001600 it's called order we're good yes Mike Davenport here Christopher Espinoza here I'm sure all Fuller so I'm sorry absolutely Jenny hagstrom here Craig pavisage here Joanna Vice coach Drexler here Nancy here and Caitlin Vincent here we have core 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 thank you okay all right I'm gonna enjoy the perspective by Arwen up that working there's more seats in here and we really don't bite and of course comes to worst we've got two seats up here good evening um Arwen lip principal at South High it is my honor tonight to introduce our December student perspectives we have a group of students who partnered
002with adults um and that's intentional because they planned our first ever intergenerational learning Workshop I'm not going to steal all their Thunder because they'll walk you through it but essentially um you're aware that on our block days our staff participate in professional development during that resource period and our students um own kind of their own experience during resource whether they want to take advantage of programming we offer or if they feel like that's time they need to use on their own but we took um two of those dates in November and had an intergenerational learning experience where our staff and our students learned right alongside each other so I'm going to introduce our group of adults and students who planned it they are our change makers so come on in you stand right here by
003the mic because I pulled it down for me and the floor is yours just tell me when you need me to advance slides for you I think we're ready I'll be your clicker I well um we're here at the Sarah bar intergenerational uh learning workshop and we actually have a short video to show uh I'm a senior um I'm Hannah rodak I'm also a senior I'm Catherine havalusa I'm also a senior I'm Julia arjayo and I'm a junior I'm not the Chavez and I'm also a junior and these are our lovely sponsors [Music] and I'm one of the Librarians at South in a change maker sponsor good evening I'm Val vettry school counselor at South and also a change maker sponsor now the video right the video no sound good sound very technical difficulty should
004be going on nope kind of reassuring to know other people have problems with this stuff too yeah I know it's not just me after all make sure it worked out Easier Said hey [Music] students had the opportunity to attend a change maker Workshop during this Workshop we learned that stories Inspire empathy and empathy drives change we had such a great experience and one of our favorite activities was something called a mini story exchange it was a powerful activity to exercise our empathy muscles and allowed us to connect with new friends to understand life from another perspective then in 2021 we partnered with another organization called narrative four and became trained facilitators of story exchange narrative 4 believes that if you share today you can change tomorrow today we want to invite you to participate in
005a story Exchange in order to build more connections between students and staff at dgs like we do at madash we encourage you to take a positive risk and get involved and today you get to do just that by sharing one of your stories outside of courage in an open mind the only thing you need to bring is a story from your life that you are willing to share we asked that before we began sharing that we all create this cherish your partner's story and live truth be ready to repeat your partner's story back to them in first person with a genuine heart here's how the mini story exchange is going to work today each student will be partnered up with a staff member partner one will tell their story while partner 2 listens intently we
006will pause take a breath and switch so that partner two can tell their story partner two will tell their story to partner one while partner one listens intently we will pause take a breath and think about how that felt next partner one will repeat partner two's story back to them in first person as accurately as possible with a genuine heart pause take a breath and think about how that felt think about how it felt to tell the other person's story and how it felt to hear your story now we will switch partner two or repeat partner one story back to them in first person as accurately as possible with a genuine heart while partner one listens intently think about how it felt to tell the other person's story and how it felt to hear your
007story now that you have heard the process we are going to share the story exchange prompt for today today our prompt is describe a memorable day you had as a student remember each of us is made up of countless stories but during our time together we would like for you to share just one story from your life just as a reminder The Prompt today is about a memorable day you had as a student before we get started sharing our own stories with each other today we just want to share with you a few of our positive perspectives from participating in story exchange with my name my story and narrative four understanding other people's stories helps to inspire empathy in our school community and helps us to be patient with one another I think the biggest
008takeaway I have from story exchange is that it's cherishable it lets me understand the different passions and identities that people go through in their life and I think it brings the school a more Equitable diverse and a place where we can make connections thank you one key takeaway I had from the story exchange was that you might not know what other people experience and sharing my story and listening to my partner's story helped me empathize with them and connect with them and the school as a whole learning about how they have come a long way as a person and how they have matured as one and two and now our first dgs student and staff story exchange begins with you [Music] foreign [Music] exchange that we did a few weeks ago um in front of
009the students and staff in the library but before that as we touched on in the video we had other story exchange experiences over the past few years specifically since our freshman year us three so Hannah and I just want to talk about our first change maker leadership day which was in 2019 with an organization called my name my story and that's when we were first introduced to the story exchange model which you saw demonstrated in the video where you share your story and then you get it repeated back to you by the person that you told it to in the first person so Hannah do you want to talk about your experience my experience with my name my story was very positive coming into school as a freshman I wasn't sure how I would fit
010into the school community and how I would be able to make those connections but being able to sit down with my peers people who were the same age as me freshmen people who were upperclassmen like Juniors or seniors and being able to share a story that was authentic to me and true to who I am and hearing it repeated back seeing that people could empathize with my story and empathize with who I am was a very like powerful experience for me especially as a freshman and it helped encourage me to just feel connected to the school Community as a whole that I wasn't just like one student in a sea of the 2000 some kids we have at school I was really connected to the Greater Community of dgs okay so um I was a
011freshman um in 2020 sorry I was a friend oh Jesus I'll just hold it um so I was a freshman in 2020 and this was when we had school on zoom and so going in the freshman year it was definitely very nerve-wracking for me because I didn't really know what to expect um and I felt like I was also kind of missing that connection piece that you would usually have when you're in person with your peers and your teachers so this experience on this exchange was definitely a very positive experience for me as well um I knew I know that um I came from a private school so I didn't really know many people but having this experience kind of allowed me to connect with other people and I also realized that you kind of
012have like that um going into like high school you have that vision of like all the other all the older students are gonna like Bully you and like all those things but going to this exchange it really helped me realize that everyone at dgs and like at school is always really nice and um having this exchange kind of helped me open my eyes to that and so 2021 we had um our story exchange certification and uh I was upperclassmen and change makers we actually just LED our own uh Star Exchange and it was really great being like a junior and just like opening up freshmen and you know getting more comfortable with the school uh hearing their stories and like you know hearing it from like the first uh person from like another person um
013it's just like you grow like a like a bond like really fast um and then seeing them in the hallways is just like amazing and it just kind of brings out all our barriers um for new students and also during our 2021 story change it was like I felt more confident after that like that exact story and change because it was like it was mostly like a two on two conversation and it was better because you could actually like talk to the person and it was more like I felt more confident with like with my partner because I knew that like that they were actually listening and like I knew that like that they would also understand like from what a person is coming from so yeah [Music] so that brings us to the storage
014days that we're here to talk about where we did during our resource periods as miss explained to you guys and it was a really awesome experience we weren't sure how many students we would get to come because obviously all the teachers were there but that was something we're kind of nervous about getting enough people but there were a lot and it was really a cool experience to be sitting in a circle with a group of other teachers I think it was eight in a group and my personal experience it was me and my friend and six other teachers and then we each kind of split up and took a few and then more people came and it was really cool I was in a group with my math teacher and the director of the play
015I was in at a time so it was a different experience being that I knew the people I was talking to but I also didn't so it was it awesome experience for me to share my stories with them and them to share stories with me and not just the usual level that I see them with and I'm definitely more comfortable in class talking to my teacher now I love seeing my play director in the hallway and other teachers that were my group I feel like normally faces that would just walk by me or people I know and I've got to share something with um yeah I agree um like just the connections that you build with people that like you normally you don't have to like uh look up to and like being put down
016on like a to like eye level and doing like a story from even like even though like I didn't know the teacher at the time uh like building like that strong connection um and like hearing like a deep personal story um really just broke down like a lot of walls and um it's just like it just feels like a lot more comfortable walking around the hallways and seeing like other members like the staff that you've never met before one thing that I really liked about this experience is that I got to connect with former teachers that I've had throughout my four years at dgs I feel like that's something that we don't really get to do that often unless you have that teacher again or you see them frequently before or after school so it
017was really nice for me to like sit in a circle with a lot of my former teachers and catch up with them they all asked how I'm part of the dance team they all asked how the dance team was doing this season and it was nice to know that they had like remembered individual things about me and remembered me as a student and I also remember things about them as a teacher and just getting to reconnect with them and like Forge those bonds again was really like meaningful for me um I also had a positive experience doing this um I was with a teacher that I didn't know at the time and it's really nice getting to know others other teachers because again like if you're not in their class you don't ever get to
018know them um so getting to know like the other people in our community is always a good it's always um good because I feel like it really builds that sense of community and like they all said I really feel like um we built like more of a sense of community and I feel a lot more comfortable I mean to be honest it was like I mean cookie was like a good thing right like like I would go like just you know but like to be honest like I I feel liked it because it was also a a 1v1 like a one-on-one conversation with the teacher that you probably didn't even know or talked to before and just just like talking to them and like it makes like your own like perspective different um people because
019I mean I something like I'm like oh like he looks mean like but but like to be honest like I would like actually I would enjoy talking to like every teacher to be honest because every single one have has a different like perspective yeah that's true so um you know Miss galon and I will speak together in this one um you know overall we had a very positive experience from staff uh we had one staff email us and that was the quote that we put on the slide here um for the most part it was really a meaningful activity for our staff to engage with students outside of instructional time that's really what this came down to we focused so much on instructional professional development which is absolutely important but the other aspect of social
020emotional development and having that time to connect having a human interaction that's meaningful and also vulnerable you know it puts our students not only in a very you know kind of uh not not precarious situation but being able to talk to an adult and just share a life experience I think is uh easy to relate to so hopefully we broke down some barriers and I think it was overall positive experience yes I think we had had the opportunity to observe the students at their original training we participated at the second training so we kind of knew like this is a powerful moment um and we had a great show in students I think at one moment one of the sessions we had more students and staff members I was like yes they can tell me
021it was great and we knew like it's going to be powerful we chose one quote but all the feedback teachers really valued like getting just to exchange their story and realize that maybe we are you know separate by a number of years the experiences are still the same and we connected as humans foreign first of all great presentation yeah yeah great and I love the acting so I'll think about it but did you have a theme to focus the conversation or could you talk about anything it was a like a positive memory you shared about school okay um so like for staff like when they were in school or even like now Mike did your phone yeah I was going to ask if uh there were any I imagine there were some sort of like
022aha moments right where it um seems to me uh there well especially with uh social media and the way things are these days uh people judge each other based on a few opinions or a few comments or a few actions and they really don't know the person right and and by getting to know each other better we at least maybe have a better perspective as to why somebody feels the way they do or acts the way they do or what have you I'm wondering were there any did you go into this with any preconceived notions about somebody else that after hearing their story it made you think of them or think of who they are and how they are a little differently than what you did before yeah um back when we were doing the
023um uh in 2020 oh my God the certification all right 2021. um I was with a student or a period that like I knew and they were like they're a pretty shy person um but like you know like you don't know why and um after that they told me their story um about coming out and joining like theater and stuff uh like then you know like I learned like why they were like so they had like so many laws of them were so cautious when talking to me um originally like because I've had them like in class before but um now I know and now like it's like it's really cool for the Show excellent yeah yeah very cool I have another testimony to share from this year's cookies and conversation I was paired with
