001e e e I will now call back to order the City of Lake Forest school district e e e can feel I don't any other question all right may haveone call please miss John Mr hi Mr yes mber yes Mr Shan Mr yes the second bond issue is a resolution 2025b of the district for the purposes of increasing the working cash fund of said School District providing for the levy of a direct annual tax to pay the princip and interest on said bonds and authorizing the proposed sale of said bonds to the purchaser thereof are there any questions regarding the second bond issue a roll call vote please Mrs shohan yes Mr Remis yes Mr carar hi Miss Engelberg yes Mr Adamo yes Miss Yan yes Mrs Bernal yes motion carries we now have an
002opportunity for public participation solely for issues relating to the Bonds are there any members of the public who would like to address the board regarding the bond issues seeing none may I have a motion to adjourn the public bond hearing so moved we have a second second may I have a Voice vote please all in favor say I I I I I will now call back to order the City of Lake Forest School District 67 Board of Education meeting for February 25th 2025 may I have a roll call please Mrs Bernal here Mrs shohan here Adamo here Mr carar here miss Yan here miss Engelberg here Mr Remis here motion carries I have just a brief president's report for this evening and what i' like to do with these meetings is talk a little bit
003about what the board is doing outside of this limited meeting environment that most people see um and one of the things that the board has been working on and focusing on a lot over the past year is in terms of the many areas that are important uh is making sure the students that are progressing through 67 advancing to high school wherever that may be including 115 are ready and assessing High School Readiness and so one of the things that we participated in last week was a fantastic listening session that was hosted and organized at Lake Forest High School where we had um several members of the board of 67 current and future board members um as well as members of the other Boards of Education from 115 and Lake Bluff and we had the opportunity
004to meet with students current high school students at Lake Forest High School um and ask them questions about what their experience was like are they ready for high school when they start at Lake Forest High School if they aren't in what ways aren't they ready what would they like to see Improvement and and it was just a really fantastic exercise um we're still collecting and synthesizing that data um but what I can say is it was um extremely affirming and a couple ways because one the people the students that we met with were just incredibly just bright intelligent articulate people who had tremendous Insight um and they also had very valuable contributions that were helpful to me as a board member understanding what we need to focus on um and it was affirming because we
005some of the things that they commented on and these are students some of which are current seniors so they left 67 a few years ago um that they said I wish I would have had a little more help in this area in the areas that we're already working on so it's good to to hear that we're on the right path and also hearing some new ideas there where there's perhaps work for improvement in the future so um High School Readiness is something that the board is focusing on the administration as well um and so it's a really great opportunity to hear from those high school students last week with that I'll turn it over to Dr Montgomery for the superintendence report thank you kind sir and I do talk about uh with some pictures on
006the event that you just talked about with the board mixers so I'm glad that you brought it up because it was a wonderful event uh the first thing I'd like to draw your attention to is earlier tonight in the workshop excuse me is actually in the finance committee uh the board heard the results from the annual Financial audit and I am pleased to report that once again District 67 received an unmodified clean opinion from our auditing firm and this is the highest Assurance an auditor can give the district I want to congratulate Dr Hermes and her team uh for their outstanding Financial stewardship this happens year after year and it should not be taken for granted so I want to congratulate Jen and thank her for her leadership because this is truly uh Best in
007Class and um I want to make sure that we are celebrating those successes today Jordan and um the team met with the district 67 technology working group this was a new idea that we created in a partnership with the community to talk about how we are using educational technology within the classrooms uh one one of the uh big findings from this working group is that there will be changes next year particularly in the K4 arena with iPads in that we will not be having iPads going home in grades K through four next school year um and they won't so it won't be over the weekend it won't be in the evenings uh they will stay in the classroom the committee also talked about the pilot around securely which is a inhome uh monitoring uh opportunity
008for our parents to monitor devices this is an Outreach to try to level up the support we're offering for our parents right now we have uh 105 students enrolled in the parent uh pilot and we are hoping that after spring break we will be making this widespread to parents this will continue likely continue next year uh but remember without the students taking the iPad Home Care four it will be primarily focused then in our grades 5 through eight where the devices will still come home um during the school day excuse me after school hours uh moving forward uh I at tonight's meeting later in the meeting uh there uh is a recommendation for the board to accept bids on the rendering or excuse me the Improvement for the DPM cafeteria many of you know that
009the spirit of 67 graciously donated about about $300,000 worth of new furniture to transform the DPM cafeteria well ahead of when we were going to make improvements to the physical structure a commitment to the spirit was that in summer of 25 we would remodel uh the cafeteria itself and that's the renderings that you're seeing in front of you today the furniture in the picture is the existing furniture uh so this is one rendering uh we added some elements that may be new to the community there is a grab and go uh counter that we have added there's actually two of them this is just one side so it'll be a 7856 side quest came to uh the workshop tonight and talked to the board and told them their Vision about how they are planning to
010utilize the new space and then I'm especially excited about the DPM Hub which is was the tech office and previously in Years Gone by actually a teacher lunchroom that is uh largely unused at this point was used for storage and it will be transformed uh there will be a gra another serving area in the back there will be um windows and that open as a nano wall uh that will open into the cafeteria flexible seating and uh you can do small group areas here I think the students will like it um and it would be almost a reward area it'll feel more like the cube uh for our students uh to make uh the uh environment a little bit more welcoming as uh Mark shared we had a wonderful turnout for the joint board mixer
011we gained a lot from parents and from students I will not belabor this because he about it but we're proud of this event and want to thank Dr lonard for her leadership the biggest thing that I would add is that as we synthesize this data my priority is well now what so what so we want to make sure that it's actionable so each of the board members who attended received a form to fill out for Trend data then each table of the student interaction there was a note taker and that data is being synthesized and then there were note takers within the parent room also collecting notes so Dr lonard is going to need about a month to process all of that but please stay tuned for um key takeaways and findings and next steps
