001Fade to District 128 logo 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 liberty and justice for all thank you can I ask for a roll call please pause for roll call here Cara Benjamin here Don Carmichael here Cara drumke here Lisa Hessel here so now oh Carney here we note all members present quick review of the agenda so everybody knows what to expect we will begin tonight with public comment um I will be going in the order of the sign-in sheet everybody will have three minutes I will give you a a gentle warning when your three minutes are up to please wrap up your comments if you did not manage
002to sign in that doesn't mean that you've missed your chance uh whenever when we've been through the list um we will get to anybody who did not sign in who would like to address the board after um I I also want to note I think many of you have been to board meetings before and are familiar with our board protocols for public comment we do not engage in discussion about the comments that we hear it's not because we're ignoring you many times comments are about things that are not on our agenda for the evening in which case we're not giving proper notice to the public who would have wanted to come for that conversation so it's not that we will ignore you one of the reasons that we do get people's names and phone numbers
003is so that if there is something to follow up with one of our administrators will be back in touch with you about your question or concern so um at the beginning of the meeting we will have our invitation for public comment with a three-minute time limit then we will hear from our teachers union after that we will hear our student School Board representative reports review our foia requests and have some good news after that we will get to our consent mode agenda the consent vote includes items that are routinely approved together in one motion uh things like hiring approving minutes um some employment matters educational tour requests these are all things that we have discussed in committee and are included in the public materials for a board meeting for transparency are there any board members
004wishing to remove any of the consent vote items this evening pause for discussion okay so you're not on the consent but we'll stand after the consent vote we will have three items for Action we've got some employment of employees these are hires that came in after our committee meeting we have a very small board governance handbook update that we will discuss and approve and then we will review the uh contract for the Vernon Hills High School graduation venue we have a few items for discussion tonight we are going to receive an update on our Equity policy and for any of our community members and students that have come here because of a genuine curiosity and concern about the district's view on Equity I sincerely urge you to stay for that item to hear an update
005on our Equity policy uh we will also have a presentation on a 2023 summer school as well as a capital projects overview after that we will have a review of the regulatory fiscal year 23 employee compensation report we will hear our superintendent's report from Dr Herman we will share some board comments and events or training that we have attended do we have an iasb report this evening okay so we will have a report from our Delegate for the Illinois Association of school boards do we have a seawall report this evening nothing for cetall um and I do not believe we have any other reports to discuss we will review future agenda items we have several that are listed in our board packet and once we complete that we will move to adjourn the meeting there
006is no closed session this evening so without further Ado I'd like to start a public comment and invite Rania bellabis to the podium cam returns to Podium approaches podium hello my name is Libertyville High School the same as every other student so why I'm like every other student do I have to fight for a day off to celebrate my face four years ago I watched students from my community including my own sister stand before you like I am today asking you for uh for your support and including your on the school calendar I watched them back for something that I believe should be a right the year after that their Hardware paid off and it was announced it would be a day off you can't even imagine my excitement as an 8th grader in Oak
007Grove knowing that for the first time including my holiday matters to my school I felt like I belonged as much as every student and now imagine my disappointment as a senior having to fight so that future generations of Muslim Students can feel the exact same for a district that pushes diversity and inclusivity this is ultimately a step back our mission statement is to be daring the last letter G for Global and the first statement under that category is we value diversity is valuing diversity really maintaining only Christian holidays is it taking away a day that we have fought for over eight years now is it continuing to let students who are of a religious minority struggle in comparison to students who are given their holidays off as a right we are not even asking for
008official recognition of the holiday only the day off whether it be a non-attendance day or a teacher Institute day for our for the most important day of the year as a Muslim or our education to not choose over it last year well it was an honest mistake or it was not off and it was a great example as to why an excuse absence is not a reasonable option I was not only stressed about missing all of my classes and having to make everything up on top of my two jobs and other extracurriculars but school not being off still found a way to impede on my holiday in regards to last year snowflake a program where High School mentors middle school students within the area fall on the day of rape snowflake has been something that
009I've been a part of since seventh grade from participating in to planning the event for the past three years I have no I would have never had to choose between participating in Snowflake last year and staying home to continue celebrating with my family had the day been off since it wouldn't have been scheduled on a day without School in session and ultimately I had to go taking six hours out of my biggest holiday while my family was left at early dinner with an empty chair reserved for me at the table we are not asking for any more only to retain something that we have already spent years advocating for as you have seen for the past eight years we are such a big and growing population that we will continue to attain leadership positions advocate
010for ourselves and continue to push for this one day off even though I will not be affected by this in the future the rest of my community will and today is proof that generations to come will not give up I want to add that we are completely open and willing to work with the board on this issue to explore any alternative any alternative that works for everyone if other schools in our area like Stevenson nutria and Grace like Central can provide a non-attended stay for religious minority holidays we can too it's important for us to get this day off because we believe it makes us as a community feel equal and like we belong as you are voting on this think about all the people in this room and how they are only a fraction
011of the community that will be affected by this by this decision for years to come and now if anyone in the audience agrees with me I believe you could wrap up your comments that's three minutes thank you no you can finish your sentence if anyone in the audience agrees with me tonight and believes that religious minorities should continue having non-attended stays during their holidays please stand up [Music] majority of audience stands in solidarity with speaker thank you Rania next is Abid Khan Abid Khan approaches podium foreign hi everyone hope you're all doing well my name is Abid Khan and I'm the co-president of the LHS Muslim Students Association and I just wanted to share my own personal experience as to why I believe removing Eid and other non-Christian religious holidays off the calendar would be
012a huge setback last year due to miscalculation on what day Eid would be we did not have the holiday off though this miscalculation was not the board's fault it does serve as an example of what our holidays would be like in the future with the secular calendar that night as we broke our fast for the last time after 30 days of not eating or drinking during the daytime 30 days of extra supplication and 30 days of balancing all of this with schoolwork clubs and sports I did not have time to celebrate instead I stayed up that night doing practice problems for math tests that I had to miss the next day and catching up on AP US History prep for our upcoming Final it was also my responsibility to help vacuum the house and help
013prep the food for the family and friends coming over the next morning that next day on Eid as I tried to celebrate with family and friends I dragged my apus history textbook and my math notes around asking my brother to help test me on U.S history terminology and explain limit statements while he asked me to help him with ap econ review response practice imagine having Christmas with the textbook on the dinner table that was what our eat looked like even though we did take the day off the looming knowledge that we were missing school managed to ruin the whole point of the holiday to celebrate 30 days of sacrifice these situations are not just individual to me I know that for a fact because my brother and I weren't the only people I saw celebrating
014Eid with textbooks and work they needed to make up in hand therefore I ask you all as the Board of Education to please not disappoint us as members of religious minorities by revoking the decision to have religious holidays like Eid Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur and Diwali off because I know you all truly do believe in valuing our experiences and can recognize that moving towards a secular calendar is contrary to this belief thank you all for your time cause for Applause thank you next is Ahmad Nader Ahmad Najar approaches podium uh hello everyone my name is Ahmad I'd like to thank the board for the opportunity to give public comments today I really appreciate it I'd like to share two perspectives and end with an offer for the board my first perspective is as a parent
015I've been a parent of a district 68 and 128 students for the past nine years I'm currently the father of Yahya Mohammed who is a sophomore in Libertyville High School is a student who finished freshman as an honor roll student for the two semesters and is currently in the junior varsity soccer team with four wins and one loss so far in their conference and although it's good to be proud of what our kids do I'm not saying that to be braggy I'm saying that to encourage a sense of appreciation in the board members of how important and inclusive and welcoming environment in the school is for students of ethnic and religious minority as parents who've never been through the high school system in the U.S we were so anxious about how our kids would actually
016be welcomed and accommodated in such a school system and it has been incredibly overwhelming how Libertyville High School has been inclusive to students like him accommodating the religious and cultural needs from things like accommodating places to pray thinking about having religious holidays as time off understanding their needs and their cultures and their backgrounds is a big factor for their success the second perspective I want to share is a different hat that I'm wearing tonight I am currently the president of Islamic Foundation North which is one of the Muslim organizations in Libertyville on Oakland Road maybe some of you have driven by it this is an organization that has been there for more than 20 years currently has more than 600 families as members and more than 2 000 individual members the size of this community
017has grown by almost double in the last five to six years and one of the biggest factors for that is not about the community itself but it's about the general area one of the things that we are proud of is this area we have the right mix of the right religious institutions and the right Public School System we actually talk to people in the community about how this is the right place to be because the students never have to choose between the religious commitments and their success in academic life again thanks to what Libertyville High School and Vernon Hills High School have been trying to do with those students so this is a really unique mix not only for Illinois but for the U.S and I do not think anyone here wants to lose that
018now last I'm going to end with an offer to the board and before I mention that I think this is here either a question of whether or a question of how whether we want to be inclusive to those students or is it a question of how do we be inclusive to those students and I I do not expect any of the board members to be asking the question of whether I'm sure everyone wants to be inclusive to those students and I encourage everyone not to let the struggles of the how to prevent us from going back to the question of whether I think the question of whether is aren't I done uh that that's three minutes if you can wrap it up last thing what I'm offering as Rania said in the beginning student board
019members parents and even myself as a representative of one organization to which most students belong we're here to help with anything survey collecting information reaching out into other schools in terms of how it can be done how it can be accommodated happy to help thank you thank you thank you pause for Applause next is Eva farencross Eva fair and cross approaches podium I don't ever think about the holidays I have off and it never occurred to me that that might be something that students my age had to concern themselves with it was when I first connected with one of my Muslim friends that I realized some people have to choose between missing a day of school or celebrating their religion with their family as a Christian Student I've never experienced this and I've always had
020the opportunity to spend my holidays with the people that I care about I've never had to fight for this privilege and it shouldn't be a privilege this should be the standard I'm not the first Christian to speak before the board about this Emma black gave a speech four years ago when the class of 2021 was advocating for complete religious tolerance in d128 specifically recognizing Eid as a religious holiday and a non-attendance day unlike Emma Black's speech imploring that you give students their holidays I am now asking you to fight to keep them tonight on behalf of the student body I too show complete support for all religious minority holidays to remain recognized as non-attendance days I was appalled when I learned that my non-Christian peers would lose their holidays next year how can a school
021and Community who have made such great efforts to create more diversity and equality settle for this outcome how can you ask students to choose between their religious the religion and their education as a school and Community I recognize that we have made efforts to create more diversity and equality specifically through the daring mission even from this even from the perspective of a student who is unaffected by these changes being made to our school this seems to be a clear step backwards from that mission thank you pause for Applause next is sristi karwa shristi Karma approaches podium hi my name is Justin Cobra and I'm a Asian community of District 128. I'm here to advocate for a day off of the on Diwali a widely celebrated holiday in India this holiday is known for the Festival
022of Lights as it celebrates the time when King drama came back to ayodhya after a long fight with ravna a demon this rep this represents the Triumph of good over evil knowledge over ignorance and lightness over Darkness as you can see this is a very important holiday for the religious Indians who compose roughly 11 of our student population here at Vernon Hills High School South Asian Americans represent about 36 percent of the state's Asian American population as well this will continue to increase as the Indian population in Vernon Hills is increasing this is only one step closer in making Vernon Hills High School much more inclusive for the Indian Community which is growing at a rapid rate although Diwali is a five-day holiday we are only asking for the main day off according to the
023Hindu calendar we would require one day off for only seven out of the next 10 years when Diwali does fall on a weekday it is normally during midterms which causes academic stress for many students um since they could potentially start falling behind on the curriculum or on exams if we still have to complete assignments during this holiday it will result in significantly less time to being spent with our family celebrating religion and connecting with our cultural roots a way to prevent this is to allow us to take exams at later times and either exempt us or give us an extension to make up for these worked for the work we missed in all classes thank you for your time and I will hand the rest of it off to my partner sahibi thank you [Applause]
024next is sahity garamella sahity garamella approaches podium hello my name is sahity garamella and I'm a member of the South Asian community of District 128. I'm here today to discuss the lack of diversity with regards to the holidays that are included on the school calendar our school calendar focuses mostly on Christian holidays and there's a lack of representation for other major religions in our community as seen a few years ago with the proposal to have a holiday for Eid I believe that it's possible for the district to accommodate holidays from other religions without drastically changing the school calendar so that we can increase diversity and acceptance in our school Community having a school calendar that mostly focuses on Christian holidays leads to other religions being ignored and the religious and cultural diversity in our school
025being suppressed in our specific case the South Asian Community will be unable to participate in the traditions of Diwali due to Christian holidays being favored another negative impact is that students will lose touch with their culture in my personal experience being surrounded by Western culture and Christianity all the time made me reject my culture in favor of Western Traditions it also made me ashamed of my culture because I felt out of place in a school where my culture was barely focused on or celebrated though I've recently started reconnecting with my culture and religion you still won't see me wearing like this on a normal school day if holidays from other religions are incorporated into the calendar these issues can be remedied students will be able to see more representation of their respective cultures and our
026community will be able to embrace diversity in addition giving students the opportunity to celebrate these holidays will allow them to take pride in their cultures and reconnect with them by participating in religious and cultural traditions we believe that a solution for this issue is to have some of the holidays coincide with teacher Institute days past experience has shown that this is an effective method for giving religious holidays off a couple of years ago a group of students from LHS made an appeal to the school board to get the day off for Eid in 2022 their appeal was successful and they were able to get the day off since the teacher Institute day was scheduled for Eid that year we're aware that a major priority is to have the school year end by Memorial Day and
