Wilmette Public Schools District 39 Committee of the Whole Meeting October 20, 2025

001Will the clerk please call the role? >> Aaron Stone >> here. >> Kristen Dcastro >> here. >> Allison Papless >> here. >> Amy Paling >> here. >> Katie Hilton >> here. >> Judy Berlin >> here. And Hart >> here. >> I seek a motion to approve the minutes of the September 8th, 2025 committee of the whole and executive session meetings. >> I move to approve the minutes of the September 8th, 2025 committee of the whole 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. All members in favor of approving the mission the minutes say yay. >> Yay. >> Okay. Motion carries. We will start this meeting um with strategy and I will

002turn it over to M. >> Yes. Thank you. Um we have a few items on our agenda today. The first one is relates to our strategic planning process which we are beginning. Um I believe I'm turning it over to Pat Greco from Stutter Education to give a presentation. I'm happy to introduce Pat Greco from Stutter Education who's here to present to the board the process well a little bit of information about herself in Stutter and then also the process of strategic planning that they use. Um and we have been working with Pat and her team um well for probably just about eight months now um on some leadership development activities and review of our current strategic plan. So um we're really excited to have her share a bit with the board of education regarding um

003the possibility of helping to lead our community engagement effort for our future strategic plan. Uh Pat, welcome. >> Thank you everyone and good morning. appreciate the time and look forward to just spending a little bit of time giving you an overview of the process that we use and happy to answer any questions. First, a little bit about me. I've served in public education for 38 years. Half of that time as a school superintendent. I grew up on the south side of Chicago. My adult life has all been in the metro Milwaukee area. um served in two different school districts and joined the team that coached us on our improvement efforts when I retired um moving into 2019. So I've served in roles of teacher, assistant, principal, principal, assistant, superintendent, superintendent over that 38-year period of

004time. And then um for the last seven years I've been coaching coast to coast, spend a lot of time in California working with organizations large and small on their improvement efforts. So I've had the good fortune of meeting Carrie through a national superintendence association where I also mentor and have joined your team in uh the coaching and support role in uh since May. So in the work that we do um stutter education actually um uses the work of improvement from industry healthc care in the crosswalk over into education. So improvement isn't unique um to a field. It's really a matter of how do you actually build strong systems align the leadership work and then listen deeply to the constituent that you're serving and making sure that you're developing that line of sight. We work with

005about 200 organizations, community colleges, K12 organizations, municipal governments, and um have done a little bit work with the Hil Hilton um chain in the state of Florida um for their leadership management, but that would be atypical in the work that we do. So the unique part is the people who coach and lead in our field have all been practitioners. So when we when we think about the work of improvement the executive leaders the leadership team have either been higher ed um executives K12 executives principles we coach we also know deeply the work of systems change improvement um process improvement as well as the work of how do we get underneath what what are the community messages um as we're working with the um the work of the community. When we think about improvement, our our

006foundation is really how do you listen carefully to the people that you serve? How do you build your organization around strong culture, which you know well is the commitment of well- met and then how do you align strategy to the areas that are most important for you to improve and then making sure that you're able to scaffold that as a system. So in the work we do we have two fundamental frameworks that we use for um underpinning the work. The nine principles is a leadership framework of how do you build strong leadership tied to your improvement efforts. Half of the nine principles relate to culture. Half relate to strategy to execution. together. It's really a matter of how do we build the capabilities of each leader in the team to to feel confident in their

007leadership skills and the abilities. And then we really focus on how do you listen deeply to what are the strategic priorities of the system? How do you actually set the goals related to what's most important to the work to of your community? How do you build that aligned effort across the team? build that that feedback the strategy aligned to that then move into your improvement cycles and make sure that you're aligning your efforts and your resources well. So when we think about the nine principles it's leader development when we think about the evidence-based leadership framework it's really building the system capability to align to what you're saying is most important to improve. So when we think about a reset and that deep listening within your community about five years ago, you had that opportunity to

008get underneath what were the what were the key areas that were important to your community to improve. You've done a lot of work in the efforts that you've done with alignment. Your strategy and your execution was set as a priority at that time. The leadership team has had a significant amount of focus around that area. the areas aren't necessarily going to shift heavily because as you know student achievement will stay a priority of the work that you do. Strong culture will. So it's really a matter of as you're going out into the community, how do you again listen deeply? What's worked? What how you know what progress do you see that has been made? What's most important to the community that you serve? How do we actually align those key questions to the areas that

009are that you perceive as being really important? In the work that we do with strategic planning, we co-design the areas that are important for you to to do that listening deeply on. We'll have the ability to do a survey aligned to the areas that are most important to you. in addition to using the surveys that you regularly provide out to your students, your parents, and your community members. And then um being able to pull that feedback back together in alignment with the um the areas and the focus groups that we would be doing during the course of the February and March timeline. When we think of the road map and the process, we're sitting here in October. It's really that early time to set the stage of what's important. What should we be listening for

010that? January would be the kickoff in alignment with your strategic planning committee. Carrie had indicated you have a standing committee that serves that role. In addition to the leadership feedback, we'll typically do individual meetings with board members, focus groups over the course of that February, March timeline. who the focus groups are with are determined by you and the leadership team of who's important to get that feedback to as well as that survey going out to all of your stakeholders so that feedback is comprehensive and then the deep listening is with the teams that you feel are really important to meet face-toface with during the course of February into March into April we'll be doing the synthesis of the feedback and then around May we'd be preparing ing the update to the board and then in

011June um the recommendation would be to have it be a face-to-face meeting again for that board update. So as we think about the the process isn't that unique to across strategic planning groups. um the process of the surveys, the process of the focus groups. The biggest piece that would be unique is we take the opportunity to then scaffold those priorities. So it doesn't stay with just the strategic plan. It actually goes into how do we set the balance scorecard, your key performance indicators for the system, how does that scaffold to the divisions, how does it scaffold to the buildings, and then actually create that scaffold all the way through the organization. So, as we work with teams over time, that's the after. So, the deep listening, it's really setting the stage for what's important to

012improve. And then the after is how do we actually continue to align the efforts to make sure that that's real. So I'll pause there just for a minute and ask if there's any questions or clarification just on process and then I'll give you a glimpse into what does it look like as we move into the strategy. Um when for the last part when you were just talking about the scaffolding um and you create I guess KPI for is that just for year one or is that >> not it actually when we think about the KPIs you're really identifying what are the little measures that are really important to improve you'll set an annual goal you can set a five-year target but really you're what you're also doing with the strategic scorecard is setting up quarter

013over quarter or are you on pace to hit your KPIs annually and then where do you want to be by the end of that fiveyear period of time, >> but it also allows for flexibility should there be >> right a pandemic or >> Yeah. And and part of it is you're going to part of what we recommend is fall in love with your targets, but don't fall in love with your strategies. be flexible in the strategy that you set so that as you're taking a look at your evidence, as you're taking a look at there could be a critical incident that you're actually doing that adjustment quarter over quarter, year over year. So, it isn't a matter of putting a stake in the sand and running at it without really building in those ongoing feedback

014loops. Thank you. Any other questions? Any other questions this time? So giving a little bit of snapshot view when we think about a balanced scorecard. Everyone is familiar with school goals, school improvement plans, division plans. We're really building that what is the key focus. Your strategic plan currently is set up with strategic priority areas. I would anticipate those aren't going to change that much and it's really a matter of what are your annual goals in alignment to that. What are the measures that are most important to for you to improve and then what strategy feedback are you getting from your community members, your your team members, your faculty members? What's the action steps that are valued that would align to those strategic priorities over time? When we think about the work that we do over

015time, it's really a matter of how do we actually sit position it so that we're co-leading, listening deeply. We'll set up opportunities to do the development with leaders and teams. We do the regular feedback loops as we're listening closely both in one-on-one situations as well as through surveys. and then having the opportunity to work with teams on root cause process improvement outcome improvement as we um align the efforts over time. So as we think about the work of uh ahead it's ex it's been um an honor to work alongside your team. You have a highly capable and skilled team which you know you have a deeply committed community. It's really a matter of making sure that as we're positioning the team going forward, we're looking at impact, not just activity. How do we know the

016work that we're doing is really creating the impact that's important to you? What are those key indicators that are important to demonstrate that improvement over time? So, it's a pleasure to work with you. You um I'm sharing with you a couple of additional resources. our team and founder Janet Filchshire founded the education arm of Strutter Education um in about 2018 or 2008. Um we've been partners in the work for a long time. Janet has a podcast as well as a number of other resources, books available. Um so if there's additional in insights that are helpful to you, I'd be happy to do that followup. So we are published. We have significant evidence of impact in the work that we do both in community colleges as well as K12 organizations and um often work with the

017National Superintendent Association as well as other um major providers of leadership development around the work and the efforts of the organizations that we serve. So it is not atypical when we're working with teams that the teams also become published around the efforts that they're learning from the improvement efforts that they have. So it's an honor to be here and to um be able to share in the work that you're doing as well as along with your leadership team. So feel free if you have any follow-up questions to let me know. I'd be happy to answer any questions that you have via email or on the phone and look forward to continuing the conversation as we're working with you and the efforts of your team. >> Thank you so much for that presentation and for that

018thoughtful um information you shared. Do we have any comments or questions now? Are we good? >> Okay. >> Thank you again. >> Thank you. >> All right. I think we're moving on to NWA MAP reorming in AR proficiency ratings. This Kelly Jackson looks like you have someone in the wings ready to speak to us. >> I have Tom Hunter here who is our MTSS coordinator. Um, I'm just going to share or share my screen here. And now, um, I will turn it over to Tom Hunter. um he's going to take us through some changes that we've had this year with our MAP growth norms as well as with um the AR changes that have happened. MAP and Ames Web uh have both changed their norms. They've reormed this year and then I has changed a

019bit with their uh performance rating. So, he'll take you through all of that. I'm sure you've read um some of the communication that has come out to the community, but he'll go into deeper detail for you. Right. Thank you. So, as Kelly was saying, uh my name is Tom Puncher. I am a curriculum coordinator here in the district. Uh I help analyze our assessment results and there have been a lot of pretty substantial changes towards NWA map as web plus and I so I'll be walking you through those changes today. All right. So, the first thing to get into is that NWA map has changed their norms. They have updated those. So map growth reports do provide achievement and growth norms which helps educators understand what a writ score means and how students are progressing

