Wilmette Public Schools District 39 Board of Education Meeting September 21, 2020

001i hereby call to order this public hearing on the budgets before the board of education for wilmette public um schools district 39 this monday september 21st 2020. well the clerk please call here here we have a video of the wjhs students leading the pledge of allegiance this evening okay so you know what we'll all do it to the together in the united states of america for which it stands individuals i seek a motion to approve the minutes of the august 24 2020 budget hearing regular and executive session meetings i moved to approve the minutes of the august 24 2020 budget hearing regular board of education and executive session meetings we have a second second the motion has been made and seconded board members are there any comments errors or admission to the minutes great um

002all those in favor of approving the minutes as submitted will the clerk please call the roll oh uh all in favor okay hey great motion carries this is an opportunity for the community to address the board are there any audience members that would like to speak at this time please come forward to the podium i must remind all guests to use the microphone state your name and community of residence and by board director for your allowed three minutes so the district has also requested public comments emailed to public comment at wilmat39.org tony have we received any public comments via email we have so there's about 15 of them heather and i will go back and forth as we read them first one from league of women voters of wilmette as a nation and as a

003community we are living through disruptive and chaotic times to a degree many of us have not experienced in our lifetimes we are dealing with a global pandemic that has appended how we work live socialize and educate our children in this epidemic in the midst of this we are also recognizing inequities that have exacerbated the impact of this epidemic on minority communities and those already most vulnerable furthering the strain on our collective consciousness is the civil unrest catalyzed by the brutal police killing of george floyd which has heightened public awareness of systematic racism and implicit bias in our criminal justice system and prompted reflection across all of our governing body's policies now more than ever we need to come together as a community to communicate with each other respectfully to engage in dialogue to really hear

004and understand different perspectives and to collaborate to develop solutions that can serve the needs of our community and our goal of becoming more inclusive discussion and factual debate about the issues facing our community is absolutely appropriate and important but disrespectful accusations or comments impugning a lack of integrity and as have increasingly been posted online and in communications to local government leaders are rarely appropriate but almost always harmful to the very system that we depend on we are fortunate and will met to be led by thoughtful and committed individuals in leadership roles across our governing bodies including elected and appointed officials as well as dedicated staff each board is working to reconfigure core programs and address significant financial issues often without complete information they are all making difficult decisions of tremendous import which impacts people help

005people's health safety and livelihood these community leaders deserve our gratitude and respect even when we disagree with their opinions or actions at the same time individuals and families are under tremendous stress as they seek to protect their family continue to make a living and educate their children fellow community members also deserve compassion and empathy as our leaders continue to make difficult decisions as we head into the final months leading up to the november general election and move from there into our own municipal elections we encourage everyone to approach discussions and debates with mutual respect to ensure that qualified individuals are positively disposed to consider volunteering their time to serve in office let us try to reflect on how we conduct ourselves online and in our communication to government leaders and recommit ourselves to exemplifying the

006best of the democratic process let us not sink to the lows that we may see in politics elsewhere in our state and country let us be role models for our children and finally let us agree to respect not only each other's opinions but more importantly each other's integrity at the end of the day we're all neighbors in this incredibly special village next i'm kim simon i have an eighth grade boy he came home from the first in-person learning day last week so happy i have never seen him so happy to be in school he said even though it was different that it was 100 times better than remote learning i truly hope we can continue to have these in-person days and more of them i am 100 supportive of going back full-time that said i'm

007not naive and no this may not be the case this is where i believe change needs to come on the remote side of work i believe that asynchronous days are not a great idea my son and so many others are frustrated bored and frankly not engaged i thought the original plan was to livestream the class and those who were at home were live and participating with the class i believe this would be such a better option there are way too many days of them learning on their own and feeling frustrated and alone we can't go back full time i believe something has to change thank you from dr ruka patel dear board and dr chroma scully the in-person students need to get back to the classroom sooner i have a kindergarten and third grade grader

008at central school their mental physical and emotional capacity to sit in front of a screen from 8 30 a.m to 2 15 p.m is not sustainable adults cannot sit for that long i could not sit for that long during my continuing medical education they are becoming sad kids my kids are very happy healthy excitable kids very excited for school in person week 3 and my kids are showing signs of early depression this is getting to them my kids want to just get get into in-person school as they are crying my boys don't cry they don't whine they listen and are good kids i'm starting now to get impatient and furious with you all for delaying the start and not doing something for our kids i'm in the healthcare field in my and work with patients

009all day i've written before and i'm writing again i will not let my kids be pawns they need to get into school for the reasons the cdc and aap recommend i will not have kids that are emotionally broken from school not being in session when that is what we pick for our kids we are in phase four not phase one this is not acceptable we need to get the kids in school my kids were in wilmette park district camp all summer after three months of being home they are so unhappy and overcome with joy to socialize at a distance and play and be around children you have to take kids emotional well-being into consideration here they have already been there have already been numerous kids committing suicide at all ages due to restrictions placed on

010them while the rest of businesses and restaurants are open we need to get them in school i do not like seeing my boys broken my happy boys broken down by something as simple as not going to school our coven numbers and positivity rates here are low and we are able to provide kids with in-person school the metrics committee does not seem worried about the kids mental health we are taxpayers of wilmette and we want our kids in school i study the data and science very diligently and deliberately i think the team is overlooking a lot of benefits for our children concerned and getting more furious parent i've given you this i've given you the space and tried to stay positive and see how the welcome weeks play out but i will not sit here and

011watch my children get more internal about this when they can be solved for them please get them in school sooner your vote matters i'm not on the board to ever i'm not on the board to advocate for my child thank you for your time passage jamie weiner to whom it may concern my son is in fifth grade and is doing the hybrid option at highcrest my son is a very shy and quiet kid the remote learning has not been going well for him it's hard for him to sit and pay attention all day sitting in the same seat and staring at an ipad all day all the programs he is learning this year was such a such a confusion that he was sending his assignments to the wrong place also when he needs help he

012has to email and sometimes the email can take a day or two to get a reply if he has an ins if if he as in in school he would just ask the teacher right then and there why can they be in school two days but not five days at least five half days would be a great start my son isn't learning anything at home in this prime castle time thank you for mary fertini good evening wilmette board of education i'm reaching out to strongly urge you to vote on accelerating in-person learning for the k-4 students in d39 the idea that we need more time to figure out how to implement in-person learning safely seems unnecessary at this point and serves no useful purpose the children's skills with mass squaring and social distancing will only

013improve if they are consistently in person there is no need to further delay what is best for our students i understand that last week's metrics meeting that teacher representatives objected to the idea of moving forward a week with in-person learning i didn't hear any clear reasons for the objection other than sticking to the plan and general worry about an outbreak break of coven 19. i understand that superintendent kerry kramiscolli made her recommendation today our children are struggling not only with e-learning but also on a social-emotional level they want to be in school they need to be in school this is not healthy especially when the metrics are in line with being in person and especially since other new trier feeder schools and local private schools are all in person and have been successfully for several

014weeks already as i mentioned in previous communications i'm a local preschool owner and as of next week i will be entering into my sixth month of safe and continuous operations while i am smaller in scale i find very similar many similarities to my experience and the district's k4 operations and safety protocol plans we have over 40 staff members and over 160 children entering and exiting through one door five days a week our children ages two to six have to change into school shoes daily and wear masks in situations where it is difficult to social distance we were given 24 hours notice by the state of illinois to pivot to a mask all day plan and the children ages two to six and staff adapted immediately without a drawn out ramp up schedule operating a school

015during the times of covet is no easy task but when you have the resources the plan and the strict health and wellness policies it's it's it is successful and possible based on my relevant experience i'm reiterating that district 39's reopening plans were always strong enough to open in person for k-4 from the get-go there's no reason for a continued delay please listen to the families your constituents and here are reasons to get the children back in school sooner but most importantly our children and our youngest learners need this more than anything we'll met board of education we would appreciate your consideration and immediate action my first traitor is suffering her anxiety has increased dramatically clinically she stares at a screen for six hours a day the zooms are chaotic consistently interrupted inconsistent and boring she

016repeatedly says i hate school through tears of frustration there is little to no learning taking place this is breaking my heart data and experience in other schools shows us that we can go back please for the sake of these kids at least get the younger kids in person i have three older kids and they are managing okay i can see a major difference in the ages and how they tolerate this the k2 kids are suffering thank you they're a constant mom of first grader 5th grader 8th grader and 10th grader from nikki hilbert dear d39 board and task committee while remote learning has been dramatically improved since last spring we still face significant challenges when executing this style of learning at lower grade levels technology issues being least of which and keeping children engaged will

017engage being the biggest hurdle while d39 at least has a plan to return the elementary level to full time in person there is no plan after all this time to get high crest students back to full time the private schools in our community have proven this can be safely and successfully done on an accelerated timeline and are already back in the last several weeks i have found that remote learning is much more complicated and stressful for my fifth grader than my fourth grader there are more classes more zoom links more schedule changes and a longer day all of which we know is difficult for fifth graders to adjust to in a normal year let alone trying to navigate it during the remote learning this is simply not working and especially detrimental to kids with ieps

018as the study agrees as the studies agree we all have to do better for our students and plan beyond the hybrid model for our fifth or eighth grade students our kids are playing baseball flag football soccer hockey and even indoor basketball the wilmette park district mathnasium and other third party facilities are hosting in-person care and services to cover what d-39 won't much to the expense of desperate parents these program administrators are eager to find solutions to keep their programs operating because their livelihood depends on it surely d39 can learn from our sister private schools and other local community programs that are still serving our children to find a solution to get all kids back much more quickly from drew priestette during the few times this year my children were at highcrest in the junior high

