001Jo the flag of the United States of America to the repic for it stands Nation godis welcome back and happy New Year um Terry could you please call the RO sure Steve Frost here thank you no here benos here Chia here gon here Mo's here tyer here we're all here tonight even though one is loose one's on the little machine and uh do we have any correspondence I don't believe so okay all right bye welcome back thank you Happy New Year everyone happy New Year all right so we are back and in full swing of things is absolutely frigid out there and I remember my kids walking today like you could see the smoke you see the air and everything like it was cold but people we are all back we are all happier than
002ever ready to hit off the second semester of things back at it and so tonight will be a little bit of a shorter report on my end um given the big holiday break but there's been a lot that happened within the community um sort of looking forward towards the next generation of Stevenson students um and Athletics was very busy as well over the a break so we'll kind of break that down so to start on the bottom right uh we had two of our incoming freshman nights for all of our incoming freshmen who will become a part of our Stevenson family in August next year we had two nights last week and then we have our final sort of introduction night um this week on Tuesday and then incoming freshman will start course selection as
003early as next week and so it's a very very busy time for family engagement for our incoming freshman families um all of them sort of packed in there in the PAC learning what the Stevens and Community has to offer I know many of the fmps uh presented for this event as well so that was leadership on their part sort of explain what they've been able to do with their advisory program and just see what the next generation of Stevenson students has to offer and then on the bottom left on the top and on the top right myself and 10 other of our fire leaders are fostering Intercultural respect and empowerment Club leaders on the day that we got back on the 7th last Tuesday we traveled out to apic middle school and we spoke to
004to all uh was what ended up being about a thousand of their middle school students it was all sixth seventh and eighth grade students and we gave our speakup training to them so if you remember a couple of months ago right before we went on Thanksgiving break we gave that presentation to our freshman uh recently we've been pushing it out towards our area Middle Schools as a way just to start this process a little bit earlier uh we find that middle school students have never received a training like this before and so it just feels really good looking back sort of when I was a middle school I would have loved to have a presentation like this and so to give back to our future Stevenson students it's just a really fun and empowering experience
005for me and for our fire leaders and they were a great group right for a thousand of them on their first day back for our first day back it was a great presentation we had a little Q&A in there as well and so they were able to ask questions about what Stevenson was like and it was just full of joy and excitement and it was a great way to open the new year so as I mentioned Athletics uh was many teams had very busy sort of winter break schedules um on the bottom left the girl basketball varsity team played eight games over their holiday break and finished with an record of four and four that'll be the subject of the Statesman article that I hand you in a minute on the top right our boys
006basketball team had a busy holiday break with over six games and they finished six at the Wheeling Invitational on the bottom right our co-ed cheerleading squad um placed second with a score of 92.7 at the badier North High School Invitational on Friday December 20th then in the middle our bo boys swimming and Diving team traveled to Deer high school over the break for the Lake County Invitational and they finished in first place which was the first time that that has happened in coach Lily doll's tenure here at Stevenson so big congrats to that is in that first place no at that Invitational at the Lake County invite specifically and so what I really wanted to show case with Athletics overall especially for our winter athletes right um is that for many of these students they're
007very deeply passionate about Athletics right they they perform at a high level they love that team atmosphere and for a lot of them they give up a lot of what their time is over break to do athletics and so they're really grateful to have opportunities like this where they're able to have immense team bonding and just have fun doing what they're passionate about right like I mentioned a couple months ago that with Fine Arts similar to that we don't have an Athletics requirement here but the students who do that are really really passionate about it and that's why they give up some of their break and some of their time spent with uh friends and family over the holiday season to compete so kudos to them for that for the Statesman Spotlight this month uh
008I had two sort of stories that I wanted to share so that one the first one that'll be coming out to you guys is a profile on an athlete a student athlete trainer and so that student actually is a student trainer in our student Training Division and so he helps work with physical therapy with athletes and adults alike and it's really cool for him in that he is also an athlete himself he's a fall athlete right so when we talk about what our athletes are able to do throughout the course of the Year having an opportunity such as training allows them to stay connected with the Stevens in community sort of with the athletic World um in this sort of new Manner and it finds out you know careers within physical welfare and Athletics as
