001good evening everybody good evening welcome to the Board of Education meeting November 13 2023 could we have a roll call please here here here here here here here thank you 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 thank you all right the next item on our agenda is items for information and that first item is recognition of National Merit and National Achievement Scholars thank you madam president um we will have uh Dr Kenzie our assistant superintendent and principal come to recognize our National Merit and our National Achievement Scholars this evening uh thank you Dr keny thank you I am really excited to be able to honor our students and their families who are here with us tonight so
002I'm going to ask each of our national merit scholarship award recipients to come on up we're going to share a little bit about the National Merit um semi-finalist activity and we'll be able to honor their names as well so um come on up and we're going to be able to say your names Jacob D crescenzo Anna uh Gregor ESU who's not here this evening not able to join us Sarah schulin is also not able to join us but Xander senal is come on up Xander Aiden Thompson and Emma zazow awesome so these students are being recognize this evening and there are a few of the approximately 16,000 semi sem finalist in the 69th annual National Merit Scholarship program these academically talented High School seniors have an opportunity to continue in the competition for National Merit
003Scholarships that will be offered next spring all six of our students entered the 2024 National Merit Scholarship program competition by taking the 2022 PSAT and msqt as Juniors and the nation the Nationwide pool of semi-finalists representing less than 1% of us High School seniors includes the highest scoring entrance in each state so again we are really excited to honor Jacob Anna Sarah Xander Aiden and EMT so a round of applause and I did prep them that they get to now go around walk and and Shake everyone's hands and receive your PIN so you can start right here conratulations congratulations congratul congratulations [Applause] and Scholars and families if you are so welcome to leave now if you if You' like to or stay for another few hours or can stay for another couple hours if you
004want thank you congratulations again all of you thanks for coming so exciting we should start all of our meetings like this right yes something to celebrate okay I'm good with that okay yes okay our next item is the opening of school report so we're kind of on a ro all right so we've got Dr uh Levy our director for research and assessment Dr Pete bavis our assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction and uh they'll be doing we can just kind of do it together both the opening of school report and the year in review report okay we'll do them together you can do them together good evening nice to see you all right I'm going to start with my notes with the opening of school for this year 2023 um I'm just doing a few
005highlights from the report pretty brief um so this Year's total enrollment is down about 100 from last year it's three the official enrollment as of September 30th that's what the official enrollment date always is Snapshot in time was 3,593 um so just slightly lower than last year um overall and then oh these look small sorry um the percent so this one is just our proportion enrollment by student group and it's a 5year trend and I apologize it looks small on the big screen um so basically our proportion of enrollments for Hispanic lat next enrollments has remained steady it's pretty much the same as last year the proportion of black African-American enrollments has been has fluctuated over the last five years and our white enrollments have decrease slightly just proportionally over the last compared to the
006last five years our special ed enrollments are consistent with last year 427 as of September 30th that's pretty similar to last year and then the bilingual program enrollment so this is up a little bit it's 54 just to note that while we have many more students who are identified as multilingual learner this is a bilingual program so it's in the um bilingual Services Program shelter classes it's just a little new Nuance difference there um so usually those are the quick highlights I do for opening a school enrollment any questions thank you questions from the board I just have one quick okay I just wanted to like do you understand what is our understanding of the the lower enrollment are kids moving out of the district are they going to private schools like do you have
007any sense of what's driving the data no I think what we we saw the last couple of years a bubble where we had higher coming from District 65 higher cohorts and we expected that to Trend off a number of years ago and so we're exactly where we're supposed to be yeah okay thanks that's good question anybody else Mia um am I would it be appropriate to ask a couple questions about what was in the report but not necessarily just presented um so I I just wanted to oh um you can hear um note that um a couple things that jumped out in me um and that was when I'm looking at enrollment um in the grades and then it's broken out by off-campus safe school and day school so out outside the main building um
008the percentage of students who are off campus for the black African-American students it's 30.8 which is discrepant with typically for the grades um the black African African-American students are like 21 to 26 um and I noticed that that was kind of it's gotten a little bit higher each year um and I just wondered if that I just kind of wanted to point that out and if we had any thoughts about that okay all right um and then um the um it looks like the Freshman Class um from last year that are now sophomores there was kind of an increase in reclassified students and um that happens sometimes um what do it what what does it look like in terms of what are we doing these days to really support those reclassified freshmen um sure and
009I know some of these questions might play into your next piece on year and review year and review so should hold off this report is just it's really technical something that the board has to for the pro and all of that but we'll get into some of the programmatic evaluation stuff at the next report but it's all together so but we can do thatat yeah what I I'll add to an answer to your question is you know we from the very moment students are preparing to enter the high school we are we are working to identify what plans and interventions we want to do for individual students as well as the grade as a whole whole and so that's definitely um part of the trajectory is understanding what the needs are but making sure there's
010interventions and plans throughout and so that's definitely some some pieces that the team have been doing with a increase in in a variety of interventions from 504 to special add to um general education thanks and you can hold on to that question if you want more discussion later we can do that other okay other questions Mira your lights on do you have questions oh I'm sorry it's okay no okay all right thank you we can move on now okay no problem all questions welcome all right so uh we're going to move on to the year in review so opening School enrollment is this year's enrollment the year in review is last year's data um and so just to note that this year as I talk about kind of like what's new this year is going
011to this report will look very different next year as I we work to restructure and align it to the news District goals so just preface this for just say that one more time that the say it one more time car so make sure that the board really heard which your okay the report this year this is reflecting on last year's data next year's report will be aligned to your new District goals so I will look at alignment look goals and what is not what I've not been reporting and make sure reporting everything that's in your goals so it will look the outcomes and you mean the outcomes and the measures yeah you keep saying goals but we're talking about the outcomes and measures yes I will line the outcomes and measures I report on next
012year to your new District goals did I get it that's great I'm glad to hear that that's looking forward to that starting off with the tongue Doster um okay so it's just the report is an opportunity incorporate some new data points that are not previously reported I try not to repeat what's already available in the school report card although I do lift up things that are specifically um outlines measures outcomes and measures aligned to the district goals um but things like disaggregating student well-being measures it's not reported anywhere um else typically any additional post-secondary planning and career Readiness measures that we have to report that also align to the district goals and so like last year this is organized by section so we start out with our social emotional learning well-being section in the datas
013in that which I'll walk through and then we have academic and attendance data kind of the inputs and then the outputs are post High School planning data um so just to repeat this report includes students enrolled in the 2023 20 excuse me 2022 23 school year and it's not just graduate cohorts so in the past we may have report on just graduate cohorts this one since we're reporting on all the students there are some measures where we report only the class of 2023 to be consistent um but most of the measures are like of all of the students so we've got the class of 23 which were the seniors last year the 24 which were Juniors last year last year sophomores which are class of 2025 and then last year's Freshman Class of 2026 and
014then disaggregated by race gender meal status students with an IP and our multilingual learner which is um a larger group student group that we are now able to report more on and then just reminding our continued focus on reporting data reporting through visualization and in equity lens thinking about adding qualitative data where we can and just our use of colors to um avoid bias or assigning value so I like to use our eths color palette that you find around the school okay so just some quick highlights even though I'm going to talk about a little bit more as we go on um we highlights about over half of our students report that they belong they feel like they belong quite a bit this comes from our well-being survey in every February a quarter of the
015students feel connected to adults at eths uh 45% feel that most all of their teachers are really interested in how they are doing see me and the majority of students report feeling from the five Essentials feeling safe comfortable and respected with their teachers and these results are similar to what was reported for the from the 2021-22 school year few more highlights our average daily attendance for all students last year was 92.2 um down just slightly compared to the prior year 89% of our class of 2025 The Freshman last year this year's sophomores is on track for graduation we'll talk more about that when we get to these slides 88% of the class of 2023 that just graduated took at least one dual credit AP or project leadway course by the time they graduated and this
016is an increase compared to the class of 2022 wait slow down that's an important one say it again okay but I have a whole slide I know but let's just get the headline there that's a good headline these are big yes okay 88% the class of 2023 they just graduated 88% took at least one dual credit AP or projectly the we course which is an increase compared to 70% of the class of 2022 and when I get to that slide I'll even tell you a little bit more about the class of 2021 but you're just GNA have to wait um but you make us do the math it should be you should highlight 18% more yes that's a lot 20% more than the class of 2021 that's amazing now we're talking now we're talking all
017right and so last year we reported on that students that viewed C career Pathways info sessions this year we've got data on students that actually participated in a career Pathways fair so I'll talk about that a little bit more when I get to that but almost a thousand students that participated in our career Pathways Fair last March um and then we have some data on students that participated in a onewe job shadow 56 students during spring break last year and then 32 part students participated in paid summer internship and four students were hired out of their um internship or actually job shadow and then just a couple horm highlights but I I'll go into a little bit more detail with you slide um so we'll talk about our unweighted GPA all students re achieved a
