001okay it's called an order Mike Davenport here Christopher Espinoza here Cheryl Fuller here Denny hagstrom here Terry pavesich here Joanna Vazquez Drexler present Nancy kopka here Luca plauskas here and Caitlin Vincent here thank you the important let's stand for the pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all foreign okay on the second reception second reception okay we have two opportunities for comments from the audience the first reception is intended for audience members to address the word about any agenda item on which the board will vote we have no questions further that okay we will move on to recommendation for action I need a motion to accept the report of the board-appointed hearing officer
002in the manner of student2023.1 and expel student2023.1 for the 2023-2024 school year if students2023.1 is meeting or exceeding his goals he may be eligible to return in January 2024. still moved Jenny second second Terry thank you very much Jenny hagstrom aye Terry pavasich aye Joanna Vasquez Drexler aye Mike Davenport aye Christmas Fuller Nancy Copco aye the motion carries next we need a motion for the Board of Education to approve the minutes of the April 17 2023 business meeting the April 17 2023 closed meeting the April 19 2023 parent teacher advisory committee meeting the May 1st 2023 Workshop meeting and the May 1st 2023 closed meeting so second Joanna first Joanna Vasquez Drexler aye Mike Davenport aye Mr Espinoza draw Fuller Denny hagstrom aye Terry pavasich aye and Nancy I the minister approved all right I
003have a couple of recognitions before we move on to the final business of this board uh first of all last week we had several days we celebrated it was teacher appreciation week uh all last week so thank you for all of our teachers and all that they do for for our district on May 10th we celebrated a national school nurse day and after everything we went through during the pandemic it was wonderful to recognize everything that they did for the district over that very difficult time and then finally on May 12th with school Communications staff day where we recognized the work of Jill and Lauren and all that they do to support the board and the District staff and all of their efforts to keep the community in the loop of everything that we're doing
004so thank you a quick Round of Applause for all of those it was a busy week for us uh Rod Rousseau we learned that he has been awarded the inaugural ietl Lifetime Achievement Award ietl is the state Organization for Tech directors so Rod is unable to be with us this evening but uh boy he's racking up the hardware and well deserved well deserved yes uh also uh we got a piece of Hardware from the village of Downers Grove we did uh the Downers Grove Economic Development Corporation 2023 Cornerstone award to recognize our work uh in the master facility plan uh Mike was there to receive the award alongside me um we are the first public entity in the village to receive this award so that was fun to receive that and wait there's more oh
005yeah great date this was in the same this was all like two this was all on Thursday of last week all of these recognitions then uh Thursday night Mike and I went to the Chicago building Congress merit awards uh as a non-architect this meant nothing to me actually when we received the notice that we had won this award I almost deleted it thinking it was spam so I then reached out to our Architects that were like they fell off their chair uh when they found out that they've been nominated it's yeah as Mike said it's a pretty big deal um it is an awards event it was like being at the Oscars in the room uh they even came up with like gold envelopes and everything the winner is and uh we we beat out
006a pretty talented crowd of of projects um to win the award in education pre-k through 12. like it was pretty fun to as especially somebody who didn't understand what it was all about once they called our name and the room went nuts like people are cheering and like stopping to shake your hand as you're going to the St you realize I kind of realized oh this is a pretty big deal so so it's a pretty big deal uh yeah all right and uh yeah also 136.6 million dollars spent on the two projects and there can be no doubt that we were great stewards of that trust that was put in us right so this is an acknowledgment of the high quality that was delivered well the board expected the team to deliver more than what
007was expected and I believe Thursday was a testament that we were able to do that very good very good so uh that's all I have except for the recognition of outgoing board members first I'll start with our our two students Caitlin Luca thank you for a wonderful year uh and for all of your reports I feel like you did a great job of representing uh both South and North High student bodies and we appreciate the all the times we're able to just put you on the spot and ask you what you thought so thank you so much [Applause] make sure you guys come back and tell us how you're doing you're welcome back at any board meeting yeah I know how much you'll miss this you've shared it before but let's just share what your
008plans are going forward look at why don't you start I am going to Indiana University at the Kelly School of Business for accounting very good very good very good and I'm going to Mizzou political science major pre-law track all right very good so look when we expect you to come back and take Mr Stalin's spot I am a happy enough you've seen the spreadsheets yeah yeah yeah and Caitlin the school district's always looking for attorneys all right and then uh our board members leaving the district Joanna thank you so much for your service [Applause] like Davenport who's currently serving as vice president thank you sir thank you thank you to open it so we can you guys gotta open them so we can see what it is I gotta let Nancy here we gave you
009the most important things oh my stamp and your cat oh this is what I wanted [Laughter] thank you all for your dedicated service to District 99 uh through the best of times and the most challenging of times I have appreciated all of your Insight and Leadership and guidance thank you for your service to District 99 and to our community thank you thank you this is traditionally if Mike Joanna and Nancy had anything that they wanted to share this would be your time it's been you've heard me say this a few times it's been the most rewarding volunteer work of my entire life even thinking about the last few years of the pandemic and it's been an absolute honor and privilege to serve with such high quality board members and with the best community educational School
010District staff on the planet so I know wonderful things are going to happen going forward and I know that everything's in great hands with the board members that are here and the ones that have been elected to serve so thank you I had to write it down and you ended up being more eloquent than I was oh come on so I just want to say what an honor and privilege it has been to serve on this board and at the risk of sounding like an academy award speech I'd be remiss if I didn't think the many people with whom I have learned so much first of all are our students those who've represented on the board have presented to the board have written to the board and just met with us one-on-one over the years
011our exemplary teaching and support staff who bring talent and commitment to a difficult job bettering the lives of our students every day I look back on the impact teachers have had on my life with on respect it is the Nobles profession our other staff members who keep our buildings safe and secure clean preparing food for our students and all the other jobs that keep our mission chugging along day after day after day our administrators past and present including Hank the two marks Julie Scott I'm going to get Whiplash here Gina Rob jury Jill Rod Courtney Erwin Ryan and anyone I missed Tony I miss Tony we've all been so kind and teaching me so much over these years while improving the lives of our students and staff no small feat that our community so many
012community members contributed to the district through the foundation the boosters and those who come to the board meetings to express concerns with their only agenda being improving education and finally my fellow board members past and present we haven't always agreed but we have always been a true team and that I have found is not something that many boards can say and as we see our three new board members I finished with this thought the community has demonstrated its support for you and your commitment to public education for all students there will be detractors there will be people with different opinions than yours that's okay vote in informed conscience and you will look back on your career here and be proud so thank you very much second reception of visitors Joanna did you have anything I'd
013like to thank you all I have enjoyed working on the board with everyone I probably learned more than what I gave to the board I mean it was a rough time to be on it it wasn't what I had expected but I thoroughly enjoyed working with everyone and um I I just respect all of you so much for the job that you do every one of you um and you always listened very uh thoughtfully to any comments that I would make and I appreciated that and best of luck to all the new board members yeah uh yeah we could do the introduction of the new students because then they can come on up as we do the transition between the two So Courtney hmm good evening everyone um I'm here today I'm from North High
014School and also representing South High School in Irwin's absence she is out celebrating her own son and his accomplishments this evening so I would I have the very much pleasure of introducing our two new student board members for the 23-24 school year and first from Downers Grove North High School we have MS Gianna hunchi and then from South High School we have Nala mochath so each of them are going to come up and just give you a few little words about themselves um hi my name is Gianna hunchi um and I can't reach mics um I do soccer and Tennis through North I actually just came back from soccer practice and I also I'm the president of our model un um I founded The Debate Club at our school I do Scholastic Bowl I'm on
015the peer jury and I have done a couple um political internships that I've really enjoyed so and I can't wait to do this so I needed one more thing to do hello I'm Nala mokath I'm from South and I'm also in a variety of clubs at dgs so my main ones are I'm in Deca so I even got to compete at Nationals in Florida so that was amazing experience and then I'm also in research Club change makers and I'm also on the principal Advisory Board and then with that I also play tennis and I'm also on the ultimate frisbee team so I love trying new things and meeting new people throughout wonderful very good and I can speak for Arwin that we are both super excited to have these two on board and of all
016of the applicants that we had both of these young women showed a genuine interest in being a part of their Community being a part of their school and being a part of the board so it was really cool they stuck out to both of us and we're really excited to have them so thank you very good yeah yeah we'll do the trade in a second after cake laughs uh we do have one reception of visitor but I need some clarification Miss Weiss would you like to address this board before they leave or would you like to address the next board there's like two board meetings tonight so well we can I think everybody's in the room so if you want to do it now we can do it and then you don't have to stick
017around if you don't feel like making it through the entire evening yep well then you're welcome to stay for kids you're welcome to stick as long as you'd like I appreciate it just trying to be respectful of your time thank thank you my name is Laura hoyce I've been a member of Downers Grove a resident of Downers Grove since 1985 and raised four children in this community and we've had quite an experience leading up to the last School Board election we were disappointed in the results in that candidates Alan Cox and Erickson were not elected to the school board would have truly represented the interests of parents and wanting the best for their children that is what I believe and was hoping for but we have newly elected board members that are coming in starting
