Wilmette Public Schools District 39 Board of Education Meeting November 15, 2021

001my name is jordan and i participate in high five choir [Music] oh please stand for the pledge [Music] one nation thank you thanks for being here and we're also grateful that you're able to participate in all of those such important activities once again this year [Applause] so i want to tell you a little bit about the art behind me jamie berngard central school artist provided the amazing work in our boardroom first graders delved into the color monster a story about emotion by anna yenis to inspire these collaged monsters each monster represents a feeling based on the color and expression students enjoyed portraying different color connected moods while making their artwork look just like the book second graders started the year learning about pablo picasso in his most influential art movement cubism students created a picasso

002inspired witch while learning how to mix primary colors to create secondary colors students experimented with paints by layering both watercolor and tempera paints creating a colorful leaf third grade students refreshed their knowledge of pattern while creating a specially colored large leaf using bleeding tissue paper students continued to explore nature this fall by creating realistic paintings of pumpkins using a wet on dry painting technique focusing on the lightness or darkness of the shade fourth graders at the end over there were very enthusiastic about creating these soft sculptured plush pizzas students learned a new skill and were soon sewing as if they were professionals so at this point i seek a motion to approve the october 25th 2021 board of education minutes i move to approve the october 25th 2021 board of education minutes may i have

003a second second the motion has been made and seconded board members are there any comments errors or omissions to the minutes okay if not all those in favor of approving as submitted please indicate by saying yay yes the motion carries by general assen consent i request a motion to adjourn to the public hearing on the 2021 tax levy i move to adjourn to the public hearing on the 2021 tax levy they have a second second motion having been made and seconded all those in favor please indicate by saying yay yes motion carried by general consent and we are now adjourned to the levy hearing i hereby call to order this 2021 tax levy hearing for wilmette public schools district 39 and i turn it over to dr premisgoly thank you and i will introduce corey

004baldwyer who will walk us through the estimated tax levy thank you so tonight we have a public hearing on the 2021 tax levy um as i'll cover the presentation the tax levy hearing is an optional act of transparency that the district has done for many years now so tonight is the last step for the board's part of the annual tax levy calendar we asked the board to approve it and then by the last tuesday in december we will file the approved levy with the county clerk a little bit of review of the background for district 39 the property taxes are a source of over 84 percent of the district's total revenue the district's levy is subject to p-tell commonly referred to as the tax cuts and this is an increase in the prior year cpi

005plus the addition of new property growth this is something the district must capture in the year that it becomes new growth or they lose it forever there are three kind of three big considerations eav is the equalized assessed value of properties within the 39 boundaries cpi is referred to as the consumer price index or inflation for the the calendar year that's applicable to this year and new property growth which is the value of new growth that has been newly developed and assessed during that tax year this next slide shows the relationship across multiple years of cpi which we found out in calendar year 2020 of 1.4 it's applicable to the tax level year that we are asking the board to approve tonight those taxes will be paid by taxpayers during the 2022 calendar year and

006it ultimately has a direct impact on the district's fiscal year budget historically this slide shows 10 years of new growth and eav amounts last year's new new growth was 12.19 million 10-year average is just a little bit over 14 million which we plugged into our estimated formula for this year and as you can see from 19 to 20 the total uav across the district remains almost identical our next slide shows the formula that the county uses in calculating our limiting rate the importance of the limiting rate is it's the rate that is assessed to new growth so it essentially creates the value of new growth and i think one key takeaway that regardless of where where our rate might end in any given year whether it's 2.9 or 3.0 or 2.8 is that the district

00739's portion of the average taxpayers bill will increase by a cpa factor of 1.4 for the 2021 tax level this particular slide i like to focus on two things there's three columns on the right account for what if we capture cpi what if we capture cpi plus 10 years of your average of new growth and then what is our recommended levy of the amount so when we go to the bottom half of the slide you can see that the increase due to cpi is estimated to be about 795 000 value then we go down even a further line in the middle column and we can see that our 10-year average a little over 14 million dollars of new growth should equate to about 418 000 in value for tax revenue during the next levy year

008and then the far right column we have the 41.98 million and recommended new growth which would equate to 1.25 million an additional tax revenue the reason that number is so much larger is that the way the formula is is done we need to levy an amount much larger than what we think it's going to be because they don't tell us what the new growth and given what i just previously said about if you don't capture it you lose it forever we love you an amount large enough to capture anything that we think is out there forty one point nine eight million is a number large enough that we think it will capture everything then this last slide just shows buy fund or buy like levy area the final extension amount from the 2020 extension which

009was collected during the 21 calendar year the middle column is the estimated extension so that's really the best way to figure that is that's what we think we'll get based upon historical averages and then the far right column is what we are levying or that amount that's kind of been bloomed up to capture any potential new growth out there so i think the two k key takeaways from this final slide at least from my perspective is our levy request is 3.6 over last year's final amount 1.4 of that is what we would expect existing taxpayers to see on their bill and then the other 2.2 percent is what we've levied to try and capture any new growth which we won't know that exact amount until probably next summer when the tax bills are finalized so

010just to recap our levee request is 58 million eight hundred seventy five thousand three hundred and one and it's three point six percent higher than last year that is the end of the presentation so i will open it up to any questions at this time or numbers have any questions uh i just wanted to say there was a good presentation it's always difficult to do so many steps to get those across and i think the scientists here did a good job um yeah thank you cory it's really helpful i'm i'm always just struck by how important the new growth is to our budget every year it's it's amazing to me how it drives a lot of our growth and revenue it shows the importance of development the continuing development of our community through our finances

011so then this would be an opportunity for the audience to address the board regarding the tax levy i do not see any uh audience members in the room do we have any on zoom would like to speak about the tax levy no okay so uh i request a motion to adjourn to the regular meeting i move to adjourn to the regular meeting may i have a second second motion having been made and seconded all those in favor please indicate by saying yay motion carried by general consent and we are now adjourned to the regular board of education meeting and we will start with board reports uh we'll do facility development led by mr panzika thank you um we had the um we did the whole meeting on november 8th and subset of that is the

012facilities meeting this is again the transition time of the year where we're working through the the details uh in particular we're looking at the programs for next summer so we have some major projects at harper ramona and mckenzie harper is out without to pre-bid and the opening of the bids will be uh at the end of november the current estimate for the work needed to be done at harper which is boilers and roofing bathroom renovation is right around 4.4 million ramona and mckenzie are in the process of getting their final quotes ready for pre-bid and both are expected to open up in january on time we are watching carefully the uh two two factors one to make sure that any equipment that's needed is ordered in a timely manner so the work can get done

013in the summer and be complete before the school year and then the other is watching if there's any price inflation so far the the contractors are on top of that and believe that we're a good fit so that's it for today great thank you mr cesaretti school of finance thank you president paling so at the same meeting mr boltmeyer told us that baker tilly will present the audit report at the next committee meeting on december 6th he noted that the statistical information for the comprehensive annual financial report comes from outside the firm and cook county and cook county has had some challenges and there's been some delay in getting that information over to us therefore the information will be presented at the next committee meeting nevertheless mr baltimore reviewed a draft summary of their revenues

014and expenditures by fund the operating funds total for july 2020 was 41.7 million and the operating funds total for june 2021 was 35.7 million with operating expenditures fund balance at 56.96 mr baltimore also shared a budget to actual differences spreadsheet and i think that just was there it was fairly different and he noted that there were a large number of operational decisions that were made last year due to the pandemic especially in regard to substitutes and long-term substitutes he reviewed budget categories that came in under budget such as salaries and benefits p39 tuition lunch fees supplies and materials for the education ed tuition student fees and utilities categories that came in over budget included replacement taxes transportation technology purchase services capital outlay and federal stay day members discussed keep 39 tuition stating it staying ahead

015of the supply chain issue in technology by ordering ipads early replacement taxes and possible investment opportunities mr baltimore stated along with the financial audit presentation by baker tilly in december elizabeth hennessey of raymond james will also present about our debt refunding options along with district 39 financial projections thank you great thank you miss schneider faves for strategy um thank you the district received um fall achievement data from nwea math which was presented by katy lee for review of the benchmark data the data provides a baseline achievement for the school year as well as the historic reflection of the time data since the achievement i mean the assessment was first administered lee noted that student achievement levels have remained consistent despite the challenges strategic plan goals and action steps align with areas for equipment institute learning

