Wilmette Public Schools District 39 Board of Education Meeting June 15, 2026

001I hereby call to order this regular meeting of the board of education for Wilmap Public Schools District 39 this Monday, June 15, 2026. Will the clerk please call the role? >> Ann Hart >> here. >> Judy Berlin >> here. >> Aaron Stone >> here. >> Christend Castro >> here. >> Alison Pafas >> here. >> Amy Paling >> here. >> Katie Hilton >> here. Thank you. Principal Cindy Anderson is here to introduce members of the 2026 Wilmet alumni, graduating seniors from New Trier High School to lead us in the pledge of allegiance. Good evening everybody. Thank you so much for having us tonight. Um, this group is a little taller than my normal group of students doing the pledge. Um, but I wanted to bring them here tonight because at the end of every year, the

002principles get the awesome opportunity to invite our seniors back to the elementary school. And it is filled with nostalgia and memories and fun. The Ramona kids this year even asked me to bring out the parachute and they played in gym like kindergarteners. Um, they reconnect with teachers, the parents reconnect, the kids reconnect, the central kids even had a party after the party because they were so excited to reconnect with each other. There's something really special about what D39 does for kids. So, to all of you, thank you. I'm extra emotional because one of these is mine. Um, so it's a really exciting time for these kids and I thought you might want to share in their joy. Hi, my name is Stephen. I'm going to Miami, Ohio next year to study business. And my favorite

003memories were the DC trip and outdoor. >> What elementary school did you go to, Stephen? >> Oh, I went to Harper. >> Hi, my name's Owen. I was from Central. Um, I'm going to Indiana next year to study business. And one of my favorite things about district 39 was my favorite teacher, my third grade teacher, Miss Marbelli. Um, was awesome. Hi, my name is Zach Meyers. Uh, I went to Ramona. Uh, I'm going to University of Illinois Urbana Champagne next year. Um, I'm studying finance and data science. And my favorite District 39 memory was gym class with Mr. Toy. >> Hi, I'm Samantha. Um, I went to McKenzie and I'm going to the University of Florida to study finance as well. And my favorite memory was outdoor ed and my first and third grade teachers

004at Mackenzie, Miss Lucin and Miss Saffron. Hi everyone, my name is Lucia Paz. I went to Ramona Elementary. Um, I'm going to Fairfield University to row and study marketing. And my favorite memory from district 39 was probably just how supported I felt by all my teachers, specifically Mr. Brady and Miss Young. >> Hi, my name is Gabby Gurian. I went to McKenzie. Um, and next year I'm going to University of Virginia and I'm planning on studying political science or public policy. Um, and then my favorite memory is probably fourth grade farewell and also my eighth grade teacher, Mr. Beckman. Um, I'm Phoei Karavvis. I went to Harper Elementary School and next year I'll be studying special education at the University of South Carolina. And my favorite part about District 39 was probably my teachers, Mr.

005Brady and Mr. Reynolds to be specific. Now, can you please stand for the pledge of allegiance? >> I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Well, I just want to take a quick moment to thank you guys for coming out here. I'm sure there are other coming here this evening. I'm sure there are other things you could be doing on this beautiful summer night. Um, but it's really fun to see you all and hear from you all. And we know with um your strong foundation from district 39 schools that you will be very successful in your next endeavors and we wish you all the best of luck. Thank you so much. And

006this is the time where I usually tell the little kids that they can meet me here and I'll give them a small, you know, you know, merchandise or little gift for being here and then they can go meet their parents. But I'm guessing you guys can figure that all out. But I will meet you and give you something small on behalf of the board. Again, thank you so much for being here and good luck to all of you. >> Thank you. Okay, we would now like to recognize two outstanding athletes from Wilmet Junior High School. and principal John Baffico will give us a a little bit of background on these outstanding students. Okay, good. So, we are honoring two WJHS track and field athletes tonight. Campbell Fazio and Tessa Bodner, who represented WJHS at the

007state track and field competition. Campbell finished seventh in hurdles and eighth in the 200 meters, which earned her two state medals. She also ran a 13.22 in preliminaries for the 100 meters. Tessa finished 20th in the 200 meters. Congratulations on your success at state. I know Campbell is here with us tonight and she'd like to say a couple words. >> Hi everyone. Um, I just wanted to thank the board for having me here tonight and I would like to thank my coaches because they have helped me reach to be where I am today. Um, I was also wondering if we could get a track for the school because it would help so many other students become faster and also get to state track to help you guys win more medals. >> We agree that's an

008excellent idea. Thank you for having me here tonight. >> Thank you for being here. Very impressive. >> Oh, that's right. Campbell, we do. Please come on up here. We do have a small gift for you as well and really appreciate you coming in and are quite impressed. I think too if your parents are here and they're welcome to meet you in the hallway as well. Thank you so much for being here this evening. Congratulations. >> All right, I'll now turn it over to Dr. Kremcoly who will introduce the AP candidate for Ramona. >> Thank you. If I can invite uh Mr. Joseph Sloan to approach the podium. We are excited to introduce the chosen candidate for the assistant principal position at Ramona Elementary School. Mr. Joseph Sloan has served as dean of students for the

009CICS in Irving Park uh school since uh 2017. In this role, he led schoolwide MTSS behavioral systems, including data analysis, intervention planning, and progress monitoring, and oversaw daily school operations, including scheduling, supervision, coverage, ordering, and logistics. He also led attendance interventions um to support chronically absent students, including family outreach, data tracking, staff coordination, and managed school compliance processes. Uh most importantly, he provided support for students and for staff, learning and growth, establishing positive collaborative relationships rooted in connection and in care. And that really came through in his interviews with us. Prior to his work as dean, Mr. Sloan served as instructional coach for enrichment fourth and fifth grade and schoolwide and also as a second grade teacher. So, we're really pleased to welcome him to our community, but I should say to welcome him back.

010There seems to be a theme this evening of welcoming some of our uh graduates back because Mr. Sloan is also a proud graduate of D39 and Neutra High School and seems so thrilled to be returning to his community and we're really thrilled to welcome him back. Mr. Sloan, >> thank you so much. I want to sincerely thank you all so much for the opportunity to join uh Ramona School and District 39. As you said, this is especially meaningful to me having grown up in Wultt and being a graduate of district 39 myself. So returning to this community as an educator and school leader really feels like a full circle moment. I have such a deep appreciation for the impact this district can have on students and families and I'm honored to now have the chance

011to serve this community in a new way. I'm incredibly excited to join the Ramona team and begin building relationships with student, staff, and families. I'm especially looking forward to bringing my background in student support, relationship centered leadership, school culture, and teacher coaching to this role. I'm grateful for the opportunity to partner with this team in service of the students and to help continue the strong work already happening at Ramona. Thank you all so much. >> Thank you. >> Not to have Mr. Sloan left out. I think we have a gift for him as well. It'd be so great if they were though. >> Congratulations. >> All right. Um, I now seek a motion to approve the minutes for the May 18th, 2026 Board of Education regular and executive session meetings. I move to approve the

012board of education minutes for the May 18th, 2026 regular and executive session meetings. May I have a second? >> Second. >> The motion has been made and seconded. Board members, are there any comments, errors, or omissions to the minutes? Okay, seeing none, all of those in favor of approving the minutes as submitted, please indicate by saying yay. >> The motion carries. >> This is now an opportunity for the public to address the board on any topic. Are there any audience members that would like to speak at this time? Okay, great. you may please stand to address the board or and approach the podium if that works. Um, and I will remind you to state your name and community of residents. And by board directive, you are allowed three minutes to address the board at this

013time. >> Evening. Thank you. My name is Carolyn. I'm a WT resident and um I'm here with a group of district 39 parents who are concerned about screen time especially and um I first wanted to start by acknowledging we have many incredible teachers um who have been through a lot I'm sure the past six years between COVID and um all the online learning they had to do and I'm There's a lot of adjustments that have been made over the years. Um, but this emergency phase is over. Children are back in classrooms and we don't need to use era tools anymore. Um, iPad gamification learning, that sort of thing. Um and more and more data is emerging from pediatric and scientific communities uh showing that early and excessive screen time is not harmless and in and

014associated with concerns in attention, behavior, sleep, language development, academic performance and social emotional health. And so for many parents um of course this is a developmental concern for many of us and we'd like the to take a fresh look at the technology practices especially for the elementary and younger youngest students. Um, not because we're completely anti-technology, of course. I know typing, my son's going to be doing typing classes next year. So, I understand, you know, range. Um, but we know that a lot has changed since with that. And I'd also like to add um I'm on the board of the green wet and so this is also important for me as well that we'd love to see um if an area of opportunity would be adding some environmental hands-on uh curriculum in classrooms. So getting

015off of iPads and some more hands-on environmental um learning. And I'd like to now introduce the next speaker is a neurologist and district 39 parent and she will be speaking more specifically about what we're learning about screen exposure and developing. >> Thank you. >> Okay, just one moment. >> Okay, great. Thank you. Go ahead. >> Good evening. I'm Dr. Elizabeth Harris. I'm a neurologist and the parent of a rising kindergartener here in the district. The reason this topic matters to me is that the K through five peers are when the brain is wiring itself. The white matter tracks connecting language, attention, impulse control centers are actively minating throughout elementary school and that process is shaped by what the children experience. And it seems that screen time is not neutral during this window. environmental exposure acting

016on a brain under heavy construction. We now have MRI data showing that screen time in young children is associated with disorganized wiring in the brain's poor language circuits. The track connecting here is responsible for speech production and comprehension. There was a study of over 8,000 children ages 9 to 11 and more daily screen time predicted weaker connectivity in the brain's impulse control circuit over two years. Also, EEG studies of brain electrical activity show that early screen exposures associated with brain wave changes that account for a meaningful portion of executive functional differences that are seen later in childhood. These changes in the brain show up in the classroom, but for each additional one hour of screen time, it points to a 9 to 10% lower odds of meeting grade level benchmarks in reading and math. Kindergarteners

017exceeding one hour of developmentally vulnerable across every domain, physical, social, emotional, language, communication, and this is regardless of all other factors including family income. The direction of causation matters here too because screen use at age three predicts behavioral dysregulation later at age four and it's not in the reverse and we see this across all elementary ages. We also know that many children are already exceeding the recommended a screen time limit at home. So we don't want to compound this in the classroom. Our school should protect the developmental experiences that screens tend to displace the movement the hands-on learning conversation out social interaction. I do understand the district's position that the you know certain grade third grade standardized tests on an iPad and the question is are we going to prioritize the children's neural development or

018the ability to navigate you know a standardized test on a device. I think you can give second graders brief structured practice, you know, the the spring before the test, a a targeted proportionate solution, but the rationale doesn't justify putting iPads in hands of kindergarteners, first graders every day. I I want to reiterate too that we're not anti-technology. It's just about matching the tool, you know, to the developmental stage of the child using it. I think you know um I guess I I'm asking that you sort of urgently re-evaluate the current practice. Consider removing iPads from the kindergarten and first grade classrooms and limiting screen time thereafter to designated tech learning labs. >> Thank you. That's three minutes. Thank you. I I will say there is another time in the uh point in the agenda for

019public comment if and you would have another minute if you um desire. Thank you. >> Hi everyone. I'm Rachel Ginsburg. I worked at Google for eight years. I understand that technology is important. I'm also a parent as part of our district who wants to help district 39 lead and our children thrive. Many of us know families who are looking at area private schools or they've already chosen private schools because those schools are delaying routine technology until fifth grade or later. This is not a fringe concern. It's becoming a real educational value that families are using to make decisions. We want to make sure that Harper Central Mackenzie that enrollment continues to increase. The evidence is moving in one direction. Pediatricians, psychologists, neuroscientists, teachers, parents are all becoming more concerned about what early routine screen exposure

020is displaying. Sustained attention, handwriting, reading stamina, outdoor play, problem solving, face-to-face social development. District 39 has always prided itself on being thoughtful, high performing, and child- centered. We moved here for the schools. That's what everyone says. So the question is, do we want to continue to lead on what the data is telling us or do we want to trail behind? We do not need to wait five or 10 more years with this current experiment that's going on with these five-year-olds having iPads. After another cohort of children has passed through elementary school to admit that we overcorrected during CO, we can make a course correction now, which many states are doing in the United States. It does not require eliminating technology. It does require using technology more intentionally. It requires asking, is this device truly adding

021something developmentally valuable or is it replacing something better? You're asking the district to adopt a more developmentally appropriate technology policy. Remove iPads from kindergarten and first grade. Minimize routine iPad use in the youngest grades. Preserve hands-on and social learning. Delay regular device exposure until children are older and better able to use a tool rather than be shaped by it. And be transparent with families about when and why screens are being used. Please, District 39, I'm going to get emotional because it's about our children. Please be a leader like so many states are being. I know we can do this. Thank you so much for your time. >> Thank you. Hello uh good evening members of board of education and my name is Elena Rednik which most of you already know. I'm back here today to