018tonight that's my understanding so I welcome them and for those who are elected I can only hope and ask that the board will make better decisions than they have in the past in many areas for example no more lockdowns no more school closures no more masking of students no more invitations to vaccination clinics we ask that this board can discontinue diversity equity and inclusion in favor of merit-based Education that will do much more to restore real academic excellence in District 99. we ask the new members of the board to respect and acknowledge parental rights and everything that they do most importantly keeping parents advised of any issues concerning their students we asked the district to discontinue the safe to help program that puts students in touch 24 7 with a trusted adult from the state
019agencies that address various issues instead put them in touch with the parents that most most care about their own children and need to know about these issues whether it relates to bullying or preference given to minority students or desired gender transition all of these are things parents must know we asked the newly elected board members to consider its time for school districts to support laws in Illinois that will limit the power of Public Health institutions so that what happened during the lockdowns that was hap damaging to our students and caused them to not be able to go to school and learn from their teachers will not happen again so in light of that we endured three years of useless and divisive policies that included the vaccine mandates and discrimination discrimination against the unvaccinated so before
020the pandemic um I thought that uh things would continue to improve uh in that way but but they got worse and so we're hoping for a resumption of merit-based Education that treats all students equally because Equity is the opposite of equality a lot of people don't understand that I understand it well so we ask that you gracefully accept limits on power of Public Health institutions what was given by the CDC was guidance it has since been determined to be wooly and correct and bad for our students so from this point forward to make local decisions thank you thank you Miss Royce okay [Applause] that that is our do we have any other slopes one more my son it doesn't matter but I signed it out out there oh you signed a guest register yes yes
021is it okay yeah yep I'm Julia Beckman I'm a former board member you think I'd know how I'm supposed to sign in but I just wanted to congratulate the retiring board members you have done great service over some very difficult years Nancy Joanna Mike you've done wonderful work for us I know the newly elected board members will do great work but we hope that you will sort of be mentors for them as I've been a mentor for some of you just don't don't run away with all the experience that you've gained and I'm also here as president of the District 99 foundation and there's always room for one more for those of you who don't have anything else to do with you so here I am to sign you up but no really congratulations on
022some great service and we hope you really won't be strangers thanks right did we miss anybody else I've got nothing here all right okay uh a German we need an emotion for a German Sendai so moved sorry I'm gonna give it to Joanna you should Mike and Joanna all those in favor aye aye all those opposed we are adjourned Cinder all right uh we'll take a short break and then we will adjourn uh with the next board meeting I believe there's cake there is cake he's drunk with power foreign [Music] you can't the minute you run you and they're going to sit down and you can't like you don't have a goalie it's like it's really easy yeah frisbee though but there's a lot of running and ultimately [Music] sometimes all right let's be like
023your folder let's start with this meeting could we have a roll call please we start with uh inviting our new board members forward that's right we haven't sworn them in yet I am so sorry invite them for it and their families yes if any family members are here and would like to do one time you'll want that piece of paper it's a long oath yes up here yep just up in here in the middle that's fine yeah yeah there we go this only happens every couple of years so so if we make a mistake don't hold it against us are you ready and we have judge thank you thank you thank you for joining us we solemnly swear that I will Faithfully discharge the duties of office of member of the Board of Education of
024Community High School District 99 in accordance with the Constitution of the United States the Constitution of the state of Illinois and the laws of the state of Illinois to the best of my ability you solemnly swear that it will Faithfully discharge the duties of the office Community High School District 99 in accordance with the Constitution of the United States the Constitution of the state of Illinois and the laws of the state of Illinois to the best of my room I further swear that I further swear that I shall respect taxpayer interests by serving as a faithful protector of the school district's assets I shall encourage and respect the free expression of opinion by my fellow board members and others who seek a hearing before the board while respecting the privacy of students and employees I
025shall encourage and respect the expression of opinion by my fellow board members and others who seek a hearing before the board while respecting the privacy of students and employees I shall recognize that a board member has no legal Authority as an individual and that decisions can be made only by a majority vote at a public board meeting I shall recognize that a board member has no legal Authority as an individual and their decisions can be made only by a majority vote at a public board meeting I shall abide by majority decisions of the board while retaining the right to seek changes in such decisions through ethical and constructive channels the majority decisions such decisions through an ethical and constructive channels as part of the Board of Education I shall accept the responsibility for my role
026in the Equitable and quality education of every student in the school district I shall Foster with the board extensive participation of the community for relate goals Define outcomes and set the course for Community High School District 99. Michelle Foster with the board extensive participation of the community formulate goals to find outcomes and set up a course for Community High School in District 99. I shall assist in establishing a structure and environment to ensure all students have the opportunity to attain their maximum potential through a sound organizational framework I shall assist in establishing a structure in an environment designed to ensure all students have the opportunity to attain their maximum potential through a sound organizational framework I shall strive to ensure a continuous assessment of student achievement and all conditions affecting the education of our children
027in compliance with state law I shall strive to ensure a continuous assessment of student achievement and all conditions affecting the education of our children in compliance with Statewide I Shall Serve as as education's key Advocate on behalf of students in our community schools to advance provision for Community High School District 99 I Shall Serve as education's key Advocate on behalf of students in our community schools to advance the vision for Community High School District manual and I shall strive to work together with the district superintendent to lead the school district toward fulfilling the vision of the toward fulfilling the vision the board has created fostering Excellence for every student in the areas of academic skills knowledge citizenship and personal development I shall strive to work together with the district superintendent to lead the school district
028toward fulfilling the vision the board has created fostering Excellence for every student in the areas of academic skills knowledge citizenship and personal development congratulations thank you [Applause] we'll give you a week really this is all right oh okay okay here thank you now uh we will uh have the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God and justice for all right well it comes to our our election of officers for the two-year term of this board so um do I have any uh nominations for president well we don't need a second but that's okay you know one time right down Chris and Jenny put it down anyway yeah yeah any other okay well let's uh take
029a vote okay um do you want a voice Vote or do we just do a hand vote you can just do a voice okay let's just do a Voice vote all in favor of uh don Renner as our new president um say aye aye opposed will Don is our new president welcome John because of that I am now turning the gavel over there you go short term so we should take nominations for vice president yes you can have a nomination for vice president please I nominate Terry pavesich any other nominations hearing none uh hearing none then I'd like to hold a Voice vote all in favor of nominating uh Terry pavisich as vice president opposed hearing none carries thank you thank you [Applause] I am having trouble logging into my Chromebooks oh here here it's
030fine thanks we can just figure this out we'll do a little text describe the camera I haven't tried to sign in um I don't recommend that anybody take it over jewelry Because by the way if you're looking for an administrative recommendation I'm telling you I've seen what she does you don't want that job I then uh can I can I have a nomination from the or office of secretary for d99 I nominate um Julie nydek any other nominations [Laughter] serving as secretary for District 99 say aye aye aye any opposed hearing non-motion carries thank you moving to the first reception of visitors do we have any uh comments any slips no slips this would have been fraction for this first one those are our action items all right we're good all right so item six
031of the agenda establishing um 2023 2024 recommended Board of Education meeting dates and times we have a slip there I'm going to need a motion for the Board of Education to approve the 2023-2024 recommended Board of Education meeting dates and times so Chris moved and do I have a second second Mr Dawson Christopher Espinoza aye Ken Dawson hi Cheryl Fuller hi Jenny hagstrom aye Trey pavasich aye Kara Caston aye Don Renner aye aye motion carries um moving to item number seven of the agenda appointment of board committee and Liaisons um given that I don't think we've had any discussions up to this point I think it would be prudent um for each of the board members to send me an email before the next board meeting with their uh requested committee assignments I certainly think
032we should give deference to seniority and also for those board members who are previous are currently serving on existing committees just to take advantage of their experience in history and those committees and just to review currently on these committees shirelle is currently curving serving on policy committee Chris is currently the representative to iasb um assassin governing board the structure of that change I will go to the majority of the meetings but this is for the for the operations board this is the governing board that will meet two to four times a year now instead of it being a monthly meeting a representative to lend has been Jenny up to this point District Education Foundation has been Terry and then Downers Grove planned commission we're not up this year right it's the next year correct so