018final unweighted GPA so this would be class of 2023 of a 2. 76 or greater with a mean cumulative GPA of 3.23 the class of 2023 is four-year graduation rate was 92.8% the class of 2022 is 5-year graduation rate was 95.5 and then 79% of students from the class of 2021 enrolled in a post-secondary institution two years after graduating from eths I know I went through these fast because I'm going to take a little bit more time for each slide to lift it up a a little more okay so from our um student our climate our well-being survey and the way these charts are is on a scale we ask students how much they feel they belong at eths and so the students so on the the teal um or reporting they belong a little
019bit or not at all the yellow in the middle is students that reported somewhat and the green on the top is students reporting they belong quite a bit or completely and so over half ACR half half about half or slightly over half across all of the student groups you can see we have it disaggregated by race ethnicity and then because this is a survey and students self-identify we are able to report by gender identity and students who identify as non-bar binary transgender and this is one of the few places that I can report data for students identifying as non-binary transgender and so students who identify as non-binary transgender are less likely to report that they feel quite a bit or completely um kind of a bigger group that are more likely to say somewhat in
020a smidge more not at all as we look at some more of our well-being data we also asked students how connected they feel to adults at school and this is similar data is very similar to the prior year um where a majority report it's kind of split between somewhat to not not at all about a quarter across the board they're pretty similar across the different student groups reporting quite a bit or completely and then a third question we ask in this excuse me section of a survey is um how many teachers are really interested in how they are doing and so just under half it's pretty similar for most of the student groups are reporting most or all of their teachers are really interested a small group of reporting somewhat and then about a third
021across the board are saying reporting not none to a few hey one more um measure we look at for student um wellbeing is we look at the percent of students that participate in extracurricular activities so this particular data which um I know you'll have a report later this year on school involvement and activities and this is specific to Fine Arts um Athletics and Student Activities in clubs and so I have three years so the numbers represent the data from 2023 so overall last year 75% of the students participated an extracurricular activity that's fine arts uh Student Activity club or Athletics that's compared to 65% from 2022 and 57% from 2021 so we can just see the growth across every subgroup over the last two years when I look at data that includes students attending participating
022at least one fine art extracurricular activity you know Club Athletics if I include attending one of the social Consciousness series Summits homecoming or prom it goes to 91% of our students that um participated in one of those extracurricular activities or School connection throughout the year all right a few slides on our section on academic and attendance measures so here's our average daily attendance rate last year was 92.2 the state Benchmark is for an average daily attendance is 95% the state average last year was 91.2% and you can see this the the far left dark blue is all of our students in the middle identifi as our students um by race ethnicity and then yellow is our students with an 9p our students who eligible for free reduced blunch is green and then students who are
023identified as multi-lingual learner or the orange I think I'm okay last year um for the class of 2026 freshman 89% um the state report is on on track for graduation that's fouryear graduation we know we keep our students uh for 5 years when when they're um behind and that's something we look to do uh this is the orange and that top bar across is over all of our students to 89.1% and the Illinois overall average was 87.4 this is lower than the prior year last year's um the class of 2025 was 93% that was in the school year 2022 um and again I have this disaggregated by race ethnicity gender students with IEP free Reds and students who identify as multilingual Learners we do know so this is data from last year so we are
024been proactive I've shared for example our students with the 90p it says 70% 71% almost that are considered on track so I have shared the specific student list that the state has identified as not on track with our director special ed so she can be proactive you know work with the individual student plans was already familiar with um some of the students on the list so we have been taking this data and trying to be proactive knowing that it kind of comes late in the year as we work through it all right and then unweighted um cumulative unweighted GPA so this is the class of 2023 by the time they graduated their final cumulative unweighted GPA um was 3.23 and so that 2.8 threshold that's in our uh like summon of designation that's a threshold
025that the state sets as 2.8 so that's why that's there so every subgroup is near or above um we have our students who identify as African-American black are at 2.77 and then our students who are eligible for free reduced lunch are at 2.76 but every other oh and students who are identifi as multilingual learner are 2.75 all very close to the state's 2.8 threshold and then here's the one um so this is our slide for our 88% of seniors class of 2023 who took at least one AP Project Lead the wayer Dual credit course so 88% um so 99% once I include honors that's 99% of all students when I when we focus in on the Advan um courses like AP Project Lead the Way of dual credit that's where we have 88% of the
026class of 2023 that took at least one um and that's an increase like we were saying the 70% of the class of 2022 and the class of 2021 it was 68% so it's 20% higher than the class of 2021 and then this one is reported Ed by our uh race ethnicity all right and so a couple slides on post High School planning so as I mentioned last year reported on the number of students that viewed career info sessions this um started probably when we were remote and then we had virtual uh sessions here I'm reporting the students that attended career Pathways fair so more um Hands-On and active um and so almost a, 992 students attended in the around the wheel is all the different career Pathways that were represented we had 40 um employers
027through M business partners and then I believe this was the first time last year the um Aviation career okay thank you last year was the first year so last year was the first year the students attended the eths Aviation career exploration day and we had over a th students and there were 20 exhibitors and business partners um and then along with our career Readiness um this is the first time I have some data on students participating in job shadowing so last year there was 56 students that participated in job the onewe job shadow during spring break and then underneath it or the number of students and all the different Pathways that they participated with the employers they worked in and then 32 students participated with a summer paid summer turn summer internship and that's an
028increase over the year before when it was 28 and then out of the summer internship and job shadow experience we had four students hired based on their um from their work-based learning experience and then um couple more our fouryear and fiveyear graduation rates um so our four-year class of 2023 was 92.8% but I mentioned our fiveyear so our fiveyear is up for the class of 2022 they went from 94 to 95.5% we usually see an increase when it comes to our fiveyear rates um and in the report it has all of these disaggregated by wraith ethnicity and other student groups and then looking at our post-secondary enrollment which comes from National Clearing House so this is enrollment any time during the first two years after high school so since it's two years out the class
029of 2021 is 79% um and then looking far out six-year post-secondary graduation rate for the class of 2016 is is 52% so this is of the entire cohort of the class of 2016 regardless of whether or not they went to a post-secondary institution or not 52% graduated from some postsecondary institution within um 6 years when we look at the percent of students who enrolled into a post-secondary institution within two years after high school we look at the students that it did enroll then the graduation the sixe post-secondary graduation rate is 65% for that and that's um above the national rate for the same cohort was 62% and I think that's a smidge higher than the Illinois rate also okay those are just the highlights from the report um so I'll take any questions before we
030move on to the report card a lot to take in Glon you have question um first thanks for the nicel looking report I every single year you're tweaking and improving and I appreciate that and I think you've also Incorporated all these um principles of equity into your data analysis like that organization that I love that I know you also we all count um and you've clearly um utilized some of their suggestions um which I think is really great um but to the substance um two main points I I wanted to ask about or make um the first is on the wellbeing point the three kind of interrelated questions about whether our students feel uh supported or comfortable or as if they belong at the school I have to say I don't mean to be unduly
031negative but I'm a little disappointed that more of our students don't feel that they belong maybe that's a double negative I um we seem to be kind of holding steady with this and it suggests to me that we need to be doing something different and I'm not sure that I have the answers um to what it is that we need to different and of course we're coming out of the pandemic but that's kind of getting old now we can't keep pointing to that um it just seems to me that more than half of our students like a lot more than half of our students like almost all of our students should feel like they belong all the time so I don't know how we crack that nut um but it just it's it surprises me
032and it has to do with connections within this building um and I I I think we're a large we have a very large student body compared to most schools um and we do our best to make it feel small but I think it's very easy for individual students to be simply lost in this mix and I don't know that's the only thing I can come up with and we're not being systematic about connecting with individual students we're not really looking for the disconnected maybe I don't know I'm I'm surmising um as I said at the outset I you know I really don't know what the answers are but I I think it's an area that we need to focus on and um I don't know if there's anything more you want to say about it
033well I will say that that's part of our overall message and how we've structured our system to be looking for students and and and we talk about connec all the time Y and I'm also um curious as to why the numbers look the way that they do and I think in part could be we give this survey in the dark of winter in February when everybody's tired of each other and school and if you look at the five Essentials it's very different you know some of not very different but it's a it's it's better so I'm trying to figure out how do we really triangulate and see what's really happening cuz this is just one snapshot in time in February without any breaks well I think there's one day off in February something like that
034so that's not that I'm dismissing the data at all but I'm really looking we're really looking for for context and really trying to understand because we've given this survey during this particular time period because that's just when we gave it and you know when we used to give the you know all of these other drug use and all of that kind of that's just kind of our window of time so um we're trying to figure this this out but I would say overwhelmingly that our system is trying to be very responsive to kids that we um who don't feel connected especially our our non-binary transgender kids yeah and I do believe we care I mean I I'm just to be clear I'm not saying that we don't care but clearly there's also reflected here a
