School Board Meeting 11/8/21

001sorry about the delay but it's really good to see all the students here so welcome welcome to our november 8th board of education meeting can we have a roll call please here here thank you all right so we're going to make a quick adjustment to our agenda and the first item on the agenda is that we're going to address tonight is recognition of the national merit semifinalist thank you president savage williams i'm going to invite beth erie our college counselor extraordinaire up but before you even begin beth i just want to make a general statement that is i hope you can feel the brain power in this room right now we have truly some of the most outstanding scholars in the nation here to honor this evening i know beth will explain what a small

002percentage of people achieve this kind of recognition and and what it takes but i think it's just really important to understand uh that to be a national mayor of semifinalists is one of the biggest deals in high schools across the nation and i've always felt that uh that in a school like eths when we're honoring our semifinalists we are honoring truly top achievers talk uh young people who are really applying themselves in their academics so uh let's enjoy uh let's let's uh let's celebrate each of these people that we're going to hear about this evening and miss arie i'm going to turn it over to you thank you thank you dr witherspoon it's so great to be back with everybody so i'd like to first say thanks again for including us in the agenda as

003it is important that we represent these students here tonight so the 15 students that we have at eths who have been recognized as semi-finalists are just some of the few uh approximately 16 000 semi-finalists in this 67th net oh my god it's so hard to do this with a mascot i'm like smiling and talking just so you know i'm really enthusiastic in the 67th annual national merit scholarship program these academically talented students have an opportunity to continue in the competition for national merit scholarships that will be offered next spring what is particularly unique about these students is that while typically it is the psat nms qt that students take here dths that would qualify them these students actually went on their own and did the alternate application and took the s.a.t to qualify for this

004prestigious honor so as juniors they entered the national merit scholarship program by taking the sat and applying through that alternate application the nationwide pool of semi-finalists represents less than one percent of u.s high school seniors and includes the highest scoring entrance in each state so for eths we had 15 this year and we will celebrate those who could be in attendance each semifinalist counselor has prepared a few remarks that i will read on their behalf so to start um our semifinalists include carmen tracy omarosa oh dr witherspoon you didn't do your big explanation of what they're supposed to do yeah they won't know what to do so so here's what we're gonna [Laughter] this do the most important we didn't do this during the pandemic i know that's right we're we're rehearsing again uh miss

005arie is going to call you uh introduce you and when she does she's actually going to call you up so you can come and stand up here so we could can see you stand next to her uh one once you've been introduced just you know step back a little bit and pretty soon there'll be one person left next to her and everybody else behind her once we've introduced all of you then we're going to invite you to go around this little horseshoe and i guess we'll do fist bumps or elbow bumps or whatever we're going to do to congratulate you and when you get to our board president miss savage williams we have the world famous eths pin um and we really do like to give these to people who come to the school board

006to be honored i will admit it's probably not a 20 pin but but it is a representation and a thank you from the school board for what you've achieved and how proud we are of you so that's the plan and i'll even be giving a few directions again to get us coming around uh the horseshoe but i think i got it all did i remember everything this area did a great job let's get going thank you so our first student semi-finalist will be carmen tracy amoroso so carmen if you'll come up [Applause] carmen this is what mr johnson had to say about carmen carmen is a responsible thoughtful motivated and intelligent young lady her sensitivity to the nuances of those around her and how that they impact what goes on in and out of a

007classroom is very genuine her very thoughtful mature decorum is well accepted by peers adults and teachers her passions in her academic endeavors and her commitment to her extracurricular activities has spurned on her success that's carmen [Music] [Applause] next mr johnson has written for sophie lammers [Applause] sophie is a high achieving student who has a keen sense of emotional intelligence and who is extremely well grounded for a high school student she tries to create a collective learning environment within any situation she walks into she really understands that engagement with everyone in that space will lead to the best experiences for all she has never backed down from a challenge matter of fact she thrives with challenges she is compassionate and shows a great deal of empathy to those around her sophie congratulations next we have from

008mr johnson paxton fetters [Applause] so paxton is intelligent motivated and conscientious only to begin to describe him he is he is diligent persistent and hard-working he is a multi-talented musician and athlete reliable committed and for others he has has been paxson's keys to success he has been very unassuming and receiving the credit he deserves so paxton congratulations wow mr johnson mr johnson would also like to share some comments about jacob chiss [Applause] jake is focused self-directed in school music and athletics he has done an outstanding job of blending his very demanding academic load with extracurricular and community involvement he is a young man who has great relationships with his peers and the admiration from adults and teachers he has built relationships with jake has done a remarkable job challenging his interests and directing his focus

009to areas which he enjoys congratulations miss omaker had this to say about annika macy come on up annika's internal motivation and maturity allows her to go against the norm and excel in any area whether it be academics or extracurricular she's a naturally kind caring humble focused leader who sets an example in every lane the number of achievements and honors for annika are too numerous to list but rest assured there's no category academically or otherwise that is too challenging for her she will always put her best foot forward not to compete with others but to remind herself what the result of hard work feels like congratulations [Applause] next ms p cars would like to honor sydney termolan sydney did not show up okay well we won't hold that against sydney and so miss chankin wrote something

010for george o'carroll [Applause] george is a brilliant student an engaging young man and a leader among his peers he has excelled in the most rigorous courses possible at the honors and ap level when george is not at school you'll usually find him on the soccer field george is a relationship person he makes real genuine connections with peers and adults alike and they are important to him congratulations george ms morris has written some comments for cornelia de joya [Applause] cornelia is a fiercely determined young woman who works tirelessly until mastering anything she touches she's an accomplished violin player cornelia is a rare blend of intrinsic curiosity genuine compassion for others and commitment to improving the world congratulations cornelia okay so this is our group did i miss anybody out there who oh look you guys weren't

011on the list okay so now okay so george wyler [Applause] so miss chapin also wrote about you george so george is a bright young man with tremendous drive and determination and a leader among his peers he is naturally curious and exceptionally intelligent he has excelled in the most rigorous courses possible george has worked hard and climbed up the ranks of our theater department is a leader and award-winning debater has volunteered countless hours for local political campaigns and has also devoted his time to the cook county clerk's office as an election judge congratulations george [Applause] and we have where did he go i have one we're looking for mr sokol is that right oh here he is jack so this is what miss grandma so ms graham wrote about you jack jack sokol is a welcoming

012intelligent and talented young man jack is a wonderful mix of subtlety intellect humor and compassion jack is a conscientious student in pursuit of excellence jack is also a boy scout pursuing his eagle scout distinction as well as a member of the eths science olympiad team congratulations jack now we have everyone excellent thank you so much for your patience and understanding that i didn't have you on the list so now we get to do the parade yes you get to leave the way and head on down step there and just come right around the table thank you yes you're welcome thank you [Music] congratulations in addition to those who could be here tonight with us we have a few that we the students who we would like to at least mention to celebrate them as well

013so the first of those students again will be sydney termolin we have maeve shannon aaron martin kai lee caldwell noah polish and brandon wu so congratulations to those students as well and thank you again school board for uh inviting us to this evening and thank you families for supporting your students through all of this and um we bid you good night thank you well congratulations again uh obviously uh we'll bid you farewell unless you really want to go home and watch us on tv but uh just thank you for how you represent this district thank you for how you represent your families and thank you for how you represent what your generation is capable of achieving we're very very proud of you have a great evening [Applause] yes [Music] congratulations [Music] very nice all right