019in person the experience was good the remote learning has been a different story in summary they are giving very little live instruction over zoom they are expected to download handouts and complete them independently without any live explanation according to the ispe kids should receive two and a half hours of synchronous learning and my children are not receiving that given the wealth and education level of the parents in our school district i would expect high crest junior high to meet meet the minimum recommendations of the ispe our children are simply not capable and mature enough to study independently at home my wife and i work and we are not able to sit next to them all day monitoring their activity we find the kids playing online games all day while they should be learning it's next

020to impossible to restrict it in my opinion we should go full in person immediately to solve this problem covid19 is not going away and when the vaccine comes it will be it will not be a silver silver bullet teachers parents and children will choose not to take it for various reasons other illinois and new chair feeder schools have adopted a model where kids attend school every day for example am or pm only in instruction in winafa with in-person classes being the most important ones math science reading writing this seems like a good compromise where kids can be taught in person daily and return home to complete assignments independently or study less essential classes i see no reason why district 39 cannot do it too i hope you will reconsider the current approach to learning because

021from what i i've seen so far we do not need the state recommendations and our kids are not learning while at home the current model is ineffective and stressful for kids and families regards true stephanie crocker as a parent of two kids in the district i strongly urge you to resume full-time classroom learning for all kids i truly believe that my kids are falling behind we just moved to the area and came here for the good schools and now school is in my kitchen it's not it was not exactly what we were picturing for our life in wilmette sincerely stephanie crocker janet kavanagh dear district 39 i appreciate the complex plan to base kids back into school in order to ensure a safe environment however due to the protracted nature of the plan we are

022struggling to create a consistent routine and the transition back and forth from remote to in person is problematic i fear we are wasting precious learning time trying to create new norms at the beginning of the year i was elated that families had the choice to do remote learning or in-person learning i feel that the opportunity has been stripped away from families this is especially hard for families who have kids with special needs my child has an iep and we are struggling to be a good parent moderate e-learning and try to provide special services i fear that the educational needs we are sacrificing will leave more permanent stars than the negative effects of covid other districts near and far have successfully moved towards fully towards a model of full in-person learning without issue in the event

023of a material increase in positive cases of clover without schools or otherwise you can always return to remote learning why not give the kids a chance alexa burnout i was so pleased to see an update from the village last week declaring region 10 down to 5.3 percent and well met at 1.9 percent this is great news and leaves no doubt in my mind that we can do this windows can stay open during the warm fall weather and outdoor learning lunch can also decrease the spread of covid or any other bugs out there as a preschool teacher working at two schools in the community i'm a first hand witness to watching kids learn how to stay safe despite a pandemic in our early childhood children if our early childhood children can wear masks all day wash

024their hands a million times and learn about social distancing and so can our t39 students this is a great opportunity to teach our kids how to thrive not just survive during a difficult period know a roth child watching my five and seven-year-old struggle every day with the ipads is maddening when i was a kid i love school my kids do not love this this remote learning must transition to everyday in-person instruction as soon as possible and if you're already going one or two days each week what's holding up five days christina ballister hello board members we understand your meeting tonight to discuss return to school again please consider the following we supported the board's efforts to do the best for all giving our two giving the two options for parents to choose was wise and

025well thought out we love our teachers but we respectfully believe that they are no more a protected class than us parents who are lawyers accountants doctors nurses grocery store clerks shop owners etc who have to go to an office or store and be around others with safety precautions in place to work we also see the parents across the aisle who have chosen e-learning and yet they continue to create noise and oppose in-person learning i venture to say they will never be satisfied no matter what you trying to and do to assist and we do not appreciate that select group continuing to impact our children's learning with their complaints as he fairly gave two options and many parents felt completely apprised of what that would look like including us it is important to note that our

026pediatricians ask us on an annual basis that our children are only getting one hour of screen time a day including older kids but clearly what's happening now why is it with a very incidental small percentage at risk for this age group which is well documented by scientific data we are harming them by subjecting them to this forced approach when there is already an e-learning option in place why when we had physician parents step up before the board and support in-person learning at last at meeting last month based on what they have seen on the front lines this was still ignored and a vote was had that night irrespective of the 95 percent of parents who spoke and commented in favor of in-person learning starting on time reintegration of in-person learning should be moved up as

027soon as possible for k-4 and moreover our high crest kids should be in school daily as well the hybrid option of two days in school is not enough as these kids are incredibly are an incredibly small percentage of the pool getting sick and you have the best data to support five days for high crest kids because the high crest summer school program for kids with ieps was successful in person this summer as was ramona in the play safe camp and the rec center all had inside school days even in a non-air conditioned building like ramona on a more personal level all of our three kids have had their screens freezing to the point of where instruction became very frustrating and difficult for them and we were told although internet is top speed we are in

028a dark spot by the school our eight-year-old is struggling with the timing component online when the teacher gives them a longer task and then feels rushed like he can't use his fingers on the ipad fast enough and then to submit it he loses focus and shuts down both the eight and eleven-year-old are becoming lethargic and screen dependent after school as well as just as well despite our best efforts kevin robinson hi my first grader is excited to give back full time thank you perhaps i have missed it but what are the expectations for students who out and of abundance of caution do not go to school for a day for example if my child is sneezing from common cold symptoms i would keep her home but she would still be healthy enough to participate will

029in-person teachers be broadcasting or some students either home out of caution or quarantining join virtual instruction classes thanks kevin w l there was no last name given the district 39 board of education i'm writing to express my frustration with the timing of phasing of in-person learning at this time we are in phase four and should be a go for five days in person for those who signed up for in person first of all as a teacher myself i can completely understand the extra task of managing safely safety regarding kovid it's hard and challenging but at the same time the benefits to maintaining a regular consistent schedule should be a priority whether it's remote or in person for those opting in person we cannot do this easing in they need to just get into it and

030everyone learns together it's a risk but that was what we signed up for when those of us that signed up for in-person learning in certain practices if certain practices are in place and adding more flexibility to teaching rather than your usual in class like taking advantage of the outdoors more while the weather is nice those risks are lowered kids are kids and yes reminders should be frequently given about wearing masks and distancing but at the end of the day they are kids and they will try the best they can adults have much more control over such matters and should be more responsible teachers and staff should be tested regularly if possible keeping to classroom house cohorts is the best way to go as well so that eliminates having to shut down the entire school these

031are things that can be implemented other schools up north like ronda out are doing it we need to do the same thanks for your shoemaker dear district 39 board and dr chris foley i ask that you revise the hybrid plan to include in-person instruction on mondays and synchronous instruction on the alternating remote days as for mondays the district initially communicated the plan would have students in school on alternating mondays but then quickly swept the idea under the red one that junior high principles video message on the curriculum night suggested that the current remote monday schedule was set only through october 5th but today's email correspondence update from the district suggested that the hybrid plan was fully implemented in grades five through eight this week the jets suggesting that there would be no adjustments to monday

032it is not clear why groups a and b cannot have in-person instruction on alternating mondays resulting in five days of in-person instruction over a two-week period for each group in cb4 furthermore on the remote days our children are asynchronous for all four subjects in fact the only live and the only live interaction not even teaching they have during remote days are home room world language and check-in in the afternoon in reality there is no learning on those days and few assignments that do get posted by the teachers get quickly done with little feedback this is insufficient and unacceptable our children are basically either asked to self-educate 50 percent of their grades curriculum or missing out on fifty percent of the grades per game as there is no end in sight to the current situation there

033has to be a long-term solution that advances academic objectives other nutrient feeder districts as well as future have come up with better ways to engage all students in full-time learning in the hybrid environment given all the technology available in the district students should be able to participate in learning virtually on remote days missouri [Music] my name is christian and i'm 11 years old there is one problem with the hybrid option so on monday when no one was in school there is roughly five hours of zoom every monday five hours is insane for example the first week with zoom for five plus hours multiply that about five and a half hours of school on five days a week is more than 25 hours of zoom on the first week and then add to the fact that

034we have had two more weeks of almost all zoom except for the one day we were in school is probably about 20 or so hours of zoom i feel really strained from all the zoom in my head and was always being and with always being on video i feel i need a break or rest during the day but the five minutes is not enough because then it is just more zoom the bottom line is i want to be in school five days to learn i do not want to i do not like all the screen time yes it's exhausting my brain please let us back into school to learn with our teachers so that we can ask questions and see each other i think that on monday we should just have asynchronous work instead of

035five hours of zoom at least now we have less zoom zoom days than the first couple weeks of school another solution for mondays is just having some classes on zoom so that five hours goes down to three so you'll let us back in school for the full five days the sooner the better thanks and that's it um next we'll do board reports uh we'll start with the facilities development committee mr sternwaller miss faves uh the facilities development committee met as part of the committee of the whole on september 14th and we discussed uh the ramona ramona and mckenzie keep 39 projects colby lewis of str architects provided an overview scope of the projects mackenzie will net two additional classrooms with a total of five thousand square feet of additional additions and um five thousand square

