001oh yeah Julie 6:30 I think it's that we get together without a doubt you're right I agree here espa here Fuller Jenny HG here kry pav here Don rener here GI H here and Al M here thank you all right we have a quorum let's stand for the Pledge of Allegiance Pledge of aliance to 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 I keep W to after I say that right tonight we're going to start with student perspectives I'm sorry South high up I like those moves though all practice hi everybody Arwin lip principal D Grove South um M Martinez our director of Student Activities and I um work together every time we have the opportunity to showcase
002a group of students here at the board meeting and we're really excited tonight to highlight student council we were sitting and reflecting and thinking on really what a fabulous start to the school year we've had how many different activities and events have really helped our you belong here motto come to life and when we reflected and went through it and I want you all to hear this too um so much of what we've done has been LED and implemented by student council um these four young leaders their sponsors uh Chris Chris Esposito and Jenny Wolf and also uh led by De Martinez we're just so proud so I'm going to let them talk I'm going to first introduce Lily and then we're going to hear from Isabelle Grace and Juliana and I'm excited for you
003to hear what they've been doing hi everyone thank you so much for having us here it's like such a big pleasure to be able to come and share what we've been doing um this year we've had a lot of different opportunities to Showcase what we've done and like the resources we've had to be able to like show the school what we've been able to do and one of our big things was that you belong here um starting from the beginning of the year that's been just like implemented in every way possible and it's really amazing to see where that's been able to go I was able to speak to the Freshman on the first day of school and I was able to mention that you belong here and I just really think that throughout that
004time since then I've just been able to see it throughout the entire school so in our presentation we have different um aspects of where we've implemented that both within the school and our community so we're excited to share that so my friends are going to come here and we're going to talk about it so um my I'm Lily I'm a senior and I'm the president hi I'm Juliana I'm a junior and I'm one of the vice presidents hi my name is Grace I'm a senior and I'm the other vice president hi I'm Isabelle I'm a senior I'm the communications officer and then if just turn one to one to advance yeah you ready perfect okay so I'm going to talk about Halloween fun fair this is an annual event that student council plans and runs
005this is essentially a community Trunk or Treat so members of the community get to come to the school for free and different clubs each set up it was indoors this year because of weather but normally it's outside and they set up a trunk of a car and decorate it and they have games that kids from the community can participate in and they get candy so it's a really great way to get involved with the community it's wonderful for community outreach the kids and the parents love it and it is one of our I think it is one of our main things that we do and something that we are very very proud of and it was very successful this year despite the change that we had to make from outside inside on very short notice
006that's just some more pictures cool the chicken okay so the next event we did was schoolwide Bingo this took place during homecoming week this year and this was our kind of way to like get involved with the Le the week leading up to the homecoming dance so we passed out Bingo sheets to each access class for students and teachers and we also had some available in Student Activities for those who wanted to participate and on the Block days we would send send out the Bingo numbers during block periods and resource periods so that kids even when they had like resource or lunch could like play Bingo and like fill out their sheets along with them and when they got Bingo they could go to Student Activities to get prizes and we passed out stickers bucket
007hats uh DJs merch so yeah and this was our way to kind of include students and staff and get them really involved and spirited during the week of homecoming more pictures and then one of those prizes was the South side strong sticker so at the beginning of the school year all students received or had the opportunity to receive a Southside strong shirt and we valued that Motel just throughout the school year along with you belong here so I was able to have the opportunity to take that logo and turn it pink one because of Barbie pink and our homecoming thing but also because um of home like homecoming took place during October so breast cancer awareness and we throughout the week our school was able to raise and donate to the Susan G Coman foundation
008so it was really important to me to be able to find that connection from students and bring that into our community once more so another upcoming event we have is working with the foundation blessings in a back pack we had a parent from District 58 reach out to student council asking dgs students to help um District 58 families in need so we're going to be making 500 bags with motivational cards to give to them wow very good and yeah that's all for what we've been able to do this year it's been really amazing to share all of our experiences and to be able to keep pushing for that student involvement which was really important to us um from the start of the school year we met over the summer and that was a big thing
009was like how do we get people involved our favorite thing is our Instagram we've been able to use it a lot more this year we post on it all of our Bingo numbers were shared on it so it's been really cool to just take this New Perspective to what student council can be and be able to to share with all the students in the school so thank you thank you questions from board members yes so the the Halloween fund and how is that funded for you guys are you ra money or I mean that's so cool to have the the the candy and all that never yeah so that so all the um Candy comes from our Student Activity so me and Miss Martinez work very closely that week so we're able to like get
010our funding from them and then we're also so our we I don't think from my knowledge we don't bring any in anything from that event but it's really important it's a good way for just the community to get involved and just like really come together because it's so fun like just looking around you're like oh like all these kids like they're all like together and like some of them know each other and then you know maybe later on they'll see each other in a picture that they took when they get to high school so it's just a different event that brings like so many different age rents too there's like little babies so like midle schoolers so it was really cool question the 500 bags you guys are putting together are those like backpacks or
011what kind of bags you put in together just small bags I think they I'm from my we haven't done this so this is the first time doing this event so we're really excited to see how it goes but from my knowledge it is backpacks where the backpacks going to come from do you know I think it's from the foundation so blessings in a backpack is like a general not General but it's like a large organization so being able to so that's coming from one parent I think works closely with them and they're bringing them for us wow and there's so students are coming half mostly a little bit more than half from student council but also from Key Club which is another organization and then you guys will prepare them and stuff them and get
