001so good evening can we have the wrong cup i usually have to here joanna vasquez drexler here nancy kupka here thank you 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 we'll move on to the first approval of minutes we need um a motion to approve the minutes of the june 20th 2022 business meeting you've had the minutes prior to this examination and the minutes will be made public within 10 days of board approval so moved nice second jerry chris he beat me terry piavisch aye this is christopher espinoza hi mike davenport aye jenny hackstrom aye troy fuller aye joanna vasquez drexler aye i'm nancy kupka aye minutes are approved
002thank you we'll move on to the first reception of visitors yes we do okay the meeting agenda includes two opportunities for comments from the audience this first reception of visitors is intended for audience members to address the board about any agenda item on which the board will vote the second reception of visitors is intended for audience members to address the board on any topic pertaining to community high school district 99. comments are limited to three minutes to provide all visitors and equal opportunity to address the board individuals needing more time should submit their thoughts in writing to the board secretary visitors addressing the board need to submit a comment slip to the board secretary in this case mrs asia and will be invited to the microphone prior to addressing the board audience members should state
003their full name these proceedings are being taped recorded for the purpose of producing accurate meeting minutes and it is being streamed i reserve the right to modify these protocols if circumstances warrant audience observation of these protocols is appreciated all right we have three speakers that have indicated that they wish to speak about uh a consent item or action item the consent action items are up on the board so please limit your comments to those items when you address the board our first speaker is eileen breiner good evening can you hear me yep okay um last month was the first reading of changes to the promotion policy since the reading was not oral i'm going to read it here for all to hear while listening to this ask yourself why why is this being stricken from
004the record the grade level of all students shall be based on the number of years of experience in high school and the number of high school credits earned district 99 students are classified as freshmen in their first year of attendance and if they've earned fewer than five high school credits sophomores are students who are in their second year of attendance and have earned at least five high school credits prior to the beginning of their second year juniors are students who are in their third year of attendance and have earned at least 10 high school credits prior to the beginning of their third year seniors are students who are in their fourth year of attendance and have earned at least 15 high school credits prior to the start of their fourth year since there's nothing to
005replace this language what will the criteria for grade level b this is an academic establishment so why wouldn't academics be used to establish levels of accomplishment i find this nonsensical i expect to hear some robust discussion on this change i expect to hear something more than this is the recommendation of the illinois association of school boards you were elected to run district 99 not the illinois association of school boards it's time to show your autonomy and your independent thought and not acquiesce to central planning the next speaker is lower voice thank you i'm laura hoist last month i objected to the proposed change to district 99's grading and promotion policy 6.280 it was a first reading which was neither read nor shown on the screen for people to see this change removes the number of
006credits to be earned for each year of high school leading up to graduation i'm asking you to consider vote no to removing these objective standards if the number of credit requirements no longer apply then please replace them by reference to the illinois school code course requirements hank has said this change needed was needed to comply with the law the every student succeeds act also known as essa replaced the no child left behind act in 2015. since then the isbe be has embedded essa into its policies the d 99 d 99's performance has declined as it traded high quality merit-based education for equity social emotional learning anti-racist teaching prioritizing the supposed need for students to recognize their feelings and the perspectives of of others avoid upsetting students stop assigning homework lower standards and provide safe spaces
007don't turn your work in it's okay you'll earn fifty percent anyway if you don't feel good take a mental health day math reading and reading scores and science scores are going down each year what does d99 do they use a covet as an excuse to be more lenient changing the grading policy appears to give the superintendent and the administration even more discretion to decide when a student can be promoted to the next grade level to change the student's final grade to tell teachers everybody passes everybody's a winner including students who don't do the work the teacher has to do better but the student's not held accountable how exactly is this preparing students for success what college professor is going to tell a student you can turn that thesis in whenever you want to what future
008employer is going to employ want to employ a student who cannot read or write well or solve problems on their own what future employer is going to want to pay a student who's now an employee for a job that's not well done or not done at all expecting less of students by allowing them an easy way out of earning grades hurts everyone it hurts the student the parents future employers and society it is degrading not uplifting most of all it hurts the lower performing students who are being told by district 99 that they can't meet higher standards in education or that they don't have to i urge you to vote no [Applause] next speaker is barb allen hi um i'm a donors grove resident and district 99 parent and i'm too short for this microphone
