Batavia Public School District Board of Education Meeting for February 22/2022.

001meeting of the board of education on february 22nd 2022 and we have someone with a really great t-shirt and unfortunately she's not in the front row at seven o'clock p.m um kathy would you please call the roll here present here present here all right mr gilbert would you please leave us in the pledge 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 are there any items to be added to or removed from our agenda tonight dr hitchens there are not all right then the first item on our agenda is our public comment so welcome to the meeting of the board of education if anyone wishes to address the board this evening please

002see our recording secretary to submit a form for addressing the board we ask that you put your full name and address on the form as we're required by a detailed set of the minutes of our meeting in general we do not answer questions or engage in dialogue during our public comments it doesn't mean that we don't take your concerns or comments seriously and if you have specific questions for or would like to further engage with the district you can submit your questions using the link on the website and an appropriate staff member will communicate with you our bps101 communications manager holly diesman will now explain the procedures for public comment and she will call up the speakers thank you welcome to our board meeting this evening speakers will be called up in order of form

003submission the first form received is the first person invited to speak when your name is called please come to the podium so that you can be heard your comments will be limited to three minutes we did have somebody that notified us in advance that we they would be speaking on behalf of a group and that group will be given five minutes a timer will start and it will be shown up on the screen once you are settled at the podium at any time during this meeting written comments from anyone else may be submitted to our recording secretary kathy scafidi right there at my right we ask that everyone conduct themselves with civil civility and respect towards others our first speaker is sarah barrett and kim anderson i can do that too okay good evening my

004name is sarah barrett and i'm kim anderson and we are your fourth grade team from grace mcqueen school beyond that we are also parents of bps students my daughters kayla graduated in 2007 and 2013 respectively my son theo is currently a freshman at batavia public high school we come to you tonight to express our support and appreciation for the district's dei initiative and the work that is currently being done we also want to take the time to stress the importance of continued focus on dei in its role in our education system while we acknowledge that the district has initiated some very important conversations in relation to diversity equity and inclusion we would like to ensure that the conversation does not end and grows into meaningful work my daughters akila and kayla both attended batavia schools

005beginning in kindergarten all the way through graduation during their combined time in batavia they only had two teachers and one counselor of color throughout their time as students they dealt with microaggressions as well as overt situations relating to their race for those of you who believe that this issue is new i assure you that it is not for those of you who feel that this issue is an old one i can assure you that it is not i am the mother of a korean adoptee matters of dei have always played a part in my family from the very moment my husband and i brought our son home at the age of 10 months when you are a family brought together by conspicuous adoption which means you adopt a child outside your race or ethnicity education

006and celebration of differences is imperative to the family experience within the school setting theo is one of very few asian students and while that has not had a direct effect on his success or happiness it is a topic of discussion frequently at our dinner table i would love nothing more than to note as a topic of conversation around the teacher lounge table as well i have been an educator in batavia for over 30 years during my time in batavia i was told by an administrator that i needed to change the way that i spoke because i did not sound professional enough during my career in batavia i have had a family ask that their child not be put in my room because i was black only once during my career in batavia have i been

007approached by my colleagues who to ask my opinion about a situation regarding a black student more minority teachers and administrators are needed in our district we need more open and honest conversations in our district regarding dei when looking at dei through the lens of educators we must start in the simplest of terms and grow as teachers to meet the needs of all learners i found a statement on the university of michigan website that defines deis diversity is where everyone is invited to the party inclusion means that everyone gets to contribute to the playlist equity means that everyone has the opportunity to dance while this statement addresses dei with a dash of humor its meaning is very real teachers need to develop an understanding of dei and the district needs to embrace dei at a systemic

008level we do not need another item on our checklist what we do need is meaningful sustainable and effective dei leadership thank you for your time and consideration regarding this important topic we look forward to working with you [Applause] our next speaker is richard all right my name is richard darlene live on the east side over there moved here in mid and uh one reason we moved here according to reeler was a school district i've sent multiple forms in district contact forms reached out multiple times zero responses so this is just a reminder that you guys work for us and we need some response you know i want to be quick to note that the remote learning done in the spring of 2020 and all of last year that was day on day off was garbage

009at least the best it was terrible it was awful i don't mind spending time with my child i love it i love doing math english with her but you know sometimes she was done by 10 a.m and i hope to never ever go back to that i'm pleased by the option for my child not to wear a mask to school but i do believe personally that this should have been an option from day one a choice made between parents and students not a tyrannical school board that held so diligently to the governor's tyrannical illegal mandate by the way these mass minimize emotional expression impedes communication and inhibits individuality it does these mandates must end especially in school-aged children whom facial expressions individuality and communication are paramount to their learning a couple of you guys three

010members are up for election 2020 2023 i know a group of parents that will never forget how you muzzled our children for almost two years sad my daughter stated teachers were constantly interrupting the class telling kids to pull up their mass we spent years teaching our kids not to even touch their face the t-zone they'd learned that batavia where was the common sense these kids don't even wear masks in pe in lunch and band they're with each other after school they play together after school they're in the same sports teams it's sad and the decision to muzzle these children during the school year into compliance was a gross decision i believe that and you guys should be held liable for the permanent damages you did to our children and let's not go back to these

011mass it's over it's done with let's stop don't confuse these children anymore thank you [Applause] our next speakers are speaking on behalf of a group so we'll be given five minutes that's jenna mcknight so good evening due to the uptick in racially charged incidents in our district many of us have found ourselves in the middle of a very difficult situation and there is no easy way out we know that the goal of every staff member administrator and school board member is to create a welcome and inclusive environment for all students with minimal disruptions to the learning environment that is not happening many classes have been disrupted some students are being harassed and some have been subject to racial trauma on a weekly and monthly basis this is untenable to us and cannot continue we've been

012patient and we know things take time earlier this month we sent questions to smt asking for some answers but as of today we have not received an official answers but we heard that a meeting went very well today so we are really looking forward to hear the information from that we want to be able to collaborate with our leaders and work together for the betterment of our students and we are excited to help do this work we just want open communication while we understand some questions are not easily answered there are others that we feel could have been communicated which leads us to our next point if there are any plans being made and it sounds like there are please tell us it would go a long way to where collaboratively and the lines of

013communication were opened up we want to recognize that there are those in leadership roles who are helping us move the needle forward the acknowledgment of the need for our students and the collaboration does not go unnoticed we know that now there are plans for the fall in the late spring which we are excited about and we look forward to building a relationship with ken williams and we look forward to learning and being better and doing better in the meantime we need to know what the plans are to help our students now we have students who are hurting and searching for help and guidance so how will we help them now what are we the district leaders and staff oh sorry who what are we the district leaders and staff getting in place now to help

014those students students are still continuing to go to teachers and share how they're being treated and hurt so let's do something now one way that we feel we could really get focused feedback from our students is through using our current resource of tripod ed and issuing their dei focus survey for students this would give us a wealth of information to focus on why would we shy away from getting concrete answers from our students this is an action we can take in the spring if we are to put dei as a priority then when will we as a district put forth the resources to hire an individual to take on this work it's disheartening to hear that we may not have the money or resources to do this but then as a staff and community it

015seems like the money is being spent other ways if this is a true priority then please prioritize the resources we do have to hire an individual that is trained and has the knowledge to help our students and our staff by publicly hiring a dei coordinator that will show students parents and staff that we are committed to this work and that we have more plans further on down the line long term our goal for continually bringing up dei is to create an environment where every student feels accepted supported heard and loved we keep coming to you because we want to build this together in a partnership a partnership that is transparent that openly communicates and above all make sure that every student feels like they belong here [Applause] you coming up for the next one i

016might our next speaker is mark pepping how you doing i'm mark peping back again i'm here tonight to advocate for the board to make some final decisions and move along with the masking and testing and quarantining self-isolating or whatever you call it now that you know if i felt like we were waiting for the appeal decision to be done a lot of school districts were after the ruling was made on february 4th that has been done so it's time to make a decision now and broadcast it to the community and let them know that you know there is no authority telling you guys that you have to do these things and then kids can feel like they can freely take off their masks i'm getting surveys from kids in our schools half the kids are

017wearing masks half are not how come the half are not because they're mentally anguished they are scared they're they're traumatized you know i've got girls two girls they don't want to take it off their dad comes to a board meeting every month and complains about it holds up signs in the streets and they're scared to take it off that's frustrating to me but you know what that just tells me that overall we've got a lot of problems mental problems that are going to happen social problems social skills i mean my daughter is afraid to talk to other strangers you know without her mask on her face i don't understand it but you know we've got to end this thing and you guys have got to take the leadership and say we're going to stop this

