001Good evening everybody. Welcome to the March 13, 2023 board of education meeting. Can we have a roll call, please? Here, here thank you. First item on the agenda is written communication. Dr. Davis, do we have any written communication? Uh, yes. We received written communication from Patrick Keenan Develin from the Moran Center and it was distributed via email to all board members. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So, we're going to move um the first amendment to intergovernmental agreement for reciprocity reporting and school resource officer. We're going to move that up. Uh so we're going to do it first first right now. All right. Thank you. So that means that means that uh Officer Lorie Spells and um we're going to have a take take a seat at the table. Um is the chief on
002their way back in the door? Okay, here they are. And uh police chief Shannita Stewart right here. Right here right on que. And Grace Carmichael. Grace, are you sitting at the table as well? Yes. Okay, great. Um so we're very um thank you for being here tonight and we move you on a just so that we can accommodate you first of this conversation. Um so that the board knows um we um have been in conversation uh with the chief um just trying to engage in a discussion around emergency preparedness and um we realized something that ETHS is uh we have 1.3 million square feet of space. We are the largest high school under one roof in the country. 64 acres. And should there be a an event at the school um that um the police
003would need to address, they need eyes into the school. Um anyone coming into this building to um address a threat um with 1.3 million square ft of space would be a huge at a at a huge disadvantage if they could not see um what was going on. And so just a few weeks ago, the uh city council passed an intergovernmental agreement where uh we would provide uh access to our cameras in the event of an emergency. Um what we what I decided to do was to ask the city and the chief to narrow that language to be uh to define what an emergency actually is so that um you know we're not just turning cameras on. And I think that the chief and our uh our officers uh agreed with that. And so we have
004some draft language in your packet uh that um uh we want you to look at tonight uh with the hopes of at the April meeting having the final language that you can um um be that you can read and uh um be satisfied with. But while they're here, uh this is also an opportunity to um to ask questions about our SRO program if you have them as also to um have if there are any questions that you have about community policing. uh that the chief can address. And um so with that being said, Chief Stewart, did you want to just give a little bit of context for our conversation and and where we landed with the IGA and then we can just take some questions? Yeah. So, first of all, thank you, Superintendent Campbell for
005actually sitting down at the table. Uh one of the things and I'll have Detective Spells point it out is this is just another tool. Um, we're looking at uh in in the ongoing conversations that myself and the superintendent have had is uh just to be cautious of how we possibly institutionalize our kids by not setting up the proper safety measures. So, this was something in conversation we came up to came up with. Um, after some further talks, we thought that the language might have been too wide of an emergency base. So, we wanted to kind of uh narrow that down and then give a board an opportunity to to come back and if we have to tweak it again, you know, we have that working together with the part partnership. Um, I'm going to have
006Detective Spells kind of touch on some of the other things we've been discussing since he is the SRO here at the school, him and Grace and and further conversations that we've had. Thank you. Uh, it's truly a joy to actually see all of you and be with you this evening. Only took six years for me to actually get to this table. My office is just behind us here. Uh if I may, uh I would like to share a couple points that I I believe will provide some some context and foundation as to why this is so necessary today. Uh there were more of the school shootings in 2022, just last year, 46 total, than any year since Coline. We had multiple gun incidents and several gun and bomb threats within the last year in which
007I personally was involved with. So this national problem became a very local and real problem every single day that I walk through these school doors and hallways. 4.6 million American children live in a home where at least one gun is kept loaded and and unlocked. 68% of improperly stored weapons have contributed to school shootings. So EPD has responded to that in many ways. One of which uh is safe storage of firearms which prevents tragedies. Just last month, the city of Evston partnered with Mom's Demand Action for a free gun lock program to residents. Uh we also host a a a number of gun buyback programs on an annual basis. This past December, EPD partnered with uh Eve Community Foundation in Mount Zion Baptist Church for the most recent buy uh buyback program, which resulted in
008over 54 firearms, 44 BB guns, and over 53 individual uh individuals turning in ammo and ammunition. Is that enough? It's not because in four out of five school shootings, at least one other person had knowledge of the attacker's plan be but failed to report it. So giving some avenue, some mechanism for students and young people to report or anyone for that matter to report uh some information that they know. If we are going to truly challenge individuals, if you see something, say something. We have to give uh avenues and ways that they uh can do that. uh Evston police and ETHs uh host individual anonymous text to tips uh mechanisms and they do work very effectively and I know personally I've respond to them uh even this school year multiple times. Is that enough? 75%
009of school shootings were posted on social media before the incident actually occurred. So having intelligence officers and partnering with our local law enforcement agencies from the state police and federal agencies who are monitoring and collecting this information and reporting it back to us uh in real time is really important. But we found that that's not enough. In 45% of school shootings, the weapon in question was shown between two to 30 minutes before the incident. So imagine if the police is alerted within that window of time or before. How many lives can be saved throughout this country? How many tragedies could be prevented? Time is the issue. According to the FBI, every 7 seconds a person involved in a critical incident or active shooter or mass casualty incident is being shot. Every seven seconds. If we
010can interrupt that time and respond accordingly and appropriately, we can change things. And it is my great hope that that never ever occurs in our wonderful school and in these halls. But we must be prepared for that. My partner and I are the only school resource officers in this building of 65 acres plus. But keep in mind, it's three campuses as well. We respond to the day school and the transition house. Time is not always on our side. So what what whatever tool that can be provided to us to help us meet the needs of the students and the staff would be a great advantage. Thank you. And just for context board, we have uh uh over 500 cameras and close to 600 lenses. Um, so we're talking about a lot of coverage as far
011as eyes um for our on our campus. All right. Thank you. Thank you for that. And uh boy, you've had an opportunity to take a look at this and um I think it's really important to think about um the the massive space that we have here. Um so we are really just I I appreciate you saying it's a tool, another tool. Um it's it's hard to think about anything that will be will for sure guarantee um that this won't happen with like you loy too am hoping we never get here and that we never have to use this that we never have this level of an emergency. This is what I of course hope for, but we still have to be prepared. Um, so, um, board, any questions? Anybody? Gretchen. Um, just one question, not
012necessarily directed to you. Hi, Officer Spouse. Nice to see you. Great to see you as well. Um, first of all, ju thank you for coming and welcome, Chief. Um, we haven't met either and I really appreciate you all being here tonight. I really appreciate our two SRO's. Um, I like having you here and I appreciate the work you do. Um, and I I think it's important to acknowledge at least and we haven't met, but I do know Officer Spells and I know he's deeply embedded in our community and has been for a really long time. Um, and it's it's just always good to see you. But I had a specific question related to this agreement. Um the Moran Center sent us a note and and they had some comments on the agreement. Um and I
013think actually um some of their comments are already incorporated in here. Um, and I think one perhaps not to the satisfaction of the Moran Center and that relates to school student records, but I think we've articulated in section one, paragraph G, um, how we're dealing with this footage as it relates to the student records um, legalities. Um, and I think that's probably appropriate. I defer to our legal counsel and our police department on that. Um the one point that gets raised in the Moran Center letter that um I think is sort of out perhaps outside the scope of this agreement is uh their suggestion that the board there be a mechanism to keep the board informed. Um so less of a question for you, more of a question for Dr. Campbell. Um I I hope
014that we could agree on some sort of protocol for keeping the board informed on the use of this footage. Yes. And I'm just seeking your input there. Yes. Thank you for the opportunity to do that. Um and there will be a mechanism for keeping the board informed as we would do in any crisis. Um how we do that depending on the nature of the crisis, we would have to work out. Um but um because we're on a lockdown or something like that, we would just need to um establish a procedure uh in a c well if we're in a crisis like that to keep the board. And I would prefer that you deal with the crisis first and inform us afterwards. Of course, and and you know, frankly, I'll just I'll just toss out there
015that Yes, exactly. I hear Mon'nique making my point for me that I think it's important that our community also understand um in this age of sort of um being able to see everything instantly online um and and this demand for transparency. I I completely appreciate a demand for transparency. That doesn't mean that you're going to get the information at the same time as those who are trying to actually deal with the crisis get the information. Um, and I think there needs to be a better appreciation of that within our our community. I'm not saying everybody. It just it it seems to pop up. Yeah. that people don't understand if they haven't received that that instantaneous notification, they're somehow being cut out of the process. You know, I I mean, I'm frankly amazed at the um
016rapidity at which both ETHS and our police department gets information out. Um and I'm very appreciative of it. Well, thank you. Yes. And we will certainly have a procedure in place for that. And that was something we discussed when uh me and the superintendent had breakout sessions with safety and how quick we can get that information out, but how quick as law enforcement we are dealing with a threat. Um and and so we are trying to explain that not only to the public but to staff here. Yes. And once just so we're clear, once this building is placed um in a in a crisis situation, we turn the district over to the police, right? who would be making those those the decisions and uh we'll be at uh the chief's or her design um um
017command um because that's what happens once we get the police involved it becomes a police matter and certainly in the state in a in a in a in a crisis situations I'm not running the district uh but we we're at the under the um um authority of the police department who will be trying to be sure that everybody uh is safe and I I know that um having two SRO's who are a part of our district it is also to our advantage. I understand is it 64 acres or 65? Never mind. I'm only kidding. Never mind. Never mind. Don't answer. Don't answer. So, I understand the the the acreage and the um trying to get to all of our sites. I get that. Um but we still it's still helpful to have a couple of
018people who really understand us, who know who know us and know how we work and know our students and where things are here. So, that's really helpful. And I know that that that's uh folks have different opinions about SRO's in schools and and those are conversations that we've touched on over the last few months, years. Um I guess I'm I have been thinking about it a lot. Uh much of what I've read doesn't seem to apply to us. I think we've done a really good job at integrating uh you into our school and into our district and we will continue to do that. your relationship with the administration with with our staff is is really important to us. And I would think that in an emergency that could only work to our advantage. I I
019believe that too. And I believe um me coming in as chief, I wanted to evaluate if I had the right people. Not putting them on the spot, but as a chief, that's what what you have to do. and and I spent a lot of time here at the high school engaged with the students and and even um during Black History Month, I was interviewing kids and saying, "Do I have the right people here? Do you feel comfortable talking to them?" Because I think that's important, too. Um and that's why I wanted them here, too, to be explaining this with me because, you know, they're part of this school community and they have buy in to what goes on here in in in the school. Yeah. So, thank you for pointing that out. So speaking of
020that [Music] um we've actually been having this discuss discussion for a couple of years right I mean if we think about what um prompted SRO's in the school or police in the school or what have you the whole George Floyd phenomenon and how um communities of color were perceiving police officers and the relationships. Now, I see an obvious change immediately already. Um, but I I want to ask you, how has that relationship evolved here at ETHS between our SRO's and our students? Because I can I can see one right away. I know this is not your night outfit. He always looks this good. Both of them, but they sharp right now. I know them both. Then they come suited. you know who they are and what they represent. I don't see that it it there's
021been a difference in how you're presenting yourself and you're not just doing it for the board. No, that that's on purpose. Um and I'm going to have him talk more about it because actually I think it's just a matter of administration listening to our staff. You know, I I think for several years um it was bought up to change how the officers dressed when they came to the school to be approachable. And it was actually early on, I think we I was doing my internal survey. Um, got a one-on-one with uh, Detective Spells and he had a long list, longer than agreement of things he wanted to go over with me. And then the dress code was one of them along with other initiatives that he was working on and and so I want to
022give credit where credit is due. So, please let them know everything that you wanted to do to make this a smooth transition and to be acceptable for our students here. Absolutely. I I will say that the school resource officers program uh began in Flint, Michigan uh in 1958, I believe. It's a community policing effort uh to build strong relationships between the law enforcement community and young people that holds true to this very day. Uh and although SRO's do, in my humble opinion, do great work throughout this country uh every single day, um I feel there's something really unique and special about how we do it. Um, can I say that in all humility? Uh, one of those things is we we should be the difference. If we say that we are different and we're unique,
023uh, we should do more outside of the box things uh, and innovative and creative things. One of which is something as as simple as our wardrobe. Um, how do how do we not to present it as though it's a costume, but how for many students that's how they view it. Uh, and I pose a question oftent times to our our students. Um, and show of hands. How many of you have had someone that dislike you who don't really know you, but they dislike you because someone that actually does know you dislike you? And so they dislike you because someone else they know. And many raised their hand. And unfortunately, I believe we fall victim to that many times simply because of the uniform we wear. and we're likened to um someone that harmed them or
024harmed a family member. We want to be seen in our individuality uh as well as individuals and not just simply individuals but those who are part of this community uh one of many that are here to help them um and form them to be you know better citizens uh once they leave this institution. Uh so uh Monday through Thursday we are uh in business or semi- business business attire and on Friday we are in school spirit. So you will see us uh in ETHS paraphernalia and gym shoes and jeans and we are part of this community and not um sort of a foreign party. I have amassed quite the collection of t-shirts Fridays, you know, and I I appreciate that because um it it is hard. I mean, as a as a black woman, it
025I'm conflicted, right? Because I know like I know Lois, I know you. We have a a excellent relationship. So, as as a person, I know you and I know how much you care about our community and our kids. Um, and and yet and still as a board member, um, I'm also responsible for the well-being of our students. And so, that's a conflict. And of course, I think we have the best, um, you know, SRO's that we could possibly have. And, and Chief, I know you've been in and out of this community. um buildings, schools, nonprofits, just meeting people and and trying to just, you know, establish that that presence in the community of what true community policing looks like. Um and and so I appreciate that. Um we have a duty to keep our students
026and our teachers safe, right? That's our responsibility. and and also to make sure that we're not creating more harm to our students. So, you know, I'm that's where I am. I'm in the middle. It's it's a fine line. Yeah. And I always respect you for being honest, you know, that it is a fine line, you know, and I think that's why we're here to answer questions cuz people have questions, you know. So, but I I appreciate both all of you know that first and foremost. Definitely. And I thank God you are who you are at ETHS because it could be totally different. Um and we can have different individuals that don't care about our children. So I appreciate that and that is the fear that I mean you know you're not going to be here
027forever. So the fear is um you know the what if what if and and I think that um you know Evston's not perfect. We we we have our challenges as as a community. This is one thing that I believe we've done well at ETHS. This is one thing that we've done well at ETHS. Um, and I and I believe we're committed because we've seen this model, then I believe that if we should need to replace either one of you that we would look to be consistent with this model. I believe that I'm glad you said that because um the current IGA does state that if we are uncomfortable or dissatisfied with the uh officers uh who are in those roles uh we can request a change and I understand the board member uh read something
028from Patrick from the man said I have a great working relationship with Patrick and I believe he's he's got a point too right you know this one day this can change right so we do have to have an out and any agreement and and and when we are caring for this community and and the kids in the school. So, if I can add, you know, we've had 13 SRO's here since the 1970s. That's a pretty good track record. 13 in almost, you know, 50 some odd years. Yeah. Um Yeah. And there's a pattern. Um and it it didn't happen by coincidence or happen stance that we have these patterns. Um it is my hope that we will continue because we've created the pattern to follow. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Thank you. Big shoes to fill,
029shall we say. That's true. That's true. Yeah. I don't know if they've been as good as you have, though. That's not pushing money. He is the good. He They are both. But they are. We are very lucky. I am I am very like I said when I sat down with some of the students um they are very approachable and and that's coming from like I said uh when I was here and I was almost doing interviews but I posed I said I want just you to be honest how are the school resource officers and do I have the right ones here and they were like actually yeah and they wanted to talk about just that they are approachable and that and that's rare it is hearing from our students is really important and taking the
030time to listen to their perspective is really important. I'm going to add um watching our students as well because you can see our students engaging um with our SRO's in the hallway randomly. They push into classrooms in structured ways but we also see just positive relationships in you know random engagement. So want to thank you as well Nicole and then Mirror. Hi can you hear me? Okay. Hi, I'm Nicole. Um, I'm the student rep. So, like I rep the students. Um, so I just had like a quick question. Um, so a lot of students um see you all as resource officers and it's like it's really positive and um a lot of their relationships with you are positive. Um but in some conversations I've heard that there are students who feel like the space is
031like their learning space in school is kind of disrupted by having a um school resource officer in the building. Um I'm just curious to um know what do you have like trainings or um different like strategies for making your impact at school a more like positive um thing. like uh you brought up the attire and um how you present yourself, but are there other formal things that you do? I'm gonna have them go into that, but I just and I know Mooney kind of brought it up. What's unique is the restorative justice background he has. I I don't think we've talked about that. So, in addition to the policing and the training as a school resource officer, Spells out actually has a restorative justice background. I think comes into play here um that a lot
032of people don't, but I'll let you both answer that question. Uh I speak from the heart. Um it's about um being personable and uh acknowledging some things. One of which as I grew up in an era where the police weren't in my school. Um uh and when I actually did see them in uniform, I felt what many students perhaps feel today. Um, so I acknowledge that upfront and do the opposite. So I want to show up in places where um it's not an emergency. I want you to see me outside the cafeteria. I want you to see me at the basketball game. In fact, I want you to see me at the away basketball game. Yeah. Right. I want you to to feel and see that I care about them and about the individuals in
033this building and in this space and that this is more than just a job that I come to and just punch a clock. But this is a service, a commitment, a lifelong commitment. In fact, I've been an officer half of my entire life. This is what uh I was born to do in many ways. Um so it's it's important that we also meet students where they are. And so if they're not at a place that they're receptive to what we're offering that we give room for that too. Um but also extend the olive branch that if they ever want to connect with us they can. We're in North 116. We have UNO cards and a chessboard. Come and connect with us when you want. I'm refilling the candy bucket tomorrow and chocolate. Free chocolate. Always
034free chocolate. Well, thank you for answering that question. My follow-up question was related to restorative justice. So, um, that was great. Thank you so much for all that you do. Thank you. Um, hello. Good evening. I, um, have had interactions with Officer Carmichael. You probably don't remember me, but just, you know, like in the parking lot at Trader Joe's. I wasn't taking anything. They were positive. Um, you were helping us. Um, I think there was a some dance or party we've stood and talked. And so um I appreciate all of your work. Um and I and I also feel that conflict that u Monnique mentioned, but also you know there's this negative association and um and yet you know as educators we do a lot of harm too and this can be a harmful thing.
