001I hereby call to order this regular meeting of the Board of Education for Wilmette Public Schools district 39 for Monday June 15th 2020 well the clerk please call the roll Lisa Schneider thanks here Chauncey's already here thank pen Zika here any paling here Mark's team here Allen Stern weather here Aaron stone here thank you good evening everyone I wanted to open up this evening's board meeting with a message to our community and especially to our african-american students parents faculty support staff and administrators the district 39 Board of Education wants to express our profound outrage and sadness at the murder of mr. George Floyd in Minneapolis he died because of the color of his skin because he was black our country's systemic racism led to his death and that of too many others it is heartbreaking
002it is inexcusable and it is all too real we mourn the loss of his life and so many others we would say their names but there are too many we want you to know that the that your lives matter and have always mattered to us we stand with you racism is wrong and unacceptable and that we as a board are committed to ensuring that district 39 supports and welcomed students of all races within the past three years we've made our intent clear by establishing a statement of diversity inclusion and last fall a resolution condemning hate and deepening the district's commitment to a positive school environment but we know that statements are not enough you have our promise that we as a board will continue to work together with our administration to try harder to do
003better to make a more inclusive community we as a board are committed to educating ourselves in our community about racism and how to make sure you are safe and secure in our school community and we as a board will work with and support the administration's efforts to take an additional ongoing steps to ensure that our community is welcoming accepting and safe for all this includes making sure our curriculum reflects the diverse experiences our students are growing up in we will discuss the board's initial actions toward this commitment later this evening during old business I wanted to ask for a minute of silence for mr. Floyd you thank you now we'll start with the Pledge of Allegiance principal Becky Lippmann will have the central team leave the pledge tonight I'm gonna go ahead and share the
004screen good evening my name is Becky Lippmann and I am the principal of Central Elementary School I am here with assistant principal mr. Anthony haddock a teacher together we are excited this evening to join you and to share the accomplishments of a few mer students who participated in our new moving through e-learning Club as we moved into remote learning we were motivated to get kids away from their screen and engage safely and move the moving through e-learning Club was created by Miss hunt one of our central PE teachers it wasn't just created by me it was through the influence of two of our participants that we have here with us tonight who emailed me at once note into their outside activity could count towards our very popular mileage club I couldn't do that because our
005mileage club is pretty strict but I said well why not so Andrew and Junie Rogers I give them the credit for helping us create our moving through e-learning Club our consisted out and do any sort of activity that they chose to do as long as they can track it they can do it as a community we went six thousand eight hundred and forty-one miles in seven weeks we had a total of 107 participants and I gave about three hundred and eighty or moving certificates this one is number it looks like our 75th mile certificate this one was from a Stoli and I have five of our participants here tonight who are going to give us their reasons why they wanted to continue moving and participate moving learning but I'm gonna start from our youngest and
006go to our oldest so Andrew Rogers is earning because I like when we added our image into the computer I like any certificates and then we'll go on to one of my first graders Judy Rogers I like to Lily don't eat learning club because I like I also like any miles and certificates and I have a second-grade participant or in the grass and then I have one of my third-grade participants Braden Lincoln I loved the competitiveness of the moving through e-learning Club and I also liked how we could run and bike and do whatever we wanted and it definitely made me want to do longer bike rides and jobs and then our fourth grade purchase one of our fourth-grade parts of Spence Riley bertocchi ll visit true mileage club and living through e-learning club is
007like a great substitute and it kept me out in and gave me something to do today I think all of you who are participating and I think six thousand eight hundred and forty-one miles done by a hundred and seven participants was out of this world congratulations thank you boys and girls that was fantastic no please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance [Music] thank you everyone thank you everyone that was fabulous okay I want to say again that that was fabulous and you know I just have to say too that I wished I knew about this earlier so that I could have joined because I needed to move more and you know close to 7000 miles that is fabulous I'm feeling a little unworthy about my own activity level now great job everybody so I'm gonna
008move on to the standard announcement I would like to remind everyone that this is a public meeting and that all our among neighbors and fellow residents appropriate conduct is expected from everyone we ask that you speak only when called upon and that everyone treat each other kindly and with proper respect please refrain from distracting behaviors such as loud conversations cheering clapping or booing and I just want to remind board members that we will be doing roll call for all votes during remote meetings so this is the first one we are going to do roll call for I seek a motion to approve minutes of the May 18 2020 Board of Education and executive session meetings I've moved to approve the minutes of the May 18 2000 28 Board of Education and executive session meeting may
009have a second I'm sorry I didn't hear one could I have a second thank you mark the motion has been made and seconded board members are there any comments errors or omissions to the minutes seeing none Clerk can you please call the roll bouncies are ready yes Frank pan Zika yes amy paling yes Mark's team yes Owen stern weather yes Aaron stone yes mr. Schneider faves yes great motion carries by General consent this is an opportunity for the community to address the board the district has requested that public comments be emailed to public comments at will met 39 org Tony have we received any public comments via email no there are no public comments thank you so now we will move on to board reports committee reports a facility development committee mr. Weiler Thank You
010president babe's at our June 8th Committee of the Whole meeting the facility development committee was provided updates regarding all of the district's current summer construction projects we reviewed and discussed all the projects which include the construction at Harper Central and high crest in addition the board received an update regarding future construction projects being planned for Mackenzie and Ramona schools to accommodate kindergarten enrichment and still tentatively scheduled to proceed summer of 2021 the administration has initiated work with STR and Nicholas & Associates to review the original high level McKenzie and Ramona construction plans that were developed as part of the phase in enrichment construction plan a couple of years ago we're currently currently exploring several design options and examining our space needs to update those plans and the team plans to bring back preliminary schematic designs
011to the August Committee of the Whole meeting the FTC also discussed the high crest outdoor classroom and garden bids which originally came in much higher than we expected expected due to this coupled with significant challenges to access and maintenance as a result of the pandemic and the construction this summer adjust adjustments to the timeline are now being recommended long Crispino will provide more information on this in her report on this item later in the agenda this evening and I believe that is all so I will turn it back to you thank you school finance mr. Cecil ready Thank You president Abe's the school Finance Committee also met during the Committee of the Whole meeting last Monday the school Finance Committee reviewed a number of transition plans related to the hiring of a new chief school
012business official to assume Ellen crispy nose position when she relocates later this summer in addition the SFC the working cash fund abatement the resident which you may recall is a basically moving cash from working cash to I think operation maintenance five million dollars the resolution we also looked at the resolution adopting disclosure compliance disclosure compliance policy which was recommended to aspire lawyers and the July payment resolution as is typical for this time of year each of these items are seen later on in this evenings agenda finally the SFC reviewed and discussed summer programming due to covered in 19 we have had to alter the summer programming options all enrichment classes have been canceled and academic classes have been planned to be delivered remotely in order to provide a variety of options for families we have
013added a new program this summer called jumpstart to fall that will provide a short two-week review and preparation for the new school year due to the short time frame fees for this class are different from the peas previously approved the board expressed support for the recommended fees which are recommended for later action on the agenda and with that I will turn it back to you president baek's oh excuse me I was on mute um thank you very much next we have the strategy committee mr. steam thank you very much so this report comes in two parts first will address the 2019 2020 school year and then the 2020 2021 upcoming school year so the 1920 school years obviously come to an end and the district is very proud of what it's accomplished along its strategic
014plan goals and rewards get a report on that later tonight in Katy Wiis reports the board for the 2021 school year things are not going as expected and so the strategic planning process will be adjusted to reflect that the district is put on hold the strategic planning process that we expected to have overall for the for the board in the district and we will be doing that in the second quarter of the academic year so towards the end of the fall next year in the meantime the district will be developing a strategic plan for 2021 along similar lines and similar lines to what we normally do similar calendar etc however the majority of that were we'll be focused on how to provide excellent and safe education in a pandemic environment in addition to that there
015are a couple of things from the prior year that we will want to tie up and that the district will be working on that and a few limited new initiatives the in the final piece of strategy is the CRC is report is providing its report to the Board of Education in a coming up meeting and we will expect some of their recommendations to be included in the 2021 school plan as well and that's it for the strategy report so I'll turn it back over to you presidential on your faves thank you very much next we'll have the Parent Teacher Advisory Committee miss stone yes the parent-teacher Advisory Committee met last week to review board policies related to discipline and student behavior the discipline section of the parent handbook and bust procedures based on a review
016of policies 7 : 1 9 Oh student behavior the committee made some recommendations that will be presented to the board at the next Committee of the Whole meeting other recommendations address changes to the discipline section of the parent handbook updates to the transportation handbook and the need to eliminate pronouns in policies when they are next updated terrific thank you next we're going to go to the liaison reports we have a report from the Illinois Association of School Boards mr. Weiler sorry I had to unmute brief report the Illinois Association of School Boards continues to plan for the November 20th through 22nd 2020 joint annual conference in Chicago is be has delayed the conference registration online until late July as they continue to monitor the pandemic so they'll be providing more information later on and along
017with that I know we haven't discussed this since the beginning of every year since we were since being over the pandemic but ISP resolutions the deadline is passed upon us it's June 24th so if anyone has any resolutions to write and submit in the next 14 days we are less than that actually June 24th is B member districts still have time to submit resolutions for consideration by June 24th for the 2020 delegate assembly the deadline is next Wednesday and for those of you that have not been involved in this it's actually very important I'm sorry it's it's actually a very very important process it's just that this whole year has been so lagging and mixed-up that we haven't really been on top of this we've been is be and the boards have been more focused
018on the pandemic than anything else at this moment but remembered district proposals can be submitted as new resolutions amendments to the current position statements or reaffirmation of existing position statements and/or lastly as new belief statements so if anyone on our board has been thinking of the ISB resolutions and there is something that is pressing and you want to present it you should you know speak up and submit it to me and I can talk to Carrie about it and we can talk about it so I just want to say as a point of process here I'm thinking that if board members have ideas for resolutions I think this is something we would actually have to vote on before we send it you know and we have a super short time frame so I just want
019you to think about whether or not you have ideas and let's talk about this during new business yeah it was posted just they weren't posting on this regularly they've been posting about other things and kind of resume calls that they've been having and suddenly this popped up it wasn't something that they were advertising a lot of so this was as big of a surprise to me that has popped up all the sudden but it is actually very important so you know in the past last year we did we did propose some things so um back to you Lee so sorry no no worries thank you well it's just yes we have a week we can if people have something we want to advance we'll talk about it new business so thank you let's do it
020okay the next is legislative update miss stone yes the couple Senate bills got sent to the governor at the end of May and he just signed them a few days ago so they are now laws Senate bill 21:35 is now public act 101 - oh six four oh and that codifies the governor's executive order allowing for school boards to conduct meetings without its members being physically present in times of emergency talking about that that gives me a little bit of a made a moment there and then the other one is Senate bill 264 which is now Public Act 101 Oh 637 which contains the fiscal year 21 state budget it adds no new tier money budget line items held flat for grants for early childhood Career and Technical Education and mandated categoricals and new funding
021will be distributed in a manner that prioritizes low wealth districts thank you so next we'll move on to information items doctor cream Ascoli I think you can just go straight down the list without my interference all right I will have a couple of moments to pause for questions because they do have a lot to share with the board in our community this evening first under written communications the district did receive several written communications from parents expressing appreciation for the district's planning for reopening schools and for the efforts of teachers and staff and administrators throughout remote learning we appreciate the thoughtfulness and the positivity of of those many emails that came in to us and the board was copied on several of them as well in terms of administrative announcements I'm actually going to see if
022I can share my screen because it will be a little easier for me to talk while sharing and hopefully everyone will be able to follow along a little bit better if I do it that way at least I can you just confirm for me that you can see my screen yep you're good excellent let me know if something goes a little funny and I need to shift otherwise I will just kind of walk through we have several things to celebrate the end of the school year though very challenging and very unusual gave us many opportunities to reconnect in-person at safe distances and celebrate the school year and so these are some pictures from our graduation our eighth graders we held two ceremonies outdoor in a tropical storm it was all sorts of fun and really
023did prove to be well worth the extensive effort that went into planning that I think our graduates and Families really enjoyed that and you'll see on the right-hand side just a handful of pictures from many many special moments throughout our district of teachers coming together to say farewell to students of students and families coming together to acknowledge and appreciate our teachers and staff effort and also to you know pick up their supplies from school that had still been quarantined at our school so there were all sorts of really fun in special moments I was honored to be a part of many of them across our elementary schools in graduation was was really spectacular really a lot of fun so I'm I just want to pause and say on behalf of the board we acknowledge and
