001does anybody have anything to add to the agenda can i please have a motion to approve the agenda potion second enters in mazer all in favor aye aye any opposed eyes have it uh accomplishment recognition for the month of march the administration would like to honor the following individuals who have been nominated by staff and selected by the administration for the following awards student of the month mr gold okay oh okay great oh how cute yeah for the employee of the month um ladies uh [Laughter] oh my gosh [Laughter] i have been told i don't need a microphone before but i'll use it um i'm going to try to do this without crying but kathy and jen are probably two of the most amazing people i've ever met in my life there's so much that
002goes on behind the scenes at all of our schools and in our district that people are never ever gonna see they just are never gonna see it unless you work there and jen and kathy do it every single day with a smile on their face they care about us as teachers they care about our kids they ask about our families on a normal basis and it means the world to us so thank you for everything you do oh hello i'm not sure if you guys can hear me but okay um yeah over the course of the pandemic it's been really hard and we're always trying to find somebody who's like consistent and constant and i think that's who miss jen and miss kathy are in the front office i find it interesting because like the
003term front line is now kind of a thing and they are on the front lines of the front office and it takes a certain level of presence and focus as well as the ability to like coordinate with not only just families and students but with like the admin the transportation and as ms don said it's like something that they manage to do every single day and despite the amount of responsibility that they have they never lack in empathy or patience and they give students like the time of day or a listening year or even to like a staff you know when we need it most um and despite of like the heaviness of it all like they're like they're a light in my day because i get to watch them from my office and it's
004kind of fun because you know they're always dancing or doing something crazy and they don't take themselves so seriously which i think is like the kind of that's the kind of spirit that you have to have especially in a time like this so um i just wanted to say i'm so happy to be celebrating this evening with you guys because you guys deserve to be celebrated you're so appreciated here and thank you for like embodying like the big hollow spirit well i love jen and kathy and they work so hard and they're always doing the best job they can at all times it's so hard to choose who's better the right or the left so they're both [Laughter] [Applause] so they truly are deserving of this recognition certainly working with these two co-workers every day
005has been a gift they are not liking any bit of this as they are the most humble people that i know but we have to say this anyway um they truly exemplify all that is in our mission statement they're willing to do whatever it takes to help children families the school and the district be successful there's no task or project that they cannot complete they're amazingly resourceful and always willing to work through any problem and go the extra mile they bring positivity to the school every single day and work hard to ensure that everything runs smoothly they are welcoming to all and extremely dedicated to our school district we really feel fortunate to have both of you as the first faces that people see when they come into the office as soon as you walk
006into the elementary school they are there and no matter what is at what comes forth they're ready to tackle that and so thank you kathy and jen for all that you've done and continue to do for everyone at big [Applause] hollow pitcher yes i'm just gonna stand back here well you're gonna be in it thank you thank you there we go all right okay our student of the month julianne all right julianne you want to come on up [Applause] how are you doing good you must have had a you must be doing very very good work you know that your teacher nominated you for student of the month we're proud of you that's so cute good job all right here wait don't wait here stay here come here i'm going to let your teachers come
007up here and brag about you okay why don't you come over here and stand right here all right let's see if you stand right here let you hold this okay you hold this all right your teacher is going to brag about you all right [Music] in class one of my favorite memories i have of julian i don't even know if she remembers this is i always send home books and crafts in their monthly deliveries and one time one of my one of her crafts didn't end up in her bag and we didn't realize that until we started doing our craft and she looked at me and unmuted herself and said you know what miss dimaggio it's okay i understand sometimes mistakes happen and for a kindergartner to have that maturity and understand that that's what
008happened just blew me away and i was like oh my goodness julianne you warmed my heart and she's just a kind little girl she's so funny and i absolutely love having her in class i don't have enough good things to say about her she's an awesome thank you so much we're going to stay here and take a picture can we take a picture here all right mrs mazur's on our school board here come right in here you'll get to be right in front oh yes yes get her dad in here awesome awesome great thank you so much thank you oh she's cute i will take no private action that might compromise the board or administration and will respect the confidentiality of privileged information thank you anybody have any questions on the consent agenda nope can
009i please have a motion to approve the consent agenda agenda as amended in closed session motion second question yes yes public comments i have a public comments here do you have mrs johnson yep there's a microphone right there robin miss jensen are you aware of all the comments no worries i don't know do i need to pick it up or is it okay all right is this good man up here i'm not that loud oh my gosh that's a first good evening for those of you who do not know me my name is robin jensen i have been a teacher here at big hollow middle school for 20 years and am proud to be part of this district that being said this is the first time that i have felt compelled to come before the
010board and speak i want to begin by saying i'm not speaking as a representative of the middle school teachers i'm here to speak in support of them after watching the last board meeting i could not help but feel that you as our board have lost faith in your teachers a discussion regarding asynchronous assignments which began with an unintentional signaling out singling out of teachers ended with a motion to have administrators come up with a proposal to improve what we are providing to our students surveys were sent out to both parents and students to better understand their perspective regarding both the quality and quantity of asynchronous work and provide them with an opportunity to indicate areas of support they feel are needed or are currently lacking we have all been trying our best the community the
011board the administration and the teachers to put the needs of the students first and while it is true that improvement can always be made i was disheartened that when many stakeholders were heard from there was one key group that was left out the teachers we too are stakeholders in the educational process at the last meeting i got the impression that some of you were unaware we were teaching remotely and in personally in person simultaneously this led me to think that perhaps you are also unaware of the programs we are using and the supports we are providing to our students this is when i decided to survey the teachers here in the middle school who teach the core subjects just so you're aware all the core teachers responded with the exception of one who is on
012maternity leave so we didn't ask her the data i have provided to you is just that data information that i believe may give you as well as the community some understanding as to what is seen in the classroom i ask the teachers to select from this trimester one asynchronous assignment and figure the percentage of incomplete work and one friday that they had requested specific students to attend class and figure the percentage of non-attendance the percentage was over 50 percent for both i asked teachers to figure out the percentage of those students with missing work for this trimester which was also over 50 percent finally i asked teachers to provide a list of programs they have used over the course of the year to give instruction and support to students as you can see there are