035disconnect between our desire to be connecting to all of our students and our students belief that they are connected so some some we need to connect that um anyway that that's the main point there and then I remember us having quite a conversation about this like what does it mean what does it mean and how do we ask the question do do students really understand um what we're talking about and um um I think these these numbers just reflect how important our work is um and you know we we I've I've heard I've said too we're not perfect we've got PL we've got some ways to go um this helps Drive our work when we see which students are not feeling like they're a part of things here and uh just being very clear about
036what we mean when we say you know do students feel like they belong yeah it it makes me think that if if you're a student who respond to the survey that you're you know in the in the yellow on the bottom I think it is you know where you're not like I am unhappy or I'm not connected I you know I feel like there should be a further box if you check this you know let us know what we can do you know raise your hand so we can come find you kind of thing you know I I don't know do they have opportunities to uh elaborate or talk on the S no it's um not for that because it's Anonymous I but I I don't know maybe we can think about that anyway my
037second point was on the economic side of things that the um it seems to me the opportunity in this area is that uh freshman on track piece and that comes up in the um that extraordinarily long school report card um and it's somewhere like in the middle um but freshman on track to me is we just we have to and I know we are I mean I know we do Focus but we need to be all over it because there's 10% of our students who are not on track and we need to grab them and get them on track doing whatever it takes because those are the ones that are going to be you know that drive all the other data that follows um so it seems to me and that's why they've included it
038in the school report card that's why it's included as measure and everything because we all know if you don't get on track at the beginning that you're going to fall off um and so I will also tie this up a little bit with um Cradle to Career because I see that we have a member of the administrative team of cradle to Career here with us at our meeting um hi Miss Brandy FM um and this is why it's important that we are connected with District 65 because these freshmen come in the door and we only have them for a tiny little bit of time um and what they're coming in the door with is whatever they got in District 65 or in a very small number of cases from some other District entirely or a
039different country entirely um so um I'm going to reiterate that if Cradle to Career is ever going to succeed we need to have that kind of partnership I'm just slipping this in in an area that is not yours I know um but I I really want to make that point because when we started with the Cradle to Career effort it was all about this it was all about working these two districts together and making sure that the students that we share in our community come here knowing how to read at grade level so that we can then do the necessary things within our own District to advance them to graduation and a productive Life Beyond and we still need to keep talking about that and it's not on us alone it's it's on the other
040District here in our community as well I just wanted to add briefly um because you had talked about connectedness and rightfully so um that it's one of the things that I think is our challenge is how are we doing that from a schoolwide perspective and how are we doing it student by student by student right and so while we have an anonymous survey there are other ways that students do a phenomenal job of bringing students forward when they're concerned so that's I think just one of the ways I wanted to offer up also we make sure that students get the constant reminders even through the survey of if you want to get connected right here's some steps if you want to connect a friend right now this is how to do it and those are
041those steps that I believe that we take and so I'll just off this is my my moment of Happiness this morning I started out by walking into our alt school um which doesn't start at 8: a.m. because it's a different schedule to provide support for students we had students in am support in our alt school program that doesn't officially start till 9:00 a.m. because they wanted to get ahead and and specifically students who've identified okay what were my barriers previously for not feeling like I belong and now I'm feeling like I belong so you know I agree and I think there's that moment by moment yeah Pat um so back to the um student well-being slides the three that disaggregate with um racist ethnicity and um gender um despite the fact that we have you
042know work to do what I noticed was that in each of the three slides males were the best of the three when you compare female male and um non-binary transgender and I'm just wondering if you have any any color on that and how that what that means because one of the things that made me think about is we've focused a lot in the last few years on black male students and I was wondering if some of this is showing that work and I don't know if we can connect those dots but um I guess I'm just curious if there's any even speculation as to why males despite the fact that we still have room to grow and go um seem to be a little better off than um than some of our other students I
043have no idea okay yeah so you don't have a sense of disaggregated by race and ethnicity within gender that is like you didn't see that even I know it's not in the report but is that something you saw and kind of got a sense of or not even we do look at that and I have not looked back at that so I can't answer your questions the top of my head but I will go back and look at it yeah and I guess I just wonder if you do look at it if you can make some connections to what is working I mean these aren't huge you know it's not like they're Leaps and Bounds ahead of females and non-binary transgender students but I don't know maybe there's something positive there that you can us
044out thank you hi um my question was already answered but I just wanted to say thank you for disaggregating some of this data um by multilingual Learners and by non-binary transgender students where where you're able to um I think it's really important that we do have a snapshot of those subcategories so thank you for that um I did have one quick question what was how many or what percentage of students actually filled out the while being climate survey we have about 80% every year oh that's great that's a good number pretty good number good thank you but I mean there's always right we always wish it was a 100 and maybe some of the students that are harder to get to or some that aren't there aren't as connected so um we are mindful we
045talk about that all the time but um overall 80% okay great M well I think Monique and then I'll oh okay yeah that was my question I wanted to know um how many students filled it out but I think also what I noticed um that sort of just popped out and this is definitely not in every category but in most C categories are students of color are um performing less as a group and I know you highlighted um that under the well-being and climate survey um students of color are non-binary transgender students there but in every category MH I just want and particularly our black kids particularly our black kids and then our Hispanic latinx yeah um without a doubt um and then our two or more races so I mean yes our black students
046are um for lack of a better word cuz I hate using this word but they're they're at the the bottom consistently still um and they are being outperformed consistently um you know and so when I look at that and that that's not every black student I want to be clear on that but um as a whole yes the unweighted GPA class they're close to 2.8 but they're not there you know um you know so and even in that category you know they are so I you know that that needs to just I don't know we need to marinate in that for a while because it's um it's not good still so I know we're always chasing this and trying to figure this out but I'm looking at it um with um another lens attached and
047and just trying to figure out how we use this data to continue to push and to be more persistent um in addressing that and I don't know if it's connected I don't know if those that are not feeling connected or are saying that they don't feel like they belong here are the same ones underperforming I don't know that but there's something there oh that's it I think I think it's an important um it's it's an important point to make these are the this is the predictability of academic Performance Based on race this is what we're talking about in our first goal and it's it's still there we've certainly not accomplished this or we've not I mean this is you know as I said earlier this is the work that we have to do so um
048thank you for highlighting that Monique and making note that that it is in every area don't want to run over it too fast well that's kind of some of where my mind was as well um and I always thank you for your report I don't mean to just jump in um so a couple of my questions come from a place of ignorance um but before I get there I just want to say that I think it would be interesting I know these are Anonymous but perhaps we could begin to couple GPA and report of belonging and connectedness although I I will also offer that um I think there's another indicator in there that we're missing but we'll come to that later um just to see to tease out some of this um that you're getting
049at and then my question that comes out of ignorance is so we have kids who go to um Oak Dan or Tech campus right who go who get am I yes um do you mean dual credit or do you mean like leave and go we don't send any kids to Oakton and we don't send any kids so the Dual credit that they achieve are all here all here in the house and all of those are weighted mhm right okay and so then my thought would be [Music] um let me go back did you disaggregate those numbers yeah okay so then so again I would think think about how those are tied to because the design of that right is so that all of our kids have that career and college um Readiness but also are
050able to um not get pigeon hold and to to have more opportunity so I just if it's playing out and that's our um lagging indicator then what's the leading being than belonging or you know so I'm just trying to kind of look at the trajectory of the things that we're doing to create the conditions for success and are they in fact doing that so I'm I was just trying to kind of think through that a little bit um I'll leave that for a moment did you um was there Point you're going to make about like something else that you think yeah survey because I'm totally open to all feedback well you um I think it's and thank you I think what I where I'm going with that is um um we're going to talk a
051little bit about what we experienced at Summit and um my thoughts around um belonging and uh connectedness are insufficient or Not My Thoughts around it but that being a leading indicator are I think is insufficient I think we're actually measuring possibly the wrong thing so but that isn't in your I mean it's in your control but not it's I think a bigger systemic issue um so hopefully you'll be here for part of that discussion but it's not really appropriate for the report yeah thank you though so I think I have more of a comment than a question but I think I wanted to you know the previous report I too quickly brought in the Freshman on track but I just wanted to explain that I'm not trying to come from a place of negativity but
052also I think that we have have to have maintain a sense of urgency does that make sense so um I think that what really jumped out and and I'm sorry to go ahead again but when we talk about the state report card you know spoiler um on a lot of these numbers were way better than the state averages I mean there's a lot I mean that's really that's something to be happy about that's something that's really positive but it's when you look at like when you look at the overall numbers like in almost everything we're above the state average um but when you break it down by race and ethnicity students with an IEP multilingual Learners fore introduce lunch then you see you know that while we're still better than the state I don't want
053to just pay attention to what the the rest of the state we want to do the best we can here for our students and I think that just um I guess this is my long way of saying that's why I think that the equity our focus on Equity is so important and so urgent because while we can take [Music] some I don't know what the word is um we can feel positive about the strides we've made because we have made strides it's kind of like when you look at that data for instance about Advanced coursework this is so much different than in the past but then you look at the students who took specifically one at least one dual credit AP or Project Lead the Way and for African American black students it's 50% and
