001good evening let's call the order roll call please report here christopher espinoza here here [Music] we have a quorum let's stand for the pledge i pledge allegiance to the law of the united states of america and to a republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay i believe we start with student perspectives i'll invite courtney up for north high here you gotta flip it on i think there you go there we go okay hi good evening everyone thank you so much um for allowing us to recognize some students tonight and um tonight we're going to present to you our girls track team from the spring of 2021 and i'm going to let them come up here and talk all about their accomplishments but i would first
002like to introduce our coaches matt maletich and tim mcdonald and they're going to introduce the girls too and the girls are going to talk a little bit about some amazing things that they did last spring so thank you all all right uh thank you for having us first of all i'm matt meltic i'm the uh head coach for the girls track team uh just to introduce a couple people we have veronica lesotho over here veronica's junior this year she's an excellent sprinter on our team we got claire pine next to her she's a junior as well she's an excellent distance runner we have carly harkness another excellent distance runner she's a sophomore she actually was on the all-state 4x8 last year as a freshman and we have marley kowalski right here she's an excellent triple
003jumper her sister l is right here al is an excellent uh long jumper and sprinter and then they just walked in right here is abby straft she was also all-state last year in the four by one she's a junior uh thank you for uh having us uh it's an honor to be here uh this team truly should be recognized because we've said many many times this is the best team we might ever see and it was the best team we ever had it was a weird year to have such a great team but this team persevered through challenges around every corner as everybody knows contact tracing just the sheer stress of competing during kovid and they overcame everything else going to go through some of the accomplishments for us here's elle kowalski hello i'm al
004kowalski i am going to talk about a few of our accomplishments there are quite a few i'm super excited to be here and speak on behalf of my team i'm also super proud to be a part of this team after everything we've accomplished last year as you know our season was cut short in 2020 as well as 2021 but we seriously outdid all expectations for this year and we came out even stronger than anyone thought we ever could um just to kind of put it in perspective since the beginning of the season up until the state meet we did not lose a single single meet um that includes our conference um champion and our sectional so at the west suburban silver conference we had a historic amount of points scored which was 183 points and
005donners grove north athletes scored first in 11 out of the 18 events um a division one athlete who went here kind of should know she also now holds the west suburban silver conference triple jump record which is super impressive and we're definitely going to miss her next year but we'll we'll persevere through for sure next was sectionals this was the first time we have won sectionals since 1999 so it's definitely been a while but it was super exciting to be a part of that team when we won this year last year we to put it like show how well we compete against other schools we scored 176 points and the runner-up scored 75 so we almost doubled their points and not to brag but that's kind of a bragging moment um and our athletes scored
006first in 12 out of our 18 events and then the meet after that was our state meet and although technically not like a huge group of girls always qualify you can still feel the love from our entire team from three hours away like there are a few girls who even came all the way down to eiu and you just feel the support from everyone on the team there's so much love that goes around and i'm super proud to be a part of that um this was also another historical moment for us we scored 26 points which is super oppressive we've never scored that many points at a state meet before so again super proud to be a part of that and to contribute on the 4x1 um as well as that we scored three we
007have three new records up on our outdoor girls track and field board which doesn't happen quite often there's a records up there from quite a while ago so just to get three this year especially after all the circumstances of years prior we definitely worked our butts off to get that and i'm super proud to be a part of this team and speak on behalf and i'm really just looking forward to what we're going to accomplish this year that's all i forgot to mention that l was also on the allstate 4x1 team so not only a great speaker she was on the 4x2 as well we unfortunately weren't all state in that event but she did a great job thank you so much thank you all and congratulations thank you for representing us so well uh
008in so many different ways it's great to finally get you here in front of the board and recognize you and don't ever apologize for bragging you did a great job that's right we're so proud of you well done yeah well done not just not just the records which we're very proud of just the team spirit i mean god bless you we're proud of you all right little closer sorry we're just proud of you we'll leave this thank you thank you thank you thank you student board members questions in common all right student board members so i'm gonna go first some of the latest things that have happened at south since i last updated the board have to do with our sports teams both our boys and girls cross country teams are still placing extremely high