016curriculum and structure katie lee then presented the iar or illinois assessment readiness assessment results from the spring of 2021. the results were just received the past week so the results presented were very preliminary and embargoed by the state the data is reflective of the 2020-2021 school year and will be publicly released on december 2nd when the illinois state board of education releases the school report card data the iar state assessment is issued once a year at the end of the school year it is a measure of the district accountability and student achievement at a single point in time state is still processing the data and once the data is released the administration will share the information with teachers to identify focus the first air assessment was administered in the spring of 2019 prior to the

017pandemic the iar was not issued in 2020 and the 2021 school year is still recovering from the effects of the endemic while on map student achievement is maintained as relatively consistent the iar shows mixed results with some grade levels performing better throughout the endemic than the state recovery needs and suggested while other grade levels show some learning recovery needs similar to those recognized on this measure throughout the state participation rates are not yet available in several aspects of data analysis that can be helpful to districts in evaluating needs have also not been released thank you so much so we will have liaison reports starting with ms stone for community review yes the crc met on november 9th it approved its topic for study for this year which is social emotional learning or sel specifically the

018topic is building a cohesive and responsive social and emotional learning environment across the district through strengthening parent-teacher communication and increasing parent understanding of an engagement in specific social emotional learning instruction the crc also divided into four subcommittees um the first is going to look at current parent and community understandings of sel the second is going to look at what surrounding or similar districts are doing the third is going to look at what the national trends in this area are and the fourth is going to audit the crc report from 2014-15 which was cultivating growth-minded resilient students their next meeting is on tuesday december 7th at 7 pm here at the mac our work will be so helpful thank you and mrs kim for illinois association of school boards thank you um i don't have much

019to report except for this weekend is the joint annual conference and i'm really excited to represent district 39 along with the stone and drama scully so uh we will be reporting back on you know what we experienced there thanks great it's nice that they're back in person uh mrs hart the wilmette community special education units um the committee met earlier today mr baltimore provided a summary of the 2021 annual financial report and audit as presented by baker tilly no issues were identified and the with the committee approved the 2021 annual financial report dr swanson also stated that they are working on a plan for summer 2022 classes the current plan is to hold the summer classes during the month of july similar to what we did this past summer and summer classes will likely return

020to ramona junior high this year thank you i'll turn it back to mrs kim for a legislative update thank you um so today president biden signed into law the 1.2 trillion dollar infrastructure bill which is meant to repair the nation's aging roads and bridges upgrade the electrical grid and expand access to broadband internet this is the largest federal investment in infrastructure in more than a decade what it means for schools is money for broadband internet and affordable devices clean energy school buses competitive grants to schools for energy efficiency improvements and alike illinois will likely receive 1.7 billion dollars from the program 100 million dollars will likely go to expand internet broadband coverage throughout the state and 1.7 billion dollars to improve drinking water including lead pipe removal um in illinois we have seen two bills

021relating to coveted 19 that are of interest to schools one is an amendment to the health care right of conscience act the health care right of conscience act prohibits discrimination against anyone for their conscientious refusal to participate in a particular form of health care services contrary to his or her conscience the amendment would insert language stating that it is not a violation of the law for an employer to take any measures or impose any requirements intended to prevent contraction or transmission of covet 19. it's been a controversial bill but it is supported by the governor and likely to be signed the second bill hb 2778 is the school employee benefit and wage protection bill cast by the house and senate and currently in front of the governor this bill will require districts to provide unlimited

022covet administrative days to any school employees to be used for all covid related absences of quarantining and testing so that employees would not have to use benefit fund the second provision is that it would provide paycheck protection for hourly employees so that would mean that if school has to close hourly employees would still receive their full paycheck it is um uncertain whether the governor will sign this bill as it's as it um is currently um and the third law is hb otherwise known as face law and that is currently on the governor's desk the law aims to educate teachers and school staff about grooming and how to identify the warning signs that the teacher may be sexually abusing a student that's it thank you thank you for keeping us updated on all of that dr

023kramer scully we can move to information items thank you written communication the board received several written communications from greg fischer regarding transportation from harm's road in glenview to highcrest middle school and written communication was received from ivana zelik offering assistance with instructional design and teaching strategies in terms of administrative announcements i'd like to start with appreciation for our school board members today is school board member day november 15th and i just wanted to announce this event and take a moment to acknowledge the many countless hours of time and efforts the school board members put into supporting us our district our community it is often a thankless job but i will say through covid in all of the efforts to recover from the pandemic it has been especially difficult and um and at times divisive and

024i think our school board in particular has done an outstanding job of uniting together to support the needs of our students and our staff and our community at large your leadership has really really helped us to move forward and ensure that we can provide the best for our students and for our staff as well so i just want to take a minute and say thank you very much i also want to acknowledge and thank you for pushing us to move forward with the strategic plan even when we were unsure we would be able to accomplish it all and your support there too means so much i think it has set us up really well for a successful next five years and again recovery from the pandemic so thank you to each and every one of

025you [Applause] speaking of a strategic plan we have our district strategic advisory team compiled and meeting for the first time this thursday we're really excited to gather as a team our first meeting will be organizational in nature in reviewing some of the subcommittees and our next steps so we're really excited about that this year's work as we all know will focus primarily on developing the key performance indicators that will help to monitor and evaluate our district's progress so we're really eager to get that work started i know there's a couple of areas in particular that people are very excited to spend some time talking about so thank you parent-teacher conferences were held last week each year these meetings provide a really wonderful opportunity for parents to connect with our teachers regarding their child's curriculum progress

026performance in classroom in the growth areas that teachers are identifying so i want to say thank you to all of our teachers for their incredible work and making that a really meaningful connection time and a thank you to our parents who took the time out to meet with our teachers we also held a staff event as the board knows one of our goals in building a strong and supportive professional community is connecting across our district and we do that in a variety of ways professionally through curriculum committees and grade level meetings etc but we're also trying to find some opportunities to celebrate our staff and so recently in celebration of fall we hosted a fun staff gathering after hours teams from each school competed in a friendly game of family feud and i have to

027say it was so much fun um we we met outside outback wghs we had a facilitator come and lead us through some fun games we were there for just about an hour but it really was a great way to connect so we hope to host more of these events and i want to say thank you to tony devonte for helping to organize and set this one up so thank you and to everyone who joined us as well on a very busy week it was great to connect across the district we also recently held our first township vaccination clinic for 5 to 11 year olds thank you it was a wonderful event we hosted it on friday many of our families are choosing to access vaccines in a variety of ways this was just one additional

028opportunity um we were pleased that all doses were or all appointments were filled up and that they didn't fill up so quickly that someone who really wanted to get one right at 6 30 pm wasn't able to so it seems those appointments were available all the way until about 11 30 or midnight on the night that they opened up but they did all sell out within the first six hours or so uh we administered approximately 1 000 doses to 5 to 11 year olds across the township and they'll get their second dose there they have their appointment for that in three weeks and then we're hosting a sec another clinic coming up and that clinic will be hosted at glencoe but again available to all township students so we're excited to be able to host

029that i want to say thank you to all of our partners throughout the township for collaborating on that effort and to joel oscar who is our pharmacy partner it was really fun to see the kids coming in many with excitement a few with a bit of trepidation but uh they made it through and i think it was really helpful to have some friendly faces there uh to help navigate so thank you to everyone who volunteered their time to come in as well we also recently communicated to our parent community about some job openings and substitute needs that we have we continue to recruit or substitute teachers this is really important partially because of the pandemic in the job market related but also because we really are focused on supporting our teachers through professional development and

030collaboration in order to do so we need to make sure that we have sufficient substitute teachers available so we continue to be in need of daily substitutes within our schools we're looking for qualified substitutes and just sent out an email sharing some information asking people to sign up if they're interested in our human resources department will walk them through um through that process of application so thank you to so many i think we had either did you say about 42 43 responses to our recent email which is outstanding and we're learning that our parents are some of the very best substitute teachers they really do a great job and i think find meaningful work through that as well and a nice opportunity to enter our schools which not everybody can do right now so if

031you're interested reach out to our human resources department and then finally freedom of information act request we have received a few uh we received a foia from marcel country requesting the most recent transportation rfp and beverage milk water juice rfp documents another foia was received from bernadette soto of the chicago regional council of carpenters requesting executed contracts between district 39 and triple a lock and key halderman home anderson lad incorporated and stalker sports floors for fy 2020 including any correspondence disclosure documents identifying general contractors subcontractors and the schools where the work was performed and so that concludes my report we have annual business up next yes said a couple follow-up comments questions whatever i'm on the parent t-shirt um i assume they were they were doing this here or anywhere and obviously there's a lot

