001with Liberty thank you trust here no here here ciao here Carson here moons oh here Tire here any correspondence uh none that's reasonable no we had no questions um so this is a point in time when we listen to comments from the public if there's people that have comments would you like it go ahead hi um my name is vedan I'm currently a senior at Stevenson High School and my family and I have been proud residents of Buffalo Grove over the last four years last month was National School Board recognition month so we would like to recognize you for your five service and continuous volunteering work to make a great effort to make this school a great place today here I'm here to talk about an event that is very special to me it is
002an annual Teachers Appreciation called Guru Vandana this event is organized and hosted by Hindu swim sevak Sangha HSS over the last 15 years across the nation the guru vanilla program provides a plus a platform for students to honor their teachers from imparting knowledge and wisdom to them during this event we as students invite our teachers for and pay their prepare our respects to them and uniquely celebrating this student relation teacher relationship us students receive blessings from our our teachers and honor them in a true Indian tradition for me this has instilled the importance of the role of teachers in our life and appreciate their sacrifice and service to shape our future during this event each student will honor their respective teachers followed by cultural performance fun activities and food in Lake County we have honored
003more than 100 teachers and principals in the last three years across six school districts and more than 15 elementary middle schools and high schools more than 115 Hindus families have attended the celebration last year across the USA go to oneana events were held in 24 States 71 cities and 113 districts over with over 5304 participants on behalf of HSS it is my pleasure to invite you and your families to Grace us at the Teachers Appreciation Day celebration as our guest of honors we will be hosting this event sometime in May from 3 to 5 PM and this year we are expecting 100 plus teachers and it would be great to it would be great if Stevenson High School could provide us with their facility to host this event thank you very much thank you I
004really appreciate that and do you want to hand in your do you think do you get a copy yeah what you wrote sure yeah just so we can get a formal request to put the facility around yeah okay thank you thank you very much um any other comments this evening just to be clear when you email us do you think that you might know the date yes we have uh the date uh for Saturday May 6th tentative okay so we will share that internally and then we'll talk about facility usage thank you so much we appreciate it okay um I think now we're ready for the best part of the meeting hi everyone I hope all of you guys are doing well I'm really having a great time because it is 50 degrees and that
00550 degrees for me even though I'm from Florida is summer because I don't know I can just handle cold really well at 50 degrees is like my June so I'm excited as you can tell I am driving for it I just take the laser off then we'll be all set ready to go to the pool uh but yeah I'm just gonna briefly discuss academics Athletics and arts because I really want to dive into the community aspect of this presentation given how many things have been going on at Stevenson uh so specifically with academics uh the there's been Community College week that's hosted by the CLC so allowing students and students who are interested in Community College just to learn a little more about that and what that looks like with nclc specifically and then certain
006competitions as well so FBLA they took home over 100 medals at the Northern Area leadership conference and students were named on the executive board for the northern area as well so that was definitely a big achievement Science Olympia team defeated several International Champions um and they placed first at the Ohio Invitational which is awesome because all these kids have been really high ranked and they're able to defeat them so that's pretty cool and then for the third time in the row the chess team took home the state championship so that's definitely a big achievement to recognize as well they come next month yeah it just happened this weekend it just happened okay and also another thing that just happened was the girls dance or the dance team took home the National Championship uh which is
007awesome a lot of different athletic accomplishments there um along with placing their states or Third Estate and then first at National so I know a lot of them are really excited especially the seniors who are leaving to end it off with a big win um the archery team hosted a fundraiser for St Jude so every Bullseye they got they got a specific amount from a sponsor um so that was a great way to raise money for that cause uh Stevenson cheers so they play seventh at Nationals and or state in Bloomington uh so another ah a thing they're recognized okay and then with Arts so some students participate in the All-State Musical Shrek at U of I and there was 4 000 audience members uh so definitely a big shift from you know Beauty and
008the Beast here um a lot of different members or people supported them and went to that show so that was just awesome and then the underclassmen specifically performed three Productions of Romeo and Juliet and I know that went really well as well okay so this is a project that's new to Stevenson that NHS generated we thought it would be a unique way to incorporate Wellness um to what we can cause uh so for those of you that don't know the Gonza Center is a startup non-profit that supports technology literacy in rural Kenya so to the left are students who are using iPads for the first time and the money that we raise or will be donated to this Center as well and then graduation we have iPad collections uh device collections for the center to
009refurbish and then send off for these students because none of them have really any access to technology it's such an important factor in our lives so we're trying to train them to get used to technology teach them the basics so that they'll be able to be successful and I'm actually one of the first student volunteers to work with this organization so five of us from NHS have been tutoring these kids bright and early at 7 00 a.m uh when we have the most energy um but yeah it's been really rewarding to see a lot of them have asked questions seem really interested about it because I mean it's like a kid opening a toy for the first time like it's brand new to them even though it's been a big part of our lives for
010so long um so it's just rewarding to see how our tutoring has impacted them and then in relation to that we're hosting an event called kilometers for Kenya um in March so we've just been planning out what that would look like so it's gonna be the field house we're gonna have a lot of different activities teach nutrition bring in some food and then have people run around the track and it's kind of like a relay race um and the most uh the goal is to run the most amount of laps we emphasize the walking because running scares people sometimes um but yeah we're really looking forward to see how that's gonna play out um and I will update you guys with further information because I believe next time I see you it may happen when's
011the next meeting oh okay perfect so it would have happened by then um so I'm excited to see how this goes we have a lot of teams sign up already and yeah I know I'm sure just real quick in the meantime if anybody is interested sorry to interrupt I'm working with the uh director of um this Center and uh he is looking for recycled iPads or computers so um if you have anything that um you would like to recycle and not have to worry about finding a place if you want to bring it here to the district office um I meet with them every month and those iPads there are actually recycled iPads from Stevenson so it's a really great cause and this is the first time that these particular students have really ever interacted
012with any technology so it's pretty powerful and kudos to you for being a part of the program because you're tutoring these students on how to actually utilize and access technology technology and getting on the Internet for the very first time so and it's been great because the first um night that fundraising opened this team already raised 700 so I'm just excited to see how this event is going to progress in terms of you know fun and funds raised okay and then Sagar recently held a masquerade ball over the past weekend and we had 80 people attend from Vernon Hills Wheeling Main South and then obviously Stevenson and over a hundred a thousand dollars was donated to the Kenneth lgbtq Youth Center in Schaumburg um so that was just a great way to represent the lgbtq
013community along with raised money for a good cause and I know it was really fun they had a raffle a costume contest wall Valentine's and a balloon drop so I know those that group of students had a great time okay and then ask Factor so these are just some pictures from s factor um an event hosted annually by Kiva um and the host as you can tell they had a great time with it I know a lot of them were practicing looking forward to it um along with the singers as well being able to Showcase their talent to the school and to teacher judges and then Chinese New Year so there was a Taiwanese club and a national Chinese Honor Society collab and they hosted this wonderful wonderful event um I believe yeah 400 people
014of all ages attended this event and there was like food games uh you can see ping pong so I know a lot of those people had fun celebrating that event and yeah okay so the Asian Night Market that actually happened this past weekend as well um and I know it was a huge success I think more people attended that and they did a street fast around like 2 000 attendees from the community which is a large number um but I know a lot of people had fun watching the performances food uh singing as well the club members that actually attended had a lot of fun doing those specific activities so it was a huge success oh and the prostitutes made from that event was donated to UNICEF and just to highlight some student experiences so