027start during the second week of August and this method of giving the day off ensured that the schedule for the school year wasn't disrupted the year was still able to end by Memorial Day on May 26 2022 to be precise and the following year was able to start during the second week of August on August 11 2022 and even if the school year did end later than expected the school board has the option to start the school year during the first week of August in order to accommodate the extra holidays the method of setting up Institute days on holidays is still being used to give days off even on non-religious holidays as evidenced by the upcoming teacher Institute day on October 9th 2023 which is indigenous people's day therefore since this method has been used
028in the past to give days off without any negative impacts on the schedule we believe that it can be used more frequently to give religious holidays off in addition to Christian holidays thank you for your time foreign next we have Ryan dinklinburg Ryan dinklenberg approaches podium hi my name is Ryan dinklenberger Ramirez and I like many other students and community members at this meeting today am deeply concerned about an allegedly proposed plan by the board to transition the school to an operational calendar which would effectively eliminate most Jewish Hindu and Muslim holidays from the school calendar hindering many students abilities to practice their faiths also we can get out of school before Memorial Day if staying after Memorial Day means our calendar is more Equitable and serves the whole student population we will gladly stay
029after our Jewish and Hindu populations are high and our Muslim population is fast growing by transitioning to this operational calendar we are telling these students that effectively they don't matter here some could argue that if a holiday has most of the school population not observing it should be stricken from the calendar looking at the school demographics the only group that makes up a slight majority of the student body is the white population of students many of the holidays that would not be represented on this calendar are celebrated by people of color well it is true that Christians at our school come in all colors we cannot ignore the racial connotations of this decision and the negative impact it would have on students of color in the district not too long ago a survey was also
030sent out to students and parents that asked them to provide information as to what religions they practice and what holidays they observe given how this information was collected we don't believe that the survey is representative of the student body because it disproportionately attracts participation from a demographic of non-immigrant parents and a small number of students who care to check the countless surveys in their inboxes the method of data collection for which future Generations will be affected is skewed due to a non-response bias generally speaking immigrant parents in our community will be more likely to work multiple jobs and will therefore have little to no time to dedicate towards keeping in touch with their children's school and will simply trust that the board is looking out for them additionally immigrant parents in our community come from
031a culture where communication is more direct and responsive it is also important to note that the Immigrant parents in the d128 community are more likely to have limited English proficiency for example the influx of Ukrainian parents in our community will not have had the opportunity to respond with full comprehension due to the language barrier and their children cannot always be there to translate for them if they are active participants in school and extracurriculars armed with this knowledge I respectfully ask how the administration can expect that this survey is anywhere near representative of a very diverse Community what are you doing to reach those parents who aren't able to get as engaged with the student School several schools close to us including New Trier Stevenson Buffalo Grove Highland Park and several more have Jewish and other
032religious holidays off of that issue operating on what is essentially a Christian calendar as a public school is fundamentally disrespectful to our community and antithetical to our daring Mission what is good for most is rarely what is Equitable thank you [Applause] next is kanjar Padilla kandark Vidya approaches podium I will note an item of Correction our survey did not ask members of our community to identify themselves their religious group it did ask what days their students would not be in attendance for a religious holiday just want to clarify that okay whenever you're ready thank you good evening members of the school board and District administration my name is Candor fadia and I'm a senior from Vernon Hills High School continuing on the comments made by my peers I wanted to take a few minutes to
033discuss the multiple fundamental issues proposed by the operational calendar four years ago my family and I moved out of an apartment the apartments we used to live in and had to choose what high school we would move into we were given three options Stevenson Mundelein and Vernon Hills High School we are a Hindu family who want to preserve our culture while also greatly prioritizing academics learning about our the daring mission of Vernon Hills High School which does exactly this greatly balancing amazing academic opportunities along with tolerance and diversity which is essential in the life of a growing student made Vernon Hills High School the Clear Choice in the past couple of weeks after talking to a couple of my peers I was surprised to find that this story was shared by them as well and
034something that we had in common was that we loved Vernon Hills because of the staring Mission unfortunately the proposed operational calendar which will remove all non-Christian religious holidays that are currently there including many Jewish holidays Eid and any possibility of Diwali goes against our daring Mission without the school giving these holidays as days off students of multiple large minorities including Jewish students Hindu students and Muslim Students will be forced into a school which would restrict their ability to practice their own culture along with a severe loss of the very diversity which you value under at District 128 under our Global goal it also goes against the goals set by our superintendent Dr Herman instead of working against a super instead of working excuse me towards the superintendent's goals of quote ensuring Equitable opportunities for all
035student populations implementation of this calendar would compel the many minority students to make the difficult decision between doing school work and celebrating important religious holidays Additionally the Calendar's removal of non-religious school hall religious holidays excuse me non-Christian religious holidays would stop students from building relationships in order to understand others a key Point under our aware goal if the school doesn't officially recognize the important religious holidays non-participating students will never be prompted to learn about them and the many call important cultures that make our community of d128 so beautifully diverse diverse recognizing that the proposed operational calendar flies directly in the face of our core daring Mission and the goals outlined by the superintendent on behalf of the students I request the board and the administration to continue using the current calendar and therefore continue being
036daring thank you so much thank you next is Nate Wreckers Nate wrecker's approaches podium hi my name is Nate Wreckers and I'm a senior here at Vernon Hills High School I am fortunate to have been a part of a positive School Community with fantastic support from teachers fellow students and administration it saddens me to hear that the experiences of some of these individuals may be in jeopardy buy a change to the school calendar during my three years here at this school the experiences I have shared with my peers have educated me on the incredible diversity we have here in this District as a Christian practicing student I am fortunate and privileged to be in a position where I do not have to choose between my religious freedoms and my education some of my peers ultimately
037individuals that I consider to be important in my life would be faced with this tough reality the elimination of Jewish holidays and other minority holidays within our school input from the calendar would be disrespectful and inequitable to the individuals who practice these faith faiths the decision to eliminate these holidays will not truly be implementing an operational calendar however instead this will simply be operating our school on a Christian calendar ultimately at this school our goal is to be a microcosm of our community we should be reflecting and honoring this community in the process we want to create an environment that is fair Equitable and accommodating to all people regardless of their own personal religious affiliations we should not be implementing an inequitable Community by making these changes to to the calendar School Administration has properly
038expressed a 60 40 rule for the school to properly operate this is not an equitable system as this states that whatever is best for most is best for all however this simply goes against the very idea of equity I encourage members of administration to consider how a change in the school calendar May and ultimately will have a large and meaningful impact on the very students and teachers that this community is built upon even simply considering to eliminate these days of importance is foundationally wrong inequitable and creates harmful effects for students and people within our building it send them it sends a message that the people in this community are being overlooked and we do not value each and every number I hope to see this community continue to make steps in the right direction many
039of my peers here today share a fear that this would be a step backwards creating a more harmful and less inclusive environment for the minorities in our community with all that being said I would like to encourage you all today to continue advocating for your beliefs in the beliefs of others as I believe that this is what is the ultimate goal and the only way to create a loving community in the wise words of Maya Angelou love recognizes no barriers it jumps hurdles leaps fences and penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of Hope thank you [Applause] next is approaches podium as a student I wanted to add that these periods of time off are not a hindrance to those that are non-practicing we students not only appreciate but look forward to having a
040few days off here and there it gives us a day of calm a day of refreshment and a day of tending to our mental and emotional well-being having these days off helps us live a more Balanced Life which aligns with the resilient and healthy aspect of our daring mission additionally as part of a religious minority myself I wanted to reiterate that this decision goes on to send a disheartening message to many communities that uphold other vibrant faiths and cultures removing holidays not celebrated by plurality at the school in essence sends the message that if it is not Christian it is not of importance to the district this is the opposite of equity simply this consideration regardless of intention carries with it an unsettling tinge of intolerance which does not resonate with the aware and Global
041aspects of our daring mission this dilemma has been another grievance adding to a sense of growing distrust in the administration from students and families to provide the policy needed to not only accommodate but support for our diversity for the reasons presented tonight my peers Ryan kandarp Nate and I along with others in the audience believe that the current student calendar the daring calendar should be kept inclusive and open-minded thank you for your time [Applause] Lisa Hessel um I'm not able to uh the the next is inara and I'm not sure what the first couple of letters of your last name are I'm and I don't want to guess it says inara rep of JSU an era katzman approaches Podium Lisa Hessel and our what's her last name I'm sorry katzman cat cats that's a k
042i could not that was what I was struggling with didn't want to guess thank you good evening my name is Anar katzman and I am a sophomore at Vernon Hills High School and a representative of Vernon Hills JSU I'm here this evening to speak about the calendar changes that the board is considering specifically I would like to explain how your possible decision to have school on Jewish High holidays will affect me other Jewish students and students of other minority groups within District 128. I'm glad to be able to speak with you this evening one day after Yom Kippur has ended yesterday I spent time at synagogue and services led by Rabbi Ari megolis who is here with us tonight I also spent 24 hours fasting which meant that I had nothing to eat or drink
043for a full day I did this because Yom Kippur is one of our two holiest days and we do not eat drink or work so that we can devote ourselves to prayer the high holy days are a period of 10 days in which God writes the book of life for the next year these days are dedicated to forgiveness and reflection it is considered our new year and Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are the most important part of our New Year celebrations and prayers we Jewish students in District 128 were very privileged yesterday because there were no school we were we felt able to celebrate our the holiday with our families and Community we did not miss any instruction tests homework activities or sport we were privileged to be supported by this District our teachers and
044our classmates this has been true for students since the school's opening The Proposal you are considering not taking off holidays unless 60 of the students and staff would be absent would take away that feeling of support when you sent out the survey to find out how many district 128 community members take the various holidays off you knew the results before a single person answered Jews are a minority group in the school community and our country mathematic mathematically minority groups would in fact be represented somewhere below 50 this tells me that the survey you sent was purely a facade to make it look like you were being responsive to the community it wasn't about finding how how many people it would affect because anyone could have told you the answer would have been less than 60
045percent minority groups will by definition never be over 60 of the population the only group that meets that threshold is white and Christian so please tell me as me and my Jewish peers missed two days worth of instruction what will take place during those days that is okay for me to miss do you believe that there are days in my classes that aren't important I can tell you that there are not because our teachers make every day a meaningful and important learning opportunity to make it unimportant for me to miss a class is a statement about what you believe happens in the classrooms of our schools every day I know that this District believes in equity and inclusion in 2022 you made a statement to the community about what you value when you created a
046position that solely focuses on equity and inclusion our district mission statement daring conveys similar message the G endearing stands for Global which is about valuing diversity and understanding others and and because I am a product of District 128 I have had teachers and coaches who teach to the mission they have taught me that d stands for dreamers and doers which the district has defined as students believing they can make a difference I am hopeful that the board will consider what I have said and let me make a difference in how you vote on the calendar proposal when you vote please remember your commitment to the values that our district strives to uphold and keep the minority holidays as days off thank you [Applause] next is Aiden Shepard Aidan Shepard approaches podium hello I am Aiden
047and the president of international Club to eliminate nearly all non-Christian religious holidays is a violation of remission dang this um this one um the G and daring is is to be Global and to Value diversity and inclusion this will be violated by by requiring non-Christian religious students to take an absence in order to fulfill their beliefs this would occupy a normal instruction day which according to the state of Illinois Illinois missing more than two of these days in a month would result in a decrease in academic performance this inherently results in a disadvantage against me and my fellow religious minorities thank you [Applause] next is rubia Khan Ravi akan approaches podium hi my name is Rabia Khan and I'm a parent of two current Libertyville High School students and two future Wildcats a few years
048ago when this board made the decision to make Eve a non-attendance day I was so proud to be part of this District I felt like my children and my community were seen and acknowledged as part of this community I was also extremely grateful to this board that my kids would not have to make the decisions I had to make growing up do I go to school so I don't miss a key instruction or do I celebrate an important holiday with my family do I let my team down or do I let my family down as a religious minority these are the questions we struggle with to say that I'm disappointed that the board is going back on their decision would be an understatement you are sending a message to members of your student body that
049you don't matter according to the daring mission statement G stands for Global we value diversity we build relationships in order to understand others do we only value diversity when it is convenient for us when it looks good on the website Banner or on the cover of a pamphlet what relationship are we building when we tell a community that is just too difficult to accommodate you Illinois has the largest Muslim population per capita in the United States and it is only continuing to grow at Oak Grove School which is a feeder School into Libertyville High School we have seen almost 15 percent students absent on Eid when it was in attendance day one of the reasons that Oak Grove School was able to make the argument to make either non-attendance day was that District 128 was
050already doing so the decision you make not only affects the district 128 calendar but it affects the feeder districts also many who who look at your calendar as a baseline on creating their own calendars so I ask you as a board to think about the message that you're sending out not only to the district 128 Community but the community at Large thank you [Applause] next is Justin Rubinstein Justin Rubinstein approaches Podium hello my name is Justin Rubinstein and I'm a senior at Vernon Hills High School I would like to speak to you in objection to the proposed operation or school calendar as a practicing reform Jew I use these the days off of Rosh hashan and Yom Kippur each year to go to synagogue and spend the holiday with my family I worry that in