033we alternate between District 5899 for that committee position this year it's District 58. it was Mike serving in that role so so do we need a board member serving on sassad or am I hearing that you will serve as the representative for district we still need a board member to serve so there's a operational structure and a governance structure now I will serve as the bylaw as the superintendent I need to serve as the operational member and then there's a governance member that serves much like being on this board we're setting vision and accountability and and those kinds of things but for the sacid organization that'll be like a quarterly meeting can I ask a question can we only have one board member serving on each board or if is there only enough committees for
034board members that's a great question so policy is two board members the rest have traditionally been one okay they don't have to be but you can't go more than two otherwise it becomes an official board meeting but if there's someone who's on a committee that wants to stay in the committee there could be a second person it's up to the board president okay is open okay mind explaining the policy committee committee's role for the new board members sure so policy committee is probably the it's one of the heavier uh commitments of being on the board because uh two to four times a year we receive updates from the Illinois Association of school boards I almost said ISB I gave you the non-acronym um they release two to four times a year an update of recommended
035changes to policies generally due to review of those policies or because of changes in state or federal law when that packet of information comes to us Julie does a great amount of preparation that then goes to the administrative team we then take the recommended changes to the policy committee those two board members we have a meeting that the public is invited to where we discuss those recommended changes we mark up any recommendations and then it goes to the board then for first reading of those recommendations at that point the whole board has access to all of that information the whole board can provide feedback over the next month to either the administrative team or to the two members of a policy committee we mark up those changes and bring them typically for final approval at
036the next board meeting so if you're on that committee you're at least two to four meetings a month that you're meeting outside of or not a month a year where you are meeting yeah that got real busy where you're meeting outside of this meeting to review that it's a lot it is a lot of reading you know it is a lot of material to read through we will do our best to make it so that it's digestible and understandable but it it's a good amount of content but that committee is really important to the operation of the school district as the policies serve as the laws of the school district so when we are trying to figure out what to do administratively the first thing we refer to are those board policies because those those
037don't even guide our work those are the must do things of our work um how do I do that that's great thank you Dr Daley appreciate it uh I guess the other uh you asked for kind of work ISB governing board Chris it's a couple of meetings a year you know it's it's very below effort uh intensity um you serve as the representative at the uh convention in November um that meeting itself usually takes four to ish hours depending on if there's debate um which is it's a it's an interesting experience to uh be there in a room with all the other uh delegates from other school boards around the state yeah it's uh not as intense as the policy committee and the the lead up to that you know is preparing uh reading through
038all the recommended it you're serving as kind of the policy Committee in some ways for the the state organization right so uh whoever's in that role takes those recommended changes that are going to come at that delegate meeting reviews them brings them to this board as to should we be voting those up or down because we get one vote as a school district in that room of all of the 850 other school districts in the state so Chris has a lot of work to do in November to prepare for that but then once that one is done it's just attending kind of the the uh division meetings yeah for DuPage we talked about sacid lend is pretty much a monthly meeting sometimes more when the legislation is in session yeah um some are virtual some
039are in person um and then Jenny does a great job job of taking notes about all the legislation and changing and changes that are being proposed and Reporting back out summarizing those back out to the board and that's it and I'm going to be uh taking over Nancy's role on the executive committee oh congratulations there we go okay any questions on committee assignments okay moving to item number eight on the agenda recommendations and reports of the superintendent uh the first one is district auditor services I don't know who has this tree or Mark yeah I will so we asked Miller Cooper our auditing firm to provide us with a three-year cause proposal for the fiscal years of 2023 2024 and 2025. their proposal reflects the two thousand dollar increase for each of those three years
040it's nominal we are very pleased with the level of service that we receive from Miller Cooper in addition to conducting the annual audit they also serve as a valuable resource to us throughout the year with many different types of accounting accounting advice so we recommend that the board accepts the three-year cost proposal from Miller Cooper any questions for a jury or Mark all right this shows up as an action item later on this evening the next one is English Department novels and this one is Terese as well all right we've been going out to bid for English novels for Maria you've you're here what do you say about six years now I think it was maybe my second year in the district so probably six years yeah uh this year we had 11 vendors that
041responded to our English novel bid the lowest bid was from book source and that bid was in the amount of a little over a hundred and seven thousand dollars however they did not bid on 76 titles there's 148 titles in the bid so it's it's a non-responsive really bid yeah the next lowest bid was from bookpel in the amount of 122 598 dollars and four cents they just had one title that they did not bid on book pal has been awarded the English novel bid three times in the past few years they've provided us with excellent service and they are the lowest bid so we recommend that we go with bookpel now what about the one that they didn't bid on can well they eventually get to that I think it's out of print no
042one bid on it oh oh okay all right so what do we do when they're out of print then and the teachers have to find another novel Finding them yeah because yeah they missed something I'm just curious I don't know I I believe this is the same company that's bid a couple of times and they usually bid about half of the title so I just don't think they can fulfill the order um wow then we'd rather not go with them if they can't fill the order yeah okay bless you all right any other questions for jury all right uh our next one is the Illinois State Board of Education Consolidated District plan for our new board members this comes every year at this time May or June uh jury does it or jury Gina does
043a lot of work leading up into this and she's going to walk you through some of this Philly said every year we are required to submit a Consolidated District plan this is actually our fifth year so this came around about five years ago and it's a very comprehensive plan in that it basically covers our El grants our title grants so like title one and it covers idea special education and also now the Esser grants so these are the grants that the plan must encompass in that sense it it also is very comprehensive in the sense that we are required to show in the grant how we're using funds relative to these grants and there are a series of questions that we need to address some specific about specific grants some of the questions are more
044General so to go over these grants so that you know basically how they work Title One is based on poverty level only South High School receives Title One funding North does not qualify title two is used for professional development at both campuses title three both title threes I should say liep which is our language instruction education program Grant and the Immigrant student education grant both are for El students English learners they are used to support our bilingual and El program title IV is a relatively new Grant it is used for well-rounded education it is by far my favorite Grant because we are able to provide all kinds of resources through that grant for our students there's idea which relates obviously to special education and then the Esser ARP which is the American Rescue plan Grant
045coming out of the pandemic so those are the grants that this plan encompasses so part of this plan requires what's called a comprehensive needs assessment and it requires that we look at data certainly the board has seen Data before and we look at data all the time but we look specifically when we're working on this plan at these different data sets and we don't just look at our all numbers meaning all students what is the average for example of all students but we also look at various subgroups of students ninth grade on track is basically looking at our freshmen our ninth grade students and whether or not they have earned five credits and have not failed more than one semester of a core content area we have been looking at that data those data sets
046for years so we continue to look at that one we also look at graduation rates focusing more on the four-year graduation rate than the five or six but we do look at all three we have been looking this year extensively even at executive Council on a regular basis at our first semester failure rates second semester hasn't finished yet so obviously we looked at first semester and SAT scores with the exception of the first semester affiliate rates we are pretty much looking a year in the rear and we use the state report card as well as local data sets in in our review and as you go through the needs assessment we're looking for what interventions we have in place how those interventions are working any new interventions or resources that we can put in place
047so the Consolidated District plan focuses on these major headings student achievement and graduation which is appropriate since that's something that we've really been focused on professional development special education youth in care which used to be called foster care now the state refers to students in foster care as you think care and we write a stability plan related to that safe learning environment College and Career Readiness it focuses a lot on Title One and there's specific questions we must address for that as well as our bilingual service plan which this is actually the first year that the bilingual service plan is embedded in the Consolidated District plan in the past it's been a separate plan that I've had to write but now it's encompassing it as well so I was actually very excited to see that
048because you're able to reference different parts of it throughout the other areas so I'm gonna try and give you key highlights and summarize the different areas so the first area is student achievement And Timely graduation this is really talking about what is your curricular program so for example we have over 200 courses we have 27 advanced placement 10 dual credit courses two dual enrollment courses you've heard about Project Lead the Way at various times we have the complete engineering strand we also have the biomedical Sciences pltw we have an English learner El program as well as a bilingual program so we have both programs now at both campuses our bilingual program is Spanish we have obviously special education supports and one thing that I'm really excited about that is included in the plan and that
049we reference is the Seal of by literacy and the Commendation toward by literacy we adapted and and really promote programming around the seal of by Literacy for about the past four or five years what that essentially is it's awarded by the state of Illinois and students who can demonstrate proficiency both in English typically through an SAT score sometime and it's an AP language score an access score as well as a foreign language that could be in AP Spanish French German test score we also administered the Apple test and stamp test can actually earn the Seal of by literacy or the Commendation the seal is the higher of the two levels so that means that you are proficient in both levels Commendation means you're working towards proficiency so accommodation toward by literacy and I share that
