001this is how we made the Worry Dolls we took a clothes pin and lightly colored yarn we wrapped it around and then we used pipe cleaner for the arms and then we used marker to decorate the head see SA was born on March 30 31 1927 he was born in Arizona he's known for Farm worker for wble white La leader and civil whes activist fought for Farm Workers whes that's not M his I researched Tito pente he was born April 1923 in New York he's a jazz musician I re I researched Lion Messi Lion Messi was born on June 24th 1987 he was born in Argentina he is known for a professional soccer player Sonia said Meer was born on June 25 1954 she was born in New York Puerto Rico she is known for
002the first [Music] Hispanic antino American to serve as a Justice on the US Supreme [Applause] Court great job thank you so much second grade thank you very good all right accomplishment recognition Mr Gold okay we've got a few accomplishments to recognize tonight going to start with the boys cross country teams we have Mr Cornwell and Mr coach Eric Walter Step Up all right so if I'm wrong about this Mr Walters will correct me but I believe this is only the second time in Big Hollow Middle School history that we have had an entire uh Team qualify for the state meet so our boys cross country team qualified for the state meet this year and so we're going to recognize them and Mr Walter is going to read off the names they can come up and
003shake hands and get their certificate got two ab so far we got Axel DeLuna and Jaden Lopez abson tonight and coming up we have Ben Carlo BGE [Applause] Marcel kubak Josh balker Luke Leighton Harrison Pope Joe sski shadam [Applause] Garing and Tyler [Applause] walls yep uh Tyler also is our fourth or our fifth overall Allstate Runner placing 19th this year at the safe in class [Applause] 3A thank you boys congrats [Applause] e next we would like to honor the following individuals who are nominated and selected by staff starting with our student of the month for big Hall primary we have Finley ader Finley can you come up right here and she was nominated by kindergarten teacher Mrs Adams I nominated Finley because we got a new girl in our class and it's hard to be
004the new person well Finley took it upon herself to help her along teach her things and the one thing that you don't know about my new girl is her main language is Russian so the language barrier was there so she took it upon herself to really show her the ropes and try to get her into school routine and every time that she does something she's kind of like the little mom for everybody but she also models the good behavior and uh academic Excellence so that's why she got [Applause] nominated okay so our next student of the month is for the elementary building and um the second grader is named Adeline gambo and she had three teachers who recognized her congratulations they recognized her for her perseverance and cooperation in all learning activities and for consistently
005demonstrating the qualities of a star student and so we're g to let her teachers who nominated her say a few wonderful things about her okay hi I'm Mrs OA I am Adam's reading teacher um three like Dr V um three of us nominated her not only because she perseveres she's pulled out for reading and math group and she jumps right back into her classes ready to go she also has such a growth mindset and she keeps herself and others on task and a supportive and fun way so congratulations sweetie and um I am adeline's classroom teacher um models the star expectations in all parts of the day she could be counted on to be the first to um focus her attention when I'm trying to get the class's attention and then she's also a good
006reminder for her classmates um she takes responsibility for her learning and tasks with a growth mindset she comes to school with an incredible smile every single day it's contagious to all of those around her um she's very well liked by everybody by hers her teachers um because she's so kindhearted and truly a joy for everybody to work [Applause] with [Applause] okay uh for the Middle School our student of the month is Dan Hayes and Miss buek nominated him and she's gonna say a few words about [Applause] him so the eighth grade team wanted to nominate Dan as student the month because he is always responsible respectful and safe a true Big Hollow warrior in class he is always polite and make sure to say hello and uh and have a good day at the end
007of each class he's always willing to add thoughtful comments and content to our class discussions he's very self-motivated and is willing to try all activities without hesitation he's a leader in class he's always helping others around him and presenting himself as a good example he helps lead class discussions he takes his work work seriously and always puts forth full effort on all assignments he is kind to everyone always has a positive attitude he's a first class student and like I said a big Hollow [Applause] Warrior last but not least oh I'm sorry okay all right last but not least we have employee of the month and this month we selected a primary teacher and uh I would like to call it Beth linski kindergarten kindergarten teacher and Beth was nominated by Miss Haley jany I'm
008G let Miss Janny take over um Beth has been a dedicated teacher at Big Hollow since she began her career and she always goes above and beyond to provide engaging instruction ensures that her students academic and behavioral needs are met even after her students move on to the next grade level she's always willing to collaborate and help her former students be as successful as possible Beth is an amazing coworker and helps to ensure that her fellow staff members are supported and she is an active member in our Big Hollow Community she organizes an event at juwel each year to help provide food for families in need she plans a really fun Big Hollow pumpkin patch day for our Primary students each fall as well as was volunteering for various P2 events like the trunk Retreat
009most recently um and she's just a wonderful asset to our big hello family and I feel very lucky to work with [Applause] her congs we're going to continue on with our meeting feel free to stick around if you'd like but we won't be offended if he leav it's like 98% of the room nobody start start right yeah I'll just go ready yep yeah let's do it all right board member code of conduct review Lauren I will represent all School District constituents honestly and equally and refuse to surrender my responsibilities to special interest or partisan political groups thank you anyone have any questions on the consent agenda NOP no can I please have a motion to approve the consent agenda motion Lauren and Gary yes sorry yes know we have to do roll call we have
010to roll call she was doing it she is did oh I couldn't hear [Laughter] you it's yes would you like yes hello hello yes yes all right superintendence report Mr Gold okay we're going to start uh tonight uh just with the the first paragraph in my report shows that the school report card uh is released and and we have the link on the on the board agenda but uh tonight I brought in Mr John G from Acra if you remember board we partner with ekra this year for the first time and they they took our school report card data did a a a deeper dive with it to kind of share some things with you um and at some point Bard I I do want to show you I think in another month or two
011uh some other ways we're using this partnership we benefiting from this partnership with ekra but tonight uh John's going to give us uh a school report card summary through their uh data analysis but John step on up here we've got slides exhibit is in your is exhibit 10 on your devices they'll also be up on the screen okay great uh it's great to be here thanks Bob for uh inviting me to come present as you know the the district entered into a relationship with ekra uh this year uh my name is John G I'm the the CEO of ekra group ekra is a research analytics firm that works all across uh the nation just helping school districts better understand performance uh through data and data analysis services and so tonight what I'm going to do
