001good evening everybody good evening welcome to the Board of Education meeting for March 10th 2025 can I have a roll call please here here here here here here here thank you all right the first item on our agenda is written communication Dr bavis do we have any written communication we have no written communication this evening okay all right the next item is comments from the public do we have any comments from the public uh we have no comments from the public this evening either okay folks must be at a particular um game otherwise I'm sure they would be here comenting they're at a basket basketball game think all right um so the next item is items for information the first item is the 2025 26 and 20 26 27 school calendars we going to have
002Mr Mike Jacobson from our Communications office answer any questions in the memo on the school calendars all right good evening everyone thank you for having me here tonight so I'm here to present uh the 2526 District calendar as well as the 2026 27 draft District calendar for approval and if you haven't met me before so I'm the assistant director of the Communications Department I think I was here about a year ago so it's always good to see friendly faces once again so I want to start by thanking the calendar committee uh for their dedication to help formulate these calendars the committee is made up of Administrators faculty staff along with representation from District 65 ensuring a broad range of perspectives and aligning the calendar with the best interests of the School community so a little
003background on the calendar so all public school districts must develop a public school calendar with at least 185 days including a minimum of 176 student attendance days and eths is uh plans its school calendar two years in advance to support students staff and families and throughout each school year the calendar committee finalizes the calendar for the next school year which would be 2526 and the following year calendar which would be 2026 and 202 7 so the draft in front of you provides families with early notice of key dates and may be revised as needed so as always this is probably the most important part what the committee prioritizes number one starting as late in August as possible ending semester one before winter break balancing instructional days between semesters and aligning with District 65 as much
004as possible including breaks so aligning with District 65 helps families reduce stress um you know reduces Child Care conflicts and supports collaboration all right so a c a few key highlights of the calendars the 25 26 Calendar in front of you remains unchanged from the version that you approved last year so as for the 2026 27 calendar the proposed start date August 17th is later than in recent years and better aligned with District 65 this also ensures adequate time for summer programming and facility maintenance a staff Institute day has been added at the start of semester 2 for the 2627 calendar giving teachers and staff dedicated time to prepare review materials plan for the second half of the year and basically take a deep breath before the second semester begins so this helps ensure a
005smooth transition for students and for staff so those are the major items that I want to highlight and so I now open up for any questions you may have all right thank you Bo any questions Leah um really just a comment I like uh the things that you you held up that um you've made as priorities with the calendar but I thought that um I particularly just wanted to say that um the idea of having a day after winter break for the the staff the teachers um it seems like a really um it's very positive I mean we want to have our students have a real Break um and this also enables our our teachers our staff to have a real break yeah thank you yeah other questions Monique M and you did say that
006um the committee is District 65 and 202 correct is that correct yeah uh Melissa Messinger from District 65 is a part of our committee okay and we also work with her uh for their calendar committee as well all right okay that's good that's important yeah okay all right so there no questions so thank you so much for coming great thank you so much that with us okay our next item is international travel for 226 Dr Kiana Brown tonight is Kiana's night here at the you want good evening good evening so again I am here to propose international travel for July 1st 2025 to June 30 2026 for approval there's five total trips one to Namibia Africa one to Japan one to Germany one to France and then one to China and Shanghai um uh fundraising
007considerations um were donations t-shirt sales a variety of restaurant uh fundraisers where they receive re a percentage of the sales cultural performances and profits from those as well as grants in order to supplant the the needs of students who are not able to pay for travel and any questions questions board Pat I don't have a question but that is amaz when I read that we were taking kids to Africa I literally I was I got chills I mean that's amazing like I went to school a thousand years ago but we didn't go anywhere we were lucky to get a bus to go three hours so you know we didn't go to really and I just applaud you for doing all this work to give these opportunities to kids and do it in such an equitable
008way so that I I I can't I think it was the Africa trip that if you don't have the money the whole trip gets cancelled so it's not like just some get to go I think that's so important so just thank you for your amazing work that's awesome I just wanted to also say that I was like super excited reading this memo um and I think it's great that um that our students are having this opportunity and that we're enough postco where these trips are happening again um and I think they're so valuable um and like Pat said um it's really good to see the thought and making sure that the part participation and the financing of it are equitable yeah I too was excited to see um the fundraising efforts and and how uh
009you just make sure the department makees sure that everybody who wants to go is able to go yeah so um so that's really good and I do remember the days during Co when we were unable to do this and how hard it was and complicated so it's really refreshing yeah that now we can just do it thank you I do want to just highlight for the board that there could be one more trip to China that we bring uh to you in April uh through the travel club which you know we didn't we're working with our partners in China and waiting for them to get us some information but that could be forthcoming good right okay well thank you Dr Brown you're welcome thank you I'll just stay here because you can just stay here
010all right so we're at the literacy and numeracy report and we will be joined by Dr bavis Dr bavis and Jake Mills Jake Mills and for the board that doesn't know Jake Mills he's serving as our interim math department chair uh for the school year welcome welcome we'll get started in just a second I'm getting okay that one all right going ready to roll all right and away we go so welcome to the literacy and numeracy update uh this is an annual update to the board last year was the first year we included uh numeracy and we felt it went so well we're going to include it every year uh first off this is uh all about District goal one Equitable and excellent education and I've added that literacy and new Missy are Central to