012there was a joint board coffee in February February 6th and we had about I don't know 12 or 15 people there um it was a wonderful conversation sometimes we come and there's zero people sometimes there's 20 this time there's like 12 to 15 and it was uh this is a time where you can the community can go in a thousand different directions whatever they want to talk about and it was a great conversation in February and I want to thank Mark for his leadership and his partnership uh the next opportunity is on April 17th and this is just reaffirming our commitment to community outreach I'm going to talk about some of those ideas here uh in that we also Al had the superintendent advisory council meeting last week and you can see pictures from that
013meeting it was a uh this meeting was really focused on what they wanted to talk about which I appreciate the cander they offered and the guidance and the support that this group has remember this is about 25 community members who applied there were 75 uh that were uh submitted applications Mrs Oakley helped uh create a cross-section of our community each person serves on a two-year term and then we will we're trying to figure out are we replacing them all at the two-year Mark or are we going to stagger to bring some type of historical perspective I don't know if a 67 board member has ever I've ever invited you into those uh I know that John Noble came to present on one topic um perhaps at the next meeting we'll invite one of you just
014so you can hear what they're saying and sharing I think Mr Noble found that beneficial you can ask them to so maybe he didn't but I think he did uh some other community outreach uh on February 3rd uh we are doing annual presentation to uh the newcomers club we did it last year and February 3rd was this year's we also have this week I think Thursday of this week we have our uh realer and uh Chamber of Commerce presentation with Dr leali both of the first two uh Dr Le Ali and I co-present and it's always wonderful to have Lisa um and share the stage with her and hear about the wonderful things that are happening in 65 remember we are committed to the partnership between the three districts that was a major Focus focus
015when I was on boarding uh four years ago now uh we also do an annual or I also do a presentation to link Forest Place and that's an annual event now and that's going to be on April 4th uh to go into the community and have uh those representatives of the community and residents be able to interact with me give an update and then also hear uh what's top of mine for them there's two upcoming book talks uh that I'm especially excited about the first one is Ellen ginsky and that's in a partnership with the district 67 AP all district meeting at croya Ellen is uh now I I can I think I can call her a friend I interviewed her a year ago and we've worked on a couple uh things together at the
016national level uh the book is I should warn you uh the Lake Forest book uh store has both of these books the library also has both of these books uh Ellen's book is about this thick it is she did not uh use cliffnote version it it is years of research actually nine years of work on this and is really talking about uh the Breakthrough years which is 10 to 25 uh and it was enlightening to me as a parent and as an educator I think it's very much worthy of a read come and listen to her uh and engage and she's also spending time with our students uh the night before her speak she's going to interview students and then share what she found from the students in uh relation to what the National Trends
017are and I think that's a wonderful add-on to make it more personal Doug Bolton's book is not out I have a a galley version of her right now I was reading a little bit last night before bed um and it is uh called untethered both of these books are talking about how we are supporting young people as adults the I think parents and Guardians in the community are searching for answers just like we are as Educators especially in the face of a mental health crisis where 53% of our females on a national level uh are experiencing anxiety and depression three out of 10 are having suicidal ideation and that's both males and females and two out of 10 are actually um committing some type of self harm so when you think about how are we
018supporting the young people within our households these two authors um help level up and give you more tools in the toolbx toolbox whether you're an educator a parent an aunt Uncle uh grandparent please spread the word because I'm excited about these and I think it'll help um on a much lighter note uh but equally exciting we had our DPM spelling be on January 22nd and there were it took 45 rounds to select the winner um this is definitely not for me I think I'm getting um more dependent on electronic spell checking uh but 45 rounds for these young people so we had Demitri as a sixth grade sixth grader as well as Lucy as a sixth grader forgive me we also had Ila as a fifth grader intentionally leaving off the last names at this
019point eighth grade we had Luke and Joey uh we uh this is the first time in DPM history where we had to go to the secondary list and the results were second place was a sixth grade Lucy and our school Champion was eighth grader Joey who will attend the regional spelling be in March for the second year of the row I had the word the word was bore b o a r b o a r I did it thank you um I had to practice it in the mirror um and I took it down there because I didn't think it was a very um complicated word uh but at that point they had went through so many incredibly difficult words that was the last one um that Joey spelled correctly to win it all so
020um I want to congratulate everyone that participated and U it brings a little joy to my heart to know that spelling bees are still important and we're still uh engaging in that practice that concludes my report and I thank you for your attention if you have any questions I'd be happy to um answer them these are young people celebrating the Sheridan U playground picture just brings me joy that must have been today it looks nice and warm uh any questions for Dr Montgomery all right um tonight we have three opportunities for public participation the first we already had for bonds the second one now is just for items on tonight's agenda um so at this point in the evening's agenda this opportunity for public comment will be limited to comments about this meeting's agenda items
021only please hold all other comments until the following opportunity for public comment later during tonight's meeting are there any members of the public who would like to address the board regarding the items on the agenda for this evening nope all right next up I believe Dr s Fitz Simmons uh is going to talk about the winter assessment thank you so much we are excited to to be here and I am honored to be presenting with this amazing team we have the teaching and learning team with also some of our coaches and um colleagues from our department of student services so I'd like to just very quickly introduce we've got Mrs keer veale keer we've got Mrs Ford helverson Joanne we've got Jenny Parkhurst who is our math coach Denise ganos who is our literacy literacy
022coach we also have Sam pson who is the DPM principal on the west side and then in the back we've got molly so um thank you so much for being here with us I am excited to work with these friends as well as share and celebrate them I'm celebrating them as much as our students I am excited to share the data in this report tonight so without further Ado um we can click through our next next slide and one of the things I want to highlight one of the things we will be talking about tonight we're going to be going through some of the Strategic plan and academic metrics reframing that this is also a board priority we're also going to be looking at the NWA map by school as well as the ecra growth
023metrics so the ecra growth metrics really are going to show an overarching growth measure high growth low growth expected growth and this is taking from all of our benchmarking which we call fast bridge and Vil is going to dive a little bit more into fast Bridge as well as the map from our winter based on previous years and the projected or estimated expected growth we'll also talk a little bit more about our action plans because you are going to see some celebrations but you're going to see through our triangulation of those different data points you're going to see that we have highlighted areas that we still need to continue working on and then last but not least we're going to hear from Joanne Ford helverson this evening on the work with the special education Continuum