009a whole and then the second story features The Varsity girl B girls basketball team captain it's got the coaches profile on there she had her thousandth Career Point a couple of weeks ago so big congrats to her and sort of everything that the girls basketball team has been up to in the recent weeks we school next and so up and coming this month uh there's a lot going on as I said we've got the last incoming freshman night tomorrow and then we'll have our two course selection nights into next week and so incoming freshman will go right away into picking their courses for next year um and meeting with all the divisions and counselors to sort of schedule all of that sort of in line with all of our incoming freshman nights we have more
010Consortium Orchestra and Choir concerts there was a jazz band Festival that's going on tonight as we speak and so the month of January is really spent with a lot of consortiums um with you know incoming students and and middle school students coming here seeing what our Orchestra our choir our concerts and our music offerings are like as well as sort of taking part in that course selection World spare is new this year um it's going to be held over the 25th and the 26th of January it's usually held in October it's kind of swap places with the night market and so divco will put that on over the two days it'll have all the boots from all of our 27 plus Affinity clubs um and different cultures will be represented and students will have performances
011at that event as well then on the 29th we'll have our Lunar New Year celebration so that will be a time for us as we sort of close out January with the Kaa Club Sor singing competition competition that goes on with that and they'll be able to raise raise proceeds for that lastly uh we will have a huge freshman sophomore play the sixth the seventh and the eighth of February and so our actors and especially our younger freshman and sophomores who are involved in that play are busy at work memorizing their lines and getting ready to put on a three night performance so that's all I've got it's been a kind of a shorter one tonight but Happy New Year I'm really really excited to be back and sort of kick off my last semester
012here at Stevenson giving you all these presentations so thank [Applause] you do we have any visitor statements hello everybody my name is Elise halman I have three alumni from the great Stevenson High School that are all currently employed in schools one is a school psychologist one is a speech language pathologist and one is a fourth grade teacher so thank you they're all paying it forward okay um Stevenson continues to evolve and improve its approach to emotional well-being and mental health subjects that were once hushed up like substance abuse and suicide are now addressed in health class and Catalyst Club this is a mark change from when my kids were students here almost 10 years ago and I'm thrilled to see it one area that remain in the shadows is school safety specifically as it relates
013to Firearms approximately two years ago Stevenson shared safe storage information with parents and while it's a terrific step there needs to be more One Touch point is not enough I'm here to request that Stevenson High School reach out to parents about firearm safety just as they reach out regularly about other safety issues whether the school sends out an annual letter or keeps information posted on a safety tab on the school's website resources should be made available these small actions can have a major impact on safety and in and is in line with measures protecting emotional and mental health of students and staff suicide by firearm is successful over 90% of the time 78% of School shooters obtain the Firearms at their homes or at the homes of close friends or family in November of 2024
014students brought guns into mundeline High School Fremont Middle School Hinsdale South and Central High School in Champagne those are just the incidents that have been public publicly reported in newspapers so we can only imagine how many other incidents there have been the statistics and incidents support the necessity of firearm owners safely securing their firearms several letters were recently sent to administrators and school board members asking that Stevenson share safe storage information with parents feeder districts are already doing this as our other local high schools I respectfully request that the board and administration take action to keep students and sta staff safe from unintended consequences of unsecured Firearms I'm one of many who would be happy to elaborate and collaborate on this effort I thank you all and I look forward to some followup action thank
015you thank you thank you and what village do you live in ver thank you as you know we don't typically respond now but that's all good reach out to me if you want to set something up I think you know to for further conversation I love okay thank you I'm gonna go take your left overs now don't forget the cookies the cookies all right all right so that brings us to our curriculum team presentation tonight so we're very excited to welcome uh members of our multilingual learning division so Justin I'll let you introduce your team and uh talk to us a little bit about the work you're doing incl thank you uh Happy New Year everyone it's great to see everyone uh I'm excited to uh present two wonderful teachers and our Advanced conversation and
016culture team um this is Sam figuroa and this is Christina Mueller hi very fantastic teachers this course uh to give you an idea we have uh Spanish 34 and Spanish four in our two sequences this is a course that could be taken after that it can also be taken after AP Spanish language and culture one thing that Christina and Sam have been doing for the past couple of years as they've been building this up has been working on two different approaches portfolio and Intercultural community of competence which Raj you mentioned that a little bit earlier that's something that in our multilingual division communicative competence is hugely important but Intercultural communitive competence the idea of bridging two cultures bringing yourself and your own lived experiences as you're working to to learn more about the experiences of