011providing our students with an equitable and excellent education it really is at the Forefront of our Equity work and that's why it's an italics up there uh tonight we'll talk about uh how we're doing we'll look at several assessments uh as measures we look at star reading PSAT 89 psat1 and sat um those three assessments the PSAT sat Suite of assessments are sunsetting uh and next year we'll start to rebuild our data set using uh the uh act Suite of Assessments which we will start giving next month all right so this graph is um is a picture of our grade nine star reading proficiency for our incoming freshman um so at the beginning of this year as every year we give the universal star screener to all of our students grades 9 through 12 but
012we wanted to highlight the one thing that we noted for this year with our incoming freshman group was that they overall were performing higher than they had in the last 3 years so that was actually a good thing to note um but in particular our Brown students had increased by about 10% Inc coming in our black students about 5% so it was great to see that increase in their instructional reading level um which is pretty much their instructional level where they may need a little bit of guidance but their um they're doing pretty well in regards to vocabulary and comprehension so with a little support they are accessing text and material um so it was great to see that increase coming in and then our literacy lab we continue to offer support in our literacy
013lab and we increase um each year as of right now 24 25 school year we have about 64 students but we anticipate roughly about 5 to seven more if we're looking that Trend um before for the end of this year so we're definitely seeing growth in numbers in our literacy lab and being able to offer that support um one thing I would love to highlight is student quotes um which is one student and this was kind of something that we saw in multiple um multiple areas of feedback from students who said that the lit lab helped them actually like reading now it also helps them to support them in areas that they are weak in um and that's the premise of the work in the lit lab and so it's great to see that students
014are actually feeling support um and are growing in areas that they feel like they are not as strong in and then just a little information about the lab is again it's referral based so anybody in the building can refer a student to the lit lab if they are noticing that they are in need of any additional support in literacy and we've also added a numeracy component in the lit lab for this year and we're adding more support in numeracy for next year and so it's important to also note that when we talk about numeracy is also a formal literacy so students have to have um literacy and Mathematics in order to be successful it's not just about reading a book it's also about being able to answer math problems and to determine what what math
015really means um that's also a form of literacy and so we do this by collecting different types of diagnostic assessment data Running Records through the lessons that they're um received in the lit lab and also evaluations of their current skills and Reading Writing comprehension and vocabulary and math skills and then summer lift the great summer lift um this summer this last summer 23 24 school year we had about 28 students um we did not really we did not have the donations from our donor he was not able to supply that anymore and so we got some funds from District 65 who are not able to give us any funds for next summer so we're we're not offering summer lift for this upcoming summer because we don't have the funds to support it but um we
016were able to run it last year and so we were really grateful to have the 28 students that we had there um because that's the funding that we were allowed so when you see that the numbers are have decreased it's not because we didn't have the students who needed to be in there we just didn't have the funding to support all the students who needed to have the support um and then their overall growth was about one year there was one particular student who read about 16 books and it's a 15-day program so this student was just adamant about reading and really grew the love reading over this over the course of the summer um and really like developed their interest in the specific genres um where they learned what their favorite genre was during
017the the the time they were in this course so that was really awesome to to know but again um about oneyear growth um from the students during the course of last summer and then the awesome fantastic work of our school wide reading specialist Miss Bramley um we have several community events the eTown Community literacy Fest that's typically held in September outside on the courtyards um Family literacy night that's in April so that's coming up if you're available come through and then eths Black History Month popups they offer two of those where in all these events we offer free books and these books are typically donated by various organizations that um Liz Bramley solistes free books from and they give us lots of them so that's awesome um and then internal events Liz Bramley does an
018a lit monthly e newsletter that offers literacy um instructional practices that teachers can use it offers different books that they can use and then some examples of lessons that they can do with these the eths all staff book swaps we offer right before um winter break as well as again at the end of the year and this is where all staff in the building from custodians to the superintendent can come and bring a book and pick up a book and if they don't have a book to bring they can come and get one for free um so that's for staff just to encourage the love of literacy and to demonstrate to all of our students that literacy is important No Matter What area in life you are from students to superintendent um literacy crash course
019that's something that we're starting to offer um because there is a gap for our staff who want to be able to support students in literacy but don't necessarily know how and can't afford or don't have the time to take courses in in official college so we're offering a literacy literacy crash course that'll be offered on Wednesdays um for eight weeks so we're doing 8 weeks 8 week increments of this twice a year um to support teachers in developing their literacy toolbox I guess you can say um and foundational knowledge so that they can support our students to help them become stronger in classes and then Chicago area literacy leaders we held we actually hosted that this year it was really great we had about 55 participants from surrounding um Chicago area schools um where our
020own Jana mcelin Tony keynoted for us and then we offer workshops and Literacy for those teachers and then the Freshman book is the thing that we offer every year for all of our incoming freshman they all read one book um and then there's a lesson that's devised for them to to work through just to support them in discuss in the book um some future plans is a literacy event student planning committee Liz Bramley is working to form this committee with students and also expanding Community collaborations as well as doing more promotion to do more with the freshman look all right so we have numeracy uh you'll see our district definition for numeracy up there the ability to understand reason with and apply simple numerical Concepts numeracy means being able to understand how math is used