036feet of renovation space and ramona at ramona we're going to be adding one classroom to the kindergarten wing along with a new special education classroom and additional meeting spaces um much needed additional meeting spaces near the office area um str is currently working with the village to obtain zoning permits and conduct soil analysis and mr papa nicholas of nicholas and associates gave baseline estimates for both of those projects he reported the baseline budget for mckenzie um was four million five hundred sixty six thousand three hundred and forty one dollars with an alternate of 250 000 for the toilet room um the baseline budget for ramona is a little under 3 million with no bid alternates yet um we the committee almost also discussed the wrap up of summer 2020 projects there's been a lot going

037on this summer with facility development in addition to everything else mr pop nicholas reported his crew was finalizing their punch list items at harper central and high cross he was also obtaining warranties and closing documents for each of those projects he noted there was an unused allowance remaining and all projects were finished on schedule and under budget the committee was updated regarding the village construction projects the administrative team has held weekly meetings with the village regarding the stormwater project which has been remarkable actually behind hms and central avenue [Music] behind hms and the central avenue water main project near central school the hms stormwater project is finishing up now due to restroom problems there was some disruption to the parking lot um which will be restored before before final paving can be completed uh the

038central avenue project was scheduled to begin in august when school started but was delayed um due to state funding issues the village navigated construction to accommodate in-person instruction although the schools are currently at 20 to 25 percent of visible attendance and that is my report so i will turn it back over to escapes now we are going to move on to the school finance committee mrs running president babes so the school finance committee also met as part of the committee of the whole on september 14th the school finance committee reviewed the cash flow spreadsheet provided by mr both fire the business manager the report showed monthly actual amounts from the last year in projected amounts from the current year mr boltzmeyer also presented a summary of the illinois state board of education ispe criteria for

039obtaining an excellent financial profile score he explained the five financial profile indicators and noted that district 39 has had an excellent rating for well over a decade mr baltzmeyer reminded the members that with the change in ispe budget procedures the student activity accounts would be presented as part of the board of education informational meeting reports for transparency purposes mr goldsmire presented a formal letter from baker chile virtual kraus llp the district 39 auditors explaining their methods and procedures and provided contact information members requested having a representative of the firm present to present the financial audit that's all i have for the meeting that we had turn back over to you president tapes thank you very much um now it's strategy committee right dean yep uh so the strategy committee did not uh have any update

040per se but uh for the strategy community most of our time was spent with an update from dr terence scully on the reopening plan and specifically the metric three opening advisory team which has already gotten some good air time tonight the district 39 metrics reopening advisory team is composed of teachers support staff members administrators parents board members school nurses medical experts and a covered strategy expert the purpose of the mrap is to study the metrics and progress related to the coca-19 transmission and district reopening plan group meets every friday to review the latest data data and offer recommendations the district 39 metric dashboard will be updated weekly and the team's recommendations will be shared by monday evening with any adjustments for the following week there's a lot of information that the metrics team takes into

041consideration and it analyzes every week including covet positivity rates and cases in wilmette throughout the new trier township suburban cook county and other neighboring communities operational and supplies metrics and staff and student absences we're pleased to announce that the administration and the district are launching a publicly available metrics dashboard which includes the data reviewed weekly as well as additional information regarding our metrics reopening advisory team and that can be found on the district's website it's sort of on the left-hand side for those who are looking for during last week's meeting the team reviewed the metrics and discussed operations within schools during the first week of in-person instruction the team also discussed options for expediting elementary students frequency of in-person days including bringing elementary school students back in person earlier and considering a creative uh and

042sorry the committee considered a creative recommendation that would bring pre-k and one students back a week earlier than others the team thoughtfully deliberated each of these options and although the team did not recommend expediting frequency out for elementary students in the upcoming week it was eager to evaluate how elementary students did in the following week as they transitioned to full days of attendance the team uh agreed to carefully consider increasing full-time attendance to come and uh last week's team deliberations will advise uh adjustments for monday september 28th other adjustments made were to ensure plenty of ppe supplies cleaning supplies and on-site access for all faculty and staff new contacted lists thermometers expanded cleaning and disinfection procedures for all classrooms and offices where in-person students attend including electrostatic spray and targeted uvc light use improvements to

043lunch procedures ongoing review and vision to bathroom schedules and access and targeted review of our remote learning environment connections and needs during the committee of the whole meeting the board asked that the metrics can consider options to return elementary students to a full in-person instruction the week of september 28th i do want to clarify one thing which is that uh what i've what i've just given as a report of what we discussed at the last committee of poll which was a week ago so what i talked about in terms of the metrics reopening advisory team was the update that was from the previous friday since then we've had another metrics reopening advisory team meeting this past friday and so if people hear us saying at in the report that i just read that at that

044time we did not recommend an expedited reopening i don't want people to be confused to think that that's what happened this past friday three days ago rather that's what happened 10 days ago and that's why we didn't reopen expedite reopening this week we have another update uh coming up on what we did this past friday on the metric three reopening advisory team and i think that will be presented by doctor a little later and that's the end of my strategy committee update thank you we are now going to move to liaison reports educational foundations polling so the educational foundation met on september 16th online uh each member had times for introductions as it was their first meeting and they shared that the attire to inspire event is cancelled due to covid but they wasted no

045time and partnered with plaza de lago in their fashion show and luncheon which was held very successfully on a sunny day september 17th uh it was a great way to start the year trivia night is a spring event so they will decide about that in the coming months and their next meeting is october 20th at 7. thank you and just so the board knows miss pullig was a natal and my understanding was she did a phenomenal job thank you next is the illinois association of school boards mr weiler so i know people are anxious to hear some other things tonight but i actually do have a report tonight and it's not the shortest thing in the whole world but i'll try to make it as quick as possible so um first uh just so everyone

046knows we do have the north cook division fall meeting coming up um it is virtual all meetings have gone virtual now for the foreseeable future but um the first one is october 28th um the north cook division ball meeting so um it's october 28th at 6 15 via zoom so you get to make your own dinner this time you don't have the dry chicken so bonus um and uh more importantly um the 2020 isb resolutions committee report is now available online um the report includes all of the resolutions that will be voted on during this year's delegate assembly which is scheduled to take place virtually on saturday november 14th at 10 a.m each isb member district is entitled to one voting delegate at the assembly because of the constraints of holding a virtual meeting with

047hundreds of participants delegates will have two opportunities this year prior to the assembly to debate and discuss proposed resolutions the first time will be on october 21st at noon and the second time will be november 5th at 6 00 pm um the review uh to review the resolutions committee report in order um oh we're encouraged to review the resolutions committee report in order to um for our delegate to be able to make informed votes during the delegate assembly and i just wanted to quickly give you a rundown of um the new resolutions have to do with there are eight of them um one is a loan the loan program um to schools gun storage proposal school report cards pre-k teacher licensure teacher shortage recommendation e-learning on election day they're making a recommendation to allow for

048e-learning on election day and then two two proposals which are almost identical that have to do with allowing local control of school districts over their decisions about openings and related related to the pandemic so i think everyone should go i'll provide um after the meeting i'll provide the link to all the resolutions um so that you guys can all read and we're gonna have to discuss these and see if you know where we want to take a vote and a stand on these the other thing that i think is very important as well is there are three reaffirmations of existing positions where we can decide whether we want to agree with the positions that isb is taking and there's a new belief statement which i think is really terrific because isb has never taken a

049stance whatsoever in regards to equity so they've they've written an equity statement it's um it's a start i think it's good that they're making a start at it so um that's included as well and then there's three three position statements that they're reaffirming so i just wanted to update you on that and uh i'll get you the full report i can email it i guess i'll give the link to carrie and she can send it out okay that's my report perfect and if board members could actually review those resolutions so we can discuss them at the strategy you know strategy uh committee at the next committee as a whole and then we can decide what action we want to take and i'd like to say resolutions as well as positions and reaffirmations like the whole

050shebang okay great thank you um legislative update this stone this is uh going to be quite brief in comparison there is nothing new to report at this time okay that was free so now we're going to turn it over to uh dr kramez foley for information items we'll start with written communications and if you just want to go okay very good thank you everyone um so first of all for written communications the board has received written communication from a number of individuals um written communications from bill and lindsey bauman kathy ryan sarah kennedy amanda and rick adams hamburg angela orward walther lauren and bill patrell all supporting in-person education the board also received written communications from alicia brown michelle coffee dr aruka patel by kim bret redzik diane schausenbach dr laura hemmer all supporting transition

051to in-person learning sooner communications from alephia pirin and diane hornell and randy russell questioning class sizes jane tomlinson wrote to support the slower responsible reopening of schools elizabeth rosenfeld wrote to relay frustration with delaying the start of school kristen marvin wrote about her frustration for remote instruction and technology issues kasia poor and jan lee requested special education students be allowed back to school as soon as possible and robin cook wrote to request asynchronous learning days be more enhanced to engage students throughout the day and ask the district to consider live streaming under administrative announcements from my staff and myself first of all we hosted a parent webinar in partnership with past 39 we held a parent webinar to welcome families back to the new school year and answer questions about special education services in these

052unique learning environments about 45 families attended and asked thoughtful questions we look forward to continuing to collaborate with master united and our families as we navigate the school year so thanks to dr kristen swanson for helping post that we also have i'll skip down just to lump all the parent events together um we are working in partnership with family service center and tony de monte has scheduled um about nine events of coming here a really good list of learning opportunities for our parents d39 has lined up monthly parent events on topics ranging from social emotional health to technology our next event is tomorrow september 22nd titled parenting during covet 19 supporting adjustments at home and at school it will be led by clinical staff from the family service center of wilmette there's registration links for