024simply because we have been charged with this seeing that some of our students with the highest needs are not growing at the rates that we would expect um so in moving on I did want to just oh could you go back one Vil just to see I've circled the NWA map and the ecra growth and the fast Bridge because those are three different data points I'm trying to work through this year in creating an understanding around what each one of those does I think in the past we've selected one or another to highlight in an assessment the key is to look at all of them they do different things and you can't extrapolate one and tell a story you really need to look at all of them they tell you different things some will dive
025into the curriculum so you can look at standards and strands and inform instructional decisions others will give you highlights on we are not growing here others will actually show specific skills that we need to Target in order to boost those standards on the test but the key here is triangulating all of them so that we can see trends that we can move our district forward and I'm excited to say that I think that we have some good information from where we're at all the work we've been doing in the action plans but even more importantly I can we can see where we're succeeding and where we still need to dive deeper to get some answers so um the first thing we just want to remind you Veil do you want to just talk a little
026bit about our metric yeah so just back to our strategic planning and our metrics that we set um as a community um we really talked about our growth in map as well as fast Bridge so we're going to highlight a little bit of that later today um the ecra growth that we have really focuses a lot on the map piece so we wanted to also make sure that we had an understanding of how we're doing with our foundational skills as well so we'll be back there and just as a reminder um when we set these goals really thinking about we are high achieving District High performing we are in currently from the IR lens um in the 93rd percentile for ELA as well as a 96 percentile for maap or math so celebrations okay so
027getting started if we want to take a peek at our first set of data we have Cherokee reading so let me just take an extra moment to explain what these bars mean if you look at the very top bar what you see is you're seeing the growth for this year that's a specific growth measurement the growth measurement we are looking at are the green and the blue bars so the top is pure growth um the green and the blue bars indicate the number or the percentage of students who are scoring in the 61st to the 100th percentile so we want to be in those green and those blue bars the green stands for the 61st to the 8th percentile and the blue means that those are students who are scoring in the 80th percentile so
028this I just want to clarify this is not proficiency this is different than what you see on the I state test this does not mean a percent of students who are proficient it means students who are in that top Echelon and this is compared nationally so what I've chosen to show you tonight if you go to the achievement um bar which is the second bar veils pointing right there uh that whole line there that whole line on that second row is essentially achievement from comparison from Winter of 22 20 or 23 24 to this past winter 2425 so what I would love for you to take a look at and Vil if you can just circle the green and blue on the on last year's um achievement compared to the green and the blue of
029this year's what you are going to see is that we have actually increased the number of students who are scoring in the highest Echelon the highest percentiles in Cherokee reading we have Cherokee students going last year from being in 50% of our students scoring in that highest Echelon to this year 56% of students scoring in the highest Echelon you can also see in those two bubbles that it's um the do you see the two bubbles where it says 60 and then the other green when which says 68 those are median percentiles so what that means is that if you lined up every single score of every single student at Cherokee the median the very middle score last year was ranging in the 60th percentile of the nation and this year they are now in the
03068th percentile which is in that green band of success so this is a huge celebration for Cherokee and we it is is one metric to show how we're comparing nationally now if you go down to the next slide I'd like to give a shout out to our fourth grade teachers they are not here tonight I invited them to come but they were not able to come this was a huge um shift for them they actually went from 48% of their students scoring in the green or the blue to 66% of their students scoring in the green or the blue and that's essentially moved them up from falling in the 60th percentile last year and this year you'll see the 72nd percentile as their median distribution score so a huge celebration one of the things um
031I don't know if Denise or if Jenny well this is Denise so this is Ela maybe Denise you'd like to share two of the main interventions that they did this year so one of the things that we did this year was we came together sorry can you hear me now is early on in the year we took a look at at our data from last year from Spring and looked at our initial fall data and we identified areas of focus in terms of the skills that we want to prioritize and then from there as a team we've been working together with the building coach and the administration to really look at in an authentic way how we can within our core resource identify where those skills are taught and how we can make sure that
032we're prioritizing those and then checking that progress along along the way so that's been um a really nice way for us to authentically embed those skills within our core resource but also think about how we can continue to engage students what else would you add to that per okay thanks thank you thank you Denise and one of the other things to mention is that they have embedded some interventions to Target some of those phonetic and grammar skills that weren't being addressed before like lli and six minute readings so we're really proud of the um the unique interventions that have been delivered universally as well as to the students who needed it now what I'm going to do I wanted to give a big Focus here on Cherokee because I know that we are concerned but
033what what I do want to make sure that we do is go through all of the schools but I won't spend as much time on each of the schools unless there's something to note so please feel free to write down some questions and you can ask when we're finished with the presentation but moving on to everit we have Everett who moved from 64% to 70% we have Sheridan who moved from 69% to 77% we have DPM who moved from 65% down to 57% on the east side and we have DPM West who moved from 59 to 67% um what I would like to do though is go back up one slide to East and then if you can take it down to the next slide Veil I added in an interesting data point for us
034to note DPM East again we're looking at a lot of different data points you I just mentioned that DPM East dropped from 65th per or 65% of our students falling in that upper echelon to 57% but one of the things I noted was that if you look at Ela which is on the right last year the average RIT score which is a Rous unit and that's essentially the best way to describe that it's just a measurement scale to evaluate student achievement and growth on the NWA map the 2324 and the 2425 RIT score on average was the same so what that did tell us is that the nation was moving and growing at a faster rate than our fifth grade so that is one of our data points we're triangulating to make make us see