018now you know suspending enforcement is not anything close to saying what we're doing is wrong we can't do this lawfully and you know last month i said the legal action is coming uh our district i don't think was enjoying any lawsuit yet but we've got hundreds of parents that are ready to go we don't want to do this this is a waste of time you know we have to wait for months and months for for what you know they have the same end results we already have permission now nobody in the state is forcing you to do this it's just up to you to make the decision admit that we can't enforce the rules that were imposed and move let's move on let's work on getting our kids uh more comfortable more uh you know

019bring them back from their their zombie state that they're in so you know if you have half of a class still masking i gotta expect that it's interrupting learning especially for the little kids now i'm what i'm hearing is that the elementary schools and some of your teachers here maybe you can comment on it even they are less masked than the high school so that says to me the high school kids are being pressured in some way if it's being bullied or if it's uh just peer pressure too many instagram views i'm not sure what but we've got to get through this and get done with it i mean there's you know how long you go for we're going to go forever what are you looking for what is the you know what's the purpose

020i really want you to consider let's get a decision made so we don't have to continue doing this as parents we don't have a waste our time doing this you don't want to hear us here every month doing this you've got dei you got to work on thank you [Applause] that's the end of public comment all right next item on our agenda is our bps partner so i'm going to invite our student ambassadors to the podium share with us what's going on at the high school hello everyone super packed today um we did share a presentation with you at yes okay oh it's a little cut off but um so recently our girls basketball team went to sectionals and they were regional champions which is really exciting [Applause] and then we also had multiple wrestlers

021go to state this weekend hayden federal who's on the far right place and i believe we also had two girls this year that qualified for state [Applause] and then the dance team season is almost over after placing second sectionals 18th at state and 10th in the nation at nationals [Applause] and then we had a little little um insight into our school right now which was touched so recently we've been emphasizing equity and fine discrimination which has been a big priority at the school so we've been collaborating with students and clubs including the equity and diversity committee to help spread the new equity statement and continue to create a welcoming environment at the high school we've done this through videos such as dr smith's video elaborating on the equality statement that was shown in classes as

022well as newly added art promoting black history month so of course there's still more work to be done but just um being happy that yeah being happy that and excited that there's work being done right now [Applause] next i'd like to invite todd swanson president of the bea to the podium [Applause] applause before i speak all right i'm going to try without my glasses and see how this goes i made the font a lot bigger so good evening members of the board first off i'd like to thank those of you who have reflected on my comments over the past few months and have been asking questions and seeking understanding and clarification there's no better way to gain clarity than to ask questions and i want to make sure that you all know that i am

023available to meet with any of you and can answer any of your questions as well so please don't ever hesitate to reach out to me should you have questions that you would like to ask of me it's always nice to meet and to talk over coffee or sushi today is a pivotal moment for our district we are going to hear a final report from a group that has been analyzing the board's strategic priorities which focus on welcoming and inclusive environment authentic learning and early learning even more anticipated are the next steps that are to be shared as we move forward as a district none have been awaiting the sharing of these next steps more than those who have been championing the causes of diversity equity and inclusion in our district you may notice that a

024few in the audience are wearing red tonight no other color symbolizes a wider array of feelings and emotions in the color red red adds heightened awareness and urgency to any situation in the education world we have a movement called red for ed this is when educators in a district state or even on the national level wear red to raise awareness and cause a sense of urgency to whatever topic that needs to be addressed tonight our teachers are wearing red in honor of continuing to raise awareness and add urgency to the need for systemic change in our district around the topic of dei this is not to take away from the steps that have already taken place this year and i want to acknowledge that we have certainly made strides but no one is denying that

025much work still lies ahead of us when we reflect on where we were as a district just one year ago at dei we certainly have moved in the right direction some may feel that we have been working at a snail's pace while others are just now coming to understand the immensity of what dei work entails that is why the results that will be shared this evening are as i said before pivotal as to how we progress as a district to get back to the color red for a moment red has an entire month dedicated to it with the celebration of valentine's day in february so it's only fitting that this color red be the focus of my time with you tonight it's truly amazing how one color can invoke such a wide array of feelings

026that can be at such ends of the spectrum from each other on the positive side red symbolizes energy excitement power courage and determination yet when i shift over to the negative connotations of red we find aggression anger shame embarrassment and exhaustion each one of these emotions has its roots in the color red and we have had many instances where many of these emotions have come to the surface as of late much like the red flames of a fire that start out small and spread into a larger roaring glaze the desire of many in our district to look at how we operate through a lens that continuously needs to focus on what is equitable and inclusive for all in our diverse school community creates a need that is driven by determination and a passion to make

027our schools a place of safety and inclusivity for all what happens however with any fire is depending on the external factors that are impacting it a blaze could turn into a devastating inferno or be smothered completely out of existence by removing any of the basic elements needed for its life i have no worry that this movement is going to be extinguished there are enough of the elements in place to keep the fire burning but what we need to be is cognizant of the exact opposite the devastating inferno together we need to ensure that everyone in our district has a common jumping off point regarding dei does everyone have a common understanding of what it even is and what its principles are are we all meaning the same things when we talk about dei can we

028recognize our own attributes that could hinder the progress to this movement we have had some staff do amazing work this year around this topic but now we find ourselves as a district to be somewhat all over the place we have worked with senior administration to engage our plaque committee to help everyone in the district get a common foundation for dei on which staff can build more layers of understanding as time and training continues this will happen beginning at a time set aside for an upcoming institute day this spring if there has continued to be a red flag in our district vision however it has been not having a coherent plan with a tangible timeline attached so all know the way forward together will there be a dei committee will there be a dei coach or

029coordinator what will professional development look like around the topic of dei in the future it is these questions and many more along with not knowing the answers to them that continues to add fuel to the fire that could further ignite the flames into the proverbial inferno that is why i mentioned that tonight's findings are going to be so important in how the dei fire burns in batavia continuing on with my homage to red another red emotion that i have not only personally felt and experienced in these last few weeks but also witnessed first hand in our district is one that for 29 years that i have taught in batavia that i thought i would never feel or experience working in this community that i love i saw my colleagues be put on the front lines

030in a political debate i saw students used as pawns i saw staff threatened with litigation and hateful emails for doing what we've always done teaching respect for following the rules expecting that we can disagree in respectful ways and always holding out hope that we never forget that we are all human beings i've never experienced the levels of fear disrespect and intolerance that i witnessed in these last few weeks and that leads me to a red emotion that i never thought i would associate with batavia and that is shamefulness for anyone to think that my teachers or our principals administrators and employees could be spoken to and treated the way that they have been goes beyond and directly moves to anger for me this past month my emotional bank account is even more in the red

031than it has been all year and i also know that this is a case for our teachers our administrators and staff as well i know full well that the actions of some do not speak for all and in that my negative red emotions temper down quite a bit and i find myself being grounded in the emotion of determination no matter what comes our way educators will persevere as we have always done what matters now more than ever is not focusing on the things that will divide us and break us apart rather we need to look at the things that unify us and bring us closer together each one of us does the job that we do because it is what we are meant to do with our lives when i'm with my kids in my

032classroom whatever else is going on outside my door disappears and i'm lost in the magic of learning sharing and community it recharges me and gives me the strength to come back day after day no matter what else is going on and i know that is a unifying threat i share with everyone in my school community no matter what we are here to help the children of batavia learn grow and succeed and that is unifying around the best cause of all red means uniting for a common cause red is for education thank you [Applause] good night uh plaque met this past week two weeks ago the 10th and we teamed up within our committee to discuss other districts and relevant organizations dei statements and discuss them as a team and how we wanted ours to look

033like we also discussed upcoming march institute day and that would what that would look like for our staff um which was also dei focused um big mets and we discussed updates of pto and booster organizations and hell of honor has extended the deadline to february 28th um for nominations so get those that's all thanks aaron rj um i got a pretty good update from fox valley career center um some highlights um mr virtual is very excited about some things that have happened in the past so far the school year so i want to share it with you all um so far this year the fox valley students have qualified to test or schedule the test for the following certifications or licenses american welding society automotive service excellence certification certified nursing assistant certification comp ta certification

034cosmetology license uh he mentions that several the second year students have already completed or will soon complete their coursework including 1500 hours of clinical practice for professional license environmental protection agency universal refrigerant license fire science certification and hazardous materials certification they also have several students who have qualified to test for emt basic certification when they turn 18 years old so it's a reminder for everyone this is you know high school age students that are all doing this uh the certification testing is possible and the students have completed the necessary clinical hours or past the required skills testing some other highlights beyond the students uh 32 percent of well this includes students 32 percent of them have been have already participated in work based life experience learning experience including job shadowing internships or site visits they've

