001barry altschuler here leah callister lazari here erin chanding here katie karam here steve wang here all right thank you and welcome to our may 17th board meeting um we will start with the pledge of allegiance but i'm going to turn over to dr hunt to introduce our star student so as the board knows we every month we recognize students throughout the district that are just doing exemplary things and today i have the opportunity to have a fifth grader from sunny hill with us today so anikswell would you come on up please and i told her that [Music] the sunny hill had a lot of very nice things to uh say about her and she wanted to know what it was and i said we can't stop [Laughter] taking all those conflicts that's right so uh
002i was described as an exemplary sunny hill student she daily demonstrates and represents the three b's what are the three b's she knows them and she personifies the spirit of sunny hill every day she's kind she's compassionate she's always has kind words for her classmate mates and is always willing to help others she provides social emotional support for peers having a sense for finding those that may be having a down day she lives each day with empathy and grace and has a maturity that is beyond her years she's proud of her heritage and proud proud of being bilingual honest the type of student who brings joy into the room upon her entrance everyone at sunny hill and the school district is very proud of you and we're so proud that she's a sunny hill tiger
003so let's give her a big round of applause so we have a special treat tonight uh we are going to be led in the pledge of allegiance and we're going to do it in english and in spanish so please stand up whenever you're ready maybe you want to stand a little bit closer than my phone so if i can hear you real and to clear republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for allah her one more big round of applause [Applause] your mom [Applause] all right so um mental note for next time let's have the spanish up on the screen that would be helpful um okay so next up is we've got some some more recognitions so dr hunt would you like to continue we've got two more
004three more actually sorry three more three more in the air so uh at this point i'd like to introduce kelly key she's our district assistive technology coordinator it's been in the district for 16 years [Laughter] she's been in her role for 16 years how am i doing she's going to introduce our early childhood students that recently won a very prestigious award so thank you for being here well hello i am so excited to introduce you all to jacob jacob's sitting over here with his family and a little bit we're hoping to have him come up if he feels comfortable but jacob is five years old he attends the barrington early learning center and jacob uses an app on an ipad called lamp words for life it's a pretty robust uh pretty sophisticated app and we
005introduced it to him to help support his communication and he picked it up immediately and saw the power of using it to help support him in communication and using it as his voice and he's not only able to communicate his wants and his needs and answer questions he also is able to share his amazing personality and he is hilarious right you have to admit he was really funny um so because he's done so well and so young with this very robust app we nominated him for the infinitec outstanding use of assistive technology award there's hundreds and hundreds of applicants and he was one of i think maybe like 15 that were awarded the um the 2022 award and we attended his family his team and myself all attended the award ceremony last month and in
006a moment we're gonna see if he will come up it is his bedtime and he's a little shy but we'll see if he'll come up in a moment but before we have him come up we're actually gonna show a video that was shared at the awards ceremony that will share a little bit more about who jacob is and why he won the award [Music] jacob is five years old and attends the barrington early learning center school in district 220. jacob has many wonderful characteristics he is working friendly and socially driven a boy who enjoys interacting with staff members and friends in his early childhood classroom he is always first to greet everybody when they arrive and he is quick to share a story from home to help him do this he uses an ipad with
007the lamp words for life app jacob is very independent he is motivated to initiate interactions communicate his basic wants and needs share his academic knowledge and talk about his favorite foods he demonstrates a great interest in wanting to learn more words in his device and remembers their location after being shown their paths only one or two times he has a beautiful smile and infectious giggle and enjoys telling jokes and making others laugh jacob loves to play with his friends he likes to be chaste play with balls climb and crawl through tunnels in addition he enjoys playing in the kitchen area at the water table and with shaving cream his teachers say that jacob is an absolute ray of sunshine brightening everyone and everything around him he never ceases to amaze them with his persistence and
008hard work he is an incredible young man who has accomplished so much and they are very proud of him as he receives his award tonight jacob did have a speech that he gave at the award um and he's welcome to come up and give it today [Laughter] mom and dad can come up hi jacob just leave buddy just say hi that's it that's okay [Music] should we take a picture [Music] [Applause] mom dad would you like to take it would you like to at least take a picture you think you guys can all come up yeah everybody can come up maybe we can just stand up where we are all right ready one two three thank you [Applause] thank you jacob congratulations thank you kelly and thank you for our staff for being here as
009well appreciate it uh at this time i'm going to uh introduce mr mc williams who has a few recognitions from barrington high school this evening it's a hard act to follow yes it is good evening um thank you for uh allowing us to come and celebrate a few of our students today we've got an athletic achievement and have academic achievement and a few fine arts achievements that we'd like to recognize this evening to start off with i'd like to introduce miss illinois basketball sophie swanson for those of you that aren't aware miss basketball is the most outstanding basketball player in the state of illinois and sophie is a junior at barrington high school and she was a member of our state runner-up team sophie had planned to be here this evening but she found out
010just recently that she has been selected for the team usa tryouts so um she is going to be um going to u.s junior nationals in a couple of weeks and she's required to do some training to prepare for that so the coaches have said she needs to be in the best shape of her life she's one of 32 players from throughout the nation that will be considered for um team usa team team usa and may have an opportunity to participate across the country and throughout the world this this coming summer so a couple of stats about sophie are a couple of highlights she was msl conference she was the msl player of the year in the west division she's the first first team illinois basketball coaches association all-stater and she's an all-stater for the illinois
011news gazette so please if she's watching or if we can just pass along the applause to her please congratulate sophie and for those of you that didn't get a chance to see her this year she will be back on the on the floor next year and a tremendous team to watch tremendous program and i hope that you uh take an opportunity next year to watch the young ladies compete so congratulations so sophia kai next this is the academic piece so sophia is amongst a small number of students throughout the world so she scored a 36 on the act to put this in perspective about .33 percent of students that take the act score of 36. about 1.6 million students took the a.c.t last year so it's a pretty um elite group sophia has participated in
012marching band at the high school she's been a member of the orchestra math team the robotics club and she's been recognized as an ilmea allstate band member she's earned the presidential volunteer service award and is an ap scholar please join me in congratulating sophia for accomplishment on the act and it's nicely done are we gonna go around here [Applause] um [Applause] oh yeah um thank you [Music] [Applause] he's up first oh well there you go so uh showcase and designate a piece i will tell you it was extremely challenging but really as i walked around this piece by madison edwards just really spoke to me i'll let her give you the art side because it's up there about her inspiration but let's first have madison come on up and congratulate her [Applause] [Music] it was
013kind of like what i drew on the thing that kind of came to life and um i really wanted to try to capture that in in this piece and i kind of wanted to commemorate like the child like uh imagination i don't need to convey why i chose it because everything she just said is the reason i chose it it really does bring you back to that time where you were just free to think critically and innovate and create and just reminded me of my own children and them being out and sharing and playing with their you come into an friends space [Applause] are you gonna i got like five thank you congratulations thank you thank congratulations i would echo what dr han said these are very difficult uh decisions to make and um please
014please present your piece to national us in california and i've been doing photography for now this will be my fourth year doing darker photography and i always make a joke that all these people make all these meaningful pictures and i just getting pictures of rocks and trees i think all my pictures are and um i just really love nature and not anything with like man-made objects just nature itself and how beautiful it is what kind of camera did you use so this this actually speaks to me because this is this is my artistic medium too i actually took a photo at harrington high school and i am a fan of black and white photography chemicals i remember the smell of the fixture and rolling the camera film on to the developing roles and um you
015know from uh from a technical perspective looking at this piece and the contrast that you have and um you know i can only imagine the amount of dodging that you had to do to get to get everything perfect so that you can get your contrast so it really spoke to me and uh you know it kind of puts you in that space so um i i look forward to seeing that every morning and kind of going into that that happy space with you and thank you for presenting that and giving us the honor of having that at the school for the next year congratulations [Applause] are you good there's some barrington high school swag but there's also a gift certificate that goes along with this so that both of the artists have an opportunity to
016buy supplies and continue with their with their art and their passions [Applause] together any comments from moms and dads okay bye jacob all right next up is my report i guess nobody wants to hear it i own a camera but i don't think i can do that i know i can't i could have watched you do it would have taken me back well i will be i'm going to go ahead and give my report it's pretty brief and it's mostly through the board here so as everybody knows our our framework 220 conversation copying conversation is is coming uh it started last night so um um janine you're gonna can you give us a google form to make sure that board members at least have a chance to sign up for the coffee and conversation and
017then that way we can make sure we stay in compliance with open meetings act and so forth and um no we don't have any any conflicts there that would be great um also um janine gave us two um dates for a board workshop this summer and neither one of them looked like they were going to work so um so janine i'm going to ask and dr hammond asked that we look at maybe august 16th which is our scheduled board meeting in august maybe we could start a few hours early for him we know everybody's going to be here that day already and see if maybe that might work i think they would probably three hours at least three hours you could ask iasb what they want um [Music] and then as a reminder um on
018june 7th we're going to start five minutes earlier start at 5 00 pm 30 minutes earlier i can't even read my own writing here uh my own typing um so let us know if you've got a conflict i haven't we haven't heard of any yet so um we will see you at 5 p.m on june 7th um and then last just another reminder haven't heard from anybody about an iasb resolution if we wanted to do one of those they are due in on june 22nd so if anybody has any ideas there we need to probably share them across the board sooner rather than later and that is all i had for my report so next up is public comment so we've come to the portion of our meeting we set aside for public comment we
019value your thoughts and opinions and in accordance with board policy we ask you to state your name elementary attendance area or relationship to the district before beginning your comments um tonight um since we have less than 20 speakers we will limit your comments to three minutes and we've got the countdown timer we will ensure that all voices are respected and heard in accordance with the board equity statement that states we recognize embrace and defend identities abilities and voices of our diverse school community and per board policy the school district expects mutual respect civility and orderly conduct among all people on school property we are committed to addressing issues and not attacking people we ask the community to do likewise so with that i'm going to call up paul rednicky good my evening is paula rodnicki
020i have a fourth grader at countryside and a freshman at the high school um i was heartened to and happy to get the draft of the framework 220 priorities that came out of the strategic session what hit me about those is that four of the six of the strategic priorities focus in some way shape or form on social emotional learning as the board continues to hear updates and consider the pending strategic plan i ask you please keep the focus on building these skills in our students it is these social emotional skills that will empower students to be successful in the diverse world in which we live along with you know the academic skills but at the core the world is full of people so learning how to handle and deal with people is absolutely key
021also social emotional skills help normalize the prioritization of mental health these skill sets also help prioritize the neurodiverse needs of students within our school district having these skills will help students who need help know it's okay to ask for help and feel feel good about it right and not feel isolated about it it's also going to help students that maybe don't need any particular help or aren't you know [Music] in need of any special supports to help support those that do need help by letting that that feel normal to them okay so i think those are important skills in the classroom out of the classroom on the playground in a lot of different ways also looking at the learner profile i couldn't really pick out any any all all of them have some sort of
022a social emotional skill at the root or at the root of that learner profile in all facets i'd like to focus on the one that's titled empathizes this is the key skill that we need to pass on to our students demonstrating and teaching empathy towards others is one of the keys to eliminating the hate we see in the world today being able to put yourself in someone else's shoes or at least trying to have that perspective is super helpful in dealings with others so again as the board continues to to look at that plan and hear these coffee conversations and and consider the next steps for our school district i think those are key things to keep at the forefront you thank you and that actually concludes our public comment um for tonight so next
023i'll turn it over to dr hunt for his report thank you and good evening i will start with the first slide it's a um just an update for the board of education on our summer school program i you know one of the things obviously when i was transitioning you know last spring coming to barrington i was following the website looking at different things and uh the the quality and quantity of the offerings for our students in the summer is just amazing and i'm very excited to report that we have over 2 000 students in our school district that are going to participate in some capacity within our summer school programming some of this may be review for some of the board members but maybe for new for some of our newer board members that includes
024a variety of offerings at our early learning center we'll have the extended school year which is designated to help and maintain previously uh prior acquired skills by students it really targets early childhood instruction speech language therapy occupational therapy physical therapy and a continuation of services for our students at our elementary we have a program that's really balanced on continuation introduction of math and reading maybe the next level and a number of creative and enriching courses i can tell you i have two young children at home are very excited about taking uh art camp and being a part of the drama camp and i will let you decide which of my two children are the the dramatic one but i'm just extremely excited about having that opportunity we offer an elementary jump start to dual language
025this program is for incoming grade level support for in reading math and english language development it's got dual language and one-way immersion as well middle school course offerings range from skill enhancement to learning acceleration through enrichment opportunities and the exploration of new and unique interests in addition to a wide variety of camps and activities athletic camps as well and then of course at the high school we have offerings that are hands on elective like video production photography and drawing as well as painting and then traditional curriculum design to advanced like business exploration health and honors chemistry i was happy to see it looks like the illinois virtual school is going to run i know that was a question for a while there uh for for health uh for our high school students uh yeah i
026think again when you're in a place for some period of time you take for granted the things that you have in place this is this is a culmination of a tremendous amount of work uh by our staff that we have you know just to prepare and offer these things but also to have staff and teaching staff that's willing to step forward and do these things in the summer uh speaks largely to how much they care about young people so just wanted to update you on that and as we are offering things for our students we are also offering a variety of programming for our teaching staff for their own professional development we'll be offering 57 courses over the summer and of our staff we have 600 total staff enrolled in the summer university courses that
027will help them grow as professionals and us grow as a school district they're offered a variety of modalities both in person virtual and blended and they'll run between june and all the way through august open to all of our staff members and we're still having them register a variety of topics as some of them revolve around assessment discussions inquiry-based entrepreneurship health leadership literacy math race equity and inclusion science and social emotional learning and uh dr burn and i are going to collaborate on a book study on leadership and leadership development as well so just very excited and uh for this summer for the growth for our students and our staff and i appreciate the support of the board to offer these things to to our staff and students i wanted to address uh quickly uh
