September 2, 2025: Committee of the Whole Meeting - Rockford Public Schools

001I now call this meeting of the committee of the whole to order at 6:01 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. >> We will now take a moment of silence followed by the pledge of 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. Um before we go any further, I want to welcome everyone to Resa Middle School and thank Rhysa for having us. This is our first committee of the whole

002meeting at a school and we will continue to meet at various locations throughout the school year. I also want to thank Miss Kim Person and Stephanie Pearson for their assistance in the audiovisisual audio video um recordings tonight. I also want to thank our bilingual interpreters, Suani Rodriguez, Maria Razo, Tiara Blanca, Arturo Mononttoya, Cindy Leanos, Patricia Diamo, and Abigail Aguilar for being here and interpreting the meeting for us. We are now on the regular portion of the meeting. Um, section 2 A is meeting minutes from August 5th, 2025. Are there any changes, corrections, or additions to the meeting minutes? If not, they will be accepted as submitted. Thank you. Miss Stanford will now lead the stakeholders committee. Good evening everyone. It's time for the stakeholders committee portion of the meeting tonight. Let's start by showing our

00312-month agenda. Our feature presentation will tonight will be from our lobbyists from Zephr Strategies. We want to remind board members of the opportunities available to interact with our students, families, and community each month. Go ahead. 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 look at all the good things happening in our district. RPS 205 held its summer sports camps in July over the course of four weeks. Fourth through 8th grade students got to try 16 different high school sports ranging from soccer and cheer to football, swimming, golf, and more. Huge thanks to all the coaches and bus drivers who made it possible. We kicked off the school year with our administration building back to school barbecue on August 1st. Cabinet members served

004up lunch to staff and prizes were handed out. Huge thanks to our human resources, IT, operations, communications departments, and GSF for making it all happen. Cherry Valley Elementary hit the road on August 6th for a mobile block party. Administration and staff met families in their neighborhoods, played games, handed out backpacks and treats, and shared learning materials. It was all about building relationships and community support. We rolled out the red carpet for 200 new teachers at orientation. They learned all about RPS 205. They are inspiring, teaching, and making a difference in our classrooms. On August 9th, the Brothers for Change held their bags back to school bash at Auburn High School. We welcomed 2600 parents and scholars. 600 backpacks, 200 t-shirts, 1,200 meals, free services, and games made it a true celebration of unity, preparation, and

005love for our students. On Thursday, August 14th, we welcomed kindergarten through 12th grade students and staff back to school. Our early childhood centers had their first day on Monday, August 18th. Look at all those smiling faces. Next up is items of note with our community partners. John Ecberg of Circle Boring and Machine visited Roosevelt Community Education Center summer school students to share insight into local manufacturing careers. He discussed skills needed, answered questions, and gave hands-on demos with tools and machines used in the field. from farm to school. This year, Auburn, East, Guilford, and Jefferson will serve fresh and regionally grown menu items from the Common Market. They work with farmers from across the area. Between August 20th to midepptember, we're featuring Olden Organics from Ripen Wisconsin. They're providing broccoli, carrots, cucumbers, watermelon, and cantaloupe for

006our students. Delicious. And on our 205 vibe, little scientists took over the park as our early childhood prevention initiative wrapped up summer with STEM fun. From racing cars on do-it-yourself ramps to fizzy volcanoes and balloon science, learning got messy, giggly, and unforgettable. Read all about it on our 205 Vibe. Now, it's time for our legislative news and our feature presentation. Please welcome our lobbyists from Zephr Strategies, Michael Cassidy and Amy Ballinger Cold. The floor is yours. Sure, I can do this. Um, board members, staff, Michael Cassidy, uh, Zephr government strategies. Good to see everyone here. Uh, a lot of familiar faces. Um and uh just truly grateful for the opportunity to continue to work with the uh school board and district now. It's it's been over a decade. Um and a lot has happened in

007a decade politically. A lot happens politically all the time. Um and so I give a lot of credit to the folks on this board and staff that work with us because there are times uh and discussions where there are things that uh we're always trying to figure out what is happening in the world these days in politics. Um, so I think we're going to be very brief. I think we have some opportunities to showcase some partnerships and some wins that we had done. But I'm going to start off with quick bio about myself, bio with Amy. Jeremy's on my team, works with me. Um, a little bit of just kind of lobbying 101. We'll get into some of the priorities of things we worked on if that makes sense. Again, Michael Cassidy. Uh, I've been

008government and consulting now for 25 years. Um, I got my political start in this town, which some of you may know. uh actually worked for a gentleman by the name of Chuck Jefferson who passed away uh not too long ago on the west side and was actually his house was not that far from here. So uh I've been fortunate to learn a lot about this town and have a lot of relationships have a chance to build. Um prior to uh getting to consulting I worked in government for about nine years. Uh I worked for the House Democratic majority staffed a handful of committees staffed education committees and I hate to say it uh I am a Chicago. Um, this is a second home to me, but we oftentimes spend most of our time uh in

009in Springfield, too. And I think we'll get into some things of this board hopefully having a chance to actually come down to Springfield. We've had it's been a while since we had you actually down in Springfield. And I also want to talk a little bit about DC stuff, but again, Michael Cassy's effort Government Strategies. Appreciate the opportunity. Amy, >> hello everyone. Amy Ballinger Cole, also a lobbyist consultant in Springfield. I have spent my career much like Michael um in the general assembly also came from the house side and from pretty much the moment I arrived they put me on education. So I have for the house the speaker of the house at that time I looked at every single bill that came through that had anything to do with education and I analyzed those for

010the speaker. So in those first years I got to see sort of you're not surprised that issues come around and around and around in education. So, I got to see everything that that moved through and have watched it my entire career. Um, work only with education clients. So, education committees are what I do. That's what I care about. Like you all, I'm okay sitting through like hours of education testimony. That's interesting and fun for me, right? Um, so have been working with Michael um for the district for a decade plus 12 years, something like that. Um, have enjoyed it. And again, I think what we wanted to do today, I think a little bit lobbying 101. We don't want to ever assume that you know what it is we do. Um, we also don't want

011to like talk talk down to you, but so Michael's going to do just kind of a brief um explanation of sort of what we do over the legislative session and the rest of the year um for the board for um Rockford administration um and students, staff, everyone. Here you go, Michael. Actually, I just want to introduce Jeremy Duffy on my team who oftentimes is not forward facing, does a lot of the work behind the scenes. >> Jeremy Duffy, good to see everybody again who I haven't met before. Good to meet you. >> Um, so what does a lobbyist do? Uh, that's a good question, especially these days, and we can get in a lot more details. I I think it's simple to say in a very complex way that it's five things, right? We're dealing

012with a budget and budget issues. We're dealing with legislative items. We're dealing with rules through the department. We're dealing with a lot of the media issues that come up that you may hear or issues or uh that come before ISBY. And we're also dealing a lot with the politics of things, right? So, our job is to navigate all of those. As everyone in this board knows and staff knows, Rockford has a diverse and bipartisan delegation. So, we have a handful of folks on either side of the aisle and all have their own agendas just like any politician does. our job is to obviously educate and meet those folks uh where they are and work with them on a lot of issues that are important to this district, right? Um so we are very fortunate to

013have that diverse uh uh group of folks that our job is to really just kind of pour through every bill that's introduced, find a way to work with uh the committee chairs on things that are important. Um align with whatever the district has given us as direction on. So, there's 10 goals that were set last year, kind of a format we worked off of, and I think it's one that we're probably going to be revisiting soon that we'd love to kind of lean into. Um, but there's still some more work to be done. We do this at the state level. We do a little bit the federal level, too, and I think we could do a better job at the federal level. Um, one thing I think that was an accomplishment I should probably highlight

014on the federal side is, um, Senator Duckworth, who's going to actually be at one of our schools on Saturday for a town hall meeting, uh, was very fortunate to get us a congressionally directed earmark. um uh on pathways uh to teach here uh from Rockford College, Erin Jared, I think that's right. Right. Um and so we're very lucky to approach our uh federal delegation and find ways to get certain grants. So I don't want to get too long in what a lobbyist does and I think some folks here kind of know, but at the end of the day, it kind of varies and it varies on topic and issue and we also are focusing on state and federal and I haven't seen myself in much federal stuff as well too, but I'm going to keep

015it as short as that. Amy, did I miss anything about what a lobbyist is supposed to do? I think you probably do more with the Illinois State Board of Education as much as it is the legislature. Do you want to speak a little bit to like what we do with Isby? >> Right. So, with ISBY, we attend all of the ISBY board meetings. Make sure we listen to all of those, are listening to all of those as if we're Rockford Public Schools, making sure we know what affects you all, making sure you all know what's happening there. It's sort of you don't have the time to sit through every, as I say, education hearing because you're doing your work here. Um, but that's what we do. You don't have time to always talk to every