013not only district approved programs such as ixl apex and newsela but there are multitude of other resources that are being used from pbs videos to peer deck presentations we know this pandemic has forced all of us into making difficult decisions in an ideal world we would all be here in school masculist teaching learning and thriving but we must deal with the reality of today i came with two purposes tonight to make certain you have the information from all the stakeholders and to reassure you we are all here for the same reason the students i have come here tonight to reassure you of the efforts that i see being made by your teachers and hopefully reinstill your faith in them the faith that i fear has wavered i have watched my colleagues collaborate on new ideas
014research innovative ways to present material meet with students during their prep and their lunches and continuously strive to serve their students to the best of their ability and i believe we will continue to do these things because that is who we are we are teachers and we believe just as you do in putting the needs of our students first i respect and value your time and thank you for allowing me to share my thoughts with you thank you robin thank you uh next public comment this is from natalie stetfield four years ago tiffany enters joined the big hall school district as a board member and since that time tiffany has dedicated countless hours to ensuring that our voices were heard and decisions were being made for what is best for our students tiffany has been
015instrumental in the success of the big house school board as she has joined multiple committees participated in classroom events meetings with teachers and etcetera whenever there was an opportunity to learn or assist the school tiffany was the first one to sign up we as a community have truly been blessed to have tiffany serve on the school board as she always gives 110 percent in everything she does i have witnessed the countless hours that tiffany has put in to make sure that her voices are heard she has been fearless in her pursuit to allow all students to have the best opportunity to be successful while attending big house school district in order to participate in the board meetings tiffany would spend time becoming as knowledgeable as possible on all topics being discussed by doing this it
016allowed her to be objective and considerate to all situations tiffany never did the bare minimum with her role as a board member and she had always gone above and beyond tiffany is a member in the big hall school district community i thank you for your time energy and compassion you have given your position on the school board your fearlessness commitment and undying support for big house school district is beyond appreciated thank you for everything that you have done these past four years this one is from megan blake we would like to express our deepest gratitude to tiffany enters for years of devotion and dedication to the big al school board and our kids within this community we are very sad to find out that she will no longer be on the board tiffany is someone
017who wants the best for all kids our school and our community she has dedicated countless hours to ensure our kids at big hollow continue to thrive even under rough circumstances we met tiffany when our kids started attending big hollow she was one of those people that when you meet her you feel like you have known her for years she welcomes everyone with open arms i know my kids have felt that too our kids have been in class together she is somebody that always volunteers her time and has a presence in the classroom and school my kids know her as one of those special people they can go to if they need a simple comfort of a hug or a smile as she passes by we appreciate all the board members commitment to wanting the best
018for our children we hope that the new board members will have the same commitment and passion that tiffany brought to our community she is a true servant's heart and the positive impact she made during her time on the board will not go on notice kevin and megan blake this is from lindsay levine it was with great sadness that we'll be seeing tiffany enters the part from the big hill school board this year is no exception that she has been part of all the decisions that have been made throughout the years no matter what decision or what topic all her votes and decisions have come from the heart this is who she is and she speaks from the heart with truth and passion for what she believes in she also put the big hollow community first
019and that includes students parents and the entire administration and staff there has been a tremendous amount of time whether it be observing classrooms taking time out of our day to go to conferences pre-covered and in the current state an enormous amount of time spent on zoom call meetings including meetings regarding technology and curriculum there's so much that is involved when you are a member of the school board and her commitment needs to be applauded and incoming board members will have some big shoes to fill thank you tiffany for everything you have accomplished ben and lindsay levine i believe that's that's it and then we have another request for public participation in closed session at the end of the board meeting okay that's it for public comments superintendents report mr gold yes monthly board policy review
020is item a exhibit 12. you can see the four policies that we have here incurring debt 440. each of these relate to different topics on the agenda instructional materials connection with community and parental involvement any questions on any of those policies if not i'm going to move ahead to item b which is our human ex parent student data we have svetlana popovic here and svetlana is going to present to you the data there'll be some data on the screen here and there is some in your packet as well what's in your packet won't match directly what's on the screen so svetlana i'll turn it over to you thank you good evening board uh sorry to hear that you're leaving tiffany thank you so much it's been a pleasure to work with you so hello board
021tonight i'm going to be presenting student engagement data and parent and family data from the human ex culture climate surveys when we start with this it's a reminder that this is for grades three through eight so all students a big hollow third grade through eighth grade completed the 64 question culture and climate survey 13 dimensions is what it's filtered into and five of those include maslow's hierarchy of needs in the question in each one of the dimensions students were asked in regard to themselves i statements teacher perception and perception of their principle these are all this is perception data these 13 dimensions self-esteem is the number one dimension this year so the current mean is 3.8 3.99 and so the 13 dimensions really center around if these 13 dimensions are high functioning it creates a
022learning environment that is conducive for students to learn in and that's why the maslow's hierarchy of needs the five are included in those dimensions so this is directly voices from third through eighth graders at the top of the screen you see that we had a participating class of 973 students that participated in this survey this year any dimension this is a mean out of 5.0 any dimension over a 4.0 last year we achieved a 4.0 in the self-esteem anything at that 4.0 threshold is in that good to great category that humanx designates so as we're looking at all the dimensions the first five are definitely areas for celebration students are feeling self-esteem classroom management feedback the feedback that they're given on their assignments from their teachers fairness of grading and curriculum and belonging a sense