014always good to have a full house for a few minutes for a few minutes all right how exciting and always refreshing to see students so it's always good to see you too barbie okay so let's go back to our agenda so the next item is uh written communication dr bavis do we have any written communication uh we have no written communication this evening okay all right so this is unusual i don't know if she can handle this or not but the next item is the finance committee there's a public hearing and mary modino let mary get into place and then but mary it's really 9 15 because we set the clocks back very good point all right so i am now officially convening the 2021 tax levy public hearing this public hearing is being held

015due to the district's intent to adopt an aggregate levy of uh 2.98 in excess of the 2020 levy ms modino did you publish notice of this hearing yes the notice was published on november 1st of 2021 thank you the proposed levy will provide funds to support the usual expensive expenses of evanston township high school an amount of a 2.98 percent overall increase is to be levied to ensure that our extension base increases by the tax cap cpi of 1.4 percent plus any new property anyone desiring to present testimony may do so at this time okay miss modino do you have any comments i do i have a short presentation and then i can take any board questions okay so i actually thought the agenda was probably going to get flipped back so i wasn't sure

016if i was coming up next or not but i was ready usually i just sit and kind of stress about what i'm going to say the whole meeting so it's kind of nice to be up first so and but to your point pat it is 9 15 5 o'clock so i'm right on time um okay so i just have about 10 slides and then i'm happy to answer any questions we did publish the required legal notice on november 1st today is the public hearing on the 2021 tax levy and then at our next meeting in december the board will actually adopt the tax levy and then it must be filed with the county by the last tuesday in december which this year is the 28th so i just have to call my presentation up on

017my laptop because sometimes i can't read all those words so far away i'm not going to go through the definitions on this slide it's kind of long but we we do talk about some of the terms like the debt service levy that's the amount that we need to service our debt our bond and interest payments we talk about the consumer price index which is a national number that goes from each december to the next december we also have a corporate levy which is just our main levy for educational purposes we talk about equalized assessed valuation which you've probably heard up and heard of in the property tax world and then we have sometimes we have special purpose levies there are many things that can qualify as a special purpose levy but generally the only one

018we've had in years i can remember since i've been here is a special purpose levy which is a small amount but does have to be levied separately due to some changes in the consumer price index so in cook county and for our district the budget consists of two different tax levy years the the second half um of the prior year's levy and then the estimated first half of the next year's levy which is in the spring so there are two levee revenue numbers in our budget book we call them spring and fall levy just for ease ease of recognition and those are timed with when the payments are made so i learned something a couple of days ago in our ed red meeting gretchen heard it as well um that because of some things that

019are going on in cook county and the amount of time that it takes to reassess properties within the city of chicago and and it is a reassessment year for those properties in the city of chicago it's possible that the taxes that are normally due in august of 2022 may not be due and paid until as late as january of 2023 so for those of you who have not been on the board for a number of years you may not remember this but i just i don't want to get too far in the weeds on something that we don't know for sure will happen but i do just want to let the board know that if tax payments are delayed that long then that's where it really becomes evident that your your policy and practice of

020really trying to be conservative on the district's fund balance will come into play this has happened once before in the time i've been here probably maybe eight years ago and we saw tax payments coming in very late in the fall even in the winter i think it was december and that's where your fund balance carries you so it's very conservative and right that we would have a fund balance that can carry us for some months for exact situations like this normally we start seeing money coming in july and it's very possible that in 2022 we won't see any of those payments all through july august september later into the winter and so that's where your fund balance is important so i want to put your minds at ease that that the board has been very

021conservative in our practices and we've tried to make sure that our fund balance is adequate and this is exactly what you need it for so i'll let you know more as soon as i hear more well you'll know when you get your property tax bills um so regarding the property tax levy you all already know this we talk about it every year that there are tax cap limits on the amount of taxation that the district can levy for it is based on the prior year's amount of taxes it's based on a dollar amount and then the increase is either the lesser of the prior year cpi or five percent so the 2021 levy cap rate is relatively low last year it was 2.3 this one is 1.4 so when you take the average of those

022two rates you get a blended rate of about 1.9 but the numbers we're levying for this year would be limited to that 1.4 but we also get to add on any new property that's coming on the tax rolls so that's why our actual public publicized levy is the 2.98 percent that you heard about in the beginning of the presentation so oh and you'll hear about it again so the publish levy increase of 2.98 is probably not what we'll actually see you have to levy for an amount that's larger than what you're allowed to get by law which is that 1.4 percent and that's how that's the means to collect the taxes on the new property and as you all know we've had some pretty significant new property throughout evanston and that's also the way that

023you would collect any funds from any expiring tiffs we don't have any tips expiring this year but we did have the washington national a couple years ago so you levy for more to be able to collect that new property so uh just to kind of summarize our tax levy by fund our education fund is just over 64 million six hundred thousand the next largest is our operations and maintenance at seven point eight million um and then imrf social security fund for a total of seventy seven thousand three hundred sixty eight dollars well 428 dollars and then the debt service which is an actual separate levy we levy for um the increase that we're allowed to by law but what actually happens is that the county calculates what the debt service is on our bond and

024interest payments and so that's actually what we collect and uh only that amount even if it's if it's less than the cpi we only can collect what we need to service our debt so on an average home in evanston valued at around 400 000 our portion of the tax bill the increase as a result of this tax levy would be an approximate increase of 55 on an estimated total property tax bill of 9 700. so as i mentioned before they have a triennial reassessment in evans in cook county this the current year is a reassessment for chicago properties 2019 was a reassessment in the northern suburbs and so that will be due again in so the assessor's website states that an evanston medium home median home value is about 497 thousand and it's so that

025kind of relates to that last slide where i said on a 400 000 house the increase would be about 55 and it's important to always remember that district 202 as as district 65 and other school districts levy for a dollar amount so we don't necessarily benefit from an increase in eav we only benefit from what we're allowed to capture by law and then any new properties that come on the tax rolls so just as a reminder the washington national tiff closed by the city was closed by the city in october of 2018 we don't have any major tests closing anytime soon there really aren't a lot of large tips left open the ones that are open have not been extremely active so there's not any anything in the soon i guess there's nothing in the

026pipeline that we will be capturing soon as far as tips rolling off and the joint review board meets every november december i've not heard yet about a meeting but i would imagine there'd be one in december as you all know tiffs have been in the local news lately so i'm not sure that the joint review board will be discussing any of that but they'll be talking about the results from the tips that are open in evanston and that's it i be happy to take any questions if you have any questions comments from the board mary once again very clear and maybe the the early hour just makes it clear a little boring but i try to be clear thank you oh yeah sure thank you there's a script here all right is there any further

027testimony hearing no testimony no further testimony i declare this hearing closed thank you and we'll be back in december with documents for the board similar to what you have in your packet tonight all right thank you next we have um we're at item number six items for information and the first item we have is the opening of school report from 2021 to 2022. and we have doctors lady and davis coming forward the dynamic duo they're going to do both of the next presentations the opening school report and the review and i'll turn on my microphone and say that i just said that [Laughter] hello thank you really nice to see you in person okay so i'm gonna do um opening of school first it's short and then um i have some questions and enroll into