028this evening we've had a variety of emails and i know the board has gotten some questions as well um regarding honors course work at the high school and uh obviously mr nick williams can jump into support and help that says you know as needed uh there there has been a reduction of two honors classes one in global studies and one in physics i know the board got some information some background on this but essentially i think they both fall into the categories of as our teachers go through a curriculum cycle which dr byrne presented to the board that they they realized or came to the realization that the content and curriculum in the traditional honors course really aligned with what the ap offering was and it made sense for us to encourage students that you
029know wanted to stretch and take that to go ahead and expose themselves and access the advanced placement opportunities so different years in which these have gone away over the last couple of years but i wanted to give you some context with that in terms of high school and we also provided an update on middle school honors math as well and really an effort for the district to allow more students to attain or reach algebra in eighth grade which will allow them to access higher level math and rigor as they go through the the school the high school so i wanted to pause and see if you had any questions regarding honors uh specifically that you would receive that we can help clarify i just want to just reiterate it all honors classes there's just a
030couple that have been reduced but they meet tyria's ap courses in english we have any um that are being cut for next year i don't believe so steve so the physics was actually if you looked at the memo as a reduction several years ago the course that is not being offered next year is physics but it wasn't an honors traditional honors class it was supposed to be an on-road it was a pilot that we were running as an ira on-road to ap science courses and it the data was not indicating that it was working in that direction so we're actually going back to where we were about five years ago when ap initially started an ap physics one two and then an advanced ap so that ap physics one took the place of the honors
031course which which fits into the criteria that dr hunch has presented not to argue with you guys because i absolutely think you know what you're talking about but we have fear i i am hearing from parents that a full a different story so would it be possible perhaps to maybe like over the course of five years just publish what honors courses have been offered and i mean just okay it's five years even enough because it sounds to me like i can go more but i don't it sounds to me like this uh physics course was a couple years ago did you say two or three years ago is that what i heard it's been uh we implemented the transition or the the pilot program to help support students build skills to get into ap courses
032about three years ago it was just before covid but prior to that when they implemented when ap implemented a three level ap class ap1 ap2 nap c uh that was that was the time when we eliminated the ap i'm sorry the honors physics course because that aligned to our current honors course was it pulling that together that feasible steve so that actually was part of the memo but yeah we we can re-highlight some of those pieces i mean so is this something we can just publish on well we publish we have the course catalog right which shows what offerings we do have is is that enough to show that we've got some are you referencing i guess i'm trying to compare where we were five ten years ago with where we are now because what
033i'm hearing from parents is that they're and i i i i'm what i'm hearing whether or not it's happening to answer your question you can look back historically because the course catalogs do exist historically okay okay um i'm hearing that they feel that children are being honors classes are being removed and your only track is either regular class or an ap class and that not everyone has the ability to take five ap classes or four ap classes they so i and i'm not saying that so i just feel like if we are able to put the access the information then we can answer those questions i think we can better answer now too the reason we don't have the honors is because the honors course is giving the same rigor that the ap courses are
034giving so we'll figure out how to best put that together so we so just to confirm junior english honors has not been removed is that correct when was that removed a few years ago that has been removed what about uh freshman and sophomore honors english classes for next year are there plans to remove that english honors is there any plans to do away with that in say two years or is that still the commitment of of the the direction of the honors classes it's analysis so i think um we just had a actual senior exit interviews today and they brought up some points it's something that we we want to consider in terms of what are some different onroads or some different options for students specifically looking at honors classes they gave us some some
035some feedback about our curriculum altogether and that's certainly some things that we need to look at so was that like having more access to honors classes or i think we need to evaluate the the rigor across the board to make sure that every student has an opportunity to be in the most appropriate classes so so i don't think anything is off the table but the the decisions were made based on an analysis of student achievement data placement data and not being able to differentiate between a student that was in an honors class or an ap class specifically in global studies um and uh specifically in that ap physics one class and the physics um honors physics so again that honors physics that was put into place that's being removed for next year that's the most
036dramatic change next year was because that was a pilot program specifically targeted at students that we were trying to accelerate into ap science classes and the data didn't play out that it was doing that it wasn't it wasn't being purposeful what about the junior um english honors what was the rationale behind removing that if you look at junior english honors there are actually a number of courses again that kind of fit into that sequence there's um ap lang that's an opportunity for students there's intro to research and ap class that goes along with that as well so there are options for students that again align with that honors rigor in terms of doing some uh some craft cross-referencing with it so it wouldn't be um an acceptable removal of that honors class if the only
037choice was honors laying or honors interrelated arts which is probably a little bit more rigorous but when we look at the research course and we look at that tracks towards senior seminar it does give students an appropriate course that align with our honors level class and then environmental science is that honors class still being offered next year as well credits um and ap yes dual credit means so is it it's an honors class then no it's weighted at okay so it's weighted you get like a grade half a grade up or whatever okay got it um and then advanced topics in us history uh is that honors class still being offered next year advanced topics in us history us history um that course was um that honors was it was honors by um course um
038so we had honors and average together and then you would i'm sorry your honors and ap together that was that was taken away several years ago so again we we can go back and and sequence all of that together it's in the memo that we we shared with you well you know and i think that as you know we're just we respond to the community obviously we have similar conversations here time and time again but i think that you know some community members and i think the board as a whole is shared concern as far as we are so good at targeting the top we are so good at targeting those who are struggling and it's sometimes those that are like under that you know that ap you know situation that need a little boost
039that need a little assistance and and we've heard from you know our discussions and our learner profile meetings and all of this that it it kind of becomes a recurrent theme in our district and and i think that um parents it is an aside can i just say how awesome it is we're talking about like classes and education [Laughter] instead of other stuff um but you know i think that parents when when they're you know looking at their kids you know options and and they see that the you know the word honors is gone well then that's you know that's kind of scary because that you know maybe that's that kid that you know should they take all ap classes probably not you know that's that's a lot of work but they do want to
040sprinkle in some honors in some ap and to have that option and when you know it starts to you know be taken away or they see that the the course catalog is changing then you know we start to get emails and calls and concern and i don't want this to seem like we're trying to you know micromanage anything you guys do an amazing job providing a wonderful educational experience from pre-k through you know post 12 but um you know we are just trying to be responsive as far as you know this issue in particular because it's come up you know my eight years on the board time and time and time again just you know wanting to continue to push those kids that maybe are you know not quite ready to be an ap but
041also are probably could use a little push beyond just you know the regular core classes so that's the question responding that that's exactly what we look at when we're developing these course sequences so that we don't have overlaps so when something goes away it is looking at data it is looking at what the course offerings are so it's not that honors is being taken away it's that there is a comparable option that fits along with with that piece so the title of of dual credit yes but it matched with our honors curriculum so we're we're not trying to have students take courses that aren't appropriate for them we're trying to find that nice sweet spot where they're challenged and they're growing and as we look at the curriculum as we look at those courses that
042we offer that's exactly what we're trying to do and when we see where we've got those significant overlaps that's where those decision decisions are made yeah and i think that you know maybe even in the course catalogs when there's a you know an elimination of a class or something even just a little notation you know potentially replaced by whatever just you know like i think it it it continues to bolster the continuity of the path that you know the kid is on and and that they can you know they're still reaching for the the the highest level but not to feel that pressure ah that pressure i've got to take the ap class i've got to take it or else there's not another option and you know just to kind of point those out maybe
043again you guys are the experts but just you know the feedback that we've been getting is is a little bit of um trepidation uh feeling that some of those classes that would hit that kind of middle ground um may not be offered but it's nice to hear that there are other options to you know replace those and i don't i just don't know if that's being as is understood as as completely as maybe it should be yeah that's something i won't speak to the kind of the evolution of the district over the last 10 years but i can say you know there's a philosophical conversation to be had and a lot of districts are having it around as access to dual credit comes that that really fits that niche of honors and then it becomes
044about communication right what are the benefits what's the curriculum how does that align and making sure that in the spring if we have any changes they're coming to you as part of our curriculum review and we're demonstrating and showing that to you so that that will happen so are the comparable courses generally dual credit courses then not ap or is it a combination of those i would imagine it's a combination it's a combination okay and so far the fit has been okay for the students who would have taken the laminated honors classes or if we didn't think the fit was there we wouldn't have made the changes so um so i'd answered the question yes so it is research based it is based on the students it's based on their experience their grades their performance
045and the courses that we offer so um it is you know there is the humanistic side of it for sure but there also is a very scientific you know looking at achievement data um understanding how our students are growing in in comparative courses so um and it's something we look very very closely at in terms of what our students are are having access to and uh you know do we have uh an opportunity for all students to grow and you know accelerate their learning essentially that's that's what we're looking for is those different options those different different pathways for students are listening to this feedback and really taking the time to hear it and we have to do a really good job of supporting our students and not only selecting their courses but stepping through
046a process of course planning and post-secondary planning and that process starts and should start sooner than freshman year so part of what we're doing at the high school and re-envisioning some of these roles is what support are we giving our middle school and high school counselors as well as our families to increase their awareness of not only the offerings that are available to our students but how does this fit into either a career pathway or a post-secondary plan or what makes sense is it an honors course is it ap or is it dual credit and doing that work up front is really going to help in the long run and in ensuring that our counselors are supported so it's not just a process that begins in november and says here's your sheet pick your classes
047but what are your plans long term actually i mean being a freshman i have to tell you that is so reassuring and i know we came off of a weird year and i also but because i was going to say perhaps to your credit or to be fair many of these conversations may be happening between the children and their counselors and not filtering their way down to the parents i know my child doesn't tell me a lot so but that is real i think that it's going to go a long way in a huge step towards clearing up a lot of the confusion amongst us because it is big decisions so that's great to hear opportunity well i think our course catalog is really good too because it shows the different pathways you know there's
048not just one path for math there's many paths for math there's not just one for social studies there's many um so you're just making the parents even aware of that and taking a look and there's even i think inside those course catalogs we still have the planning sheets too or they're they're they're on the website if they're not in that course catalog we're actually doing some revision on that as well so that it is a little bit clearer some feedback that we've gotten from students very easy to follow so we're doing some work over the summer to try to to roll out kind of a new uh improved that's a little bit clearer for students on what pathways exist how to access those pathways so the conversations are advancing the foundations funded a program called
049transio that will help us to communicate with students teachers and parents about these pathways through a product called journey so there are a number of things that we're working on to try and help this become more transparent for students parents and teachers as well so trying to get more more involvement from all stakeholders in that student's life so some good things coming um hey steve you know this is all great too i guess one bit of feedback that i received that i wanted to share also you know and maybe just if you could help me um understand a little bit more the dual credit program is that on or off campus at the high school both is it both okay and the reason i'm clarifying is because i've gotten feedback from certain parents that they're
050not in favor of having their students leave campus um to you know to take part in these dual credit programs they understand the value of it at the same time they do see the value in them being on campus being able to socialize with their classmates and so you know perhaps you know the argument is that it's a cost savings for us because we have limited need too i mean because i have heard in certain instances that there's been limited enrollment in some of these courses and therefore it's you know probably more economical to share in the expense off campus with off-campus resources but i guess i thought i'd share that bit of feedback and then the second thing that i'd want to mention too is or i guess ask is um how do you
051envision the output to be if you're going to do a look back as far as you know what's been offered in the past because if and and my suggestion is if in the y axis we could have a listing of all possible honors courses and the x-axis we have years and then within just little squares basically that are colored in so if that's offered in that particular year that class in that particular year it's colored and if it's not it's left blank and for both squares that are left blank in that matrix you do have some sort of you know asterisk or some sort of description of what class or classes have been established to um you know replace those honors courses that are no longer offered is that something that we can do to
052make it very easy and accessible for parents versus just putting up a you know list of classes on an annual basis having them possibly scroll through many many years of uh catalog i think we can support the rationale for some of the decisions that have been made in the past um but what secondary from you know the explanation of why and um so that's something that we would need to do and i just uh to piggyback onto your dual credit comments the foundation and the district in general have been really supportive about developing dual credit programs within the school so that we don't have to go off campus so for those few instances where students do have to go off campus um you know it just is the reality that we deal with and but
053we are trying to bring as many of those programs onto campus as we can if there's student interest that goes along with it so right now that's i think that has to be part of a broader conversation what we're trying to achieve i mean it's the right time to have the conversation for sure uh but there comes there come costs associated with things like this right there's teacher certification that has to be reached and do we you know do we provide that for it's part of a broader conversation of where do we want to go moving forward that's fair we currently have double the dual credit opportunities available to students on our campus as opposed to off campus and if a student only took dual credit courses on barrington high school's campus and we did
054present this to you at the april meeting students could earn up to 37 college credits on our campus which is a huge celebration thank you for that reminder i have a comment when you guys have a moment it's hard to hear offline and i apologize i'm phoning in go ahead leah okay um thanks for letting me phone in i don't feel well i appreciate being a part of this um as a person in business had three kids go through the district the honors classes is an important piece of this you know honors ap global studies and honors physics are classes that many many students take you know many students take global studies and many students take biology chemistry and physics so just to think about this is that a lot of students as a freshman