012is just give you sort of a a broad overview of some of the analysis that's been done uh up until this point there's a lot more uh behind this I'm going to talk a little bit about the state program and the results of the of the state system in the report card but then I'm also going to share some additional data from some of your other assessments as well um like map and and so please answer questions I'll I'll probably talk for maybe 10 or 15 minutes to take you through it and then I'll stay as long as you want to answer uh any questions you do have so sound good sounds good all right so uh we're going to go first through an overview of the assessments we're going to focus on I that's
013the state assessment and then we're also going to focus on map that's the measures of academic progress that's your National assessment and then we're going to move into talking about some of the additional analysis that eer does on these data sets to have a better understanding of growth and performance performance and impact and I'm going to end with some of the ways that the administration is beginning to use this data um as they work within their administrative teams and when work within the buildings and so uh an overview of the assessments I always like to start with this graph and so the reason why this is important is what what you're looking at here is you're looking at a 10 11e history of Big Hollow in terms of how they've performed on the state assessment
014and the reason why this is important because if you take the state assessment at face value right you could come up with some really sort of inaccurate conclusions in terms of how you're doing right and so if you were to take this it's so what you're looking at is how the districts performed in terms of the percent meeting or exceeding State Standards you're you're looking at mathematics here and then there's a separate one for for English language arts but if you were to look at this going all the way back to 2012 what what do you notice first you're going to notice that wow we were close to 90% sort of meeting proficiency standards back in 2012 and now we're all the way down to 20% like what's what's happening right like the like Rome
015is burning right that's not really true right and so what you have to understand about the state Assessment program is that there's a layer of policy that's put over over on top the assessment of these assessments so if you if you think about students they're responding to assessments they're taking tests right they get a score on those tests right then the state decides to draw lines in the sand in terms of what score you need to be proficient the problem is they draw new lines all the time right because they they they change their policy would be like trying to to uh identify um High jumpers right and changing the height of the bar all the time and then figuring out try to like like how many people can get over the bar right and
016so what we did here is we overlaid sort of the historical view with some of the policy changes that have happened at the state so you can see how the inflection points of these graphs um they intersect with policies so like in two 2012 that was the old ISAT test that was there was a bar on that that that's why you were closer to 90% meets exceeds right then if you remember uh they created new cut scores on iset and that's why you see a sharp drop but you see a drop at the district level and you see a drop at the state level why because they just raised the bar right then you see in 2015 the introd introduction of park right what do you see a massive drop but you see a massive
017drop at the state level and your District why because they just mooved to the bar again and then uh you can see sort of where uh where I then came into the picture uh as well and so the moral of this story is you have to look at the data not through the lens just the lens of the percentage that are meeting or exceeding State Standards you have to look at it through the lens of what's typical or atypical across the state and how competitive have you been in terms of your performance across the state and Across the Nation because that's the only thing that uh removes this sort of contamination of the state policy layered on top of it right so that you don't come to the conclusion that over time our scores have
018really dropped they haven't I'm going to show you they've actually gotten better right um so this is it with uh um mathematics it's the same story in terms of English language arts uh you do see a little bit of a weird pattern in 17 or 18 uh which was back during the days of whether you're taking it electronic or whether you're taking it paper and pencil and so there was some variation there but essentially you see this this um slide in performance but the real question is but how do we really perform right and so what ekra did is we took your data but we reanalyzed it and created state percentiles so that you know sort of where are you relative to the state and where is your relative standing to the state when you
019look at last year 2002 to this year uh 2023 so the first thing that you see so let's take Ela proficiency to start if you see it up there right so uh back in 2022 right the the district value was 22.5% and this year the the value is 33.8% remember you know as I said those percentag are hard to compare a lot of times because it's got this policy layered on top of it if you look at the percentile column you went from the 33rd percentile to the 56th percentile so what does that mean it means that your performance in ela in 2022 was equal to or better than 33% of school districts across the state but a year later in 2023 your Ela performance was equal to or better than 56% of school districts
020across the state so that move from 33 to 56 is a big move right you that's a big percentile move and the way to think about that is you were far more competitive if you think about sort of a marathon race right you have everybody in the pack you some people in the back people in the front you passed a lot of school districts um from 2022 to 2023 as you went from the 33rd percentile to the 56th percentile in math uh you also saw not as big of a jump but again you also saw a jump from the 35th percentile to the 41st percentile so that is again uh Improvement uh that you you sort of gain ground in terms of what was happening across the state you surpassed uh you you surpassed those
021Trends and I'm going to move down now to talk about Ela growth and Ela math because the one highlight I want to make is this is going to show up in numerous announces throughout this presentation is um your improvement in ela is some of the largest I've seen like you went from the 10th look at that you went from the 10th percentile last year to the 88th percentile this year that is a massive move and that was for growth right that's for growth that's that's basically taking the growth percentile and seeing where your growth percentile lands relative to everybody else so the raw metric there was you were 40.9 in 2022 you were 58.4 in 2023 but if you convert that to a state percentile in terms of where that ranks across the state you
022are equal to or better than 10% of the districts last year as it as it relates to as it related to ELA progress or growth and you went all the way to 88th percentile this year and then in mathematics you were at the 17th percentile last year you went to the 52nd percentile this year so you can see that that shows that there's been a lot of progress you know in the last year and this year specifically um you saw a lot of sort of growth recovery um that a lot of districts have have been showing the one thing I want I want to reiterate here though is these are normative measures right percentiles are normative measures and so we have seen as a firm a lot of growth recovery across the state this year
023right I think this was the year last year 2022 2023 school year was the year that a lot of school districts started to show a lot of recovery you know in growth after the pandemic but remember these are percentiles this numbers already bakes that in so you actually recovered much faster in this last year than the rest of the state because if your percentiles would have been the same it would have meant that your recovery was equal to the to everybody else across the state the fact that your percentile is raised means you passed a lot of people along the way right now now that said you always want to think about you know sort of growth versus proficiency as well and so there's there's sort of rates of progress that are ultimately different than
