Wilmette Public Schools District 39 Board of Education Meeting June 12, 2023

001I hereby call to order this regular meeting of the board of education for Wilmette Public Schools District 39 this Monday June 12 2023 will the clerk please call the role Aaron Stone here chansey's ready here Ann Hart here Bonnie Kim here Allison pathos here Amy Paley here Lisa Schneider faves yeah principal Aaron dubno is here to introduce end of year writing contest winners from Harper Elementary School to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance hello thank you thank you for having us Aaron Dube no principal at Harper and as we just heard I have our end of the year writing contest finalists so we have an end of the year writing contest one it is optional so I think kudos to all of these kids and many others for even just participating in an optional

002writing contest and then two uh this group of students just had some phenomenal writing um where they showcased a highlight or talked about their experiences at Harper so they're going to introduce themselves say what grade they just finished and share what their piece of writing was about I also want to give them a compliment for showing up tonight even though school is out um that's how dedicated this group really is so here we go hi my name is Puri and I just finished third grade hi my name is Scarlett and I wrote a poem about deserving dolphin certificates and exist from the second grade hi my name is Charlie and I just finished the second grade and I write about my specials classes hi my name is Sylvie hi my name is Margo we wrote

003about memories at Harper and the friends that we made hi my name is Sophia and I just finished third grade hi my name is Caroline and I just finished third grade we wrote about a saying that saying is if you try your hardest you can accomplish anything hi my name is Grace I just finished third grade I wrote about a field trip I had to the botanic gardens hi my name is Isabel I just finished the grade and I wrote a poem about the Harper hoedown my name is Margaret and my friend and I wrote a poem about Harper special classes Harper's special classes and I just finished fourth grade hi my name is Vivian and I just finished fourth grade I wrote about my experiences in Harper through all all my years hi my

004name is Annabelle I just finished fourth grade hi my name is Emily and I just finished fourth grade and we wrote a paragraph about having friends now please stand for the pledge and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you so much for being here and for choosing to express your beautiful thoughts and experiences in writing and tonight and if you want to meet me over here I have something for each one of you and then you can go out this door and meet your parents in the hallway thank you all [Applause] Dr cremoscoli has some student accolades to recognize you in just a minute I would oops in just a minute I'd like to share some pictures of our band students uh

005because two weeks ago the wghs bands traveled to Cleveland in Sandusky Ohio for performances by the combined wjhs Jans Jazz ensembles at the Great Lakes Science Center um that followed with a concert and symphonic bands at the music in the park festival it's in Sandusky High School it was a wonderful weekend and one that also featured a visit to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Cedar Point following the festival performances Saturday morning the wjhs bands were recognized for their musical Excellence with both the concert and symphonic bands receiving Superior ratings The symphonic band also received first place overall for their performance as a collective the Wilmette bands were awarded the very prestigious as aspiri Decor award for the entire Festival which featured several other performing ensembles from the music in the Parks Festival

006site the award recognizes the participating organizations that displays an exemplary attitude of positive support in outstanding personal Behavior throughout the festival weekend personal Integrity quality character values a desire for excellence and a spirit of cooperation serve as the Cornerstone qualities of this award our students were also recognized for How They Carried themselves away from the instrument staff members at various locations throughout the trip stopped our teachers to commend them on how well they behaved the wjhs band students are truly represented truly represented both this program and our school with great pride and integrity we'd like to congratulate them and honor them so let me show a couple of pictures here if I'm able to do this oh that's not the one that I meant to share but I'll share that one it will switch over

007there we go so there's one group they had beautiful weather as well let's see if it'll let me switch to the other all right I'm gonna stop sharing we'll try this once more for the other picture what a lag here in my effort to share doesn't seem to be sharing Tony is that from your end do you see that as well yeah I'll try one more picture see if we can get this last one to share it's on my screen like it is but I will have to send those pictures onto the board I think I actually already shared the pictures with the board so but congratulations to all of our students I'm glad at least one of them one of those pictures was able to be shared because these students certainly deserve to be

008recognized and honored for all their hard work and everything that they accomplished so kudos to them and to the teachers and parents who support their hard work thank you I seek a motion to approve the minutes of the May 22nd 2023 Board of Education regular and executive session meetings motion to approve approve the minutes of the May 22nd 2023 Board of Education regular and executive session meeting May I have a second second the motion has been made and seconded board members are there any comments errors or omissions to the minutes all those in favor of approving the minutes as submitted please indicate by saying yay yay the motion carries this is the first opportunity for the public to address the board are there any community members that wish to speak this is a reminder that

009this is the time for the public to address the board it is not a question and answer period please come to the podium and state your community of residence and you have three minutes District 39 board members my name is Ali Frazier and I reside in the McKenzie school district of Wilmette and have five children who will go through District 39 schools ages 12 down to one I'm here tonight to speak with you about my oldest and her experience this year at HMS with sixth grade math my oldest has always loved math and excelled in the subject her National testing averages were consistently in the top percentiles in the country and therefore we were very surprised when for sixth grade she did not qualify for the accelerated math program despite countless conversations with Administration beginning

010before school began with recommendations from each of her prior teachers stating she would rise to any Challenge and to please move her she was not moved the first few weeks of sixth grade were very difficult especially from a social standpoint with none of her former peers or friends in her classes she'd come home every day and when asked about math class would say I already learned that information it's so boring we spend all of our time doing homework review my teacher won't call on me anymore please switch me out of this class the list went on my request that she be moved continued and I even asked for an in-person meeting for my child to advocate for herself to share her experience but she was not met with and she was not moved the negative

011trickle-down effect caused both social and academic distress suddenly she didn't like math anymore and that's when I noticed a new and even more negative change later that fall when I asked my daughter about math class her response was I guess one good thing about not being an accelerated math is that I don't have to work hard you can imagine the pit that formed in my stomach and hearing that is this the message we want a sixth grade girl to believe about herself in a core stem subject a child who has proven herself since age seven and who teachers stated would rise to any challenge is that policy and its effect the right one in my law year-long conversation with staff I was informed there are approximately 36th grade students who are considered cusp kids the

012fact that these kids have a name assigned to them as a group is enough of a sign that there are too many of them recognizing the large number of children in a similar situation does it not make sense to dedicate a teacher for these kids in speaking with parents of older students this problem is not a new one every year the same issue occurs and parents are assured their child will be taught the same curriculum and be eligible for eighth grade math in algebra just like those in accelerated math so there is a long game occurring but at what cost to the child their love of the subject their confidence their friend group their interest in school their belief that they have the ability to rise to that challenge anymore thank you your time is

013up you have very much you have a couple options um if you have written remarks that you didn't get to share you can email them to us there's also another opportunity for public comments at the end of the meeting you would get an additional minute to speak then thank you so much I will share it via email I appreciate your time good night thank you we are and does anyone else wish to speak okay um we are moving on to board reports facility development Mrs Kim thank you Mackenzie PTA raised a significant amount of money over 300 000 to entirely fund the cost of a new playground besides the new equipment the playground will include a poured in place service that is accessible to a wider range of students there is also a piece of

014equipment designed to accommodate students in wheelchairs the board will enter into a donation agreement with the McKenzie PTA for the new playground also um the capital project summary is reviewed twice each year as the projects targeted for summer 2024 have been identified the committee briefly reviewed the one-page document progress continues to be made on the projects identified in the capital projects plan from last spring that's it thank you thank you I think I neglected to say that that was facility development but that's what it was so yes School Finance Mr cesaretti there was discuss the fiscal year 2024 wixie tentative budget which is a joint agreement with d-39 and Avoca we see has its own financial statements and board approved budget it is a flow through budget entity with no fund balances revenues and expenses

015are always set to be equal similar to the d39 budget the Lexi tentative budget is presented for approval it is on display for at least 30 days also it was discussed the fiscal year 2024 d39 tentative budget uh which is the same as the draft budget reviewed and discussed in May the d39 tenant budget is presented for approval and will also be put on display for at least 30 days prior to the adoption of the final budget in August also was discussed annual resolutions and renewals each year the board is required to approve certain resolutions and renewals the treasurer's Bond renewal appoints Corey boltzmeyer to serve as the d-39 treasurer there are two resolutions for transfers between funds that will occur in fiscal year 2024 presented for approval on the consent agenda that was it

