March 2023 Committee Meetings of the D128 Board w/AD

001good evening everyone uh welcome to the uh program of personnel committee meeting for um March 13th 2023 um we will call this meeting to order and we will start with the Pledge of Allegiance congratulations it please okay um like to start with uh first agenda item is the invitation for public comment anyone wishing to address the program of personnel committee just state your name and uh just as a our common practice is three minutes um we're a little looser in the committee meetings but okay I I'm Angie Naylor I'm a Spanish teacher at Vernon Hills High School I was a teacher at Libertyville High School for 15 years prior I'm in like my 20 30 or something and I'm the one who wrote The Letter regarding the language lab so I just wanted to share

002that as you are having your discussion if there if you have any questions there are many language teachers here and we would be so happy to answer any questions that you have okay thank you that would yeah okay anyone else wishing to address the committee okay uh hearing now we'll move on uh first item on the agenda is the ihsa membership renewals this happens every year the Price Is Right I had not gotten that news that they were not charging their members this year but they haven't they've been charged in a few years number of years but this is our normal annual membership renewal for both Libertyville High School and Vernon Hills High School okay any questions from them from the board it's pretty straightforward you do this every year it allows our participation in

003ihsa so that will be on the agenda for the board meeting later this month all right that's done the agenda I'm going to spend agreement uh we recommend we will recommend at the board meeting for approval of the alternative education service agreements for 23-24 so we've had a long-standing agreement with Ombudsman to provide some off-campus program of course our students and so they um request Us in the agreement to look at the number of seats to pay for for the year and we can also after that if there's still room in um at Ombudsman that we can add students in there but it's you know a little higher cost and so we contracted last year for two students we've used our allotment of two students so we're asking for another two students for next year

004Reserve spots okay any questions or comments on this again most of us have seen this before so this is a minimum of two students so we paid for the first two students no matter correct yeah okay okay that will be also on the agenda later this month moving right along uh annual certified staff employment recommendations it's that month so in the um agenda I did try to provide with you a timeline going back to the beginning of the year of the sectioning process um you know that it started back in the fall with uh finalizing our curriculum uh proposals and the courses um into then starting the process of course selection with our students um so in January through February our course selection for our um current students 9 through 11 but also then our

005eighth grade students selecting courses once the course selection is done then um the schools the buildings get together and look at the students that have signed up for the courses the number of courses and then they start to look at the number of sections that we should have for each of our courses and the number of sections are based off of our Optimum class sizes which were updated in this contract they're included in appendix F of the teacher Union contract so we the buildings go through that process as a team they work together with their Department chairs building Administration then we as a district all meet together so both Libertyville Vernon Hills and we evaluate the number of sections for each of those departments and again you know looking at the optimums and holding to

006those optimums they're you know there's a number of factors that go into [Music] um looking at the number of sections that we you know select when you look at there are some year-long courses there are also some semester courses there are also larger courses and some smaller courses and so sometimes we have to make some tough decisions on whether or not a course will run depending on the enrollment that is in there so our optimums um the big change this year is a lot of our optimums all some of them that were 28 moved to 25 and some of our courses that might have been 18 or 22 some of the AP courses moved up to 25. so most for the most part most of our courses were 25 there are some other courses in

007physical education and some of our other courses that might be bigger or smaller so once you have the number of students and you determine try to keep as close to that divisor Optimum as possible then we determine the number of sections again going back to there were some tough decisions to make that if you know eight students signed up for a course you know just it's tough for us to run a semester course with eight students there were times that we did look at a couple of our uh courses and um what we call is we stack the courses so we if we have um two courses that are very similar and low number of students if this teacher is able to be able to teach both sections in there we try to keep those

008courses going if possible um we do have one um course that is taught across the district so calculus three uh currently is taught across the district it's dual credit course and we have one teacher that is teaching both at Vern Hills and Libertyville students um and so you know once all of the um sectioning is done now behind sectioning there becomes people and our teachers and we look at um you know our full-time equivalent or our teachers and who can teach the courses um taking in again to effect to account the teachers that are retiring so obviously they're not part of determining who will be teaching the courses when we looked at that and finished everything we kind of we this year again we the last few years we've been working on trying to get

009our numbers broken down into different areas and so I thought this year you know we broke it down into classroom full-time equivalent um general education so classroom full-time equivalent in some of our intervention and services so El Pas special services which was instruction and co-teaching and then also transition Pathways and then our non-classroom full-time equivalent or FTE which was our non-instructional assignments student services which includes our LST special services non-instructural so you're looking at social workers psychologists and then again transition Pathways so when we finish with all of the sectioning our total FTE on change in the classroom was down a 0.9 and for our classroom FTE and intervention services so El pause special services transition Pathways our total ft was the FTE was up 0.2 and then non-classroom full-time equivalent we were up um

0101.5 um in that area um and so some of the other so when you look at overall then for our teaching assignments we were up 0.8 for our staffing so we realized that although some of the course requests had declined so if you look at Libertyville High School there is course requests down 440 course requests and um Vernon Hills course requests were down 22. so although there was a declining in course requests some of it was due to you know um declining enrollment at both buildings but it's also whatever what the students choose and how many classes they they choose so although we were down we were really only down 0.9 for classroom FTE part of that was we knew that with some of the changes in optimums um that the class is going from

01128 to 25 um you know there would be a slight increase in the FTE um so even though you're down 440 here at um Libertyville students receiving special education services um there was um we project an increase of 23 for next year um and then our students receiving um EO we have an increase of our El services for next year now we did make some changes to El with some overload and some other additions through this year and so we think that we are in a good place with the structure of our El at both schools if we do get any enrollment over the summer but if we have another big bump like we did this past summer with some of our move-ins from Ukraine we may have to make some you know adjustments but

012we're hoping that um you know we don't have that big of an increase there in el yeah we used we used the predictors that we normally have in terms of the trends over the last five years so last year was the much larger jump so we build in some cushion room in our El classes but didn't want to um predict who the movements are going to be so just to foreshadow that there may be a request in July or August for additional El Staffing we we find these uh increasing all year long no don't we like we have kids that are moving into District every week it's kind of hard to plan so I appreciate the buffer because I'm hearing from friends in other districts that it's just a continual increase in the numbers of

013students and trying to find ways to get people to accommodate you know they they may have actually finished their year in their previous school and yet they have to go to school so good and if you recall the um this past year we added two AIDS in our El program so luckily we were able to find um you know um Russian speaking Aid and also a Spanish-speaking Aid to add um but again we had some overloads with our instructors in El and so we made some changes there at both schools and we're hoping maybe with that again we don't have that big increase over summer if we do we'll try to get on it right away though so any questions on the that Staffing portion before we go on to kind of the employment piece

014um just a general question but have have all students who applied to be in a class have they all gotten that class right now or do we still have a population of students who may not get into the classes they wanted to sign up for so that's a good question so if um the buildings recognize that maybe classes weren't going to run just the enrollment was um so low you know like five students that signed up for a class they were they were going back to the students right away and try to get them um into other sections so that when we really did the sectioning that there's not going to be movement now here in the spring or summer of those students so we were trying to capture that so that if we sectioned

015something at you know 24 students that you know students in an elective that didn't get it didn't get piled into a class and then that class Optimum increase so we were trying to catch those um sooner rather than later this year okay good so those those questions just to be clear those conversations with students have already taken place correct or yeah one level of them there's a few more classes I would say the buildings did a really good job projecting and internally deciding which classes they knew couldn't run but there were a few more added to the list but the other area where students sometimes have to make choices is when there's conflicts when we actually build the master schedule and German 4 is offered the same time as some other Singleton even though we

016try to not do that with you know an a period day it's impossible so that's one more round where students unfortunately are asked to make a choice between Class A and Class B yeah they're certain when when Denise says Singleton's you know if you sign up for geometry there might be eight sections of geometry throughout the day it's easier to fit into a student's schedule but if they sign up for a certain art class it might only be offered once during the day and once that schedule is built sometimes it's hard to piece that student's schedule around and they may not be able to get that and so then um you know we do may have to move their schedule around yeah I mean I was also thinking about it there are some classes you

017can only take in a certain year like I think Health has to be taken freshman year and you can only take AP government in senior year I may be getting some these specifics wrong but are we like making sure that these students for those types of requirements that they can get into those classes at the right time I as far as I know um I think of the classes that have low enrollment it typically are some of the specialty classes and so we try to as the school counselors especially work harder this making sure students know what is a close alternative but anything that would be in a sequence we make sure that the student either has that path or a path that's similar in terms of graduation requirements or something else thank you can

018I just want to first of all thank you for putting all this together just deciphering this I can't imagine how much information goes into just creating this but I want to make sure I understand it even though we're down one or point nine FTE through the contingency we're not going to see a change in our staffing is that right is that why we have the one FTE contingency so the one the one FTE contingency was like this past year when we added some El um in the past I know we've added a math section over the summer um at Vernon Hills so if like we have some move-ins in an area or we need to add so that contingency is in case we need to add that we don't have to come back to the

019board and say and ask for so we're asking for a 1.0 contingency which allows us that if we need to add an overload or add a teacher some sections that we can do that without having to come to the board just to be clear it's not somebody we're hiring it's somebody it's a placeholder in case to not eliminate an FTE right right foreign anything else okay Part B of area so then the next piece that that we um all work on together so Department chairs um work with their teachers on what courses um you know they would like to teach for next year um and then with the building Administration with us and so once we plug all that in obviously there are ft so again 1.0 FTE um is that a teacher is teaching

020five classes uh first semester and uh five second semester so really 0.5 and 0.5 so that adds up to 1.0 at D so that's that's where you get the the 1.0 FTD you know there are um you know there are a couple things in here when you look at like non-instructional assignments so for example our um data coaches are Equity coaches in the building you know they'll teach um three classes and they have two assignments off so there'll be a 0.6 teacher with a 0.4 release and a non-instructional so that's where you get you know these these different points of Lte which is different than like Middle School school or grade school where you have a third grade teacher and they teach third grade or something like that um and so when we go through

021the Staffing um again there wasn't a there was a decrease in FTE for general education but increases across the board so our recommendation is uh for continued employment of our first second third and fourth year teachers the fourth year teachers would also then be recommended for uh tenure and again you would take action on this in the board meeting we do have honorable dismissal of full-time faculty which is Again by law you have to do this so many days before the end of the school year and the only full-time we had two leave of absences that were covered um by staff members they knew that they were covering one-year absence although we hired them to cover or leave legally we still need to release them from their job so again they've had conversations that they

022will be released from their positions the other part that um The Board needs to take action on at the board meeting is non-renewal of part-time faculty so a part-time faculty members anyone under 1.0 it could be 0.9 or it could be 0.1 but anyone under 1.0 is considered a part-time and so by law you have to release them um and some people call it a you know part-time riff but it's a reduction in force so again they've had conversations from their department chair to the building that they will be receiving a legal notice from you so at the board meeting you will take action to release our non-tenured teacher some of them may be coming back in positions um and we'll if they're coming back in open positions um some of them are part-time positions

023that they may be offered you would rehire them again in April so then we you know we go and talk to them and see what sections are available to them and then we hire them again in April and part-time doesn't um allow you to start your process of earning tenure also so just so you know that the 10-year process in Illinois under Pera um could be um it's it's normally four years you can accelerated tenure with three years with three years of excellent you could get also accelerated tenure with portability if you were tender to another school with two years um but part-time teachers do not um earn any of that process toward okay any questions I have a quick one so this is for um certified faculty and so I guess when does the

024the window close for notification of potential riff so I'm just confirming that five days before the end of the school year so this is not necessarily is this final so then we um board action you would take um at next week I suppose what I mean is this list isn't anticipated to change before next year it's not going to okay and then my other question is do we get a staffing report similar to this for our non-certified staff our Paras are I can't remember uh we'll have the the April born thank you foreign anything else okay moving on we have a employment of employees this is just our our March uh Personnel report for employment of employees any questions on these these will be included in the consent agenda right okay moving on to letter

025F Educational Tours I will say it's nice to see that we were able to hire someone for specialized support so quickly because we just approved that no good point okay we have uh three Educational Tours yes and um this is the first year that we participated in the DECA competition at Libertyville and one student was selected to participate at the national competition in Orlando so they will be going to that in in April and that is the international Career Development conference and then we have students going to the state conference for future Business Leaders of America um in in Springfield and we also have a network plan for our French speaking students for uh 2024 to Canada okay got any questions on that just a comment that I was happy to see the Canada tour

026back on the agenda I know that my daughter went on that one and it was a fabulous tour so just happy to happy to see continue to see these come back so good hearing no other uh questions we'll move on next um those will be on the agenda for um the board meeting later in the months uh uh item G gender support model overview so good afternoon all members of the Board of Education and to our d128 community our staff Administration um I am here today along with some members of the dynamic gender support I know I have Mr core I think that's it I think it's just me and him that worked hard on updating um the gender support model so again um special thanks to all of our members that participated on the

027committee they helped to create a space um in which all of the members including students and parents that participated on the committee were able to share their experiences as well as contribute and challenge at times and be able to learn from each other in addition to helping me to review different um documents as well as the presentation and then also some accompanying documents that we still have to finalize next slide I think yeah next slide yep next slide from that one all right so I want to give a special shout out um to uh the member the student members of the community um I really want to illuminate their participation in this process um it was absolutely amazing to be in a room with students um that advocated um for students that are currently with

028us as well as students that will be joining us in years to come but also to be courageous to share their voice with something that is um not all the way accepted in which you know where it really needs to be I also want to thank the Libertyville High School gender sexuality Alliance as well as the Vernon Hills sexuality and gender acceptance club for allowing me the space to come in and also speak with those students as well next slide please please all right so I wanted to give a little bit of a background on where the gender support plan came from um so back in 2019 Governor pritzer put together a committee entitled strengthening our commitment to affirming inclusive schools and his order for this task force was to create some type of guidance

029for districts to support their gender their non-conforming transgender intersex I know I'm forgetting one uh non-binary and students questioning their agenda for um to support as well as to ensure that there was no discrimination towards these students in 2020 right before covet hit um their task force presented recommendations in which um there's now is the guidance specifically for this however I want to point out that d128 formed the committee back in 2016 and to create a gender support guidance as well as a gender support plan that was used district-wide so we were actually well you guys were actually ahead of the Curve all right so um you'll hear me say gender support plan and gender support model but we are going um with the alignment um of what is B would like us to call

030it so it's a gender support model and it is a framework um to um support um our transgender transgender non-binary and our gender non-conforming um students according to each of their needs thoughtfully and intentionally with looking at four factors um providing tailored support to ensure equal access to educational programming and activities recognizing all risk factors um keeping in mind the students chronological and developmental age as well as family supports that may affect the process and then if requested and if needed providing um supports to siblings or other family members that may be also attending the school district next slide please all right so um I also want to include in this history a history of where we're at in this alignment to our strategic plan and our Equity policy and as uh the great Larry