035Not to equate it to guns but we get off kind of easy sometimes. And so I I want to also just um acknowledge the stereotype that can be out there um about police officers. So there's when you were talking about tools, right? And I think the um idea of time as a resource and a tool is so important and I thank you for bringing that up and I don't think we always understand how much time can be lost in communication between getting to the school and knowing the school. And so one of the things I'm thinking about is a lot of the disruption that occurred when as you said we have to turn we've decided to turn the school over if there should be an emergency with the ways in which then the police come
036in. Um and so I'm thinking about things you probably already do. You're going to laugh at me like yeah we do that every time. But um how familiar outside officers are with the school um and thinking about how to help increase that familiarity. Um, and then just the training around and again I know I'm using a school mental model and I have to acknowledge that there's a crisis going on and not everybody can be quiet and nice but there is a elevated behavior that I've seen when police enter a space and things are at a high time you know at a very intense um stress level that then elevates all the cortisol in all of our kids and takes takes it to a really high level. And so I'm just thinking about how we walk
037kids out of spaces um often called like a perp walk or how we invade and come how the police come in and take over. Could there be a deescalated way of doing that um so that we don't have, you know, the calls from our kids when they're terrified because they're watching their peers get pulled out in ways that seem extra aggressive. Again, I'm using my, you know, I'm using my non-p police mental model. So, that's that that's okay. So, one of the things we didn't mention with time for me is isolating the threat and where that threat at threat is in a school this size. So, when we do come in, it's going to be lockdown, right? But there there could be times to evacuate students and staff. But that's why I think it's so
038important to be able to see and know and describe where that threat is. That's going to be a frantic situation with people fleeing, people running. And I think that camera access gives us the ability to say, "Okay, this is a description. This is who we're looking at." First people to get that information is going to be the two right now here prior to us entering or or or um um assistance from outside agencies. but to say, you know, it uh orange hallway, second floor, isolate that threat right there, and now we can have others that we can uh assign to either evacuate or lock down or secure the other parts of this building. So, I know I'm talking about time, but for me, too, it's it's such a huge school. You I know now it's
039they get much more time to get to class. I had like three minutes, you know, I had to run, but it is huge. And when you're looking for a threat that you don't know and it's just being described to you, I would like for as a chief to have a dispatcher that can see that threat, describe that threat and isolate where that threat is and not an accident or be at the wrong location in the school looking for that threat. So just just something I think about when I'm thinking about time. I don't know if you two had anything else to add to that. I think I want to say that like when we're doing, you know, when we the masses come, we're trying to get to, you know, whatever resolution we need to get
040to as quickly as possible so we can get up out of here cuz that's like our major goal. Make sure everybody's safe. Make sure we get whoever that needs to go out to be out. Um, sometimes it's, you know, it's it's it's it's not pretty. And I will say that our guys do understand they're coming to a space with a bunch of kids and they dial it back. Yeah. So, you know, but it's because, you know, we're in a contained space. there are children and children see you know things that you know they don't need to what's the word I'm looking for they're have you know they're having a hard time rationalizing what they're seeing and so you know everybody's kind of hyper aware of that and we just try to get things done as
041quickly neatly as possible you know yes there's going to be some you know sometimes someone's struggling with us trying to come up out of here we gota like touch them, hold them, walk them up to the car, you know, but we try we do try our hardest to make sure that, you know, everyone is is is mindful of what's going on around. And I want to keep my 3,700 little best friends safe. And I think that shows, right, we unfortunately we did have a couple situations I thought were handled professionally because of the staff we have here and and how that went down with unfortunately weapons in in the school. Mhm. If I can add, we're we're very conscientious of reinjury, right? Uh even a minor that has made a mistake, who've done some wrongdoing
042or caused some harm. Um how are we contributing to um sort of the hardship or how are we being constructive in building them beyond that point? Um so restorative justice work or restorative work is typically seen in post but it can be preventive as well. You can do work in advance towards uh helping and healing. Uh so working with the staff here it it's easy uh because we're aware of the peripheral impact of experiences. So, we might have a student in this particular space where we're going to try to clear an entire hallway so no one is seeing that. We might in fact find a different way to get out of the building to escort them out. One, so no one else can see it or impacted by that, but also that person is not
043viewed and then targeted for days and weeks to come. What did they do? Sure. Um, and so that that is work that we all do in a collaborative way. Um, I think we do a really good job at it. I'm just going to add one more quick question. um how do you think is the best way to approach um having or equipping more safety officers and officers in general with like the techniques of restorative justice and like like you mentioned like preventative um strategies? How how do we go about doing that? What is the best way? Yes. Uh I think R.J. is uh one of many tools on the tool belt of resolution, conflict resolution. uh and in his work the interesting thing if we look through the sort of the indigenous roots of it
044um one foundational piece of this is that it's a sense of community right in the absence of community it's very difficult to um one to recreate it uh to manufacture community so that you can actually get to conflict resolution so that work must be be done on a daily basis already and so I I believe the more people that are equipped with the tool the better but we also have to understand that there are times that it's not the best tool to use and it actually can cause more harm. Um so that it it requires some wisdom to exercise in the usage of it as well. See what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. We're fortunate. We are very different. Pat, thanks. Um, well, thank you all for being here and, uh, thanks to my colleagues because
045a lot of what I, um, was thinking I I want to really emphasize what Mon'nique said, which is I do have this in between feeling. Um, because on the one hand, I do think as Pat said, we've done a very different job. I've done a lot of research on this topic just to get myself up to speed and clearly what we do is not what is done and and and criticized nationally. Um and and I appreciate both of you because you know we've heard a lot of things about the work you do and you work in classrooms and you know co-e classes. I mean very different. So, I I do applaud you and I also am glad that the IG says that if if in the future after someday when you get to retire and
046go to Florida, um Marcus has a has a a a strong um voice in who is here. I think that's very important. Um, but I also want to lift up what Nicole said, which is that over my time in Evston, not just on the board, there are students who still, and you you referenced this, um, that there are still students who have trauma just at the fact of a police officer. And it pro I I'm sure that it doesn't really have anything to do with you. It has to do with when their aunt or parent was taken away by a police officer in the community or they were taken or stopped for some silly thing. Um, sorry, a little but they, you know, they were stopped for something that probably they shouldn't have been. So
047I guess I have one question, very specific question about the IGA, but I guess anything else you'd want to say about that issue because even though you guys are doing things very different and and the chief is really involved, it's just great. There are kids that still feel this way. And so kind of tell me what you think, what you're where you're going with that. I don't I don't even have a better question than just let me know what you're thinking. Law enforcement is a crusade for me. Um, I'm not from a cop family, right? Um, I grew up with more bad experiences with law enforcement than good. I'm very transparent and open about that. I share with as many people as I can. In fact, there's such a message in that for us to
048express that there's a thing that I am currently doing that I hated. That perhaps the very reason I have breath in my body is to correct or challenge the thing that I have issue with. Uh so it's it's really important that that message is is is told and that officers throughout this country in my humble opinion uh are recognize um past hardship and past trauma and that it's difficult for us to protect and serve moving forward without acknowledging what was and that there should be some simultaneous healing uh in the in that process. Um, and so one of those things is is providing communication and and building relationships. We're talking about crisis today, but that is a very small minute component to what we do every day. We do 99.9% relationship building. That is our
049our goal. That is our focus every single day. I would prefer to speak with children about prom and homecoming than many other things. uh and that is really the case. We want to be viewed as um sort of extension of family in some ways. This is my sixth year and so for many of the students that are here um I was here when their older brother or sister was here and I have very you know strong ties with with them. In fact, my son was here my first four years of my six years. So uh this is community community building. Thank you. My specific question was around um the IG and talking about the um viewing or retaining images. Um it didn't now I assume that in the general terms something happens you all are
050here and see it or Dr. Campbell calls you or a teacher whatever you're immediately notified by someone in the school. But as I was reading it, I'm like, well, what if they saw something on social media that a kid posted? Um, and it hadn't gotten to Dr. Campbell yet. I guess what I was looking for is is there a I would like there to be a a quick click that he is involved from the beginning. And I I'm I'm guessing that you do that anyway, but when things are written down, they become the the gospel. And so I just kind of wanted that in there that you know if you were going to view the cameras that there was a connection with with Dr. Campbell or if you were going to retain records that he
051knew about it in advance. So that you know maybe in a not in an emergency you wouldn't have a dialogue but maybe as a retention of records maybe he has a reason he doesn't want you to do that. I just want that. I feel like that's important that as much as you know and I understand I think Gretchen was saying that in an emergency you know do the emergency first but I I think that we want to make sure that our administration is there. Um so anyway I I don't know if you want to talk about how it's normally done or if that's kind of an assumption that isn't written. I don't know. We have no problem adding that. I mean, that's simple. I'm already in there as a chief. So, and and and at
052that point, we're talking about foyer. We're talking about records. He'd be involved anyway. Yeah. Um and and that would be after an emergency situation in which it was a crime. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. Might already be in the SRO. I think it's in the SRO. Is it another part of it? Okay. The S this agreement is just relating to the video access, right? But then we have this separate agreement around the SRO, right? So this is just emergency. So yes, so this is an amendment to that agreement that Gretchen is referencing. And so that language is in the um um well I guess in this Chief Stewart, we could add it. We could add it here. It's not going to hurt us. All I mean is when you're going to use the cameras. So that
053was in this amendment that you're a part of that. And similarly, if we're going to they're going to maintain records, you're a part of that. So that's all just related to the very specifics of this video. That's all. Okay. Thank you. Liz, um hi. Um I'm just looking at the um limited viewing quote authorized viewers portion of the agreement and you had mentioned that it had had been narrowed down and it was more broad, but to me it still feels quite broad. Um, I'm wondering if you can kind of define the portion that says emergency personnel and law enforcement personnel assigned to oper operational command posts. What that means exactly? Yes. Go ahead. Uh the breadth of the language is is very important to our response uh as it relates to public safety because in
054the event of a critical incident, mass casualty incident, active shooter, the number of emergency personnel that will respond um is great. Some of which that we can't even control to some degree. Um so there might be federal involvement. There might be uh our the SWAT team of NIPUS might be responding. Um the operational command post would be the location where is designated by the chief or her designate uh is where staff will be the command center um which will not be in this immediate area. Um so individuals at that location can view cameras here in the response real time. Uh my partner and I um in responding to an incident unfortunately won't have it's a good possibility we won't have the time to review cameras because we're responding immediately. But for those who are coming
055behind us, uh it means everything for them to know exactly where we are in this building, where a threat is located, and where possible, uh victims might be to respond and render aid in those locations. Okay. Thank you for your clarification. Sure. Other questions, comments, board Stephanie, I want to echo what my colleagues have said. Thank you so much for being here tonight and for the work you do and clearly the very intentional and thoughtful relationships that you've established within this community and how you've integrated into this community. Um Pat said at the beginning that you know we're sort of unlike any other place and you know I hear that a lot about UTHs in a number of areas you know in our curriculum in our equity work um and now in our sort of
056community safety and restorative justice approach. So, I'm wondering, you know, as you think about the importance of reaching back into history and knowing what brought you here, um, but also thinking of yourself as sort of a forerunner. Where do you And I'm getting a little philosophical here and maybe this is a good place to wrap up, but um I'm wondering where you see this if you are a forerunner, if you're sort of a groundbreaker, if you're really thinking outside the box, so to speak, what do you envision for the future of this type of relationship, this kind of community policing work with students? Is that solely to me or can I share that with my chief and with my colleague? Uh this is intentional work of being a school resource officer. The problems that we
057in my I'll speak my truth. The problems that I have perceived nationwide with officers operating in educational institutions uh are many are there for the wrong reasons. Um what makes Evston unique is that you must express a great interest to do it. Um and not just a great interest but you should be equipped with various uh certifications and trainings to do this job. Um and so I think it's important to develop a uh a strong criteria um very detailed specific of of certain you know skill sets that are needed to do this job. Um, and I'm using job loosely because it's really um a a service to do the service and you have to view it that way. We are are s soon to return to the community policing unit uh in as school resource
058officers um moving from investigative services. Um that's the heart of where it began in the 1950s. Um, and so it's truly about community policing and not um, uh, a traditional police response. And now that's difficult because we are also still living in the post Coline era. Um, and so we're thinking more tactically sound than we ever have before. Um, but we cannot forget that most of our encounters are going to be about relationship building and not the active shooter situation. And so I think that there is a balance um of officers uh that can work in and navigate both sides of that. So April 3rd will be the change of the police department in which I've moved the SRO's back to the community policing unit that will go into effect. I've also put a a
059uh supervisor in charge our community relations unit. So under that unit will not only be community policing but community outreach and engagement. I've created a new unit and I thought it it made no sense to me and and and I didn't discover anything new. I just said I kind of got two good people. Let me let them run and do what they do if they were just actually empowered. That's all I did was empower the people that have been here and let them be creative. But that's going to be part of it because I really like he kind of touched on believe that that's where the unit the SRO's need to be. They need to be working with the community. They need to be engaging and that unit will actually be working with external stakeholders
060um under a commander and they will be following up on those cases um working through the school because a a lot of it's not going to be criminal in nature, right? it's going to be more outreach um issues that come up that we'll be doing um either in school or after school or or things that that may arise. And so that was one of the reasons why I wanted to uh I wouldn't say shake things up, but change the organizational chart to how it actually should fall. If we're really going to do it the right way, we got to empower the people and let them and let them work through those units. Nice. So, so that sounds like some of what we've already been talking about and and which is that communitywide partnership so that
061these don't fall just in the domains of the professionals in the high school or the professionals in the police force that that we have a real wraparound and communicatingworked kind of integrated partnership. And that's departmentwide, right? I probably me and him probably talked more than the last chief for chiefs before then or we're going to put out a a press release. We're going to work with our team and there and the school's team quite honestly. And it's just something we didn't do in the past, but um you know, I I think um bi-weekly we'll be doing lunch that you'll be paying for um uh not only uh we'll make Dr. Horton pay for uh but and then both districts for me. So, we're we're working on just working together more in any, you know, um
062reading books over at district 65. Um we're working on a lot of things, but we we need to work on our communication. And quite frankly, the police department over the years have done has done an awful job communicating outside the walls of the police department, you know, and as chief, I have to own that and work on how to build back those relationships. So my my greatest hope is that what we're doing inside ETHS rubs off into the community that the relationships that you're building the way that you're building the relationships and how you view the position that you serve um flows into the community. So I appreciate that. As long as Chief stays here then it will. [Laughter] So I just want to say a very heartfelt thank you for your thoughts, for your
063commitment to um to not only ETHs but to our community. We need you and we need you to do what you're doing the way you're doing it. This would not work if if you were not committed to doing this from your heart. If you were if you were not really thinking about what's best for our students. if you weren't you you this whole thing of reinjury is so important. That's key and what you can do to avoid reinjuring our students, our families. That's really such that's so basic and without that we we just wouldn't be able to move forward. Thank you. So, thank you again. Thanks for coming. All right. Thank you guys. And thank you for the time. I know you guys got some tough decisions to make. Um, and I appreciate that, too.