016thank you strategy committee Mrs Schneider fabes assessments of social emotional learning are administered in the problems every year to students in kindergarten and eighth grade principal Kelly Jackson will be the growth that had been made since the fall and highlighted continuing areas from actions currently being taken she also shared information about the growth teachers had made around here in their confidence and fairness the teachings thank you moving on to Liaison reports the community Review Committee or CRC that was me they met last Tuesday they introduced a bunch of new members they elected new officers they talked about what their topic might be for next year and it's not final it won't be final till the fall but they're leaning towards understanding and supporting the learning needs of neurodivergent students which sounds similar to what we

017just had this year but it would be focusing more on academic supports and learning strategies to help neurodivergent students whereas this year focused more on SEL type of considerations and acceptance and they are not meeting again until the fall Ed Foundation Mrs Hart did someone else go I believe it was feeling okay May 10th but I believe I reported on it yeah okay so maybe there hasn't been a meeting I think they were done okay um Wilmette Village intergovernmental cooperation working group Mrs Kim and Mrs Schneider fabes anything to report yes thank you um I went to the meeting um the intergovernmental cooperation committee comprised of Wilmette and neuter Township government agencies had our second meeting of the year on June 1st as you may recall the committee is focusing this year on the mental

018health challenges facing our community the meeting was led by a group of local facilitators whose specialty is helping groups like ours Define challenges identify possible solutions and formulate concrete actions we consisting of local government officials and administration and mental health care providers spent the meeting brainstorming with lots of Post-it notes about where we should focus our efforts and what success would look like in these next few months the facilitators will take all of the data and come up with an accessible action plan so the next meeting in September will be very exciting and Ms schneiderfabes and I look forward to representing the Boardman yeah thank you um Mrs paling do you have anything to report about wixie Yes actually uh as Mr cesaretti uh alluded to wixie met today actually and we approved the meeting

019dates for the upcoming school year and the reviewed the tentative budget and set a budget hearing great thank you um Illinois Association of school boards Mrs pathless um uh we submitted our resolution related to School Safety and Security on election days to the iasb last week that's the one where we're seeking the amendment of the Illinois election code to allow schools to have an option of whether to be a pollen place um and then the second item to note is that registration for the 2023 joint annual conference for the iasb is now open it takes place in Chicago on November 17 2018. continuing with the legislative update Mrs paffles hey the legislative update in the early morning hours of May 27 2023 the Illinois General Assembly passed a fiscal year 2024 budget and adjourned they'll

020be back in session not until late October after months of legislative action 75 education related bills passed the general assembly this session some have already been passed and have been previously mentioned and discussed before and some are headed to the governor's desk for approval um these are just a couple that sort of interested me that I thought I'd let you guys know about uh the first one is hb2396 that's the full day kindergarten bill which was passed by the general assembly and is in to the governor for Signature this bill requires every school district to have full day kindergarten by 2027-2028 school year uh the second one is HB 3428 which is the opioid antagonist this provides that a school district shall instead of May maintain a supply of opioid antagonists in a secure location

021where an individual may have an opioid overdose if there is a shortage of opioid antagonists then the school district shall make a reasonable effort to maintain a supply of those um the third one is hb3559 school safety and Rapid entry this amends the school safety drill act and provides at a school building's emergency and crisis response plan protocol and procedures shall include a plan for local law enforcement to rapidly enter a school building in the event of an emergency so that's sent to the governor for signature um the last one for Illinois is the is hb3425 which is a bullying notification so this updates the definition of bullying to include I know we're talking about this later but to include um bullying based off of physical appearance socioeconomic status academic status pregnancy parenting status and

022homelessness um um it provides that a bullying prevention policy must include procedures for informing parents and guardians of all students involved in the alleged incidence incident of bullying within 24 hours after the school administration is made aware of the incident which is instead of promptly informing parent parents and Guardians um it provides that the State Board of Education shall develop a template for model bullying prevention policy by January 1st 2024 and that school shall develop the bullying prevention policy for school based on that model per um some later point that wasn't quite clear in the bill and then the last thing uh just to make everyone aware of is that the U.S Department of Education has updated guidance on school prayer and religious expression in public school I just want to let you know about

023that it's available online on the US Department of Education website um it appears to be a update related to or acknowledging the recent Supreme Court case in 2022 related to school prayer Kennedy versus Bremerton so you can find that online but I thought that was kind of interesting too that's it thank you moving on to information items Dr kramascoli thank you we have several announcements as the school year ramps up first of all under written communication the board received written communication from Kimberly Newman Amanda alt Kathy and Kevin rubash all regarding the d39 choir director position from Kelly gruner regarding the outdoor education program and from Alison Frazier regarding the accelerated math program and students who are on the cusp of being eligible to participate under administrative announcements from myself and our staff first of

024all the school year has come to an end with tremendous success our students faculty and staff enjoyed several wonderful end of the Year celebrations from fourth grade clapouts to the high Crest concert in the lawn and kindergarten graduations to eighth grade promotion the smiles and pride really abounded over these past few weeks as we celebrated a great school year I thank you to our faculty and staff for all that they have done to accomplish another successful year to our families and our community for the support of all that we do and and thank you to our students as we saw tonight for their hard work for their Joy of learning and for the many connections that they built throughout the school year um I also wanted to share that we will be participating on June

02522nd in the Nutra Township Equity Summit uh Kelly Jackson has helped to lead and organize some of the activities associated with that day it will bring together our Township Partners from across the township and our partner districts we will host a Collaborative Learning Summit in this year's Summit is focused on diversity Equity inclusion and nurturing a sense of belonging so the Nutra Township District leaders share a goal of creating and sustaining a culture where every Community member family member teacher staff and student feels that they belong and so on this day and in the spirit of togetherness staff have been invited to participate in this one-day Summit the focus of the Gathering will be to learn together with our Township colleagues and to collaborate to create more Equitable systems inclusive environments and to foster a

026sense of belonging for all members of our learning community so we're looking forward to this first Venture into a summer Summit in quite some time and we hope it's a great learning opportunity and really just a wonderful opportunity for collaboration across our districts as well I have an update for the board uh in terms of planning and stamping for the 2324 school year as our school year comes to an end we've continued to experience uh success as we've worked to recruit and hire several teachers this spring we have continued to have really tremendous interest in working in District 39 in a strong candidate pool for each of our positions that we have posted several additional new teachers are recommended for hire this evening on the Personnel agenda for the board's approval as of June 8th

027we had five certified positions that were still continuing to hire for but we've really made significant hiring progress over the last several weeks hiring will continue to be a focus throughout early summer I also wanted to mention that this summer we've had success recruiting and hiring several temporary staff members many of whom will serve as custodians over the summer to support the rigorous work that we know needs to be accomplished this summer and in cleaning our buildings and in supporting the several facility projects that are occurring throughout our district this summer so that's been a really nice addition to our team as well in addition here with us this evening is Nicole Ryan I'm pleased to introduce her to the board into our community Ms Ryan will be joining our District 39 family as the

028next grade level administrator at Wilmette Junior High School Miss Ryan separated herself as a Top Choice candidate from an outstanding pool of candidates and we're really thrilled to have her join our leadership group at wjhs Miss Ryan comes to District 39 from Stevenson High School where she served as principal intern and instructional team lead while also working in the classroom as a teacher an English teacher at Stevenson Ms Ryan initiated and facilitated the multi-tiered systems of support we know that's a critical Focus for us throughout our district as well and she provided instructional support for both pre-service and novice in-service teachers by modeling pedagogical moves and offering both lesson and unit level feedback she also planned and led several professional development opportunities for faculty T and staff there um please join me in welcoming Miss

029Ryan she's here with us at the podium I'm sure she'd like to say a few words but we are so thrilled to have you joining our team so thank you for being here yeah hi uh good evening everybody I am so excited to be here I just have a few quick short words um I am just truly honored and excited and humbled to be taking on this position um really throughout this interview process I really and in researching District 39 and Wilmette Junior High I really felt like it was the perfect fit for me um so I'm just really excited I'm looking forward to supporting students and and teachers and parents and this the Wilmette Community as a whole throughout next school year and Beyond as well as collaboratively creating spaces where students can grow

