001you [Music] let's get this party started can we do a roll call janine here angela wilcox barry alt-schuler yeah leah callister lazari aaron chanding here katie karim here steve wang all right can you stand and join me indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you for joining us this evening and thank you all for being here and uh i i need to state that we need to universally mask and if we have any issues with that then we will call a recess if we need to have a discussion about it so thank you for for complying to that requirement we're going to change the order of the agenda a little bit tonight and we're going to go with the superintendent report first then move to public comment we'll then we'll circle back with my
002report any concerns with that no okay i'll turn it over to you dr house good evening uh thank you uh i i'm gonna talk through my report and also i guess address originally we had invited when the agenda went public we had invited our council from france to attend uh so we could have some dialogue about exclusion quarantine in the school district and things have changed quite a bit since last friday and i think i'll address some of that as we go through my report so janine if you could go to the next slide please we have originally going to report we've rolled out shield testing i want to commend dr winkelmann dr ford for all of our work our building administrators nurses and staff teachers uh it's an amazing undertaking to do what has
003been done and like i've come to expect here people just step up and do the right thing and and make things happen we administered almost 5 000 uh tests to students since we we started this process we've had 12 positive cases so less than one percent of those cases have come back positive but a tremendous undertaking by staff and we certainly appreciate that as we evaluate kind of where we're at the guidance continues to move and change uh we were one place friday i received an email on friday afternoon that was an executive order related to our staff and vaccinations specific to our staff then saturday midday i received a second executive order from the governor uh that talked about or informed us on exclusion which changed kind of the direction of things uh as
004we sat in closed session reviewing some items this evening i got another update email from illinois state board of education with further guidance and clarification so i think it's just really important for everyone to understand we're doing everything we can to stay on top of this interpret it do what we can for our students and our staff with the ultimate goal of keeping as many students in person learning as possible specific to the governor's order because it's probably the most relevant to what's going on in the district there has been a shift in in terms of uh what our responsibilities are as a school district for exclusion uh in terms of when students are identified as covet positive or they're identified as a close contact and in those cases uh previously there was you know
005this process of voluntary core voluntary uh quarantine which transitioned into a need for a court order very specifically was the direction given by the governor that those were not necessary and that districts are to require required to exclude students when identified as either covet positive or a closed contact and you know failure to comply with that leads to a variety of consequences for the school district uh including our own kind of certification uh sports uh things of that nature so like we were and i think we kind of relived the conversation about mass where we thought we were in one place uh that changed over the weekend and we are kind of where we're at today so we will continue to move forward under those requirements and do the best we can to keep as
006many students in school as possible in this i appreciate the efforts of our staff i wanted to address a little bit about kind of education when you when you kind of fall in that situation we obviously have students that are unfortunately unable to attend in-person learning this year due to medical conditions and for those students we have a third-party provider and those students are proceeding through their educational pathway throughout the course of the school year in quarantine we we made the decision not to push students into third party providers and and try to keep them on pace in classrooms uh within our district as we kind of receive them back in uh in our strategy has been in the first 48 hours as we figure out the length of the quarantine and what is going
007to happen our teachers uh post resources regarding c or out on see-saw the elementary age or schoology or schoology for our secondary uh folks and then develop contact and make uh uh uh make arrangements with students uh regarding both synchronous and asynchronous learning through the length of their quarantine period uh and that's kind of the path we've taken with quarantine i think it's real important when we get to this you know position especially as parents that we kind of understand where students were coming into that quarantine period evaluate kind of where they're at during that time and and communicate if there's any issues along the way uh we've talked at this board table about all of the resources and supports that we've put in place uh due to uh some of our esser funds and
008our mtss program is robust and strong so if there's there's issues where people are falling our students are falling uh behind we want to intervene and we want to provide those services as we go forward so the landscape has changed a little bit and we continue just to be focused on providing providing the best educational experience we can for our students i think the other thing is we've had this conversation with legal counsel we're also committed to working to find where we can have local control and push for things that make sense and we will continue uh to have those conversations at the appropriate places and levels and and hope that we can uh influence change that provides us a little more flexibility uh within our local community to make some of these decisions so
009i wanted to address that from a post perspective this evening just a couple other things to highlight this week is the third annual safety week in the school district uh i want to commend austin johnson who's kind of taking a lead on that a variety of activities bringing kind of safety uh to the forefront of our minds both you know in school and out of school hopefully we'll have tests of weather emergencies we'll run our run hype fight drills school evacuations and and bus evacuations as well so it's just a time for us to step back as educators and and think about all the things we're responsible for and if there are situations that jeopardize the student student safety that we practice the the things that will help in those situations so just to bring
010awareness to that uh throughout the week and that is ongoing also uh coming up uh is homecoming so something uh very positive to celebrate uh i i've heard enough about this pancake breakfast that occurs that i need to attend for sure uh that'll monday the high school will have the kickoff assembly uh for homecoming week that i believe is a change that's typically an assembly that happens on friday uh obviously we're going to do that outside to provide more space so mr mc williams moved that to monday in case there's weather challenges you have kind of all week to get that in so really smart move there uh thursday we'll have the alumni legends musical performances by four four bhs alums friday is the infamous philly football game and then on saturday again the pancake
011breakfa breakfast the homecoming parade will go forward and the football game at one o'clock so we hope our community comes together and enjoys those those activities and opportunities to celebrate our school district and then finally i did want to kind of put this on the radar with the board of education as i transitioned to the district strategic planning and talk about the future was something that i think was desired by the board of education at the time and we've continued those conversations as we transitioned with boards we look forward to this work and engaging our community in this work uh and we have started kind of internally with a group a subcommittee of our exit council to look at various firms and opportunities and processes uh to bring forward for board consideration i'd like to
012bring a discussion item forward in one of our meetings in october just to talk at a very high level about uh time frame process uh your thoughts on engagement so i put this slide in here tonight to just maybe put it on your radar to think a little bit about uh strategic planning i think what we will do is maybe give a brief overview of where the district has been uh some things that have happened in the past and and then maybe some ideas on where we need to go it will not be a recommendation for a timeline or process by any means it's just kind of a starting point to talk with the board about the process so if there's any questions from the board i'm happy to answer them if not that would
013conclude my report sector i just want to emphasize for the community because i was initially unclear that test to stay is still available for students if they are in a school setting and both masked right so they can still test negative if they're asymptomatic and stay in school that is correct and that's a requirement for those that are unvaccinated if we're vaccinated this test to stay applied or there's still some strength it's not it does not apply if you're vaccinated so it's for unvaccinated students if they're considered a close contact uh they can qualify for test to stay and go through that process but if a student is vaccinated and asymptomatic then they don't need to test to stay they can just stay okay and is that when a case is determined at school that
014is that an option if a case comes from outside of school that is not an option currently but when you talk about things we uh want to advocate for i would put that very high on the list if there's a close contact having the option to test to stay sounds like it would be it certainly it would a a benefit in keeping kids in school and again i want to be clear it's not available but it would be a pathway to certainly increase or decrease the number of quarantines and keep kids in school but if kids are vaccinated and they're close contact they don't have to quarantine in school or outside school or outside of school yeah they're symptomatic thank you okay so so if you're vaccinated it gives you a better opportunity to knock
015quarantine correct okay any other questions for dr han here and then we will move into our public comment portion of the meeting um so i'll read our our preamble here we've now come to the portion of our meeting set aside for public comment we value your thoughts and opinions and in accordance with board policy 2 230 we ask you to state your name elementary attendance area and your relationship to the district before beginning your comments we also allow you we also ask you to limit your comments to three minutes since we have less than 20 people and janine has the countdown timer and a bell uh we will not allow the board's business to be impacted and we will ensure all voices are respected and heard in accordance with the board equity statement that states
016we recognize embrace and defend the identities abilities and voices of our diverse school community and per board policy 830 visitors too in conduct on school property i quote the school district expects mutual respect civility and orderly conduct among all people on school property and no person shall strike injure threaten harass or intimidate a staff member a board member sports official or coach or any other person no person shall impede delay disrupt or otherwise interfere with any school activity or function all in attendance must be respectful of others and allow the board to dialogue appropriately we commit to addressing issues and not attacking people we ask you to do likewise if we experience continued disruption the offenders or offender will be asked to leave and will be escorted out as necessary we also will call for
017recess if the board is unable to conduct business in order to follow as many people to allow as many people to speak as possible if someone has spoken and you agree and represent their views please do not feel the need to repeat their comments instead consider standing to show your support we ask that the actions do not delay or impede the public comment of the work of the board as a reminder the public comment is not a conversation and if any comments require further attention we will ask dr hunt to follow up and report back to the board so that being said um alison moselle would you please come forward after allison will be jenny starrett yes hi my name is alison mozelle i have four children that have been through the district three that