016legislature about every bill because a lot of them are going nowhere. The majority of them are going nowhere. We have the time to figure out which ones are moving and let you know if something bad is coming your way or if something that aligns to your priorities is coming your way. So, we do a lot of that. Um, sort of transitioning to um goals that we met this year, I think, and things we've worked on. So I would say in my career one of the biggest things I've worked on and part of that work was for Rockford is we worked five years on a new funding formula. We don't have to tell you how important that is. Since then we've worked to make sure every year that that is funded at the maximum level. You

017all know during during the pandemic, there was one year that it wasn't, but other than that, and even in trying times like this year, we really have gotten the general assembly to understand that they need to add 350 million per year, but it takes a lot of voices and a lot of advocacy every single year to get that funded. We've done that. So, I've worked on issues like that that are all-encompassing. And then there are those issues like dual credit, for example, or there was a pension issue this year. There are so many different things across the spectrum that we that we've worked on. Um, but we do that like we don't come to you and say, "Hey, this is what you need." We expect your superintendent, the board, the policy committee, and people that

018are actually on the ground to tell us what needs to happen. So, for this year, for example, dual credit was a focus and something you asked us to to work on. So, we worked with Bridget French from the district. She was absolutely phenomenal. she can tell you that I was texting her often a whole Memorial Day weekend. Um and and that's we sort of want to show you what we do, how we work with people in the district to meet your your objectives. >> Thank you everyone. I'm Bridget French. I'm the executive director of college and career readiness. And first I just want to start out by uh explaining what dual credit is and why it's important to our students. So, um you you are likely familiar with AP advanced placement classes which are uh

019also hold a lot of value. Um in order to get college credit from an AP class, you have to pass an exam, get a three or higher for it to transition to college credit or for it to equate to college credit. With dual credit, you are receiving students are receiving quality instruction with the same material, same syllabus, same content that they would in a college class. if they receive a C or higher in that class, they get the college credit. So, we have found that dual credit um has been an extremely important uh tool in our toolkit of opportunities for our students. Um students still have the opportunity to access AP, but now we have increased our dual credit courses um by hundreds of percentages. Uh when I started in 2017, we had two classes

020running, one class at Guilford and one class at Jefferson. We now have 30 different dual credit classes running um with 66 sections. That means there are 66 individual classes running um across the district. So, we have widened the opportunities for our students to receive college credit, which um decreases time to graduation, increases college going rates, increases college persistence rates. Um it it's just another great way for students to be able to get a leg up on their post-secary education, whatever that might be. We have dual credit courses in both core content and in our CTE career and technical education courses and we have worked um hard to ensure our teachers have the proper credentials to allow them to teach dual credit. So the amendment to the dual credit quality act has provided consistency to um

021the act itself. So now we have written into the legislation that um not only can teachers teach dual credit if they have a masters in the content area or a or a a master's plus 18 hours in the content area, but we also have uh now uh permanently codified in the legislation that if you are a teacher that has eight master's hours, you can create a professional development plan and work on those additional eight hours over three years um while you're teaching dual credit. So that is significant for us because uh we want to make sure as many people who want to uh teach dual credit have that opportunity to do so. Um we also uh have seen in the update to the dual credit legislation um the enactment of a committee um that includes

022both um representatives from secondary and post-secary education which will help continue to review the legislation to ensure it is consistent. It is providing the best outcomes for both secondary and post-secary schools. And there's a lot of agreements that go on in the back end. Um, Rock Valley College of course is our primary uh partner for dual credit. Um, but there are opportunities where where Rock Valley does not offer something. Um, that we do have uh the ability to go with Rockford University in which we do have some class classes there. Uh, Blackhawk Technical College in uh Jainsville, Wisconsin offers dual credit for our culinary students. So, um it has been a a really um wonderful advantage for our students and um like Amy said over the past six to nine months um Zephr has been

023great to work with. They provided me, you know, the the draft legislation, gave me the opportunity to read through it, review it, provide my notes as someone that um works closely with Rock Valley to ensure that the the memorandum of understanding is fair for both sides. So, I have appreciated their advocacy and and um legislative support on this and um I just want to thank them for their time on this really important issue to our to our district. So, thank you. >> Yeah, I can't say enough that basically we found out that this was a goal of the board and that Bridget was an expert in this area and we said, "Oh, really? We'd like to use you in the legislature where I'm going to bother you day and night with every draft." And she

024was just an incredible, incredible policy expert. We worked with all of our partners with Luda, Ed, with Linden Scope on this. Those are other um organizations that represent school districts. It was a team effort. We spent a lot of time on that this year and it literally would not have happened without Bridget's help. We We don't always know what's best, but people on the ground certainly do and Bridget knows. So, we really appreciate it. So, that was something that got through the House and the Senate and the governor signed it, right? Like that was a big win. We worked a lot this year on a pension issue as well for Rockford, which I know is really important to you. It was in a draft. It was going well. At the very last minute, it went

025out. That is something that will we will continue to work on. And I asked Dr. Brown if he could just maybe explain that a little bit. He also worked with this with the legislator legislators making sure they understood this issue and he was our policy expert there. >> And let me let me uh reframe it too. Dr. Brown, you were great because we set up some meetings earlier on in session bringing stakeholders in. If anyone knows in education oftentimes these are very large bills. So the pension discussions became this massive Christmas tree of a bill and our actually our issue was was in a bill that bill just never was called. So we actually have our language that we had Dave Vela file for us put into a larger omnibus bill. It the omnibus bill

026just didn't even move. So it wasn't taken out. We're very close to finish line but let you kind of take us from there your interaction with us on this. >> Sure. So this this really came about as a result of penalties that TRS charges for salaries that exceed 6% in the final four years of a of a teacher's uh career. And so what was happening was because of the teacher shortage, we were giving uh our our staff what they call six assignments to be able to make sure that we were able to cover classes with with certified educators. So, you know, we were trying to make sure we were putting the best people in front of our students so they could actually take the classes that they needed. Well, as a result of that, in

027in a lot of the the later years as teachers would approach retirement, you know, these six assignments were increasing their salaries by 20%, you know, in final years. And so when that compounded, what was happening was because we were trying to do the right things for our students, we were getting penalized by by TRS for putting qualified educators in front of our students. And you know, there were times when penalties would actually exceed $100,000 just for a single person that had retired in that one year. So we had seen successive years of million plus dollars in penalties, you know, and that's when we decided we really, you know, needed to see if there was some way working with TRS that that we could maybe get a legislative fix to this because TRS was not going

028to change this on their own. So, uh, that's when we really shifted into high gear this last year and we're it started out as a separate bill, you know, as as Amy said, and then it actually got lumped in with the pension bill, which is kind of on hold right now because it's a much much larger issue in the state. But, you know, it was it damned if we do and damned if we don't, right? So, if we can't put a good educator in front of a student, then that student can't take the class. but we got penalized for doing what we thought was the right thing for our students. So that was that was really the gist of of why we took action on this one. >> So more work to be done on

029that issue. We're not done the general assembly is not done with that issue. Not even close. So we'll have many more opportunities and we'll and we'll be working on that in the future. >> Uh once again uh Dave Ella was tremendous. just happens that our own representative was on this pension working group and tackling a lot of different issues and at the start of session if you guys don't know Dr. Browns and working on this for a few years now, wrote us a memo and we finally decided to actually draft a bill and file a bill. And so from a strategic point of view, when you try to get something as complex as this issue into an even bigger complex bill, it was really strategic for us to go to our own member of of

030our delegation, educate them on it, bring TRS, unions, stakeholders, you you name someone in the education space that we didn't educate and and have an opportunity to just introduce the concept and slide it in was something that we hadn't done in a while, which is good because we've talked about it, but to put uh action was was terrific. I also realized that Dr. Brown I think has a daughter in Springfield. So we try to get him to come testify at like the last minute and he's like I'd be happy to come down to Springfield and drive three hours. So we may take you up on that but we appreciate your counsel on it and there's still work to be done. We are going to take a pause here and let board ask questions or or

031anyone else uh offer anything they'd like to do. Um, I know we have some additional thoughts, but I I think from our perspective, um, we're really enjoying working with staff and finding these these partnerships and opportunities. And I think the 10 goals or whatever the next goals may be, and I know Erin Jarrett as a friend and obviously as uh going to be made as announcement and there's going to be some transition on this board, we want to be that partner with this board um, as it finds its next leadership role, as it finds its next goals. Um, and I think Amy made a really good point on something I want to be kind of clear with. We we always will take direction from this board, but we are also reacting a lot, >> a

