Wilmette Public Schools Board of Education Meeting May 23, 2022

001i hereby call to order this regular meeting of the board of education for wilmette public schools district 39 this monday may 23 2022 will the clerk please call the roll amy palin here john cesaretti yeah ann hart here bonnie kim here frank panzika lisa schneider fans yeah aaron stone here we'll start with uh principal kate dominique and assistant principal eric rieses to introduce student government participants to lead the pledge of allegiance good evening everyone not only are you looking at a group of students who participated in the league of women voters student government program this school year but you are also looking at a group of students who only have about three weeks left in district 39 and so we wanted to invite them to participate in this board meeting and we thought as they

002wrap up their experience it would be a little special way for them to depart so i'm going to pass the microphone along to with our students so they can introduce themselves uh and then mr reeces will tell you a little bit about the league of women voters student government program hi my name is rick mcgoyle my name is evan lee hi my name is jordan leinberger my name is isaac shepard i'm matt fang oh i'm rhys lieber i'm jerry dew i'm joan julie all right well done you guys um so we had uh we had a really successful program this year after a one-year hiatus so we did have a limited number but um there were some great learning opportunities and and all of our workshops were held in person we had we held a

003kickoff at the at the junior high in january which i know some of you are at or have attended in in previous years uh and then held several workshops through uh the months of january february uh in march where the kids learned about robert's rules of order uh they got to have an evening meeting to meet with uh village officials who were there who were their counterparts and i'll and i'll back up for a second but league of women voters students do play the role of a local government official they either play the role of an appointed official or an elected official and so once they do uh get assigned their role they learn about the various roles and responsibilities of local government uh get a chance to experience how local government works both at

004the village level and then in previous years actually at the school board level uh as well but the students did a really nice job and we had a really good time uh learning about the various projects that were happening in the village of wilmette and again they all got to meet with their counterparts as well and it all culminated with a with a mock board meeting where they had a budgeted amount of of money to vote on various projects to approve uh for uh for for the green light to to move forward and adopt whatever whatever programs they were assigned to so congratulations to all the students who participated and uh it's continued to be a wonderful uh partnership with uh with the league of women voters in that so we look forward to uh

005continuing with uh with the program for many years to come so i think it's now time for the pledge right so if everybody could uh please rise and we'll uh begin with the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you for having us thank you so much for being here and thank you for doing that [Applause] it's great to see that you are all so interested in learning about local government so thanks for committing all that time and for being here so much uh we'll move forward with more student recognition dr kremes goalie we have a number of students to recognize this evening and some certificates to hand out

006i don't believe the students are here with us this evening we'll be delivering their certificates to their school to celebrate their hard work but this evening we have a couple of groups of students who have gone above and beyond in their studies and in their work outside of school and their efforts have won some awards throughout the state and they deserve to be recognized we are recognizing this evening our science olympiad and kratoman students um for their achievements so first of all our science olympiad team made it to state they placed 12th out of 22 teams in the state level the following students placed in the state meet in their respective events road scholar second place ritvik and matt peng i think matt might have just been here electric right third place aryaman varshani and

007matt ping sound of music fourth place ken callister and andrew lee experimental design fourth place matt peng ken callister and ritbik goyal and green generation fifth place jordan weinberger i think he was just with us as well and jerry do thank you so much for all of your hard work a big round of applause for our science olympiad winners [Applause] thank you so much we'll deliver your certificates to your school and we also recognize this evening some hard-working students who have been working on latin studies and competing first our wilmette junior high won second place in the 2021-2022 illinois kirtaman league state competition second place students were adam tyncov excuse me jacob wilkins and amy kessler and anna sandler anna sandler also won the outstanding player award or the mvp and received a very snazzy

008medal eight students meddled in the national latin exam in march anna sandler took gold on nle silver medal winners include aiden khanna shiv jam nades shane wilk walker excuse me catherine g any kessler jacob wilkins and leo appel congratulations to all of these hard-working students thank you so much that's terrific thank you you'll see lots of artwork behind me uh there at harper elementary they have a showcase of artwork on display they their dolphin parade is a school-wide project inspired by chicago's cow parade each class is decorating a 15 by 7x7 paper mache dolphin to represent their homeroom first graders learned about scandinavian folk art by designing nature inspired drawings they also created self-portraits second graders learned about patterns through the designs of kenti cloths from the country of ghana they also explored warm and

009cool color schemes for their color monsters third graders created mixed media art using paper plates paint and yarn they studied landscapes by artist henry russo and they constructed biological illustrations using plants animals and insects fourth graders learned about symmetrical asymmetrical and radial balance in their vibrant las molas prints inspired by the culture of panama they also celebrated black history month by researching black artists and created artwork using their unique styles so please take a look at all this gorgeous art behind me when you have time i seek a motion to approve the minutes of the april 25th 2022 board of education regular and executive session meetings and the minutes of the april 25th 2022 fiscal year 22 amended budget hearing i moved to approve the minutes of the april 25th 2022 board of education regular

010and executive session meetings and the minutes of the april 25th 2022 fiscal year 2022 amended budget hearing may have a second second promotion has been made and seconded board members are there any errors comments or remissions to the minutes okay uh will the clerk please call the roll johnson's ready yes ann hart yes bonnie kim yes frank panzika yes lisa schneider faves yes erin stone yes amy feeling yes motion carries so this brings us to public comments are there any community members who wish to speak seeing none we'll move forward with a board report starting uh with facility development mr panzika thank you the facilities group met as part of the committee the whole meeting on may 16th we had a number of topics this month uh the first one was an update on the

011summer construction projects joe papa nicholas of the nicholas associates gave us an update basically projects are on time and in this environment more importantly equipment has been ordered and scheduled to come in on time and the prices are fixed to fixed bids so there's no impact on supply chain or inflation which is a good thing so the projects are scheduled to be done this summer at mckenzie ramona and harper a variety of things killers universe windows framing etc but all that is going to be done before school starts in the fall we then spent a little bit of time talking about the roof replacement at central elementary um fortunately or unfortunately we it was identified that there was a rough leak at the school and a lot of work was put into making sure it

012was understood how extensive that was and um the work had been identified and costed and the board signed off on replacement of a section of the roof that was over 20 years old but not quite as old as we would like so that again is scheduled to be completed this summer and then we also spent some time looking at long-term facility plans we had a number of different items we discussed and looked at in a five-year multi-plan we looked at required maintenance projects such as piping boiler work unit roofs and windows and then we also looked at a number of other items including air conditioning for classrooms we've moved on to the the next round where we'll get a little bit more detail on each of the proposed projects so we can discuss um going

013forward with the more specific plans on costs and time frames and that was about it great thank you that summary uh mr caesar ready school finance thank you president um so the finance committee also met last monday the committee of the whole and um it was pretty extensive meeting so we covered three things we had a presentation on long-term debt planning we talked about lunch fees and we also looked at the draft budget so with the um respect to the long-term debt planning elizabeth hennessey of raymond james presented financial market updates and long-term debt plans along with district 39's financial history ms hennessey reported on aaa mmd index and treasury rates non-referendum limited bonds decents and funds on hand foh and current rates of interest the district can issue bonds without a referendum to fund

014capital projects if the debt service payments fit within the dsap which is currently one point five nine zero or one million five hundred ninety thousand nine hundred seventy one dollars the debt certificates are paid from the operating levy and dseb is a separate levy in the debt service spot so it does not negatively impact operating funds in any way this hennessey presented options to issue non-referendum debt from the debt service extension base in 2023 the proposal is for an issuance generating 11.4 million dollars in proceeds leaving a window in 2030 to issue more deception this option included the current interest rates plus a one percent cushion for a total interest rate of 4.33 paid over 13 years another issuance option is for 12 million proceeds but this option would not allow the district the opportunity

015to issue any non-referendum with respect to lunch fees historical lunch feed data was provided that included revenues expenditures and review of fees charged directly to student lunches three lunch fee options were presented options were to increase lunch fees by 20 cents 40 cents or 60 cents due to the dramatic increase in food costs and the cost for staff salaries and benefits members agreed to the 60 cent increase for the coming school year the board will be asked to approve the 2022-23 lunch fees as part of the consensus with respect to the budget presentation mr baltimore thank you so much uh strategy mr schneider faves thank you so strategy also met on uh monday the 16th um we postponed the science olympiad discussion until the june community of the whole meeting due to time constraints um

016and in terms of the dsat the district strategic advisory team update um the entire team that finalized the kpis or key performance indicators uh for presentation later this evening um we'll hear more about that their work and their recommendations later on the agenda great thank you so we'll move to liaison reports i will begin with crc uh they met on may 10th and we will hear from them as well later this evening at that may 10th meeting they discussed edited and finalized their audit report in this year's report and they will have their last meeting on june 7th at which time they'll elect officers and begin talking about possible topics for next year uh educational foundation mr caesaretti yeah i got to go to that meeting uh this month on may 11th so wednesday um

017a lot happened to that meeting so highlights though were they slated a new um slate of trustees and and then i think all the officers basically moved up and so there's a new group of officers it's a really big and impressive group highlights include an extensive presentation by treasurer christie o'neill on the budget which i enjoyed and um yeah and and they're in really good shape so they did they adapted really well to the covid and sort of the new normal generated lots of revenue and gave lots of friends so grateful to both of those groups thank you uh the district strategic advisory team i know we're going to hear from them later miss stone mr kenzika anything we had our final uh meeting for the year and we're gonna hear the presentations later tonight

