001amazing night to comments so let me see we will talk about and get back to you after yeah okay thank you uh so thank you have a couple of comments um and a few questions um so I'll skip the part about thanks for your leadership and continue success um last week more than half the members of of this board seated in front of me uh attended meetings which constituted a legal Quorum so uh the open meetings act Illinois statute 5 ilcs 120 which is known as the open meetings act requires that advance notice of any meeting that has four or more individuals for a a public body such as a seven-member body give notice they met not once last week not twice but three times in various locations including on school property via zoom and
002at a local business with board membership totaling six members present one meeting five members and four members including the president and the vice president before me per the reference ACT public notice prior to the meeting is required when a board meets to discuss public issues namely this board has set the precedent and I saw walking in having physical postings of agendas minutes making recordings available as well as these items posted on their websites this applies to regular special and emergency meetings per the statute to quote the statute its citizen shall be given advance notice of and the right to attend all meetings at which any business of a public body is discussed or acted upon in any way this required notice was not given for these public meetings as a publicly elected board this is
003unacceptable disregard for procedure misalignment with State statutes and brings to question the ethics that motivated this breach I will be filing a complaint with the Illinois General Assembly regarding this breach of the statute here are my questions for now uh more to come as we see the agendas be posted the minutes and any recordings to president Frost during the meeting titled Town Hall in which you facilitated visitors questions regarding policy Finance special education Etc you referenced Stevenson owning the ELC can you please elaborate on the ownership of the ELC for the public secondly Mrs Ben Yosef and president Frost you each offered a parent on the call a tour of the facility which I assume means the Stevenson High School was this done as an individual as a board member or the board as a
004whole or as a candidate why was Administration not part of the call or this offer finally vice president nyalt you stated that this board handles Finance is different than other school boards referenced as competing districts local districts feed Industries specifically referencing application District you said we quote worked hard to keep maintenance as part of the budgets so we didn't have to go for referendum quote we just have a little bit different philosophy rather than putting off repairs and things like that so we don't have to go and ask for more quote we can't tell 102 how to manage their funds is this board opposed to referendums in local feeder and other neighboring districts are they leveling charges of mismanagement of funds or are these comments made as an individual not on behalf of the board
005or are they made as a candidate for an election again do we statements refer to whom to Stevenson to the board to an individual I sincerely hope this oversight was a series of flukes and not indicative of what typically goes beyond when Beyond close doors when the public is not watching I shouldn't be put in this position to call your attention to this but this is how taxpayers keep those who hold the public administration accountable to the high standard accountable themselves thank you and have a great evening thank you um okay we can we will sit down and talk with you later I guess the short answer is we've been advised by our Council that when we're meeting on campaign stuff and we're not meeting to discuss school business or take action that it doesn't
006count as a public meeting and we can go back and talk to our Council if that advice still holds but that's what we've been told which is why we can go to campaign events together we're not conducting School business um and we can meet after the meeting if you want I don't want to sit and discuss I mean the same is true what you're asking but we're happy to be with you and talk back um any other comments okay um we get to the best part everyone um I hope all of you are doing well definitely am with the extended period of light and uh seasonal depression out the window uh so I'm ready to get started I'm ready for spring break uh it's gonna be it's gonna be good so I'm going to get
007on with academics uh so just a general gist of what happened over the past month Science Olympiad team uh won first at the you've had an Invitational and earned 14 medals uh which is a very high accomplishment and then Stevenson HOSA participated in State uh last month or earlier in March and 67 members will be advancing the Internationals so that's awesome as well along with the 27 students who will be advancing the Nationals from BPA so a lot of people will be having fun competitive trips this summer so looking forward to that political action Club recently hosted a campaign fair at school where local candidates came in expressed what they what changes they want to implement to students which is like a great way for civic participation and just to know what is going on
008within the community and within the government and then science reach Club also 23 members qualified for state and then recently the junior has participated in Isa testing so those are just some academic related things that happen and then going on to Athletics we had a wrestler placed third for boys state finals and then a female wrestler placed fourth at state finals so that's a great accomplishment and then the voice women dive team they placed third at state that's actually a picture of them to the right with their medals and then their trophy as well and then boys basketball won regionals for the fourth time in a row which is just a very crazy amazing accomplishment for them so moving on to Arts we had the marching band visit Orlando and they performed at the Magic
009Kingdom Parade which is awesome like I remember going as a little kid and seeing all these like for I was like terrified of like Mickey Mouse like the cartoon ones like I was okay with the cartoon but when I saw it in real life I just cried um but the parade was always a cool thing to watch because I used to live in Florida so I'd go every year um so I bet they had a great time with that and amazed all the people watching uh and then choir students performed at the winter choir concert putting on an amazing performance along with band students who performed at the Winter band concert which took place over two nights and then this one I actually really enjoyed because I did go to this one my friend was
010playing like the therapist teacher kind of role but the Curious incident of the dog in the night time it was amazing production um I knew the black box was a small space but they really used that space to the max like the whole like Star thing and like the um helpers as well like lifting him up into the air it was a very very amazing and just inspiring piece and I've heard a lot of great feedback from teachers from students from family members as well about that so it was really cool to witness you know it was sold out all for you yeah I was sold out all four it was amazing and then Winterfest so I got feedback that the assembly was probably the best assembly ever uh we had like yeah we had
