001have a roll call please mike davenport here christopher espinoza here fuller jenny hagstrom here terry patterson here joanna vazquez drexler here a little hera here jade toledano here thank you all right sounds like we have a quorum so let's stand for the pledge of allegiance where's the flag where's the flag i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic where we should stand one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right thank you next we have the approval of minutes can i from the october 18th meeting nope i'm sorry i'm jumping ahead we're on the october 18th the we need approval for the september 20th meeting business meeting in the october 4th workshop meeting is there a motion to approve second thank you exactly
002i'm sorry thank you very much i'm sorry all right joanna vazquez drexler aye terry pavich aye mike davenport aye christopher espinoza aye drop fuller sounds like the meeting minutes are approved next we move to the reception of visitors uh public comment um the meeting agenda includes two opportunities for comments from the audience the 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 will be limited three minutes to provide all visitors an equal opportunity to address the board individual need individuals needing more time to submit their thoughts and writing to the board's secretary visitors addressing the board
003need to submit a comment slip to the board secretary and will be invited to the microphone prior to addressing the board audience members should state their full name the proceedings may be tape recorded for the purpose of producing accurate meeting minutes well i don't think we're really tape recording anymore are we we're video streaming yes and the board's presiding officer reserves the right to modify these protocols if circumstances weren't audience observation of these protocols is appreciated so i have no slips for action items we do have a light agenda for action items this evening and have not received uh any slips for that but we have some for the second reception does anybody else uh well you still yeah i flew up ahead of time so if there was anybody that wanted to speak on
004these items we just need to slip from you okay so we're going to move on to recommendations and reports as superintendent and i'm going to hand the gavel over to mine thanks thank you all right good evening everybody uh before we get started on our regular business i'd like to recognize the principles and associate principles at both north and south high this is national principles month in october uh the last i think the last week day of the month is actual principal's day um but we will be recognizing our administrators for all of their excellent leadership and hard work in the district this month and today is one of those days that we recognize them courtney is here ed unfortunately couldn't be here this evening and i'll just show everybody the goody bad try not
005to drop them so courtney on your way out courtney if you need help [Laughter] i only deliver i i don't know what happened to yeah no thank you thank you i wish ed was here this is his uh last year as principal so yes and this is ed's last year yeah so and courtney's first all right so it's really to recognize the the work of the entire principals or uh assistant or associate principals uh during this month so they're a wonderful team of people to work with and uh we appreciate them greatly so thank you both for all all right uh just a quick update on return in person learning we updated our metrics this morning you can see for our numbers are really i hate to say it really good yeah comparatively especially uh
006you know at the high school level we're doing really well with all of our activities running and the number of cases new cases won each of the last two weeks so overall people are doing what they need to do to keep our schools safe so i appreciate the work that everybody's doing we did receive some updated guidance late today on new definitions around what outbreaks are going to be considered from idph i haven't had a lot of time to process that yet but it looks like it's more reasonable than what we saw before with you know just any transmission being an outbreak so i'll i'll take a look at that but it didn't look as a cursory look of the new guidance and faqs that there's anything that substantially impacts what we're doing so uh
007you know new guidance coming in uh the governor's executive order on masks expires this week so we'll see what happens uh with that we expect to hear something by thursday on that so we'll see what happens i think that's all i have for the return in person learning update any questions from any board members all right uh the core of tonight's meeting is really about uh the proposed new bell schedule for the next school year uh gina and i are going to tag team on this a little bit really as we head into this week we'll be communicating a lot of information with students families and staff over the course of this week tonight's presentation is intended to be a general overview of kind of what we're we're starting to look at proposing to do
008over the course of this week we'll be emailing everybody a a whole bunch of more detailed information a 20-minute video that jaden scarlet helped me put together that go dive deep into all of the information it includes the full slides that make up the video it provides an overview of kind of the potential bell schedule and a feedback form for people to offer their feedback on what we're working on at this point what's important to recognize is that people are seeing this as we build it okay so we we will present uh in in the in the materials that go out some of the challenges that are being presented and some of the things that we need to work through these are all things that we administratively could easily solve if we just wanted to
009make a decision from the superintendent's office however we feel like these kinds of decisions are best made with input from the folks that are closest to the impacts that we're making so and really the way that the flow of a school year works if we're going to make a schedule change for next year we really need to outline the core of that change by november when we start to head into course selection so that students and their families are selecting a schedule knowing kind of how the flow of the day and year will will occur so we don't have to have all of the answers by november but we definitely have to have a structure built by november and then we need it in november to be ready for it to be in place next
010august yes no that's a fair question all right so overall what is the change that we're talking about uh really we're talking about just changing substantially two days of the week actually all of the days will change slightly but really two days the week go from the eight period day to a block type schedule where you see half of your classes one day and the other half of your classes the next three days a week are traditional eight period days so we're still building around a traditional eight period schedule it should not at all limit the ability for students to get the courses that they want to get or you know it's still built around that we just restructure time on two of the five days by restructuring those days you're going to see some
011of the benefits that come from a team that's going to share some of those with you in a little bit but other features that happen on those two days are access periods which is some time each day in which all students and all staff are freed up at the same time so that students can get help from whoever they need help from or they can accelerate using the resources that we have here or take advantage of the building resources or see triple s or support staff or whatever students need they can access those resources or we can drive students towards those resources if we know that they need something during that time also you'll see a feature in the schedule is when their lunch period rolls around in the block days they get an extended
012period of time to do some of that as well also in those times we can push in and provide resources to students so things like the college and career center or scheduling or college planning or meeting with the trades or meeting with businesses in the community tasks that just eat up time throughout the year like a yearbook photos or bubbling in for the sat or survey any of these number of things that chip away at instructional time in various classes throughout the year can fall during these times as well which keeps our class time our instructional time with our teachers more protected and it actually puts more instructional time back into the school year [Music] and like i said more details will come out later this week with actual times and and structures and those
