001you're all Fuller here Jenny hagstrom here Terry pavisich here Joanna Vazquez Drexler here Nancy kupka here Luca plauskas here and Caitlin Vincent here thank you we have cuerma 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 oh perspectives we're going to invite our South students up today but to introduce them or our North students up let's introduce them as ours is that our uh South High principal principal lip is here because well our their principal is busy at the super sectionals and uh just a reminder hopefully we'll get through the board meeting in a timely fashion so we can all get home to watch them the game is on television on
002wciu so which is what is now 26 26 26. okay yep so we can all tune in and catch a lot of the game this evening and cheer for our North High men's basketball team so with that being said turn over to you all right so um I am standing in for um principal to bed tonight but she wrote something that I would like to for our two students that are here tonight representing Deca so Dr DeMent writes tonight we have North High students with us representing Deca Deca is unique because it lives in both the academic world and the extracurricular rule the club is designed for students interested in business and marketing and they get to compete with kids from all across the state I'd like to introduce Omni cower and Kate Peterson and
003the sponsor Mr Baca if he's here which I don't think he is but we will celebrate his gifts anyway to talk more about what Deca is how they compete in business and marketing and how has that benefited the students who participate in this amazing program so I'm going to turn it over to you and we're looking forward to hearing about what you have to say whenever you need the slides to advance just let me know I'll be your clicker and I'm a senior at North my name is Kate and I'm a sophomore at Downers Groveport and I'm also the vice president for our Downers Grove North chapter so DACA is similar to a business Club um the acronym stands for distributive education clubs of America and um it does a really good job at preparing
004us to become leaders and like future entrepreneurs and it helps us if we want to have future careers in marketing Finance Hospitality tourism and Entrepreneurship and it does a great job at having us um you know do public speaking thinking on the spot coming up with creative ideas and um efficiently explaining your ideas in a short amount of time and core values that the national Deca honors itself on are competence Integrity Innovation and teamwork and um but then Deca there's like individual events but there's also team events so that's where a lot of students can work on working with someone else to effectively show what project you're kind of communicate to the judge and whatnot sorry so why is it beneficial so it takes things that students learn in classroom and applies them to real
005world situations as well as it connects to the business field which is a huge industry and those students can take those skills it also encourages competition which is always fun amongst different students from different schools as well as kids from your own School it also allows students to become accountable in a professional manner and they gain skills in communicating with others public speaking which is a huge one managing projects and just expanding their Network overall and just to add on a bit with that like I know at North we have a huge business just like our class A lot of classes in it and a lot of students who do take it they really love Deca because it's like they can use the skills they learned in class somewhere outside of class and deca is
006a really good way that students can use the business curriculum taught at our schools to apply that somewhere else and another thing about the professionally responsible is like I learned a lot about how to dress professionally and like when you have to compete like how you're supposed to look and present yourself and that is something that the DECA judges do score you on so that's also something that um kids can learn about like how to even for the boys like a lot of them were learning how to talk um so that at the competition so um we do perform at the sectional State schools and there's over 40 different competitive events so um there's like within this club you everyone can find their own Niche and whatever they're interested in So within so there's four
007main categories there's entrepreneurship Finance Hospitality tourism um in marketing and then within those there's different types like within marketing they're Sports um you can like go into like travel and tourism or you can go into like Hotel lodging and management so there's different areas um that students can like go into there's also like automobile services or retail merchandising so whatever students are interested in there's like it's like um and then students also compete in Prison events I've done written events in the past see um so written events you can prepare before the competition and you write a 20 page paper um and for mine I got to research a local business I research Adorn 512 last year and then this year I researched a local um so I'm an auditorium in Westmont and those are
008also really beneficial for me and then at this sectional sectional competition is held in January in Rosemont and then the state competition we just had it last week that's also really beneficial because we got to stay overnight it was really fun like making new friends within our chapter but also like I've met a lot of people from schools so I really enjoy that as well and then last year I qualified for the national competition but I couldn't go due to like covet and all of that but uh that would have probably been a really fun experience so why should you join Deca I mean as our meet said but we get to travel which is always fun this year Nationals takes place in Orlando and next year it's in California and then the year after
