001thank you would you please follow the rules yeah we're all here to counter for tonight thank you and we have any correspondence uh do we have any uh visitors statements um okay i'm sorry i don't think so carol is there someone you think is outside yeah yeah okay um okay nick the floor is yours good evening everyone um september 13th last presentation of the year okay so first up we got stuco as always um so first thing on the agenda super super important all the class boards and as well as council got together last thursday to vote on the winterfest theme um so student council presented um willy wonka and then there was also um alice in wonderland the nutcracker um safari and one other one i'm forgetting um senior class board just beat out
002student council by one vote so i was kind of sad but we are going with safari for the interface team so we're super super excited um the dance team as well as my assembly team can finally starting um start to get to work for um both of the events in february so that's super exciting and then the next thing we have um is distress distress week with your helpers so my monday nights team for student council is work or my third hour team sorry is working on this um so they're working with peer helpers so last week we had the um annual comfort dogs but they weren't in the ccc i think they were in 2104. so that's something peer helpers did and then we have to advertise that with the boards throughout the school
003and then um this week we also had stew plants so students got to take home seeds and they can plant them in little styrofoam cups just watch them grow and then we also have a sand and a bottle activity with like different color sands and layers it's just a cute design um and then last thing we'll talk about student congress at um almost any meeting so i thought i'd show you guys a little bit of um an update as well as a spreadsheet we go through so this is actually the spreadsheet that we have so um we have a google form every student congress and it goes onto a spreadsheet then we bring it to another spreadsheet and kind of evaluate them so all the stuff you see in purple is things related to sodexo
004so we've decided that we're just going to send all of our petitions related to sodexo to mr osmond so that we can kind of correspond with him and get to work on those and then all the ones highlighted in light green were ones we talked about with dr gergen so it was me briana scheck my co-officer for our third hour team and then as well as our third hour team so we went through a lot of them had to do with um a lot of them had to do with adding intramural spike ball in baseball there was actually a call for a referendum of petitions so all petitions related to the student body the whole student body would vote on them since they didn't want to limit limit it to only student congress attendees um
005and then a lot of the other ones were adding like specific classes lots of language courses as well as kind of engineering and like computer science related since those are really popular majors coming up in college now so that's a lot of what our conversation was about and i think that really just contributes to the whole um the importance of student advocacy because a lot of what dr gurion said especially with like intramurals was students who are interested in these sports or extracurriculars could just go to mr wellington in student activities and kind of talk with him about it and then same thing with language and adding new courses obviously you guys are all involved with all of that but if there's like a student demand obviously administration should be willing to hear students out
006about that so that's a lot with student congress um before you go on what's spikeable spike ball okay my old like i don't know what that is a little bit maybe yeah what is so it's like it's this um game where you have like a stand and then there was a net in the middle um and you have this little tiny ball it's like a little bit bigger than a baseball but it's softer so you can't like lift it it's kind of like volleyball where you have to hit it off the net and it bounces and you usually play 2v2 um it was actually one of the activities we did in one of our virtual assemblies last year and it was super super popular all um i think nhsn yeah all right yeah it was
007also um we also had it was two of like the extra activities at um what's called spring fling last year yes for that very [Music] well without any other questions about spike ball we're good to go on to fmp okay so fmp sadly didn't have a graphic or a picture for today um but lots of important updates so first thing is recruitment season so all the applications are due december 17th um and then the second thing you see under recruitment season is mentor shadowing so i'm really impressed with fmp missed him in the whole board because they put out a google form for all prospective applicants specifically for sophomores since they didn't have an in-person advisory last year and it was all remote and as an fmp for this year and last year is completely
008different so i had a sophomore applicant come to my advisory today just to kind of shadow what we were doing we were kind of doing conferences today which brings me to my next point so it's kind of not the best day to shadow but um he did have such questions about um the application so i was able to answer those so i think was super super super helpful for um sophomores to come and see what fmp is fully about before they do make that commitment because it is a huge commitment and then second thing conferences and then semester so um me and my co-s and every other advisory out center google form a few weeks ago just to do individual conferences before the end of the semester so we were doing those for the past
009week so freshmen got to pick um whatever fmp they were comfortable speaking with so we just went over questions just any questions about final end of the semester um stuff like that basic stuff um leading into second semester and anything they struggled with just so that we can better support them um and then the next thing is something that's upcoming so we have freshman parent night so i remember doing this last year i was on a virtual panel just answering questions about co-curriculars um so um we will be doing campus tours and co-curricular information to all parents and freshmen who visit stevenson so i think it's super important because it is kind of like college where you do have to get acclimated to the large campus so definitely something super useful for fnps to look
010forward to nhs so nhs probably has the biggest update of the night so delivery day um from giveathon that's a photo um it's actually on the d125 website so gifts for more than 400 families which 57 of those gifts were um 57 357 bikes delivered to families 47 boxes of baby baby items and 80 boxes of diapers so obviously we were helping um support families for the holidays but then also just bare necessities so super super important work and then also kind of in conjunction with that collection day was also super helpful i went down during sixth period since i was a leader for my literature class so they were busy all day just kind of organizing and then you also had the um advisory donations of mac and cheese and also hygiene products so
011that's about it for delivery day first semester experience can i interrupt you for a second yeah what's up i just want to share with you i was at a um at a meeting over the weekend with a group that i belong to where we were talking about different types of charitable activities that we want to try and do and i was shocked at the short the demand and need for diapers that families have it's an incredible need and the fact that you're doing this and what you guys have accomplished with giveathon i just want to give you a shout out because i think this the students are just fantastic and what you're doing is wonderful in this area i think nhs did an amazing job i think everything just with families over the whole pandemic
012has been difficult brings into like child care child care services have been super difficult obviously teachers at stevenson have the amazing little pete's program which i think was shut down because one kid had covered which is really really sad um but obviously like lots of families are in need so they really did an amazing job with delivery day then the next thing we have is first semester experiences so nhs is probably the biggest club at stevenson huge membership so um all um members in order to maintain their membership have to write about three experiences they did on interview so this kind of like feeds into the discourse between hours and service experiences so they really want to make sure that everything that their members are doing has an impact on them and needs them to