024ultimately where you are right and so but I think you know what the data shows here is that um your state report C results do did show a lot of progress from last year to this year now if we look nationally so now now we're going off the state assessment now we're looking to that those are sort of State comparisons now we're looking at National comparisons from your NWA map assessments so what you're looking at here is a graph that superimposes your local percentiles against National percentiles so how do you read this chart well if your District looked exactly like the nation right you would see flat lines at 2550 and 75 why because if a student was equal to or better than 25% of students within Big Hollow right they would also be better
025than 25% of students in the nation right if they were if they were better than 50% of the people in Big Hollow they'd be better than 50% of the students in the nation if you looked exactly like the nation right so what what you know not many people look exactly like the nation right but what you see here is you're you're pretty close right so and this is this one we're looking at math your lower part of the distribution so your lower performers within the district um in terms of in mathematics are pretty much at that 255th percentile you know through grade five there's a little grade dip to grade six but then it starts to recover uh on the low end and and you can see that the the the middle part of the
026distribution and the higher part of the distribution uh is a little bit lower than what you would expect nationally but not a not a ton low right um in ela is where you start to and they report it as reading not Ela uh map specifically in the Middle School grades is where you really start to see a reversal so look at that lower part of the distribution in grades one two three and four your lower performers in in the district here are below that 25th percentile but as you get to the higher grades look at look at that steep climb from grade four five six seven eight to to where your local 25th is um is you know between the 25th and 50th percentile in the Middle School grade and again this is another way
027in which that strong Ela performance at the middle school shows up you saw it in the last graph now you're seeing it again in the now and remember these are two different data sources with two different analyses telling the exact same story so again we're starting to starting to converge on something that's uh that's meaningful here and your high end of the distribution so your most advanced Learners here within Big Hollow are pretty much at the 75th percentile you see a drop in grade four but generally speaking they they tend to track with that that 75th percentile so how do we take this even a step further so we looked at things against the state how you performed against the state then we looked at how you performed against the nation but how do you
028look relative to each and every student and looking at each and every student one student at a time and asking the question where did students over the past over the past year how did students perform perform relative to how they how we predicted they would have performed given how they've done in the past so we look so the way to think about this is we looked at it against State benchmarks we looked at it against National benchmarks and now we're looking at it against personalized benchmarks to every kid right and so when you do that you can reference whether growth and we're looking through the lens of growth here right and you can look at whether growth is higher than expected expected lower than expected or unsatisfactory and so um what this analysis does is
029for each and every student within the school district it creates a personalized projection for every student sort of a you can think about it as a personalized Benchmark so remember I I mentioned the state has a bar for every single kid across the state basically no matter who you are you get the same Benchmark for the state assessment system and in this kind of an approach each and every student gets their own Benchmark that's personalized to them in terms of where they need to hit or exceed if they're to show sort of progress above and beyond what what you would have expected and so uh the takeaways here across all subjects are both uh both schools uh sort of keep Pace as you would have expected them uh to keep Pace basically they're they're they're
030meeting their projections uh overall if you look at mathematics by grade level um things are pretty consistent in grade eight you're starting to knock out the threshold is point three so you're starting to knock on the door of something that's that's significant in the positive way in grade eight for mathematics but generally speaking um students sort of met their their growth expectations across the the system uh at least grade levels in mathematics Ela is where that shows up again remember I I mentioned the strong Ela performance uh based off of the the state data the strong Ela performance based off the NWA map data and now on this framework look at those blue dots six seven and eight in ela again that's another indication of just um the strong performance in ela that existed in
031the Middle School uh last year and when you look at this across subgroups for mathematics and Ela uh the good news is here is that at everyone's meeting their expectations at a minimum and there are certain subgroups that are uh that are systematically outpacing their projections and again so this is a this is a positive result you that we're not seeing any yellow or we're not seeing any red and I can tell you you know as a firm we do thousands and thousands of these kinds of analyses and presentations and usually there's little Christmas lights going on here in terms of some uh some different colors so we don't we don't really see that here which is um which is good and so what does all this mean in terms of how gets put into
032practice so what you're seeing here tonight is a high level summary of sort of what all the data represents in an aggregate form sort of a general storyline but the administration and the school Personnel are using this data in a more granular way more student by student way to go through a continuous quality improvement cycle in which they they interact with this data all the way down to the student level to identify students take action on students and then evaluate the growth and impact and that it sort of Wis and repeat and so the tools that are available to the administration through EA the ecra platform allows them to take what you're looking at in sort of summary form but drill into it and ask questions to the data and pull data in a variety
033of ways and to use it to set School Improvement goals to identify students to evaluate programs uh and to do it uh to facilitate um a lot of questions and a lot of improvement processes so with that I will go ahead and answer any questions that the group has and this is um this is just a sampling all the analyses that have been done uh to date and I think as the years go on you're going to see a lot of different analyses um come to the board so have anything to add or anything no I just that's data presented to you differently than what we've done in the past you may or may not have questions this time uh but it's a lot of digests um so but John I asked John to come
034out and he was more than willing to do that just in case you have questions that I couldn't answer so this is really helpful the explanation I read this this weekend didn't really make sense to me so I don't have a lot of questions after you're presenting it but it's it's really nice to see it presented in a different way so thank you good good 850 roughly and so when when you're looking at the percentiles in that report it's analyzing all the across the state and then the map data you're analyzing data across country yeah and the map data is Nationwide so there's you know tens of thousands of school districts 14,000 school districts roughly speaking but I think the the big takeaway for the board is as you begin to interface with with achievement