035had over 24 guest speakers already some that he highlighted are automotive repair shop owners computer computer company owners multiple community college instructors and the king county sheriff k9 officer and a dog other students have also taken they've had they've had over 13 different field trips king county coroner the jail albanza community college cadaver lab and the tricom 911 dispatch so they've had a lot of advisory meetings met with a lot of local businesses into in industries and community colleges to ensure that the programs continue to prepare students for their chosen field so they're doing a great job they've got six more advisory meetings coming for later this spring so just wanted to highlight some of the great stuff that's going on at fox valley career center thanks rj yeah great i'm remiss to report that

036we did not have a meeting so um if there's anything tony wants to add but otherwise we'll catch up on the next one huh that leads me to say that the insurance committee also did not meet thank you tony you're not a slacker uh capital the projects fossil did that meet we did have our first community engagement session on february 1st to talk about the master facilities plan so i want to thank everybody in the community who attended that night we had a robust turnout we had a very lively discussion i was only observing but from my seat in the cheap seats it looked like we had some really productive conversations and i want to thank all the speakers dr hitchens brad tony the dlr group they did a nice job and especially want to

037thank the volunteers on the committee that are the hosts that are organizing it these are people these are your neighbors these are your friends that are doing the heavy lifting so that we can communicate with our community so i want to thank all them and then i'll do my commercial our next meeting is thursday the 24th from 6 30 to 8 30 at the high school and the topic of discussion is financing the plan so i think this will be information that will be of great interest to the community and will generate great discussion and so i would hope everyone here would attend and tell a friend because this is very important helping us decide what the future of our facilities will look like and if you want more information obviously you can go to

038holly's done a great job our facebook page or the district website will give you all the information chris we did have a cac meeting um during that meeting we reviewed the plan for the summer curriculum week we continued our discussion on subject area leadership teams or assault and we will discuss our short and long term goals for that at our upcoming meeting on thursday and then we also discussed equity statements uh we looked over various equity statements el they looked over i observed and came back with several ideas that they i assumed uh sent on to the other committees that are doing that work and the things that were important to them were they like the active proactive voice um they felt that definitions are needed um they wanted to emphasize collective responsibility and ongoing

039continuous examination of our education system so that was it sounds good next item on our agenda is our consent agenda which is an opportunity for us to approve a number of uh routine and regular business items all of which are detailed in the um board docs so mr pearson you'll take us through the consent agenda absolutely this is easily the most exciting moment of the board meeting for those of you here for the first time and i'm joking when i say that uh 4.1 is the approval of the january 24th 2022 special meeting minutes 4.2 and 4.3 is the approval of the january 25th 2022 regular and closed session meeting minutes 4.4 is the approval of february 14th 2022 special meeting minutes 4.5 is our monthly personnel report 4.6 is our monthly payrolls and bills

0404.7 is the review of closed session minutes 4.8 is the destruction of closed session recordings from august 25th 2022 4.9 is the display of high school science textbook and 4.10 is the display of our high school social science textbook lastly 4.11 is the approval of this consent agenda are there any items to be removed or that need further clarification all right then i would entertain a motion to approve all items in the consent agenda as presented still moved second move my by meisler second by low all in favor hi hi any opposed all right next item on our agenda is reports i'm going to pass that over to dr hitchens sister sure the first two reports i would entertain any questions normally we don't have any because these are recurring reports that are here every

041month so while i'm anticipating questions i would invite the strategic plan check-in group led by ming shelby to approach the podium because you guys are the next report up for tonight are there any foia questions or treasure questions oh hi everybody all right so we're super excited to share um what we've been doing as a check-in committee and we have some great representatives to share the process that we went through as part of its strategic plan work the board of education directed the administration early learning authentic learning and a welcoming and inclusive environment these priorities have been guiding work for three years and the board determined that additional feedback was needed especially from underrepresented voices to seek feedback and engage the community around the board's priorities is existing data from available sources was compiled and

042a series of focus groups were conducted centered on finding and lifting up voices that may not be represented in our current collaborative systems taken by thousands of students data from the five essentials survey as well as the district administered tripod survey serve as the basis of the quantitative data that was a part of the process along with information from the annual school report card qualitative data was gathered from 29 different focus groups and over 350 individuals inclusive of staff students parents and the community a community engagement team was put together to process this data and identify strengths and weaknesses around each of the board's priority areas we opened speaking at the board meeting to our whole committee and these volunteers so generously offered their time um to be a part of this tonight so here

043they are good evening my name is danielle mahoney we moved to batavia six years ago and we love this town community i am a proud mom to two amazing girls my older daughter lily is living her most awesome first grade life at hc store and my spunky penny is in her last year in the ec program at ags she also has down syndrome most are not aware that the largest minority group not just in the us but in the entire world are individuals with disabilities yet when having a discussion about inclusion and acceptance they are not always top of mind and usually have limited presence often time this is because students with disabilities are not able to articulate or voice their needs opinions frustrations so i'm hoping to advocate for them and their parents and

044caregivers i'm martin and as a student at bhs and an lgbtq student i care deeply that all voices are heard and about tackling all forms of racism queer phobia ableism and all types of bigotry in batavia schools and to make school a safe and equitable environment for all students good evening everybody my name is jake wyatt i teach fourth grade currently at gustafson school i'm a lifelong batavian myself i was very grateful to have an opportunity to participate in the community in this discussion forum i have worked in three different schools in batavia and in a number of different roles so um great opportunity to to represent the community on this team and i'm holly dietzman i usually sit right there i'm the communications manager for batavia schools i also am a parent i have

045two boys one at rotolo and one at batavia high school and i'm also a member of the lgbtq family uh yeah so some words about our process uh 28 non-administrative staff participated in a five-part engagement process during these meetings the group processed the data developed statements to identify perceived strengths and weaknesses and then prioritize these to help guide further action planning team members processed through the quantitative data and made inferences about how the results reflected strengths or areas of weakness in our system over 70 statements were generated by the teams that processed the data these statements were grouped into overarching themes and then the statements were voted on as to their level of priority i'm going to speak to some of the positive things that came out of the welcome and inclusive environment community engagement

046team members voted from a long list of statements some of them you can see up on the screen there that were created under this category all of which can be found in our report here are the results from the committee under the priority welcoming and inclusive environment our two our top two strengths are welcoming for welcoming inclusive there are many extracurricular opportunities for students and these experiences strengthen the welcoming and inclusive environment and provide a sense of community and staff authentically connecting to students as a positive impact on the learning environment student focus groups from all levels support the notion that extracurricular activities connect students to the school environment staff focus groups also indicated that extracurriculars provide opportunities to establish meaningful and positive relationships that connect students to each other staff and their school local

047quantitative and qualitative data sources confirmed research findings that teachers make a difference and the experience of our students the five essentials survey from 2021 indicated that 90 percent of students believe that they share a high level of mutual trust and respect with their teachers overwhelmingly students said that their teachers make them feel safe resp and respected confirming results were seen in the tripod survey which is taken by students annually and questions related to care and school climate for weaknesses there was a tie for the top two staff members would like to see more progress in making the environment welcoming and inclusive for all students and certain populations of students feel unsafe not included or respected among their peers indicating a sense of urgency and a willingness to engage in meaningful change more than one-third of

048staff members would like to see more progress toward making the learning environment more welcoming and inclusive in focus groups staff acknowledged that while that we are making some progress there are still opportunities for improvement the tripod survey showed that between 21 and 22 percent of students at rms and bhs believe that their teachers are not aware that something is bothering them which demonstrates the complexity involved in making all students feel welcome and included while an increasing majority of students feel safe in the school environment and most report positive peer relationships some focus groups indicated that certain students do not feel connected to their peers further work is needed to improve student interactions during unstructured time and locations like hallways buses and restrooms especially on issues related to racial social cultural gender identity learning disabilities and

049special abilities okay so i'm going to share the results from the authentic learning priority i'll start with strengths we distilled down all of this information to the two overarching statements most staff 74 percent believe that authentic learning experiences are important for student learning that was from a staff survey in 2021 staff and student focus groups also indicate that collaboration such as in labs community and business connections and career explorations result in higher levels of engagement for students the second strength was that most students affirmed that engagement with their academic work is important and student focus groups from all levels connected high levels of engagement with improved learning which suggests that application and connection of theoretical concepts to real world scenarios results in improved learning experiences for our students the two areas of weakness i think