024a teacher who's very outgoing and very energetic and like one of the reasons that she shared with me is that she had this amazing teacher when she was in high school that had like the same energy and that is what inspired her to become a teacher and bring that energy so it was really it was a nice story for her to share and really interesting to like hear why she wanted to teach and why she went into the profession awesome and then what did you have to do to get the certification we just uh like participate like we we led the experience uh we had um like two other like underclassmen and a group of four uh we were actually meeting our group four together we it was awesome um we had like a great
025sign our energy of the group was just great um so we just had to like lead that and um yeah if I could add on to that so uh we did this about a year ago it was a full day training we did bring in uh narrative four which is this International Organization I think at the time we were probably the largest and longest training they've done for a school and they've worked with some schools in the area with students people yeah so we were really fortunate um and the interactions were far longer than the cookies and conversation interactions so it was a very lengthy activity a lot of practice with empathy so yeah I think Kai's downplaying kind of the intensity of the training but yeah a lot of work our world needs a
026lot more of this so congrats to all of you training we had a different modules and then actually going through the experience we all walked away with a certificate and I got to bring staff to be pretty cool it'll survey all your life yeah being able to facilitate yeah yeah it's an art well being able to listen is is really an important skill in being able to tell your story to understand why it's important for you to tell your story too right absolutely So yeah thank you thank you because I just wanted to say thank you to them too and one of the things that struck me about this um not to mention all the powerful people we talked about but and our five district values specifically about caring and belonging and it's a nice
027like Cadence and Segway for tonight we have you know our department chairs are here to present new courses and it's a nice reminder of that balance we strike between that caring and belonging along with providing that rigorous curriculum for our students so I just think they're helping all of us remember that Baseline of caring and belonging always has to come first at the heart of everything we do so I just want to say congratulations to all of you on YouTube Miss Martinez nice job thank you thank you okay student board member questions and comments who's up first okay um so to start off during the holiday season students at Downers Grove North have been starting to help the community in many different ways and to start off I'm not sure if everyone knows the organization
028called Toys for Tots and so we had a basketball game for the boys last Friday to help bring more people together and then bring unwrapped gifts and then also we have a basketball game for the girls tomorrow to help with the same organization and just make it a greater community and just getting people to join in and also with that there are several clubs at school who are also trying to help with donations during the holidays because we know it's a tough season for those people who can't afford it and so we have an organ we have a club called I will um which is collecting like holiday lights that people aren't going to use after the holidays and they're doing that up until January 13th which is giving some time after the holidays even
029then to collect lights that maybe aren't working anymore and then also we have um an empowerment club which is um doing this type of Drive where students are able to buy their own stockings and stuff them for children and then they donate it to children who are nearby in the community which is also really nice to see um for festivities in school I know we do a lot of activities during the holidays to support the students who got through the semester so we're doing our second annual gingerbread house competition and then throughout the week we have several days days where we have different things going on such as tomorrow we have gift cards being handed out for our coffee shop Wednesday we have hot chocolate being passed out to all the students and then Thursday
030I know we're setting up there's this very big inflatable snow globe where students are able to go inside and take pictures so that's definitely something great um two other things I want to say is that Downers Grove North does the mod Pizza on Ogden which is also a nice way to get students involved in the community and just raising more money and so that is going to be um December 13th which is tomorrow and then also we had the Mosaic which is a very big performance for our school for the holidays once again bringing everyone together I know I wasn't able to go because of track and I had other things to do but I saw tons of people going in there were elderly very young children and it was just a great thing to
031see over at South we also are in the holiday spirit we had our holiday plane I think it was last weekend and I didn't get to go to it but I have some friends who were in it and they said that every night was packed and sold out so that was just a fun thing to offer the community to start getting in the Christmas spirit um we had our cocoa in the Commons last Friday that was the last Friday that we had school so we had that again which is again was just staff and students connecting getting some free hot chocolate on your way to class best way to start the morning uh with finals coming up students are just like in their groove studying everyone's looking forward to Christmas break it's kind of been
032like a long semester but we've all made it through and I think uh we're all just looking forward to Christmas break a little no homework hopefully um and we've been uh our winter sports have been starting up so we had a few boys basketball games and this weekend for the girls basketball team is a big weekend we play North on Saturday so if you're looking for something to do this weekend South's hosting north um and just Athletics have been ramping up our teams have been pretty successful and we're just looking forward to continuing to making progress with um making changes to our new schedule and just adding new activities and resource like we've been doing in the second semester But ultimately it's been a good semester and we're looking forward to a break Luca where
033can we bring our um our lights that are no longer working I've got a few strings to bring here I'm sure they're going to be I know I know that of boxes and like little stations that say so or there's like a certain room that you can go to um for that club um but usually we do collect a lot I know that that's definitely been going on since I started in 2019 and um it's just great being able to see that people are willing to actually bring them in instead of just throwing them out and they're putting it to good to use mm-hmm and um will there be a reminder going to out to the staff that we don't want to see a lot of homework over Christmas break they're always because that was
034that was the uh that was the content yeah that goes out every year all right it'll be in tomorrow's message very good okay thank you ladies moving on um we need a motion for the Board of Education to approve the minutes of the November 21st 2022 business meeting and the December 5th 2022 closed meeting so moved second Terry and shrill I think aye aye Mr Espinoza all right and Nancy cup aye the minutes are approved okay um we would usually move on to the reception of visitors right now yeah we are we are but we have no slippers we have to do it before okay because it would be any comments about action items but we have no slips so okay we'll move right on to we're gonna move on to the consent agenda but
035yes um does any we're going to talk specifically though first about to the donations does any other member have anything else they want to talk about no well we've had two very lovely donations to our district and um one um glenberg who's a South High Alum is here with us today and he's representing the family of Carol Berg whose family made a generous donation to the Fine Arts Department of so I don't know if you want to do no I just wanted to thank the Berg family for their generous donation I know that our fine arts department will put all of these materials to work and I appreciate you being here tonight and supporting our students all right thanks sure yes please so that's very wonderful I know my mom you know Buster would appreciate
036it a little about who we are and why there's this connection it was the District 99 our family the bird family was one of the first 200 families in Woodridge and the house was built in 1959 in early 1960 went to school of Woodridge Edgewood Goodrich eventually at South I feel very old tonight listen I feel you I went to South 71 to 75. if you didn't live in the area or part of the school or the area at that time Dunham road was graveling Bottom road zigzagged all the way to 75th where the mall is where the White Castle on the other stores and restaurants are the mall used to be an Old Farm which for years and years was vacant before they eventually demolished it there were no homes to the south of
037Downer South we didn't have a pool I think we were the last year before the pool was built the big news was we got the new gym okay I've been study halls and free periods from my first year or two in trailers okay outside the school cafeteria I think we might have been the first or second year of open campus that was a thrill so that's the connection to the community I have a younger brother he went to South my mom God bless her was an artist she was a legal secretary in the city for many years a stay-at-home mom for a while decided to pursue Library science got an LTA from the College of DuPage who was one of the first Librarians at Morton Arboretum and because of her love for children I ended
038up becoming a children's librarian at the first Woodridge Library which was in a house moved to the second one down the block and did that for many years all the while I had this interest in art I brought a little biography that we framed and put in the house which I'll set out so people who might be interested to learn a little bit more about her but she did everything started out with charcoals watercolors acrylics oils she got into all kinds of different looks and so forth until she really got into collages which is pretty emotional stuff I wish you'd take pictures Dice stampings and all kinds of things so she passed unfortunately in 2019 of dementia my father lived to 98 he was still driving passed earlier this year in January so when he
039passed being the eldest of two sons the executive of the estate I got everything so I've been going through for the last 11 months 70 odd years worth of stuff my dad had taxes going back to 1947. okay he was a world Truth at the Battle of the Bulge played at Patton's funeral he had a very he's amazing man he's buried in the military cemetery down in Joliet but when he passed he said what are you gonna do with all the mom stuff or before he did I I said well I thought I'd donate it I got some ideas in mind so I shared the idea of doing that and he was thrilled so it's with the love of my parents their love of art because my dad was a photographer and we've accumulated all
040of these things I mean frames glass matting beveled mats must be close to a couple hundred mats all hand tools small power tools and so forth that the students I'm sure will just love and use for their their creativity so what better place than to give it back even my mom's and dad's love for children and my time at the community I thought we we do this when I went into the school and talked to Omar about it he said oh yeah we'll take it so in the last couple months we've been working through the details and I didn't know he was going to go through all of this but you know my folks my brother and I and the family the entire family my aunt my mom's younger sister is just thrilled that we're
041doing this so enjoy students enjoy thank you for the opportunity for us to give back we really appreciate it thank you thank you and thank you [Applause] I did I did want to also just um acknowledge that uh Beth I'm gonna mispronounce this Rankin runchkin also made a lovely donation for athlete recovery to the girls varsity soccer team hmm so with that we need a motion for the Board of Education to approve the consent agenda as presented which includes the Personnel report appointment Administration transfer position classified leave of absence classified appointment classified the Personnel report retirement certified retirement is classified the financial Pages the student tour the acceptance of the donation in honor of Carol Berg from the Burke family and the acceptance of donation from Beth friendship so moved second Mike and Mike and
042Joanna Mike Davenport aye cons moving on to the recommendations and reports of the superintendent I'll turn it over to Gina for our annual curriculum proposals for knows we come to you every December with title changes for courses as well as new course proposals I'm very excited as Arwin said we have many Department chairs with us tonight thank you for being here and they have worked tirelessly on four new course proposals and three title changes so we'll begin with each set of Department chairs coming up talking about their title change or their new course when they finish with their explanation the board can then ask questions and we'll let that set of Department chairs leave and the next set will come up and we'll continue till we've gone through all seven okay all right so we
043are going to begin with um our CTE Department chairs Patrick farty who is our CT department chair at South High School and Brian Vite who is our new well newer he's been here since August first time before first time in front of the board and he is obviously from Downers North so I will turn it over to them all right good evening everyone we'll start again just uh have a chance to let my counterpart here introduce himself in front of everyone uh my name is Patrick farty I'm the CTE chair over at Downer South oh thank you uh my name is Brian fight and I am the CTE department chair at Downers north thank you so I thought to myself first like do I just let the new guy throw him under the bus did
044you tell him did you tell them did you tell them about the initiation that we did there's none of that okay so um we have had a we have a course name change from we're hoping for this next coming year um for the last I don't know how many years at this point it's been um our keyboarding classes we knew it was called keyboarding lunch because of just some things ever changes in the district and it ran during specifically just during the Lunch Period and it was would take up the students resource period so they'd go to their launch for half the period and then they'd spend the other half the period instead of going to Resource they would take keyboarding and it would be a year-long commitment for the student and they would get
045their credit for keyboarding um but things have changed recently uh students now are able to have full period lunches which is great um but so what that's one of the reasons that we decided to go back to the idea of making it a standalone class um but the other reason why the course name change is that we are fortunate enough moving forward from this year is that keyboarding is a dual credit option for students and which I always think is interesting I tell everyone that they always look at me and they say keyboarding you're getting dual credit for keyboarding says sure are um and so our students now have the option to get that dual credit through Cod um through keyboarding which then they can hopefully use as often those colleges that will accept it
046for your University as a general elective credit there and uh they the class at COD is called keyboard technology so we wanted to honor the fact that students would know what course that they were earning credit from from Cod and since we didn't weren't going to call it keyboarding lunch anymore we figured it would make sense that we would call it keyboarding technology pretty straightforward very good all right thank you thank you thank you both you're welcome we have two course title changes coming out of Fine Arts specifically in music and we have our South department chair Jerry Lowry here to speak to us about them hi everyone Jerry Lowry uh finance department chair at South before I actually get started on that I'm really glad that Mr Berg is here um the information that
