2022-09-12 CSD99 School Board Meeting

001mike davenport here chris espinoza here shirelle fuller here jenny hagstrom here troy pavisic here here auntie cupcake here luka plauskas here and caitlyn vincent here we have a quorum let's stand for the pledge i 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 okay and we start with our favorite yeah our students all right i'll invite courtney up good evening everyone thank you all for having our students this evening i am really happy to introduce to you three of our student leaders from our north stars program and they run our freshman orientation program and that's what they're going to talk about tonight um so we have tonight topher ferris michael logan and ellison mulvey

002along with our sponsors kevin leslie and lisa lichtman aaron moore is also one of our sponsors but she couldn't make it tonight so these two have graciously joined us this evening so i'm going to call our students up and they're going to talk to you about our freshman orientation program hello everybody i'm topher ferris and um yeah we're just here to talk to you guys about uh what north star is positively north is all about um so just for some statistics there's 110 of us so pretty big number of leaders and um yeah let's get into it so our mission uh as leaders we provide a foundation for new dgn students and the ways we do this is we help them become familiar with the building we show them to their lockers and that's just

003a huge part of making them feel safe and comfortable heading to that next point and yeah so showing them around and really showing our philosophies them really makes them feel safe and comfortable and along with that we encourage them to meet new people north is filled with tons of resources and uh great people to help you fulfill what you need to accomplish at north so yeah okay so my name is allison mulvey and on orientation day we had about 430 freshmen and i believe it was about 25 upperclassmen transfer students so a lot of people came and it was a great turnout it was really nice you know when they're introduced they're walking into the school and the band's playing the drum lines playing you know they have they're really kind of understanding like what

004north and the excitement and energy that they're going to be getting when they you know are at football games you know when you'll see the band or at the homecoming parade and like the homecoming rally everything like that so we get everyone together and they find name tags as you can kind of see in some of the pictures topher is actually finding some name tags right there in his little construction uniform and so you know everyone knows their group you get a group number everyone you know the waiters like to like dress up topher i'm really calling you out but topper was construction some friends and i were guy fieri and michael you're also construction as well so you know everyone has their own little theme some people dressed up as pigs you'll see that

005on the next slide yeah um but it's really great and you know everyone we start talking out dr dement was introducing herself and kind of the school we learned some cheers from the cheerleaders and it was a really great time and then next slide yes please so there's the pigs [Laughter] so everyone kind of was grouped together you know there's the numbers on the wall you can see where you're going and you can right off the bat you can finally meet some like new friends i know there's like people in my freshman orientation group that i'm still friends with today it was just kind of nice to before the actual first day of school get to see a few faces you know maybe compare schedules and see oh we both have math together oh you

006just see him in the hallway and you're like oh yeah that's kate from my freshman orientation group like that's someone i already know you see at lunch you know that's kind of a scary time you don't know who you're going to sit with especially if you're a transfer student you know maybe you lost some friends just through summer and you need some some new friends you see oh she was nice in orientation she said that her favorite color was blue so is mine and she has six dogs i love dogs like let's i'll go i'll go sit down and talk so it's really nice a good community right off the bat one more side please and so there's like the cheerleaders and then so i want to really break down the gauntlet line so that

007is intense let me tell you you can see in the pictures students walk through that's after you know they see the drum line in the band they're thinking all right all right we're just going to go find a spot no no way they are not done they are going to be fished through this line getting like praised and cheered for and the cheerleaders are cheering the athenas are there the football team is there it gets a little crazy by the end that's where the football team is but um it's also just a more like wow okay like this is kind of exciting it's a little intimidating you see all these people and you see oh they're all cheering for me like that's kind of nice as i'm walking in you know all these people are

008here for me and i'm here to make this first kind of day of school experience at north a good one so oh yes and the athena's cheer and drum line i still have that one i got it okay so i was saying a little bit before but the athena's um they were there they're in the gauntlet line right at the beginning and they did a performance jv and varsity so kind of maybe you didn't know when tryouts were because athena's tryouts and um athena strides are before the school starts they're in like the winter kind of spring time so some people in eighth grade might not have known they see athena's they think oh i i like to dance i can try out next year so it's kind of nice to see and know get

009a little glimpse at what you're going to be seeing at the football games and same thing with cheer you see someone just getting hoisted up right there i mean you're thinking wow okay that's pretty intense and she like flips down and everything it's incredible how exciting maybe i want to try that next year and then of course the lovely drum line i mean you gotta love them you cannot go wrong with some live music and i mean our drum line is incredible as you guys must know because we know what's up we know what's up with the drum line absolutely and football is getting everyone hype getting everyone going crazy and it just really brings the energy it's really exciting it's something that i enjoy as a leader and i know i enjoyed as a

010freshman coming in so hi everyone my name is michael logan um so this these are like pictures of our small group meetings so after like everybody wanted to the gym we had these like small group meetings it was like 10 to 15 kids and we just did like simple like get to know your activities um then we did human knot which me and topher's group could not do not so you know it's like it's just like kind of like getting to know like a few people in your grade um so like my freshman orientation i came from st mary's which is like a small school so like i think maybe 15 kids went to north from my school so i went annoying like really small amount of kids um so like a small group activity

011getting to know people's names was you know like really it was really good for me um it's just like a group of kids that you can like be friends with it's like your first friends um and like allison was saying earlier like you kind of talk to these kids and you're like oh we have this class together so like i'm a pe leader and like two of the kids in my group are in my pe class so it's like kind of interesting how like they they like know people going into the school so it's not like super nerve-wracking and then locker practicing and finding classrooms so you know lockers can be a pain in the butt sometimes like i remember with the renovations my freshman year i had a different locker so the first day

012of my junior year i went to my locker and i spent like 10 minutes trying to open it i found out that i was at the wrong locker room so that's probably why i wanted to make sure that like kids knew like where their locker was how to open it like again coming from saint mary's no lockers so like i did not know how to open up a block in my freshman year so my leaders helped me with that and then also finding classrooms like the classroom numbers are i'd say mostly in order and then there's like this like area that's like kind of like a square and they can get a little out of order so just kind of helping the freshmen find their classrooms i think was really good for them yeah and

013then continued support so we had on the first day of school small group meetings um where we kind of met with the same group did some more get to know your activities and then just kind of let the freshmen ask us any questions about like clubs or classes like how's this teacher um and then we also helped them find their classrooms so we kind of sat um like in the we sat in like a like a business like area of the school and we just let freshmen come to us if they had questions and then on the student panel so this hasn't happened yet this is happening next week i believe um so during your resource period on the block day or the freshman resource period on the block day they can they're going to

014come to the auditorium there's going to be a few north star leaders that are on a panel and they can ask any questions about homecoming week or homecoming itself so like um we brainstormed a couple questions but like some of them are like with spirit week like do people actually dress up it's like that can be like that's a serious thought like you're like remember last year anything but a backpack day and i brought a cooler and i was like what if no one else [Laughter] so just let some like ask questions like anything that they have like we can encourage them to go to the dance because it's a lot of fun any questions from board members no i think it's really a great thing that you um you know help the freshmen and

015the transfer students because coming to a new school is is hard enough and then not being acquainted with anybody in the school can really be intimidating so thank you guys for for taking the time to help those those kids because it makes their their four years or three years or two years much better yeah thank you terry questions are really important and these guys do such a great job and they they make fun of themselves but they're dressing like pigs that actually it provides a really positive impression for our newcomers and our new students because it is a perfect example of how on homecoming we have all of these kids participating and it's building our culture to show what we're all about and they do such a great job of that and creating that positive

016first impression for all of our new students so it's just it's really impressive and it's a lot of fun so um and evidenced by the number of kids who show up for freshman orientation and then continue to participate and be involved and really that's what our whole first couple of weeks have been is getting kids involved we just had our student activities fair um and a lot of ways for kids to get involved some of you were at the homecoming game or the first football game last week and saw the great crowd that we had and that's just again that's part of our school culture that's really important to our students so yeah thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you and a nice presentation too buddy yes yes thank you thank you

017thank you all right we'll turn it over to our student board members i know that they drew straws to see who went first so i don't know who won or lost define one yeah just define win leave that up to that picture i can go first okay okay so starting off with last friday we had our first home game like miss dement had mentioned earlier our stands were full of students who were supporting our football team and both sides were able to come together and enjoy the game that definitely didn't disappoint in the end and with the dgn students flashing this like the entire side of the theme which was purple out and we were supporting our cheerleaders with the fnl shirts that most of our students had bought which is really great to see

018people engaging and then also figuring out how to use their resources to get those shirts following the football game on saturday we celebrated our diners grove community by having our first block party that incorporated many games food choices and lively music and that made the environment as fun as possible and it got individuals to come together no matter the age group and then for a homecoming report as to what's going on this week and next week we have already started getting our themes from homecoming and starting off with class colors next monday which creates an establishment of every grade cr having a specified class color and then wearing them and it just brings everyone together starting it off strong and then throughout the school we have gotten pure excitement from what is to come we've

019seen that people are enjoying what they're seeing so far and everyone is informed last week that we're able to start selecting our homecoming court of 15 individuals and later this week we're going to fight down our five royalty individuals for homecoming court and then an inside look for the academic aspect of donors go of north we have incorporated time during free periods to help students with specific areas that they might need help with and recently we have had teachers teach lessons such as how to apply for college and how to become successful during our stressful times right now and so far students have been responding well and are engaging in the activities presented by the staff good thank you thank you thank you at dennis grove south um a lot of the students and staff

020are finally settling into the new block schedule it seems like the students are finally figuring out where they need to be when they need to be and i would say the black schedule is like easing into a routine around this time miss lip has taken the initiative to come to different classes she was just in my english class today taking feedback from the students directly asking them what they liked about the black schedule and what changes can be made long term and just like following them in the next few weeks so having um our principal really like open up to us and ask direct um feedback was really nice and felt very personal for the students some of the pros that i heard during my time listening were having more self-choice of um like when

021we get to leave during the black schedule during our lunches at the end of the day especially for upperclassmen that's been really nice getting able to leave school early so that we can get to our jobs or just have more time to do homework throughout the week and feel less cramped and stressed the teachers have been really engaging with the longer class periods especially in my anatomy class for example we've been able to really like use the microscopes and the equipment since we have the longer time which has been really helpful in learning some of the cons that i've heard are more with awkward schedules having long spaces of time in the middle of the day just sitting in the commons due to having eighth period off for example or even study halls so some

022today when we were getting feedback we're recommending like an open campus or some changes to be made with eighth period laying in the middle of the day on block schedules and for access the seniors are more excited to have the student choice stays and the willing like the ability to go wherever we want but the freshmen do enjoy like getting to know a certain group of students that will be with them all four years i know my younger brother who's a freshman he really enjoyed having that new group of people that he might not have classes with already so he can meet and get to know those people um this week is our homecoming week so the spirit is high at dgs we started the day off with a comfy dress day so it's always

023nice to have a monday pajama day with different dress up days following the next few weeks we have powder puff coming up on wednesday which i'm really excited for as well as a mind reader coming to our resource which will be really fun and interesting and i know our homecoming court just got released today so everyone's really excited and looking forward to the dance very good thank you thank you thank you thank you all right we'll hear more from luke and caitlyn later today as we dive a little deeper into our schedule we're going to start with the the reports for tonight and i'm going to turn it over here in a moment to ryan and lisa a feature moving forward in our meetings will be as we open up reports from the superintendent we

024will tie it back to how it directly connects to the strategic plan so that the board is aware of how we're working to meet these goals and specifically the tasks that we're working on uh as tonight is our first really official night of the board of the school year first uh board meeting of the school year you will see some of these are extensive you know because it's the first time that we've connected that strategic plan those strategic plan items with that topic in future meetings if we revisit the same topic again we won't go into as much depth as it comes up just like what new uh are we touching on related to that in in that meeting so there's an overview for that today as we go through that if a board member

025would like for us to connect any of these in some way to what we're doing please ask we might call out a couple of things as a team as well as we go through those but really this is you know us documenting that we're working diligently towards meeting the goals of the strategic plan so the first one tonight talking about summer school and the extended school year report really these ties into the strategic direction of an equitable and supportive environment and you can see there the the key expectation it ties to is that ensuring safe sustainable opportunities for all students and families including access to district resources there's two key tasks that are met uh through this the first one is really about the instructional practices and academic metrics through summer school uh you'll hear