021in the real world and being able to apply it to decisionmaking and numeracy skills are the vocabulary and tools of mathematics communicating mathematics quantitative and abstract reasoning structure justification patterns recognition fundamental arithmetic questions number sense operation sense computation measurement geometry probability data and statistics it's significant that we we we name these and that we are very um intentional about how we build numeracy through the acquisition of the numeracy skills and you're going to see uh in the in the highlights from the report tonight uh both the success and the challenges we've had in that area uh first off you see numeracy growth on the PSAT uh to psat1 so PSAT 89 is given uh in the spring of 9th grade and then PSA 10 is given the following spring so this is cohorted data uh
022you'll see that your expected growth is 12 points between those two assessments and you'll see that every student group that we were able to collect data on that had more than 20 students showed growth uh and the percentage growth is uh on the right that percentage growth calc calculation and you'll see that we had a 6.5% increase in Hispanic Latino mathematics achievement as measured by the PSAT 89 to the psat1 in math so we're talking about numeracy skills when we talk about standardized assessment so it's just one way to look at it but overall uh the story of students continue to grow uh here we see what is considered this is from the College Board this is uh this is the growth area this is where you grow this shows you uh how we're doing
023growth-wise we're in the the green which means our students grow and you'll notice that our students grow the most between 10th and 11th grade uh between spring of 10th grade and spring of 11th grade uh they grow the most U last year uh this includes the students who actually took AP pre-calculus uh so we think that may have had some effect there uh in terms of that growth there was more growth that year than in previous years it's a hypothesis we can't really prove it yet but we'll look into it but it's definitely a a positive uh um development now we see new Mercy attainment by sat Benchmark and what we did in blue we have the 2023 cohort uh and in red the 2024 so that spring uh this are students who took the
024SAT and the spring in 2023 uh compared to students who took the SAT uh in 2024 and you'll see that overall we grew uh almost half of our students meant The Benchmark uh we see that Asian students marginally decreased from 71 to 70% black students increased from 133% to 17% meeting The Benchmark Hispanic students went from 19% to 28% on the chart that's that's pretty significant jump actually uh so that's worthy of study and and really to think about what what did we do uh and we have done some very targeted things uh our ganos program is one of the things that we've done uh so that's that's a part of that data uh students who took that two or more uh students two or more races this is is a very fluid and dynamic
025group dep self-reported on the SAT uh so you see one from 63 to 60 uh and you'll see that white students increase from 67% meaning The Benchmark to 71% there is lots of work to be done here um and but there it is trending overall in a positive direction for our student groups uh and next is I'm going to turn it over to Jake Mills um this section of the presentation is called meeting the demand increased pre-algebra and algebra enrollment and I want to preface this by saying there was a time when we had four teachers teaching algebra and pre-algebra and they could literally go across the hall and collaborate or they could collaborate over lunch and now we are at 14 teachers a third of our math department teaching algebra and pre-algebra and that
026has ramifications I'm going to turn it over to Jake uh he's our interim math department chair and previously an algebra 1 teacher as well as a Stats teacher and everything in between so Jake it's your show thank you Pete um just a couple things to highlight here um as a former Algebra 1 teacher and now the the interim math department chair um we had a dedicated numeracy interventionist this year um at a point2 release who focused on our Algebra 1 students and our pre-algebra students in the literacy lab um we saw a lot of success um from the students that were working with that interventionist um the number of failing grades decreased in both pre-algebra and Algebra 1 um the algebra 1 class is team taught by two Math teachers um in all our sections
027um but we still see that we need to focus on numeracy foundational algebra um and arithmetic operations um so I've assembled a working group of instructional coaches and Algebra 1 teachers geometry teachers and pre-algebra teachers um and we'll be doing an audit of some of our classrooms in Algebra 1 and pre-algebra um through student surveys collaboration with the instructional coaches teacher surveys department chair observations um we hope to you know have consistency across the curriculum one thing that Dr bavis mentioned is we used to have three or four teachers that taught pre-algebra or Algebra 1 now it's a team of nearly a third of the department so finding dedicated time for these teachers to collaborate can be difficult um and so one of the things that I've tried to focus on is giving them that
028time and figuring out what we need to focus on First and so I'm hoping that the audit will give us a clearer picture into the challenges that we face in the department um another thing I want to mention Pete mentioned our uh AP Pre-K um class um I think the the story is students are growing here at eths um we have a lot of students that are starting in Algebra 1 but uh we had the largest AP pre-cal enrollment in the world um and 70% of our students passed that exam got a three or higher so it just shows um how hard the the members of the math department are working from where students come in and then where they finish in AP pre-calculus or above turn it back over to Dr bavis all right
029uh so we see a variety of num Mery interventions and supports uh that that that Jake has has mentioned um we see small class sizes we see uh multiple teachers we've grown that pride ourselves on individual instruction curricular alignment to standards uh I want to talk about our broadened articulation with District 65 briefly um Jake has the unique position of both being a participating in articulation work with District 65 as an algebra one teacher but also in the role of being the interim math department chair of actually going in uh in that role and continuing to work with uh District 65 teachers and one of the things that's significant is that um District 65 is going to a full uh standards based assessment for math uh next year for algebra uh and Jake um has
030some uh what has come out of that in terms of your uh articulation work uh the last two years when I worked with them as a teacher an algebra one teacher um we focus on writing the assessments so what are the the learning targets that we want to see in an algebra one student coming out of 8th grade um and so we identified the learning standards critical for Algebra 1 and then wrote the assessments um most recently I went down there about a month ago um we looked at what does it mean to meet expectations on these assessments and so I think it was helpful to have someone from eths meeting with the Middle School teachers and also U Middle School administrators to determine what the bar is for meeting expectations and what we want