050were things that are areas just to continue to to improve on student focus groups at all levels revealed that learning was that was student-centered was more engaging to them strategies such as interdisciplinary units project-based learning inquiry collaborative learning quality discussion and the use of multi-age grouping such as mentoring or buddy opportunities across grade levels and special school or community projects were noted by students as contributing to their engagement in their learning there was a noted need to have shared experience as well as personalized learning opportunities at all levels and i think the the area for growth is figuring out where that balance lies in the 2021 five essentials survey most students surveyed reported academic engagement in their learning when asked about engagement student focus groups stressed the need to see the learning connected to and

051applicable to their lives students at all levels shared that learning activities that focused on student discussion instructional approaches such as simulations debates taking informed action and inquiry learning increased opportunities for student agency in their learning process at bps101 early learning refers to opportunities for pre-k through first grade as solid foundation for future learning i can personally speak to this priority having two young kids in this demographic and having first hand experience in both the strengths and the weaknesses focus groups data on program desirability and committee members express support for the district's early childhood model early childhood staff reflections show that a common curriculum shared experiences and a connection to kindergarten programming are hallmarks of their success we are so fortunate to live in this community with a program well admired by others and is a

052model of success especially in the special needs community families move to our district specifically because of the early childhood reputation unfortunately with all of its strengths there are a few weaknesses currently there is a lack of capacity sections and facilities to accommodate all the families in pre-k which has resulted in the use of the lottery system many three and four-year-olds remain on the waitlist and either do not enroll in school or have to find private opportunities this may impact the transition to kindergarten there was some discussion in the committee about potential barriers such as transportation and program awareness that may impact the use of preschool by our neediest families my older daughter was on the wait list for both years we just missed the call her first year and then we received the call mid-year

053of her second we were fortunate to be able to enroll her in another preschool that we loved but not all families have that option by the time she did get the call we did get the call to enroll she was already in her current school having forged friendships and thriving where she was at so how we arrived as which statements were our top levels of priority differed for each group member for myself i am coming from the perspective of young children i looked at what would have longevity and seeing improvement as my kids their peers and future children move through the school system i chose the ones for the opportunity that were the most actionable and impactful as one other committee member had stated we picked the ones that had the most bang for its

054book so my process was i it was there was a lot of information to uh pull together and for me i was trying to consider what i heard from students other staff members community members i had spoken to and then i thought as i was trying to compile my list of of the biggest priorities think about what would be best addressed from a holistic district-wide level rather than within a individual school or classroom level yeah i agree with that and for me was difficult to select just two priorities because there are a lot of things to discuss in terms of how i arrived at my vote for priority levels it was informed by not only my lived experience as a student seeing these issues up close and every day what needs to be done but

055also as a member of groups like the pride alliance and the equity and justice committee at bhs hearing from other students of diverse and often marginalized backgrounds that certainly informed my consideration and i'm a very analytical person so i took all the data we had binders full of data from all the different surveys and i went through it and tried to look at it as a parent separating myself from my job and my title within the district and see what uniquely my family how they were impacted by some of the different groups that were speaking to tonight so that's how i look through it and i tried to like find common themes so going through the data hearing what students were saying and also what the staff and teachers were saying and trying to come

056up with some some general thoughts and kind of move our way through the process but it was a great the process in general was very good because we would have the whole group would talk then we'd do breakout groups and then we would come back and we would kind of summarize the statements it was it was really well done and really appreciate all the effort that especially mingan had put into the the group so it was really a great process so i'm going to talk about some of the committee insights at the end of this committee process we sent out a reflection survey to all of the committee members there was an overwhelmingly positive response to being on the committee a couple of the snippets of what was shared are on the slide i can

057share personally that i really enjoyed hearing from a wide variety of points of view that i don't typically encounter we had just community leaders business leaders parents of all ages students and it was interesting to see how different people's lived experiences really affected what they how they felt about different topics that came up through the data that we found i thought everybody was very open very honest and very respectful of each other's points of view throughout the entire uh process i appreciated hearing the viewpoints from the teachers administration students and fellow parents and community members it definitely offered a well-rounded perspective i found it interesting that here we were given this binder with all this information and it was a lot um thankfully it was broken down um here we have all this information provided

058and though we come from different differing experiences at the end of the day we all have the same ideals and that was really impactful and i just wish that more of the community could hear all that was shared on these committee calls and really understand all the work that is being done behind us yeah i also appreciated hearing a variety of voices from a variety of perspectives based on the discussions that i participated in i felt that everyone cared about bps students being welcomed and included about having authentic learning opportunities and good good early learning opportunities for students and that everybody could have equal access to them i felt that all of our discussions were held in very good faith and uh finally a special thank you to the board and to everyone who took

059time out of their schedules to be a part of this important work thank you [Applause] do you have any questions for us at this time oh this is podium is hello i have a question yes first i want to say thank you to danielle jake martin holly and ming for that presentation it is difficult to get up in front of a crowd like this i to all the speakers that come to any of our meetings i always admire you because it does take a level of courage but i want to thank you for your service this is really valuable work that you've done and this is really going to shape the discussions that we're going to have moving forward on the subject meaning specifically for you i do have a question can you discuss in

060more detail a piece of information that was provided in the background documentation specifically the information from the 2021 tripod survey discussing the percentage of student respondents who feel safe in the school environment personally for me and i think my other board members i think providing greater context and what those statistics mean we'll provide clarity to the challenges we face and allow us as the board and the senior management team to make better and more impactful decisions to make improvements in that area yeah thank you for your great question and so the tripod survey has seven different areas of seas related to care um and we just broke down what aligned with the board's priorities and those are normed um and a lot of other districts participate in that as well and it's not aggregated to

061say like this many students felt this way or this way so we just took all the data all together and said where are we going from here where are we here and then where can we go from the next steps thanks erin thank you the only thing i was going to add is one of the advantages that we have as board members and we're asked to kind of sit in the background and i really wanted to say i just appreciate the discussion that you guys had or the commentary you had about kind of like your personal insights and would help you make decisions because one of the things that's difficult as a board member sometimes is really understanding the why decisions were made and what the thought process was putting in it and so i

062appreciate you guys and the administration making it capable for the boards to attend and either as individuals or mass because that just for everybody else's purpose is that little minute there or five minutes of them talking about what it meant to them literally happened for about 45 minutes in a meeting the other day where every person talked about why they made the decision they made and that was really really insightful to me to be able to kind of help understand so everything you heard from them is literally you know just one after the other people told similar stories about why they came to good decisions so i appreciate the time and the effort to everybody that was involved you four or five and all of those there so thank you what else are we ready

063for the next steps uh we don't normally take questions from the group this is our thank you thank you thank you thanks jeff great job good job all right the next report and if people do have questions there are um some sheets that you can leave those questions and we will get back to you and answer your questions um the the next report again uh board reports don't have any action in them they're informational but we do have a follow-up to that report we very much appreciate um all of the work that went into this point but we're a district of action so what just happened over the past several months is this group helped us identify some things that needed improvements and like i said we're a district of action and we will be

064um we're here to talk about the next steps what do those next steps look like and we already heard about those three priorities that the board has a comprehensive strategic plan with the dashboard of metrics on the website and they chose a few years ago to have us focus on three things in addition to that strategic plan they said these three things should be on the front burner right now which is why um we made those we call those strategic priorities and they asked us to do this check-in and they said how are we doing so that's that process that you saw play out um next steps i'm going to we're going to take them one at a time i'm going to turn it over to chief academic officer brad newkirk sure so authentic learning

065we'll tackle that one first and why this is an area of focus for the board is very clear we saw it in the focus groups we heard it here tonight even in rj's report about students being motivated to obtain these certifications at the career center is that it's a very simple calculus is that when we engage students authentically in learning experiences and connect them to the real world it yields higher engagement and higher engagement is highly correlated to students learning so we want to make sure that students are learning at their most so how do we do that is by engaging them authentically and making sure they're highly engaged in that i think we've all experienced learning situations that weren't as engaging or didn't seem connected to the real world or what your ish interests

066and passions were and we can probably tell in ourselves how that impacts our ability to learn so the board's focus on authentic learning is a simple calculus about engagement and its impacts on student learning as we looked at those strengths and weaknesses that the committee just talked about is that there are lots of things to celebrate in our district including the commitment to authentic learning both teachers students and staff recognize the importance of this work but there's also work to be done to improve it again as dr hitchen said we're a district of action and that means committing to continuous improvement one of the things that came out through the process is that there's a need for additional clarity and definitions and a scope and sequence of authentic learning skills right so we have high