047was sent to Omar was then forwarded to me and I think he's understating how incredibly generous this donation is I looked and I like scrolled and then like there's another page and then I scroll it was like you know like hundreds and hundreds of items and I sent a copy of the list to my art staff to just say like hey you know these things are possibly being donated and like the excitement and you know the just pure joy that our staff was feeling because of what they'd be offered to their offered their students as a result of your generation generosity can't be understated so I just wanted to personally thank you and I'm glad that you're here tonight so um but we do have two uh name changes uh requests and um these are
048all in reflection of a couple of just philosophical things we're trying to do district-wide in the Fine Arts and one of those things is making sure that our students find tangible career Pathways within the Fine Arts and the other thing is to work on what we perceive as an exclusivity that happens in the Fine Arts where like well if you didn't do band in fourth grade like if you didn't do Orchestra in fifth grade it's really hard to find your voice in the Fine Arts when you want to because of just the systems that have been in place for many many years so these two core course name changes are a result of that the first one is digital music we decided that you know digital music not only is it not like a really
049common course offering at the Collegiate level it's also not a career pathway that many people can identify with like I'm a digital musician like what is that so the idea was like what they're actually doing in the classroom is producing music and one of the career Pathways Pathways that the students can really relate to is music production and uh from a long-term standpoint like music production one I already know of many dual credit opportunities within like all of it Nazarene where like you can okay you can get credit for music production on that level so it really does open a ton of doors for our students to be able to explore a tangible career pathway in the Fine Arts through music production um none of the like the the actual like resources in the classroom
050change they'll still get their workstation with the full desktop the keyboard the headphones and the microphone but everything else just the actual approach of the class is about finding the career pathway in music production so that's that one any questions about the music production no makes a lot of sense very cool that's great awesome awesome the second one is uh there was a class that was out maybe I guess it hadn't run since like 2011 it was called the singer's lab and I think it was sort of um I actually I can't even speak on it because it's kind of third person knowledge so just know there was a class that hadn't run since 2011. and um I have been trying to find a way what we had been trying to find ways to allow
051students to sing who made that may not enjoy the choir setting or may not enjoy performing publicly all like five times a year or ten times a year so or may not want the full setting they just want to individually sing or sing in small group or learn how to sing over you know produced music so the singer studio is now that um it is really literally I know I just walked through the Halls we all do when we hear kids that sing and it's like I love singing but I don't want to be choir so like what about singing and learning how to sing individually in different styles of music um you know rhythm and blues and pop and rock and things that they relate to and hear on the radio more day to
052day and the goal is that again we're just bringing as many kids to the Fine Arts whenever they're ready whenever they find a moment they need it okay this class is right now this is what I want to do um and then we may see increases in the choir program just through singers that have now found a little just yeah just a back road into it so um we're really excited about both of those course name changes and that's where they come from so um questions about any of those so this is multiple students though in the class not one student correct correct multiple students singing in multiple settings um and then you know sort of a big picture thing for me is music production and singer Studio collaborating on you know curricularly where the
053music producers are writing music and the singers and the singer Studio are performing them and then we are now we're talking music business there's so many different great things that can come of all that so but it starts with the name change it's really messaging right it's I mean it it says something about what you're wanting to accomplish in the class and if you don't have the right name you're not going to get students signing up yeah yeah that's really cool yeah yeah singers lab just always sounded kind of quirky to me so the singer studio is pretty cool so that was more today Thomas got to say I attended the concert sir it's Thursday and it was fabulous and I think there was a exhibit of the digital music right there was a component
054of the digital music what was really cool but I always love seeing that come together because it's all the things that I can't do second that yeah absolutely beautiful let's go into something like that yeah thank you very much thanks Jerry thank you okay all right thank you thank you thank you so those were the three name changes we'll now move to New course proposals the first one that's going to present is coming from our social studies department and we have our South department chair Chris Esposito and our North Department Junior Micro Center I knew there was no way tall guys with the mic stand no chance uh I'm Chris Esposito social studies chair at South um I'll start off by talking a little briefly about this new course that we're putting forward this is
055a course for our El Learners um the reason why we are putting this course forward is because we currently have Global Connections and U.S history for our El students however we don't have any place for our students those students to go junior senior year to fulfill the third year social studies requirement that we have to fulfill the new Civics requirement that the state put forth back in 2019 and to fulfill the consumer ad requirement so this is a course where we have an opportunity for kids now to be able to have the El supports that they need but also for you know their their entire requirements to be fulfilled in social studies with those supports so that's the idea behind it it's it's really straightforward in that way and Mike's going to talk a bit
056more about what this course is going to look like as he worked very closely with the team to develop the curriculum for it so again my name is Mike wilther I'm the social studies chair at North uh so the the course itself is is going to be set up so that the first semester is a sociology Focus uh the second semester would be a personal economics focus and then the Civics and current events will be embedded within both of the semesters um and so kind of how we will do that and one of the things one of the the Civics requirements is to have a service learning project so we'll put that with the sociology one where they're going to identify like a sociological issue and then do a service learning project to help mitigate
057that issue so they're kind of meeting together the sociology and the Civics another Civics requirement is to do research and so we're going to have students as they learn about different economic systems Democratic socialism mixed capitalism a more pure capitalism research countries that are choosing to then figure out what kind of economic system it is that they have um some other ways on the course itself I know the course description is pretty lengthy so just to kind of highlight some things in there so with personal economics the units we sort of hit on um will be how prices are determined so kind of melding that supply and demand part of Economics but then again mixing in the Civics so where the government gets involved in that so things like rent controls and minimum wages and
058the government what should their role be with that we'll do some budgeting we'll do some investing and we'll do a final unit in economics on really analyzing the role of the government and the economy and what should their role be in it with sociology we'll obviously talk a lot about socialization and then again we'll interweave the Civics since people are socialized by interest groups by political parties by the media and so we'll use those examples to kind of teach socialization um we talk about one of the one of the state standards in socialization is marginalization of groups and how does that happen and again we'll talk about how political structures can do that through with things like gerrymandering and the history of of those things so we'll really be an interweaving of those um those
059topics right so questions for us about the course are there several texts that you use um are there really no options for textbook um that we have for it because largely um it's going to be very current events based very current topic based and so we don't have an official textbook that we're going to really need for that and then really we've been stepping away from those anyways in our personal economics courses and sociology courses that we teach outside of the El world we really are have don't use the textbook much on those anyways we have enough resources developed to really kind of help the kids with um access the material without a textbook okay sounds very practical yes absolutely okay surprise this isn't a dual credit course not yet thank you thank you both
060thank you so the next new course is speech communication and we have our South English department chair Tracy Sebastian who will walk us through this course hi good evening um I'll speak for both schools there my kind of heart couldn't be here tonight um we want to offer a dual credit class most colleges require that a student take a composition 101 and a speech 101 for the most part um it's very rare that a college does not require that in some way and we had our speech coach at nor at South um Justin makovich was very interested in wanting to pursue a master's degree in speech so he worked actually through our ppls that we have for PD he actually worked with Cod to make sure that he was doing the exact things that they
061needed for him to do in order to get this certification so that we could offer this class to our students so we're very excited about that that he put in all that work and effort and he started this whole thing and we've been trying to figure out what what could we make as a dual Credit in English and we knew it was going to be one or the other and writing is a little more difficult and this is what he wanted to pursue so now that we have someone that we can actually teach the course we're now proposing the course so we did have two speech classes um originally in our curriculum so we had forensics and oral interpretation um neither one of them ran very consistently at either school they were sort of sporadic
062here and there so there was like a there'd be like eight or nine kids that signed up for it one time or it'd be like eight or nine kids forensics and eight or nine kids for oral interpretation we would always have to meld them so we are going to eliminate those two courses that we're not competing with each other on all these different same courses so if we're going to offer a dual credit speech by itself then we will eliminate the two courses that we have for forensic and oral interpretation now so that there's just the speech communication class the students interested in taking a speech class and we'll take the Dual credit option speech we do still have we have a course called I was just talking to counselors about this today we do
063have a course called writing for public speaking but that is a writing course so it counts as our writing class for seniors so speeches outside of the English Department credit so they'll still take four years of English full credit and then the speech class if they opt to take it would be an elective credit it's on top of taking the speech class so it could potentially take writing for public speaking and the speech class as well and get the dual credit plus their writing class as well and do similar things in the classes and the same teacher teaches it in the class there are three main summative speeches that the students will do so that everything in the class is geared towards making these three speeches so they do go through the entire oral communication
064process and from start to finish they actually talk a lot in the class too about not just giving a speech in front of people but like really taking into consideration who your audience is so they do talk about different cultures and the different ways that oral interpretations of speaking is like what what do you do when you're in this type of crowd or this type of culture and how do they interpret the way in which you speak so there's that is also incorporated into the class but for the three main speeches it's informative persuasive and then the third one they kind of allow for a lot of different things so students will actually get a big choice in what in all of their units and what they're going to do but in that third one
065they really it's just an occasion speech so it could be that you're standing in front of a board meeting and you have to give a speech it could be that you want to give a TED Talks there are a ton of different types of speeches they can give in that third one the first two are a little more traditional but there's always a component of research and talking about how do you choose the kind content how do you organize the content all of those will go into planning as well for those three main speeches but that's the main Hub of the class those three speeches that students will give in order to get their speech requirement out of the way for college so mostly Juniors or seniors Juniors or seniors yes yeah who else has
066time electives available yes yeah so fantastic yeah I think that the name is much better yes um you know really I mean I don't think anybody knew what forensic that forensics was a science class yeah so that was one of the problems that is the speech award that is given it is called the national speech award as a forensics I understand but once again and and your your messaging to the students and make it as clear as possible what they're getting into I think increases the chances that they'll get into it so and we are promoting it very much as though like they pretty much every College wants you to take this yeah for sure is it generally because I don't even remember in college but is it for speech is it two years just
067one I don't even remember you usually have to take one semester of a speech and one semester of a composition class is usually required almost every major okay so this would get that one semester out of the way for the three credit hours all right thank you thank you of course is one Wellness we have our PE health and driver education chairs with us tonight to share information about the course Courtney White who is our daughter department chair and Scott Lange from South hello we're really excited to be able to get to the point where we can present this we've actually been talking about this class for about five years a couple years before the pandemic and the pandemic put us on the back burner but also gave us an opportunity to kind of realize
068that technology has now caught up to us to allow us to be able to do this type of class so the class we've come up with is called Blended Wellness I mean it's a traditional PE class it's a semester-based course all of our customers and it's geared towards our Juniors and seniors and they need to finish their pe-1 pe2 sequence first before they before they have an opportunity to be able to enroll in this class the purpose or the role if you go back one more question oh sorry the role of this class is to kind of push on the focus that Fitness is and wellness is something that's personal and the supplements you get done when you can get it done and so we know our kids have heavily structured schedules and so hopefully
069this class will give an opportunity some of the students an opportunity to be able to focus on Wellness but also be able to have some time during their day too all right now you can go [Laughter] um that's a long drawn out description but basically the bulk of this class is going to be uh activity just like most of our physical education courses there will be a 150 minute um requirement of exercise that they have to get in each week and we are going to work on ways they will have to have a fitness tracker Fitness technology in order to take this class and that will be moderate to vigorous activities we're going to make sure that they have to not just go for a walk they have to actually do activity aside from the
