School Board Meeting 11/9/20

001good evening welcome to the november 9th 2020 board of education meeting of evanston township high school governor pritzker recently extended the disaster declaration related to covet 19 pandemic for all illinois counties and extending the ability of public bodies to hold virtual meetings to november 15 2020 in accordance with the open meetings act um can i have a roll call please yeah yeah hi uh hi here livingston here monsael here parsons here rolowitz here to terrich here i did it good savage williams here thank you thank you kathy nice to see you thanks good to be here all right the first item on the agenda is written communication dr davis do we have any written communication we have no written communication this evening all right then um the next item on the agenda is recognition of

002national merit and national achievement scholars and board we're joined by beth erie our college and career counselor uh who uh every year coordinates this wonderful recognition and we have some great recognition tonight it's just going to be in a little different format than we usually do so beth hi good to see you and uh we'll just turn this over to you so we can honor these uh these wonderful scholars excellent good evening everybody um i'd like to say that the students and their families were invited to attend um the viewing of the school board meeting so hopefully we have some of them out there that will be hearing the recognition as they happen the national merit scholarship program is an academic competition for recognition and college scholarships that began in 1955. united states high school

003student enter the national merit scholarship program by taking the preliminary sat national merit scholarship qualifying test also known as the psat nms qt this serves as the initial screen for over 1.5 million entrants each year the mission of national american scholarship corporation is to recognize and honor the academically talented students of the united states national merit scholarship corporation accomplishes its mission by conducting nationwide academic scholarship programs the enduring goals of national merit scholarship corporation programs are it's a lot of letters a lot of words sorry um their goal is to promote a wider and deeper respect for learning in general and for exceptionally talented individuals in particular to shine a spotlight on brilliant students and encourage the pursuit of academic excellence at all levels of education and to stimulate increased support from individuals and organizations

004that wish to sponsor scholarships for outstanding scholastic talent in early september about 16 000 students or approximately one third of the 50 000 high scorers are notified that they have qualified as semi-finalists to ensure that the academically talented young people from all parts of the united states are included in this talent pool semi-finalists are designated on a state representational basis semi-finalists are the highest scoring entrants in each state qualifying scores vary from state to state and from year to year with the scores of all semi-finalists are extremely high to be considered for a national merit scholarship semi-finalists must advance to finalist standing in the competition by meeting high academic standards the semi-finalists we are celebrating tonight include zachary barr benjamin barbero celia chambers ian dunbar alexander johnson madeleine rodriguez ezra steinberg and anna tolfin congratulations

005to each of you and best of luck on the next leg of this competition thank you thank you thank you so much yes i'm really hoping that they they were able to be here or they heard their names and uh you know just one more thing that we're doing a little differently in this time but we are still recognizing their achievements so congratulations to all the students are we going to figure out a way to send them their pin their little pin yes because i always do that i mean we do i just wonder because you know so few perks so i was wondering about that and i can coordinate that with dr witherspoon's office oh wonderful thank you thank you beth that's great okay fabulous thank you all right okay so moving along the

006next item is items for information and the first item here is an update on e-learning okay and so tonight we have dr levy and dr bavis uh who are going to give us an update on that e-learning and in particular uh with the survey uh that we recently completed and uh and uh what we're learning from it and thank you guys are you going to go first or pete thanks daddy with a spoon i'm going to intro and carrie uh carrie has been looking at this uh it closed uh just this past week so this data is about as fresh as it gets um carrie uh will be presenting on the student and family results as well as the staff results and we will be fielding questions between the two presentations but you know we've

007also used this survey already our department chairs have been digging into this survey these preliminary results what we don't have are the comments because there are literally hundreds maybe even over a thousand comments uh i don't want to overstate it but analyzing those comments and looking for themes takes some time but we wanted to start working with the quantitative data that we had right away so it's hot off the presses it's very fresh and i'm going to turn it over to carrie and she will walk you through the presentation great thank you do you want me to do the um student and family one first does it matter which order i think the student and family one would be great to do okay and yes the um open-ended free response items had over a thousand

008the students was over 1200 open-ended comments so we're working through those okay so um let me set this up and then i can share my screen okay does that work yep okay awesome nice to see everyone it's nice to see you um sorry let's see all right well there we go okay so my um first couple of slides are just the demographic and i put in um since i'm presenting the opening of school i put in the opening of school numbers just to give some contact so we had just over 1580 students complete the survey take the survey and over 1200 parent guardians this is more students that took the survey than our return to school poll but a little less on the parent guardian and um and so i just put in just so

009we can see kind of the distribution by grade pretty pretty close a little over for freshmen i'm a little under for sophomores but it's close and then i also this is all based on our opening of school um enrollment versus how all students and parenting parent guardians identify so there it won't totally match up but it's pretty close um i do have some survey results uh we have this the parent guardian survey that was available in spanish so i do need to incorporate those and get the comments translated so there's a little bit more data to add for that on the parent guardian but it's about 20 less than 30. um so this is just uh to set up some demographics and then on the parent guardian um we had a question for the parent

010guardians if their student and parent guardians could have answered for more than one student so we asked if the student who had an infp or five or four um and so we see some pretty consistent representation in these uh survey results there too and then all throughout just um to let you know i have a no response um the first questions it's fine but after a while there's a there's quite a bit of no response especially for students so i'll just kind of mention that as i go a little closer so um and i also put them together we had several questions that were similar in both students so so we ask given that we're currently in a pandemic overall how satisfied are you with remote learning this fall we asked the staff the same

011question um parent guardians it was a scale of zero to a hundred and guardians average was seventy one percent and students was lower at sixty percent and when we see the staff on the staff is higher um so here we are almost all of the students answer this but maybe like four and now i get to a point where i have about there's about 230 or so students that do not answer the rest of the questions and i just point it out to let you know that i've left them in because they answered that first question on satisfaction and i felt it was important to keep that data instead of just throwing it all out so so you can now see for the rest of it about 232 students who then just dropped off and

012didn't answer the rest of the survey um so i just wanted to point out and acknowledge that so we asked students um you know think about your typical 70-minute class on average how much time do you spend on live instruction and for the most part they're saying about more than half half more than half um a quarter say the entire 70 minute period ask a question carrie just uh a question about this slide um when we say live instruction we mean any type of live instruction not just necessarily lecturing right right correct and then um so we have both students and parent guardians on average how much time you know for students do you spend on homework for parents do you um you know perceive that your student spends on homework unfinished assignments or other

013projects each week so this is all about over a course of a week not a day um and so they're pretty close you know one to three hours is pretty close three to five a little over a quarter is for the bulk of it so really between one to five hours is where most of the responses are falling um and so in some parents a little proportionately say more than five than students um and then but then there's also the parents had more of a don't a little bit more but don't know which is not surprising okay and then we also asked them what the student i'm sorry carrie could you just go back to that previous one because this is the first time we're seeing it so it's a lot of data on the

014screen and we need a little digestion time here sure i'll go a little slower and leave it for you yeah and i'm not you know i think just relatedly to me digesting this i'm i'm thinking i can see why some people stopped answering the questions because it's really hard to do these kinds of guesstimates on time you know broken into kind of all these different segments it's you know i i can totally appreciate i've abandoned surveys at probably around the same point before okay do you want to leave this one up a little bit no we know i don't want to keep delay us too much i just it just went fast thank you thank you no problem um so we asked students what they use asynchronous time on mondays for and we ask the

015parent guardian it's the same question what does your student use the time for and again they're pretty um fairly closely aligned completing the monday the assigned work for monday or other homework or other work projects not assigned on monday that's where bulk of the responses were um i have i think this one i'm going to let you look at this for a minute i'm pretty sure this one has two the list of all of their options will fall over to the next slide so um counseling lessons uh social work individual group therapy some executive functioning and then i'm gonna go to the next slide that's part of this question also and they also spend so about 13 or so post-secondary planning um a third of the students who say they participate in extracurricular activities the

016parents that responded this that was a little less for the parents that respond to this on behalf of their students um work helping with family responsibilities that one's different um and that may be it's not like very clear so students may have our own perception of what they do for family responsibilities and the parents would be like yeah they didn't take the trash out so i mean i don't really that one um it's kind of a little different and then connecting with friends and family so so i assume they were able to check all them you're right yes okay thanks okay it is i have to say it is interesting to see the the difference between student and parents clearly parents have some ideas about what their student is doing that really does not not

017quite line up i mean it's not like it's you know i i think that that seems normal probably yes um and you know but on the other hand with respect to sort of counseling and social work and support where parents seem to think they're get they're spending time doing thing those things more more than the students say that they're actually doing them that you know that is i think notable and something to look into a little more deeply yeah yeah i agree i also think some of this could be that there are different um the parent and guardians are not necessarily the of the students who were you know there's not necessarily complete overlap thank you totally true right right right it could be just too completely different right okay i'm gonna move along um

018so we ask students how they feel about the work assigned during asynchronous time um and so over half strongly agree agree to strongly agree that it contributes to the understanding of the concepts and about two-thirds say it's relevant to their class discussions um a little less than half reported that they felt the assignments were clearly explained or that they were given adequate time to complete the work and so about a quarter of those two on the bottom or in the neither agree or disagree and those have a little higher proportion in the disagreed category okay and then um so we ask students a question about their camera on during class how long do you typically have it on and it's you know spread across these responses almost 30 percent just say a few minutes not