032of advantages that especially in the [Music] one of the places where i met a lot of parents um and over the years you know recognized faces you know talked about how kids were doing etcetera etcetera was at these conferences um and while there's classes and minuses to the to the zoom i think there's an opportunity to replicate that maybe in some other ways restrictions to make sure we don't lose that because especially in the four grades the bonding with the school the bonding with the other parents turned out where a lot of your kids friends are made in those grades just doing it by doing the parent's communication with each other is submitted so i i mean i'm not in this environment i completely understand um i think you're i think you're right and i

033think that our elementary schools in particular really grappled with that decision to maintain conferences on zoom conferences are more of a one-to-one opportunity but each of our schools has hosted some fall events all hosted outside and in partnership with their ptas and so those have provided i think an opportunity for parents to come together and gather but your point is well taken and we'll continue to really look at that as um as we come out of the pandemic i think one of the strengths of our schools is the bonding that the k-34 i mean people even in high school talk about being friendly but but i mean that that means that there's a value there um that again we're doing everything right sometimes if you don't bring these things up remember them like to present

034the board i think it's pretty self-explanatory i guess i think i'm more here to answer any questions you may have it really just consists of charts every which way you want to look at this from the last 20 years to today you know there are peaks in certain grades mostly being our upper grades right now but taking a look back at the last 20 years you will find that you had other peaks so although it may look as it's going down now and that certainly mirrors a trend that is happening around uh here as well as all of illinois as well as much of the country as well over time it's pretty stable so i'm here if you have any questions regarding the report the numbers not just who we house physically in our six

035schools plus our itinerary speech kids that come here to the neck but as well as those that we that are enrolled through us that provide get some type of service whether that's at our one of our neighboring parochial schools or elsewhere are there any questions i think you just spoke to it but could you tell us a little bit about what you've seen or heard about illinois and other areas so next month i'll give a long-term projections report where we'll take a look more at that so around this time every year there's two reports i typically give this time it's separated out i couldn't have them both done we didn't have data back from barrager which is a company we use that looks at uh first strict cert births as well as other data in

036order to do some projections for us um so right now what i have is enrollment data as of today and past so that's really what i can talk to and and uh it's even broken down by school as far as historical okay thanks yeah next month i think it's month it's a little more appropriate i will say just one thing on that which is with the pandemic and enrollment dropping slightly due to that i'm not sure that was ever in a burger projection uh how that would impact us so there is something floating out there of how many uh how many kids did we lose due to covet or just not parents not wanting to enroll their kids within the school boundaries so that number might be are currently enrolled students might be a little

037smaller just to talk to that one part i'll also add two points just as we're looking at this and as we think about next month's report um two interesting ways in which i like to look at these data um if you look at page five of the report there's longitudinal enrollment data it just makes it somewhat easy to look at that cohort survival which just means from one year to the next one your students are in fifth grade the next year they're in sixth grade if you watch that cohort and how that those numbers grow within the cohort we tend to grow meaning we tend to add students from their elementary school through eighth grade um that a demographer would say in migration that's students moving into our district and adding to our population it's

038one good indicator that students aren't moving out of our district but instead moving in as the cohort continues through our system and the other thing that's really important for us to continue to consider is with our keep 39 program and now offering a full day option for families previously we often heard that families would choose outside of the district in kindergarten um because of the the differences in enrichment opportunities for a whole day kindergarten program now offering that it'll be interesting to watch and see if our numbers remain steady if they're able to grow what happens with that first year of kindergarten enrollment because we know that once they start here they often stay involved in our districts and vice versa as they start at a private school they tend to stay as they become

039a part of that community so the suspicion is that if we capture the kids in kindergarten um not only bring them to other schools but sometimes um the the other one is is i've been seeing these reports i always found them interesting for probably 10 years for 10 years it's like you know the numbers really they fluctuate they're stable and that's been a really great thing um you know the last three or four years so it's not just a pandemic the if you look back 10 12 years it's all really pretty but it has scripted and it's always difficult to see trends on this until after the trend is well established but yeah um the numbers are a little bit different than they have been they are i mean they're a little lower than they

040have been but if you look back to 20 years and we were floating around 3 400-ish students we i believe peaked in 2014 2015 at 37 and 32 and then we're back down we've never been in the 3300 range historically so there is something unique about that but unsure how coveted and people's willingness to send them to a school not just our schools playing school during this time it's just it's just unknown so i would love to see like you said it's always something interesting to look in the rearview mirror so in a couple years from now when life is a little more uh pre-covered normal uh it'll be interesting to see how our enrollment uh shakes out right now it's very hard to determine that because if they choose not to send their kids

041here we're not aware of that information so yeah next month we'll talk about projections going forward it also takes a look back and then it's been fairly accurate in the projections that we've gotten from them but again these last couple of years i don't know if anyone could have predicted our numbers relative to other districts have been more steady so that's yeah well that tends to be a very stable community young couples move here they raise their kids here and you know there just isn't uh there's not a lot of open land there's not a lot of cory talked a little bit about the new construction which i'll probably reiterate next month but typically the new construction in town isn't isn't for families um that we're seeing at least in the last couple years or

042if it is it has minor impacts so there is what there is as far as homes uh here in our boundaries not just here but the party venue that we serve as well so it's just a matter of families moving in and families moving out and you know as uh berger has told us as well as other we've seen from other demographers that populations are we're just not seeing the birth rates that that once were so families there's a big trend of just enrollments going down no matter where you are but ours when you think about that the fact that we're stable maybe is just as good as it going up so i mean we tend to our buildings are pretty full if you were to ask any of our principals i don't think we

043have a shortage of kids let's put it that way any other questions yeah can i ask you a question i just want to make sure that i yeah i know how to read this on that last page the top part no um the bottom part so like if i were to follow a particular class of kids would i be going on the diagonal okay yeah yeah yeah that's what dr kramer scully was talking about just following those cohorts on the day any other questions okay thank you katie lee will present the fall assessment report and i believe that uh kelly jackson is here to join her in that associated with the social emotional learning media too so we'll have katie start with a quick snapshot of iar and then looking at data for most of

044the board this is a review of information but formally presented this evening if i was going to say thank you for the conversation activity of the whole so this presentation um involves three reports that support it so the first one being the spring iar that i will begin with and then i will continue with the fall map um baseline achievement data that we'd like to present to you through our seo information which is also baseline for us so before i begin like i did the whole i wanted to provide some context for the type of assessment um you know from the classroom level we gather data from assessments about student learning that will inform instructional decisions classroom school and district we acknowledge the teachers and staff assess and value the classroom and curriculum-based information a

045lot and these assessments are gathered more frequently they help them decide what comes next within the lesson measure how students are progressing and decide when to re-teach or provide enrichment incentives sometimes it's really formal at the end of the unit test or sometimes it's informal like population notes but they both provide evidence of learning for our students um there are district and school level assessments who are administered less frequently the snapshot data from the assessments help us to set more strategic goals and adjust our district's uh focus and administration uses information at the to engage with staff and collaborations to celebrate strength to notice trends and descent goals this data provides focus and signals to the district where we can better support this presentation will begin with spring 2021 iar data um it's the illinois

046ss movement readiness and it is preliminary as this is during the day it is embargoed until december 2nd um so um we also wanted to mention that during the week of october 25th um when we received the student reports they were sent home for the elementaries um so due to the nature of last year though there were incidences where students were either not able to participate so although the overall performance level provides measured progress the skills breakdown provides more description to aid in the interpretation of the scores um we are still waiting for the school district and state property averages that are provided for comparison usually and is the illinois state board of education as these reports will be available around december and anticipates the public release of the results to happen okay so let

047me begin there we go all right this flight prize you from background and anyone who is watching some background about the stage assessment it began as part in 2015 continued for a few more years using a different format and then became iar in 2019 2021 you will notice that 2020 is reason being that illinois state board of education is suspended ier describes student performance and progress for great specific standards according to five levels level one um being did not yet meet expectations level two partially met expectations of the approaching expectations and level four net expectations and level 5 exceeded access we typically focus on levels the next two slides share in the table the percentage of students is performed at each of the levels last columns of both of those slides just combined level four

