School Board Meeting 10/11/21

001so welcome welcome to the october 11th 2021 school board meeting can we have a roll call please here here here here here thank you all right it's really good to see the room full um must be a special occasion very special person so our first item on the agenda is written communication dr davis do we have any written communication we have no written communication this evening okay okay then the next item on the agenda is the portrait unveiling for jane carleton [Music] [Applause] well you know service on a school board is is a very special labor of love school board members are elected officials so it means in a community like ours and and and throughout the state of illinois that every four years an individual has to stand for election or re-election to serve

002on a school board and for those of you who think that it comes with all sorts of perks there is absolutely no salary no hourly rate and a lot of sacrifice of time and travel uh in order to be a member of a school board much less uh all of the homework that's required to prepare for all of the meetings and all of the community involvement and all the involvement in the school and school events that is expected of anybody who serves on the school board for the most part most people who serve on the school board serve one and uh and and oftentimes two terms beyond that is very rare and school board members who serve on a board for 20 years become legend and we have a legend in the room tonight jane

003colleton indeed was elected and reelected to serve on this school board for 20 years from 1991 to 2011. and during that time she was indeed a faithful member of the board some of you in the room were fellow board members with her many of you in the room voted for her many times many of you in the room were supporters and i have no doubt that many of you in the room gave her an earful from time to time because that comes with serving on the school board as well but jane's faithfulness to this community and edison township high school and to the students of this school for literally the decades that she was here but also making decisions for those who would come for generations to follow was never in doubt jane was committed

004to this school committed to the students committed to what the school needed to be and what she wanted the vision of the school to become and she was a strong and faithful board member in that i had the fortune of serving as superintendent here uh employed by the school boards that jane was a member of from 2006 to 2011. and during that time i really very much was able to observe and get to know what jane stood for it was during that time that we tackled something that had never been tackled in this community before and in fact isn't tackled in a lot of communities even today and that was detracting and making this a an equitable school making this a school that was not segregated by race in classes but it was a school

005where every student would and does receive the best courses and the best curriculum and the best teaching that we have to offer and many of you were in the community when all that was going on and i can tell you that it was a very tumultuous time in district 202 and this board was faced with a monumental decision when it had to to vote on whether or not to start detracking this high school and jane was one of those seven members who ultimately came together stood tall and made the decision that it was time to move forward and she cast that courageous vote and she made eloquent comments that night she had prepared comments and they were eloquent about what she believed and what she knew our students deserved and she ultimately completed her 20

006years on this board and she left a legacy and i can't account for all the other votes that she made before 2006 from 1991 to 2006 but i have no doubt that every one of those votes was principled was well thought and when needed courageous because that's jane colleton [Applause] and at this time jane and uh president uh savage pat williams pat sam [Laughter] pat savage williams and i are gonna move to the back you're gonna all have to either turn around or stand a moment or whatever because we're going to unveil a portrait you will see that there are two portraits on the wall already in a 138 years those two people plus jane are the only three people who have served 20 years on the school board in evanston in 138 years dan

007phillips to the right margaret lurie in the middle and now we're going to celebrate our esteemed jane colleton right now [Music] all right are we ready all right three two one [Applause] so we're going to give jane a moment to speak but before we do because you are you are the final speaker on this uh we we have with us tonight uh the artist anne poncey uh she's also actually joined by by kathleen van ella uh kathleen uh is with portrait chicago we've worked with her uh when the artist was selected and and uh margaret's uh portrait was made and we were so pleased that we went back and uh and she gave jane some choice of artists and uh she she chose anne and yes this is the brilliant artist who is responsible for

008this and and did you want to say just a couple of words and then we're going to turn it over to jane [Music] uh oh about six inches six inches you're fine can you hear me can you hear me okay um i have two two gifts for jane um i i got only got to know jane last february we've had several meetings together enough that i got a feel for her personality and the things that she loves and uh some of her accomplishments um which just uh floor me they're so they're so amazing i got to know about her family her grandchildren i've got to know her husband a little bit and hear about his his life and their life together uh it's been it's been wonderful to uh to know these people and thank

009you all for the opportunity kathleen has been instrumental in arranging the business part of this and for introducing us all to each other got to know mary rodino and uh all under a mask which is a very weird thing when you're trying to do somebody's portrait the first time i saw jane she had a mask on like oh okay um so as i got to know her i asked her what is what do you love what are some of the things the places that you love we were trying to decide a context for the portrait and so the first thing that came to her mind was this little ballet studio where she studies at least three three mornings a week and she talked about the redbud trees in bloom every spring that she looks at

010as she takes her ballet class and how much it was her kind of her happy place and i thought well let's try to do a portrait in that in that space so i did a preliminary portrait which you're about to see this is actually a double unveiling it's a twofer and we looked at the portrait and i i decided that it was a good portrayal of jane but not necessarily showing her as the community leader that you all have have gotten to know and love so this is it tada whoa [Music] so [Applause] so this is jane sort of in her element but i will say about this portrait she's also in her element very much uh she loves trees and plants and the few times i've been with her she just can't stop talking

011about trees and plants and so i thought well maybe i'll make maybe i'll make a green background and the green background sort of developed into some leaves and there you have it the necklace and jane if you want to come up here [Music] come on up jane here she is jane carlaton [Applause] yes yeah why don't we turn around now and james gonna speak from up front push the button ah very nice let me begin with some thanks thank you to those who are here my family so many friends my fellow dancers and play readers unity members friends from saint mary's and saint nicholas church and members of delta sigma theta sorority special thanks to ann ponce a remarkable portrait artist who i believe has succeeded in capturing me at my best thanks to the

012school board members with whom i served during my 20-year tenure and thanks to the current board members for squeezing this event into a busy agenda to mary rodino the eths finance guru who made the wonderful arrangements for tonight's event finally thank you to superintendent eric witherspoon who persisted in urging me to get the portrait done more about him in a minute by way of background for those of you who don't know my husband don and i have lived in evanson 50-plus years and raised four eths graduates we even have a sophomore here he's a sophomore here today pondering this moment felt a little like being at my own wake where i could voice my innermost thoughts but i'm not at my own wake so i won't go there instead i'll just give three points during

013my time on the board i was also employed as a teacher and administrator at cara valley montessori school here in evanston i often reflected on how privileged i was to be in a position to influence members of a segment of our community during significant periods of development specifically children in their toddler and teen years i viewed this work as a vocation looking back i like to think my efforts along with those of many others contributed fruitfully to the intellectual emotional and social advance of young children and teenagers in our care i'd like to think that we really have enhanced their futures and that of our community during my tenure board members were charged with addressing disparity in learning caused by racism and social injustice we did our darndest to do just that among other things

014by detracting the school's curriculum i don't say that this was easy or without resistance i know it was and it remains a complex challenge but we made a good start eric's leadership helped facilitate real progress i leave you with one last thought eric will retire this year in recruiting his successor don't overlook traits key to his success he is a kind man 24 7. in his every encounter with students parents the public and all levels of staff he is courteous he has genuine not just expedient concern for others encouragement and humility hallmark his personality his faith with a capital f in human betterment quietly animates his every engagement yes the district needs and eric possesses other professional qualifications but his special traits importantly helped drive eths growth in the last 16 years put them in

015your research profile thank you for this honor so okay thank you all for being here uh and uh we have a reception uh area set up uh out in the lobby uh all of you found it earlier and uh you're invited to to have a little more time with jane and her family and thank you all for being here tonight okay with masks on or with mask off [Music] we should we're gonna go take a picture with jane we're gonna go take a picture [Music] a different is [Music] i know obviously this meeting is going to continue please the reception continues in the hall please stay as long as you'd like in the hall take your time [Music] so many connections portrait is gorgeous i really like it i like awesome i like me too

016it is so stunning okay wonderful be careful actually that's what i was thinking about yes it does remind me they're the best i was thinking of that too all right here we are thank you for being here yes it's that's one announcement to make before we start okay um dr witherspoon has an announcement to make before we start uh yeah good evening everybody good evening board i want to remind everybody that this uh that masks are required in illinois schools by executive order and so i would like to remind everybody including our speakers this evening that we are wearing masks here at eths thank you doctor with the spoon all right so we are going to proceed um so the next item on the agenda is um items for information we're starting with an update

017on covet 19 and we have a couple of guests here and uh taya is going to introduce them hi so thank you and um what an act and a fabulous honoring to follow so we're really glad to be here um and honoring our school community in a very different way by talking about covet 19 and what we've been doing to continue to keep our students and our staff and our community safe so hi i'm ty kinsey i'm the associate principal for student services and here with me tonight is dr robinson and dr suglund we're so glad they're here they are two members of our community but also members of our medical advisory board so we're going to be hearing from them this evening as we walk through a little bit of an update and then

