Wilmette Public Schools District 39 Board of Education Meeting June 13, 2022

001i hereby call to order this regular meeting of the board of education for wilmette public schools district 39 this monday june 13 2022 will the clerk please call the roll amy palin here john caesar ready ann hart here bonnie kim here frank panzika here lisa schneider faves aaron still here thank you uh principal aaron dubno is here to introduce the end-of-year writing contest winners to lead our pledge of allegiance hello tell me when we're good your card on your tony there you go you all look beautiful this evening they sure do give us just a minute to get everything set up but my goodness this looks like a great presentation we're about to all right i'm aaron dubno the principal at harper and uh we have the honor of reciting the pledge at tonight's board

002meeting i have an amazing group of students some current dolphins and some graduates of harper that they will introduce themselves in a minute um and not only has this group braved the weather conditions outside um they chose themselves to participate in our end of the year optional writing contest um this group of about 10 or so students and close to over a hundred other dolphins uh chose to participate by sharing a poem or paragraph describing a highlight or some memories from this school year of that over 100 different students that participated these are our winners um they all use such great voice they all shared a highlight that was meaningful that was personal and really just captivated um us so uh they're going to introduce themselves share what grade that they just completed and uh

003what their poem was about thank you for having us hi i'm ellie lockwood and i just finished fourth grade and my poem is about um going into fifth grade hi my name is arya gable and i'm a graduate from harper and our poem is about our memories at harper that we made hi my name is keaton bobby um i just finished fourth grade and my poem is about like all the great harbor memories and going into fifth grade hi my name is molly antolini and i just graduated fourth grade and we did um a poem about harpoon memories and i liked the part about a teacher hi i'm eloise oxley i did my poem with molly and um we did our poem about harper memories which my favorite part was um the friendships that i've

004made at harper hi i'm penny hilton and i just finished third grade and my paragraph was about how i got my first deserving doll hi my name is elsie anscum i just finished third grade my parliament is about the first day of school hi my name is mabel o'donnell and i just finished first grade my poem was about new friends hi my name is margaret lebowski i just finished third grade and me and my friend wrote about we wrote a poem about harper rhymes hi i'm tommy roy i just finished second grade and i wrote about how harper's best school hi i'm audrey korsinski and i wrote about being back in person and i just completed third grade hi my name is aubry tapping and i just graduated fourth grade and i wrote a poem

005about joining harper at the end of the year hi my name is abigail riddle and i wrote about my last parent teacher conference and how much i've grown during the year hi i'm andrew bailey and i just finished fourth grade and i wrote a poem about being a technology helper please stand for the pledge is dolphins thank you so much for being here [Applause] you made this stormy night so much sunnier and i'm so impressed that you took the challenge to do this optional challenge to do this writing contest so keep embracing those challenges and we look forward to hearing more of your seeing more of your reading have a wonderful summer thanks again [Applause] at this point i seek a motion to approve the minutes of the may 23 2022 board of education regular

006and executive session meetings i moved to approve the minutes of the may 23 2022 board of education regular and executive session meeting minutes may have a second second the motion has been made and seconded board members are there any comments errors or omissions to the minutes okay uh seeing none will the clerk please call the roll ann hart here yesterday yes bonnie jim yes frank panzika yes lisa schneider faves we can't hear you lisa yes aaron stone yes amy palin yes motion carries so this is our first opportunity for public comments are there any community members here who would like to address the board don't see any now we'll have another opportunity later in the meeting so we'll move to board reports uh our committee reports starting with mr panzika and facility development thank you

007last monday we had our committee the whole and for the facilities section we had three topics first we got an update from mr papa nicholas nicholas and associates on the summer construction projects mackenzie ramona and harper he said everything is on time on schedule so that's the really important part they did have a little glitch that the air conditioner chiller is going to arrive late but they have enough contingencies that that shouldn't impact when it's completed um the second large item that we spent time on was the long-term capital planning mr poltemeyer identified long-term planning projects we had numerous discussions on guidance for specific plans for the six district schools um we specifically talked about raising the the annual budget for miscellaneous uh capital projects from 600 000 which it's been for longer than anybody

008could remember to uh 900 000 uh this is the fund that takes care of like cracks or or new carpeting or or just general maintenance and six buildings that are aging nicely but are definitely not brand new um we also went through various scenarios for future capital budgets we specifically looked at approving doing background work to identify what resources are needed to look at the air conditioning for our five schools that remain after the summer when we do mckenzie and then we talked about central illinois school the pta raised money to replace the playground equipment and as a standing policy of the school board in order to accept that money we had to uh um authorize as a school board the use of that and we very gladly are going to be doing that so

009those were the three big topics for last monday thank you and i am happy to share the finance committee unless okay uh since mr c's already is not here i can update about that uh we had three topics we discussed the wilmette community special education agreement tentative budget uh district 39 serves as the fiscal agent on behalf of the special education cooperative that includes d39 and avoca the illinois state board of education requires wixie to keep separate accounting records and to follow the same illinois state budget guidelines required of all illinois school districts so mr baltimore noted that the wixie budget is a flow-through entity with equal revenues and expenditures and that public hearing will be held in august for final approval of the week c budget the second topic was our district's tentative budgets

010for fiscal year 2023 mr baltimore presented the initial review of that budget in the calendar which will be approved in june uh today the final fiscal year 2023 budget will be approved at the public hearing to be held in august prior to the regular meeting of the board of education the account summary estimates estimates revenues at 70.5 million and expenditures at 69.4 and then the third topic was an annual resolutions and renewals mr baltimore reviewed the annual budget resolutions which include the treasurer's bond resolution along with interfund transfers to and from the o m fund educational fund and capital projects funds so these short-term transfers permit timely payments of construction-related expenses the district tax levy receipts generally are received twice a year in july and august and february and march the payments for 2023 that

011schedule is questionable due to county issues so due to the timing of cash flow short-term loans may be necessary to maintain adequate fund balances we were told that the board is obligated to make payment of various recurring bills and previously approved construction related services and materials during the month of july and because we do not have a board meeting scheduled that month this resolution enables the treasurer to fulfill those payments for necessary financial obligations between june and august and then i will turn it over to mrs schneider faves for strategy i thank you um so we only had one topic in the strategy meeting which was science olympiad upon request from a board member uh miss katie lee summarized the history of science olympiad program highlighting the significant role of the d39s educational foundation the

012foundation took the lead in 20 2013 with a soft launch and hired one coordinator to assist the program in 2013 and 14 school year the foundation advertises the science olympiad courses for the high crest middle school and the junior high and hired two coordinators along with two facility coordinators in 2015-16 they hired facility coordinators and recruited from the community they also adjusted course offerings to meet the interest of the students and the courses didn't necessarily align with topics selected by science olympiad the courses not being aligned resulted in the last year of competitive teams um or in the last year of the competitive teams um d39 was asked to take over running the competitive teams and since 2016 the district entered into an agreement with that educational foundation would continue to run the science courses

013lab 39 and district 39 would run the science olympiad competitive teams recently the education foundation announced the discontinuation of lab 39 the primary challenge for both the finding the foundation and the district has been staffing that's it great thank you for those reports i will turn to liaison reports starting with miss katie lee for crc i'm sorry i don't have the notes in front of you but i can offer those notes thank you since you offered them for us uh the community review committee met for the last time this year on june 7th the meeting was attended by currently seated members and we're joined by some new members as well the president and vice president shared that the presentation to the d39 board of education went well they shared the compliments and acknowledgments of all

014the hard work following that the election of the 2022 2023 officers were held we wish to congratulate the new crc president amy wexler-ross vice president ariel ruby and secretary katie borges the committee members engaged in an informal generation of next year's potential topics and in the fall the members of the 2022-2023 crc will have a more formal discussion and select their topic through a vote thank you uh mrs kim the wilmette village in our governmental cooperation working group thank you um i was not able to make the meeting last wednesday but uh mr says ready went and um um there are a couple of um items that were discussed one of them being that um they're still looking at the sustainability coordinator position and so now they've like drafted what that position would look like