064And I appreciate your honesty and the tough questions. That's what we're open to, right, to move forward. So, thanks again. Appreciate the time. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Okay. So we are at item number five items for information and the first item is the report on student well-being goal number two uh student services 2122 and we had a really nice report yes in our packet we're inviting Dr. Mia Levo our associate principal our brand new associate principal for uh students I know right to the table and Dr. Ty Kinsey, assistant superintendent principal. Um it's great to hear from two um high level administrators, both with social work backgrounds on what we're doing with with SEAL and well-being. And so um it's seen some some positive things happening in in the data. So great to
065hear about it. Hi everybody. Thank you so much for your time tonight. I promise I'm not going to take too long, but I do talk a lot, especially when it's about something you love. Okay. So, as Dr. Campbell said, I'm Dr. Mia Leiso, and I am the sticking to the table. I am the new associate principal for student services, and Dr. Kenzie and I um are principal and assistant superintendent. We're going to just kind of go back a little bit and talk about our well-being, our students, our goal um to well-being and how we reflected last year's data. It'll be reflected to you guys. And I really want to um tell you the importance of this report because it is really going to show you that our social workers, our psyches, our our mental health
066professionals and our staff in addition to our social emotional learning activities, it is really making an impact. We are going to see the data that's going to reflect we are making some changes and strides. And I know that we are, you know, very concerned about the mental health and wellness of our students. And so that's something that's really important and you're going to see that we are really making an impact. So our I really want to just highlight that because our social workers and our mental health professionals are doing a fantastic job. How do I collect this? Okay. So um we are looking at our I I call this it takes a village because we hear so much so often about connectedness and connectedness with safety and trust. That is something that is so critical
067to students success and it takes a village of all of us in this building and the community at large to make students feel comfortable and connected and safe. So part of the well-being survey that happens every February, there are questions that are asked to students. So this is self-reporting. Um students are asked if they feel safe, if the teachers are making them feel safe, and just to give their um opinion of their particular experience. And we have 89% of our students that are reporting that they feel safe at school. Um 92% say that they are treated with respect by teachers. I think that is really remarkable. Um what we also have questions that are related to studentto student relationships and how students see themselves in their school setting and 80% of students said that they
068feel that all students are respecting each other. Additionally, 80% of our students say that they get along with one another. Sorry. Yeah, it is. It is sorry. Again, additionally, we um have our mental health and well-being survey. Again, reporting out just student voice. 16% of our students reported that stress has impacted daily activities for 11 or more days in the previous months. Um 29% reported feeling sad or hopeless most days for two weeks and that resulted in stopping or doing some um of their usual activities. And while these numbers still represent some you know it can look grim I want to reflect that the year prior there was the number um wasn't 16% it was 33%. So we are down 50% decrease from school year of 2021. Um additionally we are down 1% with the
069students who have reported feeling sad or hopeless most days because it was 30% last uh the year prior. Um, students who access resources, 29% reported seeking out mental health support in the community. 15% reported seeking mental health support from ETHS mental health providers. Um, we wanted to just provide some context to that and look at the racial demographics of those students who reported. And we have 17 and a half% of our black students, our 20% of our Latinx students, 20% two or more races who identify two or more races sought out support for mental health, and 37% of those students identify as non-binary or transgender. So, this is something that's pretty important. Um, we're looking at social work referrals and I wanted to look at just the trend analysis and of course we see precoid
070that our numbers are fairly low with how many social work referrals that we have and we see a trajectory and it goes up. But what's really important to note is that 2021 we did see a significant decrease in our numbers and and I'm sorry so there's a 24% decrease in social work referrals from 2020 2021 so 477 to 358 um we had 9% of students were referred um prior year for social work service so it's a 4% decrease in referrals when compared to 2020 and 20 2019 2020 20. Additionally, we're just looking again at our racial demographics. We have 25% of our students are identify as black students and 39% of them are represented in this data. Um 45% of white students are our population. However, we have 30.58% represented in the data. again the
071Latinx students um very I think what is important to note is that our students with the highest need are our smallest population and I think that's really important that are seeking out services and they are also being referred by teachers but that could be uh for a myriad of things um we don't have exactly the information in front of me right now that says why a teacher may feel that a student needs support but we know that teachers are trying to be connected with students as often as possible possible and when they see a need they report it and they say and they try and talk to the student first. If they feel like they can't make a connection then they will then refer them out which is something that is very important. So here
072um we have risk assessments that's our suicide risk assessments. I um looking at our first quarter data from fall 2021, we had 53 risk assessments and compared to uh 1920 pre- pandemic first quarter, we only had 26. So we saw a 104% increase in postcoid as we returned back to school. Then the second quarter, we had a fall 2021 39 risk assessments. And when we compared that again to the pre- pandemic, we continue to see an uptick and increase in risk assessments. But I thought it was really important to note as I started um and for this fall of 2022, our first quarter report was 43 risk assessments and we compared that to the first quarter of 2021 and we saw 18.9% decrease. Um again in second semester second quarter excuse me of fall 2022
07331 suicide risk assessments and that again is compared to the second quarter of school year and we have 39 which was again a 20% decrease 20.5% decrease. So I just really want you know to highlight the work that our um MHPs are doing to support all students. However, they spend copious amounts of time and our most emotionally vulnerable students. So, it's important to understand the work that's being done here. Okay. So when we talk, I wanted to highlight the importance because I think that what happens a lot um I've been hearing conversations and talking to families when they're calling concerning their students and we are talking a lot about well the pandemic impacted our students in a very um traumatic way. However, when students report out they they may they have a a little bit
074of a difference um in opinion because they're showing some resilience. And so our pandemic related stress when we asked the question on our well-being survey about how the pandemic has impacted them, 32% of the students reported not feeling stress related to the pandemic. And that is up from 2021. Okay. 44% of students reported feeling stressed about doing well in school, which is down from 54% in 2021. And then we had the breakdown of students. It included 60% of students who identify as non-binary or transgender, 53% of females, and 33% of males. Um 28% of the students felt worried about being socially isolated or losing connectedness or connections at school. Again, that's down um from the 44% in 2021. And we then have the additional breakdown of demographics. 48% of the students identify as non-binary, transgender,
075which is down from 65%. In 2021, 35% of students down from 55% and 19% of male students, excuse me, 35% of female students and then 19% of our male students, which is down from um 31% in 2021. And again, it just speaks to the resilience of our students and they're working to move beyond the adverse impact of the pandemic. Again, we're talking about the need needs and connecting to additional resources and the pandemic. So, we do the um we have a section on the well-being survey that identifies the emotional identification and regulation of curriculums and screening and our PE wellness during the 20 2122 highlights. It's really important because we do a lot of work. Again, that's what I said. It's really having a a a tremendous impact on our students and how they're regulating.
076Um, students who completed the in-class social and emotional activities reported fewing few feeling, excuse me, fewer depressive symptoms, higher levels of academic motivation, and greater use of emotion regulation skills. And I thought it was really important to highlight those voices. And because I can't see there, I'm I pulled off some of the um direct quotes from some of the students. They said, "This helped me to understand and connect with my emotions better." Um I think it is really important for people to know about this stuff and I think it is really important to know. Oh goodness, now I can't even read my own stuff to know about this one. And then when they asked the favorite part, they said my favorite part is activity was realizing that having emotions is normal and everyone goes through
077things. I don't have a least favorite part. So I think that was something really important as well. And this one I really wanted to highlight. I enjoyed sharing my own story, but sometimes writing them down feels personal. Though it was personal, it felt good setting some stuff out, getting some stuff off my chest. So I think having a space that is not necessarily in front of a onetoone practitioner gives them an opportunity to express themselves and utilize and draw on some of the emotions that they're experiencing. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. So here we're just talking about a lot of the resources that we're offering and this is just a sn a snippet of it. Um when we talk about connecting to resources, just how we're trying to support students in the space, um our inschool
078credit recovery, our homebound education, uh gender support plans for the LGBTQ supports, our student support teams, our social work groups. We have several social work groups that are really impactful and that are addressing a lot of our needs. Um counseling meetings, crisis care team, and the virtual calming room. Now, for our multi-tered systems of support, we have the family talk series that covers um a plethora of u different topics from suicide, college and career planning, um our freshman and um sophomore study halls, our wild kid futures day, which is really impactful for our 9th grade um students, school refusal and truency outreach. We're really trying to make strides on how we're approaching that. um 504 and IEP management. Our alternative school, we're looking really to um in the future look at how we can expand
079that so that we can support students who are credit deficient. Um our signs of suicide program which we just completed successfully and it was a great experience for our staff and our students. Uh student summits and our black, brown, and breathing. These are just just to name a few of the some of the great things that we're doing. Okay. Thank you, Dr. Libbyo, for highlighting so much effort, hard work, and you know, we think about, I know we've said it, our students are resilient and our staff are pretty resilient, too. Um, and thinking actually March 13th, three years ago, right? This was our last day before we went to remote learning. And Oh, wow. This was it. Oh my. Yeah. Oh, wow. It is real. Um, and so much has been done. Um, so Dr.