013kinds of things now really the way that it benefits students is in some key ways i just shared with you some of the flexibility in their day in that schedule access to teachers and resources a huge piece of moving to a block a couple of days a week is stress management because students so monday they'd come to school they'd see all of their teachers tuesday they'd see all their teachers that establishes kind of the baseline for the week then they go home tuesday night and students only have to prepare for half of their classes the next day so it takes the workload and cuts it in half on tuesday night when they come in they see they're half of their teachers and they have to go home and prepare for only half of their classes
014the next day because they're longer durations of time then finally they come in they close out the week and see all of their classes to close out the week and then we repeat the following week so that kind of break in the change in the schedule in the middle of the week really tends to lower stress levels for students and then the the last piece is preparation i always hear from students that we prepared them wonderfully academically post high school i hear over and over again that students were easily outperforming their peers when they ended up either in work or the military or in college once they leave schools with what they know but i continue to hear from students that wish that we would have better prepared them for managing their time and activities
015because they're so structured in over the course of a school day and post after after school with their activities that there's not a lot of time where they get to make choices as to where they are structuring their time and spending their time we've started to add some of that this year with the full period lunch schedule where students have at least half of their lunch period each day to structure and make choices and and to get help but this would add a little bit more of that throughout the course of the week and i keep hearing from people like why are we going to make this change now well we were preparing to make this change starting with this school year because the we've looked at a variety of schedules for the last two
016decades and what's really prevented us from making a substantial change is the physical layout of the buildings that we wouldn't just like what we see with lunch periods this year we didn't have space to to house students and to get them access to resources where our new common spaces allow for that to occur so we had planned on this being in place for this school year pandemic got in the way a little bit with that but now we're here the spaces are up and going we're returning from the pandemic in our traditional schedule to give us a year to kind of work through this understand it get feedback but now we can accommodate a schedule change moving forward all right anything on what i just shared there i'm going to get a little bit more
017into the weeds here all right so if you walk away with three key takeaways uh this is what i'd like for you to to take from this really the the first change is uh this allows students more access to teachers and resources and it lets students spend a little more of their time where they need it right now the way that the schedule is locked in you get 50 minutes per class every day each day of the week and that that's how the time is structured but by adding the access and the resource periods there's some student choice there or for a student that's having trouble making good choices will structure the time for them so that they are applying more of the time over the course of the week where they need to spend
018it or where they choose to spend it if they're performing at a level where they should have choice the next thing is it allows staff to leverage different opportunities for lessons and activities right now everybody's kind of working in the same 50-minute box every day if you want to do a longer activity you have to spread it over to you can't get kids into the flow of this longer activity and then stay there it has to end in 50 minutes when the bell rings and what this allows is the same kind of thing we've done with the building is build in flexibility make it so that they can leverage time to work for them just as we've started to change or drastically have changed our buildings so that the building can work for lessons and
019activities so it gives teachers another tool to plan and build around throughout the course of the week and finally as i said earlier it adds instructional time into the school year it compacts the school day one of the features of this is that we get rid of the late the extremely late start on monday and instead we're when the schedule goes out the proposed schedule later this week everybody's going to see a little later start every day of the week which we know the research shows for high school students the later that you can start and still make the day work and all all the things during the day and after the school day work the better it is for our our students to learn and then there's a consistent start time and end time
020each day of the week as well so those are the key takeaways there so this just takes everything i said and puts it on one slide i'm not going to read it to you again but this helps people that want to go back and review that information so let's let's look at it in big chunks and as i said going out to the community we want to make sure that the all students and family members received this information at the same time so that's why an informational email will go out on wednesday to everybody but what it'll do is it'll fill in the times into these blocks and dive in even deeper into some of these concepts and ideas but this is the general flow of the week so you can see uh on monday
021tuesday and friday as the board has seen before we have eight period days just like we have now like i said three of the five days a week don't don't substantially change two days of the week you can see wednesday the odd period classes meet you can see the featured access period in there which we discussed and you can see there is a lunch block that lunch block is an instructional block and the lunch period so when you look at this every class period 1 3 seven five all receive the same amount of instructional time that seventh block on wednesday the third block of the day is your instructional block same length as all the other classes plus there's a lunch period in there and then the way that this flows because we need to
022move one third of our kids through the cafeteria at a time there's a group of students that would start that block with lunch there is a group of students and this would be determined by class so your class would either start with lunch have lunch in the middle of that block or have lunch at the end of that block now that's where they would be typically scheduled from the beginning of the year there's certain classes that you wouldn't break up typically you wouldn't schedule to break up the long block classes that naturally would benefit from the longer block or would have challenges transitioning like a pe class you're not going to have students dress start an activity come back change go to lunch change go to go to pe right you're either going to start
023with the instructional or the lunch block or you're going to end with the lunch block science classes are another one because typically they're going to try to schedule longer labs into that place but there's other classes where you can make it work and structure your activities either way the nice thing of how this is structured though is if a teacher necessarily needs a longer block we can just switch that class with another class and one class would get the longer block and one would get an interrupted block there are some classes even science classes as a former chemistry teacher there were many labs where you would do one half of the lab and something would have to filter or cool or something would have to happen before you could move on to step two so