022yet again bring to the board to the board's attention to the problem of barely restricted and excessive use of technology in classroom and very real risks this brings to the developing brains of our children. While there are only a few of us here, there were there were over 50 parents interested in reducing screen time in school in the very recent local group poll. There were also over a thousand local parents who signed our change or petition to urge the district to reconsider its ad tech reliance. I appreciate that the board and Tony de Monte here heard some of our concerns last year and banned YouTube screens as rewards and leisure time and delay and delayed taking iPad home to fifth grade. These have been noticeable positive developments in this area. However, they truly barely moved

023the needle. Many problems still remain as will be seen in strategic plan presentation later today. Technology use was number two theme in focus groups as well as number one as what have we missed highlights. Highress and junior high students brought up tech testing fatigue yet rethinking technology is not explicitly made part of the final strate strategic plan and I would like to say to ask why the district still lacks clear tech policy by school and grade level with clear time and app limit. Here is an example of D34 uh very clear uh at the policy by school by grade level. What are the limits? What are the apps? What is iPads used for? This excuse me is T39 very very vague very uh unclear little about what green and red technology is. Uh despite lacking

024clear policy and strict device safeguards, we parents are essentially forced to consent to our kids' use of iPads and release any liability should something go wrong online. The district still has an astonishing number of approved apps. As of May 18th, there were 200 approved apps or children. 180 of them are approved for kindergarteners, first, second, third grade. uh 81 of these apps were approved in 200 2021. Where is the certainty that apps or their privacy policies haven't changed especially to include some sort of AI? Can we as parents be sure that what you give our children access is access to is safe? Uh and there are 27 apps labeled as other, not math, not reading, not science, other. And their names are not clear to me as a parent. And I don't want my children

025to use to access something that I have no visibility of. In addition to this long live list of approved apps, some are not even on it, such as Safari, which is available on each iPad starting kindergarten. These 200 apps are not the only apps children have access to. In Spanish class this year, kids were to use green screen app, which is not on the list of approved apps. And I would like to ask the board and Mr. Deonte here, what visibility do you even have of what our children have access to? >> Thank you. Uh, hi, my name is Max Resnik. I'm a Wilmet resident. Uh, and I'm here to continue my wife's observations. Uh, you know, she she talked about the apps and I would like to talk about AI. You know the district

026created a very vague AI framework but AI is still a new technology that effect of which on developing brain of children has not been studied and as such should not be allowed uh at all to students well into junior high yet fifth graders use it in class. My biggest concern of all, however, is not the excessive number of apps uh you're giving our kids access to, but the inadequate control that would prevent them from swiping between apps and are going to other unapproved apps or websites in Safari. There is no clear understanding whether app store is locked. Why would Safari be allowed? We've talked to multiple parents and heard many stories of inappropriate use of school issued iPads uh which not only affect that child's learning but that of kids around them. I'm happy to

027provide examples in writing playing Minecraft, Pokemon and other countless new games on Safari, selling buying things on various platforms during school hours are just a few. The district prides itself on focusing on building a community of students. Social emotional learning, but how do soft start in third grade spending mass instead of chatting and catching up serving this purpose? Not to mention clip creates for kids to then refocus and be present for circle time and further learning. You insist that iPads and typing are preparing our kids for the future, but select college professors are already switching to having students write assess assignments and tests by hand in class because otherwise students use the eye to do the work for them. By not prioritizing handwriting, you're creating a disservice for them because such changes in college will

028keep happening. Typing can be mastered in two three weeks of August class. Legible writing by hand cannot. uh you actively promote reading on iPads starting in second grade and in some cases even earlier teacher dependent even though study after study bring up the fact that we do not retain information as well from digital skin as from a paper book and that even additional power hour on a small screen increases me in children why not invest in cheer class libraries instead kindergarteners 5year-olds still get access to iPads and so-called techn technology lessons. Instead, they need an extra 30 minutes of free play or recess a week. Um, I want to also bring your attention that iPads are not the only screens our kids are staring at. Since last school year, projectors have been replaced by smart

029TVs. >> Thank you for consideration. Hi, my name is Joanna Spelman. Um, I don't have any prepared remarks and I don't want to retread a lot of ground that folks just covered uh very aptly, but I also as a D39 parent with uh a rising first grader and rising fourth grader McKenzie. I just wanted to lend my voice of concern about the use of screen screens in elementary school uh classrooms. Um, from my perspective, I'm hardressed to think of a reason that a kindergartener or a first grader would need a to have a screen at at any point during the day, the school day. Frankly, setting aside whatever the the test testing concerns there are, and I understand we're working within a state uh framework, I'm hardressed to think why a second, third, or fourth

030grader really needs a screen in elementary school as well. Um the emerging data is very troubling to me about the effects that screens have on young learners and um from my perspective I think you know the burden of proof should really be on promoting the use of text. Does it improve my kids critical thinking? Is it improving my kids reading comprehension? Is it improving their math skills? Is it improving their social emotional skills? Is it improving our ability to relate to other people to communicate with other people to build those really foundational educational skills? I suspect the answer with respect to screens is probably no on all those fronts. But I think that that should be the the test the burden when we're considering using screens in in our elementary schools. So I would just

031ask the board to as as others have you know reconsider the use of screens in elementary schools and definitely improve communications to parents. What are the clear guidelines? what are the limits? What are the restrictions? So that when we come into school for back to school night, you know, we can have a sheet. We know what we know exactly what's going on and what our kids are going to be doing in the classroom from the very very beginning. So thank you. >> Thank you. Is there anyone else who would like to speak at this time? Okay. Thank you. And there will be another opportunity for public comment later in the agenda this evening. We will now move to board reports starting with committee facility development. Mrs. C Dcastro, I don't believe we have anything this

032evening. >> No, do we? You do. Okay. >> Uh the facility development committee met on June 8th as part of the committee of the whole. Mr. Boltire updated the board on non-classroom space use as the schools as part of the action steps from the district's strategic plan and how the spaces are utilized. The board was also informed of two summer projects at Central and Harper schools that will be entirely funded by the PTA PTO. At Central, the PTA has raised funds to provide new stage lighting for the auditorium. And at Harper, the main playground will get new equipment to replace the existing playground equipment. When these types of projects occur at a D39 school, the board enters into a donation agreement with each PTA PTO group prior to the project, which will be voted on

033on tonight's consent agenda. Mr. Boltier also reviewed the five-year capital project summary. Great. Thank you. And now, school finance. Mrs. Mailing. >> Yes. Uh, school finance also met on June 8th as part of the committee of the whole. We reviewed the fiscal year 2027 tenative budgets for D39 and for the Wilmet community special education agreement, Wixie. Approval of these tenative budgets appear later on our agenda this evening. Uh we also reviewed the annual resolutions and renewals which are recommended for approval later on this evening's agenda. >> Thank you. And strategy committee miss. >> Yes. The strategy committee also met on June 8th as part of the committee of the whole. The board received and reviewed in-depth reports on the district's strategic plan work for 2025 2026. That's the one that just is sun setting to

034be clear on that. Mrs. Jackson shared detailed presentations on spring academic assessment results and social emotional learning assessment results. The board discussed the scores, successes, and areas to target for improvement and recommended changes and additions to screening tools. In addition, Dr. Kmcoli and Mrs. Jackson provided an overview of the draft of the 2026 2031 Wow. Okay. Strategic plan. The five strategic opportunities of the plan were reviewed and recommendations were discussed. The 2026 to 2031 strategic plan that will be voted on by the board later this evening. That's my report. >> Great. Thank you. >> Leaison reports. We will begin with community review committee. Back to you, Miss Stone. >> Yes. The CRC met on Tuesday, June 2nd for its final meeting of the 2025 20226 school year. As the board knows, this year's CRC report

035entitled Supporting Educator Well-being was presented to the board at its May 18th meeting. The CRC is now welcoming new members and is inviting other community members who are interested to join the CRC for the next school year. At the meeting on June 2nd, the CRC members discussed possible topics for next year um to study. I think there were, depending on how you're counting, there were about sevenish topics that were um that were suggested during a very robust discussion, but they will vote to finalize next year's topic um when they resume meeting this fall. >> Okay, great. And uh district strategic advisory team, Mrs. Pathless and Mrs. Palin. >> Sure. I'm happy to uh provide that update. The DESAT met on May 28th. At that meeting, our strategic plan goal champions reviewed the final end ofear

036progress report for the current district strategic plan. That full report will be presented later this evening. And in addition, we were provided a preview of the district's proposal for its new strategic plan. Members provided very valuable feedback which has been considered and incorporated into the plan. along with the feedback from the board following Monday's committee of the whole. So that draft will also be presented later this evening. And we are really excited about the significant progress that has been accomplished throughout the last five years and look forward to the new opportunities and focus areas for our strategic plan. >> Absolutely. Thank you. Parent teacher advisory committee. Mrs. to Castro. Parent teacher advisory committee met to review the district's discipline and bullying prevention policies, discuss strategies and results of current efforts, and identify possible programming and

037instructions. Great. All right. And now moving on to Wilmet Intergovernmental Cooperation Committee. Miss Stone and Dr. Kremcoli, I believe, will provide a update. >> I think Miss Stone is going to >> and you want to add something if I left anything out. >> Okay. So um the intergovernmental cooperation working group met on June 11th. Um unfortunately I could not make the meeting and I discovered afterwards that the people from Avoka and Nutrier school districts also could not make the meeting. I think this time of year was tricky. Um and that come becomes relevant to something I'm going to say here in a minute. But I did get the notes from the meeting and the um recommendations that the group came away with after discussing their um topics at that meeting. One is that they are

038recommending that the intergovernmental as you know the uh the topic this year is civility. Um they are recommending that inter intergovernmental public official civility training and social media training become part of orientation for board members in the spring. They are recommending that um uh that there be an a voluntary adoption by local candidates of a civility pledge. They recommended um encouragement of participation in third spaces and public activities. And if you don't know what that means, I think I'll do my best to explain it, but um this notion that, you know, people from the village are gathering at different events, not just in silos at like just the schools or the park districts, maybe something more like the block party or other things that might start to happen more frequently. Um they recommended reviewing all

039governmental policies on social media, decorum, public comment, and communications to ensure compliance with recent First Amendment jurist prudence. They recommended encouraging the remaining governments in wtt and they specifically u mentioned the school districts so that's where we come in here who have not yet taken the Cook County against hate pledge to do so and um I'm thinking that that could maybe be something we look at in depth and add maybe to new business at the committee of the whole in August. I'm not wedded to that idea, but it's something that I think we should all look at individually and then discuss as a board if we're going to uh be a governmental body that is going to adopt that. And then finally, they recommended exploring lecture andor workshop series regarding civility topics, perhaps using September

04028th, which is good neighbors day, as a kickoff. So that's what I have from the notes that I got. Do you have anything else? No, I think that um those ideas are really good ones and I think we need to spend a little more time exploring um that last one that you were sharing. Um but I think they're all good ideas and certainly supportive of of what I think the group as a whole is attempting to accomplish. >> Scheduling this meeting was really difficult. I think it got rescheduled like three times and unfortunately ended up falling on a time when so many of us were busy with end of school year activities. So, >> right. And I don't think they have an official next date for their next meeting. >> Okay. Thank you for the

041update. Wilmet Community Special Education Agreement Advisory Board. Mrs. Hilton. The Wilmet Community Special Education Agreement Advisory Board met today to approve um advisory board meeting dates for the 2026 2027 school year, the tentative budget and the fiscal year to date activity. >> Thank you. Illinois Association of School Boards, Mrs. Berlin. >> The um 2026 joint conference for the Illinois Association of School Boards is scheduled for November 20th to the 22nd. Um I attended last year and found it inspirational. If any board members want to join me in attending the conference this year, you can let me know or uh Ann know. I'm volunteering Ann or Carrie and you can look at him. >> Great. Thank you. and then we'll proceed with legislative updates. Mrs. Berlin as well. >> This is just a short update. I

042had reported previously on the notice to remedy legislation which was Senate Bill 2914. As an update, that bill passed the Illinois Senate in April and it passed out of the House of Representatives in May. It now awaits Governor Prit Pritsker's signature to become law. I I wanted to share that because although the Illinois Association of School Boards found portions of this bill to be problematic, um there are other organizations that found this portions of this legislation to be positive. For example, the Illinois Education Association feels that it can protect teachers and school staff who are wrongfully accused in that they will not have to worry about false accusations following them throughout their careers. So, I just wanted to kind of share that because I don't think that was part of what we had heard before

043and we'll it's on Governor Priter's desk. Okay, >> great. Thank you. We will now move on to information items starting first with written communication. Dr. Kremcoli. >> Yes, thank you. Uh, the board received written communication from Miss D regarding her children, from Mrs. John regarding kindergarten eligibility requirements, from Mrs. Spataphor and Mrs. Tuttle regarding screen usage in school and from Mrs. Soho regarding the strategic plan. We appreciate all of that feedback and engagement. In terms of administrative announcements from the superintendent and our staff, uh first of all, as we were just mentioning, end of school celebrations. School just ended. Um, and we have so many celebrations to acknowledge from our end ofear reports to the board to the incredible music performances, from retirement celebrations to the academic growth of our students, which has really been