015I asked these students uh what are some fun things that they've experienced um this semester and this is what some students replied with so the intramural basketball season was really fun this year despite my team not playing well we all had a great time playing with each other so way to bring a positive fit into the negative but yeah I know intramural is a great way for students to have fun doing a sport that's not competitive but sort of this is okay I enjoy going to hockey games with my friends and sharing Stevenson on my favorite game this semesters was when Steven played viter and went over time it was a close game and even though we lost it was still fun to watch I have actually like this is my uh goal for this
016year to go to a hockey game I've been a lacrosse game and I remember when I was little I saw this guy just like smacked the other guy at the stick the arm just went ooh and that was the end for me um but I know hockey is just as aggressive but you know people are cheering screaming so I need to be a part of that soon um yeah okay and then back to the Asian night market so the Asian Night Market was very cool and had lots of very tasty food and amazing cultural experiences it was a great to see the diversity the students and student body um so yeah a lot of numbers from the community came to this event and it was just a really great way to unify the community and
017the students in student body as well and then I am so proud of my teammates for the dedication of hard work they put into each of their routines winning the national championship this past weekend felt really rewarding and I can't wait to see what the team does next year so yeah I mean whenever you win a National Championship it's obviously really rewarding especially when you put so much hard work like the students said into something that you love um so I bet all of them people on the dance team are celebrating ah ready to come back to school tomorrow I think I've talked at like a million miles per hour if you need our pillow afraid I would go over any questions for real um as always love your presentation you love the way you
018give us a sense of what's going on in the school from uh events to the student experiences I really appreciate it thank you thank you so much thank you foreign um if Alex represented the best part of the meeting as you said this must be the second best part second best um but we do have uh our monthly curriculum team presentation and um tonight we have members of our communication Arts team here with us uh our academic literacy team um so I'll let Doug uh Louisiana director of communication Arts introduce his team tell us a little bit about the course uh and what they be presenting absolutely absolutely uh delighted to have you all meet our academic literacy uh two team uh so targeted sophomores we have a one that is targeted on freshmen that's
019our number one team um and uh so we have uh Christina anchor Christie Colores our uh vulnerable of venerable uh team leader and then uh Dan argentar and uh they work with some of our most important students in the school uh kids who are oftentimes reluctant readers and who need supports in order to move effectively across the curriculum using literacy in ways that are going to make them successful in their futures and so this group is a Powerhouse group that does some Fantastic action research and um I will stop talking because they have a lot better story to tell me so um right here we go uh hi everybody so we're we'll Begin by first I do want to thank because I might forget later on Lori and Doug for their guidance and support throughout
020the entire school year um and then also my amazing team which we are all a team together and they are even though I'm team leader they are the leaders and they really bring their expertise uh and it is a pleasure I mean I'm not saying this because they're in front but they are a pleasure really to work with um or three times state championships just say um I also do want to encourage um this to be like an open conversation open dialogue please jump in if you have any questions uh keep them coming all right we'll be able to answer those for you um so to begin I do want to give us some background um who we are and who our students are so you'll notice that we have two um classes it is
021a targeted group we have academic literacy two that's a total of 20 students this school year and that is a tier two reading program and then we have academic literacy two plus and that's more of a tier three program where we notice students who are still not growing um and it's a little more intensive um the intervention and so our targeted group this evening we're about 31 students that were looking closely and if you take a close look at the graph below you will notice that our most recent data which is this past school year the average growth for students who took English and Al had a higher average growth on their instructional reading level than students who just took English and it is quite evident that this intervention is helping our students throughout their
022literacy and strengthening their literacy skills as well as um it's clear that our course is closing the gap you will also notice that I'm not sure if I'm in the right place it's fine you could see okay um [Music] classroom background a little bit more I bolded this part so that you could see the percentage of historically underserved minorities increase as they enter our academic literacy program and from 36 to 57 while the percentage of Asian and white population does decrease as a team it's been interesting for us to really pause and discuss and reflect on these numbers and really also discuss how to better serve our students and this is where we jump in to do our job right right all right and um given us and thank you again Troy for their awesome
023work this framework to sort of understand how can we help build student agency moving away from those numbers what can we do on the SEL side to really help students not only get that sense of identity and belonging but also get to that point where they can start valuing the subject and looking across all of their courses and recognizing themselves as a student of literacy and learning so to do this for us what we have done is we've looked at two different data points one data point we're proud of and we've increased and really focused on the last few years is that idea of classroom belonging we've raised this number believe it or not um and we're really proud of this um 71 where we're at now there's been excellent sort of Department initiatives where
024we've had a great toolbox where teachers can choose from and really help students feel like they are a part of a class something we noticed this fall when we were pulling out this data is we need to work on the sense of valuing the subject while students are starting to feel like they belong in our classes they're still not feeling as well as they really value reading and literacy they're often the students prone to coming and saying I don't like reading with their arms up I don't like any book I've read I don't actually read so we're really working on that as a class we notice that in our data so hopefully when you see us again in the spring we'll have a different data set um our department like so many departments around the
025school are doing excellent things with making students feel as though they are part of the class you know whether it's for at the door making eye contact with students right when they walk in asking them about an interest or a hobby this morning asking them magic Monday you know what did you like about the Super Bowl what were your thoughts about Rihanna's halftime show um that very interesting announcement or even just asking them what could you do in the beautiful weather this weekend so we've had a great excellent in our department just compiling all these different tools and resources and certainly in our team like many others have been using them uh you're going to see some wonderful sort of artifacts from the students and how they're interacting with some statistics Dan's gonna walk us
026through sort of the academic side but going off that SEL component um we have students kind of compile digital portfolios of their literacy throughout the week in all their classes in our class but again before they start looking at that academic side we want students to really thinking about that wheel that template think about okay how does this impact my identity how does my identity my interests how are they represented in my valuing of this subject as a student of literacy so you can see some of their covers rooting for Michigan State or liking Sushi or playing the violin let me try to step in because I don't want the video to start playing so I'm gonna just recover it from here okay so uh this is the fun part because you get to see
027actual student product uh and really what we're doing with this digital portfolio earlier in the year so you've heard about our students they're not very School a lot of them there's a different profile every year obviously but these are 30 kids out of a thousand that we're identifying is not growing and we want to really Kickstart uh they come in at different places we want to meet them where they are and so we're going to show you two different students um one coming in uh struggling not valuing necessarily uh the classroom another coming in and knowing a little bit higher hey this is important I've got it but still not really sure what literacy means and what it means to be a student that really comes in here and keeps up and and works hard
028across the curriculum so we have our two students early on in the year we ask them hey with successful literacy look like to you and hopefully this works for you [Music] maybe it's reading and writing is important because when you're when you're reading something you should be able to understand and when you're writing something you should be able to like when you write something whether it's coming from what book or whatever you're reading you should be able to understand what you're going to be writing about and it helps you get somewhere in life foreign not a lot there right like we're really not sure what it means we're a sophomore what is Luther's reading understanding I mean things they've probably heard year after year but really when they're here in five different classes and being