024like a science class that would traditionally not have a break i might go to the associate principal and say hey you know on next thursday it would be much better for the lab that i'm teaching to have a break in the middle so if you could could i start with my class and have lunch in the middle and they'll probably be a list of other teachers that are listing out hey you know the activity i'm doing that day it would be a lot better i typically have a break in the middle of the class period but it'd be much better for me if i could teach a full block consecutively and it's just a switch and then we make it work for both teachers both classes and it all comes together so there's flexibility in
025that structure as well you'll see in this sample student schedule their lunch period that in this sample is sixth hour happens monday tuesday friday at the same time but then that lunch period rolls back through as a block so that's another chunk of time in the students schedule in the week where they can get help they can meet with counselors they can get ahead they can there's any number of things that we have throughout the building where students are always trying to squeeze those things into their calendar into their school day that now they can take advantage of those during the day and not outside the day um so that's the general feel can you elaborate on the thursday it looks like the whole they're gonna have lunch and then lunch yeah i mean it's
026just the way that it fell in this sample for this this student another student might have lunch fourth period and then they don't right so what is that resource then that resources when their sixth period lunch rolls back through the schedule so that sixth period that happens on monday and tuesday it falls again in their schedule somewhere on wednesday or thursday so that becomes unstructured resource block where we'll put activities into that time and students will have that time to also get work done just like they do on the back half of lunch right now so it's about two hours at the end of the day of unstructured on thursday for the student it'd be a 45 minute lunch period and then whatever duration of that other lunch block is yes so um can they
027leave that's that's one of the decisions that we have to make over the next year as to whether students would be if they would be able to leave and on what days like if that's a day where we're putting in programming and you're meeting with your counselor or we have some kind of programming in place then no we need you to be here but if it's a day where it's your time that's a discussion that we have to have about uh would that that be the time that you you could go where parents could plan on that being there and that's where you schedule the doctor's appointment or you know the trip to the dentist or uh a work experience you know any number of things that that are going on that families need to
028find time to schedule into the week as well i have a question during that unstructured period how will you keep track of students who are not choosing to use that time wisely yeah it's the same thing we do now with the back half of lunch periods yeah so if if a student needs some kind of intervention or resource we can schedule them into that during that time so it wouldn't be free because they haven't demonstrated that either they can manage that time or they've demonstrated to us that they need some other intervention or support during that time someone's monitoring that correct okay and who would that be it's a combination of the counselor and the administrative team that are putting all of that together we also have our student success coordinators on on staff that
029are helping students that are struggling as well that would be part of that team i think part of the idea here is that um that this is an opportunity to help the students transition into being better managers of their time as you were saying earlier absolutely as opposed to everything always being just so you can see the beauty of it i'm just concerned there are some students who really oh sure never really mastered that skill into college and so i'm going somebody's got to be keeping track of them well part of this structure allows us at the beginning of each year especially of our freshman students to teach them the structures of how to manage your time and the strategies for that and the expectations and like right now we have to rush through that
030at the start of every year because you know we have that first day of school where we do some of that but it's you know about an hour presentation and then it's like okay kids let's go and then we kind of shepherd them through the school year where now we have time built in where we can teach some of those skills that we know students need whether it be managing their time or studying or you know reaching out to teachers or activities they can be involved in all of these things that we hope that students just naturally absorb by being here we can be a lot more strategic and intentional about giving our students the skills that they need to be successful here over their four years that right now kind of the way that
031the the year and everything is scheduled you kind of have to absorb that and we're seeing a lot of challenges especially coming back off of a pandemic with those soft skills so this intentionally allows us to structure a year where those activities and lessons are built in and we can definitely help our students be more successful at all times here and during the less structured time thank you so i i know this has yet to kind of go out you said on in the notes on wednesday are we finding that a lot of the students are wanting something like this well let's ask our students jade scarlett what is your take and be honest on the hybrid schedule yeah i mean that you're here to represent your peers i like the hybrid schedule i liked
032it last year it takes a lot of stress off and with my course load if i could only have to prepare for half my classes it would make my life astronomically easier so i think it'll be benefit there are going to be some you know quirks to work out but i think i think the students will like it they talk about it now they're excited i mean personally i agree with scarlet 100 i feel like with the course load i'm taking it would be really helpful to only have to prepare for half my classes but i also have heard from other students that they're not the most excited i guess but i think that is to be expected since everything is still changing a lot this year so i think implementing this it will be
033something good as long as um we work out those little things that we still need to do and then i know chris is a previous student so just curious yeah i think i agree with them that only having to prepare for half your classes at a time seems to be uh easier to prepare for the day before it takes a little bit of the stress off you know in college for me i have classes monday wednesday friday and then tuesday thursday and only having to prepare for the the test that day you know instead of even like monday tuesday and friday being all the classes i think you know you can you can suffer through friday because you got the weekend to come up and then monday is a good reset to get all your
034information from your teachers but that break in the middle of the week is usually when the stress sort of hits its peak and i think that'll take off some of the some of the mental wear that it puts on students okay thank you so while they would only have to prepare for half of their classes isn't there a theory though too like hypothetically with an english class you might have more reading to do or something because it's a longer class absolutely yeah yeah but there's a lot of research about this the switching and uh getting into the flow for one you know half of those classes is easier on a student than prepping for eight separate ones right because it might be a little bit more for a class that night before but it's not
035keeping track of seven different classes it's now three or four different classes that you're really digging into and then just to confirm on the day where there's math and lunch they're going to have a full hour and a half of math or they're going to have a broken down yep that would be uh it would be the same amount of time as the other classes that meet that day okay but it may be split in half it might be split for you know because we still need to move uh students into the lunch period we you know can take a third at a time so some of our classes are going to have to be split that way in order to accommodate uh getting everybody in and out of the lunch period so last question