044uh spectacular this year and the tremendous accompl accomplishments of our students at regional, state, and national competitions that were celebrated uh at the end of May at the new special student recognition event. um and the successes of the conclusion of our five-year strategic plan. Um there's really so much that um has been outstanding this school year that we have to celebrate. Um our fourth graders have um been celebrated as they prepare to move on to Highest and our WJHS graduation was just a wonderful conclusion to the school year. I want to take a moment to thank our teachers and our administrators for all of their hard work this school year and to recognize and appreciate our students for their commitment to excellence within the classroom and beyond and to celebrate our parents and our community

045members for their partnership and support. Thank you all for your support in the learning and growth accomplished this school year. I also uh want to just make a special announcement or a special recognition of the culminating event for our WGHS students. Our graduation at Newer High School this year was quite a celebration. I'm really grateful for the team's exceptional work um in planning for that event. Um, and a special thank you to principal John Baffo, who I know is here with us this evening, and our eighth grade level administrator Rob Miller, who um, spent a lot of time really organizing and reviewing and updating our plans to make it a really wonderful celebration. So, on Friday, we said farewell to our outstanding group of students and staff, and we're looking forward to them enjoying a

046fun summer and us having a really productive summer um, as we prepare for the year ahead. Um, I'll just continue on uh the personnel report. We're continuing to interview and hire teachers and certified staff as well as some support staff for the upcoming school year. On this evening's personnel report, we're proud to welcome several outstanding uh new members to our D39 family. We've been really impressed uh with each candidate pool and are proud to recommend these strong candidates to join our teams here. um under PTO and a um project donation agreements um as we've mentioned this evening and talked about at committee of the whole there are two different projects that are planned for the summer that are being funded by our elementary schools PTAs and PTO's at central the PTA has raised funds to

047provide new stage lighting for the auditorium and at Harper the main playground will get new equipment to replace the existing playground equipment when these types of projects occur at at a D39 school. The board enters into a donation agreement with each PTO or PTA group that's making the donation prior to the project, which um will be voted on later this evening. Um we also had a really important day today. Um the Wilmetwide reunification training occurred with a lot of organization from our very own expert Tony Damonte and the Wilmet Police Department partnering with him as well. Um, we hosted reunification training that included all of our administrators, our secretaries, student services staff along with our mech staff, including our secretaries, administrators here. Um, but we were also joined by partners from across Wilmet um including

048all of the schools in Wilmet, private schools, um, independent schools. Uh, I saw Lyola was there. Um, also the park district was there, the library was there. We had representatives from every entity um serving our youth throughout our community and it was really a unique event for this. Um the I I love you guys uh team was here training us and um the reunification process that we were trained in would be utilized if we ever had a largecale emergency at one of our schools and needed to enact a strong chain of custody and accountability system to ensure that our students safely reunite with their families during um what will likely be somewhat chaotic and and potentially anxietyfilled um situation for for everyone. We're really proud to have so many government partners show up and participate

049in this training and I think it's really exceptional that our community can partner in this way. Um I think Tony said it best today during the introduction of the training. It's really helpful for us to all be speaking the same language and using the same terms. It will be helpful for our students, so many of whom um visit each of these different centers throughout their lives and throughout their day sometimes um that everyone knows what we're talking about. but also for their parents and their family members. When we say lockdown, what does that mean and what can they expect? Um, so it really was just a a really outstanding training and we're so grateful that so many people gave of their time to come together for what was a very full and very intense day

050of training. Um, and we're really grateful for Tony for his leadership for this work. Um, because without Tony, we would not, um, know how to even begin some of this planning. And so, um, it really takes that that vision and that partnership, um, and the partnership throughout Wilmet. So, on behalf of our students, our staff, um, our administrators, and our community, we're really grateful for that opportunity. So, thank you. um the Freedom of Information Act. The district received a commercial FOYA request from um sorry to the district for general purchasing records from January 20th, 2026 to the current request date of 520 2026 and that the district also received multiple PTABs in the last month. an estimate of the f an estimate of the financial impact has been prepared for the board should the appellets

051uh be successful in their appeals and lots reported there I'm happy to answer any questions if anyone has any board members any questions okay and we will continue on with the annual business >> okay wonderful um well we're really excited this evening to be discussing and presenting the district 39 strategic plan we're celebrating ating the conclusion of our our 2526 school year with an endofear strategic plan presentation. Um and then we will move into presentation of the draft of our new plan. Um we know that the board has seen some of this already and so it's our it's our intention to provide a high level review not only for the board but for our community as well knowing that there is a lot of work still uh to come in our planning before next school

052year. So, um, with that, I see that Kelly is sharing her screen, and I know that our gold champions are are ready to jump in, but this is our five-year strategic plan, and we have accomplished so much in this plan over the five years. And at the conclusion of this year, uh, we really have recognized a lot of the fruits of our labor, um, our hard work, the board's vision, and our community's partnership and support of the learning and growth of our students. and so much that's been accomplished throughout our community. So, we're pleased that we've made so much progress and yet we know that there's always continued room for improvement. And so, we're eager and excited about the new plan that lies ahead for us. As we get started, I just want to give

053a big thank you to our district strategic advisory team. The names on the screen are some of those who have served over the past five years. um administrators, uh teachers from Wilmet Education Association members, support staff, union members, and um really importantly to the pro process, excuse me, our our district parents and families who have given every single year great feedback on the action steps, have um really helped us to be clear in what we're aiming to do, and have helped to uh formulate a plan over the past five years that has been really meaningful for our students and for our staff. So with that, I'm going to turn to uh goal one uh student achievement and growth where we're ensuring a differentiated education that provides students a strong foundation of rigorous academic learning. Um

054you'll see on the screen we have our outcome indicators on the left. We'll talk briefly about those. Um most of this was presented at the committee of the whole meeting uh earlier this month. Um and we will also spend a few minutes going over some of our strategic or our strategy indicators. Um uh the action steps we have the first one is was to analyze student data and collaborative teams after each benchmark period. Uh to make adjustments to tier one instruction and identify students who require tier two or three services. So um within that intervention and enrichment and either language arts or math um that's an ongoing process while we've completed it for this year it will start again next year. Um it's just part of what we do. Um number two is just to

055introduce foundational principles of universal design for learning to support planning and use of differentiation in the classroom at the tier one or at at the the core level. Uh but we had uh sessions for universal design at both of our institute days this year and we had many staff members uh just become more familiar with the principles for UDL. Um three is a very exciting thing. We've supported implementation in professional learning for recently adopted curriculum uh for our K4 bridges math and number corner um for our UFly foundational skills um and for our uh 58 social studies team and really I think Kristen will highlight in a minute but um a lot of that um early literacy and early numeracy um that's addressed by these two by both Bridges and UFly um have really shown

056up in what we're measuring with our students. Uh and then pilot and evaluate multiple curricula grade K8 uh English language arts to make a recommendation. And we are so excited to um we've already actually begun the process of training and implementation for our teachers. Um in K through five, we have adopted collaborative literacy from collaborative classroom. And in grades six through eight, it's common lit 360. Um teachers are engaging this summer and some summer writing work and um there are some warm-up training scheduled already for August uh to get people ready to uh get started in this at the beginning of the new school year. Uh number five, expand the reach of instructional coaching through an increase in individual and team coaching cycles and ongoing professional learning. Again, um this is ongoing, but it's also

057something um that now has really become part of what we do in our daily work with our instructional coaches. We had a really great session all day last week um with our uh our coaching trainer from uh student centered coaching and our coaches came together with our administrative team and just continued our learning so that we can continue to see the impact that our instructional coaching makes in both math and literacy. but also across the buildings. Um, we provided teachers with a goal setting template and specific examples to use. Um, we'll see some data from our goal setting a little bit later in this presentation. Uh, we've uh implemented and evaluated the effectiveness for our new grades 58 schedule for the school year. Um, and we uh have gathered feedback about that and some slight

058adjustments have been made for the next school year. um but nothing too drastic. Um we've uh curated and implemented tier one executive functioning lessons uh for home room and some of our summer work this summer will be on um looking at tier 2 resources for executive functioning. So um students that may be struggling a little bit and what can we do to help support them with executive functioning. So we have some groups working on that for all of our grades. And finally, we've reflected and refined our current building MTSS systems and responses to improve student learning, enhance efficiency, and improve response times uh and address resource allocation. This is ongoing work. We had a a coach all year working with our building MTSS teams on both behavior and academics. And uh we're excited that this

059work has um now had a really solid foundation from which to grow in the coming year. Hey, I am really excited to report that we've officially met our early literacy goals, our key performance indicators. This success is really the direct result of a deliberate and very concentrated focus on our foundational literacy skills. Over the last three years, we didn't change just change what we taught, we changed how we supported our educators. We protected daily instructional time that focused on those foundational skills. We've backed our teachers with intensive training and ongoing training from literacy specialists and our instructional coaches have worked and been vital to the journey. They will continue providing this essential hands-on support for both our veteran and incoming staff to sustain this momentum. I'm equally proud to share that we've also met our

060early numeracy goals. The driving force behind this achievement was a deep investment in teacher professional development that really focused on mathematical reasoning. Our classrooms now feature highly intentional, active routines, including foundational inquiry, collaborative problem solving, and interactive math games. This robust approach has empowered our students, and the results really speak for themselves. We've our our teachers and students have just worked so hard. It's really exciting to see the progress over the past five years. >> Turning our attention to uh NWA MAP achievement. And again, you've seen some of these results um in the committee of the whole presentation earlier this month, but we are really just so feeling great about uh meeting our achievement goals in both ELA and in math. Uh teachers have spent so many hours through professional development and training about highly

061engaged um instructional practices and things like universal design for learning which they then have turned into uh practices in the classroom. Additionally, assessment frameworks have become increasingly unified and by leveraging their high quality instructional resources and prioritizing student engagement through differentiation, they've created a more responsive learning environment and you'll see the results here in in our achievement. As we look at NWA MAP growth, again um this is the first time we've met all of our achievement go goals and all of our growth goals um for our key performance indicators in ELA and math. The success is really rooted in the culture of student agency where goal setting has become regular practice in the classroom and learners are act able to actively monitor their progress and map out actions to help them grow in their skills.

062Um, we're also, you know, really just so proud of the rigorous instruction that comes from the the resources that we have that are centered on studentto student discourse, collaborative problem solving, and small group learning. So, integrating these practices, our students have been met where they are and have been able to have individual growth in their learning. Next, this is just another slide showing that we have met our uh KPIs. It's just showing at the bottom there what those are a little bit more specifically. That's uh achievement and this is growth. And then finally, these two slides show um it disagregated by grade. So you can see at um our spring student data for achievement uh by grade level there on the right as compared to 2024 2025 really just high numbers there in both reading

063and achievement and again in growth here these are quintiles that we have separated by this is how math reports the data Now I'm going to move on to some of those strategy indicators that I mentioned uh a couple slides ago. Um this first one is on goal setting. So this shows our goal setting data for the year for our K4 classrooms. Um this these numbers really show us that we've successfully institutionalized goal setting across all of our elementary gate grades. And it's really been transformed into a check the box kind of thing into this is something that we do every day. And um you can see especially by those um the academic goals that people are setting just 97% reported that academic goals are being set on a regular basis in the classroom. Um and

064that's that's really exciting for us to see as we go into um grades five through eight. The students actually this survey. So, in grades uh K through four, it's this the teachers. Um and again, really high numbers here. Um as far as uh individual goals being set, academic goals being set. Um you can see that's increased over the course of the two semesters and and kids are reporting that this is a way of life for them. They're setting goals. Um you can see our progress over time. And again, um, we started this in the winter of 23 24 and moving into the spring of 2526. I think we were aiming for 100% and, um, 99% is pretty darn close there. Um, especially on the bottom there with our our students setting goals. Um, I may

065remind you with our 58 students and also with our K4 teacher surveys, we were asking some questions on those surveys that um, talking just about conferring and things like that that um, the students didn't really seem to understand what we were asking. So, we adjusted a little bit of our language and it it has shown in those numbers over the course um, of the last couple of years. So you can see from spring 242 25 in the the conferring that's definitely raised up. I think that's a result of us being more clear with our language. >> Can I ask a quick question? >> Sure. >> The percent academic what what does that mean? >> The percent of academic goals as opposed to non-academic. So sometimes we set goals with like um social emotional learning um

066executive functioning types of goals uh versus an academic goal where I want to you know dive in more deeply on you know setting a claim and >> so when it says 99% academic that means >> the the kids are reporting that 99% of the kids that took the survey say that they were setting academic goals. Okay great thank you. Um the next is our strategy indicator for professional learning. Um really focusing on having differentiated and focused um professional learning and the goal was to have a 4.5 rating um in across the board. Um you can see different things are broken out there. So we have our institute days at the top al together with a 4.1 rating and then um as you can see how they uh fell out for each individual institute day. Our