017other cultures that's been a huge part of our focus and these two have done a great job to that end so without further Ado I'm going to pass it on to them okay so as Justin has mentioned this course is unique um recently we've had three different Pathways coming into this course we've had individuals coming from three4 accelerated which Christina and I have both taught for the last few years which you might remember us from last year speaking about in um interpersonal portfolios and the success we've had there um this year as well as last year we've had a chance to get students from Spanish 4 and this year from uh ap5 so three different streams of students which had a lot of unique challenges um and as a result of reshaping our curriculum this
018summer Christine and I have decided to delve into portfolio in a different vein not just interpersonal but presentational as a we've had some tremendous success we want to share with you guys looking at the data here something that really really surprised us tremendously was how much we jumped up in two sectors in particular so a 12% increase in both classroom learning strategies and classroom belonging are things that we feel were were were as a result of changes we made within our portfolio model um because it gives the students a chance to express who they are not just to us but to their peers but then also that student agency where they have a chance to really take ownership of their education in looking at some of this data over here I want to highlight the
019second one over here where it says in these class in this class how often do you use strategies to learn more effectively one thing that we understand with portfolios is that students have not just one opportunity they have many opportunities to work on their uh on their skills and as a result of those multiple attempts in AB ility to reflect on their progress they feel more confident with what they're doing with classroom belonging and something that we've seen with the cultural aspect of this students in in a different way from Spanish 34x or the interpersonal portfolio model have a chance to really explore a little bit more how they connect with the culture and it's something that their peers as a result of our feedback process are understanding more how one another interacts with uh
020the cultures that we're studying so in the past it used to just be you look at the window and you see you look at the mirror and you see your own culture you then look through the window and you see the target culture but now we're giving students a chance to look through the window to see what their peers are actually doing in a more specific intentional way and it all really comes down to student agency so if you don't remember I just want to refresh you guys refresh to you guys what it looks like with uh interpersonal portfolio the idea is that in the past students have had one particular particular assessment they would do during a unit and that was it and often times it was a highrisk sort of scenario for them
021in Lee of that we spread it out in four different occasions where students then have a chance to have a chance to hear the recordings reflect make adjustments moving forward taking the feedback that we're giving them that their peers are giving them and so that their their next opportunities are such that they feel more confident because they understand what they need to actually do with that we decided since we've had this success in 34x we've had some of those students coming in that we wanted to explore what it looks like for it to happen with a cultural comparison in a different mode of communication so understanding that students have three skills that they're really working on the interpersonal presentational and interpretive we decided that another one needed to be added in to really kind of
022dive deep into students being able to not just explore um the uh not just to explore culture amongst sorry not just to explore how it is they interacting with that culture but how their peers are interacting with that culture as well and Christine here's going to go over some activities that we've done thank you so much Sam and the okay great thank you all right so thank you so much Sam for getting us started with that I would like to start off with the cultural comparison portfolio is within our presentational skill standard and we got this model from actually Spanish 2 I was part of the team last year in Spanish 2 and we've experienced so much success with it that I really wanted to incorporate it into our Advanced conversation and culture course so
023it follows a very similar outline and follows the same basic principles as the interpersonal speaking portfolio students have four opportunities within a six-week unit to demonstrate a presentational writing piece of evidence but because the title of our course is Advance conversation and culture we wanted to take it a step further we wanted them to be able to demonstrate not only their presentational writing but make connections with what we're learning in the Target culture and compare this uh Target culture to their own culture in community so with that we provide students with a prompt that allows them to analyze the target culture and express how their own culture and Community connects with it and within that prompt students must be able to identify the cultural products practices and perspectives of not just the Spanish speaking culture
024but of their own as well and with that we found s some some success and from some student conversations that students are actually able to learn more about themselves their backgrounds and their families which has been a really powerful piece to this transition to the cultural comparison portfolio in the grand scheme of things and what it looks like in a unit we first start off with learning about the target culture so for example we may be learning about cultural aspects within the Mexican culture and the Guatemalan culture throughout a six we unit we provide them learning activities they have opportunities to discuss and to do writing activities at towards the end of the unit students have the opportunity to engage in two rounds of pure feedback with two writing samples that they have created in