051the future these opportunities will not be available for the Jewish students to go to synagogue and will cause people to get behind on homework or give up celebrating the high holidays all together though I understand there is a delicate balance between which holidays you decide are days off of school I feel the approach you are using did not gather sufficient data for example the calendar only got responses from 16 of families which does not represent a true sample size since this survey was only voluntary my suggestion would be considering new changes to the calendar you should gather more survey results lower the threshold for occupational capacity or come up with some better way such as each religion having one holiday off thank you for your time [Applause] next is Andy trobe Andy trobe approaches podium
052hello all my name is Andy trobe I'm a sophomore at Libertyville High School and I'm here on behalf of the Jewish Culture Club the Jewish Community has endured centuries of persecution around the globe but in the 1980s a significant step towards inclusion was taken within the Libertyville and Vernon Hills Jewish communities during this period the school board made a vital decision to allow Jewish individuals to observe their most significant holidays by allowing them to have those days off of school this inclusive policy has not only improved diversity within our towns but has also made Jewish families in this school district feel genuinely welcomed and valued as our school district promotes and prioritizes equality it is necessary to show that to the Jewish Community as well among these important holidays Rosh Hashanah stands out as the
053Jewish New Year a time when Jewish families come together to reflect on the previous year and prepare for Yom Kippur known as the day of atonement Yom Kippur is the most sacred day of the year for the Jewish community and it is a time when Jewish people gather to seek forgiveness for their past years mistakes allowing them to move forward with a clean slate yesterday District 128 did not have school because of Yom Kippur as a result I could spend the day fasting reflecting and praying without the anxiety of my overwhelming schoolwork if we did not have school off yesterday I would have had to do school work on a body that was hungry and exhausted and a mind that was focused on developing my faith none of these are qualities that are helpful in
054succeeding in my difficult and time-consuming classes in addition to the students in the community Jewish staff across the district spend the day reflecting and repenting for their sins by hosting school on these days these teachers would have to pick their job or their faith with both options having large disadvantages both of these holidays hold much importance for the Jewish community and having these days off from schools instrumental in enabling Jewish students and staff to fully engage with their faith rather than juggling academic responsibilities alongside the profound teachings and rituals of these special days an excuse the absence would not be the same as having this day off because then the Jewish students will be required to make up the work they missed that day this sacred time is essential for my family and the rest
055of the Jewish Community within d128 during these days we strengthen our sense of community connecting both with our faith and with one another the continuation of school days off for these holidays plays a vital role in preserving these necessary Traditions thank you thank you next is Kim Riemann Kim Raman approaches podium hello good evening my name is Kim Rahman and I'm here as a parent and an aunt of an LHS student and some Oak Grove nieces I have and I really want to step back here for a minute I want to remind everybody we are here as a representation of the reflective of this equality and inclusion that we just keep talking about so let's talk about it and look around the room this is why we're here because it's in your your mission statement
056about let's be daring and be Global this is the world we live in it is very Global and it is not aligned to everything that is you know what we consider around the Christian faith or a holiday and so I just want to remind us of this that we're here today because of that but I also do understand how difficult it is to balance the calendars and all the requests that come so as a parent and someone who understands instruction time is critical for all of our students it's really important to take a step back the other reason that we're here is for our students right we're here I want to remind you that we're talking about the community that we serve are our kids and our kids come in every shape color size and
057religion religious holidays can help us reduce can help students reduce the feelings of isolation and exclusion and among students who feel like their beliefs are not being recognized or respected to be an inclusive District we need to do the small things that have very big impact we should do things like look at the practices and processes that put a school calendar together why don't we have conversations bring our Dei committees together and look forward okay over the next few years they're going to change they don't run on a normal calendar right we follow a lunar calendar a lot of religions do this this is not something that's new but I understand when you're putting a school calendar together to open the school year we may not be thinking what holidays are coming and did they
058move by two weeks or there's a lot of moving parts to this but let's think about how we put that calendar together and by making an effort to honor these holidays the school board can send a message that all students are valued included regardless of their beliefs and their religious backgrounds it's crucial for school boards to recognize and honor the diversity of students by acknowledging religious holidays I know this is not an easy task but doing so can create a more inclusive accepting School culture which is what we're always talking about let's welcome everybody and let them all feel comfortable but then to take things off the calendar doesn't make you feel very you know included or engaged so and we have to remember that we have a lot of kids that have feelings and
059emotions attached to these choices that we're asking them make in high school we made a decision that this was important four years ago and now we're pulling it out because we didn't look ahead and I think that's a really difficult thing for us to swallow right now so I'm also here to help problem solve or think about ways that we can you know tackle these issues but we have to really realize that by just sending out a thought and idea that we can't meet the academic timelines because we didn't think through a calendar is really a difficult position for all of us to be in thank you for your time [Applause] is there anyone else that would like to address the board pause for the public re margolas approaches podium hi there I'm Ari Margolis
060I'm a rabbi of congregation or shalom in the area and father of an incoming 9th grader to Vernon Hills High School I wasn't going to speak tonight I came to support some of our congregational students who came to speak but then I spoke with Imam uddin of the Islamic Foundation North who's out of town and we were going to come together and speak together um since he's out of time I'm representing both of us but I've been a part of school district conversations about holidays on calendars uh in many different places in Raleigh North Carolina in different districts here in Los Angeles and one of the biggest trappings that you can fall into innocent in in these times is by by saying we have legal standards to uphold and this is just the way it's
061going to be it ends up pitting minority groups against one another in the conversation I want to applaud all of you who came out tonight to speak all of the students you spoke incredibly incredibly well and you're standing for the opposite of that standing together to say that this is what we want as a district I can speak for myself as a parent we moved to this District because we knew that this would be a place where we would have our religious holidays honored as a day off otherwise we would have looked at another place to have lived many Jewish families do the same and I'm hearing tonight many Muslim families do the same as well making a decision to take these holidays off of the calendar will lead to a different a different uh
062rate of of uh moving into this area and that's going to get in the way of our daring goals of diversity uh there's a uh if Jewish feminist thinker named Blue Greenberg who said when there's a rabbinic will there's a halachic way and is the Jewish word for law she says when law is seemingly against you if you have the will to make it happen there's always a way to figure out the law and there are many districts in our country who figure out the law how to honor the the religious minority holidays in their districts if we have the will I'm sure we can do so as well on behalf of uh as far uh Imam as for Odin and myself we are both willing to talk with the district and talk about options
063of coming together how we can fulfill the legal obligations and to work with the district to honor all student Faith backgrounds that's what we want to do and we want to be part of the the solution part of the collaboration uh that that exists around this issue so we thank you all for your service and for your time today and again huge huge amazing shout out to all of the students who spoke so beautifully thank you thank you would anybody else like to address the board cause for the public pause for the public Rayne weiner approaches podium hello my name is Rayne Weiner and I'm a senior at Vernon Hills High School and um I would just like to thank everybody else who spoke and they um I agree with everything that everybody else said
064here not only do does the proposed operational Calendar affect the lives of students it also affects the lives of teachers there are so many teachers here and um having this operational calendar that removes the holidays that many teachers would celebrate discourages the hiring of teachers who are not Christian because if we have teachers that would be unable to teach in school on more days then there would be unable to have more school days that um the whole school can function on so I would just like that people think about the teachers and the students with this decision thank you [Applause] any other public comments pause for the public Bruce Bernstein approaches podium hi good evening my name is Bruce Bernstein I have a senior in Vernon Hills High School and a freshman who just started
065Vernon Hills High School um when I was growing up long time ago I lived in a community that only had a christian-based calendar we were one of two Jewish families that lived in the community so it was kind of hard to blame the school and that's how things were I missed out on team activities I didn't do as well in certain days of classes because I had to take time off for Rosh Hashanah for Yom Kippur um when my family and I decided it was time to move back to the United States from China we looked for a community that was diverse because we lived in a diverse sex Pat Community when we lived in China but also a community that supported the Jewish religion Muslim religion Hindu religion we didn't want to move to
066an area that was strictly white Christian um therefore we probably would not have moved to Vernon Hills if the operational calendar which you are considering was actually put in place we hope our family hopes that since I do have a freshman that uh we kind of continue the way it is and look for other ways of giving the school more learning days if that is one of the things maybe extending the year a week maybe starting the week of starting a week earlier um just some other thoughts uh thank you and we do appreciate the work that all you guys do up there for the community and for the schools thank you would anyone else like to address the board pause for the public Kathy Wolf's son approaches podium hi my name is Kathy Wolfson
067I had no intention of speaking tonight I came because my nephew um Justin Rubenstein uh came here to speak I am absolutely Blown Away by all of the families and students that are here today I think it should be noted that a lot of the students they hear talking are seniors so they have no personal interest for themselves I think that's a really good message and I want to thank you for coming out and speaking for the future of Vernon Hills High School in Libertyville High School I moved here 20 years ago I have six kids going through the school never in a million years that I think that there would be a possibility that they would have to miss school for a Jewish holiday I'm excited for all the Muslim families that are here
068and I hope that you know the Muslim and Hindu families are able to get the holidays that they need because I think that's what makes this community so wonderful I love this High School Vernon Hills I have kids of all different shapes and sizes and challenges and every one of them has had such an amazing experience and that's because it is so accepting every teacher here has just given our kids so much and like someone else said you're inclusive and that's what makes it so special and I think that would really do harm for our district so if you need help in any way not that I have the time but I will make the time I would be glad to help figure that out as well in any way that I can thank you
069would anyone else like to address the board pause for the public ball approaches podium hi my name is Sophie Iqbal I'm actually a future Wildcat I'm in seventh grade um I just like to ask if this is rude or anything feel free to knock it down but how many of you guys are Christian or Catholic so I think we're not going to do a survey okay no but anyways MPR I think that would just say enough [Applause] pause for the public someone from the public approaches podium let's say my name address or notes just your name Socrates I have a junior Here I like to basically say thank you for being here um I agree I'm Catholic um so I did see that Serbia come out I really didn't participate in it normally I don't
070participate in service because I feel that not a lot of people participate in them so uh one of the questions I have for you is if there's a threshold that needs to be exceeded before you take the recommendations from the survey um as Catholic I've actually thought that the school district was very um lenient towards Jewish holidays actually but um clearly I was mistaken and one thing that makes me really happy to see is that we're not a secular student body as we can tell from this audience and so as a practice practicing Catholic I have felt that over the years recent years that religion has been under attack all across the nation so by you being here that helps me continuing my faith as well so thank you so much for being here um
071so again what I like to end with is when you do these surveys you should set and ex you know exceed a certain amount of participation because if only 16 participate you really can't go in any direction with that survey so that's all I have thank you [Applause] would anyone else like to address the board pause for the public marzy Costa's approaches podium hi hi my name is Marcy Costas I have a senior here at Vernon Hills High School I wasn't planning on participating I wasn't planning on really talking about this because obviously my kid is going to be graduating next year but what I'm missing and what is lacking from this conversation is what happens if you do change the calendar what are you going to do to ensure that all of those students
072have their ability to take the time off do not have tests do not have homework due on that day are not penalized for from the teachers for having a religious holiday off that's something that you really need to consider the teachers also need the time off to celebrate their religions as well without getting penalized without having a hardship from that and I think that that's what's lacking from this conversation yes a lot of school districts are changing it so that there's no religious affiliation except Christian affiliation that's kind of like the way that we're going but what makes Vernon Hills separate and better than most is that we do recognize all of the students and you can see from this room that everybody wants to have their religious holiday off it may not may or
073may not be doable but they need the right to take that day off and not be penalized in any way shape or form from the school from the teachers from the superintendent on down so thank you foreign would anyone else like to address the board pause for the public pause for the public Lisa Hessel going once do we have someone yes please please come forward pause for the public someone from the public approaches podium Nexus Papa Tony approaches Podium um hello my name is Nexus Papa Tony and I am a junior at Vernon Hills High School despite having uh Jewish family members on my mother's side I have been very disconnected from my Jewish culture all of my life I have never really been taught about it and one of the only times I've ever
074had access and connection to it is through these holidays that we get off for school instead of learning about the Jewish culture that is despite growing being dying every day due to the nature of our society I've been able to learn more about this Jewish culture of mine and my history then I would be able to if I had to sit and learn about how to solve for x so I feel that it is so important to keep these holidays in order to keep our history our culture alive as to not repeat the history and even if the schedule does go through I doubt it'll be forever change isn't easy but I had no idea this board meeting is what's even happening but multiple of my friends spoke out and encouraged me to come today
075so even if this does pass through people will continue to fight and change hasn't been easy but I know that it will happen thank you [Applause] would anyone else like to adjust the cause for the public pause for the public Lisa Hessel I see somebody waving all the way in the back but I don't know if you're raising your hand did you want to come forward okay sorry didn't mean to single you out I saw you wave sorry um would anyone else like to address the board cause for the public okay seeing no other public comments uh before we wrap up the public comment section I want to thank everyone again this was an exemplary standard to set for civic engagement so thank you and we are going to move on to our next agenda
076item cause for next topic Lisa Hessel I'd like to invite our teacher Union report um oh there hi Monica I didn't realize you were a representative so um this is Monica Caldecott our Union president yes good evening everyone my name is Monica Caldecott and I am the librarian here at Vernon Hills High School you know I'm going to ask you to pause just for a second because we don't want to miss any part of what you're saying and I think we need to give a just a really short break for the people that are not going to stay with us we do encourage everyone to stay if they can if you can't completely understand we'll give you a minute to file out so that we can focus on the teacher Union report Fade to District
077128 logo Fade Into board members eat at a table right Lisa Hessel okay if you want to go ahead and get started I just didn't want there to be any uh uh difficulty in us being able to hear you thank you thank you um so again I'm Monica Caldecott I am the librarian here at Vernon Hills High School also president of our d128 Federation of teachers I am glad to keep give our certified teachers a voice tonight our Union is 308 members strong and covers all three District buildings this is more than 99 of our potential membership all of this year's new teachers joined our Union so when you hear from the union about what makes our members happy or proud or worried know that we speak for such a super majority of super teachers