024were absolutely delighted and amazed at the creativity of the staff and the effort and the care and I have to say that was the most amazing drive in graduation I have ever seen for the eighth grader so I just I speak for all of us and say that was a job well done to the team thank you Lisa I I heard from so many who were so appreciative and I did hear from a few said this was better than any in-person graduation they've ever been to before and so who knows maybe we're onto something we're gonna start a new tradition I thought it was especially meaningful that students and families had the opportunity to be together at this moment in their child's life so it was it was really a lot of fun and thank
025goodness we were able to get it off safely without the storms interrupting us thank you Lisa and moving on we do have a couple of updates here let's see summer school I did want to give the board an update on registration registration closed for our summer school programming with the exception of jumpstart if people still want to jump in to jumpstart there's still time until the 19th to register for that our registration numbers as you might imagine are a little bit down this year partially because enrichment programming is not being offered and I think also because we know that at this point our summer school programming for the most part is going to be remote and I think many of our students and families are recognizing the need for a little bit of a break
026from that I do want to share though that the state just came out with some guidelines for summer school if districts have the opportunity to offer in-person instruction I will acknowledge for our entire community the as well that this guidance came out exceptionally late typically when we're planning for summer school in esy we are planning about six months in advance for our typical I hate to say run-of-the-mill but a program that we run every year it takes us about six months to get that staffed and registration done curriculum organized resources and rooms all set up this year it was about I think a week and a half ago the state came out after saying only remote learning said that we could open up for some in-person instruction in very limited ways and so most districts
027are choosing to remain remote we are exploring the option of a hybrid model for our extended school year students the limitations are pretty stringent and we're really looking into whether or not we can manage this and staff it quickly enough to be able to offer programming our hope very much is that we will be able to on a very limited basis offer some esy in-person instruction paired with some remote learning so we're excited about that Kristen and her team have been doing an incredible job trying to evaluate the guidance and the restrictions and also staff the program because it will be needing to be staffed a little bit differently than just a straight remote program would need and so lots to consider there we hope to have some decisions made in the very near future
028but I did want to let the board know that things changed on a diamond and we're trying to adjust to it as we will as a school year progresses as well we got an update from the village on the stormwater project the board will remember that we are receiving these updates regularly there are a couple of key points when we were scheduled to get a more formal update from the village and so we received that right on time thank you so much to the village a couple of highlights of that letter the project is already ahead of schedule much of that because they started earlier and have had greater access to the play fields than they would have otherwise if school had been in session the parking lot restoration which is of critical importance to
029us is scheduled to begin in late and should be ready by August 15th which is what we were really looking for there was some there were some details shared about the progress that they've made you can see those listed here the installation of the 36 inch storm water sewer which is in the permanent easement on our property is scheduled to begin on June 15th and noteworthy also is that the work at the intersection of hunter and Illinois roads will commence near the end of June and so there'll be some shutdown of access there the board can expect the next formal communication to be on July 15th and we'll remember that that is the date that we set as the firm deadline to know whether or not lis access construction activities will be necessary right now
030the village is forecasting that they will not need it they feel like they're making really good progress and continues continue to do so but that is the next time we'll receive a formal update as school came to a close we did some reflection on remote learning some of that came through surveys we surveyed our parents and our students and our teachers but some of it came through teacher collaboration and the June 10th and June 11th were reserved for these planning opportunities by our teachers so they could reflect on how far students have progressed in with regards to their learning standards where we saw successes where we saw struggles and to help us plan for the start of the new school year these two days were used incredibly well obviously not in person bless you mark
031but we're we're done remotely just like we're meeting here teachers were meeting as well so I wanted to review just a few things that they found in terms of areas of concern and our planning for that as well as progress at the k4 level our elementary schools most students engaged successfully throughout remote learning there were some areas of concerns that were identified but you'll see through the data that relatively small percentages of students experienced concerns that were noted by our teachers so somewhere between two and four and a half five percent of students struggled in one of these areas either academic performance low engagement or some social emotional concerns those students who displayed concerns across all three areas obviously those are our high priority students that we really want to connect with and engage with
032and hope to be able to support as they transition back to in-person instruction hopefully in the fall so about twenty-four students of all of them and then there were some students who showed two of the three areas of concern so again our teachers have identified those they worked throughout remote learning to really engage and support student success and for most of our students that was that was relatively successful all things considered but for some it really continued to be a struggle and so that's where we will focus as we progress to the fall the k4 teachers also looked at what worked well and then started to design some of the possible solutions for any challenges that were faced during remote learning keeping in mind that there may be the need to return to remote learning
033at some point in the upcoming school year we want to really maximize the learning that we have accomplished through these last two and a half months to plan for the best possible services for students they also did some articulation meetings across grade level as well as vertically at our middle school and junior high school level students also for the most part were able to engage successfully through remote learning in what we found is when students engaged they experienced pretty good success in their learning concerns arose for those students who were not engaging and so of our 1699 students there were about 23% of students who had some concerns with engagement throughout the period of remote learning that those concerns could be anywhere from no engagement to just low engagement or some inconsistent periods sometimes students
034were engaging and other times they and then some students really started out strong and then kind of fell off as remote learning just went on and on for them so the teachers were able to identify what challenges students were experiencing and will be planning for how to support them as we return to in-person instruction we did have some students who did not engage in one or more classes it was about 9% of students and you can see that that varied across content areas with the highest non engaged students showing up in PE and in creative arts I think that's probably reflective of students and families when they're feeling overwhelmed recognizing and focusing their efforts in those core academic areas first which may have led to some of that non engagement but we did have some
035students in each subject area struggle a little bit more with engagement one thing we did note is that non engagement in classes was more prevalent at the higher grades and we kind of saw that throughout the entire district where we saw a younger students really engaging certainly we would we would imagine that parents were really supporting and connecting with students of the younger grades it also at the younger grades required far less sustained attention when you get up to seventh and eighth grade the sustained attention necessary in order to complete some of the rigorous work that is expected of some of the ninth graders becomes a little more challenging when doing it independently and so we did see that that trend where our older students were less engaged it may be a motivational issue as
036well and we did identify that SEL reasons were cited for non engagement or low engagement in about 88 of those cases and again our middle school teachers also reviewed targets students averaged about 75 to 95 percent of meeting the various standards across content areas when they were engaged most content areas noted that students who did not participate consistently made up about 5 to 15 percent of students within the class who are struggling and so those are things that we need to think about if we are in a remote learning environment how can we really engage those students or partner better with families to help support their engagement a little bit more teachers also met at the 5-8 level to talk about adjustments to standards especially in those content areas where there's vertical alignments we may
037need to do some review of that necessary information at the start of the next school year again recognizing that we want to meet our students where they are when they come back to school and help them to grow from there then we move on to planning for fall and in terms of an update I know the board is well aware of the many many different things we're doing at this point to plan for fall and we've done several webinars with staff and with parents alike and sent out a lot of information I will acknowledge that at this point we're a little bit on hold although we did launch our planning committee meeting this morning we still are expecting guidance from SB we keep being told it will come out this week and so we have
038all of our fingers crossed that that it is in fact the case and that that guidance is clear enough and is maintained enough for us to actually start to plan for what the fall will look like so right now we're doing a lot of contingency planning we're really evaluating all those areas of consideration so I'll talk through some of those that we have been able to really plan for so far but again until that guidance comes out we we're feeling a little like we're kind of stuck so we do hope that is being gives us that guidance this week again we still have more unknowns than answers at this point these are our four areas of commitments and as I spoke with our planning committee today which is a diverse stakeholder group from across our
039our community including teachers and administrators parents community members and students we we talked through the need to make sure that every plan that we're developing is really evaluated in the context of these four commitments health and safety for students and staff being flexible and adaptable depending on what is happening with endemic and the data and in the health situations making sure that our programming is manageable meaningful and sustainable and then ensuring that it's targeted and connected for our students and staff this again just acknowledges the guidance that we must follow and we continue to get additional legal experts kind of weighing in on this health experts wing and on this and everyone really is pointing to it is in the best the district's best interest to make sure that we are well understanding these guidance
040that are put out for us and that we follow them to the best of our ability not only for the health and safety of our students but to make sure that we can sustain the programming that we really want to over the entire year so as we're doing their planning and as we work with our summer planning committee this year we will be developing three models and the hope is that there will be some flexibility and connection between these three models we hope very much to return to in-person instruction in the fall in some way we'd love for it to be expanded to include all students back at school right now we're not sure that that will be possible but we're hopeful and if not all in personal instruction we're very much hopeful that we
041will be able to progress to a hybrid model but we do recognize that depending on how how the situation unfolds we need to be prepared for the possibility of a return to remote learning for us whether it's for a short period of time or a longer period of time or maybe just for students and families who are impacted by the virus during a time period we are looking at a number of different models for our hybrid model scenarios and at this point the one with the gold star the one that seems to be gaining the most amount of positive feedback and identified through surveys as manageable and connected is the alternating days approach and this would mean a group of students comes on one day and other students maybe are experiencing remote learning and then
042they would switch for the next day so it would be kind of like a day on and day off and a be kind of a schedule that feels a little more connected for our students and teachers a little more manageable for our families than might be the half days approach the alternating weeks I think some are concerned that it may be too long of a stretch but before we're back in school again so our administrative team is doing a logistical review of what this might mean and how it might work within our schools and then we'll be sharing those plans with the planning team to really refine what it looks like and how it could be implemented these are the areas of consideration and as we met with our planning committee today and kicked off
043this effort the planning committee has been separated into the each of these three categories there's a group that's focused on health and safety a group that's focused on school operations and logistics and another group that is focused on teaching and learning I do want to mention in terms of health and well-being of students and staff there really is a lot for us to think about it is not just sanitizing our environment but making sure also that we are considering the vulnerable populations that we're planning for our special education needs and services and that we're really being as proactive as we can be so we have been able to make some decisions in this regard these are our small decisions but on the grand scheme of things they're helping us to move toward what fall might
044look like we expect in the fall that the guidance of continuation for using base masks when you're indoors or in close proximity of people outside of your immediate family you should be wearing a face mask so we expect that to be the case for our staff and for our students for our staff as an additional layer of protection for staff and students will have face shields provided for them as well for students at their desks we have some sneeze guards that again will just give a little more privacy and protection for our students within the classroom and then what you see all the way to the right is it is a thermometer it's a thermal camera essentially and so it will help us to check temperatures which we understand to be the guidance at this
045point as students are entering our school buildings in to do so as efficiently as we possibly can the other area that we're really focused on right now is the physical restrictions for social distancing again we have received quite a bit of guidance from the CDC and the Illinois Department of Public Health on what this might look like in the fall we also can make some guesses based on the guidance that has come out for small groups gatherings of 10 or less and for daycare centers and so some of our assumptions have have been built off of what has been provided by those agencies so far I will highlight for the board just as I did for our planning committee the most defining restrictions that we know right now are listed here and this is really
046what we have to plan around as we plan to reopen school in person so these are the things that really guide and also limit the options that are available to us for in-person instruction if these assumptions if this guidance changes then we will have a little more flexibility but for right now maintaining six feet of distance across all school environments is a really sticky one for us it is very hard our schools were not designed to have people stay that four-hour apart from each other not in classrooms where we're expected to serve 25 students within a class there isn't enough square footage to separate them in certainly not in common areas lunch rooms bathrooms buses all of that really limits our ability to bring everyone back in person at the same time again if that