018are still in one that have graduated a history of 20 years in education and now i'm in the corporate offices but i have a lot of experience with teaching and lots of plans and education systems so this was just like a brief i'm sure everybody's heard of what happened with our children but a brief explanation of what happened um this week four students got together on saturday september 11th for a short amount of time at home they were not within six feet of each other for more than 15 minutes student a told his parents that he didn't feel well on sunday september 12th his parents took him for a rapid covet test which came back positive he told the lake county board of health that he saw these three other students however it was not
019close contact our three children went to school on monday september 13th and were pulled out of class sent home and told the quarantine for 10 days on tuesday september 14 student a had the negative pcr test lake county would not recognize it be allow the student school so the three children innocent and healthy were sus quarantined for 10 days they didn't have conflict with the student and he didn't have covet um because it was at home like aaron was saying that there was no option for test to stay so i do appreciate that you're working towards going that in that direction part of the problem is that the online instruction was very limited and i know this is the beginning of the year and teachers are still getting used to classes and and lesson plans
020but there was nothing in place for these children except for completing the written assignments at home but not the actual teaching in the classrooms so they started falling behind you know they were not missing school for vacation or an illness because they were healthy and i don't know what the answer is but somehow students need to be learning in real time so right now there's a tutor that is going to meet with them in their lunch hours when they're allowed to go back to school tomorrow but it's going to take them weeks to catch up honestly it'll take their free periods it'll take their lunch periods it'll take extra time after school and weekends to miss this one quarter that they've missed of school this year and i'm not and some of the teachers two
021of the teachers had emailed me or texted me erin gibbons and um and and mrs sanchez had texted me and said that they were working with the students but otherwise we didn't get anything from any of the teachers this is what some of the kids had said they said my teachers haven't given me any lessons or in-class work but will give me homework on a new topic which i have no clue how to do in most classes i have no resources to help teach myself the new lessons my grades dropped from not turning things in i have a lot of things to make up but i can't do until i'm in school so every day the kids didn't know if they were going back they heard us talking at home about quarters and quarantines and
022voluntary orders and what happens if we go are the police going to come and get us or that you know it was very it was a very very hard last 10 days so i do appreciate that um the administration and the teachers and the board have been very very supportive of this and we understand that your hands are tied what you're doing to help us thank you allison thank you jenny starrett hi i'm jenny stewart i have two kids uh at burnington high school and i'll just find my stuff so i really wanted to discuss the impact on the kids and how important it is the direction that that we are going in and how it really has affected the kids some of this is not as relevant as it was last week but i'm
023going to go ahead and read everything and thoughts that i put down um i want to say by thanking the administrator and the board members for really working overtime trying to do the right thing and we really appreciate that but here's my story for my daughter just imagine getting a call from the school nurse that your son daughter has been contact traced and was picked up immediately to quarantine for 10 days the close contact did not happen and all that was reported and and this didn't even happen on school grounds we're stunned and confused and we come to find while looking into our rights that a signed court order from a judge is the only way the kids can be pulled out and quarantined this is not provided we start asking a lot of questions
024in the meantime our kids are missing more school and falling behind my daughter didn't hear from her teacher for at least 48 hours we didn't know what's going on besides feeling like she had done something wrong she is stressed about school this goes for all the kids involved we continue to find out our legal legal rights why can't the kids test and if negative return to school and activities isn't that the test to stay program we're told the kids can't because they weren't on school grounds this makes no sense why have testing if it can't be used in all situations it sounds like that's being looked at none of these kids have symptoms none of them had covet after working together the kids can go back to school friday with a negative test fine no
025covet here they're back in school they're pulled out again monday due to the executive order in this order it states if a negative test is submitted on day six kids can return on day seven i brought this up our kids were tested negative on day six but we were told since our kids were not on school grounds they couldn't do this so we had that that's actually in the new executive order in the meantime our kids are missing classes texting and only have i have no direction my daughter from everything that's going on is already has her grades down she said tell me how i'm going to make up 10 days of lost learning my daughter and the other kids involved yours talking about court orders attorneys you might be kicked out or removed from
026school they're stressed freaking out with anxiety through the roof as parents we are thinking will we be the brave ones to weather the storm considering talking to my daughter about going to school to fight this battle this is crazy remember these kids these are kids they never should have to go through anything like this they haven't been they haven't they've been through enough we need our administration on board to fight for these kids even if it's difficult even if it means being involved with pritzker is the anyone who's denying our rights for in-person education for our kids these kids did not have covet the situation has caused all these kids so much anxiety and worrying at times when they're faced with uncertainty every day we need legal counsel which we pay for as taxpayers in
027the district that will fight for our healthy kids to stay in school this never should have happened this way legal should know the process we really need to be fighting for our kids thank you jay stephen hi my name is david robins i have two kids at the high school right now a junior senior have one that's graduated this entire situation is terrible why there isn't a better way to keep the kids in schools babbling the the power given to lake county health is ridiculous over the top especially given the order by maybe mighty jb on friday as parents why doesn't district legal counsel pay for buy tax dollars isn't pushing back is surprising what i've witnessed is our school administrators asking for legal advice on our situation but no one says and is this
028legal for our governor to do should our administration ask for legal checks to file a suit against the county and state so kids can be educated properly which means in person contact tracing is weak no due process in this when i asked too when i asked the lake county investigator she made me she already made up her mind never asked any of the kids about the version of what happened i felt very confident my son was not in close contact currently there is no way to keep kids in school even with math and testing available we need ways to keep kids in school not out all of this doesn't apply if your kids were vaccinated which we all know fascinated people are catching and spreading cold my son had three negative covets the kid you
029falsely put in close contact with his pcr gold standard test was negative only the rapid was positive for him it's a shame our kids had to miss six days of education i think the administration and school board members involved for the time and support on this you know we are right so i ask you to push back because this is only going to get worse and more and more kids will possibly be sitting at home with very weak education at home the kids basically lost a year of education last year and now we have kids missing a large amount of time with these schools especially high school and topics are moving quickly and easily fall behind i ask you all to fight to gain local control to make sensible decisions and not be scared of
030our governor's overstepping power to dictate rules and making zero sense thank you [Applause] hello i'm marcia mcclary i think you all know me by now um and i just wanted to talk to you guys a little bit about the vaccine and how we're handling vaccinated versus unvaccinated students i think we all want kids in school as we talked about and doing the right thing instead of which is just always not the popular or the easy thing to do which we're dealing a lot with and i thank you all for that um difficult situation you're in um so the fact is the vaccinated do transmit covet it's proven israel was the first to vaccinate their highly vaccinated country and the data shows that it does i know that's not great news but it's true and yet
031um the u.s is behind on that data and we aren't doing a lot of testing of vaccinated sort of on purpose it seems so we aren't going to see all that data here i don't think and even in our district we're not testing as many vaccinated people um and the fact is that even the vaccine study endpoints i've read the studies in detail are about symptom reduction they were never studied to stop transmission so i don't really understand why we're discriminating between vaccinated and unvaccinated students because there's no scientific rationale that we should be doing that so i would ask that you use the vaccinated quarantine policy and push for that for all the students if we believe that that's a good policy for vaccinated then we should be able to apply that to all
032the students i know we have a big equity and anti-discrimination platform in this district and right now i have no other explanation because there's no science to back up treating those students differently so i'd ask ourselves what is the motivation behind treating vaccinated and unvaccinated students differently if there's no scientific rationale left to do that and then i think some of our other kind parents will show you some interesting things about the vaccines we do not want to coerce our students to get the vaccines and provide them any additional incentives we should let the experts their medical experts and their parents make those decisions because the vaccines have risks too the risk is not zero percent they do not have long-term safety data and some of the experts from the fda panel made some very
033shocking statements last week in the booster shot trials it's all public record and it just makes me brings me to tears because i don't want to see us pushing our students into getting a vaccine that may not be right for them thank you thank you monica monica casey we've been in the district for 16 years i concur with marsha's comments and i support her data and i wanted to play some actual assignments from the fda hearing last week the public record the doctor defying against um the booster shot consideration and citing insufficient data and evaluating risks especially among young people i have no conflict uh advance to slide number four with the uh i'm going to focus my remarks today on the elephants in the room that nobody likes to talk about because if i
034kill more people than they say today we focus almost exclusively on covetousness vaccine efficacy because we're led to believe that the vaccines are perfectly safe but this is simply not true for example there were four times as many heart attacks in the treatment group in the finds or six month trial report that wasn't bad luck fierce shows heart attacks happen 71 times more often following these vaccines compared to any other vaccine you know 20 people died who got the drug 14 died who got the placebo few people noticed that if the net all caused mortality from the vaccines of negative vaccines boosters and mandates are all nonsensical this is the case today death rates um uh let's slide number seven advance uh to the number seven in lower in three cases only the various numbers
035are statistically significant the other numbers are troubling even if the vaccines have 100 using completely different non-us data sources and came up with approximately the same number of excess vaccine-related deaths per million doses that translates into about 15 000 people have died next slide is slide number 11 of the nursing home now the real number confirmed that we more than we say and i will i would love everyone to look at the israel ministry of health data on the 90 plus year olds where we went to we went from a 94.4 vaccinated in the last four months in the most optimistic scenario it means that 50 of the vaccinated people died and zero percent of native people died unless you can explain that to the american public you cannot approve the boosters flight number 16