031to see out of our students when they get here to eths um so we've had some great discussions um back and forth about spiraling content um as as we've returned to semester exams we want to make sure that students are ready for those when they get to the high school as well um so a lot us come out of those conversations and um we'll continue to articulate with them going forward thank you Jake uh we also have a MTH Department support Duty uh this year our Focus was on one algebra and next year uh we're looking to expand that and continue that Focus uh on one algebra uh beyond the traditional numeracy pathway uh Jake uh has has done a lot of work this year with uh data science Early College AP compi transdisciplinary courses
032is there anything you'd like to add I'll just touch on our data science class um we currently have three uh sections of data science uh next year we'll have six sections of data science um recently uh about two weeks ago myself and the data science team presented at a conference in San Antonio Texas um on the development of our course what we do um and sharing out some student experiences and project that the students have done there with researchers and professors from around the country around the world actually um connected with some people in New Zealand while we were there um and they um were really intrigued by our work um so the data science team is doing great things the enrollment in that class is really exploded along with AP Statistics um and so
033more and more students interested in math um at a college level Jake is being very humble one of the things that came out of the data science um I'm I'm going to brag for you and your data science team uh you this is a national conference on data science in high school right and uh some of the The Architects of data science at the University level folks who are really involved in this and involved in the pedagogy were very impressed at the eths team that presented on using local data uh s locally sourced data in Evanston uh as part of their data science course as part of the experience that our students have and that's an extraordinarily unique experience uh and very and it was so unique in fact that the folks who were in
034the room the academics in the room the folks in in higher ed were very intrigued and asked a series of questions about wow how do you do that that's pretty amazing but that's really what Evanston math should really be about right locally sourced use of of mathematics and that's where we get to that definition of numerous that I started with so it comes so it really does inform the work and it really is uh unique and and there's a reason why that's grown uh over over the years and is doubling uh for next school year uh so now it's up to uh questions we at the question portion thank you uh board questions question um excuse me we go back to the literacy piece um there's a I'm I'm scrolling scrolling in the lift section
035which I know we're not doing anymore because there's no money out of 65 which so it was sort of sad to even see had included I feel like but um what's interesting in the slide show is that the there are two slides related to lift maybe you could I'll pull them up pull those up first one shows the population served I think it's called population and then the second one says average growth uh very helpful slide um but since we don't have lift anymore let's now scroll back to LIT lab enrollment see how we have this slide that shows numbers of people this pet peeve of mine where we talk about things we're doing but we don't show what it's achieving I'm glad we're doing it literacy lab sounds great love the testimonials all excellent
036but we need the slide like the second slide in the lift presentation that shows out of the out of the 56 one year 62 one year and 64 which one of those started here and went to there as a result of or potentially as a result I'm not sure if we can show the actual connection right but I I I just feel like that's the missing piece with this kind of reporting out where we're just we're talking about so often we're talking about all these really really good programs no question all sound really exciting and interesting but I just I want to know what what it's producing I mean I know our students are human so I don't want to make it sound like we're just you're looking at you know in that way yeah
037and a lot of the goal for summer lift was to support initially it was to support our students and as we expanded to District 65 we noticed that majority of the students enrolled in summer lft were d65 students so we we're talking about kids grades two through pretty much five um so we haven't seen the impact because they're not here yet um but that was the hope um if we were to continue summer was to see that impact when they came and not to you know put anybody out of a job but to see the numbers in the lit lab decrease because we wanted to be able to service them when they were younger so that the impact would be shown when they got to the high school um but unfortunately no money not Ina
038that's helpful to me because I didn't understand that before you explain that other questions Pat thank you um so I was also really interested in summer lift because long ago I did a lot of work on bridge programs and from the data that I saw back then it was a very successful way to get kids ready and that their second to fifth grade I didn't even that didn't beam in to me so that's even more amazing so two questions one I this might be hard to answer so if you can don't even want to try I understand but what is kind of the universe of kids that would be eligible or good fit for the lift program so we were looking for students who were anywhere between two and two and more grades behind grade
039levels behind in reading so if they demonstrated on the ma map test that they were at least two or more grade levels behind then those were students that we considered to be prime candidates because even with a little bit of intensive instruction you can still see growth and that's why if you remember maybe three years back we were seeing two three plus years of growth because we were really focused on those students who had two or more years of of grade deficiencies in Reading um as we started to kind of Advance postco we were getting more of the students who were between 2 to three years so there wasn't as much growth and then there was a high number of absences because there were still Co related illnesses so students were missing a lot of
040days um in those last couple of years so the growth decline but we also saw that the students who were coming were not as in much as much need as we saw in the beginning of the program okay so in theory if the program were to continue if you're working with students as young as second grade in theory they could come every summer until they came to eths I mean they could a lot but yeah we had a lot of repeat um students and also the great thing about um what we were doing too is we collaborate with Neu and so I also signed up to um do our Clinic practicum so students and or teachers at eths who were part of the Neu program as well as in the surrounding area like d65 teachers
041were part of this program and when they did their Clinic practicum here in the fall um with me as their instructor we would use these 65 and eths students in the program so they could not only get support in the summer but they could also continue in the fall to get the support and so we saw students who were Contin to come into the program um and that has also declined so we won't have that next fall we had it this last fall but we won't have it next fall um so that's just the unfortunate you know part of it but a lot of those students who were um growing incrementally were students who were part of the program both in the summer and then coming back in the fall so they had lots of
