March 2024 Meeting of the D128 School Board with Audio Descriptions

001Fade to District 128 logo Lisa hessle signed up so um that list is right by that post that says graphic so if you do intend to speak for public comment and haven't had a chance to sign in yet I do encourage you to do that before our meeting starts um it is not a requirement for you to sign in in order to address the board we look forward to everybody that has come to share their comments um tonight we are going to start off with the Pledge of Allegiance so I invite everybody to stand for the pledge everyone stands for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all

002everyone returns to their seats Lisa Hessel roll call please pause for roll call Jim Batson Cara Benjamin here Don carmichel here Cara drumkey here Lisa Hessel here mides catwall sonal karney here Lisa Hessel okay we note five of our seven members present we do have a quorum um I'm going to review the agenda briefly so that everybody knows to what to expect um we are going to be starting off with a public hearing for a fund transfer after that we will have student recognition and then an invitation for public comment we will have a teacher Union report our student Schoolboard representative reports a review of foyer requests as well as good news then we will move into our consent vote agenda the consent agenda require includes items that are routinely approved by the board with

003a single motion that includes minutes destruction of closed session recording ings educational tour requests employment matters disposal of obsolete Capital Equipment bills payable and financial reports these items have gone through extensive board committee review and recommendation and documentation concerning these items has been provided to the board members as well as the public in advance to assure an extensive and thorough review items may be removed from the consent agenda at the request of any board member do we have any board members wishing to remove items from the consent agenda this evening no okay seeing none um we will move into items for Action we have um several items from our program personel committee as well as our facilities and finance committee that we will review individually uh then for information we will have a superintendence report

004uh we will share board comments and events uh we will not have an IB report tonight do we have a seedall report tonight uh yes we will have a seedall report and then we will review future agenda it items and then move to convene and Clos session to to discuss Collective negotiating matters under 5 cs120 2c2 then we will move to reconvene an open session uh we will not be taking any action after closed session this evening and then we will adjourn for the evening so if we could go ahead and start off with the public hearing um I'd like to declare the hearing open and uh move into any public comment regard star in the public hearing for fund transfer pause for the public Lisa hessle okay seeing none we are going to move

005on to the item for action and I'll turn it over to our business office to present Dan Stanley uh this action item will appear later in the agenda under the action so this is just our fiscal year 23 uh Transportation fund which is one of our several funds had a negative fund balance of about 241,000 and it's really just due to the timing of when our expenditures go out and when the all of our revenues come in and so in order to give us cushion I don't want us we shouldn't have the negative balance in there so we I'm recommending a transfer from a million dollars from Ed fund to to the transportation Fund in order to do that legally you have to have a hearing you have to no post a notice in the

006paper and the board is to take action on it so it's it's not quite as simple as you can just transfer like in a bank account there's the laws are pretty specific on how to do that Lisa Hessel okay great so if we had any questions um now would be the time for board members to ask them pause for questions we did review this in committee uh last week so seeing no questions I believe the next step is to it's an an action item in the action item later on it's an action item later yes okay great so um 7:05 I'm going to declare the hearing closed and we are going to move on to student recognition I believe I get to turn it over to Dr K Dr Tom kentes approaches the podium Dr

007Tom kentes all right I'm very excited to present both of these tonight um we're going to start with our Mighty LHS cheer team uh we have two outstanding athletes from our cheer program um who are being recognized as being all state in cheerleading and I know one of them is here so I'm gonna call up Nicole Smith and is Christian here is Christian Ritner here tonight he couldn't make it student approaches the podium to receive award more Spotlight for Nicole on over here so um despite my appearances I am not a cheer coach uh but I am a huge fan of this athlete right here Nicole has been a four-year Varsity member of our cheer team um and she's been one of our team leaders and captains uh they had a great season this year

008um doing a routine that was very complicated um your leadership was fundamental to that and um Nicole was selected by the ihsa as an Allstate cheerleader and next year will be cheering at Purdue University correct and as a member of the alii nation I will be cheering against Purdue but I will always be cheering for Nicole Smith congratulations students receive certificates and takes pictures with school board members for about the next seconds m d Dr Tom kentes uh Christian Ritner is our other athlete he is All State cheerleading as well um he is Nicole told me he's cheering tonight which is why he's not here uh he will be whoops Tom picks up some paper he dropped off the floor taking his talents to the University of Louisville next year cheer there um I've got

009a grudge against him because he was going to go to Minnesota and be a Golden Gopher but uh he chose Louisville so we're very excited for him as well um now uh we are GNA bring up and recognize our LHS wrestling team who took fourth in the State uh wrestling tournament and we have a gentleman who's new to District 128 um Mr Dale edgert and though I was a high school wrestler uh I stay far away from these guys right now so I'm gonna let Coach Edgar talk all about the team coach edgert approaches the podium so uh fourth is the the best our our team is our programs ever done we did get a fourth in 2008 that was 16 years ago I'm very proud of these guys we brought uh some of our

010uh senior starters uh that were were there we've got it was a 21-man team but we uh we brought the guys that did the most damage we have will Carney right here a regional champ 144 oryan Moran he's a sectional qualifier 132 Luke burto took six in the state Matt cubis took fourth in the state Owen mcgury took fourth in the state Charlie Clark was a sectional qualifier I'm Really Gonna Miss these guys we had seven senior starters um that is a very good number because you have to not just have seniors but you got to put them all in the right weight classes and the leadership we had it was just truly amazing season so thank you very [Applause] much students receive certificates and takes pictures with school board members for about the next

01130 seconds pause for Applause everyone returns to their seats Lisa Hessel it's always nice to start off with student recognition put the students uh especially the students who are so successful in the Forefront of our minds um so now we are going to move on uh before we move into to public comment I'd like to just welcome such a strong turnout of our community for tonight's board meeting we are truly fortunate to have a community that's dedicated to our schools and to our students for everyone's comfort and safety I'd like to remind everyone of our guidelines for public participation in board meetings you are welcome to address the board for up to three minutes during the public comment portion of the meeting once that concludes and we move into our agenda you are of course

012welcome to stay and observe following District policy regarding visitors to our buildings disruptive or disrespectful conduct is prohibited and we'd like to continue our long tradition of modeling Civic engagement and civility for our students and attendance d128 employs incredibly talented hardworking Educators who work diligently to ensure all students learn at high levels at the same time we acknowledge that there are some deficits in student achievement and expectations set by the Illinois State Board of Education that have prompted the placement initiatives we are planning as you know many conversations are taking place in our community and online regarding these placement initiatives that include heterogeneous classes EOS and the accelerated placement ACT first and foremost I want to address a major concern that has been circulating and clarify that we are not eliminating honors or AP class

013we will not eliminate honors or AP classes now or in the future that statement is on our website as well we recognize the value of these programs in challenging and nurturing our students academic growth we also recognize that all students deserve the benefit of experiencing a rigorous Academic Program these changes reinforce rigor for all students not dilute or diminish it the suggestion that we are dismantling the curriculum is false these placement initiatives have nothing to do with our curriculum it is simply not possible for us to provide transparency about something that doesn't exist I also want to acknowledge statements made about our teachers Readiness to move forward with these initiatives our outstanding teachers are already successfully meeting the needs of diverse learners in their classrooms we've already implemented additional support systems outside the classroom and

014provide dedicated time for professional collaboration through plc's and access to instructional coaches during our recent Institute days we offered opportunities for our staff to take a deeper dive into these initiatives the d128 university and summer curriculum projects will also provide additional robust support this summer the district will continue to track metrics and share them at public meetings as we support this work into the next few years we stand firm in our commitment to support our teachers and students alike however managing the day-to-day classroom procedures will continue to be the job of Department chairs and building leadership in collaboration with the district leadership team while it's tempting for our board to micromanage the detail of each classroom We Trust our teachers and course teams and will focus on setting Direction and holding the superintendent accountable for

015results momentary pause it's important to recognize that while we strive for excellence we're not alone in this Pursuit High achieving schools like our neighbors at Stevenson have already set the bar High by removing striving learner courses from their course offerings we now know and believe that all students deserve access to grade level instruction and that they are not well served by being segregated from their peers it is our responsibility as a school board to remain forward-thinking and proactive we refuse to settle for the status quo or allow our rankings to slip and our Focus remains steadfastly on what's best for student learning district 128 has a legacy of excellence and is heading toward a bright future as we work to complete our strategic plan and embrace our daring Mission I hope that we will all

016continue working together to ensure that our students receive the best possible education preparing them for success in their future endeavors around noon today the district shared a frequently asked questions document with our school Community thank you for all of your questions that you emailed and contributed on the Google form the FAQ can be found on our district 128 Facebook page and in the news section on the homepage of D1 128. Org the FAQ answers the questions we received from the community regarding the placement initiatives and we will continue to update the document so that answers can be shared for the benefit of the whole Community we are always open to ideas that will improve the success of our initiatives and we will continue to listen and keep Avenues of communication open with our stakeholders and

017with that I will open it up for public comment first on the list is Marty momentary pause Goran thank you camera turns to Podium Marty Goran approaches the podium good evening my name is Marty Goran both my husband and I were teachers in this district for a total of 72 years I was an English teacher I was an English teacher and I taught all four levels at LHS I served as president of the Teachers Association brought in the if to unionize the school was Union President helped write your contract and served on the negotiating committee for many years I have a long institutional memory with this District the relationship between this Administration and the faculty is not a normal one in 36 years no grievance ever made it to the board despite any differences that

018we had we were always able to work things out we never had to make statements at a board meeting or have a teacher present because the trust level was low teachers are now demoralized by seeing their legitimate concerns ignored or deliberately mischaracterized many of the best teachers have had enough and have told me they are starting to look elsewhere this district has now so many new initiatives going on teachers and parents can hardly keep track one of the initiatives that concerns is how many lower performing students have been moved up into honors while the act that predicated this is still being amended you say that honor students could be given additional work or that students should choose their own mode of assessment we're going to let students choose their own testing format this isn't going

019to work for AP that uses only two forms free response essays and multiple choice questions and much of honors is taught in the same way so that they are prepared for college level work the whole point of tracking is to group students of similar ability a large movement of students with c-level GPA into honors and AP dilutes the rigor difficulty and pacing of the class and it's not fair to the gifted students the superintendent plan does not preserve honors and AP in the ways that they are currently taught diluting the content will result in lower AP scores and this blame the accelerated placement act method of heterogeneous group break group grouping brings no benefit to the average honors or AP student according to research I also see the block scheduling is back on the table

020again two things stood out when we fought this battle 30 years ago teachers were told they had to cut their curriculum by onethird and there would be less instructional time I can't even imagine why you would want to consider this as someone who taught both honors and AP for a third of my career here I am concerned with seeing the rigor dissipate a whole generation of teachers spent their entire careers building this District into one that ranked fifth in state when I retired since then I've seen things that chip away at that rigor and demoralize The Faculty things like the elimination of honors classes like English Lit honors not because of enrollment but because the admin wanted to add another AP class in its place elimination of several high-end specialized courses for this next year

021the proposal to allow students to design their own tests that's minutes if you could finish your thoughts please no more zeros or penalties for work not handed in on time block scheduling riger does not appear does not disappear with one decision it is a death by a Thousand Cuts and the cuts have started this Board needs to go to both schools sit down with the teachers and actively listen to their [Applause] concerns Lisa Hessel next we have Dale Sherman Dale Sherman approaches the podium good evening and thank you for this platform teacher layoffs this is the inevitable result of dogat dogmatic and blind adherence to Dei principles which as d128 attempts to achieve them are immoral unethical and contrary to federal law that law has been on the books for 60 years specifically title six

022of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the fact that acting contrary to the law has been normalized in Academia lately does not make this action any more illegal with cult-like adherence to Dei the administration seems bound and determined to eradicate meritocracy eradicate rigor eradicate consequences and eradicate Excellence Success is Not finite but resources are d128 has squandered resources on massive administrative bloat how bloated if my research is accurate we have the largest staff of Administrators in Lake County these additional high-paying and utterly unnecessary administrative positions mean there is less money available for educators what's worse under the current regime d128 seems to only hire administrators with red flags all over the resumés who are specifically recommended against by interview committees and who either have minimal High School experience come from the worst performing districts

023or both d128 compounds the wasteful administrative bloat by by hiring expensive Consultants to work with unnecessary administrators the d128 sends out surveys that cost tens of thousands of dollars to justify report choices with alleged parent and student support those surveys are simply self-fulfilling prophecy parents have become so disgusted that many opt themselves out and they opt out their students the parents who are left to take the survey are a tiny sample of the recipients and they apparently trust the administration and do not hold it in the same contempt that the administration holds them all of this abusive and wasteful spending results in fewer critical resources for our students by far the most important of which is talented Educators we can afford less of them overall and cannot afford to keep the best ones we have

024we're told the reason for the reduction force of our teachers is declining enrollment why is enrollment down some of it is inevitably birth rates those have been steadily declining in Lake County since 2010 or before that but we knew that we expected it it's also because home buyers are voting with their feet H schooling and private schools both seem to be booming many no longer want what they perceive as a district in Decline it does not have to be that way though decline is a choice by a series of intentional steps a return to Excellence is a choice too if this board is bold enough to make it I leave the board tonight making three requests one please stop the proposed layoffs of the teachers vote no and do whatever you must to ensure administrative

025staff is cut before teachers are please don't cut one more class one more program or one more teacher until you significantly reduced the size of the administration and exhausted all other remedies butt cutting teacher staff two please stop the Blind and Lawless adherence to Dei principles to the extent they violate the law and do not Advance student interests demand that your administrative employees refocus on Excellence Merit achievement and returning d128 to its former greatness third and last please put a stop to heterogeneous classrooms block scheduling changes to traditional grading systems and pushing students in AP classes that they have not earned a spot in based on their academic results tracking and Merit have worked for decades the law absolutely does not require all the changes the administration intends to implement please don't force a misguided

026social experiment from a misguided Administration onto our stud and teachers that's three well over three minutes thank you they deserve better A lot better and it could be done if you're bold enough to act Lisa hessle next we have Amy Christian and Samantha Phillips are you it's together yes it's me okay um we just have a group there's a group that I represent community members and teachers who are here to stand together with Amy and finish any of her statement that she does Amy fishell is at the podium surrounded by fellow teachers hi my name is Amy fishell Christian and I'm here to address you today as both a staff member in d128 and a Community member you see with me other staff members who also play the role of community members staff whose kids

027will go do go or went to d128 Schools staff who attended d128 themselves and staff who live in the district this is home for so many of us this is my 14th year at VH I'm a graduate of LHS I'm a second generation educator in d128 I'm a parent and a taxpayer in the community and my three kids will be here in just a couple of years I have a lot of vested interest in d128 and I don't speak lightly tonight I speak out of love right now I'm feeling sad and I'm feeling frustrated parents ask me all the time about the high school I used to be excited to tell them about how special it is about the opportunities that their kids will have when they get here about how educators willingly leave districts

028where they have tenure like I did to come to d128 because they know it will be their home for the rest of their career right now I can't say these things exactly and it makes me really disappointed I want to address the certified Staffing plan the board is voting on tonight I know you may already have a plan for your boote but I'm asking you to vote no the plan includes a reduction in certified staff including a 10year teacher in her fifth year this plan includes a reduction in courses a reduction in course sections for our kids and it doesn't set us up for success to support the hundreds of diagonal Movers will have next year due to the APA these cuts are in the interest of fiscal responsibility I get the economic imperative I'm

029a taxpayer however I understand that d128 also has a responsibility to its daring right over there Mission I believe in this district and I believe we have the ability to face our enrollment decline in a daring way that does not mean a loss for our students opportunities last week Cara juny you said and I quoted this is the first time we're talking about a reduction of Staff what does this look like for our student body and their options are we giving our students less end quote I want to answer her directly and say that if this plan goes through then yes we will be giving our kids less these are cuts to our ability to develop graduates who are daring a mission that we've all voted on and care about during the board meeting last

030week we heard that 37 courses will not be offered for next year and that and I quote a lot of these classes are year-to year where we have one student sign up four students sign up and we just can't offer those that's just not the case this year and it's not the case in many instances many of the cuts are to classes where over 10 students signed up for example VH style Studio 10 kids were told no the course will not run VH AP music theory 11 kids were told no the course will not run VH social justice lit 11 kids were told no VH zero Fitness hour 12 kids were told no LHS computer science honors 13 kids were told no the course will not run VH stem Capstone 13 kids were told no

031VH Dance 3 13 kids were told no VH Advanced technical drawing honors 14 kids were told no the course will not run what's frustrating is that these are many of the classes that are getting cut these these are very special very Niche classes that you don't find at any public school yes they're small but they are the classes that give kids unique opportunities and access to multiple Pathways which is prioritizing our strategic plan that's three minutes I'm going to I'm thank you where' you leave off okay pretend I'm Amy I'm I have red hair I'm almost six feet tall and I'm gorgeous okay um one example is personal for Amy and that's American studies it's emblematic of the decision making by admin both building and District that leads to fewer opportunities for kids currently we

032have two sections at VH next year there will be one and Amy will no longer be teaching this class 59 kids requested the course that's more than we have enrolled in two sections right now nine kids were told no they cannot take the class because there will only be one section those kids are all missing out on the opportunity to do daring cross-curricular learning that breaks the mold of traditional American lit and American history classes 50 kids is the administrated creative Optimum for this class so 50 kids will be enrolled together in a giant class next year if anyone were to ask the teachers about this they'd explain why this plan is suboptimal for learning the English and history teachers will have to separate essentially recreating the traditional model of isolated English and history classes

