, when you see uh people people from the community at their games and things encouraging them. Um, also, uh, the open

103houses and the parent teacher conferences. I I attended the the ones at Auburn High School and it was just greatly attended, uh, by by the parents and students as well. I used some of that time to to hear from, um, the teachers, you know, the the f challen challenges, I'm sorry, and and different things that they face um, you know, so far at the first first, what is it, second quarter or whatever. Um, I have received positive feedback about the school lunches from some of the students. Um, they were they were on me the last couple of years about the food being nasty or whatever, but this year has been so far so good. So, I want to send a shout out to all of our our nutrition services and things um, regarding that. Just

104wanted to let you guys know that the the students are watching. they are they are coming in and and commenting to me at least you know I guess I don't know feel like they they think they can tell me anything but the food has been good so far. Um and additionally just just thank you guys um for showing up today at Lincoln Middle School. I think this is a great um opportunity for for us as a board to see, you know, different schools in action that's not uh directly in our our district subdists and um that's it. Thank you, >> Miss Pearson. >> Yes. Thank you, Miss Stanford. So, outside of athletic events, I had an opportunity to participate in the breast cancer walk. um a lot of parents on the track. It was an

105awesome event. I survived it and I'm grateful. But um I want to encourage those that are in the fight of breast cancer to be encouraged and we certainly are grateful for those that made it over and out with positive outcomes. Lastly, I want to recognize our lunch breakfast and lunch aid workers. uh many of them are retirees that come back to help out in our schools. And I think that we ought to pause every now and then and say thank you even to those um positions that don't typically get rec recognition. So thank you to all of the breakfast and lunchroom aids. They go above and beyond outside of the cafeteria, trust me. So we appreciate them. Thank you. Anyone else? Miss Chavez, sorry, I can't see the mic. Um, I just want to state

106that I did attend the um the new board member seminar um back in September and I didn't know what to expect um a lot of information as we we all know. Um but I was able to connect and meet other board members from different school districts and um I was pleasantly surprised and very pleased though although we are not perfect as a district. There are many many areas that we are actually far along compared to other districts and their challenges. So I felt pretty proud about some um leeways that we've made and some improvements that other districts are still struggling with. Again, we're not perfect, but um we do have some things to be proud of, >> Miss Haley. >> Um so, a couple of weeks ago, probably a week and a half ago, I

107was able to attend uh the uh strong schools um at Lewis Lemon. as you if you don't know rock uh RPS 205 uh is is working with commu a certain a certain number of uh schools in our community uh with the strong schools framework implementation in conjunction with alignment rockford. So, I was able to attend one of those strong school sessions at Lewis Lemon um where the uh community was engaged uh well families were engaged with uh information from the staff and the principal and getting getting students uh uh they explained the bags program and the bags program discusses behavior behavior attendance grades and social emotional. So it was very well attended. Uh we had to bring in more tables, more chairs. The families were fed and information was provided to the parents about these

108programs as well as the importance of students being at school and engaging in positive behaviors so that they can learn and be productive members of um our community. So, I really enjoyed that and I really appreciate the collaboration with uh Alignment Rockford and all you guys do is is amazing for our community and we look forward to continuing this uh the partnership. >> Anyone else? >> Miss Bennett. >> Thank you. Um I two things uh wanted to uh thank Lincoln for hosting us u Mr. Ser and his whole team um for having us. Um, my grandpa attended Lincoln in the ' 40s. My aunt, mom, um, and uncle attended in the 60s. I attended here in the '9s. And so, um, I very much appreciate getting to be here. This is a lovely building. Um,

109I don't know of many places you can just exist in, um, with this architecture. It's just lovely. So, thank you for hosting us. We very much appreciate you. Second, um I want to do a shout shout out for um board president Carpenter and all of his hard work the past, we'll say month or so um regarding superintendent search. Um he went in my opinion above and beyond ensuring um sessions were held in places that mattered to people um just for what' you say >> communication. >> Yes, communication. um always keeping us updated on what was happening. Um but having sessions in places and meeting people where they are were very important to us all. Um and Mr. Carpenter made sure that happened. So faith organizations for example was hosted inside a church with a very

110trusted pastor in town. So um he really did a lot of behind thescenes work and put a lot of effort into being available for media whenever um needed and um really just trying to make sure that the community was included. So, uh, I appreciate him and his leadership. That's all, >> Mr. Carpenter. >> A, thanks. I appreciate it. But you also, you all also did a lot of work um, getting the word out and so I really do, I do appreciate those words. But I know you all did a lot of work, too. So, I appreciate all of your work. Um, I also wanted to mention I went to uh, NIU football game a couple weeks ago. It was band day. the bands from Jefferson, Guilford, and East participated in band day along with about

11110 or 15 other bands from the area and they did a great job and it was um it was definitely the most exciting thing on the football field on that 6 to3 game day. So, I appreciated that. All right. Thank you. >> Sorry. >> Anyone else? >> Yes. I just want to thank the community for completing the the um surveys and coming out to the sessions and making sure that your voice was heard and being an active um participant in this pro in this process. You know, this is a very important undertaking that we're having and we like to have the openness and the the sharedness with our community regarding this important decision. So, I just want to say thank you u from the board. >> I'm sorry, one more shout out. Um, Mr. Carpenter