078we share information with our members by bulletin boards in-person meetings a monthly newsletter emails text messages our Union has building and Department representatives to whom our members can go to in person with questions or issues our Union executive board is leading this great group forward as president I meet with Dr Herman weekly to discuss issues and work on the agenda for our monthly Labor Management committee which has four members from the labor side and four members from the management side each Union building representative also meets weekly with their principals we work hard to stand up for our union members and to share our perspective on how d128 decisions would impact our working conditions we want to listen as much as we talk and we seek cooperation but when strategies fall short our collective bargaining agreement
079which is in effect until May 2025 has a grievance procedure to guide us past our disagreements in addition for in addition to working for district 128 about one-third of our union members also choose to live in the school district so know that we look to the school board for decision making that impacts our jobs and also our families Monday September 4th was Labor Day according to the Illinois Federation of teachers this day is a set aside to honor and recognize the American labor movement and the workers of the past who sacrificed to ensure workplaces that are fair and safe for all the strength of labor unions is in the news recently with President Biden today joining the United Auto Workers on the picket line um we also have the Hollywood writers strike and a growing
080push to unionize retail locations ift President Dan Montgomery shared that that this week is the 40th anniversary of Illinois laws that granted collective bargaining rights to public employees in Illinois this and all the days are a days to celebrate our Union our Collective work our representation and our strength together our work educates supports and lifts up our students and our society thank you [Applause] Lisa Hessel thank you Mrs Caldecott next we have pause for next topic our student School Board representative reports I will turn it over to you pause for students good evening everyone I am rukaya Elementary and I'm representing Libertyville High School tonight so uh in tonight's board report I will be talking about clubs Affinity groups cafeteria concerns and student involvement in committees so let's get right into it so academic and
081career clubs have been looking at new ways to learn about the the career the club is focused on so recently these clubs have been inviting guest speakers to talk about their jobs in the given field so for example last week psychology club and metcats which are clubs focused on careers and interests in Psychology and Medicine invited the Lake County coroner to give a presentation about what her job looks like and I was actually very lucky to attend that meeting and thought it was a cool way to bring new ideas to the table in these clubs now I will talk about Affinity groups and what they have been up to during their meetings in the past month API Asian Pacific Islander Club did some cool Hands-On activities where they made origami Mosaic squares this month they
082also collaborated with the Vernon Hills High School Asian Student Association for a family dinner last week black student union also started off the year strong and are currently planning on are currently planning to attend the black student Workshop that will be held on October 12th Muslim Student Association had their annual scavenger hunt and also their annual baking meeting last week where many students worked together to make batches of cookies Jewish Culture Club also had a great turnout for their first meeting where they made apples and honey to celebrate Rosh Hashanah LHS lasso Latin American student organization has a schedule for events to celebrate Hispanic and Latino Heritage months which started off last week with color poster art and this week with making papal picado so now I also wanted to bring up how students have
083been feeling concerned about the rising cafeteria prices the vending machines really have anything that costs a dollar with almost everything being one and a quarter freshman Michael Bowman said the prices are high not crazy yet but I would prefer for them to go down especially drinks which cost up to four dollars like a canned piece to you I understand that there's inflation going on but it's starting to go over my budget so I personally think that the cafeteria food variety has significantly improved but the prices have significantly also jumped uh over the past year which I can understand because we did change our catering company uh and also there's there is inflation and when I was a freshman these costs only three quarters but now they're two dollars so I will definitely say that like
084most seniors I do like to use my senior privilege to go out for lunch because meals from nearby restaurants cost a bit less than the school cafeteria so overall I hope we can start looking at alternatives to lower cafeteria prices to make food more affordable for our students who cannot pack their own lunches moving forward student involvement behind in behind the scenes committees has been impressive many students are looking forward to serving on the prince Advisory board with Dr K and continue working on projects to help our school in many aspects and students like me Molly and Louie are also involved in committees along with staff members to provide students perspectives in the artificial artificial intelligence committee to help create a policy around using AI in the d128 calendar committee which we'll soon discuss updates
085regarding the calendar which many students are waiting to hear about I look forward to attending that meeting to share the student perspective on how best we can create a calendar that suits students needs thank you Louis Perry good evening my name is Louis Perry and I first wanted to start out by discussing student council at Libertyville High School members of our executive and elective boards have been working tirelessly to plan for the upcoming LHS homecoming season these include preparing for the theme days for Spirit Work Week creating designs to decorate hallways around the school and the floats that will be highlighted at the homecoming parade on October 7th freshman married Fleming said that she is super excited for freshman Council this year this year she's most excited about getting to assemble and create our own
086stuco float for the parade to bring Spirit to not only the school but to our town Libertyville brings a special connection to its Community as we engage with local businesses through local window painting the Sunday before homecoming as well as our parade on another note one issue that was brought up amongst some of the executive stuco members was regarding Class Credit executive board members meet during second period each day and for them it's a class however they do not see a credit there are hours and hours of work put in both school and after school that they feel they should receive receive some sort of elective credit senior Jack gold says that he sacrifices a period a day towards planning a better school for all he juggles many other classes and activities at the same
087time and feels a credit would be worth it it is an ongoing discussion that they hope can be addressed and they look forward to having conversations in the future I'm also looking forward to discussing the topic with Dr Alban looking for potential requirements that Suka would need in order to reach a credible class on another note LHS music department had their very has been very active these first few weeks of school the staff and faculty concert recital occurred earlier this month with performance from Dr Brown the Corral instructor and our very own Mr Stanley who played a fantastic rendition of free Fallen by Tom Petty the Libertyville Band program has also been preparing for their first band concert which performed last Thursday in Butler Lake Auditorium senior Eric Vu said the concert was very early
088on in the year and normally we have a lot more time to prepare but overall excuse me sorry but overall we performed very well the highest band The Wind Ensemble played a song called dragonfly which featured a various sections of the band in a fast tempo performance the symphonic winds played Legends of the Galaxy to open their performance Thursday night band board president and Senior Cameron Huang said that the fall concert was incredibly exciting this year it was fun to get into the swing of things after a long summer break fortunately enough Rishi to party a member of our student newspaper drops of ink was able to write a feature on the band concert and post it to our online news website the magazine has been covering different sports events such as girls volleyball games
089and the Friday Night Lights Out on our football field capturing the game highlights through their stories and catching the best plays through Photography they are very excited to be writing more stories using their online platform this semester highlighting various events in students news editor senior Caroline Scott shares that one new addition in the class this year is the breaking news team which governs urgent or prominent events impacting LHS student to post on their online's website this idea was sparked last year when students walked out of class in support of antique gun violent in the schools and in solidarity of victims of such occurrences two drops of inks a student attended that walkout and within six hours posted a summary for the rest of the student body to read their first print magazine of the year
090at LHS will be distributed the week of Homecoming in October Caroline also mentioned that hours of preparation have gone into our newest issue and each story is centered around the theme Elevate such as LHS is elevating their campus policies and Student Activities as a first-year student staff or myself I can share the enthusiasm and excitement for our upcoming issue we have stories ranging from the new bathroom renovations to student perspectives on the hall pass policy they have been re-jump starting their social media usage to keep students in the loop of news stories and what it's like to be in drops of ink thank you pause for students Molly Neri hi I'm Molly Neri starting off LHS Heather native plant cell hosted by the environmental sustainability Club ecos as well as leaf and NHS volunteers the
091group made over ten thousand dollars reflecting a growing Community interest and awareness in helping our local environments speaking of green our interpersonal violence prevention program Green Dot had an impactful week hosting a variety of trainings freshman informational presentations and a school Greenup one of the trainings hosted was QPR training which I attended alongside Dr Herman that taught how to be a proactive bystander in situations of suicide this training was also a part of our school's yellow ribbon month aimed to break the stigma around Mental Health Center conversations many Juniors and seniors gathered during their lunch period to take part in the trainings receiving receiving certifications for completing the training the next type of training hosted by our prevention and wellness program is alcohol poisoning response training which began today and is set to take place
092throughout the next two weeks freshmen also learned how to be a proactive bystander when they were introduced to Green Dot and its 3DS direct delegate and distract introducing Green Dot from the start of their freshman year allows for greater effectiveness of what the training is meant for creating a healthy environment for LHS students to feel welcomed and safe senior Green Dot trainees including myself were also able to attend the Freshman sessions sharing examples of how Green Dot has given us many opportunities for involvement in LHS information about these events was pushed out through the Green Dot LHS Instagram account serving serving as an example for the new trend at our school using Instagram to boost participation in school clubs and activities the Green Dot Instagram account administrator Hannah Fleming who also maintains the class of
0932024 student council and life of a wildcat Instagrams shared that she believed this marketing tactic is mutually beneficial as it allows for information to spread fast as students repost information on their stories encourages all students to participate regardless of grade or previous involvement as they see positive posts about their High School Community as well as teaching the owners how to create eye-catching posts that gets students excited this activity is seen in a variety of clubs that also repost colorful infographics to spread news about the club or upcoming meeting dates and events this trend raises questions over how we can use social media for better communication between school and students as well as shows how social media might be beneficial for students involvement Shameless plug here we value star shared Instagram account LHS board reps to
094post information and notices about our participation in these meetings and have seen positive interaction within our school community cause for students Maya raval hi I'm Maya Robel the past few weeks at Vernon Hills High School have been filled with new and exciting opportunities for the students as well as a time to reflect on numerous times of importance VHS is excited to recognize the class of 2024 National Merit semi semifinalists there were 10 individuals that met the state and National qualifications qualifications for this prestigious recognition so a big congratulations to them the class of 2024 also had the opportunity to put on their campaign hats and collaborate with their peers for the AP government political ideologies project during this project students randomly chose a political party to represent each student would then go on to research
095the beliefs and ideals of the chosen party students would then go on to write a speech campaigning for the 2024 election it was a fun activity for the students to work with their classmates to understand more about the political world Lisa Hessel across Maya can you predict for us who the 2024 uh you you won um it was it was more of like an election of how well we represented our party as opposed to like who who would win so you're saying it's inappropriate for me to ask your class to predict the results of the next presidential election please continue across do District 128 we are sure to prioritize safety for the students and staff to ensure we are doing so in the first week of September we took time during second period to practice
096all of our safety drills from fire drills to lockdown drills the School Administration staff has made it a priority to ensure the staff and students in the building feel the highest level of safety while they're in the buildings the investment made on the door locking system has not only allowed for more efficient transitions to designated areas for the lockdown but has also allowed for teachers to feel a sense of security and calmness when directing their students during these drills we asked our AP Government teacher Mr Boss what he thought of this new system he said the automatic door locking systems are great it is a great way to ensure my classroom or other areas are secure when there is a threat in the past I need to use my keys to lock my classroom door
097if I didn't have those keys there would be no way to secure the room this makes it seamless and much safer just last week our spark club had a week full of activities in our exercises to raise awareness and advocacy Pursuit suicide prevention the student body Embraces important cause and participated by decking out in yellow to support to show support while engaging in Raffles in the school foyer having the entire student body able to participate for this and very important cause we reiterated the feeling of community so that many of us feel at Vernon Hills High School pause for students pause for students pure barora thank you Maya for those wonderful updates jumping straight in I like to dive into what student council is planning for homecoming Vernon Hills homecoming will take place on October
0987th from 7 30 to 10 30 pm to create craze around homecoming each class will be meeting to decorate their chosen hallway this Saturday the week leading up to homecoming will be filled with hype spirit days surrounding the theme Cody's Carnival the specific spirit days are United State Fair Day pink out night at the carnival color competition and cougar Spirit which have all been voted on and finalized by the student council classes having generated all this Buzz around homecoming through the color competition rally on Thursday and the homecoming pep assembly on Friday students will be ready for homecoming on Saturday additionally student council Dr beagle and Miss nardini are hosting extreme flag football on Monday October 2nd in which an epic game of flag football will be played among senior females on the football field
099new clubs such as future aviators Club are in their second year of operation and students seem to be gaining interest Club leader Orlando Alice says they are continuously making improvements in communicating the need for pilots in our country and are frequently engaged encouraging students to take a peek at careers in the aviation industry by giving presentations on different careers and inviting speakers that work in the industry according to students in the club they find it engaging and educational when he brings his personal flight simulator because it allows them to experience what it's like to fly an aircraft without actually having to leave the ground lastly I'd like to talk a little bit about our transition from future Business Leaders of America to business Professionals of America also known as BPA the new advisor Dr beagle
100who was previously an FBLA advisor expresses how excited she is for this transition because of the growth in communication and organization of BPA in comparison to FBLA she does she goes a little bit further in detail and says that BPA works better with the school year as all competitions take place before school ends and allows for more students to participate just recently BP had the first meeting in which previous FBLA president Kenda vadilla let it led a detailed meeting teaching students about the new organization they had nearly 60 students attend with many of them following up with questions additionally this club attracts many new faces due to the different competitive events it has to offer and it is in the proximity of or the proximity of area State and Nationals this year as they all
101take place in Illinois Thank you Lisa Hessel organization is BL BPA BPA yes ruhi subramanian hi my name is ruhi subramanian BHS also started off by giving seniors a bit of attention as the CRC provided surviving app-season presentations for seniors to help them stress Less in the stressful time with Comfort dogs and cookies overall seniors were very appreciative of this opportunity to de-stress additionally BHS also started celebrating Hispanic heritage months last week last Tuesday a question was asked in the intercom and a random class was chosen to answer Miss Randall's class was one of the lucky classes that got churros for answering questions right students look forward to being able to win churros and learn more about Hispanic culture in the coming weeks in addition to Student Activities VHS also had many important events happening
