001Six. And I call this meeting of the board of education to order. Cindy, please call the role. >> Carlu >> here. >> Gonzalez Thomas >> present. >> Hilberts >> present. All right. Thank you. And just so everybody knows, Erin is away on business, so he is participating as he is allowed. Um on phone the phone. Does that work? Okay. >> Yeah. >> And then we will now do the pledge of allegiance. >> I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Right. Tom, are there anything items to add or remove from the agenda? >> No. All right. Does the board have any questions or comments? Otherwise, I will entertain a motion to
002approve the agenda as discussed. >> So, moved by Raquel, second by Rob. >> Suny, please lead us in a roll call vote. >> Meadows, >> yes. >> Thomas, >> yes. >> Arandu, >> yes. >> All right. Thank you. Pause too long for a while. All right. Hali, we have two people wishing to address the board today. >> Okay. Welcome to the meeting of the board of education. If anyone wishes to address the board this evening, please see our recording secretary to submit a form for addressing the board. Please put your full name and address on the form. In general, the board will not answer questions or engage in dialogue during the public comment. This does not mean we do not take your concerns or comment seriously. The board values active community participation in the district's
003endeavor and encourages people to engage in the district using appropriate channels and systems designed with your input in mind. Board members are not involved in the day-to-day operations of the district and cannot engage in district business individually. If you have specific questions or you'd like to further engage with the district, you may submit your questions using the link on the website and an appropriate staff member will communicate with you. Holly, please call up the first person. >> Thank you, President Meadows. Speakers will be called up in order of form submission. First form received, the first person invited to speak. When your name is called, please come to the podium so that you can be heard. All individual speaking will be limited to three minutes and there's a timer there. We will start that once you're
004settled at the podium. At any time during this meeting, written comments may be submitted to Cindy Rodriguez at my right. Speakers should conduct themselves with civility and respect towards others. Our first speaker is Haley Lamb. Over the past week, I've had multiple conversations with our school about our schools and school board. Parents, teachers, and former board members have shared their experiences of bullying, racism, and suppression, heartbreaking and uncomfortable conversations that have been ignored, distorting the law to avoid accountability, disdain, and defensiveness towards the party voicing their concerns. Your silence is compliance. The bullies are amongst us. I look forward to the student board members sharing their insight and speaking for their classmates. I hope that they are heard. Our previous meeting had 1500 views on on YouTube, multiple Facebook posts, and I'm sure hush hush
005conversations that ended as soon as you entered the room. Your community is tired, but we are not stopping. We demand answers. answers regarding screen time, bullying, recess, answers about how the n-word is not hate speech in Betavia, but it is in our neighboring communities. Why our passionate educators have been let go. Why novels are removed from our classrooms. What is your plan for pride since you cowarded during Women's History Month? When our community faces adversity, you choose defensiveness over curiosity, silence over transparency, and isolation over collaboration. It feels like you have forgotten that you were elected leaders chosen to represent your constituency. It is a betrayal of the entire premise. It only changes when someone steps up to do the right thing. I challenge you when you are vetting the who will replace Danielle and
006Katie to seek someone who embodies the views of our community who challenges your mindset making the board more of a reflection of our community than it is right now. Thank you. Our next speaker is Emily Buckles. Good evening. My name is Emily Buckles and I'm the parent of a rising fourth grader at HC Storm. The primary reason for my comments tonight are regarding technology in the classroom. However, I would be remiss to not comment on the recent resignation of two board of ed members. As a district parent, I am very concerned by these two resignations taking place prior to the end of their terms, especially given the reasons cited by both individuals. I sincerely hope that constructive discussions are taking place regarding how to foster a positive culture with trust and transparency between the board
007members as well as administration. As an outside observer, what I heard and witnessed during last week's meeting suggests that there is work to do. Turning to tech in the classroom, I'm here in support of the distraction-free Bavia advocacy group. Just last week, the Surgeon General released an advisory on the harms of screen use. While I am 100% on board that it's a parent's role to monitor, educate, and guide their child on the use of screens, there is also a critical opportunity and responsibility for schools to do the same. I faced a direct conflict with the use of screens at school because we limit usage in our home. And unfortunately, my child's exposure to screens was introduced at school. And in our experience, some teachers use Chromebooks more than others. The Surgeon General's advisory calls out
008actions that youth, families, schools, health care providers, tech companies can make right now. And I'd like to highlight a couple of those specific recommendations for schools. The first is to implement a bell-to-bell ban to limit or eliminate multitasking during school hours. A comprehensive ban offers documented benefits including reduce distraction, improve student focus, enhance test scores, better peer relations, reduce bull cyber bullying. Neighboring districts such as St. Charles 303 implemented these policies this past school year and in talking with my nephews who attend middle school there, it was an easy transition. The second is to teach digital citizenship and literacy skills. In practice, this means prioritizing pen and paper curricula, hands-on activities, and social activities for all grade levels. A friend of mine who teaches sixth grade in Geneva shared that she rarely uses Chromebooks. And
009when she offers the choice between digital and paper assignment, roughly 80% of her students choose the pen and paper. They actively crave time away from screens. The third is to create opportunities to display screen time. This involves offering games and activities to encourage physical movement and social interaction during class free time, lunch, or recess. We hinder our children's ability to learn how to engage and socialize with one another when we allow Chromebooks and other devices to be used during free time at school. I urge you to read the study by the surgeon general. And furthermore, if you have not yet read Jonathan hates the anxious generation, I highly encourage you to do so. The research is clear. We cannot afford to wait to act. Our students deserve BPS 101 to be a leader and not
010a follower in adopting these vital policies. Thank you. >> That concludes our public comment. >> All right. Appreciate everyone coming today. All right. Jumping right into reports. Item 4.1, school improvement plan presentations. I need bullet point. Lots of talking. >> Car, you're up. [clears throat] >> Run, run. I'm so excited to talk tonight. Right. So, um, I'm Tara Pekch. I'm the principal over at Routollo. And then I have Ryan Sullivan with me. He is a PE, first aid, foods, um, anything else that we put on his plate teacher at our school. He's on our SLT. He's also finishing BPSU and we have this awesome opportunity for him to showcase all of his learned skills tonight. >> Hey, Erin, do you mind uh muting? >> Eron, could you mute at our school? That doesn't count towards
011my minute. >> All right, go ahead. >> Dave, could you drive to wherever he's at and take care of that for him? [laughter] >> All right, so we're going to start with our goal updates. So, our first goal was to increase student learning through implementation of impactful tier one strategies. And then we were hoping to create equitable learning environments uh through implementing proactive strategies that foster engagement, belonging, and academic success. So our metrics that we used to measure that were growth on the map and then our panorama data as well as our champs walkthrough observations. So if you look at the data that's up there, the fall of 2025, we have map math growth data that was 65.34 and reading was 50. Our goals were 70 and our SLT knew that those were high goals
012for us to reach. We did not make it. We did have decent growth in our MAP scores in terms of achievement, but we didn't see our growth goals being met. I'll talk a little bit more about the difference between those two on the next two slides. Um, we still did see a lot of positive things happening in MAP. It just doesn't show in the goal that we chose to um, look at. So, I'll explain that in a minute. Um, the second thing on there is our panorama data. We've talked about this percentage as well. So the 70 72nd percent means that we are still in the 90th percentile nationwide for data that we receive for belonging but we were hoping to raise it to 73. Talking to Panorama representatives 73% is really uh moving 1%
013to 2% is really a big jump for a year. Um but we were hoping to do that. We didn't. We stayed level which is better than dropping but we would love to see those scores go up. The last thing on here is our champs opportunities to respond. So, our SLT team goes into classrooms and watches teachers for about 10 minutes in the classroom and they mark literal tallies on a sheet of how many times students have an opportunity to respond. We have 11.6 in the fall. We were shooting for 14 and we ended up with 11.93 kind of growth um mathematically speaking but not what we would want to see. One thing to consider with this is that the rate that we are expecting or hoping in an ideal classroom is between 10 to 40
014opportunities to respond in 10 minutes. Some classes did hit that 40 mark, but there are others that have some room for growth. So, we averaged out to pretty close to what we were in the fall. Our SLT has come up with some goals and some ideas of how we can increase that moving forward. A lot of factors play into that, including when you're going, what time you're going, what classes you go to, but we really want to see those improve. Um, so although our goals were not met, there are some highlights for us to look at. Down at the bottom, if you look, our overall proficiency increased, but students failed to meet growth goals. That'll be on the next two slides. And then students with 504s, their sense of belonging rose on the panorama data
015three percentage points. Every area of their ratings for 504s increased. Um, and then students with IEPs saw growth in five to of five% in two different breakdown questions. So, those are big percentages to jump in Panorama and we were excited to see that happen in some of our groups that don't always feel like they belong. Um, we've done some work with our counseling and advising groups to try to target some of those areas for um outreach and we're excited to see some opportunity there. All right. So, like I said, there's a difference between proficiency and growth. We've talked about that in each presentation that you guys have had. If you look at our math scores, we did not reach our growth target. But if you look at our achievement growth, we went from um 73
01676% to 81% um for our students who are scoring in proficiency range. So that's a huge jump for us. Even though enough kids didn't grow for us to meet our growth target, our kids are showing proficiency at a very high rate. So they're doing well on the test, they're just not all growing. We still want to see our kids grow regardless of where they're placing, but it's hard to grow when you're in that higher percentile. Um the window of growth kind of shortens a little bit. So that is one of the reasons we think we might not have seen as much growth as we were hoping for. We have growth in our ELA um classes as well. While we were in the 61st percentile for growth, we did see 71 to 73rd percentile for our
017actual proficiency scores. So again, our kids are improving. It's just not an all students improving situation like we would like to see. I do think that our aligned curriculums in math and ELA being fully implemented next year will show opportunity and growth in those areas. So, we're excited to see what those new curriculums do for our kids. >> Um, so some action steps that we completed. Um, we have an aligned bulldog block at our middle school and we're kind of excited for the progress and the shift it's going to make next year where every student will have it all at the same time at the end of the day so they can come get support in their exploratory classes as well as their other interventions that they need. Um, the intentional champs utilization, many walkthroughs
018throughout the course of the year. We did classroom visits by all of our SLT, TLS, and admin throughout the course of the year focusing on each grade level as well as our exploratories. Um we had common exit slips to make sure that we could identify which kids needed the enrichment or which kids needed the interventions during those times as well as um the informal visits just to kind of see what was going on in the various classrooms by all of the various teachers. >> All right. >> Um we had some improvement in our five essentials data as well. Um back in 2003 our safety component was not very good. It was at a 33% which is an all-time low. But in the past four years, this score is all the way up to 70, which
019increasing by 7% over last year alone. Um, also our various different groups of students, each group saw an increased amount of per uh safety throughout the course of the year with it ranging obviously from anywhere from eight points to uh 13 points throughout the year. And then with the new math and ELA instruction, um, all of those ratings went up, math up 18 points and ELA up about nine points. And then our continued focus as we move forward next year will be to work towards an align curriculum in with science and social studies field testing. Um look at the curriculum around our focus with bulldog block all being at the end of the day next year and then develop additional checks and balances to ensure our plans are executed as well as provide the necessary
020PD and tools that the staff can use for implementing those things. >> Questions for us? That's all we have. Could you explain the the five essentials math? >> Yeah, so there are different categories for each of the things and one of them is instruction. The um math and ELA instruction questions are around the curriculum, whether it's aligned, whether the kids understand what they need, they understand proficiency. So kids are scoring um their understanding of the curriculum they're receiving. And so in the past that some of them have been kind of stagnant, some of them have been a little bit lower, but we saw a huge jump in math and ELA uh questions being positive in the five essentials this year. We usually don't have that data by this point. So it was just something exciting
021that we saw that we wanted to include because that new curriculum was definitely a heavy lift for our teachers. So to see our students immediately see some of that in these ratings is is a positive thing for us. I seem to remember too when we were talking about the new math curriculum that that first year there can sometimes be a dip or it can be a little stagnant and so hopefully next year will >> yeah I'm excited to see what the data does next year after teachers are comfortable with the curriculum and are able to use it. So, [clears throat] excuse me. Existing strategies. Uh, have you guys given any thoughts to anything new that you're looking at and you can share? >> Yeah. So, SLT kind of talked about what we can do. Champs,
022we've been fully implementing now for over a year and we are running into a little bit of a problem of the more you say it, the less um of a priority it becomes. It kind of becomes old news. Um, and so we talked about starting out the year with a reminder of what those strategies look like and really moving past the visible part of CHAMPS into the actual engagement part of CHAMPS. So CHAMPS is far more than just um visuals on the board and and the acronym going up every time you do a project. there's really a level of engagement that needs to be focused on and SLT is going to focus our PD towards that side of the CHAMP's work which we think will help both engagement in the classroom and hopefully our scores
023because when you're engaged you're learning more. So that's one area we're going to focus on. Um, the second area that we're kind of looking at is that panorama information. Really choosing what lessons are vital to our students and helping those advisory lessons transition into bulldog block to make sure that anything that we're doing in that time is more effective for our kids. Um, because we have a limited amount of time with them for SEAL curriculum, we have to make sure every lesson counts. and we're really they're meeting tomorrow full day for a retreat on Bulldog block to make sure that that SEAL curriculum hits those needs um and works with our counseling program to ensure that there is continuity throughout our building. >> I have a few questions. >> Yeah. Uh so why do you
024think the decrease in math and reading happened? >> That's hard for me to say. I think sometimes when our proficiency is higher, it's harder to show the growth. Like I was saying earlier, I think that um there are sometimes dips with new curriculum right at the beginning. Um statistically, no matter what curriculum people pick, there's sometimes dips in what we see scores show in those first few years as you start to implement new things. Um I really don't have I think our teachers are working incredibly hard. So I couldn't blame something happening in the classroom as much as I assume it's just getting used to those resources and kind of working through it that way. um the opportunities to respond. I apologize. Can you um go over that again? >> Yeah. So, when we do
025our Champs walkthroughs, we take two teachers at a time and they go into a classroom with a clipboard and they are watching for students opportunities to respond. There's passive engagement through active engagement. So, active engagement is an example of asking students to raise their hand and answer a question. Passive engagement is you're asking students to put their Chromebooks away and put them under their desk. Each of those counts as an opportunity to respond. Um, but the goal is to have more active engagement in the classroom and not focus on those passive engagement opportunities. If you walk into one of our Spanish classrooms, you're going to see opportunities to respond from our teachers over 40 every 10 minutes. Every time we go in there, they are consistently they deserve the shout out for having constant opportunities
026to respond. answer this, ask this, say this, partner with this person, turn and talk all the time they're they're engaging their students in that way. Um, and so that kind of opportunity and environment is our goal. Um, and so when we're looking at opportunities to respond, it's just one data point, but it gives us a chance to see how much of the lift is on the students and how much is on the teachers. Um and then up there it said that there was on [snorts] one of the slides about the breakdown questions you improved on two of them. How many questions are there al together? >> Four. >> Okay. 50%. >> Yeah. >> And one of them stayed consistent and one of them did go down a little bit. So we are looking a little
027bit closer into that but um one of them stayed even and then the two were increased. >> Can you go back? Yeah. um on one of the slides the um this one here. >> Yeah. So the first through 20th so that means the students and so the red means that they are first and 20th percentile. So like they're in the high end. Is that is that what >> Reverse. So they're low end. >> Yep. >> Okay. Thank you. And so then the 80th means >> Yeah. We're shooting for greens and blues. Um and so when we get in the bottom two, if we get closer to that blue, the gap that we have for students to show growth, growth is a little bit more challenging because the skills are more advanced. Um they've already mastered