070activity piece there is going to be a curriculum that the students will have to take care of that we will go through different concepts and things like that throughout the semester that they'll be quizzed on things like that and then uh we will also put in this Blended the teachers will also be meeting with these students throughout the semester individually um it's not just go off and do your workouts and we'll see you in five months that's not the way this class is going to work we're gonna we're gonna set up meeting with them on a regular basis probably every other week talk to the students make sure that they're getting their work done make sure that they're like any other class you know if we start seeing them fall behind we step in we
071can start working with them and figure out ways to get them caught up get them working through some problems so there will be that piece where we're still going to be meeting with the kids one-on-one so we're focusing on what type of kid would be beneficial in this class we have a lot of students that are I can imagine heavily structured in their schedule so we want to focus on those kids first a lot of those kids are also in our early bird class they're seven or eight classes they have a lot of AP classes and they're trying to squeeze certain things in those AP classes are typical Singletons so they're really kind of stuck in the periods they have the reluctance or the PE class hopefully this will give them opportunity to open up
072the schedule a little bit maybe take a launch which we highly recommend maybe take a study hall or possibly take another another class maybe one of the classes or colleagues are are presenting but this is the the type of student we're really focusing on uh talking to our colleagues in the area that have also started this class there are certain students that really struggle in this type of class we want to try and stay away or keep those students away from this those are the ones that generally have the low executive functioning skills that don't have a lot of time management skills they tend to not do very well in this class according to our colleagues in the area so you really want to try and stay away from them but keep those kids that
073really have a really good executive executive functioning skills to be able to get in this class you can probably just start off and go on their own with a little bit of guidance from us as Scott said and still be successful and do some of the work that we're doing online um right now we're going to meet with the kids in person the first week of semester in the last week of the semester we're going to set the class up we're going to do the course expectations we're going to give out the equipment we're going to let them know here's how it works and then we're going to be checking in every other week as Scott said and at the end of the semester we're going to come back in and check in but that's
074gonna be there during zero hour because the expectation is that they don't have a class during the day so the only time we're really going to be able to meet all of them together uh so that that would be our goal uh if they have an alternative situation we're working with our counselors to figure out if this class will be beneficial for a student for instance if there's a student has an SEL situation or they have a lot of specialty classes that they can't get into they can't get into a p-class we'll have that conversation with the counselors about whether or not this cost is beneficial for that type of student questions this is very cool because adults don't do team sports I mean this is great how about you work with students who have
075chronic illnesses like diabetes we're still working on the curriculum however I have Vision that can be one of our our discussions one of the best things for diabetics is actually exercise and now we have to learn how to modify exercise support with diabetic that's something we can research and study without calling a student out clearly the condition but we're still creating the other curriculum that's one thing that we can talk about and look at at modifications because they can still have a doctor's note saying that I need these modifications and that's not a problem for us at all because the technology will allow us to do that so this will satisfy a PE credit do you see this as a good option for some of our athletes it could be uh but that wasn't the
076student that we were we were targeting uh we have we have classes out there for our athletes that are that are um geared towards our athletes we're really looking for those high flyer kids that really need to break in their day and talking to a lot of the varsity coaches and stuff there's several of them that really like the kids to be taking the weight training classes right things like that now is the the certain group out there absolutely sure we're not going to say no to them absolutely yeah um how are you going to Target certain students how do you know that certain students in their executive functioning won't you know how do you know the student well enough it seems like there's going to have to be a lot of communication with the
077counseling staff right there um like I said in talking with the districts that are running this right now we will have to work hand in hand with our counseling staff they know the students the best on their course loads and uh and they'll be able to tell us with kids we think will be able to successfully manage through this class and we both just finished having our meetings with our counselors for the pre-registration process and we've it was a good hour for for my meeting at the private property Central Scott and we said these are the type of students that are going to be successful and these are the ones that won't be successful please work with us and try and find which one of those students should and should not be recommended for this
078course you have something we're very they were like oh yeah I know exactly which kids in my case will be able to handle this and this would be perfect for them so could there be something built into the curriculum where you're early on identifying if somebody gets in there who shouldn't be in there that there's a way to make a change um before that there's there's a lot of problems yes I mean those those weekly meetings we're gonna be meeting with kids every every week we'll find out the same kid every other week most likely there's gonna be about 40 kids there so as we're the Technic the technology that we have is it allows us to see everything they've done on a weekly basis and so I can reach out to whatever student and
079say hey you're you're falling behind we need to meet either before school get on the zoom call after school whatever the areas are that we can meet uh to try and get them caught up you said you're still working on the curriculum so yes so I mean how far along are you in here proposing a lot of ideas um from the Glen bars are running a class like this the naperville's are running a class like this Addison Trail Willowbrook is running a class like this so we've got a lot of ideas it's not going to be hard for us to put together the curriculum and the concepts that we're going to be going over in the class the bulk of it's going to be around the fitness piece but we're going to put in Concepts
080about Fitness Nutrition sleep deprivation things like that that we're going to talk about in the class I think it's fitting a need my question is okay if you can service and see Nancy mentioned diabetes will it give you guys the autonomy to have different paths for this meeting I won't call it custom but yeah absolutely yeah it's everybody's going to have different paths and different ways they want to work out things like that and that's going to be our job is to work with those students and and learn them and and be able to help them through this yeah one of the things we really push is Fitness is personal and granted I'm not the type of person to work out in the morning so I can understand my students don't want to come at
081eight o'clock and start moving around I get it but I'm also not at eight o'clock at night time of course neither but somebody might be I've had students in class that I spoke with and I've written loads of recommendations for Chris um that really gotten into it and it's a very hurtful thing we want to try and push that I think it's really a it's it's something that is definitely going to carry forward because a lot of employers now are are bringing this into focus and focus you know helping employees with you know whether it's a calm app or any you know we're doing any type of fitness and making sure that it's part of your day like you said whether it's whether you're morning lunchtime evening you know just recognizing the overall Wellness benefit
082the wellness is the bigger part of them yeah yeah okay thank you thank you both thank you ah and then our final proposal is for Earth and space science we have our department chairs here to walk us through it Karen Etter from Downer South and Mike Hines from Downers North and certainly this has been something that I know they've been working on for several years so very exciting to be at this this phase 12. very excited to be at this phase so I will turn it over to them so I'll get started um like Gina said my name is Karen Eder I'm the chair over at South um she said we're proposing Earth and space science but we're also we're proposing two classes actually we're going to propose a course for Earth and space science
083and we're proposing an honors option of it um so the state of Illinois and District 99 have a two-year graduation requirement one for a life science and one for physical science this would be categorized as a physical science option for students to take to meet that graduation requirement we would make it available to freshmen sophomores and juniors and it would be a year-long course this class actually aligns to State learning standards for science so it is a big section of the standards that Illinois states that are important to student science learning that we have an opportunity to address the three main uh driving questions for this course as outlined by ngss are about the formation of our universe right um the formation of our particular how the Third Rock You Know closest to the Sun
084formed into this place that's suitable for life and then what our place is humans on this planet and in their universe is and in how we have an impact on that and so that will be the the main focus the driving questions for our students in this course that's the part about the Earth and space science another change that you will see in science in District 99 is this has been our traditional pathway for students and many of you have recognized this as biology chemistry physics um because of the structural changes that are happening within the district and to our courses we're going to change an opportunity to move away from a sequence model to go to the next slide um changing the name of some of our course so we're going to get rid
085of the physical science course at North are you keeping physical sciences out just for one more year because there's a population of students need to be served there and this idea of moving away from an idea of science sequence one more slide please um good as Karen said there is one life science course and one physical science course for graduation requirements in the state of Illinois uh there are two or two lab science District 99 requires one life science one physical science that's not going to change what might change is the order that students take their courses in with the Strategic plan in the district where students have more choice and more agency with putting this in we think that giving them a choice when they are able when they are ready and based on
086interest we'll open up opportunities for them to take more of our AP and electives as they move into Junior and Senior year so you'll see our course option model next this is the course option model that's each column is 9th 10th 11th and 12th grade you have a copy of that and it's also on the web uh Mr Davenport as you said before messaging is key now we've made a video for each of our courses that we teach that includes our teachers speaking to the topic in each class what type of student exchange class and students engaging in the activities in that classroom we in science don't think that the word laboratory is quirky at all contrary to what Jerry said earlier and so if you're right messaging is key because now families will have
087a choice for example when students come in from eighth grade to ninth grade as we know with moving forward they'll have an honors distinction maybe based on standardized tests now it still goes back to the the course recommendation by the eighth grade the honors and and course level will be based on their abilities but then choice will that be honors Earth and space science or will that be honors biology is a choice that students and families make so to messaging what those courses are about and what they're looking forward in their future is key to us right now and that's what our teachers took them through in the course recommendation process this year and we too each had about an hour-long conference with counselors to explain the changes that are happening counselors looked at this
088model before we implemented in the district so they're well aware of what's coming in the prerequisites for each course now and that's that's think that's the that's it that's it yeah any questions so this is uh I notice um it seems that this is really an alternative foundational course it seems like that you can the sequences all start with Biology I know we're getting away from a sequence but there's there's just multiple sequences right so you're either starting with Biology you're starting with with this new this new class right yeah so the two options for freshmen would be biology are Earth and space science neither of those classes have a math prerequisite so we really do feel like all of those course offerings are open to all students and all of our classes biology chemistry
089Earth and space physics um yeah uh they're all aligned to the high school level these are the core areas right um they're all going to the high school level ngss standards right so you don't have to be 17 to take physics yeah um and you don't have to take biology to be successful in chemistry you really give students an opportunity to kind of explore those fields that are of interest to them and that gives them an option to take all of the fields of science not just the you know historically this is so overdue this is great um uh can you go back to this to those different paths um this um sorry yeah right here so um so it is possible uh no it is not never mind it's going to say what so
090it's possible a student could go so it's chemistry is what gets dropped right it is possible to graduate and without ever taking a chemistry class yes sure just like it is without physics for students to graduate without a guitar but you haven't well chemistry is actually pretty cool I think that I mean if I just wanted to speak for I mean but chemistry I think it's a really bad rap I think you have to take the mic test right you know that's true taught by me that's true if you would have been taught by Micra you would have thought it was the best classic I'm trying to be on your side here I'm saying it's pretty cooler than what a lot of people think it is and and what a lot of students might think
091we have students who take biology and physical science and and don't advance in further in any other of the core science classes okay so that is currently something that could happen for our students right got it so we think we're opening up more options yes by adding this Earth and space branch of science offerings to students at both of these levels that we're not diminishing any of those opportunities no right so it gives students four options instead of really three yeah it's I think it's exciting and I think there's going to be just a ton of Interest too it's so tough so topical right it's opening up key and importantly options for students to go down you've heard it a bunch of times tonight Pathways of their interest tailoring their experience for what they want
