001okay I've got 630 Julie can you call the rooll pleas Cara Caston here Ken Dawson here Chris Espinosa here Cheryl Fuller here Jenny hagstrom here Terry pavich here Don Runner here and N M here thank youum let's stand for the pl agents I aliance 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 allent uh first up is uh Mark marandola with North High School hello good even everyone uh as Dr th mentioned my name is Mark marandola I serve as the Director of Student Activities at North High School uh before I was director of Student Activities um I had the privilege of starting a leadership group at North uh which we call Elite uh the name Elite
002stands for everyday leadership inspired through example and so that's what we really strive uh for with our students is being everyday leaders um serving as pos positive examples to other students so about 10 years ago um I started a lead with another teacher U Miss Megan Gilbert um because we identified the need um to have positive leaders in our building um at that same time we had a really great uh leadership opportunity uh where we would take students up to the outdoor Wisconsin Leadership School um in Wisconsin um and at that time that program was called belief to behavior and so Dr Ken senson had started when he was a Student Activities director um and so um through the elite program we saw a need to continue that program and so we call that our
003Elite fall leadership weekend um as well as our Elite leaders um that are involved with a number of things throughout uh the school year um and so I've invited four of those students uh Miss uh Izzy Cervantes pie Fischer uh Drew Hardy and Addie Potter to come and talk to you guys a little bit about uh Elite um what it means to be an everyday leader at North as well as our fall leadership weekend um which took place a couple weeks ago um so I'm going to have the student students step up and and tell you guys a little bit about Elite and our fall leadership weekend uh the next sign please sorry um so who are Elite leaders so the elite leaders at North it's 30 students we are Juniors and we're seniors we
004go through an interview process our junior year and it includes an application that you need to get some teacher recommendations for and then there's an in-person interview which is a group of kids and we go through a scenario that Elite leaders would have to go through and Miss Gilbert and Mr mirandola basically just make sure that we are cut out to be elite leaders um and then all of us as Elite leaders are usually involved in other activities such as Athletics we have theater choir we have a wide range of people that are involved um and then all of us every day are committed to Leading by example throughout the school be it through our activities we're involved in or just by our academics um and then we we all try to help everybody else
005around the school realize that they can also be leaders that you don't just have to be in a leadership position to be involved in leadership there's other ways to be leaders throughout the day oh sorry um then that picture is of all of the leaders that are currently serving as leaders and then the next slide is of everybody who went to the elite leadership weekend this year all right very good okay so the fall leadership weekend is the annual week weekend that we have up at Williams Bay Wisconsin with all the students the leaders the owl staff um all of the new Elite incomers um and then this year we had about 120 students grades 9 through 12 attend and the largest chunk of that group is actually freshman which we really take pride in
006because it's really good that they're getting out there literally less than a month into the school year getting their hands dirty with leadership opportunities and then each year um in June a couple months before the fall leadership weekend the leaders go up to the camp and train and do the same activities that they're going to do maybe a little harder because they've earned that by becoming a leader and some of those activities include the rock ball which we can see on the left which everyone does and it's good to show like bravery skill um teamwork cuz they can sometimes Tire rope between a couple people and they have to work together together to climb up and then on the right side we have the 12T wall which is the most Monumental of all the activities
007we do because it takes everything we've worked so hard for during the leadership weekend and really puts it to the test um the most important thing is what do these students learn from the weekend um because we're putting these small groups um and about like two to three leaders per group you get to really connect with each of the students and um those freshman can look up and see a friend in those upper classmen um when they're going through the hallways through school they're able to see a mentor figure um all throughout the weekend the um owl staff and all of the teachers who are there emphasize it's a challenge by choice if you don't want to do an activity you can choose not to do it but you can also push yourself to go
008a little bit further um it teaches them importance of communication and Trust um you have to learn to become friends with all these new individuals you you might not know um you're brand new into school um and some of the freshmen get to meet some of their classmates who are going to be in their classes um there's various ways to lead so you don't have to be the person out there um rallying the whole group together it's just as important to lead by example or sometimes you just got to be the one to follow the leader too um which they say and emphasize is equally as important um we learn about effective leadership so um how to then lead that group through the activities um most of the challenges are timed so you feel the
009stress um but you work through it with your teammates together and I feel like that really helps when students go back to North and have to deal with stressful situations on their own um they're better and stronger because of it all right so on top of our fall leadership weekend Elite participates in many activities uh throughout the year um in Downers Grove and in the in Downers Grove North and the community in general um one of our um things that we do is we work with Student Activities to improve the culture in our building and student experience um this also ties hand inand with us helping plan Spirit weeks and assemblies um all of the elite leaders are extremely involved not only in separate activities but in the Student Activities office itself uh we all
010are constantly in there uh helping Mr marandola and Mrs mamula and Mrs Gilbert uh we help with so many different Spirit things like the assemblies like Spirit weeks uh things like that we also periodically attend leadership workshops or have leadership workshops come to us um like this top photo up here is one of the leadership workshops that um a lot of our leaders went to last year um at LT which was extremely helpful um for us to learn more about leadership which then can help us the leaders get it out to the rest of the school population and then the bottom picture is what a program called evolve where uh they actually came to us and they taught our leaders at school about um school spirit and Leadership which we can then share with this
011uh student population all right thank you all so much for listening to our presentation and I hope that you all enjoyed thank you so um talk a little bit about um how the experiences at Elite have impacted your experience at Downers gr North and how you might use some of those skills As you move on to Beyond High School yeah absolutely um um I did not do Elite my freshman year because of coid um my or my sophomore year um but I became an elite a leader um as a junior and a senior uh I applied for it because I really wanted to become more involved with my student atmosphere I was already involved in um activities and sports um but I wasn't really involved in the actual School culture the school climate the school