036for me um so the classes on that we see thursday are longer classes correct how you know i think about attention spans right yes and having kids in that class for so long i think sometimes breaking up a day you know gets you to kind of refresh and get ready to go back and fit into some other course um so just that movement so that's another thing i was wondering are we incorporating a break because you're talking about an hour and a half long class right not necessarily yeah you're talking about a longer class yes okay but what what teachers will do in that space is very what activities and lessons are occurring during you're not going to sit and listen to a lecture for an entire block it's a time to build in longer
037based activities things that take a longer duration of time to engage in i doubt but no teacher should be lecturing for you know you shouldn't sit and get for an entire block that's the time where we should be building in more active type of activities that take a longer period of time that are a lot of times either not built in because we don't have time to do those in a 50 minute or they're truncated so a teacher has to get it up and going the kids have to start it and then just as they're kind of getting in deep into that activity like the bell rings and we gotta pack up and we we gotta move on where this would allow at least one day a week where for that class you could really
038go deep on an activity or you could structure multiple types of experiences during that block where for a little bit of time you might be listening and then you might go do an activity thing then you might have a little bit of group work all structured around that same topic for that class period i thought that that was one of the criticisms that students had with remote learning is they felt like the classes were kept going on and on and on and there was no breaks there was i mean you know sometimes you have to have a potty break or yeah yeah teacher's neck breaking and i think that that was one of the big criticisms in some of the questions so i want us to be really careful because we did run a hybrid
039block last year and we did that for a lot of the same mental health issues for this year but students working from home for 80 minutes without the structure of a school or the adult in the room is much for class period after class period after class period is very different than what this would look like with students back here in person all right one of the things i had to do when i because i had a similar reaction to you know oh my gosh you know and my mind goes right back to when i was in school you know i'm thinking oh man how many times i sat there watching the clock you know and and um but school isn't like it was you know uh for us um thankfully so i think we
040i think i think we've learned a lot of lessons i think teachers also know from one of the benefit last year was unusual and we did have the blocks in there but it did give us a year for teachers to find some things that worked and some things that didn't and how something structured actually help students make the time go by and use it efficiently and other things not so much right so although i would never say that last year was a dry run for this because it wasn't but it wasn't lost in the fact that teachers did learn that there's different ways to structure time and activities and things that make it work and things that don't right um and i think we'll all be well served by having as we are this year
041students back with us in person as we structure those times and activities was also going to add that that um you know this experience last year obviously helps us as you interested you know learn and this was something that we were working on prior to last year as well right so um for you know for our community to know that this is not something that we've just quickly put together here in the last couple months and we're trying to you know this is something that we've been developing over a large period of time and having our situation with covet last year um while not ideal at least we got to experience experiment a little bit with this and see how that would help with remote and we learned some things from it and i i'm
042i'm hopeful that all that experience is going to lead to more success coming into next year than we would have had and we've gone into that this year not having gone through what we've gone through for the last year so yeah the the time frame a presentation similar to what will go out on wednesday we had prepared to go out towards the end of the school year in when did we go out 2020 yeah uh that was supposed to go out and ask the same get feedback and you know but then as we were dealing with the pandemic and then we we had a window of time where we were going to send this out even over the summer there but then we knew based on the guidance that we're going to have to be
043looking at alternative schedules we just thought it was just too confusing to be talking about a year from now with right now so we just put a pause on it so we're back to it now that we're back to a normal somewhat more normal school year and a more normal schedule we feel this is a time to have that conversation and as i said we need to make a decision here by november so we know what we're doing for next august so you have the fact the faculty support or yeah we've worked along with the teachers on this since the beginning and then again if there's an opportunity to offer final exams that would be yeah it would fit naturally within the schedule and that's going to be a department decision course team yeah yeah
044because each course kind of has a little different approach and different material and topics and strategies that they're using to teach that material so i had a question um in terms of teachers and and maybe you're going to talk about this tonight you don't have to talk about this tonight um but from what i've read which is not extensive but from what i've read about black schedules oh sorry sorry can you hear me now i don't think it's a little bit hello hello no no um i was going to say maybe you're going to talk about this later or you don't have to talk about this later but the question i have the reading i've done about this which is not extensive but the reading i've done you know there's pros and there's cons either
045way you go but we're i've seen a thread is that where block schedules have failed it's because some teachers embrace it and run with it but a fair number of teachers don't change the way that they teach and so there is actually then lost time because they don't teach the last 20 minutes of the class so i'd be interesting to know if we go to this how we're going to work with our teachers how we're going to do development how we're going to support how we're going to do evaluation so that's also one of the strategies of trying to have this structure out and approved and in place now because it gives us half a year to work on those strategies we also did a lot of professional development over the last year when we
046were in a block schedule of how to plan appropriately for those lessons right so we've already started some of the professional development around this i think a lot of school it's also i'll also caution people that look at some of the research out there we are not moving to a full block schedule right so schools that move to a full block schedule five days a week that are structured like this it's a lot of changing in the planning of how you're going to do things we're moving to two days a week right so three days a week our planning is if we've planned in the past now it's one less than a week that you're changing and many of our teachers have lessons that span multiple class periods already in a week right so instead
047of that lesson spanning two class periods you'll be able to restructure it and get it into that single class period where it makes sense to do so for that longer duration of time so this is not as drastic of a change as a school district that would be going to like a four by four block or or some other structure like that you know this is restructuring the middle of the week to provide some extended time so it's not a drastic i know it may feel that way is a massive change but really in the whole scheme of planning and building lessons and activities this is not a seismic change it's just a it's a good change for the reasons that i've mentioned you know the especially the mental health aspects and stress management aspects