025their cultural comparison portfolio once they have engaged in that pure feedback they choose one that they believe exemplifies their best pie piece of presentational writing they revise it and they submit it as a piece of evidence to be scored uh in the IRC and we provide feedback on that piece of evidence and what this kind of looks like in the classroom these are screenshots from the slide that that we use for every single unit so students know that the cultural comparison portfolio if you took a look at the top left I know it's in Spanish but I'll translate uh some of the parts uh we really want to make sure that students view this cultural comparison portfolio here's a little hard copy this is a Learning Resource this is their Bank of everything that we've
026learned these are the pure feedback sheets everything that we've learned in their in the unit everything that we've studied and how they can connect with it so it keeps all the culture that we learn all in one St um one packet it's also a tool it's a tool for them to be able to track their growth not only just within a unit but throughout the whole year this stays with them the entire year um and kind of speaking long term our hope is that something like this can be adapted at the lower level so that way once our students finish out our program uh here at Stevenson they have so many connections documented of all the culture that they've learned but also how they connect with it as well and then also we tell our
027students that this is our evidence um you can use this to analyze your girl to reflect um and because we implement it so much in our daily instruction uh and frequently they really look we use these a lot in our class uh on the bottom left hand side you can kind of see the frequency with when these opportunities occur Sam and I try to be very intentional that we try to space these out so that students have time to not only uh progress in their language proficiency but also have some time to learn about the T culture and the cultural aspects that we want them to be able to identify and then on the right hand side that's a screenshot of the expectations whenever we provide them with a prompt we want to make sure
028and be consistent with that they must identify the products practices and perspectives and they must also be meeting using our intermediate mid proficiency rubric so these are just some of the tools that we use when we give them an opportunity so I'm I'm kind of going to zoom in here and kind of give you an example of what this may look like throughout the unit in the eyes of a student so the sample that you see here is from our third unit which focus on the Caribbean more specifically we gave a lesson on Theos in the Dominican Republic and we showed them a news clip of a dino cultural center that was being opened in the Dominican Republic which was a really big deal because the government did not exactly um identify them as an
029actual group that deserved a cultural center so we gave them this news clip that was fairly recent from uh within the last year but then also we gave them a news clip or we provided them a virtual tour of AO exhibit Gallery in the Met Museum in New York because we wanted to provide them of look look what we're doing in our own country to honor the daos the indigenous people of the Caribbean so they took a virtual tour these were the learning that we provided our students and then the following day students had to address this prompt we've learned about that Dano cultural center and the Dano ex exhibition in the Met Museum in New York what is a space where you feel represented in your own Community or in our own School Community
030reference the theme of preserving cultural identity representation and consider the cultural products and practices so this is a prompt that we provided for our students and then here is a response that a student generated and this student decided that this was their best one so this is their writing after it's been given feedback on by a peer and after he has revised it so I'm going to kind of outline some of the ideas that really spoke to us in this sample that dinos have lived for many years but now the governments say that this group does not exist the Met Museum feels different and therefore this Museum honors the dino culture with an exhibition this creates feelings of Pride what I thought was super interesting is that he was able to connect sports analytics Club
031here at Stevenson it's been a special space for me I've learned about sports my favorite interest I participated With Friends the Met Museum and my club have very different topics but both value the import of Pride Sports analytics club and the Theo Cultural Center super super different right but what I think is so re very neat here is that he was able to tie both of these contacts with the same value and perspective therefore forming a bridge with the target culture another sample I want to outline is throughout the unit or the third unit as well we're still focus on the Caribbean but now we're focusing on Puerto Rico and we did African influences due to the slave trade in Puerto Rico so we provided them a video of How It's Made what's the history
032of of it they we also did a reading activity of peles which is another food that has African influence in Roots so students did activities they did speaking activities with this as well the next day they had to make a cultural comparison with it and the prompt was we've learned about the history of two Puerto Rican dishes and Belles how do these dishes reflect the history of Puerto Rico and then how do these dishes how do the dishes you eat reflect the history of your family what we really like about this next sample is me is sometimes we not only learn about our students we also learn about just history itself that we haven't known before so this student says Mofongo is a Puerto Rican dish brought by slaves and adapted with local ingredients similarly
033in Greece there's a dish called baklava that was spread to Turkey by Greek slaves there now baklava is a popular dish in turkey and Greece like is popular all over the Caribbean due to the slave trade in my house we baka for important occasions like Easter and Christmas so this student was able to find very similar Trends in their history with Puerto Rico which we thought was super super neat and if we didn't provide the student that opportunity they may have never even made that connection before but now they had to analyze it they were able to do so so we thought that was very neat so this is kind of how the cultural comparison uh portfolio works I'm going to bring it back back over to Sam and where he's going to dive a