023of belonging to the school community are all within the top five dimensions when looking at the lower dimensions we have safety survival needs survival needs meaning sleep and water essential needs satisfaction relevance in learning and choice and so we see that the same student choice is at the bottom as it was last year many of these have shifted and in consideration that this was a year that the students really faced a challenge of remote learning environments and then blended learning environments this is data that really is uh something for us to actually celebrate because we are holding steady last year we were at 30 of the 973 students that took the survey this year 29 percent are saying they are satisfied and highly engaged highly satisfied highly engaged last year we had 30 so considering
024the times that we're in and considering the sample size of the grouping we had more students complete the survey this year than we did last year and that's what we're hoping to have year over year is more participation so that the data has and holds its own integrity in 2019 that dream box meaning that upper corner was at 52.37 percent and this year we're at 51.76 percent what we're always wanting to do is uh make sure that we're changing the that environment with those 13 dimensions by moving the numbers and students perceptions from the lower left meaning low satisfaction low engagement all up into the right upper right corner and we have achieved that this year in 2019 that lower quadrant was at 22 22.87 percent this year we have 20 20.92 percent so again
025considering that we have a larger sample size and considering the drastic change in the learning environment this year this is actually cause for celebration to say that our students are not feeling we're not seeing the data a drastic difference in what their perception is of the learning environment when we take a look at the top questions i am going to have to move a little closer when we look at the top questions the number one question rated out of all the question items is my teacher wants me to be a successful person and you see how many of the first two questions have to do with self-esteem also a high regard for my teacher treats me with respect and so these two questions all of the questions that you see here ins are all teacher
026focused and this is a celebration of the teachers because the other option remember that the students had three question phrases i statements teacher statements and perceptions of the principle the fact that all five of these questions are in regard and give the students perception of their teachers is really again something really to celebrate in our teachers but also that the relationships here that we know between teacher and student um is very strong and so uh all of these top questions are a great indicator and they are all above that 4.0 threshold and you see not much of a difference in the means from the previous to the current when we look at the lowest uh questions the la the lowest five questions um consistent again with last year the two lowest questions have to do
027with choice of learning in class i get to choose the activities i work on my teacher asks me to help create classroom rules and expectations and i get to make decisions about how i learn in the classroom all three of those belonging to choice as well as survival needs i have a lot of energy at the start of the day so taking this into account into the context of remote learning that we had this year the reason why we're seeing and you'll see this more in the parent data but a lot of these things weren't things that were really in the students control this year as well as many things that weren't in all of our control this year but we're seeing this that it is still consistent so i'm not really sure that we
028can really put this all off on kovid a a year of remote learning in covid because last year these same questions were the lowest questions that we had as well so it's something for us to notice in the trend data and i know something that each one of the teacher leadership teams are well aware of and the teachers have been talking about and also actively trying to think about ways that we can improve choice in the classroom for our students for accessibility to learning when we look at the student participation so from the elementary school to the middle school the overall district profile we had 249 students last year to 290 at 273 this year participate the dream boxes for the elementary the middle school and the district as a whole and remember that the
029elementary is really representative of only third grade since it was just third grade through eighth grade that took it so all grades are considered in the middle school sixth through seventh i mean sixth seventh and eighth grade now moving into the parent data the parent data we came we have 451 parents that participated in the survey this year thank you parents i understand that the five essentials is taxing as well as yet another survey this one this survey really is we did increase almost doubled our parent participation this year so something i really do invite all parents to continue to participate in it this data is very specific a lot more thorough than the five essentials and here are the dimensions that the parents perception is wrapped around perceptions of the superintendent how well he's
030doing the school environment again in relationship to the learning that their students are experiencing safety school district teacher mission principal and student learning and so all of these for from last year were in the 4.0 we only have one dimension this year that's not in the 4.0 so from 451 parents that completed it these are excellent results and a great message back to you as a school and a superintendent's cabinet teachers administrators as well as to the school board that your parent community is in support of the superintendent the school environment and believes in the safety and the school district as well as the teacher so all of these results are very uh very good results when we break it down we see that of the 451 parents participated 48 percent 48 call it 49
031percent are have high school pride and high sense of service to quality of educational environment so that service to quality of educational environment is their comment uh toward the learning environment something that i want to um point out and actually celebrate the dynamic this year with students learning at home is that the parents were also very present in the students learning and when i dissected the data with the principals in the in their buildings a lot of what we saw was that the parents had increased uh perceptions positive perceptions of their students learning because they were some some of them for the very first time watching the learning happening over the ipad directly in their home and in their living room and so when you talk about the double uh 451 parents participating and that
032we are at this almost within that same 49 percent ballpark it really is something to celebrate to say that our parents are seeing how their t how their teachers are responding to their uh child's learning in the classroom and so forty eight point seven eight percent really service of high quality of education and school pride again we're always wanting to shift from the lower left to the upper right so uh last year that shouldn't be it should be august 2020 we had 8.97 in the lower left and 14.64 this year in the upper if you take the upper quadrant we are sitting at 66.30 percent of parents with high pride and high quality of education in their in their classroom for their students these same five questions were in the top of their were the
033same top five questions last year in 2019 and so you can see here the parents perceptions all of these are in that four point above that 4.0 it's solid 4.5 and above i feel comfortable approaching my child's teacher with questions teachers treat me with respect teachers treat my child with respect my child feels welcome in school and when i enter my child's school the front office staff is helpful so really it's so poignant tonight that we celebrated the front office staff because kudos to them parents really appreciate that and and they really do an amazing job so these are the top five questions and they are the same ones last year but the data has more integrity because it is more informed this year here are the bottom five questions and so the lowest question
034from this year's survey is really my teacher my child's teacher reaches out to me regularly with feedback about how my child is doing in school and my child feels comfortable going to his or her principal with questions well that one in particular going to the principal for some students for many students wasn't even an option this year but the fact that they even rated that as a 3.79 is fantastic even the low question my child teacher reaches out to me regularly i know for a fact working with the buildings and with the teacher leadership teams that this question really we need to dig into a little bit more that it doesn't necessarily mean that the child's teacher hasn't reached out regularly rather that that communication looked differently it was more in the moment um many