028a lot of the skills that are at grade level at that proficiency level. So that's why it's sometimes harder for them to show growth. Um and then um there was one for the the next slide, >> the action steps or the five essentials. >> This one here. >> Yeah. >> Uh so this one it says the ratings for the black, Hispanic, and Asians. Did the population stay the same? >> Like so if I you know if they >> there was let's say there I don't even know 20 black students >> last year. Yes. >> Are there 20 black students this year? Do you understand? >> Exa? Yes. Exact numbers? No. Very, very close. Yes. Our percentages are about the same in both of the groups. >> Just one thing on that. But these eight points,
02913 points, 12 points, that's percentage points that went up, right? So, >> yeah. >> Takes into account >> population changes because it's a percentage. Okay. >> Yep. And then for the SE for the um the next slide, is it the uh this one? >> Yes. So the look at curriculum surrounding. So do we have curriculum for I thought when I started on the board we had it. So is this curriculum not working? >> We have some. We're in a process actually. So we'll talk a little bit about this but the student services committee has been spending a lot of time doing like a gap analysis and an alignment analysis because the state is coming out with new SEAL standards which they haven't updated in 20 years. We have our portrait of the grad of a
030grad. And then uh we have castle which is like a a nationally known organization. We want to make sure that a curriculum that we're going to move towards in the future aligns with all three of those pieces. So they spent some time um studying that and looking for gaps with what we currently do and where we want to go with curriculum in the future. So teachers do have something. Uh it's not a researchbased best practice curriculum. It serves a need right now, but we're on that path to do that. >> You said like tomorrow there's what a meeting or something about. >> You're revamping your current >> Yeah. Our teachers are meeting. We have a collection of teachers that are meeting to sit and talk through what our bulldog block looks like. So that's our
031intervention enrichment um time that we have that also includes SEAL. and they're talking about the format of that time um and how they're going to best utilize that time to hit SEAL needs um any of our curriculum needs some reteing or enrichment needs and the teachers are going to kind of build that structure. Teachers have a lot of autonomy in those periods to help kids how they need it. Um so they might be completing a science lab or they might be retaking a math test or they might be getting a new lesson that they missed while they were absent. Um, but we wanted some structure to that time to make sure that everyone is utilizing it in a way that we can ensure give students something that they're currently missing because time is precious and
032every minute we take away, we want to make sure they're using for something effective. >> Well, let me um for the bulldog block, let's say you just have a student that is >> needs help in we'll say three areas like reading, math, >> and or English, ELA, math, and science. >> Yeah. How do they what's the priorit pri uh priorities? Is it prioritization? Yeah. So, um the team that's the beauty of the team model is that our teachers sit together in their team meeting and decide what priorities that student has for that week. So, if Sully's in my class and he's struggling in three of his classes, our team would sit and talk about which one he needs to hit first. Maybe math has a big unit that's wrapping up and he needs to finish
033up those skills that he needs to learn in math first. So he would go to those for the first two days of the week. Maybe the next time that he needs to meet with somebody, ELA has a big paper that's due. So he would go to that teacher for the next time. So the teams get together during team meetings to discuss student need and to figure out where they're best suited for those times. >> I don't have the only other thing I have and I don't think it's for you. It's maybe more for Brad and then Tom. I love that [laughter] >> is uh with the decrease in the mask there be due to the interventionist leaving or you know some of them got whatever um is there going to be an issue with this?
034>> We looked at we just looked at numbers we feel confident that we're still below capacity for our current staffing levels for that. The middle school does have math interventions that run as a part of their schedule as well. >> Right. Thank you. >> Thank you. [applause] >> Hi. >> Joan. >> Hi. I'm Joanne Smith, principal of the high school. Um excited to talk to you about data, but you'll notice a couple missing pieces of data. So, um, we received word a couple couple weeks ago that the ACT scores are delayed and so the estimated date for ACT scores is June 2nd. So, be happy to give you an update on ACT scores once we have them. Um, but I do want to talk a little bit about other data sources and one being Panorama.
035So, these three goals are the board's goals for for the high school. And so, our sense of belonging data on the Panorama survey is really exciting. In the fall of last year, we were at 70 70% which was already an increase over the spring, last spring, so over the summer, they felt a sense of belonging. Um, and then this spring, we're up to 73% which is far exceeding the board's goal of 67% for the high school. Um, one thing I wanted to touch on there because that a lot of work goes into that giant goal and our school leadership team has focused around sense of belonging, but particularly for our lowincome population. that's where they've centered their work. Um, that subgroup has been discrepant in almost every data area for many, many years. Um, and
036so one of our hypotheses in SLT was if we could get students to be included and be involved in extracurricular activities and take away any barriers that might exist that might help that sense of belonging. So last fall, I talked about the cohort model. So all of our SLT members had a small group of students who were in our low-inccome population but who were not involved in activities the pre the previous year and they met with them on a regular basis. They literally walked them to clubs and activities and athletics and met coaches and also in the meantime that gave them another trusted adult. So whether or not it took it got them into key club or track and field it gave them another trusted adult. And what we saw in one year was our
037extracurricular participation for our low-income students go from 50 to 56%. Which is a huge jump that we haven't seen in um previous years. And in that sense of belonging data, when you just look at our lowincome population alone, it went from 61 to 66%. So I know our SLT is pretty excited about the work that they did. So how did we get here? So again, we'll see ACT scores. We have no idea. Um but we did as our professional learning communities um really engaged in work around this ACT work and other work obviously including high impact instructional strategies. We've been working on those for years and just really getting the best instruction the researchbased instruction in front of our kids. Um we did include this new program called Mastery Prep which is an ACT prep
038program. It's a online program but it helps build students uh a unique prep program. So they take an ACT pretest and it builds them their own unique prep program based on what they need. On the other side of it was sense of belonging. I talked about the extracurricular experiences. But also our building level intervention team or our blit team and our grade level teams continue to monitor data. They look at panorama data. They look at grade data. They look at everything under the sun. Um one little exciting thing is our Blit team this year really focus on attendance. And so they did that through education and celebrations. They lots and lots of announcements about attendance every single week. Um and this year our sophomore class had the most improved attendance from the beginning of the
039year to the end of the year. And so they had an endofthe-ear field day type experience with everything you can think of, food, um activities, and they really liked it. We were a little nervous about, you know, 500 kids being in the fieldhouse at one time. Um, but they really had a blast and it was really a great celebration of being in school and so we were really excited to bring that as a new program this year. And then finally, just looking ahead again, those ACT scores hopefully June 2nd. Um, we're going to continue this cohort work. So, we saw great success with our low-income students and getting them included and involved. We're going to continue that work through SLT. Also this year, our SLT um sorry, this past year was the first year that
040not only does Panorama include student data, but also staff data. So our SLT will continue to look at Panorama data, but also add that staff data as well and determine what areas for improvement or what what we could do to improve that data. And then finally, just like everyone else is going to talk about and probably will has talked about is we have new curricular resources too that were you guys approved a new ELA curriculum last week. Um, so there's a lot of new work around that coming in in the future for all of our teachers. Questions? [clears throat] >> Um, Joanne, can you speak to AP tests? Um, how we did, >> uh, did we see improvement just in, you know, uh, one in engagement with them the test? Maybe not engagement is the
041right word, but participation. >> Yeah. >> With the test. And did we do any outreach to maybe students that >> um weren't necessarily identified for AP courses? >> Sure. >> Um in the past um any steps that were taken in that direction? >> Yeah. So, um we did have an in increase in the number of students in general taking the AP tests. We'll get those scores in July. July 7th, I think is the date or sixth. I can't remember which date. Um, we additionally had some staff, including Brad and Tom, attend um an AP conference last month >> around getting students more um more marginalized students involved in the AP process along the way. We do and continue to see more students of uh more students taking that chance or that risk and taking their
042first AP class. Um it's been great. Sometimes they're taking it sophomore year, junior year, and it's not it doesn't feel exclusionary. I think a lot of times in the past students felt like if I didn't take AP human geography my freshman year that was it I couldn't take another AP class in social studies. Um but we're seeing more and more students taking those risks. Um those I talked about those grade level teams looking at data. Those grade level teams look at students who are on that bubble who maybe just need a push or a little bump of like you're you're in that data data set of someone who probably should be in an AP class and you're not. Tell me more. Why aren't you? And a lot of them, you know, some some may have
043a great reason. I'm in three sports. I do all these things outside of the school day, but other students just needed that little push. So, we are seeing some improvement just based on those more uh individualized conversations using the data. >> And we don't have any barriers with the cost of the exam. >> No, no, no. We work with all the students on that. I just have a few. Uh the mastery uh prep program. >> Was that did they do that in school or was that given like did they take it in school and then their homework I'll say it was after school or everything was during school? >> It was all during school with a lot of opportunities outside of school. So um once you're in the program you're so freshman through juniors were
044in the program. So they may have had science first semester but they their science teacher introduced them to mastery prep and so they had access to it all year even though second semester they weren't in a science class. So during that first semester their science teacher was pushing them and but maybe during second semester they were doing it on their own. Um, and then was the attendance, did you phrase that like a competition? Like, hey, if you do this >> from the very beginning, we every week we announced who was in the lead all year long is is shockingly fun. The kids said, I didn't I, you know, you don't know if high school kids are going to care about free pizza and bags and they really cared. >> And do you think uh this
045new curriculum for ELA? Do you think our numbers will take a dip? >> You know what? I don't know. It is. So, we had a field test in the spring with um three different teachers, including some of our special education teachers involved. It is very challenging the curriculum itself, the assessments. It is different from what we've been doing and it is extremely challenging. So, it wouldn't shock me, of course, I hope not. Um but it wouldn't shock me because it is very different and very challenging and it asks a lot of our teachers and a lot of our kids. >> All right. Thank you. Thank you. [applause] >> Kristen Stevens. I'm the principal at Ellis Gustoson. And with me I have Julie Tulle, a first grade teacher and a member of our SLT. So glad
046to have her on a summer vacation day. We will start with our early childhood center. Lots of celebrations here. Um 97% of the EC students made growth in the area of literacy. That's very important because it's those pre-iteracy skills preparing those students for kindergarten and beyond. Um another big celebration they've been working really hard on uh questioning. Um and a big celebration in the growth in understanding. And I remember last time you asked me questions about the questions. So this time I came prepared. Um, it's the difference between saying something like, "What color is the ball?" and or saying, "Why do you think the ball rolled away?" So, it's just upping the level of questions that you're asking students so that you get more language, more critical thinking skills. Um, and that does involve a
047large amount of people. It involves paraprofessionals, the speech pathologists, the teachers. So, it's definitely a very collaborated effort to show that kind of growth. Um, and then their last goal, also a celebration, and that's the arrival and dismissal routines, handwashing, again, all those important skills for when students enter kindergarten. And for the elementary side, um, we had a couple goals and we're happy to report that we met both of our goals. Um, for ELA, we were wanting students to [clears throat] score at or above the 50th percentile on their MAP assessment to show the proficiency. And we went up from the fall to the spring or I'm sorry, from fall to [clears throat] winter. And then from winter to spring, there was a little dip in there, but we kind of figured that was a
048little bit due to assessment fatigue at that time of year and kind of spring fever in there. Um, the second goal that we had was SEAL and we really wanted to focus on perseverance and grit. That's an area that we feel a lot of kids struggle with. So, our goal was for them to participate in at least three different activities that would involve showing perseverance and grit. And we're happy to report that all of the grade levels exceeded that number in um participation. And we also wanted to kind of take a close look at it using the panorama data. So, we looked at student reported perseverance scores and they went from 65% in the fall to mid midyear um 70% favorable and then by the final time um in the spring they showed 71% favorable
049and based on the trainers that dealt with the panorama they said that that was stat statistically significant and that it was a very good jump for them. So, we were very proud to show that jump in perseverance. Um some of the action steps that we did, the main one that we talked about was the map and the AIR style questions for ELA. Uh we noticed that a lot of times the students are familiar with the content. They're able to tell you about something, but they're not always able to answer the questions maybe because of the style that a question was written in or maybe the wording. So we really wanted to add a little bit more rigor to that in our embed that in our daily instruction. So, a lot of the times we would,
050you know, maybe it would say site evidence using this or analyze or um different words that they maybe wouldn't be familiar with and by giving them lots of opportunities to use that throughout the year, we felt that they would be more comfortable in answering those questions and we felt that that had a big impact on their app scores. Um, we also focus on a couple other things that you can read there, the goal setting and some academic teaming. Um, and then when we jumped to our second goal, we talked about the daily SEAL strategies and we really kind of did a lot of different things with that. Um, we wanted them to really focus, as we said, on perseverance and grit. So, we had a book study this year and we used the magical yet
051series of books and tied that in. We used a different book for every trimester and did some activities related to that to focus on that. Um, Kristen did every single day she did different things for things over announcements. So whether it was mindful Monday, talk it out Tuesday, work it out Wednesday, just little tips and things that the kids could use. Um, and then a lot of times there'd be little slides that could go with that. So along with portrait of a graduate and those slides, we were able to just really continue to talk about perseverance and grit throughout the year. And one thing I think had a really big impact is that we did some STEM activities that were related to um, perseverance and grit. And we had a whole family night in which
052we brought a speaker in for the parents. And while the parents were listening to a speaker and learning how they could support their child with perseverance and grit, the students were all depending on their grade level working on different STEM activities in which they would have to demonstrate that. And at the end of that to kind of culminate it um after the parents learned a little bit of information, they sat down with their student and kind of came up with a family plan for that. So, I think just really using that language throughout the year, hearing it at home, hearing it at school, and tying all those things together really helped to boost that perseverance score. The goal setting was at the end of the event, too, and I thought parents would just scoot out
053of there as quickly as possible, but they really did sit down and take it very seriously and have a lot of good conversations with students. So, um, we would like to possibly do that again, something similar. Um, our reflections are that digging into panorama data really helps us. Um, just looking at the overall sense of belonging gives us a little bit of information, but the reason we picked grid is that was our lowest reported score from students and our um, teachers. Um, and kind of looking at next year or our future, um, one of the things that our SLT talked about is we don't want to just abandon grit and say like, h, we made it. We're not doing that anymore. So, we want to weave that into whatever we do. Um, and we're looking
054at emotional control because that seems to be one of our um, areas that students report having some challenges with as well. Um, Julie kind of talked about the unified culture, but really everybody focusing on grit we think made a huge difference and like she said, pulling in the parents, the community, um, all the teachers, everybody really focused on um, that that goal and it unified us as a team. Um, and then just the consistency and connection. The consistency of every day doing announcements, um, giving kids short little tips and things that they can try, that helped keep us all connected and and really focus on the goal. So, those are kind of some things we're thinking about continuing to do for next year. Have questions for us? >> Any questions? >> You're thinking of something.
