Wilmette Public Schools District 39 Committee of the Whole Meeting June 2, 2025

001I hereby call to order this committee of the whole meeting for Monday, June 2nd, 2025. The time is 8:01 a.m. Will the clerk please call the role? Aaron Stone, Kristen Dcastro here. Allison Papless here. Amy Paling here. Katie Hilton here. Judy Berlin here. Annne Hart here. I seek a motion to approve the minutes of the May 12th, 2025 committee of the whole and executive session meetings. I move to approve the minutes of the May 12th, 2025 committee of the whole and executive session meeting. May I have a second? Second. Motion has been made and seconded. Board members, are there any comments, errors, or omissions to the minutes? I just had one. Um, I believe I had the pleasure of calling the role that calling to order the meeting that day. We'll just change Aaron Stone

002to Ann Hart. Does everyone approve the amendment? Great. Um, may I please have a roll call vote? Annne Hart, yes. Kristen Dcastro, yes. Allison Papless, yes. Amy Paling, yes. Katie Hilton, yes. Judy Brewan, yes. The motion carries. All right, we will start today's committee of the whole meeting with the facility development committee update. Mrs. Diccastro. The first item on the agenda is a construction update. And I'll turn that over to Mr. PMer. Okay. So, for the construction update, um, we're we're focusing on what's going to occur uh this summer. uh two items to to just update the board. So, the first floor air conditioning project at the junior high uh particularly noteworthy, it'll be the last dozen or so classrooms in the district to get air conditioning, but also this is the seventh project um

003at at our schools where we're doing lots of like classroom air conditioning in the last say four years, five years. Um but unlike those um going into this project uh everyone's feeling pretty good that like when the summer's done the project will be complete. Uh the mechanical equipment for the first time since we've been doing these kinds of projects um has already already been on hand for several months. So the construction team is pretty optimistic going in that when school starts in August that hopefully fingers crossed everything will be working well on that front. So that is a a bit of a change from what we saw um especially in the summers of 2022 and 23. Then the other item is I did get confirmation that the Harper PTA is going to fund a um

004I I'll term it a enhancement to their existing playground. We're going to expand the footprint just a little bit. And the the main piece that's being added this summer is one of those I don't know what it's called exactly, but it looks kind of like a spiderweb where kids climb all over it. Um there's a couple other small pieces that'll go next to it, but that is the first part of of their main playground. So because of that, um next Monday night, we'll we'll uh in the board packet, we'll include uh a donation agreement with the Harvard PTA for that bit of work. Um does anyone have any questions? Board members, any questions? Okay. Well, that's uh it's been a four years, a lot of work. Great to hear. Everything is on time. Um so

005just a uh significant project and very exciting to think that we'll be in a place where all the classrooms will have air conditioning. What a feat. So, thank you. All right. And the second, excuse me, the second item on the agenda is the five-year capital project summary. And back to Mr. Ultimate. Yep. All right. So, I'm sure in this document, um, so this is a document that we've committed to discussing and sharing with the board at a minimum twice a year. Typically, we'll do it December and June. Um, sometimes it may get brought out for other months if we're having specific discussions. Uh so what you see here um highlighted in yellow, the board had previously um approved the architectural design. They're they're well underway with that with that part of it. Um so we'll

006see how that plays along plays out this summer and as we start to come back for our meetings in the new school year should start to see um some budgetary estimates at different design levels u related to that project and and the five alternates that are in there. Um, you know, the one thing that we're kind of hitting a point where we get to shape what we do in this next, uh, fiveyear window, um, there's not a lot of defined things that we'll do. Um, you know, from my perspective, a few things that could drive, you know, what projects do we target or what gets accomplished in this next, say, five to sevenyear window that's after the summer of 26. you know, um it'll fit nicely with the next iteration of the district's, you know,

007long-term strategic plan, but also we're getting closer to um our architects and engineers going through and doing a 10-year life safety study um for the district, which is required. Um and so when those very detailed um walkthroughs that are completed of each of our buildings, um you know, there's a sometimes a very lengthy list and some are some of those might only be a few hundred or a few thousand dollars, but some of them could be some of the items that make it on that list in different categories, you know, could be seven figure projects. So, um, it's those kinds of things that will help form what goes into those next, uh, beyond what our final bidding is for the summer of 26. Um, so there's not a lot of definition compared to maybe if

008we were to look back three or four years. We had a pretty good idea of what we wanted to accomplish over this current period that we're ending. But, um, I I think it'll be interesting to see how it plays out. Does anyone have any questions? Any questions? Okay. I I had a question. Just it's a 10-year study. The safety study is 10 years and every single school in our district. Yeah. Every building including this one. Yeah. So, the way it works is they'll I had a conversation with the design team. Oh gosh, maybe earlier or now it's June. But so it have been like I think early May. We were just briefly talking about what that timeline might look like. And if I have the details right, I believe in what would likely happen because

009it it takes a long time for them to they got to go through everything. They're using the lens of like what are the codes? What are the um codes for all the different areas and it's not always straightforward to what is the current code. It's like sometimes it's what was the code when that part of a building was put in place. Um and so when they go through they'll create a list. they'll they'll the person assigned to it will probably spend a good bit of their summer doing it. But when they the report that will ultimately make it to a meeting like this is there's three categories A, B, and C. A items more urgent. Once the report is submitted to ISBY, the district um tries to complete those or is told to complete them

010within one year. Then there's uh item B which is within five years and then item C which are recommended um not required to be done but generally the way it works is if you get a list most districts have quite a bit quite a few things in in the C category. It's good to knock out a bunch of them during your 10-year window because if you don't typically those are the ones that then move up to A or B the following cycle. They they can become quite urgent. So um so the review of the schools will be done next summer like a year from now. Yeah I believe and then so like they so just an example timeline might be that the architects and engineers would go through our buildings next summer then you know

011as they pull together all the findings that they that they have and and compare that to what what is code for different buildings. Um it it would probably be sometime in the what would that be the 26 27 school year they probably would share that with us. Um it doesn't move as quickly as you might think. Like it they very well could be um doing the investigative work next summer but not actually formalizing a final report until sometime in 2027. So, it's it's a having gone through this at other um districts, it can be a bit of a lengthy process, but then when it once it is finalized, then depending upon what what's in there um could spur some fairly quick action and conversations on our part. So, something like that, it it could end

012up being that there's not much to do. Like, that's certainly possible. Um or there could be some things that you know we really want to consider like hey what's our plan? How are we going to tackle these items in say the next five years. So great. Okay. Thanks. No, it's great to know that that's on the horizon as we consider the the budget kind of five years and beyond. So thank you. All right. Uh if there are no further questions um we will move on to school finance. Mrs. Bailing. Terrific. And we have, I believe, four items. I will turn it back over to Mr. Bulley. All right. So, item number one for for finance. This is more of just an an FYI on the on the process. So, um, next Monday, we'll ask the

013board to approve the fiscal year 26 D39 tenative budget. Uh, I'm, you know, we we looked at that in detail in May. nothing from May to to next Monday night's meeting will be different numbers wise for D39. Um so from like when we think about the process of like approving a budget in any given year, one of the steps is the board approving a tenative budget which then allows us to have that budget on display for a minimum of 30 days can be much longer which in our case it is before the board takes formal approval in August. Um but also the board would be set the setting a public hearing which we would hold typically at the beginning of our August board meeting. Um you know at that point I would review it. We

014have public comment specific to that particular agenda item. Um honestly it's not much different than like our conversation in say this meeting. It's just much more formalized and it is a required step in the process. Um, does anybody have any questions about that? Okay. So, then the next agenda item is Wixie, our joint agreement with AOKA. Um, so because it's a specific joint or joint agreement with the two districts, it has its own separate financial statements. Um, they are in the grand scheme quite simple. Um, each year the revenues and expenditures equal each other. the the draft or tenative version I've shared with the board. Um the total revenues and expenditures are uh approximately 234,000 for next year. Um there's really in when I dive into it, there's really only a few transactions um within

015this joint agreement. Um, so and and while we do have a like separate Wixie meetings, the D30 because we're the fiscal agent for the joint agreement, our board approves takes the steps of approving um the budget and audit and things like that at a at one of our board meetings. Any questions? I do have a question. I maybe I should have a asked it in the first uh the first tenative budget item. Sure. Um but I I was just wondering and I'm not sure it has any impact on the tenative budget going forward, but with the the rise in property taxes um around here, I think a lot of people are talking about it. It's been quite significant. Will that have any effect on not probably not this budget, but on future budgets or anything

016like that or do you do you know? I don't know. Maybe that's so I think what you're talking about is I've seen articles about it is when like assessments are done in any given year is the split between residential and commercial properties. So you know our our tax levy amount is is a fixed amount plus we can get like a CPI or inflation amount added on each year. But what taxpayers can feel is that if if you started in one year and the split between commercial and residential was 50/50 of the total taxes, property taxes, and then they reassessed or people appealed um and now the split was say 52% residential, 48% uh commercial. It may not seem like a lot, but something those small shifts which have occurred. Um, and I believe if I

017read the article like the city of Chicago, they're going through their reassessment right now, but that won't taxpayers won't feel that for another year or two. Um, it it can be it can be significant, which then leads to people getting their tax bill and say, well, D39 said my tax bill is going to go up, I don't know, say 3.4%, 4% but in reality the tax bill may have gone up seven or eight% or could be even doubled it. You know, there's a lot of different things that are beyond like this this district's control that impact each individual taxpayer. just to give a more of a lay person's kind of interpretation to it. Um the our tax our what we levy can only go up by CPI plus any new growth, right? We know that