026later on tonight about ninth grade on track and how we've used that summer school time to really improve that academic metric and then obviously access to district uh resources is a key part of summer school especially with the sy extended school year so with that being said i'm going to turn this over to ryan and lisa just tell me when to click hi uh ryan dougherty director of student experiences same guy new role uh excited to be here we're going to continue with the what happened before the school year started with summer school so next slide we had 288 students participate in the in-person portion of summer school we had 67 students with online credit recovery of those 288 238 were in academic classes and 50 of them were in driver's education um and so

027in comparison right that's probably the highest enrollment by about 30 kids since 2016. with the exception of last year last year um we were about 518 students for a variety of reasons mostly kids reacclimating after being remote for a year and especially with some of our kids who may have struggled during remote learning excited so of our online credit recovery 67 students earned about 39 credits and that helped for students to graduate who didn't make it in may but none then made it for an august graduation i gave a little bit more detail about those 67 students at the bottom you can see that of the 36 students who enrolled in one course so one semester course they completed 30 of those so if you enroll in one you're more likely to finish the 20

028students enrolled in two mostly that's first and second semester of a course and so they completed 18 of those courses so really high percentage when we start getting into those five and six students who were in three or four more courses this online credit recovery program is helping students who have gotten really far behind and making sure that they'll still be able to choose the future that they're looking to see for themselves and so when we talk about supporting having an equitable supportive environment for students this online credit recovery program is really helpful for them specifically um so great distribution with the the regular school year it's pretty on par with our regular school year we had two percent fs during the actual academic school year two percent f's um over summer school um the

029a's it was 45 during the regular school year 41 in summer school the one difference is is that you can see at the bottom the p or i so it's a pass or incomplete so earlier you saw that some of our online credit recovery students did not complete so they earned an eye but then also are you only can earn a pass with online credit recovery so that uh additional percentage that maybe not with the a's for 45 some of those kids would fall within the past so it's a pretty even distribution between summer and the regular school year next slide so one other question that we ask is why are you taking this course and as you can see 58 are repeating it um there was a a fairly significant jump in the questions

030for other right um because of the change in policy uh a couple of years ago where you can retake a course for a higher grade some kids you know they they're not going to choose repeat they're not going to choose enrichment so you can see 13 other also sometimes our drivers education students don't know which ones to choose um so they may choose enrichment they may choose flexibility because they're looking to take driver's ed to get out of the way before the school year and others choose other so um you know in the future we may clarify that question to find out so that um it doesn't kind of fall into another do we know i know i'm starting to interrupt but no that's yeah we're about to switch at least so it's fine we

031were um uh we know that we were expecting to have more students coming in for enrichment this uh summer than we have in the past and it's been a goal for a long time for the board do you know in the past is this i don't recall if this is a new question or do you know like how many what percentage of our students who have frenchmen in the past um off the top of your head if you don't you don't i don't know um absolutely i think so you look at the report yeah it was on there oh i didn't see it on there i'm sorry but they have every year going back um so grade distribution reasons for attendance well there it is i'm so sorry i skipped no that's okay i'm sorry

032i should have printed out the report and put in no no so it's actually down a little bit yeah i think this year um i know that the goal has been enrichment but coming off of two summers where students weren't able to like enter the world and do what they would like um summer school was a harder sell this year for sure um there was actually the students who took summer school this year more of them made it all the way through summer school than they ever had in the past because the kids who wanted to take summer school all really made it through i think we only had four or five students dropped from attendance whereas last year i think we almost hit 100 students because one they didn't pay for summer school second

033it was like i don't know do i really want to do this and uh you know masking and so um the the students who were there this year really wanted it and the students who were on the fence they ran they wanted their free summer for sure thank you good evening everybody my name is lisa balo i'm the director of special services there's just a little bit about what what role on the main roles that i play within the district but tonight i'm here to talk to you about esy and i'm the prime administrator and supervisor for esy so what is esy those are you know our fun special ed acronyms right um but esy stands for extended school year um and it is a program required by law for eligible special education students so

034not all special education students but those that are eligible for the purpose of maintaining those skills that they gained throughout the year and making sure that we don't have a lot of regression of those attained skills while they have their summer break right so predominantly we're usually pretty much talking about many of our students in our multi-needs programs at both buildings as well as at t99 who are really working on basic functional math and and um english and reading skills as well as those life skills that's predominantly that that group other students that fall in other areas of eligibility within special ed also have access to summer school right um just many of the programs that ryan already talked about but this is specifically for that that group of eligible students that we discuss at

035each individual iep meeting and make a decision as an iep team on whether or not that student is eligible so just to give you a little bit sorry go back more i thought you were pointing yeah just to give you a little historical perspective prior to 2020 um we utilized sacid solely as our esy service um that was eligible to that same group of students that we just discussed but then the summer of 2020 while everybody was virtual we put together our own virtual esy for that population of students and what we really found honestly during that time is that our students really really just love being with our teachers and we just really felt like we really need to make this work for years to come and so summer 2021 and 22 we offered

036in-person esy at donner's grove south for those eligible students so you can see our enrollment numbers here um starting off with that virtual session um you know i think at that point we just like we had some kids that were like you know i'm done with school i i and parents who are just like we're kind of done with 2020. we're going to take a break during that virtual time but again we did have 35 students that that interacted with us and we were able to use our own staff to complete that and as you can see the little breakdown there of which students participated from the three various buildings um and then you can just see in 2021 up till this last summer at 2022 we had 81 students really good turnout and i

037really think the one of the best pieces of it um is that we did it all of that with all of our own district 99 staff with the exception of three people um which was which was really really great the kids who are coming into district 99 who are incoming freshmen got to meet a lot of their teachers they got to see a building they got to meet other students and as well as our t99 students are interacting then too with our high school students and there's really that cool camaraderie like oh next year when i come to t99 i'll see you there and there's a lot of that good mixing right that for an entire summer that wasn't happening before so really cool to see next and this is my last one i think

038it comes second because what i just said i think is cooler however this is still pretty cool not only did we service them within our district with our own staff we did it 20 grand cheaper yeah um better program better program with our own staff um and and cheaper so we're super excited we'll see if we can beat that 81 number um for this coming summer and um i think we will does anybody have any questions no i think it's a great program this is a wonderful i just win-win and can't say enough about it i love hearing i love hearing stories about how we had a really tough situation in 2020 and we figured out something that you know from that experience that helped us do something better more more efficient thank you yeah

039this was a great byproduct of that for sure yeah thank you thank you thank you and our kids profit from that any questions for ryan and lisa before i release them no we've got them here oh let them go hank thank you both thank you for all you do thank you [Applause] all right as we come back to a new school year every year we focus on safety and security as we return obviously with things going on in society recently especially uvalde in highland park this was at the top of everybody's mind as we all returned to school this year this is once again part of our strategic plan under an equitable and supportive environment we have an expectation to ensure safe and sustainable opportunities for all students families including access to district resources and

040then we have a specific task within our strategic plan for this year to continue to work with public entities on creating a safe school environment so this year to kick off the school year uh once again as part of our new hybrid block schedule we were able to integrate into the school year our active shooter drills which consisted of two videos one that looked at the alice program and the other that looked at our blue points system which is like the fire alarm for the police and then some of our staff including uh ken sorensen and omar davis who are on our safety and security teams and had that up in the buildings then offered during uh the resource time so access we ran the the drills then in the resource time that followed that

041provided an opportunity for follow-up uh to hear from our staff to answer questions that we commonly heard during the drills so that it was a pretty comprehensive program and the systems the blueprint systems up and running at both both schools yeah they were tested over the summer and at t99 as well okay yup i just i seem to like i remember reading something about where it wasn't at one of the schools for some reason no all all up and going okay good up so good and then we've refocused on ensuring that all exterior doors are secured locked and the biggest thing is not propped right making sure that you know nobody's propping doors and if uh we've integrated into our practices this year if a door is propped we're going back to cameras we're seeing

042who propped them we're following up with the staff member that propped it or if it was a student we're following up with the staff member that was responsible for that student if if there was one at that point so uh really making sure that you know we're doubling down on that and then a change for this year is that all classroom doors are closed and locked during instructional periods so that'd be like a general classroom space not a library or or those kinds of things but every classroom door is closed and locked during instructional class periods we wander the halls to make sure that that's done and in place we know that from all of the studies out there that that is the easiest most effective way to secure a school so we were really

043focusing on that as well this year now one of the concerns with that is can a police officer get or a fire you know a fire fighter get into those spaces if need to be we have always had access to a key for police and firefighters at various locations in the building that they can access but in response to what happened at uvalde we worked with the downers grove police department to issue keys to they go along with each patrol car key ring so they're inventoried they're secured but when an officer is on duty they then have access to the exterior and interior of the buildings do our do our um our doors are the are the locks do they have removable cores they could be re-keyed or do you have to change the entire

044lock no you'd be able to change the core you can re-key it yeah but it would be very expensive either way so i'm wondering how often do we think we might want to need to do that i don't think we need to very often because our key security is very high right now we're issuing more keys though right but these are all inventoried okay so the way that they work for the downers grove police department is every key is inventoried and placed on a key ring that key ring it can only be removed from that key ring with a specialized tool they're checked in and out at the beginning of each shift and made sure that they're secure and returned so there's if they lose that key they also lost the key to their squad

045car so yeah okay and i did uh chief gillette who works really closely with us i mean the police department are incredible partners with us uh he and i had a very long conversation about key security and how that works i had very big concerns heading into that conversation and chief gillette made me feel very comfortable with how they secure keys and would maintain the security of them so this is something probably other school districts are doing as well i think that after this past school year this is something that many school districts are are looking at how to make that happen okay so um and then we have a current intergovernmental agreement with the police department for our school resource officers one of the things that's been added by state law in the last

046year is body worn cameras that must be on every officer including school resource officers so we are working on an intergovernmental agreement we kind of have a an agreement right now but we need an official intergovernmental agreement that the board would approve and that the village would approve around though so we're finishing that up with legal counsel and that'll come to the board soon once that's done we're going to reevaluate our entire intergovernmental agreement make sure that the key aspects are captured in that make sure we modernize that it's been pro almost 20 years since we've revisited that intergovernmental agreement and the world's changed a little bit over that time so um we just you know it's a good opportunity for us to just update that and make sure that we all know how it's

047supposed to work uh we also when we talk about safety and security something that's commonly overlooked is things like cyber security which you know our district has made a huge investment in over the last decade and that we're one of the leaders in the state and the nation on cyber security one of the things that we did this year that kind of holds hands with physical security is that we did a vulnerability assessment and what they call penetration testing which evaluates can somebody get into your building and once they're in that building can they access your network or some of your critical network infrastructure so the feedback from that testing helps inform just overall safety and security that go along with that and then uh going on this fall are then tabletop safety exercises that

048go along scott's running these with jim and in cooperation with the sros on campus where there's an actual secure safety and security situation that's brought to the table and then we process through that with everybody involved so scott and jim put everybody virtually in a certain location in the building and then introduce some kind of a situation to us that we don't know what it is heading into it and then we process through that situation together as kind of a dry run to then assess and learn from so all of these things factor in together to make sure that we're offering as safe of a campus as we possibly can up on our website we do offer information on both of these topics so if somebody goes to our website and searches for safety they'll

049find the overview of all of our safety practices and if they search for data security they'll find the overview of all of our data security practices but all of these things play into the whole overarching work of safety and security and this though i was saying this is in addition to all the changes we made with the master facility plan to enhance the physical structure of our school to enhance security correct and those are outlined on that website as well with secured entrances adding our security team and our lead security officers and and all of those pieces are part of the safety practices we share publicly and as the board knows there's far more safety practices that for security purposes we don't share with the general public right so for everything that's here in the

050public that's the the tip of the iceberg of our safety practices across the district any questions yeah are the um because joanna and i had the opportunity to sit in one of the alice trainings on the 31st um we had i think a group of sophomores i think some of them were not super uh talkative they didn't have a lot of questions when it came to that part have you noticed any other or i don't know if you know this uh other grade levels other classes were there more discussion um among students was there any sort of topics that came up yeah i think that you know obviously varies based on class to class and the the group of students in front of you but um also students this isn't brand new to students either