055No, just a comment. I [laughter] guess I guess I like I like the where you were going at the end here, which I I in my my interpretation of it was you prioritized and put the focus in on it. Um, so I'd like to see, you know, next for the upcoming school year. Um, okay. Like you said, you're not giving up on grit, but what are what are the the new items that you're going to be working on and putting the focus on? Yeah, definitely emotional control because that was the area that we kept that kept coming up over and over again with students and um staff too. So, >> and it still ties into perseverance and >> great. We're planning on weaving that right in there. So, >> Okay. Thank you. >> All right.
056Thank you. [applause] >> Louise White is next. can't come too. >> Hello. Uh, I'm Michael Wall. I'm the principal of Louise White. And here with me is Megan Bone, one of our kindergarten teachers. And we're going to update you. >> Yes. So we took a look at our literacy goal and our sense of belonging goal for SEAL goal. For our goal, 60% of our students for literacy were to meet or exceed their grow on math assessment. So we're our starting metric was about 55% close to 50 56% and then our end of the year update was that 63% of our students did meet their MAP growth goal. Um so we did meet that goal which is awesome. And then for a sense of belonging, we focus on peer relationships. And then our goal is to
057improve the end ofear score um by 10% which was ambitious. Um compared to last year, we were up 3% which is great. And then um we ended up the year with about 6% growth which is awesome but as you can see about with we had about 200 students was close to kind of where um we were favor favorable with those percentage changes. >> Yes. Panorama, the consultants said that's a terrible goal. That's way too high. Um, so mistakes were made. Uh, however, uh, the 6% on their chart for the number of kids that um, how did we do it, you asked? Thanks. Thanks for asking. Uh, we took these key action steps, which I'll talk to you about on the next slide. Here we are at the next slide. We made this growth by focusing
058on several areas. So, one was PLC's. So we had um kind of a reset. We've been doing PLC's for a long time and as as you go different teams kind of branch out. So we kind of did a reset of what is a good PLC look like and so teams evaluated themselves three times throughout the year uh on the same rubric to show growth. And each time we did it, teams were reporting that they were growing uh further and further along the spectrum of well functioning PLC teams. And I think that that played a big factor in um our academic growth. We focused on learning intentions and success criteria. Um and this was an SLTE um professional development focus and we saw lots of growth uh in teachers utilizing those things. And then that impacted
059everything including classroom observations where kids are able to speak to what they're learning and how they they'll know they'll be successful. um in literacy. We also focused on um the um Illinois comprehensive literacy plan practices through training for the whole staff and then that was expressed throughout classrooms in lots of different ways most notably in our primary uh with a um deeper focus on phonics this year. Um for SEAL for that that peer conflict we focused on conflict resolution training for all the students. So, stop, walk, talk is a classic PBIS strategy of how you can solve small problems um interpersonally. And so, we focused on that as a whole school. And then each month we had a different behavior focus that we rotated through both what we were learning about in morning meetings um
060and also kind of whole school events and different things like that. We also um had our colonies structure which also was focused on some of that peer um agreement uh lack of peer conflict and students reported that they liked that very much and and enjoyed it and staff as well. This was where we had students from different grade levels would get together uh every other month in a group of about 14 to 16 kids and they would have anal topic. So, kindergarteners through fifth graders would all be together um for those lessons and kind of rotate through with the purpose being that wider school community and more relationships. And um we're looking forward to building on that next year with um our fifth graders that are leaving being replaced by new kindergarters, but keeping the
061rest of the group together to kind of deepen those relationships year on year. And then family connections. We've we had those focus areas last uh last year where each month we'd focus on a different behavior area. Um and then this year we've focused on sending home um SEO connections for families which were discussion prompts, activity ideas that corresponded with what we were focused on on school in order to allow parents to come alongside us in helping students to to grow. So, um, moving into next year, we're hoping to build on some of those successes and go a little bit deeper. And this concludes, um, the update. Do you have any questions? >> Were all students involved in a colony group? >> Yes. Uh, yeah, every student. Um, and so yeah, there's a little when we
062get new students moving in, you know, some some shuffling and other things, but yeah, everybody was was in a colony group and every staff member, too. So that was really interesting. It was all staff on on deck and the staff was really flexible in and specials for that day and and rearranging those because we saw the value and what we were doing. >> Um, I just had one for you said you had the behavior focus um like AGS. Do you see that there was one behavior that was maybe more prevalent than the others like that you really that they had to work on? >> Yeah. Well, according to our panorama data and also my informal observations would be uh so recess conflict uh from peer-to-peer might continue to be an opportunity for students to grow
063both in solving uh larger problems but also in that um kind of interpersonal relationship uh pieces. So, um the actual topics just varied from month to month bas um addressing some of the castle competencies um that Dr. Newark uh referenced earlier. Um but um yeah, they kind of had that format. SLT for next year is going to look at the colonies and say, do we want to just have one focus on that time throughout the year so it's more consistent for the kids? But that'd be a revision we might make. on the family connections. Did you get any input back from family members? Did you hear anything like are they doing it, not doing it? Just curious. >> Great question. We had plans for a survey that um did not happen. However, uh informally >>
064anecdotal is fine. >> Anecdotal everyone loved it. No. Uh >> good answer. >> 100%. Uh everyone uh no so anecdotally I heard from various families that they um were building on things and um one family I called about an incident that happened and the parent said why didn't they just stop walk talk and I said I don't know great question um so that that to me was like that connection where the parent is thinking like this is a skill that that we can utilize and um and so anecdotally yes. >> Any other questions? >> Thank you guys. Thank you. [applause] >> Are we doing this? >> It's a clicker. >> Yeah. >> All right. Special thank you because you just uh allowed me to escape a finance class right now. >> That was uh there
065was a screens of spreadsheets when I left just a second ago. So, I appreciate that. >> Did you swap in Tony? because he might help you out. Great. [laughter] >> Nonetheless, good evening. >> Ace. Tonyy's your guy. >> Yeah. [laughter] Yeah. I'll do that on test taking day. Um I'm Jeff Mf as you know uh from Grace Quain School. And this is Lauren Peterson. She's an SLT member and fourth grade teacher at Grace McQuain as well. And uh we're excited to share with you about the student outcomes of 2025 and 2026 at Grace McQuain. Here are our school improvement goals this year. We are very proud of our ELA growth this year. We set the bar for 58% of students growing on NWA MAP in reading and uh by the end the result was 70%
066uh of our students growing in ELA. Uh later in the presentation, Laura and I will share a little bit about what we attribute that growth. As far as our sense of belonging goal, uh we looking we were looking to go from 72% to 76% of students favorably in the sense of belonging measure. Uh we recently learned from Panorama experts that this was quite an ambitious goal. Uh 1 to 2% was uh uh more appropriate. Um but I didn't know that till about a month ago. So uh but nonetheless, we shot for it. Um we dipped a little bit in the winter and then we worked our way back up. uh but we still um did not meet that ambitious goal that I was speaking about. Uh but through professional development and research uh we keep
067learning about the sense of belonging and through conversations with students we keep gathering information about how we can best support them. Um clearly our area of greatest need continues to be studentto student respect. That is our lowest score when you look at the four questions. Um, and our SLT has already brainstormed researchbased ideas that we look forward to applying uh during next school year to attack that area of growth. >> Okay, so as Jeff mentioned, we set out this year focusing on ELA and SEAL. So starting with ELA, we had monthly PLC data meetings with our teams that really just helped us focus on looking at the data to try to make instructional strategies work in the classroom. With the professional learning sessions, those really helped in the fall as we were doing the data
068meetings. Once we got taught more what those ICP components were, then we could have more ideas in those data meetings of what to do moving forward for instructional strategies. And then our ORCY work, it didn't only support students this year, but it also laid the groundwork for strong engagement strategies for next year as we implement CCOA. So, we're super excited about that. Um, but one successful addition that was not originally included was our video reflections. You'll see that next to the ORS piece. Twice this year, all of our staff recorded a lesson and then we used a rubric to reflect on student engagement in ORC. Then we met together as teams PLC's during staff meetings to reflect on common instructional practices and student discourse data to improve on that. And then for SEAL, Jeff met
069monthly with student focus groups. And this was really awesome where they could share their insight on sense of belonging and they said some things that maybe we wouldn't normally hear. So just having that um small focus group really helped with going along with our theme of superheroes. We had six new superheroes that were invented by students that highlighted the great qualities of portrait of a graduate. And then as a staff, we continued to collaborate on how we can use these skills within engagement strategies. So some examples were behavior boosts. Um but just tying that all together in a culture throughout the whole school year. And then lastly, another addition to our SIP work was a partnership with G Marie Cro to try out a new data protocol framework called data wise. So it kind of
070goes into ory back in the LA but I was lucky enough to be a part of this process as the fourth grade team was chosen and this elevated our data meetings by helping us use an assetbased approach to analyze authentic student data build on student strengths and identify areas for growth and we're super excited to incorporate some aspects of this work into our next year data meetings for PLC's. Yeah, as a final reflection, uh we were quite pleased with the outcome of the year. Uh and we learned a lot. Um PLC data meetings proved to be successful and kept us talking about formative assessments and taking informed action on the data. Uh and we love the integration towards the end of the year with the data wise framework and uh we're looking to integrate all
071of that into our work for data meetings next year. Uh the learning we engaged in this year resulted in strong growth in ELA which we were very proud of. Uh and we're going to carry that work into next year. Everything seems to dovetail very well into that CQLA rollout. Uh including working when we worked with first and second grade teams this year uh who uh field tested uh the CQLA, we discovered that the data sets that are built through uh the teacher observations and the checklist that they're using throughout the their lessons uh fit perfectly into the PLC data meeting framework. So, uh, as they produce that data more regularly using CKLA, we were able to, uh, use the data meetings to, um, process that data and think about next steps of responsive teaching. Uh,
072so based on what we learned this year, uh, also student engagement will continue to be our northstar. We learned this year how powerful it can be to focus on student engagement. Uh, and we did that through our video reflections. And we also know with longer teaching time um and less small group work uh with CQLA that student engagement is something we need to focus on and continue to do that. Um [clears throat] in addition uh we and finally we plan to use some of the tools suggested by Panorama to further examine student relationships and help our students feel respected by their peers to a greater extent which we think will increase the sense of belonging uh benchmark data. Now through smiles, laughter, connections, kindness, all of these things that we see around our school, we
073feel like we have a strong sense of belonging. Uh but as we look at the panorama data, uh it is telling us that we still have work to do. Uh so that is uh far that is it for our presentation and we be we would welcome any uh questions from the board. >> I just have a few. Um you said uh for the winter numbers for belonging, what what were they? You said they did they recover or did they dip a little bit or >> So in winter it dropped down to 66 from 72 and then it went back up to 69. So we made some gains uh from the winter after that little but uh we didn't bring it back up to 72 or to our our goal of 76. >> And then um
074for the focus groups were those the same students throughout the year like or did you like each quarter you picked a different student? So we mapped it out so every student in the school had an opportunity to sit with me for 20 minutes. So we so it changed throughout the year. Um I thought I have actually reflected on whether or not I do need to have more strategic focus groups and thinking about um talking to the some similar student groups throughout the year. Um the other thing that we've uh we're going to take the focus group data and [clears throat] connect it to student council next year. So trying trying to uh empower our students uh with the data. So, as I gather data from the student focus groups and as we get panorama data
075in the fall, we're going to provide that information and explain it to our uh fourth and fifth graders and student council and then ask them for ask them to help us understand how we can improve the experience, student experience at Grace Grand. >> I'm just really curious why only second through fifth? Why not first graders? I was like, >> yeah, so last year I did third through fifth. I tried with second. It's um it's it was more about just context like what what what level of the world are they living in to you know K1 and sometimes two they're um a little more egocentric like they think about themselves and they think the world's pretty great no matter what happens right whereas so it's a little bit more difficult for them to identify bigger problems
076or to see trends and patterns where you get closer to fourth and fifth grade um they can they can tell you a great story about what their day looks like and they can connect the dots. They can say, "Hey, this is where I was here. Where's where I am now? I think that's because of what this happened and this happened." So, the cause and effect is a little stronger for the older grades. >> You going to go back to third through fifth or you keep second? >> Um, it's a good question. And I I think I want to talk to our student council reps and see if I should be focusing more on the student council as representatives because if they're meeting with me and talking with me, then they might be able to enact
077some of our plans better. They're going to feel better informed and they can also kind of be the eyes and ears of the students to come back to me. Uh so I haven't decided that yet. Um but uh it's certainly worth exploring, you know, K5 at this point. >> Thanks. >> Yeah. All right. >> Thank you. [applause] >> No. >> Hi, good evening. Thank you. Uh HC Storm over here, Chris Mila, principal, and with me I got Jen Torus, first grade teacher and SLT member. Um before I go into our overall goals, just listening to the everyone that went before us, even the high school and the middle school, you're going to hear a lot of commonalities. I know that they went on their street data measure. We took it upon ourselves. AGS, they went
078with the rigor with the questions and just looking at the question responses and just like student responses. You're going to hear that in ours. Just like the colonies, we have classroom buddies. Um, just like Jeff, where'd you go? >> Spreadsheets, spreadsheets, spreadsheets. Uh, you're just going to see a lot just with the student focus group. So, it's a huge celebration that when we actually come together as admin, some of our ideals trickle on in while still allowing us the uniqueness of our individual buildings. So, with that being said, I just want to go over um [clears throat] we reached all of our goals this year. >> Absolutely fantastic. It's a testament to every single one of our students. um every single staff member that we have, just like everyone else, focusing on ELA, which has