035zoomed parents were like hi mrs papavik over the zoom when the children were learning so the communication this year because of the remote learning looked very different but again teacher leadership teams are looking into this and digging into different ways that they can make sure and ensure that they are giving parents feedback and then two questions that i did circle is my child is meeting his or her learning goals that isn't a significant drop from last year last year we were at 3.99 this year we're at a 3.8 and the top the other question that's in the green is the expectations in different teachers classrooms are consistent throughout the day again these are informed i would say majority of middle school parents because there's just the one courthood or third grader so it's third through
036eighth graders that inform this survey so here we take a look at primary parent survey i'm sorry yeah this is the parent sermon so primary elementary middle school and the whole district as a whole you can see how we doubled the participation in each one of the buildings and then you look at the dream box how it's increased from 2019 to 2021 in the elementary school and then we're still holding within that ballpark with double in for information with the other three with the other two buildings middle school and primary any any questions that i can scroll back to any clarifications that you'd like to see on either one of the student or the parent that looks good i appreciate your work thank you work with our appreciate your work with our building leadership teams
037and our principals so uh the data doesn't go on a shelf we're just trying to yeah it's good well thank you very much thank you so much thank you appreciate it okay the next item i'm going to call up dr hedgevitch dr king pittman we're going to probably pair these next three actually gonna maybe be kind of converged together is that right yeah okay so we inundated you with many memos is this good matt okay um and we don't want to take up your whole night reading them to you so we just kind of wanted to frame everything that's in the memos under one larger theme i guess you would say which is what we can do now that we've been through this pandemic now for a year what do we plan on doing and
038what do we know is important for our students moving forward to not only try and help you know bring them up to speed if necessary but really set up structures within our schools in various ways to just move forward in a healthy way so when you take a look at the best educational practices in the aftermath of a crisis memo it kind of outlines just a few things that are they seem minimal but they're actually um if they're done correctly we can i think really really mitigate some of the effects of this pandemic for our students and families so one of the things listed in the memo is just that again we're going to prepare for next year like we normally would but we're also going to be making sure that we're preparing for this
039social emotional impact and so all of this data that's taken and put in this memo is really it's come from data that's been gathered during other crises like the west african ebola crisis or hurricane katrina when students are removed out of the learning environment for extended periods of time so these are the points that some of the research would outline that researchers who looked at those situations gathered and put together into many different websites that are actually offered for you on the bottom of the memo so speaking of social emotional impact this ties to some of the work that we'll be doing district wide we're going to continue many of the practices that we started but it's also um going to help us as we reframe our kindergarten classroom experience so that can be you
040can peruse that in the kindergarten memo but we'll be um shifting our instructional model with kindergarten to more of a purposeful play model which lends itself to more social emotional communities for our students which we know is something that they're going to need in that memo it also outlines the transition between pre-kindergarten and kindergarten and how important that transition is but now we know not every student went to pre-k not every student had had a daycare experience like they normally would have so we're preparing extra for that impact on those youngest students the second idea there that we're sharing with you is that we would want to of course encourage students to enroll in summer learning opportunities and dr pittman and mrs denovo have worked extensively to put together some wonderful classes that dr pittman
041wanted to talk to you about so i definitely couldn't do this without kira dinovo she's the administrator for our summer school and she has really put together a really nice package we continue to have our esy for our students who receive services our ell academy transition for kindergarten transition for fifth grade but then we also have some community outreach so we have some steam classes robotic class offered and then academically most importantly we will have reading and math offered for every grade level it'll be no cost to parents trans transportation will be provided camp duncan and a child's place have worked out kind of a deal with us for child care for parents and then ultimately in past we would cap classes what we are going to do is after registration is open you know
042if the class caps at 15 we'll cap it at 15 but then we are going to continue to offer then another section even if that means that we start posting for positions outside of the district thank you um number three just discusses how there's more of this multi-tiered systems of support work that dr king has been really engaging in with all of the buildings we're looking at our test data of course but we're really needing to take a look at it in terms of it's a diagnostic measure of a student's knowledge and abilities but how can we make sure we really use that to differentiate instruction because as we said all the students coming into school next year will have had very different past educational experiences so that data really needs to be used in
043a diagnostic manner and we'll be leading our staff through that we have had a couple parents reach out with regards to feeling you know worried about their child's academic skill and ability right now based on being in this pandemic for a year and some of them did ask us you know how are we going to move forward can we can we hold my child back and so we started digging into the data regarding that too and so we just wanted to make a statement as a district that really grade retention no matter what the situation is not helpful and actually can be hurtful to students and harm long term so we're as a district going to make sure that we're putting students into classes based on chronological age and are again that ties to the
044differentiation piece our teachers are very passionate and very good at differentiating and we will continue to work with them to make sure that that happens and last but not least focusing on teaching the grade level standards so again how much time are we going to spend on quote unquote lost learning or missed learning opportunities and the answer is um both we're going to be doing sort of a skill recovery approach because that's what was proven to be effective for hurricane katrina and we'll obviously going we're going to be making sure we give them exposure to the grade level standards so almost a spiral spiraling effect where we're going to keep moving forward just as we normally would and constantly try and circle back and re-teach as needed for any missing skills so we are confident
045that those practices that when put in place are going to be helpful but like i said the the kindergarten memo and the handwriting memo are to be seen under the guise of that memo in general again the kindergarten teachers will be provided some training we'll be moving into a different instructional model to help support our youngest learners and then with handwriting this is one other thing just to consider and i'm sure parents would have already thought about this but i just wanted to speak a little bit to the handwriting memo and that really has to do with again these opportunities that students normally would have had in a regular school year of writing using paper and pencil and and not necessarily typing that's a great way to get across your knowledge but um really this