018we're going to circle back to them to really hear about their perspectives and experiences as we've been on some of this journey together as well and then we'll have an opportunity for some q a so as i mentioned we're going to talk about the medical advisory board more at the end and our cova dashboard the procedures that we're looking at vaccinations and our shield testing updates one of the things that we know is that we talk a lot about guidance and we talk about idph guidance and isb guidance and cdc guidance and the evanston health department at our medical advisory board we talk a lot about guidance but in the end i know that we are each driven and guided by the act of caring for each other and ensuring that our students have an

019opportunity to learn and that belief that we have to care for each other and for our students in order to make that happen so today we'll just be providing that brief update as we think about responsiveness so on our web page we have the covid response 2021 but truly responsiveness is part of our journey as we've been figuring out the right next steps and then sometimes having to turn or completely pivot as we've been doing that that includes our covet dashboard if folks haven't seen it yet it includes our diagnoses and we do weekly updates every friday at noon and if we don't get it right at noon i usually get an email right away to notify me that it hasn't gone on right at noon but it is regularly updated by midday and that

020includes the diagnosis for students as well as students in quarantine as well as diagnoses of covet 19 for any staff members or any staff members who might be in quarantine and that's available to the public on our webpage and in terms of our coveted procedures we've worked really hard to make sure that we have transparency in what to expect both for the public as well as for our staff members and continue to post all of our many communications those of you who are parents know how many communications we send out to try to ensure that everyone is well abreast of the situations but one of the things we wanted to highlight was just how hard our staff continues to work from an operations perspective with nightly sanitizing so full sanitizing in all classrooms in the

021offices where students are receiving even mental health service provision our teachers our staff members everyone is working tirelessly and somehow our staff are amazing even when they're tired sometimes so we've been really appreciative of all of that work we had talked a little bit about highlighting our vaccination rates because we're pretty happy with our vaccination rates and i know our medical advisory board has given us given us some feedback along the way and they'll speak to this further and i thought oh we could do a pie chart or we could do a chart i think the numbers just speak for themselves this time 96 of our staff have been vaccinated for coven 19 and over three-quarters of our students have been vaccinated and we're continuing to encourage those opportunities for vaccinations and then in terms

022of additional steps as we consider all of the mitigation factors and actions we're taking to keep folks safe we will be beginning our coveted shield testing the week of october 18th and we are beginning with students who have not demonstrated proof of vaccination and we're eager to get that started next week which somehow the time has flown and it's already next week and then we have our amazing medical advisory board and that consists our medical advisory consists of a variety of leaders from eths doctors from our community as well as staff members and union members and licensed staff members as well so we are so blessed really to have the opportunity to continue to get guidance and we're glad to have two members of our medical advisory board here this evening so i'm going to

023invite them to share a little bit about that journey that we've been on together and then we'll close with some questions and answers uh so i'm david saglin i'm chief medical officer at lower beta children's hospital on the south side of chicago but i am a lifelong evanston resident with four children who are alumni i'm an alumni um and a family of teachers in district 65. um so i think the medical advisory group was brought together in january in preparation for beginning hybrid learning and i think one of the things that really struck me from the very beginning was the transparency and the inclusiveness i think from our very first meeting there were there was staff from there was union staff from i don't even know how many different unions um are here but there

024was union staff from everybody um there was the whole ranks from engineering to the teachers i mean and everything in between and i think that that openness um and the ability for everyone to get their questions asked and for sharon to answer them um it was really what allowed um eths to have such a smooth opening and to and to do as well i think sharon and i both spent a lot of time talking about baby steps that you want to do something you want to build your own confidence and the confidence of your staff and students and then you want to take the next step and just keep moving um that way until with your eye from the beginning in january our eye was on this fall and and a goal of full reopening

025and i guess that's really all the comments i need to make i'm glad to answer any questions and i'm sure sharon has more to add as well good evening everyone i think i know everyone but just in case i'm sharon robinson i'm a pediatrician in the community with north shore university health system i am also the proud mom of two eths students i have a senior and a freshman this year so it's a very exciting time for us and we feel very fortunate that they get to experience this year in person together in a way that's safe um i can when marcus sorry dr campbell reached out to me and and asked about um putting together a medical advisory board to help with the rio with the return to in-person learning plans i was honored

026and and thrilled to partner with eths in order to to do this for our community because the reality is we we have such a wonderful setup here because not only do we have a community that really believes in science it cares about each other and has really done what we need to do to keep each other safe but we have this school that cares about each other believes in science wants to take care of their students and their staff and so those together just um really made our jobs so much easier you know all we had to do was read through the guidelines and the guidelines of the guidelines and all the different guidelines to try to sort those um but but putting it all together was really really quite easy you have a very

027special team here at eths and and you should be quite quite proud i think every every step of the way and also being just so nimble and flexible and you know we're wearing masks we're not wearing masks we're wearing masks um and then putting together the um the vaccine clinic we hosted one in august in july and august i think it was her where we partnered with north shore university health system and did a big vaccine clinic this was shortly um after the vaccine had been approved for 12 to 15 year olds and just being i was there and able to be a part of that and seeing how the community and the students felt so safe when they came into this space in order to get vaccinated something that many parents were fearful of

028but because it was at eths and because they trust you so much they've they felt okay not only getting their children vaccinated but we had parents who had been hesitant who got vaccinated during that time as well so i honestly could go on and on about about how wonderful things have been and i just want to extend a thank you to all of you the board members to the incredible staff and teachers at eths you all have taken um a lot a lot of um abuse and unfair treatment to be quite frank and we just wanted to all of us on the physicians at least on the medical advisory board we stepped into this role because we wanted to be there to support you all and to rebuild the relationship between the medical community and

029the school because we work better together when we support each other and and lift each other up so we're at with that really happy to open it up to for any questions that you might have i'm going to yeah i'm gonna make one more comment because i want to play off of what you just said i think we are really lucky to be in this community right because the community vaccination rates and the acceptance are just huge but as sharon alluded to that doesn't mean this was easy but it was made easier by some of the early decisions i mean i i've consulted with school districts around the state and some of them you know just the superintendent wants to talk to you others just the teachers union wants to talk to you and the

030superintendent isn't invited to that meeting and so the decision early on that we are meeting as a team is critical to the success that we had um because it doesn't work if you're just talking to the union or if you're not talking to the union neither one of those uh works and yes we are blessed to be in evanston where you know where we accept science and everything else but it's you can still screw it up um and and you have to build that transparency and that trust which i think you know was done beautifully i'll add that they've been tremendous about continuing to guide us really around so what are we centering on as we think about science as we think about how we're caring for each other and so i've been so impressed

031with how our students and our staff have shown up in that way with engaging with masks and probably wearing masks not just wearing them but properly wearing them and our vaccinations and our hand washing and our sanitizing and the covet testing all these all these pieces of the puzzle that we are so committed to so i wanted to say thank you because i know every student and every staff member is engaged in it and thank you to our medical advisory board as well so we wanted to open it up for questions so i just want to say on behalf of the board i just want to thank you to the two of you and to your team for for working with us i know this is your community but what you're right what when our

032community works together then we can pull all of our resources and put our heads together because as you know we've been through a time that um challenged all of us we are we're going through a time it's present tense that continues to challenge us so my hope is that work has will continue um because there are still guidelines and guidelines and guidelines yet to come um and and we really do need you and rely on you to just help guide us through this the complexity of what's ahead so thank you thank you for believing in us and giving your time and i'm sure that it was not easy for you as well right okay questions from the board i have a question gretchen so i appreciated seeing uh the numbers on the vaccination rate of

033teachers and students because i i think you're right ty it tells kind of the whole story right there and kudos to our fabulous staff for hitting that 96 vaccination rate i think it's tremendous very exciting and i think 76 percent for students is still pretty good but what can we do to get it higher the the student rate yep you know it i've been reflecting on that because interestingly i can tell you that in my i've been practicing an evidence in this area for 20 years so i have a fair number of patients i can think since that they have been eligible for the vaccine i can think of one of my patients that i've seen who's not vaccinated so my reality is very different than than that my my suspicion is that some of

034those folks are people who just haven't turned in there exactly and once the shield testing started it starts i think you're going to see that number go up a little bit more the shield testing the swap that goes all the way it's a spit test oh darn because if it went all the way you know if it's easier then maybe i don't know but yeah i think that that was sort of my follow-up i think that's part of it and then i i just i think there is still some um vaccine hesitancy among some parents for for various reasons it is it's difficult to know what to do now because i feel like we've kind of done everything that we can do i know i have been on a mission since the day i got