019at all um and then a little less than a quarter say about half the class period you know 18 percent say the entire class period we do have two follow-up questions to this one that are open-ended and that's the one where i have about 1200. we asked them what you know why do you turn your camera on i forget exactly how i phrased it but you know what um encourages you to turn your camera on and why do you not turn it on um and so we got a lot of responses so we're working through those and and i'm looking to for some like kind of something like this to give you some of the big things um that we get out of all the open-ended data okay um and then so we have a

020few questions about support so we asked the students how important is the feedback you get from teachers on the following and as i look at this i see um so i'm going to start with assignments here so about two thirds 65 percent feel that's very important for assignments and about 60 percent felt that it was very important to get feedback for work submitted and overall progress when you look at crap class participation it's really more around a little under a half 40 percent that that was somewhat important so really they felt like assignments work submitted overall progress were very important for them to get feedback class participation a little less important okay if my wait time's not long enough just let me know i think you're good okay and then we asked parent guardians like

021what are some of the ways that they're supporting their student during remote learning too knowing that you know we're all community all in this so parents are reporting that they discuss the studies with their how their studies are going how the students feeling they're encouraging them half of them are helping the student plan and organize they're helping the student understand specific you know assignments about a third little under a half or helping the student find information or share their own knowledge um so you didn't include the the question that says do you sit next to your student while they're in class because apparently that's a thing that's happening and i sort of hope it's not happening for our high school students at eths um but but there has been some news about that did not

022have a specific question about that now thank you i i do hopefully that's because we didn't feel the need um okay and then area so we asked both the students and then the parent guardians where does the student need the most help at this time and so i'm sorry i meant to sort this in order by students but the top area was motivation students you know 58 almost 59 are saying they need the most help and motivation parent guardians also um and then students followed by executive functioning skills and that's also looks like the second rated for parent guardians too about a third are saying self-care well-being and then slightly higher um o'donnell skipped down here exercise physical activities 43 percent of parent guardians felt that but then only twenty percent of the students um

023reported needing extra help with the exercise physical activity um and then after that's academic course content and tutoring so that was um lower and everything else excuse me okay and then i think our yes our self-care wellbeing so we have in um this the next two slides it's a list of resources that we ask them about are for the students and then i have a couple slides for the parents we have a similar question first staff also asking if they've accessed these these following self-care well-being resources and so majority like two-thirds or more say not at all we do see them for students the meditation and mindfulness videos um are more reported to be more likely to have access either with you know on their own or with their teachers as part of a class

024i mean there's a third that are you know if i go down that are accessing it but there's a greater portion that are saying not at all so um the meditation mindfulness videos and then maybe acknowledge care tell um these are our resources and then i have i'll give you a moment and then i'll go to the next slide with the additional resources for students okay and then the additional ones for our students included the study centers um we do have a little less than half who are talking to their counselor social worker um psychologist and then here we are we've gone up to about 70 to 75 percent that are not accessing the live learning guides the ideas from the self-care guide for students or the family talk series when i show you the

025appearance more of the parent guardians have access to family talk series okay and then for the parent guardians similar um again a a larger portion um actually than the students have not accessed the uths website acknowledge caretal the meditation mindfulness videos um the calming room and then most likely about a third counselor social worker or psychologist so students are accessing resources that are a little bit more than the parent guardians one of the reasons to have a question like that on the survey though for both the students and the parents and guardians is to maybe even initiate conversation around those resources right kerry correct okay and then the last question we asked them was the amount of emails from the eths community actually the questions are specific from eths communications office um so 70 percent

026of parents and guardians are saying just enough a little under half of the students are saying just enough um and about 28 are saying too many um we did say specifically eths communications office in hopes that they wouldn't confuse it with other emails that are coming from teachers and whatnot but so this one's the that's the end of the oh no i lied one more we asked students if they had any textbooks or library books to return um and so while most of them are saying they do not we have 117 they're saying they don't know how to return them another 27 they don't have transportation a portion that have lost them and we do have in those other responses we're looking through and there's many responses in there where they they do there's some

027just some other reason that they um typed in so these are the pretty sure yes last questions for the student and parent guardian um any questions before i slip over to the t staff do we have some sort of large number of unreturned books is that why we did this question yes uh we had a large number uh earlier in the semester of unreturned uh textbooks uh but uh those we really were able to really cut into that so but it's always good to get whatever textbooks are out there back so this was a nice way of saying hey you know those phone calls and those emails we've sent this is yet another way to follow up so yeah so i guess that was a large number when we started developing the survey and we

028were getting ready to put it out yeah okay you could have scared people off though with the question like we're coming for the books and then they're like okay i'm not i'm not doing this survey i don't know at the very end of the trip okay do you want me do any questions or do i need to um switch over to the staff any questions from the board all right can we keep going oh sorry i guess i guess i'm wondering i'd like is it possible i know you're still processing the data but is it possible to get some sense of what it was you guys were trying to find out and how you i mean were there any big surprises were there any kind of aha moments from this and how do you plan

029to put this information into practice or use it in some way sure uh yeah one of the things we vetted this survey before it went out with uh t with teaching staff with uh department heads uh the administrators what we're looking for is information that we could actually utilize and turn around fairly quickly uh we were very interested in the workload we were also very interested in the support so we're going to spend some additional time in increasing and working on accessing the academic and social emotional supports and we also were looking at alignment whether whether um you know do students value feedback as much as teachers in this environment do students uh uh report that their workload is consistent with what teachers are reporting so you'll see in the second uh set of slides

030we would look at where those alignments are are where we want them uh if there's a need to increase that alignment or to recalibrate it we'll then strategize so that's why last friday i had the chairs working on this in breakout groups going through and they were really uh focused in on those academic and social emotional supports and really seeing what we could do as an institution to increase the utilization of those so that's that's just one example right now of what we were able to do in a short period of time yeah i would think that that would be extremely important given where we are with remote and covet and that really is kind of like the key you know i was wondering if the question or the response to the question family responsibilities

031um has anything to do with older siblings helping helping their younger siblings and how students see it and how parents see it right um so that's when i saw that that's what i thought immediately um so that just came to my mind yeah just to highlight that monique that's exactly the kind of places we look to see a difference and then we can explore that further but yeah that's a good point okay i think we should transition to the staff and future survey would be good sorry it's okay all right let me um i think i accidentally clicked stop share it got in my way try this one again okay staff um there we go so we have 300 staff take the survey 215 who identified as teaching staff so there's a series of questions

032in the middle that were very specific to teaching staff about in the classroom and some questions at the beginning of the very end that are more for all staff so the staff got asked the same question the overall satisfaction question remember the parents were 71 students were 60 and staff are saying overall their um average is 77 satisfaction and then so the next several slides are for the questions that were very specific to teaching staff anyone who identifies non-staff non-teaching was skipped over so we asked staff a similar question as the students thinking about their typical 70-minute class how much time is spent on live question on live instruction and their responses are pretty similar to the student responses um really about that about half or more than half is where the bulk of the

033responses are came in okay and then we asked um staff to what extent do they incorporate the following social emotional learning competencies into their instruction or asynchronous assignments demonstrate decision-making skills using social awareness and interpersonal skills to establish and maintain positive relationships and developing self-awareness and self-management skills um and so most of these responses are in a great extent to some extent um categories can i just add care that that's encouraging given that that was a real focus over the summer to get that uh integrated into the online uh remote learning environment uh it's something that teachers expressed um a need for how do we do this in the online environment so to see those numbers is is is encouraging at this point and then we asked um how frequently do they give individual feedback

034to students so we ask students what you know what type of feedback is important but here we ask the teachers the teaching staff how frequently and for the most part it's weekly whether it's you know once a week or more than once a week or daily uh the bulk of the response is that 60 almost 79 are saying at some point uh during the week it would have been nice to hear from the students about how often they get individual feedback to see how that meshes with this yeah yes you know i we started on the student survey first and realized that question didn't fit for staff so then we asked about frequency but now we're just practically looking at it you're right that would be a good question and so next time you know

035i think you're you're asking the teachers to say you know are you doing something that would be a good idea for you to be doing and i think um you know the inclination might be to say oh well of course i do that thing that i should be doing um whereas i think you you might get a more accurate idea of whether it's happening if we ask our students and i'm not saying either version of self-reporting is going to be you know can be taken 100 at face value but i think it's important to know this really from the student perspective no that's a great point it was a lot of the questions we asked across the surveys to see how they lined up so that is definitely one thank you that next time i

036would definitely ask to see how they you know lined up together okay um and then we asked uh teaching staff how they um what they mostly do during asynchronous time on mondays and a most of their time is grading student work um planning lessons meeting with other teachers kind of a great extent to some extent and then we see sort of in the some extent to little extent meeting with students um meeting with other staff and then the self-care well-being i move my cursor and i think it's sorry all right sorry about that hold on okay there we go and then edtech was on the um the last one we asked them so about a third to some extent are spending some time with technology or a tech resource we have okay and then i

037just have a couple more slides for the staff this one where we get to the self-care well-being these are resources well-being resources available to staff um and so now all staff that took the survey would answer this so we see a little bit more than use the eths website than was reported in the students or the parent guardians um not so much in the call for call and support line um but we do see about half a year's acknowledged to tell i'm a little less than half using the meditation mindfulness videos um and not as many of 70 are reporting not using the calming room the fitness and wellness classes and about 60 report not using rebel human mindfulness and then the last i think this last one yes same question we have some about