020over time compared to their peers. This context helps informs decisions about instruction systems or or programs to better meet student needs. So these norms help provide context and meaning to go with the score. A kindergartener scoring a 200 writ score in math means something very different than like an eighth grader who also scores a 200. So the new norms for NWA uh have just been released this summer. They're called 2025 because they're named after the year that they are released. Um and they're really essential for understanding three kind of big changes which is first of all student demographics have changed across the country. So of course the new norms are reflect those changes. Additionally post-pandemic shifts in student performance are also reflected in these new norms. Uh and finally there is a update to the

021algorithm itself that has been reflected in these new norms as well. And of course these new norms are based on data from 2022 2023 school years and 2023 and 2024 school years. Uh they use information from a bunch of students nationally 116 million scores reflecting 13.8 million students over 30,000 schools and 7,000 school districts across the country. So the first big shift you'll see uh which matches up with pretty much all the information we've gotten since the post pandemic is there was a decrease in achievement kind of across the board. Um that's the first thing you'll notice when you look at these graphs reflecting that. It's also worth noting that there is increased variability as well. So not only did it decrease but you also see the graph itself got a little bit like fatter

022so to say. Um and that is also reflected especially in the lower performing students where we see a further variability. So kids who were doing poorly before are doing worse compared to the 2020 norms which are taken from before the pandemic. Uh next I've got a chart here reflecting kind of how this looks big picture level nationally for both achievement and growth norms. So in terms of achievement what we see is pretty straightforward a decrease right especially among lowest performing students. So that's what these arrows are indicating with decline being two arrows. So reading bottom middle and top achieving students we see a larger decrease among the lowest achieving students a smaller but noticeable decrease among students in the middle of the achievements and among top performing students. There's not really been a meaningful change.

023In math, something similar happens. Lower achieving students, bigger decline. Middle achieving students, still a decline, but less so. And then top achieving students, you'll see it's pretty mixed. Now, growth norms looks a bit different. Um, and what jumps out to me especially is when you look at math, how do we kind of reconcile a decrease in achievement as a whole? However, we see growth actually increasing in a lot of areas. Um, and that ties into what I was saying earlier, and I'll get into more detail of it later, which is the change in the algorithm that they used is reflected in the math scores and actually seeing increased in growth. Um, I'll get like the the real specifics of it soon, but just a preview there for you. All right, so this chart is kind

024of a summary of the percentile shifts for students who are at the same rate in 2020 compared to 2025. Um, I find it most helpful to kind of start at the top looking at reading as our first one here. Kids who were at the 30th percentile in 2020 using the 2020 norms. Look at like third grade are now going to be at the 39th percentile. So, they can score the exact same RIT score, which means the same thing as it did before. A 200 is still a 200. However, how we interpret that score has changed. So, that is showing that they actually did better than other students would have under 2025 versus 2020. Um the other one that's worth noticing is if especially if you look at the highest percentile they're the like 95th percentile

025in math around second third and fourth we actually see that it didn't decrease students actually did better on uh among the highest performing students in those grades in math and again a part of that can be attributed to the new algorithm. Um but part of that is just students the highest achieving students didn't see the same decrease in achievement that we see in lower performing students and even kind of middle performing students. All right for this next chart uh it's looking at again achievement percentile uh and you can kind of see more detail in terms of how much difference was there actually between the different percentiles. So again, at the top, we're looking at what was the achievement percentile in like 2020 versus what will the new one be in terms of the RIT score

026here in 2025. We're going to see the same theme of students who are at the lower performing uh achievement scores are seeing more of a drop where students the higher achieving achievement scores are seeing less of a drop. And then like I was saying before, especially in like second, third, and fourth grade, those higher achieving students are actually performing better than they were in 2020. As for the growth scores, um I should take a second to kind of explain how is growth actually calculated. Um so growth projected growth whenever students take MAP, they take it here in our district, they take it three times a year. Once in the fall, once in the winter, and once in the spring. So the way a growth score is calculated is they take all the kids during the

027norming period who scored the same score. We'll say a second grader who scores a 171 in the fall uh and they look at all the kids who also scored a 171 in the fall in second grade. So same grade, same time frame and then they see how did they score in the spring and that average let's say most of them jump to a 181 that becomes the growth score looking back. So because of that, these scores are really descriptive. They're not really saying what a kid should gain. They're saying what a kid on average has gained. And that's how the growth score is actually calculated. So it's only based on those two data points. They they don't update with like winter score. You can like manually look into it like that. You could do a

028fall to winter when you're comparing to all the other kids you scored in the fall and all the other kids who scored in the winter. Or you can do a fall to spring, all the kids who scored in the fall, all the kids who scored in the spring. Um but these these norms don't update in like real time. they're locked in. For example, in 2025, we're using the data from 2022 to 2024 school years. And so that's what it is. >> This is a key point that people often get confused about when looking at MAP growth scores that it is an average. So about 50% of students will hit that target and about 50% of students will not hit that target. Statistically, it's an average of how much students grow rather than sometimes um as

029Tom mentioned, people think it is you should hit that growth. And so if a student isn't hitting their growth target, they're not growing enough. Um the reality is statistically it's lined up so that 50% of students should hit that target and 50% of students should not hit that target. So when we look at our growth scores, anything above 50% is really above what's expected statistically speaking. Um and a really high growth um score would be above 60. I mean if we if if if a district has students hitting their growth targets well above 60% um that's that's considered a really high performing high growth district. um and it gets harder and harder to meet those when there's only one point that's predicted or two points that are predicted in the lower grades. It's usually um

030many more points than that. So, but that that point of 50% is something that's very um complicated to understand because statistically half of the students should meet their growth target and half shouldn't when you look at it statistically. >> Thanks. All right. So when we look at the actual the new norms around growth um we see a very similar trend um in reading we see lower growth especially at the median and below and that's across the board. Um once you get to the higher percentiles um you start to see that there's less of a a change but new growth scores are being calculated under these new norms. So they'll be in reading for the most part lower or the same. Um when we look at math, the new growth scores actually increase in some areas.

031Not all but some. Um and you see that reflected in this chart as well. Especially like I mentioned before in that second, third, and fourth grade, we're actually seeing increases in what's expected. Um and that's reflected here. All right. Uh for this next part, I just use an example here. Um under the 2020 norms is the left side. And under the 2025 norms is the right side. And this is the exact same. If you guys are familiar with the student progress reports that get sent home, this is that exact report only one's using the 2020 norms and one's using the 2025 norms. Um the charts on the top are math which is where you actually see first of all if you look at the percentiles, uh they're different. Um and you'll see where typically a

032student who would have had a lower percentile in 2020 has a higher percentile in 2025. Um, but the other thing to take note is the growth projection also changed, especially in math. So in our example student here, they were projected to grow 10 points in spring of 2024. I'm sorry, they were projected to grow eight points in spring of 2024, they grew 10 points. Under the 2020 norms, they met their growth goal. However, under the 2025 norms where math among high achieving students was actually higher, uh, their growth projection would have been 11 points. in which case the 10 points of growth they grew was not actually hitting that growth projection reading was pretty consistent. Um in fact the growth projections decreased like we were seeing on that previous slide. Um so the like the

03321 points that they grew well past their projected four in 2020 and it was also well past the projected two in 2021. All right. And now for the enhanced item selection algorithm. So I mentioned before that NWA did change their algorithm slightly. So in May of 2023, they actually reached out to our district to let us know about this new algorithm that's available. Uh they reported that reading test sprit scores remained the same and consistent between the old algorithm and the new algorithm. However, math scores, there was a slight difference and we did see this reflected in our data as well in that roughly uh there was a decrease of 0.5 RIP points for students taking math in the fall and a swing of like plus three RIP points for students who take the test

034in the spring. Now, when they reached out to us and told us about this change, we rejected it uh because we wanted to keep our longitudinal data. We wanted to make sure if we're using our 2020 norms, uh we're using the 2020 the same version of the test they were using without this enhanced algorithm. We wanted to be consistent. Um and so we did not make that change. Now with the release of the new norms, we are switching over to the new algorithm. Uh and so moving forwards, all of our tests are taken under this new algorithm. Um and that's what we'll be seeing. And the reason for this switch to this new algorithm is it is an attempt to make the test more applicable to teachers. Um what it really gets down to is

035that this algorithm uh tends to weight questions a little bit differently. Um as the kids take the NWA MAP test, uh each question has its own assigned RIT value. And the way they calculate their RIT score at the end is they find if a kid has a a question that's at a 220 and they get it right, they get asked a question at like a 230. If they get it right, they get asked a harder question, maybe a 240. Now, if they got that 230 wrong, they get asked an easier question, maybe a 225, working all the way down until they get that RIT score at the end. With the enhanced item selection algorithm, it just tends to weight the student's grade. So, it tries to find a question that's actually tied to that student's

036grade level. So, a fifth grader is taking it and gets a a two and it's trying to take a question assigned at 225, it'll look first for a fifth grade question that's related to that. If it can't find one, it'll expand out to look for a sixth grade question. If it still can't find one, it'll expand out to look for a seventh grade question. And so in doing it this way, um, they're trying to make it so the test is more applicable for teachers to look at the data and able to use it more in the classroom. This does make it more sensitive to grade level content. And that's the explanation for why we see that shift of like roughly 0.5 points less in the fall. They're being asked more grade level content before they've

037been taught it. And then a higher point, a three-point shift in the spring because again, they're being where the students are being asked more uh grade level content. and usually in the spring they've been taught it and so they do a little bit better. Now when we look at the actual impact on RIT scores uh this chart here kind of reflects that this graph where we see issa is the enhanced item selection algorithm that's the name of the the new algorithm and legacy map and it tends to be pretty consistently across the board. The students who took the ISA test scored slightly lower in the fall but ended the year in the spring slightly higher. Uh there are a few places where that doesn't quite hold up. Eighth grade it looks like they in seventh

038grade they look like they start slightly higher but they still end higher than they would have. And again they attribute that to the test is a lot more sensitive to grade level content. Now these next two slides are us looking at what would the actual what is the actual impact on our scores. Um and so we put together the same re the percentage of students who met their growth goal that was presented to you guys in the spring using the 2020 norms versus the 2025 norms. So first is reading where under the new norms we did slightly better. Now keep in mind this is using the enhance this is using the old legacy map test algorithm. So this is not under the enhanced item selection algorithm but we did slightly better under the 2025 norms.