067profile programs in our district like our incubator program which has been presented to you several times that's great it involves about 40 community members coming in teaching and learning alongside our students but authentic learning doesn't have to be 40 adults coming into the room it can be very simple ways of connecting students to the real world and taking the theoretical concepts that we ask them to learn and connecting them to what their interests passions in the real world is like so i hate using the term real world because school is real and but it's really a kind of a commonly known phrase around authentic learning is connecting that so there is need for additional clarity related to that and also to lay out opportunities along a continuum that teachers can use to embed that in

068their practice we have been making significant strides as of late with vocational experiences especially for special needs students and making sure that we're doing a better job with transitional planning there's a required transitional planning at 14 and a half years of age for for students special education students but we also see that there's a need for vocational training for lots of our students rj talked about the career center we've the this board has brought before you there our wabonsi community college partnership for manufacturing this board is committed to several programs and programming for vocational experiences but our work is not done in that area and there's a need for more work all right we've done significant work around our curriculum including our counselors who have worked with the pace which is connecting it's a statewide

069framework for connecting students to career pathways one thing that we've come to learn both through this process and through the building our future together process is that our students are not one-dimensional we are really preparing students for a multitude of different pathways moving forward some students will enter the workforce some students will take a gap year some students want work in the the private sector some students are going on to two-year colleges some students are going on to four-year colleges there's so many pathways laid out there that we're planning for we want to make sure our students have all doors open for them whatever their pathway will be we're also looking at continued partnerships we have a great partnership with the chamber just like a little anecdotal story for our vocational experiences for some of

070our special ed students we reached out to the community with the the chamber of commerce and we had an overwhelming response and we're able to place our students in the community working in the community alongside our business owners and that to me is like a true success story of really fostering those partnerships and having them pay off for our kids but partnerships take work and there's always more students that we can serve so those are some next steps for us our cte and exploratory electives pathways this is something that's really known at our middle school in high school but we also need to make sure that we have we have a pre-k 12 system so introducing those types of experiences to our elementary students again is something that the committee brought up is they'd like

071to see more authentic experiences across our system not just at the middle school in high school so there's a lot of work to be done with authentic learning but kind of the positive news is i think people are energized by this work they're connected to it and they see the impacts on our kids next is early learning again why this is a focus of the boards is that there's a pretty wide research base about the impacts positive impacts of early learning experiences on the longitudinal outcomes for students this is a value that our community has expressed to this board of education it's one that they've committed to and it's one that commits to our our district of always learning always growing and that doesn't matter if you're three years old or 22 years old uh

072we're still committed to that work that we've done and then work that we're going to do next is that as danielle pointed out is that we've expanded by a pretty significant amount our capacity at our early childhood center we've moved from a a special ed only program to a community-based preschool and then each year we've tried to expand those opportunities for our community this board of education has also dropped tuition from that which increases uh families access to early childhood programming and that's a huge move towards equity but we still as again danielle said we have a lot of people on that wait list and if you're four-year-old on that wait list leanne's in the crowd you're probably not getting in because that means someone has to like move out of district or or something's

073got to happen for you to get that four-year-old spot so there's always demand that is very high for our early childhood program and it's something that i think that we need to address we have great community preschools we don't want to undercut them but we also want to make sure that everyone has access to high quality preschools kindergarten enrichment this is our first year for kindergarten enrichment over 90 percent of our families are now enjoying at the kindergarten level a full day kindergarten experience a half day with their kindergarten teacher and a half day in our enrichment program i would say there's still some growing pains around that and making you know readjusting to having a full slate of kindergartners in our building for six and a half hours is an adjustment but our teachers

074in the enrichment program and our kindergarten staff have done an amazing job of working with that and we'll continue to refine programming in that area so that's a great success and work to be done and then our continued investment in lower class sizes at the early elementary this board spends a significant chunk of the taxpayer dollars to reduce class sizes to 22 students which is our guidelines at the early elementary level and that is a an investment that we believe pays off it allows our students to receive what they need when they need it and it is something that will continue to be a struggle even as enrollments shift a little bit down it becomes even more difficult if we have two sections or three section buildings it's a little easier to do at scale

075to balance out those class sizes without moving kids across the district or across their school boundaries so there's always challenges with that and we'll be continually work in progress but that's just a few of the pieces both to celebrate like most of life you're like yeah that's a celebration but there's always more work to be done so that's kind of the tale of both authentic learning and early learning that's a good transition more work to be done the other priority of the board was fostering a welcoming and inclusive environment for all students and the purpose of this priority is to help students develop a sense of belonging which is rooted in research when students feel like they belong it's linked to better academic psychological and health outcomes and students with a sense of belonging also

076demonstrate increased self-efficacy motivation attendance persistence and of course achievement that's why the board made this a focus and throughout our conversations we have also brought um equity into the discussions and people are asking how does this fit into our commitment to equity and fostering a sense of belonging is one of the equitable practices that our district does engage in and equity is not a new concept for our district um but we have found that we need to go back and clarify what our commitment actually is make sure that we're transparent and all that we do and really be clear about what the work is what we've already done but also what we still need to do because we're early on our journey although we've been doing this work for many many years some would say

07720 years we need to be really specific about what it means to be a district of equity um in general i would say equity is a state where there are high expectations for every learner there are supports and resources provided so that each learner can meet those high expectations and if we were to reach a state of equity it would be achieved when outcomes so when student outcomes can't be predicted based on a student's race class linguistic background their abilities their gender their gender identity or their sexual identity we want to eliminate the those predicting factors and make sure that all students can achieve the same high outcomes so some of the keys to achieving equity one of them was our current priority which is focusing on that inclusive and welcome environment but some other

078things that you've heard tonight are removing barriers ensuring all voices are heard and a big part of equity is our work is making sure that everyone students staff and parents all believe that students can achieve at a high level i know that's easier said than done because we really focus on the growth mindset it's important that the students believe that they can achieve higher so there is a mindset work that goes into this to better communicate our equity work so we're going to take a tangent here away from welcoming inclusive and broaden it back to that larger equity discussion we do have a web page that i would like because you probably do have questions and you want to go back and look at some of the things that we shared tonight the the earlier

079checking committee report that presentation is on our district our board docs for tonight's meeting and then the presentation that we're sharing right now there's a lot of information coming and it's on this webpage in case you want to go back and look at it the first part of this webpage we're going to take turns sharing what's on here in no particular order but i do want to start with the the commitment to equity you've heard a lot about it we've got different faculty groups talking about what does it mean to be an equitable district and we really need to have that common basic foundational language where we're all saying the same thing or we all have a common understanding um and you heard different the student ambassadors talked about it and different um you know

080committee updates here from the board you guys talked about how we're having these conversations our work right now is to unpack the word equity describe what it means be able to have people understand what it looks like describe how all students will benefit when we align our practices through an equity lens so that work has been ongoing for two months collecting that feedback and the next step in the very near future is to take all of that feedback and make it our own our starting point for these conversations was the district or i'm sorry the illinois state board of education um commitment to equity and that's what we put out there as our placeholder and we ask people to start their discussions using that as a starting point and um holly if you can scroll

081up for a minute because it's probably too small to read but i'll just say this is the one that the state has adopted illinois has an urgent collective responsibility to achieve educational equity by ensuring that all policies programs and practices affirm the strengths that each and every child brings within their diverse backgrounds and life experiences and by delivering the comprehensive supports programs and educational opportunities they need to succeed so that's our jumping off point we put it here as the website as our placeholder but the board one of the next steps for them is to finalize that definition bring claritable clarity about what it looks like and also some supporting definitions or key terms it's important that we align to to is be at the state board's definition because they are also the ones who

082will be giving us an equity ranking um they have a equity journey continuum that every district in the state of illinois will receive a ranking and then they'll give us opportunity ideas on how we could can improve that is coming soon and we're attending um some learning sessions to try to figure out when that score will be available i believe it will be on our fall report card but they might um give us they will be giving us some context and some ideas on how we can improve in the meantime so that information will be um up on here as well as is that board presentation that i just mentioned the powerpoint that we're showing right now and as a matter of fact i can put on the other powerpoint so it's one-stop shopping the

083um check-in committee will be i'll put your powerpoint down here as well i'm going to turn it over to tony right now who's going to highlight a couple of the different parts on the website yeah thank you holly we're going to jump to the very last one policy and finance we saved the best for last even though i'm going to go with that first so here in this particular section you'll see current policies that the board of education has adopted and it's had for for many years and also recent actions that we've undertaken in terms of finance these particular policies you'll note that touch all aspects of our organization they touch you know our expectations for employees and how we treat each other our expectations for students what they learn how they behave and the