029asked to do all of the amazing things that our teachers ask them to do that's not a lot in terms of recognizing skills a good sled this little literacy student one way to be uh [Music] you need to participate or ask a lot of questions [Music] it's like it was just like [Music] let's start like just practice [Music] it should be another reader is just to really fifties yeah I'm reading 15 minutes a day um so it was important for us to see what our kids are looking at in terms of successful literacy because if we really want and then we notice this number is 60 right they really don't they don't get it right they don't understand what we're doing why we're doing it and if they're not buying in we can't help them
030they they need to trust us we need to help them Buy in and see why they're here and why they're doing what they're doing now the struggling student this is actual from their portfolio so we developed this idea that hey we're going to create running slides a digital portfolio every three weeks and this was the beginning we were just finding since this one's a six week every three weeks we're going to ask the kids and tell us across your day where are you using literacy what's going on and we go over skills they have a slide in their in their portfolio different skills and their toolbox and this was student Ed six weeks in got nothing I've got nothing and so through conferencing through talking about things we started anyway so uh through conferencing and
031what have you we're trying to improve upon their recognition and their use of skills across the curriculum uh this student through that process well went backwards um actually grew right oh I can start identifying where I'm using skills now identifying is one part of the process but when I ask them to okay you see a lot of English here this is English this is English this is English this is English you have other classes we have one notes from biology um where else are we seeing it uh we still struggle to find variety but this one particular student was really proud because she um this is you can't see the colors as much but this is actually a green box they track their weekly reading we try and up the pages because we know that
032reading more is going to help them they're encountering more words they're fluency and everything she met her page goal for the first time and this was you know two months two and a half months into the school year she was so proud she put this on there but you could see there's a lot of reading of the book here we want to push variety but she was growing she was recognizing she was doing stuff where she wasn't before student B and she continued oh I'm going the wrong way this didn't mean that's a it shouldn't be the same but starts off at a different place he has an idea he has some idea where he's seeing his literacy he's taking notes he's reading books he's um and this is I think uh from English class
033and then academic literacy but still not a lot of variety throughout the curriculum but knows what he's looking for and now he starts to really flourish through conferencing where are we seeing stuff now we're getting these little blurbs about what they're doing he's not just identifying but he's really pointing out and we've got notes from social studies we've got English we've got um academic lit uh and different classes and different skills that they're starting to look at he grew even further continued more and more places now we're looking at Star scores and monitoring and thinking about his thinking and how he's improving again I'm improving I know my star is going up here's different notes from my classes and different things and this is great this is first semester but now we decided hey we
034need to push them even more so our next step is actually starting to not only identify so taking these students that are starting to fly and seeing the application how is this helping why are you doing it so not just identify identifying the skill but now taking it the next level how this is helping me why I'm doing it what is going on when I'm annotating why am I taking notes for this uh why am I reading more and actually getting them to metacognitively think about how they're using the skills not just where so this has been a continual action research with our kids and we see no matter if they started playing or if they start at a different level they're growing and they're starting to recognize how and now we can see second
035semester why they're doing some of this okay notice that as a team we for the first year we created these digital portfolios on Google Slides making it accessible for students conferencing with them having weekly uploads because we want to stay consistent with our students and having them reflect as well as giving our job to give that timely feedback to them so they continue to grow and then we did revisit our expectations and we are working and we're continuing to look closely at this we reviewed these digital portfolios and we're doing it a second semester so you'll notice that at the end of the semester when we did look at our data 27 out of our 31 students met or exceeded our expectations aligned with our rubric while four are still working on developing that that's
036huge that's great that I don't know math too well here you know I'm an English teacher but 27 divided by 31 I think it's up in the 80s I think right I think it's like 80 or something like that you're close yeah right so thinking back to that 60 for value of subject and only in one semester they're starting to pick up on like why am I doing why am I doing it in not only in my English class or my academic literacy class but how am I seeing this also in my social studies class why is this important why should I value this so we're going to continue because we're looking ahead and we're going to continue to focus on student efficacy in order to increase the value of the subject as well as
037classroom belonging and keep those numbers going up and our next steps we are administering the student voice survey in the next two weeks so we should have that data to look at we have a digital portfolio for second semester and then we'll be able to uh take a close look at the samples that we have in front of us and refine our feedback look at our instruction and assessment methods and move forward from there so it is a team effort and we do want to open it up to questions that you might have come up here we know that when they're valuing the subject and they're buying in and belonging they're going to grow yeah that's like the obstacle once we can get in and we have that relationship and we're building it we can
038turn around the kids that come in and say I hate reading well okay let's do something with that though because we know we need it and we value the skill and it's a huge turnaround and some of these kids it could actually change the trajectory of the rest of their work here at Stevenson wow yes so you've been doing this a number of years do you uh track how your former students who aren't in the special class how they're continually doing a school academically we see the growth but and we know that we don't completely fix them I think in two years of academic lit we haven't Totally Tracked those 30 kids throughout uh we we definitely look at freshman year growth sophomore year growth and the work that they do within the academic literacy
039class but that is something we should probably be doing more often see nowadays I think I know how they were a seniors in other words Juniors I think when we I don't know how it is I see them in the hall yeah and sometimes when I see them in the hall and I remember who they were and I see that they're engaged in the school community and they're still here like there are kids that I thought weren't going to be still here and they're still here and I'm fist pumping that I'm going right on you still on track you're gonna be I mean I know anecdotally that we're successful because I see them all they're smiling but we're right we can track their greens for sure and I could step in uh right before the
040pandemic you know Marla uh worked with us closely because we wanted that social aspect we didn't want to lose the relationship and connection that we had so we did only have one um lunch kind of meeting where they were it was like an open invitation do you guys remember this this was back in February of 2020 and we opened the invitation to our former students and I would say like from the previous year maybe one was missing and that was because they weren't you know able to make it because of another commitment we did it during an activity period right or did we do it during lunch period connectivity period they all came just to hang out and see us we could see them and you know continue to maintain that relationship that we have
041outside of the classroom and I think that was a huge huge um and I think after the pen now that we're getting back into this many things there's still a desire to see how we can keep these kids not in the program but a part of the program it's just hard to find the time can they come before school transportation is an issue during activity period Well they have other clubs and we want them to be involved so it's hard but we've also tried to do some lunches with sat work and other things just to entice them to come back and a little carrot we've given them a book before in the past that come have lunch with us here's an independent reading book for you um we're still trying to create ways that we
042can do that but also after sophomore year we want them to take elections so we can't keep taking up this elective time with academic lid it's a little yin and yang but we should track grades my my hunch is that these kids are graduating and they're and they're moving on hey and you know when you start and you don't know what literacy that's a question yeah um you know and I could see the profile of those kids it's great so I have a thought and a question um first of all Troy tells me a lot that as a former socialist teacher I shouldn't do math in public um but on the action um the action steps um the digital portfoliosity yeah I do but you mentioned that yeah we're the pictures that you showed of