053this and all of our other parent events those can be found on the district's website thank you tony for helping to organize those for for us um let's see next week we will also host a special parent webinar for parents of students who are participating within the enhanced fully remote program of the district we've received some questions and we know that there's some unique challenges to the enhanced fully remote program and so we are excited to dedicate some time to our parents to address their their questions and concerns but also to hear from them as we start to look at now that we are building those routines in the fully remote program uh what's going well and where could improvement maybe be realized so this event is scheduled for thursday october 1st at 7 00

054pm and again registration information was shared today our district schools also hosted their curriculum nights those were hosted virtually this school year we missed the opportunity to invite parents and families into our schools to show off how beautiful our schools and classrooms are looking but the connections between teachers and parents were we're still fostered in a really meaningful way so we were happy so many parents were able to participate we received a lot of really positive feedback and i think for some parents it was maybe an even more comfortable environment to engage in curriculum night so that was wonderful again each event was really well attended and many commended our teachers and staff for their incredibly hard work putting together this event which again is an example of something very new for our teachers hosting

055a virtual curriculum night with many parents on the other end it's always nerve-racking as a teacher to host curriculum night and present to a lot of adults and parents and this made it probably doubly so for many of our teachers so i want to thank our teachers for persevering and for putting together a really wonderful evening for our parents and thank our parents for coming out or joining in i should say to support our teachers and their students all right i have i do have a couple of updates uh regarding the reopening plan we have continued to experience success as we progress through our first few weeks of school our enhanced fully remote program is off to a really good start with teachers and students connecting regularly through synchronous zoom lessons and daily instruction routines

056have been established in our supporting learning and engagement with and among our students among our students who are transitioning back to in-person learning this lower progressive start has provided the opportunities for teachers and students to build connections to begin to establish some of those routines and to launch learning as well as they began transitioning into in-person school we were able to support success successful implementation of our health and safety protocol and procedures with fewer students on campus i know that there have been some concerns expressed about that but the feedback we are getting from our teachers and from our administrators and staff is that it really has provided the opportunity not only to open our schools which in the midst of a pandemic is something uh to be recognized but also we believe to keep

057our schools open longer and more safely and so we really do appreciate the opportunity to practice to problem solve to make sure that we're managing our resources well and to address any unexpected challenges as they've arisen our students for their part did a great job following our new school protocols and procedures though continued practice will certainly be useful we've heard that a little bit this evening as well as we build our comfort and our students comfort in these new procedures uh students attending in person have done their very best to consistently wear masks and social distancing but if you read my updates to families we continue to ask for support in that regard that said again consistency routines will be important to supporting our success both remotely and in person we've also continued to make

058improvements to our procedures as the idp's idph updates its guidelines quarantine guidance continues to be updated it feels like every other day i know it's not quite that frequently but when you're updating plans across the district it certainly takes some time to build those updates into our plans we've also continued to make improvements to our cleaning and disinfecting procedures mark spoke to that just a little bit and our ppe supplies seem to be in good amounts at this point to continue to maintain our operations altogether we are really building our confidence and our ability to effectively implement our protocol and to manage the unexpected and what we continue to experience is that the unexpected within the pandemic era is always amplified and so we do appreciate everyone's support and their grace as we work through

059all these new ways of behaving and of teaching and of learning as well i will give a brief metrics reopening advisory team update i'm sure everyone read my update this afternoon but as the board is aware our metrics team does meet every friday they advise guidance for the subsequent week the purpose of the metrics team is to study the metrics and the progress related not only to public transition but to our reopening plan as well so um i could share the dashboard but maybe it's not necessary board numbers they took a really hard look at it at the committee of the whole meeting and we were fortunate to have recorded that so that is posted on the website for anyone who's interested in a more detailed walkthrough i would encourage you to look at that

060the metrics dashboard is is hopefully pretty simple to read but a little harder to actually understand everything that goes into that so that walkthrough will be helpful for anyone who's super interested also the full reports are attached there as well and those reports include links to a lot of the places from which we actually capture these data not only the data but the guidance on threshold so more recently i have received some follow-up questions and some information from families um again there's a lot of information there so if you dig a little bit further you can see kind of where those thresholds are coming from um it is all linked there on the second page of the message report so this uh this last week the the metrics reopening advisory team met and really talked

061about some adjustments to the metrics and and how we're monitoring those metrics in particular looking at the regionals at codes we have been able to pull zip codes a little more locally so when we talk regional we are talking about where 93 of our staff work so we pull our wilmette zip codes we pull our uh neutral townships of codes in the nicole regionally where 95 of our staff live and so that gives us a really good sense of who's entering our buildings and what those verses might be and then the team looked at some of the operational data and we will continue to review and revise how we're gathering information in particular about mask wearing and social distancing as well within our schools that said the team spent a lot of their time really

062talking about accelerating in-person instruction for our youngest learners there were there was a lot of differences of opinion though very respectful throughout some advocating for maintaining the current wilmette welcome week schedule that has served us so well as we have built our confidence and continued to practice these routines and made sure people were safe throughout others were advocating for returning all students in the upcoming week and still others were advocating for bringing back our youngest learners as we support their success so that the following week when all learners return to our campus we will be able to do so successfully unfortunately by the end of the meeting there was not clear consensus coming from the metrics team and so that left me in the somewhat unenviable position of needing to really contemplate all of the

063guidance and insight that was shared and make a decision uh for the year so i did communicate that out this morning to our teachers and then this afternoon to all families indicating that we will be accelerating our in-person instructional program for our pre-k first grade students this means that next week all students will return in in preschool through first grade which will return to in-person instruction daily with a full schedule of instruction so we're really excited about that that will give us some time to support their success there provide a little more targeted assistance as they transition we recognize that for our preschool through first grade students um these are the students who need that practice even more to build their routine and and and get used to what's happening in person we also know

064that for some of our youngest learners the remote environment is it has been a struggle and so bringing those students back in person will be really really helpful and then the very next week we're bringing back our second through fourth grade students we are really pleased uh to be feeling so confident to be able to do that with the instruction daily for for all of our students um and we're really excited about that so um the news was shared this morning with our staff and i know our elementary principals are here in the back of the room and they are already brainstorming with all of our teachers and staff to make sure that next week is really highly successful for our teachers staff and students in all of our buildings and then that the following

065week is equally as successful at the 5a campus we are at full implementation this week that means that students are attending at least two days a week in person and that fifth day as we have said is is a day for really setting the stage for the week if we have a good day not every week while we have a fifth day but when we do we really want to make sure that that day is used well for all students and that it sets the stage for a really productive rest so what should have occurred today on our friday campus is it should have been a fully remote learning day for fifth or eighth grade students they should have received uh synchronous instruction for their core classes again that allows teachers to be teaching to

066all students in the class for that day and then for the rest of the week we will be alternating a b those classes are much smaller than the blue c at our highway campus so we have about 11 or 12 students in person that's really intensive instruction some really targeted feedback and then when students are home as we heard a little this evening they should be getting a homeroom check-in their world language class as well as an end-of-day check-in they all should also should be having some live connections to their poor class throughout the day so those what we're saying is those are in within period classes uh within period connections excuse me for their core classes i will say that this is all very new and so our teachers are still learning and exploring

067ways to make this most meaningful the key here is that we want our teachers during that in-person time to really be able to focus on the instruction that's being provided to the students who are there in person making that as rigorous as it possibly can be while also ensuring that students were at home have an agenda know what their activity and assignments are and are being connected with their classroom in some way we know that that's not perfect yet but we are continuing to work on that and i know that our principals and assistant principals are continuing to work with our teachers to identify ways to make that really as meaningful as possible having heard some feedback not only this evening but throughout the last week we've got some work to do and i think

068there's a little bit of confusion between what is a fully remote day meaning today was a fully remote day in what is the remote hybrid day the the av schedule and the time that you're at home and what parents can expect what students can expect and quite frankly what teachers are doing to support partners in both of those environments we need to continue to work on building consistency across all of those environments so that everyone can continue to learn and grow but also that we know what to be expecting on these days so uh so far things seem to be going pretty well but we we need to continue to to review it and make improvements there the other adjustments i did want to mention you know we've heard the idea a couple times now

069of schools across the township who are inviting students into in-person and the board probably remembers the community members as well when we were building our plans we spent some time talking about would it be better to have students in person for full days in alternating we're better to have them in for half days every single day and clearly we got some feedback that being in person full days made some sense to us um would be really good for students to be able to connect with all of their classes in person as well as remotely and what we see across the township is kind of a mix of that there are some districts that are doing half days every day and then there are some schools similar to our 5 8 model that is doing full

070days every other day and so we will continue to evaluate this at this point we think our model is a good one we also know that we need to continue to build that consistency and continue to evaluate where it's working well what i do think is unique for our elementary schools is that our model does provide full daily university instruction which is somewhat unique in our district and has taken some time to build up toward full implementation so them again we can include lunch we can include um all that instruction within the day um and so we're excited to be getting there and feel really good about the position um so first of all i just want to tell you that um i think it's remarkable actually and very i'm very excited that we are

071getting the um pre-k through um first graders back in the whole time i think it is yeah it's fun to say very very pleased about that and then in a week to have our elementary school the young kids back in is just it's incredible it's really great that that plan is implemented now um in the um in the beginning versions of this of our plan um and i think a lot of people have read you know by now have read through our initial kind of presentations and stuff and um the one thing that i'm wondering about is and i've heard it from from quite a few people so um the you know we we have the ability to offer that because of the the size the buildings the space in the buildings and there there