112and I were able to do a tour of Rockford Barbell. Um, they're present tonight. All of their, uh, equipment is behind us, so if anybody's interested after the meeting, um, maybe they can assist. But, um, we were able to tour their brand new facility that they have, learn about their programming that they do here, um, hence the equipment in addition to Constance Lane, um, and learn about all of the work that they're doing with our students. So, if people are not familiar with Rockford Barbell, um, please go online and look them up, call them. They're lovely. Um but um really appreciate them coming and being a great partner to Rockford public schools. >> Okay. Anything else? >> That concludes our report. >> Thank you, Miss Stanford. We're now moving on to the performance and monitoring

113committee. Miss Chavez will lead the performance and monitoring committee tonight. >> Thank you. Okay, so we are excited to be here at Lincoln Middle School for the committee of the whole and want to once again thank thank Principal Jake Ser and the students and staff at Lincoln for hosting our committee meeting tonight. Tonight's feature presentation will be delivered by Principal Ser and focus on the school improvement plan plan. After a brief presentation, board members will be invited to ask questions to learn more about the about what Lincoln is doing to increase growth and change academic outcomes as an ISBE designated intensive school. As a reminder to all board members, we will be hearing from all intensive schools this year and will receive updates on their progress three times. Principal Seer, welcome and please proceed with

114your presentation. Thank you. Appreciate it. Um I just want to piggy back off uh Rockford Barbell um came out obviously tonight. So part of our school improvement plan related to this presentation is um some of our community building community partners uh getting uh some of um organizations into the school helping us out. So, Rockford Barbell, we've uh created a partnership that I hope extends into, you know, uh ongoing years here. Uh the feedback's been good. I know some kids go there after school programs. Um so, it's nothing but a positive, um, you know, addition to what we're trying to do with students. Uh we've also been working heavily with Alignment Rockford, so Emily Cloni and Antonio Ramirez. So, we're definitely pushing in the right direction and getting some of our community partners in the building.

115Um and for the first time in about you know this year um there's a real sense like that's um happening and it's coming together in a positive way. So that can only enhance what we're trying to do here. The more res uh resources we have the better it's going to go obviously. So thank you guys. Um sorry. All right. So if you look at this slide it's just a school overview of Lincoln Middle School. All right. Um, and if you go through there, I know, um, we've mentioned it quite a bit, a common theme, um, diversity. Rockford public schools, uh, student population at Lincoln Middle School, I think, represents a very our, sorry, our very diverse, uh, community. Um, and I wanted to highlight that. And if you look there, um, I'm not sure how

116well you can see it. Um, a couple of things I did want to point out. Um, at Lincoln Middle School, we have a couple programs. We have a newcomer program and we have a TPI program and we also have SLA um sections that we began two years ago. And the newcomer program is um essentially we have students that are new to the country um probably two to three years um they've been in the country maybe less and they might not have had a formal education. Um they're seeking refugee in the United States. Um and so every year we have uh two classrooms. We have two newcomer teachers um supporting our students coming to us. And if you look, and again I don't believe you can see it very well, but we have a pie chart

117up there kind of representing all the languages that come through Lincoln Middle School. And any given year, you're looking at about 20 plus um languages uh being spoken in the building. Um so quite a few students coming from other countries around the world. Um we have our TPI program. So and basically students who progress um with their language proficiency um go through TPI um to the point where they can uh uh test out and get into the gened population just depending on their progress. Um so we have quite of you like I said a diverse population of students. Um very unique um and so it's very cool. Uh a lot of different cultures a lot of different backgrounds being represented here. And so I think um that definitely adds to what we're doing here at

118Lincoln those students. So all right uh if you look here in 2023 we received a summitive designation of intensive um intensive uh designation from the state essentially um you're you're the bottom five uh% of schools uh title one schools um in terms of performance. Uh so there's a level of proficiency all students are trying to attain based on what the district puts out there in terms of targets. Um and we were at um five the bottom 5%. Um and so as you fast forward to 2024 uh we were able to move forward into a targeted uh designation. And so that obviously is a positive things. Our teachers and our students uh definitely have been working hard. Um, and so we had a subgroup that was in the bottom 5% in comparison to others. Um, and

119that's why you're considered targeted. Um, but as a whole, we were moving out of that in uh that comprehensive status for a year. All right, we're going through a cycle if you uh that will go through 2026. Um, and in we're anticipating moving into we'll receive 2025 uh designations here in come in weeks. Um and we're anticipating we'll still be in the targeted area. Um so definitely making progress forward. Um a lot of work to be um you know um that needs to be completed. Um but I think with our current uh school improvement plan um we're heading into the right direction and data would suggest as much. Um our third area of action. All right. If we establish effective tier one systems focused on aligned instruction, optimal learning environments, and professional learning, um then

120teachers uh excuse me, then teacher practices will lead to meaningful connections and improved outcomes for students. If you look at this slide, uh this is uh for goal one of our school improvement plan, which is for ELA. Um, and this is the area we um continue to make the most improvement in. Um, we're making a lot of progress. Um, and if you, we have a goal set for student growth percentile by 2027, uh, we want, uh, 50% of our students to be hitting the 50 percentile mark. And if you look at 2024, um, we were at the 48 percentile mark in terms of student growth. And that is basically where they're measuring us based on um other students in the state um at the same performance level wherever that may be and determine how school