035vaccinated in december to put myself in and everywhere i could to try to get the message out about vaccination and i know my colleagues have done the same i think at some point you know the staff are mandated to get vaccinated so i think that probably it's you know i'm i'm wondering if that's going to have to be the next i mean that's not something you we can do as a group here that's a state level you actually can under the state policy i think we can mandate more strictly than the state requirements i think that's laid out in in the in the state law i i read that looking for that bit of information and that's the lawyer in me looking for that language and it's there as i read it interesting unless there's

036been a change and it will be interesting to see how far the mandate's going of course than we have the rule making under president biden's osha you know employers of 100 and or more will need to mandate or do the testing as well so i think you know as that as those sorts of mandates continue to come into play hopefully we'll see numbers creeping up absolutely and we will see hopefully um in the next couple of weeks the fda um put their stamp on approval for the five to 11 year old so then i feel like we'll have a lot more traction to have these conversations when you have the critic a critical mask of students who are eligible to be vaccinated yeah good point but i also think we need to stay engaged with

037those 23 percent that are not um they're you know there's a far cry between i think you know covid vaccine hesitancy and the rabbit anti-vaxxers that are i'm probably going to be in trouble for saying that my name is not david and the you know anti-vaxxers that are all over social media spreading disinformation two weeks ago i got a call from a woman i worked with 10 years ago in september wanting my opinion on whether or not she should get vaccinated i was like you had to call me to you you wonder whether i'm going to tell you or not to get vaccinated but we had a 20-minute conversation and she ended up by asking what vaccine she should get and she texted me you know last week and she got vaccinated i mean she

038was ready right she called me i didn't call her she was she was ready to make that decision and needed a push but but i don't think we i don't think we stop that engagement we have to continue you know person by person um well there's something to be said for sort of peer pressure and you know particularly amongst our students and i think um you know we have ambassadors in other areas and we can have you know vaccine ambassadors and you know just it's i mean i think there are some creative ways to to keep trying and we've we've talked on the advisory group and and i've talked with other about some of the you know kids need to be in school right i'm absolutely but some of the perks of being in school

039could be tied to vaccination um and um and actually some of those perks are also higher risk than just being in the classroom and so so i think it's worth at least thinking about even if you're not going to mandate every student at eths you could think about mandating indoor sports you know band orchestra choir that if you want to participate in those things um because that makes sense medically um and it kind of rewards uh the vaccinated right well there's also talk i think because the ihsa does not currently mandate the vaccine but i think there's some who are advocating for that to be a requirement i mean because that that's a statewide you know there's these wide variations between as we all know between parts of the state we're in the we're in

040the right part of the state i want to be clear i think yeah i was just going to add that it seems like there's also a teachable moment around a lot of this kind of crisis and process that we've been living through for the last 20 months and and it's an opportunity to teach critical thinking and how do we process misinformation and social media for one thing how do we support each other as a community around public health and making you know choices not just for ourselves but for the protection of other people so i think that you know as we are all dealing individually and collectively with this you know pandemic there are also things very much tied to education and how we teach one another and learn from one another i too will

041be very interested in seeing what those numbers look like once we start that shield testing next week and really um ty i hope you will just bring this back to us and just let us know particularly if those numbers change significantly um because i expect that though i expect that they'll go up because like you said sharon some people just really haven't probably reported and nothing is stronger than peer pressure so once it's pretty clear who needs to go for the shield testing and who doesn't and i don't know how that's going to work i'm sure we'll be discreet but you know kids have a way of knowing what their peers do and um so i'll just be interested in seeing what what happens with that so this will be the only time that we

042really advocate peer pressure as a public education strategy well i always think about peer pressure i just don't always talk about it especially when it works in our favor positive peer pressure you know before we leave the subject i would just like to thank the medical advisor group for the just being a part of it i'm a part of that group and i know taya and marcus dr campbell are a part of it along with dr witherspoon and what i've found is that just this afternoon we hosted a q a with our staff just to check in around around you know covered protocols and contact tracing and whatnot and the level of uh of of response to the questions taiya really uh quarterbacked the today and just just being with you folks and and just

043understanding at a deep level like the not just the science but also how to talk to people about uh vaccinations and about covet and about the baby steps and the comfort level and the anxieties that folks have acknowledging that and working through that has been really helpful to me uh and and again we had about 50 people on the call this afternoon about 3 40 to 4 o'clock and uh it went very well but that's a credit uh both to taya's leadership on that this afternoon but also to the to being a part of the group so thank you for that thank you you know what and i want to add on top of that i think um being in this evanston bubble you know i mean you can become complacent right and and just

044say oh yeah we're good we're good we have high numbers and so forth so i appreciate that that we are still very much aware that we have to continue to be very conscious and aware of um you know just staying the course and and doing all the things that we know are working um so that our numbers don't dip or so that our numbers don't rise whatever because it can happen just like that so i um appreciate you being patient with us right and and working with us and staying clear or next to us and staying just just close to us and helping us through this process because we know that it's long and it's a marathon and it's tiring and it can wear you out um but you know that's that's the thing that

045matters most that you just endure with us so thank you thank you so much natalia thank you honestly it's been a pleasure to i mean and to work with this team i mean it's really they're an incredible group and it's been a a pleasure it's not been a burden they've been very respectful of our time i keep saying it's okay i'm not in that big of a hurry they're like no no your time's valuable um but it's just been a great group to work with and and um you know we are literally giving advice you know when we have a meeting and then they're doing the work and so we have the easy job um because we're reading the stuff anyways for our own knowledge um and so literally to be at a meeting and

046share it is so little compared to the the work that's happening inside this building is incredible okay well dr robinson i shared your video when you got you i mean because you were one of the first ones that i know and especially as a woman of color right because then i was like oh okay well if she got it then [Music] okay maybe i can get it you know and i had to share that and and really it helped me share the story with um you know my family and my staff and my friends and so forth and so on so it is that personal conversation and that changes lives it's that one-on-one it's intimate it's no longer the big group conversation it's the intimate conversations that we have to have one-on-one um with the

04718 year olds that are no longer listening to their parents and they think they're you know too grown but they're not but we can't tell them what to do right that we're not in the doctor's office with them anymore right so they're making their own decisions and they're not getting the shot and so we have to figure out how to get to them um so i want to because i haven't seen you forever i know so i want to thank you for your bravery thank you thank you very welcome one of it was the first that i saw women of color and and it was really a powerful loud statement for me personally and for so many oh thank you well i am loud that's it that's when i need to be so i just

048put that to good use i thank you i appreciate that i i was this i got my vaccine the vaccine arrived in the united states on a tuesday i got my vaccine on thursday wow and when i received notification the saturday before that i was going to i've been chosen to be part of the first pilot at north shore to get the vaccine to make sure that the operations were running smoothly um the first thing i did was cry from relief and then the second thing i did was send an email to the chief medical officer of north shore and i said i've got i'm getting vaccinated i've got work to do i need to reach out to my community and figure out a way to start spreading this message how can i do this

049and then it just she respond this was a saturday saturday night i emailed her she responded back to me in 15 minutes and said absolutely i'm going to put you in touch with marketing and then next thing you know i'm doing the facebooks and the video things for abc and then press conference it just kind of that's that's that's how it happened i just it wasn't anything planned i just said i felt a calling to to to do something and be impactful and i wonder if that's why i have so many patients that are vaccinated because they they saw me and hopefully that that made a difference so that means a lot to me to know that um that that it that it was impactful that that was the point trust me i hate seeing

050myself i don't watch any of my own clips by the way i can't stand it but thank you thank you and we'll keep working i won't stop i'm tired i'm not gonna lie i'm tired but i'm not stopping well i have one more layer then of that work because i and i thank you too i mean i reached out to other doc robs and um and i was like all right what do i do you know um and so i just want to go back to the student piece because you know a thinking about it could be 400 kids and that's only 10 percent let's say or you know 12. and i think about who they might be right and you were talking and if they're 18 year olds are not listening to the parents

051but if they are at the mercy of the adults in the home i would hate to see them removed from some of the things that keep them in school like their extracurriculars and i would also i know we can't necessarily all know but what are the demographics of those students and is it hitting a particular group harder than others and then we do things that could further marginalize them without them having you know their own will so i just whatever it could take some of that creativity or um i just would ask that we continue to do that and we've we've had those conversations those are great points i can say nationally the the data of who's not the demographic of who's not vaccinated is very different than it was in the beginning so in

052fact for african-americans we are pretty close to the vaccination rate we have made up a lot of ground and now are pretty close to the vaccination rate of white americans latinx americas still are lagging behind so you're right that is that is something to consider i just think we also have to we it's we have to pull some levers in order to make change at this point because i think we've i think we're we're stuck um and so we have to just think creatively but equitably you're right about how to how to affect change and i just want to acknowledge that i had said you could take away some of those perks but i also know how important that school engagement is to their academic success and to their so it's i probably said it