072were a lot of reasons why we were able to pull that off and there were a lot of reasons why we were not able to pull that off with um five through eight i mean there were very good reasons a lot of it to do with the the building space and the number of students we have that is not apple's apples with a lot of our sister districts um to not be able to to do the full time everyone in school at the same time during the pandemic um solution that we did for our younger kids but um we did i think at the beginnings talk about that third day as an alternating day and um i just want to say that that i feel pretty strongly that um that was that that day is

073pretty valuable still um and i'm uh and i'm hoping that it's something that we can still consider keeping on the table because as a as a learning day in the same way that you're considering other options for you know looking at the option of you know okay well you know we have we have two days on two days off as as a model and we're going to see how that works versus because you know some people are saying oh you know i've seen in other districts every day you know what's best what works best um and we opted not to do that and i don't question that actually um because it seems that you know a two to three day a week would make up for that but if we're just talking two days a

074week that's a that seems like a big difference to me just in theory it just seems like a big jump and so um i just wanted to i just wanted to mention how i feel about that i think that extra day is a big day to give up um and it's something that was that was there wasn't it it was part of our our thinking was that it was going to be an alternating day and just for clarity you're talking about monday monday when when we have schools on monday so i think i i think um that certainly is an option that that we can look at and have looked at um i think right now that the difference in in our thinking is that we're not giving up the day but we're really maximizing

075the day by providing a full remote learning day with synchronous instruction if however it's not a synchronous instruction day meaning that that students aren't receiving their core instruction during that time and it's not really setting us up well for the whole week then we really do need to look at it and so the we don't we don't see it as giving it up our teachers actually um should and many are working even harder to ensure that that is a full period of uh synchronous instruction on that on that fifth day of the week whether it's monday or another day but with that said we certainly have heard some feedback that it's not always synchronous it's not always a lesson that's being provided and those are some things that we need to work on so i

076just want to state that my personal opinion is that we have given up enough uh days of learning and that there's too many people that want in school learning that every minute of in school learning in school learning that we give up is too much and that that is i would prefer that we use it as an in-school learning day so i would echo your your sentiment i think a lot of my confidence in our five to eight plan and i do feel very confident in it is about maximizing like you said the time in person um and to remove that third day field significant um i understand i you know it's helpful to understand what the goal is with having that date synchronous i can see that there is more zoom whole class instruction

077but i think we've heard pretty resoundingly that it's a lot of time for kids to be learning in that mode and that was not our plan that we that was not the thinking when we presented this plan originally so it it feels different to me and a significant chunk of time that kids are not represented it feels like a big change even though i know it isn't in terms of amount of time i understand the um desire to maximize in-person instruction right but i also understand the idea to maximize construction and i'm wondering if it's accurate to say that if it is a remote synchronous instruction day on the fifth day that the total amount of instruction a student is receiving is actually more because they're not alternating every monday you're getting five hours of

078instruction every monday yeah so i'm assuming that there is a well it seems to me like there's a a logistical problem which is that you have two groups the a group in the b group and so what we have to think about is if you have either you know let's say you have a's coming in on a monday what are those b kids doing that monday they'll come in the next monday the alternating monday but then what are the a kids doing and i think that's your your point and i and i think that's an important thing to think through because the idea is at least as i understand it the idea is the synchronous instruction allows us to have instructions for all the kids a and b at the same time so i really

079like the idea of maximizing the av maximizing the person i get where we're going with that and i am very worried about these five whatever hours of zoom because so far that has not gone terribly well uh but i don't know how to solve the logistics problem and i understand why we came to this solution so i think it's a kink that we still are trying to figure out and and i appreciate the fact that the board and others can have um some real understanding that what we're really all saying is man school in the time of candidates is not what we want it to be um but i'm glad we've continued um yeah the trade-off obviously is the total amount of time teaching um and how much the weight the fact that some of

080that might be in person i guess the point that i wanted to follow up on was he said there's still a learning curve in terms of using that day well and i think that's really important because the equation is if that day is used well and the kids are getting a lot of instruction every week on that monday then the trade-off can be talked about but if that's a you know if it's difficult to use that day well then i think it over why it overrides the fact that then let's get the kids in school um so i think it's important that if you can get to the point where that day is used well um but if you can't for whatever logistics reasons then then for sure i think we need to seriously go

081back to the every other week or whatever the right way of saying that i think that's right and i you know i think that there's a theme running through everybody's comments which is we don't want the kids to be back in school sooner as opposed to later and there's no perfect situation so i don't want to miss the the good moment which is we're really glad that we moved up pre-k one a week that that was a win and i think there's collective disappointment that we couldn't move everybody up and i think what you hear um in the comments um is a concern with what's happening whether it's the av all remote day or the a b hybrid remote day there are depending on the child's significant or minor challenges with at-home instruction and i

082hear from you sorry this mask is challenging today it's shrunk um i i i think that that you know we know this is a learning process and we're really hoping that um next month when we come together kind of the public comments and the the feelings from the parent community is that this remote kind of at-home learning whether it's an 80 day or an a or b day has gotten better that a fair summary of where we are are there other comments or questions about reopening or um dr crema scully covered a lot everything from metrics to curriculum night do we have any other comments on anything else that she's discussed lisa i just wanted to respond to that because i think um i think you you summarized it very well um i actually wanted

083to mention how it ties into the um the webinar the meeting that you're going to be having with the families who are exclusively at home and taking into account it is so crucial that meeting is so important listening to what those families are saying which we've been listening to all along but really having that deep dive conversation with those families and being able to listen to the feedback from them and um and then working back and forth as you have been all this time um and the teachers and support staff and everyone but taking that information i think is going to be such a big part of this um of pulling this all together um basically going back to what you just said um it pulls the whole picture together of um giving us the

084time to giving giving the administration the teachers and everyone the time to work through something that is all new to the parents to the kids the teachers the administration us everyone um and everyone's trying really really hard to do their very best so i i agree i just wanted to explain that but yeah i i want to go back to this event that's that's a lot that's a lot of effort to put that together i'll add uh i enjoyed curriculum thought that you could tell so thank you to everyone there's a lot of work going into everything that we are doing i i say that with all sincerity and we recognize there is always room for improvement but i have to take a moment and say that our teachers and administrators are working so incredibly

085hard and across the state you see different examples of how schools have opened this year some successful and in some less successful um nothing is perfect and in this moment right now nothing will be perfect um but there's a lot of people working exceptionally hard to support our students and to support our families and to meet expectations and i truly appreciate everyone's not only support but their understanding and grace as teachers are expected to do a completely different things than they have ever been taught how to do and supported how to do and as much professional development as we provided in support as we provided it truly is the herculean task to shift everything that you're doing and so while i recognize there's room for improvement and we will continue to try to improve there's

086also incredible things happening for students across our district and so i do want to celebrate that and so i will end my comments on reopening with a celebration and appreciation for our teachers and our staff and our administrators who truly are working tirelessly at this point to serve our students and to support our family as well and we'll echo that acknowledgement and thing much appreciated and then when it comes to lots of work the one thing that we didn't hit on your administrative announcements was hoya oh well actually there's a couple other things we didn't actually oh before we get to foia which which also yes is noteworthy um the student academic assessment plan the district will return to its traditional assessment practices to assess student readiness and performance both in-person and our full remote

087students will participate and they will incorporate assessment practices that were in place prior to the shift to remote learning in march teachers may use formative and summative assessments in both formal and informal ways some of you may recall or have heard that we were set to launch map today and we learned from some uh trials that there there were some challenges with that and so we delayed that but we do fully intend to implement map as well as our other district assessments uh which include things like ames one plus desa and mesh and state mandated assessments like iar isa and the fitness assessments we do have a district 39 assessment overview posted to our website and so anyone is welcome to check that out unlike last school year's spring assessments that were canceled the illinois

088state board of education has shared that these assessments are required this year fully expects to administer them there are no waivers allowed at this point this school year so katie lee and our wonderful department of curriculum and instruction will continue to monitor is the announcements throughout the year and make adjustments as needed just as we did sort of in the 11th hour for math but i think we'll be better off for it in the long run so thank you katie for your team support of all of that i did want to mention right at school which is a partnership district 39 is attempting to form you'll see it later on this evening's agenda that partnership right now is to provide staff of district 39 a child care option for their school-aged children while their own

089resident district is providing um remote learning only and so we are partnering with regina who is offered a classroom space that we can use and then our employees will be able to sign their children up it is simply organized through us but registration and fees and all of that goes directly from an employee to the right at school organization the board will recall that we partnered with the park district as well and they offered a wonderful hybrid program that was opened to residents first to register and i think that program filled up really quickly and not all of our staff members had access to it um or we're able to sign up for it for one reason or another and so this just provides yet another option for our uh for our our staff to

090ensure that their their own children can have care and that they can then um so again just another option so we appreciate the word support for that and now moving on to the freedom of information act report the board has received several foia requests i will go through and read these it is uh rather lengthy this month from john sorry joe john dated august 30th 2020 requesting all confirmed colby cases for all d39 staff and students from january to august 28th of 2020 from jeff axelrod the board received a foia dated august 26th uh requesting any documentation about suspected or confirmed kobit 19 exposure suspected or confirmed cases for district 39 staff from january 1 2020 to present from jeff axelrod a foia dated august 20th requesting documents containing information about building ventilation from jeff