036please myocarditis uh the paper just posted erin you're gonna go now yeah yeah my name is aaron schachman um three children in the district i am playing the continuation of the testimony at the fda hearing last week further questioning the theory of covid vaccine and positive results from alternate treatments like ivermectin in india archives entitled mrna coca-19 vaccination development of cmr confirmed my pericarditis shows that the myeloperiocarditis risk was one in a thousand and that's an overall age range from 16 18 to 65 mean age of 33. it is not inconsistent with what the very shows next slide would be slide number 18 gaming of the trial it's pretty clear that the pfizer trial results were game it's statistically impossible for protocol violation to be five times higher in the treatment group why hasn't this
037been investigated slight number for kids now she's paralyzed from life it wasn't recorded by in the there was no investigation please tell us why this was not why this fraud would not be investigated and finally slide number 20 please early treatments are much better alternative to boosters the proof is that in israel cases are at an all-time high in india uttar pradesh is now cloven 19 free as of today almost nobody there is vaccinated thank you i don't know how much of that was caught on these but we tried okay thank you thank you thank you very much uh brian priggy did i say that right brian this time you did all right all right um dr hunt members of the board uh i once thought board meetings c-span and paint drying were all equally
038exciting ways to spend a tuesday evening it's odd for me to say that this is my third time addressing you in person in the last 60 days and countless other emails you probably could count i don't recommend it it's unfortunate that this moment in history requires that we've spent plenty of time talking about covid tonight i'd like to focus on the other plague in our nation which is prejudice whether it comes in the form of racism sexism homophobia ableism or many other exclusionary mindsets prejudice is nothing more than an eagle that bears our society apart as a cisgender heterosexual white male this issue is not one that has personally impacted my life i have seen the damaging impact of this mindset on others lives everywhere from the national news to our own backyard but that's
039not my story to tell my sole purpose is to raise better humans with the hope that the next generation can do a better job at loving their neighbor regardless of their differences i'm eager to hear from mr rouse this evening about the progress the district is making towards educating better humans and i had you all continue down this path regardless of the headwinds thank you [Applause] hello i'm margot i have one child left in district and my elementary school area is huff street and i just am here to ask some questions i know you addressed the shield testing so far there are five thousand tests administered and of that one percent were positive so i think that means fifty positives out of a thousand or five thousand and so subtracting that means there were 950
040negatives is that correct okay 12 positives 12 positives yes okay regarding the positives i'm curious to know how many were true positives and how many were false positives i assuming i did the test to stay or had subsequent tests and of those that turned out positive i'm curious to know how many kids were contact traced how many had to quarantine and of those how many ever tested positive or developed any symptoms and how many of them that were quarantined and not able to go to school never did develop symptoms my last question is will information on the dashboard be expanded to see if this kind of mitigation is still warranted to do thank you margaret catherine dear dyer dear hello i just have a question state your name and your campaign here catherine dear i
041live in the north barrington school district almost 40 years and i am a retired educator okay um i just have a question uh would it be it would be helpful if toward the end of the board meetings people could have time to ask questions or clarification of any issues just covered at the meeting if there is not time to respond they could be addressed at the next meeting because as we listen questions come to our minds and it would be extremely helpful if there was some time allotted to do that okay thank you [Applause] all right that concludes our public comment for the evening dr hun i'm sure you're already doing it but um i'm just asking you to follow up with the students that uh have access issues to to their teachers and and
042their assignments that were mentioned the first two people okay all right that brings me to my report which will be very brief um so i just wanted to take a minute to thank the board again for the extra time that we spent together before the last board meeting i found the time to be very productive and i truly appreciated everyone's willingness to the for the board to function as one so tonight um the community will hear us i think it's one of the very last things on our action items i'm here to review our protocols that resulted from our two workshops so again thank you very much um i wanted to let you know that if you didn't notice that on included on the consent agenda tonight are the minutes for may 18 2021 um
043based on our conversation at the workshop and a divisive council council reminded us of the implications if we were to do things differently and their opinion was to continue our current practice of summarizing all the public comments as the most equitable and efficient practice so look for those on our consent agenda if you had didn't already see them dr hunt already mentioned homecoming but um we do have a few board members that will be marching in the parade so look for us there um i will email you the details of when when what time we need to be and where we need to be so um look forward for that we have our ed red luncheon on friday so hopefully i'll see several of you in attendance this friday i wanted to mention again the
044911 display that we have at the high school commemorating the 20th anniversary of 9 in a museum workshop again a huge thank you to steve mc williams and staff for bringing the photography and the humanitarian work of gary susan to barrington high school he's a barrington high school alum and i spent some time there and i really encourage the community to visit the tickets to see that i think we added a few more dates are available on the district website also on the website is the information about the barrington high school alumni association legend program that dr hunt mentioned so you can get tickets for those musical performances just before homecoming and as a reminder we will continue to hear throughout this meeting that keeping our schools safe safely open and in person are top
045priorities and that concludes my report okay so next up is informational reports does anybody have any questions or comments on the informational reports we have the bortenia report the compensation report and the fourier report any questions on those items what does trs stand for on the compensation report board paid tr retirement thank you okay so there's no more questions we'll move into the board committee reports i know we've had a few committee meetings since we last met anyone so for policy we uh met in early september but we canceled the september 21st one because there were there were no items from press uh so i think we're meeting in october the district equity committee that for the first time in person even though it formed last year because it was overzoo and we had you
046on it it was great to see everybody in person and i know you'll be hearing a lot more from nate later on on about our fall equity report leah anything to add about that i think it was it was lovely to be in person and we're going to hear an awful lot from nate that is you know we heard a little tidbits and this is going to be a bigger presentation so looking forward to that tonight any other committee reports quiet two weeks all right so next up is our consent agenda um do we have a motion to approve the consensus as consent agenda as reported second okay before we take a vote are there any questions or comments on that and i'll read through everything that we've got on there in a moment okay
047um so we have finance reports gifts grants and donations we have the 2021 exception bills from august the 2021 nslp exception bills from august we have the 2021 bill list from september 2021 nslp bill list from september activity counts for barrington high school and k through 8 for august 2021 wage and payroll report from august treasurer's report from august revenues and expenditures from august and for minutes we have may 18 2021 open session minutes and september 8th both open and closed minutes and a revised personnel report any given that any questions or comments all right roll call please andrew bradford yes steve wang yes erin chan ding yes leah callister lazari yes katie carram barry altschuler yeah okay so we have a number of action items that i will read through so first we do
048we have a motion to approve the second reading of board policies i can read that all the policies we're going to go through in a moment do we have a motion so moved um does anybody have any questions about any policies we went through them last time let me read which policies we are going to approve here or potentially proof policy exhibit 2 125 e3 policy 2 130 policy 2 policy 510 policy 6145 policy 6 160 policy 2 6235 policy 6260 and policy 890. do we need to go through any of them anybody have any questions shall we go ahead and roll call in mary yes callister lazari yes katie carran aaron chan ding yes sandra bradford yes steve wang all right motion passes next action is the consideration to approve the resolution to transfer
049funds to capital projects do we have a motion second okay do you want to give us a quick overview of that before we certainly uh board members based on preliminary results from this past year you have before you a recommendation to transfer six million dollars to capital projects fund this is consistent with past board practice over many years uh to put funds into the capital projects fund for facility projects as they arise in this case the recommendation is to earmark funds for work on the prairie parking lot which will as a non-referendum project for the front parking lot that provides significant improvements for our students in our community improving student safety as well as improving traffic flow in that area and decreasing congestion funds for a potential stoplight out over here in front of the
050high school that again would provide for student safety and improvement and traffic flow which has been one of the commitments for for the high school it does provide for a offset for uh summer projects and then a small amount of additional funds just to round it off to an even number for you to consider in this resolution that could be used for future facility projects for the board are there any questions that i can answer for you just so the community knows the spotlight is anticipated to be right outside this entrance to the district building right that's correct depending uh pending additional engineering work along with approval through idot and other regulatory agencies not so much to defend benefit the admin billing though as it is to improve traffic flow in and out of the
051high school i just want to make sure that that's clarified an exit from the high school from there which anyone who's driven in high school has done the roundabout yeah right any other questions or all right roll call steve wang yes leah callister lazari yes sandra bradford yes aaron chanding yes barry ultra schuler excuse me katie karum ocean passes next we have an action to approve the 2021-2022 budget actually the the only change on here from uh the tenant budget you saw is reflective of the discussion around uh uh retention of these of the d sub borrowing the operating funds um otherwise this is the same budget that you've had presented to you and that we've discussed over the last couple meetings uh so this budget is reflective of an operating surplus of approximately 2.2
052million for this next year any questions i would just like to commend dr buy and his team we look at a board priority about budget and fiscal stability being able to look at our cash balance and continue to manage that percentage within board policy is challenging especially during these times so just want to thank you and your department for your hard work thank you any questions all right i'll call gary chanding yes sandra bradford yes leah callister lazari yes katie carram barry alt-schuler yeah steve wang yes okay next up we have um three similar agreements that i will call out separately um so maybe just to summarize quickly these are um agreements with um villages you'll hear in a moment and with sheriff's department um that will help us share information between the school districts