015and they're still sort of in stages to see about financing and such on that and so that will likely take place by the end of this month the committee discussed opportunities to work together on diversity equity and inclusion and to identify ways um in which a larger segment of the community would would hear one message or one voice each governing body will consider their support of forming an intergovernmental dei committee to work collaboratively to advance dei initiatives so and that will consist of professional staff rather than elected officials and um let's see and um the last item is that at the next meeting which is going to take place in in the fall there will be input on training topics for newly elected officials which they're hoping will take place in the spring after elections

016that's it thanks thank you uh i will turn it to mrs hart for the wilmette community special education agreement update thank you i attended a brief wixy advisory board meeting earlier today via zoom in terms of updates the board confirmed that the leadership will remain the same for the 2022-2023 school year and the board approved the meeting dates and tentative budget for the 22-23 school year as well great thank you uh and right back to mrs kim for iasb uh no real news except uh registration for the joint annual conference which will be taking place november 18th to 20th is now open if you're interested in attending please let nancy know great thank you and uh so that concludes liaison reports but i will leave it with you for a new legislative update thank you

017um over 85 percent of all of the bills impacting education that were sent to the governor by the illinois general assembly are now signed into law there are too many to list specifically but i have highlighted some of the more interesting bills in recent months and there are no surprises and the governor has not issued any vetoes to any education related bills as of last week also last week a subcommittee of the u.s senate committee on appropriations held a public hearing on president biden's 2023 budget request for the u.s department of education members of the committee emphasized the need to address school safety and gun reform in light of the recent unfortunate mass shootings and then on sunday senate negotiators announced that they had reached a bipartisan framework on measures intended to limit some access

018to firearms paving the way for the broadest federal legislation on guns in decades the proposal aims to go after illegal sales of guns and to fund mental health programs and school security this may involve additional federal appropriations for local school districts to address these needs so it's something to watch for thank you so important thank you i will turn it to dr kremescoli for information items thank you i will try to keep my comments brief this evening because i know we have a lot to talk about later in reports first of all in terms of written communication the board received written communication from an anonymous community member requesting clarification regarding residency when a family owns two homes in district 39. in terms of administrative announcements we celebrated the last week of school last week with

019uh so many celebrations and end of year um hoopla it was really really fun for our students the last couple of years have been an unusual end and so this year certainly is still somewhat atypical but um more opportunities for coming together and celebrating with our students with our colleagues and with our families alike um so we really enjoyed that we want to say thank you to the ptas and the ptos to our administrative team to so many who helped have a hand in those celebrations um i also would like to announce a very special honor that was uh just announced over the weekend um it's my honor to share that one of our teachers has received the 2022 barbara buellman young conductor award this award is given to a person who has demonstrated the

020following qualifications they have to be a director with a minimum of five years and a maximum of 10 years with the majority of teaching in the state of illinois a director who's actively involved in igma and a director whose students consistently excel in the igsm events and we know that ours do and a well-rounded person who belongs to professional organizations and is respected by his peers we congratulate alex blomars our band director at wghs and high crest middle school on becoming the 2022 igma barbara buhlman young conductor award recipients let me share a few highlights from his peers what his peers had to say about him they said he is highly professional in all of his interactions and dedicated to fostering the growth of each and every one of his students mr blomars is generous

021in sharing his time and talents he goes above and beyond to support his colleagues and team team members for the good of the school community and he is a lifelong learner continuing his education beyond his graduate studies to further his knowledge of best teaching practices and deepen his understanding of student needs particularly social emotional needs mr blomars will be recognized publicly at the 83rd annual ixmo state meeting this fall on sunday september 25th we congratulate him for this honor [Applause] speaking of celebrations for the end of the year as many of you know we hosted two outdoor graduation ceremonies on wednesday at nutria's northfield campus while it was a little chilly for a june evening the events were wonderful our students seemed to especially enjoy being together and cheering one another on as they celebrated

022their conclusion of their journey here in district 39 again i want to thank everyone who helped to organize and lead such a wonderful celebration for our students and families we look forward to next year's event and two additional considerations as we continue to plan for the future ahead but special thanks to kate dominique and air greece's for helping to plan such a wonderful event and tony for your help with that as well i'll also mention we had a staff movie night as the board is aware we've been trying to offer some additional opportunities to celebrate our staff and to celebrate just the many accomplishments so we hosted a movie night over on ramona's lawn and had a really nice showing we also showed the encanto movie outdoors had popcorn and hot dogs and ice cream

023cups and lots of fun treats a couple of board members showed up to help us to celebrate so again thank you to tony for helping to organize that wonderful event we're looking forward to summer school we're finishing the planning and staffing for summer enrichment for our summer enrichment program and extended school year program we have approximately 380 students enrolled and are still looking for a few teachers and paraprofessionals so if anyone is eager to sign up please contact us kristen swanson can get you in touch with all the right people i'll also mention while our students are away many of us as teachers and administrators continue to work hard as we plan for the next school year we have curriculum work and professional development happening the board has been provided a little synopsis of what's

024happening over the summer but lots and lots of opportunities for our staff to learn over the summer for them to lead to do some curriculum work and to come together in preparation for the upcoming school year so we're incredibly grateful for everyone who's had a hand in putting those together and has volunteered their time this summer to come in and either learn or lead or do a little bit of both and finally we have several freedom of information act requests that we have responded to the district received foia requests from diane schnauzenbach requesting map student growth reports for all schools with grade level detail for fall 2021 through spring of 2022 though there's a report later on this evening's agenda which summarizes some of that from tony walk requesting copies of certified payroll submitted by

025the general contractor and all subcontractors and any invoices for the harper elementary school 2022 asbestos abatement project and from zoe yelsen of smart procure submitted um a commercial foia request for any and all purchasing records from may 10 2022 to present and that concludes our reports terrific thank you i think we can move to strategic plan updates excellent we have several strategic plan updates and we're really excited to be able to share our progress with the board of education in the community at large this evening we'll start with our 2022 spring nwa map assessment report our nwea map growth assessments in reading and mathematics were administered fall winter and spring this year to students in grade two through eight and so this report provides us the opportunity to share the spring achievement and growth results

026for this past school year we know as we look forward we've set some kpis and so we'll begin to transition to monitoring in that regard but this report kind of has a mix of the old way and the new way as well so i will let katie lee lead us through this report thanks carrie as you know the presentation is a visual complement to the report that you received i know that the contents of the report has tables and charts and some and some words but what we'd like to do for our presentation is to provide you different ways to slice and dice that data and look at it from a grade level perspective from a cohort perspective just so that you can see the progress of our students one thing to note is that

027nwa normed their data and so we we've used their updated norms and applied them to all of our data and these it's important to note that the norm is based on a pre-pandemic information so the first two slides this one and the next one is just a visual snapshot of how our students have done from 2018 to 2022 as far as their spring mean writ and so what we look for in this type of display is any drastic drops and here is math this is um the next section is nw achievement for both reading and math before by grade level so something to keep in mind is that the each of these bars represent different groups of students from spring 2018 to 2022 this is second grade reading and math they're great different six three

028seven the next view we will split up into the content areas and the first one is reading achievement and it's a cohort view we appreciate this view because it shows the progression of the same group of students throughout their district 39 experience first starting with second grade reading third grade four three three sixth grade seventh grade and eighth grade so the next set is exactly the same except for math achievement as you can see our students as far as achievement they are pretty consistent from past years there may have been a grade here or there that have dipped a few rip points but overall pretty consistent with our past performance i think the area that we really are most interested in as our district strategic advisory team has also focused on would be our growth

029and so the next set of information is based on student growth so first we'd like to just remind everyone that we do choose fall to spring growth comparison period as opposed to others we feel that it best represents the grade level with within which that they have been learning and it represents their growth from the beginning of that grade level to the end of the grade one other thing to keep in mind for growth is um the research shows that statistically it's designed for about fifty percent meeting and fifty percent that do not meet their growth um of projections or targets and um what's nice is they provide us what range we're trying to shoot for because approximately fifty to 60 percent of our students nationwide meet or exceed their growth projections so as we