039But when we look at math next, it shows us as doing noticeably worse and especially in a few grade levels. Now again, this is use legacy map but applying norms that use the enhanced item selection algorithm. And so because of that, it's not necessarily an entirely fair comparison. Um, and that is exactly why it is that we actually rejected the switch initially. We wanted to make sure that we were consistent in terms of using legacy map algorithm with legacy map norms. Now moving forwards, we can use the ISA or enhanced item selection algorithm along with uh our 2025 bars. So our last few kind of key implications here. So map growth still continues to report SC scores on the same RIT scale. It's just the reference group that has changed. In general, a given rate

040score in 2025 now maps to a different percentile than it did under the 2020 norms. Um, when we keep track of our information, we use a a website called Edgic Climber, the database for that. Um, and we will keep our 2020 norms in in the exact same way. So, we can easily access those and locate them. How do the kids do compared on the legacy map? Um, moving forwards, we're using the 2025 norms with the enhanced item selection algorithm. Um, and students in 2025 will typically have a higher percentile rank compared to 2020 for the same RIT score. And because of these shifts, we as a district have to kind of rethink a few ideas around program policies, placement criteria, and resource allocation. Um, the last thing I did want to mention about this is

041that when I first looked into it, I was kind of bummed that it wasn't like a super easy way to look at and go like, oh, well, now we can clearly see like post pandemic, how did our kids do pre- pandemic? Because it's all kind of entangled, right? Changes in the student population, this new algorithm, and of course, post-pandemic learning. Um, and there's really not a way to dis disentangle all of that, but they're all linked together anyways. So, even when we're looking at it today, we can't quite separate those three things out, when it comes to just describing how our students do, they're all an important aspect to it. All right. So, now I'll pause for any questions on NWA map. >> Board members, any [clears throat] excuse me, board members, any questions? Amy,

042>> I found that extremely helpful. Thank you. Really helped understand uh the changes. I I wonder and we don't create the reports that go to families, but that piece that you highlighted about the percentage of kids who hit their growth target would be so good for families, our whole community to to know and to see very explicitly. So I don't know if there's a way to add that to that column or I know we don't produce those reports but >> not on the report but with the communication that goes home with the report we can for sure add that and I in bold >> we're looking [laughter] to we're looking to uh as we sent the the preliminary communication um this fall as we get closer to when we um report out on the growth

043we will be highlighting this again and including some of that information. So for sure we can do that. I mean, there's just so much information when you get those reports and that feels easy to miss, but so important. Thank you, >> Judy. Um, I know that NWA records growth this fall to spring. Do our parents get the year as well on that? Do they get that information? I know in some districts it's used only by teachers as a to inform instruction if you can see what you should be working on. But I was just wondering if those are also sent home to parents the the discrete kind of the standards what to work on. Um we do send those home if if requested. We send home a more abbreviated report um to parents but we

044can access that and teachers access that >> and I believe all of the information is available in the parent portal when they go in too. So they can they do see the the results. So Judy, I think what you're referencing is some districts just withhold that that winter score. They don't really kind of acknowledge it with parents or send that information home. The information is available to our parents. And what Kelly is mentioning is kind of that deeper dive into the standards um is available should parents want it, but um more so parents look at those big the big cumulative numbers. Yeah. Yep. that they do have they have access to them fall winter and spring. >> Any other any [clears throat] other board members? >> Pam. >> Um, thank you. I agree. This is

045incredibly helpful and very well presented and clear. So, thank you. Um, I was just curious and I know there's there's so much going on in looking at the reading norms versus the math norms, but I'm I'm curious, you know, what our thought is given the variability between the two. you know, generally speaking in reading, um, we're seeing an increase generally speaking in math or not. Um, just curious, you know, what conversations have taken place or how much we should be looking into this or not. >> And to be clear, what you're seeing an increase in, um, Ann's looking at the slide that has the red and blue. Um, keep in mind the performance is the same from the students. The difference is how the norm uh reflects the performance. So that isn't that that is

046the same performance. So the it is taking the exact same test performance and it is use applying the norm from 2020 which Tom refers to as the legacy norms and then comparing that same performance to the 2025 norms, the new norms. Um, so there isn't actually a change in how the students performed. It's a change in how we compare the students performance across different data sets. And you'll see when I present um the fall map data that we use the RIT score as a comparison year-over-year, at least for the baseline, and then we'll look at growth in the spring. And so when those when we look at the growth in the spring, if there are these drastic changes, then we will we will certainly address it. I do want to say, you know, we we

047are um implementing new math curriculum for sure at the elementary. We're in the second year of that with our bridges implementation. And so and that's going really really well. Um and MAP is just one one item that we would use to kind of measure that implementation. >> And I would add too um a note kind of thinking a little bit about what does what do these different norms mean. it I think means that on this measure in reading our students grew their achievement um grew more than was expected if you compare to a national norm right um and we've done a ton of work in reading in fact I think some of our focus areas over the last several years were specifically in reading um now looking at math when we compare to how students

048grew nationwide post pandemic our students their achievements didn't grow quite as much as some other students across the nation. And so that's where you see kind of like when you compare to the 2020 norms and the 2025 norms. Um we were a little more kind of on par with what happened nationally and in some grade levels um the achievement didn't um grow quite as much as the norm grew. And so, um, that is a an identification of some some areas that we can continue to focus on, um, to address those achievement needs there. And I think in looking at this as well, I mean, keeping in mind that the ESSA is something that's new for this year, but this is comparing kind of apples and oranges with the norms um, between last year's uh, growth

049percentages, but we still are in most grade levels around that 50% mark that we were talking about earlier. And so, um, I think that that bodess well hopefully for this year as well. And, um, and in some grade levels, we're still far above that 50%. >> Absolutely. No, and I just think this really nicely ties back to Amy's point about, um, making sure that there is an understanding of that growth target and that it is an average. So, we should see it right around the 50% if it is correct. Uh so looking at these statistically so looking at these scores you know if you're just looking from a very high level are not even scores but the growth goals um it there it might be like someone might question it or think okay well that's

050not going in the in the right direction but these are still very high numbers and in most instances you know excellent performance to see you know the growth right around that 50% or higher. um especially with the reading norm so many of them being right around 70%. Um but so important to understand that 50% average >> else follow question. >> Oh go ahead Amy. >> So but as we're looking at that same chart were some of those students using the new algorithm and some were not? No. Okay. This is only of schools that used didn't elect the new algorithm >> taking the scores and it's applying the algorithm. So keep in mind that the the test performance is the same but then the the way the algorithm is applied to the test performance >> then

051I didn't understand the algorithm correctly. I thought the algorithm changed the questions the students were asked based and weighing it closer to >> but these are last year's data. >> Right. So, >> but didn't you say or am I misunderstanding this that some schools elected to do that algorithm sooner >> uh within the country? >> Yeah. >> Yes. However, our school district turned down the new algorith so no one >> So that's my question. Some of these students >> did have the adjusted algorithm >> with the with the red norms. Yeah, that's that's actually these this year's norms. So, we're not really comparing apples to apples. >> Right. Right. >> That's my point. With the math point >> that some >> we didn't have that algorith the new algorithm and some schools did. So, to

052me in math >> that makes more sense that you'd see that more than in reading in terms of what's been taught. I'm not explaining it well, but it makes sense in my mind why you would see [laughter] that in read in math a little bit more than in reading. >> Well, and as Ma as Tom said um with the math, that's where the algorithm was more applied than in the reading as well. So that yeah, >> also to build on that a little bit is that when you think about it, math requires almost like a a previous understanding to move forward, right? Which is why we actually saw that shift in the scores themselves when you applied new out. They applied that new algorithm to reading as well, but reading is like the same skills

053you learned in second grade are the same ones you're applying in fifth grade. The text is more complicated, that kind of stuff. With math, it's very different. And that's why we actually see a shift in the actual outcomes with math that you don't really see in reading. >> Excellent point. >> Thank you, >> Alison. Yeah, I maybe along the same lines if we're looking at the RIT score then in the spring sort of as a historical way to measure then can you do that if you're using the new algorithm or the new test? I mean will that work? >> Uh I think it's a very important caveat uh that really you you you shouldn't mix norms for sure. That's like a general rule of thumb is you shouldn't mix norms. We're looking at RIT scores.

054Um, they will suggest using like a concordance study to like apply your your new RIT scores to your old ones. Um, to me when I'm looking at them, uh, I'm keeping that in mind. I haven't seen like a big shift in any direction for us. Um, we only have with our new algorithm, we only have fall to compare to previous falls. Um, but we are going to be looking for that in spring because you're right that there really shouldn't be a direct comparison point because of that shift and that we did see a change in RIT scores overall. Um, so when we're looking at it, we'll be keeping that in mind as well. >> That's a bummer that you can't see it over time. >> Yeah, which is why we initially rejected it in the

055first place. But >> any other board members? Great. Thank you so much. That was very helpful. >> All right. Okay. And now we get to talk about more. [laughter] >> There's more. Never mind. Keep going. >> All of that makes it somewhat complicated, right? To evaluate our performance year-over-year. So, the timing of this change um for us is we we just have to keep in mind as we look at now our student performance outcomes um all of that u does make it a little bit complicated. Um, in my head I'm kind of thinking, okay, well, it's good that we're making this change now, so that now as we go into the next new strategic plan, we have some new KPIs that we can set. Um, but it does really make it complicated for this last

056year as we're trying to make sense of the data over time. Um, so keeping that in mind is really important. Tom, thank you so much. That was a really informative presentation. >> There's there's more to Tom's presentation now. orbs that have changed. I >> a different assessment is A as web plus um which is the testment given at our elementary schools typically K through two and then sometimes in third and fourth graders as well um has also shifted their norms they've updated them as well. Conveniently they did not update their algorithm or test. So this is much easier to explain in my opinion. [laughter] Um and so generally among the assessments that we give within ASWeb um there was also a higher shift in percentile points just like we saw within WA map but because