079been kind of stagnant. Uh our proficiency, we met that goal. Again, there was a little bit of an uptick over winter, kind of decreased again over in spring. Same thing with our overall student growth goal. Um and then for sense of belonging, we highlighted those three areas over there specifically of that supported adult, do you feel cared for by that adult? Um as well as do you have a sense of belonging? Um, [clears throat] probably the one question that you guys cannot read is when you are at school, how much do you feel like you belong? We went up to 78% which is an increase, a positive increase of nine to the winter. And how do we do that? Again, I'm not going to read all these. I really think it comes down to the
080student focus groups. Jeff, by all means, he has a better system than I did. Uh I did do second grade, third grade, fourth grade and fifth grade. Rated group assignments uh representative community of our our student population. Um brought them on in mainly from our winter goals like okay what's going on? I mean I have a great great staff. Jody Bird's here too. Hi. Shout out. Uh we have a great staff but when you have adults sitting in a class or in a room being like what do our students need at this point in time? It only goes so far. So we're like let's start pulling on the students. What motivates you? What do you like? What don't you like? What does respect mean to you? Where does that like? What does that look like?
081What does that sound like? Where is it happening? Um, and then I think the biggest thing is they gave us great themes. So, we came together based on their word and we had uh HDS come together for kindness. Um, and then they also said that they like colored zapits. That's our PBIS reward system. Blue Zapit compared to a white Zapit. Miracle. I don't know. It was absolutely fantastic. Uh but we took their voice and we actually demonstrated like putting it into action and I think that's what actually gave us that buy in. Um again just like you heard with AGS we looked at just like the rigor of student responses and some of the question formats um including students in decision- making the conversations uh having fidelity of our tier one seal with portrait of
082a graduate uh panorama playbook and second step. Um we just had a lot of success. So it is nice to stay up here and just reflecting on that. >> Yes. So reflections beyond our school improvement plan. Um also we were excited about our growth in mask since our our improvement plan was mo was all ELA. So it was good to see that even though that wasn't our focus, we still had good improvement in both our math proficiency and our math growth. And that although we focused on sense of belonging all competencies and the p panorama by students increased and that when you pulled the staff that our sense of belonging we weren't really focusing on staff sense of belonging but we did talk in SLT about how when staff feels a certain way then students
083kind of it's kind of an avalanche. So that kind of matched um up with the kids sense of belonging as well. And then we had a favorable response when we had when we pulled like our families, but we had a small sample of those families. So we're we're like it's favorable, but are we is our we getting answers from families that are representative of our of all of our students. So that's something that we want to keep looking into. Um maybe taking that street data in that way too to look at our families. Um, one of I one of the things that I like the best on Carva reflections is that the the student and staff just celebrating together our success. Like that was something you could just feel in the hallways. Everybody was just
084coming together to meet these goals and they were so excited. And when Chris came on the announcements to announce that we had met our goal for the growth in the ELA, like two of my football playing first graders got up and like ran across the room and like chest bumped in the air. It was like it was like a touchdown in the in the finals or whatever. They were so excited. It was it was just so fun to see them get that excited over an academic achievement. Um so that was that's that's like one of my favorite reflections. But um so the improvement was seen across all school populations, but we still see gaps in the amount of improvement. So that's another focus that we want to look at is what subgroups are not growing
085as fast. Maybe they're still growing, but maybe not showing as much growth as other subgroups and how we want to keep focusing on that as well. Um and then we want to keep doing our student focus groups. Maybe we get some ideas of how we want to organize those from other other buildings. But basically, we just want to maintain, you know, making all of our goals this year is exciting because we stood up here last Did I stand up here last year? Was it >> you one year about to the day? >> Yeah. Yeah. I had really bright nails that day, too. I remember thinking, don't talk with your hands. But, um, but it's exciting to stand up here and say we made them this year. And so, we want to keep moving forward. We
086want to keep doing the things that we're doing, but also we know there's going to be changes that need to be made because we have new curriculum. So hopefully a lot of these things will carry through, but we'll tackle new things as they come. >> Question. >> So the ESL students also saw improvements, but maybe not as much as other populations. So if we looked, we actually uh all of our subgroup populations from fall to winter, tremendous gains. We saw a little bit of still from fall to spring still improvement, but there was a drop off from that winter going into the spring and we want to identify a little bit more with that. Um looking at our Latinx population, they also have access testing over there. So it's like you come back from winter
087break, you got district assessments, you got state assessments coming up right around the corner, you have access assessments. So is that something that we need to look into? Um, we're still happy with the gains, like they have closed the gap, but we we want more. And I think the other one thing that I just kind of I didn't go into kind of with the classroom buddies and the counties and everything. Uh, this spring assessment, we had our older grade levels actually be the the little cheerleaders or the pep talkers or the motivators about perseverance and grit for our younger students. Uh, and that was a lot that was better received across the board. Um, and it's just like it it was awesome. And then some of your students wanted to go I met my growth
088over to their little fourth grade. It was just so cute. It's that's what that's what it is. Cuteness is what we need. >> Um but as do you think um or how has the boys and girls club over there contri has has it contributed to um any of your scores? Do you feel >> for my school personally? I do not believe I have a high enough attendance to yield a response for your your answer there. I think at most uh inconsistently we have anywhere between six and 10 where I know the program has been a lot larger at some of the other uh school sites that we have over there. So just with that small of a population holistically tier one I don't think I have any necessary data points for it. Uh of those
089students a lot of them they're not in third fourth and fifth grade so I can't even go pull their data up over inside Panorama. I think of the two that are between that when I looked up to see if they have like an adult outside of school, they mark yes, but I don't know if that's related to the Boys and Girls Club or that's another family member. So I >> I don't have a representative. >> And then um your focus groups um again are they like I asked the same question. Are they the same are the same students every quarter or how did you so >> how did you pull them or? >> So what we it was very mathematical. Uh, I had all my lunch supervisors each pick a kid. That was it. I
090go, I want a representative sample of boys, girls, and any type of population that you could even think of. They went and they picked it over and I brought them over into the conference room. So, they actually had lunch with me and I went through a series of questions. Um, I was able to do it probably about 12 to 15 times and every single time that was a student, a different student population. Um, I want to get a little bit more strategic, a little bit more purposeful of that. Uh, definitely making sure that we have the appropriate demographics. Um, also looking to see if I could get a live translator because doing it on my phone, I think it lacked a little bit of something. I got their voice, but that personal connection still was
091not there. Uh, so that's something I definitely want to improve and make it a little bit more systematic. And then taking whatever they have, putting it onto our community wall, which is eight plexiglass things, which is absolutely fantastic, that we write on. So, we're going to have that actually be reflective of what we're seeing in our panorama as well as our 4Bs that we have across the board. >> And then the staff belonging questions, are those the same as the student questions? Are they different? >> They are not the exact same. I would have to go back and actually read them verbatim for you, but they are different. >> Yeah. >> No, absolutely fantastic. Other questions? >> Just two comments. One on the collaboration. I'm very positive um your comments there and you know, encourage
092I've talked to Tom a number of times. We talk about you know collaborating between between the different especially on the elementary level between the different schools. So if you guys if one school is doing a practice that's really working you know copy it and do it at your schools and you know implement it and hopefully you'll have the same success. And then um then another comment just on I think when you went through some of the reflections it's it's about culture. So it looks like you're starting to change the culture or improve the culture, create a positive culture. So keep up the good work. >> We got as a whole is great, but over at Storm, it's a unique little family. Our PTO, our events are well attended. Our staff is absolutely amazing. Um, we
093get to cry together, we get to laugh together, we get to celebrate together, and we get to push each other a little bit more. That's what it's about. >> I had a question, but I'm going to let you end it on that. So, thank you. [laughter] >> I shouldn't start with that comment then. [applause] Yeah. [clears throat] >> Hi. Hi. I'm Sean Dougman. Uh, first year finished at Hooverwood. So, [laughter] >> that was a a a happy yes. Not a >> You did it. >> It looked happy. It wasn't. And then this is uh this is Lori Ring and she's a second grade teacher and also uh a member of our SLT. Oh, I do it. All right. Uh we had two goals. Uh literacy and the sense of belonging. Um our goal for literacy
094was for 61% of our students to meet or exceed their growth target. Uh in the winter we had 73% of our students meet or exceed their growth target in reading. And then we saw a dip also in the winter or fall to spring. uh still still beat our our our goal of 61, but it fell from 73 to 65% of our students meeting uh their growth target. So that was a good accomplishment. We're proud of that. And then our sense of belonging, uh we had 70% of our students uh feeling like a sense of belonging was our goal. That was where they ended last year. So coming into my first year, I decided let's just try and maintain our sense of belonging. Uh so we kept it at 70. uh in the fall they rated
095a 70% and then uh this spring they rose 3% we're up to 73%. So that was a nice that was a nice thing to see. So some of our action steps that help us get here for our um our literacy goal uh our weekly uh grade level team meetings. Each one was attended by an instructional coach and they centered around um the ICP and also around collaboration. um they learned um we worked on the ICLP core practice throughout our staff uh throughout our staff meetings and we embedded it into our daily uh ELA instruction and then did you want to speak about that? >> Sure. Um I I just want to talk about our sense of belonging and our SEAL at our school because our school has worked so hard on this for years and
096we are just so happy even though it was a 3% uh growth it was amazing. We just focus on it on a daily basis uh through morning announcements which you help with that um and read alouds, portrait of a graduate lessons and our morning meetings. Um one Wednesday a month we have our fabulous social workers send us a slide deck um to use at our morning meeting and we focus on mindfulness, self-esteem, perseverance, inclusiveness, self-control, handling big emotions, just to name a few. And I feel just as a second grade teacher and I've been in our district for quite a while. Um and happily so uh I just see a huge improvement just over the years in SEAL and I see happy kids and I see kids that feel like they belong and I feel
097really proud of our school for how hard we work on that and I I just think it's an amazing place to be. So >> I'll bet you later. >> Okay. Thanks. >> Um >> I am poor. So to go along with that belonging those belonging action steps that we were just talking about, a lot of the things I did this year were were things that were lower level in my ability to to put out but high level in reach and engagement with the kids. So kind of the things we're talked about uh we created uh we digitized a lot of the stuff we did. So our how's heroes those are awards that the kids earned. We also made them digital so then they were able to be sent to parents so the parents were involved
098in them. um our care sheets and our hawk checks. We also digitize which help us be able to better target and use data to see where where do we need to support um teachers and staff members throughout the building. Um also I created drops. a note. It's a note uh digital um Google form that our third through fifth graders have access to that they can send me messages throughout the day or after school wanting to to tell me things going on good in their lives or also things that they want support with that they maybe they don't see me in the hallway or they don't want other kids to hear about it. And I would get a lot of kids sending me messages through this about just things going on at school with other kids
099or problems they were having. And then I would talk with them, but I'd also forward it on to their home room teacher or to our social workers and be like, "Hey, like I know you see this kid or I know this kid's in your class. Like this is something I want you to be aware of while I'm talking to them about it." So that was um that was something that kids really took advantage of. Uh and then next year we're going to be implementing hawks nests. That's the colonies idea. Um it's something I did in my previous school. Um, and it was one of the one of the bigger undertakings we did at my previous school, but I also think it was the most beneficial to the school. It was the most empowering. Um, once
100you have that up and running and you have your colonies or hawks nest or we had cougar dens going, it really allows you to spread out and do so many more initiatives because so many students now know different staff members. so many students know other students that you're allowed to organically create other events and other activities and other initiatives throughout through through the use of the Hawks Nest. So, I'm really excited to to bring that next year, but that is more of a higher level task that I didn't want to implement in year one. So, then our reflections um our ongoing collaboration um actively engaging students in their learning by helping them build teamwork and critical thinking skills. I do going back to the work of our instructional coach with our um grade level teams
101and really focusing on that collaboration. That was something that was started the year before I got to Hooverwood was a collaboration was a big push um for the teachers. So that's something we carried over into this year for them to continue with and um seeing the different collaboration going on um between the students in the classrooms was really was really organic and really awesome to see. >> Yeah, I just want to add on collaboration. We did start it last year before he got Sean got with us but we hadn't really focused on it in a way that we saw any results or saw much going on. But this year our teams all met with our uh instructional coach weekly like you said and we planned collaboration lessons and what we found surprisingly easy techniques that
102we could use crosscurricular. I mean it was just so easy to just find one thing and then just use it all throughout all kinds of other things. The kids talk about engagement, loved it. Any chance they had to work together was just so exciting. Um, my favorite faculty meeting, just so you know, and I've not told you, was when we all came together and we all brought different techniques that we had tried, different collaboration techniques, and then we shared those with each other. And it was so powerful because we talked about how it worked, and then we could go over and say, "Oh my gosh, tell me more about that. I want to try that." And it just was a wonderful meeting and I felt so inspired and invigorated by it and I think everyone
103did. So hopefully we'll do more of that next year. >> We will. >> Yeah. >> Um and then I would just say for the collaboration and engagement, one thing that we've really been pushing towards the second half of this year and then moving into next year with CKLA is the idea that something that's collaborative that something is collaborative or engaging isn't a one shouldn't be something that's one off that's specific to a certain lesson or a certain curriculum. If you're doing it the correct way, it should be something like like Lori was saying that can be used across all curriculums, across all grade levels. That's how you know something's truly collaborative or engaging is the fact that you can pick it up and take it and put it somewhere else and it can do the