028the year in review so glasses on steamy foggy okay so total this is um the school enrollment is always as of september 30th so it's like a snapshot on the last day of september and our total school enrollment is pretty much the same as last year 3728 so um it's uh same as last year but just up from the past few years and then some trends are the trends we've been seeing over the past several years and i think i've seen the same thing last year so this is over the past five um but it's been really a few more than that we're seeing um a trend kind of downward in our person and number of students our black african american enrollment a trend up of our hispanic latinx students and then our the proportion

029of our white student enrollment has been pretty consistent across several years in our special ed enrollments they're up um they're up over the previous four years so this year we have 475 up from 440 last year and 402 back in five years ago in 2017-18. and then our bilingual program enrollments are down from over the last five years so in the program the bilingual program is down to 37 compared to the prior few years this is not this is different from our english learner population this is students who are in the bilingual program we have students who are english learners who are receive special ed services therefore not in the bilingual program or who are not receiving services so this is specific to the bilingual program just a little note about that so those are

030like just kind of the big picture trends for our um opening of school enrollment do you have any questions about those i just i just want to want to lift up carrie and you lifted this up uh last year but you see that our enrollment this year and last year have held steady i mean it's within one student and i do want to remind you these are the highest enrollments at eths in like over 30 years so we have really experienced in the last three decades a steady growth since i came here 16 years ago this is like a thousand students more than when i came here so uh it's it's just a real healthy environment we realized that uh you know we're kind of landlocked here in evanston uh but we are building up

031if we can't build out uh and uh and so we do continue to see uh uh strong student enrollment which is which is uh notable given the last 20 months most notable guts yeah just a quick question could you take it back to the side that had the um uh next one or before yeah there you go so special at a moment here this just gets to my recurring thing so are it that the raw numbers are up but it's a percentage of the student body are the numbers up do we have any idea or is that because because the enrollment's gone up during that same time period right correct i i'm not sure but i don't think the percent of the student body has increased okay so student body has been done i thought

032we had increased a little bit over the last couple years but maybe it's flatter okay okay so so we've still had an increase even over the time when the enrollment has been flatter okay okay thank you of course carrie um yeah you you just quickly and i and i think i know this but i just i think i just need a little review the bilingual bilingual program versus the the english learner program so not a program just students who the state identifies as english learners yes so there's there's these students that are in the bilingual program they're taking classes courses in the bilingual current program but you know if we have students who are identified as english learner the state requires they take the access test they could be have identified as long-term english learner

033from coming in from elementary middle school some of them respects receive special ed services so therefore they're not in the bilingual program they're getting services through special education some of them are not they're not out they don't they are not in the bilingual program they don't need to be but just the state still has labeled them as english learner whether it's english learner or long-term english learner so i'm just making that clarification i don't know if i don't normally do but i just think even though our bilingual program enrollments are down it doesn't mean that our english learner population is down and i think it's present because we just did access testing not long ago okay okay yeah i think that whole special ed thing just threw me too so but i think i understand

034it now thank you pat can i say a quick question certainly um carrie and you might not know this off the top of your head so that's fine but um in terms of the african-american student population decreasing are we losing kids out of 65 or is the universe of african-american families influenced by housing costs like do you have a sense of like why that number has gone down i have no idea do you think no i i yeah i'm just i am i'm sorry i didn't mean to ask a trick question i just curious if it's an issue of school or if it's a broader cultural you know economic issue in our community so yeah no i don't and i have not looked at like this r65s enrollment patterns yeah okay housing is an issue

035in evanston affordable housing is an issue and i don't have numbers in front of me so i you know i don't yeah that's why i misspeak but i do know that that's been problematic for some people yeah for sure thanks other questions okay all right so um down the view near the view formally known as the achievement report okay so if you bear with me i'm gonna spend a few minutes in the front which normally don't but to really talk through a lot of the changes that were made in this report and the why um so and i'm gonna put glasses on off okay so last year we're gonna have a lot of data missing from last year and as i'm gonna talk about later on when we get to the report card data that

036will be coming later in the year and as we thought about this last year and realized how much data is missing how are we going to do any sort of comparison to last year and just needing to really rethink what this is what we're going to be able to provide to you what's meaningful found this as an opportunity to incorporate new data points we haven't previously reported that we've been starting to collect some more robust robust data on um it's an opportunity to create this a transition between prior year reports and as you go through the process in this next year and your new district goals um to kind of look forward to look and see what we can provide what data we have that you can think about also as we're going forward um

037and then also with the state soon to report some college and career readiness not exactly sure what that's going to look like but an opportunity to start bringing in some of the data that we have so that is what kind of helps set the scene um it organizes report in a way to that tries to reflect high school to post secondary and important markers along the way um so we've kind of reorganized it into these different sections some academic measures in attendance well-being and bringing in some college and career readiness and then post-secondary enrollment and post-secondary graduation date from the national student clearinghouse so past years report has focused on graduated students graduate cohorts and we're trying to take this opportunity to kind of take a step back and report on all of our students

038that were enrolled last year so hence the year in review really kind of a better picture of our students and it'll let us kind of track some of their their progress throughout the you know as they go through their four years or what not um so we have some measures that reported by class of 21 to kind of remain consistent with part reports i'm trying to keep some consistency and also kind of move and bring in some new some new um points some data points so we have our cohort so we have class of 2021 or earlier so our senior so we are including all the students last year we know we have fifth year seniors and six year seniors so they are all included under that class of 2021 or earlier so 2020 2018

039for example then our class of not 2012 i have a little typo there 2022. you think what year am i in are juniors typically class of 2023 typically sophomores and then our 2024 freshmen and then we report that the data is disaggregated by race gender meal status and iep placement okay um so we focus this data this year data reporting and visual data visualization through an equity lens so in february we started thinking about it we also started my team started doing a lot of brainstorming and then at the same time we were participating in kind of data visualization work groups and other pd resources with the focus on data visualization through an equity lens um and adding in we as we go through the port so we've renamed it to your review we've added

040this qualitative data that we have right now from school-wide surveys like the five essentials and our student well-being climate survey that we administer every year i'm hoping that we go for we'll have like more different types of qualitative data um but adding in the cultural data kind of helps us bring in the student voice so we're trying to round out the picture and so from our equity view helps us think about the role and presence of whiteness and data and what perspectives are missing and also kind of bring more um meaning to this the numbers to the data um so there's an important thing that we're trying to do throughout this part and then the intentional use of colors in the charts and graphs and thinking through how big visualization is through an equity lens

041so the colors in that we've used throughout the chart are the colors that are found throughout the building they're the exact same don't know what the the term p whatever the code is for the different colors the yellow the aqua the green or whatnot throughout the building and those are the colors that we have intentionally embedded throughout this report all right so a few highlights and then i'll do those snapshots so um 72 percent of the um students and this is a class of 2020 or earlier achieved a final unweighted gpa a 2.8 or greater and the mean cumulative unweighted gpa was 3.17 last year the average daily attendance rate was 96.4 percent um 57 of students participated in at least one extracurricular activity and then the number of this is the new data one

042of the new data points industry recognized certifications has more than doubled but over six years and i'm gonna have some more highlights on that our graduation the four-year graduation rate last year was a 93 percent and the five-year graduation rate for the class of 2020 was 94 percent over 80 percent of students enrolled in a post-secondary institution within two years so this would be from the class of 2019 would be the most recent and then we have some data on students who enrolled in post-secondary institution within two years 69 graduated within six and i'll speak to that a little bit more as i go along all right so our composition of our student body that's represented in this report so if this may look slightly different from the opening of school like i just you