035data is to always keep in mind that to situate the results against some normative backdrop of what's atypical or typical the example that I always give I do a lot of work Healthcare as well and I always like to give an example of Pediatrics because it's it's such a a great example of so if you have a son or daughter right and you take them to the Pediatric you know they're born maybe they're seven pounds eight ounces and then you take them back they're 12 pounds and they're 16 pounds or 18 and you're charting growth in the most absolute sense of the word right and that's on metrics like height and weight which as humans we just intuitively understand right but what is the first question you ask your pevious what percentile is that normal
036what percentile because it looks like he's got a big head to me is is that normal right like it's it's in our nature and the only way to understand things is through relativity right Einstein proved that time and space is relative and information is relative too so when you think about the way that the state or other um outfits report these data in raw form where they just say 38% meets exceed State Standards or 20% meets exceed State stand I have a PhD in statistics I've SP my entire career analyzing numbers and if you give me a number like 25% me standard I don't know how to interpret that I only know how to interpret that if you put another number next to it or convert that into some contextualized value that I know what's
037typical oral so I would just I would just offer that to the board in terms of data that you use in a variety of settings is to where where where it's possible Right try to situate against a backdrop of what's typical or atypical because it'll give you better insights sort of into where you are relative to to where you should be I just had one question the the first actually the first three charts so Pages four five and six am I just so I'm like when I would reading this like more I was confused but as you went through it it seems like the first Pages four and five or where we're actually at page six is where we is this four is where we is how much we grew yes is this okay yeah
038so page four and five are where we're actually at where you actually at yeah where you're actually at relative to sort of a sort of the history of the pro like the last 12 years right even if we just take this year it's where we're at now compared to everybody else in the state so then page six is that chart so that chart shows where we were and where we're at now but that yet that's not reflected on the first chart I guess that's where I'm confused like I don't know how they all relate it it is it is reflective in the first chart so the what you what you're seeing in this in this chart is actually where you were in 2022 where you are in 2023 if you look at the column called
039District value right if you look at the column called District percentile that's a new number that's not in the other ones right so it think about it as a raw metric okay and a percentile so the raw metrics are are tracking from the from the other analysis to this analysis right at least in in concept but the percentile is new right and the reason is that that this analysis that looks at it over time really is here just to educate the board that it's really hard to interpret data when you just have raw metrics that you have to have some normative metric and then uh to motivate the idea of looking at percentiles instead of percents and so but it is where you are and where you were okay and then when we get to
040the final part of the presentation with those stop with that those those dots of blue yeah that's growth I yeah I that was very I thought that was pretty easy to comp and I really like that like it was very because it caught your eye like if some color was off immediately went to it and were able to look at it that I was just confused about these first three thank you yeah it's a lot and we're we have some projects going that I think we'll be able to share more the coming months but we're we're just diving into them now but the more I've looked into the data the more you know more I'd like to I I see some positive U things that we can do with the data and it's going to
041help us know whether or not some of the things we're doing are having an impact but one of the things you know if you if you look at this data as a whole you can see math is an area that we did haven't rebounded yet and so we' that this year by looking at a we're doing a math resource adoption process right now just to see if that's G to U you know if that's something that's needed prior to the pandemic math was growing a little bit then we just have not recovered so we have to do something and uh we're trying to do that right now um and then this gets broken up by Kid what's that this gets broken out per student yeah and then teachers have access to this teachers no not
042yet uh principles do why I just asked like why wouldn't we give teachers at least their own kids yeah um I mean I think is that typical for you guys it's it's it's typical to when you roll out a system like this is to basically layer it down is you start with the administration you get some data literacy in it so that the administrators um feel comfortable with it and and they feel like they can uh answer questions before you start you know um just rolling out so something we're looking at right now is we are taking we have intervent men groups so we have we have kids in Title One Reading and so we're going to place the kids in Title One Reading in a group where we can track data specifically for that
043group and see how those kids are doing individually and that will get brought to teachers and we can say hey these interventions are working or they're not working like these kids are not performing better than what the kids in that aren't getting that intervention then we've got to look at that so that's what we're doing right now that that data will get to teachers if we just open this up I think it would be like a little overwhel helming for them because we're still it's there's it's a lot here so we're try the data will get in front of teachers it's just going to be uh you know we'll be picking and choosing where that where that happens but you can look up any student in the district and where they are and where they've
044been and whether they're me grow expectations so it drills all the way down okay for the district percentile um what is the value in that like because I mean where do you want to be well see right because I mean if you're if you're at 12 percentile that could mean that you're way up high or way low right well 12 percentile would be low because that means that the 12 if you if well that's comparative though right compar yes yeah but of the best school districts how many are at the best so so the the question is a good one the the one that's throwing me off the most is like if you look at the 99 percentile where we're all performing at 99% but we're only 39% comparative to districts so with the yeah
045so so so that's why we put it's a great question you're you're hitting on something really important right is that that's why we put the raw metrics next next to the percentile right is because yes there is a point in which the percentile doesn't mean as much if you've already tapped out of the of the raw metric and so so participation is a great example because generally speaking there's there's really high degrees of participation you know intense across the state and and yours as well me you have 99% participation rate so because yeah you're at the you know 46 perti so basically your participation rate is average but it's still way way high so I wouldn't so but that's why I mean wouldn't that isn't that the same for all the categories though does 56
046percentile really what does it really represent because if you're talking 99% there if we were in the top 10% of Performing schools what would our percentile percenti 90 90 be a 90 if you're in the top 10% of the state your percenti would be 90 90% of the districts are performing it means you like that 56 means you performed equal to or better than 56% of all school districts across the state out of the 850 you did better than maybe 500 of them who took the test right exactly but right if you wanted to if your goal let's say as a community as a board was to be the top 10% of the state then you want that number at 90 okay that's why I was just confused because like the participation doesn't reflect that