102outside of school hours girls volleyball player Maya Ravel broke the record of 1108 assists an 18 year old school record in a match with the main East [Music] congratulations [Applause] keeping with our daring Mission VHS also hosted Asian Pacific Islander night on September 20th where parents and students were able to come together eat some traditional food and find community in BHS lastly VHS Orchestra had their first concert on September 21st kicking off fine art events with a bang the symphony orchestra's performance featured Seoul Louis Rodrigo Batista Noah Kim and Kaylee Kim overall of HHS students are getting into their groove with the end of progress period one and ready to start the month of October great Lisa Hessel excellent job thank you student board reps moving on to foil requests Dr Denise Hermann yes I'm
103in the board report we received three additional foia requests and they were available for the public and the board's review and then next I have our good news report and I'm going to build off of one of the announcements our students made and share the names of the d128 seniors who were named National Merit semi-finalists Charles Collier Amir abdullivan sarthak argowal Christian Choi sahiri garamella Divya Moody Noah Kim Karen Kai Tyler Park rain weiner Cameron Huang Vanessa Zhang and Kyle Lee so congratulations to the students and their families it's a a very big honor the Nationwide pool of semi-finalists represents less than one percent of U.S High School seniors include us the highest scoring entrance in each state semi-finalists will compete to become finalists and have the opportunity to earn one of the more than
104seven thousand National Merit Scholarships worth nearly 28 million dollars that will be offered next spring we have another group to recognize congratulations to the d128 seniors named by college board National recognition program honorees we had several students included in that award including Sean kalu Sophie Caudill Ryan dinklenberg Ramirez Michaela marreras Cole Mitchell Abraham Quinones Rihanna at Bella bells and Michael Jean the national recognition program celebrates 7 200 High School seniors from across the country who have met the following criteria a three-point high five or higher GPA PSAT scores within the top 10 percent of test takers in each state and attend either a rural area or are identified as a student of color next student to be recognized is senior Bridget Graham and she was named this year's recipient of the Daughters of the American
105Revolution good citizens award next d-128 special Olympic Athlete Noah Hewitt an athletic partner Luke Angelos attended the youth activation committee or Yak boot camp in Wisconsin as representatives for d128 the yak worked with Special Olympics Illinois staff on their unified Champion School initiatives to promote inclusion inclusive schools and communities across Illinois LHS Junior Annie Brody was selected to participate in the Ohio State University honors jazz band on guitar students participating will experience an opportunity to work with the Ohio State University Jazz faculty in rehearsal and master classes and finally d128 was recognized for its exceptional communication efforts by the state's school public relations Association or inspra d-128 communications director Mary toderick received an award of excellence in the special purposes publication campaign category for our d128 strategic plan booklet [Applause] and that completes our good
106news report for this month okay moving right along for the consent vote agenda um before I ask for a motion I just want to remind everyone that this includes items that are routinely approved by the board with a single motion minutes destruction of closed section session recordings educational tour requests employment matters disposable of obsolete Capital Equipment bills payable Financial reports these items have gone through extensive board committee review and recommendation and all of the documentation concerning these items is in the packet for transparency may I have a motion to approve the consent agenda has presented are Michael so moved that's one second thank you any discussion pause for discussion on roll call please hi Carmichael hi I'm sorry Benjamin hi Carmichael hi drumki hi Hessel hi Cole Carney aye and the consent photo passes and
107we will move on to items for Action uh we have some employment of employees looks like we have in the Personnel report it's uh uh sorry again these were these items came in after our last uh PMP community meeting so is it just one additional or is it um what's listed in the Personnel report Brian Kelly so it's listed in the Personnel report but there's only the one Higher and that's why there's the One resume on there understood thank you uh looking for a motion to approve the employment of employees that occurred after the PNP committee meeting Benjamin I moved to approve the employment of employees that occurred after the PNP committee meeting thank you Bill Carney second thank you any discussion seeing none roll call please aye Carmichael hi hi oh hi that's hi
108motion passes pause for next topic uh moving on to item 4B uh board governance handbook update um this is for the board to approve the amended language and the board governance handbook that is posted on our website um on page 17 of the handbook under collective bargaining uh which was updated to reflect the addition of our new ESP Union I don't think there's any further information that we require is there a motion to approve the amended language in the board governance handbook donkey moved to approve the amended language in the board government thank you second thank you any discussion pause for discussion seeing none roll call please aye drum key aye hassle hi Batson hi Benjamin aye thank you motion passes moving on to the 2023-24 Vernon Hills High School graduation contract pause for next
109topic Dan Stanley uh before you is the same contract that was presented at the fnf committee meeting a couple weeks ago which is a contract with Rosemont Theater for the graduation for this school year uh the total amount was forty three thousand dollars not sure what else to add at that point Lisa Hessel anything you want to add Dr G Dr John Gil Leon yeah thank you I you know updated you uh last month and uh excited to bring this contract uh before you the the stakeholder committee is fully supportive of this and excited for our class of 2024 to be in a big venue where many family members can join them in the significant celebration great thank you for your efforts on this can I please have a motion to approve the contract with
110the Rosemont Theater for forty three thousand dollars for the 2024 Vernon Hills High School commencement Carmichael so moved thank you Benjamin second thank you any discussion pause for discussion seeing none roll call please Benjamin aye Carmichael hi motion passes congratulations pause for next topic moving on to uh section five items for discussion uh the d128 racial Equity diversity and inclusion policy report pause for next topic I will invite Mr Varn to the podium Kim returns to Podium Larry Varn good evening I am excited this evening to share with you updates on some of our policies um the commitments within those policies for our racial diversity equity and inclusion policy I'm joined this evening by our campus Equity coordinators Tara Young at Vernon Hills High School and our newest addition to the team uh Matt constadt
111at Libertyville High School pause for slide foreign the district 128 racial diversity equity and inclusion policy consists of 11 commitments that the board has decided were so important that we needed to have a policy to make sure that we were always pressing forward and making progress in these areas this evening I will be presenting specifically looking at commitment number one identity affirming environments number two Diverse Staffing and number three Student Success as we move forward throughout the year the other commitments will be shared out with you with our metrics and how we're making progress towards those pause for slide beginning with our first commitment identity affirming environments uh as policy states that we want to ensure that District 128 schools are identity and affirming environments where all students their families and the community feel safe
112welcomed in valued we have talked about some data around this particular commitment before but new information that we'll be sharing tonight comes from I5 Essentials survey which reports our ratings in five categories ranging from very strong to very weak and we get that rating based on the score range from the average of our responses students teachers and families are encouraged to take the five essential survey pause for slide as we consider identity and Performing environments part of that is making sure that we have psychological safety and through psychological safety we can determine that at both schools the five essential survey rates both Libertyville and Vernon Hills in the very strong category for that it asks it asks questions around these areas asking if I feel safe with my teachers my teachers treat me with respect
113I feel comfortable with my teachers at this school my teachers always listen to student ideas and students treat each other with respect work well together and help each other learn these questions relate to this area of psychological safety and we really want to recognize our faculty and staff at both Libertyville Vernon Hills and our transition centers who are doing an amazing job of making sure that our students feel connected feel valued and seen so congratulations on that end some day to day we have looked at before but we want to make sure that we connect it across all of our data points is looking at our SEL survey results from last year in our SEL survey we asked about supportive relationships this again supports our identity affirming environment and at both burning Hills and at
114Libertyville High School we had over 90 percent of our students reporting favorable results there so we do believe that this data around psychological safety of our students is reliable as we continue to see similar results across the multiple measures as it relates specifically to our racial diversity equity and inclusion policy it is important to note that even across our various subgroups of of ethnicity and race that our students report again a strong feeling of psychological safety and supportive relationships cause for presentation effect the third piece of data to look at is our Equity survey and when we asked our students about adult fairness we saw about 84 responding favorably so across multiple measures our students are reporting that they feel safe and as we look at our Breakout by demographic here we see across our
115subgroups similar results except for our blacks population our black population of students do report at a lesser rate feeling a sense of adult fairness pause for slide pause for presentation effect the five Essentials also looks at physical safety as it relates to physical safety we do see a shift in how our students responded there and we see that at LHS and at VHS students reported a feeling of neutral responses as related to school safety the questions asked around school safety are about feeling safe outside and around the school safe between home and the school safe in the hallways and safety in the bathrooms of the schools these questions are what led to our results of uh neutral when we look at the culture and climate survey from last year and we consider school safety if
116we apply the same score range to the results that we received at last year's survey it would be favorable so over the course of last year we did see some decline in our students reporting physical uh their sense of physical safety in our buildings pause for slide and so some actions that we're going to take in order to address this part of it is ensuring that we have adequate supervision um and that that supervision is targeted to specific areas assigning staff to supervise bathroom and hallway areas during peak times such as between classes or during lunch breaks the presence of adults can deter inappropriate behavior in these spaces and provide assistance in cases of emergencies at both Schools teachers are assigned supervision periods where they are placed in these areas additionally we are expanding our
117anti-bullying program through the implementation of Green Dot at Libertyville High School a new cohort of teachers and staff have just been trained to provide Green Dot anti-bullying training and it is being explored to it is being explored as an option at Vernon Hills High School where staff also participated in that training in order to provide Green Dot Green Dots anti-bullying program will increase awareness and create a campaign with an emphasis that includes ensuring that students feel safe and supported in areas such as the bathrooms and hallways and encourage students to report any incidents or concerns and also intervene when they witness bullying through specific tools and strategies provided by Green Dot uh we will make sure that our gender inclusive facilities are clearly identified we do have gender we do have gender inclusive and single
118occupancy bathrooms at both campuses we want to make sure that those spaces are clearly identified for any student seeking to use those facilities we also want to address awareness and Reporting and encouraging students and staff to report any safety concerns or incidents properly and establish a clear reporting process and ensure that reports are taken seriously and addressed promptly by continuing to use the QR codes prominently displayed throughout Libertyville and Vernon Hills High Schools students can use those QR codes to report any instance of bullying or harassment and and those submissions go to uh Brian Kelly and our lsts um and then finally student input involving students in our decisions and our discussions about safety and improvements um they have valuable insights and suggestions for enhancing the overall safety and comfort of these spaces pause for
119slide moving on to our next commitment um is commitment two which is around Diverse Staffing recruiting hiring and retaining practices that embrace the Diverse Staffing of all Personnel at every level that reflects the global community and staff who carry out the district's commitment to equity inclusion and diversity cause for slide in 2023 2024 we are looking at our local demographics um for the Lake County Lake County was identified during the process of creating the policy as the space where we wish to align our staff too in our commitment we mentioned that we want to make sure that it is a reflection of the global community in order to reach that we will Begin by by aligning more so with our Lake County population um so across each row you'll see for Lake County uh with
120the demographics are according to the 2020 Census Data uh you will notice that it does not add up to 100 because the Hispanic and Latino population and the way that the census collects that data they separate ethnicity from race so they ask um is your ethnicity Hispanic or Latina you have to select yes or no and then it also asks you to select the race um so those those numbers won't add up to 100. it is also important to point out that the census captures data from all people of all ages um so it includes children um as well as our elderly population when we consider that in in relationship to our Workforce there are some individuals who are not eligible for um for work based on their age we want to align that to
121uh District student population our student population is the uh second column there um by ethnicity and race and then the third column shows us where we are in terms of our uh District staff so you'll see one area of improvement for us is to make sure that our alignment for our Asian group our Asian staff is more aligned not only with the Lake County population but we also want to make sure that we are attentive to Bringing more staff of the Asian culture into our work and to work for us so that it can be a stronger reflection of the students that we have secondly is our Hispanic a Latino population and making sure that we put emphasis on our recruitment efforts to bring in more Hispanic and Latino staff members into d128 I'll come
122back to that fourth column um later in the presentation pause for slide so who's applying as we consider the demographics of our applicants we hired 18 certified positions this year there were 293 applications in total here's a breakdown of how the applicants that we received for these positions compares to the Lake County demographics again we selected Lake County because that is the uh The Benchmark where we are aligning ourselves to um so you can see in blue represents the percent of applicants that we had representing that particular demographic and the orange line is the Lake County demographic for that percent pause for slide reporting your demographic in a hiring process is optional so we do have the no response option there our process for hiring goes through several steps what I want to do now
123is walk you through each step of the hiring process and show you how those 293 applicants filtered throughout our selection process first is all qualified applicants here is our breakdown by ethnicity or race for each uh for each ethnicity a race for the total number of qualified candidates that we had applicants for applications for once we review each application those candidates are forwarded to a video review um through the video review it is a recorded interview where applicants answer questions and the hiring manager or the department chair reviews those those videos from the video selection the hiring manager forwards on a promotes uh applicants to our next phone streaming section uh the phone screener then uh is a conversation a live conversation with the candidate um and the hiring manager or department chair and then
124any applicant moving forward then comes to committee interviews the committee interview is made up of a committee of individuals from that department where the candidate comes in for a live interview in some cases um that may be a zoom interview but in um in most cases they come in for a live interview in person um and then those candidates have forwarded it there after the committee interviews the candidates the applicants they will then make a recommendation for the applicant to move on to the final interview and this is the last stage of the interview process and that is again an in-person uh interview and then finally uh somebody is hired for the job and so over the course of these five stages you can see where uh applicants fall um in terms of moving forward
125or being Advanced to the next round pause for slide and in this year of The Hires that we made for our certified positions uh 78 of those hires were white and 22 percent of those hires were Latino pause for slide and so retention as we look at our com our commitment one of the things that we want to make sure is that we are uh retaining the staff that we bring in this is the overall look at all staff including our non-certified staff members so in uh 2022 last year that First Column you'll see by ethnicity or race without total number of Staff members what that second column will tell us what number of that group left in 2023 how many we hired in 2023-2024 for this particular school year and then what that current