067grades 58 institute day is just fifth through eighth grade teachers and staff. Then we also have this slide talks about um more differentiated trainings if you will. So um our MTSS teams um our champs cohorts um we've had a lot of work with artificial intelligence this year, our new staff orientation. Um so these are more differentiated and for specific audiences those are because they're so differentiated do tend to rank a little bit higher. So you can see over time our institute days and then in the bottom there our audience specific learning and trainings is reported as well. And now I'm going to move on to our supportive community. Uh this is about cultivating a supportive and inclusive learning community responsive to the social, emotional, and behavioral needs of each student. Here are our outcome indicators

068and our strategy indicators. And we will briefly go through some of these results as well. Um on our action steps for this year, um the first was an expanded scope and sequence for our Wayfinder SEAL curriculum for fifth through 8th grades. uh piloting a reporting tool for SEAL skill development. Um integrating monthly themes of inclusion beyond belonging. Again, that's ongoing because it just is becoming a way of how we do school. Uh optimizing our current building MTSS team systems. Um this kind of goes along with the last item where we were working on MTSS teams. Um as I mentioned, we had a coach who worked with us on behavior. um and also academics. She focused more on behavior and we've also worked kind of along with that on the academic side. Give Kelly a break

069for a second. Um we've also provided a lot of training in CHAMPS at the kind uh elementary level in restorative practices. We've done two years worth of CHAMPS training now for different cohorts and restorative practices. We had two cohorts go this year. It was really exciting. Um, we have teachers that are wanting to do the advanced already and have already started to change what's happening in their classroom. So, these are both two behavior classroom management systems that are designed to really emphasize um consistency for students as well as building a sense of community. So, they really go along well with what we're doing in terms of a sense of belonging. Um, we've also we've been researching and evaluating existing and available mental health health and SEAL screeners to identify needs proposal selection for the 2627

070school year. We will be moving to use a system called SARES which should give us some more information about our students um in terms of their social emotional learning and growth. Um, the state of Illinois has also also is requiring in the 2728 school year a mental health screening for all students. So, we are continuing to look at that. Um, the state of Illinois is also going to develop their own. So, we're kind of holding a little bit to see what that's going to look like as well. Um, and then we we t the student advisory group at each school to engage in problem solving that really focus on increasing that sense of belonging and idea generation. And that is an ongoing process that has been really effective. some of our classes and students have

071have developed um week-long programs for their schools like kindness week at Central. So, we're excited about that. Um again this was uh presented our SEAL data was presented at um last week's committee of the whole meeting but um we do utilize insights assessment to measure foundational social emotional development specifically emotion recognition and social perspective taking for grades three through three K through three and understanding others and social problem solving for grade four administered in the fall and the spring. This assessment allows us to track our progress toward increasing the percentage of students performing in the average and above average ranges. These quantitative gains are supported by the robust framework in place where elementary teachers dedicate weekly instructional time to developing competencies. Over the past five years, our staff has deepened their expertise in the castle

072competencies and have delivered a cohesive experience through explicit lessons, integrated activities, and morning meetings. This work, as Kristen also mentioned, is further reinforced by community building initiatives like Harper's Dolphin Pods and Ramona's Ramona rocks, resulting in high levels of competency tests. At the 58 level, we utilize the mindsets, essential skills, and habits mesh assessment to track social emotional development. This data is supported by the recent adoption of a consistent SEAL framework and the Wayfinder curriculum. Using that Wayfinder curriculum, home room teachers facilitate explicit instruction and discourse centered on a core competencies with a specific emphasis on fostering a sense of belonging in grades six through eight. Beyond the home room, all staff integrate SEAL strategies to help students navigate conflict resolution and perspective taking. Complementing this classroom work, an expanded suite of clubs and extracurricular

073activities provide students with vital opportunities to find their niche and deepen their connection to middle school and junior high. show you that in a second. Um this is the CSCI um the comprehensive school climate inventory. Uh this is our third year and u administration of the CSCI and it provides a longitudinal view of student perceptions in grades three through eight. Uh as we analyze this information, it's important to know that a grade or a score of 3.5 or higher serves as the benchmark for a positive school climate. The stability and growth of these scores reflect our sustained commitment to social emotional learning through regular explicit instruction and integrated supports. It's also further bolstered by our school-based foundations teams which have standardized behavioral expectations through direct teaching and systematic practice. By using evidence-based interventions to refine

074student behavior, we have successfully cultivated an environment where students feel safe, supported, and included. to show you those areas. These are all based on the student responses in the CSCI. A little bit later, you'll see some staff responses. Um, and here's a list of those extracurriculars at Highest and Wilmet Junior High. We just have so many club offerings at each school. Uh, we have co-curricular, athletic offerings, just so many ways for students to be involved. Um you can see at Highest the average attendance is about 15 to 20 students in clubs. Um and even more in some of those athletic and uh co-curricular offerings. Um and then at the junior high we had um about just over 40% of students uh participating in athletics and around 40% of students participating in clubs. in inquire, which

075is something really notable. Um it's it's grown to over 60 seventh and eighth graders this year and even larger for next year. And so um it's just something that we're really excited to see kids taking part in that um during their school. Finally, this is one of our strategy indicators is staff confidence and ability to implement the framework. Um you can see that our staff um at 77% feel somewhat or more uh prepared to teach SEAL skills. 73% feel somewhat or more confident when instructing the SEAL skills in their classrooms. And um you can see the numbers for how people how often people are teaching it. It's important to realize that um we had support staff and um nonh home room teachers also taking the survey. So where you see NA or not at all,

076those are probably representative of those types of teachers. Finally, I'm going to turn it over to Heather. All right, goal three focuses on the adults working in our school environment and with our students. You'll see that the performance indicators are listed there. they they've been pretty consistent over these last five years, including outcome and strategy indicators, most of which honestly get updated in the fall of each year. So, what I'll share with you is um the the new information um that we have at this point for our action steps this year, I want to highlight two in particular. We um you can see I think as a result of the CSCI data that Kelly just reported on how um our school teams number five in particular on the action steps really took the information that

077was collected um from the climate and culture surveys and adapted and made specific action plans for their schools that then um impacted those outcomes that we received this spring on the the assessment. Additionally, I want to highlight the attendance data. We've talked a lot about this over the last five years, and our goal this year was to implement two action steps related to this, and we did that very consistently. The first was to provide monthly totals to each staff member as to how many sick days were used. Um admittedly those those were received with mixed emotions but it was the intent was awareness and that's that's where it landed with these are how many days you've taken since July 1st and um we continued that practice through through June and the second action step that

078we took was as an administrative team we consistently looked at the absence data each week to see um where our numbers were falling in terms of what we might expect in terms of the number of staff falling over that 10day mark. So, um once we finish the end of June and our full cycle ends, we'll be able to to fully update that data. But those were the two steps we took uh very consistently through the course of this school year data that Kelly reported on for students. Uh we have updated this data in terms of how staff reported to us. And you'll recall Kelly saying that 3.5 or greater is the goal on this measure. And you can see um that our staff indicated for rules and norms, administration and leadership improvement in those areas.

079And and we're still well above in support for academic learning and social emotional learning, but those remained more steady um in this spring's report. Uh this slide talks about data again from CSCI but really speaks to the leadership team and how staff are viewing the administrators uh working in our district. And you can see there's been some nice improvement for collective efficacy and school connectedness. That was exciting to see. Consistently over the course of the the strategic plan, we've given our staff survey questions that have um come from the Panorama survey specifically related to cultural competency and c culturally responsive teaching. And you can see the data that's listed here all the way um back from the fall of 22 to current. We've had some ups and downs, but generally have trended from if you

080look at where we were in the fall of 22 to where we're at in spring of 26, we've made some steady improvements. Some years have been higher than others, but generally that trend line has has gone in the right direction. So, that has been exciting to see as well. We have an open-ended question on that survey that speaks specifically to asking staff how we can better help um staff learn about and discuss and confront issues of different races, ethnicities, or cultures. And again, you can see over the course of the years the the different areas of suggestions that we've received. One that came up this year that I thought was new and particularly of of interest would be um the third bullet point from the bottom talks about mingling or with or having conversations with

081staff from more diverse schools. And that is not something we have yet to explore. So that might um be an action for us down the road, but it was a great suggestion. You might recall from some of our data reports talking about how often pair professionals are being pulled from their regular assignments to sub in our schools. This came out especially around the time of the pandemic. We were short staffed with um our substitutes. We didn't have as many as we typically like to have in our pool and we had um uh people that needed to be out for an extended period of time. And we had made some really nice improvement. Quarter three uh this year seemed to have um taken us back to where we were that first year. It's one data point.

082Overall, the trends were were really positive and um going in the direction that we had hoped, which is not having to pull our pair of professionals from their assignment. We know they fulfill a critical role in our schools and pulling them from their work is is taxing on everybody, especially our children. >> Right. goal for family partnerships. So things that we focused on this year was taking a look at how to uh outreach to uh intergenerational caring adults, current students, community members, alumni and uh this will be ongoing for us. But we uh our uh communications director Leo Krauss had uh posted a lot of uh social media um pictures of students uh with college decisions for the WJH WJHS class of 2022. Um we did create an alumni web page with a questionnaire to

083try to capture information from our kids as they leave our system. Um, we've had great success with our students or uh as they get older coming back to us to either present to students, talk about how they've done in their careers, connected with uh science in the real world, math in the real world, uh some of those types of topics. Uh we also uh did some uh outreach with uh United States Postal Service mailers. So physical postcards and mailers um with some registration information, some leap outreach on the back. Uh we did a lot of yard signs this year. Uh one example of that is utilizing them for angel fund awareness and donations. So um not just using the typical historical uh channels for communications but uh trying some others to diversify the ways that

084we outreach to our community. We created some guidance documents for the use of artificial intelligence uh by teachers, students and parents. Last August we had a really nice um workshop with faculty, staff, students and parents that came together and we worked on agreed upon um guidance uh for use of that in D39 and worked with a consultant and a picker staff from AF for education who helped guide that work. Uh as far as communicating a clear philosophy for the use of technology, um we refocused uh teaching and learning practices with an emphasis on active uh learning versus passive learning trying to give us common vocabulary. When I say us, uh, our teachers, our parents as far as the tech use, uh, during the school day, we also made some adjustments, uh, this year reflecting on

085our use, uh, looking at intentional use, uh, keeping elementary iPads at school. Um, core AI chat bots were blocked through highest, uh, YouTube was blocked on student devices and student networks. We added additional categories on our filter. um to block students from accessing content and increased our monitoring tools uh as far as visibility into what kids are doing. We have some ongoing work as far as welcoming new uh district 39 students and families throughout the year. PTAs and O's take a um a very front seat to that work but that will continue beyond the life of this strategic plan. And finally, if you can move on to the next slide, um we use this data that we've been capturing. We were focusing on the junior high transition from highest to the junior high. We use

086data um to create and uh our WJHS leadership team uh is proud to have created the first uh 7th grade walk your schedule night uh tenatively scheduled for August 17th time to be determined. So trying to get our students and their parents into the building before school starts which has been a long-standing request by our parents and students. Um we also took the feedback of the students during the strategic planning process to make the student schedules more uh easily ex uh understandable and simple uh that was directly out of them and adjustments have already been made. So when they uh get those schedules it's a little more clear uh where they go and what rooms and um hopefully that's uh something that uh will work well for them. Five, stewardship of resources. All right. So,

087uh, district 39 has earned the financial recognition on the, uh, annual financial report for fiscal year 25. Um similarly on fiscal year 25 that ended with 51.99% fund balance for the operating funds uh well above the 40% target. And the board approved um the construction project to replace windows which soon as you walk outside you can see that they've been working on for um just about a week now and it'll take them nearly the entire summer to get completed. That was the last um project that we had committed to during this this past strategic planning cycle. All right. So, numbers one, two, and three are ongoing um by nature. uh you know, things like reviewing our capital improvement plan multiple times a year, reviewing how we're going to plan and prioritize our our building based

088projects, and then, you know, monitoring what's primarily going on in Springfield and and could be more locally as we've seen with Cook County in recent years related to property tax funding. You know, those items are ongoing. they're probably going to always be a part of um monitoring what's going on and staying up to speed through any strategic plan. We did take a look at the the non-traditional classroom spaces within the building. Um, and so we had been able to share some data and confirm. I think what many of us knew was lots of really good things are happening in spaces that are just quite literally much smaller than your typical 900 foot classroom. Um, so we were able to do that and then much earlier in this year we were able to review the sustainability

089audit and the work that was had been accomplished um from from that item. And this is just a graph that shows that we are right at 52% fund balance for fiscal year 25. >> Great. With that, we'll take any questions. >> Mrs. Bailing. Well, I just want to say um this has all become just normal for us to review this so repeatedly throughout the year and certainly at the beginning and the end of the year. But I want to acknowledge that this did not always exist before this current strategic plan. We did not have a forward, you know, multi-year strategic plan in place. And I'm just so grateful for the transparency, the involvement, and the constant updates of the progress of where we've succeeded and what we still need to work on. And I'm really