035that something's going on so moving on um to the reading as I said DPM West we have of 59% of our students falling in that upper ashon to 67% so nice growth uh if we move on to math we have Cherokee who also had some incredible growth in math again last year was 59% of the students moving to 67% again growth we're in a much better place this year Everett 69% to 75% Sheridan did have a little bit of a decline they went from 84% last year of all of their students being in green and blue down to 76 and we talked to Susan and one of the things that she said in math is that there's a cohort that came up from first grade that was their neediest grade and it's a cohort that
036has come up to be in second grade and this is their first data point that they're collecting so this is also part of their SI plan their school Improvement plan and they're targeting those High need students the small groups of students that are not growing the way we would like so I just wanted to let you know that we are also on this and aware of it and have action plans embedded moving on to DPM East math we have a um an increase actually last year we had 62% of DPM East students in the higher echon this year up to se 67 so that was an increase of five percentage points and then DPM West wow we want to celebrate DPM West and I'd love for Sam to just say a couple of words we've
037got DPM West moving from 69% in that blue and green all the way up to 79% of those students in the highest Echelon of the nation and and if we can move one more slide to highight on eighth grade wow 74% of those students in green or blue up to 85% so Sam if you'd like to just say a few words on the success of your team uh yeah just extremely proud of the work we've been doing uh really our Focus this year has been disaggregating data as early as we can and then looking at the trends and our students who aren't growing at the rate that um we would hope they would be and then really intentionally designing instruction to help pull them up as well so continuing to Target those who are exceeding
038and then how can we extend beyond where they're at and then truly the notion of meeting kids where they're at and trying to pull up our students who might be plateauing are not growing as well and um I'd like to say the proof is in the pudding it's it's working and we're very proud of that and it's something that we're going to continue to try and bring down to lower grades as well uh where we obviously see fifth grade as an area we need to put some more emphasis on but developmentally they're at a different point than our eighth graders so how can we make it still something that provides them that same lift and then work towards the High School Readiness that we were all talking about at the beginning of the meeting thank
039you and I'll share one more slide on the overall growth if we go down to the next slide Vale this is an ecra overview of the growth so one of the things you can see it's kind of hard to see all the numbers but your eye goes to the yellow right the yellow circle there because what that's saying if you break this down by school and we can go deeper this is in the actual assessment report the deeper data points this is just again another triangulation point for us because it's pointing to some of the areas that we don't have as much growth and what this measure is this is about the scores that cohorts had last year the trends according to the local growth model and then the projections that ekra our data tool
040is telling us that our students should be growing at so this we look very deeply at and um Vale I don't know if you can just kind of circle the low growth column those are the numbers that we look at very intensely because those numbers are telling us what percentage of our students aren't growing the way we expect them to grow and not just nationally but locally so because it's locally that's giving us a motivation and an intentionality to say that we're not keeping up with our local peers and in the fall you remember I showed you the peer comparison model these are the things that we're looking at so this yellow is not the be all end all of all data points but combined you can see that we have our area of focus
041so I'm going to turn it over to Vil and the rest of the team to share some of the work that we're we have one more data point to look at and that's the fast bridge scores where some of our attention is going and then overall what this means and what we're doing for the rest of the school year thank you um so the only other thing I'd like to add to that about ekra is that we're really encouraged to look at this as a formative data piece so it's not Spring right we still have a lot of time with an instruction so the really nice piece about having winter is that we're able to make action happen and that's exactly what our teams have been doing so I'll highlight some of that in just
042a couple minutes um but first of all we wanted to just address a little bit about one of our uh our goals as as a community and what we're looking at for our foundation skills when we started our reading review those years ago we recognized a need for our literacy practices to change and to really focus on current research one of the commitments we made was looking at um how we are um uh reducing the amount of students in the high-risk or some risk category and really looking at our springt spring data so I recognize it's winter right now but I wanted to show you what that looks like um this was in the assessment report but we're seeing a nice trend line showing the decrease over time that when we get to the spring
043for our kindergarten and our first grade students we have had a nice steady decline and that's a good thing because that means there's less kids that are in those high-risk pieces um that tells us that the curriculum that we're using our resource that we have in place as well as our interventions that we're putting in for uh place for kids is working so that's exciting to hear um so action plans we wanted to talk to you a little bit to there is so much we could say tonight about the level of intention that's been put into the work um I am really proud of the team that I have worked with on all of this um it has been truly a village because every single person has put their hand in and said let's go
044um it is all about our students and our outcomes and making sure that we're helping students succeed which has been great so I wanted to talk a little bit about that and I think it goes back to just to remind our community about our commitment to our strategic plan and how that is really being carried out through each of our schools individual School Improvement plans um we can look at our district level data it really does take our schools digging into what does this look like for the students we serve at Cherokee at Sheridan at Everett at at Deer Path so um all of that has been really beautifully aligned I think the alignment this year more than ever has been wonderful we really kicked off the school year knowing what our projections were going
045to be and understanding where we needed to focus the time and attention um the other piece that we've talked about a little bit this year is our just our distributed Leadership Model we do have you know lots of folks in positions administrators coaches our building leadership teams our our department chairs what we've really tried to do this year is Elevate those positions and think about how we can build the capacity of our leaders to support student outcomes so that it's not just coming from our administrators it's again leadership really coming together and thinking about what these action plans look like so I did want to highlight that because it has been a tremendous amount of work you know all of our building leadership teams and and coaching teams are looking at the data um with
046a laser-like focus um our instructional coaching so a lot of this is really how we have part partnered with our district coaches and our building coaches and our administrators I think the way I'd like to think about it is that there is so much data that exists that what we're not asking our teachers to do is to become the experts on absolutely everything that's what we have this other layer of leadership for and what we're able to do is to bring that data to our teams really zoom in and then we can spend our time not just trying to figure out what does this data mean but actionized um more than ever and I know we've talked a lot over the past couple years about standards Focus but really our accountability to students and to