018every year and then it's capped um beyond that. Um what we as homeowners, which I think is maybe what you're referring to, um there's an appraisal process, right? and that that that is what I think a lot of our neighbors are talking a whole lot about because many properties appear on that that initial assessment to have gone up pretty significantly. So that refers to how the how the pie is sliced so to speak. So Corey is talking about the difference between the whole pot of residential and the whole pot of of commercial business property. Um that pot that piece of the pie which is residential is what that assessment has got many property owners talking a whole lot about. It doesn't the way the pie is sliced doesn't increase the size of the pie. The

019pie only increases by CPI plus new growth every year. But the the way it's sliced, who's responsible for paying that piece of the pie depends on your own property value. And when we see that go up by 20% as a homeowner, 50% as a homeowner, I've heard people talking about 97% um valuation going up. That means what slice of the pie you're going to pay. So the pie is not getting bigger. So we're not the the pi only can increase by CPI plus any new growth, which is actually kind of outside of the pie because um because of the way that gets calculated. Um, but the PI itself can only really increase by CPI capped at 5%. For for our levy, so it probably won't have a major impact on the budget. Correct. Um, I

020mean, it won't, right? The D39 budget is is based on that CPI factor. That's the levy that we can levy, but your own personal budget might No, let's be clear. I just want to make sure that no one is interpreting what I'm saying is like don't worry about that because um the slice of the pie that that you as a homeowner might be responsible for could change significantly based on the valuation of the property. Cory, did I say that right? Yeah. The only thing that really what I've seen come into play in the last say 15 years in variety of communities when they have their trionial reassessment and they and you see these 20 30 40 50% increases in an assessed valuation is and this is where the the very slow appeals process which is

021available to both commercial and residential is if everybody's seeing these large percent increases. It now motivates people to hire an attorney, go through the appeals process. And from a district's perspective, there's kind of two paths. People who appeal and their situation is resolved before the the final tax levy is calculated. So in that case it it does no does no harm to D39 because it's been the the the reduced value that someone achieved is like respplit amongst the whole pot. However, in some cases um like the sides just can't come to an agreement particularly in larger properties or more complex properties that are hard to assess. that could take multiple years. And then if the levy has already been set, refunds come out of D39's collections for that year. Um, so that's that you the

022biggest impact that we we would see are usually those like really expensive large properties whether they're residential or commercial. Um, and so th those can have an impact like that can be like the long-term impact, but like it's not immediate. It could be five years from the time that like the community is talking about these large reassessments before we see any spike in refunds. So Corey, wasn't there a change in the way that gets calculated and refunded? A couple of years ago there there was an adjustment to how that was. Is that still at play? And can you just briefly what that means? Yeah, I think we're in like year four now. Um, so because of that, like school districts and other entities were harmed by this very slow process, not every type of refund,

023but like certain refunds um were the uh Cook County Clerk will track the amount of refunds in in a few different categories and they'll go from say November 1st to October 31st and then sometime in November they will publish a report for every taxing body in Cook county and they'll say, "Here's your amount." For us, it's typically been in the low $400,000 range. And what it allows it is it gets added on to our tax levy at the end. It's a it's called a property tax refund recapture um law. And so, it's it's been helpful. Um but similar to the whole appeals process, it's lengthy. It's not immediate. So, you know, a school district eventually will will get that money back or portion of it, but you know, it's not immediate and it could it

024could be at least a year or two. Um, so that that has been a very positive change. Um, it's been helpful to us. One of the driving factors for that piece of legislation was um if you think about certain communities, some communities or school districts, they had, you know, a couple very large taxpayers that made up a very large percentage of their tax base, um power plants or or big manufacturing type things. And if they were successful, you know, that could really like hamstring a school district's budget. So, um, so that's been in place and it and it's it's been quite helpful. So, so what Corey was just describing goes with that second set of appeals, that delayed kind of set of large, more complex appeals. Yeah. Uh, for our community and for your neighbors.

025Um, that assessed valuation is what a lot of people are talking about. um which again is how the pie itself gets um cut up among residential and commercial properties within our community. It does not drive what we levy. What we levy is based on CPI. Um and will be that doesn't change. Um and that's an important distinction because I know a lot of community members think, oh my gosh, I'm I might my valuation went up this much. I my taxes will go up by that much. They presume it it doesn't because it kind of it's about the slice of the pie, but um but that it doesn't mean that the district is taking more. It means that um the pie is being cut differently. So it is really important that people pay attention to that

026because it can it can make a big difference for Thanks. Any other questions? Oh, I wanted to make a just a mention as Corey was talking about Wixie, which is our special education cooperative. Um, just so that people are aware, um, many of our local uh, neighbors, our our neighboring school districts are part of a different cooperative um, named True North. It used to be NSSED or the Northshore Special Education District. U, many of their boards are um, considering um, some changes in their partnerships there. And so I just wanted to just kind of make a note that as a school district we are not. So they um are having a lot of conversations um over the next several weeks and months and maybe even years about that organization um because D39 is not part

027of that organization. That's why our district uh specifically won't be engaged in those conversations. We have our own separate um cooperative with AOKA. So, um, just wanted to make a note of that because I expect that in the future we're going to start to hear more and more about about those conversations and wanted to be clear about why those aren't happening at our board level. Okay. I think we can move on to annual resolutions. Okay. All right. So, uh, this year we have four four items for, uh, review and then we'll make its way on to next Monday's board meeting. Um, first item, treasurer's bond renewal. Uh, so I'm the district 39 treasurer. One of the requirements is that any school district's treasurer is bonded. Um, so we will renew that bond, which is a

028protection for the school district um, should anything happen. Then the second item is a resolution regarding the interfund transfers from operations and maintenance to capital projects fund. So each year when we do these large capital projects, typically north of a million dollars, um we pay we actually pay the expenses out of the capital projects fund. Um which makes a lot of sense. The only uh reason we need to do the transfer is there's no um reoccurring um dedicated funding source to that fund. And so we transfer money from our operations and maintenance fund uh so that that fund can uh end with zero fund balance each year. So for next year we're uh uh planning to budget 3.4 million as that that transfer amount. So we've we've done that for several years in a row

029and any year that we have capital projects we'll have to continue that in the future. The third item uh interf loan from the ED fund to the O and M fund. So we have as a practice have had the board going into a year approve a potential loan from the ED tom. One of the reasons for that is as you saw the onm fund transfers money to the capital projects fund. However, given that we are heavily locally funded or locally funded school district, meaning property taxes primarily, um we get those in two installments. Statutoily due dates are August 1st and March 1st. However, sometimes and in re recent years, we have not seen that se that second installment bills go out to taxpayers until post Thanksgiving and sometimes even approaching like New Year's. Um, and

030so we like to have this board approval in case the ad fund were to have to temporarily loan the um onm fund some money. uh primarily because the on andm fund is going to have to transfer the most of that 3.4 million at the in the early parts of the year uh since a lot of the construction um comes out. A lot of those bills will be paid in the first few months of the year. So we've set the loan at 2 and a.5 million. Um we haven't had to uh go down this path in the or had to use this, but it is nice to have um in place should we need it. Then the last item in this uh agenda item is since we don't have a board meeting from June 9th to

031August 25th, um board annually approves a resolution allowing the business office to continue to make accounts payable uh payments to a variety of vendors all through the summer. um allows us to be good business partners and um you know get payments out and then you know basically that's a two to two and a half month window. When we come back in August we'll uh present the board with the full list of everything that was paid during that time period. Pretty uh standard practice across uh school districts. Any questions on any of those four items? I think we can move ahead to special education. All right. Okay. So, um special ed contract, uh it's been seven years since, uh our last bid, which means we have the ability to renew for up to three more years.

032Um I'm happy to say that next Monday I'll be bringing a recommendation to have a multi-year agreement uh with with for this service line item. Um, just to give a little bit of history. So, like going into COVID, kind of the COVID era, the contracts that were in place for for like transportation services, um, you know, they they mirrored typically what you've seen, but then on the special ed side, the f when that existing contract went up, our renewal, we had a one-year renewal at 10.5%. Then then last year was seven. So it's starting to come down. So for this three-year renewal, we're looking at um 4 and a.5% for next school year, 4.25 for the um second year, and then we're still working on the language, uh some specifics for year three, but I

033I expect it to be a little bit less than the 4.25. um like the firm we'll have that my hope is that we'll have that firmed up before Monday. Um but also for comparison just some of the higher numbers that we had previously seen on the regular transportation side when that contract had run out it was 12 and a half 8 and a half and then 6.25 25. So, um you know, things are coming down. Um I think some of the you know, current uncertainty um regarding costs plays a little bit of a factor into it, but um Northshore has, you know, they've been reliable. They have met our needs um daily for several years now. So, um I'm glad that we're moving towards uh hopefully an extension of of our contract with them. Any

034questions that anyone has? Thank you, Mr. Wolmire. Um this time we will move on to strategy updates. And Miss Stone was unable to be here this morning, so I'll go ahead and facilitate that. Sure. Um all right. We are going to begin with the spring assessment report and I believe I'll be turning that over to Katie Lee. Yes, thank you. Um I'm presenting this on behalf of our entire district. I thought it might um be good to spend a few minutes telling you about district 39 with the new board members and the type of uh assessments that we engage in with our with our students. So, there's many different levels of assessments. One that the state requires us to do, which you're most familiar with, I A and um there's some that the district chooses