126number is and the last column tells us the change it's important to note here that we are making progress in our goals of increasing diversity in all areas with the exception of black um hires uh Hispanic numbers we have added seven more Hispanic staff members this year um than what we had last year so we're making progress towards uh that uh that percentage that we looked at earlier um as well as we added to our Asian this particular slide becomes important for us because as we continue to move forward in our hiring process we want to make sure that we are maintaining where we are with diversity and growing um so we are we did see some regression in our black or African-American staff population so another priority for us is to make sure that
127as we move forward targeting specific groups that are black and African-American group is added to the Asian and Hispanic groups that we're looking to continue to to grow Mr Varn can you remind the audience who is included in the group that left oh yes um and the group when we say pause for a slide when we talk about the number of Staff who left that includes retirements that includes resignations that includes non-renewals we had no riffs um last year but so anybody who left for any reason um and so as we monitor I anticipate it um retirement is coming up that's important because we know we have an idea of who will be leaving who we anticipate to lead thank you pause for slide bro with those changes now we've you see um in the
128fourth column what our new percentages are for each demographic um so you'll see the slight shift um downward in uh black African-American staff but a upward shift in our Hispanic and Latino staff pause for slide uh actions what are we going to do to continue to recruit and retain staff of color our actions include developing more inclusive hiring practices by examining and revising our hiring practices to ensure that they're Equitable and free from bias uh using diverse hiring panels to include Educators from various backgrounds in the hiring process and we're working with our hiring managers our department chairs our administrators to conduct non-bias training um through the process so that as we're moving advancing candidates from one stage to another that we are eliminating any um that we are eliminating any bias that may exist
129there um we are considering looking at uh blind resume reviews to minimize unconscious bias um and advancing applicants of color to the phone screen around um as well we're creating Partnerships with diverse communities by building relationships with our local colleges and universities especially those with diverse student populations to establish pipelines for recruiting future teachers and we're collaborating with Community organizations and networks that serve underrepresented communities to identify potential teaching candidates we're connecting new teachers to our community we're looking at providing relocation support and assistance in helping new staff members coming to our district secure housing and to move into the district by connecting them with new by connecting our new teachers and with our new teachers with families in the area making sure that we are making it hospitable and connecting them with the right
130individuals to support them in their transition to high District we're looking at mentoring and networking programs continuing mentorship programs that pair new teachers of color with experienced Educators who can provide guidance and support and continue to host Affinity groups or networking opportunities for teachers of color to connect share experiences and access resources and we are continuing those targeted recruitment efforts for the groups that we've identified by attending job fairs and recruitment events specifically aimed at candidates from underrepresented backgrounds we're advertising our job openings and Publications and our websites related to diverse communities and we've just added most recently uh a job posting directed specifically to historically black colleges and universities and finally our Grassroots recruiting one of our biggest assets are the staff that we already have and by tapping into the networks of our
131current employees to promote employment opportunities to diverse candidates in their professional circuit we believe that our friends would more than likely be willing to join us at District 128 because they have heard about the wonderful experiences that we're having here pause for slide and the third and final update for this evening is uh commitment number three uh Student Success honoring and building the strengths and assets of every student promoting academic social emotional group and providing multiple Pathways to success this includes monitoring and assessing the impact of educational programs on the achievement of all students we have spent a significant amount of time last year evaluating the program for striving Learners and the remedial sections that we had in District 128 and the work that we were doing to address that group tonight we're going to
132focus more on the advanced placement side and give you some data around our more rigorous course at most rigorous courses that we offer in the district so here we'll first look at our overall enrollment by demographic and compare that to the enrollment in a at least one AP class so for example if you look at the first uh column there our Asian group The Blue Bar represents the percent of overall population that this demographic makes up of our overall student body and the orange bar represents the percent that that demographic makes up of the advanced placement enrollment course so you'll see um that while the Asian students make up 15 of our overall population they make up 27 percent of students taking uh AP classes and so you'll see that same similar data across there
133one of the things that we have already talked about in and uh working towards is making sure that we have more representation about African-American and Hispanic and Latino students in our AP classes our partnership with equal opportunity schools is going to support us in identifying students who uh have AP potential and uh invite them to participate in our AP courses cause for slide now we're going to look at the percent of the demographic enrolled in AP so for each demographic in blue that represents the percent of that subgroup who that is enrolled in at least one AP class the orange represents the percent of that subgroup not enrolled in any AP class so you'll see uh again starting with our Asian group um 74 74 of our Asian students take at least one AP class
134while 26 take no AP classes we have almost an invert uh of that for our black and African-American student population and our Hispanic Latino student population so again um really drawing our attention towards how do we get more representation um from our black and brown students and our most rigorous AP courses pause for slide then of those students who took an AP class uh they are affording an opportunity to earn AP credit which was transferred to college that is earned by passing the AP exam earning a score of three four or five so of the students enrolled in an AP class who took an AP exam this chart represents the percent of students who earned that three four or five and at least one or more AP courses um and so you'll see looking at
135that bar that bar there um across the board of our students taking AP classes enrolled in AP classes by and large the majority of them are successful we do see that there is a disparity in our black and African-American students um being successful so we want to make sure that not only do we have more of our students enrolling in AP classes but there we are supporting them to be successful and we see that there are some targeted uh things that we need to do in order to better support our black African-American students enrolled in those courses and just so that we are aware as we talk about the level of diversity in our AP classes here are the top three most diverse AP courses at Libertyville High School and the top three most diverse
136AP courses at Vernon Hills High Schools pause for slide so here's some of the things that we plan to do in order to address our AP enrollment and AP success we will offer a diverse range of AP courses we know that there are some AP courses that are designed to have greater access for students of all Races and ethnicities um we're very proud that we were selected as one of uh 500 schools Across the Nation to Pilot the AP African-American studies class at Vernon Hills High School which allows our students to have a broader range of AP courses we want to make sure that our AP courses cover a range of various subjects so that students can take AP courses that are aligned to their interests um we're also targeting Outreach and recruitment we were
137conducting Outreach programs and underrepresented communities to educate students and their families about the availability and the benefits of AP courses making sure that our students and their parents or Guardians are aware of what AP is and how it could benefit them and save them money uh if they earn the college credit those are courses that they do not have to pay for when they go to college and we're also identifying and recruiting potential AP students through personalized invitations recommendations from teachers or discussions with our counselors this is very much aligned with the work that equal opportunity schools will be providing for us to train us on effective Outreach techniques and recruitment methods to reach our black and brown populations we're also providing professional development for our teachers providing professional development opportunities to enhance the ability
138to teach diverse student populations effectively this training will include strategies for culturally responsive teaching and differentiating instruction so that our most rigorous courses are more accessible for all students who are enrolled in there and we are able to see success and support for all students also through our mentorship program we would like to establish mentorship programs where our current AP students particularly those from underrepresented backgrounds who are enrolled in AP classes can mentor and support students who are considering enrolling in AP and be an encouragement for those who are um on the on the fence about taking an AP class and we also want to recognize and celebrate the achievements of our underrepresented students who is selling AP courses as this can Inspire others to follow suit and then finally through our counseling training we
139want to ensure that we train our counselors to provide guidance and support for students interested in AP courses ensuring that our councils are proactive and encouraging student participation as our students go through course selection um that they are being encouraged to take AP courses and inspired to do um to do well in them pause for slide that concludes ah the presentation part of the evening at this time I will take any questions uh that the board may have Jim Batson so I have a quick question a lot of slides are talking about AP um and um I recall our conversation with the EOS folks uh there was some comments at that point in time about dual credit as well and while all this AP stuff is is good and valuable and and helpful to get
140rigorous educational opportunities for our our students as well as college credit um dual credit does a similar thing so will we be seeing similar plans similar thoughts some some uh similar um uh information coming on participation in in those types of courses I know we're earlier in that process but there seems to be a trend in many districts moving to include um dual credit as well as AP for various reasons but I'm just curious to your your thoughts on that yes uh the dueling the Dual credit option is another option that allows students to transfer credits from high school to college um depending on their performance in those courses as we as as we prepare to make our dual credit offerings more robust as a district we will collect that data and present it as
141well alongside our APS both options um equally provide the same outcome of students being able to take college level courses and transfer that credit to to their respective colleges and universities we do have some of that data now though right we do have dual credit classes or science the Dual credit class that we offer so could we just include that as like college level experience instead of just calling it AP and then put all of that data into one category pause for discussion Lisa Hessel we'd have to I think that's an interesting question I do think we have to look at the policy to see how it defines the metrics we could certainly update the policy to include those metrics but I'm wondering your thoughts on that Mr Varn Larry Varn um I think that
142uh in terms of reporting the Dual credit and the advanced placement options we certainly can do that uh yeah we can do that okay both are viable options for our students students to take um I don't I don't think one is is more valuable than the other um they're both equally equally weighted in terms of of that Cara dromkey Mr fun I I do have a question this seemed to be like a snapshot based on the five Essentials and the culture climate survey from last year sorry I know I'm horrible uh I know we have been keeping data similarly longitudinally and I guess what I'm looking for is what are you noticing as our Trends are our Trends in PR and that's when I'm not seeing here it seems like it's one snapshot this is
143what it was last year but now that we have been focusing on this as a strategy where are our Trends are you noticing gaps closing or gaps widening um largely last year was a baseline daily year for us um with the inclusion of uh Charlotte Eye director of data and assessment um largely our efforts were around collecting that first Year's data so moving forward as we continue this um discussion and looking at this longitudinal data across time we'll be able to track and and see from year to year how we are comparing as we as we go forward okay thank you son all Kulkarni I had a more tactical question as we are encouraging students to take more AP classes are we also providing with them with coaching or help in the school system because
144not everyone is able to afford tutors and some AP classes are difficult and may not support you know their home environment for whatever reason yeah a couple of things that we are looking at is uh how we are organizing our summer program and for students who have never taken an AP course before we know that it can be intimidating um it can be a shift from what they were accustomed to particularly if they may be coming if they're making diagonal movement um from a lower level like college prep into AP courses for the first time um and so doing some um Bridge work during the summer to allow them to be exposed to what they're going to see in in the in the AP course additionally it's really important that we make sure that our
145teachers are armed with differentiating strategies in order to be able to reach the various needs of students coming in so that as new students um come into our advanced placement courses our teachers feel confident and they have the capacity in order to reach those students with wherever they are as they're coming into into that class so that professional learning is going to be critical um a critical piece for making sure that we are ensuring the success for students coming into a b classes particularly students who are first-time AP students pause for discussion and questions Lisa Hessel I'm curious one last thing you mentioned uh expanding the Green Dot program can you talk a little bit about that currently Green Dot is only at Libertyville High School um in about two weeks ago about two weeks
146ago um the Vernon Hills staff also came together for a training on Green Dot and looking at how we could incorporate that model into the Vernon Hills High School so I'm determining whether they also want to be a partner with Green Dot and make Vernon Hills uh a Green Dot school like Libertyville is okay do you have any sense of the timeline of when that decision would be made and how how long it would take to implement pause for discussion Dr John Gilliam so the decision the timeline for the decision what we've talked about at our place first of all we have VH give which uh implements some of these same themes around respect and um focuses on the way we treat students so we would probably be phasing that out and moving into Green
147Dot that is something that uh with kind of the an early um implementation with staff right now we'd be able to turn around and Implement pretty quickly uh the one thing that we are kind of um I don't know if I want to say waiting but but intently watching is the work being done with the flexible use of time to see exactly how it might work with some calendar or some some scheduling changes if they're if they are coming that's still a big if um but that would give us more time to be able to implement if something like that happened if not then we'd have to figure out how to how to implement implement something like that in our current structure got it thank you Tara Benjamin any other questions I have a quick
148question regarding the retention of Staff of color when we see the changes um and we have you know negative change or minus change is happening within certain populations when these individuals leave and I know they leave for all different types of reasons um are we conducting any type of uh or gathering any type of qualitative data on that or conducting any type of exit interview um maybe someone could speak to that although we've incorporated qualtrics into you know our program they are receiving an exit interview and then we'll start compiling that data and then we also do some follow-up on the exit interviews online so thank you any other questions pause for discussion and questions okay thank you thank you the next item on our agenda is the 2023 summer school summary cam returns to
149Podium Dr Yesenia Sanchez Dr Iman Ellis Bowman hello I know it's a little late but we're excited to present our summer school program um for this past summer pause for slide so summer school we ran two semesters some the first semester ran from June 5th through June 29th and the second semester ran from July 5th through July 27th from 8 15 to 12 45 Monday through Thursday um this year we offered pause for slide we offered a virtual platform courses as well as in-person courses so we had 14 courses that were offered in person uh you see those listed on this slide and then we also also offered seven courses that were offered virtually and these are the courses that we were not able to staff so for instance in chemistry we're able to find
150a teacher for one semester we're not both semesters and that was an ideal so then we offered that course um virtually and then the other courses we were not able to find staffing or someone to provide that course in person so we partnered with Dr Iman Ellis Bowman he's gonna take her slide good evening everyone um so um this year we were excited to partner with um imagine learning for our online course platform and we offer two types of classes um the first class were were our courseware classes which were our self-paced um platforms and our modules with Staffing for our summer session we initially had one person um to cover our credit recovery classes however within the first two days due to a significant increase in enrollment that we did not expect as well