055coming in might not want to take an ap class and global studies honors is an option less than that and also physics maybe students don't want to take an ap science class but they want honors and i understand if the it was the same content as both of them it might be interesting to look at it and make it uh you know three different levels of options of what's what's available you know but if we don't do that we just need to explain it to people and make it really clear that this is you know what's available and this is what the class is so students and parents know what the content is and the experience level is so that they know what it is they can sign up for the appropriate things so i
056know that you know me as a parent i didn't want my freshmen to take an ap class i thought that was pretty intimidating coming into a new school a big high school with a lot of things but every student is different at least every family is different so we just need to explain what it is and what the options are so that's my input for this conversation and i appreciate what we're doing and that's what i'm offering to the board and to the community so thank you thanks leah yeah i just wanted to add i i reiterate what katie has said i think maybe the problem is communication i think the parents don't understand what we're doing with our course selection i think if we could generalize not all ap classes are the same not
057all ap classes are as rigorous some of them are much more rigorous than others and i guess we shouldn't get scared off by the term ap it just means we're going to work your child a little bit harder but i think we have to communicate to parents that we're not getting them into a like a sinkhole where they're we're setting their kids up to fail because they're in an ap class that you know that that yes they're going to have to work but we want to challenge all the kids so i think the key is communication is as katie has said and maybe the parents aren't part of the loop as much as they need to be because we want to let the kids make their decisions but i think they need their parents to
058counsel them they may not understand exactly what ap global studies means as as leah said and i just don't want the parents to get scared off by the term ap because that doesn't necessarily connote uh you know five hours of homework every night right and all right thanks very i was i was couldn't put it towards but um i think it's also good to look at if the rigor's there they let's make sure the students are getting their credit they're doing the work let's make sure they get the credit for the ap as well so um thank you thank you for listening and and all the work that you're doing at the high school to provide the excellent offerings that we do have any other questions on that i gotta remember where we were you're
059not done with your report i'm not sure about it okay you win i'll be quick last two items as the board know we reported an update on framework 220. we've done a lot of work preparing drafted learner profile strategic priorities we have pushed those out to everyone that was involved in the learner profile group as well as those that attended the strategic planning summit so we've gotten some feedback that way but we also want to take this out into the community and provide opportunities for our constituents to offer some additional feedback so as sandra had mentioned earlier love for the board to attend uh we'll get you a signup sheet hopefully you can plug in i had the first group last night i don't know about 12 13 people real good conversation um really you
060know insightful feedback people had prepared they read it in advance so um really enjoying the interaction and the engagement and this is one i'm happy i can share we'll have different members of the exec council that will be out because i can't be in all of these places at one time uh so uh really looking forward to to the feedback and we'll continue to update uh the board and would just appreciate any help with your your constituent groups sharing these dates encouraging people to go the broader the net that we cast the the more this plan is going to be reflective of the expectations of our community uh just want to thank board members that were able to attend we had a wonderful day traveling around to five different sites i heard it was a
061world record for pepper construction the most kick-off ceremonies in one day it's certainly an exciting time for our school district as all of these projects begin to move forward and uh certainly thank the the board for making the time to uh kind of launch this off and now the the real work begins over the summer um with with all of these projects so great day for our board our administration to to showcase uh some of the things we're doing but also a great day for the community to start to realize um their support of that referendum is coming to fruition as we kind of uh you know renovate and improve our facilities throughout the district and and the weather held out and the weather yes and last but not least in my report i would
062like to uh introduce to you later your report it will be recommended that dr uh peg lazuiki i knew i was going to do it will be is being recommended to join is a new assistant superintendent for student services peggy is currently the assistant superintendent arlington heights uh district 25 and has served in that capacity for the past uh three years uh i you know we in in checking references and and talking to different people i thought this comment resonated and would resonate with the board uh peggy is a 100 percent student centered and 100 service oriented she cares deeply about supporting staff so that they can provide the best learning environment for every single student she has the unique but genuine ability to help all members of the team appreciate each each other and
063work collaboratively for the benefit of students she's a trusted and valued member by staff and by families i've seen numerous situations that have been resolved successfully due to her ability to connect with families and staff around a common goal she never loses sight of what's important and that's students and i that that comment resonated uh in everyone that i've spoken to regarding your work um i think i've had the opportunity two days in a row to be at luncheons with superintendents and word is starting to get out um and they are just uh uh amazed she's coming here and um nothing but positive things uh for all the work that she's done so you can hold your breath for a few more minutes but uh hopefully very soon you'll be approved by the board and
064i know we'll give you an opportunity to say a few things the board at that time that would conclude my report excellent thank you can i just say that i know that our your our coven stats are no longer weekly part of your report i trust that you're monitoring our schools for surges to get us to the last uh let through of the last two weeks of school but i just wanted to celebrate this being the first year in three years that our kids have been able to attend the entire year in person for yeah just the duration of the school year and i know we learned a lot of things through remote learning as well that we'll carry with us but just wanted to thank you and thank our exec council and the staff
065and the teachers because navigating a global pandemic and i know we're still in it but i know it was not part of your job description and for me as a parent and as a school board member just very very grateful that our kids were able to to attend in person um throughout the district this year so thank you for all the work that you put in it's a good reminder yeah so let's celebrate that actually too before we move on katie i just wanted to make sure are you good with the answers that were provided today or do you still want to see something more specific as it relates to honors courses and historical you know ins and outs of that catalog i think they're going to address it yeah and did we i'm sorry
066if i missed it did we decide how we're going to address it or we just want to publish catalogs from the previous five years is that what i heard no what do you how is it going to be presented what i heard would be provided a rationale for changes that have been made are we going to be able to see specifically what changes were made and is it how far back are we going i i guess that's a decision uh with where we're at in the school year i'd like to limit it and hopefully we can push this information to we've got this little thing called graduation on june 3rd so i know the high school is pretty busy with that sure um so maybe we can circle back with you on how to share
067that information that's right yeah yeah no to make an action you guys were going to address it and get back to us okay perfect thank you okay so with that um we don't have any information reports this week just triple checking um so let's go to board committee reports any updates from any committees from the district equity team we met for uh the last time this year i know you're going to hear a lot more from nate rouse and this time we went to roslyn so i personally want to thank the staff and principal kirk at roslyn because i went from for hosting first this district equity team for me but i went from only being very familiar with the amazing playground that the roslyn pto helped build um with the district and uh and
068our construction partners to to going inside the building three times in one week and it was great to hang out with um i know all of us board members have picked schools that we're not as familiar with and that those tours are ongoing and it was great to hang out with the dual language uh classes and during stem and hang out with kindergarteners during their snack time and and learn more about roslyn so um thank you to principal kirk and the staff for that but um with regard to district equity team um it's it has been just so great to meet in person um we've been touring just a reminder that it's an invitational space and over the last two years really built a lot of trust among each other it's a cross-section of our
069teachers our staff board members community members parents and a student abigail who's back there uh and uh it was it's it's been a a wonderful space to do self-reflection but also to think about how do we move forward with regard to equity and common language and integrating the stories and backgrounds of our incredibly multi-racial district with students with different neurodivergent different abilities and different socioeconomic backgrounds and it's been uh it's been a wonderful space we reflected on we've been going through journal together and we've reflected on our experiences with race um and i and nate will present some more to you later on but it was also a great time to thank abigail who's moving on to duke um two departing members and dr adminiers maxwell principal at sunny hill who's retiring this year so
070it was great to be able to thank them as well and for those um parents in the community i know there's some interest in our equity efforts and district equity team but please feel free if you're interested to to reach out to nate who i'm sure will provide his contact info later because we we do want you to get involved in different levels uh and leah who's a part of that team do you want to add anything to our meetings this year as a whole you are doing a great job and i feel bad that i'm not live in person but yes it's been a very good team and there's been some sub sub committees going on and i'm sure nate is going to update the community in his update so thank you so much
071to all of our members and all of the teachers and staff that are working on this in the different buildings and the the communities that are being built across the district i super appreciate you and so does the rest of the families and the students in our district to keep this work moving forward because it's super important and i feel like moving forward with our you know strategic plan or framework 220 in the future so thank you so much everybody and i appreciate dr hunt in supporting this work so much thanks all right we'll hear more about that in a few minutes um any other committee reports safety and security matt um we got to say hello to our new sro we have new blue reflective lanyards for members of the safety and security team
072to kind of differentiate them when walking the halls from staff subs students all that so there's different color coding it's they're easily recognizable they put forward the draft schedule for the run hide fight presentations that are going to go out to all the schools starting next year we talked about bringing back the fire prevention and safety curriculum across all elementary schools and incorporating visits to the fire stations again um and there was some excitement regarding that and then also talked about just reaching out to um our emergency departments to let them know that with you know prom obviously just happened and some other activities are happening at the high school there will be some kids that are getting home after curfew just to put that alert out there into the community so that they know
073that there will be some um some kids getting home a little later than normal that was it awesome also one more uh it's still may so happy asian american pacific islander heritage month again and happy early pride month for june and one reminder there's we have a cultural calendar up that i'm sure nate will talk about and that has more resources about both these months and uh for the rest of the year as well so check that out on that equity page all right thank you all right shall we move on to the consent agenda can i just give a quick um the 220 foundation i'm excited i'm hoping i can go because i haven't been able to it's pitch night tomorrow at the high school um for the incubator program um so 5 p.m
074um it starts at 5 p.m and then pitches will start at 6 pm which i think should be pretty cool yes is there money awarded yes there is so it's the top four get to um present right all right now are we ready to move the consent agenda do we have a motion um to approve the consent agenda as presented and i'll read through everything that's in there you have to have a motion second okay so we have um gifts and gifts from joyce moynihan and joyce wright from the national society of daughters of the american revolution over 630 books for the summer read for students so that's very exciting thank you very much for that choice and joyce we also have april reports for 2021 exception bills activity accounts for bhs and k-8 wage
075and payroll report treasurer's report and revenues and expenditures those are the april reports and then we have may reports for the bill list and nslp bill list we also have minutes from may 3rd both open and closed and i should have said this first to remind everybody to look we do have a revised personnel report so make sure you take a look at that and then as we spoke about at their last meeting we have um the consolidated district plan we'll also be improving on the consent agenda any questions okay let's do a roll call sandra bradford yes steve wang yes aaron chan ding yes leah callister lazari katie karam yeah barry all schuler yes angela wilcox yes all right motion passes so with that motion passing i'd like to thank the board of education
076for me the opportunity to be part of the district 220 team i'm very excited to get started and continue that excellent work that district 220 is known for i'm looking forward to the continued success of working with the families and staff and sharing my passion for special education i'm honored to be here so thank you very much and dr hum thank you for your kind words thank you thank you very much thank you welcome welcome [Applause] all right let's move on to our action items do we have a motion to approve the lunch and breakfast menu price prices as presented second all right any questions of what was presented any summer you want to make a statement before we we discussed this in finance and um i think we are obligated to and that's the
077recommendation uh that we're making though either that or we have to make adjustments elsewhere in the budget so yeah i think leah talked about this too in her uh summary report last meeting okay are you ready for roll call let's do it mary altschuler yes leah callister lazari yeah katie karam yes aaron chanding yes sandra bradford yes steve wang yes angela wilcox yes okay motion passes did we say the numbers um so the breakfast price will go to 150 and um the new price for um lunch is 305 35 cents i get that right correct okay thank you okay so next up is the consideration to approve um the retirement agreement and general release leave a motion okay any questions or comments just like to recognize and thank jones for her service to the district
078she is one that cares deeply about kids and families and certainly made an impact on a lot of people so i wanted to recognize and thank her for her time i wish her well with her retirement absolutely thank you beth all right should we do a roll call steve wang yes leah callister lazari yeah angela wilcox yes sandra bradford yes aaron chan ding yes barry alt-schuler yes katie karum yes all right um next we have a motion to approve a one-time performance-based payment to dr hunt in the amount of fifteen thousand dollars second okay so um the board of education took some time to think about and reflect upon this year that we've talked about a little bit and um the motion that we'll vote on here is to as it was stated is a
079one-time performance recognition to dr hunt for all the work that he's done in his first year here in this in hopefully the last year of our pandemic but thank you very much for being here and all the work that you've done and the leadership you've given to to the staff of the district i appreciate that and certainly lucky to have such a great team so thank you for your leadership as a board as well you're very welcome so again just a one it's a one time and it does not change the contract that we do have in place okay and it's also very similar to a cpi increase that we granted in line with in addition to the to the hours you put in um that we granted to a lot of the rest of
080the administrative staff as well that's correct all right roll call aaron chanding yes sandra bradford yes leah callister lazari yeah katie carram yes angela wilcox yes barry altschuler yes steve wang yes all right motion passes thank you dr hunt um let's go into our discussion items first up is uh i'm not sure who all's coming forward uh dr fuller dr byrne okay we're gonna talk about pandemic lessons so just as a kind of an intro we we talked a lot about uh dealing with the pandemic and getting through the pandemic but we also talked a lot about this is completely kind of flipped education on its tail and there in any kind of crisis there's opportunity and it was as we wrestled with how to best capture the things that we should consider to hold
081on to uh as an executive council we made the decision that we needed to go out and talk to our teachers and get feedback from our teachers so executive council members went to every building in the district and went through a protocol asking questions specific to lessons learned during the pandemic and i think what i think the board is accustomed to we don't just kind of gather information and then just put it on the shelf the teams worked really hard on analyzing that data developing themes and presenting in a way that it can be useful and meaningful as we move forward with making decisions about the future of our schools the last thing i'll say and then i'll turn it over uh it really validated a lot of the conversations and input that we've received