046act of putting your pencil to the paper and especially for our youngest learners making sure that they have opportunities to build up those fine motor skills so as a district we've always supported the grade level standards with handwriting and illinois does dictate that we teach handwriting in our schools but up until now we haven't systematized it as much so we'd really like your support in providing our teachers the materials that are necessary to get that k pre-k through fourth or fifth grade alignment and we will continue to make sure we provide those supports for our teachers as they receive a new resource some of them are already familiar with it and some of them may not be so we'll make sure that everyone gets the proper training to make sure they're implementing that handwriting without
047tears is the name of the program and we will be doing that like i said pre-kindergarten through fourth grade so those are just some of the the topics that have been rattling around in the district office and again we just wanted to say thank you for your support and i'm willing to take any questions if anybody has them i know there was a lot of words on those papers i've asked if maybe i could join the handwriting for tears class right me too my handwriting is gone cursive bob you can spend some time in third grade cursive next year oh i had it i just had one question sure i um we got this in the curriculum committee meeting and it took me a while to digest it but um my question was with the
048kids assessment so it says it has to take place within the first 40 days of school yes and then it says we're going to do it three times a year so it means we're going to be assessing kids 120 days out of 175 days a year you know what that's i'm so glad that you asked this question so the answer is yes but the reason that sounds so insane is because the purposeful play model and the way that the kids assessment is created is the idea it supports this idea that teachers are constantly assessing students and so if i were to walk around the room and you were in my classroom i'd be making simple observations and anecdotal notes about all of your abilities and the idea is to collect this information over time because
049as kindergartners we know just walking into the classroom as a brand new kindergartner we're going to have students on all ends of the spectrum so really the idea is to gain information about individuals over time it's not this this assessment is not a one-to-one sit-down skill and drill assessment where a teacher is going to be engaged in giving prompts and pro and expecting answers from students it's more of a natural observing students in their natural setting so if for example a child's in the dramatic play area and they're you know doing some dramatic play with a peer the teacher might lend their ear to hearing what the students are saying to each other watching observations of their interactions uh social emotional abilities and then turning to that section if you will of the kids assessment
050and doing a quick check mark so it's as instructions happening it's not like an nwea assessment where we would have a child sit on a computer and spend 40 days testing and then 40 more days testing and then 40 more days testing it's just in a natural environment if that makes any sense so is this like three times the paperwork for the teachers or like i'm sorry so it seems like what is on the kids assessment is also what's on the report card and what's also what's on these other so are we doing this are we doing the same report three different ways or that's a great question so we would need to and this is one of the district's uh goals too is to kind of refine our report cards the idea being though
051that the items that are on the kids assessment yes they're reflected on the report card but the teachers could use the kids assessment data just again to go in quick and do the reporting side for the report card it won't require yet another set of observations or anecdotal note gathering or even artifact gathering it would just require the teachers to take the information they've observed all year long or all quarter or semester long and just plug that into the report card do you want to talk about the kids assessment the current requirements from the state on the kids receptor and actually i might reference dr king over here she's dr king's been working extensively with the kids assessment and all of the problem solving or excuse me students support team we just changed the name
052of our teams um meetings and so we're we've been going through the kids data but there's a lot to it and i'll let you kind of take over so currently the state requires that we complete 17 components every single year and so it's something that teachers have to do in addition to everything else we give them the what we're proposing is instead of adding all these others so the map test for can specifically just for kindergarten instead of having them do an assessment that's not developmentally appropriate appropriate for kindergarten removing map and map reading fluency from the kindergarten tests students and then having them just do the kids assessment which it's not to your point and i'm so glad you read and asked these questions because it's not a sit and get whereas map and
053all these other conventional ways we've assessed kids for so long specifically it will in all of our grades but unfortunately we were on the phone earlier just talking to someone who understands emergent learners better than i do just saying that that's developmentally inappropriate so they're sitting at a computer taking a paper or take a paper-based test isn't that makes what makes most sense and so instead if you want to see if kids can share asking them to fill out a document about can i share that doesn't make any sense can i watch you share when you're on the playground or can i watch you share resources or transfer resources one person to another those are a it's going to tackle the sel bit that is really critical for our our young students but it also
054it's going to tag in something that the state already requires so we're checking off a couple of boxes because this is something that already had to be done anyway we're certainly adding it in so we're doing it two more times because we want to ensure that we're making even though they say all kindergartners are kindergartners we want to ensure that our kids are making adequate progress to the degree that i can understand that kindergartners make that's still something i'm trying to wrap my head around from just an academic side but there are ways to see are our students learning these concepts that we're teaching when we're in these purposeful play environments and transferring them on a regular daily basis that we wouldn't be able to get if we were just sitting at in front of
055a computer for 20 to 40 minutes three times a year taking the map test so it will happen more often but it's an assessment we already do and now we'll be making use of that data in a much more important and impactful way as it relates to the curriculum that teachers are teaching okay thank you question thank you yeah i i really was yeah anything else tiffany i interrupted you do you have a question no i was gonna mention the same thing so i don't know maybe for the other board members talk a little bit more of like what the purple purposeful play kind of means because we were in a curriculum meeting but i think would be beneficial for others to kind of where the schedule is not so you know rigid and everything
056so it would be good for them to hear kind of what that looks like before i give it to can i just wait i do want to clarify because i don't want it to make look i was ever misleading anyone it will feel different for all of our teachers the doing the kids more often so i don't want it to sound like i don't understand the work that will be associated with that but we have training and coaching that we'll be doing for our paraprofessionals for other coach people to come in we're going to help do that to help with the lift in the beginning because i don't want to say the work they're not doing is they have a lot on their plate and we want to we were acknowledging that as an administration