048the flexibility and designing structure and the ability for students to get the help and dedicate time on what what they need are really the keys here making this change i've been talking a lot i'm going to turn it over to gina she teased me earlier before we go to gina could people just make sure everybody's got their mask on please thank you ma'am [Music] could you put your ass down please over your nose thank you thank you all right uh so i've talked about a few of these but i'll let gina highlight some of the things that i haven't talked about which may not be anything sorry gina um some key points in terms of an increase in instructional time aimed at some of that late start monday time so there's a consistent start and
049end time to the day for students every day we're also pulling back out of sometimes going into classes to actually get some of the activities required activities done for example um we've mentioned bubbling for the essays those kinds of things taking those out and putting those it's also an opportunity for students to meet with teachers to ask for help during the school day and giving them some choice giving them the opportunity to make choices about where they go to get them home increased instruction time on the black days will help for deeper lessons and activities in land-based sources and will also provide time this schedule also has some flexibility built into it not only for choice since you can help the possible stands for enriched furthermore currently professional development primarily on the late start funding
050this schedule we've been building [Music] development built into the schedule one of the questions that we've been asked by that goal especially in life really taking the best of three a day we along with the information that's going out this week is an faq that has some of the common questions that we've heard on it this is one of them that will be included and this is basically the timeline so we finalize the prototype and that's for students and parents to give their feedback on the schedule we are planning to finalize the schedule and seek for it next month then december through may and including teachers on those cities [Music] uh one thing i will i'll point out that gina mentioned the committees up to this point uh we've had over 20 students providing us
051feedback or you know had the opportunity to provide us feedback on this about 30 parents and about 50 staff members that have been working on it up up to this point to see this prototype that'll go out uh this week and now everybody will have their opportunity to provide us feedback that then we'll go back and and see what concerns in there maybe we haven't thought of or or haven't uh responded to yet um it's important to note we're we're not like blazing a new trail here right there's other schools across the country in the chicagoland area that have made schedule changes that incorporate aspects of these changes so whether it be the access period there's lots of schools in the area that have something similar to that whether it's block you know later start
052times there all of these aspects have been worked into high school schedules in the area or across the country in the last uh last 10 to 15 years many of them correlate with changes in facilities because you you have the flexible space to be able to make these kinds of changes uh in the school day all right any other questions that we haven't answered yet you're waiting on the to give us the actual time yeah all of that will go out to everybody uh on wednesday so a sample schedule and everything else as i said i i could have debuted it tonight but then it would kind of go out to some people get it tonight some people would get it over the next couple of days we really felt it was important that you
053know all the students and families saw it received it at the same time so wednesday that information goes out all right the only other agenda items foia documents is our monthly report that we've received foias and we have responded to them and all the information is available on our website anybody here yep okay moving on to our consent agenda is there any consent item that any board member wishes to extract yeah no then we need a motion for the board of education to approve the consent agenda as presented which includes a the personnel report appointments exempt appointments classified b the personnel report retirement administration retirements classified resignations classified see the financial pages indeed the educational tour ggn bands inquires 12 27 22 through 1 323 europe united kingdom so moved second mike and terry thank
054you mike aye jerry pavich i with a heavy heart juana vazquez drexler aye christopher espinoza aye troll fuller hi jenny hagstrom aye the consent agenda carries moving on into new business the first reading of the policies and resolutions [Music] uh policy committee met this month we reviewed many policies recommended by the press uh a couple recommended by the board's attorneys and one resolution recommended by divorce as always this is the month to take a look again if you have questions asked about recommendations oh we'll take action on exponential resolution separate from the policy for the resolution no you covered it thank you oh one other [Music] last couple of years we looked for any policies that we had that press did not and i believe a board member pomonado put us on schedule uh how
055we're frequently reviewing our own unique policies uh mike contrell this time asked for us to put together a schedule to prove new policy if not yet julie's got a nice spreadsheet of course she does thank you thank you julia yes absolutely julie okay moving on to the second reception of visitors with public comment this is the second reception of visitors which is intended for audience members to address the board on any topic pertaining to community high school district 99 comments are limited to three minutes to provide all visitors an equal opportunity to address the board individuals needing more time should submit their thoughts in writing to the board secretary mrs nadiak visitors addressing the board need to submit have submitted a comment slip to the board secretary and will be invited the microphone by order
056prior to addressing the board audience members should state your full name the proceedings are being recorded for the purpose of producing accurate meeting minutes and are being strained live and i reserve the right to modify these protocols if circumstances warrant audience observation of these protocols is appreciated that there will be a timer up there please wrap up first up is fridge print are we up and running hold on [Music] good evening i'm rich brennan the downers grove taxpayer do you remember nikita khrushchev's prediction in 1959 quote we will keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you finally wake up and find you have communism end quote remember socialism leads to communism today more than 50 percent of college graduates believe in socialism i wonder where they learned that they were not taught about the
057great american land of freedom and opportunity here's the progressive communist recipe eight ingredients control health care and you control the people d-99 board follows all masked mandates and lockdown orders teaching young people to obey government without question evidence that masking and lockdowns will not eliminate covid19 virus is called misinformation increase the poverty level poor people are easier to control and will not fight back d-99 equity politics says outcomes must be equal for all equity politics just spreads academic failure and poverty by lowering standards d-99 academic performance hasn't been too hot the last five years increase the debt and taxes to an unsustained unsustainable level woke federal spending and insane debt will impoverish d-99 graduates poverty helps communism federal tax money influences d-99 to obey politics rather than parents the welfare state creates dependence on the
058government the failed u.s welfare state is not challenged within the d-99 educational system the 99 kids don't know of a world where the family supplied lunch not the school gun confiscation opens the door to the police state look at canada new zealand and australia where they have no second amendment to remind government that government is instituted to preserve our rights take control of what people read and listen to and take control of what children learn in school the d-99 board has taken that control with not so good results remove god from the government and schools so government becomes god how about the ten commandments as a counterforce to oppose inappropriate sex education in school divide the people into wealthy and poor as in crt equity politics class warfare is a tenet of crt even if