034little bit deeper into what our students actually think about this process very cool oh it's awesome and think about the idea that those wonderful things you guys read here their peers read that as well so it's not like we're the only ones who's looking at this they have a chance to engage with their peers they pass them their packet and they say hey I want you to prove read number three for me and their peers look at that they read it and then they talk about it and then the next day it's like hey pick a different one that you wrote find somebody else and have them read that so that whole idea about looking through Windows not just at the Target culture but their peers is something that we're to explore really really richly
035through this mode of communication that we haven't been able to do with interpersonal because students have time to intentionally sit down and write they have more time to thoughtfully put down what they actually think and then you know work with their peers on it so that's been absolutely wonderful in that aspect and one thing we really wanted to do was figure out we know that we see value in this like what do the students think especially since these are brand new changes in our curriculum um so we gave them surveys right so that's what we do what doesn't get measured doesn't get changed or doesn't get you know iterated on and that's something that we wanted to understand and so I'll give you guys a moment to take a look at uh to see what
036students said about the writing specifically and so now considering that this was unit two and Christina and myself were still in the iterative process and refining things we can only assume that things are getting more polished now and as a result of students having this feedback from their peers but also the interpersonal relationships they're building via reading more about their cultural backgrounds and how they connect with these shared experiences that they're having a class through this culture we can only imagine it's getting even stronger so considering about what they learned about themselves here's what students had to say so we talk about students being reflective often times we don't really talk about how much time it takes for that to happen and so with these cultural lessons that we're giving students and how we're intentionally
037braiding in it braiding them into a assessment I think is forcing kids to actually think a little bit more uh deeply about how it is they actually connect with things I think in the past when it wasn't tied to it was something we just went over uh very much it was a passive part of their learning now I think it's very much an active and integrated part so now thinking about their classmates so how this has impacted their relationship with their classmates so after having given this survey to the students uh only recently did I really kind of realize these three buckets of questions we asked them our pillars here at shs right we talk about the commitment to self commitment to others and commitment to learning and this is something that naturally just lives
038within this particular work that we're doing here um and I'm really happy about it and I believe Christine is as well and so in thinking about what our next steps might be um this is something where we I feel very fortunate to have Christina working with me on acc and this is the first time that she and I have had this course together and these adaptations we've made we hope much in the same way as in our 34x three years ago that she and I really pushed and pioneered the interpersonal portfolio that we can help refine these ideas and help move them towards our other curricular teams um I strongly believe that students if if they're able to connect more deeply with the culture uh they'll understand the importance of the language and so when
039we think about how things are interconnected here in together how you can't really separate from EDI they're all in one language and culture are one um so the sooner we can refine this and make it in such a way that our students as they're vertically articulating through our courses have culture as the Bedrock of what they're talking about of what they're writing about they're not only going to have more success in learning the language they'll also have more success working with their peers uh in creating the type of school environment that we want them to have which is empathetic really so thank you guys very nice have you okay so the portfolio you're using it within the the language arts classes you had an opportunity to share that out into other disciplines or other maybe
040that's more of a justing question but you know social studies considering this it seems like a great idea and I love the way you're doing it and are all the world languages doing it yeah so um World languages interpersonal well let me start this over Justin Justin has done a great job in allowing things to ferment naturally amongst different teams so if there was a volent told things things probably would have been squashed pretty early by lots of different people but as a result of letting teams themselves decide how they might want to navigate this we've naturally had teams um exper with different types of portfolios in different modes of communication so we're not all 100% on the same page um but as a result people are confident with what they're doing so they're producing
041a better product for kids and we're getting to the point now where we're starting to narrow things down so we're more uniformed for the student experience as they go through so although it was it my design it was probably the right design as a core team last year we also provided our division with kind we actually made pillars of portfolio I really loved the architecture um reference and basically as a coure team we decided you know some just guidelines principles to guide portfolio and we made a chart of which teams are doing portfolio which teams are in the beginnings of Incorporated portfolio and so I'm not on coure team anymore but as I'm sure as time goes on we'll kind of get an updated list on who's progressed and what we can learn from each