038the amount emails they received from the eths communications office and uh two-thirds reporting just enough more reported too few than too many i thought that was interesting but um that's it pretty sure yes first staff so any other questions for the staff yeah i have a question um it's a little bit less about the survey as much but more about alignment so for example on the um slide that early in the staff section you talked about um teachers being honest about not either not very often or not at all using sel supports in the classroom and it was admittedly it was a smaller number than those that did and i was wondering if and at this point it's the back of the envelope math probably but do you think that that aligns with kind of

039the numbers of teachers you're seeing come to their department chairs or come to the counseling office or social workers and ask for help with that you know i'm saying like or some people may be being honest like i'm not really doing it but similarly are seeking help in doing it does that make sense um i don't know pete if you want i mean i i do think sometimes that no response is an indicator to if you skip a question um but he can yeah i mean the short answer is i don't we don't know because it's it's it's not at that level where we'll be able to track that back it's not by you know um it's not it's not correlated like that um but it isn't i'm sure it wouldn't be numbers well i

040guess i'm just trying to get a general sense are you getting teachers coming for extra support in that area i mean some are being honest that they need this the help it sounds like and then are you getting people asking for that kind of help i know they're not going to be you know numerically lined up or anything yeah we're getting people who are asking for help and support and if you go to the slide um after that carrie just a couple go ahead one more go ahead one more go ahead one more here we go back one yeah there we go okay so you know this really kind of outlines what this doesn't tell us if if each of those are unique right i mean if those are unique that's kind of interesting that

041teachers spread out and did different things i think having him and offering those supports are critical um the extent to which they're accessed of course we want them access but even if even if they're going on their own uh to one of those at when it's needed during the semester i think is is is critical um but we could also look at if we wanted to the we probably have data on because their websites and their clicks for the most part we could probably figure out how often those are utilized yeah and i think that's really important i guess what i was wondering is if they're not using supports with the kids i think that was the early slide that they were integrate because you talked about how you spent a lot of time on

042that over the summer and a lot of people learned from that summer experience how to do it and seem to be doing it in real time which is great and i guess i'm just wondering if that's still if people are still seeking help in that area because it is diff this is a big area that's different i mean lots of things are different about remote but it feels like that's a big one right they're trying to teach while they're trying to watch kids in a different way for signs of concern yes i i think that um i know people are asking their department chairs and doing those in departmental meetings they're sharing time in every department meeting where people can share best practices and connecting with students uh social with those social emotional learning standards

043is part of that discussion for sure so it's not done no way it's such a new and such a learning environment that our teachers have really embraced that learning component our administrators have embraced it um there's really it's critical to be adaptable at these times and asking for help is part of the the um [Music] you know being vulnerable and asking for help in a place that is typically our faculty is very much uh perfectionists and i say that as a perfectionist but being able to be vulnerable and ask for help and support builds community we've had our leaders do that we have our our uh department leaders and our teachers are doing that too so yes thanks pete i have a question and kind of a follow-up um p do you envision um the

044possibility of sel being embedded more embedded into the curriculum so it's not it is it's not like in you know just an extra support and resource but it's actually embedded in class time and in the curriculum yeah yes dude that yeah exactly and that's if we go back to those slides that's that's where that was going um we've done work over the over the summer on this we've we've always had intentions of bringing it in um i do think that being able to bring this in to your instruction and assignments in in in the environment we're in right really pushed people you know you might have been in the in the in the olden days you might have been like well you know i do some of that but really i have a lot of

045content and i have to get through this and all you know but what we found is that by doing this all the other things happen easier when you build a community and you really spend time on decision making responsible behaviors social emotional awareness all those things uh cues and if you can do that in a zoom environment or a google meets environment when we come back to uh and return to uh in-person instruction in an in-person curriculum i have every expectation that this is gonna pay huge dividends in terms of integrating seo into the curriculum dude um intentionally just like we did this summer it'll be it'll because we're seeing how valuable that is um first hand thanks pete got it one of those um one of the many changes that will stay after this

046is all over it will be we learn okay other questions hearing none um i guess i i have one i'm i'm still um i would love to um hear more about this um in the next maybe at the next board meeting about findings and drilling down a little deeper because i mean i guess i mean i think it's good to kind of get a general temperature on satisfaction but i'm kind of curious to know if there's a way without creating survey fatigue um what what's really what what's really what satisfaction is really about like what one person considers satisfaction another you know i'm satisfied is very very general and has a lot to do with a lot of these things that you're already drilling down to you know the social emotional and the academic and

047you know the feedback and other things but i'd just be really interested if you had more time to go through the data because i know you said you didn't have a lot of time to process a lot of this but with the comments and some of the feedback that you're getting in the written answers it would be really really interesting i think to hear more about that and and to find out what you're planning to how you're planning to act on some of that information so a temperature check is really good i'd love to to just hear more about how it's shifting your course or how it's not shifting or how it's helping you evolve your you know what's being done and how teachers are using this information too potentially i agree we could we

048could probably turn around that around uh by the neck we can do that right here get the analysis on the thematic analysis i think is what we're talking about and then how we're utilizing that and it's looking really quickly so for example at the end of the staff um he asked them about aspects you know things that are going well um suggestions for other schools can support so we have it all the surveys a couple of open-ended questions like that and that's what we're digging into looking for some broader themes to help on some more qualitative data to share so i'll have that for um hopefully by the next time you're me for sure um in the next couple weeks we should have vanilla going through all of that great thank you that'll be good

049yeah just kind of see what what conclusions you will come to um i'm not really i'm not really interested in looking at item by item because i know that that can get really tedious but you know just what are you like you said themes what what can you pull from this data what's going to be most useful to me um is that this survey really is going to help teachers department chairs make adjustments to their instruction that's where i really think the the real value of this comes in and and that's what uh pete and kerry have already started with the department chairs and there'll be time spent in departments doing it and and really you know i'm very interested in it myself but but i really don't think i think the real value is

050going to be with the teachers and and and and and them getting a better idea of uh what we can be doing to just uh make more improvements to to just uh address some of the things that uh that popped up all right so are we ready to move into the opening of school report okay all right so carrie and i will just continue uh with our with our set here we're gonna do the uh opening of school report next uh this is an annual report that goes to the board uh and uh carrie uh has created a very brief slide deck that highlights aspects of the report but once we get once we do that slide deck we are open we'll be open to any questions and then we'll move on to the report

051on student achievement and talk briefly about the uh truncated school report card all right so okay slide deck number three um opening at school okay so i think i need to because i don't have all of my hard copies of the report with me or my office i want to say i've been saying like for the last 30 something years so i think we're now up to 35 years the school enrollment is up from the prior year so this year total school enrollment 37 29 that's the official enrollment as of september 30th um so we have and then when i look at our enrollment um there there's a it's table and report but when i pull out and look at our african-american black and women our hispanic lab next enrollment and our white enrollment which

052are the largest of the three uh subgroups i've you know looking at the trends just over the last five years so here's the portion proportion is on the line and then i put the total end down here underneath each school year so you can just see how that's changing not only by proportion but um by total size of each group so we see a slight trend down in our african-american black enrollment a trend up it has been going up even before these five years for our latinx population and then our white enrollment's been fairly steady over the last five years a little bit from from five years ago but for the last four years pretty consistent and then our special enrollment so this year is the first year that we've included building fine the day

053school they were not included in enrollment as of september 30th last year so they represented additional um that that bump up right without that it would have been like 414 414 so that extra um group is rep is um from our big school building five in special ed and then our bilingual program enrollments are um down again for this year and i think that's it those are like the main highlights from the opening of school if there's anything else um any other questions let me know that was my shortest and sweetest report gary i have a question what defines enrollment like are those kids that are actually walking into our building or are those kids um could be our students but could be at some alternative placement so it's a it's a as of september

05430 of students who are officially enrolled but the total enrollment is building line the main campus building five and then the off campus if there's an off campus or c school that are considered you know we are the home school so that is our whole our total population i do and i forget if it's like the first few pages does break down a group pulls out what's um the number of students disaggregated by off campus safe school but the total enrollment is our total population of the students that were um their principal got it thank you you're welcome [Music] it's just interesting that um our enrollment has stayed the same or gone up um despite all of this um remote so that's that's just a note it's a statement not a question [Music] all right

055report number three student achievement you're on a roll carrie all right pete's gonna kick this one off all right okay um here let me just fix this here okay good um so you know we're doing our uh annual uh achievement report um it's a little bit strange this year uh some of the data is incomplete we do have a cohort though uh of seniors who graduated and that's what we're reporting on for the most part we won't be reporting on the juniors because we don't have any test data on them that we would typically put in the appendices but this year more than ever before i just want us to be clear that that um this is a this is a report it's a it's a it's a data report it's a map of what

056uh what that senior class experienced it's not the current experience at eths because this is the group of students who had one quarter if that really as seniors of uh remote learning uh but had a had a uh consistent in school experience i just want to keep that in mind uh and with the final caveat that next year's achievement report with the current seniors will look even will look different as well because we won't have necessarily sat or act data on the graduating seniors so with that in mind uh this is a more granular report than the uh than the school report card uh these academic indicators that are in here when we look at english uh language arts ela um you know we're looking uh you know to be uh they look at are