031Vaughn who was sitting with us today says all means all um and we want to make sure that we are supporting all of our students um and so here again is our Equity um policy uh which um also focuses on um our students you can go to the next slide um and then um our vision which says that every child feels seen heard and included which is something that we wanted to make sure that we were doing in this process um and then championing opportunities for every student to be daring please go to the next slide and then again just a reminder for the board and our community of our d128 Equity commitments next slide all right um so our d128 gender support model um is designed to provide procedures um to address our the

032needs of our transgender gender non-conforming non-binary and intersex students within the guidelines we focus in on um uh professional development for our staff we focus in on Student Records um as well as making sure that within the guidelines and our procedures that we are creating a culture free of harassment discrimination and bullying next slide please so we had um four um four uh pillars of focus I would like to say we wanted to make sure that we supported our lgbtq plus and affirming student groups we wanted to provide um easily accessible information and supports and make sure that they are communicated to all we wanted to ensure accountability for inclusive practices and then again as I stated um before provide ongoing training and support to all staff members next slide all right so um before

033you um our components of the gender support model um that were previously included in the gender support guidance that was created in 2016 um with these components we just updated and or aligned each of the areas to what was um created in the isby guidance so some of the some of the areas it was stayed the same and then in other areas we made that alignment to the SB guidelines next slide so what's new what was not included in our 2016 um gender support plan that we included in our model are the six areas of focus here um and I'm not going to go through all of them but I do want to focus on some of what I would like to call um needs or hot topics or our gender support plan so one

034component um that is a new addition um it's overnight field trips um there was definitely a need for guidance um for our students and staff in this area um to provide um supports and accommodations for overnight trips um in um in respect to our transgender gender non-conforming non-binary and intersex students as well as those questioning their gender So within this area we provide um specific procedures um as well as communication structures um for overnight field trips for our students another area of focus which was not included and the support um in the gender Supply in the gender support guidance of 2016 with staff in transition our 2016 guidance only focused in on students and we wanted to expand this to include our staff or any incoming staff as we look at continuing to diversify our

035staff and so we wanted to make sure that there was language to ensure that our employees career social that our employees career social and emotional success um another area that we um felt that there was a need to expand was our training training and professional development um and this is training in professional development that will be provided to all staff um and we will focus in on four areas terms Concepts and current developmental understandings of gender identity gender expression and gender diversity in children and Adolescence developmentally developmentally appropriate strategies for communication with students and parents about issues related to gender identity and gender expression that protects students privacy developmentally appropriate strategies for preventing and intervening in harassment intimidation discrimination and bullying incidents include including cyberbullying and their last but not least classroom management practices curriculum

036resources that Educators can integrate in their classrooms to help Foster a more gender inclusive environment for all students last but not least another area that the committee felt was very important was the new facilities and the additions um there was a firm agreement that there should be consideration of additional non-gender bathrooms and or facilities that should be included in any discussion and or plans of new additions to existing building structures next slide so moving forward um our team um will finalize the gender support model we also have to finalize some accompanying documents that go along with the model we also would like to finalize our advocacy plan and then we prepare then we will prepare to communicate this with all parties um we will share this out with um Vernon Hills Saga and LHS GSA

037we also will provide training to our LST teams in uh August during Institute day we hope to provide training to d128 and then last but not least update our websites including resources and then as a team um just really talk about the accessibility and the communication and how we can get better to make sure that this is known by all before I open this up for questions and discussions Mr Gore do you have have anything that you would like to add very much all right with that being said um do you have any questions or in the comments it's like just I I'm not sure what finalized the advocacy form means what is that so um the advocacy forum is something that we discuss it is a form that um initially when we talked about

038it would be given to um our students to um identify like what their pronouns are with their preferred name would be and what supports as the team started talking about that we expanded that to include a form that will now not only cover those areas but then also can be given to all of our students um to identify those who may be in need of mental health supports or may need some social emotional supports and students that may have some Financial deficits and that may need help on trips or um different things within the school so it would be more General to yeah provide a wide range absolutely yes yes thank you um on the same slide again this is really good work so good job everyone um the question I have was it says

039finalize the gender support plan so is the idea here that a student has their own individualized student support plan and whatever documents that go with it is that how I should interpret that yes so one of the components of the model is actually a gender support plan in which um the students will work with the gender support team which are which is which will be members of their LST and then an adult um who they may have a very close connection with that they want to have there in the meeting to support them and in this plan it is very specific to their needs to support them within the bill within all areas of the building so if within the classroom within the lunchroom I'm doing extracurricular activities as well as during after school events

040such as um homecoming or driver's ed or you know any areas that we may have not thought of including overnight trips as well too thank you and when will this process be finalized so we will continue working on the plan and the company documents the other document um in addition to the advocacy plan is an overview of what the gender support teams should look like expectations um and then it's some guidance in regards to how to set up those meetings what should be discussed um so my plan is to finalize this with our social workers that were on the team just haven't had time to do that yet and then I anticipate this being completed and done by April yeah Our intention is for this to be ready to go for 23-24 super um does

041the does the advocacy Forum also serve as like a referral piece yes okay so I I guess that was kind of my that leads to my next question it may be just unclear from the presentation but maybe you just have the info so I guess how do students and families seek support other than coming to their LST and social worker how do they initiate these kind of supports like for students who are encountering this perhaps for the first time as they set foot into our doors of our schools um you know I guess how does this plan support the growth of that awareness of services available for families and individual students can you speak to that yeah thank you so with the advocacy Forum um we are in discussion about um how does advocacy form

042can be provided to all students at the beginning of the year um and it'll be a Google form um that will where the students will ask certain questions and then based on their answers it would just direct them to the next question so if a student is not in need of um supports um because they're part of the lgbtq Plus or gender affirming then it will skip them to mental health and supports or skip them to financial um and then we plan to take this and then um there are some questions um on the form that if they are in need of supports then it will funnel to a counselor or a member of the LST um and then we'll be able to provide information to the lsts as well as if needed um to

043the students teachers as well too so it's just like a something that happens during registration is it so we're talking about whether we should do it in registration whether we should um give the form within the first couple of weeks of school so that's one of the details that we still have yet to um decide on um on what's best and is it something that goes out to individual students or does it go to families it goes with students yeah it'll go to the students okay other questions comments a lot of tremendous work just uh there's so much going into this and um I would comment it says finalize a gender support model I would I would say yes we'll finalize it as it is now this will be an ongoing process there will be

044so much more that we find out as we go through this journey and as you've already you know uncovered new new things as we go so I'm I'm excited that we're on the journey and we're keeping a focus on it so that we do recognize those things as we move forward so thank you plan on um providing I mean doing an update to this model every two years so really trying to create a structure to do so but thank you so much to each and every one of you for this time to present this yeah thank you thank you okay okay uh next on the agenda is I think what a number of folks are interested in hearing about the language lab update so yes so the language Lab at LHS was discontinued at the

045end of the 2021 school year then it was decided that the Vernon Hills language lab would be discontinued at the end of the 2022-2023 school year um so that is the recommendation that we are uh presenting or will be presenting um I I wasn't here when the decision was made so I don't have a lot of the background information on that I'm I'm told our district historian Mr Brian Kelly will have more of that information um when we um just a little bit of History too in um was when we finished the school year um under covid um so we came back in the fall of 2020 we were remote at that time um and so we did not um have the language Lab at that time in both of our language lab Personnel were

046assigned in other areas at that time a little history of the language I'm going back before that um was that we had language labs and this is some of the information I got from our schools different software over time obviously that software has developed and changed um we went from the computers to iPads um and then the College Board in spring of 2021 so now we came back to school in 20 to 21 and if you remember in 20 all of our students at that point were one-on-one with Chromebooks we had Chromebooks the College Board had developed some um a deck Chromebook act uh Chromebook app which um we you know manage with our I.T when we had our discussions in that spring of 21. so um the decision was made that we were going

047to shift away from using our language labs and their Viva was ready to make that decision much sooner they didn't have the language lab in 20. yeah 2020-21 and they wanted to re-reutilize that space as an innovation space for all of our staff so they were ready to make that decision going into the 21-22 school year um and made that decision much sooner um and Vernon Hills at that time said that they would be transitioning into phasing out the language lab that they were not ready though for the 20 for that um 21-22 school year and that they would phase that out and fast forward to you know this year is when we're looking at you know phasing the language lab out for next year so I just have a basic question and a naive

048question what exactly is happening currently in the Granite Hills language lab in terms of how you know how does students access that and what happened I can talk about that I first want to make sure that I say in public that our language teachers make really meaningful use out of the lab there's no doubt about that the the the language lab is used primarily for teachers to drop in so there's a there's a room that stays open uh there's an ESP member who staffs it five days a week eight periods a day and teachers sign up for sections and almost every one of our language lab teachers uses it uh the students come in and based on the teachers goals for the lesson they have worked with uh the ESP member radical Yoshi who's uh

049fantastic what she does she's highly skilled she's got the interface set up at the front of the classroom the teachers move in they sit at individual workstations most of the time they put on headphones with also microphones and then they go through a series of exercises sometimes listening and responding sometimes those responses are recorded sometimes they are literally speaking with another student maybe across the room or somewhere in the vicinity that they don't necessarily know or isn't necessarily sitting right next to those can be recorded the teachers then have the ability to go back and assess the students ability to both understand comprehend and speak the language and so I think instructionally what I what I think these teachers are here probably to say is there's there's value with that and uh as a principal

050I've never said there isn't I don't think anyone has said there's even value with that I think over time you know our language lab uh continues to be used and I can't speak for Liberties but libertyville's but there is there has over time become this this uh imbalance in programs and so Vernon Hills is spending x amount of dollars every few years to upgrade the computers every few years to upgrade the software there's of course user agreements uh with the software uh and and we employ an ESP member to run that thing um yeah that I think that answers the question of of what the lab is used for I think the question then becomes so now all of these students that we have have one-on-one devices one-to-one devices right they all carry Chromebooks and

051as I talk to even Angie about this um it for a teacher to facilitate that in a classroom uh the answer it can happen but it's going to be different right now the ESP members at the front of the room is controlling the action right is pressing a button and every student hears the exact same prompt at the exact same time uh the students don't have to worry about navigating that in their software or trying to you know mess with their Chromebooks to try to get it um obviously the privacy of the the classroom with the Stalls you can't necessarily replicate that in a classroom so there are some differences but I think what I have challenged uh Tammy black over the years because to Brian's point I have we have gone to bat and

052supported this language lab for several years knowing that probably there was going to be uh you know a shift in that but we encouraging our our leaders in that language area for years to to try to find a different different technology that might be able to be used with the Chromebook since every student has a Chromebook and I know that Jenny getch and Tammy black continue to work on that I don't that won't probably be free there'll probably be some cost to the software uh package just for for that on a Chromebook I don't think that's you know there might be a subscription uh but but that still has yet to come but in In fairness to Bryant we were told last year and I did tell Tammy black but this is probably going to

053be the last year for the language lab and so she has known that and um I you know I I think the teachers are probably here to say we would love to keep it um but we we do understand that we were told that last year and then moved ahead accordingly so and I don't know who can speak to this but what is LHS doing because they've I'm assuming successfully phased it out so what did LHS replace it with I don't know John I don't expect you to be able to speak yeah I I no that wouldn't be here whoever can answer the question absolutely yeah could you go to the podium though because we have people who are listening um to the live stream and if you're not uh speaking in the microphone they

054won't be able to hear what you're saying yes so I was not at LHS when they they didn't phase it out so in the letter that I wrote to the board I explained that LHS decided that teachers weren't part of the decision but somebody at LHS decided to switch to an iPad model where I think the vision of the space was that it was a collaborative space where students could work on um one group could work on interpersonal speaking and I don't know it was supposed to be a collaborative space so they change they got rid of their old model of the lab and put in an iPad model and the software wasn't it didn't work I don't you know I think that they lost their lab Aid the teachers weren't trained in how to

055use it it just simply didn't work and I think that teachers stopped going to the lab and the iPads were taken out so did that I don't know if anybody if that sounds like that's that accurate rendition of what happened so the teachers didn't decide they didn't need the lab they it just was taken away from them and iPads were put in in the place so that's why it's extra difficult for us at Vernon Hills to know oh LHS like is using the materials that they have in the classroom and that's fine it's really not the same at all and I don't think that I think that many of the teachers from LHS would say we want our old lab back this you know we didn't choose the iPad I don't want I've certainly not

056gonna argue that point but without having bad actual information yeah I understand I'm not diminishing your credibility whatsoever but yeah speaking of speaking for LHS or for the LHS teachers is probably not the best way for us to get that information I don't know if any of them sent any letters or information Dr Sanchez did speak about this with Ray and Jenny and Jenny so I'd like me maybe heard a give an update okay of a recent conversation with both of them yeah so I think there's um difference in opinions on on whether the the lab at LHS is successful or not um I can certainly um prepare something for our next meeting just to detail that out um but I do think that if you were to ask them they'll tell you that the

057the the software on the iPads they feel is is working for them and their teachers are are starting to to use the in the classrooms um so I don't want to over emphasize the success of the LHS lab in having made this decision because as I understand it there's there's there are no iPads there anymore it's gone understood thank you um I guess my my point is that we're not looking to read um re-examine the decision because we've already approved a budget for next year that doesn't include the lab so we're not saying go back and get more information so that we can make that decision over again because we've already approved that budget and that's that's done mainly through the department and the building correct correct yeah I'm saying we can get some clarity

058so that we can support the model transition at Vernon Hills oops so you're saying what did LHS find that was helpful or at work have been helpful do that kind of an audit and then make sure we'd provide that and anything else so Vernon Hills teachers feel supported in the transition correct yeah because I mean ultimately and I I'm only speaking for myself so please speak up ultimately the board wants to approve whatever is going to be the successful model so we're we're not passing judgment on what we want to improve and what we don't want to prove as as a as a board level budgetary decision I guess what we do is we we approve the final budget but all of the decisions made at the granular class level department level building level um

059those are made before those things get to the point but we do want assurances that the students are being supported if we've taken one service away correct how are we supporting them going forward and is that effective that is something we want to know um however you choose to provide that information because I right now I'm not comfortable that that is what's happening so sure so I can work with Joe and Ray and and prepare with a proposal yeah and I I would Echo that and and from a perspective if there's something that we've overlooked along this process and and remembering that a lot of these decisions were made in a pretty chaotic time and have been you know delayed and and you know the implementation of those decisions uh hasn't been done uh has

060been done in in sort of an um a prolonged manner so we don't have at our fingertips the reasons and the decision making you know all the data that went into the original decision but to to ensure the one thing we can do is moving forward uh to ensure that those students are going to have appropriate supports and if it's to look at what's happening at OHS and learn from that or if it's something else I I think we just need to be comfortable that as we make this transition and we make this change that uh that there's going to be some positive outcomes yeah and the learning that's happening at Libertyville using you know the Chromebook app that you know the the you know Jenny can work with Tammy and can put things in

061place and Joe and Ray work together to ensure that the transition from you know moving from a language lab to not having the language lab that our teachers can be supported um in that process I think we're sitting in a position to have the benefit of seeing what has been successful versus can it be successful so prior to making anything final I would if they were given those services and those opportunities how again it would be important to see how LHS has transitioned from that the same level of success that they had with the language lab right it seems like they were ready to make that transition so they should be able to speak to that right and whatever is going to start serve student learning best is what we'd like to make sure is