051right sophomore a room full of sophomores they all saw this last year right so no it's review right so i i think amongst our ninth graders there was a lot more uh discussion i know in those settings uh luke and caitlin you know put you on the spot uh how to you know you guys are coming back for the fourth time around for this kind of information so what was it like in your access for your alice training um kind of like how you touched on since many of the seniors like we're returning we just watched the videos and then we didn't really have many questions since we've been through like the alice procedures but um our teachers did like kind of like give us an outline of like where the blue point like systems

052were in the building um just like to refresh like because it varies from like floor to floor so give us like a more perspective but other than that since it was like review we there wasn't many like questions asked about it um the class period i was in during the time we were learning about this um obviously once again we've been through this for four years and sometimes it feels repetitive but we obviously think it's important it's important to know what's going on and what you should do in these types of situations and personally my class was very engaged in the video and everything that was going on and afterwards the teachers i personally have two teachers at the time and they were they were trying to engage the students in a discussion and trying

053to figure out oh did you understand it because sometimes there's students who are watching and maybe they have questions or they're too scared to ask something so they definitely made it a very comfortable environment to ask any questions you have and just be open about it and i think it was very helpful because in a sense you're supposed to know this and if you don't then something should be changed i didn't admit those kids he they may not have been engaging in a big discussion but whenever he called on one question they knew the answer was back thank you okay thank you yeah thank you all right uh we're gonna have uh courtney and irwin come forward for the update on the hybrid block schedule as the board uh saw this presentation in advance you

054know that every one of our four strategic directions are addressed this year obviously uh through the hybrid schedule obviously this is a huge aspect that we're working on throughout this school year and an inner it's interwoven inside of everything we're doing you can see many of our strategic expectations we touch on through the work of the strategic plan you know you can see expectations you heard about that with access and those kinds of things are with uh our drills and those kinds of things but there's a lot a big focus on social emotional learning uh as caitlyn and luca both alluded to earlier and just knowing how the school works uh we even heard our students today talk about that in our student perspectives and really you know this idea of building these relationships you

055know i i think i mentioned both to joanna chris on the way out it'll be interesting to see like that group of sophomores that you both came in and saw they're going to work with they're going to be together with those same two teachers for the next two years it'd be very interesting to go back two years from now and see what that room is like you know after those students and teachers are together for multiple years but it's a different type of relationship building that happens through this you can see there's many of our strategic expectations that we're meeting and i didn't even list all of them these are just the ones that i anticipate will connect to what is shared today and then remember while this time is going on in this new

056schedule our students are doing access and and resource our staff are also engaging in their professional learning during that time as well all right so there is a lot that weaves into this i won't read it all to you the public can visit this online as well it's up in board docs but you can see there is a great deal of the strategic plan and the administrative tasks that connect back to what we're doing through this new you know schedule my reading through it too i mean there's you know there's a lot of tasks there that it's as compared to the traditional schedule we had before this accomplishes it better and then there's other things that only get accomplished with this block schedule that that we couldn't do yeah yeah one of the key things

057mike is if you remember back to one of the key words in the strategic plan and the directions and expectations is ensuring that these things happen yes and in the past many of these things would happen but it depended on the teacher you had or the schedule you had or what coach you had and what the access and resource time allows for is ensuring is making sure that every student has an opportunity to engage with these concepts and these expectations moving forward which is significantly big significantly different than just leaving it to chance that these things happen you know like every kid had the opportunity if they had questions regarding the drill to have questions answered right and to dialogue about it there was a second revisit of that in resource if there was questions

058it was identified if after that there was adults up on the stage that you could stick around and talk to them or you knew who to follow up with afterwards where in the past that that you know we would have covered the drill but it wouldn't have been move on in the same way that we did it here so um you know we're much better at what we're doing as a result of this change excellent all right i'm going to start with uh north high very good luca is going to start she's going to talk through like first off what's going well and then some things that we're still working through um and i'll jump in here a couple of times to explain a few things that we've already kind of troubleshooted and um but

059i'll let luca go and uh she's giving us feedback from our student advisory team last week and we had probably i don't know about 25 students i think um from all grade levels and um we spent almost the whole time talking about the new schedule so i felt bad because we didn't get to homecoming but but they had a lot to say and it was really interesting so this is kind of a summary of what they had to say so luca i'll turn it over to you um so starting off with a great positive is that last year we got used to the minute classes and a lot of the teachers try to cram in the time to teach a lesson or just go through a test or a quiz and now that we have

060more time and teachers are trying to adapt to those changes or the longer class periods we're able to incorporate more brain breaks which is better for students individually and all together because after learning a lesson you might feel a little drained and in a sense having a brain break it allows individuals to get to know each other because either you're talking with your group that you're sitting with in math or you're doing something while you're up and then you're stretching and it just helps overall also students once again with the longer class periods students are given more time to finish their work i know that personally if you take regular rigorous classes that you might get homework piled on and piled on and so having that time where you learn a lesson for maybe up

061to 40 minutes and then having almost 50 minutes to do your work is very helpful in a sense and even just with the longer periods for resource i know it also helps a lot because you're giving that a lot of time to finish what you might have and then you can just engage with other students around you in the commons or up in the library getting more out of the lessons like i said earlier even though the lessons might be the same amount of time maybe a 40 minute up to 40 minutes up to a whole class period on a normal monday tuesday and friday schedule i think that it's easier for us to understand the lesson in a sense because you have more time to ask questions instead of cramming it and trying to

062rush the lesson and there's more time to maybe stop a teacher in the middle and then try to have them explain what they're trying to teach you and once again you're getting to know everyone you're trying to get closer you're trying to make new friends just to get to know your peers and the teacher individually because i know there might not be that sense that you're close with your teacher but now it allows you to feel like you can be open to your teacher about any problems that you have in the class and then another great thing is that with the brain breaks into teachers are starting to learn how to adapt to the schedule in a sense because now we have the a b and c lunch and with the b lunch obviously it's

063in the middle but teachers are doing a great job trying to overcome that challenge and splitting up activities having maybe notes in the beginning letting students go to lunch and then coming back to an activity that relates to that lesson which is great just amazing having that time to take a break in the middle for students to go eat or have a snack or talk to other people and then overall i personally think that this is great that we just made a big change even though it might seem overwhelming at the beginning i think that it's making us students individually stronger because we're learning how to adapt to these changes and we're learning how to just learn in a new environment and overall i think it's helping everyone be positive and more so get everything

064done at the same time i think one of the things that stuck out i think uh during when we were when we started feedback i think some of the students were a little bit tentative um to say that i actually like the schedule it was really cute because a couple of people started to speak up and and then a few more did and while certainly there's there's always things to tweak when you're going through a chain a big change like this i think overall the sentiment is that students um are adapting and they're doing well at that adaptation and so um and and the students it's funny i was laughing because uh one student had mentioned something about b lunch and then a few other students jumped and we love bee lunch and it's like

065that was causing some anxiety with students because they didn't know and teachers because they didn't quite know how that was going to work um but we got some really good feedback that teachers are are really breaking that up um very well for kids so if i can interrupt just as a parent i got some comments you know that they thought the bee lunch was gonna be yeah awkward and i've actually gotten a lot of parents who are you know more i don't think i i don't think i have the bee lunch but um other parents have said that they're in favor of it and i do also think you know that it it it's giving kids you know i think having a senior more of a vision of what the next steps are like in

066terms of planning your day whether it's your day between eight and three twenty or your day you know for my daughter sometimes between 6 a.m and 6 p.m and so i think it's a you know and i would almost say in the beginning some people were kind of under you know like underwhelmed like what are we supposed to do for an hour and a half you know like and as we've settled in it's definitely you know taken shape and they're finding things to do and i will say too that's it's funny that you say that because a lot of the kids mentioned and it's something that's on our next slide and that i think is going to evolve over time as kids start to get more work is what do i do with all this

067time and and you know at the beginning of the year there's not as much work there's not as many things yet and so where they are really starting to think about that genuinely about how to use that time so but a lot of kids have said it's really positive because and your daughter's a good example you know i have a lot of things after school and i can get those things done on a lot of days and it's also on a you know on a tuesday or on a wednesday not that you know they only have to prepare for fork you know they don't have to prepare for as many things and so it's it gives them a little bit of a reprieve um on on those nights too and that helps with some of

068their other activities you know and if you all remember one of the key pieces of feedback that we always got from graduates was academically you do a great job of preparing us i wish that you would have prepared me better in managing my time and organizing myself and some of those executive functioning things which are really built into this new schedule right i mean access and resource time has been set aside for the resources we have at school how to manage your time how to goal set you know how to be productive you know how to schedule your time out how to use a personal planner like i've all been part of these lessons stacked at the beginning of the year to make sure that as that workload increases students are prepared to manage that

069time well the real world i mean people i mean we want go-getters we want people who will take initiative people that don't need to be told how to how to solve the problem they'll go right into it and and so this is doing that and this b lunch idea really resonates with me i hadn't thought about that before just you know i mean i don't how many times have have you had a problem that you're working on stepped away from it and then came back i mean we tell actually we tell our kids to do this as parents right you know just take just let's sit for a minute come back to it so um and let me see it much clearly yeah and this in the into to see this actually even taking place

070now in our schedules really kind of cool pretty awesome all right i also think like it's not that i would push you know i don't i don't ever we don't ever have a good night if someone you know has to stay up until midnight oh man it's not right and and so i think you know this is this is helpful um yeah in that piece too they can hopefully have a more normal sleep schedule yeah and then the next day yeah it's a consequence of what that's well we know not everything is perfect so we definitely talked about a few things that we're continuing to work on so luca go ahead so a lot of the feedback that we heard from students during our advisory meeting last tuesday was that like we just mentioned the

071time given although we might think that most of the time is used for maybe homework some students i know have periods of time where they're sitting in the commons for three hours straight and personally i know three of my friends sit in the comments for three hours straight and they finish their homework for maybe up to an hour and then don't know what to do with their time maybe they will go up to the library or they'll go maybe get a snack from the cafe but other than that once again something to consider is trying to figure out ways to use that time in an efficient way but like earlier i had mentioned we're using like the resource time now with teachers trying to teach us lessons like college planning and everything like that and

072that's definitely helping but like underclassmen who don't want to learn about college right now because they're not applying they might need something else to maybe help them with that time to fill it up um also trying to spread out activities in block classes i know that most of the teachers are doing a good job trying to spread everything out and like maybe trying to like the be lunch and have the maybe notes in the beginning and then assignments later but one of the bigger issues right now are the assessments giving and most of the teachers are spreading their assessments out on the same day and so if you have most of the same classes with other teachers like if you have a double math like i personally do i have two tests of math almost

073on the exact day every single week so personally most of the tests or quizzes you're taking they all stack up on the same day and most of them are on a friday which isn't very appealing to most students because by the end of the week you're already in the mindset of it's the weekend and maybe in a sense it might be downgrading your test score and so maybe that's something also greatly to consider as to trying to help and spread out that time or having specific days as to like we did last year which was very helpful was i know we did the exams on specific days for each department and i saw that most students were happy with that and it definitely helped lower the stress um also like we talked about earlier the

074importance of all the videos that we're getting during access periods and making sure that the teachers are giving those out and that there are discussions that are being held obviously the discussions might not be so long and take the entire period but i think it's very important that we take time to make sure that everyone is getting that information in the correct way so that nothing is maybe undermined in a way and so that all the students are able to get the access that they need to like say the importance of an alice presentation and be able to be aware of what is going on in the school and then similar issues with that more so about the lunch in a sense crowded a lunch is definitely one that was brought up during that 50

075minute and it was definitely a discussion because during our a lunch you can spend up to 25 minutes standing in line trying to get your lunch and by the time say you don't want to eat pizza every day and by the time you get to maybe the tacos or the quesadillas they might be out because you're waiting in line for too long and it's overcrowded and a result of the overcrowding a lot of people had said that they also have sensitivity to loud noise and it's they their experience during those lunch periods isn't very enjoyable because of the noise level being way too loud and then you're also not able to work on your work at the same time because obviously who wants to work on maybe a reading or an essay while it's very