057you do you have a gpa of 2.8 overall do you have 95 percent attendance in high school in your junior and senior year uh do you have at least one english language arts academic indicator and at least one mathematics academic indicator and i've talked about this in the past it is a whole lot easier to get the math indicator than the english language arts indicator by virtue of how they set this up go ahead kerry so the english language arts academic indicator you have to attain one of the following you have to get an a b or c in an english ap course that means you have to enroll in a junior advanced placement or a senior advanced placement english course we only offer junior ap and senior ap that's all that's available and you

058have to get an a b or c in that class or take that ap exam and get a score of three or higher our students who take those ap courses overwhelmingly get scores of three or higher we don't have students who don't take those courses who take ap exams in english so that's irrelevant and then reading and writing sat subject score 480 or higher which is the benchmark that the state set for the sat this is a significantly higher bar due to that ap requirement than the bar you're going to see from mathematics go ahead gary so our math indicators you must take two algebra and earn an a b or c all of our students as part of their graduation requirement take uh you know they take two algebra as part of their math

059sequence um so it's it's not a question of enrolling in an ap course it's a question of taking a core mathematics course you can also take a ap math course and get an a b or c most of the students all the students who take ap math courses got an a b or c and two algebra so that's redundant your math ap exam score 3 or higher again is redundant and your math subject score of 530 or higher is another way to get this but essentially the alpha indicator here the one that controls the entire set for mathematics academic indicator is your two algebra a b or c okay so the report consistent with the past few years you look at a four-year cohort so this report is the um class of i have a

060typo here i apologize i'll fix it it's actually the class of 2019 and 2020. i think i got ahead of myself with 2021 so it's 2018 class of 2019 and the 2020s the the cohort that i'm reporting on for the first time that just graduated um and this is all students that cohorted who graduated in four years and those who have not graduated yet um the report is disaggregated by race and gender we have male status iep placement like pete said it's more granular than what's found in the illinois report card most indicators kind of align with how it's be played you know reports college readiness except for the one is that attendance rate we report attendance rate across four years of high school um as a plan and in the report where they're going

061to look at uh they look at junior and senior year so this is just our um cohort our just our total n of students across each of the subgroups um we have a couple of subgroups that are too small to report they're under 20 so they're under 20 students in that subgroup so that's why like two or more races is not included um american indian native um but otherwise this is you can see our total sample size our total size for the class of 2020 is 838 similar um to prior so the highlights here which is what i'm about to walk through in the rest of the slides um i can just give you a minute to look at this um but this is all of my follow-up slides kind of go with these bullet

062points um so i'll go to the first one actually so the the gpa here this is the mean unweighted gpa and so the mean overall here the first um bar for all is 3.1 that's up and that's higher from the prior to actually three cohorts um and and shifting of that macro measure um i think is a little harder so that one's up and it's up across subgroups um i believe and then the percent of students who earned a 2.8 or higher is also up so overall it was 72 of the cohort class of 2020 that earned it has a 2.8 or higher gpa compared to like from the class of 2019 and also 65 from the class of 2018. so the gpa is uh i think that was a good highlight and then our

063attendance rate so the mean attendance rate is across four years um here that that bar is that benchmark of 95 percent attendance now remember we're reporting across four years and it's an annual an average daily attendance that's what's on the report card i do we do know that when we looked at the data when we looked at the report card data in the year let me know from last year that a lot of students we had a high um higher um absence rate in march to june much higher than we did from the first seven months of the year so that definitely is impacted in these numbers um and attendance during covid when we were shelter in place was um taking cane taken a variety of ways districts could could do their attendance by a

064variety of ways we did ours in a kind of a more conservative way we required students to you know fill out a form for their attendance and ask them about a measure of how their well-being is for that day so um just just to kind of keep an eye and just keep in mind that there that is playing into these figures but um well i had another point i was going to make but i lost when that point was but this is oh um this 92 attendance is uh overall is the same as the prior year the prior cohort if my yes the mean attendance rate for the class of 29 was 92 percent in this class of 2020 which is also impact my covet is also 92 so i just thought that was something

065to to lift a little bit and then across all these we have everything disaggregated by uh race and gender okay um and then as pete talked about the the benchmark so this is just the percent meaning at least one of those benchmarks that pete talked about this is the english language art benchmark that um pete was highlighting the english the ap course in a b or c or earning exams for three or heart or an s a t reading writing score of 480. and then in math um it's the same but this one includes uh taking and getting an a b or c into algebra and this is a percent meaning this is similar to the class of 2019 and so um we had some measures that are in goal two district goal two student

066well-being one of them was the percentage cohort we looked at zero to four referrals across all four years of high school so that's average of one referral a year and from the class of 2017 to the class of 2020 we see a shift up and 85 of the students from the class of 2020 had zero to four referrals across all four years um and i saw that that increase across all of our suburbs as reported in the um in the report and then another one do we know what the percentage you just get zero is who just get i know i would have to go i mean i could go back and figure that out just wonder yeah um and then when we asked about are we not yes sorry still talking like it was

067a survey for my apologies when we looked at data from those that participated in one or more extracurricular activity that as you can see has been uh taking out nicely over the last four years and so the class of 2020 had 81 of that cohort participated in at least one extracurricular activity these are in their junior or senior year um and that but that's an increase over the prior cohorts too and we see that across almost all of the subgroups and then so graduation i um kind of rethought how presenting graduation normally i give you two tables one big like bar graph a four year and one a five year and it just makes more sense to look at it this way so here's four cohorts together the blue bars represent four year and then

068the little orange is the five year so what i have in parenthesis so for example class of 2019 94 have a five year graduation rate that's 92 over four year an additional two percent for a five year so now you can look at this across the four these four cohorts and kind of compare their four-year graduation rates and then also see the increase after a five-year so that's for overall and then this one is by um race ethnicity so we have our black african-american students latinx and white students um so again class 2020 they've just graduated to four years and so you can see that and then you can kind of compare the four and five-year across the cohorts um it just made more sense to do it this way since we're looking as we're

069keeping more students as we know we have five year and sixth year to kind of give a bigger picture of how they're doing over time and trying instead of trying to do the math in your head and then we also have our free reduce students eligible for free reduced lunch which we see therefore year is up students um with an iep class of 2020 their four-year cohort is up in our english language um english learner students their four years been up for the past two cohorts and that might be my last yes slide for just some highlights from the report any questions these are very very important interesting i've been combing through this data all weekend um so i really appreciate you putting it together what it always tells me of course is that our

070black african-american males continue to be the our lowest group we can see some progress and some improvement but we still have work to do in some areas i see also our our latino males latino males their data is all below black males too yeah that's a new um new data point a new trend that i've made and it's not just below it's been it's decreased i think from previous year sort of notably i thought it was just um in looking at these numbers just i mean it's hard to determine i guess which cause but um like which comes first chicken or the egg because i noticed that the the the group of students performing um the lowest academic achievement they they also are the students that have the lowest rate of attendance and the lowest

071rate of being involved in the school community um so that would be the uh the black and the latinx young men and i i it's a it's a it's a problem i mean you know so it's not an easy problem to solve but i just i'm just curious to um to know what some of your you know your thoughts um are on that um but yeah students who are who have lowest rate of attendance and the lowest rate of participating in the school community are performing performing the lowest academically not sure which is being caused by with is it there's no sense of belonging for these young men in the school and that causes the poor attendance and that causes them to feel like to not have a sense of belonging so they don't participate

072or is their lack of participation in attendance causing the low academic achievement it definitely looks correlated jude there's no doubt about that um whether or not it's causal or symptomatic i don't know um but this is a trend that's not uh hasn't gone away um it's something that we uh we we work diligently on and we're going to continue to um i my concern is that you know um involvement's going to look really different next year than it did for this senior class right this senior class was able to be involved in in-person activities to do a full complement of things all the opportunities were there perhaps in an online environment maybe more students will participate in things virtually i don't know i don't know how that sense of connectedness uh will play out right

073in that sense of school identity and identifying as an eths student particularly among our freshmen is something we've really been working on but you know we'll continue to do that and and you know latinx males are on everybody's radar too i go to student service meetings i meet with our department chairs and this is uh we've been strategizing and and working on that um consistently and that goes to the engagement piece that goes to the you know are you engaged in extra creepers it goes to your attendance uh piece uh certainly um yeah but i don't know if it's like to your point though is it is it chicken is it egg is it causal is it the locust of of of situations is it a composite of everything um you know and the numbers

074you know when you you know the the old like if we compare this nationally you'll see better numbers in evanston of course you will but but our students deserve and our kids and families um certainly deserve better than what they currently have they deserve better they deserve better they deserve to see uh a distribution in this data that's representative of the community across the board and that's what we strive for and pete i i think that's it for me um it's frustrating because i know that evanston township high school is one piece of the puzzle and you know for as long as i've been on this board i've talked about um the community approach or another process or you know something that is going to um be as as bold and innovative as it needs

075to be to help our black and brown boys and and so that is what frustrates me um because we you know we know it doesn't start at ninth grade so i mean we know that and we know that there are some fundamental um academic gaps that exist prior to them getting to us um but if we are to do what you just said and make sure that all our students get what they deserve living in a community like evanston i mean i'm i'm like heated right now because i it's because it's a lot of stuff it's you know it's covered it's the environment it's it's everything and i'm still trying to figure out how we do better at this how we do better as a high school how we do better as a community like