053and those villages to increase the safety of our students anything else you'd like to add today i believe every two years we bring this forward to the board of education and it's really about student safety and being able to have open lines of communication and and and help our students and and make sure that we both have access to information when it's appropriate okay so is there oh sorry okay question yeah quick question um i remember two years ago that some villages aren't included on the list and i think we were trying to include them and you know i don't has anything changed uh we continue to reach out and make offers uh as dr mentioned um austin johnson's our new director of states and security he went around to all the villages when he
054assumed that position in july and continues to have strong partnerships and relationships and see if there is interest in formalizing agreements in this nature so we'll continue to pursue those annually and see if there's opportunities for us to include the other villages thank you good question so is there a motion to consider the approval of the reciprocal reporting agreement with the village of south barrington so moved second sandra bradford yes aaron chanding yes steve wang yes leah collister lazari yes barry altschuler yes all right motion carries is there a motion to approve the reciprocal reporting agreement with the village of barrington so moved roll call leah hollister lazari yes very sandra bradford yes katie carram steve wang yes is there a motion to consider the approval of the reciprocal reporting agreement with the sheriff of
055lake county so we'll move second roll call aaron ding yes steve wang yes leah callister lazari yes katie karam sandra bradford yes barry all schuler yes motion passes okay we have a few more actions folks um next we do we have a motion to consider the approval of the easement agreement of the woodland property so moved okay dr hunt do you want to give a brief description of this one or uh yeah dave certainly jump in if you need to but uh essentially it's an agreement to provide access to the uh park behind the woodland property it's a about a 10 foot asphalt trail that will be installed um connecting and making access uh through that property uh the agreement original agreements for five years i believe it's one year renewable after that and kind
056of exchange for that they will also maintain the outside facility grounds of that property which is a benefit for the school district so i think it's a win for access for the park district and as well as offsetting some of our labor costs out at woodland i agree anything you need anything it's well said all right any other questions or comments from everyone i appreciate the hard work on this one it's a win-win i think all right roll call lady karam yeah sandra bradford yes aaron chanding yes steve wang leah collister lazari yes barry altschuler yes motion passes do we have a motion to consider the approval of the owner-controlled insurance program agreement so moved second okay dr hunt dr being do you want to give us a quick overview of this one certainly this
057is a recommendation to provide amendment language to our contract with pepper construction that would allow for an owner-controlled insurance program the an owner-controlled insurance program would provide the opportunity for what is normally contractor provided insurance or subcontractor provided insurance to be provided through a contract that would be purchased by the district there are two reasons for doing that the primary reason for doing that is that it provides additional protection for the school district to ensure that during the 10-year period of repose following the completion of construction that we have a policy in place with the coverage limits that we asked for at the beginning of our construction process that's the primary reason secondarily there may be also there also is an opportunity for some cost savings that will depend exactly how what those cost savings
058would look like would depend on how the bids come back but primarily this is around making sure that we have an opportunity to ensure appropriate protection uh following the construction of our of our facilities or the remodeling work that's done this is language that actually was drafted by pepper it's been reviewed by our legal counsel uh pepper is supportive of this language and the amendment in either case whether we decide to go with owner controlled or not we would still have the proper coverage that we need that's correct okay any other questions or comments okay roll call sandra bradford yes steve wang yes erin chanding yes leah collister lazari yes katie karam barry l schuler yes okay so next up is the approval of our board protocols and i want to make sure everybody sees
059that we have a couple copies of the protocols in here one clean copy and one with the edits shown so the motion would be on the clean copy okay andre i didn't oh sorry we have a motion before let's let's uh let's we have a motion um to approve the board protocols in the revised clean copy that's attached to the agenda so moved okay and now we have a question question yes i didn't get to ask this earlier but you emailed this thing you wanted to revise the there was a portion we initially had that the community emails will receive a message received auto response board members have the autonomy to respond to emails as they see fit so we're so your proposal is to delete that part and say a board statement regarding board
060email responses will be added to the district web page is that just to give us more time to figure out it's because if you remember the memo from dr hunt and we talked about this a little bit in our workshop as well okay that's right it wasn't going to work exactly as we thought so that's why just change the language to give us that we'll we'll create a statement if we want to do that here we could but we can work that offline as well and and i gave you guys a couple districts to look at but i just gave that to you today so to be fair instead of forcing us through that we can um i think i saw a draft already come back from sam uh so we will get you a
061draft in your weekly report this week to take a look at okay so we will have that draft and we'll just continue to work on it so the protocol just says that we'll put a statement out there on the web page instead of being specific that we will have uh an auto an auto generator so i just make it a little made the protocol a little more general but i think the intent of what we discussed is covered but it's up to you guys to decide to agree it seems like a good idea sandra's suggesting i'm okay with that do you guys want me to read through the protocols before we take a vote maybe i can just at least summarize the at least the categories yeah let's summarize okay so the protocols um give
062us operating expectations in the following areas in agenda development asking questions about items on upcoming meeting agendas you hear that at the end of our board meeting each one of our board meets that will stay the same protocols on communicating with staff on visiting campuses communicating with the media and what we were just talking about specifically is communicating with the community um gives us protocols for social media conduct our board members responsibilities board member requests for information we have a protocol on no surprises do not surprise each other and a protocols on board meetings um much of what you i think we've got no change on this one i don't think from last time but much of what how we conduct our meeting in the order of the meeting and public comment and things like
063that you guys want me to cover anything else all right and we're okay um upon approval we can post these as well okay okay so everybody can read all of that um information on our just on our board webpage so any other questions or comments all right let's do a roll call barry altschuler yes leah callister lazari yes katie karam aaron chan ding yes steve wang sandra bradford yes all right motion passes all right believe it or not those were all of our action items except for the last one we'll get to at the end of the meeting so next up is our discussion items um so first well the discussion item we have is on equity rates and cultural diversity issues updates i assume we're gonna have some people come forward so as craig
064and nate come forward i just want to commend uh i always look at first year administrators that came in with covet 19 and and what a horrible thing to walk into and you you'll never you'll never experience something like that uh for certain and then you know nate was put in that same position with these uh you know difficult conversations and trying to figure out how to do it and grade yourself in a community when everybody's virtual so i just want to commend them for the work uh remind the board that one of our priorities this year is around equity race and cultural sensitivity there's a lot of conversation about uh you know race uh diversity and equity and i think it's really important that we talk about what what work is actually happening in
065barrington 220 this year and the goals of that and i'm very excited for nate to share that information as well craig tonight so welcome and thank you for being here thank you um for our presentation nate's going to lead an update on our work in barrington 220 in the area of equity a lot has occurred since the last board presentation that was provided on march 2nd last spring you know from my seat before nate jumps into the details of the work that has occurred from kind of a big picture being fortunate to work with nate and our district equity team consisting of not only administrators but our teachers and our parents and community members it's nice to see some of the goals and objectives that the board and the school district you know were seeking
066with this kind of work and also having it being led in a more organized and consistent fashion i'm already seeing evidence of that of how things are occurring more systemically throughout our district we've been involved in this work for a number of years but to see it organized in this way and make sure that it transcends at all levels and it all schools in our district is really exciting to see it start to take shape underneath leadership so i just wanted to make that comment thank you so good evening everyone thank you for having me and uh thank you to the audience and folks that are here to hear this report uh nothing like having a group behind you as you have a presentation but we're gonna make it work so um you know uh
067just as i start and uh thank you for the introductions uh um but uh barrington 220 has always prided itself in inspiring all students to achieve excellence we have well documented history of those successes and should be extremely proud of our accomplishments at the same time we also have been aware of the fact that we have not been as successful over the years with our students of color those achievement disparities are also known as achievement gaps as a result we have responded with finding ways to meet the needs of our diverse student population over the years and as our demographics have can you see that while our mainstream students have continued to thrive and have been successful in our schools those experiences have just not been the same for our students of color we've also
068began to hear some of the stories being shared about the uneven efforts uh and experiences of our students dear barrington for example is just one of the ways that we have heard some of our former students where issues of race gender and ability were prominent concerns the director of equity race and culture diversity initiatives was created uh as a way to streamline our district efforts as uh dr mentioned and have a leader dedicated to systemizing this work for our school community when i came to the district last year uh during a national pandemic i had three primary goals to establish positive and meaningful relationships with students staff and community members to explore our community and district's efforts towards creating more equitable outcomes for our students and to create a district equity team composed of key
069district stakeholders to begin the work needed to create systemic transformation so to that end last year provided professional development and support to our district equity team and staff via summer universities and also supported our barrington high school equity cohorts i went on listening tours and presented at our barrington area rotary clubs participated in meaningful equity discussions with our inaugural barrington civics leaders group in our community our school ptos student groups teaching departments our barrington council for gifted and talented our students with special needs advocacy groups and courageous conversations that takes place at the barrington white house uh just to name a few and i really look forward to expanding and meeting with those groups more and many more this school year this brings me to what lies before before us this year the purpose of