059you don't call it crt any questions thanks to our wake up hotline callers and one more thing you know why we're here because we love these kids they're our nieces and nephews our grandkids our neighbors kids just like you and one more thing we don't hate anybody we disagree with i guarantee you that thanks [Applause] i'm sorry my name is marcela durdik cheray i'm a 25-year district resident i've mentioned here before that i've spent over 20 years researching threats against children via public health initiative i'm not willing to give up my fundamental civil liberties for the false narrative and mass psychosis that is coveted i refuse to perpetuate what's become a two-tier discriminatory system based on perceived health status that's the real covet threat the slippery slope that threatens our freedoms more than it does
060our health you fail to understand this or worse you purposely disregard it you've shown where your loyalties lie and that they most certainly can be bought you sit here month after month and obediently parrot what the kovitzars tell you that understanding that decrees from alphabet agencies do not override individual rights to bodily autonomy or parents rights to make decisions for their children you've implemented masking you talk of test the state strategies quarantine policies which you can't enforce without parental consent or court orders a call from the school nurse doesn't cut it parents please understand that and you advocate for vaccination you provide nothing but ad nauseam regurgitated mainstream medium talking points all for some supposed greater good freedom is the greater good we should all align ourselves with not propaganda campaigns i stand in truth
061so here's what i challenge you to do cite the authority of law that supports any reason for violating an individual's constitutional rights provide the statutory laws that give you authority over personal health decisions not executive orders business policies or directives but law to be clear provide the legal basis and rationale not remarks such as it's our policy or we're following health guidelines on second thought don't bother it's rhetorical those laws don't exist there is no question we the people are free to choose freedom is not bestowed it's innate and divine the question is whether we're shaping a society that supports and protects our freedoms or one that subverts and overrides them while discrediting those who descend you either align with freedom or you don't if it's the latter i suggest each of you renounce your
062citizenship and leave this country because you clearly don't understand what it means to be an american [Applause] good evening i'm linda schranz 35-year resident of downers grove my daughter is an alumnus of donor school of north and i came tonight to speak in praise of the board's effort to maintain safety for the children teachers and other staff despite pushback you're receiving from some members of the community i voted for each one of you up here and the reason i did was because some of you i knew already some of you i spoke with in person some of you i read about but the thing was is that you all presented to me people who cared about the children in the community so that's why i voted for you that's why you're standing up there right
063now i um i really believe that you would be able to craft policy and oversee the education process by trying to provide every child a positive and safe environment i've heard a lot of talk about masks and personally i hope they stay because they have been demonstrably shown to minimize the contagion of covindite and an added benefit is they also help spread they help hinder the spread of the cold and flu so i just want to come up and say i think the board has done an excellent job of providing clear direction during this turbulent time i hope you know that the majority of people in the district support you and hope that you will continue to serve us in the future thank you for your service [Music] i'm janet winningham i'm a district resident
064i'm not sure i can speak um more eloquently than linda did but i'm here to thank you for the work you do i think that the um covid numbers that you showed tonight prove the uh the work that you do that that you those numbers uh say it all and that masks are effective they are important and uh for my own personal opinion if somebody doesn't want to wear a mask fine stay home but school boards as you know are under attack nationwide it's a stressful time and i appreciate that you are serving and doing a wonderful job for our students thank you [Applause] [Music] hello i'm margaret brownlee i'm a resident of westmont for over 30 years i used to teach school but it was too hard so i quit and became a chiropractor
065instead it was much easier i'm here because i'm interested in helping you create and support you in creating really healthy happy community in school i'm really willing to listen to others with opposing ideas i believe that's how we grow but i'd like to read a couple headlines that kind of alarmed me the first one is the right wing political machine is out to take over school boards by fanning fears of critical race theory and i can lick my tongue okay we'll just go to the next one the coke connections and the sham grassroots appearance defending education parents defending education is corporate school privatizers going hard right to attack school boards superintendents principals and teachers it is kind of a dirty game i guess you're aware of it i hope and it says a lot about
066a grassroots system particularly one related to a political operation so now i'm kind of wondering if some of the controversies not all of them here but some of them that i've observed and you have to may really be about healthy choices and freedom or are they more contrived movement to break down an institution that is part of our local governance we need institutions we need you and i think you do a great job a book written by timothy snyder called on tyranny discusses 20 ways to break down democracy number two was to go ahead and destroy all institutions we as a community will either rise together or we're gonna fail together we are all connected the human body if one cell goes dysfunctional i don't know if you're aware of this but every other billions
067of cells in the body at that moment are identified notified and communicated that something's gone wrong so every other cell actually harnesses energy to go help rescue that one cell if a group of cells continue to dysfunction we get something called disease of an organ and it ends up usually not very well they can often end up in death that's how a community works i know um that we are here to listen and to work to others and listen to others views but i want you to have the task to pull all of us together i know that that is your goal and you're doing your best but if there is a concerted effort to actually destroy you as an institution i think you need to be aware of it as i have grown to
068be aware of it thank you for being the warriors that you are trying to keep the school system working and keeping all of us together i want you to just be cognizant and consider this may not really be about masks or vaccines or coveted or racism many of us have your back and understanding this challenge i hope will help you in negotiating your institutional goals thank you for all your good work [Applause] excuse me could that gentleman in the second row please put his mask on hello i'm laura hoyes we have been addressing the board now for six months as an organization known as wake up d-99 and we care very deeply about our kids and that's why we're doing this we really want information we're seeking to understand what is happening in our schools
069and rightfully so i think that there are three areas that i'd like to address tonight where we have questions and i understand that board policy does not permit answering questions in this forum but i'll go ahead and let you know what what's on our mind and then follow up with questions and hope those hope those answers will be forthcoming we have made email employer requests and direct requests for information and we've gotten a few answers but we've dealt with a lot of resistance to disclosure of information that we simply need to know first of three items is we want to know what educators are being told to teach our kids we want to know what training is actively going on and in those responses to foias we learned that district 99 has been conducting workshops