082uh during focus groups and we saw on our community input forms uh in terms of the pandemic and moving forward so uh certainly appreciate all of exec council was involved in gathering this and and and dr byrne and dr fuller in terms of kind of bringing this together for the board tonight durham as dr hunt stated we each exec council members each went to one or more schools and engaged with their staff and specifically asked these three guiding questions the first what have you learned throughout the pandemic about what education and school could be how have relationships change between you and your students and their families and finally what programs or services developed out of necessity during the pandemic that you'd like to see continued and even though those are three targeted questions you will
083find through our results that many many more themes came out of those questions and we found it fascinating what our our staff came up with as dr hunt indicated all 12 schools are represented in our responses and when we shut all out we ended up having just over 1500 responses from all of the schools that we went through individually and coded and collected this data between january and april of this year there were five primary themes that came out and melissa and i will go through these themes right now the top five themes were technology flexibility and adaptability relationships sel and finally homeschool connections and then there were seven secondary themes that came out as well the first theme technology was mentioned even though it was not a primary question we asked it was mentioned
084in over 23 percent of the of the responses and the the top two technology related responses were number one the staff was interested in continuing virtual parent meetings as an option after the pandemic through zoom or some other or some other platform they were not interested in replacing them completely they were interested in having them remain an option and likewise with virtual staff meetings with both district meetings and school-based meetings keeping zoom as an option after the pandemic in addition staff respondents were interested in keeping remote learning days for emergency days as options among the among the responses and a smaller number were interested in having remote learning program stay the remote learning stay as a program after after the pandemic as a student choice program as we were coding the results in technology it
085was clear that some results were more pos some were some results were positive on technology some results were negative on technology so we decided to code that too we just we discovered that among all those 1500 responses we had of the technology responses 71 were positive comments about technology only 24 were negative comments and there were some middle comments too i believe the the term double edged sword came up a lot more than once and then we then we we found it interesting to check out how does this break down among the grade levels and perhaps not surprisingly the elementary teachers found that they had a more positive view of technology than the 6-12 teachers and we probably think that had a lot to do with cameras during cameras on during class because we had
086a lot of those types of comments come up in the in the in the breakdown difficulty in getting students to be on camera we also gave them the choice as well but it like it led to it led to a lot of different opinions we'll say as far as flexibility and adaptability these these two this this topic came up about 14 of the time among all of the responses and this was a great comment because it encapsulated so many of the teachers who who mentioned they were surprised that they realized that learning really can't happen anywhere and this response has a lot of a lot of meat to it and there are a lot of a lot of different topics in there that were expressed throughout the comments in addition inflexibility and adaptability a lot
087of teachers talked about what i call the ideals of blended learning you may remember that our definition in the district of blended learning is learning that's partially online partially face to face where students have some control over time place path and pace and that came up many times in flexibility and adaptability those specific terms in fact and finally the terms resiliency and creativity came up a lot during the flexibility and adaptability section the next primary theme is relationships which was about 13 of the overall responses so overall staff felt that their relationships strengthened with students other staff members as well as families so if we break that down from a pre-k5 lens and a secondary lens you'll see that it was an overwhelming positive response and that they felt that their relationships became much deeper
088as a result of and then in regards to the breakdown of staff to students staff to staff and staff to family you can see that the majority of staff are referencing the staff to student relationships because if you think about it staff really got an opportunity to not only getting to know students on an academic level but got to know them on a personal level as well to really understand and know what each child and family was going through i think this might be the most powerful quote that came out of our data education in schools are about relationships which lead to learning and growth that's really what it's all about is knowing each other as who we are as humans and then making connections and those being as important if not more important in
089some cases than academic content another primary theme which is also not surprising because we've talked a lot about it this year is social emotional learning which was about nine percent of overall responses and the comments here were about the increased emphasis on seo and then a lot of staff members talked about the need for more social interaction during the school day now that we are back in person and and talking to students more about what it means to communicate with one another collaborate with one another in an in-person school setting and then the continued need for us to look at as a district what we're doing in terms of sel in regards to staff and interventions and then our last primary theme was that home school connection which was about eight percent of overall responses
090so staff as i talked a little bit about before is gained a deeper understanding of the home lives of students they really got to know them on a deeper level and then overall the changes in parent and family engagement staff felt that that really increased during the pandemic because of the time that they were spending with students and families in both modality as well it's easier in some cases to connect with families virtually because you're not having to travel anywhere and then in addition to our primary themes we did have some secondary themes that we did feel important to talk about so these were any themes that were anywhere from one to five percent of the overall responses so in person learning meaning that in-person learning is still the preferred method of learning over virtual
091communication always the the point that more communication is needed with students and families interventions to continue to focus on both the academic interventions as well as the social emotional interventions blended learning strategies this was talked about a lot in the in the written comments and utilizing the blended learning strategies specifically at the high school that we've had in place for many years but continuing to capitalize on those as well and then trust came out as a secondary theme and staff members reported that there is a high level higher level of trust as a result of the pandemic than was there previously and then personalized learning we opened up a window and a door to what this could look like for students and getting them what they need when they need it in the way that
092they need it and then more opportunities for staff collaboration so now in terms of next steps we're bringing this data to you today and then our exec council members will be sharing this data report and presentation with each building to in a synthesized way so the staff know what the themes were from all of our buildings and then we also presented this with our elt slt group last week and are supporting the buildings and incorporating this into their school improvement or vision cycling process so any questions or feedback from the board i think this is awesome i'm so glad you guys did this because you know it's so important to learn from you know this crazy unanticipated event um and i just you know i have i have one comment and then i also i
093want to start though with just a praise which is you know i can remember i don't know how many years ago it was and i think it was dr fuller but maybe it was someone else that was with you but you were explaining to us who were sitting like doe-eyed what blended learning meant and they were like there was like a picture of a student then there'd be little boxes like they may spend some time in school and they may learn the content in school and go home and do their homework or they may learn the content at home and come to school and do their homework and we were like what does that mean we're asking so many questions and it seems so you know out of the box and and you know anything
094that's different i think you always kind of at least i try to kind of tap the brakes like is this is this the right direction is this what we should be doing and and then you know we all got on board and it became so much more natural and then you know obviously in-person learning is preferred and you know that's your your assessment as well but it was really um i think just it made me proud to think that we were already forward thinking about this situation um before it happened without knowing that this was going to happen so um i just really want to commend you for that i thought it was um you know it started out where we were kind of patting ourselves on our backs because we had asked for that
095you know the ability to do um uh snow days as remote learning days and we thought it would just be you know a couple weeks that we would have to do this and we were ahead of the curve but look what happened so that was number one and then number two was something that i brought up maybe the last thing maybe two meetings ago but i just i i think i mentioned i was sitting at a table during the learner profile with a teacher who made such a an interesting comment and i just hope that we can i don't know what to do with this comment but it resonated with me so well that i think that it's something we have to take forward which was just that the pandemic showed us that children you
096know while we have been working towards collaborative learning we also had situations where kids had to learn how to work completely independently and this really highlighted or spotlighted you know maybe some of the the you know the areas that we need to work on to allow for both of those things because it's not necessarily that we're going to work in a society our kids are going to you know grow up and work in a society where everything is collaborative sometimes you do have to be an independent worker and sometimes you have to be um you know inventive and creative and you know problem solving and all that all by yourself and you know this pandemic definitely highlighted that because a lot of kids were working in their bedrooms by themselves so um i just wanted
097to throw that out there as one observation that i just thought was so smart that a teacher said and i was like okay i hope we can i don't know what we do with that but i i just found it very thoughtful and i think too it speaks to the importance of the learner profile and once we solidify what those personal success skills are how do we scaffold those down and up and what do those look like in different contexts so what does that look like when a student's working independently versus with a group and being able to support a student in both contexts we never intended these results to to dovetail so well with what we learned in the the summit and the learner profile work but they definitely have so thanks for pointing
098that out and thank you for remembering those animations forever to do thank you well worth it well worth it great example it reminded me of um one of the quotes i was looking at last week or last board meeting that 90 of education is encouragement right and i and i took care of as a french gentleman i can't remember his name i've got my head i just wrote it down here but um and that i think coincides with what you presented as well with those relationships and the sel and how important that truly is and i'm looking forward to seeing how we can continue and strengthen that as we continue with education i mean i think there are some wonderful opportunities here that we maybe wouldn't have seen and i love thinking about the silver
099linings i think even doctor when we spoke to you before you even came here we talked about um you know looking for what what what can we learn from this pandemic and what can we do better going forward so i'm really proud of all the work that you've done and i'm proud of everybody's feedback here it's it's an amazing volume of feedback and i'm really looking forward to seeing how we can do better so i smile oh god did you have it no okay the only thing i'm just echo is you know a lot of people kind of got on that bandwagon of saying we've got to learn from this but i don't know of any other district that took the time to commit to talking to a staff breaking that information down and pulling
100it together think about how does this play into what what we do next and it's really powerful work that you know it it's a great little package and a presentation but it's messy and it's ugly and it's a lot of time and effort so um i i think it's going to serve the district well moving forward i'm really proud of this work i'm just going to say i smiled when you said that there seemed to be a desire to continue some of the parent-teacher conferences virtual because um so my husband and i experienced both where in the fall we were stationed and we got to meet our teachers in person or our teachers our son's teachers in person and in the spring we did the virtual meetings and one thing i really appreciated about the
101virtual meetings even though i love the physical is that we were on time to all of them and it wasn't just it wasn't just because of me and my bad habits that we were late at station it was that we were as much as we loved the building we were getting lost we couldn't find like the different where the rooms were the different hallways were just spending time getting oriented so i appreciated being to fit like eight meetings in in our 15-minute time frame it seemed it's it seemed very efficient without losing some of the intimacy and the one-on-one conversation we we were able to get with our teachers so i guess my question is i think that's something that jumps out is a tangible uh thing that maybe we might keep going is there
102anything else that kind of comes to mind at this kind of early stages or processing feedback is like oh these are things that you know we may want to that you kind of can see incorporating as we move forward lots of things i think specifically what's coming to mind now is the flexibility and adaptability as well as the opportunity to really personalize learning for students and making that shift to from differentiated instruction to true personalized learning and encouraging students to own the learning i think will be really powerful and that now we know for sure that learning doesn't have to be confined by time or space and there is a lot we can do there to really reimagine how we're supporting all of our learners like likewise with blended learning where the high school teachers
103were able to use the terms because many of them had experienced them but we got some of the same feedback with midland elementary and we had started going down that road to expand blended down to the elementary midland elementary grade levels we're completely ready for it now because everyone experienced some level for it so it's this is an opportunity that that cannot be wasted i'm guessing we've also lost any kind of true snow day now right it'll probably be remote it's two decisions two decisions right now do we need to know should you guys be in here tonight [Laughter] i would just echo doctor sandra i mean i think we all know i could make my list of negatives from uh remote learning i'm sure i said i'm ad nauseum but this is so pike
104i think like you said the silver lining i mean it is we did learn something and this is or we you teach i learned something and it's so great to bring it forward and and benefit in ways from where we were so awesome thank you you struggled with the pandemic and learning at home and being alone but there's a good number of kids that thrived during that time and so i'm you know i applaud you and i want to capture that and make sure those kids that thrive still have the opportunity to continue to thrive because maybe they don't belong in a standard classroom or they need the opportunities to kind of get outside the box like like we did during during covet so you know and and uh you know the old saying you
105know when life gives you lemons make lemonade i mean you guys made a very sweet program here and i'm just very impressed and i hope we can follow through on some of the improvement process using what we've learned you know i applaud all your hard work hey thank you i don't mean to cut off barry um you didn't okay okay um yeah thank you for all this work i appreciate it too and just a quick question um is this i know there's been a lot of work on the seo dashboard i think that's the right term are we still working with that and building on that is my small question here because that was a lot of work from the past few years and this is you know continuing so that's that's it yes thank
106you we are in the process of administering the spring sel survey through ekris if that's part of what you're referring to yeah that window is currently open awesome all right well thank you thank you and thanks to all the staff um for all this incredible feedback keep the momentum going yeah keep the momentum keep it going these relationships are so important it's too rich to let it end here for sure all right so next up is our equity update yes hey is that a fan club i do know they're your fans they're all for you so this is report four for me and i believe the first time that i'm actually seeing all of you and we don't have masks on so i know that's a recurring theme but hello uh good to see you
107all um thank you for so much for the opportunity um i promise i will be as uh succinct as possible um i do have some updates for you but i think the most important pieces are the the folks in the back of the room that want to share some of the experiences that they've had with their work this is kind of a compliment a compilation of uh just checking back in as to some of the work that we talked about we were going to be doing in the fall and then giving you some updates on that but then really talking a little bit about some of the lived experiences that are happening in the building and then talking about some of the stuff on the horizon so um with that being said okay we're good
108good good good uh just as uh uh you know to kind of give you an overview talk a little bit about leading for equity this is just a little follow-up about some of the work that the administration has done this year as we've kind of done some professional development together so i wanted to give you a little highlight on that a wonderful blessing from the illinois state board of education which is called the equity journey continuum you may remember some scuttlebutt about that sometime in february or january from from dr hunt mentioning to you that the the illinois state board of education has given us a wonderful opportunity to excel as it relates to an equity journey continuum i'll talk briefly about that the equity in action is all about the folks behind me talking