035to use as benchmarking. Um and so today's report will focus on those which is NWA MAP and AS web plus. But we can't um ignore the significance of classroom performance assessments. Um they're directly related to our um what our teachers are teaching and assessing. um based on the lessons provided in the units. So, please know that this is a glimpse. This is one data point um to help us as a district and as a school um and as educators to really monitor how our students are doing. And so, I wanted to just lay that foundation there. Uh so, the first assessment that we will um look into is the 2025 spring Ames web plus. This is our assessment that we use predominantly with our kindergarten and first grade students. Um it is to monitor their

036progress since NWA MAP is an assessment that we administer to second through 8th grade. And so we wanted some standardized benchmarking focused on their um skills and objectives. and Ames web plus is our choice um in our district this year or actually for many years. Um these are the assessments um the names of the assessments we're in education where you'll see initials um uh you know moving forward. Um but for kindergarten, our early literacy skills are what you may also um hear as foundational skills when we talk about curriculum or any other um educational context, but letter naming fluency, letter word sound fluency, phone segmentation, and nonsense word fluency. And you can see on first grade um it's nonsense word fluency and the oral reading fluency. For kindergarten, we also um monitor early numerousy skills

037like name uh number naming fluency, quantity total fluency, and then in first grade, we go to math facts fluency and number comparison fluency. So, here come all of the initials. So, um what we wanted to show here is that through the course of our fiveyear strategic plan, we are in year four. Um we learned about some of um the early literacy skills that we wanted to develop and monitor um for our kindergarten and first grade and second grade um students. And for this particular assessment, we were collecting as you see in the first 21 23 some data, but what was needed was a little bit more information for our kindergarteners and our first graders. Also, the nonsense word fluency is a particular assessment that helps us see if our students have a little bit more

038difficulty um in the early literacy skills and that may trigger other, you know, um assessments and investigation into how they're developing. And so, we thought that was really important to do at the end of kindergarten as well as continue through first grade. Okay. So this these little dashes that you see will then be now directly translated into the data displays where there will be blank um spaces um because we've shifted from 2123 assessments to the 2325. So continuing this year but this was the year that was made the changes. So I wanted to make sure we highlighted that for you. And so here we have AI as web plus kindergarten, first grade our early literacy um assessments and each color represents a different uh well it actually represents different grades and also uh different assessments

039as you can see in the key. Um but what we are looking for and what you may notice is that um we are consistently um improving in our kindergarten areas in our assessments and we're also monitoring um the improvement in the first grade assessments. So, I just wanted to point out the first three bars, let's say you're looking at 24, 25 are kindergarten, right? And then um the last two bars are for first grade and for those assessments. And we're doing really well. This is a highle view just to monitor if we have any um visual inclines or declines. And so what we see are inclines, which is nice. Um so so for early literacy the KPIs that we monitor we are showing you fall, winter and spring over the course of 20 uh 21

040all the way to this year. And so you can see that every time we have improved um with the exception of our early years. So our goal was to improve in the spring and we are definitely doing that. for a request early numeracy for both of those grade levels as well. Um we continually see improvement in our kindergarten as well as in our um first grade assessments. It's a point of pride for us. So early numerousy um again over the course of the fall, winter, spring with our uh first grade and kindergarten aggregated. So we started off the year at the 77% and we're ending strong um at 89% of our students. So with NWA map um this set of slides which are many I provided a heads up that there are many um it

041is not to share with you every single piece. What we want to do is give you somewhat of an idea of the level of analysis we engage in when every assessment window concludes. And so there's actually more levels. Um, you know, you're going to see bird's eye view, you're going to see averages, you're going to see, um, the entire, you know, grade level across the district clumped together in this data. But we also go down to the school level. We also go to a classroom level. And some of those assessments really help us target, you know, what are some action steps that we need to do um, based on the information. So, I'll give you one as an example for um our eighth grade students in math. We have a course um called Explorations of

042Algebra. And one thing that we've noticed over time when you drill down to a very specific set of students is how are they achieving? How are they growing? And um this is a class that is co-taught by with a learning behavior specialist and a general education um teacher. And one thing that we reflected on with the help of the principal at the junior high which is Kate Dominique last year we had a series of meetings and some reflections. And when we looked we looked and identified the students that were in explorations. We would like to see what are some changes that we can make. So we hypothesized, we looked at our curriculum and we did a realignment of our standards. You know, what are we expecting our students to learn and grow and it actually

043produced results. Um, and so that's been a really great compliment to the teachers who engaged in that work. Um, and so we have made an adjustment. It's the first year of it, but it's promising to see in the data um, just in general. Okay, so here we go. Um, NWA also norms their data. It provides us a way to compare our students with all the students who take this MAP assessment. And so the data that you see is using the norm study from 2020. And just to be clear that uh the data that they use for that no norm study ranges from 2015 to 2018 data. It is precoid prepandemic data. And then um I wanted to also just give a heads up that this summer uh the new norm data will be red re

044released. And so the 2025 norms will be released this summer. that will then reign our information. Again, just to be clear, um NWA just like the rest of us in the entire nation, um has not used information from the COVID years, the pandemic years. And so the study uses 2021 to 2024 data um in order to do that. So I think moving forward it will be interesting to see how our students fare with a new pool of information um post pandemic but I just wanted to lay that foundation before we move on. This is still currently the 2020 marks when we share percentiles and percentages and and whatnot. So the bird's eyee view um at this point we look at this type of data you can see it's really pulled back just to see if

045you know are there any significant dips are there any significant uh raises and what we see is pretty consistent across the board. Um the black bar is the national mean rate and what you see in front of you are um different cohorts of second grade, third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade, sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade students. It's very important that I emphasize that each of these bars are different groups of students. And so when we cluster to look at one particular grade level over time, what we're looking for are any significant um changes in the size of the bar, if you will, in order to know that we need to um draw some attention there. And this is for math. All right. So, this is where I will um spend a little time on

046one of the slides. It's typically the first grade one, I mean second grade one. And then after that, you will notice that I will just flip through all of the others. Um I'll share with you what we look for and then um and then you could bear with the silence and as I progress through the slides. Okay. So NWA achievement at the grade level view. Um what we look for are trends in reading and math. Um and now we are publishing for you um what our mean RIT is. So, not just a general picture, but now a specific piece of information. And as you can see, we're consistent in both reading and math. In the next slides, you may see a plus or minus um of one writ point and that is not as significant.

047But if you see any that are about three RIT points, then it is an area of significance that we would pay attention to both on the positive and also um the area of growth. Also keep in mind these are different students. Okay. All right. second grade reading by the subcategories. Um so once we look at reading as a broad category, we like to break it down to see a little bit further. Um you know, is our area of focus and our strength in the literary text, ourformational text, our vocabulary. That's how they break down the assessment. Again, what we're looking for is any significant dips or increases. And as you can see, it is pretty consistent over the years. And second grade math has these um subcategories. Same information. Go to the other grades. And

048um a little bit of silence from me. Third grade reading and math. what grade reading in there. Fifth grade reading and math. Sixth grade reading in math. Seventh grade reading and math. Eighth grade reading and math. Okay. Um, now what I will share with you is NWA reading achievement the cohort view. So this is tracking our students as they start with us in second grade. same groups of students as they go to third, fourth, and so on. Of course, there's moveins and exits, but pretty much as a cohort, how are they um how are they progressing through all of the grades in district 39 before they graduate um with us? So, this is our current um second grade h class of 2031. That was quite a shock to see it being typed in and and

049and and noticing. But our class of 2031 is starting um with our fall to spring um progression in reading achievement. We always use our national mean as a point of comparison. So what you want to see of course that you will see in all of the slides is that we hover above um the national mean. Um actually uh we you'll see it in the summary um slide later, but all of our students are average in all of our grades, our average rate is about a grade or more um higher than our national um years. This is third grade for reading, fourth grade. What I keep an eye on is our our incline. What we want to see is progress over time, second through 8th grade, that they're progressively um increasing. And we are. And this

050is our current eighth grade. We'll be graduating very soon. One thing that has stood out to us for the reading achievement is this plateau from seventh to 8th grade. Um that is one way to look at it is that our trend follows the norm across the nation. Um it's pretty consistent. We'd like to look into a little bit of um what is the difference between seventh and eighth grade as far as achievement is concerned for this one measure. We know that our students are engaging in very rigorous uh learning. Um but we just need to investigate further with with our teachers as to why we can't seem to move the needle a little bit um as we progress from seventh and eighth grade. But it's something that was pointed out as an observation in our

051DESAT uh meeting recently. But I also wanted to say that we've noticed the same. And this is the exact same view um but for math. So cohort and our math progression. Here is second grade as they start off this year. Okay. And now we turn to student growth. It is a measure from fall to spring in our district. We start off with you know what is the uh students RIT score in the fall. Um then we move on to having a comparison of growth to the spring. Uh so it is by NWA maps norm study where they give some growth projections or expectations. What's expected for students at a particular grade level with a starting fall RIT score and what do they anticipate might be that growth target for the spring. Um so there are