092to do Post high school that's right in line with our strategic plan this this mirrors that same kind of work being able to get to physics earlier right so students had asked us speaking with their teachers about recommendations and speaking with 8th grade teachers about their reputation setting in here and they've already expressed lots of interest and gratitude that these are options now for them so yeah I definitely think that the the student interest factor is an important piece of this and we're excited to see a number of sections of both levels next year I'll have to go back and just you know just it's just curious why and how we were where we were you know why we've been where we've been this this sequence that we've always it's the same sequence I had
093in high school you know I mean why when you think back it's like why it's alphabetical yeah we've been Karen went to quite a few of the middle schools I've just I've been to Herrick just because of time Factor so we're talking to the eighth grade teacher directly in regards to this as well because it's new for them sure placement or recommendation of students coming in so we've had those uh and sent videos out to the eighth grade teachers as well as the eighth grade parents um why can't singers take environment why can't seniors take the new course so what we did with the core classes is you know we're running a class called principles of biomedical science that we have open to everybody right and uh the design of that class to be differentiated
094for freshmen through senior Learners right is considerable right and typically we haven't had that level of openness in our science programming so we've limited all of our core classes to a three-year kind of segment of students so biology and Earth and space science are open for ninth through 11th graders and then chemistry and physics are open for 10th through 12th graders right and just kind of just to kind of see how this lands for students with options right and then certainly something that we could reevaluate in terms of how many options we want to offer incoming students or things like that right but to start you know this is a huge shift for how we've traditionally sequenced students through their science learning and so we think this is a good model for giving students the
095most access that we can to all of these course options and then we can still cater it kind of to particular student levels with their math abilities and their Readiness for science very cool terrific stuff two courses I want to audit now yeah right thank you and this also wasn't dual credit so that like tells me fantastic thank you both thank you very much thank you thank you all all right uh all of those are up as an action item as a slate of an action item later on this evening as just curriculum exposes um the next one I need to uh switch over and bring Ryan in Ryan's going to join us virtually here I'd love to go through high school now not be a high school student oh yeah just go to high
096schools yeah all right hey Ryan look at that technology technology works all right before I turn it over to uh Ryan here uh Ryan will share some screen with you here in a second uh as you all know Ryan is new to the central office this year we stole them from North High to bring them over here and he is our director of student experience and obviously a major part of the student experience this year is the change in the new schedule uh 10 weeks into the school year we sent out our first survey uh and you can see from this slide up there not to steal Ryan's Thunder but I will a little bit that a lot of information came back Ryan has led the charge in processing all of this information making sense
097out of it uh coming up with some ideas of what should come next and then has met with all kinds of groups especially staff and students to try to process it move recommendations forward and to prepare for today's presentation uh about I don't know four weeks ago he realized that he has about two and a half more years of doing this as we continue to develop the schedule so you'll get to hear a lot from Ryan over the next few years about how it's going with this so with that intro oh God so is that is that the sample you sent out to or is that the response that's the response wow yeah so there was a lot of data for and there's a lot of open responses that Ryan had to categorize so uh
098Ryan isn't able to join us in person today he's going to be virtual uh I've asked Courtney and Arwin to be at the table as well because they've spent a lot of time talking to students and staff about these changes so they might pipe in now and then with uh some of their experience with all of this and with all of that said I'm going to turn over to Ryan all right everybody I I apologize for not being able to be with you in person um I'm probably only a stone's throw from you um I live in the neighborhood uh so um as Hank said this is the beginning of about a two and a half year process for me so I'm excited to get to the end of the first hurdle ironically I'm I'm
099starting phase two uh tomorrow I have a meeting with Josh and Chris Nelson Gina tomorrows to uh talk about some of the recommendations that you're going to hear about tonight so uh just to connect to the Strategic plan a little bit um you know we really wanted to make sure that we got feedback from a large group of people um you'll see um on the next slide um the number of people that we met with um and it's the diversest perspectives that are super important um that our student voice is just important as our family voice and our staff voices and our administrators um and so you're going to see some samplings of comments that led to some of our recommendations and then also at the end some things that we're going to work on
100second semester with some committees to see how we might adjust the plan so mid-october um as Hank said 10th week of school we sent out the survey it happened during access and we prompted families I think four or five times to see if we can get as many responses as we can we had uh some connectivity issues on the day that we gave the survey and so we left it open for students as well um and then early November so uh very first well I think Halloween actually we started digging through um at this point I just want to thank Vicki miles she's one of the administrative assistants at the district office who came with me from North she spent countless hours with me reading through every single comment uh categorizing it um coming up
101with different themes so that we could develop a workshop presentation with the committee right it's not just enough for me to read all the comments it's how do we put it in a digestible format for people to see the range of comments because some students love the schedule some students are struggling with it there are aspects about the schedule that people really like there's aspects that they're struggling with as well and so making sure that we're taking into account all of the voices and all of their experiences before moving forward so we um the protocol that I used was putting together packets by theme the committee was able to read through the packets and then we'd go through some of the quantitative quantitative slides um some of those like I present or provided in the
102supplemental packets so that you could see when people were given an option of choosing where they felt you could see that but then also how they felt what what their thinking was behind some of those responses and then the reason we did it by theme was to make sure that every time we were going through a topic like access that you could hear the student voice the family voice the the teacher voice all of the voices together to be able to come up with what the teachers and our support staff and our administrators our department chairs felt like an actionable step moving forward through this process I'm starting in December after working with cabinet exec Council the committee and DLT I started meeting with students we met with about over 250 students whether or not
103it was in Access in resource I was thankfully invited to a couple of classes I got to meet with Senior English and the senior stats Class A Band an orchestra so we got a wide variety of perspectives from students in a lot of different locations um and so I'm going to start going through some recommendations but again next steps I'm meeting with some people tomorrow I'm meeting with Aaron and Sarah some of our building APS next week and then we start moving forward with the committee looking um doing a deeper dive into some of these recommendations and how they actually hit the ground as we move forward also I'll be providing the raw data to an outside consultant so that they can look through and make a determination about you know my analysis versus their
104analysis to make sure that we are really hearing every voice and that we're not bringing any bias to that data so I wanted to give some context for some of the data um so again we gave it an October 20th both schools reported some connectivity issues which is why we think um we were just about 56 of the student body ended up responding I also you can see I've broken it down by grade level um obviously our freshmen were great about responding 61.6 percent of our freshmen across the buildings um and you know some of our seniors reported when I went around and talked with them uh that uh they're like yeah if you're making changes for the schedule I won't be here so I did not fill out your survey okay well there we
105go um so uh we also have families uh we had 16.7 percent from North and um we had 18.9 from South um and you also can see the staff breakdown I also gave a little bit of data about what has happened in the school year at this point because it was fairly early in such a significant change in order to elicit feedback but we wanted a baseline right um anytime you're going to make any kind of change we need that Baseline data because we've never given a survey about how people felt about the eight period day um so we don't really have any Baseline data for schedules so at this point there was one student support past day for juniors and seniors versus five for sophomores and freshmen um we hadn't started autonomy and access
106yet and for our grade level presentations with our counselors only Juniors and seniors had had their presentations at this point in the year so some of the data on how the Freshman felt about it well they didn't seem to have a high opinion about the presentations because they hadn't had it yet so um there is some data that is skewed by what has happened in the year at this point so um we're going to start talking about the recommendations uh one of the first things that um I wanted to make sure that we did was to see some of the voices that led to the recommendations right this isn't just we read through the data but separately we're going to make this this recommendation so you can see um from the top student voice staff
107voice and parent voice I took some representative voices um and then again there was a pretty big range of people that were responding so um for our first recommendation it's about access and one of the themes that came through uh the feedback was that it was too complicated the schedule the seniors have a certain schedule the freshmen have a different schedule I have a sophomore access but I teach mostly seniors and so the ability for staff and students to connect without a lot of hurdles came through probably the loudest and the clearest across any of the feedback back um so um we have decided to make a consistent day um once a week making it easier for students to either plan their study time or to access their teachers for help because students said listen
108I understand that there's sometimes programming but also if I know that in advance I will plan my time differently knowing that I won't be able to do some homework or to meet with a teacher during access originally we thought Thursday would be a good idea but as I met with students they all said Wednesday that they wanted the ability to meet with the teacher on Wednesday and then they'd still have Thursday in order to meet with a teacher again if they needed to or to finish their homework based on that help before they had their class on Friday so we took the students advice and I'm currently working on a schedule with Aaron and Sarah to see how that will map out but can consistently there will be student support with a pass on Wednesday's
109second semester so that when we survey again in March we'll see how that's going and that's pretty easy change you're going to hear some other ones tonight that not so simple to make right away that might involve more moving parts we might need to do some coaching up of our students or providing time for our staff to figure out kind of the direction we're going in or to build a pathway forward for what's being recommended so you're going to see a blend of those today as I introduce these to the staff over this next week we'll kind of lay out some general time frames that we're looking at for each of them but you'll see these are all of the recommendations then we'll start working forward to get these in place so I you know
110I don't want the board or students or staff or anybody else to think like all of these are happening tomorrow right it's over time these will get implemented as we roll into second semester just a quick question so is our goal we're going to take a look at what the feedback was and then try to fix the feedback right try to fix it respond to the feedback yes where we get and then we'll take another pass where we are yep and what direction we need to go in yep so we'll do this another time in this well Ryan will lay out the path forward in a little bit but yes there'll be an aspect of these big kind of post holes Where We Gather a big chunk of data all at once um that will
111be these major points in time moving forward but then Ryan will talk about a little bit his plans for in between those those major Benchmark uh in between going forward so just had a tangential question how does how does this relate with the study White's doing that's what Ryan's talking about so Ryan will is going to turn all of this over to white and they will take an independent they'll be like an independent auditor of Ryan's work thank you yeah all right Ryan thank you for clarifying that yes that um that some of them are a much cleaner recommendation and others we're going to have to work through with different committees um and again one of my meetings tomorrow is specifically about a recommendation that I'm making tonight so um our next big chunk of
112data is on March I believe March 20th is when we're going to be doing um our next survey for students during access um but as Hank said I'll be meeting with people all throughout the way not only getting feedback about how things are going from uh the beginning of second semester but also working on some of those larger changes that are a little bit harder there's a lot of nuance that some people um may feel a certain way about a change and others are feeling a different way and so how do we come up with the best modification in order to better serve students within the schedule so our second takeaway is here in Access we had a lot of programming to start the year right um we have to do our drills um we
113do executive functioning lessons so teaching kids about time management how to reach out to your teacher and the feedback was pretty strongly that there was too much programming to start the year they needed more time to be able to meet with their teachers so they would have loved for it to spread out a little bit and that also providing the that those lessons in a video format was a struggle so you can see um as a senior some of the kids felt like the video was too too much of an orientation and if I have to watch a video on my own I'm not gonna watch it um and um some of the staff reinforced that with making sure that we need to differentiate between what is a skill that we need to teach our
114freshmen and sophomores that maybe our Juniors and seniors don't need and so making sure that we have a clean schedule where we're only doing essential lessons and that we're trying to do it in a non-video format so that we can interact with the kids making sure that it's appropriate specifically for their grade level not just something that all students need but how all students need by their grade level a third recommendation is uh based on conversations with kids when we talked about how do those lessons look um that a lot of kids said that the differentiation by grade level is great but even across seniors some students are really great with time management other seniors are not some students have all of their work in and some students feel like I've dug myself into a