012everything together next Monday for today so so this is only November so we're we're we're talking about September and October and you guys have accomplished all that I just can't wait to see what's going to happen the rest of the school year I'm excited too yeah you guys are doing a fantastic job thank you so much thank you thank you thank you so much all right uh student board member reports keep the South theme going you want to start first sure okay so hi board members so this for the past let's see last time we met we had our homecoming and that went off that went off and it was everyone loved it there was a lot of feedback from it especially seeing how it was indoor this year and along with that we had
013our homecoming parade and that was also fun to see along with the trunk Retreat that was another Community kind of Outreach we got to go around this area over here and give out candy to those little kids and I was actually so I actually participated in the student council like part of the parade and um we were behind Dr th's car it wasn't my car okay well a really cool car it was a cool car and it is not my car right so we were behind them and we we missed we didn't really get candy but we saw we were right behind him so we kind of said that student council funded Dr th's candy so that way and if anybody asked cuz all we had was a sign and then no candy but it
014was a good EXP experience no doubt and we all got to again like see those little kids and begging for that candy but having that experience you know that memory and then along with that we also had um two cross country runners go to State this weekend and I our boy cross country Runner Josh he is a senior and he finished top 35 in the state while our girl cross country Runner she finished 20 top 25 in the state so they both did very good for their seasons and we're excited to see one of the girl is a junior so we're excited to see where she'll be next year and then along with that um Everybody November is that time where we're all like striving to get our grades up because there's a few more
015tests until you know winter break and all but we're also looking very forward to uh Thanksgiving break so there's that too and there's a few like gr gra grateful things we're doing for Thanksgiving for example like our gobble grams where we're selling those through Key Club and we can just those are just meant for like they just write a note you would pay a dollar for a note and those will be delivered through the classrooms throughout the day of Thanksgiving week and that way like you can give it to your friends teachers just to show that you're grateful for them right and then along with that uh seniors just had their um the first first deadline for college app so we're all a little bit more calm and relaxed and uh there's one more deadline
016left so there's that too for seniors so overall we're having a good November and we're again we're excited for Thanksgiving and winter break eventually um on the north side of things we had homecoming as well um there was definitely we had we got a lot of feedback on it being inside versus outside there were pros and cons to both with outside it was a lot cooler and like less scrunch and there was a lot more room um because inside it was in our purple gym and this poor these poor people that were running the water stand at The Stance like the water was just going and it was in these like little cups like these like little Gatorade cups and I don't think there was like an empty Cup on the table at all or
017like a full Cup on the table cuz people just kept taking them it was really really hot in that room um but the inside had a really cool stage setup and even though it was inside there was an outdoor option in case you wanted to go outside so that was definitely a really good feature of it the photo booth was so fun um I I love the photo booth that was awesome um and then the spirit days had mixed reviews so um all in all like most most of them were really good like it was like mostly good feedback on the spirit days so that was fun and then um for Sports North had a very good sports weekend got to say really good sports weekend um our cross country team finished first in St
018which is awesome and our girls or boys cross country team and then our girls cross country team finished second in state and the football team beat Hershey which is also awesome so um we have our next game on Saturday so I I will be there Lincoln Way West right yeah so we will be there um and yeah and then we also um we just had our first student Choice day for Access and um that went off really well um it a couple students had a little bit of trouble discover figuring out which room they were supposed to be in just because they chose it like a week and a half ago so they were like where am I supposed to go um but they really liked being able to choose earlier how most students said
019they really like to be able to choose earlier however there were some students that were like I don't know when I need help until the day before so um maybe just like keeping the deadline window open a little bit longer um people really liked the open gym that one filled up really quickly um and then another feedback we got was the access lessons um most access lessons take around 10 minutes so maybe putting more access lessons into one day so like doubling up on access lesson days so that way there's more room for student choice that way students are really able to utilize what access is supposed to be about but yeah good stuff awesome any questions is that the first time in history that our CrossCountry team has finished men's first women's second I
020mean that's just a phenomenal accomplishment in this state like that I believe that's that's the best finish for the teams that we got yeah yeah that's fantastic last year we were third and fifth boys were third girls were fifth um so this year um one two and pretty sure it was the best finish we that's fantastic it'll be the best finish until next [Laughter] year yeah bring home those first place trophies next year EXA and I I'd like to compliment Dr M for organizing a fantastic celebration at at dgn that was well attended um I I showed up around 7 o'clock in the learning Commons and there were about five people in there including Terry myself Dr DeMent and maybe two other people and um uh we went outside and there were hundreds of people
021outside um awaiting eagerly and uh with great anticipation and then we came inside and then the boys and the girls walked in to much Applause um and I can tell you that um both teams were very grateful for that acknowledgement by the community um and it was special and it's it's special day for them and it's a a special time for them to be able to celebrate like that um and they're they're I mean they're in a sport that is not basketball and it's not football right so um having an opportunity like that is unique for them so I was very appreciative of that and the memories that those student athletes will take away from that are Priceless I mean that's something that they will remember their whole life I mean when you know when
022I think about it it reminds me of as long ago as it was but the Super Bowl celebration that once upon a time we had in Chicago but it's just amazing those student athletes were remember that for their whole life so that is just fantastic it's really special how Sports bring our community together and it really doesn't matter which sport but it has this really unique way of bringing us all to the same place in joy and in happiness and in celebration and it was just really really cool so thank yeah I did inform Dr DeMent this morning this is two years in a row with state championships and sports so she's just got to keep it going yeah yeah we will we're on a good streak right now you are on a good streak