011senior showcase performers or the winner uh perform uh along with winter sports athletes being featured s factor there was just a lot going on uh so a lot of students had a great time watching that stuff at that assembly and then Winterfest as well obviously school dances are always a huge hit we had Inflatables dancing the silent disco like when I was a freshman I heard about silent disco I was like I mean dancing music in your ears people watching you but it was in school actually like you're gonna be surprised uh and then obviously the moshing waking up with a million bruises the next morning but it's all for the experience all for the experience okay and the kilometers for Kenya initially when we were planning this it was a brand new event we
012were concerned that everyone was just going to want to walk the complaint like oh running well like for three hours oh that's that's too much but when the event actually took place it was just amazing to see how many people were running whatever their motive was some people wanted to compete and win that first place others were like oh shoot there's people that are actually running I gotta run uh so that was really fun um a lot of people had a good time with the activities in the middle there was always something going on uh like teams brought some team t-shirts as well so it was kind of a fun new event and hopefully it'll take place in future years but we did raise over eight thousand dollars from it which is awesome because all
013that money will be donated to the agaza center so uh it's great to see how a new event like this sorry will be uh used to benefit the line of the children in rural Kenya who are getting exposed to technology and trying to prepare for the workforce you're probably wondering what is that picture on the right uh so two three days before we decided to take a little Home Depot trip so for our little batons we're like oh shoot like tracking people kind of me earlier what can we do for Baton so we went to Home Depot we got PVC pipes but we had a great 40 of them and the Home Depot people only could cut it into three pieces so we were like um can you teach us how to use the machine
014like we'll do it uh so she was like sure whatever so we did manage the saw we saw the PVC pipes into 40 equal sized pieces we had a use some math skills to do that but that was really fun then we got poke bowls after for reward for our little Home Depot Adventure do you still have all your figures yeah and that's your showcase so this event was also amazing I had some friends that participated in it so I want to support them and oh my God like the one on the left that was the funniest thing I ever saw he was imitating he won the whole showcase but he was imitating a Napoleon Dynamite and did this dance and I don't even know how to explain it it's just he's very tall so
015when he did certain movements it was just like funny to watch uh but it was it was crazy I was not expecting that but everything about the show was great itself uh the host did amazing job keeping our attention the contestants were all phenomenal and I know it was a really great bonding experience for the guys that participated as well as they did many practices together so it was great to watch and I know everyone had fun participating it as well as well this event it was actually 24 hours which is crazy for kilometers for Kenny were like oh maybe it should be 24 hours but I don't know if people would be happy with us we did a 24-hour Marathon uh so hackathon was 24 hours they all had a great time and I
016know they were participating to win a pool of about 2 500 um so that was really fun and I know a lot of them were tired because they didn't get any sleep at all uh but even then they had fun they stayed away through pizza and other food and just hanging out with their friends and it was a really great time for them an operation black history month so this kind of ties with anti-racism and inclusivity week that also occurred at Stevenson um but the black student union hosted an event called operation Black History Month in order to unite the black community and also other members in the community and spread awareness about their culture by providing different foods having different games and it's just a great way to spread inclusivity and it is women's
017History Month as well so a lot of different months dedicated to promoting diversity and inclusivity within Stevenson and then salsa is salsa so that actually took place uh last Friday I believe but a lot of people had a good time it's kind of like a unique event to do um there was Salsa of the food and then salsa dancing so a lot of people enjoy doing something that they may not know how to do in their daily lives and just having fun laughing at each other dancing with everybody I know some people dance with people they didn't even know which is funny and crazy um but they all had a good time and also a great way to Spanish the or celebrate the Latin culture and then going on to some student experiences so I
018asked four different students about specific events that happen in their experiences with that so student a said shs hacks was a long but really fun event even though I got no sleep I had fun participating in the activities with everyone and competing student B said I really enjoyed the competitive atmosphere at the event so he's referring to kilometers Kenya so many people were running on the track at once and my team had a great time it was funny to see some teams bear crawling or wheelbarrowing after getting sabotaged so that was kind of like an incentive we had to get people to raise more money so you could technically purchase power-ups or sabotages to help you either increase your lab count or sabotage another team so one of the sabotages was a bear crawl where
019you had to like crawl on your knees for 40 yards I believe and then wheelbarrowing so like a person I don't know how to describe okay so like someone's holding them like this and then the other person's on the ground they're holding their legs up and then they're walking on their hands uh so just like a creative way to one of the sabotager stood been like Mario Kart for the banana peel over your shoulder we were thinking about that Mario Kart but I think that would violate a lot of safety precautions so we decided banana peels on the track yeah maybe maybe next year or maybe next year okay and then student C said being a part of senior showcase was always something I wanted to do since my freshman year it was such a
020fun and fulfilling experience to not only work with some of my fellow classmates but to have people come and watch us perform it was a night I'll never forget and I'm grateful that I was a part of students he said operation Black History Month was an event made to motivate encourage black students and to learning more about their Community it was a good experience to be able to lead and X and execute an event that impacted a small community of people in such a big way s thank you of course okay [Music] okay all right everybody um thank you one of the things that uh that we're really honored to do is to present our ambassador Awards one of the highest Honors that our school board Awards and so tonight we have uh the wonderful