009that it goes to Georgia so it circulates through those three places and as amnit said also you get to meet new people expanding your network is definitely one of the biggest things and you learn to step outside of your comfort zone because everyone's there for the same reason so there's so much to connect on and you can find similar people within your Niche and outside of your Niche and your career it builds your career you can put it on college applications it looks very good in college applications and you just get to explore things before you actually have to do them in the real world there's diversity and events as Amit said you get to compete in entrepreneurship marketing finance and hospitality and tourism and there's so many different ways that you can compete in
010those it's also very fun like I said we get to travel but also after fall leadership we get to go to Portillo's and that's always the kicker is right uh it's always fun going in there and all of our business attire we get a lot of stairs and it just helps students create um in like an appreciation for the ideas around them uh so yeah yeah um that just like was really been like I really like that we connected deck into the whole school because like in our school compared to a lot of other schools we don't have like the biggest club we have quite a few people I think we had like 70 or something this year which is a huge amount but not many people know about Deca like they're not as informed
011and some people might think like oh it's just a little business Club but like it's so much more than that and I think like Omni said having these different events to promote Deca really encourages kids to want to join the club this past weekend from Thursday afternoon to Saturday afternoon we had State and we did really well this year we had 11 students placed in top 10 and then we then we board students Place top four and qualify for the national competition um and uh uh it was really good this year uh we did it like compared to last year we didn't score last year we didn't score very high but this year we did really good as a group um and it's like we all had a great time like um before we were
012a lot of us were preparing for the exam so there's a random exam and then there's the role play so we were all preparing that together and it was just like great to see how we like all came together and placed really well at state yeah um my experience with Deca my favorite memory would be um this past weekend in the hotel we had a lot of fun I remember those three other girls um we did a lot of fun activities and we were watching like Netflix in the hotel room between our events um and then there's like we all had like events during the day so that was that was like the stressful time kind of but then during our downtime we had a lot of fun um and then I've done Deca for
013the past four years um and I've had like um I remember my freshman year uh Deca state was on March 12th um 2020 so right they canceled the field trip right before that and then sophomore year we um we did video role plays um so my Junior and Senior year were a lot more fun where we got to stay in the hotel and I did a lot more of the social aspect of deca so I really enjoyed that and um it's impacted me to learn how to be like more professional and um like public speaking um with the role plays there's like the time crunch so like how to effectively um explain um like as quickly as possible and try to get your message across uh so my favorite memory had to be State last
014year because it was my freshman year and I didn't really know much about Deca because our sectional competition got canceled so we basically just got full ride to state which was really fun but nerve-wracking because now instead of competing with just a few schools you're competing with the entire State and I was one of the only sophomore or freshman girls and it was really scary because I didn't know anyone and that was it was fun for me because and now I have I have friendships that I never thought I would have um I also got to make friends with the upperclassmen like Omni um so that was always fun and since I'm a sophomore this is my second year in Deca and it's impacted me just by building connections like I said meeting new people
015and stepping outside in my comfort zone it really helped me just honestly I when I'm at Deca I'm a completely different person than I am when I'm with other people because I these people understand like what I like and I can talk with them about that and there's so many different ways to connect with people throughout that's that's all for today any questions for for our students you guys did great yeah yeah that's great thank you what are your what are your what is your biggest area for each of you know you're you're uh you're a senior meet right yeah so are you either going to enter the business world or study business I'm interested but um I feel like Deca has prepared me in like like there's like the there's a difference between like