057i'm acknowledging that in my role i understand that but we're very equipped and prepared to to help with that lift because it will feel like different work and they may wish they had the map test back for a little while but i think the information they'll get later will be really important and helpful for them and you just say the training they'll have multiple training too yes yes or something right yeah and it's and it started and it's gonna keep going and we'll have like human power to help with that like we will they'll they will not not have support perfect so they have like there's three training dates like april and will there be additional training offered come say august yeah summer goes by and yes so we we're lucky to have those institute
058days at the beginning of the school year next year and i think we'll be fully fully using that time if we can you know get teachers to come in and and over the summer we'll provide it then we'll do it whenever they are able to do it but for sure um it's already begun we started last friday there'll be more training pretty much every friday until school is out and then if we can get teachers in in june and july we will but otherwise august will be the last um third of the training is the plan okay just for me what is the difference from major and minor the so are you referencing the data section um so the major and the minor referral data that's included really um the best way for me to
059describe it is um there's a matrix that each building has and so when a teacher observe observes a behavior they look at the matrix and they determine is a major or minor minor typically means this is just something that i want to take note of as a teacher if we start to see some patterns these are the data that i want to make sure that i reference in terms of helping a student work through something but the major referral data is really that really generally means that the child was referred to the principal or to the office for some sort of consequence so miners are sort of observational where it's keep an eye on it majors office referral yeah and then you want to know more about purposeful play or do you know just to
060kind of let the other board members sure it's more about the program i think it's pretty neat well and it's funny because the trainer that we're working with um she made a joke of course because she's in full support of a purposeful play model but she's like are you gonna use purposeful play because sometimes that word makes people a little bit leery and so we are we're going to use the word purposeful play and what that generally just means in an early childhood classroom is that teachers and our teachers are phenomenal i will say they have all of their standards in their head of what they need to cover in kindergarten for example our pre-k teachers also do this and so um they're observing there's um there's circle time at the beginning where a teacher
061might do a mini lesson and then students are able to make choices for choice time and so a lot of that just to be honest it's a dramatic play area it's a mathematics center with blocks or other building materials there's usually a writing center there's usually a center that where the child will work with the teacher um you know art there's there's all different ways to do it um but the the idea is that we'll be taking more of an approach of teaching the literacy and the math concepts multiple times throughout the day but through a social studies or science lens so one of the units for example is called seeds and so everything that they do during that unit is going to be through the lens of science and seeds and growing and you
062know there's mathematical concepts that can be visited through that type of a theme all of the centers will take the take the theme of seeds for that particular unit or you know some sort of flowers plants it's very uh inquiry-based and problem solving based um and it really like i said it just lends itself to students own curiosity driving their learning so they will have choices of like i said choice time where they choose which center they want to spend the most time in and it's the teacher's job to capitalize on that interest and take that as an opportunity to ask open-ended questions you know teach concepts on in pretty much spontaneously and that's where that magic with our teachers comes in they know what their goals are and their job is just to kind
063of keep that in the back of their head and provide those opportunities for students to demonstrate what they know so that's my best explanation on the fly but um play play is like i said it's some people are calling it this four-letter word and it's we know that students need those social emotional opportunities and long term the data is starting to show that the financial for society and students own lifelong experiences and growth is just in just crazy impacted by this approach so i can provide that data but it might be referenced in the memo as well i think at the bottom yes will teachers mean more manpower in the classroom that's a great question so what we'll initially be trying to do is provide some more support especially in the area of collecting that
064data on in a spontaneous manner and using the checklist you know even in a gifted setting some of the like even northwestern uses that for their summer school programs they've got people that support the teacher to collect data and i think if we could get something like that underway for our teachers that would be extremely helpful i know that we discussed it a little bit today and in terms of providing them other supports our pre-k teachers are also very well versed in purposeful play so they're sort of an internal support system and we do have ideas to support teachers in other ways but i don't know if i'm at liberty to talk about it right now um we have ideas and it's moving pretty quickly now that we're putting this in front of you and
065asking for your support so but yes to answer your question yes it's always helpful to get other adults especially into a kindergarten room in general but to help collect the data especially how much time would that the kids be standing in the play area so the teacher will teach a lesson and the kids will go off into yeah it varies it varies to be honest when we look at a purposeful place schedule there's many different you know correct purposeful place schedules out there but i would say that they'll the teachers will follow a general schedule they'll have their specials where they still need to take their kids to specials so it's it's not like we're going to put students in a room and just they play all day that's not how it is it's very
066actually structured so the mini lesson time is probably about 15 20 minutes max because we know they have short attention attention spans but in general i would say that there's um probably two parts of our day where it is going to be play-based purposeful play where and i don't want to say exactly how much time that they're going to spend but i would say 45 minutes to an hour each time maybe a little bit more but that's when that teacher is making rounds and working with individual students or small groups so it's it's intentionally set up setting up the way that the classroom looks and feels to make sure that they're hitting those very important foundational skills but i would say maybe two two and a half hours where there's it's solid play and actually
067that's why i referenced at the beginning of the memo too that when we switched to a full day kindergarten model um our poor teachers i can't i don't remember what the reaction was back then but it's hard because they're they are so little and we need to make sure we're structuring the day but also providing time for them to um be developmentally appropriate in a developmentally appropriate setting and not sitting in a desk all day so our teachers do a great job of sectioning their schedule out now but this is really going to give them permission to do what they've always said they wanted which was this purposeful play model because we know what's best for kids do you expect the referral numbers to go down part of that too is is again this idea