084ways that we um tackle instruction to make sure they learn what we we feel so these are just the direct references to equity and you'll find many more indirect references to equity all throughout the board's policies and i would encourage you to read them they're very exciting uh in terms of financial resources and allocations toward equity the board has undertaken a number of things that you've heard mentioned here already this evening but more recently too we've also taken a policy where we're trying to encourage students to participate in clubs and activities we don't charge for any of those things because we feel that it removes barriers to participation and make sure that students are participating and engaging with one another in the school community we've simplified our school fees and we've also taken a new

085approach to school supplies where we provide school supplies to all elementary students when they walk in the door and that's part of registration and then uh lastly you know the pre-kindergarten and tuition uh pre-kindergarten tuition and that program has uh also removes barriers as well so we'll take a journey on back up to the top and take a look briefly at student staff and board learning and delve into the focus as our as our understanding of equity evolves and continues to improve what our focus will be in the coming months and years for both students staff and the board of education when it comes to students equity fits into social emotional learning quite well especially when it comes to ideas like um self-awareness and perspectives and decision-making and especially how we treat others and in

086terms of tolerance and so we have much work to do there although it's not new work in any by any sense of the means but we can continue our improvement and focus in that area in particular with regard to staff very much the same is true especially when it comes to collaboration and using that equity lens and what that means for instruction in particular our understanding is improving and evolving and we've got work to there to do there as well and that's already start it's underway and we're very much looking forward to the april 15th institute day where we'll we'll delve into that on an organization-wide basis and lastly for the board of education we've got work to do in terms of the commitment to equity and finalizing that statement that'll become before the end

087of the school year and also they've committed to undertake equity training themselves so we're looking forward to that as well steve will take the next portion of the website particular workforce yeah if you can click on that holly so we want everyone to know that we're committed um to getting better at this right um there's a wealth of research and evidence that is very clear about the fact that you know if i'm a student of color and i come to school and there's staff members that are also like me that my experience might be a little bit better or will be a little bit better or will be a lot better and we should be making decisions based on research and coupled with evidence and so that is all out there it's been shared in

088this room before and we have to get better there and so we are committed uh if we can scroll down to teacher prep programs i mean the uh the state of illinois um the isbe has has you know understood that there is there's a very limited number of diverse educators and there's just not many getting into teacher prep programs and there has been some progress made which is cited up here on the website lately and the isbe does have some plans to make that pipeline better and and so then taking it to us if we can go down a little further um oh sorry going back up um we we actually have some opportunities um you know building our own local pipeline we had a great event uh earlier this year over batavia high school

089the education career pathways where dwayne reed who's a cps teacher came he actually brought students it was absolutely fantastic we had students our own students we had students bust in from all sorts of different school districts and it was fantastic and that's that's one action and one action isn't enough it needs to be followed up um and and so we actually have set up um some specific uh courses at batavia high school uh that can grow our own uh as an attempt to grow our own pipeline and you know as um somebody when i came here to batavia uh nine years ago i was amazed how many staff members we have that either grew up here in batavia or currently live in batavia and so that's similar in a lot of school districts i think

090it's something that makes batavia though really really special just by the sheer volume and so we need to continue to get better of having our students uh our diverse students get them interested into uh education and then bring them into um our our workforce and i think that will make a huge difference and then lastly um recruitment we're still getting after it with our recruitment um people probably don't know this but i attend job fairs i've been going to um diversity job fairs in the city and in other areas in illinois for several years and you know making those attempts and we will still continue to do that it's a huge challenge this this whole diverse workforce is a massive challenge i was on a call with the other kane county hr staff members directors

091last week and it just so happened in this call i was there was only it was about half of us and uh everybody there um besides me was uh uh from another culture and they're str and they're in school districts that have uh are much more diverse than us and we talked about this very issue and they're struggling with it too one of them actually shared that they went out of state for a full week to try to recruit teachers about two months excuse me about two weeks ago and they literally found zero candidates so this is a massive massive challenge there's no easy solutions at all but we are committed to this and i think one of the huge things that we all have to remember is that however diverse we're able to make

092our workforce we all as staff members whether we're board members we have a lot of our teaching staff here support staff administrators we all have to get better to be champions of equity in our current roles i think that's hugely important and then lastly um if you know me you know i'm a big believer in the power of the team and we have a lot of people on our team in this room um and i think that we all got to work on this problem together and if we have connections with other people if we have relationships acquaintances friendships um you know we all i think are committed i don't think there's anybody in this room that does not want to have a more diverse workforce and you know if you know of people or

093if you run into people or make connections with people send them our way we'd love to hire them we we had um mid-year this year we we were actually able to hire a couple of diverse teachers um and they're now working in our buildings and we just want to continue that so if we can all work together on this i think we can get better but certainly there's a lot of work and it's a very very challenging solution because everybody is struggling with this but i believe that we can do this if we dig in and work on this together and i think we turn it over to brad just so you kind of aware that the board priorities and the strengths and weaknesses are all listed there it's kind of that middle row and

094i won't go over that because our our community committee really did a nice job of talking about those but we wanted to show how that fits into this larger work i'm going to talk a little bit about staff voice and student voice so if we can go to those two sections that would be great under student voice this community engagement around our strengths and weaknesses related to the board's priority was just another way that really showed us how important student voice is in this process student voice is a means to getting at equity and it's something that our district has done and will do and is committed to doing in the future our students have a lot to teach us listening to them working with them learning from them and collaborating with them is an

095important part of the business that we're in and that's serving students so who better to ask than our students and they have a lot to say it's something that we need to double down on it's an effective strategy and one that will continue to lead to good results for our district our staff also have a lot to share and contribute to this process we've long relied in our district on a system that is very collaborative we have a system of collaboration whether that's the school leadership team at the the building level or our district level system of collaboration where we collaborate with staffs around the curriculum professional learning insurance resources and doing those things but our staff are interested in this work that's clear and looking for ways to involve them in that process and

096to to work on that is something that we are committed to well again as steve said everyone's work is the work of equity we may need to find as a board we'll talk to you about this is we may need to find additional opportunities to engage staff and have collaborative systems at the district level around this work again it's about listening hearing and making sure dr hitchens yeah there's um quite a bit of information to digest there but i would like to go back to the presentation to summarize um what you've already heard about in the past few years our commitment has focused on removing barriers and increasing opportunities for students and this slide highlights those things that you've already heard about tonight the next slide also highlights a lot of things that you heard

097about but not everything when we heard about the student ambassadors they brought some other you know there's other things that are happening in the district but district-wide these are some of the things that we captured this is our first year fully in person since the 2018-19 school year so in addition to reacclimating students to full-time in-person learning we were able to achieve some of these things maybe made some strides and elevating voices we we heard from the committee that we engaged it was a good process there's no reason we couldn't do this again with other topics to make sure that we're listening um and we did all learn how to use google meets and that does seem to be a way to engage more people in the evening because a lot of this work needs

098to happen in the evening so um we've seen some success with that with portrait of a graduate and this recent check-in committee and in addition all the focus groups we we did about 29 focus groups about um the board's priorities and so those all that all happened this year and we found that those are things that we can replicate um with other topics and then the next slide does show these are the next steps with a timeline so you've heard about them but i wanted to make sure they were summarized in one place so the first thing that you would see is the board finalizing that equity statement and that will be on the website again it's what what is our commitment what does it mean when we say we are striving to be an

099equitable district and then what are some of those terms that we need to be all on the same page with and what what does it look like we need to explain to people what it looks like and the board will also receive their training in march all the licensed staff will you've heard about that training the equity training that will be happening it's the the professional learning committee is planning it as we speak and um there will be some flexibility and when all the staff can do that training so it will be it should say april but i wanted to give you guys a little wiggle room those of those of you who are doing the planning and then um like brad just said we do have advisory groups about everything but we do have

100these groups throughout the district that are taking like taking the lead on this equity work and we like to collaborate and we want to help you to have that place where we can have the a group that determines what work needs to be done and monitors progress so we do know that we need to have those conversations and i do believe it needs to be a team but we'll turn this over to the board in a second but that would be a new committee that would need to be created and then that committee in our opinion would be the ones to write that action plan based on mostly what we heard from the checking committee but also there are some other things that can be addressed um into an or placed into an action plan

101and we would like to see that by may and i would now turn it over to the board i have some questions on there for you guys to contemplate in your discussion but really we're wanting to hear from you now well i want to say uh oh please jump in here nope great um i let me go back to that last slide we had up one more i'm sorry oh yeah i did skip slide that's why holly wasn't there was one that was not only the short-term work but future work you want to go and talk about that that's fine it's there for one so i'm excited to see dates where we're going to take action so we've done a ton of work i think everybody in the room has seen what's been done putting