043know presented it's a snapshot on september 30th of any given year and so this is a student body last year and it represents all the students that are excuse me included in this report we put in the appendix of the report the enrollment is disaggregated by subgroup and then all students and then by cohort okay um so our average like i had just kind of mentioned the highlight the cumulative gpa for the class of 2021 or earlier was 3.17 um you do have in the appendix by cohort the average cumulative gpa the unweighted and weighted all disaggregated but i put in the chart the seniors because it's the ones that are at the the kind of the end after their four years and we know committed kind of builds each year um and the 2.8

044benchmark that we've kept that was in prior reports that's also what's on the um report card as part of summative designation so i'm i'm looking at class of 2021 or earlier there's only a couple of measures where it's really just focused on that class and this is one and we looked at the number of in percent of students with at least one honors ap project lead the way core so project lead the way course carries the same weight as an ap um so we're including that here so in this chart it is if i can see through the semi glasses um so the the bold at the top thank you is the toy honors ap and project lead the way so for example all students 91 percent of the class of 2021 earlier took at

045least one honors ap a project lead the way course by the time they graduated 68 so that the lighter bottom shaded part shows the person that took at least one ap or project lead the way so 68 of all students in the class of 2021 or earlier took at least one ap or project lead the way course by the time they graduated by the end of last year and then the call outs here are where we've tried to bring in some of that survey data that we think kind of fits in with the quantitative data and so from the five essentials 93 of the students last year reported that teachers want us to think to become better thinkers and not just memorize things um and pete's board report later this year we'll dive in and

046have more details about ap i'm just doing like a big picture um data points and then you have other to kind of link to your other board of course that you get throughout the year that provide more robust details okay and then last year's average daily attendance was 96.4 this might be slightly different than what's on the report card because these are the the students that are in this report so i'm not including students that were off campus um the report card might show it as slightly higher but this is focused on the students that we're reporting on on the data throughout here and this is also one more table in the back of the report where we have it disaggregated by race ethnicity gender iep status meal status and by cohort is the average

047daily attendance and then dr kinsey's board report on goal two i believe she did it earlier this year like last year um february had details on the efforts that were put into place last year to keep students engaged and attending classes during remote learning um and so she may and her report also speak to this a little bit more but this is sort of our big picture average daily attendance so the next section in the report is well-being um and so here this one kind of links to the report the school involvement report you get from uh chris levitino and nick and nicole boyd nick gayle nicole poyd so they will have kind of more robust about student activities later this year but last year during remote learning 57 percent of students participated in extracurricular

048activities so the lighter part in this one the 50 so the lighter shaded part of the top is the percent the portion of students that participated in activities in the prior year so that would have been 20 20. so that actually is up until march 2020 until we went to shelter in place so even that was a little lower from the year before but this is to show that that students were well lower than usual that students were able some students were able to participate in activities or find opportunities to participate in activities during remote learning some additional well-being data that we're bringing in here is some from our student survey the well-being survey which is administered at the end of february so that was during remote learning this was before we went hybrid and

049then the five essentials was mid-march um again during remote learning and so some takeaways from here so so 58 of students reported belonging quite a bit during remote learning we can see that 23 percent of students from well-being felt connected to adults and that's during remote learning um so when we do this again this year we'll look and see hopefully since we're back in person that should be looked much differently um but what they're saying also during that same time questions from the five essentials student survey they feel safe and comfortable with their teachers 90 or 91 percent and 96 percent are saying their teachers treat them with respect um okay so next is we try to bring in some of the college and career readiness and then some post-secondary enrollment and graduation data so

050since 2015 we collected this data the number of industry recognized certifications has more than doubled we've gone from 60 to last year there was 159 there were no industry recognized certifications um in 2020 um and then we can see the work based learning experiences which i believe are typically were for graduate seniors and these were the type of experiences so class of 2020 had 20 students and then last year's graduate class of 2021 there were 30 students and these are the type of experiences um in the in the fields where they were able to get these experiences and then some of the survey data that we're building in the five essentials 63 percent of students report discussing connections between reading and real life or situations once or twice a week or almost daily and seventy

051percent of students reported their classes give useful preparation for what students plan to do in life and then in addition some nearly 600 students 598 participated in online information sessions uh led by meac and this is like the different types of pathways of the career pathway information sessions that they participated in and now that compares to about 90 students who participated in career exploration field trips back in 2019 all right so uh the four year and five year graduation rates the detailed charts are in the report disaggregated by subgroups so this is just a big picture of the 93 graduation rate for the class of 2021 and then we can see for 2020 and beyond the the additional the yellow is the additional five year and then a call out survey is five essential survey

052eighty-nine percent of students reported that high school is seen as preparation for our future all right so some post-secondary enrollment from the national student clearinghouse and we will continue to track those over time so this is for students whose post-secondary enrollment and during the first two years after high school so class of 2019 now and this report this data comes from january 2020 one so we usually get post-secondary around december january once all like fall enrollments are in and universities have submitted data to clearinghouse so for the class of 29 up through last year had enrolled in some type of post-secondary institution during the first two years since they graduated and in the report there's that information is available by subgroup so the national rate six-year graduation rate so now we have post-secondary sim graduation

053rate data so the national graduation rate is of students that's that's reported the 60.1 percent is of students who began college in the fall of 2014 so six years later so this is a college students who have entered college their national six year graduation rate is 60 this first slide that i have is of our entire cohort students that have enrolled and not enrolled our entire cohort from the class of 2013 2014 15 and 2016. so in the class of 2013 the class of 2014 six years later the entire cohort 59 percent have graduated so just compared pretty close to the national average of students who had enrolled and i think it's important to look at our entire cohort and that 31 percent it could be students who have not enrolled they've gone straight into

054the workforce we've just looked at some career readiness and career pathways um or there is something that does not report to the clearinghouse when we look at our students who had enrolled who have enrolled within their first two years then the post-secondary graduation rate the six-year rate increases to 69 percent 69 for the two classes of 2014 15. um for students who have enrolled within the first two years we can see like the class of 2015 their five-year graduation rate is at 65 percent so it's above the national average and i believe that's even above the state average yeah the state average six year average in illinois is 63 percent and that again is all students enrolling so this one is apples to apples but it's important to account for all of our students i

055think so that's why this slide before i um keep in there and i think that's an important data point okay that's the big like run through for this year in review if you have any questions before we go through the report card okay there we go hi um one is i love your explicit work as you said both to honor the presence of colors within the school the presence and role of whiteness as you said and then an effort to even use certain visualizations that could instead of being a bar graph let's say the donut and that kind of thing so thank you for that um what i am looking for is a little bit of clarity let's see i have little notes here so maybe this could come in the future but on page

056five academic measures you have disaggregated the data however i'm finding when i'm looking at for instance iep or free and reduced it's not disaggregated right and so i'm just curious if that would come later and it's not in the back right i didn't miss it because my behind that is trying to understand the ways in which we are able to help our kids better and it would help me if i could see if we there were certain groups of kids who were disproportionately populating some of these spaces based on race and or um our over classification et cetera et cetera so wondering if we could have that in the future okay i could i i don't know if i ever have disaggregated um that group but i can look into it i don't know um