090grateful and I'm excited for where it will take us next. But it has been a fully lived strategic plan um in the most way I've seen in my professional career. It's really been alive throughout its existence. So very grateful. I have one little question that came to my mind. Um, on some of those measures, I think it was like social emotional where our KPI is to increase from the fall and we're always, you know, above the threshold of what the benchmark is and but sometimes we don't increase. I guess I I don't know the answer to this, but I wonder if that's typical. you know, I I think as we're coming up with KPIs for the future, I know there are some assessments like that that capture student uh thinking that they might have a

091different frame of mind at the beginning of the year than the end. And so I just throw that out there. >> Yeah. And I think we so we did actually make a recommendation at the last at the committee of the whole just about that because what we're finding from both the insights assessment and the um mesh assessment that we are doing with kids is it's not it's giving us information, but I'm not sure it's sensitive enough to know about those changes and um not really the information that our MTSS building teams are looking for with respect to um a screener for students. So Kristen mentioned the Sabers screener which um we are going to put into use moving forward and discontinue the use of the insights and the and the mesh um just um in

092lie of this the screener because I think that will help us to target kids who have specific needs um and really intervene for them. >> I think I'll also add Amy and thank you Kelly because I think that information is super helpful. Um, the other thing that I know to be true about our our most recent five-year strategic plan is that some of these goals we set, um, and it they were intended to be key performance indicators over five years. And it it provided us with a really long look at how things were changing and yet sometimes we were setting marks and measurements that didn't make sense over time as we learned more about that measurement. And so this is a perfect example of that. Um where what we have learned is that students are

093super excited at the beginning of the school year and by the end of the school year just like our teachers and and some of us as well we're ready for summer. Um and so their responses to these data are a little bit different. So to expect that's going to increase over the year maybe isn't um the expectation that we should be aiming for. And the other thing I'll point out is that you'll hear us talk a little bit more in our new strategic plan that we're really focused on these short cycles of improvement. So rather than a fiveyear let's keep measuring this one thing whether it's working or not for us we really want to uh narrow in our focus on the key areas of improvement based on what the data are telling us and

094then really measure and monitor the little data that are telling us are we starting to move the needle even a little bit. And so you'll hear us talking about that a lot, a little as we present this year's strategic plan, but a lot as we move into next year as we talk about the short cycles of improvement. Because so much of what this um sunsetting strategic plan has done for us is it's laid the foundation for this really good work that's happening in our district. And now we can really focus in on fine-tuning that through short cycle improvements and through really narrowing our focus on the little data that will tell us if what we're doing in shorter increments is making a difference for our students. So that'll be a difference between this past strategic

095plan where we talked about a lot of big projects and a lot of big undertaking over five years to what we hope over these next couple of years will be a transition to short cycle improvement. What's working? What's not working? How do we how do we institutionalize what's working and how do we move forward from something that's maybe not giving us the results that we want? Um so just a a bit of a shift in how we're thinking about our strategic plan as we look ahead to these next five years. So thanks for pointing that out and giving me a chance to talk about it for a minute. Board members, I know we we viewed this um presentation at length and discussed it at length um last week, but any other questions, comments at this

096time? >> Okay. Well, I will just say that it there has been truly a really impressive amount of progress made over the course of the strategic plan. I know that um an area that I was um particularly excited to see was the growth in early literacy in math and then in geometry is these are really foundations for student success going forward. So really just excellent to see that and just want to recognize that all these positive outcomes that we're seeing for the students is really a reflection of the collective work the leadership staff um our teachers our community and we are grateful for everyone who's played a very important role in this. Thank you. And we will now move on um to the Wilmat School District 2026 2031 strategic plan. >> That date is something

097to hear, isn't it? It it feels a little overwhelming. Um and yet we're really excited to be presenting our new strategic plan, which builds from the foundation that's been laid from our our past five-year strategic plan. We're we're really uh proud to be presenting this on behalf of our entire district. All all members had a voice in this process and so uh we're excited to be formally presenting this for approval this evening. I'd like to introdu introduce Dr. Pat Greco who has been our facilitator throughout the strategic planning process. And I've let uh Dr. Greco know and Kelly who's going to be presenting with me on behalf of our entire administrative team and the the many many many um hours of feedback and um an analysis that helped to inform our plan. Um I've let

098everyone know because we've we spent um committee the whole in April talking about the outcomes from our focus groups. We spent committee of the whole in May talking about the survey results and we spent June talking about the draft plan. Um so we're going to give kind of a highle overview tonight really touching on um what we think is most important to highlight in each of those stages um and help uh not only the board but the community who might be paying attention this evening um to understand where some of these commitments have come from and what some of these steps might look like moving forward because again it does look and feel a little bit different. So Dr. Greco, thank you for being here with us. my pleasure and I really appreciate the commitment

099of the board, the leadership team, the families and the students in the process. >> So, we're going to do a quick highle review of what has been accomplished. Um, every one of our focus groups uh centered on the work that's been accomplished over these last five years. This has been our strategic plan. And you'll see throughout um our presentation this evening, we talked about um our vision, our mission, and our core values staying the same. and they have all of the feedback has really supported that work continuing along with the portrait of a D39 scholar. We anticipated that our goal areas would remain the same and the goal area itself really has. But we've learned from our community and from the data analyses that we've done that some some refinement of the language here helps

100to clarify what we're really aiming for in each of these areas. So I'll take some time to highlight those as we get there. But um in each of these five goal areas, we've really made some tremendous progress over these last five years. And what again you'll hear from me is that this has been foundational work really focusing on our commitments of supporting our teachers, supporting the programs within our schools and ensuring that our students are not only achieving, but they're growing each and every day. So in the first goal area, we've implemented a lot of new programs and new curricula. But what's been most important is the professional development that we've done for and with our teachers in those foundational literacy areas, instructional coaching, math support um and um in each of those um areas

101of instructional um pedigogy with our teachers. Our supportive community really focuses on students. and you'll see a a slight shift there as we look at the new language um because we really want to emphasize that this is all about our students experiences um and and really cultiv cultivating that supportive and inclusive learning environment. So, we've done a lot over these last five years focusing on the social emotional learning um of our students. Um focusing on making sure that each and every student has a sense of connection and belonging within our schools, supporting our staff um to provide some of that really intentional behavioral support and instruction, supporting those expectations of our students, and increasing the mental and behavioral uh supports for our students within our schools. remembering that this plan was coming out of COVID

102and so there was so much that we were responding to at the time of development of this plan. As we look at the next two goal areas, our professional community is goal three. And that there we've really focused on ensuring that um we're developing our staff professionally around culturally responsive teaching practices, that we're making sure that um our staff have the opportunity for agency and voice in our decision- making. Um and that we're supporting um so many strategies that we we believed would make a difference not only in our students experiences, but also in our staff experience. And and so as we present our new plan, you'll hear a little bit about that. Family partnerships. Um as Tony has talked so much about, our our new communication plan has really focused on supporting families to

103be active partners within their students uh schooling and to have opportunities to connect with our schools. We focused on technology especially over this last year setting some guidelines for how it can be used as well as guidelines for artificial intelligence which really five years ago wasn't a key priority and has become a key priority to make sure that we are um setting up those guard rails and supporting not only our students but also our staff and knowing how um what our expectations are in these regards. And then the final um goal area is around stewardship of resources. And so much of this is focused on the work that we've done within our buildings. Um laying the groundwork within our buildings for addressing all of the foundational needs of our facilities, including installing air conditioning, making

104sure that our facilities could support the level of air conditioning that our community was calling upon us to provide. Our all day kindergarten programming required some major additions. We've analyzed class sizes and we've made we've really looked at the sustainability audit. Um and then finally how our financial resources are being allocated. The key here is as we look forward we're not only focused on our financial resources but we're focused on the time and talent of all the human resources within our schools as well. And then the right side really is a nod to the strategic plan dashboard that um has been implemented and has tracked our progress over these five years. And again, that will look a little bit different as we move into this new um strategic plan because we still will have key

105performance indicators, long range indicators as a dashboard, but we're really focused on creating scorecards that will help us measure and monitor um the the short cycle improvement efforts that we're focused on. So, with that, I will have us um look forward to what the road map has been. This is our journey. Uh we are now at uh in June presenting the final draft of our plan after so much feedback from our community throughout really since October but um in earnest since January. >> Yeah. And as Kelly or Carrie indicated as we're taking a look at the the board knows that at the time when we were in fall you initiated the process. We're really going to be focusing on the highlights of how the work came together. you've had an opportunity to take a look

106at the focus group feedback as well as the survey. So, I know that you've spent a considerable amount of time taking a look at the depth. Just want to make sure for the community purposes, they understand the flow of the work that you've had. I'll just reintroduce myself quickly just so that members of the community know a little bit about my background. I'm Pat Greco. Served in public education for over 38 years. At the time I became skilled in both improvement, strategic um alignment, strategic improvement of organizations and joined the team that um that supported us in the coaching after my retirement as a superintendent. So I've had the great pleasure of working with the board as well as the leadership team. You have a deeply skilled team, very committed to the work of of

107both the children, the community, and obviously a parent and community base that deeply values the work that you're doing. When we take a look at the um process feedback, uh Kelly, you can advance. The core commitment was to make sure that anyone who wanted to engage had the opportunity to. So rather than limiting focus group participation because focus groups typically be tight eight to 15 people. Identify your key groups. When we I was meeting with the executive team and the leadership team, we identified who are those those groups that need to be important and it based on the work and your community engagement, but then we really opened it up. So you had some focus groups that went up to 80 people with facilitation in the room. So total number of people was over 450

108to include students going up as as young as third grade during course of your process. So when we take a look at from that work we identified what were the key themes that were coming out of the high priority needs both the areas of strength the areas of work. these 11 themes really advanced as as you're taking a look at the next five years. What's most important um to the people that were coming into the or into the group? We took those themes continue on into a follow-up survey. So the survey again opened it up. What do you see as strengths? So there was a full open response for anyone who chose to participate in the survey process. The themes were then ranked so that the board and the and the teams had an opportunity

109to see in order of work over the next five years. What are those those tender areas that the community would really like to see um worked on in a particular order. So you can take a look at volume of participation again over 550 people participated in the feedback surveys. in advance. Um, it gives you the representation. The survey gives the leadership team the ability to um take a look at the survey responses by the disagregated groups. So, as you're taking a look at the feedback, you can actually do it by the respondents within that. It gives you not just the mean, but the variation within each question. So, variation by group, variation by question. Obviously, with any individual, you're you're going to have some where it it prioritized individuals prioritize the item as their highest

110ranked area. We're also giving you the volume based on the individual groups, volume by parents, volume by support staff, volume by your certified staff so that the leadership team is responsive to the feedback based on the groups that you receive the feedback from. >> And I'll just sorry, can you go back one? I I just want to point out here the order of these is not in order of priority. Um as you look at the heat map to the right um the the bars where the the heat map where the bar at the bottom is um larger that is indicating more individuals said that was a priority. Um so for example advanced learning and differentiation of the respondents more than 550 respondents more of them identified that as a higher priority for us to tackle

111first. When we look at for example the next one of technology integration and use um the prioritization there was a little more mixed. Some people thought that was a really high priority others thought that was not such a high priority in their ranking. Um so that was there was quite a variety there. Um streamlined communication which is here listed as third. These are again the order is not prioritization but you can see that that was actually identified as one of the lower priorities and I think that's likely a nod to some of the communication work we've done over the last five years if there if respondents are asked to prioritize what's your highest need. Um they were saying streamlined communication was not their current highest need. So that's not the first thing um our community

112was telling us that we need to tackle. So, just so that you know how to read those heat maps, that's kind of what that's telling us there. Um, so >> when we take a look at the the respondents again, you're able to break it down by each of the of the groups or the all respondents. These were the identified areas when they were identifying what is working well. this was a portion of their feedback in that open response of what was that feedback from them which also matched the feedback from the focus groups. You're going to see a lot of the same themes that was that were coming out of um the feedback. when you take a look at it, the areas that the um survey respondents wanted to see um the board, the community

113address early, you have the areas again off of the feedback that was part of their open response to what are the areas that they would like to see the board the and the leadership team address in the course of the next five years. When we take a look at the um the ranked items as Carrie indicated, you've got the areas of earliest need, they were all identified as important from focus groups. So, it isn't that they were unimportant. It was in that area of what do you want to see addressed earliest? These were the areas that were coming up in that ranking of the feedback. So, and in what's working well, here are the themes that came from your individual groups. One of the things that you're going to see is the quality of your

114team, the range of opportunities that you have available, the range of the ability to meet the the varied needs of the student were identified as a strength and also a priority. So when you're taking a look at the value that your community holds, your your teachers hold, the students have in range of programming, ability to meet needs, the care and culture within the schools were ranked as high and we were also identified as areas of we want to continue to see this work focused on over the next um five years in the next plan. So when we take a look at as um parents had mentioned earlier in in the board meeting today the reliance on screens technology that balance between instructional priority as well as that um you know the appropriate use were identified

115as areas from a high level of need differentiation and enrichment opportunities particularly where that full range of learners that came up as a high area of pride for students in that range of differentiation and a high area need as you're taking a look at um the work going forward. So as we take a look at the work ahead um we're going to be identifying those actions based on feedback from the groups as well as the how do we respond to the needs based on on the groups. So the only portion of the groups that didn't receive the surveys themselves were the students. So the focus group feedback actually identifies the same areas of what do you see that you're proud of? What is working well? Students were very thoughtful. Um even your youngest learners were

116really thoughtful in preparation for the focus groups. Also want to compliment um Carrie the leadership team. Every member of your leadership team participated in a portion of the facilitation. Principles were also engaged in focus groups with the students at their sites. So um they were actively involved in that deep listening process as well as being able to do a portion of the sense making in that process under the themes of what we can improve. Um I know that you discussed this in committee. Um, some of the student feedback is really around how do we actually improve the conditions, lunch, hallway passing, the ability to, you know, have access to bike racks. There were some of those things that came up over and over and over again in a portion of the feedback. Those are going

117to be things that we take into account, but they aren't necessarily going to be an action plan because they're easier to action as we take a look at the planning. So, middle school and uh the junior high students go ahead again um students were really complimentary and I think what popped up um in particular was you worked heavily in strong transitions that came up as a strength and the students continued to give feedback on how do we make them we continue to make the transition stronger And uh one of the things that the students were really thoughtful about was really the conditions and climate within the schools, respectful um treatment of one another that actually came up as a strength and came up as an area that we can continue to focus on going forward.