016classroom instruction and then having that like um participate like actively participating in something outside of school so deca's like prepared me to understand like how it would play out in the room and then what's your favorite area because I know you're a sophomore so it's a little early for you to make a decision well I what's your favorite area so far so both of my brothers both one of them's a junior at Western Michigan University and he's majoring in sales and he has an internship in Kellogg's and my other brother is a senior at Downers Grove North and he wants to become an entrepreneur so I kind of was surrounded by that business aspect like growing up and I fell in love with like marketing and real estate I like I've always wanted to go
017into the real estate industry and I know that sales and marketing has a big impact with that so something I that's something I want to pursue when I'm older I've always wanted to go to like Kelly School of Business at IU that's like my dream but we'll see if I make it there but I definitely think Deca helped me so much in finding like what I want to do and like what I love when you go to the state competition how does how does that work so are you are you you're interviewing or you're pres it's probably a lot of different things that are going on let me tell us just a little bit about your individual you know experience uh it's you know something kind of specific okay so um on Thursday after after
018a written exam so under each of those four categories there's like a cluster exam that's based on like basic business knowledge under that certain area so I was in Hospitality tourism so I had a Hospitality tourism cluster exam and that was like 100 questions in an hour um and it's like it's pretty much based on like uh business vocabulary and um how to like deal with customers in certain situations and stuff um and I feel like um some of the classes I've taken at North have helped me so they have to like rigorously study for that um and then on Friday um there's uh you're given a schedule of your role play time so you have to take do two role plays you're given any time from nine to five because they have so many
019kids um and then at that role play if you're an individual you're given 10 minutes to prepare and then a 10 minute presentation and then if you're a partner you do a 30-minute prep time and 15 minute presentation and then I also did the written event so I had my presentation prepared beforehand and then I gave that presentation on Friday and then um they also like in the evening they have um fun uh events they have like a DECA Banquet dinner it's like a formal dinner um and then at night they had a hypnotist show and we watched some of our classmates get hypnotized that was pretty entertaining um I got hypnotized my freshman year and then uh Saturday is like um pretty much it's like all Awards yeah so that's pretty much like the
020DECA schedule impressive very good all right well thank you for coming out congratulations [Applause] all right continuing with student reports who's first okay thanks again thank you so um last month there has obviously been a lot going on with like sports and different events and awards and um all across the board dgn has been excelling in so many different areas I could not fit it all on one page and I didn't want to be sitting here for more than maybe five minutes but um to start off like they mentioned Deca went to state which is a great achievement because there are so many individuals who join this year and it's great to see that although these clubs might seem small at first we're all like spreading the word and talking about it and including more
021individuals and just kind of creating that school Community where we're bringing in more people even though they might be shy or have little to none knowledge about those different clubs and also with that we also had our Varsity scholastic bowl placed second in our West Suburban Conference and following with sports our boys swim and dive team earns State medals and then also like today our basketball game which is a very big achievement and we're top top eight yes in state and I know so many people are there right now it's going to be so packed and so fun so it's gonna be great to see that later on and following with that there's also the our School Musical this weekend March 9th through the 11th called Chicago and I have so many individuals in the
022Fine Arts area have been working so hard and have been putting in so much effort I personally know my friends who are in pit band have been putting in several hours a day almost every single day just to make this performance amazing so it's going to be great to see how many people come to that and watch it and just things around the school many of our clubs are starting to honor like obviously women's history month and also we're going to have a huge amount for culture week and many clubs are also putting their ideas in for that there's nothing final yet but overall I know that's going to be amazing because usually we do something really big for these type of um like weeks trying to see um how we can represent specific groups
023in our community and then also this week another big thing is our pretty and purple fundraiser fashion show which is going to be so much fun I'm going to be excited to see how that goes usually it's one of our biggest events because we raise so much money and the booster club obviously helps with that and we have so many individuals coming out to have a little fun and show off their little modeling skills and everything like that and lastly I just wanted to say although like I personally know since I'm a senior there's like the senior right is going on but I've seen so many people still put in so much effort throughout our school and students are still trying so hard to keep pushing and getting their grades to be at the at