032lot. >> So, as much as this board can give us what they want, I think there are times we have to be obviously quite, uh, reactive to what Springfield or even DC sends us on this. And so, um, I think there our request to the board is to be a part of that kind of strategy session on your next goals, revisiting some we talked about. Um, can we come in and give political advice, ideas, timelines, and uh, I, you know, I'll say it, we love to have some folks from the board come to Springfield. I know we are very fortunate to have our members come every year for, uh, an annual lunch, but I think being down in Springfield would be would send a really strong sign. I know other school districts do it. um

033a lot of folks do and I think even your delegation and maybe some folks who aren't from Rockford but are very important to the education space, the pension space would love to hear from one of the state's largest school districts and so I know it's time away from here and it's not Washington DC but we love to like kind of focus on getting you guys to come and I also think from a federal perspective um we've again had some wins but I know that there's a federal event that we go for a conference every year and I want to maybe be more helpful on those visits and those asks in a bipartisan way. Um, as we have a lot of Democrats, we do have uh a member of Congress uh on the other side of

034the aisle too that uh Darren Lehood would be happy to meet with us and staff. And so just kind of fleshing out better strategies and and being more strategic on it. And I think June, you you threw up a calendar. It's really incumbent upon us to give you a calendar of these dates because we live by these let us say of dates and sometimes it's good to know different coordination and so we got to do a better job just on the calendar of what to expect. Um but I think we've gotten a good rhythm and we've just enjoyed working with both of you and staff. So um we're happy to answer any questions or anything else the board may have. So, just one thing I want to add is um as far as the stakeholders

035committee goes, we meet monthly with the Zephyr group um and just talk over whatever's new, whatever's going on, um whatever they think we need to know or we ask them questions if um any board member has posed questions to us. Um I guess my question to you is what would it what would a day in Springfield look like for us? What would we do? Who would we see? That's an excellent question. Um, and and obviously it's one that I'd want to work with you on, especially when we identify those goals, right? those issues because some folks in the general assembly maybe not from Rockford have spent their life's work on certain issues, mental health, uh transportation and so outside of visiting with our delegation I think we would target >> probably every stakeholder that deals

036education Amy unions reform groups >> education committee chairs >> committee chairs >> right anyone in leadership sort of we know every I think between the two of us there's probably not many people in the building we don't know I can't imagine from from you know legislative assistants to legislators we we sort of make it our business to know everyone in the building so we're looking at that entire group of people looking at your priorities and saying who does it make sense to make sure you sit down in front of so that when something comes up that affects you they have your face in their mind like oh I remember that person from Rockford right so that that would be the goal for us to match your priorities to um each member's um subject area and

037then getting you as many meetings as possible. It's busy. It's a wild day. Like wear walking shoes. Luckily, the casual the the capital's getting more casual in their people are starting to wear tennis shoes these days. So So that's good because it's a lot. It's chaotic. It's >> talking my phone. >> Yep. I'm sorry. It's very chaotic. When I bring teachers, administrators down to Springfield, they're always really shocked because it's loud, it's noisy, there's a protest going on at the same time. There's like policy discussion, everything starts two hours late. We're running to this meeting to this meeting. It's very different than sort of the rest of the world. >> Don't don't talk about I'm visiting, by the way. >> Yeah, I'm not. But I just I want to warn you. It's amazing. I think

038it's the best place to work in the world. and we will show you around and it'll be a good day but a busy day and hopefully we have time to like get something to eat or do something nice instead of feeding you in the basement cafeteria. So, we will do our very best. It's not this nice the capital's basement cafeteria. I'll tell you this. So, it'll be a good day, but a very busy day full of meetings. Um, a little more chaotic than you're used to is the way I would describe it if that makes sense. >> Sure. Thank you. Dr. Jarrett, did you want to say something? I was just going to endorse I had the opportunity to do this many times. Uh I would say one fairly recent experience we had uh it

039was also a pension related issue that tied to the the state of Illinois was pay districts that were largely funded with federal dollars that uh Rockford was part of a uh districts and that title one dollars used to pay salaries of staff. uh the state was pulling at that point 41% of every of all the 17 to 18 million in title one funds that we would spend on staff uh was going to the pension fund as opposed to being invested. So it was a big job to explain that to legislators and do that. So what our team was able to do for us um I had the opportunity to testify in front of a content hearing. I had the opportunity to meet all of our local delegation individually. I had the opportunity to go on

040the floor and talk to people during down times of the day and probably met five or six other people in leadership roles. So, literally from 7:30 in the morning until probably about 5:00 p.m. we were busy going from spot to spot. But what was powerful is it started that one day never gets it done. But you start stacking those days and those relationships and building a coalition which we did with some of the other groups and we ended up doing something that was really good for students that has lasted for over 10 years. I would say our district has conservatively uh kept $und00 million since we got that legislation changed. It was a multi-year concept, but one of the keys to getting across the finish line were the multiple days we spent in Springfield with

041very well orchestrated. I think what what Zephr and groups that have the expertise our team has provides is the opportunity to not just you anyone can go to Springfield, but to go to Springfield and and maximize your eight hour day or 10 hours when people are working to really accomplish something significant. That is what's different about what we're able to do. the relationships are built but grow stronger and the focus is able to be initiative. So I I think we have multiple issues. I think uh the issue Dr. Brown mentioned uh also related to pensions will be would be an excellent one for us to potentially uh uh get those tennis shoes out and uh and head to Springfield. So uh I I just wanted to confirm it's a very very positive experience and I'd

042be happy to join the board uh if asked. Does anyone have any questions? Okay, go ahead. I can't see your lights, so you'll have to go ahead said to raise my hand as if I were in school to be called on. So, okay. Um, thank you for coming uh and speaking with us. I miss our time together now that I'm not on internal external. I love my new committee, too. But, um, I just want to say thank you for our updates. So, because I don't get monthly um communication as I did previously, I really appreciate the like updates on what we really need to know, what really applies to us and you make it in language that is digestible. So, um keep those coming and I very much um appreciate that and I would love

043an opportunity to go to Springfield. So, >> thank you. >> Over here, anyone? Go ahead, Miss Pearson. >> Just want to make sure everyone can hear me. I'll use the mic in my throat. Um, so I just have a quick question uh just for clarity. So did you did I understand you to say there was 10 goals given last year? >> We're we're working off of the board's 10 goals. Uh yeah, that that >> Okay. >> Yep. >> Thank you. So for the um sake of public knowledge, we address the uh dual credit, >> the funding, and um the pension penalties. So what were um some of the other goals or the committee could >> go ahead >> the the goals that I have and I think I don't know exactly how often. So we

044meet you know often with the um policy committee >> and as we say we would we would be happy to be in those meetings as you come up with new goals. I don't know what your timeline looks like right now, but the goals that we have for you all are special education, transportation, funding and driver pay, accessibility, speech language pathologists, lure, um teacher shortage, housing availability for new teachers, child care, barriers to lure and certification, and universal mental health screenings. So, another one that passed last year was universal mental health screenings. Illinois is now the first state in the nation that has universal mental health care screenings and will be providing um services to districts for those. So, that's another positive that happened last year. And I could say with any of these, we could

045give you something that showed legislation and how far it got on every single one of these. So, there are things we could point to on on probably all of those, but none of them all go every year. Usually what we're doing is we're looking at that list. Then we're looking at the like 700 500 bills usually filed every year. What matches your priorities? What ones do we want to push? What ones make it to the finish line? And we're helping those get over the finish line. Or like with the pension issue, we're drafting our own bill. You know, a brand new bill that's just a Rockford public school bill saying, "Hey, this is what we need." So it depends every year. And as I say, I don't know if you guys are coming up with

046a new list from that. And if you are, please include us at any point where we can be helpful so that that list can even better match what the general assembly might, you know, have an appetite to work on at that moment. Because maybe like you would come up with an issue and we would say, "Hey, they already hashed that out last year and they said they're not doing this and here's why." >> Right? Or >> or this is a great idea. Let's work on this one. >> Or to give a give a briefing on an issue that where where are we at? Where is the state on this? I mean, transportation, you brought up transportation last year, right? >> It's still on the list. We've got work to do. >> Okay. Thank you. I

047just I just wanted um a quick update on that. Thank you very much for um coming and sharing. We certainly appreciate that and I too look forward to going to spring. I think I had this conversation with Mr. Cassidy a couple years ago, so I'm still interested. Thank you. >> Yeah, we love that. And we've over the 12 years, we've done it all the different way ways, right? like we've had times we just you guys just want to do the legislative lunchon. You know, we're here to accommodate you all for what what you want to do and and I think ending with that if there aren't any more questions. >> Go ahead. >> Okay. I just have one thing to add about the um universal mental health screenings. Yes. So, I talked with Dr. Jared