062implemented and there's costs associated with that then we'll have that conversation can I ask just a background question I know Brian went into it a little bit but um what was the original I guess logic behind just getting rid of the physical Labs I I understand iPads or Chromebooks kind of came became available I think maybe the usefulness of a physical lab became kind of obsolete with the pandemic and it sounds like LHS kind of shifted models successfully but I I guess what I'm asking is you know what was the initial driver were the language Labs cost prohibitive were they space prohibitive I think there was a combination you know in talking to you know the building that the way it was situated with the um um what they looked at the time was the

063Corrals that were were set up um that you know the the Corrals kind of isolated the students we did have software um you know in the labs we had um Hardware that we had uh you know update but it really um the functionality of the room too by opening it up um it allowed other classes so not just language classes to be able to use spaces you know in in the school um and they just felt that over time with the change in some of the software so the software went from um a Sans lab Sony soloist software to the iPad software to the Chromebook software that I think just with the technology changes over the years that they were able to still do some of the things that they were able to do and

064then can I ask another question kind of as a follow-up do we know of any of the just maybe yes anything I can speak to this I don't know how much information exists without having a member of the uh World languages Department from LHS here but what are the current limitations on that iPad software or Chromebook software what have you that don't match the functionality of the current language that I've set up I think that that's something that we'll we'll have to get from LHS I I am a languages teacher at LHS so I don't know if you have any questions specifically for me but I can answer questions that you have if you could shed light on that I think that would just paint a picture and I don't want to speak for the

065board but for me um you know when we're comparing the original lab set up with desktop computers study carols Etc versus an iPad model um or a Chromebook model with this newer software what are the limitations of that software you've noticed as a world languages teacher how has that either um added value or detracted value from your experiences with a language lab be it be it in the lab physically or within your own classroom does that make sense um yeah so I can give my opinion if that's perfect that's what you're interested in um we really did enjoy the old model with the carols because that gave the best recording and it gave the best experience for the student talking not hearing the person next to them um it isn't the best for having a

066conversation um but that's what we do in the classroom so the reason that we would go to the lab would be to do these recordings and that was the best quality recording that we could get so once we had the iPads we no longer had the carols and we no longer had that advantage of that recording and I'm sorry to get down to the nuts and bolts here of this I'm just really trying to put myself in the place of a student and a teacher but um headphones recording with a mic right are those typically student provided School provided yeah the students had that too but then we no longer had control over the iPad so we couldn't start the recording at the same time so um although we ask our students to please be

067logged in at the same time and to start at the same time that doesn't always it's not as easy as it is when you're in the lab and you can you can control that yeah in practice not not necessarily a good use of time for instruction right and we no longer have the iPad so now we're we're just using the Chromebooks right now and we don't we don't really have an app that's on there we use mostly uh a service called slipgrid and um that doesn't work all that well all of the time I've asked um my students for feedback on that and I the last time I asked them uh 90 of them said they had problems with it sometimes or all of the time so I'm hearing that perhaps the software in place

068currently is not maybe the best fit for our teachers and students it is not working as well as the labview store yeah okay by your measure from your Vantage yeah yes okay and then my other question again kind of goes back to the headphone piece because I'm just thinking what what with all the new technology we have available with noise cancellation and things like that is are there other options perhaps we haven't explored that could potentially allow for better recording less interference we do have some headphones that are available for the students that we have purchased um but they are I don't know how high quality they are they're they are working when when the sites are working may I just make a statement uh to me it sounds like there's maybe some optionality that

069hasn't been considered some Cooperative or collaborative solutions that may exist that haven't been explored here a third way if you will and I I appreciate I appreciate the language lab as a graduate of this District I think I was one of the experimental guinea pig classes for the language lab and I found it invaluable as an AP student studying Spanish but um and I get it like it is what maybe we are used to and perhaps what works best over at Vernon Hills right now in the opinion of some of our teachers but if there is a way of this Third Way perhaps that we haven't quite conceived of that still allows the functionality and capability with our technology but somehow frees up space somehow preserves um perhaps an educator who can provide that functionality

070at a level maybe our language teachers don't have the capacity to provide right um maybe there there's a creative solution that lies therein and so I I want to hear more I to me this isn't very black and white actually this this appears to be kind of a gray situation very much so to me so thank you for providing that information Yesenia what I would be looking for as we're going forward with this is looking at activity skills opportunities between these two models that are either available and no longer available foreign how are they being implemented differently I mean we're getting into kind of programmatic stuff that is not really our that's not our thing and I that's right and I think so I would rather look at more of the full picture and the

071broad SPO the broad picture of Are We offering those same opportunities because that's our job to make sure to be fair I don't think we will be making any changes the curricular decision making and that's not our role but I think it is important for us to be informed as to what what's you know what all the you know the details not specific details but enough of the details to feel comfortable that we're moving in the right direction and to be able to provide I think you know I keep going back to these decisions were made Based on data that was available at the time I you know I I see a lot of different things I've seen about it you know and I don't want this to be taken the wrong way either but

072I've seen a lot of labs set up around desktop computers and stations and things that just don't exist anymore I'm not saying that they aren't valuable and that they might not be the right thing for this but there's technology changes and this is a technology-based lab and if there's something that you know somebody can learn from and move on it's not our job to make that choice it's not our job to find those Technologies but it's our job to listen and try to support initiatives that might come out of this so uh I guess you know I'm encouraging um the administration of at both buildings just to take a step back and see if there's some things that we can do to to make this uh a better situation of learning from what we've done

073so far and I hope I wasn't getting too into the weeds with that commentary I just I guess I'm not completely satisfied with what the current status of the language lab is based on that testimony we just heard at LHS either that doesn't sound ideal so are we trading down by eliminating the like do you do you know what I'm saying it doesn't seem like we got well I think it would be really important to have Jenny getch and Ray Albany here to talk about the rationale behind the decision and all the supports that are in place um I don't think we knew the conversation was going to go in this direction but they will definitely be present at the next conversation great so we have time to make some decisions here um I'm sorry

074yeah I definitely I just want to give some information I'm with Sierra vhhs I teach AP Spanish I just want to give you a little bit information about the doc app that was referenced to um so this app is on the Chromebooks um it is in English and it just basically it's an opportunity for the kids to record a sentence there's no feedback provided the kids don't speak to anyone in that reference so it's just a test for the kids to practice what the test will be like um in the 30 second recording so it's just um Howard I say a tool to see if they're ready to practice pressing a button on their computer so there's not much educational value in that application it was just a way that Doc and the AP college

075board um created to test the kids during covet from my understanding as an AP teacher so just to present that info thank you uh I definitely feel like that we are on the Dance Floor we are not in the balcony so I would like to move away from that uh I'm not exactly sure how to go about doing it but I still have not I'm not satisfied with an answer about how the decision was made it doesn't seem like anybody in this room was a part of that decision-making process whether it's the administration or the teachers so I should have an idea I definitely think we have people in the room who were a part of those decisions I think that when we're doing Staffing and things like that there are many decisions being made

076at the same time and I think it would go to the Improvement we see it in record keeping the kind of information that Bryant is sending to you now about these Staffing decisions and why we're up and why we're down in areas we're doing an excellent job of documenting the why the what and the how I think during the pandemic some of those same things weren't happening and it was just this was a decision I think that I don't want to imply that there weren't very sound instructional things because I think Jenny getch is Stellar at her job and so until we have her voice in the room I want to make sure that we're not assuming it was just money I don't think that was the case at all I think we saw that

077students could be successful without the lab and that we might be able to use other Technologies in its place but I want to wait for us it doesn't mean at this table but we will definitely have that voice for all of you so you feel comfortable that high quality instruction is being delivered to all students that's that is that's that's that is your job right I would like to add though but I am a firm believer that the curriculum experts in the building are the teachers in the classroom and the teachers in the classroom are the ones who will make the decisions about how to teach whatever it is my experiences with science so I can speak to that it's much better to have your own lab room than a shared lab space but sometimes

078budgetary constraints and make it so you have to share a lab space it's not ideal I can't speak for my curriculum point whether this space is better but if I have a majority of teacher teams saying that this is a thing that is valuable to them then I think that the administration would listen to that and then it would come to us to say yes we're going to approve that expense but we would not get into the discussion about what's best there that's we're not experts there teachers are the experts so I appreciate that we've heard from teachers tonight I just think that we kind of got behind this like this conversation should have happened before somewhere else and that what should have happened here was like cashing the check saying yes this is what

079we need we agree with you and right now I don't agree with the recommendation to get rid of the language lab but I I also don't feel like I have compelling evidence one way or another I would turn that over to the teachers and their directors to figure that out and then come to us we have a teacher um so am I allowed to speak um my name is radhika Joshi and I'm the one in the Woodland Hills language lab I know we are comparing Libertyville teachers versus one on his teachers I can speak to a couple of teachers who are commuters who are at Libertyville and who come to Vernon Hills and those teachers even though they don't have that opportunity to use the lab here they come to the lab every single week

080so they see a value in using the lab versus whatever model they have on their laptops can you explain how does an LHS teacher use the lab at Vernon Hills High School the commuting teachers they teach in both buildings yeah understood thank you so that's what I want to add um that even for those teachers it adds them one extra prep because they have to prep a class that they are teaching at Libertyville differently than how they would do the lab at Vernon Hills they choose to add extra prep versus not using the lab thank you thank you again just a I'm sorry just a dance point that it's all helpful information but we're not going to be good folks to make those detailed decisions we're going to be expecting you know others to be

081involved in that and or have been involved in that we just haven't had the opportunity to to gather all the information so I think it's um while we're grateful for people to be here and and share that information that's a lot more information and I've had when I walked into tonight um you know this will be an ongoing conversation and we're not going to be making those specific decisions about how to implement or what to implement are those kinds of things the only thing I want to add is I agree with everyone here this doesn't seem like enough information for us to say this is the right thing to do or not um well I just wanted to share what I heard it sounds like there is a technology challenge there is a space challenge

082from my point of view as a board member if I had to approve something it would be something that comes up for budget and making sure that our students are ultimately served so whatever recommendation all of you come back with I'd like to look at if your example of the recommendation is to take away a lab then what due diligence has been done to make sure that you have the same or better service when you look at technology space and all those things and if the answer is I couldn't find something that gives us our kids the same experience when you look at software Hardware space you know what do you want them to achieve then then we shouldn't be making that change um I think I'd I'd like to [Music] see that assessment and

083at the risk of opening a closed decision I'd like to see that also being done for LHS I mean just because we made a decision before if it's not working [Music] I think we need to look at that that's all I wanted to add on top of everything else here anybody else a comment I suspect we're gonna have much more conversation on this maybe just to add the link to other conversations we're going to have tonight about one of the things that is in the board in purview is to help us understand more clearly what we mean by Equitable programs at both buildings because this is an example of that and both when we're adding things or we're reducing technology access how to how can we fully Implement what we said we believed in our

084Equity policy about all students having equal access from classroom to classroom as well as school to school and I see this as being something that wasn't fully considered at that time since it's been different for two years so yeah good point okay uh shall we move on to the next agenda item it's our grading and assessment update thank you so I have with me um Mr Dr John Gilliam and Ms Sam Phillips who are part of the committee we've started working on this in the fall we've all all the committee members uh participated in a virtual grading and assessment um conference a two-day conference where we learned from experts such as Tom guskey formerly Ken O'Connor and we've met a number of times and in the process we've looked at what other districts are doing

085we've looked at the shifts that were made mostly to equidistant grading scales or to proficiency scales or elimination of the zeros and as we were doing our research we found that all of the experts suggest or recommend that we start with really taking a deep dive into our operating beliefs and and developing a purpose as to what grading is in the district and identifying those guiding principles and so that's that's the point where the committee is at now we've identified a purpose and at the next meeting we hope to solidify those guiding principles so tonight we are here to ask for clarity around with the expectations for the policy for the spring we do plan to have like I said the purpose The Guiding principles and a number of recommendations to provide more consistency in

086grading but we do know that this is um is going to require a significant paradigm shift in how each of us feels and about grading and assessing an assessment it's something that is very personal to a lot of people and um we're going to have to facilitate this shift um well anything you guys would like to add I do anything um I just think yeah some additional Clarity around what you guys are looking for in a policy and what you would like to see be consistent and at what level um because the conversations we've been having uh a lot of the time we're talking about different content areas different courses we're we're looking at the difference between you know freshman literature and AP Literature right and so the different assessment practices in those courses are

087going to necessitate different grading practices in different ways and so um just understanding what you're looking for as far as consistency would be helpful as we move forward in solidifying these beliefs thank you for joining us and Hi Sam welcome to the table I oh my gosh well Sam is doing this as part of her internship she is working on her administrative license so this is excellent experience for her it really is thank you um I'll just make a quick comment putting my educator head on maybe for a little bit in terms of policy so we're wanting to develop a policy so if there's a board policy but there's also I think we need to be very careful at what comes to the board policy level versus what's maybe an administrative procedure so that we

088have the the proper flexibility so you don't have to come to the board to make adjustments to procedural decisions that that you know it gives us all the flexibility to do that because the board policy is really a very high level sort of philosophical document if you will so that's from my perspective and and having worked with policies for a lot of years it's it's helpful to sort of put that lens on what gets in the actual policy versus what it gets in more of an administrative procedure I understand what the committee is seeking because there are different levels of specificity of creating an assessment policies from District to district and so that was one of the things that I know they did look at and having seen other schools who are trying to tackle

089this and and not only get consistency but consistency and fair and Equitable grading so both of those things not just consistency of things that maybe aren't contributing to improved student learning but different policies Mundelein this last summer approved a comprehensive grading and assessment policy at the board level and it was big picture about philosophy about what what we're assessing what would count as evidence what kind of consistency they wanted and then the AR went into all the details about numbers or whatever might have been some of the things but um I know Stevenson also did some grading and assessment work in the last few years on their policy again it's going from the policy being clear on expectations to then the implementation and so I really appreciate the committee asking how how broad or how

090refined do you think would be helpful for you because we are as we received a few emails in the last few weeks about parents requesting us to have more guidelines on Fair and Equitable grading because they are experiencing very different grading practices even within the same class let alone the message they might be receiving from a first period teacher who says I don't have to grade homework that homework is just practice and then they go to their second period class they said homework is really important and the parents are saying is homework important or it's still work not important and not that there's one right way but I would want us to have a consistent way of talking about that and I think that's what I'm hoping the committee can help find but we want

091to make sure that when we when we looked at the policy last time and it really only talks about that grades will be given it doesn't say really anything else so I think the policy as written right now is very sparse so what would you feel would be a good Next Step so that we went from sparse to more clarity so that individual teachers departments and buildings can make sure that their practices are aligned to that see and we thought we weren't going to talk policy tonight um so the policy that we're referring to is 6 280 I believe which is extremely vague it's like yeah we'll give grades yeah and that's about it um again I'll just reiterate that you know to try to keep it the board policy level of it high and