024the fullest potential as they could be and it's just amazing seeing how our community is still growing and putting in their best effort all right um at South we just had our Winter Dance which is really fun because like students can dress up and all dance together and just have fun for the weekend and it had the most attendance in school history so a lot more people have come out so that was really fun to bring that back before Kelvin um we also have our orchest show coming up which is always really nice I went to it last year and it was so good just seeing all the dancers um create their own dances and perform a show we also um I need to give a shout out to the girls gymnastics team for winning
025State that's a huge accomplishment and I've seen so many pictures and know people on the team and it's just like so I'm so proud of them for doing that because that is a huge thing for our school and then we are celebrating respect week next week which is just a week to tell every student that they belong at South and just build our community I know last year we had a table with a bunch of stickers to give out to students and just games during lunch periods and in the Commons just raising respect and making sure that everyone's just continuing to be kind to one another and then this past week we had our snowball event combined with North which is always a fun event for people to attend and get to know not only
026people at their own school but people at North as well and I know a lot of my friends went and they loved the DJ part of it and just dancing at night so again was filled with a lot of fun and then other than that we're just trying to get through the last three weeks before spring break I do I do know the senioritis has been kicking in for me at least so I'm just trying to get through these past three weeks other than that we have a lot to look forward to it all right okay moving on thank you both staffing recommendations all right so I'm going to turn this over to Rob all right everybody um before I get started on this I just want to remind the board this machine of figuring
027out how to do Staffing for next year starts in January with students requesting courses um we're still in the Weeds on sorting all of that out but that will come to you at the business meeting in two weeks but there's really two parts to that there's the part of courses that are selected by students and how we staff those courses and then there's this other section of Staffing that isn't tied to those course selections but are areas that we've identified our needs for additional Staffing in the district so on the page here on the memo that I wrote for you are the ones that are outside of that sectioning process needs that we have so I'll go line by line with you uh the first one up there is we've recognized that as special services
028program and needs have grown the demand on our department chairs has also grown uh to the point that most of their role right now is managerial and tasks and so the instructional leadership part has been forced to be pushed to the side because they're trying to keep up with all of the work that's there so Scott is working with our special services chairs and our principals to identify some release periods in the form of FTE that we could have some of our other staff who are aspiring to move into leadership roles take on some of those managerial tasks off of the department chairs so that way the department shares have more time in their day to be able to lead and and push the department forward so what we have right now preliminary is 0.8
029FTE but again they're working through those details right now to to figure out which roles and and which responsibilities are going to shift to that we'll have a final number in two weeks of what that FTE is going to be but right now we're at a 0.8 wrap for this and for the next when you say like point eight or one yeah north and south or is that a total of 0.8 yeah so this is District 29.8 or this is District wide right okay so that division right now is a 0.4 at each campus but we're evaluating whether that's what we what the real need is uh once we look at all those duties and responsibilities that would shift over so you're anticipating one person to do part-time itself and part-time at North correct yep
030and the same with the um path coordinating path is a little different so path is a little different yeah uh we currently have the the staff in place for path coordinator right now uh but at each campus at South it's 0.6 FTE and it's 0.4 FTE at North uh for this one what we've learned over the past year is that we really need that employee in there full time to fully implement this path program with fidelity uh so right now what uh the staff who are in there the certified staff who are in there is part of their day is in path and coordinating it and part of it is teaching classes and that disruption in their day of Shifting over to classes uh and leaving the program but having a support staff member there
031is is not helping for us to fully implement the path program so this is a net new position for special services like back up to the top yeah um how old is Santa line like their other room Department chairs where they be you know yes a really good question when you look at the number of teachers that the special services department chair is responsible for and all of the support staff they're essentially running their own mini schools so it's far greater than what a normal regular department chair has responsibility yeah we probably wouldn't be able to support that no no there's no need in the other department S I mean South has like 17 yeah it's like 17 or certified staff um with all the evaluations and and that work is like where I was