012spirit so that's why I really wanted to get involved um with this organization because it got me so close with these students and also helped me grow as as a person which I'm sure everyone else could say the same uh I've grown as a leader and as a person through this organization and has really impacted me I feel like everyone else so um yeah I did the uh Elite weekend as a participant to start off with and it's definitely a different perspective I was pretty intimidated by all of the upper classmen coming into North um but going into the weekend afterwards I just felt the north love like it was a very good experience for me um because I felt like I could have that friend who I could see around the school and I
013was like oh I know that upper classman they were my elite leader and they like wave high to me in the hallways and made me feel very good so that's one thing that I was like very very good thing about the program and overall just like working with the challenges in general like you end up getting frustrated during the challenges and you see like different sides of people that you normally wouldn't see in a school atmosphere and I thought that was equally important to see what people go through on the other side I can answer also as long as there's not another question um but I I mostly got involved cuz I'm the one who like I said is involved in like the choir theater kind of thing so I sort of stay in the
014Fine Arts sector of Downers Grove North a lot of my time so I was looking for other ways to like Branch out like Addie said like to get involved in more of the school unless just like a smaller part of it and uh one of my my at the time Junior friends who was a leader before she graduated she told me she was like like it's perfect like it's really fun and the leadership weekend sounded super fun to me and I was like oh my God like we get to go to the lake I love the lake so I was like of course like I'll try and then when I got in and I became a leader my junior year and I realized like how much we actually like help this school and like how
015much we get to be involved in Student Activities and all of that I realized like how much I enjoyed my decision to apply awesome and then I guess I can answer too um I wanted to become a leader since I've been in like middle school I had a friend or my neighbor actually who was an a leader and he was a pretty cool kid so I was like okay I want to be a leader too and then like one of my friends in the grade above me was a leader and he told me like go apply go do it you won't regret it so I applied to be a leader and I just I love it it's great um just like being able to learn how to talk to people uh just be somebody that
016people can like look up to and just make somebody's Day by saying hied them in the hall like I think it was PA as he said so yeah thank you thank you for your all right we're going to Vite for the Grove Express uh Foundation Junior board members just got to put other sh a good change uniform change well good evening superintendent The District staff and board members as you all know again my name is Addie Potter and I'm a member of the gr Express Junior board along with the rest of the students next to me uh my name is Gina Lou I'm a senior at down Grove North I'm also on the junior board hi my name is Ma kinus I'm a senior now but I was also a junior that joined the Grove
017Express Foundation hi my name is Sarah Ryan I'm a senior at South U my name is Cameron Gillespie and I'm a junior at South my name is Joe grippa also Junior at South all right and we are here today to talk to you about the Grove Express race our role in the race our future plans and more all right so the Grove Express is a non for-profit race that raises money that goes directly back into the community of Downers Grove so that includes um local businesses or local organizations schools and businesses um the race has taken place on Thanksgiving morning and has bringing the community together for 20 years okay well what do we actually do here the junior board of directors was a new addition to the Grove Express Foundation last year and this
018was really just an opportunity to connect to the Youth of Downer's Grove we've also given many opportunities to high school now to high schoolers now so they can learn what it takes to build and run no pun intended an organization just like this in order to give them opportunities post High School um within the Grove Express Foundation there's different community uh committees that you can join and it's really based on your interests and like what you want to pursue so we have different branches of what we do and we each have picked our own committee and what we chose to be a part of Additionally the junior board is responsible for collaborating with each other um to accomplish other goals and activities like advertising to our schools and to the community we also coordinate uh
019volunteers we help with ideas and we also help set set up and execute race day and we also help with so much more and we basically just help wherever we are needed this year the junior board of directors have many new plans that we plan on collaborating on we plan on making instructional videos to inform our volunteers of their duties additionally we will be interviewing our race participant families and board members alike on why they choose to participate in the Grove Express Foundation this year we are also starting a competition between North and South schools where students from each school will represent their school community on who participates the most in Grove Express foundation in our volunteer activities as well as in race participants the school that demonstrates their participant participation in our race day
020will earn a token of our appreciation that they will get to hold on to throughout the school year until the next Thanksgiving Day race all right well that's all from us thank you so much for listening we are very excited for the the upcoming race and all things that come with it uh stay tuned and we hope to see you on race day and now we'll take any questions if you have them uh for those of you who participated last year the seniors now can you talk a little bit about your experience last year and why you came back yeah absolutely I'd love to um last year um when I was applying to The Grove Express board um kind of similar to what I was talking about in Elite I found myself in a lot
021of activities but not exactly being involved in my school culture and by extension of that in my community's culture and my community itself I wanted to Branch out more and do a service to my community and when I saw the opportunity in my email I uh applied and I didn't really know what I was signing up for I'm not going to lie but as soon as I went to the first meeting um I the board members they were all great um I remember having like lining up like what my duties were and having to work on it but I also remember just it being like the most fun thing in like the October November time frame of my my junior year last year um it was a ton of work it was a ton of
022time but I enjoyed the community that came with it in the board and I enjoyed what I was actually doing to benefit the community of Downer's Grove yeah so I actually was a race participant in the 2021 race year um and just going into my first ever 5K it was incredible there was this sort of energy that you can't really describe anywhere else there was the idea of Thanksgiving and family and just connecting with these strangers that you're running the 5K with and it was just just a beautiful experience for me and that's what prompted me when I saw that email in my inbox to join the Grove Express and apply um and I can attest that family aspect happening within our board it's really we're a close-knit community that again gives back to our