042other as well I appreciate that you're talking about agency and you're you're giving you know from the student having had students here I can you can almost see how that works with them it's sort of the way that they think so I appreciate that is this a Capstone course for students in Spanish no yes and no yeah in Spanish there's potentially three different capstones uh and they can be taken with the exception of AP Spanish Literature in any order once you get to a certain level so if you finish Spanish 4 you can take AP Spanish language for this course as your Capstone uh you can actually take this after AP Spanish language AP Spanish Literature is the one course that we ask students to finish AP Spanish language first so for many students this
043is their Capstone one of the if they didn't want take cor exactly right you can just kind of finish up and we didn't talk about it tonight but one of the areas of focus of the class as well is uh helping students earn the seal by literacy so they'll take the Apple exam as part of to and and a good number of students will earn that se by and how many classes of of this are we teaching there are two section currently two sections of the moment one each yes your long yeah yes yeah work it's it's very cool very cool and interestingly enough um we we included an article um in the superintendent information report which I think Wendy will speak to later that it just kind of fits with this whole idea of
044building agency so it just it's very timely I they weren't to plant they weren't here uh to reinforce the article or anything was a plant many years ago thank you Sam was well done well thank you guys really great thank you so much we appreciate you so much awesome that was good thank you apprciate thank you thank you for staying for that stay for the rest we get to start our Monday a. together and then we joke that on our board meeting days we always go 7 AM to 8:00 p.m. yeah so we like just it's a fun Monday it is that's how we spend our Monday all right have you night guys nice meeting no no okay um well next we have our board policy updates but um I'm going to take a moment
045of kind of privilege uh I was going to introduce uh re in the superintendent's information report but because her and I are Partners on this little board policy update now I'll take the moment to uh introduce you all to ream I know many of you know ream from our um finance committee meetings but as you know P has stepped into a role in another district and ree has um stepped up and uh is taking on the role of district office coordinator and uh secretary to the board of education so and uh remember yeah I was going to say her daughter was our board rep in the 2021 school year um so kind of a Coy she was amazing she she it was kind of a rough year for those meetings she had to sit through
046some stuff and I you're sat through a lot of that my heart brok she just graduated oh good friend December yeah from super cool from George Washington wonderful yeah good for Jaden graduated the next year hopefully next year from Purdue and then you have only two more Alissa is here yeah and then Luke is coming Luke is coming so and then er's gonna name a haul after me or at least a locker a lock something a locker maybe well we are super excited to have you and um in addition uh re and I uh kind of reviewed uh everything that P had put together and that we shared with you at the last board meeting for the board policy updates uh no real changes and again nothing's particularly substantive all of these are recommended by
047press and then we're further recommended by attorneys um this process is fairly new to Rene but she will be um kind of diving into this and we'll work together with Wendy um on the next press update but in the meantime we're presenting to you uh press uh issues uh 117 updates uh for your approval tonight okay could I please get a motion to so moov second was that Don yes Ronnie with a second thank you any questions for Eric about any of this actually I if I can I have a question sure um Eric there were only a few of the level a and level B types of changes and several of them deal with like the AP program and stuff was there anything that changes or was it really basically addressing stuff that we're
048already doing most of this is stuff that we're already doing um but it's important that we kind of keep up with the Press updates so it is really kind of concretizing what we're already doing and that's why Steve I mean you've been around for a while like you remember remember we used to just do these every year or two and I think now we're just trying to keep up with all of the changes that are coming so that's why you see all this more frequently and most intive most of it is non-substantive for us on a day-to-day basis but that's definitely true here as well and that's why you it's the one that's probably the biggest is the career Pathways information and that's why Wendy shared that previously I think in November December accelerated place
049yeah those are all so those are all things that we're doing yep yeah no I definitely like the way you're doing this compared to what the way we used to do it yeah so thank you yeah thank you okay Terry could you please P the board certainly no hi bsph hi s hi gon hi moons hi Ty hi Ross all right thank you carries seven to nothing all right and that takes us to the Personnel section this point I'll turn it over to you okay well as you all know Eric is still insisting that he's gonna leave here um he keeps promising he keeps I'm sorry I know it's not this is not the goodbye we will deal with all of that much later but in the interest of a super smooth transition we've been