042opportunity to get additional support so we need to find someone to get you some money I mean this real in all serious bu this sounds like a really amazing opportunity and you know people raise concerns about our relationship and are we supporting 65 and supporting each other this is like a crown jewel example so okay we need more money no I agre no I know you do I know you do I know and it can all come from our operating budget I understand but yeah that seems like a program worth raising money for maybe being creative to try to figure out how we can um how we can do this because um we do want to support students from District 65 who are struggling because they're all our students students they eventually come here and
043they're all our our kids yep yeah that's right yeah I mean I I agree with you I I hope subday we don't need a lit lab um but we have needed a lit lab I'm glad we have M we have the resources I've been there it's really a great space um so if there's something that we can do to help these students before they come that would be great yes Leah great well thank you for your awesome work thank you let's get you some money yes um I had two comments and one is actually related to what Pat just said which is I've been really pleased to see that when we listen today to the collaboration between math for math between District 65 and our district and we've also recently had presentations about what's happening
044with the um uh dual language program and multi-lingual services and I just wanted to lift that up because I mean that seems like a direction we want to continue to go and those things are both um very very positive um and good to see um and the other thing I wanted to note was that um I think it's really interesting um and great that the numeracy interventionist is in the literacy lab because it seems to demonstrate that numeracy is a type of literacy and I noticed that you made a comment about making sure that literacy instruction is integrated into the math curriculum and I think that's always sometimes been sort of forgotten about in general not here I mean just in in the world um so that seem was like pretty forward thinking and I
045just wanted to lift that up as well yeah I just wanted that was very intentional I thought that it was critical because I always want to enforce the fact that everybody's a reading teacher and reading does not always mean books it it literacy happens in many forms in the Arts and math and the Sciences it's everywhere it's in everything that we do and so that placement with the the math interventionist in the lit lab was very intentional so thank you for that comment Liz yeah I just I also wanted to just comment on summer lift my kids participated in it um a few years ago two or three maybe and uh they thought it was really cool you know they're very um food motivated there's snacks at summerl um being in the high school very
046exciting like they were just so much more responsive to it than when they had had um interventions at their their home Elementary School um and they both came out of it you know reading really well so I just wanted to say I also love summer lift um but I have a numeracy question um it's kind of the dreaded question but I'm thinking about um we're about five years out from the beginning of the pandemic now and I know it was around then that um disor 65 changed their math um approach so how are things looking um as compared to before the pandemic well if you go back really before the pandemic we had four algebra we had four algebra teachers now we have 14 what we really have is we've seen a greater need we
047were just talking about this actually Jake and I um and we talk about this a lot actually because we're seeing more students in Al placing into algebra and geometry I mean algebra and pre-algebra right after they've taken um ostensibly taken uh algebra in 8th grade um we're really looking at what are the on what are the numeracy skills that students are struggling with it's not necessarily algebraic skills it's it's very foundational math which we can see if we look at the pandemic that shifted the years that were remote As students come in have shifted so it means one thing if during the pandemic you missed 8th grade or you missed seventh grade math it's another thing to say you missed third grade and fourth grade where a lot of the numeracy skills uh are established
048and built upon so we're seeing one of the things we could hypothesize is that we're seeing more students in placing into algebra and pre-algebra because of that uh and because the need to to work with students and meet students where they are and and often times we find that it is with number sense and operation sense and computation is there anything you'd like to add Jake no it's a great question um when I was in the classroom we'd always you know back so if they were know if Co was 4 years ago what was covered in that grade and then if they didn't get caught up on it what do we need to catch up on when they get to high school and so as Math teachers we were just you know informally doing that
049that work to go back and figure out what grade they missed um I think the further we get away from covid it's second or third grade skills um but we're still seeing number sense um difficulties for some of those students that are taking pre-algebra and outra one yeah that sounds great I mean that sounds exactly right like what you would need to do as far as backtracking where did they miss this foundational math you know so I it's good we're keeping track of that and it sounds great thanks it's still a challenge though because you've got like what' you say four you said 14 teachers is that 14 sections go ahead Jake uh we have 14 teachers that teach pre-algebra or Algebra 1 and then they're team teaching right yeah so I it's 14 sections
050of algebra one um and then uh six sections of prealgebra this year okay um so some teachers teach pre-algebra and Algebra 1 so um yeah about a third of the department is teaching one of the two or both currently right now that's a lot that's a lot of uh catchup because many of these kids had algebra right as eighth in eighth grade yeah absolutely and I think the one thing that's that's come out of it though is it's been a team effort so since we've had to bring more people onto the team this has been a conversation among the lunch table um in the math department you know how do we get these students caught up from where they were um and we're talking a lot more about Algebra 1 and pre-algebra at the lunch
051table rather than geometry like we used to in the past so trying to spread the work among a lot more people on the team um in the math department and that means we have to be more uh when it was for folks again it was more informal but you know one of the things is that uh Jake uh doing this in response to when the when the algebra teachers came forward and said hey we need to get on the same page we're we're seeing this in a larger scale uh that Jake has has has created then developed this working group in collaboration with his teachers and again that that's like class audits that means classroom observations seeing what's going not evaluating the teacher but evaluating the mathematical experience right looking specifically for literacy integration and