092philosophical but yet you know with enough framework to really guide the work that goes on underneath without restricting unnecessarily restricting and having to come back and revisit it over and over I would personally I would be curious to see um some of the the other policies that you mentioned online there's some other ones out there I'm sure others are struggling with this I know a lot of especially high schools are are struggling with this um trying to get this right so I I appreciate the the effort this is really really really challenging work and um so I think it's it asking the right question make sure we get it encapsulated in policy in the best way we can and can we address that at all in the student handbook there yeah there is a section

093in this handbook but I wouldn't say it's much more descriptive than uh word policy it sort of just outlines the percentages what they mean and then sort of the letter grades during progress reports and then the letter grades for the final semester grade and that shift from the plus minus to just the whole letter grade so it doesn't it doesn't go far beyond that I see that's helpful to know what you know what we have in place in terms of policy and in the handbook it's more about the management of grades and that's about any kind of philosophy I I think just yeah there's a couple Dynamics at play one when we get a committee together as we have a pretty wide range of stakeholders from science teachers to language teachers to physical welfare to

094like they they all see grades differently and and we quickly realize that we get into the weeds when we start talking about behavior for example like should you grade Behavior well that's pretty easy to tell a math teacher not to great on Behavior because what behaviors are present but when you talk about a physical welfare class when running daily to get your heart rate up that's a skill the heart rate up that is yes yeah okay so yeah Sam has an example in her journalism class with teamwork right like they have an editor and a group working together to develop stories and and a news magazine and and so those teachers begin to talk about the nuances of behavior skill or behavior and what can I assess and what can't a math teacher might say

095well homework is a kids practice and we practice in class but if they don't finish the practice then can't I expect them to practice it those kinds of things so we quickly get into the weeds uh and just so you know we started pretty early talking about the zeros and equidistant scales um which we can share a little bit more if you want but um and as yesenia's memos States we realize that like first we got to lay a foundation of of kind of our philosophy of what grading is and that's what we're working on and and we feel good about that but what we don't feel good about is once we identify some principles is that going to be okay I've heard Lisa talk a little bit about kind of taking what we're doing

096here and bringing it down to here um and we want to we want to be true to that but just looking for a little bit more guidance of what does here mean for you so that we don't we don't do this and you're like no we want to adhere or you say oh we thought you were going to be here um so I don't know I mean I can only speak for myself I'm not interested in telling teachers I'm not qualified to tell teachers how to evaluate homework in their class um you know I don't want to get to that level of detail I was thinking more along consistency between departments making sure that all the math teachers were on the same page with how they handled things and all the history teachers are on

097the same page with how they handled things than I was trying to get into the weeds in specifics I usually I'm not looking for that I can't speak for my co-board members but I I think Jim put it best when we definitely want to make sure our teachers retain autonomy and how they they grade because that's their skill that's what we are you know that's why we have the awesome teachers we have because they know how to do that and if I could just jump in and speak to at a department level that consistency that even gets challenging I teach three different preps right now and I have three different grading practice policies in my syllabi because of the different classes I teach so I teach AP research where students are working on a year-long

098process and so I migrating policy is either you demonstrate Mastery or it's incomplete I require them to redo because everything that they're doing along the way is contributing to that final project right any other class that would be appropriate because that's not the model we're following so to have a department level directive of how I need to grade um looking for that kind of consistency would be challenging just based on the the variety of students and classes I teach in a single day okay that's good feedback so is it really policy that we need to look at and maybe review other policies that are clearer before we give some direction because I do agree I think we need to stay at the policy level among the experts you know handle the details um so is

099is that where the conversation needs to start it at the policy level for us to make ours better I think yeah I think it would be helpful to see some examples and maybe you know maybe we'll find one that no we'll do something just like that maybe we'll create something out of a number of them but I think whatever we decide it will be an example of the level of detail on the level of information that we can then bring back to this committee and say okay what's missing or maybe they see this as a piece of their overall picture and the rest of that picture needs to go in an administrative procedure or something some other you know type of documentation or the student handbook or whatever that might be but I think it's

100yeah it it doesn't hurt to to borrow from others and and learn what what others have been doing yeah in the same I think I keep coming back to our example of our the difference between our protocols and what our beliefs were and I don't want to get into the protocols because that's not where we are uh but I do want to have an eye too I know we are preparing our students for any number of different paths that they choose to go but many of our students choose to go to the next level in Academia on any policy we have should be reflective of what are they expected to see at this next level and are we preparing them for that so I think we are that is where I want to keep my

101eye for those students that do choose to move on have we prepared them for what it's going to look like at the next level and I I don't see continuity as I don't I don't see consistency and continuity as being identical because that takes away from the autonomy of what's going on in our classroom and our teachers have done that so I don't think we need to have consistency where it's identical and I don't want to be in that process because I'm not working here every day I want to keep up here with the goal of preparing our students for the next level if that's what they choose to do yeah so we have to figure out how we're going to answer your question it sounds like you would appreciate some models not necessarily for

102the content but to say here's one broader policy here's uh Goldilocks one or here's a pretty detailed one because the the we want the members of the committee to be authoring the content I think I'm hearing like what what do you feel is Broad enough to have teacher the Art and Science of teaching be accounted for but specific enough that as parents challenge us on some of the ways they're saying it shouldn't matter if I get you or you for a teacher I should know that my students work will be assessed in a very Equitable way that's what we're trying to find is that sweet spot I have sort of not take a step back question is what I thought this discussion was going to be versus what it is is slightly different so my

103question is going to be what is the ultimate goal or deliverable if you will that will come out of this committee is it a board policy is it a board policy and your working protocol um or it's only the working protocol what's the actual outcome or what's the end product of this because I got lost well after this started from what I know and I appreciate Bryant our historian but during covid it required us to shift many of the grading practices that we had and some of them were required by the state we had no choice and some of them were options that we said we needed to do because it was so remote and so challenging so there was a committee that got together Rita oversaw that committee that tried to make some grading

104it wasn't a policy probably some protocols consistent grading protocols so student learning could be measured in an equitable way during the pandemic when we came back from the pandemic we had this list of protocols and last year Rita was working with the team to try and say okay makeups we had them required um before you know some of these things about some of the other grading practices are they are is our pandemic language going to continue is it not when we look to the policy we saw that our policy is very very thin in terms of giving guidance as to policy-wide so we started this committee last spring actually and we said that was way too fast we needed to slow down and so we invited a lot more teachers to participate so they have

105been meeting I think what we're realizing now is we still haven't decided what is the product that would best serve all of our needs I think I'll try to take a crack at answering your specific question and that is this is a process that's going on it's creating practice um you know the committee the this work is being done and what's being asked from us is to help support that work and the future outcomes of that work with a policy that more specifically addresses the work that they will complete in the in the the philosophies that that will come out of that so I think you know our policy right now is so vague it just doesn't it really doesn't do much of anything so I think it's important that once all that hard work

106is done and all those Frameworks are developed or however we deploy that that we should have a strong policy that supports that in a way that really you know get gives it our blessing and our our support for for the work that they're doing um so I think it's a it it's a lot of different things but the conversation here and I think what we're being asked for is how far do we go you know we have a very vague policy now what is our expectation of how deep do we go and how how much do we put within our policy and I think it's you know I think it'll be an evolving process I don't think that we could come up there's no way we can come up with a policy without really understanding

107what's going to be supported by that policy but um it's I also think that it's helpful to start looking at um opportunities to to learn from others and what they've done uh I will make one additional comment in here it says the committee was in in the document for this section in this letter yeah in the memo uh it mentions uh the committee meant to finalize a purpose statement so when it's appropriate to see that that will be very helpful because that purpose statement in my mind would be one of those things that really needs to be in the policy so it's that type of thing that that should be outlined into policy to support the work that's done in the district and one of the things um as schools say that they have a

108grading policy they really don't have a grading pop there a lot of people use the term policy but even if you look at moneyline they have a grading policy but it's not a policy they have the same policy that we have in terms of grading they call it a grading policy but it's really their procedures that are in place which include the grading scale which include you know some philosophy uh and so forth so you know when you start looking at schools is it really a policy that was developed and adopted by the Board of Education or is it a policy a policy I'll use quotes that is really a procedure and guidelines that were developed by teachers and administration that is in place and you know the one thing yes we made changes from

109that we're forced through the pandemic but we never changed our board policy we changed our procedures that were you know went with it and then we adapted our procedures or the way we graded after the pandemic and continuing to look at that so if you change your board policy that's you know set in stone and that's what your guidelines are that's what you have to do and you can't it's harder to make you know adaptations the other thing is we have put an equity policy into place which references you know some things with grading and assessment so we have to make sure that we are being you know Equitable in our grading and assessment practices and that it also ties into our our Equity policy but that piece of the equity policy is pretty vague

110too it really doesn't Define what that it doesn't say what you know Equitable grading practices are so Brian you brought up the equity and I was kind of thinking the same thing this is very similar to creating a policy and although I wasn't a part of the process I don't think the equity policy came from the start of the board coming down it was a part of the committee coming up and then the board kind of approved the policy so I I guess my question is is it so I mean how is this process so much different than that process that it can't come as a recommendation from the committee of what you want to see the policy look like as opposed to us doing the work and it never works when it's the top

111down telling you what I mean I I don't think so so isn't it much more uh buy-in when it comes from the bottom up so what is the barrier between of you coming to us with something that you've worked on and I'll just add that kind of just said everything I was trying to say more eloquently sorry because I've been struggling with what comes first you know us telling you go do this or you're saying here is the best practice support us with your policy that's kind of what happened I've read this memo 100 times and I can't figure out which direction is the best Direction yeah I think we're we're all sort of saying the same thing the work the actual practices the actual way we do things is going to come from the

112committee and my you know comment earlier was once we understand that we need to be able to develop a policy collectively that supports that work the work that describes that word not dictates that word but supports that work in in the proper way and I think really I don't know I'm maybe I'm putting words into your mouth um what the question is is how deep do we expect that policy to get because some of our policies get right far more detailed policies are very big obviously yeah and this one is just like there's no there there so I I think it's a good question but I agree I think it's the the actual work is going to be done within the policy we're not here to decide how to do grading and how what gets

113assessed and what doesn't get assessed and how those and I was involved on the equity policy um development team and um it was exactly as you described it came from the committee the word came from the recommendations came from the committee there was a lot of parent voice on that committee sure and so that might be something else that we consider um for this policy because right now it's very skilled teachers who are serving on that committee but I think that's one thing that set the equity policy committee apart is that there were students and parents also sitting there and they were some of the people who drove the commitment language and the metrics language and so I think that might be one other thing for the committee to consider well uh just to jump

114in and clarify I I think the reason that at least the reason I'm here today asking some of these questions about what the board is is asking is because from my perspective and maybe I'm I'm misinformed what was told to me was the board wants a policy right so that's what I'm responding to is the board wants a policy so I'm trying to say okay like what what are we looking for here because I have teachers that are fearing a top-down policy and I'm sort of I feel like I'm the one walking the line here trying to make sure so the words have been used to me several times the board wants policy so I'm trying to figure out what the board is looking for thank you for saying that yeah thank you thank you

115I don't know that we've ever had a conversation where we said we need a policy I think we want a framework I think we want to become more aware of a framework um an educator generated framework what works best for our educators and our students first and foremost so the committee was formed did you say or were you given a directive yeah okay what was that directive to develop a policy that was going to provide more Equitable and fair and consistent grading okay I think we need to be careful with the term policy yeah based on what Ryan was just saying because when we usually we're developing is not a policy a board policy is a very high level document what pushes the how right right so I think that's where we're kind of like

116we need Clarity It's like because we can I think we can develop a policy with the with the purpose just with the research we've done around what that what we believe as a district a grade represents and those guiding principles like here are the things that are going to guide how we grade and how we um think about grading um and then I think when we're talking about everything else those are administrative procedures so I I think that we can do a policy I think the administrative procedures are what will take more time um and we will need um I do think more and more input from hopefully some some families and some students it's just that we thought that you wanted all of it now no no yeah and I would I would say

117and I think you've heard we don't want to dictate what this looks like we need your feedback and we don't and actually if there's a treatment to make scenario here you really we really need that the the content of what we're deciding to do before we can even create a policy because that policy has to support what we're doing it's not the policy dictating we don't want the policy to dictate because we don't want to make those decisions it's got to come from the other direction I think the analogy of the the equity plan was was a good one I so to answer that question unless somebody else has a uh you know a serious desire to do something different I think we're interested in the work that the committee's doing and the results of

118that and it will be I'm living this myself it'll be messy it'll be complicated it'll be it might not be finished for a long time but it'll be finished in steps you'll will have certain things that we're able to implement and get get going and at some point in time then we'll be able to step back and say you know based on this uh the the statement that we're talking about and sort of the philosophical work that guided the work you're doing then we'll be able to step back and say okay this is the policy that we feel this is how we're going to change our policy we already have a policy um and in reality it supports what we do but it just doesn't do it very well so once we get a little

119deeper into that and we understand where this committee and where the district is going from a from a Grassroots perspective then I think we can develop a policy to support that an organic development I just want to clarify because it the the message has been you know there's outside Community pressure that we need to formulate there is I was just going to speak to that and if you don't mind um I I don't know how it's going for the rest of you but this is what I'm hearing like literally every day my phone and my email are blowing up over this so I'm getting a lot of external pressure from my constituents on deliverables sooner than later and so I understand like his makes waste we don't want to do this in a in an

120you know unthoughtful or rushed way we risk a lot by doing it that way however um it sounds to me that there is some urgency within the community about getting this on a path to resolve um and I want to make the point that if we are honoring our Equity policies the time is of the essence and to me this seems like one of the the top priorities for our district is is figuring this out um for for me personally and just like putting on my educator hat for a moment this is this would help me as an educator um and I I'm again only speaking for me as an educator I would feel empowered by this and not that my autonomy was being taken um so for me I I would really truly appreciate

121kind of a map of where we're going with our itinerary and stuffs along the way and then perhaps even some kind of loose timeline because lately this is becoming a major conversation in the community and and we we sit in places of governance I feel indebted to answer the community and to add to what Kara was saying this was one of the top strategic plan items too and maybe I'm wondering if that's where you got it from that you had to build the board us to build a policy I'm just guessing here but I think the problem to be solved is to have better different I don't know what the adjective of choice creating practices that are Equitable and maybe as a parent or a student or more predictable to know if I'm in this

122class and if I do this here's how the grading will be versus it being different from class one to class two that's the ultimate problem we're trying to solve and we don't want to be the ones we don't want to tell you how to do it correct because we and what do I know about grading and and the the pedagogy that serves learning is is what you're going to tell us about we're not going to try to determine that I think just to reiterate like at a high level it sounds like that kind of philosophical piece would be would be very possible definitely what we're on track to accomplish this year of like the the purpose statement for creating the set of beliefs that can govern our practices but even from a perspective of like

123what happens in a math classroom versus what happens in an English classroom like doing the same thing from class to class doesn't necessarily serve the learning from content area around that area yeah you're not going to get anybody here okay because pushing back on to do the same thing that my friends are doing in the map hallway uh you know it's two different learning and I haven't heard any expectation on the part of parents who expressed concern that they expect the math grading policy to be the same as the English grading policy but I do think we have some differing practices and that's what's for the same things and and students our students School Board reps are a perfect example of the student voice that has come to us saying we don't know what to