009um so just i'm also speaking to all about this same agenda item that the last two speakers spoke about and my concern is that there has not been thorough discussion on this recommended policy change before you're recommending vote this evening i think it's a pretty big deal that we're um it's being recommended that we're removing the structure of credit hours that denotes if the student is a freshman sophomore junior senior and that there's nothing as another speaker noted in in in place to replace that the policy is grading and promotion but nothing in this revised policies is is showing okay what is how are we quantifying promotion here you've just pulled out the paragraph and didn't replace it with any other recommendation so my question i guess is you know what is driving this recommendation
010is it are there is it teachers at downers grove north and downers grow south is it counselors is it deans how many times has there been an inflection point in our district where we find that this policy change is needed um is it just coming from the state if it's just a direction from the state then i would highly encourage you to think okay or to discuss that maybe this all policy changes suggested by the state are not in the best interest of our students in downers growth so i hope there would just be some robust and thorough discussion among you and also for transparency for for parents and residents to understand where this policy change is being driven and just you know an explanation and just some thorough discussion it just seems quite questionable
011to me thanks so much was the final speaker for action items moving on to recommendations and reports of the superintendent we'll speak about the draft district goals and tasks for the 2022-2023 school year much like a policy revision review this is how we do goals and objectives with the board each year this year as the board knows we have a new strategic plan so the structure of that document which is available in the board in board docs and as a public record can be reviewed by the board this month please provide me any feedback or changes that you'd like for us to consider as an administrative team then this will come back in august for approval uh by the board so questions concerns reach out to me between now and august and as always we
012consider all that feedback from board members and then we'll bring a final version for approval in august are there any questions at this point yes mike um so in looking at the equitable and supportive environment under build community foster belongings and values the sentence that reads build structures within the building that allows for students and parents to offer their perspectives and important topics and maybe changing the instead of saying build structures maybe put in place systems or something like that just it's i just think the sounds like yeah the language on it might be to someone who doesn't is just looking at it for the first time they may misinterpret what our intent is there although i understand perfectly what we're talking about even though i'm architect and i think building you know i thought
013you would like build structures i think we've built enough for now yeah it might hold us back for a day or two we'll pause after the few years that we've been through i thought there was something else too but they had one other thing but i'll get i'll get i'll get i'll send you an email okay just um you and i exchanged emails but um could you speak a little bit more about what we're going to attempt to do for our homeless students yeah so one of the goals in here is uh providing more information for our homeless students we last year one of our goals was include increasing the amount of information publicly available for students with 504s so our c s department worked to build out information on the website additional information that
014could go out to families as we added our 504 coordinators you know we've worked on making that programming more robust next year and continuing to expand our services and information it'd be the same thing for students that are homeless that we'd have a website with additional information point to resources resources there's a lot of county resources for students that are homeless to make sure that they're aware of that there's also certain rights that come to students that are homeless as well so making sure that we're very transparent as to what uh resources there for assistance but also what rights they have uh while while they're qualifying for homeless services beyond the website it's also just making sure that we're being intentional about our communications home to our homeless families um actually uh looking at a
015road map um this is just a quick i've been through the whole college search thing many times with my kids is there an opportunity for me to maybe share some of exactly what i did with my students and my niece and some others that i've helped um as with our what we call the css team or c triple s yeah yeah we could have a conversation mike absolutely like to just share what i've done and share that information and you can do with it what you will but i it's worked worked for us pretty well and uh i think that there's some strategies that that could be shared with students in general and in particular parents and we'll we'll make sure we share with you what materials are being prepared for those presentations as well
016so you can kind of see as we move through the access and resource periods and and run that instruction what you know what materials we're using excellent thanks anybody else we've received them and we filled them and they're available up on the website under recently fulfilled foia requests okay we're going to move on to the consent agenda um i would like to just uh acknowledge yet again this year uh the wonderful people from the bonfield express they've made a 5 000 donation to north and a 5 000 donation to south um special needs i think for the special education department especially i think and you know we're so grateful for their continued support was there anything else anybody else wanted to pull out of the consent agenda hearing none we need a motion to approve