050with you because I'm really excited about that in the state of Illinois if a student earns the Seal of eye literacy and attends a public university so State University that school is required to give them college credit for that wow there's a whole process for that the way the law reads but essentially many students get at least eight hours worth of credit there are other states that honor it as well but it's here and there I cannot say for sure oh it will be honored in you know any state school Wisconsin or Indiana or something like that um so my knowledge there's only one school that Awards credit for Commendation toward by literacy and there are some private colleges and universities that award credit as well so I wanted to share that with you that's
051something that we've embedded in the plan now especially relative to the bilingual service plan being in in there so together sorry sorry if a student doesn't get credit many times they're allowed to skip a level right in advance and that when you skipped over tcd we are literally still testing um so I cannot give you data on this year yet also AP scores don't come in until usually like mid-july um but last year we had 62 students earn the seala by literacy and 47 earned the Commendation our five-year average is 51 on the seal and 50 for the Commendation so really excited about that um and that's something we've really been promoting we've opened it up we're now issuing it in Polish and uh Mandarin I mean a host of different languages so something really
052exciting um as Dr Phillip pointed out I skipped Technology Center I should have just known but I'm also a really good question so regardless of the language if you went to a State University you'd still get regardless of the language and not only could you get credit and also as that Technology Center DuPage so we are really excited a year ago or roughly a year ago I shared with the board that we were at the highest number of students for this year attending tcd in more than well over a decade and I'm excited to say that that's continuing so we are seeing a huge number of students in some cases we had to put students on a wait list and then as we worked through things we were able to add more students to the
053list and that is true by the way of many DuPage high schools as I work with my colleagues in the area but very few of them have seen the increase that weren't seen so I'm very proud of that as well and on that same thing I think it would be a really good idea for us as a board to take a field trip to tcd because it is such a phenomenal place you know I don't know how many of you have ever been there but it is well worth the trip to go and and see all of the different uh technologies that they provide so I don't know if they have something open up they have an open house in the fall okay um I go every year as a deos deos is the governing
054board of Technology Center DuPage as a board member I go every year but certainly we can invite them invite the board yeah to attend it is phenomenal in fact I did some professional development in the Summers pre-pandemic it was called Building Bridges for teachers and one and we toured various companies but one year we toured tcd and the feedback I received was that was by far the best tour of the four or five that we did that summer yeah I I hate to say this but when I was first on the board back when the dinosaurs were walking the Earth we all went up there for uh for a tour of tcd and it really impressed me as a place that our students would really get a lot out of and so I think sometimes
055if if we all went you would you would understand um you know what Gina is talking about and there's a lot of programs there so many it might might actually surprise some people like fire science and cosmetology culinary and programs where students earn a substantial amount of dual credit and their dual credit a lot of students will obviously graduate from District 99 have started their studies there at tcd they go for roughly half the day and continue they many go to a four-year School sure some go to Cod and continue their studies or they can go into an apprenticeship course with um trades the trade that they have chosen so it's it it's very worthwhile so that's a phenomenal it also sounds like we do a good job of promoting that because if we are
056seeing the increase and it's not being seen that it's so much across other high schools we we have to be doing a good job of letting people know how great it is and I think that's part of the work that we've been doing in terms of like career pathways and the board adapting our internship course several years ago so we've really kind of tried to focus and I think students are are really responding yeah they're reaping the benefits of that program yeah it's a great program that's what we want yeah and we've seen a big shift in the community of being receptive to the like when I got here almost eight years ago there was a real reluctance of some families to to engage in alternative Pathways that weren't a four-year plan right and uh
057people have come along like we've seen the rising cost of colleges we've seen that you know every kid has a different path uh towards success you know I met I was doing interviews with students the other day you know practicing interviews it was very interesting in the group of students I had I had a four-year student four-year college student going to an elite University I had somebody going into the Armed Forces and I had somebody that was going right into the world of work and expected to own his own business within a year and was on a pathway to doing that so it was just you know and it was just success in three different ways and it was so exciting to see like the impressiveness of our students in each of those career kind
058of Pathways I love that because I know one of the things we talked about maybe two years ago is that success doesn't look like the same path for everyone that's right so everyone that leaves the art school in our school systems we want them to know that there is Success you know they can carve out their waste their own path and be successful Gina um just for uh I remember being a new board member uh a while ago in my first couple of meetings and you know listening these presentations and thinking what's going on what language are they speaking um can you talk a little bit about just uh the number of AP courses that we have at a District 99 I know there was a lot of work when I was on the board
059previously to improve the offerings can you talk a little bit about that for the new board members and maybe also touch on what dual enrollment actually matures for the new board members sure so we have 27 advanced placement courses advanced placement we refer to it as AP and these are courses and we have them across content areas these are courses that are taught really at a college level content so very much like an entry-level College course um there is a there are guidelines provided by the College Board the College Board overseas AP oversees advanced placement and students take an exam in May so we just finished up last week it's always the first two foot so what I'm talking about um so the exams are given the first two full weeks of May the dates
060are set by the College Board students can earn a score up to five and depending on what college or university they're going to they may are in college credit it also can very much depend on what their major is so it is dependent on that score the school that they're going to and the major that they have selected so dual credit is a little bit different dual credit we currently have 10 courses we are certainly working on Dual credit it has been a challenge for us but we continue to work towards dual credit I think a few years ago we were at four if I remember correctly we have dual Credit in for example we have a lot of dual Credit in CTE we even have some in PE which was really excited thank you
061sorry Career and Technical education um so we have for example some courses like AP Computer Science advanced placement computer science that are both dual credit and AP therefore dual credit is based on how the student does over the entire course whether it's a semester some of ours are semester summer year-long courses and that dual credit for our courses is through College of DuPage and so students would they can transfer that credit to whatever school they go to so it's not based on one test one day it's based on performance over the course of that course whether it's a semester or whether it is a year-long course and that's the this the school has to be willing to take that so it does vary so it there is an articulation agreement with over like 100 schools
062in the state of Illinois so some courses are pretty much accepted but you are correct there is some of that however we have found huge success with dual credit courses counting whereas not we've seen success with ap too don't get me wrong I used to teach apus history a long time ago um but it is very dependent so for example if you're going you're going to be a science major some schools will not accept AP science courses I learned that from my own job yeah yeah so it just varies out but dual credit they would have accepted because you're building a college transcript you're basically leaving school with a transcript yeah as opposed to just a test score another thing that's I'm sorry to us with the rising the increase in college costs that's absolutely
063yes and go ahead I was just going to say that our it is free to us the Dual credit courses are free to our students so they do not pay any tuition extra tuition right AP they have to pay for the test and AP a three or better does become college credit in a Illinois public institution yes it doesn't necessarily count towards your major right but it has to be accepted as college and they could count as elective credit for example you know those tests all around the same cost I I don't yeah uh 98 almost 100 101. I don't know I paid I paid for a bunch of them this year but it's it's so dual credit courses are taught by our teachers taught by the high school teacher even though the content is
064at the college level dual enrollment is different dual enrollment means that the student is obviously duly enrolled meaning enrolled in high school and enrolled at the college or university the teacher of the course is the professor at the University we don't have a high school teacher teaching that course it is solely taught by that professor at the University we have currently two dual enrollment opportunities for our students one is calculus three which is taught in the fall so first semester and that is through our partnership with Elmhurst University so it's taught completely by an Elmhurst professor students do pay a small amount as tuition is required for that the other dual enrollment opportunity is through Benedictine and this one we've been doing longer our calc 3 used to be with North Central we transitioned to
065Elmhurst we also have an astronomy course dual enrollment with Benedictine that is a completely online course that we typically offer second semester and there is tuition to be paid for that as well it's very reduced it's both cases extremely reduced tuition but there is a cost for the tuition again student earns a transcript of a college transcript so you can have a student who leaves us with ap hopefully a three four or five right one of our dual credit courses so they have a transcript from Cod three a transcript from Elmhurst astronomy a transcript from Benedictine we do have a few other different situations where we might have a student who duly enrolls and they attend a class for example in COD so they might get out a little bit early or take a night