053too lightly um because it is absolutely a difficult balancing act board the approach we've been taking with all of our extra creative participation is proof of vaccination or a negative coed test so nobody gets excluded but everybody has to understand that that this is a serious situation and one of the two is necessary uh that's basically what we will do with the uh the shield testing um uh proof of vaccination or get tested regularly so i i hope that families will understand why they can protect themselves of their children and others in their family by getting vaccinated but in the meantime we're taking efforts to protect eths thank you so much thank you thank you again all right so another item for information is portrait of an eths graduate and we'll give dr davis a

054minute to get set up yes um all right it's what you call hard segway so what i'm going to do is i'm going to brief the board on portrait of a graduate this evening and i'm going to outline a process that we will follow as we go through ultimately culminating in adoption hopefully right so um you know eths has a a clear mission statement statement on equity vision statement along with district goals that this group has you know traditionally drafted there's the mission statement i pulled all of this off the website so just as a refresher for those out watching this on cable or on youtube there's our mission statement uh there is our statement on equity uh and that was approved and adopted in 2011. we have a vision statement from 1996 which was

055adopted by the eths school improvement team many many years ago and and you see there's some elements of portrait of a graduate in that vision statement which makes sense because a vision is what do you envision what do you see you know concretely for our for our students uh but what we don't really have is a we don't currently we do not have a portrait of a graduate that's what i'm going to talk you through this evening so uh why develop a portrait of an eths graduate well uh you know it's essential in that it represents a school district's vision for 21st century skills character traits and or social emotional skills and practices that students need to succeed in college career and life it does not replace this as important some folks confuse this a

056portrait of a graduate does not replace our focus on academic achievement it shows the district's commitment to investing in educational experiences that educate the whole child in doing so it clarifies what is missing in our efforts to quantify academic experiences for our students so we have these academic experiences that we traditionally quantify using test scores a c t scores s a t scores ap scores i do a lot of reports on scores and gpas and things like that which are which are fine they're going to continue it's part of the picture what i don't often report on is what's in the curriculum that enhances the student experiences what's in the extracurricular realm what's in the co-curricular realm and that's really what portrait of a graduate gets at uh so you know we begin with answering

057series of questions you know we had a team that worked on this initially uh and these questions are are you know fairly important these are very important questions you know what are the hopes aspirations and dreams that our community has for our young people that's a big question what are the skills and habits of mind that our children need for success in this rapidly changing and complex world i don't know about you but i grew up on blockbuster okay now i have netflix i mean that's just in 20 years you know i remember going to blockbuster on friday nights it was a big deal we'd go to blockbuster we'd sort through the movies pick out the movies get the popcorn and the soda and head back to the apartment to hang out and that doesn't

058happen anymore because we have netflix and you can just click or you have amazon prime but it's that set of future conditions that we're preparing our students for uh that is that really is more than a test score a test score doesn't do that right uh a curriculum of of that that privileges critical thinking and things like that does does exactly that and what are the implications of the learning experiences we provide uh in our school system and that that last bullet really turns it back on us uh back on educators and says okay now that we have this portrait now we have identified these traits what are we doing within the context of the school building to really grow those traits develop those traits over time so there are many examples of this but

059uh you know one of the things that i just really want to point out it's not a static document it doesn't sit on the website uh you know and look and look nice as an infographic uh you know this isn't so my hope is that in in i don't know 19 was it 96 was a lot was the vision statement my hope is that in you know 25 years someone doesn't pull up a porch of a graduate look what i found from 2022 23. so that's the hope right uh so we follow an established process we we we're utilizing this portrait of a graduate program which is just really a series of uh questions a series of experiences ways to reach out to different different as different partners in the community to develop this portrait

060it's a four-part process you plan you activate you create you adopt we're really fortunate in-house to have very creative folks who can actually make infographics that look that are pleasing to the eye and you know that's down the road but really what we did as a leadership team two years ago as we planned this we actually planned this process which i'll share tonight we didn't get to the activation point tonight's kind of the beginning of the activation so let's talk about that okay so a working group uh to explore and plan we started in january 2020 through may 2020 that's when we were planning and we we came up with some yeah we we did a deep dive into future conditions we talked through the different traits put an equity lens on our work we

061were thinking through things at a very deep level and then in mar and then in april covet happens it really happens uh and we met one more time we met in may because somebody thought it was a good idea enough it was me maybe i thought it was a good idea let's get folk people focused on the future instead of the day-to-day which if you remember back in may 2020 it was very much a day-to-day existence right so we met one more time uh and then we we kind of put it on the back burner we said you know this is a great idea now is not the time uh but we're here to activate so what do we activate we get input on feedback and competencies i'm going to share with you some of

062the initial thinking which is going to change as we go out and we talk to folks but the nice thing about evanston a nice thing about the the different groups we have to reach out to is that we can really hit the business leaders through the mayor's employment uh employer advisory council the broad-based meac not the just tana and neil that come and do the reports to us but there really is a broad-based group of employers in edinson we can talk to this about we can talk to district 65 get feedback from them obviously we're going to work with our faculty and staff similar to how we do our goals development when we would go to department to department different departments within the school both both academic faculty staff and support staff we have we

063have built-in mechanism to reach the faith community we can we can reach families uh through our different family groups uh and reach out to those folks uh we have higher education partners that we could reach out to and we do reach out to and continually talk through we have oakton and northwestern and in fact they both uh you know oakton was talking to us about their strategic plan they were talking about their career planning documents so that kind of articulation is already there and then northwestern through nera is actually partnered with us on how do we measure this stuff how do we measure these traits uh in in the academic setting because we really do we want to measure them it's not a it's not an obsession with measurement but it's it's we have to

064know we're making progress and how do we account for that progress we also can reach out to evans and cradle to career we have lots of social service agencies involved in amazon cradle to career to get feedback on these questions and on these character on these traits and develop that up and obviously our students we have plenty of mechanisms to reach out to our students whether it's focus groups surveys things like that conversation student senate things like that we could we could definitely engage dra and then we will draft the design portrait and competencies which is the create portion which is where we draft up what it looks like we give it we produce a very uh clear infographic and then we bring that back to the board for for adoption and say hey here's

065what it is and and what it ends up doing is it really acts as a as a way to magnify elements of the curriculum magnify elements of the in the co-curricular and and extracurricular space and ultimately allows us to build those competencies and bridge those to district 65 right so we say here's what it looks like as a high school student what does that look like as a as a middle school student as an elementary school student and what are the way points where the checkpoints along the way and that's just a fancy way to say we're going to do all that right but that's an infographic of all the things i just showed you from the planning document but we actually have groups right i just identified the specific constituents in evanston along those

066lines here's an example this one this is where my vision is really bad so you just have to bear with me for a sec the first example i believe is from waneka when public schools uh this is what a portrait looks like um you know again you'll see that it delineates specific traits and specific you know character traits and and development things that we we really want to look for and build upon and i'll send this to every you'll have all this these are just examples this doesn't have this isn't ours here's one from sonoma county california uh curiosity empathy communication collaboration ethics and initiative is their portrait and underneath that underneath those state underneath those qualities is where the work lives right when we start defining those what does curiosity look like in a

067student what does curiosity look like in the classroom what are the experiences we have in the curriculum that generate curiosity or empathy how do we develop communication so that's how that lens works uh here's a minnetonka public schools in minnesota is the next one another example some of these get unwieldy i just want to put that out there i'm not i'm not casting aspersions on minnetonka but that's a whole heck of a lot of of uh of things there right one two three four five six that's like nine nine's a lot to keep track of and if i counted wrong i'm sorry so we go through this group we meet with about we had about 45 people working on this and we had members of the administration some folks from teachers council some folks uh

068from support staff uh we had our athletic director our activities director we were all collaborating kind of going through this process just to kind of see what we would land on and how we would develop it and um the big traits that we came up with and these are by no means final traits and these this is where we were in 2020 critical thinkers that makes a lot of sense we just talked about it tonight uh somebody on the board table said ah there we go said hey critical thinkers we need critical thinkers in this in this era right absolutely curious learners was another thing we looked at and thought was really really important folks who are really curious and engaged confident communicators in different mediums and compassionate leaders a lot of you know and

069when i say uh compassionate leaders we really there was a long discussion around how can we build leadership qualities in students and be intentional about that we know that we have some excellent examples of that as a district we can point to a few students right we could probably name the students who've gone started here gone off and done things that are extraordinary how do we develop that and nurture that for all of our students what would that look like what are the opportunities that exist and then how do you build out more opportunities in those areas so just to give you an idea what the next level underneath this is you have to so if you say critical thinkers this is an example of some some some real you know that clarify and and