030look at our data that's what we want to see we also want to see better than 50 to 60 so um you know that that'll be always our ultimate goal um to challenge us to get our students to that level um but also to keep in mind that they also cite that 70 of our students or above is considered a high performance district and i'd be happy to share that there is a grade level that has reached that this year this is our second grade the percent of students meeting expected growth fall to spring third grade fourth grade in fifth grade i'll pause right here for the 71 growth for our fifth grade math students sixth grade seventh grade and 8th grade so in summary district 39 students continue to demonstrate that overall high achievement

031as i've shared and their mean ritz scores indicate performance that's equivalent to a national mean ritz score for a higher grade level so the percentage of students who fall in that average and above range for achievement has always stayed within about 90 to 99 now for growth um because we have that measure that we could look at several grade levels increased the percentage of students who met an expected growth in reading the range was 2 to about 11 from last year to this year and increases in math range between 3 to 21 um since last year in reading in particular the percentage of district 39 students from fall 2021 to fall 2022 falls within that beyond 50 to 60 benchmark in all grade levels except in one um eighth grade the there were a couple

032of grade levels there was seventh grade and also fourth grade on in reading that their percentage of students were meeting were higher than all of our historical percentages we can do better um but it is something small to celebrate for all of us and that all of our um grade levels fell within that 50th to 50th to 60th range which was different than last year in math the percentage of students also exceeded um and you may have noticed that if they exceeded in the beyond 60 so every grade level except for a couple were above 60 percent in their growth range so now this is this is where we showed you achievement separately and grow separately and in nwa they define high achievement and high growth at that 50 percent mark the reason i'm pointing

033this out is because our dsat team who has formed the key performance indicator we redefined what high is to be more challenging and rigorous for our roles so this is the um the quadrants if you will where you have the high growth high achievement low growth high you know all of all of those different categories so let's start with second grade reading this is third grade reading and this is the same information except for math second three so i think um one thing that uh would stand out as far as an observation would be you know how well are we attending to how they define our high achievement um students and their growth and working on that and then a couple of grade levels looking at some of the low achievement students and the low

034growth area we would want to improve um so kristin swanson and i are goal champions for goal one and we thought we were able to provide you a key performance indicator preview and so we wanted to present that in terms of the kpi that was set so as a reminder one of our kpis for goal one of the strategic plan focuses on our youngest learners our kindergartners and first graders and for those students we're looking at achievement on the early literacy and early numeracy measures on aims web plus our goal for kindergarten and first grade students in early literacy is to have 80 of our students on track which is defined as achieving up within the average range or above on that measure in the spring as you can see here prior to the pandemic

035year we were very close to achieving our goal this year we had 71 percent of our kindergarten and first grade students on track based on the spring early literacy assessments while we've experienced some some differences pre and post pandemic we are confident that given the attention that we're paying to early literacy and our reading instruction for our youngest learners that we are on track as a district to really meet our goal over the next few years given the action steps and information that we have for addressing that goal area as part of our strategic plan our goal for our early numeracy was to have 85 percent of our kindergarten and first grade students on track defined as achieving again in the average range or above as you can see here we met the goal this

036year so our plan is to continue to evaluate this we'll look at it again next year and if we continue to maintain that level we will reevaluate the goal and look at increasing it so really good news on our early numeracy levels for students okay so now for map we chose both uh achievement and growth key performance indicators for reading the target being more rigorous in that we're looking at the number or percentage of students who fall within a high range and high range defined as 81st to the 99th percentile that is different from how nwa and i previously presented at the 50th percentile was considered high so we're looking to see how many of our students what percentage of our students would fall in that high achievement category based on these quintiles so equal

037ranges of five so currently our kpi is 50 or more students in the high achievement category and we are at 44 and we also set the goal of 4 or less of students in the low achievement category and we are currently at 5 for reading growth um our we were set for 25 or more students in the high growth area and we're currently at 20 and 15 or less of students in the low growth category and we are currently at 20 so we have um our starting point and we will continue to work toward this kpi over the next few years for math spring achievements we have 48 currently with our kpi being set for 55 or more students in the high achievement category and we also have set the kpi of 4 or less

038of students in the low achievement category and we are currently at four percent for math growth 30 or more students in the high growth category and we are currently at 29 and 15 or less of students in the low growth category and we are at 16 so we will continue to um you know put all our efforts into uh improving toward this kpi and so i think um you have seen in our strategic plan you have heard um kristen swanson and i talk about reading and literacy within this presentation it is not lost on us that reading is an area that needs to be um our focus we have really um we have dedicated and prioritized that as our focus and so we wanted to just show you some things that we already have in

039place and that we will continue to do it is part of our district strategic plan we know that this is a growth area for us we also don't want to forget math but we know that this needs to be a priority so our learning behavior specialists and reading specialists are trained in the orton yelling ham approach it is a very explicit way of tackling literacy skills our teachers of first a kindergarten first and second continue to explicitly deliver phonics instruction which teaches the relationship between sounds and letters and they are being coached by literacy specialists and our trainers to improve in that area as well teachers are being trained to better diagnose students reading skills and modify their instruction we have particular reading assessments that we are trying to embed that really draw out what

040those skills are and what how we can target instruction in that area all teachers um will engage students in setting goals in reading once per semester actually it's just setting goals in general but we wanted to point out that it will be in reading for this particular slide we will also set goals in math and sel and and all of that um and then another part that you've heard from kristen was that based on the needs of students with ieps the elementary schools are expanding their co-teaching options this provides a rigorous general education instruction um while addressing some unique needs and we've seen some success at one of our schools i'm currently and so we are really looking forward to expanding that and exploring it further for the others so based on that any questions

041you have we're happy to answer i'll just say thank you katie for the presentation and kristen for helping as well i know a lot of work went into that and um you highlighted some of the things that we're doing to address some of the identified areas that we're working to continue to improve so appreciate that as well i just had a quick question were there were there any surprises in the data or did things come out the way you expected well i think one of the um surprises i don't know if it's a surprise if i would say it's a surprise i think it's more of um a compliment to the work of a group of fifth grade teachers who teach math they were able to this year really get together and discuss math and

042sequence and have these collaborative conversations um i can only think that that is what attested to their growth and in identifying what the fifth grade students need 71 if you look at the trend of what they had before we were worried about them a little bit but they have far exceeded our expectations demonstrating the highest percentage of students growth this year and again one that nwa would define as high performing uh in math in general we have you know definitely falls within 60 to 70 range but i would say that i would applaud them as being the quote-unquote surprise if you will but knowing our teachers and how hard they work i think it's just nice to see that it shows in our data thank you i just want to say this is so exciting

043i feel like this is the most thorough you have just analyzed this from every angle we've talked about and then adding in our kpis is so exciting because what we've all talked about prioritizing and the way you presented it tonight was really helpful to look at some of the ways to celebrate and also where we need to uh improve and what your plans are for that mr panzika thank you um i wanted to double down the report has a lot of good information and presented in a way that that lets us get an understanding at the next go down deeper so thank you i know the fact that it wasn't 50 pages worth of material that you have to condense down so that's even more thankful for for that i i always like to to

044see our math history from the standpoint that we consistently do better than the national mean range and our our growth is also significantly better and they go together i mean you start off high if you don't have high growth you don't say hi and math has done that and as you mentioned reading is an area that hasn't quite lived up to that same expectations and that's great that you work on that um i had one one other question in terms of focus whatever or if you have any understanding um it looks like for both reading and for math that the growth from seventh eighth grade at least as measured by these scores was zero um i mean it's kind of the year after the really main part of it but i'm sure there's some ripples

045do you have any initial theories on on why that was or or are you working on making sure that that's not a pattern or what how are you addressing yes um you know i have to say eighth grade has been a bit of an anomaly um in trying to tease out all of the different factors so you know first i would wonder about maybe our 8th graders attitude for last lack of a better word toward an assessment such as this meaning you know how much value they put to sitting and sustaining and doing the work we did look into the time spent on the assessment as compared to the other grade levels and it was noticeably less than the other grade levels if we looked at fifth grade for example and how much time they