013learn more about service so interviewing kind of reflecting is a super important part of being a member along with the floor the last thing is applications so rent applications are due january 16th so it's kind of a three-tiered application so after they do the written application there's an interview with the current award and then obviously they campaign with all the nhs members who vote okay last slide best line first thing we have finals week obviously all students have final experiences wednesday through friday i think one thing that i've emphasized really with my freshman is that they can leave early on wednesday since we have a fourth period advisory so i think all of them we're super super appreciative and excited about that um as long as they can coordinate rise and i think that's one
014thing stevenson has done that just to help accommodate students and stress second thing students have bad parking you know this has been going on for a while they officially got um name dropped and written about an opinion part of the statesman so i thought i didn't include them here so um i'm all for this there it was the original stevenson account and it's amassed over 1500 followers i think it's kind of fun for students i think it's the most anonymous account a lot of the other ones with like shs slumpers is kind of like i don't know i'm not sure about that one because people have like faces and they did like a dm for removal but i'm all for students in bed parking especially because i have road rage so i feel like the
015accountability piece is really there and you know i'm all for it um is it mr smith's car it's too clean um next thing we have the bandapalooza so freshman concert symphonic advanced symphonic and honors band held a two-day concert in the pac so one of the student council officers our secretary ian harmon is in honors band so we left monday nights really quickly of course our e-board was still there um but we left him on the ice really quickly just to go and watch that watch him and they were really really amazing we caught them at the beginning of the show since it was around 7 30 so they were just opening up but they're super super super impressive they have huge dedication i have no rhythm no anything i literally don't even have an
016arts credit at stevenson so definitely applaud them for doing so many concerts in the week is prominent patriot so nhs and peer helpers awards receive the honor for first semester so that's just a good shout out to all of them like i said nhs did an amazing job with delivery day and peer helpers is doing de-stress weeks so they're definitely doing important work um that's all i have on this slide but in my notes um you always ask about kind of the vibe or the feeling among all of the students stevenson so um i thought i'd just kind of include that with um the student highlights so i think with freshmen and sophomores i'm kind of lumping them together i actually saw my counselor today and i was like how are you all your freshmen
017because i know they were doing course election they're like oh they have no idea what they're doing along with the sophomores so i think that's kind of the i um whole purpose of fmps is to just kind of ease their anxiety and if there it is their first official finals week especially like in person two so i think um that's really important and then one thing that i think just comes from the whole finals experience is self-advocacy for students i think that's the best lesson i've learned at stevenson just being communicative with all your teachers and making sure that you know where you stand and putting in the work and making sure that you're advocating for yourself and making sure that you have the best ends of the semester possible so i definitely think that's
018a super important lesson for all students especially with associated with finals week and then juniors i think a lot of them are scrambling i think my junior i kind of got a reprieve with the online schooling since we weren't like in school as much and i kind of got to de-stress at home but i think this is the year that most students choose to challenge themselves with their coursework so i think with finals it's a little bit extra pressure with all of them and then seniors i think just everything like life is consuming them a little bit it's definitely consuming me a little bit i think this is where like the path kind of diverges for a lot of students lots of early college decisions i was trying to discover about this before i walked
019in a lot of early college decisions are coming out mid-december and that kind of coincides with finals week so lots of important things going on i think like the next time i'll see you i'll be a second semester senior which is just weird to say next time i'll see you i'll be like an illegal a legal adult so um not an illegal at all so just lots of things in life are happening um and i don't want like i feel like it's all passing us too quickly so that's kind of the whole um the feeling amongst the senior class any questions i have a question i just jumped on the stevenson bed parking um and there's one car that got three different days of bad parking did they get like an award or anything like
020that wasn't that your car i think just like it looks a lot like mr gobble's car by the way i got super scared because one day someone posted the same car that i have and then my friend dm me it's just like is this you i was like no i would never do that yeah so and the owner of the account ethan hill um so he posted the person that parked next to him and i parked next to him the next day a little bit late that day i do have to admit but i did like re-park and adjust him i will tell you uh assistant principal laca has really actually appreciated that instagram account because people are parking better so they don't end up on it so people are you know the security trucks
021have even been on there [Laughter] anyway secondly nick uh during the holidays my wife makes toffee so she made this for you so happy holidays see when you give gifts you got gifts back that's right so thank you so much everyone thank you so much you're welcome i'll see you all in january before we'll do this now okay uh so before i ask for a motion uh to open uh the public hearing for the bonds um there have been a number of factual inaccuracies that have been circulating in the community and we just want to take a couple minutes and identify those items um there's three that i would like to focus on the first one is the size of our fund balance uh a number of people been arguing that we should not issue
022bonds and they've been arguing that we should not issue bonds by telling community members that the size of our fund balances last year are significant and beyond what's necessary for the school the point that we want to make is that what's relevant here is not what our bond or fund balances were last year two years ago or four years ago the issue is what will our fund balances be at the end of this coming year after we pay the construction expenses and while we did have about 108 million dollars in our fund balances at the end of last year uh if we pay our construction costs as we've explained we plan on doing and then borrowing 17 million which is what we've intending to do uh then we're projected to have about a 49 million
023dollar balance in our front balances at the end of the current fiscal year that's significantly less than 100 million plus uh and it puts us at right around the bottom of the range of what we feel is a reasonable reserve for the school i do want to say in full disclosure we did recently change our accounting method which we had to do frankly in order to satisfy requirements imposed by the rating agencies our prior accounting method included advanced tax receipts that were received from the county because we were on what's called the cash method of accounting and they related to the next year so looking for example dr claudelle has put a uh a screen on the board or a site on the board with 108 million dollar balance that we had at the end
024of last year if you reduce the tax receipts that are reflected in that 108 million uh that are attributable to the fiscal year 2122 we really had a fund balance at the end of last year 58 million not over 100 million this year we projected we're going to have a fund balance um at the end of june of 32 million without issuing bonds and that's because now we're using the modified accrual method where we're taking and adjusting for that prepayment of the taxes immediately if we issue the bonds as anticipated that's the 49 million dollar balance that we had said yeah and this is consistent with the reports that we filed with the state and it is required not only by the accounting excuse me by the rating agencies we also discovered when we were