068of allowing our teachers to set up environments where students are allowed to experience things and get feedback and grow and when you think about kindergarten students they don't always know that it's not appropriate to poke or touch or you know do other things so i would say yes um and it's really our job as administration to support them in maybe observing some of those behaviors but re-teaching in the moment as opposed to sending out of the classroom i think it'd be interesting to see that data how's this going to say can we get the data yes we have collected all the time we have a system called swiss where all of our office referral data is entered in and i know our assistant principals and principals do a great job of analyzing that on a
069very regular basis with their pbis teams i think at some point too it might be nice to see what the miners are that the five and six-year-olds are written up for 1800 is a lot yeah yeah and again i'll say that as a district we've and i will use dr king's word nationally not as just as a district nationally we've set up this expectation for our youngest learners and it's not always it hasn't been fair we've had a huge emphasis on academics but like i said the research is starting to show that you can push academics and push academics and push academics and if you're not addressing this other side of this emotional intelligence and the development of their social skills it's um very detrimental to them long term yeah you have some good balance
070of both so now we're trying to find a better balance any other questions so out of the bullets here we would just need on item d uh when to talk of purposeful play comes the creative curriculum which will provide some structure for the teachers in implementing the purposeful play so we're just thinking seeking approval on your uh for from the board uh to uh implement the creative curriculum all right does anybody have any further questions on creative curriculum no no can i please have a motion to approve the implementation of creative curriculum in our kindergarten program beginning with the 2021-2022 school year motion second enters and plus yet yes yes yes yes uh yes all right so next i'm gonna jump down to uh item f moody's rating update um you have exhibit 20 in
071exhibit 21. i won't spend a lot of time but we recently were upgraded to an a1 status for moody's on exhibit 21 you'll see it's kind of a little blurry but you'll see a history maybe it's blurring my glasses aren't off here we go you'll see a history of our ratings uh in 2000 um 2012 we in 13 we were a1 and then a2 is a step down in 1314 and then at 15 is where it drops pretty far down b double a3 and it stayed there uh we've gradually climbed out of we were most recently in 2019 we were b double a1 and this year they upgraded us to a1 which is a good upgrade so it really doesn't mean a whole lot in my mind because we're not going out to seek any
072bonds anytime soon but if we were to it's a lot better position for us any questions on that all right next i'm going to bring up matt mccully our technology director to talk about the three-year tech plan which we reviewed with the technology committee recently good evening everybody um so usually we do this yearly unfortunately last year when it was our time to do our tech updates well things things kind of ended for a little while there um in march so that's why there's a lot going on in the beginning of this memo where we talk about all the things we've done because it's the last two years all the upgrades and updates that we've done you know the thing that i want to emphasize and stress that i'm most proud of is our team
073has really started develop we now have two employees besides myself in the department and you know in the last few months things have been a lot more streamlined for us there's a lot less pressure because there's more people to kind of spread around with so it's been a huge help having alex and holly helping me out in the department you know a lot of we learned a lot of things this year with going from having 200 teachers or 200 staff members that we support to now having 2 000 people that we're supporting on a daily basis and not just in three buildings but you know in three different towns we're we've been spread out and that's been hard but because of that i think we've gotten a lot of good things to move forward with
074and we we have a lot of things that we're going to be presenting to you tonight and a lot of things that goals that we have pushing us forward moving forward for the next year we put a lot of our projects off this year because all of our focus was on trying to get the classrooms ready and the teachers ready and the students ready for all the remote learning that we've been doing so some of the things that we pushed off is putting cameras in the elementary and primary building that's an infrastructure thing that we've been wanting to do we're going to be updating all the teachers desktops this year the reason we're going that directions we feel like we were in an environment we had to do this again that's the area that if
075we had a solid ability to stream or one machine in the room that was able to stream that we would have put our teachers in a better better position for that um some other big projects that we're looking at is and i wanted to take the big projects moving forward not only is how can we help remote if we had to go remote again but how can we help those students and those teachers within the classroom as well so how can we find projects that will be dual based so one of those projects that we're looking at doing is putting in a microphone system within the classroom there's a lot of good research out that having a microphone system in the classroom not only helps engagement and increases engagement within the classroom but it's also
076something we can use for for streaming some other things we put off our big chromebook purchase just because there wasn't there weren't chromebooks to be purchased last summer so we are we're gonna be replacing 870 of our older chromebooks this year over the summer we already have about 350 in it's one of those things though it's a it's going to be gradually coming in over the summer just with all the supply chain and everything that's going on in the world and some other big projects we're looking at is our our phone system really is the last system that predates me um so we are looking to upgrade that so it's something that we have a better control of and we can give better support to our staff with so we're looking at doing a voice
077over ip uh i'm sure we're aware that every four four months or so there's some sort of phone outage due to some sort of whether it be a natural disaster outside or construction crew cutting our lines or just something that is kind of is out of our control with having the voice over ip we really haven't had any down time with our our comcast lines so moving over to the internet we think it's going to be a better better option for our staff you know and then we're looking at trying to get involved into some of the curriculum with the the elementary the primary in the middle school computer classes and trying to stream like that and look to see how we can continue to improve there as well as start to work with grant
078a little bit because i know i mean we've been told that sometimes our kids go over there and they're they're a step ahead just because of what we've been able to put in place here at the middle school so you know we want to support them to have an avenue for beyond a big hollow so a lot of these projects are put in for next year in part because we have been getting a lot of budget money recently um from all the different grants that are out there so we we did put as many as we could on the front end just because i think all these improvements will put us in a better position for the years to come you know we will continue over the next three years to constantly assess our network
079constantly assess the infrastructure and constantly assess the end user's experience as far as what devices they have in their hands it's always something that's always changing you know we can make make a three-year plan but come august there could be something new and and more exciting out there so we do have to keep keep that in mind um the last thing i do want to address is coming up is there's a new law that has been passed it's been out for about 18 months but july 1st is when it takes effect and it's called sopa student online there's privacy protection act um we did have to purchase some software there to to help us with this because what it basically entails is every product that we use that involves student data we have to make