009at their meets our boys golf team won conference and both the girls and boys golf teams have moved on to regionals our football team is on a winning streak with a rough start to the season that's a plus and the regular season for all our fall sports is wrapping up in the next few weeks and then our teams will be off to their championship series with the hope of bringing some trophies back to south touching on the plays that i mentioned in the last update the cast and crew are still working hard preparing to put on spectacular performances and one more thing i would like to talk about is our homecoming that happened this past saturday homecoming this year was hosted outside and all people in attendance had a lot of fun the students loved
010the fireworks show to end the night it was especially nice to have the dance again after not being able to have one last year this was just another event that provided a little sense of normalcy back to the high school experience i also want to congratulate our nine students who are named national merit scholars and our two students who are commended in the upcoming future the winter sports season will be starting and we can't wait to see what the muslim teams accomplish this season thank you scarlett jade okay so here at north we've had a very busy couple weeks and i don't think it's going to be stopping anytime soon last week we had our theater present um blight spirit which was very fun uh the set it was up a couple days ago and
011it looked incredible and i know they're going to be working very hard for the next one that comes up on the other side of our fine arts department we also have a couple concerts in the upcoming we have our choir concert on october 6th here on fdgn and our orchestra concert which is very exciting because i'm part of it on october 14th at dgs which is going to be very exciting to be able to perform in the new auditorium that we have so very exciting moving on to other things that are going to be happening a lot of fundraisers are happening our student council is having a fundraiser tomorrow to be able at chipotle to be able to fund future events including our homecoming which is coming up very soon i know south just had
012theirs but ours is coming up on the week of october 18th which is very exciting like scarlet said to get a sense of normalcy back another fundraiser we also have is the no one fights the loan fundraiser starting in the next couple days we're selling t-shirts and stickers which is very fun to raise awareness for cancer and i think it's a really important topic to touch on and another one is also a fundraiser happening between our empowerment club and our um eating disorder initiative which they're also going to be fundraising for nita which is the national eating disorder association which i think is also very important to touch on and another thing that we're also doing for our health is the young hearts for life which is going on in this week on thursday we
013have early dismissal but that organization is still coming in to do this really important exam on us for all the kids that whose parents gave authorization it's still not too late to sign up so i think it's really important that if anybody still wants to sign up the registration date is october 6th for the last people and then moving on to something that also concerns how our students have been feeling the last couple days last week we unexpectedly lost one of our own here at dgn senior mason walters tragically passed away this last week it hasn't just been hard on many of his friends and teachers but on our whole community and i'm thankful to go to a school where we as students are so close and united and especially in these situations we came
014together to mourn and to celebrate mason's life and the legacy he leaves behind not just as a friend or a student or an athlete but as a person who taught us so much and he'll be remembered by the content of his character my deepest condolences go out to the walters family you're on our thoughts and we're with you thank you jade thank you any questions from board members for our student board members thank you paul we'll move on to the first reception of the visitors the meeting includes two opportunities for comments from the audience does anyone in the audience wish to comment i don't believe we've received any slips does it speak nancy no close to your microphone please oh i'm sorry yeah we have received no comments for uh reception of visitors for public
015comment so we'll move on to the board workshop for return to in-person learning all right so return in person learning a short report tonight just reminding everybody that up on our website is the list of all of the covid activity for students it's students that are close contacts and asymptomatic we report each week and we also report positive cases that we've had we've been pretty consistent of less than 10 positive cases each week and less than close contacts each week we did if you remember i think at some point i discussed with the board that we were not reporting staff numbers because they were so small on the dashboard but we've gone back and we're just going to start updating at the end of each month how many cases we had for each month if
016we hopefully our numbers stay very low for our staff we're a little over 96 percent vaccinated for all of our staff so although you know we know there are breakthrough cases and those kinds of things but we figure with the the low case numbers we want to be transparent for our community and let everybody know how many cases we're experiencing but we also want to keep staff's privacy as well so we think this is a nice balance of reporting that so you can see in august uh we had two weeks of school and we had two cases in september we had six so how many do we have quarantined right now students it's hard to say how many we have actually quarantined at any one time because they can overlap and where they start and