025looking at this we were one of only two schools in the area still using this method of accounting and uh so now we're basically doing what other schools do the second point that we want to make is people in the community are saying that we're misleading the community by saying that we're issuing working cash bonds to fund capital expenditures and working cash does not refer to capital expenditures but working cash bonds are called working cash bonds because the proceeds are deposited into the working cash fund which is a governmental accounting concept what the bonds are called has nothing to do with how the proceeds are used by law and i want to repeat this is strictly by law amounts in the working cash fund may be used for any corporate purpose including construction and other
026capital projects in fact the district is going to have to agree with the purchasers of these bonds if they're issued that we would only use a bond proceeds to pay for capital expenditures it will be a condition of the bonds again we have a slide we're just emphasizing the working cash bonds is strictly an accounting concept it's named that way because it's deposited in the working cash fund which is a governmental accounting concept and they can be used for any corporate purpose including construction other capital projects part of the miscommunication that's going on is people have said that we're the only school or one of the only schools around that's doing this it's interesting we spoke with our council there's a case that we cite on the on the side if you're interested i actually
027did read this 1001 ogden avenue partnership case and to the point that we're the only people doing this that case involved 16 school districts in dupage county who were doing the same thing that we're doing taxpayers filed making very similar claims that the school districts were scamming the public by issuing fraudulent notices that hid the true intent for the bond issues because they used working cash funds to pay for building purposes and the the district court lower court and the appellate court both throughout the complaints basically without even going to a jury just uh on a summary motion because it was just just wrong misinformation so we wanted to clarify that point the last point that we want to make is misrepresentations that are being made about the bonds and the tax cap illinois tax
028cap people in the community are saying that your tax rate is not capped for these bond repayments and that the taxes for the repayment of these bonds would be levied over and above the tax cap this is simply one the property tax extension limitation law people call p-tell generally limits tax increases to inflation and it does apply to debt service on the bonds that we want to issue and the reason is because they're not referendum approved debt in fact your tax increases for stevenson for debt service and other expenses for at least 10 years have been at less than the inflation rate and the point here that is truly ironic and that i want to emphasize is that if we had either asked for a building referendum to issue these bonds or the petition drive
029that's currently underway to try and prevent the sale of required referendum if in either case the community approved the bond sale the bonds would be outside of the tax cap and would be available to increase your tax rate the point here is that what we're doing keeps the tax rewards at and what's being asked by people circulating petitions is us to take a step that would allow for us to increase the tax rate which is terribly ironic the school board does not want to go to referendum because it does not want to increase the tax rate do we have a slide here showing what would happen if we went to referendum for construction bonds the payment would be uncapped and over and above the levy and tax cap for the petal limits if the working
030cash bonds are issued because we do go to referendum because of the petition drive the bond payment would be uncapped over and above the levy and tax cap if we do what we want to do which is issue the bonds pursuant to board approval the bond payment would be capped by the levying pcap and subject to the ptel limitations if you're interested we put the site here section 18-185 with the p-tell statute you can if you want to work through that that's fine we've worked through it we've worked through it with our council and this is simply a statement of what the law is which is inconsistent with what's being said the last point i want to make is that stevenson has held seven or eight public meetings to discuss this project and how to
031be financed the village of lincolnshire has similar notice requirements has also held seven or eight public meetings to discuss the project local press has published articles about the project people with questions have called the school for information we encourage that we welcome your calls if you have any questions or want to discuss anything about the project or the school we ask you to contact sean carney or someone else on the administrative team so that we can talk to you about your concerns so is there anything you would like to tell look if there's nothing you want to have we'll go to the national skill okay can i have a motion please to um go to an open so move set public hearing so we have a first and second and this is a voice vote
032all in favor uh all opposed okay motion carries and i guess i should read the motion it's to open the public hearing for purposes of receiving oral or written testimony in regards to the board's intent to sell working cash bonds in the amount of 17 million dollars from the remainder of these building edition phase two project do we have any testimony from the public or if the board has any questions or clarifying statements in the other comments i actually have a quick question steve i think you know unfortunately you know we have seen and heard a lot of misinformation moving around the community over the course of the past year and a half troy and i have been subject to you know quite a bit of it ourselves um the irony here and i think
033it's worth repeating again because it's so important we've received a number of phone calls over the course of the past couple days regarding your third point and the irony is that the petition drive that is currently circulating would actually have quite the opposite effect of what the intended purpose is so would you mind just summarizing this law again i think it's worth repeating okay so basically the point is that if we issue the bonds with board approval and without getting approval of the public in other words not going to referendum non-referendum debt is capped by the levying tax cap and subject to the petal limitations so that that can only increase annually at no more than the lesser of five percent or inflation if on the other hand we had decided originally instead of just
034going and approving the bonds but to go to referendum to get approval for the bonds the result of that is it would be referendum debt not non-referendum debt and that would be uncapped and would be over and above the levy and tax cap not subject to those limitations and if the people now who are seeking to require us to go to referendum to issue the debt are successful and we then go to referendum and that is approved then the bond payment would be uncapped again not subject to petal and will allow us to assess taxes uh at over and above the levying tax cap it truly is ironic it's just ironic i it's just hard to explain why this would be happening are there other questions or comments for steve okay um no other no
035other public comments so i'm going to ask for a motion to close the public hearing for the purposes of receiving oral written testimony in regards to the board's intent to sell working cash bonds in the amount of 17 million dollars to fund the remainder of the east building edition phase 2 project can i have that motion so moved second okay yeah gary was the second um and this is also voiceover in favor of closing the open jury public hearing all right well thank you um that brings us to uh the curriculum and instruction uh part of our meeting and uh on the agenda we did have uh originally planned for some ambassador awards uh we're gonna postpone those by one month uh so um we will present those in january so we'll see our ambassador
036award winner um in a month and that brings us to our team presentation tonight and i am so excited to have uh colleagues from my former social division and i'll let brad smith the director of social studies uh introduce himself uh and your team right yes um [Music] social studies director and i am very excited tonight to be able to help showcase our us government team or at least two-thirds of our u.s government team that's here tonight um and i'll get to who's here and who's not in a second but i'm i'm really excited to have this group of teachers here with us because of the work that u.s government has been doing which really where they've been doing the last five or six years really embodies the type of focus on self or individual