121our students are making progress in comparison with other students. So it's um and th though the the metrics will be changing through the state in the coming years but essentially you're being put um you know compared to other students like I said across the state um and we want to continue to the majority of the students um you know um exceeding that 50% mark um that means we're streamlined in the learning uh we're making more progress um in a in a streamlined way um so that's the goal um and by 2027 like we said we wanted to be at the 50 percentile mark um and we're on pace to do that. So if you look at our strategic uh actions um and this kind of goes handinhand with all u content areas um we're trying

122to be aligned across the board um trying to uh for specific purposes of like I said to streamline learning for students you know when we talk strategies when we talk instructional approach uh we want to have some common ground uh so students aren't going to five six seven different classrooms and relearning how to um you know through instruction how to complete a task. We want to have an common approach so students understand um how to you know succeed uh meet expectations with the learning. Um so if we the couple of the things we're doing is we have a PLC planning uh doc. It's a common planning doc we utilize and and it's essentially just a lesson plan. Um but it's very strategic. uh it's aligned to uh PLC type questions, professional learning, community questions that

123drive the instruction and we're looking at student evidence and making decisions based on the uh student evidence we're collecting uh to help inform our decisions. It's just data driven is what we're trying to do and we're trying to be more informed and why we make the decisions we make. Um, a second thing we're going into our second year, um, is our Champs, um, initiative. And essentially, CHAMPS is something we, um, piggyback off a constant slain. So, part of what we're doing with our SIP pro, uh, plan is trying to be aligned with our, um, feeder schools, uh, community partners. Um, again, so students aren't having to relearn, um, expectations, you know, how to do school in a different building. Um and CHAMPS is essentially just how we operate as a building. Um you know just

124managing our students in common areas, the classroom um in a unified approach. Um and also professional learning is a big part of what we're trying to do. Um we're we're diving into safe and civil schools. We're in our second year of champs as I just mentioned. We will extend that into explicit instruction. Um so taking it beyond the management piece to how we plan for students and basically we want to we have a lot of students uh we have struggling learners. Uh the ability levels across the board you know can vary for anywhere from um lacking foundational skills all the way to uh high school level um skills. Uh we have students that will attend East High School for example for um math courses. Um, so we're we're trying to meet the needs of a

125lot of different students. Um, and so that's just being intentional in why we plan, like I said, using student evidence, um, the data we have available to us to make decisions on what they need. Um, and getting better at differentiating that instruction so they understand, um, how to meet the needs of those varying uh, levels of student abilities. Um, and the other piece is our CR uh, TL work, excuse me, CRTL work. Uh we're partnering our learning partners uh ullcro university. Um and that's uh uh we partnered within the last two years. Um and so basically what we're trying to do is it's culturally um excuse me responsive teaching and learning uh training that we'll be engaging in ongoing. Um and so the the partners from RU and ULLC continue to come in. We had

126our first kind of session last spring introducing it. Um the state has standards related to that. Um and just so basically just getting to know our students better. Um you know understanding their backgrounds and experiences, having them be part of our school uh in terms of being co-creators of what we're trying to do. Um it was mentioned earlier student voice. Um so we're really trying to engage our students and work with them. um this needs to be a place they want to come to and uh obviously better results outcomes will be better when we do that um and so when we monitor the evidence big one is I each year um you know it's what we're measured by uh what gets publicized and then the through the course of the year we have uh district

127level benchmark testing and then the big pieces our PLC's as I've mentioned a couple times just really being intentional and being able to collect data at that level um because That's the real- time evidence of how we're doing and we want to get good at that. Um our second slide uh related to goals is our math goal. Um the strategies, the evidence essentially is the same. Uh if you look at the strategies or excuse me uh the professional learning piece, we did partner with our curriculum resource um people to provide um year-long uh training and that's occurring at all the middle school level uh um schools and so again trying to be aligned across the board and really helping our students. That is probably our greatest area of need. it is um in this district

128um in terms of that we have students that um move quite a bit and so when they go to one school to the next we're trying to be aligned um amongst the principles as well um big district uh but the conversations are uh the right ones and so we're we're doing some things that will help um and then if you look at our goals 2027 same goal we want to be at the 50% mark student growth percentile mark um and in 2024 we were at 46% of students. Um so on pace um we think we're doing um some good things here and the data um hopefully will continue to show that. All right. Uh uh our excuse me our goal three is uh related to chronic absenteeism. Um this was brought up before. This is

129an area we need to improve in. Um it is a struggle. Um and we need to get getting school uh excuse me students to school. Um, and so our goal is to decrease that number each year. Um, and so if you look at 2024, if you can't see it, we were at 40 30% of students miss 10% or more. So that's how it's being measured by the state if you're missing 10% or more of school days. Um, and that's excused uh unexcused. Um, so it just accumulation of days and uh that essentially adds up to about 17 days um give or take. Um, so that is one of our priorities. Um, it's one of our areas we're measured in um, by the state. Um, and obviously students being in the building means more opportunities to