070for faculty members since 2015 and spending thousands and thousands of dollars for seed training which is seeking educational equity and diversity so it looks like every faculty member has been through seed training over the years and it's been thorough and it's under the category of professional development but we simply don't know what that is and in our request we've been asking for training materials what is it that the teachers are being trained we need to know that so that we know what's going to be related to our students our children our kids in this goal and it's not forthcoming for some reason it's close to the vest or you know i've heard that teachers are told not to say what they've learned in these training sessions it's about equity and diversity and i know that
071the founder of seed is all about white supremacism so this is something that raises some concerns and if you would please be forthcoming with those training materials we greatly appreciate it secondly sex educate education we want to know what is being taught in the health portion of the class that is sex ed we are told that there's no book no videos no documents that each teacher presents in its own way as long as they follow the guidelines that's fine but what is it what is being presented and what will the changes be for the national sex education standards if the isbe is gathering those materials and those are forthcoming we we're asking to know what will the content of sex education include so discussing amendments to a policy about parents can complain about the curriculum
072is difficult to make a complaint when we don't even have the curriculum information that we've been requesting the second point is why did this district give panorama 27 100 last year that also raises concerns thank you oh first of all i'd like to say hello fbi and doj my name is paul dravik i'm a downers grove resident i serve my country and i'll be right here in front of this microphone every month exercising my god-given constitutional rights i'd smile for the camera but apparently showing faces just like free speech has come dangerous in this country i would urge the parents of district 99 to read the district's covet protocols if they have not already they read some they read like something out of 1984 or animal farm i wonder if our schools are assigning those
073books along with the marxist equity paddle i wonder what you might say if the kids confronted you with some facts for example if they were to reference the study out of israel that shows the vaccinated are anywhere from 6 to 13 percent more likely to contract covet than those that have natural immunity or what if they asked you about the india province of uttar pradesh where they used an ivermectin protocol and saw a 97 percent decline in cases yet in america we have contact tracing and quarantines for a disease that has 99 percent survivability and is less dangerous to children than the flu but here we are watching our school board impose segregation on our children these measures are draconian not science based i wonder why a government who has shifted radically toward authoritarianism in
074a span of less than a year might want to silence parents surely it has nothing to do with parents calling out basic facts facts such as this is an experimental shot mrna technology listen closely has never been used in humans we have no concept for the long-term effects it is a lie that is fda approved the only vaccine fda approved is a brand named komer nati by a pfizer affiliate named bioentech that is not available in the united states all the vaccines you've been made to believe are fda approved are still under emergency use authorization or perhaps they are worried parents might point people to theirs report which shows that over 16 000 people have died from the vaccine and over 1 million adverse events have been recorded but we can't say that because the
075vaccine is safe and yet in 1976 about 30 people died from the swine flu vaccine and it was immediately pulled from the market perhaps parents are curious why the government's threshold for acceptable vaccine deaths has jumped 50 000 percent and i know this parent is wondering why this district is helping big pharma market an experimental vaccine to children who are virtually safe from this disease but don't worry i'll submit these questions in writing along with my recommendation that you resign from the national school board association for calling parents domestic terrorists do the right thing you work for the taxpayer for our part we will continue to be the voice in opposition to the true domestic terrorists our government [Applause] good evening my name is noel manley and i'm a resident of darion illinois the united
076states is not a racist country and district 99 is not a racist community however it's difficult to maintain these positions when we have critical race theory under its rebranded form diversity equity and inclusion being taught to children case in point we've obtained a copy of the textbook used in the downers grove north government class school year 2020 to 2021 titled magruder's american government by william clinton on his facebook appears to be benign however when you do a deep plunge with material you discover its wokeness for example on page 20 the book declares it is clear however that we are still a considerable distance from a genuine universally recognized and respected equality of all america's people by what measure are we considered a distance off there's no mention of the civil rights act of 1964 the
077voting rights act of 1965 even the community reinvestment act just a blanket declaration with no contacts on page 35 the book makes what appears to be an innocuous assertion about the russian revolution stating 1917 the russian revolution ends the harsh centuries-long czarist rule pretty bad what the book fails to mention is that the russian revolution ushered in a period of communist rule that forced conformity on its population through sacrificing the individual to advance the interests of the state of course the cost of the revolution was 50 million people dead as a result of political purges collectivization and show trials i'm sure old joseph stalin would be proud of our government's pointless mass mandate in the weaponization of the fbi against parents on page 112 the book discusses the full faith and credit clause of the
078constitution instead of using court rulings and criminal procedure to illustrate the clause it uses same-sex marriage to articulate the clause's meeting and finally on page 156 the book discusses voter qualifications and citizenship here the book declares the following still nothing in the constitution says that aliens cannot vote and any state could allow them to do so if it shows it's important to note that the constitution is silent on a number of issues the silence includes judicial review the right to privacy and executive privilege yet the subtext of this reference on alien voting is a clear endorsement of such activity as you know voting is a fundamental aspect of american citizenship without this right citizenship is rendered meaningless and validates open borders so once again we find critical race theory to be alive and well in
079district 99 undermining our institutions by indoctrinating children and foregoing any critical thinking thank you [Applause] [Music] good evening i'm just going to talk from my heart i'm an american like all of you and i wish that you would teach this generation of kids to love america this is what the land of the free the home of the brave the land of opportunity but this is the land that my grandparents love they came here from another country made a way for themselves and they love it here i'd like you to teach our constitution how can you argue with all men are created equal it does not say white people are supreme like it or not our country is founded on christian values yes there were slaves both races work together to abolish it race was a
080non-issue until about five years ago anybody can be anything they want to be if they apply themselves in america that's the freedom of america why that's why people come here because we're free thinking we don't do what the government tells us to do um we've been paying 50 plus years for the school board and the pensions and maybe we should change that to use of the public schools to 12 years if your kids go or cut it down to however many years the children use the public schools uh is your teacher's union ordering you to use this criteria if you refuse are you going to lose your jobs are you the teachers you and the teachers comfortable with teaching all manner of sex is acceptable these days what does a people group that makes up