047guidance changes we'll have a whole lot more flexibility but we're at the point where we have to start to define what those assumptions are and start to plan we also know that we're being advised to limit mix mixing of groups and so once you form a pod or a family of students the the guidance is that that's group of students stay together as much as possible in that they're not be intermixing so as we look at our k4 environment some of that is a little more possible there because students don't switch between classes quite as much becomes much more challenging at the middle school in the junior high school level obviously no group no large group gatherings wearing face masks hand washing and sanitizing we have to think about and then we also really have
048to plan for what happens for those common areas in the high touch areas or any shared space how can we clean those environments or just limit that that sharing of space so these are some of the things that really are guiding our thinking right now and to a certain extent limiting the options that are available to us that six feet of distance again is really a critical one for us and then we're looking at our instructional model planning in the teaching and learning category and here we're really looking at how can we make sure that all the general education needs are met while also addressing the special education needs as well in integrating those so this is kind of the image that we've used to identify what might work at pre-k through fourth grade may
049not work or may need to look drastically different at the fifth or eighth grade level and we also need to be thinking about how our special education students and services fold it into all of those plans so again in summary these are our commitments and our considerations I know you all have seen these so I'm kind of jumping through this a little more quickly at this point we're getting to our planning our planning committee as I mentioned hazmats met this morning and kicked off their work their first bit of work is really to review the assumptions that we have developed so far based on the guidance we've received and refine that make sure that the assumptions we have as we build out our plans are as accurate as possible if they're not or if they
050change well then we can go back to our assumptions list just as the board does with their budget planning we will do the same thing with our planning for the start of the school year our administrative team again is reviewing logistics the planning team will be working throughout the summer and we are aiming for the structural decisions of how school will look in August to have some decisions made by July 31st I say this with caution because it really does depend on if we're getting the guidance we need to make the decision so if is be issues us guidance this week and they stay to that guidance we'll have a much better shot at having our decisions made even by mid-july if they don't or if that guidance continues to change throughout the next couple
051of weeks then our decision-making probably will be slowed this I know you can't read but this is the detailed assumptions that we have begun to develop and our planning team will be reviewing and refining in each of those categories those three areas of consideration we've defined the assumptions that we believe to be true at this point the planning team will be doing their research in either affirming these assumptions or making revisions to them so that then we can turn our attention to planning we have all sorts of resources and guidance that we provided to the planning committee and that is what we rely upon to guide our instruction I mean our instructional planning excuse me you can ignore the gray bar at the bottom of my presentation here but I'm happy to answer any questions
052or address any areas there that I may have gone through too quickly that you might want me to emphasize further or talk about board members do have questions I know that was a lot yeah go ahead Frank quick one I carry one of the things that I appreciated that you did he didn't it wasn't part of the lots of things that you had to enumerate just now but that school would be starting at the same time and it's the original calendar I know a number of people you know wondering you know earlier later at the same time and it makes a difference planning process yes thank you Frank that is one of the things that is entirely within our control as far as we know right now and we see benefits and starting earlier we
053see benefits and starting late but we also see drawbacks in both of those so we are at a point where we need to start making decisions and so one of those decisions that we can make firmly is simply to say we're gonna start on the same date that had been planned the entire Township appears to be doing the same thing and so that is helping us again just we're at a point where we need to start checking off some decisions that's that's one that we can make so yes the school year will start as it was expected to start in August other questions I think I saw John Han one maybe I did yeah thanks Kerry so so if we went for a hybrid model you know and I know we we want to go
054with all the kids in school right mm-hmm that's the goal but if we went with a hybrid model is it contemplated that like let's say you're in the B group and you're not in class that the B group would be home or the B group would be in school somewhere else those are really good questions at this point it is most often thought of that the B group would be home rather than someplace else in school just being supervised and part of that comes down to the restrictions of social distancing we don't have enough square footage within our schools to maintain that six feet of distancing among all of our students we have started to talk about using some of our outdoor space but we know here in the Midwest we can't always rely on
055that space and so the the likelihood is that it would be a day in school and a day at home doing remote learning and they would be shifting back and forth and again that would be the hybrid model and we would want to make sure that we have plans laid out so that as soon as we're able to and allowed to bring everybody back into school we can do that without too much disruption yeah not ideal for sure and we know the burden that that will place on our parents you know the burden that that places on our staff to manage all of that but when you're thinking about creating class sizes small enough to serve students at six feet apart distances we need a lot more square footage and a lot more staff because
056now those those group sizes are down to something around 15 maybe 18 students in some of our larger classrooms but our class sizes about 23 and sometimes closer to 30 so well I guess I guess where I was going what the question is you know it so there's been kind of an alignment between what the state has done in the private sector and the schools right everything's shut down but that is gonna I think change or it's gonna put I think an extra burden on working parents who don't have to build flexibility and and I I would suggest that it would be imposed to try to accommodate working parents who who may not be able to pull this off with adequate supervision at home and and also would suggest that we could explore some models
057where we incur more expense you know where we could create some tents maybe dad some kids and it's more people to manage the kids and and no I think he worth it frankly and I had opened that I'm it's my opinion but I think it's something we should prioritize thank you John I think you are absolutely right in one of the options for returning to in-person instruction that we're trying to evaluate is the option of simply using every square foot in our buildings and placing classrooms in some alternate space which then would mean we're hiring more staff or reassigning staff in order to serve and meet the needs of those smaller classes but can we convert our gyms into classrooms can we convert some of the other common spaces into classrooms certainly not ideal but
058is that preferable to having students on an alternating day schedule it's a square footage challenge it's a personnel challenge certification challenge as well we need to make sure that the teachers who are teaching core content areas are certified to do so so you are absolutely right John and we we definitely recognize the burden that it places on our families we also recognize especially for our youngest learners it is very difficult for them to sustain attention in a remote environment for much more than an hour hour and a half at most and so there's a lot of lost instruction there so we are really working on that there's logistical challenges both at our elementary level and at our 5a campus yeah I got another one that's good another one I guess I have the opposite question
059what if you're a parent and you do not under any circumstances want to send your kid to school yeah that's a question that we have both queried and received some feedback on we know first of all if a student has a medical condition that limits their ability to attend school whether it's during a pandemic or during any other situation and we do have students occasionally who have medical conditions that really restrict their ability to participate wholly in school in those instances we we have already procedures in place for homebound instruction or remote learning if that were the case the bigger question when I hear you kind of asking is what if it's just someone's preference that they stay home instead of coming to so no dad Oh dad Carrie what if the caregiver has an
060issue yes you know the kids will hopefully you know be fine you know pray that this isn't too bad for the kids but that I think they can spread it together yes yeah no that's one of the questions when I get to the next little portion here in my presentation we did collect some survey data and that was some of the questions that we were asking I mean if a family member requires that kind of really strict quarantine in all likelihood that would also qualify as a medical condition requiring homebound instruction so we absolutely for those situations we will be I think required to provide some services for those students the bigger question and the more challenging question for us right now is what about those families who aren't comfort or prefer to stay in
061a remote learning environment even though we're ready and unable to provide either a hybrid model or an in-person instructional model it would be our hope that we can accommodate remote learning options for families because we do recognize about 10% of our families have indicated that they would prefer to remain in remote learning in some instances depending on how you ask the question and the scenarios that we're presenting that jumps up to 20 percent of our families the challenge then that we face is we're already over taxing our staff by separating them into smaller groups for in-person instruction so we can maximize in-person instruction someone has to also be teaching the students who are in a remote learning environment - that probably wouldn't be the same staff member and so again your offer of we may
062need to hire some additional staff may in fact be one of the things for this short time period for this next school year we may have to look at how are we maximizing our staff we have and how are we potentially hiring a few more teachers in order to address the various needs that exist I don't know that we'll be required to offer a remote homebound experience for students who don't have medical conditions requiring it but it may be mutually beneficial to do so so it is something that we're looking into for sure yeah do you I'll stop at this I promise do you feel constrained budget-wise on like or I'm sure you do but do you feel like we should weigh in on how much more we'd be willing to incur as a board
063in in making this work out as best as you can make it work out I need to weigh in come July when we have a little more knowledge and understanding of what could be possible we may need to come back and talk to the board about what that means for staff right now based on our preliminary estimates it would mean at least one additional teacher at every grade level at every elementary school and at some great two additional teachers and that is just to break group sizes down enough to be small enough to social distance so if you kind of do that math over our four Elementary School's times six or seven additional teachers that may not actually work within our budget but before we get there and before we start even looking at the
064budget elements of it we have to look at what's best for our students and the considerations for health and safety and social distancing so give us the chance to do some work I appreciate that comment and I hope support for in understanding that there's some costs in reducing class size is small enough to be able to offer this and there's also some costs associated with running multiple educational programs at the same time and so we do expect that that there may be some additional costs but we will come back with that information when the planning team gets a little further down the road again we need that guidance first then we need to really vet the options that we have available to us and then we can get to the point of costing them out
065thank you I'll make brief but it will be very interesting to see once you have the updates from SB and you know kind of flush this out more I didn't want to know and I know there's so many iterations of this possibilities but a little bit kind of off shooting from what John said pardon me and I'm in agreement with him by the way I would love to see what it would take to use every useable space that we have you know implementing that I think it's very important to consider like he said working parents where both parents are working that's very important but also you had mentioned basically the the most at-risk students I'd love to report by the way it was very very interesting to see the breakdown of students that were having
066the the biggest difficulty because it's easy to just look and say for someone to say okay kids with IEP s which is of course great concern IEP is in Vigo for us but then to look at the numbers and say that the teachers themselves were able to identify students across the board who are really struggling which can include students that don't have IEP isn't 504's but students that just overall also may have challenges with remote learning in general or may have had challenges you know just in general distress the stress of the pandemic and may have fallen behind because of everything that has happened so including all of those students in addition to the kids are kids with differences in our districts our kids that are most at risk in general I want to know
067if how minutes when when I as when is B comes back how the particularly the hybrid model will might look like in terms of incorporating those minutes because minutes are so hard I know you know this year we kind of just said you know there's no way but you know to continue that year after year you know into a hybrid model and all that becomes more and more tricky with families that have a really counting on those because the the more we can't fulfill minutes the more behind those students fall and so I'm wondering if you've been evil I know it's really early to take into account how we might be able to implement those minutes into the hybrid model because if you're a day on day off that becomes very challenging yes Alan those
068are really good questions and again more planning needed but the reality is if we're in a hybrid models some of those minutes will be delivered remotely and some of those minutes will be delivered in person in all likelihood it really is the only way that we could do that we do know and we have recognized throughout this remote learning experience that the State Board has given us all sorts of flexibility and how we implement general education services in the minutes that we deliver for each of those content areas we really have been given just a ton of flexibility which has been wonderful and has allowed us to do that turn on a dime that we have successfully been able to accomplish for the most part they have not in nor has the federal government given
069us any relaxed relaxation of the requirements for special education and so that has really caused some challenges for us and for our students and families because we're living in this world that it wasn't really designed to be so it will need to be a hybrid model and if it's hybrid for if some is in-person and some is remote the same would be true for our special education services and programming and then it becomes how can we best maximize the in person time that we have and make sure that we flood those minutes as much as possible and in prioritize some of what we're doing that goes back to what John was saying kind of in keeping also with parents that are two working parents you know like possibly the notion of prioritizing the minutes for
070family you know the minutes in school for families that might really need it it's a possibility of thinking it that way just a thought thank you I just have a quick comment not a question which is that we all I think we would all recognize that the teachers will have a heavy lift and I think we will probably all be very supportive of whatever professional development incrementally we need to do during summer or whatever it is I think that's a really important component I'm sure you guys are working hard on that so I just wanted to express some support for that thank you please say you're muted apologies I was just asking to father's head in the comments okay they should continue thank you yeah heard that we did gather a whole lot of survey