102together all that information on the website is took considerable effort from a lot of people but as a board i feel now we've got considerable amount of information that we can start moving forward with some of these steps and so i know there has been in some parts of the community frustration by a perceived lack of action which in my opinion is not the case because there's all this information gathering and my position has been i was waiting for this report tonight and now i feel excited because now we can take that along with everything else we've gathered and start moving forward so for me that's very exciting lisa can you clarify the second bullet point there that that's for the board right yeah the the illinois school board association is providing i just want

103to make sure that that's right that was the one that chris attended and he said it was really good it's march 8th we get into training we're not giving [Laughter] i agree with aaron's comment about the timelines um i also am very excited about all of the training that's um listed up there both um within our district i know many if not most of us are so thirsty and hungry for that kind of training and we're bringing it and as a board i know it's very important for us as well so that to me is a huge celebration you go to the questions helen so i guess part of what my take away from this is just you know i've been struggling a little bit because the one thing i really like to see up

104there is like there's dates in my profession if i don't have a deadline i'll probably never finish so you know because you can do kind of paralysis by analysis and you can just kind of get stuck in things and you can get stuck in a feedback loop and so i appreciate the fact that at some point it may not be perfect but it's actionable and so that's what i think we're getting to i but i do also think that it's important to note that there's a lot of work that's done by a lot of people and while some people may say it's slow other people will call it diligent i tend to lean more on the diligent side because that's important this is a very sensitive um but important topic and we it can get

105derailed pretty easily if people don't understand the terms if they'd understand the goals um and so i feel that you know from my perspective i feel like we've got a kind of a commonality about a direction we're going i think there's a lot of work to do so i want to kind of applaud the admin and the staff and all the people that put in there to help show us the things that are our successes but also the challenges and i won't say weaknesses but opportunities for us to kind of improve upon as we move forward i don't know the ex my expectations for the next steps but i appreciate that you know i am going to learn a lot at that board equity training and so i will kind of reserve some of my

106statements to them because i want to make sure that i understand what things mean and how to move forward and what is important because i will recognize that i don't know what i don't know and so i need to figure that out and craig that's just it you don't know what you don't know and steve was talking a lot about some of our hr challenges in terms of her opportunities excuse me in terms of recruiting folks of diversity and we you know if it's not there it's it's not there and someone went for a week to um to try to recruit more folks and there they weren't there so to me that was a huge takeaway of tonight's presentation probably not what i necessarily hoped to hear or wanted to hear but i appreciate the

107candor about that challenge because it that in particular has been very much on my radar how can we um source more candidates of um color and um that that's that's disappointing but it is hopeful that there is a slight increase and we'll keep at it but i i appreciated that that takeaway i've got some thoughts um i think as a board member i truly appreciate how much work we've done and how much progress we've made um being a large institution we move extremely slowly that's the way we're designed so to actually see progress with dates is very inspiring and i feel like we're on the right track just kind of a point of clarification when we are responsible for creating an equity statement are we also going to be providing definitions with that okay so

108i think that the those are two very important things that we need as a foundation is to have an equity statement and a list of definitions defining what that means so that everybody knows what their expectations are additionally i you know i think we've done a lot of work but i think we need to make sure that the people we're trying to support understand the process and feel supported during that process it's good that we have short and long-term goals but we have seniors who have been suffering their entire career and are graduating in a couple months and it would be nice if they we could do something to support them we have teachers who are dealing with heightened incidents and if there's something that we can do now to provide them with more super

109support i think that that's good i think that it is wonderful that we have all these collaborative structures but we need to understand that those collaborative structures in the system is what created this problem in the first place and that the decisions that we the decisions that we have made have been intentional and the voices that we haven't been listening to have been intentional so we need to make sure that when we're making decisions we're looking around the room and determining who's not there and who's being impacted by those decisions that we make so while i think we're making progress we need to check in on the folks that we're trying to help to make sure they're okay with the progress that we're making and that we're supporting them in ways that they will appreciate

110also um so i i've got a lot of other details that we can go into but this is not necessarily the time or the place but overarching um for example we keep mentioning that we need to do things for underrepresented groups but we are hesitant to name what those underrepresented groups are we know based on the data there are very specific groups of black and brown students who are being harmed and we have years of data that proves that and we are unwilling to say that um we say welcoming and inclusive why aren't we using diversity equity inclusion why aren't we using anti-racist or anti-bigoted um they all say the same things but they include people in different ways i think these are important discussions that we need to have um but i'm very hopeful

111i think that we're making progress and i think we're on the right path but we need to make sure that we're supporting people in the interim so that we can minimize the suffering holly can you go back one slide yeah to chris um we have been talking about we do have a strategic plan dashboard but one of the things that we have been talking about is updating that to include some long-term student outcomes related to equity some of those things that chris just talked about so that is one of the future steps this is the slide that i skipped once that committee is set we have an action plan and we know that that's a next step as well is to figure out the the data that needs to go on the dashboard that already

112exists but we do know that there's that other data of students who are um not that they're the gaps we need to include that information and student behavior information things like that that are missing from the dashboard and i think that that is going to be a key component to our success is identifying um specific data that we can track so that we know whether or not we are being successful or not exactly that will go into our long-term strategic plan because i think one of the problems that we've been experiencing is we've been trying to do this work for a long time but as far as demonstrable progress it's been elusive yep it's something that every district is fighting desperately hard for i mean i work in a different school district and same conversations

113are happening and same agony and pain over not being able to make the strides that anybody wants to because there are no uh there's just not enough research best practice to how to solve some of these problems and so that's what i love about our um about our collaborative processes because everyone is constantly sought out and invited in and so i keep encouraging people step up when you when there's that opportunity students are joining i love it that's amazing because if we don't have people who are willing to step up and help us do the work we're not going to get it done and we have an audience full of people who's related exactly and so we just thank you for stepping up and we just gotta again we gotta keep doing it together and

114i love seeing a group of people here that are so passionate about our students i've got one other thing too um i think it's really commendable what you guys have done keeping on track with everything in a year of uh hundreds of emails of four mask or anti-mask in the school and i'll i'll definitely i'll admit it it's demoralizing to get some of the emails with the the tones and i know todd said that the words or actions of some don't represent many but it could be hard to do your job if you're being told you're awful at it all the time so you guys it's really commendable that you stayed on path i definitely see a lot of commitment and care and all this so thank you very much for this any other questions

115comments board members all right we have one item on our agenda for action tonight i'm going to invite dave to the podium hello so i'm here to talk about upgrading our wireless uh network that just seems like quite a segue i just showed up right i just realized that this week literally is the start of my ninth year here so we've seen a lot that same year we started uh one to one with all our chromebooks that same year we put 500 plus access points in our classrooms it's been pretty wild so it's come time to basically replace all of the wireless access points to keep up with the craziness in the classrooms these days and back then our original proposal process we i think we quoted three devices per student that's well above that

116now with nintendo switches and phones and every other type of device you can think of so we're hitting some record highs this year now that everyone's finally back in the classrooms um bandwidth is soaring so i'm here to talk about just proposing to purchase juniper mist that's a great solution that we've basically held an entire process to go through evaluating each system we had seven proposals come in um based on price technical fitness capacity compatibility and overall that's what we decided fits our district's needs the most and should last us quite a long time so the proposal is for a five-year agreement the current number is at 550 000 ish um once we go through the e-rate process that number drops to about 315. so quite a bit of difference but uh going through this

117process we've learned a lot of what's out there what's new and it's the way to go so got any questions from anybody here no all right thanks all right then i would entertain a motion to approve the purchase of wireless network equipment and support from juniper juniper mist totaling 550 875 dollars a second move my micellar second buy meadows all in favor aye any opposed all right motion uh carries we do have uh an item for closed session but there is no action to follow um so i just wanted to point that out tonight before we went to comments uh we'd start with lisa i have said enough i feel like i'm good all right board uh chris we'll start with you actually can you start at the other end i have a lengthy comment

118and it probably would be easier to be last sure okay um i i said quite a bit earlier but i would be remiss if i did not acknowledge the student services um presentation a couple weeks ago regarding [Music] children's mental health social emotional learning and general information regarding resources in our community along the lines of um social emotional wellness and it was just really it was really well done really well attended by our community and i'm very thankful that we have a district that is so supportive of initiatives like that so thank you for um carrie and natalie for putting that on um i i was thinking a lot about the mask and anti-mask and or mask optional i don't want to say it like that uh discussions have been happening and i know that