076loud and a part of that there were some mentions of an open campus like it's been mentioned several times last year and over the course a lot of individuals want open campus but that's obviously a greater discussion that involves a lot of different people to incorporate themselves what does that mean like being able to go out yeah yes being able to leave and come back basically yeah yeah yeah yeah so yeah uh to address a couple of things that luca talked about um it's it was funny we we've been talking about that a lunch for a while and the kids echoed exactly what we have been working on and we are definitely moving some things around for uh second semester so that is one thing that we were working on and again that noise level

077is a result of that crowded a lunch and our library has responded and they have made it a quiet study place for that time because they know kids are looking for some quieter places so they've adjusted and adapted a little bit too to help us out um and then we're continuing to um to work through our professional development with our staff i think one of the things that i've heard consistently um in our couple of sessions that we've had with staff is that this is obviously a really big change for them too and they're finding that their pacing is off a little bit and that's very natural and so we've we've taken them from a traditional eight period day that many have known for their whole teaching career and turned it upside down a little

078bit and while they still have those three eight period days there's two black days that that do throw off their pacing a little bit so they're working through that and figuring that out and we're working with them through professional development sessions that we have with them to continually talk about the things that we can do to help them through that so um and to address any other issues that they might be that they might be finding during the block schedule to be clear when we talk about pacing we're talking about how we're moving through the curriculum yep right yeah exactly for anybody that might be following along so yeah yeah so you know some teachers are finding they're finishing earlier than expected um or later than expected and so adjusting um through those times and

079you know um to figure out what what they need to do and when overall in terms of content are are most feeling like they're on track i think so yeah um you know again a couple of issues with pacing and like some of their sections are maybe a day ahead of the other ones and so they're kind of trying to figure that out yeah um and i think too we're we're going through time and just figuring those things out as we go along but i would say for the most part i think they're pretty much on track as of right now anyway but still really yeah exactly and continued conversations about spreading out those assessments i told the students that i will be really curious when we meet again in october to see where they

080are and that's something that we'll continue to monitor with our leadership team and with our teachers too so and then and then the the hearing that their students though three hours with right yeah so we have a really very small percentage of students who have a very unique schedule where they have two periods off so they have like a study hall and a lunch period on top of each other and again i think it's uh please don't quote me but i think it's about less than 20 students so it's not that many but there's definitely a small percentage of students in that very unique boat and that's just the way the schedule happened um we looked at those students because we were concerned about that um but it's again it's a small number of students

081and we i know some of our counselors have met with some of the students to see if they can add a class and some did and some chose not to um but they do have a large chunk of time there there's no way around that like figure out day then sure don't have a student that would fall in that there's just so many permutations of the schedule depending on how horses fall there you know there will always be a random sub sample especially with students that have a study hall because they're naturally creating an extra block of time in their schedule and that's what they sign in some ways that's they signed up to have that extra space yeah in their schedule it just backed up to another free time in how it fell so

082it will be like counselors are meeting with some of the students to talk about how to plan out that time or do you want to fill that time can they volunteer too yeah for sure so maybe that would be a way that they know that we've put out a couple days a week they could volunteer to help a teacher or help yeah in in the office you know i don't know they could put out announcements for that as well and made students aware of that [Music] but it's not going to be a large number of freshmen um i couldn't tell you for certain though i would have guessed that it might have been more likely i mean i know that i know that coming in when with my students you know that first year that

083was a discussion my wife and i had with our students you know whether or not that was something with a couple of my we thought that might be especially my oldest coming in we felt that was definitely beneficial to him as he gets acclimated to high school so they didn't kind of overload himself these are probably um we're probably learning some lessons right now too that uh with our counselors and and how we communicate with parents and students going forward and how they make their schedules that this is something to be on the lookout for i think we're going to see a lot fewer students selecting study i think i agree i think it gives you a chance to take more you know i mean but i know as a parent i would i would

084appreciate especially as as an eighth grader going to ninth grade you know i i'd appreciate knowing more about that um for some of our our future freshmen some of this is just the nature of lived experience right that next year we'll be able to say like we've heard from any of our students that you know this created the time in the day with you really didn't need a study hall and you know but until you live it it's hard for you know people to envision it or to believe that that's actually a true statement we can't make a change like this and not have some things be a little less than ideal and it's going to take a little time to perfect it but i know we will the other question i had with the

085crowded lunches so are the kids even able to go out on the lawn or anything they just can't go off campus they can't leave the campus they can go outside i know they have this whole thing with this whole food i know that's a whole different discussion but food trucks another thing is i know there were like the grade schools they do that uh fun lunch i kind of forgot about farmers that's a whole different thing but i was just trying to figure out how people could get food and actually enjoy that extra time that's been built in for them instead of doing it in the comments we're serving better food yeah we are we are yeah and that is also really good double-edged yeah we have opened up our cafeteria earlier so um on

086each of those block days when because we have kids who are in there for resource time that's technically not their lunch period um but it but it is time for a fine time for them to eat lunch we've opened up our cafeteria earlier so that they can access food and it helps to alleviate a little bit of that stress during that lunch period that has helped a little bit um and and of course we're starting to get into the groove so it's certainly not perfect but our cafeteria has responded very well um and they've managed it and it's been better i've gone in there and spot checked a couple of times and it's been it's there's been food available so everyone gets to eat but at the beginning there is a there's a bit of

087a line especially during that lunch is it well with our kids you know they eat all the time i'm just going to be honest you know and and the more our cafeteria is open for those possibilities it's it's good for us and it's good for them because they study better on a full stomach than they do i remember hearing students that said my daughter said so she ate all the time but said that they didn't eat because they just didn't have time to eat right but even if you were in line right now for 20 minutes which i stood for the first week and i measured our lines as to how long they were the longest lines were 20 minutes um there's still 20 minutes to eat that meal once you're out of line right

088so there's still plenty of time even if you stood in line for 20 years yeah kids can eat in like three and a half right but the other thing that happens at the beginning of the year is kids don't know a routine yet they haven't developed a routine yet so everybody goes to the line all at once and now we're getting into well i'm going to go work on my homework and then i'm going to get into line once it dies down a little bit right so as time goes on it kind of works itself out the other piece that was new too is this was the first year that students had to have their id to scan for lunch so they used to be able to just type in their code and now they

089have to scan their id so in the beginning and we're just starting to get there um but in the beginning and like dr event i would stand in spot check but students and adults would do this too so it's not just teenagers it's adults too wait in line for 20 minutes get up there and then be like oh yeah my id and then get it out or it's in my locker and then scan yeah and then so we've been sitting there saying have your idea now um but students have been adapting to that too so that was just one piece not only um like the the different lines and then students do have kind of three different lunch experiences so they have their lunch monday wednesday friday they have lunch on wednesday and one time

090thursday and it's like three different maybe times of day students and so students are adjusting to the different social groups when do i go in line um but the piece of the id we've kind of worked out and made sure students have it ready when they get up to scam but we've all probably been in line when you've waited in line a very long time and the person in front of you still isn't ready um but we've we've been work we've been working through a lot of that too it's just it's it's and you'll see in a moment the south sides are similar but it's just getting better every day yeah is it ever could could we foresee a system where students could actually place an order ahead of time and pick it up i

091mean that's what the rest of the world is doing now yes jury has been talking to chartwells about those pre-ordering options that might be available in the future yes and then then it's just making room for the pickup or the pickups yeah it's another problem then the pickup line is locked yeah those are all all of the things you see happening in society we evaluate as well all right good all right i'll turn it over to southai so it's actually very very similar um and caitlin gave a really nice preview of everything in in her opening so i'll kind of start and then caitlyn can jump in um so we are just starting our principal student advisory council at south so we haven't met yet students just just applied and we're having our first meeting

092in a couple weeks so some of the feedback we gathered from student answers to their applications and then like you heard caitlyn say i was able to visit different classrooms and just kind of ask students these two questions tell me what's going well and tell me what we still need to work on um so overwhelmingly one of the biggest pieces of positive feedback is that students really like the 8 20 start time that extra 20 minutes in the morning katelyn's saying yes they feel a more relaxed a more relaxed pace some student says they're sleeping 20 minutes longer other students said that they didn't really realize that it started 20 minutes later so they were getting up at the same time and just having so much more time like it was just relaxing like pace

093more relaxed so we heard really positive feedback about that um the next one caitlyn can jump in on too um mostly from 9th and 10th graders they're just excited about the time to get to know their peers and teachers in access so they know they're going to be together all four years they're excited about meeting peers in different ways teachers in different ways um not really something to work on but the 11th and 12th graders are kind of like okay like you're saying that we're gonna be together all four years but the seniors are like yeah we're leaving um but it's been really positive from ninth and ten from ninth and tenth graders that piece um the increased free time during resource students say we have more autonomy we love that we have less homework

094similar to what we heard north students say um juniors and seniors with that fifth and sixth period resource are so happy um to have that freedom to leave early they appreciate the trust and the freedom that we've instilled in them that they've earned it i was chatting with a group of freshmen in the commons on one of those days and they were like miss lip do you think freshmen will ever get to leave early but i'm like well i will never say never but probably not but they seem to accept that too yeah but by the by the time they do it they won't be fresh you heard um i think luca talked about this the students love having that coffee bar open during resource um and then dr tibet said this too that um

095students really for a while weren't ready to admit out loud they liked the schedule like i'd say how's the schedule going i actually really like it like they weren't sure that they were ready to say that publicly but that's but that's coming anything you want to add um just like with the resource i know mostly it's been like presentations about like dean stuff and just like some things that we need to know but i know like for the future it's like being planned to like have a day when you're going over like the fafsa for college or like different things of like how to apply to college or like scholarship things so i'm like really excited and i think that's a really good time built into the day to get that information instead of like

096having to make extra time in your already busy schedule it's i go into the college and career section or career center and just have that like readily available for you so i think that's like a really nice thing that we're providing especially like for seniors who are going through college like admissions and just having that time like to have like a conversation with someone i i think is a really good like built-in time for students there's some really good programming on the way that genie ryan and the team have been working on so we'll be excited to share some of those too early for debuting yet okay some really cool stuff a little teaser yeah get it to tune back in again all right and then um just things that we're still working on too

097um you heard um both of our students mentioned that students like the the brain breaks um during those 78 minute blocks um are students asking for more of them so they're just they're noticing and very aware of like in these four classes it's working great but in these three i'd really like more of a brain break okay so what is a brain it could be a number of different things the class is 78 minutes long so essentially we're asking teachers to vary up their activities within those 78 minutes so sometimes we previewed um for our teachers during that like professional development time um really quick like three to four minute like youtube videos that you can show students so we had showed one about optical illusions like the one for example with like is this

098dress black and blue or is this dress golden white and it flashes like five or six different pictures for students and just gives their brain a chance to work differently kind of a reset in between transitions so there's some formal things like that that teachers are doing but also it might be we were talking with a science teacher and students were working on a lab so they really had kind of the whole time to work on a lab and it was chunked into all different sections and the teacher had encouraged students just in their individual groups after you finish tests one two and three i want everyone to like put everything down and take five minutes just to do what you need to do so whether you need to take a break and go on

099your phone for a couple of minutes or talk to your neighbor for a couple minutes not about the lab um but just kind of that that just break let your mind reset i guess kind of similar mimicking what we talked about with the lunch um but a little less formal and less structured and students are feeling it in classes where um at least they're perceiving that not to has happened on a level and they're asking for more of it and really recognizing the success of when they're seeing it one of the things that um our north students have done along with our radio and tv uh students they've we had the video announcements before every friday and our announcement structure has changed a little bit and so what they've done is create videos for brain

100breaks so you know uh here's five four to five minutes watch a fun little video disconnect from your academics for those four minutes and watch this fun little video that's like you know a sequence of events that happens all school year so we're kind of getting creative and some of those brain breaks too so teachers can have a pool of resources for those things sometimes advice just sometimes we like if we don't bid in sometimes a long meeting and the facilitator might just be like okay everyone just take a minute stretch stand up walk around for a bit um so it's just that because it's 78 minutes um one of the things we put um in hindsight and caitlyn talked about this is um so the first you know the resource activities were mandatory for