130learn and that's the goal. And so we are continuing to work hard on that. We have incentives. Uh, we have staff members devoted to that work and just trying to be a lot more intentional as I know everybody is. And so we will continue to work on that. Uh, we have support staff like I said. Um we have an attendance plan um that we're working with our uh MTSS uh staff from district level. Um so multi-tier support system of support um so we continue to work with those um um you know that that um department to help build this out because there's getting the you know the global view what's happening across the district, what's being uh effective in other schools and obviously we're going to try to adopt some of those um you know

131strategies. Um and then as was mentioned earlier, champs and then backs um you know being real intentional about communicating with our parents, our students uh about their on um on track uh progress. Um you know going into middle school, nth grade is probably one of the most critical years if not the most critical. Um, and so we're being, for example, in 8th grade, we're uh commun uh communicating quarterly with parents, kind of doing a mock credit system to help build their understanding of what it means to earn credits in high school and what happens if you don't. Um, because our students, what we're finding in our par, our families don't understand what that all means when they get to high school. And it's um it's quite a shock. And um, you know, it's kind of

132before you know it, it's too late. And uh we want to have those uh skills in hand for those students so they can be successful in nth grade and springboard into the pathways. And uh closing thoughts, um Lincoln Middle School will be continue to grow and improve outcomes for students if we do the following. Uh implement our school improve improvement plan with fidelity. Uh effectively make d uh data driven decisions and use uh our tiered supports to our advantage. um again being uh understanding the data and making good decisions to help kids at all levels. So thank you. [Applause] >> Thank you, Principal Syer. Does anybody have any questions? >> Miss Bennett. >> Uh thank you very much for your presentation. Um, can you just uh briefly explain kind of your choice in uh utilizing

133Champs given kind of your um large population of students from Constance Lane in particular? >> Um yeah, so Constance Lane all of the students from Constance Lane um come to Lincoln and so um the idea is a uh like I said a a universal approach to just managing behaviors. It's a positive approach and essentially what it is is a um you have to plan you know how to manage your classroom just like you have to plan for instruction and so um we actually had one of uh Constance Lane's uh APs come up to us two years ago and so she was familiar with it and the students were familiar with the language and so um that it appears that it um was greatly um um it was helpful let me just put it that way

134um students understood the language, for example, you're at a level zero, meaning nobody's talking, we're testing. Um, little things like that. If I go into every classroom, I'm bound to be more successful because I understand it and it's being um consistently communicated and that's, you know, a big part of it, being consistent. >> Thank you. Um, I really appreciate the the um thinking of, you know, the demographic and the youth where they're coming from and what would make sense to have that be um continued from elementary school to middle school and really like looking at what their needs are and continuing. That's great. Thank you. >> Anyone else? Okay. Thank you again, Principal S. We appreciate it. Thank you. Okay. Next, we will hear from Ronnie Storm, director of health services, who will update the

135board on the process used to determine the future of the school-based health center and propose a new partnership. On tonight's consent agenda, you will see the executive summary for this proposed partnership. Miss Sturm will begin explaining the process for the board. The administration is seeking board action at the next board meeting. Welcome, You're good. You're good. As stated earlier, my name is Ronnie Sturm. I am serving as the director of health services with Rockford Public Schools, and I'm here today to talk to you about the school-based health center at Auburn, which, as you guys likely know, has been sitting empty since Crusader left in July. We do have a vision provider there, but not a medical provider. Um, so tonight I'm seeking guidance from the board on the next steps that we should do to

136return a comprehensive social, emotional, and mental wraparound healthc care for our students and our community. And um I believe that there's two potential pathways that we can do. The first one is a re request for proposal RFQ. uh you know sending it out to our community partners and seeing gauging the interest in um serving our community there. And then the second is uh there is an interested party that has reached out to us. It's Miles Square. Uh they are a state um accredited school-based health center provider already and that is outlined in the executive summary. Now, if you're asking why we already have interest, um I serve on the Rockford Regional Health Council Board, which is a collaboration of um community healthc care providers and other community entities that help uh negate the um health

137care disparities. So, it does include UW Health, OSF, Mercy Health, Rose Crants, um, UIC. I'm probably forgetting a couple more. Um, and they're there. And during some of our discussions, we've discussed the exiting of Crusader, and that is when Miles Square reached out. So, I'm just going to give you a brief synopsis on Miles Square. Um, Miles Square operates out of the LP Johnson Center, which is actually in the same block. It's just kitty corner from here. They are affiliated with UI Health, which is the medical side of the University of Illinois of Chicago. They're also affiliated with the UI with UIC medical school. So, they're training our up and cominging physicians here in town and then other providers. So, um, all I'm I look forward to your decision on the way that we should

138go and reestablishing the much needed health care, uh, comprehensive wraparound healthcare that we need for our students that um can be provided at at Auburn Healthc Care Center. >> Thank you. Thank you, Miss Dorm. Uh, we're going to open up the floor to any questions from the board members. Any questions? Miss Pearson, >> thank you. I just have a quick question. Do you also work with students with chronic um illnesses and associated with or working with them with their academic success? Are you a part of a team with for that? >> Well, I'm part of the the health team in Rockford. So, I I I work I'm I work with all of my nurses and we do manage on an individual school basis students with chronic health conditions. Now, that being said, with the school-based