047for some reason it doesn't you participation I mean honestly participation is a weird one the state reports it so we report it but it's kind of in a weird it's kind of a weird metric I think it's I think it's one we don't even pay attention to yeah I I know it really doesn't matter but I just thought that it would reflect in the district percentile the same way that all the other categories should yeah I mean it does the percentile means the same thing no because we should be at 99 percentile for participation right or no no no because you have to understand a percentile is a competitive metric the percent is just a raw metric so that means 54% of the districts have higher than 99 percentile of their % of their kids
048taking Ela they might be 99.1 99.2 I mean they're going to be higher than 99 so uh that one is yeah the reason why it's important is so that you have some context to this because if you let's say you didn't have that that 56 number up there right you just had the 36.5 right as a board you would talk here and you'd say what are we do you're telling me that only a third of our kids are at grade level that's a conversation you probably that way though I mean we're seeing we're comparative to the other schools but doesn't neily feel all right especially when we have to tell the community let me give you a little context to this is now changes by subject and grade a little bit but generally speaking across
049the state of Illinois about 25% of kids meet standards okay so you take that at face value right only one of four kids across Illinois are grade Lev okay if you were to take that same performance of Illinois and map it to National percentiles through nape that's the national assessment of educational progress that's a it's a national assessment right Illinois is very competitive we're about the 70 to 75th percenti so we have a state that's basically telling the education community that three4 of our kids are not at grade level yet when you think about how competitive we are nationally we're better than 70 to 75% of the states across the country so that's why it's important to have this kind of context because otherwise you you would be quick to judgment when you see low
050numbers like this the point is every the moral the story is everybody's number is really low not everybody but most most districts across Illinois their percentage is below 50 but and I can tell you because I know these numbers so well if you got that number close to 50% you'd be in the top 10% of the state if you got that number to about where half of your kids are meeting uh State Standards you'd be in you'd be knocking on the door to the top 10% of the state that's how low that's how low the performance levels are across the state because of the policy that's been set it's just really important to understand that so that you so that you don't um rush to to say that wow we're really you know we're really
051not doing that well but if your goal is to be in the top 10% you got some work to do I don't know if that's our goal but not I mean better than 20 20 something that would be better yeah all right so you're saying saying that if we were at go ahead if the if the state no if our number was at 50% in math proficiency we'd be in the top 10% that's ridiculous that's what's wrong with the state it's ridiculous 50% of the people 50% yes it's because of where they drew that cut line that's why because they just write an arbitrary line and then they make the districts look bad and feel bad about this so you stay under the thumb of the state it's crazy but that's why we're here to
052help to provide some other metrics so but kids see this I mean the kids you put out the report C the kids go on there and they look at it and it's it's sad for them to see this it's sad and it's disappointing it's dis that's why this graph is so helpful because in 2012 it was 90% you think the kids you think the kids are any worse off today than they were no they're not they're much better off they just redrew the line exactly that's exactly right so then how do we convey that to our constituents I mean I think this I think the percentile graph is is a really good one or this percentile chart to me is is good data if we're below I mean I want to be I I'm I
053don't want to set the bar low but any numbers I see below 50% is is something that we've got to we want to be above the 50 percentile and District percentile and then you know I think from there then we start setting goals higher but anything below 50 is definitely we want to well for me but to me it's almost like this still no matter what it's not accurate because so say everybody raises a stin and the state can just be like we're going to change the bar and move it up here so now everyone's at 50 now everyone's happy well it's still not telling you where your kid is actually at which your the percentiles will because the percentiles are going to tell you how they compete at the end of the day how
054they compete right but at the end of the day that's what you want to know yes and the percentile tells you how they compete let me give you an example of how you message I'm gonna I'm going to play reporter here maybe I don't know if there's anybody reporter listen into this but I'm going to play reporter here right and I'm going to I'm going to play reporter off of ela proficiency for 2023 okay now if you only had the number that state reports that's 36.5 right I might write a headline right that says latest test results for Big Hollow in 2023 reveal that that roughly a third of students are at grade level that's not such a great headline but that's not true but that might be written right the same exact data through
055a different lens through a percentile I might write that had that latest test results for 2023 reveal the Big Hollow out out uh out achieves what's typical across the state of Illinois right and surpassing state averages that's a totally different message one message is you're outperforming the state the other message is two-thirds of your kids are not a great Lev so that's why percentiles are important because without it there's no context and yeah I just can't stress enough that that um a number should never live alone it's always got to be next to a number number that that gives some kind of context to it right and I think the more that you can focus with your community on percentiles and progress and growth and less on these raw metrics that have such politics and
056policy layered over it the better you're going to actually understand how the performance of your students uh is and and you're going to understand how you're competing maybe I we're talking we're going to be bringing back Warrior workshops for like parent night series maybe I'll do a warrior workshop and present student data they in this context they can that'd be a good idea anybody have anything else thank you so much John thank you appreciate it John thank you all right so my next items uh are just basically fii there's an immunization report is in the agenda um our nursing staff's done a really good job uh with that there's a staffing plan timeline for you to for 2425 planning for next year you'll see that as an exhibit 11 and then the ISB resolution committee
057report Vivian is our delegate once again thank you Vivian thanks thank you there are four new or five new resolutions I don't know if you saw in your packets uh I can run through them real quick industrial construction that was uh resolution to prohibit uh instruction or indust Ral industrial plants from being built next to school districts and they they're recommending no uh school resource officer funding they're recommending yes bus driver reg regulations are recommending yes which I would highly support that because they make it very difficult employment history review they're uh recommending no on that um and then alternative of safe school funding they recommending no on that but any when you read through it did anything alarm you that you wanted to share with vivot no I one question may we discuss later
058but how does the school resource officer for us deciding if we want or who who would do that job so if they uh if they pass this resolution it's just that basically and Viv and you probably know more about this than I do but basically it's is saying we put our stamp on this it doesn't mean anything passes though just recommendation yeah just a recommendation if they would require the funding yeah they Lobby to try to get some funding nothing real controversial there it doesn't seem to be okay not this year so no video cameras what's that cameras no no news yeah all right so that's it for my report all right Kevin with the employment report coming up we have to remember to add Andrew Bernay that's the uh added to the report we