080Lisa really laid out all of the efforts that have been put forth. Yeah. And it's still really amazing to think three years. It's kind of unbelievable. Um, you know, as we've talked about, the tier one efforts are so critical, right? those schoolwide efforts and thinking about the ways that our teachers have even done teachertoteer culturally responsive SEAL professional development so that they could embed it within the classroom and building those pieces. Um I wanted to raise the three years ago because um Dr. Dr. Lisa was speaking to the PE and wellness department and um you know thinking back to even last year as we were going through more COVID action items um you know a little over a year ago we had converted the fieldhouse into a giant testing room for COVID. And so I
081just really wanted to give a shout out to our PE and wellness teachers. Um we're going to give many um accolades to everyone. They spent a lot of 2122 doing everyone pivoted. All of our teachers were amazing. It was it's stunning. Our staff, our operations, you all heard it so many times, but we want to say it again from a tier one perspective. And um our PE and wellness teachers, I think, did even even more pivoting um along the way. Uh as did our mental health professionals really being so responsive um every step. So, wanted to make sure to to shout out our resilience staff and students. The board counts in the resilience factor of all the conversations. Um, and we know that our student services team, our mental health professionals, as we all are
082focusing on tier one and addressing these tier two and tier three. Dr. Dr. Liso and I were talking about the fact that our tier one efforts are yielding those positive data points that we just saw. And part of what we've seen is increased need in the students who are struggling. They're their struggles are more complicated. They're more challenging. So you can see that in some of the increases in our 504 plans, the um obvious increase in health services from a year when we were largely remote um and our psychiatric hospitalizations, right? Noting that there were 128 unique students who were psychiatrically hospitalized last year compared to the year before um at 106. And so looking at even the increase of of multiple hospitalizations again pointing to we're doing so many things to reduce um the
083need and recognizing and I love the quote of you know everyone has emotions we all go through things we want to normalize that give the coping skills and then when things are more complicated respond to it which is what our our student services team is working to do um our ETHS Wildcat well-being extracurricular activities and I am not still on anybody's thunder here, y'all, because they're coming up to speak with you in a little bit. Um, but we did just pull per our planning around outcome measures and goal two, um, that there was a significant increase to 65% of our students participating in at least one extracurricular activity last year. And wanted to really think about, you know, we have 184 um, teams, clubs, fine arts. It's amazing. And all of our strategic priorities are
084embodied in this action, too. that supports ultimately well-being and connectedness, all that social emotional learning, the the physicality of it. Um, our centering of racial equity, I know they're going to speak to all these components, but it's it's pretty spectacular the efforts that have been made. And when we think about the classroom environment um and think about GPA as an outcome measure that we had identified previously, you can see some of the highlights of what our students not only are performing at but their experience. The fact that 89% of our students report that teachers work hard to make sure that all students are learning and they feel that way. 91% of our students report that their teachers want them to be become better thinkers. Not just to memorize things, but to daily make critical decisions
085and figure out how to solve problems. And that's part of what we really want to do. And that really also goes back to thinking about all the ways that we've been embedding um the acts of well-being and building that problem solving. Um there were a few uh quotes that um we wanted to share also through uh our wellre rebel human actions and one of them was um from a student. It helps me be a better person. I know I could always use that um always working to be a better person. It helps me to be myself instead of code switching. Overall I'm better able to see things as they are and it's lowered my anxiety. So there's so many ways um that we're seeing the impact and generalizing that to the classroom environment. Okay. As
086we think about um Wildit well-being and the impact on four-year graduation rate continuing to increase up to 94%. Um our five-year graduation rate increasing. Um 90% of students report that high school is preparation. They believe that this is preparing them for the future. And our average daily attendance rate despite so many challenges with COVID was still remarkable at a 92.8% higher than our um state attendance rate. I also wanted to note I'm going to slip back for one second because we're talking about attendance and we've all been working on building attendance and building connectedness and it's fascinating even this year to be in and out of classrooms and to see all the ways that teachers are building community um within the classrooms. I was in a classroom just recently where I witnessed students checking in
087with each other when they weren't really getting it and that someone in a team wasn't really understanding the information and students checked in with each other with empathy to say it's okay you got this encouraging each other and then helping to problem solve further. It just really speaks volumes to the community that is being created um and our individual career and academic plans. lots of um lots of effort and shout out on this piece and you can see even in a pandemic that 91% of our students felt prepared for post high school planning. That means that's tremendous and we're going to continue to work on moving forward. Um wanted to also highlight we last year um we had our career pathway seminar all year long. Um that took hold in many ways and we had
088our our first career pathways fair during the school day. Last year um almost a third of our school attended during the school day for our career pathways fair. It was tremendous. And this year um we have over 37 partners who are coming to our fieldhouse not for co testing this time for career pathways. So excited about that as well and really excited to see so many students who were really engaged in that process. just hitting a few highlights as we look at substance use and we know there's been a lot of conversation about substance use and and through the pandemic and what did that reflect and again this is for last school year and seeing that actually 96% of students reported they had not used tobacco in the previous 30 days. Um 90% of students
089reported not smoking or vaping um or using cannabis and um 98% not using prescribed drugs not drugs not prescribed to them. So it it it speaks volumes to what students self-report students often think that everyone else actually may be using and that's also right we see that what their own self-report um is accurate and um we appreciate their cander. Dr. Liiso and I were talking about um how tremendous our student voices and this is one of the ways that it's get gets lifted with their with their honesty. Um also wanted to raise up that we saw and you can see a few of these highlights here. White females um and white males and females who identify as two more races um were more likely to report having used marijuana in the past 30 days. And
090another critical piece as we think about how we pull families even closer, we really wanted to highlight this again that 69% of students reported that their family has clear rules that do not allow alcohol and drug use. And that is an area that we know contributes to student decisionmaking. So, as we continue to want to build and pull our families closer and help um all of us message consistency, it's an important point for us to think about. Okay. So, in closing, I just wanted us to kind of look at I wanted us to say we're going to look back, but we're also going to look towards the future and what's next. So um we know that the pandemic has stunted our progress and we understand that the mental health and trauma are interconnected and and
091they had an adverse impact on how I would say the adults as well as the children excuse me the children um um just lived everyday life and it also impacted academic trajectory. So we look at, you know, how many students go off to school, but who persist and things of that nature. However, um I think it's important that we anticipate that we'll continue to see a need to to support students as a result of the pandemic and it is clear that students have mental health needs that are reflected in their trauma responses. However, our students are showing that they are resilient and they need us to support their academic and social emotional needs and trajectory. We have a solid grasp of what is needed, but we do need time and space so that we can
092get this work done. Um, we are committed to reviewing and assessing our past practices, but more importantly looking at some things that we can do new, innovative, and readress some of the things that we may have missed through this. So, what we're looking at next is inclusion and interventions for all students. More specifically, our students have greater need. Um, we are looking at our black and brown students and how they identify in the mental health space. We know that sometimes even culturally, we are missing some students because they don't want to share that they're experiencing um some setbacks. But our our mental health professionals and again our staff, we're really intentional about that. We're going to be looking at school refusal and in school truency and looking at ways that we can really really attack
093that and get to the root cause of it. Um we're also looking at SEAL education for our educators. So really pushing into classrooms and looking at classroom instruction and see how we can address that from a holistic perspective and not necessarily from one lens of PE wellness but we want to work with our our staff to see how we can support kids and support them as they're supporting kids because it still continues to be a challenge. Um, so, uh, we did want to say I wanted to say we do hear the voices of our students and we're going to re really really work diligently to ensure that they are heard and seen and we're going to continue to align to our district's goal of well-being and that's again to connect each student to supports to
094ensure that each student will experience social emotional development and enhance academic growth. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Wow, what a report. So much information. Thank you so much. I appreciate um I en I really enjoyed this report. Um we've been talking a lot over the last three years really ta um about our students well-being. Um that's been our focus. When we came back, we tried to come back and and really highlight and lift up student well-being. We've been talking about um mental health personnel. Do we have the right number? And are they capable? Are they not capable? Of course, they're capable. um are they able to support the all the students because there's we knew that there was so much need and um and this report really helped me see um that some real
095positive things are happening. Um, it's it's still a I'm still a little hesitant to say, you know, we're out of the woods, of course, because we're we're we want to see an upward trajectory. We want the pattern to be um to be good. Um, and I hope it it will be. We So, we'll keep we'll keep looking at it. But uh clearly our staff I loved when you said it takes a village because I really truly believe that in so many ways our staff the operations are teachers who are identifying the students understand that during the pandemic the students who struggled the most were the black and brown students and the transgender students. And these are these are the students who really struggle. We know that. So even to see these numbers and see these
096are the kids who are um taking advantage of the mental health services and supports. Um I think that's good that they're taken that that they've been referred and that they are actually um what you call them unique appointments or whatever. I don't I don't remember. Um, so I think it's good that they are the ones that are being supported. Um, I really love the the term healing. Uh, Dr. Cameron and I were talking earlier today and and that word came up and I think even in our last report, someone said something about healing. Um, we're still healing. We and and we will be for a while and our students are healing. Um, so how do we help them through this process? How can we continue to help them through this process of healing? Um, it
097is it's it's really it's really great. Um, and then recognize that we only have them for four years. So for a lot of them, you know, since it's been three, you know, their high school experience has been completely changed forever. They don't get they don't get a doover. This is it for them. Um so so those are my comments. I guess um my question is is there is there more we can be doing or should we be doing or what's what's what's missing or is it too early for us to look for these patterns. Um I think there's always more to do. I think there's always more to do. I think we just have to really in addition to hearing student voice, we have to hear the voices of our staff that are supporting those
098students. How do we support them in their work because their work is so critical to student success? Um, but but we it it comes back to interventions, but looking at what have we done and what we can do differently. And I I hear exactly what you're saying. I think it's so important. I I say this all the time that I want us and I talk to our mental health professionals all the time, everyone in my department because that's who I work closely with. We're going to start really talking more about moving from trauma to resilience and the importance of doing that and teaching our students how to do that. And that shows up in how we engage them every day. That shows up in how we meet their need through moderate um to extreme interventions.
099whatever is necessary, we have the tools to do it, we have the staff to do it, and we have the commitment. Thank you. I was going to add um all of the tremendous early intervention and and intervention and um one of the pieces of prevention that we're going to we have continued to work on this school year is to roll out a slow but intentional um training for our staff in all of our unions um around restorative practices. So, we've engaged um 25% of our school already this school year um in two-day um restorative practices training and the way that we want to continue to lead that forth with all staff as well as with students. So, as more prevention, yeah, definitely. Thank you, Pat. Thanks. Um thank you for that great um report. Um,
100and I want to start with what Tayia just ended with, which is, um, it's great to hear that about supporting the staff who are doing the work, but also thinking about all the staff. Um, because to your point about it takes a village. So during COVID, for example, I know we did a good job of trying to help teachers push SEAL and and sort of that more emotional social emotional piece into their classrooms. virtual, not right here. Um, but I, you know, I think it's so important we don't stop. That was a good shift and let's keep doing that because our safety officers, everybody, our cafeteria workers, everybody has a role in these kids' lives. And um, so I I think that's really important. Um, but I'm going to ask the question that I ask
101every year and I might ask Tia to ask for because she was in your spot by herself in the past. So, what more what more do you need? Um, you know, I I look at all the wonderful work you're doing and there the numbers are going in the right direction, but even before COVID, we still needed to do more and now with COVID, it just amped everything up. Um, is it social workers? Is it pair of professionals to kind of do some different things? What's the And I I'm not expecting a direct answer, but I guess I'm pushing for boldness, creativity, you know, shake the Is Kendra here? I don't want her to hear this. Forget the money part. Forget the money part for a minute. What do you want? What do you need to
102do this work so that we're getting more of our kids, doing more with our staff, all the good things that you talked about? Um, in in honesty, of course, we have to think about the money, but I I really do think we need to think outside the box to think what is it that we need and let's figure out how to get you that. And so that's what we as a board do is we we deal with the budget. And so that's why I really ask to think think about that question that I ask every year and I'll keep asking as long as I'm in this chair. um what more can we do to support you and your work? So um I'll jump in just to say I think you know we are going to
103continue to assess that and um Dr. Louisiso has done a tremendous job of really trying to keep a finger on the pulse of what do our students need and what do our mental health professionals need especially this year and looking at you know the the continuation from last year and the challenges. So that's been um tremendous. And um I want to also kind of respond to your first statement of oh wow we we really emphasize SEAL during remote learning right um and we really emphasize it upon our return and it's absolutely certain that it's happening in all spaces. So when you walk into a classroom, any a classroom, all the classrooms where I've done informal observations, popped in, anyone who's been doing this throughout the school year can acknowledge staff, the teachers know students, the
104relationships are there, the culturally responsive instruction that is happening. Um that is strong community building in SEAL and it's tremendous. So want to add anything else? Um, I think we need all hands on deck. I think that we need collaboration and and and I will continue. Uh, I know it seems like I'm partial. I am partial to mental health professionals cuz I once was one. And I understand the burnout that they experience and I I witness it when they come and sit in my office and um I know their passion and their care for our kids and that can be a labor of love, a true labor of love. So, what I would like, you know, I don't know necessarily requires money. It just requires time, dedication, and commitment from everybody um to see the
105work all the way through. And um we're we're we're committed to it. We're really revamping some things and going to spend some time this summer looking at our best practices and again the practices that are possibly not working, that really aren't making, you know, good progress. We're going to do more progress monitoring, looking at data from a long trajectory. How did this student start? How are they doing? And where are they going? And I think that's so important that can really get to the meat of what it is that we need to do. So, um, don't you like that, Kendra, that I said no money? I will say I was I did have to temper my smile over here when you said that. But you know, one thing that like that I'll lift that you
106said collaboration, right? And so I know that we've done a really great job this year and I look forward to continue collaboration because when it it's not just about the budget and the money, but also student well-being and making sure that we balance those district goals. And so I just appreciate that. I know you do, Kendra, but I was teasing. Well, thank you. Thank you both. Yeah, I I appreciate you saying that because that's really what it is anyway, right? Um, so I have a question about the surveys and how often we survey our children, our students. Um, you know, how many surveys do we give them? What's the frequency? Are we concerned that they are burnt out of surveying? are they tired of talking about co um you know that's part of their resilience
107isn't it right they're just like okay enough is enough and and so I'm I'm I'm curious and so are some of you know my high school friends I met the other day [Laughter] I can answer part of that we do uh we do the well-being survey annually Um, and I know it's subjective. You know, it it's based on how a student feels at the time they take the the survey, right? I mean, we know that that's just basic research. Um, but I would say having a son who's a sophomore who says, "Please stop talking about co mom, but um his experience here has been nothing short of amazing." And that's because of the teachers, that's because of the administration, that's because of safety. And um I was just trying to highlight all that and almost