018okay great uh the wilmette village intergovernmental cooperation working group this is kim mistress um sorry we don't have much to report because um the next meeting will take place on june 8th um which is great graduation yes so i'm not sure yeah okay but if anybody else wants to represent the board just let us know okay great uh and mrs kim uh illinois association of school boards it is a very quiet time of year for her iasb and the legislative update so i will say nothing that would be repetitive okay for both for legislative as well okay then we will turn to information items thank you and i will try to keep these updates as brief as possible because i know we have two large and exciting reports coming up um first of all written

019communication the board received written communication from diana har in support of the d39 pride club and opposing discrimination on the basis of lgbtq plus identity from lisa olsen md in support of lgbtqai plus children and creating an atmosphere of inclusion and support from brian yay expressing his disappointment of the discussion regarding covid mitigations and reporting at the april 25th 2022 board of education meeting from dan o'brien thanking board members for their public service and for their continued commitment to diversity equity and inclusion concerning race gender abilities sexual identity and socioeconomics i can move on to the administrative announcements first of all in terms of coveted mitigation updates i will share that during last week's review of our covet metrics it was decided that district 39 will maintain its current covered mitigation through the end of

020the school year the board will recall that we have um remained at the same step for the last three review cycles uh choosing not to off-ramp further based on the significant number of cases we were seeing not only in our schools being reported but also throughout the community based on the cdc metrics the cook county covid community level remains at medium we're hearing that we may be moving into a high level in the near future so we're watching that carefully but we're continuing to see cases reported across our schools so based on that review we feel it's prudent to maintain the current off-ramp mitigation measures for the final three weeks of school that does have an impact on some of the end-of-year activities yet uh we'll make adjustments as we can our priority continues to

021be keeping students in school and healthy to the greatest extent possible i'll share my screen quickly so that everyone can see what we're talking about here it's similar to what we've seen now so cook county and suburban cook county remain in the medium levels last i checked which was just before this meeting we know that our new cases per 100 000 have been up and down and we also know that this is a metric that is not as heavily relied upon simply because of the reporting nature of home based test versus lab-based tests so we understand this to be an under-representation of the actual coven level seen throughout our communities and nationwide we have seen significant spikes in the number of cases reported on site within our schools thankfully last week's number was a little

022bit lower and so we're hoping this is a trend in a good direction for our community at this point this monday's data that were reported was they were the lowest number of cases reported on a monday since really the second week after spring break so we've seen a steady incline in really some pretty significant numbers of cases on site we continue to notify families when a case was present within a classroom and continue excuse me to track these cases online as well we've been in close communication with the co county department of public health and have reviewed these cases we review those daily with them and have also asked them if they have other advice or guidance to give us they indicated that they were really supportive of our daily communication continuing many school districts

023have stopped that at this point we continue to provide that notice we have encouraged wearing masks while at school especially during those those high or significant numbers of cases and we continue to really closely watch those classroom numbers to see if there's any trends or what the cook county department of public health might otherwise call an outbreak if a classroom or a school is in an outbreak status they can direct further action of us but as of yet have not been able to do so and we all know that our ability to direct actions beyond kind of just adjusting our off-ramp um has has been minimized by the lack of rules and enforcement that's available to us so we've been encouraging testing encouraging masking and encouraging really close symptom monitoring what we're seeing often is

024that symptoms are relatively mild um and yet um people if they test a couple times in a row typically will uncover a diagnosis and and so that's really important and we appreciate people um really taking that seriously um as we look at let me see if i can flip this over yeah as we look at our off ramp excuse me this last step in in removing these kind of light gray mitigation measures is what has been on hold since about mid april and so we'll keep those in place through the end of the year the other decision that was made is to maintain shield testing which is free testing available to students and staff members through the end of the school year that continues to be available on tuesdays and thursdays the last testing day

025will be june 2nd for our relationship with the shield representatives and we've seen good participation rates on tuesdays and thursdays i know for a little bit there we were starting to see pretty minimal numbers and that definitely has ticked back up again and and the tuesday thursday um schedule seems to be helping with that as well so many thanks for tony for his leadership of that and the many extra hours he puts in to ensure that that access continues to be available but otherwise some of these uh mitigation measures here in the gray continue to help us and uh we continue to pay close attention to those again as we think about the end of the school year and we're thinking about gathering our celebrations we're really trying to be thoughtful about those knowing what

026the current covet status is on our metrics page we also continue to report the cases per week you can see where there have been some spikes and then some declines and then on a daily basis if someone were interested in seeing this uh here we report this the last two weeks but the start of the next week always includes a couple uh the last full two weeks our vaccination status and then the shield testing numbers which you can see kind of popped up from these lower numbers that um so at this point with the board support we'll continue with our current covet mitigation strategies continue to provide notice to individuals when there's a case identified within their classroom and continue to encourage um testing and masking where that seems like it is beneficial and make

027adjustments we're really grateful i think we have good plans in place for graduation but we're really grateful that we have made the decision to host an outdoor graduation again i think it's a really enjoyable experience allows everyone to participate and the flexibility to do so safely so we're we're looking forward to that and i know many of our schools are hosting some outdoor celebrations at the end of the school year and so thank you to the principals and the ptas and ptos who are helping to support and organize all of those events as well any questions or feedback regarding any of that okay um then i will move on speaking of end of year preparations our schools and classrooms are preparing for the quickly approaching conclusion of the school year this is always an especially

028exciting time uh touching and certainly bittersweet for many of our classrooms that have formed some pretty tight bonds throughout the school year so we support our teachers as they make time for some special moments at the end of this school year we are also looking forward to the upcoming school year so we continue to expect and encourage enrollment so we have seen enrollment numbers continue to come in especially as families are moving in and preparing to move in over this summer as we look toward the end of the school year we have wjhs's graduation which just was mentioned is on june 8th the same day as the intergovernmental cooperation meeting but we will be hosting that in the afternoon and evening of june 8th we're excited to host that outdoor ceremony this year and are

029excited to celebrate with our graduates and their families after this very interesting middle school experience these students have had within our district similarly we are hosting our elementary open houses on may 25th this is a great opportunity for students and teachers to celebrate with families all the work that has been accomplished throughout the school year again our elementary principals and teachers have made accommodations to limit the number of individuals on campus at the same time with some shifting schedules so we appreciate their work i know it always takes a little bit of extra effort sometimes a lot of extra effort to make sure that that is all arranged and coordinated and so thank you to the principals but also to our teachers who are working incredibly hard to ensure that that's a meaningful evening of

030celebration for our students and families our ptas have also organized some events and and again they're making accommodations based on covid and outdoor gatherings where possible and weather permitting not to leave high crest middle school out of our end-of-year celebrations we have an outdoor concert coming up we're excited that this is returning to our end of year celebration so on may 27th at 1 45 we invite the board to join us at the annual highcrest middle school outdoor concerts we're thrilled to have this tradition returning again and finally our reflection celebration was hosted on thursday evening and it was just a wonderful celebration again we were able to return to an in-person celebration thanks to the hard work of many the last two years we had to do that over zoom and um so this

031is my first chance although i feel like i've been in this district for a really long time this is my first chance to participate in person for this annual tradition and celebration of our retirees as well as our career milestone milestone employees and it just was a lovely event so thanks to everyone who was who were able to join us that day and i think the video of the retiree celebrants has been shared out as well and just a really nice tribute to those individuals who have given so much to our schools in our community in terms of freedom of information act requests we have two to report the district has received foia requests from zoe yeltsin of smart procure submitted a commercial foia request for any and all purchasing records from november 17th 2021

032to present and the illinois policy research organization requested names of all district 39 full and part-time professional staff in teaching or paraprofessional positions that concludes our administrative reports and we can move into the strategic plan update would you like me to go ahead yes please excellent okay well this evening we're really thrilled to have the community review report here i would like to introduce our representatives from the crc this has been a labor of love throughout this year this group has worked incredibly hard and is here tonight to present their report which has a rather long title building responsive social emotional learning through strengthening parent teacher communication oops i lost my notes uh parent-teacher communication and increasing parent understanding of an engagement in social emotional learning instruction again a very long name for a really

033important report we're really thankful for this team's hard work because it aligns so closely with so much of the work we were really focused on as a district this year within our schools with our teachers and with our students and we're eager to hear their recommendations for how to better engage and communicate with our parents so thank you so much for being here please if you'd introduce yourself and thank you good evening i'm lindsay anderson i of the crc am year i'm amy wesler-ross i'm the parent of a harvard kindergartner first grader and i have a preschooler um and i'm the vice president thanks so much for the opportunity to be here we're going to talk to you tonight sort of in two parts so first we'll talk about the report we won't share that

034title again um can you hear me okay much better thank you so as you all know the purpose of the crc is to advise the board on specific strategies that help fulfill district 39's mission we had a great group this year of parent and community representatives and also staff representatives which was really fun not just bringing that parent and staff perspective but also really some great subject matter expertise and professional expertise that they were able to add as well um and we had obviously tremendous support um from dramascoli and katy lee thank you so much for supporting us for answering about 20 questions a day we're so it was so great to work with you thank you just a couple more acknowledgments before we jump in but just thanks for the chance of the opportunity