054for all the other categories it's 70 73 92 92 um as Mo'Nique pointed out you know the GPA it's it's near 2.8 but it's 2.77 for for black students um you know you look at the Freshman on track and the thing that it jumped out about me for me on the opening in school report was that it seemed like last year was sort of an off year of all of the number numbers were pretty consistent in terms of like each year the number of freshman on track but there seemed a little Spike last year and I just looked at like compared to um comparing the number of black students to the class size and it was 15% so that is not to take away and in fact I think it's like an opportunity for us
055to share what we are doing because I think we're doing a ton but it makes what we're doing so important because those are still pretty alarming numbers that's all thank you I agree with you completely anybody else Pat well I actually have a question for merera I wanted to understand when you said measuring belonging is the wrong indicator can you I don't want to speak with miror but I wrote from belonging to mattering I think that's what you were talking about oh okay okay okay that's fine if that's what it yeah yes got it I I got that too okay I didn't you didn't finish the sentence so I just wanted to make sure okay thank you I think she that was her report out she was going to say that I bet you were
056going to say that later yes you spoiled it but we can explain that later and well I think this all of this data tonight shows us that the district goals that you adopted are still very relevant um and certainly there is no single story in this data there is a couple definitely Trends here um but we still have work to do in combating the um the disparities by race in this district and Carrie you're just the messenger know that right so without um this information we couldn't justify the work we're doing so a co-conspirator because you WR write these and write the um the surveys so that's where I hope you I mean no pressure do hang out because I think we could construct some different items to measure things in a different way yeah
057yeah I know that would be great thank you for letting me know CU I'm always looking to improve what we have and see how just it's like a hard KN to crack right to how do we get to what this really means um so yeah absolutely know mom's going to try and be transparent in providing the data for you and even though I go through it quickly in the highlights I try to give you a lot of details in the report to get to um the good and some of the bad that's not that where we want to work on so thank you all right your turn is it all right Illinois report card we're going to keep it simple because I don't want to we've talked a lot about data I know that Leah's
058done a deep dive into the school port card um me too actually what I would encourage all board members to do is to look at the interactive report card online it's it's very interesting it's it's user friendly there's a wealth of information in there there's scattergrams uh where you can see how eths compares to like nutrier things like that you can do it's interactive it's kind of fun cut to the chase we're commendable same designation we've had pretty much since these four ratings uh began they're dictated by percentages top 10% of schools including all magnet schools and magneet dist all that stuff is you know figured into the exemplary commendable is the next layer then you have targeted and comprehensive a all right uh here you have the Illinois report card I apologize but if
059you follow along in your packet you can see what that is that basically shows uh the district English language arts scores uh 2023 is at the top and you'll see that there's more green than in 2022 which we predicted would be the worst year for test scores and it seems to Bear out uh you see the ELA sat uh by Broken Out by uh racial demographic if you remember back in the in the winter we did a report on mathematics and we said that this tracks to the I which is taken in eth grade that establishes sort of the cohort data and this tracks very closely to this cohorts e8th grade I data which is the standardized test it's the SAT for 8th grade and you'll see that math is still an area of great
060great need uh we uh we had a comment earlier about um the pandemic and I think that's right for a lot of things for math instruction I think it's taken a lot to dig out uh and one of the things uh I'll just get to the math here's the math you see it's rebounded a little bit it's not near where it was uh pre pandemic it's at the top there district and then here it is broken out by race one of the things you need to know is that um we haven't seen the growth uh in uh students who there are a lot of students on that list in the orange and the on those charts in the orange and the light orange uh that have significant algebra issues and challenges uh we are redoing
061our freshman placement uh what we found in working with our teachers over the last couple years is that students who are placing into our geometry with support class in n9th grade we're really taking algebra in that support period and we were doing a disservice by teaching it concurrently with geometry for students in that group it's about 60 70 kids they will that group will now be placed in algebra with two teachers in the room it'll also make room for an elective period for students in that group so that's A Plus on that side more elective more reason to come to school more reason to engage as opposed to a double period math if you're not interest if you're struggling in math it's kind of it's not a good recipe for a ninth grader um I
062see Leah not in her head because she knows and I should have listened um but I listen and I'm listening now uh so that's what we're doing for math um here's a scattergram and I've only chose two scattergrams to show y'all uh but I think these are two interesting one two right Mark two I got two I got two because I love scattergrams so the the scattergram is this is not the interactive no this is not the interactive one th this is not interactive so so that blue square there that's eths and that's our English language arts sat exceeds growth the the the top uh line there is what would be considered uh average growth uh on this test so we exceeded average growth all those other little dots around us all over there are
063all different high schools in Illinois so that kind of positions us overall we're exceeding uh growth I look at this as a terms of like how are we growing right relative to previous years so we're doing all right not going to comment on who those schools are around us uh here's math so math we're still above the line we're we're we're showing some we're showing we're above the growth line so that's that's good um um but again there's schools around us in terms of our SAT meets exceeds growth question that's the entire population of our students that's not disaggregated this is the entire population of all of Illinois high school students and this is not unfor I know where you're goingon to go ahead ask it's not disagreable because the folks who made this did
064not have a we can't disaggregate this information on this chart in terms of the growth model so I can't look at what our growth is for for say black students or say Hispanic students I do have scattergrams though that tell us how our white students are doing compared to White students in other districts black students and not growth but how they're actually doing I have that and that would be fascinating to see because there are kids who are okay so we got you funny you should mention that uh hid behind the two question slides was just this answer uh so here's our e English language arts sat for white students this is a scatter plot and again you see the the a it says State average that's just the demographic average so what that says
065essentially is that as a state we have let me just pull it up on my computer so I can see it I can explain it better okay so you have every you have the state average is state is about 48% white enrollment that's what that line is right there that vertical line the red triangle is eths for white student achievement in English language arts to the left and up above us are magnet schools and if you if it were online you could go and hover over and actually name those schools and to the right of us you'll see like Stevenson and nutrier but again it's the proficiency is where you know is the is the access that puts us very much very high for that group you get it got it we good you know
066can I can I just interject one small point about that for anybody who is worrying 12 or 14 years ago about what we were doing with our classes here at eths and I'll call out the white parents in particular who were um expressing concern um about the future of their white kids academic abilities this slide says it all and that's all I want to say relax white parents I think that that's such a good point don't relax be vigilant but I really you know yeah be vigilant but I really appreciate you making that point let's let's not lose it appreciate you making that point this is this is really important to well and can you send us the um we don't have we don't have these slides can you send us oh yeah I'll send
067them to you and do you want me to just quickly click through the rest of them they're all available on interactive report card just send it to us you want me to link I'll send you the link yeah all right should I click through them yeah I want to give us a couple more okay so there's black students Ela uh to the left so the average um is about 18% black student enrollment across the state that's that line that vertical line you see there uh to the the triangle is eths to the left of eths are predominantly uh particularly when you get to the left of that line those are predominantly you know white very white heavy districts to the right are more um more uh districts with higher percentages than black students and then
068you see eths is the is the red triangle I'm going to leave inferences for one you compare the tables but I'm just leaving it there just as informational okay uh the next slide ready for me to go on the next slide represents our Hispanic uh latinx scatter plot uh what what I like to say is this indicates work to do within eths as compared to other districts so we would look you know this is a good opportunity to like compare yourself to other districts and see what other places are doing with similar demographics potentially not exactly because no one has exactly our demographic um makeup if I put a uh SATs for white uh student scatter plot these kind of mirror right what you saw with the ELA and math is really math took is
069is very is a real challenge is a real challenge for students at eths and it looks like across Illinois but there's work to be done I wanted to share this with you I could break this out if you go online you can break this out by free reduced launch you can break this out by IEP you can break this by every student group um and you you can as long as there's enough students in the group that make sense for reporting purposes and you can really find out I've shared this with the department chair team I've shared this with our vision casting group we looked at this Scatter Plots last year uh to kind of say Okay acknowledging the origins of this measure right it it was a structured uh you know it's it was
070it's a complicated measure that is really designed to do I'm just going to say it it's designed to do that it's the SAT was its origin story was designed to put white students and white folks relative to other folks and to have them have a numerical sort of way to do that and that's sort of the origin stories it goes back to the origins of the IQ testing Eugenics movement and all that but you see it at work when you just look at their Scatter Plots in Illinois it kind of tells that same story uh anyway questions so the last thing you said kind of speaks to what I was about to ask or comment on which is um you know is the SAT A A good measure what kind of measure truly is the
071SAT for language arts and math as compared to what students are doing in their classes and teaching in our classes according to you know the the state standards you know yeah it's is it the right measure that so I have problems with that but that said I'm going to just you know yes you caught me I did a dive into the data but I just wanted to say that I looked at this and overall in every subgroup we do better than the state when you measure us overall yes but there's always a discrepancy within our own data that is really significant between white and for the most part Asian and on the other side black brown students students with IEPs multilingual students low-income students and homeless students and I just wanted to share um because