070my report tonight is to share what we have planned moving forward this year in the areas of equity race and cultural diversity however before i get to that great work i also wanted to provide just a bit of information about critical race theory as there have been a few questions surrounding crt and equity work and as many of you already know we're not alone this has become a national debate with extremely high emotions intentions i want to start off first by saying that i understand those feelings of uncertainty and concerns being expressed as this has become and continues as this information has continued to dominate the national uh media and news outlets so before i begin to talk about the great work going on in our district let's have a quick discussion on the crt
071national debate and how we got here so let's go back to last may and the unrest taking place around the nation and the world for that matter really related to the murder of george floyd besides the protest and the need for racial reconciliation many fortune 500 companies and government agencies began mandating racial equity training for employees in july 2020 an employee of the city of seattle documented an anti-bias training session and sent the evidence to a journalist by the name of christopher rufo he used that information being sent to him to begin writing articles about trainings across the country that started to gain him some attention and notoriety last last summer on september 2nd mr rufo appeared on the tucker carlson tonight show and said this it's absolutely astonishing how critical race theory and excited
072those work very slowly for emphasis has pervaded every aspect of the federal government crt as an existential threat to the united states and lastly called for an executive order to stamp out the destructive divisive ideology after that he got a call uh from the white house at the time and soon after flew to dc to help create what was called an executive order the rest is history as we have seen uh throughout the last parts of our year uh this has dominated the media there's been in school boards and there's been lots of confusion and as we sit here today we have at least 22 states that have banned the teaching of crt schools in addition to other measures to eliminate equity training so this culture war of sorts was born and from my perspective
073was a direct assault on any and all forms of equity training the goal was clear and it was to really try to lump all equity efforts that uh that people were uncomfortable with under the term critical race theory as the culture war began to spread here are a couple of the tweets from mr ruffle about what was happening as they were attempting to brand the work one of them reads the goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think critical race theory we have decodified the term and recodified it to annex the entire range of cultural connections that are unpopular the other was we have successfully frozen their brand and quotes critical race theory into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions we will eventually turn
074it toxic as we put all the various cultural insanities under that brand categories okay these were mentioned last month so that's a little bit about how this kind of national debate started and then how it kind of just blew up and then it just became everywhere to be clear we do not teach critical race theory here in our school district however we do aim to provide students for the thorough fact-based account of our history this slide here is an example of how one state provided language to citizens to help them understand if critical race theory was taught in schools and as i share this slide please remember this is not a representation of our p220 and our beliefs if you look at the slide and i know it's small and if you see a couple
075of the uh the words there i want to draw your attention to number two equity diversity and inclusion that's my title uh the first one is talking about culturally responsive teaching we're going to talk a little bit about that later but again this is just an example of how to lump a lot of things into this term critical race theory as as this really got the attention so now that we have some context for the national debate what the heck is crt right what is it what is this thing so simply put um if you could if you say that um critical race theory is an academic theory that's mostly taught in higher education systems and law schools it was developed about 40 years ago by legal scholars derrick bell kimberly krinsall richard delgado gloria
076lassie billings to name a few and as and it was simply a theory to frame race as a social construct and also shows how racism has been embedded in the fabric of our country through law the quote here i thought from dr crenshaw really really kind of puts it in nutshell and it talks about the fact that law helps make race real from what our life expectancy is the wealth we have to what we can pass on on our to our children and this can only be understood by understanding our history and understanding the law's role in it again we do not teach critical race theory uh here in barrington 220. so now that we have a little bit about that let's talk about some of the concerns that were expressed relative to this experience
077with crt the belief that crt teaches one race or gender is inherently superior the notion that crt creates division or focuses on the negative and lastly white students bear the responsibility for the past again these are some of the concerns that were expressed as the argument continue to grow so again just a bit about critical race theory so let's get to the good stuff and what that is is the great work that's actually happening here in barrington district 220. so as we begin let's keep in mind that uh the board of education made equity a priority as a goal in addition to the createment of this commitment to equity statement last fall we simply want to put some action behind this commitment and i want to show you a little bit of how we do
078that we do that by creating a more inclusive school learning community building our students pride in a country that faces its path to construct a better future critical thinking and last and certainly not least culturally responsive teaching i'm going to stop for a second and talk a little bit about culturally responsive teaching you know a lot of times in education we have these buzzwords and sometimes we don't do a really good job of explaining what they are so what i did want to do is kind of give you some examples of how culturally responsive teaching is actually being used in our district at this time so let's look at culturally responsive teaching through literacy this comes from grove elementary school limits cassandra chain miss chang engages in culturally responsive teaching primarily through literacy any chance
079she gets to select a read-aloud book she selects appropriately leveled books from diverse authors here are some of those examples when she introduces these books she makes sure to show the authors websites photos and their work so that they know that students know them as a person these read aloud books also allow them to have meaningful conversations about diverse cultures and anything any associated historical facts as many of these works teach students about immigration refugees native american history the civil rights movement and the japanese internment camps beyond the whole class read-alouds ms chang also recommends books during book clubs for students to read with parents that are written by diverse authors to teach readers about disability and diversity here's another example this is culturally responsive teaching through identity mapping and this comes from michelle wiese
080formerly known as mr gia vanelli and she's a fourth grade teacher at lions elementary in our classroom we want to celebrate that which makes us unique so one way we do that is to create identity maps for each person in the classroom the kids think about their families their hobbies their interests and of course their cultures they put down in words quotes drawings and pictures or things that represent them that they feel may be comfortable in sharing with about themselves over the course of the year they revisit these identity maps and add them as they grow we celebrate what what's unique about each person be it a religion race ethnicities hobbies talented you know talent strengths and favorites we are starting to understand that all of these things contribute to making us who we are
081at this time in our lives and as they come together as a learning community it is important to work on building trust and empathy towards one another and this is one of the ways that they do this by the way we should also note that this activity was taken from sarah ahmed's being the change book and if i'm not mistaken back a couple years ago uh um we actually brought sarah madd um here to our district to do some work under dr becky gill next up this talk this talks a little bit about character counts and this is from our prairie middle middle school social worker mr brian tricott social emotional learning curriculum going back as far as the days of character counts has included lessons on kindness and acceptance we teach asking for help
082self-advocacy and encourage all 220 learners to be upstanders for what's right conversations about everything specific language and skills to use when something negative has been said or done are a vital part of fulfilling that upstandard role another piece i'd like to talk a little bit about is a laurie ford's position uh it's called our in rush enrichment for instruction specialists we've had this position here for about 15 years this position provides direct support aimed to nurture and manifest potential in students starting in kindergarten and support students from sunny hill that continue and extended and are accelerated through middle school and high school okay last and certainly not least many of you may remember our orchestra teacher clark shelton for those of our new board members he came to your first board meeting and actually spoke
083a little bit about his experience that he had through our equity cohort uh this is uh this is culturally responsive teaching through music his project this year is to foster a sense of belonging for students of all backgrounds in the orchestra program initial actions include inviting current dhs workers and students to participate in surveys and focus groups to give in to explore ways to provide culturally of responsive music in the classroom and co-curricular performances to seek input and discussion from elementary and middle school orchestra and music teachers and to talk to music teachers outside of district 220 that have success in serving a diverse music populations so these are just a few examples of how we actually do culturally responsive teaching in our classrooms and simply put it is making making students see themselves in
084the learning process okay so um there's also been a little scud about about some changes to curriculum that have taken place and i wanted to take a brief moment to talk about those so the illinois state board of education last march actually uh moved forward with the isb's culturally responsive teaching and leading standards these are directly related to state colleges and teaching universities and what it talks about is making sure that our new teachers you know after they receive their certifications come to the field already knowing and having an ethos about what culturally responsive teaching is a reminder there's these standards apply to teacher preparation programs not to in-service educators or the k-12 curriculum so our curriculum has not actually changed however the state has let us know that if we were as a district
085we're interested in trying to provide professional development for our staff on culturally responsive teaching they'd be more than willing to support us but again no curriculum changes this is really directed towards our teacher colleges and certification programs okay embracing our diversity as a school community see the student so one of the things that i thought i'd kind of share with you is a little bit of our our story and as we look at the changing faces in barrington one of the things that we noticed and i talked about uh just a minute ago was how it started changing some of their standards to be more uh culturally responsive well there's a reason for that so if we go and we look at some data and this is an illinois race ethnic trend from 2006 to