023yeah Saturday we'll tell the tale yeah we also have swimming WS that's right we do yeah we still have swimmers at both schools right let's go and is is that at Westmont again yes at the navori best place I have no slips for reception all right schore report I'll let you drive so last last month I guess it was last month I presented about SAT scores they were preliminary and I shared that the score core card would be coming out on October 30th which it did this year unlike some of the previous years we're going to have several presentations three to be exact on different components in the score port card so a little bit shorter and a little bit more focused rather than having one that lasts you know an hour or an hour
024and a half um so we'll both shorter this um so today thank you g [Laughter] f not I'm just G to move on um so key areas um today I'm going to talk a little bit about the summit of designation going to talk about some of the school report card changes every year there's changes and quite frankly I think that the state did a fantastic job with some of the changes uh in this year's report card so I'm really excited about that and then we'll talk today about graduation rates so those are the three areas that I'll talk about tonight so I mentioned the summit of designation and there's a lot on this screen but essentially I wanted to share that both North and South received a rating of commendable and we pretty much have
025since the rating started a little bit of a history in the sense with Co occurring so the first couple of years we were commendable Then They Carried the designations over then there was a year of not assigning them and now we're back to assigning them so we've continued to be rated as commendable there were four designations there's Now sort of a fifth one this time um but to be commendable you need to have uh it were none of your um subgroups are underperforming so you have to have so all your subgroups need to be performing for a high school the graduation rate has to be at least 67% which ours is substantially over that but we do not fall in the top 10% of schools so the the top ratings exemplary that's the top 10%
026then there's commendable which is by far the bulk of schools and then there's a couple ratings below that um targeted comprehensive and now there's this intensive group as well so in order to um to think about it this way we get a score based on a number of indicators indicators like SAT Math proficiency evidence-based reading and writing proficiency science eel there's a number of scores which I'll show you in in just a minute and then we get a total score and they take all the high schools and they just list them and then when they get to 10% they draw the line as long as you don't have any of those like I talked about no underperforming subgroups as long as your graduation rate is 67% and that's where they draw the line and there's
027some other factors um that that go into that so we again are considered commandable can you talked about can you what what does it take to be in the top like what is the graduation rate so it's it's a comparison okay so it's a comparison so it's always going to be a moving Target it's not about attainment right it's not like if you get this score you are exemplary or if you get this score I guess you could look at it the other way you're comprehensive um it's it's a comparison to other schools so it's it continues to be a moving Target but I can I'm going to show you in a couple of slides how close we are okay um so I said I wanted to mention some of the key changes um one
028of the changes I really like is the schoolhouse visual which I'm going to show you in a couple couple of minutes I think that's a nice way of of laying it out so when the public or even Educators go in and look it's right there you can kind of see where where we land the Illinois Science assessment this when I say this year it's really last year but this year's report card um was not about participation so in last the previous year it was about participation in other words the percent of students who were supposed to take the test that actually did test now it's based on proficiency and that will continue moving forward there were some changes to Chronic absenteeism the way it's calculated specifically they altered it in 2022 um and now we're
029back to the previous way it was calculated the way it was altered in 2022 did not impact us it was about schools that declined by a certain percentage got bonus points that is an area of focus for us that is an area that we're working on it's an area that we'll present about in December um so we did not get those bonus points but that is a key change this year that now um they're going back to the previous calculation and then for the first year they started reporting on the on the indicators you may recall several years ago we did several presentations about um College and Career Readiness indicators and what it would mean for a student to be considered a distinguished schler or College and Career ready and this report card even though
030these indicators do not impact our summative designation in other words they don't impact our rating the data is there and this is really an opportunity for the state to get the information out there as schools work through some of the Kinks with that data these are huge data sets um and so that's something that the state is working on and that schools are working on and I can tell you for sure it's something that we are working on so to give you an example some things that are up there uh um Junior and senior attendance for juniors and senior students the expectation is that it would be 95% that's you can go in and look at how we rate it on that um also the Fine Arts indicator which will not impact us for a
031few years it's also on there so there's some information that's available in the report card that isn't impacting our designation but that ultimately May or will in terms of the Fine Arts indicator it will um but we have a couple a couple of years on that so wanted to talk a little bit about the schoolhouse Visual and this is obviously a PowerPoint right but if you were to log in and look at one of our high schools so this right here is obviously South High School there's a Schoolhouse this did not exist up until this year so even though there's 2023 in the corner it looks like you can pull it down there's nothing to pull down but it will in future Years be there to pull down and as you can see in while
032while there are some blank areas which is sort of interesting um you can see where the different ratings come from so for example about half of that bottom part of that Schoolhouse is graduation rate well half of our rating is based on graduation rate you can see on the the left side Ela Proficiency in math and then you can see some of the other scores one of the scores that's not listed there is the Science assessment so there's a instant kind of look at how we're doing um in terms of that Schoolhouse which I really like because it's a nice quick quick look what's really nice about it what's the 2161 oh that's El progress to proficiency so El progress to proficiency came out several years ago before before the pandemic and it looks at