048about it and um different um cabinet individuals for RPS. Uh I'm very excited about it. like I you know social worker very excited about mental health screenings. Um my question that I'm sure will be answered at a later time not till 2728 school year is regarding the funding mechanism and the reimbursement of the screening. So um the the shortage that Illinois has regarding mental health services, not that other states don't, but I'm only concerned with Illinois. So um about every one um psychiatrist for every 2,000 children like throughout the state of Illinois. So to screen children is lovely and to then refer or whatever would to come next. I'm just concerned about the funding of doing such um and the weight list that already exists. So, in the coming out of the um directives or

049whatever is to come, any updates on that specifically because we have such a large school district and 28,000 students who I'm sure could benefit from lots of resources. So, um just a high priority list. Um yeah, so appreciate it. Michael said he's added a list. We've got it and we hear you with all of that. More more questions than answers sometimes in education funding right now, but we're on it. Speaking of uh priorities, because transportation is so related to absenteeism >> um which ultimately affects academic success um that that's really kind of urgent too and in in addition to everything else that's that's high priority. I know some things we just have to try to work on simultaneously. Um but um for academic success >> absolutely >> the the transportation uh crisis is um is

050a must >> because we will probably not ever really see the academic uh return on investment that we're looking for if we don't solve the transportation piece whether it is providing the transportation andor having the drivers to fulfill that. So it is um a huge problem that I believe that we will be able to see some difference if we were able to be in a position to offer the transportation outside of the 1.5 miles >> and um work with all the way to the federal level to to really get the attention of those decision makers to make this possible for us. >> And these are the kind of conversations we set you up for in Springfield, right? I mean, this is exactly the conversations because what's happened is with evidence-based funding, everyone advocates for that

051and then the mandated categoricals, which includes transportation, they sometimes get a little bit lost in the shufflines like where should the priority be? So, you're in front of that legislator saying, "This is great. We really appreciate this evidence-based funding, but what about transportation?" And that's where those conversations happen and that's where they decide where to put the money, right? The the more conversations like they have like that, the better. So, >> thank you. definitely noted. >> Well, in um regarding the transportation, I know uh our uh legislators are very active in our community. They attend our schools, right? They they visit and they're um always willing to help. And I know Representative Vela visited Constance Lane and one of the things he heard was like, "Kids don't have transportation. They have to walk all these

052things." And he was like, "Well, why is that? It is a law and it should be something that you can help us with." So, I know he reached out to Dr. Jarrett and like got the ball rolling to have that be a priority of his. But had he not been a part of a school or the school on that day to hear what he heard um not really understand what it means for our families and our students to have a law change and have the reimbursement be different for us um as a board. And so um I just reiterating the idea of relationships and being connected to our legislators. Agreed. >> That's all. Last thing I'm saying. >> Thank you. >> Anyone else? >> Yes. I just have a question uh regarding uh thank you

053for the invitation. When when are when would we be able to go down to Springfield? >> Talk about legislative session dates. >> Uh uh it's a good question. So the state legislative session usually runs between January and June 1st. And um I think this is one of the most productive conversations we've had with the board. it would be really uh terrific that we go through these kind of goals and these topics and kind of figure out that path because we go down we can help map those relationships and so um I would not recommend the first part of session or or really the end of session so we're looking kind of spring March or April but we obviously talk once a month and we can be very fluid and flexible and everyone also has jobs

054so we want to be mindful of how that works uh usually Tuesday Wednesday Thursday uh is is session days too so it's the middle of the week, but we will uh we would work with your schedule. Um, and we don't have the official schedule. We should get it right after veto session, which is uh in October, and we don't see anything in education in our veto session coming up at this point right now. >> Okay. And and one other thing, I know that uh I'm on the stakeholders committee and we meet with you monthly. If the bo if board members have other priorities that they want to make known um would they just um is there a way for them to reach out to you or would you prefer that they just let us know

055as state as part of the stakeholders committee to inform you? >> That was sort of my close actually to say and really I think it's up to the policy committee of how you all want to handle that sort of flow. know that we are available. Um, you know, when we're at the Capitol, there are days during the budget times when we're there at one in the morning. I was there at three in the morning. You know, they they work sort of a part of the year, but it's all the time and sometimes through the night, right? They pass budgets at 5:00 a.m. often. So, we're really available. You know, call us. But also, we want to respect the the way that the policy committee wants that to flow. and they know, you all know what

056makes more sense um that than we do. So, we're open to whatever that looks like. Um we want to be as helpful as possible and available as possible. >> Anything else? Anyone else? Thank you guys so much for coming up. >> Thank you. >> And seeing us tonight. Thank you. I >> I did have just one one uh comment. >> Sorry. >> Not for you. Not for them. For you, for the committee. um when we schedule the the the um trip to Springfield, I would like to go as well, but also do not schedule it dur during the spring break. >> Okay. Just just a little heads up. >> Okay, no problem. Okay, let's finish our slides. All right. Can we pull the microphone up close to our mouth, please? >> Sorry. >> Now, for

057some internal external news, school board members attended the Greater Rockford Chamber of Commerce's 815 Rock and Eve event at the Hard Rock Casino on August 14th. We dressed in our favorite 815 gear. This high energy annual dinner and fundraiser supports the chamber's mission to build a thriving business community. And we're on to board member reflections. Do any board members have anything to share regarding any events you've attended or any interactions you've had in the community? Sorry, I was also at that that meeting. They took the picture without me after I left. No. Um I would like to to highlight since we're here tonight at Rha um over the the past several days, I was able to participate with the um Rockford Park District in their celebration of the Clarence Hicks uh Memorial Sports Complex. So

058I was able to um attend when the Chicago Bears girls flag football uh their camp. So, they had a couple of of of Chicago Bears players come and and talk to the students and the girls and have them all riled up and about uh winning and and different uh tactics that they used. Um and also on Saturday they had the the grand opening and myself and and Miss Stanford was was uh present there as well and it was just a beautiful thing. Uh we want to also just remind um remind the audience that you know the girls flag football is open. you have a a middle schooler, send her over. I think we need some more students from RHA. They come from all four, I'm sorry, from all the middle schools in the area. And

059from sixth grade up to 8th grade and it's a it's a very very um dynamic experience. Uh our participation has launched the girls flag football throughout the state. You know, we have it at at Rockford University and things. So, it's a very dynamic program. It's a game going on now. me and Mr. Phillips was thinking about cutting out and no going to see the the the game across the hall. I'm sorry, across the field. Um again, um I'm available if you guys need uh me to come and and and visit anything as my schedule allow. I will do my best to attend and be present for the community. >> So, go ahead. >> Sorry. I just wanted to say that I attended the Labor Day parade this past Saturday and the reputation from and the

060representation from the schools and the Rea and the um I guess it's IEA was phenomenal. I was glad excited to see all of our cheerleaders, our bands out there and our our our teacher union and our also our bus drivers. There was buses out there. So it was just awesome representation from our PS 205. So, just wanted to say that >> Miss Pearson. >> Thank you. I just want to uh share that I had an opportunity to um attend um flag football game between uh Guilford and Yorkville. It wasn't necessarily a positive outcome for Guilford, but it was uh a nice being out and you know, communicating and and enjoying an event with community members. I also was uh had an opportunity to sit on a panel with RISE Teen Summit with our former uh

061board member, Miss Cameron Muhammed and Dr. Ashton. It was um a significant success and I really appreciate having an opportunity to engage with parents. I never try to miss that opportunity um because we need all hands on deck and that's my story and I'm sticking to it with uh parent uh engagement as well as um a community picnic. Um it was um u about four churches that came together for community um picnic. So it was good to be uh present um with the faith faith-based community and engage with parents. um there again. So, thank you. >> Anyone else? Go ahead. Sorry. Um I was able to attend uh quite a few back to school events. So, um I came to Reese's back to school events where there was a dunk tank with Mr. Sover um

062included, which is exciting. Uh food trucks, very lovely. Um West View, Spring Creek, and Guilford. Um, and then the morning of back to school, I was able to welcome students at Monasuri. Um, and I kind of forget sometimes just how small our people are like unbuckling car seats and like carrying children inside the school. So that was lovely. I want to start my day that way um, every day. Um, and then also uh, just another shout out for the Labor Day parade. U, I was asked to walk with bus union and nutrition services and just the like overall pride for RPS 205 yesterday. like I wanted to cry multiple times of just like the passion and how excited people were. I think it was the most um like energizing parade I've ever attended or been

063a part of. Um just so many hardworking people coming together and having a day to be celebrated and it was lovely. So feel very honored to have been able to do that. My children got to be included too and my daughter's whole life was made riding in a school bus. So um very very great day. So thank you everybody for attending that. So that's all anyone else >> I just wanted to mention real quick. I think the pair of professionals were represented at the uh Labor Day too. >> It's not like I hear you. >> I think the pair of professionals were recogn or were represented at the Labor Day parade, too. Oh, and and I'm um looking forward to heading to DC next week uh to participate in the federal uh conference. >> No