0862022 okay as you just look across and see how the state has changed what you'll see over time is that we have become incredibly more diverse as a state which is a good thing right and as a result of that they've shifted they've shifted requirements to make sure that we were more inclusive and being more culturally responsive all right so this is at the state level so when we look at the state level we wonder what this means for us here in barrington right so let's take a look at our actual statistics okay as we see over time we're actually mirroring what's taking place at the state level so we are becoming more and more diverse as well we want to celebrate that that's an awesome thing that's a wonderful thing and so obviously as
087we become more diverse we certainly want to become more inclusive in the way that we teach in the way that we practice and the way that we grow okay some of the ongoing efforts and again these are just you know just a compilation of some of the things that are already happening and artistic and some things that we want to move forward on we start off at the high school and again as we've kind of been talking about you know this this work didn't just start i went back as as far as 2012 just for the purposes of this report to start looking at the timeline that they have created at the high school of work that they have done okay and that last piece in 2020 speaks to increasing pd opportunities for staff so
088they've been moving towards this and again we will continue to do that professional development this year i was fortunate to provide summer university workshops for interested staff over the summer um that focus on uh implicit bias and anti-racist thinking we had new staff orientation where i actually had the opportunity to meet with our entire new uh new staff provide them some some kind of remind them of our board statement also share with them some of our visions for equity and how this looks and what we're going to be looking like in the classrooms we also been talking about our administrative academy and again when we talk about administrators i want us to think about our principles i want to think about our teacher leaders think about our department chairs our assistant principals our deans okay
089so these are the individuals that will be going through an administrative academy in early october focused on guess what leading for ecwid and in addition to that we will also sustain professional development for that same team throughout the school year to make sure that we are practicing what we preach and providing the opportunities for growth for our aquatic leaders some community outreach i don't know if you guys are getting tired of this picture to the right but it seems to be everywhere that being said the barrington white house i've been fortunate to be asked october 17th they have a cultural series they reached out to me in early march of last year and asked me to come and provide information this this report that i'm doing here is going to be you know botched up
090and we're going to put it on the road and so this is one of the things that i'm looking to present to them to again get the information out a little bit more to our community and what we're doing uh barrington area library tedx event never done a tedx event it freaks me out but that's okay we're gonna rock it right so in november of this year i'll be doing a tedx event again exploring and talking about the work that we're doing in our schools uh the barrington civics leaders group i spoke about that a little bit i'm also connecting with our our folks in uh um an instruction to create a barrington 220 parent university you know one of the great things that has come out of the establishment the positive relationships that i've
091been establishing with parents they really like the stuff that we're doing at the school but they also want to know what's in it for them you know what kind of training can they have and so whether it be you know coffees with nate whether it be this parent universities i'm really looking forward to partnering with parents to figure out ways where we can expose them to some of this information and share with them so that again this is this becomes a community of learners we don't want this just to be in high school we don't want do not want this just to be in our schools per se we want to make sure that this is a community effort and so i'm going to get out there and try to find ways to make sure
092that we can do that these are just some examples of some of the other opportunities that i've had i wanted to make sure that we were showing how inclusive we've been so uh last last spring i had the opportunity to go to the barrington council for gifted and talented uh coalition to kind of talk about our equity work i'm doing that again hopefully this spring at another time just this last week uh thanks to um our good folks in special services uh there's a coffee and conversation that was created we're talking about sel and making that a strong branch to our district equity team so i'm connected with that group again again trying to expand ourselves to be as as inclusive as possible a website tonight overnight thanks to the good work of samantha and
093a few others our equity web pages will be live uh the equity what page will do a few things first it will consist of a couple faqs and again this will be fluid we'll continue to increase those faqs as we go along through the year um it will have a couple resources for our community talk a little bit about our district equity team um some upcoming events that happen for us and again and also there will be a a interaction session where uh uh community members if they have questions on equity or questions on our work they can actually fill out a google form it'll come directly to me where i'll be able to respond to respond to any questions or concerns that folks may have this is an example as i get move on
094to some of our our committee work in our district equity team um i talked a little bit about us having these four committees and the four committees are purposely uh near the organizational structure of our board okay these are these are school committees but we wanted to mirror them similarly because that's how we know that business gets done so our community and awareness group for example will be a subcommittee that works with me to continue to update our our website and provide communication to our school community about our works we have a professional development curriculum committee we'll be talking there about again guess what pd you know uh making sure that we're moving towards creating that vision for equity and sustaining that work in all of our buildings uh our policy and procedure committee an
095example of how that work uh um how that takes place is uh earlier this this evening we've already approved an example of some gender neutral policies that we're going to go through our board policies right this is an opportunity for our policy committee within our district equity to kind of get some of that information and then provide board of education feedback as you start seeing more policies so throughout the year as we start meeting in october these are some of the things and how we will start being a little bit more systemic okay in addition to that we've talked a little bit about hiring we've got a group that's really going to uh the support our our human resources department to to work together to talk about ways that we can specifically target more minority
096candidates and get out there and work on our brand to make sure that we people see that we are trying to be more inclusive and also recruit aggressively a more demographic that's more consistent with our student population okay again four committees building level liaisons for our leadership team members and my goal will be as i come back in march is i'm looking to have some friends come along with me from our subcommittee so that you will hear about the work in our subcommittees just to show you how systemic we are trying to be and moving that work forward how about some questions before we get to questions i just want to make sure that i state the board asked me less last time we met at the workshop to let the community and let you
097know that we did this new board the current board has affirmed the equity statement as it's as it stated today so i want to make sure that that is very clear because the action was taken on that with the prior board so we do want to let you know that we you and the community know that we do affirm the equity statement as it reads a couple questions but does anybody else want to start well i guess my first question is really to the board like i want to get some professional development you know if the board is is is in with me or not can we look at even the board getting some professional development in this area either through nate or i know that um iesb offers the course too that that laurie
098grant mentioned to us as well so if the board is interested in that then um i'd like to ask janine to start looking for dates on our on our calendar so we can do that um and that would be a public uh it's an open session item obviously so we could anyone could be invited to observe that session as well i think that wouldn't that would be really healthy for us as a board to go through together and also you know isb is stated in its strategic plan from 2020 to 2023 that it's actually developing an equity tool to evaluate every district and so at some point we're going i believe we're going to be as a district kind of evaluated on our equity journey and i think by going through something like that together
099it will help us you know start or continue that journey so i'm in favor of it and i would love to participate with with all of you together at some point i know that wasn't um so janine can you start to survey us for a date i'll work with nate and craig and and all of you obviously we'll find it it would be great if like nate or craig could sit or both could sit in on that too if we end up going with the iasb facilitated workshop too to make sure that we're kind of in sync as well right i think and maybe nate doesn't actually have to teach it he could just kind of sit back and absorb right [Laughter] i think along those lines i know we discussed and nate you've said
100you're so willing to work with community and i know catherine and our audience brought up being able to ask questions i think it would be nice to even have like some town hall event sort of things too where we can all have a dialogue together absolutely um i think that would be helpful forever so nate thank you so much for sharing so encouraged by your work and your partnership and what we as a district are doing and the opportunity we have to partner with our community with regard to to equity and uh you know being as inclusive as possible for our students and our kids uh and thank you to this board too for affirming the equity statement that the previous board approved i think that's also very encouraging um sunday my question for you
101is you've been here for more than a year now clearly came during the pandemic um in your assessment and i think you know you probably see correlation with the committees too in the district equity team what would you say are the most urgent gaps in our district with regard to equity and how much do you think something like an equity audit or an audit done through an equity lens could help in discerning those gaps sure um first and foremost i i call it pockets of greatness i think there are wonderful things that are happening in many many areas of our school school district right the um the challenge is streamlining those efforts right and making those efforts more cohesive so that the experiences that students have are consider as consistent as possible throughout all of
102our buildings each school has is is its own culture don't get me wrong right but at the same time there should be some some con some consistency as it relates to how we operate and so i think that highlighting those pockets of greatness and then finding ways to make sure that that greatness can be shared in other spaces is where i'd start as it relates to equity audits um you know one of the things that i said said to some parents uh um a little while back is this phrase of what we don't um i think that when we start having a little bit more training and start developing our critical lenses so that we can start seeing gaps and start asking questions of what's missing we'll get better at than preparing for things such
103as an equity model and so when you think about those things we want to make sure that again we're in a space where we're ready to pull that mirror up and be able to look at ourselves and be able to say okay let's work on what we're seeing here that's different to do that i think we're going to have to have a heaping helping of understanding about the whys why we have to look at this information different why are we asking these different types types of questions so that we can start seeing some different outcomes once we start doing that work i think that an equity audit and again the high school is already on its way and doing one um you know they're in year two of their equity cohort so they're a little