037student sel work that our division has been committed to across all the teams and i think they'll be able to showcase some of the work that they've done that has been i think quite quite positive and quite powerful in helping our students um but for me what's what's most exciting is the work that they're doing to help push forward our division helping lead our division into looking at more social aspects of sel and being a civics-based course the importance of that social dynamic is also important and their efforts at really leading us into using transformative sel and and looking at social awareness and and student belonging through those lenses so i think that's an exciting piece of the work that they're bringing to the division broadcast tonight i'm very excited to talk about um that
038with y'all sarah here sarah gutierrez is our 10-year veteran on the team uh longest serving member on the gov team i would argue her ten years started actually before that because as an alum of stevenson high school she was actually in my government class so um probably more than 10 years also pursuing her second master's degree hopefully pursuing her second lasting degree um i think there's stuff later that's coming up about that um in positive psychology so a great resource for us there great lizzy shankoff is with us she's current team leader and a fifth year ish since she's student taught here with us as well um teacher of government and also pursuing her second master's degree this one in instructional technology we're lucky to have both of them leading our students in civics government
039and then we also i mentioned we had two thirds of the team here i hope tom is out there watching us tom's not able to be here because he's worked he was working on having his first child he was expecting a new year's baby which is really exciting but ended up with a thanksgiving baby so congratulations to tom tom and amber are home everyone is well and they're eagerly eagerly awaiting um james to come home and join them as well so that is our team and let me let them lead us through the wonderful work they've been doing thank you so a little bit about our course it's a one semester course for seniors um it's one of two options for seniors to take ep is the other option it is a graduation requirement it's
040also a state of illinois requirement to take a civics course so it fulfills that requirement um and what we've been seeing over the last couple of years is an increase in the number of students who are choosing to take college prep so it's between 30 to 40 percent of the senior class taking it every year um and just a couple of semesters ago we also started to see a little bit of a change in our student population when the collaborative government class uh merged with the college prep class and so we're seeing an increase in special education students as a result and so in our course uh what we do cover is we have our three skills that are divided up all around civic principles so our first one of civic principles institutions and virtues
041is essentially the meat and potatoes of the civics course all of your content three branches of government so on and so forth civic reflection and deliberation is a skill where students are able to do a lot of self-reflection and hopefully build self-awareness which will give you some examples of that work uh in a little bit and then civic application is how are they actually actually acting right like how are they citizens within the classroom citizens uh once they leave the classroom and how are they positively impacting the world in which they live and so within these skills we do a really good job in our course uh in focusing on their personal identity and finding out who they are as a political being and we want to continue to build the community aspect of that
042um when we're kind of looking at these different pieces of data that we're going to show you that lizzie will speak to in a moment we notice that the sense of belonging in our classroom is is where we can see the most growth and building out of our curriculum and so that led us to that community identity piece so what we're looking at right now is actually the school-wide data on classroom belonging and so currently the school is sitting at 71 percent uh you'll notice it did take a little bit of a dip during the pandemic unsurprisingly but we are happy that we're back to the pre-pandemic levels um also important to note we are close to that 99th percentile nationally um so even though we'd love to see a higher number this is still
043a really nice thing to see across stevenson and so from this data in the svs we then broke it down to our data and we wanted to point out a couple of things here before focusing on classroom belonging um first and foremost we're really proud of that line right there that's all green dots where we're in that 80th to 99th percentile for all six of the tenants um that we're looking at for the svs survey we also saw some double-digit growth which was cool coming out of the pandemic going well this part of the pandemic coming from spring until now where we're seeing um students are engaged they're in our class we have space that we can make change in their lives because they're with us um and then we get to our classroom belonging
044which is our lowest number um by multiple digits but we also would like to point out or one percent higher than the school so we're excited about that too are students enjoying coming to our classes and getting us to a point that again we can push them in the work that we're asking them to do from a civics perspective so to dive a little bit deeper into the classroom belonging we wanted to break down into different categories so we looked at gender first by looking at the students who identify as female about 70 of them have a sense of belonging in our classes students who identify as male 74 so there is a little bit of a gap there that we can close but the one that we wanted to focus the most on is
045the racial data so you'll notice here that our white students do feel a stronger sense of belonging at 77 compared to our students of color and so with this we're aware of it in our classroom we're aware of it at a school level um it's something that the school has been working on to address and so we want to think about how do we bring our students of color their number of classroom their percentage of classroom belonging closer to our white students as we increase all of them and so through the lens of sel we wanted to look specifically at transformative sel and so transformative seo definition up there of focusing on a practice of inequitable settings and looking at those systems and settings um and bringing in justice oriented civic engagement to our classrooms
046and dr haney i believe presented a little bit to you guys in the past year on transformative sel but it's really this new realm that we're going into to make sel itself more applicable to our students and where they're at um so the castle wheel where everyone in here i think is most familiar this kind of gets us to the ways that we're working on our students as people outside of just on their academic setting and so by bringing in the seo we're familiar with along with transformative sel as a team and as a department we've really worked hard at kind of bringing in this equity component so we've worked with dr haney we've worked with molly for a few different sessions individually we're part of the erd cadres as well as from a department
047standpoint we've really been working within this work of equity for the past two or three years and so we feel that we're really moving into a place that we can start sharing our learnings in our classroom and start bringing this to our curriculum in a more purposeful manner for our kids so one way that we're already doing this is that we feel really strongly that we're helping students gain that sense of self-awareness and we'll talk about some different ways that we're doing that in just a moment but what we want to start bridging that towards is increasing students social awareness and also relationship skills and the belief is with that that will also build their classroom belonging so on our little framework here of where we are step by step we spent time in our
048student voice data and now we're getting to that commit and expand so we want to share with you a little bit just some of the ways that we're committed to the work that we're doing that we do really well as far as building that self-awareness and then bring you into some of our ideas for expansion and different theories of how we can can move forward so this is just a snapshot of some of the course activities that we have we're going to talk you through a couple of different elements of our course the first being identity wheels then something we call thinking questions tqs for shorts these are weekly topic prompts that students are able to engage with and then the political socialization essay which is a really key component of our government course so