070again this is a example um some of those things understand the big picture and propose solutions that are mindful the impact they may have on parts of a system seek multiple perspectives consistently improve the quality of one's own thinking by skillfully analyzing assessing these are things you can do in the classroom these are things that we're already doing in the classroom but imagine the possibility if we elevated those qualities across grade levels across courses they exist in almost all of our courses if not all of them but what would it look like if we said you know what here's critical thinking and here's what it means at eths and here's how we can then build those qualities here's an example for curious learners a lot of these things lend themselves to hands-on experiences to to

071really engaging in the community later tonight you're going to be voting on a data science course and part of that data science course is designed for critical thinking to develop critical thinking but also to provide to create curious learners confident communicators we we know that this is extraordinarily important um and again this is just one example of how that could look right if we if we said confident communicators we go through and that comes up in our different stakeholders they we start to articulate those ideas i'm an i'm an english teacher by trade i think this is a debate coach formally i think this is absolutely one of the most important things we can do for students and folks tend to agree with us because if you're not an effective communicator you can't get your

072ideas out there in this world but again this is just an example and compassionate leaders again this is a little you know how do you how do you do this this is the trickiest one right how do we build that in our students if we go down that road so here's the nice thing with a portrait no matter where this portrait lands right ultimately here's how what it can connect since it's going to be attached to these kind of traits that drive uh our curriculum it's also going to align with and it's going to align to you know the the 21st century skills what the future conditions are first their students are going to encounter that directly informs a bunch of of connections right it builds connections among career pathways which are you know right

073now is a rather static document that lives in our course selection guide where it says here are the different career pathways we were just talking to oakton last week oakton community college said we have career pathways that align wouldn't it be great if we put those together and we could articulate for students certifications and four-year plans and all that yes absolutely it would be enriched if we had if we had this portion of a graduate right college career indicators that's something that's measured by the state uh it's also uh critic it also can connect our to our work to district 65. we already talked about evanston cradle to career prepared for adult life comes to mind uh directly connects internally to students individual uh career and academic plans or icaps we already talked about the

074mayor's employment advisory council council in terms of building a pathway right a pipeline uh directly in uh to careers that that pay a uh a a not a living wage that's that's not what i'm looking for what i'm looking for is a a viable uh life wage right so that you can sustain uh life in evanston uh within within that context it connects to nero because we can plug into nera in terms of the northwestern educational uh educators research alliance because they could they're already committed to supporting us on the measurement piece and it connects to oakton we've already talked about that and also school links is this technical piece right because you have the adaptive stuff but you also have a technical piece school links is our is our software platform uh for college

075applications but also for career you can track your career uh experiences you could track whether you know what your jobs are where your internships are what your work based experiences are for more comprehensive uh accounting for a student that will absolutely be informed by uh by a portrait of a graduate because then we can create portfolios in school links that will uh where students can provide examples of their critical for the in this example of their critical thinking of how they're curious learners and confident communicators so all of that right so we have we have the mechanism to house this work uh the ability to evaluate it and how it can connect uh to students uh beyond um beyond these walls so there's ways to measure and report now here's the interesting thing uh you

076know one of the things that neera said right off the bat is you have to take an inventory so once we do this we'll take an inventory of what those opportunities are right in our curriculum uh both both both our written curriculum but also our extracurriculars and co-curriculars where do these where does this work where do these uh portraits where do we where do we uh develop these traits uh in students um but there's also more granular examples and i put those up here the mesa portion of a graduate has a series of look fors in the curriculum like what do you look for where you can demonstrate this learning and the backpack of success skills is out of louisville kentucky and they have more discreet examples they actually do uh students do a defense

077uh in in third grade fifth grade eighth grade and in high school uh of these traits so they say like all right how have you grown as a critical thinker let's see an example and they present like their portfolio on that it's a pretty interesting idea it's progressive right starts in third grade develops into fifth grade it follows them and the nice thing with this is that our middle schools now have school links which is the same platform we're using so it can follow a student that portfolio that's developed in middle school can follow that student into high school using uh these these traits so again where are we we're activating that's where we are so uh i just want to get your input feedback if you think this is a is a good idea

078to go forward on once i get uh once i hear your feedback and questions on this then i'm prepared to get a team together uh to start reaching out asking those questions of these different uh folks synthesizing it crafting and creating a a very uh infographic developing out those competencies and then seeking board approval in the near future questions comments what are your thoughts very exciting very thorough very exciting [Music] yeah so questions from the board mir yes um i love it i am a big fan and i think that i would use the metaphor uh north star or um to really help us always figure out the direction that we want to go what i find kind of i would say uh just in the current form you know i would critique is that

079um while we are saying 21st century skills that's no longer very future since we are in the 21st century um and so i'd like to push us a little bit more forward um and i would argue that the ones and i know you said they're not set in stone there's four c's they're not very in my mind progressive um and i think they could be rationally found in a lot of situations already so i would push you to use some maybe work out of culturally responsive teaching i would look at the intersection of critical race theory and how that informed for instance yoso's work and understanding cultural capital and so i was thinking about you know systems thinking versus critical thinking you know i'm thinking about uh culturally conscious uh kids what does that mean

080so where would they get that these pieces i think while they are very important um are easy not not really like you know to teach i know it's hard but i think we could find these when we're i'm trying to push us into the future i would argue that it's a little bit harder to find um some of the ones i just named and so i would uh use that as one of my points of critique um i think i said everything thank you thank you this is exactly the feedback we're looking for too thank you yeah very good pat so i too love this i think it's really important to have um clarity of vision and really to push because that really informs the day-to-day and and the process of getting to even remotely

081achieve a vision you have to have one so i think this is great um i guess a question i have um is how would you ultimately and maybe you've seen in the research you've done from other districts how how does this become integrated how does this become a day-to-day lens um the way that i think we've developed and still are working to constantly grow our equity lens how does this become kind of a lens that's i mean is it institutionalized in the curriculum forum is it a department chair's job like i mean i know you don't have the answer yet but i think that's really important is from the beginning to think about the day-to-day because this is the kind of thing that can easily just sit on a shelf or be a pretty colorful

082picture on the wall and not have legs so i know you don't really know the answer to my question because it's more a question for you to think about no no i appreciate that and uh these are exactly the questions that our department chairs have been raising around this work and our team was like you know they were like okay where's this live how do we develop it how do we hold folks accountable how do we hold ourselves accountable so absolutely those are those are the those are critical questions the day-to-day piece and elevating that absolutely we have a great model with the equity work we've done and how we built that in so i think there's a nice synergy there uh so this is exactly exactly what i'm looking for in terms of feedback

083thank you great yeah i was thinking about this in terms in terms of the equity work as well like how um how this would would parallel the equity work and and um as you know when we rolled out all that work we had we had some support and some consultants to kind of help us understand at a deeper level what we were doing and and why and how to apply it to eths and um just wondering if if if there are other groups out there that might help help you help us as a as the district move forward in a meaningful way um you know just looking at some of the the graphics that some of the other districts have produced they're they're beautiful they look really great um and then you know as as

084you said the the work is really in in the connections and the links and then the support from district 65 and how that how this work would bring in district 65 because if it's really going to be useful to us then it really really needs to be useful to all students across the district so so i guess my question is um um maybe it's it's not even a fair question what do you think about about some of those resources or a timeline like how long um this could take this could be a while yeah i'm like super aggressive but i need to like slow down no i think i think what you're saying though is is to really make this work we have to get the same kind of buy-in we we get with our

085district goals right i would even say we need to get even beyond go beyond that um just in turn just in terms of really vetting it with different constituents and developing it out because it is a very organic process and to your point i i think we could get some support and help in this but uh i would like to get this you know ready uh concurrently with the goal so i'm talking like by this spring i think we could easily have a draft if not sooner just because we have good thinking around this already we have a strong equity base sure you know part of it we have the built-in feedback mechanisms which i love because if i were in another district i'll tell you what you know when you talk about who who

086who to run this by you know we have a lot of organized groups already where we could we could vet and talk this through so that that's not an issue really right finding those groups they're here we meet with them quite a bit we can get on their agenda but to do a really thoughtful thorough job uh we'll we'll take a little bit of time but here's one of the things i will tell you though i want to preview something our our annual report used to be called the achievement report it's gonna be called the annual report now uh it's gonna embrace some of this thinking okay okay so it'll be a little it'll be we'll have call outs it'll be it'll be a nice bridge to this work right and to it'll hint at

