001e e all right Julie if you wouldn't mind uh calling roll call please K cast one of those things Ken Dawson here Chris esposa here Charelle Fuller here Jenny hagstrom here Terry pavage here and Don Runner here thank you okay having a quorum let's stand for pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right Julie the first reception of visitors do we have any slips no sir no okay I'm going to turn it over to Hank for item number four let's time just a couple of quick items for the board this evening uh the first of these is uh the final opportunity for discussion on strategic plan draft indicators and measures
002uh we're asking the board to take action on these tonight and adopt these uh just to review uh quickly review uh these stem from our larger mission statement uh you can see the Mission Vision and values up there uh those pieces created by that strategic plan committee a couple of years ago uh led to our work over the last year of trying to identify what our top priorities were inside of these uh to actually measure and Report out on regularly to the board as indicators of our success within those the Strategic plan are four strategic directions which are listed across the top of the page there underneath there the Strategic plan planning committee outlined for us some descriptions of what those things mean based on that we went back to our work uh the work
003that we're doing and uh what we hope to do in the future and looked for ways to come back to the board and show you uh ways in which which we are making strides in these areas and to identify gaps that we have and to come back and explain how we're working to close those gaps uh so the board has seen these in at least four separate occasions so I I don't want to necessarily read through all of them to you you've seen them this is just kind of the final format that'll present as these uh four slides I'm showing you will eventually end up on our website as that single page document that provides the overview and then we'll provide the kind of structure as we report out throughout the year uh so you
004can see this for each of the four domains and that's pretty much it so asking uh tonight for any last questions uh before we take this for Action otherwise we'll adopt it and then this will become a major part of our uh welcome back for staff uh week from tomorrow that's here so fast oh honestly it just seems like yesterday we were at graduation oh gosh time flies when you're having a summer yeah but in the winter time it doesn't seem to go this fast not this quick no I would just like to commend the administration all the work that went into this uh I think it looks really nice it's appealing it's visually um I think it's concise and presented in a way that is easily to be understood so kudos to your team
005and putting all of this together it was truly a collaborative effort there was a lot of people across the whole organization involved in it so thank you thank you all right well and then hopefully you'll approve it and then get ready because the rest of the year is really going to focus board reports will be a lot of them will tie back to these MH that just now will Encompass getting the work done behind the bullets right yep that's what our work will be well it really helps us Focus what that work is for us it's these 11 things that are most important in the work that we're doing all right I'm going to turn this one over to Gina all right thank you so we are recommending an increase in the number of days
006a student would be considered excused per semester which is outlined in our student handbook our student parent handbook currently it is after the sixth absence that we pretty much require documentation from families so doctors know those kinds of things and of course there's reasons under school code for which a student can be excused absence we are recommending shifting that to after the eighth absence and for a variety of different reasons there's no requirement in school code as to the number of excused absences until it triggers unexcused so there's nothing there that's precluding us from that change that is something that is set within the district and each district can set it some districts do not have a certain amount right other districts like ours it's after the 6th we believe we should change it for
007several reasons you know we've talked a lot in recent years about chronic absenteeism you may recall our chronic absenteeism rate MH is significant and something we've been working on for I don't know the last three or four years it's it's been a while that we've been working on pic definitely post pandemic and um that rate will not be impacted as much by this because that rate is 10% of the school year so 17.6 days excused or unexcused another factor that I'm the school report card though is chronic truancy chronic treny is 5% of the school year and only considers unexcused absences and so this could potentially and is potentially inflating that number for us you may recall also related or coming out around the time of the pandemic a little bit thereafter that the state
008is allow students to take up to 5 days per school year off for mental or behavioral health reasons and so in alignment with that that that's approximately 2 days per semester we feel that moving from 6 to 8 takes an account for that change in terms of authorized Days by state law so there's a couple of different reasons that we would like to shift from the 6th to the e8th absence in terms of changing our practice we're still going to be doing all the Outreach that you've heard about in various board presentations that we do related to attendance but it would be a change from which when documentation would be required and when an excused absence could potentially flip from being excused excused if I remember correctly the excused absence well absolutely were a part
009of the atenism yeah so I'm making the assumption that we probably can't change the definition of excuse actions we don't have control over that corre correct yeah because that was a little cloy to me how it's mastered mhm but the control we have is just to change the number of days because there's no stipulation on that you're absolutely correct okay this also helps our Deans a little bit when they call it six sometimes parents are like well why you calling me now you know and it's kind of hard to say six when the state numberers really closer to eight right now it all kind of lines up where they can say well the state has this measure of chronic absenteeism and it's any absences that are you know and it kind of helps that narrative