052three different factors. Um their grade, the starting RIT score and then the subject matter. And keeping in mind that our students again the grade and the starting RIT score right are a year or more advanced. Um that helps you contextualize what our achievement versus growth um may look like. Each growth comparison um period provides estimates based on the span of time fall to spring. So Nate Jansen is our go-to person. Um he has shared with us that and everyone actually not just us personally but um the assessment is statistically designed where 50% meet and 50% of our students do not meet when they take the assessment. So it's assign it's designed in that way and what they found that is approximately 50% to 60% of students nationwide in all of their studies meet or exceed

053their growth projections. Um and when a when district data produces growth percentages that are greater around 70% is their benchmark it's a sign of a high performing district. Um so keeping that in mind and I'll remind later what our benchmark is in in looking at each of the grade levels. So for um this one slide and then I will stay silent for the rest of them. But in second grade um this is our percent of students meeting their expected uh growth fall to spring. And in reading um you will see the progression over time. And again, these are different students. Um, so spring 2021 all the way to spring 2025. Orange is our current year. Um, so currently we're at 59% of our students in reading um that have met their expected growth the spring

054and also 72% in math for spring of 2025. Um, this does not take into account the vest group of students who are just shy of their expected growth. So they might be one rip point off. Um so that's one thing uh to keep in mind as a context and as as we look at this information but as you can see we're progressing nicely. So the rest will be in silence but I will show you the rest of the grades. Um grade three Three, four, three, six. and three. So to summarize all of those um uh graphs and data displays where we look at the same information in multiple ways, um district 39's achievement is comparable to previous years. Um we look at that to see if there's anything um that we're doing that may be

055dipping or or helping. So that's really good to notice. Each spring, our district 39 students perform at a root level at least one grade level above um their current grade. And so that's something to um to celebrate as well when we say that we are a high achieving district. That's what we mean by that. Um with the growth map is statistically designed for 50% of students or more to meet their expected growth targets. In reading, we have a um a range of 57 to 66% of our students in grades two, three, five, six, and seven. Um which we see that as a celebration as a as as having met um or or that's noteworthy. Um in grade four, we're just shy with 49% and in grade eight we're at 39%. Um or math we have

056grades um two through seven the full uh continuum um being at 56 to 72% um and then for 8th grade we're at 48%. So when we look at this information, that's where we engage in the collaborative conversations looking drilling down further into particular grade levels and classes and schools and and all of that in order to help us identify um what instructional shifts need to be made. Um anything in the curriculum area um those types of uh those types of things. Um the other thing to also note for everyone uh just a little reminder that we have we are in the middle of our English language arts reading and writing um curriculum review. Um so our foundational skills we've addressed as you can see the resources are working the consistency of practices are working with

057our early literacy. We are now shifting our attention to uh reading and writing. We've just completed year one of that. I thought this is one of the map um reports that have been always helpful to us um just to see how we compare within their context. And so this is a cross-section of achievement status growth. I don't know if you guys can see me, but I keep doing this when I talk about this particular graph because in uh visually I'm very visual and in the reports it's a quadrant. So it's got four sections and it's uh divides it up by achievement and also growth. And so each of these uh colors that you see represent a quadrant of um this information where we look at anything above 50 50th percentile and above as being high

058and 50th percent and above uh I'm sorry uh lower than that would be low. Okay. So, it's a little different measure um but it's interesting for us to view. What we always wonder is how um how are our high achieving students doing in relation to their growth. And so the blue bars that you see is high achievement category according to NWA with high growth. We want that to continually get larger. We also um have low achievement with high growth. How are students who you know are typically categorized into the low achievement for their grade level? How are they growing and are they growing at a high level? So that green bar is there. Oh, there's one the data that 5% that's kind of dangling above that's supposed to be in the green. I apologize. But

059those two together um is really what we look for. Um because we're valuing growth within our district as well as achievement. So if you look at 2025, we're at 59% of our students in high growth. Um and then the yellow is high achievement but low growth. And so we want to pay attention to that as well. Um and then the low achievement and low growth is the red. Okay. So this is um second grade reading and these will continue um in the grades but uh but with reading exact same information but for math. Second grade, third grade And finally, um you will receive an end of the year strategic plan presentation um in a literally a week um uh next Monday. But we wanted to share with you the key performance indicator, a little goal

060one preview. So for our reading, math uh spring achievement, our key KPI is 50% or more of our students in the high achievement um category and this year we're at 44%. Um 4% or less of the students in the low achievement category and we have met it this year at 4%. Um the key for the KPI for MAP reading fall to spring growth um is 25% or more of our students in the high growth category and we're at 20% and 15% or less of students in the low growth category and we're at 18%. Um I specifically shared the percentile ranges uh because when our um when we were working with our very very first strategic planning team uh we wanted to set some higher bars. So as you noticed in the high growth and high

061achievement it was in cortiles and we um look at this data for us in KPI um goal setting in quintiles and so you'll see the ranges of percentiles for the high high average average is different from um what you've seen before and so when you um look at these data graphs please uh note that it's in five different levels um the KPI for MAP math spring achievement is 55% or more of the students in the high achievement category and I am very proud to say that we have met that this year at 55. Um and the 4% or less of the students in the low achievement category and that's at 2%. um our KPI for MA math growth fall to spring 30% or more of students in the high growth category were almost there and

06250 15% or less of the students in the low growth category and we have met that this year. Thank you for uh your patience throughout this whole um explanation. If there's any questions I'm happy to answer. All right, board members, questions. I have a quick question. Um, for the kindergarten and first grade, how is that measured? They don't do standardized testing today. Those those assessments are done, um, one-on-one with a with a teacher or a specialist. And so, um, for example, there might be a sheet of, um, words that they need to decode. And so, they're one-on-one doing it that way. It's not a computerized sitting down and clicking like the NWA map is. We didn't we in our district do not feel that that's the best way um to measure our kindergarten first grade

063students. So we kept it to be nonmputous. Okay. This is very helpful. Thank you. Miss well my so I think this is so helpful and I love the variety of ways we look at it. I particularly appreciated your example at the beginning of how you used this to look at a particular grade level. I think this is great for us as a board and to look at it as a district, but the most valuable piece to me, I imagine, is the school team, teacher, grade level. And so your example you provided of really digging down in that data in that way and making change is really appreciated. And I think it's helpful for us to keep that in mind because it's so easy to get focused on big numbers. But what really matters are the

064individual students and the change you can make by the teachers and the teams. So we see these as temperature checks. Yeah. um to the actual work that is happening in the classrooms and at the specific schools. Yeah, thanks for sharing that. Thank along the line of the temperature check um and looking at what can be changed or should be improved or goals that teachers and and the and admin would want to make to improvement. I hope there's also a look at what might have changed that could have led to change. For example, are there less our class sizes bigger or are there fewer specialists or have we changed a class that maybe changed too much and brought down our scores instead of up. So I hope there are a couple of grade levels where you

065know this year's group might have done not quite as well as the previous year's group. Was there a change between last year and this year that might account for that? And I hope that that would also go into part of the discussion. Absolutely. Especially if it's a change that was requested by the board, right? We would want to know that. Um, so I hope that you're looking at that. And then I have a second question. This is more u my experience as a teacher. I assume that you're giving NWA fall, winter, and spring. Is that correct? Yes. So as a person who taught ELA for seventh and eighth graders and knowing those end of the year eighth grade scores, by the end of eighth grade, by the time they're taking these tests, they already have

066their high school assignments. They already know what classes that they're they're um assigned to and what levels those classes are. And there is a it's very difficult for eighth grade teachers to keep them engaged, you know, and take a test in May and do well. And I often thought as a teacher that it would have been helpful to also include like eighth grade winter scores because often the eighth graders go down in the spring and it's not because they know less, it's because they just aren't testing as well. And so if there was a way to actually add the eighth grade winter sport, it might give you a better sense of improvement over time. Yes, we do. We do definitely monitor that. I we've had so many conversations about um you know the seventh and

067eighth grade for lack of a better word attitude or perception through school towards the latter portion of their um of their school. And I think what we struggle with is taking that into consideration because it's very true. I think looking at winter is important. Looking at the state of mind of our students, that's important. I think we've consistently struggled with, well, how do we then compare with the nation and other seventh and eighth grade students that also are of that same mindset, but yet when we look at our data, we know that we could also improve in that area. Um, and so you have nailed the conversation. It's such a conundrum for us, but we're so we're trying to be respectful of the norm study and all of the information that's coming through um the

068assessment um you know uh company um keeping in mind where our students are mindset wise um in seventh. So, it's been it's been quite a an interesting conversation that's evolved over time and and but we agree with you completely. So, thank you. I'm not suggesting throwing away the spring data, just adding in one more data piece that might be more accurate. Absolutely. Thank you, Miss Pavas. Thank you, Miss Hart. Um Katie, I just wanted to say thank you. This is a ton of work. so much color printing is amazing. Um, and I also want to thank the teachers because I mean I I think that academics is sort of the heart and soul of the district and this is I mean this is a lot of work to come up with all the charts but

069really all the work is done by all the teachers and staff that are in there every day. Um, and then in just for a a specific question, do you think there'll be any impact um as a result of full day kindergarten on any of the academic? I mean, I I know it's hard to predict, but or maybe we're already seeing it with P39. I don't know. A little bit. Um, it's hard it's hard to predict yet, but the one thing that I'm hopeful for is the time that we are giving um to particular content areas. I'm really excited to see when you are allowing the teachers to engage with the students with the right amount of time. It's never enough. I'm just going to say that. But the right amount of time to engage in