057if it may make um i can we can look into it if there's some um groups that are too small to report i certainly want it but i'll i'll coordinate with our special ed team too and look into that okay um and what i'm thinking about is so for instance and again we've done incredible work here over the years but we know that we also find when we disaggregate by races let's say within ses we will see still racial disparities right regardless of um all the work that we're doing that don't suss out to um it's still within our schools within our our reach here and so but i don't know what it is if it isn't um done in that way so i understand there's confidentiality but i'm um i think it's very hard

058to get to the root of some of our um i'll call them problems okay so then i have another question for you um just make help me please so this is on page six um so for instance when i'm reading this tell me if i'm reading this correctly so if i go down the list here and i look at for instance let's say black or african american students who are seniors out of let's say approximately 208 84 percent of that 218 took ap pltw or honors is that what that took at least one um during honors ap or project lead the ways pltw project lead the way course that's correct okay and so um one of my thoughts then is that are we able to understand what's happening between so there's some you know i

059would argue big disparities here um in the sense of students you know let's say if we use the baseline as our white students at 89 or 97 as our highest with those honors and thinking about the differences there right so i'm just looking at this and trying to understand while we're reporting out what is the um how can i say this what's the what what are we are we going to account for any of our differences here or what's the next step so so we're trying to avoid from using white as the baseline for comparison for anything i was just using the highest number but not because of the race gotcha um so but i think this is like kind of a step back sort of a 50 000 foot level of by the time

060they graduate enrollment but when i do when we do pete does his for reporting you can speak to this more it has a lot more detail and enrollment and the difference across the different types of ap courses and has trends over time what else do you want yeah we can do a deep dive into that uh in our ap report uh what we typically do is we desegregate by race we decide by course we also look at enrollment trends over time we take a historical view and this year we're actually reaching out to students who are uh who decided not to take an ap course and we're talking to those students as well to better understand uh qualitatively their decision making so we're looking at all that we're also looking at belonging within the classroom

061uh things like that as well and we'll report on all of that uh during the ap report down okay okay um so then i'll just finish with this last comment and one of the things as you're doing that one is i would love to know then what are a pro you know baseline or whatever we're going to use and look at the one more step in understanding the um risk ratio so if we were to look at this is like what's our goal right like proportionality i would not think that would necessarily be a great goal um in the first step but understanding then like i was doing that with the student well-being an opportunity of for instance our latinx students and being in one of these clubs is about 60 percent less than and

062i used white students because that was the highest and but those numbers aren't necessarily provided right so we've got the proportion based on the the group that it's within but not understanding what's the risk of being in our school and or having that opportu or not having that opportunity um and so there's just a set of numbers that i feel like could be added to this to help us understand the story and that's the risk ratio and just so i understand like how are we are we defining that as let's just use is it the difference it would be the um holding steady whatever our baseline is so whatever our highest group would be the y and then it would be the whatever group that we're looking at to target what we need to do

063so let's say in this case i was pointing out let next students divided by that baseline those two percentages would give us the risk that our latinx students have or the opportunity i mean we'd have to do one more step but of not being in that club or sport or what have you so so it's a difference to the to the highest point right right essentially and then it's saying that that's a good decision to make correct if it's a good decision to make because it's a it's a value proposition as well right well in this case right so it's either an opportunity right or right the risk and the reason i say that is because if we don't know the impact of our enviro if i don't because i can't tell from this the

064impact of our environment then it's hard to decide what it is that we could or should do because some kids are able to do all you know take advantage of this but if i just stop at the proportion that they are within our population and i don't feel like i'm able to understand what's going on got it and work on it okay thank you you can help me with that right kay sure okay okay other questions pat so i have a specific question and then sort of a broader reflection question so on student well-being um do you have a sense of how many of our student or what percentage of our students took the five e's and or the well-being climate survey so um i don't have the exact percentage yeah even more yeah but

065i'm going to say about three quarters did the well-being um so we do it we partner with our pe wellness department and um do it with them and so they did i have a much a smaller portion normally we have a really high portion of students that do the five essentials we do it again we partner with our our um ve wellness or other groups so it's i think it's like between 55 and 60 percent that did it which is lower than normal in in prior years um but given that we were in remote learning um that was and they were doing it they were given like class time to do it both of these surveys are given class time we have a higher participation for the well-being but it's a large enough participation that

066the results are i feel are generalizable yeah yeah no that those are good um so then i guess look my reflection question is i think i'm seeing sort of a story here and and you can tell me if i'm wrong um but so our attendance like that's great kids want to be here and even during covet we had kids here and we're here you know virtually so that's really exciting and some of the comments they made about teaching and learning you know that little cut out you had about teachers want me to be a better thinker not just memorize that's really terrific um as are some of the other comments around the teachers and sort of to me kind of connected to academics to that academic relationship but where we had some sort of holes

067and i appreciate it was during covid so we we definitely have to control for that but you know the sense of belonging wasn't as high and connectedness to adults wasn't as high so i guess the reflection i'm having is is and and it's also a question is there a story there around that kind of connectedness again i appreciate it with kovid but it it some of the other areas during covid were really quite good so that's that to me sounded more academic so i guess i'm wondering if there's a hole there and an opportunity there to really um do what you know what we talked about i think the first board meeting of the year where marcus talked about sort of making the school more humane and and sort of kind of how is that

068all coming together i guess i i'm sort of seeing that from this if i'm correct i i really don't think we're going to be able to answer that till we get the results after we've been back in school this year uh when students are answering my sense of belonging in school in their home in their bedroom yeah yeah yeah you know we we don't really have a lot to compare to here so i i think it's a very valid question but until we are now back in school a year and and and we administer that survey uh and and can do some comparisons i don't know i don't know how we're going to determine the effects of covet but but based on on empirical uh evidence kova changed a lot and it was very hard

069to feel a sense of belonging in your high school when you couldn't even come in the building and when and when you were taking your classes in your bedroom right so i i just think we have to factor that in yeah the question's good i just don't know how we would answer that until we you know have data from from having them back in the building that's fair the only thing i would add to that is that you know we are working on that the nice thing this year is that the cameras are not off right so that was obviously a huge piece of this too right it's very difficult to connect with someone via zoom we've all we've all been on zoom we spent a lot of time on zoom spending time on zoom

070with the camera off is extraordinarily difficult both for the teacher and the student to build a connection so right now you know the zoom is we're not zooming we're talking uh in the classrooms we're connecting and we would like to see that that number should increase so we're also putting you know all the changes we made this year we're really designed to address you know well-being as well as academics yeah yeah okay thanks well then i guess i would say the flip side is that despite all that having the attendance high and having some of those really nice numbers in terms of can you know the way the teachers were interacting with the students is a real plus to say that for students to be able to answer that in the time when they're in

071their bedrooms with their cameras off so thank you um yes i have a question um as far as the student well-being slide do you um for the well-being climate survey and the five essentials do you ask racial information in those the yeah um we do in the well-being survey and in the five essentials they report it i don't know i don't think they ask it because i think they get that comes from like the state is connected to the state but yes there is that data i would be really interested to see some of those questions broken down by race especially the the sense of belonging and the um connectedness to adults and things like that yeah all of these are really important actually but to see it broken down by race would be really