101all students in the beginning um and as administrators you know we said okay first we're going to go over introduce students to their counselor and then we're first we started with deans make sure students know rules then we're just into their counselor and then we'll teach them safety procedures all three weeks in a row um which really is a really good solid way to start the school year off there's no doubt um but in hindsight and planning for next year to mix it up a little bit so that students know what resource is going to be about because i think the first few weeks they were like oh my gosh you're just going to make us go to the auditorium and you're going to talk to us every time and we're like no no just

102the first three and then um but our hindsight as a planning team was there's really not a need to do all three of those in the very first three weeks so if we had been able to spread it out like we just did our mustang fury activities and athletics fair maybe that's the first one um and then the second one is counselors or dean so just so students know what it's going to feel like as opposed to the first three i don't know if it was the best introduction even though it made perfect sense in the plan um this one you heard about and it is very unique and it's not that many students but it is to accurate that if students have seventh or eighth period study hall and then it's stacked at a

103lunch of one of those block days they have a very long period of time um and similar to what um what courtney said it's it's mixed some students are like oh this is too long i'm gonna add a class um i talked to one student today though and i said in hindsight if you did it again would you have signed up for a study hall and he's like well yeah because i love it on monday tuesday and friday so so it just it just it just depends it depends on the student i think um both buildings were really good at customizing for individual students needs so we've already been working with some students just one day a week they're going to be a staff aide in the dean's office or a staff aide in the

104counseling office or even working as a pe leader even though it's only the one day a week it's a chance for students that are saying oh this is too long for me in the commons no i don't want another class because i want to keep my study hall but we're working really creatively with each individual student to find the time and for every student that says it's too much time there's three others that are like shh like i want i love this time i want it so it's just really working with with each student and and their families and figuring out what's going to work best i think you point out something important that i did not say is that it's only once a week it's not like it's happening every day it's one time

105a week that they have this large chunk of time so to your point there's for everybody who doesn't want it there to do so they could be artists yes yeah yes um the next one uh i put an asterisk uh because it was it was actually on my of my other slide too on the last slide although i don't think i highlighted this part of it um a student said like one thing that's so nice is that i don't have to go to all my classes every day so it's like it's such a nice break that i don't go to every class every day a couple of kids said that and then a couple of students were like well one thing is that i don't get to go to every class every day so again

106that that's what um a few students mentioned just the sequential nature of the courses in math and world language that having the one day off might be a little more challenging in those in those classes but we're working through it and then the other one kind of like we talked about with the lines um at the end of the month we're opening a second kiosk um coffee bar area at south high so there'll be two lines um so two lines for students to go through because that that line is really long um especially during the afternoon resource periods at this moment at least that all the fruit lines aren't open at that two o'clock start resource time but that line is and it's very very popular and that one would be the good one to

107order ahead of time that would be great like the starbucks app yeah right caitlyn what do you want to add um i think like when you touched on the eighth period off i know especially for seniors that's kind of been like difficult especially because a lot of us have eighth period off for varsity athletics or just because like senior year like we earned the eighth period off so i know it's kind of awkward during the day because it's like also when all the lunch periods are so it seems like a lot longer of time that you're just sitting there and then all these people are coming in for lunch at the same time so it can seem a little overwhelming so like i know a lot of seniors would love if it's like an open

108campus but obviously with that comes a lot of different rules you have to put in place for other students so that's just the main thing i've heard especially from upperclassmen because having 8th period off during the normal days is great having getting to come home early but just on that block day that awkward pause is a little much but i didn't know about the coffee bar opening up so i'm very excited very excited really long very good tell your friends oh remind the board that a few years ago the problem was we didn't have enough students using our food service that's right oh no so put your order in early yeah 10 minutes too yeah exactly and make sure they get the name right really good it's really good i go in there every day

109yeah yeah the food's fabulous yes yeah so they go in there every day additional questions i have one have we had any feedback from our tcd students i know that there there were some concerns about how that was that was going to work no none other than like similar similar to other students at the very beginning they were just like how is it going to work for tcd like just because it was an extra extra layer have we have we actually tried to find out so part of the there was some confusion at the beginning because we break tcd into two sections we have morning tcd and afternoon tcd our morning bus is going out before school starts so there was some confusion in the very beginning of the year because students heard wait the

110school day starts at 8 20 but i received this you know so i have to be there at 8 o'clock so there was a few kids that actually missed the bus in the very beginning of the school year but we we got past that we ironed it all out and the reason for that is we want to make sure students have a great experience at tcd and we want them to have as much time as tcd as they can possibly have you bet so once we got beyond that which was just the first um i have not heard anything from tcd or okay from our students well that's good i've talked to a couple of students um that i know who have said in the beginning the bus was confusing and once that was worked

111out it's really just working seamlessly now like it feels like a normal wonderful normal part of their schedule normal part of their day have you heard anything differently yeah it's just working i'd like the bus in the beginning was the most confusing okay and when we planned the schedule i met several times with tcd so that our students would have a similar time you know certain period of time at tc i'd gotten a few questions about that prior prior to this over the summer so that's great to hear and we've got a record number of students going to tcd and it's something we hope continues so how to utilize that oh my gosh so this is fabulous thank you so much because i think we've all waited with baited breath i did have one question

112about our teachers i'm not so much well a couple questions about our teachers one how how are they adapting to this as you said you know some of their cadence is off or their their pacing is off but what are we doing to evaluate to make sure that teachers are maximizing the schedule using in the best way they can so the first uh thing that we implemented because we knew that this would be of course an adjustment for our staff is that our professional development as i was talking about earlier um we have had well after next week is our third session with staff and in each of those sessions we've been taught it's really been focused on teaching in the hybrid block and really specifically focused on the block days and so we've been

113um we've had teachers in groups and talking to each other um talking to each other about what they're doing during those block times in specific you know talking about specific topics with each other and that's both um across departments and in same departments and so they can get ideas from each other about what to do again that pacing seems to be probably the biggest issue that i've heard from staff through those sessions both keith and i have been attending those sessions and that's probably the biggest thing and so our instructional coaches have been working with our with our teachers to kind of go through that okay here's some ideas and they've been really good about here's there's like basically six frameworks that that teachers can use to teaching in a in a block and so

114they have we talk about those and talk through those and what does it look like for your opener your engaging activities and your closer and that's really what we've been focusing on with staff um to help them through that because it is it is an issue right i mean i i'm a teacher for 21 years i've been used to the same thing right so so it's an adjustment for sure and that pacing even though and even on the on the eight period days a couple of minutes off can really throw off a teacher who's been doing this for a long time right so so we've really just been kind of working through that in um in our professional development that we've set up and we purposely did that at the beginning of the year because

115we anticipated that we would teachers would want to talk through that so is there are we going to step up actual formal evaluation no we have a well-defined formal and informal evaluation process that we would use for measuring teacher how teachers are doing things regardless of the schedule right right so that's that's how we know it but you can see both from you can see from arwen and courtney's presentation today one of the things that's definitely a board a strategic plan goal a board goal is something that is courtney and irwin's goals is increase student voice and feedback which you've already seen demonstrated this evening you've heard it from our students here so that is our most likely way that we would hear something from a student that they were uncomfortable with something one of

116the things that the three of us have spent a lot of time hanging out in the commons during lunches during resources visiting with students listening to their feedback that's where we're going to hear if there's a concern from a student about an ongoing concern about what's happening in a classroom or through a parent report or a kid report like we always do if things are not going as expected in a classroom we've got you know the best teachers here so i know that they're doing their best to embrace what we're doing and and i i i i share what you what you what you just share just thinking about what you shared i i shared with somebody else recently i mean yeah i've been an architect for a long time if someone came to me

117and said okay you need to start doing it this way now instead well and pacing is not surprising with a new teacher yeah that's always like the top thing that we need to work with with our new teachers well in some ways our old teachers are new again within the new schedule right so it's it's the most difficult thing to do is to get your pacing right for a class period of how long will something actually take with this group of students and you know i i subbed the other day for an access class and so i was ready for the lesson plan and everything else and there was a part of it where i'm like oh this is going to be the spot where the kids really want to have a discussion and i

118brought it up i'm like let's go and everybody just looked at me right so i was off by like five minutes of my p like i ended my lesson five minutes early because i had allocated five minutes for this great discussion that nobody wanted to have so i mean those are the things that we all as teachers learn to navigate through and the more we do it in the next year when we come back and do it again we'll just keep getting better at it i've been really impressed with the um reflectiveness of our teachers so we're the two buildings are structuring the pd the same way and so there's time for teachers to to talk in groups and talk out loud and hank and i were actually at one of them together where teachers

119were just talking about just had time to reflect about what's working and what's not and just like our students are saying gosh it's so nice like on tuesday night i only have to think about my classes for wednesday there were a couple of teachers that were like okay is anyone else also really liking the way this feels um and it does just gives more like more time to be reflective and deliberate in in the change and just a really nice thing um about doing something new altogether is it gives everyone a chance to just really kind of lean in authentically and saying okay i'm confused how are you working on this how are you working on this because it's new to every student every teacher every administrator we're all learning it together and so just

120really building that like culture of trust and reflective dialogue i've been really impressed with teachers sharing some things that they've struggled with and then other teachers jumping right in to say oh i was having a hard time with that too but um you know here's some things i built in and here's how i felt make it better and something you always say is giving everyone grace to kind of learn through that i think has been really it's been helpful to see the teachers help each other work through that and and um our instructional coaches to lead that work has been has been really positive since you brought up subs is that is that a struggle if if there's the last minute it hasn't been so far we you know but uh you know we have

121everybody on deck including the district office i think you know i think gina's subbed rob is so no i just mean like is it harder if a sub is coming in with very little notice is it harder for a sub on a black day to oh you know what are the students going to lose time because someone doesn't have 78 the good news is like when a teacher is out they're still responsible for planning the instructional activities for that day and our whether it's a 50-minute period or a block day our teachers tend to plan activities and a lot of times uh not a lot of times but there are many times where a teacher knows it's coming that they're going to be out for a reason they set up activities intentionally for that and

122when they're not they do a nice job of getting a lesson plan in and it's not like a teacher just as like i'm not coming to work today and then nothing happens after that you know there's some plans that come in and you know we have department chairs that help make sure that our subs are set up and ready to go and so i haven't heard any issues with that obviously subs are at a premium yeah right now but then like i said on access days a lot of the administrators are subbing for those because they're very specific lessons that it would be hard for a sub to step in and run you know like the one i stepped in on was about goal planning and scheduling and those you know be hard for a

123sub to come in and do that it's hard for me to come in and do that as a sub so well i've been i i was thinking about this a little bit over the weekend just we've asked a lot of our of our teachers and our students and our staff these last few years and you know this is the fact that this is going well is a real testament to the quality people we have here so well this is just i'm thankful because this i really believe in what we've what we've done here and this is just the start as we've talked to other schools that have made this change the first month is really just figuring out the mechanics right that's you know getting through the shift learning how to plan learning how to

124allocate your time and those kinds of things uh other school districts we've talked to it's like the next eight weeks is when it starts to really get exciting because now it's i know how it works now we start to create and build and really take off from this point you know people are starting to see the benefits of it kids are starting to see the benefits of it and now it'll be really you know moving forward get real exciting yeah i don't want anybody to um infer that i was suggesting that we didn't have good i hope they didn't i just know that everything i've read is where this has failed it's been because it is hard to change especially if you've if you if you've got your way of doing things over years and

125that's where when this has failed it has failed but at the same time it's one class period a week we didn't do a full block change a lot of schools do that full block change and now it really is it's not just one lesson a week that you have to plan different it's every lesson every week and students get a you know you see this rotates through once a week with this chunk of time for some of our students if this was two or three days a week with that that's where these schedules get challenging but one day a week for each class you know is it's an adjustment for that time obviously but it is really just one class period yeah each week thank you well thank you thank you all thank you thank

126you nice presentation all right uh the next one here uh talks about state accountability measures uh we've heard is the strategic plan uh rolled forward that there was at least some community members confused that believed that our strategic plan didn't speak enough about academic measures if you take a look at our strategic plan and go and look at those tasks that's what that qr code will take you to you will see that what our mission talks about is providing that foundation for students to pursue the future of their choosing and it talks about what we'll create as students that are equipped to realize their potential realizing their potential is working at the highest level of their ability you'll see today that the tasks that connect back to the state metrics reach into all four areas