049starting with the identity wheels i know it's a little bit difficult to read what these student samples say but to give you a sense of what's on here it asks students to independently consider different aspects of their identity so it could be race gender sexual orientation religion but then they also have an opportunity to discuss with peers the different identities that they feel most strongly about things that they think about a lot and things that they don't think about a lot um and with that discussion that open dialogue they start to see that there are many commonalities between themselves and their peers but also there are lots of differences and so the self-awareness that we're building here of who am i and how do i fit into this classroom community is very important at the
050beginning of our semester together as we continue to build that self-awareness as far as our tqs we give a variety of prompts throughout the semester but wanted to give you one of ours from earlier on uh in the year and so we ask students to engage a lot with the different principles that guide our governments and guide who we are as far as values of our country and the government system and so one of the questions that we ask is what image best represents freedom to you freedom being a foundational value of american government and so we give a whole bunch of pictures this is a sampling of some of them that we give and we ask the students to choose an image which one is best representative of freedom to you so i want
051to give you a couple of student examples up here and so on the left-handed side the student who chose the picture of dr king is really focusing through their own identity at understanding this picture what it means to them what it means to the country and how we value freedom we see a lot of great connections here too our student is using the lens of school that they've been through through other social studies courses of econ and u.s history to really pull together um what freedom means to them with this picture kind of being that lens and their self-identity and awareness being the lens that drives that belief on the right side we see a little different focus looking at security looking at our armed forces and the gratitude that the student has and how
052freedom is a driving force behind that security that they feel and where that freedom comes from and so again we see both 12th grade students both male students in our classes who have these different viewpoints that they are seeing the world through and therefore seeing themselves as a civic being through them so for our political socialization essay what we have students do is think about the different socialization factors that have led them to their beliefs so these are factors such as family peers school media geography and they spend a lot of time making connections to those socialization factors and why they believe what they believe and so they get to choose from different political issues these students have chosen on the left we have affirmative action on the right we have government assistance welfare and
053so these students were able to make connections between their beliefs about these two political issues and where their beliefs came from so they had to do some thinking and reflecting about how did i end up here how did i how do i believe what i believe and again through this process they're thinking a lot about their own self and they'd spend a lot of time reflecting individually so what we want to start doing is thinking about how do we bridge that to the community how do we take it just away from just being ourselves and bring it to the rest of the class which brings us to expand so expand is where we're looking at ways that we can modify our curriculum and build upon the curriculum that we do well to allow these opportunities
054for our students to gain social awareness gain relationship skills and hopefully gain a sense of belonging at a higher level than they have right now so when we're looking at just some of our different um theories and and focuses of how we're going to build this in the classroom we're going to continue on our professional development focus that we've had as a department and as individuals and continue working with molly and dr haney to bring these culturally sustaining ideas to our classroom right bringing in stories and viewpoints of all of our students so that we have more perspective that they're able to take and see themselves in the curriculum we also want to take that self-reflection that's building that self-awareness and then build it out through deliberative dialogue right putting our students in scenarios where
055they're having conversations they're pushing one another and ultimately themselves they are being pushed they're being pushed in the classroom and then that builds out to the community at large and to them after they leave stevenson either a semester or two semesters after having us when we're doing this we also know that this deliberative dialogue work is going to push them in their own self-awareness so we gain growth there as well and it's also going to lead us to that socially supported dissonance which we all know to be so important as political beings right understanding that everybody's not going to agree with you so how do i have positive conversations in a place that's very safe where students feel that you know we're there with them to help guide these conversations so when they go out
056into the world we can bridge political polarization a little bit down the line so to recap a little bit our current goals first and foremost to increase that sense of classroom belonging so make that number higher than 72 percent um most importantly working towards closing those equity gaps um especially with the the students of color that we have in our class we want to see a much smaller gap if any gap between our students of color and our white students and the steps that we're taking to get there we're building social awareness and relationship skills within our curriculum we're also curricularly implementing deliberative dialogue practices and including um various types of surveys so continuing the work with the student voice survey and also doing some teacher created surveys that we can give to our students
057uh at the end of the semester to check in and see how we're doing and what work we still need to do so with that last side left side yeah you did it because we're so close left side [Laughter] so two things let me can i go first sure first of all amazing uh absolutely amazing secondly before anybody else says it yes i very clearly was the anchor holding this group back when so kudos to brad and you guys uh i just want to get it out there before you jump in all right so you guys are amazing brad great job i apologize for everything now dave you can sorry have you um noticed that there's any difference in this when you do your surveys between their first semester students and your second semester students
058i only haven't done sex semester yet but from last year's whatever are you have you seen any kinds of differences so i've been teaching this the longest i guess so i'll take this one i last year was really hard with the data we didn't have very good results back on our student voice survey um just for full transparency from our students for this this course but in the past i think second semester there's just a lower participation rate um as far as the the numbers and the percentages we've had a lot of consistency um i think the students who do take our course tend to like it tend to enjoy the the classroom culture that we've created but just numbers i think that by the end of their senior year they're ready to go play
059spike balls so that's our biggest challenge thank you so that slide you had with the with the government aid and the welfare and the girl whose dad was uh yeah can you go back today that's it how does that play out and so what happens after what happened how do you facilitate that discussion so this piece has been all done independently in their writing but as we are trying to bring that to more of a discussion piece something that is really important not just in this class but any social studies class is establishing those classroom norms and procedures at the beginning of the semester the year whenever it is of how do we communicate with each other respectfully appropriately what does deliberative dialogue look like in the classroom and students come up with those norms
060it's usually something that they are deciding upon themselves as the class and it sets the stage for how the environment in the classroom is going to be for the rest of the year um and so obviously in the the time that we're living in there is a lot going on in the political world um and that's not going to change anytime soon so we're aware of it and our students are aware of it too they're they're aware that there are tensions that exist um and so they do have a sense of what is appropriate to how to engage with each other um and we're just there to make sure that it's a safe and respectful space and if at any point it doesn't become that we step in and say we need to we need