052then working with teachers to make sure that our curriculum our algebra curriculum is responsive uh to the students in front and they have a common um not not a not a lock step curriculum but there there are guaranteed experiences within that curriculum and standards that everyone uh collaborates and we work towards with our kids and we also want to make them a space of Joy I mean it's difficult when kids have to repeat a grade their first year yeah and they have to repeat a class their first year so we're very conscious we're having a conversation about that too and that's why we have things like algebra and Entrepreneurship uh and algebra en coding and just looking for opportunities to make that experience new and fresh and be able to celebrate the learning that's occurring
053and really as Jake was saying earlier really having that um to to bring kids in you need to celebrate where they are in their small successes to build that mathematical um confidence that is eroded over over 15 over I don't know how many years is that but you get to high school like eight years nine years right where you've been told essentially a lot of kids internalize this right they internalize I I'm no good at math I'm not a math student and if you think about what we want our math students to be we want them to have this numeracy right the ability to understand reason and apply simple numerical Concepts being able to understand how math is used we want them to be citizens of of the world that are fluent uh in those
054things so that they can take things like data science and that you know in the world that they're going to encounter um really requires that they be they have a level of fluency with uh with numeracy and numeracy skills so really finding joy in those spaces is important too very much so other questions something that we want to keep track of for sure so thank you much for coming and sharing thank you thank you than you all right got any information for us you got any information for us yes I do um right now the game is tied 1515 okay eths was down um 115 and now the game is tied at 5 game is TI okay um we're going to do our data quarterly update yes and we're going to have Dr L Dro
055uh Dr Carri Levy and Amy ver to come with our quarterly update everybody else is at the game so don't rub it in hi good evening good evening okay I we'll make it quick because I know we want to see how the game's going okay I'm just going to drive um I've been here a couple times to show the dashboard to you so now we have third quarter data up so I'm just going to go through explain it and um just elaborate on a couple of areas so um this is straight from our website uh you can find it from my research go down to data dashboard and then this is what you see so we've got this um homepage for this year with our first quarter second quarter third quarter um you can click
056on academic support tab this is third quarter data Kiana just talked about like the 64 and the lit lab attendance so this is third quarter participation with the academic studies Center Homework Center lit lab wild kit Academy um and then as you go down you can see we broke out the academic study centers by um student demographic and grade um we break out the homework Center the Same by uh student demographics in grade and then wild Kid Academy lit lab is two small to disaggregate in this way so that's sorry to me go so fast that's academic supports um and you can go for the drop down to the top so if I go to attendance and I can drop down to Third repor so attendance and discipline we're reporting cumulative so a note about
057attendance um for chronic absentee at the end of the year the state consider students with 18 absences excused and unexcused as chronically absent and the state considers students with nine or more unexcused absence as chronic truant and so as we've been doing collecting this data and reporting it to you through this dashboard cumulative we're also been thinking about those like kind of inflection points of where we really think students are um kind of at risk of being chronically absent or you know chronically Trin and so here we are through the third quarter I'm just going to back this up for a quick minute um before I go ahead so when we did the second quarter which was the end of the first semester we had a halfway point so we said nine or more absences
058excus unexcused that's halfway through for chronic absentee and we said four absences for unexcused and so we're trying to kind of think about that as we go through and reflect on quarters so that's where we came up with 14 more so next quarter it's four more absences are unexcused to be considered chronically absent and next quarter students was seven or more just two more unexcused absences will have them considered as chronic tant so kind of where we've where we've why I have these points um if you're just to explain how I kind of came about deciding on my team whether whether it's 14 or 13 or seven or six like this seemed to be um kind of a fair report and and um comparable to what we did first quarter also okay so that was
059that um but you can see uh so 85% of our students have less than 14 so 15 % of our students um with 14 or more absences and 6% of students with seven or more unexcused so that is tracking lower than what we ended last year so and this is consistent with last semester so hopefully he'll just kind of keep tracking lower than last semester which is um good I mean last year which is good um and so that 15% of students with 14 or more absences excuse and unexcused is 511 students and so this breaks down those 511 students by demographic the um portion of them they have an IEP that are free reduced lunch and the portion that are emerg at multilinguals it also breaks it down by grade and then similar for
060the students the 6% of students who have seven or more unexcused that's 200 21 students so seeing break down by demographics and by grade okay so that's all I wanted to say about the attendance um discipline is also cumulative um so at this point at the near the end of the third quarter 659 students 19% had one or more discipline incidents and then those are broken down of those 659 students disaggregated by student demographic and grade and then um I also uh we talked about this in the beginning of the year and so we've been breaking out a little more of all of those students all of the actions it's multiple actions and how all of the actions for these discipline incidents break down so for example over half 57% are conferences it's a conference
061with a Dean or a student whatnot uh 4% are insight suspend ension 2% are outside we have 3% of our alternative to suspensions 5% are restorative practices so that's how this is and then we have detention social probation uh restricted lunch and study and then just a small portion of other actions okay and then the last section of the dashboard is uh student services um so third quarter my colleagues here um so and this is just third quarter data so this is not cumulative so this third quarter is the number of universal referrals 302 students who had Universal referal referrals and then we're uh reporting on the number of socialwork referrals the number of AIT referrals and the number of 504 plan referrals and then looking at students with an IEP of those students with