115hole I don't know how to get out of it and I don't know who to talk to about it um those things can't really be taught in a group lesson so um one of the things that we have talked about is being able to give access teachers the time to have one-on-one conferences for academic help so that students can figure out how to better use some of their free time also how to manage their stress um and then those one-on-one conversations will lead to more positive relationships and access uh one of the things that came across loud and clear from the students was that they didn't want teachers to get a list of five questions stop at their desk pull up their grades and say why aren't you doing your work um that they really
116wanted to be able to have a sort of problem-solving conversation if they needed it and if a teacher comes up to their desk and says um how are you doing you're like great I have nothing to talk to you about but I do have some homework to do that that's also what the student needs and so um we'll be working on this with um you know the committee again I'm meeting with Chris Josh and Gina tomorrow about this specifically to talk about how does this look um and so this is something that as Hank said isn't something that's starting the semester but will be rolling through sometime during second semester as we sort of better form how that looks for teachers and students in Access a fourth recommendation um is about autonomy days during access
117there was a lot of conversation or not conversation a lot of feedback from parents about the amount of free time that a student has during their day now students have absolutely said I'm just sort of like uh Courtney White said in his PE presentation right sometimes you want to work out during the day sometimes you're doing it eight o'clock at night students feel that way about their autonomy time during the day that um their autonomy time is for them and whether or not they're going to be productive in those 30 minutes maybe they need to manage their time to have conversations with their friends then because they're not going to see them for the rest of the day or after school or have ability to check in with them at night that's when they're doing
118their work and so students feel pretty strongly about maintaining that autonomy time but some of the adults that we've heard from have said that you know they're not college students they're 14 or that some of their students they wish were making better choices with that time so one of the recommendations that we're going to work through is reducing the amount of autonomy days during access and restricting it to senior only um to begin the second semester and that as we work on strengthening positive academic academic behaviors with our freshman sophomores and juniors that we start to build those autonomy days back in as students are better able to use that time this uh next recommendation is about the counselor presentations and access and we didn't have a question specifically in the survey regarding the the
119presentations other than did you find them valuable and again at this point Juniors and seniors were the only ones that had these presentations by this point and we did a lot to make sure that counselors have the ability to present their material to students who are on their caseload because it's really important that counselors have their students with them so they continue to build relationships with their through them with them through their four years students have said they really valuable they really value meeting with their counselors and parents have said that they really want their students to have access to counselors during access and so right now we have them in larger spaces some counselors feel like that delivery time is cut into because of students traveling there and other counselors say no I if
120I have to choose between traveling or having a little bit less time I'd rather have all of my students with me so this is one of those that we're going to be working through with C Triple S on what's the best model my recommendation is that we move it into access classrooms for second semester and problem solve around making sure that counselors have their caseloads when they're presenting and then see if that's the best model for moving forward next year also that that we have a lot of connectivity issues with larger spaces that we worked through the tech team was great about working through those larger spaces um and so um possibly would this help with that um and but um we'll be working on this one with C Triple S through the beginning of
121second semester the first presentation for seniors I believe isn't until March so we have a good couple of months to figure out how that's going to look the final recommendation that I'm making for second semester um is specifically around allowing teachers to have more department and course team time second semester to apply their professional learning that um we provided a lot of professional development um each week throughout the fall and sometimes the staff felt like they didn't have enough time to actually dive into the topics or to apply those topics students have said that from September to November they've noticed a pretty big difference in how their teachers are using that black time but we want to make sure that we continue to capitalize on that and that as teachers are working on applying some
122of that learning to better utilizing black periods um that the the idea of a student being able to focus for a 78 minute period um should improve and so um the families have felt like teachers are working through it and one of the big things that they've said was that they like that their student has more time to ask questions in class that they have for bigger assignments um that on testing days they have a little bit more time but it's also challenging with that imbalance of their classes um and so um you'll see in a future recommendation um that uh I'll start talking about some things that we need to work on further that's going to take a little bit longer to unravel so those are the recommendations for um us to start looking
123at either at the beginning of second semester or working through during second semester um and here are some recommended areas for future Focus so taking um all of the the data and all of the comments here are some themes of concerns uh that families staff and students have asked that we work on and so um number one uh definitely um in a very close number two is the imbalance of academic courses um students having all of their rigorous courses on one day and then having uh uh free time or too much free time on the other black day and then the other hot topic was see lunch um students have asked that we determine a way to offer lunch earlier in the school day so that um see lunch on in case uh your unaware
124starts at 117 on Black Days um so students have asked that we work on ways in order to move that up earlier in the day um also improving communication about access and resource programming some students have felt like um they don't know where to look for it or by the time that they knew something was happening they didn't have enough Advanced planning time so we're going to be working on that um and one of the things that came across from both parents and staff was connecting a student's autonomy and access to the commons with their accountability for being respectful responsible engaged in class how can we make sure that students who are not using their free time that were able to coach them into better use in their free time for students who are missing
125too many assignments or have too many absences how are we helping them during this resource time to get back on track um also looking at ways of increasing academic support so how can we have more teachers available during resource um some creative ideas from staff and from families about developing enrichment courses that students could sign up for um uh you probably have heard of service opportunities that were starting to increase I believe a student board member talked about um operation gratitude that happened in November and we're looking to increase those opportunities and engage in clubs um and asking their Club sponsors if you're doing a service opportunity outside of the day how can we bring those into resource to engage more students in it and then finally we want to investigate some ways to offer
126um some group study sessions during access that students would be able to sign up for so instead of one-on-one help with a teacher with a pass that teachers might be able to say for example before uh the AP testing is there a way that we'd be able to have students sign up for an AP study session during access so that um all students would be able to access that during that time that is a rundown of the recommendations um again uh I will be continuing this is just step one of a long journey um we'll be again giving a survey in March and throughout January February and before the survey in March I'll be working with groups on specifically these recommendations um and making sure that as we're moving forward we're not just waiting for
127once or twice a year to get people's voices but as we're implementing them that we're constantly getting feedback on it so I'm happy to take any questions okay that's what I thought but we also there was we also talked a lot about Connections in the in the presentation yeah no it was actually no connection yeah so I wasn't so I wasn't sometimes I was a little lost on that um I also I didn't see um I didn't hear any conversation about our tcd students and how this is impacting them are there any adjustments we're looking at making uh for our tcd students particularly anecdotally I know you know there's been um the some of the senior tcd students missing out on information in an access period because they're gone so how do we how do
128we make sure that they're getting that same information in a meaningful way and we've talked about trying to provide greater access to resources from access periods for students who attend morning tcd traditionally we've had more students attend afternoon tcd but the board may recall we are an all-time high for many years I think we're just over 170 students this year and we've had years where we're under 120. so we so we do have students that are missing access it's very difficult to navigate and have students here for Access because they need to have a set amount of time to be a tcd many of those courses have certain number of hour requirements many of them are democratic and so that is one of our challenges we've engaged in conversation the last few years with tcd
129about possibly sending all of our students just for example in the afternoon unfortunately we're not they're not able to meet that need for us and I am concerned that if we do that we will lose some students because they there will be classes that are only offered in the afternoon for us and they'll want to be here for those classes and so we could see students not attending tcd because we've pushed tcd in just into just one part of the day so this is a real challenge I hear we're working on it um but they're Mike there just might be with some students some just trade-offs that naturally have to occur so that we meet that student's individual needs so it might be that what this student's pathway really calls for is tcd and the
130trade-off for that will be they're not going to get the same access experience that all students will get but that's an a known trade-off that we're making as we make those course selections yeah and when I spoke with students uh for example um seniors were I think probably the most vocal about please stop the videos um and I did say uh seniors by the way um you've earned yourself your first video so we offered a FAFSA um sort of a financial aid um uh presentation during resource and um while we did have a good turnout I wouldn't say every senior um attended that um and so senior started asking counselors like hey can like can you how can I see the FAFSA so the very first um presentation is a video when we get back
131from break and it's FAFSA so that is something that we then can put on the Google Classroom all freshmen have a Google classroom for if there's something that we need to push out to them that's only freshmen same thing with Juniors uh sophomores Juniors and seniors and so for that presentation they that's something that we can push out if you missed access today because it's not just for kids in tcd it's also for kids who just happen to be absent that day um that we can push that out to them through there really good but I have concerns because what I'm hearing there is that those kids who I was afraid were going to fall to the cracks are falling even deeper in the cracks when he said you know they aren't using that time
132they're getting further behind than they already were I go how are they going to get themselves out of this hole I mean I I don't think that that's a true statement that kids are falling through the cracks what we're saying is that there are greater opportunities to help students in that time but I would say based on the work that we're doing we are far better at meeting the needs of each individual student than we ever have been during this time between the access periods the data that we're looking at to make sure we're we're catching the students before sometimes they even reach out we're reaching out to them because the information says that we should be I think this is about how we can get better at what we're doing I don't think we're
133seeing I mean Arwen and Courtney are in in the buildings but I I don't think that we are seeing kids fall through the cracks I don't know Courtney Irwin no I mean we've been taking a very close look at our gray data for the whole semester and because that's obviously a really big part of this too you know that plays directly into that and I would say we haven't seen any spikes or different major differences than we did last year and I when we've looked at that I know I can speak for North that in every single one of those cases there are logs for all of those students particularly our freshmen who we pay very close attention to and for seniors who are ready to graduate we're really looking at that to make sure
134that and I would say that in most if not all cases there are logs that somebody or multiple somebody's have met with those students to figure out what's going on so I wouldn't say that kids are necessarily falling through the cracks I think what we talk about is really just enhancing and tweaking some things that we can do a little bit better based on some of the comments that we are seeing here and you're saying they're showing up equivalently to you know I mean it's hard to tell until you hit the end of the semester right but we've been especially ninth grade on track data have been following that really close you know students that are fail that are ninth graders that are failing or in danger of failing uh we have paid very close
135attention to that and week by week grades have improved over the course of the semester and we're we're likely going to do better than we have this year when we we had some of the best ninth grade performance last year that we've ever seen in the district okay then the other question I had so I'm just trying to figure out we're going to make these changes how much of a heavy lift is that to be prepared for the next semester for instance I'm looking at slide nine and we talk about which recommendation is that one um it's the days doing access and restricted seniors so tell me what that means where I think we're saying we're going to take that economy away from everybody but seniors so what do they do then with that time
136if they can't make a decision on their own how do you make up for what's going to happen I I can comment on that so and just to to Ms drexler's kind of thought from before too so students have autonomy remember in resource which is the one time a week for 78 minutes and then they also have their access period twice a week for 30 minutes and I think one of the things that Ryan was mentoring mentioning that as adults we're looking at them some days and thinking Hmm this isn't maybe how I as an adult imagine them using their autonomy because they're having their coffee and they're playing on their phones and they're chatting with each other but when we dive in and talk to them um a lot of students will say I'm
137taking this time with my friends and I'll do my homework at home and as of right now um our great is showing that our grades will be on parch where they're at before as a way though to pull that in a little bit or have that maybe hindsight 2020 that none of us actually have the student autonomy students will still have in resource same as they do now right now in Access it's a blend in some days a whole class like freshmen or sophomores or Juniors or half of a class if they're not at their counseling presentation we'll have student autonomy and access and then on that same day they also have autonomy during resource so what we're saying is this dude autonomy piece and access for second semester would be for seniors for seniors