087things to come it won't be the old fashioned achievement report in fact one of the things we're going to do is if it's in the school report card and it lives in the school report card which we also brief the board on right we walk through the school report can answer questions it won't be on the annual report the annual report will be more qualitative more homegrown data more more information like that and we're also integrating survey data into that and previous report data for the year so it really will be a synthesis document um and and it will dovetail eventually this work it will dovetail into that so i just want to say like you'll see something in november when we do our report which will look a little bit different than what we're

088used to but know that it's different because it's seeking to ultimately align with this work and and it looks really interesting it's really i'm very proud of the presentation and how it looks and the data's the day is pretty good too but so you're getting a smile except that's a yeah that's like a radio teaser right just yeah wait um it's the most exciting report you'll have for achievement ever anyway no last to think about on this again i appreciate everybody's feedback and i will update if it's okay i will update the board uh in uh not in november because that's gonna be a packed agenda but i could update the board in december in terms of our progress i would like to do every other board meeting just so that i project manage this

089appropriately okay uh and that i get feedback from you folks along the way because i don't want to go down this direction if we want to go this direction does that make sense yes and i would just maybe when you do bring it whatever i'm guessing you'll have some of those attributes identified yeah i see the kind of the bones of it being whatever we require for graduation those courses who's got you know what are because sometimes i'm finding the courses don't always align with what we really say we value or at least what we require of our kids so maybe you could attach them or show some alignment and that would be great that would help with that accounting for sure okay that's great excellent idea and pathways right alignment courses and pathways and

090i just sent you my most favorite one that is an interactive compass that you can click on on a website and it turns to that attribute um it's really cool so i just emailed you that's great thank you super all right i think this is exciting are there any other any other feedback on this at this point any any other comments there'll be plenty of opportunity for feedback along the process i i committed to bringing this back to you folks periodic every every other board meeting yeah thank you i appreciate that thank you thank you all right so dr robinson's moving up so it must be time for that public hearing eths e-learning emergencies we have the other dr robinson now the doctor and the steam david chan she always says she's the one who

091saves lives [Laughter] let's say i can argue that too thank you so much for being here uh this evening and giving us an opportunity uh to present the e-learning program update uh later in the summer we had an opportunity to re-apply for e-learning for emergency use but i thought it gave us another opportunity to to just kind of go through and uh so you can see kind of what what the it team did i did want to publicly thank david chan and his team jessica dunn mina marion and melanie marzin for their incredible work for designing so much which you'll see a little bit today but the goal here is just to uh re-up on our opportunity to do e-learning again for emergency use i'll just remind you that uh when we first did this

092the opera the state gave us an opportunity to apply for e-learning it was pretty laborious but we were in fact one of the first school districts at least on the north shore who had approval for e-learning uh before covet so as you know before when covet came into play uh we that very next week were able to uh kind of flip the switch uh based on a lot of the preparation uh that we did with the guidance for the state but also the preparation that rit team did uh here uh so just wanted to to give you that opportunity and give dave chan an opportunity to to lay out some of the things that we have to do sure thanks dr robertson we'll keep it brief um so one of the big components of an

093e-learning plan is access and really i just wanted to just reiterate you know we are committed to having a one-to-one program for our students as well as a loaner and repair program and this was really put to test during remote learning when as soon as we were able to have staff in the building we were able to support students who had trouble with their device during remote learning so again kudos to ms bollinger who works in the chrome zone i came in sometimes but really miss bollinger the safety staff who were able to arrange safely you know this transmission of devices uh that needed to be repaired and loaners to be given out to students uh without really missing a b as best we could and the safety staff did the whole deliveries to homes

094and really just it was amazing to be part of that group that that did that for our students and our community similarly on mobile hotspots we were able to with the support of the school the eths foundation to have additional mobile hotspots we increased our supply to over 200 we took advantage of a grant program through t-mobile and to this day we are able to accommodate any request by students and staff for that matter that need access to a home a mobile hotspot obviously this has put more to test during remote learning it's it's decreased somewhat since our return to in-person instruction but still having this at our fingertips for our students we still get you know requests for hot spots for families and to be able to say yes and without you know we

095have an extended loan period we don't have to you know when we first started out it was like okay maybe check in with us in a couple weeks in case we have uh you know a wait list and we were working with the library at the time now it's just it's a totally different world we we have a very good comfortable uh supply for our students so that's really uh a pleasure to have access to instruction uh so in conjunction with our current block schedule an e-learning day would consist of either um you know an orange or blue day we would stick with the schedule we have currently or if it's on a monday that we'd have our wildcat monday schedule we would ask our teachers to facilitate a learning deck that accounts for essentially

096five hours of clock instruction as dictated by isb so we worked out the math there you know essentially it's about 75 minutes of instruction whether that's uh you know asynchronous instructions so like uh you know teaching via like here's a recorded lesson and here's some work for students to work on uh or similar on a wildcat monday that 40 minutes teach lessons can be ready in advance similar to you know back in the day when we had like snow days or or even a substitute lesson plan you could prepare your edls in advance if you should do one or you know as a chemistry teacher uh when i taught i could see myself just continuing where i left off uh without missing a b and i think that's really part of the evolution we we've

097arrived at with e-learning and is is the fact that we don't have to kind of make up a lesson or make this up at the end of the school year when you know we've already gone through our content as teachers so we have models and templates available for our staff we have access to through google drive and all this work can be shared digitally with students of course uh we prepared our team prepared several lesson ideas for e-learning this is still available for our staff um we have this you know on our website attendance we've updated the process so they don't have to complete a google form as they did in the past essentially teachers will take attendance in teacher access center or tech they'll have the same procedures that they do on a regular

098day uh they'll have up to two days after healing the data market tenants and again students also similar to what we have for in-person learning they have two days to make up work should they uh not be able to complete it on the day of training we've had approximately one and a half years of training uh for e-learning so we are good to go but i'd like to take a moment to celebrate actually the work that's done uh dr betas mentioned the day-to-day grind you know in spring of 2020. so one of the first the things that my team did was we we met together every day and we talked about what was happening uh in e-learning and we created a blog and every day we posted a funny photo we found out what national

099holiday was and got together and then shared out uh with our staff you know all the sorry for the dizziness there but essentially the point is that we did this every day for for several months and we have a plethora of tips and resources to continue to share with our staff should they be interested in seeing that similarly we had pd online pd courses as the pandemic continued we created opportunities for staff to really dig in not just at that introductory level of e-learning and online instruction but also doing more with it as we you know as time grew on we challenge our teachers to do more with their instruction and we've had thousands of hours of recorded lessons i will say uh there's this product you see it there called screencastify it's actually based

100in chicago uh and we've done we've done a case study with them they've come to our school they feature us on their website because our teachers have really put in such an amazing amount of time creating lessons and this is even prior to the pandemic and then of course all throughout where they record their themselves and they share their their recorded lessons with our students so again kudos to staff there and then of course the e-learning academy as we were preparing for the fall of 2020 um you know having all teachers go through these units and then when we did our return to uh in-person instruction having these marketing follow-ups to work with our staff on how to teach in a hybrid environment as well so again all these resources still exist they're available to

101our staff should they need a refresher and then we have we've updated our kind of just internal website for for staff um when we're uh in preparation in preparation for e-learning day and they can always refer back to again essentially the three big a's as we saw we call them sometimes attendance and then uh you know how are you taking attendance what kind of work will you be assigning how will you be assigning it and then your availability on that day all right yeah so part of the whole plan to thanks david every time i see uh the plans and the work and the hours and the lessons uh it's always so impressive uh that we take such pride and just do such an amazing job uh with communicating what uh we would like our

102community to to experience at a very very high level so i'm just always amazed with the team so thank you so a big part of of this is having a hearing today where we have gone through a lot of the bullet point expectations uh as per the state and a big part of it too is the communication so we've also fulfilled this requirement with uh communicating to our families we've updated our uh communication on our eths website uh for emergency use and also we've uh you know we just have a communication plan for if and when we need to use these days for emergency use how that's going to happen so the communication is going out to our families it's posted on our website all of the unions and bargaining unions have been informed just

103as before and this will allow us three more years to be able to utilize e-learning if need be after this hearing and with that we'll we'll answer any questions okay thank you thank you very much thank you for all this amazing information and just reminding us all the pieces that came together that were in place ahead of time i remember when when this all happened when covet hit districts were suddenly looking to eths because we already had our plan in place we were the first in the state to do to do that is that correct if not the first in the state and maybe or close to it but we were definitely the first in this region and the regional office of education the regional superintendent actually sent our plan out to everybody in the

104area as a model of how they could quickly uh rev up uh their plans so we felt real good we weren't even trying to be first we just saw the value of it we have a a great team and and we wanted to get that application in right away yeah little did we know yes all right thank you questions from the board anybody i don't have a question just because you're here david and we don't always get to see you i just want to say thank you and we have talked many times about how amazing the work was that you did in the last year plus um and little did you know when you did this plan for a day or two in a year you'd be doing it for a year and a half