057there are no changes of test content or scoring it's just the interpretation it's just the reference group that has changed um so we can make sense of it that way. Uh so typically and I don't have like fancy charts to go with this one unfortunately there's there's less information for mains web because they had less changes. Um it's just an update in the norms themselves. So like personally with MAP, we can't really compare percentiles from the 24 25 school year to 25 26. That's given a given score will likely result in a different pretty much always higher percentile rank than it did under the old norms. Um we can however continue to use their old raw scores or vertical scale scores for comparison um across different school years. And that's all I have on web

058actually. Which brings us into the Illinois Assessment of Readiness, which also had some updates. Um, and so last year they made a lot of changes, but it was all on the proctoring side of the test. Nothing changed on the content of the test itself. Um, just how it was administered, what teachers had to do, all of that. The kids took the test in the exact same way. Online questions were asked, what was great. Um, however, over the summer, ISBY has updated cut scores for proficiency. The scaled score for I remains the exact same. If a kid scored an 800, it means the same thing whether they took it no matter when they took it. An 800 means the same thing. However, what the cutoff is among in the past it was five levels. What the

059cutoff is for what is proficient has changed. So they've gone from using five levels to four. So this slide indicates the old levels of performance. The level one, two, three, four, and five has now become below proficient, approaching proficient, proficient, and above proficient. A new rating system, right? And I will pause to say I know I think every single person in the room heard, wait, they lowered the uh expectations for proficiency and had like a gasp and is like, all right, let's talk about that. Um, so I'm going to kind of pair it back what ISBY has said about why they made the changes to proficiency. Um and essentially what it comes down to is they feel that there is a mismatch between what we are telling students uh is ready for college versus what

060we're telling them is proficient. uh and so they use charts like this to indicate that and this is mostly coming from to be very clear mostly the high school college level right so they look at kids who went off to college and said okay we asked universities as well what is considered proficient so kids who were rated as proficient in language arts it was only like what 30% on this chart whereas about 65% of high school graduates were enrolled in college within 12 months we're saying there's there's mismatch here in us telling kids you're not proficient in language arts but you're going off to college and you're being successful there and they said there's the same thing going on with math similarly low percentage of kids are being considered proficient however a lot of them

061are still going off to college and being successful uh and science actually had the opposite problem we were telling kids they were proficient in science they're going off to college and having a more challenging time with it and so because of that they're saying there's a mismatch here and So while they lowered proficiency for ELA in math, they actually raised the target in science. So I will give them some credit for that that it wasn't just a across the board lowering proficiency was in fact lowering it in ELA and math while raising it in science. Uh the other key part to it was that Illinois when compared to other states had an extremely or had a higher cutoff for proficiency. Um what they did was they take the Illinois assessment of readiness and they compare

062what is proficient on that onto the NAPE assessment which is the national assessment given every I want to say every four years. Um and they compared every state's assessment to it. Um and when they looked at that cutoff for proficiency, Illinois was actually the highest among all the states. >> Interesting. Uh and the last piece to why change proficiency was that it was kind of confusing that I had five levels of like does not meet partially approaching meets and exceeds and then the Illinois science assessment which is given in fifth and eighth grade had four levels of emerging developing proficient and exemplary and then the SAT for students who are in high school uh they had four levels as well of partially meets approaching meets meets expectation and exceeds expectations. So under the new system

063all are using the exact same language with the exact same ideas [clears throat] behind it. ISA and heads up if you got a high schooler we have switched from SAT back to ACT. We're an ACT state now. Um but using the same language of below proficient approaching proficient proficient and above proficient. All right. Now when we look at the actual what were the changes to those cut scores uh that's what we have here on this slide. uh and it did change by different grade levels. Um and I will pause just to say that a proficiency can mean like a lot of things, right? There's not a designated scientific exactly example of like all right, an eighth grader who is proficient can do this exact thing. Um when you think about it, we could set proficiency

064as a state and make it something like any kid in eighth grade who count to 10 and then every kid would be it. But that wouldn't really tell us anything. Similarly, we can make it incredibly difficult and make it like, hey, they have to answer calculus questions. And similarly, it wouldn't tell us anything. Um, so when they redid this, the attempt was to actually try and get it so that we're actually telling kids, hey, you're you're on track for college or you're not on track for college. Um, they start at the high school and work their way down, right? And so under this new system, um, there's actually a bigger gap among lower uh, grades than there is larger so higher grades. So in grade three, the old score for proficiency was a 750. If

065you scored a 750 on IR, you were proficient in ELA and math. Actually, under the new one in ELA, you need to score a 735 to be considered proficient. In math, you need a 732. So a difference of like 15 or 18 points. And when you look at the upper grades, in grade 8, the old one was still a 750. The new one is now a 745. In math, the old one was a 750. The new one also 745. Uh and of course like I mentioned in science it actually raised proficiency. So what was a 799 was proficient is now an 812 in both fifth and eighth grade. Uh in terms of in actual effect, I used some preliminary data to you to do this. Um I of just since we have their scaled scores,

066I was able to export those into a simple spreadsheet and I was able to just do a simple count if um and so I was able to see all what was our proficiency under the old rating system versus the new rating system. So in third grade ELA here, we can see under the old system using this preliminary data, it was 71.13% of students were proficient. And that's just a combination of four and five. Under the new system, it is now 82.44% proficient. And that's a combination of proficient and above proficient. So, as you can see, it increased our percentage of students. Seventh grade math, we're going to see less of a jump. And again, I attribute that to 750 versus 743, I think it was. Um but you you do see a similar jump in

067terms of more kids are proficient under these new cut scores. And finally science we see the opposite direction where under the old ones using this preliminary data we had 81.84% of students who are proficient but under the new cut scores it is decreased to 68.56% of students who are proficient. All right. And this is where I can answer questions and it will be the end. >> Board members, any questions, comments? >> Allison, >> I just had one about sort of defining proficiency. So, is that defined like at the end like in a 12th grader and then you work backwards or is it for each grade you're like what is a what is proficient for a third grader? It's my understanding they started at the college level um and specifically used like the ACT of like

068I think it was 19 I want to say I didn't look as much into the ACT because I'm like oh high school where where T3 district but with that they also went to different schools and asked them about like they spent like a year and a half I want to say um just going across the state asking schools as well as universities what is kind of a good threshold and then with the math behind it as well as what the ACT's threshold for proficiency was that's how they landed on it and then worked backwards from there. Okay. >> So, starting at 12th and then going back. >> So, it isn't like a teacher can look and see at the end of third grade they didn't know these things that third graders should know in order

069to be proficient. It's just sort of a math on a calculation back from whatever the goal is for high school. >> So, right uh let me see if I can answer this but Tom or Kelly you can jump in as well. I think that um that proficiency like that cumulative proficiency mark is that backward mapping that Tom discussed. But a teacher can look at the discrete items and see how it relates to the standards of that grade level that was assessed um to determine what they did learn or didn't learn or what they were able to demonstrate on this med on this test, right? That they mastered or didn't master. Um so there there is both both are true. Um but the proficiency what counts as you are proficient on this me you are proficient

070on this measure you've demonstrated proficiency is kind of like a cumulative target so to the same extent if you think about like the ACT right there's all the different standards that are being measured on the ACT but there is like one final cumulative score that the test publishers would say okay you have met proficiency and you're demonstrating readiness for college in the state of Illinois. Right? So like it's we have to just kind of keep in mind that there's all sorts of different ways to cut the data and to look at the data. And here um our teachers can use the I kind of as a backward look, some might say an autopsy of like what happened last year. They can look back and say, "Oh, my students generally speaking were able to meet meet

071these geometry targets and they weren't able to meet these algebra targets or whatever it is." Um but the proficiency is really just a cumulative you you met proficiency or you didn't in this content area. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> Did I say that? >> I agree. Sort of. >> Yes. And I was just going to expand with and then even within that there's different ideas behind major content is like one of the big subcategories within I and it's weighted differently and then supporting content which is when we get into like major content will be standards in like I don't know like third grade like fractions is huge right and so that might be labeled a major content but then you get into like some of the geometry stuff they're going to hit on in fourth

072grade a supporting one. Um but then there's also mathematical reasoning which is how does a kid think about this math problem? How do they answer it? Um and so there there are within that subcategories and the only thing they changed was the overall proficiency target. >> Thank you. >> Any other board members? >> Judy back um two slides I think it is to that comparison with the um the old and the new proficient and the four four levels versus five. that just go back to in the slide presentation. I think that's >> on the third grade ELA. >> Yeah, the ELA and the math. Well, ELA, they're two separate slides. >> Yeah. >> Uh yeah, that would be it. Um because if I'm reading this correctly, it's almost if they split that level three, right?

073So that now we have 82% more people went into the proficient above. What was level four? Level four in the old one was >> proficient. Yeah. I know. [laughter] >> I will chime in to say that when they changed those proficiency ratings, they did change all of them. Um, in the past, like level one was like I'm just gonna spit out numbers here. It was like a seven or a 650 to like a 700. And the new one, it might be a 650 to a six like 87 or something like that. So, it's not a direct level one is now not proficient. I was just trying to see if there was a change in the not the people that were highly proficient but the ones that listed as proficient because those are the kids you

074would want to target to try and get to I was trying to see what those numbers look like >> other board members Amy >> this may be a conversation for another time but I'm just curious on a high level that science piece that tipped to, you know, we're as a whole not creating enough proficiency, not talking about us, but whole group versus reading. And I just wonder if nationally are we sort of approaching science in a way that's not proving as useful at the university level or I don't know. It's just an interesting like I don't know what the conversations are about why that shifted in that direction but it's fascinating. It it is it's so it's so interesting right to kind of think about it and remember this proficiency rating is Illinois proficiency rating.

075So how we compare nationally is yet another norming group to think about. Um but it is really interesting to think that now based on the new ratings that Illinois has chosen reading it math we're hitting proficiency to a greater extent than we were before and in science we're not. So why is that or what's the what's the goal? What's the aim? How is that aligning with our curriculum and our own internal measures of science proficiency? It is it it makes me think more though about what Tom was saying that it's a backward mapping from what our students are doing when they are taking some of these prof assments in high school and so and then you think about well and then we switched from SAT to ACT and the proficiency targets shifted a little bit.