139health center, when it was there, we did partner and send our chronic students with especially asthmatics, um, we would send students with asthma over, get them checked out hopefully three to four times a year as require as it's it's suggested to also ensure that they had their inhalers. Um unfortunately right now we can't do that there but that is something that should be part of the process when we are if we do send out the request for proposal but it is also something that Miles Square is very interested in and already doing in Cook County with their five did I say that I don't know if I said that they have okay the 30 years experience and they run five of the Cook County um schoolbased health centers out there. So that's already in their

140mission and their plan. >> Thank you. Miss Bennett, >> um for the cost that you're requesting or is being requested, can you just give kind of a brief overview of what um exactly would be included with the startup costs? >> So that we had very limited talks with with with Miles Square. That was an estimate that they threw out um to provide the equipment, basically refernishing the school-based health center. um and to start off the first year with salaries. Now the hope is that it's covered with grants. The reason that this number was given this year is it was already too late to apply for grants. So this um but the hope is moving forward they would be covered by grants and charging insurance. >> Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? Oh, Mr. Carpenter. >>

141Thanks. Um, so I'm first question I guess is time frame. If if if it was miles square, it seems like we could do it quicker, but I might be wrong about that. >> That would be the hope. Yes. >> And like what would that time frame be? >> Their estimate was one to two months once they got the go-ahad. >> And you know, we obviously building the program so that we're building it appropriately, taking community input. you know, what services are needed, making sure that we have the right supports in place for parents and students. Um, we're a little bit different than the Chicago system, so kind of a learning curve on that, but um, in our talks, I would say that they'd probably be up and running within four or five months, full full

142capacity. >> Thank you. And then the executive summary says that they're the only local health provider that has expressed interest in maintaining the clinic there. >> Correct. >> Okay. Um, and so if we did the RF, the request for proposals, would we I mean I guess we would hope that there would be an out of area provider that would be interested or or >> My hope would be to keep it local because there is a huge gap in um primary care physicians for our students and our families. So my hope would be to keep it local so that we can keep them tied to local agencies for that wraparound care. It'd be very hard for an out of out of our community district to come in um with no ties here and provide the social

143emotional um counseling support that's already that they've already established care with like like somebody like Miles Square. They're already working with some of our counseling. They're working with our churches. They have those things as would another local organization I would hope. So um ideally to make this a really truly wraparound in you know whole child whole family care it in my opinion it should be local. >> Yeah I understand that I guess I so I mean if we did the request for proposal do you think there would be any other local interest based on your I guess your involvement in the um >> so I'm pretty vocal >> community. Okay. Um um and at these meetings I've brought it up um at probably four or five and not one CEO has stopped me other than

144Miles Square and then they continued to reach out and and have continued to reach out. Miss Bennett, >> um is it I I think this is true and if I can do some research at a later time if you don't know as well, but does um U of I and Mile Square, aren't they the health providers for the juvenile detention center? >> The youth that are there as well? >> I I I do believe so, which is where a lot of their other communal contacts come into play. >> Okay, that's what I was thinking. And I think as well as the um the Wnebago County Jail as well. I think they provide the Okay, thank you. Any other questions on that side of the table? >> No. Okay. I I can't see lights, that's why.

145Um I have a I have a I do actually I have a question. Um I guess um just wanting to know maybe this could be provided to the board members, but basically like what has been the data for when Crusader Clinic was the provider? Like what were the stats on that the data of how many students they served? I mean I haven't seen I don't know if it was provided to us or not. It could have been. and I just maybe missed that. Um, you know, and also wanting to know like what are some of their obstacles and challenges that they had that then we can go back to you and be like is there are these a you know, you able to to overcome those challenges. So I guess more background information is what

146I would like >> I can gather that I have that data. Okay. Okay, I had that data and um you know before CO it was a very very productive um partnership uh at CO when we came out of the schools it was hard to get students there and um we've just we've had a hard time recovering u her maintaining because there was one provider there so we just had a hard time recovering and crusader did change their model a little bit which was their reason for leaving and when they told us in spring that they had changed their model and they didn't feel like their medical model was lining up with the school-based health center model the same. So, I can I can type I can get that and get you some challenges and some

147things that I think we've learned and my other people in the team have learned along the way. >> Yeah, that would be great. I think it would be helpful in making a decision. Thank you. >> Can I ask a question? Um, the startup costs you mentioned are pretty sizable because we weren't able to apply for grants. What would the timing be if we waited to apply for grants in the next cycle? How far back would that put us? >> So, I I'm not able to answer that question. I'm a great nurse. Um, I'm really not great with grants or hospital funding. So, um, I I can ask those questions of some of our grant writers and maybe reach out to a couple of the other partners that apply for some of the same community grants.