124expect we feel like there's such different expectations of our friends that are taking the same class but have a different teacher and that's where the concern is um at least from the community that that I've heard yeah today that was that was like a highlight of our conversation the kids were focused on that yes Iman was there and so was Larry and I think they can attest that came up pretty uh with a pretty substantial yeah but we don't expect us or students or parents to say what is the best pedagogy what what what what service learning the best that's where you're the experts but there is a I think keeping timeline in mind is probably important I mean I'd like to see some kind of a road map long term however it is there

125might be some low-hanging fruit that you know is easy to accomplish doesn't have a negative impact can we Implement that I'm just throwing it out there don't go exactly but can that be done in the next school year I'll start somewhere right start something somewhere but then maybe you have more complex areas that you start sort of think about Pilots you know do you pilot by school do you pilot by department and you could go so many different ways but having some some timeline that we can all sort of look at even by the end of the school year I think hope you guys can can come up to that family starting next school year has something to look look at yeah expectation this is very helpful so I'm hearing really I think three things

126one a timeline two just to give you an update on where we are with kind of a purpose slash philosophy three one I think I heard you say you wouldn't mind seeing some examples of what some schools are doing relative to them policy uh but then I've got a lot of nuggets that you've shared in terms of you know everything from um not throwing away my autonomy policy versus procedure framework that doesn't restrict those kinds of little nuggets are good for us as we start looking at uh what our practices might be underneath a broader policy so I I think we have can I give you one more nugget yeah I would hope that teacher teams have similar identical right so that's that's a great piece of this Equity right and we've heard that several

127times that student a who gets the you know teacher B has a totally different experience than students see with teacher d right they just we call it the twin effect the twin apparent has twins yes two different classes two different classrooms but the same course same course different experience completely different expectations I would also like to add with a view to the future with the view to the next level our teachers are in the best position to know what our kids are expected as far as grading to the next level and it needs to look similar so by Next Level that's the second College yeah you know whatever what does it look like well and can can I add that it should be a logical progression our freshmen should not be on a grading system

128that a college professor should use but there should be a progression towards if you're a freshman and this is what grading looks like it's going to there'll be an iterative process getting to a senior who whether or not they go on to post-secondary studies are are being evaluated the way that the expectation will change when they leave us so when you wrote clarity I looked at that and tried to think well what you're going to be the experts that are examining this what what am I going to give you is clarity now I do have some background so um as a group I would hope that what you're doing is examining good grading practice and then you're looking at what the peer-reviewed modern best practices and comparing that to what it is that we're doing

129looking for discrepancies if we're doing exactly what best practices we can be like good job and we can move on and if we find discrepancies then we would come up with a plan for improving whatever it is our grading practices now on several occasions you said this this would require a significant paradigm shift I don't know what this is sorry so is this uh we're all gonna go to standards-based grading that would be a paradigm shift that would be a mind blower and it would take us a little while although gusky would say that top down would be the best way to do it we just implement it get it done in one year and move on that's that's the only way to do that because like like I said like to have a stakeholder

130group of all the you're never going to come to that consensus point right so if that's what this is I'm not ready for that and I don't think we are ready for that I think again and I think we've said it several times you are the experts find out what needs to be done being responsive to the community um as Miss Benjamin brought up uh I think that that you're on the right track but as far as I'm concerned I didn't come here tonight with a specified idea of what I expected you to tell us and I think we just wanted Clarity on a policy that includes purpose and beliefs or you want a detailed policy like the equity one that has metrics and when they're going to be delivered and all those things I

131would say at this point don't worry about the policy do the work that you're doing the good work that you're doing and come up with those components the procedures the the Frameworks the whatever you need to do we will then step back and say what policy can we craft to support that okay it's it's you know it's move away from the word policy you move away from the word policy yeah what's the procedure what what with your expertise because that's what we're depending on I don't want to develop high level policy yeah I don't want to develop a policy that restricts you so if we if you were to tell me we'd really like it if we had a consensus we really need a new policy and we got to do it now it wouldn't

132be that much different than what we have it wouldn't be that much deeper because I would be afraid of be the tail wagging the dog yeah yeah of of con constricting what capability we might have so I wouldn't worry about policy right now we're not pushing policy when people say we want a grading policy that's not a board policy what they're really saying is we want a better grading practice Yeah framework whatever you want to call that so I wouldn't get hung up on the policy part that's that'll come later could I just offer maybe just some historical context so I I wasn't really involved with these conversations but I was kind of next to them a little bit and just for history I think if you use the equity policy the racial Equity policy

133is an example I think a lot of that came from a lot of people in our district and it grew over years of people saying there's something missing here there's something that's not quite right and they were working on it and then basically ended up coming to the conclusion that we need more we need more umph here but it's going to take more than just a Grassroots thing and so but the strongest thing that the organization can do in the Board of Education that leads the organization is to set a policy that's the biggest thing you can do in this District you can't create laws but the policies are your laws essentially now policy can be scary but policy is nothing more than the will of the board sometimes your will has to be what

134the state says your will has to be but other times you have more flexibility but in your flexibility you can exert your will I think when that Equity when the racial Equity policy was developed there was this uh a balance of Grassroots coming up and saying we as a system um sometimes policy does restrict but it's intentional it's purposeful it's meant to be purposeful that yeah you know you you have we want you to focus in this area and so I think similarly the the what I've seen from the grading practices was under the umbrella of equity Equitable grading practices that's the thing that I heard for years uh being talked about and talked about that recognizing that there's something going on with grading that doesn't seem quite right we need to figure it out

135get to the bottom of it it's I think it's very logical that somewhere along the way somebody thought you know what we we have people that think this is important the strongest thing the board can do is do it by policy and so I think that was a I think that's a natural logical connection that the strongest thing you can do is set a policy um that will you know the idea is to help improve and change the system and so there's only so much you can do building that up and getting everybody to buy in um at some points to make system changes it requires a policy change and sometimes we get that a lot of time at the state level they will craft a law that was not on our that's we had

136no interest in changing that but we're then forced to and so that just to some historical context that I think that's the perspective yeah it's a really good perspective and I'm thinking I was thinking of this process as you were speaking and really once you know we're going to to get to a point where we've begun formulating our practices and our procedures in our framework of how we're going to do this with a good portion of uh of our overall organization but at some point in time yes we will need the policy to say okay this is the direction we're going um and to sort of validate that that direction and I think we will we will get there I don't want that policy to be The Driver of that just like it was on

137the equity it's like you build this to a certain point and then to get it pushed even further we have to sort of you know uh formalize that through policy to say this yes we agree we as a board agree that this is the direction we need to go through so right for the equity policy we didn't write the policy until we had stakeholder input right and it sounds like we're in the early stages of that with the administration and the teachers um but we we crafted the policy further along in the process that we than we are right now although I think you make a very good point about the strongest thing that we can do is create policy I'm just not hearing that we're ready to to do that right now because we

138don't have the framework we have our support to keep going yeah yeah go for it do your work we appreciate it okay thanks thank you anything else on that yeah thank you for your work thank you for having me yeah was that everything you imagine yeah okay okay we're getting on um next up uh school calendar update yes so we met with the calendar committee I know I don't remember who was that asked for an update um in response to the the dially request so we met with the calendar committee um Casey was there Larry um facilitated we invited our feeder districts we did have um super Dr Hannigan from um 773 right he's from 73. the other three districts couldn't be present so we looked at um what districts around us have moved to

139secular uh which ones are still observing religious holidays and then we pulled everybody in the room um and the majority 19 folks in the room um would like to keep a religious calendar um and there was a was it for Larry or folks that uh um supported a move to secular and so this is just an update as to where we are with the committee I think we we still will have to meet with the committee reconvene them um and saying okay if if we are going to continue with the religious calendar what are the criteria what is the threshold how do we determine what you know holiday or any day will then be um in our calendar we'll be honored and observed in our in our calendar so that is uh something that we

140will have to follow up on and do that with the committee um and that's going to be challenging because they're yeah there will be unintended consequences of develop developing that policy yes one other thing that in looking at the information considered by the calendar committee it was for the next year or two where several of the religious holidays fall on the weekend so once you go three or four years out it will make our school year much much longer my understanding of well first of all let me just say thank you to Mr Vern and Dr Sanchez for the great work they do on this after sitting on the calendar committee for 10 years I can unequivocally say it is a huge challenge to put this together um and make it effective for all the

141stakeholders so I appreciate that time um we my understanding with the meeting was that we were looking at the 24-25 calendar when we said do we want to stick with religious calendar versus secular calendar um then saying we were going to put a objective way of looking at how we approach our calendar going forward we need to have some way to make these decisions for the time when it comes that all religious holidays fall on school days we're going to have to have an objective framework to look at some of this as groups come to us and and ask us to help them with their religious observations keeping in mind this is one thing that I can't State strongly enough we will always support our students taking an excused absence to celebrate their religion and

142observe their religious beliefs that is always available to our students yes you may have work that you have to make up um you know when you come back but we would never restrict anyone from observing their religious beliefs um but I I definitely I think in the wording of the memo we may be a little premature saying that we don't see a trend of other schools um in terms of how they observe their calendars because what we didn't really look at was when did the schools that went to secular calendars when did they do that we don't have that data so if we could maybe gather some of that data they may that may help us really understand whether there's a trend out there because if the list of schools that are are on secular

143calendars have switched to them in the last three years then that is a trend and that is something to consider we will we will do that um um Larry and I will we'll email districts or call them up or read board minutes and all that to figure that out I appreciate that is it more likely that secular calendars have just been in place for all time so far at many of these schools I really can't say I can tell you that where I came from it was a secular calendar when I got there um and but I couldn't tell you when that changed happened or if if it happened or that's why we need the information I Know Dan you were working at Lincolnshire when they made the change so I think at different communities

144it's come up at different times and I think it comes up more um when you get into different um different Pockets that have different religious prominent religious groups in their districts that you know have different things some of these communities you know I grew up in Zion there was there was mostly like Christian you know I mean so that batched up really well with the days off right so for that a lot of that community and so the communities end up being differently and then particularly as those communities have shifted over the decades that I think has prompted a ton of conversation that's exactly what happened in Lincolnshire was the community shifted and it was different now and it's now it's what do you do and that's you know that's what that District uh went

145through that process and made their decision at that point so just an update um a comprehensive update of what the was done um so we met as a count on the committee and it included students from our various face faith-based Affinity groups um to look at what we are currently observing as our holidays as we all know we currently observe a religious holiday and I defined the religious holiday based on including Jewish holiday observances so these schools um were schools that did that as well 128 is the only school that I was able to find that has a non-attendance day that aligns with Eid of schools in Illinois we also looked at our theater schools to determine family for families who have students in both 128 and in our elementary districts to see how our

146calendars align and there's an even split between our fourth Peter schools uh and so the calendar committee came together with one of Jada one outcome for this particular meeting and that was to determine whether we wanted to continue to observe a faith-based calendar what to consider a secular calendar we did not look at the 2023 2024 school year calendar because that calendar had already been approved and published and based on our where we are in in time we felt that it would be um appropriate to to reserve those dates as as they currently stand um also based on the idea that this discussion came from a presentation about the valley and in the 2020 3 2024 school year does fall on a weekend and would not be impacted by this particular school year so for

147those reasons we were intentional about not looking at 2023 2024. the second calendar that has been approved by the board was the 2024-2025 school year calendar which is the calendar that we did look at it is also published on our website when the committee looked at this calendar we met under certain constraints for examples that we looked at it is important that we reiterate that these were examples or samples it could be changed or manipulated in any way but the constraints that um were used in order to create these samples were maintaining the same start and end date for students and staff and maintaining the same and total number of days for students and staff we have yet to adopt any calendars Beyond 2024 2025 and so those are still open when we looked at

148our secular options based on what we currently have already approved they would be removing Rosh Hashanah and Good Friday and Eid would be the three religious holidays that would be removed when we look at our faith based calendars we looked at continuing to observe Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur Good Friday Eid and the in considering adding duality um for that year that's the uh poll that was taken from the stakeholders some of the feedback that was um discussed in that meeting included uh the appreciation that Muslim Students felt for the addition of Eid in the school calendar um and also what students who presented the presentation for Diwali would feel if there was to be a change in the calendar they felt like they it could be perceived as retribution for their presentation um and so

149we took a poll of all those present that included the members of the calendar and those who are not members of the calendar Committee in attendance so it was all in attendance for that um and that is the 19 to 4 vote that Yesenia referenced to continue to observe that holiday um with that being said the discussion felt that it supported our daring mission a religious holiday supports uh our attendance of being aware um ensuring that we seek to understand the varied experiences and realities of others as well as our Global tenant that we value diversity they also felt that it uh supported the District 128 racial equity diversity and inclusion policy that ensures that d128 schools are identity affirming environments where all students their families in the community feel safe welcome and valued the

150Committee reported out that observances of a religious calendar supports and reinforce reinforces our core values as a district which are embedded in our daring Mission and racial diversity and inclusion policy they felt that it was the fabric of who we are as a district and that is a beautiful tapestry woven together by strands of various faiths beliefs and religions it makes us better and stronger together and so those were the comments from that particular meeting where they made that next steps and again so that meeting of the outcome was to determine which would be supported by or recommended by that Community next steps if that is accepted is that we would collect faith-based demographic data to determine what religious holidays are observed by families uh to establish the criteria then in thresholds of a district-wide

151holiday observance and then to adopt operating procedures for adding district-wide religious observations to the school calendar and we would use this identified curriculum to determine which holidays would be observed so that we would have a formal objective systematic and standardized way of determining what holidays we observe as an organization and that's for calendars from 25 26 and Beyond 24-25 24 25 will read we settled on but for in my mind it was from 20 so 25 26 on we will use the framework that we developed to evaluate any further religious holidays and whether the ones we're currently taking meet those criteria yeah but so 2324 is next year that's already been approved correct and in the fall we come back and re-look at 24 25. calendar that was the one that we were discussing in

152that meeting as exam he was giving examples of that one in the meeting so that people could see what it would look like if you did went to a secular calendar or you went to you know um observing all the religious holidays I think that the the that it's hard for I think it was hard though for the committee just to look at that one year because there are examples like Dr Herman said that you know a couple of the religious holidays fall on the weekend if all of the religious holidays fall during the week plus you'd have an election day um at some of the other holidays how do you fit that in when we wanted one of the things was to keep that start date on that Monday and keep the ending date

153you know on that Thursday before Memorial Day how do you you know how you can do it you know you take more days off you might have to shift some of the other days that you take off it might meet up and I guess that's the thing that I don't think we fully consider a career if if is it more important to keep the starting and end date or to have observance of religious holidays or having a 2 week long spring break or a winter break you know it all of those things are competing interests for when we don't have school and when we do have school and so I appreciate case to you saying that the committee felt good about the draft that we were able to arrive at but even that some of