070reading and writing and math and and all aspects of our curriculum that's not truncated to a half day. Um but having said that, so I will I predict positive impact. Um that's why I'm so excited about it. Um and have been excited about it for decades. Uh the um the piece though that I don't want by saying that I don't want to dismiss all of the hard work our halfday kindergarten program has produced. Our students have excelled in that. We just can only see improvement in a full day um setting. So great. Any other comments? Okay. I'll just say thank you as as well and I agree with Amy. I thought it was um I appreciate the example that you gave from seventh to 8th grade and how you really take the data and determine

071what to do with that. So that example was great to hear about and how that will apply to other areas identified within. Um, and then I just also want to say I really like these progression charts a lot because they give so much history and whereas we might see a year where you know we're off trend um it might not be a trend. It might be one year and then so just be to be able to to look back and to get the longer term view in perspective is really helpful. So thank you for all of the work that goes into this. Anyone else? Okay, great. So, we are moving on within strategy to social emotional learning assessment report. I will hand it over to Kelly Jackson for this. Thank you. Um, so today I'm

072going to show with you share with you an overview of our data from the 2425 school year with respect to our SEAL assessments. If you'll recall, I presented our fall data in the fall. And so now this is the recap of the entire year. Uh we use two assessment tools to monitor uh social emotional learning competency development for our students. At kindergarten through fourth grade, we use the insights assessment which is used to be known as um Cell Web. Um they're doing their official migration this summer. So we will just refer to it as insights from here on out. Um and that is completed by the students. It's um not a survey. It's more of an interactive um assessment where students may look at a face and determine whether that person is looking sad or

073happy or angry. Um they have some self-control kind of challenges that are in there. Um there are stories that are given um and the students have to determine what the right course of action would be to problem solve. So on and so forth. At fifth through eighth grade, we have the mesh uh which stands for mindsets, essential skills, habits, and habits, excuse me, assessment, and that's from Panorama. Um this is more of a survey type and uh so students will answer questions or prompts um based on their feelings and their experiences. We use these assessments to look at trends and to provide information for teachers for instructional purposes. And also um within each assessment platform they can be connect teachers can be connected to u resources that are within our curricula that we use um

074to target areas. So first let's you just might want to move the microphone a little bit closer to you. All right there we go. Thanks. All right. Um the first we'll look at the uh cell web or the insights. Um it's an like I said it's a nar narrated assessment um taken online by students in grades K through four. Uh students are given situations asked to choose the way that the character might feel or choose the reaction that best illustrates the problem. Um there are two versions of the insights assessment. One is the early educ or the early elementary eee and we give that to kindergarten through third graders and then there's the LE which is um designed for fourth grade and fifth graders but we only give it in our district to fourth graders.

075Uh the EE assessment measures social emotional competency development in four areas. emotion recognition, social perspective taking, social problem solving, and self-control. And the LE measures development and understanding others, social problem solving, self-control, and self-awareness. Um, and then they divide the results into four performance levels, above average, average, below average, and well below average. And so this was our fall assessment um the of the insights. And you can see the four categories are in various shades of green. Um on the farthest on the left is our overall score and then you see that the scores are broken down into the four other competency areas. Um in the fall uh the results from the fall administration had our K3 students in above or average and above average at 90%. So we combined the top two lightest colors

076of green to get um a positive score for those. Uh here you can see the change over time. So this is after the spring assessment. We did that um in uh at the end of April into May. Um and you can see the change over time here. Um the fall period time time period one is on the left and the time period 2 or spring is on the right. Um we are focused on growing the two lightest colors like I said on the graph. Um, and in the overall category, just on this slide, which is the furthest graph to the left, our students went from 90% during the first administration to 93% overall, demonstrating strengths at the average or above average. We're going to move in and focus on our two target areas. Um, we

077we look at emotion recognition and social perspective taking specifically for our students at K3. And so again, combining those two largest um or those two lightest green areas, we have uh 84% in the fall were showing strengths in emotion recognition and 91% in the spring. Um as well as in social perspective taking, 87% of our students in the fall were showing strengths in those areas and then 91% in the spring. And so we have our uh KPI there at the top. Over the course of the year, the total percentage in the above average and average categories will increase for both these areas. And we met um in both of those. We are pretty excited about that. Um as we move on to the LE, which is just fourth graders again, um you can see this

078is our fall administration. uh the LE assessment uh shows the um 97% of students in above average or average um which again is the far left um graph overall that was in the fall and then as we move to the spring you can see the change over time similar graph um periods one is uh fall period two is the spring um fall's on the left spring's on the right um and you can see that we went from 97% in the first administration and stayed at 97% in the second administration overall. However, um that lightest green category at the top, which is the above average strengths, grew from 53% to 58%. So that was that was a nice growth for us. Again, we look at our target areas for the purposes of measurement over the course

079of the year. Um and our two target areas at fourth grade are understanding others and social problem solving. And these really align with the K3 areas as well. Um in the area of understanding others, the amount of students with average and above average strengths increased from 93 to 97% over the course of the year. Uh in the area of social problem solving, it did decrease by 1% um with that decrease occurring in the average strength category. So we went up slightly in the um below average strength. Um, while we are close here and our scores look high or high in this area, we may want to take a look to see if there are specific students as we enter into the next school year who may may re um receive some uh support in this

080area. I think it's it's always we have that option to dig further down as Katie mentioned with the the academics and so we want to do that for specific students and these are spread over four schools as well. So, um, our teachers have access to that as do our administrators and we do dig in, um, where the need occurs. It is evident though through all of these scores, we start high and we go even higher. And it's it's really evident that our proactive approach of using everyday speech, SEAL lessons to support that SEAL skill development, uh, coupled with the SEAL, um, embedded supports and interventions that we have have had an impact over the course of the year. Um we've seen over the past few years as we've implemented everyday speech an increasingly consistent approach

081from our elementary teachers using those lessons um in a in a consistent manner across a grade level and across the schools and that's really exciting to see that growth over time. I think we also want to keep in mind um the age level of our fourth graders here when it comes to social problem solving and um you know at the beginning of the year we're really excited and we come in as old third graders and um we get closer to that middle school year things change and so there may be some of that um that to account for that that slight dip there. So um just something to keep our eye on as we continue to to do this over time. All right, I'm going to switch gears and move to the MESH assessment which

082we give to grades five through eight. Um, the panorama mesh is a survey that is given in the fall and the spring and it has two components. So, we have a social emotional competencies component which really reviews the the five competencies that we're like self-awareness, self-management, um those competencies and then there's a supports component which looks at more of that sense of belonging um teacherto student relationships um and those sorts of of kind of more school climate issues. uh areas targeted. I just talked about that. Sorry. Um so if we look again, we'll do a fall to spring comparison. The mesh, the way the mesh is set up is it does third through fifth grade, but we only give it to fifth grade and then the sixth through 8th grade. Um and so you'll see

083fifth grade is separated out from sixth through 8th grade. Um and here we can see the the fall uh results from fifth grade. Um you can see that we have a lot of strengths in this in this area. All the green dots are where we are at the uh compared to all other schools nationally. And so we are in the highest percentile there. Um and strengths are in those supportive relationships, self-management um and and even in social awareness there. Um as we move to the spring again, fifth graders come in really excited in the fall. New school, lots of new friends. um we have seen a dip um for the competencies. So these are the results from from the spring assessment. The arrows on the right where there's you see a little arrow um those

084represent uh the the change from the the fall scores. Um we have decreased as compared nationally in the areas of specifically of social awareness and positive feelings with respect to that percentile as well and that's where we saw some of our bigger dips. So at four points, the area of social awareness asks about how students are able to describe their feelings. Um how they resolve conflicts with others and how they compliment others. Um in the area of positive feelings, ask students how often they have felt loved or safe over the past week. So deter depending on the week is determines your answer. Um it's important to note that some of the categories for positive feelings are considered negative. So, for example, um one of the questions is how often did you feel safe this past

085week? Um and students, a lot of them marked frequently as their answer, but that is considered a negative response. It's not considered a favorable response in this survey. So, that's that may account for some of the nuance there. If I'm a fifth grader and I'm answering this and I feel safe frequently, that that to me is probably a positive. But, um so that's that's some of the survey um confusion there. The only positive response in that category is almost always. Um, next year, fifth grade staff will have a longer home room period and have been provided an expanded scope and sequence for SEAL lessons. So, we have gone from having um two two to four required um core lessons over the course of a quarter and now we have about 10 over the course of

086a quarter. So, um those are required lessons that we will be expanding upon and um so teachers will have that consistent everyday opportunity to um target these lessons and use lessons that are required for all such as respectful disagreement, stress busting, adaptability, and comfortably uncomfortable to address some of these areas. We'll move into sixth through 8th grade. Um this this was our fall and you can see again those green dots are over to the right which means we were in the highest percentile across the board um in the fall and um some of our strengths were in supportive relationships, self-management and positive feelings. We take this in October so it's still pretty pretty fresh in the school year. And then towards May again you're going to see some areas have dropped um or stayed the

087same um from fall to spring. Um again, these are sixth through eighth graders and these are aggregated um together. Um when you take them and you look at each grade level separately, there isn't a whole lot of difference between the different grade levels. Um and it varies between the different um areas that are tested. Um but they stay pretty consistent across the grade levels. Um, similar to fifth grade, again, next year our staff will have the opportunity to have um an expanded scope and sequence for SEAL lessons and um hopefully can target better target the areas of social awareness, social perspective taking um and social perspective taking is actually an additional category that they have in sixth through 8th grade over fifth grade. They don't have that as on the fifth grade assessment. So hopefully

