001right should be good I call to order the April 14th 2022 Committee of the whole meeting of the Board of Education of Hinsdale Township High School District 86 we are meeting in the Hinsdale South library and the time is 5:2 PM m p will please call member Walker here member hman here member James here member Hansen here member h here member letho here member Waters here is there a motion to make the February 4 2022 Clos session recording available to the board members for their review in today's Clos session so move is there a second okay we will not uh move forward with that uh may I have a motion to adjourn to close session for the discussion of the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of employees and discussion of minutes of meetings
002lawfully closed under the open meetings act for purposes of approval of the minutes by the public body so mov second motion held second James will you please call the role member Walker I member hman I member James I member Hansen hi member H hi member 11th hi member Waters motion carries the board will now adjourn to close session please note that the board will take action following our Clos session I did take the train yesterday thought was motion 6:09 p.m. and the board now reconvenes the Open Session of the April 14th 2022 Committee of the whole meeting please stand if you are able and join me in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance pled to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible
003with liy and justice for all our principles and student Liaisons will now provide the board with latest news information and updates from their schools thank you um we're going to start this evening um recognizing hinel South leaders in both activities and Athletics who had this phenomenal and outstanding performance in the spring season I'm going to start this evening by introducing Kathy lenion our mock trial [Applause] coach good evening uh it's my pleasure uh tonight to present it's my pleasure to present Awards to two students tonight uh each year the Illinois State Bar Association uh provides materials for every mock trial team in the state to to try a case this year it was Cameron Mercer versus smart forensics Incorporated it was a negligence case um about a forensic summer camp in in what went wrong
004um before I present the outstanding uh uh Awards to these two students I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge that uh mock trial is a true team event and as much as these young ladies and they certainly did um shine that day and and uh help our team our entire team's efforts allowed them to do that as well uh the entire team is a pleasure to work with they are driven hardworking students I'm so proud of them and I hope they're so proud of themselves um but tonight I have two awards that the isba uh issued last month when we competed in our our state event and the first one goes to Anastasia galinsky she earned this award for outstanding presentation as a Mack trial attorney Anastasia cross-examines for us and it is like
005watching a lion devour its prey it's both very impressive and a little scary at the same time and she's phenomenal at it as well as delivering a closing argument and so Anastasia congratulations our second award goes to Yen Millan uh she was a witness for us and this award is is for her outstanding presentation as M trial witness she played Endo endocrinologist Dr Quinn Lawrence in our our um presentation and if she doesn't have a future in law she certainly does in medicine because you would have thought there was a real doctor sitting in the room so yeah you did a wonderful job and [Applause] congratulations the next um sponsor I'd like to introduce is a Ashley your asley is going to talk about our business professionals Association BPA um and their performance at State
006and Nationals we good evening I'm Ashley as Arwin said and I would first like to just say thank you for having us here tonight to honor um my BPA kids business Professionals of America um it's definitely a special Club to me I am a of H South I competed in it here and now um I'm the sponsor for The Last 5 Years um this year was our most successful year we had 15 kids make it to State um and then our most ever moving on to Nationals in person um in May and Dallas so that's very exciting especially um we've had two seniors who placed first in state the past two years aush patal over here on my right um and Nicholas mcha who's not here tonight but will finally be able to go in
007person in Nationals um like they've are in the past two years as well um BPA if you guys don't know we compete in all different business um activities we have advanced accounting interview skills they make resume cover letters um fundamental spreadsheets business law and ethics all different things that kind of give them a variety of real life things they could do in their future um I will say they put a lot of time in outside of school as well making those presentations working as a team um we compete in team events individual and testing events um and overall I just couldn't be more proud of all of my students off here um we're heading to Nationals in may just like I I said to Dallas um and overall we're just super excited once again to
008be in person and to honor all my students here tonight thank [Applause] you thank you Ashley congratulations everyone um next from the world of Athletics I'd like to introduce coach Mike morat and Coach Joe Maisy um they are here tonight to say a few words about Garrick Bolly member of our boys basketball team who is recently named to the three a All State team good evening guys um my name is Joe um like Ashley I'm also a hornet Alum so it's been an honor to be able to coach in the Hornet basketball program a program that gave so much for me is when I played here um so it's my honor tonight to introduce Garrett Bolly Garrett was named to the ibca 3A allate team this year and so I've coached a variety of roles
009with the basketball program the past couple years and when I first got in Garrett was a sophomore and it was interesting to see Garrett's role grow throughout the years because when he was a sophomore to tell you the truth he was only told to rebound pass the ball and play good defense and as he developed he developed not only on the court but also off the court as a leader and a great teammate this past year we were a very young basketball team a lot of Juniors the sophomore and two freshman up on Varsity so Garrett had the role of being a mentor to those younger players and I could not have asked him to do a better job this year so I'm very proud of all the things he did this year do a
010great job he's going to Hillsdale College next year to play basketball so I'm very proud of this guy right [Applause] here thank you congratulations to everyone um i' now like to introduce for leaz on Jenny Panton who's going to share more good news from hille South this evening good evening and thank you for the opportunity to speak on behalf of the accomplishments of South this past month first off I would like to congratulate Hinsdale South theater group for taking third place finals in drama their their performance of Mean Girls torch song Trilogy was amazing and we thank Mr yusa for his hard work a special a special congratulations goes out to the six seniors who R named All State actors and technicians South Science Olympiad team is State Bound we are proud of the hard
011work and commitment of all students and faculty that support this amazing team and good luck spring sports are back and in full swing the boys baseball team is currently seven and four with a big win over downers North this past weekend the boys volleyball team is hitting the ground running with a 65 record and two all tournament team selects from their Argo invite Quinn Mar and sophomore and Cole corus senior a girl soccer team is currently 4-4 and softball 2 and3 we cannot wait to see where these athletes end their season one note that is not in my report but I would love to highlight is our National Honor Society induction ceremony yesterday evening in the auditorium we inducted over 50 Hornets into the National Honor Society congratulations to these Hornets on their accomplishments in
012the classroom and through their acts of service upcoming in the hive seniors are buzzing with nothing but College talk we are excited to see where the academic journe of every student continues whether that is University trades or Beyond senior Signing Day is being celebrated on April 28th and I for one cannot wait to see everyone supporting their College colors thank you and let me know if you have any questions good evening Bill Walsh principal H Central High School like to turn the floor over to Christine to present the Hinsdale Central good news report Christine the floor is yours good evening thank you so much for the opportunity to represent Central and share our past accomplishments prom is coming up on April 30th seniors are getting super excited about going to the field museum and I
013know I'm going to be looking at all the exhibits especially Sue many seniors got their dresses and suits and are planning hair appointments people are planning to go all out and a senior I talked to from Devil's Advocate says she loves the field museum so she's really excited there's also an after prom on a boat that students can get a ticket to for student council just held elections and finished up voting the new Executive Board of student council was announced along with the other senators from all four grades congratulations to all who made stuco also on March 23rd the student council put on Banana Split day any student that brought a banana or bought one for a dollar was able to get free ice cream and some chocolate syrup I had one and even added
014a cookie on top and it was an 11 out of 10 a freshman C I worked alongside said it was awesome and he convinced all of his friends to get Banana Splits too Ramadan began on April 2nd and will end on May 2nd Pinel Central has been incredibly supportive of their students fasting during this time they accommodated students by providing spaces to work during lunch and allow them an option to go to PE resource and not participate in PE it's great to see that Central is taking action to create a welcoming School environment and actively promoting inclusivity to keep all students in mind the new learning staircase is a common area where students can learn hang out relax and recharge themselves and their Chromebooks a senior I spoke with in my AP site class as
015she tried going Wednesday morning and it was so packed she couldn't even get a seat it's awesome to see that students are enjoying their new place to hang out and the referendum in action feel free to ask me any questions and as always more details are in my report thank you thank you very much U thank you both for those reports we will now move into the uh audience communication section of our meeting the board will now hear audience comments for up to um 33 minutes speakers will have three minutes to address the board speakers who do not have the opportunity to address the board during our first public participation agenda item we'll have the opportunity to offer comments during the second public participation agenda item our Board of Education protocol states that board meetings
016are meetings of the board held in public not open Forum Town Hall meetings board members will not engage the public during public comment the board will keep this in mind as we conduct our meetings allowing the public to provide input at the time allotted on the agenda to ensure that multiple voices of the community inform board deliberations when the board deliberates it will be a time for the board to listen and learn from each other taking the public input into consideration not a time to re-engage with the public the board will consistently abide by our formal processes relating to this issue so that all persons are treated fairly and equally our first speaker is Ivon mayor quote she played you end quote those are the words someone in this room texted to Keith bachal Chief
017Information officer during the March 24th board meeting shortly after he texted the person at 7:48 p.m. regarding the February 4th 2022 board meeting video as the entire Community heard him State publicly at that meeting in response to board member lethal's questions he made a mistake in not posting the video on the d86 board meeting video archive and he agreed to do so after the meeting none of you raised any objections or concerns when he took one for the team in admitting this mistake did you no instead apparently discussions began by text message among some of you at this table who is the she that played balt was it Miss lethal Miss Apprentice Miss Walker Miss Kowski if not who who wrote the text message that shows disdain and disrespect towards the quote sheep end quote
018in response to my recent foyer requests only Mr bal's text messages were produced the district is legally required to produce all text messages from the phones of both parties especially since they were texting during a board meeting while they were supposed to be on the job those text messages were public records created during a public meeting and should have been turned over it is ironic that the anonymous person who wrote she played you use those words since Under The Apprentice Administration a series of expensive obstructionist games have been in continue to be played by Apprentice kadasi Walker Attorney Steve Ricker all paid for with taxpayer dollars I've said it before and I'll say it again enough is enough what is it going to take for you to do the right thing and demand that all
019the text messages be produced immediately find out who was talking smack about the she that is referenced and then take action against this employee for their inappropriate unprofessional and disrespectful conduct and if you find out that the text messages was were destroyed fire that person for intentional destruction of public records a violation of the Illinois local records retention laws a violation that might even be a class 4 felony thank [Music] you our next speaker is Richard Morton thank you good evening I've been a resident of the Hinsdale d86 attendance area since 1979 and tonight you will be trying to elect a new president for that office from my vantage point you've demonstrated a poor record and the last four presidents M Walker Mr Camden the Resolute in First Amendment Mr camman Camden uh Miss poock
020and Mr Carpenter all have fallen under Tammy's influence and have become core leaders of the d86 Board of Education the influence of this Apprentice uh is so pervasive uh that it needs to be reigned in take her pursuit of equity in that all student groups are negatively affected by content grading and only God knows what else and the metrics that I've heard you all state can be skewed to make the results suggest Improvement when they are not for example a top performing students are hurt but they have the resources they have the abilities to recover maybe the lower performing students have fewer resources and OPP opportunities to help them post d86 and will they ever recover I don't know but Tammy's Equity Pursuit even included scheming with a diversity consultant and manipulating the community's clergy
021what a cynical approach to get her equity and yet the d86 board members have flocked in support of C certainly current members Walker hurman held in Hansen are all clearly under her spell and tonight I hope an antibiotic can be found to treat this disease and d86 can begin the long journey back to where each student has their best chance for growth and leaves d86 being the best student they can be thank [Applause] you our next speaker is Kim Naro I am the Community member who filed the complaint against Tammy Prentice after she called me unsolicited with a one-way Tye rate Apprentice called me during dinner on November 2nd 20121 at 5:19 p.m. and told me I had crossed the line I had broken student confidentiality she didn't know who shared information with me she
022told me not to speak to listen this is a one-way conversation what precipitated PR's call when a p Committee Member told me that an unnamed Central student broke down in tears over the unbearable stress her parents and peers put on her I reached out to a Dean who I knew was on Pac she left early so I reached out to Dr Chris Covino to make sure that d86 provided appropriate supports for the student students continue to be isolated and I didn't want her pain to go unnoticed especially since both my kids have lost friends to Suicide during Co the PAC committee members comment about the raw emotions remains posted on Facebook I wonder if Miss prenis approached her I filed the complaint against Tammy prenis because community members should not be afraid to speak their
023mind and expose the inappropriate and unprofessional actions of the superintendent my complaint to the board the following day asked for the board to discuss Apprentice behavior on November 22nd 2021 19 days later president Walker responded that the board have fully discussed the matter and have addressed the issue raised but failed to provide resolution so I filed a formal complaint on December 3rd 2021 on March 2nd 119 days after the incident I met with Jamar or and Kevin null the attorneys from Robin Schwarz Law Firm conducting the investig ation I knew it would be a he said she said however I was not the only Community member who received angry phone calls from Apprentice that week I know four others and two Comm community members who were left in tears they feared retribution so I asked
024the attorney if we could speak with them confidential confidentially but they responded they could not even as the complaintant I am not privy to the robin Schwarz investigation report but it ended in a disgustingly predictable 34 vote three find fault where were the other four the board majority I stand here one of many who have received intimidating phone calls it wasn't the first time Tammy CR has called me out of anger but I assure you it is her last in 2019 when I posted a clearly identified rumor on Facebook that pren has plan to eliminate GN AR classes she called denied it and berated me for spreading false rumors but she eliminated GN AR classes anyway I'm stunned by the board majority's inability to be impartial and do what's right by sweeping my complaint under
025the rug the board majority condoned brenis pension to intimidate people who don't agree with her and confirm community members fear of retaliation the community deserves the superintendent who cares about us [Applause] our next speaker is Mary odow um respectfully I will SE my time to another genten D thank you our next speaker is Dale cleaver new uh new setup here we can't sit down anymore I guess um if you want a chair I can pull one up that's you know I think I rather if you don't mind it's I got some notes and get them all twisted up have a desk be thanks so much [Music] good evening my name is Dale CL I've been a resident of Hil for over 30 years I want to thank you for your service on the board and
026thank you for allowing me the opportunity to share my thoughts with you tonight my thoughts are shaped in part by my upbringing I'm what's known as a Navy brat I never served in the military myself but I was born on a naval air station into a family with a deep military tradition my father was a career naval officer graduated from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis and saw Combat Action in some of the most pivotal B battles in the Pacific Theater of World War II his brother my uncle was a career officer marine officer and he was 200 yards from the flag that was raised on evil gima I have a first cousin that served on the White House detail and Marines I have another cousin who attended the United States Military Academy at
027West Point and that cousin is what brings my uh thoughts to Bear here um at West Point the school's honor code is literally etched in stone it states a canette a Cadet will not lie cheat steal or tolerate those who do I want you to focus on those last five words I'll get to that in a minute this is a two-prong test my law professors would say you may not lie cheat or steal nor will you tolerate the people that do it's simple powerful clear language that leaves no room for doubt no room for excuses no room for equivocation the first prong is pretty clear if if a Cadet and and this is actual guidance from the West Point character education program and character integration Advisory Group uh they say if if a Cadet deliberately
028deceives another by stating an untruth or by any direct form of communication to include the telling or include the telling of a partial truth or the vague or am ambiguous ambiguous I'm sorry use of information or language with intent to deceive or mislead that's the first part um the second part is Toleration Cadets violate the Honor Code by tolerating if they fail to report an unresolved incident with uh the honor code and uh they failed to do that within a reasonable period of time so the first comment I don't know this hit that button on the I hit it thanks yep um you know so the first the first prong is very clear and it's is clear as a sunny spring day that we had today the superintendent prce failed to tell the whole truth
029on on January 12th when she read that letter that contained her undisclosed alterations you all know the facts at West Point this princess's conduct would be regarded as a clear violation of the first prong of the honor code but it's a second prong that I really like to focus on tonight and that's tolerating lying or deceptive conduct it recognizes that persons who tolerate or accept who excuse deceptive conduct are equally culpable culpable as the original deception at this point it appears that this board the majority of the board at any rate is tolerating the superintendent's unethical conduct calls for removal of superintendent prce began in late January and this board has remained silent for two and a half months meanwhile over as of today I believe 1500 individuals have signed a petition calling for the