064other comments. Okay, thank you. That's it for our committee. >> Thank you, Miss Stanford. Miss Bennett will now lead the performance and monitoring committee. Okay. Hello. Good evening. Okay. We are excited to be here at RHSA for the committee of the whole and want to again thank Principal Ben Stover and all of the students and staff at RISA for hosting our very first committee of the whole uh inside our schools. Tonight's feature presentation will be delivered by Principal Stove and focus on school improvement plan. Um, after a brief presentation, board members will then be invited to ask questions to learn more about what RHA is doing to incre increase growth and change academic outcomes as is designated intensive school. As a reminder to all board members, we'll be hearing from all intensive schools this year

065and will receive updates on the progress three times. Principal Stove, welcome and please proceed with your presentation. >> All right. Welcome uh board. And I want to just thank everybody for being here because I realize everybody in the room has a day job and like I'm sitting here in the chairs, same as you and it's it's getting late. Okay. Uh the first thing I want to make sure uh everybody knows Oh, if I can get the clicker. Yeah, that'd be great. So, if uh if you ever interview at Rhysa Middle School, the very first thing I'm going to let you know as a prospective candidate is that Rhysa is a bilingual school. So, we serve a population uh around 1100 students with over half of them being English learners. So, no matter what role you

066have in our building, no matter what capacity you're serving in, uh you're going to be working with students and families who come from a variety of different backgrounds and uh have needs related to language acquisition and uh that's going to impact the way you uh deliver any service that you're going to have at RISA. Okay. Uh we also have uh the plus program at RISA. We actually have ex it's expanded this year into two classrooms that is a uh self-contained special education classroom uh for students with uh significant disabilities and uh we've been excited to we've had Miss Whitmer for years and actually we had a uh uh Miss Smith who was a parah in Miss Whitmer's room but through our LEAP program and partnerships has uh moved through there to become a special education

067teacher and is now uh our second special ed teacher for our second classroom there. So, we've we've been excited to see that. You can see the uh demographic breakdown of our school. This is just from our school report card. Uh we serve obviously uh a diverse student body with uh a large especially with the bilingual program a large Hispanic population. So, we've really tried to over the years uh ensure that we have staff who can greet families where they're at and you know, like if you pick up the phone and call, someone's going to be able to speak with you. You're not going to have to wait for an interpreter and things like that. Okay. Uh we are a intensive school and I want to just Okay. So, we're an intensive school and those are

068these are the schools you're visiting this year. What intensive really means is this is this is the second time the state of Illinois has done uh this type of rating system. So we're in the second four-year cycle of this uh rating system. And because we had started in what was the equivalent of a comprehensive cycle in the last four-year cycle uh and then we ended still in that same rating. We are now in the intensive rating. Okay. And it's important to know like the 2024 school year, that was our planning year where we started to develop this long-term plan to uh improve our tier one instruction and strengthen our MTSS systems so that all students can see greater growth and achievement at RISA. Okay. And uh what we are excited and doesn't necessarily say on

069the slide but we had we started with a score. So if you were to like take everything about RISA according to the state and put one number to it we were 25. Now that may not mean a whole lot to you but it means to us we were below the point where we needed to be. Okay. Uh what we saw last year was the score went up to about 34. Okay. And uh we still don't have the most recent data, right? Like so from last school year. We're waiting on that data. But once that all comes out, uh we're hopeful that we will be moving even further. And if you look at our, you know, growth and achievement data in uh ELA and math, you're going to see like we're moving in the right direction.

070We're not where we want to end up. So, uh, I want to go to our theory of action though where we we actually address this with our our staff. And this theory of action says if we collectively improve our tier one classroom environments and tier one instruction, then we're going to see growth and achievement for each student. Okay? This will lead to a greater sense of student belonging and better attendance. Okay? We we know that students are going to do better if they feel like they belong. We know that students are going to be better do better if they come to school. And we think that by collectively working together and so what that has looked like for our staff is really all being on the same page as we move forward with implementing our

071our SIP initiatives. So last year we were uh one of the first schools to work on or one of the first middle schools to be working with the champs and implementing some of those things in our classrooms and the staff really uh took to it really well, right? It it was speaking to a lot of like the common sense things that you've always known as a teacher, right? If we're clear with directions, if we're consistent, if we're fair, kids will respond to that. They they they need that structure in their lives and we need to be the place to provide that because we're kind of the only place for all the kids to be. I mean, everybody's going to go home somewhere else, but we're the only place where all the kids are. So, we

072get to be here and provide that structure for them. And when we say collectively, that means everybody has to do it because if not everybody's doing it, it's not going to actually make a difference. we're going to end up spinning our wheels and everybody, you know, we're going to have people trying really hard, but they're working in different directions. So what I've been amazed by is how the RISA staff has uh come together to collectively uh whether it's something as simple as IDs or as complicated as tier one instruction, they're coming together to do it all together as a team because it's a lot easier if everybody is doing it than uh to just be out there on your own. Okay. So in English language arts uh in 2024 our student growth percentile so this

073is like if you were going to take one number for how well our students are growing in ELA right it was at 39 and then in 2026 what our goal is to be at 50 I believe we were at 48 last year so we're we're moving up sorry not last here. We're we're in these uh this multi-year cycle and we're like already a year past, but we don't have the actual data from the state until like October. So, it's it's it gets muddy, but uh what the bottom line is we're seeing positive growth. Okay. uh the explicit instruction strategies that we've been trying to roll out. We've kind of been uh increase opportunities to respond and I feel like like a board meeting uh is the opposite of opportunities to respond because you're also polite

074and we all have to take turns. We have like microphones and things that have to turn on. But uh this isn't how we want classrooms to be, right? Because if you're doing something then you're learning something, right? So, we are encouraging our teachers to create opportunities within their classrooms where instead of kids waiting and raising their hand and waiting to be called on, right? We're using strategies that encourage all students to participate all at the same time, right? That might mean turn and talk to your partner because then they're all participating, right? They're all thinking about something and and doing it. Or it might be some sort of coral response or things like that. So, there's a lot of different strategies uh that are wrapped up in explicit instruction, but uh we're just starting to

075scratch the surface of that. Uh common assessments for all core subjects. So, we've kind of had this theory. We talked about how the planning year was was the beginning of a four-year cycle and we've been working in our PLC's the first year a couple years ago was like, how do we work together as adults? And then after that we started saying well what should students really be learning? What should we be expecting all our students to know and how are we going to know that? Well those are those like the four PLC questions and uh what our teams did all of our core PLC's they came together and made common assessments that they use. So any summitative assessment at at RISA uh if there's more than two teachers teaching that class they're common assessments. So

076they they they develop that together in their teams. Uh that's kind of in their self-directed time in PLC's which is uh professional learning communities. Okay. And then this year we're trying to add on this kind of mantra that if we're doing our uh instruction really well then 80% of our kids should be benefiting or getting it from the tier one instruction. Right? That means like you teach a lesson and then 80% of the class is really with you right there. We have strategies for the other 20%, right? Those are interventions. Those are things that we're going to do extra or in addition to, but we want to see that, you know, you you can't walk away from a class where half the students didn't understand something and then say, "Oh, well, we're going to we

077got to move on. We got to get through it." you know, so we're really working with our PLC's and the teachers are working on ensuring that 80% of their students are getting it each time. So that's what they're going to be doing in their PLC's. And uh we monitor this using our STAR data. So we give those assessments three times a year for our tier one students. And then any students who are in tier two or tier three are going to get tested more frequently and they're going to be progress monitored as they are in interventions. Okay. Uh for math, it's a very similar slide because most of these things are kind of universal strategies that work across the board. What I will say we did last year was really emphasize, hey team, we're going

078to use the core curriculum and we're happy you know then once we started uh really getting the teachers all using it on the daily basis so they all were trained and had access and were ready to go then uh they said well hey we want to make some changes and so uh they wanted to do it in the order that the the publisher of the curriculum did Well, they went through our collaborative processes with CIL's uh you know, meeting with uh district curriculum staff and it uh over the summer the decision was made districtwide to at the middle school level go with the sequencing that was put forth by the publisher. So that's going to help our teachers be able to plan more easily because it's in line with the way that the curriculum was

079designed and written to be. Uh chronic absenteeism. So this has been this is one of those things that was a problem for years before COVID. Okay. And then COVID came and the whole country now has this problem. Rhysa, it's kind of always been we used to have a 38% chronic absenteeism going before uh COVID and that was terrible and now we're sitting at around 50% chronic absenteeism and it's even more terrible. Okay. Uh if half the students are not, you know, are chronically absent, then it's very difficult for them to learn. It's difficult to do a multi-day project where you're going to have a group working on something when you don't know if your group partner is going to be there the next day. Okay. So, we've really been trying this year to tackle this