119everyone has it has their different opinions and i totally validate that um but it was weird because everybody has everybody says that the main goal is to do what we think is right and safe for the students so i'm going in a different direction here not mask related just asking people to remember that all your actions impact each other and i'm talking specifically about drop off and pick up lanes schools i get copied on almost almost all the different school updates from the principals and almost every time they're saying please follow the rules please stay in the right lanes please respect people that are biking especially people who decide to ride their bikes in the middle of winter um i think they deserve a little a lot of respect for doing that but um i

120mean even today when i was picking up my daughter i saw three people pass a school bus that they're not supposed to pass and it's just maybe to get out of the circle 30 seconds earlier so i really would i'm just challenging the community if we really do want what's safe for our students to start you know living by it with our actions that's all thanks rj craig uh i've probably said enough but i'm going to keep going um i just want to kind of echo what aaron said earlier there's a lot of kind of community involvement and you know there's you know as everybody knows there's such a thing as like meeting fatigue but i really appreciate everybody stepping up and being a part of it coming to these board members giving themselves a

121voice letting us hear their voice there's you know in any given year one of these things would be enough for a school district and a board and the teachers and everybody else to deal with when you look at eei building our future together masks mask optional whatever else there's plenty to go on on any one of those topics and everybody's doing the best they can to kind of balance all of those and so i just for one appreciate everybody um kind of trying to maintain a civil discourse where possible and to treating with each other with civility and respect um because this is a complex and complicated process um and so i just wanted to say appreciate it you know the only other thing i'm going to end on is the reason i wasn't here

122at the last meeting was because i was at one of my the first kind of concerts that the jazz band was able to do and if anybody had an opportunity to hear of it see it catch a glimpse on facebook because i shh posted a little bit of it to some friends um it was a fantastic concert it was one of the it's really really nice they had they were right when all of this stuff kind of covered started we had a concert they just got canceled like two days before and so it was the first jazz concert in about two years that they've been able to do at a real venue and it was exciting to see the kids ate it up and really getting to see them interact with professional jazz musicians was

123a lot of fun and good for them so thank you for the opportunities for everybody that helps make that work thanks craig so i want to thank as i always do by thanking everybody in attendance tonight those who spoke those who sent emails we do read them all we have been receiving a lot of emails and they do shape our discussion so i want to thank you for that um i want to improvise and say to my friend in the back kim who i did not know who is going to be here tonight i want to say congratulations you know what i'm talking about and i'll talk to you afterwards about that so that's great news um and i don't want to steal chris's thunder and i don't think your lengthy statement is about a

124basketball game but uh go ahead i do want to congratulate and uh wish good luck to all of our students who are performing in state level competitions athletics dancing music you know i follow a lot of them on twitter and it's always fun to see the kids achieving i think actually sometimes i get even more of a kick out of the kids that maybe struggled to make the team and made a contribution so i applaud all them especially the lady bulldogs who are currently competing in a sectional semi-final and chris is missing so i anxiously look forward to hearing the score of that when we're done tonight and then finally on a little more serious note you know being on the school board right now and being in a position of leadership is a challenge

125and i'm sure that's no surprise to anyone depending on where you fall on the spectrum of the decisions we've been making um and i want to be clear that i'm speaking about myself right now but in my private life i do quite a bit of traveling throughout the midwest and um right now i don't know if it's the time of year or the fact that we've been in a pandemic for two years but there is a palpable sense of tension uh you can feel it everywhere you go and and so um i'm speaking for myself and i'm not a philosopher i'm a poor farmer son but at 50 years i'm just beginning to understand myself and how i operate and i want to share three passages other people's words that i've read recently that have

126resonated with me uh the first is from the roman floss for seneca on anger three one there's more no more stupefying thing than anger nothing more bent on its own strength if successful none more arrogant if foiled none more insane since it is not driven by weariness even in defeat when the fortune removes its adversary it turns his teeth on itself the next quote is from a contemporary author ryan holiday anger and passion is powerful fuel but it can be short-sighted it ignores the wear and tear on the engine it ignores what happens when the initial anger wears out and how more and more fuel must be generated to keep the machine running until the only source remaining is anger at oneself and so the reason why i shared that is because i feel like

127i actually have quite a bit of passion and i know that it has driven me to achieve a certain level of success in certain areas of my life i also know that at times and actually quite a bit over the last two years it's been corrosive on my mental and physical health and it's negatively impacted how i interact and view others who might disagree with me on certain subjects or appear apathetic to my causes and and so um that leads me to my last phrase and this again is from seneca who was advising nero when he said other people can afford to be angry and can afford to be led by their passions but not you too much is at stake and so there is a great deal at stake right now on a variety

128of subjects and so speaking for myself i know it might appear to the public when you come to these meetings that we are emotionless um dispassionate could not be farther from the truth but as a leader we're not allowed we can't afford to be led by our passion so i'm committed to uh leading by listening to learning to connecting make the best decisions possible moving forward thank you thanks erin chris okay um i've written this and rewritten it and rewritten it numerous times and i debated the whole meeting whether or not i was going to read it but i'm going to do it let me say up front i'm not at all comfortable with what i'm about to say i've been trained my entire life to keep these thoughts to myself however i've learned a

129lot and grown grown over the past few years i understand that if i'm committed to anti-racism and anti-bigotry i have to be vulnerable myself we must share our truths so others can see the pain we've been hiding with that in mind i want to share a few stories of what it's like to be a black man in a predominantly white community lost my spot as many of you know i've always been active in the community my children have been in clubs activities band and sports we visit local parks businesses and events during the 20-plus years i've been in batavia we've grown close to many families we've spent hundreds of hours together on sidelines carpooling camping vacationing bowling volunteering spending holidays together doing all the things that make this community so close-knit there are many kids

130i treat as my own and i hope other families feel the same about my children however creating these relationships as a black man comes with risks in the past few months i have learned of incidents where families i have been closest to have committed racist acts in one example a child used the n-word maliciously towards a black student with the intent to harm in another case a child thought it was acceptable to post a picture on social media that was the equivalent of blackface and was done to demean black history month on one hand these are isolated incidents it may not be indicative of most batavians on the other hand on the other hand these are incidents involving those i truly believed understood me and were my friends and the thing is i don't know

131if folks genuinely didn't believe such acts would harm me or if our entire friendship was fabricated all i know is how it impacts me and my emotional well-being sadly this was not a new experience for me such betrayals have littered my entire existence for example i used to work in a small office where a gentleman was blatantly racist he would leave job listings on my desk hoping i'd leave i couldn't do anything about it because he was friends with and went to college with the owner i've always been told to ignore it or not make a big deal of such incidents i've been told they did they didn't meet it it was a joke they may say some bad things but they're really a nice person it was always my responsibility to swallow my pride

132and preserve preserve those friendships my feelings weren't important now i realize this is how systemic racism is allowed to continue when we allow this behavior to continue unchecked we give our approval for it to happen to the next generation so i must speak up if i believe change is possible i know i never know when i'm in a safe place even when i believe i'm among friends i never know if i'm genuinely part of the group or a token so folks can claim they have a black friend well that is probably not an issue for most of you i imagine i wake up every day wondering if i will discover again in no uncertain terms a friendship i thought was solid was not real for for you can't be a little racist and have black

133friends you can't continue to support and befriend racist and have black friends you may know black people but they're not your friend if you don't defend them as you would any other friend yet living in our small town often my circle of friends are so intertwined with such folks that i cannot avoid them i'm at the same events parties stores etc in all likelihood they will never know how their actions have impacted my life and will likely live with the blissful ignorance of not knowing that my smile is fake and my heart is broken i'm not sharing this to garner sympathy in fact i'd prefer the spotlight not to be on me i'm sharing this because often we don't realize how far-reaching incidents may be i'm sharing my story to let others know i see

134them i hear them and i can empathize with your pain i am also sharing this because i don't think our children deserve similar experiences when they get older finally i'm sharing this because i believe we can make a difference we have the opportunity to intervene when we see someone being bullied we can let others know we are not a safe place for racism and bigotry we can help create an environment for change so others can feel safe in the community they live in thanks thanks chris all right as i mentioned we do have closed sessions tonight so i would entertain a motion to adjourn to closed session to discuss the appointments employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employees of the public body or legal counsel for the public body including hearing testimony on

135a complaint lodged against an employee of the public body or against excuse so much wording or against legal counsel for the public body to determine its validity second option is litigation when an action against affecting or on behalf of the particular public body has been filed and is pending before court or administrative tribunal or when the public body finds that an action is probable or imminent in which case the basis for the finding shall be recorded and entered into the minutes of the closed session second second move by mike slater second by mathis on favor hi right ready to break you