091axelrodifoya dated september 3rd requesting any and all information about building ventilation for the past 30 days from jeff axelrod afoya dated september 3rd requesting any and all information about building ventilation for the past 90 days jeff axelrod afoya dated september 3rd again requesting any and all information about building ventilation from february 1st 2020 to present from jeff axelrod afoya dated september 3rd requesting any and all information about building ventilation within the past year from jeff axelrod afoya dated september 3rd requesting any and all information about building ventilation for the past five years from jeff axelrod of hoya dated september 4th requesting spreadsheet data of current and past employees from may 2019 through the present providing job titles hourly and annual salary gender race and ethnicity from jeff axelrod afoya dated august 25th requesting a list

092of staff resignations along with resignation dates correspondence from resigning staff and any other documents explaining resignation from the first to the present from excuse me from jeff axelrod foia dated september 4th requesting list of staff resigned for any reasons copies of resignation letters or other documents explaining their resignation from august 25th 2020 to present and from jeff axelrod foia dated september 11th requesting a list of staff who have resigned for any reason along with resignation dates and copies of resignation letters from september 4th and that concludes my reports so just a a question or a point on this i know that um gathering all the data for foias takes an incredible amount of administrative time um in the time of covet i'm just wondering how much of a burden is this right now i will

093acknowledge that um gathering it's not only gathering the reports but it is redacting personally identifiable information from those documents in order to disclose them to the public is something that just takes quite a bit of time and when there are so many of them coming in quick succession it has taken a lot of our time corey and heather have both spent a lot of time working on hoyas over the last month and um of course we consult with our attorneys to ensure that we are doing everything we can for us being as transparent as possible is really important but we also have to balance that with maintaining the privacy of our employees and of our students and so um when we get a foia we really do have to go through each document as carefully

094as possible to ensure that privacy okay so just and i'll get you one second so basically two of our head administrators are the ones who are gathering and redacting the doctor um yes with the support of our attorneys because quite frankly when there's that many of them we do have to lean on our attorneys for support to ensure that we're doing everything as as correctly as possible and in protection of both our responsibility and privacy and i know that we are pretty um groups um but in this case in this time i think you should feel free to spend what you spend to get professional assistance to deal with this so that your um you know intentions of this frankly i personally think it should be that i know is you know mr axelrod is

095certainly entitled to astralis information is this something that you can we could have somebody from the outside at a cost to the district do for us or is this something that you have to do yourselves because i'm assuming you have to you know where the records are and you have to go find the document there are two elements to it one is retrieving all responsive documents and the second is redacting information from the document sometimes we can do that reaction ourselves when it's not i'm doing burdensome and then there are other times where we do need to lean on our attorneys more recently with so many we have needed to lean on our attorneys to assist with the reaction but the compiling or the gathering of the documents uh really is something we have to

096do our attorneys wouldn't know where to find the human resources documents or the business documents uh the buildings and grounds documents those kind of things first before we can ask for support so uh we are doing the very best we can to respond to each other that comes in but it is a lot of work and for heather and corey and so it really is taking your eye off the prize in terms of your ability to hire and staff up and manage cleaning and everything and so i think what we're trying to say oh go ahead i just wanna to the extent we can hire outside people to um enable you to do the work that the most important work in terms of running the schools right now i think i'll speak for the board

097go ahead that's what i was gonna say so i'm just gonna file one all right there's i'm assuming there's no objection though do what you need to do to take this off your plate i i appreciate that and i will say that we also want to be diligent in ensuring that our resources are focused on children so again this is a bit of a balancing act because we um are already spending a lot of money to open schools and keep them open so i appreciate the board support and we will continue to be as fiscally responsible as we can as we approach each of our responses so i'm just counting one two three the last thing we want to do is is waste money where we you know spend money where we don't need to

098spend it but i think that right now given the magnitude of work that has to be done and the hiring you know peras and you know what heather has to be doing to be hiring people and you know what corey needs to be doing right now in balancing our books and budgets it is just it's unbelievable the work that has to be done right now in order to make sure that the kids are in school and everything is moving as smoothly as possible i mean it's like couldn't be more crucial right now so i i i realize that there's a balance there but like this is you know we might have to give something up for that to happen i mean this is important the other question i would have is there any way um

099we could ask for an extension on the time that we have to answer the ques given this is a global pandemic that we're trying to operate schools within that time so there is the ability to extend by five days and that has been used and helpful beyond that we don't understand there's been extension options okay a lot of creative ideas um we we will it is our responsibility to respond to these on behalf of the board and it is our responsibility to report them to the board and so that is the nature of today's report and we'll continue to do that okay thank you um next is strategic plan updates uh yes we have two items listed today the first is my response to the community review committee report that was provided last year through

100the study of the crc this report is my response to the crc's report which focused on strengthening parent partnerships that report was provided to the board in june 2020 thank you to all members of the crc for that deep dive into current partnerships we are using that to guide our work this year and we really appreciate it as you'll see in the report it details the 2019-2020 crc review committee's recommendations the recommendations were were presented by me to all of our administrators and were accepted as part of the 2019-2020 strategic plan which katie will now give an overview of for the board if we can progress there thank you dr komasgoli i am speaking on behalf of all of the administrators as i present this high level summary of the strategic plan along with the

101report so as shared on the slide as we always do district 39 follows a yearly sequence of purposeful planning starting in june with an analysis of the strategic priorities the strategic initiatives are divided into three sections the first section is the new strategic initiative and these are new focus areas for district 39 section two is the continuing strategic initiatives uh the initiatives presented have been um introduced to the board previously and these are ongoing focus areas and in section three is the annual business the outcomes presented here are regular part of the school or department's responsibilities as dr prescott shared in the introduction um this is the primary priority for this year our new initiative of the 2020 2021 wilmette district 39 reopening plan we are committed to implementing the plan with acute focus on

102keeping student staff in our school community safe but while ensuring that the learning needs of students are met this initiative highlights an extremely comprehensive plan that involves all aspects of teaching and learning health and safety and school operations and logistics basically every possible area including community building diversity inclusion and parent partnerships so for the purpose of this presentation i will highlight some action items however the entire plan can be accessed through the district's website as well as the district 39 families toolbox and the links have been provided in the strategic plan document for your convenience so the district pre-opening plan offers three instructional models for this school year modified in person hybrid and enhanced remote for fall the recommendation to begin elementary with modified in-person model and grades five through eight with the hybrid model

103was and continues to be permissible in phase four of the restore illinois plan wellnet is part of region 10 and metrics are being monitored closely in order to guide whether any shifts to the other models are needed the metrics are being closely monitored by the metrics reopening advisory team as shared earlier it is comprised by a wide variety of stakeholders including administrators teachers support staff board of education members district nurses parents and representatives of the reopening planning task force community medical professionals and a community expert on national and international covert impact and the purpose of the metrics team is to study important school relevant metrics of program 19 and the district's reopening plan in order to guide adjustments to our reopening efforts and improvements in health and safety protocol building a positive school culture and

104community for all of our learners in person or remote is a priority in this initiative we are committed to fostering a sense of connectedness among all students and staff connectedness to their class community connectedness to their home school community and connectedness to the larger district-wide community the entire district team will be implementing community building strategies throughout the year our district is very fortunate to have parents families and community members who are invested in our schools and invest in the success of our students the district has a long history of partnering with families and based on the work of the community review committee last year we will be reflecting and taking action so that we can strengthen our parent partnerships crc's recommendations are reflected in these action steps first is to create and update a one-stop

105shop that would be a useful tool for families and parents next is the seeking the input and suggestions from district families regarding current events offered throughout the year we will also conduct a review of the district-wide communication practices and methods and finally evaluate ways to strengthen the home school partnership and improve two-way directional dialogue between parents teachers and administrators in the next section of the strategic plan the administration identified three ongoing focus areas delivering a kindergarten enrichment program by june 2021 district 39 will have completed and reviewed the kindergarten enrichment and enhancement program 839 at central elementary and harper elementary school also the district will continue to review mckenzie and ramona school's construction plans with str architects and seekboard's guidance on this project student growth through differentiation and personalization district 39 is committed to positively

106impacting student growth and achievement by meeting the learning needs of students through differentiating instruction and personalizing interventions this year we have kept the challenging goal of maintaining or increasing the percentage of students who have either demonstrated positive growth or high growth and math assessment in addition district 39 will focus on the social emotional well-being of students we strive to attend to the social emotional needs of our students as well as their academic needs in creating flexible learning environments we really completed a milestone last year last winter with high crest learning commons being completed there is one important project remaining and that is the outdoor learning spaces in the gardens so when str architects developed the construction interior plans for hikris middle school's learning commons the plan included a direct connection between the outdoor classroom and

107gardens to the interior design and this year the plan will be finalized and implemented next is the annual business section and the outcomes presented here are regular part of a school or department's responsibilities and this section highlights a few of the many ongoing goals for district 39 first and foremost building school culture and community is a commitment that has been ongoing and it will never go away therefore it has been moved to annual business to communicate as much so district 39 is committed to improve school culture by directly engaging in conversations about diversity and inclusion as well as fostering that sense of connectedness among all students and staff in addition district 39 will engage students in ongoing learning activities to address anti-bias bullying and social conflict and increase the level of understanding across our schools

108and community about the threats posed by hate and intolerance school safety is also always a priority in addition to the action items within the new initiative district 39 continuously implements the district-wide safety plan which includes facility improvements and safe practices training for students and teachers also by the end of june 2021 year three of the curriculum review process will have been completed for science the curricular resources were adjusted for elementary grades this year in light of the safety protocols and practices that are unique to this school year and finally the district continues to ensure positive environmental practices during all and future construction projects through the use of sustainable materials grant funding applications and cost analysis questions that you may have or numbers any questions well it's really a compliment um i was thinking of sharing