061to take a moment and take a step back and talk about what's happening right now so yours is a uh ears is a role of mediator sort of business facilitators yep do you think we need a teacher in that setting or any setting in that setting i think that if you start um from a place where the teacher does have a little bit more of a role and gradually remove that presence and turn it more into that facilitation role i think that's a good way to set up the students for success i think maybe we should send them to washington and maybe with the real government [Laughter] you have a lot of really good information on the site so i'm going to ask a question that i may have missed you're saying this and i
062apologize in advance because i was trying to actually read some more of what's on the side um are you getting a sense of why there is that difference whether it's with the students of color or the other groups as to what's causing that difference yet um as opposed to just recognizing that it's there's just is it too early the participation the the the sense of belonging and comfort participation yeah i think from a theoretical perspective we're gaining a great understanding of places this could be coming from and i think that that again is just attributed to our department and to these great cadres and dr haney has been wonderful in teaching us that those equitable differences over time i think the part that is too soon is that conversation with our students with stevenson students
063and what is that conversation that we need to be having and how do we help that get better here and i think that's the part that um this work is hopefully going to allow us to really see and do got you but you have to do the the first first before you can do this exactly right do we have that data for the whole school we do we break it down by race do we find that across the board those numbers are similar yes yeah um i'm just curious about the metrics you presented it obviously is by race and then it shows white versus other colors but there might be other metrics you can look at the participation rate in terms of maybe by their interest some students might be interested in stem they're just
064not interested in this type of very much debate communication based subjects or it could be um a metrics based on their language skills there might be students coming from like a um english is not their native language and they may not feel so comfortable to to participate so i just one suggestion rather than looking at simply by color of skin wrist there might be other metrics we can look at it and that would be a great thing for us to do when we when we generate a survey because the student voice survey doesn't ask those questions necessarily of what you know what topics do you enjoy learning or which ones um do you do you feel the strongest in so that would be something that we could certainly add to our own surveys to find
065out a little bit more a little bit more that background of why that example exists because obviously you're using that as a kind of criteria for your teaching efficiency and you want to see the gap is closing maybe it's not it's a false signal maybe it's not a right goal you're trying to close it could be a different goal that's why you might want to look at from a different angle yeah thank you i think that that i think we were talking the other day 61 languages spokane or 61 last year 59 this year languages yeah and we certainly know like through our classes that language is definitely a component of the way that our students are participating in our class and that would be i think great for us to look at and know
066and feel like we're doing a good job reaching out to those students who are listening to us speak about million thousand men in english about the government um to be able to connect with them yeah for sure thank you thank you so can you go dave was interested in this life that's the one i was particularly interested in um and you know having taught government myself this class for a long time i love teaching the course and i agree with amy like oh my gosh now more than ever what you all are doing is so important i think i was interested in you know are you finding it harder this year than maybe five years ago lizzie when you first started or you know 10 years ago sarah like are you finding that it's a
067much more challenging course to teach are our kids more vocal uh today than maybe they were five or ten years ago and then you know to me i quickly read these when you had it up there earlier but i think these the way that these two students wrote about that might signal the real strong differences and change that you're seeing these you can get two different images right yeah um yeah i so this is my fifth year teaching this course specifically and i've been doing econ all the way throughout so i do see a balance between those two um i guess the short answer is yes i think that students do get more vocal and more passionate i think it mirrors what we see in our country what we're marrying on social media um i
068think there's good to that people are talking right people are having political conversations right we're getting to see that in our classroom um i've certainly seen build out of these responses over time um from all my students instead of just being really short and like oh i got to get this done i think there is a lot more passion and excitement behind what they're writing politically um and that's really good and i think that that points to we have a great seed bed for doing work like we want to do because the kids are invested and i actually i taught middle school for um a few years before in between student teaching and coming back here i thought middle school for a few years that was that was an experience um right and west oak
069yeah so i actually i have a couple of kids in my class right now that i had as seventh graders that's really it's really nice it's cute they're taller now they're much taller and less smelly um but i i would say through and i've only been teaching um government for just a couple of years i've but i've i've taught um apus that my whole uh time at stevenson and i have seen the same things that there's there's more curiosity um amongst the students for what's going on outside of these walls um they're they're so much more sort of cued into what's happening um i have a student who shares different um news articles with me every other day um just like did you hear about this did you hear about this and i i can't
070imagine that happening at the same level um you know ten years ago five years ago five years ago so i i too liked this comparison and as i figured you would figure i would um but here too are you facilitating and not teaching why do you say not teaching to me they're teaching it's something it's what they're teaching they told me they were teaching they told me they were facilitated now they're teaching how how to have these conversations i'm asking is it about the conversation or the event these events are very impactful and they're very time sensitive depending on where you at where you are at in time sounding very much like a bible this is not a history class they come into this is the expectation that they know the events of history so
071now they've already taken us history they knew these events from the year before okay or should they should we will as historic moments occur in real time we definitely pause to discuss those um but we will not in the case of like this or like these slides we'll give them the pictures and then we want them to interpret the picture for what it is to them um and so really with our seniors that's what we're hoping that they're they're taking this stimulus that they've gotten in some other way and they're now figuring out what does that mean to me how does it connect into a civics curriculum um and really that extra step is now taking it to what we often are unable to get to right now which is okay what it means would
072you pick whatever did you pick why'd you pick it and giving them time to have those conversations together right um they're doing a lot of the here's what i think and i'm gonna type it and i'm gonna send it to my teacher so that my teacher can give me some feedback and have dialogue with me and now we want to open the opportunity so that they're talking to each other thank you thank you i made a joke and i i don't take this lightly though that i think that it's very important given the political world that these kids are coming up in to teach them how to have conversations where they don't agree and we don't just attack each other and get ugly and you know to have serious conversations and trying to solve problems