154the drafts had the holidays on a teacher Institute day and not on a day off off and that's a difference and so how are we going to say which holidays go into your Institute days and they're usually fall when it's not really the most Optimum time to have a teacher Institute day so I also for pedagogical reasons wouldn't want us to always think we have to have a religious holiday when uh when we excuse me a teacher Institute day that aligns with that that's not necessarily setting our teachers and our administrators up for when their learning would be Optimum in terms of getting prepared to implement something new or somewhere halfway through where we're doing a reinforcement you know whatever kind of learning that we need to do I'm fearful that this plan could also

155be handcuffing us to putting teacher institutes with religious holidays and I think that's not necessarily aligned with best practice the secular plan the religious no the religious plan and you also slippery slope man I think uh personally I I'm in favor of honoring religious holidays and pushing out the school year I say this is a religious minority if we want to bring the holiday into question that I'm thinking of into question we don't want to go there that's silly but like that's a normal day for someone like me I'll go to school my kids will go to school so I honoring our equity policy it's well since you said slippery slope my question is by setting a qualitative quantitative threshold are we opening ourselves up to some legal scrutiny that we don't really want to

156be opening ourselves up to yeah because if it might imply that if you're a minority enough that your voice doesn't matter and I don't think that's what we're trying to do here so that's where the thresholds worry me a bit um and the other thing I wanted to point out is if you start a lighting teacher Institute days with religious holidays then what happens to those teachers who are observing that Faith you know you're making them work when they really shouldn't be right so I think that doesn't sound and I mean I currently right now maybe to answer that question there are some days that we are in school and the teachers um have their religion and they need to take that day off and they are allowed to take um days off for you

157know religious purposes obviously again it's difficult if that's your religion and you're not going to work as a teacher you're doing prep work for your you know your religious day off um and sometimes that's difficult because you're trying to also honor your religion and have a day off students same thing you know they uh according to board policy and state of Illinois they can take religious days off but again and and not be penalized but again that's difficult they're not in school um and so you know it's a balancing act of you know how can we you know honor all of that but I do recall when the student I wasn't at the uh I think I was Ill when the students made the presentation about Diwali but when I watched the board thing it

158was yeah we're in support of this but make sure we have something for the next student group that comes and wants to present and so what I hear us saying is if it's not going to be quantitative data what what might we use as some guidelines how are we going to make those decisions right I I I don't know and I think that actually is what prompted many districts to go from a religious to a secular calendar is they didn't want to get in the role of saying this religion is more important than that religion so I I think my concern and I'm sorry to come back to this my concern is that the secular calendar honors one religion over all others that's a that's that's why I struggle with it no one is asked

159to give up the holiday that happens to fall during that two-week break on the secular calendar no one ever yeah would the conversation be the same if that was two weeks in November that's my sticking point well I mean I understand that and I agree and I I want to respect that but the bottom line is those two weeks in December is because the entire country is not really working and going to school and how would we be offering our services and vendors and everything else that needs to happen to have school go on when you don't have the access to those vendors I get it completely but principally right yeah also you got to recall like some of the reasons those are days off is because it's a legal School holiday in the Illinois

160school code so we don't have a choice and I'm not I'm not disagreeing with you why I was why it was called a legal School holiday but it was and you know it just has different it has different legal weight when the state says this is a this is a school holiday and other dates yes I get it completely I'm just kind of Devil's advocating right here this is this is what when you're of a minority Faith this is what goes through your head every time if we don't establish a framework of how we make those decisions going forward though we are going to run into a legal issue in terms of we have to meet certain instructional minutes for sure and we are at a point where we don't have days to give and

161it doesn't do our community any any service to not be honest about how we're going to make these decisions going forward and put some kind of framework around it um in trying to take some of the emotion out of it we can find some ways to put metrics in and make those decisions because we we are going to have to to do that I support a framework entirely I guess what I'm saying is when it comes to Thursday before Memorial Day weekend I don't see that as a hard cut off for any particular reason I don't see why that needs to be like something we stick to exclusively in the future going forward yeah and I I agree with that and you know speaking from the perspective of excuse absences which are always available but

162my kids have never taken them because they miss too much in school right and and I bet that's what happens with many other students who would like to celebrate but they don't because the impact of not doing that is too high um so I think that's the other perspective but yeah I I think if adding a day adding two days to the calendar it makes it more equitable but yeah so we need to have a framework I just caution on when we start looking at only five percent of students are you know whatever religion that that could get into but maybe we have Ramadan we have Kwanzaa it's it's only two now so how where is the cutoff I mean I'm gonna be the person and I don't I don't know what other metric you

163use and I wonder if there isn't some precedent that is being used by the three six nine ten others uh peer districts that still have a religious calendar some of them are much bigger schools than us in areas with more diversity so these metrics might have been established and there could be some precedent that had been used for the establishment of them so um like we always say we don't have to reinvent the wheel if there are other best practices in place that can guide how we develop a framework and by all means take a look at them but we're not being asked to do anything to I want to go back yeah this is a conversation and a conversation so now we have ideas on some of the information we need to gather and

164then what can be the focus for the committee's next meeting okay any other comments okay thanks for everybody's input on that uh board self evaluation yeah so I put this on the agenda in following up from conversations we had when we were writing our governance handbook and one of the things that we put in our governance handbook was a goal to have an annual um process by which we would as abort as a governance team the Seven View and one of me reflect on how well we're aligning our practices to those governance principles and then just any other things that we would want to say are we using our time as effectively as possible you know just some of those things about needing protocol versus the idea of are we um you know um uh

165following some of the protocols about putting things on the agenda I'm just thinking of some things that we added that were new protocols that we'd want to get some feedback on um so now that we're sort of getting to the end of this school year Lisa and I thought it would be appropriate to get some uh Direction I don't mind contacting the person or finding the right tool but I didn't want to do that without the forward you know like which again sort of which depth of of self-evaluation would you be comfortable with there's some that are very very granular and there's some that are big picture all from iasb or other other tools so they're all very reputable um I wanted to hear what the board had to say about that and how I

166can assist you some of those tools Focus really on meeting Effectiveness maybe as a group we decide no I don't know that we need to adjust meaning Effectiveness or maybe we do maybe we want to talk about how we affect how effective we are as a team or some other aspect of governance but now would be the time for us to just sort of have a discussion about thoughts about how how we choose what we're going to evaluate and how do we want to evaluate it this is perfect because I was going to bring it up we we created this handbook with these protocols and we've been doing it and working it for a year I would love to come back and revisit our protocols to see what's worked what hasn't and how would we

167change because there are things to be a good board member I have tried to Faithfully follow our protocols and there are times where I've thought you know I don't think we thought about this in practice and I'd like to revisit that yeah we designed it with that in mind so we definitely have the space I'm not too sure we're going to get a nice neat efficient tool to be able to do that but I think carving out some time towards the end of the year um just to review let me just go down yeah I don't need an online if that you know our first evaluation is based on this product how has it worked for us I I would be content with that yeah I mean we put there was a lot of work

168that went into that handbook and it's a great tool so let's let's continue to evaluate it and make sure that if there's a way to make it better we do that and and equally as importantly make us better right by reflecting on the tool and using it yeah yeah the only other thought I had was um that that's actually a great idea but um you know the Strategic plan is sort of what you know we've started going on should we like evaluate ourselves on how well are we supporting the execution of that strategic plan I think we should probably do that every year to make sure we are doing what we're supposed to to meet that objective we'd have to develop a tool right some kind of evaluation tool yeah some kind of rubric yep

169can someone remind me did we do this last year okay so this is our first our inaugural experience with this I'd be interested to see what tools the ISB has same okay we can do that um again I think the idea of the local assessment we want to do is to our own governance handbook but it sounds like we're also interested in a few of the things that just high functioning boards regularly reflect on from iasb so I can definitely pull together a few of those strands and then have that prepared for some word feedback probably at the April meeting right okay um we're down to the um future agenda items anyone have anything that they're interested in adding well I did but now I just brought it out there you go um has everyone

170I don't know if this needs to be put on the agenda but we will have to take a look at it by our next um committee meeting the student board rep interviews selecting the student board Reps for next year uh are coming up in April and the buildings have graciously invited us to participate in those interviews um so I would encourage if you haven't had a chance yet please do look at that um so that we can I did look at it and they are all during a work day yeah and not any weekend opportunities is that possible or this is set instead so I don't want to speak for the buildings on that but I think because we're dealing with students we prefer to do it during those school days yes yeah it's a

171fair question but I think it's almost impossible because our kids are so overly involved like to try to single out a Saturday in which all of our current board reps who are involved in six different things plus the 12 kids from each school that there's just totally get it I totally and I've looked at it and I you know it's just not something that I think I can and you're not the only one it is an an extra activity and when you took your oath of office that you have fulfilled very Faithfully it didn't not include taking off time from your paid employment in order to do extra activities so that is a hundred percent acceptable and understandable so I appreciate your your input on that and I hope that you won't be disappointed if

172we're not able to accommodate full faith excellent okay um so by the next meeting hopefully those of us that do have some flexibility with our work schedules um what are you looking at me for I'm not looking at you you are the only retired person on Earth but that's you know either here we're there but but you also travel more than any of us I can I can take one of the days I was waiting to get okay through the second day out of town here's what I'll offer 26th I'll raise you 23. I was 26 years 26 I can't do and then there's one on the twin yes I think Vernon Hills is on the 26th and LHS is on the 20th somewhere in there yes I was gonna I was gonna offer to

173take LHS because I uh served on that role last year at Vernon Hills and I would love to see what the process is like at LHS so yeah who wouldn't do the 20th but I can't do the 26th okay we can take it somewhat offline and figure it out I guess I don't know yeah I just wanted to be sure that we knew that by our next committee meeting we will have had some commitment um decide who's participating so cool anything else just a few agenda items um I thought I saved my comments but I can't get to it long day oh no I did but we have a few ongoing activities it would be nice to get like an update like you did with the calendar or thing I think you covered too so

174someone was reading my mind when they put the agenda together one was the grading uh second was calendar third is the Community Education I know we stopped the program here but there was work going on to essentially find alternate ways of providing that service so I'd like to get some kind of a periodic update on that yes I can give that in April okay perfect thank you and then another one that was on my list was I can't remember when but there was some conversation about how do you handle programming for I'm going to use the wrong words but the remedial students am I using the right words but it's the students who need help essentially are off in their own class and there was some conversation about how do we you know improve the

175experience for them I'd like to kind of get an update on on that not right now but I want to add some Cadence to that yeah I definitely included that in one of my updates to the board back in December when about some data and some information and we've been talking about that at the December January February and March meeting now at all admin to try and say what does this mean here what data do we have to look at what are these outside laws and regulations saying so I I think we had we have a lot of consensus now on a way we can move forward and so I'll be happy to present that at the April meeting is there a way that we could add just a list of these things and then

176can figure out what when we get periodic updates on them till till that is actually closed if you will okay thanks I'll send an email if I remember more okay uh shall we adjourn program personnel you need a couple minutes five minutes and then we'll be back today program and Personnel committee meeting adjourned currently on break facilities and finance committee meeting up next currently on break facilities and finance committee meeting up next currently on break facilities and finance committee meeting up next currently on break facilities and finance committee meeting up next currently on break facilities and finance committee meeting up next currently on break facilities and finance committee meeting up next currently on break facilities and finance committee meeting up next currently on break facilities and finance committee meeting up next currently on break facilities

177and finance committee meeting up next currently on break facilities and finance committee meeting up next currently on break facilities and finance committee meeting up next currently on break facilities and finance committee meeting up next currently on break facilities and finance committee meeting up next currently on break facilities and finance committee meeting up next currently on break facilities and finance committee meeting up next currently on break facilities and finance committee meeting up next currently on break facilities and finance committee meeting up next currently on break facilities and finance committee meeting up next currently on break facilities and finance committee meeting up next currently on break facilities and finance committee meeting up next currently on break facilities and finance committee meeting up next currently on break facilities and finance committee meeting up next currently on break facilities

178and finance committee meeting up next currently on break facilities and finance committee meeting up next currently on break facilities and finance committee meeting up next currently on break facilities and finance committee meeting up next currently on break facilities and finance committee meeting up next currently on break facilities and finance committee meeting up next currently on break facilities and finance committee meeting up next currently on break facilities and finance committee meeting up next currently on break facilities and finance committee meeting up next currently on break facilities and finance committee meeting up next currently on break facilities and finance committee meeting up next currently on break facilities and finance committee meeting up next currently on break facilities and finance committee meeting up next currently on break facilities and finance committee meeting up next currently on break facilities

179and finance committee meeting up next the facilities and finance committee meeting for Monday March 13th it started at 8 19. um let's start with the invitation for public comment is there anyone here who would like to please purchase podium and a reminder that we try to keep comments to three minutes okay okay this can you hear me okay yes good evening my name is Wes Poland I'm a district 128 resident residing in the Vernon Hills High School boundary before I begin I want to thank the board of education for your dedication to our community and the students of District 128. I personally understand and appreciate your sacrifice to serve please accept my sincere thanks for advocating for our Collective interest and making the difficult decisions necessary to prioritize Student Success for all students at both

180Libertyville High School and Vernon Hills High School I'm here tonight to comment on inequity in our district specifically graduation venues the graduation ceremony for Libertyville High School is held at the now Arena Hoffman Estates and students have access to unlimited tickets the overall budget for this year's LHS graduation is sixty thousand six hundred dollars or 136 dollars and 18 cents per student the Vernon Hills High School graduation ceremony is held in the main gymnasium and the students receive four tickets the overall budget for this year's graduation is ten thousand three hundred dollars or twenty seven dollars and seventy six cents per student when looking at the two high schools the district plans to spend a hundred and eight dollars and 42 cents more her student at LHS then on the Vernon Hills High School students

181Fern Hills High School families needing additional tickets to attend graduation have to reach out to families or create in search of posts on social media in hopes of securing one or possibly two extra tickets from families not using all four of their tickets the big event hosted by the district 128 foundation for Learning and the Vernon Hills High School cougar athletic boosters bash capitalize on the demand for the Vernon Hills High School graduation tickets at both events families have the opportunity to bid on extra graduation tickets all this is just for a chance the siblings grandparents step parents and special caregivers might be able to attend the Milestone event in their students life when Vernon Hills High School opened its doors graduation tickets were unlimited as new housing developments were completed and more people moved

182into the Vernon Hills boundary class sizes grew instead of securing a new graduation venue to accommodate the growing class sizes the solution was and continues to be to take away tickets I understand that the current d128 projections show a slight decline in the student population over the next five years however this reduction will not solve the graduation venue and equity this inequity will only be rectified when Vernon Hills High School students receive the same number of graduation tickets as the Libertyville High School students I am not I want to repeat I am not suggesting that LHS students receive fewer tickets or switch to a smaller graduation venue the students and families at Vernon Hills High School should have the same access to graduation tickets and a similar graduation experience after an in-person meeting with Dr