032mentioning you're kind of in the managerial part of it and it's like the stuff that we need to work on in terms of structural looking at our programming we we do it's hard to it's hard to get to it so it's like 17 more teachers at South in that department versus our next largest Department which is English plus I don't know how many support staff for supporting special edu itself I mean yeah I'd have to get the numbers that I mean we have I think in the district support staff we have like over 75 support staff like paraprofessionals that are just being managed by our specialized chairs so okay and one of the things we'd like to do next year is evaluate Scott's going to lead the charge with that team at looking very closely
033at some of our instructional programming with our chairs but if we're going to have them take on that leadership in program evaluation of our instructional programming we need to take some things off of their plate to make space for that work to happen so this is what we're looking at to try to make that work I think I think it's good to tell him that discussions on it yeah I understand right yeah and then the bottom three there are all related to t99 and the growing of the t99 program uh the first one is uh we'd like to create another Lea position but it's specifically 14.99 to assist Lisa with the out placement um so that would be a district outplacement coordinator when she came in there weren't as many as there are now and
034so that just keeps growing and growing and growing we also have a need for an additional teacher based off of the projections that Scott has so that's the second to the last line and then also the services needed another 0.4 FTE for a speech language pathologist to be over there at t99 so we have growing special education needs across the district Scott's I asked him to pull some data for you tonight as we talk about this so let me share with you yeah so like t99 um currently this year has 60 students right around 60 and we're going up to a little bit over 70 next year for the school year so there's where the teacher ask is on the line item there and then we're actually going up but roughly 10 every year after
035that until we Peak out at 90 to 100 so another reason why we're building onto the building to accommodate that so we will be you know down the road for another staff member to manage and support all the students and then in the buildings I pulled numbers from 2020 for North 220 special ed students and at um if I could read with my glasses 288 so from 220 to 288 next year the north is looking to bring back our directive programming which supports our students with emotional disabilities years ago we were running low numbers in that so we kind of moved away from that and we were using Sal's program but there's enough students to support that and and the increase obviously is over 60 students from 2020 to now and then at South where
036we were at in 2020 333 students and we're at 356 this year and a lot of the next year is we're adding another classroom for our multi-needs so our multi-needs numbers are going up which will then eventually feed into t99 so it kind of all is you know working together there to support those numbers so so this is a little preview you're seeing some of this in what we call the below the line the non-tied to section the sectioning process of FTE but those numbers are a kind of a Prelude to what you're going to see in the above the line around sectioning when we come back in another couple of weeks in growing enrollment in our special education programs so this kind of dovetails with what you'll see the next time we present our
037projections for that growth are based on um looking at enrollment yeah where the theater yeah so for a special one yeah we're we're how how are we projecting that we're 10 more 10 more 10 more peaking at night oh at t99 because there are current students now remember t99 is grades 18 through 22. so you can look at how many enrolled freshman year and then where they'll be assuming they stay with us which they tend to do uh what those numbers will be how many actually stay for all uh so there's there's like six years six years ago up to six years okay so it's great it's nine through twelve and then for two to three years depending on their age age 22 is what they can stay with us until what was your question
038so I was just I mean I know some some students choose not to go through the entire program before their I don't have that exact number but honestly the number is really low they they all usually go to transition so we're looking at how many students we have right now in the when do they start transition planning as part of the IEP well I mean it starts it actually starts in eighth grade usually for most students it's like 14 and a half of age um so transition to ninth grade through then all the way through t99 so part of the individual is the education plan is transition planning Scott that starts at age 14 and a half at that point you're starting to build a plan for post High School graduation planning that transition between
039high school and life yeah so that window right there is our t99 program so at age 14 they're already building in expectations of what's going to happen at t99 post-graduation so it's it's somewhat easy for now that's you know Revisited every three years in whatever your totality but every year we touch base on that so um you know it's pretty easy to project out if we've been has there been a trend in terms of uptick of of of people moving into District that need the services you know I mean my my theory on this is District 99 and down herself years ago used to be the hub for all the DuPage County for uh special ed programming in like the multi-needs area I didn't know that yeah and so I I think I mean I