030removal of premise that's unprecedented so after 2 and 1/2 months without any action I think it's fair to conclude that the majority of this board is tolerating the deceptive practices of Miss premise in West Point if you go more than 24 hours you're deemed to be tolerating this is ridiculous two and a half months of course a school board is not the same as a college student but I think most people would agree that when the board sits on its hands for two and a half months it's tolerating the violations of the public trust that have occurred and therefore by that Toleration the port is equally guilty of violating the public trust so in closing I would implore this board to stop tolerating deception among its leadership start exercising your most important duty and that
031is oversight of the superintendent I implore you start conducting the business of District 86 according to our Honor Code thank you tonight thank [Applause] you all right our next speaker is naen Gilbert I think I'm going to use Dale's chair no one um okay um not long ago I ran into a friend whose son like mine is a High School Junior and like my son has always hated school that is until this year what's different his parents attributed to their son playing on his high school's JB golf team interestingly enough her son is not a golfer she confided that he's terrible he's the worst on the team and often the worst when they play other schools but it doesn't matter now he feels like he's part of something he feels like he belongs and he
032feels like he has a place our discussion reminded me of other discussions I've had with other parents in essence all the things some of high schools claim to do to reduce stress all the claims they make that they understand the importance of our kids social emotional needs and all of their CL claims of a Kinder gentler school because of the pandemic is live service for a large number of high school students the different M Difference Maker is inner Scholastic sports sports often make a powerful contribution to a students's well-being their sense of connection to the school community and their engagement in academics researchers have found that schools often have a blind spot when it comes to the benefits of high school sports and students's mental health the peer-to-peer connection students get from playing on a
033high school sports team far outweigh what a team gets from mindfulness coping and self-care programs conducted Within in and outside of high schools the pandemic has messed with the well-being of many students High School sports help establish normaly Foster social connections and maximize academic achievements so that students see school as a place of safety and belonging in studies of high school Youth and suicide risk Sports participation was significantly association with a reduced risk of feeling hopeless and suicide behaviors and this was true for both male and female athletes even while controlling for levels of physical activity International Studies have replicated these results moreover participation in in Scholastic Sports was F found to be significantly more beneficial than participation in intramural or club sports similar results were found for educationally vulnerable youth but what do I
034want or why am I here it's simple more opportunities for our kids to play on interner Scholastic sports teams of their choice there's nothing in the ihsa rules that prohibits schools from having a sophomore or jv2 or jv3 team whatever there's also nothing that prevents a coach from allowing an athlete who is injured and has medical clearance to practice with a team while he gets back to his former form money shouldn't be a problem since parents pay for our kids to play anyway um cler's always the candy sales um don't destroy our kids because they're not destined for the WNBA or the MLB instead change the trajectory of their lives for the better and let them be a part of something thank [Applause] you our next speaker is Angie sori [Music] hello board thank you
035for your service um it has now been actually 91 days Dale since our own superintendent helped write that's three months uh she helped write and then read someone else's letter publicly at the January 13th 2022 d86 board meeting in that letter as we all know superintendent Apprentice herself added two long defamatory sentences about Hinsdale Prentice did not reveal her role in crafting the letter before she read it we've had no explanation or apology from prentis nor have we had any explanation or apology from the four majority board members Walker or the three H's hurman Hansen held who refused to discuss the matter any further what they don't realize is that these actions along with the behindth scenes actions that Apprentice has taken to try and jockey to keep her job all revealed via Freedom of
036Information releases have now destroyed the Public's trust in the superintendent and now destroyed the public trust in the board at the last meeting President Walker for example tried to clear the record on falsehoods that appar apparently were floating out in public about her it's interesting that Walker wants to clear falsehoods about herself but yet she has no interest in clearing falsehoods about the superintendent the one employee of the district that she was elected by us to monitor instead president Walker put these falsehoods upon herself and they've been revealed via Foya the facts are within Foya 10:30 where one single clergy leader reaches out to president Walker first asking if she can help the board president Walker immediately forwards the email from clergy not to the board but straight to apprentice apprentice then proceeds to frantically
037schedule a group meeting with more clergy during the time that she is delaying the Foya that she knows will reveal that she helped write the letter all of this is happening behind the scenes Walker is helping her out she's participating in the charade now she even helped hide the two4 special meeting video in a foia rather than posting it on the regular meeting log going so far is to say that special meetings are not recorded when in fact a substitute videographer was sitting right in that seat right in that chair on February 4th being paid to record the meeting the meeting is supposed to be on the law the person sitting in that chair on the 24th of March said they would put it on the log it was put on and then it was
038taken off what is going on and who is aiding and abetting Apprentice it needs to [Applause] stop the next speaker is Katon melon I'm commenting tonight on the fitness of the board president to continue her present role A change is in order the board president has tolerated an even fostered failures to address serious problems examples include the Myriad of of unanswered questions raised by the valr matter and the superintendent's related misconduct the president Dodges these questions by appeals to majority rule and yes we have four members who vote as a block to obstruct legitimate issues this then translates to referral to Roberts Rules of Order and majority rule so I was curious about these rules and so I read them here is what the Roberts rules commentary says parliamentary law rests on certain principles perhaps
039the most important is the principle of Rights the right of the majority ultimately to rule the right of the minority to be heard and the right of the individual to participate in the decisionmaking process there is also a requirement of part elamentary courtesy with proper decorum being understood majority rule is only one of the components of proper parliamentary procedure what about the right of the minority to be heard again and again the president quashes discussion and Smothers legitimate issues there is an arresting failure to understand that as part of parliamentary decorum All Views must be heard this is healthy and essential to a proper functioning board and there are numerous examples of depriving individuals the right to participate ging down a kid who bravely made public comments for small time infractions telling fellow board members
040their requests are not relevant and frustrating their requests for information denying board members even the right to speak by publicly interrupting them all form a pattern of suppression and Leadership without consensus building the president may be new to running meetings of public bodies and ill equipped to handle these matters but during her tenure there is no sign of development and growth there is retrogression let's appoint a president who can unify a divided board [Applause] hi thank you all board members for your service I hope we are not going to forget about the investigation board member James called for on nutritional inequality in the school in the lunch program um if true this would be a very good reason for a mass display of outrage um we're at the investigation stage but it shouldn't exist and
041how come a true counterpart high school oening high school in New York can offer Universal free breakfast and lunch wouldn't that be easier nobody stigmatized no no one has to go hungry um next I would also like to suggest that as we equalize course opportunities we do this in some cases in um smaller courses by combining classes via technology and a teacher switching locations combo classes would promote a one District experience and one District bonding so I I think that that should be one of the Creative Solutions that we use and and finally um the community was told we were having the biology first pathway restored and it would it came out uh um from various sources that there is a new Biology book we um concerned families are investigating this book we all hope
042it's going to be fine we know teachers supplement the book but the community will have questions that should be respected because after the attempt to force pitu on all students and the claims that were made that turned out not to be true we all have to understand that the the community especially those concerned for St education will be skeptical and should have some opportunity to examine this examine the book and have their questions answered um my focus is on stem because it is so sequential and cumulative and even one year of poor instruction will reverberate down the road the only exceptions to that statement are students so brilliant that they can fill in the gaps for themselves and also so emotionally mature and well connected that they can do that um to water down stem
043curriculum most hurts the kids who most depend on their Public School for Good curriculum so we hope it's going to be okay but um the stem concerned Community will will need to trust with verify thank you our next speaker is Alan pan okay in the last meeting I wasn't here I saw it on the video okay Mrs Walker you talk about the meeting related to the face group leaders so yeah you know out of curiosity I just searched online for some information regarding that meeting and found this printed ad on the newspaper uh some sometime in February so for the inst newspaper in the ad it says acknowledging that our faces have been used to exclude and oppress we will speak of a more excellent way love with diversity equity and inclusion so shocked I
044was UN vacation when I watch this shocked is the least I can say describing my feeling seeing this act especially seeing the words the fa have been used to exclude and oppress so I just want to share some of my family fa and values We Believe In Harmony fairness respect Family Value diligence honesty Integrity responsibility accountability and most importantly sympathy and dignity to those in needs so I I'm pretty sure this is not just an Asian thing everyone here who have a facei share this with us so I just wonder how are these values used to oppress and exclude I don't get it and let me tell you what the real oppressing is when students are so afraid of repercussion to express opinion in the classroom when the student get harassed and bullied for not
045agreeing with so so-called the common belief and when the other students are so scared to stand up to him and also when the students are forced to accept a narrative and propaganda item which they don't agree with and if they say something they they have been called racist and some kind of phobia this is oppressing I have to say at home we are never afraid of discussing sensitive topics we are Against Racism we are against any kind of oppressing behavior and I heard about Dr ping Dr ping the director of diversity is here thank you for coming to the meeting today I also want to tell you our opinion as Asian group our believe in thei we believe so don't get us wrong we are a firm believer of diversity equity and inclusion this is
046what make United States and thec community so great and powerful and but we believe in diversity of talents and opinions equal opportunity not equal outcome and inclusion of everyone's difference and opinions you might have heard what's happening in Shanghai they are forcing everyone to accept One Voice one opinion and a single accepted value otherwise they will jail you they starve you this is what I call indoctrination not inclusion this should never happen in the US and can I just to be one last sentence and lastly Mrs Walker thank you for your service well I'd like you to do everyone favor please do not run for the president again what you have done to Ethan on February 18th special board meeting that's that's totally unacceptable and that has badly damaged the reputation of v86 not just
047on Facebook but everywhere including on YouTube and some other places so thank you our next is you our next speaker is John sarl thanks I assume you met me I generally pronounce it surway um first I would like to thank you I I you know do recall that this past fall uh with some controversy you did um act uh in the interests of what you campaigned up upon as new Lally elected board members and uh would fit with the direction of the community uh to reject a single sequence for mathematics uh you also uh did as Linda pointed out um act uh with in the best interest of all students by allowing or continuing to allow multiple options for science Pathways and I think those were both excellent decisions that reflected the will of the
048community as well as your campaign um I'd further like to thank you for the many many hours that uh board members devote to things like the policy committee I know that the folks on who do serve on that take it seriously and the reason they do is because they know policies enable the board to act not because of individual whims but because there is a frame work for moving forward with sometimes controversial and other times routine matters but it is codified and that's an important role I'd also like to point out that in a recent well relatively recent December of of 21 uh edweek article there was a survey of Educators um and what they thought was appropriate for curriculum selection the vast majority of the folks surveyed uh 51% said that parents should be
049somewhat involved and an additional 16% of believe that parents should be very involved unfortunately those same respondents said you know the majority answer was that 39% thought parents were very uninvolved and the reason I think they are involved is because instead of setting a welcoming sort of collaborative environment too often there is um an environment of hostility and rejection of anyone who does not wear the mantle of expertise um I myself thought of commenting last year on the chemistry selection text um and technically I am an expert I am a certified chemistry teacher but I didn't want to add to to the negative cations of of conflict however um in reviewing the current situation where we do have very different levels of science being proposed but a single text book I think that we should
050try to determine if that's truly in the best interest to rely on the whims of individuals to add the supplemental material as opposed to endorsing different textual materials for different levels thank [Applause] you thank you and that concludes the uh public participation section of the meeting um at this time the board will now receive reports from Dr pay the director of instructional equity and David Latino the director of instruction and innovation good evening superintendent Apprentice members of The District 86 board my name is David Latino I'm the director of instruction and Innovation here in District 86 I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to speak with you tonight about my role as director in District sorry technology problems it's impressive um the term Innovation is often used to describe the creation of new products
051and services Innovation when used in the context of education has a different meaning in this case it describes the constant Improvement and iteration of practice that helps us hone our skills and learn from others Innovation can take two forms top down and bottom up top down Innovation can take the form of instructional practices or initiatives such as Blended learning or the inclusion of technology in the classroom environment in the case of bottom up Innovation the driving force tends to be problems of practice that cause the teacher to ask deeper questions or seek Solutions there's truly no better approach to innovation because focusly focusing exclusively on a top- down approach could alienate teachers by neglecting to honor their experience whereas focusing only on bottom up Innovation leads to problem solving and isolation siloed practices and makes
052coherence difficult to achieve as a result our goal is to support Innovation at all levels to promote a clear and coherent vision and value the experience and insight of our highly skilled staff in District 86 we're fortunate to have a team of Highly qualified instructional coaches to help promote classroom level Innovation our seven instructional Innovation coaches are teachers first using the experience from their own classrooms to inform their instructional coaching not only do they help facilitate topown Innovation through just in time PD and whole staff professional development but they also work work with individual teachers to co-create classroom level Innovations because District 86 serves a diverse population of students with diverse needs it's more critical than ever that we strive for administrative coherence and Alignment part of my role as director of instruction and Innovation
053is to help facilitate this coherence although I began my career in education as a science teacher having spent 15 years at Hinsdale South as a teacher before taking on my role as director I've been fortunate to be part of many significant changes to instruction in District 86 over the past 6 years each of these items represents a significant shift to instructional practices in District 86 from the incorporation of instructional technology in the classroom environment during our shift to one to a one toone learning environment to our continued work on the Strategic plan now I'd like to shift to the our current and future work while teachers use of instructional technology received a significant boost during the remote and hybrid phases of the covid-19 pandemic we've truly come to appreciate that many aspects of instructional technology
054use will persist in a marriage of our assessment literacy work and instructional technology practices will be continuing staff development that helps bring useful tools to the classroom environment in addition to continuing to provide learning opportunities to our current d86 Educators we also have a commitment to ensuring that future members of our team are able to successfully enter into our onetoone learning environment as such we provide PD to our new teachers providing some essential tools before they enter the classroom in day one to continue PD during their first year and Beyond as you know District 86 has taken deliberate steps to unify our approach to assessment by establishing a common approach to how we communicate what students know and can do we've laid a strong Foundation this work will continue into the 2022 2023 school year
055with districtwide assessment literacy professional development a team composed of instructional leaders from across District 86 including instructional Innovation coaches department shairs and staff will continue leading these conversations to help promote student involvement in the learning process and student agency while the term Blended learning may have gained widespread attention during the pandemic its roots are actually much deeper Blended learning is an approach to instruction that at its core describes a thoughtful Union of instructional technology with inperson learning during the 2019 2020 school year we began a districtwide introduction to Blended learning for approximately 4 teachers and Department chairs while this introduction served as a very useful and unintended on-ramp to remote and hybrid learning it's our hope that we can continue to develop our capacity to increase student engagement in agency and build stronger relationships with
056our students Dr Payne will talk more about belongingness to our uh with in our Panorama uh student survey results during her presentation while both students and teachers have experienced significant changes to the learning environment in the past decade the pace of change has only been accelerated by the challenges of the pandemic teachers and students Now function in a mediar technology Rich learning environment that has challenged many of the assumptions about how School Works in order to help Educators navigate this new status quo instructional Frameworks like Universal Design for Learning and Blended learning have emerged as approaches to instruction that can provide a coherent consistent instructional framework in an attempt to bridge the work being done by members of the administrative team and the instructional coaches both key members of our Innovation model I've been facilitating
057a book study with both teams the combination of udl and Blended learning helps Encompass the key principles of quality instruction that we seek for all our students in District 86 such as Community Building equity and accessibility finally rethinking our instructional practices can only go so far if our instructional spaces don't match the go 5 strategic plan team has led the effort to physically remodel the classroom spaces to match the instructional changes that have been occurring in District 86 It's Our Hope to support increased instructional flexibility with our classroom design thank you for the opportunity to speak with you tonight I wanted to open up the floor to see if you had any questions on anything that I've spoken about tonight so um when I think of LED learning the first thing that comes to mind