109this later at good and welfare but you spoke a lot about connections and um building community and this was an area i've been really concerned about for every student in this environment and i have been absolutely astounded on a daily basis to see my girls at home building connections with friends online through the guidance of your teachers in such masterful ways through breakout groups and teamwork in ways i couldn't have imagined could be done behind a computer at home i have a daughter who's new to high press and she is meeting all new students and i really wondered how that would be you know it's just a real challenge and your teachers have exceeded any expectation i could have had about how you are doing this work in this amazing time so i'm just incredibly

110grateful to see you put that in action yes it's always a good report so thank you for that i had a follow-up question because it's something that i know we were focusing on a lot last year which was starting to implement the differentiation and i understand this is a totally new world but how is differentiation being done in this remote environment hybrid environment i mean we're having a lot of challenges to to having a steady state so how are we how are we doing differentiation in this environment so the teachers would be applying some of the similar strategies where there might be assignments that are differentiated based on the students readiness for the content area or to produce evidence or most often people are using utilizing the small group options to be able to target

111some instruction based on the information that they've gathered and so that's a couple of ways to do that in this environment as well as in person do you know if they've been able to do that i mean i know that directionally what we'd like but yes i have definitely heard of many examples and seen our teachers do that so um i've applaud this as well um but i do have a couple questions for you um and i might have one for tony um so uh one is just a question about the you mentioned the garden the because it's the one piece that was left and i'm just curious because we haven't talked about it in a while and there's so much has happened is that just because of all the construction and everything like that

112it's still on um target or is it just kind of waiting for a bit because it's not like you'll probably recall that some of some of the garden work needed to put on be put on hold just before the season for two reasons one because the bids came in slightly higher than what we had anticipated yes and so we chose to make sure that some of the usable hardscape that we knew we'd be using right off the bat or hoping to be using sooner rather than later was installed and that needed to all go in first before plants could be planted in some of that new foliage the other element was that um in terms of timing um there would need to be people on site to be watering and caring for the plants and

113we didn't want to plant items that then did not have staff on site to help maintain it and at the time the decision needed to be made we were still in phase three and a fully remote environment and so we weren't confident in our ability to attend the plans and so that has been delayed i know um that we have continued the discussions and are already building out those plans we've had some budget discussions as well to ensure that that work does get done but in the near future it looks a little different also because we're using our outdoor space a little bit differently than we would in typical times and so we really want to make sure that we are maximizing that outdoor space for for people's face as much as possible and so

114it definitely is still um in the works and i know that um kelly jackson continues to have conversations not only about the that garden space but many of the other courtyard spaces we've started to examine to ensure that we again are maximizing our our outdoor space to the greatest extent possible in the times that we're living in that's what i was actually thinking i was going to suggest that because um now we're moving to in person and we're actually probably really going to use those spaces more than ever right now that perhaps if there was any way to switch around some of our priorities that maybe you know we we might have pushed it off before but now maybe there's a way to make that a priority over something else that isn't as pressing because

115we're not full you know it's not normal right now that um it might be something to look at because wow that would be really neat space to be able to use for the kids and the teachers now so that was one thing that's just a thought um my next question has to do with um and i love that you put building culture um school culture and community into general business which is an ongoing thing that will always be fun i agree with that so thank you for that but i do have a question um because when we started down this path of really making a general business um we had talked about changing the curriculum and moving away not moving away completely from second step but second step was the only thing that we had

116um and there was a lot of discussion about it and it was um and you were moving away from it but we never really kind of uh knew we knew bits and pieces um before everything changed um it was kind of like just starting out to be this amazing thing that you were working on and you had um seminars and things happening exciting things i'm just kind of curious where that's at in terms of curriculum and the older kids particularly because i think you're still using i'm not mistaken second step with some of the really little kids because it's appropriate but um moving forward are there programming or things that you have planned in particular yes this is definitely a time of transition for the fdl work but a group of administrators and teachers were

117involved or luckily invited to a neighboring district's castle uh competencies uh seminar and so it was multiple days of training and what they do is based on their identified competencies which are very much what second step is also um teaching um they they recommend that we start with the adults and so what we've done is started some professional development some general knowledge and then they're their approach is more embedded within the curriculum so what we're trying to do is model each competency over time with the adults first the teachers first and then show them how they could incorporate that with the students now for castle this is about a three to four year process that we are embarking on but second step and facing history and any of those other resources are supplemental and supportive

118of everything that we are working for we are seeing some progress and we can also give you an update um in january or a later month and before before you go that would be great sure and then i'm so sorry i have one more question that's okay um and this is to tony i guess it's it's about um similar stuff it just has to do with because we're now dealing with a little different you know we've got kids that are in and kids that are out of school not all of the programming sorry not all the programming that we've always done is um has been modified for both and i know one program in particular that was missed by like sixth grade kids every year get a program uh given by officer um yes he

119gives them a the program in the gym about um safe uh social media use and all that kind of stuff and then but it's in he does it in person and he doesn't know how to do it over the media um like over the internet and all that and and he never gave it to the sixth graders last year because we were in it's in the spring and we are in quarantine and so um i think it's crucial that the wghs students at least in the seventh grade if not everyone uh across either whether whether they're in school or out of school um gets that information it's pretty important information what you're referring to is that presentation that we give to the sixth graders at highcrest the last couple years i've done it in partnership

120with him um it was missed this spring um due to circumstances but uh when there are things like this we for instance when we did the new teacher trainings and there was a part that he provided he actually came on site and we helped him do it remotely through zoom and i would imagine we would do something similar uh because that topic we really try hard to make sure that that gets hit very hard well it gets it gets hit with a variety of different grade levels but sixth grade in particular that's kind of a tradition to make sure that every kid going through really gets a thorough discussion and talking to so yeah we'll make sure to yeah for anyone that doesn't know what it is it's um it's a talk about social media

121social media safety and cyber bullying and that kind of stuff and it just extortion sexting we'll make sure it gets somewhere other questions about the strategic plan okay so let's go on to annual business summer enrichment program district 39 has historically offered a very robust summer enrichment program with enrichment classes such as cooking and rocketry academic classes as well as basic skills and specialty classes such as poetry this year due to covid19 we had to substantially curtail our summer offerings and reimagine them and we had a very successful summer program though quite different from what we typically offer the bulk of planning for the summer program usually occurs during late spring when we were under a stay-at-home order because we did not know what would be coming next we delayed the start of summer school

122by two weeks to give us additional time to plan and reduce our summer programming options to really focus on the academic classes that might be of greatest need or greatest interest to our families we ultimately held summer school from july 6 through august 7th and all summer enrichment programs were held remotely our extended school year program however which provides goal-oriented instruction for eligible students with ieps was offered as either a fully remote program or as an optional hybrid program and here is a one additional place where we as a district really stood out this summer i did not hear of any other districts being able to pull together any kind of in-person instructional program for extended school year kristen and her team did an amazing job of making sure that we jumped on the opportunity

123as soon as the governor made it available to us and put together a really neat program that was i think very beneficial for the students involved but also helped to guide our return to in-person instruction gave us some really good examples of students doing just as they were expected to do and staff members supporting their success so that was hugely successful in a program we were really proud to be able to offer again not too many other districts were able to do that so kudos and thank you to the student services department for doing that our extended school year program um oh excuse me i already said that we added a new class this summer as well uh jumpstart as a short two week class to give students a head start on a return to

124school our summer enrichment program is designed to be cost neutral and despite the unusual circumstances was close to achieving this goal this summer so expenses went up enrollment went down and yet we were pretty close so um the board has been given that report and we want to thank everyone for their participation as well as their support of quite an unusual summer for us so it was good that we were able to offer some some neat programs for our students despite the challenges um yes unless we wanted to maybe take a break oh great okay or so comment more so one um not necessarily in the order i think the uh head start idea was really um that the jump step yeah was really imaginative and i'm sure it was helpful for the students that

125took it it might be interesting if you had a second or two of extra time to survey the kids that took it and see if that if they felt like it helped them kind of to close the circle on that particular topic because i do think it was a match to have that and it looks like a reasonable number of kids took it it'd be nice there's been ten times as many but obviously um you know the ones that took it i'm sure i think it's it's good the percentage of students referred that i actually took the class looks like the percentage went up a little bit that's a number that i always look at because if we think it's worthwhile that they're referred to to take these classes it's always a question of why

126they act and and i know every year i ask this question and every year well you know some don't want to some you know didn't really understand why would be useful um but obviously if we got to the point where we thought it would be useful if they had a little bit of extra instruction that they that they took advantage of that recommendation that i think is really important so i'm glad that the number one off that's great um and i know you work every year to try to get that number aside as you can um next summer unfortunately the respect would be even more important that the number of kids that if you use the same criteria that we'd recommend you need some extra help to stay on grade in this prime year i

127mean it would be hard to imagine there won't be a bigger number so um just kind of think forward um what you can do to really encourage participation um be prepared for it you know if it turns out that we don't really talk about that he's charging the right amount but this year if we think that there's a lot of kids that could be really benefit from this we should make it a highlight for this i guess others okay um joshua promiscuoli uh called the question of whether or not we need to take a break right now or do you want to plow through until we break through hey you know what when someone makes a suggestion it's always a good idea to take a couple minutes i'll say i think that tony has queued