021opportunity to recognize there's about 12 students 13 students bring me in a few coaches for winning the state championship for the chess team this year so we can get a big round of applause thank you call them in one at a time to come in and we'll get a chance we're going to do you'll you can have that individual photo uh when they mom and moms dance parties when when Steve shakes their hand and at the end we'll bring them together for a big group photo I'll help organize that so so here we go our first uh is zombie Adams Molly [Applause] turn around into a fixture awesome thanks Edward Italian [Applause] air again [Applause] roll it too hot [Applause] there's a picture okay so be a passion [Applause] that's okay [Applause] do not play
022Chess at that house route [Applause] thank you karinji Shiva Kumar [Applause] William Wang [Applause] Ray's son [Applause] and last but not least tugs yes and two more [Applause] we have three coaches to recognize tonight coach Scott Oliver coach Vince Springer come on in Head Coach Ken Wallick [Applause] all right so let me let me have you guys get in two rows put the coaches in the back okay two rows in the front so we just take one step out just a little bit so we'll get a group shot for parents you guys want to get up and get around to where you can get a good picture of everybody hold those up in front of you like this get a good one I'm gonna get out of the way look everywhere all at once so
023you're looking at the campus it's a good movie all right hopefully everybody got your photos now if I can have the kids stay here and turn around just gotta back up a little bit the board would like to know a little bit more about your experience so I'm going to turn it over to them there you go tell us a little bit about the competition what is the format yeah besides playing chess so it's a seven round tournament um there's 12018 from across the state and um Stevenson field eight players match um each board is weighted a little bit differently the first board has 12 points and then that goes down by one point so it's four to eleven points then 10 points gradually and then uh for each match we have to get 34.5
024points to win and to Wednesday you have to be perfect you see that seven out of seven third year our third time in four years the one year we did it when it was like the pandemics are you a long time test players like did you have chess boards in your cribs or some of you you were arrivals to the game um yeah I feel like most of us have been playing for a long time some of us spend more time than others I play more than you yeah he plays a lot um I feel like probably like one to two hours a day so how many of your graduating seniors here a lot anybody having a chess scholarship or no such things I am curious when you watch movies and stuff and you see
025chess players and you'll often talk about studying games that other people have played in the different techniques and strategies do you guys study fire games and more everyone's adding yes okay so this is really serious ly you don't have ratings like like they're all rated and when in the tournament if you play like rated people like is that is that how it works or no no for high school has like nothing to do with like the actual ratings okay a couple of separate so like technically they're all like high school ratings but like they're like very inaccurate yeah but so what do you what is what are the ratings so he's like 2400 which is like the best in the state probably isn't the country oh yeah I am number 10. that's incredible of adults
026and everything yes yes your sisters get so good by playing each other is that how yeah it definitely helps motivation for each other that's fantastic thank you so much thank you congratulations congratulations [Applause] thank you very much all of you that have come to celebrate with uh with this great team if you would like to take off now that would be a great idea but you're more than welcome to Hangouts and listen to us uh but it's downhill a good presentation coming up from the Fine Arts team right I think it's fine arts right yeah it's fine it's the best part I learned my lesson I don't say that anymore very cool so three out of the last four years the number one players in the state that is absolutely amazing yeah absolutely incredible hi
027team well it's good to see you hello could you bring us a state championship as well we are nationally recognized serving up there for you one of the parents is asking for you to be part of the picture [Laughter] yes we are ready so we get to the next item on the agenda thank you uh is our curriculum team presentation and as you know each month we hear from a curriculum team about the work that they're doing related to our uh SEL initiative so tonight we have uh representatives from our fine arts division and I'll let John introduce the members of your team yeah take it away uh good evening everyone thank you so much for allowing us to have time we're excited to share the great work that's happened in Fine Arts but specifically
028our theater program um in theater we know we teach life skills through theater and we're proud to share that today with me yes hi I'm Joey Fitzpatrick I'm a theater teacher and director at Stevenson and I also teach Spanish hi I'm aubryson I'm Joey's co-theater teacher and director and it was great to hear the comments earlier about the winter play just a couple weeks ago and you know on that point oftentimes we think about Stevenson's theater program we think about our big flashy musicals our fall play our children play actually our six main stages that we have main stage shows that we have at Stevenson High School but really we are we have this robust curriculum and the curriculum is really the foundation for our co-curricular program do you want to click the next slide
029yes um so students could really engage in almost a four-year sequence of classes here of being on stage or being behind the stage but through these classes we know that it's essential to teach really the foundational academic outcomes of Theater which lines so closely to social emotional learning so with that I'm going to pass this over to Joey and Auburn to finish up the presentation so to get us started we're going to talk about our mission we got to keep the door keep the door open we'll project over it's over yes we will feed of Your Excellence cult and cultivate mindful citizens in an inclusive community of well-rounded theater artists engaging in diverse stories this is a mission statement that we developed in the fall of 2019 with student leaders and took what was valuable
030and important to them as well as our professional uh and and Artistic Endeavors um and we revised this every year with our student leaders and we ask what needs to be revised what are we not focusing on where do we need to improve where are we really nailing it and in developing the mission statement with our students something that we realize is that this really closely parallels social emotional learning in the classroom and so we decided to use this as a guiding force for the areas that we wanted to most work on and celebrate within our students because when you think about it activating passion and inspiring Excellence those really tie so closely to a student's sense of belonging in the classroom in a fine arts World cultivating mindful citizens that's all about their interactions