080because again, we talked about if 80% 80% of kids should be being seeing their needs met by tier one, that means we're not our tier one is where the problem is, right? Because if we're talking about half the school is having an issue with chronic absenteeism, then we can't intervene our way out of that. We have to fix tier one, the thing we're doing for every student. So, uh we still have the MTSS, right, which is the intervention, but uh we really have tried to Dr. Jarrett kind of challenged uh middle schools last year. He said, "Hey, you guys got to find a way to use your lunchtime to really drive your goals. Okay? And that's what we're trying to live out this year in being more organized with our lunch interventions. And you know,

081there's always been tutoring, there's always been like lunch detention or, you know, things like that. But what we've kind of added on this year, first of all, we have like behavior interventions that are actually, you know, teaching skills using like our Wayfinder curriculum. And then we have an attendance intervention that is just holding students accountable for whenever they're not there because they already are being held accountable for it. If kids don't come to school, they miss something. They were supposed to do that. They have to make it up at some point, right? And they have to turn that work in typically. Okay. We're putting in a system where if a student was gone yesterday, then they have to come at lunch and get caught up today and it takes them out of the cafeteria here,

082which we're happy for because it this gets real loud. Okay. Uh, and it puts them in a room where they can email their teachers, go on Google Classroom, find out what they need to know. Um, check their grades, do the things they need to do to be a responsible student when you're gone because even as adults when we're gone from our jobs for something like let's say you have to go to Springfield to to visit with some some lawmakers, right? You still have things you've got to do at your job back here and you're responsible for that. And that's what we're trying to teach the students, right? Right? We're trying to teach them to be responsible when they're gone. And so when they return, they have to attend this day of intervention. And what we've

083seen just preliminarily is from the day I started this, which we've only been doing it for like three days, okay? But we've only been doing for a few days. But from when we started it, we've already seen attendance improve. We've already seen students uh saying to their parents because we had parents calling saying, "Uh, I my daughter's sick, but uh she's saying she's got to get to school or else she's going to have this lunch thing and uh you know, can you tell me a little more about this?" So, you know, we communicated with our parents and made sure they know what's going on. Uh but we got kids wanting to come, which is what we're hoping for, right? If the kid wants to come, they're going to get here somehow. And that's that's really

084like the end goal for all of this, right? We want to build belonging. We want to make this a place where everybody feels like they can grow. And uh we think that by implementing a lot of these things with attendance tier one, communicating expectations, celebrating things. So like we're in this uh cafeteria here. We can see our VIP lunch area where kids can uh hang out. And if you're not in one of those lunchtime intervention groups, you get you can go in there and there's video games or they can head outside at lunch and, you know, play soccer and things like that. We pop a shot and things like that. So, we have lots of opportunities for kids uh if if they're on track and have everything together. Um overall uh to make these initiatives

085move forward, we have ongoing professional development. So on Thursdays we uh have the benefit of late start and that allows us time to work with our staff to um have both PLC time which is where they're working in their teams like sixth grade math or seventh grade social studies to plan their lessons and to analyze the data from their common assessments. And then it also gives us time where we can get embedded professional learning where they can talk about some of these strategies that we're going to be implementing throughout the year. So we already have all those dates kind of planned out. There's a whole big long sequence of that and uh we're going to be benefiting from that throughout the year. Uh we also have been trying to engage our families more. So, uh,

086Miss Bennett was here for our back to school night, which was a huge success. We had so many families out here, so many community community organizations out here. Uh, and was just a great time. It was a fun festive atmosphere. It felt like a block party or carnival or something like that. I mean, it was really great. And I want to give a lot of credit to uh, uh, my parent leaison uh, who really helped to put that together and make that a great success. And uh finally uh we are also excited to get some with all the with the support we have a lot of support staff that are in place that didn't exist uh seven years ago or when I started I this is my 10th year at RISA a lot of those

087support positions didn't exist and so as we've been adding new positions that creates new needs for facilities and we we were really happy that uh we're going to be able to be occupying sometime later this school here some space where we can get more of our services done in super high quality environments uh and you know so that people have the space to work with the students in the small group setting that they need to do that. So we're really excited for that and uh you know to continue on this journey as we go through the next few years of our school improvement cycle. So that's all I have for you and I'm here for any questions or anything. So >> okay, thank you Mr. over very much uh for your presentation. So, we are

088going to have about 20-ish minutes if if needed. Um what questions does anybody have? Does anybody have any comments or anything that they would like to ask or share? >> I have a a comment. Um, I just want to say um that your your attendance initiative and you know as you explained it to us on the tour before uh the meeting today and just now I think it's amazing. Um I can't wait to see the the results and the data um from this intervention and uh you guys are doing an awesome job over here at at uh recent. Shout out to your AP's over there. Hey. Well, no, but no, you guys are doing an awesome job. So, I I'm really really excited about that that new initiative. So, thank you. >> Thank you, >>

089Miss Pearson. >> Thank you, >> Mr. Epson. Thank you so much for the work you and your team doing at here at RISA. This is one of the schools I can't say that I'm overly concerned about. Um, you all have an awesome team here and I certainly appreciate all your efforts. Sorry I wasn't able to make it to the first day, but as you know, subd district A have the most uh schools in it subdist and it's kind of hard. I try to rotate um around to each school. So that wasn't a success this year either. But thank you so much for uh you and the sacrifice that you make because I know that you go above and beyond along with your team and I appreciate all of your hard work. Thank you. If somebody

090else has something, you have to raise your hand. Mr. Carpenter, >> thank you. Um, thank you again for for hosting us tonight and to your staff for hosting us. I know this was a fair amount of work to get us here and um, we appreciate it. U, I wanted to ask first, I guess, you know, is there any supports that the board could provide to help you in your goals? >> And you can think about that. I would say really the continuing of the sitebased budgets where we have discretion in how to spend some of those dollars that actually equate to positions because I think most of this work like changing things wouldn't be possible without the dollars and the positions and the people that are doing that work. It's a lot of work to

091like put together a weekly newsletter. It's a lot of work to implement a lot of the things that we're doing here and it's very helpful when you have somebody whose job that is to really handle that you know whatever the thing is and so um just sort of continuing with that and uh I think you know I think the board's been responsive with a lot of things as far as like student code of conduct things right like it takes a lot this is a very lively place every day, but we're providing a essential service here and and you know, the fact that we have kind of like this consistency and we we we know what to expect from, you know, a code of conduct or things like that that really helps us, you know, we

092kind of live and die by that book sometimes and and I think those things have been very helpful, but especially the sitebased dollars and uh as an intensive school this year. We got um some equity dollars from that process and I think that's been really helpful especially since those are local fund $10 which we can spend on a lot of different things that you necessarily can't spend like grant dollars on and uh that that's been been critical. >> Thank you very much, >> Miss Haley. >> I know you Thank you. I know you've been you've used some of those sightbased dollars um to employ parent liaison in your attendance initiative. What other ways are you using uh parent leaison at this site? >> So we have parent leaison who are helping with attendance uh and

093they their like whole focus is on helping improve student attendance whether that be uh working directly with the students or working with the students and the parents. We have uh parent leaison who really focuses on the like family involvement and communicating with uh our families. So we have these like weekly newsletter that goes out uh and they're really involved in a lot of like the mass communication Facebook, Tik Tok, all that. You got to be on all that stuff, right? And so we've got folks helping out with that. And then uh we also have parent liaison that are uh helping communicate with families for students that are in the discipline process, right? That that's a part of uh communicating with families as well, right? Because part of due process is like you call the family

094and let them know you're conducting an investigation and you uh let everybody know what everything's going on and things like that. So there's all different types of ways that uh apparently can be used by to to interact with our families. And uh it's it's one of those positions that we've kind of expanded the use of a lot in the last couple years. >> Okay. Um I have a quick question. Um so when I uh visited last year, uh you talked about a position that you were able to kind of create. um a dean position. So, could you kind of talk a little bit about that so the board's kind of aware of how that's unique to you and your building and your needs and kind of how it works and why um that was something

095that you did regarding like the intervention >> Sure. >> aspect. Thank you. >> So, uh our deans, uh so we call them deans. Okay. They're actually behavior intervention specialists like is their job title, although that's in process and and working through here. uh they help with processing of discipline and especially last year it was about like lower level discipline but we're working on developing it so that they're working on solving the case or investigating the bullying and interviewing the students and the families and things like that so that we can respond to everything in the way that it needs to be responded to. There are uh you know it would I think come as no surprise that the whole world of discipline is more complicated than it was 10 years ago. You you know so

096every little piece of that means there's more work to be done right. So there's you know new things from our government about bullying for example right and we want to make sure that we investigate and respond to and put in safety plans for everybody. So what like for example at the start of this year our student services department gave us this uh a list who of students who based on the data had had disciplinary issues in the past and the team was tasked with so we have to create a support plan for these kids. They're going to be here and they need extra help. We know they need extra help. So before school started, I had, you know, 40 50 kids who had safety plans and intervention plans. You know, that went that might have