081less than 4.5 percent of america get their agenda in our schools is your paycheck worth poisoning this generation of teens do any of you have the courage to refuse this repulsive and vulgar teaching any teachers i can't believe they're all on board with this you're all okay with this i would rather pull my kids out of school and get them jobs rather than expose them to this indecency we are not the enemy truth is and if satan's offering you a piece of bread you're supposed to say no seems you're drinking the kool-aid and want us to drink the kool-aid too and our kids are not your kids or the government's kids don't you see what's going on here it's government control is that what you want socialism then communism and you'll be a part of
082the downfall of america it's not too late freedom's worth fighting for motives matter what is yours a paycheck you all can change this whatever happened [Applause] [Music] hi i'm mary lemanski my son is a student at downer school of north um after speaking last month at the meeting um the people behind me wrote a five-part blog post about my conversation i don't know quite why they did that maybe to intimidate me but i'm not intimidated one bit um one the i went on their thing and i was going to do a point by point rebuttal of everything they wrote but when i went on their first post it said of they criticized my one in eight americans infected by covid and they put meanwhile can you guess how many americans have been infected but not
083died the answer is also one in eight i'm just wondering how statistically that's possible if you have one person that's sick out of eight how only one person lived out of eight so in seeing that they don't know what they're talking about i decided that i would do a side-by-side comparison of the numbers from last month with the numbers from this month so everyone can see why dr falchi's opinion has changed over time because the data changes last month there were 41 million coveted cases now there are 45 million coveted cases that means last month there was one in eight chance of getting covered now your chances are one in seven um there were 670 000 deaths last month now there are 724 000 deaths your um chances have actually improved of not dying of
084covid 1 in 62 which is interesting um 1 in 89 million people have been fully vaccinated compared to 173 last month so last month there were 12 908 breakthrough cases and now there's 14 992 which gives you a one and twelve thousand six hundred sixth chance of getting coveted vaccination compared to one and seven and finally the numbers for death uh last month it was 170 million we're fully vaccinated 189 now there was approximately 2 000 deaths from people who were vaccinated from covid and this month there are approximately three thousand and so now your chance is one in sixty thousand of dying if you're fully vaccinated compared to one and seven or i'm sorry uh one in 62 chance of dying from the new numbers thank you thank you for following the science because
085the math supports it that's what i want to say [Applause] final speaker hi my name is cynthia hopkins i'm a resident of hinsdale so i still consider myself a president of dallas grove because we're still in thunderstorm township so it took me 10 years over 10 years to become citizen and i think i have decent education and a fairly successful career i have two master's degrees from university of chicago and i never took a penny from the government so now i escaped from china to come to united states where the white supremacists discriminate me based on the crt and i found it to be an insult on my intelligence there are two things about crt i hope you all understand one crt is insulting to accomplished minorities it automatically categorizes us into a victim into
086victimhood instead of giving us the credit where we deserve i don't need the elite who's pushing for the crt to feed me fake directory sympathy they're not my savior secondly crt indignify those hard-working minority families once you take their dignity and their pride away what's left have any one of you being in a situation where your family your freedom your wealth was taken away from you that kind of despair i have i was in that situation so without the opportunity that this great country gave me i probably would be somewhere in a in the third world china so now if you gener every one of you if you genuinely genuinely respect minority americans i please you to reject the crt and by the way if you really want to experience what discrimination and racism is
087i will pay for your round trip to china just let me know i'll pay for it thank you that you can make a good job thank you [Applause] our final speaker [Music] it's interesting that the last speaker is from china because my last daughter is also from china and i have a little bit of a different uh opinion i am a resident of downers grove i've been a resident for 23 years in downers grove both of my children came to this school i trusted you to protect my children and i have never been disappointed and for that i thank you i thank you for following the science for doing the right thing i know now it requires courage and all i can say is thank you and let's keep working at it thank you [Applause]
088let's have a report on legislative education network of dupage okay that's me um we met for the first time for this school year on september 24th um it was really my first probably substantive meeting um with with the group um we sort of split into we had a lot of state legislators um attend the meeting as well and so we split into breakout groups um based on you know which representative represented your district etc um a lot of what we focused on are some of the shortages staff shortages substitute pay things like that that are kind of in flux right now we looked at some of the conflicting laws as to bus drivers because we have such a shortage and whether or not we might be able to you know amend some of those laws
089so that we could allow more of our district staff to provide such transportation to students both during the school day and after school to accommodate the shortage we focused a little bit on issues about local control right now we're still obviously under a statewide mandate so that's not relevant um sorry i'm working off of a bad set of notes and then we sort of got shifted into a group where not all the representatives represented our district so it wasn't quite as relevant but and we'll have another meeting um on the last friday of october thank you uh yes sir julian well as of last week we at sasad we closed three classrooms one at north elementary school in villa park district 45 and two at waterbury elementary school in kenyville district 20. we're also advised
090of a positive individual at hillcrest school at donner's grove 58 and will now be closing that classroom uh due to the activity within the cooperative we are now in collaboration with dupage county health department to determine whether or not we will be designated as experience in outbreak we are having a difficult time due to lack of staff we are shifting caseloads and making required notifications where we are not able to fulfill a service on an iep we're also on the cusp of having to halt enrollment where we cannot provide services particularly for students who require nursing at southeast school also we are not able to offer the alternative to suspension program at southeast due to the lack of staff and space needed for social distancing and substitute shortage is further straining the classroom is there
091anything that would be relevant uh north shore clinical administer 20 test first the asset staff at the administration center so 86 of staff are vaccinated um i don't see anything else nope that would be it okay thank you thanks trian uh terry 99 foundation we're meeting uh wednesday so um i don't have anything to report right now okay uh chris do you have anything on ies uh there were two uh well the upcoming vote in november uh that i did want to put up the discussion uh as a board um both uh resolution number two and 15. i'm sorry we'll have those resolutions [Music] and that's going to be a bad date yeah okay our upcoming board meetings november 1st we will have a meeting at 6 30. it'll be a workshop and it will
092be here at south high but in the auditorium and then november 15th we'll have a regular business meeting again at 6 30 p.m it'll be at north high school at the auditorium do we have a motion to adjourn someone who moved second joe this is joanna yeah sure all those in favor aye well the suppose we are adjourned thank you thank you [Music] i have a question for you then you have something all right you