072valuable information to have okay great thank you i almost think any data like that where we're asking students to respond and react to how they feel about being a part of the school has to be uh desegregated by race um for our purposes for pths yes i just want to add one caveat to that um traditionally the five essentials even though they've collected that data have never desegregated the results that way so i don't know if that's been a change i know that for the for our internal well-being survey we can do that right but in terms of desegregating i don't know if that's uh because the five essentials is really not ours yeah we they don't send us a file but i think we can find it to segregate it okay all right gretchen

073so first these colors are very beautiful and i do i do appreciate um [Music] not just the visual quality of the report but but what the visual quality is trying to communicate and how you've been intentional about this equity lens that you've used to sort of pull it all together and i and i think it's really helpful it's still a little bit it took me a couple passes through it because i'm there's so many different kinds of charts um and i definitely like some of them better than other you know just me personally i think everybody has a different like i like the donuts because it's like a pie a different kind of pie chart i kind of like that it's certainly better for me than reading a spreadsheet and i appreciate that you have

074all that data in the spreadsheets at the end of the report so those who like my husband who lives in spreadsheets could you know go there um so i think um so this is more of an observation and rather not a question and it's a little bit of thinking out loud about what purpose all of this serves to go to some of the things i think mira was asking and others as well i think that going forward this is a wonderful i like this idea of having a framework with the 50 000 view and then when later reporting comes to us in the year you're gonna tie it back so i would urge you when the time comes to give us that more detailed info for example around ap when pete does that and he

075breaks it down into all the little pieces that your starting point is to is to be here again with a reminder you know this is this is the big view and and this is where we are i just think it would be really nice to have that kind of continuity throughout the year and how and how we report because it's difficult for the board to keep all of these things front of mind you know i mean if it's only once a year and it's like oh yeah i imagine we got that last year we just can't um can't remember any of it and i do think the year-over-year is important and and i appreciate that this was a weird year and this was a nice way to compile it but it really is important to

076see the change over time the growth that kind of thing and then i would also say the second important point is how this gets communicated in the community and how we display it on our website for example and i know i've talked about dashboards and we've taken a crack at doing some dashboard kinds of things but we really need and i and i know i understand that this will go be part of this portrait of a graduate thing that we're doing but we've got to figure out how to convey all these bits and pieces to to our community and parents need to be able to to go somewhere on the website and and this is too much i mean it's okay for some people there'll be there'll be a contingent of people in the community

077who've loved to read you know 20 pages in every single graph but there needs to be a way to convey some of these key points and for us to understand fairly quickly where we need to work most where we need to focus our work for example well-being obviously to pat pappensel's point about you know bad pandemic year students didn't feel connected but they weren't in the building obviously we're going to pay close attention to that so i although i appreciate it and i do like the way you've linked this five essentials to each of these categories but it's just a lot of stuff and when it's tilted on the page like that it kind of makes me crazy just you know it's cute it's cute i like that little brain um and there's some really

078good news here by the way i have to say one of the things that i thought was really one of the most outstanding little fun facts is that teachers want us to become better thinkers not just memorize things and that's 93 of our students so kudos to our teachers because i think that's great um so all of that was more in the nature of a comment thank you do you have any is there anything does that make sense yes it does and it's very helpful feedback as i think about how i'm constantly improving on this and and in making sure we link that which is kind of the vision as i help with the data for all these other data reports that board reports that come to you like making sure they're all connected and

079so that's the goals of things you know and i do also think you know obviously this stuff relates to our goals but but our set of goals as the board discussed um you know in our retreat on saturday that we have an upcoming we have to reset our goals we have to but honestly we've had this set of goals for five years now and we don't often enough refer back to them and we don't often enough in a very intentional way connect what we're talking about at these board meetings to these goals but this report relates to every well almost all of them and and i i just i'd like everything to be get tied up in a package so that it's easier for everyone to understand where we still need to go so liz

080one thing i forgot to ask um for the student well-being surveys the two surveys where would i be able to find all of the questions that were asked on those surveys and the results of those so the five essentials one um is publicly available it's one we have to do or it's state mandated um every year and kind of change the time frame but for the past couple of years it's been sort of in that january to march time frame and it's one that all students do staff certified staff and then they we have the parent guardian component and so they have so we can get links for that where they have their questions yeah you can just google five essentials and then you can just find your school and click it the the well-being

081one is an internal survey that we've done with a partner with the student services for several years it really started out as a substance abuse um survey and then we've like built on it and created more of a well-being climate survey and it has traditionally most of it's used internally in health like with student services and a lot of their programming and dr kinsey will usually speak to that during her board okay thank you sure maybe maybe to gretchen's point also is a thought about how this i'd be interested to know sort of as part of your summary or sort of the takeaway how maybe a couple of examples of how you're using this data to inform your decision making just some examples of you know we found this in the data it prompted us

082to do such and such i know dr campbell has shared examples of that in the past and some of your reporting and i always find that sort of nice to hear sort of on the ground how this data is working for you and what it's how it's moving you in particular directions so that's a great segue for something i wanted to get out we hosted uh sanity senator tammy duckworth uh last week uh a panel uh with employers not-for-profits uh in in the workforce development sector um and what we one of the things i shared using these data points and one of the things that it's really pushed is is this you know intelligent career readiness you see the expansion of industry certifications you see the expansion of work based learning opportunities and we're nowhere

083near where we need to be i mean we had 30 of those students do that primarily through what's called the ikip program which we partnered with the city of evanston we partnered with the wii program on uh but you know the thing that the thing that contextualized that for us is that you know when you look at it you see you know oh 81 of our graduates enroll in college during the first two years right you you know that's that's great six year completion rate exceeds national average okay that's great however you know the reality is that 41 percent of our high school class do not complete a degree within six years they don't enroll and we have no information on those alumni uh that do not complete a post-secondary degree okay so 41 percent

084per se thereabouts of a graduating class we don't know and then in the car in the context of that conversation we talked to how about how a bachelor's degree is not necessary or even maybe the best pathway to career success you know we know that college graduates often end up in jobs that do not require the degree we believe that there are multiple pathways to success and we know that we can better serve our students before they leave high school and that's why you see the the growth of like the career pathways movement at the high school we have a career pathways planning document for students we have the expansion with me act right the mayor's employment advisory council so that's just another example and i really want i love that segway because then i

085got to you know really talk about senator duckworth and what she had to say about this is you know essentially that there's funding available federal funding available that she was going to have her folks work with uh work with us work with the the folks around the table that day and i issued a challenge to everyone that was there and the challenge was that everyone the employers the not-for-profits in the high school we all need to step up our game so that we can really exploit have students start that career exploration earlier in high school into middle school that is also driving our collaborations with district 65 so that's that's a nice way to say this data is living and it does drive and something is as as as relevant as like a graduation rate

086that years ago what we would say is hey we're doing a great job yeah we would stop the conversation at 81 percent of our students enroll in college isn't that great and now we know because we have data beyond that that that's not sufficient that we have to do more so that's that's another case in point but thank you uh for for mentioning that and we're going to do a better job at this table i pledge on in connecting that uh in what we do we're only halfway done because now we have to do the score report card if we have no more questions ready for the school report card this is this is the most frustrating report of the evening um do you want to you want to talk about it first and then