097meant they're calling the the deans are calling the families and finding out, hey, so did you still, you know, there was this issue with Susie and Timmy and and figuring out what all was going on there. And we were able to start this year with those things already in place. So, um, really being able to be proactive on a lot of things rather than just reactive has has been enormously helpful. Thank you very much. Anything additional anybody wanted to ask or make mention of? No. Okay. U, Mr. Silver, anything else additional you'd like to say? >> I did think of another thing with the deans. >> Okay. Tell us. >> So, uh, we have amazing assistant principles like Miss Butler out there. I know I'm probably not supposed to mention and uh with the deans

098here able to handle like looking into disciplinary issues that frees up Miss Butler to go into classrooms and help lead change in instruction. And I think strategically that is the direction that I want my assistant principles who've gotten master's degrees and went to school. None of their none of the M's programs around here investigate anything to do with, you know, what happened in a bathroom, right? It's all about uh learning and teaching and leading. And so it frees her up to do those things. And that really is where you're going to see the numbers here start to go up is from that leadership of the staff and the presence in the classrooms and the presence with kids. And I think that will be where we're going to see things really take off. >> Great. Thank

099you so much. And then shout out Miss Butler for attending our meeting tonight. Oh, okay. Well, okay. That's very nice. Thank you. Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Okay. So, thank you again, Risa, for kicking off our um tour of schools um for our series of school uh improvement reports. Next, uh, we just have anformational item on the agenda which outlines the sitebased expenditure expenditure reporting for each of our schools. Dr. Brown is here tonight if anyone has any specific questions and that's letter B under four. >> May I May I offer just a couple points about this real quick? >> Yeah, go ahead, Dr. J. >> And then I'll turn it over to Dr. Brown's expertise. Um, this is actually one of the most important things that the board should look at

100each year. And I just want to give you kind of a guide of how you can look at this. If you look at the bottom right column uh for each school, you can see what the total spending is per pupil. Now, here's why I think this is really important for the board. Um, you can verify all this and go to the Illinois State Interactive Report Card and that unfortunately only goes back to 2019, but it's very telling because what you can do going back from 2019 to 20 24 is you can see as the district has gotten new dollars and evidence-based funding. You may ask, well, where did those dollars go? And so if you go to the very bottom of the worksheet that you have here, you can see the district is now averaging

101spending 16,26782 per school. That's the average per school. Early childhoods are included in that. Roosevelt is included that outplace students are included in that. And you can see that broken up into our different categories. So when you're looking at that, you should look at first of all, what is the district spending per pupil? And then you can look at things like are our schools that have that greatest need getting more money or less money. And one of the things you're going to be able to see in our district over the last decade plus is that schools that have greater need are increasingly getting do increased dollars. Let's take for example. Mr. Stover did a fantastic job of talking about what those dollars mean. So if you wouldn't mind, I'm going to just dive into that

102example really quickly. In 2019, Rhysa spent $12,640 per pupil. In this report, you can see that Rhysa is spending over $16,200 per pupil. That is about a 30% increase over five years. Some of those dollars go because staff is more expensive over that time period. But that also has gone because what we've done is as we've gotten new dollars from the state, we've given additional discretionary dollars through our funding formula based on need, our local funding formula. The state has evidence-based funding. We have our own way of doing this. And Mr. B, Dr. Brown goes out to every school and talks to principles about what they need and how they're investing the dollars and reconfigures that formula to make sure dollars are going where they're most needed. So when Mr. Stove is able to talk

103about the investments he's made and in prioritizing instruction. Part of that is possible because they have 30% more dollars than they did 5 years ago locally. And as a board, what you can do here is look, is the district investing more dollars in the local funding formula. You can look at are schools that have higher low income counts spending more or less per pupil. And I would suggest that you do that by category of school. It doesn't always work to compare a high school to an elementary school or an early childhood center because they have different complexities in the way that work, but you can disagregate it by the type of school. So, I would suggest that the board take a look at that. If you want to sit down and go over it with

104during our one-on ones, I would be happy to do it. I know Dr. Brown would as well. But one of the really powerful things that this tells is the story that the Rockford public schools have added well over 200 additional positions spread out over our 41 schools. Where does the money come from and how do we know we spent that money? You can look at the year-over-year spending on this. We are often criticized for not making enough local investment in our schools. And I would just challenge you to continue to review this chart each year when it comes out. The state now requires it from 2019 on. But if you go back to 2011 when I first got here, you could literally predict how much a school would spend per pupil because the schools that

105had less lowincome students would spend more per pupil because we tended to have more experienced teachers that cost more. Now what we do is we equalize for that. all schools get what they need or we try to give them as much as we can give them towards their need. And if schools have a higher concentration of low-income students and less experienced teachers, principles automatically get additional dollars that they can invest in the type of positions that Ben Stove talked about tonight at RISA. So, please do take your time and review this um look at the interactive report card and you can see change over time and Dr. Brown and I would be happy to help you. But this is not a report that I think we should ever just gloss over because it really tells

106the story of are we making equitable investments in our schools. And while we are not perfect, if you look to 2019 or certainly back to 2011, we have a strong story to tell. But it also shows that we need to continue to make investments. So with that, I'll turn it over to Dr. Brown. But I did want to share that with the board because I think this is a really important chart that we produce each year. >> I don't have anything to add to that. That that was well done, Dr. Jarrett. >> Anybody have any questions for Dr. Brown or Dr. Jarrett? >> Nope. Okay. I just wanted to go ahead and >> and I think I just got the clarity. So, this um chart is also made available for the public, correct? >> Thank

107you. Okay. Uh, finally review the consent agenda. Thank you for your feedback on the way that we explain the performance monitoring uh committee's consent agenda. We have organized the items um for your convenience. So, first we have um first we have items H and I. administration's requesting purchasing authority for up to $150,000 with the regional office of education and up to $52,000 with various venues for rentals. Does anybody have any questions on letter H or I? Nope. Okay. Um, moving on. Professional learning items J, K, and L. uh star renaissance PD letters training our central office initiatives to align professional learning with our universal screening assessment and best instructional practices and foundational literacy college preparatory mathematics CPM will be providing school-based support at Jefferson High School to support integrated math teachers. Does anybody have any

108questions on item J, K, or L? >> Miss Pearson? >> Yes. So just for clarity, these are not recurring items, correct? >> No, here you go. Y >> uh yes, they actually are. We've done uh Star Renaissance training multiple years in a row. Um this is going to be our third cohort of letters training as well. And we've had inclassroom coaching with CPM over multiple years. >> Oh, I'm sorry. >> K. Oh, yes. That's the letters training. This will be our third cohort. >> Okay. And so we we have data with the the outcomes of the purpose for these. >> Uh yeah, for our letters training in particular, we have 120 teachers who have finished and become certified. We have 80 teachers in cohort 2 and we're looking to start another 40 this year. So

109that puts us up uh you know well over 200. Our goal is to really saturate our elementary schools with teachers who are highly trained in explicit systematic phonics instruction. Uh for Star Renaissance, pardon me. Uh last year we ran the Star Champions Academy. Um, and so that means we have at least two people in every school who are highly trained. Star Renaissance is our universal screener in reading and math. Um, and then with CPM, it's been a little bit of time since we've done the in-classroom coaching, but we started that um, several years ago when we launched the program. >> Thank you. >> Okay. And then my apologies, I skipped letter G. Um, letter G is a certified compensation report, an IMRF compensation report for administrator and teacher. Um, Miss Crowder is available for any

110questions uh, regarding that report. Also, raise your hand if you have a question because I will not be able to see you. Nope. Okay, moving on. Uh, item M is for safe and civil schools. This contract outlines the service provided by safe and civil schools across multiple campuses in our district. Does anybody have a question on item M. Okay, moving on. Item Oh, I'm sorry. >> Thank you. >> Yep. Sorry, Miss Pearson. >> That's okay. All right. So, um, how do I want to work this? So, will you please confirm how how often we're going to get an update on the use the outcomes of utiliz utilizing champs. I think we could pretty flexibly accommodate that whether it's through the weekly superintendence update or if you would like something more formalized than what we have

111here. Um because it was asked in performance monitoring if you did want to be able to see the full package of uh the menu of items that are being uh provided in terms of training at each school. That is appendix A which I believe is page uh 128 to 151 of the board PDF. >> The executive summary is is pretty clear. Um I mean since we have you know schools that have been identified uh just to keep a a closer eye on it on the improvement would be helpful. Go ahead. >> Absolutely. >> Okay. Um, next is items N and O, related services staffing. Uh, through independent contracting and staffing agencies, our special education department is working to fill hard to fill vacancies. Does anybody have questions about these two items? Okay. Next are items.