059discussed in the uh for the school safety coordinator okay we just have to add that to the employment report yep what was that oh who's the other one I'll just say with the additions okay yeah that's um moving on does anybody any questions on the employment recommendations can I please have a motion to approve the employment recommendations with the additions made motion Lauren and Vivian yes yes yes yes yes all right I've got exhibit 14 is uh tax levy this is an estimated tax levy we do this every year in November I'll bring it back in December for a final approval from the board I met with the finance committee we discussed this I'm GNA just you have the exhibits in front of you exhibit 14 I don't know Matt if we can put it
060on the screen that would be great but uh first page of exhibit 14 you have our fund balance uh history history from 2012 to 2023 total fund balance on the far right column then you have each fund going down we use that data to do the tax levy we determine if we have funds that we see dipping a little bit we will adjust the tax levy to put more funds in in a certain or more more uh money into a fund if needed um which we did a little shift in our tax levy this year uh you saw that we increased our o M last year our fund balance went up 400,000 our transportation went down 300,000 so we shifted some tax levy from one to the other uh the next page has a list
061of all the I'm just I'm gonna burn through this if you uh just stop me next page has a list of all the elementary districts not the unit districts but Elementary districts in Lake County and their tax rates and Big Hollow right now is right in the middle the next page which I think is the most uh informative when you're talking to taxpayers lists all the elementary districts again and then the second column has percent adequacy that's that Target that's that number the state gives us and determines whether um uh the best way I can state it is if you're 100 if they give you a score of 100% adequacy they're saying you get you're getting 100% of the funds that you need to run that District uh in the uh with all the resources
062or supports that they feel kids need so we are at 69% um the the next column over is it says adequacy Gap that number for Big Hollow is 7,654 th000 that's what it would take to get us to 100% it's that much more funding per year and again the thing I remind people when we talk about this is that districts that are at 100% they have that 7 million in their budget so they're doing things for kids that uh uh that obviously we can't uh the far right column is resources per student so that's Revenue coming in divided by the population the student population we're in the uh we're in the bottom three I don't think that's a bad number I think that we are putting out a I think we're doing a lot for
063our kids for the revenue we're getting and uh I think it's a good thing to show there you can see the uh just the uh the Gap in Lake County from $34,000 a student almost 35,000 student down into the 9,000 range pretty big gap in the same county but uh the next page is a listing of all of our accounts and all of our tax levies over the last since 2017 uh the far right column is the extension we're recommending for this year um one thing you will notice is the if you look at the bottom the second line from the bottom says 13, 698,000 that's the total Levy for this year just to the left of that you see a number that says 17 mil 173 that was last year's Levy so that's a
06420% drop and that's based on the bond payment so the line right above that is the says 1,95 for bonds for this year last year was five I'm sorry 1, 95,000 this year last year was 5, 85,000 so this is the big year that we see a bond payment drop and this is the year taxpayers going to see the big they'll see it they're going to see a 20% decrease in their Levy so this is the one next year it'll it won't stick out as much because we're only going to lose a million off of that does that one 1 million 95 is going to drop off so next year's Levy will probably be uh still be a a decrease but it won't be as much so we will make sure that we if this
065Lev is approved by you all this will be something we'll make sure we publicize because I think it's it's good news for our community the next page and then I can take questions the next page is just um an explanation to you that shows what Bond payments are left the uh didn't we pay extra that's what I was just looking because um the yes so go back the total payments is 5.5 million and then in the levy document it says 5.0 yeah if you look at this look at this one up here 2022 it says 5, 85,000 352 under 20 22 and the bonds see where it says 5, 85,000 that would have been 5, 585,000 but we took 500 and paid it out of our Le out of our own reserves last year and
066we only levied that amount oh gotta that's what that's we did it was going to go up to five and a half million yes yeah so uh on that next page there's a little table on the bottom and it shows you there's a payment going out for 5, 535,000 this year in February we've already levied for that money it's already sitting in our bank five million of that was levied the other 500,000 is our bank account then next year is the 1,95 that's what's on this Levy then that's it no more no more debt so the last page just a summary it's uh in fact that that percentage I have there is a little off because it's it's right around 20% decrease uh for tax taxpayers this year for the leting so we're almost there
067we're almost there ex we'll have a uh we'll gonna have a bond burning party Bond party that's done anybody have any questions on the levy NOP uh can I please have a motion to approve the estimated tax ly for second Gary and Doug yes yes yes yes yes okay the next item is the annual audit report I can go it's up to you how deep you want to go on this uh you've had the exhibit um but we went through the audit we had no significant findings um we did a few journal entries everything was pretty good this year probably the best audit we've had in the last two or three so anybody questions on the audit no can I please have a motion to approve the 2223 audit report motion second Lauren and Doug
068yes yes yes yes anyway the grant yeah the next item is just the school manance project Grant it came out again this year we've got $50,000 and we match it with 50 um on exhibit 17 you see some projects I met with the building grounds committee that we discuss these projects um you know are any of these emergency projects no but these are with this grant we try to do projects that we need to do but it's hard to throw money at at them sometimes and one one of them is Middle School fence around the playground uh it's a safety issue we have kids that go down towards the road and uh so that's a that's a big one and it's kind of expensive uh to get a good we need a good sturdy steel
069grade fence out there for Middle School we didn't quite need that for Primary Elementary but middle school kids would not do well with uh lower grade so that's 40,000 in the grant um we we have the stage lighting project that we're receiving some funding from the Fine Arts boosters but we have the rest of that project in here too so might as well we've already started that one um we have the repair project for the gym if you remember the gym wall so that project's in here we have to do that project so that's a good one to throw in here the last one I think it's we're going to get this done a lot cheaper than what I have in this grant but I put a higher number in there just in case but
070we were this might seem for list to some of you but we want to put shade structures at all the elementary play at all the playgrounds uh it's just none of them have any shade structures so yeah this we thought we'd thrw that yes Ash that was one of the ones that I mean the kids are inside for six hours and they're outside for 18 minutes like how are these permanent Sage shade structures are they sales are they they're they're are they're permanent they're permanent they're Post in the ground that have like a canvas uh shade show you see them pop up in a lot of playgrounds so I you guys thought that was really necessary buildings and ground I wasn't there I I don't know who at buildings and ground that's why I was