148Um, I know I, you know, Terry White's a great resource over at Crusader, so and he did that before, so I I will gladly ask those questions. >> That would be great. >> Anyone else? >> Um, maybe just one question. This probably for Miss Goldmith, actually. Um, but the, uh, we wouldn't have to do a request for a proposal for this. Or we we could choose to go with Miles Square without doing a request for proposal. Is that accurate? very specialized skill set. >> Thank you. >> Anyone else? No. Okay. Thank you so much, Mtor. We appreciate it. >> Okay. So, finally, we will review the brief cons consent agenda. Are there any item items board members wish to highlight for comments or questions? No one. Okay. Thank you. And that concludes um performance and

149monitoring. >> Thank you, Miss Chavez. We are now moving on to the planning and development committee. Um Miss Pearson is leading us in that. >> Thank you, President Carpenter. a um memorandum of agreement between Rockford or the board of education of Rockford public schools and strike academy. Jefferson's outdoor basketball and soft softball fields uh sit unused during significant portions of the year. Meanwhile, Jefferson baseball and softball programs lack regular access to highquality indoor training facilities during the winter months. Strike Academy, a travel club baseball organization, currently rents Jefferson's baseball fields during times when Jefferson athletics are not scheduled. Strike m maintains its own indoor facility equipped with ba batting cages, pitching tunnels, and radar guns. Under this partnership, Jefferson baseball and softball program have access to Strike's indoor facility during the winter, preparing athletes for

150spring sessions. Strike has provi proven to be a reliable partner using the fields responsibly and helping maintain them in good condition. Are there any questions on theou agree meant for strike academy? Think if not um we'll move on to the resolution calling a public hearing concerning the intent of board of education of Rockford schools district 205 Wobbago and Boone counties Illinois to sell not to exceed 50 million working cash funds bonds and not to exceed 10 million school fire prevention and safety bonds. I will turn the meeting over to Dr. Brown to discuss recommending that the board of education approved resolution calling for a public hearing concerning the intent to sell working cash bonds, school fire prevention and safety bonds. >> Okay, thank you. Uh this is the borrowing phase of the facility master plan.

151So we have invested about $30 million so far which was what we had planned to spend from cash reserves. So we are at a point now where we are ready to begin the issuance of bonds. So this is the first step in doing that and it pairs up actually with C below which is the actual resolution declaring the intent to issue the bond. So this is the first step calling for the public hearing. C is actually the resolution declaring the intention to actually sell the bonds. So this is kind of a two-step process in this. Uh we have worked with steeple to run the numbers on this. We can do the issuance of these bonds without increasing the bond in the interest levy. So there's actually no tax increase from this initial $50 million borrowing.

152So any questions on those? Are there any questions for Dr. Brown regarding the recommendation? So, the resolution to approve the public hearing will be brought to the board at October 21st, 2025 meeting for approval. The public hearing will be at the November 18th, 2025 board meeting. Um, Dr. Brown have touched on C. The resolution declaring the intention of the 50 million working cash fund fund bonds of Rockford School District 205, Wnebago, Bone Counties, Illinois for the purpose of increasing working cash fund of said school district and directing that notice of such intention to be published in the manner provided by law. Interest transfer from working d interest transfer from working cash funds to capital funds. Administration is recommending that the board of education approve transfer of earned interest from working cash fund to the capital

153project fund in the amount of 4,600 or yeah 4 million 4.6 million. >> Correct. This transfer will be used to fund part of the district's 30 million cash outlay of the facility's master plan. Are there any questions for Mr. Dr. Brown regarding the recommendation? No questions. Resolution to approve the transfer of earned interest from working cash fund to the capital project fund will be brought forward to vote at the October 21st, 2025 board meeting. Facility master plan update. Dr. Brown will continue with that. >> Okay. So, you have a write up in the packet regarding the facility master plan funding options. We have discussed these uh a number of times over the last two years and really just wanted to give you an update on where we are at with reaching out to the other

154districts regarding placing the 1% sales tax on the uh March uh uh ballot. So we have worked with the Harlem School District, the Winnebago School District. Both of those have gotten their boards to approve putting the 1% tax on. We have also worked with Haneneigga, uh, Kicknik, uh, Prairie Hill, and Sherlin, which are, you know, kind of referred to as as Haniga and the feeder schools. And all those districts have also had discussions with their board and plan on placing the resolution in their October board meeting for approval. We've also been working with Durand and and Pekkatonica as well as South Blo. So, you know, the districts are moving forward with this. There seems to be a general consensus that everyone would like to give this a try. And so, including our district, uh we

155believe we'll have over 90% of the school districts in the county that will be supportive of placing this on the ballot for a vote. So that's where we stand on on uh you know the facility master plan funding options. >> Questions Miss Bennett >> for uh the boards that have already um voted and and approved. Um is it the 1%? They're all on the same page for the rate. >> Yes, everyone was was inclined to go for the full 1%. >> Okay. Thank you. Anyone else? So, the resolution for the public hearing on the intent to issue working cash funds and the resolution of intent issuing working cash fund bonds will be brought to the board on the 21st of this year for approval. >> Can I'm sorry. Can I go back just a question

156on that? Um, what's >> President Carpenter? >> Thank you. Um, so can you tell us again what the time I probably asked this every meeting, but what the time frame is then to be on the March ballot? >> Good question. So the time frame would be that if if we're inclined to do so as well uh with the other districts, we would need to pass this in November to be able to s have it certified by the regional office of education to the county clerk no later than mid December so it could be added to the March ballot. So the the action would not be required in the in the October meeting on this resolution, but absolutely would have to be done in November to be able to meet that certification deadline to the regional