043the student work and their evidence is that that's the digital portfolio yeah and so all that evidence is submitted by the student and is it tagged by the student as or identified they do all of it um this is the student identifying their own wow yeah to fixing ones yeah yeah this morning but they think the important thing that you said which resonated and I was I just wanted to make sure is that you know this is that whole idea of metacognition that students are actually learning about their reflecting on their own learning through this process and hitting those targets are really critical that's amazing we pause on Fridays yeah and we spend 10 to 15 minutes and I allow them to go and search and put in their portfolio and work on that wow
044and then at the end of the three weeks they know I'm gonna take it I'm going to assess them give them some feedback what we don't see it here is I also conference with them and I'll put those notes directly on the slides yeah when we're talking about that stuff it ends up being in that whole uh slide it ends up being one slideshow I'm glad you asked that because I thought they wrote those things and you were really funny too like yeah like the I didn't crack the All About The Barbarians yes they learned all about The Barbarians no notes from world history yeah yeah this is them and I know our team knows this but for our board you may have forgotten your Edge site class but that whole idea of metacognition really
045is the jet fuel for learning without the ability to reflect on your own learning it becomes difficult and so the fact that our kids in academic literacy are able to do this under your guidance it's really great and then I'm applying that to uh you know self-awareness yeah this class I mean again when kids are assigned to academic literacy they're not always jumping for joy right but when they can see this that it is playing out that there's tool they are using across the curriculum that's where the value in the subject comes in and that's where we're hoping to get more leverage as you go through the year it's why they come back voluntarily to hang out yeah yeah I don't know are they identified it's not clear to me are they identified before they
046come in as freshmen or during their freshman year at what point so that's part of the uh kind of the universal screener uh that we use as kids come in we use the start test and also in their initial uh testing Ed they do a map test or a STAR test or something at their Center Schools and that's one of the First Data pieces that we use to create the um the options they uh literacy is not an opt-in or opt Cloud class they're they're placed in there until they show that they have reached the level that we've said this is probably what it takes to be successful at Stevenson um but then they are you know the key body of evidence the key freshman year is that team has developed criteria because the the
047idea between RTI intervention um is that tier two you should be able to exit out when you demonstrate so the semester if they've met that criteria we lose kids right so when you see those numbers of growth we're talking about kids that we've left all the kids that have been successful freshman year and we're still closing that Gap with the kids that may not have grown freshman year that grew up sophomore year we're left with 30 kids that really struggle so they haven't exited they can still exit a semester it's sophomore year we have that criteria so they know and they have that carrot if they work hard and it is rare but we still have our College Prep sophomore and freshman teachers administer the star like two three times a semester or a year
048a year yes beginning middle a year and we could scoop anyone into the program too but it's rare that happens yeah if the kid needs it thank you do you do you think um focusing on the castle competencies is actually more effective we knowing the value feeling a sense of belonging the value of what you're doing all the other competencies it's like it seems even more powerful for these students and other students I'm really moved by what you're doing I think this is absolutely fascinating I I think you're right and I jump in and I just think having been doing this for 20 years right it's everything it's key you get kids and there's a reason why they come in and they're struggling and if you can find that and you can unlock it because
049they trust you and they feel they belong and they know why the word is important they and again again I've had kids go from academic lit to PhD at Department you can unlock the secrets like it's not obviously or else we'd be rich somewhere it is really touching to see whether it's the kid that starts with a blank slide or the kid that starts here where they can go and again we're just one piece we've got teachers all over this building that are coming to us or we're coming to them or they're working their tushies off to support these kids who might be reading at an instructional level of third fourth fifth grade to read books like Fahrenheit 451. and it's incredible that they're reading history and they're reading the things that they read in
050biology and chemistry the teachers who work so hard with all of our students but to get this group to kill how do you identify which of the castle competencies and ones that you want to focus on are the ones that are most significant Behavior what was that Lord right um we can't forget about that but it's a matter of looking at this voice student voice data seeing what we've seen we've all been doing this for years uh what we know and we know that connection with these kids in particular is important and then matching that with castle and looking where our data Falls and then this one just kind of naturally fell hey let's look at this and see if we can even up that's 60 that's what I should say I think Steve no
051different than you said it seems like for this particular group of students valuing a subject becomes even more important and more critical I think part of it and correct me if I'm wrong but especially for those of us who have been using this data for a long time now initially you sort of thought naturally it was all about sense of belonging sense of belonging and we do know that obviously that is important but as we've gotten more familiar with the data and as we understand the implications in each of our courses we can start to pinpoint areas where wait why is that still so low how can we really have our students appreciate it in different ways and then we start to see that General increase across the board fantastic her um many of your
052students English language Learners or is that a different category a lot of mine yeah that's here it's great the tier three um and I know it's because they're access testing these days those are in and out of the classroom um and I know that from there obviously um and that's one part is that one of the reasons it's one part we haven't it's one part and it's probably it's it's a part of why we chose the research-based program that we're using which is a requirement for tier three because it does work on fluency vocabulary pronunciation they've heard words but sometimes they don't recognize them so they need to put those two things together and we work hard at that in my class I read aloud to them that hasn't happened in years in their education
053and they like that we talked about when Mom Dad Guardian used to read to them we read a whole novel together for the semester and they start giving insight and saying but that's part of rekindling their love right I remember when that used to be that was great we don't do that for many years of education and then um but they start to see those connections between Words which is really important for those I'll toss one more thing out there too Amy uh one of the things that we've done uh is the collaboration with uh we have actually started this past year with uh academic literacy uh one program where we use screen more carefully for kids uh ml in their background um and so they've been funneled into a college prep level class and
054we actually have a news teacher I collaboratively teaching with a multilingual support teacher in there as well and we have a good success with that program so again if we can support them without taking away the elective that's part of the goal is uh to make that happen and we're halfway through a power program it's important Mark amazing absolutely really great thank you guys thanks for having me thank you so very much thank you thank you good to see you thank you Lori thank you Doug appreciate it all right uh that brings us to our next item which is uh first reading of our approval of textbook recommendations uh you can see a preliminary um list uh that oops preliminary list that marked and put together for us um on the short side it looks
055like whatever just two bucks just two studies in social studies so uh U.S history and macro economics you'll see um that come again to you in March for a approval in the meantime if you'd like to see a copy of those uh they're in Mark's office display uh you'll also see our human resources report there for you that will be part of the consent agenda just let me know if you have any questions about that we will not need an executive session following the meeting and that brings us to the business section and Sean we have on the audit we do um we as we've kind of mentioned before this year's audit was just a little different because of the change in our accounting uh basis or a method of accounting which we changed from
056a cash basis to a modified accrual basis there were certainly some it just took a little bit longer mostly because we had to wait 90 days for certain things to run out and then make some judgments from there but uh Britney Jarvis who's our director of accounting and physical Services really did an amazing job working with the Auditors making sure that the information that they were requesting received in a timely manner but more importantly reviewing their notes and I'm very happy to say that much like all of the years previously we don't have anything significant there was no misrepresentations in any of our findings uh our material misstatements I guess I should say and then there were no significant get deficiencies in our internal controls as well so we are going to work on setting