080sure that we have a contract on file with that vendor that says they're one aware of this law and they're going to comply with this law we have to post that publicly so we begin we've begun that process of gathering all the information to put on a public database to share with the community we also have to if there's any data breach have a place where we we put that um you know if a company which we know happens all the time we hear in the news that a company has some sort of data breach and so many people's information got put out you know if that happens and it's our information we have to make sure that we're posting that and we have things in place to mitigate that so that is going to
081take up a lot of our next few months as we prepare for that um you know the biggest thing is getting those contracts and making sure that all of the all of the programs that we're using is are going to comply with that and that's it's going to have to take effect july 1st so those are those are the highlights of what we have coming up i'm happy to take anything i want to get question i want to just get some feedback on one item on on matt's updates on 21-22 most of all of that we have it's not a budget issue until we get to the cameras for prime elementary we did a big camera upgrade for middle school we have not done the camera upgrade for prime elementary which will be a it'll
082be a significant cost we put 90 to 000 in there and so we have not done that we can do that this summer if we uh but it's not it's not an emergency so that's what i'm want to get your feedback i guess it would be a it would be a fun 60 purchase the other the building grounds committee met and and it was in the minutes or in the notes here for the consent agenda the other big project we have to do this summer that really we we have to do is is one of those things that uh you just you hate to spend the money on it but we have to fix the concrete and curbs are pretty bad we got some a lot if you've driven around the parking lot and that's
083going to be a pricey item that we'll bring to you at the next board meeting we're going to do a we'll have a bid opening here soon and we'll present that to you so that's that's going to be a significant uh but then other than that this summer should be kind of quiet and i just haven't i haven't been able to really it's going to depend on like do we want to tap into fun 60 to pay for the camera upgrade now or do you want to wait uh it's not something that i guess i just want to get some feedback from the board is what you think we should do in that area if we waited when would you do it or recommend to do it well if we don't do it this summer
084we should do it next summer uh so you wait a whole year to do it then yeah because it's it's hard to do during the school year there's a lot of uh running wire and installing cameras all throughout the building so we have does does the plane include enhancing the coverage like it did here yes yes yeah right now i think we have um 24 total cameras between the two buildings indoors um the the plan i believe it was about 80 just because we didn't really we don't really have any coverage i mean we have coverage in front of the bathrooms coverage a little bit of coverage in the cafeteria we added some coverage into the gymnasium because we had outside groups using it so we did add six cameras when we did this project
085um two in the cafeterias and then um four in the two gyms um it's just it's an analog system right now that we are using what about the exterior the exterior um we did do the exterior when we did the the middle school exterior i believe that was over spring break we did last year okay yeah this is just internal then so the last piece of the project is the interior of the primary elementary yeah so for me i think it's if you don't spend the money now yeah yeah you don't want to be regretting this later that you didn't spend it that's something it could be more unfortunate it happens yeah for safety yeah okay so i think it's an important thing all right thank you we'll go ahead and start then we'll just
086start getting bids and we'll bring it back to you okay any other questions on the plan there i think the only question it's for future future switching to tablets or convertibles so you're thinking getting away from chromebooks and doing something else it's 2023 yeah you know i i myself have a kindergartner and a second grader so i'm getting a lot more of a perspective on the primary side of things my background prior to this was all high school so seeing my kids try to use the chromebooks at home you know one is great with it but i have a lefty and trying to teach her how to use the chromebook has been a challenge um and i can totally see how you know she might have benefited from having something that's strictly a tablet strictly
087a touch i also think that there's curriculum and the in the primary level seems to be geared more towards the tool being better at a tablet or or a convertible something that they can use uh where it's more the touching than the keyboard and the mouse so so that is something that's on the radar um i was just worried about like um you know kids fumble things whatever i was just thinking about maintenance wise you know right as a tablet yeah the chromebook it's a little safer kid you know doesn't matter yeah yeah oh yeah jobs are are always or it's always something we deal with on a daily basis with something coming in and physical but you know the the technology is getting better and stronger and more durable all right thank you thank
088you very much thank you man item h we already talked about dr pittman talked about summer school learning opportunities we'll be sending something out this week to parents so we're going to encourage again she said it was going to be free to parents and we're going to cover the cost through some of the uh the esser grant that's coming through for covet recovery so i could start a question did um do we have enough teachers volunteer for that yeah so far we've we've got offerings at every grade level okay so yeah um and we're willing to if we fill up classes like dr pittman said we're willing to open up for more perfect oh thank you i just want to say a shout out to them for especially after the year we've had so for
089them to volunteer i appreciate that very much absolutely i think that's a great thing thank you absolutely and that's it for my report kevin all right thank you anybody have any questions on the employment recommendations no no can i please have a motion to approve the march employment recommendations motion second laser heater yes yes yes yes yes all right resignations we accepted a resignation from jodie baum bus driver effective april 2nd we accepted a resignation from christina hagen as sixth and eighth grade girls basketball coach effective at the end of the school year we accepted a resignation from val reil sixth grade ela teacher effective may 28 2021. we accepted a resignation from christina marturano primary primary school social worker effective may 28 2021. does anybody have any questions on the employee requests on the
090monthly reports for the board the administrator meeting agendas nope there will be a special board meeting on wednesday april 28th 2021 at 6 00 pm uh the next regularly scheduled board meeting will take place on monday may 11 2020 with closed session beginning at 6 p.m before we exit the closed session i'd like to thank board member mazer and board member enters for their years of service on this school board you guys will be missed julia you were here when i got here i looked up to you and you've been nothing but helpful and a steady voice throughout your time on the board tiffany we've been friends since our kids were little and to see you go truly saddens my heart wish you nothing but the best and you know that will always be there
091for you so thank you guys [Music] all right can i please have a motion to exit into closed section for the employment employment compensation disciplines performance or dismissal of specific employees of of the public body or legal counsel for the public body including hearing testimony on a complaint lodge against the employee of the public body or against legal counsel for the public body to determine its validity five ilcs 120-2c-1 motion second enters in heater all in favor any oppose all right we exit into closed session we'll return in the open session when we're done probably your office yeah you