104further along so that's an example of something that i have in my mind is so as we start looking at these cohorts in each of our buildings once we start doing some training i think that's when we'll start thinking about doing some of those things yet at the same time we know that in some spaces we're already you know we're already checking and doing some checking and balances to see how we are that's really helpful just one follow-up to that um you talked about pockets of greatness and it makes me think about you know the consistency throughout our district and you alluded to making sure those pockets of greatness spread so i think about you know what you described with mrs chang it grow and what's going on at line i can think of examples
105of my own kids as they're going through like uh so so one classroom one teacher i remember one year spoke about todd taught the kids about wilma rudolph and uh you know maybe grace lee boggs was uh in dolores warsa um and then another classroom i i know an experience of another kid of my children maybe martin luther king weekend pass without any mention right of the modern civil rights movement and so how do you how do you envision that process working where those pockets of greatness or you know what is working really well so that students and staff can see themselves reflected in a holistic way so that we're expanding the narrative of our community how would that process work so that you know it can move throughout the district and it's not just
106isolated by classroom or by teacher i mean could you explain what you envisioned in terms of how to actually move that sure through the district one thing i'll say to be honest is this is helpful i think teachers hearing a commitment from a board of education and teachers hearing us talking about this work um gives them the the the okay to to be to dare you know to to go ahead and take risks to try to do things some things difficult at the same time why reinvent the wheel when we have these wonderful folks that i've already been able to reach out to out to that have these wonderful opportunities what are ways that we can get those folks in front of folks to share the great things that they're doing and so a way
107to do that is is to systematize that in my opinion is as we think about our district equity team right principals have recommended staff for that committee many of those staff members were some of the people that i reached out to right to get some of this information so as we look at next year and developing these cohorts in our buildings of willing participants of 10 to 15 to 17 staff members we'll be using these quotes as resources to start sharing those pockets of greatness that's the way then i think that we can sustain these efforts and then hold ourselves accountable to make sure that maybe in places where we don't have that pocket of greatness we can share and then make sure that pocket becomes great how can we as a board support those
108efforts in the best way possible i think continuously to keep equity on your table continuing to hold us accountable to actionable items as we as doctor have talked about creating a strategic plan making sure that our strategic plan is embedded with the equity and we go we go lock step key and key it's great that we're starting with the process at our at the district level to create a strategic plan at the same time as we're at the ground level of this work that we're doing with equity they'll go hand in hand so as long as you continue to keep that on your table race on the table and equity on our table and hold us accountable to those actual items and continue that to have that as a board priority we'll be on our
109way you did affirm our four priorities at that last meeting i'll remind everyone and so we did have a whole section on equity race and cultural sensitivity so um i don't see us erasing that but thank you for those reminders and we can continue to to support you in that way um one thing i was observing as you were talking about these pockets of greatness too is that i mean we have done a lot with curriculum in this district in the last decade or last 12 14 years um and have moved to provide consistency not just in this area but we haven't done as much in this area but we've done it in math and social studies and science and so we do have um a lot of experience in this area so i'm sure
110we'll be tapping into those resources to make sure that yeah and you know as you mentioned certain subject there you know certainly our social global studies unit that we just refreshed and trading stuff had an emphasis in this area as well so it is there but i think we need to expand it in other content areas too and look for opportunities this can be a massive undertaking right and there's a process for curriculum review this just becomes a lens to that process that over time evolves and i guess if there's new board members that aren't aware of that curriculum cycle maybe we have a yeah can you actually explain how that curriculum review works um well maybe we can give you an update i mean you can do it real quick but maybe we should
111give an update too on we have a defined process that every year we work through the different curricular areas and actually um you know at the elementary level becky gill our director of curriculum instruction oversees that work and kelly hanson is our secondary curriculum director we can take those tables and we can share them in a board update so that new board members can see how that cycle flows and i think what dr hunt was saying is now this equity lens just overlays right on top of a structure we have in place that this just becomes another thing that we're looking at as we're doing a curriculum review how do i do maleficent [Laughter] right that's right that's doing the same thing over there i couldn't see can i add one thing really quick about
112the curriculum review process is that as part of the process we always want to make sure that we're using a universal design for learning process which means that it's all inclusive to make sure that all of our students are able to access that curriculum with rigor so that includes all levels abilities everything so that would naturally be part of the process that's a very practical example is the teach act that passed over the summer and was signed into state law so it makes illinois the first state in the country to integrate asian american history into the k-12 curriculum and so um i find that very exciting not just because i'm asian american but because it reflects our community um so in a practical sense how does that how would that partnership work because this law
113has been signed but as as it passed the illinois legislature and was signed um the the our legislators also said there's a lot of autonomy with each school district with the board with the administration with the teachers in terms of how to integrate this curriculum into this this history into the curriculum so in a practical sense like what does that partnership look like between the district equity team and melissa and her team and the teachers and the board in terms of integrating this curriculum which will i think starts in 2022 so next fall so could you sure i mean i think it's seamless um you know melissa's office is right down the way we we talk often um um it's an easy process and again i'll just you know not to beat a a dead
114horse as they say but uh um it's certainly a lot easier and we will be able to be more inclusive as the board continues to be more inclusive and so as we think about those commitments that is something that we will be able to align with the curriculum pieces so as we talk about the autonomies our autonomy might be a little look a little different than maybe a a school district whose board doesn't have a commitment to equity who aren't who is not doing these things and so maybe they do the bare minimum um we won't be doing the bare minimum we'll we'll do our maximum the best that we can to make sure that we're as inclusive as possible but i'm envisioning a lot of partnerships absolutely your curriculum committee and melissa's team right
115yeah i can't have a curriculum committee without without the the head honcho you're talking about two different well not two different things but there's two passes there's a cycle for curriculum review right and part of it's resource allocation you can't adopt a new math program every year and afford you know for that from a programmatic standpoint from a professional development standpoint and it takes time to implement and do things with fidelity and then there's things that happen legislatively that seem to happen a lot where we then have to plop them in a schedule and we've had these conversations are where where's implementation have to happen let's work backwards from there and we'll discuss put it in uh the curriculum it'd be great if they always aligned but it doesn't always work that way in this
116case if i can clarify a couple things this does align very nicely with where we're naturally at in the process for social and global studies from the k-12 perspective and i also wanted to clarify that the teaching asian american history act is not a curriculum in and of itself it's that we work with our curriculum to refine and revise and implement units of study relating to the teaching of american history so right now our social and global studies is in that monitor and refined stage and another piece of legislation that was in the house bill 2170 is the revision of the illinois social studies standards which are currently being they were released by the state of illinois and currently being revised even further and our directors of elementary and secondary education are working with our
117curriculum steering teams to look at those revised standards along with our new legislation and we will make sure that everything is implemented appropriately in conjunction with nate's work as well so in this case it does fit really nicely with that monitor and refine stage because you're already in that process and then you just kind of look at you know what more might need to be integrated what we already have in the because curriculum is really fluid and dynamic instead of static so we always want the autonomy to be able to look at things as needs come up so it's not like we would say well math went four years ago you're not due for another three years they're always in that monitor and revised stage or research or that development stage that may be something
118that we bring back in march you know as nate mentioned um we have our district equity team the whole group that recently met we're going to go now into those subcommittees and each of the subcommittees is going to have short long-term goals right so there's going to be some long-term goals of how we're addressing curriculum that's going to follow that cycle this will be one of the things that's more of a short term that we may actually be able to bring back to the board some updates on that just like the communications subcommittee i know we've got plans of how do we increase our social media presence and have more you know real-time information then strictly the the website with updates to be more you know forward and stuff like that and certainly policy committee
119i think all year long will be looking at some policies there may be certain topics that the policy committee brings forward so that's kind of the structure we're going to work within over the next several months throughout this year a couple things i just wanted to say thank you i see a lot of the committee here these folks this is a volunteer thing to be on a committee it's extra time it's extra care and i really appreciate that everyone who's involved there's a lot of people behind the scenes with craig and nate and i also see a lot of people in the audience who have come to hear about this and i i congratulate you for coming and i'm glad you're here too to hear what's going on and spread the word and um you
120know some of the things you said about the website um like those opportunities to come see you speak out and about in town will the dates and times be on there okay okay and then um because it sounds like a lot and then and then if other organizations are like wow i want nate to come to my organization that's how to find you right okay the emails and then the question and answers like because i know a couple audience members said well we want to ask questions at the end of the meeting and i'm thinking they might be about this as a good guess maybe um to contact you right so yeah um and this isn't so much a question but i just also i just want to say thank you to the teachers that
121are thinking about this and have been thinking about this um you know some of the things i've learned this year from being on the committee are that and and from life and from some of the other folks is you know if i am a student and i see a teacher who looks like me who who i can look up to and i can say wow i want to be a teacher one day or if someone comes to school who's you know an interesting profession and i say oh there's someone who looks like me who's a doctor or works at the fire department that can inspire someone to to want to to greater achievement and to bigger goals and so i think this is really important on so many fronts and you know i'm not explaining