048and five so that we can um share with you the number of students who match those the next several displays shares level four and five years by the grade level the line graph that you see is an estimate of the state level data and you'll notice that in some grade level sister theory one follows the time statewide but you will also notice that i will run through each of these slides will represent a grade level in yellow so in order to learn a little bit more um specifically where to focus our improvement efforts we did look at the subclaim categories in particular for english and their categories um fell under literary tax informational tests every written expression knowledge and use of language with the time that we were given we really wanted to decide in

049this area to see where could we really focus our attention um just to also give you a little bit more background the subclaim performance levels are really matched to the other performance levels that i shared with you the h or the higher um means that it is equal to the performance level of four times the n in the middle was at three and the lower would be levels one two the next set of slides will share the 2019 results to offer a pre-pandemic contest this is third grade followed by the 2021 to offer a pandemic and this is 2020. starting um with ela and then we'll move on you'll notice that the pandemic did have an influence when you compare 2019 to although we have students who performed well in written expression we have identified

050following the next presentation on fall interview map assessment will include written expression as it relates to one of the security thank you for the information and the details that we had at the committee as a whole um it's hard with only one data point but it really seemed like the fifth grade ela number was dramatic is there any i mean it was a traumatic year and all sorts of things and going from fourth grade the comfort of the grade school to fifth grade could have been part of it do you have any preliminary because the the crop off was quite significant in particular i mean there's other places where it dropped off you kind of expected it at some level potentially but that one stood out just by flipping through um perfectly i think in

051general if you look at 2019 a little bit better than in 2021 but for fifth grade we'd love the opportunity to engage our teachers in that conversation i do think um i mean i'm pretty confident it was just a um indication of the situation learning environment being there but the other thing we have to consider is how how our students perceive the data and also and how much you know energy they may have to put forward a spring assessment that one thing that many people may not know is for the entire year the state went back and forth of whether they were going to have us do it or not and so there was a really short turnaround so i don't have a direct answer for you to say but i do know that um

052we should engage businesses going back and forth and the typical because the entire environment applied to all the grades um and that one just kind of it's about twice the drop off of other grades so it's just you know if there's any known reason yeah no not yet not yet but i do believe on the district level for my department that is ours to really take that information out and to did you bring back when when you have some information on that one in particular because the cell phone just united to get a little bit of balance and it'll never be a death obviously but okay thank you um see if i could share the appropriate screen um so the next part of this presentation will be the 2021 fall nwa assessment we consider the

053fall achievement data as our baseline main data to measure how our students are doing um throughout the year just to provide a little bit more background on this as mentioned earlier this evening nwms of the district assessment that's administered three times a year three times a year fall winter spring nwa nap is a computer adaptive assessment school used to monitor second through eighth grade students achievement growth and when students finish a map growth test a root score is calculated that is a level which the student has correctly answered questions of similar difficulty and complexity and red is an abbreviation for a rash unit which is based on a stable equal interval and the equal integral means that the difference between the scores is the same and measures student performance regardless of all achievement data many

054times serves as a baseline for the district to use in order to moderate student progress and the year-end closed by spring this presentation provides the same results but from a variety of perspectives so the next slide provides a visual represents representational reading and mathematics achievement by grade over the years just to give you a snapshot of trends you would notice if there was any drastic dips or increases now this slide answers the question how many of our students performed better than the national average for fall 2021 you will notice that at least 80 percent of students within a grade level performed above the grade level in some cases the next two the next two slides present the same information as these tables that are organized by cohorts to show data for the same group of

055students as they progress this is the cohort trends for reading we're looking for staircases um or equal and this is now next we are sharing more detailed information for each grade level i will use second grade um to explain how the data is being presented for each of the grade bubbles and then following this explanation i'll slowly flip those lies for the other grades so this slide shows reading and math the average or the mean risk for over time so fall 2017 all the way to call 2021. i think the most interest might be in the yellow fall 2019 which is that pre-conference here in fall 2020 which was our um just like iar we wanted to dig a little deeper and show you the different subcategories and um see if we notice that you're

056trying to know interestingly um nwa map decided to be categorizer sub categories this particular year so what you see on the screen now is from fall 2017 to fall and then the next screen i will show you in the three different the three categories moving forward so if you know as fall 2020 is the queen i mean particularly this grade level um some of our higher shores and in the past and then we have the second graders yes um these second graders then would have been um in first grade this year would have had a typical kindergarten year an unusual a more typical kindergarten year until about march right right an unusual first grade year and then now this is their second grade year and that's what we're reporting so these are students who really

057haven't had a typical school year yet and that's that would be so this is this is the uh this would represent what you just described each of these um whenever we share with you that's data that is not cohorted then please know that those are all different classes you see so let me go back um for example to this one so this one um we're showing you all of 2017 the group of students that were second figures so there's i think relevance in sharing this type of data but we value the cohorts more from our perspective as we see um the same for the students grow over time um but we do know that this is one way of looking at how are we regardless of the group of students are we able to achieve

058or help them achieve at the same level as other groups of second graders before them and then into the future so um yes and again this is all relative to national averages right so each year is how we are okay um and so then i'm back to where i paused before and this is the lead threats for um the current year and projector explain a disrupted kindergarten a pandemic first grade here's our first year second and we were still able to look at it and for math um they did not re-categorize now sub category so that you will see the orange bars um alongside the past so again different groups of second graders but in math um they are mean reds according so follow the same pattern for third grade fourth grade and so on

059so i will just flip through these slides for you third grade foreign that was one representation looking at different groups of students over time uh what we'd like to also share is a cohort view uh reading and math progressions throughout the years starting from when we first start with them if they were in second grade we started the math assessment all the way through eighth grade so the next series the slides will provide the same information but organized by cohorts to show data what we're looking for is a trend up as they progress because the mean rate score should the achievements should be greater over time so here is uh reading and start with that the second grade is very easy we have a single point right current class of 2028 um what you see

060in the black is the just for context it's the national mean lit and we're using the 2020 nw pre-pandemic one so when so we are saying hey district 39 our second graders are starting with the meeting width of 187 and nationally not even taking into consideration on the pandemic the national need with just to provide some time so for on this one you'll notice a little orange data point that is um showing up we wanted to show you all the spring um for each of these um students so the way you would read this one is that 188 in the fall 199 this group of the class of 2027 um ended the year as second graders and then this is their uh third grade year and so we are starting with a meanwhile of 200.

061so here's our class of 2026. you'll notice that spring 2020 does not contain a data point and that is because we followed illinois state board of education suspension of the state assessments and we also did not administer now in the spring of 2020. here is math and the same views um this is very familiar to all of you with our strategic plan for goal one just wanted to bring this to your attention and also highlight what we feel are the action steps that would address the results that you have seen so far so we would say the action steps or the next steps would be district 39 will apply the improvement process in the following ways um some directly from the strategic plan action sets that you saw in the earlier slide but continuing the

062data meetings with improved structure and focus on grade level and student level data analysis in order to identify for students with interventions supporting android enrichment and reading and math we would like to strengthen our primary reading instruction assessment and interventions for elementary students having that early literacy focus will grow over time strengthen and support writing instruction in grades two through eight especially addressing the written expression that we've identified as an area of focus and we are through our mtss committee conducting quite a few audits but one in particular is wanting to learn from our teachers what classroom level assessments give them the most valuable information and we want to know if there's any gaps that we can help and support or is there any place that we should be sharing we are also looking forward

063to i should not be remiss by mentioning this we're also looking forward to that the district strategic um advisory team uh to review data such as this as ir and nwa map along with many others and assist in identifying what our key performance indicators will be and we would look forward to monitoring our district's progress using those again thank you katie for all the [Music] and i know in a lot of ways the district likes the map tool better than iar for a variety of reasons but it doesn't look like the map has a way of highlighting written so what what um testing um body makes sense to be able to identify that we're making progress in the written expression or do we have to basically fall back to the iar normally we don't well

064absolutely we notice the same thing we're thinking a lot about um you know when i said let me start over with the gap and doing the audit of what do we have that's really strong what's missing i believe that administrators and teachers who all identify we don't really have something other than iar or a component of iir that will give us that writing information so we've already had side conversations you just need to formalize it now you know part of that is like you said going to the grade levels having those discussions what do they find uh valuable you know within our curriculum resources we do have uh writing assessment rubric we have opportunities for students to do what we call an on-demand writing or flash drafting where we could use a set rubric in