108forgot what I was going to say. I did want to say that we do think about things. So we had some concerns about how we were doing our student advocacy forum. And we did say, let's create a survey to make sure we're capturing their voice. How do you feel? And so we're looking at doing those kinds of things that may be isolated to a specific group. So or it'll probably still go out to everyone, but we know that we're targeting a certain group and we can target that group individually. Uh well, collectively, excuse me. But I do think that you can get burned out on a lot of surveys. I think when surveys come through my box, I'm like, I don't have time. But kids, they like to have their voice heard. I noticed that
109being here and I love the way that these kids step up and speak up and speak out and so I think that the surveys are necessary just for that part of it because they get a chance to to speak and they know that we're listening. Thank you, Dr. Lisa. I'm going to add that even for the shortterm progress monitoring that we're doing in PE wellness through Dr. Razi's work um through WashU and Stanford. Um those are brief for progress monitoring. So it feels more like a quick check-in as opposed to our enormous well-being survey. So we do try to balance it because yes, we hear you and we all feel the same way about surveys. So we try to balance it out for our staff too because we've done staff well-being surveys twice a year
110and we're committed to continuing that so that we get our staff feedback too. Thank you. Gretchen. Hi, thank you. Um, I appreciate the fast talking in the report. Um, I can't talk that fast. I have I think three things that I qu sort of questions, comments. Um, the first to to Mon'nique's point about over surveying. I did notice that um our response rate on the five essentials from both students and teachers was in the mid60% which is um significantly lower than the state 80s something% on average for students and for teachers. Um, so I don't know, maybe there's something to it, at least in our community, about people being burned out or something in how we administered that survey because, uh, you know, in sort of normal polling world where, you know, anything over 10%
111is considered great, this would sound really good. But I think for this kind of survey, which my understanding is we administer it in school, it should be higher than the mid60s. And you know, and I and then we're going to get more reliable data. So, I just tossed that out there. You can see all that the full result including that response rate if you go to the uh Illinois um state board of ed website and they break it all out. So, I just I did that quick check. Um so, two sort of questions. One and and I don't want my questions to take away from all the good things that are in this report. There's all sorts of huge efforts that have been made. um by both our staff and our students to sort of
112get themselves back postcoid or semipostcoid. Um but the one thing jumped out at me as particularly troubling on page five of the report that's in the packet. Um you know and there there were certainly other troubling things. Let's let's be fair. You know these mental health issues and so on are all troubling but this one just hit me. Um, it says that 15% of our students reported being physically forced to engage in some sort of sexual activity. I'm a little unclear on how that question was phrased. You know, this could have happened anywhere. I'm I gather it's not that it's happened here in school, but that seems like a pretty big number and and one that I hope we're uh digging a little deeper in that. Um and it's not broken out of course by
113gender. Um so that u you know presumably includes both male and female students. Um but I would say generally speaking these numbers often tend to include more women, young women than men. Um, and there's often been talk about our culture of toxic masculinity in American society generally, but also here at ETHS specifically. So, um, are are we are we doing anything about that number in particular? So, we are we are doing something about that. That that question was posed. I worked with um our two department chairs with um Carrie Levy on composing that and it was kind of a direct question and it had some subp parts to it to ask more information like how often or did you feel uncomfortable and things like that. Um I can't I'm sorry I don't remember them exactly
114but it was a very straightforward question. So there is some honesty in that. Um, we are getting ready to gear up and we did get some funding and grant money to do a sexual assault awareness month which is coming up in April and we're working to do some work with that and um there's just anytime anytime someone has any conversations our social workers again they are dealing with this kind of work and this conversations all the time and they're very difficult. uh some people come to the conversation with their own trauma and um they they but they are doing a lot of work to do that that we're getting ready to get some groups going too so that we can have some supports around students um male and female. However, you're absolutely right. We do
115see an over representation of u female students who are reporting out um some sexual assault. If anything happened at school, we we're on that immediately. That hasn't necessarily been our story, but I I want to be clear about that, too. I didn't mean to suggest that it was. No, no, no. But I understand the concern definitely and we we take it very seriously. So I want to make sure that our students who are responding to that and I I don't know how you put together the survey if there's a little line you know sometimes we see for example warnings whether you call them trigger warning or something else entirely about um you know there'll be a reference to some form of self harm or suicide for example and you know we we want you to
116know that that's there and if by the way here's the 1-800 number to call which I always think is a little bit lame, but it's better than nothing. And um so I'm wondering if when we survey and we ask these pretty intense questions whether we're doing that there are do we make that offer and if we don't I think we should I'll jump in that um yes uh it's offered and it's actually offered in a multitude of ways. So they receive an email um it is part of the survey itself. they get a bounce back on that as well with the documentation. And because it's implemented within PE and wellness classes, there's a personalized conversation and a reminder of how we all practice acknowledge carel, whether it's because it happened to you as a person
117or to someone that you love and how you what you can do next. Great. Yeah, of course. I should have known you'd have that good answer. Thank you. Um and then just switching gears, my very last question, um takes me to the very end of the written report on page 27. Um and the heading there is enhanced academic growth outcome academic performance and it's it's the outcome measure related to performance that says 100% of students will maintain or increase their GPA. and just to turn from something that was a little more kind of emotional to something that's much drier talking about the GPA and and the apparent stressor for many of our students which is to say their academic performance. um the the data that's shared here which just shows um the cumulative unweighted GPA
118class of 2022 by various subgroups does not tell the story that this that this goal is is set for. The goal is is meant to promote, encourage, and track growth of individual students. And this just this collection of a of an average um GPA by subgroups doesn't do it. And and I know there's probably a recognition, but this is sort of what we had. So this is what we're showing here. But I, you know, I think this is really, really important and we had a lot of discussion. I know we're in the process of redoing our goals and our strategies and all of that kind of thing. Um and so there'll be some discussion and I and I think it is important obviously to move beyond the GPA but certainly at the time this was
119one of our few things um that we can measure and I I think it would be a much more a much more useful measure if we looked at what it was intended to look at which is the growth of each of students and not to treat each of these subgroups because within these subgroups there's just all kinds of differences, right? And that's the problem with the averages. Um, and it's not telling us what this goal, and I can say this because I was there when we established the goal, when we talked about the measures, it was most definitely this this wasn't where where it was intended to end. And and very frankly, we've just never done a job at holding ourselves accountable as a board, as a district, as an administration, as teachers for that
120kind of growth measure. And I think it's critical. And I I'm I'm harping on it because I know that we're going to work on the revisions to our goals and it needs to be there, but it needs in, you know, in some form, but it needs to be treated in a way that's sort of useful and productive and it's not just ticking a box. So, I bring it to you because it just it was right there at the very end as I was scrolling off. By the way, your report goes to page 29, but 28 and 29 were blank. So, that was great. I was actually excited. Well done, Dr. Louisisa. I love it with that expectation setting right there. Um, thank you, though. I think it's a really good point, Gretchen. Um, and it's
121one I know we've talked about for years of how do we accurately measure, how do we look at individual students, how do we look at semester to semester, right? We've we've we've looked at many versions of this and that doesn't mean we should stop looking for a way that accurately reflects our efforts and the student outcome. So, we'll definitely bring that back. Yeah. And we'll figure out how to show it. Yeah. Mera. Okay. Hello. Um I am also impressed by all of the amazing uh growth and attention to our students well-being that you're doing. and when you talk about that intersectionality of um you know culturally responsive teaching uh and SEAL instead of separating them and so I thank you so much for that. Um, I guess where I am is just this piece and
122I was looking to see on page 13 um when you were talking about hospitalizations I and maybe I am not reading this carefully. I saw where you disagregated by race only to talk about black males um but didn't do that um break it down further. So that was one of my questions and what I want to just put a plug in for and that was me trying to see if my theory plays out here. So I think we know how devastating the impact of racism and structural racialization is on our black and brown students, but I also see it on our white students. And um one of the areas that I see that is this high level of drug and alcohol use. Um, when we look at who's using more, it's our white students. And
123obviously, they're using much more, all of them, than they're reporting because they're not going to, you know, say they're real. Um, and the impact of that is also then felt on the kids who go to those parties and who are part of those um, groups. And so I just hope that while we are um obviously paying attention to some of the other aspects that you mentioned around our groups of kids um who are in the the numerical minority but who are majority in you know social work or getting those referrals that we um really work on the drug and alcohol abuse especially among our white kids. And as I argue, as a result of uh racism on them, not racism towards white kids, but the impact of living in a racist country and society, hospitalizations,
124drug use. So, um to that point, I wonder I wonder what kind of data do you collect around experiences of racism or bias? Um, and what kind of data do you collect around safety and feelings of safety um, at school, at home? Is there is there data that is collected on that or that could be collected on that and would that be helpful? It's a really good question. There are components of the well-being survey that reflect both, you know, the intersectionality of multiple identities um and the experience of how do how safe do you feel on the way to school much like the five essentials um but within the community environment within the within the home environment and that is something that we could lift further you know in reporting for the future definitely and
125I and I'll also add you know we've talked a lot about so we always talk a lot about student voice lift the students lifting their voices and each other and the many many ways that that takes hold to um name microaggressions to name when this happens out in the community or here at ETHS and how we can do better and how they've changed many things whether that's students organized against racism and their ongoing work or a student voice forum. So those definitely from a qualitative perspective we continue to lift up their voices. So, thank you for that and we'll look at ways to bring it back next time. Great. Other questions? Well, thank you again for this uh really good report, uplifting report. I just look forward to seeing it again next year. I'm looking
126for those patterns to just continue. Um so thank you. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you. Okay. So now we are going to hear another great report from stu on student student activities. All right. So, we have uh athletic director Chris Levatino, student activities director Denise Clark, fine arts chair Nick Gail, and community service coordinator Diana Balon, who will share the report tonight. And I should add before they start, we uh I encourage them to use a bit of a different methodology uh to capture a little bit more involvement. So, it it's a little it's a different from the well-being report, but I think it's we're trying to get us closer to actually what we're doing here to reflect here at the board level. So, they'll talk a little bit about that. And we're still not quite
127there yet, but we're we're closer than we were last year. We are. So, first off, thank you for having us tonight um to hear to speak to you guys about um our ETHs student involvement for last school year, which uh Dr. Kinsey pointed out was really our first year back after being out for over a full school year. And uh you know I think we've got some really positive things to share with you guys tonight. Um before we do that, we'll just introduce ourselves. Reaclimate the buttons. Hi everyone. I'm Diana Bali Don. I use they or she pronouns. I'm the community service coordinator. Hi everyone. My name is Denise Clark. I use she her pronouns and I am the student activities director and I oversee the student success center also. Good evening everyone. I'm Nick
128Gail. I use he him and I'm our fine arts department chair. And I am Chris Levatino. I use hehim pronouns and I'm the athletic director here. So we are going to uh share with you guys some uh some exciting information. Um, but before we do that, we just want to have a little party, a little jazz some things up a little bit. This is a little little fun from our first formal affair after the pandemic, a homecoming 2021. [Music] Wow. All right. I didn't see anybody get up and dance, but say that was a big pivot to have homecoming outside. That was That was a big event. That was a really big event. and for uh for Denise and everyone else who helped figure out how to to bring everybody back safely and have that
129uh that party was was awesome. Um and that's you know sort of emblematic of I think the whole year you know uh some of the highlights from last year is we had significant participation increases um really a bounce back of participation um from the pre- pandemic uh years. Uh also the grade point averages of students that were involved in extracurricular activities uh you'll see is is almost a full letter grade higher than students that are not involved in extracurricular activities. Um and we also you know recognize as Dr. Campbell said earlier we recognize that that students were engaged in a lot of other ways as well. Um from this from the summits that we have for a variety of students to the dances. Um and then finally, you know, we're going to point out different
130ways that we can use our data to identify areas for equitable growth um in terms of participation number by subgroups. So, I'm not going to read our extracurricular philosophy, but I'll boil it down to just saying that extracurriculars um help push our students beyond their comfort zones um and provide tremendous opportunities for social emotional learning in ways that a classroom often cannot. And uh and that's true from athletics to activities and clubs to fine arts to to community service. Uh I just one little point on this picture and we're not going to talk about each picture, but this is just sort of an example of one of the highlights I'm going to share um for athletics is we had tremendous, you know, success with sports that don't always get a lot of uh the spotlight
131here at ETHS. And boys gymnastics, we haven't had multiple medalists since the 80s. And the coolest thing about being at that event last year was just how much our kids cared about the success of the other kids that meddled. And it was just a really fun, neat experience. And uh that kind of leads into the highlights for for each of our different areas and specifically athletics. Um we had an incredible variety of teams that experienced success last year, traditional success. Um, we had 18 different programs that either won a conference championship or a regional championship or a sectional championship or finished in the top 25 in the rankings. 18. That's well over half of our programs that had tremendous success last year. And I won't go through each and every single one of them, but
132I would say that that's sort of a broad highlight of ETHS athletics. Um, yeah, and I'm going to go over some highlights from community service. Um I keep reflecting back to last year and just like the whole year was a real big reset. The previous year we saw our participation levels um very low but it's because we know that students want to be in person and do things in person. So we had to really meet that need um by leading over 55 volunteer activities for a community service club and that is all studentled activities like students leading activities with and for other students which is really powerful and also reintroducing students to what the community service office does. So we did that through different ways by having a great socks showdown. So having students in
133classes and clubs compete um to help uh support needs in our community. CNE was asking for 50 holiday socks um and we were able to raise or collect um over a thousand as well as introducing our culture of service to students um especially our incoming freshmen. So we did that the summer before this school year that we're talking about and the summer after as well. Um and lastly, we piloted an online submission um process for service hours really bringing the community service office to the 21st century. Very amazing. Well, in uh fine arts coming back from remote learning, you know, we had shifted and pivoted toward uh many online performances, many pre-recorded events and without a live audience. It just creates a totally different experience for our students. So, last year we were excited to
134bring back a number of productions and performances in person and we brought just under 6,000 audience members into that space. So, um, it was just a reminder of the power of re-engaging our families into our programs, re-engaging the community and re-engaging our student body as well into being audience members. Um, and the other point I think worth mentioning is just our our visual arts students. Um, in some ways many of them loved being on remote learning. They got to create uh a lot while they were there. Um but then coming back into the big into the building um being a part of our studio environment and then to um participate in a statewide event that's put on and currently going on right now uh where they collected over $2 million in scholarships towards uh post-secary
135schools and camps as well. So just an incredible um experience and outcome for those students to come back and really uh get back into the studio, get back to creating what they love and then reap the benefits from that as well. All right, you guys saw the party that we threw, right? Um, that was just the beginning, right? We got back this year, well, last year to an amazing homecoming. 1600 over 1,600 students came. That's a lot of kids at a party, right? Um, but we pivoted. That was all last year. It was pivoting. It was making the right decisions to show that our students that we want them to be involved and to get involved. And that it first started off with homecoming and our students came out in numbers before that we have
136never seen and as you guys will know this year we report to you guys next year it just increased and it went higher right so they want to be involved even if it's not in one of these four pillars they want to be involved and be a part of a community and that's what we gave them starting at homecoming um I also wanted to highlight the fact that we have an amazing Japan bowl team here at ETHS that um took first place last year and Two of those first place winners were two African-American males who had a free trip to go to Japan. You guys may not know about them, but they're doing an amazing job here, and this is their fifth year running here at ETHS. We have small things like that that are