040get calls all the time being like yeah we we're moving into the area where our child's going to be in fifth grade or third grade we want to get to Downer south or downers North for for the programming um so I think we've just we're just kind of a hub for for it and we Pro you know we provide great support the board is always supported absolutely programming it is it's huge but I mean it's great Services that's the right thing to do and then right right and we always look at those numbers and bringing back students from outplacements and yeah you know it does ebb and flow like next year I know is the outplacement's going to be larger but you know it just is what it is it's you know yeah the service
041that we do so next year's board might might be looking at some additional yeah we'll probably yeah there's some more requests okay yeah okay any other questions thanks Scott all right um the next item I'm gonna have uh Jeff and Scott share a little bit about last Friday's uh Institute day that was while everybody engaged in news today across the district however we ran kind of our own conference for our support staff members uh on Friday uh Jeff and Scott put a lot of work into this with other administrators across the district and I'll let them share a little bit of what went into it thank you Hank and uh as uh he mentioned this was a you know kind of a great opportunity so you know how did we get here um last few
042years since I've been the District Scott and I have worked with kind of co-chaired a support staff professional learning committee and uh I know it's Maria Giorgio is here she's the current SSA president and is always a willing participant it helps us lead that committee as well so I would consider a co-chair as well um and so it's really a very nice collaborative group um as I said we have Scott and I are on there Ken Nomar also make appearance on the committee to help us out as well and there's a sort of a stable if you will or a bunch of support staff who come in a few of them come in pretty regularly some make it every once in a while but Maria is great about making sure that we have SSA Representatives
043so that when we are having these discussions about everything that it's a you know it's a collaborative meeting and we're discussing and hearing ideas from the people who were looking to uh impact um you know some of the things we've done we've did a fairly big survey a little over a year ago uh checking on the interests and needs of the support staff and we try to tailor that sort of line with District initiatives so we're kind of steering them say here's the things the district's working on what are some needs and goals you have that sort of fit into that very nicely so that we can kind of make sure our meeting needs of our staff while also meeting needs of the district next one yep please um so just real quick just to
044give you a peek at this uh this is I know it's hard to read but this is just the schedule that we put together um for everyone we started today at about seventh in the morning we were truncated a little bit we were supposed to go till three but you'll if you could see that you'll see it it says 1 30 that was with the impending weather so we were you know safety precaution there um but we were able to still have our full morning plans which we uh had three different keynote speakers that we brought in uh for our support staff focusing on a few different topics that are of importance to the district um they had there we also had some kind of little breakfast they had a chance to network meet folks
045from across the district that they normally wouldn't interact with there was also lunch provided again with that same purpose of giving a chance to have those professional conversations about what they just experienced with their normal colleagues as well as the folks that they see don't see on a regular basis I should say and we had some afternoon sessions again tailored toward some of the feedback that we had from staff that these are things that they would like to know more about so a little more in our keynote speakers this really in a lot of ways was kind of I guess a highlight for us we wanted to really present this day as Hank said you know um all of our teachers were doing various things on this instance today and they get to always participate
046in really nice professional professional development with high quality things going on so we said to ourselves well we really want to take this opportunity you know a calendar presented this opportunity on the third here where we had this time we could create a day for our support staff and give them a really top-notch professional professional development day so we brought in you know well-known uh well well recognized speakers in each of their areas Mr J Shannon who actually has done some work with our Deans in the district already on restorative practices so he shared some of that information with the support staff Dr Don Parker who specializes in equity training I'm a former CPS administrator I'm sorry yeah he was uh also and also CPS I believe so he's got some good experiences he was