109a little bit about the great work that's happening in the district i'll give you a little bit of a hint of some things that are happening on the horizon and then last and certainly not least allow you some opportunity for a question okay so with that in mind um i know that uh sandra had always already spoken about this but just i always start with that commitment to equity because that's one of the things that is the driver for my work i know that you all know that um since you wrote it so i won't have to read that to you but uh this is again as a reminder to the community as the why in the direction of the work that i i particularly do leaning for equity one of the things they talked
110about earlier in the year was meeting with dr hunt dr winkelmann with some questions about what sort of uh professional development our administration has had relative to to equity uh race and cultural diversity uh we hadn't had much at the time so we kind of brainstormed behind the scenes and remembered in i think in the fall i talked about our first administrative academy together where all 60 of our administrators were together uh had some wonderful professional development than what i did for the rest of the year is just sustain that effort through meetings with them and our goals were to again get to know each other establish establish positive and meaningful relationships and then again delve into a deeper understanding of what equity race and cultural diversity looks like and what it looks like to
111lead in that work and so we spent some time together about three hours we split the time 60 you know there's 60 of us that we did uh you know half hour three hour session in the morning three hour sessions in the afternoon so that our buildings could still run and then we could still have the opportunity to develop our work together and so we'd use that model for the remainder of the year um in the red is there's something it's a manual called cultural proficiency and manual for school leaders that's some of the anchor work uh for the work that we do so i wanted to make sure i shared that and then behind that is something called the culturally proficient continuum framework which really is the meat and potatoes if you will of
112the work one of the things that i did for administrative staff is uh well two things first um i i work with this with our district equity team and i'll have to be honest um uh steve williams who works in our in the copy center um i had sent him a document for folks that i wanted the administration to have and so i'm annoying what he did was he was kind enough to blow it up into a sheet that looks like a place mat so all of our leaders got this this document that you see here and it's a framework and it's really cool because they can really use this and what it is is it's just a way to measure um your growth as it relates to uh equity or proficiency and so there
113is uh destructiveness which is obviously a space where you maybe do not see equity at all and actually you don't see equity and actually you try to um do things to move away from equity versus the far right which is proficiency which is in green which is where we want to be where we see the difference respond positively and affirmingly and so it's a continuum because different dependent upon what happens or whatever whatever you're working on depending upon the pushback or depending upon where you're sitting you may ebb and flow relative to the framework i think it's important for us to though as leaders to know individually and collectively where we are in the framework and then use that to really push ourselves more into the proficiency and so you'll hear a little bit more
114about this framework in particular from one of our administrators who's going to talk a little bit about how we use that as a growth tool for us together you'll hear that a little bit another big piece is just going from if you think about our work is there's a just a mentality of philosophy from going from being a reactive administration to a proactive administration as it relates to equity and what that means is instead of thinking about it from a philosophy of tolerance or mandated equity and again you look at the small little arrows there you've got the destructiveness the incapacity and blindness i showed you those on that framework at the beginning so as as as you learn and grow in equity you want to go from a reactive framework to something that's more
115proactive and that means that we start focusing on us and our practices versus focusing on them and and equity being a problem a diversity of inclusion can be goals that we can obtain and so we want to do everything to get more further on the right of this column versus the left and so again two big components from the leadership that we really looked at to anchor the work that we did together another another way to look at it is thinking about leadership from expanding our leadership model and mindsets to be less traditional and more of a an equity leadership approach and what i mean by that is that there are times and places where we should be traditional there are things that administratively from just an admin 101 perspective when something happens we know
116that there's a there's a problem that we can fix and there's a way that we do that and and we use that what this is challenging us to think about though is when complex problems come across and so a complex problem is something that's usually dealing with equity rates and diversity and what you want to do is kind of flip the model a little bit and really seek information first before you move and what that simply is is another way to say let's talk to the individuals that are most impacted prior to us making decisions more often than not in our leadership structures we we don't find ourselves talking to the people that are most impacted prior to making decisions this challenges us to stop before we start making decisions and really talk gathered feedback
117from individuals especially those impacted prior to us making decisions so that we can make sure that we have a collective way of approaching a problem versus it being more of a something that doesn't involve that feedback um as is journey continuum again probably in january 25th i think is when our state board of education started talking a little bit about um producing this for us it actually didn't come live for us until probably mid-february i know that that time dr hunt said hey you know this equity journey continuum is coming and again this is just a polite tease i promise you in august we'll get we'll delve even deeper into this but just know that this is part of the uh the uh the process that our state has been doing as they're looking at
118trying to find ways to hold districts accountable related to their equity experiences and so the reason for this is that as they looked at why they're focusing on equity is that students from low-income families are under-represented in advanced placement gifted programs students of color more often suspended students with individualized educational programs are more chronically absent english learners score below their peers in math and reading these are some of the key components where as they were looking at their data as a state and they decided you know what we probably have to do something different so let's ask our districts to focus in a different way on these particular areas and that's how kind of the the continuum came to pass the key components of the continuum are three particular categories where our one is student
119learning the other bucket is learning conditions and the area three is elevating educators these are the three buckets ladies and gentlemen but i will tell you under those three buckets there's probably six to seven different profiles that make up that one bucket okay and again this is just a nice little mean tease for you we'll get into the devils in the details as we continue to learn more um the the key in this is this the state has has asked us over this summer prior to october uh the fall of uh this fall where our school report cards come out that is when they anticipate releasing what's called the equity journey continuum categories for us as a school it's not individual schools it's one as a district and so we will get a score okay
120or steps if you will in these particular areas just to give you another mean tease about that to uh to talk about that a little bit more uh the progression indicators are large gaps in equity would be something where we would have a one um moderate gaps at equity would be something that would be a two small uh gaps in equity would be a category three minimal gaps would be four okay as it relates to the again the aggregate of our scores in those three areas that i just talked about here is where we landed as a district okay the good news is this um we want to we certainly want to be more towards the three and four areas than we do want to be in ones but um again this is the the
121overall numbers once we start delving into each of the categories we will see why in some of the other small other areas the numbers will be lower than what we see here but again this is the compilation of those all right and so um as we look at student learning learning conditions and elevating educators this is kind of where we're listed now and then as an example of an area for growth for us as we look at this next slide here we can look at the kindergarten individual development survey or kids they are saying that a large gap for us is how we are responding to that and so as they're looking at our demographics they're looking at who's responding and who's not so this gives us an indication right now that we know one
122of the things that we're going to have to report out on prior to october prior to this going live is what we're going to do as a district to go from that 1.5 category to a two to a three or two or four the good news for us is this because we have already started our equity journey besides what the what what the state is requiring a lot of the professional development that we're talking about developing and the things that we're doing are going to be pieces of our narrative that we provide to the state board of education that says this is the way that we're looking to move from a step one to a step two or from a step 3.1 to a step 3.4 it'll get that specific and again we'll talk a
123little bit more about those numbers and our journey in august but in the interim what will happen is myself melissa and a team this also has the district equity team to be honest written all over it we'll get together to write what's called a narrative the state is actually giving us time to develop a narrative over the summer before they release this to the public that explains what our number is and then again most importantly what we plan to do to go to the next level so our work over the summer with this document is digesting it and then talking about a narrative about what we'll be going doing to go from point a to point b okay so in essence in the fall when i see you again in august or september we'll talk
124about the journey and then we'll start talking about actually what we're doing as it relates to those individual pieces we'll actually talk about that okay that 1.5 is 220's particular score yes in that area okay and again as a district not as as uh individual schools okay a little different from the report card okay more to come on this equity in action um this is the the little part where i'm gonna ask a couple of my friends to come up and uh and talk a little bit about some of the work that they're doing um you know we've had different cohorts that have taken place uh um the last two years the high school in particular has been a little bit ahead of the rest of the organization and so some of those individuals are
125in year two of their equity courts which is a place where they do what are called equity uh action projects so they take something that is near and dear to their heart and they try to explore that deeper right and so the first person i'd like to bring up is miss barb spicer who's gonna come up and talk a little bit about well you know i'm not gonna say it i want you to talk a little bit about your project thank you thank you good evening i am barbara spicer i am the mother of seven children that went to the barrington school district and grandmother of 19 and seven of whom are in the school district now in the elementary in the middle school and in the high school so that is one of the
126reasons why this is near and dear to my heart i love the barrington school system and i want it to be the best it can be and i am a listener and i'm in the position to listen to staff i'm administrative assistant in the english department for over 12 years to listen to staff to listen to students to listen to my family and to listen to my neighbors and what i heard repeatedly was there doesn't seem to be a very diverse staff in our school system so i became really curious about that and i thought well that will be my project why do we not have a more diverse staff and what can i do to find out how we can change this so i thought about i spoke with nina i don't know if
127she's still here there she is about my project and we both decided maybe i could interview the department chairs in the high school and have some questions that i was curious about so i did and i'll share with you my findings i had asked them and i interviewed seven different department chairs how long they'd been in their position and it was a total of 58 years for all of them with an average of eight years so within these eight years i asked them how many candidates had they interviewed they had interviewed approximately 286 so that average per each 40. and then i asked them also ask them how many people of color diversity have you interviewed they said 70 a total so an average of 10 and then i asked them how many people of
128color of different diversity within our school and our staff have you hired and they said seven within the eight years and most of them were in the world language department which would make sense um i asked them how did you find your applicants they've said posted on school website people who had seen the the posting facebook groups referrals from district 204 referrals from national lewis referrals from northwest department chair association i asked them are you satisfied with the pool of applicants you've been interviewing they said yes but it's getting harder they would like to see more diverse candidates they said that alumni returning is nice because there are a fair amount of alumni and that's nice but it would also be nice to have a more diverse hiring pool um they said that late hiring
129puts them at a disadvantage that many of them felt that they were doing a lot of their hiring in the 11th hour and then you weren't really getting the top candidates they said and this came out repeatedly that hr reach out would be helpful so if human resources could reach out to different applicants in the area in the city that that would be helpful they asked what or i asked what can we do to increase the number of diverse candidates some of them said could we possibly hire a recruiting service to actively recruit more diverse candidates one of the department chairs and this was an interesting revelation that she ends up hiring a lot of her student teachers and because then they're there they see that they do a good job and the student teachers
130realize they like being here in the barrington school district and they get hired and we thought could that not be a way to get some candidates in here from other schools from more diverse candidates it's not as much of a risk they're coming here you know many times maybe without a family yet so they're not moving family um and they could see that yes they could fit in at barrington high school and also on the other hand we could see yes they're doing a wonderful job they'd be a great candidate for hire these diverse applicants they also want to make sure that the language used in our job postings are welcoming to all and i think that is something they've been working on i asked them anything else you would like to share regarding your
131thoughts on the district's interviewing and hiring process they said diverse representation here at bhs is important there needs to be intentional steps to recruiting diverse candidates we need to establish a pipeline with colleges and universities with a diverse student population for potential student teachers and teacher applicants they said the video interviews were very helpful because on a application you cannot ask race or you know various other things religion and that the video here they see yes they're hiring someone a diverse applicant so they they really appreciate that um if i could add something i think one of the uh the morals of this is the affirmation of some of the things that we talked about in the fall relative to how we work with hr and um try to um diversify our pools by using
132different measures and so we've heard from a couple division heads that talked about kind of our the normal standard operations which is you know you go to your your division chair pool of candidates everyone has these candidates but we're recognizing is that as it relates to how i'm looking for candidates of color our process might have to look different the way that we go out and reach out might have to look different we might have to start going to different places and frankly where more candidates of color are so maybe that's connections with uh the hsbcu's one of the things that district 203 does one of the things that district u46 does one of the things that district 300 does is they actually do have a team that does go to different places where there
133are more minority candidates and so that could be something that we consider doing and so this was just an affirmation of some of the very things that we've been talking about on myself to talk to teresa about i know that teresa's been talking about human resources about about how we can really really aggressively find ways to increase our candidate pool again at the same time hiring the best candidates it doesn't mean that you are lowering your standards it's just saying that as a district you want to make sure that you have individuals that represent the diversity that you have in your district thank you thank you so my own reflection after gathering this information um and thinking about it i feel that it's a little disturbing that we are willing to seek out and pay
134architects large amounts of money for design renovations to our buildings in order to keep them up to date and to fill our students needs yet from what i can see we have not been spending the time money or effort needed to hire a diverse group of educators to work within these fine buildings and meet the needs of our students i know that it was mentioned several times while interviewing the department chairs that finding and retaining these diverse candidates is hard but it's my experience in life that most things that are worthwhile are hard and in order to keep the excellence in our schools and to walk the walk of promoting equity which we say we want for our school district we need to proactively recruit applicants from colleges and universities with diverse populations we need
135to develop relationships with these schools i also know that sometimes meaningful change can be slow and gradual however i wonder how many more graduating classes we will continue to let go through the barrington school district without the benefit of experiencing a diverse staff how many barrington alumni when recalling their days at barrington will say i never saw her had a teacher that looked like me we can and need to do better please make this a priority before another year goes by thank you bart thanks sure hire your brac well then miss robinson you want to come up heidi and jennifer are also in their second year and for their equity action project in a spirit of using a train the trainer model we have asked them to be part of our professional development team so