031with peers and the inclusive community piece that ties so closely to classroom climate as well um so if we're looking at just a general comparison of where we launch with this student voice survey data and how it ties into acting we look at Stevenson on a general level and we already know that Stevenson does so well at nationally placing right our numbers are already so great um when you compare them to the National Standard but when you look at our acting numbers those really even kind of Skyrocket even more and that's something that we're really proud of especially when you look at that classroom climate between Stevenson Savage and our own um but really across all areas but that doesn't mean that we stop at just being content with where we are we still very
032much use our student voice survey as a springboard to determine what's the work that we still want to get better at and by the way if anyone's looking at this and saying what your math is wrong uh the classroom belonging and valuing a subject are actually flipped on the different sites so bringing that specifically to our SEL Focus uh here is the castle framework for SEL learning and commitment and the two areas that we chose to focus our work on this year are self-awareness and relationship skills as those are particularly prominent in the theater classroom um so thinking back to how there really is a close tie to our mission statement in PTC with social emotional learning um one of the things that we came to discover is that um really SEL in the theater
033classroom it's a formula and it actually very closely mirrors the portrait of a graduate here at Stevenson um so we know that our portrait of our graduate has commitment to self commitment to others and commitment to the learning so I kind of invite you to think of that commitment to self in the theater classroom is like the actor right that individual performance when you pair that with the commitment to others which is The Ensemble right our result is the learning taking shape in transfer skills too much yeah um transfer skills um and those kind of being those skills that students take beyond the theater classroom into whatever their elected area of study or profession is After High School and we'll talk a little bit more about those later on the presentation as well and so
034we're going to take each of these three areas the actor The Ensemble and transfer skills and show you some data about the work that we're doing as well as student examples first data point we have here is about the actor and the self and this comes from the SVS survey uh and the question is how much respect do the students in class shown you actually and we had 87 positivity with that um which we just think is absolutely so phenomenal makes us so proud because that is the focus of our work getting to know each other celebrating the students um as well as having that confidence to share part of who you are with the ensemble so we have some student anecdotes here I developed my consonant excuse me I developed my confidence especially speaking
035English in front of other people I was always a bit embarrassed because my English is not really good so I was a little scared in the beginning but what really helped me is that everybody respected my language and never laughed about it and these are all from students in acting one particularly freshmen and sophomores by working on my projection I wasn't cut off anymore and my voice was heard group projects were suddenly teamwork projects and here to see a little of this in action we have a student oh we have a student performing part of a slam poem from the acting three showcase and this is a project that we work on in acting three and then put on as part of the Showcase uh and a project where students are invited to write what
036they need to say and what they need to be heard and we'll just watch the beginning part of this student rayon Sheikh's poem hello my name is be upon you foreign [Music] it does go on for a quite engaging uh two and a half minutes um but hopefully that little bit helps to demonstrate the confidence in sharing his identity multiple languages um a part of uh tolerance and talking about his own experience in the world in front of the public audience this type of work this type of uh class project does show up throughout our curriculum that project was in acting three we have oral storytelling and acting one where students are invited to share a story representing some aspect of their culture in acting four we have Global Theater Research which students can choose
037any theater tradition from around the world to research and present time and perform and many of them do choose so they are not required but many do choose to share of theatrical tradition that is linked to their own family or personal heritage we are continually escalating our variety of Multicultural and multilingual scripts both that we have available for students to read and use for monologues and scenes as well as for in-class text study and in the theater design and stagecraft one place this shows up is in our sound collage project where students are asked to make a personal story of themselves through sound so if we transition to The Ensemble piece so what is an ensemble it establishes the sort of energy of a space the energy of a production it sets the tone it's
038a group of people working collectively right so our data point when we were kind of extrapolating data to to prove where we are in this it was pretty shocking that question about how positive or negative is the energy of this class um 100 of our students responded favorably which is pretty astounding to us um so that shows us that our focus on climate and connection increased engagement and overall success in our classes yeah and I'll add that one of the ways we do this you'll see in a moment part of a routine warm-up but we have many routines in our classes and we actually want to take a moment and have them invite you all to join us in one of our routine moments so one of the biggest things that we teach students is
039um you know obviously to to achieve certain levels of acting we have to build certain levels of empathy um and so we thought maybe a great thing for you all to empathize with us for a second in our students and what they do on a daily basis so you don't have to stand up and you don't have to participate if you don't want to but one way that we engage class every day is that we have them do a focus breath and to do that what they do is they take in the current energy of the space and so they take a nice deep breath in if you would like to stand up and join us and then they release that out for letting go of the energy that's currently there and then we take
040in the newly focused energy we take a deep breath in and then we plant that down into the ground does that feel nice um so that is one way that like three hours a week where were you two I know tools for everybody and acting classes yeah um so that is one way that we will start class and if you go to the next one um so this work in action once students have focused in the space um in my particular class we do something called psychological gesture um and what this asks students to do is present their name into the space that day in a way that they are feeling uh physically and also to demonstrate that in their voice and once they present that the entire class has to repeat that exact gesture
041that they did and that's kind of an exercise in empathy to put yourself in someone else's shoes maybe you're feeling on top of the world today but the person standing right next to you isn't so what does it feel like to be where they are today how do you gain that empathy and this is just a little bit of an action Maybe Chelsea Serena so as you can see they don't all I mean that's a pretty wide Gambit of emotions going on there in that day right um and so that's what we kind of do after that is just we talk about what's the collective energy in the space today how do we name that and then how do we transfer that into the work that we're about to do honoring how everyone's coming from