057up a meeting with the board for those that are interested to meet with our Auditors myself and Brittany as well to go over that in more detail but tonight we are just seeking or asking the board to accept and and file the audited financial statement for the fiscal year ending June 30th of 2022. do you have a motion please second first and second any questions for Sean on the audit while we're likely pleased with their work or we want to think about new Auditors so we uh we it's a great question we did um enter into a three-year engagement when we did our irfp um while there were certainly some um some hesitations throughout the process Brittany did a good job of meeting with their partner to talk about our satisfaction or lack thereof at
058certain times they agreed that it might not have been their finest moment but we are all confident moving forward that we'll get the service that they want to deliver and that we expect as well okay thank you any questions would you pull the board please certainly no hi benioza hi so hi Corson hi wounds aye Tire aye Frost all right carries okay and Sean we just have one first reading for tonight you have an agreement yeah just uh if you recall we um tried or we didn't try we Consolidated much of our storage space and are utilizing um a warehouse facility um just north of us it has been an amazing adventure in terms of helping us um really allow more instruction to go on in our building because we don't have the space for
059storage um so we are um we did work with um again listening um on an extension and we should have something for the board in March and then of course you can see we did also have one um foyer request um not atypical this time here and they have a motion for the consent agenda first second any questions about the consent and pull the board please I tired trust no I accept it seven to nothing all right and that brings us to um if Alex was the first and the team was the second best part the third best part of the meeting uh we have uh Alex Stoller and Aaron Wellington here tonight to share a little bit about uh and oh well I'm sorry of course we have Eric Ramos I just how could
060I forget uh we have Eric Ramos here as well um Ted gergen was not able to join us but um this is our great triumvirate of leaders who have been really helping us Implement our Wellness initiative so we're very excited for this team to share a little bit about um you know that work and in particular you know the wellness initiative encompasses a lot but what we wanted this group to do tonight is to really kind of talk us through what's happening in some of our um newly our new spaces that went online this year so I'll turn it over to the team fire away uh before we dive too far into this what I wanted to also mention it's really exciting to see the Synergy that's taking place between what we're about to talk
061about and the curricular presentation that you saw earlier because you're going to see a lot of connections between the work we're trying to do right now and seeing that work carrying over into our curricular team so it's very very exciting to say the least so what we're going to do tonight is talk to you a little bit about how we got to this point with the wellness center and where we want to take the wellness center in the future so this all goes back and ties to the portrait of a Stevenson graduate commitment to self others and commitment to learning I'm going to circle back to this concept a little bit later in the presentation and what we're trying to do is enhance the portrait of a graduate by adding what we'll call A Portrait
062of Wellness or a portrait of a Wellness Community here at Stevenson and the wellness center is just a vehicle to help make that happen so with everything that we've been trying to do there's intentionality to it and three key components that we're trying to have is clarity about how we're going to go about doing these things build competence not only in our students but in our staff that they're comfortable and feel competent in teaching these skills which is what you certainly saw with our curricular team earlier tonight and then once we build that confidence having a consistent message and consistency throughout the entire building to build what we want our Stevenson Community to be so to give you a historical perspective how did we get to where we are now a lot of thought has
063been going into this for a very long time and something we really wanted to point out was that that building right over there was not just kind of built on a whim we know a lot of thought a lot of intention went into that process and really the whole process was all the way back to 2010. that's where we started adding an SEL goal that's where this all this work started and you're starting to see the evolution and culmination of it tonight with that team that went a little bit earlier than we did so it got added to our gpis in 2010. then we fast forward a little bit when we were doing this timeline we were a little shocked at like how recently some of these things actually took place we didn't change to
064that 8 30 start time until the 1617 school year it feels like it's just been part of what we've been doing for so long but we really haven't been doing it that long we moved finals to before break instead of after winter break we started the choice PE program we created a mindful menu and literally changed the way we're serving food here at Stevenson and that was the first time we had an SEL coordinator so it really hasn't been that long and we've made so much progress that in 1718 the portrait of a graduate gets added to the vision statement 17 to 19 is when the planning and design of the PWC all comes into play 2020 the gentleman standing to my left Alex Stoller who you're going to get to hear from very shortly
065was brought on as a wellness consultant to start doing some of this work we also hired Levis Haney Dr Haney to be our EDI director then we get to now time for the building to be open we're almost ready 2022 and I went to Eric and Troy and I said we really need to have somebody to run this facility and we've got the perfect person that's already in the building doing a lot of this work and that's Alex Stoller we brought him on to be the wellness coordinator we added the wellness initiative project to our gpis and then August 15th 2022 we opened the doors to the wellness center so I'm going to turn it over to Alex and Eric now and they're going to talk a little bit more specifically about what's been taking
066place in that space since we opened it well it's lovely to see you all for the first time uh thank you for your service and what you do for the school for the community um I hear you've been on the board for 20 plus years so yeah that's 30 plus yeah 30 plus thank you so yeah it's really lovely just being here and being able to talk about what's going on with Wellness at Stevenson High School and of course the vehicle for all of that being the Patriot Wellness Center the beautiful construction project that now has manifested and the students are really enjoying the space I graduated Stevenson High School in 2010 for a little context and it was upon learning about the value of Wellness for my health and my performance namely that inspired
067me to change careers pursue a career in health get a master's degree in dietetics and then actually return and provide that service for the students because I saw how impactful it was really for me in my own life and how it enabled me to start to really not just meet my performance goals but enhance them but also become just a very well-rounded human being and that is what led to essentially the design of the pillars of Wellness I'm not going to dig into all of this content too much today because I know I want to keep the scope and the focus on what the Patriot Wellness Center is doing and that's what we're going to do yet there's there's a ton of thought and effort school-wide now cross-departmentally how we're integrating these pillars with specific
068actionable and engaging steps for students so the Patriot Wellness Center exists as a place for that to take place essentially yet this is happening across the school in remarkable ways already and so the pillars of Wellness just for a little bit of this context and background our mindset movement nutrition and restoration it's very clear and obvious when you step in The Patriot well in the center of that movement or physical activity takes place there yet these other pill pillars we are providing opportunities for students to learn about and engage in in a variety of ways I'm actually asking for a nap room in my office to go for the restoration sleep is one one aspect I don't think that made it through the budget problem he was Consulting last year um when this was becoming
069a reality that the facility was going to open and it was going to be a movement space um him and I both shared the the vision that it needed to be much more than that which is why honestly the way it's designed if you walk in there with the um where the monitors are placed and the teaching stations it was really intentional because we knew it's one thing to move kids but it's another thing to change how they how they see the world and how they see their own health you heard that a lot with the team earlier on the intrinsic motivation doesn't just happen right you have to give them the fuel to start to think about how they are interacting with this content so we knew it was going to be that way
070we needed to shift our Focus quite frankly on our curriculum especially in our PE curriculum shifting away from movement and more toward all four pillars and where students interact with all four of those things in our in our activity-based spaces um so we went to this house fan focused curriculum so it's not just about lifespan and how long you live but it's also how many healthy years you have and that has really resonated also we've taken more of a wellness of a day in the in-day approach trying to teach kids that how you eat in the morning is different than how you get at night and it should be right and some of the reasons and the science behind that and that's all those are some of the major changes that are taking place in