071results and so I did want to give the board at least a glimpse of this chica has done a wonderful job of putting together the survey data into an executive summary format that goes to the planning committee along with all of the questions and input and narrative format as well but for the board this evening because we just finished getting all those survey results back I did want to just highlight a few things that quantitatively are pretty clear and and can be well summarized in this kind of environment so again we received so many responses over 2,000 responses from parents and teachers and other faculty members support staff and from students as well and the students responses were especially fun to read but just a lot of really insightful comments and we asked some closed
072questions as well so I'll kind of just highlight those for the board this evening and know that the open-ended questions are really being analyzed as well and will help to guide the work of the planning committee so we asked some questions about the manageability of each of the hybrid schedules and across the board across each of the stakeholder groups interestingly even down to the students the alternating schedules the alternating days excuse me seem to be the most manageable four on each of the stakeholder groups as opposed to alternating weeks or half days or some other kind of rotation we also asked about which would best support student learning student learning opportunities we asked students what feels like it would have the most positive impact on your learning and again alternating days one out there are
073some nuances here and for teachers especially teachers think in terms of small group instruction and half days and so they recognize the benefits of that in terms of student learning the manageability of that is still leaning more toward the alternating days but it does seem like we have a model that seems a little more favorable a little more manageable for us based on stakeholder feedback we asked about hybrid schedule preferences and what I thought was really interesting here is not only did parents and students identify most frequently the alternating days of in-person learning and remote learning as being the favorite so to speak it's not overwhelmingly the favorite it just it did receive the greatest percentage in each of those surveys but more interesting is that about ten percent of parents and about 20 percent
074of students said none of these models will work for me a hybrid model will simply not work for me or for my family so again things we need to really think about as we're trying to plan for the next school year we asked parents some questions about reopening school in light of the PPE and other equipment requirements and in light of social distancing and other significant adjustments and the feedback we received was overwhelmingly in support of returning to in-person instruction as much as possible and so this is noteworthy because we do recognize that there is some worry and some concern about returning to school but when asked explicitly would you be able would you be willing to send your child to school even if this is the environment in which we have to operate and
075somewhere between 88 and 91 percent of families said yes even in these extreme circumstances though not ideal I could make it work if offered the option to return to continue with remote learning this is where again 21% said very likely or somewhat likely they would consider staying in remote learning instead of coming back to in-person instruction clearly overwhelmingly families would say no I'd prefer to return to in-person instruction and even under these circumstances ready to do so but it is noteworthy that if given the option there are some families who would choose to stay home as John you were alluding to until we can return to full day in person instruction for all students this question was the only solution that seems realistic and equitable to support meaningful and connected student learning is continuation of
076remote learning and you'll see quite a difference your parents overwhelmingly are saying I strongly disagree with that statement get them back in school in-person instruction to the greatest extent possible teachers on the other hand we're finding that it seems a little more manageable and remote learning if we can't have full in person instruction maybe is a little more equitably balanced across and even our students are recognizing that while we'd like to return to impersonal instruction there is some benefit of remaining within a remote learning environment as well John this gets to your question I think you were asking previously we asked parents and teachers and staff do you or does your students have a medical condition that might limit their ability to participate in school if we are reopening school or does a member of
077the household have a medical condition that would limit their ability and so what you see here is parents reporting about seven and a half percent either yes the student has a medical condition or it's a possibility that the students medical condition would restrict their ability to return to school in about fourteen percent of parents reported that someone in the household has a medical condition that may limit the child's ability to come to school when you look across our teachers in our staff it's also noteworthy that about 20% of our teachers acknowledged that they either definitely have a condition or it's a possibility that they have a condition that would limit their ability to return to work that number grows when we're looking at our staff and so staff means our non-certified staff members our paraprofessionals
078our secretaries our custodians all the support personnel who work within our schools are reporting a much higher percentage concern around personal medical conditions high risk categories or having a household member who it may legitimately limit their ability to return to work these are things we really have to think about because if we can't staff our classrooms we can't provide the kinds of services that we need to for our students we did ask a question about transportation and in full disclosure I will share that many of our school districts myself included but really across the area are starting to really get concerned about how are we going to manage transportation and do it in a socially distance responsible way the buses just simply cannot hold the same number of students that they otherwise would have and
079the efficiency of routes is dramatically impacted when you can't put when you can't fill a bus and transport them to school and so about eighty six and a half percent of our family said it would not be impactful to them if transportation services were limited but there's a significant portion that said yeah it would be extremely impactful the yellow and the red really aren't different categories it was just a it was a wording issue that popped up in the survey so so again we have to think about that 14 percent of our families who really do rely heavily on transportation and may not have another way to get their child to and from school interestingly this surprised me a little bit I wonder if it might for you to we asked a question in in
080consideration of the current health pandemic would your students continue to participate in the lunch program at school and well some said it's not likely I'm gonna fix their lunch and send them to school there's about the same amount of families who said nope it's not gonna have an impact on me at all I'm still going to have my child participate in the lunch program and so again there's a lot of restrictions around food service lining up to get food going into the cafeteria all of that has to really be looked at but it I thought it noteworthy that about the same percentage of families said I'm gonna have them continue to participate in in food service at school so again these are just our next steps our planning committee is looking at a lot of
081information right now and will be affirming the assumptions meanwhile our administrators are really looking at the logistical organization of all of the assumptions and the programming options and then we will begin to really dig into what is going to be most manageable with the goal of end of July to start to make some decisions around the structure recognizing that we can only do so if we get clear guidance from the state again these are assumptions we don't need to dig into that too far but I would be happy to answer any questions that anyone might have or numbers any questions yes I think just because I recognize that it is one of the trickier logistics issues is a transportation one of the things that we always talk about there is the elasticity of the bus
082ridership but you know there is stirs if there's a fundamental need do we know how much they're willing to pay for that need I mean somewhere along the line because that does come into play right I mean you're talking about maybe four times as many buses or if we were trying to do the same number of kids and you can't carriage everybody four times as much but if if we charge twice as much than that limited it down on the other people that really really needed it would they be able or willing to pay twice applies I mean there's a lot of sensitivity there and the costs are really high and logistically it's really complicated so do you have a process to like survey a price point or anything for that dirt that's details we
083haven't come for the process to survey on price point the first question really was about how impactful would it be I presume if it's really impactful for families they may need to and be willing to pay a little bit more the question is at what point is it so costly that it would be unreasonable for us or for the parents to be paying for bus service and we are in full transparency we are a district that is not required to provide bus service outside of students with with some unique special education needs we are not required to provide buses and that is a program that while our parents pay a portion of the fee the district the board picks up a pretty substantial portion as well and so that is something we need to look
084at if we can't run our bus service efficiently and effectively will we be able to provide it the other question that is raised is if every school district needs to run four times as many bus routes we may get to a place where there's simply not enough buses to provide that transportation not enough bus drivers not enough buses if you can only have 12 or 15 kids on a bus that otherwise might have held 50 or 56 kids that's a whole lot of buses moving around the community and we may not even have the option to provide service to all those who want that we may have to limit it only to those who really need it I mean we wouldn't be able to afford the same number of students taking four times as many
085buses because like I said that would mean four times four times the total cost and we wouldn't get any of the kickback from the state for a part of that cost so it'd be more like six eight times the cost of the district but if there's you know ten fifteen percent that says this is the only way my kid can get to school and we say okay we we have a fixed number of buses we can put a fixed number of kids on those buses you know this is what it's gonna cost if this is your only option is that available to you I mean somewhere down the line that may be you know an option that you know unfortunately not everybody can afford but for the people that said this is this is what
086I have to do there may be a price point Aaron sorry I was having trouble I'm meeting myself are we looking at all the possibility of staggering starts I mean I was thinking you know if all four elementary schools usually start at the same time if they didn't start at the same time would that solve our bus problems potentially so it may help you probably wouldn't solve the bus challenges and yes we do need to look at a staggering starts and end time because we also need to think about how are we going to get 500 600 900 students into a build and get them temperature checked into their classrooms even if we cut that in half which is likely what a hybrid model would look like we still have to get them all processed
087it won't look like a typical arrival at school kind of set up where hundreds of kids just converge on one doorway so we probably will have to go with staggering so that would help Aaron it it probably doesn't solve the problem because we are so limited and how many kids could ride the bus but it would help um go ahead Amy so my I was thinking just like you Aaron about the staggered start times but I was thinking about it a little bit differently that it might actually make the problem worse because if we're staggering within a school not between the schools right right so buses have to get back to the same school multiple times and I also imagine that there are families who currently do not need bus service because of different start
088times at different levels elementary middle junior high and next year if those times align they will need bus service so you know I think about surveying parents how much are you willing to pay how important is this to you but it's hard to do that without knowing what is school going to look like I know for myself my answer to that question would differ depending on what time my kids need to be at school in different places right we're in so it's not only the structure that we're using to implement in-person instruction but it's also the way in which we're assigning students to which block of in-person instruction yeah you're you're absolutely right there's a lot for us to think about what we have to get to we need the guidance first and then we
089need to structurally come up with what the model is going to be and then we can sort through some of these other logistical options felon apologize really quickly I might say I wouldn't suggest first when when we looked at the pie chart and you said that I think it was 14% Bob really needs the busing still we're talking 14% how many kids approximately are we talking about well this is a sample there were a thousand parents who responded but if you figure fourteen percent of 36 hundred students if it's a if it's a reliable sampling and again that varies because some middle school and junior high school students maybe would choose to transport themselves by bike or otherwise but then again they're coming from all over town as opposed to just it's it really I
090think we are best served to settle on the model of instruction that we're delivering first and then to sort out some of the logistics of I I agree with you and the only reason I was asking was just to suggest that and I greet you this is for later but um that possibly after you've established that that may be some creative thinking and all of this might work because this is a temporary hopefully temporary thing and maybe thinking outside the box a little bit on this whole situation depending on the number of students that we have to serve with this you know we have provided our own bus service in the past I don't want to get you know crazy with this but there's some other solutions that might possibly be even you know holy
091there's there's other ways to provide service for students other ways we can figure out possibly I just want to throw that out there well let me just suggest to the board that there we have a lot of questions and there's lots of suggestions but to Kerry's point let's kind of identify what school model we have and then kind of talk about this because there's so much up in the air and so many decisions that have to be made and we have a really long agenda tonight our folks okay with holding until the next iteration John are you good everybody okay all right hold on I have to switch screens Frank Allen okay thank you all I just this is this is a long meeting and it's there's just so much unknown okay you mm-hmm that
092was an amazing presentation thank you and I know what you're doing isn't very hard Thanks then the only other report that I have is related to the Freedom of Information Act the district received a FOIA request from Jonathon bag of abc7 requesting information related to student attendance during the period of remote learning as well as how attendance was tracked and so that way it was responded to thank you do you want to move to strategic plan updates I'm excited to hear the CRC report but I I don't want to that would be wonderful in fact we have the CRC report up first on the agenda and then Katie will follow with a review of the 2019 2020 strategic plan report and so we are privileged today to have with us Maggie O'Brien and Sarah Lahey
093from the CRC they are going to walk us through their report this report focuses on parent partnerships but it also I think is again evidence of the hard work of our entire community coming together despite remote learning and making sure that we continue to make good progress with regards to our goals and our learning so without further ado I would invite Maggie and Sarah to turn on their their cameras and their microphones as they walk us through their Taoiseach thank you um I'm going to take a moment to share my screen with everyone I have a presentation here ok Tony can everyone see this yes ok great thank you um okay well like um dr. chroma school he said at my name is Maggie O'Brien um let me see sorry ok my name is Maggie