104same thing. Um, and then the last thing I just want to mention on this uh this slide is uh the video announcements. Uh going back to the sense of belonging, I think the video announcements this year have been um a big hit with the staff and the students. Uh they're every morning. They range from one to five minutes in length. They have every anyone whose birthday is that day or the weekend, their their uh their pictures up there with their grade. Uh anytime um a student makes the impossible shot in gym class, their pictures up there with that. Teachers send video like if the cross that cross town track meet, you know, pictures of the kids that participate in that are in there. We put incl videos daily into there that connect with portrait of
105a graduate for that month. So each each day there's either a full video or if it's a longer video I I chop it up over a couple days. But each video in there every day or throughout the week and then throughout the month aligns with that month's portrait of a graduate. And it's there to help the home room teachers around portrait of graduate and around community their uh their community meetings in the morning to give them things to talk about and springboard conversations in their classrooms. And then again the video announcements they become as the years go on and becomes an organic way of getting more kids involved in the announcements. We had kids doing videos and put them announcements. I would I mean in my old school I would start to get kids sending
106me things like hey I won this karate uh this karate tournament. Can you put this in the announcements? Parents sending me stuff and then it just kind of organically grows from there. So that's been a big uh a big plus this year too. >> We had a Friday joke of the day. >> Oh yeah. Friday joke of the day from Mr. Long. Yeah, that was always a big one. >> Different teachers. It was kind of fun. >> Yeah. >> All right. And that was it. Do you guys have any questions? >> No questions. only thing that intrigu intrigued about with the the um kind of crossgrade level the colonies and some of that stuff is one of the things that I was always fascinated a bit about and really happy about it like at the
107high school level was where the kids because the block schedule had an ability to intermix at different grade levels which I think really help kids progress and find friends at the right ages and stuff like that. kind of interesting to see how that that might actually kind of grow through the district over time as these kids, fifth graders are not just like fifth grade buddies to kindergartens. It's kind of a little bit more engaging. >> You do you do it takes years because it I mean obviously year one's their first year together, but those kindergarteners and like first graders, they're with each other every year then through fourth and fifth grade. Like they're with each other for years. So then you start to see them interacting on the playground, you start to see them interacting
108in the hallways. Uh, one thing that um I like new students I feel like really liked at at my old school is if a new student was transferring in mid year, I would put them in a den before they got there and then I would have those kids down in the office to then give them a tour of the school and be like, "You're going to be a part of our den. They'd take them around the school. They'd introduce them to the to their new den leader." And then like on day one, that kid feels like they have like eight to 10 like friends in the school that they can go to across the whole school to start off their uh start off starting in the middle of the year. So, there's a lot of
109things that just kind of like spring naturally out of having something like uh colonies or nests or dens. >> Cool. Thank you. >> Thank you guys. [applause] >> Our last presentation is a video since principal apprentice could not join us today. out of the country at the board meeting tonight. So I am Nicole, principal at JD Nelson Elementary School and this is one of the second grade teachers and also the school leadership. All right, so let's review our goals this year. We had three goals. The first one was proficiency in reading. We started the year at 65.48% of our students showing proficiency in their reading skills. Our end of the year goal was 70% and we did exceed that goal in the spring at 71.61%. So we were pretty excited to see that. We also
110had a goal and this is something we focus on for several years. Learning targets and success criteria. focus of our school improvement plan. When we started the school year, 10 out of 21 classes had students that were able to speak to the learning targets and success criteria. So, we set a goal that we wanted to end the year with at least 71% of students being able to speak to it. We actually exceeded that goal at 95% of our students being able to speak to learning targets and success criteria in their classroom. Our final goal was focus on a sense of belonging, specifically peer-to-peer respect because something we've noticed that is an area of need in our building. In the fall, our belonging data, our students reported 68% of them felt a sense of belonging at
111JB Nelson and that peer-to-peer respect was still our greatest area of need at 56%. We set a goal for the end of the year. We hoped to get to 71% of our students reporting that sense of belonging and we wanted that peer-to-peer respect to increase to 60%. When we reviewed our data in the winter, we were really excited because we had grown to 70% of students reporting belonging and 62% reporting peer-to-peer respect, which was an increase in both categories and in fact exceeded the goal that we had set for the end of the school year. However, when we got to the end of the school year, we saw a drop. So, 66% of students reported that sense of belonging and 56% of students right back to the beginning reported that respect action steps that we
112took throughout the year for our math proficiency in reading. We had our instructional coach, our reading specialist, and our fifth grade team that had field tested the CKLA lead professional development for the staff. And it included um discussions and um learning with the whole school and with grade level teams. The learning Our teams continue to work together and with our instructional coach to make learning targets and success criteria that were clear and easy for students under to understand and to help the students understand how to use them and why they are important for their own learning. And then in the area of the sense of belonging, we started our year with our wish tree and that included our schoolwide community and with a variety of activities and even brought the families into it for our
113reading night and then ongoing things throughout the year. We had our daily Jaden promise that was said together every morning. We had mindful Mondays grade level buddies that focused more um on inclusive activities between tried to um make those a shared experience for the whole school. We started and tried a new problem solving protocol for recess time. and we started using achievement badges that students could earn for um different things that they accomplished schoolwide or [clears throat] as we reflected on this year our instructional rounds and chance rounds showed that we had significant growth. We had met our targets on these goals. So we have focused on the learning targets and success criteria in our school improvement plan for the last several years. And we really we have met those goals. So, we want to
114continue that work, but that is not going to be the focus of our school improvement plan moving forward. Um, as we already talked about, our fall panorama belonging data was higher this year than last fall, but it did not end up we did not end up sustaining that. We grew in the winter and then dropped again in the spring. So, we really are reflecting on what what worked and what maybe we can do differently. We had that strong launch of belonging through our family literacy night. Next year, we're looking to have a make sure that it continues all year long. But we're also listening to student voice. We held some student focus groups this spring and we're reflecting on how best to strengthen peer-to-peer respect and peer relationships next year. Thank you so much for
115taking the time to listen to our wrap up of the year. We have a lot of things to celebrate. We have work still to do. If you have questions, we would be happy to answer that via email or you can ask Dr. because he does come to our Wow. [laughter] >> Well, any questions you have [laughter] >> is there. So, I've seen some consist or some consistency with those like SEAL scores that they'll go up in the winter and then drop again in the spring. Is there any explanation? >> I think uh context is always important, right? Like as a student, we're kind of just taking a little dipstick of where they're at with that sense of belonging in those four questions. So, I think anytime you're doing that type of assessment, it's very context
116driven. So, and that's complicated, right? Like we don't know what's going on in kids' family life, what's going on at school. their peer relationships are at that age um developmentally pretty volatile sometimes and they're changing. So I think it's just when you're taking that dipstick. I think the overall kind of purpose is to see where are we headed as a system, right? Do we have systems in place to continue to increase that performance little kind of ups and downs I think are to be expected in that. >> Natalie, did you want to add anything? [laughter] >> I think one of the things Yeah. Go for it. kids, but then as you heard from all of these buildings, they're reacting and changing. And I think that's the important part is they're trying to find out what's
117going on with our kids, how can we increase that? And to me, those conversations are super valuable. Listening to our kids is super valuable. And then just moving forward with those those plans. We're going to get out of the PowerPoint for just a few minutes to show the board and the community uh some district data that's on the website. So, if you're a board member and you have your computer up, you can go to bps101.net and under the about tab, there's a strategic plan um dropdown and then there is the interactive dashboard link that's right there. So people who want to learn more about our strategic plan in the community and and what we're all about can click into each of these uh fields to see our mission and vision, our theory of action. And
118then we're going to focus on these priorities that the board has set. So enhancing teaching and learning. We'll click in there. And then there's an interactive dashboard that shows both our math and our reading, both our goals and where where we are right now. So you can see with the blue line that is our math growth. So we're slightly below the target overall as a district for our math growth and then we are well above on the red line our reading uh actual ELA reading growth as a district. So some things to celebrate but this is again is about trend data. Are we trending up? Are we trying to accomplish those goals? That truly for me is the power of the strategic plan as it sets that direction and we go in that direction. We
119want to be headed up. So, uh we'll talk a little bit more about these numbers um when we get into the slideshow, but just so you know that the community can see all of this information and then we'll scroll down a little bit and you'll see some not updated data because as Joanne said, uh the state had some issues with the accuracy of ACT scores. So that's not updated yet, but as soon as we get that, we'll update that so the community can see that as well. So it'll show that both the math and ELA scores there. We'll go to the second priority. Tim Holly gets the, you know, she loves driving while people just kind of bark out things at her. So, we'll go to priority two and this is just an overview. Natalie's
120going to go into this in a minute. Uh, but you can see that overall trend data with Panorama under strengthening student belonging. You can see that we're on target for that and still maintaining very high national percentiles uh but with both our elementary and our secondary targets. And then there's some blank data below and that's because board goal 2.2 is increase family and staff satisfaction. This spring we gave for the first time a staff survey that was selected by help me >> student services committee. So they selected a survey to deliver to our staff and some of our schools reference some of that that data which we're getting for the first time. And then we also did a community survey and [clears throat] we're going to work on building greater u participation in that survey
121but none of them like equal satisfaction right there about a number of metrics both for staff and their sense of belonging and parents how they feel we're doing but we didn't know how to fit that into the category of satisfaction. So we're going to work with Panorama and see if there's some things that we can do to get a little bit simpler data to report back to the community. So, we just have that data and we will continue to work on some alignment and getting some data in this part of the dashboard. But I wanted to give you a little update on that and then Tony will just do a general overview of priority three. Certainly priority three really focuses on our operations and our facilities and ensuring that our resource allocation is devoted to
122the right things to both maintain sustainability and improve our outcomes for both academics and for the key way that we do that the only way that we do that in from the board power metric standpoint is to look at the uh financial profile score that is provided to us by the Illinois State Board of Education. Uh in the last few years, we've seen a perfect score of 4.0 on that profile and uh the minimum the target baseline is just above 3.5. I think it's 3.53 if memory serves exactly. We do anticipate that we will not continue to see 4.0 scores in the future. I do expect in fiscal year 2026 that we're about to finish, it will be a 4.0, now, but in 2027 and the years after, we'll see that decrease probably right to
123about that 3.5 level as we're spending down our reserves and that will count against us because we won't have as much count cash on hand uh in case uh we face some adverse financial conditions. So, um we're going to keep an eye on that, but I do expect we'll meet the goal, but it's not going to necessarily be a perfect score moving forward. But that is one of the key ways that we measure our ability to um be able to allocate resources where they need to be. So we thought we'd use the website just to highlight it, show that people can go here and look at this data. We'll willingly take any feedback you have about what could be better for our community to see. But I think this gives them ready access to some
124data as well as these presentations being put online and and doing them here. So if you have feedback, please seek us out and we'll do that. >> Is there a feedback uh option here for the people viewing? >> Not that I'm aware of. Is that >> there is a feedback? It's not necessarily on this page. Actually, if you scroll to the bottom there, maybe there are feedback mechanisms on the website, but not necessarily on the strategic plan page. >> Okay. >> So, if you could go to contact us, uh you can provide feedback on any topic, including the strategic plan. >> Just two quick questions. Um for the staff belonging, what's your goal percentage of the st taking this questions. >> It was a little bit wonky this year because um the state moved there's
125a the five essentials data that Tara referenced. We want to not do that survey and focus on our own in-house surveys through Panorama. So in order to do that, you have to apply for like a waiver from the state of Illinois. They moved the timeline from like October to the following January. So, next year we're we plan to apply to not give the five essentials, which would help us to focus on getting all of our staff. You still want about 95% of your staff. That's kind of the goal that the state puts for five essentials if your district is going to participate in that. So, we still want about 95% of our staff participating in that survey. >> What about the community? Like what's the goal for the community? >> Anything over 20 for a
126community survey is like really really good. So 20 would be to me like that would give us some really good data. We were below that this year. >> Are the staff and community surveys once a year, three times a year? >> Once a year. Yeah, those will be once a year kind of in that February March time frame. So because of this year we were putting kind of emphasis on taking five essentials and the panorama on the survey, I think we kind of diluted our our pool of participants. But hopefully we fix that for next year and then we'll go to the slides. Um just kind of going through these kind of you want me to go >> next. You can see our overall percentages which were represented in those graphs that the public has
127access to. But let's spend a few minutes here talking about map growth and then how this is disagregated. So here we have both reading and math growth. Math on the left, reading on the right. And you can see our overall percents are very solid in terms of our overall growth. But when we start to look, we can start to see some things that I'm I'm really actually proud of. So typically what we've seen is a gap between um lowincome IEP students, e students, black and Hispanic students. So when we take a look at those categories, so like the top uh five of the six rows there, we can see that we're getting pretty nice growth, some growth that we haven't seen necessarily from some of those subgroups before. So that is something that we're watching.