042a very different place that day and I think recognizing the courage individually and collectively to even share your emotions on a daily basis in your mental state um then some student anecdotes to highlight this experience of The Ensemble my acting one class Community is supportive diverse and funny I got to learn about different people's backgrounds from India to Uzbekistan to Germany and learn about some cool Heritage and the storytelling unit everyone in class has different strengths and weaknesses and all are very talented and funny another student said acting is my only class where I know everyone's name at the beginning everyone took the time to get to know each other and it strengthened the class Community I feel comfortable with my peers and they understand me as a person wow um so if we look
043if we continue to look at The Ensemble one thing that Abra and I did at the end of last semester was survey our students specifically we wanted to Zone in on um their experience with their student Tas to kind of validate what their purpose and presence was in class because we were sure that they had some type of determining factor in the student experience but we wanted to know how the students voiced it and to add to this yes or theater leadership class yeah and that oh you say these students um have most times I think they have completed our entire acting one through four sequence um so this is kind of a Capstone for them but if you look at one of the statistics so 79 of our students feel pretty or extremely connected
044to their Tas um which is huge huge because they come from a wide variety of experiences backgrounds Etc if you look at what they say about those experiences I felt like I belonged because of the Tas they encouraged me when I felt nervous and they helped me keep improving they encouraged me to put myself out there more and try new things overall they were extremely encouraging and helpful to my learning process so this is a very unique presence that we have in our classrooms um we're we're very lucky to have them to connect on that student level just to support the learning that we're already promoting with them and one thing I'll add to this is that uh we the student Tas learned that to how to model that empathy and that leadership and that
045growth from their Tas as well as from ourselves which goes back to the castle framework and how do we develop that self-awareness and that empathy so of course our the third part of our portrait of The Graduate we've gone to the self as the actor the others The Ensemble and now we get to the learning where we focus on the transfer skills as Mr Gray started our presentation theater skills our life skills so the data for this section uh is actually from our slow our student learning outcome for last fall where we looked at the slate and the Slate is an introduction before a performance you'll see some examples of that in a moment I always say on the very first day of class if you learn nothing else in this class you will learn
046how to introduce yourself to a room full of strangers as we are all doing right now and it's really remarkable seeing their growth on this not only throughout one semester but for the students who are enrolled over the course of three or four years to see their growth over that entire time period so you have in September 2022 62 of students in our acting one and three classes were exceeding or meeting the Target and then December 2024 uh excuse me December of that year 96 of our students were exceeding or meeting the target incredible growth for just a couple of months and here you'll see some student slates and these again were part of the acting three showcase so they were indeed full of a public audience hello my name is hi my name is
047Lily Brenner and this is Michael I am here at right now hello my name is [Music] I hope you enjoy it and Joey will go into some more student anecdotes about the transfer skills yeah so what students have identified for their own transfer skills they've identified things like flexibility I developed flexibility as a transfer skill when we started the project one of our team members wasn't there so we had to adapt and come up with a way to include them when they came back or I developed a sense of risk taking and spontaneity which helps in other areas of life because risk taking allows me to put my ideas onto the field and spontaneity allows me to be more flexible in short notice situations and come up with solutions for example when I'm working in
048a group setting in my other classes such as chemistry if a mistake is made I can quickly problem solve to fix the situation so what these really look like and there's a myriad of transfer skills right but when we think of some of the skills that most employers are asking for that's critical thinking it's citizenship it's growth mindset communication creativity collaboration um we just have a little Jeff Bezos uh quote in there for you he says top-notch communication skills are essential um and so that's just again something that we want our students to recognize that this doesn't just we're not building professional actors and technicians here if they go out into the field and do that Beyond high school that's great but what we're most proud of with them is that they're able to make
049these connections of how this can serve them in real life after so what's next what's the current goal that we have as we continue our work um while we've established that students have created we have created a climate for these students that feels inclusive to them it gives them a place where they belong our next step is that we want to incorporate more diverse playwrights and texts in the theater curricula to better reflect Stevenson's evolving population we want our students to now start to see themselves in the work that we're doing Beyond just the environment that we've created in class and so here are some of our action steps that we've already started to create and that we're working on one is that we're developing a forum for PTC students to suggest scripts for classes
050these are not just scripts to have in our library or to read or to access but scripts for us to study and engage scenes with and analyze as a class we also want to involve Tas in the process of authenticating and confirming text relevance so sometimes the Tas are our best friends in this planning of our curriculum because they're representing the student voice that goes into it they're going to tell us when something is out of touch or when something feels like yes you guys are on the right path this speaks to us students will be able to see themselves in this work I feel like I hear my voice in this work definitely use this text message or Mr Fitz and we've also heard this text old we need something new yeah and then