058is somewhat like of the elementary model you know with stations almost um can you kind of give an example for the board and the community of what that maybe plays out in a specific content area at the High schol School level absolutely um one of the benefits of Blended learning is that it is flexible and it kind of exists on the Continuum it can look very similar to what you'd see in an Elementary classroom which is actually um kind of exciting because one of the things that we found is that in the traditional model of instruction most teachers feel rather Limited in their ability to interact with students when they're doing the difficult work because they're up in front and frings the teacher from being up in front of the classroom and allowing them to
059circulate while students are working at different tasks actually increases the opportunity to interact with students and engage with them while they're doing their work much like you'd see in an Elementary classroom and it's actually kind of a refreshing change to the classroom uh teachers find in a report that they feel much more connected with their students and students find that they actually get the help when they need it which of course is the most appropriate uh time to get help when you're engaged in the in the challenging work um springboarding on helping does it also promote um differentiation opportunities within a given classroom absolutely uh the ability to work with a student oneon-one means that you're able to provide them with a different explanation uh additional help um while they're engaged in the work as
060opposed to waiting until the student might come and seek you the next day for help on the on the activity so it does provide uh the kind of contact that uh allows every student to get what they might need from the teacher in the classroom one of the things that you mentioned is um the classroom redesign and how it supports um group work can you also talk a little bit more about the Collaborative Learning spaces as well absolutely um one of the things that we find um has been a hindrance to the uh to collaboration in general is just the furniture um it's very difficult to position as a classroom teacher for 15 years you knew when someone was moving furniture it sounded like a herd of elephants that was ramp paging overhead so in
061trying to be polite we wouldn't do it very often and unfortunately that meant that students weren't able to face each other have good dialogue and get the distance that they needed to have those kinds of discussions so um the ability to move furniture easily uh frankly to move furniture out of the way sometimes that gets in the way has really freed the teachers that are in those currently remodeled spaces um and be able to instruct the way that they'd like to and create class activities that allow students to work together um one of your earlier slides um it references the facilitating of the district level Innovation with just in time professional development and District level professional development can you provide some examples of those that may have been delivered this year oh absolutely um it's
062easier for me to speak to the district level because just in time just to make sure that I'm explaining the term means um I have an issue in my classroom and I'll seek out a coach so those are private conversations uh supporting that teacher in the moment whether it's technology related or instruction I I need some help with this um debate that I want to have with my students and I want to set it up in a certain way so the coaches would work with those teachers individually and um so that's on the end of the spectrum that's very personal uh in terms of District level um we've actually been spending a lot of time um trying to help teachers with the incorporation of tools in the classroom uh you saw maybe some logos but
063uh we're using assessment tools in the classroom one's called Atomic assessments and so we've been leading professional development with small and large groups of teachers um also relating to use of other formative assessment tools that are used in the classroom uh called parek and uh Camy and those tend to be more Technology based but uh we coaches are on call so they will also come to a team meeting and deliver professional development to a team that might need help as well the coaches are those fellow teachers are they yes we have seven coaches they are teachers first they have one release period in their day otherwise they teach four classes and so uh we try to strategically uh schedule them so that there are coaches available most of the time um but they're in all
064areas all the core areas of instruction do you envision that we need or um that we'd want to expand the number of those instructional coaches over the course of time well if you're asking um absolutely uh we actually have fewer coaches than we did a few years ago um and I I think especially as we are undergoing significant shifts in education I will always advocate for additional resources for teachers um I will say to anyone who listen that um we value um providing resources to our students when they need them and I think we need to do the same for our staff one of the things on Blended learning I first became a topic that came up and and not it wasn't quite as fully understood um you know when you look at what you've
065written there um if have problems uh an active engaged learning online active engaged learning in the classroom you know there was a thought oh so they're going to be like they're going to be online for part of the class they're going to be with a teacher you know and that kind of has fed some of the um conversation that we we've had over um even heard a little bit tonight the idea of perhaps well that means that we can have a teacher here and a remote classroom here and flip and that's Blended learning and Blended learning of course in my understanding is is a far larger concept than simply just um half Zoom in person that's correct I I would probably Define the scenario that was explained earlier more as distance learning as opposed to
066Blended um I do think while I'm willing to definitely discuss any model of instruction that can benefit students I think it's important for us to uh maintain at its core the things that we know work well in education and uh one of the things that we've learned and I think to our detriment during the pandemic was the critical importance of relationships in proximity to your students um during remote learning um so I I while I I definitely wouldn't want to make any snap judgments I I'm always cautious to make sure that we're uh continuing to move in a direction that supports what we know works well for our students well you talk about um you know the distance that created I'm sure we'll hear a more impa I know we will about belongingness and that
067does seem to dovetail you know very nice thing to that con and something that in the 2021 school year became a large deficit for you know for students Nationwide not just not just here other questions I just want to say thanks so much Dave this is always helpful and these are my favorite parts of the board meetings and we learn what's going on in our buildings because we're not students we're not there and it's really neat to hear about what's going on so thanks so much thank you so much for the opportunity good evening thank you um just to Echo Dave's Words thank you superintendent Prince um and thank you to the board for allowing us the opportunity to share our work with you so I wanted to start out by um just sharing um
068our guidance that we received from ISB um and so there is the ISB Equity Journey Continuum um and that is an internal tool provided to districts to provide guidance and most importantly to hold schools accountable um for addressing persistent unequal outcomes and so what you will see is um this tool will give us information on different gaps that exist in three specific domains those domains are student learning um learning conditions and elevating Educators and so our ratings could range from one to four with one indicating um the evidence of large gaps and four indicating minimal gaps so that is um State guidance which is in my opinion long overdue um but also research uh purports the importance of uh the powerful impact that that implicit bias has on students opportunity to learn when the attitudes
069and stereotypes that unconsciously affect people's perceptions actions and decisions are not addressed and continuously engaged we will see these biases materialize in five very specific ways and as you can see um it spans from discipline special education mindset tracking and dominant discourse and so what I hope to share with you is very specific data that is very uh uh recent um as recent as our fall 2021 data and what you will see is that all of these components are very closely interrelated um and as you can probably imagine they all stem from number three um our mindsets and our beliefs and those inform one another and so our beliefs will then become our dominant discourse what we believe um sometimes um on the extreme when we are not proactively engaging these mindsets and beliefs these
070become very pervasive um fixed attitudes about students abilities um and their ability to contribute and so I will start by sharing this slide which I hope will work because it is a video here it goes no play well that's okay so I'll just share sorry Kurt boname who did an amazing um audio for us um because math is not my primary language um but basically this video is just it describing the the framework that I hope we can all um speak from as we look through these various slides so what we see here is um a visualization of proportionalities and in this instance disproportionalities and so um if all things are proportionate then we should see um leveled bars those blue and red bars and so what we see in front of us um is
071what our enrollment in special education looks like in d86 and again this is as recent as fall 2021 um and so the Red Bar indicates the percentage of students within that specific demographic who have IEPs and then the blue bar represents the percentage of those students in our entire student body and so what we know is when that red bar is higher than the blue bar there's disproportionality there's over representation and so I will uh ask that as we go through these slides and we look over different compartments of our district that you kind of make observations and and and if you notice Trends or if you notice things that are curious that you'll make note of those things so this is our first slide which looks at identification of special education and you'll see
072the demographics across the bot if you click on the PDF in our board docks the video actually does pop up if you want to try and go back to that I don't know if that there's a difference between the PowerPoint and the PDF there let's take a look at some data that illustrates implicit bias through the disproportionality in special education here in District 86 namely the percentage of students with IEPs in this chart what you see is the percentage of students with IEPs broken down by demographic across the bottom you can see each of the demographics and then within each demographic you see two bars a blue bar and a red bar the blue bar represents the percentage of the student body represented by that demographic for example Asian students make up 17.1% of the
073student body in District 86 while white students make up 63.1% of the student body the Red Bar illustrates the percentage of IEP students made up by that demographic what you'll notice is that in some cases the red bar is higher than the blue bar for example black or African-American students make up 7.5% of the District 86 student body but they account for 16.04% of the students with idps similarly lowincome students make up 12.4% of the student body but they account for more than 23% of the students without IEPs when the red bar is higher than the blue bar it means the demographic is over represented in their percentage of IEPs alternatively in some cases the blue bar is larger than the red bar for instance Asian students make up 17.1% of the student population in
074District 86 but they account for only 8.25% of the population with IEPs this indicates that the Asian demographic is under represented in their percentage of IEP thank you and so now I will um move over to disproportionality that is evidenced in our discipline the same principle applies so again what trends do you see if there's anything curious I encourage you to write it down and just to be clear um when we speak of office discipline referrals that can cover a span um of student conduct um and so these could this could range from student tardiness um this could range from verbal altercations um Defiance so I just want to be clear that this uh includes a range of different behaviors disproportionality and Support classes and so this is specifically focused on academic reading again you
075can see that dis disproportionalities exist among different demographics this is another support class this is supported math algebraic reinforcement and again you can see that there are clear disproportionalities looking at tracking in terms of access to AP courses if we take a look at our AP English content area you can see that there is disproportionality and here is a representation of AP math and again this is fall I'll give you a chance to observe and so um as Dave introduced there's also the concept of belongingness and so we took our Panorama survey results and um just looking at the overall topic of school belongingness um 43% of of our students uh responded favorably um as as if they feel um a sense of belongingness in our district and just to be clear when I say
07643% responded favorably what I mean is 43% of our students either responded um agree or strongly agree and so that's 43% of our students and so if you look to the right of that bar you'll see that that places Us in the low EST percentile and just to uh clarify this is comparatively to all K through 12 schools so this is not specifically um focusing on secondary schools and so below here is just a sample set of specific questions and you can see the percentage of students who responded favorably um so this all falls under school belongingness and so for example that third question how much do you matter to others at this school 37% of our students responded favorably and um the Panorama survey has one um just overall question that's very specific to
077belongingness and connectedness overall how much do you feel like you belong at your school um 55% of our students responded favorably and then what we wanted to do was provide you with a snap shot of what that looks like when we break it down across demographics and so at the bottom you'll see each demographics percentage in terms of favorable responses and that brings me to um our goal one key performance indicators so this is a tool uh that is a part of our online scorecard and um again this just uh meshes with the accountability um that the state is uh prioritizing in terms of addressing these persistent gaps which have existed for decades and so here is one such measure um our district along with all other Illinois districts um will have um a a
078very pointed look at how how our students black students Latin X students lowincome students are performing on the SAT compared to their in District peers and so um you can see that right now we have a 220 Point difference um in terms of score and the goal is for our Target uh the goal is for our score to be zero which would indicate that there is no Gap and so um what I hope these slides have shown is our why um Illinois um is the I I try to be conscious of not using our our education lingo um but the State Board of Education has provided us a framework to hold ourselves accountable to meeting all of our students needs um but more than that um our inhouse data what we see um from our
079students performance um is more than enough information which uh fuels our reason for providing Equitable um approaches to meeting students needs and so after looking at those different slides um we can conclude that um as a district we have two challenges and because we have two challenges we have two responsibilities and those challenges are number one um student achievement um and I want to be very clear um which is always why um I'm very careful with uh showing certain types of data because I do not want to u i don't want people to leave with any unintended consequences where we're making assumptions about students and or groups abilities um but what I would like to share is that um what we see in terms of student achievement does not necessarily indicate students potential but rather
080an opportunity for us to shift our practices so that we are more adequately meeting the needs of our students and then the second challenge is belongingness um I um I think that we see very clearly in our our Panorama data that there is a clear opportunity um to provide students with more opportunities to feel more connected and to feel valued um in our schools and if I um am being honest I think that we have three challenges which would be a both end situation um and and we don't know if it's causal we don't know if it's correlational but I believe that there's that there's a merg that there that those two items student achievement and belongingness merge together um and influence one another and so I thought that it was uh it would be
081a good idea just to share very clearly um really the focus of my role and um I know that traditionally um we see Dei um administrators whether it's in the school Arena or whether it's in Corporate America where they kind of have a holistic view um of all things related to equity and sometimes that includes interpersonal relationships um but I wanted to be very clear that my role is instructional equity and so um my focus is really facilitating systemic implementation um that's proactive and responsive um to meeting the varying needs of our students and so um that is done heavily through professional development and uh providing consultation to our leaders um as we address in time issues as well as issues that have persisted for a number of years and so I hope to share
082with you on the following slides uh just an idea of those professional development opportunities that we have embarked in throughout the year um one such way is via selt um selt as we know is the cultural Equity leadership team and um proudly we had a wonderful meeting um right before spring break and um we are very committed to not only providing Direction and feedback to the district but um that word accountability is emboldened um because we truly value all of the different voices that exist in that space and in order to do that we did exactly what we did tonight we looked at the same data um and we had very very robust conversations discussing opportunities um to better meet our students needs and then the other thing um which I'd like to highlight is
083each of our C members um will be championing um an equity goal that we find outlined in our Equity statement in order to um support our our mission moving forward additionally um we have done a lot of work with professional de velopment we have this series um which I love the title probably because I came up with it um and it is inclusion starts with i and we have facilitated these sessions in two ways we've done them during our flexible learning days in which we had three sessions and I I have to say this and and I I do thank um superintendent Prince as well as the administrators um for just realizing the importance of this conversation because the true work of equity starts with mindset shifts and so um I'm bragging on our administrative
084team because everyone had the foresight to say our entire staff needs to participate in this conversation and so every d86 staff M met for our first two sessions where we talked about um our our personal self-awareness um understanding our cultural lens and you see that little visual um to the right that is kind of like what centers us it's what keeps us constantly aware that we all walk through life with our own perspective with our own set of experiences that have molded us and that is not problematic if we engage in those implicit biases and are aware if you are human you are biased I am biased I'm biased because I am human I'm biased because I have lived life that has provided me with a number of experiences however I have done the work
085to become self uh self-aware as well as socially aware so that my biases don't turn into harmful behaviors and so I'm very proud that we took the time as a staff to discuss the importance of knowing that we all have a lens um that we see life through um and so that then led us um to part two in which we talked about social awareness um we don't live in vacuum um what happens in our social lives what has happened in our history impacts how we show up today and so we um really spent some wonderful time just having good uh dialogue amongst uh colleagues and so part three was very specific to instructional practices so now that we're kind of um we all have the same foundational knowledge now we're able to have a
086more specific look um in terms of well what do we do now that we know we have biases um now that we know that that our students our children come to us with with varing experiences um well what do we do to meet those needs and so that was the focus of our third uh flexible learning day which was how do we create learning Partnerships with our students and so in order to do that we had to first look at our data and we had to realize that we have two challenges ahead of us and we also have two responsibilities to address those challenges and um that that then um kind of duct tailed into US looking at culturally responsive practices and the wonderful thing about it is um it's a lot of what we