128We're taking a look at. We're kind of proud of some of those uh numbers inching up. So, if you look at reading, same type of thing. Moving for IEP students from 50 to 54. Carrie's going to talk a little bit about this in a few minutes. Low income 44 to to 56%. And then EL students 41 to [clears throat] 51%, black students, 42 to 54% of them meeting those growth targets. Those are pretty impressive numbers that our staff has worked so hard at reaching every student. It's something to me to really take some pride in. So, we hope with the implementation of new curriculums next year, we continue to see this growth. We have high expectations of our kids and I think that's a huge piece of our success this year is having that high
129expectation. Natalie, do you want to come up and >> act? Yeah, go ahead. >> I apologize. Um the math is that was that grades uh one through five or one through six or I don't I'm sorry >> this is uh K through eight act we'll come back to that you want to talk about this or you'll go to the next one >> uh you can go to the next slide >> okay >> so really within BPS uh just like we're celebrating academic growth we are celebrating the work of staff and students in uh achieving our goals that we set forth in positive student ratings of belonging belongingness. So, uh belongingness in Betavia is a culmination of both skills, social emotional learning skills and our environmental conditions uh learning conditions. So, our skills are anchored in
130some of the terms that you've heard already from our building. So, it's that BPS portrait of a graduate, our Illinois State Board of Education social emotional standards, and the castle uh social emotional competencies. and our conditions are anchored in those predictable classroom environments. Um, you've heard champs throughout uh the day-to-day, student agency and voice, identity affirmation, psychological safety, and responsive discipline practices. So, that's how we define those two skills and conditions in the district. So, our student voice um belonging data for grades three has demonstrated a 1% increase from spring of 25 to spring of 26. Um we're noticing differences in positive ratings of experiences of belonging abund uh amongst our demographic groups. So we're definitely celebrating the growth of some demographic groups. Um notably you just heard about um our black students um exceeding
131some growth measures in academics. We're also seeing um higher rates of improvement for ratings of positive ratings of sense of belonging as well as our Asian um student demographic group and students in grades three through five who um are two or more races. And we're being presented with some opportunities to continue our work cultivating the skills and experiences of skill of students who identify uh with demographic groups uh who students who are multilingual or Hispanic our areas at 35 that we're seeing continued room for improvement um and growth rates that are discrepant from uh our our district population. In 612, our belongingness data has demonstrated positive ratings um of increase from six of six percent from the spring of 25 to the spring of 26. Um that is tremendously significant and should be celebrated. Our
132demographic data is also showing strong uh growth for students who are free lunch eligible black and Hispanic. And you heard the very targeted work that our high school and middle school have done um to connect with demographic groups. Uh we do continue to see opportunities at the 612 level as well to cultivate skills and conditions for those students who are multilingual as well as our students who are IEP eligible in grades 6 through 12. So there's much to celebrate and we do have some targeted work to do. So on the horizon within the district for our work within priority 2, we're continuing to focus on um our social emotional learning curriculum work and really we'll be working on uh resource exploration that aligns with the ISBE social emotional learning standards which will be released um
133in final form in September of 26. Um that work is in collaboration with CAC and we're working on uh classroom engagement walkthroughs that braid both those learning conditions uh so those champs that you've been hearing about as well as instructional engagement which you've been hearing um from our buildings as well. And we are also going to be working on social emotional learning, professional development um that uh plaque has prioritized as a district professional learning topic for next year. So we're really excited about that. Our administrative team are going to be working um within their professional learning focus this summer on restorative practices for school culture. And the focus of that is really to proactively build relationships um foster psychological safety, support accountability and repair and strengthen inclusive environments for both students and staff as a
134way to start responding to that staff belongingness data and the staff well-being data we saw as well. >> I'm gonna Tony, do you want to talk about that again? Everyone loved that part. >> Everybody did. They loved it so much they want to hear it all again. >> [laughter] >> Um, I'm Carrie Ru. I'm the director of special education. And in December, I had the privilege of sharing with you the journey our district had undertaken related to our state citation um for many years for significant disproportionality of overidentification of black students for specific learning disabilities. and we really highlighted and outlined the shifts we've taken as a system to improve student outcomes. What we've learned over the last few years is that students demonstrating the least amount of growth is what we've seen in our
135historic data were often the same students missing the most instructional time through absences um restrictive discipline, missing core instruction or um not thriving in some of the classroom structures and routines that we had. What we have done on this journey is we came to understand is that if students do not feel connected to their classroom, the adults, peers included in instruction, um they're not finding themselves showing their capabilities within our school community and disengagement becomes um a an issue long before achievement gaps appear in our academic data. So this understanding of the journey that we were on as a district shifted our work amongst all of our committees, our school improvement plans, our conversations, and our PLC's. And as you have seen tonight, our district efforts, our staff, our teams um have never been about
136reducing identification numbers for simply meeting compliance. We really have shifted um our practices and our beliefs as educators. We're focusing on understanding and addressing the root causes behind student outcomes by strengthening their engagement, inclusive practices, and meaningful connections for all of our students. So, today, for the first time, I'm proud to stand here and celebrate not only are we below the risk ratio for ISBY, but we have officially received notification that we are finally off the significant disproportionality citation list. Um so this is a huge um celebration for our entire district tonight because after many years of collaboration, conversations, reflection, and intentional planning by our staff and our administrators across the district, this data has become possible for our students. So this accomplishment reflects the entire dedication of a district of individuals who believe that
137every student deserves to feel connected, supported, successful, and every staff member is working to ensure that this happens. So coming off this citation is not an end point for our district, but rather a continued responsibility to sustain our progress and continuously improve our practices in support of all of our students. As we've talked about before, there's um opportunities that are ahead of us that I'm confident that we'll be able to maintain and sustain this growth. So while we are all here proud of how far we've come, we want to celebrate our successes. We also need to stay vigilant and remain committed to ensuring that every student feels connected, supported, and successful within our schools. So, thank you to Betavia for all the hard work and effort because it should be very, very much celebrated tonight.
138So, thank you. [applause] >> Um, just to kind of give the board, you're going to get copies of all of this so you can look through it. Uh Carrie talked a little bit about reducing um exclusionary discipline for students. So we have some slides on that. This is a big one. Again, if kids aren't there, we can't teach them. So reducing chronic absenteeism is something that our building and our district has worked on doing. You heard about Joann's efforts and all the elementary schools and middle school have worked on this as well. But to me, this was some pretty outstanding data. If you look around the the this disagregation here in every single demographic group, we saw a reduction in chronic absenteeism. That means we had our kids more. They were more engaged in learning.
139And I think that's a huge testament um to our district and our teachers making that welcoming environment where kids do want to come to school and they do want to participate in that. So, a lot of work has gone into reducing that chronic absenteeism. Are there some differences between different demographic groups? Absolutely. And we'll continue to work on those so that we have equity across our system. Um we've talked a little bit about bullying and how that really puts um that feeling of belonging on the back burner when a kid is feeling bullied or harassed. So we do uh we have a process that the state defines for us and that we've been trained on to investigate bullying incidents that that arise. So and then we have a different data classifications that we give to
140the state of Illinois about those different incidents. So we determine if that was part of a protected class. Was someone being targeted because they're part of protected class? We had five incidents of that this year. Was that another reason that they were being targeted? Eight incidents. So, a total of 13 founded bullying claims. 12 uh incidents after the investigation were not found to be bullying. One of the things that's really hard for us to convey is that while something may not fall into the state definition of bullying, mean and hurtful things happen to our kids and we will address those. It may not fall into this data categorization, but like all of those behaviors are not acceptable within our schools. So, we want to make sure that um sometimes we launch into these and parents
141feel very kind of betrayed by the process because they think it's bullying. We have been trained to go through that process. It doesn't mean the kid didn't experience something. Um that's really the the whole purpose of a bullying investigation is let's get at the heart of what's really going on in these relationships with students. So um we have 2,612 total discipline incidents this whole school year representing about 811 students. That's a very small amount of our overall percentage of students are involved in any kind of discipline incidents whether it's trudency or whatnot. So uh this is just something to highlight because we've been talking a lot about belonging and this type of behavior kind of goes in the face of that. Joanne talked a little bit about activity participation and then um I just want
142to spend a moment on EL exit rates. Our target is to exit students in the fourth and fifth grade. That's our like that's the sweet spot of the access test. So this is measured through access and we've received preliminary data and you can see those blue lines for our current year jumped up in fourth and fifth grade and that's due to the dedication of not only our general education teachers and our e specialists but all people involved in really motivating kids and getting them to engage in that access test. Uh because once that kind of window of fourth and fifth grade passes, it's much harder to pass with a 4.8 8 composite which is what they need to exit uh e services and again when students exit in fourth and fifth grade we do monitor
143them and support them for an additional two years to make sure they're not falling behind there but again it's a celebration fourth and fifth grade but we have work to do with others a lot of this information comes from the Illinois school report card which will not be updated until um October so you've seen this data before and then we'll go into some of our operational pieces which I believe. Hey Brad, real quick back on the bullying data. So the the we understand the classifications >> but do is there any way to report metrics on resolution or outcomes of those incidents or do we do that? >> Give me a little bit more like what would you be looking for? >> So you said um I don't know protected classified incidents. Can we somehow report
144that those were mutually um resolved with agreement by parties or some kind of where there was resolution to the incident? >> I don't Yeah, I we can talk about that and see what we can do to kind of close that loop because it's sometimes it's hard, right? Some kids want to mend fences and go through some restorative practices. Other kids are like, I just don't want to see that kid ever again. Um, so I can >> How does it like an incident get closed out? >> Yeah, we finish the investigation. We issue consequences and supportive services, but we can give you more details on what that might look like >> for these students >> because I think that may be a missing piece. Yeah. >> Here you've identified them and even the 2,612. >> Yeah.