073and come together it's what's lacking in the world in the government today and so i do appreciate that we're giving our students that opportunity because we're never going to fix it if we don't fix it and teach children to do better so hopefully this generation will solve some of the problems that are being caused right now so thank you for that i think there's a really big challenge here that as you're going through all these things i'm i'm looking at this the idea of a sense of belonging and how do you differentiate that between ever i only have a good sense of belonging if i'm thinking like everyone else in the room and that to me that would seem for you guys to be a real challenge it's not we're not trying to get everybody
074on the same page so how do you instill a sense of belonging but have all these different identities and all these different opinions and that's okay you don't want to diminish the ability to think for yourself exactly and that to me seems to be a real challenge for that that you guys are taking up and i would argue that this assignment itself like the way that they've structured this not just saying describe freedom but giving them a group of images to build their analogy around i think that's exactly what kids need right they now i've got a space to look around and decide what it is to give them that place where it's not like us and them it's well i'm going to pick this image and i'm going to write about it i think
075that that's brilliant like the the way you structured that question is awesome seo so to wrap up two two things i think what you've heard us say is that the um fate of democracy rests on your shoulders so i think uh [Music] thank you thank you thank you so much i don't want to lay a guilt trip on you but i think in many ways our future does rely on it that's how important this is yeah thank you yeah and can i just throw one thing it was so awesome that they came into the space with having an understanding of what they needed what they wanted out of this course and what they said to me in so many words where we want to use sel as a lens to help students have different opinions
076and feel safe enough to dialogue with our argument without arguing right and as amy said that's something we hope adults could do right and so they knew what they needed to do and they came in with a really open mind about we need to develop social skills we need to help students understand that relationships don't have to be based on sameness right um and that we need each other to learn and so i think they came in just the right you know the right space the right attitude and i'm just grateful to be able to work with them this year so thank you thank you for working with us so it's great guys thank you a wonderful winter break thank you so much all right and that brings us to uh the next item which
077is the approval of board policy updates um and uh we shared this last month as a first reading just want to remind you that most of the items in here are wordsmithing a lot of catching up um with the press issues we had a little slow down during the pandemic uh carol and i blame it on the supply chain the only item that would be a of note would be the acceptable use guidelines uh doug did work with council on those to make sure that everything is up to date um and includes all the language that is recommended by council so we bring these to you tonight for your approval evolution second your first sentence all in favor all right um we have um under personnel you'll see the graduate program approvals the human resources
078report that will be included in consent unless there's any questions we don't need an executive session after the meeting as we had one prior to the meeting and that brings us to the business section uh and the first item sean is the award of the casework bid associated with the summer of 2022 uh renovations correct so in an effort to ensure that we don't have any material delays associated with some of the supply chain issues that the entire nation is facing we are bringing before the board today um a recommendation to award the bid for casework casework fancy word for built-in cabinetry um this is the majority of this work is associated with the science lab um renovations there are four labs left that we need to bring to the current national science standards for
079square footage and how to run a science lab or how to set up a science lab we did have three contractors bid and the winning bid did go to carroll seating um at a price of 248 245 dollars which was in line with our original estimate of 273 so tonight uh following discussion we are recommending that the board of education award did package 12a caseworker carol feeding at a cost not to exceed 248 thousand 245 dollars any other questions for sean about their country and would you please pull the board certainly moves i no hi shane hi frost hi weisberg all right all right well hi where's simple motion carries um we uh also discussed uh the acceptance and filing of our audit normally we get this to the board in november but our auditing
080firm eloy cam schulte jacobs just had a little bit of a delay john aceto um conducting our audit um you'll find that there were no significant findings and we had a clean audit opinion which simply means that there were no material misstatements by the uh by me i guess no deficiencies in our internal controls and compliance with requirements that could have an effect on major federal programs um so tonight we are uh recommending that the board of education accept and file the audited financial statement for the fiscal year ending june 30 2021. can i give a motion so thank you um any questions for for sean um how you know this is going to come up later with the first reading from the first reading um is there anything that we have to do um
081in terms of you should ask about that at the first readings in terms of accepting the audit or in terms of the uh proposal that's out there yeah it gets the two together really i mean no so what will happen is with the change in our accounting um uh our the way we're um accounting so as as we move to a modified accrual basis um the new auditors should they be different we'll review this year's audit make some adjustments to restate them in line with the modified accrual basis um and then move forward with uh fiscal years 22's um audit on an accrual basis i'm not about to go business okay i'm sorry any other questions were shown about this the audit report for life did they have any suggestions for improvement uh no not
082on this one would you please call the board certainly okay uh thank you very much um and next one is um really something that is a matter of fact that we have to do um in 2018 the illinois legislature passed um some changes to the pension code that required uh trs which is our teacher's retirement system to develop an optional defined contribution plan as soon as practical uh well as soon as practical is january 1st of 2022 um they've decided to go with voya um the really the the i guess the the hiccup in this for us is that um this is an opt um out not an opt in for new employees so new employees will automatically be um enrolled in this program and we'll have to opt out um and the only reason
083i say that is an issue is because of our current collective bargaining unit uh our collective bargaining agreement and um the incentive that we have for our staff to save on their own but this will not cost the district anything other than just uh some time and energy on my part to manage uh and make sure that nobody goes over their contribution limits for the year because regardless of whether they're in trs plan or stevenson's plan there are federal limits that they have to follow so tonight we are recommending that the board of education approve the participation agreement for the supplemental savings plan with trs of illinois as presented can you have a motion from the left side i got two over there um okay any other questions for sean on this i have a
084question sure are those federal regular federal rules governing the top side or the bottom side top side okay so is this going to be pulled together pooled together so a an employee no this will not be part of our plan that we have with fidelity um equitable and uh lincoln investments well i mean it is uh stevenson's um all pulled together with everybody else it's going to be poor with other schools so they have a bigger pool rather than you running your own dc investment plan um so voyo will manage the entire plan for the entire state of illinois yes but remember contributions are not mandatory they're completely optional for the members sorry you misunderstood that okay uh would you pull the board please shang hi brass hi why is fruit hi hi well hi
085where's something hi who's i know hi carrie's seven or nine uh last thing i have uh for approval tonight there are the student fees for the 22-23 school year we are recommending no change when it comes to the student fees for the school year um they are currently at 350 per student we are recommending that they stay that um we are um though however recommending an increase in our drivers education fee for the summer school and this is only the behind the wheel portion we would like to increase it from 325 dollars to 50 dollars or excuse me 350. um so a little difference there and this is in line now with what we would charge during the regular school year of 350 um so tonight we are asking the board of education to authorize