088um there can be some work done with that as well. Um but we have lessons such as your own perspectives. We do a lot of work in sixth grade on intent versus impact. Um navigating conflict, talking about ourselves and our stories and sharing our stories with others. So a lot of that is built into the curriculum. So hopefully with a more consistent approach and experience for all of our students, we can target some of those areas. The next section that I'm going to look over is the um supports area. So um we had those were the social emotional competencies. Now you see the supports. So we look at school safety, sense of belonging, teacher student relationships, valuing of school and school climate. Um and really our two target areas in here um that align for

089this whole assessment that we really target um for our KPIs are sense of belonging and valuing of school. And so I'll go into some more detail on those at the end, but I just wanted to um highlight all of these areas first. Um on the far right you see some boxes there that say 99th 99th um those are as compared with just middle schoolers nationally where we are in the percentiles. So while the green dots look at everybody nationally, we also take a deeper look at the middle school comparison nationally. And so for example, teacher and student relationships where we are at the 60 to 79th percentile nationally with everybody including elementary schools, we are at the 90th percentile as compared with middle schoolers um on the spring assessment. So we did experience some drops

090here. Um we see decreases with this area with our largest decrease occurring in school climate. Um while decreases occurred in our target areas of sense of belonging and valuing a school, we still remain at the 90th and 90 99th and 90th percentile when it compared to other schools nationally. Additionally, in a couple of these areas such as teacher student relationships and school climate, we have additional survey data that we'll take a look at um in this survey and also later on um from CSCI, so our comprehensive school climate inventory. and that will give us some uh there's it's there's some kind of some mixed messages I think we're getting but um the CSCI has some questions that go a little bit more deeply into that. So I'll show you a little comparison a little bit

091later on. Um our target areas for mesh again are sense of belonging and valuing of school and we'll take a look at those at specific questions and kind of where we see um the change over time uh for this year. Keep in mind that fifth graders start every year to be eager in a new school environment. And so as we progress through the year, um some of that valuing of school, some of those school climate things may change as they get more embedded into fifth grade and that middle school mindset. Um taking a look at our KPI preview, um we see that we did not meet in in this area. This is first for sense of belonging and next for uh valuing of school. So our KPI asked uh for us to increase from 3%.

092So from 72 to 75 over the course of the year um we went down by five points. And then again 3% increase for valuing of school but we went down by five points for fifth grade. 6th through 8th grade. um the same area this supports area they have school safety, sense of belonging, teacher student relationships and valuing of school as well. Um you can see in the fall we were at 99th or 90th um for most of those categories as compared with middle schools and then school climate we were at the 70th percentile. Um so as compared with middle schools nationally bless you. Um, in the spring, similar to fifth grade, we see reductions in almost all areas for the supports portion of the mesh with the greatest reductions happening in teacher student relationships and

093valuing of school. Again, as we look at the CSCI survey, there is a contrast in those areas. So, we want to keep that under consideration. Um, we also target belong sense of belonging and valuing of school on this survey. So, we want to note that again with the increase of consistency of experience with our Wayfinder curriculum at grades 6 through 8 due to the longer home room and expanded scope and sequence, we're hopeful that these targeted areas will stay more consistent throughout the year. And it is important to note that um the Wayfinder curriculum specifically for sixth through 8th grade focuses on that belonging um and building those relationships. So, the lessons are really um geared toward that at a sixth through 8th grade level. Again, this is a preview of our KPIs. And for

094fifth through 8th grade, we look for a 3% increase um from where we start to where we finish. Um we only reduced by two points here in sense of belonging. Um there is a note about that and I'll show you on a chart in a in a couple of slides from now um how we've been historically with sense of belonging. So um there's a positive takeaway that I'll share in a second with that. And then here um 70 to 73% um was our goal and it was started at 63 and went to 58. So now I want to dig into the these these targeted areas a little bit more to give you a a peak behind the scenes with um some of these areas the the sense of belonging and the valuing of school. First

095I want to look at the it historically. Um, so we've been looking at sense of belonging over the past five years. Um, and so if we look at fifth grade, which is on the left there, um, you can see historically we've had a slight dip from fall to spring. Um, and then if you take a look at the the sixth through 8th grade graph, you'll see that we um, we have stayed either stayed the same or gone up a little bit in sixth through 8th grade. Um it's important to note that um we did adopt the Wayfinder curriculum in um 2324 uh last year or we adopted it at the end of last year after a pilot. And so this has been our first year really of teachers using it on a semicconsistent basis I

096would say. And so our target is as we go into the next year um to bring about a consistent experience for all of our students on a regular daily basis in those home room classes and have teachers teaching the lessons with some um a higher higher degree of of reliability across the board. Um and so so our hope is that we would see these scores especially in fifth grade but also fifth through 8th grade um staying the same over time. Now, the one spec specific thing that I'd like to mention with the 2425 scores where we see a dip that's bigger than some of the the dips that we've seen because it actually has gone up in some years prior to this in sixth through 8th grade is that we started at 67. Um, and

097you can see in previous years we've been in the 50s. So, um, we've gotten a bump up already. And so having that dip, we are already starting at or we're ending at 65% favorable whereas in previous years we are um a a good degree below that and so um that is something to celebrate. I think as we continue to talk about SEAL and teachers are including more and more explicit instruction, I think that only bodess well for the future. Valuing of school is something that we added a few years ago and have um continued to monitor for the past three years. Uh you can see over these there's a historical pattern of dipping in this area um for both fifth through 8th grades. Um and so we wanted to take a deeper dive into these

098areas and then look at some of the questions and where does that dip occur? Um there aren't a ton of questions in either of these areas. And so um I'll show you uh kind of where we see the nuance with how kids are responding on the next few slides. Um so first again sense of belonging. So this is fifth grade. They have four questions. Uh how do how well do people at school understand the kind of person you are? How much support do adults at your school give you? How much respect do students at your school show you? and where when you were at school, how much do you feel like you belong? So, I want to call your attention. First, we took a look at where the greatest dips were. Um, and then we

099looked also if there were areas that were below uh 60%. So, the biggest dips here were in the last two questions. So, the first one dipped 10 points. So, um you can see this is the fall and these are just the numbers of students who responded in those categories. So the five areas that they respond with are no respect at all, a little bit of respect, some respect, a lot of respect, and a huge amount of respect. And then when we look at the spring and if you take a look at the a little bit of respect and some respect, that's where we see the numbers go up a lot. And so those are negatively related rate rated categories. So, um, as we see some respect go from 91 to 110 responses and a little

100bit of respect go from 23 to 37, that can account for that dip that we're seeing occur. The other one that we looked at was when you are at school, how much do you feel like you belong? Um, and that dip 5%. Um in the fall students responded um with these responses and in the spring um you can see that we had some jumps in some areas and decreases in other areas. And again the belonging a little bit and belonging somewhat belonging somewhat went up only one but belonging a little bit increased um almost double more than double and so that can account for that um negative that uh change over time. And then sixth through 8th grade, we took a look at um just the one question there that dipped four points and was

101at 56%. How much respect to students at your school show you? And so this was these were their uh spring or fall responses and their spring responses. You can see already that pattern in that in that middle category there with some respect um going from 306 to 370 and a lot of respect which is positively um coded but it is um it's not as given as much weight as a huge amount of respect. And so that went from 459 to 493. But the sum respect category going from 306 responses to 370 would account for that um decrease. Then to valuing of school. So fifth grade we looked at the first two questions in this um but they have four questions. How interesting do you find the things that you learn in school? How often do

102you use ideas from school in your daily life? How important do you is it to you to do well in school? And how useful do you think school will be to you in your future? You can see our students want to do well in school. Um which is exciting. Um but I'm not sure that they find everything interesting or applicable. Um so if we look at the interesting how interesting do you find things in school um there's the fall and the spring responses and you can see um we we increase in uh somewhat interesting and slightly interesting over time. And so um that when you think about a fifth grade mindset kind of stands to reason. Um and then again we looked at how often do you use ideas from school in your daily life

103and um and here we have uh almost never once in a while sometimes frequently and almost always and again the almost always decreases while the once in a while and uh almost never increase a lot with sometimes also decreasing. So um we see we see that over the course of the year students may be less using things less in their daily lives. Um which again it's kind of I think when we look at the percentage or then compared nationally it we're not that much different from the other middle schoolers out there. Um finally valuing a school for sixth through 8th grade. There's one additional question here where it says um how much do you see yourself as someone who appreciates school which is interesting. They're right at that 60% mark. So we looked at the

104first two questions again and then we looked at um that question. And so how interesting do you find things that you learn in your classes um really over time slightly interesting increased and so did somewhat interesting as well as not at all. Um, and then how often do you find you use ideas from school in your daily life? And that was the lowest rated there. Um, and so over time, um, we really once in a while went from 194 to 247 and sometimes went from 357 to 397. Um, so that accounts for that decrease there. Finally, someone who appreciates school, that went down six points. Um and so uh we decreased there or we increased their overtime on in the somewhat category from 225 to 316. So almost close to 100 uh responses there 90.