087already do um if for those of you who are familiar with differentiated instruction um a lot you'll see a close resemblance with those strategies um but the only missing piece is the cultural piece and so uh if I talk to my seven-year-old nephew um about um rotary phones right and I think I'm making this amazing connection with him he does not know what I'm talking about and so while I am making the effort to kind of connect with him um in that way it still has that that Gap because of that cultural piece and so when we um think we're being amazing and we're playing our favorite songs and the kids are like who is that that's an example uh trying um to differentiate and trying to have those out of the boox learning experiences
088but we have to include that cultural piece and so the other way um that this Series has been introduced to our staff is through induction two in which our our staff members who are in their second through fourth year um went through three sessions um in which we had these discussions but in a more um in a more personal way and uh some really beautiful things came out of that induction um our staff members did an amazing job uh staff members uh specific they had uh projects in which they actually um they they worked with particular students um over that course of that induction uh two phase and we were just really proud of the results that happened and so um if anything it is so encouraging because it shows that it's just minor shifts
089and it's specific intentionality that can yield us um wonderful results um so here's another thing and this came out of our flexible learning day um our teachers were giving an were given an equity self assessment and I wanted to share I just pulled out a few um of those questions that I thought uh would be good information to to consider so this first one um the statement is I believe that learning environments may not be a Level Playing Field and so uh just to share with you um one is strongly disagree and it ranges to four which is strongly agree and so you can see that close to 90% of our staff members believe that the learning environments um are not leveled and so that's something that I I'd like to kind of put a
090bookmark or maybe a pen um and come back to that so here's one statement and then here's another my students see aspects of the identity and diverse cultures reflected on the walls of my classroom and in the text of my course and so here you can see um I did a little cheat sheet you can see that 66% of our our staff believe that students uh actually do see aspects of their culture and their identity as uh not only physically represented in the classroom but also in the text um here's the next statement my curriculum highlights non-dominant populations and their rates and assets so again you can see that the majority of our staff overwhelmingly um feel that that is so and here is the last statement that I pulled which is very important to
091that mindset shift that I referenced earlier I have considered the teaching Gap what the teacher does as an alternative way of thinking about the achievement gap which is how student performs and so the reason I pulled those those last three is because um when I move to my next slides um what I found interesting is that while we believe as a staff um we are uh showing um this level of awareness um this is not the case when you speak to our students who are directly a part of these historically marginalized groups and so um that was very informative to me um because it shows a really good thing um as well as an opportunity for growth but it shows that there is a willingness that there is a desire um to support students more
092appropriately because 90% of our staff recognizes um that the learning environment is not a Level Playing Field and so here you can see a gap in um in in in students who are from historically marginalized groups um feelings compared to that of our staff and that brings me to this slide um in March 14th I believe was the day we had um my best day in d86 we had the yes youth Equity Summit um what an amazing group of of of kids we have in this District um during this Summit we were very intentional we um asked for representation from our groups uh for marginalized students and I want to say that I'm I'm very Unapologetic about that because how can we support our students if we don't hear from our students I think uh
093we had an an amazing takeaway from one of our staff members um as the kids left he said I think I realized the problem we spent so much time talking about kids when all we had to do was talk to kids and so we had students from our Human Rights group we had students from our black student union the culture um our student voice Hispanic Student Association um and so and our our prism and our LGBT um q+ clubs and we wanted to ask them one specific question and that is what does a school that is committed to equity and inclusion look like and I want you to take the time to to take a look at their responses their answer was staff accountability constant appreciation awareness and student accountability and when I tell you
094this is an impressive group I mean it and I won't say this Student's name who's actually here um but this student took it upon himself and he's here this the student took it upon himself to do his own survey and so he specifically targeted our black students at hensdale South he asked students when during what month during what time of the school year did they have highest um or positive responses to the school year and if you'll take a look at that chart it may be blurry for you but you'll notice that there is a huge spike in February why do you think that might be I'll tell you black history month so yay right there's a spike but we want to flatten that curve um and and so if you look over to the
095right we ask students well if this is what a school that's committed to equity and inclusion if this is what it looks like then how do we do it and so they they mentioned those five things tokenization which directly relates to that beautiful graph that we see at the bottom um if students do not feel connected if students do not feel appreciated or seen um except for one month out of the school year um then we can't be surprised when we see the academic results that we've talked about um and so tokenization was one thing that our students talked about they also talked about hiring um students feel that our staff does not represent our student body um conflict resolution um students talked about how we can um in a more restorative way um help
096students to learn from their behavior and then help students accountable um and then there's also the need for decensored Content this came from students an impressive group and so uh I say all of this to say if you think back to our Equity self assessment there's a clear Gap um in perspective when we look at what our staff believes to be true versus how our students actually field um and so they also talked about making sure that our staff um is trained so that um we can have a more inclusive environment where students feel affirmed in addition to our flexible learning days um the staff was just so amazing in fact they actually pushed for us to have that additional that third session and so we wanted to make sure that there were ongoing opportunities
097to learn and so that evolved in to our bite-sized PD and so um during our Lunch Period staff members um op to participate in various um sessions that cover a range of topics as you can see for each month um we started out in January with demistifying rigor that came right at the end of our third flexible learning day um and so we uh talked about the importance of really defining what rigor is um because rigor has unfortunately become coded language in which uh we're in essence saying that uh rigor is for some students and it's not for others and um riger has everything to do with um challenging students and creating exceptional learning opportunities um and and we use web's do his depth of knowledge um as well as uh Bloom's taxonomy to guide
098what riger actually is um and riger is also something that should be evident in any classroom um not just in our Advanced uh honors or AP classes um and then in February uh that conversation continued the equity road to riger dependent to Independent Learning again this just continues the conversation about if we um take on the Persona of warm demanders and we show students um the the beautiful um knowledge that's within them and the capability to succeed and if we make sure that our learning environment ments are supportive um rigor is not something that has to exist in the absence of support um and so then in March we moved on to uh the learning environment because we're very clear we've looked at our at our Panorama results and we've seen that while we need
099to talk about instructional practices we cannot ignore the learning environment and so um in March we kind of pivoted and we talked about um microaggressions and and how that impacts students and and how those build up and how that uh ultimately impact students confidence and in April our final bite-size PD session will be classroom management with an equity lens um and I'm smiling because that fabulous presenter um has created a little subtitle to her session and uh it's entitled my last nerve um because she recognizes the timing of this session and we're we're right at the end of the school here and so we want to make sure that our students finish um successfully and I'd just like to congratulate our staff in each of those sessions uh our attendance was at a minimum 90
100uh staff members who took the time during their lunch periods uh to learn in a 25 minute session and there are there were extension opportunities in which um our staff could earn CEUs towards their their Illinois certification um if they chose to implement some of the strategies that were taught and to reflect on those strategies and so the the final leg of my work um focuses on mtss multi-tiered systems of support um and here's the way we make sense of it um we're very honest about where we are and the work that needs to be done so mtss multi-tier systems of support um typically you'll just see that abbreviation and it's all capitalized it's mtss and so we realized we have the m and we have the last s but what's missing is the tearing
101and the systems and so um our mtss leadership group has uh been working really hard to systematize all of the wonderful things that are happening but currently they're happening in silos and um and what we need is a system in which we're able to monitor student progress um and so uh just to share this information tier one uh is basically our Universal practices that we provide for students for 100% of our students if you walk in any d86 classroom um all of our students 100% of our students should have access to certain Universal instructional um and behavioral supports that do not require students to receive supplemental supports outside of the classroom um and tier two is well what happens when you realize that a student is struggling um and those tier one strategies are not
102enough well then that is when we're able to provide tier 2 strategies and those tier 2 strategies include um more uh more specialized uh interventions for students and that sometimes happens in a small group um but the goal is for these tiered strategies specifically tiers two and tier three uh the goal is for students to receive um support that extends beyond the classroom um and so in tier three those are our students of greatest need those students are um have hit multiple indicators and those indicators could be um attendance indicators they could be um uh their test scores could be below Benchmark um that could ALS also be their current grades so it's a number of indicators that we use that we triangulate to make sure that we are identifying our students of greatest need
103currently our system um is kind of adjusting time I think uh Dave mentioned just in time so currently that's who we're supporting as students maybe struggle in their geometry class they're able to receive additional support um outside of the classroom and that's fine that that's a great resource however um in order to provide um Extended support for our students so for those of you who are familiar with mtss um it's recommended first of all that interventions last for a 6 to 8 week period because that way you're able to observe students progress and you're able to determine if the intervention is in fact successful and so um in the way that we're currently operating we are not able to determine if we're actually meeting students needs because it's just in time and so um I
104look forward to working with our guest teams at both campuses um just so that we can refine our process and make sure that we are targeting the correct students and providing them with the appropriate tier supports and uh this is just additionally when we get this right this will directly address our disproportionalities and special education as well because when we have a system that is absent of those appropriate tiered supports um that's kind of an unfortunate um consequence is you know students are kind of catapulted towards um the most um and I I don't want to use the word extreme but that's the word that's coming to me sorry um but in in the absence of an actual uh systematized support um students sometimes can be um overidentified and so I just wanted to share
105with you uh just my alignment with our administrative teams um I will tell you um someone told me about a feature on our Google Calendar that I wish they had not told me about and that feature shows you how frequently you have meetings um so I did not realize uh that I was uh as involved in these different teams um but the beautiful thing about it is it's really allowed me to be integrated into our works um into our our different works that we are doing and so um I I'm I'm I'm grateful for all of those hours and meetings because um it's it allows us to have a constant focus on how we can better serve our students um who are in need of support and um I just wanted to end with this
106visual I think that it is absolutely um important that we understand that educational equality and Equity are two separate terms um educational equality speaks to samess it's a one-size fits all approach and you see at the top um equality certainly disadvantages and it leaves certain people out um and again this is not to be confused with the notion of equality socially I am speaking specifically of educational equality um our students have varying needs they have varying skills they have varying talents and that requires us to think of students in an individualized way and so you can see the depiction at the bottom it would be absolutely inconceivable um for bicycle manufacturers to say well here's the model of bicycles that we make if you can't write it oh well but instead they had the um
107intuition to realize that we are all VAR varying people with varying needs and that is not indicative of our ability um but rather it is our responsibility to meet students needs now one thing that those two concepts do share is the notion of justice and fairness and Equity is for sure fair and it's just because it is proactively and responsively aware of the VAR needs of individuals thank you so much um for giving me the opportunity to share my work and now I'd just like to open it up for questions I have a quick question ma'am you mentioned decentered content what is decentered content yeah um so decentered content speaks to um varying voices and perspectives so uh as we know um our education is very eurocentric and what happens is when we address um
108other cultures which we saw um kind of evident on that um which we saw evident on that Equity self assessment what happens is um often times we are kind of othering people whereas we think of other cultures we think of other voices um from a peripheral lens um and so you have to think about the impact that that has on a child um when that child does not see himself or herself in the curriculum um and so when our students uh thought of the importance of decentered content they were speaking very specifically to um decentering content it is not about uh teaching um the perspectives or the beliefs of a particular culture or from a particular lens it is about Teaching Standards and utilizing varying voices to teach those standards um I I uh personally
109uh witness a wonderful example of that um one of our teachers um was working on um the creation um and so the standard of course is um whatever that that that that um ISB standard is whatever that learning standard is which I can't remember at this time but the point is our work is Guided by standards that has not changed and will never change but how we teach our standards is what's important and so um how amazing is it for students to have the opportunity um to learn about creation um by looking at Greek mythology um by looking at biblical references by looking at um Native American uh stories of origin and so that is the perfect example of what decentered content looks like like there is the concept there's the alignment to the standards
110and there is the inclusion of all voices um so that's what decenter content looks like thank you so much really helpful so when we um and this might not be a question for you it actually might be a question for Mr deso but when we look at the Panorama St results and belongingness and we're in the lowest um percentile with the 43% % but it's lumped together with all K12 um is there any way to break it down even more I this had actually come up for something else I mean there's a huge discrepancy between what a first grader is going to say and the honesty of a high school or um and so I'm wondering if there's a way to break it down because looking at it you know it's hard to really yeah
111with that span of age group to still down yeah so I do not know the answer to that um and I will yield to uh Mr Joka um but what I would like to say is the percentage is the percentage and um just as an educator I know that of I I believe it was 55% if I'm not mistaken for that particular question 43 43% so that it's that other R yeah so that to me is just like hugely communicating that there is a need to address that but Chris do you know yes so what um I think what these percentages are showing are the people that are the respondents that responded favorably so these are not the national benchmarks um these are literally the the students who took this survey you know for example
112how connected do you feel to the adults at your school 28% of our students responded favorably so that's not a national Benchmark but but m I have talked to Panorama there are ways for us just to within the system compare ourselves to the to high schools they're still working on coming up with a way to actually have that show up in the reports they they haven't gotten there yet um but there is a way but this this is not National Benchmark I was looking on the corner of the slide the 0 to 19% how that's yes that yes that one that is the the national benchmarking and yes we can do that um just comparing ourselves to high school not every K to 12 school in the country that they work with Urban rural whatever
113I guess speaking a little bit further about that specific question on belonging I know that you captured some feedback from the students that participated in the yes Summit but are there going to be other opportunities to get more information from students to to really understand what they meant and how they were feeling when answering that question yes um um so we are are you speaking specifically about the group that was involved well iess I guess I'm speaking specifically about that question around belonging and you know are there going to be additional opportunities to get information either from those students or other groups of students yeah um so the I know that the Panorama survey um has multiple checkpoints throughout the year because quite frankly um you could feel completely different um in May than you
114feel in August right so we do want to make sure that we are at least um triangulating different points um just so that we can monitor how students feel um in regards to the students who participated in the yes um Summit uh those students we've already had a debriefing with those students in which we shared um kind of uh some insight from the survey that they took in terms of um what they were interested in in terms of next steps um and how do we continue the conversation because while we wanted to uh very clearly receive student voice in that conversation um we know that in order for us to actually change our school environment and improve um our students relationships and feelings of belongingness um it has to be a conversation that extends to
115all of our students and so um yes um is the answer uh we have a a great group of Staff members who have been committed um and working with our students and I I'm I'm thankful that I I get to be a part of those conversations while I don't have um you know the everyday connection with students um so we are currently planning how do we expand this conversation um our student leaders um are are planning this may be a surprise uh to our principles where our student leaders are planning um to have conversations with our principles because they want at our students uh and I I told them that I was aware that I was old but they made me more aware um because one thing about our students is they don't want to
116talk on a hamster wheel um they have um been very they're very clear about what it is they want from their school and the part to me that's so admirable is their commitment to making sure that students who come behind them have better experiences than they had and so they're very interested in moving into the action phase and so um yes we are thinking about how do we expand these conversations how do we um move this into our our school communities as a whole um so that we're bringing along everybody um as we work to become more inclusive and connected than thank you for the presentation here one question didn't that look really interesting the fsize PD they say those are about 25 minutes like there was a lunch session basically and so there have