062an IEP the portion that have um problem solving at risk factors so the definition it's in small writing I'll read it as IEP problem solving and intervention refers to IEP teams actively problem solving and developing interventions in alignment with the students IEP to address academic academic performance behavioral and well-being needs and so um that's our uh what we've been um measuring um in that area this year okay so that was just a quick drive for what the update dates are for the third quarter so if anyone has any questions questions board gchen um I know we've talked about this before because you've been we're now starting to get these updates more regularly at least I think we've talked about it before um when we see the absences um this is so great to see all
063this visual I really app appreciate the depiction and how we can access the data and look at it in different ways but my question is what does it mean for what we're doing with the data so when we see these number of students um particularly maybe the ones who have seven or more but they're not yet at 14 or maybe they're approaching seven who who says okay let's find those kids um who who are they who's talking to them to figure out why they're not showing up I'll take that thank you excuse me so uh we do run a regular attendance report and um often times those students are referred to our SST through are great level teams and we also once we have that report we disaggregate it out there often times we will
064refer them depending on the percentages we'll refer them to the support student support advocates that um we work with with North cook who are house in our building as well um we have if they're severely Trent we refer them to Brent Nance who is the trcy officer and he will then have those meetings where he meets with I just actually had a meeting with him and a teacher and he he'll get a team together and we'll meet with the parent often times the student will be present it just depends and we talk about problem solving things and of that nature and how we can support the student that's also where you'll see Universal referrals because then we may say well they may need a social work referral and there are different mitigating factors that we
065look at and we look at it holistically there are some students that have attendance that may not have been reported so they may not their parent may not have called it in it and they may have actually been sick so you have students that fall into those guidelines but we do we have attendance groups and um social skills groups and things like that and so we take that data annually too and that's kind of how we build out some of our support groups that our social workers and mental health professionals um will develop groups around that to try our best to attack whatever we can um using different tiered interventions you're welcome anyone else so so I I like the way you're saying that you use this data to determine next steps for um for
066students and the staff is using this um do they do they use it from the dashboard or are they getting it in other ways so we always have um Mid she always runs we we put in an attendance report request so that we can then have and we bring break it down by grade level um how many absences inc's things like that so it's a large report that is then disaggregated out and and we attack it from that lens so it's not just the dashboard the dashboard is where some of that information is house but we use a bigger report internally you're getting data more timely and more regular reporting at the end of a quarter super great okay well I really appreciate also seeing this and and I I really like the way um
067we can see it visually and click on it or or hover over and um just get more information and get it all highlighted for us so I think it's extremely helpful thanks and you know I mean this is our first year doing it so as we go through and then at the end of the summer when the state gives us the data and we can reconcile and see like how close especially with for example these this attendance are like tracking metrics are to how it ends up we'll be able I may keep it the same next year or I may make modifications dep depends on what we learned at the end of the year from the state data yeah so great right thank you yep okay okay Dr bavis is going up so we're going
068to do our textbook adoption deletion proposals and the kits are up 25 22 at the half all right at the half already half already I know just it's so quick no timeouts yeah they're moving it along they'll be over we're in the lead and it's halftime it's halftime so it's time for textbook adoption yeah let's see if we can finish this meeting before the basketball game halftime show um welcome to textbook adoption for 2526 uh the first thing you'll notice is that here's our Trend uh we're down to $ 49,27793 ,000 is is no small number but it definitely isn't a 100 yeah uh I I'll go over what those are in a second but first thank you to the teachers who who who you know suggest books Department chairs who shepher them through uh
069Angela Malone and the book distribution center team uh they do a phenomenal job uh securing quotes ordering books uh filling book orders they work with a variety of folks they do a heck of a heck of a great job uh Liz Johnson uh my secretary uh does a Phenom Al job every year in helping to quarterback all of the all the textbook adoption and and and all that work uh and finally curriculum Forum members uh who really get the the sneak peek on this they get they get to see the presentations by the department chairs and kind of talking through what each book uh the importance of each book and really why we why we should be adopting them um I will go briefly now to the grid itself uh you'll see here's the grid
070itself we make that a little bigger for everybody uh you'll see that there's a lot of world it's all World Language and multilingual service textbooks uh you'll see there's a Latin book uh a German book uh and then there's some Spanish books uh you'll see that there's a dual credit Spanish book which is 100 Years of Solitude uh that's what they're going to do with our dual credit course with Lake Forest uh and then you'll see the multilingual Services is this digital print uh English 3D levels 1 through 4 which also acts as a supplemental uh for different content areas so one of the science te teachers who was in curriculum firm was really excited and she was like man that's great I can you know use that resource and that's the purpose right the
071purpose is not only to have it there for the students uh but also to have it as a resource for our for our teachers so we thought that was really great questions about textbook adoption that's great very clear okay uh it's an information item tonight and uh the next board meeting will be an action item okay thank you you all right okay I'll let Dr bavis get back to his chair and we are at foas all right we have foas we have we have three foas one from kwani one from Gormley and one from kulsa and the responses are in your packets okay fabulous thank you you all right we are at board committee reports do we have any reports and oah and I went to um a meeting I don't know if you want
072to say anything about that I'll say something really briefly so we um Pat and I went to the Illinois Association of school boards North cook division meeting and the presentation was about AI um and uh the person was able to really familiarize ourselves our us excuse me with um many of the things that really at this point AI can do and how that might relate to schools um and was good at saying you know what we need to be careful of and how this is an opportunity and I'll just share that um obviously we have to always be careful about appropriate use um really uh the importance of teaching AI literacy it's here students are going to use it it's part of all of our Lives now and then making sure that Educators have support