157office. So they they could then certify it to the clerk's office. >> Thank you. >> Okay, that any other questions? >> Um okay, one more question. Sorry for the um I don't know the proper word but I want to use the word campaign. So for the campaign to happen between mid December and March the cost of that is that shared amongst other districts or because we're the largest district would we take on the cost of that or how does that work? >> Yeah so that the school districts are actually not allowed to run a campaign. uh all we can do is provide information to the community. So if there was a campaign that people in the community wanted to rally behind, they would have to do that privately and we cannot actually support any kind

158of a vote yes campaign. That actually has to be done outside of the school district. >> Okay. So I'll use a different word because I that's not the part that I meant. So, um, the awareness group, so the people that would go out and educate the community on what we're doing with facilities, the updates going to the schools. So, those that group of people, the communications team or whoever is doing that, >> any additional costs or maybe they won't be maybe it'll just be staff time and that that's fine, too. But, um, any co uh cost would just be something that would be staff time. >> Staff time. it would be staff time and and we do have commitment from the other districts to actually go out and help in their respective communities to actually

159do this work. So, you know, it wouldn't be just, you know, myself or a group of other people that would be doing community meetings. Obviously, we do those here, but Harlem has has said that they would help. Haniga and, you know, Kickan and, you know, all those other school districts are willing to get out and get in the community to get the word out. Okay, great. Thank you. >> Yep. >> Any other questions? >> Okay. Item F, FY27 and multi-year pro projections and preview of 2025 tax levy. Dr. Brown will take well. >> Okay. What do we got up here? >> Present. >> All right. This is a sheet that you have seen in previous years. Uh and what we're looking at right now are three different tax levy scenarios as we have done in

160the past. So the first levy levy option would be a which is no CPI or no new property. Basically keep it level with what we levied the current year actually in December of of last year. Uh and you can see that that uh takes the tax rate to 4.3624. Uh option B would be to take it only on new property. And as you can see, we've had a significant increase in new property over the last year. So this is a lot of real good new property growth in the community. So that's a real positive sign for us. So the additional revenue with going with option B which is to just take the levy on new property only would be about 866,000. Uh and then if you look at C which is the maximum allowable amount

161we could take which would be based on a 2.9% CPI increase because we're in a tax cap county and we can only levy for the greater of the CPI increase or 5%. So the CPI increase in December of 2024, which governs what we can levy for in December of 2025, is actually that CPI indicator, and that was 2.9%. So you can see that that would result in additional new revenue to the district of 5,192,000 plus or minus. So those are the three options. Uh we will bring these back again in November for for your review. And at the November meeting, we will be looking for you to give us direction on which one of three these three options you'd like to pursue. So we can make sure for the December meeting when you guys actually

162approve the levy, we have the right paperwork in place for the December approval. So again, timeline here is to get these in front of you, give you a month to think about what you guys would like to do, make a decision in November for us, so we know at the December meeting we're bringing the right paperwork forward. So those are the three options. And obviously there could be something that you would do in between any of these three, but this is the the what we did previously December 2024 and A and then the maximum that we would allowed to be allowed to do in option C. So questions on that? >> No questions. The resolutions, the resolution to approve the tenative 2025 tax levy will be brought to the board in November for approval. And

163the resolution to approve the 2025 tax levy will be brought to the board in December for approval. >> Thank you, Dr. Brown. >> Okay. >> Are there any questions on regards to the prevent uh preview consent items A through F? >> Oh, I'm so sorry. My apologies. >> That's okay. Is there is a clicker up there somewhere? >> Thank you, Dr. Brown. >> Okay, so we're just going to run through real quick kind of a high level. We've tried to make some projections for next year already for FY27. As you guys can probably imagine, the outlook on revenue is pretty sketchy right now. Uh there are a lot of different scenarios that are floating around out in Washington DC as far as how our federal funding might work and we just don't have a clear

164picture on a lot of the financial things. Uh I will let you know that the state of Illinois is also seeming to have a little bit of a dip in their revenues right now. uh their corporate tax revenues are down about 31% from where they projected them to be and those numbers are bearing out in numbers that we're seeing in our corporate personal property replacement tax receipts so far this year. So we're about 20% lower than where we thought we were going to be on our corporate personal property replacement tax receipts. So, you know, we are starting to see some chinks in the armor at the state level as well. So, just some awareness on that, too. Um, I'm going to slide around over here. >> I'm I'm okay. You know what? I'll just turn

165this. >> I think I'll be I'll be okay. I can see now. So, revenue assumptions. Uh, what we're looking at there is an increase in evidence-based funding of 5%. That would include the tier funding. Uh, we did receive a nice increase in tier funding this last year. uh because a lot of the other larger districts actually went from tier one into tier two and so the the number of districts that remained in tier one with the the highest level of deed actually got more money than they were anticipating. We think that what's going to happen is that may revert back to the way it was this this last year the year before the current year and we're probably looking at more like $10 million or a 5% increase. And I'll show you a slide on

166that one real quick. The assumptions that you see in here uh have us doing option C on the levy that we just looked at. And we're estimating that corporate personal property replacement tax to stay flat. So, real quick for the evidence-based funding, you can see here that we had in the blue section for the current fiscal year, we had that rather large increase in the tier funding. uh we're assuming that we're going to go back to something more like what we had in fiscal year uh 2025. So probably in that $10 million mark for the evidence-based funding. Uh the property tax levy we just discussed, you can see there 2.9% on the CPI. Uh property tax levy background. Yeah, the the it's split between two years. Obviously, you know, we pay taxes at different times.