105Um so that's interesting to note that um over the course of time they see themselves less as somebody who appreciates school as you get into spring. As I mentioned, CSCI um we've done some crosswalks with CSCI and uh the MESH survey and so we really wanted to look at these questions that I just shared with you um how do they compare with some of the questions in the data that we're getting in the CSCI. So on the left hand side of the screen you see some of the questions from CSCI um that align with the areas of sense of belonging and valuing of school. And so we're looking at students at my school are kind to each other. Adults in my school stop students if they see them making fun of each other or others.

106U my teachers care about me. My teachers try to get to know me. The school is welcoming. Lots of questions about that. And the fours in parentheses are all above the the positive threshold for the CSCI. That's at 38.5. And so we're getting really positive responses overall from our fifth through 8th graders. And this just is this is disagregated for fifth through 8th grade only. Um but from our fifth through eighth graders on almost all of those categories that would align with sense of belonging. Um the one area is students at my school will try to stop students from making fun of one another. And that's something we've targeted. We targeted last year and you'll hear some targeting this year um at those upstander lessons and behavior. That's also something that is a component of

107our expanded scope and sequence that we have included for teachers for social emotional learning. Um for teaching and learning we again we are seeing really positive responses for um things like um at school I learn things I care about. Uh my teachers help me try out my own ideas asking for help or figuring out how you learn best. And so, um, I think that's that's some conflicting data that we have. Um, but the CSCI goes a little bit more deeply. There are a lot more questions under teaching and learning that, um, we can also analyze, but it these are just the ones that seem to speak most to the valuing of school um, that we were looking at from the mesh. Um, finally we gave I was kind of curious about that sense of belonging

108and we've talked a a lot about, you know, what what do kids say if you just talk to them about some of these things and some of the questions in the mesh to be honest are um I don't I don't know if it's the time of the year or if it's um or if it's just confusion with how they're worded, but sometimes the kids have a lot of questions about the the assessment as it And so we we gave our own sense of belonging survey just recently and so we don't have a ton of responses from it but I think on the surface it's just a good um another check into what our kids are feeling at school. So we asked them how to define belonging um because we as adults may define it differently.

109We just had a CRC report at our last board meeting about belonging and a definition of belonging. But what do the kids say? And so these are this is just a list of what some of the students responded but a lot about fitting in things that they have in common with other people feeling welcome in the space or feeling like you can just be yourself. Um so our kids have a lot of insight into that and and we just wanted to highlight um on the survey we asked them to rate themselves um and their sense of belonging. Uh we had 82 responses so far from our uh fifth and sixth graders and they were um if you combine the four and the five we had about 72% of those responses were in the four and

110the five area which is um that's a pretty good percentage. Um and we only had 48 respons responses at um seventh and eighth grade. And so that's not a huge amount of our kids. Um, so we we did see most of those fall into the um four category, but um again the higher the higher two categories um had the majority of the kids in there. Um we wanted to find out kind of what are the things that help the kids belong. And we've talked a lot about clubs. We've talked a lot about extracurricular activities. We've talked a lot about um how our teachers and and our um community cares for us and um and I think this was kind of a an aha when I looked at these. Um and and also the consistency between

111the two grade level or the two schools was interesting, but um the first one that stood out was sitting with friends in the lunchroom and that's a huge area um for our kids. Um, and even just when you talk to them and then their friends, caring for them is another huge area. And so I think it it brings us back to we do a lot of things as adults to try to um build this sense of belonging, but when it comes right down to it, um, getting our kids involved at a higher level is going to be key for us as we move forward. And so what could HMS and WJHS do to improve the sense of belonging at our school? Um these are some of the suggestions from our kids and you can see

112that there's a lot about lunchrooms and a lot about mixing across houses and having classes that mix more and so um something to keep in mind as we move forward. So with that, some next steps that we have for uh the next school year and um we we're looking at an expanded so scope and sequence as I mentioned for the curriculum, time set aside for that SEAL instruction as well as support for embedded across content areas. Um continued opportunities for students to develop clubs and events at school and increasing student voice in that planning. And that's something I think that as we did our um CSCI um we also found kids saying we want some more voice in things. We want to explore events for students to mix across teams and houses explore opportunities for

113more inclusion in the lunchroom. And um one thing and I've mentioned uh that the mesh assessment we we want to take another look at that is something that we've used for many many years now and it's time for a review of that assessment. is it really getting at what we want or are there other things out there um that may be more effective and um I think the CSCI is a newer tool and so using that and looking at that over time as well is going to be important. So uh while we create more opportunities for students to engage in various ways, we want to make sure that the when the students are in these settings, they have the skills to navigate some of the conflicts and to connect and engage with others more effectively

114um navigating some of those changing social situations. Um and we really feel that a lot of that is accomplished through increasing the student voice in the planning but then also through the consistent uh systematic explicit instruction coupled with embedded uh supports in all areas. So no questions. That was a lot. Thank you, Kelly. All right, board members questions. Miss Papas. Um thank you. This is super interesting and helpful. Um, I know it's a ton of work. I was just wondering when you were talking about the percentiles for the spring like guess I don't know what side that but like in the middle school and some of them are dropping down to 50th. Are those percentiles for other including other schools that gave the assessment in the spring as well or are they comparing that? Like

115I just you know that 50th percentile stuff jumps out to me and I just wonder. Yeah. And it different schools give it at different times of the year. So it it's just normed based on the assessment as a whole. It's it's not necessarily based on the time period. Okay. Yeah. Just because you know ours work sort of a little higher in the fall and a little lower in the spring and I'm just wondering if the percentiles are the same. Thank you. Interesting. I'm just going to add to that because I think that's an important point of clarification because I was wondering when I looked at it, I thought, okay, well, you know, maybe in the spring we're not as our attitudes are not as, you know, positive or we're not as enthusiastic about school and

116valuing school and that, you know, might decline from fall to as we get closer to the end of the school year. I understand that. But then I questioned whether or not um we would be looking at that being a bigger problem in district 39 than nationally. but not necessarily because students are taking these tests at a different time frame. So, we're not looking at fall to spring. And some some districts just give them at one time. At one time. Okay. That's helpful. Thank you. So, it does skew that you have one percentile, not a spring. That would Okay. Okay. Um, Miss Baileing. So, I just really appreciate that we as a district attend to this so carefully and thoughtfully, and I know how much time has been put into this over many years, and we

117now have the CRC report, which is so helpful, and we'll have more time in home rooms starting next year. I think that that is going to be incredible. And we know the impact on sense of belonging affects so much of their that students as a whole, their academics as well as their social emotional growth. Um, I thought the examples that kids gave are fascinating. And I I, you know, it's it's just not a surprise when you sit and think about it. We all have that like instinct. If you walk into a middle school lunchroom and you don't know who to sit with, we all know exactly what that feels like. And so I think that's really helpful for how we move forward to move on these things. Um, and I think having that extra time

118starting next year will be really helpful. This is a tiny question. I can't remember if I've asked this before, but this is my parent hat. Like if you're uh if you are a child who is marking yourself in the very very low range across the board um I don't feel like I belong. I don't feel like I have parents, you know, on the extreme low end. Do parents ever hear about that? Like if you're concerned about a child based on how they Yeah. um we use this more as a global level, but when we have students that are presenting some concerns in some of those areas, then we will dig in and um share those with with parents. Um hopefully we're doing some problem solving in a lot of areas for those kids. Miss Berlin.

119So, we've heard a lot of bird's eyee information as a board, but my question is kind of specific based on the very last thing you said, which I hadn't really noticed before. Um, but when when you pointed out that um at at High Crest, I think it might have been the grade or other grade levels, the kids felt the greatest sense of belonging in the cafeteria with their friends at lunch. It occurred to me that at fifth grade we artificially separate kids at lunch by houses and some of them walk into fifth grade thinking I will never get to sit at lunch with my friends because we're permanently separated based on where we were assigned to house. Has anyone looked at the possibility of adjusting the lunch schedule for especially for those fifth graders or

120fifth and sixth graders so that they might throughout the year rotate and actually in contact with others. I mean, on the one hand, it seems like you'd be sitting with it' be good to be sitting with the same people all year, but on the other hand, if you feel like you've been separated from them and never have a chance to get back together, I just wondered if that's on the Yeah. And that's something that So, our capacity in our cafeteria at Highest is um we can only fit half of the grade level in. So, that's why we only can mix two houses at a time um in the cafeteria. And so, yes, we we assign two houses and then we flip-flop those. Um, we have in um previous years done some um maybe it's house

121one and three eat at the beginning of the year and then maybe we change that to houses one and two eat together so kids can see some of their friends. Um uh it so the capacity holds us back from that. That that's really our biggest um situation with that. Um but we do uh we start the year with fifth grade and sixth grade um sitting in home rooms to try to um give kids as they start school an opportunity to not have to worry about where they're sitting. And so then we start to broaden that up and so kids get to see that um ability to mix increase as well um over time. But I think that con continuing to consider mixing which houses eat together over the course of the year. It could be

122quarterly too, so everybody gets to eat with um somebody at one time or another. Um could be an opportunity. Another thing that we have done um at Highest with our um clubs is a lot of those clubs are span lunch and recess. And so kids can um maybe it's creative writing club where they're in the the creative writing club for the entire period. Then if Amy is in a different lunch period than me, I can say, "Hey, Amy, let's join creative writing club and we can do some writing and we can eat lunch together at least for one day a week." And so that's brought about some opportunities for kids to mix a little bit more. And so looking at how we can continue to do that, I think would be really important as well.