033how long it takes our students to get to become proficient proficient means it's based on one score it's called the access test we give it every year near February but there's a there's a window um and if students score a 4. on that composite so the composite score for the test basically Reading Writing listening and speaking um they graduate out of e they're no longer considered El they're like former El students the state has also set and it's very individualized by student benchmarks of growth for students and ultimately a student from that first year that they're identified are given roughly five years there was an added year during the pandemic but that's going away um to become proficient and while you might say well we're a high school district we only have them for four
034years so how does that even factor in it's from when that student is identified so even if that student is identified in fourth grade if that student is still El for us it factors into our rating okay and then the upper right that's science where it's purple sorry Don um that's purple and then the climate survey which I don't know why the percentages aren't there I think ultimately they will over to see right now yeah I'll show you in just a sec on the um on next screen I'm sorry so what does it mean 2.16 of so we got 2.16% out of 5% okay same way on graduate this is South High yeah yes the designations are per school districts do not get a designation so it's not like we have a District 99 designation
035and you only going to see the the um graphic by school so for graduation rate for example it's 50% of our rating South High had 40 4.71% I'm sorry yes we only got 3.62% out of 10% that's an area that we are definitely focused on andh meaning you want a higher number M we want to get to 10% right we want a higher number because you don't want that's not how that's not the percentage of students that areon chronic absent indicator yeah that's how many points we earned out of the possible points yeah and what's really nice is there's reports where we can actually drill down and as Hank said we can hover over now this is not live so I just gave you one example but you can hover over so in this example
036I'm hovering over the ELA proficiency that blue box on the left um and it shows you what the indicator score is what the weighted score is so 7.5 and what we obviously got the full 7.5 on all three of the testing indicators if you hover over you'll see the the percentage that we received was full percents um the one area to for graduation rate is something I'm going to talk about later so I'll Circle back to that and the overall score of 84.0 n meaning we're in the 84th percentile of schools in in Illinois we received 84% % out of 100 so we're 80 we received 84.9 points out of and it's technically the top 10% that's exemplary which would be you would consider over 90 but I'll show you in just a minute where
037that cut off occurred and I believe that is due to like um ties you know where schools receive the same scores okay so let's go to North real quick and then I'll take you to that okay so this is the same idea this is obviously North High School so where South had 8406 I think it was um North received 87.2 eight so about three points more you can see one area where they were received higher points to be for example in graduation rate a little bit and then a little bit in chronic absenteeism and then the same idea I decided in this one just to show you a different hovering over to go with science and science isn't identified as you can see it doesn't say science but that's what that purple is a little
038box in the corner yeah the little right above climate survey and I I'm hopeful in time that will end up all filled in like next year with the report card but this is a huge uh step towards making it really easy to understand yeah I think it's a great great step forward so one of the one of the things I want to highlight when we sent out and are you going to get there as to where we got our all of our points am I stepping on your toes where we got all of our points go ahead talk over can you go back oh yes I just think it's important for the board to see that in this scoring that in all of the areas of standardized assessments so English math science both schools receive
039100% of their points right graduation rate Gan will go into nearly all of our points um there's a couple of areas where we can make up some ground and climate survey is any easy low hanging fruit to to hit this year um but then there's some now it starts to get tougher like Ela proficiency where as G will talk later on this school year like you're talking five six seven years of work to move a student to meet that that proficiency level chronic absenteeism where we're ranked based on whether or not kids come to school and parents send their kids to school is not an area where we have a lot of control over what that is and obviously changes in society have impacted those numbers as well um ninth grade on track we'll talk
040a little bit about and that has been a major Focus for us for the last couple of years so uh this a real nice graphic to help you see where it is we can make up points and try to move at the same time every school in the state is doing the same thing right where is the area where we can realistically make up some points now it's Eugene sorry so the question was one of the questions was how where does that exemplary come in and the commendable and so I included this this is for South High School um where you can see the schools that were an exemplary received 91.2 for or greater um and you can see where South was so definitely close and um and you can see as I talked about
041earlier like the targeted schools of and comprehensive schools where on the opposite end the um the dividing line Falls and then the same idea so is that the number of schools in each I think it's percent percent okay yeah the percentage of schools so in other words and since I have North up I'll just use North as an example for us to fall in the exemplary we would have had to have 91 .24 or greater and we had North example 8728 I like this graphic for a variety of different reasons because it actually shows us where we landed the house is nice because it gives you a quick visual you can hover over it and see it this is nice because it shows you where you actually landed which we haven't had the opportunity to
042view it this way and the public hasn't had the opportunity to view it in a way that's quick to look at now um the the schools that were exemplary do we have any in DuPage County we do so we weren't and would you say 91.2 4 is about like some years is it ever higher than that or every year is going to be different because they're going to rank them in where they all again it's not a tment it's not like if we know if we got because next year that number might be 90.9 or you know it's a moving moving whatever 10% a comparison right yeah so oh do you have a question we don't know what it's going to be no all we can do is work go ahead well we do know
043that to be exemplary you have to have a graduation rate of 67% and you have have to fall within that 10% but it's a comparison to all the other schools so in that sense we don't the cut off might not always be at 91 next year that cut off could be at 955 yeah right right or it could next year be at 85 like you just you don't know you what they weigh the rules change from year to year as well okay yes so examp when I mentioned Fine Arts remember I mentioned Fine Arts as being something that's on the report card but doesn't impact us and I believe it's 2425 it will factor in so things will change a little bit because that will factor in and for Fine Arts they look at two