136their ex with action project was working with us to actually develop and lead the facilitation for our second cohort this year hi i'm jennifer robinson i'm assistant principal at the high school i've been there for 15 years how many 15 years i'm heidi rockwell and i teach english and social studies and i'm um i wear many hats and this is one of them this is my 24th year here at barrington we like to call ourselves equity in action we are when you look at equity we look at organizational structure organizational policies and at the high school right now we are the peasants as we've both been here a long time we've seen different policies come and go but what we really have learned throughout the pandemic throughout just our years being here is that together
137we are stronger and what creates a true diverse and equitable place is a place of belonging so this year for year two we started last year in learning cohort year one is professional development student center focus uh research-based practices that give us those tools that teach us about equity and diversity year two we are helping to guide or guide different staff members in their projects and the nice part about that is it's it's a hard job there's a lot of courageous conversations that are had but there's a lot of reflection and in order to support student centers you have to support staff you have staff has to see themselves in the students because that's how they change instruction that's how they change behavior that's how they create a sense of belonging in their classrooms and
138that's what we're doing through different artifacts through different professional development we are trying to create a safe space for staff to have those conversations of what their equity journey looks like and then we have the staff members go back to their classrooms and look around and really dive into what does this look like for me how am i looking at individual students whether it's based off different cultures economics abilities and race how am i creating that sense of belonging because as we all know students that don't feel like they belong aren't going to perform as well so supporting the staff and giving them the tools are helping to create that equity journey with students we've also created different opportunities in excelling student voice we've created just listening to students we've had student panels which were
139attended by our second year cohort staff where they heard different students different genders different cultures speak about what barrington high school looks like to them what their average day is like and it was powerful you could drop a dime on the floor and everybody just listened there there were tears in the room because you have to take that moment to stop and say wow i never knew this is what your experience was like and it was so powerful to hear student voice to hear the students talk about this is how high school is for me and as you think about it the fact that we have the chance to do this i think about when i went to high school and that no we didn't have that ability but now we do and it's so
140nice to just unwrap the staff and create those abilities we've created different clubs through student voice we were able to create the black student union that celebrates african american culture but also invites other different cultures to come in and celebrate i see you as being an african-american but i celebrate you for who you are and i want to be a part so we're not only are we doing that but we're creating other opportunities in terms of celebrating black history month in terms of celebrating women's history month in terms of getting different information out there so everyone feels a part because together we are stronger so i'm going to pass it over to heidi she's going to talk about some of the artifacts that we use in working with some of the staff in that year
141too i hope i'll be brief jennifer said it very eloquently um just the way this seems to me is that equity work is both the policy side the the practices and the policies that and the vision that we have as a district the hard work is in the personal and what is the personal work that we do with ourselves in that reflective practice and with our students and so the equity group that we are part of is really having that difficult hard conversations of learning as a teacher again what does it mean to be that learner again so that i can better understand my students and some of that is in our practices as teachers for example visual literacy and and recognizing how does my understanding of race equity diversity cultural proficiencies what does that
142look like when i see an image and so putting together activities that we do within our cohort that they can then take back to their students in their classes so the power of an image what is that what is that what do you see what do you understand what is your first thought when you see this in it and recognizing and thinking in a very personal way how how am i bringing my own experiences how am i bringing my own understanding of my worldview to my teaching that might not be accounting for the way that my students see the world and the way that they see this image and are we all on a similar can we have a common language can we have a common open conversation that allows us to see and to
143to grow so this is one small artifact of a work that we do that is both difficult rewarding challenging and necessary so thank you for supporting it and for allowing us to be part of it we really want to highlight the fact that this is a journey so there are difficult times there are difficult conversations but the nice part of what we do is the reflection piece everyone is at a different place in their journey so the reflection that we do with the staff the reflection that we do with the students helps to build that path and change and as we're going through that it's nice to see that that is definitely happening so again thank you thank you for your support you both are off the hot seat thank you um brian your abigail
144bergen um stories from district equity team members both of them have been um in spaces for two years working together abigail has been phenomenal bringing our student perspective and she will be leaving us we will miss her but she promises that she will carry on the work at duke university but wanted to give them an opportunity to just talk about the work from their perspective as well sure um i guess i can start so like has been said i know erin referenced a little earlier my name is abigail bergen i'm a senior uh high school i am the only student on the district equity team i've been involved with guys since what you emailed me like fall 2020 and we're like you should you should do this um and it's been great and i can't
145thank you enough for giving me space for my boys and for the student perspective as a whole uh to be heard i've been involved with equity work kind of at large from about that time i got involved with a year of courageous conversations the previous fall and then surrounding the summer 2020 i co-organized a black lives matter protest which was certainly um an experience there were it was a phenomenal experience to see all of the community solidarity and that's what gives me hope as we battle for a more equitable future for the district and i also got involved with be the change barrington a policy organization made up of vhs students and alumni i'd like to share some data from a survey they collected conducted in june of 2020 of about 650 barrington people associated
146with the school district only 7.4 percent of the respondents surveyed agreed that racism was being properly addressed in the district almost 80 percent of respondents believes that racism is a significant issue in the district with that being said something has to be done to fix that those numbers are from a representative sample and you know that tells you that work needs to be done that's where the district equity team has come in through years of dialogue and hard work we've managed to bring a lot of different perspectives together and i think that it's really important from a student perspective to prioritize understanding and respecting diversity no matter what you do after high school so i have a lot of friends that i know going to a bunch of different places so sophia who was just
147recognized for a fine arts award for and a ct score craziness thing amazing um is headed off to mit i know people taking gap years i know people uh joining the armed services i personally am attending duke university where i'll be continuing this work by majoring in some combination of public policy comparative studies political science and uh getting a certificate in civic engagement and social change absolutely will i figure that out when i get to it yes um and so no matter where you go and no matter what success looks like for you prioritizing inclusivity and diversity is a gateway to facilitating multifaceted success and i think that's one of my biggest takeaways from everything that we've done with the district equity team um over the past couple years is you know it's really valuable
148to be able to have conversations about difference and respect and value and cherish a diverse group of people at every age whether it's really young kids or adults and me in the roslyn road gym i think that what really has stood out to me is that prioritizing empathy and respect and inclusivity are things that really matter at whatever age um and i can't thank the equity team enough for doing such a great job laying the foundation of hopefully a more equitable future hello everyone i'm brian turcotte i'm the social worker at prairie campus this is my 21st year in the district i think perhaps fourth or fifth time having the opportunity to interact with the board this way so thank you i always appreciate when you're listening to the work we're doing um out and
149about i've been doing quite a bit of writing and revising since i was invited to be part of tonight's presentation because i want to be perfect when discussing such an important topic hence reading rather than speaking off the cuff or trying to remember everything i'm hoping to say i'll start by sharing an analogy i heard a number of years ago at a social work convention the speaker was addressing the role social workers have and fill within the education process that speaker reminded us that we when we are building our student houses reading writing math and all the other content subject matter courses are the bricks problem solving social emotional learning collaboration resilience self-advocacy teamwork coping in short the skills outside of the academic contents are the cement or mortar that builds strong foundations and hold
150everything together the work we've been doing as a district equity team falls into this category of support and enhancement i'm not sure everyone outside of schools is familiar with the term professional learning community but it is a type of collaborative patient we talk about and strive for for within education the district equity team has functioned as a true professional learning community i've been able to meet connect and work with a range of fellow educators and community members who share ideas find and explore information related to our work discuss successes problem-solve regarding challenges and learn from each other it has been rewarding hearing all about accomplishing for students across the district and within the 220 community our team has been able to share techniques lessons and strategies i've no doubt our work has led to improved
151experiences and stronger foundations for all 220 students you may have noticed i've yet to say diversity equity and inclusion outside of our team name i've observed an unfortunate trend that some people have started to find negative connotations to those words this is disheartening to me as a person a social worker and a professional educator my social work training tells me that finding connections looking for opportunities to elevate voices and include others is important i worry that social emotional learning and mental health will soon be questioned as well before working on the district committee i might have been scared to say and admit what i just did out loud in this venue i've continued to learn that it is important to talk openly about topics that are vital to student success my committee work gives me
152the courage to do so when it is time to adjust our math curriculum we may do research ask questions and even debate about the next best steps we would not freeze and decide that we shouldn't continue to evolve our math curriculum i hope that we can follow a similar path of continued work within the 220 community related to diversity equity and inclusion thank you one more almost time i promise bring us home katie matthews and zach ernst all right uh yeah i'll start um i'm zach ernst i'm the principal at huff street elementary and uh katie and i are gonna share a little bit um about some of the administrative work and what the equity work we've participated in this year has kind of looked like and then how that's kind of trickled down into
153kids so katie's going to share a little bit about that but this year um we've got the we've been very fortunate to be part of administrative equity cohorts and it's really been a an introspective process that that's kind of it started with some identity work where groups of administrators got together and we started doing beliefs and values activities and exercises we did some self-assessment and self-reflection and we had some scenario-based discussions and you know through all of that you you know i found myself all of a sudden being uncomfortable and i didn't think i'd be uncomfortable and you really developed kind of a trust in a relationship among the people in the room and i think for an administrative team that hadn't been together in a couple years getting the chance and me still being
154fairly new this is only year two for me it was a very vulnerable position to be in as in in some cases the first time i was in a room with some of the administrators but as you filter that down i think that's that vulnerability that willingness to talk openly and honest honestly and have the conversations is something we're trying to um kind of establish across the district um i think all of this work when we put the students at the center of everything that we do it's very easy to get behind this work because ultimately and you've heard it said tonight we want students to belong we want students to feel like they're represented and they feel included and the work that we did as an administrative team is has been has caused me
155to think differently about interactions i have with parents with students with staff and really thinking through how are we making learning belonging accessible to every kid in the community every kid in the school in those conversations help you take time to stop kind of remain calm think clearly and and listen um to other people's journeys and think about how is this going to impact what we do on a daily basis in schools and so with that being said i want to kick it over to katie and kind of share a couple examples of how that is kind of representative and what we do in schools okay so i um brought some pictures because i think that it's very helpful to see the work in action and how this can potentially play out with students over
156the course of the last few years the grove staff has done several staff book studies together and one particular book that is an example that has led our work with students is a book called being the change by sarah ahmed and that has led to students sharing their name stories in our classrooms creating identity webs and creating what we call i am statements and so the pictures and examples that i want to share with you are some of the work of our students most recently especially you can too if you peep fingers crossed i think we need to drag it across second grade students created i am statements things that they said about themselves i don't know if they interrupt you or keep going i am powerful i am proud i'm independent i am strong
157i am brave and they created visuals that went along with that then some fourth grade examples no we're really stuck here right there said about themselves i am a daughter crazy friend reader scientist swimmer pianist badminton player and a sister student kind tennis player swimmer and dancer i'm an athlete a writer and a student i am unique i'm a pianist kind forgiving and friendly i'm a reader a student friendly and friendly and in doing that and and in this work some of what we do is we have students go home and talk with their parents and one of the activities that they do with their parents is come up with the story of their name and then come back to school and share the story of their name so we ask them to go home
158and talk to their parents how did you get your name why do you have the name that you have what does your name mean how do we pronounce your name so part of us affirming students identities helping them to create their own identity and establish who they are as a person is making sure that we know how even to say their name correctly so these are pictures of the i am statements and if you want to go back just one okay well these are fourth grade iom statements here's some examples of name stories that students came back to class with and shared with their classmates my name is evelyn wong my mom thought that the name evelyn sounded pretty also she wanted a lin at the end of my name i felt happy that my
159name was evelyn and i am happy that i had a chinese name and so she shared that although her name is spelled w-a-n-g which phonetically it looks like wang it's pronounced and so now the teacher knows how to properly pronounce that student's name she shared her chinese name and what the chinese mean the symbol and what the symbols in her chinese name mean king good luck and gem another student shared that his mom liked the name daniel his middle name was after his grandfather and his last name has a w that's silent and he likes his name because it fits him and finally a student said my full name is nitya patel this is an indian name nitya means every day patel is the surname of indian people my name is of a godsen i
160feel nice because nitya is a nice name so in the classrooms it's a way of us allowing students to share their culture to share their backgrounds and to understand each other's backgrounds and to build a culture of belonging these are some examples of students poems that they wrote they're called where am i from poems and they were given a format to follow but then they included information about themselves and in these poems to identify themselves and actually i have an example from the classroom teacher detergent i am from apartment shag carpet knotted mud and ticky under my feet i am from the willow trees and the hard workers and avid readers from be respectful and be careful i'm from buddhist temples and incense prayers i'm from the lo and chang branch chewing noodles and soy
161milk from the grandparents who were pilots the parents that emigrated in my photo albums of my childhood from taiwan and the us i find my places things memories traditions and people of my dual origins so as you can see it's a way for our students and our staff also to share their cultures and embrace the differences that they have but also find the similarities in their humanity another step that we have taken at grove is working on diversifying the books that we have available to students we've done that for the last five years this is just a highlight of two of the books that we've done these are by diverse authors and about diverse characters this year's book was midsummer's man and it is about an indian-american girl and she is finding her place in