035to make these recommendations on what we think is a very impactful and relevant topic um but thank you to all of you to um district 39 board and staff for your leadership just during this challenging and crazy couple of years so i am going to first the report i'm going to give just a little bit of background in process um before amy jumps into the findings the research the recommendations and conclusions um and specifically on recommendations how to strengthen parent-teacher communication to support sel and to increase parent understanding and engagement in sel for all district 39 students so on process we divided into three subcommittees um group one researched parent perceptions of sel by creating a survey to collect qualitative and quantitative feedback from the community group two analyzed how local districts communicate sel resources

036and curricula to families and group 3 explored national trends and family engagement strategies of school sel programs amy's going to talk a little bit more about that research our findings our conclusions and recommendations thank you lindsay so our groups worked really well together and they did a lot of online research read a lot of articles talked to a lot of different people and really worked hard to come up with um their findings and conclusions overall the um through the parent perception survey we found that district 39 parents largely agree that sel is a really important part of a really important way to support economic success um we've talked about this before the district 39 this year is really putting a really huge emphasis on sel um they developed their social emotional framework kelly jackson is

037spearheading the sel committee um and this topic just really paired nicely with that and the parent perception survey showed us that district 39 parents are very interested in learning more their understanding is pretty low but they're interested in learning more and they're interested in incorporating strategies into the home setting is really really high and this is a great opportunity for district 39 to capitalize on that parent interest um our one of the conclusions we came to is that really a comprehensive dedicated sel website is the most effective way to compile and share resources with the community um i think leo kraus has already started developing the sel website for district 39 and we have some suggestions on what can further be added to that and really how to utilize some of the really hard work

038that d39 is already doing we found that through our research schomburg school district 54 is really the best example of a robust wellness resource website and what we also really found was that several districts have really limited information and this is a really great opportunity for district 39 to just be a standout and an example for other surrounding districts on what they can have on their website that supports families we found that resources resources should be divided by age group in order to help stay developmentally appropriate to the audience we also found that expert opinion supports family and school partnerships as a critical component of seo this has been shown several times over through research and really in pandemic related research especially that looks at the impacts of the pandemic on social emotional well-being we

039found that reinforcement of these sel behaviors across multiple settings really improves skill acquisition in children and finally that schools should ask parents about their expectations regarding sel programming including things like their preferred communication method um so that schools can best determine how to plan sel programs and how to plan for robust two-way communication um overall we which will continue to show you through the rest of our presentation found that bridging this gap between parent-teacher communication with seo will significantly benefit district 39 students and their families and really further support building those critical foundational skills that support academic success and social emotional well-being just a little bit of a summary on our parent perception survey so we did have about five percent of the d39 population respond which seemed to be fairly on par with typical

040response rates um per per leo and as i said before we we found that d39 parents really strongly agree that sel is very very valuable um and really do have that high interest in learning more but again that low understanding our second group which focused on exploring local school districts um really utilized these two questions at the top what are surrounding and other similar districts doing to engage parents in sel and how do parents best receive information regarding curriculum instruction and at home implementation and as i stated before we found that district schomburg district 54 really was truly the best um but that in general sel information for parents is really lacking statewide um and then finally group three they were re they researched national trends um and they really focused their research on methods

041of engagement barriers to engagement and evaluation of engagement strategies and really found in terms of methods of engagement that truly a variety of communication strategies will be the most effective in reaching parents so some parents do well with a newsletter some parents do well with an email some parents do well with a handout it's really not a one-size-fits-all program and part of reaching the most parents is being adaptable and really understanding your student body your parent body communication should be twofold it should serve both a programmatic purpose and an educa provide educational guidance they'll be both part of the program and teaching the information um we they also found that establishing a shared vocabulary helps promote consistency and discipline from school to home and can improve parent understanding of program goals this is really really

042important especially with d39 having six schools within the district having that shared vocabulary will also help ease the transition could also help ease the transition between high crests and then to wjhs which is also a focus of the strategic plan um in terms of barriers to engagement um we wanted to to draw attention to to that there can be barriers to access so including things like culture and language and um what what how the information is available and in general we found that misunderstanding around program concepts can can lead to negative opinions of sel and so really increasing understanding will also increase engagement and hopefully further increase favorable thoughts around sel learning um and finally they found that a barrier to engagement can be high use of things like jargon or clinical jargon sometimes we

043call it and so really ensuring both a mix of family-friendly language and programmatic content and then finally they've they their research showed that it will be very helpful to conduct an assessment of parent school engagement sel strategies in district 39 in order to best inform decision making so overall we broke up our specific recommendations into three areas we broke them up into communication parent resource and engagement and we'll go through a little bit of each of those we really wanted to just again draw attention to the fact that our program our recommendations really fit in well with the programming that district 39 is already doing and not these aren't going to be significantly new but just more expansions on things that we're already doing in district 35 um all right so in terms of a

044communication recommendation that the biggest point in the research is that two-way communication is so super important and that means having an ongoing dialogue between parents and teachers versus just teachers sending home information and expecting utilization of that information in a home environment um so our first recommendation is that d39 should develop a communication plan and strategy for sharing information with parents regarding seo and what it looks like for schools and gave some suggestions for things that it could include like planning for meaningful parent education events based on very specific topics and themes that's again something that d39 already does this would just be an elaboration on specific topics or speakers develop a system for regular two-way electronic communication between teachers and parents to include connections between sel at home and at school and to support

045conversations between parents and children around sel that's the hardest part a lot of parents don't know where to start in those conversations and giving language and a system for that would be really beneficial and then finally consider utilizing the castle framework on family partnerships which is a really nice tiered evaluation tool to determine the level of parent teacher engagement um in in an sel program um and then the last recommendation for communication is to develop strategies to empower students to become involved in the communication with their parents regarding their own seo so this is a means for for students to share with parents versus just parents reinforcing with students and this is so so critical to success um so our recommendations for parent resources our first recommendation is for to create handouts for parents and

046caregivers that will be distributed at the classroom level based on the district's adopted curriculum i know that the currently used curriculum is open to discussion so we didn't want to name a specific curriculum in there and these handouts can go over things like the skills cover they can give activities and lessons for ideas um there are a lot of great examples of similar resources that other districts are using which d39 can consider for inspiration but of course should specifically tailor it to the program that they use um and then our second recommendation for parent resources is for district 39 to further elaborate on the sel website that they're currently developing and we gave several suggestions for how to divide website resources creating an online sel resource library increasing use of family friendly or increasing availability

047of family-friendly resources um and generally how to district 39 could identify strategies for how to increase traffic to sel online resource on the resource library and then there's some suggestions i'm not going to read them but there's some suggestions for further content on the website that we found was really helpful through our research of other websites and then finally in terms of engagement um just a couple of recommendations we're recommending that district 39 should engage parents in a variety of ways and examples of this are things like embedding programming and already established highly attended events such as a curriculum night or open house that's happening later uh in next week this week wednesday thank you um and apparent teacher conferences book studies webinars parent education events things of that nature and then lastly that district

04839 should develop a way to assess the effectiveness of parent engagement and sel and use their results to assess satisfaction and inform future plans or adjustments to make efforts worth the time invested and this one is so important so critical to determine effectiveness especially when it relates to sel because it is such a broad topic that can easily misunderstood so um just to help with overall fidelity of implementation um so in overall we truly believe that these recommendations will help support the district's mission the current strategic plan and most importantly the district 39 students and families i personally am a licensed clinical social worker and sel is my lifelong passion and it's just so amazing to have a district that really really places such value on it and it was a really awesome experience to

049be a part of this and thank you for that now turning to the audit report um so the audit report that we looked at was um the 2014 to 2015 crc report cultivating growth-minded resilient students so that may ring a bell because um just to mention sort of timeline and process and why we're looking at this report for a second time um so this report wasn't from 2014 um but and then it was audited if you recall for those of you that were on the board in the 2018 to 2019 year um but it actually didn't um follow a rubric that was designed by um a later crc um so we chose and then for a few other reasons but i also chose to audit this again um so both process um um but uh

050so the format but then um really just the pandemic um that shifted additional focus on sel for students um and and how closely the 2014 to 2015 report tied in with our report this year but we do recommend that future crcs stay follow that agreed upon rubric and also resume that three-year audit cycle so um overall just in our research and then through this audit process overwhelmingly our findings were that the school district is doing so much to implement recommendations is is already doing so much of this so uh well it's not as much fun in the interest of time i'll just focus on a few key areas where maybe we see some saw some challenges or areas for improvement um so there were six overarching recommendations from that report i'm just going to talk

051about a few of them um the first is prioritizing the development of executive functions for all students and we're doing so much to help our students with their transitions and really helping support those high crest middle students who need that additional functionality one way that district 39 is doing a great job is are those parent information nights i'm already starting to catch up on the videos i know that have started for next year um but um we did note in our audit that that does require support and is a challenge because it requires parents really to opt in and participate in those parent nights one additional recommendation was around building a parent awareness about characters um uh characteristics of successful learners um and so just wanted as a note for consistency as you know d39