033this isn't in line with our daring Mission we should be fighting harder to hang on to our staff truly we are going to need all of the support we can get next year when the APA is in place hundreds of students will be moving into honors and AP classes for the first time personally we think that it is very exciting that more kids than ever will have access to rigorous college level courses let's be daring and ensure that more access to rigorous courses comes along with more access to resources right now the plans to support the vast jump and diagonal movers is nebulous and has left my colleagues and I with more questions than clear answers even the FAQ sheet that was sent today did not include any answers about outof class support for all

034groups of diagonal Movers be daring and meet the needs of all our diagonal movers rather than hiring non-certified hourly employees to staff the lab for nth graders only why aren't we retaining classified AP certified teachers who know our curriculum and standards to staff the lit lab perhaps there are other places where d128 should consider its fiscal responsibility there's one place that's especially top of- mind for many of us the district office has created new six figure salary district office positions within the last four years research says that the factor with the highest impact on student a aent is high impact learning not more District administrators to me this feels like the place to address D1 128's fiscal irresponsibility and to realign with our mission let's be daring in a way that doesn't create losses for

035our kids opportunities due to Lost classes lost sections and lost teachers I believe in this board I believe in this district and I believe it's possible board members please vote no on the certified Staffing plan presented to you tonight thank you for [Applause] listening Lisa Hessel next up we have Gwen Jansen Gwen Jansen approaches the podium hi good evening and thank you all for your service to District 128 um the community the staff the students um I'm here tonight to share my concerns about the direction of the district and the well-being of our students and staff I have a junior and an incoming freshman at bhhs and we've lived in Vernon Hills for more than 20 years our amazing and high regarded District appears now to be at a Crossroads and I am deeply concerned

036we are about to go down the wrong path in preparing to speak tonight I had several teachers from both high schools reach out to me I won't betray what they shared except to say that their frustration confusion and despair was palpable while I'm not here to debate the merits or challenges of any of the initiatives d128 is considering instituting I will say that I believe it is folly to make so many changes in such short order we currently have a shifting and inconsistent grading policy that neither teachers nor parents and students understand evaluation and assessment practices are changing at the very same time we're capturing more kids into honors and AP than ever before thanks to the APA and the EOS we don't have any way to measure the successes or failures of these initiatives

037because of the grading and assessment changes and even more frighteningly we have virtually no way to support these students thanks to our embarrassing lack of MTS s even tier one supports aren't fully available and reliable at vhhs specifically because we can't keep the arc staffed struggling students already have nowhere to turn as students like my kids are being automatically recommended for honors and AP courses they're being told that they should expect not to be able to exit the course if it ends up being too demanding for them obviously this comes from an understandable scheduling and sectioning roadblock but the shot is that kids will be stuck in the deep end with very little support and no Escape I can't even wrap my mind around the level of stress this will cause teachers students and parents

038rolling out so many changes in such short order will mean we can't collect meaningful feedback to evaluate the metrics and the successes and challenges of these implemented initiatives we can't Implement anything with Fidelity and importantly we're adding to the climate of chaos and stress that our teachers and students are already feeling every single day in our buildings as passionate as any of us may be about any or all of these changes and many of you here know how passionate I am about specifically the grading policy with equity and reform I implore you to hit the breakes before we hit a breaking point we cannot afford to lose or fail to attract quality Educators and administrators and we can't play fast and loose with our kids education thank you [Applause] next is Julie landra Julie landra

039approaches the podium I have mine on my phone my name is Julie langra and I'm an incoming parent of a ninth grader I've debated what to address tonight as we only have three minutes to talk um so I want to be brief briefly address two issues first the curriculum changes I'm very concerned about how the administrators are making changes um when it was clearly recommended by our district from a consulting firm that the board hired to not make the changes my next concern is how is it that the incoming ninth grade parents have yet to be contacted in regards to these sweeping changes when their children will be the first to be affected by them I have not received an email from the district about the changes I received emails about registering my daughter signing

040up for class classes and the advanced placement but there has been no other information I have gotten all of the district emails either through friends through Facebook or just from relying on others I've been watching the board meetings I've gone back and watched all the information and to try to to try to learn all the information that I can about how my daughter's curriculum will change what a disappointing start to the beginning of what was supposed to be a fun and exciting time for my daughter um and for our family um who is now worried about whether or not she'll have classes with enough rigor to get her to college or whether or not she'll be challenged enough in high school I'm very concerned having family members who have also needed more support dur with

041learning disabilities and due to other learning needs that you're pushing kids who need more support into classrooms with way less support um here tonight you will talk about also letting teachers and staff go how can we let teachers go when they actually need what they actually need is more support not less support this brings me to my second area of concern which is our school budget how are we in a position where we need to financially let staff go have we looked at every possible option to keep these valuable teachers and staff um employed the teachers have come to the board very concerned about this but I do not feel their concerns are being hoarded by our board or our Administration the school board is the voice of our community and I hope you use

042your position to address the concerns that the community and members have and that are so desperately trying to convey to you thank [Applause] you next is Amy France Amy France approaches the podium hi good evening thanks for this opportunity um I come here my name is Amy France I have two College children who went through LHS and a current Junior I'm a language arts teacher with an lbs1 a special education license and um I'm started out as a classroom teacher and moved into co- teing I now work uh more as a private lbs1 with students in d128 and other neighboring districts obviously the idea of a fully inclusive classroom is what I have strived for and that's what I think all of us on the board and all of us in this community would like

043to see happen however um I have some concerns about some of the things I saw in the FAQ and some of the answers that I've received about some of the changes that are coming first the change to what the district is calling heterogeneous classrooms the main reason that has been given for the current shift to heterogeneous classrooms is to be in compliance with what is called the 7030 rule this mandate came about to protect special education students that is 10% of our population according to the school report card they have the lowest Proficiency in math and Ela scores other than one other subgroup included in the Eos plan the 7030 mandate states that the amount of IEP students in all general education classes needs to be limited to 30% not just in the team taught

044this is not a viable solution to answer this problem and to get us into compliance with this rule adding other subgroups that we have been doing through this EOS plan is not solving this problem it's only further complicating it so my question to you guys is how are we going to get these students our most vulnerable students where they need to be just implementing that in the ninth grade this year is not going to solve this problem the second challenge that I see is that our pandemic grading and assessment practices which are still in place are not consistent and they're not Equitable we have academic gaps across all of our tracks Honors College Prep and AP as is evidenced by our proficiency scores which are still about 10% lower across the district than they were

045pre pandemic there are many inconsistencies around late work retakes grading most of my students that I work with cannot even explain what all the policies are in their classes from my observation we are not adequately preparing students for college with this consistency more kids with all these di diagonal movements are going to need reteaching and they're going to need retesting that's 200 kids our teachers back here are already spending so much of their time grading late work reteaching retesting how are we planning to add these additional layers of support we also don't have very available mtss data that's going to help Drive these these decisions and determine who does need those extra layers of support neighboring District cohesive policy on grading and assessments this keeps our data fair and normed we're going to need this

046data to evaluate evaluate all these programmatic changes so can we look to our Administration to find a solution to put a consistent and cohesive practice in place before we make all these programmatic changes Amy that's past three minutes if you could it up thank you there are many details to synthesize and I really appreciate as a former board member myself I know how difficult this is and I realize the train has left the station but let's try to be fluid and make sure we're considering all aspects of this plan thank you next is Michael Shank Michael Shank approaches the podium at least I'm going to try to set my own timer here just so keep myself on track so uh first before I actually do start I want to commend everybody out here as a

047business as a community leader as a village trustee it's wonderful to see our our teachers our community our board welcoming giving a welcoming area for people to kind of speak their minds and to see the teachers that were up here going in front of their employer that's a tough thing to do I am sure so I applaud all of you guys um you guys are on the front lines every day so I thank you all for that um it's really hard to follow up on a lot of these comments I'm actually going to talk about Finance I'd like to ask so a while ago somebody told me that hey take a look at the district finances I'm like why we're 172% adequately funded according to the uh evidence funding model and what does that mean

048that means we're 72% overfunded according to is an example District 873 is 82% underfunded okay okay yes we had a referendum five years ago and yes did I leave that lead that referendum one of the people yes along with Julie langra and a whole bunch of other people so I understand that but why are we so overfunded but now we're making teacher cuts so I started taking a look at things and I I'm a I'm a numbers guy because I'm a business owner and I see all the financial documents that are online support services for example have gone from 21 million to 27 million in three years that's a lot instruction Services now granted you know the instruction is the lifeblood of our community in in the district that has also increased revenues have also

049increased but why are we overspending I sometimes feel that when I watch board meetings mostly online these days I feel like the questions you know I've been I'm in your shoes with the village I'm not with the school but I'm with I get it I implore you all to ask the hard questions why are we here how did we get here that we have to start laying teachers off there are there is a lot of administration and wondering like well if you were laying teachers shouldn't we also lay off some Administration nobody wants to lay off anybody in my mind personally I think we can figure it out at 172% adequate adequate funding model so I just implore you all please please ask the tough questions Miss drumkey I think you were asking some nice

050questions tough questions when they were talking about um at the last committee meeting a week AG go because now you guys are going to be asking the community to fund a referendum for Debt Service extension bonds which is like a line of credit momentary pause how are you expecting us the taxpayer to approve that and to be levied more on our taxes I think that's a tough tough sell you have to do something on your part to show fiscal responsibility that we're working hard this is our last option I know you guys put a $60 million Capital Improvement projects which was out of out of uh reserves which was great which I thought was so how did how did we get there for years we were adding more and more to to the general fund

051reserves if I'm correct that's three minutes okay I'll just just wrap it up okay so um I want to make sure that you guys always ask those hard questions dig deep Don Mr Carley you're nodding your head on the reserves you get it we're so far away from that today and I don't know why last thing walking through the Libertyville cafeteria last week I get it this like the ceiling looks like it wants to fall down we have a lot of capital Improvement project I get it but we have to start taking responsibility for our financial decisions thank you very much thank you next is mar Navaro Marnie Navaro approaches the podium good evening my name is Marne Navaro I'm aoud District 70 and District 128 graduate and mother of a gifted District 70 fifth

052grader I stand before you here tonight as a deeply concerned parent and taxpayer the historically High performing District 128 that has for decades been a destination District attracting the most talented Educators some of whom like Marty Goran taught me AP Literature and parents like me as a single mother moving to this District solely for the schools is on the precipice of being destroyed past the point of recognition two short weeks ago I first learned of the prospect of heterogeneo classrooms and was deeply concerned about the potential impact on my daughter and the many Advanced gifted incoming feeder school students thus began my crash course in what has happened to District 128 under superintendent Herman's now three-year tender R tenure rendering it nearly unrecognizable and it is about to get a lot worse whereas I was

053taught Shakespeare students are being taught Harry Potter which my daughter read in third grade standardized test scores are declining equidistant grading where there are no zeros unlimited redus group grading leaves our students unprepared for the rigors and reality of college and Beyond there are numerous converging broad sweeping initiatives EOS heterogeneous classrooms AP initiative equidistant grading that have been in the works snuck under the radar for the past two plus years with zero transparency to the parents in the community up until last week There's been no communication to the parents presumably in response to our sitdown with with superintendent Herman and the many questions some many of which are still unanswered the administration finally got around to sending an email last week but conveniently didn't bother to even send it to the incoming freshman who will

054be the first canaries down the proverbial Min shaft beginning in a a few short months contrary to the claim the teachers are not ready for what is on the immediate Horizon they are overwhelmed their expertise and valid concerns ignored District 128 has tripled the number of Administrators in the last 12 years creating four new six-figure District level administrative positions in the past three years at significant cost to taxpayers yet numerous of the hires are not the most qualified or competent candidates even with our topheavy administrative bloat District 128 is expending significant money on outside Consultants hemorrhaging taxpayer dollars all this while simultaneously firing FTE superintendent Herman has a documented history of bouncing from District to District after a few years with contentious relationships with unions this is consistent with the reported experience of ignoring teachers

055surrounding herself with external hires who won't challenge her perspective I and others have not gotten straight answers to straight questions including the data underlying these converging initiatives why they are right for district 128 and how success or failure will be measured instead we have been met with deflection and circle talk we've now heard that honors will continue to exist but what does that mean will it be a year-long of honors level instruction with the same rigor curricul in teaching or will it later be blended into heterogeneous classrooms with independent study for honors credit that's a big distinction superintendent Herman's chosen architect of overhauling of District 128 three minutes if you could wrap it up please yes yet last week he was unable to point us to specific examples in similar District board members it is

056not too late to tap the breaks parents wake up we are at a Crossroads the future of your children's education the strength of our school district and its curriculum and our parents our students College and Career Readiness and your property values are at stake thank [Applause] you next next is Kate ketov pause for the public Lisa Hessel you don't want to address the board okay does anybody else want to address the board at this time John Hutzel approaches the podium good evening John Hutzel Vernon Hills I've been coming here for almost two years now momentary pause if I'm not mistaken I think I've heard the same thing from the teachers students student councel parents you're overwhelming them your initiatives are going a little reckless people can't adapt they don't have the time two years now

057you all double down don't make change just don't pivot don't be flexible you just Ram it in and that's what you're doing I also find it interesting that there was a grievance filed against Miss Herman when she was at Palo Alto as a principal where she went against the Union contract she did the same thing this fall with the calendar saying she had the support of the teachers union and they empathetically in the next board meeting said that was not the case it wasn't in their contract so now we have a pattern and also I wanted to point out four jobs in the last seven years before coming here how do we know she's going to be here in another year after all this is done also like to know the other architect of a

058lot of this Mr VN comes from two high schools with some of the lowest proficiency rates and ranked in the bottom of the state while he was principal there and that's who you have being the architect of these three new three four new educational platforms you're putting in I'd like to know how the credal ials there supported that so what I recommend that this school board teachers parents in this community make sure that we understand clearly what's trying to be accomplished here and we're not certain that that's been clear to anybody because there hasn't been a lot of transparency other districts who have implemented some of these things have done them one at a time and they have uh platforms on their websites that are very clear and informative yet you guys have been hiding

059it in the weeds it's not fair to the community it's not fair to the students and you're going to degrade the education you're going to lose some teachers you're going to lose families in this community so your enrollment is going to go down more think about what you're doing here you really need to understand who's driving the car and that car is heading for a wreck and we've heard this now for two years your overwhelming Community stop it thank you would anybody else like to address the board pause for the public Yan landra approaches the podium hi my name is Yan landra I wasn't planning to speak and it's sad that not all the board members are here tonight but um I just want to have the board members remember that you work for us

060and you could tell by all the people who are here today that they're very concerned and you need to make to make sure that this is the right steps that you're taking and in the right order and are we going too fast and that's your job and please represent us we're here telling you that we're not happy and we would like you to do something about it thank you thank you would anybody else like to address the board pause for the public okay we are going to move on to our teachers union report Katie Boger approaches the podium good evening my name is Katie Bacher I'm a science teacher and instructional coach at LHS I'm also the LHS building rep for the d128 Federation of teachers tonight our Union is here to express our grave

061concerns regarding the proposed reductions in full-time equivalent positions within our school district and the profound impacts these reductions will have on our students as Representatives the dedication as representatives of the dedicated professionals who serve d128 students every day we cannot overstate the severity of this situation last Monday Paul carstead spoke to the program and Personnel committee about the district's plan to reduce FTE at that meeting Administration noted that there was only a 1% degree decrease in our FTE our Union would like to clarify that that 1% reduction in FTE sounds very low because it's based on the entire certified staff including non-classroom Educators when the reduction is calculated by General classroom teachers only the school board is being asked to cut 5% of our classroom teachers the proposed reductions in FTE will hit General classroom

062teachers the hardest and also that is where will be felt most by our students this will have widespread and deeply felt impact the board is being asked to cut 3.1 FTE this will be the first time since 2018 that a 10e teacher has been reduced to part-time additionally teachers are being shuffled around and given teaching assignments for next year in different departments that are not in their area of expertise veteran teachers are being asked to commute and many teachers will have brand new preps now to be clear we believe in our teachers and we know that if you're certified in something you can teach it we also know that our members will go above and beyond to deliver the best possible education to our students but the reallocation of teacher assignments is happening at a

063much higher rate this year is it fair to our students that in a year of Rapid change and potentially an increased level of academic support required that we will have more teachers than ever teaching new curriculum in addition to this we would also like to emphasize that it is the course requests not necessarily enrollment of students that determines class sizes the 5% decrease in classroom teachers and a course request decrease of 1.7% do not match we are concerned that our class sizes will only continue to rise optimums are determined by our a appendix F in our negotiated teacher contract this school year we are seeing 11 to 12% classrooms above Optimum class size our district average average previously was about 6.5% classes above the optimum class size since the 2014 2015 school year if you

064decrease teachers more than your course requests decrease you can expect to be well above that average again we want to continually advocate for what research consistently shows us smaller class sizes and adequate support staff are critical factors in Student Success by reducing FTE position positions we are compromising the quality of Education our students receive and jeopardizing their future prospects additionally during Monday's discussion board member Cara Benjamin asked if there are any Trends in classes being over the optimum we were frustrated to hear the administration ation say that these overages were seen across the board this is untrue we came to the we came with data to the January 18th Labor Management committee and we shared that our college prep and honors level courses were trending at a much higher rate of being over Optimum than