162her family she's one of four children and she has three older siblings who are extremely high achieving in different areas and she's looking for her niche in her family and the story is about how does she find her niche and family and it actually happens to be through baking and um this offered an opportunity for us to learn about the indian culture in our school and students participated in different activities and games that were associated with indian culture one of the things that they learned about was henna and they each created a hand a hannah hand that we have right now hanging up in the school around grove and just one thing it's a very simple thing but you'll notice that the paper that was available to them is available in colors of different tangents
163so when our students are doing something that's identifying that's just one very small and then that also did correspond with an activity that we did with our families because the theme of the book was about baking we offered a night for families to come and share information about their cultures and specifically share different foods from their cultures or even traditions for just family favorites things that maybe have and really we want this to be something that we do with our students to go back if you would hold on one quick second i will go back to my original powerpoint to close this up katie i believe that you have my computer [Laughter] panic for a second i was like no what know okay just as we're closing uh i just wanted to just show some
164other wonderful inclusive opportunities that we have in the district the one um i would wanted to highlight was uh um our roundup article that was just written in may that really talked about our a couple of our students and their experiences in the lbg uh btq plus community and uh just their experiences in the school and i thought it was a wonderful way for the um the high school to wrap their uh their arms around the students and then really give them an opportunity to provide some educational awareness about just what their lived experiences were um i'd click on this but i know if i clicked on it it'd take me another five minutes to get back to it so i apologize but if you don't have the article i'd love you to take a
165chance an opportunity to read it because again it's about building empathy and i hope that at least one kid read that article and looked at that and said wow you know i never knew that those students had those experiences but i certainly know that i felt the way that they have before and just to make them think differently about how we operate in spaces and so i really think that was a wonderful way uh to be inclusive uh at the high school so kudos to them for doing that um last but certainly not least a few other wonderful opportunities for equity and access um one of the goals that i had was trying to highlight at least half of our schools during this presentation and then in the fall i come back and try to
166highlight the other half this is a huge shout out to micah corb and the folks at countryside if you look at this wonderful basketball tournament it's not just about the tournament and i'm sorry that this is smaller but if i could direct your attention over here to the small little area over in the right there it's uh it's a student that's in a wheelchair that's shooting a basketball they were very clear in making sure that the community knew that this was all inclusive and it was for all abilities and i would so i wanted to highlight it like this because i so hope that as we continue this work we continue to see this in other schools as well in addition to that countryside is hosting a a a wild i was going to call
167it a fireside chat but it's a wildcat chat uh this is amy lekowitz and natalie pollock one of the parents and it's a way for foundation families to do two things first kind of come and get to know each other but also an opportunity for them to come in and find out things that they can do with their sons and daughters and their children leisure leisurely activities that they can do over the summer um when they're not in school so again just another wonderful way uh to show some of the inclusivity that's happening and obviously there's a little bit of a multicultural night that took place at rose a couple a couple nights ago uh i think it was last friday so just again another wonderful opportunity for access and inclusivity throughout the district um
168with that in mind part of equity on the horizon i've talked a lot about the preparations for cohorts for next year relative to making sure that um our teachers have the opportunity to go through some of the experiences that we've had this year so we will we'll have teachers go through that i talk to you in the fall about meeting individually with with principals i have done that we have names by june 1st we will have all of our names locked in and dates assigned at each schools for us to do our building level cohorts that next year will they will go through similar experiences that our leadership has went through this year to again improve what we do in the classroom last but certainly not least dr hunt asked a great question when i
169prefaced this with the leadership team on earlier this week and he asked nate what does this look like in the classroom i thought that was a really great question to ask and just as a as just as something to to show you is is we want people to be able to through this work as teachers there's roles of teachers and roles of site administrators as it relates to the cultural proficiency we want them to be able to assess culture and its effect on students and assess the culture of the classroom we want them to support students into discovering their own cultural identities we'd like for them to teach all subjects from a culturally inclusive perspective insist on classroom languages and behaviors that value differences use conflicts as object lessons you know learn and then most
170importantly teach students appropriate language for asking questions about other people's cultures and and telling other peoples about their experiences without there being this dissonance that happens and so finding ways to develop those relationships and for students to be able to do that so some that is some of the end games of the professional development work that we do um that being said you know aaron talked a little bit about the website we're going to continue to make that fluid especially as we flip to our our new website and creating more resources for families as we move forward i know i would have been long i thank you for that i really wanted to make sure that our folks came in who stayed a little longer to to talk about their shared experiences and so with
171that being said i am done and i would certainly love to open it up for questions that was a lot any feedback comments questions from the board this is phenomenal and i'm saying that all the board members can't be on the equity committee because there's so much there's so much that i would like to dive into here i have a question but i also have a request i've heard from the couple board members who are on equity committee that you share some very powerful uh resources and references and i'm hoping you can do that for all the board um you know i'm told there's like a google doc or something that we need access to and i just i'm so interested and you know i can't necessarily come to the meetings but i would love
172to partake and then ask questions if there's questions um but my question for you and this is it it's probably leaning towards the negative and i don't want to be negative but um i the feedback i've heard from some families is they don't want the word equity in our strategic planning right so are they i just want to kind of get from your perspective is this something that people are threatened by or is there denial that we need this in our community why you know what are you hearings i'm sure you're getting some of the pushback yeah why i think that's a great question and the first thing for me is one of the reasons why i started with the commitment to equity that we have as a district is a reminder of of what
173the charge is um this is what speaks to uh um the conversations that we were having at the time about why equity was was important for us as a district uh that being said you know sure there there are a lot of challenges with words that are happening a lot and so um even through the experiences that we've had when we were trying to develop our learning profile and developing documents there's been challenges to language what i would offer is that um if someone has an issue or a challenge with the word equity i'd love to hear that perspective and what i mean by that is uh um what is that i mean let's have a conversation about those challenges because i think that and again from your what you're hearing from this team is
174a desire to make sure that all of our students feel inclusive and welcome that is what our work is about um and to do that i mean you do have to think about um equity you do have to think about where we are as a district where we want to go and again we we just talked a little bit earlier about the illinois state board of education and their challenge for us and challenged for districts as it relates to an equity journey continuum so clearly there is a push in our state that focuses schools on this term of equity and again i know it's a challenge i know that for some folks there is this this belief that maybe it means something else but i hope that through the conversations that we continue to have
175through more um awareness through more conversations that people begin to understand that what we're really talking about is being inclusive right and i hope that you know uh not to steal some of the thunder that's coming for for next fall and some of the conversations that we're having about belonging and inclusivity i certainly hope that some of the work that we do lessens some of the fears and anxieties as relates to equity because again it's really about making sure that all students have the opportunities uh to be successful and whatever success looks like for them does that help no it does thank you and barry i want to thank you for asking a hard question because i think that's a question on a lot of people's minds and i myself have gotten some similar questions
176in regards to that and i think dr rouse to your credit you know i think you made a very poor distinction one um i think it was uh ms spicer was up talking about you know having diverse hires i think it's very important to point out that you know in in interviewing a diverse uh pool of candidates the objective isn't necessarily lower standards and i think that's a very important distinction because questions come up about well are we now focusing on hiring for example a chinese person because for sole purpose but he's chinese and i and i am very pleased to hear and i'm sure a lot of folks who are watching us are pleased to hear that no the objective is not to say we want to hire a chinese person just because they're
177chinese they must be qualified as well and i think that's again a very important distinction because i think in a lot of ways to your point barry folks get you know concerned that by broadly diversifying this pool we're not going to lower standards or even worse cater to a specific culture or a specific uh demographic and you know again i'm happy that is not the case it's for all and that's you know i think that should help help us go a long way to you know kind of clearing that hurdle and i think it's important to keep the an overarching goal too is it's for our community and for our students to see themselves reflected right in our growing you know student population of color neurodivergent students we're at 40 students of color to see
178that in the staff to see that in our administrators right to see that all around them because it's i mean for me i didn't have a single teacher of color until college right and so i think it's a different experience we have the opportunity to give a different experience for our students i think we're doing that and i think it's important to continue it but yeah qualified is definitely a prerequisite yeah and i think that's the important distinction like i don't think i had a chinese teacher myself until i was in college either but you know i was very pleased with the fact that i had the most qualified teachers and i think that's the objective we in 220 have and should continue to have to parallel barry's question i've heard so our board had
179an equity workshop that i think was about three hours or so earlier this year and that i think we all thought was incredibly valuable and we had facilitators from iasb come in and they were talking about for their own strategic plan that they incorporated equity as both a lens with which to do things with the definition that you use and also as a pillar to hold themselves accountable with regard to hiring and retention and uh you know curricula right and safety and protection how would you and thinking about equity if we were to commit to say well we've made all these commitments already how do we hold ourselves accountable what would you say is the most effective way or some effective ways to incorporate it in our strategic plan and to be explicit about it
180i mean to be honest i think the the the word intentionality comes to mind i think in a district where we are trying to move towards the more equitable outcomes we have to be a little bit more intentional because that's a constant reminder when when equity is something that that is not a lived experience for you or something that you don't see every day you have to make it something that you see every day and a way to make it something is by putting putting it somewhere so that again it is there as a as a constant in addition to that as you're saying um aaron i think that the premise would be that you would have um you know you know equity uh um inclusion as a pillar if you will but at the
181same time you want to make sure that equity is embedded in everything you do because if you don't do it that way then it's just off to the side and and then you think that okay well this particular part of the organization is just going to focus on equity that's kind of a little bit of the problem uh right now um i am the the director of equity rates and diversity but i will also tell you that people constantly ask me how can you talk about race or how can you talk about equity or how can you talk about things or why aren't you talking about these areas in the organization and that makes a lot of sense but that just shows you also how siloed our approach has been and so again having it
182there to be intentional is is really really critical for us as we're learning to be a district that strives to be more equitable i think that's what's important about seeing it for me as an individual that sees it in our board of education commitment to our equity statement i think that's a something that we're going to have to continue to see as we move forward again but again intentionality i think is the most important because if we're not intentional it's something unfortunately we will miss because it's not something that we always see every day caught up and i think you're you've articulated this well here i think people get caught up in thinking that equity perhaps only addresses race and i don't and i think you guys did a great job of showing that that's
183not the only so i mean there's disabilities there's cultures there's difference in learning and i use when you spoke at rosalind you said a year of belong if we want it to be a belonging for our children and i think that that is such a great thing to point out because it does mean so much more and you guys did such a great job of grasping that here thank you let me ask another question um this kind of got uh this one we went through this pretty quickly but on slide 19 uh there's a reference to culturally responsive teaching i know that's not been another term term that's gotten a lot of press in recent months or recent years uh with regards to you know what that means could i trouble you to kind of
184define that for us um i'd love to give an example for you and i'm going to date myself with this so i apologize how many of you remember we're on per room oh seriously yeah what was the first thing that she said when she got the kids in this in the in the circle okay see i'm dating myself she said i see right and then she said i see bob i see barry i see steve okay you remember sitting there and hoping you hear your name right and then many times you didn't right okay so let's let's think about that philosophy as it relates to culture okay kids need to see themselves in what they do the engagement that that's required in classes is more than just the x's and o's it's more than just
185the academics kids need to see themselves in what they're learning and so what culturally relevant teaching does is it requires us to think about that as we prepare our lessons a very small simple example is my seventh grader last night is doing i ready math problems he has a story problem in math and all of the names happen to be hispanic well what's cool for him is because he's because he's taking spanish now he's practiced rolling as ours and some other things but the key is is that students can actually see themselves in that math okay and so as we teach we want to make sure that we're culturally responsive to the kids that are in our classroom so that they are more engaged absent that engagement sometimes steve what happens is it's that charlie
186brown teacher that we all know and hear it's the blah blah blah and and and the words don't speak to you education is different now and our kids are different now because of their attention spans and a lot of things so we have to engage more and so what culturally responsive teaching does is allows us to respond to respond to the cultures we see and the reason that we're doing that is remember in our state as we look at our demographics our demographics has shifted mightily so that there is far more cultures in schools than there have been in the past and as a result of that the state has said okay we need to shift our thinking and make sure that students can see themselves in the teaching and learning that happens so that
187that improves the overall education experience for everyone that's the real crt that's the one that yeah it gets i know tell me about yeah tell me about it yeah and i think it's important that we as a district culturally responsive teaching culturally responsive teaching i think one great point is that if when if and when we embed equity into our strategic plan is to what katie was talking about have common language and so that we don't have fear around the word equity and that we're all understanding it's it's fostering this culture of belonging and where every student can have access right to the resources that they need i just wanted to take a moment just to to reflect on the past two presentations we had and how how tightly coupled they really are right we
188just heard about all these great learnings and what our staff is telling us and relationships are important and sel is important and it all ties into these great examples that you guys shared with us from administration how they need to behave to the examples of the students in the classroom it's all very very powerful and it's um i think this i hope everybody takes opportunity to listen at least to this portion of the of the board meeting tonight because i think it's it was very very powerful so um i thank each and every one of you for for sharing um what you did what we've done the work that we've done and and i'm really i mean i think even to see the student was a very powerful way to think about things this year