017end depending on whether they had symptoms or didn't you know it but you you know looking at that rolling average we probably have about 20 to 30 students out of school at any one time for covet relatedness okay and that's both schools that's both schools combined yeah if i broke if i broke it out by school it'd be getting small enough numbers that i'd be concerned about student privacy as well yep all right so we update that on the district website every monday morning so by midday monday that should be up updated for folks that are looking for it test to stay protocol we've been talking about this over the last couple of months right now we're not recommending moving forward with this at this time you can see our quarantine numbers are low and
018of course we want to keep as many kids and students in school as we can the challenge with the guidelines right now is that for you to qualify for tests to stay you would have to be following all of the protocols for when the contact happened and most of our contacts that are tracking back to school or happening at lunch when you remove your mask to eat or at athletics where you have close contact any student that is being quarantined and it tracks back to those settings isn't eligible for tests to stay so this is a pretty heavy lift to put this in place a very small number of our students would qualify for it and right now we have a few nurses out as well so this isn't a time where i can recommend
019that we go this direction however we do have several especially elementary schools in the area who can't have students out or exempt out of quarantine because of vaccination because they're not eligible to be vaccinated so i think this is an area where you're going to see a lot of elementary schools push quickly into especially and some of our elementary partners as well i meet with them on a weekly basis we're constantly talking about this so we're going to just monitor it we'll see if our numbers start to tick up a little bit then you know might change our opinion as an administration but right now we're just going to closely monitor and see how it goes and kind of keep tabs on how many students would have been impacted by a test to stay but
020as i said right now would be a very small number so um and our students do have a pathway to get out of to be exempt from quarantine in being vaccinated like i said our elementary partners do not have that option so right now it's just monitor and keep reassessing this is a reoccurring topic in our administrative team meetings questions on this all right that's it for the return to school update i'm going to turn this over to rob and jeff on a presentation on staff recruiting hiring we bring this to the board each fall good evening board uh yeah so as hank said jeff and i are here to give the annual update on uh staff recruiting and hiring uh particularly about actions that we took past this past spring and now that we
021see in our staff today so to start out i just want to bring us back to our mission statement uh in particular those first two underlying words and our mission statement is the caring and challenging environment for our students that's what we strive to create and to create that we need a staff that's caring and challenging so this gets into the criteria that our selection teams look for when they go to hire an individual for a position i'll start us over on the right hand side the challenging that's everything we think about a classroom teacher or a parapro or you know anybody that's really working in our buildings is we want our staff to be experts in their profession we want them to have high expectations of their students and of each other and we
022also want them to understand how the brain learns so they can structure learning for students that's appropriate for them the other side is the caring well the challenging part is there the caring is we need personality traits and we need background experiences uh to be able to care for our students so we need every single one of our staff members to be student centered we need them to be empathetic coaches and for our staff to be able to empathize with all of our students collectively on our staff we need a variety of shared lived experiences and we need a variety of shared social identities so we can empathize with all of our students so that's that's the large profile of what we're looking for each hiring season i just want to remind you some challenges
023that we see as we go out and try to recruit and find people for these positions should come as no surprise we report every year there's a national shortage of individuals who are going into the education field that's both classroom teachers and our support staff and our cmg staff and administrators just collectively there's a challenge there nationwide we also have a challenge within the state of illinois that there's pretty limited pipelines to allowing somebody to get their license or their certification to fill some of these roles there's been some some improvements over the past few years but the challenge still exists the third point down here really leads to that first point which is we also are battling a perception of the profession so there are some negative perceptions of what it means to work
024in education and that unfortunately is leading fewer and fewer people to choose education as their their field of work so we have that that we're working through and then the other is uh there's always a challenge particularly in the western suburbs here is that we're competing with other school districts for the best candidates so there's fewer people and so it creates this competition field between the school districts but the good news is we've got jeff and jeff's primary role in all of this is to go out and with all these challenges happening find people to apply for our jobs so he's going to talk to you about some new and unique ways that we've been recruiting some candidates there are increased like i said in illinois some increased pathways for an individual to get their