065order to affect that there's really nothing formally standardized other than iar to really evaluate a composed piece um so i think that that's something we're really looking into and that we know is a gap in how do we demonstrate that we believe our students are writing well here's their proof or here's the evidence of learning so i think we need to do so we are engaging our um committee members on mtss conversations teachers have you know just anecdotally you know what what is the tool that we could use and rely on and then we need to revisit the resources we do have and engage our teachers in how can we use what we currently have as a way to measure progress over time i anticipate that you will see a fear of something by the

066end of this year or if not next year i'll just add to that i know that especially at the elementary level i've visited with some principals and with some grade level teams who are talking about the rubrics that we use we don't aggregate those in a standardized the results of those in the standardized format but our teachers really have been digging into the use of those rubrics to evaluate student writing and to compare from classroom to classroom what's working what's not working it doesn't feel a kind of data set that could be easily presented to the board and i think that's one of the things that we just we want to spend some time thinking about because ultimately our teachers are working incredibly hard as our students and we want to know if that is

067moving us closer to the target of improved written expression and we want to know that along the way not have to wait as you're suggesting not suggesting but as you're also acknowledging wait until the iar we don't want to do that we want to see if this month and next month and month after we're making some progress in that regard and so i know that um as i look back at our principles in the back of their room there i know um that they have had some conversations with their teachers around that but really we need to dig in there more and i think that's what he's talking about i appreciate that um are there any external resources i mean best practices around the country best practices in you know other high performing school districts

068um that we could open up the horizon a little bit and see in this area there's some um some places that have had a similar need and have found some answers so so it really does come down to a consistent and then and also to provide opportunities for our staff to um assess in a similar way so they call that inner radar reliability so part of the professional development is what will that piece of writing that will be affected in a similar way for a particular grade level b how you know well do we have our teachers um trained in evaluating of writing using the rubric um i know that they use it but if we want to standardize it in a way to present to the community at large and whatnot then we would

069have to engage um that's all great so we're showing trends that is there in eighth grade for math achievement yeah i think that's one of the things we're hoping that our district strategic advisory team can help us to really define because many might say that 70 percent higher or better some might say 80 percent or better looking just at the ritz score it's hard to translate mentally into what that means uh because our students do tend to perform a couple of grade levels we're just looking at the risk score above expectation but we're really hoping that the strategic advisory team will be able to define for us what should we be aiming for is seventy percent of our students above the national meeting ultimately something that we're aiming for which we tend to have pretty

070consistently or are we looking for a specific rate score that would be refreshing so those are some conversations we're having each district that i've been in looks at it a little bit differently and sets targets a little bit differently so um having that team really engage deeply in the key performance indicators and having some universal agreement around that will help us to know what we should be aiming for um yes i know miss stone wants to get in i didn't know if you were done yeah um let's see so i don't want what i'm about to say to be misconstrued that i don't care about the data because i do what i really care about is the kids growth so if i'm understanding you correctly you're saying we would like to have a rubric that

071evaluates writing that is not the iar and i don't know if it's like this for every grade but i have proctored iar tests and then the ones i've proctored the writing comes at the very end and the kid is often cooked by the time that now you're gonna write this whole thing comes up so in my mind if you're coming up with something else that's fantastic um because i would not want to rely on something that is set up the way it currently is and here i have another question is when did they take the iar test and when did we merge the pods i can answer one of those questions i mean i know i'm putting you on the spot i don't i can't remember the date of the merging of the pods but

072uh very much around the same time okay i know what that felt like because i went through that too and it was like the first day of school for a few weeks over again but happening in the spring i'm just thinking about those fifth graders and obviously you know i don't want to say that i'm you know unconcerned but if you think about fifth grade they're already merging with the other schools they did like another merge they're in middle school it's a pandemic it's just a lot so i just feel like we could have a wider lens that would probably behoove all of us and there's no doubt in my mind that what everybody did last year on behalf of our students was absolutely herculean so um i don't want that narrative to get replaced

073add on to that i think your perspective is invaluable as somebody who's both watching on the ground and also sometimes we forget how bad it was it was really bad and i think that we are still living um and the timing is that that's i hadn't put that together i think that's very interesting yeah i don't want to have too much more time on this but um i i always think that that one of the goals especially in academics is preparing our kids for a new career so in the writing area one of the things would be is our are students better prepared for nutrient in writing and are we you know moving the bars in terms of helping so if you're looking for some kind of metric maybe figuring out working backwards what is

074you know freshman writing teachers that you truly expect and you know are we making steady progress through the grades to to have our kids go from eighth grade to freshman year you know dramatic stuff absolutely um you know one of the other pauses that happened or in our nutrition articulations with nuclear high school teachers and staff as well and just recently that efforts are made to revive them and meetings start i think i mean i know they have some kind of standards that they try to normalize as they can um so you know the more you understand that the more you can make sure that our kids are making steady progress toward that that would be even more important in some ways than having standardized 70th percentile for our school district that may be good

075or maybe you know falling behind okay thank you so much for all of this information and uh helping us move forward and i think the strategic advisory team will really help us know how to look at can i just ask a quick question katie um so i i it just sort of occurred to me as i was looking at your data again um is the um is the winter test relevant to i mean do you use that data for anything we used to use it as a touch point um so if we look we do use it and we do record that and we analyze that as well um but it's more of a benchmark like a mid midpoint check-in if you will um because when we have fall and there are growth gains or

076targets that we're trying to achieve with students then we'll see how we at the winter point in order to adjust again toward our journey forward to journey towards spring okay i understand yeah okay because you're going to say if you're not really using the data maybe because you don't really need to take that middle test but you're saying you do use it yes currently we do but we're open to a lot of discussion about um i think that just in general there is a conversation about assessments and which are most valid and what we should invest our time in and and whatnot so i think that's a part of a consideration that we should look into i'll just add there i think there's a couple of points where we see students being assessed more frequently

077with less action being taken one point there would be our eighth grade students who in eighth grade have to take the mutual replacement test they have to take a variety of assessments and by the time you get to iar they are they have spent a lot of time testing and so we may um be looking at some some ways to just modify that in in those ways that are within our control we don't have any choice in administering iar but we may have some choice in some of those other assessments in the eighth grade year where um it doesn't impact students as much as it's more of an assessment we'll be taking a look at that your point is a good one thank you and winter assessments teachers use more than we it's more like

078a midpoint progress than a reportable accountability another exciting report next we do thank you for your time thank you and i will hand that over to kelly jackson all right um so we're going to move to the social emotional side of our assessment report uh this school year district 39 staff has been working to implement a new framework for social emotional learning and it's built around five competencies of social emotional skills developed by castle which is the collaborative for academic social and emotional learning those five skills or five competency areas are relationship skills self-awareness self-management social awareness and responsible decision making and in district 39 we also have chosen to focus in on the area of diversity equity and inclusion as one of our competency areas so we have six total staff is using resources

079and lessons from castle and responsive classroom as they integrate the competencies into their instruction and isolate specific lessons based on student need or competency focus we have different foci throughout the year that we review and reflect on and then go and move on to implement and dig more deeply into an essential component of the frameworks implementation is measuring our students strengths and using information about areas of growth to problem solve and develop supports for individual students or groups of students so two measures that we use in district 39 to benchmark our sel competencies are the devereaux student strengths assessment or desa and that's used for students in grades pre-k through second grade and then the mindsets essential skills and habits which is called the mesh for short and that's designated for students in grades three

080through eight these assessments are administered in the fall together our baseline data and then we do work throughout the year to target different competency areas or areas being measured on the assessments and then we gather data again in the spring to show growth hopefully in the areas where we have been focusing for the year so let's take a look first at the results from the desa the desa is an assessment that is completed by teachers so the teachers go through a short there's two different formats but the first screener is a mini and that's used for students again in pre-k through second grade and then if there are students that are through the mini assessed as needing more intervention then there is a length more lengthy assessment that can be used to pinpoint more specific

081areas of need for the students so this graph shows uh the results from the fall desa you'll see that uh 33 percent of students fall in the strength category so that's the green one on the right um 62 fall in the or 63 sorry all in the typical range um while five percent were identified as having social and emotional needs so that's that um small kind of pinkish colored one on the left hand side when students are identified as having needs for more instruction interventions specific interventions have been planned and are used to support these students in their social emotional development desa measures all of the same competencies that we actually have highlighted through our framework so social awareness self-management self-awareness etc and then um what's really nice through desa is there is a resource

