001congratulations of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all welcome to the full house tonight we wanted to acknowledge we've changed seats a little bit so bear with me and I just wanted to personally thank you Steve for all the support and mentorship and you know you're the reason that I'm sitting here and I thank you um for everything [Music] I hope we continue working together for a very long time congratulations congratulations for those who haven't figured out Amy is the president of the board yeah yeah um and I just wanted to take a second I I was um I would have actually the country um although we had we knew about all this happening before I left this wasn't a coup [Laughter]
002yeah that's true but I wanted to take a second and just say first of all it's the right thing for the board I've been the president for six or seven years and I think we have some younger members and we want to develop leadership skills of other people it's important for the school to do that but I also want to say because I wasn't able to say this at the meeting the change occurred uh it's been unbelievably great this board is a fantastic board everyone is committed to this school and cares about the school they work collaboratively and ultimately every question that's answered the framework and it's something that Dave Weisberg constantly would say to us is what's right and what's right for the kids and ultimately that's the decision that basis for every decision
003we make so I just want to thank the rest of the board members for their support for last year's and as Amy said I just want to make really clear this does not mean I'm going anywhere I want to stay here for as long as I can and I intend to continue thank you Terry would you please call the roll this hasn't changed Frost here no here but Joseph here so yeah Gerson Moon's here Tire here we are six tonight and do we have any correspondence none nobody ever writes this anymore it's a lot and um do we have any visitor statements okay I'll just remind everybody that three minutes um and you can stand up if you want to but please try to keep your remarks to three minutes it's just your name and
004your village Daniel Destiny Buffalo Grove thank you and do you know why because we're on YouTube and people might be listening who've never heard you before oh I'm already famous I've been on YouTube so whatever um so uh Daniel listening Buffalo Grove uh thanks for the time we'll see you tonight um first I want to say uh thanks um in between last meeting and tonight um I was given the opportunity to talk with a couple of your board members um Mr Steve for us and Mr Don tire and I want to thank you for your time uh as follow-up based on some things we've discussed throughout the school year and I want to thank you for your attention and uh the follow-up on just some of the things that we've discussed that are important to
005the community on that so I want to thank you for your service and Steve thanks for your service thank you um I want to talk about tonight about um misplaced priorities and not keeping eye on the ball um it's a good Institution we're all Highly Educated here once we leave here and it's good my son graduated here 11 years ago but I am still a Community member I live in the community um and I've touched upon a little bit before but there's another area that I'm going to want to further follow up on that that I think will also benefit the community we've talked about SEL which every one of the department heads uh and their teachers give presentations on SEL and it's talked about rather than academic rigor it's we look at the percentages
006that increase from semester to semester and we look at it and then I remember gorson at the last meeting that they were presenting math and he said well how about the academic outcomes and that seems to be missing from these presentations and I know we care about academic rigor most of our students go on to college but it seems to be that emphasis is not there and I think that's not in the best interest of the students or the parents or for the community in a broader sense from that standpoint um a DI officer was hired here in the wake of the tragedy of George Floyd he unfortunately and his tragedy that happened on Memorial Day of 2020 and then we went on to hire a Dei officer that started the school year August 17th
007of that year of 2020. um I'm looking to see what outcomes have happened from that what projects is Mr Haney working on uh who is the eye officer that we hired how much he's getting paid that's taxpayer money what projects what are the outcomes these projects how is it benefiting students those type of things there seems to be a very lack of transparency and if that's going to be the main focus of the school in that area it would benefit to let people know what that is also another thing that comes up I understand uh the head of the Stevenson's teacher Union for next school year 2324 is going to be Robert Penta a math teacher here well he's probably earned that position but some of the Unholy alliances that exist that maybe don't pay
008attention that you count on community members being just interested focusing on other things uninformed and basically compliant in terms of that Robert Pinta good teacher here he's made out of the teacher Union his wife teaches at a feeder School District 96 Carolyn Pinta who is a very divisive Community bully okay she demonizes people in the community and when you're having and no that the floor is mine don't be making any non-verbal comments hold on the floor is yours [Music] she there that's going to affect some of your policy making going forward if that's what people want in the community that you have somebody who demonizes us because be EG Pride which is a great organization which she runs she has gone out of her Lane and she is divisive and you guys just sit there
009and keep holding your heads guess what there should be a reckoning that the community understands that everything you're doing is not right even though I like you individually why don't you wake up and do things for the community and for the best interests of the students so you can sit there and give your happy talk guess what it's not so much and you know what why don't you concentrate that including your incompensates of people and and make the comment over that Alex on that why don't why don't you pay attention to what I'm saying on that I listen to you talk excuse me you're done use three minutes over you're over okay moons I'm glad you're the dictator I am you are the dictator absolutely is that what you want to tell the community you're
010the dictator and the longest to remember stop settle down we can talk after yeah and I have like I said from the beginning of the meeting we'll talk about Frost and tire met with me Mr gobble is back with me in in October I wonder if I will do that Miss moons you're out of order that you sit there that you're a dictator let everybody know that's here that you're a dictator and you have power over them you work for us I don't work for you you work for us I don't work at all I'm a volunteer oh really yeah you're out of line there's kids in the room you're out of line I didn't lose any swear words it's your behavior let's just talk backwards oh really my behavior it's let's let's just say
011does everybody think everything's okay with your property taxes with your policies I guess it doesn't matter it doesn't matter you guys sit there and you're in power okay okay any other statements okay Alex we're sorry what um a little bit of a cleansing this is your last meeting I'm very sad to leave you all but I know you guys are gonna be in good man so now are you going to introduce us of course of course these are very big shoes to fill everything tiny shoes awesome hi everybody my name is Kosh I am a rising senior at Stevenson and super excited to work with you all next year and I know Alex has done an amazing job and so it's gonna be hard to live up to that but really excited to get to
012know each and every one of you and you know make an impact okay and all of you guys are in Gray hands he is amazing so you guys will have a phenomenal year next year so to get on with our presentation uh speaking on academics we had a lot of different competitions going on and a lot of accomplishments achieved through our different academic clubs here at Stevenson so for starters Aces competed at the Eastern Illinois University competition and they took home the state championship you guys are going to see that a lot of these are state championships so that just goes to show how phenomenal all of the competitive clubs here are at Stevenson and then Statesman won their first State title ever at the state journalism finals uh which is also a very incredible
013accomplishment I know some people within that organization Network very tirelessly and hard during their school day to produce the paper that we have so I know it's very well earned and I'm very proud of my friends that are on Statesman and then for the third time in a row math team won the Illinois State comp Championship so they also took the first half first place prize home and then the Science Olympiad team also earned the most points ever to win state so they not only one state but they achieved a record within state so that's also a very large accomplishment along with the five teams from Stevenson that are heading to the team's Nationals competition and then Moving On Athletics so this one was actually recent over this past weekend but the girls Batman team
014took home the state championship as well so that is a very big accomplishment for them my friend Lindsay she's on that team and I know she worked very hard lots of practices lots of days where she didn't want to go to school but she had to for practice so I know a lot of that paid off and I know a lot of them are very excited that they took home this championship and then the boys baseball team defeated Waukegan on their senior night so senior night itself is already a large celebration for seniors and taking home that Victory is also something proud to celebrate and then for Arts we had a lot of different artistic events happen in the past month at Stevenson I know this past weekend there was the improv show and got
015a lot of good laughs from that it was a great way to end off my senior year but we also had the percussion concert and that showcased a variety of literary works and portrayed several different emotions that spoke to the audience so I know a lot of people that went there had a very impactful time while engaging with that concert then we also had the 1X so there are six student-produced and directed One X where other students were able to participate in and that was really unique as well because they were student produced and given like the wide variety of different one acts there was musicals I remember one of them came from my creative writing class and we got to read it last year as well as a class where all of us kind
016of played a part in that so that was a really cool experience to see that become a one act and then we had the spring dance concert which also showcased some student choreographers as well so students were able to choreograph their own pieces and then present to others so that was an awesome experience and then the music production showcase so that occurred and I believe they're still raising funds for it in order to support three charitable organizations um so that's really good to see students connecting their passions to something philanthropy and then also the spring band concert um that also kind of related to original works and there was also some arrangements showcased within that concert that was a lot one thing that we didn't mention um it was Alice Newton's last choir concert last
017week which was a very uh emotional and exciting beautiful songs they had a song prepared especially for the event written for it was amazing so they also performed uh the finals from I don't know if any of you guys watch this but Pitch Perfect um they did a whole acapella showcase and it was really simple it was crazy I think I watched it every single class period that day because all the teachers were so amazed by it but then moving on to freshman Wellness day so as an FMP I was here to witness it and it was kind of cool to see because they were trying to rebranded from last year um and I think they did a really great job they had a bunch of different activities a keynote speaker if you can see
018in the middle there was kind of this Bagel exercise and one cool thing that I found from that day was how they kind of differentiated between equity inequality they really kind of used a graph in order to show the differences between the two and I think that just provided A New Perspective to freshmen because a lot of them are still in their immature phases but then um kind of that graph and symbolism with that showcased um the difference between the two and kind of put things into perspective but a lot of the freshmen had a lot of fun there was focus on physical and mental activity um I think that's a great thing Stevenson does I know we have our weekly counselor visits where the counselor stresses mental health and different aspects of Stevenson but