065other levels we also shared that math and English departments across the district had been hit harder with classes over Optimum and again at a higher rate in our College PR and our honors level courses than anywhere else we also brought this data to the January January 30th board meeting in order to inform the school board to avoid the difficulties we are discussing today we came to both the administration and the school board in an effort to address a problem and it feels like our concerns are being dismissed last Monday board member Cara jumy asked in regards to the proposed FTE Cuts what's being eliminated what does it look like for the student body we don't have the big picture yet as the Administration has yet to share any of that data for the 2425 school

066year but what from but from the information that we have gathered we have answers that look like this Briant Kelly reported that student requests to take 37 courses and administration decided not to run those some of which had as many as 14 students who signed up for them French one is not running next year at laj students who are not able to enroll in French in their middle school can never take French and do not have equal access to upper level French classes at d128 nine students at vhhs were turned down to take the class called American studies next year and the remaining 50 students who requested this popular English social studies double class will be in one section with two teachers one AP AP English teacher was told that his section will have 30

067students next year at laj there are only two sections for Autotech 2 with 44 students in a space meant to hold 20 students per class at vhhs next year AP music theory will not run computer science honors is not running next year at LHS either this is a prerequisite to our AP Computer Science classes so if this doesn't run it puts the entire program at risk at vhhs 13 students ready for the stem Capstone classes will not have a class 13 vhhs dancers will not be able to pursue dance three there are only a few these are only a few examples that have been discovered and along with staff reductions this is all undoubtedly led to more courses being over their Optimum reduction in individualized attention and diminished access to essential resources and support services

068for our students we ask the board to reconsider its acceptance of the proposed Staffing plan and to explore alternative solutions to address budgetary challenges our students deserve better than diminishing staff plan and it's incumbent upon us to prioritize their needs above all else we urge the board to listen to teacher voice to find Creative Solutions to preserve the Integrity of our Blue Ribbon Schools and ensure that every student has equal access to a high quality education [Applause] Lisa Hessel like to turn it over now to our student School Board representatives for their reports Molly Neri hi um I'm speaking on behalf of Raya tonight uh she's currently breaking her fast for the holy mon of Ramadan so she apologizes for not being able to make it this past Saturday Vernon Hills High School invited us

069right here to celebrate the annual best buddies prom hundreds of students attended from Libertyville mundeline greylake Central and Lake zich I was very lucky to attend this event because we worked very hard on the best buddies executive board to promote it and get as many students to come as possible students danced took pictures at the photo booth watch a magician had a delicious pasta dinner and showed off their dance moves overall it was a really fun experience in everyone enjoyed their time celebrating in an organized and flexible environment for student disabilities recently the student council executive board visited our prom venue for this year it will be at the Lincolnshire Marriott visiting the venue allows stuco to plan out where different aspects of the dance will be and to create a floor plan of the

070dance ahead of time senior Bridget Graham said i' like tasting all of the food options and figuring out what our prom menu will be Graham also added I definitely think this venue is way better than last year's in terms of distance relative to home driving really takes away from the event in my opinion so being able to get there quickly and get back to LHS quickly is awesome I also love The Pavilion at the linol Shire Marriott which The Stonegate did not have last year stuko has not yet decided on themes but they are currently working on that momentary pause back to me on Tuesday March 12th LHS had their eighth grade activities night the night kicked off with a presentation in the auditorium showing the vast extracurricular opportunity students could participate in high school

071then the kids were released into the gym where they interacted with members of the many sports and clubs offered head of the new club young entrepreneurs young investors Oliver Braun shared why he was grateful for the opportunity it's a good way for incoming freshmen to see all of the different interests supported by the high school and get in contact with yay at the start of the year so they know when meetings are right away one side of the gym was lined with all kinds of clubs including yay while the other side held our Sports on the sports side of the gym Junior quinland Hunter tossed around a water polo ball while T talking to Future girls water polo players she thought the night was a perfect as a warm welcome for the girls to see

072coaches and talk to players that way if they decide to play they will see familiar faces for our preseason events overall the night was successful in boosting eighth graders excitement and involvement for when they're officially wild cats momentary pause recently groups of students have been asked to be part of the interview process for different positions at LHS students served on the Wildcat committee for the day and heard candidates response to various questions as well as sort of a mock staff meeting presentation that was done by each candidate this was an amazing experience as allowed students to give input and be a part of a decision that would directly impact other students in the school we were able to give a different perspective on the most important qualities these candidates had to offer and also learned

073what employers look for in interviews as this will be beneficial to us in our future career plans I'm very grateful I got to partake in this opportunity and I'm excited that students will continue to be included in these important decisions including filling the freshly open role of principal Lou Perry good evening last week our LHS boys varsity baseball team started off their season in a home opener against Crystal Lake Central the boys had a strong performance with line drive hits out in the field to great offensive pitching the game ended in six Innings with a win for the wild cats taking 12 runs and Crystal Lake Central getting two senior Varsity member Ryan Lang said our success has been attributed to hard work and having each other's back if we keep this mentality we'll go

074far in the playoffs their next game is this week Tuesday at home against Glen Brook South and they will also be partaking in their annual tournament in Arizona over spring break sticking to sports The Varsity the bo Varsity water polo team has had a great season so far with eight wins and three losses their last few weekend tournaments have been a great show of their strength as a team at the Buffalo Grove tournament LHS took place uh first place a first time in LHS history of winning that specific tournament and this past weekend they participated in the mundeline tournament and in the end they took fourth senior and one of the varsity captains Sam raisin said so far the water polo season has been a great um and lots of fun we've bonded together as

075a team very well and improved our communication schools and we're looking forward to a fun and successful rest of our season their next game is against our Vernon Hills cougars here right here on Wednesday at Vernon Hills this past weekend as well debate participated in their state tournament held at ISU Libertyville brought four varsity teams to the tournament and all were for the public forum Debaters four groups worked together to create cases with different pro- and con perspectives as well as different evidence and rebuttal they started preparation in February and March and practice mock debates to prepare for their evidence after six rounds on Friday Alex Clark and Cal cigar Advanced forward to the championship round these advancing advancing teams beat the number three seated team Stevenson a big upset as Libertyville was only seated

076at 14th Libertyville added to their quarterfinals but sadly fell to hensdale Central Senior Alex Clark one of the varsity members said it was a great time to close my debate career I was super proud of the hard work we put in as a team and bonding we did this past year especially this weekend it was a great experience together as a team as well this weekend LHS mock trial also went to State and had a very strong finish in their tournament thank you Maya raval our sports teams have had quite the start this month our unified basketball team clinched a state championship Victory so congratulations to them our girlss Batman team is returning with the intent to have yet another successful season with making a deep run to the state finals once again after completing

077her sophomore year in the state championships and battling hard but finishing in eighth place Junior naha Carney is excited for another opportunity to bring home the gold senior Kyle monib bosam is starting her last go around with the badminton team and she says I'm so excited for the rest of us rest of the season this year I'm looking forward to seeing what the rest of the season carries for us and we are all hopeful for a successful postseason we are all rooting for them and their success this year our girls track team just wrapped up their indoor season with the conference Championship Varsity relay took second place and for the fielders senior lurel Han took first place on P Vault and Senor senior Katie fav taking third in shop put Senior Emma frano is enjoying

078her last year as a first-time track athlete and says I've had a lot of fun with my teammates and I'm looking forward to taking our success to to the outdoor season our boys track team also just completed their indoor season with a fourth place finish in the CSL Championship senior Campbell woard Junior Brady kets freshman Bryant Lester and Senior Charlie Blackmer all took first in the 4 by eight senior Shan kollo also took first in the 200 meter dash on our club side of things our Science Olympiad did a clean sweep taking first and qualifying for the state competition in arbana Champagne senior Olivia Graham has been a m M of the team for 2 years and says winning regionals was genuinely so special seeing all of our efforts come to fruition and knowing that

079our practices paid off is such a great feeling we are all going to continue our hard work and look forward to seeing what we can do at the state level our math team also had some victories the past couple of weeks with the first place victory in the sexual meet and are excited about competing at the state meet in arbana as well Maya passes the microphone to RI RI sub romenian this month bhhs saw a lot happening in the fine arts department firstly on March 8th students performed in the inclusive Fine Arts show during 8th period and after school both times there was a packed audience in awe of the amazing show that was put on every year we get to see a beautiful performance put together and this year was no different this year's

080show was titled the cougar Quest a hunt through the habitats where performers brought us along on their journey to find treasure braving Through the Jungle ocean and Arctic throughout the show there were enthusiastic dances to some familiar favorite songs songs from The Lion King to Happy Feet we look forward to seeing the Epic show that they create next year also as we approach the end of the school year in the fine arts department are concerts with senior solos which kicked off with the March concerts every year seniors participate in a concerto competition and The Talented winners performed their solo during the Fine Arts concerts on March 13th senior Kaye Kim performed Edward Lo's Symphony ESP bangol beautifully showing the sheer Talent the VHS music department holds Kaylee says I've always been intrigued by the orchestral

081part of L's Symphony esang Nole but never had the chance to actually play the piece with an orchestra so I was really excited to relearn this piece given the opportunity through the senior concerto competition if you missed the LA amazing last concert in Solo don't worry there are two more senior soloist concerts left this year flautist Karen Skai is preparing to perform on April 30th Griff's poem preparing for the May 14th orchestra concert is Noah Kim though he usually plays the violin at school he will be playing the piano for a solo performing on Dante s Tano sa son's piano Certo number two in G minor movement one momentary pause finally our academic Resource Center continues to hold their sat boot camp every Wednesday led by student leaders each week there is a session held

082where specifically Juniors can learn and practice more with the SAT one of the biggest things the arc has had to navigate is how to help students prepare for the new digital sat on the arc exec board senior Amy Bia described this experience as the arc sat Booth Camp is most definitely a collective effort by the executive board and other peer tutors with some members focusing on marketing some on one-on-one tutoring and and still others leading large guided sessions the SAT boot camp aims to give those taking the SAT confidence and strategy this year with the new digital sat being released by the College Board the SAT boot camp has become more focused on understanding the differences between the digital and paper sat as well as putting General Strate strategies and recommended times per question to

083use by doing practice problems the remaining sat boot camp sessions will focus on math and as we inch closer to the April sat the arc will continue to urge students to drop by on Wednesday mornings for a hop cup of hot chocolate and some SAT practice RI passes the microphone to P pure Aurora March 4th through the 9th consisted of recognition for school social workers the school Social Work Association of America is a dedicated organization seeking to empower social School social workers and promote the profession of school Social Work leading to a special shout out for our social workers some of which are here right now Karen Clark Amy Dylan Josie DeMarco Doug duster Jessica Perez Liz Peterson Kelly Garrison momentary pause this month 76 students who are enrolled in one of our business classes

084introduction to business entrepreneurship marketing or sports and entertainment marketing attended a field trip to Top Golf there students got to play top golf games with their classmates and were offered lunch Not only was this a fun field trip but educational as well as students question the operation operations manager and event coordinator to understand how top golf runs its day-to-day operations and how it generates Revenue that's different from their other physical locations momentary pause last week BHS students completed a five essential Illinois state survey that allowed students to make their voices heard and helped assign a summative designation score to our school with participation being shown on our school state report card 95% of VHS students completed the survey this data will allow our school to create Improvement plans and allocate resources to help increase student

085learning and outcomes additionally this month our career Resource Center arranged speaker sessions within architect Builder contractor realator emergency room doctor Med dental assistant massage therapist lawyer VP of a major company and aerospace engineer to provide students with greater insight into these careers and how to pursue them one staff member describ these as fun and interactive sessions that allowed students to to ask questions and interact with the guest speakers after talking to numerous students who stopped by some of whom were eel and were provided with awesome Russ Russian translators many found it insightful and entertaining as some of the guest speakers got into the industry unintentionally lastly our school safety officer Dan me was honored at the March 10th Chicago Wolves game as Hometown hero and was nominated by a mentor that he personally looks up

086to faran Tony at school he's an adviser of the law enforcement clubs and ensures campus safety as an adviser he brings in special guest speakers that have different backgrounds in law enforcement such as judges canine units and forensic accountants he's even hosting self-defense classes this Tuesday and Thursday after speaking with him he said that he's grateful for helping with the best buddies Proms and he will pursue a career in special education after retirement in all officer me has expressed that he's glad to be a B to create a place for students to belong Thank you Lisa hessle thank you very much did anyone have any questions for the student School Board reps about their reports pause for questions oh okay thank you very much uh moving on next is our foyer requests Dr Denise Herman

087good evening we received four fouryear requests and they were fulfilled since the last board meeting and then following the fouryear requests we also have our good news for the month of March um as the students indicated our Special Olympics unified basketball team won the state championship and I want to note that the team members are Chase Miller zavi granados Ben Peterson Marco pastar Alex Perez Guzman Hazel Morales Noah hu Brendan Larsson Devin razek arav Seth shiff Zack Henderson Jack waser Connor Brockway and Parker Nal in addition Debbie beagle coach of the state unified basketball champs has been selected as Illinois basketball coaches association unified basketball coach of the year she will be honored at a luncheon in May at ISU next the Libertyville High School academic daath decathalon team finished fth in state um which

088was held on March 2nd at the University of Illinois champagne campus the 23 20 2023 team members were Jessica hedin Jillian Thompson Sarah Abraham Elise juny Nicholas Reeves Alexandra gomberg Michaela Boon Quinn Eisenberg the team is coached by science teacher Mark buing and finally the Vernon Hills Science Olympiad team earned first place at the McKenry County regionals and qualified for the state competition at you University of Illinois champagne the team is coached by Nikki Collins and that is the end of our good news report Lisa Hessel thank you for sharing that indeed good news uh we are moving on to our consent agenda uh and we are looking for a motion to approve the consent vote agenda as presented Don carmichel carmichel so moved son all K Carney K Carney second thank you any discussion

089pause for discussion okay roll call please Benjamin hi car Michael hi drumkey i hessle i k Carney I the consent agenda passes moving on to items for Action I will turn it over to P&P chair Don carmichel to take us through the items that came out of committee Don carmichel okay the first thing up item a is the 2425 ihsa membership renewal this is something that we do annually to become a part of the ihsa uh Brian if you could take us through it sure um again this is as Don said this is our membership yearly for the ihsa for our Athletics and our activities um for Libertyville and Vernon Hills please note there are no dues to the Illinois High School Association but we do need to renew that we will be participating for

090the 24 25 school year and that no dues is that like a long-term thing or because we Paid Dues for years um we have not paid dues momentary pause since I was ad so probably over 17 years all right so that's normal now it's just so are there any questions pause for discussion and questions no discussion okay roll call Don carel we got oh I'm sorry I have to have a motion first uh I would like a motion to approve the 2425 ihsa membership for LHS and vhhs H moved Benjamin second roll call pause for roll call carmichel I drumkey hi hle i k Carney I Benjamin I don carmichel okay motion passes uh we'll go on to the Ombudsman alternative education services agreement uh again I will pass it over to Bryant so our

091budsman um their campus and while Keegan provides a off-campus program for um um some of our students um and we have to make a commitment to our budsman so that they can make their um um Staffing for the following year so we are um committing to two students we have two students there this year we are committing to two students which gives us a better rate for the two students we can always if there is room we can always add students in next year you pay a little bit more a rate but it's the amount of time that they're in there so we are reserving um two slots again which we did uh last year with them Don carmichel so can I have a motion to approve the Ombudsman alternative education services agreement for the

0922425 school year Benjamin I move to approve the otsman alternative education services agreement for the 2024 to 25 school year drum key second further discussion pause for discussion very good bro drum key I hessle I co Carney I Benjamin I Carmichael I again the motion passes we're moving on to item C for the intergo intergovernmental agreement for physical therapist uh for district 70 and District 120 Brian Kelly yeah so the background in this currently our Physical Therapy needs for the district for Libertyville um high school and Vernon Hills High School students um are met by um seedall so the special education District of Lake County and so we contract with um them for physical therapy services for our students during the day um we have had um some struggles with um getting some services from

093seedall in the past and that's why um again we've made some changes with seedall from taking back our um e El classroom to um starting our own transition pathway program program to our occupational therapist that we now employ our own occupational therapists and so looking at our um Physical Therapy needs we do not need a full-time physical therapist that we need to hire so um Kelly Hartwig um was exploring um alternatives to how we can get uh a quality physical therapist for our district and for our students um and working with District 70 so again Libertyville um Elementary District district and District 120 which is um mundeline High School District again they have um historically gotten their physical therapy needs through um seed doall um but they are struggling also so um we decided to

094work together um and have this um employee um share Services basically between the three districts um District 70 will hire the person they'll be responsible for the physical therapist um and part of is that three um weekdays will be at District 70 one weekday at District 128 and then one weekday at um 120 so um all of this is going to you know cost us money in in in paying District 70 we are not renewing our services with special education District of Lake County so I think this is a good alternative for our PT services for our students Don carmichel all right can I have a motion to approve the intergovernmental agreement with District 70 and District 120 sharing of a physical therapist one weekday to District 128 John Keo moved hesel second further discussion

095and just as a reminder uh we discussed all of these at our uh P&P meeting a week ago so it seems like we're kind of flying through things here but uh we have already had discussions about each one of these items they're just not part of the consent agenda so they're separated out pause for discussion anything else no this made perfect sense and I appreciate that we're making sure that we're able to meet the needs of our special ed students Don car call okay Carol R call hessle hi K Carney hi Benjamin hi carmichel hi drum key hi and the motion passes we're going on to educational tour requests normally these would be part of the consent vote agenda but we received a couple more after the meeting Brian Kelly correct so um the ones