044things they look at enrollment and and they look at teachers who are qualified to teach the area in which they're teaching which all of our teachers are but they give you a couple of years so they introduce a new metric and but they give you some time to and we've yes and we've known about Fine Arts for all of these have been in years so it's not like year to year you're surprised no no not at all we'll know what they're going to measure correct next year we know that now no so we can work on it right okay but we can't say like we need to get our score above 90 and then we'll be exemplary right we just have to get it as high as we can get it and then hope we're
045within the top 10% of schools well and all depends on your your class too CL I mean every class and every group of students is different so it's it's it's a variable that sometimes we don't have the control over and we're going to talk about chronic absenteeism obviously in December which I mentioned already but to also consider that when we're talking about and that's if we go back to the graphic right that's a huge area for us um of improvement that also I just want to point this out because this always becomes something that people are surprised by it includes excused absences so a chronically absent student is a student who's missed 10% or more of the school year excused or unexcused so yeah days add up to to full days yes right so if
046you it's a partial day yes okay and we have that's interesting we have made some adjustments over the years we just made an adjustment or we're in the process I should say of of making an adjustment we just met a couple weeks ago to review the way in which we um calculate ATT tenance because now we can go down uh two decimal points and so we changed some things to impact it that way um that change may have a it should have a slightly positive but but the larger is we have students missing school and then theigh weigh the number of students it's a it's a percent so mean yeah one of the areas where I do think it does it is starting to impact Us in terms of some of these scores like with
047the El progress to proficiency um we have had an influx of eel students um we in the almost two decades I've been in this District we we are this year and and we started to see it last year too uh but we had a huge in influx of el students and I think that does impact us not just with ratings I'm not talking about that but with programming and with serving students needs is they're coming in with a variety of different needs it's not just a language barrier in many cases it's because we have good programs and people move into our district for those good programs so um that's not always a minus but um the state does hold that kind of against us so do Serv and so our overall index score for South
04884 4.09 North 87.2 how does that compare with the prior year we we did not have this visual to compare yeah we didn't have the information on and we didn't have the schoolhouse and we didn't have and I know I'm sorry I'm clicking back but I'm trying to show we didn't have this either yeah so on this chart it seems to me like 23% of school districts or maybe slightly more than 23% of school districts in Illinois are doing better than South High on those metrics on those metrics yeah does that include Community Unit School Districts Elementary School Districts High School Districts but these would be high schools yes it's not distri it's schools it's schools so it's high school this is high schools this is only high schools these are high schools yes but
049it doesn't matter if it's a high school district or a unit district okay to make sure that we've answered your question about 700 I'd have to I'd have to check on that now so if if we're meeting our e if we're meeting our Ela and math proficiencies and we're basically maxed out on graduation then what I'm hearing is other districts are doing better in absenteeism than we are yes many districts are because that's where we're missing most or they don't have El students or they don't have elel students or they had a higher participation rate in their climate survey yeah we did not get the other the other wing of the school analysis you add up those percentages is about 83% so the science and then the climate survey science is 7.5 right get to
050the so I give you an exact climate is it's got be 10 oh I hang on do you want North or you on South I just hover over so we can see so on oh I know but I thought you want an exact percentage so for so it's 5% okay climate survey north um we 6.67% is the weight 88 so 88 plus what I'm sorry the science five five and then six 6.67 is climate Sur yeah it adds up to 100% even though I know it doesn't visually have everything on it I think it I think it will it's something the state's working on um um so I think ultimately it will um but they released it with it this way and the climate survey is the five essential survey five essential and its completion
051by students and by staff and the interesting thing about that is that it's basically when they look at the percent that we have that completed both students and staff they then compare it to the state average and so it's a comparison unlike Brad rate for example or some of the other areas it's compared to the average of the state which is interesting because it's one of the only factors where it's compared to that versus you know do we have pretty good participation we could improve our participation absolutely um so members of the public public who look at this and they look at North and or south and at North there you know I would extrapolate that roughly 17 or 18% of high schools in Illinois are performing better than North on these metrics on these
052metrics um if I if I extrapolate that from this report card um is that a fair way to assess our high school in in other words um should we be focused on these results and instituting policy changes just inflate our report card scores because we believe that this report card is a fair assessment of our school district so the school report card is built around uh a research study called redefining ready which looked at research-based methodology that indicated postsecondary Student Success so the short answer is these are variables that research is shown can generally make a difference in students After High School students that do well on these tests that show up at school that graduate that are involved those are all things that that indicate so it's yes and um I don't believe that
053these are all the metrics that indicate if a school is meeting the needs of their students you know I I would take the breath of our curricular offerings in District 99 up against anybody in the country we could maybe move up some of these numbers if we took some of the resources that we have for all of the course offerings we have for students reduced course offerings and then focused more on something else we could do that but I don't think that that's the experience that people look for in this community right so at the same time are these good indicators things that we should work at and try to improve within our course of business absolutely but is it like drop everything and just focus on these I I don't think that that would
054be the right approach that's in the district that's that's what I'm trying to get at with that question I mean from my perspective when I think of North and South High and their reputation Statewide uh and even in DuPage County and the Chicagoland area I would wouldn't I wouldn't classify either school as as having that large of a gap of number of high schools in Illinois performing better than our high schools um so clearly something going on in this report card that is pushing us below what I think our actual performance Lev is or or what we think our school is is not necessarily what it is and so that's that's the Crux of the question how important is this and what should we be doing to address this and I I think I think