086student fees for the 22 23 school year at 350 for each student summer school fees for the summer of 22 to remain at 350 dollars per course and then increasing the drivers education behind the wheel fee for summer school from 325 dollars to 350 dollars dollars motion it was amy and then gary just really um i'm sorry so questions were shown in the fees why are we increasing this only this one why are we only increasing the driver's ed fee yeah um the uh do we want to make the summer school fee uh in line with the regular um school year fee for behind the wheel to keep that consistent um the other fees at this point we wanted to keep steady um as we kind of look at and continue to evaluate the various
087practices that we have but remember that our fees go to cover of a wide variety of things including textbooks a lot of our technological needs supplies and then do help offset our athletic and co-curricular um activities as well so the behind the wheel fee right now is higher it's higher during the school year than it is the summer yeah not exactly sure how to let that happen but yeah so they're just making it consistent yeah and there are programs in place for anybody who needs assistance with that so absolutely and um if it's not behind the wheel for the classroom part because that is a graduation requirement we would there's no fee associated with that you need other questions would you please pull the board certainly frost all right whisper all right all right well
088person all right i know hi shane hi harry's steve as you alluded to we do have a first reading out there for our auditing services a request for proposal uh we sent it out to nine different um uh accounting firms or auditing firms um we've heard back from four um already um with um interest and telling us that they will be submitting um our proposal as well so we think that this will be highly competitive um and good for the district i'd look to see i didn't see a list can i not put the list in there i'll give you i'll send out that list okay um sean when do you expect our hope is that we will actually present this to the board and um do you want a board member on that committee
089who interviewed sure somebody would like to be absolutely i'd love to have a finance um if you don't have someone i'll volunteer to help if someone else wants to do it okay of course so why we're going on are we doing a request for proposal um we one of the things that negotia are necessitated to change was the fact that when we changed our accounting method from a cash basis to modified accrual basis we felt like it was a good opportunity to also take a look at how many are or what of the other auditors out there and services that they offered that they could offer for us we've also been with evoy jacobs and cam chilty for many many many many years and while they do in fact change the team that comes out
090and audits us i think it is good practice to open that up and look for a different set of eyes to ensure that we're still following problems and generally accepted accounting principles well and i think it's somebody else to take a look at our internal controls and practices to make sure that always we're we're doing the right stuff they were very helpful years ago in helping us to set up internal cash checks and balances correct but i think it's time to give they might end up being the best candidate after the fact anyway so we don't know and then of course you see the foyer requests that we received as well we can have a motion for the uh consent agenda yes do you think that's okay what um would you pull the board under
091any questions for eric and the consent agenda nothing okay um and then i just have a couple items for tonight oh go ahead fire away um i just want to bring the board up today we've had we had two meetings um we had a second facilities meeting last thursday that many of you were able to attend on the vernon township um energy commission which is something that the township is organizing so that all the governmental entities in the township can kind of coordinate more together on the infrastructure projects that are coming down the road because of the recent federal legislation after our meeting on thursday faye and i went to the commission meeting on sunday night and that included representatives from long growth buffalo grove a couple a number of the other uh actual governmental
092entities and um i made some notes from the meeting i think that the best thing to tell you is that we're kind of moving forward i'm not sure you know we need to talk to sean uh about the virgie the company that they want us to look at uh some of the other districts already have their own vendors that help them with their energy projects so the stuff that we talked about in site facilities as to whether we all do this together whether we have the synergies or not it's still an open question and i just want you know we're trying to set up another meeting on thursday right now for the school districts it won't be a formal second facilities meeting so actually we can't have more than a couple of people from the
093school there because we're not going to notice it and have a full site facilities meeting but we're going to continue the discussions and try and move this forward the plan is for the commission to have another meeting in january and to really move quickly to try and see what we're going to have because the the assumption is that we'll have to do an audit figure out what we want to do within the next four or five weeks and at that point we'll have to essentially do the grant writing and apply for these grants all very quickly within the first quarter of next year so this is going to move real you know real quickly but we'll keep you surprised and quite vancouver keeping sean and eric in the loop and making sure that we're not
094missing something here but i just want you to let you know that that's going on one of the things that john mentioned at the meeting on sunday is he said did we stevenson want to have a student intern working with the township and i asked him if he'd be willing to have somebody there um i don't i think that i'll have to wait until after break um and we'll have to figure out kind of who we would ask to be a representative so is it a i'd like to just be a student who might be interested just to observe okay just it sounds like such an amazing you know opportunity for a kid who's really passionate about i think both civics and environmental issues you know if that that one kid is out there who
095has a passion about both and john is willing to let the student observe some of the meetings that'd be great that's it that's all i was interested in i would like to be on the record with mr gorsuch that i tried to slip in nuclear but nobody was interested we could try again though again i tried but nobody was interested okay i just wanted to uh technically its fuels all right uh i just have two items um the first is um every year we send you away um with a copy of our course book um and please bring it back if you decide that you don't want a copy because as jamie will tell you we can always use them however um you know this is our bread and butter right this is why we're
096here these are all the courses that we offer um and you know i think it's just something that you might be interested in to see kind of what you know as a school we're offering our students um in terms of curriculum so all that work that goes into letters of intent and then course proposals that cycle which we're going to begin again in march and april and may all results in this course book kids are already registering for courses for next year [Music] and this is just every year a monumental project so also take this opportunity to thank jamie and her team course book looks great and uh we all want to go to school here really well done yeah it it makes makes makes your high school look really shabby yeah yeah yeah anyway
097um can you uh photograph mine and have mr gobble autographed mine too even though your autograph is on the first page i would like to have it anyway all right and then from e.t with that said um [Music] let's see uh with that said uh this is just an article um that i thought you might be interested in regarding the topic that we have recently discussed we will leave it at that and that is all i have for this evening you didn't happen to hand out a whole lot of paper after i reported on our energy yeah yeah we if you don't mind waiting until the middle of march we can reload well we can give you for next year oh my god you just want them right now you want this here yeah it
098doesn't i'm just curious sure you can do that trey be happy to get that for you tomorrow morning that's exam 6 30's i'm just kidding can i have a motion to adjourn please all in favor aye