030socially emotionally and academically um and I'm looking forward to hopefully having conversations with each of you at at some point so again thank you so much I'm very excited okay in terms of curriculum committee work we've had a busy spring our grades K4 math resource Review Committee completed their work this year the district will be adopting bridges in mathematics as its curriculum resource in addition our K2 teachers identified the need for some decodable texts to support phonics instruction and so the short-term K2 Ela Review Committee Matt reviewed and identified quality text sets from a variety of vendors to serve those needs the narrowed selections were voted on by all K2 teachers who engaged in the collaborative decision making process these resources will be implemented in the fall we're really appreciative for all of the teachers

031who engaged in these committees the administrators who supported that work in Katie Lieber leading Network so thank you I was going to mention the McKenzie playground donation agreement which is seen later on this evening's agenda but I know that's already been discussed for really appreciative for the Mackenzie PTA and in their support of the upgrades being made to the McKenzie Elementary School playground so thank you for that we have property tax assessment appeals the district received two ptab notices from Cook County and information regarding the assessment appeals and potential Financial impact to District 39 has been provided to the board we did not receive any Freedom of Information requests that needed to be processed this month and so we can move on to the Strategic plan updates unless there's questions of course thank you board

032members any comments or questions okay all right well our strategic plan Updates this month we have two both are a little bit lengthier but full of a lot of information so we hope the board has had the chance to preview some of this information but we'll start with our 2023 spring assessment report and I'll introduce Katie Lee to lead us through this assessment report thank you so much good evening we tried our best to streamline so hopefully it will show in our demonstration in our presentation tonight but on behalf of all the administrators Kristen Swanson I will review the spring assessment data with you tonight and we are going to begin with the ainsweb Plus data hey um so mine is actually shorter than Katie so the early literacy information for our K kindergarten and

033first grade students looks at a variety of early literacy skills and we aggregated each year to look and see how our students progressing as you can see this year 76 percent of our students were listed as on track which means they scored average or above on those spring early literacy assessments this is back to pre-pandemic levels so that's exciting and I think that our goal for which we'll talk about a little bit later for the Strategic plan is to be at 80 percent and I feel like we're on a really good trajectory for the early literacy right now we've been doing a lot of work with early literacy both with General Ed and special education teachers as well as looking at additional resources so we're feeling like again we're back to that pre-pandemic level and

034we're we're in a good place right now so similarly early numeracy is given to our kindergarten and first grade students we look at a variety of Assessments and early skills for those students our kindergarten first graders tend to perform quite well on our early numeracy measures so we're seeing again we're at 87 percent of our students are on track or which means average or above and those measures so we are in a good place and we talk later about our kpis that we would be expecting or hoping that our students would be at 85 percent of them so we are exceeding that and have for two years we're doing some new things with math next year so we'll see how that goes and we may be increasing our kpi depending on how our purpose to

035perform Katie's turn and so um as you know we administer nwa's map growth as our assessment in District 39 and the Norms referenced in this presentation reflect data from nwa's Norm study using our pre-covet and pandemic assessment data from 2015 to 2018. um the score in NWA map is called the Writ score and it is an abbreviation for the rash unit and um it's based on a stable but equal interval scale and the equal interval means that the difference between the scores is the same and measures student performance regardless of age grades or grade level this set of slides a couple of slides give you just a broad overview a flash of how we're doing second third fourth all the way to eighth grade just to give you that visual of reading and an average

036writ score context and the the black bars are the national mean writs for comparison and this is for math so the next set of slides will display historical and current achievement information please note that each year represents a different group of students I'm going to use second grade set of slides to explain a little bit more detail and the remaining slides for the grades I will just progress through because it is a repeat of the same pattern so this slide displays the average spring grid scores from 2019 to 2023 for both reading and math we do not have data for spring of 2020 due to the closing the schools in response to the up until spring of 2021 NWA broke down the content area of reading into five sub-categories and this slide displays the mean

037writ scores for each of those however in Spring of 2022 NWA realigned their categories to three literary text informational text and vocabulary we felt that it was still pertinent to share with you those past years just to give you a little bit more of a historical perspective moving forward we may revert to having um just these three categories shown to you who are historical data and in the category of math for second grade um NW breaks down the content area into four categories and this slide displays the mean root scores for each of those subcategories okay I will um do a paused progression but the next set of slides for every grade level follows the same pattern so achievement foreign really good so I hope that just visually as we progress through the grades you

038will notice that our achievement had an increase or a slight decrease of One Rate Point range um so what shows what that shows is that our students are remaining um comparable to Prior years in all of the subcategories as well as just the broad domain now the next set of uh slides will be more in a cohort View and so whereas prior slides were groups of different students at those current grade levels or those grade levels um this one takes you on a journey of our second good years from Fall to Spring and then our third graders from their fall of second grade all the way to Spring of third grade and so on and so we are showing this in a progression in a line graph format so this is second grade and the

039national mean writ being the the black bar and the District 39 students from the fall starting at a writ of 185 and ending the year at 199 as their mean rent our current third graders and so on um this is the exact same view of a cohort view but with math achievement for student growth our students are growing from Fall to Spring every single year one of the targets that we look for is how once their growth targets are set are they able to achieve and meet them so a student receives a growth projection after a test Administration that provides an estimate of what is considered to be reasonable for that particular student and it is based on the grade they're starting writ score and the subject matter and each growth comparison period provides estimates

040based on that span time and we use the fall to Spring as far as the percentage of students meeting or exceeding growth projections nwa's assessment is statistically designed that 52 50 mean 50 do not meet so approximately the range that we're targeting is 50 to 60 percent of students meeting or exceeding their growth projections that would mean that our students are falling within that statistical range so here are the percent of students meeting expected growth fall to spring for second grade in reading and in math third grade again if you could keep in mind that each of those years are separate groups of students as you review those and then what we do as we analyzes data as we look at the cross-section of achievement status and growth and so this is the information for

041reading so this first one I will use to explain are map assessment distinguishes between low achievement and high achievement at that 50th percentile so when you have low achievement and low growth that means that students are below that 50th percentile in both of those categories and if you have high achievement and high growth that means they're higher than 50 percentile in both of those categories so what we strive to do is we look to minimize the red which is the low achievement and low growth and hopefully grow in the blue that you see in the high achievement in high growth so again these are different groups of students but it does give us information about how we do in second grade in general and the rest will be reading um in the following grades so

042grade three this is the same information uh but the cross section in math for achievement status and growth starting with second grade so just to summarize as far as achievement we're pretty consistent um actually in two of our grades grades four and eight we started the year with our mean Ritz as being higher than um usual or a lot higher actually about three to four rip points but each spring our District 39 students perform at a level that's at least one grade or above their current grade level as far as growth in grades second third fifth and sixth our students matter exceeded the expected growth the 50 in both uh grade both reading and math and our growth reading ranges were from 50 to 58 and in math growth it was 54 to 63 which

043is well within that range that we are targeting um grade seven however did not meet growth in reading but exceeded the expectation growth in math and grades four through eight did not meet the expected growth in reading or math um in the percentages are there for you to review happy to answer any questions that you have I'm sure that was riveting for all of you to listen to some silence but um because the the slides were presented to you in advance were you would like to ask us board members any questions Mrs paling this is all so helpful and fascinating and I think um the focus on growth is particularly helpful I I'm curious if you all have any thoughts or ideas about what might have happened at the fourth and eighth grade level my

044mind goes to where were they during covid is there something in there not I don't know it's just an interesting pattern so I'm going to start with eighth grade first for eighth grade I think there's a lot of factors that we need to dig into we need an opportunity to have conversations with the teacher teacher um this wrapped up towards the end of the year where we didn't have that um but one of the things that a high level at a district level that we could look at is how much time students are spending on the assessments and we did look at that data and compared to their National peers they the NWA ship shares with us like on average a second grader will spend X number of minutes and then eighth grader will spend

045X number of minutes and in all of our grades except for eighth grade our students actually spent on the average more time and the assessments except for eighth grade they fell a little below um so one aspect could be looking into how our students did in an itemized level as far as how much Focus or attention that they may have spent um in that and then um the other thing that we've been thinking about are our spring assessment schedules I know that you've heard of all of the different pieces of assessment That We Gather across the board but there's um you know classroom assessments there's Diagnostics or pre-assessments and we I think as an Administration need to look at um because for some students we have you know for example let me take an El