017the consent agenda which includes the personnel report appointment certified transfer positions classified the leave of absence classified the personnel report retirement certified retirements classified the june expenditures the mfp accounting stipend the club session minutes and verbatim recordings and acceptance of the donation from the bonfield express foundation so moved uh terry and joanna terry pepsic aye dr vasquez justin chris espinoza agenda carries next we'll move to all business second reading and approval of policy 6.280 grading and promotion you need a motion to approve it before we can discuss it i move that we approve the policy change as presented second second all right as the board has been informed for the past month about this and as several members of the community have been informed when they've reached out and asked questions about this the paragraph
018that's being removed was added in 2015 as part of no child left behind before that there was no numbers as to moving between grades 9 10 11 or 12 because in a high school setting it really doesn't matter you're taking courses based on your interest and in your pathway towards graduation the only thing that matters in high school is graduation in 2015 because of testing requirements no child left behind put in arbitrary never before numbers as to the amount of credits that were needed to be designated at each grade level no child left behind went away several years ago at that time many school districts removed this paragraph it's an antiquated practice it does nothing for students it does nothing for what we do internally it's an internal process that takes us time to do
019every year it doesn't make sense for us to allocate district resources or hours to do something that isn't required by law any longer it it's just an internal accounting practice that has no implications on anything that we do so for that reason we're making the recommendation that that paragraph disappear just as it has in other school districts across the state when you talk about the administrative work that is required to do this could you talk a little bit about what is required to kind of associated with the credits and i'll let you speak to that she's she heads up that process so twice a year sometimes more often depending on situations our aps go through all students to see how many credits they've earned and where they're at and their number of years and then
020we have to through state reporting identify those students and basically change all their records and then mid-year if they earn credits back we have to change them back again and then again at you know it's at least a semi-annual process and for students that are special education students or outplay students it can fall even within those time frames so it is days of work days of work for individuals within the district figuring out who needs to be reclassified are they earning any credits through credit recovery that could change that before we have to exit students in july there's a whole process so it is a lot of work for where staff and this doesn't change the fact that students will still have to have a certain amount of credits correct it doesn't change to graduate
021correct doesn't change the graduation requirements are a whole different policy it's not this policy at all nor does it have any impact on classroom grades or expectations there this is a line a paragraph of text that was added under no child left behind in 2015. no child left behind is not the law of the land anymore these numbers were arbitrarily decided as part of no child left behind they have absolutely no impact on anything that we do yeah regarding student progress it was just to kick in what at what point students would take federally mandated tests that was the whole point of the mechanism we don't have those requirements any longer there's no reason for the district to be spending time on something that has nothing to do with the work we do here and
022in practice nothing's going to change other than we're going to stop doing some administrative busy work that has no is not beneficial to our students at all it's just i think of this like i mean when you when you enter high school it's kind of similar when you enter college you you have so many credit hours that are required to graduate and you meet with your counselor regularly to make sure you're staying on track if if you've failed something if if if you want to jump ahead you know there are opportunities to do those things and none of that's changing at all so this is really just kind of acknowledging how we've been doing things you know recently other than having this administrative uh requirement go away in fact i think it will help in
023some ways especially for students who are not promoted to senior year but then catch up on credits we keep them on a separate list to make sure that they get the prom information that they get the graduation you know all those end of senior year activities because in some cases they are still considered a junior before that and there's always the potential of missing a student and we do a great job of it don't misunderstand me but it forces us to keep several different lists to ensure that all those pieces come together for our students yeah and i appreciate the um answers because when i saw this i too asked you reached out yeah you reached out the same questions you can understand and based on what i was told i with i'm i feel
024the same with my daughter being a senior in college where she's a senior already goes by faster even though a class was missed there's still a credit so this doesn't change standards it doesn't change expectations all it is is it removes a piece of bureaucracy i very much think that there's a you know a third year student in high school right now thinking of themselves as a sophomore you know i mean that themselves you know that never that never was really going on you know so this was something i think you know one of these sort of government unfunded government mandates pushed down on us seven years ago and fortunately it's no longer something that we need to worry about and so this is just this is this is one of those cleaning up our