071Wonder I wasn't there but I do think like there's plenty of students with like health issues that the heat exacerbates health issues that was one of the reason being outside for the 18 minutes they get is to soak up the sun being a Rec me that's when they're outside for don't they get a second recess they're out twice at elementary yeah element not the other in primary not middle school but uh but yeah they're out there twice I mean um yeah I get what you're saying how big are they going to be are they going to take away no it's just like another structure out there it's going to be you won't even so we already have picnic tables it's just going to go over the so I would say 15 by 20 uh they'll
072go over picnic tables so it's it's not going to be it's just going to be over areas that we already have like as rest areas for kids so um and and we do have some kids that we do have some I mean I would say this is a reason we're doing it but necessarily but there are kids that get get they get have medical issues and just get overheated and uh when we don't have any kind of structure out there it's just it'll be a it'll be nice to have but any other questions okay please have a motion to approve the submission of the fiscal year 24 School maintenance project Grant sorry question go ahead the stage lighting this is what we talked about in the past right yes it's the project we already have
073approved I just threw it in the grant okay that's yep I didn't know we were pce no same uh I was trying to throw stuff in there we already knew we had to do and that's one of them all right we good now anybody else okay please have a motion to approve the submission of fiscal year 24 School maintenance project Grant motion second Lauren yes yes yes yes yes okay the next one sorry this is taking so long but this one is uh I've been thinking about this for a while have worked on this a few times through the summer but uh finally finalized it in recent weeks um is trying to provide an opportunity for our prayer professionals to have a uh to have some support if they want to become a teacher generally
074this could be for anybody in our community that wants to become a teacher we could we could hire them as a parah they could get support to finish their degree through this plan and uh so you'll see it outlined EX 18 uh some of the language mimics what we have in our current contract I did run this through our attorney to make sure we're good on everything you'll see we have some stipulations in there for if somebody were to if we help them get get their degree and then they choose not to work for us if they're offered a job they would have to pay some back if they're not offered a job because we don't have anything available and they go find another job we're not going to we're not going to punish that
075uh um but we want them to give us a chance first so I think it's a good program I'm excited about it if we get this past because I think it would be we did cap the district's uh exposure each year to 24,000 that would be six pair professionals taking full advantage of the $4,000 if we have more ticket more desire to do it we'll probably prate it and spread it out but I don't anticipate that that's a lot and and this is we don't have that many pairs I think we want to do it more than six would surprise me but I do know we have a few that would be interested so so for under repayment under number five am I read this correctly that they your position but is not offer the
076position and they work for District 38 as a they don't have to pay it back but otherwise they if they if they continue to work for us as a PA for two more years and uh but if they use the money they don't get hired or there isn't a position and they go on to someone else go onto a different District do they have to pay that back then I say that again sorry sorry they they take advantage of the program yeah and there isn't a position they're not hired for position and then they go to school district down the street do they have to pay that back no this I see what you're saying though this might be a little bit seems confusing it sounds like you have to work here still as a
077after you have your no I see you're saying I'll that language up I I agree that was the same issue I had when I first saw this is if we don't have any openings we're basically saying sorry you're stuck here you can't go somebody someplace else that has I can clean that up yeah I see what you're saying yep other question I had for you on this is on number four uh if they cease employe employment because of illness what do we consider illness enough to say that they don't have to pay it back it would be a doctor saying they couldn't do no long they could no longer do their job so something that actually says they can perform not just say I've got a long running C I can't no anym no it
078would have to be a physician saying they can no longer do the job but I can clean that language up I read that's why I was when you said that I'm like that doesn't sound right so I gotta clean that up all right am have any other questions okay I please have a motion to approve the proposed educational support Personnel tuition reimbursement program with the revisions yeah does and Gary yes yes yes yes all right this is last but not least but give me a minute to explain so we have uh I've mentioned to you that uh building grounds committee we've talked about this we've got a lot of projects in the next five to 10 years that we have to get done the buildings are are yes they're they're paid off but they're also
07920 25 years old so um we did a facilities assessment last year um that our architect did for us um and gave us some starting conversation about where we need to go we're looking primarily at right now at roofs um HVAC such as chillers things like that are coming to near end of life so those are some big items parking lots getting there um so there's two ways to do this work we can do design and build which is where we call the architect in they design the project we bid it out and it gets built um in that situation you run into I mean it's not a you there a lot of districts Do It um if they're if when they design it they miss things then there's change orders and the price goes
080up more than what you thought so there that's a downside another way is is performance Contracting I have never done performance Contracting I'm telling you that right off the bat so I was a little C always been a little cautious um but I have talked to some districts who uh have you know it's become more common um and I have reached out to some districts who've done both and they really like it so basically what the Performance Contractor is and ver G would be what I'm asking for tonight is is to let me enter in agreement with verie it's not going to be we're not going to have any Financial commitment at this point but what verie would do is come in and they would do a deep dive into our district and kind of
081do a facilities assessment we did last year but at no charge to us they'll determine what projects they would prioritize and they'll determine estimated costs that's when I'll sit down with the board and we'll say based on the estimated cost of these projects I would recommend we do the roofs and the summer of 25 maybe a chiller the summer of 24 you know we kind of break it out um once we agree to do that that then we jump into an agreement with ver well they'll basically they will bid it out and they will they will show us the bids and they'll give us a cost and they'll say you know for the new I'm just going to throw a number out there for the roofs of the primary Elementary building it's going to be
082a million dollars and they'll give us the cost and at that point um our costs can't go up so if there's if they if they start turn off the rof they find there's a lot of uh underlayment that's bad they've got to get it replaced but there there's no change order for us we're just we we're paying what we're paying them the uh they also are part of the performance Contracting agreement is that they they try to find Energy savings we're not going to have a lot of energy Savings in the rofs we might have some in the new HVAC because it'll be more efficient but if they guarant so if we put a new Chiller in and they say that's we're going to save you $30,000 that's a lot maybe $10,000 in uh utility