076when will this frustrate everybody in the community um and so that is that is and i know people are helping but there needs to be a collaborative collective effort um to draw our focus on them um they could be and i'm on my soapbox now but they can be as so belonging or feel belong like they belong here at eths but leave this safe and comfortable environment and and totally feel like they're not welcomed in their own community and we know that exists and and that has that plays into their esteem it plays into you know the expectations we hold for them and that they hold for themselves and and somehow we have to figure out how to block out what's happening in the world in order to protect our boys while we have them

077as long as we have them because the world is not going to catch up and we have to figure this out this is highly frustrating to me you know p i'm i'm wondering um i completely agree with what's been said um but i'm wondering if there's a couple things we can learn from so one of the things i was thinking about is the redeployment of staff to really be an old school name but case managers for kids and like really paying attention to their work and their assignments and talking to their teachers and all that detail work um i know they're doing it during a totally different learning environment so you know it's not apples and oranges but are we learning from that you know work some things that can we can start to really

078drill down and on how to support students similarly if we looked at the the behavior um the goal to student behavior um the number of students who have zero to four behavioral referrals um you know those numbers look better in general but if you look at our black men they went from 47 percent in 2019 to 69 in the class of 20. i'm wondering what that's a 22 improvement and i'm wondering what what accounts for that what can we learn from that detail about what worked that we can start to learn from and apply more broadly with our with all of our young um men of color so i i don't know that you have answers to either of those two questions right now and and that's fine but i i really think that like

079that statistic really jumped out at me when i was reading this report um in a good way and and the fact that i'm sorry to interrupt which one can you just repeat that that went fast sure so in the in the report um it's actually on page 11 gretchen if you're looking for actual report got it uh it's the student behavior chart oh the behavior one yeah yeah so again i'm just it's not everything but this is i feel like this is one of our strong suits as we drill down and these are some things that i think we can drill down to this improvement in behavior referrals and what are we learning from having kids have someone really paying attention to them and i'm sure some of them are i'm sure they're all different

080races and genders but but i think there's something hopefully there we can learn i have some i have some comments and questions but i don't know pete did you want to respond to that yeah i was just going to say um the the first one well you know in terms of the uh reaching out to the students and the redeployment of staff we're still learning from that experience that's too early to tell but one of the things that i really appreciate about that is that's something that you know as it as it unfolds and if we determine what works we use it to collect information and really reach out and connect the kids and really bring them back in um i i see potentially use for a similar deployment during the school year i i

081think to myself what would a regular school year look like with in-person instruction with with a group of folks who are track checking in and and supporting kids at that at that at that level and and i think there's real promise um with that in terms of the discipline data there's gonna be a full-on discipline report coming your way and hopefully i could take information gleaned from that and that kind of information and drill down i think that's also part of the you know the as part of the sense of belonging piece i think you know that goes to the disciplined piece i also think it's the the more we work with our um [Music] our staff on uh sel uh embedding scl practices that jude talk spoke about earlier and what we're learning now

082in the online environment i think all those things are things we can take away and and use to improve uh this that's the situation that we see in the data yeah and i like to add to that um one of the things that you know we're learning in uh this a remote environment and having staff redeploy to support kids and families is that um because a piece of this is um connected to an effort for with home visits uh it's something that you know it's different when we have our our support meetings here at the school and that's very formal but when someone shows up to your home i think the partnership between the school and family looks and feel very feels very different and that's something that we're looking to learn a lot from

083while we're in this remote environment so it seems like a bit of a paradox supposed to make home business turns down but it's it's what's necessary in some cases and i think that we're going to learn a lot from that um as we continue to do that um this uh this semester can you guys hear me yes yes come here in terms of like the gap between like black and brown boys um i i know it's not possible to close that gap within eths within the four years that we have it because it starts from a very young age i don't really know the way that we would do this but i think looking into investing in district 65 schools of young students before they come here and then implementing support when they get here

084is important because there's no way that you can teach somebody who doesn't know how to read to read within four years and to catch up when they've lost that much time which is a lot of the stuff that happens so um i think there just needs to be a partnership more within the whole entire community of evidence not just smoking within our school because that can't work you're absolutely right what you said makes total sense and we've been talking about that and trying to make sure that we are working with district 65 because we recognize by the time the students get here they come here with their skills and their experience that impacts their approach to school and academics so all of that is definitely a part of what what they bring so i had

085a couple um comments probably more than questions um but that the point that carmia just made it relates directly to one of the points that i was going to make and i couldn't agree more with the notion that we need to align our work with district 65 and within the community and i would say that i think we missed an opportunity like both last spring and this fall by not going ahead with our usual joint school board meeting um where we would have an opportunity to come together with our our um colleagues at districts on the district 65 board and within the district 65 administration to do a check in on many of these points um and i'm sure we'll get there again eventually these are pandemic times so it's it's certainly tough to do

086that but i think we're missing something by not having that conversation so that we can share the work that we're both doing or trying to do together and impress upon our community the importance of coming together and working towards a common goal and and i would add that this relates to the work of cradle to career as well our collective impact work in evanston and i think the pandemic has made that work more difficult too but we continue to meet we continue to have conversations um around these topics um and i i think that um so my frustration with this report um is certainly the substance of it as everybody has noted um it feels like well it doesn't just feel like it there really is a lack of progress and then and in some

087ways there's um even even worse results um but what struck me i just pulled up the report on student achievement from last year because i wanted a point of comparison and what frustrates me about this report every year is that it gets delivered in isolation and we don't have a point of comparison for previous years that's made easy for us to see and understand and relate to or for a community to see and understand and relate to so i did go back on our fancy board books set up and pulled up that colorful bar chart about whether our students have met one two three or four of the college readiness benchmarks and i just did the math which is never my strong suit i do not even begin to compare to steve kornacki on election

088night who does all that math in his head on the vote counts like on the spot i can't do that but it was easy enough for me to do the math on our all of our students which is the first bar across the page on whether all students meet one two three or four of our college readiness benchmarks and we reported that differently last year we reported last year on one two three four and this year we combined it into three or four and one or two but when you add all that up together we have exactly the same result this year we had 62 percent with three or four and if you go back to 2019 we had 62 percent of all students with three are meeting three or four this year we had

08924 of students getting one or two last year we had 24 doing one or two and 14 each year get meeting none of the college readiness benchmarks and then if we dive a little deeper and we go to african american and black males it's remarkably similar and arguably well it is worse i think in the first category three or four we're at 24 this year but we were at 27 in 2019 um one or two we were at 44 this year it was 46 in 2019 and this year uh black african american males um meeting none of those benchmarks is 32 and it was 27 in 2019 so that's that's really um really it's very upsetting um and it's you know and i don't have to read the numbers but i think it's important to

090look at these numbers year to year and to understand how they relate to one another and i i really i've said this before in different ways but i wish we could figure out a better way to report out on this data in a way that's digestible and easy to to follow from year to year and i think we need a dashboard where we can convey this information to our community and get our heads around it and i think we need to get back to for example our joint district 65 202 literacy goal which you know was a 12 year goal it still exists it's something that we are meant to discuss at our joint school board meetings which we haven't had for quite a long time and it's an opportunity for us to look deeply

091at this issue year over year over year and try and get to the bottom of what we're missing and and what needs to be done here and instead we're in a holding pattern um i would say worse than a holding pattern because we're kind of going backwards um this is this is tough time so i'm you know i'm i'm mindful of that and but because it's tough times i think it's even more important that we stick with these goals and stick with this focus and multitask around it because we can't just put it aside and say we're going to wait till the pandemic is over to tackle it um and it's frustrating and then lastly i'm just going to end with a question uh to pete um to try and be a little more specific

092and wrap this up the um whatever happened to our work with northwestern to develop eths specific benchmarks because we're now you know i know that we always look at the college readiness benchmarks from illinois essa but we had spent literally years working with northwestern to develop something specific to eths um can you just i i'm not looking i'm not asking you to do an off-the-cuff full report on that but just what happened did they just fall into the black hole that is the pandemic where everything else is going um kerry actually has an update on nera can provide that but the measures that initially they provided us of which we could report on are essentially um they were what they settled on were on track indicators for college readiness based on ninth grade where students

093were in ninth grade was what was what we what they uh came up with and kerry do you uh know where they are with that project right now i know last we met they were talking if they had attendance thresholds uh court essentially we looked at it and if we put that in this report we would um it wouldn't be sufficient because it didn't track juniors and seniors and only attract freshmen at that time so what we asked for was a more a broader application of that measure if that remembering correctly we ended with like college readiness uh ninth grade and then in eighth grade and it was not something that was usable actionable quick um turnaround so i kind of took a step back and they're looking at that transition from eighth to high

094school sort of a high school we're not really calling it high school readiness but that's where they're looking at they're sort of um rethinking the data and now they're looking at eighth grade ninth grade so what was wrong what was wrong with their you you said it wasn't it wasn't what it wasn't something but what wasn't it i suppose that it was looking at so ninth grade predicting you know college um readiness with the five consecutive you know semesters right of you know likelihood of completing five consecutive semesters and what they ended with were just in ninth grade it was only ninth grade so it doesn't even take in account what happens in 10th 11th and 12th they haven't gotten to that point yet and it was i mean across the board a lot of

095measures we look at attendance and um you know having honors level courses etc i'd have to go look at all of the the model itself they ended up with but it was um not clunky but it was a really complicated model that again was really only narrowly focused at ninth grade so after conversation and thinking about it they just sort of stepped back and did an eighth tonight they're working on eighth to ninth grade instead i think though to that question though uh gretchen i think that we could bring we we we always do a nera update uh at some point and we could we could do that because i think that would be yeah i just you know i think that usually happens at our joint school board meeting we didn't have one in