118When you take a look at the feedback, go ahead. This was really the what are some things that worked well in the transition going from your elementary to your middle school, your middle school to your junior high. As Tony indicated earlier, you're already taking that into account as you're preparing for the transition sessions. >> Okay. So with that, I'm really pleased to uh present our strategic plan and and thank you again to DESAT and uh the board of education who provided us with some really valuable feedback as we were preparing this final draft. Um this is currently just a representation. It's watermarked with draft because we will be making some adjustments to this. So know that the visual won't remain exactly the same. Um, but we do want to acknowledge that this really is building

119off of so much that was foundational over these last five years and the data, the progress as well as the feedback from our community has helped us to develop the strategic priorities and the commitments that we will be working on over these next five years. So the mission, the vision and um the core values along with the portrait of a scholar remain the same. The strategic priorities have shifted just a little bit. those five goal areas focus in the same ways, but again, we've refined how we're looking at each of these areas and what we're um what we're committed to in each of these areas. So, Kelly and I, as we go through these commitments, uh we'll highlight those. We anticipate from these commitments over the summer and as we plan for the next school

120year, we're going to identify some of the key areas of first action. And then we'll um develop how are we going to measure and monitor what if what we're doing is having the impact we intend for it to have. And so there's some critical work that lies ahead. This is the framework of that work. It really is setting our commitments of the work that lies ahead. Um Kelly, go ahead please. Um, so this is our first goal area. Again, we have uh previously been focused on achievement and growth. That remains a focus of ours, but we're really focusing in on the learning and the growth of our students here. So, you see that slight shift in the language. The other shift that you'll see is in the description of what this goal, what this priority

121is really focused on. Um, and here we're in f we're focused on ensuring a differentiation differentiated education, which we always have been, but here we're really focused on that rigorous academic foundation and opportunities for advanced learning to ensure that all students are appropriately challenged and growing. We know that over these past five years, we focused on those foundational um skills and abilities to ensure that everyone was prepared for that rigor. And now we want to take that even a step further. We've heard from our community. We've heard from our families that we want to make sure that each and every student is feeling challenged every day. That includes our students who might need some remediation as well as those who need some advanced learning opportunities. And so you'll see that reflected throughout here. We got

122some really good feedback from both the board and from DESAT as we refine the language around these five commitment areas and I'll let Kelly highlight those for us. So the commitments really outline what will be true as we work in uh throughout this plan. And so number one is students feel valued as learners. And then the second one really addresses what Carrie was just talking about the feedback that we get from families and from DESAT and from the board. Um we really want students to um be personally challenged and supported in making their growth. So, not only do they feel that way, but they are. Um, and so we will center our actions around um how do we help them to be challenged and what are we measuring to see that that challenge is indeed

123happening. Um, students identify and reflect on their strengths and areas of growth with access to targeted learning and support. And then four, staff use evidence of learning to align instruction, inform differentiation, and balance appropriate curricular and technology resources to meet student needs. Again, we agree that um using technology in a balanced way and having brief structured use of that technology is really really important to the growth of our students. Um and so we really wanted to show our commitment to working to continue to refine our practices in this area and review um and measure what that impact is on our students and how we can improve them. And finally in this area are committed we are committed to students confidently engaging in challenging tasks that push them beyond their current abilities persisting through temporary discomfort

124and mistakes as they overcome academic and social emotional challenges. So that that resilience and and really productive struggle that we want to see students engage in as they grow. Um the second goal area um really focuses on the student experience and community. Previously we called this um supportive community and there we kept having to qualify this is about students. this is about students and so we want to make sure that our priority two is around the student experience and community. Um the working definition here shifted just a little bit as well and that is um focused on not only the supportive and inclusive um learning community but also that it be positive and helps to advance our students social, emotional, behavioral and mental health. So there's some nuances there that shift just a little bit

125there. Um our priorities. >> So first our commitment is that students feel valued as individuals with a sense of belonging and connection to their school environment. Um as mentioned in our previous strategic plan, a sense of belonging is something that we're continually striving for. So we wanted to call that out as a commitment. Um secondly, students take ownership of their learning while developing advanced executive functioning skills such as goal setting, organization, conflict resolution, self-management, and leadership. Third, staff feel informed about the academic, social, emotional, and behavioral strengths, needs, and supports of their students. And fourth, school rules and expectations for behavior and technology use are understood, enforced, and cons consistently prioritized to support safety and learning. And I think this speaks to again our commitment to looking at our use of technology with our students

126and and reinforcing our expectations as um staff members and then also our expectations for them in order to prioritize their safety and learning. And in uh priority three uh here again we're focused on the adults who work within our schools. That's the professional experience and community. Um, and here we're seeking to foster, we're really committed to the priority of fostering a professional community that supports employee care and excellence. We heard about that from our community, the adults, our community um of parents and community members as well as the adults who are working within our schools, our our teachers and staff. and we're committed to continuing to support that and to ensure that our staff all feel valued, supported, respected, and integrated into their school communities. So, our four commitments are the first one, staff feel

127valued and recognized for their contributions to the success of our students in the school community. Secondly, that staff engage in supportive onboarding, differentiated professional development, and structured collaboration focused on their roles and responsibilities. Third, staff feel supported in navigating and problem solving difficult interactions with students, parents, and colleagues. And fourth, staff demonstrate growth in their roles and have increased opportunities to lead. And in um the fourth priority area, we're really focused on family experience and partnership. And again, um, beyond the partnership that our last five-year plan really focused on, uh, we want to make sure that our families are having the experience of connection, collaboration, and communication. Um, that really helps to advance, uh, teaching and learning within our community. Um, Kelly, sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead. >> No. Okay. Uh we're committed to families

128feeling that their child is valued and in and they feel informed about how their students are supported, challenged, and growing. That families feel welcomed and connected with opportunities to partner and volunteer. We're committed to families easily accessing timely information about student learning and school activities. And finally, families feel confident in using information about their child's progress to support learning income. And then finally, I and I mentioned this before, our stewardship of resources remains a focus of goal five. Um, but we're moving beyond the financial resources and really focused also on the time and talent of our human resources to sustain um practices that promote growth. So, there's some nuanced adjustments here in in really making sure that we're honoring and attending to um the use of all of our resources to support our students. So,

129our commitments are as follows. Staff time, talent, and resources are aligned with student needs for the greatest impact on student learning. Financial resources are aligned to maintain, enhance, and support instructional and operational needs. Long and short-term plans address routine safety requirements, capital improvements, and maintenance needs. and investments in instructional technology, nutritional options, and updated furniture support student learning and safety. So, as I mentioned before, um these commitments, these priority areas, and the commitments that follow really allow us now to begin the the most important work of planning for next steps and how we'll measure and monitor um the impact of our work. Yeah, as Carrie indicated, strategic planning isn't new to you. So, when you think about the strategic aims, the strategic commitments that you've already established now with the KPIs, the key performance indicators,

130some stay because they're your annual indicators of student progress within what you've already identified is important to you. Part of what we want to do is also get a little bit more nuance so that rather than having the lagging indicators be the only indicators that you're working from, which ones can we break down into 30, 60, 90day, both action steps, but leading indicators so that we know based on the priority that you have, our students in those short cycles making the intended growth. Are we clear that our core processes are advancing in the way that they should be? And in some areas, you're going to set project milestones. For the example, your long-term and short-term facility plan. What are those long-term milestones? And then the milestones within that would be the shorter cycle. Are we

131on track to completion based on what you're saying is most important? So as we take a look at the work ahead, it's to define the action steps as well as the KPIs and then those would also come back to the board. The other process that we typically recommend is doing them midyear and end of the year at a minimum. But then the the building teams, the division teams would really get into a process of month over month. Are we on track to what we're saying those 30, 60, 90day actions are pacing? And if we are likely being able to hit those end of year targets. Uh to that end, the work continues. We actually have a meeting this week where we will start to discuss um those key measures and goals that are mentioned and

132start to develop out our scorecards um and refine that over the summer and um into the fall. So then you'll get to see those scorecards um using the data that we have using um also identifying what other data might we want to use to measure some of those shorter cycles of improvement um so that we can really see our impact on a monthtomonth a quarterto quarter basis rather than just at the beginning and the end of the year. We are happy to address any questions, but I think I noticed um a minor adjustment in what was spoken versus what was on the slide. And so I want to go back to um the priority area one and um ask my team because I think that we shifted um the fifth priority just slightly with some

133feedback from our board at the last uh meeting and the language was intended to read in that um goal five students. it. Sorry, the commitment five, I'm shifting my language still, too. Um, the strategic commitment number five, um, it's intended to read, "Students exhibit resilience and confidently engage in rigorous tasks that push them beyond their current abilities, persisting through temporary discomfort, novel challenges, and mistakes." And I think we had talked a lot about that and it didn't get onto the slide, so I just wanted to point that out. I know the board has that updated language. we will update it um so that it's reflected properly when we uh go to produce all of the documents to support this. But I noticed just a typo in that number five. So I wanted to call attention

134to it and make sure that it was um recited accurately. So with that I'm happy to address we are happy to address any questions, feedback um or suggestions from the board before we ask you to uh adopt the strategic plan for these next five years. Thank you very much for the presentation and all the work and all the um input from the community. I think it's really valuable in terms of setting priorities and so forth. Um I'm I'm just wondering if you could talk just a little bit more about the short cycle targets and how they're set and how often they're set. I know you sort of said beginning of the year, middle of the year, end of year. I don't know if that's a reporting thing or if you're talking about setting new short

135cycle things at each of those points. >> Yeah. And it's it's a good question. Some will be timeless. So when you think when you take a look at student one of your key priorities, one of your key commitments is students making growth part of and uh what Kelly indicated is you've got students right now in the process of goal setting. It's also getting to the point where students will also be monitoring growth. The trickiest part is getting it down to the little data and and that takes work because the little data ends up being unit over unit and are they making Harvard indicates if students can actually um hit an 80% threshold in confidence level they're able to transfer those skills into other learning environments. will be confident in pulling that that skill into new

136learning environments. It's really getting to the little data, understanding it, being able to track that, and being able to do the sense making around that. But that one likely wouldn't change as the indicator. It's really making sure that that habit and that process is in there. um particularly for literacy and math and the other areas that you're identifying regarding um part of that student feedback around persistence. >> Okay, that that makes sense. So, but how do you collect that data then from or the teachers collect that? >> It's going to be a combination of both. Part would be student toteer. Part of it is going to live in in what you would be building into future dashboards as far as your ability to monitor the little data. Part of it is what's most important. You

137don't want to collect a ton of measures. You want to actually have them be the high leverage measures. >> So I I can advance this idea just a little bit with some more specific um ideas around what's happening within our school. So, we know that our school teams have really focused in on um the grade level teams and in measuring and monitor the grow monitoring the growth of our students. Um and that's been really really helpful, but we haven't done as much around school improvement initiatives. And so, we want to support our schools in taking ownership over some of these goals. Um, the other thing that we've done, and you've heard about it, you've seen those charts time and time again where we're looking at student growth in aggregate. We're looking at student achievement in

138aggregate. And what we're realizing is overall our students are all doing really, really well, right? We see that data and we know that there's so much to celebrate there, but there may be pockets where our students are growing more or are growing less. And so looking at that little data to identify, okay, if most of our students are growing really well, is there a pocket of our students who maybe aren't growing quite as well and how can we really target growth in that area? So, we've heard a lot about our advanced students and so we're already starting to look in look at the data to discern where are some of our highest most advanced achieving students, where are they growing and growing really well and where are they maybe not growing and how can we

139target either program development or professional development or resources, what we're doing with our students to really target those students who maybe maybe they are growing really well but maybe they're not. And so really trying to dig into the littleer data so that we're not looking at aggregate means and we're instead looking at some of the the smaller data that can help us measure and monitor our impact. And >> do you feel like the buildings currently have that data? >> We do have the data and we've already started looking at it. And so recognizing that that's the critical next step, we want to start reporting out on that in more targeted ways so that we're really transparent with what we're seeing is working and where we're seeing we can continue to improve. So, um, what we'll