145It's how do we convey to our stakeholders that progress was made, you know? >> Yeah, I think there that is would be something to help kind of tell a better story about school discipline. Most people are not super happy that they're involved in that that whole process, but we can talk about like the types of interventions, the types of supportive services that we're able to offer to help kind of heal some of those wounds. Sorry. >> Do you keep track of the type of incident? You know, for the ones that don't that aren't bullying but are discipline instance, do you keep track of how many of a certain type? >> Yeah. >> So my question was is what is a discipline incident like like um is a detention a discipline incident? >> Yes. >> So
146this is everything. So I guess the I don't know what to call it like the the lowest form would be like a lunchroom detention or that and then like obviously the highest one would be an expulsion correct. >> Expulsion would be the top. Yes. >> And then so what is the biggest category that of discipline incidents like what is the most given I guess is what the question would be >> the most given consequence. >> I don't know that but I can get you that information for sure. I mean it I'm sure it might be different from >> it's different levels. Yeah. >> So I mean if I could have it I say for elementary, middle school, and then high school. >> Great. Yep. No problem. >> Is that something all of us are interested
147in? Just want to make sure. >> Okay. >> Yeah. It's very easy to break that information down and give you both consequences and then major infractions. just just to help me narrow down on the question that that Raquel was talking about, you know, like there's significant discipline incidences and there's kind of like daytoday like where does it end up? Is it a is it is it a teacher telling a student to settle down and be quiet and be respectful enough times that they write them up or where is it up on that? >> It can be part of that. Some buildings have different processes on how they do that as to what equals an office discipline referral. So, >> so that's where the that's where the line is >> the office discipline. So, anything that
148comes to the office is represented in that 2000 num that 2,612 number. >> If a teachers handling that within their classroom, we don't know about it. >> Okay. >> But sometimes there's so many of those incidents that teachers are handling that it would rise to the level of an office discipline referral. >> But that office discipline referral might have like five things behind it. >> Right. Right. Right. >> That they've been struggling. >> Understood. >> Okay. Thank you. And do you keep track of comparison year to year to see if progress has been made? >> Yeah, we do. We do look at that over the years. Um, we had some pretty dark years around 2020, 2021, even into 2022 and we've seen a down tick in a lot of our discipline incidents since then. And
149I think a lot of that actually has to do sorry Tom with our focus on belonging, right? So if a kid feels like they belong, if we're teaching them how to do conflict resolution, I think those are all positive things that have helped. Go ahead, Tom. Sorry. >> No, no, no. You gave much better answers. Um, what was I going to say? I was going to share. >> I'll stall for you for a minute. So, one of the things that I'm intrigued about on is the absenteeism because to me, and I'm looking for kind of confirmation from everyone here, or you feel free to tell me I'm overre overreaching a bit. To me that feels a bit foundational, right? Like yes, having them in, you'll get more in year one, but the more they're there
150over year two, year three is kind of my impression would be that it's a kind of a compounding effect, you know, because you're engaging them. You're teaching them the joy of learning. They're there to participate. It's kind of like it's a self feeding process, you know. So I'm intrigued about that as it moves forward. >> Did I say >> Thank you for the >> Yeah, you're welcome. >> Appreciate it. Yeah. Um Kristen to also address that question that's a part of also the reason why we also know like if you talk to Carrie and Natalie they'll share with you there are certain areas that we have to keep my eye right now uh of certain groups that we do see some disciplinary um areas kind of rising a little bit and so that's based on
151that year-to-year study and kind of mindful watching of the data. I just have one quick question. Um was going back to like all the scores and so forth and it's like uh so the EO community it's like a little bit behind on everything. Um we first give these was it December 2024 these presentations like everybody is that when it was >> uh we've done a presentation midyear presentation December 24 and this past year December 24th >> was that the first one December 2024 >> um and I remember it was I think it was um Ming Jen Hicks did the presentation um and just going about everything and I asked the question of how many Hale endorsements they want and being said 100. We want everyone to get EL endorsed. So, I'm just curious if there
152has been and I know I have that data now, but if there has been any EL endorsed teachers, um I just like to know since our EL scores, I'm sorry, the English learner scores are kind of a little bit lagging and behind. I was just curious if anyone got approved to do an EL endorsement, but you don't have to give me that data now, but >> seems like he's taking notes. I am [laughter] I am sorry Raquel I'm taking not you're looking for kind of like has there been progress on that side of things. So there there's uh aside from that though just to reflect on our data one you're right there there are areas that we are intentionally trying to uh support right different student groups I think that's part of the reason why
153we're also celebrating some of those metrics because we're seeing um even though there might be a little bit lagging to peers when compared to peers um that are not in that same demographic we're seeing the growth trajectory which is as we all know we've talked about each year. That's one of our biggest gains and and excuse me, aspirations because I think um as you're seeing, the more we keep growing, the more the scoreboard kind of takes care of itself, right? And where we land, where we can say like, hey, we're off our significant disproportionality watch where, hey, we're here where we're seeing a beyond standard deviation of growth in certain areas. >> [clears throat] >> So that's um so I think there there's a really good there's a really good point in what you're raising
154because a part of that for our staffing is a really close look that Brad and Steve uh spend time um kind of understanding and assessing what our needs are. Our principles are part of that staffing conversation as well. >> I mean I think >> great for our success and for us knocking down our >> you know getting our goals accomplished and so forth but it was just a question. >> Oh we take a look at that for you. Sorry, one more question related to that. Uh there was mention of after they test out that they're still provided supports for a year, >> two years. Two years, >> two years. What do those supports? >> It's check-ins. It's monitoring grades. It's looking at talking to their teacher. The EL specialist will work with their teacher to
155see like where they might be struggling, providing some resources that might help that particular student. Any further questions for Dr. Newkerk? All right. Well, we're going to shift from talking about student learning to how we support student learning in the operations side. So, um, from the business office standpoint, we're going to look at two different goals. Um, one is meal participation, and we wanted to see a 5% increase yearover-year on that. and then the implementation of my school box and I set a really ambitious goal of 90% utilization and we'll see how that went. Um but first let's look at the meal participation. So this is our second year with Organic Life. Um they've been a really great partner and that really shows in the data. We had a 22% increase in lunch participation um
156from last year to this year. So if the food's good, kids are going to eat it, right? and that's what the data is showing. We only had one month in October where the um sales went down slightly, but that's okay. So, overall, we're really pleased with that. I think what's really important, too, with Organic Life and talking about food service is not only are they providing cultural foods for kids, but they're also supporting kids through activities after school, they're also integrating into our culture in the school. uh they catered the teacher um lunchon day for teacher appreciation at the high school. They're just always there to support and to help the process. So really looking forward to working with them next year as well. All right. So then the really ambitious goal of 90% of
157moving away from all that uh cash on the teachers desk to a digital platform of collecting payments. Um and we did really good. We did really good. We had four schools that actually went and surpassed that 90% goal of um reduction in cash payments. So, that was really good. Um the high school did a great job. They collect a lot of money at the high school through all the different activities that go on there. And the high school really did a good job in year one of not only moving the needle, but also asking the question about, okay, we did this this way. How can we do it better next year? So, I'm very excited to see how they'll progress in that journey. Um, the middle school data is actually kind of skewed because they
158started going cashless in March last year. So, they did a really nice job. Um, just wanted to highlight that it's better than that data shows. Um, but really what's important with all this is all that taking in cash that teachers have, it takes away from what they're doing with their students. So there's just a couple pictures here from different events that by school bus helped teachers not focus on administrative work but really put the focus on kids. So we've got the fifth grade track meet um and some quotes there from Greg at from Storm. And then the middle school bounce again putting the focus on kids and focusing on their the staff's attention on the kids and being there and not collecting dollars and cents at the events. Any questions? >> Is there just some
159parents that just like to do cash? >> Yeah, and that's okay. I mean, >> that that's okay. Uh it's that's perfectly fine. Like the goal is never going to be 100%. You know, I always like to think about we're not Portillo's drive-thru. Like, we will still take cash, so it's okay. But what this does is it allows the staff to focus on what they're doing and not keeping track of all these dollars. All right, >> I'll pass it on to Dominic. Hello there, everyone. All right, we've had a really exciting year. And first thing I want to talk about is our how we're having artistic and technical excellence help meet our goals here. So the one thing I talked to you about in the middle of the year is that I wanted data mechan mechanisms
160for us so that we could track how great we are. And students have worked 40% of BAC events this year. And the more important thing is that we now have a tracking mechanism and we can increase on that from year to year. Um we do professional trainings not only within our site but around the district at all of these places that we go to. And right now 33 I mean district buildings when I say that uh 33% of our buildings have had a an audit of all of their TVs, cameras, not Dave related um and those types of things. So that's all of the east side elementary schools and those are things like the manufacturer of things, models, connection types, IP addresses, which network closet things run to, warranties on it, and manual links for
161anything that is an experienced technology thing for for people there. We have seven new interns enrolled in our events. And one of the [clears throat] we had a great day today. Today was a great day and an example of that. [laughter] So today I had two former interns that are now employees, one working on photos and one working on editing a podcast and a new intern come in who is a writing intern that was there to help write content and copy for website and emails going out. And that made me think going back up to that first one, how in that 40% that we have there, there's still no mechanism though for me to judge how many events those students are also working on. So that's where I want to go in the future with
162this one is to also get those interns who work behind on events before they even happen with us. This is this is our surveying method uh that goes out to everyone after they have an event with us. And don't mention that three to Joe. He's very sensitive about that one three there. Okay. Um believe it or not, this is this represents more than twice as many people filling out a survey postevent than we had last year. So that's growth right there. [snorts] Uh systems around our district. We we've designed, implemented, and trained staff on eight systems around the district from LRC's and digital signage to new mu music room. Uh really a new way of having a music room at HCtorm and soon to be Louise White. We have nine systems coming next year already
163designed and ready to be implemented and then trained next year. Our front of house inspection log, we got a baseline on that. So, that's another way. Every time we have an event, we want someone's eyes on every part of our building to make sure that it is safe and it is uh looks pretty and we're at 48% right now. Going throughout this in this in the middle of the year, we identified reasons on why that might not be as high. So we redid the form and we restructured how staff run events before the audience even comes. So that number could slowly increase while we we actually still go through till the end of June here. Uh and we have some great new improvements that we have uh done on an ADA level. Specifically we are
164upgrading our hearing assistance devices within the main stage and the blackbox this summer. The lobby will be next year and in fact the LRC at the high school will have hearing assistance ADA uh system for the first time ever this coming summer. We're going to be putting that in over there as well. Our outreach with uh all of our arts and ed and our uh our programs for pay what you will has gone up by 40%. This is absolutely an incredible number for us. And then next year we're increasing the amount of students we can reach by going to an early elementary uh arts and ed as well. And then look at that number for people coming through our doors. 20,000 tickets have been sold. That only represents people who have to buy tickets. It
165does not represent anything that's free that the public comes to for all of those uh concerts and things throughout the year. Um, we have made a series of operational improvements this year, standard operating procedures. And one thing that we're really proud is 100% of our staff is cross-trained to cover over 75% of the positions in any job category there. So, um, that is what I have for you all today. >> Just have one quick question. >> Yes. Sorry, Rob. >> I have a longer question. [laughter] >> How many tickets do you think would be sold including the free events? >> Oh boy. The free events are going to be more because the free events um are a greater quantity of what we do to begin with. I would say that that number would be there
166would be at least twice as much just in the free events. Yeah. because we have approximately 60 to 70% of our events are free and general admission >> is and maybe both for you and Tony too maybe is the operational goal for the BAC to sustain all its own costs or do we budget for certain activities outside of that outside of their revenue? Um [clears throat] the Dominic was around when it was first conceived and I wasn't necessarily directly involved in these conversations when the beef act was first built and the financial model was uh >> the philosophies were laid out. So I'll let you answer that question. >> Yeah, there's uh there's a a formula that says basically how much our our you know having Grace McWain concert and Louise White concert and whatnot
167would be to to have it there. And the model we did not want to have we knew was one that some schools have and that is a bill gets sent to any elementary school or middle school or any program that does an event. Well, we didn't want that because it was very clear to us at the beginning from all the stakeholder input that it was this building was wanted to be used as an arts home to the entire district. So that's where the model of coming up with funds to help offset that. And then the taxpayers when the referendum was passed were sort of promised that they'd be able to use it. So that's where the rental program came into place and then our national tour program in addition to allowing those programs to then
168also educate our students throughout the process. So through that education, we're a school system and so education does cost something. Now, we do everything we can to financially minimize all of those costs. for example, the arts and ed programs that we bring in like history to hip hop or this coming year uh diotutos that those shows are all offset by grants or previous year's ticket sales that help sustain that program on into the future. So all of those programs are funded in those senses but there is a budgeted amount that we believe the educational value of that is from year to year to year. Does that answer your question? >> Yeah. So but does that come do we have to support that like that comes out of our >> school budget you know that we
169>> it's not necessarily a school budget but it comes out of our government funds. Yes. >> Okay. So we we we expend funds to support those programs to operate that facility for educational purposes. Yeah. But they're offset by to a lot more than than what they cost for the other things that happen in that facility too. >> Um but then also it's not just confined to the BAC anymore, especially the skill set of Dominic and his team. >> Yeah. >> They have expertise that we don't have anywhere else in the district. In some cases, you could, you know, it' be very expensive to purchase. And that's why they're going around the district and offering these additional expertise and support for these audiovisisual experiences >> for conference rooms and for the music room and the like.