025policies you know policymak you know to reflect what's really good which is why we subscribed to press plus because they point out when it is that the there's these leftover things that you know can go away expectations for students are not changing in the least not a bit yeah all right nothing else any other questions i call the i call the um let's call the question yeah chris espinoza aye jenny fuller jenny um sorry cause i never call you by your last names jenny hagstrom do you have ask quest wrestler aye nancy kupka aye motion carries okay we'll move on to the second reception of visitors which is intended for dance members to address the board on any topic pertaining to community high school district 99 is unlimited to three minutes to provide all visitors
026an equal opportunity to address the board individuals needing more time should submit their thoughts in writing to the board secretary visitors addressing the board need to submit a comment slip to the board secretary will be invited to the microphone prior to addressing the board audience members should state their full name their proceedings are being taped recorded for the purpose of producing anchorage meeting minutes and we are streaming i reserve the right to modify these protocols of circumstances warned and audience observation of these protocols is appreciated we have one speaker carrie swenson good evening board um thank you for listening to me uh the reason i'm standing up here right now is i'm gonna first start by saying i don't have anything prepared either but hank you said the reason for high school is to take
027classes that they're interested in that you graduate i see it as a lot more than that um i look at these kids um across all races across all socioeconomic things and it's more than just taking what they're interested in and then to graduate there's a lot of skills that are learned in those four years um that are academic that are preparing them to be leaders and global students in their adult life so i think it's more than just what interests you and graduation so i would agree with you on that we're taking part of a conversation but yes i agree with you okay so along those lines when i look at the goals and tasks for 22 to 23 i did read it um some good stuff in there i'm really concerned about the lack
028of anything academic though um i mean we are dropping our test scores and performances are dropping whether covet or not whether comparable to other districts or not we are dropping um and have been since about 2017. not going to get into the reasons or my beliefs as a former teacher okay i i can read stats i know how stats can be manipulated i know that isbe had a whole different process during covet i get it but it's a concern and to not see it on our districts goals and tasks of what we're going to do to address that and see a lot of other diversity inclusion and all that sel stuff which is needed because of covenant and what these kids have gone through i'm not against that there needs to be a balance for
029academics right now westmont's doing better we're they're performing better it's cheaper to buy a house there you know we're gonna start losing things in our neighborhood because we're not focusing on the loss of academics and the loss of competitiveness that this district that i moved here for um i am in the community a lot lots of people agree with me lots of people don't but both sides talk to me a lot if you were to ask a lot of parents right now at the rotary fest on vacation or whatever what's your number one concern with this district right now i bet most of you would not know what that was because most of you do not have kids in this district in this age or coming up into it it is academic performance it's not
030inclusion people feel safe they feel heard they feel that the downers grove 99 is a safe place there's work to be done absolutely your district has made that a priority and i think that that's great academic performance right now is the number one people are concerned about the loss of time with block scheduling they're concerned about being able to retake tests they're concerned about losing finals they're concerned about um well they were concerned about this but you answer those questions they're concerned about you know homework rates a lot of places aren't doing homework rates you guys need to re maybe reach out to that community a little bit more because the number one concern of every single person i talk to no matter which side of the spectrum you're on was academic performance and i
031don't see any of that in your goals and tasks and i would urge the board to maybe add that to your discussions of how we can start bringing those things up thank you [Applause] i'll remind the board that the strategic plan was made after months of public feedback surveys parents community members and students participating in that strategic plan that was all developed from the work of the community so that's what the tasks all and the the strategic plan all originate from that's not administrative work that's community and outreach work any other questions from the board all right that's all i have okay we'll move on to communications and announcements uh report on legislative education network of dupage nothing to report uh sas said joanna you have an um i have a handout for everyone to
032see i'm not going to read it to everybody because you can kind of look at it and see what it is but it is a breakdown of the ways that it is the number of students that we have participating in the program based on ethnicity and which programs that they're in so if you do have a question in particular about this feel free to ask me now or email me later and i'd be happy to answer it in more depth for you terry the foundation uh no we're meeting uh wednesday chris anything on illinois school boards the uh what is it the uh urban board alliance symposium in september it in georgia members to register to attend the symposium uh i'm sorry i couldn't quite hear what you said something of georgia uh school board
033symposium in uh in georgia in september is open for registration so if anybody wants to go registration is open that's about it okay upcoming board meetings we'll meet again on august 1st for a workshop at 6 30 here and on august 15th again here at 6 30. and we'll likely have some action items on the august first board meeting okay you know as we typically do in the summer because of hires and and those kinds of things okay anything else we need a motion to adjourn so moved second all those in favor you