117been four of those this year and so is that is uh there are some calendar planning looking ahead for kind of these monthly or possibly even more than once a month but having more of these in the 22 23 school year just expanding that as just kind of a normal part of the the background Cadence of PD with within the for the staff absolutely um and and what's even better is um my ability to pair with Dave Latino so that um we're just having one conversation um because really what it boils down to is flexibility um realizing that the students who sit in front of us have very different needs than honestly our students from two years ago our students have changed and good practice changes good practice evolves um and it evolves because the
118people who sit in front of us who we serve change and their their needs do evolve um and so uh Dave and I have been working closely uh in terms of planning for the next school year to make this a part of um our our our monthly happenings um we are scared to do it more frequently than once a month um because honestly it the staff is amazing um you literally see people carrying their laptops like headed to a place so that they can participate and so uh we we thank them for for doing that but what we do want to be cognizant of is um kind of like what is that underlining thread that connects um Innovation and Equity um and so just making sure that we're having one conversation so that we are
119able to hit people um according to their different job roles and and we also want to make sure that we're also being um responsive to our classified staff as well um so for sure we're in planning stages Dr P how are you good how are you thanks for coming tonight thank you for having me uh can you can you go back to that disproportionality and special slide it was early in the presentation I'm just trying to unpack some of those numbers sure for my for my benefit so with respect to the represent representations to e each different contingent so to speak yeah when you see under the white classification roughly about the same number um what does that say to us it says that we're close to proportionate so since our white students make up
120and I'm sorry it's a bit blurred for me I think it's 63 and 60 yes since our white students make up 63% of our population um there's proportionate representation almost uh there it's a bit um under represented um but uh I believe that number is 60.5% or 60.1% um so there is a slight under representation so that is that to maintain that the white contingent would be more specialized is that well no um our our goal is always for students to learn in the mo in the least restrictive environment um it it's just what it is and that is that white students make up 63% of our our students population and they make up 60% of our students who have uh IEPs and um and and that is uh closely proportionate however it's slightly um
121under represented and that's not a bad thing no I'm just trying I'm just breaking the numbers down in percentages relative in the Asian scenario 9 half% of the Asian community in the district has an 90p I think it's yes no it's it's N9 and a half and I'll walk you through the math I'll walk you through the math in a second if you focus on the black or African-American Community 75% of 4,000 kids roughly is 300 and 16% of approximately this is a rough number 800 i p is 128 so the African-American community represents 42% of that contingent has idps is what the Math's telling me yeah I believe that's the case because correct me if I'm wrong if you focus on the white contingent it says 6 63% of 4,000 kids is 220 students
122we can agree on that number I believe and I think 60% of my assumption of 800 IEPs is 480 so you have you have about 20% of the white students have IEPs 95% of the Asians have IEPs 42% of the black or African-Americans have IPS and the Hispanic Community 10% of 4,000 is four is 400 and 133% of 800 is is 105 so they have about 25% of the Hispanic or Latino or any race so these aren't percentages and correct me if I'm wrong Global but it's saying we have students with IEPs and within those students of IEPs we have these percentages in these particular silos these are in the blue this is the percentage of student body so that percentage lines up with student body but it's not saying that 60% of the white
123student body has an IEP it's that 60% of the kids who have IEPs are white or um 13.4 are Hispanic or 8.25 are Asian so it's it's a that those the red bars are percentage as a subset of the overall student body it's not proportionate to the student body those are just the IP so those don't correlate right right so the the the bar on the left represents the percent they represent of the student body and the percent on the right represents the percent of IEPs that that contingent has correct no well the percent that they represent within the group that just has IEPs not within the student body right so IEPs you have a I forget what the exact number is we've heard that in the past what 14 14% of the student body
124has IEPs so 14 14% And yeah of that 14 so it's it's looking at that subset data not at 4,000 kids but correct so 60% of white kids have what 60% of the IEPs correct 60 60% of the 14% of IEPs that exist in the district yes that's that's right that's what that's what I'm saying so just walk this Matthew for me for a sec in the white scenario we have 2500 kids which about 60% of 4,000 right okay and assuming it's 800 IEPs which is a little off very off assume assume it's so if you have 560 IEPs we're saying that 60% of those 560 are to the white contingent 60% of the 560 I right yes okay so what the numbers that I'm breaking down which are a little off in percentages but
125in magnitude they're right the Asian Community has about four times less IEP frequency than the black or African-American and the Hispanic Community has about three times as many PS as the Asian community as I extrapolate that math so what my question is knowing that as you further unpack that math what are we driving towards are we driving for Equity across idps I I was unclear what we're driving for relative the sure um so when we talk about disproportionality and special education um regardless of how the numbers break down um what we do know is that of our stud stud body um for black students in particular um it's more than double right um their their representation in special education and and just to be very clear um we want students to receive the supports that
126they need um there there's nothing um problematic about um receiving the supports however we do want to be sure that the appropriate students are receiving the appropriate supports and nationally um it has been a longstanding issue that uh there have been times where our our misguided placements have happened as a result of kind of those mindsets in the dominant discourse that I spoke of um that we see evidenced in schools that have not engaged in implicit biases that exist and so um sometimes when we hold deficit thinking about certain students um we can easily draw conclusions about placement that is not always appropriate and so here we see with the data um that whenever we don't have leveled bars uh we should be questioning why that exist um because it just goes against normal practice
127um whenever there's disproportionality we should always be asking um why is that and are we doing anything that needs to be readjusted and so when I see and and just to be clear ISB has guidance about disproportionality school districts are de are deemed um when there are disproportionalities and they're deemed because this is not a new conversation about misguided practices in which um we see students of color specifically black and brown students um who are over represented and again this is a national conversation um so the point I'm making is um we we want students to receive the appropriate support however we want to be sure that we are um identifying students appropriately and so uh there we have all the cause um to really uh figure out and dig into um why do we
128see such disproportionalities and so that's very concerning with the same I I agree with you I'm a big believer in support so I have two questions short that follow up on this do most of the students or what percentage of the students that have IEPs in District 86 arrive at District 86 with an IEP and then we carry on with that IP and potentially reevaluate them and is the same data Min for five students with 504s um or is it not necessarily relevant it's relevant um it's just a different conversation um the 504 convers ation um but yes I mean as I stated this is a national issue um so we know disproportionalities is sometimes something that we inherit um but we want to be sure that we're not contributing to that and so um
129it is our responsibility to take a look at our practices and be sure that as much bias as possible is removed from the process and that students and families have the appropriate agency um where they're able to uh speak up in those meetings and and be very informed um so that they just have a sense of agency in these conversations and that they're Mutual conversations um so so yes do we inherit um disproportionalities for sure um I don't know the exact number uh but I do know that we are identifying students in secondary at as well just be clear I didn't accuse us of inheriting disre I just wanted to know if our students typically arrive or if they're evaluated um you know a lot of times these things are caught much younger so I'm
130wondering how many students arrive at high school what percentage arve at high school and are evaluated then to that same argument then do we have to be careful about the disproportionality the other way so for example you know where the blue bar is much higher than the red bars they're potentially an under um support of a group of students that we should well it it kind of goes back to my original uh statement which is the goal of compulsory education is for students to learn in the least restrictive environment which is why we're doing our due diligence to ensure that we actually have a true robust mtss system um so if we are constantly evolving in our practices to ensure that we are using the most um researched best practices that are inclusive that are
131um that are are mindful of various learning preferences and needs so that students are able to learn in their General Ed classes um or with as limited supports as possible like that's the goal the goal is not um for the the percentage of students in the student body to have that same representation in terms of IEPs um but when those bars are unleveled we are we have to start asking ourselves some questions and certainly some of the levels and some of the slides are dramatically more different than just looking here at special ed um taking a look at discipline for example I mean or any of the other ones um to the point you made about you know the students needs that we had two years prior different than what we have now and two
132years in the future um and so this kind of goes to you know there's the human aspect and there's the data aspect sometimes you know we you want to get pulled more toward the human story but sometimes the data one um that that can help to inform A system that has longevity so when we look at the comparison between student body and percent within that that field um are we going to have set for us whether it's something on like the kpi dashboard or something that we just kind of keep internally you know that's kind of under your purview or you working with some of the other members of admin um kind of a tolerance that we're looking at from um the the two different sides where you know when we take a look at
133um you know um I don't know what's a dram I mean well take a look at the the next slide there on discipline and you know we see there that there are a couple of big gaps um you know everything's pretty much out of proportion at that point in time right nothing is is showing as being directly in proportion and there are perhaps stories that need to be impact within that to address why that's that's being created so that's that's part of the real the very human element of that that's being driven by the data but do we see trying to over the course of time say listen you know we understand that populations change but is there like two to 5% drift it's some of looking you know professionally what I I look at
134kind of there's there's tolerance zones for certain performance this is not performance in the same way but when we see data presented like this sometimes that's a question that we may get is there a range that we're looking to fall in or is it more we're going to see where the students are meet them find out what the stories are the drive the numbers and you know some of these numbers are going to change over time but you know we can sometimes maybe not always fix a disproportionality we can just try to address it by time the students you know leave our leave our buildings that's right I'll be a couple of questions well I I'm I'm saying Amen to your your statements because that's exactly right like um you kind of have to begin
135with the end in mind and so what we know is at the very least um we expect to see proportionalities and that's at the very least um like under representation depending on the topic I should say um is should be the goal um but I I think you you make a really good point um which is why this the work is so important to me is because you know we can really get caught up in data and looking at barats but like these are real students and and these are real students lives and these will become real students trajectories and so um while we're we're having this conversation about data it really requires us to have this humanistic conversation and and and it lends perfectly to our our process with mtss um so we often
136times talk about mtss just from the academic side um but there's that bside it's the A and B of mtss it's academics and it's also behavior um and so uh what happens when I talked about using multiple indicators to identify our students of greatest needs behavioral components are included in that like I mentioned attendance I mentioned tardiness um those types of things and so what happens is we include those students in that identification and so what what we're supposed to do um in terms of in terms of the TSS perview is you have a problem solving approach in which you are humanly meeting with these students who are clearly communicating that what we're doing isn't working for them um and we have these conversations where we're able to kind of peel back the layers to
137figure out well what's the source of that because typically when you see these types of of of results whether it's behavior um whether it is a gr there is some core component that's driving that behavior that we're actually seeing um and so that happens with our problem solving process which will happen through our guest teams and of course with the support um of our academic cabinet um and and so it will require us to sit down and talk to students um to get an idea of what their experiences are um and then for us to make sure that our students at the very least um have a trusted adult who's able to kind of serve as like that that person who monitors their Pro ress um so it's a yes and no it's a yes
138and no answer to all of your questions board uh uh member member um held sorry um so yes it it requires us to really take a humanistic approach and it does actually require conversations and I know to some people they're probably itching um because it feels warm and fuzzy but it actually has to happen like the core component of being culturally responsive is amplifying student students voices and nobody can explain to us better what's hindering their success than that actual student and then that kind of gives us the road mapap to support that student in different ways but what I have what I know and what I've seen is that uh you start to see interconnectedness um when you look at a student who's kind of hitting multiple indicators of struggle and it's really just
139a matter of being intentional enough to say this student is struggling I need to actually Center this student and I need to figure out what is driving um those difficulties that that student is experiencing and we may find that it's multiple things so I have a couple additional questions I appreciate all the disproportionality SES they're they're very helpful to to understand things um and I would like to reiterate to 11 PA's question um a little bit you know where students come in I mean we are a high school district unit district so we don't get those students you know in the very early stages and we're not able to so we have to start with when it hit ninth grade um so I guess some of the parts that were interesting to me um was
140both the special education so the students with IEPs um you mentioned at one point something about um overidentified and assuming you're referencing the iups yes and are they overidentified they come in or is that is that what the or are they identified by d86 and I guess that's where I'm kind of wrestling with where that overidentification happens um but then also to kind of pig you back on to some of the other um slides the discipline which I'd like to see kind of broken out to the types of discipline as well um but then the next few slides which talk about the um supports and the AP um so the supports that they're coming in needing support I think that's great that they're getting the supports or they're being identified for those supports but then
141I'd like to see that growth out of those supports if we're able to get to that level U so I don't know how you track that and if you're able to track that so that's I guess my next question and then if they're coming in need if students are coming in needing supports would you expect them to be in the AP Levels by the time they're done I I don't I guess that's a question yeah um thank you for that question um so so I I'm going to say this we have to be very careful um with conclusions right right um so it has been a longstanding conversation that that tests are not the one indication of a students ability right and so um just as students who are entering postsecondary uh colleges in universities
142like they look at multiple measures to determine um if a student is a fit right and so what we um have to have to be aware of is um a student score on the nwea math test is not an indication it's not a clear picture of a student students ability um and so it it's not easy for me to just um move past that point because I I hear what you're saying um but I want to say um that it requires more digging um and so know it it's not sufficient just to make those assumptions based on um one metric um and so yes do we want students to be supported when they need support yes but it goes back to my conver ation about special education we want to make sure that we're identifying
143the appropriate students but you know I mean data is powerful and data is very helpful and guiding the conversation so I'm assuming that that data that you have thus far you're digging Down Deeper you're using that to help drive your conversations and help support those students that need those support yes um however um students do not achieve success when they are not receiving grade level content so like we can't support um the notion that teaching a student below their grade level content will prepare them for their grade level benchmarks so to me it makes perfect sense why we see disproportion why we see gaps in our achievement when we look at our SAT data because if we have such pervasive tracking then those students once they hit the grade level to take the SAT if
144they have not had access to certain content then how can they be successful right so so that's the whole work of being responsive that's the whole work of including our students it's because we have a really good opportunity to raise students ceilings as opposed to lowering them and we can do that when we shift our instructional practices when we provide students with scaffolding when we provide students with end time support as well as supplemental support in that tiered system that I talked about and in none of those instances does that require students to kind of be left behind with grade with um content that does not push them and that is not um sometimes at grade level I don't think I'm suggesting that they not get that content like that's that's obviously the goal is
145to lift all the students up but starting with where they come in and helping them get to that point so that they are successful and they do meet those benchmarks no I I hear you but we just have to realize that our schedule is a finite schedule right like there's not unlimited time to learn and so when we have students in those Support classes it's it comes at an expense right so if you have supported math that means that you kind of have a double do math you have that algebra one math and then you also have that algebra reinforcement class and so that that takes away an opportunity and so what I am saying is do we want to support our students of greatest needs for sure but first we want to make sure
146that we're supporting the accurately identified students of greatest need and we also want to make sure that we are doing our due diligence in terms of classroom instruction so that we're providing students with as many on ramps as possible and so this is the work of culturally responsive education this is the work of Equitable practices because for too long we have relied on traditional teaching practices that have not tapped into the capabilities of some students and so this is why I kind of mentioned the the kind of difficult part of showing data is because it sometimes reinforces ideas that we have which is oh students are strugg strling so they need to be in the Support classes when that can be true but it can also be true that if we shift our practices and
147if we provide more arm reps and if we provide more inclass support then the students who would have typically had to have taken those those those additional Support classes they may not have to take those classes because all it just requires is a shift in our practices to meet the needs of those of of those students who might require them more to come absolutely and then goals for 22 23 those include I I'll tell you exactly what they include right there is to attack those five things um and uh the first attack um I've shared uh we've had a successful start through our flexible learning days um and and that's just the beginning we have a long way to go um but I I'm very clear and our our staff who has really um engaged