138only to have their time with their whole senior class we know seniors have more of those skills um but for our freshmen sophomores and juniors they would stay in Access so they would say an access class and instead of having student autonomy we would increase the amount of time they have student support with a pass to go and get help from their teachers in a structured way they'd have more time and access to build those relationships with their access class kind of what Ryan said we wished we'd done less programming at the beginning and focus more time on relationship building this gives us a nice time to do that so like the the answer I guess to like what would they be doing we would be increasing what they do in Access Ryan is also
139working with our APS who develop this calendar but I would also point out that one of those recommendations that we're working towards um is it number three that would be something that would be another activity that they could do while they were in that access class so getting those one on one conferences for academic help and conferencing with the students and meeting with them individually that would be another example of something that they can do but Ryan and our assistant principals and he can talk to this too but they work very diligently on that schedule and in terms like of a heavy lift we have some things that we would be able to plug in pretty easily I think maybe I have a place to buy checks yes you would be so I'll check chat
140with you afterwards yep so in so in that vein how are we tracking kind of for lack of better work caseloads so we have teachers who are reaching out to students we have counselors who are reaching out to students I realize it's a fine line you know between using our resources fully and overusing using our resource are we doing any kind of tracking of how many of these inter how many yeah we do yeah interventions that we do okay yeah so yeah it's being tracked and then when Scott showed you five Labs one of the aspects that we've added in five Labs is that simple student report and one of the data pieces on that report is all of these check-ins okay whether it be student support with a pass whether it be with a
141counselor an individual teacher a phone call home all of those things so when data says to us whoa this kid hasn't come forward and asked for help yet but the data says that somebody should reach out to the student for help a lot of times the data is showing the student is struggling our teachers and staff I have made these kinds of interventions but now we need another level on top of it so that's where you hear Scott talk about like mtss where we have these tiered supports you'll see a lot of the tier one supports a counselor reaching out a teacher reaching out you know calling home bringing them in for extra help but then we're going to have a group of students where though that first tier of response is not enough now
142we need to move to the to some more strategic coordinated responses in that tier two or ultimately maybe even the tier three response where we're getting into very specific personalized interventions uh for a specific student that is good to hear so we're looking at the student level are we also looking at the teacher and counselor level [Music] do we have enough staff or we have staff that have that are overextended do we have staff that are stepping up you know kind of like I hate to say productivity there's productivity statistics I think you yes because you would see it when on a student by student basis like when a if a student who showed up on our radar and then we went looked at the student notes and saw like whoa nobody's intervened with this
143student or repeatedly that this this teacher has not intervened with their students then our team would step in with that individual staff member but I'm following Nancy's thought a little bit but what I I'm trying to figure out as we think through this is this driving potentially teachers to be have to be even more productive or it will not be some will be some will not be you know I guess so to your point about productivity is this change driving of drastic changes for teachers to be overwhelmed or well I think that Society is driving teachers to be to feel overwhelmed right now absolutely you know the amount of students that are in trauma and are in need and the number of student absences that are going on right are the the factors teachers intervening
144and meeting the needs of the student that's across from them has been our expectation District 99 for a very long time and tracking of interventions has been in place since before I was a superintendent here so these are strategies that have been in place here the number of students that are needing more tier one and tier two interventions I think has grown post pandemic but the expectations the teachers do this is is not changed I concur so you're right I I'm there with you on that however is this one additional an extra but the question is more around is this in addition to the fact that things have changed basically how we have to intervene in different components of society that is making the students already and teachers staff deal with more so that's all
145I was asking so no I agree I agree we are there already but there's this pile on top of that can we put the question to Ryan I mean Ryan has Ryan has looked through read through all the comments sorry um the uh the surveys uh teachers teachers have had a voice in the data that we're we're you know that we're putting together here in the decisions that we're making going forward so Ryan do you can you comment to this at all based on the on the survey responses you saw well I mean I do think I do think that the that staff you know they are getting used to the change um that it has not been an easy Road for every staff member some staff members have adapted to it much quicker than
146others um some classes just generally lend themselves to it some of our lab classes are you know they feel like um they're getting a lot out of that time some other classes feel like you know I'm I'm trying to I sometimes I think one of the comments I had up there was sometimes I feel like I'm teaching two periods in one period um and so that's why it's really important that we get half the time to grow in it and the students you're growing into it as well um that students are being very honest about like I've never had the opportunity to even figure out sometimes what to do with my time during a school day because I it is Belle five minute Bell five minutes and the one thing that they would try to
147think of is what am I gonna use the washroom um that now they have time to uh senior athletes talk have talked pretty openly about this is the first time I feel like I've been able to manage and keep up with my classes during height of season um or students that um some families have said like my students don't bring homework home anymore some of them are happy about that some of them would like to see more homework from home um so there's kind of a wide range about it so I would say after 10 weeks um that there that you could feel the stress in a lot of the comments and so that's why I think it's important that from January and February that I'm still checking in with people and working through the
148committee on some of the recommendations so that when we get to it in March it should be a natural growth right anytime we're trying to basically show important any kind of change dip that you get because status quo there's a change it feels a little chaotic how do we bring people to the other side as fast as we can and that's through being really open honest and transparent um with what people are feeling and how do we use some of their experiences to shorten that crunch time so um definitely you could feel the the pangs of growth in the comments for sure switch a little bit the other way um looking at the one comment on slide eight from the staff that says this is a lot of time for a student to have with
149no structured instructional time if they don't have anything to work on then they're simply on their phones not doing anything productive there's I mean there's clearly a there's a section of students who you're monitoring and reaching out to and logging there's other students who are who don't need that level of attention and do you seem it's I know it hits a lot on one or the other of the Wednesday or Thursday for most of them but you know two hours is a lot of downtime um you know is there any I mean I know it's hard to balance it out but yeah and so that one of the reputations [Applause] um that we can reduce some of the free time first for students who have like an imbalance in their schedule um that you know
150how can we try to prevent someone from having more periods um back to back um you know like what would you rather um but that definitely some students uh one of the other things that we're starting to hear from students and teachers as well is teachers are getting better at accounting for the resource time and pushing expectations into that space you know this every we have to remember every week right now is the first time that teacher is taught that week ever in their career right so every teacher on Wednesday and Thursday is a first year teacher right now so and every week they're getting better and and more comfortable and being able to anticipate what's there part of that is also teachers anticipating what their students experiences like over the course of the week
151so understanding like on Tuesday when students are heading out into those two block days over these two days if you're struggling with this this is what you should do like here's what you should do on your own or if you need to come see me or like they're getting better at anticipating how to structure that time for students so that when students have that time they can go down their list of oh yeah my teacher said that if I did you know if I was having trouble with this I should be that or to get ahead for next week I should look at this right but that all comes with time as we learn how the the flow of a week Works a semester works that I'm starting here more and more from teachers of
152oh I've kind of cracked the code now and I know how to take advantage of my time and their time on those two days and that will accelerate as time goes on so there are other programs there are other schools that have hybrid are we working with any of them to to that have had more experience in here than we are there's one question to this year okay yep but will we are we like continuing with this information are we continuing to say hey this is where we're experiencing what have what have you founded it's something different as you look because yes other schools do hybrid but other schools have not necessarily been intentional about the student time as we have or in Block many schools just that is the feature of the schedule the
153student free time they aren't investigating how students are using it or how we're pushing into that space and because that's that's like the feature of the schedule right so we're not going to worry about students free time during that time this is what many schools will tell us we put it there for students to have that time that is the feature the feature is students have choice they determine what they're going to do during that time and they do it we're far more intentional with what we offer during access what we offer during resource how we offer student support during that time and the data that we keep during that time than many other students are or other schools are for those students that are intentional the things we're experiencing I mean when you were
154building this when you were building this you as you said there's some schools that are unintentional but there are some that are so do we use do we do we Garner that experience from those schools that are intentional are we talking with them about some of the problems we're having and so we need to kind of dust up a little bit I I I don't know if we're really having problems I think we're having the experiences that have as Brian said the implementation dip as to as you go into this um we had a lot of conversations heading into the school year about what it was but there are a lot of things that you could address to people in theory but until it hit practice and an experience it it wasn't discernible or understandable
155until we got to this point and maybe problem isn't the best word I'm just saying there are certainly has other people have yeah hopefully I would think heard some of these voices before and have had some sort of response that worked or didn't work and that we would learn from those people well those went into our planning for this school year yeah and now Ryan's doing the work of how do we make those things better for us in our setting uh I think you know by getting all of that authentic staff student and family voice is how we take these things and tailor them for us but what other schools do fed into how we started right right this year how we get better is really intentional based on that that voice I hear some
156students Nancy's saying though is that you know we can't be completely Reinventing the wheel here and and and that maybe there may be a point in the not so distant future where maybe after this year we've gone through this year that there's a moment where you might be able to collaborate with some others that are more intentional and just just compare compare notes that is going on with the other school districts that are around us the deuce we do talk to them and Gina's in those meetings with those other curriculum directors and our assistant principles and principals are meeting with their peers all of the time and I'm meeting with mine all of the time and that's influencing the work that we do inside of here but there it isn't like we're throwing away what
157we're doing and just going and grabbing off the shelf what are another school that wasn't suggested yeah we're saying why reinvent the wheel you know something has worked or more importantly sometimes something hasn't worked that they've implemented so here here is kind of my thoughts on of course anytime we do change right this is going to happen you know we're going to get some feedback because we're working through it to try and figure it out the the thing that when we were talking about this when I couldn't decipher is because we've had so much change with the pandemic is this the right time was it the right time to do it because are people looking for more normal now you know because we've dealt with so much change and was this going to be you
158know un you know you know not at the hands of our own selves right the pandemic happened none of us so that was the piece where I know this is going to happen I just struggle with it was this the right time based on there was so much stranger where people looking to get back to our normal life looking to have more change to deal with and that's you know just kind of seeing where we are where we are though I mean yeah we know we know that we know there are people who didn't like it like it do that but we did it so like I understand why you you know it's still in your mind but we're here yeah no and I'm I'm I've moved you know past that I guess the point
159is we've got to have this but is it is it what is it driving you know was this the is some of that driving it but we're gonna have change I mean we're gonna I mean we're gonna have concerns because we did something different yeah yeah hey things are changing yeah I think you think you can get rid of the sea lunch oh for next year yeah I don't know if we can get rid of the sea lunch but we're looking at what are some things we can do with the schedule and make it happen earlier yeah we still need three lunch periods okay yes um but you know are there some structural changes that we can make and what would be the best ones to make yeah you know uh moving at a half
160hour yeah right that's what we'll have something like that is what kind of and Ryan's Ryan's mocking up some different things for us to talk about with the leadership team to talk with students about you know what they would prefer with with those you know how the flow of their day goes and know that like sea lunch only happens twice a week yeah and not every kid has C lunch on both those days like a student might have an a lunch one day and a C Lunch the other day right so but students that do have sea lunch feel like it comes too late in the day for them they would prefer to have the meal earlier in the day and then manage with snacks throughout the day rather than manage with snacks eating up