025license or their certification for particular jobs he'll touch briefly on one powerful thing we have going for us is the reputation of district 99 and that while there is a shortage uh people as they are coming in for interviews are telling us the only reason why i applied for this is because it's district 99 so we have a really good reputation out there and then also how jeff in his professional networks is trying to change that competition mindset between districts into one in which there's coordination to try collectively across districts to fill in some of these gaps and to find candidates for these positions so i'll hand it over to jeff now and he can talk through uh things that he's been working on all right thank you rob um so i'm gonna start off
026uh just as i said rob mentioned touching on what are some of the methods that we are using for recruiting staff here to district 99 uh some of these are tried and true methods couple things that are a little bit newer perhaps uh obviously this past year with the pandemic job fairs were not plentiful year before there were apparently none i managed to get to two they were virtual and that was with some reach out trying to find some so hoping that uh things will uh move up in that regard for this coming school year in fact i've already signed up for one with a local university here in the state as well the other thing we're trying to do not only with our certified positions but with all of our positions is a more
027social media promotion if you've been on facebook or twitter or perhaps linkedin you've probably seen postings for things it's still ongoing as i mentioned for some positions we still have open in our support staff but we were trying to do that in the spring as well for our certified staff positions and all of our positions uh one thing that's a little bit newer is trying to reach out connect with some more national tools and some more national job boards uh idea this is trying to be a little bit more proactive than passive instead of traditionally just posting our jobs on our website and hoping people come and find us is also trying to do a little bit more hey we're out here in this area because if you're not from the chicagoland area you might
028not have ever heard of downers grove and not think about coming to work for district 99 so trying to get our name out there to different regions of the country uh through these other job boards um and that leads into my next point there which is personal outreach so starting last spring when we're looking at this i've been reaching out to different universities in various regions of the country just trying to connect with their education departments uh make sure that our name is out there as a district and that people know that we're interested in having their students come to our district and you know get a chance to interview them and see what they can bring to filling all the various goals we have that rob mentioned in terms of finding ideal candidates here
029for our students the next one on there is the networking so uh nwpa which is the group of human resource professionals from uh the burbs out here that i work with just had a meeting with them friday we meet monthly and and that's really really an outstanding group for those of you that were here when pete was here you may have heard him mention them before and what a tremendous resource that is even though we are all high school districts that are as rob mentioned we're competing for some of the same people it really is a nice platform of support um trying to help each other find tools find resources i just uh connected with them today said hey we need a substitute for this position that we're having a little trouble finding an applicant
030for uh can you please you know share this with your networks as well so definitely a very collaborative approach on that front and then as rob mentioned our district reputation the work that we're currently doing has been tremendous as i was you know we have uh our online digital interviews that are the first screeners for our candidates and i go through and some of those i watch more intently some of them i just kind of pick and choose every once in a while depending on the position and just kind of spot check see what we have coming in and it's uh really interesting to me how frequently even doing that on a random basis we have people talking about the reputation and not just saying oh dennis grove is a great place but specifically mentioning
031things like our master's facility plan um some of the work we're doing with blended learning they've heard about all these different things that are district initiatives that people are uh you know able to speak to and you know are excited to be a part of with what we have going on here at the district so some things by the numbers for you this is related to our certified staff positions from this past spring so our teachers counselors those types of things we posted 25 certified positions and we did manage to fill all those positions prior to the start of school we had 954 applicants in our pool 135 of those self identify themselves as diverse so as we're thinking about the uh district goal here to try and as rob mentioned have staff that reflect
032the varied natures of our students um one of the things we look for is you know does our staff look like our students overall and trying to make that a closer relationship so we did have 25 candidates of color that were brought in for in-person interviews uh eight of those ultimately we did target for higher uh we ended up adding four to our staff the other four at some point either as we were making them the offer or shortly before accepted offer offers from other districts so as rob mentioned uh there is a com competition for districts to do that a lot large majority of uh staffs are not as diverse as maybe our student populations are so we're trying to address that across the board and that's all over the suburbs so some considerations