148in the process um and I I'm thankful for their their willingness and their openness to improve practice but it has to start with our mindsets and our beliefs and that's not something that we can rush through because we want sustain um work to happen and so we have to um have these these difficult conversations where we're looking at data and and and here's the thing like the data is the same it it hasn't changed we our students have communicated to us for years for decades um and our we we teach high school students like we talked about and our students they're not going to raise their hand and say hey I need help I don't get it all the time sometimes they will but they communicate to to us through their outcomes and so our
149data clearly communicates that we are doing a wonderful job as a district serving a large percentage of our students but we have a lot of work to do um when it comes to our our students of color when it comes to our students who um are who have special needs and if if you um want to know what my work looks like um next year it is work through these five um uh these five indicators that are evidenced in our school culture um and so I look forward to continuing to partner um with our our leaders and our staff and providing them with support um as we make these shifts thank you very much Dr P thank you thank so we're going to move to our next agenda item um which is board new business
150and uh alternatives for student scheduling options member 11 11th all and Waters and I would ask if we can try to keep this conversation to about 30 minutes at the most yeah absolutely um so this goes back to a couple different items that we've discussed for a while and first was access as a community member who was quite passionate mentioned earlier something I've been passionate about myself since the summer of 2020 which is the remote platform and in this case certainly attempting to utilize it to drive more opportunities for classes in a students indigenous school that are unavailable that might that might be offered and available at the other school um you know I've had conversations with a couple different people in administration obviously on the heels of the pandemic you know remote learning may
151not be certainly optimal or preferred in every single course but to the extent that there's a significant demand and interest by a student it would be nice to satisfy that Demand with respect to access to the platform which as I mentioned in the summer of 20 is something that would be um inexpensive to upgrade I believe I spoke to the CTO who um received a quote at the time which was quite affordable um now that quote was for the entire District to be accommodated with that upgrade of the platform to make it for lack of better word more optimized and thus a better experience so that remote platform is the first piece the second piece um and I don't want to put words in de's mouth I think she you know echoed some of these
152things or maintain these things first but to Echo some of them and certainly include my own that I've mentioned in the past is this whole concept of Mobility between the campuses um whether it plays out by leveraging the capacity to have staggered starts to have buffered study halls and lunches certainly perhaps to provide transportation and optimal parking um again trying to find ways to provide students who are interested the key the key thing here when I mentioned interest on the remote piece I don't think English one would be ideal because a lot of students aren't necessarily passionate about English but if it's German 3 for example and there's a certain level of passion despite remote learning being non optimal for all it certainly can satisfy the interests and demands for some kids same thing with
153the mobility piece and so you know with that um you know I would encourage the administration to work alongside with the board um on a more granular granular level with with the secondary instructional scheduling group SL committee to really try to get further into the details on how to perhaps accommodate some of these student demands that are otherwise unavailable care that's kind of the 10,000 view I think um you know this originated as the potential for either um a task force of you know administrators some of this work I'm sure goes on already just by nature of finalizing the master schedule and slotting students into their Singleton courses um but it started as almost you know formation of a task force some other you know ideas I think though that's a right limiting step for
154some families to access courses at either campuses is there a way that we could provide a shuttle bus um one of our vehicles to drive to and from campuses to access some courses um that might otherwise be difficult for students to access if they don't drive or have their own transportation um also looking potentially at increasing our early bird course offerings to especially um to accommodate some courses that students might have difficulty accessing they can take it early on another on the other campus um and then longterm looking at are some of these courses things that we can offer during summer school um or potentially revisit course credit for courses that students aren't able to access on another District's campus but we don't offer during summer school I just have a question we have a
155a committee that was recently formed which is the secondary instructional task force I'm not on the committee so I don't know the work of the committee but it sounds like what you're talking about is something that would be ideally directed to that committee um I'm on that committee so it's not necessarily looking at these types of things looking more at the daily B schedule and um forgive interject if you'd like superintendent Apprentice but looking more at our standard daily schedule and if that daily schedule is still meeting the needs of our students um or could perhaps be optimized in different ways so yes some of these things would be um natural offshoots of that but that's not the purpose of that particular task force necessarily so is there an opportunity to add some of these
156items that have been raised to that group or um certainly I I think first you have to start with um conceptually how we want to do school and how which is what they have been researching and collecting in from all sorts of high schools as we know there's lots of different ways to do school um we had found through our research we one of the very few secondary high schools that do lunch the way we do lunch and so there's just many internal systemic pieces that um that committee is working on and considering the report will come to the board in June the update but then I think once that piece once that recommendation if people feel good about that these are all just subgroups um that absolutely could continue to work on whatever all
157those other parking lot issues are but it's really hard to uh consider these types of things until we understand what part of the master bell schedule we want to be part of and how we would go about engaged interest um it's been brought up many times so I'll use the example I use German 3 so it's the traveling teacher and there's B sections of German 3 at Central and there's this class of three at Hinsdale South so that teacher on Mondays and Tuesdays is in that classroom space at Central and there's a parah on this campus and then teacher is coming to South on Wednesdays and Thursdays and teaching those three children that means there's the parah at Central in that space and so that just brings up um all sorts of questions about about
158good instruction which is something that Dave Latina was speaking to tonight in terms of how we actually deliver content and how um we know what our students want and so it also just causes the academic team lots of hesitation to suggest that um all students not having access to their teacher five days a week um gives a lot of us a lot of pause so it doesn't mean that we can't work through it but it is a legitimate um Equity piece that it would take that that committee some more time to really look through to see if that is really um an appropriate use of um fiscal dollars and if that will really provide students with an equitable instructional experience compared to the students who have a teach or five days a week we heard
159last year when the um the multistacked super stack World languages classes at at South became a bigger topic related to uh Latin one and German one not being offered for this school year um one of the options that was offered cor me if I'm wrong Administration was zooming zoom in the room was was being at South and zooming into the the equivalent class over at at Central and the students were given the option of that we'd simply G we' gone through it the year of it obviously we knew that it's possible for kids to learn that way and the students themselves rejected that again Jeff to your point there is zoom fatigue I think that persists um for all of us but for the kids they they very they sharply felt it I think much
160more than you know any level of profession you know kids felt it because of the the need they had for being in the classroom with the teachers and that kind of support and my one of the things that I've you know been thinking about is very much along the similar lines of what you guys have been saying which is and this go going back to you know when I first got on the board um and knowing that we were going to have some of these presentations from from Dave Latino over the course of time on in instructional Innovation and talking to Keith about the remote platform you know cameras and the the way to plug in uh was an excitement to have kind of those sorts of classes um and to have the idea of
161of a of a district course where you can offer something at one school and you had like AP music theory was one that was talked a lot about in the winter and spring of 2019 that was that was a big one it was going to be offered at one school not at the other but you still have I think like seven or eight kids I think it was at Central that year it wasn't offered you still have those kids that really wanted to take it so what if they could just punch in through um a remote platform and do it and while that was a topic it it does appear that through the um through the fire of the zoom um classroom in the pandemic we found the kids don't like to learn that way
162and I think that has to inform what we do and how we deliver education I think there are opportunities though for certain classes particularly more advanced classes that have um where we are expecting the students to take on a greater kind a burden of the of the instruction on their own but where there there's more of an independence aspect to it where it might be more appropriate for those higher level courses to have um whether I don't think it's even a te it could be it would be a teacher split and then you know a remote platform because we can trust the students to be at a level um and they're accepting that in in a small band of students we have a confidence in them to succeed there whereas for a a larger more
163general population class even some of the bigger AP classes like you know AP US History or Euro or something along those lines where their experience would be marketly different than what we have what we've defined that experience as and how we deliver that instruction so um I think there's a I think there's there's still a place for that for what we're talking about um for this alternative schedule there for those those courses I think it's it's a a conversation to have with members of you Department chairs perhaps or you members of of admin to see what what are these possibly pilot courses but this narrow group where we can and um we can be confident that teachers and those students can thrive in that in that setting and we're not doing a detriment to the
164education that we're providing so if I can just I I think when I hear you talk about Creative Solutions it's not just one solution there are several different solutions to and ideas and and and Aven to kind of explore and talk through and brainstorm through those ideas I think that's where you're going with this um so I don't think the board table is the appropriate place to be having or making those decisions necessarily it's it's probably to create that task force to look at um a variety of different opportunities that there might be for some alternatives for students um scheduling uh and I think the other part that I'd like to um to add is that the sooner that we could do that the better uh and the reason I I mentioned that is process
165right now of looking at scheduling for next year so those Alternatives wouldn't necessarily necessarily apply this year but we could use some of that information to help have that discussion for the following year so I guess the the the point that I'll just go back to and I'll ask superintendent FIS about this again I think I think when you talked about the committee that you have right now that's looking at scheduling and you're doing some specific work right now MH and it sounded like your your recommendation was let's come your thought was let's come back with the original recommendation or the initial recommendation of that team and then have further discussion about some of the things that are being discussed here so I will throw out if if that's a possibility you know is that
166something Jeff and Debbie that you would be willing to go along with that this committee is already in established Debbie's a member of it maybe there's a way for Jeff to participate too if he isn't um and that they the two of them could bring those ideas forward once that initial recommendation which I think you said was coming in June so that's I mean not I would be an extension then you know I don't think it was you know you'd have to obviously see if people wanted to continue because it would be an extension of the time frame well not of the time frame but what the initial purpose was correct but I also think that as students are receiving their schedules there's some more immediate things that could potentially be thrown out there for
167students that get the news that we can't accommodate you know three of your Singleton courses you know here are some options to potentially access them um is that something that's a conversation I think already goes on um wal um in terms of as once the master schedule of what period what is happening I know at some point starting in the summer when they actually then push all the student schedules through there's individual conversations held with students and so um I I believe member Lal was [Music] wondering it's one of the 11 fall students and they have a conflict with a Singleton or something what does that process look like and how does the student move through their list of what courses they'd like to take instead of the conflict CL I think it's the both
168campuses the counselors reach out to the students where a conflict they can't get business law to so the counselor reaches out to them and says look Billy uh this your schedule's just not going to work with the way we had business with business law is placed we have to choose another class here are some classes that are available and then they give them those classes usually a lot of times a student has a second or third or fourth choice depend on what electives are looking at and we can easily plug those in um but it occurs in the summer usually mid to Late July August September miss anything right you didn't miss anything um the the one thing that I guess is different for South is are there are there typically almost always resolved um
169before students leave for summer so that's I don't know if that's right call from the spring conversations yeah they're almost always resolved before summer we are um I I don't want to say this and speak too soon but we are excited we as you I think are aware we transition to from echool to Infinite Campus so we building the schedule in there um we are anticipating um that program having less conflicts than we've had in the past it was one of the reasons why we switched to that program so we are not done yet so I do not have that information at this time um but one of kind of the pros of moving to that program was to look at ways to be able to minimize comp by utilizing the technology available in that
170do you have other questions any anything else we can answer I think just one of the things um popped into my head I know we're talking about as dual credit if we're talking about a small segment and talking about like the courses up the um upper classman um I think that that's kind of something that we've been exploring already as a district um but that bounced off of uh a memory I had at when when we it was um recommended to us and the term that I remember was maintain the Integrity of the diploma that you received from d86 in terms of offering accepting credit from other places not not you know dual credit is totally different but I'm talking about other institutions other um uh places that students might seek credit for courses that
171we offer here in the district and so that was something that that has been discussed and um in policy and one of the um TS of the folks that came was that they wanted to ensure that the uh that what students received the credits that they received for the ultimate diploma was um standardized um and and equal and not you know going out to other places and getting perhaps credit for a course that doesn't necessarily meet the standards that we have here in the 86 so just want to mention that so I guess I'll ask again um you know are you comfortable with proceeding with potentially adding this topic to the committee that's already established that's looking at scheduling I'm not on the committee but I'm comfortable with it perhaps join me as well and
172can we facilitate add Mr Waters that excellent and does the rest of the board is the rest of the board in agreement with that approach I just uh and may this is coming later but you had mentioned the superintendent prce that we do lunch differently intrigued by that well have you ever has your student ever had um a math class where they have math for 25 minutes then walk down the hallway and have lunch and then come back finish up their math class that Dr will still boggles his mind that we operate this way in District 86 and it appears to be we are a unicorn in that area as we've been doing our research so that's a whole opportunity because that causes all sorts of other issues and conflicts um around um that experience
173so that is something that we are tackling through um one of his dreams get rid of it so we're working on it okay we're going to move next to the um board committee reports and the um policy committee report mman all right the ongoing work of uh going through the the IB press release uh and we're we're moving along with the policy committee met on Monday April 4th to review press issue 108 which is the big comprehensive uh packet of revisions and what the manual sections that we looked at at our meeting on the 4th were section seven which deals with students and section eight which deals with community relations uh 15 policies are being presented to the board tonight for first reading since we won't be acting on those policies I'm not going to
174spend time talking about them they're available for you to review and if you have any questions about those policies uh reach out to me and I'm happy to answer them uh they will not be before the board for action until uh I believe it will be our next meeting those policies are provided to the board for first read because there are changes proposed that actually uh deal with language within the policy uh there are four and it may be inconsequential changes but because it deals with the actual content of the policy they need to be brought before the board I I think I need to clarify what I'm saying here there are I want to make a distinction between what I'm about to say next which is four policies which are presented for approval on
175the consent agenda those policies the changes are uh to either references or to statutory citations or case citations and there's no substantive changes and that's why they're being put on the consent them the policies that are being brought before first we have some I I misspoke when I first started to explain this do have substantive changes in the policy but there are changes that I don't believe necessitate full board discussion because they're not significant changes but again as I mentioned we're not taking action on them tonight so if you have any questions about any of those policies uh please reach out to me and U I'll be able to answer them if there's a a need if any of you feels there's a need to bring it before the whole board for discussion we can
176bring it before the board for discussion before we take action so that's essentially what happened in the policy committee meeting thank you for that um we are now going to move to the consent agenda and the consent agenda consists of items minutes business affairs Personnel policies contract renewals and administrative tasks that are routine in nature or that have been discussed with the board and are now presented for approval any item may be pulled from the consent agenda for further discussion and consideration all items on the consent agenda are approved with a single motion unless removed before the roll call vote does any board member wish to remove an item from consent for a separate vote uh I'd like to remove items 13.1 13.2 and 13.3 which all deal with minutes of Clos session those minutes