051the third action step is to research or continue really continue to research unpublished plays to continue to move beyond the traditional Canon this is the Canon of Tennessee Williams and William Shakespeare Eugene O'Neill who are extraordinary playwrights but not necessarily relevant and speaking to our student population right here right now and one of the ways we're actually working on number three right now in the Pro currently is that the advanced acting class has a project where they used all of their text analysis skills and their production analysis skills that they've learned in all the other acting classes and they apply that to propose a season for a co-curricular uh different plays that make up a variety of what does that look like students who are repeating this class as it is a repeatable course have
052the next step of that where they use all of their skills in text analysis and play production and their experiences in all the acting classes to propose texts that we can study in the various levels of acting classes and through this they're looking at the same questions that we continue to ask ourselves why here why now would I be engaged in reading this what will we learn and how will this represent the students and that's been a very exciting project to begin with those students so that brings us to the end of this part of our work and thank you for letting us be with you today well thank you fantastic any questions I thought you had a question no got it how do you how do you this is really minor in the grand
053scheme of thing first of all fantastic presentation what you've done is amazing I know often we see the scores on the surveys at 76 or 78 we wonder about it but we realize it puts us in the 90 99 tell of our kids feeling lying and yet you had a hundred percent um so how you improve on that not true how do you on the last slide you mentioned that you would research unpublished plays is there a source from English plays there there are many there are many sources for unpublished plays uh one is talking to people that we know other teachers um other theater artists working playwrights um there's also an incredible resource called uh new play exchange it's kind of like the Wikipedia for playwrights but but much more uh vetted than that
054but playwrights can publish maybe like the SoundCloud playwrights can publish their own work and there are thousands and thousands and thousands of plays on there and sometimes it's not even about finding a play to do in the context of Performing formally within our season but how can we get access to these scripts and then create opportunities for students to engage with them through it could be stage readings it could be through in our script Studio Club where they're reading new works just just so that these ideas are coming to them and they're seeing themselves for and getting ideas for future research down the line and giving students access to that same database to encourage them to research to encourage them to choose the selections what demographics or gender identity of a playwright are you really
055looking to find that will that will speak to you and I'm I'm also curious some of the the exercises that you're using to train the skills look like they're unique maybe to theater that you would have thought of them that others might not is there any collaboration with other teams and other divisions I mean some of those things seem like they would be applicable for developing the confidence and the belonging that um I mean for example so as someone who teaches in two divisions sometimes I will not on an everyday basis but there are times where I realize like Focus gets really out of control in the group setting so why not take a focus breath together um the buy-in sometimes is different right like students in a theater class are going to have different
056expectations for how they're going to engage with the learning but I'm sure that there are certain warm-ups that we do in theater that you know dance might use when it comes to things like breath movement Etc how many how many students go go from acting one all the way through the progression all the way back before I mean is there is there a drop off in numbers or we typically have about 75 retention from one to the next yeah so 75 from acting one to two active one to two is a little bit higher uh but then two to three is about 75 and then three and four to advance is about 70. and sometimes what we see is students might drive off for a period of time and then come back to us a
057year or two later while they're trying to get some other classes in between um but they always come back to us saying like you know I really miss this time of my day yeah this was a time of day that was carved out for me to be me to engage with my peers in in a way that felt like I needed that you know and I think to Mr Frost's question about the how do we improve on 100 well one of the ways is reaching more students and that is something where you know I think people don't necessarily know what happens they think oh it's performing scenes and monologues which it is and a lot of people love that but also a lot of people might be afraid of that or think that's not for
058me and so by finding a lot of variety in the curricula gaining out to the school uh we hope to include more students you absolutely read my mind because because like I don't know how your your marketing this is incredible thank you thank you Senator curriculum you know and I don't know how you're marketing it to like eighth graders coming in I would imagine many of the people signing up for our for acting one I've got the buck already right yeah and part of it too is just you know capitalizing in our community presence and we have events like the Consortium event for the musical when students are coming out or those incoming freshman nights um and then creating performance opportunities for them to open up the doors have them come see what we're doing
059on stage backstage creating TalkBack opportunities showing them that these skills are not just happening after school these students that they see are getting these during the day and this is what's supporting and elevating what they're doing and not to not to bring into but I'm just kind of interested in this like because when I taught I taught it I taught in a subject area that's mandatory this is not right but I remember students who by the end of the year their year with me were like I've never taken another history class again do you what is the Journey of a student who signs up for acting one for example and you know this that acting is not for them or or they or they communicate that to you what is that Journey like it's interesting
060I mean I think one of them you ever noticed that I mean I think one of the things that is um unique and special about our curriculum is that yes these courses are called acting one through four but what Opera and I have made very clear to ourselves and to our students is that we are you know it's it's really for theater Artistry um we're building a whole theater artist here and yes it has an emphasis of performance so trying to help them discover other outlets that they can use within our curriculum still you know maybe there's a stagecraft uh and design class that's that's going to be really great for them or maybe there's opportunities within projects that we're already doing where they're really going to shine um that's that's one of the things
061we try to make really clear on the first day and I'll say that I think our our student Tas are really essential in those particular conversations and moments as well because I think talking to a teacher is always different than talking to a peer about what that peer learned we have a student ta now a senior who had never done acting before acting one was like I don't know what I'm doing I'm here because of my friend and has not only in every theater class but has now repeated uh the highest the Capstone theater courses is a TA for the third semester is pursuing uh theater education in college had a lead in the fall musical um because because of the journey that he started when he had no idea and so I think for