033going forward what are we doing uh to continue on uh what do we need to think about so uh district 99 is uh full-time hiring not been affected by the teacher shortage yet i stress that because as we were able to fill all 25 of our certified positions for the spring or from the spring into the fall here we do have some issues still staffing some of our leaves that we have coming up for fmla we've had a couple long term leaves they have all been very challenging to fill and the pool of teachers applying for various positions is not as deep as it once was in some cases we're talking about maybe a dozen to 20 applicants in some cases for very selective positions such as our social workers psychologists those pools can be
034even thinner and so those are difficult positions to fill so we are still kind of watching that and trying to do various things to continue to attract talent to the district um as i mentioned support staff those shortages are already here we have several support staff positions currently that are uh unfilled and we're trying to look at ways to promote that and continue to bring people in and that's not unique to district 99 as i mentioned networking with the nwpa everyone is experiencing the same shortage right now in terms of those staffing positions definitely looking to continue job fairs as i mentioned two from last spring i think typically uh the district we would attend around eight or nine at least so looking to return to that number here and currently working on the networking
035to get that going and um in terms of examining national job boards we're gonna continue to look at that we did have some applicants come from those when we tried so we're going to continue to dip our toes in that pool and see if it can do things as mentioned some other tools that allow us to proactively recruit talent from across the country where we can look at a list of candidates and then send them and connect with them instead of again waiting for them to come to us and then one other thing that's a newer thing that is a position we're bringing in the district i believe we're down to a couple finalists the education pathways coordinator you may have heard that mentioned before a very interesting position here we're bringing on where we'll
036have staff member who's going to work with our own students to kind of shepherd them through their high school years into college and those are students who are specifically interested in going into the education field so we create our own homegrown pipeline so that we have students who are interested in a career in education they're not going to be ended up going somewhere else we can try to bring them back back home to district 99 then hopefully any questions on so uh yeah real quick um so just to summarize uh you know we know specifically what we're looking for each hiring season uh and while there is a there's a there's a national shortage on workers in any field uh and we've we've historically had that in education also um so while there's challenges that
037are there one thing that excites me is i think about what is the pandemic uh what are some positives and it's caused us to really think differently about instead of passively just posting a position how do we actively go out and find people uh that fit the profile of what we're looking for so jeff just been doing a really good job there's frequent times he'll come into my office and say hey what about and we process that and think about is this a way that we could be creative solving this issue okay any questions for us i had a question about the educational pathways coordinator and maybe you said this but i i was having trouble hearing um we're bringing we're trying to encourage our students who are interested in education to return are we
038providing any kind of incentive for them i'm sorry are we providing any kind of incentive for them like tuition or sign-up bonus or something or other yeah we have we haven't gone come up we haven't gone that far yet right now we're just trying to start the position up um it is a new position and uh start kind of letting that grow but that's certainly something that possibly could be considered in the future i suppose okay yeah we don't offer uh specific incentives and you know we have the the intro to teaching class so there's a course there and then this position jeff was talking about is structuring it in a way of helping students choose courses that could lead them into a career in education okay thank you and i will take this opportunity
039to share with the board that tomorrow one of our students gracie over at south will be featured on the aaasa that's the superintendent's association for the united states our education pathways program our intro to teaching program and gracie one of our students will be featured in kind of how to do this how to grow your own so we'll be sharing that on the national level tomorrow and i hope to have a reporting of that to share with the board afterwards any other comments or questions all right any other questions all right thank you we have one action item for tonight we need a motion for the board of education to adopt the resolution authorizing july 1st 2021 to june 30th 2026 performance-based superintendence contract with dr henry thiele and to adopt the 2021-2026 performance-based superintendent's
040contract with dr thiele so moved second i think mike and terry might be a report [Music] no nancy kupka aye the motion carries and i am honored that we'll have dr thiele for another five years thank you board finally we have a second perception of visitors which is intended for audience members to address the board on any topic pertaining to community high school district 99 we've received no additional slips okay seeing none we need a motion for adjournment i move that we adjourn second all those in favor aye aye all those opposed we are insured thank you very much