066class or an online course but that's separate and that's just one individual student these are when I say dual enrollment opportunities those are the ones that we offer to students now there can be prerequisites obviously you have to take out BC to be able to take and be prepared for calculus three but we offer it to students who are eligible and I will sing Gina's Praises here this has been a board goal every year that I've been superintendent here and every year Gina has increased the opportunities in one of these areas or in all of them sometimes so she's done great work in this area thank you thank you the one I'm excited about them which I forgot to mention but I'm going to take my most excited our dual credit speech that the board
067approved and we have running next year at both campuses that's really exciting most universities do require speech course so that's really exciting I think I went through all of those right so addition in the plan we need to reference and talk about different interventions different supports and different resources that we offer our students it could be select groups of students it could be in some cases all students or it can be programmatic in nature and this is not an exhaustive list if you look at the summary which is in the board docs there will be things in the summary that are not mentioned here um I'll pick a few to go over but if you have questions I can explain the other ones as well and I'm just going to pick a few that you
068may or may not be familiar with a few that hopefully you'll be able to see what group of students it might serve okay so we have a summer bridge program the summer bridge program is for basically incoming ninth graders incoming freshmen who could use a little bit of support in reading and math we offer that program free of charge to students there it's an invitation only type of program and I use Title One funding for the most part to pay for that program talked a little bit about AP we found that some of our students could use a little help and perhaps a little bit of enrichment over the summer we have run different AP Summer Bridge programs this summer we are running our AP Chemistry Summer Bridge and that has run for years now
069so that's one that we're really excited about read 180 and strategies for academic success are reading courses read 180 focuses a lot more in the special education realm than in general education or experience for academic success tends to be more general education students than special education students you may have heard that we have math s classes that means extended time so it's it's like a period and a half for students who need that additional support we also have a transition math class that a transition math class is to really ensure it's a fourth year math class for seniors to really ensure that students are ready to go into credit bearing math courses in college and we are part of that along with other schools in the county through coordination with Cod we call that course
070pql or preparation for quantitative literacy so really excited about that that is one of the indicators to be College and Career ready so that's the reason I pointed that one out we have many different Personnel that are funded through our grants including we have a math specialist at South High School we have interventionists at both campuses to typically to itself and one at North and we also have an avid program which I'm excited to say it's really a college prep program but it has really started to morph a little bit and support even beyond that so we have students for example in Avid who will go into the military we have students that will go to Cod a two-year school as opposed to a four-year when Avid started with us and obviously Avid before it
071is it's Nationwide and really it's International there are other countries as well it was really focused on the four-year University and it has morphed over time and I'm really proud of that as it's supporting students in several different paths we also have Wi-Fi hotspots and we still do this is something that we have offered in District 99 since we rolled out one to one many years ago that was one of the things that was for me really really important that our students would who can whose families do not have internet at home would be able to have a hot spot that they can take home to do school work so this is way before the pandemic hit but we have continued that and that really served us well obviously during the pandemic actually District 99
072was recognized when I first got here by members of Congress is like the first school in the country that guaranteed that every student had internet access at home so we led the way in that in a lot of ways full of other things we're Abby abscess period built in on Wednesday and Thursdays and we have different lessons that we lead like on Executive functioning social emotional learning so on and so forth through access and then also our resource which students would only have one resource period a week it's basically when their lunch period is their regular Lunch Period on Monday Tuesday Friday when it rolls into the block day and we have all kinds of programming that we provide during resource and will continue to provide and some new opportunities during resources well certainly did
073not go over all of them but I'm happy to answer any questions if you're wondering about anything specific a couple of things that are new or newer that our interventions that I reference in the CDP the Consolidated District plan is that we'll be moving to a full-time path coordinator at each campus that's really exciting as they work with students in that intervention our path program is our thank you thank you in our path program is our in-school Intervention Program so rather than suspending a student outside of school they would attend path there's lessons there's uh work that they do with the coordinator and with the isi in school intervention supervisors to um basically realize what they've done how they can improve how they can move forward and there's check-ins after they've you know made it
074past the discipline piece our team continues to check in to make sure that there is any recidivism around that behavior that we're trying to correct and we've only had a head of the FTE to have a full-time program at both campuses so that's why I listed it path is already in the cdb for from a couple of years ago but now we're moving it to being a full-time program we are also planning to offer an SAT prep class during resource next year the SAT is a college entrance exam that all Juniors take in April typically in April next year's a little different we have a window versus a date but it's typically taken in April it's obviously important that students do well on the exam depending on what school they plan to schools they plan
075to apply to so we'll be providing an SAT prep class to students that they can enroll in that will occur during resource and that will also be free of charge to students it'll focus on both oh I'm sorry will that be taught by an outside Source or will that be taught by existing teachers we post it will not be taught by our current teachers but we posted the position uh the positions I should say and we'll obviously be interviewing as well we're looking obviously for someone who has experience in that area do you think that'll have any impact on our overall SAT scores as a district I I believe it will and I also am excited about it because I think we really need to focus on certain certain groups as I said when we
076first started this presentation we de aggregate the data to look at different groups and we see for example that our El students sometimes don't perform at the same level so we can really in like invite and encourage and promote it with certain families and certain students to hopefully bring them greater resources not every student can necessarily afford or even have the time for outside tutoring um so that's something that we're going to bring in some of you may know that in I'm sorry how long I've been in the district but more than 11 years ago we started a program which was when it was psae so what was act and then the workkeys on day two and we had a psae prep program that was actually taught by our teachers and I had a couple
077of teachers at each campus who taught the courses we we may certainly reach out to some of them to help with the planning of the course so because some of them have gone on not just to do act tutoring even outside but to do SAT touring so we have some uh really great people internally that we can the challenges as our teachers are they're teaching or engaging in professional learning during that resource time so but Don to your point there's a very strong correlation between families economics and SAT scores part of that strong correlation is because families with resources can pay for s.a.t prep programs have time outside of the school day have transportation to those things so creating this opportunity during resource makes it accessible in every way to every one of our students
078in a way that's kind of unique in the fact that we have a schedule that allows for that and I think I asked this last time so this is apologies if I did what you mentioned we're going to reach out to certain people because just kind of being able to determine who will have access I would think for free it's I was apparently for free but I was saying I was a parent that paid for this so I would think that all students a lot of students would be interested in this I think we do so how are you mentioning we got to reach out to some people that we would give special or use the word special but have an opportunity to take advantage of this first and then I'm just wondering how we're
079going to control right the amount of people that could be interested in this so we it will be open to all students and we anticipate about 900 seats okay um so when you consider you know we have probably under 1200 but that counts students who are out placed that count students who don't necessarily have a lunch period because it's being offered during resource so for example we have approximately 170 to 180 students will be going to tcd next year typically those students don't have a regular lunch period because half their day spent at tcd they have to come back or sometimes they go in the afternoon it just depends so they don't necessarily have a lunch now not all 170 or 180 are Juniors because we send Juniors and seniors but that's a number of
080students as well we have some students who just do not have a lunch period while we don't necessarily encourage that that does happen so we're very excited to have about 900 seats for students and as we have different groups of students like I'm really hoping that we can promote this with our our El students our English Learners because oftentimes when we even pulled different groups of students and were last I checked about 250 English Learners in the district that's that's a significant number in fact we've had uh so many join us this year and we always get some students that that obviously register late we've had so many this year that we were able to get that immigrant education grant it's based on an increase and we've only received it a couple of times so
081we have had so I'm hopeful that we can reach out to different groups encourage it I attend for for example our bilingual parent advisory group and we just we just actually talked about this on Thursday and hoping to promote it for for families and for those students so if I'm hearing this right if we have about 250 English Learners and we have about 900 seats more than everybody will have enough but it's only open to Juniors it's for juniors because remember the SATs taken in that's right so we have less than 250 Juniors that are English learners does the AVID program they offer this so for their students already don't they so there are test taking strategies built into the AVID program however that would not preclude an avid student from taking this and in