047our our state is is on the standards it's not the resource itself we are in a spot right now where we have really robust resources in place for our content areas what we're able to do now is really think about our our instructional practices in the classroom um thinking about the historical trends of our data so when I talk about data driven standards Focus um what we've been able to do especially for some of those areas where we continue to see the trends that we don't want to see is we've looked at historically about five years worth of I data and we've tried to look at to see what are the gaps that exist because what we know is that the resource doesn't necessarily have everything in it so what we have to do as
048a team is really think about what are other opportunities that we can layer in there another piece is that we have become even more focused on how do we further differentiate within the classroom how are we using our resources um so at the elementary level this is called Extended Learning we have that for K through five actually and then um what I need for 6 through eight that's an intervention time where we're able to address the needs of not only students who need further support um but also students who are already there and we want to extend their learning so that's a piece too and then um something I've been really proud of high levels of collaboration this year have been on our commitment to exposure with with ir again our resources may not have
049everything in there so what we've been able to do is think about there are areas where we need to supplement more we need to provide opportunities for students to see prompts that they may not see within our current resource but that they'll see on I to familiarize them to be able to have those um those conversations and to expose them and then as teachers we're coming together and really looking at what are those student samples and how we can make further instructional decisions so those are super kind of highlevel pieces that we've been doing I think the word I want us all to leave with tonight is intention it's a lot of really intentional planning that's been happening in action for students um and so with that I'm going to turn it over to Joanne
050for hson to talk a little bit more about special education and our Continuum of services work you um so on December 20th I believe it was um the last um egg committee before U we all left for winter break um our department of student services presented to um all of you about um some of the deeper analysis that we were doing this fall around um students with IEPs and our Continuum Services um as a result of that work the the headline was our students are growing but they're not growing at a rate that is going to close the gap for many of them um and so that was really um the focus and the charge that um led to um us creating a a workg group um so our next steps here let me kind
051of Advance there we go um so so uh kind of where we left with that um we have created a group we have 11 um Educators um that are a part of this work group uh we had our first meeting about a week and a half ago and uh we kicked off our work um setting the the course and the tone for um that work and we will be digging into um really more clearly defining um our our services I think we identify gaps through um that analysis and we'll be working with our team to uh draft out some of those additional layers and supports that we need to build into our Continuum um and so we have four meetings planned between this winter and spring and we have an iterate an iterative process set
052up where uh we're meeting as a work group um digging into that work and in addition to that um some of the resources and the best practices and evidence evidence-based practices that we want to see along with um um that Continuum of services and supports uh and then we will be um as we meet as a group then we'll Circle back to our admin team to take it through a round of feedback and so forth um and by the time we get to May 20th to our egg committee update um we'll have something um really robust hopefully to bring to you um for additional comment and feedback and then our goal is to um we're going to have some Focus areas for next year and what we build out this year will be set the
053course for implementing the change that we will see more systemwide for the 2627 school year um so that's a little bit of a like a teaser for um more to come for May 20th but we're currently um in that work um right now and um it aligns nicely with um a lot of the database conversations that we're having um at the team levels as well thank you great and I know that we have just a couple more minutes thank you this has been important work and I know that this is a lot but we want everyone in the community to hear this intentionality this focus and the headline is we are excited about a I I feel like it's game day coming up and we are going to come in and do our best we're
054excited and so um Vil if you want to just wrap up with a couple of next steps and questions yeah and I think we're excited and I can speak for our teachers I believe as well the level of excitement because of all of the work that that we've been doing thank you to our teachers I think that we can't say that enough they're on the ground floor working with our kids every day um so next steps are we have I coming up um this year we have a new platform that we're working with so we're doing some training coming up in the uh coming months um but that will be in April and we're uh partnering just for how we can help support uh the messaging for our students to get really excited it's a
055show what you know kind of piece we will have our map spring testing later uh in the spring as well and then one other uh piece that we have been talking about um with some different uh groups in the district have been our suite of Assessments so really uh I think we've kind of started that conversation here are the assessments we're offering the right assessments so we've talked about that with our our teachers um we've brought that to CCC and then we will be kind of making some other recommendations about um if the assessments and the timing of them are the right ones for us moving forward so we would love to open it up to any questions you may have but again I would like to just thank this entire team we've got our
056coaches Jenny and Denise here to answer any questions Molly's here as well um please ask away but thank you to this amazing team to the teachers and to the students who are doing all the work yes girl I I'll defer if anybody else wants to go first all right could you go back to uh I think slide three it's our strategic priorities oh it's going to be a while there you go uh so this this is a great metric it's the state assessment metrics and I really appreciate all the hard work that everybody's done and we are trending exactly the way that we want to uh but I just would like you to focus on this and I guess I ask you Matt to we need to adjust this because we're already at where our
057goals were for five years now so something this needs to be adjusted where it's a better metric for us to to track uh to if it's a reach goal that's fine but whatever it is it needs to be something a little bit better that I think the wording in there maybe was a just misunderstanding with how we put it together so maybe it's something we could work on if you could recommend something uh in the future to adjust this one that might be good for the future boards yeah I know you've brought this up before and um certainly did not go on notice the hope is that we will have a recommendation for you uh over the summer so we can make the change in August um because we should have something that's really showing
058a growth and if we're already meeting it right now we need to reestablish it otherwise this is I mean it's a great story we're we're doing very well it's just the how how else can we track it uh but I do have a question for you uh so again every obviously things are working we're trending up the right direction or math and our Ela or progressing the way they are the way we wanted to uh so you're meeting the B the board's goals but I guess my question is are we creating issues anywhere else is science now lacking because it's less time is art or any other uh other sections are they now lacking or are they struggling because we're putting so much time in these other Block hours I don't know who that goes