046took in taking the assessment versus eighth grade it was you know just you know like 10 to 15 minutes left so we wonder that um the other wonder would be with eighth grade and our curriculum being primarily algebra one you know our our classroom tier one curriculum for eighth graders is algebra um and um you know some of you would think then some of these skills that have eighth grade standards or you know ninth grade standards embedded in it that they may perform well but i i don't know you know i don't know why that's not aligning um but it's something to look into as far as both achievement and growth areas for eighth grade i can also say the the assessment itself may have some limitations but then i swing toward well we have

047national norms from all these other districts so i don't know what what it is uniquely about our 8th graders but i think it's something to to explore all the way from their own personal attitude as pre-teens all the way to um you know how they invest in the assessment or how we may try to highlight you know the importance of this assessment i think that they would have differing views than us as adults i'm glad you mentioned the algebra because i always like to listen to that also but um in the state report card district 39 always brings like 90 plus percent delta we're ready i and not anything against other feeder districts but the other feeder districts are more than 50 55 so we do a really really good job in that and um

048and i'm sure some of that is if you're spending a lot of time as much time on some of the other things the only reason i brought it up and you're working on it other eighth grade other years eighth grade grew a little and there's always been the reluctance to take eighth grade test this year you know it stagnated more than you would have expected um so i mean hopefully after effective covid yeah it i think as katie mentioned it's a question that we need to dig into a little bit more it's it's it does make us wonder if if it is partially due to the curriculum alignment with this particular assessment because we do exceed the expectation of students completing algebra and we have far more students participating in the mutual math series as

049eighth graders and younger and so some of that may contribute to the lack of growth as demonstrated on this measure but as katie mentioned i'm not sure it accounts for all of it and so we that is something we need to look into i think um for me i was um not surprised but impressed by the growth that we're seeing in our fourth fifth and sixth graders especially because those are some years that we've really targeted we've really spent some time and i know the glads have spent some time on goal setting but just in those transition years a lot of times you still you see some some lagging indicators of growth as as students readjust to a new school and so i'm really proud that that we're not seeing that in terms of our

050growth um but it's a question at eighth grade we need to we need to look a little more closely at is this a measure that can show us the growth we're looking for or is there a lack of growth as demonstrated by this measure those are some things that we need to spend some time um digging into a little bit further the numbers are all really good that one pops out because i know we don't have longitudinal data nothing certainly we can do about that but i know other years eighth grade was always a little challenging but it wasn't twice as challenging so all right um thank you this is excellent really well presented i appreciate it i just had one um point of clarification just to make sure that i'm understanding something correctly um

051if you go to the achievement ranges for the kpis i think there were five different ranges um can you tell me again how those were defined so nwa provides us different uh ways to understand percentile rates and so um currently they do a 50 50 if you will so high achievement is 50. what what the uh what we went to is the data that split up the percentile rank into equal 20 increments so so they're called quintiles um so the first the low being from one to twentieth percentile um the low average is 21 to 40th 41 to three it's straight up quintile yes absolutely um and so when we we wanted to point out the difference between high when we presented in the in the way that they typical what we've typically done historically

052to the kpi version so the way that you could read one of these is 44 of our students fall within the 81st to 99th percentile in reading achievement and i think that's a a more rigorous goal for us uh rather than saying oh you know fifty percent of how many are actually falling in that top tier um of achievement for us great sure any other thoughts board members i i was just also thinking your question mr panzika i love you talked about this but the grade level conversations in the training everybody is getting with data wise that it's essential that as a district we're looking at this and understanding it but teachers at an individual team looking at this and learning from it and with it is so powerful and gonna make real impact anyone

053else thank you again so with that we'll move on then to our 2022 spring sel assessment report kelly jackson will lead us through this report our ec through second grade teachers administer the desa sel assessment for their students in the fall and spring of this year and our third through eighth grade students responded to questions on the mesh sel assessment in the fall and spring so this report shares the results from those most recent assessments and discusses sel strengths throughout the school year kelly thanks um this school year as as dr karma scully mentioned district 39 staff has begun implementation of the district 39 framework for sel social emotional learning uh the framework is built around five competencies of social emotional learning developed by castle and then we've also used some assessments two measures in

054district 39 to identify the strengths of our students with the sel competencies that we are looking at um the first one is the desa the develo student strengths assessment and that's designated for students in pre-k through second grade and then the mindsets essential skills and habits assessment is designated for students in 3rd through 8th grade tonight we'll review the spring scores for 2022 and also take a look at the fall scores that we had looking at growth and areas that we will continue to work on first we'll take a look at the desa it's an assessment completed by teachers as they reflect on their grades pre-k through second grade students unique patterns of strengths and areas of need with respect to the sel competencies the purpose of the desa is really twofold it's a screener

055for students who may be in need of further social emotional support and also serves to measure growth and effectiveness of that support and instruction over the course of the year students are screened using a short questionnaire and if warranted a more lengthy assessment can be used to dig more deeply into a student's area of need when we get the results for desert tells us how many students are in each category it's either need strength or average i believe i can't remember what it is typical excuse me not average um and uh then based on the need category it might flag some more students for that longer assessment so this is just a quick quick recap of the fall scores you can see we had about five percent of students in the need 62 percent of

056students in the typical category and 33 of students at the elementary level or pk through 2 level in the strength category as we look at spring we can see that we have reduced our area of needs so three percent of students or 35 in the area of need um 58 percent in the typical range and 39 so increasing that strength range for strength so those are positive results sorry um that is just a brief report on on the results that we get from mesha used from desa excuse me not misha um as as the teachers like i said see that need then they get a more detailed report for students so they can really target those areas of need and that has been done there is a an accompanying resource guide that comes with desa

057that the teachers can use and really pull lessons and resources so they can have some small group or individual instruction in that area mesh is what we use for grades three through eight the mesh assessment has two components one is social emotional competencies and the other measures student supports in school environment social emotional competencies assessed in the mesh include classroom effort self-management social awareness self-efficacy and growth mindset uh sixth through eighth graders are also assessed on social perspective taking and those align with our castle competencies they're not necessarily called the same thing but there is a crosswalk that we do to make sure that they align the areas assessed in the supports and school environment category include teacher-student relationships bullying school safety sense of belonging and school climate mesh assessment different from the desa is

058is one that students respond to it takes about 30 minutes maybe 40 at the younger levels and is a self-reporting strengths-based assessment so results are reported as strengths rather than areas of deficit um but it can look to see where we're stronger or maybe where we're less strong in assessment results are reported by grades three through five and then separately through six six through eight so we'll start with just the focus on the grades three through five to start um so again these are the fall assessment reports in this in this area the student competency measures um this was a real area of strength for us um all of this all of the areas fell at or above the 90th percentile nationally in the fall as we look to the spring for grades three through

059five they showed similar strengths um all areas measured at or above the 90th percentile nationally uh the area of self-management followed the 99th of the tile nationally while the areas of growth mindset classroom effort self-efficacy and growth mindset as well as social awareness fell at the 90th percentile nationally self-efficacy saw the greatest improvement since fall so you can see that's indicated on this graph by a little green arrow and a five questions in this area include questions about confidence and completing work assigned in class on time understanding complicated ideas discussed in a class and confidence about working hard in the class while still measuring above the 90th percentile nationally the areas of classroom effort and growth mindset saw slight drops from the fall please note that in my board report it stated self-management and growth

060mindset but it meant to say classroom effort and growth mindset so you can draw a red line through that in the classroom in the area of classroom effort students are asked about paying attention effort toward homework in class and engagement in discussions and so you can see on this graph it's marked by a little a red arrow and a two the questions that fall under classroom effort include when your teacher is speaking how hard do you try to pay attention and how much effort do you put into homework for this class in the area of growth mindset also marked with little down arrow and a two students are asked about how they feel they are able to change so the questions include in school how possible is it for you to change behaving well in

061class or in school how possible is it for you to change liking the subjects you are studying looking at this assessment in the slight drop again we are still above the 90th percentile in these areas um it could be attributed to the timing of the assessment it was given in may um so if i'm asked in may as a third through fifth grader how much effort do i put in homework for my class i may say slightly less than i would in the fall this is the student supports and environment part of the mesh for grades three through five again this is just a brief recap of the fall it shows aries strengths and areas of school safety sense of belonging teacher and in teacher-student relationships um and then a school climate fell just at