083costs because of the more efficient Chiller they have to go back a year later and determine whether that number was met if it wasn't they have to cut us a check for it so the difference so Performance Contractor basically says they're going to give you a uh this is the job you need to get done this is what it's going to cost and then they manage the project and you don't pay any more than what what was so I've talked to uh you know there's a lot of districts that do this uh the two that I've the one i' uh I talked to a district down in Central Illinois no I think it Northwest Illinois is where it was at um he's had he said he's probably done seven projects in 500 performance Contracting had
084a lot of success with ver uh huntley's done a lot of performance Contracting um they use ver as well I've been trying to get a hold of them but I've not not been able so their real focus is is to try to find you Energy savings we don't have a lot of that we've already pretty efficient but they're still interested in our in our projects because they feel like they can they can find some savings there and uh they can manage the project so tonight really what I'm asking is just to let me bring them in to do an assessment it's no charge no charges to us at this point there'll be a time where I would come back and say based on their assessment this is this is what we recommend doing and we'll
085have a timeline I mean i' like to have this timeline going out even up to 10 years what are we going to do and how are we going to pay for it I do have a uh I've talked to our person uh Tim King financials is who did our last debts debt certificate which we paid for the parking uh the bus lot construction and the road which that last payment's being made this month so we've been paying on that for seven years um I talked to him about doing another debt STP because we're not going to do these projects and go out to the voters and ask for money so uh what I will do is once they give us an estimate I will bring Tim in and I'll say so if we do $2
086million worth of work and if we do $3 million how you know what's our we got to have a manageable payment on the debt certificate and we'll probably spread that out over time but that's I'll include you all all in that conversation how does ver get paid ver is going to have so when they get all the bids for the roofs just using the Russ example they'll build in their costs there so they'll get the bids in they'll show us the bids but then they'll say this is what we can get the project done guaranteed for you and their cost will be built in there so and are are you g to compare any outside bits yourself or it would just be whatever they say and then that's that's the challenge here yeah that's the
087challenge here is that we because obviously they have preferred vendors too so they're going to be well they did say that they would they would give give let us uh bring our uh because I have some people we'd like to make sure bid it and they said they would definitely bring our uh they'll have local biders um so they did give us some flexibility there okay I that was one thing I'm worried about Ash is I don't want to you I want this to be more expensive you know significantly I think that what I can't say it's going to be cheaper I could say I feel safe with it because they're going to give us a price and it's there's not going to change that feels a little better how of does it change though
088I mean like in all the years you've been doing stuff and you get see I haven't done a lot of big projects but I know every project I do they the AR The Architects get paid too so if the Project's a million they're going to get 10 12 133% so that's that's probably similar what ver is going to build into it uh but the problem is that they uh I don't know you were around these buildings I'm assuming there's a lot of change orders yeah I mean Kevin this roof here alone when they tear it off and strip everything off last time we just redid whatever it was I don't know that right before I got here that was right when I got here yeah got it was I me every month I mean they
089gave you a bid but then did they come back and say hey we need yes okay so they did and I think that was half the problem is the architect who was that terrible firm at that time yeah he wasn't like willing to handle all this stuff so he brought everything to us yeah every single time where you talk to like other we'd go to the conference and talk to other districts they never had to deal with this but they didn't have this type of company but they had like a construction manager or somebody else on site so we I think we were paying our architect whatever the 10 to 15% and he wasn't doing anything yeah besides designes they design it they do bids then they yeah uh verie will have a construction manager
090on site if we do any projects I just think like I I think bidding local is nice I think that if if they if they make if we're going to spend the community's money in this way the community should have a chance to B on the work at the totally agree that's fine yeah I have a question they do roofs are they gonna look for like the I want say the most cost effect not cost effective Ro but the best roof for us they could put the cheapest shingles on that say like a 20year shingle or they could put like a 50 shingle I think we can tell them what we want in the bid specs okay yeah I feel like these roofs did not last as long as they should have last it's 20
091years and we're looking at and it's bad and how much money we put in noral at least five million five you when I came at Big Hollow that summer you guys were doing the roof project yeah it was very expensive project you were just finishing it when I got here so so if we did like the primary and Elementary we talked before about putting gutters in but it was better to wait to replace the roof yeah yeah we could could ask some if we're gonna do the roof now let's look at the gutters and prices yeah it's good point no they do not they do not so we would have we have a say in that though yeah we'd have a say in that they're not that's one of their selling points is they're not
092uh tied to the lowest bit if it's not a contractor you want to work with but they're tied to to wait the all the wage restrictions for schools right yeah for railing wage what's the they will be at the conference so I would encourage you to stop by if you see verie just stop by and ask questions all right all right anybody have any other questions about the performance contract with ver you please have a motion to enter in performance contract agreement with ver motion second Vivian yes yes yes yes yes yes all right resignations accepted we accepted a resignation for Victoria rathy per professional effective October 13th we accepted a resignation from Christine Lino uh lunch monitor effected October 17th accepted resignation from Tina bourbon seventh grade social studies teacher effective October 26th accepted
093a resignation for Langford middle school special education teacher effective December 25th um and we are withdrawing new hire paperwork for Katherine isan Transportation driver due to her lack of communication uh anybody any question information questions on the information act re press no I okay anybody have any questions on the monthly reports for the board nope uh the next regularly scheduled board meeting will take place on Monday December 11th 2023 with Clos session beginning at 6 pm and Open Session beginning immediately after Clos session okay maybe School Board of Education November 15th is designated as school board members day in Illinois on behalf of the students Administration teachers and staff at Big Hollow we thank you for making the tough decisions to spend the money we have at our district considering stakeholders input and being visible
094and present supporting opportunities and providing time for our teachers to learn and grow supporting all the resources technology and materials we use volunteering your time communicating to our parents and Guardians about the school taking time to meet every month to make decisions to help all of our students learn and grow thank you thank you thank you all right with that being said can I please have a motion to adjourn second as Lauren all in favor I any oppose I it being thank you