072I added the numbers three sets of numbers one for you can partially meet approach standards meet or exceed so the lower categories are partially meet and approaching and black students in ela that's 77% partially meet or approach and 87% in math that's like that's not good um Latin X it's um 75% partially meet or only approach standards in ela 80% in math and lastly for English Learners and they're learning English but 94% only partially meet or approach standards but even in math 94% are in those uh lower categories for math that's exactly the work um you know Sean the thing that's really just you know really hits is that Sean Reen came out here about eight years ago and did did a presentation at wou and then he did it at fan and I think
073he may have done it I know several board members attended that session especially that we had a private session I think over a wou and he kind of showed this at EV in Evon schools he was talking about the K8 experience because he didn't have the high school data but the high school data mirrors essentially the the the K8 data but yes this is this is the work and the work is to raise and to figure out and also maybe to figure out different ways to measure um I don't know how viable a measure the SAT is going to be in 5 years in four years in three years just overall as a metric because test optional and all those things that fit into it because it's very difficult to give a high school test
074and say this is about achievement this is about how you're doing and not have any external reward attached to it which is like used to be take the ACT it's the ticket to college you get scholarships for having a high ACT score same with the the SAT and now it's become a lot of schools are test optional some are test blind and that reduces that sort of maybe that particular incentive plus the numbers were always weird to begin with because there were test prep companies and independent tutors so you do get sort of it's a measure of privilege potentially it's meas of white privilege potentially um what do you replace that with I mean I'd love to replace it with grades but you know that's fraught with sort of challenges too when we look at
075those GPA calculations uh I would like to share with the board when we do our AP report some uh predictive analysis on grades in advanced placement and AP outcomes and that tells a a a counter narrative that actually tells you a story and I got the numbers to back it up that our black and brown students get get B's in AP classes but they have shown grow over the last 10 years right just about white students predominately get A's um if you're if you're going to get a B your chances are you're you're you're black or you're Latino and so so lower grades but yet the growth on the AP exams three three scores of three four and five our our black students and Latinos are showing those gains and white students have gone down
076not precipitously but they've gone down and it's not a function some people say oh well that's a function of kids not taking the test anymore no we only looked at kids who took the test and back M that so that's out of there I'll took that out right away uh because I know how I know how I think I know how people think uh and I know how to construct sort of that do those kind of constructs so so that's what we found with that so in another report you're saying in another report we're going to take a deep dive into what that is and that correlation which I think is helpful and speaks to the work but um that's just uh thank you Leah for for raising that thank you and I also just
077kind of want to say for the record that um when we look at freshman on track we look at this dat of the night I do want to assure the board that the administration is and is and has a number of plans in place um that we are uh vetting through the staff um to address the very things that we're talking about tonight in a new way right not the same all stuff we've been doing right we've got new ideas new thoughts new strategies new programs new approaches to um um address this systemically that you all will be hearing about I almost want to say just like I told you some years ago like we've got stuff coming that's pretty big so stay tuned I just remember the last time you said that things kind
078of got really big so I'm really glad to hear that really excited can I just want to say I think that's great I also think that what you just you both just talked about in terms of black and brown students doing better threes fours and fives we should be looking at what we are doing I know you are so I'm not I'm just but really looking and digging deep into what we are doing that's working and for all these things as I was listening to this conversation I feel like there's something there there's something there what are we doing to connect the dots and again I'm not I'm speaking to the choir but I think you know it it it's good that we have the consistency of the team here that you know this data
079and you know what you've been doing over time and I just really encourage you not to to reinvent the wheel but to really reinvent it where it needs to be clearly but also really dig into some of this stuff and try to unpack like that number I mentioned about the males feeling better connected why who are they what what are we doing that's making them feel that way like really peel the onion to some of these things because I do think that we've done done a lot of work and some of it's working and so we just have to kind of figure out why and who and how and and and try to figure that out for a more um expansive group of students so again I know you know this but I think it's
080really important to say out loud that we don't have to start over we do a lot of really good things here what are they who's being helped and how do we learn from them to help others so thank you um and then I would just add because I do have faith in us um the like I'm kind of shook um and I have looked at some of our report card data but somehow seeing it up on the screen um it's it like should be illegal um the conditions of our students and what I'm thinking about is yeah with our Scatter Plots and you you know we can see what schools where we do have students who are low income or students who are experiencing um homelessness or who are born into whatever race who are
081succeeding and to figure out um what's happening in those districts so that we can bring some of that back to ours because uh obviously um the conditions not just in our school but as you know to the point of our entire 202 and 65 are creating those um scores I mean it's just it's I it's kind of unbelievable and yet it's not because I'm not naive I know the country and the situation we're in but there are districts that are getting it right um for these different groups so I think we could learn I think we could visit what's that no I'm not I'm not disagreeing with you at all I just wonder um when you start start to look at some of the higher achieving districts with you know on the To the Left
082Right these are kids who are doing theoretically doing better than our kids I mean we can't look at Magnet but we can look at districts where it's yeah no I I totally agree with you I wasn't I wasn't at all going against what you were saying I'm just saying what are the conditions are there small numbers of African-American students in those districts are they magnet schools where they're Plumbing out kids you know and being very strategic about who they allow into their schools that's all I meant I I I hear you and you're right there are we are we don't know everything and we should look to our our colleagues there are regular old public schools in which that we have populations each one of those subpopulations achieving at a higher rate than ours yeah
083no I agree I agree and they're not magnet and they're not um well that's what we would look for right that's what we would that's the information we would gather would what are the schools like what are the what are the perers I um Peter I really appreciate you bringing up Sean weiron because I think about that se that session all the time that Evanston is probably one of the best places if not the best school districts for white students and you just showed us that that was true eight years ago and it's true now so that is pretty amazing and and the flip side to that is it's questionable for black students of course I mean you know and that's the I think that is the reality we're in because we are a very
084challenging Community I mean it you just look around the community and you can tell um that Evon is not everything for everyone that lives in Evon and of course they all meet here right so we're we're faced with that reality in our community um and so I think that is the challenge a big challenge that we have it is a heavily resourced community and yet and still like I think other book we read it's not Utopia for everyone right um especially for our students of color so again it's it's just a great opportunity for some big things to come big things some big things to come and we can't do it alone right right which is why go four is so important yeah yes and thank you for mentioning that definitely that is true do
085it alone all right any other comments or questions from board thank you for bringing this forth yeah this is really helpful thank you this is what we have to stay with Y all right back to my agenda okay the next item is the summit for courageous conversations um what I'll say is I think this is so consistent with the conversation we've been having so far um the sequence couldn't be better uh for us um so uh six of our seven board me members attended The Summit in Austin last week assistant superintendent and superintendent attendant um and I've asked if you I've asked you if you if you choose to to talk a little bit about your experience there I think I'll wait and um go last so who would like to start Leah okay um
086I've I've been to Summits before and for this Summit there were a few things that uh stuck out for me that I just was thinking about a lot afterwards and one was that we um had heard a speaker who is a psychology or Psychiatry professor at Harvard yes correct me um anyway um I think the point that there is um scientifically there's transgenerational um trauma that is real and that goes and that um people people deal with the point though against that that that ju opposed to that that there's also can be transgenerational healing was really powerful to me and that and the work that we do um to work for racial equity and equity in general that um we that hope is a big part of that and we have to know that you
087can you can work for healing and that that can have a profound effect and a generational effect um and the other thing I was going to say is um we did hear from the three black women who it was intergenerational and I thought uh gen z um Millennial gen Gen X and the idea the point that was made that that there can be great harm done in a day for instance you could have Row versus Wade turned over or voting rights something could be passed and um and you know with the passing of a law you know people don't have the same voting rights they did and yet sometimes uh there's a tendency from the older generations to say change takes time and that um why does the change for positive take time but the
088negative can happen just like that and that speaks to I brought up the word urgency before but that how important the work for Equity is and how urgent it is and how when the work that some of us who might be older um and more veterans in education are doing to remember that what we're doing and the decisions we're making the people who are going to have to live that are the youth and the Generation Z they're going to live based on our decision and the consequences of those so those were things that really stuck out to me at the conference at the summit thank you thank you Leah next Liz oh sure I have some thoughts um so um as Pat said um six board members and our top two administrators attended courageous conversations