073um in using a AI lit AI in the classroom um and just reminding the opportunities involved in that um it can lead to efficiency in the um uh learning process and was very interesting showed us ways that um AI can really create some personalized learning opportunities that can really help students um in terms of supporting them when they need extra uh help in a particular subject great it was a very good I think presentation and um and I think we're supposed to get the slides although I haven't seen them yet so I'll write Arana and ask her uh for them but once we get them we'll be happy to share them because I think you'll enjoy going through them any other board committee reports no the discipline committee was cancelled so okay no it was
074a um couple weeks ago yeah okay okay we're at the student board report okay hi everyone um I have kind of a short report today but basically after the solidarity space that we held in February um a few staff me members and I plan to meet tomorrow to discuss implementing student suggestions into their High School experience um we're working on increasing promotion on eths resources as well um and other events that support student well-being and Community Connection at eths and that'll all be discussed tomorrow hopefully um to achieve this we plan to create short segments on the Tuesday tidbits reaching the entire um School community and we hope to involve clubs interested in work interested in or working on these events to help create uh these different types of like media content um and then
075the Student Union is progressing with their committees with most groups sending emails and developing Google forms already the IEP and 504 plan committee um along with the lunch line efficiency group it are awaiting responses now um and then a lot of good work has been done and I'll continue to provide updates as we receive responses from the leadership team and um after our meeting tomorrow so that's all for me yeah thank you thank you thank you so much okay Dr Campbell hey thanks man I love that we have a lunch line efficiency CW I love it I love that we have a lunch line efficiency [Laughter] group it takes kids like 20 minutes to get into the lunch line and there's so many choices in there you know people can't make up their mind what
076they want no like getting inside the thing it's like with the scanning the scanning yeah we're trying to figure out a way to do that but like cost effectively thank you uh yes so there's this is student Summit season and we're in the middle of our uh that that season for our students and it's a very exhilarating time for our students and staff just want to highlight a couple of things for the board community in February we celebrated 10 years of our black student Summit so for a decade this Summit has been the space for students to come and connect connect and embrace black history Heritage identity this SM Stone year uh we honored black staff who and students who paved the way for a legacy of growth learning and Community um you all may
077remember some board members MD Shelton and some others MD was a student board rep who was the first student keynote speaker we had at the black student summmer back in the day so and he's doing well living in California being an adult graduating from more house a couple years ago um we welcome eths Alam Nan Jones class of 2016 and Kayla Henning class of 2020 as our keynot speakers for this year and they just knocked it out of the park I mean just knocked it out of the park I was so happy uh for naquan and Kayla who were very nervous to get up there and to Kino and they did a remarkable job um also last month we hel held our Middle Eastern North African uh Asian Summit this year theme was in The
078Garden of Life we Bloom together and the summit was filled with powerful discussions interactive workshops a fashion show which was amazing and multiple celebrations to grow learn and uplift one another later this week believe Thursday we have our lgbtqia Plus student Summit and in April we will have our ability Summit and the latinx student Summit a couple of calendar items uh there are important dates that I like to bring your attention to spring break is just around the corner exactly two weeks um so school will resume Monday March 31st and finally wow for eths the annual fundraiser benefiting eths Foundation takes place this Friday March 14th uh be sure to head to there or maybe if we're down state head in there too so we will see as I keep checking the score uh so
079that's my report and what is the score still halftime I haven't gotten I haven't gotten an update yet oh yeah that would have been a technical you so we've got our fingers crossed Go kids tonight thanks John yes definitely okay so we're at action items the first item is approval of the 2526 school calendar can I have a so Mo second V call yes calendar oh did you call me yes yes you're holding it up you're holding it up yes yes yes yes okay the next item is approval of international travel for 2526 so moved second roll call yes yes yes yes yes yes yes next item is approval of days of remembrance of victims for um of the Holocaust and uh Leah's going to read that for us okay whereas from 1933 to 1945
0806 million Jews and 5 million clerics Communists dissidents Roma gays and lesbians dis disabled people poles serbs and Jehovah Witnesses were murdered in the Holocaust as part of the systematic program of genocide whereas the students and staff of Evanston Township High School should always remember the atrocities committed by the Nazis so that such Horrors are never repeated whereas the eths community should continually dedicate itself to the principle of equal justice for all people remain eternally Vigilant against tyrants and hate speech and recognize that bigotry provides a breeding ground for tyranny to flourish therefore we The District 202 School Board Proclaim that in memory of the victims of the Holocaust and in the hope that we will always strive to overcome Prejudice and inhumanity through vigilance education and resistance proclaimed that March 17 through March 21
0812025 be hereby designated as Holocaust remembrance days at Evon town high school thank you just take a moment to take all that in okay can we have a motion for accept second roll call please yes yes yes yes yes yes yes okay thank you the next item is approval of resolution AU authorizing non-renewal of part-time teachers so moved second voll call please yes yes yes yes yes yes yes the next item is approval of resolution authorizing notice of non-renewal of non-tenure teachers other than the final year probationary teachers so moved second V call please yes yes yes yes yes yes yes the next item is approval of rehire of second third and fourth year teachers for the 2526 school year so moved second call please yes yes yes yes yes yes yes the next item
082is the consent agenda which consists of approval of asbesto abatement removal project 2025 approval of masonary joint cience scaffolding and steel bid approval of I HSA 2526 membership approval of minutes from February 10th 2025 regular and closed session meeting and February 18th 2025 special meeting Treasures report from December of 2024 approval of bills and Personnel report so moved second roll call please yes yes yes yes yes yes yes okay um any old or new business other than the game okay um any updates 2925 we still kid still okay all right okay uh closing or polling of the board anybody can I have a motion for so mov okay we are adjourned at 850