046student an El student at an 8th grade or a fourth grade level may be engaging in assessments from February almost every month a set of Assessments with iar and um as well as their access assessment and so I think we need to be a little bit more Mindful and maybe think out of the box as far as how we're scheduling so it's something to look into and have a conversation so these are all outside factors that I'm I'm speaking to just because we haven't been with the teachers about students on a personal level but those are the types of things that I could offer you at this point in fourth grade however I will say that the past couple of years are producing similar results and I think that is an indication that we need

047to dig into our curriculum and what we're offering most of the time with NWA map it's really about exposure to the higher Concepts or the the further along and when we have our students just on average functioning at a grade or more beyond their grade level I wonder how much access we're able to provide our fourth grade students to higher content areas or you know more advanced standards and so just something to continue to dig into and that might be more of a curricular question both Ela and in math for fourth grade because the past two years have been pretty consistent that way the other board members growth in eighth grade yeah possibly you know we like to really engage the teachers in helping us give insight as far as the the cohort of students

048are concerned in their classroom but you know when I look at assessment in a district higher level those are the types of things that come to mind and we just wondered so we looked into it and the amount of time that eighth graders are spending on map in the spring is an indication that they don't spend as equal to their National peers on average there could be a variety of reasons for that um but you know something to look into and ask and monitor doesn't know because those are our two big trends from fourth grade to fifth grade those students are preparing and at the end of fourth grade preparing for a pretty significant transition to the middle school and then again from eighth grade graduation and a whole lot of other things that come

049with that transition time so I just I think it's noteworthy that it is fourth and eighth grade where we see that um load display of growth in the springtime as we try to administer those assessments I just think it's not worthy yeah I wanted to emphasize that too um the growth targets that are set by NWA map uh definitely are what we're measuring as far as showing you the data the percentage of students but I I ask that you know that our students are growing they're just some of them are maybe a little bit shy of the growth Target meeting or below so that's another way that we could look at it I do think that just the way we've analyzed so far I don't know if we're getting to um the granular level that

050we need to to be able to present to you a fuller picture of our students growth there's no doubt in my mind that our students are learning and they are they are growing how do we share with you aside from this map data that information that's something for us to reflect at and hunger Mr Caesar ready Mrs Schneider babes it is you know I I just wanted to maybe can you share how you're gonna explore that more because I do feel like it's in the 30th somehow it's you know a little bit sure I'm just wondering how we will follow up in that exploration so are you you're speaking toward the fourth grade results yeah it's Fourth and eighth I think we need to um do more of a detailed report so that will tell

051us specifically how many um you know writ points or how close they were to their goal and it will let you know we will be able to let you know how close some students were to achieving that growth Target that was set for them at their root score um and then we also need to investigate their starting point versus their end point um so for example in the fall of fourth grade and in eighth grade um they actually started off both grade levels this year higher than they have in the past about three to four rip points and so when you start at that higher level in the fall um I think we need to investigate why or what it is that's um not exposing them to the concepts that they need to in order

052to meet their growth targets that's what I'm talking about so when we have we just have to dig in more in the granular level of that in order to tease out uh you know how to address the needs of those students at that point the other thing too is NWA map is one data point and um putting that into context with also the classroom data we would get a better picture of of how our students are progressing from the fall display they're looking nice no no absolutely not no no then I think they're transition years and that's even more alarming certainly in eighth grade where you would you know want to see that level of growth and preparedness so um in terms of you know digging into that granule level and outside elements that you

053talked about is that something that we will then this early fall or what do you think in terms of timing when we're going oh sure um yeah I think maybe not August right right uh possibly October I was gonna say as we bring back the fall assessment results I think that would be a good time as as our teachers have had the chance to think a little bit about how this year happened and then what the the fall assessment results are showing that might be an opportunity of us to also touch upon the reflection on this year and some of the steps that might be looking a little bit different as we move into so this is also a discussion among um my colleagues or Co counterparts in the township um so even looking at

054you know the sensitivity of math and whether it could provide us um that growth information so we're learning a lot from each other we just started the conversation because everyone just finished their spring assessment and so we'll continue um that dialogue as well the other board members Mrs Kim oh I was just I'm curious if you thought um an outside like assessor would be helpful um to look at you know all of the data you have and to try to come up with a story or a reason there is actually a district that just shared with me that they have a Consultant Group um that does do that because they also felt as though the growth measures were not um really reflecting what they know of their students and so they've partnered with them to

055do that but I haven't had a chance to this meeting just happened this morning and and so there are other districts that have data consultants if you will um to analyze the information in a different way so yes that's possible Mrs Hart I also just wanted to bring up the early literacy course again just looking for looking at some of the outliers in 20 to um so making sure that I'm understanding this correctly we have 76 of kids um but that percentage is much lower than the fall number of kids that were on track I'm looking specifically at letter words sound you want to see my am I reading that correctly but 92 were on track so in the fall and then that fell to 76 in the spring this here is an aggregate so

056it's all of the early literacy measures okay it's what we use for the kpi so we reported in the fall on both the individual subtests as well as all of the the kpi measures the overall in the fall was 77 of our students were on track I see okay so it's a very slight dip remembering that we have higher expectations for kids in the spring than we did in the fall from um what was mentioned earlier any other board members Mr Cesar ready the achievement levels are you saying yeah come back and it's just not there you know as far as achievement it's just not there for our district um we have consistently stayed very comparable if even if we dipped a couple of rip points we've swung back up um you know soon after

057so just visually if you can just look at as you review the achievement data it's it's pretty similar to pre-pandemic and I think um and we spent some time talking about it even during the pandemic that we weren't seeing the dips that some districts were really experiencing and and some of that may be attributed to the hard work of our our teachers our students and and really our parents in support of what we were trying to accomplish during the pandemic um but I I agree John it's amid the the discussion of growth we continue to have really strong achievement and so those are kind of two different snapshots of what's happening for our students and our achievement has has really remained pretty strong um and as Katie mentioned there's a couple of classes where it

058was actually in the fall higher than higher than we've ever seen and so not that that makes growth more difficult but it makes demonstrating growth on the same measure a little more difficult I think our students are growing but on this measure it's a little harder to to see that growth and that's kind of what I think Katie is alluding to with ismap the right measure for us to really tap into the nuances of the growth the growth that our students are accomplishing because you're right John our kit our students continue to really achieve at high levels when compared to what the expectation might be whether it's expectations against former students of ours or expectations when compared only or to similar districts you know I can I I can share I'm not prepared to show

059you graphs or charts at this point but we did receive our um this past current uh preliminary spring iar data that we are reviewing at this point to make any Crush so we have this opportunity to make Corrections um along the way and and that was in particular an area of focus for us especially in ela um to increase awareness to provide support for our teachers to provide support for our students and I can tell you just in general and a high level summary um our students did very well better than last year and in particular I will highlight E3 as well with that so I'm excited to once we go through our process with the Illinois State Board of Education and it's more final in the fall we usually share that with you and

060so I'm looking forward to sharing that information speaking that would be part of the October update as well so maybe we can pull all of that together some of the reflections from this year along with the iir results any other board members Mrs Papalis I have just one other question um if you're looking at those two groups that were like um High achiever low growth low achiever logo which between those two do you think would be the the one that would offer the best chance for an improvement in the growth could you repeat the two candidates so you know you showed there were like that one chart where they're like four different ones and it was like High achiever low growth low achiever low growth obviously those two groups could improve by in you know

061increasing their growth so I think our our greatest group would be the high achieving low growth because that's a greater number of kids or because there's just more potential to add um we do have more students that fall into the high achievement low growth and what we'd like to do is see how close you know um looking at the granular level how many did meet the target I mean we're very close to it um I think that or how far away are we from from helping our high achieving students to achieve that growth Target so I think just looking deeply into that they're our biggest group um comparatively um not the biggest group in every grade level but the biggest group comparatively that I think we could um spend more attention sure any other board

062members I will just say that um I really appreciate your reflective the reflective nature of your analysis and your comments and your eagerness to dig in and your willingness to think about things outside the box you know I think these tests serve a purpose and that they allow you to think about what might need to change or um what ways student outcomes could be improved but I also wish that like everybody could spend a year living in a school and really see that these are just a snapshot um and that they are not the whole picture and that there are a lot of ways that students grow that aren't measured by a standardized test and um what I appreciate is your process and your commitment to digging into the information we have across the board