105but um really you know eric sends us a lot of the emails that go to the staff so we were kind of keeping track of what you were doing and i i was just completely blown away and and just so grateful of your leadership and your team and and you know obviously the whole staff really just came above and beyond and really rose to the occasion but your leadership and your uh capacity to bring together technology pedagogy compassion equity uh we're just very grateful and i i know other districts are very envious of of what we have here and they can't take you you need to stay here so thank you appreciate it but thank you so much really outstanding work thank you pat well well said thank you i just want to add as

106a parent who experienced my daughter then transitioning into the online it was really amazing to watch that happen at home and and i would say not little did you know and you couldn't have predicted the pandemic but your mind has a very future directional approach and maybe that can also help the portrait of a graduate and hopefully you're part of that committee because i think that would be really important thank you thank you wonderful all right thank you for your time guys thank you thank you have a good evening so madam president i i think being a public hearing you would want to invite any public comment oh thank you yes yes um yes this is a public hearing i forgot um are there any comments from the public there are no uh comments from

107the public for the hearing okay thank you now we're on record may i just say that yes you've approved this before yes but the state requirement changed for example there was no public hearing required last time you know brought it to you for approval and uh and so the requirements changed and we just want to be sure that we're still not only legal but have these tools available wonderful thank you all right okay so moving along with our agenda we are at item number well do we have any other no comments from the public correct no comments okay no comments from the public thank you okay so um we have one two three four four years in our um packet uh dr babysitting anything you'd like to say about them they're in here no um

108they're in the packet okay very good okay so back to the agenda um we're board committee reports do we have any reports from the committee i know that we had a couple of um committee meetings since we last met so uh any reports prepared ready summaries from anybody i know we had a district 65 um joint committee meeting and we talked about the agenda for our next joint meeting so that was pretty much the entire [Music] agenda for that meeting so the purpose of that meeting is to plan for the joint committee meeting we also had a city schools meeting and it was the night that eric was honored at um mashup so we um just reviewed some topics and got over to the to the mashup anything else all right so we are at

109the student board report so barbara what do you have for us okay so is this good okay yes um student union has just been focused on the wither bell forum which will be the last wither bell forum because dr witherspoon you won't be here next year so that'll take place monday november 8th in the hub it's a full day and for people who aren't familiar with it it's just all the administration is invited and teachers can bring their students and students can come during their free periods lunch periods to talk about their experiences at eths student union started the weather bell forum six years ago to connect the administration directly with the student body throughout the day hundreds of students gather to share their opinions about what is going well and what is not going

110well for them at eths to make sure that like we stay on topic and we talk about relevant things student union is working on making tables label the topics of things that we might want to hear about specifically from students last year there was a virtual witherball forum so props to student union for organizing that and the topics of mental health and homework policies took the stage this year potential topics include the schedule lunch student well-being school community race and equity coveted policies and a couple more to be decided but we still haven't voted on those as a group in the past the forum has led eths to change the student dress code influenced making changes to the detention and tardy policies and amplified voices who sought fairer and more equitable spaces in the building

111so we have hope that those kind of changes will come from this wither buff form as well and just to thank you in advance to all the administrators who are planning to attend um we're really excited and we hope i mean it's just a full day for you to meet students and get opinions from not just me but everybody else that goes to the school so we expect many meaningful conversations and we'll have a lot more to talk about that after that because there will be a lot more concerns and also you know improvements to be made so yeah wonderful thank you thank you all right superintendent's report dr witherspoon it's just so important to lift up student voice and this is just a wonderful format and as you say and uh you know the

112things happen because of it and so it's just great i know it's a lot of planning to put it together i want to remind everybody of a few events but first of all um uh to lift up that we have 15 eths seniors who were named as national merit semi-finalists and uh we've already put out information press releases and the like to the community i'm sure you've seen those but uh but again we are just so uh proud of uh our national merit semifinalists we have a wildcat futures day coming up this wednesday this is a become an annual event and we do it to uh uh when on a day where there's a assessments going on but also where other classes can can have activities so there's one for each young freshman sophomore junior

113seniors and uh one of the traditions is in the morning the freshmen have a uh an experience with calvin terrell and and i just want to lift up that uh then in the evening and we've been done this before but this coming wednesday evening october the 13th at 7 00 p.m in the school auditorium uh there will be family night with calvin terrell and that always proves to be a very uh impactful event as well we are continuing to host our family talk series and the next event is going to be wednesday october the 27th where the discussion is going to center around anti-bullying and uh you know unfortunately bullying has has been part of the human experience probably as long as there's been a human experience i'm certain that everybody in this room can

114think of bullying examples they have known of in their lifetimes and in their school experiences so this is not a topic that ever becomes untimely and uh we invite parents uh to that uh wild kid academy we have one coming up this saturday october 16th and a couple weeks later on saturday october 30th and we always get a good turnout for wildcat academy and mona just keep reminding everybody of that be sure that you check and keep track on our website a fan of the family action network that brings so many authors and and and speakers in uh is like on on on supercharge right now i mean there are so many fan activities uh available and coming up uh and and you know they are so applicable uh to to the things that we

115deal with in this community and uh and in our school and as uh in recent years uh there are several opportunities to address issues of uh social and racial justice and and equity and uh that's by no means the only um uh topic that's covered but but certainly it's it's one that has gained a lot of interest in the in the community uh and finally uh we're preparing um for i can't believe i'm saying this where does time go we're preparing for next year's incoming freshman class uh and we're going to do remote registration days which we did last year they'll be held for 8th grade families during the week of october 18th yes we are that close to starting to welcome our 8th grade families to eths and there will be a virtual incoming

116freshman information night on wednesday november the 3rd that'll be at 7 pm and we get so excited every year when we start connecting with with our 8th graders and and with our incoming freshmen and every year and i've said it before when i start to talk about it's like wow can we already be thinking about next year's incoming freshman and indeed we are so very excited that concludes my report thank you you're right time does fly all right so mary is heading to the platform and we'll give mary a second to set up because she's got you're going to be convened as the finance committee yes and uh it's that time of year to talk again about the capital improvement program yes yes marcus keeps putting his life right sorry this one's eric did you

117want to say something about homecoming uh i would love to and then and then i'd like you to chime in okay and maybe even barbara but but let me start just because i we had a fabulous homecoming and you know since we had had no in-person homecoming uh a year ago in fact not even any income any fall football which normally is when you have a homecoming it was a weird year but kudos to everybody who was part of the planning i'll certainly say kudos to nicole boyd who are activities director but our students who were so involved in in in the planning of it just briefly uh we we had our pep rally on on the friday afternoon uh uh well first of all we had a spirit week and and and all of

118the different uh things that the students could do you know uh uh your orange and blue day your college sweatshirt day or your pajama day you know all of the fun with that friday afternoon uh no i did not wear my pajamas [Laughter] friday afternoon we we had our traditional pep rally and what was so different about that is we did it outdoors we always do it in beardly gym at least all the years i've been here i think it's been endorsed pretty much forever uh but we we because of colvin we did it did it at lazier field and we have the best students in the world did i tell you i ever tell you that so first of all probably of our student body probably 3 000 or more stayed even though we

119what we do is dismiss school early and and if you want to stay for the pep rally you may easily we had 3 000 students who all walked over to your field you know can you imagine that kind of people movement going on everything is just works as smooth as it could be uh everybody gets up in the stands and uh it was just one activity uh after another uh very much a lot of fun uh that that evening a ball game uh that uh i believe some of the people have heard that uh we beat new trier um i think that was it was mentioned and and then the following evening right out here in the senior courtyard we had a magical evening with a homecoming dance and i really mean magical i mean

120under the stars although in chicagoland you never see the stars but but under the stars uh we we had tents uh up in the area for for the dj and and and the dancing students poured out what do we end up seeing we've had 1500 kids 1500 students came uh it was a dress up this year for homecoming and they were all they looked so good i mean you could tell they really wanted to dress up like like i haven't been able to do this in a while uh and and and so we had that uh the tent that they were dancing under was huge and i swear at one given moment there might have been fourteen hundred of the fifteen hundred under that tent dancing uh it i mean it was packed but again

121and our students were fabulous so we had three thousand students at that i don't know how many of the six thousand people at the game were our students but it seemed like a lot uh we had fifteen hundred students uh at the dance and we did not have a single student incident that's what our kids are like okay marcus thanks for letting me go first [Laughter] yeah well done [Laughter] and i don't know barbara did you want to say anything it was so fun i wish we could do that every week yeah i agree that's what i thought was amazing was just that the kids came to life um and i have to admit i was um yeah i was there at both the game and the dance and i just saw so many precious