189too you know every time every time we get together as a board every time i read something on the on the website i think wow look at that you know you really you know get down to their level get you know and learn about them and just take in the few minutes to have different colored handprint papers little things are big yeah big thank you hey i'd like to say something if now it's a good time go ahead reminding us that something's not here once again but this is so amazing i just want to say such a big thank you to nate rouse for all the work you've done i want to say a big thank you to barb spicer heidi rockwell jennifer robinson brian turcotte abigail bergen we're going to miss you so much
190off you go to college zach earns katie matthews and everybody who's on the equity uh team this year it's been a wonderful journey i thank everybody who's at the school teams and the cohorts because there's a lot of work going on behind the scenes that everyone's not aware of and this is so important for our students it's super important for our students especially in these hard times when they're shooting supermarkets and there's terrible hate crimes like i love our students and want them to feel cared for and appreciated and safe in our schools and so i appreciate the work the work you're doing and i'm babbling a little but anyway um i also think that it's super important and i'm hearing from the community through emails and phone calls that it's important that we are
191strong about equity diversity inclusion in our strategic plan and our walk against anti-racism in framework 220 and these coffees and people are coming together there's some people who are uncomfortable with some of our words but we want our community to be inclusive and welcoming to all of our students and it's so important and so i appreciate all of you and i thank you so much and i just i'm supportive of the work going forward and commend you so much so thank you thank you thank you sorry so long no it's very good very very very good okay that's gonna be tough to follow actually we have um a community feedback conversation next oh i just lost my connection here um so thank you again um so last board meeting we talked about seeking out feedback
192from the community on on how well we've been how well we've done in the last year um so steve do you want to share your ideas yeah sure that we and first of all i want to say that i think it should happen probably june 3rd or later just so that it's not interfering with the coffees that we have planned it's also not your graduation and that type of planning but i think yeah to your point we should have some sessions where we're allowing the public to come in and you know have you know access to all of us on some level to talk about not just what we've done well but also things that we could do better too um allow for honest feedback um so you know i had two ideas as to
193how we can structure this you know one was to do a session at each of the elementary schools and maybe have at least two board members and so we can call them official meetings if need be we have more than three but providing some times where and hopefully we can have at least two board members so that's one option a second option would be that we have you know actual meetings so for but essentially just the public comments section of those meetings um at each of the middle schools um and you know katie had an interesting idea so she and i had talked about this briefly too we had discussed the idea of possibly having town halls that are dedicated to specific topics so you know a few that come to mind for me are
194you know pandemic response virtual learning so baby let's kind of go together but you know curriculum additions and deletions um you know funding for the fine arts i mean we can put we can put you know like i said topic based um sessions together and but if we go that route i would say that we probably need to do more than two so probably having it at each of the elementary schools might be the best way of going about doing that but i guess you know admittedly i know this is a big left for all of us i mean candidly i don't have much time either but um i do think it's important for us to kind of you know start that com start the conversation of how we can put ourselves out there and
195i acknowledge that we have these board meetings we have public comments we have the ability to email but i think sometimes it would be better just to be out there and you know be able to just sit with folks and like i said maybe maybe not necessarily a coffee but be in a public forum where folks can access us individually because i know uh you know for folks who know me they don't mind stopping me but for folks who don't i know i've heard of instances where they say you know i saw you at jewel but i didn't want to stop you and i can certainly appreciate that but again just providing yet another venue for folks to reach us and you know the more i think about it the more i realize that i
196think we need the ministry of support but we can minimize it by you know not troubling dr hunts we can um you know ideally we put this on youtube so i guess that would involve some i.t assistance but um i don't know i'm open to whatever the board thinks those are just kind of my broader ideas and you know something that katie and i discussed broadly at off cuff one thing that i did also want to mention that i thought would be really helpful and we i mentioned this last time too and i think we could you know piggyback off of some of dr hunt's work that he's already done but it's also putting together a list of accomplishments that i'd like to share with the community you know so the things that dr hunt
197and his team have done over the last year i mean there's been so much that i think we can list and i think it would be worthwhile to have those as just a you know an a and just a example of all the great things that this district has produced over the last you know whatever it is 12 18 months however we want to frame it time-wise so i'm gonna stop there um so i'll make sure the very first sentence you said was you you were thinking about doing this after june third right absolutely okay so one thought i had was what you're talking was yeah this is a great um thing to add into our goals even for the next year less than ours when we do our summer session our priorities for the
198year yeah then we can be thoughtful about it i really like this idea of the different topics and maybe we can even tie it into things and events that are already happening so that it is a little bit less of an administrative burden can i offer to you in terms of timing i think that we maybe could think about um how we want to structure this and set it up over the summer because i feel like people's minds are shifting to like summer vacation and where i don't i think the last thing they might be thinking about is like let me give feedback to the board but as the school year starts maybe we can like plan start planning how we're going to do this and then maybe we use the new school year to
199like kick things off potentially and then people's minds will be more kind of shifting toward okay it's a new academic year this is a feedback just in terms of timing and what where people's attention spans are because you're right summer vacation will play a role in that as well but i feel like as school starts then it's back to you know the bride for the administration everybody else so there's that to take into account it can be intentional right they can be intentional we can be purposeful we can spread them out i mean i'm thinking like people have an internet safe internet safety we've got like you know um well learning losses see like there's so many different things so i think if we do i like it being part of our board goals and
200set up an intentional schedule for all of us to commit to perhaps participating in one you know at least one and trying to minimize the work on the district so if this is shifted i think from our initial conversation if we're shifting towards a topic-oriented uh town hall conversation we have to have the experts that work in those areas at these events i mean i worry if it's well you know i get it yeah i get it and but i just then it becomes more topic-based informational if you take digital citizenship i want matt fuller and i want his team back here yeah so to talk about the things that we are doing um so we can one promote those and encourage people to utilize those and then have that dialogue well does it necessarily
201though because i appreciate what you're saying dr hunt because what you're basically doing is you're saying that you want to have the staff available to answer questions for me it's more of a question gathering session though because i don't know if we'll necessarily have the answers but we'll but we'll at least have directives from our constituents to say here's what i want to see happen and whether we do it or not is a separate matter but i think it's something that we can at least all aggregate and bring back to administration so here's an idea go ahead i think a few years ago we tried to schedule our board meetings as a once a month board meeting in a once a month community of the whole and i think we did that for a full
202year maybe i think that we had to make some exceptions because we had action but what does that mean angela sorry we had one business meeting and one community of the whole meeting each month so instead of two working board meetings we get all of our stuff done the first board meeting or whatever is you guys decide on the agenda and then the second meeting it would be topic based sometimes there would be a presentation from the administration usually that was what it was this was the very first year i was on the board for me it was incredibly helpful because i learned so much and i was the only newbie on the board so i almost felt like i was dragging everyone else down but i think it was a good refresher as well
203but it's a cool idea we could maybe change it a bit so that the community of a whole a hole is um you know more of this town hall structure as as a you know piece of the puzzle i don't know in practicality how it will work um you know i don't know i mean things pop up that we have to vote on and i know that it creates some shuffling at the last minute but it's a potential especially as we're trying to be cognizant of everyone's time and the effort that you know the staff would have to put into it this wouldn't really increase staff efforts and preparation it would just kind of change the focus there's certainly districts that focus they have a business meeting you know to cover approvals things of that
204nature and then more like these discussion items we pulled out and put into a second meeting that's certainly a direction that could you know we could consider and this way we would all be here because we already kind of had to already do this that's such a great idea maybe we can even almost pick like four you know like they could be like a quarterly yeah can you take this you know can you guys go back and think about this a little bit more and i would say steve though i do i did every board meeting everybody oh wait a minute wait i would say though i do think an open dial i know that you said more of an egg like aggregating question i i will say the biggest criticism i get is the
205lack of open dialogue so i do think an open an opportunity to ask a question and receive a response is important some informal so still have some informal with you could almost have um i don't know i'm just making the sausage here right but you can have that committee the whole and then have a follow-on you know that saturday morning or something after the board meeting to ask more comments and have some smaller group discussions or something where we sat in front and answered questions was that about the referendum i can't remember i think it might have been about the referendum but it was uh you know i think you know didn't have the cameras didn't have that you know it was just really uh just a dialogue you did it on the grc i
206remember yeah people liked that i think you get i i think we have to define what it is the board is trying to accomplish with this right um so my my thought process and you guys you know check me if you have a different idea here is i wanted to find a way for folks to be able to reach us and solicit you know and for us to solicit their true feedback of what we were doing as a district and how we could be better um because ultimately we report to them all of us and so you know i know some people email some people coming to a public comment this is just another means to providing a platform for folks um and you know i was actually going to say we i would like
207it's recorded but maybe we don't want these recorded because i do feel like they're in situations where folks are nervous to speak on camera that this still gives them access to us without interrupting us while we're you know grocery shopping right well i think i don't know exactly what i want the what i want out of this but i will say this i think that as publicly elected officials you know we can all kind of subscribe to the the narrative which is well if you're doing a good job you'll find out at election time right and so that's that's kind of your your two-year check-in for your check-in whatever but you know i don't like that because we're affecting the lives of children for those two years and i don't really think that the the
208mindset should be go for it and then we'll see what happens at the ballot box so [Music] i i like this the concept that you're speaking of i don't under i don't know i don't know exactly what my goal is is you put it very bluntly like what is your goal right i don't know but i i would say what i think would be nice is uh if we intentionally try to come up with ways that we can change and alter what we're doing yeah throughout the whole process that we're publicly elected officials not just waiting for the next election so that that's what i think i'll need to reflect on you there's changing the structure of how we do our meetings is one way and then there's creating events in which people have the
209ability to access you and provide feedback if you're looking to create events that can be done you can piggyback it with meetings that are happening in buildings you can hold an event where people can come in and and talk to you i think that's what i'm gonna need clarity on and we can we can certainly dialogue and bring some thoughts back to you but trying to understand what it is you want to obtain out of this isn't almost feels like it's part of our you know annual workshop too reflecting back on evaluating ourselves and what we can do differently too yeah i think the seven of us can certainly meet and talk about where we think we've been successful and where we've you know not been i agree with sandra that maybe we can bring
210this up in our workshop sorry it's hard to hear who's talking i apologize but yeah this is something we could talk about our workshop because we've talked about open communications there before and how it's really important for the board to be open with the community and what's the best way to do it and maybe we can get some input about what other boards are doing because that would be helpful to know what's an effective way to do this yeah and if we're really going to be listening and potentially doing a committee of the whole i think accessibility is important like when dr hunt did his listening sessions like he moved right like he didn't say oh come to me i think it's important if we want to hear from all parts of the community to
211to go where different parts of the community can access us right that's what we did in that year we had the differences of the different buildings yeah i think so we had like the business meeting at one spot but every time our community the whole or committee of the whole moved how was the engagement was it pretty high or well it was different because it wasn't necessarily opening it up to community members to have open dialogues it was like um dr winkelmann would give a presentation about i don't know whatever and then we would ask kind of in-depth questions but it was a more you know it wasn't like there are three presentations on the agenda it's about well and actually that's like where dr fuller came for the very first time and talked about
212blended learning and and and so the community kind of showed up to hear what is this blended learning you know what but it wasn't really a q a as much as i think steve is suggesting which you know i like that as well but so i think the engagement was more topic specific not necessarily venue specific that could be wrong i like that you rotate it yeah i think we want to be careful though steve we've kind of come full circle um because initially you said kind of we want feedback and let's just have open mic and then now you've said well let's talk about specific subjects i i like to go back to just open mic we're available people want to have a dialogue so let's be available to them and not limit it
213to you know you came up with all these topics which are all germane but i'd rather just let people decide what the agenda's going to be and if you know if people want a dialogue instead of this you know usually the the public comment we don't really respond back right away we let the administration do that if we want to have a dialogue then let's plan on that maybe quarterly saturday or or um as you said if there's something else going on like maybe a couple of the back to school nights we can piggyback onto those um but just leave it open-ended and don't you know don't limit people's participation yeah well if the board has interest in topics specific town halls i mean we we hosted a town hall this year mostly engagement second
214semester has been around framework 220 and strategic planning we certainly could do topic specific i mean i know there's parent universities we could handle that administratively with board members you know attending or not if this is truly about engagement then find a way that you're comfortable in doing it whether it's a couple of people go to yeah whether it's people you know split up two per building and you know it's a saturday morning and offer bagels and let people come in and what do you want to accomplish and then we can figure out the venue right yeah i think it's tricky because we have a lot of things we want people to engage with and people are busy and they're stretched you know we really want the input for the framework we have the referendum
215meetings you know when school starts piggybacked on to the back-to-school night so it's it's just hard to stress people so thin you know i i don't know it's hard to figure out well maybe we can all take this conversation back reflect on it and think about what we want the priorities to be for the coming year and continue to have the conversations with each other if you have suggestions yes no yeah for sure okay been around this black not this one not this particular black all right um do we have any agenda items that we need to talk about for june 7th we've got recognition planned the student discipline committee report will be on a consent agenda the hazardous crossing resolution will be on the consent agenda the school calendar the final approval for this
216this year's school calendar will be on the consent agenda and we're going to have a presentation on solar yeah talking about topics on topics i'm laughing that we're approving this year's school calendar i think we it's what we have to do to say the last day right like i'm here for it we gotta do it katie huh yeah you can't get that calamity back anything anybody once said now remind her again since i said it wrong before we will start at 5 00 pm on june i ask do we have a motion to adjourn well first we have to do a quote oh yeah close sorry uh sorry um do we have a motion to approve the um confidentiality of closed session minutes all right well call katie yes yes steve wang yes leah callister
217lazari yeah angela wilcox yes barry all schuler yes all right do we have a motion to adjourn so moved second all right all in favor aye aye aye opposition all right you