183Herman on February 22nd and watching the board meeting on February 27th I know several in inequities exist between Vernon Hills High School and Libertyville High School fortunately the graduation venue and equity is fairly straightforward excuse me in a complicated one to remedy the time to act as now as the classes of 2024 and 2025 are quite large the class of 2024 is approximately 400 students which is only 27 years to three minutes if you can wrap your comments 27 fewer students in Libertyville class of 2024. please do not waste valuable time conducting a survey a survey isn't necessary to point out this apparent inequity thank you for your time and I look forward to hearing about how the district plans to make the Vernon Hills High School graduation experience more Equitable thank you thank you

184thank you anyone else for public comment okay seeing none we will move on to the discussion about graduation um I'd like to take just a second to make a couple quick comments before we enter into the discussion in the presentation um it's worth revisiting how we as a board operate as a board we employ the superintendent we set policy and direction for the district and as such we Empower our buildings to develop their own graduation please typically the board doesn't tell the buildings where to have their graduations um I've been on the board since 2018 and I can tell you it has never even come to us where we have told Vernon Hills that they can't spend money on graduation so I just want to make that clear as we enter into this um you

185know it's it's really never even been brought to us for approval so it's worth noting that if we Converse about this any other comments Denise no I just wanted to say it was following the meeting ahead with the parent and then Cara also I think I said parents um request that the board have a conversation about this because I think although it hasn't come to the board before I think that now that people understand the difference in investment that the um now that now that the sunlight has hit this issue it's something that is um not a tiny difference it's a sizable difference in terms of the monetary amount um and I think from many of the parents who contacted me then just look at this as an opportunity to say so what do we

186want it to be going forward um and I think um again this isn't necessarily because it is becoming such a large public um uh discussion we definitely want to have your input on what you think would be wise again you're representing the parents and the community and people like that and this ceremony is for the students and their parents and the community and so I think if ever you uh you have an expertise this would be one of the ways that you participate in graduation and you understand the importance of it to so many families um so I think that's why it says a discussion item it's been brought to our attention um we will be developing uh next year's budget and I think how we develop budgets we sort of roll things over and

187we don't zero things out every year to year and say is this still a good investment um so I don't think there's any intention that Libertyville tried to increase their budget spending and Vernon Hills was not I just think that we have traditions and we have ways of doing things and sometimes they grow further and further apart and I think that's the situation where we find ourselves now and so the parents are asking our whole organization to consider this and I think because it's such a sizable amount you proved cut you would you approved this contract so you approve the contract for the now Center and so I think we wanted your input since it's a sizable monetary difference in in what you're thinking is about that and then I and the administrative team can

188definitely do the work we're hired to do in terms of implementing some of those things well I I just want to say this is not not here to forbid a financial decision um the the way that we've arrived at the venue was not based on a monetary constraint it was based on what the building designed and because so much of the parent feedback has come to the board and not to the building I counted as of tonight 11 emails that the board received that the building was not included on I'd really like to put it back to the building to say do we want to examine this and then if you come back to us and say hey we need to we either need money or we need some other kind of support so that

189more tickets are available I think that's then when we when we jump in and when it's appropriate for us to to set it but in terms of the money I mean we're always open to if the administration comes to us with a recommendation to spend money and we agree with that we're going to approve it and I can think of very few examples of where we have we may have asked a lot of questions and we may have made some changes but there haven't been examples of where the Administration has come to us to approve a budgetary item and we've said no so I I think if the question is are we open to considering the expense of course we're open to considering the expense I mean can I I think you don't know there's

190a problem until you know there's a problem yeah I've only been on the board for now the year and a little bit years uh so until you know it's a problem you don't know it's a problem and we've never heard that it was an issue and I almost had I don't mean to I do question it being termed in inequity because we didn't know there was a problem so I don't when you say it's an equity there it's inequity there's almost a sense of a purposefulness and there was no purposefulness on this I get that there was a lack of opportunity and it's not the same but it was never presented as there being a problem with that so now that we know there's a problem if that is something that the building wants to

191change and come to us I I have no problem doing that but I do have to say there are many liberty-filled parents that I've also heard from that do not like going to Arena and it becomes a balancing um am I going to choose the inconvenience of the travel to have the uh unlimited unlimited tickets versus I can't tell you how many times I have been asked why can we not just have this here and when we did have it the one time with covid I understand the parameters but there was so much positive feedback I hope you consider bringing graduation back so I was a little bit surprised to see all of these emails come in because I didn't realize it was I mean that's ignorance on me because I've never asked so now

192that we know there's a problem I would absolutely be open if that is something that the building wants to do so I'm at the other end of the spectrum and having been here a long time what I think in some cases we confuse equal to Equitable we're not trying to be the same and when the decision originally was made I believe it was an equitable decision I believe it was a decision made at that point in time based on the information we had based on the feedback we had based on the community we had um at that point in time I'll step back I'm probably a pretty unique individual at least with the people in this room where I've had children go through these schools and I've attended graduation for my own my own offspring

193at both I had a LHS graduate I had two BHS graduates I've attended both of these venues um I'm not saying one's better than the other but I think if you talk to most high schools they would say they would love to be able to have their graduation ceremony in their house in their facility if possible that's not always possible um and it's just typically a space constraint thing so as you were saying Carl you know that I I like both I I have no preference Brennan Hills ceremony versus Libertyville I've attended many of both both as a parent and as a board members The Venue at the now Arena it's great big lots of Technology although we have a lot of technology that we bring as well uh but it's a big wide open

194you can have as many tickets as you want um but it is a long way to drive it is somewhat impersonal because you're so far away um I get I'm sad because while the choir the LHS choir can sing the orchestra cannot perform so you hear a canned you know uh track where the the students and and staff uh process and recess too at Vernon Hills it's home yes it's very tight you only have so many sick tickets but the orchestras fact they're playing you hear our kids playing it's in our house it's it's a great they're both great ceremonies um you know I I like them both but I can see that there's benefits uh to to either one and really the the moving off campus was a necessity not necessarily a decision made

195to go to a better venue I'm sure you know if we had a venue here in this building that could handle that you know there would be a lot of argument to bring it back home but um again it was I think it was a decision made at that time with the you know the best intentions does that mean that decisions should stay forever I don't know and that's not really our job to decide it's up to the buildings I know John probably has some some comments here but I just wanted to give a little bit of a historical perspective that you know neither one's better than the other it's just different it's and it's different based on decisions made at that point in time and it's going to be impossible to make everybody either

196way um with that being said do you have any thoughts you want to share no I I know that I don't mean to make light of it I it's interesting you know Carson you don't know you have a problem until you know you have a problem I I feel the same way I don't feel like there's a problem I know I I certainly listen to the comments and respect those comments for sure um just just a couple things of clarity one we do offer unlimited tickets but she's right these last couple years we've only offered four well take covet out um before in-person gymnasium tickets but everybody else who wants to come is welcome to sit in much more comfortable seats in the auditorium and watch the the event streamed live so I I've had

197four kids graduate from the high school and that's where my parents have sat that I mean that's that's just the way we've done it I have been at every Vernon Hills High School graduation every one of them every one of them has been in the gymnasium so this is really just a matter of tradition how we do it you know it's not it there was never discussions about um comparisons and to to Mr Batson's Point like uh Dr Batson's point when you know I've also been in Libertyville graduations as a teacher at Libertyville and and when we were uh at um rivinium and they just have always had that that space crunch as to not be able to do it in their own gymnasium and I don't want to speak for for Dr kalenski uh

198kalentes but I I know that there are inherently difficult things about moving a venue and inherently good things about the the decision they've made to move and obviously the the big thing is tickets I will say this just from a school standpoint you know what I say to families is of course you have unlimited tickets yes you know the the extras um sit in the in the auditorium and watch so there's that I also say that um we do ask students to to turn in tickets uh to us for those that if I know you know I only have my Mom and Dad are coming and that's the only two then here's two tickets and each year we get a handful we're not getting hundreds back I'll I'll shoot straight there I'm not saying that

199that's like the windfall of all tickets but um we do offer those back I do know that there is kind of an act of hey kind of this network of does anybody have the tickets the kids kind of do on their own um I will say this this is my favorite part of our graduation is that we flank the ends of our roads so if we have 15 rows of St of graduates with an aisle down the middle on each half of that row I have two faculty Marshals and the thing that's special about the Vernon Hills High School graduation is that our teaching staff is involved in graduation they sit next to the kids um and they celebrate with them and as principal that's that's a that's a huge thing for me and um

200you know I'm not going to sit here and lie and say that I've uh pulled our teachers um to see how many would make that difficult drive out to Schaumburg or Hoffman Estates wherever that is to and but all I have to do is look at libertyville's numbers to see that that would diminish greatly and to me that would be you know kind of the the greatest hit of that we we did we did plan an outdoor graduation because that's been something that's been kicked around and you know my entire principal life I've heard principals say don't do it don't do it because you can't imagine the stress that goes into um you know watching the weather and wondering and wait is that a cloud or is that what is that and um you know

201the Thor guard going off and all of that stuff so but we did it we did it once we decided to do it it was over coveted it was 2021 and man we spent you know ten thousand dollars to get the DJ to set up extra speakers that we didn't have and rented the chairs and wouldn't you know it's stormed that entire day and so we got stuck back in school with kind of a yeah the makeshift split schedule it was and I vowed at that moment I will never do this again so um you know and of course then Hawthorne literally graduated the next night on our field it was like 70 in sunshine it was gorgeous um so you just roll the dice on that I um so I you know with all

202due respect to the to the comments and the emails like I get it I would never try to dismiss that or tell somebody that that's a bad argument or um your priorities are in the wrong place whatever I would never say that but I would I would point to the tradition of the high school um the way that we've made it work the the really good feeling that you know I I I honestly can't I honestly can't remember uh a parent coming up to me before during after graduation and complaining about it or um you know questioning the decision um not and then maybe they are under their breath or whatever you know but um so I yeah so this idea of you know you don't have a problem until you have a problem I

203still from a school perspective um you know don't feel like we have a problem Lisa you said pretty clearly like you can't please everybody not everybody's if we move out to Hoffman there will be people that are upset that we're doing that you know we've a lost tradition and B you've moved the thing 20 miles away and it's hard enough to get there on a Thursday night um so yeah that I mean that's that's my voice I think overall I really appreciate everything you had to say John and I think this it goes back to our example about what's the role of a policy from our PNP meeting because um one of the things that the board charged all of us to do was to look for inequities and I I I don't think inequities

204ever imply intention I think they almost always are more unconscious um but in the equity policy it called for us to review any program and to seek these things out so that we could then once we're aware say how do we want to proceed and so I think you're going to be seeing things that we didn't even know were different we're they're going to surface and people are going to ask us okay now that you know about this inequity now what's your action going to be and I don't think we have a protocol established for John or the parents or other people who want us to reconsider doing something differently it's it's we're treating every situation very differently and I think that's normal when you're doing something new and for the first time but I

205think it goes back to we said we want this really loose grading policy and that we're gonna sort of take some of the individual things as they come this is an example of taking individual differences as they come and how hard it is to do that so it goes back to again what's that sweet spot of not having a policy or expectations that are so tight that it's dictating things ahead of time that we don't even know but why would we have a policy saying review and see that there's differences and when we find them we're not quite sure how to proceed so I guess that's where I feel a little in a gray area of wanting to be able to advise John on how to proceed once these things are surfaced because as someone

206who came from a blended family I think sometimes we are used to our old structures serving a fairly traditional family structure with a nuclear family where four tickets would be pretty sufficient for most families we have so many Blended families and that's what I was reading in many of the parents who brought this to our attention that the needs of our families are changing and that that's what they're asking us to reconsider and so to me that's what I see this issue about it is about what is going to how do parents or any group who feels that there's an inequity going to bring that to our attention so that we then have an opportunity to audit that or to say is this still the right way to proceed I don't know uh if it's

207necessary to codify things to the minutia such as graduation but you know more of this kind of holistic approach where you're looking at things situation by situation as they come up could that that right there could be catified into some kind of policy but as for you know just kind of the Optics here if graduation if if upgrading or I don't want to call it upgrading if changing the graduation venue at Vernon Hills is not cost prohibitive the Optics are really poor um and if you know anything kind of about District history this this kind of just that goes a lot of some of the uh you know short straws that Vernon Hills kind of historically has has felt that they've been given over the years um but you know I realize there's no intent

208male intent whatsoever and you guys make a beautiful graduation event over at the high school and it is special and so is Liberty bells and I've had the privilege of attending both now um but you know short of saying well then let's bring lhs's home and put the Overflow in the auditorium I just don't know how we carry on this way because now that we know what we know you know um going forward it will look highly inequitable if we keep it this way from from my vantage um this is a this is a momentous occasion for many families and I think it's particularly when we look at our demographics at Vernon Hills it's a highly momentous occasion for many of our students and their families um and I'm not going to you know pretend

209that the demographics at our two schools are the same they're not and people want to be together people want to celebrate the achievements of their graduates this is what we as a district work toward every single day is producing graduates that are daring and if we don't offer space for families to feel that they can celebrate that fully and with everyone that's important in that student's life in attendance like our our students over at LHS do have the opportunity to do then I just don't think it's right by the community but I would say at this point I would need to know more of what the whole Community is actually looking for because 15 letters is not is a sample but it does not speak for the whole community so I agree and if that

210is what the community wants I so I under I do not see this as an inequity unless it is and I don't think we have enough information to make that to certain you know decision right now uh and I I don't see how you make a decision without asking without knowing more and if that is what the majority of the community is feeling I've been made aware oh I'm sorry I think I just cut you off next not at all I just I had that feeling that it was just going this way I'm taking it backed up um I've been made aware of a petition that's circulating currently if that makes a difference I've been pinged personally about this numerous times over the last few weeks um again sometimes when you don't know what you

211don't know and it comes to light that's when you suddenly have movement that didn't exist before and so you know all it takes is is some people who are aware and to spread awareness and to uh you know Inspire action and others to really get the ball rolling so to speak and I think that's what we're witnessing here and I I really appreciate that involvement from our community and and their concern can I just briefly Echo Cara's comment though that we're not sure it's not equitable because we don't have enough information and I would I would say people are maybe informed but I think the understanding of the differences in the venues the fact that their child that may have been involved in music doesn't get to perform the fact that they have to drive

21245 to 55 minutes to get there the fact that it's there are you know hundreds of feet from their their student and they have to watch them on the big screen because they're so far away there's there's just and I'm again I'm not defending one or the other I'm just trying to point out there are differences between the two venues and there are good things and there are bad things and I think a number of people are thinking oh they get this it costs more must be better isn't necessarily the case it's just different I appreciate that I I just I worry again if this isn't cost prohibitive and we're still saying no and absolutely not I don't think anybody I think anybody's saying no so I would oh I mean I'm just hypothetically if

213it's kind of sounding like we're not moving in that direction then then it does start to creep into not Equitable territory right now instead we really need to change this I think that we would change it yeah great well I don't know if it's a case of equity at all I think it's a case of preference and I think John has stated his preference I'm not exactly sure why we're still talking about it well and I think the difficulty if I learned anything from covid is that we'll have a group of parents and um they insist they represent the majority and that may or may not be the case but regardless of whether or not it's the case the building and the administration and the board are ultimately left to make that decision so I