062a lower at uh below the 80th percentile nationally when we look at spring we see some changes here results show strength still in the areas of school safety sense of belonging and teacher-student relationships with composite scores near the 99th percentile for school safety and near the 90th percentile nationally in the sense of belonging and teacher-student relationships however you can see drops in three categories of sense of belonging teacher-student relationships and school climate from the fall with the largest reps being in student-teacher relationships and school climate we'll dig a little bit more deeply into that sense of belonging number first and then we'll dig into the others in the area of sense of belonging it just seems like a slight drop 78 overall students responded positively to feeling that they belong at their school to that

063question but it's interesting to note that third and fourth graders responded positively to the questions at 77 and 78 while fifth graders were at a 67 percent so there is a drop when you see that transition to the middle school um a question in this area that received the lowest positive responses is how much respect do students at your school show you and that was kind of across the board we saw some themes of respect and respect be from peers showing up in both third through fifth grade and six through eighth grade as a part of this category another area to look at is a student teacher relationships this area dropped by five points um moving from the 99th to the 90th percentile nationally still high but but a drop nonetheless some sample questions include

064if you walked into class upset how would how concerned would your teacher be and then how excited would you be to have your teacher again again this is asked in may so um there still had 76 favorable responses on there but a drop from uh earlier in the year as a goal as we move forward will be to determine better ways to maintain these positive relationships between students and teachers throughout the year so not to see that drop as we get to may um this is really work embedded in our work in responsive classroom as we continue to work to build those classroom communities and so we'll revisit some of that as our sel committee plans for the fall and how to refresh our responsive classroom morning meeting responsive advisory meeting lessons what have you

065um another area of focus which was also a foot area focus in the fall is in school climate um this fell from where it was in the fall at the 80th percentile nationally to or just below the 80th percentile nationally to just lower than the 60th percentile nationally so a significant drop this time some questions include how positive or negative is the energy at this school how much does the behavior of other students hurt or help my learning and how often do teachers seem excited to be teaching your class it's important to note that with the question about other the behavior of others hurting or helping my learning the largest response was in the category it neither hurts nor helps my learning so kind of that neutral category but that is categorized as a negative

066response so that plays into why that drop may have happened and then with the how excited how often do your teachers seem excited to be teaching your class again in this category the response sometimes was scored negatively um and it was 17 of the responses so a good amount of those responses and i think it's difficult for our students to determine the difference between sometimes most of the time at the third fourth fifth grade level as this continues to be an area of lower strength for us we will break down these question areas again and analyze the responses share them with staff in an effort to determine some targeted ways to improve and also work in how we explain these questions to our students and how we prepare them to take this so that they

067understand what's being asked an additional two questions on the mesh both in third through fifth grade and in sixth through eighth grade have to do with bullying i'm not going to spend a lot of time on this because kristen swanson will give a bullying report later in the year we have really similar responses from the fall to the spring let's take a look at mesh for sixth through eighth grades um again the fall for student competency measures this is an area of strength for us um classroom effort and self-management we're at the 99th percentile and the rest of the categories were at the 90th percentile so really high responses there spring results show that the areas on the social emotional competency measure continue as areas of strength you can see all the green dots are

068on the right side so they're you know fall within the 80th to 99th percentile but we did see some drops so as we look a little bit more deeply we want to see specifically in self-awareness and social perspective taking they fell to the 80th percentile nationally so classroom efforts showed the biggest drop here again overall in the area of homework and how much effort students felt they were putting in for homework so again how much effort do you put in homework for your class when your teacher is speaking how much effort do you put in to try to pay attention overall how much effort do you put in class those were all experienced pretty big drops from fall to spring um we know classroom effort weighs throughout the year just with the timing especially being

069in mid-may when this was taken self-management as i mentioned also saw a drop some of those questions are during the last 30 days how often did you get your work done right away instead of waiting till the last minute that saw a seven point drop so they there was 58 positive responses on that one and then uh being polite to other students in the last 30 days keeping their temper in check and paying attention and resisting distractions also saw drops of three points so again in similar to classroom effort this may wax and wane with the seasons if you will in the area of student self-awareness uh students responded less positively about their confidence in getting their assigned work done in class however they were more positive about tackling more tough concepts in class and

070in discussion so that was really a positive that came out of that and then in the area of social perspective taking which is an interesting category because the social perspective taking questions are geared more to how they interpret their teachers or how they try to understand their teachers so one of them one of the questions was how hard do you try to understand your teacher's point of view um in the category of somewhat hard made up 248 of the total responses so that again is kind of that somewhat sometimes kind of category and then our second area first grade six through eight it is the student supports and environment area this is the fall again we had students really strong in school safety and teacher-student relationships and a little bit lower than at school climate

071and sense of belonging sense of belonging and school climate both fell near this 40th percentile nationally in the fall and we've had some changes since the spring so spring results demonstrated that school safety and teacher student relationships basically continued as the student as areas of strength and then the area of school climate followed the 40th percentile nationally which was on par with where it was in the fall the area of sense of belonging however which is a big area of celebration for us it placed right at the 60th percentile nationally so up from the 40th in the fall so um it it the the graph is a little funky here if you um go into the or the dot is a little funky if you go into the graph um it'll break it down it

072has it on the scale and that's where we ranked so that was pretty exciting um so looking at teacher-student relationships that um experienced a drop uh this time of the year and this go-round if you walked into class upset how many of your students would be concerned or how many of your teachers would be concerned was one of the questions when your teachers ask how you're doing how many of them are really interested in your answer so these are student perceptions of how their teachers are viewing them so we'll want to take a look at that and break down some of those questions uh school safety um a lot that's where a lot of the respect and fair and unfair came up so at your school how unfairly do the adults treat the students um

07379 but that was a nine point drop from the fall so um i guess the rules are getting more unfair as we go um and then there were questions just about how how likely is it that students would bully you online and how often are people disrespectful to others at your school and those both dropped somewhat um and then while we saw some areas of drop i mentioned that we had some positive increases with our sense of belonging which has been a target area for us for the past several years and actually the um 57 that it was um there is the highest that we've seen with the exception of 2019 fall when it was also at 57 so that's pretty exciting for us the positive responses places are results in the 60th percentile nationally

074so a good boost there questions that saw some improvement include how well do people understand you as a person how much do you matter to others at this school and how connected do you feel to the adults at this school and all questions in that category rose by at least one point so that's pretty significant as well i also wanted to share that just anecdotally at the end of the year you know we had a lot of celebrations a lot of students that sixth graders especially that were leaving and just sharing about how they felt that they belonged at the school i had a student come up to me and just say i really felt like i mattered at a high crest and i'm really gonna miss it so things like that are going on

075behind the scenes um so that's really exciting to hear and have them tell you face to face um so that kind of caused us to think a little bit more about um what are things do we have in place and then what kinds of things might we focus on in this area again as a target area for us um and we started with better transition activities from fourth to fifth grade again another focus on our strategic plan is from sixth to seventh grade supportive communities and affinity groups for students access to interest-based activities for students our responsive classroom approach as i mentioned before and even the use of a regular morning meeting or responsive advisory meeting to use as a check-in on a daily basis but what we want to do looking forward is what

076are other schools doing in this area are there are there things that we could learn from different places what structures might they have in place to have a sense or a higher sense of belonging can we use students to help us identify how they define belonging for them so like those students that are coming up to me how do we capture that in a way that's not just a question on kind of a likert scale but more of an anecdotal response and that and then how do we target what they want and help to build that with them and then continue to evaluate options and opportunities for students to engage with their school community and what works and what doesn't and allow those opportunities to thrive the next two questions again are on bullying we

077had similar responses from fall to spring so kristin will review those soon and just i wanted to highlight some next steps just like i did with the sense of belonging but um just we have some things going on and we also have some kpis that are designed to address this so you know our sel committee currently is looking at the use of desa and mesh it originally was desa at the elementary level of mesh at the middle school junior high level then we moved mesh down to the grades three and four we're evaluating whether that is appropriate whether the questions really translate in whether it's an effective um accurate response with the kids and if if we do agree that that's the case then how do we prepare kids and teachers better for that and