122myself as well as nate wood but um but it's appreciated and i think it's important for our community at this time and all the time so um there's probably people watching who've been involved and it's nice to see you know some of the outcomes and see some of the real steps and real things that are happening and teachers who didn't think about this until they were exposed and now they're doing things different and inspiring students and i think it's really important for for our students and it's really nice that our families want to jump on board and have some parent education and university too so thank you for this work and um i'm appreciative of our board for supporting this work thank you anyone else i had a couple other comments too thank you even
123how how many things have changed just from last tomorrow she's grown and i'm so impressed with your support group behind you and i'm so glad you're getting people involved and i think the thing obviously about everything you're saying and doing but i'm i'm most excited about you're getting into the community i mean you know you're obviously a district employee but you're you're expanding and i think that's going to be so helpful to get the support of the community to make you even more successful in the school so uh you know as much community outreach as you can do i i'm gonna support i think that's just phenomenal i really do so thank you yeah i would echo that i so i'll echo what my colleagues have said thank you for what you're doing it's appreciated
124i think you know we can all agree equity is very important um and i do think that getting out to communities can be critical for us to make sure that everyone is you know on board with this because that as you noted at the beginning of your presentation there are concerns and i think it's important for us to clarify because you know you talk about pockets of greatness and i think it's fantastic that we're going to find those and make sure that we spread those around to you know make sure that everything's on an equal basis i guess my only question on that front is are there any safeguards we're going to put in place to ensure that we're not going to lose focus on those areas that are already getting that will now not
125be the focus anymore no i think i think uh the the beauty about equity is that um you can embed it into your lessons and and how you teach the um you know the key is is creating those spaces for kids creating those safe spaces where we know that critical thinking is going to happen so sometimes we bring things into class you know that um we're sometimes not comfortable with we create a safe space for those dialogues kids are ready for that you don't have those safe spaces that's when the trouble starts so we want to make sure that we again remind folks about you know shifting those safe spaces so that we can have these conversations and again we're all about teaching and learning but equity can certainly be a supplement to that and
126then the other point that i heard you make as it relates to you know making this a you know kind of a destination district i think that's fantastic as well and certainly you know we want to make sure that everyone who's qualified and prepared and you know you know going to be an asset to this district is aware that this is an opportunity i think the concern that i've heard from some folks in the community is are we going to treat those candidates differently than we would treat a non you know let's call it diversified to candidate i think that's the issue we can do that all right no no we can strategically target because we want to mirror our student population but that doesn't mean you know people need to have their qualifications the
127reality is that people have those qualifications the question is can we find them what are we going to do different to make sure that we can bring those folks here and not just here but keep them here it's really important he is outreach yes it's not narrowing the lens it's broadening the lens to get the candidates to come so okay well that's great excellent thank you and you did have an hr committee on the team right to address just that right so i just had a couple more things too so thank you also i really appreciate all the work that you've done i'll echo what other board members have said so we also have it's it lea you reminded me when you talked about you can see somebody that that looks different or whatever but
128we have a lot of people that are neurotic divergent we have the lgbtq community what kinds of things are we doing for them are they are we looking at them also in the district equity committee absolutely uh part of probably part of the uh the purpose of the website h2 is combining those forces and so you will see on there other other groups that we are connecting with to make sure that we're all under one umbrella we want to make sure that this isn't just about race race is important but they're also looking at gender we're looking at other issues that again are part of the reasons that position was created so yes absolutely i want to continue to work with those groups share with those groups and again support those groups as much as
129we can to again make sure that we're inclusive for all for everyone can you tell us a little bit more about the tedx event [Laughter] i know there's a stage i'm excited it'll be about this work though i'm just really about trying to share that work i'm really forcing it again to have great community members that have reached out that have been supportive of the work that are helping me establish these really positive connections and it's it's really going so i really want to thank them uh for for being here tonight the work behind the scenes uh for coming and showing up um the executive council for their uh constructive feedback as it relates to this this presentation that you're seeing tonight as well as the district equity team we spent a lot of time
130looking at this i'm really happy that this was a product where i feel that we kind of vetted in the appropriate way that we're bringing up and can be really really transparent and proud of so i want to thank everyone for their efforts because it's not easy thank you again i think you uh you know just looking at our priorities under this category right to assess and evaluate collaborate and community communicate with the community promote racial and cultural sensitivity and equitable behavior and training the district leadership i think you touched on all of those things already so we're in good shape for meeting our priorities for this year so really appreciate that so much and i have one last question we'll release you but my understanding is that there is some development around um you
131know families or students who experience incidents or feel like hey i i don't know where to go this is and by this i mean you know incidents that are uh racial in nature or sexist in nature or anti-lgbtq um we're looking at some kind of um systematized like way of i think that's a major focus i'm sorry not to cut you off but i think that'll be a major focus of our uh procedure subcommittee is thinking about ways that we can again find ways to be more transparent and again we're going to need to collect data so we need to figure out a way to systematize process it and then make sure that again when we roll it out it's something that everybody knows about we know how to use it we know how we're
132going to report with it and then again folks feel that the work is you know that it's actually happening so we want to make sure we take some time that kind of stuff and those procedures will come back through the board of education through the policy committee so i'm looking forward to bringing some of that to you in march there will be a recommendation from the det policy committee that will probably go through the policy board policy committee and then go to the board if there were suggested if there were changes or suggestions or procedures absolutely okay fantastic thank you so much thank you you gave us all um a little uh pin last year we have a ton of these pins because one thing i've learned over the last year is that you know
133to communicate by showing people that that you're supportive and in the same place to come so i don't know if this was given out before with the new board or the old board but if everybody doesn't have one can we make sure that we all get of course thank you matt fuller for making this presentation look pretty uh sitting with me like it wouldn't be as nice and we'll post that right thank you [Applause] okay so next up is our agenda items for september 20. oh wait wait wait wait for october [Music] like what am i doing i went back and looked at the other meetings i can pull the priorities up that's my problem i think we invited the ed foundation to present and then strategic planning update is a possibility anything else so
134angel had brought up bus routes looking at bus routes last time and i um i had a couple of questions i um asked to uh dr hunt about you know bus rods in winter in particular that i think we're probably going to need more information on i'm wondering dr hunt do you think we should put that on the agenda for next time or should we hold off for a couple of meetings so you can be down for october 19th october 19th for that that discussion item okay that's good with me um as the quarantine and coveted things are changing literally daily i'd love to just reassess as often as we can i mean i think our number we keep saying our number one goal is to keep healthy kids at school and i just want
135as a board to make sure that we are doing everything we can to achieve that goal so we want to have it as a separate item on the board agenda or it can be part of the superintendent report i'm happy either way but i mean i don't know i think it's so influx i don't even know we i think we just have to you know hopefully we'll get to a point where we can see if there's like we said we would love local control back and we need to i know we're fighting for that but this let's keep the kids in school we're still interested in percentage of vaccinated uh employees and and high school students is that a number you might be or uh we might be able to get in the next couple
136weeks maybe one percent of staff 91 i'm impressed and i actually put an email out today to start updating our student numbers so i'll bring that with you next week thank you just reminder for the board at our next finance committee meeting for the next four meeting we will have the district auditor there uh so you're all welcome to to join will be before the regular meeting that'll be four o'clock four o'clock on october 5th four o'clock okay so katie's request is part of the superintendent's report then i think it'll be part of the superintendent's reports unless we know we have something specific that's kind of how i'm looking at it that we something new no that will get like let me let us read the guidance and yeah i'm sure he will give us
137new new guidance before then a few times probably well we at least just heard that we're gonna at least get some updates on the percentage of the vaccinated so okay i don't know if we have to have a separate discussion later or not it just kind of depends on what's if there's new stuff but yeah some form that is on there so i have a question i don't know if the next meeting or in two meetings would make sense to have an update on the shields testing and how it's going or if that's too soon i don't know oh i think we can we can talk about it okay yeah hopefully it's it's helpful it's like anything else when you take something that large on in each building yeah uh first couple of days rough
138and learn from one building to the other and as we move forward with it you know it certainly improves and we need to get some clarity on whether that's a requirement of tests to stay or not i mean some things that have come up lately there's a lot of misinformation we've got to get clarified as well staff um i'm assuming your guys are working through all that too correct anytime with a mandate for teachers to be vaccinated and or or be tested yeah okay i just want to make sure i knew what that wasn't something else yikes okay all right so we've got those things on our agenda for next time um i'll remind everybody that don't forget about all our great events for homecoming and please do not leave immediately you must sign six
139documents right here we can pass it down you can start at one end i guess oh you've got them okay these are just mine okay great so uh oh okay great everybody so go to the public continue before you leave so is there a way for the community to obtain one of these pins that you talked about [Music] can if you stop by the district office could you get one there you go okay so there you go all right anything else okay so is there a motion to consider the confidentiality of our closed session minutes so moved second roll yes all right motion passes there in motion to adjourn second all right all in favor you