047able to share a lot of practice on how to engage and interact with students and with equity in mind and then Dr Allison Jackson who spoke on trauma-informed practices which of course is ever important now as we still you know dealing with a lot of things coming out of the pandemic and people's emotional and mental States and and how can we best support our students and ourselves with regard to that so three really great presentations uh that were in the morning so we had every the group was divided up into three groups and they rotate through all three of these presentations throughout their morning and so next few slides are just some pictures so here's uh Jay's presentation um he was really excited about the keftorm space specifically because he wanted to have very interactive
048things going on so you see him there interacting with staff and the right on the left he's got the circle of chairs or he's bringing staff down to kind of model and simulate something having conversations with students and staff around restorative practices uh Dr Don Parker was in the studio theater and uh he you know while these two couple pictures didn't capture that but he did a lot of things where there's a lot turn talk with the with each with their partners and things and going through um you know what were things that you can encounter with students he touched a little bit I thought was really powerful on the percentages of students who are dealing with situations that are difficult for them and you know how the Outreach and make sure we're teaching or
049treating them equitably uh builds relationships and helps make students be more successful so that was good and then Dr Allison Jackson again lots of really great feedback on her presentation staff really learned a lot and there's some really great discussions where staff were even then kind of you know examining what had gone on in their lives over the past couple years and reflecting on that so we heard some really good feedback and conversation about her presentation as well so three really awesome top-notch speakers we got in for our support staff that morning give them again a really sound professional experience and so here's just some other just some photographs of the day our support staff uh I'm gonna take the opportunity here just kind of talk about I know Scott and I've talked about some
050of the feedback we've just gotten informally at this point lots of uh positive responses people were excited about the day felt like they learned a lot that there was a lot of value in it so that was great to hear um so yeah so the afternoon sessions uh we had a few different things going on so there was stopped the bleed which was related to First Aid that was a continuation for a lot of our paraprofessionals from some professional training that had happened early in the year where they had some things that just couldn't all be done in one day um we had summer ad assistants uh had interest any Finance which was one of the platforms we use so dree was gracious enough to facilitate a session on that for us East school again
051another platform we use frequently here in the district a lot of our admin assistants use that and Colleen Daley Jim struck and Vicki miles stepped in uh stepped up I should say and in to uh for that training for our staff in those sessions so I got a chance to walk around and see that going on and they were fairly small groups so it was nice to see it be pretty interactive actually talked with Colleen a little bit today and she was really excited about some of the things she was able to do and what we were talking about what are some things maybe going forward to to reinforce what was done or give people more opportunities to connect with questions and things they want to learn about for those folks or some folks or
052maybe those two weren't really germane to what they do so we also offered some self-guided Google Suite training which is pretty comprehensive anything anything you want to know about Google you can click on it it kind of walks you through a practice module so you can get more familiar with that that's one of those things that always comes back to us it's like we want to learn more how to do this with Google how to do that with Google and since it's the basis for so much of what we do it makes sense that we try to help them out with that our security team engaged in some emergency response training with their group and our Tech Team also did some in-house training around various Tech issues regarding technology in the afternoon as well so
053as I said a little truncated so not everybody got to do everything that we had planned but everyone was busy and got something worthwhile out of that afternoon so in terms of what's next we're about to send out feedback survey about these sessions we also a couple questions about some of the things that happened early in the year a couple times that we did some PD for them just trying to get a overall temperature for how they thought things went and what they want to see happen in the future and any other feedback they have so as we're looking to the Future how can we uh you know further enhance what's going on in terms of the learning for our support staff again the focus is trying to continue this momentum and hopefully continue providing
054them with high quality professional development at every opportunity that we have I think one of the things that kind of come came from our committee discussions um I think Maria and Scott use that a lot of times support staff you know they feel like they are you know kind of second tier sometimes the teachers and what's provided for them and we really want to make sure that our support staff feels like that they are you know unequal footing that we appreciate them and we have a vested interest in their development in making them uh the best they can be because not only does that benefit them but obviously a lot of them especially the parapros are the people who have most direct contact their students sometimes we want to make sure that they are as