082fact I would encourage them to in fact I just this morning met with one of our coordinators our South High coordinator and shared information about that about the SAT prep class and she was very excited about it yeah because I was going to say that that really fits into their program you know without any question absolutely 100 so yeah and Ryan has structured this in such a way where English is separate from math so we expect that there will be some students that will just pick one subject area or the other and not attend both right so that kind of stretches out the number of seats as well okay and this year our sophomores remember during the pandemic there were different years of testing did or did not occur certain years but they took the
083PSAT 10 so we will get those scores this Summer that will also be an indicator where some students who might want to encourage it'd be interesting to see if a student took a PSAT as a sophomore they take our sit prep courses in school and you see a dramatic rise in their test scores I mean that might be a quantitative assessment that shows that this program is actually having a true impact on our students yeah I'm looking forward to the data yeah me too yeah um so one of the other and I I know I've said this year after year but it continues we have expanded our English our El English learner offerings courses we have the board approved a new Civics course for El Learners which is running next year we have in you
084know more recent years we've been able to do what's called push-in support so where we have an El teacher that goes into different classes to support students small groups of students in those classes so that continues and as one newer intervention and support so professional development there's a whole segment of the Consolidated District plan that talks about professional development it's also woven into almost all the other areas so if you look at the summary you'll see it coming up several times and that's why again this is not meant to be an exhaustive list a couple things I will mention though that I'm really excited about we're rolling out a new program called elevation and that program is for English Learners it is a program that will assist us as we work with families in terms
085of like translation and not just all the required documents because there's law on what needs to be shared with El families but we can also use it to enrich and even beyond that it will also help us because after a student exits our program an English learner can exit the program by getting a score on the access test that shows that they're proficient in English we do monitor them for a couple years after that and this program will help with that monitoring really excited about that program and we're going to be working with our faculty on the program how to use the program what that looks like when you're sharing information about how a student is doing in your class why you would be sending that information because the students on consult and just graduated
086out of el so really excited about that I know our personalized professional learning is something that's not new at all we've been doing it for several years now but that was something that was rolled out this year more second semester as we spent a lot of time in in first semester on for example working you know in the hybrid block and and whatnot and I just attended the PD sessions last week was really interesting to hear teachers talk about what they did for what we call PPL personalized professional learning we continue to offer best practices training we have coaching and much of that goes to our coaches we still offer seed um and we still send teachers not as much perhaps as before the pandemic but we still do have teachers who are going to
087different trainings and workshops and those are focused on a variety of topics and then we specifically send for example there are a couple of conferences every year for El teachers another section relates to idea for special education a lot of those funds are used to support our AIDS whether um you know they are one-on-one working with individual students with special needs we do all kinds of professional development um and and Scott really works with our teachers and our support staff that work with special education students in that area so much of that section talks about professional development and how we use funding the youth and Care stability Plan used to be called the foster care plan it pretty much is the same plan it just changed names and we provide support to Youth and Care
088in a variety of different ways ways much of it is very individualized because each student's need could be very different and our counseling and student Support Services Department definitely works with any students that we have who might be a youth in care so those are very unique needs and it depends on the students we do provide in some cases special Transportation if the students cannot get to and from with our regular bus routes it used to be called a transportation plan which is why transportation is each component of it there is a section about safe learning environment where it asks about all the different programs that we might have in place to assist and ensure that our our campuses are safe and so these are just some of them um positively North and Mustang way
089you may have heard about those programs have been going strong for more than a decade I mentioned already seed and some of our equity and inclusion work we also have a Spanish-speaking homeschool liaison this was a part-time position that we started about five or six years ago and it was part-time just to serve North High School I was able to fund it the first year out of our immigrant Grant and then was able to grade funding with multiple resources and multiple grants at South for years we've had bilingual facilitators but as our number has increased of el students of our bilingual Spanish-speaking students we now employ the Spanish-speaking homeschool liaison full-time and between both buildings so that is something that's really expanded in the last year or so we obviously have curriculum that comes out
090of our counseling and student Support Services you may have heard the focus Pro heard of the focus program at South High School or discover U at North High School we also use a program an online program called Naviance that you may have heard of we will continue to use Naviance next year but we're actually planning or hoping to transition to schoolings which is similar to navigance provides greater resources a lot more in terms of College and Career Readiness a lot more in terms of those indicators under Essa so we are looking at transitioning many schools in the area have already transitioned to school links but we will continue for next year to use Naviance we're seniors upcoming seniors we're actually going to have Naviance for all of them but we'll use it exclusively for seniors
091we do lessons in different areas about bullying anti-bullying and harassment we have Student Assistance coordinators we learned a lot about that and is that the last board meeting I believe we have some social some SEL lessons through our access for example through our access period and then we already talked about the path program they use a curriculum called Why Try so these are just a few this evening you heard about safe to help that's another program that helps with our safe learning environment allowing Anonymous reports or not so Anonymous reports of things that students have concerns about um questions raised by Community member today as to why we are using it if we weren't using it it's it's provided by the state at no cost if we weren't interfacing with it students would still have
092the opportunity to report to that but it would bypass us and go straight to the local police and resources so by us intersecting with it then our C Triple S staff our counseling student support staff has in our Administration team has the opportunity to provide as a serve as a resource in responding to those moments of Crisis rather than being on the outside of that looking in so a lot of times our trained professional staff is critical in making sure that a student is responded to appropriately and with the right level of care where if we were on the outside looking in on this process our students wouldn't be served as well which was three would be closest to the student than having some so that's an extra layer of support is how I see
093it right but a student would be able to access that whether we were interfacing with it or not because it's a state level program is that recent that we're interfacing uh she said when did we move our second year second year yeah yeah we used to have a different system that we used that was we would have to do the handoff manually to local police ambulance those kinds of things now the way that the safe to help program is set up is that if we are unable to respond so something comes in at two in the morning we don't see it if they're unable to make contact with us it immediately turns over to the emergency service personnel and they're able to step in immediately which the stress on our team under the old system
094like everybody did not want to miss something even if it was the middle of the night which put a lot of pressure on our administrative team and our counseling team now at least we know if we're unable to see that if we're offline if somebody's on vacation those kinds of things it will pass off to somebody else who can intercede on our behalf currently how much usage is that program receiving oh Scott you're better I mean we have um I think we're around 60 to 70 reports this year so far pretty typical for the last two years and um even before that yeah so another section of the plan is called College and Career ready and it's really is truly College and Career ready so in that section we talk about and I just listed
095again this is not an exhaustive list but some of the things that we do to ensure that the transition not just from middle or or Junior High School to high school is smooth but also that transition from high school to whether it's College whether it's trade school whether it is a four or two year whether it's work a world of work so that section asks a series of questions where several of these things are pointed out and so um a lot of it's really important in terms of us working with our Sunday schools our partner schools in other words the junior highs and middle schools to ensure that students are placed appropriately from the start to make sure that we have resources for those students who need various resources so that course recommendations are really
096for the right level for the student we really want students to take the most rigorous courses is so that process is really important we are back to doing more articulation now after the pandemic face to face a lot of that was occurring either virtually or you know electronically through information being shared but we have a very well vetted recommendation process from eighth grade to ninth grade you may be familiar with our Saturday registration day which is usually the end of January and then we also have an orientation night which that is usually in January as well oftentimes falls on our board meeting night newer things not necessarily new because we were doing them this year but newer things include our access lessons which do focus on a lot of things related to College and Career
097Readiness also our counselors provide lessons during that time many of those relating to College and Career Readiness also our resource programming bringing guest speakers exposing students to the trades military those kinds of things and then we talk in the plan about our high school post-secondary planning and some of the relationships that we form some of which I've already mentioned but we even have some other relationships for example we have a program that's unique to District 99 with Benedictine where students take a certain series of courses with us and earn particular grades they do not have to take placement texts if they're going to Benedictine so we've tried to work with schools in the area that our students go to to provide that transition to be smooth and not necessarily reliant on one test one day