023community um we put everything we have into it basically so yeah um so I remember when I first joined last year my first thought was that these people are really passionate about this whole thing um and that's honestly what made me want to keep continuing doing this and doing this last year um you get to see the passion from all the people working to create such a beautiful race and the work really does pay off when you get to race day and you actually see thousands of people all coming together to race as a whole big community and it was honestly really nice and inspiring to be especially coming from a family that wasn't so really connected to the Downers Grove Community and it was just a nice like perspective to have and yeah I'm
024back so I guess I'm one of those passionate people it's cont um when I saw the email for joining the gr Express Junior board I honestly had don't idea what it is either but I um had never like once I joined I did not realize how close of a community we become and how close of a family i' become with all of these adults and all my peers who lead with me and um I just love seeing all of the community that we can bring together I've learned a lot of things from our adults like Nicole and Don and just the real like Hands-On Community experience is just so um so fulfilling and you really get to see results and it's really nice we appreciate you all previewing the new t-shirt cuz that's always the
025big an last year's t-shirt I thought last year's was the BL 22 the next year this oh it's still a secret oh I was going to say big reveal big reveal any other questions um I I don't know if I missed it but how many people do we have normally come out for something like this um so last year we had just over 5700 we should probably have over 6,000 this year awesome yeah and in the two years previously that the Grove Express Foundation is um organized and administered the race we've raised over $250,000 that we given back awesome well thank you guys for all the work and I love seeing our students participate in things like this helping to organize it for the community thank you [Music] absolutely okay hello everyone so this week
026well today or well okay this whole week is homecoming week so today we started off with our pajama day just so everybody can participate but for those of you who don't know our theme is Barbie so we're throughout the week we have come up with a bunch of different themes to fit that such as tomorrow's career Barbie day so whichever career you want and then another fun one is on Thursday it's Ken day so K day so which is basically like Kasa dojo man house day which is Western if if no one's watch or if you haven't watched the movie but other than that um we're going to end off the week with our dance on Saturday and then on Friday is going to be our football game and during halftime there's going to be
027a nice firework show as well so that'll be exciting to see because normally the firework show is during homecoming like the dance but this year they decided to make it to um to the football game because our dance is going to be indoor which actually is ever since the changes of the outdoor versus the indoor dances and then talking about sports our golf cross country both girls and boys and then our girl world's tennis team all are conference conference champions so they all did very good in their program and actually one girl from the tennis team is going off to State this weekend and two people one girl and one boy from the golf team competed at State last weekend and they and they did from what I've heard they did really good for for
028what they had and then um the principal the first principal student advisory council meeting was last week with principal lip and there's going to be one more during Halloween this month and that that council is more for like a different variety and diversity of students and they all come up together and with and speak to the principal on different like improvements that could be made at dgs so we are I'm part of that committee as well so we are just brainstorming ideas that we can Implement in the next semester or so and then with this our research Club three members have been researching on implementing a reconstructed Prairie at South just like Downers Grove North and they actually just got the approval to build one so come spring there will be we are going to
029start implementing this reconstructed Prairie right in the corner of norfol and Dunham and then and we will have this in come 10 years we'll have this awesome Prairie Garden so all in all this month has gone off strong and we're excited to see how homecoming week is going to be and then we're excited to see the other improvements of the school than very good thank you fantastic yeah I like the Prairie idea okay next item on the agenda approval the minutes um can I get a motion for the Board of Education to approve the minutes of the September 18th 2023 business meeting and the September 18th 2023 Clos meeting so moved second Terry move Chris second Terry pavich I Chris Espinosa I Charelle Fuller I Jenny hagstrom I Cara Caston I hen Dawson I don
030rer hi motion carries U moving on to the first reception of visitors Julie do we have visitors have slips but let me see if there you be sir uh none have indicated that there's anything for the action or consent item of the OB all for the second session yes okay then moving on to item six recommendations and reports from Dr the getting there all right uh a few recognitions this week uh first we are uh in that time of the year where we rep uh recognize our principles and this actually recognizes all uh building principles and leaders Deans athletic directors throughout the state activity directors Mark m is here this evening uh so we recognize all of their hard work this week uh we'll recognize them with a little bit of cake this week as
031well um but thank you to all of our building leaders our two principles are actually off this is the week where the principes have their conference uh so they're off learning with their peers for the next couple of days as well so I thank you to all of them for all of their hard work uh We've also received as a district a couple of recognitions the board uh was recognized uh for their effective uh Governor behav governance behaviors and learning practices over the last several years uh there's an application for this and uh we were recognized at the ISB IB division meeting uh a few weeks ago so uh every every year we've been eligible for this since 2017 we've receiv it uh we also probably received our last award for the master facility plan
032uh this one from uh the American Institute of Architects from Northeast Illinois uh both North High and South High received their merit award uh for those projects so Don and I were able to go there and receive those Awards all right into our reports for the evening uh the first one is insurance premiums do you have this or do I have I think you were doing this one just making sure I didn't want to step on your toes R so uh our insurance committee uh met uh in the last month to look at what the recommendations are from Hub which is our advisor for our managed insurance plans uh we also have uh or self-insured plans we also have a manag plan which is an HMO plan that we don't make decisions on uh Blue