010in the dean's Department that it doesn't feel as arbitrary because it is kind of an arbitrary number of six it's more correlates with that state measure we have using language of absent with parents too so that aligns nicely so can you explain the eight then the eight is a state measure the you're not required the state measure is 17 and a half in a year is when you become chronically abon so eight in a semester eight is half okay kind half the so okay yeah it's in that and the idea is we want to prevent students from getting to be considered chronic chronically absent so since this is a change in the handbook we're bringing it to the board for yeah we don't print the handbook anymore do we it's online it's all all online
011so this is easy to yeah we'll just update the online document yeah I believe Julie does well by we we mean Julie we mean Julie yeah thank you Julie is a lot of people so it'll be at the ninth absence that they'll start asking and and subsequent yeah yeah yes and yeah yes how does this impact truancy so true in so there's chronic absenteeism which is what we typically focus on in part because chronic absenteeism impacts our Summit of designation you've heard me talk about Summit of designations every time I do a school report card chronic treny does not but it is part of the school report card it is reported if you go to Illinois school report card you look at our district or any District in Illinois you're going to see that every
012district has a rate we determine based on school code though things that can be excused we decide what's unexcused certainly we use school code to guide but that number is our deter ation it's not like school code says oh you can only have six and so it should and I can't say for sure every year is different every student is different um it should impact our chronic treny rates which are approximately about 15% 15.5 and by bringing it down which would have what impact on the score par card nothing lower number it's a lower number it's a it's a number that you can view on the school report card there's a lot of data on the school cour sorry I'm not following I don't understand I'm not following the connection dety so chronic truancy is
013defined as a a chronic truant is a student who missed 5% of school y right unexcused for an unexcused reason y they don't factor in the excused we decide that right now after the six if a family does not provide documentation that even if the parents call and say Johnny is sick it's unexcused now I got loss with that unless you bring a doctor's or a medical medical yeah whatever absolutely some documentation which is which is making more of our students true it absolutely because of the number we have selected and we did not adjust than other districts we have a lower threshold for frency yes got it and we did not adjust when the mental health days went into place we did not adjust for that so for truy you're saying if a parent
014call and said my kid was sick but there's no doctor's note or then that's Tru it no after after the eth after the eth that's what we're recommending after the eth but currently it's after the sixth it I guess my question is is is there a reason why it's eight rather than 10 because that's two weeks so so we we want to head it off before a student becomes chronically absent which is two weeks this is before the threshold of 17 and a half days yeah so it would be 16 we also don't want to give the impression that it's okay to be it's okay to be ABS I guess I look at College visits and things like that could add up to eight pretty easily you can they can when I first looked at
015this my my impression was we're having absenteeism problem problems and we're now making it more lenient um but I understand why but at first blush that was my resp that's why we but it went back to me the fact that when I thought about with the excuse absence with what was in there it it it kind of to me felt like that should be changing but there is no way we could do that right cuz if you're excused and you're going to college visits I mean to me that's you know and I get to six of those that's easy to do in a semester because there are a lot of colleges right so and especially if you go uh Coast to Coast you know you could easily take 3 days maybe four days at each
016visit so just getting there yeah well that's what I mean you know I think the move to eight is is like you said we had never made the adjustment with the mental health days so it's more consistent with what has been done around the state correct yeah it's the what this threshold is at is really not consistent across the state but what is consistent across the state is chronic anarchism at that larger number this then aligns with that larger number and it just kind of brings everything into that Focus being reducing chronic absenteeism and the metrics that are associated with it cool is there any impact to like an individual student in terms of being designated as chronically Trent like is there there's no enforcement or any no I mean obviously it might impact student
017learning there's obviously well there's those yeah but I mean like discipline there's yeah no different discipline for that or something that would follow a kid around or something like that yeah all right any other questions no all right this is about to be an action item as well okay item number five the consent agenda before the vote board votes on the consent agenda is there any agenda item a board member would like to pull out of the consent agenda for further discussion no okay hearing none can I get a motion for the Board of Education to approve the consent agenda is presented which includes a person Personnel report appointment certified contract adjustment certified appointment classified B Personnel report retirement classified resignation classified C strategic plan indicators and measures 2024 to 2025 and D student parent
018handbook change absenteeism so moved second Terry moves K seconds thank you Terry pavage hi Ken Dawson hi Espinosa hi Charelle Fuller hi Jenny hagstrom I Cara Caston hi and Don rener I motion carries item number six uh second reception of visitors Julie do we have any slips no sir thank you item number seven closed session um can I get a motion from the Board of Education to go into close session for the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employees specific individuals who serve as independent contractors in a park recreational or educational setting or specific volunte of the district or legal counsil for the district including hearing testimony on a complaint lodged against an employee a specific individual who serves as an independent contractor in a park recreational or educational setting or a
019volunteer of the district or against legal counsil for the district to determine its validity so moved second Terry moves Ken seconds thank you Terry pavich hi Ken Dawson hi Chris Espinosa hi dra poer hi Benny hagstrom hi Cara Caston hi and Don r i motion carries for the members of the public the board may be taking action on a person Personnel matter as noted in the agenda when it comes out of closed session we are in closed session all right does it matter what day