151as addressing the needs of students we ended up soliciting more assistance from our Math teachers to provide support to the students in that class so that way that they can be successful on the platform we also offered what we call instructional Services as well too we which were our online classes that had a non um d128 Illinois certified teachers to provide support to students who were participating in that class and that class was for any student who obtained initial credit as well as repeat and replace for our chemistry classes this year pause for slide so in regards to our enrollment data here you see that this is our enrollment data for by building as well as by programs and services as you can see most of our students were enrolled in our Import in person
152courses however as I stated in the slide previously we did have an increase of students who were taking an event who took advantage of our online platform pause for slide here on pause for slide here on this slide we showed our three-year Trend data this is by enrollment by course so these numbers are representative of students who took multiple courses in which they were counted twice so as you see um there was a significant decrease between summer 22 and our current summer however it was an increase from 2021. pause for slide Dr Yesenia Sanchez I'm going to walk us through the demographics of the enrollment so this is new this year the first year that you'll see the enrollment of summer school broken down by demographics pause for slide so the first slide will cover
153the gender demographics and this goes through our in person as well as our instructional services and our coursework which were the um the courses that were offered through the online platform pause for slide and Then followed by students who had an IEP status of students and then we also looked at students who were receiving a fee who receive a fee waiver and then lastly we have it broken down by race um pause for slide so if you take a look at this you'll be able to understand who are the students that are taking advantage of our programming and and which students are falling more into the credit recovery Credit Recovery a program as well as taking advantage of summer school for to earn initial credit or um repeat and replace um and I'm going to
154hand it back to Dr Ellis Bowen pause for slide Dr Iman Ellis Bowman so next we're going to look at um the type of credit um earned and as you see again we had a large number of students who attended summer school to earn an initial credit while we did have some students who attended to complete credit for credit recovery and repeat and replace so there is an assumption that our students tend to do well during the school year which results in Rich results in um not a significant enrollment and Credit Recovery repeat and replace but they do take advantage of the initial credit pause for slide again this is our data by grades for semester one semester two again overall our students did extremely well and our grade distribution shows that most of our
155students earned an a during semester one semester two and all um all the different levels or programs and services that were offered and we did not have any student who did not who received an F or not passing uh horses pause for slide next as part of our summer programming we also offered our Student Success academies and as well as a variety of programming for our students with special needs pause for slide all right so um during semester one only we offer two programs we offer our incoming Student Success Academy which is designed for our in identified incoming freshmen with activities and instructions that assist with them acclimating into the high school setting students focus on areas such as executive function which is time management organization along with math and Ela this program is for
156both general education students as well as special education students and our special education students who participate in this program are recommended by their IEP team during their annual review um our next program that is also offered during this time is our Student Success Academy plus which is a program that is designed for our upperclassmen students with special services again they look at um both those executive functioning our learning our Ela and our math courses as well as strategies that have been identified in their individual education plans students who participate in either program whether they be general education or sped earn a 0.25 credit and a grade of P or NG earn which has no pack no impact on their GPA pause for slide in addition to our summer academies for our students with special needs
157and as part of our extended school year we offer our educational life skills academy in which programming provides students with academic social functioning adaptive skills along with vocational and community-based experiences um within our transition Pathways Academy students continue our we continue to provide instruction support and services that are allowing aligned to the students extended school year goals areas of focus are post-secondary transition individual living skills social skills all within a community-based setting we were excited for our students in the transition Pathways Academy to participate in the repo to participate in their vocational job site at repower which is located in Buffalo Grove both of these programs are aligned to the special Recreation Association of Central Lake County so that students can attend our programming in the morning and participate in Recreation and leisure activities in
158the afternoon pause for slide in addition um to these programs we also do offer related Services esy related services for speech and language social work as well as OT momentary pause so for our enrollment data for our Student Success Academy enrollment as we have increased our student recommendations for coal talk settings our enrollment and recommendations for placement and our more supportive special education instructional classes has decreased which has resulted also in a decrease in our students recommended for both of our Student Success Academy programs for our special education students um also too there may be some residual effects from the pandemic with our students accessing these programs as well too during uh for a student with special needs during their annual IEP process a student's IEP team recommends that student for any for eligibility for
159both of these programs and then if the academy models were not offered to students then we would return to a different model in which it would be provided with homebound services pause for slide and um this shows a number this of students that were invited to participate in the program and a number of students and the number of students who actually attended um as stated on the previous slide due to our increase of our students with special services participating in cold talk classes which is absolutely amazing um the effect of that is that we have a decline in or decrease in students who are in need of more supportive services therefore may not be in need of Supportive Services during the summer momentary pause um also students who did not earn credit for course did
160not meet attempt the attendance requirement of 13 days or more of attendance pause for slide momentary pause Dr Yesenia Sanchez we're gonna keep you guys guessing and include one more person on this presentation so Dan is going to join us Dan Stanley I'm gonna click this slide pause for slide uh so wanted to put together some financial information on summer school summer school is a little tricky because our fiscal year ends June 30th with which is right in the middle of summer school so we have to so no one fiscal year can encapsulate a whole summer school so we have to look across two fiscal years for summer school 2023 that actually includes fiscal year 23 and the current fiscal year 24 and really what we do is based on in the expenditures and the
161revenues we run a really a date range between March we can have start we can start receiving revenues as early as March and we have expenditures for summer school through this month that occurs and so when we're looking at all that information and pulling it all together the total revenue from our summer school program uh tuition is 96 000 that's and then Transportation uh so people students that elect Transportation uh is 86.40 for a total of 104 720 and then the expenditures are listed there's summer school the Summer Academy which is um what Dr Ellis bone was just walking through and then transportation is together because they all ride the buses together so it's difficult to split that out but the total cost for our summer program uh as of through the end of uh
162this month is at 309 000 which would put our summer program our summer school program uh combined with the Summer Academy at a deficit of about two hundred thousand dollars so it's important for us to understand that and it's also I think important to understand what is what is the intention what is what is the intention of our summer program from our financial perspective pause for slide Dr Yesenia Sanchez and so that leads us to our considerations and things that we are exploring for next year such as looking at reviewing our attendance policy for summer school how many absences we allow students to have before saying okay that's you know you've missed too many you you're not going to be able to attain credit or or make up this credit also um really looking into
163recruitment of teachers for summer school so that we could offer more in-person courses this year was the year that we had the hardest time finding teachers to teach our classes so we want to explore more options there as well as explore additional models so for instance driver's ed is one that is really hard to staff and so this year we're going to um ask our driver's ed teams at the schools to start exploring other other models if there are different ways to do it so that we could continue to offer it Without Really limiting the number of students that can take advantage of it in the summer also taking a look at what we offer for incoming freshmen if we would like to explore more offering more credit bearing courses for them and what that
164that would mean in terms of how we develop the program and how we staff it and then exploring and evaluating the current offerings so this would kind of lead to the question earlier about do we offer anything to support students who are going to perhaps be enrolling into their first AP of course so this is um this is one of the things that we're we're thinking about when talking about what we offer during the during the course during the summer school course course offerings as well as examining our summer school schedule and if there's any flexibility with um with um with the dates or especially with our driver's ed if we could all perhaps you know change those hours so that maybe they do some of those behind the wheel hours in the evenings or
165or after 12 p.m um so we're going to be exploring um all of those things and we'll have our summer school proposal for you in the coming months thank you any questions Don Carmichael I wonder for Dan uh traditionally do we operate at a deficit for summer school Dan Stanley uh we do yeah it um it might vary year to year um but but historically I believe that program is running a deficit so we regularly budget for a deficit for summer schools and investment in those programs uh uh I would say that I budget for the revenues that I anticipate and for the expenditures that I anticipate I don't think that's an intention to budget it at a deficit and that's the result is the result is the deficit so I'm not sure that the
166deficit is intentional in terms of our budget but I it but the revenue I I budget based on the revenues I'm projecting and that budget based on the expenditures I'm projecting understood Lisa Hessel but the I interrupted the answer to Don's question which was do we historically operate at a deficit for summer school and the answer is yes and it's the what's I mean besides adding more students because I suppose there's a cost to the program infrastructure itself right so it's the best way of reducing the deficit to have more students enroll essentially momentary pause I think the best answer I can give you is that we haven't yet taken a close look at all the drivers and the levers associated with the financials related to summer school and once we do that we would
167I would better be able to tell you what would move the needle on that it could be more students do that however if the way our summer school is priced if it's priced at a deficit model more students would make it worse so it depends I would say and more investigation is necessary to give you a better Jim Batson I think this will get back to your your question earlier is what is there the intent or you know is our plan just to run the set of deficit and provide the programming for the students that that need this this programming and that's it because we might we increase the the tuition to accommodate the deficit we'd probably price ourselves out of you know a lot of the students wouldn't be able to then take advantage
168of it you know I I think there's a you know some understanding of what our intent is is our intent to provide a program even at a cost to the district for these students or not and I think that's a that's really the fundamental question and is that part of what you Dr Ellis Bowen and Dr Sanchez that you're going to be looking into as you continue your research on summer school yeah so we're going to be looking at like the philosophy of our summer school and what are what are what our goal is during summer school Dr Denise Hermann I mean one thing you separated the enrollment data so well I think we need to now do some of that same kind of analysis with the funding so we have students who choose to
169enroll in the get ahead classes and pay tuition we have students who are participating in other programs in which there are no charge so I think that would be another thing for us to get more clear on which programs by Design would not carry a tuition and which ones would and just be very clear about that with parents and students and and making sure you know the it's aligned with what we want to be supporting student learning year round does the online platform that we implemented give a little bit of um relief to Staffing concerns Dr Iman Ellis Bowman so in theory yes however um there um as with our first uh first session we did notice that we would need Staffing in order to be in the classes to support the students because um
170we had only anticipated about 20 to 30 students and um during the first day we had over 62 students so that was extremely too many students for one staff member and so we began to take a look at smaller look groups and so when you look at the research and when we have worked with in partnership with Imagine Learning they recommend smaller groups of no more than 20 with those courseware modules now with the instructional Services because the students are assigned to a teacher those classes can be larger so we do need a staff member even for online classes yes and it sounds like from what you've said we allow students to enroll very close to the start date of the course is that correct they or is yes this year we did I think
171we are we will be looking into for next year that was um some feedback that we received from the school sites that although it was it was good because we were allowed we were able to get more kids in the program it was difficult for Staffing and it was also difficult for families who were trying to plan vacations and figure out what they were doing without knowing if yes this course was going to be available online or not sure so that is something that that we are going to be addressing for next summer could the latent enrollment as far as students making up courses um could that be driving because perhaps students weren't anticipating needing to retake the course the second semester grades yeah some of that is it would be due to that okay
172thank you son all Kulkarni I was trying to understand many of these uh Academy classes were by invitation so what is the what's the criteria for invitation Dr Iman Ellis Bowman so the um students for um uh the general ed students were um identified by um a criteria looking at their math and their El English language arts scores um and so if um the buildings had identified these students that were in need of more supportive services to assist with them transitioning into our buildings along with that articulation with our Center Schools they were invited to participate in this program for our special ed students that recommendation took place at their annual individual education planning meetings [Music] Lisa Hessel okay thank you very much look forward tomorrow on summer school pause for next topic um next
173on the agenda we have a capital projects overview Dan Stanley hi um I recognize the time so I will try to make this as efficient as I can the intention behind this was walking through the LHS cafeteria project that we're currently in right now and knowing in October at our fnf we're going to have more design information and much more detailed information to share on that what we wanted to do tonight was to give perspective on where we've come in basically the last year slightly less than a year and so I put in for the packet really four attachments one was the long-term capital projection presentation that we did last January and the intention behind that data was to show what is on what is on our Horizon in terms of capital needs that we
174have just to keep this place running roofs uh things like that this that list did not include the optional extra Ray models that we're interested in doing and just the repairs are loan necessitate a significant amount of funding over the next five years and we dedicate a significant amount of funding we right now we're at about four million dollars a year but in order to meet the timeline we're gonna we might have to look at more so the reality is there is not enough money to do everything that we feel we need to do and all the things that we want to do and and so in order for us to really move forward we strongly felt the need that we need to prioritize so then we went through a process to try to develop
175the criteria by which we're going to prioritize and so that is the second attachment that I provided was this these were the the various criterias that we used um to help us evaluate proposed ideas for renovating to align with the things that we want to align to things such as our daring Mission our strategic plan um uh the impact of students how many students are impacted the impact academically SEL inclusion behavioral and then system Improvement things that that improve our instruction or our service delivery help things that help improve the efficiency of our system energy conference conservations sustainability health and safety long-term Financial benefit to the district Ada accessibility urgency meaning how how bad is it if we defer this and wait on this and impact to the broader Community those are the things that
176we felt were the important things for us to consider in that process and so we once we had that criteria we had a we had several proposals sent in and a committee of not not a few number of people actually at this table spent a lot of time evaluating and thinking through these projects to see how each one aligned to that and so what I wanted to do was then walk through with you for example the LHS cafeteria when we looked at each of those areas the committee looked through them and tried to evaluate based on the best sense so everything could have a score from every different criteria could have a score of zero to three so zero one two or three four different options for the alignment of the dairy Mission does renovating