033Cross Blue Shield does so you can see the insurance committee is recommending uh a few changes uh in deductibles to help manage plan costs and uh also uh that will impact premium costs and you can see those uh total premium costs reflected here the actual costs to the board and individual employees are based on their employee groups um and you can see kind of the increases below as well for dental insurance in the PO plan um the insurance committee that comes together made up of a cross-section of all the employee groups work really hard to balance these costs and make plan changes um the PO plans that are self-insured uh those increases are not uh extremely different in percentage than our managed plan that's controlled from Blue Cross Blue Shield so the insurance committee feels
034that all of these recommendations are in line with indust industry Trends and these are up for approval this evening uh are there any questions that either Rob J or I can answer those pretty self-explanatory yeah all right so that's an action item later this evening I'm going to turn the floor over to Gina to give a preview uh well actually some information on some sat data and some preview of what we believe is coming uh at the end of this month thank you Dr th so last month you may recall I reported on advanced placement dual credit and Capstone courses this month I'm going to talk a little bit about sat data some of which is um restricted to cohort data and some of which is going to be on the school report card which
035will come out or is expected to come out on October 30th next month we'll talk about more school report card data after it comes out so this first slide here you may recall several years ago the Illinois State Board of Education decided that freshman would take the PSAT 89 sophomores the psat1 and juniors the SAT the SAT while all the tests are required the SAT is required for graduation from an Illinois public high school so all the tests are required but that's the one that is the one that is really the accountability Factor and quite frankly we were really excited about that because we would be able to look at scores over time for what we would refer to as a cohort of students a cohort of students is the same student taking each test
036right and seeing their growth their scores from one test to the other and Co hit and the testing kind of paused if you will so one exciting thing is that for the class of 2024 so our current seniors we actually do have some growth data this class took the PSAT 10 they did not take the 89 they took the PSAT 10 as sophomores and that was in April of 2022 and what this slide shows you is what the average score was on that test so the average score there's two parts to the PSAT whether it's the PSAT 89 or the psat1 there's two parts and one part is called the evidence-based reading and writing test the state refers to that as Ela so when they're talking about Ela on the school report card they're not
037necessarily talking about the PSAT but they're referring to the SAT so Ela is often times how we refer to it test is actually called the evidence-based reading and writing the other part of that test is math so there's two parts to one test and these were our average scores we compared that to the College Board Benchmark because the college board says that for a a student should be at this level or higher and as you can see in both cases both the evidence-based reading and writing as well as the map our score was higher than the Benchmark for the College Board this is just one class of students students the class of 2024 our current um our current seniors a was it unusual to see the um reading and writing score being higher than the
038math score G it it actually is a little bit unusual because in in the past as the board may recall we've had the average be higher in math than it's been in the evidencebased reading and writing section or the ELA section this could be unique to this class mhm right and we don't have a lot of years of data because again Co HD and some of the testing stopped could you clarify is this just Illinois College not taking questions from the audience on this thank you so um so yes that was a little surprising they're not usually different if they were if there was a wider Gap then um that would be be more surprising okay so again the class of 2024 this is the average score for the SAT and again we're looking at
039the cohorts so these are students we're only looking at the students who took both of these tests so in April of 2022 they took the PSAT 10 and April of 2023 they took the SAT so they were our students minimally for 13 months or something close to that they may have been our students all three years right but they were our students in April of their sophomore year and our students in April of their junior year right and again the scores on the SAT were above the College Board Benchmark um and as you can see here math is higher which tends to be if you look at our scores over time like on the report card for example you'll you'll see sometimes that they they are higher um but again higher than the Benchmark for
040the College Board can you can you comment on the correlation between the scores and the PSAT versus the SAT I mean does it mean when I look at the scores of the raw data the p satat and I compare that to the 531 score of the sat on English reading and writing does that mean that is a class that they've improved upon their test taking or are they just totally different in how they score the test they're not totally different in the sense that they're completely desparate but they are expected to grow in the scores and so we would expect to see this growth I would be concerned if we did not see that growth okay so in this one we're looking at again the cohort so it's only those students who took both tests
041and we looked at the difference in other words the growth between their average score on the PSAT 10 and their average score on the SAT and then we looked at College Board metrics what the college board says the range of growth should be so what is the range of growth a student for example who gets a 495 what should their range of growth be what would you expect on the SAT because that's a PSAT score right what would you expect on the next test and we looked at how many of our students of this group met the expectation met that criteria met that score range and that's where the 85.6% comes up for the evidence-based reading and writing and 89.1 for the math so this this slide is is attempting to show how our students
042grew and are they're growing the way that they should be growing and meeting the standards set by or the score range standards I should say set by the college board and how does that percentage of students meeting expected score range compared to Prior classes is that we don't we don't know okay and I truth be told I really wish we had the PSA t89 for this class as well um and in future years we will right but for now we look at the data that we have so starting with current Juniors you'll have the three years is that what you're saying yes okay yes and that you know the state initially said that sat was the requirement and it wasn't until later that we were able to get all three tests that the state said
043all three tests we were really excited about that because that gives us something that we can follow and we can look at the cohorts of students um and so that's why we're excited to have this will the illino report card show these percentages for other school districts in our area so that we can see how other school districts are performing so the school report card only provides data for the SAT and it does not from PSAT to sat they and they don't show necessarily in in the case of test scores they don't necessarily show cohort data so we can only compare what the College Board is suggesting our expected grow sh as opposed to comparing it to other school districts exactly okay exactly now this SL is not a cohort data slide okay this slide