140still continue to do is report out on those big aggregate data, but those are more of the umbrella data, the the, um, the compliance endofear kind of data that is more of program evaluation overall. What we also want to be looking at as we're getting more strategic with our efforts is the the smaller quarter over quarter, maybe even month over month data and what are we seeing there in those critical areas where we know that we can continue >> building by building uh building by building absolutely um but also in the targeted areas across the district where we see groups of students who maybe aren't growing as much as we would. Um and and again, we're already starting to disagregate that data. Um we have some ideas of where we might really want to focus

141in on, but we also have some ideas of where our community thinks we need to focus in on. And so we want to make sure that the data supports one way or the other. Either we need to be more clear in how we're presenting the data or we need to do some things differently to really reinforce the growth of those student groups. So >> that's kind of cool. >> It is. It's it's exciting. It's it really is that next level of targeted improvement effort beyond the foundational and the big umbrella work. Now, we're kind of >> narrowing in on that bullseye that we've learned so much about. Um what are the key areas that we really want to u make sure is true for all students um not just most students which um we're really

142good at. So >> like those columns that you the graphs that you guys love the high achieving low growth the low growth exactly what yeah I always worry about those low growth >> people either high achieving low growth or low achieving low growth. So it sounds like we're and in those charts that you're referencing we um look at quartortiles. We're thinking we need to dig in even further because a quartile still is 25% of our students and we really want to see well but what about that very top 5% or the very low 5% or that middle chunk of students? Are they growing as much as as we really want to see them growing in each of the content areas and across each of the grade levels? We know we see some really strong growth

143at some of our grade levels and some other grade levels. We're not seeing that same kind of growth. Is it something about maybe all fourth graders need something a little bit different? So >> changing over time. >> Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So it really is about that short cycle improvement now because we know that foundationally we have so much that is working really well for us. It gives us that opportunity to really dig into some of those key priority areas and the commitments that we've made here for all students. Thank you. >> Pat always says things so much more eloquently than I did though. So I'm going to ask Pat if if you want to advance any of those ideas further than I was able to explain how >> and obviously you have a team that's

144really working hard to do a portion of that sense making and your question is does the data already exist in many cases the answer is going to be yes and part of the process is where it doesn't what do we need to do about that so rather than waiting a year to make that determination what is that little data that we need to be doing sense making around how do we create a test of that before we actually scale it out and figure out does the measure work. So that'll be part of the process as well. Thank you. >> Other questions or comments? >> This is mostly just an appreciation and an observation. Um so there's this thread that's kind of been running through my head during most of this meeting based on different things

145that have been presented and Dr. Dr. Kercoli said something she used the phrase critical next step and I think that the way that this plan is created and the language that's been used and the focus on I mean even just having it's strategic that pun is intended um to have the subject of the sentences be almost all of them are students families staff like that shows a intentionality around who you're trying to benefit with this And I mean, I was thinking I was looking at um one of the slides about the previous plan that just got sunseted and it said that the that we increased mental and behavioral health clinicians and thinking about keeping kids safe and we talked about the reunification training earlier this meeting, but this idea that um you know they are

146precious cargo in our schools and that that's the most important thing is to keep them safe and that in the new strategic plan that says students will feel valued as in or students feel valued as individuals with sense of belonging and connection to school environment and how important that is and I know how hard everybody's worked on that the past few years. I mean like the fact that there's 40% of kids in clubs I think is is awesome. um and sports. But um I think the not only just the language you've used, but the fact that you're addressing a critical need and that you're doing the shorter action cycles are going to help this be even more impactful and um uh can't think of another word, but yeah, impactful and I think um with what

147we want to do with addressing whatever critical next steps the kids need. So hopefully that made some sense, but just thank you to everybody >> and and part of the process is as you take a look at the KPIs, it should tell the story of are those things becoming true, >> right? >> Yeah. So as that ends up being part of that line of sight. So thanks for that. Well, I think that the way you're doing it or the intentionality of how you're going to do it is it's going to be easier to pivot sooner >> to make the necessary change or to do the critical next steps that need to happen to improve growth and learning and safety and care for the kids. So, thank you. I had a a quick question about um

148there were some items that were maybe even smaller or I I forget what you called it like just do it items where they're not necessarily incorporated in the strategic plan but they are going to be completed. Um are we how are those tracked just because I think that the board would be interested in what those are and when they are completed along the way. hearts want to ride their bikes to school. >> Right. Right. We we we need no more excuses for why our bikes are breaking not only the hearts but all students throughout our community to be able to ride their bikes and have proper storage at our bike racks. Um and so I think one of the things that you um saw our very first strategic commitment is that our our students are

149feeling valued as learners. And part of that is creating these feedback loops where we are continually um finding ways to hear the voice and the needs of our students and responding and and addressing those needs. And so many of those as we learned um the good news is they are not these like big institutional challenges. they are like the small just do it kind of things, right? Just take care of it, get it done. And so, um, we have to figure out what's the best way to measure that so that we can report out on it. Um, but our Pat was pointing out some of the the feedback that our students were giving us and some of the things that they really wanted to lift up as here are the needs that I have. So,

150many of those are like bike rack examples, right? like just add a couple more bike racks and I'll be able to ride my bike and feel safe doing so. And um so those are the things that we um not only want to address, but we need to figure out um the best way to communicate those without creating just a laundry list of we just got all these things done. Um um because the key issue really is making sure that our students feel valued and that they have voice and connection within our community, within our school communities. And so, um, those are some of the just do it things that will help us to ensure that, um, we're addressing that need. >> And, and one of the things also is to be really intentional of you

151regularly give updates to families, but actually give that stem of why was this important? So, starting with the why, not just the action steps that you're taking. You know, even even when we were going through the focus groups, one of the things that building leaders walked away with is members were raising questions that said they were saying we could be better at our communication because there are some things that are being raised that that are already in action, but people wouldn't necessarily know that. >> Thank you. No, and I was just so pleased in this process to see the level of comm I mean the level of involvement, participation um from the community and all of the stakeholders and I think it shows just how interested and engaged um everyone is and how important everyone

152felt about how important this process is. Um, but it was also a testament to all of the communication that went out about the opportunities to get involved and the level of flexibility that was provided for people to be involved whether it was the daytime or in the evening, the focus groups, the surveys. So, just a a really job well done to, you know, encourage and make that level of feedback possible. >> Yeah. I just want to lift up Margie did a ton of work and just preparation. So I know all of you had an opportunity to participate in focus groups and took that responsibility seriously but the ease of setup because we were going from one to the other you know with 10 minutes in between everything was seamless. So the level of lift internally

153was significant. So I just want to provide that. >> Thank you. Thank you Margie. Anything else? >> Okay. >> So, to be respectful, I'm I am actually driving home to catch a plane. So, and I am going to be leaving. So, um just wanted to say thank you and I'll continue to be working with the team um as we identify the KPIs. >> Thank you very much. Really appreciate it. >> Thank you for being here with us this evening. I believe we're moving on to the state bullying report. >> And I will ask Dr. Swanson to provide this report. >> Yes. So I'm pleased to share an update on our district's ongoing efforts to create cultivate a safe, inclusive, and supportive environment for all students, which is in alignment with our previous and upcoming strategic

154plan. Um, as you know, every year we are required to report on the bullying investigations. This is a state required report, but we also take the data and the information very seriously. We take bullying very seriously in this district and do a lot of different investigations. Um, this year I district 39 has really balanced proactive culture building with clear accountability. We've used evidence-based programs like everyday speech and wayfinder as well as a lot of high energy school assemblies. We've expanded home room options at the 58 level. We're embedding vital social emotional skills directly into our students daily routines and really trying to work hard on developing that sense of belonging in all of our students. Um we've also placed a strong emphasis on helping students understand the true definition of bullying versus normal peer count

155conflict. um students engage they're they're learning how to interact socially and they engage in a lot of interactions that don't go well and not all of them are bullying and we want children to to learn and grow from those but we also want to make sure that they have a safe and way to report bullying and that we are taking those reports seriously even if it isn't bullying we want to make sure that we are teaching our students how to navigate those difficult social interactions the data shows our efforts are playing paying off um according to the latest comprehensive uh school climate inventory, our metrics still remain very high. An impressive 96.7% of our students report feeling safe at school. That's a really high percentage of our kids that really report that they are feeling

156safe at school. That's a that's a great number and we should be very proud of our students, our staff, and our families for that. We're also seeing seeing favorable and upward trends in students knowing where to turn for help and standing up for one another. On the accountability side, out of 17 reports that were fully investigated. So again, our our administrators received multiple reports about potential bullying, many of those they investigate everything. Many of those turn out not to require a full investigation. So just a simple interview with a couple of students can often indicate this wasn't this was social conflict. This was not bullying. But 17 of them had really full robust investigations. And I I don't want to underemphasize how much time our administrators put into this. They interview countless students. They review

157video footage. They make sure that they really understand what was happening. They reach out to parents. So we they do do very thorough investigations for those. Um of those eight were substantiated as actual bullying. I think it's important to know that when incidents do occur, whether they are substantiated as bullying or not, they are addressed. uh consequences as well as restorative practices occur. Um we use a combination of really structured disciplinary actions as well as restorative practices to try and help heal those relationships and help students move for move forward and become learn from them and grow because that is really our ultimate goal for our children is to help them learn and develop the skills to navigate social interactions. So overall our our multi-pronged approach is really keeping our stu our schools safe. Our

158students feel connected and we are deeply focused on student belonging. We will continue to emphasize those as we move forward. Anyone have any questions? Board members. >> I had one question I and it's just really did help me understand. Um, I noticed that internetbased bullying decreased. And I'm I was curious, um, is it only reported as bullying if it happens during the school day on a school device? Um, >> necessarily. So, we we do we get lots of reports about things that happen at home or on the weekend. And in terms of a disciplinary response, if unless it has what we would call a nexus, so unless it's really impacting the school environment, we would not necessarily provide a disciplinary response, but we still may investigate to see if it's has that internal like if

159it's impacting the school day. We certainly work with families about alternative methods. If things are happening outside of school and they are not coming into the building, they do have other options as well. They can talk to the SRO. they can talk to the other child's parents. Um, >> but in terms of whether we would say this is bullying and it has to impact what's happening in the school. >> Okay. >> So, >> okay. >> But we do we do investigate and do conversations with parents as well as students. >> Sure. Okay. Um because initially when I saw that I thought well maybe it's helpful that um we have phones away and you know there's just less of an opportunity for that during the day for the students which is excellent. Um, so, um, regardless,

160I'm glad it's going down. And >> I do, yeah, I do think we've done a lot of education as well about >> cyber bullying and about the impact, um, and the fact that what you put online doesn't go away. >> And I think that's something we can continue to emphasize with our students. >> So important. No, thank you for this report. >> No other questions? Um then we will continue with the agenda with the district 39 fiscal year 27 tenative budget. >> Thank you. And in fact the next three items are um from our business office and Corey Boltzer will walk us through all three of them. None of them new for the board because we talked about them at the committee the whole Corey. Okay. So, for our fiscal year 27 budget tonight, the

161important steps that the board is taking is we're approving that public hearing to be held on August 27th, but we're also approving the tenative budget and then putting it on public display for at least 30 days, of which there are many more days than 30 between now and August. Skip over a couple of other slides that we've covered before. Um, from the type of funds, we always talk about the operating funds at much higher rate than the non-operating funds. I have the the names of those six funds listed there. The operating fund summary. So, uh, going into the summer, we're looking at about a $740,000 surplus. But after we transfer money out of those operating funds for construction projects, windows across the street, and that's repayment of some debt certificates, that puts us at a

162net projected deficit of about 3.5 million brings us to a ending fund balance or estimated ending fund balance of 32.8 or just over 40% for uh fiscal year 27. Here's a graph showing revenues versus expenditures over a five-year period. Each year, the revenues do exceed uh expenditures. And then here's a graph that we always like to round out our our presentations with that shows going out where we would anticipate fund balance being at the end of fiscal year 27. You also have several years of actual amounts in there. Fiscal year 26, we're getting close to wrapping that year up. um that actual amount will get re will get updated over the next you know several months. So for for the D39 budget that's all we have like I said the big thing is approving it

163and setting that public hearing for August 24th. Then on to uh Wixie. Same thing. Fiscal year 27 tenative budget for Wixie. We're accomplishing the same thing. Approving that tenative budget. Setting that uh public hearing. Wixie really has just a few things about it. Um each year the revenues and expenditures equal each other. There's which leads to no fund balance and most of the transactions are passed through accounting transactions in nature. Um, and there's really just a few of them each year. So, Wixie being our uh joint agreement with Aoka School District. So, we would ask the board to go ahead and approve and set that public hearing date uh later this evening. Then on to the uh renewal of the school district treasurer's bond. So, each school district is required to take out a treasur