052has largely moved away from that term csl non-cognitive factors but many of the same tenets are now referenced as social emotional learning so just wanted to draw that connection and then the last recommendation or finding that i will reference is reevaluating and monitoring the d39 homework policy overall there have been a lot of resources for parents once again so much work done by the district um but we did make a note that um one area of implementation um may need more student feedback um regarding student homework so we'd love to see that student feedback there i lied there's one more and that's the building stakeholder awareness around emerging best practices to cope with academic anxiety and stress so as you all know someone she's been doing in this area engaging parents leading presentations for parents

053but um currently there's uh not an adoption of warning signs for parents also no reference to strategies related to reducing teacher stress so i just wanted to note that those were included in the audit as well so that concludes our report um and our um audit so in summary though um i can't end on some negatives with the with audit just as a positive we learned so much as parents throughout this process about not just all that the district is already doing around sel but um really just um confirming how amazing we already thought the district was right and just um every day we learned well districts already doing this and this and this um so we're so grateful to be part of this amazing community and this district we just hope that we can

054help other parents learn as much as we have in this process thank you so much [Applause] lindsey and amy thank you so much for your leadership for your presentation this evening but for your leadership of the committee throughout the school year it was a ton of work and um a little bit nebulous to start with and i think the outcome of the hard work really will help to guide our work moving forward in partnership with our parents so thank you so much i agree i think many of us have been on crc and we know it's a lot of work and your expertise your passion just came through and you've given us so much to work with so thank you for that uh if it's okay i'll open it to comments and questions from the

055board let's start um see if i can make coherence with my notes um first i just want to applaud you for all of your hard work um and echo what amy said um sel has always been important but i think it's particularly important now and so thank you for that and you've done an invaluable service by highlighting an existing gap and identifying an area for growth and doing the legwork necessary to help start bridge that gap i particularly love the student empowerment piece and feedback that you talked about both in the sel report and the audit report um something i would just like to draw um attention to that you drew attention to but i want to draw attention to it too is the last paragraph on page 16 of the sel report which starts

056out by saying it would be helpful to conduct an assessment of parent student engagement sel strategies in district 39 in order to inform future decision making what measures were worth the time and effort and um i just would advocate this is something the district pursue because if we're going to ask staff to spend additional time in pursuit of this which i think we should because it's really important we should know after a period of time what things are in fact what things are effective and what things aren't um just so that we can keep the work targeted and meaningful and not or just so we can best utilize the precious time teachers have to accomplish everything you need to accomplish so highlighting that but really really well done thank you so much thank you um

057i'll jump on the phrase and thank you train um it was really terrific isn't there one of the challenges i think the district has the amount of change and things that have to happen in any given year so if you had to look at this report and say kind of what are the one or two must do first right now what would they be i would say that it would be establishing a shared vocabulary and opening up an opportunity for two-way communication between parents and teachers using that shared vocabulary if parents don't know what they're talking about they can't talk about it just to add to that helping students know how to talk to their parents about it as well as you mentioned again i'll i'll say a quick uh thank you very much for

058the work a very good report and i know it does take a lot of work to get to this point so um i had let's kind of follow up on on lisa's point and a point that you've made many times during your presentation the parent communication i think starts with an understanding of the definition um if you get emails if you get things in notes um and you don't understand what it is or don't recognize it it kind of goes in the that was nice tile um so really in that area of starting the education process one group that that has a lot of participation is ptas did you look at at having like a presentation at the pta level and trying to get more you know 50 100 parents per school that show up

059to some of those meetings and bring across some of the vocabulary that is a a really nice suggestion we did not consider that in my personal experience attending pto meetings they're they're not that well attended um but that is a definitely a resource that we could tap into um i think once the shared vocabulary was established and implemented by the teachers i think that would be a great route to um further get the information out thank you so this is a really tough topic appreciate your uh methodical polling and research and hard work it's something that's very important to the board yeah i'd just like to say thank you as well and um and i really appreciate the fact that you highlighted um this um the parent element of social emotional learning so that was

060another um victim of covid because with my older son i was in the classroom so much volunteering that i would see you know the posters in the classroom of the social emotional learning rubric at the time and um and they made it very user friendly and so i was able to like use those words at home and he did too and so it was really reinforced that way but um and that just hasn't happened in the last couple of years and plus like i know that um the program has changed so i'm not really confident talking about it with my younger son um but and i really miss that so i really appreciate you um getting that information from parents i'm just in the past year to see what they're missing no thank you like

061when i attended one um knows of a variety of displays or touch points throughout the um well thank you for making a tremendous contribution to our district thank you up next up next we have a report from our district strategic plan our district strategic advisory team has spent this year really doing some similarly important work digging deep into each of our strategic plan goals and strategies and helping us to define what the key performance indicators will be in each area so as a way of introduction the district strategic advisory team is a group that is comprised of all stakeholders from across the district teachers administrators parents a variety of representatives to help us ensure a strong foundation of shared decision-making ownership action planning and accountability the district 39 strategic advisory team is not a voting

062body but rather it will help to establish and review key performance indicators to guide our decisions on refinement of our action plans and make recommendations to the superintendent each dsat member will serve two years and so we're just finishing our first year we know we have many members returning for the upcoming school year and we're excited about that this year our teams met way more frequently than quarterly we expect that next year our team will meet approximately quarterly to review progress update our goals and give suggestions for how to continue to improve our outcomes and progress this year's objective for the dsat was to establish key performance indicators for each strategic goal the full committee met five times this year along with each goals subcommittee holding several meetings in between to focus on their respective

063proposals for key performance indicators our goal champions this evening will present the key performance indicators i think we're going to start with miss katie lee excellent wonderful thank you so much we're really excited to hear the report today thank you uh we as uh gold champions are representing the entire district can you move the microphone just a little closer maybe to the side of your career thank you sorry to interrupt you no that's okay um the gold champions are really proud to represent the full strategic advisory team uh these are our key performance indicators as we have proposed and finalized for the 2021-2026 district 39 strategic plan so um dr kim chromos goalie has shared with you the makeup of our team and these are the specific people and we cannot thank them enough for

064all the time invested with us uh not just even online through zoom meetings but also their independent time in reviewing a lot of the work and many um actually almost all are returning for the second year um and as kerry shared that our goal for this year was to establish the key performance indicators for each of the strategic goals our meetings began the kickoff was in november and ended in may um and our subcommittees held working days in between what was really important for all of the members was that feedback loop we presented we gathered feedback and then even in the subcommittees we also or our goal committees we also did the same gather feedback analyze it and then act on it to present again to the full community so let's start with our first

065goal of student achievement and growth as you may recall it's to ensure differentiate instruction that provides a strong foundation of rigorous academic learning and the strategies are differentiate instruction and supports to ensure and monitor strong academic foundation of challenging meaningful and growth-oriented experiences for all students and implement structured staff collaboration focused on data informed practices to support rigorous achievement and growth for all students and three is provide differentiated professional development opportunities to support effective innovative and growth focused classroom practices we feel that all of these led to um you know asking ourselves what would be that key performance indicator that would suggest that we are either meeting that goal or that we have continued work to do so for this particular goal we wanted to share some terms with you because the way the key

066performance indicator is written we have some terms like well above average above average high high average and so we wanted to share how each of these platforms that we have chosen explains what it means so eames web plus is an assessment measure that we use with all of our kindergarten and first graders and we'll be using this as a benchmark tool and it really looks at the foundational skills of reading and math and as we look at our students performance in the spring we're looking for students they're categorized in different areas based on their performance and based on national norms and indicate whether they are on track to attain the skills that we need them to and to continue on the trajectory of appropriate learning and adequate learning so that's the these are the areas

067that aims web uses they have the well below average and below average and then the other the children that are considered on track are children who score and the average above average are well above average on these early assessments of foundational skills and then reading and math and for nwa math which you are all very familiar with um typically they define high growth or high achievement at that 50 percentile or greater and so when our goal committee talked about that we didn't feel that that was sufficient for our district and uh creating a kpi for that so then we looked at quartiles um to see if that would best fit but we wanted it to be a little bit more rigorous but attainable and so we looked at quintiles so dividing it up into five

068equal ranges of percentile ranges and this is actually data that we can pull straight from nwa map and so these are the ranges that they have identified for low low average average high average and high our subcommittee focused on the high and the low in order to determine a trend or pattern of what we've how we've accomplished in the past to set a kpi for the future so here we go so for our kindergarten and first graders again we're using the spring aims web plus benchmarking assessments and we're looking for those students in the early measures of early literacy we want to see at least 80 percent of our kindergarten and first grade students on track so again achieving at that average or above on the aims web plus early literacy measures similarly we looked

069at the early numeracy for our our kindergarten and first grade students but we historically we've performed slightly better on those early measures and so we have a goal of 85 percent of our kindergarten and first grade students scoring at that average or above for early numeracy in the spring assessment we will continue to look at this and monitor our progress but based on our past performance which was interrupted a little bit by covid so but based on our past few years these are appear to be very reasonable but but ambitious goals so they are attainable we believe but they are ambitious based on our past performance and for fall to spring nwa map in reference to growth for second through eighth grade um we felt that fifteen percent or less of students at the district

070or aggregate level in the low growth category for both ela and math would be an appropriate api 25 or more of students at the district level in the high growth category ela and 30 or more of students at the district level in the high growth category for math and this was all based on patterns and trends that we could gather for the past few years for 2nd grade through 8th grade spring nwa math achievement we have set targets of 4 or less of students at district in the low achievement category for both content areas 50 or more of students at the district level in the high achievement category for ela or english language arts and 55 or more of students at the district level in the high achievement category and the strategy indicators we've identified