063and um seeing what might change if um if something needs to change what that might be and so for me it's about the forest and not necessarily this particular tree oh if that makes sense but the tree the trees are important they make up the forest but yes okay um any anybody else we're already for the next thing I wonderful we are excited to share with the board today also our end of year progress report regarding our strategic plan so as as the board knows we're in our second year of our strategic plan and as part of our strategic plan each year we set action steps at the beginning of the year we have had the Good Fortune of being able to use our committee the whole time to provide regular updates to the board

064on each of the goal areas and the action steps that we're attempting to accomplish this end-of-year report really summarizes the progress that we've made throughout the year and some of the next steps that we're starting to think about for next year as we start to plan for our action steps so what we will do and many things to the district strategic advisory team for reviewing this and providing some feedback well so what we will do is for each goal area the gold Champions will speak to the action steps and the progress that's been made or accomplished relative to those action steps we'll share a little bit about each key performance indicator from that goal and then we'll progress through the Strategic plan that way and again this is our culminating report for our strategic plan

065this year and then the plan would be we will continue to review these with both the dsat and with our administrative team and begin to set action steps for the next school year which would be presented to the board in the fall with that I'll invite Katie to give us a launch here well thank you for the lunch Gary you're welcome um so why don't we just Dive Right In so as Carrie mentioned as well our district strategic advisory team met on June 1st to review our end of year progress report and key performance indicators they provide you valuable feedback on the current report as well as regarding next steps and action planning and in particular opportunities for improved alignment in monitoring and reporting that was very clear we're very grateful for their review and

066input into our process and the way that we present out so following this evening's presentation as Carrie said we will begin to draft our action steps for the upcoming school year with our administrative team and these will then become will be reviewed again on June 22nd which is the last meeting of the current dsat team and we'll refine these action steps throughout July and August prior to the presentation to the board in the fall and as you may be aware we have off of our district website a dashboard that has the information that we are going to share with you just for ease and convenience we've done some screenshots of the dashboard to show with you throughout our presentation so that we don't have to keep going back and forth to a different website okay

067so let's start with Goal one student achievement and growth ensure a differentiated education that provides a strong Foundation of rigorous and academic learning and so um these are a summary of the action steps that we have aligned or that we have written in our strategic plan that have been complete did and when we say completed there are certain things and actions that have been done to completion however portions or sub actions will continue so for example um completed is the Implement and solidify the multi-tier system of support mtss process within each School of course that's you know a ongoing work but the part that was completed was the forming of mtss building teams consisting of principles assistant principals and other staff members who will ensure Fidelity of implementation we've also structured data meetings to focus

068on grade level and student level data analysis in order to identify and refer students with intervention needs support and or enrichments and the details that we feel that we have established what those structures are are bulleted underneath for you to review and we've also created a staff survey on the degree to which professional development opportunities are differentiated and focused on effective Innovative and growth focused classroom practices and so our Target for that action step is as we survey staff that we will produce at least a four point five out of a five scale summative rating from staff survey and the degree to which professional development opportunities are such and so even though the survey is um been completed the ongoing collection of data will continue in first continuing for next year as Katie shared the

069mtss system is really the Bedrock of a lot of what we're doing we will be continuing to work on mtss through the academic process using our teams to continue to problem solve around student learning as well as looking at tier two and tier three we'll be focusing more on tier three next year in terms of our interventions and enrichment opportunities we've been training our special education staff in research-based multi-sensory reading strategies and we will continue to work on that while we get have gotten many of our teachers trained we do have new teachers coming into the field each year and we have multiple programs that we're working to make sure that they're receiving training in um we've also worked a lot on our primary reading instruction looking at resources as well as instructional strategies for

070our K1 and 2 teachers and so that's been an area that we expect to continue to see growth in our early literacy measures in our students and reading we are going to continue to engage our staff in professional learning that really focuses on both understanding student growth and communicating progress with families so that we have a good understatement everybody has a good understanding of where students are and what they need to work on and then we're going to continue using our that survey that Katie spoke about to monitor our staff development and differentiations feel like they're getting the training that they need in order areas that we've identified as priorities the next one we talked a little bit earlier already about our our kpis for early literacy our goal is 80 we are currently at

07176 percent um this is the early literacy here actually has the fall which was 77 in Spring whereas our early numeracy has spring from last year in spring from this year which is at 87 so we are exceeding in math and we are close in Reading we are going to monitor it very closely again next year as we Implement some of the new reading strategies that we've been exploring and investigating this year and um for NWA math we looked at um our data in five different ways for those who are new we actually split up our data to have a more rigorous goal into quintiles and so the top fifth is what we're calling the high growth category category or high achievement category and the low fifth would be um for the low achievement or

072growth category and so as you can see we have some room to grow in our growth categories and even in reducing our low growth this is all aggregate information for for the growth piece at the very top also aggregated are our students achievement from second grade through eighth grade at the bottom and so we have met in the math low achievement category we're at three percent at the fight this year and also we were at three percent last year so we are maintaining that um but we have a little bit more work to do as far as striving toward the 50 or more in the high achievement category for ELA and for math we're um I'm going to continue our work there okay so moving on to goal two supportive community we're looking to cultivate

073a supportive and inclusive learning community that is responsive to the social emotional and behavioral needs of each student some of the things that we've completed in this school year we developed and trained foundations Behavior teams at each building we've participate our teachers have participated in six and a half days of training so far this year have identified areas of to focus on for their learning next year and to really focus on teaching a positive behaviors and help develop that culture of proactive and positive behavior supports developed um Kitty or Kelly confined to the next one the second bullet point there is develop and Implement social emotional systems of support using a district-wide framework and approach and some of this work began actually last year and has continued through this year as we have continued to

074develop some objectives at each grade level and worked with teachers to adopt curricular materials to facilitate that implementation you'll see noted there is the survey to staff gauging their confidence and ability in teaching SEL this is that same survey partners with the survey that was mentioned for Circle one as well and we were just Gathering Baseline data this year that survey will continue as we hope to see that number grow we've looked at sense of belonging as you'll recall from our committee of the whole meeting earlier this month we discussed sense of belonging at the fifth through eighth grade levels and really have been targeting student feedback and student interests to develop in-house flexibly scheduled interest-based clubs that are sponsored and funded by the school district we I'm so excited that we have a great

075system in place I've mentioned to you all earlier throughout the year the number of clubs and we did a survey at the end of the year with kids to ask them what they liked about them and what we can improve for the year to come so we'll be continuing with making refinements to that and then develop consistent systems to connect in school learning and home support for social emotional learning we've had a subcommittee of our district mtss SEL committee working on this it was as as a result of last year's CRC report and so we've really developed and implemented a common shared vocabulary we've created parent and teacher facing materials with objectives for each grade level some look fors for students and also some hints and help for at home we will continue to develop

076these but it is a good start continuing for her next school year we are going to work continue to work on our progress monitoring for students who have been challenging behaviors being able to identify where those are occurring and what interventions are most effective for those students and really track the number of students that require more intensive interventions so that we can provide instruction and services where needed again under the implementation of social emotional systems of support with our framework and approach we've gathered a lot of information about professional development opportunities and so at the beginning of the year people just needed to learn more about the framework and now at this point in the year we are excited that we can now plan for better differentiation for teacher needs in this area so we

077look forward to continuing that work as we plan for the next school year planning and engaging staff and data focused and informed data meetings at the grade and classroom level in order to identify students with intervention needs in social emotional skill development is an ongoing work we've had a subcommittee of our mtssel committee working on processes and and resources for tier 2 and tier 3 interventions so you'll see that in a further bullet point as well looking at how do we progress monitor how do we identify which students receive intervention and how what does that look like in the classroom so those both kind of go together um as I just discussed um with sense of belonging we have been having a fifth through eighth grade scheduling committee meet uh regularly this year and they