019I think that's unique from other schools because not many schools in our area or in Illinois have so many resources to mental health and focusing on bettering both physical and mental health so that's something really unique to Stevenson that I think freshmen really appreciate and then for Polish Fest so I know this happened recently as well but it celebrated the Polish culture with some foods um traditional games dances trivia um so my friend went to this and she said she had an amazing time but a lot of people came even those that weren't polish so um just coming together to celebrate this was awesome and then for senior Awards so this is crazy but over 300 seniors were recognized they had like a slideshow with three seniors on each page and people would scream every
020time they saw themselves on the presentation so that was really cool to see and recognize the seniors who will be going off next year to celebrate and do new things in college and just kind of recap the past four years at Stevenson and then Senior Sunrise so in the middle that's a pick of me and my friends with our colleges it was just kind of cool to wrap up uh Stevenson with that celebration I was like worried about senior assassin that day because I was like oh no like I need to be inside the school by 8 30 but it's fine like I'm out now like it was too much work it was way too much work um but I got her I was the one yeah yeah he got me I I didn't expect
021it yeah um but yeah it was cool to sign the dogs I know that's a tradition I remember because I was in chem last year I would sign all of my friends dogs because most of them were seniors and I was excited for that tradition as well then you got to pin where you're going to college um so I know a lot of seniors were looking forward to it and they had an awesome and then for Indian night so that was also a cultural celebration that featured dances games speakers so that was also a great way to unite the Indian Community then for the fashion show so I had one of my friends participate in this and it was awesome as you can see um on the left some of these outfits are really cool
022really unique um just showcases the creativity within our student body um and it was also for a charitable cause as well all prophecies went to dress for success which is a non-profit for woman empowerment and encourages people to dress professionally and provides the resources in order to do so so that was also a cool thing and I got to attend that and then finally moving on to our student experiences so I asked everyone given that it is the end of the year what their favorite memory over the course of the year was and this is what they said so student a said my favorite memory from this year was winning best large delegation with my model un team I felt ecstatic because it was fun to work with my team achieved such a high accomplishment
023for one last time student at B said I think it would have to be competing at Batman and state as a freshman even though I didn't place it was cool to see my team win the championship and celebrate with them then students see my favorite memory was making FMP this year so that applies to the club I was really nervous during my interview but opening the email and seeing the word congratulations made me feel really proud of myself I personally related to that because I remember being really happy when opening my email uh and then student D my favorite memory was prom it was so much fun taking pictures and seeing everyone dressed up it's a perfect way to end a senior year so that's all I have for all of you I just wanted
024to say thank you I've um really enjoyed getting to know and see each of everyone of you over the past month and I'm gonna miss you guys next year but as I said before you guys are going to be in great hands thank you [Applause] so now we're going to transition into some of our Awards the awards part of this ceremony and the board gives an award called the ambassador award it's the highest award that we give to the students who go to Stevenson High School and so Alex we couldn't be more proud of the work you've done we think that this year you brought just so much energy and even changing to the student experience lots of different ways to present what's happening in and around the building for everybody to hear and you've
025just done it just magnificently even with the shiny feet so um let me get a picture of you know Echo all of that these were amazing presentations and we're gonna miss you and we know you're going on to do great things thank you okay [Music] and Alex this is for you from us as well there's when you are off at Penn you said yeah you could have a Stevenson water bottle also make sure you use that all right and then a Stevenson notepad for all of your studies so congratulations congratulations so we did hear that it's been just an amazing month and a half here at Stevenson lots of things to celebrate many of the clubs and activities that we saw one state championships so the sports they just it just happened right it was
026before we could even get them onto this agenda but the aces team which uh the academic challenge team they are here tonight and we are very excited to celebrate with them so I'm just going to call you out when I call your name please come up to the front give a big round of applause Timothy okay Jaden Chen Aaron Dan Aditya rude venden Rafi [Applause] Mikhail Severin [Applause] James tan [Applause] ricking the car thank you Renee uh Andre vlasov [Applause] thank you Joshua Wang congratulations Lillian Wang [Applause] Catherine Yin [Applause] Ethan uh Zhang [Applause] Joseph Zoo [Applause] and I don't see coach Deb wurzma also stab here would I miss somebody yeah I think that's it all right so one big round of applause for this whole team let me do this let me get
027like a couple of short folks in the front maybe three or four so we could see it squeezed in here we're gonna get family pictures one more maybe right here there you go kind of squeeze inside all right I'm gonna get out of the way let's get that photo all right everybody get your shots yeah so now I'm gonna quickly ask you guys all to turn around kind of back up maybe a step or two just back up a little bit and turn around face that way the board would like to hear a little bit okay that could have been dangerous but they're out of wood we're safe so I'm gonna let you let the board ask a couple of questions about uh about your competition yeah I don't have a question well I do
028have questions but I want to make one quick observation you exhibited your skills right away because when Mr gobble said okay let's have a couple of short people in front one of you in back said That's you tell us about the competition I mean what's it like how's it set up um so it's seven different tests and seven different subjects and everyone has the choice between uh two different subject tests whichever ones they're best at or whichever ones they prefer so that's how the general competition works and then we compete against different schools in the area and eventually in the state area in Illinois yeah so there's biology chemistry computer science English engineering Graphics physics and math you got all seven so you must know what it's doing so how many how many of you
029are a senior CC comes back to your one next year too and where are you going to school or don't you know yeah we're all actually going to UIUC you're going to UIC computer science yeah together what are the majors we're gonna uh I will be majoring in physics in like the College of Engineering for one year and then I will be transferring to a certain time after one year okay and you I'll be majoring in math computer engineer computer engineering um I don't know exactly but a few dozen I think at least and what schools did you uh did you beat out to win the state championships well all of them [Applause] all right well congratulations [Applause] [Music] bring up our next next recipient I'm really this award is very interesting and I'm I'm
030I can't wait to hear the conversation that we have after this one to let them get settled in all right so um this year we've been lucky enough to have on the student advisory Council for the Illinois State Board of Ed one of our students has served in that role from all across the state so if I can freeze please bring forward ishan foreign members this is a this is a really interesting position that you saw how did you get interested because I knew that there was a state board of education yeah so I actually um knew our rep from last year I think his name was Murad and um like I wasn't super close to them that had like one conversation with him and he was like a really nice guy he like showed
031me around Stevenson showed me like a lot of opportunities and one of the things he was involved with was uh the like Board of Education um advisory committee and it's like freshman year I'd like definitely try to get involved a lot Stevenson and one of his big pieces of advice was like Stevenson's a great Community but you also have to think outside of it and so one of the things he told me was to apply for it and I'll be really honest with you when I like filled up the application I thought it was like the worst thing I'd ever written um but like I was lucky enough to be appointed and I served with like 24 other members from across the state and it was really cool I think this year particularly we focused
032on two main like challenges that I think for like me at least weren't too specific to Stevenson but are still pretty like widespread issues throughout the state and so for us the big ones we focused on were social media awareness and bullying prevention and I'm lucky enough to know that Stevenson has a great culture around like not bullying each other and honestly better social media practices than a lot of other schools um but that's what I worked on a lot with the Board of Education this year to work it's tackling and creating reform yeah um so this year I served as Secretary for the council and um that was pretty fun experience so hopefully looking to come back as a vice president or president of coming here but yeah awesome if you have any interest
033in governance um yeah I'm actually involved in the student council here at Stevenson so it's pretty fun uh see Mr gobble there all the time but um yeah like definitely think it's a great career option um politicians are always pretty fun people to talk to um but yeah I'm honestly pretty interesting government uh look to make a career out of it one day sounds like you're off to a great start perfect congratulations now we are lucky enough to have the opportunity to celebrate with some of our amazing faculty members tonight also um each year for the state of Illinois we are able to nominate folks in various categories for the those who Excel award again thinking about put on by the only Illinois State Board of Ed and we are thrilled to have the opportunity
034to announce the folks that we nominated and all of them received awards at the state level which we are incredibly proud of so the first one we're going to start off with is the CL in the classroom teacher so pick a teacher one classroom teacher who is outstanding we'd really like to recognize Maddie Vogler please come forward thank you you might have heard a little bit earlier in Alex's report about our music production class Maddie works with the music production class and uh it's an absolutely fantastic job any questions for me okay we're gonna keep bringing them on so soon support Personnel our counselor we'd like to bring forward Irina kogan [Applause] awesome thank you Irina she's amazing the next award our early career educator award goes to Griffin forbert he's not here tonight but
035big round of applause for him anyway [Applause] and then we also get to nominate one of our educational support personnel and we are thrilled to have the opportunity to celebrate with Reem varghese come on in thank you [Music] those will break so don't drop things we're going to get a picture of everybody in a minute okay and now last we get to recognize a team of folks that work in our school to better the place and um this year we had the opportunity to pick a team and recognize this is one of the largest Academic Teams in the building for those of you know we we organize all of our curriculum each class operates as a team and they work together um well in the last five years this this AP Physics one team has
036had a complete redo of their class and had to rebuild what they believe their class to be and um how many kids took the test this year 650 it was over 600 students it was the largest AP exam that we offered here at Stevenson High School and it was physics right so not starting with easy stuff so we're going to bring everybody in we've got the whole team here there's a lot of them Hannah alberstein come on in the former Patriot by the way Josh Beau today [Applause] Sarah Cahill [Applause] thank you Andy Fitz [Applause] Molly Greenberg [Applause] Nate's still wearing his cleats from the game [Applause] all right Mark lindenberger Come On In Kristen one also a patriot Jenny Ruda [Applause] John Wilkie [Applause] and last but not least the big toe of the