071three so 100 of our students will engage in setting academic goals and review their goals at least once each semester we are hoping that that could elevate each year of the strategic plan so we're starting off with at least one first semester it may then become one per quarter but i think the future district strategic advisory teams will help us inform that elevation so 100 of certified licensed staff will be trained on the effective collaborative protocol what we're calling the data wise improvement process um so that they can participate in meaningful data review meetings and we would like to score at least a 4.5 in a five-point scale and a summative rating from staff survey on the degree to which professional development opportunities are differentiated and focused on effective innovative and close-focused classrooms okay goal

072two is supportive community as you may remember this goal is to cultivate a supportive and inclusive learning community that is responsive to the social emotional and behavioral needs of each student so this stuff tells very well with what crc talked about earlier today our strategies are really two-fold one is to really implement that positive consistent proactive curriculum that addresses all of these areas social emotional and behavioral needs and the other is to really strengthen the sense of belonging that our students have their opportunities to be engaged representation agency all of those areas so that our students feel like they are really strong contributing members of our school community so for goal two are outcome indicators based on the overarching goal uh the first is a strengths-based measure of student social emotional competency development we currently

073use the desa and the mesh as our strength space measures our sel committee is doing some work right now at diving into those measures to see that they really align with what our framework is intending for our students so we want to make sure that is the case and they're also looking at a few other measures of social emotional growth but that recommendation will be made before the fall and then we would be gathering baseline data to set future targets for growth go ahead another area an outcome measure is really our behavior in common areas this is an important area that we've been working on through our mtss committee and we're looking at implementing a consistent district-wide behavioral framework we don't have consistent baseline data this year so next year is really going to be

074collecting that baseline data around behavioral incidences within common areas in our buildings and really targeting those those areas for a reduction in the behavioral incidents so our outcome measure for next year is really to collect that baseline data and then make plans around that next is the five essentials student data so five essentials is broken up into five different categories one of which is uh supportive environment and the scores for supportive environment come entirely from student responses in the areas of peer support for academic work teacher student trust safety so it's kind of physical safety around the school and then academic personalism which is kind of like differentiation or adjusting the curriculum if they have a problem learning something or if they need a challenge so we are hoping to maintain well in first of

075all increase our score in the category of supportive environment from 78 strong to at least 80 very strong um 78 is our score from this year we'll do a full report later um next month but um that that's where we um are starting from and then we want to increase that over time um and then breaking down those four different categories we'd like to maintain or increase in all of those four so the the threshold really is that 80 for very strong so in peer support for academic work um it's currently added in 87 so we'd like to maintain that or increase it teacher student trust is currently at an 83 so again maintaining it um safety is at a 70 so we'd like to increase that by one point to 80 or more and

076then academic personalism is at a 61 so working hopefully in concert with uh goal 1 to increase that to 80 or more then secondly reach and maintain average scores across fifth through eighth grade in two supplemental categories so five essentials has the five main categories and then there are supplemental questions that are asked and two of interest to um this goal are student peer relationships and human and social resources um and we'd like to uh reach and maintain a very strong writing in both of those areas as well currently student peer relationships is at 78 so we'd like to increase that and then human and social resources set pretty high level of 88 so we'd maintain that or increase for our stat strategy indicators the first is based on our social emotional learning framework that

077is currently in the primary stages of implementation so we would want to increase our staff confidence and ability to implement that teaching lessons and gathering assessment information for students to ensure growth so we will be planning a teacher feedback survey to gather baseline data for that implementation process as we implement our new behavioral framework we'll be we'll be focusing on developing specific behavioral committees in each building to really personalize and make sure that we are implementing this with fidelity and also tracking our staff confidence and their ability to implement the behavioral framework so that we know that we are working on it and that our staff are feeling good and confident in implementing our strategies as we look at as we look at the students and their sense of belonging in the school and participation

078in activities um participation in extracurricular co-curricular activities such as clubs or band and orchestra those are of great interest to us so we will be gathering baseline data on the percentage of student participation based on the entire student population in schools sponsored non-academic activities outside of the school day and we'd target an increase based on those baseline numbers in the following years and then finally one part of the mesh survey that is of interest for students in grades six through eight and for those of you that have been around for a few years you've heard me report out on the mesh survey scores as being low in a sense of belonging as reported by students in sixth through eighth grade fifth grade we don't see those numbers as low but sixth through eighth grade is

079really an area of focus for us so we'd like to increase the percentage of students feeling a positive sense of belonging at grades 6 through 8 from current which is 64 to 80 percent the focus for goal three is professional community working to foster a professional community that values supports develop and maintain highly effective staff the strategies under this goal include working to improve collaborative and shared decision-making structures to strengthen the representation and engagement of our staff as well as cultivating a more equitable and inclusive learning community by developing staff expertise and support diverse learners to support diverse learners through differentiated instruction and culturally supportive teaching the key performance indicators for goal three are as follows the outcome indicators are the indicators that we look at at the very end we want to achieve and

080maintain a 90 teacher retention rate we're currently at about 89 as well as look at our overall staff retention rate so the positions that are not in certified teaching positions but perhaps more reflective of our secretarial staff our custodians our paraprofessional all of the other staff that work to support our schools we also want to ask staff leave district 39 start working to identify themes as to why people are leaving see how we might address those going forward we're already starting to collect that information this year both through sort of an online survey but also an opportunity to have an interview should they request that as well as looking at the categories of the five essentials although it's changed this year so this might get tweaked a bit but really looking at the categories that

081the teachers respond to and looking to see how we might improve in those areas areas include effective leaders collaborative teachers and involved families our strategy indicators or things that we're going to look for along the way are to make sure that 100 or all of our staff are trained in the data wise improvement process so that we can use data in a meaningful way to support student learning we want to look at how often our paraprofessionals are being pulled from their regular assignments to sub in our schools know that has an impact on many environments we also want to look and monitor our absence rate so looking at staff who have 10 or more absences related to not inclusive of vacation or professional development but the use of sick leave and trying to monitor that

082very closely as well as collecting baseline data on a staff survey from panorama regarding cultural competency and culturally responsive well four family partnerships strengthen partnerships by connecting collaborating communicating with families and communities to advance teaching and learning we have two strategies under this goal the first one is to improve school home communication through more consistent and effective strategies especially those focused on communicating student performance goal setting and growth monitoring and the second one is to implement strategies to better support successful transitions both from fourth to fifth and then from sixth to seventh for students parents and teachers as well for our strategy indicators for the first strategy to deliver a communications plan as a blueprint for strategic communications so the deliverable is going to be a communications plan this fall that will structure strategic messages

083to multiple constituent groups and then being responsive to the intended audience timing of the message and platform news we heard a little bit about that tonight so being a little more thoughtful in our communication and 80 percent of our parents by the 20 25 26 school year will report that they're well informed about their child's progress in school experience school activities and district news so we want to make sure that threshold of being well informed is hit we want to increase district and school social media following interaction so for both district and school level social media accounts want to increase their reach by increasing followers by 15 by the first school year and then have 10 increases each year throughout the 24 25 school year so that could be achieved through strategies we've never used

084in the past such as active advertising through social media and trying a few unique tricks and tips that maybe the business sector is very used to doing redesign the district and school websites to streamline access to information so not just give a new skin if you will not fresh design but streamlining information so we want 80 percent of parents by the 24 25 school year to report that they can find the information they need including student performance data on school the district and school website so uh it doesn't seem like a high bar but right now we're very very information rich on our website some may argue too much so we want to have as few clicks as possible to make sure people can access what we need increase powerschool parent portal access to statistics

085for report card viewing uh 98 of parents by the 24-25 school year will log into powerschool to view report cards during the report card window so uh that's a very key uh point to make which is we want timely access to the student grades within a very specific amount of time we do know eventually our parents do get that information but we want to make sure they get it as it's released and as high of a percentage if not even through not just technological means but if we need to and we do this now hand paper but we want to also train parents to get the information and then offering parent education events that meet expectations of our parents and create a library of informational videos we want 95 percent of all district level parent

086education event event attendees by the 23 24 school year to strongly agree that their expectations were met and they plan on using what they've learned after each presentation so not just attending an event to learn but then doing something with that information and by the end of the summer of 2023 having an on-demand library of district webinars and short video clips with content not limited to building assessment literacy and conversation strategies regarding student data and goal setting we've heard a lot about sel but expanding it to our academic uh categories as well uh some of what we're doing now and then also including in that a short bulleted list of key takeaways which is something we have not done before so for those people that may not have the time to watch the video at

087least they can download the quick hits if you will of the key points of that presentation for the second part of goal four um the strategy indicators are very similar um it's just the grade level at which they focus so um the first bullet point is just to increase the rates of participation and satisfaction with the fourth to fifth grade transition by parents students and teachers um so you'll see we are looking for 90 of families and students reporting that they had a highly successful transition from fourth to fifth grade by fall of 2024 and 90 of students participating in at least one of the new school transition activities for high crest middle school and then also discussing the content with their parents so that's kind of a secondary so we have had a lot