123But that's a great idea. Okay. Anyone else? Okay. Right. Um I I just had a question. And I think um reflecting back on something Katie said about the testing and the uh test results that we looked at that's just one piece of our overall academic pie and you know there are so many other important elements to it. So thinking about the kids and taking the surveys and how they might be you know interpreting these questions. Um you know I think also with seal and sense of belonging this is one piece. Um, and I'm just wondering from your perspective or they and maybe you know can't answer this right now, but I'm just generally curious if what you're seeing experiencing in the schools reflects what you know some of the declines that you're seeing here in

124the data. Yeah, I think I think you've hit the nail on the head with the the surveys and the sense of belonging. I think, you know, we gave CSCI and then we followed that up with with the mesh and then I think kids can get surveyed out just like we do as adults. And so it's like I've given these answers 15 times, you know. Um and so I I question that and that's part of the reason I want to do a review of the assessments that we give. Um and I think that it doesn't necessarily match everything that we see on a daily basis. I think there are instances um espec es especially with some of the upstander skills and navigating conflict. Those sorts of things are things that we do see issues with um

125throughout the middle school experience. And so building those skills is really important. But um I do think kids take pride in their school and overall and and really feel that um Highest is a a good place to be or the junior high is a good place to be over time. And so, um, I think any given day you could have a whole set of different responses on the survey. Sure. Yeah. I do think I would add that, um, just as we as adults get to a point in the school year where we're kind of like, okay, we're, um, seeing the the end of the school year and maybe looking forward to that. I think our kids do as well. And so I think some of their responses um on some of these things as we

126look at the trajectory, you start a new school year and you're super excited for all the opportunities um and by the end of the school year. Uh there may be some waning of that excitement or some realization that um you know things are are you're starting to look forward to summer. So, I think that that's probably a a natural trajectory that we see in schools generally speaking too for adults and students alike. For sure. All right. And then just I just appreciate how clearly all of the data was presented um you know Katie and Kelly and um specifically how clearly it ties back to our strategic plans and the KPIs. So, thank you for that. Um, all right. We are moving on to comprehensive school climate inventory. Dr. Cremis Bully. Yes. And in fact, I

127am back to Kelly Jackson who will uh provide this review as well. We've had our um joint leadership team meet a couple of times um most recently to review these data and each school team has also um met to review the data and um identify some strengths and some opportunities at the school level as well as at the district level. So, uh, Kelly is just going to give a high level review of that and, uh, make note that we will be using these results to inform some of our next steps in planning. So, Kelly, sure. More of me. Um, so the district 39 um, again, we've we started taking the CSCI and it's it's taken by staff, students, and families. Um, we started last year, so this is our second year of data. Um it

128measures school climate uh and uh it's developed by the national school climate center. Um these are the five domains. So safety, teaching and learning, interpersonal relationships, institutional environment and uh leadership and efficacy. And below those domains, you can see several dimensions. Um so I won't read those out loud, but um you can see they span a lot of the same things we were just talking about um and more. Um we were really excited this year. Um our response rates have increased this year overall. Um but we have a 95.2% student response rate. We had an 81.4% staff response rate and our family response rate increased also to 25.1%. And you can see uh the breakdown of the staff responses um underneath each category. There's about 354 students per grade on average. So, um that's just

129noted there for you. Um just a little bit about the scores. I mentioned this earlier, but scores greater than 3.5 represent a positive perception overall in each dimension. And a score between 2.5 to 3.5 is considered neutral. Uh scores lower than 2.5 are considered negative. uh the scores uh when you see the numbers they are the median of all the responses within that domain. Uh when you look at our district overall score um it's a 4.2 which is increased over last year which is very exciting to see. And we um the bar graphs you can see where we landed at um 2024 and 2025 um in each of the five domain areas. And so we increased in all of those areas um across the district. Now I will say that as we look at these

130we're really excited about that increase but in some areas it's nominal, right? It seems nominal 4.0 to 4.1. So, what we're going to want to do is um after we've taken this for three years or more, um that that will give us some better trend ideas and and some really uh good places to work. But this was exciting for our second year. Um the next few slides outline each domain. Um so this is the domain of safety um on this slide and the five or the dimensions underneath there. So, um, this one has rules and norms, sense of physical security, sense of social, emotional security, and online safety. Below that, you'll see students, staff, and families, and where their, uh, score was for the 2324 school year. And then for this year, um, on the

131right hand side, you'll see what the change looked like. Um, and you'll see a lot of these we have no change or positive change across the board um, in the safety category. So, some celebrations there. And again in the 3.5 is the threshold for positive. You can see all of our scores in this are at 3.5 or above. The next uh domain is teaching and learning and again there's two areas under that. Um we had a slight decrease for students under that support for academic learning. Um but still at a 4.0 which is well above that 3.5 threshold. Interpersonal relationships includes respect for diversity, teacher student relationships and peer relationships. Some changes in the students responses. [Music] Um but overall positive staff and family and again we are above the 3.5 in all categories. uh

132institutional environment. Uh this is these areas are all above four for us which is amazing. Um and in seeing those uh subcategories the school connectedness and physical surroundings and social inclusion. Social inclusion is about um how we include students with um special needs. So we see a lot of lot of good results there. And finally, leadership and efficacy. And so um positive changes over the course of the year. These are only staff responses in this category. There's no student or parent responses. And so we look at administration and leadership. And then the collective efficacy is really how are our staff teams working together. So overall we took these results as and we looked at them as an administrative team and also as a joint um uh climate committee and we found some celebrations a lot

133of celebrations I would say and so you see some general celebrations and then some specific celebrations in different areas. Um the participation rates as I mentioned um safety was a big one um where we had some positive trends in social emotional security which is an area that we've targeted over time uh that includes that sense of belonging for our kids and that um the upstander lessons that we are continuing to target. Um and then another thing of note was positive trend in feelings of online safety for both students and families. So, I know Tony um has done a ton of work in this area and with uh parent presentations and um just communication overall. So, that's been great. Um teaching and learning, you'll see uh family responses indicate communication um about social emotional learning has

134been noted in there. Um interpersonal relationships and that we kind of combine those institutional div environment because there's been increases in positive responses for respect for diversity and social inclusion. um which kind of go hand inand but they're in two separate categories on this survey and we've done a lot of communication and work in these areas over the course of the year. So that's that's a big celebration. And then leadership and efficacy um we had increases in both areas. So that really speaks to our partnership with our staff and and um our amazing administrative team. Um as we look at celebrations, we also want to highlight some opportunities for growth. and we'll take these opportunities and um dig into them at um during the summer and um we'll reflect those in the fall when we

135come back to you as some action steps. Um but continued support for students and staff and building that social social emotional security. So those upstander lessons are social emotional learning curriculum um and integrating all of that um throughout uh continued support for families and how to keep students safe through uh parent education online. um increased opportunities to report progress in school to parents and students. Um there was a a question in there about um how students feel informed about their progress, how parents are feeling informed about their progress. And I know Tony has done a ton of work with um accessing that information online. And so we will continue to work on that um over time. uh increasing student voice and so we saw this in our what we just reported on in our mesh

136survey but we want to increase student voice and planning for rules and norms of the school and strengthen that feeling of connection uh engaging staff and building connections with one another that are supportive inclusive and offer offer perspective and then increased staff voice and planning and formulating that school vision. So those are just some areas of opportunity. Um we shared our building specific data at our uh May 28th building meetings last week. Um we are reviewing them uh currently with you all and um we will continue to review these celebrations and opportunities as an administrative council this summer. And as I said um we will um build in some action steps as we look at our strategic planning for the fall. And I just want to give a shout out to our awesome climate and

137culture leadership team here. We have many staff members uh WEA and support union staff members um you can see them there on the screen and then um some administrative members as well that have cont contributed to this effort. So we are appreciative for all of the meetings and times that they have given. With that I will stop sharing my screen. Great. Thank you Kelly. All right uh turn it over to board members. Any comments, questions, thoughts? Thank you for sharing um the team members as well. Um it's always great and um to see and nice to know who's um part of all of this work that's being done. So, thank you for that. Um and um thank you again to everyone who took a part in today's um presentations. And I think, you know, it's

138great to see all of the opportunities um so clearly defined um across all of the presentations. And I also think that um there were so many um positive outcomes of all of the work that's been done. And so it was nice to see that. And hopefully we're I know we're also looking at, you know, what went right and how we're going to continue that. I look at those like early literacy numbers and think this is great. what are we learning in terms of what's working too? So, kind of looking at it from both ways. So, thank you everyone. Okay, we are now moving on to public comment. This is an opportunity for the public to address the board. Are there any community members present that wish to speak? Okay, seeing none, we will continue on

139with our agenda. Old business. Is there any old business? New business. Any new business today? Right. Great. Um then we will adjourn to um or I need a motion to adjourn to executive session to discuss special education individual student matters, collective negotiations, and specific personnel. Um I move to adjourn to executive session to discuss discuss um special education individual student matters um specific personnel and collective negotiation. Thank you. May I have a second? Second. Motion having been made and seconded. Uh may we please have a roll call. Allison Papless? Yes. Amy Paling? Yes. Katie Hilton? Yes. Judy Berlin? Yes, Annne Hart. Yes, Kristen Diccastro. Yes. Motion carries. We are now adjourned to executive session and the time is 10:06