094O'Brien it was my great pleasure to serve as a CRC president this year presenting with me as Sara Leahy Sara served as the CRC vice president and played an instrumental role in putting this report together this year the CRC was comprised of 23 dedicated individuals a half of them were teachers and administrators from the district the other half are parent representatives from each school we researched the topic of strengthening parent partnerships to help ensure the district 30 that district 39 parents and teachers engage productively and build partnerships that support learning and foster academic success oh here we go sorry ok all right um to thoroughly research this topic we broke into two subcommittees with two focuses the first subcommittee researched how schools can cultivate new partnerships and focus on including peer engagement and the second
095group focused on improving partnership and important educational topics research was collected from surveys site visits and reputable scholarly sources let Sara take it over ok hi so the research showed the scholarly source has supported strong school parent partnerships and which you know is not surprising but in particular that two-way communication was a critical tool to strengthen partnerships and so communication coming from the school but also very much coming from the parents and in our surveys to d39 parents and local in comparable schools we saw the importance of topic and timing for community of events and the majority of parents preferred detailed emails about important topics which we thought was surprising but important you know emails are something they can really access from home and access out there like on their own schedule and that there's
096also a parent preference for in-person community engagement events to be held in the evening in the evening in particular facilitated working parents and so the first recommendation was that d39 should review / formalize the process used to determine community engagement event topics for the year so this is really about topics that the district should try to be flexible relevant and timely with the topics they choose for each year okay and the second recommendation is more about how parents and teachers can communicate the research shows that parents and teachers often differ in their vision of strong communication they both value parent involvement but sometimes divide in terms of what that encompasses and you'll see this in the report but specifically you know it was that parents often felt that they wanted teachers communicating kind of all
097the time if not very frequently they wanted to hear from teachers a lot about how their students were doing but teachers were actually looking for parents who reached out and parents who were communicating so it was an interesting divide but they really wanted the same thing they were looking for parent involvement in our surveys revealed a difference in the perceived effectiveness of communication tools and that's detailed more in the report surveys to d39 parents also showed that many parents perceive conferences as the primary two-way communication method available to them despite open invitation by teach by teachers for these conversations throughout the year and research showed that schools can improve by having school-wide communication policies and providing teachers with the necessary non instructional time and what we mean by that is that teachers will need the
098support the non instructional time to communicate with parents or maybe even have policies in place so that the teachers know how and when they should communicate with parents so that was an interesting finding and the overall recommendation here is just that d39 should conduct a review of district-wide communication practices and methods because we were trying not to suggest precisely how the district should implement this idea but mostly that the district could review current communication practices alright and lastly I'm just gonna start with the recommendation and go backwards here the recommendation d39 should evaluate current parent-teacher meeting opportunities and explore ways to improve to directional dialogue between parents teachers and administration and this is because the two directional dialogue was in the scholarly research and in the surveys to directional dialogue was the main focus right
099it was what everyone kind of agreed was the key to success so at the top you hear our survey findings highlight opportunities for greater two-way communication the comments section of the parent survey suggests that that parents would like to increase the duration and frequency of parent-teacher conferences or similar opportunities to have that one-on-one time with teachers and lastly that parents report some frustration with Schoology the online learning management system okay thanks Sarah common for conclusion is that our research found there is an opportunity for a more strategic and systematic approach to parent partnerships and therefore we recommend our are three main recommendations as we just reviewed was that the district ensure input is utilized in the development of parent event topics and timing that the district conduct a review of communication practices and methods and
100that we look to improve and increase dialogue two-way dialogue between parents teachers and administrators and the CRC believes that these recommendations will help district 39 educators and parents build stronger partnerships that will lead to improvements in student learning and foster academic success are there any questions [Music] Lisa I think you're on you sorry thank you I just before I take questions on behalf of the board I just want to say to Maggie and Sarah thank you so much many of us have been on the CRC for years and we know how much work goes into this and you not only did this you did this during a pandemic finishing it up so um thank you very much board members I saw hands raised Frank first I wanted to reiterate the quality of the presentation both
101the written and tonight I think over the years these have gotten much much more concise and precise and this was the best one I've seen so far so both like I said in the written and in the presentation tonight so what a very good job from that standpoint I had one quick question because I know we're a little short in time but when I was reading through the report that it was clear and you pointed out in your summary that the parents were hoping the teachers would talk more and the teachers were hoping the parents would not war which which offers a lot of opportunities I suppose but what I'm trying to picture what the teachers were hoping for from parents I mean I can understand if a parent knew that the child was having
102problems and the teacher really would like that parent to reach out more so that they could help their child but you know in general was that what they meant to her even it's like like it's hard to imagine my child's doing well but I think you know once every four weeks I'm gonna call they spare all of his teachers and talk to them just make sure I have a dialogue I'm not sure that was what teachers were thinking so do you understand what in the research showed that teachers assumed that parents know there's an open invitation anytime you're welcome to come talk to me about your child but what the research shows is that invitation alone is not enough often parents you know and I actually I hear this often parents don't want to bother
103teachers and they don't really feel like they don't feel like it's really appropriate they feel like their main time to talk is the parent-teacher conference that time that's it and so you know that's not how we build strong partnerships and really to foster that we have to have a process of communication process where teachers you know are encouraged and they know and they are given time to really reach out to parents in a more systematic way I'm Sarah and my reach is there anything else I'm missing yeah no I think that's great you know and I I have a teaching background as well as being a parent and I think for the teachers the teachers are also looking for a systematic way to be in touch with parents so with more guidance from the district
104on what are the appropriate communication methods what are the best ways to reach out to parents and the research did show I mean one of the things we had in the report was teachers reporting that something it was like regular communication with parents was facilitating student success like greater academic success so I mean I agree it is tricky to kind of picture exactly what this will look like but only that teachers need some routines and some guidance and the parents are also looking for some routines and some guy maybe now that we're all unfortunately comfortable with zoom we could have more zoom meetings between parents and futures yeah thank you again very good report thank you very much thank you other board members and yes thank you so much as you know crc holds a
105special place art by laws so my question was i think there was an indication in the surveys about an increase with the conferences was that across the board was it more the upper grades was it a desire for spring conference for the grades that don't have one um you know i don't actually know if we captured the grade levels of that sarah i but i don't know the were many comments not just on wanting more but i'll comment on that the structure of them felt much too fast felt to say asked like that kind of speed dating kind of a conference they greatly dislike so there was definitely a common theme of what they disliked about them that their to increase the frequency like i said it in the format but i don't know if
106we capture that by grade level sarah do did we do that i don't i don't think so oh yeah sorry about that aaron that would be a great question your good thing to find out i don't know that answer other questions okay Maggie Sarah oh sorry Amy no I just wanted to also thank you for this very thoughtful report more important now than ever when it's hard to be together I really was struck by in your report the distinction between the parent involvement versus engagement and that just a really helpful way to think about it and I also loved thinking about taking advantage of the high turnout events like curriculum night whenever we're able to do those in person together again I feel like that's a great opportunity for us to continue building community share
107about issues of relevance to the parent body I wanted to hear a little more if there's anything you can elaborate about what you read about report cards I know in your report you talked about seeing opportunity there I didn't know if there was anything that comes to mind from the research or parent surveys you know I remember reading the research I'll tell you the part I didn't I'll let Sarah collaborate or add on to that but um one thing I remember reading in the research is that the importance of report cards was one of the things that was definitely differed between parents and teachers teachers did don't really look look at report cards at teachers don't look at report cards as like the number one distinctly determinant of how your child's behaving or acting or
108doing in school where parents really do so that was like a you know a disconnect there um that was one thing that was interesting but Sarah will you speak more to that because I can't remember a lot of it yeah you know there was a little bit that I think I cut from the ultimate report and report cards just that I think the parents in our district and this was coming out of survey data really do like that qualitative feedback that they're getting on report cards so like the learning you know it's obviously parents wanting more than a grade and and how can report card C serve as a real feedback tool so we just had some qualitative data from the surveys from parents saying how much they liked and want that detailed feedback that
109you can get about your kids on a report card things in the comment section you know things beyond the grade and that was in the research as well that feedback that grade should be more than grades they should be a feedback tool in a communication tool and more person yes definitely more personalized even just more frequent personalized communication about your child yes yes their board members Ellen um just real quick I just wanted to thank you for the work you guys did on this I was at the very first meeting I think or the second one on this the work you did was fantastic I was so impressed by this report and I just want to thank you for it I read through the whole thing and what you came out with at the end
110from where you began with this no I mean the crafting of this I remember I remember you guys going through this and and the machination of it I just it's very impressive and I'm very excited to use thank you we had a wonderful it was a I've been on the CRC for a few years now and it was really a wonderful group of engaged parents this year who felt very passionate about this topic and I think that makes all the difference in the world so educators of course we're equally as passionate so it was a wonderful group John did you have something I just want to say thanks this is really important topic to all of us we really appreciate the effort you could in mark yep and I will add my thanks as well
111and actually I'm gonna say Maggie what you just said really resonated with me as well as did the report having been a parent for a while in the district there were many things there that I agreed with but also when you just said you know the CRC had this great group of engaged people who are really passionate about the subject I think that's a great thing to take into thinking about what next year subjects are and what future subjects are and to the degree that you guys have more insight on that and can pass it on the future CRC's I think that would be terrific but thank you very much for the word only thank you okay Bravo thank you very much so I think dr. Krim ascoli this takes us to the strategic plan
112review that is true Maggie and Sarah thanks again for all of your hard work into the entire seriously thank you for everything you put into the report and presenting in this in this new format tonight - I know that's not always easy so thank you maybe is going to go next and well we typically like to have all our administrator standing behind Katie tonight know that virtually they are all standing behind her and stand ready to assist but considering the way in which we have to meet at this point Katie is going to walk us through most if not all of the presentation to review our 2019 2020 district 39 strategic plan Katie I saw you pop on just a minute ago yes I can you know there are I believe you literally stole the
113words off of my first slide I'm typically I'm surrounded by my colleague sitting here standing behind me so I'll skip right over there please know that they are with me on many of whom would have loved to enjoy sharing the microphone with me but I'm also proud to represent the entire administration as they share the status of each initiative so thank you very much first we'll begin with the new initiative and each introductory slide will display the intended outcome the status of each and any applicable next steps so effective integration of Technology an administration has met this year's intended outcome as the saying goes timing is everything a district Learning administration in particular Tony Giamatti teachers technicians and many others work diligently didn't moment action steps under this new initiative from late August to mid
114March and it really paid off since district 39 had increased access to technologies that every student had one device to be used as a tool for learning we were able to provide in record time every first new fourth-grade student access to the device to take home when all closed and remote learning began so prior to the Cova 1910 that make in the state of home order students were taught how to navigate and use digital platforms like seesaw and Google classroom who started the school year would you allow for some increased independence at home most were able to use these sounds a learning platform as well as a communication tool with their teachers in addition the staff benefited from the professional development provided throughout the year the tools teachers learned 3:39 online training increased their capacity
115to enhance delivery of instruction where am i sorry through the use of technology tools such as lip-read for create your see from Google classroom mediums bulgy so one of them intended yet positive outcomes it occurred either ship to remote learning teachers administrators and other staff members learn how to video conference record instructional videos learn about the safe ways to communicate online and deliver instruction in synchronous and asynchronous methods it reinforces the notion that need drives learning and the pandemic provided the need to inspire learning new skills it is important to note that its support from the district-wide technology and library party is invaluable dreams time each technology teacher librarian database expert and technician wiki resources for continuous support as families students and teachers transition to remote learning so the district will continue to implement the
116staff development plan promote a balanced approach of using technology tools in order to enhance teaching and learning and support our community by hosting family and community engagement events on digital citizenship how and wellness next we will share a review of the continuing initiatives delivering a nutrition School Lunch Program the administration has met this year's intended outcome last year nutrition committee led by Ellen Crispino and Heather blanky divided two subgroups and focused their research on four areas nutritional quality nutrition education time a bill would eat vegetables fruits and proteins the committee recommended that this year would be one of trial and reflection so while the goal was to try out 10 new menu items food service coordinator listo intern our team were able to trial 14 new items before school closure occurred the results of new