177of not so cons and not have any action taken out tonight okay so those would be added to a future agenda maybe 428 so may I have a motion and a second to approve the consent agenda as amended motion second motion James second L ball will you please call the role member Walker I member hurman I member James I member Hansen I member held I member lethal I member Waters I motion carries the next action item is to appoint concussion oversight team members is there a motion to approve appoint cons concussion oversight team members as presented so move all right motion hman second lenthall uh will you please call the role member Herman hi member James I member Henson I member h i member Leal I member Waters I member Walker I uh motion carries
178um I just have a very brief uh report tonight I just wanted to thank um the students who were here earlier the principls um for sharing the good news news across the district um thank you again for highlighting the students and all of their achievements um it was also a pleasure to hear uh this evening from Mr Latino and and Dr Payne I appreciated their very thorough U presentations and and sharing the information with us and I look forward to continuing to hear from them uh um as their work progresses and um we will now move into future agenda item requests so I will ask board members if they have any requests for future agenda items I just I have a question um there's a few items on here um that review policy 2110 and
179then the role of um board president and it says off to the right that it would be part of an iasb self- evaluation I don't recall us as a board deciding that that's how we would discuss it I thought that we were potentially discussing it in an open session or deciding how we would discuss it so I'm [Music] just I recalled us talking about it and saying that we were going to discuss it as a part of a self- evaluation um with an ISB that's my reflection I I don't recall that either I recall he said maybe but we didn't align on that well we could go around the room now and I can ask board members of their preference and uh again these are the two points are the role of board president and
180policy 2 colon 111 so what is what is policy to col 110 just everybody I believe it's the board officer um role poliy qualifications term and duties of board officers let me pull it up qualifications term and duties of board officers well I'll make a formal proposal that if this is a a topic that the the board wishes to address that it be addressed in a meeting with our with our um I I I um I support and I feel like that's uh something that I supported at the time I don't know that it I think that we would need someone to help guide us because there are specific duties and responsibilities and um you know I think aside from us just deciding in a vacuum that we would want to have our IB guide
181us through that discussion other comments I mean if we're looking at president and the officers and how if we want to make changes to it um having that moderator could be different from who we've had in the past um would be productive in close in the Clos session that doesn't mean that it wouldn't for example if we decide to review policy wouldn't go to policy and become an open conversation and then an open conversation from either on that policy acceptance a future board meeting but we have the opportunity in in a um a self assessment for self eval um to Leever iasb rep to help Focus that conversation so it basically can happen both ways but it may be that the ation more productive to start and close and then I guess finish in policy
182in the full board we actually decide to change to10 other comments so just briefly just to bring myself up to speed so we're trying to determine how exactly to try that discussion whether it's in public or in closed just trying to become more correct uh and member Harman proposal was that we have the discussion with an iasb uh and Ember Hansen and member held agreed with that my inclination is to think we should have in public it's a District 86 position um which was I was in the restroom was it was it discussed in policy prior no it's on future agenda item it's it's on future agenda item so one one option would be to have an ISB rep here in close session discussing um the role of board president as well as that policy
183and then of course as you know member hell suggested it could be kind of both we could have the discussion in close and then come forward uh in a public meeting as well is there a reason why we couldn't do it all in public well I think we having the facilitated discussion I think a couple board members mentioned that it could be helpful to have a facilitated discussion so I would prefer to have it entirely in public okay all right um member 11 I would prefer to just have it an open session so we can expedite the conversation and with member James I would prefer to have it in public so we can be transparent about our discussions all right and I would suggest that we have the discussion with an IB rep first which
184would be a um facilitated discussion and then we can come forward uh to the public with our point of view and any changes that that we've discussed um so we have four people who uh would like to have that discussion inclosed with an ISB rep and we can work towards identifying a date for that in the future are there other items on this list people want to ask questions about or additional items that need to be added yeah um I have a question regarding the nutritional Equity that's that was uh discussed at the last meeting or added to the Future agenda items and has a meeting schedu date of uh the next meeting and that is the administration's bringing in the conversation so it's I'm just making sure I'm not expected to be bringing the
185conversations uh certainly I think I mentioned this last meeting we could bring It Forward in the process of uh creating a video and umun rooms and um see ston will be back as well I guess we've been working out here spring break anything else no all right um we have set aside time on our agenda for board comments uh this section of the agenda is not for board deliberation it may be used by board members to offer their comments for the record each board member may offer comments for up to 10 minutes per Roberts rules for a total of 30 minutes for all comments are there board members who wish to offer comments just have quick comment I spoke about this at the last board meeting and I just wanted to reiterate um I will
186start by reading a letter I referenced a board member earlier excuse me a Community member here in the audience young lady in the front row thank you so much for your encouragement for the remote platform um I have another esteemed and Community uh esteemed and well-respected Community member whose name I won't mention but I do want to read her letter relative to the early dismissal Wednesday proposal thank you for conducting a survey about early release Wednesdays and thank you for the transparency on the survey results the feedback from the staff and students is totally predictable my understanding is that early release Wednesdays was already discussed with the teachers union even before presented to the board so the staff results are no surprise the student results are no surprise either my student and all of his
187SL her friends view this as a half day off every week so they think it's awesome it was right to ask students but I take those results with a huge caveat when you present the results in a future meeting I would like to request a line chart that shows instructional hours per day on average for The Last 5 Years I appreciate that the district says the proposed model does not decrease instructional time over last year except that a instructional time is maintained comparatively at the expense of lunch which is not a good choice one fiscally for the district and two nutritionally for our kids B instructional time has allegedly decreased over the last five years A friend of mine shared the early release date SL late start dates for the past couple of years and
188those are definitely higher in number now than we were a year ago I look forward to hearing D 86's plans and again I appreciative of the survey and transparency on the results I do want to reiterate that our kids need to be in school more now now especially postco and not less I again request a 5year graph on instructional time not just this year versus last year those are just a couple excerpts from community members letter we've generated a lot of feedback on this issue I would implore any community members who fall on either side of the issue or anywhere in between to please offer your opinion in an email as well um or certainly to reach out to any one of the board members personally um as I maintained before in the first presentation
189of the early release Wednesdays there was a list that detailed the pros and the cons of early release Wednesday the first pro I maintained instead should have been listed as a con and I still believe that it says consistent schedule this early dismissal Wednesday is it drives consistent schedule for students and families I'll repeat what I said last time I would argue it it does exactly the opposite it does not drive consistent schedule for student and families in fact it drives uncertainty and there's a complete Divergence from expectations going back to forever ago number two from what I understand recently this could include dismissal as early as 12:30 in the afternoon which interrupts for many a work day how do children get back from school to their home and to the extent they have buses
190how do they return to school for activities after school from a nutritional standpoint as I think one of our community member uh community members mentioned a few times and a fellow board member did as well students won't have lunch on that Wednesday which is the most concerning Point um additionally as we discussed I believe in the last meeting there would be a loss of profit to the district of 120,000 by not having that lunch on those Wednesdays um so again I am fiercely against early dismissal Wednesdays to Echo this particular community members letter and not to be too verbose we need the same amount of school if anything more and certainly not less but I do encourage the community to continue to reach out with your feedback this is important this is your district for
191some of you this is your students and without the ability to interface with the community the board just doesn't know we've certainly gotten some feedback I'd like to see it to uh increase on any very know range of that particular input that you may have we appreciate the input thank you I'll comment um very briefly um at the last meeting I have pulled the PE card purchases off of the consent agenda because I had a question about why a video that we had the district had hired a third party contractor to come and do wasn't posted on the video archive um and was told that it would be and then it was quickly taken down and there have been you know many reasons um most relying on past practice that it's not the district's practice
192to post videos of Special meetings on the purposes for the board to go into a close session when we had the opportunity for discussion and nobody chimed in the expectation was set for this board member for the board and for the community that the video would be posted um and I believe that the video should be posted so in going through the archive there are videos of town halls from curriculum there's a presentation from depal a few months ago yet one of our publicly noticed publicly held publicly attended board meetings that we publicly paid for um is not on the archive and I would like it to be added to the archive and if there is a question about past practice that isn't necessarily supported explicitly in board policy then this board should be able
193to have a discussion and decide going forward what we want recorded what we want live streamed and what we want posted does anyone else want to offer a comment I think I'll just um uh round out by saying that I know on our agenda we're having election of officers um and you know regardless of how that turns out I want to thank you president Walker for your service for this past year I I know it's um a lot of work in who' let us tirelessly on a lot of different issues and um you just wanted to extend my appreciation it it is I'm sure everyone can imagine a difficult position um with a lot of Demands um I also wanted to um as as the committee chair of Pac I guess I wanted to just
194take this time to thank the participation of our staff and our students and um our PE and that you know I really as as chair hope that all of our members feel comfortable participating in that and um that what takes place although it's a PO meeting that that they feel comfortable expressing their ideas and their thoughts um uh because I would love for the wonderful work that we do and the discussions that we have to continue I wanted to also say that um I know that Dr pay and um is not here any longer but um I'm excited I excited to continue the equity work I'm excited that she uh brought to us the the focus of the work that she does for the district and hopefully gives more perspective because I know there's been
195a lot of questions in the community um uh I also serve on sell so I was at the presentation when we looked at that data before and also when the students had come uh and presented to us about what they want to see in their schools um and that was a very powerful um to see and to here again in this uh in this presentation to our full board so I just wanted to express my excitement on that continued work um and the a good hard look at the data or at least the beginnings of the data and hopefully um has answered some questions for the community and we can just continue on from here and I think that we are staying true if we're talking about petitions that there was a petition um during
196our previous board that was signed by many members of our community former alums of of this District who asked for Equity work uh over 1,00 signatures so it is definitely something that continues to have momentum and and you know that are students in Alum need so thank you anyone else superintendent thank you president Walker I just have a few things um first of all a big shout out to our buildings this has been a really big week for the um variet of student State testings and just there's a lot of logistics that goes on behind the scenes of names that I'm sure both principal Wasington pip could probably take the next 15 minutes to um go through their individual list there's a lot of Manpower that has to happen prior to these fig testing dates
197let alone rearranging the entire building and all the staff that are proring making sure every student whether they have an IEP or 504 is in the right location gting the right accommodation there's a list there's an approval L and it's quite a process and so for all of that to happen and all of that pre-work for these two days to go off very smoothly so just thank you and thank you to both buildings I know that's a massive undertaking at the high school level um in this time there's no power outage so we had that going for us here at South class that a little bit loss of power in the middle of that um second all the months here in the spring spring is coming in with um a storm uh we've had several
198and continue to have several opportunities uh for our multiple stakeholders to provide feedback the Feb back is very important to our ongoing work of our strategic plan and our commitment to operational um um improvements so so far we've had us we talked a little bit about that late start early release schedules we sent out a communication to the community we will be bringing a recommendation at our 428 meeting um we recently also sent out our portrait of a graduate survey it it's currently open and that closes on April 22nd and that update will be coming to the board in June we also have our second round of our Panorama um students took that survey Clos on April 11th and that will be part of the June board event update as well the staff take their
199Panorama um survey here it'll be open on 425 and will close on May 2nd and that two will be part of that June update and then our uh parents of students with IEPs they received an opportunity to give us feedback through the Ida needs assessment and that is currently open as well and that closes April 22nd and so there's a lot of suring going on and we appreciate everyone's uh time that they are taking to give us that feedback that's all thank you for that all right so we will now turn to the board reorganization um and as detailed in policy 2 Poland 210 um annually during an April board meeting and even numbered years the board considers organizational matters including selection of officers and scheduling a time for regular meetings so we will begin
200with nomination and election of board president when the floor is open for nominations please note that any board member can make a nomination including self- nominations nominations do not require a second and anyone nominated will be eligible to receive votes for the position which they have been nominated so the floor is now open for nominations for board president I nominate Eric for president I nominate Peggy James for board president District 86 I'll accept the nomination accept the nomination are there any other nominations so now that all the nominations have been made I will ask the recording secretary to please call for the vote when I call your name if you will please indicate your candidate of choice from those nominees member held and member James are we have no discussion like we did last here
201when I lost oh right why they're nominating person did I mean we we can have a brief discussion if people want to do that my microphone is on and I will um I could say thank you that I I'm returning the favor you bestowed on last year by nominating me but that would be inaccurate I think you are more committed to board service than I am and I find myself quite committed I think you are extremely well well researched and I think I'm the benefit sometimes of it I'm also reminded Often by Peggy that we have certain meetings at certain times so Peggy thank you for um keeping me aware of my whereabouts but honestly P you I think you drive transparency I think you Champion hard work and diligent research to best serve the
202interest of the district and all stakeholders for that matter um I do think that you have been nothing but extremely loyal to your platform that you ran on that was privileged to be your running mate and I benefited greatly by being such um I mentioned some of the ideals I wrote a couple other ones down you're diplomatic you often um or I should say you rarely agree to move forward in discussion unless you feel like you've expressed yourself and also received input from others and as such you're quite diplomatic and most importantly board member James I think on comprehensive level you are by far the best candidate to be the president of the board here in ' 86 because I believe you will serve the most important stakeholders the best all 4,000 kids so it
203is my honor to nominate you I appreciate the con thank you I'll say for my own part I'm looking forward to continuing the service here on the board um here start about to start the fourth year um as a as a board member serving across a number of committees um and listening to a wide variety of stakeholder voices um in that uh in that point in time um the the work of the board is is not easy and it certainly has been proven that over these these last several years um it hasn't been a challenge that I've Shi from I don't intend to shine from this the particular challenge here of um you know perspectively potentially being the the board president um you know we are a collaborative unit here and I hope to continue
204to drive that collaboration we've had some ups and downs over the last year but I feel like um we have the the possibility to you know learning from that um emerge into a better place over the course of the next year and you know for some of you for the next a few years AG on the board however a lot any of us are on the board um and I am excited about the opportunities that we have for the seven of us together there um to you know not just work together but to work together for you know this greater District so interestingly um I'm not nominating anybody but I was reflecting on the selection um and some values that I hope the next Bo presid will bring to the table um that they'll keep
205the full board informed of information sent to you or communicated with them that is relevant to the full board including legal advice um I'm hopeful that the next board president um will work to build consensus and hear from everyone at the table during board discussion not stifled discussion of topics or Community concerns um and that the next board president will value all board member input regardless of viewpoint as well as constituent treat con constituents with respecting courtesy member James what's a question last member Hansen uh Eric held member held held member lethal James member Waters board member py James member Walker Eric held member hurman Eric H member H member held received four votes member James received three votes member held will be the next board thank you and I hope to live up to
206the values that we're espoused here at this from my fellow board members we're now going to be moving forward to the nomination and election of board V vice president um and so the floor now is open for nominations for board vice president again you can self-nominate or you can nominate somebody else I nominate Peggy James I nominate Cathleen Herman any discussion on those nominations call member Hansen Kathleen hman member H member hman member lethal member James member Waters board member pegy James member Walker member Herman member hman member James James member um hman received four votes member James receive three votes member hman will be the next board vice president thank you and now moving on to um the uh nominations for board secretary again self- nominations nominations of others the floor is now open