078one of the components that they're looking at is that homeroom advisory structure as it relates to social emotional learning so they've developed some must-haves in in really targeted the social emotional development of artha through 8th graders with that sense of belonging component in their for work in the coming year uh this is this is a two-year committee so we're hoping to have good recommendations at the end of next school year and then develop consistent systems to connect in school learning and home support as I said we have a good start there with our subcommittee now we're looking at how do we revise our reporting documents in order to report out on Social Development social emotional development and growth for students and look at how parents are engaging at home and connecting their learning at school

079with what's going on at home the next slide talks a little bit about the kpis you'll see the five essential survey data that is all survey data that was reported on let this past fall we take this the survey in the spring and then it closes and then we get formal results and and analyze them and look for the growth so that will be reported again in October of this year when we report out on our data and then the other box there is the mesh survey data which we discussed at the committee of the whole meeting our goal is 80 percent positive respondents to a sense of belonging and we are at 65 percent that's up I think one from last year's goal three is our professional community so this is a focus on

080our staff completed several of our action steps this year continuing with our strategic advisory team meetings looking for opportunities for our staff to participate between schools and within schools and where we continue to look for opportunities I think we shared an update earlier this year during Institute day where we've had trivia game this is all coming from a sense of trying to contributions and we were so excited during the pandemic looking at um tools or strategies for ways that we can address immediate and short-term community so each school has looked to see how they might be able to address very specific need that a staff member might have trying to focus in on some low-hanging to address any needs that are just irkson I'm dressed we continue to have our meeting Norms stated at the

081on our agendas and conveyed verbally at the start of each meeting and looking for opportunities to increase awareness and culturally responsive teaching so we did accomplish that during our Institute Day in February we have more work to do there that was our initial action stuff continuing in 23-24 we know that our advisory team will continue meeting throughout the year for updates we will continue to seek feedback from staff as they become new members to our teams or as they leave us or at key points within their career here because that has been very helpful to us in terms of how we might continuing to engage and include staff members on our school committees looking for a variety of voices and perspectives being very conscious as we Select Staff members to participate on those committees and

082then finally looking for opportunities to identify professional development that both our staff and administrator administrators are seeking in different areas and in making those priorities either Institute days or training opportunities out and then similar to go to our kpis are updated in the fall there's five essential data that we're expecting that we'll be able to report out on as well as retention and ask s well for family engagement strength and Partnerships by connecting collaborating and communicating with families and communities to advance teaching and learning where the areas completed this school year as you may recall from previous board meeting there was a strategic Communications plan report our communications director Leo Krauss had worked on that taking data from the fall survey that we gave to parents as far as their preferences on which ways they

083want to receive information and then using that information to distribute our news that will live on in the form of a annual survey and you may see tools change from year to year and methods change but the the template and the format of that plan will exist on we can we ended this year providing monthly district-wide parent education events to facilitate student social emotional academic growth and progress monitoring while creating a library of these and other informational videos you know also may recall that we tried a couple different formats this year whether that was the social media Boot Camp or the book talk and uh trying we had some day time we had some evening so trying things on site offside try a variety of different methods to see what parents what seems to meet

084their needs and then what we can continue on into the future uh and then at the end of this school year we did send out a survey to just to see what parents topic wise they want to hear about next year including we know from last month's presentation that neurodivergent Learners will definitely be a topic for next year's parent events and increasing PowerSchool Parent Portal viewing statistics for report cards there was a jump from last Spring to Fall what we don't have yet Foley is information from this spring so there was a substantial jump from last spring fall we're curious to see what the Springs data will show in the final bullet point on this slide is evaluate changes made to the fourth to fifth grade transition process this has been ongoing since last year's

085work we had a plan last year we sent a survey at the beginning of the year and made some adjusted adjustments for this year based on feedback from parents teachers and students we will continue to send that survey so we can gather feedback and make sure that we're targeting the needs of our incoming fifth graders and we'll talk to our teachers about the orientation format again but really this has been very successful with the changes that we've made and we're looking forward to continuing to improve on that transition reaction steps that are continuing we have increased district and school social media followings and our interaction and the first part of that was to have some consultants and training for Leo and I so we can advertise through social media channels that has begun we've already

086had our first session with our second one tomorrow so we have about I believe it's five sessions with a couple of flexible hours to tailor to our specific needs so pretty soon here you will probably see us dabbling into reminders about registration and I know the bulk of that has happened but that is us just attempting to reach even further through our channels through advertising in particular through social media we have begun the redesign process it's not live for the district and school websites to streamline access to information including information available through parent-teacher organizations at each School so we met with the webmaster from each PTA PTO which is to hear about how their websites are being used or the membership toolkit through the PTA to make sure we're not duplicating efforts anecdotally what are

087they hearing that is missing or what parents seem to really want the lunch menu happens to be the big item by the way uh it's interesting what you learn through those conversations but we have engaged with our company for the template redesign we've gone back and forth a few times just to get the template close to where we want it to be and then we'll work on the contents as a meeting with each department in school to condense the information really think through do we need that on the site anymore do we pull it off an archival like we've talked about before so that work will work be an Earnest over the summer design work now content Work summer and hope to go live with sites prior to August when the school year begins um

088the next item that we will be working on some work has started we have some elements of this but uh is creating a fifth through eighth grade academic Pathways and class descriptions document um we get a lot of questions about what this class is how is it differentiated are there levels of these classes where's the next step once you get to seventh grade or eighth grade and So based on that feedback that we we get on a yearly basis we are hoping to kind of consolidate that and if you have students that have gone to New Trier you know they have about a 5 000 page pack I'm exaggerating but it's a large packet with their class descriptions ours would not be that large but hopefully it would give similar types of information for our

089families and students um and then the last element is a comprehensive transition plan for sixth to seventh grade and so some of that planning and change has happened it was reported out at a committee of the whole meeting earlier um in the school year and they will be giving a survey again this fall and we'll collect some feedback from families and students and make adjustments as needed so we have our key performance indicators here I mean the first two are the parent education events as you've heard me say before we struggle to have a survey feedback and it I think at our highest it's been six at our lowest it's been zero yet we have many attendees and many views once these are posted and we get feedback all the time on them so um

090we believe uh this measure does not uh the survey just in general I think people are surveyed out and by the time they've ended our presentation they've moved on so we'll try to figure out a way to capture it so I know that's been suggested before to maybe have an embedded question within the presentation because I think once the survey ends it ends but you can see that we're not at the goal but we do pretty well as far as meeting the expectations and what parents find useful as far as what they hear from us and then the report card statistics access statistics are shown there so currently that's where we stand which is meeting the goal and then our social media followers which we anticipate growing substantially once we start sending out Communications through

091the community not just our parent base so although we've done well so far Leo's done a great job but we'll that we anticipate that number growing quite a bit and then Kelly I'm not sure sure yeah no that that um right hand box there if you're looking at the screen is schools transition from fourth to fifth grade this is based on the survey that we gave last fall so that was gathering some baseline data and so what we will be doing now is um setting some goals for increasing that based on the changes that we've made for this coming school year so um we look forward to sharing that in October goal five is stewardship of resources ensure the Equitable and effective use of resources to sustain practices that promote growth so there's one item

092we've moved up to complete it during 2223 uh you know we spent a lot of time on the early end of this five-year cycle getting estimates for projects that we wanted to complete over the five to seven years and and creating that prioritized list so we feel like we've accomplished that part now the the next step is just going through the five years and completing all those projects then we have a few items continuing we're going to continue to review that five-year Capital plan twice a year we're focusing on that facility maintenance and upgrades then we continue to review our process annually to prioritize our building-based Capital Improvement projects those are our smaller projects that are more unique to each individual School and then monitor legislative adjustments related to property taxes funding formulas real estate

093tax appeal refunds and pension cost shifts and consider you know the been plan for any potential impact they might have on our resources well we're also trying to incorporate anything else that comes through the pipeline from Springfield and then we just bring all that information together and present that in our annual five-year projections in the month of December continue to look into that process as we um start next fall and look to see what our student enrollment is the metric that you see here is our operating fund balance as a percentage of expenditures our our targeted ranges at 40 low end to 40 percent high end of 65 percent and we ended 50 uh fiscal year 2022 at 51.8 even though fiscal year 23 is ending in a few weeks it'll be well into the