071our PE setting oh and honestly we've redesigned all of our curriculum regardless of which PE class not just Choice P but all the PE classes around a common warm-up that centers around those movement patterns that you see up there and those are science-based movement patterns that um lead to a healthy lifespan so being able to launch being able to hinge these are things that have been pulled out through the years as key components to Living Well into adulthood but it starts now and it starts when you're young and that's the kind of the hard part is getting a kid that's young and vibrant to understand that these are going to matter and to build those patterns those healthy patterns now so we just baked it into our warm-ups no matter what class you're in you're
072going to warm up in this way and they don't think anything of it they warm up anyway right and so in health it was a little bit of a different ask because um Health already was engaging in all of the pillars in very authentic ways so now going into next year and actually a little bit of this year they are kind of taking apart the curriculum and finding ways to explicitly teach the wellness pillars so they're attacking it and referencing the wellness pillars as opposed to just talking about Wellness more generally and they're drawing it back to the fact that essentially those pillars all need to be even even the um attended to and so when you have um an athlete maybe that thinks movement is the key right teaching them that how restoration and
073how their mindset will all factor into how they perform and that's coming in the health classroom you can get a little more in the weeds and that content and so we're going to use that platform for that and to just piggyback off of that aspect of creating value just to share a story I know student B from that previous presentation I see him in the Patriot Wellness Center all the time after school sometimes he sits at the front desk where we have a student staff member typically checks students in and he just wants to be a part of the team he just wants to be a part of the space and I can say I was surprised when I saw him up there and kind of laughed to myself because I've seen his growth since
074day one here where he kind of came into the space maybe not with the utmost respectful demeanor has now transformed into someone who I see contributing value to the space as a whole and so it's really cool like Aaron was saying to kind of see those how it's transcending and there's those parallels between what we're doing with Wellness what's happening in the classroom and how I've observed even a change in student B's disposition if you will and so that's really the key mission of the Patriot Wellness Center as a movement space but also a place where we embody these other pillars of Wellness is to create an exciting environment where students feel very welcomed there's a variety of ways to engage in these pillars based on their unique preferences their backgrounds Etc so by seeing
075how students can come in and feel welcomed and valued it's that sense of belongingness that's being created that I think students are really finding the space to be a useful place to spend their time and so I'll talk a little bit about what we offer what that actually looks like so we have a variety of dynamic movement patterns which I'll follow up on the slide here and then we're getting student voice to tell us what they want to see lived out in the space and then we're doing our best effort to then manifest that for them so that they feel excited about coming to engage in these Wellness practices and tying it to a benefit that meets their immediate wants and their immediate desires for their identity because like Eric was saying it is challenging
076to have a 14 year old have the perspective of what does my long-term Health what are the implications for my health span and lifespan giving them a reason to engage with it now and I think a huge part of that is just creating exciting offerings and opportunities and then also helping meet the physiological needs that they have developed mentally from nutrition from restoration from mindset as well and so you see that living out in the PWC Cafe and the multi-purpose spaces on the first floor where some of these opportunities are being offered and then in the actual work out area itself and so what I'm about to present here is data from the beginning of November through December uh last year so that's actually 22 data apologies for that oh that's December 21st okay that's
077why dates have three so total attendance was 12 000. so what that means is students scan their ID 12 000 plus times to come enter the space the PWC on the second and third floor the fitness loss cardio mezzanine uh uniquely there were close to 2 000 student attendees so over 43 percent of the student body has entered the space and I can say anecdotally I've seen a lot of new faces since winter sports kind of are now transitioning into spring Sports and Athletics and then clubs are just getting kind of some changeover and engagement and I've seen a whole bunch of new faces in the in the space now and so I'm sure now it's closer to 50 percent or more of the entire student body has come to use the PWC facilities at
078some point or another uh and then what's that that's only two months so that's right it's ignoring the kids the kids yeah yeah could we maybe get a uh year long absolutely it's amazing that would be fantastic yeah kids have to scan in so we have it because point the sports seasons of what kids are doing at different times is going to play into that so as a total throughout the year we can break it up very different faces in September October than we're seeing in there right now and then over the years too to draw attention to that point is this data the colors are representing Academic Year so red is freshmen first year students so what we're going to see this is the first year this place is open they're going to evolve
079through space and eventually there's going to be new first-year students and I imagine this becoming more of a quadrant where you're seeing the current freshmen who didn't get their lifetime membership or whatever it might be who aren't driving who are staying here after school and they'll continue to do that through their four years so um this data will evolve certainly as the year progresses and then as the years progress as well uh and then looking at unique attendance by gender again I've seen a shift here where this is mostly less skewed toward male participation and the reason for that being is when we took this data we noticed the skew toward male participation and started creating offerings that would entice females to come and learn more about how to move their body in a comfortable
080way and so we've integrated this data already and we're seeing how that data is Shifting and is something that will again pull in another month and then again at the end of the year to see how that has affected attendance at the PWC and to give you some historical perspective on that as well of course we want to increase that female attendance percentage rate however when we didn't have the space and we had open weight room every day after school in the west Fitness Center I can tell you you could go in there maybe three out of five days where you didn't see a single female in there working out it was all males on there so to see that number is actually fantastic what channels are you using to communicate with to the students
081yeah great question I have some more on this but we can address it now it's through we have Wellness Wednesday which is a regular Wednesday feature in the daily digest my face has been shamelessly featured on a lot of video content that is amateurishly assembled but effective in communicating what we're offering in the PWC as well as through the different departments through the physical welfare department through Student Activities departments and then also through even engaging through ssts in the student services department informing kids about what it is that we offer and how it might facilitate a heightened sense of well-being for them and just an interesting note on that is that this is a preventative or intervention method for a lot of students who can learn that just a little bit of movement daily is
082actually what they needed to feel de-stressed and I know it's kind of getting away from the how are students finding out about it but when it is through a counselor that they find out that we have this movement program offered that they want to engage in and they come and engage in it it's they're really kind of blowing off steam and it's helping them return to school the next day energized what do you also say probably the best advertisement for kids to use the facility after school is the use of the facility during the school day PE right like so our numbers mirror a lot so the female participation in our strength classes have traditionally been very low and now they're higher than they've ever been and so we piggyback off each other a lot
083on ways that and we need we need to honestly continue to grow in our partnership and that in advertising in our classes what is offered after school and I think you guys a really nice job after school of advertising what's available during the day so just as a reminder maybe this goes without saying but a lot of this data that he's sharing is all the after-school programming from four to eight ish right so this doesn't even count all the usage that it's getting literally all day long in our PE classes and I'd want to thank Jamie too because her team has played a huge role in helping us construct our communication strategy right her team's area of expertise and that has been just absolutely tremendous and I've created some great relationships with people on our
084team that have really just helped us in communicating myself so these are some of the programs that we offer by name you will recognize yoga and Zumba these are popular group fitness classes that also have a de-stressing component to it if you will through music and dance through the restorative practice of yoga and then also Patriot Performance training where we've seen a lot of female participation and that is a lot of athletes coming in off season to train together from different teams which has been really exciting and cool to see I like coaching that myself because it's something fun for me to do and I think the students like it too and one-on-one Fitness training that we are offering with our Wellness coaches a few of whom we've hired through rebound Fitness and they're there