164take out a bond on their treasurer. I serve as the D39 treasurer. So, the bond has been renewed and and taken out on me for another year. Um, it's just more of a procedural thing that the board approves each June. >> Thank you, Corey. Um, we will now turn it back to Dr. Krocoli. >> Yes. Um to address the administrative raises annually the board approves administrative raises for the team here in district 39. In keeping with the board's philosophy of matching revenue revenues to expenditures, the board of education has asked later this evening to authorize an increase in the aggregate administrative salaries indexed to consumer price index which is CPI um with a floor of two and a half a ceiling of 4%. Therefore, in aggregate, merit raise of 3.9 is recommended for administrative salaries

165for the 2627 school year. And the board will be asked to take action on that later this evening. And then two more annual actions for the board um budget resolutions and our July accounts payable invoices um resolution. Corey Boltzer can speak to those. >> Yep. The budget resolutions has a couple items in there. One is a resolution we've passed for several years that allows that um provides the authority to transfer money from the operation and maintenance fund as needed to pay for the capital projects or the construction projects such as the windows across the street. Um that is done annually. The other one is because is a is a more of a precautionary ability to loan money between funds because the operation and maintenance fund pay essentially pays to the capital projects fund for all

166those big projects and some of the things that are going on at the county level with delays. Um the board provides passes that resolution and provides the authority to loan money between funds primarily to the from the ED to the M fund. It's on a temporary basis. You would loan it. As tax money comes in, you would pay it back. This year I think the loan amount I we had asked for potentially was $2 million. Something that is also something that has occurred um many times in previous years. Then the July accounts payable invoices resolution. uh we go through and have the board pass this resolution each year because we do not hold a meeting in the month of July where the board is providing our our authority to um approve and pay many of

167the vendors that we do business with throughout the year. This this resolution provides the authority to the business office to be able to pay many of these vendors. Right? So, we have tonight's meeting and then next one's not till August 24th where the board would be uh planning to take action. This allows us to go through those couple of months and u be good business partners and make payments in a in a timely manner. Also something that we have done for many years in a row. because all of these items show on the consent agenda. If there's any discussion or questions about any of these, we would um invite those now before we move on to public comment. >> Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much. This is another opportunity for the audience to the

168address the board. Are there any audience members that would like to speak at this time? >> Great. Great. All right. Please stand to the to address the board. I remind you to state your name and community of residents and by board directive, you are allowed three minutes or one minute if you have previously spoken. >> I'll take advantage of my one minute. I'm Elizabeth Harris neurologist and a Wilm resident. And um I think where we left off was just, you know, I ask that we re-evaluate the current practice with screen use and tech. Consider removing iPads from the kindergarten and first grade classrooms, limiting screen time to those designated perhaps, you know, tech learning labs for second grade onward. Follow the science here, you know, protect the kids neural development. They're the youngest learners. They're

169the most vulnerable, you know, and I this is my first opportunity to be here and witness your meeting and I can tell that you're an organized, very professional bunch, and that you like data. I see that. And I just hope that that the adverse effects of screens and tech over reliance you know will uh the data there will be fully appreciated and acted upon and that the strategic investment doesn't just bring unchecked expansion but you know perhaps um you know limits and even reversal and that the changes be really promptly communicated to the parents. Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much for being here. Okay, great. >> Hi everyone. I'm Rachel again. Again, I come from tech. I was at Google for eight years. The pri prior plan was Thank you so much for sharing

170that. Starting COVID, we're now in a new era. D39, Tony, you got this. We can lead in the We can lead in education. This is our opportunity. Like Liz said, you love data. Please, I'm begging you to use the data on screen time. Jonathan Height, like I'm sure you've heard of this. If you haven't, parents are concerned. I started a petition four hours ago and already have 25 signatures for Harper in kindergarten that they do not want iPads. They didn't even know iPads existed in kindergarten. I urge you, as soon as I share data with parents, they are concerned. They're worried. The data is not going away. It's expanding. And I want I hope we can all be a part of it together. >> Thank you. >> Again, Alina Resnik Wilmet resident. Before this meeting

171is over, I want to reiterate again, please, while tech has its place. It does, especially in older grades. The way it is currently safeguarded is not acceptable to us as parents. Nor is it healthy for our children's developing brains. We urge the district to read latest studies, not just John the height. There are a lot of studies out there coming out almost weekly about the harms of excessive technology. K through one should not have iPads at all unless it's specifically written in their IEPs where some students need support with iPads. Please, you need to consider changing iPad setups. There is no way kindergarteners, first graders, second graders should have 200 apps at their fingertips. Should have Safari with with you know their games appear every day and kids find ways to access those games. It

172should not be the case. Safari can be locked down. Safari can be removed from Apple products. It is feasible. It should be done for all our students. >> Thank you. That's time. Thank you for being here. All thank you. Okay. Okay. Um All right, then. At this time, we will move on to action items. The next order of business is the consent agenda. Are there any items the board would like pulled from the consent agenda? Okay, Mrs. Papless, please proceed with the motions. >> You know, I actually do have one question, Terry. um for um H subject H and subject I they're the same. I just want to make sure I don't need to read them twice, right? They >> do they have different attachments >> to the capital projects >> operation. >> She might

173and one is from operation and one is from the educational fund, right? She might. >> So H is the resolution authorizing a transfer of fund for operational maintenance and the second is a resolution authorizing an interfund loan from the education fund. >> Correct. So I have it just on one action item. Both of those. Can you read both? say >> I can. Yes. Okay. I just want to make sure just because it's >> money stuff for the summer. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Sorry, I didn't ask earlier. >> Thanks for clarifying. Appreciate that. >> Okie do. Um I move to approve the personnel report dated June 15, 2026. I move to approve the donation agreement between Central Elementary School PTA and the Wilm Public Schools District 39 Board of Education. I move to approve uh

174the donation agreement between Harper Elementary School PTA and the Wilmet Public School District 39 Board of Education. I move to approve the district 39 strategic plan engage empower inspire action steps for 2025 2026. I move to approve the fiscal year 2027 tenative budget as contained in this report for immediate public display. And further, I move to approve the public uh sorry, I move to approve the publication of notice of a public hearing on the tenative budget to be held at 700 p.m. prior to commencing the regularly scheduled board of education meeting on Monday, August 24th, 2026. I move to approve the Wilmack community special education agreement fiscal year 2027 tenative budget as contained in this report for immediate public display. And further, I move to approve the announcement of a public hearing on the tenative

175budget to be held at 7 p.m. prior to commencing the regularly scheduled board of education meeting on Monday, August 24th, 2026. I move to approve the renewal of the state of Illinois school district treasurer bond in the amount of 5,500,000 for fiscal year 2027. I move to approve the administrator contractual salary increase for the 2026 2027 school year index to consumer price index CPI with an aggregate merit raise of 3.9%. I move to approve the attach resolutions authorizing accounting transfers from the operation and maintenance fund to the capital projects fund. And I move to approve the attached resolution authorizing an interfund loan from the educational fund to the operations and maintenance fund. I move to approve the attached resolution authorizing payment for goods and services between now and the next board meeting scheduled for August

17624th, 2026. I move to approve the accounts payable for bills listed between May 19th, 2026 and June 15, 2026 and the following amounts. Educational fund $118,69.13 on ON&M fund $556,98068 Transportation $33,280 total all funds $78,869.90. And I move to approve the manual checks issued between May 19th, 2026 and June 15, 2026 in the following amounts. Educational fund 1,143,294.11 and M fund $120,774.32 debt services $25729. Transportation $350.33 tors $5,5000. Total all funds 1,270,1765. May I have a second? You want a second and then you want to clarify? >> Second. >> Any discussion? Just to be clear, I think there was a an error in the reciting of the strategic plan. Is that what you're going to call out, Aaron? >> She said 2025 2026 instead of 2026 2031. >> Yes. >> Which letter is that? >>

177Uh C. >> Oh, it's it's wrong on here. >> Should be 2026 2027. It should be 2026 through 2031. The strategic plan covers these next five years. So this action item is incorrect >> because I'm just reading what I'm I'm reading the proposed action by the board of education. >> Okay. >> I think it was the I think she was reading from last year the action steps versus the new strategic plan. In any case, we are trying to move to approve the um >> want me go back to it here. >> Approve the Wilmet School District 39 2026 through 2031 strategic plan. >> Yes. We just want to make sure that what you're saying matches what we're trying to approve. Right. And and I'll add as amended because we clarified that um when we were

178talking about the presentation. So, I apologize, Allison, for sure having a document in front of you that doesn't tell you exactly as long as every one of them. >> No, you don't. You don't. But we just we do want to be clear in what the consent agenda is uh focused on. So, thank you Erin and I think Heather for catching that uh error in what we put out there and we just want to be clear that it is the strategic plan from 2026 through 2031. >> Thank you. Okay. Moved and seconded. >> Moved and seconded. Would the clerk please call the role? >> Amy Paling. >> Yes. >> Erin Stone, >> yes. >> Katie Hilton, >> yes. >> Judy Berlin, >> yes. >> Annart, >> yes. >> Kristen Castro, >> yes. >> Alison Pavil, >>

179yes. >> The consent agenda is approved. We now move into conference items. Is there any old business? Is there any new business? Okay. Good and welfare. Does anyone have anything for good and welfare this evening? >> Erin, I'll be brief. Um, I'll try. So, I've been thinking a lot about joy the last few weeks in connection with the work that's being done in the district. So, back up a few weeks ago, I was in southeast Evston at probably like, I don't know, 3:45ish, and I decided to drive home to my house in the west side of WT by going up Sheridan and cutting over on Central. So, I'm like cutting over on Central and I drive by Central. I was probably like a block east of Central School and there's these two boys like running

180as fast as they can with like looks of sheer glee on their face, like with reckless abandon. and their parents are like walking like a half block behind them with the like the backpacks. And I came up with this like, you know, backstory in my head that I'm like maybe they stayed at laid on the playground and played and now they're going home and like they're just so happy. And that was us at McKenzie, you know, like a million years ago. And then a few weeks ago, you had sent us a um in the emails you sent us on Fridays, there was a picture of a boy reading in the little learning commons nook and then there was like a staff member next to him who just looked so happy to be there. And I

181think about, you know, Paling and I are like the waterworks over here with those seniors that just graduated and they're all like doing these amazing things and they look so happy to be here and, you know, I they were in kindergarten when my daughter was in fourth grade and my son was in second grade. They were all like in school together and I'm feeling like a sunrise sunset kind of moment, whatever. But they're so happy. And then Mr. I'm already forgetting his name. Mr. >> Yes. I mean, talk about how I mean, how exciting is that? He grows up in the village, he comes back, and he teaches and serves the kids here. And he was like so excited to be here. So, I just thank everybody. I know the end of the school year

182is it's like a simultaneous army crawl in a sprint. Um, and it really is, right? But, you know, the work everybody's doing matters and um I just appreciate the work that everybody in the staff is doing to help our kids achieve that joy, whether it's now or when they graduate from high school or down the road or just to have these productive lives. So, I'm just grateful for that. >> Thank you, Aaron. Any other good and welfare? >> Okay, I'll just mention a a couple things. Um the first one is the the simplest and that is around 9:30 this evening I think the air conditioning turned on and whoever whoever's responsible for that is my new best friend. So um okay and then uh next I know Carrie mentioned it earlier but um I also

183just wanted to mention how many compliments I've heard on the eighth grade graduation. It was a tremendous success. it was really um noted by the community and um I know so much work went into it and I just want you to know that it was recognized and appreciated. So, thank you very much. And then lastly, as um the strategic plan comes to an end and we're working on the next strategic plan, I couldn't help but think about someone who played such a tremendous role in the building of our first ever strategic plan and how proud she was of that plan and the work that was taking place um against it. And I just thought that Lisa Schneider Fabes would be very proud of um everything that was presented this evening. So I wanted to just

184do a call out for Lisa. Um had the same thought about her because the learning commons were her idea. That was her brainchild when she was the CRC president and she had gone somewhere and seen them in another community in another school and she's like, "Why can't we have them here? We can." And I remember the the cover page she wrote to that CRC report talking about that brainchild and I was thinking about that when I saw the picture of the boy with the staff member. Um yeah, same same exact reaction. And just one like more light-hearted comment I think of the where there like eight kids here. You know the kid who's going to Illinois is going to be celebrating a national championship with the men's basketball team in like you know next April.

185So he's going to have the most joy. Just just saying. So yeah, anyway. >> All right, >> I digress. >> More good and welfare from Aaron, please. >> Okay, if there is no other business, we will adjourn to executive session. May I have a motion to adjourn to executive session to discuss specific personnel, special education, individual student matters, and collective negotiations? I move to adjourn to executive session to discuss uh individual students and special education individual students specific personnel and collective negotiations. >> May I have a second? >> Second. >> Okay. Motion having been made and seconded. Um will the clerk clerk please call the role? >> Kristen Dcastro. >> Yes. >> Allison Papless. >> Yes. >> Amy Paling. >> Yes. >> Katie Hilton. >> Yes. >> Judy Berlin. >> It gives me great joy

186to say yes. Annne Hart, >> yes. >> Aaron Stone, >> yes. >> Motion carried. We are now adjourned to executive session.