096that were on uh consent agenda and were approved were um brought to PMP last week so we have two additional ones as you heard from Good News um Science Olympiad um is going to state competition in Champagne Orana April 19 and 20th that's the one and then also our wrestling team now we're you know um looking ahead toward uh summer and so they're doing some competition and team building um at the end of June so these two were brought to you Don carmichel very good um can I have a motion to approve the educational tour request as presented Benjamin I move to approve the following educational tour requests vhhs Science Olympiad to State and vhhs wrestling team to Wisconsin drum key second and any further discussion pause for discussion just looks like fun have a

097great time very good Carol Cole Carney hi Benjamin hi Carmichael I drum key I hessle I okay congratulations to vhss Science Olympiad for making it to St yeah Don carmichel uh and then is this mine or is this fnf employ employees Brian Kelly employment employees these are employment employees again that um we had some in the consent vote agenda but um since last week we had a few more employment employees right um so we have a staff member that's requesting leave of absence for next year retirement and then a replacement or coaching very good Don carmichel um is this momentary pause this this doesn't have a motion on here has slly moved to approve the employment of employees as presented son Al Carney second Don carmichel discussion pause for discussion okay Carol roll call Benjamin

098i carmichel i drumkey i hessle i k Carney I don carmichel okay and moving on to item G the annual certified Staffing employment recommendations sorry the annual certified Staffing report I'm just off okay uh okay so the annual certified Staffing report Bryant if you can take us through sure um again um although we talked about the six extensively last week in P&P I will go through it again um for those that were not with us um last week so again um just kind of talk about the sectioning and then into the Staffing process um which starts uh last semester when we start looking at any uh curriculum proposals any updates that start um before our curriculum guide is um updated and published we also look at other updates maybe to our some of our programs

099or interventions um some model systems so we start those discussions leading up um to uh sectioning and Staffing um we also look at um actually course recommendations for the um for the next year they begin in December with our um with our staff um curriculum guides are finally updated in December so then January leads us into where the students uh select the courses for next year both of the um schools have eth grade grade orientation nights um near the beginning of um January our counselors work with our incoming ninth graders on their courses um then um you know all those courses are sent and um into data processing and we start looking through all of those uh course selections our department shairs work with building Administration on what that course um you know the selections

100are um again when we start looking through those um as mentioned before we do look at um our Optimum class size which are spelled out in our teacher Union contract um and so we are in the second year of our Optimum class sizes where most of our classes are at uh 25 um for uh you know our general education classes we do have some other classes that do have differing uh sizes um whether it's due to uh space um or it um maybe in physical welfare some of our classes are larger than 25 so then when we meet as a um group um so a district leadership team our building leadership team we spent this year five days of going through um all of those sectioning um so looking at our classes um when we

101have students sign up for classes again we um are doing our best to adhere to our Optimum IMS and when we look at the optimums we also have to think about the number of uh students if they choose a course of whether or not we do run the course and so if you have a class of 25 anything less than 15 we chose we it's hard to run a class and be again um physically responsible of running a class if eight CH eight students choose a class and they're supposed to be 25 in there um what we we do try to do though um before um we have our um data processing and our counselors working with those students to ensure that they do get into a another class and so there is s there

102is movement leaving leading up to those when we make those sectioning decisions so those students they may not get the class they choose um but we are trying to give them opportunities in that department for classes that may be similar we do look at there are times that we do look at we do run classes that may be below that number but we still have to make you know I think um you know decisions across um the whole District that anytime we are running class it is um you know it's it's a tough decision if we don't run it because we have maybe uh faculty that um have been teach in that class for a long time we have uh students that really wanted that class so again we try to work to get those

103students into another course um following you know those discussions the other thing that I talked about back in December we started looking at some of the intervention uh model and so this year we do have um some changes and I'll talk about that so when we look at our general education Staffing um again general education Staffing in is uh determined by enrollment it's also determined by course selection for students so if momentary pause enrollment maybe goes up a little you would think that it is a perfect storm that the FTE and the general education class would go exactly the same it may not because it may depend on the course that they choose most of our optimums are 25 so it's it should say that's pretty close but there are some again classes when you

104look at you know physical welfare that they are larger classes so if they choose some of the larger classes that may not be exactly um you know perfect that the number of course selections we did have a decline this year in our course requests um and um significant de decline in our course requests at Vernon Hills High School um the other thing in our um FTE in our classroom so um in the report it is down 9.7 the other thing is the elimination of Team taught at the Freshman level team taught is where two general education teachers so two English teachers um teaching in the same classroom so with the elimination of that um there was a decrease with um some of our general education staff we are moving to our classes to the co-

105teing model and for those um co- teing is where you have a special education teacher and then with um an English teacher or a special education teacher with a math teacher so due to some of those changes with our team teaching um at both schools that was also um why there is some decrease in that general education we did have an increase in our English learner um program at uh Vernon Hills and that's also um a rise in our English learner program from this year last year we added 1.0 over the summer for El um Staffing and then um again we're seeing another increase in our El Staffing for uh next year we um are pause and pause for us to explain what uh pause is so we have really three parts to our pause

106um at uh we have executive functioning students are identified that need help with executive functioning we also last year at Vernon Hills expanded where we identified students through their test scores um for numeracy and literacy help and so the pause program at Vernon Hills had already switched to that model set where some of our English and math teachers were already doing some of that work with our students um Libertyville then is switching next year they both had executive functioning uh but next year at uh Libertyville that our um students again identify through test scores will be getting numeracy and literacy um pullout help um with some of our English and math teachers um and so there was a increase of 4.6 um so we had 6.2 FTE dedicated to pause last year and next year

107we are dedicating 10.8 um FTE an FTE is a full-time equivalent so 1.0 is one teacher teaching five courses um and so next year we have 10.8 across the district there in Special Services um in the classroom so special services instructional um classes so there's some special education classes that are instructional plus our co- teing um we saw a slight increase of point4 um at our transition Pathways um program um and again that's our our new program in the last two years uh we didn't have did not see any change in our FTE um um then if we go down to the next part of our staffing detail and non-classroom FTE and so we have tried to the question before I know some people looked at previous Staffing reports and things were lumped kind of

108together one of the things we're trying to do is also explore what is happening with um uh course selection with enrollment um in the different areas um and also looking at you know where we're putting help for our students whether it's uh in the classroom or non-classroom ft so if you look at our non-instructional assignments for us include our freshman transition program um at uh Vernon Hills link crew our Equity coaches data coaches at both buildings there was a slight decrease due to um freshman transition at Vernon Hills just the number of freshmen so there's the decrease of 0.1 FTE which is really um one period um for the whole year so that's one class period for the whole year student services so our LST and so that would be our counselors uh and social

109workers um there is no change in um our counselors or social workers although we have a declining enrollment we still think that um the services right now that they're providing with those number of students there wasn't a change to for us to necessitate any changes in our social workers or counselors special services non-instructional um there was a slight decrease in that um again here is another um uh the situation where we're looking at um a point4 FTE that we are going to take back from um special education District of Lake County seedall in hearing itinerant I know I talked about it at the PMP committee we were hoping to finalized that um intergovernmental agreement um we just haven't finalized that that will be with District 120 and we'll have that at the next one so

110again we're looking at instead of going with seed doll so we're putting that back on our books because that will be somebody that we will hire and share with District 120 so you'll see that slight increase in the hearing itinerant transition Pathways then a um non-classroom FTE that was an increase in Speech Pathology of 02 so non-classroom FTE um increase of uh 6 so again in the general education classroom down 9.7 um again shifting some of that into our intervention and services we it wasn't all shifted so there is um you know there is a decrease of um some of the staff of -3.7 non-classroom FTE point6 so a total FTE of down uh 3.1 some of the other changes um down in the administration that is a increase with our El department chair and

111so our El department chair was higher last year um and we had set out that there would be a progression of our El department chair teaching two courses uh this year um just like our other department chairs and then knowing what our El population was increasing that um Jessica would not probably be able to teach we we thought maybe we could push it off another year but with the number of el students and the number of work that she has to do um that she is not going to be teaching two classes um anymore and and so those classes were taken off the books from her um given to our staff and then we just showing an increase in administration um Lisa hessle and that point2 is one Department share that goes for both buildings

112yeah so Jessica Fernandez switch uh you know she commutes between both buildings for our eel Department right thank you and to remind the board when we made this hire there are guidelines that ISB has for when you reach a certain threshold of students who have to invest in a coordinator and then once you go up to the next threshold they have to take on additional responsibility so we're approaching that second threshold have we met that threshold um I think we are predicted to over the summer if we have the same um number of students move in so yes Brian Kelly and the last couple pages are a little bit more history of some of the course requests enrollment changes um students receiving special education services um in the district students receiving English learner services and

113so if you look at you know if you really look at that number you could see the the the increase in the past three years for our El services at the district and that was again the increase of our um our faculty in El and then also with Jessica Fernandez being hired um look at the number of course requests for students um over the years and then looking at again our change in um FTE in the classroom over the years at both Libertyville and um Vernon Hills and so you could see uh I think all of that on page three of the history Lisa Hessel and this is the report that we reviewed last Monday and it doesn't look like there has been any changes to this report there is not Don carmichel okay so

114for procedural we would get a motion in a second and then have additional discussion after that so can I uh Lisa Hessel H I move to approve the annual Staffing report just jumping right to it son Al Carney go any second all right so now additional discussion pause for discussion Don Carmel and I I do have a question um so from a the board we're not involved in in the sectioning process or like there were a lot of things were brought up tonight that are not necessarily board work you make the uh the recommendations for what the Staffing would be and then we approve that generally we approve that um but from a policy point of view that's what we do and I do have this question when I hear that we have a French

115class that's gonna have 14 students or maybe have 14 and I know that we've created a threshold of 15 like that's so close one and and what's the other option momentary pause like are we serving the community well by denying those students an opportunity to take that French class I wanted to ask based on what we heard today Cara dry how is the Staffing recommendation correlate to the course offerings that the union shared with us just now that's no longer going to be available in essence momentary pause if we were to retain all of these positions would those courses all of a sudden become available and how is the we we were given a laundry list of different courses that were told are not going to be available how is that different from prior years

116um I'm assuming we've had to go back and forth and eliminate some courses so are we looking percentage wise is this pretty typical uh that these type of courses are no longer offered because I'm I mean I asked the question how is their experience changing and are we offering them the same level of support and I momentary pause I'd like to start with when we had this original conversation since I was quoted I want to put in that I thank every person who went through this process uh if it appeared like I was questioning I was not questioning the work that you were doing or the recommendation you were making because I know everyone sitting at this table is trying to retain as many of our teachers as possible so if what I was trying

117to do looked like problem solving in an area when I shouldn't have been problem solving because that was not my track I Apologize I did not intend for that um I guess I I was going into a problem solving kind of mode with all of this information that we haven't really had to get into the meet before but now that it's we're getting some specifics how does this look like typical years um Tera Benjamin I'll leave it with that I I share those same concerns especially where course es um are no longer going to be offered where they were before in what feels like really critical areas and all academic areas are critical but um the fact that a student may completely have to dead end on a path of study that they are passionate

118about and we're looking at several kids are they above the threshold or below the threshold or what have you it momentary pause it seems to be um an exercise that that may not be worth pursuing in terms of cutting those courses um and so I wonder then of course how does how does some of these uh releases of our of our non- tenard staff and in the case of one tenur teacher how does that momentary pause you know how does that get affected and same with Cara I don't want to go into problem solving mode that that is not our lane Don always likes to say we we stand on the balcony and watch the party dance we are not dancing and it's something we have to remind ourselves of pretty consistently but those two

119ideas seem to just be in general opposition taking away opportunities for students to pursue certain Paths of study especially when we speak about multiple Pathways as a a something we hold dear to ourselves um and at the same time potentially sacrificing some of our teachers in the process they they aren't they don't agree with me and and I want to add I think you guys have said it very eloquently and I probably would have asked the same question so son Al carne yes there's certain understanding that I have that based on what I've heard today has put me in a spot of conflict uh where we want to support multiple Pathways for our students but it looks like we're not able to provide these classes I'd like to understand more about where we are with

120that and again you know what's what's historically happened in those circumstances we've had a lot of questions there I don't know if you have you wrapped your brain around each one of those yeah I think uh you know maybe start from in my mind the beginning at some point when students sign up for a class we have to make a decision on when a class will run so we we have to set a number and you know if we ran all of those classes three students sign up is momentary pause five students are we running a class so we made a decision to run a class at a certain number and we have to I think at some point make that decision so then it does get hard hey it's only one student less than

121it so then if we run that what about this class it's two students less and then it's three students so yes that is a hard decision anytime we make that decision that there are not enough students but you have to make that decision at some point because every time we decide to run a class it it you know that is you know a lot of money so if if you just start adding some of those back in you you have to make a fiscally responsible decision um and so yes I it's hard because you're making a decision when it comes down to numbers when I looked at the i' just like to add um just for clarification one of the things we do in this District that is um not completely unique to us but

122is special and important to us is that um principles are at the table with our District administration when we do Staffing some of our principal colleagues that is not the case they would just get numbers from their District administration and say here um allocate this for your staff we go through line by line and we discuss every single class and the numbers so we are running a number of classes below the 15 threshold when we get in the low class number um what we talk about is do the students who don't if we don't run this class do the students have another option is there an option for them to enter this curricular area or is there not is this course a Capstone course that students have been working towards for four years um is

123this course a special course to ser a special population of students is this course one that we are just trying to get started and it hasn't gotten a lot of momentum around it yet so we want to give it a little bit of support and run it at a very low number um all of those discussions are had and talked about um when we go to make decisions about which courses are running or not running because we do recognize that there are significant Stakes to our students and our staff when we make decisions not to run a course um so when we don't run a course we believe our students have Alternatives in that curricular area to still pursue that area of study just with a different course sequence rather than a specific course that

124they may have wanted to take Dr John gilam if I could add just another part to this there's a very human element to this and as I listen to as a principal I listen to several of the teachers out here who are speaking you recognize that they're speaking about their lives their livelihood and the decisions that we're making around this table that impact uh who they are as individuals who they are as parents who they are as as professionals and we get it car I think you asked a question was this year particularly different is this was was this a unique year and the answer to that is no I been at the sectioning table for 21 years 10 of as an assistant principal and now 10 as a principal 11 as an assistant principal

125and it's the same process and we don't go into the process knowing the outcome like we don't know what the the balance sum is going to be at the end and as we've talked about down 3.7 we have no idea what that's going to look like but we take our responsibility seriously and as we're going through those numbers Department by Department line by line course by course we're making some of those difficult decisions that Tom talked about not knowing at all what the outcome is going to be holding our breath that it won't negatively impact our people because there are people period momentary pause and the difficulty this year is that for the first time I can remember as an employee of Vernon Hills we're significantly down in sections I wish it wasn't the case

126I've never had to have difficult conversations with staff members we've made those cuts Cara every year to certain courses we make those cuts we have to they're difficult decisions but because our enrollment has been consistently up or because our course um um course requests have been consistently up or flat we haven't had to have that the difficult conversation with a staff member but now because the enrollment is down sections are down now you make a what feels like a pretty normal cut for a course that's at 13 12 11 now that feels a whole lot different because now you can say oh that's a negative impact to a staff member but the conversation hasn't changed it feels like the weight of the conversation is different it feels like the implications and the consequences are different

127but the Integrity of the process hasn't changed throughout and it's it's a terribly difficult thing to try to rationalize in your mind like I'm doing what I've always done but the impact is different so how do we move forward with that and and I think you heard that in some of the comments tonight it's it's a it's a difficult thing to do uh but I've had several St meetings with staff members in the last couple days who who spoke to Dr Herman last Thursday and just kind of owned some of those decisions this is not just a district level decision these are building level conversations that happened between me and my assistant principles and the department chairs to come up with these really difficult projections understanding ultimately like oh man at the end of the

128day this is going to result in in in human issues like we're going to have staff members that lose sections and those are really difficult uh discussions and decisions to make Brian Kelly and um piggy back off John and the question about what does this look like from previous years at Libertyville last year there were 17 courses that weren't run this year 16 um as John alluded to at Vernon Hills um because of the enrollment last year I have eight classes that weren't run and this year there were more there were 16 at Vernon Hills that weren't run um you know but some of those classes one one student signed up seven students six students and again we worked with our couns and our staff to get them into you know into other areas um

129that they they could get into um so you know there momentary pause were a lot of I think tough decisions on some classes and and and what to do with them the other thing that we did look at um in looking at our optimums of um 25 and adhering to those optimums but also looking at our courses um with moving towards APA next year that um there may be some movement um we feel that we've um we have room if our students need to move down um that we do have room in some of those sections so we did you know even in some of those um have room for our students um to be able to move um and like John said you know it was um also tough this year having tough conversations

130we had um um one general education teacher retiring this year that's the lowest general education teachers that we have so there have been times that there have been um you know unfortunately some decreases in FTE but with no retirements there was no absorption of those decreases so I think it was three things that happened again declining enrollment um declining in um course selection then with the enrollment and then the retirement um so I don't know if that answered the other question about multiple Pathways so we there have been some changes in the multiple Pathways Project Lead the Way will'll be running at Vernon Hills next year um and you know looking at those numbers they're running um those classes are running lower um than a lot of other classes um there's a couple sections there