117menu items very high school but were predominantly well liked with the insertion of green spinach for example slice Turkey holy bagels roasted broccoli cauliflower parmigiana and pork carnita bowls were among the new items added both high crust and junior high students were able to purchase fresh footballs at the elementary all the students were able to select from a variety of food as well the monthly menus and principal newsletters highlighted a featured cleaner item to bring attention to the action of informed parents the new food items were announced during daily morning announcements or and/or displayed on screens to increase awareness of the options to district reunited students and they made the board approved to increase the lunch fee for 2020 2021 by 15 cents per day or get a garden through 6th grades and to increase
118their lunch fees an additional 20 cents per day for seventh and eighth graders based on some considerations the lunch peas have not increased since fiscal year 1718 even though Huff's and to mute your eyes school cooks requirement an extra hour filers per day to prepare a healthier menu items and lunch these are designed to offset costs in order to support our self-sustaining lunch program student growth through differentiation personalization this initiative is one that is ongoing and always in progress although challenging efforts were implemented as best as possible to support the needs of students during remote learning the following are several examples of how teachers throughout the district personalize and then differentiated during these unique circumstances teachers offer differentiated activities as and options enrichment and support they offer treats to students in the ways they engage
119with learning of content and when needed smile do blessings or one-on-one live synchronous video conferencing sessions focused on providing specific targeted interventions or extensions social workers provided social-emotional protected opportunities for students to support existing or new newly developed needs and specialists such as psychologists accreditations for teachers social workers have also come taught lessons and content areas or lessons to address the emotional needs of students due to the current situation at the executive order that was shared by the governor suspended all mandated state assessments like Illinois assessment of readiness I are in addition spring local assessments like math were also cancelled therefore the intended outcomes outlined in the strategic plan will be added to next year's strategic plan as a continuing in us initiative so that we can provide you more of those details operation designing
120a canoe Gardener management program administration has completed the face to your construction timeline plan although the work of the connect our enrichment enhancement program keep thirty nine committee was positive this spring it is scheduled to resume this summer and the intended outcome will be met by fall of 2012 the members will plan and continue to develop lessons under the hopeful assumption that schools will be open without restrictions this approach will prepare the teachers to implement keep 39 at any point in the school year as well as provide the foundation to adjust and modify as needed we fully understand that keep 39 is also consideration for the transition planning committee and will remain a part of the strategic plan for next year building school culture and community su during the mid-year update and summarized in the
121report district very nice building school culture and community and continues to focus on enhancing each lost culture collectiveness administrators staff and students of embraces initiative accomplished a lot of the work will never truly have this goal is one that is not finite and our district community is devoted to continuous growth during remote learning we continue to value and prioritize positive relationships and staying connected to students principals teachers district administrators support set on many ways to remain connected with students families and each other because each of these members are a party community so some examples for the live video class meetings both class are small lunch group meetings personalized videos to students from teachers and principals the daily announcements be treating some special cuts of announcers school-wide challenges and in special mystery readers the service-learning option
122that we had with half 1839 gets back reverse grades faith great driving graduation lots of sentiments and videos created to share how much time our students and also parents need support as well and 22 Monty partnered with many Jimenez to provide two very timely virtual parent nights in a webinar format it was very successful in attendance one that was on stress management during The Cove in nineteen high seas and another was on connecting kids and how to virtually connect kids at a time they can't be physically connected so in reference to what our community review committee president and vice president shared it really was timely and it was relevant and therefore well attended Learning Commons one intended outcome has been met the completion of the learning house construction and hi Chris middle school immediately following
123staff and students shifted their attention was the after class regarding project now that phase two was completed so the Lakota group worked with students teachers and administrators to gather information insights of the project and during the February 2nd Committee of the Whole meeting Lakota who presented their design suggestions and options and after reviewing the designing cost estimates district administrators recommended moving forward with finalizing plans and looking for additional funding in district 39 went out to bid and established a May 28 as the due date and I believe that maybe share the later tonight as a result of code 19 pandemic and the stay at home order phase 3 of the three-phase plan to address the redevelopment of the other Christman Barton paused and will resume the new school year so phase 3 will be added
124to the 2020 2021 strategic plan as a continuing initiative there are a few pictures of when students were able to access the learning happens annual business is the final section School Safety Administration has been the intended outcome ensuring the safety and security of students and staff and district 39 is a primary ongoing goal this goal also includes the health safety of the entire will meant to district 39 community focused attention to this initiative has been and will always be a priority standard rates Learning and reporting all committee work was passed and will resume in part this summer as well as in the fall the science curriculum review committee has completed the second year of the review the 2021 school year is the implementation phase of the revised trick EULA it will be taught and I'm
125playing reflection and feedback will guide any updates needed to the curriculum maps all 2nd through 4th grade classrooms will implement elevate science and all of it through eighth grade classes will implement amplify science and teachers will receive ongoing professional development and support throughout the year sustainability planning practices focused attention is to this initiative has been and will always be a priority as well Board of Education has worked closely with the district administration to ensure that our practices are aligned there are two updates from the video presentation future green district 3 and I was able to lock in electrical rates through the future green energy for two years starting at the end of June 2020 and the word with the LED light LED leading at McKinley and Education Center district attorney and continues to investigate the
126options of replacing all the lights at the NEC with LED lighting with the cost of doing this all at once still has a payback period much longer than five years so over time and as budget allows the district's electrician will continue to face in the LED lights during remote learning sustainability and environmental awareness lessons work to these did not cease on student life or staff members creatively schoolwide challenges for students to reduce reuse and recycle at home and students celebrating learned about Earth Day and how they can contribute to a more healthy environment during the February Board of Education meeting actually mr. Steen has already addressed this the board approved the consortium of educational change also known as CEC as the group to facilitate a new district 39 strategic planning process and originally CEC was
127going to work with a team of stakeholders including administrators teachers staff and parents from throughout the district to help facilitate our strategic plan work the goal was to celebrate successes as a district and identify improvement opportunities within a five-year plan so currently the work with CEC has been paused and will resume as soon as possible next school year in the interim the administration with board of education support will follow the current process and developing the new year's strategic plan and look forward to developing a multi-year plan through a stakeholder input guided icz finally we would like to share a small peek into remote learning and our hope is that you will be able to see components of the street strategic plan come to life so for example the effective integration of technology the personalized attention
128to student growth academically and as a person the sense of connectedness and the efforts made to maintain positive relationships and most importantly how ensuring the safety and security of our students is a priority [Music] and finally the administration would like to express their gratitude toward each and every one of the board members your understanding and empathy during the CNE time has not gone unnoticed we're happy to answer any questions you may have if there are questions that I cannot answer on behalf of my team the principal's will be taking notes and we can provide you responses through dr. Thomas Foley at the later time what members do it are there any questions Frank okay I had the to one comment whatever learn the Learning Commons is a project that we've spent a lot of time
129on and has had lots of really great results so the fact that we're after almost at the end of it is is a major accomplishment one one of the things I think would be useful not that we that it says anything about the program as it was implemented or like I said the results have been great is from a learning standpoint and be useful to go back to what we thought it was going to be five years ago and what it ended up being in terms of the technology improvements as we went school by school but also from for the board to learn better what we thought it was going to cost and how long it was gonna take versus how much it ended up costing and how long it took I know we added
130things because we thought it was important and I know see how quick was was better than we appalled but originally it was something like six hundred thousand dollars per school and I'm pretty sure the number is at least double that even picking out the well as long as we're doing this for land another classroom type of thing so we'd be useful to understand from refer a board future standpoint again not saying anything about what we did or how you know the program was but if we could understand what our sumption were and why they ended up significantly different then we'll be able to understand better next time we talk about a big project you know what kind of variants we need to take into account like I said step by step things made sense step
131by step the outputs were great but you know the original number was significantly different than what it ended up being we should learn I was wanted in a real quick one like I can't ever miss the opportunity to mention differentiation because of the environment we're in right now I think the more disruption the more variation there are between students so the more importance of differentiation both in terms of how we do it how expensive it is how we identify who needs it all those things that you do but I think differentiation is even more important when you have potentially you know students that might have been learning at about the same rate but now are learning at a different rate because they didn't adapt klimt adapt to whatever to remote learning in the same way
132that other students did so I encouraged and you obviously have lots of input but a baselining in the fall with the standardized test to see where the kids are you know some may have fallen behind that dude anything other than the environment that we've been forced into but you know get that baseline so that you can move forward I think might be a very useful thing and then just continued emphasis on differentiation in the year where there will be more differentiation between students and normally would expect an instruction assessment and how and how we evaluate what truly gives us the right about our students fragrances and so your point is very well taken thank you Amy um well first I just want to say you all do so much I hope that like putting this
133together and presenting it is as rewarding to you as it is inspiring to hear because from all you just presented you never know that our year was truncated in the way that it was um I don't really have questions but just on my mind is thinking about keep 39 all worked so hard to have that launched and so I'll be eager to hear and learn about what the plans are for that in whatever model unfolds I don't know what the numbers are in terms of whether that works in a socially distance way in the different schools or not but thank you we are going to remain hopeful Amy I was having the same thought how were all these balls being juggled especially keep 79 a brand new like entirely brand new program like how does
134that continue in the midst of covert 19 other board members done yeah the same thing boring repetitive to a mean lycée yeah it's amazing guess that's so much done it's really impressive very grateful obviously what you've done so looking forward to what's coming up next unit you set the bar so high we we are variable also know as accent actually to have an incredible administrative team that really works well together and everyone goes above and beyond so Katie thank you for pulling together all of that and making such a thorough report in the midst of also planning for the end of the school year and the transition planning committee and everything else our administrative team is truly an impressive group of people and very privileged to have them supporting our work uh very true and
135I also just want to say I thank God we moved to one-to-one technology when we did if you had not had the foresight and like you know we moved so quickly we would have been in big trouble with the crc as well that was part of the reporting with the elementary and again hats off to Tony de Monte and his team as far as you know what we were able to do in the time late and luckily it was in the spring because everything was just set up for success we can only learn from the districts that did not have that and we feel fairly fortunate to have had that and it's you know it's it's just a really good lesson learned yes now if we would have done the old packet pick up we
136still did so well great job by all thank you all so much I don't want to cut it off did anybody have anything else okay great job thank you thank you okay so we're moving on to annual business dr. Greer was going y'all get thanks let me get myself back to where we need to be I got so into listening to Katie all right annual business we have the bullying report is annually presented Kristen Swanson has compiled and submitted to the board the report for review the annual bullying report really looks at the kinds of bullying that's being reported and also what the findings are Kristen would you like to share anything additional sure um you know the state of Illinois has enacted several several public acts that are designed to address both the prevalence
137of bullying in schools as well as the prevention in response to them as a district we've adopted those policies and I believe that as a district we've done a really nice job of taking all instant allegations of bullying very seriously as well as working hard to prevent prevent instances and teach our students how to address how about engage in social interaction in a more appropriate way when building administrators receive a report about potential bullying they quickly and thoroughly investigate the allegation they interview students teachers potential witnesses parents we review those allegations we reviewed the investigations yearly I'm really pleased to report that this year we saw a significant decrease in the instances of bullying while some of this may be related to the lengthy period of remote learning because we were out of school for
138a period of time in the spring when we often do you see a few instances of bullying I also think that a lot of the decreases due to that's the strong attention that this district has paid to social-emotional learning for our students into helping students develop better interpersonal skills and coping strategies last year during the 1819 school year there were 17 allegations of bullying and five of them were considered founded this year we had six allegations of bullying and none of those instances were considered founded they were instead deemed to be issues of social conflict it is important to know that even if students engage it even if it's considered social conflict or deemed unfounded we do take it seriously we have both consequences as well as proactive strategies that we use to help teach