037group she's the team leader Christie Rona thank you so if I can just have all of you come out here we'll do like a group picture of everybody if we can get everybody out here in the space right here Steve wouldn't like to take responsibility just get everybody in here you know the kids figured out how to get in line in like a minute [Music] one two three [Laughter] [Applause] congratulations [Music] [Laughter] equipment what okay well like this before the accessories yeah I'm not sure [Music] um I just want I'm not sure if the board we had a chance to talk to the award winners before the board meeting and I spent most of my time I didn't get a chance to talk to everybody because they were so interesting um but I basically spoke
038with the physics team and I just uh I'm not sure if all the board members are aware of this but 700 people 700 kids taking AP Physics is an amazing number of kids and it's not just that it's the number of kids the physics teachers explained to me that half of our students that are taking the physics AP are sophomores and half of them are Juniors most and one of the teachers came from another top 10 school in the state where they're all seniors taking it and our kids are sophomores and juniors and then we got into a discussion about the collaboration and the way that team worked and it just really spoke about what the school was about and the culture of the school and it's so unique some crazy facts that exist we
039are about we represent five percent of the AP Physics one test given in the state wow tapping here we're five all by ourselves it's a 900 and something high schools yeah and there what's your average score 3.8 3.8 this is a little anecdotal but one of those students that took the test was my daughter and her experience based on what she tells me about her friends is that she's absolutely on fire for science as a sophomore and that speaks very highly of that entire team so really really good job so we're obviously very proud of all of our students and faculty members who get recognized um in those different programs however um one of our uh awards that I think the board feels the most special about is our Student Success story Awards and our
040Student Success story awards are given to students who've demonstrated really I think in many ways uh our mission of success for every student and have achieved wonderful things in their own right over their course of their four years here at Stevenson so um Miss Bowen I think I'm going to turn it over to you to provide us a little introduction to our two students who we have the honor of recognizing today sure and Dr twaddell is right this is without a a doubt a highlight of our year to be able to celebrate our special students I think we recognize that high school is a journey and all Journeys have um High moments and moments of Celebration and they also sometimes have some bumps in the road and some challenges that we have to work through
041and what we're really um so proud of our two students that we get to honor tonight is that they navigated that Journey with such resilience and strength and growth and really learned ways to push through the challenges that presented themselves during their High School time and to develop those skills around self-advocacy and accessing resources and connecting with team members and students that are not only so important for their success here at Stevenson but will be invaluable in whatever Adventures life holds after they graduate from Stevenson and so tonight we have two amazing students to share and and tell a little bit more about their stories with you our first is Elizabeth Mark um and Elizabeth kind of cool we have I believe Mom Dad younger brother we're looking forward to working with you um and
042um yeah two more years right yeah okay okay cool we're ready we're ready um and we also have Grandma and Grandpa and I believe grandpa is a class of 1966 Stevenson Alum so we're here so we're going to start with Elizabeth if that's okay and I also want to acknowledge um there's a team that comes together to partner with our students and our families and really support them through their High School experience and that team is so proud of Elizabeth and we have a couple of those team members here tonight so we have Elizabeth's counselor Jennifer Falk who's with us tonight and Angela O'Brien the school psychologist that has worked with Elizabeth over the years and we also had Mr veracic who has been an awesome support for Elizabeth through our guided study program and
043so I know this team not putting words in their mouths couldn't be prouder of you and is really happy to be here tonight to celebrate your success and so I think what I'm going to do we're excited to hear a little bit more about your story I'm going to turn it over to Miss O'Brien I think she's gonna start us off as we listen to a little bit more about Elizabeth's story [Music] sure my seniors in my opinion Miss Elizabeth mark and serving as her counseling service provider and Section 504 coordinator in my role here as school psychologist I've had the privilege of working closely with Elizabeth especially these past two years and this has led me to nominator for the well-deserved Senior Honor tonight I'm just going to give a brief overview of a
044little bit of her journey and then I'm going to turn it over to Elizabeth herself to speak to you a little bit in her own words so four years ago Elizabeth came to us as a tiny freshman Stephenson as an as a freshman with an individual education plan this plan included many instructional and testing supports and included some speech and language Services some counseling services special education instruction and case management and she took full advantage of that support throughout her freshman year towards the end of her freshman year she underwent a re-evaluation and based on her growth her diligence and her ability to reach her goals that were in her IEP she no longer qualified for special education and she was she was supported from then on through a section 504 plan at that time
045she also received daily support of a guided study class and as many of you know that is the district's tier 2 Executive functioning class that supports kids every day who just benefit from a smaller class size and more adult assistance in their day Elizabeth took full advantage of those supports she increased her skill sets and test preparation homework completion and really the goal of that program is for kids to develop executive functioning and independent skills and she showed that so well over time she no longer demonstrated me a provided study not even a regular study hall was needed in her day she just continued to grow and grow in her independence in South Africa so since that point she has earned numerous accomplishments and awards um this young lady has earned a 4.1 GPA she
046is with Google's honors role she is a National Honor Society member she is a German Honor Society member she has earned the investor award for FCCLA not only state but also National gold medals she has earned the ihsa Scholastic Achievement Award and she also made the NFC All-American team as team manager for the Varsity softball team last year during her four years here her extracurriculars have included the sports broadcasting Club the fashion magazine club and the family career and Community leaders of America Club a lot of varied interests but in addition to our economic accomplishments I believe that Elizabeth is a young woman who also really has her priorities in order values her family she highly values her faith and she really sees the importance of her health and overall well-being she's also a great
047friend but perhaps the most impressive that she seeks to make a positive difference in the lives of others one thing that I really admire about Elizabeth is that she takes time out of her very busy school and Family schedule to teach religious education to young children on the weekends she also has a Litany of other volunteering activities kind of interesting Elizabeth Prides herself on being a seamstress she loves to bake cook and design creative lesson plans for preschool-aged children which is a talent that she was able to just learn through her experiences in the teaching young children classes at Stevenson clearly she is an impressive young lady with much to offer and proud to have had the privilege of working with her as well as her supportive family through her diligence intrinsic motivation and willingness
048to access the wonderful resources that Stevenson has to offer Elizabeth now graduates from Stevenson High School as an incredibly strong self-advocate and top-notch student she is surely well prepared for her next chapter as a college student and in the fall she plans to major in Career and Technical education with an emphasis in family consumer Sciences at Eastern Illinois congratulations thank you did you have something you want to share Elizabeth sure yeah thank you first thought Miss O'Brien for the monthly speech and thank you all for nominating me I'm very grateful for that that was a lot of talk they cover most of everything but there was one thing I didn't want to talk about is not only my high school Journey but my journey before high school because that was kind of stepping stone to
049where I'm at now so um think about what to say but um my brother here he he's having a lot of medical issues so when he was born he has like a very rare disease so um he's been through a lot of medical surgeries hospitalization so I would come with him and part of that I miss a lot of school when I was younger so it was a lot for me to try and catch up with schoolwork um so I've come a long ways and Special Ed I was I think I think yeah so I had earlier invention when I was very very little so I had like PT OT I think speech therapy because I have um it's called auditory processing so I have trouble sometimes with like hearing and interpreting things so I
050had a lot more issues with the speech side of stuff so that's why I needed more special ed it's because I struggled a lot with writing and talking so but um from there it was let's see I can't think it's a lot it's a lot to think about um so I don't know it's great foreign [Applause] congratulations Elizabeth we're super proud of you thank you we're going to make you do a few more photo shoots I'm sorry after this is over out there um we our next student that we're very excited to celebrate is Gabriel de Leon um and I believe we have with us tonight Mr varghese who's going to tell us a little bit about Gabriel I think Gabriel you were also wanting to share something um we're super excited to have Gabriel's
051parents here too to celebrate him as well thank you so much for being here and um oh and grandma too welcome thank you for being here that's great um and so without further Ado Gabriel would you like to start or would you like Mr Barbies yeah okay okay well we'll ask Mr varies to start all right can I stay here thank you everyone and uh when I spoke to Gabriel Gabriel said I will speak for myself so you know I'm gonna give uploading but before that I just want to share a little bit about Gabriel for me uh part of the SSD I think it was uh uh this is I started with him as a freshman yeah so uh Gabrielle is a student who I feel has grown a lot you know if you
052look at where you started I think he has really grown and most importantly he has been from where he started I feel like he has made connections not just his peers but also adults and a lot of his specialist members and also Mr B who is his character and I feel like everybody he has made everybody care for him and I will thank you for allowing us the opportunity to serve you actually you know without the resources that we have we have been very good with listening to us wanted to change classes for the advisor of the SSD you know and also wanted to stick with private study and the help at a point I thought Gabriel was going to drop off our school that's what I was afraid for some time but it was
053many phone calls many phone calls and zoom calls we struggles are getting back and it's a struggle where I'm sure there are other students in the same situation but it's amazing when we make that connection with the family almost reach into their lives and are able to make those connections and see this values so very proud of you you can you can say I want to thank Mr varghese Mr borisek and Miss uh strudinski who is not here I want to thank all of y'all for wearing me this award I want to thank my uh my dad and my stepmom for being such good role models and um you know they've done a lot for me yeah I come a long way and I know not enough that students have to think about it I
054want to get I want to show them so the I have certain skills that I watched that I can do yeah I'm really glad for them they're doing so much for me and all the things Mr Morrison for seeing the good you know they've always been there for me I know it's hard for me to say I want to think of but they've done a lot for me you've already shown them how awesome you are yeah they already know yeah yeah I know I've had some rough times throughout all my four years in this school and um you know I thought myself that at one point school is important and I realized that you know I have to give everything I have to myself for myself in the future and of course you know I