055equipped well equipped as possible to do the work they need to do and also you know this is a great option we see is you know providing that high quality professional development in a day like today kind of showcase that and leverage that as a retention tool for the staff we currently have and also as a recruiting tool as we still do have openings in our support staff ranks that we're trying to fill is trying to create an environment that is attractive so people say hey here's what my here's what my district does District 99 you got you should come check us out I know your District doesn't do anything like that um and so we kind of want to do it because we I just spent the problem this last week at like five
056different job fairs for certified staff and the things that people come up and they already know about our district and how excited they are about things they've heard that we're doing centered around our certified staff and what happened what you can do for teachers um you know Robin I've talked about so we're going to try and generate that same kind of buzz and excitement for support staff to help us again retain and then Recruit new people to fill all those positions so um yeah that was a little encapsulation of the day overall I think very successful so we're all pretty happy this is great about what percentage of support staff came was it 100 yeah it was a paid day we just about everybody who did yeah we had a good number I mean we
057did have some I mean you know like any type of thing when there's a Friday or whatever you know there were some people who calls like we had very good attendance yeah great yeah couple of Staff helping out snowball as well but overall you know it was like a normal work day yeah I love the idea of you know using this as a as a tool for retention and recruiting I mean yeah you're always what what the best way to to attract you know great people is to take care of the great people we have and other people will recognize that well done great yeah the only thing I'll I'll add to this is uh in recent past Institute days used to be just teachers and then we started inviting support staff particularly our 36
058weekers that their their work calendar is usually they come to work when students are in session but our August Institute days we started inviting them to the Institute days so they could hear the same messages on some of those Institute days um and then when we had late start Mondays before our hybrid block we were inviting them to learn with the teachers on some of those late start Mondays uh and then this is the first year where they were there for uh our August into two days they were there in January for our Institute days with our teachers so we we reached a point where we're like okay now all adults are learning together at the same time uh and then Jeff and Scott said what if we took it one step further what if
059we created an Institute date just for them so they didn't feel like yeah this is a day that they're tagged on that's really for the teachers it's a day specifically for them so the two of them worked their tails off and got a bunch of feedback and and put this together and um High reviews so high that Julie saw the agendas and Julie said can I go and learn with everybody so Julie participated in the sessions also great thank you so much conference yeah thanks thank all your folks for coming of your professional development I mean that would be a real a real point for me in finding a job in a school I have to say yeah because I used to always kind of complain about the quality of the professional development when I
060was working because I always felt it was geared more to the teachers and not to particular area that I served you know yeah that's why they planned this day I really like to be powerful and then they can tell their friends right like yeah yeah some work in District 99 yes yeah great so that's really good thank you thank you thank you thank you all and thank you folks for coming no visitors we'll move on to uh closed session uh we need a motion 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 educational setting or specific volunteers of the district or legal council for the district including hearing testimony on a complaint lodged against an employee
061a specific individual who serves as an independent contractor in a park recreational educational setting or a volunteer of the district or against legal counsel for the District of determined Civility and Collective negotiating matters between the district and its employees as or their representatives or deliberations concerning salary schedules for one or more classes of employees and litigation when an action against acting on or behalf of the district has been filed in this pending before court or administrative tribunal or when the district finds that an action is probable or imminent in which case the basis for the finding shall be recorded and entered into the minutes of the closed meeting and I shall therefore say so moved second Mike Michael moves I think sure I'll beat you okay that's fine I don't care thank you as long
062as we might go report aye Fuller aye Denny hagstrom aye Terry pavasich aye Joanna Vazquez Drexler aye Christian Espinoza aye and Nancy cupka hi we'll be going into closed section session we will only be um adjourning then when we return to open session no reaction tape actually action's taken later tonight thank you so much quick break and then we'll come back together wonderful