177the LHS cafeteria align to our Dairy Mission the Committees felt based on the language of our Dairy mission it didn't but there are redeeming qualities there's a lot of tangential connection but there's nothing explicit in renovating the cafeteria that we can tie very specifically to the dairy mission on the flip side for a strategic plan action alignment we felt that there was significant alignment to that and so that got a three from the committee's perspective and so we went through each of that so for students impacted all of the students at LHS would be impacted by the renovation of the cafeteria this is this would not affect a small number of students in the building so that gave us a three for that area we felt the impact to the student academics the SEL were
178also three that those would could have significant impacts that's a main that is a main space in the building that even academically is as we've talked about in the previous meetings having a significant impact on our schedule our even ability to have a different schedule for that space and so that was behind one of the drivers of being able to get more students through that system to feed them and do all those things in an appropriate amount of time and then when we went through our system improvements we had different things that were that had higher scores some had lower for a fish it felt that this would absolutely help the efficiency of our system energy conference conservation and sustainability that one we we set it to um because that we felt that that would
179have an impact on sustainability but it wouldn't necessarily be significant it would be a space that how just by the nature of renovating an old space we're removing things that were inefficient and replacing them with newer that would have an impact would would it be significant considering the scope of our all of our facilities we didn't feel that it was but that's that's what went into the committee's the committee's thoughts I believe at that time um and so I so all of those things are kind of what we walked through to try to get the best sense of like how does this really align and we went through that for every single project that was submitted we spent I can't remember but it was at least to very long evenings or it went into the
180evening for sure um time trying to trying to go through that and the results were the results and so we then then score then we then uh puts all the projects on a list and ranked them by the score that they had and the cafeteria had the highest score and one of the things I remember Dr Batson you'd mentioned is like we run through something and kind of see like how does this feel and it really was the committee's sense that when we looked at the end result of this does it feel right based on everything that we've lived through that the renovating the LHS cafeteria is that the top priority and the answer for the committee was yeah that makes sense like that feels like it should be the top priority and based on
181the process we went through it is the top priority and so that felt that felt affirming to us and so we kind of went through and like okay does the bathrooms feel like the next thing and yeah that makes sense and so that's really how we determined those the order of those priorities so that is just a brief overview of kind of where we have been where we have come since January really and where we're at right now and so looking really in depth at the cafeteria we know that that project right now the design of that is was higher the initial conceptual design of that was much higher than we anticipated it being and that realistically affecting our ability to do the other projects with the amount of money that we have available and
182so we're not done talking about this we're not done talking about the LHS cafeteria but that was at least a brief overview of where we've been and where we are right now the future for us is at the October fnf committee meeting we will have more in-depth design and discussion around the actual cafeteria and then at Future meetings we'll be able to I think talk about um the broader projects that we want to do beyond that and what options you have if if that's a direction you want to go and so that that will come probably in November for us to be able to talk more about that um momentary pause so not sure why I said um uh so that that's really the summary of what I wanted to share with you all tonight
183um and all of you were here as a walking through this process so uh if you have any questions or or any comments uh now would be the time pause for discussion and questions after a review of the information in the packet it looked like there was a very good summary of everything we've talked to up to this point but no new information for us to discuss tonight just this was for information and to summarize a very intense process of quantifying and coming up with a rubric and a plan and priorities and then gut checking that once we've been through that process is that correct it is and going forward help reminding us of the process that we went through to try to be consistent with what the criteria that we wanted to be important
184um to say like this is this is the result of the process that we went through um and that should be in the Forefront of our minds when we're trying to figure out what's the next thing we're going to do meaning if the cafeteria moves forward where it is that will inhibit our ability to do the next thing on the list and so the question is what do we do we do we stick with the next thing our list do we change the order do we something like that I wanted to give us all information so that we're all on the same page in terms of what we what the committee thought was important based on all the data that we had available to us at the time Lisa Hessel thank you what questions do
185we have for for Tan at this time I wanted one clarification of or conforming my understanding but this list of projects that we have these are our optional projects not the core ones we need for maintenance right correct so okay thanks Don Carmichael eventually we're going to have to have the conversation about what to do about the not having enough money to do the things that we want to do yes and I don't know how to have that conversation I don't want to have rocks thrown at me um but it's possible that the public will not like to hear me say I want more money but there's a lot of things that are on that list that the science labs like those need to be done but we're at a point right now where they're
186not going to get done for a while I think that's a great conversation for uh fnf yeah I think Dan was saying my question was so what do we do but looks like you'll come with some options which is why I kind of held off on asking that question today yeah so November my target is for the November fnf meeting to be able to talk more plainly about what your options are good October is going to be too soon for us to be able to do that but we felt November was going to be the right time good anything else pause for discussion and questions Don Carmichael I'm just going to continue on the agenda for uh for a moment um uh informational items uh the fy23 employee compensation report um Dan Stanley yeah this
187is a report that is required to be presented at a board meeting and posted to our website before October 1st so it is Data from the prior school year it is data that contains most of the salary and benefits for most of our certified staff it's not all of them is be uh makes the rules on what information is reportable and not this is the report based on ISB system that we have to present to you and post on our websites there's no action to take there's not a requirement take action it just needs to be presented at a board meeting yeah and we did also discuss it in committee yes and since we don't have to vote upon it it's not on the consent agenda any other comments or questions I think it's pretty
188clear thank you too thank you we'll move on to the superintendents report thank you um actually Bryant Kelly is going to give us a brief update on our press policy transition Brian Kelly thank you um however before I begin our update I do want to thank publicly thank Carol skodden and Donna Carmichael for their time and effort in this huge undertaking um you know once this product process is complete um I believe that our d128 board policies will be in much better shape than before so just to kind of go back um to June June 12th we had a policy committee meeting and our current policies procedures for d128 were reviewed by Tammy Eng from the director she's the director of policy services for the Illinois Association of school boards and that review is done
189through some general questions and her spending a lot of time actually reviewing a lot of our d128 materials online so our current board policies our websites going through stuff she really does an extensive search and gets to know our district through our online presence but also through questions that she asked us from June through September um District unique language hyperlinks policies were incorporated into the first draft clarification and questions were covered with our district board attorney and then shared with iasb so Carol and I communicated back with Tammy at ISB on some clarification questions July 19th the first draft was completed and sent to District 128 the first draft was then reviewed in preparation for the September policy committee meeting which was held on September 12th and on September 12th um we met so Tammy
190Dan Carroll and myself met and we reviewed sections one through six um one of the things that did take time was that we had to go back and thank you Carol we had a um ISB press still uses he or she in their update and we re we changed all of our um like we had in our current policies today so that took a little bit of time we also compared current policies with possible optional language that was previously adopted so there's optional language that we had adopted or not adopted and so we had to go through that also ensuring that our policies reflect our current procedures in d128 and then the policies also reflect that we're 9 through 12 grade school you know a great School District so not there's still some language for
191K through six that was included so we had a you know um make sure that was updated so October 18th um is our next policy committee meeting again that's open to the public or for anyone else from the board to attend um the goal it's exciting it is um the goals of this meeting are to answer any clarifying questions from our September review we've gotten some materials back already reviewed draft two of sections one through six so that's what we went through in September but we need to finish reviewing section seven and eight and then finalize our you know review of draft one um for seven and eight our next steps is to receive at the end of October a final draft of the board policies where hopefully in November meetings that we can bring
192our first reading of the a finalized board policies and then December a second reading and Adoption of board policies it will basically be voting on every policy every policy Clean Slate at that point in time I mean slate at that point it will all be updated at that point yeah so yeah we'll be all updated you know if we missed any updates along the way um from years past or they weren't done in the ISB five-year review or law updates that were missed those will all be updated but again you know we do have some you know unique language we have um our Equity policy is unique to us um our mission statement is incorporated into our board policy that you know we have uh three three schools are Incorporated so all of that needs
193to also be incorporated into it but it'll be a nice clean slate um and then moving forward it'll be much easier for us to look at the changes that need to be done but also communicate the changes to the board on any changes in our board policies moving forward so it won't be as tedious um yeah process Don Carmichael we also found a couple of things in policy that iasb has that we don't have in our policy manual that sparked a little discussion that at some point will probably come up uh we'll talk about some things there correct and then there was a couple of like intent questions what um but we'll Hammer those out sonal Kulkarni right I was just going to say thank you that it sounds like a lot of work so
194thank you all right really they're doing it yeah and a lot of tedious work to that's okay I answered I think a solid five questions in five hours but we appreciate you helping and thank you for all of your hard work to everyone on this project um Dr Denise Hermann yeah uh thank you Bryant and uh two other quick updates to the board um I wanted to follow up on my our fellow student board rep who acknowledged the QPR training that she attended um many of you know that um as an educator and in my personal life I've had experiences with suicide and September is National Suicide Prevention month and I wanted to recognize that this was the third time I've been able to be trained with students on QPR and it's just a testament
195to how dedicated our district is to supporting mental well-being and mental health we also have shows t-shirt trying to publicize 988 or suicide Crisis Line we have students being educated on that last week we we had Yellow Ribbon Week here at Vernon Hills High School schools so we have events for staff and students going on at both campuses and knowing that that's one of our three goal areas to support the mental health and well-being of our students I just wanted to acknowledge both um uh Brenda Nelson who did the training I attended and the efforts of Amy Dillon here at Vernon Hills High School and then finally just to set the stage for our October 9th teacher Institute day when we have been presenting the action plans for our strategic plan and trying to say
196what are some of the Key activities that we want our staff to be able to participate in the trainings that we want them to be able to learn the connections the Voice who want them to be able to have that's been what we focused on for our October 9th day we have two days in which we have access to all staff October and February and so the teaching and learning team as well as the other action planning teams have been really prioritizing how to how to maximize teacher input and teacher learning so we are going to be focusing some of our time on our equity and inclusion efforts where we'll be doing our EOS launch staff will be given time to complete the survey and we want to gather input from every staff member about
197every student and that takes time so we're not going to ask staff to do that on their own time or their prep period it will be completed during the in-service day we will also have a speaker work with our staff I know one caution that the board had when we talked about trying to increase access to students who previously weren't in AP or dual credit or other classes was wanting to make sure that we had that growth mindset that we weren't placing students in classrooms where you know teachers didn't have the tools they needed and the attitude that all kids can be successful so we're going to make sure that we launch that initiative on October 9th also we will have time for a grading and assessment committee to be meeting and providing support opportunities
198for for teachers in the grading pilot we also will have exploring multiple paths our school counselors and College and Career people will be looking at the pace framework and some of the other things that are called for in our action plan so I just wanted to make sure that as a board you understood we are trying to make sure that we're maximizing teacher access to the trainings that is one of our you know foundational principles is that we won't support any initiative unless we can provide meaningful and job embedded professional learning for our staff and I want to thank a teaching and learning team and the principals and other people who've been putting the agenda together for October 9th and again as always any of you who might have some flexibility in your schedule and
199you'd like to stop by any of our sessions we would welcome you so I'll send the final agenda when it's published Lisa Hessel right thank you okay moving along to any board comments and events I will ask everyone one to keep their comments brief at this late hour pause for discussion Jim Batson none I did I'll just jump in with a couple it's not directly board related but it's education related I sit on two Committees of a national Tech leadership group uh the uh it's the the group's called Kosen um they sit on their their cyber security committee and on the digital Equity committee and the interesting thing this month was we had a a guest speaker at our Equity committee meeting from the U.S Department of Education talking about the new National Education technology
200uh report that's going to come out the the plan the technology plan that's going to come out I believe next month but he was presenting the the key elements of that and um asking for feedback and whatnot and I think the most important thing there is that in every aspect of that plan Equity is sort of you know sort of the thread the Common Thread through all that so it's just interesting and you know it helps me understand things much more effectively and I think it not only in my professional life but in my board of life here it's those committees really help put things into perspective just thought I'd share that nice anything else pause for discussion okay uh you said there was a brief ISB report yeah just a reminder that October 11th
201uh dinner meeting for all those that are are participating they also have the joint conference coming up on starting on the 17th of November and then the legislative breakfast in early December hosted by d128 so three iasb events coming up this in the next couple months pause for discussion okay any other reports pause for discussion and questions okay moving on in addition to the items listed in 7A for future agenda items are they are there any other future agenda items board members wish to discuss can can I ask that on either the October or November this will be probably program Personnel committee um I received the the delegate report for the iasb delegate assembly then the annual meeting it includes all the the proposals for this coming meeting and I'd like to get some feedback
202from the group on those those items on that I don't know if that went to everybody or it's online now it's online now I think there's only like six proposals this yeah yeah there's not many but they're just to get some feedback on those before I attend the meeting in November so either October or November yeah we can make sure that happens thank you good point anything else uh I would like to request um just some type of like progress update on the uh new grading pilot just maybe see if we can get a little snapshot of how it's going or any feedback would be great just interested to know it would be great to get students perspective on that too pause for note-taking we can make that happen thank you thank you great anything
203else pause for discussion okay um may I have a motion to adjourn please Carmichael so moved thank you seconds and second thank you um uh Voice vote um all in favor of a German please say aye aye any opposed we are adjourned thank you everybody for your Fade to District 128 logo end of meeting