055want to be successful so I can help them because they've done so much for me they've given everything to me and I'm grateful they're all in love that they give um I know it's hard for me to speak because I'm crying but good you know um yeah I just want them to know that I love them I appreciate them and I think Mr Marcus Mr word second for everyone who always talk about my son see that you know I can do a lot more and just a little level of maturity of throughout those years I realized that you know school is always beneficial for you even on the low pronoun of course I want to be successful and pretty much it so sorry for sharing that one thank you thank you Elizabeth and Gabriel your
056families too and the teams all the people who worked with you throughout your journey to support you we truly could not be prouder of you I know I speak on behalf of everyone in this room you are why we do this work this is what matters and we couldn't be prouder and are looking forward to seeing your little Angelic faces walk across that now Center Stage um in just a week and a half or so so thank you for being here and [Applause] said in addition to thanking our students we would also thank our the parents who are here amazing kids um but we also thought that um on the way out we would also recognize our 1966 graduated yes so we have a special gift for you as well I mean and on a
057long time so we have a little water bottle for you wow all right okay thank you all very much for being here thank you and we're um we will just transition into the hallway we're gonna take a couple pictures if that's okay and then you can be free to enjoy your evenings thank you so much for coming thank you [Applause] so much congratulations good work s here in a couple years congratulations congratulations yes thank you very much congratulations drinks oh really yep the whole team yeah did somebody grab it yeah you got it all right so I think we have one more award before we get to our presentation you say just you're all good foreign things just work out they just work out we have a special guest tonight who we've been saving the
058award David look you're even dressed up for it come on over here get up here Dave Weisberg [Applause] this is embarrassing I'm going to button up for this yes thank you for all of your years of service and personally Here Without You I love you and thank you for everything [Applause] [Music] okay ready one two three perfect thank you [Applause] [Laughter] I'll take a second and say you are absolutely the best in every category and uh keep it up thank you [Applause] like I said 7 15 you'll get started oh good right um so uh that was a great part of the meeting uh always May is always fun um June will actually be equally as fun if not more so in fact in June we'll be meeting over in the building because this room
059won't be large enough so we'll be over in the new PWC multi-purpose rooms because as much as we've celebrated some state championships we have many more to celebrate uh in June so we'll give you directions on that there could be more um so we'll transition into our uh presentation tonight from uh members from our cset and applied arts division in just a little bit of um context um and I know we'll talk more um but our SEL presentations are something we've been doing for about five or six years now um not that we're ignoring those conversations about uh academics and student achievement we have a report each fall that we present to the board but the SEL conversations are really focused on how are we supporting students in their Journey over their four years knowing
060how academically rigorous Stevenson can be how stressful it can be for many of our students how do we support them through that process so for the last I'd say five or six years Troy we've been having uh SEL presentations to the board from each of our divisions and I have to say that over the years they've just gotten better and better as we've dug deeper into this work and tried to support our students along the way so we are excited to hear from you all tonight but I will turn it over to our director of c-set and applied Arts to introduce the team um hi I'm Jackie king um and I'm really it's kind of Bittersweet to introduce the business Education team which I would normally be presenting with this is my first time not
061being with them um but I'm really these are four of our seven business uh teachers at Stevenson and they are going to be presenting about one of the classes that we think is vitally important um and really can set students up for Success both in high school and Beyond um and I am nothing but extremely proud to say that I've been a part of this team and you're gonna hear about the really great work that they're doing today so I'm gonna let them introduce themselves so because they have some cute photos yeah uh well thank you guys all of you for allowing us to be here and then just kind of share our journey over the past handful of years as we've tried to integrate the social emotional learning into our business education curriculum so
062um I'm Ryan Carlson we'll formally talk through everybody here in just a minute or two uh but we're going to kind of highlight our personal finance team is as Jackie mentioned and the work that we've been doing through uh again over those past five years as we've Dove deeper into this whole SEL journey and foreign everybody on our team teaches at least one section of it throughout the year so we have seven teachers that teach this course to a as you'll learn in just a little bit a lot of our students so it's a really great course and again we're going to talk about that connection we're going to dive into the data a little bit to talk about how SEL aligns itself really well with personal finance and vice versa we'll hear from some
063of our students on the testimonials that have just recently this past semester taken the course and then we'll kind of talk about next steps to around things out so all right so here we go so with graduation right around the corner next week for our seniors we thought it was very appropriate to puttle back into the archives and share High School graduation many many years ago so without any further Ado um my name is Jason Ford it's my 10th year here at Stevenson I teach obviously personal finance I teach our accounting classes as well I'm involved in varsity football and our business Professionals of America I'm Beth berlowski this is my fifth year teaching at Stevenson um and I teach accounting with Jason personal finance with the entire team entrepreneurship and also entrepreneurial tactics I
064sponsor business Professionals of America and also future Business Leaders of America and again I'm Ryan Carlson I teach personal finance I teach her into a business class as well as our investment management class I'm another teacher Business Center of America sponsor and I also sponsor these stagecrafters Club so if anybody's seen any musicals over the past six years our crew has been a big part in and putting making those scenes come to life so I just before you move on I just want to say that I don't think it's fair at all that you all look the same and I'm a terrible compared to when they first shows Once just took that yesterday that's not fair the graduation outfits haven't changed either because of them are from graduates and so like the cap and gowns
065haven't changed much either three of you are from graduates yep yeah is that possible space out a little bit and it's the same grade school too I think I'm the only one who actually had to take a picture of a picture and just give you my age it's literally a picture of like digital pictures of me and a graduate you know yeah um I teach our marketing and personal finance courses here at Stevenson I am also a future Business Leaders of America sponsor and I also am an assistant coach for varsity girls soccer program yes and there are 330 members in FBLA so that's why there's three of us as well so um to kind of bring us to why we're here tonight um I could throw out statistics like 44 of Americans can't pay
066a emergency bill of over 400 I can say that over half of Americans actively every month over month carry credit card debt I can talk about how a third of Americans have zero safer retirement and how 56 percent of them have less than ten thousand dollars saved for retirement so we we're kicking around these statistics thinking about the impact that it has and so many studies out there show that Financial well-being is directly correlated to emotional Wellness the pricewaterhousecooper said that is the biggest Factor when it comes to their employees well-being is it tackles it it hurts their emotional uh health and you can see everything on that list is vitally important to all of our physical and mental well-being so it was a great topic and we thought a course that we could truly
067align with that was personal finance so another graph that we have up here is the percentage of student people who live paycheck the paycheck it's not just people who make less than fifty thousand dollars a year who fall into this cycle it's every wage earner and it's a high percentage of every wage earners so in align with that it kind of brings us to this cycle that we have here at the bottom of financial difficulty creating emotional well-being or unrest and that emotional unrest it helps us prevent us from digging ourselves out of that Financial uh hold that we're in and that cycle is continues and continues and continues so we thought personal finance was a really good course to highlight and focus on how we can hopefully educate the next group of uh graduating
068seniors and juniors to help them at least build that foundational knowledge before they leave so how we do that is not click that button I don't know what you're dead you can't cancel I it won't let me he's in control officially broken the meeting you have that thought sorry let me do it well I can talk through here a little bit about personal finance so our personal finance course we have three skills that we focus on and the first skill is decision making we talk about building and starting off with financial goals and effectively evaluating options that align with those goals explaining how to implement the chosen decision we make and then our second standard or our second skill excuse me is communication once we've figured out what that decision is how do we go
069in and how do we actually communicate that decision to the appropriate audience are we talking to a board of education are we talking to our parents are we talking to our grandparents our counselors and what does that look like and then the last skill that we focus on is our business professionalism and everybody on our team firmly believes that building 21st century soft skills are crucial to not just be successful in personal finance but to be successful in any class and Way Beyond the walls of Stevenson so those are the three things that we focus on the three skills that we focus on in personal finance and we integrate those all throughout are curriculum and units right I'm going to give you an opportunity to stall I don't know what Dr Frank's number is right
070here computer um could you just share with the board what you mean by 21st century soft skills because you you blew through that pretty quickly absolutely so we teach our students every single day The Importance of Being able to effectively communicate be able to collaborate sure to be able to troubleshoot problem solve have conversations with people be on time to things not be distracted by technology all of those things we incorporate into a set of skills okay we have on every poster and every one of our classes we truly firmly believe that those are going to help us be successful and honestly I I don't have any of the formal statistics in front of me but you can say these Fortune 500 companies of course they're wanting us to be able to um read write
071and count right that's obvious of course but more now than ever they're also looking for you to be able to communicate collaborate troubleshoot that's how we built these skills or this skills specifically was the fact that I'm using on the importance of students with those 21st century skills are so while they're working on that I can say so my daughter's in college she's a entrepreneurship major and almost the entirety of her program has been exactly what you're describing you know they focus so little these days on some of the you know tactical elements because they're going to train you on whatever job you get right like the industries change so much so quickly that they want to make sure you can adapt you can you know troubleshoot as you said it's fascinating they can teach