089in Austin um We join 700 Educators from all over the country to sit in our discomfort and have conversations about race um together we built the emotional capacity to have difficult conversations in interracial spaces with the intention of not producing more racial harm in the process some of the classes available to us were things like teaching beautiful brilliant black students or working with whiteness allyship and decentering or healing racial habits of harm through mindfulness and it was just the kind of learning that I've been looking for courageous conversations is an institution that prioritizes the voices of bipo folks so I got to witness black and brown speakers poets authors singers Educators students and others shine while we were together for 5 days wow what a privilege as a white person to learn from that greatness
090I feel very humbled to have been among the interracial groups who share their fears loves hopes and vulnerabilities and yes their pain as well people were willing to bring their most authentic selves to the space so that we could all grow together I had the opportunity to be in beautiful interracial and intra racial spaces to listen and to learn from one another I took to heart the feedback that I heard from our bipo members about how a lack of vul vulnerability and a low affect often shows up in whiteness and I heard that and I felt it and I took it to heart these are the kinds of things that inform my Schoolboard work and my personal work the eths folks were able to present on our own Equity Journey so that others can learn
091from us confront their resistance and Achieve similar outcomes in their own spaces I went to Summit in a professional capacity to increase my own racial awareness so that I can better serve our bipo students here at eths but it quickly turned personal as the courageous conversations are meant to be I found myself thinking about my own black son as I listen to the joys and Sorrows of my fellow black and brown brothers and sisters and how I as a white parent can best honor my son his race his culture his family and his very essence I want him to be seen heard valued and I want him to belong and then of course I had to start thinking about our students at eths because I want the very same for every one of them because
092we are all interconnected and we all share our Humanity I just want to express my gratitude for having the opportunity to attend Summit and do this kind of work for our students and for the larger Community I look forward to it every year because it feels like a personal growth spurt for me time and again and I'm lucky to be a part of eths because we actually prioritized this racial Equity work um someone actually asked me at Summit if eths has receipts for the outcomes that resulted from our Equity work and I said we definitely have the receipts and I'm happy to tell you all about it thank you Liz anybody else um yeah right like I some every year is so amazing and um I love that my worlds come together um here and
093in my school other school district uh so the theme of we hold these truths um was fascinating and a challenge um and hearing from Kimberly kenshaw and then uh Dr Joseph and Dr AMC and could these truths be suppressible kind of kept coming up um and what we have to do to not suppress our truths um was in a sense a challenge um I think or an invite um and and so when Dr Joseph said there's a freedom Beyond emancipation that is to be taken not just given I kept thinking about like what are our students telling us that they want how is it that they're taking whatever it may be um that is evidence of us not giving them enough uh and I don't have the answer to that but I think about that
094in the data um there was another piece that uh was put out there in the sense of how we might work to co-construct or redefine what Student Success means and that's where that mattering came up for me over and over again so I want to look at you know College and Career Readiness and grades as those lagging um metrics or indicators but what are the conditions necessary and that's where um when Dr AMC talked about mattering that it just like blew my mind I was like that's it what does it feel like to be valued in our school so not just that you belong to a club or that you connect but that you actually matter um I would start asking kids in a classroom you know do you all know each other's names can
095the lesson go on without you what does it mean to be valued in a classroom do your thoughts um help move the lesson forward that's the work of the practitioner to make sure that students believe that their presence and their thinking actually matters to the curriculum um so I have all kinds of thoughts there and then I thought about mattering being the answer to the challenge of um we have yet to produce a moral language that says this oppression cannot happen wow like our language is insufficient to stop us from doing the oppressive acts that we do in our schools like what an amazing moment to think about so if we used language like mattering could that in a sense be a new architectural tool to help us build the conditions that are necessary to
096then stop the oppression in the end for me so much of this about Consciousness and not about numbers not about labels we have this many kids here that um I would love to to actually start talking more about staff and Consciousness because we're always putting our kids up and we wonder and we don't want to blame them but yet those are the numbers that we're always looking at so where could we kind of shift ourselves and last um I'm I'm always thinking about this Continuum so my my push is that um two things and this is kind of just me being I don't Know full of myself I guess but it's not necessarily both and it's and both so if you just listen to those words there's a little bit of a change there and
097we're moving from woke this idea of woke to alive and and so how do our kids how do our staff feel alive to me that's what mattering is and so that's kind of the the things that came up for me while I was at Summit um and what I wanted to share so thank you thank you Pat um well first I just I feel so lucky to be able to attend um Summit and I have before and I just um I'm grateful to Pat and Marcus and just prioritizing this work um among the board as well as our staff um and I think they're always great but for some reason this year just really had a very powerful impact on me um and I think it was the Beyond diversity three session that really kind
098of kicked it off for me but um I think that this deep and sustained Focus um to look inward regarding issues of race racism racial Equity is in extremely powerful and at Summit we engage in that deep reflection um and then we share it with others and then we look at how all of this internal and and personal really applies to the work of our school board and then the work we do here our personal and professional lives and so forth um I think that the sessions were you know there were all different kinds of sessions as others have pointed out that looked at the power and presence and impact of whiteness that look at how to manage conflict in the workplace or even for women of color and black women and white women to
099have conversations um and that really just on that personal level as you're doing this work you're really exploring um and clarifying your own purpose purpose and specifically your own um personal racial Equity purpose and as a white person I think this deep focus and work continues to be transformational and give me a really powerful lens to look through as I do the work on this board and really everything I do um the work we did at Summit gives you these tools and you continue even though I'm from very familiar with these tools I think you deepen your understanding of how to use these tools to support um the work we do including our newly adopted goals because if we are saying that we're an anti-racist organization um and that's one of our goals we really
100have to do that work in order to make it so to ensure that our students well-being and success is is attended to and that's applies to all of our students um I think these courageous conversation tools are very powerful um they support conversation that dig deeper into race and racism and equity and what all of these mean in our schools and in our community and in my experience um many white people in our community really do want to make progress in advancing true racial Equity but they don't know what that looks like or they don't and or they don't know how to engage in meaningful work and conversations to achieve it and I very much encourage um you know white people in our community to look to Comm uh courageous conversations for help in this
101there's books that Glenn Singleton has written and they're terrific and really um spell out a lot of the tools and a lot of the examples to help you understand those tools um Beyond diversity is offered in evinston all the time um and you know if you're able to do that to participate in that session and then use the tools that you learn um to have these hard but important conversations with with others in the community especially other white people because as a white person I'm incredibly grateful to my friends and colleagues of color who've supported my racial Equity Journey but we can't rely on people of color to both live the impact of racism and then constantly be teaching the white people all about it so I think as white people we need to do
102our own work and as a white person who cares deeply about our community Community particularly our young people and the community and the world that we're going to leave them um I'm really here to engage in those conversations and to support others who are willing and um interested in having courageous conversations so thank you this was as always an amazing experience and I appreciate being able to go thank you Pat Monique yeah so um I also think that the um experience with um Beyond diversity 3 set the tone for me um for the conference and I always um as a black woman I have to Center myself before I go to any race Summit or diversity training or meeting with a white woman or you know whatever it might be I I have to um
103be grounded you know I have to be grounded and and that's just the matter of a fact um so this conference for whatever this time and I've been going I've been going since I've been on the board um forced me to look Inward and to stay there um and so it required that I that I'm reminded of the purpose I'm reminded of how heavy and hard but necessary this work is um I'm reminded what burnout might look like um I'm I'm reminded that um there was one conference or one Workshop I went to called spiritual aspects of vulnerability but um Integrity in the conversation um in the protocol with yourself um and forgiveness just around maybe not the outcome being what it should or what you want it to be um um and the the
104the courageousness in having hard conversations so I really just did some deep thinking and everything every Workshop I was in it just seemed like they all fit together without me even knowing that they were going to fit together that way and I think it was just very important um for me during this time to be in that space because um I do want to give up I get tired of having these conversations you know I get tired of proving to people why it's important um that Race Matters you know I get tired of looking at the same data and not seeing the movement and feeling bad as a black woman that we have not progressed or our children have not progressed um I get tired of white people questioning if we're dumbing down our curriculum
105because you feel like we are or you have some issues with how we're teaching our children um our students um you know I I get tired of people saying that they live in Evon for diversity but you are still very deeply segregated in your thought and in your in the way you choose to live that's tiring and and so this was important because Above It All Above of all the mess that we as adults bring into this world our children are the result of our mess and they're suffering because we can't have these conversations and we're afraid to have them um or we think that something is being taken way or we we're just ignorant to the fact um that we all have to live on this Earth together so yes it it requires being
106centered it requires being grounded it requires picking ourselves up and saying okay we're going to go at this one more time um and we're going to keep showing up and that's what we're doing and and so I know for none of us the six that went that this was an easy conference to go to um I know that it was not comfortable um for any of us um but we stood in it and and for that we became closer um so it's so worth it because at the center of it all it's about our students um I said this and who knows I you know I may not run again and it you know whatever I said it the first time I ran and and I'll say it again that I absolutely needed the adults