088of school partition participation in events but how is that being delivered home and so what is the discussion uh looking like so we want that to kind of carry on past the school building into the home and then ninety percent of parents and families will view the fourth to fifth grade transition videos and webinars and discuss the content with their child or children prior to the 24-25 school year so it's kind of that reverse where the parent watches the video and then says hey i've learned a little bit about creative arts let's have a talk about what you can expect at highcrest so increasing some of that communication and then finally staff will report measurable improvements and practices and communication as evidenced by the percentage gain and comments between the fourth to fifth grade transition

089from fall 22 to fall 23 and every year thereafter of the plan similarly for sixth to seventh grade while it's not as big of the transition um there's still some things to work on there so we again will be uh creating uh transition videos and webinars for viewing by parents and students and discussing those webinars as well and then 90 percent of families and students will report that they have had a highly successful transition from sixth to seventh grade uh you'll remember that this year at the beginning of the year we did do an initial survey to kind of get gauge the current transition activities um we'll do an initial survey uh next year for sixth to seventh as well and then staff will report measurable improvements and practices and communication as evidenced again by

090the percentage gain in comments between sixth to seventh grade transition from fall 2023 to fall 2024 and thereafter so um sixth to seventh grade is kind of a year behind the sixth grade or fourth to fifth grade all right goal five is stewardship of resources ensure the equitable and effective use of resources to sustain practices that promote growth we have two strategies number one to implement long-term capital planning focused on facility maintenance and two to examine resource allocation practices including staffing based on best instructional models so we have six uh performance key performance indicators for the outcome indicators we have maintain an annual financial profile score of financial recognition this is the top level of score the district has had for nearly 20 years now the second one is to maintain a ranking within the

091referendum and nutria theater districts on per student expenditures the third one is a development plan on long-term capital projects a five-year period will be reviewed annually in short-term goals to accomplish the plan to establish report approval we are making progress towards that we have at least the plan by next month and then on the strategy indicator side the the first item is to maintain our annual operating fund balance between 40 and 65 expenditures on something that we've had in place for a and then the last two indicators in this goal area are to maintain our class size at or below the district guidelines close to that as possible and also monitor the space available within each of our school buildings to make sure planning for future needs is as best that we can our presentation

092of the key performance indicators we're happy to answer any questions that you may have oh thank you wow i will point out this has been a tremendous amount of work and i think when we set this plan um back in uh was it september october to uh develop and establish these key performance indicators some of us thought that work would be relatively easy other others of us knew that it would be a little uh more intense than what we maybe originally thought so this has taken a lot of work to get us to where we are i think the really exciting news is we have now a five-year plan with some key performance indicators and some ways of monitoring and holding ourselves accountable in really making adjustments along the way based on those measurements that

093we're all committed to and so i again want to commend our both champions for their leadership throughout this uh journey but also everyone who participated on the dsat it really has been a collaborative undertaking and i think everyone's perspective and input has really been incredibly valuable so thank you to everyone for for your hard work there i just have to say on any year this would be remarkable right this is so much work and tangible goals for us to work toward and this was not an ordinary year so the fact that this team got to this point is astounding thank you i between this and crc it's pretty inspiring to think of all the people working to help our district just make huge strides question and i'll just add to that i know that it

094seems like this is a lot of work to come up with key performance indicators i just want to acknowledge that um also we're doing all of the work to support the strategies and really laying that strong foundation that we had hoped to accomplish in the first year so we'll hear more about that next month um but um there's been a lot of work happening and this has really just been the work focused on the key performance indicators so um for those out there kind of wondering about some of that stay tuned we'll give a full report next month but uh really exciting accomplishments of this group so thank you questions from the board yes well i just wanted to say thank you so much um for this amazing document i was so excited to read

095it and um and i know how much work went into it and it really is an incredible document um and i think it's so important because it really grounds the strategic plan it was sort of like floating and i think that that's why you know there's been so much discussion about it like since last fall you know it was really hard to talk about the strategic plan without these kpis um and i also think that it helps um well i hope it guides you know the staff and teachers and work that they do but it also helps you know parents um i don't know if manage their expectations is the correct term but um to understand what's going on and also um you know afford some transparency um and so that we have something to

096look at when we try to assess what's going on with the school or you know the programming so thank you very much this is just way above and beyond anything i expected thank you we will continue to work toward um making sure that we're held accountable um i do think that there there's a lot of work ahead of us and i think setting the goals very high leads us to understand the kind of work that needs to be undertaken to reach that so it's not always about more people sometimes it's more time and sometimes it's just a greater amount of focus on the things that are most important and so we are hoping we can accomplish all of that as we move forward into the next year for our action steps next year uh love

097this thank you tremendous work so now what well that's a really good question so next up um again we'll give a report on our annual progress at the next board meeting and then we need to set the stages we have done historically annually in really developing what the action steps are i think the critical difference right now is we have these long-term goals and now we have key performance indicators that will help us to measure those we're in the process really i should say leo is in the process of developing a website a dashboard of sorts that will allow us to regularly update and monitor that progress and then throughout the next school year the district strategic advisory team will help us to monitor those that progress to give reports to the board and to

098ensure that we're making adjustments where needed which ultimately is is the real power in setting these action steps and goals so those are our next steps we do plan to provide a report next month and then we will come back again next september to present what the action steps are for the upcoming school year and then we'll continue to measure monitor and make adjustments as we go through our swoosh of our data analysis thank you lisa [Music] i know that that we've had a few board members represent the board on dsat and so i'd love to hear their input our insights as well you know i think i would reiterate something i said at the committee of the whole meeting last week um but i'll preface that by just saying just how gratifying it was

099to work with such a broad group of people um that we had so many constituencies there but from different kinds of it wasn't just all teachers it was some teachers it was some parapros it was um administrators it was uh parents but um i will say what i said last week which is that my overwhelming takeaway from this is that the gold champions are two champions because they really just kept us on target and directed us and led us in the ways that we needed to be led and worked tirelessly on this so that's that's my feedback from having participated on it i'll just reiterate that um i appreciate that there was a lot of work that went into this plan i know the overall report meetings but the subcommittee meetings and the work getting

100ready for the subcommittee meetings uh takes a lot of time and effort and it resulted in a very comprehensive report so now next year let's implement continue implementation with progress and accountability i also just want to see what this does is really add a new level of transparency and when you sit there and think about kind of the reporting um it'll just i'm sure we're much easier to understand when someone says what's going on to be able to know that's really important and okay and we hope it will give us the opportunity to celebrate our successes and growth that we are accomplishing and also to recognize where we if we start to struggle or recognize some areas where we're not growing to catch those and make adjustments along the way and so both are really

101critically important to improvement cycle that is effective that's our hope celebrations to come and also adjustments well thank you all so much really exciting so hard act to follow i'm not sure how to transition this but we're going to move to lunch fees annual business all right so about a week ago we reviewed a bunch of information related to the food service program here in district 39 and the board considered three options for increasing the lunch fees going into next school year we are looking at for the grades up to sixth grade the price would go from 375 to 435 per lunch and then at 7th and 8th grade it would go from 4 15 to 4.75 um three of the biggest considerations that are driving the increase in price are are cost factors the

102cost to employ people the cost to provide benefits such as health insurance to those individuals and then the the cost of the food itself which as you imagine we we buy many different types of food but when we've kind of reviewed that we've seen the typical increase or just over the last year being that 10 to 15 range so um we feel that this increase will put us in line with uh put us on track to be more closely aligned with our historical revenue versus expenditure amounts for the food service program so the the fee and the fees for next year not seeing any questions i think we can move forward to the fiscal year draft budget all right so the first the kind of the first public look at the budget each year for

103the upcoming fiscal year is our draft budget we took a look at the draft budget last monday the finance committee and again tonight next month we'll review the tentative budget and then at the june 13th meeting we'll ask the board to approve a tentative budget and also approve a public public hearing for the fiscal year 23 budget to be held in august and of course we'll keep that budget on display through the summer if anybody wants to view it it'll also be posted on our district 39 website in august that our finance committee will review any changes that are made over the summer as we head towards the final version of the budget at the august 22nd board meeting we'll hold a public hearing and then later on in the meeting we would ask the

104board approve approve that fiscal year 23 budget and then as an administrative procedure we would file that budget with appropriate state agencies by the end of september when we look at the operating funds of district 39 when you combine the other local fees along with the proper taxes to generate a total local revenue number this trick is right at about 92 percent of all revenue coming from local sources so let's dive into those local sources property taxes being the largest component for the upcoming fiscal year the applicable cpi is 1.4 we've built in uh just over 14 million worth of new growth which provides a value of 415 000. senate bill 508 a newer piece of legislation that hits the property tax bills we had recently shared that the amount for this for this recapture

105legislation was 771 000 more recent letter from cook county noted that our amount had dropped down to 517 000 that the 517-804 is what would be added to our total tax extension later this calendar year in the budget we've set a net collection rate which is uh money money received at the county level minus any refunds processed at 98 and then just as a reference point um because that collection rate can bounce around um from year to year depending upon refunds and how quickly residents are and businesses are paying paying their taxes about a quarter percent equal is equal to about 100 000 worth of revenue on the interest revenue side the total revenue in total interest revenue for the upcoming budget is just slightly lower than we have in the current year um two