137happening here at our school that are giving our kids opportunities to excel outside of the classroom and outside of this country, which is just simply amazing. Um, as you can also see there that we um hosted and established pop-up shops for our students who are entrepreneurs, right? using that time to highlight their skills outside of the classroom during Black History Month and during Women's Month. Those are just a couple of highlights that we're doing here at ETHS with our student activities department. as Dr. Campbell mentioned, uh one of the things we're doing is really trying to stay mindful of what can engagement look like beyond the traditional um ideas and then how can we capture that data? how can we really see what experience students are having? Um, so we've presented uh to this group
138before and we've included athletics, community service, student activities, and fine arts. Um, and now we're continuing to grow and we've included school events as a part of this. We know our social conscious series and our summits have been an incredible opportunity for students. Some of them are getting involved at the leadership level and planning those events. Um, as well as, uh, Denise mentioned with our dances. So again, just different activities that are being provided that are engaging students who aren't engaged in one of our other activities. So it's been exciting to kind of broaden the term of engagement and what that can mean and then see how that's capturing students that we haven't seen yet. So when we bring all of those students together, we've got 85% of our student body engaged in one of
139those activities. And that's an incredible number. I think we're all excited about it. Um, and we're also excited about the potential to kind of keep growing. You know, what does engagement look like? And then who are we still seeing not engaged and what opportunities can we create for those students? Each of these numbers here uh did go up from our previous report except for fine arts. I can acknowledge that. Um, but as Chris mentioned at the beginning, we're starting to see numbers return back to the precoid uh level of participation. So that's been affirming for us. If we break that number, the 85% down uh into our racial subgroups, you can see how each of those fare. And remember that each of these percentages is the percentage of students within that racial subgroup. So 92%
140of our Asian student population participated in one of those activities. I'll give you an opportunity to scan this slide. Okay. So then we'll take a a closer look into the areas that we've reported on in the past. Um just athletics, community service, fine arts, and student activities. And uh you can see here we're at 73% and the last time we had shared this report with you, we were at 66. So we're definitely moving in the right direction. Uh, community service had incredible gains and I know Diana is going to talk about that in a little bit, but going from 24% to 52%. Um, so really big gains there. And when we look at that across our racial subgroups, we can see an increase from our last report in every area. Our Asian student populations, our
141Asian student population had the biggest increase going from 66% to the 80% that you see. Um, and then it was our black and African-American students going from 41% to 51%. So, I know the last time we presented to you, we had shared that one of our goals was to continuously work on supporting our black and brown students. Um, and we're seeing here some growth in that area. So, we still have some work to do. Uh, but it's promising to see some of the growth. If we look within these uh groups by grad year, again, we're seeing numbers across the board that were much higher than where we left them last year. Uh 10% gains for most of the groups and our freshman class was coming in at 75%. So, it's great to see those students
142starting off their high school experience already looking for ways to be engaged and participating in activities. If we look by income status and IEPs, these were another two areas that had significant growth. For our lowincome students, we went from 28% to 50%. So, it's great to see that number jump up as well as students with IEPs that went from 20 to 31. So, I think big gains in two very important student subgroups. And then lastly, by gender, we continue to see our female identifying students uh participating more than our males. Um but again, both numbers went up by about 10% since last time. So just reflective of the overall growth and as Chris mentioned at the beginning big slide lot of cells uh but I'm happy to summarize it for you. Um you know one
143of the gains we continue to see is that students who are involved in activities are showing a relationship between their GPA and their involvement. Uh one thing to note is that the differential here on the bottom right of the screen is the largest it's been uh since we've been reporting out. um since the 2019 2020 data. So it's looking like that differential is just continuing to widen which I think speaks to um which I think speaks to the importance of being involved. I know I often hear from students that when they're in rehearsals for a production their time management is sometimes better, their organization is better. Um that's just anecdotal from the students, but um it's great to see that our students who are performing on stage and in the classroom and in all of
144these spaces are also performing in the classroom. Thank you. Okay. So, I think it's really important to set the context for community service within our school. So, to note, as I tell all of our students, although they think otherwise, um service is not a requirement here at our school for graduation. Um it's it is literally completely voluntary for students to get involved. And over the course of um you know our remote learning year and our transition back, we did see a really big drop the year before we're reporting here um as well as then a huge increase. Um and I think a part of that um to note is a couple different things. One um it's voluntary for students to submit hours. This number 52% um is based on the percent of students that are
145submitting their hours into our tracking system. Um so again that is something that is voluntary for them. Um and while they're not recording them or they weren't previously recording them, we know that students are doing a lot of service, especially after the start of the pandemic. Our students are amazing and they are um activated and agitated to make really big change in our community. um they consistently are listing different issues from uh food access to criminal justice to environmental issues to LGBTQ rights um as things that they want to do. And you know, sometimes they're like, I don't want to record that cuz I don't want to be seen as someone who's just trying to put a number on my record, right? And a lot of last year was us trying to change that narrative
146of one, we want you to be recording this so that you have a record for yourself so you can just see all the amazing things that you did um and not just use it as a number um to use for your applications. Although we also say that you should do that. Um I think what's really amazing about this statistic right here um not just the 52% but the table on the right is to note um the number of students that are um submitting hours based on these different levels. So last year um there is a requirement around service for honor society. Um a lot of students are motivated to put that on their record because of that. Um for 5 hours that's for freshmen. For 10 hours that's for sophomores. for 15 hours. That's for
147juniors and seniors for honor society. Our students consistently submit even more than that, right? They're actually recording the amazing work that they're doing because they're doing it so consistently from the animal shelter to fundraising for different health organizations. Um our students without a doubt they they are really involved. Um and so yeah, so we saw that number really increase which is amazing. Um and we definitely saw those numbers across the other demographic info that we'll show also increase. So here participation by federal race code um I think yeah what's really important to note here is that all of our numbers really increased for our Asian students. Um that number doubled for our black students um that number I don't know how to say it six times. It's okay. Six times. I don't know what the
148special word is. For um Latino students, this number tripled as well as for our white students. Um so again, our students are recording at a vastly higher rate um in the past year their participation service. Next for grade for grad year um we see this number hovering around 50% across all um school years the year previously it was about 20% that it was fluctuating around and I also looked at our numbers before the start of the pandemic um which also was around maybe 25%. Um so we see a big increase around students actually recording their hours as well. This is from Yamo. So funny. Okay. And then lastly, um this is participation by gender. So in the previous year, um the numbers were 27% for our female students. So we see that number doubling and
149then for our male students it was at 7%. Um so we see that going up uh a big amount as well. Um, this is for me, right? I wanted to highlight goal two and goal four of the district goals, student well-being and community engagement and partnerships. Um, when highlighting additional student engagement experiences, there's an important piece that we can't see here, that we can't collect in data, which is relationships. Um, that's something that you can't put a number to, but we're doing here in the building, right? And our students can are getting involved in all these amazing things, the happy Fridays, the extra community service, the entrepreneurship, but the importance of relationships with our students and supporting them with their social emotional and their advancements for their academic growth is something that I recognized that
150was so important last year that flow over this year. Okay? And I want to tell you a story about an amazing student who came to my office and was like, "Hey, Miss C." And I was like, "Hey, how you doing?" And she was like, "I don't want to do any of this stuff, but I'm a writer." And I'm like, "Okay, how am I going to tell you how to write about what you feeling? Just write for me. But I want people to hear my story, though." And I'm like, "Well, how am I going to do that for you? How can we make this happen for you? Because you don't want to go to the poetry club that we have, and you don't want to do X, Y, and Z." She says, "Well, let's do something
151fun." And I said, "Well, tell me what's fun cuz you know my version of fun, your version of fun looks two different ways." and she goes, "Let's let's create a poetry slam fun thing for Valentine's Day." That's not captured in our data. But she was able to express her words to her classmates in a fun poetry slam that we had in the hub. Then she left the poetry slam and was like, I'm ready to express myself in other ways too in this building. She ended up writing for the poetry I mean the contrast for graduation, right? I can't put that in data. Right? But that conversation, the importance of relationships here in this building, it speaks volume to what our students need, right? And so if we give our students all these extra opportunities to
152experience things, then they're able to see what else they're good at and they're able to see, hey, I probably if I expose myself and do this, then I can do this, too. And so I'm just happy that we're offering our students so many wonderful things to get involved in, but I don't want us to forget the importance of relationships that can't be tracked in data. And this young person right now is at the University of New York writing from one simple conversation. Can we imagine what we able to do with our students here if we all had conversations and just planted the seed? And that's what we're doing here. But some things can't be tracked in this information that you guys are requesting from us also. So, I just want to highlight that for you
153guys to notice, too. So, as we look at uh steps forward, ways to uh to continue to improve, um one of the things we're really trying to do is create equitable outreach to engage our students of color and activities where they are underrepresented. Um and I'll just kind of highlight two things within the athletic department that we're doing there. One, one was a another kind of simple story. Um, we had the opportunity to bring in Archie Cooper, who if you're not familiar with, he was, uh, part of the very first black high school rowing team in Chicago. Um, and incredible speaker who tells his story in a in a passionate, um, and and connectful way. And he came and we just created a a field trip opportunity for for classes and for students to come
154and and hear his story. Um, and I think we had something like 750 students that came and got to understand the significance of him putting himself out there to try something different that uh that he had never done before. Um, that wasn't the societal norm of a black person and uh and really try to send that message that it's it's important to try to step outside yourself sometimes and and the expectations of other people. So, that was one example um small example. And then just over winter break, uh had a a light bulb moment of creating this program called REPS, um which is an acronym for raising raising Evston performance standards, which is really just simply giving kids the opportunity to come in and practice their sport um on their own uh with a supervisor
155of course at ETHS, but really being intentional about trying to provide it for sports where club sports um and uh uh payforplay opportunities that have negatively impacted students of color uh the most have shut them out from improving in their sport from freshman year to senior year. Um and giving them the opportunity now to come in and practice on their own um or with with other students here um those skills that they otherwise wouldn't have been able to get the opportunity to to practice. So, those are two just small ways that we're trying to again create more equitable access for students of color um within athletics. Yeah, I think uh in addition, you know, one of the things we talk about is developing more improved approaches to communication. We often hear from students, you know,
156that they're unaware of some things happening. uh you know we're we're continuing to experiment with you know is it email is it social media is it announcements um and I think the reality is that something different works for every kid um you know or so I think we're just continuing to think about like how do we communicate what opportunities exist for students in a way that's effective and meaningful for them so that we can get them engaged uh particularly those who aren't engaged already and then just piggyback on that we actually have these wonderful things called Tuesday tidbits and Nicole is uh one of the voices over Tuesday tidbits and we're using that way to target our students who normally we wouldn't get by hearing the announcements. It's just a visual aid where students can
157get the announcements what's going on, what's coming up next. And that's really our push to using technology and social media. This is a generation where they want stuff instantly. They want to know it. They want to get it. They want to put it down where however they can do it. And so we're we're trying to revamp for next year to do a podcast with some of our students and in the student activities department just to kind of get information out there of ways to get involved and um really using the platforms at our at our hands and our fingertips that they use all the time. Um so looking forward to really tying in social media in a aspect of way to get our kids involved also for next year. And then this last note is
158um just hearkening back to um the tools that we have in the community service office for students to navigate service opportunities um the expansion of school links and using that as a way for students not just to look at college and career activities but relating to service and keeping track. We have thousands of student students who use it. I mean like thousands of uh entries like I think this week there's like 20 a day um that we're just reviewing and making sure that it shows up on their um accounts. Um but lastly just like hearkening back to the relationship building that Denise was talking about. Um a big goal for our office this year has just been um trying to uh work with teachers to really integrate um service um into their classrooms especially in
159the ways that it builds. it builds like their classroom culture. Um, and I've seen so many students um, in class and outside of class like once there's a service activity, they open up and connect with their teachers in like whole new ways. And with the content curriculum, um, we specifically did an activity with a math class where we got to take them to um, Sam's Club to do all the shopping and apply like the algebra that they're actually learning of like how do you how do you budget out making, you know, 70 sandwiches? um and actually bring that to fruition. Yeah. So, we uh we appreciate the opportunity to come here today and and share our great news about the increase in participation, uh the incredible academic achievement of our students involved in extracurriculars, uh
160opportunities to broaden engagement for our students, and also how we're using data to create more equitable growth going forward. So, thank you. Excellent report. And I just feel like tonight has been a night that we have seen um all this great stuff come after the pandemic. So, uh these numbers look really really good and it's very exciting. Um, I love how you are looking deeper at um trying to get students engaged and and looking at some of the activities that we wouldn't necessarily count or attend to like uh students who are working to plan the summit and and our the summits and um and just all the the you know the activities and the planning and the leadership behind them. And as you were talking, I was thinking a a lot about um the opportunities
161to give students leadership opportunities and and all that comes with that. You know, sometimes it's difficult and frustrating, but you know, they learn, right? So, um and then I was I I do admit I got a little stuck on that Sam's question, so I'll just have to keep that in my mind. So, thank you again, uh, board. Um, Mary, you have your Oh, your mic on. You okay? Well, first of all, amazing um your work. And, you know, I have a few individuals I hang out with on a daily who um benefit from so much of what you're creating. And um I think about the haunted house and that you know in volunteer work they get to just it's not only so um accessible but it's also um fun for them and and I think
162service is in can be that way and I love what you're doing. So I thank you for that. The hub magical space um I think it's really important to keep that going. Um and I really um honor what you're doing in that design work. So thank you for that. And then um Chris, you were talking about the impact of clubs on sports and um I mean like I feel like you're reading my mind. And so what I also then think about is like the impact of that kind of similar aspect on the arts and we have that happening within our um community as well. And so I just and I love that you're a team. So maybe that will um keep kind of going. And what you mentioned around reps, innovative. Um and then so
163I know I'm probably in the weeds, but I'm going to just like two thoughts, recommendations because you know that's just me. Um, so one, the parties, the dancing, like kids have need some things to do at night and it's a lot of pressure and I wish that they were doing it more out in the city um for them. And but the fact that so many kids do come to these dances, I think they need more hangout. Maybe I'll come I'll volunteer. I'll cheer them. Um, and then I always think about how we don't have a skate park or anything like and all the things are building geometry and all of that and and our, you know, did you say skate park? Yeah. Yeah. So, it'd be really cool. There's one opening next year. Yeah. Where?
164Tell me. Maybe. I just don't. It's um I think by Sam's Club they're building a new one. Oh, yes, they are. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Absolutely. They are. Okay. And we have a skateboarding club here. Yes. That Jeremiah has run and founded and we've been able to get our boosters to get boards and get all the equipment they have. He's actually doing something in the spring, so look out for that. little little plug from Jeremiah, but as his graduation gift from as a senior, he wanted to give back to the community. So, we're getting all that together. So, look out for that. All right. Thank you. And um did you say you're volunteering for that? I will go to any dance because it will be lit and I'll have fun. And so, yes.