078also do all the questions that we ask are they necessary to get the information that we want or do we just hone in on kind of those areas that we really want to focus in as a group so those decisions will be made by the end of the summer the other next part is to maintain and grow our student competency measures so we want to continue to look at those student competencies and how we're implementing our curriculum and what's that crosswalk in our where are we targeting things um support and maintain year-long teacher student relationships that's that area that fell off and we want to make sure that we're keeping it on par at least um signs of belonging 5-8 and um in our school climate in grades it should say six through eight um

079so taking a look at all of that um and really our our kpis that addresses our staff competency confidence and ability to implement social-emotional learning and the framework and then we also will be measuring participation in extracurricular and co-curricular activities including our affinity groups but also interest-based activities and then student self-reporting on the sense of belonging especially at grades six through eight and we may want to adjust that to grades five through eight um we have it based on the mesh survey but we can certainly translate that into additional questions as needed and that's oh what questions do you have i have a quick question um such an important topic and we're so grateful that you give such time and energy to it do you know the compared to others nationally measure is that current

080or is that like a standard from a certain year like that as far as i know it has not been renormed since the pandemic so so when i think about what teachers have been through over a number of years that's what struck me is i don't know that has to play in there somehow yeah an excruciating set of years right so i didn't know if that was like compared to others taking it this spring yeah or if that was normed yeah so thanks questions comments from board members uh i thought it was great to see the overwhelming favorable responses so i mean there are some you know gifts here and there what you guys are looking into but just speaking responses are very favorable which is excellent um and i i guess i wondered about

081it does seem natural to me that over the course of the year more so as you get close to the summer break that your feelings might start to shift on some of these areas but when it's also changing as a percentile of the national norm it does say that you know shifting more than some other schools with some other students right so there's still a change there so i'm glad that we're still looking um into some of those areas and i know last week at the committee of the whole we talked a little bit about homework and just you know continuing to monitor that and do that and certainly you know in that area of the grade 68 and the self-management uh that came up a couple of times thank you so much thank you

082we will move on with an exciting report uh as we conclude this first year of our strategic plan we want to highlight a few of the action steps that have been accomplished in our planning process for the upcoming school year as the board knows this is a little bit of an abbreviated foundational year since the plan was adopted um in september and so um katie and our gold champions are going to lead us through this presentation as well we're excited not only to be wrapping up this foundational year but to be looking ahead at the upcoming school year and setting our action steps for the upcoming year as well katie do you want to kick us off sure thank you um so good evening uh the board has received a more detailed written report upon

083reflection of our mid-year update we'd like to share with you some of the highlights um in in the context of our action steps for 2021 2022 and then what our next steps will be in developing um our multi-year plan so let's get started um at the at the end of this brief presentation we're happy to answer any questions all the gold champions are ready to do that and anything from the report is obviously please feel free to ask so as just a visual reminder here's our beautiful one-page plan uh with engage empower and inspire let's start with goal one student achievement and growth ensure a differentiated education that provides a strong foundation of rigorous academic world so this year we had two pretty robust action steps associated with goal one that we did and complete

084we worked with our administrators to engage in learning and training about harvard's data wise improvement process and we're applying that throughout this year and next year in order to facilitate staff data meetings help our staff analyze student data and better target our instruction to meet the needs of our students the other area that we engaged in and completed this year was an evaluation of review and analysis of the special education programming and services here in district 39 we engaged atlantic research partners to come in and work with us around that and that was completed this year and we have a whole slew of additional things that we are working on in relationship to that so two pretty big action steps that we completed yes and one of the opportunities that we have in a multi-year

085plan is continuing the work that started this year but continuing it on for next year and investing more time so we would like to continue to do that in auditing our classroom level instruction assessments and supplemental interventions for reading writing and math in order to identify any gaps in needs this year we really did prioritize reading so that we could set some action items there we also are going to continue our work in making sure that our learning behavior specialists as abbreviated years lbs's and reading specialists are trained in the orton gillingham or wilson reading strategies um and so any new hire within that category of role would also receive this training we want to continue our data meetings with improved structure and focus on grade level and student level data analysis in order to

086identify for students with intervention needs support and or enrichment in both reading and math and then also strengthen the primary reading instruction assessment intervention for elementary students we'd like to continue that work and moving on to goal two which is supportive community and we've heard a lot about that already from holly but the goal is to cultivate a supportive and inclusive learning community that is responsive to the social emotional and behavioral needs of each student so again we have a series of action steps that we have either completed or will be continuing so a couple that we've completed are really to audit the school and classroom level positive behavior systems and assessments in order to identify both our strengths and our areas for improvement and to investigate a district-wide positive behavior system in order to

087make recommendations for implementation and we shared earlier that we did look at that and made the recommendation for foundations through safe and civil schools we also partnered with the community review committee or crc to research best practices to engage and communicate with parents as it relates to social emotional learning and there was a report a couple of months ago that outlined some recommendations that we will be implementing as a part of our action steps in the coming years and then again we have some that are continuing so we are continuing to investigate our methods of progress monitoring and data collection that is related to student behavior and working on how we implement that with across our grade levels and age levels we are also identifying the number of students who are needing requiring behavioral intervention

088outside of the classroom as well as the types of interventions that are used to do that work next year also continuing is the implementation of our social emotional systems of support using our district framework continued work with responsive classroom and resources that go along with our framework planning and engaging staff and data focused informed data meetings at the grade and classroom level that to discuss social emotional needs um is a also a target for next year to really look at um beyond that first level but what's the next level of need and what are some interventions that would go with that goal three is professional community the aim is to foster a professional community that values support develops and retains highly effective staff this year we've been able to complete a few of our action

089steps and make progress in others you know that we've developed a strategic advisory team um strong work and the outcome speaks for itself on that it's going to continue next year and so that is you'll see that also under continuing but while some of the work is done we have more work to do and one of the things that you heard about earlier this year was the committee that we formed regarding the school calendar and so we had support staff teachers administrators looking at the nuances of our school calendar the requirements the expectations but looking to see if we could move some things around to make it fit the needs of our students but also our staff and still honor some of the holidays that fit in there and i think we're pretty excited about

090the new calendar that we have that has already been approved by the board but taking into account all of those elements we weren't able maybe to speeds at as much professional development time as we had hoped at the onset but we definitely feel like we were able to chunk the calendar in a way that might be better for students and having optimal learning so we're excited to see how that progresses and the feedback we'll get from that under continuing for next year we're also going to continue to look for ways to bring our community our staff community together you've heard bits and pieces of the highlights of that from this year from the way we started our school year which was very different in terms of the picnic and being outside all together and trying

091to find fun ways to connect but also bringing our families together so we can connect in that way thanks to tony's leadership in that area we've had multiple opportunities for that and received some positive feedback from staff as a result we have been throughout the course of this year looking for ways to get information from staff who are leaving us and so anytime someone alerts us to the fact that they're unable to continue employment they've had an opportunity to weigh in both from a google form which is perhaps less personable but highly efficient but also be um willing and able to meet with either carrie or myself for a verbal in-person exit interview to hear from people directly so we've offered different ways to collect that information and we'll be looking at that feedback throughout

092the summer as we plan for next fall and then as we form committees and develop different initiatives through the district looking for ways to bring as many different voices to the table as possible on our committee so we always have an application process put out the work ahead of time through a job description on anything but looking to see perhaps staff that are newer to the district staff that have been here for a long time getting different perspectives a more balanced approach through all of our committees as we expect members to join that will continue as we move forward before family engagement strengthen partnerships by connecting collaborating and communicating with families and communities to advanced teaching and learning so under goal four we have completed the development of a comprehensive transition plan for fourth to

093fifth grade that accounts for identified areas of need based on student and parent surveys and feedback and we have been excited to implement a lot of those things already this spring and it's had a lot of positive responses for continuing into the following school year we have build a strategic communications plan for d39 in individual schools to keep stakeholders updated on progress while continuing to build awareness so that was always in the plan for us to begin this summer and with a deliverable of this fall we also concluded our year with providing district-wide parent education events to facilitate students emotional social emotional academic growth and progress monitoring this has evolved with time we were very happy with uh social emotional learning uh this year just given uh the pandemic and the needs of our parents