098another part of the plan and this is really an extensive part of the plan is how we use our Title One funding and remember I said Title One is only South High School so we can only use those funds for South South High School students we allocate a large percentage of it on Transportation particularly to students that are considered homeless students under mckinney-vento we also fund our read 180 Program and Avid a lot of our Avid is funded the membership supplies for Avid I hire tutors for the AVID program their salaries are paid through title one we have as I said a couple of interventionists uh at least one of those is paid through title one we have a math specialist we've actually had the same math specialist now for over three years which has
099been the longest we've we've had one and he's excellent provides he provides support not just for students who are struggling in grade level math but he will provide assistance for students who are in count BC and even calc 3 if needed so he can do the highest level of math we support Summer Schools some summer school salaries Summer Bridge salary as well as some instructional supplies and some software programming for example we use the Alex program it's an online math program we use that in some math courses we use there's actually called courseware of course product and some courses and in our pql which is preparation for quantitative literacy our transition math class we also use Alex and I fund it for South High students out of Title One and then the last part of
100the plan is the bilingual service plan and this is the bilingual service plan is not new it's nearly identical to what it was before it's just now embedded in the Consolidated District plan and we we have to answer a series of questions about what our program looks like so what kind of classes do you offer what are the endorsements of your teachers what professional development are you going to send your teachers to what professional development are you going to do for all staff so required by law is that annually we train all of our teachers on how to work with English Learners what it means to be an English learner how to work with English Learners as obviously a lot of our teachers will have El students in their classes but we also do targeted
101PD I talked a little bit about elevation which I'm really excited about and that's a program that will help us better support students and work with families in terms of especially some of the low incidence languages for students that we serve as well as teachers as they provide information relative to our El students who are in consult we need to show how we're integrating the Spanish language arts classes into our bilingual classes which we do that in our bilingual Global Connections we also do it in our heritage Spanish class which we the board approved a few years ago and we've been able to run every year at South High in some years at North High as well and then it also references what we refer to as our bpac which is our bilingual parent advisory
102committee where we need to meet the regulation law which is four meetings a year we exceed that every year but we need to give our tentative meeting scheduled what our agenda topics will be and some of them are required by law so for example on Thursday night I presented at our Bengal parent advisory meeting about the Consolidated District plan about the bilingual service plan about the ebf spending plan about how we use our liep grant how we use our immigrant education education grant and how our new award which we just received which is a new Grant the bilingual service award so for example that is a requirement that our bpac families can provide input on all of these different plans and grants that is believe it or not just a summary there is the four-page
103document is also a summary but I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have I'd like to do the accounting program that we use now we have dual credit for financial accounting which is relatively new too I have a question for you going back to your first slide you had spoke about the title IV yes and the different uh resources and opportunity that that it provides for students could you expound a little more on some of the ones which you are excited about at ietd Illinois Association of Title One directors about title IV and how you can creatively use title IV so you heard me mention the single by literacy and we give a couple of tests to students I mean obviously they can elect to take the test or not we offer them
104so the Apple test for example and the stamp test which allows students to show if they have Proficiency in various languages I fund those those are free of charge share students I do not want our students if we can find a way to fund it we found a way so we fund that out of title IV so that's very exciting you heard me talk about calculus three so as a way to reduce tuition for those students taking calculus three I it's called braiding funds I use part of title IV to support them wow prior to about three years ago we were able to use Title One funds at both North and South even though North doesn't qualify because I put in a waiver with the Department of Education because there's this little part of the
105law that says if your schools are basically about 10 less than 10 percent in a difference between your free reduced lunch population you can use it at both schools unfortunately and we had applied for it and received it for several years unfortunately our Gap ended up at 12 and we were not able to get it so I now fund part of the AVID program for North High out of title four I fund some consumable mostly consumable supplies for our project lead the way biomedical classes out of title IV and that's all I can remember off the topic yeah that's fantastic now I'm going to go and look that's great um so I apologize if I missed it no that's great those are programs that really enrich right the opportunities for our students right right and
106I think are beneficial to families for example paying for paying for the pull and stamp test using some of that for tuition it gives a little bit of a More Level Playing Field economically for some of our families I'd hate to think that some students wouldn't be getting the sealed by literacy because they they could record the test thank you and it's not funded through property tax revenues funded through grants it's funded through grants absolutely those are all federal they're federal grants and title IV is relatively new it's only been I don't know maybe four or five years now relatively new well there used to be a title four then I went away and if we're a different purpose so yeah all right any other questions for Gina as you can tell she puts a
107lot of work into this plan and knows it very well and is well recognized in the area as an expert and leader in this area we're lucky to have her yes that was a fantastic presentation thank you very much we'll check the tape oh gosh uh actually I I have a slide that didn't load here so Rob has one up here on a textbook approval uh that's in the agenda I've just dropped a slide from it um so uh in today's action item is a recommendation for a single textbook uh for accounting right fiscal Financial Accounting yeah I thought I also had an hour to do a presentation you do but it's after we adjourn you thought you had us uh any questions on the recommended textbook all right District repositories I think this is
108jury yes on an annual basis we provide the board with the list of depositories that the district uses along with the listing of each bank account and the authorized signers for each account in the packet today is a resolution that we bring to the board every year authorizing the use of the depositories and authorizing The District administration to sign and complete any documents that are needed for the accounts so new board members there are certain things that come back every year a few of these are you're seeing tonight like English Department novels generally auditor although we're doing a three-year deal tonight uh District depositories textbooks these are generally reoccurring items that you'll see quite frequently well at least once a year after any concerns with the banking failures so far no okay not not directly
109impacting our banking no not at all you have any concerns there at all that we should be aware of okay no thank you last item in the superintendent's report is Freedom of Information requests new board members will be going through a Freedom of Information training as part of your onboarding we do Freedom of Information requests and responses our public documents we post them on our website if you search for foia you'll be brought to this page behind Scott there's a little blue button where if you click on that it will open up the list of all of our recently fulfilled foia requests our Communications team and Julie update that as we respond to those so we at each board meeting I will generally tell you we have received them and we have responded to them
110and we have do you receive requests most months is it a fairly like a couple sometimes most days most days wow okay it just depends okay it's a lot yeah okay moving to the consent agenda item nine of our agenda um I need a motion from for the Board of Education to approve the consent agenda as presented which includes a Personnel report appointment certified reassignment classified appointment classified B Personnel report resignation classified c financial Pages d 2022 2023 final calendar e the student trip F acceptance of donation from The District 99 Education Foundation excuse me G acceptance of donation Margaret Lapine age acceptance of Grant Project Lead the Way I acceptance of award Samsung solve for tomorrow challenge so moved oh go ahead bro thrill moved and second yeah me Terry Patterson thank you before
111before we take a vote uh I'd just like to do a quick thank you to The District 99 Education Foundation for their continued support uh through their grants and then Margaret Lapine is a Community member that's making a donation to our fine arts department and then Gina can you say a couple words about the grants absolutely so you may notice that Project Lead the Way um Randy palmarin who is a South High engineering teacher so in our Career and Technical education department she is a go-getter and she applies for all kinds of awards and grants and so she really single-handedly was able to obtain the Project Lead the Way Grant which you don't get every time you apply for so I just want to point that out and that's ten thousand dollars in materials that's
112through Project Lead the Way as well as caterpillar Foundation she plans to use those in our pltw engineering classes they use Vex kits so she finds use it for that and then she also entered sort of a contest for Samsung and was able to get a twelve thousand dollar package for South High School and the goal is to replace the monitors that are in c163 and then get some programmable programmable excuse me circuit boards so very exciting very fantastic great work by Brandy yeah yeah go caterpillar [Laughter] I just wanted to make sure while we were in there that we mentioned those things yeah so thank you to everyone yes yes truffler hi Terry pavisich aye Kara Caston aye Ken Dawson aye Christopher Espinoza aye Jenny hagstrom aye and Don Renner aye motion carries uh
113moving on to item number 10 recommendations for Action I need a motion for the Board of Education to accept a proposal from Miller Cooper and Co limited for basic auditing supplementary accounting and acfr services for the three fiscal years ending June 30th 2023 through June 30th 2025. so moved Chris second second all second yep thank you Crystal Espinoza aye Terry pavisich aye Harris aye Jenny hagstrom aye I'm Don Runner aye item number B um I need a motion for the Board of Education to accept the lowest responsible bid of 122 598 dollars and four cents for book pal to provide novels for the 2023-2024 school year Terry pavisich aye shirelle Fuller aye Jenny hagstrom aye Kara Caston aye Ken Dawson aye Christopher Espinoza aye and Don Renner hi motion carries item C I need a