055I I hear what you're saying that there are other metrics that we shouldn't just take this and try and pour every ounce of energy we have to improve this because we'll be overlooking other things well and there's some things here that just don't make sense like chronic absenteeism doesn't make any sense it's whether or not kids come to school for or Miss 17 days of school a year for any reason whatsoever during this time the state has added five mental health days it's added a variety of different ways in which students can be excused from school that hasn't changed in the factors we've gone through a pandemic the expectations about being at school have changed drastically um a much fairer look at this would be for students that are chronically absent have we intervened and
056worked to respond respond and provide them resources and have tried to make them successful at school like that is things that are under our control um now the reason that this is here is it used to be a very strong predictor of student failure to be chronically absent but we're meeting our graduation rates correct and actually if you look at our grade distribution for that it's it's pretty equal to the entire student body it's for us being chronically absent isn't necessarily A predictor of student failure it is a indicator though that our teachers have to work harder when a kid isn't there in class and our teachers are doing that and in theory if they didn't have to do that they'd have other time to serve student needs in a different way so it definitely
057helps the whole organization if kids come to school right but it isn't for us the same predictor of failure as it is for others right so um there's some factors in here that like make sense at The Meta level but maybe don't make sense for District 99 you know El path to proficiency the more El students you have the harder it's going to be to hit that number that number so it isn't like are you responding appropriately are you offering appropriate uh educational supports are you doing what you can to it's one test on one day and it's a test that students like it means nothing to them right so uh schools that have very small numbers of Vel students it's going to be a lot easier for them to get those points right and
058a school that's more diverse like north and south are always going to be different in that than a school that has almost no elel students right um so there's some factors in here yeah we we should look at them and we should work at them but that isn't all that we should do it doesn't tell the whole story and then these factors are going to change like Fine Arts college career Readiness 5% and then chronic ABM goes down to five okay what goes down five chronic absenteeism goes to 5% Fine Arts goes to 5% so we're likely to see our percentage probably accelerate just on that alone potentially but you don't know how it compares to all the other schools right but this mean if we're just looking at what's going to improve next year
059that in and of itself should be an improvement yes Fine Arts won't go into play for a couple years couple years okay but this this district has had for a very long time A Fine Arts graduation requirement has well supported the Arts and the Fine Arts so we're very well poised yes to get a you know a good amount of points in that fine arts area right um but I don't know how that compares to the other 800 schools in the state right I think one point which you mentioned which we need to address or highlight for a second is the fantastic job that our teachers are doing at both North and South because with a chronic absenteeism rate this high at both schools for our graduation rates to still remain as high as they
060are that means those teachers as you said Hank are going above and beyond to make sure that those students stay on track so once again we we have awesome teachers and they need to be commended because the graduation rates would not be this high if it wasn't for the dedication of our teachers and staff speaking of graduation rates Gina okay one more question oh yeah so back to the scor card so obviously like these numbers why people decide on moving to a new community they look at things like this are there other impacts that we should be like does this translate into State funding or like does any like what else does the score actually the only way this would translate in any type of support or funding would be if we were on the
061very lowest group okay and then there is some funding some support that goes into place but commendable there's there's no funding for that more about reputation and comparison to and when I talk about the reputation of our school districts in the community I mean the last 5 to 10 years has been a population boom to Downers growth of area in in in particular and in large part because of the quality of our schools so that's where I think I'm seeing a disconnect between what the the you know Community perceives our district versus how we're being scored upon in the report C I don't know the top where what would be a score that you feel would be I don't know I just I I I I don't I don't see I mean we're in the
062top but you know 20 15 to 20% bias I just don't see us as seeing you know 20% of high schools being better than Downers Grove South and on these metrics yes well you know if they if they have no El population and they're getting 100% of those points that's a you know you're immediately getting a a big chunk of a fivepoint Advantage you know when a Community member looks at this they don't say with the caveat these metrics that is one of the challenges of all of these metrics is that understand people want to just look at a number and think that they know that that means something but it's the importance is what's underneath here and what we're actually doing to serve our student body and as I said there's a lot of
063great things that happen in this District you saw them tonight that doesn't show up on our school report card right so part of our reputation is really trunker treat in our kids in the community and sharing it's the whole picture if people are just going to this little graphic and making an assumption about what district 99 is they're missing a whole chunk of the story and unfortunately we we don't get the opportunity to reflect all of that in here this is one set of measures no they're important and they're things that we work on positive yeah I don't mean to undermine that the positivity I'm just yeah saying there may be somewhat of a disconnect there I think I do what is saying I mean looking at this and how they're going is our story
064is told if somebody go look on and find a rep right corre so we don't feel because we our story isn't here you know for the most part we don't feel like it's a proper representation of all the great things that we represent well you you look at your student body that um you know are graduating you know they're getting into colleges that they were wanting to get into they're going into into trades that they want to they're going to tcd to get um more knowledge and and to help them in their their lives to begin with OR to to practice something to see if they really like it before they spend the money to be an architect or to be a uh whatever and so those are the Su success stories that really make