094fall probably late in the fall that we'll find out the amount for uh percentage for fiscal year 23. 3 and finally just as some highs um our next steps uh we will be embarking on our work in reflecting on the last two years reflecting on our progress reflecting on the key performance indicators for our outcomes looking through what action steps will be continuing from this past year we will review the CRC report recommendations on the topic and also incorporate the feedback that we gathered from dsat and all that comes together to finalize so 2023 2024 action steps that we will be presenting to the new District strategic advisory team early fall and then presenting to all of you in Fall of 2023 as our action steps to move our strategic plan forward I think the

095one piece that the administration would like to really reflect on is how are we what are we learning from this multi-year strategic plan process to be honest and in year three you know how are we refining and the way we are monitoring and reporting procedures so that it Greater aligns and more clearly connects the action steps to our goal areas I think that's one thing that we find we need to continue to reintroduce or explain to different groups of our community members or our parents and so on and we're wondering if there might be a better way to make the goal in the action steps necked in a more clear so that's something that we will work on as well as administrator it's one of the biggest takeaways actually from the feedback that are dsat

096provided us on June 1st and so we're eager to somehow work on this and then present it back to the group for praise anyway that is all and we are happy to uh answer any questions that you have thank you that was extraordinarily thorough board members any questions comments and exciting to see the implementation of it um thank you else Mr cesaretti especially gratified kindergarten thing in there [Laughter] anyone else okay I will just say thank you then there's but the kind of work that goes into this and I think our team feels a little overwhelmed at the end of the year and we're trying to compile everything and make sure that we are as transparent and clear as possible while also being as thorough as possible and we're now in the second year of

097A Five-Year Plan and this is the point where we feel like oh are we making the kind of progress that we want to be making and where can we make some adjustments and so it's it's really rewarding to see that some of the steps that we're taking are starting to yield some results and and it's really just nice yeah we know we have some room for improvement and continued growth and and we're excited about the work that lies ahead sort of multi-year plan it means a lot yes very true very true strict and a nervously better Direction it was already good but you know it's created that much you know better and having a framework at least in my mind clarify thank you Mrs paling you were talking I I wonder if there's something as

098a board that we can do differently there's so much work to prepare this uh presentation and we also hear about certain goals throughout the year so from my perspective if there's a way to consolidate that or so that you don't feel like you're duplicating efforts throughout the year I don't want the work to be on presenting to us I want the work to be on the work of the plan so if there's a way to change them living piece personally at least I'm yeah I appreciate that I think that that's one of the things that we're reflecting on because we feel like we have provided the board so many updates throughout the year this does feel a little both culminating but also repetitive of what we've already presented and we certainly don't want to waste

099anyone's time but we want to make sure that we give a a thorough account of what we've been working on what needs to continue work moving forward and so that's one of the things that Katie is alluding to that we we simply need to find a a more concise way I think of acknowledging this work is done this is ongoing here's when we reported it if you want more information here's where you can dig in but otherwise in a more succinct manner providing um a dashboard of sorts on the action steps as well as the kpis instead of so much of a narrative that honestly I think all of us get lost in the meat of that so that's it's one of the things that was a takeaway from dsat and in our own as

100we continue thinking about is there a different way to show that progress without so many in reports so thank you absolutely there's a lot of work that goes into that so hey anyone else I think we're ready for annual business let me get myself back all right in terms of annual business okay in terms of annual business we start with our annual bullying report Dr Swanson will give a brief overview of that the board has been provided the full report so each year we'd compile information related to bullying within our schools and this is information that is related to full-fledged bullying investigations and I think that that's it's statutorily defined what constitutes bullying and so there are many situations and circumstances throughout a school year in which our administrators and teachers are investigating social conflict

101um inappropriate behavior unkind behavior that don't really rise to the full-fledged level of bullying all of these are not a not okay and opportunities for us to teach students and to help them develop better ways of interacting with one another but this this report really addresses kind of those full-fledged bullying investigations in which there is really real concern that there is an ongoing persistent pervasive behavior that is forcing a child to feel unsafe at school this year we did have 14 incidences that were investigated as full-fledged bullying incidences six of them were found to be bullying these situations involved a variety of things as probably nobody is um surprised there was a number of cyber bullying types of issues that are are occurring with students also physical aggression name calling and appropriate a sinner pervasive

102name calling and really inappropriate types of name calling body shaming sexual innuendos things like that that may continue for students um every time we investigate one of these situations our administrators are very careful to make sure that we are respectful of our students but that we use this both as a as an opportunity to make sure students understand it's not okay but also as a teaching opportunity we do have children we are a preschool through eighth grade district and our kids are navigating a social world that is really often far beyond what they can actually understand given their growth and development they are exposed to all kinds of things online in the media if you think about the discourse in our country right now there's a lot of things that are not civil and a

103lot of situations in which children are parenting or copying what they see in our administrators and our teachers are really working to try and use these opportunities to make sure that the children who are victimized feel safe and secure and are know what to do at school but also to help those children who are considered to be the aggressors to really learn from that experience and develop better coping skills so while we use when we do have situations that are founded we use a variety of interventions for both our children who are deemed to be sort of the victim and the students who are deemed to be the aggressors so we may use restorative circles we may have the aggressors write a letter of apology or participate in um research paper around the incident that

104why what they did was inappropriate there may be disciplines such as an in-school or out-of-school suspension depending on the happened detention um removal of different privileges we also use a lot of Social Work support services for students we identify safety plans we may have escorts in the halls for a student who feels unsafe or increase our supervision for students we do as more transgressors in those situations this is certainly something we take very seriously but at the same time we understand that these are children who are trying to learn how to navigate the social world so there's there's sort of that temperament tempered with the teaching aspect of it um I think as you may remember at the committee of the whole Kelly shared information related to The Bullying questions on the mesh assessment and

105that is information that we also consider and look at we can continue to see that most of our students and respond favorably to have you been bullied at school so that most are saying no that they have not but there is definitely more perception among our students that bullying is occurring in the schools so that is something that we need to continue to address to look at we've worked hard to try and set up situations and circumstances throughout our buildings that help alleviate some of the underlying causes of bullying so we've done a lot of work with responsive classrooms to help students feel that they are a member of their class and to feel a sense of belonging um we're gonna we'll continue with that we've worked at the 5 8 level to really set

106up a lot of clubs and activities for students to feel that sense of belonging we've done a lot of work with Dei diversity equity and inclusion we continue to work with our students and our staff on social emotional learning for all of our students so that they can develop those skills that we want them to have and so we're hopeful that as we continue to implement these we will see the numbers change somewhat but we also know that the more we talk about it the more aware students are and so we also see additional reporting because students are more aware of that so it's a sometimes hard to judge exactly what the cause is are we actually seeing more incidences of bullying or are students better at reporting it and identifying it and saying we're

107not going to take that kind of where we are with the bullying report this year it sounds like based on the legislation we'll be revising our bullying policy again I think we did that earlier this year because as we had another change in it so we will continue to address that as well does anyone have any questions board members I'll just Express appreciation for how much care you are expressing towards all the kids involved because that came across crystal clear in your report just now hey thank you next on the agenda we have um budgeting both the fiscal year 2024 District 39 tentative budget and the fiscal year 2024 wixie tentative budget both have been reviewed by the board um but I will let Corey speak to those all right so we have reviewed the

108fiscal year 24 d39 budget in in detail at our May 15th Committee of the whole meeting tonight's review is going to be at a fairly high level so anyone that's looking to dive into the more detail that would be the meeting to to refer back to so tonight the purpose of tonight's action is to approve a tentative budget and then set that public hearing date for for August 28th and then when we get to August the takeaways I usually have from for the month of August is we like to review any budget changes that we made from the the preliminary or tenant at budget and then to hold that formal public hearing and have the board take that formal action um in the month of August so we can have our budget approved and move

109forward the operating funds is something that we focus on quite a bit I always think it's nice to include a list for anyone who's looking at this what is included in our operating funds so the first six funds that you see listed there that's what we're talking about but then we also have the three additional funds that are outside of our operating funds that serve more special purposes Debt Service capital projects and the fire prevention and safety fund so capital projects which is one of our non-non-capital non-operating funds so for fiscal year 24 we're looking at a budget of 13.1 million it's really comprised of work from two different Summers it's the back half back portion which is the larger portion of all these classroom air conditioning Renovations this summer plus a smaller project you're