082area for teachers so if i have a student that is struggling with self-awareness i can click on that and there are several different lessons that come up that i can use to help support those students in the coming weeks our administrators and teaching teams will use these individual results for their students to look at interventions and look at specifically these are these areas of need for our students in this lower area moving on to the mesh this is for grades three through eight this is a self-assessment that students take and it's there's two components to it one reviews the social emotional competencies and the other one looks at school climate and environment the social emotional competencies assessed include classroom effort self-management social awareness self-efficacy and growth mindset and these align to the competencies through castle

083that we use for our framework the areas assessed in the school climate and environment include teacher-student relationships bullying school safety sense of belonging and school climate and we'll dig into a couple of those areas in a minute so taking a look at this first graph you'll see this is for grades three through five in the competency measures we'll go through the competency measure first um for students in grades three through five all of the or yes three through five sorry the the assessment is broken into grades three through five and then six through eight so that's why it's separated out we do get individual school reports and we can break it down by grade um for students in grades three through five though cumulatively all all areas addressed on the social emotional competency fell at

084or above the 90th percentile nationally a classroom effort in self-management actually fell at the 99th percentile nationally um so the area in the areas of growth mindset self-advocacy and social awareness about the 90th percentile nationally so really our students are showing that they have a good grasp in favorability in these areas now if you look at the right hand side of this graph you'll see some little arrows some are green pointing up some say zero and some have red pointing down and that's a comparison to the spring survey so what we will be doing in the coming weeks is breaking down some of those areas that we fell in even though we're scoring high compared to others nationally why are we following there's a specific question breakdown and again we can get more specific student

085answers there as well so we'll be taking a look at that so this is grades uh six through eight again we did uh our students are measuring really well compared to others nationally above the 90 at or above the 90th percentile nationally and again classroom effort and self-management fell at the 99th percentile nationally so um looking at that you'll see a little down arrow and social perspective taking so we'll dig in there as well as other areas it's interesting self-management really coincides with executive functioning and this is one of the areas that our teachers are anecdotally saying is an area of need for our students so we'll probably be looking more closely at some of the question areas there and see how students are assessing themselves as well as how we're assessing them in the

086classroom so definite area to look at so our next part of the survey is student supports and environment you can see on the left hand side the topic areas covered are student teacher relationships additional questions are about bullying and then school safety sense of belonging and school climate for students in grades three through five the results indicate strengths in the areas of school safety sense of belonging and teacher-students relationships with the composite scores near the 99th percentile for school safety and near the 90th percentile nationally in the area of sense of belonging and teacher-student relationships a relative area of focus for students in grades three through five might be in the area of school climate if you break down school climate it looks at areas such as the positive or negative energy in the school

087behaviors of others the fairness of the rules and the perceived excitement of teachers to be teaching their classes so the students are again assessing how they feel that teachers are actually to teach so we'll take a deeper dive into that um i did break down the questions about bullying um at school and this is interesting in just that um 81 of students um said that they never or almost never have been bullied um and then that's compared to how often are students bullied at your school and 79 said um that they perceive students being bullied never or almost never so those the the difference in that question and it's actually more pronounced at the older grades but um it's interesting the self-reporting of not having been higher is higher um again we'll take a look

088at this and dive more deeply into it and then at grades six through eight so um school safety and teacher-student relationships were areas of strength for grade six through eight um it composite scores and school safety again fell at 99th percentile nationally clearly a lot of our safety measures are paying off for students and they feel comfortable and safe at school with the physical safety composite scores in school sorry in in teacher student relationships they were just above the 80th percentile nationally two areas of focus for students in grades six through eight are school of climate and the sense of belonging both of these fell near the 40th percentile nationally and you may recall this past spring when i mentioned sense of belonging as one of those areas you can see here it's even down

089from our spring survey so this is a real target area when it comes to our social emotional skill building and the competencies that we'll be looking at throughout the year as we implement lessons again we get the breakdown at a school level and at a grade level of individual answers and how individual students have assessed themselves but then also as how the groups have assessed themselves and we can look at specific questions in this area to really target with specific lessons from our framework and suggestions from responsive classroom in order to help um increase that sense of belonging that our students feel um it is interesting you would kind of expect some of that dip from the third through fifth grade to sixth through eighth grade just with the nature of middle school junior high

090but as we compare it nationally i think the 40th percentile is an area that we really target and work on and try to improve upon same thing with school climate you can see there was no change since the spring survey and again that's kind of the energy of the school the behavior of others fairness rules those sorts of things so we'll want to dig more deeply in and target that um i also want to take a deeper look at grades three through five and break out the fifth grade answers to see if there's any um difference between third and fourth grade and fifth grade to see if maybe there are similar um areas of need with fifth grade specifically just be having been moved to the middle school um the the additional questions again are

091about bullying and teasing so here you see 86 of students said i've never been bullied or almost never been bullied well 65 said i think students at my school are never bullied or almost never bullied so um that's that's an interesting comparison so the perception may be different from what the reality is but um again that's something to look into again connecting this to our strategic plan goal number two is around our supportive community and cultivating a supportive and inclusive learning community that is responsive to the social emotional behavior behavioral needs of each student if you'll remember there's two strategies under that goal so the first one is implementing and being responsive to the needs of our students social emotionally and behaviorally and so um implementing our framework this is an essential part measuring this

092data to really target in on specific needs and then it will also help us with our second strategy which is just to strengthen that sense of belonging and create opportunities for our students to have community at their schools and so those are some areas that we are currently working with highlighted here in this box are specific action steps for this goal um which include uh developing and implementing social emotional systems of support using our framework approach and uh planning and engaging staff in data focused or informed data meetings um having to do with this data and so that is our next step is to again break this down at a school level at a classroom level for individual students and start to have some problem solving meetings and implement some interventions to to help kind

093of at a larger group level but then also at a targeted level for students that are needing more support so based on the overall results uh we're going to really focus in on school environment with uh school climate and also sense of belonging and and also look at a deeper level at each of the areas to see if there's anything else we need to target at this time i'm happy to take any questions think sense of belonging is something for sure that we want to um i think we want to find out from kids what what would give them a more increased sense of belonging so really target maybe there's some surveys that we do with kids or maybe there's some focus groups that we have with students um some of the other things that

094we're doing is we're developing some um more supportive groups for students to give them some outlets for you know whether it's a grief support group or in the past we've had some of our pride groups at school where there's a community built around them of allies and and um ways to help students feel that they belong in their school community so we're getting those off the ground again we've had some pauses and some of those from ovid so um hopefully we can develop some different venues for students to really feel like they have a sense of belonging i think oftentimes what we see is we have some clubs or some opportunities for athletics or certain clubs that some students have a have an affinity for but maybe not everywhere so we're trying to target some

095of those other groups too for sure for sure yeah only eating with a certain group at lunch can be a big difference right i was just gonna comment i think it's great that crc is having this focus this year um and i wonder if they'd be helpful in identifying schools that really have this as a strength and do they have something to offer us i i know from sitting here and also from my own children you all are doing so much in this area um and so it makes me wonder is there something structural something about i i don't know if there's additional ways to look at it beyond lessons and curriculum that maybe other schools who are in the 90th 99th percentile we could learn from at this age group and maybe crc can

096help us do some of that work definitely and i know that there is a group a research group part of crc that's looking at more national trends so when we're talking about data i would say this data to me matters a lot right this is i think you know so foundational in terms of kids learning and ability to succeed so i'm excited that i mean i think these are important things to work on but i think the strengths are i think it's it's important to play upon those strengths too because they are all interconnected so how do we help increase sense of belonging by helping kids see their strengths in those other areas as well right you're speaking out did we talk about expanding and curriculum um not extracurricular per se but instead expanding the

097options available for students to connect with each other and with their school and so um sometimes when we think about extracurricular activities we're thinking about some of those really structured opportunities for sports teams through drama through music but instead i think one of the things that we wanted to look at is our student sense of belonging and how can we offer a variety of opportunities there and to be honest we've struggled with that over the last couple of years across our schools we are again this year as we try to offer some enrichment clubs finding um adults who can staff and lead those opportunities can be a challenge um and has really been exacerbated again by the economics so yes we've talked about it and i think some right we have subsets of students who

098have wonderful experiences great connections with each other and with their school and with the adults around them and then we have some others who clearly are not feeling as connected and as we said that may be somewhat structural it may be activity oriented and maybe we can capitalize on some of that it's going to take some more studying for us to as we grow over time being able to have longitudinal data and all that that type of information hopefully this won't change every other year um one area when when a lot of this when surveys have numbers that are in the upper 80s and 90s it's difficult sometimes to tease out the next step and one question i have that you may have the information may not have been in this report have you broken