087all sure okay can i give them this here's the header there will be three releases of the school report card for this state of illinois this is just the first one okay i'll walk you through and you'll explain that yes oh yeah and and how into how that's going to require us to come back two more times all right okay so what i have in the following slides are from the isb webinars this year on the report card and multiple releases and this is what they're telling us so i probably don't have the most steady hand to try and like create a highlight on the slide but what i'm trying to do is the first report card the initial release is the one that's out um and then there'll be another one a second one

088december december 2nd and then the third one will be april 27th okay so um what is so the first one does not include the s.a.t uh or any like scores participation rate this is just saying and then there's some of it that's like more relevant for the um elementary middle schools so this is kind of like what it's not um it is not calculating it's not including the science assessment or summative designation um college and career scholar um they are creating impacted metrics so the data that's delayed due to cova 19 they're saying the for us it's the sat the dlm participation rates there's we did our we tested our juniors in um april there are some districts that have just done it the sat uh this october and so that's delayed the release of

089of all of the the scores um and then they have their performance scatter plots in college and career debt ready data that's not that's all delayed um so so what they're gonna have on the report card is this list is basically everything and it's going to have a calculated with concern so i'm just showing you this because they have this list of all the follow metrics which is basically all of the metrics on the report card save maybe the finance section or um like teacher um like staff data nope nope it's on there teach attendance teacher evaluation all of that calculated with concerns and what that looks like on when you see the report card online report card they'll just have these like flags and they're going to say possible 2020 data impact due to

090covet and then this call out explaining that it may have been affected by the suspension of in-person learning so that's what to expect all throughout the report card on basically all of the metrics so that's where they are right now um so it's really not much um so the second one is coming out so we've they've released the sat data so we're in the process of looking at it and verifying it and reviewing it and then sat scores will be available only for at the school level in december including school level participation so that's in the second release no state level data comparisons or anything will be in the state release so that's what's in what's not going to be in the second release is the science data that we just had to test all

091of the seniors they're supposed to take it in their journey or the science um no summative designation that's not even gonna be in the third one um so that's they're still saying that's out in the second one so the third one in april is where they're gonna bring in the the state s.a.t comparisons um and state participation rates um and they and access data so we just had to at the beginning of the year administer the access test um to our english learner population and that will be available in april by then we also um at the beginning we'll have to administer the access test again to them again which will be on next year's report card um so they're still saying no science data will not be reported at all this year is basically

092what they're saying each time and there's no uh different summative designation that will be available this year um can i yeah um go ahead so this this is all good to know terrific um appreciate the slides none this wasn't on our agenda this the school report card just isn't even a topic on here so i'm i'm sort of confused when i when you started talking about it i mean it's all good i'm trying to pay attention but we we definitely had no information in here and it's not even listed as an item so i just i'm finding this um you know you seemed excited to get to it i was more excited because i thought we were nearing the end sorry um it's it's in a normal it's just not here in a normal year

093it would be included in the achievement report as part of it so but it just wasn't there it wasn't and it's not not even as like a placeholder so basically you're saying that the information from the school report card is limited very limited to the point of because i know we would we would even get we would get it and it would be a part like you said pete yeah of this presentation i just went to the website and typed in illinois school report card and it was able to pull up evanston township high school and i'm finding what you are reporting that there's not a lot of information here i'll just skip to my last slide so normally i would include in my packet the at a glance so there's no at a glance

094feature right now and here's just the link to the website and that there will be another basically there'll be another one next month and that will have our sat scores and the portion that are like me exceeding below and then in april then we'll have again some a little bit more data and some state comparison so i don't have anything to report so nothing there would be nothing for you to look at gretchen i'm sorry no and i'm appreciating that it just probably would have been a good idea to just have like um school report card update on our agenda just to clarify that that was coming because it wasn't it didn't there wasn't even like an extra slide in the air in review that said we're going to give you some info on the

095mess that is the state report card yeah maybe we just haven't been clear yeah that's all i mean it's not this is the annual achievement report yeah yeah no i know we have renamed it yeah and uh and and so and and the reason there was nothing in your packet is that there is another explaining there is nothing yeah yeah correct no i i totally just wanted to be a little clearer yes yes i believe that previously when we got the achievement report there was also just this line about school report card because we would accept it or we would do some some little maneuver along those lines not yet so that's when you just kept talking i was terribly confused we may have to do that in april yes yes it's it's um just

096give us a warning give you a warning it's it's uh an extension of all this the impact of covet that we just don't have the kind of data that we that we typically have timing wise and the thoroughness and usefulness and it and i can even you know even as you were going through the the um the achievement data i mean i was thinking of and i wonder what the impact of covet had on that and students and well-being and academic achievement and how connected students have been so you know those are questions that we all have and i think it'll be a couple years at least before we really know what that does i agree i agree yeah probably more that's all i've got that's actually that's actually it okay we're done thank you

097thank you so much thank you for all that information not information [Laughter] all right okay so um next item pete is comments from the public do we have any comments uh we do we have one comment from the public just a reminder that councilman public are three minutes uh what i'll do is i'll run the timer i'll do like a three a two one well i won't do half that's a debater thing but yeah i can do half and if you come up here you click on the button at the podium and it's uh if you just say your name i think i have it here i'm trying to is it nova it's uh yeah my handwriting's awful okay great i'm gonna start uh and what we'll do is as soon as you start i'll

098start the timer and then when you when it when the buzzer goes off i'll say like finish or something yeah and just so you know the board doesn't comment uh on public comment it's not that they're not interested uh it's just that the protocol is we don't comment on but dr davis i want to do would you each like three minutes yeah well yeah we wrote a statement though it says we got two speakers you know i think we're really talking about three plus three right yeah okay we'll be over before six minutes y'all can go home event [Laughter] all right all right you're on go for it um i wanted to thank you all for giving us the opportunity to speak as well my name is maisie kobernick pollock and i also have handouts

099so you don't have to worry about trying to spell that or figuring that out um so we've got handouts at the end basically we're here to talk to you today about a new policy we're hoping eths administration will adopt a few weeks ago we created a survey asking students how they felt about the way teachers have been handling gender identity this school year and we received 146 responses um what we generally found is that while like eths is seen and most likely is uh significantly better than like the majority of schools out there there are still several like problems specifically when it comes to availability and access of the information needed to get into these gender neutral spaces and when it comes to the safety of kids in the closet or questioning or who are

100gender non-conforming about pronouns in class for example like right now uh classes are all or nothing you have some classes that do not provide students platform to share their pronouns increasing the chance that they will be misgendered and that comes along with a series of negative psychological effects or we have like this sort of maximalist approach which is equally as harmful you have classes that can put students who are questioning or closeted on the spot forcing them to either choose uh to out themselves there which can lead to immediate physical uh violence at worst or long-term systemic violence if that information would get out to their parents who are not supportive to their identity that can lead to an increased chance of homelessness or other negative effects that can come with that sort of information

101getting out and also psychological violence some people just aren't ready to share every information with everyone at every time so we should like provide some stock to that so along with this in our survey we had students rate a system in which teachers would send a private google form to students at the beginning of the year asking what pronouns and names they would like to use in school versus at home in case they are not out at school or at home and teachers would also create an assignment which they already do of a google slide of the students and that would include things like their name and their pronouns if they are comfortable along with other basic information and this would be something that wouldn't be put on the spot like presented in front of