062students just and not that that's the expectation of every student for students to see that model you need to do I'd be fully open to explore the idea of graduation requirements yes but I'm just wanting to throw it out with friends I actually have a proposal that's been sitting in some of these gentlemen's email boxes a few years here but and I uh I do have experience collaborating with social studies departments on public speaking skills and I'm thinking I'm not even I'm only kidding a little bit about this but I happen to think that that everybody under the age of 18 should work in a restaurant and perform or participate in a musical or play like I think that experience is you know I'm only a little kidding about that but seriously it's your uncle
063Howard she said no how aggressive Your Mother wasn't a rustic I know that's no her married name it's just like it oh no Don and Treadwell and Rosie but thank you thank you thank you thank you all right so moving along thank you it's always great to hear those presentations uh yeah really impressive and amazing yeah so the next item is approval of our textbook recommendations last month these came to you as a first reading um and uh we didn't receive any questions but Mark is here tonight if you do have any we only have two textbooks that we're recommending uh for adoption next year uh one is a U.S history book and the other is uh principles of econ book and I think Mark both are online are ebooks uh I should say so
064both of those tonight are coming for your approval because we have a motion still moved second any questions for Mark would you pull the board please certainly no and Joseph so all right wounds eye Tire all right Frost all right Washington carries six to nothing okay um and next we have our human resources report all of which is included under consent but as you know March is always in most Illinois school districts the kind of heavy Personnel month um so you can see included in here our recommendations of appointment to tenure uh you will also note and you can see just the amazing work that our faculty has have done you'll see our recommendations to um continued uh probation for a fourth year for third year for second year um we have a resolution for
065non-reemployment approval of administrative contracts resignations and then we also note in there our retirements as well leave of absences support staff so this is a heavy month we won't ask you to go through and vote on each one individually but all of them are included in consent I know you had a chance to look at that I will just point out on page oh we've lost the page numbers uh I will just point out near the end of that section um the 25 the folks who will be celebrating um 25 years it's a healthy list and then wow there are seven retirees at the end of this year honor our faculty instead Alice Knudson what a loss speaking of Fine Arts so I know so we are looking forward to that retirement celebration wow and
066we already had our executive session for this evening so we will not need one following this meeting which brings us to Sean the business section um approval of lease for renewal of 954 Corporate Woods Parkway correct um so three years ago we embarked upon finding some off Storage storage facility for many of the things as Eric mentioned Fine Arts would be one of those things that we have a large majority of equipment fixtures costumes props scenes that type of stuff that um simply just don't fit on our campus as well as some of our athletic equipment and then the traditional storage things that we need extra tables chairs testing stuff and so we are that lease expires so we are looking to extend that lease and so tonight we are recommending that the Board of
067Education approve the lease renewal for five excuse me 954 Corporate Woods Parkway is we have a motion someone second is that Grace yeah thank you um Sean and I were talking about the lease would you mind because we were talking about the yeah renewal terms that you might explain the board about the industrial space and yeah so um what's interesting about like industrial warehouse space versus office space so um light industrial and Warehouse spaces um actually seeing occupancy very high occupancy right now which does not help when you're negotiating a renewal um very much whereas office space right now is um staggering low in fact I was at a comprehensive planning meeting with the village of Lincolnshire last week and they were telling us that in their Corporate Woods the office space is at 25
068occupancy um so suffering very dramatically and has not rebounded um since covet so um this was kind of like fighting with one and behind your back a little bit so uh but the uh the Elise is the same as same same terms and conditions as questions would you pull the board please certainly Ben Joseph aye so I wounds eye Tire hi Frost hi no hi motion carries six to nothing second item I have tonight is for what we call a UPS or an interruptable on sorry try this again uninterrupted power source so these are in essence giant batteries that are connected to some of our Network closets in the event that we take power hit a power bump something goes out um we don't lose connectivity um to our Network um and that we're able
069to still maintain the educational programming that goes on throughout the day um we have over 30 of these different units unfortunately the five that were budgeted for this was in this year's budget um that need to be replaced are the five biggest ones that are on our main data servers and so um there tend to be a little bit more costly so the total cost for these five units is 138 265 um dollars compared to some of our other ones almost double so to night we are recommending that the Board of Education approves the replacement of the uninterrupted power source units at a cost not to exceed 138 265 dollars can have a motion so moved second questions was Sean was this what was the bidding process for this or how did this no this
070is not part of the binging process because there's a a exemption for technology shooting loss and it's just we do get multiple quotes though if that makes it because you do get quick okay yeah other questions pull the board please certainly so Bonsai Tire hi Frost all right no I uh care is six to nothing um in light of our I think we're gonna facilitate we're gonna make a motion yeah sure because I I make the motion and then as part of the discussion we'll discuss okay and I make the motion right so yes I'm making a motion to table the approval of the PMA Financial investment advisor program no you have to make the motion first and have a second and then vote to table it go to table if I May um there
071was uh at tonight's facility I mean our site facilities and finance committee meeting we had the conversation um around moving uh from moving our PMA managed uh or the managed approach with our PMA which is our investment advisors to a investment advisor program after further discussion we are going to ultimately recommend tabling it so I think tonight um I would start with the recommendation that the Board of Education approve the movement to the PMA Financial investment advisor program as presented before someone makes a motion they make the motion a table no yeah I'll get this by the end of the evening I'll move that that'll start the thing I've moved that we uh yeah we accept the advisor thing no we need a second second thank you no no you could move I I moved