072you to code or account or exactly debit credit but they can't teach you to be able to work as a team right some of those skills so yeah that's where the skills that we utilized um really came from so here they are yeah you did a great job so those three skills honestly we integrate in all of these topics and I could talk to you for three weeks about credit and a lot of people are get that excited about it it's truly so important when it relates to every single one of these topics so we intertwine credit throughout all these units our housing unit we go in and we based on your needs wants goals and values we find them a property and they can buy a house we walk them through that process but
073most kids aren't going to buy a house right out of college or right out of high school they're going through probably rent so we talked through that process and then we compare the pros and cons of each we then get into Banking and investing and focus on remember that those that cycle right so we focus on here's what an emergency fund is here's why it's important and here's why if you have a few bucks set aside in the events of an emergency all of a sudden everything doesn't become an emergency right so realizing that in small financial literacy like that talking about the the compounding effect of having credit card debt and making minimum payments each month those types of skills are so important and seeing kids having them on paper and seeing kids say
074this is what it would cost me to pay just a thousand dollar credit card bill if I only make my payments it's eye-opening for them which hopefully translates to more sound financial decisions later on in the future investing Building Wealth I have support for investing but also just it's so important and so crucial to building that Foundation as well um and whether it's saving for retirement or investing we do a simulation with that as well if we get into Transportation entertainment wellness and during those units we talk about the importance of creating a work school life balance how you have to be able to take that time to step away to decompress to step away from whatever that task or objective is whether it's my full-time job or my full-time being a full-time student and
075realizing the importance of being able to step take that break recharge and then get back after those tasks and then lastly we wrap things up with honestly it's amazing how many students say they enjoy learning about taxes like learning about the basics of how we pay and why we pay them and where they go so it's important for that as well and then wrapping that all into it [Laughter] I've got it sorry um I'm gonna stop talking here right after this slide because tonight so this is just a drop of disappearing what are oh I'm not it's not of what our overall Stevenson population looks like what the population looks like inside a personal finance class and there's a pretty strong correlation so the sample size of Stevenson High School is a very close correlation
076to the same facade of official Finance platforms you can see that break down there of our demographics so without further adoles [Laughter] you need to take the canva class I said I need a new computer so now that you know a lot about the course and you'll have a chance to learn more um we're going to go ahead and show you the connection to sel um over our years um the past eight years specifically the class has grown in enrollment um almost four to five times what it was in 2016. so you can see the growth over the years and we've included some highlights on different things that have come up in 2016 this course moved from being um you know what you maybe traditionally think a high school experience in a personal finance class
077like just worried about calculating interest and um you know kind of those like the math side of it and we made it into the more skills-driven course it is now like Ryan said with the three skills that drive every essential project that we go ahead and assess on so we moved away from you know traditional tests into more um you know projects that let students have choice in those projects and focus more on the skills of why are you making this decision what's influencing it in 2017 we also went ahead and um offered the opportunity for students to go ahead and take an online section um so we do Run online sections almost every semester for students where that is maybe going to be the best fit for them depending on their schedule and other
078things so we've gone ahead and been able to open it up um to fit students needs as well and so we feel that this growth is due to the work that we have put into the course the course does help meet the graduation requirement for the state of Illinois for financial education and obviously Stevenson has a graduation requirement as well so um we're proud to say that you know over time it has grown hopefully in you know in conjunction with the work that we've done to help it make it more student friendly and the two areas this is the castle model the two areas that we focus on in the class are one self-awareness and then two responsible decision making um so self-awareness is being aware of your emotions thoughts and how they influence essentially
079your behavior and decisions that you might make a lot of people might say um you know that there's definitely self-awareness emotions that might influence spending um somebody has a bad day they go shopping they feel better right like there's that connection um where we can go ahead and make the tie to personal finance so um making sure you're aware of those feelings and what really you value when it comes to making these big financial decisions and being able to make these decisions responsibly and obviously this being one of our first skill is a big part of being able to make not only decisions that are good for yourself but also thinking ethically um you know considering safety especially right with Transportation involved you know when kids are selecting cars to be able to consider all
080of these things and so we feel like uh those parts of the castle model are the best fit for class additionally our growth and enrollment which like ends up being contributed to by building the student agency there's a lot of student choice in the class we provide them with an estimated budget for each of the projects and then they get the freedom to go ahead and use different resources um to be able to look up things that they're actually interested in so for the transportation project they can look up three cars that they're interested in compare them and then communicate their decision at the end for the housing unit um either buying or renting they get to choose which state which city they want to look at and then we provide them with the budget
081and they get to go ahead and kind of compare different things between the states and inside the end they're able to communicate that decision where they decided to live um so we feel like identity and belonging are built through this student agency the student Choice gives them the opportunity to really invest in that decision that they're making Express their own values when they presented to others at their group or even like in like larger groups or in class to really say you know this is important to me and this is why I made the decision that I made all right next I'm going to speak a little bit about personal finance and its connection to our district initiatives so here is Stevenson's portrait of a graduate and we've highlighted a few important areas that we
082feel really connect strongly to our personal finance course so in the first category commitment to self Weebly personal finance enables our students to pursue a balanced High School experience Foster responsible decision-making skills and helps them demonstrate self-empowerment so as a team we really stress the importance of making sound and informed financial decisions and we hope that this helps with self-confidence as well as self-empowerment for our students now but especially for their future selves um secondly in commitment to others We Believe personal finance helps develop a sense of empathy for others as well as engage in in our students Civic duties um so for example we have a philanthropy unit where we talk about the importance of giving to others and students get to choose where they want to contribute money to and it's based on
083our students values uh being said we hope that we are stressing the students the importance of responsible spending and in hopes that they become contributing members to our society and then lastly in commitment to learning We Believe personal finance helps our students develop problem solving and reflective skills so for example in every unit students are faced with some type of problem which forces them to make decisions at the end they're evaluating those decisions based on their values and goals that they set for them in the beginning of the unit lastly in every unit we have some type of reflective activity as well so this gives you students the chance to really reflect and evaluate the decision that they made what they liked about it what maybe they didn't like about it and what they would
084change for next time all right so let's get to the student voice survey right now so there are six main areas of the student voice survey we've decided to focus for this presentation on valuing of subject now Beth earlier talked about the year's 2016-2017 we're really starting to see a shift within this class we went from the kind of the traditional ways of kind of learning in terms of like you deliver content students take a test you move on to the next unit and then uh 26 2016 2017 we really started to incorporate some of the decision making and communication skills that uh Ryan talked about earlier and as you can see when we first rolled out the student voice survey in 2017 all the way until now we've grown exponentially in the area of
085valuing the subject so two questions I want to kind of focus on that come directly from the student voice survey the first one being how relevant do you think that this class is going to be in the future so you can see obviously with the uh favorable response um that we got on the survey um we're very proud as far as where we're at with um within this skill and within this area and we think that the students are receiving our message in class we think that they're receiving the message at home as well and having good conversations with their parents and their families and also Society in general I mean if we think about the last several years personal finance super relevant not just only adults lives but also teens and high schoolers lives
086as well so I feel like a lot of the stuff that we're doing in class is definitely working and we'll work for them in the future so in terms of right now I think one of the really kind of like fun things and cool things that we see in class is that our students come to us in the beginning of the semester with kind of just their experience of what their family's doing what their parents have seen and they leave kind of you know with their own kind of map our own kind of like map way for the future as far as what they uh what they can use so think about right now I mean we have a lot of students who of course are going to be uh going off to college in
087the next couple years they're asking great questions uh in terms of um this morning too um what a great question in terms of student loans and also um oh sorry not this oh yeah I could share some stories about what I've done pretty good though but anyways all right so back to where we need to be so I have some good questions in terms of student loans and also about credit as well and then we have some students who are also you know going into the workforce right after graduation as well so even today in class like we're dealing with our budget uh our budget project right now and a lot of students are um asking I'm oh okay yeah I think the fact oh man I'm sorry that we're able to we're able to
088bring these want our own experiences in and I think that also helps see some vulnerability that we should we can share our life experiences and with hopes that our students are able to do the same thing right they're able to open up to us they're able to feel more comfortable in our classrooms being able to share because we all have different and unique experiences that we get to bring to the table which I think is really great and also helps with that sense of belonging that we've talked about a little bit earlier so all right now that now that I'm not going to pass out all right so valuing of subject and where we are at in terms of this year we started out 82 at the beginning of the year we're still at 82
089we're not going to leave here tonight bashing our heads against the wall or anything like that upset with ourselves maybe myself but um but in terms of that we've grown exponentially in other areas such as classroom student relationships and also classroom blog so um again we're a team of seven plus teachers throughout the semester and throughout the year it doesn't matter who's going to be in front of them the entire time you know they're going to get the same great experience as far as what they're doing so something that we're really proud of and that hopefully you can see through our student voice data is that our students really value our class and the student voice survey is an amazing tool but it's not the only data source that we use to evaluate ourselves as