127of the strategic directions within our strategic plan there are quite a few of the strategic expectations of that tie back i think i have like uh you know a whole chunk of them throughout here and many of the tasks that we're challenged to do as administrators and teachers throughout this year tie back to that strategic plan you can see one we've talked a lot about here is you know understanding how to leverage their instructional time to be successful and you know college and career readiness indicators we'll talk a little bit about today and preparing for their next path outside of high school so um i'm going to really leave it to gina to lead through a lot of this and i will be the color commentary much to her sugar so good gina okay so

128the school report card comes out every year in october this year it will come out on the 27th and it's always a year in the rear so the data that's being reported will be for last year the nice thing about the school report card also is that you go in and look at multiple years so it's there's an interactive nature of it where you can go in and look at just not last year's data but multiple years of data and we i'm sorry i'm sorry and this is the most accurate data that somebody can get like if you're going to one of those other websites online many of them are four or five or six years their data is that that far back so this is going to be the most accurate up-to-date data you

129can get sorry so we direct people to the illinois state report card so as we talk about essa and i know i did a series of presentations a couple years ago where we looked at it in pieces i want to refer back to the academic indicators and student success indicators in terms of how we are how our designation will be determined so as you can see as a high school fifty percent of it is based on graduation rates and they look at the four year the five year and the six year cohorts and by that i mean a student who comes in for example in as a freshman four years when they should graduate or for those remaining students who don't graduate in that cohort how many of them graduate the following year and then

130the next year so they're looking at the four five and six year cohorts and we'll talk a little bit more about that in just a few minutes but also want to draw attention to some of the other indicators that we've really focused on in district 99 like ninth grade on track which you heard a little bit about earlier as well but that's an area that we've really focused on and as well as we're working on absenteeism all of these are important factors but we have focused on many of them some are new for example english learner progress to proficiency is a newer indicator one that we have not necessarily been evaluated on before and then of course the fine arts indicator is still yet to come i will point out once again we've highlighted in

131yellow graduation rate is the number one metric that our school district is measured by under this accountability factor yes s.a.t standardized tests play in uh science proficiency plays in in a separate test outside of the sat but you can see that is those by no measure are the number one determining factors it's are we completing the goal of graduation for our students here and then are we providing the experiences for them so that they can be successful post-secondary what essa really looks at it's research based and it looks at the things that we know from research indicate that somebody will be successful after high school so that you're going to see that a lot in the college and career readiness standards that's the second one from the bottom when we dig into that but one

132thing we do know is that those standardized test scores have very little predictability on post-secondary success or even collegiate success things like gpa you know were you involved in activities in athletics at school those kinds of things have a far greater predictability factor than things like standardized test scores which are you know one day one time in a student's four-year experience yeah is really welcome too i think this is the way things should be looked at and how many years did we hear complaints from people about you know just in general uh teaching to the test that sort of thing you know right and and luckily those days are behind us unfortunately i think that there's still um uh your great schools and other rating systems that look heavily at sat and those are changing

133too right yeah yeah but they're slower to catch up but this is this is how we measure this is how we are measured at a state level yep so graduation rates as i mentioned calculated in four five and six year cohorts so for example students who came to us in 2019 would be looking at that five-year graduation rate it's those students who didn't graduate in four years that make up that group and then the sixth year as well so it's looked at in cohorts and any student that remains that means any student that remains i know i've i've brought into this to the board before that remains for t99 for example that have an iep as that we learned earlier they they basically hurt that cohort rate because while they fulfill the graduation requirements for

134us to go to t99 we can't mark them as graduated because they're still our students and so they factor into that four-year rate now they may help us at the fifth or sixth year but in definitely in terms of the four year and more than likely it would be more towards the sixth or seventh year yeah and one of the things sorry one of the things i'm working on this year with lend is legislation to correct that mathematical anomaly we've had many school districts that have been working on this hinsdale's been a leader in this area trying to get this fixed for many years tammy apprentice over there a group of us joined in with her last year to try to get this changed and this is now part of the policy committee for lend

135that i'm chairing this is one of the top priorities this year to get that calculation corrected across illinois our graduation rates are deflated because of how that math is done in illinois in we would immediately raise everybody's graduation rates across the state if we fixed that calculation mistake well it should they should yes because because those students you know are learning far more at t99 you know and they're learning at their individual pace yeah and districts like ours that have a very strong transition program right are more penalized in that calculation [Music] so are you saying within the 50 percent there they're dividing that into three four year five year sixth year and then okay they look at all three it's it's just it's not just t99 students just so you know it can also

136be el students some come to us without with gaps in their education and so it's in their best interest to remain and and to meet our graduation requirements but then that also does does impact us last year we were really excited because we saw a substantial decrease in the failure rate we were very strategic more so than ever in terms of communication and how we approach students are at risk of failing and last year you heard from ryan and georgia that came in and talked about those strategic responses to failures and the difference that they were making so it's important to look between first and second semester last year because nothing else changed right all the changes in grading practices we made and all of that were the same across that entire school year and

137what you saw is our communication strategies for intervention got better as the year went on we we definitely decrease the failure rate and one of the things that we didn't talk about in terms of access today is that we have time built in access for students and we haven't started yet but for students to get support from teachers called student support with pass and also student autonomy days where they can also go to teachers and get help we purposely waited to get some of our very important lessons into the beginning of the school year and then by class or year in school i should say different groups will be able to go and get help and as you know our students have our teachers excuse me have office hours where students can also get help

138and during their resource time so we have academic supports throughout the building that students can take advantage during for some of those students during that gap ninth grade on track we have talked about several times and this basically means that a student has earned five credits they cannot fail more than one semester in a core content area so english math social studies or science this is absolutely research based the research shows that if students meet this criteria they are more likely to graduate in four years substantially more likely to graduate in four years and again that's 50 of our of our designation um one of the things that actually was said earlier is that sometimes students struggle with the transition to high school yeah it's new it's different um and so that's that's an area

139that i think the activities that we heard about i know south as well has various activities and leaders for students coming in both transfer and our ninth graders really help those students with the with the transition we did see a decrease in our freshmen on track numbers our ninth grade on track in 2021 but we recovered that quickly the following year while our data is not out yet we are very excited because our preliminary numbers our projected number looks at like it's 96.1 percent which with the exception of the 1920 year when we know that there were restrictions on grades and and whatnot is the highest year before that so typically as a district were some we were somewhere between like 93.2 and about 94.6 that was kind of our our range we had that

140one year where it was substantially higher almost 98 percent 97.7 percent remember that was the year where we couldn't assign that right right so if we exclude that year this is a record year and that goes back to those interventions from last year making sure we intervene early and communicate strongly and i do believe that the lessons we're doing in access our executive functioning lessons will help particularly our freshman students but all students as well really focused and deliberate and strategic about it um and then as dr thiele said we are continuing the same strategic approach that we have been doing since last year standardized testing um one of the things with standardized testing that makes it very difficult is that oftentimes people want to compare sat scores so last year's set scores to this

141year is there two years ago but but really it's a different group of students it's a different cohort just like for graduation rates i talked about cohorts of students it's a different group it really should be more about the growth of that cohort and unfortunately due to the pandemic and whatnot um there was a hiatus there was a time period where we were not giving the state was not giving the psat 8 9 and 10. so really the way this should be working is you compare that same group like it wouldn't be appropriate to have that side of the table go run a race right outside and then this side of the table go run a race outside and say like how did that group do in comparison to this group what would what's a

142better comparison is you run your race and then we work on training with you and then we see the next time you run the race how much did you improve and then we do the same thing with the folks on this side of the table it it is a educational research absolute no-no to compare a group of students in one cohort to another cohort you compare them to themselves over time and look if they're making growth as gina said we just haven't been able to do that in this new s.a.t suite yet now are they doing that this year yes so that's so that we can now it's just the class just there yeah yeah and 2024. it won't be in the class of 2025 that we have the full longitudinal set of data yeah

143and that's that's what people should compare right mm-hmm yes it's just the data's lasting at this point yes so our scores typically are above the state average i do believe that the support that students will get during access and some of the lessons related specifically to executive function will help students as they grow in the suite of assessments and now we also have time during resource once those scores come in to set aside time to explain what they mean how to use khan academy and other resources to improve their scores you know where we can get that to every student where before that was difficult that's right right or it was hit or miss it was done a little here a little here a little here but now more uniform than me at home saying

144come on because let's begin that's right scholarships so english learners progress to proficiency this is something that is new and that we are learning about um in fact the the first part says that the state's gonna track for five years they actually i was just in a webinar this week in fact where they said due to the pandemic and whatnot they're gonna give us one year kind of grace period so we'll actually be six years for this first cohort um but basically it's tracking how students are doing with the goal of students exiting el services in f within five you know five years and the way students exit is through a test called the access test so it's looking at those test scores to see how students do and looking at growth from year to

145year for each student our el population is growing and in fact the majority of our students that are in our el program they come to us from another school where they were in an el program it's not necessarily the newcomers they're not necessarily coming from another country to us many of them were born in this country but have never exited the great majority the great majority never exited via the access test so they're taking it every year taking the access test every year but they haven't achieved this required score which is set by the state to exit the el program so that's a challenge for us it also tends to be a very mobile group and we and and the nature of our el population can change quickly we can get a family a couple

146of families come in and we might have a whole other language that we we had we didn't have any students we had some students just come in uh that speak congolese right so we've had groups before that have but it's changed we've had some students come in this year um from the ukraine so more than we typically have we are still now have students what we call coming across the counter which means enrolling in our school some perhaps have been in other schools many of them have not been so hard this year so that's that's a challenge for us it tends to be very mobile group we have increased our professional development for all teachers on english learners how to work with english learners strategies to use with english learners sound teaching practices to use

147with english learners we did that the first time was last year the very end of last year and then on institute day this year we did a whole hour and a half i believe it was on el and el strategies where teachers actually went back into their departments to also discuss it from their their specific content area so we have seen an increase and we've seen an increase in classes and then access what have we done so we have in some cases separate sections of access for el or bilingual students bilingual students just so you know mean students that are in our bilingual program both schools have a bilingual program that is for spanish-speaking students if you have 20 students of one language you're required to have a bilingual program so while many of the

148students are bilingual what we mean here by bilingual means specifically spanish-speaking students who are in our bilingual programming okay okay so we have separate access for for them absenteeism is also something we have been working on and are really focused on chronic absenteeism from the state level basically means that if a student misses 10 percent of the school year they are considered a cro chronically absent their chronic issue which if you think about it is about 17 days if the student is with us for the entire year it does change if it's a transfer student and whatnot but for the average student it's about 17 days it doesn't necessarily mean 17 full days because students could have several period absences and then when you combine them it can come to 17 or more days and

149this is for any reason this could be illness this could be orthodontist appointments this could be cutting class i mean there's any multitude excused on excuse it's all combined so when a student is out for any reason it can impact it and as the board knows we look very closely at our equity numbers at different groups of students to understand is anybody more or less disproportionately affected by any of these things one of the things that we know overall is that students that are uh with free or reduced lunch our group that's far more likely greatly disproportionate to be chronically absent so you know this year we're really focusing on you know continuing to support those that's part of the tasks and goals for the board but it also students of color are disproportionately represented

150in this in the group of chronic absenteeism as well so uh groups that we definitely need to look out for and support uh through are we worried about those um kids in the block schedule that have the long thing of being bored and they just want to leave yeah i think that there could be a problem with that you know and we'll continue to measure it but we also know that we have a lot of students that end up overwhelmed and stressed that take days off of school probably more often because of that we actually believe that the block schedule will help with some of that because there's time built in during the day to get help and they can catch up a teacher yeah to see a teacher or see a counselor like we're

151building in the time in this new schedule for those kind of supports to be there so uh we're hoping that that helps with some of this and we're reaching out to those students because some of them might be a little maybe ashamed of their um yeah oh absolute situation and so they don't want to go so hopefully we're making those contacts yes we are and i'm hopeful that the resource time that we've heard about not just those students who might have that double right could be opportunities for students who do need to go to the doctor or do need to go to the orthodontist take advantage of some of that time that's already built in that will not adversely impact their attendance rate oh okay so that so take that resource period and go to