207for nominations for board secretary I nominate board member p ja iate uh Terry weler for secretary any comments sure I'll jump right in with the comment so this is very clear where this is going so at the last meeting it was interesting because there was all this talk about trust and um unification of the board and it is very clear that there is a block that is blocking any sort of unification of this board or trust so um extremely um predictably unpredictable um but I'm just going to say shameful I mean really really shameful I will um say that I when we talk about the platforms that people ran I ran specifically individually with us with other folks but specifically I ran as um someone who wanted to be a positive force on this District
208serving on this board and somebody who wanted to Foster um uh collaboration and Harmony at the board level it was a continuing Mission from what I know this District knows from a few very difficult years so when I look at where we are now I look to leaders who can um unify this board not at the expense of alienating our Administration so that is the belief that I have um and that is you know the the hope that I have for our board going forward I have um personally committed to collaboration um among several things on this board um I I think I uh I pride myself in in listening to different opinions and to upholding what is the responsibilities of this board and so I I hope that we can continue this going forward
209so I don't think you know partioning out different groups in different ways following Along on those lines um should be a continued thing if we believe in true Harmony if we believe who we are um nominating and and putting into these positions is who we truly believe are are the candidates can get this done we each serve a role on this board and we can continue to do that in a positive fashion I would like to just bring to the Forefront one of my particular strengths which is diplomacy and I think several community members could vouch for that I'm often on opposite sides of board members and community members on several issues some some of you are sitting in the audience but I do have the ability to employ diplomacy and I hope tonight as
210a board we can do the same thing and by that I mean we don't want to hop rate and I think we did make some progress a few boarding meetings ago perhaps two when we came to the agreement correct me if I'm wrong that we now only need two people to have an agenda item be placed on a future board meeting so I'm an eternal optimist I do believe the V the board will vote appropriately only speaking for myself but I do believe in the interest of continuing that Unity we drove a couple meetings ago when we decided to take down the Walls and take down the requirement to have four people to approve an agenda item I think in the interest of displaying that Unity to our community who we serve who elected us
211and who have trust in us I think we owe it to them to break up the perception of a block which shouldn't exist and it always has it let's not forget together we voted to restore BCP and to offer dual sequences some begrudgingly but yet we did it together as a team seven nothing I hope tonight we vote 7even nothing to rid ourselves of this perception of a block and to give the community what they want which is some semblance of unity and I think voting for board member James who has done an outstanding job serving the district as our secretary AR this last year I hope we give her that opportunity again I think we owe that to Peggy relative to the service provided and continuity is something that was mentioned during the last
212campaign for board president for one of the candidates that didn't succeed to be president continuity and secretary to me makes a lot of sense it makes more sense to drive unity and to display to the community we do have the ability not to have this proceed block thank [Applause] you you have any additional comments at this time you to call the RO member H member Walker member lenthal member James member Waters board member Peggy James member Walker member Walker member hurman member Walker member James James member Hansen Terry Walker member Walker received four votes member James receive three votes member Walker will be the next board secretary thank you moving on a 19.4 time and date for regular board means the board will discuss the day and time for our regular meetings and direct Administration
213to prepare a schedule for regular meetings for the 2223 school year um does the board want to continue the practice of holding regular meetings on the second and fourth uh Thursday of the month at 6 PM with accommodations for holidays for certain months of the year again we know June July December we tend to have just the one on um often times it's the the third or the fourth Thursday are there any um opinions one way or the other on that I'm making a change I recommend we continue with our our current practice I agree think that we should Contin I think we should move in the Mondays can you explain your stance board member 11 so we have the weekend to prepare that's a very good point especially as somebody who works dur day
214it's very complicated to prepare for these board meetings receive informationa theard packet exactly 48 hours that's a very good point I stand corrected I would agree with you board member 11th all I do recall in the p P Board member James you tabulated certain agendas which I think reached page counts of north of a thousand pages to have the benefit of the weekend to go through that not during my work week I'm not sure when everyone else Works would be outstanding I agree with board member 11th all I propose Mondays excuse me I agree with that I agree with Mondays um Mondays were the prior to I think it was in 19 we voted make change over from um from Wednesday to um or from Wednesday from Monday to to Thursday so we previously you
215know we were at the we were at the Mondays what are some other board member thoughts on I guess it would be reversion um to Mondays from Thursdays what do you remember what the reason why I was my recommendation at that time um it's very uh difficult on the administrative team um because of the length of the board meetings historically in this district and so for our staff who are here um and then they typically have have the rest of their work weekend so we made we asked the the board at that time if we could consider looking at Thursdays there's also a lot of Monday holidays and so it just ended up being a little bit more complicated and so we switched to Thursdays and to my knowledge that has not um at least
216in the past been an issue but that was the driving reason why it was truly for all of the staff um who have to the on rest the work because historically our meetings go so late in this District so if we did it on Tuesday could we get our pet on Friday I'm not in favor of any other I I scheduled my my teaching schedule with the assumption that we're going to be meeting on Thursdays and I I can't change my teaching schedule now so I fully support Thursdays and also for the reasons that we switched from I served on the board for five years when we had Monday meetings it is exhausting for our Administration to sit through long meetings and then have to go through an entire week I will gladly take the
217extra takes to review the board packet as a board member I I don't my convenience is secondary to what best serves our students and what best serves our students is a well-rested administrative staff so that's a good point perhaps we can address getting you know bigger presentations maybe 72 versus 48 Hours advance and maybe that those are in draft for and they are not final at that point in time but we know that they are prepared prior to 48 hours in advance um that's a conversation that we could have offline on you know extending that by an additional day for those for example like the two that we saw tonight having the the extra the extra day there for board members even if there's change if there's change obviously it would be noted to us
218um very good so then sticking with Thursdays adding a day before that for board members to get the information posting still within 48 hours per home you have consensus on that we do we have a couple everyone good see n all right so we're going to move ahead then uh to uh item 20.1 this is our second audience comments uh of the night we're now he additional public comments I will follow the board protocols board policy 2230 anyone who is interested in addressing the board please step forward each speaker will have three minutes uh to speak and please announce uh your name for the for the record here mayor Ivon mayor so as board member lethal called it this was very predictable officer election I think I called it exactly as you voted about a
219month and a half ago um and I'm actually glad the three of you were elected enjoy your last year on this board Mr H you made it very clear you're going to run and you are going to lose Miss hurman if you run you're going to lose Miss Hansen if you run you're going to lose so we all challenge you to run because we want to crush you at the polls just like we crushed the last set of incumbents that aren't sitting at the table with you you should all reflect on this past year Mr h you have diarrhea of the mouths we've sat at home watching these meetings listening to you pontificate endlessly for extensive periods of time all to not reach consensus you sit there and you say oh you hope to live
220up to the characteristics that these board members listed that they're looking for in a board president well we all hope you do too but we don't have any confidence in your ability to do it you've sat in complicit silence and you have allowed what's gone on at this table the board the outgoing board president violation of your own board protocols that you all negotiated in closed doors with an iasb facilitator which then you had to go back a second time and renegotiate when it came out that things were being channeled to the superintendent and the community wasn't even aware of it and now you guys want to go back a close session again outside of the earshot of the community that elected all of you to talk about the role of the board president you
221don't want to have that an open session and you want to be the board president shame on you shame on you I seed my time to cat green SP hi um sorry I'm uh making my public comment it was such a late time I am a mom so L dinner and did all the things my child just finished um testing standardized testing so I want to thank both principal Walsh and principal Corney lip it's been a rough two days I'm sure so we appreciate all your work uh first things first um congratulations President H um congratulations uh there's a couple of things that I'd like to bring uh talk about without naming names but we will like the Slate clean from my perspective okay but I fully expect that there will not be a board
222member in the back of that in the room back there back there at that table discussing board business with community members after board meeting and not only is that inappropriate is Unbecoming of the board two I fully expect that the board members when speaking with community members don't disclose that they don't appreciate uh what the super current superintendent is doing but the previous superintendent had bias toward south a negative bias so it's fair wholly inappropriate Okay so moving forward I assume that you're going to reassign committees at some point um I've been pretty frustrated with the work of the board in the superintendent and I'm sure you probably know that um specifically I'd like to talk about SV 100 or state code 99- 456 which requires public school districts to create a parent teacher advisory
223community um I'm assuming I'm I'm sure member hman is very um well versed in this um but the uh the district attorneys gave a presentation on this when it was enacted into law by Bruce Browner on August 24th of 2015 there are very specific things that the P committee is supposed to cover very specific as defined by state law and in going over the pag minutes and the agendas from 2019 to present day annually we are not and I want to do say this because I am in full support of Patrice Payne's work her as a person and her as the Director of diversity inclusion whatever her title is she has the appropriate disposition to lead our district through this work I can tell you that I have had the luxury of sitting with her
224in many meetings but we need to support her we need to support her in one way through the P committee which frankly I encourage all board members to go through the agendas in minutes and then take a look at the law um according to the Illinois Education Association there are specifically 10 areas of concern that we should be covering annually and the PC should be be going over the policies and Reporting back to the board you are not they're not doing that you're not doing it and I'm sorry it's a little bit shocking and surprising to some of you especially those that should know better one school bus safety procedures these the sh covered annually they are currently not two School searches these are searches that are conducted by security or the police or who
225whomever that should be covering annually by P three the role of local law enforcement I haven't seen that on the agenda either in whatever three four years four bullying prevention maybe once maybe once in four years five disciplining students with disabilities and I need you to really pay attention students with disabilities these are a protected class of students they have not been covered every year they are required to be covered every year single year six suspension and expulsion I do think they're covered seven probably not annually but they have been covered in four years School drop out probably not annually but maybe maybe have been covered I should say eight fines and fees I don't I I I couldn't find that on the agenda in the minutes nine communication with students parents and Guardians with
226regards to discipline policy we received them as parents so I assume the students do 10 professional development this is also important districts must make a reasonable effort to provide ongoing professional development to teachers administrators school board members school board members in terms of discipline disproportionate discipline out policies and how to address them have any of you gotten that training four years four years four years and staff on the adverse consequences of school exclusion and justice system involvement ask yourself have you received that training you have not you have not every year right so here's the thing I wasn't prepared to present to you this information because I'm working with many on this districts um how we can best uh serve the ptech role and fulfill our legal obligation in the state and and I have
227not finished my meetings with all of them some of the people that I am meeting with are legislators key sponsors to the original bill this bill was proposed in 2012 by students mostly from the Chicago area so you should be aware that Dr P's work Dr P's work specifically um depends upon the PX work and they're they're reporting up to board and working together together in a stress together to make sure these policies are addressing um disproportionate discipline in U specifically black black and brown students okay so I hope that this board pays attention to that and does what you know you're legally required to do okay there's another thing that is um that has been bothering me that just to let you know we've you had six minutes and going out into your seventh
228is there another Community member am going into my seventh minute or have I I only use three minutes time one F three minutes on the board thanks president held sorry another thing is um we're looking at uh Wednesday's half dayss I have no opinion either way my child is going to graduate next year and frankly I'm sure he'd be thrilled to have everyone day half day but what I want to caution you again is you have a protective class of students that you need to be thinking about in creating the schedule so ask yourself how many students with disabilities specifically I you can say any disability that are rejected and considered to have disabilities IEPs for 504s right how many of them take early bird classes good love requires that if they 5 hours or
229300 minutes in the school they are to be given a lunch period 20 minutes Seated on your butt to eat lunch I heard at some point during a board meeting that they would be allowed to have a snack in class that does not constitute lunch if the legal line is here for this district and we understand that it's here I fully expect as a community member that we are here and we will always be here we don't need to walk the tight line we don't do that we shouldn't do that why would we we need to respect the law and the codes that govern us allow our staff are highly cherished coveted building staff to do their jobs but stay above the line like this far above the line so nobody gets stressed out in
230the community thinking about this stuff okay thank [Applause] you um I was just going to say about staying above the line it would be true for the superintendent too so I hope uh president held as you take the presidency that you realize that there is a lot of things that have gone on behind the scenes I'm not sure if you follow um one of the new pages that we have where there are about 330 community members who are now being informed of exactly what's happening behind the scenes uh with the Freedom of Information Act releases those are being released to um an active group of citizens who care about this district and want the right person leading the district so we will be looking at that we'll hopefully she won't be doing things behind your
231back like she was with uh president Walker and others so uh just something to be aware of um as far as um member Hansen you said if we're being true to petitions and you're happy that we're doing the equity work I think uh Dr Payne was amazing she has the right energy she has the right attitude and it it pains me to think that we we have gone through this exercise with Apprentice on to trying to hire two publicly divisive Consultants when we actually employed someone right here in our own District who is is clearly amazing um she brings the right energy and it sounds like she has a good purpose so I I'm excited about it and I'm sad that Apprentice had to drag us through the mud on one of her agenda items
232and and then try and save herself because she didn't get away by by uh you know rallying our local clergy which is very weird and um it's it's offensive actually and then to bring president Walker into it and ask her to hide videos and and and having this this background stuff happening and what I don't understand is when you say getting stuff done maybe we're getting stuff done but Apprentice is the one leading it and she has lied to the community she has purposely shamed the community and and you guys still let her leave the district I just I don't understand and if we're actually staying true to petition take a look at the change.org stop Prentice petition again read it read the comments read the 1500 people who have signed it they are all
233d86 residents and ask yourself are we being true to petitions I mean we're not it's it's ridiculous frankly there was a petition that went for the last superintendent because some of the folks at South were unhappy and there were 369 signatures within a year year and a half this is 1,500 signatures within about 3 months and it's ridiculous that she's still sitting in that [Applause] chair any additional individuals wish to step forward comment hi um thank you all for your service I have a couple of Impressions from Dr Payne's talk um which was extremely informative and very good but I was thinking right along board member James's lines that by the time our kids get to high school many have been suffering the effects of systemic and sometimes even avert oppression since before birth and
234I wonder if we're doing everything we could to intervene with Center districts because um the situations he describes has its roots before high school which is not to let us off the hook that we don't try um also the other topic that I would have added is summer school and summer school with transportation and breakfast and lunch this is a form of Outreach that families are privilege have known about for Generations when a late bloomer is ready to rise and we could ex we could extend it we could do more with it for example one of our true comparable ausing High School in ausing New York which Ed policy Geeks would love to talk to I highly recommend talking to them they have summer courses for kids who wish to transition into AP since you
235mentioned it's the goal to get people to AP well I think the is yes when you know every the student has that desire and potential I'd also like to really thank the board members who started talking about the Creative Solutions I have a friendly disagreement with another activist a wonderful person who says there's no demand for courses at the other campus to which I reply we've discouraged it so emphatically so definitively that people are afraid to ask but if the kids know they can have any course they um you if you build it they will come and I agree that these that the and I also combo classes would promote one District unity and I agree that they should consist of kids who are motivated but there's no need for basic English to be offered
236this way because basic English is not under enrolled I I really hope this will work out and I'd really like to thank the board members who are who advocated for it and who came up with some really cool ideas to support it um anyway I'll I know it's late so I will try to curb my natural verbosity thank you um I'm just going to take just a quick second if I can find the exact number um yeah there it is 8.5% that's a consumer price index I would urge all of you to consider the impact this will have on the budget of the district and going forward the likely results of voter anger if there is any demition in the quality of instruction that community members expect or any effort to raise taxes Beyond where
237they are I would urge folks to take that very seriously thank [Applause] you addition see no one else and with no further discussion uh may I have a motion in a second to adjourn all those in favor any opposed the board will now adjourn the time is 9:56 thank you everybody have a a good long weekend [Music] a