059to but U yeah well I think I can answer from the terms of one of the pieces that we know with our schedule Chang last year with science is that we reduced the minutes there at um at Middle School um that is something that the team has been problem solving and making sure that they're thinking about how they're fitting in those um inquiry units and the Innovative opportunities I would say that hand inhand with academic Excellence we've also been focusing on the Innovation piece this year so in particular um one of the pieces that we've really tried to elevate for all students is that we wanted to make sure that in addition to really robust math and literacy experiences that all students are getting experience with stem as well so within our and I'm actually
060um going to be sharing an update with the the uh Community shortly probably next week about this um but with our stem or our science specialists at the K4 level we've introduced Sam labs this year where all students are getting coding um we can guarantee that that's happening now which is really exciting they're getting those hand-on experiences um in addition at the middle school level our stem teachers have been working on how to um integrate a platform smartlabs which is what our sem programming was built on before um but really thinking about those experiences we're we're offering you know from from my experience in Lake Forest we do offer such a a lovely uh serving of different things for students like World Language like our oncore classes Sam I'm curious what you might add to
061that while Sam's walking up you may remember from the fall assessment report that we had Snippets of the peer comparables and in science we did decrease by a negative 1.8 8% we went from 82.9% of our students meeting the ISA proficiency down to 81.1% we're on uh just to touch on from my perspective as the principal of the Middle School um I do feel it's taken up some adjustment for our teachers to rejigger their curriculum pacing to the new format so for those who are unaware with our block scheduling we have math and Ela every day 80 minutes science and social studies went from being everyday 53 minutes to now every other day 80 minutes so it's a slight decrease I think it's around 70% of what they had previously so we've been working with
062them especially during our early release Mondays our what we call our CII days and it's truly how can we still meet the standards that are in the ngss the Next Generation science standards that um are required by the state and then repackage them to meet the new format so something that the science teachers themselves have remarked to us is they had Labs that they would have to cut short due to the 53 minutes so it's actually been a benefit that they have 80 minute long because they can have the more robust discussions they can do multiphase Labs things that weren't previously available are now suddenly on the table that they didn't even realize would come with this change so while yes the number of minutes are less we feel that the way we're repurposing them
063and utilizing them in this new format is uh leading to deeper learning so hopefully when we go through the ISA again now that we've had a couple years under our belt with this new format we we should see us hopefully climb back up a little bit more can I follow up of course just uh did we get feedback during the interviews that we had a CLE two weeks ago or last week last week sorry did did the students provide any feedback did they feel that they were prepared for this some the science curriculum that I mean that's one of our big board priorities to prepare them from high school so I was kind of curious if yes we've decreased some of the the hours in the minutes that are attached to this but are the
064students truly being prepared for the challenges that come with biology chemistry so many other items up there at the high school level and I was with the parent group so i' kind of heard their opinions but uh I know some of the other members were part of the student groups I'll offer two comments one is to be continued because we're still collecting and synthesizing the data and so all I had was visibility into my own personal groups um for my groups it didn't come up but I think some of that information is going to lag a little bit because I think the change at DPM has only been in place for two two years or one year two two years two years and so for example I was meeting with a couple seniors that that
065change didn't affect them um so I think to the extent there's any effects I think it's going to take a little while before we see it at the high school I did hear Carl I did hear um some of the students at the listening session talk about that and they did say they felt like the high school science is harder and they didn't fully feel prepared but I do know that our science teachers have articulated with the high school science teachers and they almost teach above the ngss standards I remember right I mean I they are teaching above it they are teaching more High School like curriculum just the past couple weeks uh the spirit generously donated PCR Labs so they're doing things um like medical technology that things that most kids are not exposed
066to at this age um I spent a very brief time as a chemistry major in college the labs we have at DPM are nicer than the ones that were at ufi and the things that they're doing are far more complicated and advance than what most people are exposed to so uh I presented at the Ed committee a couple months ago and we talked about the Career and Technical education standards that we're going to have to build in in order to provide Pathways up to the high school so those are the things we're actively thinking about as we talk about how we're going to truly prioritize the experiences we want things like that that will help our kids get things that are more unique unque Innovative real life that can Pro provide them with that unique
067opportunity and I just wanted to add from our little group um some of the students did mention that um it was hard for them and some of their peers to focus in these longer blocks of time and so they didn't know that they were getting the most out of it because I mean some of the teachers allowed breaks others didn't and they were just losing focus because it was just a little bit too long in their opinion and I would second that I heard the same thing um I did also have a student mentioned that they didn't feel like they were prepared for science but I don't think it was necessarily because of the content that they hadn't learned I think it was more from an executive functioning standpoint and study skills because it's a
068lot of information and its memorization and they don't have a lot of experience in being able to successfully do that mass amounts of information and memorizing thank you for that we heard a lot about executive functioning last week and we do have a plan more to come but we're looking for ways we can get executive functioning skills to all and starting very heavily and very focused in fifth grade I had a question um Joanne you had mentioned that there will be changes in the 26 to 27 school year um and I'm just wondering why that so far out I mean maybe there's more to come when we hear on the Ed committee but that seems like a long ways away yeah that's a great question because that seems like a long time from now when
069we're sitting in 2025 um so our Focus so first we need to like put the road map together right um and so that's the work that we're doing right now and we're going to come to you um in May uh for next school year and granted this is this is IEP land so we also need to follow everything that's written into plans right now and so the process of change um you know IEPs you meet annually one time a year and so uh we are working to focus on particular areas um for next year at DPM around um some C- teaching which is an existing practice but honing in specifically um on that and um supporting that differently than we have before and also um some of look at some of the behavioral support a