170>> So, it's not just what's happening in the BFAC anymore. It's happening. It's everywhere. It's online. It's supporting u activities and events and you using those that equipment productions. It's it's pretty amazing how it's part in many ways part of the fabric of everything that's happening across >> graduation for example the stream for graduation although cameras and everything were manipulated by NAU they the stream comes into us and then gets fed out to YouTube and BATV and other >> had extraordinary viewership I understand >> it did I think 20,000 minutes or something like that >> you can't measure the viewers but you can measure the viewers >> yeah you can't measure Yeah, >> I think last time you came and talked to us about I can't remember if it was reduced tickets or pay what
171you can tickets. How what's your sense of how that went? >> Yes. Um that those pay what you will tickets are all represented between the arts and the ed and pay what you will in our kind of outreach numbers. And that's the numbers that have gone up by 40%. That would have been even higher if we didn't have a March show cancel on us. We had a lot of pay what you will tickets to that March show. So that percentage would have been even greater than you see in in that area there. >> Ju just one more followup and what I'm trying to get at is I think you have a good story to tell. Yes. I don't necessarily know the community understands. they kind of look at what the beef act does >> and
172you know what it costs and they look at the numbers and you know you they'll they'll say make comments about that but I I don't necessarily know if they understand you know what you do for student development and internship opportunities and um and then also what we're the expertise that you're providing to our schools. So I think it's an opportunity to communicate that and make sure people understand it's just not shows that go on >> Sure. >> at the uh at the theater. >> Yeah. Thank you. One one thing that um I will say so my firm does um school educational work and I'm aware that a a school district that's looking at a new facility came by and visited yours amongst others um and we heard very nice things about things we've already known
173but it's difficult because a number of our kids have played in there in the BAC and done plays and been in the pit and everything else and how well it's set up and the acoustics and all that other stuff. But I think people don't realize kind of a little kind of gem we have that really >> is at a professional level. Not just because you get these professional touring groups and these national touring groups that come by, but also that there are others that are striving to create what we have. >> Yeah. >> I I will I'll even share this here. I'm going to pass it around. I brought I brought this in for you because we have up front also um a merchandise area and and we sell in the merchandise area this item
174right here and that is a student artist. So that student artist makes this jewelry and they are understanding that there's a career for them [laughter] to do that and it'll fit your casted arm just perfectly. Um, but those are that's just a little story of how they um how the students can find their home and a a world outside of the educational system for them in the arts. >> No, that's a great story. Thank you. >> All right. Thank you, sir. [applause] Okay, continuing with operations. Um, speaking facilities first, >> three goals. Um, just a quick review those um efficiency part, uh, maintenance backlog and some support indoor air quality initiatives. Okay, there's what it was. So, you can see that's basically July through November. We were at 3.3 days. And so what response time
175is looking at is how quickly are you responding to the work order. So a maintenance team member gets that work order, how are they responding to it? So then the end user normally um staff will um know that somebody's actually looking at that work order. And we're at 1.7 days. Now this is from December through uh May. So, I kind of looked at it that way because we really emphasized it and we really talked about it a lot and for guys just to sit down and look at them. Um, I think that was very important. Um, and really what I'm looking at here is is for it to continue to go down for some reason and we're trying to figure this out that it kind of jumped up a little bit in March. So, we're
176talking about that as a team right now. The other one is about resolution time. So, we were at about five days. So resolution time means when the work is done. You finished, you completed the work order. Um again, July through November, that's trending how we want it and then it continued to trend. It had another spike in March. So they're very related. Now digging deeper, um they're related and again what we're thinking they're related to is um if somebody is reserving space. So, you're reserving the gym and you need a setup done. Okay. Well, that automatically does a work order. So, most of the maintenance custodians will let that sit there until the day instead of going in and changing it. So, for instance, maybe something in February was booked for something in March. Instead
177of going in and putting it and reclassifying it something else, it just sits there. So, then it just keeps adding time. So again, some work to be done for that goal. Um, again, this is just going through and you're going to notice if it's in red, those are in black is what we what was already a goal and in red is kind of what we're doing. So the one thing in here is like we talked about the July and August time frame in the summer. All of our team members are doing projects. So, we're dedicating time on Mondays and Thursdays before they get their project started actually sitting down checking their work orders, making sure, and yes, staff members throughout the summer, even though they're not in the buildings, they're still putting work orders in.
178Um, the other thing is we're going to take an a specific maintenance person off a project and try to get some of those done. So then when we come in August, there's not a backlog of multiple work orders. Um, in here is about the backlog. Right now, we're kind of set up to take that backlog down because we have some major projects. Louise White being one of them. Um, storm site work and then at Guses and Jamie Nelson uh the flooring project. So, really the last well today and then Thursday and Friday were very busy not only in the maintenance department but staff members as well, specifically Louise White staff members. Um, but we were ready to go this morning and there has been significant progress already. Um, so that's good. So what I'll do,
179I did this last year with Storm is um, with Chris, I would send him kind of, you know, maybe not exactly weekly, but every couple weeks just kind this is where we're at. Um, instead of just sending to Chris, I probably send it to either Tom and Tony. I know Tony got them too, but then to pass that along to the board. Um, so then you can kind of see each one and where we're at. The one thing I will say on this is, um, we really don't have projects for next summer. I know we've been talking about that a lot, but again, if you don't continue to do projects, unfortunately, you're going in the wrong direction. So no matter what, even if you're doing, there's still going to be a backlog because there's always
180things to be done in buildings. The third goal is um about the looking at temperature and air flow. So we are ready to start that at storm. Um we're going to be starting that in the fall as far as having a dashboard to really do measurements. So things have been put in. Um the electric meter has been installed. The gas meter will be installed um this summer. So really what you're doing is you're looking at different things um as far as specifically the temperatures in the rooms and you can actually have a dashboard. So somebody can just click on it and they see exactly what that trend data looks like. Other things we've done in there and you can see is um obviously filters are being changed but we're also being very strategic in kind
181of doing a deeper clean of units and that's going to be in our every three-year rotation. It's not like they're not getting clean, but we're literally taking things apart and really getting into them because as um things age, we need to continue to keep them running. [snorts] Before I go to transportation, because I'm up next, any questions on any of those? >> I just have a quick question. >> Does the state or any other agency have a mandate on air quality for us? >> They have different mandates. Um, one specifically is you have to let so much outside air in. You're mandated to let 10% of outside air in. So, that would be something that's mandated. Um, that's really specifically one of them. Um there's not anything else that they're coming in and seeing and
182checking and doing anything like that. Okay. Transportation. Those are the three goals. So the first one is basically on-time performance 99%. So we have two ways of looking at this. We've had this for a while is where the staff onsite reports if there's a late bus or something like that. The other piece is with Illinois Central now. We have on time u performance reports that we get weekly now. Um and looking at those two, they're pretty close to each other. Um 98.8% and then 99.02%. Um, and you also can see I think the interesting part we can pull this data very easily is through the GPS is there's 32,886 total routes. Now that's not the entire year. That's just when we started. We didn't start this at the very beginning of the year um and
183having 321 late events. Now if you just look at 321 late events you're like why is it that many? But out of that many routes and this is for in district and outplace. So this is all transportation we do in the entire district >> qualifies as a late event. >> So a late event um basically if it's a late event at school. So for example I'm going to use u the middle school if the bus is late as far as well we use 7:53 in the morning. Okay. If they're not there that way you give students time to get to their locker get to class. It's not 8:00 because that's when the bell starts. After school, it's 10 minutes. Um, so if the bus doesn't arrive, you know, within that 10-minute mark, so elementarymentaries is
1843:40. So if that bus is after 3:40, it's considered late. And really, it's considered late and it doesn't matter what the circumstance like why it's late. So some you can kind of see some things that we're continuing to do, some communication things that we're working on. Um, you know, we have the weekly check-ins. Um, the other piece is I talked mid year about there was leadership change. There was actually a major leadership change with Illinois Central. Um, the new team is in place and it's the same people from I would say half the year. Um, driver recruitment continues to be an issue. Um, again there is a and it's not a Bavia thing. Um, even if you know we contract our bus, it's a St. Charles, it's a Geneva thing. They have their buses inhouse.
185Um, everybody continues to talk about it. Nobody's really come up with exactly what works. It's better than it has been, but it's still an an issue. The other one is decreasing number of routes. Um, we're always trying to um I know I've talked about triple and double and single tier. One of our I would say what's difficult for is um bell times especially in the afternoon. One bridge and you have bell times that are 30 minutes apart. So it's it's almost not almost it is impossible to get a bus from Rotolo Middle School to Grace McUne and still drop kids off. I mean it is very very difficult to do that. Um so that that does limit the ability to get triple tiers which you want. You want one bus running as many routes as
186you can. talked about drivers. Um, and then the other piece on here is is, you know, we're always trying to reduce the number of routes. Obviously, our population is going down a little bit, so that does help. We don't need as many buses, but even throughout this year, you know, you're looking at combining routes if you can. We did go down one from, you know, when I talked last. Um, accidents basically this is you don't want safety is number one. Um, I can say that we had two accidents this entire year and one of them was actually a bus going to pick up kids on a charter with no students on it. It still counts as an accident because it was um and then we did have one um no injuries, nothing like that. It
187was actually turning around in a cult and you know did that. So um and if you look at the miles driven, there's 251,000 miles driven for all of our buses this year. Any questions about transportation? >> All right. Thank you. And I believe Dave. >> All right. I'm just going to update on some statistics from the tech department. Um so first one is our current ticket counts that we have this year. So basically from January till now, we're starting to see the windown happen. Um you can see the red little dotted line is compared to last year. So you can see the the graph of doom coming in August. Um we're hopeful it's going to be a little lower this year with some preemptive stuff we've changed. So I'm anxious to see kind of how
188that goes. Um our current uh on time rate is looking great. Our goal is 95%. We've been blowing that away quite a bit uh for the past actual couple years now. Um so it's looking really good. The team's being able to keep up with things and it's looking really well. Um this is our current incidents versus requests. Uh requests are like more like I need this thing versus I broke this thing. Um incidents are up a little bit just due to the end of the year and things breaking kids breaking screens, things like that. Um this is kind of showing some of that uh based on the current blue getting a little bit larger. That's related to some of those types of device breakage things and stuff like that. Um other than that really it's
189a pretty standard look that we've had in the past few years. So nothing really out of the ordinary there. Um this is the work that a lot of the higher uh level teams are handling. Uh this is more like uh data type team, network type teams uh handling some of these larger changes. Um it did fluctuate a little bit. We're about halfway through this year. So I'd say we're probably going to see a little bit more increase on comparing to last year's full number. U but we're we're looking pretty standard on trend as far as that's concerned. Um I am happy to report we only had two emergency changes this year. So, so far since January, so that that's a good thing. Um, all the other stuff is fairly routine and just kind of planning
190projects and things ahead. Now, summer, this will actually increase a little bit. Uh, so these pending changes may go up a little bit more during that time just because we're doing a lot of our summer work and whatnot. But other than that, everything's going pretty well. [snorts] That's all I have. So, if there's any questions, >> we're just left field question. >> Yeah. How were we affected by the Cana thing >> if at all? >> Um not that much. Uh there was some data exposed but it was primarily just email addresses and whatnot. Okay. >> Um we we used it back in 2022 but they never deleted our data. >> Right. So >> I sent that request again. >> Um we're still waiting to confirm everything with them. But it's right now the last response
191they had. Uh it it's still part of the ongoing investigation, but nothing more than what they've already told us. So, >> okay. >> Thanks for asking. >> All right. Thank you. Good job. [applause] >> All right. Support. That concludes our end of year accountability reporting as called out in the strategic plan. Um we will like LA what we've been doing um is providing Cindy with the presentation so she can submit that to the minutes of the board meeting [clears throat] public if you're engaging with someone in the community you can reference them to the minutes of this board meeting they'll be able to see whatever they want. Um you as a board will also get it. Holly will send you the presentations as well. Right. Um, so on a final note to wrap that particular
192portion up of our meeting, I just want to thank all of our teachers, our staff, our principles, um, just for the incredible amount of work, you all in particular being here on a Tuesday night here on May 26. Thank you as well for being here. But um you know, I just think everything you've heard tonight, it really just stands on the shoulders of all the work that our people are doing in this district and supporting our students and really proud of them and proud of our students uh for really embracing the opportunity to learn and be a student here in our district. [applause] >> All right. Well, thank you very much again. Uh we will be going into close session. You guys certainly do not need to stick around. So, the board will go into
193close session. We'll not have any action items after the close session. You're welcome to stay here if you want, but if you decide you leave, thank you very much for coming out today and for all these wonderful presentations. Uh, so time is 8:33 p.m. and I will entertain a motion to move into close session as allowed. [laughter] Sorry, >> she's efficient. as allowed under the open meetings act for the purpose of exceptions fivec203. So moved by Raquel >> Second by Rob. >> Uh Cindy, please lead us in a roll call vote. >> Meadows, >> yes. >> Thomas, >> yes. >> All right. Thank you.