165Yeah. But Mera, you're not supposed to be having that much fun. You're supposed to be watching the kids. I mean, she was at that home. She'll be getting in trouble. Ma was at home. I was on the stage watching everybody. My kids cuz I embarrassed them. That's who watch me just I mean Nicole um I was just going to say as someone who loves being involved in our community, I try to get in as much as possible like every way. like I Anyway, um I I saw the um new Triers Joseph and Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat the other day. Um and it was, you know, almost as good as ours last year. But um it made me think about how um grateful I am for all the opportunities you provide for um us, the students,
166um everyone in the building. So, thank you for all that you do. Thank you, Nicole. We love you. But we all have teams though. I have to give credit to my amazing department that I would not be able to sit here and plan and productively give out to all the kids that we give to without the amazing team that I have. So I know we all have a team of people that work with us and I'm just shouting out mine because we we work well together but we produce amazing things on a daily basis for the students and staff in this building. So thanks Nicole for that too. Thank you for that. So when I say thank you to you, I do mean to your whole team because I do I know you know as
167we said earlier it takes a village and and it's it would be impossible for you to do it alone. So you are working as a team and then you have teams supporting all of the work that you do. So really for all of those in this village, you know, I do want to say thank you and and and that this work getting students engaged in this way, making sure and and Chris, we've talked about this so many times before, making sure that our black and brown students are are a part of this and a part of the activities that they wouldn't necessarily be a part of. noticing their absence and trying to um bring them in. Um and then recognizing how this impacts their GPA. It's almost like it's it's almost like a miracle that
168that their GPA goes up when they're in their busiest season because their executive functioning somehow gets so much better. Like wow. So um so really it's it's amazing. So thank you again. Gretchen has a comment. Yeah. Um, just a couple things. Thank you. I I really love this report. I love the graphics. It was um a great way to capture, I think, what we've been kind of angling for for a number of years, which is to sort of capture this um picture of all the things we have on offer for our students and and tie it all together. um and and share with us where where the gaps are and and to be upfront and acknowledge the gaps um as I think we've done and you you can't fill those gaps until you see where
169they are. So that's why the data is still important. Um but I love the point about relationships um that you made and I I 150% agree. I think the problem um that we continue to fa I mean I problem opportunity let's call it an opportunity is that um we're still not reaching some students and we still have disconnected students um and some of those students are not going to come to your office and say I want to write in fact the hardest ones to reach aren't going to come anywhere near any of your offices they're not opening emails to figure out, you know, what the options are. So, I think it's that's going to be the the trickier um lift. These are students who were home caring for their siblings after school. They're struggling to
170keep up with their schoolwork. Maybe English isn't their first language. You know, all of these things that are barriers to to becoming involved. Um, and I think that's we we really need to think more creatively about, you know, walking these halls to figure out who's sitting alone at lunch and might need um, you know, rather than sitting in an office and thinking that somebody's going to come to you, we we have to get out there and find them. Um, and and I think that's a little bit tricky and I I don't have the answers, but I think that's where we need to be looking. I love the fact that we're including in this data attendance at school events. I think that's really really a great thing to examine. And I think that's an opportunity for
171somebody who may just go to an event, their first dance for example. Um and and there might be a way based on that little, you know, introduction to to then circle back to those people. I I I don't know. I'm just trying to figure out other ways. Also, I think we should be very careful about the cause effect relationship between participation activities and your GPA. It may be, not to be all scientific, which I am not, um, about this, but it may be that that students who are strong students are more inclined to get involved in sports. And it's not that sports or the arts um, that participation gives them the higher grade. I just I just want to be careful because I think it's really fabulous. And believe me, it's an argument. you know,
172I discussed it with my own children and, you know, I think it's great, but it's it's not necessarily that the fact of participation causes that increased GPA. Um, and lastly, I just want to say, Chris, you and I had some email exchanges about the anniversary of Title N this year. Um, I didn't see it mentioned anywhere in here. And I I just I'm a little disappointed that ETHS didn't make more of a thing about the 50th anniversary of Title 9. Um, is it okay then? Never mind. I'll just This was last year's report. I'll just be quiet. I'll just be quiet then. Not sure if you attended our pretend like I didn't say anything on February 4th at Northwestern University or not. It was a great one. Good. I I just I I hope that
173we talk about that because it's a big deal. Total nine happened when some of us were um too young to take full advantage because it was in the 70s and we were maybe only eight or so. I don't know. I think that's one of the hardest things about this these reports is we're talking about some exciting things that happened this year like you know Chris just talked about on February 4th and we're going to get to hear about it next year. Yeah. So no fair. Thank you. I really did like all this good news. Yeah. I you know I I think this was very promising and a very um challenging time period we've been in. Right. So to know that that this was your baseline coming from zero. Yeah. That's amazing. That's amazing. And and
174to know that our kids have been isolated and then they came back wanting and um everything you said about relationships. So I can confess that for my son engagement allowed him to get into college. playing that sport allowed him to to have a college education and um I tried to have him play every season. That was the only thing that that kept him going. But um but that's what that did for him. And it it does that for so many other of our students. And it doesn't have to be that. It could be theater. For me it was theater. For him it was sports. Um, so and Evston Township has the best offerings bar none, right? Like there is something as an example um I believe for every student but it it starts with that
175relationship which is what I heard you all commit to last year to doing to try so hard to re-engage our students. So, I am looking forward to, you know, next year's report, but I'm already seeing the excitement, right? If you're in the building and you come to the activities and you see what what you all are doing, you see the students here and gravitate, you know, you see them be excited. They're showing up. I mean, how many, not just students, but how many of our community members attend a football game? I mean, it can be between 3,500 and 4,000. That's a great The place is packed. It's I mean, that's amazing. And you don't even have to like football, right? It's it's right. It's not even that. It's just they want to be together and
176they want to cheer for their friends and they want to, you know, socialize and do all that. I think you know that you said and and so to know that that's the type of school we have for this community and for our students that's amazing. So I think this is awesome work. This is always the report that I hone in on the most. Right. So you know I have nothing bad to say about this. That's great work. And I believe, and I know Liz wants to talk, there's research behind that GPA um bunk that there's research that that shows that students when they're in when they're involved and into the season do better because they recognize that they have to be better organized. That was my experience with my girls. They have to be better
177organized. And so they they just do and it's and that's what I mean about it being like a miracle. It's like wow. Well, so and I don't mean to cut you Liz, but I do want to just say to that cuz Gretchen, that's I don't think anyone was arguing causal. It was the correlation and it is it's a minor minor point. Yeah, it's really I I feel like it's taking away from the point. No, but I think it's really important and you made it, but I was just saying it was incorrect because the fact is is that it isn't causal. I don't think that they were saying it was causal, right? Um, so I just think that's really important because we don't want that to Yeah, we don't we want we want to be accurate,
178Liz. Sorry. Yeah, this this whole report is very promising. I'm really happy to see a big increase across the board in um participation in activities. Um, so I'm looking at the participation by IEP status and it's really quite low at 31%. Um, and if there is an academic uh, you know, component to being participating in activities, um, it's even better. But do you have any ideas or plans on how to engage students with IEPs in um, activities? Yes. So, um it's going to be reported for you for next year, but this year, uh we implemented these things called incentives, um to bring kids to activities so you can just be a kid again, right? It's so important that we don't we miss we don't miss that point of just having a regular high school career
179and just being youthful. And so, we're having these incentives. Our next one is going to be with our junior class. It's a class incentive after they've tested for two days. They're going to go bowling just to come out and have a good time and go bowling with all your peers who are just like you that have no stipulations to academics. It's just for you to come out and be youthful and be a kid again. You had these two days of testing. Here's an incentive for your entire class to come out and be youthful and have fun. Right? So, we're doing these things. We we recognized last year some things that we had to change. And so, this year we implemented class incentives, right? We've had a a freshman sophomore winter formal this year. We brought
180it back, right, just for those peers to to get to get to know who you who your classmates are. We we're missing that piece of that stuff all over again. So, we're doing that. The seniors get a senior send off, right? But the juniors get to have this bowling alley experience just their classmates and um we are I've sat down with the special ed department actually and we really put together a plan of like all the activities that we have and I wanted to figure out how we could meet the kids' needs, right? We saw that saw that there was a gap in there. And so for prom last year, we had a quiet space. We've never had one before, right? But these kids want to come out and enjoy prom like everybody else, but
181they have stipulations that may have them need to have a quiet space or need to have a space they can just go draw at prom at Navy Pier. So we saw these needs and these gaps and we said, "This is how we're going to change it." We brought down seven bean bags and had quiet space outside of a place at Navy Pier for our students to really come out, get dressed up, but still have an opportunity to be with your peers and have a good time. So, we're we're we're identifying the things that we're seeing and we're changing them. You'll hear about a lot more next year, but we are doing things and working with our special ed department because inclusivity is important across the board. And you've been very specific about that this year.
182Not just with those things. you're being too kind, but you've been very specific about um some very um um and other efforts uh for to be more inclusive. So, yeah, you'll hear more about that. So, for sure. Thank you. No doubt. Thank you. That's that's really helpful. Pat, just quick. So, thank you for that. Um because my question was Gretchen's question, which is we got to go reach those kids that aren't engaged and figure out who they are and get them because they aren't always going to come to us. Um, and so I love that you're doing that and I hope that that's that creativity and that uh effort is extended because you know there's so many if you look at the data you know black and brown kids um boys not as involved as
183girls all those things there's those people that need you to come find them and so I just love that you're doing it and congratulate you and just do some more and thanks for doing All right. Well, thank you again and Billy. It's it was a great report. So uplifting. Thank you. It's really good. I just got to say while we transition, I'm really excited about next year's data, too. I mean, homecoming numbers, um the summit participation numbers, everything is just going up up up. So, we don't won't hear about it until next year. So, all right. Those are just the summits we've had so far. That's true. We're still still on it. Still summiting. Okay. So, next item on the agenda, and Dr. Davis is getting us ready, is textbook adoption, deletions, and proposals. I
184can't believe how late it is. I know. That's why I know, right? I still got all bets. All right, textbook adoption. Thank you uh for making the time uh to discuss textbook adoption. Uh the process we establish priorities and budget. We identify the need. Teachers work with chairs on recommendations. Department chairs then uh put forth those recommendations to me. Uh we run them through curriculum forum for review. Culminates in board presentation. This is the information item. And then there is board action at the next board meeting. Here's how we say that in another way. It's just our adoption chart walking us through a recommendation process. Uh the board is the ultimate decider. That's what the key takeaway for this body is. Proposed textbooks. There are five proposed textbooks this year. Three of them uh two
185of them are for uh new courses. The CTE offerings are new courses. And the uh PE adoption has to do with our medical students on medical. So, we're going to provide a textbook for students on medical so we can guarantee a uh an experience for those students going to align with our curriculum. Uh and then you'll see there are two major purchases for history and math. Uh the US history textbook was last adopted over 10 years ago and the pre-calc textbook uh was last adopted when the department chair Dale Leeforth was a student. I'm not kidding. He mentioned that at forum and we all laughed, but it's true. Uh and there is more to that pre-calculus adoption which I'll get into uh later. Uh but uh that pre-calculus adoption is linked to our uh our
186course change that um Dale Leaporth will talk about in a few minutes. Um these are our thank yous. Thank you to department chairs. Angela Malone. She quarterbacks this uh through the textbook uh through the book distribution center. her team. Uh Liz Johnson, my secretary, organizes a lot of the uh materials. Kendra, of course, who's not here, says, "This is great. You brought it in under budget," which is awesome. What you didn't hear is that there were over 200,000 uh dollars worth of requests and we got it down to $116,000 within budget. Just means that we scale those adoptions over time so that we're always within budget. And thank you to the curriculum forum members. Are there any questions at this time? Seeing no questions, I will now I will and you can you can always
187email me with questions if you have them afterwards. Uh but I would like to also bring to the table Dale Leeforth who's going to come up and talk through our a very unique opportunity we have for course title and level change there. Mr. Leeforth is our math department chair and that's the hat he's wearing tonight. And I'm going to try to talk that fast too if I can. Well, this is uh thank you for uh having me here tonight. This is usually a pretty technical um part of the evening, right? Textbooks. Um but we are sliding in a course title level change proposal tonight that I want to bring to your attention. Um so this of course connects to goal one um increasing each student's academic and functional trajectory. Uh I've been up here before,
188you've seen this slide before. Normally I have my AP AP success manager hat on. Um and so we talk about the the national recognition and really um Evans Township High School is and will continue to be um you know kind of a trends setter um for AP uh across the nation. Um and this is a continuation of that um here tonight. So the value of AP just as a reminder our advanced placement classes it allows students to experience academic rigor. Um and we talked about this in detail um for the AP board report. So, I'll save you some time on these slides now, but uh for people just to get a context of our advanced placement. Um I I added that slide in. Um in the fall, um there was a proposal for our advanced
189pre-calc honors class. Um this is the class that comes right before BC calculus. Um there was a proposal uh brought forward to you all um for AP pre-calculus on the College Board. Um is creating a new course coming online next year called AP pre-calculus. And so this was approved by you all um in the fall um as part of our regular process and we're we're very excited about this opportunity for our students. Um we do what the AP pre-calculus course has and more. Um and this was a great course um that was uh going to be set up for our students headed to BCAL. Um unfortunately uh it wasn't set up at that point for all students and I'll give you a little bit of that background tonight. Tonight we're proposing outside of our regular
190process. And I'll give you some background and some explanation around that. But tonight we're proposing a title and level change um for our pathway uh to to honors pre-calculus. This is our preAB calculus course. Uh we're proposing tonight that that also become AP pre-calculus as well. And so what does that mean? That means that all ETHs pre-calculus students will be taking pre-calculus at the AP level. starting um next year in the 2023 2024 school year. Boom. And that's the end of the report. I can give you background, but it's getting late. 567 students. But I think what's important to note is this next slide. Um 207 additional BIPAC AP students. Wow. 80 additional black AP students. 84 additional Latinx AP students for the coming school year. And I think that's the slide that I wanted
191to definitely highlight for you all. One of the questions that we got during the AP board report was, "What are you doing for our students of color?" Um, this is one of those things that we were working on at the time, but we weren't quite ready to to roll out yet. Um, and now we're at the point where we're rolling it out. So, this is something that again, 567 AP pre-calc students, and you can look at the impact, the positive impact on our students of color. Bravo. Thank you. So we we said we would continue to do the work and work towards that and here's a step um in the right direction. But I do want to provide bold and what do we call it? Bold creative. Bold and creative. Yes. Well, this is bold
192and creative. It also showcases the advocacy. And I just think just taking a moment to just highlight the advocacy because this was not a decision that the college board initially had made. This is something that Dale Leaporth had to actually surface with the college board and mobilize the change. Dale, thanks Pete. Um, so in the summer and early fall as the College Board is rolling out this class, um, there's four units. I could get in the weeds of all four of them, but I won't because I I'm looking at the clock. But there was four units established. The important point to note is um pre-AB calculus topics were in units 1, two, and three. So those are great um content for not only our BC calculus students but also AB. But there was this fourth
193unit and the fourth unit was um it it contained topics that just prepared students for BC calc at ETHS. Um our BC calculus um class consists of primarily white students. We do have a few students of color. Uh that's something that we'll continue to work on in the math department, but really the course wasn't designed um for preBC calculus students, but that's the setup that the college board had at the time in the summer and early fall. And that was the time of our um standard proposal timeline for for the board. Um but by late fall, early winter, the college board had agreed to remove unit 4, those prevc calculus topics from the uh AP exam, making unit 4 an optional topic. Um, and that was amazing because now, um, you're only covering pre-AB content.
194You can cover pre-EBC content if you want to. Uh, but this actually opens up the course, um, to a vast, um, larger number of students. So, how did this happen, right? Um, I'm a member of the North Suburban Math Council. U, we had a leadership summit in the fall. Um, Duran Jane from Stevenson was able to work with um, with myself and some of the other leaders in the area as well as some leaders in the college board. Um Jason Van Billiard was there. Um he's the department head for math and computer science for the college board and he's the lead writer for AP pre-calculus and they came to talk about this amazing course called AP pre-calculus that was a great course with four units that was set up to prepare students for BC calculus.