050talking for years now about the succession planning and our our plans and through all of those meetings leading up to now a newer series of meetings and interviews and all the things we are here today to welcome Wendy as our next superintendent to succeed Eric when he leaves so Dr Wendy cust in a moment will become the associate superintendent as of July 1st of this this year and then would take over when he does leave July of 2026 she say finally she said finally was nice it was [Music] kind anyway so we're very excited we're happy to have you and uh could I get a motion to approve got it all right any other questions comments super exciting yeah yeah we're really happy it's a good it's a good fit it's a good we feel
051very confident that um keeping our culture of continuous Improvement and collaboration and all the things that makes make Stevenson really really special and unique are you have it you get it we're we're going to be good thank you thank you but choose the fill but I'm excited we haven't voted yet oh wait all right so don't get excited 30 more seconds please call the r certainly Ben I gon is that a yes course absolutely Moon's eye Tire I cross 100% I no I carries unanimously congratulations Bundy thank you it's gonna be great very no turning back now no no Jamie Jam's going to hit s and the whole world's going to on YouTube you can't go back it's on YouTube it's on YouTube you agreed whatever happens in the next month you agree we're we're
052really happy and excited about it it's it's all good all right well moving right along uh so you see graduate program approvals there uh as part of consent we'll have the human resources report um so we will not need an executive session following this meeting I know uh but we'll be sure to manufacture one for you at some point or April um and that brings us to the business section Sean and you have two items both of which we've talked about at length and finance committee but do you want to do a quick summary Yep this uh we need to hold a public hearing um for discussion and the board to hear from uh the community in regards to the issuance of working cash bonds um to pay down some of our existing workan cash
053BS so if uh you would like um we could uh seek a motion to open the public hearing on the Declaration of intent to issue 15 million in working cash bonds for the purpose of increasing the working cash fund of the district okay could I please get a motion to open the yes second Gary tyer thank you thank you all in favor okay so the hearing is open do we have any visitors or anyone who would like St is anybody here from the community not at this moment you want to say anything chicken chicken big chance come on [Laughter] away tax dollars at work could I get please get a motion to close the public hearing the working cash box so second thank you all in favor I I oppose okay the hearing is now
054closed excellent thank you so much um in line with uh that uh particular uh hearing um as I mentioned we are issuing um working cash bonds to pay off some of our existing bonds um and so uh we've had these conversations um at our uh finance committee meeting um we do have some additional uh leftover dollar that the county collects for delinquent accounts that we can add to pay off some of our bonds as well um so tonight we are asking that the Board of Education approve the resolution for the Redemption and payment of a portion of the outstanding taxable General obligation limited tax refunding school bonds series 2022a of the district and just for um clarification uh we are paying off $1 15,515 th000 who did I get a motion thank you second is
055that you Ronnie yes thank you so we have talked about this now in a couple of finance committee meetings does anybody else have any further questions for Sean okay could you please pull wounds oh hi tyer hi Frost thank you no hi benos hi s hi gorson hi cares thank you the next item is related Sean yeah the next item is related that's the parameters that go with the final cost of the bonds the issuance of the bonds um we are um looking at uh having a bond ratings presentation uh Liz Hennessy myself and Shannon weld we'll be doing the presentation on Thursday January 23rd that's with standard and pores um we'll provide we'll be providing more information in our main meeting memo um and then we will be bringing in February the final action
056for the board which is um to ultimately authorize the sale of those bonds Sean those are a virtual now right uh yes standard standard import yeah that's a zoom you don't have to go out there no hopefully yeah okay good question um and then the uh only I have two more items uh one is a we are working on the first student renewal um believe it or not it has been um five years since we or excuse me three years since we went out to bid for our buses last time um right now we are seeking um a renewal with first student uh for 5 years um we're working on the uh annual increases um but we are also in line um we're finalizing the collection of data from many of our comparative Market Basket
057schools to see and ensure that we're in line with um everybody else um and just for uh reference remember we do still share some routes with District 102 U but nowhere near what we used to share when we were with 102 and District 96 um several years ago and I certainly haven't heard as many grumblings is service service has been actually really good um they they have want 4% more now you said it out loud the bus are going to be late they have really picked up um the pace unfortunately the driver shortage and uh the KN the starting pay for bus drivers has not um subsided it's continuing to increase but it also did help in all seriousness with not having the duplicative roots with 96 correct so they were they would always get
058canutt it up against one another that was the issue with start times we had a bigger issue with 96 because they stretch so far out west um to our community it's hard to get them back yeah we'll definitely have more information of course anybody can reach out with questions before then um and then um we had our foyer requests uh there are quite a bit of them um several of them from one individual why uh we don't know um Jack spam 6044 gmail.com is um Anonymous it's Anonymous everything's been Anonymous spam is the family name huh the the spam line of products so um we are working on it it yeah it does seem to be centered around very specific things so so um and then lastly is the conscent item which is just the