076Well, and did you say that they talk to universities about how successful students are there? >> And I anecdotally I have a brother-in-law who works in science at the university level who talks about that the kids are having and these are kids coming from everywhere. They're struggling with applying science. So I just think that's interesting to then see that >> and that also >> they've changed um the expectation on the college testing for ACT was it that now it's optional or it's going to be opt science is going to be optional. So it's yeah that's an interesting change as well with the ISA itself. has given us more information about how our students have done and so Tom has taken some time at our recent institute day and has um had the opportunity to dive

077into that data with our teachers and so they are able to do a better analysis and see where we are >> um and what we're hitting and maybe where we need to work. >> That's been helpful. Well, so grateful you all keep such a careful, transparent eye on all of this. Really helpful. >> Any other board members? >> No, I will just say thank you again. It's a lot of changes and a lot of information and it was really um well presented and I appreciate all the work that went into it. Thank you. >> Yes, >> I'll echo that. Thank you so much. I >> think we're moving on to fall map and as web plus assessment or do we that we You did that. >> No, this is this is under actually how our

078students are doing that was we will present on AR at the board meeting next week. So just that will be coming up your microphone just a little closer there. All right, the board meeting next week will have I so um we are excited to present that data but for today we have our as web plus data um and then followed by our NWA map data for fall. So I will turn it over to Kristen. >> Okay. So um as we start the AS web plus um as you know every year we have our kindergarten first graders taking a variety of different subtests on as web plus. They do not participate in math. So this is one way that we use to sort of identify those students who may need additional support or instruction as well

079as those students who may need some enrichment. Um, we have changed those subtests a little bit over the course of the last five years because the Illinois State Board of Education has changed some of their requirements in terms of early identification for dyslexia and we will be seeing an additional change coming up in the winter. They changed once again. Um but for this fall um as Tom has shared with you we had um a change in the norms and as we look at our data the good news is is that we've been going trending upward over the course of the last five years in a really wonderful way really showing the fruits of the labor of our our elementary teachers and then the new reading measures they reading curricular resources they've been using. So, that's

080been exciting to see. With the change in norms, we now look really good. Uh, our kindergarteners and first graders are all scoring above the 90th percentile. Well, not above the 90th percent. I love you phrase that uh over 90% of our kindergarten and first graders are deemed to be on track. So, they are progre they're demonstrating average or above performance on those early literacy measures. So, right now they look really good. um our teachers are still using information in order to identify those children who might need enrichment or intervention. I will say that we did do a lot of discussion with the reading specialist when we got this data um after the benchmarking and really looked back instead of using percentiles to identify students who might need intervention, we went back and used the actual

081Ames web scores because we found that that this was not identifying students who might need intervention. So we are using the scores. We have about the same number of students in receiving intervention this year as we did last year. But we did a a big deep dive into it to make sure that we were catching those students who maybe are are performing fine on the national measures but maybe not as where we want them to be in terms of our local. But anyway, regardless we we the students performed really well on the early literacy measures. to go to the early numeracy measures. Um, our students performed well. Um, again, we've been doing quite well on the the Ames web early numeracy over the past five years. Um, our goal there is for I think 85%

082of our students at the end of the year to be either average or above uh on these measures. you can see that that we're about in line with where we've performed in the past with the exception of our uh math facts fluency and I think that that that makes a lot of sense. Um you can see that it trended downward over the past couple of years once we implemented bridges and I think that the reason is because Bridges is really much more into conceptual understanding of math at those early levels. Math facts fluency is very much a wrote skill and so we would expect to see as students become more conceptually have more conceptual understanding of those math facts that that score will go up but this is where we're starting for this fall. So

083again we're in really good shape with these. Um we're still using again the same information that or the same cut scores that we did in the past in order to identify students who might need intervention. But we are looking at us compared to a national sample our students are doing really well. That's good news. >> All right, moving on to um the NWA map assessment. Similar to as Web, we take NWA MAP uh three times a year, fall, winter, and spring. So, this is just reporting out the baseline data for this fall um for 2 through 8th grade. Um a little bit about the NWA MAP assessment. Uh the RIT score is based on a rash unit which is a measurement on a common equal interval scale used to estimate a student's academic achievement and

084track growth over time regardless of their grade level. Um it's an equal interval scale meaning that the score increase of a certain amount represents the same amount of academic growth regardless of the grade level. So if you are a second grader that scores 210 and then from fall to uh spring you score 220 that 10 points means the same as if you are a third grader. Um it also means that it a score from 210 to 220 that 10 points represents the same amount of growth as 220 to 240. Um the the MAP is an adaptive assessment meaning that the difficulty and complexity of questions changes um as students answer things correctly or incorrectly. Um Tom mentioned this um now this year starts us using the ESSA um the the algorithm. So that will um

085target right at their grade level content to start um so it they they say that that makes it more precise. So, we will be using that in um the years going forward. Um we will look at several different ways to present the data and um I'll highlight some things that we look at along the way. Uh these first two slides give an overview of the last four years of achievement. So, our RIT scores based on uh the grade level mean RIT scores. Uh the black bar bar on the right is the national mean and then um the green bar right before that is uh for district 39 our mean writ scores. Um this is for reading and this is in math. So you can see that we are scoring far above on our RIT scores

086the national mean for our grade levels. uh as we look at this chart now the the percentiles come into play um which Tom was uh sharing with you earlier. So um these this chart shows uh both in reading and math um students who are performing at or about the 50th percentile on MAP based on their grade level national average. Um just again recalling what Tom discussed about using the new norms for that. Um, so you'll see the percentages of students performing uh at or above the 50th percentile for this year highlighted in the blue bar at the bottom of the graph. So 2025 bar. Um, and then the rest of the graph shows the previous years. Um, you'll see many grade levels are at the same or slightly higher than years past on these uh

087these percentiles. In that bottom row, you'll see actually that anywhere from 79% to 93% of our students across grade levels are performing above at or above the 50th percentile, which is pretty awesome. Um, looking at this graph, if you look vertically, it's comparing um second graders from year to year. So, different cohorts of students. If you look diagonally, you can see how um second graders have performed in a cohort manner um for four years. Um we will show co cohort measures a little bit later um for the whole span of that grade level. So again um this is the fall map. This is kind of the same uh chart as you just saw but now in graphical form. So um it highlights the cohort trends in reading. So again, if you were looking at the

088diagonal on the chart, this is showing that um the percentage of students in district 39 performing above the 50th percentile on MAP over the past four years. Um second graders only have one bar because they started taking it this year and this is just fall data. Um and uh if you look at like for example the fifth grade um you can see uh those kids at 77% um in 2022 uh 80% in 2023 um 88% in 2024 and then 90% in 2025. So that's the same group of kids and how they were. This was for reading and then this one's for math. Now the following graphs will show grade level performance year overyear um not cohort performance. Keep in mind these are different groups of students. Um and there's just showing the the RIT scores

089not percentiles. Um the RIT scores again have stayed basically the same. there is some slight variation and I'll point that out um where it occurs on different graphs. Um and we think based on the the issa and the new algorithm there's a little bit more of a targeting at that grade level. So that may account for some of the the fluctuation. Um generally we look at four or five points as something we want to look into um in fluctuation but two three that's just kind of normal. And you can see on this um for reading both reading and math in second grade um the mean fall rate is really consistent over time. The next slide shows the breakdown by subcategory. So you'll see on the left is literary text in the middle isformational text and

090on the right is vocabulary. Um and these are second grade readers. And then in math um you'll see the subcategories for math. So you see operations and algebraic thinking, numbers and operations, measurement and data and geometry. Um right there under numbers and operations you'll see a fivepoint difference between the um the 183 and then the 178 from year to year. And again, that may be because of the the ESSA application of that new algorithm. Um, and and also the timing of when this takes place as opposed to the timing of the curriculum that takes place in class. So, if the ESSA is applied and it's targeting second grade um content, if the teachers haven't gotten to numbers and operations yet, it may be targeting content they haven't gotten in class, if that makes sense. So

091now I'm just going to go through the slides slowly. Um for the rest of the grade levels, this is third grade reading and math. This is third grade subcategories for reading. Third grade math subcategories. Now you see that geometry has gone up five points. So again that's a positive result. Fourth grade reading and math. Fourth grade reading subcategories. Fourth grade math subcategories. Fifth grade reading and math. Reading subcategories. Math sub categories. Sixth grade reading and math. Sixth grade reading subcategories. There nothing but uh consistent there. [laughter] Sixth grade math subcategories. Seventh grade reading and math. Seventh grade reading subcategories, seventh grade math subcategories, and eighth grade reading and math, reading subcategories, and math subcategories. Now, we'll look um at cohort views. So these will be line graphs that show um student cohort performance on RIT

092um across the years um in district 39. Um so this will show the more than just the five years or four years, excuse me. Um we'll first show reading. So this is second grade. Again, there's only one point because they have only taken the test once. As we look to third grade, this is reading again. Um the orange point in the middle is the spring assessment. So the winter is not on here. We do report out winter, but um it's not on here. We look at fall to spring as as we measure growth. And you can see that um the graph is really it's above the national mean. However, it uh follows similar trends as the n national mean. Here is uh fourth grade. Again, the orange is spring, fifth grade, and sometimes we see

093a slight dip or a similar um n or a similar district 39 mean um from uh spring to fall. Sometimes there's a dip from spring to fall as well. That's anticipated. um sixth grade reading, seventh grade reading, and eighth grade reading. Now we'll take a look at math. is the second grade again. Third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade, sixth grade, seventh grade, and eighth grade. And now I will take any questions if you have them. >> Mrs. Paling, did you have your hand up? Oh, sorry. >> Board members, any questions? Okay, thank you so much for that. Very informative. >> I think now we're moving on to the key performance indicator updates for goals three and four. Goal three. So, a lot of our key performance indicators get updated in the spring each year, but

094there are some that don't come through until the fall. And so, I'm going to highlight a few for goal three, which is focus focusing in on our staff, our professional community, the adults that work in our schools. um regarding the key performance indicators or the data that's come through um in the last couple months and I will move pretty quickly our um so retention looking at our staff retention data the teacher retention data um shows a 90% retention rate this is data that's going to come forward on the school report card in just a couple weeks so It's still temporary data, embargo data, but um we're thinking it's pretty pretty s um stable. And you can see over the course of the last four years, we've been right about that 90% mark, which is our