139students or empathy for their peers we do a lot of times we use restorative circles we do proactive instruction on an ongoing basis and I'm really pleased to see I think some of the results that we're getting from this as a district we've invested in ADL we have a social emotional learning curriculum preschool through eighth grade and we do anti believe as well as restorative practices and many of our buildings so this is good news any questions board members Frank yes it's a it's a great report and you do a lot of really good things which is how you can get this kind of great report the flip side of that is it seems like what we're measuring isn't really measuring I mean I know we do a great job and I know we've done
140a lot of things and I know the amount of bullying in the school is very low but it's not this law I mean there are there are more cases of bullying and maybe it's how we define bullying maybe I know we do a lot of work and getting up standing and all that type of stuff but these numbers are so long that either we're fooling ourselves or we're doing such a fantastic job that many of the other things that we're worried about our really problems and we think some of these other things are problems you'd expect some of that to show up in this numbers if nothing else so I I know it's been we've talked about this before when you know two years ago it was four reports Islands 3,600 kids that that means
141we're not really measuring and it means we're doing a really good job but it means we're not really measuring some level of things that aren't happening and you know this is the case where the report is so good that it's not good so I would say that our our administrators have been well trained and do a really nice job of investigating the situations in which there's an allegation of bullying does that mean that we that they receive information about every single situation most likely not I also will say that this doesn't mean that there aren't inappropriate behaviors among children there are a lot of those but bullying has a really specific definition as well and our administrators have been trained to really look at is this an instance of bullying or is this an instance
142of social conflict or inappropriate behavior and to address that I would also agree with you that typically we see an uptick near the end of the school year in issues of bullying we've not been in school since March so that is an artificial this is sort of an artificial year as well yeah I don't mean we're doing anything wrong but if we have a report that has the numbers this low and it's not really measuring something all that useful so is there another way of measuring is there another thing that we could be measuring I mean this has some value I mean if it goes from 16 back to 6 back to 17 next year does that mean we did three times as bad and it's terrible no it's 17 a small number but you
143know this number is so small the measuring things that are this good or this low or this small means there's room to find something else to measure we do use other things to measure sort of student interaction with peers we have the the mash and madessa which looked at sense of belonging some pure relationships we have explored some other things to look at in terms of that and as part of our culture so this is not this is simply it's a it's a statutorily required report related to bullying and it is an opportunity to talk about the fact that we have done some really good things to work with our our students our parents and our teachers but it's not the sole measure of how we're doing in terms of social emotional development and interpersonal
144relationships among our students so we do have other pieces to look at that as well other board members mark I think you wanted to jump in Ellen I'll get you after though I was I'll build on the the conversation that's going on which is you know this is terrific and you know from a statutory perspective you know that that's great news and I'm glad we feel well-trained and maybe this is one of those instances where you know we are a district with specific characteristics and maybe this is one where we can say you know how can we when we give this required report every year how can we build on it to make it even more relevant to our goals which are to take you know a what's already a pretty good outcome but constantly
145improve and constantly find ways to do better and I know the whole administration shares the board's desire to you know have that growth mindset in our own in our own activities so I would encourage the administration you know first of all good stuff great job thank you and and thank you for the report but then let's encourage you to to think about how next year or in future versions of this we can develop some metrics and also some some reports that allow us to see that you know continued learning and improvement um I actually think it's very interesting that what you said Kristen I think what you said gets at the heart of maybe the problem that I've been having I think what Frank was saying and what Mark was saying to the the problem
146I've always had with this report specifically and and no one's ever articulated it um in the way you did in terms of think this becomes a so um the I think this is a discussion of semantics and I think that's where this this report has always fallen short for me is that now that you describe it as it's a required report you know and it has very specific boundaries very specific specifications that you follow that the the definition of bullying specifically which I don't think most parents understand that in this context within this context bullying the word bullying or the term bullying has those very very very specific you know constraints and and I think that was that's always been my problem with it too and I agree with mark and I think Frank but
147I would love a discussion at some point of how we can find language or words somehow to encompass you know the relevant language to describe what parents you know I hear a lot I can tell you of and you know just from the fall I can tell you from you know firsthand in the second hand I've heard a lot of parents describe situations that and we're working on it I know we're trying really hard from all of our initiatives but it's still there and it's not just bad behavior it's situational situations where students do things and it maybe once you know like I'm reading the descriptions you know a a single episode act but a single episode act can have a serious detrimental effect on a student to the point where they don't want to
148go to school you know so how you know where does it cross the line of becoming of being a bullying you know a bullying event where it's it's so severe where it's like and I think there's parents that feel that that that are distressed that that students become distressed and I think we see we see that we see situations like that where they're they feel like their child has been they call it bullying because they don't know other language to describe it where they say oh it's relentless you know they were they use words like that you know or they're like you know my child is relentlessly you know kind of bothered or you know pursued by this group of girls or these you know these kids that are so mean or whatever whatever the
149situation is there are there are still situations like that happening in the schools and we know they are and that's the type of stuff that we really I think they're trying to change that's the culture we're trying to change it's happened since we can have time we know that you know middle school is a difficult place and you know now it's those younger and so it's not just middle school or junior high school but in general um I think it might be nice to see like us just because there's a bullying report that's required you know it might be nice to come up with some other reports that where we can start making our own you know making our own assessments of how we're doing so that we can you know quantify like how well
150we're you know kind of tackling this this issue so I am in agreement but I'd like to see the language for it so I'm just gonna move us along again right do the length of the eye this evening has does anybody want to make a point we haven't heard what I'm hearing in summary is that we need to just take a second look at this report just in terms of all that's going on I think we have a little bit of time I don't think this rises to the top of your pile right now just in terms of remote learning and planning for the Fall but why don't we kind of put that on the docket for when people can catch their breath take a look at this of course okay so let's keep going
151all right so I can lead us through the next several items and Ellen Crispino jump in if I if you need to share additional information but several of these topics the board has already talked about it committee of the whole and so I will simply introduce them and if we need to talk further about them weekend next up under annual business is the resolution authorizing July bill payments the board the board will be obligated to make bill payments during the month of July we don't typically hold a July board meeting but we may this year just as we look at our planning nonetheless we wanted to make sure that we could proceed with bill payments so board approval will enable the treasurer to fulfill needed financial obligations between June 16th and August 24th board meetings
152the Illinois School treasurer bond renewal this is for our annual renewal the bond requirement is 25% of our highest cash balance throughout the fiscal year the bond amount is 416 million dollars and the high crust outdoor classroom garden bid I know Ellen you had a few points you wanted to highlight and share under this item thank you there's a new design maintains some of the original themes of the former outdoor classroom space while bringing in new elements to engage students in different ways and create opportunities for indoor and outdoor learning between the Learning Commons and the outdoor classroom the new space will include concrete seat walls spaces for game play quiet reading and group work that will enrich the learning and high crest new trees and shrubs will be planted this summer the renovations will
153start in June and be completed prior to the start of school in August we had the bid opening at the end of May and as mentioned earlier the initial bids came in higher than budgeted so we worked with the Lakota group and the low-cost bitter land works to review costs and come up with a recommendation to decrease quantities of many of the items in order to achieve the same and results of the lower cost we are recommending approval of the site preparation concrete seat walls as well as planting trees and shrubs this summer with a total cost of fifty nine thousand two hundred and ninety dollars from the beginning the redesign of the outdoor classroom has been planned in phases given the limited access and high Crescent summer due to construction and Cove in nineteen
154the district plans to plant the perennials grasses and ground covers in spring of 2021 when the district will have sufficient resources to care practically for the new plants plans for the next phase of the garden improvements will be reviewed during the coming year fiscal year 21 are there any questions any questions board members No okay Thank You Ellen also under annual business the resolution of aiding the working cash fund of the district John mentioned this earlier this resolution allows the district to transfer the five million dollars of working cash fund bond proceeds received in May from the working cash fund to the operations and maintenance fund to reimburse this fund for Harper and high crest construction project expenditures we also have the resolution adopting disclosure compliance policy this policy calls out policies and procedures for
155ensuring compliance with the district's responsibilities under federal securities laws including its continuing at disclosures and here again we discussed this briefly at the Committee of the Whole meeting and as mentioned earlier we also have reviewed the summer programming fees and the jump start summer enrichment fees specifically as we discussed at the community the whole meeting a fee of $80.00 is recommended for the newly designed two-week jump start to fall summer enrichment program this program will be teacher mediated and incorporates elements of online learning through a robust and dynamic academic online curriculum paired with teacher guidance and support so the costs the fees excuse me offset some of the costs of the program again families can still register for that program through the 19th and we are encouraging families to take advantage of that opportunity great
156I'll take the next piece it's the superintendent evaluation and contract extension we will discuss the evaluation during executive session but let's talk about the contract extension dr. Krim skully has a three year contract this year would be the conclusion of the first year we have decided that we would like to extend dr. Norma Scully's contract and we've been advised that it's preferable to do a new contract which covers three years than to extend the current contract I've circulated I think board members have seen a proposed contract are there any questions or discussions before we vote on this contract this evening you okay that concludes annual business so now we're moving on to transition items actually I'm Ascoli and again Ellen I will run through these but jump in if if you need to share additional
157information the resolution appointing a school treasurer this resolution appoints Korey Volta Meir succeeding Ellen Crispino as the treasurer effective July 1st 2020 the authorized agent for IMR EFT self and SSC IP and adopts the resolution reauthorizing participation in the Illinois School District liquid acid fund excuse me due to the new business manager we need the board to reauthorize the employees that are approved to make investment transactions at PMA approved employees include myself the superintendent the business manager CSB oh and the controller we also need to appoint the new business manager as the authorized agent for our insurance cooperatives as well as the Illinois Municipal retirement fund so again these are transition items as Ellen Crispino is preparing to leave our district and we are also preparing to welcome Cori the third item is a new
158signatory for district's activities fund payroll general bank accounts in the Wilmette community special education association checking accounts again due to the change in the business manager we need the board to update those approved checks and signers excuse me on the district's bank accounts and finally the Wilmette community special education agreement advisor advisory board member and the board again needs to approve the appointment of our new business manager Cory bolta Meyer as the district 39 advisory board member on wixi and that concludes our review of transition items thank you very much so now this is another opportunity for the community to address the board the district again is requested that public comments emailed to public comments at Wilmette 39 org Tony have we received any public comments via email no no new comments wait then we
159will continue with our agenda next is the consent agenda under action items are there any items that the board would like polls from the consent agenda okay mr. pan Zika please proceed with the motions I move to approve the personnel report I don't have a date for it it's dated June 15th 2020 okay restate that then I want to approve the personnel report for June 15 2020 I move to approve the attached resolution authorizing payment for goods and services between now and the next board meeting scheduled for August 24th 2020 I moved to approve the attached renewal of the state of Illinois School treasurer bond in the amount of 16 million I move to approve the awarding of the bid to land works limited in the amount of fifty nine thousand two hundred and ninety
160dollars per bid specifications for the high crest outdoor classroom renovation project bid I move to approve the JumpStart summer education enrichment fees I move to adopt the resolution contained appointing Cory altameyer succeeding le Cristiano as Wilmette public schools county district 39 treasurer I move to approve Cory Ulta Meyer as the authorized agent for Illinois Municipal retirement fund the schools employees lost fund in the suburban school cooperative insurance pool effective July 1st 2020 in addition to adopt the resolution reauthorizing participation in the Illinois School District liquid asset fund by the board of the school district on behalf of which the pressure acts I move to approve quarry bottom iron succeeding Ellen Chris panel treasurer has been signatory for the district activities fund payroll and general bank accounts in the Wilmette community special education checking account effective
161July 1st 2014 I move to approve the appointment of court Volta Myer as the district 39 advisory board member of wit CWC as MEA I moved to approve the contract extension for superintendent Carrie crema school I moved to approve the accounts payable for bills listed between May 19th 2020 and June 15 2000 20 in the following amounts educational fund two hundred and sixty seven thousand four hundred and twenty $1.94 oh and I'm fund three hundred and thirty thousand seventy eight dollars and seventy six cents depth service 75903 $1.25 transportation funds two hundred and eighty six thousand six hundred and sixty-seven dollars and seventy seven cents capital projects three hundred and forty four thousand one hundred and forty-five dollars port fund 15 thousand nine hundred and twenty two dollars for total all funds of 1 million