128up a video maybe that he's going to play a little song while we go i haven't queued up we'll see how it works with the audio the new way of the audio is i mean for the guests at home or for us here it was very inspiring so i figured well let's do that out for our break if we need to take one sure enough i should have known so it is it's it's not our students but it is a good background music forever is [Music] i love you for that and selfless i don't know if this helps [Music] know [Music] six in the morning as soon as you walk through that door everyone needs you [Music] again keep that energy my heroes [Music] honest and selfless [Music] is up in the yeah from the

129bottom is thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you good job we're going to keep going with the annual business which now includes the enrollment update thank you and i will introduce dr glowacki who is uh going to share a brief summary of the report that details enrollment for the school year so this is a an annual report that we share usually every fall however this is anything but usual in terms of how it looks we changed the format a little bit to try and depict and give a full representation of all that we are working on this fall the typical school year you'll see in the blue columns on that chart that what would reflect our typical classroom or homeroom teacher allotment we had predicted anticipated about 140 full-time classroom slash homeroom

130teachers when i say that i'm not talking about necessarily all of the other teachers our students see the number of sections if you will at each grade level again in this atypical year we wanted to highlight some of the changes that have occurred kindergarten enrichment was planned to begin at central and harper this fall we had anticipated three sections at each of those schools currently we're running two classes or two sections at each of the schools based on the enrollments and changes in enrollment from the initial prediction the reopening plan had both in-person and remote learning options for families as a result we've needed to staff both types of learning based on the request of families and in-person learning is requiring 139 and a half classroom teachers we get behalf because we still have half

131day kindergarten um and the remote learning staffing requires 31 teachers therefore in order to staff our needs this year we're looking at 170 and a half classroom teachers in order to address this and be responsible we decided to make a difficult decision and look at reassigning some staff who are not typically home room teachers or classroom teachers to be classroom teachers for this school year some of these positions included our elementary spanish teachers our library media specialists and our differentiation support teachers when we were able to do that we were able to reassign 17 and a half staff members and when you take that into account we've only increased our actual homeroom classroom teachers by 13 from what we would have done in a typical year it's also necessary to look at our special education

132teacher staffing or our lbs's as we call them we increased those teachers by five and the third essentially and this is due in large part to what students selected versus in person or remote we weren't able to just easily move our special education teachers because it was based on the needs of students so we had to be very um very deliberate in those assignments as part of our staffing decisions class size needed to be considered the in-person class size is significantly less than what you would expect in a typical year and this is because of our adherence to the idph guidelines of social distancing within the classroom needing to give space for students and staff when we were planning for remote learning class sizes we planned for class sizes that aligned with our more typical

133or expected class size when in reality our grades kindergarten fourth sixth and seventh grades actually all have smaller class sizes than if we were in a typical year grades two three and five are typical of our pre-pandemic class size um our remote learners however in grade one are a bit higher than what we would typically expect there's about one additional student expected in each class that if you average it out we have had this situation occur at various times in grade levels throughout the years in fact i personally experienced this several times when i was at ramona and when this happens we consider what supports would be most beneficial to students and staff one strategy that we've often considered and implemented is using teaching assistants or available teachers to help support reading and math blocks

134of instruction allowing for more individ individualized and small group support during those critical lessons and we are committed to continuing to look at that and we need the more specific students this year as well as our staff members to help support that need that was a high level summary any questions or comments um yes one of the this is always a interesting report and totally different this year as you've mentioned um so it's a little difficult to look at some of the things but one of the things i was looking at was are kindergarten enrollment which is always you know it always grows from kindergarten to first grade and this year there's i'm sure more differences but what i was was looking at was it appears to be a pattern that the schools with um

135the kindergarten enrichment had a higher kindergarten attendance than the schools without um so i think that's something that we need to to watch um as we're looking at what we're going to be doing for next year it's not just the number of kids that sign up for keep it's also the number of parents that feel comfortable sending their kids to kindergarten and again this is such an unusual year that it's hard to read into one set of data but it did seem like the two schools that had keep had a higher number of kindergarten students relative to their continuing like first grade through fourth grade and that there's a noticeable difference in the two schools we'll say that ramona at least for the last 10 years has run four sections of kindergarten for the most

136part and so we were watching that very closely expecting that perhaps it might jump towards the start of the school year and get more typical to run four sections and it really just never happens so whether that's an anomaly this year or related to q39 like you said one data set may not lend us to that conclusion but certainly something to look at well and also in the case of ramona it looks like 27 students did the remote learning for kindergarten so that also could be an indication that you know we're not gonna do keep that i'm just gonna keep them at home although i will say that across the board our ramona families selected remote learning at a higher rate than our families from other district schools for whatever reason across across all five

137grade levels again the one data point but i think for the kindergarten i think that is something that we do have to take oh okay i think up next we have the letter of agreement with the support staff union a letter of agreement with our support staff unit has been negotiated um the ssu letter of agreement reflects the needs of staff as related to the health crisis and our fall return to school plan so we are very appreciative of the incredibly hard work provided to our schools our students and our staff from the support staff union we could not contemplate opening schools without our support staff union members they perform critical functions within our schools and so we're really pleased to be able to recommend this letter of agreement to the board for consideration this

138evening um and then the other item here is the fiscal year 2020 administrator and teacher salary and benefits report this is an annual report that is required once presented this information will be posted on to the district 39 website and will remain there until updated again next fall right along uh we have second and final reading of board of education policies two colon two two zero four colon one eight zero and seven colon one nine zero the policies have been revised since first reading and changes are highlighted in yellow so they are recommended for final reading and adaption this evening i think there's one typo if i'm reading it correctly two colon two two zero page two or four under minutes number five if the meeting is adjourned to another date so we need to

139note when we do the consent agenda revised are there any i'm assuming there are no objections anymore any other discussion on policymaking um okay then we will move on to the second opportunity for public comment um this is an opportunity for the community to address the board i'll just say there are no community so i'm going to move members to um asking tony has the district to receive any additional public comments address the public comment it will net 39. we did we received one so i'll go ahead and read that from sarah square squiers doyle ramona parent hello first thank you for all the work that you're doing i'm listening to the meeting tonight and i'm glad to hear that the diversity equity and inclusion efforts are not getting lost given that this is a

140multi-year strategy starting with trainings for teachers my worry is that it's going to take a long time to trickle down to the kids parents and community i would personally like to see each school starting with k through 4 create a dei committee to brainstorm what we can do with what we can start doing now and to collaborate efforts i recognize there are many competing commitments and hope this will remain a priority in the district next we'll move to our action items the content agenda the next order of business is the consent agenda are there any items i moved to approve the personnel report dated september 21st i moved to approve the 2020 2021 district 39 strategic plan i moved to approve a second and final reading of the board of education policy 222 colon 220

141as amended board of education meeting procedures number two colon 265 title nine sexual harassment grievance procedures and four colon 180 pandemic preparedness management and recovery and finally five colon 20 workplace harassment prohibited and seven colon 190 student behavior the policy numbers you're reading don't align yeah today you colon two two zero four colon one eighty seven pole and one ninety yeah why don't you just start over on that one that's a double check two coin 220 four coin 180 and seven column ninety okay i moved to approve a second and final reading board of education policy as amended to colon two two zero board of education meeting procedures um four colon 180 pandemic preparedness management and recovery and seven colon 190 student behavior i moved to approve the attached support staff union ssu letter of

142agreement i moved to approve the contract with right at school [Laughter] i moved to approve the accounts payable for bills listed between august 25th 2020 and september 21st 2020 in the following amounts educational fund 329 thousand eight hundred and eighty eight dollars and sixty eight cents o m fund hundred and twenty thousand thirteen dollars and sixty three cents transportation fund three thousand ninety five dollars and ninety eight cents capital projects nine hundred and ninety seven thousand eight hundred and thirty dollars for total all funds of one million six hundred and fifty thousand eight hundred and twenty eight dollars and twenty nine cents i moved to approve the manual checks issued between august twenty fifth two thousand twenty and september twenty first 21st 2020 in the following amounts educational fund 616 573.99 o m fund thirty

143five thousand three hundred and sixty two dollars tort fund three hundred and twenty seven dollars for a total all funds of six hundred and fifty five thousand two hundred and sixty two dollars and ninety nine yes now we're going to move on um i um i was glad that i attended a webinar like all things are nowadays that was held during the year or during the month unfortunately i don't remember the name but i know it was run by dr swanson and i was very impressed by it so if you could explain what that was and why i was very impressed by it i think that was dr bolton yes who did um a presentation he he did a an hour and a half presentation for our whole staff talking about kind of how we

144can use this time to really help children thrive and be resilient and um the staff really enjoyed it and so we had him come back and do one with with parents as well and i think it was it's on our website right recorded it like yeah it was it was a really nice um presentation really just talking about how these are very trying times and there are things we need to watch out for but there are lots of strategies that we can use to help our children not just survive during them but really thrive and develop more skills in terms of resilience yeah i'd encourage anyone that hasn't seen that to take an hour out of your life and watch something that was upbeat and very interesting thank you look at the walker okay may

145i have a motion to adjourn to executive sessions to discuss special education negotiations and personnel i moved to adjourn to executive session to discuss negotiations personnel and special education did it catch everything okay may have a second all right motion having been made and seconded yes yes yes motion having been made and oh we did that motion carried we are now adjourned to executive session and the time is 8 37.