095goal. Um of course, we you know, aim to get that higher, but we're glad to see it is where it is. If you look at the staff retention, this is all of our non-certified um employees, our custodians, our cooks, our teaching assistants, secretaries. This data actually is not on the school report card. So this is our own collection and review of information. We look at September 30th date. We pick a point in time each year to see on this date this year who was who is employed now that was also employed last year. So it is a a point in time. It is um not at the goal level of 90%. And um I think when we set that goal, we knew it was a a lofty goal to meet because not all of the

096positions in this group of employees is um something that people seek to do for their entire career. And so um I'll show you in a bit more information about why people are choosing to leave. And I think that paints a a story as to why that's happening. But it is not concerning to me. Again, we want consistency. We want our employees to stay. But I'm not super um surprised by the the data at 76%. This is looking at our exit um interview questions. So you'll recall through the course of the strategic plan, we set up a process by which we talk to staff members that leave either through a Google form if they don't want to have an interview with us or an in-person interview. Uh questions are the same either way. It's just the

097the way we collect the information. And you can see this is coded information. So we ask people why they're choosing to leave, why they need to leave. You can see uh for this last school year, a lot of reasons focused around family and personal reasons as well as other which might include some retirements. Um the the piece that is important that I look at is staff that are leaving us to go to another district in a similar role. And that has been fairly consistent with one little blip uh through the course of the last four years. And so while we are losing some that retention rate that I just spoke to doesn't appear that we're losing our staff to other school districts to take similar positions. They're moving on but hopefully for reasons either for

098themselves or promotions or their family. So, that data I believe is connected. Then, um just a quick reminder, this data actually is not new. We shared it last spring, but you'll recall when we set out the strategic plan, we started looking at five essential data, which is um the climate and culture survey information from our staff. Soon after we started the strategic plan, we moved into a different tool, the CSCI, which also measures uh culture and climate. And again, I believe this was reported last spring, but it's showing a positive trend in all areas. And again, this year, we'll collect a third year of data to see if we're continuing to trend in the right direction relative to what our staff are telling us about the in these categories. Then we come to our strategy

099indicator about staff and faculty attendance. So the goal here is to have smaller numbers like golf. I've heard that a couple times in the last couple weeks. Um and you can see that is that is not where our numbers are. Um when we factor out our FMLA, family medical leave, vacation days, professional development, um you can see our licensed staff are about 41% of our staff. Um and they're we're aiming to be under 10%. So we're I would say relatively stable with our licensed staff, but we did see a fluctuation and an increase for our non-licensed staff. went from 43% last year to 55%. Our administrative team has spent a lot of time talking about this information and again you'll recall I think when we set out on this journey we thought some of the

100other elements that we were implementing through our strategic plan would positively affect our staff attendance and we just haven't seen that outcome. I think our our hypothesis was that it was culture, climate, that type of um feelings that might have been impacting our staff attendance. And we've worked hard on that and we've seen improvements in our culture and climate and the reports that our staff tell us, but it hasn't moved the needle on attendance. And so this summer, we spent a lot of time as an administrative group talking about what can we do? And so, um, we've enacted a plan this year to really focus on awareness. So, each month our staff are receiving an email about the number of sick days that they've used since July 1st, looking to see again an awareness. I

101took a day and a half for a doctor's appointment and a sick day and or I was sick for a half a day and I it it adds up over time and if you not um if you don't have that data in front of you on on a regular basis I think it kind of creeps up and so we obviously very much want staff to use their sick days when they're ill and not feeling well or in need of taking care of their family. That that is not a concern. it's um optional absences that might be used potentially as as sick time that we're we're trying to be aware of and informed about. And so awareness is this first element and this continues to be a monthly if not every other week conversation with our

102administrative team in terms of what else what else can we do to support our staff who might need this time. Um and and our goal is really to have them be with our students as much as possible when they're feeling well. We want our staff with our children because we have such a short amount of time. So we know that this data is not where we want it to be. But we also are I think this year taking some really active proactive steps to stay on top of this data. The good news is in spite of where our attendance data lies, we've made some good progress relative to um relative to how often we're pulling our pair professionals. So again, you'll recall when we created our strategic plan right after the pandemic, we were worried

103about how often we we were pulling our pair of professionals away from the students they were assigned to work with to be substitutes. We didn't we had a lot of staff absences. We didn't have a great subpool. And so our go-to strategy, and rightly so, was to pull staff that we could to support the the most critical needs. And this has um dramatically declined over time. And a big shout out and thank you to our school secretaries who track this data for us regularly. Um it's not easy, but they do. Um and and I think it's been a nice progression in a positive way to see where we've landed with a focus on this um strategy. >> And those are my updates for goal three. >> Thank you board members. Any questions or comments? >>

104Yes, Kristen. >> Is that data available where like our absence issue is common across other districts? >> That's a great question. So the school report card um All schools are measured in that relative to teachers. So, we're looking at all staff, administrators, everyone that works for district 39 is inclusive in the information I just shared with you. But on the school report card, you can see how district 39 teacher absences stack up against those at the state level. Wonders if some of that is a generational issue. Um, just in terms of the way I'll leave it at that. [laughter] We there's there's many hypotheses. We haven't quite um figured out right what the action is that will move the needle on that. But um we we've definitely looked at some generational um tenure status. Um

105we've looked at different job categories to try and better understand um the needs that exist there. Um certainly post pandemic there's been some changes in how people approach work and inerson working and so there's a lot that's at play there. So we're starting with just increasing communication and awareness and then trying to analyze what else we can do to better support our staff. >> Any other questions? Amy? Well, in that same line of thinking, I wonder you may have already had conversations just with peer schools like um and and so I think that will be helpful and also as we're thinking about the strategic plan and setting KPIs for the future. I you know just wanting to be realistic and not I mean I want us to have high goals but also just to know

106what's that local and national schools will be helpful. Um nationally we see that many many districts are struggling with attendance of of teachers and staff. Um and we see that locally too um throughout the township. We have collaborated So more to come for sure. >> Any other board members? Ann clarification, but from a state perspective, we're trending a little bit um our absentee rate might be a little bit higher than the state average of Illinois. Is that okay? Um and again, I you know, just to go back to why is this a goal? why is this a priority? Why are we so focused on it? Um, and it's just the link to academic outcomes of the students, right? The importance of that consistency of having your teacher in the classroom. So, that's a great point.

107We have we have great teachers, very skilled. >> Yes, our subs are wonderful and dedicated, but they don't have the skill and the content knowledge that our teachers do. And so while we have substitutes and our we've been able to um increase the number of subs available to our children, it's not like having your classroom teacher with you with their expertise. And then um just looking at and I know we we've talked about this before, but we aren't pulling parapros as often as we used to, but that is not because we don't need subs as often as we used to. So, so what are we doing to cover those classrooms? If it's not the parapro, is it just because we have a um larger pool of subs to pull from? So, we're working on just

108having more subs in our system. >> Yes, we do. We definitely have increased our sub pool. Um it isn't that we never pull our pair professionals. We do on really bad days. We have to. Um but I think we we've been able to increase our sub pool. um in in our subs are working more regularly which has been a gradual increase as we came out of the pandemic. >> I think the other thing too that might be note worthy there or having some impact is the staffing of our of our of our staff population. We are more consistently able to fill those positions and so they're not to sub for each other >> less vacant positions they're filled. >> Okay. And then lastly, the the chart um why they leave that includes all staff. So

109teachers and Okay. Yes. So any staff that leaves us is invited to answer those questions. >> Okay. Thank you. Allison, did you have your hand up? >> Yeah. I was I appreciate um the amount of time that you have spent on this. I know that it's been a sort of a persistent issue, but I think it's really important. Um I'm just wondering do we have data or do you have data um that narrows it down by type? So by teacher or not by teacher but I mean just teachers as far as absences go separate from staff or from non non staff. Yeah. >> That would be um specifically reported on the school report card. It just looks at teachers. We broadened it for our strategic plan because >> we think we all play a critical

110role in the organization. Yes. Okay. Thank >> Judy. >> I believe I noted and I just want to comment a decrease in staff that were leaving that also coincided with the decrease in the number of the amount of time that were being followed. I don't really believe that that was a coincidence. I'm thinking there would be a lot less job satisfaction if you were being asked to sub four or five times a week compared to once a week and that they did cope. So we want to keep that in mind and not kind of drift back into the patterns of the past. Anyone else? Okay, I think we're moving on to goal four. Yes. So goal four is our uh family partnerships goal. And um one thing that we do a lot during um or

111we target during this goal is or for this goal area is um transitions between grade levels. And an area that we've been measuring uh the last couple of years is the transition from sixth to 7th grade. Um and so you'll see there um on the left hand side is uh the dashboard from last year. um we're looking to increase um and then we give a survey, a transition survey to our parents and students every year. Um this year we gave the survey again um the slight decrease for parent satisfaction um 81.4% overall satisfaction and student satisfaction 78.7% overall satisfaction. I will say that last year we had a smaller number of parents and students take the survey than this year we've really made a concerted effort. Um and so while these decreased I think it's

112a more accurate representation of uh the the experience overall and still you know around 80% in each area is fairly decent. However, we have work to do. Um, so we ask for feedback and suggestions on the um, experience. And you'll see here, these are some parent comments um, just about doing something in the spring, touring um, the the building with students there, other students there, maybe family nights, um, walking their schedules. Um, some parents commented on the fourth to fifth transition as having improved and so now looking at the uh, sixth to 7th as improving too. um some students um they also talk a lot about trying to find their classes ahead of time um and then some some elements about um seeing other classmates and seeing teachers as well. Um, so for this year,

113we have a designated action step on designing and preparing to launch for next school year transition supports. And I know the 58 team is already working on what those look like and um how we might improve for seventh graders and look to see those numbers improve for next year. >> Okay, any questions or comments? Ellison, >> I just love that you include the comments of the students. I think that's super great. Like to know what they're thinking. >> Anyone else? >> And parents, too. >> Yes. [laughter] >> Anyone else? just appreciation because historically this was such an issue trans for high crest and um people are so happy with all the work that has been done and that's made it such a positive transition. So I don't want to forget that um it's made a

114huge difference and clearly we're doing the same for junior high. I think we can underestimate that change because it's the same group of kids moving from one school to the other, but clearly it's still a new school, new routine. So, this is really appreciated. >> Thank you. Anyone else? All right. I think that brings us to the end of our strategy committee portion. So, I'm turning this back over to you, President Hart. >> Thank you, Miss Stone. Um, all right. That will take us to facility development committee. Mrs. Dcastro, >> thank you. We have a couple of updates for the facility development committee. Uh the summer 2026 Wet Junior High School window replacement project as well as a 2026 state maintenance grant applications. We'll turn it over to Mr. Boltire. Good morning everyone. >> Morning.