085every day we have at least two of them there every day essentially floor coaching seeing that students are using equipment safely and moving their bodies effectively and providing on the spot spontaneous coaching for how to move better and then also directing them towards something just a little more structured we've found that students love coming in and having open gym and having free time but there is that subset that desire a deeper knowledge or a deeper Fitness literacy and they want to work with someone to kind of gain that knowledge and have the accountability to just Foster better movement habits and this is that piece about how our Communications across departments through the school are really creating this culture of wellness and it is very collaborative with all the different departments and focusing on really what
086those pillars of Wellness are and what they actually mean and creating really clear and consistent messaging that ultimately will enable all the adults in this building and the students to feel more competent and confident in their in their Wellness practices and so there are many events and things happening taking place outside of the Patriot Wellness Center and we're not going to really spend too much time on that today but just to mention that this is how we are communicating about it and working toward a culture of Wellness go ahead and bring that one up just a second yeah so two of the greatest things that have occurred that were not even on our radar when we were planning to open this space that have helped contribute to a culture of Wellness the first day it
087was open we had over 400 kids show up and we were like how are we going to staff this facility Well what we've done we have about 15 students that work in the space now and they've become like this cohesive team and they love it some of them work on the communications piece with Jamie and her team some of them we have one guy Nick who has become like the manager so to speak so it's really created this tight-knit group of kids that enjoy working in the space and they take ownership of the space the other thing that happened that we really didn't expect was what's happened in the turf area the best analogy I can give you is if you went on a college campus and walked through a quad in the middle of
088a school day that's what it looks like on the turf right after school the kids come pouring in you'll have a group of kids that's just playing Pepper with a volleyball eight or ten kids in a circle you'll have some kids playing spike ball we actually had an unofficial world championship spikeball tournament that was like a three-week event that ended on Friday um kids just passing a football around are you know things like that in the space that we didn't think that was going to happen and that's one of their favorite things to do in there and it's creating this culture in that space that you don't just have to come in here to lift weights there's so much more going on in the space than just that so it's really been great so that's
089where we're at where are we hoping to go so you can see some things on there that we're hoping to move toward in the future and some of these things are already in the works and taking place the the closest thing is our freshman Experience day which is going to happen in April we're going to be tying in the concepts of portrait of a graduate and the pillars of Wellness into the Freshman Experience day we're working with a team of directors teachers to create various lessons that the students are going to take part in on that day that tie directly into the four pillars of Wellness so that's something that we're working on as we speak next school year we're hoping to introduce this concept of a portrait of a community it's not just a
090portrait of a graduate it's a portrait of what we want the student and staff and the community of the Stevenson Community to look like and work in Partnership together so we have this common messaging that we're giving to the students at school that the staff is giving to the students in the classroom and then that messaging is going on when they get home too so everyone is contributing to this community of Wellness some things we're looking at long term there are some curricular things that um Lori find Zimmer and movies Haney are working on as we speak to introduce some things potentially in the future um we've even explored an idea of something like a wellness Odyssey to promote Wellness within the school for our students and then what we really want to help expand
091this to in the future is we don't want this just to be a Stevenson High School thing we want to extend end this message and this concept of Wellness down to our feeder districts and have those things start taking place when these kids are in first second grade and then it just carries all the way through to their High School experience at Stevenson so we have a lot of ideas in our heads um your one it was build it and they will come and we've definitely got them coming so now it's just expanding on that in the future so thank you for the opportunity to be in that space that's amazing thank you thank you thank you very much here and I was at an event at Illinois State School Board event Grace was with
092me and um just talking to the School Board president from District 96. he said well your Wellness Center it's all I hear about everybody wants to so it's already out there in the feeders about you know the teachers are jealous and they're they're getting some so that that may come those numbers will increase yeah the fresh I mean to whoever made the point about 30 something percent of our freshmen that if it's 30 every year now all of a sudden we've got the Weisberg problem was was that 30 of the Freshman or 30 percent of the people attended thirty percent of the people who are attending yeah but of you know how many kids those are hundreds and hundreds of kids right there is yeah that number's just gonna grow exponentially um so one one
093comments I want to make like for the female participation I can see that really happening in my family because I got a daughter she's a sophomore so at the beginning of the year when PDX just opened and she passed because you're telling me Mom there are no more female girls in the world cup like this oh oh man stop right and now I said why don't you try and right now she's going to pee that's almost every single day and with her female friends they really enjoying the working on the machines so I was so proud of her you know thank you for promoting this video you know yeah I love to hear that yeah have you all identified it was interesting to hear also just the shift from the old weight room to the
094PWC and what that looked like demographically have you identified any other real or perceived barriers to access within the student Community are there other things that you're seeing that are keeping people out or pieces of our community of segments of our community that you'd like to see come in more yeah great question we've worked with the foundation a bit to especially for students who do qualify for additional benefits to have them be equipped to actually come to the PWC with what they're wearing through the Jalen Brunson foundation and what they've done to make donations to provide some of that gear uh and then we're all we have also met with specific intervention as well as other areas that there might be an additional barrier for feeling comfortable in the space to address their specific needs
095it gets really complex especially when you start talking about like body image and potential for identifying disordered eating patterns comfortability with movement that we're creating a essentially weight a streamlined way to identify when a student might have that challenge and then right now what's in place is that myself or a wellness coach would meet with them actually in a one-on-one setting or context if that's what they're comfortable with to kind of talk through some of those like main challenges and barriers that you see commonly in I guess Wellness spaces in general and so yeah both from an organizational perspective we're doing what we can and definitely can improve on how we're addressing that and then trying to also do that on a one-on-one level foreign a little shout out to our Alum Jalen Brunson who
096made a significant donation to our foundation with the specific uh and will be for the next few years but with the specific focus on supporting our traditionally unrepresented students in that space with financial support so it's it's been great so everything from clothing to other sports for kids has been instrumental in helping us to get more students into that space after we done our reaching out to our handicapped students great question there are a number who I haven't seen that I think were either have a history of being physically handicapped in the space that's actually a great point that something that we can take back and consider more strongly something I can mention too actually they just um are represented from the ELC just reached out to Eric and I last week asking if there
097would be a possibility of them getting some space in there to do some things with some of their you know they've actually been coming this year so I've been working with the ELC they come during the day um there's certain times of the day that it's uh there's more freedom there's fewer students in certain spaces that we worked out facilitated with the teachers that to please that space and we provide them access when pretty much whenever they whenever they want or need it we've been able to work around them um so that they feel comfortable and they can they can be in that space and and experience it like every other student so how will you assess over time the success of Wellness either through the castle competencies or how will you devise your metrics
098besides the number of kids that are using it yeah it's a great question so Wellness habits in and of themselves are trackable through adherence and so when we are creating either curricular intervention or providing assessment to assess their literacy about the wellness habits and behaviors themselves an example of that would be can I tell the difference between a more highly processed food versus a relatively less processed food can I actually identify that on a spectrum defining desired behavior that they wish to adhere to over time to build a new health habit and then having the cueing of and this is something that we're doing in physical welfare that's why I'm looking to Eric here also to build upon like they're adherence tracking so I'll let you check yeah I was going to say um so