122babies just dancing and enjoying life and the game was i mean it was just beautiful and i was so thankful that we did that for them so thank you and i also want to say that one thing i love about that that evening that homecoming i just came to the game um is that i i think all of evanston comes i mean it's it's like the it's like the thing to do in evanston i i just see everybody so you said 6 000 people with when at the game i i believe it yeah everybody every every every friday is like that yeah it's like that's that's the thing to do is this isn't something yes i did have one last thing to add dr williamspoon did do a tick-tock dance i heard about that actually

123somebody sent me a video i was going to say if you ask nicely maybe marcus will send it to you well he does that everybody's pep rally because i have my taste those memories yeah from beers yeah that pops up and i was like because i i mean i love it that's worth coming just for that it was a lot of fun wonderful so do you all remember in september at the budget meeting i predicted a fantastic homecoming yes you did i'm not saying i had anything to do with it but i told [Laughter] all right so i i just really have a short presentation we're gonna talk about the district's capital plan for the upcoming for next summer like eric said who can believe we're already into planning for next year but um so

124i do want to talk to you a little bit about background talk about some of the projects we've just finished and then talk about the plan for next summer and kind of a general plan for the next few years after that so we usually do an annual update with a five-year explanation and one of those years is a recap and then for upcoming years and just as a reminder we consider assets anything valued over 25 000 we have over 1.2 million square feet of building to work on here so it never ends and 60 plus i think it's more than 65 acres of campus so this is a cool shot it's hard to see with the lights on but i finally got a little bit of an updated shot with our updated track and some

125of the other improvements that we've made over the last couple of years it was a foggy day that morning but you can see why we spend so much money right look at how huge that footprint is yeah okay so just a little background we have multiple funding sources to do our capital projects they're never enough but we have multiple sources including bonds or debt certificates uh gosh i guess it's probably been close to 10 years ago we kind of got some free money in the in the form of what's called a qualified zone academy bond it was like a quarter of a percent interest we'll be done paying those off soon we also have had some tiff money from the tif that rolled off in about i think it's been almost two years ago now

126and so um we have reserved some of that money as on an ongoing basis unless it ends up being needed for operational expenses and then we also have um foundation donations so as we've always said we're really unable to fund all the capital needs of this building unfortunately most of the things that need to be done aren't particularly exciting but in a building this old they're necessary so just as an example when we do our financial statements at the end of the year our depreciation this past year was about 3.8 million dollars and really on a building of this size and age we should be spending about four to six million on capital including tuck pointing and windows and all those things but generally we can only afford two to three million and mainly that's

127because our debt service is limited by those legal caps so just as an example uh this this isn't horrible but in our five-year cip plan that was in your packet the estimated cost is 30.2 million but so far identified funding sources for those same years are only about 27 million so what happens is we we really balance the most recent year that we're asking you to approve and then as the year goes by we start to we have to generally scale down projects in the future and if we can we push things out a year here and there so that's why you approve one year of the plan with estimates for future years just for your reference so we break it down into multiple categories when we analyze it like site improvements mechanical electric plumbing

128toilets and roofs masonry windows asbestos and then projects that really benefit the educational aspect or athletic aspects so the student experience if you will so some of the major projects we just finished up i know you're all probably aware of all these but the auditorium lighting and sound which i it's not my field but i understand everyone thinks it's much different from how it was everyone seems happy with it and the good news is as additional gifts may come in through the foundation we can add additional modular pieces of lighting so we tried to plan for the future but do what we could afford so there's a typo there that oh no the first of two phases i thought it said first two but the first of two phases of the girls locker room renovations

129are complete including the new all gender locker room which now allows us a locker capacity for 200 students we had locker capacity for 40 students before and as some of you might know our previous all gender locker room was down a dark hallway because we took over a space that was available but this is in the open well-lit main corridor so it's a much more inviting entrance and the next phase will include a health classroom and a pe flex space room and the health classroom when finished after next summer will allow us to not need to hold health classes on the fourth floor which has been a problem because it's not accessible by elevator so we also this summer did significant roof work in north school and masonry and window work in the east school

130first floor east school windows have primarily all been replaced at least on the dodge and then the inner side close to door one so we had to displace a lot of people and they were awesome and now they lo and we also did uh windows in the nurse's office this summer and also the literacy lab was done this summer if you haven't seen it yet i encourage you to try to stop in and see that it's it's an amazing space i have some photos too if you want to see them not during the presentation but uh so again major improvements for next summer the rest of the girls locker room we're discussing right now a possible nurse's office health services renovation which i think would be probably about the best use of money you could

131think of in today's environment um it's an old design and it just doesn't function well for what we need today also continuation of major roof window masonry work windows in the second and third floor of e-school will be done and kind of exciting the students in geometry and construction are building an outdoor storage building located near the track that will service several sports for some much needed storage that they've been asking for for years and um auditorium hvac and air handling as most of you know there's two settings in the auditorium off and freezing so we hope to rectify that uh some future needs just kind of on those next four years of of capital plans include more window work major masonry and tuck pointing projects i took a tour on friday and i don't

132i'm not even sure where to start but we're going to try to get some experts to help us figure out a top 10 list of masonry projects i guess and then some of the outdoor facilities science labs and some art swing renovations much needed in many spaces there so um just a couple slides on what what the next steps are we are due to do our um every two year funding source plan and this year would be uh this coming spring would be debt service or issuing bonds in the spring of 2022 and that will fund our portion of two years of projects we also as i mentioned have foundation and some tif funds and we always have the ability if balances permit to transfer some of our fund balances from other funds like operations

133or transportation into project funds so the recommendation is that the board approve the five-year capital improvements plan but you're really only approving one year of work and uh recommend there is a typo there recommend that we proceed on the plans for fiscal 22 capital improvements and that's it happy to take any questions if you have any wonderful thank you mary all right wait questions questions from the board always very clear but just as always mary you're awesome and thank you so much because this is great yes and and i'll just point out that we all know it but it's really important to remember so this building's almost 100 years old yeah and when we talk about tuck pointing and roofs you know that's the skin of the building and and if that is and most

134importantly if that's not moisture proof that leads to so many other expenses and so uh you know sometime when you're it don't try to do it on foot sometime when you're in the car drive around and look at all of the masonry up and down every side of this building and and the ins and the outs and the cuts and the everything else and just start to think in terms of the tuck pointing that is necessary to be sure that we keep a building like this uh secure and and and and the skin if you will uh um unbroken it it's an amazing task and uh so um yeah we we we haven't lost sight of that even though we still want to be sure we have more science labs and and more locker rooms

135and all the things that that are part of the daily experience of the kids thank you thank you eric for adding that all right we are at items for action and the first item we have is approval of capital improvement program um can we have a motion please so moved second roll call please yes yes yes yes yes thank you the next item is approval of eths e-learning or the emergency use plan for 20 21 to 2022. so moved second roll call please yes next item is approval of sale of surplus property or spin bikes so moved second well call please yes yes yes next item is approval of new courses course changes and course deletions proposals which we saw so moved second vote call please yes next item is the consent agenda which consists

136of approval of minutes from closed session meeting from september 13 regular meeting from september 13 2021 approval of bills treasurer's reports from august 2021 personnel agenda which includes appointments to staff administrator exempt certified support staff nutrition services change in status educational stipends other salary adjustments other job title change leaves of absence maternity and paternity exempt and certified resignation exempt support staff retirement support staff release support staff other suspension support staff settlement agreement and i believe there's an addendum um to the personnel agenda uh leave of absence revised and resignation support staff and retirement i can i move the passage of all those things minus the bill list if we could just do a separate vote on the bill list i would appreciate that okay sure thank you so can we have a motion to approve

137all those things minus the bill list yeah i move all that minus the bill list second bowl call please yes yes yes yes okay so now we go back to the bill list can we have a motion for approval please so moved second well call please yes all right so we are at old and new business anybody have anything to address now i have something that i would like to say um as you know at the end of this year we will see our superintendent dr witherspoon retire and we've heard earlier some of his great traits amazing but as a board i just want to say that we've been discussing the process to replace the superintendent and um while we're not ready to reveal the entire process at this time we will make sure that

138this process includes and involves all of the stakeholders faculty staff students parents community members and we are going to we're in the process of engaging a search firm to seek their guidance through this process [Music] but you know what is really important for me to say for this meeting is that we do want to make sure that we include all of the stakeholders in this process and we look forward to the guidance from the search for firm we recognize the importance how how significant this whole process is so i just wanted to make sure that that got into the record okay having said that any other comments from any board members if not can i have a motion for adjournment some move second all approved hi i was looking at you gretchen saying where are

139you thank you all