115>> Hi. >> Uh my name is Rachel Steiner. I'm a project manager with Nicholas and Associates. Um so we are currently out to bid for the 2026 summer scope of work. Um our contractor bids are due on um October 30th at 1 pm. Um, we'll then conduct our bid opening that will be held at the Nicholas and Associates headquarters in Mount Prospect. Uh, we had our mandatory pre-bid meeting for all interested contractors last week on Tuesday. We had a great turnout for each of our bid packages. Uh, so we're expecting great coverage and a competit competitive bid on bid day. Uh we are continuing to um estimate the project cost to be within the project estimates that were previously distributed. Uh so any initial questions before we review some of our renderings? Okay, perfect. I'll

116hand it over to Jim from STR. >> Yeah, like just one thing. Um I had the board has a copy of like the summary of the cost estimates. Um you know back in the summer I think it was our August committee of the whole was our 60% design and then the most recent one it happened like right after our September meetings. Um, so it's been a bit um, so I kind of summarized that so the board could see the kind of the progression and um, even though we did hit the 100% design, we don't typically have an estimate for that since that's the final documents and we are out to bid right now. So that's more of a reference item for for the board as much as >> uh, it's my first time here so

117I can just answer questions I guess for anybody who may have it. Um, I'm not sure if you're I think you're probably familiar with the project. It's a window replacement with for base bid and also some renovation on the inside door replacements. Um, but then also some alternate bids of some door replacements as well as uh we are removing the skylight portions of the of this two areas where there are skylights. I I believe it's leaking. So, we're taking that out, putting it under roof, adding some infill of slab, and just sort of closing it off as part of the regular building. Um, security film. There are a few different um alternate bids, combinations thereof to cover portions or all of the first floor windows with security film. And also the the biggest thing I

118think is the alternate for the extended uh driveway with Ballard protection, new uh new renovated plaza furniture. That's we kind of threw together a pretty quick um rendering of what that may look like, which we have in front of you. I apologize, one of you has some coffee on one of your renderings. It's a Monday morning. Um, and last alternate I believe is the lobby ceiling and lobby kind of renovations uh for the auditorium. >> Um, how how many feet is this? So like that from the front door to the the driveway, >> how much are we adding roughly >> referencing this bottom? Honestly, it's not much bigger. It's it is bigger. I don't I don't have the number of feet, per se, like >> actual number, but it's it's a reconfiguration of the loop

119that's there now. So, it's you're adding some, but it's not it's not the same, and it's not a ton bigger. >> You're not actually moving the driveway. You're just >> the front driveway. >> Yes, we are. We are reconfiguring that. >> Okay. >> But it's it's kind of being squished down closer to the the street and also spread out. actual net of what we're doing. I'm not sure at that portion. We are adding the extended drive to the north of there. >> Let us get that that specific number for you because that was that is part of the goal is to make sure that there's more um hangout space so to speak for the kids that is also protected. So you see there the ballards which look kind of like um I don't know sticks.

120>> Yeah. fencing without fencing, post without fencing. Um that is meant to protect the kids as they're kind of hanging out there in the morning, which if you have dropped off a student at WJH anytime recently, uh you see a lot of students hanging out, which is great. We want to encourage and support that, but we want them to do it safely. So adding some additional um width there is is part of that project and also making sure it's protected. So, let us get you exactly how much additional distance that is because it's hard to tell on this rendering. >> Yeah. From the from the front door to >> It currently goes uh like a half circle. Sorry about that. Half circle and now we're kind of pushing it down to give kids more space.

121>> So, it does increase the >> Yes, >> it does. Let us get you exactly what that distance is. >> That's definitely crowded spot and sort of part of I thought the whole reason >> Yep. doing it. Corey and Tony, you don't know off the top of your head about how much this that is. >> No, I can easily look >> if you look at the the handout rendering. Um I think it's the bottom the bottom rendering. It's kind of aerial from I guess the south looking. >> Yeah. where you know the current the current shape is very much a half circle at the top of say the half circle. Yes, there are the concrete sidewalk. I don't I don't know how many feet that is. This this rendering at least for that particular section

122like right in the middle uh where you see it's like gray right now and then below it would be like the lighter orange where to represent the brick pavers. that feels pretty representative. The part that of what's there now, like it's not a it's not a great amount of space, but it very quickly with the half circle, it it widens out. And so when kids are concentrated directly in front of those that big bay of windows um in front of the lobby, that area gets pretty dense. But like if they were to push off to the sides, it's less. So, I think that if if we were to do this with the amount of kids we typically see in front of there, I don't I don't see someone right before we let them in within

123those couple minutes. I can't imagine that we would be like, "Oh, this is really dense or this is really packed." Um, I think this would feel, you know, more much more comfortable and and plenty of space for for students to be able to gather. I would love to see like a bird's eye view of the whole thing. It's sort of hard to see. >> I have one right here. I could show >> that would be great. >> Yeah. Yeah. [clears throat] >> I misunderstood your question. I thought you meant the actual road, not the plaza, but >> Oh, no. >> The road is maybe it's a single lane, but so this is what you got. That would be helpful. I bet everybody more of a semicircle and then the way that it's designed now. How

124does that help with traffic flow? >> So, there's a couple of elements to the project. Let me see if I can address it, but anyone can jump in. So, um the we're trying to help with traffic flow even with some of the recent adjustments that the principal has made by getting people to move through um making those lanes so that they're straight through drop and go should help with traffic. But then the other element which is an alternate at this point um is that extended driveway to the north. Um that's an alternate and um right now we're not sure um based on the cost estimates if that's going to come in favorable enough for us to pursue that because extending the driveway as significantly as is required um or or as is is drafted right

125now would require some pretty significant water storage adjustments. Remember, we talked about um working with the village, but it's really actually um bigger than the village to accomplish it and and we're not sure yet. We're we're going to see how the bids open, but that that may be cross prohibitive to extend the drive. >> Extend it straight north or extend like a driveway running east and west on the north side of the >> Yeah. So, it is kind of straight north, but it's straight north from the newly designed. So, remember it goes in a semicircle. Now, the new design will um make it a flatter >> circle, almost not a circle at all, kind of a straight. And then it continues, if the alternate were to be accepted, it would continue into what is currently

126um the teacher parking lot, but it's not actually the teacher parking lot. It's the green space that is to the left of the teacher parking lot. Um, so and that's the issue is once you start to take away some of the grass, then you need to demonstrate water retention offering to offset the the the green grass space that we would be taking away. And that's what gets really complicated and quite frankly really expensive. And so that's why that alternate um is something we're really keeping a close eye on as the bids come in and why we wrote it as an alternate because it may be cost prohibitive or it may come in really really favorably and then we'll be able to pursue that. >> Okay. But it doesn't eliminate teacher parking. It eliminates grass. >>

127It eliminates the gr grass which is good because we need the teacher parking. It's problematic because by eliminating grass you need to then provide some water retention to offset that. Um, and that's that's what gets complicated. Okay. So, I think that um I see Tony maybe wanting to offer some insight there. >> Just uh we're taking multiple avenues with this. So, the adjustments that our principal has been doing, you'll I think it's today where you'll see some taller cones, some signage saying pull all the way forward, then they'll release, pull the next four or five cars up, then release. There's this project that we're looking at, but there's also simultaneously us talking to the village to again explore on one directional timebound uh traffic on Locust. That is um probably is good to pursue regardless

128of what is decided with here. But just know we're exploring probably three avenues here to try to address the same issue. uh it's not just a a one solution kind of uh pursuing >> even extending the plaza area I think I'm saying that correctly um that that kind of staging area where kids like to hang out extending that will also make it we hope a little more favorable for kids to be dropped off anywhere along that straight line whereas right now there's a clear point at that circle where it seems to us in watching again and Everybody really likes to drop off at the very point of that circle and and that is where the traffic flow gets um you know backed up a whole lot right so we're trying to actively encourage everybody to

129move through the circle but flattening out that circle hopefully will help people to recognize even more clearly I could drop anywhere along this my student will be approximately just as close to where they need to get to >> I know all about that drop Yes, many of us many of us do. It's active spot in the morning and the afternoon. Yeah. way outside question if we have to kind of make up for using can we make up for that with green space that's part of the district >> or not even like this space >> n no um it has to be it has to be proximate at least in our conversations with the village it has to be proximate to the space that's being removed so um many of us will remember there was a

130very large project accomplished behind the school building, right, with underwater storage. And we thought, well, if we advocate really strongly, maybe we can tap into that as an offset for this little bit of green space that we're talking about using differently. And uh we were told pretty clearly that that's not going to be possible. >> I was thinking >> and that's a huge amount of water. I was thinking more about this thing like if we gave up some parking here in exchange for directly across the street is that something might be allowed to be connected. We we don't believe so and also we can't really we don't really have parking spots here that we give up. It's very frequent that all of our spaces here are used but according to the village it has to

131be connected to the green space that is being taken away. So really creative idea. Um I love your thinking there. But but I think I think the village and um the water reclamation people would say um thanks for thinking creatively. I do think what I've heard in the past, right? So it's just all about you know within that >> and then creating water retention if they're taking Yeah, you got it. >> Oh, Corey. Wonderful. Thank you. >> Show us the front of the building. biggest right right now. Part of it would be This is all right. So the the area to the right of that delivery drive is the alternate that we're talking about that um requires them some pretty significant water retention. And the board may based on the bids choose not to pursue

132that alternate if if they if the you know depending on how the bids come in in which case the part to the left of that drive all of all of that still is available to the board to pursue even without doing The entire thing that's kind of overhead to see essentially because of the This is >> this is the >> but there's no >> what does it look like I think question what does it look like they don't do the alternate for then what what are the options So, no one is bidding to just do the first half. Do we do we have a water problem with just the first half too? Is that part of the reason? >> Okay. It wouldn't seem we are not taking any new It doesn't. Yeah. when we are