065our district what it is is to see each one of our students getting where they want to be I mean you know so that you can't put a number on you can't exactly you know you can't you know you can't say hey 95% of our students go on to do uh what they want to do and be successful at it you know that that number can't be associated with any of these numbers and and that's really our story to tell you know is so both things are true right we need to yes take these numbers seriously and work to close gaps where we can in here and also recognize like year-over-year growth with different groups of student bodies is going to be a challenge to do right that doesn't mean we don't take it on
066it doesn't mean we do the don't do the work we do all of those things but at the same time there's more to our story than what this uh uh this graphic or these measures will tell and it's our job to tell that story as well right and and you know there needs to be kind of a I guess maybe a a paragraph that can go with it that explains you know where our students I also think people that are choosing this community aren't just going to this visualization and saying do I move to Downers gr but but if I if I'm I'm living in the city of Chicago and I've got a two-year-old and a four-year-old and I'm looking at Lions Township hensdale Central York and Downers Grove I'm that that probably happens pretty
067routinely um they're going to look at the report card score and you know if if down if the Downers Grove schools are significantly lower than those other comparable schools that could be a perception issue and that's where I'm like well should we pour resources in to try and inflate this because of that problem or is that just is that just a superficial issue we'll come to you over the next couple of week couple of months with those areas and we'll talkis helps so that like everyone I mean you it's sort of like the SAT argument everyone at least has every school has it and is measured by those you know whether they're you know whether they shift or fluctuate or whatever and I don't I hopefully most people look at you know that's one thing
068they look one thing they look at our Runners too our Runners you have a story you can put behind it you got an essay you got grades you have your if you were athletic or or or in the band or in Qui so you still get to put a story behind that when you position yourself to that University I think the point we're making here this doesn't position us if I'm moving from California and I know nothing of any of these areas and I have this in front of me CU I don't know down is Roo from ERS and if we all are on part for cost of of living you know houses does right they're going to you know because they don't have anything else to compare it to in sat you have that
069but you have your whole story behind you to support who you are so there are other parts of the report card as well that we're not looking at right today today well we're not right there's information for example on um current technical education for example you can look at how many students take a CT concentrator which is like a path in a CT of CTE courses um you can look at um post high school placement how many students have gone into like remedial course like there's a lot of information in the report card it's not just this but this is the most visible this is to to the person that's doing but I mean in in terms of telling a story right there are other aspects of the report card that that are there to
070look at and each year they add a little bit it feels like they add a little bit more some were there last year but there's some additional but it is choices and it is where we spend our time and where we work I think there are some areas here like climate survey like uh I don't know how much room we can make in chronic absenteeism but getting it on people's Radars that that is impacting these scores that those scores people do look at when they value our community you know does that make a difference when the kid asks their parents if they can stay home that day I don't know um I mean I think there's also national news about these things I mean I just read an article recently on the uptick in working
071from home which my company is dialing back on going back into the office so that's contributing so hopefully people are to the point about looking at the data they're also following Trends and seeing this is not just a well we've been talking about chronic uh absenteeism for years years it's just far worse now than it yes yeah but I mean it it's not something that we haven't been trying to accomplish so it's it's very difficult to change maybe some of our parents um are facing the same employers can't get employees to come the office yeah yeah I mean you know it's it's it's not an easy task changing um the norm so um but it helps frame the challenge it does but it's not a new problem sorry for hijacking your presentation sorry sorry so
072want to talk a little bit tonight about graduation rates um 50% of that designation as you may recall about half of that Schoolhouse right was for graduation rate the state looks at three graduation rates they look at a four-year a fiveyear and a sixy year this is obviously the fouryear um so we have the five years which we always look at five years of data and then I put on The Five-Year average so for last year's graduating class um definitely we were down a little bit one of the things the state has also done and we've talked about this over the years especially in terms of students who are special education students IEP students who go to transition right and how we can't graduate them until even though they've met the requirements right until they
073leave transition whether that's 22 or whether they for whatever reason leave earlier whatever the case may be so and some of those students will never be captured because now they've added another year of transition year and there's not a seven there's not a year seven for graduation so some of our students will never graduate in these numbers because they are participating in our programming all the way through to age 22 which is another decision that the state made just like adding five mental health days but they didn't come back and then adjust the metrics to reflect those changes one of the things the state did do was say that 93% would get you 100% of the points 100 points towards it so they have made some modifications to the way they calculate it um I
074will say that graduation rate is 50% of our rating and 60% of that is based on the fouryear so I focus more on the fouryear just because that's the majority of of it um another 30% is for the fiveyear and then 10% for the sixth year so the weight that they're giving to those three years is different with the majority going on to the fourth year and this is District data so um while it does factor into our designation that's only a designation for the schools not for the district so our four-year rate in 2023 was about 1% lower um and fairly close to our average our fiveyear rate um was 94.3 so it was an increase but it only factored in for 30% but still that's good we saw an increase right can you
075explain what the 5year graduation rate actually measures so it's the students who the the students that are left from that four year and then those students that graduate from that group so the bulk of our t99 kids are staying with us they're staying with us for multiple years so they're not going to be cap slide I want to walk through this just so everybody not going to be captured in this year's graduation rate it's it's the future so Le let's say the the graduating in in 23 they're going to stay with us for 3 years so they're going to go into 24 25 and 26 so these are students though that may be worse to graduate in 20 yes or 21 that are going into this number got it so the five years next year's