106two kind of competing issues here one rates have been rising and we're expecting them to continue to rise throughout fiscal year 23. the flip side to that is we are going to be without a significant part of our revenue for probably five to six months as uh two competing groups within the cook county are a bit of a battle on whose fault it is in getting our second installment tax bills out so instead of the bills going out on july 1st with a due date of august 1st um we're being told to not to expect money until probably after thanksgiving in that december possibly into january timeframe so that would that would uh reduce any increase we might see in rates with lack of having the money in our account corporate personal property replacement taxes

107um thus far for for fiscal year 22 collections have been very very strong um we'll update this with what the illinois department of revenue believes is a good estimate for the upcoming fiscal year they released their estimate for all local governments in june or july each year another bigger line item in the budget is our keep 39 tuition fees or these i've included the enrollment amounts as of may 10th for for this program i think the one nice thing i take away from looking at this slide is the percentage of students enrolled in keep relative to the total number of this time it continues to be very high which is good for good for that program lunch fees um as we talked about there there's a increase that's up for approval this is the same

108the amount that's in the draft budget is the same as last week so we will update that going forward uh to reflect what we believe the increase will generate and then one other kind of operational thing as we look ahead to next year we are anticipating that um one service may mirror what we were able to do during pre-covered years transportation fees uh there's about a little over six hundred thousand in the budget this year we're a little over five hundred thousand the difference between those two numbers represents the uh board approved uh increase in writer fees um as we've seen drastically rising cost on this front and one other change this year we've been limited to 48 students per bus which is one student or two students to a bench yeah um so we're

109looking at potentially uh adding a few more students to a few of the routes that are more popular next year if we lose some of those capacity constraints state and federal aid for the state and federal airport planning to hold that flat until we get more firm allocation amounts from springfield we'll have that updated for the fall and then as far as uh kind of non-traditional federal level money we have the second and third rounds of the stimulus sr money we've got about 175 000 in route and nestor round two and we've got about 235 and that's around three um those are just placeholders for right now as we round out this current fiscal year we'll update those to reflect the amount of money that is left and what we anticipate to spend next fiscal

110year on the expenditure side as we take a look at the operating expenditures when we combine salaries and benefits we are at roughly which mirrors where we have been at historically salaries and staffing so when we budget we're based we're basing our amounts um a couple of things one based upon the amounts that are in our collective bargaining agreements and any board approved uh increases for the upcoming year in cases where we don't know that we've provided an estimate until actuals are known and then the other part is the staffing that is driven by enrollment and as we plan out our classes for next year we we assume class sizes that will remain more targets medical and dental insurance another big line item on the expenditure side just in the last couple of months we've

111received our final renewal rates on the hmo side it was six point seven percent ppo was eleven and a half when you kind of blend that together we're looking at just over nine percent on the medical insurance for the district on the dental just the ppo saw a 2.5 increase and hmo stayed flat since district 39 is relatively new to co-op 90 reserve we have completed our reserve share payments um which is nice because those were those were a couple hundred thousand each year for the first three years on the dental side since the district joined one year later we still have one payment left to go the imref rate which is a pension system here on the way illinois for our non-certified staff we recently received notice that our preliminary rate for calendar year

11223 is dropping yet again down to 5.19 the nice thing about this is too is that it's about as low as i can imagine it going and two when you look at the middle of this slide you see that our budgeted rate for the year is going to drop from 7.45 down to 5.89 which is a really nice component to the budget one percent change in this rate is worth about 80 000 a year purchase service and supplies school-based allocations were increased by roughly a cpi amount department budgets same thing i do want to point out that we do have some exceptions particularly in the departments where our budgets are a little bit larger um in the curriculum department we tend to have some uneven replacement cycles so we we're each year we're budgeting we're

113looking ahead to what what needs to be replaced and what the needs are in the classroom technology same thing we have replacement cycles i think we've reached a point with ipads where we should start to see um a you know level amount but we still have some other areas within within the tech department where we will see a little bit of peaks and valleys and then insurance recently it's been a tough liability insurance market so we're budgeting that a little bit higher than what we would see in a lot of the other apartments and then workers comp we recently received a renewal there and um as a the district is a part of the uh self pool um well as a whole it did really well so food service supplies as we compare fiscal year

11422 looking into 23 we're starting to budget the food service supply accounts back to our historical amounts trying to be reflective going towards normal lunch service covid and in our special education department budgets so if you remember for the last couple of years we've carried two years ago we were carrying significant amounts of budgeted amounts for covered related expenditures and then for this current year we we reduced that quite a bit and leading into next year we're reducing that even further to the point where we're really only looking at three different areas where we've been carrying them out um just kind of as a precaution um you know 50 000 for supplies and materials another 50 000 for purchase service and then 15 for for any equipment replacements that we might need one uh notable

115change with in the special education budget from 20 fiscal year 23 rolling into fiscal year 20 fiscal year 22 to 23. um we did increase that particular budget for about a million dollars for fiscal year as we kind of look at the composition and what the total cost for um special education non-district 39 placements might be next year the one flip side to that is while the budget the expenditure side went up about a million we're looking at at least for right now we should get a a big majority of that back reimbursed by the state what that exact amount is i don't know that we're going to know for sure until we start to work our way through mexico school year but i'm i'm budgeting at least six hundred thousand for now uh with

116an eye towards hopefully that will end up as eight or nine hundred thousand capital projects so um each year the the budget is really a part of two different summers so what i'm budgeting for this upcoming fiscal year is really the last parts of the summer 22 projects which is um there's work at mckenzie ramona and harper we got three large and robust projects that will be nice enhancements to all three buildings once they're complete and then at least in this draft version of the budget we've got the beginnings at least some of the design costs and um the first part of construction for one project for the summer of 23 as you know we're looking at our long-term facilities for capital planning so we will be updating this in the tentative and try to

117reflect uh where where that may go that leaves a total uh capital projects budget of seven point eight nine seven point seven point eight million for fiscal year 23. in the debt service fund the 2.5 million budget represents the repayment of some general obligation tax bonds and then of course our debt certificates which is which is paid from our operating funds we do have for right now a couple of transfers budgeted 995 000 which goes to pay off those debt certificates from the operation mainstream service and then for now 2.2 million from operation maintenance to capital projects to help fund those summer construction projects that brings us to our operating fund summary as we look at the next year total revenues and operating fund 69.8 million uh expenditures 68 million right now we're having a

118projected surplus of 1.7 million you do see 3.2 million being transferred out for construction and for debt certificates and as we look at it right now we're looking at a fund balance of roughly 28.2 million or just over 41 this graph shows for five year period our revenue versus expenditures in the operating funds the nice thing about this graph is we the revenues are exceeding expenditures in all five years which which is always nice to see and with that i'll open up to any questions that is the end of the draft budget presentation sorry that's really good um so you mentioned there's an issue about getting our taxes the district's should we be concerned about cash flow in the uh fall i would say not in the fall but in the winter um yeah when

119should we start to work yeah so at least my plan for now and this is something that at least has been somewhat available at least certainly to business officials going on six months now um and it will as we get closer to when the bill should be issued i'm sure it'll hit the papers even more and then we get into the fall it's going to become more prevalent at least my plan had been there's really nothing to do now i think as we come back for the new school year whether that's august probably in august um maybe september we would start to talk about okay here's when i believe we'd run out of money right so like at some point if they just keep on arguing um and don't figure it out then you will

120we would need to have some short-term borrowing so that would be step one is sharing with the board when when do we think that would be then also too starting the process of getting any applications or paperwork lined up with a bank to have borrowing in place like we've already you know we we're the bank we use as north shore bank which is part of the wind trust group had a meeting with them it's probably been a month now but that was a topic that we had talked about you know okay this this is out there everybody knows it if you think you want to you know do something with us or another bank don't wait until november 15th for december 1st because everybody's going to be in the same thing and every different banks

121have different lead times um so our at least our thought process let's figure out what we want to or who we might want to use and kind of line that up and then if you know the money starts to come in in november great we never need it but if we get into december january certainly in january february yeah just to follow on to that i mean that the cash flow needs in the rare occurrence that the state is slowing giving up their money is sarcastic um was one of the reasons that we set the minimum reserve number at 40 because we looked historically at the time over like 10 years and you use up 30 35 plus percent um when the cash gets deferred as much as we're talking about now so that 40

122number serves the purpose of minimizing or reducing the probability of any number below that that would have been an even more important question so that that's just to reiterate why that number this is kind of stunning to me right like the ripple effect the property tax is going after you and i said then i think luckily we are a district with somebody as good as you and we have forethought and ability to take out a loan but is there i don't know if this belongs here but is there some kind of joint effort to hold state accountable for this so really that you know i'll give you a little more detail so really this is a county issue so yeah but if you ask the accessory the database that they were using was decades and

123decades old and they were like we need to upgrade this because it just will make our job easier to process everything and the issue is that the folks on the board of review which hear tons of cases every year um they they just didn't care so they're like hey you don't have jurisdiction over us so what the assessor is saying is we are presenting everything to the board of view in this updated software which they have the board review should have access to the border reviews and so now they're having to take data from the border review convert it you know it's in an old format convert it back to something that's usable so their blame is on both sides but um you know my hope is that they're just kind of like scaring everybody