131again because it's a new program we're getting it off the ground and and getting our students in there some of our other multiple Pathways in early childhood development um and running that program so there are um sometimes that we do look at whether it's a new program that um we trying to get the students into um or as we look at expanding our uh multiple Pathways that we will be looking at sectioning to ensure that we do have those multiple paths for um our students I think one of the other things is we need need to also look at some of our course offerings we've been offering the course it's been on the books every year and we haven't been running it every year and maybe we need to look at trying to get some

132of those courses on the book every other year um as an option then you have more students maybe sign up in a couple years and we can run that course um by having more students sign up so I look at some of these from you know year to year and we just you know we offer every year we put it on the books and we we haven't run some of these in three years um and so I don't know if that answered all of the questions one other thing that I wanted to ask I jumped in go uh I'll I'll so as we're talking about our our plan next year where is where are our support interventionists listed on the list we're have we because I know we've talked about that we had a team

133top model and many of some of that those FTE are now re uh reallocated or redesignated momentary pause as interventionists general interventionists especially with students that might need additional support within the heterogeneous class where are they on our yeah so those um so those are in the pause um in the classroom FTE so the intervention and services so pause and then our Cod teaching um in uh special services Cara dry so that's why you services and the co- teing is going to be spec almost mostly for students who in special education so those are the yeah so those are services for special education students on that line but then the pause you could see that's where that increase up to 10.8 ft right so for our general ed students either in the college prep honors

134or AP who would need assist going from a 6.2 to a 10.8 M and that's evenly distributed in both buildings um approxim approximately however there's different there's different number of students at the buildings that are identified for executive functioning and then numeracy and literacy and just to clarify the the pause Intervention Program will not is not designed yet to serve all students who need intervention so if you're if you're an AP student and you're struggling just with the course content that would not be pause so for pause specifically what we did was we took team taught courses at the Freshman level te taught was a model that L LHS and vhhs had created um a few years ago going back several years as an attempt to uh be a gened intervention so it was let's

135take students who have low academic identities who struggle a little bit with some of the core academics let's group them together and let's put two gened teachers together to work with them and support them um that's a very broad generalization of what that model is that model was not really designed through necessarily research it was designed through anecdotal best practice and we got two great teachers who can work with these students but when we look at our data and our outcomes from Team Tau we have not seen um that those students basically what we've seen is many of the students who are in team taught were requiring team taught throughout high school so the supports were there but some of the skill development was not and so what we're trying to do now is at

136our freshman level specifically we've eliminated those team taught course designs and put that back into a model of high dosage tutoring through interventionists all of whom in the pause model are certified teachers so Math teachers doing math intervention reading and literacy and English teachers doing the literacy intervention um special Educators or teachers trained in executive functioning support doing the executive functioning so that is built into their that piece of it what we still have to determine and work out are upper classmen Juniors uh seniors diagonal movers who might be taking an AP class for the first time we have not other than our mash and some of our uh support services that we would have there have not yet fully developed out what our Support Services would look like for those students Cara Benjamin so

137if I may piggyback off that that that leaves me a little nervous and again not to get onto the dance floor but momentary pause when we talk about cutting certified full-time staff and we don't know what our needs exactly are going to be for these diagonal movers next year and for AP and honor support for kids who are maybe dancing with this for the first time this this is of grave concern to me that we may be bringing in hourly non-certified people to support those students and at at the risk of making a decision that may be slightly maybe not slightly controversially uh controversial in the financial sense I almost feel like it may be worth that risk because I'm not sure we can entrust our precious students to anyone who doesn't know our curriculum

138our system well who who isn't certified who isn't an expert in their craft momentary pause this is where I I struggle son Al Carney yep and I was going to actually make couple points one is John thanks for helping us understand it's not like what happens out there in corporate world where you're given a Target that you have to reach this is a number that you arrived at based on following your standard process and I think that is helpful because I've been on multiple sides of the Riff process and I know it's difficult no matter which end you're on it it's difficult to uh really process that but what carara Benjamin here brought up is is sort of the next set of questions that I think several folks have also asked is as we look

139at diagonal movement and I think we should encourage our students to really challenge themselves what happens if they have a struggle when they have when they get to that next level class and have we thought through how they will be supported have we thought through how the other students who were maybe not struggling in that class because they've been in multiple AP classes already and they know the rigor that's expected and if we end up having this combination of students how is the teacher differentiating between those students who need help maybe those students who don't to make sure that one is not impacted due to the needs of the other so when you put kind of that question out there with I think what you just said is the support system on the mash side

140is not fully baked it's making me a little uncomfortable but do we have the full plan in mind so our families know what to expect for their children when the next school year start regardless of where in that academic Spectrum their kids are momentary pause I hope my question makes sense yep okay thanks I think we're committed to appropriate support Don carmichel yes like we we want our students to succeed and we want our teachers to to not be overstressed but I I think that all of us are worried about those supports but I think we're committed to the idea that we want to provide those supports I think where I struggle with and I'm Cara dry I am hesitant to agree to a staffing recommendation that we have not seen the how we haven't

141seen the how are we measuring how are we monitoring how are we intervening we've been told and I trust implicitly that's going to happen but but without knowing the how and I think we are I believe in this plan I I share I I had a conversation with a Community member just before the uh meeting today and my own children this plan is not about just servicing our lowest or our highest it is my son who is an average well-performing student went through our high school new honors and AP students if they need it um when will those plans be developed Dr Tom kentes so that is the work that our administrative team would be starting to implement and design this spring and through the summer to have for next fall so we don't um

142we we don't have right now any type of support outside of our mash and our Paws that's what we've been running historically next year we actually just to be clear so if an AP student needed extra help outside the classroom they would go to pause no they would go to at LHS they would go to the mash the mash or they would make an appointment and they would meet with their teacher okay and Vernon Hills how would that look yeah Dr johnil leam right that would be the arc at the Vernon Hills campus thank you right so one of the question s that that John and I have is now with this new model we have more students who are going to be taking AP and challenging themselves which is a good thing we have

143more students who are going to be making a diagonal move because of APA which is also a good thing that may mean that we need more resources in order to support students when they're struggling in class so and that's where we've started to be begin to design some of that modeling one of the things with the Freshman while we talked about pause pause is for kids who are behind and their skills so they would be basically in the uh generally in the bottom 30th percentile of their skill development but the nice thing about the adaptation we're making team taught would only serve about 25 freshmen at the most in a class those classes would be between 18 to 25 students when we move to this lab model we're able to serve all the freshmen in

144Algebra 1 and all of the freshmen in English one because the lab is designed to serve any student who needs support not kids who need serious intervention for skill development but students who are struggling to get through a class uh unit or a test or to understand a concept the lab that we're building is designed to serve that so we've actually expanded and it will have more support for freshmen of all levels um next year at the Algebra 1 English one um and biology level what we have to talk about and still design is now what will our system capacity be to serve sophomores Juniors and seniors um both in the traditional sense of the resources we've had but if we do have more students what does that look like and what recommendations are we

145going to make in terms of the way um we can staff those we do have a number of different options from our wonderful esps to our teacher duties but our duty pool has shrunk because more teachers now are going to be teaching AP and in our contract when you teach AP you're exempt from a duty so that puts a challenge on John and I to say how are we going to fill some of these support roles when we have a smaller uh pool of teachers to select from for that due to their AP duties so this these numbers are just coming in right now which is allowing us to start to drill down on how many students do we have what resources staff-wise do we have and where are the gaps that we need to

146fill Don carmichel so let's say in September we decide we need additional Personnel is there anything prohibiting us from hiring more Personnel like if we take a vote today on what the FTE report is we're not locked into not hiring additional people Brian Kelly so as you look at the Staffing report um we did add contingency in of 1.0 which we have done in the past but this past year we added 1.2 contingency so you know we look at um you know as we're you know still building out and still working on you know the sectioning and then assigning um students to the classes and running the program and then um in power school to see that they get their schedules and assigning the classes to the um staff that um you know in the

147spring summer if we have to act classes we can we you know part of this is to add the 1.0 but if we have to come back to you and it's above the 1.0 that's something that you know we again did this past year we went above the 1.0 Lisa Hessel so just to be clear the momentary pause help us understand why the 3.1 reduction in FTE is not applicable to that possible future need for additional support in uh the mash or in the ark Brian Kelly so all of that that decrease in your FTE may not be in those areas that we're looking to to have the support for uh you know our our staff in those areas Lisa hessle so like whereas with some of the FTE that we avoided eliminating they could

148be reassigned that isn't necessarily the case with um the support in the mash and the Ark Brian Kelly in some of the areas correct that's yeah okay again that goes back to teacher certification the desire for all of you to want people who have the talent and knowledge to be able to support the student in the content areas that we know um they traditionally seek out in the mesh and in the arc sonne a little challenging to approve a a financial ask here without knowing what's kind of around the corner and are we going to need 1.2 are we going to need 5.6 I mean not knowing that it it's a little difficult momentary pause to make that decision now at least for me um and yes we could hire people but I don't know

149if you if you start this if you start school in August and have a need to hire somebody in September by the time you find somebody you're done with one semester what happen happens to all those students in in that year or the semester who needed help um so I'm I think we probably it feels like that area needs to be a little more baked before we get running here I think one of the things when we talk about what Bryant did a nice job of talking about the information that brings us to this particular Staffing recommendation that's course request course enrollment and we're using all of the same strategies that we've used in previous years as John said the last 21 years so the information that you've received for tonight is identical to arranged

150a little bit more to help you show classroom versus this and that but it's the same data that you've had to make the same kind of Staffing decision that's called for according to Illinois State law in terms of um all non-tenure excuse me all part-time teachers needing to be a rift and then any other teacher who right now we don't have uh FTE and Staffing to allocate to them um as we said we could continue to look at um additions as we did last year over the summer one of the things that that allows you to do by having it in contingency we didn't know which courses we were going to have kids move into and that we were going to need had we said you know we need biology that wasn't where it was

151so if we had kept a biology teacher it was actually El and math that we needed but had we now at this time allocated them prematurely it would not have been a good use of District funds so I think what we're trying to do tonight is say based on our best analysis of the student course requests that we have and for the pause and the lab model this is the best Staffing plan we can give you for the decision that we're obligated to make now before April 15 yeah before April 15 Tera Benjamin so April 15th is the date that all teachers must be notified of their release yeah um and so I think this is important that we we are all on the same page um if for whatever reason this recommendation does not

152is not accepted tonight by the board what happens next momentary pause you does DT go back to the drawing board and try try another pass at this um I I guess I'm just I'm curious what this looks like I think if the board doesn't pass this we would need direction from the board because we've used the op we've used the contract to make the decisions that we've made so um we would need direction from the board on what different criteria you would want us to use to make a staffing plan because we've made our staffing plan based on our historical knowledge based on again as the administrative team said going line by line providing you with the absolute best recommendation we can so knowing that we did our best we would need you to give

153us different criteria otherwise we're going to come back with the same plan absolutely and I I do it should go without saying and I'm gonna say it anyway but uh we we know that the district leadership team and our principles do this in good faith someone brought it up earlier tonight no one is looking to have to release anyone ever we realize that there are human lives attached to these potential releases um I myself have been riffed twice I know exactly what that feels like um it's not a fun place to be and and so we don't we as a board obviously well I'm gonna speak for me I hate speaking for other people I do not take this decision lately I don't take my vote lately I I I know that these discussions have

154been had in good faith um and I just want to be clear on Next Step should should this not move forward tonight so thank you Brian Kelly and to be clear there are two agenda items and So currently we're on the the Staffing report and then um item G for Action which would be next would be you know what's required by law to take action on certified staff recommendation momentary pause which is driven by our staff report but there is um you know part of that and I can go into that when we get into that so Al carne I think I'm just trying to kind of think about what's different this year than in previous years right um I mean because we this is not the first time we're looking at a stuffing report

155and have you know always thought you guys had a magic oneand to come up with 2,000 plus you know individual personal it's like your DNA every student has their own course schedule that's got to be complex but this year what's different is we don't have the team taught classes anymore so that's had some impact I'm guessing on the sectioning and then we are also um encouraging students to go to the next highest level possible which that applies I believe to all grades not just incoming freshmen so if we end up with more AP classes and more AP teachers and that creates this situation where you don't have enough stuffing for students who are not in pause but need help momentary pause I feel like we should have that at least modeled out to know how

156we are going to support them but it's even though you're correct about some of the things that are different this year it's not different that at this point when we ask the administration to provide the Staffing report that they don't have the plan for the the additional support in the mash and the arc yet developed because they don't know what it's going to be it's not different that they're not presenting a plan for that because that's that's not we're not at that point in the year yet Cara dry I understand legally why we have to be sitting here doing this now I I understand that moment pause and it pains me to have to even be talking about this but I am disappointed I'm going to just we've been talking about this for two years

157and when community members say that they haven't heard us we have been talking about this plan for two years I remember when John presented to us about team Tod and that the our statistics with those students the Gap wasn't closing the Gap was widening and we have Decades of data that shows what we were doing wasn't working it wasn't working which is why this spawned our conversation I understand why we're here now talking about this but the elephant in the room is for two years we've been saying what is the how how is this going to look and we still don't have an idea of how this is going to look and I think for me that is my policy I mean that's why I'm sitting on the board to make sure that our how

158looks right uh so I I am troubled that we don't see the how of how we haven't put these pieces together of the how because we know we're going to have students momentary pause challenging themselves teachers differentiating that I know they've been trained in anybody who says they haven't they have been supported and trained in but the how is the part they are going to be kids that are going to need more support and we should be able to sit here and say here's what we predict this is what it's going to look like in the forms of bodies helping students and I I am not clear maybe I'm wrong but I am not clear on the how Lisa Hessel I I am comfortable that the contingency FTE has been built in so that that

159can be developed and I'm also comfortable that if we determine we need additional support that that will be recommended to us and we will support that Dr Denise Herman I want to add one other variable and that is the current way students access support makes it very difficult to offer that in a very targeted way some students who we're talking about are going to take eight classes or their lunch and it's going to be very difficult for even if we have some of the increased adult access for them to necessarily get it um some of the comments we heard tonight were about a more rigorous mtss plan and we definitely are working on that but the idea of an intervention period or something where it would be very clear this is the time where any

160student can see his or her teacher or an interventionist that is something that many other high schools in the area have gone to because they they are struggling with some of the same things that we are struggling with um how to efficient ly make sure we're using the adults in our building to most uh to have the highest chance of them being together for 20 minutes for whatever time it is for them to get the tutoring that they need um so that is one other barrier that we are facing is it's it's very difficult with eight periods in the day to know when if if there is a science teacher in the AR lab it could be a chemistry teacher and I need help in physics it's it's very very difficult for our current way

161of Staffing our tutoring centers um to do it in a way that you would like it to be where as a student um is having difficulty they can automatically get support from an adult um it it momentary pause that's why we're think trying to think of of out of the box way maybe it's before and after school maybe we're going to come back to you and ask for some more money to pay teachers ipens to do before and after school tutoring I we're we're we momentary pause we want to try and find ways but simply momentary pause using a significant amount of FTE to place classroom teachers in the arc when we have no way of knowing is it going to be two students that go to see them or 20 Cara dry I guess

162I'm still you know and that I'm gonna stick because I know I'm gearing off that's not about what this is but it does go together uh and I'm still not even so Dr Denise Herman I was just responding to the questions that both of you posed about the relationship between uh an intervention model and what that can grow and become versus what we know right now in the Staffing that we're asking you to approve appr son Al carne when would we have sort of that model available even if that comes with we need to hire additional staff to help students in this you know in this acute situation when what's the timeline for us to get an idea of that because I think we'll be talking budgets soon where does the where's that come in

163I think Tom didn't Tom say that that's one of the things we're going to be working on this summer you repeat what you explained about the timeline for figuring out that um additional support well it would have to be this spring and potentially into the summer we're we're faced with a lot of challenges in the summer just due to the we'd like with um in terms of Staff that's available and um a available to work and meet to to plan these out so it would really have to be a phase this spring um that we would have to be starting to sketch all of this out as of now we have not fully started those conversations in that work so that has to be on our on our list to do right away Lisa Hessel

164touching on dr's comment about how it's unpredictable to know um if we can match the right momentary pause teachers at the right time with students who need that type of help how do you think about how do you go about trying to solve for that Dr Tom kentes well there there's a number of ways but the that was one of the reasons why some of our preliminary discussion involved using esps a teacher is contractually where one period a day to work and uh they have only five assignments during their day when we hire an ESP we're available to use they work uh an hourly throughout the day so part of the flexibility we would need to meet student needs is in some ways better able to be met with esps who have greater flexibility in

165assignment than a certified staff member would certified staff members have tremendous experience and talent in terms of um addressing student needs and for the um real intensive intervention our model reflects that for some of the Just in Time tutoring and supportive kids who are struggling with a class we think um highly skilled and talented esps can meet those needs those are some of the models we've looked at at some of our area schools who are trying to develop these types of approaches they're using um teachers to do their targeted interventions and esps to do some of the support of students who are looking for that additional class support so the the discussions we've had about this model do include that type of thinking son Al carne I think you're bringing up some a probably a

166followup question some of us would have had is as when when you propose this model it'd be good to see what some of our neighboring schools are doing and kind of what their Lessons Learned out of what worked for them what did not work for them because you know you don't need to necessarily reinvent the wheel um I think that would be and some of that is certainly happening in there's the um the other thing just to remember is we have challenges too with the way our schedule works the way students are scheduled during the day so we absolutely have thoughts about what um support could look like but then what we have to do is identify when would students be available to get that support and how would we meet that for all students