076five years will be if we take that 93.2 that difference of 6.8% is how much of that 6.8% will be in next year just of that group grad graduates the next year right so and then the next year is of that group that doesn't graduate what percentage of that group the next year grad graduates but you'll see with transition Center yeah it's very small numbers and one student starts to make a giant difference right and some of our students won't graduate until year seven which isn't factored into our graduation rates at all do some of the students drop out we do because you know they they've they've been in our program for one or two years in the transition Center they're still El eligible for two more years but they're working in they decide you
077know I can I can do this on my own some of graduate but some will just disappear and then we don't get to graduate them and that counts against us and that count count against us so so it's important that we kind of keep track of those try I know I know I'm just saying so we want five year and six year average to be high we want them all to be okay four is the that Core group right that graduates five is the group that didn't graduate in the four you want them all to graduate you know ideally you'd have 100% in year four right um but then if not 100% in year four then 100% in year five right so that's kind of how you want it to work but to get 100%
078of the points for the school they only have to have 93 which is why when I showed the house at least for North High School it had 100% they got 100% of points so that's where it also gets confusing right because I'm showing you rates are under 100% right also remember our largest group of transition students is at South High our largest group of el students which is another group that sometimes has more things to work through so that they can graduate is also at South High So when you say like why is sou why is North getting all 50 points and South isn't it's not necessarily just students dropping out it's the population of students we serving itself is different sorry did I steal your thunder okay we talked a little bit about fifths
079it talks about six year so upcoming topics I said we're breaking this into three um will be nth grade on track we'll look at that next time um we'll look at some sat comparisons we had done that uh the previous years you may recall um in terms of some of the area high school districts and then in December at the meeting if I remember correctly not the workshop but at the meeting we will be talking about chronic absenteeism and what the schools are currently working on in terms of absenteeism in general has the increase in chronic absenteeism correlated to uh an increase or or a decrease in graduation rate in a comparable fashion like has has the increased chronic absm impacted is there approximate cause between the two No in fact we have students who
080fall into the chronically absent rate who are doing very well in school not all not all students of course but we have I'd say the correlation noticing it tapering off a little bit or starting to go Trend in the other direction little bit little bit but like 2023 was worse than 2022 so so are we going back to what we were before that's where we're right working through it the correlation is definitely switched because of all the online resources supports all of those things that we have in place all we said the work that our teachers are doing it it used to be a predictor if you were chronically absent you were going to be failing it's the other way around now if you're failing courses you're likely also chronically absent right so the determination
081is flipped all right any other questions thank you all right um more to come in the coming coming weeks and months thank you Gina thank you thank you you for your short presentation hurt made it longer that's the joke that's the joke everyone gets the joke hey uh it's it's some of the most important work we do is when Gina's up here talking curriculum instruction teaching learning that's the core of our business and that's a shame that we don't have people listening you're in favor of those like graphic like the schoolhouse and because that's going to be an easy way for people to understand the I don't agree with all of necessarily how the metrics are determined and how they're calculated obviously there's minutia inside of that detail that we can argue about whether it's
082appropriate or not but for what it is the better you can make it clear for people to understand I think that that's an improvement yeah now I hope that people get interested in then that next step of what makes up that stuff underneath that rather than just jumping to conclusions off of what a number on a on a screen means so all right School maintenance Grant um we've been bringing this the last several years do you want to just provide a quick overview jury sure this is a matching Grant from the state and the state before we can apply for this Grant application the state does require School boards to approve basically the matching portion which is $50,000 we're going to use it towards probably HVAC some kind of right that we'll be doing next
083summer um the deadline is in December and then we should hear sometime in January and be ready to bid out the projects in so remember we spend um somewhere around you know 750,000 to a million dollars a year in capital Improvement so we will be spending at least $50,000 think this is then in at least 50,000 of that from the state yeah if the board approves it tonight yes any other questions no no all right uh ISB resolutions K is your resolutions chair has everybody had a chance to look at the resolutions just glanced um none of these I've talked with Hank about this obviously not being here last year or Chris was here last year none of these resolu Solutions uh have a strong impact on us uh so I would recommend that we
084go with what the state wants to do what our larger body wants to do and I would not have any objections but that's open to any comments from anybody you know Chris did this for the years when it was some rather interesting ones up on there uh these are definitely different than the ones that Chris saw in the past these are a little more nobody's carrying guns yeah yeah those ones are not there very he debate at the conference last year yeah yeah so that's K definitely got the win on this one first cooler heads prevailed yeah all right so again unless anybody tells you something different got it okay yeah all right uh our action item um can I get a motion for the Board of Education to approve submission of a Grant application
085for a fiscal year 2024 School maintenance project Grant so moved seconds Terry p hi sh hi Jenny hagr hi Caston hi Ken Dawson hia hi hi motion carries item seven no visitors okay thank you sir and then item eight um I'll need a motion for the Board of Education to go into close session for a 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 volunteers of the district or legal counsel 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 volunteer of the district or against legal counsel for the district to determine its validity B Collective
086negotiating matters between the district and its employees or their representatives or deliberations concerning salary schedules for one or more classes of employees so moved second IW hi hi Fuller hi Jenny hag hi car cast hi I motion carries we'll be going into Clos session for those members of the public who are uh viewing this online uh the board will not be taking any action other than to adjourn after coming out of closed session thank thank you should have come