099out the data by demographics um ieps of minorities boys girls are there any other trends in this data in particular i look at something like self-management it would seem to me that there might be some variances across those type of breakouts yeah that's not and so in order to break out by demographics we'd actually have to that this assessment does not ask for that information so we'd have to go back in and re-break it out that's something certainly we could do just would take a while but we can we can look at that yeah you know when you're at you know 89 you know the goal is probably never to be 100. so but if you look at and you say well there's a demographic group that's at 72 percent um that may be useful

100data or if there's you get the 89 because there's a demographic that's at 98 and you know hidden underneath that is a different demographic that's significantly different um i think that information especially on one or two of these like self-management such as a layman taking a guess i would guess that yeah and certainly as we break it down by the classroom in the the grade level i'm sure we will see some fluctuations in there this is all grouped by third through fifth grade and then through eighth grade as well and so even if just even separating out well met junior high students may feel that they belong more than at highcrest so there may be some of those variations as well so i that that would be an interesting thing to break down certainly something

101we can look at thank you yes so i'm not sure if this is correct from your from your data um your powerpoint presentation um for a sense of belonging or school climate was it one of those where um 50 of the kids were saying that they had that they had a sense of belonging and 50 said they didn't is that right it's broken down so the the percentage of sense of belonging is yes so if you look at the grades six through eight it says um 52 answered favorably it's actually kind of a five they have five options to check and so favorably is kind of the top two um and then some say that they belong somewhat you know so the somewhat category is is not looked at as favorably it's it's in there

102but um yeah i actually broke down the reverse um i don't have that with me but um but that is something that i want to look at as well is is kind of what is the opposite and who are those students and how do we target those students so that would go along with some of the demographic breakdowns for sure yeah because like to me of kids saying that they don't feel like they belong is like really alarming and i'm like like at what point i mean what number would you know would cause you to sort of assess it as like we're in crisis mode i'm not suggesting we are but i'm just saying you know like when it when does it become alarming because 50 is like kind of unacceptable yeah and it's really

103i mean it's sad right it i as a principal of one of those schools i that makes me feel really sad and um i i would hope that we can improve upon that through some deeper dives and looking at some more targeted supports for our kids and we really want them to feel that they're part of a community that's a priority for us so so i just recall i mean you know from last year that the numbers and the similar categories weren't that great and is that do you think that that's a product of covert i think it there are factors that play into that for sure so it's not that you know you've sort of seen this like downward trend in the last couple of years yeah it's been pretty i think there's been

104some elements of it that have stayed the same um it's certainly been our least um a sense of belonging has come up year after year but i think this is the lowest that has been so i think that could be a product of pulpit i think certainly taking this in october after coming back um a good percentage of students were remote last year a good percentage of students you know we're in the the hybrid model where then they merged but then they didn't really get to know those kids that great over a couple months and then they were away again over the summer so there's been a lot of transition and certainly the communities that they had in those small hybrid groups were a little bit different also than what they then had at the

105end of the school year last year and then into the school year so there's been a lot of change and and i could see how some of that has taken effect on that as well yeah i was going to say um frank to your point about looking at the demographics like to me like when you have a number as high as 50 you know like maybe maybe that's not as relevant you know like which little groups or you know or is it the minority group you know ethnic minority or anything like that where it just kind of seems like it's you know again it could be you know a covert related thing it could be the age it could you know i don't know so i'm really looking forward to you know lots of work

106to be done i think i think and i'll just add i think this is something we talked about on the strategic planning core team quite a bit as well you know we look at a lot of data we looked at a lot of data academic assessment data and district performance data but we also spend a lot of time talking about student sense of belonging connection at school and we really ask them to think about not only during the pandemic but before the pandemic after the pandemic um so i do think that this is this is something that we have recognized as an area of focus for ourselves it has been since before the pandemic and i think the pandemic really has exacerbated it i do think that the groupings and the isolation that has been

107required to make it through the pandemic has really exacerbated that along with even masks and distancing and um so much of the rigidity that is in place within our schools at this point um we really have to take a look at that but i don't think that's the only thing that we can look at so i think there's some opportunities for growth here but we have to balance that coupled with some of the other goal areas that we have this is a really important one for us administratively and i know for our teachers and our students as well this is hard i think i think you just answered um it is versus a national average but not temporarily so it's not based on the norms were created pre-pandemic if i'm not mistaken i don't think

108they're compared to um this year's class those norms instead were our national national norms but um they were run at a specific date a specific cohort um so for map when we were talking about that they were the 2020 norms meaning they gathered all the data in 2020 and then statistically analyze the norms i think that's the way i believe it it was normed but i'm just not two years ago correct yeah i don't know something i just want to make sure i really appreciate the board support for this work in recognition that this is really important work it's difficult work to it's difficult change to effect because it is kind of um the softer skills the softer things within schools and within humanity yet it's so important to our future collectively so thank you

109for your support of that work i want to reiterate something that um john said just maybe enhanced particularly when i sit there and look at how the cohorts the av cohorts were smaller that really at least i know in my own childhood was significant right then her friends they didn't even want to merge the other alphabet right into the hand and then i watch the impact of extracurriculars right it's profound um um the one thing that i felt bad about was a number of the kids who didn't make have to keep the um low for attendance that's not an opportunity so again that's another thing coming out of co-visit make these kids feel even more left out because they can't even go be a part of supporting those books i can't remember when we touch

110base about this again i know we just do it once a year right we'll do it in in the spring usually or june and i just want to say that um you know one of the tenets of responsive classroom and also as part of this the castle implementation of the framework is is that partnership with parents and that communication and so it's really exciting to see crc partnering in this specific area and help helping to support that partnership because that's going to help lend to all of these areas growing as well i'll just say for myself if there if it turns out that there are structural changes or uh staffing you know uh i don't know implications that are become clear that they would make a difference personally i would be well in support of

111exploring supporting what's needed to help our kids feel we will move to board policy review we have board policies up for review today um and and we have a lot of them we discussed them last meeting and the board had some questions we attempted to answer those and we also recognized that um pointing the board to the current policies and how those policies were broken up may have assisted in your understanding that much of these language um additions are actually not additions the iasb is instead just recommending separating them out into a couple of different policies so um again we're attempting to follow the press policy service from iasb to the greatest extent possible and then collaborating with our attorneys as well add that um the only other piece that i'd like to offer is

112that from our first reading in october press issues new policy updates to 241 twenty two pull in one ten and two pull in 120 which the version in your board packet reflects those most recent revisions a conversation from the board about these policies before but that is must have been in our policy 240 before um that's sad um i'm not sure was looked at carefully um but just looking at 260 um it seems to me lacking in um oversight but also the referral back to 220. when you look at i looked at 220 and it's really the responsibilities of the school board as a whole um and there is obviously board members are part of that hole but um most if not all but one or two of these are actually things that the board

113does as a whole so to find a school board member that willfully failed to perform numbers official duties and one of the official duties is the improving the curriculum another one is the establishment school year those are not individual board member actions in fact the only one that i could find that was clearly an individual action was the the negative 1 18 um where you know school board member failed to report a from the child all the other ones at least the way i read them are things that specifically we do as a board that we don't want individuals to be doing so the fact that the way somebody can willfully fail to perform a members duties refers to an enumeration that really only has one item um [Music] again i didn't read these carefully

114enough over the last decade have found that this was in 240 but the fact that a majority which could be as little as three depending on you know five people show up at a meeting decide to vote somebody off um the board that's been elected by the community includes an awfully low bar without any other constraints around it and the way i read this basically if they voted if they vote that that person should be removed it's then just handed to the immediate service center to execute it's not like reviewed or mitigated or there's no mitigation steps that this person willfully failed to perform that there is no dialogue that took place i mean there's just a lot of things they're missing and the outcome of this is three people could hold somebody off the

115board you know scenario but um we know what the intermediate service center does is it do they just implement it or do they study the issue and they did reach out to after our last board meeting there's no statutory guidance on this and that she's unaware of a situation in which a regional superintendent actually is there a process that guides this [Music] action with very little that combination you know if you did one of the others had to be five people and you know they had to be some mitigator involved or that uh when you handed it to would you be the regional board that they reviewed none of those things are in this the other piece that i'll just add is that school's cool code actually directs the ability of the original sequence to