167across our curriculum at all times throughout the day so those some preliminary conversations have occurred um but we clearly need to do much more planning to lay out a vision for you as a board into what that's going to look like Cara dry I think what I'm looking for and I I know this is outside the Staffing but it started the conversation is we're asking our teachers and our students to go through this process momentary pause what measurements are we using for all students how are we monitoring to determine if there's any kind of deficit what are the procedures if there is a deficit and where do they go what is the how those are the things I'm looking for uh in this plan and I and I know the community has said that you

168know so I know this is outside the scope of Staffing but it does align with we're talking about who we're having in the building and how are we using our staffing most efficiently and effectively and what's the outcome to our student experience yeah son Al carne yeah and it's it's not to say that all of if you don't haven't thought about it already I'm I'm sure that this is all top of everybody's mind it's just I think we haven't seen sort of what are the metrics for Success how do you know if someone if something isn't going well and then what actions would you take momentary pause if that would happen it's just classic sort of risk management and I think having more details about that is going to reassure the families and about how

169their child is going to be impacted so do you want to talk a little bit about how it's going to be monitored and how we're going to report that data well I think you're talking about a couple different things I think the and I know that is outside of Staffing so the overall monitoring of the three different processes that we are uh implementing next year with EOS with APA and with hetrogeneous classes we do have uh data determined that we will be able to use the beginning of the year some of the assessments like star and grades will also be available mid year and then at the end of the year we'll also be monitoring AP test scores like we we always do so many of the things that we currently measure we will be

170measuring and and Reporting out on why we had a 6% increase in this AP class and look the test scores remain the same or they went up or whatever it is but we have intentions for each of those programs what data is available and how we can report it to the board and to the community I think what you're talking about is more how will we monitor when students are struggling one of the things that um we're doing is to try and make sure that we do have in each of the new courses focusing again on nth grade as we told the board we would do is do one year at a time so for the heterogenous classes we're making sure we're very clear that the learning targets are explicit and that we have some

171common assessments that'll be used to measure not identical but common assessments so between the star between common Assessments in between overall grades we will have thresholds by which we say okay so if a student is here this will be an opportunity for them to be recommended for lab Lab would be during the Lunch Period one of the things that we wanted to make sure pause which is a more intense requires students to give up a an elective a class period to participate in that but we believe that's what some students need to close that significant Gap so they can be more successful their sophomore Junior and Senior year the lab model would be over the lunch periods so a student could be recommended let's say for four weeks or six weeks or eight weeks depending

172upon what standard the class team has identified that they need help in and that could be for half of their lunch period so that's where we tried to get that flexibility in um so again it would be connected to what is the standard from Algebra 1 that the student is needing that the PLC or the classroom teacher was not able to um help the student Master that's what would be um um focused on by tutoring a gr I call that grade level tutoring where students who have much more deeper and significant needs that's going to be done by full-time um C excuse me certificated teachers in math and English who have the training that they need to go why is this student struggling with fractions and and what kind of software and other kinds of

173tools do we have to help diagnose what this student is really needing as you're sharing this with me I know we've discussed this before I think what's missing is we don't have the plan car dry showing that we have the we've talked about it some kind of protocol showing that we do have that plan in the procedure some flowchart something written that we are thinking about these and we have the procedures in place for them I think that is missing and that would answer a lot of questions that people are wondering about son Al carne and I would say when you develop the plan it's got to address all the stakeholders in that plan right the students at different levels of achievement and the teachers that have to teach them Don carmichel we are at

174a position to move forward then is there any other discussion you wish to have at this point because right now really we're the focus is the Staffing report and I would just like to say thank you to the administrators who wrestled with that um and I'd like to thank the impassion teachers that came here tonight to to speak um momentary pause we're in tough position so momentary pause if there aren't any other questions we've had a motion we've had a second pause for discussion Carol roll call Don carmichel and let me read State what that motion was the motion is to approve the annual certified Staffing report is presented son Al Carney and I want to understand that this is this time momentary pause it's a slice in time decision and that we are going

175to be getting more information inform on the the the rest of the plan the rest of the monitoring and if there are any additional stuff we need to add to support students that are going diagonal momentary pause diagonally into higher level classes then they ordinarily would have gotten placed momentary pause is that the understanding okay Cara Benjamin just want to clarify because I definitely just skipped down in my own agenda for whatever reason we are this is for item F item F the annual certified Staffing report thank you the motion has been made to approve the annual certified Staffing report is presented and seconded momentary pause Carol roll call Car Michael I drum key i hessle i karney i Benjamin I don carmichel and the motion passes so we are going to move on to

176the annual certified staff employment recommendations item G Brian Kelly let me walk through the certified staff employment recommendations so following um the sectioning and Staffing um we then um do um have to make uh employment decisions and these are always um I think the toughest part of our job because we do um I think as Tom talked about John talked about we do care about our staff and they are part of our family our district 128 family but we do um have to by law make some decisions some of those decisions are based on Law and some of those decisions are based off of the Staffing report and how sectioning came um to be so there are a couple of reports in there the first thing is that if you look um at our non

177tenured part-time staff um anyone that is a less than 1.0 FTE um this year and there were um eight um faculty that were less than 1.0 um we release those faculty um so that's the non-renewal non-p parttime um faculty out of those part-time uh out of those eight members we will um in April we'll make recommendations to bring back um some of our part-time staff um and so when I look at that list of the eight part- timr we are looking to bring back um uh five out of those eight staff so there were a couple staff members that were at33 and 04 um and again with sectioning Staffing unfortunately um we don't have the sections for them to come back so we did have the um our department chairs administration had discussions with those

178in [Music] knew they weren't uh coming back so two out of the the six were covering a leave of absence uh we have another uh staff that's being reduced from 1.0 to 0.9 um for next year um we do have um a uh another staff member um that's a tenure staff member that's being reduced um to 0.5 um and then we do have another uh full-time staff member that there is not the um FTE available for next year and so is being fully released and again you know in particularly in those two that came down to the um declining enrollment at uh Vernon Hills and the uh core selection at Vernon Hills and so that's our recommendation for the um honoral dismissal so if you're looking at again there was a total decrease um in

179our staffing but when you're looking at releasing we're releasing ing all of our part- timers um three of them um probably will not be you know be coming back on our April board meeting meeting the other part-timers we we will and then um aronal dismissal the full-time staff um two of them again out of there were on leave they were covering leaves of absences this year I also have continuing Employments or recommendations to bring back our first year um non-tenure staff and so the list of the first year non-tenure staff uh continuing employment for uh our seconde staff to bring uh them back and then our secondy year non-tenure staff we have on the third page is for those that will be placed on tenure under the old tenure rule um they were previously tenured

180at a previous school district and were with us for two years received excellent evaluations so they uh our recommendation is at the end of the school year they would be placed on tenure and then our third year non-tenured faculty we have six individuals that will be finishing up their third year this year and our recommendation is at the end of the school to place them on tenure so that's our recommendation for um those individuals momentary pause and again these were momentary pause you know tough conversations to have as John said you know for um anytime that you know we're talking about somebody's um livelihood and their life um these were not taken lightly at all um and again unfortunately um you know we did have to make some uh reductions if um there are any

181increases um you know in the spring summer there are some laws that we have to follow so some of our honorable dismissal uh we would look to them to increase um also when you to um make a reduction in force and release somebody fully they have a full year that if we then come back next year and have a position that we would contact them and offer that position um so okay uh can I have a motion to approve the annual certified staff employment uh recommendations as presented Cara dry so move Lisa hessle second hessle Don carmichel is there any further discussion son Al carne just a question so as uh Dr K you said you'd be looking at sort of the additional support model it is possible that we may be able to depending

182on the need some of these folks may be able to come back to stuff those positions is that a correct understanding momentary pause course depending on the need of how you what what the need is versus what they have Dr Tom Kent yeah absolutely I I would assume if any of these things that were being designed were to be uh utilizing FTE and we had staff members who were Rift that were qualified for those positions they would then be offered those positions all right thank you pause for discussion no other discussion Carol roll call drum key hi hessle hi K Carney hi Benjamin hi car Michael I and the motion passes I will turn it over to our president who will take over for our vice president who is the chair of fnf yes so

183uh this item came out of fnf committee we discussed it last week um and we discussed it in our hearing um this is to transfer a million dollars from the education fund to the transportation fund and you have already explained it so you don't have to explain it again can we please have a motion to transfer a million dollars from the Ed fund to the transportation fund Carmichael so moved Benjamin second thank you any discussion Dan Stanley can uh can I just clarify it's a motion to approve the resolution a motion to approve the resolution authorizing the transfer of $1 million from the education fund into the transportation fund of Community High School District number 128 Lake County Illinois thank you Lisa Hessel thank you very much for that clarification the motion and the second

184still stand uh do we have any discussion pause for discussion okay roll call please hessle I co Carney hi Benjamin hi car Michael hi drum key hi Lisa hesel the motion passes moving on to item a the LHS band uniforms bid uh this was discussed in fnf last week um do you mind giving us a brief summary of this project yeah um so what I told you a week ago was that our bid opening was this last last Thursday and so that we knew this was coming uh this was going to be a larger number um and so this is exactly in line with what we were expecting um this was part of our fiscal 24 budget process um this was planned for advocated for budgeted for this is exactly in line with what we

185thought was going to happen um so even though the number is 103,000 for ban uniforms is is a significant investment it's a 20-year investment at least and um it's something that we thought of I I do want to be clear um John her and Adam Gore spent a ton of time trying to put together a thoughtful um bid in order to comply with the laww and get what they're looking for so they they did a ton of work on that I'm very appreciative of that and this is uh momentary pause right in line with what we were expecting to happen thank you and thank you to John and to Adam for the work that they put in on this important investment um can we have a motion to recommend the approval of the band man's

186company bid for LHS ban uniforms in the amount of $13,700 60 Cara drum key drum key so move carne second thank you any discussion pause for discussion and questions seeing none roll call please Co Carney hi Benjamin hi Carmichael hi drum key hi hessle I motion passes and I will uh turn it over to Dr Herman for the superintendent report Dr Denise Herman thank you very much um one of the things that I wanted to do was um take a few minutes to go over the FAQ that we developed so that the board if you had any questions about any of the information I know that you have been receiving questions and that knowing some of the um thinking behind the responses or sort of the context that we tried to place them in and

187making sure that you feel comfortable um or if there's questions that maybe you had to field that didn't make its way onto this yet we did um make sure that we took all of the questions that were re that we received on the form um and condense them into these theme areas so um one of the things that was important is um the overall rational um and um one of the first questions was what data do we have that we even need these initiatives um and so one of the things that we wanted to make sure is that the misinformation that this might be just about a small number of students that this really some of our concerns are broader than uh some of the init the targets of the initiatives so we made sure

188that we re-shared again all of this information has been shared previously but it's been at different times of the school year um and so I think one of the things that um we are learning is even though we share this information as we receive it how can we make sure that it's available to parents in in locations and in um formats that is makes sense to them so the first thing is the Proficiency in math showing that um it's 59.9% again and that's of all students all 11th grade students last year um and then we have 64 excuse me 63.8% of all of our 11th grade students proficient in ela um we also uh made available on some of those same slides that's just a uh the generalized data uh how the Gap is even

189the gap between students um who are lowincome between English language Learners between um students with IEPs and with some of our racial subgroups also um are significantly below even this average the other thing that we wanted to make sure is that um when we talk about the all students and then what data do we have that are specifically targeting some of our populations was the disproportionate both being over represented in the striving learner classes and then under represented in in many of our honors and AP classes so this is some of the global data that the facts and the information that we've been sharing with the board that again as we say we've known about this for a while um have been prompting us to look at our obligation to make sure all students achieve

190at high levels and right now our data was showing that um we have some room to grow there the more qualitative reason in the why is beyond the data um the why here talks about and I think Tom referenced it beautifully some of the uh or some of our previous thinking again thinking we were doing very good work was trying to use our Resources by grouping students who were struggling together and giving them additional adult support but what was happening is that was concentrating a lot of students with IEPs and other needs and that in turn was not creating a true general education and College Prep learning environment um in terms of the why behind knowing that if we instead of placing all those students together in a segregated section but rather um integrate them

191and include them in with their grade level peers um that their achievement increases as well as the achievement of their peers um and again we cited um significant research from AP um other universities and then a list of other things from researchers that are in support of um the idea that including students in the college prep curriculum um is is supported by research the next oh sure one question which might be relevant is is when I first heard the word heterogenous first of all biology is the only area where i' heard that word first so for me from a non education background it wasn't quite easy to understand what that means I mean my kids have traditionally been in AP and honors classes but there are some kids in those classes where they momentary pause

192attend a lecture and they go get an A in the in the exam the next day without any effort and there are some students who study really hard in that class and may get a B to me that is still a heterogeneous class I mean just because momentary pause we had all these kids in AP didn't mean they were all at the same academic level oh absolutely yes so I think some times when you hear this word and momentary pause first reaction is oh now my class is going to be full of kids of very different abilities and that's something new in fact it's not new that's it's always the case there's no one student is not like the other is that the right way of thinking Dr Denise Herman I yes and no I

193think that yes in um Cara's comment that as a teacher I was trained to differentiate that was a a huge part of my training as a teacher um and when I had students in an honors chemistry class or a regular chemistry class I had diverse Learners in both environments it was sometimes very different types of diversity um I would have some honor students who they could do the math part of chemistry hands down but when it came to the 3D modeling of molecules they stumbled and so I think even within a group of students from unit to unit you can have students who shine and students who struggle that's just the Art and Science of teaching and that's what our staff excels at um I think when we're talking about this particular group of students

194though um they were segregated and the curriculum they receiving was not always at grade level so I think that's when we say heterogeneous it's going from almost a sheltered to something where we want them to be um learning alongside their grade level peers okay thank you thank you very much and that I I would say that uh my observation from talking to other districts is anytime the word heterogeneous is brought up it's like throwing a bomb there there is a lot of angst and emotion and for us non-educators confusion about what that means right Dr Denise Herman um the next uh set of questions was was parents really wanting affirmation and Lisa made sure we opened with that that our AP and honors courses were not going to go away and that by including a

195larger group of students that their quality would not go down so the first uh question was to ask if other high performing high schools have eliminated um remedial courses and so the The Source I went to to find this was US News and World Report not that that's the best list but um that is a list of very very high achieving high schools and unfortunately the first 200 schools are mostly Charter magnet and other admissions based schools so I went through all of that list and I selected um in this order um schools who are on the top 200 list who um don't have admissions in our Public Schools so uh Mission San Jose Jericho this list here these are extremely high performing schools um and the one close closest to us is Stevenson um

196all of these schools I've linked the course their course manual their course guide to them um you can also I you can see how they rank and how high their college acceptance rates are and how high their SAT scores are these all of these high schools do not have remedial tracks if you look at their course guide you see English one honors English one English 2 honest English too um yes as the students get older they have a robust AP curriculum and things like that just as we do um but one of the fears that I think parents had was that if we do away if we move towards heterogenous classes that somehow the highest achieving students would decline and again that is far from what these high performing school districts are seeing and the

197research doesn't support it they do better correct momentary pause and um AP had some of that data in their report so some of the other the data that we listed here the Y behind heterog genius classes can you give you a tiny bit of my classroom experience what happens when you have a wide variety of Learners um very often you'll sit them in groups where you have differing abilities within that group and one of the best ways to get a student to uh to demonstrate understanding is to be able to explain it and very often those higher achieving students are explaining it within their groups like and a student to student explanation is better than a teacher to student explanation if a student can explain it to you chances are you're going to get that

198concept better than if the teacher explained it to you uh which I don't know it's just one of those crazy things but um the the result of that is that the students who are already high performing they've explained it so many times they really get it and so it's actually it's much stronger for them plus the students that are struggling a little bit I I can explain it to them but for some reason it's not going in but if another student explains it to them they're speaking the same language and it it syncs in better so I my experience has been in those situations where you have a variety of Learners that overall everybody improves can you just be sure that we're all remember remembering what you taught and for how long and where uh

199those two courses were both honors and AP courses but I also taught accelerated biology um physics and all of that at Stevenson for 33 years Dr Denise Herman so one of the things I did want to comment on is I they were asking for the high performing District so that's where I went to that site I know there are other high performing districts in our area who are excellent schools actually um on this list we do have um Vernon Hills was right in between Stevenson and Lambert I believe but because we still offered remedial courses I couldn't put us on the list but we are also achieving at very high levels um but some of the other districts that we like to compare ourselves to are several years ahead of us but they're not 100%

200heterogenous so for example last year I shared the example of Highland Park and how they had um the issue where um uh a staff member who was concerned about violations of the 7030 Rule and their remedial classes turned them in to ISP and ISP then gave them a letter saying You must uh alter your program so that you're in compliance with this law so um momentary pause Highland Park is in the process of making their changes um other schools that we like to compare ourselves to um nutrier also has been working on this Initiative for about seven years um so uh I but they say I think there's still one algebra class that they have that's somewhat tracked but again it it it takes some time but even districts peer districts that we like to

201compare ourselves to are having the similar Journey as to us and I can get more information on that but I wanted to go with the ones that I I knew soundly had uh removed them completely from their course offering the next question is about um College admissions and again sort of the fear of will achievement drop then will our College admissions drop and again going back to that same list the schools that are on here that have heterogeneous classes still having honors in AP but not having remedial classes they have some of the highest acceptance rates at um highly selective schools in the nation so again and it does not deter um actually because so many more of their students are taking college prep classes they have an overall increase in their four-year um acceptance