114motion for the Board of Education to approve the Consolidated District plan as presented so moved Ken moves Jenny second motion carries item D I need a motion for the Board of Education to approve the additional textbook for the 2023-2024 school year as presented Christmas thank you Christopher hi Harry pavasich aye Kara Caston aye and Dawson aye Michelle Fuller aye Jenny hagstrom aye and Don Renner aye motion carries item E I need a motion for the Board of Education to adopt the resolution authorizing depositories and authorize The District administration to complete and sign all appropriate documents required to maintain District Accounts at the depositories listed it's almost second it's Jenny shirelle thank you Jenny hagstrom aye Cheryl Fuller Terry pavesich aye Carrie Caston aye Ken Dawson aye Mr Espinoza hi I'm Dan Renner aye motion carries
115item F I need a motion for the Board of Education to hold the June 5th 2023 Board of Education meeting entirely in closed session for the purpose of self-evaluation practices and procedures or professional ethics when meeting with a representative of a Statewide Association of which the district is a member so moved second Jenny and Chris thank you Jenny hagstrom aye Christian Espinoza aye Cheryl Fuller aye Trey pavasich aye Cara Kasten aye and Dawson aye I'm Don Renner aye motion carries so that that last vote just for the public knows our next meeting on June 5th will be entirely in closed session will not be open to the public as the board is doing self-evaluation item 11 old business I have none uh item 12 any new business I have no uh Dr thiely I think
116we may have skipped over allowing new board members to just maybe make a public comment this would be the spot at reception of visitors where okay new board members could absolutely make accomplishment sure you'd like me to do that in item 13. yeah if you'd like to do that now no yep okay we're there okay so first I just wanted to thank um Nancy kupka Mike Davenport and Joanna Vasquez Drexler for their service to d99 and I'm well aware that we have very big shoes to fill um and I have a lot to learn but I'm very motivated to be the most effective School Board member I can be I also want to thank the d99 teachers and support staff for their commitment and passion to our students and I look forward to learning how
117in my role I can better support and Empower them so that we continue to retract sorry retain and attract the best talent and then lastly I'm honored to work with you Dr thiely and the existing board members um to you know address the top challenges the district is facing and continue to just be an Innovative leader um among high schools so that you know students are you know Future Ready future focused so thank you very nice I'm honored and grateful to become a member of our d99 Board of Education I want to thank all of you in the d99 community who have made this possible I would look forward to supporting and working with our amazing teachers our awesome support staff our incredible principals our dedicated administrators and our amazing Dr Thiele who is leading
118the team we'll see what you think in a couple of weeks our goal is to continue to improve on the academic Excellence at both of our high schools to ensure that all of our students are provided with the support the guidance and the resources that they need to be successful both in school and in life and I promise you the best is yet to come I I want to thank the d99 community for believing in Ken Cara and me we're very eager to continue to make d99 the best it can be it's personally it's great to be back at d99 and I know we are lucky to be joining a positive and high functioning Board of Education I very much look forward to working with shirelle and Jenny and Chris and Terry um as well
119as Ken and Kara um I I think we have an amazing School District filled with outstanding teachers and staff as well as fantastic administrators led by Dr thiely but we're not without our challenges and we certainly have room to grow and improve we should never rest on prior success but continually look for ways to challenge our administrators and to support our teachers and staff to set up our children for future success I'm excited to get started and to take on those challenges that are facing d99 I promise that for each and every decision we make as a school board that we will always look through the lens of what is in the best interest of our students and I know if we allow that to be our moral compass as a board of education I
120know that we'll be successful so thank you very much welcome to all three of you uh item number 13 do we have any uh reception of his visit visitors no no okay any of our current board members uh anything that they would like to share at this time sorry no I'm just I'm just trying to make sure we cover all our bases I just want to say welcome to all three of the new members pa um an asset to our board and I know that there's probably a lot of the acronyms that you've heard tonight that um didn't register but with time you know it'll all come it'll all come and Gina can answer any of those questions and she would be happy to so anyway I just want to say welcome in and I
121think we'll do great great work here for our students and for our staff and so it'll be a great opportunity so I again want to welcome know that dumb question you know I they they let me know that all the ones I ask initially so so feel free to reach out for for help and we have a great staff as you guys staff that are willing to help and know what what they're doing so we are looking forward to helping you guys you know come up to speed and working very closely with you thank you it goes for our student board members as well yes if you need us to explain something just because you spend all your time in school doesn't mean you know like what's going on here right so feel free stop
122us anybody if you have questions around the table we're here to serve you we know where to find the answers just look right past me yeah all right moving on to item number 14 Communications and announcements uh Jenny do you have anything to report on lend I don't I was unable to attend the last meeting but there is a meeting coming up on Friday and Dr Tony Sanders the Illinois State superintendent will be a guest speaker um I forget if it's in person or remote yes it's in person okay yeah so it's in person might be probably a full house yeah related we did get several pieces of legislation moved through the houses including the changes in graduation scores so that our transition students no longer count against our graduation scores that were waiting for
123that to go through requirements for community colleges to share remediation data with us so we'll get actual student data around students that are moving into remedial programs so we can try to figure out kind of what's leading to that there was a Oh there's another one that impacts uh moving that from a 25 hold to 10. so those were all things that lend was actively working on and then I was recently added to a committee uh working with uh Tony Sanders through the superintendent's organization uh looking at our state data system called I was I don't even know what Iowa stands for Illinois uh something I don't know what it stands for it says for something but it's our it's our state data and reporting system and it is very Antiquated so it predates Gina
124probably um so not the genos I'm going to try to infer that Gina yeah um so I'll I'll be serving in that that was a lend initiative as well to get legislation that would require uh Illinois State Board of Education to revisit that but instead is B has said don't the law will work with you on that so that was a big lend initiative as well that we kind of worked through an alternative pathway she's got it here Illinois web application security I would have never guessed in a thousand years it's the first time I've ever Illinois web asset application security yes really yeah I didn't know that one actually it's isby it's an acronym inside of an acronym Inception here okay um I think Joanna was the representative for sassad I I have the
125first operation meeting with them next week under the new structure so um and then we need to by our next board meeting name that next governance person yeah yeah Terry a report from the Education Foundation yes we are meeting uh Wednesday so um uh this is the previous month um we did some grants tonight and uh we also want to thank the dgea for Their donation to the foundation um and um that really helps us provide more grants for teachers so it's uh it's a win-win situation and we are joining the National Association of Education foundations we have to write the check first but that is our plan and that is something that we have not done before and so this this is our our part of our steps to um to better our foundation
126so that is when I have uh Chris do you have a report from the Illinois Association of school boards uh yeah the so the joint annual conference this year is going to be held uh the weekend of November 18th uh it'll be there 17th through the 19th it's the Friday Saturday Sunday um this year's conference there is a full day of equity training available through ISB on the Thursday November 16th prior to the meeting for anybody who's interested in registration for the conference opens at 8 A.M on Monday June 5th um so all of us who are able to attend should uh talk to Julie yeah Julie will be reaching out with information yes and it's downtown uh at uh it's a great experience for new board members especially because um there's a lot of
127presentations on both days about topics that are you know facing board members and members of the board so I find it to be rather educational and it's just a fun time for us to get together outside the context of a board meeting yeah great presentation and I'll bake cookies this time but this is one of the three key professional learning opportunities for boards over the course of the year it's this one and then we have two DuPage division meetings but you know just your Prof like we talk about all the professional learning our teachers and staff engage with this is the opportunity for as board members for you to have professional growth as well and to model that for for everybody else and districts and see what they're doing because you know it's not we're
128not an island and and um you know the more we reach out to other parts and and that because um you know I think DuPage county is is is a unique part of Illinois where it's it's a large State and you find that there's a lot of things going on in the southern part of the state or or even the western part that is different than what we find so it's it's very much a worthwhile endeavor agreed uh superintendent's covers listed here that's just for the board and then uh upcoming board meetings is next so June 5th is the one we mentioned it's entirely in closed session then we'll have one business meeting on June 12th that falls out of our normal cycle because our normal date would be Juneteenth which is now a state
129and federal holiday and the offices will be closed on that day so we moved it up to the 12th and then the calendar that the board approved tonight then kicks in for the next school year so the June is the tricky one it'll be back to back yep yep I know it throws everybody off but remember the fifth is closed session then the 12th is a regular business okay um then item is 16 I need a motion for the Board of Education to go into closed session for the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employees specific individuals who serve as independent contractors in a park recreational or educational setting or specific volunteers of the district or legal counsel for the district including hearing testimony on a complaint lodged against an employee a
130specific individual who serves as an independent contractor in a park recreational or educational setting or a volunteer of that District or against legal counsel for the district to determine its validity so moved second so I paused it's it's me I just you know I dropped the ball Terry pavasich aye here at Caston aye Ken Dawson aye 0 Fuller aye Jenny hagstrom aye and Don Renner aye motion carries uh to announce to the public the board will not be taking any action except to adjourn after coming out of closed session a closed session will be held in this room so once everybody steps out we'll resume closed session if board members need to take a quick break this would be the time to do so good night everyone