094and students so these will continue to evolve we'll continue to monitor what we offer we may even try something a little different than the monthly events next year so this will continue on throughout the duration of our strategic plan so you will see this continuing uh the entire length goal five stewardship of resources ensure the equitable and effective use of resources to sustain practices that promote growth so we have a few items that will be continuing on in reviewing continuing to review our five-year capital plan biennially focusing on facility maintenance and upgrades to sustain practice remote growth reviewing our process for prioritizing building based capital improvement projects and then continuing our work on the uh five pro summer projects in the next five to seven years i've already taken a large uh first step with

095author authorizing design work on four of those items last week and then continuing to monitor legislative adjustments related to property tax funding formulas real estate tax appeal refunds and any potential pension cost shifts and then just to consider and plan for potential impact on the district and our availability of resources and then we would incorporate continue to incorporate those findings into the presentation of our annual five-year projections and any other more frequent updates that we provide and then as we plan for the fall and work on scheduling for students looking at the class size guidelines which we have always done for homeroom and core content but looking at those other classes to make sure that they're closer to those guidelines so our next steps we will be developing the 2022-2023 action steps all of the

096continuing action steps from this year would remain and then what we would do is incorporate the crc report recommendations where applicable and then there were some kpi inspired action steps if you recall the dsat develop kpis and then through those conversations we realized that we did not want to lose sight of the action steps that it that it was inspired by we would then gather this feedback we would gather feedback from our second year of dsat in early fall and we also as an administrative team would like to create a strategic plan reporting schedule that's a little more aligned to the goal-based progress monitoring that we'd like to do and then you would receive as a board updates throughout the year as opposed to mid-year and end of year again we're happy to answer any

097questions that you have amy i just want to say that i know that was a tremendous amount of work um and this is like a tremendous amount of information so thank you all i know a lot of planning went into this and i for one i'm hoping that moving forward next year is is uneventful and so you can focus on the goals instead of an ongoing pandemic we agree and um a lot of the foundational work that has been laid this year will allow us to to continue to grow and work on the most important goals that have been identified by the board in the community which we think is really important and very powerful as we look ahead to the next several years working on the same goals and just continuing to grow our

098work from there so thank you excellent thank you so much oh yeah i'm just going to say no questions at all thank you and excited thank you so much okay so that brings us to annual business we have uh several reports under annual business we'll start with the annual bullying report and dr swanson will provide us this report so district 39 takes bullying very seriously and investigates reported all reported incidences of bullying it's important to know that the state of illinois requires that school districts collect information regarding bullying and share that information annually with the board however the state of illinois has a legal definition of what constitutes bullying so when we talk about the reported incidences we're talking about those that sort of rise to the level of that legal definition our administrators however

099investigate and handle many situations throughout the school year that do not meet the definition of bullying but still require intervention education and consequences so this year we had 11 reports of bullying that required the full investigation that's among the many different situations that our administrators address from little playground incidents to more significant things but we did have 11 that resulted in a full bullying investigation of these 11 two were determined to be bullying one investigation is ongoing right now when administrators address these incidents whether there's a full bullying investigation or not and regardless of the outcome our administrators are looking first and foremost at how to support our the victims of this situation provide guidance instruction and consequences for the aggressors if that's the case and provide intervention so that the behaviors do not recur

100we are an educational institution and we are focused on making sure that our students are learning the positive pro-social skills that they need and not just on consequences although that is a part of what happens when there are investigations into social conflict or bullying so some of the possible responses include restorative practices such as a restorative circle or apologies education around the behaviors interventions such as meeting with a social worker our social workers are very busy and meet with a lot of students both students who may be victims or aggressors or somewhere in the middle we might have consequences such as in-school suspension parent conferences detentions written reflections or apologies we also asked we also in addition asked students to report on the two questions related to bullying on the mesh survey and we use

101that information in order to inform what we're doing so kelly referred to that earlier our students continue to respond in a way on that survey that indicates that most do not report being bullied themselves at school but we did see some drops across the board in our student responses related to how often students are noticing others or reporting others being bullied at school so this does indicate that students are either witnessing or identifying more interactions among their peers that they view as problematic and these are areas that we want to continue to address and look at sometimes it's it's a sign of some progress that they're identifying more things as being problematic that they might not have in the past but we need to continue to dig into this and make sure that we are

102providing them with the education and support in order to help one another and intervene themselves if they see something that is problematic again we we take bullying very seriously our administrators respond accordingly but we also have implemented and focused a lot as kelly shared earlier and as you've heard with part of the strategic plan on using proactive strategies to increase the pro-social behaviors among our students and prevent the incidences of bullying that's really where we want to we must and do respond when there are reports but we want to focus as much time and energy as we can on the prevention of these instances the students are not exposed to this or victims of it we've been actively working to embed social emotional learning competencies throughout our instruction we've provided training and trauma-informed instruction for

103our teachers one of our strategic goals focuses on increasing a sense of belonging for all students and to this end we've increased the clubs at our five to eight level to provide a sense of connection for our students our affinity groups our teachers regularly discuss students our social workers actively reach out to students who may appear isolated or at risk we've implemented morning meetings and responsive advisory classes as part of our responsive classroom work which really strives to build that sense of community and belongingness among our students we know that when students feel more connected to one another there are fewer incidences of social conflict and bullying among them we continue to review the data we discussed students we have in the past done relationship mapping to look at how does everybody every student have

104a connection who do we see that was harder to do when we had the remote learning last year and with even with the disruptions with quarantines which seemed so long ago now but really were just earlier this year but it's something we'll continue to look at as we move forward um again our goal is really to make sure that we are providing the preventative and proactive support so that we don't get to this point but if we do have reports to do a thorough evaluation and then make sure that we're providing support for students who may be victims of bullying as well as interventions that help support our students who may be the aggressors so that they don't continue down that path again we are we are focused highly on this through our strategic plan

105and through goal 2 as well as the work that we've been doing does anyone have any questions i just have a quick question i'm just curious when you said there were 11 incidents across politics so um that that maybe like rose to a certain level yeah how many uh like is it like weekly is it monthly how many incidents are you so they're i mean our part of the business of being a child is learning to have those social interactions and making missteps and engaging in social conflict and so our teachers our administrators spend time every day helping children navigate the nuances of social interaction that is a daily occurrence the one the situations that that rise to the level of requiring a full bullying investigation are much rarer that doesn't mean that every situation

106isn't investigated though every report we have we have recess supervisors who interact with students and it may come up to the principal's office but it still may not count as a an official bullying investigation it may just be a social conflict situation again we we have children in our buildings and so we we are dealing with behavior that just as we teach reading and writing and math we are also teaching behavior and social interaction and we probably have done a lot more of it this year than in past years because the pandemic did take its toll on our students ability to interact with one another and they missed some some time there where they were six feet apart and socially distanced and so we're playing a little bit of ketchup with that as well does

107that answer your question other questions yeah i thought we would have seen more given just feel like there's a baseline of anger everywhere um and you know when i i've just been mulling over the sel reports too and i i just sit there and i think it could be so much more like it could be worse right i don't even think we can really appreciate the impact of two and a half years of covid on our on our mental health and well-being of both adults and children i would agree i think that we've seen a lot of the work that we've been doing on social emotional learning paying off so while we've seen some increases in behavior something some drops and some of the scores that students report i think you're right i think that

108we've we've been able to sort of provide some preventative measures that have helped support our students through this i know we're all incredibly grateful that this is the priority that it is next we have um under annual business uh fiscal year 2023 district 39 tentative budget again um the board has looked at this a couple of times but a brief presentation will be provided on the tentative budget corey yep all right so we just have a brief presentation on this timeline all right so the tentative budget so really tonight um is kind of one of the bigger milestones in our budgeting process in that the board is required to approve a tentative budget each year and then also the board approves the public hearing which we'll hold at the august 22nd meeting i would also