096the spring and we didn't have one in the fall so maybe there's another way to figure out how to do that just before our regular board meetings um so that we could you know i i feel like it's a little bit of a um you know we just keep putting it off or and you know we're optimistic about developing some new measurement system but but you know instead we end up with nothing um and we need well i guess nothing not it's not nothing we have the us illinois essa college readiness benchmarks you know and i and i think this is definitely a time it's an opportunity as frustrating as i am and we all are there's an opportunity here um yeah we no one was in a position to meet in the spring and

097um i'm not even sure dr horton has been here 90 days yet i i don't know um probably feels like 90 years to him um but so now we have um leadership at 65 that i believe has a you know of course he has a different vision um and i'm also looking forward to um a different literacy goal i mean i you know the i'm not sure if that one um well there's an opportunity there's an opportunity to look at it again there's an opportunity to determine if it um fits the current vision of district and if it will help us do what we need to do so you know we have to keep figuring this out and we have to um keep lighting a fire under it and so i'm desperately looking forward to

098what um our conversations will be going for with district 65 but the community as well i mean i you know district 65 is struggling the kids at district 65 are struggling and so it won't work with just us and i guess that's the point i'm trying to make so there has to be some collective effort that also supports this literacy goal that's um that 65 and 202 is in alignment with but there's a wider reach into how we can support our students um that goes deeper beyond the school districts so for sure yeah yeah i wanted to add um this is really just a comment is just i wonder um the numbers are predictable we've talked about multiple factors that um are likely contributing to these low achievement numbers we talked about the community talked

099about joint literacy goals talked about sense of belonging social emotional learning and just in my mind another factor and it's it's no disrespect to i think we have a an extremely talented staff um but sometimes you have to take a look at what you're doing um and maybe change things up because what it makes me think of when you have such an alarming failure rate especially coming from two particular groups the black and latinx males that's they're alarming so i'm thinking on the ground level how are the teams working in problem solving and to me that goes along with the mindset shift because i mean is it alarming to i mean students earn grades i understand that but you know teachers teach and they meet their students where they are and for it the numbers

100to be consistently what they are and in some cases getting worse um we talk about a lot of factors but i just think that it needs to be put out there there you know how about the mindset of those who are educating these children and as i said no disrespect and i think we we we all know that we have an extremely talented staff that cares um but what is going on in those teams are they getting granular are they looking at individuals who need shortened data cycles like you know we need to check in on this on this kid and not let and you know not let an f exist for weeks on end without some type of intervention um so i don't know because we're at policy level and i'm not involved in

101the daily operation of schools but i do know schools um i've worked on teams i've worked on teams devising interventions for certain students and not all of them are going to need the same intervention um but it just really makes me think of mindset like is it okay and we i mean we know which teachers are failing have the the highest percentage of failure rates for latinx and black males maybe they need more support maybe they need support in in changing their practice um it's just i'm very frustrated um yes i i just think that we need to look at mindset set and look at look at this grand in a granular way like what is going on in these teams when they get together and discuss these students individually they're individuals each with a

102story you know um we can have a great joint literacy goal we can have buy-in from everybody in the town but when when that door closes in that classroom or now virtually what is going on what is what is the you know are people being held accountable for excessive failure rates for black and latino males that's what that's this is what goes through my mind i just like to follow up on those comments i mean jude i wholeheartedly agree and i mean i i feel like we have to treat this like a crisis you know if this was a budget if this if we were falling off our budget next year because of whatever happens with covid we'd figure out a way we'd figure out every way till tuesday to work through that and you

103know likewise if this was a falling off or if white male students started showing these rates of decline we'd be getting to the bottom of that lickety-split and um and figuring out every way to tuesday to resolve those issues and it's not it's not too um it's not to say that well maybe it is to say you know where are we putting our priorities and how are we are we treating this as the crisis that it is because i remember i haven't been on the board that long but i you know i know this has been an ongoing issue and it's the same story every year and every year more students go through and come out the other end in whatever shape you know they're coming out but we know that along racial lines the

104black and latinx students are faring much worse at the other end of this and it's not acceptable it's just not acceptable and we wouldn't accept it for the dominant you know white male and female students or the asian students or you know i mean if the if there was these kinds of we suddenly saw this kind of decline in performance and an achievement in those groups it would be absolutely unacceptable and the fact that we can you know go another year before we hear this same story again is frankly offensive to me you know we have to treat this like it's a the problem that it is and you know it it's i it's a combination of all the things that have been raised tonight we know that it's what happens when the door closes

105it's how much resources are allocated how much checking that we're doing and you know what's going on in the community but maybe we really need to start thinking creatively beyond the channels that we've been operating in every year up to this point and start thinking literally outside the box and how do we engage our community i feel responsible reporting back to our community that we're just learning the same story again this year that we didn't do the joint board meetings that were not working more diligently with district 65 despite the fact that they have new leadership you know working i i just see time ticking away in this continuing unless we actually treat it like the crisis that it is and how in a crisis does a community come together and solve a problem that

106we're all invested in solving so i'm with you jude i'm with all of you on this i know i know it's upsetting to all of us and this is not no single um cause is responsible for this there's it's a it's a multifaceted issue but i can tell you that looking at it through an equity lens there is a catalyzing factor if this was affecting a particular group of students you know and those being the white students we would not our community would not stand for that our community would say there is a serious problem well there is a serious problem and we know who it's affecting and it's it's just not it's not acceptable and we can't continue to have the same conversation in the same questions year after year i feel like we

107come to this point whenever we look at achievement when we disaggregate by race we are we we are here this is where we are this is where we come and it is a really difficult and complex problem and issue we know that and we have to stay in our place of discomfort and continue the work that we're doing it's really not easy there's no simple there's no there's no one meeting that we can have and this would be it would be solved and you know i just want to remind everybody we are in the midst of a pandemic and we've we've turned our whole way of functioning and operating completely changed everything as did district 65 as did the rest of our community so it's it's not as if we're not doing anything here we

108do have to do more there is yet another opportunity and as we talk about what pieces of our new way of functioning are going to stick and stay we've got to keep this at the forefront what what other what are we doing and what can we continue to do when we're on the other side of this um how can what can what changes can we make yes i do think we should look at at how we're functioning we should look at that goal we should make sure that that's what we want to do we should look at at the benchmarks and and and make sure that they are relevant to what we what we're doing here in the high school that's what we're doing other comments all right i'm gonna move us along here we

109are thank you thank you carrie take care thank you take care of yourself thanks for coming out okay so we're at comments from the public public comments are submitted in writing prior to the meeting uh dr badass do we have any public comments no comments were submitted for this evening's meeting okay thank you all right um item number eight is foia we have one for you in the packet yes we have a foia from sb and the responses in your packet okay thank you all right board committee reports do we have any i know there's some meetings coming up you know i just um very briefly i'm going to send it around because i'm going to get it tomorrow but the ed red member meeting was friday and ralph martieri from the illinois center for

110tax and budget accountability um many of you may already be familiar with ralph mertieri he's been around for a long time he was a proponent his organization and himself were a proponent of the fair tax um referendum that was on the bell and failed rather hugely if i can say that with big implications for well our entire state but education in particular um and he laid out how that might look going forward um and i will share with all of you his powerpoint which hopefully i'm gonna have in my hands tomorrow and then i'll send it around and you can all look at it in your at your leisure as you may know if you've seen one of ralph's presentations before he has a really really detailed powerpoints and charts that sort of lay everything

111out and so some of what he talks about is the bad financial situation of our state going in to this election um and then he extends the bad situation going forward and gives us clear picture and also he talked about um you know options both for revenue raising and um cuts in spending going forward which could implicate well it pretty unquestionably will implicate education and evidence-based funding in particular so yeah there was nothing good about about it really and i have a discipline committee meeting coming up in the next couple of weeks but i would like to just share that i took part in the peer conference training on october 19th i i wish um getting towards a better space and place with our black and brown males were as easy as we've all just

112talked about um and we didn't we're not saying it's easy but i just want to say that before i say how impactful this conference was for me to participate alongside eths staff and faculty members students that are doing the hard work those numbers those graphs everything we're looking at all these ideas all these you know all the different issues it is not that easy easy and it and you know it's just not that easy to resolve and they are really on the front line trying to figure out how to um build better relationships how to make a shift in those relationships how to do things differently um i met this counselor and i forget his name i think it wrote i wrote it down but it doesn't matter um i was just impressed by this

113young man's story and to know that he was a student that i see almost every given day someone who struggled through high school and finally made it through someone supported him through college and he is a counselor for us and so he is someone that our children can see and see themselves in and what he said to me was when he first started looking for a counseling position he was afraid to tell his story of struggle and he said that he was so thankful that there was a place like eths that saw that struggle as being meaningful and important for the students that we serve so that's the kind of stuff that needs to happen it's so much more deeper than equity it is so much more profound and partnership and collaboration with another school

114it is making sure that we do we create the work on the front line where our students can feel like they're missed when they don't come or feel like there's a person that shares the same past way or passage that they have been experiencing in life and i mean i would just say if if that sort of leveled me as a board member it humbles you when you are in the same company of the people doing the work because if we continue to kind of stay up here and think that all we can do and all we should do is think about it up here we forget the hard work that's going on and none of this is easy none of this and i'm not one thinks it is but it's so it you know