044our students vast majority of 11th grade but remember I said it is a graduation requirement so sometimes there will be a senior a few seniors not talking about hundreds but some seniors who for whatever reason missed it as a junior will take it as a senior so this is April's test data it is considered uh preliminary it has not been released it's considered preliminary um but this is data on the SAT only not PSAT cuz remember I just said they don't even show that data on the school report card and this is all test takers and this is all test takers so even if a student wasn't with us for that year maybe a little over a year they would be factored in here so a student who comes to us for example in February
045of their junior year is going to be factored in this data unlike the data that I shared uh in the previous slides and so you can see how the average District 99 score compares to the College Board Benchmark and when the school report card does come out expectation is the end of this month it will not necessarily show the College Board Benchmark it will show however comparison to or it will show Illinois benchmarks and it will show comparisons to other um you know percent meeting and exceeding and then we can do some comparisons to other districts in the area like we typically do but we can't do that until the report card comes out the report card comes out it's more Illinois focused is that what you mean by that card is illino focused this
046is like a national number okay got it College boards National comparison when we get a report carpet against Illinois absolutely College Board sets the Threshold at the number that they expect that students should be hitting it that grade level where Illinois has manufactured a different numberers sets it higher got it Illinois set it higher okay or that St okay and again this is preliminary data yeah this slide shows the um we typically look at 5 years of course 2020 is missing so um because it was not administered um but looking at um averages and comparing them to the percentile for that average for both the evidence-based reading and writing and math again this is all students who took the test this is not cohort data and again the 20203 data is preliminary data so um
047while I believe the data is accurate it is preliminary the other years are known not preliminary accurate data and so what this basically shows is uh our percentile for all the years as well as the score so if the board will remember when we talked about this last spring looking at a score doesn't tell you much right especially year-over-year the best information of looking at year-over-year is that longitudinal data where you see where student was and where they ended up uh looking at a student at a student class year-over-year uh SAT scores for the last 40 years tend to change and decline year-over-year as sat rorm tests and adds new and different questions and those kinds of things so this allows us to look at each class in comparison to all of the other test
048takers in the country for that specific year right so when a student gets their scores back it tells them what percentile they are in this then shows if our school district was a single test taker what percentile would we fall in and this if you saw wide fluctuations it would cause us to look at it and see you know what's going on as we compare to that larger data set uh where just year to year on a raw score is not something that's an effective analysis so then we present it this way to oh it's the same it's the same data I was just going to say that I should have said that that percentile data is based on the College Board mhm and this is just showing it in a slightly uh different way
049you'll note that I removed 2020 from it um because the test wasn't administered so it's the previous chart basically the same data just shown a little bit differently so you can see over time for the 5 years for which data is [Music] provided all right any questions the board oh sorry I was just going to say and we'll present more on that as you present school report card next monely any questions from board members all right this is the preview next month is the big dat of presentation Christmas your Cofe thanks all right uh hiring update this one I definitely turn over to Rob this one you definitely turn over to me yeah uh I'm just giving a a quick update um we had some questions at the start of the school year about uh
050what we're doing to fill some of our hard to fill positions so we'll start with guest teachers also known as substitute teachers um can I think at our previous board meeting you asked what are you doing to try to build a sense of community for them cor uh Jeff and I were making the rounds uh talking to people and we stopped into the sub coordinator's office and we saw this sign here so we thought we'd share a picture with you to show you what greets them um at South and a similar experience at North uh they also get one of these on the table there uh it's a coupon for a free lunch so District 999 welcomes them uh our pay is uh at market rate now uh and then they also get a lunch
051and um we bought them t-shirts at the start of the year so uh they've got their swag they've got their identity and our goal is that now that we have them we want to keep them um as our subs so we have a uh a really good problem now the exact opposite of what we had last year last year we had 78 people on our sub list and if you remember I said before just because they're on the list doesn't necessarily mean that they're choosing us that day uh because they're on multiple lists in different school districts um this year we have 97 very eager uh substitute teachers who are constantly looking for work in District 9 so um we did a big heavy lift of adjusting the pay last spring uh Jeff and his
052team did a lot of work this summer doing career affirs uh and spreading the word and finding those substitute teachers um and now we have them so now our work ahead is keeping them and making sure that uh they feel like they're a part of our community so that way they they continue to choose us uh to do their daily subs next slide here's the other one which is uh a good success story and work that we continue to have uh I want to back up that story a few years uh as we talk about pray professionals and job coaches this has been a big challenge of ours over the past few years uh one of the first moves that we made in this area was actually Scott with the Department chairs the special services
053department chairs uh they put in a process now that's closely tied to our sectioning for our teacher FTE that happens in the springtime uh where they go through all of the requirements they go through IEPs and they they get a really good understanding of how many positions do we need legally uh and that gives us a a clear defin number of of what our Target is um so he did a really good job they do a a thorough process in the springtime now uh to make sure that our number of our need is an accurate number that's there in the 2122 school year you can see uh we had 27 unfilled positions out of about 80 positions um so a good chunk of our pair professionals and job coaches uh positions were completely unfilled the
054students did not get the adults uh that we had budgeted for them for their needs uh and that year we had uh 11 new hires so even with the 11 new hires we still had 27 unfilled positions which brought us to last school year uh when we were trying to figure out how how do we fill these positions where do we find people to do these roles uh we had 18 unfilled so when I say unfilled what I mean is that there was absolutely nobody that was in that role uh even though we had 12 new hires that year but one way that we backfilled some of those positions was we hired 11 agency staff so uh hiring the agencies is far more expensive and they're not our employees um and so our students don't