202rate at colleges um the next thing is sort of a question that was saying are we just trying to increase AP um and I think that uh all of the approaches that we are taking um has been to increase access to students for rigorous coursework we happened as as a district dozens of years ago to have selected AP is the Cornerstone of our Advanced coursework um so when we say we want students to have access to AP or to to rigorous courses it does mean AP we are growing our dual credit program so hopefully in the future we'll see more and more dual credit options and that will be a choice that students have some other high schools in the state or in the nation have interational Balor um you know so there are different

203options um because we've invested in AP that is the one that is the natural uh path for our students so it's we're not we're not out to try and make AP rich or anything this is just something that our district has selected and invested in and I think Denise it's important to say that students don't have to take AP if they're not comfortable taking it this is just an opportunity that they might might not have had and the other question related that I've received is are you allowed to sort of skip ahead of prerequisites in an AP class um I don't think that is possible Ian you couldn't take AP Chemistry if you've never taken right you do change that this doesn't change that there's still going to be a pre prerequisite to those courses

204yep momentary pause thank you for clarifying that may also just sorry ask this is what this is for we're really clear on the information that we try to share with you and the community I just want to be more clear about um potentially like any emergency stop valves in place for kids who do maybe find themselves in a situation where they pushed and they tried and you know what it's just not working out and that's okay and certainly there we we've we've heard some just kind of conflicting information that kids may not have the space or there may not be room in certain sections to bring kids back down a level um and so I just I want to hear more about that what what options do kids have if they find themselves in the

205deep end so speak I think that's something to add to like what I said a flowchart I'm looking for kind of a flowchart of a student experience right and uh that would be one of those offsets if they have gotten support and they're still struggling what are our Al what are you know some kind of a flowchart this is the daily this is the experience of your ninth grader and yeah it's a good question I mean I we'll just share anecdotally before you give the the real answer you know I saw it work beautifully with uh one of my own kids at fer Hills High School who dropped down from uh an AP class to a to a general um to a college Prop class and it was a frictionless experience so it it is

206something that we're already familiar with doing but I I am interested in hearing you talk about it in the context of the changes that we're making um just one clarification to what you said uh Lisa is how late in the process can you still do that because I thought there was like a you have to do it in the first six weeks or eight weeks or something that and after that you're committed I don't recall off the top of my head I don't know if I their principles know the drop date but we can get back to you with that particular information but one of the things I wanted to point out um our own Dr Kay did his Doctorate uh dissertation on studies of students who move diagonally so we have a resident expert

207um and I from conversations with Tom I know that momentary pause one of the things that we need to do is be both supportive in helping kids know they can sustain because there's this fear and they want to drop right away and um sometimes it's because they don't feel they belong sometimes you know there's lots of reasons but that when you look at the research if you can help kids sustain that first challenge um the the their confidence and their willingness to finish the course successfully is greater than it might have been had we just immediately dropped I don't know Tom if you want to give a 60c summary um momentary pause of your doctorate would you like to defend your dissertation for us this even that's what it feels like the just um yes

208Dr Herman's correct the um we wanna we want to work on belief um for students to believe that they can be successful in the courses um and then we want to work on as well as that um helping staff with the resources they need to support our students and then helping students have the resources they need so that when they struggle in the class um we have the resources to uh put in place to help support them um our research at the time showed that students uh struggle initially for a semester when they make this diagonal move but if they persist in the class their preag they go their second semester their grades go back up to where they were before making the move um and so um part of my work is thinking about

209how we can make that happen across our system momentary pause belonging so the next question um is uh the fear that um teachers might need to slow down their instruction um or reduce the rigor and I think that um I think one of the things that I'd want to comment on in general is AP as an organization has been working course by course by course to reduce the amount of content and the speed in those courses because they realize that some of the previous ways we were teaching AP classes was uh very superficial in terms of the depth of content and not allowing students to really get into some of the concepts of democracy or this or that and so as AP is going from course to course to course they are doing some of

210that work to make sure that its depth and breadth of content and our teachers are very good about aligning their curriculum their you daily curriculum and units to the expectations of of um AP so I just want to let you know that that as an organization AP is trying to help as they're revising their courses go with depth of thinking and critical thinking over rushing through 800 dates or something like that but one of the things that um again from you know your experience Don as an AP teacher and many other research there are strategies that teachers use to make sure that the rigor is still high but there there's many entry points for students and this is not an exhaustive list but it's a list of common instructional strategies and common ways that teachers

211can differentiate so that all Learners have an opportunity to um uh make sure that they are um if if there's a uh prior knowledge Gap that might be one of the things that's interfering okay how can I make sure that I have some um uh materials um the idea of flexible instructional strategies I might have different stations in in a Labs so boy you you didn't understand pipetting and how to do that particular lab skill I'm going to make sure that there's different ways that students can go deeper and get the help that they need and that can happen in a college prep class and that can happen in an AP in advanced class Don carmichel so the as an AP teacher you know what the kid needs to do to get a five you're

212gonna teach that Lisa hessle well and in terms of the curriculum in the pace there's not a lot of flexibility in an AP class it's determined by Don carmichel by the college board and then your own experience on how to that like every day is accounted for Dr Denise Herman the next area was uh questions on what kind of data we could be using um and so one of the things that we did is you know as administrators and Educators we know the plethora of data that we have on our students but it was really getting clear on which of the data that we currently have can we make sure we're targeting and explicitly um uh reviewing and sharing with parents so everything that we have on here except for the star is things we

213already have options to we already track grades we already track um SAT scores we already track College persistence but it's putting it together in a way that is going to help us say how did how are these groups of students progressing throughout semester one um so with the classroom based and again star is only math and reading it's not all subject areas but those are two very good indicators on foundational skills for students to be successful in many other classes but things like high school graduation weights things like um looking at some of our cohort data as they're going through this new CC not new curriculum excuse me the new placement processes um so we are committed to making sure that we have um this data um this year as a Baseline and then ongoing

214as we Implement uh these particular changes I think it'll be good if you can sort of put this on a timeline because High School graduation happens once at the end of a student's four-year career right son Al carne sat happens you know different times the star is happening all the time you're getting graded every week I think there's y if you can sort of show what all is happening and you're not going to wait till 11th grade sat to figure out that the student needs help I think you know you're going to get that indicator in the first you know first progress report y thank you I think we can put that visual together the next there was a question about um waiting of honors class and again there will be absolutely no changes to

215our uh defined way that we award um weights to students in um honors and AP classes and I apologize the the question uh got um chopped off of this particular table there was a question about how has the APA impacted our enrollment for next year in in general in these classes and so um you can see that at Libertyville High School um last year we had 944 students in AP and next year were predicted to be uh 1094 and again that's across all of the grade levels um and for honors and dual credit we were at 1343 and we up to 1434 so again 91 so an increase but not a giant increase that I think some people may have been concerned about Lisa Hessel the next I think there was some confusion that we

216were eliminating remedial courses and those students were going to be put in honors and AP classes that they weren't qualified for and that's definitely not the case we we don't want to set any students up to fail what we're trying to do is establish the rigor for every student but not beyond what is uh achievable I think Larry gave it in his explanation you know um you have to meet the metric before you can get to the next High level and the metric is to meet or exceed first yes in the content area and then 2.0 in the grade you know so I that was a common misconception in the letters that we received there was a lot of misinformation about that and I I thought that Larry had done a good job and I'm

217glad that we're momentary pause you know putting together this FAQ for all of the things for which we heard uh you know very well-intentioned comments but still a lot of misinformation we heard tonight and just to add I think in addition to that confusion there there is a bit of confusion in the community regarding a change in curriculum that our Core Curriculum is is going to somehow shift or be different we're teaching different things um diluting down the goals of our curriculum and again definitively not happening so some of these concerns that you know maybe we have to drive it home yet again that what is and what isn't and I think it's also so carne I mean I have learned to appreciate that now that I'm on the school board but sometimes if you're

218not then you mix up words she mean something really something different like curriculum versus dra track and track and all of that is a lot of things I think people are using the same word to mean something completely different and not necessarily what that word actually means I think you're right I think in the majority of the cases that it is a very well-intentioned um mistake but I I what I don't want to is feed into any narrative that there is um a culture war going on in our curriculum and we're hiding it so that's that's why I think it's worth whether it's a well- intention just using the wrong word or whether it's an intentional use of swapping sectioning for curriculum because momentary pause there's sort of an agenda behind it either way I

219I just want to be sure that no matter how many times we have to say it to really help people understand it we're willing to say it in in multiple ways in multiple venues multiple times to be sure because I agree with you I think um coming from the corporate world there was a lot of terminology in education that not only have I had to learn but I I continually have to remind myself of what it means and what it doesn't mean so that's a I think a good good thing to remember a glossery at the end of this what is a curriculum what is a track what's a dra TR what's an you know I think I was think mtss I have no idea what that means right I mean those are all yes

220things that I think car dry keep I think your explanations Through The Nine Pages were really really um detailed thoughtful but sometimes overwhelming and maybe more of a bullet points uh just to get momentary pause you know I mean here as I was re I I literally went through all of our emails and you did I appreciate that too and I started categorizing all of the questions and and I think I feel like there's some umbrella questions one we're changing the entire curriculum to meet the needs of our lowest 8% performing students no over and over answer is no momentary pause I I mean I think just uh as much as I appreciate all of this the detail I think we might lose our message but we need to have it and now kind of

221put something in more of a userfriendly version is and is not maybe what it is is we're helping students kind of maximize their potential what it's not is watering things down I think I think that's almost like a okay yeah bunk Ms Lisa hessle yeah so for the people that want to dig in to it's here it's here but for some people they just need the and dig you know I think the other biggest concern was that like I said this was a focus mostly on our striver Learners and everybody was going to be pulled down when this initiative is really going to be uh challenging our largest student body my son my girlfriend's daughter who went four years through our district momentary pause and never once was asked hey you want to try one

222of these classes because it was just good enough and uh momentary pause I'm happy to share that anecdote that's that you know I mean that is what this for all it's for all Dr Denise Herman thank you for reinforcing that I'm going to continue on the next section was trying to give examples of um um how our teachers are prepared would they want more time and more preparation absolutely I am a lifelong learner also and I always want to be getting better but I think one of the things that you clarified in your opening statement is this is the way a majority of our teachers teach their classes in our district right now so we have three departments who did have you know have and are going fading away the remedial classes in English science

223and math but all other departments have not had remedial sections and have been teaching in what we're labeling a heterogeneous class be it a band classroom a social studies classroom or language health class all of those classes have um uh a diverse amount of students in them and and the teachers do amazingly well at you know we we've seen some of the scores our students in World Language programs and the success of students in our elective areas so we know that our teachers have the skills we also know we want to give them more time to be able to make some of these transitions um and so we have been working with our ninth grade teachers since September and about once a month they have a day to come together and do some of the

224work that we're talking about how can we make this rigorous yet accessible how can we Define some common assessments how can we incorporate some differentiation strategies um so teachers have been making those decisions um we also wanted because there's some questions about uh students with special needs all of this is um comes secondary to a student's IEP so if a student I IEP says they need a in program US history class because of where their nition is or something else we will make that available to them so again this is all following leas restrictive environment um and I'd also just like to underscore again another kind of uh bit of misconception or some misinformation out there that this is this heterogeneous grouping is something different that our kids have never experienced before and that's just

225it's patently false our students come from their eighth grade feeder schools experiencing heterogeneous groupings I said it in our last meeting and I'll say it well I don't think it was our last meeting honestly I think it was a year ago I'll say it now I I watched a video that's why I'm getting confused um this is more of an adult mindset shift than it is one that are our students are going to Grapple with and they you know in this case follow their lead it it works out I've taught in the heterogeneous model myself I found it to be good for good good for that group of both what what would have been my college prep and my striving Learners together Dr Denise Herman I I appreciate you saying that and um I just

226want to clarify because I did get some feedback from some Middle School staff the middle school does have some accelerated courses just like we have honors courses but most of their students are in the uh general millu of e8th grade science or seventh grade whatever um so it is similar they're coming from having what would be a general level and an accelerated level that's exactly what we're transitioning to here um so when we say they're familiar with it the students are familiar with that particular pattern and I know the accelerated at least in the70s only or at least was uh mostly I think language and math it's not across the board M correct one other um thing that was presented and I wanted to include it in here because in April 2022 we did have

227a presentation and it was ironically from Amy Christensen who spoke that night oh she at the time was one of our um Equity coordinators who was advocating on behalf of students who she taught in team taught classes wanting to have the experience of being among her uh grade level peers and having opportunities to experience what it's like to do rigorous High School writing and discussion of literature um but at that same me meeting we did present lots of different models for exploring heterogeneous classes Oak Park River Forest was one of the things that we said here is a model when we investigated further we decided this model was not for us um and that's why I think some parents who maybe went back and listened to some of our previous meetings and conversations which it's

228awesome that they did that maybe thought that because oprf was on one of our agendas or was in a resource that that was a path that we decided to take and and it is not um that particular model um has what's called embedded honors which is honors students and College Prep students being in the same classroom but the assignments are differentiated or the assessments are differentiated and we after looking at that model did not feel that that F that met the needs of our students in our community especially for our core classes I I'm aware that there are some very Tera Benjamin minor number of of elective classes that allow for students to earn honors Credit in them because there may we may not offer it just may not exist um an honors level course

229that they can take separately and then we kind of allow this is my understanding please correct me we allow for um kind of a supplementary independent study alongside that cours workk that allows for them to earn the honors level credit is that correct in some of our electives there are some of those opportunities we also in some of the electives do what Brian I think last week described as sort of stacked classes 10 kids or not or even 10 kids in a college prep and 10 kids in the honors version of a class but we want it to run and we um have experience with a teacher being able to teach both in that classroom but again it's not a core class and it's because of low enrollment it's not by Design to make students

230have that experience the next thing is to again um make sure parents who had students with 504s or IEPs understand that the supports they're receiving now will still be in place and actually they'll be expanded with this model and again as the board has requested we'll come back with an even more clear picture of that um momentary pause uh let's see and then the next one is um oh the phase in thank you yes i' started they're all the the q&as are starting to look the same um yes and this was something that when um we became aware of this and the urgency um that we could have taken when we when we as a board talked it was let's do this one year at a time and knowing that the the bulk of our

231remedial classes were in the freshman and the sophomore year and then many fewer in the 11th and 12th grade year that's why we mapped out the three-year phase in for this so we understand that if the isbe police came and said hey you're not doing this we would say yes but we have a plan and we're implementing it and we're moving forward um and again that's typically how they hold schools accountable is for improvement over time and that we're not ignoring it momentary pause um the next thing is more about equal opportunity schools um and again this um is an alternate way APA was a blanket thing for all students and it just used test scores we know that for many students of color and lowincome students that might not be enough for them to

232actually follow through with enrollment or that we might miss them just on test scores alone so as Larry explained this is to try and help meet our goal of more proportional representation so to have fewer as we're eliminating them fewer students in our striving Learners courses and more representation of students in our honors and AP classes so it is a focused uh way of using measures Beyond test scores to help us identify students with potential now I haven't gone back to look at our presentation on the EOS but I thought I remembered although we're contracted for three years the goal is for us to take over this identification this is not a contract in perpetuity and that we will eventually be using their metrics to create our own student profiles with the same measures that

233is our plan so yes although there are some districts for whom they've had a long-term relationship because either their population is growing tremendously or maybe they don't have some of the same resources that we have to take it over in terms of a data team or administrators who can oversee it um but that is our plan we feel that with our data and assessment team um and with the staff we have once we understand the process and they've coached us through this that will be able to take on the identification and The Trusted adult training and the things that they're helping us learn how to do you know when I go back to umbrella umbrella the rumors the umbrella ideas what's the concerns and one of the concerns and that we heard pretty frequently is

234that teachers are being asked to recommend placement that is not appropriate for a student uh based on their demographics from their student profile card and I think we just have to say that's not h i mean recognize that that is one of the concerns and that our staff is trained and they are making recommendations as trusted adults to their students that are appropriate placements and not trying to set them up to fail absolutely yes so I I would want to know more about maybe where where some of that misinformation might be coming from but again it's very clear the indicators that placed a student on the list and then we even called that list remember Larry said there was just by all of the things on the on the U assessments and other things there

235was you know hundred and some kids and both school teams narrowed that down to even smaller so we we were even more rigorous in making sure that the students that we had trusted adults conversations with um we felt really had the preparation and the both because we said kids who expressed an interest and a passion so we were trying to build on that potential um and we used grades we used test scores and we used some of those other indicators so yes everyone who was on that list met multiple criteria the population of of that students is that mostly from the from freshman year or is that son Al carne could be any any your it it is well we didn't it wouldn't be our incoming freshmen because they didn't participate so it's only our

236sophomores Juniors and seniors momentary pause in terms of the data that we have on them because you know we we took the assessment in the fall and we did not have our eighth graders take that and it wouldn't be appropriate necessarily because we only have a very small number of AP and dual credit classes that they would even be eligible for Dr Denise Herman so the next area is we did hear some of that tonight also about the convergence of these three initiatives and I think we're working very hard to try and see these as um aligned system lovers they're all working together as the graphic on here shows to help increase access to rigorous courses some of them are mandates from the state some of them are guidelines and some of them are targets

237that we have sent for a racial Equity policy um but they aren't they complement one another they are not in opposition to one another can I um oh I'm sorry so you know even as I I've been learning about this and contemplating what the roll out looks like and hearing all the concerns about um just how quickly this seems to be happening and urging from the community to slow our role and scaffold things and pilot things before we pile them all on um the more I look at it the more I do see the complimentary nature of these three initiatives and I want to take a step back and say like I I think it would be a useful exercise to say that if let's say hypothetically yes we did slow our roll and year