070little bit differently um across the um um DPM East to DPM West um the other work we are not looking to make any major changes for this next school year because we would have already had to have been in that place to start making those changes um to roll into next year so it's it's following the IEP cycle so it's putting the the um structures in place educating um the the the staff and the system to be able to start making those decisions that will put that into play for 26 27 on a much broader scale if that makes sense and some of these things are not looking to have major changes but some of it's more refining the pieces that we already have in place and having the decision- making be more systematic so
071that we are targeting the the students that the service maybe is really intended to support and looking um at other ways is to um support in a in a more um systematic way because right now it's it's so individualized um at times that um people are wearing a lot of different hats um because of how we're managing the resources if that makes sense so some of it is more of how we're going to structure and systematize ourselves versus feeling a lot of changes for kids and families if that makes sense Joan can you add where we are with the inclusive model and any potential changes that we would make either maintaining or modifying yeah I mean I think some of that has kind of naturally evolved just out of the needs of students so when
072I talk about that we make students that are or decisions that are individualized we have done that we still have you know 80% or more in kids uh 80% or more of kids with IEPs spending 80% of or more of their day in um general education uh we do have a small subset of students who are spending maybe 50% of their day in special education and and in general education um so I think those are the P pieces that we're focused on and granted these are very small numbers of students and in a small District um it is sometimes uh harder because you to take um we don't have as many students that you would create these um big robust programs and um like you would in a large unit district and so um you
073know historically uh the district has prioritized students being in their home school um and that has been um a value and that was like one of the big major changes of bringing kids back from outplacement and and um you know ensuring that they were being educated alongside their neighborhood peers I mean we have neighborhood schools here um so at this point we have um a smaller group of students at one school that is spending more of their time outside of um the school day and that we are looking to um streamline in terms of how we meet those needs with the number of adults and kind of what that looks like in that building um you know I'm not sure we have the level of need that necessitates um a building based program that all
074students um you know are referred to and go to to attend um based on the current needs we have in the system right now um but that is something that you know it's it's not out of the realm of possibility is not off the table um that's some of the you know the stuff that we're going to be talking through and and thinking through in that work group um but I think the you know historically there has been um an emphasis on kids being in their home school and that's sort of like the ju jux position of being in a small district is um do you build out very concentrated programming in one place and and tell this student that they're leaving their school to attend this particular program and those are hard decisions or
075are we able to with the resources that we have um still meet and maintain those needs of those students so and what Joanna is very eloquently trying to tap dance through is um do we make a program in one of the elementaries and force kids to move so if we have a student that meet meets a certain profile in there in Sheridan but the program is in Cherokee do we move those students to Cherokee and the same thing with Everett because right now there is a distribution of resources that is spread across all three buildings and is there a better way through this Continuum to support those young people these decisions will come at um at some cost it may be the homeschool location yeah so thank you for the question though Joan while you're
076at the mic one question for you um the special ed working group does that involve parents and if not is there an opportunity there for parent feedback yeah there there will be an opportunity for parent feedback um one of the ways is uh we annually do um a survey to all our our families uh with students um with IEPs and 504s um and so we've been looking at like really heavily revamping um that tool and um having it focus more around um this work and feedback that connects back um to to uh the work that we're doing this year um so we definitely are looking for that um I think for the parent end like we're not looking to vastly change some of the experience some of it is is more um like I said
077having a better road map for us and how we make decisions and organize ourselves um you know with the resources that we have so I'm really glad to hear that you guys are looking into systematizing some of the um the different needs um I've always having a child who want through the district who was dyslexic it's been a challenge and I think K through 4 was a specifically challenging um in trying to figure out what was exactly going on and then and then providing the right support and I know that you do have some additional supports that you have added and there was a mention of some other unique supports could you comment on some of those specific to kids with dyslexia no it was just in general I think um that you were offering
078kids who were falling maybe either not reaching their growth potential or or am somebody yeah just restate it one more time for me so I think okay sorry so we were talking about kids who were not reaching their growth potential and or not reading in the percent percentages or testing the percentiles that you wanted them to and there was a mention that there were being there were some unique supports that were being implemented and looked at I was just wondering if there was an ability to comment on those in a more specific way yeah um so I think we've done um a lot of work around um this in terms of in special education um when I talked about like evidence-based practices and um evid evidence-based um curriculums we have um brought in um newer
079resources for reading um that Target um more so they're more intensive programming for students um at a K1 and a second grade on on up um in math uh we had surveyed last year around the resources that we're using um we don't have um we have a couple of resources at the elementary level um and then at the middle school there's a wider range but many of those are outdated or used by people who were um trained a while ago so I think um some of the pieces are I've been working with our uh District math coach on um looking to pilot and update some of those resources at the middle school level related to math um and we have um you know recently in the last two years um done a lot of intensive
080training and purchase materials to Target um students with very intensive um reading needs um so I think does that answer your question a little bit um yeah I mean I know that like with amplify like when we were looking at it as a curriculum like it does really well for some of the middle but there one of some of the data showed that it didn't you know go low enough and it didn't go high enough so I just want to make sure that appropriately both of those groups are being supported in a in a way that they all are growing um because if you look even at where everyone was growing I we obviously had it in in the right direction and I don't mean to you know not give credit where credit is due
081but obviously we want everybody to be growing where they should be so just making sure that we have plans that are yeah so okay now um so to that specifically I think some of the feedback we had heard is with the change from our workshop model to using the amplify resource that um are co- teing so when we have our lbs and our general education teacher um that they were like navigating a a new a a new totally new resource and the the things that they need to anticipate and how to adjust for students look totally different now um so we are in year two of that and I think we have better information about where to adjust um but one of the outcomes of still like hearing from our staff that this is challenging