167They straddle the fiscal years. So, the money actually comes in over two fiscal years. You can see what the consumer price index has done over the last several years. You can see some real high water marks on uh you know what CPI has done. And then you can see where the property tax uh revenues have been over the last several years. The next slide has got the kind of the tax levy dollars in total there along with significant EAV growth. You can see that we've had really really nice growth after a lot of flat years in the mid 2010s. The CPPRT assumptions you can see there as we discussed we had a number of years where we had some really really really high receipts that was due to a lot to the amount of money

168that was popped in during the COVID years. uh and that resulted in really really high tax revenues for the state. A lot of those came back to the to the district and uh you know we have used a good chunk of those for uh not not just what we're working on right now with the current facility master plan but some of the other projects that we did you know at uh uh Jefferson and and work that we did at East and you know a lot of work on those kind of projects too. You can see that we're projecting that we're going to be flat, you know, coming into FY27. Uh the expenditure assumptions, uh you can see what we've got there, plus or minus 4% for salary increases, plus or minus 3%, which is basically

169inflation for supplies. And we're hoping that the healthc care benefits are actually going to drop back down to actually where we've been over the last couple years. We did have a really really big spike this past year and uh we've taken some steps to try and reduce those. Uh this is kind of the bad news slide coming up here with the multi-year projections on the operating funds. Again, you know, that uncertainty of revenue uh the employment contracts that we still have, you know, out there that we have not finalized yet. you can see and then kind of the multi-year spends that we took a break on some of these uh and we picked them back up this year and we're going to need to continue to do that especially with buses and technology. So, I

170know this slide's hard to read, but if you look at the, you know, what you've got on your screen or in your packet, you can see that uh you know, we're looking at a pretty big projected deficit for FY27 right now. It's looking like about $13 million. And I will tell you that this is almost 100% in the education fund which is our largest fund. We've got work to do here. Uh the prism work that you know we have talked about and you guys had approved us to move forward with a number of months ago is well underway right now. And you know we're hoping to identify enough savings to completely close that gap. So that's our work right now. Again, these are very preliminary just because there is so much uncertainty out there with

171with where we think uh you know the the revenues are going to come in. So happy to answer any questions now and again these are very preliminary numbers. >> Any questions? >> If not if not that completes the report for the planning and developing committee. Thank you. >> Thank you, Miss Pearson. >> We're now at the petitions and communications portion of our meeting. When we invite the public to make comments, um slurs, profanity, and harassment will not be tolerated. If anyone uses unacceptable language, they may be directed to immediately surrender the remainder of their speaking time and be restricted from public comment in the future. Uh the board will not respond to comments at this time. If it is appropriate, you will be contacted in a timely manner by staff. Each speaker will be allowed

172no more than five minutes to address the board and it's not appropriate to discuss matters that would otherwise be confidential and open meetings. And I believe there are clocks present that would show the five minutes or okay, I think uh Mr. Phillips will have a clock so that you can see the time remaining. Um, we thank you for your cooperation with our guidelines and our speaker tonight is Pamela Hill and Brand. Yeah, let's move away from this. Okay, good evening. I am very grateful for the opportunity to speak to you tonight. I want to talk about Illinois House Bill 3247, which although signed into law, really does not come into effect or have to come into effect until July of 2026. This law makes it clear that a school may not allow an immigration agent

173to enter a school site or school district facility for any purpose without providing valid identification, a written statement of per purpose and a valid judicial warrant. Also clearly stated is that every school district or school must create and adopt a policy that ensures compliance with this law. And so I'm here to ask you as the school board to do three things. The first adopt this new code before the end of 2025. The second which is a necessity then is write and adopt a policy that addresses every possible contingency. For example, who will respond to a request for entry by immigration agents and meet them off site of the school to discuss the request? Will that person clearly understand what does and does not constitute a legal entry? If a legal entry appears to be called

174for, how will that be handled and by whom? What action will be taken if agents come on site without following proper procedure? What will be done to protect our children who take the bus or who wait for parents to pick them up? And third, provide this written code and policy to every teacher, every school employee, and ideally post it on your website. A policy and the means by which it is to be followed is, as you know, of little uh use unless everyone is familiar with it. Additionally, a violation of these provisions of the code may be caused for a a lawsuit. ignorance being no excuse. There has been a frightening escalation of activity by ICE agents, particularly in the Chicago area, but they have been here in Rockford, and many parents are now terrified

175to let their children out of their sight, and yet they are bound by law to send their children to school. Finally, as you have entered into a search for a new school superintendent, I urge you to make certain that this need is high on the list of that person's priorities as well as your own. I thank you. >> Thank you. Um before we adjourn, I just want to thank again uh Lincoln for hosting our meeting tonight. I also want to thank um Kim and Aaron again for their work on the technology. I know they've uh were working hard to make sure that everything was in working order before the meeting started and I appreciate their work getting it um in order as the meeting went on and I know they've been working for weeks to

176make sure it was working. So I appreciate their work and um with that I think I would take a motion and a second to adjurnn. >> So move second. >> Thank you. We're adjourned.