214don't want to create a everybody gets a vote and we're going to go with the highest vote getter because that's not the best way to make the best decisions I'm not sure that doing nothing is the right way to go though I think if we're aware that there is um there's some concern about this then doing nothing is not really the answer we have to do something we have to look into it I don't know what that protocol is but I also don't think that it's our job to say how how we're going to look into it as long as there's a commitment that we are going to examine it and that the board is going to get an update on what data you decided to use how you made a decision what what the

215decision is going forward um I just I'm not sure that we're in a position to to impose I think we have enough information what that is what that's going to be nor do I want to be looking at it through the lens of we spent this on this school therefore we have to spend this on this school that's that's not how we've made this that's not how we make decisions and that's not has nothing to do with equity and let's put this in perspective this is important but this does not impacting student learning there would be some urgency around this if there was a significant investment per student that was creating a different outcome in the classroom that would be a different situation we'd be having a different conversation while this is important uh let's

216just keep it in perspective any other comments right we'll look forward to an update on that moving on to bid recommendations continuing our summer maintenance work starting with LHS washrooms yeah so we uh received two bids for the washrooms the low bid was you from Carlson 372 000. the estimate we had was 500 000 so this came in well under which is great um and so yeah when you add in the design costs um the total cost for the Project's gonna be just under 400 000. um so yeah this brings our total for the summer Capital to about 3.9 million which is under the 4 million that we had estimated you know back in I always forget this day January through January um yeah so we would we would recommend this to be approved at

217the okay what month is it yeah it's an expander 20. all right so that will come up for approval next week uh bid recommendation for the LHS asbestos abatement in line with the washrooms uh yep so similarly uh we received two bids a little bit was Colfax forty nine thousand nine hundred we estimated the total cost of that project would be about 75 000 so it's going to end up being you know about 58 500 which is great um to an extent I mean like we want it to be close to what we're estimating so we're you know the intention is not to have come in under budget a ton but I'd rather be under than over yes I'd rather be close to exact but in context we say this quite frequently but it Bears

218repeating when there is a disparity between what you estimate and it what the bid actually what what the bid actually winds up to be whether it's less or more you guys walk through the scope of project with the respective bid winner and make sure that you're all on the same page you do that every time to make sure that the numbers line up sometimes it comes in under sometimes it comes in over we're hoping that aggregate it stays within what we're expecting and so far it's working out okay so we'll see that up for approval uh next next moving on to D LHS wheelchair lift replacement so this we thought it was going to be 50 000 the final code came in forty four thousand one twenty four uh it's less than that so this

219is not something uh that we're still I would require us to bid uh so we're bringing it forward and there's not many people that do this thing um so it's difficult to find wheelchair lift manufacturers that can create a lift to this commercial level that we're looking for so we feel comfortable moving forward with this one um yeah and there'll be one I'm going to mention in future agenda items too so we'll forget okay is it is the wheelchair lift currently operational just out of curiosity currently it is but we are constantly repairing it um over the last few years we've spent several thousand dollars uh and now parts are hard to get um last year we had to replace a board on it um you know to get through and they were able to

220find us a used board to get us through so yeah it's it's past its useful life okay yeah and it's costing us more money to keep repairing it so this is an important one okay uh again we'll see that next week for approval uh moving on to item E capital project prioritization our ongoing process yeah I won't read through again what I wrote so I'll just assume you've read it so we're in we're in the middle of a process that I think is going really well um and so our Hope was to have a finalized prioritized list for today that is not happening uh so we missed that goal however I feel very comfortable with the track of getting this in April um I think it really was I think the core of it was

221the committee going through the tube test projects that were submitted and the people that submitted them saying like this is this needs to get changed this is too much and this is not quite where we really want everyone really agreed that that was that was the case so we talked about changes I think we have a very um what would you call it a spelled option that kind of it's this this this very um I think a good marriage of Simplicity but also detail and a process that gets us what we want to know um quicker and so we're looking forward to that I'm getting projects I just got another one submitted today so we're getting more and more and they'll be due or they'll we can get as many as are submitted between now

222and Monday a week from today so no that's great this is this is very important to have an objective way to review the capital projects that are necessary in our district because there's never going to be enough money to do everything we have to have a way to evaluate an objective manner yeah I mean there's definitely subjectivity to it but there's criteria associated with that which I think removes hopefully removes some bias from the process and makes it look it makes it a more fair process um with that though I wanted I did want to touch on um you know we were asked about what's going on with Verity in the the V Turk um and so part of that process when we last went through with Verity they kind of gave us an overall

223summary of Where the whole um Township was in terms of different projects and ideas in the sense I had at the time from us is well we need to figure out what's important to us and so we need to see what comes out of this project this process to say what is what is most important is a project that aligns to some of the things that verigies looking at doing is that the most important project for us if it is that that makes perfect sense to align ourselves with verigen move forward with those um but if it's not let's say you know it's something else that comes up that is a higher priority then we wouldn't match up with very juice so I felt like like I I really feel that we need to get

224this processary not to figure out what is that what is our priority or what is the data show our priority is and then see if there's connection with the things that they're interested in doing or you know that's in their Lane I guess you could say in terms of doing that so um that's really the update like they're they want to know too like I would love to tell them but I don't have that information yet um just because we're not through this process so that would be all the information I have right now any comments or discussion I'm continually looking forward to trying to see if we can do some of those energy energy saving projects so I did ask Dan to speak to this tonight um but I I would actually like to

225see some of those projects on the capital plan at some point because I keep looking through that Capital plan and I don't see solar installation I don't see uh you know lighting upgrades or any of the things that Verity talked about um so right now to me those are still off somewhere like they can't be a part of the process if they're not on the plan uh well and they're never getting out of the plan unless they get proposed I'm proposing that we put solar on our buildings oh yeah and so I'm just the the pro the process is so like most of the stuff we have on our list is about health and safety issues that get brought up for asset replacement like that's going to be the where most of our things come

226from and the rest is going to be through this process so it needs it needs you need someone to submit the project through the process to do that so I've already said that I'm going to do the the solar on Vernon Hills but if there are other the other projects or even you know I don't know if there are other projects that the board wants submitted through this process now or if you see what kind of comes and this is you know what I feel like something's missing I'm not sure what you want to do um but I'm happy to do put the board once well we did the lighting upgrade at Vernon Hills High School I wonder if just putting it on the list to do at LHS right whether or not it makes

227it through the priority Matrix uh their there was a project submitted Vargis suggested like I can't remember it was an astronomical sum it was like 13 million dollars worth of projects that we obviously cannot pay for all of those but some of those projects do pay us back um and so getting those projects like what's that balancing point if we wait 10 years then and we save a hundred thousand dollars a year was it worth it to wait 10 years so and I don't I don't have the answer for where that balancing point is but I would like to see them on a schedule someplace so that we can so that they're in our minds people yeah and I guess a little as far as I'm concerned a little Clarity on obviously those come from

228the building into the district but is it appropriate for the board to say hey I'd like to add solar or I'd like to add composting or I'd like to add a lighting upgrade is that appropriate for us change the infrastructure for Waste Management uh change infrastructure superstructure for water management and those might not wind up rising to the top in any given year but is that something that we're comfortable with doing no well maybe not even that that we request but maybe we request we you know go back to the the team and say hey can you just take a look down this entire list and tell me you know do a first blush what might be Bible projects what might be things that we should be doing and make a recommendation of the things

229that you think are most appropriate based on your knowledge of the building and and you know maybe Mark could could run down the list maybe somebody else but just to sort of take that list and parse it out to those things yeah we can't do all 13 million but there's probably things on there that we either could or should be doing and just get them on the list I mean it's even if they wind up at the bottom each year at least we know they're they're considered and there are things that are of Interest um to at least some of the board members I I also see two other things I see um Don this is one of your passions and it's something that you know is something we want to model for our students

230so not only is it important to you you think that this is an important behavior in way we should model for our students in our community of being good stewards so it's a pretty big picture thing I think the other thing I'm hearing again at the district is also advocating for this and if you don't feel there's an advocate at the table then that doesn't feel comfortable for you I think the third thing that just popped into my mind is what Lisa said about how can we um June touch points or gather that information from the board on things that again your elected officials to represent especially Capital outlay needs we're bringing the educational perspective some other things but I think this is an opportunity not for you to say this nitpicky thing but I

231think we really need to be investing more money here or here or here and that's I think that's a natural part of it how can we take when an individual board member makes an advocacy to say is that what all of you want I'm used to having that be some sort of a protocol we have so that it doesn't feel like one single board member's voice is asking for something that they might have the impetus but once that is sort of surfaced we then consider it and say yes and then we give me or Dan or whoever a directive to consider that particular input because I think right now it's it's feeling those conversations started in 2018 before I was elected to the board I sat at committee meetings over there beforehand and listened and

232we were I think the board was moving that direction and then covet happened when things went crazy but I mean it's in my mind we've been at this for almost five years now but we haven't had a process in like Denise suggests right perhaps our process could be if one of us has an idea we put it on the agenda for committee we discussed it as a group and if there's consensus that this is something we're interested in we give it to you and then it makes it onto the list to be fair I did ask it to be on the agenda a month ago and it's not on the agenda so that process is apparently not working yeah that you're you're right about that and that falls on me and I apologize for that

233that was a short that was short-sighted for me not to include it so I apologize and and I wouldn't even go as far as Denise you mentioned you know if we feel that there's something we want to invest in I wouldn't even go that far as much as I think Don what you're asking is get it on the list to be prioritized right and the experts tell us if it's worth investing in and then we'll take that that feedback and and move on appropriately but if it's something that we've discussed and we say oh we think these are good projects we should be doing but just never get around to talking about them or doing that maybe this Pro this new vetting process for capital projects is put them on the list see where they

234go maybe there's a couple that'll pop to the top I wouldn't even use the word prioritized I would want them to tell me where where that was and the priorities as far as that's my point that's it you know we've raised the the ideas but we shouldn't be that's what this whole new process is supposed to be doing my only thought kind of going back to the original with Verity was is there a way for us to say when we are doing a project can we take off some of the boxes from an ideal standpoint for example I'm looking at the bathroom here right we're remodeling Bob's rooms are there any ideas from the Verity work that we can use when we remodel that bathroom like you get more efficient lights you get more efficient

235toilets Water Systems whatever it is I mean that way you're kind of inching towards that goal even if you can't afford doing the big project can you add on maybe a small percentage and kind of move us in that direction for everything we do it's the only other thing that came to mind we are following a philosophy so all our new lighting is Led uh lower efficient lower efficiency and um our toilets are low volume flushing as well as their mechanisms so we are following that Footsteps in everything that we do with our projects thank you okay you're welcome the honest thank you well we're putting a million dollar roof on like right exactly so like a million dollar roof were we and I I think that we have talked to them about that is

236that the same roof that they're taking all the Rocks off of right because we had that conversation with Verity while we were up on that roof if we were to put solar up here would the new roof support that weight so I at least at some point that conversation occurred because I don't know if you've seen this roof but it has like River stones on top and then thousands of pounds of river Stones well once that weight is gone then we should surely be able to foreign Hills are called ballasted roofs where it's just fasting around the edges and you lay all the heavy Stone the theory was a stone keeps the sun off increases the life um of the roof but the more you walk on it you know they are around stones but

237they're not all perfectly around um you know the roofs do um they last a little bit longer um but now we take that balance and weight off so now it comes to uh we have to have an engineer come in and check our trusses and our in sections in different sections of the building um might be able to support them now it will be educational section a great chance over the main gyms not so sure because of the span we are reducing weight but what is you know what is the difference um and what's the wind load um so um right yeah we can we can proceed with that with the engineering you know um while we were considering including the million dollar roof on were we considering the load that would go on if

238we were to put solar like is that just a constant filter that we have any time we make a decision about how we're going to proceed that we look at what are the possibilities for yeah so our water savings for flushing toilets our new roofs um will be fully ballasted they're done they're they're glued down um so they you know it's a matter of um if you want to put solar on there it's a matter of we just have to make the connections through the roof uh to fasten the solar and also get the electricity done so those can be modified and obviously you want to do it on on the roof you know the newest Rifts that you can right and I I don't recall seeing when we reviewed that bid if anything was

239at if we asked that question right I I don't know either in Vernon Hills you know Dan insured you know Verna Hills the the new gym Edition is solar ready it was the roofless engineered to make sure they could handle the ballast in the way to solar panels so what I'm hearing is you are making those decisions through that lens as best you can as best you can yes in a new new building that was all set and engineered uh so we're ready um it could come down to how much solar can we put on the roof depending on a trust size you know you might think well we could fill up this whole roof um because of span because of this you can only fill you know do three quarters of it or half

240of it so you know that would have to work out when they you know when we come to that that point that would be part of the engineering well we would definitely depend on you as the expert to help us understand our limitations when it comes to energy efficient modifications limitations and possibilities [Music] so any other costs okay moving on to F disposable equipment that will also come up for about next week if anybody needs a tractor is it going cheap anything to say about that no okay um that ends items for discussion um we've had a future agenda items it's like we have some budget calendar information in April some resolutions in may as well as our Lake County indemnification agreement nothing else to add uh yeah Our intention is on at the March

241board meeting we we actually got it for today yeah this morning uh the scoreboard the pricing for to replace the scoreboard at Vernon Hills which is part of our summer Capital um that's 54 000 822 and we were estimating 55. so is that a project that's running through the new Matrix the spelled new Matrix uh nope so let me let me reframe so this this list of projects that was developed um over the winter and presented to the board in January that was developed outside of this prioritization process um because that process was not figured out yet and so at that time what I informed the board was we agree that this process is important however it's not done yet and so we the the ship still has to keep moving we need to do

242projects for this summer we are going to have to follow our same methodology last year of really mark telling me what the projects need to be after looking at all the data that he looks at so that's how we generated the list back in January um so to answer your question no that's not part of it this is part of a scheduled end of life replacement for the scoreboard fair enough understood thank you we categorized our projects for the summer we went over the list so we categorized them as either health and safety or asset preservation and of useful life for everything that we've got on our list so we'll see the scoreboard next week for vote as well for approval yeah it's through the co-op Club pricing so it's over 50 000 so it

243requires bid but through the coop it's already been through that process and so that'll come for approval um so letting you know that that'll be there um so you're not surprised and then in terms of budget calendar what I'll give you in April is a draft to um hopefully have our fiscal 24 or have our budget done sooner than we ever have before so we've got a lot of things in place to allow us to do that we have a teacher contract we've got a staffing plan um almost all the staff we'll have the ESP next month you know so we'll have a lot of things in place that fully equip us to be able to figure this out and get everything tied up sooner than we had before which just helps everybody involved to

244kind of know you know what's the plan for next year sooner uh rather than later so I'm excited for that um and then we have our some of our year-end transfers that we'll I'll give you in due time any other agenda items future agenda items so now keeps pointing at you do you have an agenda yes specifically other than you know our continued discussion that we just had so that's I I'm not formally asking for us to put an agenda item on our next because Dan has informed us that he is working on the solar project and that that will go on the list and then it'll be something that I'll see next time the capital projects comes up okay well that insurance that's enough at 9 16.