090Educators and personal finance teachers um so next up you're going to see some student testimonials from students that took our personal finance personal finance class um this past fall and we're both taking personal finance this semester so my favorite project we did this semester was the really liked getting to look for someone else's day and we were asked like where they wanted to be they wanted an apartment a condo or a roommate and I thought that was really fun we got to present it to them so yeah just go for the future and then my question was Will personal finance be useful to me in the future and I definitely think it will I learned a lot of good information that will be used in the future such as like filing taxes and totally save
091money and we learned just a lot about budgeting and being able to save up for housing and transportation which would be very important yes [Music] [Laughter] all right so personally in my future full of like being successful and being financially safe to this class helped me learn what I need to do to become Financial financially safe like how to do taxes how to save how to spend how to invest and just overall like I thought it was a very good class to learn [Music] and for this class I don't really know a lot about budgeting a lot about investing but now that I do I feel pretty prepared for like when I'm like out of college I'll know like how to like find a house and find a car and stuff um so we went
092ahead students are actually working on budget projects currently this semester um but we were in kind of you know researching some of our past student examples we found a great example um that really goes back to seamless and mission statement not only thinking of themselves and being able to make responsible decisions but also thinking of others so this was a piece of student work from a previous semester there is a donation donation section on the project they have to go ahead and make a goal for themselves and then say um if they're going to donate where time money or things um and this student went ahead and selected best buddies they said how much was in their budget per month to be able to donate and then they go ahead and just give a little
093bit of information about how best buddies goes ahead and splits up the um like essentially the money that gets donated to them so they went ahead and researched and said hey this charity on charity Navigator has this many stars just um we went through that in our donation unit and they went ahead and then connected bets themselves but also to others and said they wanted to donate to best buddies because it has special heart since they were the chapter Stevenson but also believe in really the bigger mission of bus buddies as well as to developing those one-on-one friendships with individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities so um we thought this was just a great example to show you guys what some of the budget Project work looks like and there's a variety of sections but
094this just happens to be one of them foreign things out here uh in all of our classes we feel like we're fortunate in the business world that there's a lot of real world experience a lot of real world application and having students see the why they're doing something in class I think is so important I mean we all think so important but we get to do things like uh great uh Lakes Credit Union is the uh isn't that picture there they brought 20 volunteers to school to help provide kids with an opportunity to go in choose a career and actually make financial decisions throughout their lives to see the impacts that those decisions make over decades and decades so a really cool experience students really enjoyed it they had a lot out of it and
095it's just one of the ways that we try and again create those authentic learning experiences for the kids when they can see real world application of the things that we talk about in class so uh hopefully that that home is true and as I think everybody mentioned today the student choice is just integrated throughout this whole class students get to choose because I make the joke personal finances personal right like it's different for everybody it's nobody has the exact same needs wants goals and values when it comes to their finances so they get to explore that at their own pace which is a really cool thing I feel and then feedback again feedback from their peers feedback from us is always integrated throughout all of those things and hopefully all of this together they'll be
096able to promote that Financial Wellness which is the whole mission behind and the purpose behind the world is doing is hopefully we're gonna try and break that cycle um that we found that way too many people have so and lastly we know we're not done but hopefully we continue to realize and we continue to grow in all these areas of the student voice survey focusing on things of valuing subjects and at any of every semester we listen to our kids we every semester this classes look different because we pull our students we say what did you like what did you not like and what's missing what else do we need to know or do you need to know or do you want to know and we take those things into consideration when we build the
097curriculum for the final semester like there's a lot of things happening it's mid-year in personal finance because of the conversations that we have and also making sure that the world's changed a lot in two years let alone the last 10 years or five years or whatever that may be incorporating those those big Global Trends and Global topics into the things that we talked about as well so again we'll stop talking thank you all for your time great job any questions for the team I have a lot but don't let her touch it I apologize for the computer if no if no one's jumping in I'm gonna jump can you take us which slide would you like Jesse would you take us back to the side where um where you had the growth it was in
098the 38 13 there was um I I thought it was really interesting how your focus how you use the SEL um in developing the wellness and it matches with the Financial Planning and it's a circle where it you end up using that skill really in everything you're doing and then I thought it was interesting that your relationships and your belonging uh increase the way they did and I'm I'm curious if you saw like a difference in how the students were engaged in the class as this was going on as as this relationship and belonging increase the interest going up was there any kind of comment a manner I feel like um we probably all share our own personal finance Journey so like we're pretty open about it from the beginning like hey I rented and
099bought and how many cars and you know we go ahead and kind of hopefully create that culture of belonging or ability to share to begin with because it is a one semester class um and then as students um practice really writing down like what they value um and what's important to them when they have the opportunity to share that in either the small group that they're working with or either larger groups that they might present you know groups of eight instead of groups of four um I feel like that naturally gives them the opportunity to say hey this matters to me because my parents didn't go to college or hey this matters to me because um you know we've always had you know we've always lived in the state um and so they're actually able
100to share a little bit about themselves and what is influencing their decision making um based on kind of you know how they were raised and things that are important in their life you know currently even if it's you know sports activities and things like that and and it is really fun to kind of hear about where they think because we do make them kind of say hey where are you going to be at 25 which when you're 18 is only you know seven years away um but for them it seems like a such a bar reach but just to hear um when they were signing their tax forms like they had to pick an occupation like where do you think you're going to be and um you know so I think that that's kind of
101just automatically built in when students have the choice and get to communicate that choice is um there's more classroom belonging because they get to hear about each other's lives and things that have really affected their decision making yeah just to add to that really quickly the first video that you saw when they were talking about I was chose my partner's house so we created a an opportunity for them to kind of like house hunters right where they they were a real estate agent for another client in the class and they had to interview them they had to find out what were they looking for what did they want what was most important to them what were their non-negotiables and then they went out and found three properties and presented them so very similar to the
102house hunters like experience and they loved it like it was a cool way for them to well again see other people's perspectives and really get into it like I think I found the perfect place for you and those types of things so yeah I think a lot of the curriculum that we've built in it really lends itself well to those two things specifically do you guys find that that there's a like a wide spectrum of like Financial savviness that the kids come in with so absolutely absolutely yes does that create problems because I would imagine that that the the students who are less savvy might feel really intimidated maybe even more so in your class than someone who's like less Savvy math you know like because because it's such a personal thing right you know
103there's maybe sitting next to somebody who's like way into finances and you know has all that all figured out yeah I can touch on that I actually had an example in one of my classes where we were doing our entertainment project where they were uh picking where they want to go on vacation I had one table one student who um goes on vacation with his family like three or four times a year next to a student who has never flown on a plane so the interesting thing about that was that student got to help out the uh one who hasn't really gone on vacation that much so it's interesting to see that interaction because you know you really don't see that every day yeah you might not when we do our stock simulation as well
104um I'll have the students break up into small groups and those that maybe already invest are helping those that are very new to it um and to add on for this class as well we don't just see a range of financial savviness it's also a very diverse class in terms of learners so we have a lot of ell students we used to have a sheltered special education section that now has been incorporated into our section so not only as teachers are we seeing the diversity in terms of financial Wellness but also the types of Learners that we have in our and as a junior in senior class and a lot of seniors have had maybe even a summer job so when we get to talking about taxes and paychecks you know you're getting students who
105are like oh yeah I've saw taxes or you know Social Security taken out of my paycheck and might maybe they don't know what Social Security is but they've at least seen a paycheck and then some of especially maybe some of the younger Juniors who weren't 16 maybe at the previous you know or not old enough the previous summer um or driving whatever the situation is they might not have worked a job yet so there's definitely you know the difference between Juniors and seniors when it comes to like job experience and kind of even I think right second semester seniors are ready to go live on their own in two and a half three months um versus junior still have that other that that year so it's easier for the seniors to kind of picture um
106this being relevant in their life in a couple months when they choose kind of their careers or however that's done do you give them an amount of money or do they because I know my son would be like well I'm gonna make three million dollars you know being ridiculous yeah so we we use throughout this course we use the ever salary of a college graduate we use that number for everybody to go with and we get to tweak it and personalize it at the end when we get into the budget project but throughout there we're using a budget a realistic budget yeah I'm not going to buy my Lamborghini can't afford a Tesla and again and just showing them what 55 000 looks like from a monthly perspective on a take-home salary um it is
107eye-opening enough for them yeah it's a good it's a good thing for them to see and to be able to kind of work through um and again back back to uh that's why you see people who are like this is a ton of money and you see people who how am I going to buy my Tesla and all those things with this amount of money so it's again it's a great experience and I think we get it through that small like group setting and those conversations that are had on a daily basis with those topics do you see changes in students in terms of their sort of consumer identities and their relationship to stuff in the course of this work in like from like the day one of the semester to the end of it