152the orthodontist during that time miss that chunk of time and not your math class right because that attendance during resources doesn't creating some time where parents can we know doctors offices are only open at certain time or you know those kinds of things now take that resource period and schedule the doctor's appointment for that time rather than during a regular instructional class period okay good all right we'll have to that's something to promote the parents and promote absolutely we were just talking here too on the side because i remember um i used to get every now and then unexcused absence notifications and it's in mary or wes or i was there if we fixed some of that i think so because they don't track as much like at study hall you don't have to go

153check in at the library or check it out a lot of things were yeah that's what in my experience yeah okay now they're checking in at the call at the coffee bar is there a list there no you just know that you have to add funds you know the more accurate we can be about what's actually going on that benefits us as well absolutely yeah climate survey is given annually it's called the five essentials um we are required to have certain response rates in order to get our data so to get the data it's a very general survey and it's not customizable we can't add our own questions for example or we can't tweak the questions sometimes we struggle as a high school because some of the questions seem to be more tailored to an

154elementary model but our students are great about it we scheduled that time into access we used to take instructional time for that so in other words it would be done in class but during one of their classes not during access so this year students will take the five essentials during access and that you've probably taken it or you've certainly got the emails we need to have a parent response of 20 in order to get results as well teachers also take it the fine arts indicator we have several years until this will go into effect it's basically two areas so it's student participation so the percent of students that are taking fine arts classes so music visual arts those kinds of classes and the second part of that is teacher qualifications so the percent of students

155enrolled in a fine arts class that is taught by a teacher who has a fine arts endorsement so this is an area where we excel all of our teachers are endorsed in what they teach so if they're teaching art they're endorsed in art if they're teaching music they're endorsing if they're teaching social studies i mean it's it's the same regardless so teacher qualifications will certainly not be an issue one of the things that i think will help us as well is we have a half credit fine arts requirement so our students have to at least earn half a credit in fine arts many earn more than that um you know for example we average about 14 unique students taking just visual art classes drawing painting ceramics what not in any given year so this is

156something where i think our students really excel and i only mention visual arts but in our band and music program as well we average around 918 students unique students and that's performance classes and non-performance classes as well so while this is coming i think this is an area that will look so excel yeah we were ahead of the curve here with that correct with that requirement so you'll see many other school districts start adding that kind of a requirement to boost this number up we're already there and we already have the staff to support it all right we just don't want them poaching our one of the things that we haven't spent a lot of time digging into with the board or even our staff and we did this to open the school years the

157one that's highlighted there in that teal color which is college and career readiness standards this is makes up a good chunk of our overall score at 6.25 percent it's a rather so like how all of these things combine together to give us a score there's a whole bunch of factors under college and career readiness that combine together to give us that score improving that tracking it measuring it is all a whole new job in itself and that's part of the reason we brought ryan on board here at the district office to help us in this category here so college and career ready for a student to be considered college and career ready they have to have a gpa of 2.8 or higher they have to have 95 percent average attendance their last two years so

158grades 11 and 12. and they have to have the third main bullet there which is where it becomes a little bit challenging in terms of record keeping in terms of students meeting the requirements excuse me one way is students earning the college and career pathway endorsement so if they earn that they don't have to worry about where it says or all the foul right so if they earn that they're good as you may already know district 99 is a leader in this area we had 16 students which does not sound like a lot but i believe we had the most in the states of any district yeah and the majority of them in the state yes who earned it last year and that is something that we are working on and students can earn it

159in one of four areas the majority of our students are earning it in education because we have a clear and very well-defined pathway but that's one way that students can meet that third bullet or they can meet it through the following so they have to have an academic indicator in both english language arts and in math which could be an ap score it could be an act score it could be an sat score it could be a dual credit course a number of different ways they they can meet that they need to identify a career interest by the end of 10th grade which all of our students do they do it through our counseling lessons they also do a survey in naviance which is a program that we use to assess their interests as well

160and then as you can see there's a series of other indicators many of them relate to things like internships or work experience co-curricular activities community service summer employment just a host of different indicators and they have to earn three of those and so that that can be very challenging especially for our students who are involved in a lot they might be involved in athletics and clubs and have the co-curricular activities but they still have to have two of the others as well so one of the things that we think will help our students with the gpa and certainly with the common experience work is that we have really established consistent grading practices now and that's something that we've been working on for several years now where grades actually reflect the progress towards mastery of our

161students basically whatever students have learned in terms of meeting standards and it's consistent with the achievement i believe that the access lessons which i believe dr thiele mentioned earlier about goal setting will really help as well as students are going to be hopefully more aware of their goals setting their goals reflecting on their goals have you met the goal where you at with that as well as the executive functioning lessons that we talked about certainly the consistency of the new schedule and the later start time there's research that shows and we heard that some students are really excited about being able to sleep an extra 20 minutes certainly is good for for our students and then opportunities for students to get help both during those student support with past days and access and student autonomy

162days also during office hours during lunch especially on the block day when they have that resource period so just a lot of different opportunities for students to get extra help the career interest i i mentioned they basically accomplished that through our counselor lesson and it starts freshman year so that was only by sophomore year we are in great shape because we're starting that from the beginning really we are starting to increase our focus on pathways and i think that shows with the endorsements that we just talked about our counseling curriculum includes a lot i just listed a few things here um so for your planning career exploration investigation they take all kinds of different career interest surveys online that helps in that area um exploring post-secondary options and as required now and certainly we did

163a lot of this even before it was required helping students to complete and work on the fafsa and helping families as well to understand the importance of that and how to go about doing that these lessons now the counseling lessons are now delivered through access whereas before they would push into academic classes so push into english push into social studies for different years of school freshman sophomore junior seniors and all it's all four years the counseling curriculum so now those lessons are delivered in access over a couple of days it's a shorter period of time um and therefore we're protecting class time so we're not taking time away from the different areas for these lessons to occur and as we heard earlier some of the presentations that are going to be done in resource upcoming

164in resource are related to college and career experiences so that will be certainly a nice blend to those access lessons capstone courses can be defined a number of different ways they're basically the highest level in a sequence oftentimes it might be a dual credit or an advanced placement course or an honors course we one of the challenges here is that we provide students with an array of experiences which is good because they can kind of test the waters and see what they're interested in they may not get to a capstone course if they're you know experimenting with what they're interested in or students who are clearly interested and know what their passion is might excel and go through the entire entire pathway it it really depends on the student and the situation sometimes scheduling students

165in the capstone courses can be difficult often times they could be what we call singleton or doubleton courses so they're courses where we might only have a couple of sections and so there's only eight periods in the day so getting those to all come together can be a challenging but our buildings do a great job with that and they work very hard to try and reduce what we would call conflict where one class is conflicting with another we are increasing our dual credit offerings to provide greater opportunities for students i'm very excited about that and our capstone course enrollments up by about four percent from last year so we are seeing an increase i think that is coinciding with of course increasing dual credit in some cases uh but we are seeing an increase in

166students going through the entire pathway only taking capstone courses i'm going to use this as slide as an opportunity to show how everything stacks on top of one another right is students come in and we do all of this support for ninth graders coming in whether it's the students like you heard today access resource supports that way office hours that we've added the interventions to make sure kids are getting to school being successful when they are are being successful when they're there intervening when they're not starting from freshman year helps us with that ninth grade on track data the more students are successful earlier in their career the more slots in their schedule are open later in their career because they're not repeating or retaking courses whether to get a higher grade or a passing

167grade like these all impact one another a student that's not taking a study hall so they're dabbling in another subject area might then open up a pursuit for a capstone course or a dual credit course later you can't separate all of the stuff we've talked about today with the strategic plan the schedule the interventions the supports they all feather together to go into like these kinds of opportunities that then play out for how we are ranked as a school district coming out so it's all of the work combined that really work together to create these kinds of opportunities advanced placement enrollment has been studied it has been studied for for several years um we have seen some changes from the college board in ap testing when students have to sign up for the ap test

168and i think that has impacted us as well students have to sign up before they really know if they think they'll do well on the test which is is really challenging for students we have seen more situations where colleges will not accept ap scores depends on the major depends on the school there's all kinds of factors or whether they may only accept a four or five or they may only accept it for elective credit so there's all kinds of challenges with ap still our ap enrollment is up and so from last year so about seven percent um so our students have navigated through all of that and are still taking ap classes one of the interesting things which i know i didn't put on the slide but one of the interesting things that we have

169done and we're starting to do more of is to look at our ap classes and and and try to get dual credit for them as well so a student would take it still could take the ap test absolutely but could also earn dual credit dual credit much more likely to be able to transfer that credit as opposed to worrying about that one day one score of the ap test so that's we're trying to marry some of those as well how how are we affected by whether or not a student chooses to pay for and take the ap test or not so a lot of these various sites do look at your ap scores and depending on the number of students that take them we we look at not just ap scores and i do look

170at the ap scores but we look at enrollment more so than anything because the rigorous more rigorous courses that students can take the better they will be better they'll be prepared that's what i was i was thinking yeah yeah so i wanted kind of emphasis on that thank you yeah oh students are far better served by taking that ap course and stretching themselves then not taking one at all absolutely 100 which is part of the reason why the board eliminated several years ago the the penalty for getting a d and an ap course and not that that being an accelerated course for you then because we have several students that like they're really stretching to be enrolled in that curriculum they're going to be far better served you know they might have been a like

171a bc student in other courses being a cd student in an ap course is far better than than something without that same level of rigor it shows that initiative too yeah we hear time and time again that universities universities look at the caliber of the courses that students take so that is healthy we still have some growth in this area obviously uh students of color are disproportionately underrepresented in our ap courses so continuing to make uh you know to to make this more accessible well you think that though providing more support throughout the day right where students can get help when they need it and not have to try to seek that out before after school definitely will help make these courses more attractive to our students and make our students more successful in them

172when they take them it benefits the students to challenge themselves even even our you know our college-bound students i mean the the colleges that i've i've had um interactions with i mean it's they they look at what classes were offered by the school and whether or not you chose to take them or not you're better off getting that b or c in an ap class and you are getting an a in a class that was a little easier for you and you didn't challenge yourself and so it's not it's sometimes having a little lower gpa is actually beneficial even from for a schedule that's why boost when they take those those ap courses yeah and take the test so dual credit i spoke a little bit about already but dual credit is transcripted college credit

173in most cases it will transfer sometimes it will transfer as an elective it really depends on your program and the school but it is transcriptive college credit based on the work you've done over the course of the semester or the school year and not on one day test so that is why we're working to try and braid both the ap courses as well with dual credit we have about 10 percent of our students enrolled in dual credit course we have increased the number of dual credit courses the last few years and we're very proud of that it is a challenge and it's a challenge because there's very strict qualifications requirements that teachers must have to teach a dual credit course and i listed them there so they have to have a master's degree in the

174content area they could have a master's degree in any area so education would be fine and 18 graduate credits in the specific content area or they could have a masters in any area nine hours graduate level coursework and they can enter into a professional development plan with cod we are required to work with our local community college where they would get the remaining required hours within three years and we actually just entered a week or two ago our first teacher entered into a pdp with cod so very exciting about that and one of the ways and this is actually helping in that situation but in with many teachers um as you know part of our last contract was about tuition assistance and dual credit is an area of high need and we have awarded tuition

175assistance for teachers to go back and get those hours in the specific content area that's awesome gina i almost feel like that slides your part or your capstone yeah she's been hard to work at that for a long time yes it's really beneficial yeah so well done so co-curriculars we have seen a slight increase from last year we are really want to focus some attention to our free reduced lunch students because they are 3.5 times less likely to be involved in two or more and remember when we went through those indicators it was two or more co-curriculars you heard one of our principles i forgot which one talk about the activity athletic fair that we just had this week in resource and so really trying to get students involved i think the new schedule also