059receptance of the audit from last year and then also included in consent are the instruction of close session audio video recordings that are no longer uh needed and then the continued um confidentiality for audio recordings in executive session minutes as well so that brings us to consent okay can I get a motion to approve the consent agenda second okay Terry could you please pull Frost hi no hi Ben hi so hi gorson hi moons hi Ty hi thank you so it Carri seven to nothing okay and just a few items for tonight the first is uh kudos to Mel Fisher our human resources coordinator who was chosen as a recipient of the Illinois Association of school Personnel administrators support staff award for the 2425 school year so uh yeah really really awesome she's amazing um
060and uh although you know Kim is the director of the Illinois school Personnel I can never remembera uh Kim did not nominate her nor was Kim part of the um selection process so um it truly was uh kind of an award- given to M for how amazing she is and the work that she does so we were very excited about that so next time you're in the district office feel free to congratulate her and then as I mentioned earlier uh just ironic that the presentation tonight was in some part on building student agency and I think Wendy was going to share a little bit of information about that um and the work that Tony has been kind of leading out um as well so yeah want to do a quick quick yeah do um when
061you have you know time your leisure to take a look there's a quick little slide deck has the article but also a summary and the uh and a little podcast if you want to listen to it um but talk it talks about giving the title of is giving kids some autonomy has surprising results and it talks about it goes back to how much kids really enjoy school and third grade and by the time they get to high school the love of school is not the same and they're making the connection to lack of autonomy and choice in their in their work and so thanks to Tony um we um added um just some research information to reference that and then what I think is the most important piece of here is um through the side
062deck it'll get to what we are doing in the classroom so to the point of our our Spanish team many many of our classrooms are doing a lot of really wonderful things and some of some of it's wrapped around our grer reporting systems um on how students get more of that agency autonomy of their own learning it does seem like something that's been going on here for like this this almost you read this it's like well duh right it's been a big part of our work yeah and it's it's kind of a dumb moment for us which is so so wonderful but for the rest of the nation it's not not so much and as Wendy said you know thanks to Tony and the work that he's done with all of our division directors slide
063number five is one that Tony showed me a number of years ago um and it just resonated with me and when I read the article in the New York Times that's the fir that's the image I thought I'm like oh my gosh like this is exactly what you know Tony had been working with Troy and Mark and myself and Wendy on for the last few years um but slide 14 that Wendy was pointing out is how we have Steve this is a question you texted me slide 14 is how we've tried to redesign our curriculum to be more focused on skills than on content which is what you saw what I was so excited to see tonight you saw a presentation that you know was really kind of align to this idea of you know
064building student agency and it's kind of framed out in the way that you see it here so I ironically enough it happened that way that believe it or not was not planned but um if you refer the slide 18 I I smiled when they referred to um students and their um classroom learning strategies and overall as a school in the last um student voice survey from this past fall 82% % of our students um feel like they have that autonomy over their learning which in that's you know 20 some thousand entries into classroom so students are feeling that in many many many many classrooms great yeah it's very cool okay so just wanted to make you aware of that and um it just occurred to me as we were having this conversation that make make
065a great board admin team Retreat topic for August to really kind of dive into this a little bit more so I don't know already been decided so I really don't need me here at all so we'll get that Clos ready for there you go there was ever any Clarity around that direct paper there you go all right so uh a couple other items uh thank you Jamie for sharing a little bit with the board of some of the stuff that's in the daily digest if you don't get a chance to read the daily digest it's amazing but a couple highlights uh from Jamie about operation snowball and Clash of Champions so some fun information there uh you'll see some news from the ELC um as well um there are important board dates coming up um
066please don't put those in pen yet um keep them in pencil um because sometimes things change but for right now um that's how things are looking for the spring um not all of them require all board members to be there um but some of them kind of fall under the all all may none must but some should like the retirement celebration those who Excel things like that Graduation May 23rd that you should put in pen that's really that's an important one um the alternate graduation on 27th is always fun so you're welcome to do that fun yeah but we're just trying to give you a heads up on what's coming in the spring because it's always busy but rean I'll kind of review this in the next couple weeks just to make sure that it's
067all finalized and the board meeting is moved up just so everybody because of president day oh sorry yes January and February were usually the second Mondays of the month rather than the third right and that is all we have for tonight did I get a motion to so M second so I I'm going to second the motion but I'm going to add I think it's amazing how quickly people moved and seconded without me there today we feel less stressed you think less stress well thank yeah we appreciate your self- awareness so it's all good do we have a motion in a second yes we do okay all in favor iOS all right