107to vote for me in order for me to sit in this seat but the decisions I make are not for you they are for our students and that will always be the case and so I hope that with everything we say every breath we take everything that comes across our mind that we have all our students regardless if they live in your house or not as the center of focus when we're thinking about the decisions we make and the things that we say so if I'm here next year I'll go again and will probably still be tired but I will keep showing up um because I think Leah you said something about with the data you know it helps us determine what we're we're doing um this conference helps us determine how we get it
108done and um and yeah not just here but in life so I'll keep I'll keep pushing until I can't anymore but this is important for living beyond just um filling a seat so thank you and I have my protocol right there you go right here you stay in it keep it I stayed in it I almost cried I don't think that's one of them so it's the feeling quadrant so I I uh appreciate all of you and all of your Reflections and your words um I guess what I want to say about Summit if my voice holds up is that it cannot be replicated so as much as as this is important for our community to hear you have to experience it yourself um everyone engaged everyone working working and looking inside um and really
109trying to understand and listen to others uh thinking about their own districts sharing um talking about their organizations this is what it is it's not a conference it's not a goal and sit and get it's a goal to work to learn and to be transformed um that's really what the experience is um and BD Beyond diversity is important the protocol is golden but beyond diversity is not the end game Beyond diversity is the first step and then there's more and then there's more and more yet um so yes we try to sustain and and and stay engaged and deepen our work um but but there's more and um that more is what what it means to us it's important to me for school board members to go for a number of reasons because we as
110a board have stated and demonstrated our commitment to the equity work we sat here and listened to these reports tonight and we pulled from those reports exactly why we're doing this work it was as if it was scripted that these reports would be given on the night that we're talking about our experience at Summit um and that's important we recognize that first goal that's that's our goal and um and we said many times tonight why it's so important that that be the goal that we lead with um it's our responsibility to our students and to our community that's what we signed up for and um yes we we need that collective experience and and those Keynotes were really great and they always are um but so much of this is so personal and we can't
111do the institutional work until we do the personal work um so that's that keeps us there um and then of course as a district we have a story to tell so I appreciate all of you coming to help us tell that story in that session and no other District I believe in this country has taken this on the way we have taken it on and yet as you can see we still have so much work ahead of us so as much as we do we are imperfect this these numbers are humbling yet these numbers really strengthen my resolve as I believe it does for all of you so that's really important um we're going to keep telling our story because what I don't want is districts to think that we're so far ahead of them
112that they can't catch up or they can't do their work you know we're not telling districts you got to do it like us we are telling our story we're going to we're going to tell tell it again this weekend down and at the Hyatt we'll tell it again as much as we can we'll have other opportunities to tell our stories um and then finally one very exciting experience is that we received uh an award at Summit the grace Lee bogs um award and I'm G to just read a little bit um I I think a lot of people don't know who or didn't know who Grace Lee box was uh she spent her life advocating for civil rights and uh much of her work was out of Detroit I believe uh she was Chinese um
113they called her afro-chinese um she was a friend of Malcolm X's and and tried to convince him to run for Senate I I think I just love that story because I think you oh that would have been a great race um she wrote a number of books with her husband who was black um and together they became two of the city's most notable activists so to receive her award um it's called The Grace Lee box courageous conversation certification partnership award um and it's named after her because she is a fearless leader she is an Arthur um so so for eths this is an honor for us to receive this award um she approached her work with passion as do we um courage and a collaborative Spirit um great descript descriptors for us so here's the
114award um I'll try not to keep it to myself so that was my experience Marcus would you like to share more well thank you all of you who were for able to attend and I just feel um refreshed and honored and inspired as a superintendent to listen to um board members share this kind of uh commitment to racial equity and Monique you're right it's tiring it's hard you know and um but I think together hopefully together we can Garner strength from one another uh to continue to run the race um and be persistent and be relentless in our efforts um to not just sit in the seat as you said um but to be the better be better human beings and be better people uh to those of us who people who don't look like
115us right and so um I just want to say thank you um even for the discussion tonight I really appreciate um where everyone is coming from and um we will have more of a story to tell U because I really still believe in um eths and our commitment our work our staff and our students and I think we can continue to make more strides and um I being in the in the using the protocol and the tools I believe that in the conference so thank you right do you want T Ty yes thank you thank you um happy to join in with the Gratitude of having been able to attend and also to share publicly how many people once they heard that I was from Evanston and our board had already presented said wait I
116heard your board speak you had your board members and they all presented people were astounded at the commitment um that our board members represented and continue to represent and frankly sometimes I'm pretty astounded too by your Collective effort because you know it is tiring and as a white woman it's tiring for me and I can only imagine what it's like for everyone one on the journey including our staff of color our students of color our leaders and our board members so I just really want to say thank you and keeping it personal local and immediate for myself as well this journey has been our most powerful effort I believe at eths and I believe that we will make the shift but it's also together and one of our speakers our keynote speakers who I think
117several of us have referenced already but Dr Alicia Morland kapua was was really talking about that trauma but talking about organizational trauma in relation relation to racism and I know we've experienced that here and we can make that change but we have to persist and it's not with tenacity of doing the same thing over and over but that the only way we can heal and we mentioned this in Even in our communication last week the only way we can heal the organizational trauma is by doing it together cuz we can't do rugged individualism thank you again I just want to thank all who attended um and we'll just continue our effort our commitment Collective commitment um we heard tonight why it's important why it's so urgent to continue all right so I'm going to go
118forward in our agenda um the next item is comments from the public Dr bis do we have any comments from the public we have no comments from the public okay the next item is for us we have a few we do have a few we have six we have one from Dustin one from czy one from farell two from Yar Yari yarv and one from Rost the responses are in your packet okay thank you yes okay those those uh responses are in the packet you're right all right the next item board committee reports do we have any board committee reports think we've had any meetings coming up coming up okay all right okay now we're at the student board report Nicole all right hi everyone it's uh been a month like it usually has um
119since the last time I've seen you all November 1st has passed so um a lot of the stress in the air has kind of cleared at least for the seniors um around college and post High School planning um so we have recently so October 30th um that was last Monday right yeah last Monday oh a week ago um we had our student voice forum and um so that was where almost or around a quarter of the students at eths have um came through to the hub which is like kind of like a community space um and throughout the day of eight period since it was a wild kit Monday um they were able to talk to each other and to uh Dr camel Dr Kinsey and some of the other administrators who were there um
120and Dr bavis as well um about some of the things that they're seeing at our school um so some of the main things have been um concerning G gender neutral bathrooms um number of social workers we have here um affordable lunch plans um SL options and then also like that sense of belonging um in school and also in um advanced placement classrooms and honors classes things of um that nature so in the Su Union we have gone through kind of all this data um it's the data is kind of like casual looking it's on um pieces of butcher paper so at each of the tables we have this big piece of paper so it's kind of like everyone sitting in a circle together talking um and then writing things down so it's not like um
121it's not like any type of interrogation or anything or interview or no one's like on edge it's just people talking to other people um so another issue that has stood up from stood out from the form data and also just kind of what I've heard um around word of By Word of Mouth has been um conversations about school conflicts so usually like in these conversations um things that have been brought up have been like restorative practices and restorative justice and um mostly just like moving from that punitive approach that's so like traditional to more relationship based ones um again this can connect back to what we were talking about earlier with that sense of belonging um whether that be self-reported or um particip ation base especially for our black and brown students and um other
122students of color um let's see I have a lot of things for us today um anyway oh also another thing in the hub um we have had lots of different fairs and events so um like Aviation career day that was mentioned earlier and um the military visit day which was actually today um there's been a lot of opportunities for students to find out about post High School planning and um also college visits are like weekly so we have a good variety um let's see okay and then um back to the student voice Forum I've kind of jumped around a lot but the Student Union has um been looking at this data and on the pieces of butcher paper we've gone through um a lot of responses um we're kind of like 7 5% of the
123way there um So within the next week or so and after fall break we're um we're going to be ready to start reaching out to some of the administrators and Community stakeholders at eths and then um one more thing so student union and other student organizations like Sor which is students organized Against Racism have been working with um adults teachers um other people staff in the in the building about um planning a anti-racist workshop which is dedicated to making eths a more Equitable space for students of color and so some of the topics of discussion um that have been planned include racism in Evon um unconscious racism and white privilege and white feminism so these workshops are going to be um or they are centering the invitation of white students students um to continue to
124disrupt White Privilege at eths which was kind of relating to um our long conversation from earlier um I just like to say one more thing which is uh recently I've been reflecting a lot and it's um it's very easy to hide um behind like our veil of diversity here at eths just because um everyone from all nine Wards and Evon all come here for high school um and so I really appreciate that all the work that's going on behind the scenes um and I know that a lot of the students that go here also appreciate that work and um yeah that's all I have thanks thank you thank you Nicole all right Dr Campbell U thank you Nicole and um I just want to take a moment to uh mentioned that Dr Kenzie and I