195Um thank you for that Pete. At this meeting uh we challenged the college board um to take a look at their equity statement um focusing on equitable access for all students. It's something we focus on here. We wanted to make sure that the college board was continuing to focus on that in a national um level as well. Uh highlighted that the course was aligned at BC calc. The inclusion of unit 4 meant that we would be spending a lot of time covering content that wasn't necessarily preparing students for AB calc. This would be a negative impact on our students of color. The course was supposed to benefit our students who are seniors in pre-calculus. This would be their AP mathematics class. students who weren't necessarily going to take AB calc um or AP stats because
196they had four years and their fourth year was pre-calculus. This course was designed across the nation to be a course that was for those students. Um at our school here, many students start in geometry. So our juniors in pre-calculus, they're headed to AB. This was supposed to be a course, this exciting, you know, College Board course was supposed to be a course that helped prepare them um for success in abal. And it was not set up to serve those students. We made sure that the college board heard that and surprisingly perhaps um the college board did listen. Um soon after the meeting um college board decided that unit 4 would be made an optional unit. Um and this opens up to a much broader range of students not only here at ETHS but across the
197nation. Um and so we were arguing at the time not only for ETHs but we were arguing for the nation. We know across the nation um many students top out at pre-calculus and this was a course that would benefit students not only here but across the country taking you back to the early slide where we we we set up at ETHS to be a national leader um for the advanced placement program and we want to continue to push those boundaries and barriers and um I think we we did that here. Anything to add, Pete? No, I think you encapsulated it, Dale. I think the key takeaway here is that uh this course will live at ETHS should you approve it. uh it will benefit our students of color mightily and it will provide a viable
198pathway for them for those folks into AB calculus and beyond and it can also springboard students into calculus in college and we know that along a traditional collegic pathway calculus is a barrier for many of our students. This opens that up. So the college board was responsive and listened to feedback. We were incredibly pleased with that. the course aligns to our pathway honors pre-calc class and we're incredibly excited about the opportunity. Uh again, we're in our first year um of pathway honors pre-calc, our dra pre-calculus class. And so this was a great opportunity that we were excited about, but we did want to take a measured approach as a department. So we reflected on the impact of our courses and students. Obviously, we felt it was a positive impact. We we updated the members of
199the team. We have about 15 teachers who are on the pre-calculus course team. Um the course team met to do a curriculum crosswalk just to ensure that our curriculum that we currently have align well with the AP curriculum with the three units that were presented. Um and it did. It aligned very well. Um and this also provides a framework should you approve the pre-calculus text that Pete sped through a few minutes ago. Thanks Pete. 1993. Um it provides a framework for us to align to that new textbook. And we did change that textbook to a one-year proposal um because potentially they might have a AP um version of that moving forward. Um so why are we doing this now? I think I laid it out, but just to be clear, the College Board timeline for
200finalizing their framework and exam coverage falls differently than our ETHs timeline. And as I noted, they made a major change to the course structure um after our process had been completed. We want this to happen next year. I'm asking outside of our normal timeline, which is not done, right? Usually, it's wait till next year. And I could have done that and that would have been easier to do um because there is a lot of work that's going to go into this change, the work leading up to and then um post this potential change. Um there is going to be a lot of work involved for, you know, our staff, you know, our teachers and our students. Uh but we want students to be able to benefit from this change as soon as possible. That's why
201I'm asking now outside of our regular timeline. I thought that was important to highlight that. So, what do we need to do should this be approved? Uh we'd like for our students um and families to be notified as soon as possible after the approval. So, we're starting to draft that communication pending um our hope that uh it will be approved by the board. Um we'll let them know of the course title and level change. We'll let them know that there'll be an opportunity to change courses if they desire. We have a wealth of um courses in the math department for them to take. Um but we'll also be sure to highlight that the course content and rigor will remain the same. We're currently teaching a rigorous pre-calculus course. Um it's taught with exposure to honors
202level curriculum throughout. Um and we're going to continue to have that same content. It aligned well. We're going to continue to have that same rigor. The change is the AP course structure and the benefits that come with that. So we will try to communicate that as best we can that you know it's a title um level change the course is the same course we have a strong pre-calculus course we just developed it for pathway to honors we're going to keep that course going the rigor will remain the same the change will be the AP core structure um the college board we've worked with them as well we said we have 15 teachers you know what what can happen in terms of training these 15 teachers we generally send our AP teachers to uh summer institute
203the college board has offered um through a program they have to send our teachers of the AP summer institute training for free. Um and so uh with Dr. um Carrie Levy, we've worked to um sign up the teachers for that and we'll have them enrolled this summer. So again, the College Board is backing up some of the changes with some support um for our teaching team, which is great. And we'll continue to address any needs and challenges as we head toward the fall. And in conclusion, uh we're proposing a title and level uh change for our pre-calculus pathway honors course to AP pre-calc. This means that again every pre-calculus student at ETHS will have the opportunity to benefit from taking at the course level. It falls outside of the timeline that we talked about, but
204I hope I I did a good job in explaining why. And ETHS again is positioned as a leader um for equity in the AP program for the College Board across the nation. um and we'd like to continue to position ourselves for there. So, thank you for uh allowing us to uh even entertain the thought out of outside of our normal timeline to benefit our students. Any questions? Thank you. You even challenged the college boards. Wow. And they listened. We had a team that we had a team that communicated. I think the vote was 21 out of 21 for a for a change. So, yeah. All right. Board, any questions? Just really quickly, I'm afraid that this big news is going to get lost because you're coming on at like 10:35. I really do. And you
205know, we we started off with kind of this serious discussion around um SRO's and our you know, safety concerns and our intergovernmental agreement and which was critically important. Um, but you know, interest has probably waned through the course of the night and you know, as as time and we had all these other good reports, too. But I I just think and I know Mon'nique wants to say something because she's been sitting here quietly smiling, but um I just I I just have to say this seems like enormous news and um and and you have to stop apologizing for coming to us late. I mean, there's a perfectly good reason why you're coming here. So, I don't know why you keep highlighting that piece. I think the piece that should be highlighted is your advocacy efforts
206and how just in extraordinarily consistent it is with our whole equity um angle here at ETHS, right? I mean, that's what we're all about. You went out there and you pushed it in the real world and and it worked um and it worked and and you're coming back to us. So, of course, you know, of course we're going to do it. And, you know, not to speak for my fellow board members or anything, but I I just, you know, I cannot, you know, I I just think this is really big news and there's there's nobody here. Somebody's watching on TV maybe or we'll watch the replay. But I I just I don't know. I I think this is really enormous because it just ties together with everything we're doing. And I'm, you know, I'm very
207proud of you, Dale. So, thank you. And you too, Pete. This is pretty big. This is pretty big. Pet, you have um so awesome on your advocacy and going up against the AP board, a you know, college board. Um so that's amazing and this is amazing. And as I said in um CL curriculum forum and others did too that we what we're doing is 567 kids and considering and also a number of kids of color including a number of kids of color are registered for a class already that they thought they could do and through the side door are now going to get in side door in the sense that the the nothing changed about the course except the name and the classification. and now they're going to get AP credit. And so I know
208we talked about using that as a way to help kids who've already registered stay with it and get an AP credit that maybe they wouldn't and maybe now they'll see, hey, I could take another AP class if if they're not a senior, whatever. So huge. So I know that you we talked about doing that, but I also would really encourage you to kind of use this next year. You going to draw a smiley face? G Dale. Uh, it's late. Come on. Come on. Um, inside joke. Um, but um, no, but in all seriousness, I think use next year as a case study because if 567 kids who weren't signed up for AP take an AP class and maybe it's their only one or their first one, that is a way of breaking down some of
209the barriers to why can't they take AP US history instead of regular history or why, you know what I like there w I think you can use this as a as a teachable not moment but really expans expansion for our students around what it means to be in an AP class and to help break down some of the barriers that I think they have because they're already signed up for the class. Yeah. I mean I just I just I'm so as Gretchen said so proud of you and of ETHS for pushing the college board and for doing this um because this is the work. This is what we all want to see. So amazing. Thank you. Excellent. All right. Um All right. So here here's a question. Are we going to vote on this tonight?
210We going to vote on next meeting information item and then an action item. Okay. Okay. Right. I'm looking for All right. Well, thank you. Thank you for your advocacy. Thank you for waiting. Yeah. And thank you for waiting. All right. So, we're going to keep moving. Keep it moving. Uh we're at the 23 24 and 24 25 school calendars. Dr. Robinson. Dr. Robins, thank you for waiting. Good evening. Here we go. Good night. Uh my name is Keith Robinson, pronouns are he, him, associate principal for educational services. And I'm pleased to uh present very technical annual um report not really a report but a presentation of the a draft calendar for the 2425 school year and approve the draft calendar from last year for next year's 22 23 24 school year. Say that five times
211fast. Uh so I do want to start by just giving uh gratitude and thanks uh to the committee uh where we had a lot of staff, administration uh and parents uh some folks serving in dual roles. Uh but we had five meetings throughout the year where we typically review the draft for next year. If there are any tweaks, we kind of tweak some of the things that are on that calendar. And we also come up with a recommended school year calendar for that next year. Uh in the me memo I did note just a couple of changes uh about the openhouse date uh wild kids futures date uh that did not require a change in the number of the years uh just for the events for those particular days. Uh so those were the only
212two uh notable changes for the draft that was already approved for the 232 24 school year and again I submit a draft for the 2425 school year. Uh one of the notable changes that you'll see is the addition of November 5th which is election day. Uh so that is uh in the state of Illinois. It's a new day that was just put on for primary elections a couple of years ago. um and pretty much the same um dates that uh we've had in years past. It is to be noted that we did collaborate with district 65 uh with the fall break which has been a great uh addition uh postcoid to the school year calendars as well as collaborating on winter break and the spring break. So, uh, in the community, those three breaks are
213aligned, uh, and a few others. Uh, but those are the the most, uh, pressing ones that we wanted to make sure that we, uh, collaborated, uh, on. Uh, and with that being said, those were kind of the major uh, things or points to present, and I'm happy to answer any questions. Okay, questions about the calendar. I should thank you for your time. I know you know you listen, you guys have gotten a lot of great information. This has been fun uh to sit back and and watch all the things that are happening. Sometimes we here, we live here and we still don't get the opportunity to take on and listen to all the wonderful things that you know this staff and community is doing. So true. I didn't mind the late night. You don't mind
214the late night, but I do want to say I don't have a question. I have a comment. Um, just to thank you for your work in really channeling a lot of voices on the calendar committee and a lot of leaders who have opinions. So, thank you for your leadership. Thanks and for hanging out for three and a half hours to make this short report. Thank you. It's my pleasure. It's important. It's good work. It's important work and it's an effective. So, you know, I'm happy to lead that effort and appreciate your support. Thank you. All right. Okay. So moving along discussion of goals of uh district goals discussion. All I'll say is that uh we have a meeting um March 22nd which is next Tuesday Wednesday. Thank you. It's Wednesday. Um and it's going to
215be here and uh you'll be getting an agenda for that shortly. We're working on the agenda and the activities that we will have for that discussion March 22nd. What time? Is it 7? 7 p.m. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It's not earlier. The other thing I just It's 6 o'clock. 6 o'clock. Okay. Thank you. 6 o'clock. The other thing I want to just put on the mind of the board is that uh for the April 17th board meeting uh we will have a session that will start earlier. So we're going to start that meeting earlier. We're going to start meeting in open session at 5:30 and we'll do our close session from 5 to 5:30 that night. April 17th, right? And then later tonight, I know that you were able to review the the contract for Monica.
216So, that's that's coming later. Okay. So, that's that. Okay. Any questions? Okay. Next item is comments from the public. Do we have any comments from the public? We have no comments from the public. [Music] outlasted everyone. Okay, I know we have such a big audience. Okay, the next item is foyers. We have a few in our packets. Yes, we have two from Hirs, one from Drestle, one from Schmo, one from Agnu, and one from uh Trascus and the responses in your packet. Okay, thank you. All right, board committee reports. Do we have any board board committee reports? Nope. Nothing. Okay, then Nicole where you're up. Student board report. Hello again. Um, so I had a long report, but now I don't. So, um, the third quarter is ending. Um, stress level is pretty high because,
217you know, I got to get those assignments in, projects in, tests. I have a math test on Wednesday that I'm, um, not looking forward to. Uh spring break is in sight but not quite in reach yet. Uh so you know just the morale is kind of low but we're picking ourselves up and we're coming to school every day. Um in the student union we're still working on proposals uh based on the student voice forum from December and um we have different committees of students who are working together on issues such as lunch, tardies, attendance, race and equity, mental health and homework and classwork. Um, some of the potential proposals include a cultural night, culture night for students to continue fostering community here at ECS and then also a mental health presentation for social workers and
218teachers offering student voice on conflicts concerning mental health. Um, that's it. Wonderful. Thank you. All right. Superintendence report. Dr. Campbell. All right. I'll try to be as efficient. Um, so we'll continue to hold events this year as a part of my listening and learning series. Uh, next Wednesday at 6:00 p.m., uh, I'll be hosting, uh, the board of education members here today on the community talkback. We'll be focusing on the ETHS district goals over the next five years or whatever you determine. Students, parents, and guardian staff, and community members are invited to join us that night where they will have an opportunity to share their perspectives on the current goals. Um, we did two more Wildit Way podcasts that got published, released last month. Both episodes featured a conversation that I had with Jana McAlp
219and Tony, ETHS director of equity, and Calvin Terrell, a longtime friend of ETHS, as well as a motivational speaker and founder of the Social Centric Institute. We discussed the culture of violence and how we can address it. And be on the lookout for the next Wildcat Way episode, which will be focused on building community in the classroom. And I got to say that the conversation that I had with Jana and Calvin was just I was very proud of it. It was good. And um um I I love the both of them. Uh I want to give a reminder to ETHS parents. The Illinois five essential survey is available for students uh excuse me for all parents and guardians to fill out. The statewide survey is administered online by you Chicago Impact in the University of
220Chicago on behalf of the Illinois State Board of Education. As you saw from the report on well-being, the survey is very important and the data provided will provide me and other school leaders with critical input to help develop school improvement plans. The deadline for parent survey. It's March 31st. Before I close is not a part of my notes. I just like to say that we also had a wonderful Black History Month celebration for the month of February. We hosted our uh ETHS Black Caucus honor roll breakfast where close to 600 black students who made the honor role at ETHS were honored. We only have about 800 some odd black students and so this this narrative rarely gets out there but you know we are very happy uh for the nearly 600 black students who made
221the honoral. Congratulations to all of them. Uh and finally spring break uh will be April 3rd through April 7th. ETHs and all district 202 offices will be closed during that time. More information about spring break and everything that I've mentioned in this report can be found on the website. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Okay, we're at action items. The first action item is the approval of days of remembrance of victims of the Holocaust. And Mera is going to read that for us. Okay. Whereas from 1933 to 1945 6 million Jewish people and 5 million people who identified as clerics, communists, dissident, Roma, gay and lesbian people who were disabled, Polish, Serbian, and Jehovah witnesses were murdered in the Holocaust as part of a systematic program of genocide. Whereas the students and staff of Evston
222Township High School should always remember the atrocities committed by the Nazis so that such horrors are never repeated. Whereas the ETHs community should continually dedicate itself to the principle of equal justice for all people. Remain eternally v vigilant against tyrants and hate speech and recognize that bigotry provides a breeding ground for tyranny to flourish. Therefore, we the District 202 school board proclaim that in the memory of the victims of the Holocaust and in the hope that we will always strive to overcome prejudice and inhumity through vigilance, education, and resistance, proclaim that March 28th through April 1st, 2023 be hereby designated as Holocaust Remembrance Days at Evston Township High School. Thank you. Could I have a motion to approve? So moved. Second. Roll call, please. Yes. Yes. All right. Next item is approval of resolution authorizing
223partial settlement. Settlement of vaping litigation. Motion to approve. Please. So moved. Second. Roll call, please. Yes. Yes. Next item is approval of contract with Alma Advisory Group. So move. Second. Roll call, please. Yes. Yes. Next item is the consent agenda which consists of approval of IHSA 2324 membership, approval of asbestos abatement contract bid, approval of resolution regarding purchase and sale of 1739 Brown Avenue related to geometry and construction program. Approval of resolution regarding purchase and sale of 1319 McDaniel Avenue related to geometry in construction program. Approval of minutes from regular and close session meetings from February 21st, 2023 and special meeting from February 27th, 2023. Approval of bills treasurers report from January 2023. Personnel report. Approval of resolution authorizing non-renewal of part-time non-tenure teachers. Approval of resolution authorizing notice of non-renewal to non-tenure teachers other
224than final year probationary teachers and approval of rehire of second, third, and fourth year teachers for the 2023 24 school year. Second or sorry. So moved. Second. So moved. Move it around. So moved. So the chief Oh, got it. Vocal, please. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Is there any old or new business? Actually, no. I'm just kidding. All right. Um, could I have a motion for movejourn? I'll move. All in favor? I I All right. This meeting is adjourned at 10:58. Well, it's before 11:00.