108you you definitely see I don't you definitely see some change um if anything is we hope we hope that it's just eye-opening enough for them to realize that there are different perspectives there are different there are different experiences and again I'm back to the the personal finances personal we get to let them tailor it to the things that are important to them like the person who wants a really nice car realizes that well I can't live in Lincoln Park and have a really nice car right there has to be pros and cons and gives and takes so those types of conversations um just are awesome to see and awesome to hear so please wow amazing yeah thank you so much [Applause] thank you guys thank you welcome to stick around uh however I will tell
109you I don't want to break anymore all going downhill from here all right bored how we doing you ready to roll or do you need a break or keep rolling keep going all right that's a long one tonight okay okay so uh next we have uh letters of intent um we've talked about these briefly um but generally speaking um this is your first opportunity to take a look at the conversations that uh Mark and Troy are leading out at the administrative Team level um by approving these tonight you are not approving these as courses at all you're just telling the administrative team that yes it's okay to continue to have these conversations and explore the possibility of bringing curriculum proposals to you in the fall so getting to the course book is a multi-step Journey
110for our new board members it begins uh tonight essentially um and Mark do you want to just maybe rather go through every single course are there some highlights that you would want to share with them sure so we spent some time talking about Science and Mathematics about a month and a half ago I'm sorry we spent about a about a month and a half ago we spent some time talking about Science and Mathematics we'll probably revisit that conversation with the board at the school board retreat in August which we think would be a very good idea but some areas where we've been really focusing in on are certain changes in our English program in communication Arts they're looking to adopt a new course to replace another class sort of drawing on student interests and myth
111and folklore and then in a really interesting way our computer science program is really getting more Innovative as to which courses they could offer so beyond our AP programming class they're looking to offer a course and algorithms which is a course that's parallel to what they would be taking uh next in the college level experience so we're noticing a lot of students top out on that AP programming class there's a lot of interest to continue on in computer programming so we're really working with that team um and Jack has been doing a great job working with that team to create this course and then to rethink how students can enter into that course and so that we're better serving the Freshman experience during the summer in that freshman year beyond that we are looking at
112offering um a change for our El students they've usually taken a two period double course um so we're looking to split that so that's a number of our students would be able to take and free up an elective which would be really good for our multilingual students and then in social studies we are going to offer the African-American studies class for 24.25 and that's one area that we're really interested in spending some time thinking that through and getting that conversation going within that social studies team to develop that class get more exposure to the class and then as a sort of follow-up to science we just found out that um anatomy and physiology can be offered as an AP course so we've worked with advanced placement of the College Board to connect with them about
113that curriculum and then to replace our current anatomy and physiology class with that AP version of it so we're looking forward to that and then one little final note um we're continuing to work on our dual credit relationship with Loyola and we're having a conversation and they're very interested in our Fine Arts courses earning dual credit through loyal um so a theater class dance class and a true arts class so we're pretty excited about that too continue to expand that person sounds like a great class yes yeah no please yes second um so when we make a change to an AP from something we already offer is there generally a significant shift or is it pretty similar you know like pre-calc and we have several of them that are shipping yeah is that a big
114difference you know it's interesting um you know I think what we'll find with our you know our anatomy and physiology classes and like reviewing the curriculum side by side the course we're offering right now is more complicated and deeper than the expectations that are listed out there it was an interesting you know like it's not Apples to Apples um so that's been an interesting conversation with Christina wood and um Amarillo and then with pre-cal I think what do you think Troy that's pretty apples to happen it is I don't think you'll see big shifts with these two courses because the kit the kids who are kids are taking pre-calc anyway to move through so we're just going to give them the AP credit because the College Board is honestly our breakout class might be more
115rigorous than the European part yeah and then designed to go to AP exactly so and with this class the kids who are taking the current accelerated Anatomy physiology are the med school kids so they were going to take it regardless if it was an AP and their kids who are still going to want to go to med school are going to still take it regardless of whether it's AP so I don't think there'll be a lot of shifts that way and you know it I think we're looking at some pretty exciting new courses so can you explain so what difference will it make that it's a dual credit what will change in the class itself that's a dual credit with Loyola um well a couple of things um one is the course needs to meet
116parallel expectations with the college level syllabus so we work through an application process with Loyola to make sure that those courses pass the sort of the Department oversight with those expectations so that is sort of a piece of that puzzle and then our teachers have to meet certain criteria for Mastery in that particular academic field so if they're teaching philosophy or if they're teaching sociology or a fine arts class they have to have earned at least 18 credits in that subject area at a graduate level so there's a little bit there's a difference in sort of the expectations of the teaching credentials with the course and then what we do is we partner partner them up with a mentor professor at Loyola and that Professor comes observes them and offers them you know advice thoughts
117there's a real good partnership there and that's one of the more exciting pieces about our relationship with loyal love is they've just been fantastically supportive with that relationship and really about you know entering into those conversations and then I think the final piece really gosh I mean it really has to do with um our teachers earning sort of an adjunct status at the University of Loyola so they have access to research facilities access to the campus things like that and it's been a really good I think it's been a really great sort of moment you know for that any other questions about letters of intent again you will see we're pretty confident that the board will not see all of these in the fall but but some of them the admin team is still working
118through um some conversations regarding these but we need another kind of pass at these probably in August and September before we're ready to bring these back as curriculum proposals didn't we have that whole meeting with the science and math people about realigning yes those things and realigning them with our Center Schools yes and that's this is our result of that meeting yeah well I mean for the methods the math stuff not the science we're still working on that yeah that's right any other questions okay Tara would you please certainly thank you uh no uh Joseph hi so hi a moon's eye Tire right Frost I carry six to nothing okay and the next item is approval of our 2023 summer curriculum projects um and uh generally speaking um projects from year to year are similar
119though different obviously uh we we generally bring forward to the board um projects that our teams are working on in the divisions that they would love to have time during the summer to do that work and you can see a whole um kind of host of different projects there and then the financial commitment uh kind of year in and year out Sean and mark is almost the same no real change it's been a steady amount for the last I'd say 10 or 15 years for that matter um Mark any any other highlights I mean each one of the projects is tied to our gpis um is the real focus and the effort is to make sure that each one of those projects is tied to a collaborative relationship so they're very team based and they
120have an output that the director oversees so it's about a lot of time so all of these projects essentially have been promoted by the team leader of a team it's gone to the academic director goes from the academic director to Mark and Troy then Sean takes a look at it so you know we feel like these are ones that we would recommend to you for approval okay so can I have a motion to approve the 2023 summer curriculum project proposals some more second any questions during advice okay Terry would you please hi so hi Moon's eye Tire all right cross no I approved six to nothing okay and we have three first readings tonight um so we don't need to vote on these but the first is approval um of our board policy updates we're
121going to be bringing this forward to you in June um and I just have to say that uh Pia is absolutely amazing for lots of different reasons that the least of which is this organizational project that she's done um with these board policy recommendations from iasb and if you haven't looked at it already you can look at the spreadsheet that she's created that has all of the different recommendations notes that um we have added and then on the far right hand column the recommendation and Pia do you want to give just a quick overview of the five levels that we've identified or our policies that we've reviewed with your board attorneys there's more significant changes it is something we do want you to become very familiar with level B um there's some proposed changes nothing
122that needed to go to our board attorneys not very substantive but still want you to review um level C very minor changes [Music] um some changes to Legal references and footnotes but no major policy changes um Level D is footnotes legal references cross-reference changes there are no changes to the policy itself so um those are if you want to review and level E are administrative procedures and Exhibits we do not adapt those into our policy so they are not going to be adopted but if you do want to spend the time to take a look at them feel free to do so yeah this spreadsheet was great okay yeah that was great great yeah all of the policies with all the track changes if you really wanted to take a look at them super easy
123to follow it makes a lot of sense great appreciate that great and I think the what I also appreciate um as Pia shared this with band kind of for thinking around this um is again it's that level a you know policy that that's the one that um we look at each other Pia Sean uh and I and sometimes Mark and Troy and we kind of look at it and go I don't know if we should do this or not like this seems interesting we don't have an educated you know kind of perspective on this and then that's when Pia works with the attorneys to have them make a recommendation for us so those are the ones that you know we've worked with the attorneys we've gotten their recommendation um on it but we're also forwarding
124it to you to get your perspective as well we just feel like you should be aware of that um level B is and those happen sometimes I would say not not too often but sometimes and then again the level B are the ones that in the past we would probably just decide so anyway first reading tonight please feel free to take a look we'll bring this back to you um in June and then we'll probably turn around and do another one yes press 111 and then we'll be caught up correct so during the transition with p and Carol there was just a little bit of a lapse um no fault appears all my fault um but she's got us fixed so okay and then uh we're also bringing forward a first reading of our student