161to to see lunch right so but that's I mean until you live it that was not a concern the time of sea lunch that was raised by any student as we talked about this last year right it just didn't come up as a thing this is just an example that until you live it and you get into it and you see what your body feels like waiting for 117 lunch you're like I I don't like this okay well and that's you know Ryan doing all of this work is what helps us make those long-term changes and and the kids have been really open with some really creative ideas so I do want to just reinforce that um as we come up and I may mock up an idea and I'll float it to a classroom
162of kids that oftentimes they turn around and turn in a slip of paper saying I like your idea but I like my idea better um and like all right let's go um so uh you know it's it's been great to meet with classes and to have them say like well if I had my choice of sea lunch where it is now or an earlier a lunch I choose earlier a launch some kids have said can't we just do a snap like a stop drop and roll snack Break um that you know that they have a lot of really creative ideas um can't we move access to behind this period that would move this up so they have a lot of ideas that we're kind of going to work through um and and see which one
163checks the most boxes right reduces kids with large gaps of time during the day and moves up sea lunch and so trying to get the most ants into a solution you know foreign that we're going to make for next year and we'll go through a round of this next year and then we'll probably have to make some tweaks for the year after that but that's how we model for our students that you grow and get better and improve I had a few summative comments to make you hit on on two of them good hey so no for sure uh I mean the fact that we don't have that we never looked at in a period day we never did the surveys with that and and we didn't have that as a baseline because we didn't
164have that information um I so I thought that was that was an interesting Insight that I hadn't really thought about before um uh and then the feedback isn't current if we did the survey today I mean it'd be different than it was almost two two months ago yeah but it takes time for it takes time to process the data so we have to remember that we're working in you know in arrears here right you know and and then um no matter what we're data driven we've been data driven and we continue to be data driven so we're looking at results we're looking at what's going on we're looking at how the grades are are shaping up um we're you know it's we're going to make decisions based based on facts not feelings and and and
165then the last was that um I sat with an American government class last week and uh they had a invite invited local officials to come in right yeah celebrities when you were the celebrity I was just sort of yeah so um but I mean I this came up and you know when I when I shared that hey we're looking at data and you know we did a survey and guess what we're paying attention to everything that you're saying and you need to continue to participate in surveys because they're going to be more going forward and that information is going to be used to make changes and if something's not working right we're gonna we're gonna make it work right we're gonna correct it we're not going to keep doing what we've been doing you know
166the reason for doing all this was for improvement I mean this was this is not something just fun to do I mean so much easier if we just left it all alone so uh you know this is a really challenge a real big Challenge and and so part of this is about keeping promises we we said that we were going to look at this information we're going to continue to look at this information and we're not going to stop doing it we're going to continue to ask tough questions right and and that's what we're that's what we're here to do because we all know what's at stake no and I I would say I appreciate the work yeah it's been done here and the fact that we're working to make it work is for many
167as possible on a positive I think it's good that like with the new course offerings and things I mean I I've I asked my daughter like do you wish you you know I think as this is the real thing that when you're planning your schedule you'll have you know I said don't you wish like you would have had time to take culinary arts or you would have had and I think that this in the long run builds builds that gives them that feature you know that they would have it and especially like a PE alternative like that that kind of gives you yet another opportunity to take an elective or something that you didn't get to take I think that was the drawback of the eight period day was you know either I have to
168take a study hall or I have to take an elective in this model you kind of get some built-in time you know total of both yeah and so I you know I think you can sort of see it you know evolving and and getting them you know that you don't have to have you you can have some of those classes that are an interest or something that you're passionate about and you know and have lunch like you know I think it's at 1 30 in the afternoon yeah and I really appreciate that you said that um 17 of our freshmen said that they're likely not to take a study hall next year and pick up an elective instead um because they do see that they they're able to get their stuff done and they're able
169to and now they're going to make conscious choices 13 of our sophomores and 10 of our Juniors all said that they'd pick up another class um and so just the idea that they'll find some time for enrichment in their day because they still know that they have the time in order to get their studying done or get help from their teachers um is huge and to be able to see um North and South as a place to explore rather than I need a study hall to get through um that's an exciting thing and um and what you said is right like if they can pick that up and keep a lunch um because I I hate when I hate when kids don't take a lunch um my niece doesn't take a lunch though so I'm
170you know so yeah I think it's it's good in that regard and I I think you know as you get eighth graders and people that are on this their entire this this is what they know you know it'll just be better you know and I don't think we can underestimate you know Ryan just talked about taking more courses he talked earlier about what our athletes said with this schedule is doing for them and their day remember one of the goals under Essa one of the College of career Readiness standards is every student being involved in two or more school activities well a lot of students are like well I'm not going to do that activity because I don't have time for that or then I can't go get help when we create this time during
171the day now students can Flex their time and now I might be willing to go join that club or that sport or that activity because I know I can still get my homework done and not have to go to bed at one in the morning as a result of that so there's a lot that we're trying to do as a district effect to make the student experience more positive more Future Ready but we have to think about how we use time differently and that's what this schedule ultimately allows us to do all right thank you Ryan for all of your work thank you thank you keep it up good night oh moving on to the lovey request oh we're still here we've got a visual going up there oh sorry yeah I think that was
172an easy one this is a complicated one oh all right there we go mark so we've already talked about the taxes Levy during the fruits and Taxation hearing and the actual initial request to have that hearing to get this done this is to maybe give just a visual of what's happening and why I think is that very important that we do try and maximize our Levy even beyond the what the tax caps gives and unless you have new construction so the key lines here are first all these orange bars are with the CPI factor is for each year for the last 10 years orange line here is a 10-year average which is just just under three percent and the green line is a 10-year average for all of these and if we go back another
17320 years this is the first time in 30 years that the CPI has crossed the five percent bar and the the tax caps are the lower of five percent or CPI of the year and so now we've crossed we're two percent higher put in a and this it's already been calculated it's already been this is based on the levy that's already been checked so this is a known Factor we're going to have five percent only on the to increase on the tax cap and very likely have two percent or more in expenditures because that's Consumer Price Index that's a inflation level that we have to also expect right now it's it's trending between seven and eight percent it's already the seven percent is already in the books and the next one coming to December I'm
174really happy I've seen gasoline prices coming yeah it is so it may actually come down a little bit lower than that it's still going to be higher than five percent which will be the lock-in for our Revenue so we're just being very you know I think farsighted here trying to think of in the future years that we don't want to go below our maximum that we can and one thing to know that the this year the following year coming through it's going to be five five percent is the cap for basically existing properties the only other money we get is maybe up in this extra area for up to three percent perhaps of new construction now I I don't think it's going to be that because it's been we were going to be assessors were
175going to let me know if it was going through that I didn't get anything so um it just will fall away so we will probably just have five percent maybe another quarter percent of 50 of new construction that we've already identified we won't have decades you know I don't think a lot of taxpayers know that we've been keeping our uh our Revenue stream down to this level and you know they might think you guys get five percent a year or whatever no we've been below you know two and a half percent for the whole run of the tax caps so the only the only changed our addition to that is new construction and so we're just trying to make sure we don't leave anything on the table for that yeah all right we have an
176action item to approve the lobby and a couple other forms along with it yeah yeah thank you Mark thank you Mark [Music] Freedom of Information here uh we've received them and we have responded to them and they are all available on our website at that link okay well we will move into the approval um first we uh recommendation for actions first we need a motion for the Board of Education to approve the 2023-2024 curriculum proposals as presented so moved second Chris and Terry Mr Espinoza hi Terry pavisich aye aye Mr Christopher that's right Fuller hi Jenny hagstrom aye and Nancy Governor I the proposals are approved next we need a motion for the Board of Education to approve the certificate of tax levy the certificate of certificate of certificate of certificate of tax letters certification
177the certificate of compliance with the truth and Taxation law as presented enough certificates so moved I wanted I think Joanna and Chris yeah that's fine okay thank you 200 Vasquez Drexler aye Christopher Espinoza aye Gerald Fuller hi Jenny hagstrom aye Gary pavisich aye Mike Davenport aye and Nancy coverka aye the text Levy is approved we have no I have no no forms okay I meant to discuss and it's it's a new law that's in place saying that when you have your tax and truth and Taxation or your Levy requests that you indicate you you give the board information on what your total fund balances are what's your statement of position is we've been doing that for 30 years some districts I guess had to be legally pushed into it oh but we'd like to have
178that in a minute so it's always been the first thing in your financial section you'll see the statement of financial position assets and liabilities sorry to get out of order no thanks for clarifying because also we have that in our in our documents but somebody watching yeah sure so thank you oh yes Mr Berg you'd like to speak for public comments okay I got it second reception of visitors which is intended for audience members to address the board on any topic pertaining to Community High School District 99 comments are limited to three minutes to provide all visitors equal opportunity to address the board if you need more time submit your thoughts in writing to Mrs neidek the board secretary um we're dispensing with the comments look for tonight uh prior to addressing the board please
179State your full name the proceedings are being tape recorded and are being live streamed they're being tape recorded for the purpose of producing accurate meeting minutes and I reserve the right to modify these protocols if circumstances warrant thank you for observing them thank you thank you again my name is Colette Berg again appreciate your having me here as a guest and the honor to stop on our family uh I just wanted to add a tidbit on the survey and for all of you and Ryan um for over 40 years I was an HR and training leader okay in the corporate world and Ryan has a daunting task it's unbelievable yeah the amount of work that he's had to do to put it all together so kudos to him uh 50 to 60 percent response on
180an employee survey or I'll call it an employee survey or survey any of kind in his first year is Not Unusual so you've had a pretty good response the success is really determined by the people who spent the time completing your survey seeing results the sooner they see them the better the faster they see them the better the greater the impact the better so I would suggest if there are some quick hit things that you can do as a result of the survey whether it's the board The Faculty the school district would have jump on them because uh you'll get great satisfaction and they'll see it as all being worthwhile the second thing is do a follow-up survey I don't know if you plan on doing that but I've done probably 20 to 25 years
181worth of employee surveys and everyone wants to see another one because they want to give feedback on the changes because it's not just what they live with for 30 40 years it's what you changed a year ago that now they want to give feedback on everyone in today's social media World wants a voice so I offer that up it's just a couple of little tidbits so thank you again thank you thank you thank you okay moving on to Communications and announcements uh anything online Jenny no I'm sorry we don't have a meeting until the end of January okay uh for the per the board of controls request uh we asked for Sasa to provide comparison data showing member districts enrollment for the school year of 20 to 23. the data showed a trend of decrease
182in enrollment throughout our member districts as well as sassad however sassad is anticipating a slight increase in enrollment beginning in January 2023 Administration continues to look at programs and services offered to CSM membership as well as classroom usage throughout the program the board also discussed variables that impact a change in membership of the border control in discussion a change of the name from Board of control to board of directors at present the board of control consists of more superintendents than elected board members and I believe there's only two or three superintendents are privy to more Communications it seems between districts and see I said so it's very hard for board members to keep up with what's going on this would eliminate whoever the next board member is who is appointed to Beyonce I said only
183be required to be on the board of governance um thus fewer meetings to attend those are going to be quarterly right I think it was quarter I think that's what I said yeah and then again as needed you know yeah I have to get more of the cliff notes on there because I read and I couldn't quite understand I figured that right you already got the communication on it but thanks Trina uh 99. uh we haven't met uh we're gonna meet Monday okay then I will just mind people that we have a January 9th Workshop meeting at 6 30 pm here on January 23rd regular business meeting at 6 30 here everybody should enjoy their holidays and uh calling for an adjournment move we adjourn my second Mike and Joanna all those in favor I
184suppose thank you all for your service