124and saying yeah it's gonna be december january and you know they'll come through in like october november um you know like i did you know very fairly quick calculation like last week or maybe two weeks ago and just if we're delayed until say december very conservative we're going to be well over 100 000 in this interest revenue just right that doesn't even account for the fact that if we have to incur borrowing costs or some fees and setting that up even if even if the money comes in at thanksgiving and we never have to borrow we're still out six figures if they're anywhere near the timeline they're suggesting right and then they said we're we're one of the districts that's fortunate are in a good spot there are many others that once they hit one

125maybe two months they're already borrowing right in every successive months that they're borrowing you know just becomes more and more expensive so yeah it's not well on some level it's two groups at the county level it's impacting you know many many many people yeah and thank you for you might want to stop sharing your screen i was the contingency plans so let us know what you need anything for us thank you so much thanks for your very careful planning right uh student staff plans well speaking of careful planning this is our annual report that provides a status update regarding student enrollment and subsequent staffing needs dr goracky would you like to take this one sure thank you and happier news we are well on our way in planning for the fall um this is our

126typical annual report in the spring we'll have an update for you in the fall once things are more settled but this is kind of a snapshot of where we're at at this point enrollment and student registration started january 25th current projections appear to keep us pretty stable with student enrollment and staffing in general as we talked about earlier keep 39 will continue to be offered at all four elementary schools we're anticipating three set at least three sections at each of our schools um one of our schools already so we're keeping a close eye on that at wilma junior high this year we have had two extra features at the seventh grade level for those of you that have been here for a while we thought that's a double 18 sometimes the b2 now we're just

127saying we have two extra teachers um that are ones teaching math science social studies and one teaching reading writing studies and next year those two teachers those positions will move up to the eighth grade level to support those students student services has increased proposing increasing our student service coordinators for next year we're going to have more support at the building levels as well as our behavior specialist positions will be available one for our ec through fourth grade and one for grades five through eight with a focus continuing on mental health supports for all of our students and our summer maintenance and construction work looks to be on track and not impacting um our instructional spaces for this fall we're in pretty good shape i just had the one comment i think i did the arithmetic

128but it looks like around 90 of our kindergarten students um which i think we were using in the 80s as our target number so i think that's that's great um and it shows that there was a need there um it is something that we need to keep watching because in a year or maybe people's finances get a little tighter that that number may differ a little bit um but for this year it exceeds our our goals and i think that's a very good thing i agree i think too it's a credit to the teachers who are working within that program that program really has been built um from infancy to where it is today in two short years during some really difficult times so kudos to the teachers the principals and katie lee has really

129helped to make sure that there's uh regards curriculum and expectations and that we're really meeting that need for our curriculum students and families using all four classrooms at least two of the schools just very quickly thank you for prioritizing okay cool meeting well this 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 so come forward to the podium uh share your name community of residents and you'll have three minutes hi thank you so much so my name is gwen volk and i'm a district 39 parent and i really appreciate the opportunity to speak today and the work that the board does and so i wanted to really express sort of heartfelt thanks um to the board to the

130district 39 administration and to highcrest and wjhs's teacher sponsors of the pride clubs these clubs provide an opportunity for lgbtq plus youth and their allies to be in community and socialize with friends and a safe positive inclusive atmosphere and the research is really clear that lgbtq students who have lgbtq plus related school resources and support report better school experiences and academic success this support is critical as lgbtq plus youth experience greater risk for mental health challenges due to the barriers that they face and i see after listening to today's presentations that this type of support is also very much aligned and consistent with the district 39's goal of supporting community and the related kpis that were discussed today so i wanted to thank you again to the school board the school administration and the high

131crest and the wjhs teacher sponsors of the clubs that support lgbtq plus youth in district 39. the support allows our district to be inclusive and welcoming of all kids so thank you is there anybody else who would like to speak or okay we'll continue with our agenda uh which is the consent agenda under action items are there any items that the board would like pulled from the consent agenda the stone please proceed with emotions i move to approve the personnel report dated may 23 2022 i moved to approve the student lunch fees for the 2022-2023 2023 school year as contained in exhibit a of the report i move to approve the accounts payable for bills listed between april 26 2022 through may 23 2022 in the following amounts educational fund one million ninety eight thousand

132eight hundred and one dollars and ninety one cents o m fund ninety three thousand seven hundred and sixty dollars and thirty nine cents debt services seventy six thousand three hundred and forty six dollars and twenty five cents transportation one hundred and seventy two thousand seven hundred and two dollars capital projects 167 and twenty five dollars and twelve cents for a total all funds of one million six hundred and nine thousand five hundred thirty five dollars and sixty seven cents i moved to approve the manual checks issued between april 26 2022 and may 23 2022 in the following amounts educational fund 665 856.49 o m fund fifty nine thousand three hundred and sixty one dollars and three cents transportation sixty eight thousand sorry sixty eight dollars and forty seven cents would this be a credit okay

133and the credit of capital projects or capital projects a credit of ten thousand dollars for a total all funds of seven hundred and fifteen thousand two hundred and eighty five dollars and ninety nine cents yeah i have a second second the motion has been moved and seconded with the clerk please call the roll chances ready yes ann hart yes bonnie kim yes frank panzika yes lisa schneider faves yeah aaron stone yes amy yes eas have it motions carried uh we'll move to conference items is there any old business i had one item just to bring up an item that we talked about before in the crc audit of the previous report there was a line item talking about reevaluating and monitoring the district 39 homework policy um and it mentioned that there's the implementation falls

134short because there's no student feedback regarding feelings about homework we've talked a little bit about homework in the past i think this would be a opportunity to keep talking about it i guess the thoughts board members i'm not sure with the audit report the process for those recommendations typically happens with the administration and then well and i guess i'm just reframing to find out where does the follow-up from that audit happen and what is our role versus internal the follow-up most certainly would come from the administration generally speaking katie i will let as our resident expert speak to the crc and follow up on the audit report sure um when we look at the actual crc report that would inform our strategic planning and any action stepping there typically the auto report is more of

135an informational item however it is you know you don't necessarily directly respond to that it's more of them giving us a status of hey how did we do with that last report and are the recommendations that were existing back then still in existence now how how did we do in implementing that so i think um mr panzika brings up a point of this was unique in that they shared a piece that they felt was not a follow-through in its entirety and so that's something that we as the administrative team could discuss and respond to and look into thank you other related or in other way other old business well um this is not i don't know if this is really old business but um i keep forgetting just to mention um and i had plenty

136of opportunities but i did attend the educational foundation fundraiser last month and it was really i was like going to bring it up at the committee the whole and then i missed my opportunity so i just wanted to say that it was so great to see so many i mean they're really old so many young families parents who were there um and um the venue double clutch was so fun and the band is a mckenzie parent band antler chandelier and they were fantastic it was so much fun and i was really really happy to be um representing you all there so yeah it was a very successful event too i know that they've celebrated that a couple of times but a really successful event and kudos to our principals in the back of the room

137who donated their time and expertise and the willingness to hand over their reins to principal for a day i heard back from the organizers that that was in particular one of the greatest fundraisers for the event so thank you to our principals for giving up their time and talents there as well thanks for going and thanks for sharing old business yes okay uh are we done any other old business okay take it away mine relates to uh so the idea came up um recently that maybe we should think about sort of kind of in my view sort of randomly assigning ourselves to the liaison to various groups that we assign ourselves for the whole you know academic year of one of the groups like you know the foundation and crc and decent can the positive

138would be you know the kind of pro to the idea would be to to give some more consistency instead of having a new board member show up it seems like we do that for um the president's council for pta we do it for dsat um and for some of the other leads and responsibilities but the education foundation and crc in particular have rotated and that's been the tradition of the board so something definitely to think about i'm gonna rip on that we were talking about maybe disbanding a committee structure i think that's a great topic of discussion for august for the board at the committee the whole meeting i know that's often a busy meeting but it's also a really good time to plan for the upcoming year as a whole and we want to

139reconsider those committee and think and talk about it leading up to them but certainly we could put it on the june agenda if you wish as well yeah i'm just i agree i think that's the right time to talk about it off the top of my head i think are are we joining those committees in particular crc and foundation to add input to the conversation or typically what is then is more providing a board update and then sharing that before so in that way it works to rotate and have a different perspective because we're not you know in the meaningful conversation i think the other advantage is that it it gives all the board members a feel for those committees because otherwise you know the educational foundation i mean you could go several years on

140the board without actually seeing how their meetings work and the strong interactions and the inputs and all that it's just as an example so i think we could talk about it more but i mean i think part of it was to educate us as much as anything else i think it's a great topic and so let's put it on the august agenda along with any other new business um i um i had i know it was brought up before and i had the opportunity to attend the reflections um just last week though it was just a couple days ago um and it's it's such a worthwhile event it's it's important to recognize career milestones um and the the 5 15 25 euro milestones the retirement milestones i particularly felt sad that in the two years

141before that especially the retirees that that you know worked here for you know their career and you know had as much interaction as they could given covet but missed the opportunity to have their community come together as a whole and support them and it was so nice just here that they're able to do that so i think it was a really worthwhile event well well run and and well attended also so definitely worthwhile uh may i have a motion to adjourn to executive session to discuss collective negotiations and specific personnel i move to adjourn to executive session to discuss collective negotiations and specific personnel may i have a second second motion having been made and seconded will the clerk please call the roll johnson's ready yes ann hart yes bonnie kim yes frank panzika yes

142lisa schneider vapes erin stone yes amy payne yes motion carried we are now adjourned to executive session and the time is 9 19 p.m