125guidebook uh you may recall that student guidebook has to be um approved each year by the Board of Education and I know that some of you like to see the actual edits um kind of the the strikeout version um and that is included as well there are really no substantive changes Droid to the guidebook Troy leads a process out with the Deans with Ken we have parent involvement as well and this year there was no substantive changes right not really yeah it's interesting you put in the yeah yeah the board does need to be updated uh don his name yeah uh uh so if you see anything other changes again if you're needing to put yourself asleep at night feel free to read through that and let Pia know if there's any other changes great
126okay and then the final first reading for tonight is the 2023 school calendar uh we'll be bringing this forward to you in June each year we have to finalize the school calendar send it off to isby um this year knock on wood there's no changes to the calendar so maybe there's two weeks left I did the thing because they did they did the thing right I think it's gonna snow now supposed to be 82 tomorrow I think it was supposed to be used all right well I'm sorry I'm sorry uh and then you'll see our Personnel section in there uh with a number of changes um and uh uh or I'm sorry um recommendations for appointment resignations retirement lease of absences Etc so you can take a look at that that's all included in the
127consent we will not need an executive session following the meeting and Sean that takes us to you and approval of resolution of beta University cash fund of the district correct thank you um we as you might recall we have a series of different types of funds that are created by ISB and the working cash fund is uh designed by SB in the school called to allow a district to kind of maintain uh funds necessary to meet the Dan the demands of ordinary necessary expenditures as you recall we are using some of our fund balances to pay for eba2 as a result of that we do need to Abate 7 million ninety seven thousand nine hundred and sixty nine dollars of the working cash fund and distribute it to the operations and maintenance fund imrf Social
128Security fund and Port fund so tonight we are recommending that the Board of Education adopt the resolution of beating the working cash fund as presented can I have an emotion two or three so move second thank you any questions okay Terry would you please pull the board certainly so I Moon's eye tired Frost no hi Ben Joseph Hi here's six to nothing second uh uh item for tonight is the approval of the Ombudsman agreement for our student Support Services Ombudsman is a uh an organization that we work with they provide services for some of our students who require a different type of a school setting um we buy a purchase of five slots um every year and those are utilized throughout the year sometimes we actually use a little bit more than that sometimes it's
129only three we only lock in for five which is the minimum number to lock in for and then they charge us if we go over that um but uh as you can see we are recommending the Board of Education approve five additional or five slots again for next year after some negotiations we were able to um get the increase uh down to three percent Which is less than the cost of living so tonight we are I'm asking that the Board of Education approve um the odd Buds and I'm budsman renewal agreement as presented like can I have a motion to approve so moved a second any questions for Sean hey Terry would you please pull the balloons I Tire I trust no hi Joseph hi so hi Gary's six to nothing okay the next item
130is approval of the treasures Bond um so this is something that we do um annually uh at this time um and as it's stated here the FY the FY 22 AFR and audit and financial statement have been sent to our um are insured for insurers for review and determination of the amount of the bond and based on this our insurers recommending a Treasures bond in the amount of 31.6 million at a cost of thirty one thousand six hundred so tonight uh the board is asked to approve the purchase of a Treasures Bond and the amount of 31 million points 31 million 600 000 at a class not to exceed Thirty One Thousand six hundred for our very own Sean Carney so moved okay who's the Mover yeah thank you any questions to pull the board
131's eye Tire hi Prosper no I been Joseph aye so I here's six to nothing Sean I'll say the same thing I say every year which is we know where you live um thank you uh Dr 12 um the uh the next item is also an annual one that we do um uh John Bryce uh and his team constantly take a look at the inventory of our musical instruments um and we have a kind of a rolling replacement plan as they become past their useful life um this year one of our new district office in place Samantha Bennett if you haven't had a chance to meet her she was the one that um followed in Pia's footsteps um she came to us with some experience from Lake Zurich in conducting bids so it was very
132refreshing to have her be able to control the bid and kind of know everything that she was doing right from the go she did an amazing job um and so just uh one thing that we'd like to point out so you know we bid these instruments we don't actually have to bid these instruments but we bid them because we get a variety of um different Bitters and also try to get the best price that we possibly can and while John and his team put forth a list of items that need to be replaced he works with Brittany and I in developing really how much in our budget will actually allow him to purchase like in other words how much room in our budget do we have for musical instruments so we kind of keep track
133on this two ways right not only do we go out and bid it to get the best price available but then we also limit kind of the the amount that we purchase in any given year to make sure that we're fiscally responsible um so as you can see in the attached document there's a list of all of the bidders and who won um and at this point um you know we we have come up with a dollar amount that was in the budget and can be purchased um so tonight oh my where did it go hold on a second oh that's why there it is um so tonight we are asking the Board of Education to award the music instruments bid to Grand Rapids violins music and arts uh and Washington Music Center at a
134cost not to exceed fifty thousand dollars in total can I have a motion so moved second thank you Sean can I ask um I'm a little I know that you do this in a way that you condemn select the lowest bid from the different bidders to reduce the price correct and I thought aren't there one two three four five yeah there there was one that I had already talked to John about and he is just going to not purchase that one um the winning bidder and then tiles and styles we are going to reject that bid for believe it or not they actually tied to a carpeting company that we did not have a good experience with and we threw out their bid before so okay it looks like they're the only one who offer
135that product yeah there are there are that is something that they can purchase elsewhere we just didn't have any Fitters on it okay so this is where they'll have to make their decisions but again spreading it out amongst the variety of bidders also allows us to sure um save some money as well and those blue lines there were no bins on them yes correct so when we don't have a bidder that's responsive to an instrument that we're looking for um then by law we have the ability to go out and just purchase that from any source that we deem necessary we'll still follow up with John though and say yeah I need a couple of quotes we don't just get to pick one and say where's this is what we're purchasing we need to make
136sure that it's still getting comparison price even though it's not a formal bid so those aren't captured in the number no not in the total dollar amount that he gets to spend correct [Laughter] uh usually it's only a year on most of the instruments any other questions all right first no all right all right so all right curious if you do have one um first reading about our virtual Network um uh in consultation with Gary had asked a couple of questions um that uh Doug and I responded to I'll include those in our mid meeting memo for information for the rest of the board because I don't think he copied everybody um but uh this is really kind of an annual review and what we believe the cheaper option is right now and the best
137option for the district so we'll have more about that as we move forward and then you can see we had a little bit of a busy month in terms of foia requests and Records requests um there for you a couple of repeat um requesters uh there as well and that is all I have for the board this evening okay okay can I please have a motion to approve the consent agenda second okay Terry would you please request right no hi Ben Joseph hi so hi Boon's eye Tire all right approved thank you okay um just to find a couple final items for uh tonight um the first is just a reminder to the board that um we will be meeting again um we won't have to wait a month to see each other so next
138Tuesday evening right uh we'll be doing our uh administrative team uh reviews uh starting here at five o'clock um and although you may have gotten accustomed to hour and a half or two hour meetings that one will not be as short so um you should fully expect to be here from about five till nine ish if that's okay of course if you need to leave early you can uh but we have a you know a lot of folks that we want to uh kind of share um wonderful kind of news about them um and Mark uh and Troy will be leading to those conversations Terry and Grace will be working out in menu I understand so yeah we might need your help with that PSR okay got it okay so just want to make you
139aware of that that's next Tuesday and then Pia on that day will get us our graduation gowns as well right and then you'll have those uh for graduation which is so um let's see what else we have uh some Kudos uh Dean Bradshaw was announced um as uh the 2023 journalism educator of the Year yep very cool um he just does a fantastic job and our very own PR was recognized uh for administrative excellence and public service from the admin Awards program so congratulations [Applause] and if you have a few minutes please take a look at the tribute video that was put together by um the what is the organization organization yeah but they put together a really One Direction there's there's lots of Clips in there from they put together a video of all
140of the honorees but um a significant portion of it are folks from our district office staff here and our very own Jamie oh was the producer and director of that video I understand so probably want to watch that uh you can see some you know there's so many um wonderful things that happen here all the time but we just included some student profiles uh some things that you might find interesting there's a couple interesting articles uh some uh information about board member training uh we just wanted to um provide that information for you Pia will follow up with any of you um individually who needs you know help completing all the trainings but I think everybody's caught up for the most part yeah oh the new one sorry the trauma informed practices practice so I
141signed everybody up um once you do take that training it's online if you can forward me the certificate and then we'll publish it are we gonna get a notified something or now we can so you should have already received it yeah right so I'll I'll follow up on that did anybody else receive it um and then um each month on the day of board meetings Troy and I host a parent breakfast um and we had a small group of parents today that were just really wonderful with their feedback they did have some really I think good suggestions for us about some of the processes and procedures and student services and helping kids make College selection choices and it was really good feedback so again we do those meetings once a month we intentionally tell parents
142that although we'd like to hear Kudos we don't really want to hear them right now we just want your hard feedback and um help us get better and they always do a really great job and then the final item um is uh you received an email today from Jamie which is a copy of a letter that we sent out to all of our parents asking us for feedback about District Communications and so I think Jamie and her team now that Jamie's been here three three years wow so Jamie's been here three years uh and she's done an amazing job however she's always she fits right into the Stevenson mold how can we do things better so she sent out a survey to all of our parents um asking for feedback about um if there are
143any changes that our parents felt were necessary or they'd be interested in seeing with our Communications um is it too much is it too little is it just right what are the Avenues they like more social media less social media more email less email Etc so we're all kind of anxious to see that data and take a look at it and we'll come back to you with some ideas that Jamie and her team are kicking around to improve communication so thank you Jamie for leaving that out we appreciate it yeah yeah it's a good idea so that's all I have for tonight can I have a motion to adjourn moved second uh Voice vote sorry all in favor aye opposed