133people bidding the water recation portion as well. >> Correct. That would be embedded in alternate um for >> okay alternate that is just that first possible or not in >> not not no not for this like we went out on the 9th and then we're going to open next Thursday on the 30th. um that's not that wouldn't be realistic, but depending upon what we ultimately decide um certainly we have options to but the choice will be to either make changes to the front that look like what you described or not at all. Correct. Well, it'll be helpful to see how the signs and all the other changes we're doing now are helping before. >> No, I did think that communication um from one and I was very helpful. documentation with it. It was great. So,

134appreciate that as well. Um, all right. Moving on with facility development. >> If there are any other questions, comments. >> Okay. Thank you very much. So the maint the state maintenance grant uh each year at least for the last I think it's been four years in a row now um is released an application where um there's a couple of fairly easy forms. Um it requires board approval. So we would bring that back um next Monday night for board approval. It's labeled as state like state m state matching grant where if you're approved um an an eligible project can get $50,000. Um so each project that someone would apply for would have to be at least a hundred. There's no limit on how expensive or or how much a district might spend. Um so we've done

135this in the past. We've been approved. I would anticipate that we would go through this process and get approved. Once again, looking at what is be said was allocated for this program relative to the number of school districts. Uh it looked like there's enough for every district to every district, but maybe 50 and there's about 850ish districts in Illinois. So, I think our our uh chances are are quite good. Um, and there's really no strings other than it's a matching. So, whatever you get in the 50,000, you have to spend at least that much. So, any questions, comments? >> All right, great. Thank you. Okay. Um, next up is school finance. I will hand it over to Mrs. Paling for that. >> And I will turn it back to Mr. Boltier for our estimated tax

136levy review. >> All right. Share my screen. All right. So, each year one of the requirements to pass a tax levy resolution is to estimate it. Um, so when we look at kind of the process, we're going to talk about it today during our finance committee. Um, and then next Monday night, we would ask the board to um, adopt the estimated levy and then set the public hearing, which is um, a requirement. We do publish a notice in the paper um, no more than 14, no less than seven. Um, we've got the November 17th meeting targeted for uh for adoption and that public hearing and then you just have to have everything uh published or I mean filed with Cook County by the last Tuesday of December each year. So keep in mind um we're

137looking at this being over 80% of our annual revenues. And when we go through the calculation process, the ptail law or the property tax extension limitation law is what drives um how much we can increase that each year. So it's an increase in the prior year CPI plus an addition of new property growth. And one of the things that is important is to try and capture that new growth each year and the CPI. All right. So some some uh key terms that that are used frequently when talking about it. EAV it's equalized assessed value of of the property. If you think about it as a homeowner um EAV is intended to represent roughly one-third of market value. Um so a million-doll home would would have an EAV at 333,000. CPI, uh, consumer price index or

138inflation, and the new property growth. New property growth has always been a a really important component because it's a it's an additional amount uh afforded to school districts beyond CPI. This chart shows a few things. We've got about 10 years of data. But what I like to show is the relationship over time from when a CPI becomes kind of locked in. When 2024 calendar year finished, we were at 2.9% CPI. We're now talking about it for our for our tax levy. Next calendar year is when taxpayers will pay that. But it really becomes a part of our budget in fiscal year 27. We're now in fiscal year 26. This one's similar to the last one where we have 10 years of data. Um, what I like about this is we can see that new growth

139in our total EAV over time. Um, our 2024 line. Um, while very publicized, you know, it's not final that second installment bill, the information's not done because of the software project. I did receive late late in August a draft um 2024 report from Cook County based upon the numbers in there and kind of how their process plays out. They generally wouldn't share a draft if they didn't think that was where it was going to end. So we're looking at new growth of of 14.4 million. Um you know we're we're right at about 16 million as our 10ear average. So that was, you know, well within um where we would expect it to be. Then we saw a slight decrease um in the existing EAV. Um the bold the bold uh percentages represent years where there's

140a reassessment. Um as I think I'll talk probably on the next slide or the one after that for 2025. Um we're looking at a at a reassessment for this part of Cook County. um and it'll likely be a substantial assessment increase which doesn't necessarily translate to um how much we're able to collect. All right. So, another uh really important part is like what is the limiting rate look like? Um because that is the rate that's applied to any new growth which is which is really a key factor for us. And so we have last year's extension times CPI. Then we on the bottom part of the equation, we take the existing AV minus or the total AV minus new growth and we come up with 2.42%. What I'll what's interesting about that is in times

141when there's a reassessment and assessments shoot up, your rate goes down. Um, this is because when a reassessment percentage greatly exceeds, you know, the couple percent that we're allowed to increase our our extension because of inflation, um, the rate is the part of the equation that gets the condensed down. One thing to keep in mind is, you know, if we were to hold every factor consistent the 2025 levy, we should see our D39 portion of everyone's tax bill go up by 2.9%. That's in an ideal world where all factors are kept consistent. The reality is that's not the case. um you know, when they reassess everybody's properties, whether you're a multi-million dollar house or or something on the smaller side, um you know, not everybody's percent is the same. Then when you factor in, well,

142what are the commercial properties look like? Then what happens once appeals start happening and those get settled? um you know, you start to see burden shift between sometimes between residential and commercial um makes the the whole explaining that to the average taxpayer a little bit challenging. >> Right. So on this slide, we're taking a look at at a few different things. Um the thing I like to gravitate towards is at the bottom, we have three columns. one is what is our total amount of extension if we were to just capture CPI or inflation. Middle column is what we what typically occurs. Um CPI plus the new growth in in not knowing what that new growth will be. Um we use the 10-year average. And then the far right column is this is what we levy

143or ask. We always ask for a much higher amount because if we don't and we had a really high new growth year, we would lose out on that new growth. Um so we kind of balloon the levy as many people refer to it even though we know that's very unlikely. So in this case um the the balloon is an additional 2.4% over CPI. So a total of 5.3% over last year's amount. um very unlikely that we would reach up to that level. A more rep re to me a more realistic representation of what would occur is this middle column where [clears throat] we see that the the value of the new growth is roughly 389,000 and it to our overall extension is roughly 0.58%. That's how much it's worth it on a percentwise. Um up

144up up top we uh also show the the existing EAV what I believe it will be after um the reassessment and is is quite a substantial I think I had estimated in in my um calculations for this for this presentation for everything to go up roughly 25%. And when you look at some of the other documents that aren't the slides that I shared with the board there's three documents. One was the tax levy estimate that has by year by by uh taxing line item. Um and then you have a document that has new growth going back many years much more than 10 was in my slide. What you see um we've seen many times is in a reassessment when the housing market is strong. We've had a couple times where those that value went up

145by 25% and then we had a couple when the we had the recession where there was reassessments and things went down by 10% each time and then you see small changes in those non-reassessment years. Um and so we we've just for this calculation we've assumed a 25% increase. This slide shows us um in the first column the draft extension by the by the taxing line item area. So in the bold row that's our our operating funds or the the part that's subject to PTEL. The bottom two rows are debt service that is set each year based upon the documents that we filed with Cook County when bond issuances occurred. They just calculate that. they know the amount of money that's needed to pay that principled interest and they do the they do the calculation for

146there. The Senate Bill 508 adjustment row is um legislation that's been there for roughly four or five years now. And as refunds occur, they track that over the whole year. And um it's a recognition that once the the tax extension's been set, if the courts settle refunds, it's the school district is out of money with no uh course to remedy to that. And so they they add up those those refunds and whatever that amount is, then they just automatically add that to our our total extension. And so we've seen this since it's been in place. Uh low to mid $400,000 range is what it has been for for D39. Um so it's been a very very helpful change uh to school districts. Then our middle column is our estimated extension. So that's more in line

147with what I would expect once the once everything's finalized next next calendar year. Uh 69.9 million. And then the levy request is 71.1 million where 2.9 of that is for inflation and 2.4% of that is for new growth. One additional thing that's been around for a couple of years is during this presentation and also when we do our budget is to um share with everybody our cash balances. This is just a snapshot from the end of May. we by fund we had 52.6 million in cash and investments available to the district. So as it relates to uh the 2025 tax levy, that's everything that I have. Um I'm happy to answer any questions. I do have one um just comment because it is all all related. It's been very publicized that the 20 final bills

148for 2024 are are massively late. We now find ourselves on October 20th. I had hoped by now that at least behind the scenes there would be some rumors or unofficial, you know, conversations where people were sharing definitive dates of when bills would go out even if they weren't public because that's typically what has happened in many prior years. Um we are still kind of in a waiting um waiting waiting timeline. Um and so from my perspective, what the board should expect is barring some sort of definitive information happening between today and when we come back for this uh committee of the whole meeting in November that I would at that meeting share with the board um kind of a detailed cash flow where we're at, how long will we be before we would have to

149borrow should this continue. Um we did this exercise roughly um I think it was two years ago maybe and um that year the bulk of the money came in I think just before we hit winter break and at that point I think we were we were uh we had enough cash flow to get into to February maybe March. Um so we were in a strong position but we'll retake a look at it. you know, things change over the course of a couple years. So, we'll see where that looks like. And then, um, if we still don't have any information, we'll I I'll try to lay out for the board what short-term borrowing looks like, what is that timeline look like relative to when um, you know, we would we would run out of cash until

150those collections start to come in. So, um, happy to answer any questions on the 25 levy or anything related to 2024. >> Don't see any questions, but thank you so much for all of that information. >> Thank you very much, Cy. All right, at this time, this is an opportunity for the public to address the board on any topic. Are there any audience members present that would like to speak? Okay, seeing none, we will continue with the agenda. Old business. Is there any old business? New business. Is there any new business today? Right. Then we will adjourn to executive discussion. executive session to discuss special education and individual student matters, specific personnel and collective negotiations. May I have a motion? >> I move to adjourn to executive session to discuss uh special education, individual student

151matters, specific employees and collect negotiations. >> Thank you. May I have a second? >> Second. >> Motion having been made and seconded, will the clerk please call the role? >> Alison Pathos, >> yes. Amy Paling, >> yes. >> Katie Hilton, >> yes. >> Judy Berlin, >> yes. >> Annne Hart, >> yes. >> Christendic Castro, >> yes. >> Aaron Stone, >> yes. >> Motion carried. We are now adjourned to executive session. The time is 10:16