112>> I'm sorry. I have a question. >> I'm sorry. Go ahead, M. McCall. Um, will information be provided on um the applications like the demographics of the applications? Um, who were accepted and and what they were who were turned away from these agencies? Like how how are they recruiting for these positions and things like that? I don't Mr. Rya, would you like to come to the podium or I don't know if you were planning on answering questions or not, but >> you hear me? >> Yes. >> All right. Cuz can you repeat the question, please? >> Okay. So, we have these two staffing um a agencies that are hiring for these these specific special education positions, right? I just want to know like what the data is on it like how are they recruiting for

113these positions like some of that some of that data. >> So the staffing agent so one of them is an independent contractor Jordan Peterson. So she is an individual person that will be in our uh schools. the staffing agency uh provides us a number of we just tell them hey we need a certain amount of staff and then they get us a they give us a pool and then they allow us to interview and then we pick from those from the people that we interview. So, if we said we need four speech pathologists, they'll probably give us four to six and then we interview them and then we just pick. They just they just give us them. >> They vet them beforehand. They let us know who they are and then we interview them and

114we pick who we want. >> Okay. >> Did we use this um company last year as well? >> No. Presence is a new newer company. They should have gone to board uh the other three uh staffing agencies, but there was some language we need to get through in the contract. Uh they are replacing AMN. If you remember, we had AMN last year. AMN uh we uh stopped using AMN and now we're using presence for that fourth staffing agency company. >> I did have one additional question. Go ahead. Um, are we tracking like how long the the the person that's hired stays like the the results and things from the staffing agency so we can, you know, know if this is a good one that's bringing us quality quality um staff. >> Correct. So after each

115year that they have uh been with us, they will ask us if they would like for them to return. So um for example, uh Agape and SSG, we had several staff members. We liked that they were working with our children and uh they're really good at what they're doing. So, we brought a bunch of those uh people back. But if you wanted specifics like how many returned from last year, I would have to get you that information. But we've got that because if they were good, we brought them back. >> Any additional questions for Mr. Ryan? >> Thank you very much. Yes, I do. Oh, sorry, Miss Pearson. So, we have more than um 4,850 students with disability um who may receive one or more related services uh will receive their re required services which

116should help them make progress towards andor complete the goals outlined in their individualized educational program. So, do we have um the categories of disabilities or >> Yeah, I can I can get you the the categories. >> Thank you very much. >> Yep. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Yep. >> Okay. Items P, QR, and S are extended day in community partnerships. These items represent grant-f funed afterchool programs with the following community partners. Rockford Barbell, Boys and Girls Club, Rockford Park District, and Northern Illinois University. Does anybody have any questions on PQR and S? >> Miss Haley, >> I have a question on Q. Um, >> on letter Q. >> Yes. >> Okay. with with this particular contract. Is it only for RISA the STEM the STEM uh programming after school? >> Yes, that's correct. It's only

117at RISA. >> Thank you. >> Uh Miss Stanford, >> is is Q grant funded? >> Sorry, can you repeat your question? Is letter Q is that grant funded? >> Yes, that's funded out of title four. >> Thank you. >> Any other questions? No. Okay. Um, this concludes the business for our comm our committee, but one uh note I suppose, was this helpful to have the agenda organized by letters in the order that they were discussed? Is that moving forward helpful to people instead of saying letter A then J then something else like having them in the order on the agenda? Yes. Yes. >> Yes. >> In the order that you're calling the categories that you're calling. >> Yes. In order all grouped together. Yes. >> Okay. Great. Thank you. >> Easier to follow especially if

118you want to go the speed. >> Yes. Okay. No problem. And I can slow down. That can be feedback too. So thank you very much. >> On the program I mean the agenda will be fine. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Okay. That um concludes our portion of the meeting. >> Thank you. Miss McCall will now lead the planning and development committee. >> Thank you. Before we before we get um started on the agenda, just make sure that uh we're getting that both of us are getting the script uh prior to because we didn't have it at the beginning, so we don't want to and we're alternating as a reminder. >> Thank you. Uh we will now move to item A, facilities plan funding operations. So Dr. Greg Brown, the chief financial officer, will now provide an

119update on our facilities plan funding options update and presentation. >> Okay. So, as we had talked about a couple of months ago, we were going to begin to work with the other districts to see what their appetite was for uh moving forward with a potential sales tax referendum in March. And so, I'm actually just going to go through each of the districts to let you guys know what progress we have made. So we have made contact with all the districts in Winnebago County to see, you know, what their interest is in moving forward with this. So I would tell you that generally the response from all the districts has been positive. Uh not everyone has taken it to their board yet, but several have. So Harlem not only took it to their board for consideration,

120they actually had their board pass the actual language in the resolution. So, uh, Harlem is a definite yes in moving forward. The Wnebago school district has has given a thumbs up for it. They pan, uh, plan to pass the resolution actually this month at Winnebago. Haneneiga has also given us a thumbs up and they plan to take the resolution to the board this month. Durand is going to take the resolution to their board in October. Pekkatonica is going to have an initial discussion with their board and then possibly bring it as early as September 17th. I am actually going up to Rockton on Monday night to actually speak with their board about the uh potential to put it on the ref uh in March and also in South Bo on September 9th. I'm going to

121go talk to their board about it as well. Kickanic, Sheron, and Prairie Hill are all positive, but they have not given us a clear direction yet. So, the vast majority of the districts appear to be in favor. Everybody really is looking at this from a total countywide point of view and the benefits that it brings to all the the schools in the county. And so it it seems like within the next month we're going to have a real clear direction from every single one of the districts in all of Winnebago County that would be impacted by this. So that's really the update on on the funding options. So questions on, you know, where we're at as far as, you know, making progress with the other districts and and really laying out what the, you know,

122what the sales tax could potentially do. just speak up if you have a question. >> I do have one question. Was the uh discussion were the discussions all um based on the 1% uh amount? >> Correct. They were all based on the 1% amount. >> Any other questions? And was there any um discussion about timeline for when the referendum would be uh best uh suited? >> Yeah, the general thought was it would be better to try and go not in the general election in November, but try to do it at the primary election in March at least for the initial ask. Any other any other questions? >> Sorry, I'm gonna just keep going on that, I guess. But, um, the timeline then for getting that on the ballot would be we'd have to pass something

123what? December. >> December, correct? Yep. Are there any further questions for Dr. Brown? Okay, seeing none, we will go to item B, a memorandum of agreement between the board of education and Rockford Public Schools and the uh Vanvelite Family Foundation. The Vanvvelite Family Foundation has uh been a strategic nonprofit partner of the district for several years. The Vanvite Foundation affiliated amateur athletic union AAU basketball teams have requested the use of the Auburn Fieldhouse for practices March through July. The district will also provide the Van Vleet Family Foundation access to Auburn facilities for their charitable e efforts. Are there any questions for Mr. Phillips regarding item B? If so, speak up. >> Have the contract um been agreed upon? >> It's currently under review um with the Van Fleet Foundation. >> Okay. Will it be final

124by the next board meeting? Is that your expectation? >> That is our expectation. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Any other questions? Okay, we will move on to the preview of consent items. Below below is the consent agenda. I'm sorry, Meta thought I was asking a question. Below is the consent agenda item for the planning development committees. Item A, recurring the cont reoccurring contract with IMAG for site logistics design services at West Middle School. Can you hear me? >> The lights on. >> The battery. >> Item B, I don't know, maybe I got to hold it. Recurrent the recurring contract with fair for site uh logistics design services at Lincoln Middle School. Item C, recurring contract with CES, Inc. for site logistics design services at Maria Monosauri and Marsh. Item D, reoccurring contract with Richard L.

125Johnson architects for design services at Froberg Elementary. Item E, reoccurring contract with Olm Ernest Martin, Architects for Design Services at W Stadium. This completes the report for the planning and development committees. Thank you. >> Did anybody have any questions for any of the items presented? >> I didn't have a question. I just have two statements. Uh for item C and item E, just very excited about both of those projects. Uh item C in particular, it is very very stressful outside of Lincoln Middle School at that time. So, I love the idea to be able to make it uh much safer. And there's also that uh alley or I don't know what to call it in between where the football stadium is and door M or some something of the type out there that is kind

126of unused space that um some kids do utilize. But I'm very excited about those projects. That's all. >> Any other comments or questions? Seeing none. Thank you. >> Thank you. Um there's just two consent items for governance committee. Are there any uh questions about item 8A and it item 8B, the meeting minutes and freedom of information log? >> All right. Thank you. Thank you. I did want to thank um Miss From Miss Lozano, Miss Sterling for all their work in getting the uh meeting set up here. I know it was a lot of work. So, thank you and and all the uh cabinet and everyone for coming tonight too and their work. Um but if there are no public speakers um so I would ask for a motion and a second to adjurnn. >> So

127moved. Second. >> Thank you. See you in two weeks at the board office. Good job.