109note that we would tentatively display the tentative budget to the public between tomorrow through the august meeting which is required required in the school code and then in august we just have you know our finance meeting where we would review any changes since june and then we would hold a public hearing and the board would approve the budget um has annually been the case for a while and then we file with the state by price in the september this slide shows our operating revenues by source district 39 is a heavy locally funded school district with roughly 92 percent of money coming from local sources on the other side of the equation operating expenditures district 39 like most school districts is a heavy personnel district with almost 80 percent of our expenditures coming to salaries and

110benefits and then from a high-level high-level perspective in the operating funds the total revenue and the tentative budget is 70.58 million expenditure 69.39 giving us a projected surplus of 1.1 million we do have some transfers within the operating funds uh 2.9 million for construction projects another 1 million for death certificates and then fund balance of 29.3 and 42.31 within the capital projects budget we do have a few items uh budgeted we have for this summer that work has really got got underway the last few days we have uh work at mackenzie ramona and harper um those projects were approved last winter and then at least in the tentative version of the budget we have included three three projects um and we will finalize and fine-tune that for our august approval giving capital projects a 10.7

111million dollar budget that service and transfers the debt service fund is also outside of the operating funds has a annual budget of 2.5 million that includes repayment of the 2020 limited tax bonds and then the death certificates that were issued this past winter that's about 1 million and then we also have some transfers between funds of just under a million to cover those debt certificates and then 2.9 from o m to capital projects which is required by this be accounting accounting code and then we also are considering a transfer from ed interfund loans and tax participation warrants um we are going to approve a ask the board of approval resolution that would allow the opportunity to loan money between the ed and the o m funds that will be reviewed to see if there's any

112other inner fund loan combinations that are needed as we get into the fall and then tax anticipation words um we all know what the expected delay in property taxes um in our second installment looking at instead of receiving everything in july and august could be pushed out until december or january so if that were to come to fruition we would uh possibly be looking at issuing some short-term borrowing in the form of tax anticipation warrants and as we work through the summer and the fall i'll be back to discuss more details with the board and what that might look like and what are some of the kind of the trigger dates for us to need to take action in certain ways and then this the last slide is operating revenues and expenditures um as you

113see we have three years of actual data fiscal year 22 is uh some estimated data and then basically your 23 is our tentative budget the nice thing with this slide is it shows that consistency of having revenues exceed expenditures and that is all we have on the district tentative budget for this evening we happy to answer any questions or i will uh move on to the uh wixie type tentative budget questions okay all right so the fiscal year 2023 with wixie tentative budget i think was mentioned earlier in the committee reports similar wixie has its own financial statements which is a requirement since we have a joint agreement with with the avoca school district which just means that wixie has to have its own set of financial statements its own budget district 39 is the

114fiscal agent for for that entity and we actually held a meeting this afternoon to kind of review that with that group with with the individuals from avoca and we're asking the board to approve the tentative budget and follow the same process as the district 39 a very simple budget and that revenues equal expenditures each year so i think we're looking at about 200 6 000 in revenue and 206 in expenditures similar if anybody has any questions i'm happy to answer them otherwise i can move on to the budget resolutions and the treasurer's bond okay all right the next item up is the renewal of the annual illinois school treasurer's bond this is a bit of a routine thing for the school district i hold the role of the school district's official treasurer and as such

115the district is required to annually the board is required annually to approve a treasurer's bond on my position in the amount of 16 16 million so this is just an annual step um and it's a continuance each bond is is good for a one year period and it reviews on july 1st so this is just the next step in that process after that we have a couple of budget related resolutions one resolution is authorizing the transfer of funds from the operation and maintenance fund to the capital projects fund one of the reasons for this is that isb requires us to pay for our summer capital projects from the capital projects fund has no obvious source of revenue on an annual basis and so because of that we transfer money directly from the operations and maintenance

116to the capital projects to cover the cost of them that is required we approve this resolution each year and then another resolution for consideration is authorizing internet fund loan between the ed and o m that's really just allows us to continue to pay pay for construction projects as as those bills come due they tend to be weighted heavily weighted towards the beginning of the fiscal year and as i mentioned the we're expecting a major source of our revenue particularly in the operation maintenance funds be delayed by several months so this gives us a little bit of flexibility um it's something that we've we've approved recently in recent years even though we don't always use it so that is it for the annual budget resolutions and renewals and there any questions be happy to answer them

117thank you for all that preparation and information so that brings us to the second opportunity for the audience to address the board are there any audience members who would like to speak at this time uh let me just pause is there anyone tony online who indicated a need to speak i know what the weather there was i sent the information but no there's no one in right now okay thank you uh so we will move to the consent agenda under action items are there any items that the board would like pulled from the consent agenda okay ms stone please proceed with the motions i move to approve the personnel report dated june 13 2022 i moved to approve the superintendent's contract extension with salary increase indexed to the consumer price index cpi i move to

118approve the resolution authorizing payment for goods and services between now and the next board meeting scheduled for august 22nd 2022 i moved to approve the renewal of the state of illinois school treasurer bond in the amount of 16 million i moved to approve the fiscal year 2023 district 39 tentative budget as contained in the report for immediate public display and further i move to approve the publication of notice of a public hearing on the tentative budget to be held at seven o'clock p.m prior to commencing the regularly scheduled board of education meeting on monday august 22nd 2022 i moved to approve the wilmette community special education agreement fiscal year 23 tentative budget as contained in the report for immediate public display and further i move to approve the announcement of a public hearing on the

119tentative budget budget to be held at seven o'clock p.m prior to commencing the regularly scheduled board of education meeting on monday august 22nd 2022 i move to approve the resolutions authorizing accounting transfers from the operations and maintenance fund to the capital projects fund and i move to approve the resolution authorizing an interfund loan from the education fund to the operations and maintenance fund i moved to approve the accounts payable for bills listed between may 24th 2022 through june 13th 2022 in the following amounts educational fund four hundred and forty thousand five hundred and twenty dollars and fifty one cents o m fund forty six thousand three hundred and fifty two dollars and eighty seven cents debt services forty nine thousand seventy one dollars and twenty five cents transportation two hundred and thirteen thousand eight hundred

120and three dollars and fifteen cents capital projects three hundred and thirty three thousand seven hundred and eighty one dollars and eighty four cents for a total all funds of one million eighty three thousand five hundred and twenty nine dollars and sixty two cents i moved to approve the amount the manual checks issued between may 24 2022 and june 13 2022 in the following amounts educational fund three hundred and twenty four thousand nine hundred and twenty four dollars and sixty seven cents o m fund thirty two thousand five hundred and ninety one dollars ninety two cents transportation thirty one dollars and seventy three cents tort one thousand nine hundred and twenty dollars and fifty seven cents for a total all funds of three hundred and fifty nine thousand four hundred and sixty eight dollars and ninety

121cents yeah i have a second the motion has been moved and seconded with the clerk please call the role anne hart yes bonnie kim yes frank panzika yes lisa schneider faves yes erin stone yes amy payne yes yes have it motions carry uh we'll move to conference items any old business new business good and welfare i will just say that uh it's such an honor to be at graduation of our eighth graders and uh to sit on the stage and look out the way it was set up this year with the eighth graders seated right in front of us to see their faces just aiming particularly i was pretty emotional when they were watching their peers speak so beautifully and so bravely uh it was really impressive and a wonderful celebration honor to be there

122amy i've got one yes please um i just wanted to thank everyone all employees of d39 right for yet another year because two years ago was the height of covert with high drama and then all summer long you worked to create plans to start school this year and we keep thinking we were done and we weren't done and you've never gotten to rest you've never been able to just take a breath and so i just want to say thank you um i know this year was another hard year right and so i really hope this summer you all can exhale and really look back on the last two years and understand it was really remarkable you know we were in school a lot more than a lot of other districts so thank you so true

123hopefully take a big deep breath much needed okay may i have a motion to adjourn to executive session to discuss special education collective negotiating and specific personnel i move to adjourn to executive session to discuss special education collective negotiating and specific personnel may i have a second second motion having been made and seconded will the clerk please call the role anne hart yes bonnie kim yes frank and zika yes lisa schneider faves yes aaron stone yes amy palin yes motion carried we are now adjourned to executive session time is 9 15. are you guys gonna call me yes