125shared information with the community last week about our upcoming listening spaces um I'll briefly highlight the message tonight uh to be transparent about our efforts uh for more than a month our school Community has been shaken by the violence of a global crisis and we've heard from students parents staff community members who are Palestinian Israeli Jewish Muslim and Arab um they have shared their fear their frustration their pain their anger and their suffering and over the years we've learned that if we are expect to have a safe eths an eths that learns and grows um one thing we must do is listen listening is an act of respect compassion uh and it's our how we honor our humanity and the humanity of others and so therefore our next step is to create different listening spaces
126at eths to hear and understand the pain and the potential for hope that we carry in our school during such a difficult time and there will be staff listening spaces and student listening spaces for people who have similar experiences to connect with each other and have meaningful conversation about the dehumanizing narratives that have impacted their group and uh students and chaff staff can check their email for more details and as as I've said before that eths is a beautiful place and we cannot build community and can't Foster hope in the crisis in isolation the best way to we do that um is to do it together so these listening spaces will offer offer us an opportunity uh where we will grow and we will learn and um the so that the impacted communities can be
127heard um while navigating so much pain um so um stay tuned for more of that information and finally I want to wrap up with some some happy news that we recently recognized three eths support staff members who were celebrated in October for all that they do for our wild kits day in and day out like the behind the scenes stuff that Nicole was just talking about uh Caitlyn McGee Williams Valerie boner and Mercedes Fernandez are the 20232 24 repes recipients of the Gilbo Arsenal Spirit award congratulations to those three so and that concludes my report thank you and congratulations to those three nice okay so the next item is our public hearing I am now officially convening the the 2023 tax Livy uh public hearing this public hearing is being held due to the district's
128intent to adopt and aggregate Levy 6.8% in excess of the 2022 Levy Miss Williams did you publish notice of this hearing yes madame president uh that was published on November 2nd 2023 great the proposed Levy will provide funds to support the usual expenses of Evon Township High School an amount in excess of 6.8% overall increase is to be levied to ensure that our extension base increases by the tax cap of 5% plus any new property yes anyone wishing to present testimony may do so at this time Miss Williams do you have any comments I do I'm actually going to go through a brief presentation and then afterwards if there are any questions I can take those from the board so just going to go over this is our 2023 tax levy hearing so this is
129the timeline of um what happens in the process as I mentioned before on November 2nd we uh did the uh publication for the truth and Taxation legal notice in the newspaper and then tonight we're having the public hearing and on December 11th at our next board meeting that's when we the board would act on adopting the tax levy and then we have until the final Tuesday of the month or year really uh to file with the Cook County clerk's office so that date is December 26th so prior to that between the board meeting on December 11th and December 26th I'll make my way to get that filed with the Cook County Clerk so just a few terms um just to make sure that we're on the same page as we go through the presentation um
130and so of course we're familiar with some of these like CPI which is Consumer Price Index uh that's measured from December to December uh eav is the equalized assess valuation um and so that's the total assess value of property in the district and then uh the first two I wanted I just always like to make the distinction that the property tax is what we request however the extension is what we receive and so um when we get into the present a little further into the presentation we start talking about the balloon Levy and what we're requesting we recognize that that will be different from what we actually receive for the extension and then also the extension comes into play because that's how we build the tax levy uh each year it's based off of what
131was extended in the prior year so oh look at that so property tax so uh based on prior your amount of tax is extended so what you do is you take the extension and then you're able to increase that extension by uh the prior CPI or 5% whichever is the smaller of the two so if CPI is 7.5% then you're capped at uh 5% uh sorry then you're capped at 5% however if CPI is 2.4% then 2 .4% is what you have to work with for that Levy so uh this year we actually so the budget when we're doing the budget because our fiscal year goes from July to June thir July 1st through June 30th but tax years go from January 1st to December 31st we're always uh having a blend of Levy rates
132however uh this these last couple of years we we've been at the max as far as what we can Levy so we're working with a blend of 5% on both so really it's just the 5% easy math right now but what's more common you know we'll see in previous years where it's like 1.9% and 2.3% and then you're working with a blend of two years or 0.7 and 1.4 something like that I actually have a slide that kind of shows what it's been over the last 10 years so stay tuned and so um this just uh at the bottom here just brings up that we get the installments in the spring and the fall unfortunately this year uh the tax bills that usually we would be getting that Revenue in August we they're due December
1331st and so there was a delay this year as well and when we were able to receive um the fall installment but thankfully uh we were able to rely on our fund balance to get us through that period of time where we would have typically had um um the taxes received by now oh here it is so this just shows uh in previous years the levy amounts the levy percentages that we were working with the CPI history for pel and you can see that typically you know we're working with a average of let's say 1.7 or so over 10 the last 10 years but then in these last two years 5% and 5% so just really kind of like an precedented if you were to look at the CPI history for the last 30 years
134never have we seen 5% twice so and then for oh so I did mention earlier the balloon tax levy so um this year when we're you know for the published Levy it's an increase of 6.8% however we as I mentioned before we can only really Lev for five we can only we would only be extended 5% plus any new property or if there was like a tiff rolling off then that might get us above the 5% so in order to capture that what what you do is you do a balloon Levy and so that's when a district uh request a levy rate that's higher than uh whatever CPI may be to make sure that whatever New Growth there is um or any unknown eav if there's just a couple of factors that might be unknown
135at the time and it's a way to make sure that you're capturing um everything that you're able to in order to sustain the operations of the district and so I just like to harp on this just a little bit more because I I always want to make sure that people know legally we're we're only going to get what what we're able to legally right and so even if that number was 20% that's not what's coming and I don't want anybody you know at home to be thinking like oh my goodness it's going to be going up by you know an amount that it really is is but it like I said it's just a way to make sure that we're able to um get the funds needed to keep our operations going and then this
136just shows uh the levy amounts by fund by our different funds just to get a little snapshot there of course the education fund is our largest fund uh it's very similar actually to how our budget is set up right where the education fund is the largest and then we have these other smaller funds uh that might be used for specific purposes such as um the imrf and Social Security which is our fund 50 or operations and maintenance which is our fund 20 and then I put Debt Service to the bottom because Debt Service is actually computed a little differently from the other um funds there when it comes to Debt Service the clerk's office will determine how much we need to cover um our debt issuances and then that is what we'll receive and and
137so it's just done a little bit differently and then of course just to bring it on home because this is uh you know an important piece right how does it affect like an individual homeowner in Evanston and so on a single family home valued at 400,000 uh we have here that that we're talking about approximately $132 on a tax bill that might be nearly 9,000 wow and then and also just want to take a moment to talk about uh tiffs so I briefly uh mentioned before that that's one of the things that can also affect what the what we're bringing in when it comes to the tax levy um so tips are a tool that are that's used in Evon we have five of them actually five active tiffs and what will happen is that
138the eav for an area will be Frozen um and so we're not really getting the revenue for any growth that may be happening in that area for a period of time and that's usually 23 years unless the tip is extended and so we have five tips in Evanston the next one is going to be closing in 2026 um and the last one that closed was the Washington National Tiff which was that was in 2018 and so uh each year we there's a joint review board that's required and we'll be meeting on November 30th to just go over the five the five active tiffs and how they're performing and that's with the City of Evanston District 65 we meet with them as well any questions or comments could you maybe just share with us at some
139point um a schedule of the tiffs and their expiration dates yeah that would just it's been a while since I've heard what the tips are and it would just be nice for us to have it I could send that information I don't know if I said but uh yeah you said the one in you said the next one is the one in 2026 yeah so that's the Howard and ridge Tiff okay and then the furthest one out is 2044 and that's the 5 fifths Tiff the one that just happened it just started in 2021 okay okay you want me to go down the list cuz you know I know stop I'm sorry who believe that one for you to deal with I will send that information out for you guys yeah cuz we won't remember
140even if you you do it we won't remember and we'd ask you to put it in writing in other questions Bard you always explain things so clearly oh well thank you I'm glad cuz sometimes there's a lot going on in here so I'm glad that it's coming out in a way that's clear for me at least for me I find it all right well thank you oh I have another f um is there any further testimony hearing no further testimony I now declare this hearing closed thank you thank you all right okay the next item on our agenda is it our items for Action the next few um the first item is authorization of superintendent to issue a no trespass letter to individual in accordance with ICS 2424 of the Illinois school C code and
141board policy 830 visitors to a and con conduct on school property can I have a motion please I move that the Board of Education authorize the superintendent to issue a no trespass letter in substantially the form presented to the board to the individual named in the letter in accordance with Section 2424 of the Illinois school code and board policy 8:30 can I have a second second roll call please yes yes yes yes yes yes yes thank you the next item is acceptance of Illinois school report card can I have a motion please so moved second V call please yes yes yes yes yes yes yes the next item is the consent agenda which includes approval of minutes from October 9th 2023 regular meeting and closed session approval of bills Treasurer report from August 2023 and
142Personnel report I can't vote on Personnel oh um I'm going to hold off on the Personnel report and just to the first three um so approval of minutes approval of bills and treasures report from August of 2023 so moved second roll call please yes yes yes yes yes yes yes okay for personnel report could I have a motion please so moved second R call please up yes yes yes yes yes yes it's okay I didn't hear my name but I'm not hearing well tonight so okay um is there any old or new business that someone wants to share okay if not can I have a motion to adjourn so move I move you aurn all in favor I oppose this meeting is adjourned and it's before 10 o'