110the Mec and then as we look ahead to Summer 2024 the primary project that summer will be a partial roof replacement at the junior high which is roughly half of the roof square footage and then we have some smaller projects at Junior High McKenzie and Ramona that will be folded into into that uh those bid documents that service and transfer so The Debt Service fund is the fund that allows the district to Levy and then pay off principal and interest on our bonds 4.2 million is our uh scheduled payments for next year so we have the series 2020 bonds and then the more recently issued series 2023 bonds we also will pay our debt certificates from The Debt Service fund but we'll transfer in money from the operations and maintenance fund to cover that as

111you see at the bottom half of this site just over a million dollars is what we've pledged to do that then we have the 2.86 million transfer from operations and maintenance to capital projects to cover those construction projects and then the 138 000 from educational fund to The Debt Service fund is for leases this graphic shows that we are a heavy locally funded School District with over 90 percent coming from property taxes and other local sources and then on the operating expenditure side we are very similar to many other school districts in that just shy of 80 of our expenditures go towards salary and benefits with the remaining 21 coming from purchase service and supplies that we need to operate operating fun summary so on this slide uh two takeaways I'll always like to gravitate

112towards revenues minus expenditures are our kind of initial projected Surplus for fiscal year 24 is looking at 4.3 million but then we drop down two more lines and look at that net projected Surplus so what do we what are we left with on an operating basis after we transfer money out for construction and for some of those debt payments and we're at roughly 280 thousand dollars for for fiscal year 24. that would take us to a operating fund balance of just shy of 42 percent this graph shows um three years of actual then fiscal year 23 is is budgeted and then the tenant budget in numbers in fiscal year 24. this is operating revenues versus expenditures uh we like to see the the blue bar just be slightly larger than the green one it shows

113that it shows a nice trend and then this is kind of where we kind of gravitate towards at the end of every presentation of our budget or our financial statements is where where what percentage are we at and kind of where are we heading um you know we ended last year at 51.7 we were anticipating that the fiscal year 23 budget would get us to that 42.7 percent and now that we've got a tentative budget for fiscaler 24 we're looking at 41.96 so um very similar to what we had and had in our December Financial projections and that is the d39 tentative budget on the wixie side there is a budget the tentative budget for that one is roughly 213 000 for revenues and expenditures um the revenue so the revenues and expenditures are always

114going to equal each other for that for that budget there's no fund balance and the composition of that budget is very similar to what it was for fiscal year 23. are there any questions on either of those items board members okay thank you all right then the next next couple items uh the board will be asked to take action here in a little bit uh the treasurer's bond is is an annual requirement uh just to have a have an insurance bond on on the school district treasurer and that amount is I believe set for 16 million dollars for next year and then two budget resolutions that provide authority to the to the district one is the transfer from o m to the capital projects that's a resolution that the board approves annually to allow that

115transfer to take place and then the the second resolution is more precautionary in nature in that it gives us the ability to loan money from the Ed fund to the operations and maintenance fund should the O M fund uh run negative which is always a possibility with um that fund being heavily supported by property taxes but yet we spend a bulk vast majority of the money at the beginning of the school year as we wind down those summer construction projects um be happy to answer any questions on any of those three items otherwise that's all I have for this evening board members any questions okay thank you and finally we have the Consolidated District plan um so Kristen Swanson and I um on behalf of the district apply for federal grants expenditure reporting um the

116Consolidated District plan is the Illinois State Board of education's way of asking all of the questions they want and need from us for all of those grants in one place and so in order to be compliant with the rules we are asking the board to review the Consolidated District plan of Florida event just kidding uh if you could review that or understand that our practices are aligned with our strategic plan our practices have not changed in the past couple of years in how we apply those federal funds and so we ask that you will approve our plan in order to move forward with applying for these breaks thank you board members any comments or questions okay so we'll move forward then with board policy review we have several board policies up for second and final

117review this evening we're happy to discuss any revisions but um otherwise the recommended adjustments have been Incorporated board members are there any comments or issues to be raised about the second and final reading of these policies okay this brings us to the second opportunity for the audience to address the board are there any audience members that would like to speak at this time okay the next order of business is the consent agenda under the action items are there any items that any board members would like pulled from the consent agenda okay Mrs Hart please proceed with emotions welcome to approved Personnel report dated June 12th 2023 motion to approve the administrator's 2023-2024 contractual salary increase index to Consumer Price Index CCI with an aggregate Merit raise of 4 and benefits is detailed in the compensation

118to approve the 2024 Consolidated District plan motion to approve the renewal of the state of Illinois School treasurer bond in the amount of 16 million dollars motion to approve the fiscal year 2024 tentative budget as contained in this report for immediate public display and further motion to approve the publication of notice of a public hearing on the tentative budget to be held at 7 pm prior to commencing the regularly scheduled Board of Education meeting on Monday August 28 2023. motion to approve the Wilmette Community special education agreement fiscal year 24 tentative budget as contained in this report for immediate public display and further approve motion to approve the announcement of a public hearing on the tentative budget to be held at 7 pm prior to commencing the regularly scheduled Board of Education meeting on Monday

119August 28 2023. motion to approve the resolutions authorizing accounting transfers from the operations and maintenance fund to the capital project fund and motion to approve the resolution authorizing an inner fund loan from the educational fund to the operations and maintenance fund voting to approve donation agreement between McKenzie Elementary School PTA and the Wilmette Public Schools District 39 Board of Education motion to approve as second and final reading of Board of Education policies two colon 20 powers and duties of the Board of Education and indemnification two colon 3-0 Board of Education elections the colon 50 board member term of office 2 colon 105 ethics and gift ban two colon one one zero court officers two colon 210 organizational school board meeting two colon 250 School administration three colon 4-0 superintendent the colon 5-0 administrative Personnel other

120than the superintendent 3 colon 6-0 responsibility of the building principle and assistant principal Oracle and six zero purchases and contracts five colon 3-0 hiring process and criteria 5 colon nine zero abused and child neglected child reporting five colon one five zero Personnel records five colon 260 student teachers 5 colon 290 educational support Personnel employment termination and suspension six colon 2-0 cool your calendar and day six colon 50 School Wellness six colon six zero curriculum content six colon six five student social emotional development six colon 135 accelerated placement six colon 160 English language learners six colon 280 grading and promotion six colon 340 student testing and Assessment program seven colon one zero equal education opportunities seven colon 2-0 harassment of students prohibited seven colon one zero zero health I and dental examination immunizations and exclusion of

121students eight colon two zero Community use of school facility motion to approve the resolution authorizing payment for goods and services between now and the next board meeting scheduled for August 28th 2023. motion to approve the accounts payable bills listed between May 23 2023 to June 12 2023 and the following amounts educational fund 248 874.77 o m fund 42 84.29 debt Services 167 846.25 Transportation two hundred and twenty thousand five hundred and seventy nine dollars fourteen cents capital projects 947 dollars total all funds one million two hundred eighty six thousand three hundred thirty one dollars forty five motion to approve the manual checks issued between May 23 2023 and June 12th 2023 in the following amounts educational fund 455 733 . o m fund eighty two thousand one hundred eighty eight dollars at 54 cents Debt

122Service 475 dollars Transportation 56.44 total all funds 538 453 dollars and fourteen cents yeah I have a second second emotions have been made and seconded would the clerk please call the roll John Caesar ready yes and heart yes Bonnie Kim yes Allison pathless yes Amy paling yes Lisa Schneider Phipps yes Aaron Stone yes the emotions carried um conference items is there any old business is there any new business is there any good in welfare no I mentioned it previously but I just want to thank the boy your support of graduation this year we were able to be back inside and of course it was a beautiful day as a result of that now it happened to be a beautiful day and it was a wonderful celebration and so some of us were a little anxious

123about how this was all going to play out and it was just a wonderful celebration of our our students and we received so much positive feedback from our parents thank you to all the board members for your support of that event anyone else yes control it was much more predictable than the last couple of years wasn't it anyone else okay may I have a motion to adjourn to Executive session to discuss Collective negotiations specific personnel and special education individual student matters I have a second second motion having been made and seconded will the clerk please call the roll Chauncey's ready yes Ann Hart yes Bonnie Kim yes Ellis yes Amy paling yes Mr Schneider Phipps Aaron Stone yes motion carried we are now adjourned to Executive session and the time is 904.