082um on the uh we've been having discussions at with a tnl um of partnering more with our uh district and building level coaches and that would be on our uh work around engagement and and I'm folding in differentiation around that too so we have had and I've come to talk to you all about this are true north coaches um that have provided support around specially designed instruction and behavioral support um we are shifting um to not as heavily use them because I think our work needs to be more embedded with our coaches and more um at that Universal level to Target some of those students in those needs if that makes sense too so that's a great question thank you Joanne thank you you fielded those questions beautifully thank you and we definitely have a
083focus as you can see with our uh School Improvement plans we are really targeting those students who aren't growing growing all across those that aren't growing those in the Middle with universal supports and our accelerated Learners we want to make sure that we have high growth everywhere any other questions on the winter assessment no thank you very much to the entire team much appreciate thank you thank you team next up liaison reports uh Mr Adamo do we have a report for true north um I have an update in December we voted on a proposal from Glen viw District 34 to withdraw from true north um all of the 18 districts in that are members of True North have had their 60-day period to consider this I understand a couple just as an update have objected
084I think District 109 which is Deerfield and the high school district in Deerfield Highland Park par both voted to object another uh I think did too I'm sorry Lake Bluff did as well Lake Bluff did as well um so that is uh that is there Glen viw will now be forced if they wish to withdraw uh from True North to go through a somewhat complicated removal procedure involving very uncertain proceedings before the regional Office of Education both in cook and Lake County and uh there remains to be seen how that will all play out we shall see my understanding is they have every intention of continuing to progress to the next level I it's um I I agree with that they have they're True North is currently servicing zero of their students and I believe
085they are the largest of the grammar school districts so you know they have they have gone a long way towards very clearly trying to separate themselves from true north um so I agree with you any questions about True North all right uh Megan do we have a report on Spirit um just that they will be hosting a um paddle fundraiser tournament on May 10th um so there will be more information to come on that but save the date all right we have a few action items to vote on uh first up acceptance of the 2023 24 annual audit may I have a motion to approve the 2324 annual audit I moved may have a second second any discussion may I have a roll call vote Please Mr Remis yes Miss Engelberg yes Mr Adamo yes
086Mrs Bernal yes Mrs shohan yes Mr carar I Mrs Yan yes motion carries next up is approval of the Landscaping Management Services contract may I have a motion to approve the Landscaping Management Services contract so moved second any discussion may have a roll call vote Please Mr Bern I'm sorry Mrs Bernal uh yes Mrs Shan yes Mr Remis yes Miss Engelberg yes Miss Yan Mr Adamo yes Mr carar I motion carries next up the DPM cafeteria bids may I have a motion to approve the DPM cafeteria bids so moved may have a second second any discussion can you please just clarify again the the funding structure for paying for this she's not here so without Jen here I will be brief but tell you that right now um we have been uh saving for this
087but there are two different um mechanisms that we approved approved earlier both the 10 million and the 5 million uh that will be incorporated in it but right now this initial cost will come out of the uh reserves that we have and then it will be backfilled with the borrow of the 10 mil on the five mil that is forthcoming okay so you've read a check it's got to Future funds no we have the money but I'm saying is that with the $40 million of work that is on the horizon um I don't want you to be worried that the 2 million out of the reserves right now would be putting us in a Jeopardy of the investment of the results of the tenear health and life safety as well as the master facility plan
088so the structures that you're seeing in a very systematic way over since December all the way through April are to prepare us for those future borrows and the future plans this project was well well in advance of the uh plans that are forthcoming with the master facility but all of this hangs together to make sure that we can stay true to the master facility plan that was presented to the board in December any other questions may I have a roll call vote Please Mr Ado yes Mr carar I Mrs shohan yes Mr Remis yes Miss Engelberg yes Mrs Bernal yes Miss Yan yes motion carries may I have a motion to approve the notice to remedy of tenear teacher Maria galzi as discussed in the board's closed session meeting so moved may have a second
089second is there any discussion may have a roll call vote please miss Engelberg yes Mrs shohan yes Mrs Bernal yes Mr Remis yes Mr Adamo yes Mr carar hi Miss Yan yes motion carries we will now move on to the consent agenda may I have a motion to approve the consent agenda items so moved may I have a second second before we have any discussion can I ask uh Dr mcgomery just give a little bit background on the vision 2030 statement that's on the agenda thank you so the Illinois Vision 2030 statement is an updated from the 2020 version um it is a uh vision statement for the state the reason I put it on the consent agenda was that um I wanted to make sure that we had the opportunity to support the many
090organizations that came together to create this and yet acknowledge that we have our own strategic plans and Port of a graduate I think they complement each other nicely but the organizations that came together to set the vision for the state were the Illinois Association of school administration the illino Illinois Association of school boards the Illinois principes Association School business officials and more and the three areas that they are focusing on um within this our uh future Focus learning which is all over our portrait and our strategic plan shared accountability and predictable funding so that is the state's Direction and this is justor moralizing that we are in support of the direction of the state's going acknowledging that at the local level we are operating under our own strategic plan in Port graduate as well as
091metrics any discussion regarding the consent agenda items may have a roll call vote Please Mr Remis yes Mr carar I Mrs shohan yes Mrs Bernal yes Miss engleberg yes Miss Yan yes yes Mr Ado yes motion carried foyer requests uh two of four for parents care have been completed uh also completed foyer request for James Francis Lake Forest corruption Busters and Judith mcandrew uh and then uh two foyers are in progress for Frank McCormack at this point the board will now have a third opportunity for public comment subject to board policy are there any members of the public who would like to address the board sure January and February are very cold months in Chicago the place we've chosen to live thank you to the faculty and staff uh who managed to successfully Keep Us
092open every day this winter in spite of the fact that many of our neighboring districts did not it is very much appreciated it was not a f favorite person at the Montgomery household but I appreciate your support I should add safety is a top priority and every decision was made in the best light and of the information available but thank you for your kindness the next board meeting March 18 2025 and that concludes our board meeting for this evening may I have a motion to adjourn the City of Lake Forest School District 67 board meeting for February 25th 2025 so moved second I have a second second any discussion may have a V for please all in favor say yes yes yes I for you Carl I