072to table the motion regarding the PMA Financial investment advisor program thank you that leaves is there a second I'll second that thank you thank you and for discussion uh we did talk about this insurance during our finance meeting um but we'd like to have a little bit further discussion particularly with respect to if we did this what the guidelines would be for the Investments of course and some of the other issues that we discussed about inside we need to move the table we need a date to table until when April 17th purchase of the April board meeting yep regular schedule thank you any other discussion about the tabling motion would you pull the board please moons I Tire aye Frost no hi but Joseph hi ciao I uh we have approved the tabling motion of
073this um of the advising program until uh the April board meeting and then Sean you have one first reading tonight and uh ironically enough Gary had a um uh kind of an emergency pop-up so couldn't be here but this is something you've worked with him on as well correct yeah this is um basically to enhance our cyber security so we have uh I've worked with Doug Taylor and his team significantly and our insurers to make sure that we have um the proper protocols in place and procedures in place too really ensure that our network is protected from cyber security in discussing with um Gary he had us look into a couple of different options um one including adding some additional employees to manage cyber security at the end of the day there is actually a
074product out there from a company called Alchemy where they could provide us a vastly more oversight of our community our of our Network and compared to of the cost of hiring multiple cyber Security Experts so we'll be bringing this back to the board in April however you should know that the the short story on this is that this software will check every single basically log on our Network 24 7 365 days every year and um the log basically just means anytime anybody tries to access our Network they can do it so for example if I was accessing my the network from my office and then somebody was trying to use my credentials to access my network from Germany we would know that and be alerted and be able to stop any intrusion to our number
075one question I had reading through there was a lot of um language in there about identifying well a lot of languages yeah but no it's but it was a lot of identifying threats do they then are they going to help us if there is a breach do they help us or is that separate we actually have some we have somebody else correct so they're helping identify it and then there's layers of protection on top of the identification so this is kind of like an early warning system like a lightning siren going off outside and saying hey get inside Lightning's on its way this would be a warning sign and say hey somebody's trying to break your network in we could then take the appropriate steps to ensure that not only our other Protocols are working
076as intended but that we can actually shut down whoever's credentials are trying to break into our system so we're trying to eliminate we're trying to avoid it ahead of time before it happens exactly right think of it like the layers of security this is just another layer okay we get the logs and we monitor logs nowhere near the capabilities that this will be and you've seen districts around the country but also in Illinois fall subject to yeah you know attacks and you know it can your system it can cost you a lot of money I mean this is it's an insurance policy and that's why we carry the three million dollar cyber crime as well in the event that all of our systems fail and somebody does in fact get into our and network and
077hold it Ransom which is very common amongst school districts not only in the state of Illinois but also across the country click that were you know click our insurance Cooperative as I'm the chairman of that we've seen some very large ones as large as a 19 million dollar Ransom and you know some are much smaller you know a couple hundred thousand dollars but it's scary stuff yeah we need a motion and then of course you can see the foyas as usual it seemed like a lot more than you yeah what are these people looking for uh it's it seems to Common waves so sometimes it's quiet typically you know this is right after the um holiday season also typically comes after bidding that kind of stuff and then we almost always get these although smart
078uh procure you know we get all of the time but we do get some we're now starting to see more individuals interested in our retirees to try to gather their information so that they can of course reach out to them it's heartworm fashion as a marketer they use it as a marketing list yeah it looks like a lot of these different markets right most of them are can I have a motion to approve the consent agenda so moved second if you have any questions would you pull the board please certainly ruins aye Tire I crossed no aye Ben Joseph aye so I uh six to nothing we approved them okay and uh I actually only have just a couple informational items but uh begin with the Kudos we are in the midst of royalty our
079very own Justin Fisk was named the director uh or the vice president of the National Association of the District of Supervisors of foreign languages so congratulations very cool [Applause] from foreign language to World Language uh one thing that I'm going to propose actually is that it become the National Association of District supervisors for language instead of so that's on the agenda for sure it just hit me wrong you know oh absolutely it's it parallels the actual which is the American American which is from the 60s awesome uh you'll see I just included some interesting readings um that we have been working through uh one of the one of them um is uh from Daniel Kahneman about his very new book noise um in Troy um has been using that um article not the entire book
080which books are usually they're a little dick uh this is just an article but he talks about um you know the different ways that um we can make judgments whether it's mechanical judgment clinical judgment and so how does that relate to our assessment experiences so it's just fascinating uh and then we included another reading um in there that references the work um that our very own Sean Carney was involved with on the EPA on the new East Edition so very cool Sean thank you for all of that work [Music] um we listed a number of board dates that are coming up uh Sean and I included some information about [Music] um uh the current banking crisis and um short stories were safe short story is we're safe um our money is not um held out
081in Silicon Valley Bank so correct we're okay um and then we thought we would include some um student profiles some just not everything that's going on but thanks to Jamie and Carol for just a uh Pia sorry just a couple of the things that um old habits die hard uh just a couple of things that have been going on in the school so three little highlights of um uh our EDI work our Wellness great stories yeah yeah so thank you Pia and Jamie we appreciate you good night that is it for tonight a motion to adjourn both thank you thank you for uh