099we have a assessment processed there are slos I'm sure you've heard of this this term before um so this year the choice team as redesigning their SLS for quite a long time and we're tearing that apart we're rebuilding around the wellness Builders and a lot of that's content not but quite frankly I think a lot of the barriers to being well um the choice is networking how they're capable so we're going to start with the bottom right the foundational components of understanding what and why you're consuming what you're consuming and the choices that we make and how they impact you and then we're gonna we're gonna assess them on that their knowledge of that and then we're going to build upon that to have them reflect in their own way this is the key component
100to this whole thing is Alex and I talked extensively about this how a person comes into this conversation is very different and even though we might look the same and sound the same we are coming at um all of the pillars in our own way and it changes day to day oftentimes so it's so important that kids have an opportunity to understand what they're reflecting upon and then the opportunity to actually reflect upon on what and why they're choosing what to choose I think there's other ways too that you know we would have to I'm not sure you would ever be able to determine causality but you know the Illinois youth survey you know presented really you know interesting data about our kids you know mental health you know that would be data that geez
101four or five years from now you'd love to see kind of some of those indicators reflect you know kids more positive feelings about themselves and kind of where they're at um student voice survey data you know during the subject just went up this year considerably we're actually outperforming the school and the value you know Centric which is the first time that's ever happened well so yeah so you know and I think the fitness testing that's required by the stage I mean like you know there's a lot of different ways that we could assess it you know but again it how do you determine causality you know what I mean like I think generally speaking our hope is that on a number of different indicators you would see Improvement um and I think you know in
102some cases we already are you know and that's really that's really great I think what what is so exciting about this and this is part of the reason why Troy and I've been so passionate about this for so long is that everything that this team is doing just Works hand in hand with what Lori and members of our student services team are doing with our SEL initiative and so to to us this was always like the you know the yin yang you know you can't have one without the other and so you know very often when we see Alex you know here in the district office which is always great to see you he's often meeting with Laurie you know and members of student services team so having those you know two parts now working
103together I think is really powerful so I I actually think that eventually we would like to see you know some of the data reflecting how our kids are doing with their own mental health you know be improved as well that that's my hope yeah but it'll it'll take a little bit of time can I have you guys go back to just slide nine as a patriot Wellness Center experience Wellness of course excellent I was going to ask you about this but uh everyone involve them in this because we are hearing a bit that maybe that wall is not doing so well so in the background there there it was doing great that day apparently your presentation's over so now a new topic uh I figured it was just an easy Segway so no they did
104an amazing you guys thank you very much and Sean you want to point out very quickly yeah very quickly I just want to point out the follow-up of the living wall in the PWC has been a little bit of a sore spot for me uh as well I'm sure for you guys as well because um not fully developed I'm happy to say that the plantings will be occurring uh very shortly we have been involved with um this one back and forth with the manufacturer and designer of the wall and um we're hoping to avoid a legal confrontation but most importantly do they have the root cause do they determine the cause we have discernment okay and it was not us great can we just while we're talking about it remind everybody the purpose of the
105I mean we're talking about Wellness we're talking about mental health we're talking you know building in general kind of go over that briefly I don't know sure like the just the larger scale like a larger scale I mean the the carbon Net Zero yeah just all of the impacts that are students yeah just so in addition to um you know in addition to all the benefits that were talked about today um you know the the living wall does reduce our um energy needed to think of it as a giant furnace filter that recycles or that takes carbon dioxide and particulates out of the ear and allows us to recirculate air or oxygen um that is cleaner um at a but it's already at room temperature or the temperature that we wanted so we don't have
106to spend energy heating or cooling it we do have a full megawatt solar panel array on top of our roof that provides enough electricity to supply the field house for an entire year so our field house is in fact Net Zero and then of course there's just that you know that idea of biophilic design where you can bring the outdoors in to kind of bring that I don't want to say calm but for lack of a better word that calm that Ambiance there are many students that will just say you know I've heard them say in this in the in the hall when we did the first one they're like boy I just thought it was kind of cool and I like hearing the water drip down right like it's just relaxing so um those
107are just a couple of them you know obviously the natural daylight helps as well because we you know the more we can get away from the artificial light even if it is led the better off our students will be so how many living wall we're having right now so uh we have two in the uh East Building Edition that was first opened in 19 uh or excuse me in 2019. um and uh those were two-story walls and then this one in essence is a three-story uh living wall that's that's quite big and what's unique about this one is that it actually the water is coming from a rain harvesting system cistern that we have so we're collecting the rain water and we're using um the rain water that's collected from our campus I think it's
108important to note too we're talking about the wellness center and the swipes are just to get into the fitness part so our stairs and the Gathering Place and all of that if you walk through there it's it's packed it is absolutely packed in overnight this has become the primary place on campus that students just want to be and want to hang out it's exactly what we wanted yeah Friday night about three weeks ago and it was it was amazing we had there was probably 150 kids on the first floor in the common area you went into the field house on court one we had kids warming up for the pack swimming we had going on on court two was a warm-up court for the conference Dance Competition that was going on with JV and varsity
109and then courts three four five and six were Junior Patriot basketball games it was it was amazing yeah and then I'm curious about a bubble tea selling how about that bubble tea bubble tea and the acai bowls yeah acai bowls are yeah still flying off the shelf s yeah tell us about that okay moving along yeah thank you thank you thank you so much uh just a couple more items uh before we let you go uh just find a note um that March 3rd is our consortium-wide professional development day so uh you know that our three largest feeder districts District 96 102 and 103 and us here at Stevenson we all block usually that first Friday in March as our consortium-wide Institute day and every other year we do um under the leadership of Casa
110and our own Mark honest check we do a consortium-wide professional development day so you can see um the work that Mark and his team have put together to offer learning opportunities for each of our divisions on that day so thank you Mark for all that hard work we appreciate you um also you can see uh a current enrollment report uh you'll see that currently we have four thousand well I don't want to say currently I'll say on February 8th because this number moves this moves so often uh on February 8th we had 4 542 students uh here on here uh enrolled at Stevenson the enrollment projections were for 4 563. so pretty darn close um they continue to do um thank you Alex they continue to do a really great job our projected uh enrollment
111for our freshman class is 1125 but those are puts in seats so to speak correct that does not include the on average of anywhere from 50 to 75 sometimes 100 students that would be on the high end with interest rates the way they are it may be on the lower end of 50 kids moving into the district but I wouldn't be surprised if that number was 1200 freshmen for next year so we just wanted to share that with you that we continue to have a growing enrollment and that decision Insight continues to be fairly accurate and we have another report coming in about a month right so wanted to share that with you tomorrow and then uh also just wanted to make note although we won't ask you to approve uh the calendar for board
112meetings for next year until we are allowed to do so in May uh we will be recommending that the June board meeting be moved to Tuesday June 12th um due to the Juneteenth holiday so we just want to make you aware of that it's tentative right now but that is a required um non-school day for schools in the state of Illinois so um sorry yeah June 12th that would be a Monday though any people no no 12th which is going to be a Monday so we will finalize that but Monday June 12th is what even though we're not in school anyway we're in summer school okay we're ready someone thank you second thanks for checking all in favor