115even in my frustration it's easier for me to say what should happen and what shouldn't happen and strategically i think that way because i'm a ceo but as a person that's in operations everything that i think sounds right doesn't work out right and so they are doing this work and um and they're trying to be better that's the thing that i want to just lift up um and it's and you know so if ever you have an opportunity i would encourage you it might take some time out of your day um to do this work but it will definitely put you back in your lane as a school board member and as an advocate and also help you appreciate a little bit more what it takes to come in and do this day in and

116day out with teenagers and their parents so i you know i just want to shout out to the discipline committee because i am their their you know probably their biggest thorn but i really appreciated being a part of this process and will continue to support them any way that i can thank you monique and thank you for that and thank you for sharing and bringing us back to the reality of how difficult and hard this is and keeping that in front of us this is hard these are real people these are real students with lives and experiences and each story matters each story has been impacted each of those each of those students and you're right so thank you thank you for being a part of that very important committee all right we are any

117more reports i don't want to move too quickly um would student board report come here um okay so i the student union also recently did a survey for students about how e-learning has gone um and just how that's been and how this the homework load and i carry your mic is really low can you hear me better now give me one okay hold on i'm gonna is it how bad is it that's better that is much better yes um so i shared um our mr pine shared uh the pdf but if am i allowed to share my screen on here does anyone know okay i think we all can you don't see the share screen at the bottom i just wanted to make sure um i could do that and let me pull this up

118okay can everyone see this okay yes okay so um this was more of like direct student feedback on like specific homework hours and stuff and um we got demographic demographics as well and there was a skew of um 11th graders so juniors um more than everybody else and so that might have just been from what teachers sent this to their students or just who really took this but that happened and also it's disproportionately white which we already know is um also the statistics of our school as well but the statistics here are also a little bit skewed and the percentage is over a hundred because we didn't um instead of having like in biracial one for people people could also click more than one race and so that caused like an over percentage to happen

119there but we already know that it's this is basically the demographics of our school as well and then also it was um more female than anybody else represented and so i don't know why that would that is as well but that is also what you're looking at when we look at the data here um it's been shared with everybody and i'm not going to go all the way through it just because those are things that everyone can look at on their own but um so there's data which is within here that you can look at um separately but to go to was just the recommendations and like what came out of that and what we saw from students um so juniors and seniors are getting a lot more work than they feel that they should

120and they have a like um a lot of workload in terms of like ap classes and i know that there's a lot of curriculum that they have to get through and a lot of stuff but there's just people are feeling way too overwhelmed with work um and we said that we recommend that three to four hours of homework total per week for all classes um and this is just a recommendation um also for asynchronous mondays it was a lot of students reported wanting to use that as a catch-up day a lot of students are getting a lot of work on those days like excessive work when they need more time to finish all the work that they've been given the week before or to just start up on something i guess it's been more of

121a just throw a bunch of work at students day instead of letting them catch up on what they've already had um pronouns this is a big thing it's an equity issue um a lot of people who identify as non-binary or have pronouns that you might not or have pronouns that you may not assume um they want to put their pronouns up there but if everyone else isn't doing that then it feels like you're the only one or feels like you're singled out so that is an important issue um if everyone could just put up their pronouns it would eliminate people from feeling um singled out or different in that um screen so i know screens is the biggest uh thing that's talked about just because teachers um you do you want to be able to

122teach actual students but we believe that it's also an equity issue just because some students may have a environment where they feel they can show it and they feel comfortable showing their room or wherever they are and other students may have an environment where a lot of people are in it at once in their house and so and maybe they don't even maybe they're in an apartment or wherever they are um some students may not feel comfortable showing the environment that they're in um and not everyone's able to do virtual backgrounds just because not all chromebooks are updated that way and so you just can't ask people to you know you're asking to be in somebody's home in someone's life and some people don't feel comfortable um or embarrassed and you wouldn't want to force

123them to do that some teachers are lecturing a lot and are doing fewer interactive activities and that kind of limits the learning of some students is what they said it's like i can't learn if i can't stare at a screen for 70 minutes and i don't think that should be happening um where students are just sitting there and um hearing a teacher lecture for 70 minutes i don't i wouldn't learn that way and a lot of students feel the same way as well breaks is a big thing as well just incorporating breaks into class it's the same as any other class and especially while we're doing school on a computer and homework on a computer you just have a lot of screen time it gives you a big headache and i'm sure teachers feel the

124same way as well so it's it would be best for everybody just to take small just a minute break two minute breaks do a stretch i know the teachers that do that in my classes i feel great after and i feel i get a brain break and it's been really a positive thing with me um another thing students complained about um because of a lot of these were in uh we gave a section for students to just write what they feel about e-learning so a lot of this is just coming from the accumulated data there with a lot of what students have said and the trends in that but students wanted more consistent due dates because some people just have odd deadlines or whatever for stuff and it's like i don't know some people will

125have a due date on maybe like a sunday night or a sunday morning just weird due dates where you have a lot of stuff going on and it's just isn't the best time to have an assignment due it's easy to forget which then it's easier to fall behind um and this is just specifically for seniors i know that a lot of college application deadlines are coming up and um this past week is something that we can't change but um november 1st was a deadline for um a lot of early action early decision college applications and i know a lot of students reported at least within our last student union meeting of having a lot of work on those weekends when they were trying to finish up those applications which is like we're going into a

126new part of our life so it's important to do well on that and to have a lot of work is just not helpful um and then stresses um just racially socially the election the upcoming senate decision i don't know too much about that which i probably should because i'm voting um but there's just a lot going on in the world there's just so much unrest there's a lot of emotions and we're in the middle of a pandemic and i know everyone knows this but just being mindful of that because i feel like some teachers they are so worried about getting their curriculum through and that that it's going over students and how they're feeling and that that should never be the case in my opinion it should not be the case that we're more worried

127about school and and getting this lesson done than a student who is emotionally in distress um the last thing that um is a recommendation is just not giving large tests which goes into what i've been saying before but not giving large tests assignments or projects after a holiday a long weekend or a break um it's you just have to give a second for people to get back into school um you know i know after this election that happened a lot the day after which everyone we had no idea what was going to go on day after but a lot of students were getting like exams or projects that were due the day after the election and i don't know how you could possibly focus or do well on something after a big historical event like

128that so that those were the findings are all in this pdf but the recommendations is just what i wanted to say because this is direct student feedback um on just working how they've been feeling and so yes that is all i have all right thank you all right and uh dr witherspoon's superintendent's report you're a muted doctor with a spoon i'll start over hi everybody um carmilla uh thank you for that you did the shares with us the pdf and we will make sure that the student feedback uh gets in the hands of the department chairs and the teachers uh because because clearly just like the other surveys we looked at tonight um when it can when the feedback can be digested by the people who are really working with this every day uh it

129really is an opportunity to make adjustments and and make improvements so thank you very much uh uh very very uh a lot of work obviously went into that and uh congrats to the you and the student union really appreciate it um real quickly uh we did last week have an incoming freshman information night it was virtual and um it was a smashing success uh i'd encourage you to ask any family of incoming freshmen in the class of 2025 uh what they thought because we've been getting unbelievable feedback on that and it was just great to uh to welcome them uh to our to our uh eths and welfare family um i do want to uh lift up that we had the uh the annual guild brew arsenal spirit awards for support staff uh this is

130a uh a real honor for uh support staff members who receive this it's a it's only given out annually and this year a big congratulations to evelyn chapman uh in our special ed department veronica mckinney and our main office and emily sosa and the fine arts department they were honored by their peers and by all of us and it was just a very special event again virtual and uh and we had a huge uh turnout for that uh and also congratulations to uh mark von drasek chem phys teacher actually a physics teacher specifically uh because he was uh recently received a university of chicago outstanding educator award nominated by one of his former students so uh you know not the first time the mark is one and like this but uh dr von drasek certainly

131has an impact on many students a quick reminder about the family talk series the next one coming up well it is a virtual event it's uh this coming uh i'm sorry not this coming uh it's next wednesday november the 18th uh in the evening at 6 30 p.m uh we've been having quite a few families attend these uh this is when the topic is supporting grieving teens during covert 19 and beyond a little bit about the the pandemic of the issues that carmilla was just talking about in fact uh it's on our website you can check the calendar and and how to attend and participate in that a reminder that we do recognize and honor veterans day it's this wednesday november 11th there will be no school uh and then as we get into the

132week of thanks giving we will be having two uh learning planning days on the monday and tuesday uh these are remote planning days that are provided by the state uh and and as a result that will combine with our already planned fall break around thanksgiving so there will be no classes for students that week um you know sometimes you have to repeat messages a lot of times for people to uh you know really hear the message but i think with our students mentioning one time that there will be no classes the week of thanksgiving is about all it takes they're already highly aware of that and that concludes my report okay thank you thank you dr witherspoon all right so we are at our finance committee report and i am now officially convening the 2020

133levy public hearing this public hearing is being held due to the district's intent to adopt and aggregate levy 2.99 percent in excess of the 2019 levy ms modino did you publish notice of this hearing yes we did on october 30th 2020 thank you the proposed levy will provide funds to support the usual expenses of evanston township high school an amount in excess of a 2.99 percent overall increase is to be levied to ensure that our extension base increases by the tax cap cpi of 2.3 percent plus any new property i don't believe anyone um submitted any desire to present testimony thank you so much do you have any additional comments i do have a few slides for you and then we can take any board questions uh at that time during the slides or afterwards