116enact so given an opportunity to defend themselves that even that it had to be a majority of eyes but again the way this is written right now it's a lot a lot easier than would so maybe then i will make a suggestion because at this point we've kind of adjusted our our ability to legally guide the board on this if the board wishes to go beyond what is statutorily required um or spelled out in terms of the process uh maybe it maybe it would make sense just have a board number or two work with us on some of those steps that you'd like to see and then we can consult with our attorneys to see if that is is appropriate um at this point it's i think for us this is this is what press

117is recommending our attorney is saying they've never seen it implemented the intermediate service center is saying they don't really know what would happen if that were to occur but nobody's ever seen it occur anyways so um if the board wishes to invest some additional time spelling that out i would say maybe maybe i guess i would ask are there other board members that that have the same concern i do yeah i mean those in my mind those are all bad answers don't know why i don't know what never saw before these are not answers so i think that and i i'm saying similar concern same concern that you're talking about usually elected board members could be voted out no procedural protections at all doesn't need to be on an agenda i mean there's just nothing

118here so there's a little bit of but have to be on so are there probably don't need to reinvent the wheel too right i mean it's like there's got to be a board somewhere out there who's you know has some procedures in place that we could look at you know it doesn't have to even be a school board but maybe you know if somebody wants to do that leg work with that google search you know yeah right so do people want to volunteer too okay okay so we'll remove that from the consent agenda that particular policy i actually think there's probably three that we would want to remove because wasn't there one policy that got separated into three new proposals so 240 you would want to maintain pending the review of 240 250 and 260's

119presentation so it would just be maintaining so you're um if if as a board you're prepared to do so you would um approve the second and final reading of board policies one and then those three are the three that are connected two colon forty two colon fifty and two and sixty and then the remaining ones would all be up for second and final leaving and so essentially um what you will be doing i think is uh removing those from the consent agenda removing those three two colon thirty two colon no sorry two colon forty fifty and sixty from the consent agenda voting on the consent agenda and then holding tabling the the other three pending for the review okay i asked a very silly question about another policy i didn't write down which policy it's

120under but i think it'll be clear do we it says we must complete a training program on evaluations under pira um before participating in the vote we do that yeah that's part of the mandatory training that you all have completed new board members have a certain time frame in which to complete that okay you only do it once okay okay great and we have a log on our website identifying the training i think that nancy has put it on i'm looking at her though wondering if she has that posted or where it's supposed to so we'll look into that like a little bit or something by our names saying any other comments about the other policies this then brings us to another opportunity for audience members to address the board mr damonte do we have

121any online okay so the next order of business is the consent agenda under the action items so we have removed three of the policies is there anything else that the board would like pulled from the consent agenda ms stone please proceed with emotions i move to approve the personnel report dated november 15 2021 i move to approve a second and final reading of board of education policies one colon one zero school district legal status one colon two zero school district organizations and cooperative agreements two colon one zero school district governance two colon two zero powers and duties of the board of education two colon three zero board of education elections two colon seven zero vacancies on the board of education billing vacancies two colon eight zero member of the board of education oath and conduct

122two colon one zero zero board member conflict of interest two colon 105 ethics and gift ban 2 colon 110 qualifications term and duties of board members 2 colon 120 development of members of the board of education 2 colon 125 board member expenses to colon 130 board superintendent relationship and two colon 140 communications to and from the board i move to approve the accounts payable for bills listed between october 26 2021 through november 15 2021 in the following amounts educational fund 548 thousand two hundred and eight dollars and 63 o m fund thousand three hundred and thirty three dollars and twenty one cents transportation one hundred and eighty four thousand two hundred and twenty eight dollars and ninety nine cents capital projects one hundred and sixty two thousand nine hundred and six dollars for a total

123all funds of 964 676.83 i moved to approve the manual checks issued between october 26 2021 and november 15 2021 in the following amounts educational fund six hundred and thirty nine thousand four hundred twenty eight dollars and ninety two cents o m fund seventy eight thousand eight hundred and fifty seven dollars and thirty six cents transportation thirty three dollars and eighty eight cents total all funds seven hundred and eighteen thousand three hundred and twenty dollars and sixteen cents may i have a second second emotion haven't been has been made and seconded would the clerk please call the roll chances ready yes and heart yes bonnie kim yes frank panzika yes lisa schneider faves aaron stone yes amy yes the a's have it motion carried um [Music] so it's we will now move to adopting the

124tax levy the stone if you proceed with the motion i moved to approve the 2021 tax levy and accompanying resolutions contained in the report for requested amounts that can be summarized as follows educational 45 797 391 dollars operations and maintenance nine million seven hundred and fifty one thousand six hundred and eleven dollars transportation four hundred and sixty eight thousand four hundred and nine dollars working cash forty one thousand five hundred and five dollars imrf one hundred and eighty seven thousand seven hundred fifty nine dollars social security one million five hundred and eighty three thousand one hundred five dollars life safety zero dollars tort immunity six hundred and twenty two thousand five hundred and sixty nine dollars and special education four hundred and twenty two thousand nine hundred and fifty two dollars for a total aggregate

125levy 58 million 875 thousand three hundred and one dollars may i have a second second the motion has been made and seconded is there any discussion would the clerk please call the roll chances ready yes ann hart yeah bonnie kim yes frank pansico yes lisa schneider faves karen stone yes amy payment yes lias have it motion carried is there any old business new items uh the intergovernmental cooperation working yeah so this is a meeting um that was held last thursday and uh john and i are the representatives from mr 39 um he couldn't make it but um dr kramas goalie was there as well so that was really great um and there were representatives from the village um the park district district 37 as well and the library and also neutral township so it's really

126great that there were a couple of representatives from each group and we were all there to sort of like come up with you know like to brainstorm on ideas of what we wanted to do um and if we really wanted to do this and so what we did was um we um talked about what our goals were which was to improve communication amongst elected officials and provide value to the community and we decided that we would have thematic meetings on topics of mutual interest um and so we sort of brainstormed and came up with a couple of ideas um sustainability a welcoming community and which would include diversity equity and inclusion mental health and youth services communications and strategic planning so with those topics we would either ask questions of other groups and see how

127they handle them or offer you know how we have uh come up with the solution to an issue so we seem to be on the um the cutting edge in terms of strategic planning since we that's right um so maybe um i think we're sort of planning to have our next meeting in january or february so we thought we would all go back to our boards and have you think about where you would like us to start so maybe you could sort of think about that in the next month and we can talk about it more in a committee of the whole meeting probably one of these topics of again it was sustainability welcoming community mental health communications and strategic planning so i'll john or i will bring this up at a community thanks so

128much uh and then the night before that we had the league of women voters state of the village dr crema and i were here it was really wonderful to hear what each group has been doing and set the stage i think for those groups to work together i thought it was well attended and well organized yes it was different than previous years because there wasn't meals there wasn't the socializing and network aspect emphasized quite as much so i'm sure some felt a loss there in terms of just connection and networking but the information was really helpful i think just to kind of see some similarities across it was um useful to go from that meeting to the meeting on the subsequent night where we were talking about where are there some similarities in some maybe

129partnerships so i thought that was that was good all that that you mentioned really bubbled up in that conversation and everyone did a great job of answering questions terrific uh any good in welfare something um you know building off of what kate dominique was talking about the beginning of the meeting about feeling thankful this time of year um i am lucky enough to serve in my church congregation's primary organization which is for kids that are 11 and under yesterday one of my friends was leading the kids in the always popular and heartwarming activity where you've got the bare turkey and then everybody writes something they're thankful for on a feather and then you know you get a turkey with a lot of feathers um and i was really um touched that one of our mckenzie

130cheetahs wrote that she was thankful for her school we had to pick one thing they all had to pick one thing she was thankful for her school and one of our high crest thought or one of our high crest talks was thankful for her teacher and i am also thankful for our teachers and our schools and all the work that everybody does on behalf of our children as always yes it's hard i would just like to mention um and just the level of preparation and enthusiasm teachers and then in particular [Music] i agree it's amazing how even in a four-minute conversation a teacher can convey how well they know your child did you work really really hard on i mean may i seek a motion to adjourn to executive session to discuss specific personnel and

131special education i moved to adjourn to executive session to discuss specific personnel on special education may have a second second motion having been made and seconded will the clerk please call the role john ce's ready ann hart yes bonnie kim yes frank panzika yes these are schneider babes yes aaron stone yes amy penguin yes motion carried and we are now adjourned to executive sessions