238by year we rolled one of these things out at a time why isn't that the right move carara Benjamin and you may need yeah you may need time to process that Dr Denise Herman well I I think that they the APA even though it's only by a test score will identify some students and that's the law so I say that's the one that we are most obligated to do I think the other two are more um obligations that we've set to increase student learning and it's more of an internal drive that what we've been doing already has not been working and so to keep doing that and knowing that we have an obligation as a public school to do everything in our power to help as many kids be as successful as possible it feels

239like we' be turning down an opportunity that would be blending the other thing is some of these students are under like one placement of one student could be under all three of these do you know what I mean like if one sophomore who is a low-income student could have accelerated placement a heterogeneous class and um an an EOS recommendation so they are all momentary pause working together it's almost like a safety net to make sure that each student that we know might be missing an opportunity to have that rigorous experience we're we're catching them with three different tools so I guess I see them operating like this and that doesn't happen all the time in the way initiatives roll out from the state and the way our I I I actually think it's a gift

240that these things are aligned the way they are um sometimes sequential things people say didn't we do that last year didn't we do that two years ago and it it starts to become something that we lose the impact rather than knowing that we are going to put the resources where they need to be so kids regardless of which lever might have helped accelerate them and some students aren't being accelerated at all we might have recommended them or might they might not have tested it so the other thing is some students are going to be taking the same rigor of coursework that they took this year um but we know these different policies help them know that they might have an opportunity that they had not explored before you know and as somebody who is a

241part of these conversations every meeting for the last two years like I said even I was a little uh questioning of EOS being considered an initiative as as much as it was a partnership with a a tool it was a partnership of a tool to get to for a very specific thing for Accelerated placement and then also a heterogeneous class I don't see it as a separate initiative as much as it's yeah I in some districts it may be right if it had the whole District was facing the issues that are trying to be solved with that but this District it is a very small piece of a big puzzle Cara drumkey right but it got momentary pause 3 % of the spotlight yes and maybe that's on our communication because it was again it's

242it's a timely you know kind of tool that we intend to take over to support our direction through heterogenous and um the APA but it's not really an initiative yes thank you one clarification is the EOS contract is a two-year contract so this is our first year next year will be the second year what we Ro in the Strategic plan is anticipating we might need a third year that was just our best guess but just to be clear the contract that's in place now is a two-year contract well I remember we discussed that the intention was for us to take this over with our D team so um and I think as far as the APA I think we're doing pretty well even now with the student enrollment in AP classes right I mean we've

243got pretty decent levels of AP enrollment which may be why you didn't see such a huge jump as a result it really is reflective of the philosophy of this District already yep yeah I mean just I mean my own personal experience which is n of two but you know when my older child was in high school six years ago there were no AP in ninth grade momentary pause but now you have two opportunities so I know that's been growing there's a lot more AP classes that are generally available so maybe for us to what I'm trying to get to is for us to momentary pause um align to the AP we're actually kind of almost there we're already doing it so context maybe yeah yeah it's not like we didn't do it and now we're

244going to start we're kind of 99% there and that's why if you look at you know 100 students out of how many that's like momentary pause it's too late for me to do percentage right now but feels like a small percentage of change right momentary pause maybe that's another message is it's not like it's all brand new Dr Denise Herman um just to again quickly go through some of these others um included the road map that again shows how each of the initiatives is being rolled out simultaneously and how they complement one another so this is a graphic that came from if you can go to the next one actually pause for slide yeah that one thank you um so this is something that was presented to the board um first last April and then

245again I believe it was in August just reminding us um where the no remedial courses are where some of these supports are where different work has been going and we have been true to this map in terms of um uh designing different things making sure that we have had um you know the EOS summer support so that's something that we're designing right now what might be some things that students and teachers might need um to be ready to welcome different Learners into their classroom son carne there is one kind of question that's been nagging me for a while and that is when students enter ninth grade momentary pause if they're if they don't have the appropriate skill level that they should have to start 9th grade then what's being done at the 8th grade level

246the seventh grade level to make sure they don't get behind Dr Denise Herman well I think that calls for the need for more specific dialogue between eth and nth grade um I think that we've started that work I think having the APA and having all students take the PSAT where previously it was in the 90s but it wasn't all so we have increased the communication we've had with our middle schools um this also has helped us see the need to have much more consistent data for placement in things like pause for executive functioning so getting more clear from the Middle School on some of the mtss like interventions they've tried what has been successful I think we get that antidotal but I think we need to be finding some different and additional ways to make

247sure that students who um either have an academic or a behavior or a study skill kind of deficit that we're really getting clear in what that is as they transition to high school um again I think it's been informal um and we can make it more formal momentary pause in terms of other kinds of things I think we have had very um a and when we talked about summer school we've had a smaller number of opportunities for students who maybe failed a class or want to do the repeat and replace that we talked about um and we have a larger number of students who are taking get ahead classes um and so I think that could be another area for us to think about that design process um what could we do that we potentially

248a credit bearing option for freshman wanting to come in and take a class and and have it be a little lower stress in terms of juggling seven other classes so I think we have some ideas on what it could look like we just want it again one thing at a time so the idea of uh expanding summer school to do some additional things is something we see in our future yeah because you know the student has what five plus four nine years eight years of school before they enter ninth grade and if they're if they're not at the level where they have to be then you're like at the ninth grade level left in a place of massive catchup so that's kind of where I'm going with is is there something that also has to

249be actively worked on with the feder districts to make sure that momentary pause they are identifying I may be asking a wrong question and I'm not trying to kind of fast the buck here but it feels like we're trying to solve a symptom and not the root cause Lisa has well I I certainly appreciate that thoughtfulness I think you know we have excellent feeder districts and if there was information that we could share that would help them be even better I would be shocked if they weren't yeah uh wanting to have that kind of partnership um you know I know that there was a high school that drove an initiative to they had to force community colleges to share data with them because they were desperately trying to strengthen their certificate and dual credit programs

250and their local Community College just refused to partner with them I think we're in an enviable position because of the size of the region of our feeders we have um we have excellent theaters and if we offered to partner with them so that they could be even better I I think that that would be a a pretty easy road to pave Dr Denise Herman the last area I wanted to cover is um there were some questions specifically from incoming freshmen and was able to answer most of those but one um of them got omitted um and that was a question from some parents about um students who have signed up for honors world history um and when we printed on the message that went out last time we accidentally left that off so if a

251student signed up for an honors history class it was just our om mission in putting that list together last week so whatever they signed up for is what was available and what they will be receiving so one clarification there momentary pause so I appreciate the board's questions to make sure that I and and questions that you still feel like we need to remain and I love your idea of what's the one or two page summary of this with bullet points or the umbrella things and I think that's something that Mary and I and DT can be working on for our next Edition yeah I do have some questions that came up that but it's too late I can I just email these to you you know with highlights and then we can um and see

252if they are worthy of adding in either the pamphlet or version The Abridged version I appreciate you um emailing those thank you um I had just one really fast I'm wondering is there somewhere we could in one of these FAQs that exists already just embed the information that there was no one architect of any of these features that this was a very deliberate uh group effort among DT and building leadership and all the other stakeholders that went into crafting this because that's a piece of misinformation that I think is um momentary pause it's minor but I think it's worth just including somewhere if we could thank you I identify who were part of that process maybe yeah so I mean we certainly want to give credit where credit is due and maybe the the full

253list isn't appropriate or a link to it could possibly be included but um I'd like to address the misinformation that there was somehow um one architect of this son Al carne and the only other thing I would say and then I will stop talking is there were a momentary pause I think it's real that the incoming freshman U parents are not receiving the communication and now if you've had kids enroll in classes and such and you have their information I would see if there's a way of adding them to your list for the for the FAQ distribution right for that or any kind of going forward communication on this topic because I've had a few I'll let Mary go ahead and comment on that I do have the lists from both schools but I I

254don't know why there's certain people that aren't receiving them because I know others are so I'm I have messages into both schools so we'll get that fixed thank you and I I just to add to that I think it's you know obviously it goes without saying that's helpful for newcomers to the district but then you consider the fact that we have families who put through a kid or two already into the d128 system and now they've got their youngest coming up as an eighth grader and they're like what what just changed right so it can be it does feel maybe a little blindsiding to them um and so I fully agree that to be maybe a little more um deliberate in our delivery to our incoming eighth graders is a great plan great idea Dr

255Denise Herman well and I think also finding ways I mean some of the parents who spoke were parents of fifth graders who have an invested interest though and and I understand that so it can be difficult though when we were trying to brainstorm how would we get our message to elementary schools that that that that's a very difficult um task but one of the things we can do is make sure that as we continue to publish these things on our website and on our social media um that we bring people's attention to it is there a way to be proactive because I feel like we reacted to what was going on on Facebook and I I know that we we hold our meetings in public so most of the information should be out there but

256how how can we be I'm G to turn it over to Mary now um we were talking about this the other day and we want to develop a web page or probably two but two web pages that would be for parents of future cougars parents of future wild cats and we could house things like this but you know as things go through the year it would just be that's the spot they know to go to um we could still send things out but at least they would know that's always going to be their space and we could promote that through the feeder District's Communications as well so they get accustomed to going there and could they get a like a way to sign up for updates sure Don carmichel sorry I was thinking more about

257the the Facebook creation of a Facebook page that uh a lot of misinformation was going around uh when I was contacted by somebody saying what do you know about all of this like how did how did that even get out there why why are they talking about things that aren't things and angry about them momentary pause so I I don't know how to monitor that other than to have I mean I think monitoring misinformation on social media is not unique 128 no no I would much rather drive people to our website for information than to have debate on Facebook oh yeah I don't want to have a debate on Facebook I just want to like how do we direct people to where there is correct information and don't have an answer for that I think

258I'm sorry I said I wouldn't talk but I'm going um but we're happy to hear from you I think there is a lot of information so but we live in a headline World these days and if you give a lot of information people don't necessarily have the patience myself included to read through all of that because sometimes they're reading it on their phone they remember a few words that they saw and don't really grasp the concept and that's I think where I think what Carol was saying is you got to make something it's like when you buy a TV there is a thick booklet and then there is a simple fold out to hook things in and most of the times you don't ever read the thick book booklet right that's kind of what you

259got to think of is how do you make this simple something that someone can read very quickly on their phone and get the information and those people who want to get in the details it's sere but you have to also have this what is and what isn't constantly because otherwise if you don't explicitly say that something is not people are remembering or assuming and filling in gaps there I think that's what's going on Cara Benjamin and forgive me to kind of move it in this direction but like that could also be a great PR opportunity just for our General District Communications is that when you make things more accessible to people and more readily available people engage people get behind people support and I mean I I can point to District 73 who I think

260has done this really beautifully and they've they've had some fun with it too they you know they interview kindergarteners and they do all sorts of silly things but for whatever reason it works in engaging and so I hate to push the district into creating a Tik Tock Channel I don't think that's the answer but what I'm saying is who knows maybe maybe the modes of communication and information we've relied on in the past even in the last year maybe aren't serving Us in this purpose and so maybe there is a way that we can kind of meet people where they're at instead of us momentary pause constantly you know momentary pause going back to well our meetings are public we post the agenda you can play them all back I mean I I find myself

261saying that to people right where nothing is nothing is um obscured hidden but maybe it needs to be a little predigested for people yeah I I think that's a good idea I also just want to follow up down that I think while we don't want to be overly reactive to Facebook post I do think that once the concern emerged and I received an email asking for a face-to-face meeting it happened within two days so I think that um momentary pause we are trying to make sure that it's not just it's on our website it's not just these things that we are having parents come in have face to-face conversations trying to calm their fears and replace misinformation with factual information and sometimes that's successful and sometimes that's not Lisa Hessel okay thank you everybody for

262your extremely thoughtful uh work on putting this FAQ together into the board for engaging in a really thoughtful um and meaningful discussion at this late hour um we're going to move right on to any board comments and events um and go straight to the brief seedall report carara Benjamin SE does I know does anyone have any comments or events oh sorry did we all agree we didn't okay at this point no now I have to find my note hold on okay here we go must be a brid version I will give you the very Bridge version it's maybe six sentences okay so uh we met on the sixth uh last Wednesday and the governing board is looking to nominate and appoint some new governing board members as well as some new executive board members more

263on that to come as appointments happen we're in the process of selling one of the sea doll properties buildings in mundeline that um used to house the vocational training program but due to the fact that some districts including our own have taken back um some of these vocational programs there's no longer a need for a separate building uh and so that program will continue to run at all but they able to combine it uh into the facilities available at the gaues lake school so it that property is being sold if it's sold yet I am not sure but I think think it's moving uh and then we accepted the retirement of our uh superintendent Dr Valerie Donan and accepted the recommendation to employ uh two interim co-s superintendant for a one-year contract um and they

264have a wide breath of experience and they've worked together before so that's exciting to see kind of their Synergy play out um now for our uh sea doll district and uh I'm very happy to report that we have hit our district Improvement uh six month goals so back in oh like momentary pause lsh summer early fall we had a a major review of our programs kind of come to light and showed a lot of um issues within the operational um ends of the district and um a whole task force was assigned to address it um Dr Herman is serving on uh one of those committees to kind of uh work with the leadership over at se doall anyhow as we move through uh you know those those benchmarked goals that we've created we're in a

265really good place right now we're hitting the the goals set for six months out from the beginning of the plan so lots of exciting things happening within SE doll um and I feel like we're finally starting to get our footing back a bit after we've had you know just a trickier year that's it I appreciate your course efforts and your time uh and you're distilling all of that for us we really appreciate it we do rely on your um time and expertise so thank you I'll make a Tik Tock next time be sure to send me the QR code sure sure have you made a Tik Tock video oh my gosh no I I've decided I am far too old for Tik Tock I can't my brain I'm too in too many directions let me

266know if you have pointers though I've made one and it was very fun Lisa hessle so moving on to our future agenda items in addition to the things that are listed um as a an ed R representative of sorts um there is a resolution that's being circulated about Tiff districts that I know Ed R is looking for as many member districts as possible to support so depending on if Denise and Dan review this and they think it is worth us discussing we may see that at the April board meeting uh sorry the April committee meeting I know you will not be available to join us for that we will miss you but we hope you have a wonderful time in Arkansas any other additions to what is listed as future agenda items that we should

267discuss tonight Cara dry I'd like to see if we can get something in the near future on like I suggested just a flowchart a flowchart of what a students experiences is grade nine grade 10 grade 11 options supports measurements of measurements do you think you would mind sending an email just with your ideas of what what you're looking for and what that would look like when you say experiences I think that's what I want a little more clarity on uh not exp as we are putting APA together especially in ninth grade because I know ninth grade's going to look different than 10th and 11th and 12th but starting with maybe just lumping 10 11 and 12 together because they are kind of different next year a flowchart of momentary pause what we are you know

268the questions we were asked what are we measuring what how often are we reviewing it what are our criteria how are we supporting teachers how are we supporting students I mean I I can rra my something graphic that is not to verbose that says we've thought of this and this is our plan you telling me I mean we just had this conversation and you gave me 12 you know examples of what it is that we have in place already but some graphic that we could share with the community something we do in it land is called use cases orain the life of so you could say I'm a ninth grade student who was uh recommended for a higher level class and I'm doing great momentary pause what's my experience like I'm a ninth grade student

269which after you know first progress report it started to feel really hard momentary pause what's my experience like I mean I'm just giving you ideas and not I think that way people can maybe relate to this is my child and here's what I can expect if my kids's experience ends up in one of these and it just helps I think momentary pause point is we should probably add that to our something along the lines of communication about the plan to each of our agendas because it'll be a little more High touch for the next few months and it might help bring down the anxiety level momentary pause you can decide sort of which topic is we can definitely well and we would appreciate your feedback on a draft so it would probably be a draft

270but that's what is going to make your feedback the most essential is from a career from from a parent from from a board member perspective yeah we can definitely have something ready for you to feed Cara Benjamin I had one other addition for future agenda items um and I I may have mentioned it about a month ago momentary pause and I just read through it again but the print is small so tell me if it's on here and I'm not seeing it um an update on uh grading and assessment momentary pause they I think they just came last wait did they am I hallucinating now it's very possible yeah was here you're right Charlotte was here I'm so sorry no that's okay okay I Dr Denise Herman if you have remaining questions send them I'm

271going to probably um if if there was something that was missing from that presentation that's what it that's what I actually have to do okay thank you sorry about that Lisa Hessel okay then um we are looking for a motion uh to move to Convenient close session to discuss Collective negotiating matters under five is five is cs120 2c2 car Michael so moved thank you jum key second thank you roll call please pause for roll call yep hi car Michael hi drum key Hi H hi Carney hi motion passes we are convened in closed session when we return we will not be taking any action thank you everyone Fade to Black Fade to District 128 logo Fade Into board member seated a table uh we need a motion in a second to return to open session

272it is 11:15 p.m. move to open session Benjamin second uh all in favor I I any opposed motion carries so we've returned to open session I want to thank very sincerely everybody in this room did such a good job this was a stressful meeting and everybody asked great questions and I could not be proud of the professionalism in this room tonight so thank you everyone uh that being said can we have a motion in second to adjourn car dry drun so move sonney carne second thank you voice vote all in favor say I I oh I any in FA any opposed we are a journ thank you everyone end of meeting