134i'm going to share my screen i promise this won't be too long okay you all can see that right yes okay great so uh thank you again madam president this is the 2020 tax levy hearing the board will be actually passing this item at the next board meeting in december so like i said i just have a few slides the first one is with some of the important dates as i mentioned on october 30th we did publish the legal notice tonight we're doing the public hearing which is called truth and taxation for the 2020 tax levy uh at the december board meeting which is the 14th the levy will be adopted and then i'm not really sure what that's going to look like this year normally i make an annual trek down to the cook

135county offices but we we will be filing that levy either in person or remotely by december 29th which i believe is the last tuesday in december so there are a lot of technical terms i'm not going to read this entire slide i know it's been a long meeting but i i do want to give you the high points um there are two parts to the levy one is kind of the normal operating levy or corporate levy and then the debt service portion the debt service portion is always levied by the county for the exact amount that's needed to service our debt uh which as you all know is capped in cook county so that's an automatic levy uh based on what our obligations are and then the rest of the levy uh the increase is

136really determined by the consumer price index we'll get into a little bit more about that in a later slide sorry about that um and then there are items called special purpose levies but they're they're also part of the overall levy itself so uh based on when our fiscal year starts and ends our budget consists of two different levies or two different levy amounts the first is the second half or largest portion which is 55 of the previous year's levy the second is the spring which is the first half of next year's levy so two levy revenue numbers exist in our budget book every year we started to simplify it we just call it spring and tax rather than calculating which years levy it's based on so you do see spring sorry spring and fall in

137our budget book for the levies we are subject to tax caps which limits the amount of our taxation and it's an amount that's based on the prior year and the increase is the lesser of the prior year cpi which is determined every december or five percent um in in my time definitely at eths i have not seen anything close to five percent so that that would have been uh many many years ago our 2020 levy cap rate is 2.3 which is based on the cpi that was determined last december it's a blended rate so the previous one was 1.9 so if you add those together and and average them it's a 2.1 average and that's what our increase is limited to the reason that we publish a levy increase of 2.99 or request the levy

138increase it's actually three percent when you include that debt service piece um it is a way to make sure that we capture everything that's allowable by law from that 2.3 percent uh cpi increase but it also is the way that we collect taxes on any new property and evanston's been fortunate to have some new property we always want to make sure that we capture those new buildings that are going up so that's why the levy amount is actually a little bit higher than we'll probably actually see this also incorporates expiring tiffs which we don't have any this year so uh when all the levies are added in this does not include the debt service it's just over 75.1 million almost 75.2 million which again is subject to those caps from uh with an increase from

139last year's tax and then the debt service piece is just under three million so on an average home in evanston valued at approximately four hundred thousand dollars our our portion of the increase would amount to about 6 500 so 2019 was a reassessment year in evanston many of you probably noticed that those assessments went up pretty high i'm not sure exactly where this falls now but i had heard some discussion it was probably spring summer that there may be some reassessment of all property i think it was primarily due to some high assessments on commercial property but but that could be a possibility it really for us it just kind of shifts how the pie is made up because for us it's really a pie um so we're still capped at that cpi increase no

140matter what happens with the reassessment values in our area have really increased in in the past couple of reassessments we do know that but it is important as i said to remember that we do levy for a dollar amount which which we are subject to those um you know relatively low increases we don't have the taxing ability for example that the city of evanston would or a home rule entity where they can decide really what that increase is and and raise taxes higher than the cpi if they want to we don't have that ability uh just a reminder we had um the washington national tiff closed a couple of years ago we don't have any major tips closing anytime soon in evanston there are still uh i can't remember i think five active tips in

141evanston it's five or six um our joint review board which is all the um taxing districts the city um the schools oakton some of the other taxing bodies uh meet every year typically it's in november this year it will be december so i'll be going to that meeting um i was gonna say at the city but everything's virtual on december 10th so we have that coming up so that's it just wanted to kind of give you the um the basics of our tax levy there's really no surprise um nothing out of the ordinary uh like i said no major tips or anything going on right now so um you know the only thing i guess i would just say uh looking forward is of course depending on how things shake out with the consumer price

142index this year which we'll find out sometime next month that will determine how things look for us with any increase for next year okay that's my that's everything i have thank you are there any questions from the board always a very clear presentation mary thank you so much you're welcome i tried to keep it short is there any further testimony hearing no further testimony i now declare this hearing closed thank you again mary all right we are at action items the first action item is approval of the lgbtq plus month resolution and i believe gretchen you're going to read that for us first tapped out and unmute myself um so i'm reading this in uh november even though pride month is actually june um lgbtq plus history month was last month so we're just doing

143a little catch up here and then we'll get this regularly on our calendar yes we will every year our resolution is titled lgbtq month resolution whereas the struggle for acceptance simple human dignity and equality under the law for lgbtq plus people is evidenced by the dedicated advocates and allies who endeavor to create a more inclusive society and whereas june 2020 commemorated the 50th anniversary of the first pride parade which came one year after the stonewall uprising six nights of riots sparked when lgbtq plus people led by transgender women of color like marsha p johnson and sylvia rivera resisted police harassment and brutality during an early morning bar raid this historic moment served as a catalyst for the lgbtq plus rights movement in the united states and around the world and whereas the decades since have

144been one of struggle and celebration for the lgbtq plus community despite increased support and acceptance lgbtq plus young people still face many challenges and whereas the evanston township high school district 202 board recognizes the urgency of its charge to foster a responsive caring and inclusive culture where all feel valued supported and hopeful the evanston township high school board appreciates the many contributions made by lgbtq plus students educators staff and families to the vibrancy of the broader school community evanston township high school district 202 has a richly diverse lgbtq plus community that includes people from all walks of life who should be able to live without fear prejudice discrimination or violence now therefore be a resolve that the evanston township high school district 202 board on behalf of the students educators and families of evanston township

145high school does hereby proclaim that june 2020 was lgbtq plus pride month in evanston township high school and urges all to respect and honor our diverse community and to build a culture of inclusivity and equity not only during lgbtq plus pride month but during the other 11 months of the year as well thank you can i have a motion for approval please go moved second roll call please you're muted cathy kathy your mute i'll get this eventually um who made the motion please and who seconded it pat one cell in motion monique ii thank you okay um all right low day yes livingston yes bonsail yes parsons yes rolowitz yes to carriage she's having connection problems so she had to did she nod her head or yeah she is currently having connection problems she's not

146here she's not here right now all right savage williams yes you all right thank you that motion passed all right the next item is approval of resolution for supplementary debt services our service levy elmo oh i just i thought someone was going to discuss it no no no no we're going right to the motion in the second that speeds things up that's good um okay and who moved it first i you know i'm new at this pat mancell made the motion did we get a second i can second it gretchen second thank you can we have a roll call please laude yes livingston yes mancell parsons yes rolowitz yes is to terrace back no she's not backing up savage williams yes okay thank you the next item is approval of the school report card the

147mood who said that monique i'm sorry that's okay okay okay liz all right can i just ask a question on this one before the vote sorry kathy to throw you off there tell me why it is that we that we have to we have to approve this report card when it's when it's frankly so particularly unhelpful given the lack of information contained within it this year especially this year yeah it's state law by law uh we we have to present it in public to the board and the board has to vote approval okay thank you eric i think i asked the same question every year but i appreciate it i i think i i think we probably said for sure yeah all right okay um laude yes livingston yes mancell yes persons yes rolowitz yes

148to territorism there savage williams yes thank you next item is approval of resolution authorizing commencement of vaping litigation well this was news to me is somebody moving it i'm moving monique moved i confirmed pat mancell second thank you laude yes livingston yes mancell parsons yes rolowitz yes kuteric no savage williams yes how much money do we spend on dealing with this kathy the meeting is late sorry sorry okay the next item is the consent agenda which which consists of approval of minutes from october 12 2020 closed session meeting october 12 2020 regular meeting treasurer's report from september 2020 approval of bills personnel agenda appointments to staff safety change in status stipends leaves of absence maternity paternity certified support staff and engineer resignation certified support staff retirement support staff nutrition services memorandum of understanding support staff

149and settlement agreement support staff i move that we pass the consent agenda so gretchen made the motion i know and then well i'll give it to pat this time um all right laude yes livingston yes monsall parsons yes rolowitz yes savage williams yes and to terence is back oh so how did she vote on this one yes sorry my apologies for my connection no that's fine i didn't see you in the you know not sure who's letting me in every time i ask i've been dropped many times so okay okay the the next item for approval is um personnel addendum appointments to staff support staff stipends and memorandum of understanding from the teacher's counsel so moved wait a minute i've lost a piece of paper um okay and that was and what was the topic

150i'm very sorry personnel addendum monique okay monique made the motion and liz did you second it oh pat mancell would listen that's fine okay lady yes thank you livingston yes montsell parsons yes rolowitz yes to terence yes savage williams yes i see that actually was part of the consent agenda that was the confusion sorry about that you want that printer doesn't come under consent it does it should have come under the consent agenda i just i stopped reading and i should have continued to read it thank you i just need to do things correctly okay so we are at old and new business does anybody have any old or new business to present you sure gretchen okay all right um so we are at a closing uh can i have a motion for adjournment please

151adjourn all in favor say aye aye this meeting is adjourned at 10 o'clock hey we almost got before 10. thank you all very much that's what i was aiming for you