055get our employees they get somebody who's an out uh outplaced person like that but you can see um 11 of our positions were staffed by agency 18 were still unfilled so overall last school year we had 29 positions that didn't have a District 99 staff member uh that was in it so um from our view the situation was getting worse and we were trying to figure out uh how do we get the students the adults that uh they deserve so last school year in second semester is when we started studying this and trying to figure out what what do we need to do and our big learn from that was that we need to compete with Private Industry in the area um so we started looking at what starting rates are for Employers in the
056area in hopes that we could compete with them with the great benefits package to uh draw more people into um into the positions uh we worked uh very collaboratively with the support staff Association to find a way that we could increase the starting rate uh for the PA of professionals and the job coaches um so we got that into place uh and then this is this is a really good story about when you have people who are striving for one single cause they can all rally and do their work uh to drive it so uh a lot of kudos to um Jeff and his team in HR uh they put on job fairs over the summer we found in addition to paros and job coaches we found some other positions that were tough uh to
057staff um in Partnership Jill and Lauren and Communications broadcast out uh uh information about the job fairs to attract people into those um and then as soon as we had people that were uh applying for the positions uh Jory and Alyssa our special services Department chairs Carolina are chair over at t99 um and then their administrator Partners So Lisa Balo Ken Soren and Omar Davis uh they got right to it because they knew that as soon as somebody hit apply we need to do our best to lock them in so that way uh we can make a commitment to them before another school district makes a commitment to them uh so through all of that work uh I'm happy to let us know that as of right now we have only three unfilled positions so
058we went from 18 last year empty seats we're down to just three empty seats uh but that still does include nine agency staff uh so our work is not done yet um you can see that uh we had 22 new hires this uh summer which is almost double of what we have in a usual summer uh so the teams have really really worked um their tails off to get these these seats filled and we continue to have new applications that come in um the HR team is still uh hosting job fairs still finding creative ways that we can get uh the message out um so there's really two pieces now is let's continue to recruit and find ways that we can let the community know that these are really good positions with comparable pay and
059great benefits uh and then the other thing too is that the people who chose to join us um creating that sense of community that they then start to tell their friends hey you should come to District 99 uh so our goal is that we have all of our positions filled by District 9999 staff um so we're getting really close to the point that we can start canceling some of these agency staff and filling it in with District 99 staff so a lot of work over the years a lot of creative thinking a lot of people who just rallied around this cause and um it looks like we're we're on the right path here so that's what I have for substitutes and parapros and job coaches I can take any questions so congratulations on your efforts
060but it's just a question I would imagine this is like a number that's constantly moving right because students graduate and we have freshman class with a different set of needs right so is that that's just a constant challenge you never know what the number is we're going to need because yeah it is that's that's why Scott has his process in place now is that once we do sectioning of teachers then he can go in and look at the ratios and determine the number of PA Pros that we need yeah challenging but congratulations on your work oh it's not it's everybody yeah yeah it's a group effort it definitely kudos to the whole team everybody involved it's amazing you guys all working together over extended period of time towards one go the great Improvement and this
061is something that our students benefit from on a daily basis so it's a big big impact area so thank you thanks I also want to recognize with the board and we have some of our support staff leadership here that uh in order to do this they were willing to sit down and negotiate with us mid contract cont ract in recognition of you know the needs that we had and the market and everything that we were working with and that's not an easy thing you know to do to sit down and pull out a specific part of a contract and have that conversation and go back to your membership try to explain why we're addressing one high need group instead of the whole group so we appreciate Maria and her leadership team of coming to the
062table and helping you know ultimately you know this is to meet the needs of our students right and some of our students with the greatest needs and uh that their leadership recognized that that's what this was about and we're willing to uh do the hard work to help us get there thank you thank you great and obviously your data on the marketplace was accurate it was because we were seeing results immediately yeah so that's good yeah there there's some pretty big Employers in the area so we were aiming for a certain dollar amount uh to entice people to come here and uh Jeff I talked to Jeff first of all that's the genius here so you um it turns out that most of our new hires this year came from Private Industry uh did not
063come from other school districts but came from uh local employers and they were looking to come here Amazon drivers is that what you're talking about or Amazon Amazon yeah questions that's great all right uh Freedom of Information requests uh we have received them and responded to them on our website they are all listed and they can be found on the foer page uh before we head into the consent agenda I just want to point out that in the information you're about to discuss that uh the report that was first posted last Thursday changed uh and was updated in the public document online and that is a Michelle Roberts was removed from the appointment classified list okay item seven on the consent agenda before the board votes on the consent agenda is there any agenda item
064of board member would like to pull out of the consent agenda for further discussion hearing none can I get a motion for the Board of Education to approve the consent agenda as presented which includes a Personnel report appointments classified trans for position classified B Personnel report retirement certified resignation classified C July and August Treasures report in September Financial Pages d student trips tours e acceptance of Grant Illinois press foundation and F acceptance of donation District 99 Education Foundation so moved second moved 10 second thank you Terry pavich hi Ken Dawson hi Chris rinoa hi charal Fuller hi Jenny hagstrom hi I herea Caston I and Dan Runner I motion carries thank you to the Ed foundation and for their generous Brant donation although there are a couple of those tours that I wouldn't mind going
065yeah St tours look good this that one to Italy sounds kind of tasty uh moving on to item eight recommendation for Action um can I get a motion for the Board of Education to approve the calendar your 2024 medical dental and vision plans and premiums as presented so moved a second moved Ken second thank you Chris Espinosa hi Ken Dawson hi Sherl Fuller hi Jenny hagstrom hi Terry pavich I Hera Caston I and Don Renner I motion carries thank you item number nine old business uh returning is the second reading and approval of board policies these were all reviewed a month ago at the last board meeting uh since then I haven't had any recommendations for changes or follow-ups uh from board members or from the policy committee so they are as presented last month