102the class but more so presented gallery style like around the classroom and teachers could have the opportunity to get creative with this but it would be something that would be amenable and maybe put on a classroom wall and updated every few months yeah so what this is designed to do is like two things first it significantly lowers like the cost of coming out at school so like if teachers know not to say like the name you go by a school to your parents it makes it so that students can like feel safer going by a certain name uh at uh at school uh secondly uh it makes it so that students who are not currently like comfortable sharing their pronouns don't have to providing them with some cover and not being put on the spot

103to like have the negative psychological effects that can come with misgendering uh themselves and like finally it allows uh students who have like their pronouns or gender identity changed throughout the year be able to like change it throughout the year make sure everyone's informed you know no one's in a unformed situation and do something that can like possibly have some negative harm so after receiving positive responses to that proposed system we wrote an open letter to the eths administration which i have copies of and we received over 100 signatures in support of the things mentioned in the letter yeah in fact it's approximately 150 now we and the 150 like people who sign the letter want two things first we want a more aggressive advertisement of the self-advocacy form right now people just don't know

104it exists and if they do know they exist they probably have a lot of misinformation about that so if we like spread that information and uh allow for more people to know and sign up to these uh to gain access to spaces that they need that would be really really good and second we want like some guidance for teachers when it comes to providing safe way for sharing pronouns specifically we would like to see a very similar system to the one we outlined and the one we outlined in more detail in our open letter so the student body is willing to help this happen because being transgender is a beautiful thing but it can also be incredibly tiring in a space that isn't accepting or understanding or supporting of your identity and eths is gonna

105take the action or hopefully we'll take the action to make the school a safer space to be openly trained yeah uh yeah so we have things to share out i know you all don't comment but so on things but if you do have questions we have our emails on there uh we don't have one for everyone unfortunately so uh you can give them to lisa give them right here to this uh then personally we'll make sure everybody gets it thank you for your time thank you so much thank you thanks for being so prepared and thanks for sticking with us oh yeah okay and that concludes public comment for this evening all right thank you all right next item on the agenda are um a few foias just a few uh flyers are in your

106packet the response in your packet um any questions from the board about the foyers i don't have any questions but i think you're supposed to are you supposed to read the names out loud at the meeting just tossing it out there uh we could but it'll take a minute one second just making connections okay i actually think there is maybe we have agnew gulata dots and sp irvine kentree nine from meadow smizer soto [Applause] and sternstein okay thank you all right okay moving on um we're board committee reports we have any reports from board members from any committees that you meetings all right um no my favorite part student board report it is really thanks no pressure okay so oh this is really bad all right so um we started quarter two i think the

107last time we talked you're still in quarter one so we're one fourth of the way through which is crazy um so that's that also today was supposed to be the wither bell forum the last time i told you but it got moved to december 6th so that's when we'll be doing it that monday and then i think there's a board meeting on the 13th so um i'll be able to share all that information with you and just like a little preview um we got like finalized topics one will be the schedule lunch student well-being gender inclusivity race and equity school communities and coveted policies and if any of you would like to add something to that or see more emphasis on one of those topics just um let me know or just student union in

108general and then we're also doing student union is doing a math campaign with the communications department um we haven't really finalized what we're doing but some ideas were kind of like making like a competition between clubs on who can design the best mask or stuff like that because we are kind of noticing some people don't want to wear masks anymore that mask fatigue so we've been working on that and we might like push out a video or something like that to kind of encourage you know to just persevere through wearing masks and then i just wanted to extend more of nova's and maisie's comments on the gender identity policies at eths i think that what they did is should be extremely appreciated because it really it really is made to help teachers because you know

109you can be in a place where a teacher might not know how to handle a situation where a student doesn't want to share their pronouns or changes their pronouns or any of that stuff so i really think that that's an important thing to touch on um and then just to reiterate their solutions is just to like educate teachers or just like provide guidelines on how to ask students for pronouns and names and that might be just as simple as like student union me meeting with the teachers union and just being like okay can you spread the word of like this kind of uncomfort of like that extra emphasis on pronouns because i know i've been in like a club in a class where like we were told to go around and share our pronouns and

110an individual didn't want to and the adult in the room like just good-heartedly was like can you just let us know your pronouns because we want to you know refer to you with the right pronouns and they weren't comfortable and that kind of created an awkward situation um so we want to make sure like that doesn't happen and also we're really grateful that eth ath eths is a school where we can talk about this stuff and like bring this issues to all of you so that's really good and then also the spread awareness on transgender resources at eths i think student union could take that on as well as long as we have all the information about these spaces because i personally don't know but um i'm sure there's a lot of things that eth

111has eths has that you know some students don't know of um so yeah and then there's another thing that i really don't want to talk about but i feel like nobody else is going to if i don't um so over the past week i think an article has kind of been going on like a couple articles about a prior eths coach that has been arrested for child sexual abduction seduction in indiana and it's known that students at eths complained about this coach but other fellow coaches protected him and the complaints were dismissed and he kept working here that's i mean i don't think i have to explain our opinions on that or why we feel the emotions we would feel as students but um you know i understand this is your reputation this is the

112school's reputation but um these are our lives and we want to make sure nobody's put into danger because of the protection of other employees at eths so i wanted to make sure i brought that up i'm not sure what went wrong with that complaint or who's in fault or whatever but i'm sure something did go wrong and i fear for the other students that were put into danger because the complaint was not followed through and was not addressed with as much concern as we see it should have been so that's that i'm not sure going forward what needs to happen but i just wanted to make that clear that we know about this and there's a lot of talk about this and um you know we don't know what to think we don't know what

113to say we're just talking to each other and we're just kind of scared and worried because it's like eths has like a message that like we're safe here and we can come to you about things but then this instance is sending the complete opposite message than what we stand to be and um i fear that other students will take this and you know to really take it in and think that they can't come to adults at eths about accusations of assault or harassment or any type of abuse that they face in the school so i want to make sure that that was touched on because i don't think that we've heard anything from any adult at the school about that but yeah that's all i have for today thank you barbara thank you for sharing

114that and thank you for for sharing that information and um the fact that many students are talking about this at eths i can certainly say on behalf of the administration that we heard what you were saying and the district will respond but it is important for us and it's important for us to hear that voice and and even sometimes the the the uncomfortable conversations you know we realize that we have work to do so and we learn from the past and and that's what we're trying to do but i really do appreciate i'm not making excuses i just really want to tell you that i appreciate your courage and how candid you are and sharing so thank you all right doctor with a spoon uh no report okay all right so we are on items

115for action the first item is resolution authorizing supplemental tax levy to pay the principal and interest on outstanding limited bonds of the district can have a motion so moved second roll call please yes okay we're gonna skip the next item because we're not there yet so we're at the consent agenda and the consent agenda consists of approval of minutes from closed session meeting october 25th 2021 regular meeting october 25 2021 approval of bills treasurer's report from september 2021 personnel agenda appointments to staff support staff operations change in status stipends retirement and administrator is that it do i have a an addendum which includes appointments to staff exempt support staff changing status stipend resignation and retirement can i have a motion please so moved second roll call please yes yes yes yes next item is old

116and new business does anybody have old or new business to present hearing none um polling of the board any comments from board members closing comments if not i'll take an adjourn a motion for adjournment or move we adjourn all in favor aye aye this meeting is adjourned thank you you