162three hundred and twenty thousand two hundred and six dollars and seventy two cents I moved to approve the manual checks issued between May 19 2020 and June 15 2020 in the following amounts educational fund five hundred and seventy one thousand seven hundred and forty five dollars and two cents onm fund three thousand four hundred and nine dollars and 72 cents transportation funds seventeen dollars and 73 cents for total all funds five hundred and seventy five thousand one hundred and seventy two dollars and forty seven cents thank you may have a second-by-second thank you motion has been made and seconded with the clerk please call the roll Nancy's are ready yes Frank pan Sica yes Amy Palin yes Bernstein yes I'm sternwheeler yes Aaron stone yes you just murdered Phipps yes the yeas have it motion
163carries may we have a motion to approve the resolution debating the working working cash fund of the district we have a second second may the clerk please call the roll john sees already yes can Zika yes Namie Palin yeah sparks Dean yes Alan Stern Wyler yes Aaron stone yes mr. Pibbs yes the yeas have it motion carried we have a motion to approve the resolution adopting the disclosure compliance policy please yes I move to adopt the attached disclose your compliance policy resolution of the district may have a second motion haven't been made and seconded with the clerk please call the roll dance is ready yes thanks Sam Zika yes Amy Palin yes mark Steen yeah Allen Stern Wyler yes Aaron stone yes Lisa Schneider vapes yes the yeas have it motion carried great time to
164move to old business one item that I put on the agenda is a continuation of our discussion or action items that we committed to on condemnation of hate and racism are ongoing equity work so I had a list of five things that we committed to during committee a committee of the whole and I thought I would ask folks if they had any updates Aaron did you have an update on I'm selecting a book for the board to read and discuss no I'm working on it great just keep us posted mark and Amie you talked about looking for someone to come and facilitate a discussion with the board that's right Amy do you want to update or shall I okay so we met with a local group heroes who is also meeting with the administration and
165had a good discussion with them I think that will be we will probably recommend that they continue to meet with the administration and go that route that will followed be mostly a more staff oriented and possibly student oriented interaction and so we've Amy and I have identified at least two individuals who we think might be good candidates for facilitating a board level discussion but we have not reached out or we've not contacted them yet okay great and for the record we have asked dr. Krim ascoli to incorporate race and equity work into our next strategic plan once that gets underway John you had volunteered to identify any legislative changes or eius be amendments we should pursue it sounds like that has a new sense of urgency at least to the is B amendments if there's
166any we want to pursue in the next seven days there's zero chance no that is a pretty serious no absolutely but given Ellen's presentation from the Illinois so students school board needs consensus discussion so we're gonna got it okay and then finally Ellen with support from Frank was gonna discuss a sister school potentially yeah um Frank reached out to me but Frank and I have not discussed it but I in terms of finding and working with the sister school first of all I'd like to talk to Carrie about it and also I think that at this time in terms of I'd like to work with also an outside organization that specializes in putting these kind of partnerships together it's it's very useful sometimes to do that or with the superintendent's and it I think would
167be very nice to find a school that's nearby possibly but the other thing is this until the co fit until co-ed is over and we're back in some kind of semblance semblance of knowing what school is going to be like for me until school is going to be like things a little difficult at the moment to organize this so we'll start to look at it but I don't want to put that on Kerry shoulders or any anyone shoulders until we are back in school so it might be a little bit before me organize that but I'm looking to so great well this is the first board meeting that we're talking about this in this way and so I think that every month we'll just I'll just do a call for updates for those who have
168them instead of going through the list but I am definitely excited to work on all these action items so thank you all next is new business Frank I think a number of us have talked about it off and on in these meetings but I'd like to propose that we we pick a date for a Committee of the Whole meeting in July I think there's enough issues that we've been dealing with there's potential some financial issues and and certainly understanding what what we're doing so that were involved with the community and and in some cases in the answer questions if the community then has them so I think it'd be good to put something formally on the calendar for July probably around the third week of July it sounds like some of these things start coming
169that's like when we know enough to know something but just before we have to actually do something with it so that would be kind of the cut point would be so that it'd be useful that we know enough but we'd also wouldn't have locked everything in and it could be perfectly frank I think that's a great idea and I would propose at this point not having looked over the calendar in depth I think July 20th probably would be the right date for us to look at first if that date seems like it might work for some that seems as though it may be a useful at least save the date and and we can go from there whether it needs to be a business meeting or a committee meeting yeah I think if we started
170with a committee meeting and then if we had something that we had to vote on then we could call a special meeting to have those kind of so why don't we see how the agenda shapes up and then we'll make the call as we get closer great other new business Ellen well since it was brought up the IASB I mean I just throwing it out there yep the line is the 24th I apologize everyone but it really snuck under the radar it wasn't mentioned it wasn't publicized it wasn't even on the calendar for them I mean I know it comes around every year we mentioned it but this year it was rough because of kovat um I I don't want to presume that no one has some significant things on their mind or Minds I
171should say and if there is something it is something that you know like you said Lisa mmm we would have to vote on and we'd have to do it very very quickly um you know this is it's important I voted last year at the conference and some very very important things come up but I know the time is so short and I I mean if they just posted on their front page it's the first time I check all the time I don't know if anyone else had noticed it but they just said it's it's you on the 24th so I I'm not sure what other districts have been posting new resolutions but um I thought I would put it up there as new business again since you said it to be voted on so a
172couple thoughts that I have first of all if a board member has an idea and wants to flush it out there's two ways to play we could collectively decide to fast-track it the other is that we could ask it feels like a week's time is pretty unreasonable to come up with an amendment that we could approach the Illinois Association of School Boards and ask them if they're willing to extend the deadline I would do that by the way if someone has an idea and we want to work on it I would be happy to do that on our behalf it definitely seems like a lost moment for all districts given that you know this this um remote learning kind of pandemic experience if if given the time to reflect I'm sure that there would be
173relevant and the important amendments we could come up with but you know I don't have anything on my sleep at the moment does anybody thank you for bringing it up I am happy to call them tomorrow and ask if they would consider an extension and actually it's funny possibly what a resolution to ask for is in situations such as this that are unusual pandemic is who expected this but maybe they don't want to make a resolution to allow for extensions in situations that are emergency situations like this because what they do is very important and what we vote on in the fall is very important and we may end up voting remotely so it's it's an unusual situation all in all so I agree done I'll ask them what cotton alcohol and in the interim
174of people have ideas and were granted an extension then we could figure out a timeline and move the idea through our own process I will report back to Carrie great intimately so so that they can let you know any other new business so um let's move on to good and welfare I have a couple things to start with and the first is uh Ellen on behalf of all of us Ellen sternwheeler happy birthday thanks for spending your birthday with us thank you [Laughter] the next item is this is Ellen crispy nose last board meeting and I'm gonna open it up in a minute to all the board members to say thank you but Ellen thank you very much for your service you have done an amazing job um it's been fun for us to watch
175you quickly rise through the ranks and you've done an amazing job in your role and especially during this time we are eternally grateful and we're excited for you on your next adventure but we will certainly miss you and we bought you a gift which I'm happy to open and show everyone and I will make sure it gets the Emmy see tomorrow so that you can pick it up but what we got here was your own your very own and it's very beautiful you probably can't tell online crystal ball engraved and it says Ellen crispy now will met Public Schools district 39 with gratitude for your seven years of outstanding and dedicated service and so when you get it if you could actually look into it and tell us all when school it's gonna open next
176year and how we would we would be grateful um in all seriousness we are we will miss you and are grateful for your service and thank you and with that I'm gonna pause and let other board members say something on this if they have anything you know started something yeah we serious about the crystal ball one so here you have it somewhere we figured we tell the world you have it no but in all seriousness we really appreciate your service and how much you helped us understand the financial side of what we do and I think you make it look easier than it is which is like the true sign of somebody who really knows what they're doing so thanks very much thank you go ahead Erin I was thinking about it today and I
177was just thinking about how much I appreciate your cheerfulness and your preparedness and your advice has been invaluable and you have big shoes Phil so are we you're not telling them you're you're leaving us but I will miss you and thank you so much thank you okay anyway go ahead mark oh no it's just gonna say you know we've worked together for a while and I have to say I remember when you step into the position and we said boy Gail you have some you know you've left some really big shoes to fill and I'm speaking for myself I had no idea how well you would fill them but you really it was amazing and you've done an incredible job obviously the work that you've done on the financial side has been terrific the forecast
1785 which we are all still thrilled about and I suspect you still are too but I maybe most importantly I would echo what Erin said which is the demeanor the cheerfulness the preparedness the professionalism that you bring is is really been just terrific so thank you very much and certainly I wish you all the best and am jealous of wherever you land next professionally Thank You Ellen I'm going to say ditto to everything that they said I won't repeat it all but thank you so much Ellen it's such a pleasure working with you and I'm gonna miss you a lot and I'm gonna miss having a name cher there's so few of us in the world so I know I'm really gonna miss you it's been wonderful working with you you just have made this
179so easy to understand so I won't miss you thank you go ahead Amy I'm gonna build off that I feel like as a new board member I had a lot to learn and you just the way you inform us and give context really helped bring me along and also just instill a great deal of confidence and allowed me to enjoy being a board member knowing how well you lead us and you're just gonna be really missed oh thank you very much thank you so much go ahead Frank everybody else had a chance to take basically two things I was gonna say but the combination of professional knowledge in this area and a really nice friendly personality is hard to find and I think the fact that you do well in both of those areas is
180what makes you special to this group so you will be definitely missed and I'm sure wherever you end up you'll be appreciated almost as much as we appreciate you now so thank you very much thank you so much if I can just speak for one second I just wanted to thank everyone for giving me the opportunity to take this position two years ago I have learned so much over the last two years things I never never thought I would ever learn or be involved in and it's I've grown a lot and learned a lot it's a great administrative team the board is great the district is great my kids both went through the district and I just I'm very proud that I was able to give back to the district and just know that if
181there's anything that I can ever do for the district in the future or help any of you or the administrators that you can always reach me so again thank you so much for the opportunity I've really enjoyed working with all of you as well and I appreciate the kind words and and the crystal ball as well so thank you thank you um and I have one more before I turn over good in law fair open it up it this is also another goodbye this evening Chiques last meeting he's only been with us a year but he has decided to move out of state to be with his family and I owe and so I want to thank him for all his service and hard work he certainly picked a tough year to start here just
182lots of change and so I know I speak for the board when I say good luck GK it's been delightful working with you um now I'm going to open it up to the floor any other good and Welfare Amy so it feels like a lifetime ago when we end but just at the end of the school year last week two weeks ago I was very grateful and moved by the approach that my daughter's teachers took at Central was the second to last day of school I think and they they made available an optional zoom meeting to talk about what was happening in the world and you all have heard me talk about advocating for more conversation more education about racial equity and the older grades feel like we often underestimate what's appropriate there and what
183they're capable of and also what they need and I was blown away that this opportunity was made available and the conversations the teachers led were very powerful and the kids were were so eager to talk about what was happening both teachers read the kids book about racism which was just a perfect platform to explain for no matter what context kids had coming in the teachers provided it and they asked questions and I'm profoundly grateful and I'm excited that we as a border committing to this work and I see the work that the schools are doing and I I'm a strong advocate for moving forward with more of that and just wanted to express my appreciation their hard conversations to have and especially when you're on a computer so thank you others good and Welfare okay
184I'll just say one more time how great graduation was because I just still can't believe it all right may I have a motion to adjourn to executive session to discuss litigation specific personnel and collective bargaining I move to return to executive session to discuss litigation and personal issues may have a second second okay I just want to correct the motion it's also going to include collective bargaining thank you yep motion they having been made in second and will the clerk please call the roll and she's ready yes Frank ranzie go yes Amy paling yes mark Steen yes all in sternwheeler yes Aaron stone yes Lisa Schneider faves yes motion having been made as we are now in dirt motion carried we are now adjourned to executive session given that we've been in a meeting for
185three hours we will take a five-minute recess and reconvene in the breakout room I will place you in there while you're on break thank you thank you all Tony have you been having fun at the NEC exciting time sir sorry it's so late and you're still there oh oh sorry Tony I forgot that you're still there oh my gosh it's okay we met the letter of the law so that's what's important right now it's important there's all these really significant changes to the law so I would appreciate a motion to adjourn the regular meeting so moved as we were all waiting for Yellen okay great I need to do a roll call again Ellen's sternwheeler yes Jon sees already yes Amy pulling yes Frank pan Zika yes Aaron stone yes mark Steen yeah Lisa Schneider
186faves yes motion carries the meeting is adjourned thank you I was a long one appreciate happy birthday thank you out honey thanks for sticking around thank you Tony you