066and up for final approval okay uh no new business item 10 excuse me we need to take vote on the policies if you take a vote apologize um can I get a motion for the Board of Education to approve the policies just present so second jny jny motion and thank you Terry pavich I Chris Espinosa hi Cheryl Fuller hi Denny hagstrom hi Cara Caston hi Ken Dawson hi and Don Runner thank you no new business on item 11 reception of visitors excuse me they are uh yes we have four okay before we take reception of visitors just like to take the time to say this is the second reception of visitors which is intended for audience members to address the board on any topic pertaining to Comm Community High School District 99 comments will be
067limited to 3 minutes to provide all visitors and equal opportunity to address the board individuals need more time should submit their thoughts and writing to the board secretary visitors addressing the board need to submit a common slip to the board secretary and will be invited to the microphone prior to addressing the board audience members should State their full name proceedings may be tape recorded for the purpose of producing meeting minutes the board's presiding officer reserves the right to modify these Protocols of circumstances warrant audience observation of these protocols is appreciated too fast all right uh first slip is for Eileen Bryan good evening Eileen Brer resident what is a woman chromosomes of XX are female and XY are male that's an objective truth immutable that's science it's not a social construct yet you teach gender
068is a social construct and even fluid how can you be male one day and female the next this is crazy and destructive to the individual and society as a whole feminists are sadly recognizing the erosion of women's rights by the trans phenomenon girl Sports locker rooms bathrooms women's shelters and even prisons are being invaded by women with penises why is gender dysphoria not treated like anorexia anorexia is treated with love compassion and treatment not affirmation of the belief that the patient is fat the argument most put forward for gender queer and other sexually explicit books that's is that if teens do not see their feelings presented in print he or she will commit suicide even the Trevor project does not list reading about transgenders as a preventative for suicide even gender reassignment surgery does not
069lower the risk of suicide following gender reassignment surgery individuals become 19 times more likely to commit suicide than the general population let's stop kidding ourselves gender queer and other book folks like it groom vulnerable students to begin a lifestyle that can become irreversible I suggest you buy books with a different Viewpoint to include in your collections like the diversity delusion by Heather McDonald and gender Madness one man's devastating struggle with o woke ideology and his battle to protect children by Ali London thank you next slip is from Paul draic hi my name is Paul draik I'm a veteran and a father of two young kids in Downers Grove I came here during the pandemic when you were masking and quarantining our kids without evidence for what was effectively the flu the measures you enacted have
070all been proven to be bunk social control initiatives which was apparent when we told you so I stand before you today to request the resignation of everyone on this board including the superintendent the parents of this town have had to watch as the ratings from us news and World Report among many other outlets have shown the decline of District 99 it's no wonder when we find out that there's pornography in the school library I listened to a recording from a health class where an activist from youth Outlook was spewing nonsense about the gender unicorn and suggested that a person can find out that they are gay at 60 and a fourth grader can choose their gender through Foya we find out that the school never even ran a background check on this person you put
071tampons in the boys bathrooms and you just follow and locks up with the state policies because as I learned from our state representative the state controls the money so the children are going to get the propaganda that the state approves gender ideology is a social contagion and and where have we seen the bathroom thing go wrong how about Virginia where a girl got raped there have been two genders since time in memorium we didn't just wake up a few years ago and realize we were doing it wrong cityology is seated by special corporate and political interest in order to divide us just like race political parties and religion gender ideology is pseudo science look at the amount of Youth that identifies as lgbtq it is skyrocketed in the last few years it's statistically impossible if
072it was a natural phenomenon the rate would be proportional to the population in time if there's a social contagion you would see exactly what you're seeing now being gay or trans is trendy and you are underwriting this ideology to kids you're sewing confusion and sexualizing children it's despicable it's disgraceful it's destroying their ability to think critically and it's showing in the ratings and the test SC I had a mother tell me that her sophomore at Downers North had to write an English paper through the lens of a Marxist feminine or queer what does that have to do with English and writing this is Marxist indoctrination you have teachers teachers who are pushing a collectivist group think agenda you should be teaching kids to think for themselves to challenge Orthodoxy America is about the spirit of
073debate it's about the sharing of ideas in the public forum instead we have activists coming into our classroom and teaching our kids that everything is relative and you can choose your gender on a day-to-day basis you are stealing children's innocence and indoctrinating their mind with pum you are wrong and you don't have the courage to be intellectually honest about it parents are speaking out more not less we will protect our children at all costs and by the way put this meeting back in the auditorium I think there's over 50,000 Downers Grove residents this is ridiculous and inexcusable next slip is from Mr Nome Terry Nome I'm the president of uh parents involved in Ed education in the state of Illinois I'm an elected committeeman Lots changed over the last couple years since I've been here
074um a lot of lies have been exposed since I was last year last year I'm going to appeal the pornography in the school d99 educational outcomes have dropped significantly as we heard about the SAT scores tonight Force masking and vaccines are considered ineffective and harmful School lockdowns proved to harm our children's health education and emotional development follow the science only counts when the left Ed fake science results to justify Co lies while ignoring science when it defining what is a woman 2021 Hank theel requested law enforcement to attend our meeting for political theater there was no threats antifa was sitting in the audience matter fact the only threats that came out of the meeting were directed toward parents of d99 myself other parents they got threatening letters put on their driveway from antifa leftist like