176provides time in the morning for more clubs to meet in the morning so if students are involved in for example athletics after school but there's a club they want to participate if the club's meeting in the morning it provides a little bit greater flexibility for for our students um and then of course students who may have in the past had a lot of homework and maybe didn't participate there's times during the day built into the schedule where they can get help if they need it or they can work on their studies so the equity journey continuum is new i'm going to pause transition here so everything we talked about right now is about our overall state score right and those are all the metrics and everything that goes into that now there's another set of

177metrics that runs parallel to this which is what gina is going to talk yeah and and does not impact our designation that what we've been talking about in terms of those different ratings so this is new this is the first time it will appear on our school report card and it basically looks at several different areas like student learning as you can see at the bottom there learning conditions and elevating educators and i'll just give you a couple examples so like in student learning it looks at for example essay for high schools it looks at s-a-t looks at our graduation rate which as we know is 50 percent already of our designation and it looks at el progress to proficiency which i mentioned earlier so those are just a few examples in terms of learning

178conditions it looks at like the climate survey so the five essentials survey that i mentioned before it also looks at uh suspensions and expulsions so those are some areas that fall into learning conditions and then for elevating educators it looks at the credentials of our teachers are they qualified to teach the courses that they teach so are they out of their assigned area or not and as i mentioned earlier we our teachers are endorsed in the courses or the content areas that they teach so we're in great shape there it does look at the demographics of our teachers in comparison to the demographics of our students as well and also looks at teacher evaluation and it looking at those three larger areas student learning learning conditions elevating educators it gives us ratings basically the one

179through four that you see up there are there large gaps which is something that they're basically saying we would need to work on are there moderate small or minimal gaps and so the score will tell us where those gaps are so these will be released i think october as well is that right as well it will be part of the school report card now will this affect this the report card in any way or is this a separate number it's a separate number although many of the variables overlap right so if you're making improvements in these scores you're going to be making improvements in your overall scores i'll also point out many of the tools that we mentioned earlier that people in the community are using like these websites online like greatschools.org are factoring these

180equity variables into the scores they're assigning schools so the the deficits that we have that we mentioned earlier today where we have disproportionate numbers not only will impact us in our overall scores will impact us on the equity continuum but these independent websites that are giving schools uh scores discrepancies disproportionalities in data negatively impact our scores there as well so you know the equity work that we do here is essential in so many ways from the individual student all the way up to our our metrics that we're rated on to these third-party metrics that people in the community use but equity is integral in improving those scores in so many different ways so this isn't something that you you don't do these are the things that you do because it's the right thing to do

181for kids but it's also reflected in the scores that we are evaluated by in so many different ways so basically on all three of those you would like to see it to be fours right oh yeah you want to be as high as possible yeah right is that the highest number we can get yeah okay yep all right so uh are we going to are are there going to be um things that we're going to have to do as a result of receiving a certain score not yet but we're foreseeing that right because that's possible i would think that's how right now it's like we're just reporting it and then eventually i'm sure we'll have a plan and in some of these like our disproportionate discipline data that we already have right where we are

182suspending students of color disproportionately higher than our white students we already have a plan right in the measures that we're taking to try to close those gaps so like that's one segment of this score but we know that there are other areas that are already out there that the state requires us to respond to and we are but i would imagine over time you know as this gets on unpacked and out there that'll demonstrate some areas where we need to to dedicate uh some resources to growing in yeah so this will come later they're finalizing the date on this this will come with the school report card gina will be coming back next month to start unpacking what some of our numbers are both in the first half of the presentation on our overall scores

183but then in the equity continuum as well so this is kind of the preview of once we start giving all of those scores what they all meant right so we didn't have to explain what they all meant in one night and give you the scores this was our access period this was your access period yes it was a long access period um i will point out once again that the strategic plan that the board approved so many different areas of that tie back into these state metrics right there's some that are very specific that tie into those metrics and there are some that are the building blocks to improve those metrics overall we talked about the mission and the vision the next step of that is the district values on opening day we talked about

184this with our staff about there's these five values and these are really teachers are talking about these a lot throughout their planning many of them have them posted in their classrooms that these are the values that we strive to but they really tie to what we know about teaching and learning so everything that you heard today about metrics comes back to this our values we know that if we build caring and trusting environments that we do that by showing that we understand kids that we accept kids for who they are that they don't have to change who they are for us that students start to feel like they belong at school when that happens students have high self-esteem high self-confidence they're willing to take risks in classrooms willing to take on some of these higher

185level courses because they know they belong here and that they'll be supported when that happens we see them accelerating into these higher levels so the values that the board approved as part of the strategic plan are at the heart of making everything we talked about tonight improve grow and get better this is what we're talking about with our teachers during professional development and all of those things this all weaves together it all stacks on top of one another you can't separate any of this is one individual like little score and make any assumptions about what we do as a district you need to look at this whole comprehensive approach to making sure that every kid gets exactly what they need to understand what we're doing here so any other questions for us i know we

186answered a lot along the way but all right can't wait to see what our score is yeah gotta gotta stay tuned we have one final presentation for you this evening and it has to do with the master facility plan and the final financial report associated to that just a couple of quick slides as we start to wrap up that project once again it ties back to the strategic plan one of the key pieces you can see the tasks down at the bottom this year obviously making a safe school environment modernizing our environment but we have a key task this year on t99 that's one of the tasks that the administration has been challenged with this year uh the long-range plan for supporting the expected enrollment growth there so to tell that story we need to

187go all the way back to the master facility plan and and where we started and where we ended so i'll turn this over to mark well it is a big challenge for us you know it's a big big number we're talking about 4.9 million dollars total for the renovation expansion of the t99 program and um we're going to ask you to prove a budget the next board meeting and we had to find a place to make this work so we we dug back into the master facility planner this 136 is the total amount of bonds issues and the project cost that was very originally scheduled we came pretty close at 136 250 right now there's still some outstanding obligations with that that our pos are out there some of it is being able to get

188as i understand it's some components that just are slower down than the whole lag that we've had nationally and internationally but we have a administrative facility to find 264 thousand dollars not yet obligated so if you go to the next i'm just going to take this opportunity that the board challenged the administration to deliver more than what was expected with the master facility plan mr davenport come in under budget and on time we did all of those things as part of the master facility plan this is something we try to not talk about the whole time to keep it up as like a safety net for us we have interest earnings as we issues the bonds we put them in the bank wait for those bills to come but they earned interest and we earned

189about 1.5 million in interest um just we aren't closed yet but that's a that much is already known we've already moved seven hundred fifty thousand dollars to t99 and the phase one build-up where we had two-thirds of the building originally for the program and there's a whole big back area that we renovated and brought together so we're really going to what we're calling like a phase two now of the t99 build up but we have 783 000 still on hand so we have little pockets of ability here so if we go to the next combine those two the the fund balance for the 136 million and the interest earnings we have over a million dollars that we can put forward to this program and so that brings us to fortnite is what we think program

190comfortably but it's like a little bit high and it gives us 50 000 and in my mind i think the 4 9 is still going to be high well we're hoping it comes down to a lower number but we're preparing for this because this is and 3.9 million dollars we can take out of the working cash flow and and use that and that would be the in my opinion the best use of that working cash fund right now to get this program guaranteed and then we can you know we always still have other safety nets like that service extension based that we could fall on if we have problems but real stem will still have significant balance in the in the working cash fund what will what will it be about 3.98 out of the

191what with the balance in the working cash we're going to have about fund balance okay yeah actually six one i think it is okay so it's uh still be a good balance a safe balance in there and so that'll be something that we'll have in the the project the budget that we're going to put together for you to approve at the next meeting this will be part of it and you'll see a transfer from the working cash fund and eventually getting to this project fund so i want to point out that between mark tree and jim they have managed to put together a plan here between the working cash fund the master facility plan interest which was like found money through this and the amount that was left over from the master facility plan where

192we were able to deliver more under budget to put this together in a way that we can also meet the needs of t99 without additionally increasing taxes for anybody in our community all right so at the end of all of this we will have met the needs of both of our main attendance centers at north and south but also you know expanding needs at 1999 next slide we can talk about will we be will would be promises made and promises kept with the print that they would be putting that working cash replenishing that will be putting that back in out of we could do it we have capacity to do that in terms of there's limits on how much you can have in working cash so there's we could have a bigger one but we'd

193have to go back out um oh and ask for money i think we didn't we issued 10 million oh yeah we have the capacity to issue much more if we needed to yes right but i'm just i remember we issued the 10 million of pandemic and wanting to make sure that we had a we didn't get too tight because we didn't know what the future was going to hold right all right so the last thing and i think it's really very exciting this is what the original proposed budget structure really it went out all the way to 2040 four more years 8.9 million dollars a year and what we did in the in 2018 is we saw the interest rates dropping and so we we originally were going to do four bond issues we did

194three we we made that third one we combined the third and fourth together because interest rates were so low we wanted to remember lock those in and so we did so it's like getting a mortgage it's a 20 well in this case 20 year mortgage but having it be paid off by 16 years we're getting four years of relief to our taxpayers now what's going to happen in 15 20 years you don't know and there could be could be to the you know that somebody will feel this some other it won't be me i don't think i don't think anybody around this table is going to be i mean typically it's hard to see your you know yeah your you go down but and there could be a whole other series of master facility plan

195issues that you we need to address but anyways this is this is what we have and our deal was to make sure it's sixty five dollars per for three hundred thousand dollars of market value of home we've kept that promise to the penny so um just real proud of that and it's it's something we can tell our community we did we were looking out for them and we did the right thing and more yes yeah and more yeah in terms of yes on that that's yeah that's huge too paying paying it all off four years earlier than what what what if you can get a mortgage and wow we cut your mortgage from 20 years to 16 years any family would feel like wow we did a really nice thing for ourselves here we were

196able to do that for our community in the way that mark and jury issued those bonds yeah thank you we could have cut it a little bit all the way across the top and rescheduled things but these were the bonds at the highest interest rate and the longest way out so this was the right thing to do financially and it gives us some capacity down there again if we ever have to go out yeah so okay thank you awesome thank you i don't know i feel like we should be having a big you know you know right here's the ticker tape parade i want to clarify wow that this side [Laughter] it'll be working while the rest of okay so next time we'll come back with the full budget and the five year forecast which

197this all plays into right but we wanted to pull this out separate and show how t99 would be funded without increasing you know taxes for for our residents in district 99. so very good thank you thank you thank you guys okay we have no speakers no no visitors okay now i need a motion from the board to go into closed session for the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employees specific individuals who serve as independent contractors in a park recreational or educational setting or specific volunteers of the district or legal council of the district including hearing testimony on a complaint lodged against an employee a specific individual who serves as an independent contractor in a park recreational or educational setting a volunteer of the district or against legal counsel for the district

198to determine its validity and litigation when an action when an action against affecting or on behalf of the district has been filed in this pending before a court or administrative tribunal or when the district finds that an action is probable or imminent in which case the basis for the finding shall be recorded and entered into the meetings of the closed into the minutes of the closed meeting second mike and terry thank you mike davenport aye terry pavisage aye joanna vazquez drexler aye christopher espinoza aye cheryl fuller hi jenny heggstrom aye and nancy krepko hi thank you we are going into closed session we will not be taking any action other than to adjourn when we come out so anybody who's not i would like to say something before we go ahead i just want to

199say thank you to everyone who came to the block party on saturday and i want to thank the folks at north for hosting us and the cmg staff did a fabulous job so my kudos to them and it was a great event and the weather man stayed with us the whole time and i just want to say thank you thank you to all who came and um those who didn't missed a really fun day [Laughter] about how many people came here i don't know maybe a couple hundred steady all day maybe 300 you know i don't know i i we didn't really keep track of the number of people but um uh the food trucks i think were uh were uh successful i mean i think everybody got something to eat and uh they were

200happy and the kids loved the games the games were a big hit and then the band was pretty good um you know so i think there was fun time for all and i just wanted to say thank you and uh i'm sure you'll he'll hear more about things that are coming up but north you did a great job great job and we all enjoyed the north south game so we did so downers grove won and it was a close game until close to the end yeah but no it was it was a it was really a fun game and uh we'll see south plain uh homecoming this week and uh then north following just the next week so uh it'll be a good time in downers grove and the weather hopefully will be fabulous so

201that's my closed session will be in here let's take a few minutes to clear the room over a few minute break you