075Garland Hank theel Sean casson's attempt to use law enforcement to harass parents did not work it only emboldened parents to defend their kids Hank theel falsely claimed G gender queer images showing a strap on being sucked as not being pornographic as since been debunked the the's own buddy Sean Casten and Secretary of State Jan is public Ally admitted jender que's porn during a recent radical leftist book Banning Round Table hosted by Caston he admitted that these images are porn on the floor a recent Senate hearing janulus also admitted gender que's pornography recently the author of the book gender queer M kbli stated that she didn't publish this book for kids or children two years ago the claimed to be a mind reader yes a mind reader he said M kblo me was intent wasn't to
076stimulate or arouse those reading her book question to the board who's right Hank the who claims to be a mind reader gender queer does not meet the den definition of porn because the claims the author's intent wasn't to stimulate or Rouse we hear some quotes from that book that theal claims do not intend to stimulate or Rouse I got a new strap on harness today I can't wait to put it on my favorite dildo you're going to look so hot in that I can't wait to have your in my mouth I'm going to give you the of your life then I want you inside me this is the most turned on I've ever been in my life I'm dying you never tasted yourself you should try this is while a juice is dripping off a
077finger or should we believe Sean Caston and Julius who admitted that these images in gender quer are pornography we don't have to read the author's mind Mia kbli said the world that told the world that this book was not written for children it's in her own words two weeks ago we've been told by Straight radical leftists that these pornographic sexual images must be available to make gag children feel included we are told that suicide rates of gay children are higher therefore we must have books showing strapon being sucked to reduce the suicide rates of many gay kids that's a lie it's an insult to gay children gay children are children like any other child just because they have different sexual preferences doesn't mean these children are sexual beings being defied defined by and finger your
078time has expired thank you last uh slip for this evening is Ed Brer good evening uh Ed Brer D Grove resident we've had it with our high school sexualizing and IND doctoring our kids they're our kids not your kids rather than concentrating on teaching math science and reading d99 is Allin with governor pritsker and the teacher teachers union forcing teachers to comply and concentrate on teaching promoting a radical graphic inappropriate sex at Agenda incorporating books like gender queer all boys aren't blue and others for example here are a couple passages from the books favored by d99 promoting this radical sexualized agenda we've just heard a little bit about gender career so I won't repeat that one from another all boys aren't blue I put some lube on and got him on his knees he began
079to slide into him from behind I pulled out of him and kissed him while he masturbated he asked me to turn over while he slipped on the condom he got on top and slowly inserted himself into me parents do not want our kids exposed to this content or agenda d99 under Mr thy and this board think this pornographic content is perfectly okay no it isn't d99 is in favor of child sexualization important over Math Science and reading parents want math science and reading wake up d99 parents defend your kids defend your kids that concludes all the slips I've received okay number 12 Communications and announcements um Jenny can I get a report on Len yeah um the first Len meeting for this year was Friday September 22nd uh we had several state senators and representatives
080on hand to discuss uh what was happening in The veto session and what they might expect in the new session of the legis lure uh they also were meeting in small groups with the attendees to discuss any concerns that uh we wanted to bring forward in the local districts um a few of the key points that they discussed included uh polling place legislation um there's some discussion about needing Schoolboard approval to use Public Schools as polling places um it would be sort of as a last resort um and they would need to come to the board for approval uh we are still continuing to work through the school bus driver licensing legislation um was brought up last year but it didn't get through um they're revisiting it again and hoping it'll Move Along further this
081year um there's continued discussion of dual credit classes and elel dual language programs they are looking at expansion of those programs and trying to work on teacher credential requirements for each because in many cases we we don't have the staff that have the established credential requirements to teach um the amount of kids in those programs um they didn't think there were any education bills that were at issue during the veto session um and then we kind of broke out into small groups and talked about some District concerns which um in my group touched on teacher shortage uh the pension system funding for Al day kindergarten um and attendance concerns and um mental Health days so um the next meeting will be October 27th I think is that right yeah that's right so thank you Jenny
082um next to report on sassin Cheryl nothing new from me I've only had and my meeting is Wednesday this week I just know we're really looking at uh the hiring process for the new director is really our key Focus right now and then Terry a report on the Ed Foundation yeah um um we uh went over the um decision making for the uh Mark McDonald's uh scholarship Awards and um I think we've kind of narrowed it down but we haven't had our meeting yet to um finalize that uh report and then um we've got several new board members who are interested in uh joining our our group so that's really exciting because uh um uh share the share the wealth and and make light work pardon many hands make light work yes it does yes
083it does and it'll be good so um you'll hear more about uh that in the future is there anything that I missed no I think you covered it okay all right but I I did notice one thing um that Friday is um bus driver appreciation day so I just wanted to say I don't know if I don't think there's any bus drivers in here today but um thank you very much you are greatly appreciated and if your student Rides the Bus please be um thoughtful to them and uh say thank you because they are a very necessary item um for our school and so I just wanted to point that out so remember Friday so thank you jry mhm and then finally Ken for report on the iasp uh the annual convention is coming up
084it's just a little over a month away November 17th through the 19th there'll be great speakers great workshops officials from all across the state so it'll be a excellent opportunity to learn best practices which are being used in other districts and network and meet your colleagues from across the State and looking forward to it thanks k um upcoming board meetings uh our next board meeting will be November 6th for a workshop meeting at 6:30 here at the ASC and Then followed uh November 20th for a regular business meeting at 6:30 again here at the ASC I think uh at that point I think I can call for a motion to adjourn oh uh you know what before we adjourn sure um I think to remind everyone um that we have the ribbon ribbon cutting ceremony
085on the 23rd uh at uh 3:30 and uh then it's also the open house at North on this Saturday at yeah the 21st at 9: to noon yep so um and The ribbing Cutting is a week at 3:30 right week from week from today at t99 at t99 so I just thought I'd remind people because unless unless you get a reminder sometimes you forget and South homecoming and the parade is uh Friday hopefully there will be no liquid sunshine and um then the game following so that should be a busy day it'll be a busy week for us yeah yes yes so sorry to do good now can we get a motion to adjourn yes so mve okay Terry moved in Charelle all all in favor I I I motion carries we adjourn thank you
086everybody for your service thank you enjoy your week